brief book update

I've had three books open this month, and none of them fits the usual M.O. First, there was Virginia Woolf's "A Room of One's Own," which took a while to get through because it requires more thought than can be conjured on the subway. But I read at night, during Thanksgiving vacation, and during lunch breaks at work. I made a lot of notes, which I'll share with you soon, but I'm afraid I don't have enough free moments today to do so.

The second book I can't yet reveal because it's actually a gift for someone, but I wanted to give it a gander before i put it in the mail. This book I've been seriously skimming. I definitely think the recipient will appreciate it more than I can without a thorough study. I'm enjoying the book, and it moves pretty fast, but it's a bit like reading Shakespeare because of the language. Plus it's not set up like a "normal" novel ... it's got an inventive style/format. I'm not done with it yet, but I hope to be in the next day or two so I can send it off.

The third book I'm almost done with is David Sedaris's "Holidays on Ice." A customer recommended it very highly to me the other day, so I pounced on it at The Strand, where I also picked up two other Sedaris books and a bunch of other lovelies like "Lolita" and "The Alienist." I have made it quite quickly through the small volume of six essays, but so far the first one has been the only really enjoyable one. Sedaris recounts his days as a Macy's elf, and I can relate, having worked retail. I only have one left, and so far the rest have been (and I hate to say it) kind of boring. It's my first Sedaris, and I'm confident the non-Christmas variety are much more engaging. But for $1, I guess I can't complain. Plus when I finish it this afternoon, I can say I only "wasted" three sittings on it.

a million books to read

People really tried to ruin this book for me. "But it's not true!" they cried when I told them I'd been tearing up. "I couldn't stand the way it was written!" they cringed. I admit it takes some getting used to. Random capitalization, no quotation marks, no paragraph indentations, missing commas, run-ons galore. Voice, people, voice. I know this book is a fabrication. I remember the hoopla. I grazed the Smoking Gun article and decided it didn't matter. I read the book as if it were simply a good story, which it is. I don't care if every detail is true, or even if major plot points actually happened. This book was amazing to read. Once I got past reading every capitalized word with extra emphasis, I tore through it quite quickly, and it's officially on the list of books I love.

"I look up. There are tears running down Lilly's cheek and she is smiling at me. It is a deep smile, not the type of momentary happiness, but the rare kind that comes when something inside without words is woken from slumber and brought forth to live."

More often than not, Frey is saying something profound. You're there, you feel what he feels, you become him. You're dirty and vomiting, you're gorging yourself on cafeteria food, you're dreaming of drugs, you're angry with the system, you don't look yourself in the eye, you're constantly testing yourself. Then you fall in love and you remember that there are reasons to live. You might have done some awful things in your past, but they have made you. They don't have to control you. You can learn to trust yourself.

The near tears came again on the subway. Just as I was on a train pulling into Union Square, I read: "Hey, Kid. You forgot something." I see Lincoln's name in the next paragraph and I have to close the book and my eyes and let it sink in. They've come to help James rescue Lilly. It's fucking beautiful.

Frey wins the award for most cursing in a piece of literature, but it's understandable. When you're trying to hang on and all you've got is cigarettes and coffee, potty mouth is to be expected. There was also a lot of crude description of blood and guts, but I feel like I can handle anything after making it through "The Gargoyle." (Incidentally, I recently hand-sold that to a blind Rastafarian. Go figure.)

I got this book at The Strand for $1, just like "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time." I've been back twice recently, and here is what I've bought:

Virginia Woolf - "A Room of One's Own"
Siri Hustvedt - "What I Loved"
George Orwell - "Nineteen Eighty-Four"
Rick Bragg - "All Over But the Shoutin'" (I am from Alabama, I should read this.)
Manil Suri - "The Death of Vishnu"
Homer - "The Odyssey" (I already own it but this copy is much more portable.)
Douglas Adams - "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
Lewis Carroll - "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" (Again, already own a non-portable version.)
L. Frank Baum - "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz"
David Sedaris - "Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim"
Paul Auster - "The New York Trilogy"

I will basically buy any classic I haven't read and any newer stuff that I've seen on our tables at B&N. I did skip over a couple that we have on display that just didn't sound very appealing: "Spartina" and "Being Written." Maybe one day I'll run across "My Friend Leonard," Frey's sequel to "A Million Little Pieces." I've pretty much decided any book I want will end up at The Strand or a Goodwill eventually, so it's hard for me to justify buying anything new. I might indulge, though, during employee appreciation week at work. I've got a running list of things I have noticed at the store:

"The Diving Bell and the Butterfly"
"Play it as it Lays"
"Unbearable Lightness of Being"
"Um"
"I Hate New Music"
"No One Belongs Here More Than You"
"In the Land of No Right Angles"
"Daphne"
"The Gum Thief"

I'd also like to get "When Wanderers Cease to Roam," which is a really cute gifty biography, and the little New York Christmas book. Apparently I love to make lists, so I should probably also get the book of lists as Christmas Gift to Myself.

I've decided I should alternate reading classics and contemporary works, so I'm going to tackle the Virginia Woolf next, followed probably by "Redeeming Love," given to me by my sister, and then "Catch 22," and then "Then We Came to the End." It's the plan for now anyway, and upcoming books will probably also include "Madame Bovary," "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter," Paul Auster and David Sedaris.

P.S. I promise to take more notes and stop glazing over the details.

the curious incident of the blog in the night-time

I've managed to get ahead of myself again! But it happens to be fortunate in that as of only last night do I fully realize the significance of the title of this book. I happened to be watching Sherlock Holmes solve a case on the telly, and out rolled the words from his lips: "The curious incident of the dog in the night-time." And it all made sense. The narrator of this book is an autistic 15-year-old named Christopher who loves Sherlock Holmes and finds himself mystified by the case of a dead poodle.

I won't be able to be too specific in discussing this book because I've read another entire book between the time I finished it and now, and I can't wait to spill that one, too, even though I still haven't been keeping up with quotes recently. It's just too much of a hassle on the subway ...
ANYWAY, (as Chuck used to say), this book did almost make me cry. I didn't know it was a sad book until I was riding the subway one day and reached the part where Christopher finds out his mother isn't dead -- she's in London with her lover.

Anyone attempting to read this book over my shoulder on the train probably thought it was horribly written, but that's because Mark Haddon captures his character's voice so well. You feel like it's written by a 10-year-old genius. Nothing Christopher says is a lie, and none of it is without a significant amount of logical reasoning. Sometimes that reasoning extends to Christopher's favorite pastime, "maths." The book is chock-full of equations and diagrams, and Christopher uses them to explain the world around him. It comforts him to have these constants in his life, because he has a difficult time dealing with emotion, and when things get to complicated, he can close his eyes and recite the prime numbers. It also makes him feel better to think about how people's brains are like computers:
"Also people think they're not computers because they have feelings and computers don't have feelings. But feelings are just having a picture on the screen in your head of what is going to happen tomorrow or next year, or what might have happened instead of what did happen, and if it is a happy picture they smile and if it is a sad picture they cry."

It's nothing short of heart-wrenching to watch this character find out that his mother is alive, and then to watch him become frightened of his own father, the dog killer, and then to watch him become the Brave Little Toaster and hop on a train.

let's see how fast this thing can go

I decided to stay up tonight and finish "Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs." I couldn't get enough Chuck. I want more. It's like having a conversation, but less annoying. Now I'm going to have to start reading Nick Hornby and Sarah Vowell. I might be a nonfiction believer. I've read nonfiction before, but mostly in a religious or referential context. This wasn't like reading at all. This was like staying up all night and becoming best friends with someone over a beer and a bowl of cereal (not at the same time). It's when shooting the shit turns spiritual, and I caught a glimpse of the brainpower I used to have in high school, that which powered four-hour telephone conversations about nothing. Zack Morris, "Left Behind," Lucky Charms, Adam Sandler. Discuss.

By far, though, my favorite chapter is "All I Know is What I Read in the Papers." Chuck perfectly explains what it is to be a reporter. I've been a reporter. I know that no reporter inserts his opinion into stories. The tone is literally set by the first interviewee to call you back. And the one that could alter everything might just call while you're off blowing your nose for 2.5 minutes. You train yourself to word things like a balance robot. Even if you saw it with your own eyes, certain things are always "alleged." A source can lie to you, and you can print it, but it doesn't make you a liar. They really said that. Chuck almost made me miss being a reporter -- almost. It had its perks, but I lack the drive of nobility required to join that team again. If I'm going to make a pittance, I've got to be doing something I love. The only exception is that I would do something I merely like just because there is no chance in hell I'm leaving New York any time soon.

you wanna take this outside?

Me and Chuck aren't coming to blows, but I have taken issue with his overgeneralization that people who claim to like "all music except country" are "wretched," "boorish and pretentious," and just want hipsters to like them. I've been one of those people plenty of times, not because I wanted to be accepted or because I think I'm better than people who like country, but simply because it's an easy way of saying I like a diverse range of music, with one major exception. And I can say that, too, because I grew up in the South and was exposed to country music 1,000 times more often than any hipster who swears by bands I've never even heard of but claims the same thing. I will admit the phrase is a lazy cop-out, but I can remember using it as far back as elementary school. Before I knew what a hipster was. Before hipsters existed. Before the dawn of time.

And I'll admit, too, that there are a few country songs I do like. Chuck raves about the Dixie Chicks in this chapter, and for good reason. They're probably my favorite country act, and actually probably the only one I can even say I like as a whole. The rest of my country affinities are individual songs. It's possible that I like David Allan Coe -- I have seen him in concert twice and enjoyed myself, but it wasn't my idea to go, nor was it my idea to even begin listening to it. But some songs grew on me. Just like when I was a kid and my dad played country music sometimes, and there was one CD that had some songs I could tolerate. Specifically, "Boot Scootin' Boogie" and "Chattahoochee." And there are a few Reba songs I dig, and maybe a Faith Hill or two, but these are not things I ever choose to listen to, they're just the ones I can tolerate if the situation calls for it. Country just doesn't appeal to me. Johnny Cash doesn't count, either. And while it seems vaguely hipster to say you only like old country music, I can see that it does make a difference. But Johnny Cash is the only one of those I've clung to much yet.

This has nothing to do with people perceiving me in a certain way for my feelings about music. I also don't like jazz. Lots of people love it, but I've never heard a single piece of jazz and thought, "I gotta hear more of this! Who is it?" I just plain don't like it. It doesn't give me the warm fuzzies like my favorite bands do, or even the good old one-hit wonders. I hate country because I don't like the way it sounds. I don't feel it in my heart, my head or my hips. Chuck tells us why hipsters hate country:

"...because it speaks to normal people in a tangible, rational manner. Hipsters hate it because they hate Midwesterners, and they hate Southerners, and they hate people with real jobs."

This makes me laugh because on any given day I can see as many hipsters as I want in Williamsburg, and on the L train that runs through Williamsburg, and in various Manhattan locales, usually on the street. If you ever have trouble defining hipster, get off at Bedford in Brooklyn. You will drown in people who think they are too cool for Earth.

There was another Chuck quote I liked today in the chapter about movies that question reality: "The strength of your memory dictates the size of your reality." It's so true. My memory is awful, so it's possible that my reality is frequently skewed. That's the other reason writing is so important to me, because it's the only way I remember what happens in life. At work there's a tiny, fat book that's called "The Five-Year Journal." Every day for five years you'd write in it what you did that day. I used to do this in high school, and it was fantastic. I vainly read and re-read my life and color-coded things and used acronyms I'll never remember in order to keep my secrets safe. This is the reference I'll use to write the book of my youth. Too bad if I don't keep it up more, there won't be a sequel.

half-way through

I have two good quotes from Chuck today, and I realized why this book is hard to talk about without just quoting the whole thing. He recalls events and explains things. As simple as that sounds, what I mean is the things he says can't be said any better than he says them. He goes into some pretty deep details, too, so I don't feel there's a heck of a lot I can add to it other than, "This guy is awesome, check out what he said."

"This is why men need to become obsessed with things: It's an extroverted way to pursue solipsism."

"Coolness is always what others seem to have naturally--an unspecific, delicious, chocolately paradigm we must pilfer through subterfuge."

After the chapter that demonstrates how cereal commercials teach kids how to be cool, Chuck presents the 23 questions he asks people that help him decide if he can love them. Following, my answers. Will he love me? Doubt it.

1. No. I'm more impressed by brain power a person is compelled to use for the betterment of humanity than brain power a person was gifted with that bears no importance in the grand scheme of things.
2. No way. I'm pretty sure I'm not strong enough mentally or physically to kick anything to death, no matter who it would save.
3. I'd pick the skull. What if the turtle got sick and died? I'm not afraid of Hitler when he's dead.
4. Hell no. No football player has a chance against a 700-pound gorilla.
5. I love Alice in Chains, but I love all music too much to swallow the pill. I'd just date somebody else. (Assuming that's an option. If not, I'd be willing to put up with it to save their collar bones.)
6. No way. I'd just make it a point to write down my dreams if I wanted to remember them that badly. Nobody needs to know that shit but me.
7. Loch Ness Monster. People have biopsies all the time. It can still be above the fold.
8. Nah, I'd just counteract "The Dark Crystal" with "Wayne's World."
9. It would definitely increase the likelihood of me reading it. I'd take the risk. I can only assume those newfound homosexuals went on to find happiness.
10. I haven't read the book, though it's on a display table at work. I'm inclined to think "Barracuda" is better. That wasn't an amazing opening line. But maybe I'll change my mind if I read the book.
11. I'd go call my mom. If the special effects were that good, I could always sit through the boring plot a second time.
12. If $1 already made a difference, then I'm thinking a little something is better than nothing. How about $5. I'm broke, remember?!
13. I guess I'd talk about myself and how my life has changed over the years.
14. Garfield's a smart cat. I think they'd be OK with him. Dogs, on the other hand, would probably be insulted by Odie.
15. Writing my memoirs.
16. I'd probably watch it for a minute, get bored and decide I'd wait and see how it randomly infiltrated my life later.
17. I trust the man with no past the least, because at least the man with the past has been honest enough to let people know about it.
18. Hands down, a year in Europe. I'd much rather do something that involves living life than just be able to say I did one cool thing one time for 10 minutes.
19. I'd say I was really pissed off about something, and I meant to kick the couch.
20. I almost said the documentary, so I could hear what people said about me, but I really think the artistic interpretation would be more interesting. I already know what really happened. But since I get to see them both anyway, why does it matter?
21. Later. By about two years.
22. I thought this boiled down to whether I wanted to be known as a slut or a thief, but really, I guess the thief option is less troubling because it's not true. You could prove that you didn't really do it.
23. I would definitely be weirded out by the loss of free will, but at least I would know that everything always turns out great in sitcoms. I'm not sure why John Ritter is relevant.

chuck day

I just finished the seventh chapter in "Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs," and yes, that second comma bothers me immensely. To the point, though, I've taken mental notes on a few memorable quotes from the past few days. I wasn't sure what I was going to get with this book, but I've been pleasantly surprised. Chuck is insightful -- he's a guy I'd like to know. He's passionately anti-soccer, which I have mixed feelings about, but he makes some great points, and notes that soccer is basically a sport designed for losers.

"America has plenty of outcasts. Some American outcasts are very popular, such as OutKast." (footnote: "And Jake Gyllenhaal.")

"A normal eleven-year-old can play an entire season without placing toe to sphere and nobody would even notice, assuming he or she does a proper job of running about and avoiding major collisions." This after noting that most sports (including the ones I played) are humiliations waiting to happen. Strike out. Get fouled = air ball ("Basketball games actually stop to recognize (a loser's) failure.").

Working backwards, I enjoyed the chapter that compared Pamela Anderson to Marylin Monroe. And it's just the simplest, "Go, Chuck!" points that make me happy, like pointing out that Kid Rock named himself after youth and rock 'n' roll. And that Madonna's greatest two songs are similes: "Like a Virgin" and "Like a Prayer," because "Madonna is like a sexual idol, but that's just the plot for her self-stylized promotional blitz." Thus, Madonna has built her career around trying to be a sexual icon, but she doesn't succeed for that very reason.

I also love that Chuck remembers how one of the soccer moms is angry at him for using the phrase "in and of itself."

I'd go into further detail about what I've read and enjoyed from Chuck the past day or two, but it's super-late and I need sleep. Oh, but I did suggestively sell a copy of this book tonight at work. A chick was looking for something to read on the beach, and she was tired of fiction. Perfecto.

In other news, the second reason I'm too lazy to write much here this evening is because I spent all my juices on the debut post for my food blog, Pickle Hater. Just another outlet.

woman slays devil baby, self after reading vomitous chick lit

So in the time it took for me to remember to write a new blog, I finished reading "Rosemary's Baby" and started on "Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs." I'm really happy with the variety in my reading materials. While "Rosemary's Baby" wasn't nearly as dark and disturbing as I'd hoped it would be, it satisfied my desire to squash cuteness.

I made it through this book so quickly most likely because I wanted to hurry up and get to the good parts, and they never really came until the end. The first half of the book is basically Rosemary and her husband, Guy, moving into a new apartment and trying to have a baby. They know their building has a bad/mystical reputation, but they don't heed the warnings to stay away. The book is written in third person but is told from Rosemary's perspective nonetheless. She's a naive Omaha girl moving to New York City with her actor husband. She gets bad vibes from the neighbors, but it's the 1960s and she has to be polite. Little does she know, her husband is joining a satanic coven with them.

I have a feeling someone could make a great movie out of this. I know one exists, but I'm not sure how old or great it is. In a nutshell, what happens is Guy drugs his wife and subjects her to a satanic ritual in which she is impregnated with a half-breed demon baby. Rosemary has a dim, dream-like recollection of this event, but she remains in denial until the pieces of the puzzle start to come together. Eventually, she figures out what has been going on behind her back with the help of her friend Hutch, who is soon killed off via demonic vengeance. Rosemary seeks help but cannot escape. Once in labor, she is sedated and later informed that her baby died in childbirth. She is kept under watch by the coven, all the while hearing a baby cry and producing weird green breast milk, a byproduct of the "(witches' brew) vitamin drinks" she was forced to consume during her pregnancy. She drugs her attendant one night and busts in on a coven meeting, wielding a large kitchen knife. She sees her demon baby -- horns, claws, yellow cat eyes and all -- and ponders much too briefly tossing it and herself out the window. Instead her maternal instincts take over and she decides maybe she can be this child's mother after all. The end.

What kind of ending is that? What did the demon baby grow up to be? How did it terrorize Earth? How did Rosemary go on living with the coven? Did she just tell her family that the baby died? How can she live with herself? I'm not saying I hated this book, or that I even disliked it. I just want a sequel! I don't think the story's finished. What's that? There is one? It's called "Rosemary's Son"!!! Happy day. Stay tuned for the potentially titillating conclusion! Unless of course, it got worse reviews than the first! One reader recommends avoiding just the last two pages of "Rosemary's Son." Ugh. I think I'll skip it. I'm glad I read it -- I love some classic horror -- but perhaps these days we're all just a little too desensitized to violence and demonic mayhem to be frightened by the glossing over of ritual rape, odorous (albeit cursed) trinkets and 65-year-old cultists named Minnie and Laura-Louise.

As for "Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs," so far so good. Laughter, cynicism and a definition of solipsism? I think we're on the right track, 50 pages in. I was quickly over the "Real World" analogy, but the Sims bit was interesting. We've moved on to analyzing Billy Joel. I'll be sure to mark some quotes.

I browsed the opening chapters of a couple chick-lit novels, to see if there was anything I'd want to send to Angie, who is tiring of romance novels. "Confessions of a Shopaholic" was beginning to make me gag. Bridget Jones minus a few million brain cells plus a credit card. "Milkrun" I might could handle, and I think I will. Some nice writing there, comparatively speaking. At least some good "huh" points. Other books I might have to wolf down to send to Angie? "The Other Boleyn Girl" (good luck, it's huge!) and "Chocolat."

As suggested by two now, I will probably read "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time" next.

"The mere habit of learning to love is the thing" -- JA

Today I said goodbye to "The Jane Austen Book Club." It was a pretty good read, and it did make me want to crack open an Austen. But it won't make the ranks of favorites. I liked it enough to send it to Angie, who is a huge Jane Austen fan. But I haven't read one since high school, so I skipped over the "Response" section at the back. Great for English majors who like to analyze literature. I think I'd enjoy it if I'd read them recently. It's like "Jane Austen's family and friends comment on 'Mansfield Park,' opinions collected and recorded by Austen herself."

As the book closed, I could see more how it might make an OK movie. More things began to happen in the present, and somehow they attributed their success to Jane Austen: "We let Austen into our lives, and now we were all either married or dating." I guess it makes sense in that "success" to Austen's characters was love and marriage, but in the end all I can say is that this was a cute little novel. Not profound, but cute. Next I need to switch to something darker. Maybe "Rosemary's Baby." I can only take so much cuteness (they refurbished a Magic 8 Ball into an Ask Austen Ball -- need I say more?).

out of the ordinary

Not that I have "ordinary" novels to read, but I picked my latest read on quite a whim. I spoiled myself with "The Gargoyle," and so I chose something exactly the opposite: "The Jane Austen Book Club." Light, easy, quick. All of those it is, although I wouldn't recommend it to my mother. There are a few details included that I'm afraid would make her blush.

This is a nice novel so far, and I'm half through with it. It's not fantastic, but it's not bad. It's actually about what I thought it would be, but I was secretly hoping to be pleasantly surprised. A few women I work with asked what I was reading, and seemed to share the same view: the book is just OK. The inclusion of random French phrases is usually fine in a book if they are translated or explained, but there have been several parts I have not been able to fully appreciate simply because I have no idea what the sentence said. Luckily these are fairly sporadic. Just as sporadic but much happier are the sentences the author, Karen Joy Fowler, surprises me with. Every now and then, she'll actually throw in a rather profound statement. Unfortunately, I haven't been marking these to post. You'll just have to take my word for it.

The book claims New York Times bestsellerdom, and I suppose the concept is deserved. Jane Austen is a much-beloved author, and I was forced to read one or two in high school. I've always been more attached to the Bronte sisters, but I might read an Austen again soon. I think I have "Emma" and "Mansfield Park" with me here. I did the other day rearrange my bookcase. Of the three shelves (oh, hush, I have many more than that, but most are in storage) the top shelf is books I plan to read soonest. Middle shelf is books I'm on the fence about, but one might jump at me if the mood strikes. The lowest shelf contains books I've already read, recently or not, and those I know I won't make it around to for a good while, like "The Stand."

I should be able to finish my current selection pretty quickly, and then maybe I can revisit the two I began recently. Then maybe I can move on to the ones I began a while back and never finished. But, the process will be delayed if my coworker brings me her copy of "Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs" as promised. I need to add some non-fiction to my list.

I will say at first I wasn't sure if I would even make it through "The Jane Austen Book Club," but I forced myself to continue, and it's been enjoyable enough. You really don't have to know the Austen novels to appreciate it, because the author has included synopses of them as an appendix. And, as one of the book's cover blurbs says, the book might make a good introduction to them. I also found out that they actually made a movie of this book, though I can't exactly see how it would go, considering the book is full of flashbacks of the club's members. I can't imagine reading it and thinking it would make a good movie. Maybe I'll change my mind by the end.

i hope it's in this lifetime

So after making it 14 pages into a 185-page book, and maybe 29 pages into a 246-page book, I halted to devour "The Sirens of Titan," at 319 pages, followed by the 465 breathtaking pages of "The Gargoyle," by Andrew Davidson. I like that I'm expanding my reading to include male authors, because I feel I've relied too heavily on females for my favorites in the past. I can safely say "The Gargoyle" is approaching favoritism. Although I usually say that after reading anything good. Sometimes they fall in favor, like "The Witch of Portobello," which I believe was basically just OK, although I enjoyed reading it.

"The Gargoyle" was given to me during SPI, so I've been carrying the ARC back and forth along the subway, which is where most of the reading of it was done. However, I did just finish it at home. I honestly couldn't put this book down. I literally wanted to have to wait for the train a long time, because it meant I could read more. I would be in the middle of a suspenseful scene when I reached my stop and be thoroughly irritated that I couldn't walk and read at the same time, though I've seen it done by others. I even read a good portion of this book standing up on the subway, which is funny for two reasons. This is a decent-size book and not nearly as easy to handle standing up as a mass-market. Also, I can remember conversing with my fellow SPIers that we would never be able to read on the subway, let alone in the standing position. Now I can't imagine being on the subway without something to read, even when it's way too crowded and I have to turn pages and hold the book with one hand as the train sways and jolts and disturbs my balance.

I intend to return to "How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read," but I can't say I agree that reading books isn't always necessary. I am so glad I read "The Gargoyle." And I'm impressed that it's a debut novel. I'm sort of intrigued by Dante's "Inferno" now, as it is discussed much within the novel. I never had to read more than a bit or piece of it in school, so I'm sure I didn't catch all the relevance, but the author did a fine job of explaining everything as far as I could tell.

The beginning of the book is graphic and gruesome, describing the narrator's experience in a car accident in which he is burned nearly to death. He meets an intriguing stranger as he recovers in the hospital, and she reveals to him through fascinating stories how the two were lovers in a previous lifetime. She also incorporates other love stories that prove symbolic, and the chapters alternate between her bedside tales and the narrator's current-life burn recovery. Their love is rekindled, though he remains convinced that Marianne is just a schizophrenic sculptress. She claims to be doing penance by giving "hearts" to the gargoyles she sculpts, saving her last heart for her lover. The narrator is self-aware as the author of a memoir, so my only regret is that Marianne didn't show more appreciation for her lover's writing as her presented her with his written versions of her stories. She really couldn't spend her time on Earth in this particular life as much of a physical lover to the narrator, and we just have to accept that their love transcended one minuscule lifetime and is fully realized later, presumably in heaven.

I'm really overwhelmed by the number of books I want to read next. Perhaps I should suck it up and finish the two I've already started. There are a few that I'd like to buy ... but considering the small number that represents my bank balance and the sheer number of unread books on my shelf, I guess they can wait.

Pieces

I haven't finished "How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read," but I fully intend to, very soon. I didn't really think that was good subway reading, so I started a book my mom sent me called "An Episode of Sparrows," and I made it through the beginning, but I got distracted by Kurt Vonnegut. I'm not sure why, but I felt compelled to start "The Sirens of Titan" when I found a raggedy copy at The Strand, credited to Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. I guess he dropped the junior later, because this copy was printed in 1977. I suppose it qualifies as vintage, but I had to do a little repair work. The back cover of the mass-market paperback was gone, and the back page fell off. Considering it contained the last few paragraphs of the book, I figured I'd better tape it back on. Living in my purse, the back page wasn't exactly protected, so I have remedied the situation by putting a whole layer of clear mailing tape on the front and back covers. I basically ghetto-laminated it. It's pretty charming. On the new back cover is a little order form for KV boxed sets for about $8 each. I'm always tempted to mail those things in ... this one to Pinebrook, N.J. But how is it really that "handy" of a coupon if you have to send in the last paragraph of the book, too, which is on the back of it? Somebody didn't think that through very well.

Today, the anniversary of my second week at Barnes & Noble, I learned that mass-market paperbacks are so cheaply produced that the ones that don't sell aren't returned to the publisher. They're literally destroyed -- stripped of the cover and (hopefully/supposedly) recycled. Quite sad. However, the condition of my "Sirens" proves that they really aren't made to last, anyway. Also at work, though yesterday, I submitted a staff recommendation of "Love is a Mix Tape," even though I haven't read it. So, I better get on it. I do want to read it! I need to start a list of the books I want to read. Chuck Klosterman, David Sedaris, and a new one called "Daphne," which I knew before reading the subtitle was a mystery involving the author of "Rebecca." I know there are more -- I'll start keeping a good list. I also thought I might start keeping up with the books I see people reading on the subway, just out of curiosity. Today I saw a lady reading "The Bitch" by Deja King, and another reading a giant, red Catherine Coulter hardback.

Anyway, I am really digging "The Sirens of Titan." I don't usually read sci-fi, but somehow when it's Vonnegut, it's different. My roommate asked me what the book was about, and all I could do was mutter something about the future and space travel. Oh, well. At least there are no real aliens in it. The Martians are actually Earthlings who relocated to Mars. Then Mars gets blown up, of course, by Earth. It's fantastic. And there are some "aliens," I guess, but it's not alien invasion or creepy MIB monsters. I just finished reading the description of harmoniums, the life forms that live on Mercury, and it was beautiful. These thin, diamond-shaped organisms feed on the music their planet produces, and they use their bodies to create kaleidescope patterns. How awesome is that?

In other news, I have an informational interview at Random House next week, and I realized I'd have more room for music on my iPod if I gave in and converted everything to m4a. So I did, and I uploaded a crap-ton of Tori Amos tonight, along with REO Speedwagon, Korn and Jimmy Buffett.

between the sacred silence and sleep ...

My mind and my computer are both on overdrive today. I have been uploading more CDs to my iPod. It's nice to have a distraction from thinking about how I didn't get the job I really wanted this week. However, I did get hired at Barnes & Noble, which will be awesome even if it doesn't pay well.

So my iPod is almost perfect. It's only 8G, so I can't fit exactly everything I want, but I feel like the mix is quite representative of me. Following, a list of artists included:

ABBA
Alice in Chains
Amy Winehouse (2)
Audioslave
Beastie Boys
Beck (7)
Cake (4)
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
Dave Matthews Band (2)
David Bowie
David Cook
Deerhunter
DMX
The Dresden Dolls (3)
Duffy
The Eagles of Death Metal (2)
Elton John
Eminem (4)
En Vogue
Faith No More (2)
Fatboy Slim
Feist
Fiona Apple (3)
George Michael
Girl Talk (3)
The Glass Ocean
Jem
Journey
The Killers
KT Tunstall
Limp Bizkit
Live (2)
Madonna
Natalie Imbruglia
Outkast (2)
Peaches (3)
Pearl Jam
Pink Floyd
Q-Tip
Queens of the Stone Age
The Raconteurs
Red Hot Chili Peppers (2)
Sean Paul
She Wants Revenge
Stevie Wonder
Stone Temple Pilots
Sublime
System of a Down (5)
Tenacious D
The Toadies (2)
Tori Amos (3)
Violent Femmes
The White Stripes (2)

So there isn't nearly enough Tori Amos, White Stripes, Violent Femmes or STP, and Weezer and Jimmy Buffet got the shaft. But once the thing finishes syncing, I'll see how much room is left.

I did manage to finish "Eat, Pray, Love" the other day. Finally! And I got a bit of a start on "How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read." I realized Elizabeth Gilbert didn't stump me in the vocab department, really. She included a lot of foreign words but always provided an explanation. I realized this when I ran across the word "mendacity" [tendency to lie] in the new book. But I will make a note of the last sentence I starred: "[S]ome vital transformation is happening in my life, and this transformation needs time and room in order to finish its process undisturbed. ... I'm the cake that just came out of the oven, and it still needs some time to cool before it can be frosted. I don't want to cheat myself out of this precious time. I don't want to lose control of my life again."

There are quite a few intriguing passages in "How to Talk." Basically the book posits that you don't have to read books to know books. I believe that, because there are many books I know but haven't read. It's good to have some validation. The author, Pierre Bayard, is a professor who deals frequently with people who claim to have read Proust-type greats, but who are really only faking it. But they sort of have to, because any one person can consume only a tiny ("infinitesimal") fraction of all the books on earth.

"Our relation to books is a shadowy space haunted by the ghosts of memory, and the real value of books lies in their ability to conjure these specters."

" ... it is his love of books--of all books--that incites him to remain prudently on their periphery, for fear that too pronounced an interest in one of them might cause him to neglect the others."

While that sounds a bit ridiculous, it's actually true. As he explains, knowing a book is not about knowing the pages inside, it's about being able to place that book in its "location" among other books. You have to know the book culture, the relevance.

"To a cultivated or curious person, even the slightest glance at a book's title or cover calls up a series of images and impressions quick to coalesce into an initial opinion, facilitated by the whole set of books represented in the culture at large."

I love this book. The writer of the foreword admits he didn't really even need to read this book in order to talk about it, but of course, he's glad he did. And I think it will be helpful for me in a lot of ways, confirming how I already thought about books, but putting an explanation to it. It will be good for working in publishing, and at the bookstore, where I'll be starting soon. I have missed touching all the books. I know, I'm a freak.

multimedia

Today I'm playing with music. I'm putting CDs, those ancient relics, onto my iPod. I have an iPod? For shame! Thanks, Sam. But I was thinking about my favorite music, and got into a list-making mood. So two top-10 lists here, just for the hell of it, and in no particular order.

List #1 = Best CDs of All Time (Or, ones that I have had a continuous love affair with for many, many years)

1. Beastie Boys "Hello Nasty"
2. Faith No More "Angel Dust"
3. Dave Matthews Band "Crash"
4. Violent Femmes "Add It Up"
5. Fiona Apple "Tidal"
6. Live "The Distance to Here"
7. Toadies "Rubberneck"
8. Beck "Odelay"
9. FatBoy Slim "You've Come a Long Way, Baby"
10. System of a Down "System of a Down"

List #2 = Best CDs -- Runners Up (Or, ones that I hope to still be in love with for many, many years)

1. Girl Talk "Night Ripper"
2. The Killers "Hot Fuss"
3. Dresden Dolls "Yes, Virginia"
4. Duffy "Rockferry"
5. Amy Winehouse "Back to Black"
6. Queens of the Stone Age "Songs for the Deaf"
7. Eagles of Death Metal "Peace Love Death Metal"
8. The White Stripes "Elephant"
9. Outkast "Stankonia"
10. Jem "Finally Woken"

I admit to leaving out a lot of awesomeness, but when I limit myself to 10, I have to let Pearl Jam, Cake and Stone Temple Pilots step aside. Yes, even Tori, but she's a special case. I also admit the last few on the latter list were difficult to type there. Basically that means I haven't fallen in love with enough new music lately. Individual songs, sure -- but entire albums? That's much more difficult. I'm close to adding Gogol Bordello. Now that I have my iPod, perhaps it will be time to expand my horizons some more. More Raconteurs, more Justice, more Feist ... I'm sure someone super-important (and I don't mean The Beatles) is missing from these lists. It's time to spend some quality time in New Music Land.

nourishment

So it seems that my semi-daily blog has become a monthly. I aim to remedy that. The transition occurred because I came to New York and took on a chaotic lifestyle that has forced me to be "currently reading" "Eat, Pray, Love" for more than two months. Pathetic? Probably. Fixable? Definitely. I swear I am almost done with the book now, with a mere 60 pages to go. The long subway rides are helping a lot, though! But I am totally in love with the book. I can think of two people I will be buying copies for. Somebody told me the first third of this book (eat = Italy) was the best, but I'm loving the more philosophical portions, too. I've been inspired to make meditation a part of my life, especially because I feel like I need some time every day to really clear my head.

I like the way Ms. Gilbert thinks. I like the way she takes what could be an over-your-head philosophical memoir and spreads it out like she's icing a cake everybody wants a piece of. Here's a big lesson she's revealed on page 260:

Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. If you don't, you will leak away your innate contentment. It's easy enough to pray when you're in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your soul hold tight to its good attainments.

I also like how the book is winding up. The author has come full circle, from self-indulgence to self-discovery and finally reaching a point of balance. Balance is what she is seeking in Bali, and yes, she makes me want to go see that place just as much as she made me want to see Italy. Every person I tell about this book wants to know how she managed to take a year off of life and travel the world. She says right in the beginning that she used the advance for the book to take the trip that inspired it. What an amazing thing. I know Liz had her troubles in life, but how fantastic to be able to reach "enlightenment" and share the story with those of us who can only dream of spending four months in culinary heaven followed by four months in deep meditation with no responsibilities ... and then four months to figure out how to apply it all to real life.

It has been nice to stretch out this book, though, because the author does manage to transport me to wherever she is at the time, even if that place is the inside of her mind. I'd like to find the inside of my head one of these days ... I'll be working on it.

laziness

Now that the Summer Publishing Institute is over, perhaps I can reflect here some on what I learned during the book portion of the program. I have to start by pointing out three phrases that kept popping up in lectures.

1. Balancing act
2. Sea change
3. Soup to nuts

Can the whole of book publishing be summed up in that triad of linguistics?

Unfortunately, the book-publishing lecturers didn't provide quite such quotable fodder as did the magazine lecturers. However, here are a few choice words.

"Don't listen to people who say what you want to do won't work."

"An editor is like a midwife."

"Do not put your cleverness in front of the communication."

"'Google' is at risk of becoming generic."

"Publishing is like a lifelong private university."

"Above the fold" can refer to content at the top of a Web site, too.

"[That one] is a slut of a publishing house."


Update: I've had this post (well, the beginning of a post) sitting on my computer for too long just being neglected. Is it laziness? Perhaps just distractions. Certainly the latter, plus the fact that my notes are now more than a thousand miles away, and I won't have them again until next week. I promise that before the end of this week, though, I'll post something good for "Eat, Pray, Love." Then maybe I can get back into my blogging routine. Something about a summer in New York really has had my mind in too many places to concentrate on inward reflection.

Top 100

[via The Publishing Curve, with alterations]

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has an initiative you may have heard of called the Big Read. According to the Web site, its purpose is to "restore reading to the center of American culture." They estimate that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed.

For fun, let's see how many of the top 100 books we've actually read. My list is below. How well did you do? Have you read more than 6?

Here's what you do:

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you own but haven't yet read.
3) Put a star by those you intend to read someday but don't own.


1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy*
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller*
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (I've read some!)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell*
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy*
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini*
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez*
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan*
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez*
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac*
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville*
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce*
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath*
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

half full

While the last thing that should happen to a book lover is a bout of words escaping her, I have this blank box and not a clue how to fill it. So much is happening so fast, and I'm trying not to simply be pulled along in anticipation of what's yet to come. Three weeks are down, and I have almost three more to go in school, with two to follow. As much as my head is swimming now (mostly because there are not enough hours in the day), I'm hoping to use those two weeks of NY freedom to engage in some hardcore "fully presentness. "

I've known of this concept for quite a while now. It was at church with my brother at least four years ago one day that I witnessed what my brother would tell me was a style of "preaching" not much to his liking. The "sermon" was more like a class lecture, with the congregation following along in a book other than the Bible. I suppose it was supposed to be contemporary. Regardless, what was spoken of that day has stayed with me like a mantra. "Wherever you are, be there." It's being fully present. It's being aware of now, not bemoaning the past or worrying about the future. It's recognizing the significance of every moment in a way you can almost physically feel. When a manuscript proposal for a book on "mindfulness" came my way in the form of an editorial assignment last week, I was, for lack of a more creative phrase at the moment, pleasantly surprised. I read it with much enthusiasm, and I hope it goes to press.

I have many more things to say, but I'm going to have to leave it at this tonight, because I haven't been getting enough sleep this week, and my brain power is low. Save me, morning latte!

wisdom of the pages

So the big question is: "What's new in New York?" Well, I've been hard at work reading nothing but magazines and blogs, listening to awesome lectures and exploring the Big Apple. I've seen Wall Street, Ground Zero and the Statue of Liberty. I've eaten a huge slice of pizza at 1 a.m., and listened to mariachi music on the subway. I have not gotten lost, mugged or honked at. That's all good news.

I've gotten free copies of New York magazine, Bust, Wired, Rolling Stone, SELF, Esquire, People Style Watch, Parents, Women's Health, Conde Nast Portfolio, More, Traditional Home, Vogue, InStyle and Time Out New York. I've decided that once I settle into a job and a pad, I'll be subscribing to Bust, CN Portfolio, Blender and Adbusters. I think it's a good combination that exhibits my personality, but mostly they are just the only magazines I've read cover-to-cover and wanted more. I haven't had a real subscription in a while -- at some point I was getting RedBook, although I don't know why. I used to get Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, Spin, Lifetime and Cosmo, and long before all that of course it was YM, Seventeen and American Girl. It's about time I invested in some magazines I really care about. Especially because I feel a lot more emotionally attached to the medium than ever before -- and even more so than I ever was to newspapers.

I've picked some favorites from the speakers, but they've all been pretty fantastic. I've learned so much stuff that I wish had been addressed in college. I can't wait for universities like Auburn to catch up to the publishing future. There's so much more excitement now. When I think Auburn journalism, I think black and white; when I think new media, everything is in color. I'm either brainwashed or just really, really, really doing the right thing for myself. I know newspapers do lots of great things on the Web, but they have definite limits. They can't stretch those limits like magazines can. Even the book business is experimenting with video "book trailers," which I learned today on GalleyCat.

I have so much going on in my head right now that it's hard to keep it all straight. So I think I'm going to spend some time typing up my notes from the past two weeks. But not before I share some more wisdom from magazine pros. This time more on the serious side, if you can decipher it out of context.

Young people are "heat seekers."

New magazines fill a "white space" in the market. (Not unlike how Athena filled her "blank spaces." Hmm ... )

You can hire a "voice doctor" if your writers have the wrong tone.

Editors are sometimes disappointed to realize "it's still just a magazine."

A magazine is a "meal" for readers. What would you rather eat?

You can enjoy a story without even reading it if it's designed well.

"Ads are like children. They're all beautiful."

"Anything can be done. You cannot be held back by what you don't have."

The well is a sacred space.

"People want to know more than what's on the surface. The deserve more because they are smarter."

Don't live in the past.

Search-engine optimization is a "cult science."

"The classic image of the blog is the 22-year-old sitting at home in pajamas saying bitchy things."

Comments are much more interesting than letters.

Flash looks cool, but it doesn't drive traffic.

"It's a very sober environment."

Consumers have been empowered to advocate brands.

"Choice is not the enemy."

"Don't assume tried-and-true will continue to perform."

"TV is icky."

You have to compete with yourself so no one else does.

People don't want supermodels anymore. They want celebrities they like.

People don't read web content at home in their precious leisure time, they read it during stolen moments at work.

There is a difference between telling someone, "Stop eating before you're full," and telling them, "Leave three bites on your plate."

"Tri-quarterly" = we "tried" to be quarterly, but it didn't always happen.

"Knitting is a lot more lucrative than feminism."

publishing immersion

So although I don't have time to go into much of what's going on in NYC right now, I did want to note a few choice words from today's sessions led by magazine-industry professionals.

"People with money have limited imaginations."

"Jesus sells."

"Print it all out. We'll recycle it later."

they're all going to laugh at you

It's about 6 a.m., and I shouldn't be awake yet. But I am, so I thought I would make the best of it. I couldn't concentrate enough to read, but after a little coffee jolt I thought I could at least transcribe my initial thoughts on "Solipsist." I actually read this book several years ago -- possibly as far back as high school. It's an intriguing book, supposedly fiction but so deep inside the character's head you wonder if Rollins isn't writing about himself. It reminds me of the feeling I got reading "Notes from Underground" -- a sort of diary of a madman who may or may not actually be mad. This character is a true solipsist, which the back of the book so generously defines for us as one who believes the only verifiable reality is the self. 

We find out the character's name is Robert Fulton. He's basically a recluse inside his own mind. He does venture out but interacts with strangers only to his chagrin. His anxiety about potential conversations causes him to practice smiles and casual phrases in a mirror to prepare for the outside world. Apparently he's spent a good amount of time there -- everywhere he goes people he doesn't know call him by name. So he may have Rollins-like fame, or maybe he was a boxer. The only clue so far is that he spent "too many nights knocking my guts out for the approval of strangers" (34). Either way, he has developed a "me versus them" attitude that seems to represent fear cloaked in hatred. Yet he participates in a small percentage of the niceties he detests. When he's unable to simply look at the ground and avoid eye contact, human interaction makes him feel like he's drowning. We can all relate to some extent, at least to the feeling of not being able to escape an awkward situation. When it's finally over, he says the feeling of relief was "like being let up for air after having your head held underwater" (32).

Basically, the whole book is one long awesome quotation, but I've managed to pick out a few that really stuck out to me in the first 34 pages.

"If I was a woman these days, I'd be killing motherfuckers. My handgun would never be cool and my hands would be covered in testicular blood. I would have a horrible reputation with a lot of men because I would be calling them on their weak bullshit left and right." (9)

"I tried to love and failed. I tried to hate and got bored." (9)

"I know you think about sex all the time. I know you have killed people in your mind. I know that you say a lot of things to yourself that you would never say out loud. I know you say a lot of things you don't mean for fear of what the other chicken shit lying motherfuckers will say about you." (10)

"Maybe it's time to rebel! Rebellion? You mean that neurotic posturing you do before apathy sets in and The Simpsons comes on?" (10)

"When you allow yourself to trust someone, you never really do all the way, so why lie?" (20)

"I turn around and he comes up and tells me that I kicked him in the head when he was nineteen. I struggle for something to say but the only word that comes out is, 'Good.'"

Pause for feeling of satisfaction.

"He says he has a son now and he is also a fan of mine. I recover in time to attempt to use humor. 'Well, bring him over sometime and I'll kick him too.' I laugh, he laughs. I do the smile that I practiced in the mirror and the wave that I saw in a movie and keep walking. That's a wrap. Good scene" (33).

• acrimony = harsh or bitter disposition
• misanthropy = hatred, dislike or distrust of humankind

feed your head

Surprise, surprise. I've already finished another book. It's a short book, but it was heart-wrenching nonetheless. "Go Ask Alice" is a young-adult title containing the diary of an anonymous teenage girl who finds herself swallowed up into the world of drugs and sex, causing her to run away from home, and eventually leading to her death.

See the title's inspiration here.

A girl I work with said she read this book in "like seventh grade." I'm not sure I would've been ready to hear about acid trips and rape when I was that young, but the diarist is just about 15 when she begins using. She starts out as your average teen, talking about a crush on a boy and trying to please her parents. Her first experience with drugs is at a party where the kids decide to play the button game with tainted drinks, and it's all downhill from there.  

It's pretty interesting how quickly the events unfold when seen through a diary. You don't get the normal interaction of a novel, just pure introspection. I admit I read through it pretty quickly though -- it just moved so fast and was so easy to read. I didn't mark a lot of quotes, but a few.

On parents:

Page 25: "Oh, I do hope I won't have to be a nagging mother, but I guess I'll have to be, else I don't see how anything will ever be accomplished."

Page 29: "Parents really are a poor judge of character. Sometimes I wonder how they made it to the age they are."

Various memorable moments:

Page 34-35: She describes her first acid trip. It starts with colorful patterns on the ceiling, quickly moves to her words tasting like colors, and ends up with her seeing in 100 dimensions and possessing the "wisdom of the ages."

Page 46: "I must repent and forgive myself and start over; after all I just turned 15 and I can't stop life and get off."

Page 47: "Valley of the Dolls" flashback: "Finally he broke down and gave me the pills. Actually I don't need the sleep as much as I need the escape. It's a wonderful way to escape. I think I can't stand it and then I just take a pill and wait for sweet nothingness to take over."

Page 109: After returning home from running away: "But I wonder if I will ever feel completely new again. Or will I spend the rest of my life feeling like a walking disease????"

Page 111-12: "Then (the kitten) tried to nurse my ear and the feeling in me was so big I thought I was going to break wide open. It was better than a drug trip,  a thousand times better, a million times, a trillion times. These things are real!"

I'm not sure I know exactly how to feel about this book. It is definitely a testament to the torment a teenage girl can experience. You're listening to what's happening in her head, but she constantly contradicts herself, promising to never do drugs again then giving in to peer pressure the next day. It's two years of on-again, off-again tragedy. Drugs change people, control them, sweep them off their feet. They kill people. 

This book would make a really interesting study, and I'll have to read it more slowly one day. But I am feeling its effects days later, even just with the constant reminder of "White Rabbit" running endlessly through my head. "Go ask Alice, I think she'll know ... "

I leave for NYU SPI in a week. I am taking five books with me, four if I finish "Solipsist" by Henry Rollins this week, which I intend to, since it belongs to my brother and he wants to lend it to my other brother too. The other chosen few are "Anais Nin Reader," "Sex and the City," "The Singer" and "Searching for God Knows What."

book to not crack

What a stark contrast "Rebecca" is to a book I happened to read the first 30 pages of the other day: Nicholas Sparks' "At First Sight." I had forgotten to bring "Rebecca" with me to work, but my Harry Potter-loving coworker had left this behind. Now, I used to work in a bookstore, and I remember seeing this author's works, with their inviting covers and immense popularity. Intrigued, I opened it up and began to read. The horror, the horror! It was the most awful nonsense I ever saw. Every other sentence a cliche, so predictable I probably read those 30 pages in under 10 minutes. It was as easy to read as it is to watch a sitcom, only not nearly as entertaining. Mindless drivel. Like watching an endless string of commercials. No literary value at all, just something he can easily knock out in a few weeks because he's trained himself to write with a formula, just as I trained myself to write a news story. But you can't do that with books and expect to be remembered. Sure, his name will be on bestseller-list records, and they'll continue to make decent movies out of the relatively relatable stories, but no one should ever consider this madness seriously as good writing. It's laughable, and I felt contaminated for even touching the thing.

crack book

Books just don't get much more satisfying than "Rebecca" was. I stayed up last night and finished it, reading quickly and eagerly, like I was eating the crack bread at Jimmy John's. Lots of times when a book is that fascinating, I am left wanting more. But with "Rebecca," everything was just so perfect. And I don't mean perfect in a happily-ever-after kind of way. The ending of the book is actually quite frightening. 

There is a strange presence in the book, beyond the narrator. It's as though you've been told more than the narrator knows, which is quite impossible for a book written in first person. But we are told everything that does happen so thoroughly and in great detail, and even the events that occur beyond the narrator's purview are related to us through her imagination. She's constantly daydreaming, wondering and wandering in her mind. And her scenes are believable -- who better than a sketch artist could bring to life that which she believes to be true? She pictures what's going on over the other side of the telephone line, the predictable conversations people use as gossip, what happens when a guest drives away from Manderley. This faux omniscience is useful to the reader on several levels, but sometimes we are misled just as the narrator is -- hoodwinked by Rebecca, perhaps.

The local authorities are compelled to conduct an inquest into the death of Rebecca de Winter upon finding her body. Of course, it's treated as a formality until her boat man declares there is no way the holes in the bottom of the boat (aptly named "She Comes Back" in French) were made by rocks. He believes them to be manmade -- deliberately. Of course, he's right, but Maxim remains cool and collected, checking his temper at the site of his current wife fainting from heat and nerves in the inquest room. Because she was alone when she died, and it would have been "easy enough for a woman" to alter the boat in the evident ways it was, it's finally declared suicide. I kept thinking that was the only solution during the whole affair, biting my nails through it all, wondering if Maxim would be found out. When I read the word "suicide," it was such a huge relief. But it wasn't over yet.

The book was hard to put down all through the second half, but these last 60 pages or so were intensely compelling. Rebecca's cousin/lover (ew) Jack Favell waits till later in the evening to come to Manderley and use evidence to blackmail Maxim into paying him off. However, Maxim refuses, hiding the anxiety he must've felt. Favell believed Rebecca was in love with him, and he possessed a note from her to him, stating that she wanted to meet him at the boathouse, but she died before that meeting was to have taken place. Favell thinks Maxim murdered her, because who would commit suicide if they had written an urgent note to meet with someone? He produced Ben as a witness to the murder, which indeed he was, but the idiot remained (possibly unknowingly, but likely not) faithful to Maxim. The note had said Rebecca wanted to tell Favell something, and that presence in the book was telling me and, I believe, the narrator that she was going to tell him she was pregnant. Then it was found she had an appointment with a mysterious doctor in London that day -- a women's specialist. So they all go driving out to meet him hours and hours away the next day, only to find he had seen her for quite a different reason, but one he believed could have caused her to end her own life. She had cancer, and just months to live -- months that would be increasingly painful.

So Maxim is off the hook. And I realize I'm being much too summarizing in this post, but I just love how the events unfold in this book. Because that still wasn't the end. On the way home, Maxim calls Frank, who tells him that Mrs. Danvers has left the house in a strange rush. Maxim knows something is up, and it turns out it's exactly what had to happen -- and what I almost thought did happen earlier in the book. When the ship crashed, its distress signals were loud exploding noises, and I rather thought Mr. de Winter had bombed the place. And I can't believe I just used the word rather like that, but the narrator used it so frequently I suppose I've picked it up. Alas, old Danny must've got the idea, too, because she sure ignited the place and ran. And like the narrator, even upon the last lines, I imagined the aftermath: "The road to Manderley lay ahead. There was no moon. The sky above our heads was inky black. But the sky on the horizon was not black at all. It was shot with crimson, like a splash of blood. And the ashes blew towards us with the salt wind of the sea." I pictured all the servants standing outside the great house, watching the fire with tears in their eyes. I thought of the de Winters being so tired from their long overnight drive, spending the night at Frank's bachelor home. 

It's exactly as though a character died at the end of the book. Manderley was a character in "Rebecca" the way New York City was a character in "Sex and the City." "The peace of Manderley. The quietude and the grace. Whoever lived within its walls, whatever trouble there was and strife, however much uneasiness and pain, no matter what tears were shed, what sorrows born, the peace of Manderley could not be broken or the loveliness destroyed" (357). Unfortunately, she's wrong. But we can imagine that Manderley lives on as it does in her dream in chapter one, the plants massively overgrown and taking on that wild raucousness like the unharvested rose. The building itself would indeed be "a desolate shell, soulless at last" (3). Upon rereading those first pages, I find the narrator foreshadows the events: "I believe there is a theory that men and women emerge finer and stronger after suffering, and that to advance in this or any world we must endure ordeal by fire. This we have done in full measure, ironic though it seems" (5). 

The happiness of the book is that Mr. and Mrs. de Winter bond over the tragic events. It's morbidly romantic, but there's no better example of two people needing each other so desperately. The strong Maxim even has his moment of weakness, coming to his wife's outstretched arms to be comforted. 

I've definitely added a new favorite to my list. I only wonder if the movie adaptation does it any justice -- I can see that it would be difficult. I also wonder if "Jamaica Inn" will be as brilliant. A book this engaging is exactly why I love reading. I feel so totally invested in the story, almost protective of it -- like it's a secret I'm afraid to share for fear it would be misinterpreted. 

• Pince-nez = style of spectacles popular in the 19th century, supported not by the ears but the bridge of the nose (and from the French words for "pinch nose")
• Sluice = a drain
• Gaol = jail
• Banting = slang for dieting, apparently referring to the "father of the low-carb diet" in the 1860s

"the sexiest thing is trust," tori says

So I suppose this blog is becoming a weekly occurrence, but only because my day job (of which I have only a week and a half left) is so tiring. Being outside in the sun all day gives me just enough energy to eat and crash in front of the TV for an hour or so before I become incoherent. I am, however, reading a lot during the job's down time, and I've made it to page 304. This book is insanely suspenseful in a strange way. It's not a whodunit, you just really want to know what's going to happen. Today I went to a few book stores and made a point to check out Du Maurier. I found "Jamaica Inn" for $2, and thought it was really quite ironic, because I've been listening to Tori Amos's "The Beekeeper" and a lot of the songs were reminding me of the book, specifically "Jamaica Inn" because the lyrics say: " ... between  Rebeccas, beneath your firmaments, I have worshipped in the Jamaica Inn ... With the gales my little boat was tossed ..." Even unaware Du Maurier had a book by that name, I made the connection because Rebecca died  supposedly  when her small boat sank during a storm. Plus the mood of the CD is perfect for someone like the narrator, living in a big house with gardens near the ocean. 

So I didn't exactly leave off where I thought I did last time. I forgot I had more notes in a different place. So I need to throw in the actual quote from when she wanted to bottle up her memories, which occurred before she and Maxim married: "If only there could be an invention ... that bottled up a memory, like scent. And it never faded, and it never got stale. And then, when one wanted it, the bottle could be uncorked, and it would be like living the moment all over again" (36). She tells him this without thinking she needs to exhibit any particular etiquette around him; she is comfortable enough to let loose her innocence. She wants to bottle up her time spent driving around the countryside with a mysterious gentleman -- a time she felt special and free.

Unfortunately, I haven't been taking a lot of notes, though, so I have probably missed a lot of the symbolism. But I took note of a card game played between the narrator and Mrs. Van Hopper: "She flipped the Queen of Spades into the pool, and the dark face stared up at me like Jezebel" (35). She felt like Jezebel for sneaking around with Maxim, but she also later feels like Jezebel at Manderley -- she begins to feel like "the other woman" in a way because Rebecca's presence is so strong.

It takes a major event before the narrator loses that childlike awkwardness, feeling like a stranger in her own home. But she makes friends with Frank Crawley, who works as an agent of the estate. He is for a while her go-to man for questions about Rebecca, but she soon finds he acts a little funny about the subject. He tells her it is her mission to help everyone at Manderley forget about the past, to help them leave the painful memories behind. He tells her Rebecca was the most beautiful creature he'd ever seen, and she begins to wonder if he was perhaps in love with Rebecca, as everyone seemed to be in some way.

At first she is eager to know of the former Mrs. de Winter, picking up tidbits of information on her visits to various friends of the estate. She is shy and dreads making small talk with strangers, but she feels like a teenager who has found the liquor cabinet. It's certainly forbidden, and for good reason. Soon the shadow of Rebecca is too much for her to bear. She is constantly compared and feels as though she's an inferior replacement. Who was the woman who wrote with this pen, wore this raincoat, spoke with these servants? She is wary of conversations that broach the sea or boats, fearing Maxim will smell the metaphorical brandy. 

The climax occurs in two parts. First, the narrator's ball costume is sabotaged by Mrs. Danvers, the housekeeper. This, I saw coming. She went on and on about picking out the dress so I knew it would somehow lead to disaster, and the way in with Mrs. Danvers suggested it was so obviously evil (not unlike Cinderella's stepmother) that I couldn't believe the narrator missed it. So the narrator appears looking like Rebecca's ghost, likely scaring Maxim half to death, and upsetting Beatrice, Giles and Frank. She gracefully assumes the role of adoring wife at the party while fearing she has irrevocably damaged her marriage.

The second part of the climax occurred in the opposite manner, and I missed the foreshadowing. Instead of building up to an obvious event, the author made a long-winded tale of a boat crashing near Manderley the day after the party. I almost got bored of it, but I was relieved when the divers discovered Rebecca's boat in the bottom of the bay. Even when the author revealed that a body was inside, I thought perhaps it was one of Rebecca's lovers. (Mrs. Danvers had revealed that she used the boathouse to rendezvous with men.) And even when it was revealed to be the body of Rebecca, I didn't think for a second that she was murdered until Maxim confessed it to his wife. 

The narrator says that in that 24-hour period she became a woman. She grew up and out of her old ways and state of mind. Maxim tells her Rebecca has won, but she refuses to let that happen. She no longer fears Rebecca. She knows now that Maxim's first marriage was a sham. That he didn't love Rebecca. This is what is so important to her, and the reason she stands by him, knowing the heinous crime he committed without regret. She loved him before, but now she is truly in his heart, sharing his pain, his secrets. I have about 75 pages left, and I've just learned that the narrator has figured out that Frank knows about the murder, but Maxim does not know that Frank knows. I'm still in suspense, and I want to have this book finished before the weekend is up. I'm also really curious to find out how Ben, who first implied Rebecca was evil, will factor into the story's end. 

• Inveterate = settled into a habit
• "sixth-form prefect" = equivalent enough to class president, but in UK educational terms
• Colonnade = series of trees planted in a long row
• Punctilious = strict in the observance of formalities
• Awkward pause in conversation = an angel passing overhead (192)

vocabulary master

I heard about the book "Rebecca" a long time ago, back when I was reading "Story of O," I think, and I thought it would be something I'd like to read, but I forgot about it until I saw it -- where else? -- in a Goodwill one day. The only thing I knew about it was that it was written in the first half of the 20th century, and that it's a mystery. I'm 100 pages in, and I haven't hit any mystery yet, but there are still several hundred pages to go.

I really liked the opening of the book. It starts with the narrator dreaming of Manderley, the famous homestead she first heard of as a child and later inhabited as the companion-wife of the mansion's master. Not much is foreshadowed -- just that somehow the couple loses the home. It has a haunting presence throughout the book, even before any real mystery comes into play. The narrator tells the story from her current perspective -- noting how she's changed since she first met Maxim as a naive 21-year-old. She and her employer were staying in the same hotel as Mr. de Winter, and when the gossipy "clumsy goat" Mrs. Van Hopper falls ill, the narrator finds herself swept up by Maxim. He's lonely, and she's infatuated. He decides to marry her and bring her to Manderley. 

Much attention is paid to descriptions of the house and its surrounding flora. The location seems ideal -- gardens, the sea. But the house's servants are bitter toward the new Mrs. de Winter, because Rebecca has been dead barely a year. Apparently the first Mrs. de Winter drowned, but the narrator doesn't know the details yet.

Daphne du Maurier's writing style is elegant yet easy. Most of the notes I've jotted are simply vocabulary words from the first 30 pages, but there have been a few memorable quotes. I think I've neglected analysis so far because the book is so long and I'm eager to get through it quickly. It's not the quickest of reads, but not the most difficult, either. There's a decent amount of suspense, but I'm not sure what to expect in terms of the extent to which Rebecca's ghost will make itself known.

• Mullioned = having vertical divisions of stone or wood
• Inviolate = undisturbed
• Spurious = counterfeit
• Vanguard = leaders of a movement or army
• Ablutions = cleansing of the body
• Bracken = area overgrown with ferns or shrubs
• Impunity = exemption from punishment
• Lorgnette = a pair of eyeglasses mounted on a handle
• Bougainvillaea = ornamental tropical woody vines
• Patent = obvious
• Gaucherie = awkwardness, lacking social grace
• Constitution = temperament (archaic)
• Impelled = urged to action
• Fettered = restricted, shackled
• Ducal = pertaining to a duke

I love the narrator's initial description of Maxim: "His face was arresting, sensitive, medieval in some strange inexplicable way, and I was reminded of a portrait seen in a gallery I had forgotten where, of a certain Gentleman Unknown. Could one but rob in of his English tweeds, and put him in black, with lace at his throat and wrists, he would stare down at us in our new world from a long distant past--a past where men walked cloaked at night, and stood in the shadow of old doorways, a past of narrow stairways and dim dungeons, a past of whispers in the dark, of shimmering rapier blades, of silent, exquisite courtesy." (15)

I also love the associations the narrator makes with flowers, but this one is actually from Maxim: "A rose was one of the few flowers, he said, that looked better picked than growing. A bowl of roses in a drawing-room had a depth of colour and scent they had not possessed in the open. There was something rather blowsy about roses in full bloom, something shallow and raucous, like women with untidy hair." (31)

The narrator, Mrs. de Winter, is having a terribly awkward time at Manderley her first few days. She gets lost in the dark passages and doesn't know how to behave around the servants. She isn't sure what to do when Maxim isn't around, and she savors each moment she spends with him. She talks of wanting to bottle up memories, so that you could open them up and relive them whenever you wanted. She's trying not to digest the last words she had from Mrs. Van Hopper -- that Maxim does not love her, he just can't stand to stay in that house alone. I think Maxim does love her in his own way -- as he says, because she isn't 35 and wearing black satin. She's not the high-class social butterfly everyone expected Maxim to seek out. He needed someone different from Rebecca.

Second half, in a nutshell

At this point, Athena is still searching. Well, she'd probably say that she never stopped searching, but she did reach a point at which her life diverged into something she couldn't control. Her relationship with Heron really begins when they spend a day together Holly Golightly-style in London. He is falling in love with her, even though he has a girlfriend and she claims to have a boyfriend.

The biographer speaks with a historian friend of Heron's, who explains that the "new paganism" allows people to experience a spiritual life without institutionalized religion. I agree with this to an extent, but I think the same God who controls the universe is also a part of it, while the historian makes a distinction between the controlling god and the "part of the universe" mother-figure god. Mother Nature is not just an expression of the controlling God, it's a secular name for his essence that lives through it. I guess there's a gray area in there, because I don't believe we should be worshiping plants or anything. Although stating that makes me understand the distinction more.

So Athena conveniently made a ton of cash in her real-estate job, and can devote her time to her spiritual journey. She meets Heron's girlfriend -- and it took me way too long to figure out that Heron and Andrea were together -- and eventually takes her on as a student. One of the first things Athena tells her is, "When you dance, you can enjoy the luxury of being you." That statement makes me want to get up and dance right now, because it's so right, but I never thought of it that way before.

Edda told Athena to learn by teaching, even when she thinks she has nothing to teach. She tells Athena to appreciate the tiniest things in life -- breathing, cooking, having someone open a door for you. That last one got to me, because I have been the girl who is almost insulted by a man opening a door for me. Edda puts it into a different perspective: "According to etiquette, this means, 'She needs me to do this because she's fragile,' but in my soul it is written: 'I'm being treated like a goddess, a queen.'" She also teaches Athena to look upon her anxieties with humor. At some point she also mentions the calligraphy to relate to Athena, reminding her how each pen stroke was a part of her soul. I love this idea, and it reminded me of when I was in high school. I used to write for hours -- poems, song lyrics, my own name, random words -- just to experience the act of writing as an expression of myself.

Athena's venture into teaching was borderline humiliating, but her students learned more than they thought at first. She had Andrea's theater friends lie down and make gestures based on her words. I admit I giggled when she said the word "center," because it reminded me of the porno-password scene from "The Cable Guy." Of course, they successfully connected with Athena and gestured toward their navels, protecting that center of light.

Amid her "female hysteria," Athena seems to have an urgent need for transformation. I'm not sure if this has to do with her near-transformation into the voice of a deity, or the need to understand things from more than one perspective. But constantly throughout the book, things, people, auras are being transmuted into more intense forms. As I glance outside and see that half the evening sky is still sunset blue, I think how the earth is constantly re-energizing its capabilities. And that's what changes in life do to people.

Andrea is beginning to feel threatened by Athena, because she knows her boyfriend is infatuated with her. She takes herself into Athena's soul, play-acting her role in a theatrical expression of a village turning away from a supposedly insightful newcomer. She's pleased with the result, and it foreshadows Athena's second rejection by religious society. But Athena does attract followers. The group she led at Andrea's theater expands because Athena seems to be channeling a spirit after dancing off-beat to her drum-heavy foreign music. By breaking the rhythm, Edda says one can more fully experience the talent. She experienced this by forcing herself to knit badly. I don't knit, but I can relate to this through writing. As a journalist, I learned to write using a formula. I got out of touch with my creative side. But I've found that writing differently -- not badly, but spontaneously and nonsensically -- can ultimately spawn more beautiful prose.

Athena and Andrea are not friends, but they respect each other as student and teacher. Their first one-on-one lesson consists of them stripping down, literally (but not sexually), to gain a unique trust and vulnerability. They have to be on the same level to experience the right confrontation.

The group lessons are what get out of hand for Athena. She likely should have simply continued with individual lessons with Andrea and possibly a few others, but she let her divine spark become a sideshow gypsy act. I'm not sure it was vanity that led to her losing control, but perhaps it was more of a facade of naivety and a lack of consideration of consequences. She didn't care what people thought of her, and she thought she could almost live above the law because she was so in touch with what she saw as a "natural law." Heron says he witnessed "the transformation of a woman into an icon" (229). Also on that page, he quotes one of her sermons, and I think one thing she says is enlightening in its succinctness: "What is sin? It is a sin to prevent Love from showing itself."

Amidst the uproar against her supposedly satanic rituals, Athena almost loses custody of her son and escapes under the elaborate guise of a brutal murder. Yes, Athena is alive and well, And the book's second "big twist I should've already figured out" is revealed: the "biographer" is her actually-not-invisible boyfriend, and he really does work for Scotland Yard. So her excuses for rebuffing Heron were not just excuses. I guess she needed a male to understand her spirit world, since her boyfriend admits to not partaking. But it's beautiful because she respects him for it.

However, I'm realizing now that despite these twists, it's almost disappointing that there wasn't really a brutal murder. I'm glad Athena is alive and all, but they had me built up for some dramatic exit from the world. Maybe that's why I put off blogging the rest of this book for as long as I did. There just wasn't enough "wow" factor to compel me to share. Although I really think I learned some things from this book, and I would like to read it again in the semi-near future.

• Dolmen = tomb resembling a portal
  
• Mandala = symbol representing effort to reunify the self
  
• Immemorial = extending back beyond memory, record or knowledge
  
• Calumny = slanderous lie