I'm trying to make this a weekly thing. A feature, if you will. A way of bringing you, my blog readership, into the world I (occasionally) care about most: my reading life. Also a way of bringing my reading life out of the deep untalked-of basement where it currently resides.
It's a bit of a slow week to start off on: I have been desultorily reading a biography of Robespierre, the infamous career guillotiner of the French Revolution, and a paperback mystery, Thus Was Adonis Murdered, which is so deliciously snarky and clever that it took me five nights of bedtime reading to get through the first chapter, after which I sighed, dithered, and decided to save it for a time when I can really get a foothold in it. Oh, and also the Reference Grammar of the Cheyenne Language, which I have on loan from a university library and which I will have to send back in a body bag. It's a typewritten manuscript "bound" with two facing sets of staples, which unstapled themselves the other day when I was trying my honest best to understand what fourth person is (first, second, third person I get; fourth person is...I think...a person or object not connected in any way to the speaker or the listener. I can repeat this til I'm blue in the face but I will never get it.) (So: I am trying to learn Cheyenne, or learn about it. This endeavor and my ambivalence about it are the subject of another post.)
It's the kind of bedside reading pile that I heft onto myself during that glorious end-of-the-day reading period and then march through dutifully, one page of each, like I'm eating raw celery. I do rather enjoy this, but after a while I get weary of watery crunch.
So yesterday I sat down with the library website and requested five novels.
They're from the upcoming March Tournament of Books and unfortunately they were all on hold, which not only means I still don't have a good juicy chunk of reading material to look forward to all day, it also means I'm in on-hold limbo and can't properly start anything, because the minute I do I'm going to get a notice from the library that I have five books sitting on the hold shelf and they're all on hold to someone else besides, so I can't even renew.
(This just in: I checked my hold list, and I have five books waiting for me at the library. Sweeeeet!)
I'm also listening to Blue Nights as I drive back and forth to work. Blue Nights is by Joan Didion. Blue Nights is the memoir centered on the death of her daughter at age 39. Blue Nights is the book that is often said to be about the death of her daughter but is really about mortality, about aging, about what we do with what we've done in the world when we come to the end of everything and are still hanging on. It's also, disconcertingly, about celebrity, or, perhaps, Celebrities Joan Didion has Known. Names Joan Didion can drop.
Sorry; that was a piss-poor Joan Didion imitation (although well within the spirit of the book, which felt in places like a just passable Joan Didion imitation. In other places it was harrowingly beautiful.)
At first the celebrity stuff irritated me. Does she really think the lunch she packs for her kindergartener is so much better than every other lunch packed ever, just because she's famous and had a house just down the beach from Dick Wood? Okay, fine; she didn't say that; she just quoted her husband saying that, and he's entitled to think that, because he's married to her. Still. Irrrritating. The only two non-celebrities named in the book are relatives of hers. Everyone else, if they are anointed with a name, it is because they are Famous.
Later I decided it was just part of her style: celebrities are like brand names, which she also uses a lot. To set the scene? To make a point? And if to make a point, is a point about...existence? Or just that her crowd was a crowd that could afford to wear Coco Chanel suits?
Later still I wondered if it wasn't a sort of demonstration of how little it all means in the end: all of these famous, beautiful people, wearing expensive, beautiful clothes, doing beautiful, legendary things - and they all still get old and die and are forgotten. Except that an awful lot of them skip the getting old part, which seems to possibly be hinting at something more: all this precocity, all this devoted attention, all this sass and vim, and still they are unbearably unhappy.
Anyhow. It was very beautiful, it didn't make me cry very much, and I'm rather glad to be done with it.
Showing posts with label reading. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reading. Show all posts
Thursday, January 17, 2013
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Farewell, Aeneas
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| Helen as Dido |
My workshop comments for Virgil: wow! You have lots of vivid imagery and great characters, but consider spending less time on the battlefield. Also, I didn't really believe that Dido would kill herself over the bland-o Aeneas. Try rewriting from Dido's point of view.
Ha ha, I kid. Although I did get tired of being constantly introduced to new characters and their distinguished ancestors only to have them sliced in half in the next line.
Common misconceptions about the Aeneid which I am now qualified to dispel:
1. The Aeneid is the Roman Odyssey.
No. The Aeneid just borrows heavily from the Odyssey. Aeneas is a completely different character than Odysseus. He's much duller, for one, and he fought on the opposite team. Also, his wife is dead. If Virgil can be accused of plagiarizing any of Homer's works, it's the Iliad. They both have similar bodycounts.
2. Dido is a tragic heroine.
No. Dido is just crazy, in a woman-written-by-a-man kind of way.
3. Virgil is prissy, derivative classic lit; blind oral tradition Homer is the real thing.
Actually, this one might be true. I'm not sure that oral tradition isn't overrated, though.
4. Virgil's poetic vision was compromised because he was writing for The Man.
Again, probably true. I like to think that Dido could have had a better role if she wasn't supposed to prove that Octavian was right to pursue war against Cleopatra. Also, surely those endless lists of now-you've-met-them, now-they're-dead warriors owe something to Virgil's attempt to write all the important Romans into the poem, yearbook style.
5. The Aeneid is much better if you read it in high school or college.
True. Manifestly.
Friday, February 24, 2012
Home at Last
"The light is so rich outside," I said to Helen last night as we pulled down the blinds in the front room. "Don't you think the light is so rich?"
She just kind of nodded at me, preoccupied. The blinds are a technical challenge that don't really admit distractions like mom nattering on about the light. But really: it snowed yesterday during the night, after a day of heavy wind that threatened to keep my plane in the air, circling, bumpily, forever, while my house was down there, just right there, and I couldn't get to it; and as night fell, the snow was this deep royal blue and the trees and sidewalks and streets were almost violet. The lights on behind us in the house and superimposed over the deep blue snow were a homey yellow brown and it was so calm and beautiful I wanted to stay in that light forever. However, there was dinner to make, and spelling tests to prepare for, and et cetera et cetera, and when I turned around again it was night and everything outside was invisible.
So: it is good to be home. The kids really missed me this time, especially Silas, which caught me by pleasant surprise. Sometime I think he doesn't really miss anything except his Wii, during those long, long hours he is forced to be at school or asleep, and indeed, one of the stories he was anxious to share when I came to say goodnight was how he rented Modern Warfare Three from the Redbox at King Soopers (ye gods--really, must we go there? Modern Warfare? Isn't that for 16-year-olds?). It's been nice these first few days home to be not rushed, too, so I haven't been snappish at all. That part has been so nice that it's made me wonder if snappishness is something I could actually give up, like, for good. I mean, it's not like it accomplishes anything, and it's not like being rushed as a state of being is really enhanced by also shrieking at people to get their teeth brushed, now, unless you want your teeth to fall out of your head. Hm.
The work trip went fine. I managed meetings and booth duty and sessions and socializing without undue melancholy; I ate some terrific food and went on long runs along the waterfront and tipped the maid appropriately (this is always something I agonize over). I saw the Gum Wall and had tea and crumpets and bought 3 pounds of smoked salmon at the Pike Street Mall. I kept up on typing my meeting notes and came away with a list of action items that was invigorating but not overwhelming. And I read a lot. I finished The Sense of an Ending (blew my mind, a little, although I still prefer Flaubert's Parrot and I'm not sure I ever really had the narrator's back, so to speak) and Heavenly Questions (this one did blow my mind and I'm still amazed that this little blue book can hold so much inside of it). I cried over the tsunami parts in Lives Other Than My Own but otherwise this assemblage of reading material was not as sad as I expected it to be. The essays in Pulphead (by, correction, John Jeremiah Sullivan) are fantastic and humbling--the first few are just good writing, plain and simple (or complex and delicious, David-Foster-Wallace-style, without the desperation), and then he gets into scholarship, for the love of god, and it turns out he's good at that, too, and it kind of makes you reassess your own talents and wonder why, exactly, you don't bring half this energy to your own work? Also, I really want to visit some Midwestern cave paintings, now. And listen to Robert Johnson.
And under all of it, real life. The sword of Damocles that hangs over us all. I'm not forgetting. I just don't like to talk about it.
She just kind of nodded at me, preoccupied. The blinds are a technical challenge that don't really admit distractions like mom nattering on about the light. But really: it snowed yesterday during the night, after a day of heavy wind that threatened to keep my plane in the air, circling, bumpily, forever, while my house was down there, just right there, and I couldn't get to it; and as night fell, the snow was this deep royal blue and the trees and sidewalks and streets were almost violet. The lights on behind us in the house and superimposed over the deep blue snow were a homey yellow brown and it was so calm and beautiful I wanted to stay in that light forever. However, there was dinner to make, and spelling tests to prepare for, and et cetera et cetera, and when I turned around again it was night and everything outside was invisible.
So: it is good to be home. The kids really missed me this time, especially Silas, which caught me by pleasant surprise. Sometime I think he doesn't really miss anything except his Wii, during those long, long hours he is forced to be at school or asleep, and indeed, one of the stories he was anxious to share when I came to say goodnight was how he rented Modern Warfare Three from the Redbox at King Soopers (ye gods--really, must we go there? Modern Warfare? Isn't that for 16-year-olds?). It's been nice these first few days home to be not rushed, too, so I haven't been snappish at all. That part has been so nice that it's made me wonder if snappishness is something I could actually give up, like, for good. I mean, it's not like it accomplishes anything, and it's not like being rushed as a state of being is really enhanced by also shrieking at people to get their teeth brushed, now, unless you want your teeth to fall out of your head. Hm.
The work trip went fine. I managed meetings and booth duty and sessions and socializing without undue melancholy; I ate some terrific food and went on long runs along the waterfront and tipped the maid appropriately (this is always something I agonize over). I saw the Gum Wall and had tea and crumpets and bought 3 pounds of smoked salmon at the Pike Street Mall. I kept up on typing my meeting notes and came away with a list of action items that was invigorating but not overwhelming. And I read a lot. I finished The Sense of an Ending (blew my mind, a little, although I still prefer Flaubert's Parrot and I'm not sure I ever really had the narrator's back, so to speak) and Heavenly Questions (this one did blow my mind and I'm still amazed that this little blue book can hold so much inside of it). I cried over the tsunami parts in Lives Other Than My Own but otherwise this assemblage of reading material was not as sad as I expected it to be. The essays in Pulphead (by, correction, John Jeremiah Sullivan) are fantastic and humbling--the first few are just good writing, plain and simple (or complex and delicious, David-Foster-Wallace-style, without the desperation), and then he gets into scholarship, for the love of god, and it turns out he's good at that, too, and it kind of makes you reassess your own talents and wonder why, exactly, you don't bring half this energy to your own work? Also, I really want to visit some Midwestern cave paintings, now. And listen to Robert Johnson.
And under all of it, real life. The sword of Damocles that hangs over us all. I'm not forgetting. I just don't like to talk about it.
Monday, August 29, 2011
Tom Sawyer and Mary Lennox
I don't consider myself a heliocopter parent (smugly so, I might add), and then I notice myself doing things like checking the 5th-grade website five times a day (still not updated for the new week) (I HATE that). In my defense I'll insist that I'm just curious and I have NO INTENTION of discussing the contents/ activities with either my fifth grader or his teacher.
(Total lie, BTW. I'll "discuss" it with Si, and the conversation will go something like this:
Me: Hey, I noticed that you guys are reading ___.
Si: (crickets chirping)
Me: (slightly aggrieved whisper) Si. That was kind of a question.
Si: What? Oh. Yeah, we are.
Me: And what do you think? Do you like it?
Si: (shrugs) Mm hmm.
Me: (kicking self for asking a yes-or-no question) What's it about?
Si: Um. This guy does this thing, and then he has a dog, and then he does something, I don't remember what, and then he does this other thing. He rides the bus, I think.
Me: Oh. What's your favorite part?
Si: (raising his face to the ceiling and speaking in a just-end-this-conversation-NOW monotone): I like it ALLLLL.
Meanwhile, I ask Helen on the third day of school what she did in class today (this is after we reviewed in detail all the important parts of the day, such as recess, the other recess, lunch, and specials). She sighs noisily and says, "We just did the USUAL STUFF, MOM."
In summary: I have NO BLOODY IDEA what either of my children are doing in school. Hence my obsessive refreshing of the 5th grade website.
This is one reason I like reading to them at the end of the day so much. At least that's one thing that's going into their brains that I'm involved in. Also, I've said this before, but reading kids' books is one of the main reasons I had kids. As soon as Si reaches a non-read-aloud-to-age--like, gasp, 11--I'm going to have to insist that he start reproducing, so that by the time Helen is too old to read to, I'll have a read-aloud partner again. Although the catch will be that I'll have to read a bunch of the same books instead of all new material. Already I'm on reread #2 of The Secret Garden--there could be worse books to reread twice in two years, of course, but I find myself throwing longing glances at Pippi Longstocking and the Moomintroll books.
Si and I are reading Tom Sawyer, and we're both more-or-less enjoying it. This is one of those books that I wanted to read less because I lovity-loved it as a child (I didn't, and I still don't--Tom is kind of vain and self-aggrandizing, and the book is a little heavy on the adult-directed cultural commentary for either my taste or Si's) than because it's an Essential Book. You might think, from this statement, that I'm a canon-driven, reading-is-good-for-your-character kind of pedant, and, well, you'd be right. In my defense, I'm doing it because someone has to. His school favors dreary, good-for-you Cultural Context/ Sensitivity Training books, and he favors series. Both of these are fine, but they tend to omit or elide certain aspects of real life. Such as: one of the things I like about Tom Sawyer this time around is that it shows girls and boys living in entirely separate, mutually antagonistic worlds. Sure, Tom likes Becky Thatcher (that part is kind of weird, actually), but they aren't friends. Almost every other kid book in the world is based on a dual girl-and-boy hero/heroine set, and they're usually best pals and completely support each other. Which is a nice model. It also doesn't exist for kids over the age of 6, as far as I can tell.
Also, Tom's friends are both his bosom pals and...kind of based on opportunistic serendipity. They aren't friends because they really understand each other, or have long heart-to-heart conversations, or show up on the doorstep bearing comic books and bubblegum when the other guy is sick. No, they're friends because they happen to be in the same place at the same time and like to play the same things. Or they're friends because they totally envy the other guy's set-up (see Tom's affection for Huck: is it Huck he likes, or the fact that Huck doesn't have to go to school or bed or church? And does he even get Huck? I don't think he does. Camping out on the island with stolen food is a lark for Tom but pretty SOP for Huck, and it's not at all clear that Tom understands that this is what Huck's life is like all the time.) But none of this stuff matters: they're friends, or buddies, or whatever, and that's all they need. Whenever I stare at Si's roster of hero-worship friends, neighborhood pals, baseball buddies and other opportunistic associations and wonder what the hell friendship even means for him, it helps to remember Tom Sawyer.
(Total lie, BTW. I'll "discuss" it with Si, and the conversation will go something like this:
Me: Hey, I noticed that you guys are reading ___.
Si: (crickets chirping)
Me: (slightly aggrieved whisper) Si. That was kind of a question.
Si: What? Oh. Yeah, we are.
Me: And what do you think? Do you like it?
Si: (shrugs) Mm hmm.
Me: (kicking self for asking a yes-or-no question) What's it about?
Si: Um. This guy does this thing, and then he has a dog, and then he does something, I don't remember what, and then he does this other thing. He rides the bus, I think.
Me: Oh. What's your favorite part?
Si: (raising his face to the ceiling and speaking in a just-end-this-conversation-NOW monotone): I like it ALLLLL.
Meanwhile, I ask Helen on the third day of school what she did in class today (this is after we reviewed in detail all the important parts of the day, such as recess, the other recess, lunch, and specials). She sighs noisily and says, "We just did the USUAL STUFF, MOM."
In summary: I have NO BLOODY IDEA what either of my children are doing in school. Hence my obsessive refreshing of the 5th grade website.
This is one reason I like reading to them at the end of the day so much. At least that's one thing that's going into their brains that I'm involved in. Also, I've said this before, but reading kids' books is one of the main reasons I had kids. As soon as Si reaches a non-read-aloud-to-age--like, gasp, 11--I'm going to have to insist that he start reproducing, so that by the time Helen is too old to read to, I'll have a read-aloud partner again. Although the catch will be that I'll have to read a bunch of the same books instead of all new material. Already I'm on reread #2 of The Secret Garden--there could be worse books to reread twice in two years, of course, but I find myself throwing longing glances at Pippi Longstocking and the Moomintroll books.
Si and I are reading Tom Sawyer, and we're both more-or-less enjoying it. This is one of those books that I wanted to read less because I lovity-loved it as a child (I didn't, and I still don't--Tom is kind of vain and self-aggrandizing, and the book is a little heavy on the adult-directed cultural commentary for either my taste or Si's) than because it's an Essential Book. You might think, from this statement, that I'm a canon-driven, reading-is-good-for-your-character kind of pedant, and, well, you'd be right. In my defense, I'm doing it because someone has to. His school favors dreary, good-for-you Cultural Context/ Sensitivity Training books, and he favors series. Both of these are fine, but they tend to omit or elide certain aspects of real life. Such as: one of the things I like about Tom Sawyer this time around is that it shows girls and boys living in entirely separate, mutually antagonistic worlds. Sure, Tom likes Becky Thatcher (that part is kind of weird, actually), but they aren't friends. Almost every other kid book in the world is based on a dual girl-and-boy hero/heroine set, and they're usually best pals and completely support each other. Which is a nice model. It also doesn't exist for kids over the age of 6, as far as I can tell.
Also, Tom's friends are both his bosom pals and...kind of based on opportunistic serendipity. They aren't friends because they really understand each other, or have long heart-to-heart conversations, or show up on the doorstep bearing comic books and bubblegum when the other guy is sick. No, they're friends because they happen to be in the same place at the same time and like to play the same things. Or they're friends because they totally envy the other guy's set-up (see Tom's affection for Huck: is it Huck he likes, or the fact that Huck doesn't have to go to school or bed or church? And does he even get Huck? I don't think he does. Camping out on the island with stolen food is a lark for Tom but pretty SOP for Huck, and it's not at all clear that Tom understands that this is what Huck's life is like all the time.) But none of this stuff matters: they're friends, or buddies, or whatever, and that's all they need. Whenever I stare at Si's roster of hero-worship friends, neighborhood pals, baseball buddies and other opportunistic associations and wonder what the hell friendship even means for him, it helps to remember Tom Sawyer.
Monday, April 11, 2011
It's a Half Moon!*
Blogging is like skiing: every time I manage to carve a little time out of my life to do it, I start stumbling over myself with excited vows about how SEE THIS ISN'T SO HARD and I'M GOING TO START DOING THIS MORE I SWEAR.
And then I get home and fall over on the bed, too exhausted to even unload all the wet and muddy gear from the back of the car.
Or something like that. The simile may have broken down at some point.
Maybe it's more like this: it sure is a lot easier to do when I do it regularly. Turn on the computer, log on, type up a little report about the state of my life right now: easy. Unless it's been two weeks, and then I'm torn between trying to catch the interwebs up on the fascinating minutiae of my life, and thinking, eh, it really wasn't all that interesting anyway--why do I bother with this, again?
For example: for about three weeks I've been listening to a biography of Queen Isabella (the She-Wolf of France, or the one who populated the weak royal line with Mel Gibson's baby, for those of you who, like me, draw much of your understanding of history from movies) (Braveheart was totally wrong on that one, BTW: she was about 11 and still in France when William Wallace was killed). I keep wanting to tell you guys all about it--how wronged this woman was. Also, lively details about how much/little money has changed since the 14th century: a jeweled crown given to Isabella as a gift was valued at about 40 pounds, which seems correctly low; what, then, to make of the modern-sounding bills such as 4,000 pounds spent on drink for one weekend (!) (for a crowd, but still--that's some party)? Or the trip to France that cost approximately 140,000 pounds? It makes our own expenditures of the past year seem positively spartan.
This is all quite possibly interesting--but is it really more interesting than all of the things I don't talk about? Like the fact that my parents were here for a week, or that we had our first-ever-in-the-new-kitchen dinner guests a few weeks ago, or that yesterday I had three elementary school parents over to bake muffins for our school's Muffins with Mom AND at the same time had three unrelated and one related but not of the household children over--and that I was both shy and unaccustomed to so much commotion, and also happy. We used to have crowds and craziness all the time--it was the way I finally hit upon of accommodating my introvertedness while not getting too isolated. Well, one way, anyway. And I missed it, and I am looking forward to doing this more. (And I am secretly hoping that getting back into the hosting scene will lead to the resurgence of other dormant parts of my life, such as the "having and seeing close friends reguarly" part, or the "being part of an artistic community" part. We'll see. Those involve more of a focused effort, which is difficult to pull off when I'm working full-time and being a baseball mom. Grog.)
Anyhow. I hope to be coming here more.
*A little boy out for a walk with his mom turned around and shouted this at me today. I'm not sure if he was just spreading the joy, or if he thought I might not be paying proper attention.
And then I get home and fall over on the bed, too exhausted to even unload all the wet and muddy gear from the back of the car.
Or something like that. The simile may have broken down at some point.
Maybe it's more like this: it sure is a lot easier to do when I do it regularly. Turn on the computer, log on, type up a little report about the state of my life right now: easy. Unless it's been two weeks, and then I'm torn between trying to catch the interwebs up on the fascinating minutiae of my life, and thinking, eh, it really wasn't all that interesting anyway--why do I bother with this, again?
For example: for about three weeks I've been listening to a biography of Queen Isabella (the She-Wolf of France, or the one who populated the weak royal line with Mel Gibson's baby, for those of you who, like me, draw much of your understanding of history from movies) (Braveheart was totally wrong on that one, BTW: she was about 11 and still in France when William Wallace was killed). I keep wanting to tell you guys all about it--how wronged this woman was. Also, lively details about how much/little money has changed since the 14th century: a jeweled crown given to Isabella as a gift was valued at about 40 pounds, which seems correctly low; what, then, to make of the modern-sounding bills such as 4,000 pounds spent on drink for one weekend (!) (for a crowd, but still--that's some party)? Or the trip to France that cost approximately 140,000 pounds? It makes our own expenditures of the past year seem positively spartan.
This is all quite possibly interesting--but is it really more interesting than all of the things I don't talk about? Like the fact that my parents were here for a week, or that we had our first-ever-in-the-new-kitchen dinner guests a few weeks ago, or that yesterday I had three elementary school parents over to bake muffins for our school's Muffins with Mom AND at the same time had three unrelated and one related but not of the household children over--and that I was both shy and unaccustomed to so much commotion, and also happy. We used to have crowds and craziness all the time--it was the way I finally hit upon of accommodating my introvertedness while not getting too isolated. Well, one way, anyway. And I missed it, and I am looking forward to doing this more. (And I am secretly hoping that getting back into the hosting scene will lead to the resurgence of other dormant parts of my life, such as the "having and seeing close friends reguarly" part, or the "being part of an artistic community" part. We'll see. Those involve more of a focused effort, which is difficult to pull off when I'm working full-time and being a baseball mom. Grog.)
Anyhow. I hope to be coming here more.
*A little boy out for a walk with his mom turned around and shouted this at me today. I'm not sure if he was just spreading the joy, or if he thought I might not be paying proper attention.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Late-breaking resolution
On this blissfully wintry day in January, I have an additional 2011 resolution to add: I'm going to (informally, and with the rules changed to suit my own purposes) be joining Roof Beam Reader's 2011 TBR Pile Challenge.
The goal of the TBR Pile Challenge is, in Roof Beam Reader's words, to finally read 12 books from your "to be read" pile, within 12 months. One of the rules of the official contest is that all of the books have to have been on my TBR pile for at least one full year, but I'm changing that because I got a lot of nice books for Christmas. No point in sending those to next year's TBR pile! However, I have plenty (PLEHENTY) of older books that can help round out this challenge. The key to the challenge is to post the list of 12 in advance, along with two alternates (in the event of a book starting to feel like punishment).
My list:
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)
Alternates:
Raw Edges, Phyllis Barber
The Snow Leopard, Peter Matthiesen
You know what I love when it gets so cold, like it has been for the past few days? The way the mountains and foothills never seem to wake up. The snow on the trees and rock cliffs doesn't melt, so that white, closed look of wintry dawn lasts all day.
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