if you feel the same as I do
No Justin tickets for me, alack alas. I was pretty bummed about it on Friday, but I think I've recovered. And the Philly show will be before I get out there, so it looks like no for me all around. But I hope some people on my friendslist will go and write about it. I'm sure it will be amazing.
I think the reason I'm not still pissed about the Justin tickets is that I'm flying out to the East Coast to apartment hunt next weekend, and that is using up all my anxiety mindspace. Cross your fingers that I find a place and don't end up living in a crack den or on my dad's couch!
The heat has finally broken a little (by which I mean it's to be 90 today and not 99), for which I am grateful, but it's still a little too hot to do some of the stuff I have to do. (That's what I tell myself, anyway.) But there are some things I must do today:
Start to clean out my closets for packing Watch Deadwood Make significant progress on my JuC Swap story Read the paper Who wants to guess which two things I will definitely accomplish today?
And here's some books:
A Brother's Price by Wen Spencer -- I picked this up because it was on a list of fantasy/sci fi books that approached gender in an interesting or unusual way. I haven't read much fantasy or sci fi, and I thought this might be an interesting way in. Sadly, I wasn't really impressed by this book, and didn't think it did anything interesting around gender. It's basically a standard romance (set in an old-West-ish culture) with the typical gender roles switched -- so the men stayed in the house and raised the babies and were courted, and the women fought the battles and for the men. It was fine for what it was, I just expected something different and more experimental. This was like pretty mediocre fanfic, but without the fun of actually having, for example, Justin Timberlake in it.
A Changed Man by Francine Prose -- So a Neo-Nazi walks into an anti-prejudice foundation ... I really, really liked this book, which was indeed about a neo-Nazi who walks into an anti-prejudice foundation, and the effect that had on the man himself, the head of the foundation, the chief fundraiser, her kids, and even a talk show host and audience. Prose has a cool, clear, precise style, and an almost surgical way of dissecting her characters' multitude of conflicting desires and motivations. I loved the way that while this book was very much about the way in which no one has solely altruistic motives, it wasn't just a satire. It really captured something that I feel like I've learned in years working in nonprofits. On one hand, it totally caught and poked fun at the often petty things that come up in this type of work -- the way the crusading saint for justice can obsess about whether hegets two or ten column inches in the paper, the way the new spokesman of the organization gets convinced -- and happily goes along with the idea -- that his epiphany should be cleaner and more fit for general consumption than his actual drug-inspired decision. But at the same time, it doesn't just stop there, but has a lot of insight into the way people whose motives aren't maybe as pure as we'd like them to be -- because part of the reason they do or give what they do is out of guilt, or a desire to be seen as a saint, or to be famous, or to outdo their neighbors -- can still struggle against that, and can still accomplish amazing things. After years in nonprofits, what surprises me is not that people can have petty and funny and impure motives -- they're human, after all -- but that out of those motives, along with "higher" ones, people choose to do and give thing that have a real cost to them, that are difficult and not always fun, to do something they think will do good things in the world. I was expecting this book to be more of a pure satire of the charitable world, even after I started it (especially when the founder receives a chapter from Bleak House that is a terrific satire of charitable impulses), but it was much more than that. It was a sometimes funny, sometimes disturbing, always insightful picture of the way in which people struggle for change -- in themselves and in the world.
Heat by Bill Buford -- I was very excited to read this, because I'd read a few of the chapters as essays in the New Yorker and really enjoyed them. However, I did worry a little that (a) I might have read the best bits in the magazine and (b) that the book would seem like a bunch of magazine articles strung together. But I didn't need to worry.
This book was as enjoyable as I'd hoped, the story of Buford's growing interest and obsession with Italian cooking. I enjoyed re-reading the chapters I'd already read, and actually found that one of them that I hadn't been as crazy about when I read it on its own in the magazine had a greater resonance and interest for me when read in the context of the book. Buford writes about his own experiences learning to work as a restaurant chef with no training except as a keen amateur and then deciding to go to Italy to learn in the way his chef-inspiration, Mario Batali, did. He also writes about the history of Italian cooking and the research he did into such burning questions as, when did people first start putting eggs into pasta?
My favorite parts of the book were those that dealt most closely with Buford's own experiences, cubing millions of carrots as a sous chef, working the pasta station at Babbo, and learning to butcher in a small Italian town. He has a great, conversational style, as well as the ability to laugh at himself, and he not only portrayed his own obsession with this type of cooking, but made you understand why he'd become so obsessed, which is quite a feat. Also, I learned a few tricks for cooking pasta.
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls -- Walls's memoir of an objectively horrific childhood, where she and her siblings were routinely root-in-the-trash-cans hungry, dressed in rags, and living without indoor plumbing or electricity, brought up (if you can call it that) by parents who weren't incapacitated by much more than their own whims. The book is unsentimental and without self-pity, and for all that there were uncounted times where I looked up from the book and said, holy shit, who let these people have children, it wasn't a depressing read, because of the attitude of Walls and her siblings, especially her brother and older sister, to their lives and their relationships with each other. Walls has a spare and graceful writing style, and a generosity toward her parents in her writing, showing not only what they inflicted on their children but also the moments of beauty and joy in their lives, like her father unable to buy Christmas presents but giving each of his children their own star from the sky.
Walls also has a real skill as a storyteller. One of the things I sometimes find when reading memoirs is that there can be a lack of forward momentum, that you read each episode and while you may enjoy it or find it interesting, you're not really driven to go to the next chapter. I read The Glass Castle quickly, gulping it down, not just because I appreciated the fine writing and Walls' insights into herself and her family, but also because I wanted to know what was going to happen next.
A small quibble: some of the thoughts and conversations Walls ascribes to herself and her brother when they're very young, like six or younger, struck me as the thoughts of much older children or even adults. A couple of times I flipped back to make sure I'd remembered their ages right. Of course, living in the situations they were in would make anyone grow up fast, but it still stopped me a little. But this is a minor quibble with a book I really enjoyed.
The Boy I Loved Before by Jenny Colgan -- A very fun book about a woman on the verge of engagement who wakes up to find herself back in high school. But not back when she was actually in high school -- she's in high school now, but her friends and her boyfriend and everyone except her parents are still the same age, and she's the same age inside. It was fun to see her navigate high school, and to look at her parents with the benefit of her knowledge now. She's also been thinking about her high school boyfriend, and here she encounters that boyfriend's younger brother, who's now her peer. I enjoyed this -- it was funny, and insightful, and it surprised me several times.
Open House by Elizabeth Berg -- One thing that keeping a bookblog can really show you is exactly what reading patterns you have. I'm going through some big life changes, a big move and all that, and so apparently I've been looking for some comfort reading, and while for some people that might mean chick lit or romance novels or books they read as kids, for me for some reason that means books about middle-agish women who have some big life transition. And for that, Elizabeth Berg is dealer of choice. That's not to say that it's somehow not a good book -- she's a good writer, and I think she's insightful about change and loss, but when you've read a lot of her books a lot of the bare bones are the same (I think that's one reason I liked Joy School so much -- her main character was a child, which already changed things up a lot). All of which is to say, if that's the type of thing you like then you'll like this book. Again, not to be dismissive -- I liked it. It's about a woman who's surprised by her husband telling her he wants a divorce, and who rents out rooms in her home so she doesn't have to sell it. I went into it expecting wacky tenant shenanigans, but there really wasn't much of that. It was much more about the internal changes that the main character went through, and that was well done. There's a scene where she goes on a date, her first date since separating from her husband, that's especially painfully vivid and real.
Runaway by Alice Munro -- I have such mixed feelings about this book! I was very excited to read it, because I've read and really admired some of Munro's short stories before and because it got such great reviews. And it started off with a fantastic story, Runaway, with three complicated, real, vivid characters and the ways in which they miss each other, and an image at the ending that was simple and shocking and changed the whole way I saw where I thought the story was heading. Beautiful, unadorned language and just incredible. And I loved the last story, Powers, too, for the changing tone and the two main female characters and the last scene. But in between, I found myself having to force my way through a few of the stories. Part of the problem for me was that there were a few linked stories, two of which I'd read previously, and they didn't really hold my interest a second time around, although when I got to the third of the linked stories, Silence, which I hadn't read before, I found it very powerful.
The other problem for me, I think, is that I shouldn't have read the whole book at once. I should have read one story, then gone off and read another book or two, then come back and read another, and stretched it out over several months. Because reading the stories all together made me frustrated by the fact that most, if not all, of the stories, shared a common pattern, where the story would be trucking along and then something horrible and shocking would happen, although it wasn't always a big event but maybe something that someone says, something understated but that's meant to change everything. And after a while the effect of that was blunted on me -- it was used to incredible effect in Runaway, but that was the first story and also, I think, just done much more carefully and so well. There's a similar revelation in Powers, another story I liked very much, although I did think that the effect of it was a little lost on me because I was so tired of it by that point. And there's a story in the middle, Tricks, where I actually just said, You know, bullshit, when I got to the end and saw the shocking thing. I mean, I don't think I would have loved that story anyway, but I might have liked it much better -- there were certainly things I liked in it -- if I hadn't read it so close together with the others.
I think the reason I'm not still pissed about the Justin tickets is that I'm flying out to the East Coast to apartment hunt next weekend, and that is using up all my anxiety mindspace. Cross your fingers that I find a place and don't end up living in a crack den or on my dad's couch!
The heat has finally broken a little (by which I mean it's to be 90 today and not 99), for which I am grateful, but it's still a little too hot to do some of the stuff I have to do. (That's what I tell myself, anyway.) But there are some things I must do today:
And here's some books:
A Brother's Price by Wen Spencer -- I picked this up because it was on a list of fantasy/sci fi books that approached gender in an interesting or unusual way. I haven't read much fantasy or sci fi, and I thought this might be an interesting way in. Sadly, I wasn't really impressed by this book, and didn't think it did anything interesting around gender. It's basically a standard romance (set in an old-West-ish culture) with the typical gender roles switched -- so the men stayed in the house and raised the babies and were courted, and the women fought the battles and for the men. It was fine for what it was, I just expected something different and more experimental. This was like pretty mediocre fanfic, but without the fun of actually having, for example, Justin Timberlake in it.
A Changed Man by Francine Prose -- So a Neo-Nazi walks into an anti-prejudice foundation ... I really, really liked this book, which was indeed about a neo-Nazi who walks into an anti-prejudice foundation, and the effect that had on the man himself, the head of the foundation, the chief fundraiser, her kids, and even a talk show host and audience. Prose has a cool, clear, precise style, and an almost surgical way of dissecting her characters' multitude of conflicting desires and motivations. I loved the way that while this book was very much about the way in which no one has solely altruistic motives, it wasn't just a satire. It really captured something that I feel like I've learned in years working in nonprofits. On one hand, it totally caught and poked fun at the often petty things that come up in this type of work -- the way the crusading saint for justice can obsess about whether hegets two or ten column inches in the paper, the way the new spokesman of the organization gets convinced -- and happily goes along with the idea -- that his epiphany should be cleaner and more fit for general consumption than his actual drug-inspired decision. But at the same time, it doesn't just stop there, but has a lot of insight into the way people whose motives aren't maybe as pure as we'd like them to be -- because part of the reason they do or give what they do is out of guilt, or a desire to be seen as a saint, or to be famous, or to outdo their neighbors -- can still struggle against that, and can still accomplish amazing things. After years in nonprofits, what surprises me is not that people can have petty and funny and impure motives -- they're human, after all -- but that out of those motives, along with "higher" ones, people choose to do and give thing that have a real cost to them, that are difficult and not always fun, to do something they think will do good things in the world. I was expecting this book to be more of a pure satire of the charitable world, even after I started it (especially when the founder receives a chapter from Bleak House that is a terrific satire of charitable impulses), but it was much more than that. It was a sometimes funny, sometimes disturbing, always insightful picture of the way in which people struggle for change -- in themselves and in the world.
Heat by Bill Buford -- I was very excited to read this, because I'd read a few of the chapters as essays in the New Yorker and really enjoyed them. However, I did worry a little that (a) I might have read the best bits in the magazine and (b) that the book would seem like a bunch of magazine articles strung together. But I didn't need to worry.
This book was as enjoyable as I'd hoped, the story of Buford's growing interest and obsession with Italian cooking. I enjoyed re-reading the chapters I'd already read, and actually found that one of them that I hadn't been as crazy about when I read it on its own in the magazine had a greater resonance and interest for me when read in the context of the book. Buford writes about his own experiences learning to work as a restaurant chef with no training except as a keen amateur and then deciding to go to Italy to learn in the way his chef-inspiration, Mario Batali, did. He also writes about the history of Italian cooking and the research he did into such burning questions as, when did people first start putting eggs into pasta?
My favorite parts of the book were those that dealt most closely with Buford's own experiences, cubing millions of carrots as a sous chef, working the pasta station at Babbo, and learning to butcher in a small Italian town. He has a great, conversational style, as well as the ability to laugh at himself, and he not only portrayed his own obsession with this type of cooking, but made you understand why he'd become so obsessed, which is quite a feat. Also, I learned a few tricks for cooking pasta.
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls -- Walls's memoir of an objectively horrific childhood, where she and her siblings were routinely root-in-the-trash-cans hungry, dressed in rags, and living without indoor plumbing or electricity, brought up (if you can call it that) by parents who weren't incapacitated by much more than their own whims. The book is unsentimental and without self-pity, and for all that there were uncounted times where I looked up from the book and said, holy shit, who let these people have children, it wasn't a depressing read, because of the attitude of Walls and her siblings, especially her brother and older sister, to their lives and their relationships with each other. Walls has a spare and graceful writing style, and a generosity toward her parents in her writing, showing not only what they inflicted on their children but also the moments of beauty and joy in their lives, like her father unable to buy Christmas presents but giving each of his children their own star from the sky.
Walls also has a real skill as a storyteller. One of the things I sometimes find when reading memoirs is that there can be a lack of forward momentum, that you read each episode and while you may enjoy it or find it interesting, you're not really driven to go to the next chapter. I read The Glass Castle quickly, gulping it down, not just because I appreciated the fine writing and Walls' insights into herself and her family, but also because I wanted to know what was going to happen next.
A small quibble: some of the thoughts and conversations Walls ascribes to herself and her brother when they're very young, like six or younger, struck me as the thoughts of much older children or even adults. A couple of times I flipped back to make sure I'd remembered their ages right. Of course, living in the situations they were in would make anyone grow up fast, but it still stopped me a little. But this is a minor quibble with a book I really enjoyed.
The Boy I Loved Before by Jenny Colgan -- A very fun book about a woman on the verge of engagement who wakes up to find herself back in high school. But not back when she was actually in high school -- she's in high school now, but her friends and her boyfriend and everyone except her parents are still the same age, and she's the same age inside. It was fun to see her navigate high school, and to look at her parents with the benefit of her knowledge now. She's also been thinking about her high school boyfriend, and here she encounters that boyfriend's younger brother, who's now her peer. I enjoyed this -- it was funny, and insightful, and it surprised me several times.
Open House by Elizabeth Berg -- One thing that keeping a bookblog can really show you is exactly what reading patterns you have. I'm going through some big life changes, a big move and all that, and so apparently I've been looking for some comfort reading, and while for some people that might mean chick lit or romance novels or books they read as kids, for me for some reason that means books about middle-agish women who have some big life transition. And for that, Elizabeth Berg is dealer of choice. That's not to say that it's somehow not a good book -- she's a good writer, and I think she's insightful about change and loss, but when you've read a lot of her books a lot of the bare bones are the same (I think that's one reason I liked Joy School so much -- her main character was a child, which already changed things up a lot). All of which is to say, if that's the type of thing you like then you'll like this book. Again, not to be dismissive -- I liked it. It's about a woman who's surprised by her husband telling her he wants a divorce, and who rents out rooms in her home so she doesn't have to sell it. I went into it expecting wacky tenant shenanigans, but there really wasn't much of that. It was much more about the internal changes that the main character went through, and that was well done. There's a scene where she goes on a date, her first date since separating from her husband, that's especially painfully vivid and real.
Runaway by Alice Munro -- I have such mixed feelings about this book! I was very excited to read it, because I've read and really admired some of Munro's short stories before and because it got such great reviews. And it started off with a fantastic story, Runaway, with three complicated, real, vivid characters and the ways in which they miss each other, and an image at the ending that was simple and shocking and changed the whole way I saw where I thought the story was heading. Beautiful, unadorned language and just incredible. And I loved the last story, Powers, too, for the changing tone and the two main female characters and the last scene. But in between, I found myself having to force my way through a few of the stories. Part of the problem for me was that there were a few linked stories, two of which I'd read previously, and they didn't really hold my interest a second time around, although when I got to the third of the linked stories, Silence, which I hadn't read before, I found it very powerful.
The other problem for me, I think, is that I shouldn't have read the whole book at once. I should have read one story, then gone off and read another book or two, then come back and read another, and stretched it out over several months. Because reading the stories all together made me frustrated by the fact that most, if not all, of the stories, shared a common pattern, where the story would be trucking along and then something horrible and shocking would happen, although it wasn't always a big event but maybe something that someone says, something understated but that's meant to change everything. And after a while the effect of that was blunted on me -- it was used to incredible effect in Runaway, but that was the first story and also, I think, just done much more carefully and so well. There's a similar revelation in Powers, another story I liked very much, although I did think that the effect of it was a little lost on me because I was so tired of it by that point. And there's a story in the middle, Tricks, where I actually just said, You know, bullshit, when I got to the end and saw the shocking thing. I mean, I don't think I would have loved that story anyway, but I might have liked it much better -- there were certainly things I liked in it -- if I hadn't read it so close together with the others.