And for a few weeks past. It's a smattering: I'm trying madly to keep up with the madness that is The Morning News' 2013 Tournament of Books. This year I'd read a whopping one (1) (uno) of the books on the list when it was announced in December (Gone Girl), so I've had a lot of reading to do - since December I've read Arcadia, How Should a Person Be, May We Be Forgiven, The Orphan Master's Son (mostly - augh that thing was long), Bring Up the Bodies, and The Song of Achilles. I did my darnednest with Where'd You Go, Bernadette, but I could not stand it (the snark. The snark killed me). I'm still working my way through the marvelously uncompact Building Stories (it comes in a box, with "Multiple easily lost parts," according to the instructions to the library cataloger) and sure-to-be-one-of-my-year's-faves, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk. I've read enough Alice Munro to get a sense for what Dear Life is like and I've probably seen at least a few of those stories already. I've got Round House on hold (until July, I'm guessing. A smarter person would just buy the book already, but my shelf is full. And do not talk to me about the anathema that is the ebook. I do not want one.) So, out of 16 books, 9 down, 3 in progress. Not bad (pause for a moment while I pat myself on the back. Bear with me: this is one of the few areas in my life where I accomplish things.) Also, it gets my current fiction itch scratched for a while. I'm not always a very engaged fiction reader, I'm sorry to say. Get to the point already! I might think, as I peek to see how many pages I still have left to read. Or: Is this going to be worth my time? Or: Who's this Greg guy, again? I'll own it: I'm a purpose-driven reader. I'm a sucker for any and all self-improvement projects, especially if I can do them in bed with the overhead light off. Reading fiction just because: difficult to justify. Reading fiction because someone told me I should: sign me up!
So I'm reading Building Stories and Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk. Also my first entry in my TBR pile, Mean Spirit, by Linda Hogan, and a collection of essays by Elliott West (my mind is already blown, and I've only read one. Not so much from sheer brilliance - these are standard academic essays - as the way in one essay my admittedly limited understanding of the Cheyenne Indians was totally knocked down, run over with a steam engine, and put up in a completely different place. All with the same source material as I've had all along. Man.)
Building Stories, Chris Ware: like I said, it comes in a box. It looks like a board game, an expensive, heavy one, until you open it and pull out all the pieces: two or three single cartoon strips (it's a graphic novel, or a book of graphic short stories all focused on one person - what is a novel, anyway? What's a short story? What does it mean to read? These are all questions I start fiddling with when I'm pulling the pieces out of the hat), a few soft cover books, a hard cover book, a board game (no pieces, alas.) I'm so intrigued I immediately start thinking of making my own novel-in-a-box: would it be feasible to include animal bones, do you think? Probably not. Anyway, these cartoons will be familiar to readers of the New Yorker: they center around a depressed young woman to whom nothing huge happens, just the usual growing up stuff, no real beginning or end. Very like real life, and like real life you can assemble the pieces in different ways, read them in your own order, skip back and forth, etc. Less like real life, to me, is the persistent feeling of generic-ness: these stories feel less like they've been struck with the lightning of truth and more like they're someone's idea of what a depressed young art student might feel if she were crowdsourced. I get claustrophobic after not very long, reading these.
Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, Ben Fountain. I've been wanting to read Ben Fountain for a while, and so even though the subject matter of this is the kind that makes me go, huh (a company of Iraq war heroes are featured on stage at a Superbowl Halftime show, written by a nonsoldier), I was eager to pick this one up. And so far, five chapters in, it does not disappoint. Every page, every sentence, almost, I feel like I'm discovering something new, something that I knew all along. The author has a wicked ear for dialogue, and zeroes in immediately - but with compassion! - on some of our weaknesses, as a society.
Mean Spirit, Linda Hogan. I've been reading this for over a month, and for a long time I just sort of read a few pages dutifully at the end of the day, to fulfill the agreement I'd made with myself in January. I thought it fell wearily into the expected trope of Indian-helpless-and-good, White-Man-predatory-and-bad: small town fiction with a helping of victimhood. The gentle pace didn't help. Only, imperceptibly, it grew on me. It knows stuff. The Christian preacher, half Indian, half white, going into his closet to ask his Indian grandmother's medicine pouch what's going on when things start to get crazy: I didn't expect that. The man, buried accidentally (everyone thought he was dead), who crawls out of his grave and walks around town unmolested, because everyone, white and Indian both, think he's a ghost: I didn't expect that, either. Actually, right now it's got a circus's worth of insanity happening on every corner, the book still has this gentle pace and gentle tone that make me take it more seriously than if the tone were more self-consciously arty or manic.
I'm also listening to Wild, by Cheryl Strayed: almost done. I suppose like everyone who reads this, I kind of want to go out and research hiking the Pacific Crest Trail; what I think about most, though, is why this is so popular. Don't get me wrong: it's a fine book, if occasionally a little magazine-style generic in tone (the death of Jerry Garcia, which happened while she was hiking, felt not just like a death but like "the end of an era." To cite just one example.) It's also a story to which I can relate, even while I don't actually relate to very much of it at all (hmm: maybe that's my answer right there). But I'm always curious what grabs the zeitgeist and what doesn't. I'm glad this one did, but I still don't quite get it.
Okay: that's my book talk from this week.
Showing posts with label TBR. Show all posts
Showing posts with label TBR. Show all posts
Friday, March 15, 2013
Sunday, January 1, 2012
One of my resolutions should be to post more
And in honor of that, I'm gonna start with a classic post on January 1. Take that, procrastinatey gene! I'm using Sundry's meme, of course. Somewhat abbreviated, because...well, because of that procrastination gene (I have to accommodate somehow). Plus the long form feels a little too much like doing Turbo Tax.
Buy a full-on family ski pass (dear GOD was that painful.) Buy skis and boots. Enroll a child in a private sports program. Have a close relative with stage four cancer (*kicks the wall angrily*). Visit my sister's place in St Louis. Probably a bunch of other things I've forgotten.
2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
Last year's resolutions:
1. Take the kids out into nature at least once a month.
I didn't keep a close enough record of this to be sure, but I think this was basically a pass.
2. Eat more wild food.
So long as we define "more" as "some juniper berries and a couple dandelion greens," we've got a pass.
3. Watch the moon rise at least once a month.
Yeah. FAIL.
4. Hike once a month.
Check! Here's the list, for anyone who cares (me):
- January: Coyote Song/ Swallow Hill trails, 2 miles
- February: Glendale Farm Open Space, app. 1 mile
- March: Greenland Open Space, 4.5 miles
- April: Lake Superior Waterfront, app. 4 miles; Kramer Woods trail, app. two miles; Briar Patch trail, app. 1 mile
- May: Cherry Creek Ecological Park and Happy Canyon Trail, app. 1.5 miles; Glendale Farm Open Space trail, 1.5 miles
- June: Lost Creek Wilderness, app. 1.5 miles.
- July: Puma Hills, South Park, app. 0.5 miles; Mystic Falls trail, app. 4 miles
- August: Glendale Farm Open Space, app. 1.5 mi., Cherry Creek Bike Path, 1 mi.
- September: Kent Denver school property, app. 1 mi.
- October: Castle, Parmalee and Tower trails, app. 4 mi
- November: Frasier River Bike trail, app. 4 mi
- December: Lee Lorraine Canyon, Bowen Canyon and Yetman trails, 3 mi; North Tenmile Trail, 3 miles
1. Tender at the Bone, Ruth Reichl
2. At Home, Bill Bryson
3. Dr. Zhivago, Boris Pasternak, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky
4. Collected Short Stories of Raymond Carver
5. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz
6. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell
7. A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace
8. Slouching Toward Bethlehem, Joan Didion
9. Little Heathens, Mildred Armstrong Kalish
11. Of Wolves and Men, Barry Lopez
12. The Story Behind the Story (various)
Here are the books I read:
1. Tender at the Bone, Ruth Reichl
2. At Home, Bill Bryson
3. Dr. Zhivago, Boris Pasternak, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky
4. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz
5. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell
6. A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace (in progress)
7. Slouching Toward Bethlehem, Joan Didion
9. Of Wolves and Men, Barry Lopez
Well, 9 out of 12. Seventy-five percent to pass!
As to resolutions for next year, I'm keeping it simple. I'm going to remember the in-laws' birthdays and send cards. I'm going to check my 401K balances quarterly, so whenever I get the urge to monitor my progress toward retirement, I will be able to answer myself with ringing authority: NOT VERY WELL, THANK YOU! I'm going to try to hike every month. I'm going to do a smaller scale TBR (to be elaborated later, because already this post is a monster). I'm going to print out more photos. And the challenge: I'm going to do more follow-through on writing projects.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
No. What's UP with that?
4. Did anyone close to you die?
No.
5. What countries did you visit?
The great old U.S. of A. I don't even have a current passport.
6. What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?
(sadly) More time with friends and family. Less house hassle. Less debt (*not* something that was lacking in 2011). More writing and more writing projects.
7. What dates from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
None, really, although the fall of 2011 will go down as fretful and anxious and ultimately Bad.
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Painting the front of the house. I wish I was joking.
9. What was your biggest failure?
Not connecting with people as much I'd like.
10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Not really, although I suffered mental injury from the bill I got after taking Si to the emergency room for a sprained knee.
11. What was the best thing you bought?
The house & kitchen, although most of that was "bought" in 2010. Or now and for the next 30 years, take your pick.
12. Where did most of your money go?
The house, via mortage & the construction loan. Also baseball, skiing, and travel.
13. What did you get really excited about?
Hmm. I was excited about the finishing of the house and the return of its livability. Otherwise, though, "getting excited" is a state of mind I don't visit nearly enough.
14. Compared to this time last year, are you:
– happier or sadder? sadder, alas.
– thinner or fatter? the same to slightly fatter. Not so fat that I have to pay attention, though.
– richer or poorer? richer, although perhaps less in actual net worth than in the sense that the financial situation is under control.
15. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Made more connections; had more dinner parties; asked more people over; picked up the phone more. Wrote more.
16. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Fretting about the house. Working on the house. Moving parts of the house and its furnishings from one place to another.
17. How did you spend Christmas?
With the four of us, my parents and my sister at my sister's lovely little apartment in St Louis. We opened presents, ran in the park, and ate traditional Christmas food, including creamed onions and two pies.
19. What were your favorite books of the year?
Bossypants. Biographies of Abigail Adams and Queen Isabella.
20. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
On my birthday I skied, then came back to a rented condo and celebrated with M, the kids, my sister in law and my nephew. Since this was my big four-oh, I was supposed to have celebrated with my parents and sister as well, but--well, crap happened. I did get to see Mom and Dad and my sister AND my aunt, though, on the weekend before, which made up for them not being there on the day (but not, of course, for the reason they weren't there).
21. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Satisfying? Well. Made some huge trip and/or gotten some wonderful job, I guess. I would have been plenty happy (even "satisfied") with simply a different diagnosis for my mom, though.
22. What kept you sane?
I'm not totally sure I was.
23. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2011.
Life is too damn short.
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