books
It's been kind of a quiet, peaceful weekend, which I've needed very much. Did some hanging out, saw two movies -- Inside Man, which was fantastic, and MI:3, which was entertaining, did some reading and some writing. I got up at 8(!) this morning, even though I have the day off, because my friend called needing help on a grant proposal and didn't realize until I answered how early it was. But by then I was up. I think we might have lunch, then I'm meeting another friend I haven't seen in a while for dinner. I've done a little writing this weekend, too, although instead of working on the story I'd had planned, I started something new. I think I might have the first story too planned out in my head, which can be problematic for me, so I might just need to give it some room to breathe while I work on something else. We'll see.
Some books:
Wild Life by Molly Gloss -- This was really great. It's the story of a woman, a writer of girls' adventure books, in the turn-of-the-century west, who goes off into the woods to find a little girl and becomes lost. I loved the structure, a collage of journals, letters, excerpts from stories written by the main character, and narrative. And the voice of the main character is so amazing, that I wanted to read several books about her. We get small glimpses at her life as a child, when she's older in New York with freethinking women, of her marriage, and each of them makes me want to read more and more. But her journal entries about being lost in the woods, and what she found there, are so bizarre and vivid and compelling that I couldn't put it down. Another thing I loved about the book was the different views or styles of motherhood it showed, from the somewhat deceptively offhand maternal instincts of the main character, to the mother and grandmother of the little lost girl, to the mother we meet out in the woods. This is definitely one of my favorite books this year.
Barchester Towers and Dr. Thorne by Anthony Trollope -- I'm making my way through the Barchester series and being undeservedly rewarded after my criticisms. Barchester Towers was very funny, full of infighting among the clerical class when a new bishop comes to Barchester, and Dr. Thorne was a marriage story, done as only Trollope can do it, full of authorial commentary and asides. Both very fun.
Catch Me If You Can by Frank Abagnole Jr. -- This was a really fun read. I'd seen the movie years ago when it came out, but my memory of it was that it was at least half about Frank being pursued by the law and getting caught, while the book is really mostly about his capers. It's written in a kind of 60s-swinger-ish language, which is fun, and is full of a kind of giddiness as Abagnole details exactly how he went about fooling everyone, as if he's constantly thinking, "Can you believe I got away with this?" There was one scene where Abagnole, who gets pulled into a hospital job after masquerading as a doctor at an apartment complex, has to go before a board of doctors to be basically certified, that just made me laugh out loud. Lots of fun.
Everything Bad is Good for You by Steven Johnson -- Johnson's premise is that common wisdom about popular culture -- TV, video games, the Internet -- which states that it's dumbing down people and basically getting worse and worse, is wrong. In looking at it, he basically ignores content and looks at the structure of popular media and how your brain reacts to it, and argues that it's actually getting more and more complex, and that it's more stimulating to the brain. While I was interested in what he wrote about video games, I didn't have the same immediate reaction to that section because I'm not really a gamer. I am, however, an avid TV watcher and Internet surfer, and I was fascinated both by his descriptions of how the brain works in reaction to both of those things and by his breakdown of structure and use. He spends some time graphing the way in which TV shows have developed more complex and intertwining plots, comparing older shows to new ones, and when I'm watching TV now, I find myself making his charts in my head. It's really fascinating. Johnson also argues that one of the more complex pleasures of pop culture today is both the way in which the audience is asked -- and demands -- to watch actively, not passively, by being asked to fill in more blanks and make more connections to make sense of what they're watching, and also the way in which people discuss what they're watching, in person and on the Internet.
Johnson also discussed reality shows and how people watch them, which I found very interesting. He argues that the common wisdom is that people watch them to watch other people's humiliation, but he looks at popular shows -- Survivor, the Apprentice -- and argues that what people are really doing when they watch them are strategizing and exercising emotion intelligence, that one of the strongest reactions people have to watching the shows is to argue about how they would have met one of the challenges, what they would have said or done. As my reaction to watching a lot of reality shows is to draft in my head the speech I would have given that would have kept me from getting fired, or that would have justified my outfit to the judges if I were Chloe or Daniel V. (although never Santino), I really enjoyed reading that part.
Finally, one thing I really enjoyed was Johnson's tone throughout. This is really a book making an argument, and Johnson wants to persuade us of his theory, more overtly than a lot of non-fiction books, almost more like a political book. But at the same time, there's really no anger in his book, as there are in a lot of books that seek to be persuasive, whether righteous anger or contempt. Johnson is arguing from a place of joy, and you sens e that he really is happy at the idea that maybe things aren't getting worse and worse, that maybe the world, or at least the pop cultural side of it, is getting better and better. While I found what he had to say about pop culture and about the brain really interesting, it was really his style and his joyful tone that made it so hard for me to put this book down.
Any Place I Hang My Hat by Susan Isaacs -- I picked this up because I was having a rough week and wanted a comfort read, something that would be somewhat familiar but that I hadn't read before. I'd read some Susan Isaacs before; she was chick lit back when we called that women's books, and she usually wrote about suburban women who've been thrown a curveball somehow, infidelity or a murder in the neighborhood or something, somewhat formulaic but smartly written, usually funny and consciously feminist. This was a variation on that formula, perhaps influenced by the chick lit revolution, as the heroine is a city girl, NYC in fact, a journalist for a political magazine who goes looking for her long-lost mother in response to a story she's covering -- and of course she ends up looking for love as well. I enjoyed it, and there were two things that really struck me. The first was the way in which she described how the heroine, who grew up poor and inner city, learned how to make herself into a person who other people, social workers and the rich people she met at the schools she went to on scholarship would like to help. It was interesting and insightful to me, especially as I've been thinking about that at work, about how some people, even in the direst of straits, seem to be able to inspire other people to go to extraordinary lengths to help them, while others, who are no less "deserving," however you want to define that word, don't seem to have the gift.
The second thing that struck me was how it dealt with 9/11. As the main character is thinking about her relationship, both she and he put a lot of emphasis on each other's response to 9/11 -- remembering what the day was like for them, who they wanted to call, who wanted to call them, and what that said about them. On the one hand, this seemed totally reasonable to me -- thinking about your reaction to a major emergency and tragedy close to home, and how you reach out to and who reaches out to you -- is definitely something that you think about when you're deciding if and how someone loves you, and how you feel about them. It's one of those almost instinctive things that are incredibly telling. At the same time, though, I was a little uncomfortable with it -- not because it was dealt with casually or trivially, but because there was a small part of me that was thinking, wait, are we doing this yet? Shouldn't only "literature" be allowed to deal with this yet? In light of all the discussions about the movie United 93, I just thought that discomfort was interesting. It had nothing to do, really, with the book itself, but just my own reaction.
The Sky's the Limit: Passion and Property in Manhattan by Steven Gaines -- I picked this up to read in the bookstore the way I read certain Vanity Fair articles, thinking there'd be lots of stories about crazily expensive apartments and rich people behaving badly and gossip about co-op boards gone wild. And there certainly were those stories, a lot of them, from the shockwaves about Tommy Hilfinger, not only a fashion person but a fashion person who designed for young urban kids, getting into one of the 42 Good Buildings in New York, to the story about Mariah Carey, blinging like crazy and surrounded by bodyguards in a co-op interview, being asked by an old lady if "Mr. Biggie" would be coming to visit her in the building and telling the lady, "Mr. Biggie, he be dead." (She didn't get in, but whether it was the bling or the bodyguards or the lack of Biggie, who can say.) Plus stories about Old Guard Realtors and new young upstarts selling millions of dollars a year, and an appearance by Donald Trump, so on the gossip level it was incredibly satisfying. At the same time, there were stories about how the Good Buildings came about (especially interesting and somewhat familiar to Edith Wharton fans), how the first apartment buildings and co-ops were built in New York, and some history of the neighborhoods that gave some weight to this book. I mean, I wouldn't pick it up thinking it was a meaty sociological tome, but I found it an interesting, fun and quick read.
Hope everyone is having a good day!
Some books:
Wild Life by Molly Gloss -- This was really great. It's the story of a woman, a writer of girls' adventure books, in the turn-of-the-century west, who goes off into the woods to find a little girl and becomes lost. I loved the structure, a collage of journals, letters, excerpts from stories written by the main character, and narrative. And the voice of the main character is so amazing, that I wanted to read several books about her. We get small glimpses at her life as a child, when she's older in New York with freethinking women, of her marriage, and each of them makes me want to read more and more. But her journal entries about being lost in the woods, and what she found there, are so bizarre and vivid and compelling that I couldn't put it down. Another thing I loved about the book was the different views or styles of motherhood it showed, from the somewhat deceptively offhand maternal instincts of the main character, to the mother and grandmother of the little lost girl, to the mother we meet out in the woods. This is definitely one of my favorite books this year.
Barchester Towers and Dr. Thorne by Anthony Trollope -- I'm making my way through the Barchester series and being undeservedly rewarded after my criticisms. Barchester Towers was very funny, full of infighting among the clerical class when a new bishop comes to Barchester, and Dr. Thorne was a marriage story, done as only Trollope can do it, full of authorial commentary and asides. Both very fun.
Catch Me If You Can by Frank Abagnole Jr. -- This was a really fun read. I'd seen the movie years ago when it came out, but my memory of it was that it was at least half about Frank being pursued by the law and getting caught, while the book is really mostly about his capers. It's written in a kind of 60s-swinger-ish language, which is fun, and is full of a kind of giddiness as Abagnole details exactly how he went about fooling everyone, as if he's constantly thinking, "Can you believe I got away with this?" There was one scene where Abagnole, who gets pulled into a hospital job after masquerading as a doctor at an apartment complex, has to go before a board of doctors to be basically certified, that just made me laugh out loud. Lots of fun.
Everything Bad is Good for You by Steven Johnson -- Johnson's premise is that common wisdom about popular culture -- TV, video games, the Internet -- which states that it's dumbing down people and basically getting worse and worse, is wrong. In looking at it, he basically ignores content and looks at the structure of popular media and how your brain reacts to it, and argues that it's actually getting more and more complex, and that it's more stimulating to the brain. While I was interested in what he wrote about video games, I didn't have the same immediate reaction to that section because I'm not really a gamer. I am, however, an avid TV watcher and Internet surfer, and I was fascinated both by his descriptions of how the brain works in reaction to both of those things and by his breakdown of structure and use. He spends some time graphing the way in which TV shows have developed more complex and intertwining plots, comparing older shows to new ones, and when I'm watching TV now, I find myself making his charts in my head. It's really fascinating. Johnson also argues that one of the more complex pleasures of pop culture today is both the way in which the audience is asked -- and demands -- to watch actively, not passively, by being asked to fill in more blanks and make more connections to make sense of what they're watching, and also the way in which people discuss what they're watching, in person and on the Internet.
Johnson also discussed reality shows and how people watch them, which I found very interesting. He argues that the common wisdom is that people watch them to watch other people's humiliation, but he looks at popular shows -- Survivor, the Apprentice -- and argues that what people are really doing when they watch them are strategizing and exercising emotion intelligence, that one of the strongest reactions people have to watching the shows is to argue about how they would have met one of the challenges, what they would have said or done. As my reaction to watching a lot of reality shows is to draft in my head the speech I would have given that would have kept me from getting fired, or that would have justified my outfit to the judges if I were Chloe or Daniel V. (although never Santino), I really enjoyed reading that part.
Finally, one thing I really enjoyed was Johnson's tone throughout. This is really a book making an argument, and Johnson wants to persuade us of his theory, more overtly than a lot of non-fiction books, almost more like a political book. But at the same time, there's really no anger in his book, as there are in a lot of books that seek to be persuasive, whether righteous anger or contempt. Johnson is arguing from a place of joy, and you sens e that he really is happy at the idea that maybe things aren't getting worse and worse, that maybe the world, or at least the pop cultural side of it, is getting better and better. While I found what he had to say about pop culture and about the brain really interesting, it was really his style and his joyful tone that made it so hard for me to put this book down.
Any Place I Hang My Hat by Susan Isaacs -- I picked this up because I was having a rough week and wanted a comfort read, something that would be somewhat familiar but that I hadn't read before. I'd read some Susan Isaacs before; she was chick lit back when we called that women's books, and she usually wrote about suburban women who've been thrown a curveball somehow, infidelity or a murder in the neighborhood or something, somewhat formulaic but smartly written, usually funny and consciously feminist. This was a variation on that formula, perhaps influenced by the chick lit revolution, as the heroine is a city girl, NYC in fact, a journalist for a political magazine who goes looking for her long-lost mother in response to a story she's covering -- and of course she ends up looking for love as well. I enjoyed it, and there were two things that really struck me. The first was the way in which she described how the heroine, who grew up poor and inner city, learned how to make herself into a person who other people, social workers and the rich people she met at the schools she went to on scholarship would like to help. It was interesting and insightful to me, especially as I've been thinking about that at work, about how some people, even in the direst of straits, seem to be able to inspire other people to go to extraordinary lengths to help them, while others, who are no less "deserving," however you want to define that word, don't seem to have the gift.
The second thing that struck me was how it dealt with 9/11. As the main character is thinking about her relationship, both she and he put a lot of emphasis on each other's response to 9/11 -- remembering what the day was like for them, who they wanted to call, who wanted to call them, and what that said about them. On the one hand, this seemed totally reasonable to me -- thinking about your reaction to a major emergency and tragedy close to home, and how you reach out to and who reaches out to you -- is definitely something that you think about when you're deciding if and how someone loves you, and how you feel about them. It's one of those almost instinctive things that are incredibly telling. At the same time, though, I was a little uncomfortable with it -- not because it was dealt with casually or trivially, but because there was a small part of me that was thinking, wait, are we doing this yet? Shouldn't only "literature" be allowed to deal with this yet? In light of all the discussions about the movie United 93, I just thought that discomfort was interesting. It had nothing to do, really, with the book itself, but just my own reaction.
The Sky's the Limit: Passion and Property in Manhattan by Steven Gaines -- I picked this up to read in the bookstore the way I read certain Vanity Fair articles, thinking there'd be lots of stories about crazily expensive apartments and rich people behaving badly and gossip about co-op boards gone wild. And there certainly were those stories, a lot of them, from the shockwaves about Tommy Hilfinger, not only a fashion person but a fashion person who designed for young urban kids, getting into one of the 42 Good Buildings in New York, to the story about Mariah Carey, blinging like crazy and surrounded by bodyguards in a co-op interview, being asked by an old lady if "Mr. Biggie" would be coming to visit her in the building and telling the lady, "Mr. Biggie, he be dead." (She didn't get in, but whether it was the bling or the bodyguards or the lack of Biggie, who can say.) Plus stories about Old Guard Realtors and new young upstarts selling millions of dollars a year, and an appearance by Donald Trump, so on the gossip level it was incredibly satisfying. At the same time, there were stories about how the Good Buildings came about (especially interesting and somewhat familiar to Edith Wharton fans), how the first apartment buildings and co-ops were built in New York, and some history of the neighborhoods that gave some weight to this book. I mean, I wouldn't pick it up thinking it was a meaty sociological tome, but I found it an interesting, fun and quick read.
Hope everyone is having a good day!