devour books. poop words.

Books Read in 2011

2012-01-11T05:48:00.000-05:00

I've been remiss in posts. But these are the books I read this year, 25, which is way less than my goal. Butttt I read some REALLY good books this year -- Nabokov, Mitchell, McCann, Rosal, and Ondaatje especially!!!

1. Divasdero | Michael Ondaatje (very good) - 11.26.11
2. Blue Nights | Joan Didion (very good) - 11.11.11
3. The Year of Magical Thinking | Joan Didion (reread) - 11.07.11
4. This Side of Brightness | Colum McCann (great) - 10.30.11
5. Boneshepards | Patrick Rosal (amazing) - 10.16.11
6. Coming Through Slaughter | Michael Ondaatje (great) - 10.14.11
7. Uprock Headspin Scramble and Dive | Patrick Rosal (amazing) - 10.07.11
8. American Gods | Neil Gaiman (good) - 08.15.11
9. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet | David Mitchell (very good) - 08.01.11
10. Cloud Atlas | David Mitchell (amazing) - 06.26.11
11. The Beauty of the Husband | Anne Carson (very good) - 05.23.11
12. The Madonnas of Echo Park | Brando Skyhorse (good) - 05.03.11
13. Archaic Smiles | A. E. Stallings (very good) - 05.02.11
14. Lighthead | Terrance Hayes (very good) - 04.27.11
15. My American Kundiman (great) | Patrick Rosal - 04.22.11
16. Kamby Bolongo Mean River (very good) | Robert Lopez - 04.21.11
17. Ignatz (good) | Monica Youn - 04.17.11
18. Jesus' Son (reread) | Denis Johnson - 03.27.11
19. Pale Fire (great) | Vladimir Nabokov - 03.25.11
20. The Collected Works of Billy the Kid (amazing) | Michael Ondaatje - 03.05.11
21. Room (very good) | Emma Donoghue - 02.19.11
22. L.I.E. (very good) | David Hollander - 02.18.11
23. In the Skin of a Lion (great) | Michael Ondaatje - 01.26.11
24. The Hours (good) | Michael Cunningham - 01.17.10
25. Her Frightful Symmetry (okay) | Audrey Niffenegger - 01.03.11

I admire Nabokov so much.

2011-03-29T00:09:00.001-04:00

I'm sick, so don't have the patience to give this book the in-depth critique it deserves. Perhaps I'll come back to it later. [Bonus: Pnin shows up in Pale Fire, as does the name Lolita! Hee hee!] In the meantime, my Goodreads review:

I really love love Nabokov, and this was so much fun. Pale Fire took me some time to get through but as soon as I was finished, I started rereading portions of the book. I love books like this, wrapped in mystery that is inherent in the piece itself. I found the Foreward amusing, but didn't really understand it until I'd read through the whole thing. I was really drawn into the poem once I was in it, especially the section with the daughter. And of course the extensive Commentary was both hilarious and infuriating. n I have to say that I found Kinbote so intensely unlikable that throughout, even as I was flipping pages, I wondered how Nabokov had created something that would make me want to keep reading despite how much I despised his narrator AND the fact that we're led to "guess" the secret early on. Perhaps it's just the process of seeing this man's delusion that is fascinating? I have no idea. What I love about this piece is that there are so many pieces of a puzzle that you can extract, even in the final Index! My only quibble was that perhaps the final few lines in the Commentary seem unnecessary, and tell us too much we already know. But I'll have to reread it to see if there's something I missed. Overall, while this wasn't something that hit me on an emotional level (I usually reserve my fifth star because I love a book on a heartbreaking visceral level), this was a pursuit of intellect and play and psychology that I can't resist in a book. Nabokov has never let me down!

Another gem.

2011-03-07T02:04:00.000-05:00

I adored Billy the Kid. Absolutely. I finished it, googled the life of Billy the Kid, then threw myself back into the book for a second read. It's like poetry but not. Or I guess it's partly poetry. But with a plot. It feels like a well-wrapped gift, or a puzzle, and the fun part of it is unraveling it. Reading it slowly and savoring it. Making sense of things that didn't make sense the first time around. It feels special in the way that few books do. I am a huge fan of Ondaatje at this point, and am in love with how he uses his words, but also how he uses form. It's experimental, but not in a crazy kooky way that sometimes drives me nuts -- it's experimental in a beautiful way, like being carried by a stream and bumping along some boulders and brush and seareeds as we pass. I can't explain it in any other way.

The book is short -- around 100 pages -- but it is a collection of poems, prose snippets, photographs and even newspaper articles and dime books. It's at turns hilarious and horrifying, and it flips back and forth through time, so that on the first read, you have no idea what is going on. It switches point of views, it interviews other people, and it's not always clear what's happening. But that's part of the fun. Ondaatje creates a beautifully sympathetic character, and gives us a hilariously reimagined biography of an infamous character. And I love him for it.

The best books are the ones that I can go back to and reread over and over again and find something new to savor about it. Those books, for me, usually require some kind of language that I admire and want to roll endlessly on my tongue. There is something playful yet lyrical about Ondaatje's work. I also wonder if Autobiography of Red, an absolute favorite of mine, which elicited much of the same visceral devotion that I had with this book, was inspired by this 1970s novel (apparently Ondaatje's first). I liked this book as I was reading it the first time, loved it as I got towards the end, and now having gotten halfway through a second read, am completely enamored. These are the kind of books I love but can't even begin to understand how to go about writing.

Love love love.

HAWHAWHAW

2011-02-28T18:26:00.000-05:00

Been MIA. It's terrible. I do have a Goodreads account so I try to give a quick overview of all I read there. But meanwhile, this blog has been neglected. I'm sorry.

I'm on a lyrical kick right now, for the sake of my own writing. Been reading a ton of poetry, and also prose writers who write like poets. Right now on Michael Ondaatje's Collected Works of Billy the Kid. It's combination prose and poem and photographs. Eclectic and wonderful in so many ways. Kind of gory, kind of sweeping, kind of funny.

Here's an example of funny:

When Charlie Bowdre married Manuela, we carried them
on our shoulders, us on horses. Took them to the Shea
Hotel, 8 rooms. Jack Shea at the desk said
Charlie -- everythings on the house, we'll give you the
Bridal.
No no, says Charlie, dont bother, I'll hang onto her ears
until I get used to it.
HAWHAWHAW

Yes, I'm enamored.

Devoured in 2010

2011-01-01T00:01:00.000-05:00

I got really behind on keeping up with posts on this blog, and also really behind on my reading. Twenty-eight is a far cry from my annual goal of fifty-two. But I blame all my school work.

The book I read this year that changed my life was Autobiography of Red. Love love love it. A game changer, as I like to call it, and that doesn't happen often. Another amazing revelation for me was Colum McCann and poetry -- Jeff McDaniel!

Below, in reverse chronological order:

All Is Forgotten, Nothing is Lost (great) | Lan Samantha Chang (12.26.10)
Lawrence Booth's Book of Visions (good) | Maurice Manning (12.07.10)
The Balloonists (great) | Eula Bliss (11.29.10)
The Housekeeper and the Professor (very good) | Yoko Ogawa (11.20.10)
Great House (good) | Nicole Krauss (11.14.10)
Letters to Yesenin (very good) | Jim Harrison (11.09.10)
Dancer (great) | Colum McCann (11.06.10)
Meadowlands (good) | Louise Gluck (10.25.10)
Never Let Me Go (reread) | Kazuo Ishiguro (10.22.10)
Native Guard (very good) | Natasha Tretheway (09.16.10)
Let the Great World Spin (great) | Colum McCann (09.12.10)
Mockingjay (very good) | Suzanne Collins (08.24.10)
Cosmicomics (great) | Italo Calvino (08.24.10)
Kafka Was the Rage (good) | Anatole Broyard (08.17.10)
One Day (okay) | David Nicholls (08.06.10)
This is Water (great) | David Foster Wallace (08.02.10)
Invisible Cities (great) | Italo Calvino (07.22.10)
Plainwater (very good) | Anne Carson (07.08.10)
Matrimony (very good) | Josh Henkin (06.14.10)
What is the What (good) | Dave Eggers (06.12.10)
One Hundred Years of Solitude (great) | Gabriel Garcia Marquez (06.09.10)
The People of Paper (good) | Salvador Plascencia (06.02.10)
The Splinter Factory (great) | Jeffrey McDaniel (05.22.10)
Civilwarland in Bad Decline (great) | George Saunders (05.16.10)
Autobiography of Red (amazing) | Anne Carson (05.14.10)
Motorman (okay) | David Ohle (03.31.10)
Catching Fire (really good) | Suzanne Collins (01.06.10)
Those Who Save Us (good) | Jenna Blum (01.04.10)

Math and Poetry.

2010-11-25T01:54:00.000-05:00

I hadn't heard of Yoko Ogawa at all, but when I came across The Housekeeper and the Professor, I knew I had to read it. I'm obsessed with stories about memory, and the idea of short term memory is always interesting to me. This is a fairly short book and I read it in two sittings, but it was really enjoyable.

There's something really beautiful about this story, which is really just a simple one. What I love about the austerity of this book though is that despite it being a simple book told in clean, simple prose, is that it is still very elegant and poignant, complex in its underlying themes. I was so engaged by the story, even the math, and I found myself, magically, looking at numbers in a new way, as if I were the narrator herself, being exposed to how the professor looked at numbers. Ogawa must really love math too, to be able to speak about numbers in such a wonderful poetic way. It crossed my mind that math teachers should give out this book, to be honest, because it makes us less mathematically-inclined people see the sudden music and poetry inherent in numbers, and that is no small feat. I also just love how an entire relationship is painted through these little snippets and through the numbers -- how the professor finds comfort in them and so we soon see how the hard complex things that he has trouble expressing are often expressed through his relationship to numbers.

Honestly, I think the term "jewel" is thrown around sometimes, but this book to me felt just like that. Beautiful and wonderful in a small but substantial way, like a small delectable sweet bean cake held out in the palms of somebody's hand or something. I will definitely be reading more of her books from here on out.

Also, I apologize if these entries are sloppy -- I've become lazy/busy and backlogged, and now my eyes just hurt but I wanted to bang these out. :) Happy Thanksgiving!

The Great House

2010-11-25T01:45:00.000-05:00

Funnily enough, I was listening to Nicole Krauss's interview on Bookworm the other day for History of Love, and she made an analogy of a novel to a house. She said a poem was like a perfect room, while a novel was like an imperfect house that you could inhabit. I wondered if she kept thinking of a novel as a house, and if, in fact, Great House was also referring to that conception of what novels can be, in some sort of meta way.

I have to be honest -- I had high hopes for this novel, because I really love Krauss and her thoughts and her general aura. History of Love meant a lot to me when I read it, so I was excited by Great House. Well, while I enjoyed the book, I wouldn't say I loved it. I think the second half was more engaging than the first, plot and tension wise, and I do think the book has a lot of wonderful ideas and poignant moments, but it definitely didnt move the way History of Love did. There was something genuine about how she inhabited the characters in that book, whereas here, I didn't always feel the characters were as distinct in their voices. This isn't to say I didn't find her language beautiful or their characters interesting, but there was something that was a bit oblique in the telling that made this book beautiful and interesting to read, but on a different level than I expected. By the end I was fully engaged, but the stories didn't culminate in a way I hoped they would. If anything, this novel was more like interconnected stories, but unlike McCann's Let The Great World Spin, it wasn't a circular connection, but a linear one, which ultimately made it a lot less satisfying.

Still though, Krauss is exploring some interesting ideas about loss, and I liked it, but didn't love it.

Dancer.

2010-11-25T01:39:00.000-05:00

After reading Let the Great World Spin, I decided to pick up Dancer. Originally I was going to hold on to it for later since I try not to read the same authors back to back, but, bored one day, I flipped through the beginning pages, and from there I was transfixed.

This is what I want to say about McCann, who has firmly cemented his place for me as a writer I now love: he blows me away. He's a smart writer, who tackles all sorts of different subject matter, gets away with writing from POVs who are completely unlike himself (gay Russian dancer?), breaks the rules (multiple POVs, starting in different places than where you end up, doing all sorts of confusing time jumps) but gets away with it, and creates sentences that are completely dazzling. He amazes me.

What I loved about this book most though, aside from the conceit and the writing, is how closely I could relate it to writing. I mean, okay, I loved this book first just because I love ballet, but also, to read about Nureyev's passion for dance and the way he approaches mastering it was really inspiring for me and also was extremely relateable for me. I love when he quotes Nietzche about days without dance, and the way McCann portrays his process.

I listened recently to McCann's interview on Bookworm, and it opened some doors for me in my reading of this book -- to understand it also as a story about the little people who also got a piece of Nureyev, and also of how he became an exile from the one place he wanted to return to, despite having the keys to the doors of all other kingdoms of the world. I highly suggest listening to this interview after you've read the book.

This entry has come late (I've been so swamped), and so I've forgotten the quotes I wanted to jot down. But needless to say, I loved this.

Oops. My bad.

2010-09-15T01:42:00.000-04:00

Suddenly I realized that I never posted about Mockingjay. Unfortunately, now the momentum and excitement has worn off, so I'll make this brief.

I finished this in one reading (of course), and it didn't disappoint. Yeah, it lacks the same imaginative excitement as the first one, or even the second, but it's still good and tense and has you flipping pages. The thing that struck me most though, was the ending. How somber it was. How there was redemption but it acknowledged that this was a world forever changed and that Katniss and her friends and family were also changed. I won't give away the ending, but suffice to say that the hard-earned happy ending is not completely happy, because some regret remains, as do scars. This is no Harry Potter ending. I really appreciated this though, the realism of it. I liked that it ended the best way it could, but was aware that something this terrible could not simply be wiped away. For that I applaud Collins -- she doesn't talk down to her reader.

Yes. I loved it.

A spinning planet indeed.

2010-09-15T01:33:00.001-04:00

When I first picked up Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin, it was with mild interest. It happened to be in my house (my teenage sister bought it and then realized its content didn't interest her at all), and I saw that it had won the National Book Award. I've always wanted to read some McCann, but hadn't had the opportunity. So, without really knowing much of what this book was about, I started reading.

For the first fifty pages or so, I was very iffy. It opens with a vignette about the tightrope walker, which was prettily written and interesting. Okay. Then we moved into a narrative that starts off in Ireland. I found myself confused, but going along with it, yet as it went on and on, I began to get impatient, because I didn't know what the point was.

I think this here is it though: I had expected a traditional literary novel, one with a clear trajectory or arc or something, and I had no idea what I was in for here. This second section being so unrelated, I got impatient. The writing was wonderful, but it felt like a short story, and one I hadn't signed up to read. So for awhile I would put down the book for days at a time before picking it up again.

Yet the longer I stuck with it, the more intrigued I became. I started to see, by the fourth piece, that these stories were interlocking, and yet each told its own story. I began to feel that there was some core momentous issue or event (and not the tightrope walker as is the obvious device, but another event that would only become clear at the end) that these stories were revolving around, like rings around a planet, slowly being revealed, or an onion being peeled or something.

And knowing that, each successive story became more and more important, so that by the time I reached the last sections, I was being blown away. Each story became more and more resonant, in an urgent, poignant way that I hadn't felt earlier. This is very novel to me, and something I'm trying to deconstruct for myself as a writer: McCann successfully builds momentum and tension but not through a conventional plot, but somehow through the arrangement of his pieces and what they reveal. It's incredible.

My favorite section in this whole book though is "Centavos". Simply beautiful. I also loved "This is the House that Horse Built" even though it's a very different voice. It's so heartbreaking despite its rawness. I think in terms of fitting into the bigger whole, "Tag" and "Etherwest" are weakest, although I enjoyed them immensely.

On a personal note - I have a strange obsession with 9/11. This book is not a 9/11 book, not in the strictest sense, and yet, it sort of is. McCann acknowledges that this book is the result of him trying to deal with 9/11. The final chapter sort of brings that in. He mentions in an essay at the end of the book that originally he wanted it to end tragically, and yet the more he wrote, the more redemptive it became. I think I appreciate the book for this, the opportunity for something wonderful and beautiful to arise despite a tragedy, and the pain of the world. There's something very true and yet hopeful about this. And yet it's lit in the backdrop of a world utterly changed. So there's some very complicated things he's examining here, and yet ultimately it seems to show that McCann, at least, is finding some hope for the future.

Other things:

I'm very impressed with how McCann so effortlessly takes on the voices of all the various characters -- from an Irish man to an African American hooker to a Latino teen to an Upper East Side white woman... it's all very convincing, and each voice is unique. I'm also interested in how he chooses first person for some but third for others. McCann has gotten away with writing as several different races that he is NOT, and that truly impresses me. He has complete authority over all his characters.

I loved the writing in this book so much that it prompted me to find a pencil and go through and underline. This is major for me as normally I refuse to write in my books (unless I don't care for them). I tab the passages I like with post its, and type them up later. I hate writing in my books. But this is the first book in a long time that I've written in, because I could no longer help myself.

I liked so much in this book in terms of the passages, that it'd be impossible to get them all. But a selection:

Even the worst of what men did to one another didn't dampen Corrigan's beliefs. He might have been naive, but he didn't care; he said he'd rather die with his heart on his sleeve than end up another cynic.
--pg. 21

This is not my life. These are not my cobwebs. This is not the darkness I was designed for.
--pg. 121

You clip a van, you watch your life fade away.
--pg. 127

How great are you, God? Save her. Pick her up off the pavement and dust the glass from her hair. Wash the fake blood off the ground. Save her here and now, put her mangled body back together again.
--pg. 131

I had begun to think that perhaps leaving the scene of the crime was manslaughter, or at least some sort of felony, and now there was a second crime, hardly momentous, but it sickened me.
--pg. 136

His hand brushed against mine. That old human flaw of desire.
--pg. 155

He had fallen only once while training - once exactly, so he felt it couldn't happen again, it was beyond possibility. A single flaw was necessary anyway. In any work of beauty ther had to be one small thread left hanging.
--pg. 161

Genius, they called it. But it was only genius if you thought of it first. A teacher told him that. Genius is lonely.
--pg. 170

I'm such a fuck-up. No one's a bigger fuck-up than me. No one's gonna know that, though. That's my secret. I walk through the world like I own it. Watch this spot. Watch it curve.
--pg. 202

And all of a sudden - right there, looking out over Central Park - I got a longing for my daughter like nothing else before. Jazzlyn was eight or nine then. I wanted just to hold her in my arms. It's no less love if you're a hooker, it's no less love at all.
-- pg. 213

He said to me once that most of the time people use the word love as just another way to show off they're hungry. The way he said it went something like: Glorify their appetites.
--pg. 225

I don't know who God is but if I meet Him anytime soon I'm going to get Him in the corner until He tells me the truth.

I'm going to slap Him stupid and push Him around until He can't run away. Until He's looking up at me and then I'll get Him to tell me why He done what He done to me and what He done to Corrie and why do all the good ones die and where is Jazzlyn now and why she ended up there and how He allowed me to do what I done to her.

He's going to come along on His pretty white cloud with all His pretty little angels flapping their pretty white wings and I'm gonna out and say it formal: Why the fuck did you let me do it, God?

And He's gonna drop His eyes and look to the ground and answer me. And if He says Jazz ain't in heaven, if He says she didn't make it through, He's gonna get himself an ass-kicking. That's what He's gonna get.

An ass-kicking like none He ever got before.
--pg. 230

When I was walking back out the courtyard to the pen I felt like someone came and carved my heart out, then put it walking in front of me. That's what I thought - there's my heart going right out in front of me, all on its own, slick with blood.
--pg. 234

I gave Jazzlyn a bath once. She was just a few weeks old. Skin shining. I looked at her and thought she gave birth to the word beautiful. I wrapped her in a towel and promised her she'd never go on the stroll.
--pg. 236

New York kept going forward precisely because it didn't give a good goddamn about what it had left behind.
--pg. 247

The thing about love is that we come alive in bodies not our own.
--pg. 275

I told him that I loved him and that I'd always love him and I felt like a child who throws a centavo into a fountain and then she has to tell someone her most extraordinary wish even though she knows that the wish should be kept secret and that, in telling it, she is quite probably losing it. He replied that I was not to worry, that the penny could come out of the fountain again and again and again.
--pg. 277

I know already that I will return to this day whenever I want to. I can bid it alive. Preserve it. There is a still point where the present, the now, winds around itself, and nothing is tangled. The river is not where it begins or ends, but right in the middle point, anchored by what ha happened and what is to arrive. You can close your eyes and there will be a light snow falling in New York, and seconds later you are sunning upon a rock in Zacapa, and seconds later still you are surfing through the Bronx on the strength of your own desire. There is no way to find a word to fit around this feeling. Words resist it. Words give it a pattern it does not own. Words put it in time. They freeze what cannot be stopped. Try to describe the taste of a peach. Try to describe it. Feel the rush of sweetness: we make love.
--pg. 279

He told me once that there was no better faith than a wounded faith and sometimes I wonder if that is what he was doing all along -- trying to wound his faith in order to test it -- and I was just another stone in the way of his God.
--pg. 284

That was the sort of everyday love I had to learn to contend with: if you grow up with it, it's hard to think you'll ever match it. I used to think it was difficult for children of folks who really loved each other, hard to get out from under that skin because sometimes it's just so comfortable you don't want to have to develop your own.
--pg. 289

I gave them all the truth and none of the honesty.
--pg. 303

Some people think love is the end of the road, and if you're lucky enough to find it, you stay there. Other people say it just becomes a cliff you drive off, but most people who've been around awhile know it's just a thing that changes day by day, and depending on how much you fight for it, you get it, or you hold on to it, or you lose it, but sometimes it's never even there in the first place.
--pg. 304

Every time a branch of mine got to being a decent size, that wind just came along and broke it.
--pg. 313

I guess this is what marriage is, or was, or could be. You drop the mask. You allow the fatigue in. You lean across and kiss the years because they're the things that matter.
--pg. 319

A man high in the air while a plane disappears, it seems, into the edge of the building. One small scrap of history meeting a larger one. As if the walking man were somehow anticipating what would come later. The intrusion of time and history. The collision point of stories. We wait for the explosion but it never occurs. The plane passes, the tightrope walker gets to the end of the wire. Things don't fall apart.
--pg. 325

But she likes the fact that he lights up and lets the smoke blow in her direction, that it will get in her hair, that she will own the scent of it later.
--pg. 332

It used to bother her terribly, as a teenager, that her mother and grandmother had worked the streets. She thought it might rebound on her someday, that she would find herself too much in love with love.
--pg. 333

Listening to these people is like listening to trees - sooner or later the tree is sliced open and the watermarks reveal their age.
--pg. 337

The only thing worth grieving over, she said, was that sometimes there was more beauty in this life than the world could bear.
--pg. 339

(From an author's essay at the end)
A book is completed only when it is finished by the reader. This is the intimate privilege of art. In fact, it's the intimate privilege of being alive.
--pg. 360

Calvino does it again.

2010-08-25T00:10:00.001-04:00

A friend lent me her copy of Cosmicomics in a book swap, which is the only reason I decided to break my rule of trying not to read an author twice in a short time period.

I'm very glad I did.

This books premise is unique: Calvino takes little snippets of science of the creation of the world, and in turn pulls out beautiful stories based upon these scientific ideas. The results are enchanting and often startling. One never knows exactly what Calvino is going to do when one first reads the italicized "science" portion. A snippet about gravity, or the moon, or the dinosaurs tells nothing about how Calvino will interpret this for us in his piece.

All the stories are breathtaking and wonderful. I found myself basking in the inventiveness of them, a little thrill of excitement running through me whenever I hit upon what he was doing. But some of them I liked more than others.

"The Distance to the Moon" is about how people were once able to climb on top of the moon, be sucked in by its gravity and grab cheese from its crevices. What was wonderful about this was the fact that he didn't just stop there, but also made it a strange story about unrequited love, with the narrator in love with a woman who was in love with a man who was in love with the moon. It brought to mind the Chinese folktale of the woman on the moon for me.

"Without Colors" told of a world before the atmosphere filtered colors, and within this world, how one boy could love the change and anticipated colors whereas the girl he loved was frightened of it. Really beautiful, as it made me think about a world washed gray.

"Games Without End" had children playing with atoms like they were marbles. Really quirky and playful.

"The Dinosaurs" is about a last living "dinosaur" who goes unrecognized by new forms of life who take him in, and the questions for him that arise about the myth of his species. Made me actually think a lot about history and legacy and how stories are shaped for the people telling them, and may actually have little reflection of truth.

"The Light-Years" is hard to describe. Basically it's about someone whose actions are seen from light years away, but because of the time it takes for things to be seen, the protagonist is constantly being worried about how he will be perceived millions of years from now. It raised some interesting concepts for me about how we think about how we're perceived by others. What if there were a lag time between when you did something and when you could see what somebody's reaction to that action was?

Overall, this book cements Calvino for me as one of my favorite authors to read. This book is simply wonderful.

This Greenwich memoir I'm reading.

2010-08-17T00:28:00.002-04:00

A friend lent me Kafka Was the Rage, a book I normally probably would never have picked up myself, since I tend to avoid books about the Bohemian life of the artist or like, anything very Beat Generational to it. Don't ask me why -- it's not that I don't appreciate what those artists in those times must have been living through, but I think it's a little too glorified for my taste, or something. Plus, I couldn't get through Tropic of Cancer.

But anyway, my friend really likes this book so I'm giving it a try. I have to say there are parts I like better than others, and it's not really a traditional read for me, although I do find the character of Sherri intriguing. Anyhow, more importantly, some quotes I liked:

When you look back over your life, the thing that amazes you most is your original capacity to believe. To grow older is to lose this capacity, to stop believing, or to become unable to believe.
--[pg.22-23]

I supposed, I said, that love would change me, too, would advance me somehow. Because without that, it's just sex, just mechanics. And while sex is fine - it's wonderful; it can be like flying - it isn't enough. It doesn't explain, doesn't justify the whole business. It can't account for two thousand years of poetry, for all the laughing and crying. There has to be something else, something more. Otherwise, love wouldn't be so famous; we wouldn't be carrying on about it all the time. It wouldn't be worth the trouble.
--[pg. 51]

It might have been the shortest, or the only, way through my defenses, because I had a literature rather than a personality, a set of fictions about myself.
--[pg. 52]

Most people would say that lovemaking is a defense against loneliness, but with Sheri it was an investigation of loneliness, a safari into its furthest reaches.
--[pg.63]

I thought of Sheri and wondered whether, with all the trouble she gave me, she wasn't better than loneliness. Yet I had been lonely with her too - I saw that now. She wasn't company in the ordinary sense. I was lonely between bouts of desire, between distractions. There was no peace with her. She was like a recurrent temptation to commit a crime.
--[pg. 80]

It takes a while for a betrayal to register. At first you deny it. You say, Don't be silly, or It's not possible. Then there's a dead spot, a silence, a regrouping. After that you go slowly, gradually through the character of the other person. You examine all the evidence against the idea of betrayal and you say, No, it can't be.
--[pg.86]

We never believe such things until they're over. You need leisure to think about tragedy. Maybe you can face it only in the absence of the person, after the fact. Or you can do it only when you yourself are in despair.
--[pg. 103]

Another thing I've realized, he said, is that it's harder for a Jew to die. Forgive me for falling back on the chosen, but there's a certain truth in the old boast. It's harder for us because we expect more; we need more. How irresponsible, how careless it is to die so soon. IT's such an unintelligent thing to do. We become doctors to prevent death, lawyers to outlaw it, writers to rage against it. But if you're not Jewish, it's different. It may not be quite so bad, so costly. You can die gracefully, athletically, with a thin-lipped smile and a straight nose. A blond death, a swan dive, a cool immersion. You can die without an accent, without dentalizing.
--[pg.105-106]

==edit==

Okay I just finished the book actually. I found a lot of the thoughts therein very interesting to ponder, and especially the last chapter on sex during those times is really interesting. To view how sex itself was exciting because of how secret it was in a lot of ways.

The book ended up abruptly, so I was glad to read the postscript, which explained that he'd died before he could complete his memoir. Sad. But the postscript was very poignantly written by his wife.

Overall, I liked a lot of the ideas and thoughts being presented here. Anatole Broyard seems to me the kind of character I write about often -- on the outskirts of something, trying to tap in, but never quite succeeding. While I didn't love this book, I felt it was a worthwhile read.

So I guess I'm a craft nazi

2010-08-06T00:24:00.000-04:00

David Nicholls' One Day is marketed towards me. It's plot is the kind of sappy maddening romantic drama that girls like me enjoy - boy meets girl, boy and girl spend one night together, boy and girl have poor timing, boy and girl become good friends, boy and girl love each other through the years but somehow never get it together. The concept is interesting in that it follows these two through the time span of two decades - but with snippets of what their lives are like on the same day each year - July 15.

I really wanted to like this book, if not in some great intellectual high brow literature kind of way, then in the entertaining beach read kind of way. I picked it up on my little sister's suggestion, and having recently finished Calvino, I was looking for a lighter read. I had read Love Rosie awhile back which is sort of a similar concept, and you know, for someone whose favorite movie is When Harry Met Sally, kinda seemed like it would be my sort of thing.

The thing is, I didn't dislike the book. There were parts I liked, very much. But I found myself bristling often with a lot of the craft elements of the book, and so although part of me very much wanted to know what happened to these two in terms of the plot, I found myself really distracted by other things that made it sometimes difficult to push myself through the book.

For instance, he has this thing where he sometimes uses past tense and sometimes uses present tense. Within the same chapter. With only a section break. Despite it being one linear narrative. I hate that, so so so much. And also, while he almost got away with his constant flitting of points of view, the voice never felt completely omniscient for it to not be distracting to me when POVs switched within a sentence or paragraph. Sometimes I felt certain sections to be a bit gimmicky. And, while I know this was intentional, sometimes Dexter was so unlikable that he bordered on being completely unsympathetic, which is really a problem when you're trying to, I don't know, root for the guy to get the girl. The cat and mouse chase of their relationship therefore was maddening, and not in a good way all the time.

Ultimately though, because I'm a sucker, when I got to the end, I was a bit touched, and saddened. It didn't leave me unaffected, so I still thought it was somewhat entertaining, but I did find all of those craft elements so maddening at times that it wasn't always easy to read. The prose itself is solid, and probably better than your average beach read type novel, though not super literary or anything, so in that sense it was fine, but seriously. Those POV and tense things were grating on my nerves.

In fact, I feel the strong need to medicate by reading something uber literary next. My final assessment: overall, not a bad read, good if you're less particular about elements of craft and are looking for something easy.

Living a life of freedom

2010-08-03T00:02:00.000-04:00

A friend of mine lent me David Foster Wallace's This is Water, a commencement speech he gave at Kenyon College in 2005. It's a short little volume, but as with all good commencement speeches, it poses some interesting thoughts, about the nature of how we choose to live. The idea that the way we control the thoughts in our heads to live better lives, more compassionate lives, more important lives. To step out of our own self-absorption or our thirst for things that can take over our lives so that we live a life worth something greater than ourselves. And hopefully in the process save ourselves from being complacent, from madness, and whatever else threatens us in the world.

I don't know, I think I need to read it again to process it, but right now, just want to get these things down:

Look, the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful; it is that they are unconscious.
--[pg. 112]

But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, everyday. That is real freedom.
--[pg. 119-121]

The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the "rat race" -- the constant, gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing.
--[pg. 123]

I probably could wax on this a little more, but I'll leave it here for now. I would recommend everyone to pick it up though. I think I have to read it again.

A little backlogged

2010-08-02T23:34:00.000-04:00

I finished Invisible Cities several weeks ago. It was beautiful and dazzling up until the end. I think this is one of those books that need to be revisited, or perhaps just certain cities revisited. The very concept of some of these cities - the city that you are always leaving for one, or the one where life is not good (even though it is) for another, or the cities built on stilts, or the city mirrored, or the city that has another city for the dead -- these are little vignettes that I think are worthwhile to pick up every once in a blue moon, to ponder over, to savor. Little beauties to sit on your tongue and let soak into your brain. I'm excited to read some of Calvino's other works. This was really a beautiful and very gratifying read.

Some Calvino.

2010-07-13T00:11:00.000-04:00

I'm currently reading Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities. It's really marvelous. It reminds me a bit of Einstein's Dreams, in the way each little section is just an imagined world operating on a dreamlike philosophy. There are so many beautiful parts I want to pull out, but they don't work in isolation.

But some attempts anyway:

Marco enters a city; he sees someone in a square living a life or an instant that could be his; he could now be in that man's place, if he had stopped in time, long ago; or if, long ago, at a crossroads, instead of taking one road he had come to be in the place of that man in that square. By now, from that real or hypothetical past of his, he is excluded; he cannot stop; he must go on to another city, where another of his pasts awaits him, or something perhaps that had been a possible future of his and is now someone else's present. Future not achieved are only branches of the past: dead branches.
--[pg. 29]

That said, it is pointless trying to decide whether Zenobia is to be classified among happy cities or among the unhappy. It makes no sense to divide cities into these two species, but rather into another two: those that through the years and the changes continue to give their form to desires, and those in which desires either erase the city or are erased by it.
--[pg. 35]

And you know that in the long journey ahead of you, when to keep awake against the camel's swaying or the junk's rocking, you start summoning up your memories one by one, your wolf will have become another wolf, your sister a different sister, your battle other battles, on your return from Euphemia, the city where memory is traded at every solstice and at every equinox.
--[pg.36-37]
>
But what enhanced for Kublai every event or piece of news reported by his inarticulate informer was the space that remained around it, a void not filled with words. The descriptions of cities Marco Polo visited had this virtue: you could wander through them in thought, become lost, stop and enjoy the cool air, or run off... But you would have said communication between them was less happy than in the past: to be sure, words were more useful than objects and gestures...
--[pg.38-39]

"...Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else."
--[pg. 44]

There is no language without deceit.
-- [pg.48]

At times the mirror increases a thing's value, at times denies it. Not everything that seems valuable above the mirror maintains its force when mirrored. The twin cities are not equal, because nothing that exists or happens in Valdrada is symmetrical: every face and gesture is answered, from the mirror, by a face and gesture inverted, point by point. The two Valdradas live for each other, their eyes interlocked; but there is no love between them.
-- [pg. 54]

Falsehood is never in words; it is in things.
-- [pg.62]

Anne Carson is still a genius anyway.

2010-07-09T00:10:00.000-04:00

So I finished the last few pages of Plainwater. I was very taken by the essay about her brother, however short it was. It was heartbreaking, really, and made me want to go out and get Nox, which delves into this nebulous relationship more.

Overall, I'd say that while I liked this very much, it didn't have the immediate breathtaking quality that Red did. I think perhaps there were parts that were too abstract for this fiction writer to grasp at. Nonetheless, I still plan on trying to get through her oeuvre. I have Glass, Irony and God lined up somewhere.

To be honest though, Carson's way with words - her faculty with language, her ability to hit on a sentiment just right, her beautiful turns of phrases and imaginative metaphors... I am struck by her genius at times. I don't just love her, I want to be her. I want to swim in her words sometimes. That's all.

From Anthropology of Water

2010-07-07T23:52:00.001-04:00

Almost done with Anne Carson's Plainwater. I don't love it the way I was immediately taken with Autobiography of Red - I find it harder to digest and I've had to read it slowly and reread several times in order for certain things to sink in. However, as always, Carson manages to take my breath away with certain turns of phrases, sentiments, analogies. For the most part, I found that I'm most loving her last essay "Anthropology of Water" and so the quotes I'm about to post are all from there (and mostly from the section titled "Just for the Thrill").

Love is a story that tells itself... I found the kinship between a man and a woman can be a steep, whole, excellent and full of languages. Yet it may have no speech.
- [pg. 190]

The man who named my narrow bed was a quiet person, but he had good questions. "I suppose you do love me, in your way," I said to him one night close to dawn when we lay on the narrow bed. "And how else should I love you -- in your way?" he asked. I am still thinking about that.
- [pg. 191]

Well language lives in alteration, here I am. Take two-measure words and press them together like lips of a wound. Emperor, concubine, fire, paper. Love too much, love at all.
- [pg. 194]

Enlightenment is not a place, no use rushing to get there.
- [pg. 202]

He looked at the tree and the saw and the ax. It was something perfectly quiet. "I didn't think you could do that," he said. Perfectly quiet. His hands hanging down. The tiny ticking kitchen. The snow-dark morning. It was draining from him into me. I had killed him.
- [pgs. 205-206]

The emperor is instructing me in the ten radicals that are the basis of the largest number of words in classical Chinese. These more important radicals, arranged in the order of their use, are. Water. Grass. Wood. Heart. Man. Hand. Silk. Wood. Advance or Go. Mouth. I am wondering why, if he wanted to make love, he paused for tea at all. The ten most prominent radicals appear in 1,090 words. Observe the interests suggested by them. The mere fact that the heart is the basis of one hundred words in a vocabulary of three thousand, he continues, indicates a high degree of moral interest.
- [ pg. 207]

The brush starts out rich and black but gradually dries, until the bristles are moving separately and leaving areas of white exposed to view like sudden bones.
- [pg. 218]

Love comes hungering along the canyon. It will give you pleasure if you believe it.
- [pg. 221]

I lived blank for many years. And I learned two things. Enlightenment is useless and nothing replaces the sting of love, for good or ill.
- [pg. 221]

Well enlightenment is uselss but I find interesting the distinction anthropologists make between an emic and an etic point of view. Emic has to do with the perspective of a member of the society itself and etic is the point of view of an outsider seeing the society in his own terms. Lovers - correct me if I'm wrong - insist on bringing the two perspectives together, a sort of double exposure. To draw into the very inside of my heart the limit that was supposed to mark it on the outside, your strangeness. But keep it strange. Those three things.
- [pg. 223]

Life is points on a journey, it seems generally agreed. Between the apriorities howl strong winds. Yet the traveler, once in a long while, comes to a place he is sure, without a doubt in his mind, never having seen it before, is the one he was seeking. He enters. At first everything inside is so saturated with strangeness it is hard to breathe - but look now: already it is drying from the edges like rainwater in the March wind and he will in fact never after be able to recover that blankness in which he saw it first, the surgery of first look. That moment of pure anthropology.
- [pg. 224]

Statistics show that woman dream of their fathers 40 percent more frequently than men. Why not, yes oh why not. Also that during all sleep states a notably higher degree of hemispheric coherence is demonstrated by female brains than by male. Why not take all of me. Neurologists remain uncertain what to do with this data, obtained by accident during experiments with insomniacs. Take my arms I won't use them, why not oh why not yes why not, take all of me.
- [ pg. 227-228]

Men know almost nothing about desire, they think it has to do with sexual activity or can be discharged that way. But sex is a substitute, like money or language. Sometimes I just want to stop seeing.
- [ pg. 228]

It was order that obsessed him and when he began to lose his mind he suffered from this. He would spend all day making lists, lists dropped form his clothing everywhere he moved. Late one evening I picked up a book he had been reading. On the top of the page in pencil, TURN OUT THE LIGHT. He was always a forceful writer. The letters had embossed themselves through three pages underneath.
- [pg. 230]

Time has a gender; I suppose you know this. For example, the first afternoons of a love affair are some of teh longest time in a woman's life. If there is a telephone in the room, it is better not to look at it. But even so, you will have a growing sense of the hours of his afternoon running parallel to your own like a videotape on another channel, and feel them slowly rising up, building up, piling up, one by one until seems at last they are all balanced there at the top of the light well and ready to drop - straight down wide open to the night.
- [ pgs. 231-232]

Well every person has a wall to go to, every person has heart valves to cure in the cold night air. But you know none of us is pure. You know the anger that language shelters, that love obeys. Those three things. Why obey.
- [pg. 233]

It is easier to tell a story of how people wound one another than of what binds them together. Be careful of this storyteller's tendency to replace precise separate lines with fast daubs of ink. I know hot to fool your mind so that your eye accepts what it did not see. A curtain of wash is not a desert. Where ink bleeds into paper is not an act of love, and yet it is. See.
- [pg. 234]

15 pages left to read. Back when I'm done.

Capturing love.

2010-06-13T22:03:00.000-04:00

I picked up Joshua Henkin's Matrimony yesterday while trying to kill time at Barnes and Noble, and I was immediately sucked in. It's such an ordinary story in the sense that it's just about people and relationships, and yet he managed to pull me in immediately. How do you do that? As a writer, I'm trying to figure out what the secret is. Is it his characterizations of the people? The language? I don't know.

Anyway.

The book starts with the beginnings of a relationship in college. It made me think of my own time in college. I don't think another relationship is as pure of heart yet as intense as the first real relationship you ever have. The first time you fall in love. Reading these scenes make think of my college relationship, and I feel Henkin does such a good job of capturing the complete faith and abandon with which two college kids fall in love.

Also, I really like this, on the words "I love you":

What freighted words those were, reserved for so few people sometimes it seemed they were never to be used at all. She recalled being a child, four, five, six when she said those words to her teachers and classmates, when it seemed there wasn't anybody she didn't love. Then a hardening set in, a calcifying of the heart, and you didn't love anyone any longer, or at least you didn't say you did, so that now she couldn't remember the last time she'd said those words to anyone besides Julian, when there were other people she loved, her family, certainly.
--[pg. 78-79, Matrimony]

Good stuff.

Romantic creatures = leeches

2010-05-23T01:34:00.001-04:00

I've been venturing into poetry more recently, and have been introduced to Jeffrey McDaniel, whose poem "The Quiet World" is one of my favorites. So I've picked up two of his collections. Today I finished The Splinter Factory. I love McDaniel's way with words. His metaphors are surprising but apt, his lines poignant but edgy, and I find myself sighing with affect when I get to the end of many of his poems. I don't know a lot about poetry so I'm finding it hard to describe exactly what it is about his poetry that gets under my skin and burrows into me, but it does. The Splinter Factory is really really good, but I especially like "When a Man Hasn't Been Kissed", "The Benjamin Franklin of Monogamy", "The Mirror in Which I'll Be Judged", "The First Straw", "What Year Was Heaven Desegregated?", "The Foxhole Manifesto" and "The Everlasting Staircase".

The thing I like about his poetry is that for a newbie poetry reader like me, I find his poetry extremely accessible. I highly recommend him. I absolutely loved loved this collection.

Last thoughts on Civilwarland

2010-05-23T01:25:00.000-04:00

I really enjoyed this book, but I have to say I didn't like "Bounty", the novella, as much as I liked the other stories. Like his other stories, it was set in some alternate world, and the protagonist had a quirky unique voice. There were poignant moments for sure, like the memory of the father leaving them, but all in all, I didn't feel the quirkiness of the voice translated as well into a longer form, and I definitely felt the ending of the story was dissatisfying, which is surprising given that I've raved about the endings for most of his other short stories. Which goes to show that perhaps Saunders should best stick to short stories for now -- or perhaps he has yet to learn his stride for a longer form.

Overall though, I really really liked Civilwarland in Bad Decline. It shows me the possibilities of the short form, and was one of those short story collections that I really wanted to get through.

Perfect unexpected endings.

2010-05-16T23:55:00.000-04:00

I'm halfway through Civilwarland in Bad Decline, which I am compeletely loving. I'm so thankful for grad school for introducing him to me, because I'm not sure I otherwise would have picked George Saunders up, but he's simply fantastic. I really like the title piece, as well as a couple of the others, but I just recently finished "Offloading for Mrs. Schwartz" and loved it so much. The thing that Saunders is so good at is taking stories into a place you don't expect at all, but are completely perfect, so that you're like, "Of course this is how it has to end!" "Mrs. Schwartz" was completely heartbreaking in the way it ended, but simply perfect. So good. I'm now halfway through the novella portion, "Bounty"... and will soon be done.

And yes, now that school is over, I'm knee-deep in catch-up.

Outstanding.

2010-05-16T23:51:00.000-04:00

The only real thing I have to say about Autobiography of Red now that I'm done with it is that it's a jewel. Outstanding, completely completely outstanding. I don't even know what to say about it. It's like a little gift, a little treasure, and I don't even have the words to explain how I feel about it. I need to read it again in order to have anything to say about it. Anne Carson blows me away. This book is going on my list of favorites.

Speaking of Anne Carson

2010-05-03T12:36:00.001-04:00

So I went to her amazing fabulous reading at Poet's House last week, where she read from her new not-quite-book, Nox. I didn't buy it before the reading because it was $30 which I felt was hefty, but by the time I got out, I wanted it and it was sold out. The book (object?) is sort of an elegy to her dead brother, and was really moving. Anne Carson's ability to make something simultaneously heartbreaking and beautiful is absolutely breathtaking. I love her so much. It's so important to me that I find authors whose language induces my writing on a mood and emotional level, and she does that for me.

Here's NY Mag's review of Nox. I think I might end up getting this, but I now I have three of her books that I need to get through first.

Excited.

2010-04-30T01:15:00.000-04:00

I just started reading Autobiography of Red on my way to the Anne Carson reading at Poet's House today, and I'm in love. I haven't felt this excited about a book in forever. But I am positively brimming with excitement. I've been told recently that for a fiction writer, I have a poet's aesthetic, by several poets. I'm beginning to believe it's true.

I will be back later when I have more to say about the book.

Explanation for my absence.

2010-04-15T02:52:00.001-04:00

Okay this blog hasn't been updated in forever. But I swear it's not due to neglect. The simple explanation for this is - I've been so busy I haven't finished a single book since January. Not. A. One. I have 100 pages left in What is the What, 100 pages left in One Hundred Years of Solitude, and in between that I've got through half of Jose Donoso's Obscene Bird of Night, Julio Cortazar's Hopscotch and Blowup and Other Stories and 7/8 of the way through Near to the Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector. All of these were for a class that is so kicking my ass that I haven't been able to get all the way through a single book before I've found it necessary to move on to the next. And I've had to put aside all pleasure reading as well because I'm so incredibly busy.

Beyond that, I've started reading George Saunders' Civilwarland in Bad Decline and Aimee Bender's Girl in the Flammable Skirt, and have been loaned Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red. I also recently purchased House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros and Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon at AWP (something else I'd like to blog about at length but can't seem to find the time or stamina to do so). This second semester of school is seriously kicking my ass. But I'm hoping to get some good reading and writing under my belt in the summer... a month away.

Until then, bear with me please.

=edit= Oh wait. I have finished ONE book. Motorman. For one of my other classes. I guess I'll put that on my finished pile...

Books Devoured in 2009

2010-01-01T19:51:00.000-05:00

This was a good year for books, aided by school reading:

Sons and Other Flammable Objects | Porochista Khakpour (good) - 12.29.09
An Invisible Sign of My Own | Aimee Bender (good) - 11.16.09
We Were Here | Matt de la Pena (very good) - 11.02.09
Saint Joan | Bernard Shaw (good) - 10.29.09
The God of Small Things | Arundhati Roy (great) - 10.27.09
The Power and the Glory | Graham Greene (great) - 10.21.09
Remains of the Day | Kazuo Ishiguro (repeat) - 10.14.09
To The Lighthouse | Virginia Woolf (good) - 10.01.09
Olive Kitteridge | Elizabeth Strout (amazing) - 09.25.09
Kushiel's Mercy | Jacqueline Carey (very good) - 09.10.09
The Guersney Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society | Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows (okay) - 08.29.09
Living Dead Girl | Elizabeth Scott (okay) - 08.27.09
The Perks of Being a Wallflower | Stephen Chbosky (good) - 08.25.09
Shadow of the Wind | Carlos Ruiz Zafon (very good) - 08.23.09
Love, Rosie | Cecelia Ahern (good) - 08.22.09
Oryx and Crake | Margaret Atwood (good) - 08.10.09
The Raw Shark Texts | Steven Hall (good) - 08.03.09
Dreams From My Father | Barack Obama (good) - 07.25.09
Audacity of Hope | Barack Obama (good) - 07.19.09
The Border of Truth | Victoria Redel (good) - 06.28.09
Unaccustomed Earth | Jhumpa Lahiri (amazing) - 06.19.09
The Red Tent | Anita Diamant (very good) - 06.10.09
Silver Phoenix | Cindy Pon (good) - 06.05.09
Girls for Breakfast | David Yoo (very good) - 05.08.09
American Eyes | ed. Lori Carlson (okay) - 05.07.09
American Born Chinese | Gene Yang (very good) - 05.06.09
The Shadow Catcher | Marianne Wiggins (good) - 05.01.09
The Hunger Games | Suzanne Collins (very good) - 04.30.09
Nisei Daughter | Monica Sone (good) - 04.22.09
Blood Meridian | Cormac McCarthy (very good) - 04.21.09
The Road | Cormac McCarthy (repeat) - 04.20.09
A Certain Slant of Light | Laura Whitcomb (good) - 04.10.09
Crank | Ellen Hopkins (good) - 04.06.09
Loverboy | Victoria Redel (good) - 04.03.09
The Brief History of the Dead | Kevin Brockmeier (great) - 04.01.09
Sarah's Key | Tatiana de Rosnay (very good) - 03.31.09
You or The Invention of Memory | Jonathan Baumbach (good) - 03.29.09
The Toughest Indian in the World | Sherman Alexie (very good) - 03.25.09
Cut | Patricia McCormick (okay) - 03.20.09
Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood | Benjamin Alire Saenz (good) - 03.18.09
The Reader | Bernhard Schlink (good) - 03.11.09
Catcher in the Rye | J.D. Salinger (very good) - 03.09.09
Housekeeping | Marilynne Robinson (good) - 03.08.09
Outliers | Malcom Gladwell (good) - 03.04.09
Deenie | Judy Blume (okay) - 02.25.09
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas | Hunter S. Thompson (okay) - 02.18.09
The Outsiders | S.E. Hinton (okay) - 02.17.09
The Country Between Us | Carolyn Forche (good) - 02.11.09
The Secret of the Old Clock | Carolyn Keene (fun) - 02.10.09
Edinburgh | Alexander Chee (very good) - 02.07.09
The Maytrees | Annie Dillard (good) - 02.05.09
Play It Like It Lays | Joan Didion (good) - 02.03.09
The Tower Treasure | Franklin W. Dixon (fun) - 02.03.09
Howl | Allen Ginsberg (eh) - 01.27.09
Alice in Wonderland | Lewis Carroll (good) - 01.25.09
Queen of the Darkness | Anne Bishop (good) - 01.11.09
Heir to the Shadows | Anne Bishop (good) - 01.05.09
Daughter of the Blood | Anne Bishop (good) - 01.04.09

Sometimes quirky isn't enough.

2009-11-20T00:58:00.000-05:00

I recently read Aimee Bender's An Invisible Sign of My Own. I'd never read any of her short stories, but since I'm more of a novel person anyway, I decided to pick up her novel when I saw it on sale at The Strand. I've heard her stories are very strange in their content, the things that happen, and so I was interested to see how this voice translates into a novel.

From the very beginning, I could tell that this was going to be a very quirky novel. The character is strange in the way she is, and the rest of the novel is infused with that strangeness. I like it, because it's strange and fresh and interesting, and I found myself curious about the protag and what she was up to, because anything could go. Ultimately, I enjoyed the novel, especially the way it ended. However, after reading a couple of her short stories, I think she was more successful in sustaining the voice in her short stories than in the novel. The primary problem that I see is that the detachment we feel for a character in a short story due to the weirdness is hard to translate over in a novel. You can get away with not caring for a character in a story, but in a novel it's much more difficult. It's not that I disliked Mona, but I found it hard to get into her head and completely empathize with her, which sometimes meant that I wasn't as compelled to keep reading. I also wanted to get to know the science teacher more, and the kids sometimes felt bratty to me, which made me resent Mona for not being more in control (and for doing something crazy like have an ax in her classroom). I think these are all elements I'd have been okay with in a short story, but in a novel, I needed for some internal working order that wasn't completely clear to me. Nonetheless, I enjoyed it, and it was a fast read. It was definitely different, which made it fun to examine and look at, and some of the ideas inside are so off the wall, that I appreciated them. I also love how it comes full circle, with the beginning story being retold at the end in a different fashion. That to me was a bit of brilliance on Bender's part. Her prose is also really fresh and fun, which makes the read a good read. She is supposedly working on a new novel, so it will be interesting to see if some of these issues are resolved a bit.

Yes, you won me back.

2009-11-20T00:50:00.000-05:00

I'm a terrible friend. I read my good friend Matt's book awhile back and have just been so busy that I haven't had time to blog about it. And now we are, a good month or so later, and all my initial thoughts have flown out of my head.

Matt likes to joke that I hated his last book, Mexican WhiteBoy, which isn't true. I didn't hate it. It just felt younger to me and I didn't like it nearly as much as I liked his first book, Ball Don't Lie. And I really really liked BDL because it had so much heart. There were a few technical craft things here and there, but I could overlook all those issues because Sticky was such a wonderful character that lived for me. Anyway, so Matt always joked that he was going to win me back with We Were Here, which is ridiculous since, well, it's not like he ever lost me.

Anyway, I thought We Were Here was awesome. Technically, it was well-crafted, well-plotted out. It had movement and was making some clear choices, and I liked that. I loved Rondell (with two L's) who was hilarious but lovable. I liked the journal format. The fact that we didn't find out what happened to Miguel til the end (although I sorta figured it out). And Mong was SUPER interesting. He was such a creepy sad guy, and I actually really wish we had stayed with him for a little longer. He was so intriguing, I wanted to dig even deeper and follow him a little more. But alas.

As always, Matt has such a great ear for language. It's edgy and urban yet lyrical and poetic at the same time, so that the prose never feels "young" even though the book is a YA book. It's still sophisticated.

One of my favorite parts is right here:

And I just realized something. Mong left some shit out when he said only trivial things don't matter. It's so much more than that, yo. Nothing matters. Not when you break it all down like I been doing in my head all tonight. Trust me. Nothing. Not me. Not you. Not the guy in the liquor store with the bat. Not the Bible. Not the pretty girls. Not being the watcher-over of this park. Not The Catcher in the Rye. Not this damn book I'm writing.

Nothing, man.

It's all meaningless.

Everybody.

Is.

Nobody.
--[pg.284, We Were Here]

Good job, Matt! Yay!

Before the Terror

2009-10-27T03:12:00.001-04:00

Just finished God of Small Things. Wow. How heartbreaking.

The style of Roy's prose took me a little bit to get into. It's lush and lyrical, but the narrator is an interesting choice. It's a 3rd person variable POV, sort of omniscient, but not. In the sense that the narrator is present, like has a voice of his/her own, opinions, asks rhetorical questions, etc. A third person unnamed narrator who somehow knows everything. Reminds me of like, the voiceover people on, say, Desperate Housewives, if you know what I mean. But once I got used to the unconventional prose of the book, I really began to get into it.

Another thing that interested me was how she used flashback. I deal heavily with flashbacks in my own writing, so it was interesting how she wove the past and the present, moving around it with a fluidity but not in a specific pattern. It wasn't sequential, and things openly referred to other events we hadn't yet encountered. So going into it, you get a sense of what has happened, but not completely. It's a bit confusing, but you go along with it, trusting she'll reveal what happened along the way. In fact, it's the knowing that something terrible has happened that propels you forward. And even once you know what's coming, the prose pushes you along. Plus, it's a little like watching a trainwreck. Horrifying, but you can't stop hurtling towards it.

I squirmed as the aunt showed herself to be a bitch and a half. I hated her with a fury. But what surprised me were the sudden tears that sprang to my eyes as I hit the part where we finally see in scene Estha pulling away in the train station. It completely broke me apart. I knew this was coming, so why did it effect me so? I'm not sure. Maybe because I finally had the full picture of what had happened, what childish guilt and misunderstanding had taken place, what kind of grief they were all holding in their hearts as they left each other. Or maybe it was just being in scene.

The last chapter, beautiful. I didn't expect it to end on this note, a flashback of one of the rare moments of happiness and joy and positive beauty in the book. So much of the book is focused on the fallout of terror and unkindness, negative things. But here is love, and it is fleeting and we know it's only a moment - thirteen days to be exact - but it is beautiful and perhaps makes it feel like it's worth it, for a second. It's captured like a rare butterfly. So I like that she chooses to end on it. Unconventional, but ultimately, the perfect place to end. Grief and all those other things are not easily remedied or resolved. They don't go away. But this fleeting moment of joy somehow feels like an adequate ending for a story that has no easy ending.

The idea of the different shaped holes in the Universe - a thought I've thought of people sometimes but never articulated. Wonderful.

And also:

That first night, on the day that Sophie Mol came, Velutha watched his lover dress. When she was ready she squatted facing him. She touched him lightly with her fingers and left a trail of goosebumps on his skin. Like flat chalk on a blackboard. Like breeze in a paddyfield. Like jet-streaks in a blue church sky. He took her face in his hands and drew it towards his. He closed his eyes and smelled her skin. Ammu laughed.

Yes, Margaret, she thought. We do it to each other too.

She kissed his closed eyes and stood up. Velutha with his back against the mangosteen tree watched her walk away.

She had a dry rose in her hair.

She turned to say it once again: "Naaley."

Tomorrow.
--[pg. 321, God of Small Things]

One of the most perfect endings, ever.

Ouch.

2009-10-24T00:42:00.000-04:00

From God of Small Things (which I'm racing to get through in time for my class on Tuesday):

"D'you know what happens when you hurt people?" Ammu said. "When you hurt people, they begin to love you less. That's what careless words do. They make people love you a little less."
--[pg. 107, God of Small Things]

The sad priest

2009-10-22T01:56:00.000-04:00

I finished The Power and the Glory today and loved it. Going into this book, I wasn't sure what to expect. I've never read any Greene before, and from just the back cover, I wasn't entirely sure if this was "my type" of book. But of course, I try to read everything and anything, and so I went into this with an open mind, especially given that I was told to read it for a class, with an eye towards structure and the third person POV.

Well, I loved it.

The priest was such a sad, sympathetic character to me. So flawed in so many ways, but ultimately a redemptive person because he is so flawed. The fact that he is torn up about his sins because he can't be absolved of them -- and the reason that he can't is because he loves the outcome of his mortal sin, his daughter - how can one not sympathize with that? The way he brings down the difference of the love he should feel for all people vs. the real love he feels for his daughter. He is so human, so nuanced, so complex in his guilt, in his pride, in the way he is trying to live with the way he has sinned. There are so many questions that are raised, subtly, thoughout the book, and it's not one that is easily ponderable. I'm amazed by Greene's ability to infuse this book with so much that is religious, existential, etc, without ever truly preaching. His characters are not flat stereotypes, but are real people. And like real people, there is no easy way to determine good or bad; instead there exist so many shades of gray. Everyone does things that are not admirable, and yet at the end, it is hard to condemn anyone for what they have done. Even the lieutenant, you get the feeling he's not a bad man, but is simply a man with a different take on what is good and right.

I had whole pages of this book tabbed for inclusion, but ultimately, I think it's futile to copy them all down. It's hard to encompass the philosophical and moral questions that are raised without reading the whole thing I think. But I'll put down these:

One mustn't have human affections - or rather one must love every soul as if it were one's own child. The passion to protect must extend itself over a world - but he felt it tethered and aching like a hobbled animal to the tree trunk.
--[pg. 82-83, The Power and the Glory]

He wanted to say to this man, "Love is not wrong, but love should be happy and open - it is only wrong when it is secret, unhappy... It can be more unhappy than anything but the loss of God. It is the loss of God. You don't need a penance, my child, you have suffered quite enough," and to the other, "Lust is not the worst thing. It is because any day, any time, lust may turn into love that we have to avoid it. And when we love our sin then we are damned indeed."
-- [pg. 172, The Power and the Glory]

It ought to be possible for a man to be happy here, if he were not so tied to fear and suffering - unhappiness too can become a habit like piety. Perhaps it was his duty to break it, his duty to discover peace. He felt an immense envy of all those people who had confessed to him and had been absolved. In six days, he told himself, in Las Casas, I too... But he couldn't believe that anyone anywhere would rid him of his heavy heart. Even when he drank he felt bound to his sin by love. It was easier to get rid of hate.
-- [pg. 173, The Power and the Glory]

The ending was inevitable, but so heartbreaking.

That's all I want to say. Read it. You will not be disappointed.

A little moment of tragedy

2009-10-18T04:54:00.001-04:00

Reading a bit of The Power and the Glory before I head to sleep (yes, it is 5 am). I'm not very far into it, but I was trying to finish up Chapter 4 before I went to bed. This last scene before the next chapter came out of left field for me, in the sense that I hadn't expected it to affect me, but it completely did. The priest, who is running away from execution/persecution, comes across a very poor village, a community of huts and people who have nothing but the clothes on their backs. The poor priest is incredibly tired, and wants to sleep, but these people haven't seen a priest in 5 years given the outlawing of the Church, and want to say their confessions. The old man who has offered the priest a place to stay keeps talking to the priest about saying Mass and hearing out confessions, despite the fact that the priest is weary and on the run and hungry and exhausted. Finally, the priest sits up, and angrily agrees to hear out confession. When the old man is done, he asks if he can get the women too:

"Oh, let them come. Let them all come," the priest cried angrily. "I am your servant." He put his hand over his eyes and began to weep. The old man opened the door: it was not completely dark under the enormous arc of starry ill-lit sky. He went across to the women's huts and knocked. "Come," he said. "You must say your confessions. It is only polite to the father." They wailed at him that they were tired... the morning would do. "Would you insult him?" he said. "What do you think he has come here for? He is a very holy father. There he is in my hut now weeping for our sins." He hustled them out; one by one they picked their way across the clearing towards the hut, and the old man set off down the path towards the river to take the place of the boy who watched the ford for soldiers.
--[pg. 45, The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene]

I completely did not see this quiet moment of tragedy coming. It is so sad, this poor priest who is bone-tired, bitter at his lot, and yet still rises to do his duties; this community of people so desperate to see a priest. All these tired tired people, crashing into each other, despairing, and trying to hold on to something... The moment is so nuanced yet complex, and it leaves me wondering how I can ever create something like that in my own writing.

Reread: Remains of the Day is even more awesome than I remember it being

2009-10-14T23:46:00.000-04:00

Quick thoughts:

I re-read Remains of the Day for class this week. Long time followers will remember I read this book about two years ago, shortly after I started this blog. At the time I really enjoyed it, but I don't think my taste was nearly as "sophisticated" as it is now, which is weird, because it was only a few years ago. But in the sense that I remember thinking back then that I was bored at parts, and I didn't really care about politics or butlering or any of that other stuff. I think I was reading it for plot at the time, and therefore felt it moved slow sometimes. And as much as I did appreciate that it had literary value, I don't think I got it as fully as I do now. Strangely enough, this time I read through it, it was such a fast read and completely compelling from beginning to end. I couldn't put it down, even though I'd read it before. It was like I was reading it for the first time! I read it really carefully this time, but it didn't even feel like it was at all slow. Everything was so interesting to me, from the way it was crafted, to his unreliable narrator (and maybe it made a difference that I knew this time that he was unreliable?), to the way he shifted in memory, and just seeing the little hints Ishiguro placed about his unreliability.

I find it really strange, but I guess I've actually become a BETTER READER in two years' time? But I loved the book more than I did the first time around. Maybe because I can appreciate it from a writers' perspective, but maybe also because I've matured as a reader. In any case, I just thought it was worth noting that I have new found appreciation, and in fact, was fairly blown away by this second read.

Author Stalking: Nicole Krauss and Michael Chabon

2009-10-14T22:45:00.000-04:00

Last week, I happened to be able to catch two authors I admire very much give craft talks: Nicole Krauss and Michael Chabon.

Nicole Krauss
I went to hear Nicole Krauss first, at the New School. She read a bit from both History of Love and her current work in progress. Anyone who has been following this blog long enough (or knows me personally) knows that I've had this fascination with Nicole (and secretly want the authorial power marriage she and JSF share). The first and only other time I've heard her read, I was so nervous, she had to hold out her hand and touch my arm, telling me it was okay. It has something to do with the fact that when I read History of Love, I felt like it was the book I wanted to write. It had the essence of something that felt very... me, for lack of a better word. In any case, when I heard her at New School, this feeling was only further reaffirmed.

Nicole has this aura about her, that I can't adequately explain. She's obviously a very internal person. She speaks in such a soothing tone, I can't imagine she has trouble getting her kids into bed at night. She uses the word "perhaps" instead of "maybe" and she's very thoughtful and measured when she speaks. There's something incredibly calm and affirmed about her, and she's clearly a very intelligent person. She talks neither too slowly or too fast. I don't know. Maybe it's also a measure of grace.

But what really struck me were the things she was saying when she was speaking about the craft. She said that she never really came up with a plan, that what she was going for, more than anything, was a mood. I think this really resonated with me, because that's generally how I like to write too. I like to capture a mood, and that's probably why I do my best writing at night, or when I'm feeling something in particular. She said she'd rifle through books, looking for things that could help her attain or keep the mood she was looking for, and I completely understood that as well. I've read certain short stories or passages of books (including hers) to put me in the right mindset before I write. I also liked how she talked about the fact that sometimes, she would just put things in and write about it, without really know why or what it meant, and then later it would work, in fact it would mean everything. Some writers are measured and planned, but she completely opens herself to surprises. I love that about her, because I feel like that's why her book felt so authentic to me.

It was a short hour, but it left me really trusting in her, because from everything she was saying, her process is very similar to mine, or at least the way we are as writers. I've tried to become more structured over time, because I think it might help, but her instinct, and the things she says she does, it totally resonated with me. And left me wanting to be her best friend, because I feel like somehow, she might really understand me. Maybe that's weird, and presumptuous, but I really really appreciated everything she said, not just as a different point of view, but because I felt she was speaking to and about me. Weird.

Michael Chabon
I had never heard Michael Chabon prior to this, though because Moonrat is a fangirl, I knew I was in for something fantastic. I've enjoyed the two books of his that I've read, and I know he is a masterful wordsmith.
In any case, I went up to Columbia University to hear him speak. He read an essay about Edgar Allen Poe, a long piece that came in 5 parts and took him about 80 minutes to read. But to his credit, despite the fact that it was long, I was never bored. And that's a hard feat, especially when it's non-fic. He was so interesting, so funny, so witty, and his words, as always, left me in awe. In fact, I just sat there, wondering to myself how one person could come up with such interesting, fresh phrases, how he could use these words to so much advantage. It was seriously breathtaking. The essay was about Poe, and so he read some of Poe's poetry, and it was actually interesting, because you could see that he was influenced by Poe too.

To be honest, Michael Chabon was so impressive in person (helped greatly along by his scruffy good looks, gravelly voice, and entertaining reading skills), that I fell in love a little bit. Ha! But really, I thought to myself how much more I appreciated his writing, having heard him in person. He is so incredibly thoughtful, intelligent and witty, and I still can't get over his amazing ability with words. That was obvious in reading his writing, but I think it struck me even more when he was reading them outloud to us.

In the Q&A that followed, I think he had some interesting things to say about researching books and how it excites him, as well as how one knows when to abandon a book. Strange to be able to see a man like that talk about the fact that he had one failed book. You think of your heroes as invincible, I guess, and someone like him as being able to churn out gold every single time, not as someone who struggles hard the way we do too.

Afterwards, I was sorry I hadn't brought my book to be signed. I would have liked to have shaken hands with him and told him in person how incredibly in awe of him I am. I'm sure he hears it all the time, but one can never be praised too much, right? Not in this thankless job, anyway...

Two great author events that make me SO GLAD to be back in the city... :)

Book launch!

2009-10-13T13:31:00.000-04:00

I have some posts forthcoming about my recent stalking of Nicole Krauss and Michael Chabon. But in the meanwhile, I wanted to just take a moment to announce that my good friend and YA author Matt de la Pena's third book We Were Here has hit bookstores today. I haven't read it yet, but it's his pride and joy, and has gotten some awesome reviews. It's about a boy who breaks out of a home with several friends, in a journey of self-discovery. Matt's writing tends to be urban and edgy, while still lyrical and poetic, and is a great option for boys in a YA category littered with "girl" books about vampire romances and high school drama. Matt keeps it real, and I'm sure this book does too. Buy it!!!!!!

Geniusness.

2009-09-29T03:54:00.002-04:00

Long-time followers of my blog should know by now that I love Edwidge Danticat. Her work is lyrical, powerful, original and it says something. Well. Now she's also apparently a genius. She's won a MacArthur grant genius award. Good for her!

Quiet beauty

2009-09-25T20:09:00.005-04:00

Wow, I couldn't put it down once I got past that middle section. I flew through the rest of the stories, and while none of them alone hit me the way that "Winter Concert" one did, the book as a whole was heartbreaking and beautiful, an amazing meditation on love and aging and forgiveness and life. I think as a young person reading this, I was taken to a place of understanding, of compassion, like a world that I have yet to encounter, a life I have yet to live, was revealed to me -- I can't imagine what it might be like to be an older person reading this. Strout has done an outstanding job of painting a complete picture of a town and a family in episodic form. My heart breaks for Henry, and even for Olive, who is fatally flawed in so many ways, but trying the best she can to do what she thinks is right.

The book explores so many themes, but ultimately, I think the lesson can be summed up by this section which comes on the last page of the book:

What young people didn't know, she thought, lying down beside this man, his hand on her shoulder, her arm; oh, what young people did not know. They did not know that lumpy, aged, and wrinkled bodies were as needy as their own young, firm ones, that love was not to be tossed away carelessly, as if it were a tart on a platter with others that got passed around again. No, if love was available, one chose it, or didn't choose it. And if her platter had been full with the goodness of Henry and she had found it burdensome, had flicked it off crumbs at a time, it was because she had not known what one should know: that day after day was unconsciously squandered.
--[Olive Kitteridge, pg. 270]

It's hard for me to put into words the way this book moved me, but it did. I guess that's the only thing I can really say about it. It moved me.

Well-deserving of the Pulitzer Prize, and the best book I've read all year.

A history revealed

2009-09-25T15:42:00.004-04:00

I'm about halfway through Olive Kitteridge and I love it. The stories are all so quietly moving, illustrating these relationships and small currents of change that run through them. I wanted to write here though, because I just finished "Winter Concert", which is by far my favorite so far.

The picture of an elderly couple is painted with such care and tenderness. A lifetime together has made the two of them comfortable in their place with each other, augmented by the awareness of their mortality. It's a sweet picture, but what makes the story so remarkable is how a blip can come at them in the midst of all this, tilting this world that they've fought to have a little bit on its axis, reminding us that this kind of place doesn't exist without hardwork and years of trials. It's a won effort. And even though it isn't easily dismantled, nonetheless, it doesn't make them immune to hurt. An entire history of a time when their relationship wasn't so easy and wasn't so perfect and beautiful is encapsulated in this moment, this revealed past. Names aren't named, but we get a sense of what must have been a rough period in their lives together, something they've had to get through to be where they are now. The anguish it must have caused them at the time. There is nothing as poignant as the moment where he says, "Oh, Janie... I've made you so sad." (pg. 138). It is a line that is so full of sorrow in a world that has been so beautiful and perfect up until now, and you get the sense that he has tried so hard to make her happy to atone for past mistakes, to love her, and that this moment where he has disappointed her is a regret he can't abide by.

I loved this story. Truly, truly loved it. It made my heart ache from it's beauty. Loving the rest of the book too, but this was my favorite thus far.

Busyness makes one want brain candy

2009-09-23T01:20:00.002-04:00

I've been busy for the past few weeks with settling into school. I'm at a new program that fulfills everything I've wanted in an MFA - intellectually, creatively, socially, supportively. However, with that has come a lot of work and a lot of stuff to think about in terms of my writing. Because of this, since I last devoured Jacqueline Carey's silly fantasy novel, I haven't bothered to pick up something new. Mostly because I'm slammed with work and don't want to start something that will suck me in when I should be doing homework (although in its place, I spend amazing amounts of time on facebook, hulu, useless blogs and managing my fantasy team), and also because I can't decide if I want something that will be brainless and fun to counter the literature I'm going to have to read, or if I want to read something that might help my writing, which sorta makes me feel like I'm always doing homework in a weird way. I came to this program to be immersed in the art of writing 90% of the time -- so is it ironic that part of me wants my pleasure reading to simply be pleasure? And by that, I mean, reading stuff that won't have me constantly be thinking about how I can integrate this into my own writing. But then again, I'm guessing there's nothing I'd read where I could turn that part of my brain off. Even if I decided to pick up The Lost Symbol, I'd be looking at how Dan Brown is so effective at creating cliffhangers (and thus an entire civilization willing to turn the page to his next two paragraph chapter).

I digress. Ultimately, thanks to a suggestion by Moonie, I've picked up Olive Kitteridge. I'm not sure if this is supposed to fall under linked stories, short stories or a novel, but I have high hopes for the Pulitzer winner.

So off I go to read one story before I sleep for tonight.

More from the author of Time Traveler's Wife

2009-09-17T18:57:00.004-04:00

Audrey Niffenegger's new book, Her Fearful Symmetry, is coming out at the end of this month. Apparently it's about twins (which is what my novel is about! haha). Here's a video interview:

I'm looking forward to reading it! I so loved her first book...

Movie: Time Traveler's Wife

2009-09-14T00:51:00.004-04:00

Oh, I totally forgot --

With great anticipation, I saw Time Traveler's Wife at the theater. I know I was going to be let down, but I couldn't help but be excited. In fact, I reread the book before seeing it (actually only got through half of the book before seeing it, finished the other half later). I hadn't read the book in about six years or something, so it was exciting.

They changed some of it (obviously) and couldn't spend as much time developing their relationship in the past, which was a shame. My friend who hadn't read the book said the development was poor, and so it was hard to tell what they saw in each other. I thought the first half was kinda weird just because it was impossible for him to say, "I'm from the future" without it sounding ridiculous. But once we got over the establishment hump, it was much better. I love Rachel McAdams anyway. And although the changed the ending (and I loved the original ending), I thought their take was also effective and still made me cry.

Of course, they left out so many elements that made the book fuller, but the core elements of the relationship over time and being affected by his travel was still there. I think maybe as a lover of the book, it fulfilled my dreams of seeing it on screen, but it's hard for me to see what people who hadn't read the book thought.

That's all folks!

Another slew of recaps

2009-09-14T00:03:00.004-04:00

I've been off internet for all of the month of August, which is when I did a sh!tload of reading. Now I've started up school again, which leaves me little room for pleasure reading (already I'm swamped with work). But I figured that since I'm handicapped in my ability to catch up to food posts, I should at least catch up with my book posts. So here we go:

1. Oryx and Crake. Moonrat had mentioned to me that she had hated this book, so I wasn't sure what to think going in. Then again, she hates dystopic fiction whereas I love it. In any case, I enjoyed this book. Didn't completely love it the way I did Blind Assassin, but I found myself intrigued by the predicament and trying to figure out what had happened that led up to the present situation. As with any dystopic fiction, and especially Atwood's, there's a lot to ponder in terms of the direction of our modern society, and what we're heading towards. The need for things to be more and more artificial because we want to live longer, stay more beautiful, have more things that are modified genetically to meet our desires. It's a scary place she paints, but even scarier is the idea that somebody might someday believe that we as a race are too flawed that we deserve to be completely wiped out of existence. The ending leaves you hanging, similar to the ending to Handmaid's Tale, where you hope that the better possibility occurred but you can never be sure. I enjoyed the book, though I suppose there's little room for an emotional investment into the characters.

2. Love, Rosie. A Cecelia Ahern book. Okay, yes, I know this is total fluff reading, and that she's a poor writer, and that in a way I've in some ways pretty much just picked up a chicklit novel by reading this on my sister's recommendation. But I won't apologize for liking it! The whole thing is done in notes and emails and im convos and letters. And it's a bit silly and kind of cute, and it's totally My Best Friend's Wedding meets You've Got Mail with some Serendipity thrown in. But I enjoyed it. And I thought the use of no traditional narrative (until the end, which I'll get to) worked well enough for what it was. Did it more believably than other books I've read that have tried to employ a similar device. I flew through it, felt thoroughly frustrated where I was meant to, and got happy at the end when I was meant to. It's predictable, but felt like reading a romantic comedy, and therefore I liked it. My only bone to pick was the epilogue,which suddenly got a little overly wrought in its cheese, and besides, it broke out of its device and started using regular narrative which I felt was a copout and in poor choice. There could have been a better way to show they got together without doing that. But oh well. I liked it.

3. Shadow of the Wind. Zafon's first book. He paints a great little gothic Spain in this book, setting a perfect tone and mood. What I love about the book is that it's clearly a book for book lovers. The whole thing centers around a mystery started by a single book. But the world he paints is dark and slightly sinister, with some mystical magic properties that work around the edges. I enjoy his prose, or at least as well as I can in translation. The plot is intriguing and unique, in a way where it's hard to even tell where anything is going, or what the key to unraveling the mystery is. Some reveals at the end threw me for a loop, in fact. But really, the book is less about the plot or mystery itself, but rather immersing yourself in the world he's built. My only thing that I'll note is that he does this thing where the narrative changes to tell backstory, telling in such a way that the first person narrator couldn't have known those things. Or it'll do this thing where something goes off into italics and becomes a completely different narrative backstory. As a person focused heavily on craft, it amazes me he can get away with this. But other than that, I really liked his book. Can't wait to read the next one!

4. The Perks of Being a Wallflower. My sister loves this book, and it was a short read, so what the heck. I enjoyed it well enough, though I don't get why she raves about it. It had a bit of a Catcher in the Rye feel -- awkward kid with intense emotions, trying to relate to a world around him in a coming of age. It was reasonably well done, though I didn't personally become heavily invested in the character. Also, the ending reveal seemed surprising to me and I'm not entirely sure I bought it...

5. Living Dead Girl. My sister (again) gave me this book to read as one of her favorites. I read it and thought it was reasonably well-done, at least prose-wise, but found it intensely disturbing. The book, about a girl who is abducted at 10 and forced to be pretty much a sex slave to a disturbed pedophile, offers little hope, little redemption opportunity, and is just a story of horror after horror. My sister is apparently morbid and finds the book fascinating the way only a teenager with angst can. I, on the other hand, find it disturbing that such a book is on the market and is so popular. Not because I'm offended by the premise, but because the book seemed to be bent on simply telling a sobering tale, and there is little complexity or hope in the end. And forgive me if I believe that fiction should serve a higher purpose than simply telling horrors. I mean, I think the content is a story that is an intriguing premise for a story, but beyond her day-to-day attempt to escape before time runs out, there's a very insular paranoia, where the girl has become a creature we can only pity, and not one we can relate to. And I don't think a writer wants her characters pitied. It's only at the very very end when we get a moment, a glimpse of something redeeming, but then it all comes crashing down before we can even explore it. There's no uplifting moment, no moral to be told, no lesson learned, no message about humanity. I got nothing from it except a feeling of bleakness about the fact that this may happen to certain girls every day of their lives and we're helpless to do anything about it. If I want depressing stories that have no rhyme or reason, I'll turn on the news, thank you very much. I don't need fiction to do it for me. Fiction, I think, exists to make meaning out of chaos. So in that vein, while I think the writing in here is good, vivid, visceral, I'm upset by the way the content was plotted out and ultimately put together.

6. The Guersney Literary and Potato Peel Society. This book has gotten a lot of hype recently, so I started reading it with high expectations. Since it took place during the war, I thought I'd get another tearjerker, something that hits at that place in me where I like to cry. To be honest, while I was reasonably entertained by the book for the most part, I never felt like the book held any momentum. A lot of letters back and forth (and actually, I think Cecilia Ahern did a better job building her plot using this device), a couple of intriguing threads here and there. But it never mattered that much to me. I felt like I really was reading somebody's letters, and the thing is, in real life, most people's lives and letters are boring. Put in a compilation, they don't make an interesting story. And that's how I felt about the book. It was anecdotal, a few minor dramas here and there, but nothing that pulled at me or made me feel attached to the characters emotionally. It was a fine read for the airplane, but it lacked a plot that seized me. So while I enjoyed it well enough (no big complaints), I don't have anything overwhelmingly positive to say about it either.

7. Kushiel's Mercy. Yes, because I do read fantasy -- this is the last book in the series, and was my favorite one. Everything gets tied together at the end, which is satisfying. And what I liked about this book is that I felt Carey was tighter here. In the past, there would be these long descriptions about journeys, and talking to useless people, and exploring here and there, and whatnot, which I cared less about. But here, it was action packed, and I was constantly on-edge, wanting to know what happened at the next step and where it was going. I was rarely bored, and mostly just excited to see how things panned out. Her action scenes are still really awesome, and the way things fit together in the end (and the political stuff), works out so well, I'm impressed. I'm sad to see the series go (although she's doing a spinoff for a few generations later in the same world, though I don't know how that will work out). Laugh at me all you want for reading obscure genre fiction (well not that obscure bc it sells pretty well), but I liked it!

Wooo. Okay done for now!

Super behind

2009-08-08T07:40:00.004-04:00

Wow I'm about four books behind posts huh? Guess I'll have to do quick recaps then to catch up. Let's see:

Victoria Redel's Border of Truth:
Good, but not great. Now having read both her books, I'll say that her female protags have a way of grating upon me a little. I think I find them a little pretentious or self-important or something. Maybe that's how they're meant to be, but it makes it hard to sympathize. That being said, I liked the story of the father, his letters and his anguish much more. He was funny and interesting. Unfortunately, I don't think the book came together and touched me as much as I would have liked. It was meant to, I'm sure, but it fell short a bit. Maybe part of it has to do with too much saturation of the Holocaust market, that you expect something gut-wrenching. This read was good enough, but it wasn't groundbreaking.

Barack Obama's Audacity of Hope and Dreams From My Father:
I lumped them together since I listened to them on audio back to back while doing a cross-country drive. The first was much more a meditation on his ideals of government and values, etc, which I found really fascinating. His ideas made me respect him as a person, as well as a father, and reaffirmed my belief in him as a truly good person striving to leave a positive mark in the world. I found that I agreed with him in many respects (if not all). While it still remains to be seen how he can take these ideals and apply them practically as our president, and what the ultimate outcome of his presidency is, listening to Audacity makes me at least feel secure in the knowledge that our country is being led by someone with some really solid values and common sense, as well as compassion and empathy.

Dreams was much more a memoir, which I found really interesting, just to hear about the different experiences that he went through. What I find interesting especially, is that despite being raised by the "white" side of his family, his struggles through adolescence were so integrated with the African part of his heritage. I suppose that's inevitable, but I also though it was interesting how in his preface, when he talked about his mother passing away, he said that if he could do it again, he might write more a meditation on her, rather than on the absent parent, because she'd been such a driving force in his life. That was the one part (early on too) of the book that moved me to tears. So I wonder if, now that time has passed some, and with maturity and age and experience, if he's been able to reconcile the two parts of himself a bit more. In any case, I think it's really interesting to note where our current president has come from, what unique experiences he really has had from those that came before him. I also really like the fact that he is such an introspective person.

Steven Hall, The Raw Shark Texts:
Really intriguing concept, one that totally absorbed me from the outset. It's so creative and unique, being both a thriller but also a conceptual literary idea. However, the ending left me a bit unsatisfied, as I felt that there was a lot going on but didn't completely get explained as neatly as I'd have liked. I wanted to understand the rules of the game a bit better, as well as get the thing between Scout and Clio more. Maybe it's silly for me to want it spelled out, but I suppose I wanted the big a-ha reveal, ala Harry Potter, in which all the elements, however strange and fantastical, are pieced together in a coherent world.

I really need to do better maintenance on my blogs, but it's been a whirlwind the past few months, and probably won't settle down until September! [I'm tens of meals behind on my food blog for instance!]

BBS

2009-07-25T23:54:00.001-04:00

It's been all sorts of crazy, what with roadtripping it down the California coast and then across America. I haven't been reading, though I have listened to Obama's two books on audiobook, which I'll blog about shortly. Be back soon...

Wax in my ears

2009-06-24T03:43:00.002-04:00

I know that most people think it's beneficial for writers to have some sort of set schedule to stick to - an hour a day, even if it's poop, that kind of thing. For the most part I kinda agree. Except I also really believe in the muse that grabs and holds.

I think the "poop" writing thing is totally fine for a first run-through. Getting that first draft out is pulling teeth no matter what, and will probably be shitty no matter what, so one should keep writing through it, with the knowledge that it can be fixed later.

But now I'm on the revision part. And I don't want poop. I want quality. And I don't think quality in the second draft is something that can be forced. It's an instinct that seems to require the perfect mindset to be able to see that invisible perfection in the air and grab at it. I need to be in that "zone", that place where I know exactly what feels right, how words should be arranged, how a story should be told. This is where precision and delicateness comes in. This is where poop isn't allowed, because this is where you take something that's just a bunch of shit and try to make it into art. And art can't be forced through will alone, art is vision, and vision only hits you sometimes.

So it's frustrating to me when I hit a roadblock where I'm trying to piece things together and I know it feels wrong, but I know it's wrong because I'm not in the right mindset.

I'm working on Chapter 9 now. I am trying to use a block of text that originally appeared in Chapter 7 in my first draft, and integrate it. This requires some new preamble that must be freshly written, but has to sound just right in tone. Right now, I'm hitting a fog that is making it impossible for me to hear it. It's like I have wax in my ears or something, or am getting hit with a signal block. I can't get an accurate read on if this is sounding right, but I'm pretty sure it's total shit.

So I'm going to go eat a bowl of Ranier cherries, read a little, and then maybe take a second stab. If not, I guess there's always tomorrow night.

Draft 2

2009-06-23T07:05:00.002-04:00

... is so much easier than draft 1.

I edited two chapters tonight. Bringing my current WiP draft 2 to 20,950 words, 64 pages and 8 chapters.

It's so much easier to write a second draft because the story's out, and the scenes are mostly all written. It's just a matter now of looking at it from a macro perspective to try to address pacing and scene placement, and then filling in the gaps that exist. I don't really do outlines, so now that I have all my scenes down, it's like fake outlining. Ie: cut and paste.

But seriously, this process is a billion times easier than draft 1, where you have to create 100% of everything. Here, I find myself writing new scenes almost every chapter, but it becomes much clearer what scenes I need and are missing, whereas before it was all such a crapshoot.

This is so much more fun than draft 1, seriously. It actually makes me kinda excited, to see my random scenes and stuff finally starting to come together and actually beginning to make a coherent whole. I just hope it's halfway decent!

New template

2009-06-20T02:27:00.000-04:00

Because the 2-column template was getting too crowded!

Heartbreakingly perfect ending.

2009-06-19T22:15:00.003-04:00

Okay. I just finished the Lahiri collection, Unaccustomed Earth, and I am so heartbroken!

SPOILERS!

As soon as I put together day after Christmas, Thailand and earthquake in the morning, I KNEW IT. I KNEW WHERE WE WERE HEADED and I only hoped that Lahiri would navigate away from the heartbreaking ending so that they could be together.

But no. NO SHE DIDN'T and I AM SAD.

See this is how I know that Lahiri is awesome. These are only three short stories linked together loosely, and I am so bound to these characters in just a few pages that she's broken my heart. IN THREE SHORT STORIES! In 100 pages! How does she do it? Why am I upset? It's simply unfair. Unfair I tell you! How did they not end up together!!!

The ending. It was perfect and beautiful and heartbreaking:

It might have been your child but this was not the case. We had been careful, and you had left nothing behind.
--[pg. 333, "Going Ashore", Unaccustomed Earth]

I couldn't have beared (bore?) to do this to my characters if I were Lahiri, so kudos to her. Even though I sorta HATE HER FOR IT!

Seriously, amazing short story collection. I rarely am captivated by an entire collection, enough to want to read the whole thing through cover to cover, but this was simply perfection.

When short stories are successful.

2009-06-19T02:34:00.003-04:00

So I'm not a big short story reader. I like my novels. I like being able to immerse myself in a character and go on a long-haul journey, not a little snapshot. I've rarely finished an entire short story collection, mostly because there's no incentive to. You finish one and it feels good enough and then you lose momentum because you had to do stuff, and there's no drive to pick it up again and finish where you left off. Even as a writer, the drive of a novel is so much more intense than to write a short story. I always want to stay with characters and their worlds longer.

Nonetheless, I have my own short story favorites. Most notably, Edwidge Danticat's Krik? Krak! collection is beautiful to me, the opening story "Children of the Sea" my favorite of all time.

I picked up Unaccustomed Earth because it's Jhumpa Lahiri. She went to my alma mater (as did Danticat) and I just kept hearing about how amazing this collection was. This I didn't doubt, but I did doubt my ability to sustain interest to finish the whole thing. I have Interpreter of Maladies floating around somewhere - I've only gotten through the first few stories.

Nonetheless, when I couldn't decide what book to read next, I picked this up. I'm about halfway through right now, but I have to say, I am really really impressed. Her short stories don't feel like short stories. They feel like little snapshots of something fully formed. I really feel like I get to know her characters and become personally invested in them as people, and they don't feel temporary to me. I care about them, and am really sorry when the short story is over. In fact, every story feels like a mini-novella, and it just makes me sad that I don't get to continue the journey with them.

I'm one story away from being done with the first section of the book, and it seems like the next section are a collection of linked stories, which excites me.

Lahiri really impresses me with her prose and her storytelling abilities. I've been sitting here trying to dissect what makes her stories so successful because I am so impressed. :)

Holy sh*t.

2009-06-13T07:18:00.003-04:00

I just wrote the last 15 pages (I think) of my novel. That means. I am actually at the end. As in, I wrote to the end of my novel!

I have a ton of scenes from the first half still to write (that I lazily skipped over in my first run-through), but once I get those under my belt, I can start writing the fun second draft where I can piece everything together since now I know what happens!

I am SO EXCITED. This novel has been so daunting to me, and while I know I still have a long long long way to go before it's even fit for a beta reader's eyes, I feel I've climbed my own little molehill here in actually getting to the end!

I wasn't sure I was going to make it!

[For all you writers who already have 1+ completed novels under the belt, I guess this pittance of a milestone is nothing... but I am REALLY REALLY excited!]

Okay. Bye!

Strong female voices

2009-06-11T02:49:00.003-04:00

I just finished The Red Tent, and really enjoyed it.

I'm horrifically ignorant of the Bible (Old or New Testament), and I pretty much assumed Genesis was like... Adam and Eve and the creation of the world. In any case, I never knew much about the story of Jacob or his sons, and certainly not Dinah, so I came into this story with no knowledge. I found the writing and language really easy but rich in tone, and I loved the story of the mothers. This is truly a female book. Afterwards, I did my googling to figure out what the passage in the Bible actually said. I think it's extremely imaginative of Diamant to come up with her own interpretation of this small section in the Bible, and an imagining that is so feminist in its way (not rah-rah feminist, but of strong bold women). I seriously just enjoyed being immersed in the world she was painting for us.

The only moments where I had problems was towards the end, as we started getting a listing of all the spawn of the Jacobites. I realize that this probably has to do with connecting it back to the Old Testament, but it just sort of seemed listy to me. The ending with her being this spirit, and telling of her death was also kinda gimicky to me. I would have preferred an earlier ending just by a few pages. But beyond that, thought this book was fantastic.

Dragons and phoenixes and beasts, oh my!

2009-06-06T02:17:00.004-04:00

I finally had the chance to finish up my friend Cindy's debut novel Silver Phoenix (sorry Cindy!). It was so good! It's really quite something to be able to read a book that somebody you know wrote!

My favorite thing about the book, hands down, is how DETAILED she gets in describing the food. I was constantly hungry while reading the book... hee hee! It made me laugh because it was so obvious how much Cindy loves food while reading her book.

Okay, just kidding, while that was among the things I liked best about the book, it wasn't my most FAVORITE thing. Her book reminds me of the sort of wu xia type books of Chinese folklore and fantasy -- all the beasts and magic and fantastical creatures and fighting! It really has that sort of Jin Yong type feel to it -- only her characters aren't petty and annoying as Jin Yong's can be. I really like how strong Ai Ling is as a character, impetuous but empathetic, and how she's loved for her untraditional traits. And her love for food definitely helps (seriously!). I am so proud of Cindy for coming up with something that is so inventive and interesting in terms of characters and different kinds of beasts and other magical elements, completely giving her own take on Chinese-type fantasy. And her descriptions of all of these worlds and elements were so detailed. I only wish kinda that we got to spend more time in some of those places - like the one-armed town! We only got to see it mostly from a pastoral walk and then from the inside of prison. I would have loved to find out more about what the people are like, what their customs are, etc. Woulda been cool to have them land in a place different from their own and have to interact with them for a few days or weeks at length so we get a true immersion of a different place. I think that's probably my biggest criticism - I felt we were introduced to so many really cool elements, that I wish I had spent more time with them to really get to understand them and be immersed as opposed to only meeting each of them for a chapter or two and then moving on to the next ones. I wanted to get a real feel and understanding of these alternate worlds, that I'm not sure I got right now because we were introduced to so many but not over an extended period of time.

I'm really intrigued by what's going to happen in the sequel (Chen Yong's daddy search? Backstory on what happened with Silver Phoenix and Zhong Ye? Ai Ling and Chen Yong sitting in a tree?) because I feel like there are so many questions left unanswered!!!

Good job Cindy!! I am so proud of you!

Blah blah writing blah blah

2009-06-03T02:36:00.003-04:00

It's been a fun-filled last couple of weeks since I finished my last paper, what with my birthday passing and lots of trying to get in some fun time out West before I move back. That means I haven't really been reading, and writing isn't moving along as well as I'd like. Instead of getting in 3000 words a day like I was hoping, I'm getting MAYBE 1000 a day. And that's after a lot of hemming and hawing because I'm so stuck. This novel is kicking my butt. I feel like I'm stalling as I write scenes, which is never a good sign. I met a screenwriter this weekend who told me it took him 3 1/2 years to write his first screenplay, which was his way of encouraging me. He told me the first one is always the hardest because you're trying to figure out your process. But that after the first one, it'll get easier.

So I keep telling myself this. This will get easier. Because right now I have NO IDEA what I'm doing!

Cheers!

Finished!

2009-05-21T17:14:00.003-04:00

Turned in my last paper yesterday, which means that I can finally:

1. Work unfettered on my novel. Halfway there, baby!

2. Start reading for fun again. I'm trying to create a reading list that will help me stay in the right mindset as I write. Meaning no boy writers unless they write pretty, and lots of lyrical (but not snobby) girl writers. And by boy and girl I mean male and female, but whatever. I need accessible female writers that can continue to inspire me and keep me in the right mood. There's a reason I read Danticat's short stories when I need to transition myself into writing mode. Anyway, any suggestions?

Why am I not finished with this novel yet?

2009-05-16T04:39:00.007-04:00

1. Why does inspiration seem to only strike in the middle of the night when I'm actually really freaking tired and want to sleep but can't because, you know, this scene wants to be written?

2. Why does the middle of my novel suck so much?

3. Why won't my novel magically write itself during the time I lie awake at night thinking about it?

4. Why do I love my novel so much despite the fact that it seems bent on slowly killing me?

5. Why do I only have 100 pages-ish? Why is this process so damn slow?!

6. Why is it that when I set out to write a "simple", "straightforward" novel, I still somehow end up with three different interweaving timeline stories that will require me to write separately and then map out and intergrate and organize and outline?

7. Why don't I have any idea of what the hell is going on in my novel or what is going to end up happening?

8. Why do I only want to work on my novel (to the detriment of the papers and finals I have to still complete) despite the fact that when I finally do "work" on it, I just sit and stare at blank screens, type and delete things, tear my hair out and moan?

9. Why is every scene in the future more interesting to me than the scene that I am working on?

10. Why am I putting myself through this torture?

If someone has the answer to these pressing questions, please let me know.

If I count all the words I've typed for this novel so far, I'm officially over the 30K mark! This does not include random scenes I've jotted down on looseleaf and notebook pages - though it may include double scenes. But since I've stopped writing this book sequentially and started just throwing in scenes, I no longer know what I'm keeping as notes and what I'm keeping as part of the actual thing. Nonetheless -- whee! -- I'm almost halfway done with a first pass! First pass being just the bare attempt to get down the story, before the fun second draft comes along. That's where I actually get to sit down, arrange my story as I'd like for it appear on a page, and then fill in all the holes and make everything sound prettier so it's actually readable.

But for now, goal #1: get the story down!

Humor can save an unsympathetic protag!

2009-05-08T07:41:00.002-04:00

Okay I liked the book so much I just finished it.

Oh dude, David Yoo is a funny, funny guy. I could not stop giggling out loud as I read this book. The humor is silly, self-deprecating and positively ludicrous at points, but so convincing I couldn't stop grinning the whole way through. And luckily, because Nick Park (the protagonist), the young, girl-obsessed, Korean-American kid in this book, is a total asshole. I kid you not. From the beginning of the book (where he's in 3rd grade) to the end (when he's graduating from high school), he's a self-loathing, deluded, selfish asshole who lies and pushes the envelope so much that you almost can't stand him and almost lose sympathy for him. But Yoo's wit is Nick's, and therefore the book's, saving grace. So even though you kinda think he's an ass for pretending he's a kung-fu fighter, he's funny about it, so, okay fine.

And anyway, his wild delusions are all part of him finding himself and coming to terms with his Korean-Americanness. I liked how fresh this book was as one to contend with the Asian-American dialogue. It was a fresh breakaway from the many eye-rolling Asian-American texts I've read in the past. So good for David Yoo.

Towards the end, I did feel like it was a little too neatly wrapped up, this sudden "realization" - though I suppose to be able to pull it off with any finesse is a tall order, since, really, do we ever just figure things out? And for a YA readership maybe it's important to bang the moral over the head? I'm not sure. This was one of the weak spots for me, where I could see the new-ness of Yoo's first novel.

I could say stuff about race and self-loathing and stuff here - and I'll admit that it was an interesting perspective to see, one where I literally wanted to shake Nick really hard - but I'm going to save it because I plan to write a paper on it in about a week. And I need to percolate. And it's 5 am. But all I can say is that this is a good read, especially for Asian-Americans, but I suspect would be appealing to non-Asian-Americans, especially boys who have a good sense of humor and love girls.

Great read, truly entertaining. I can't wait to read his new book that just came out.

Freaking Asian-American hilarity

2009-05-07T23:17:00.003-04:00

I've decided to write my adolescent lit paper on Asian-American something or other. So I took out David Yoo's Girls for Breakfast from the library, not entirely certain what to expect.

Dude. I'm about 1/3 through it and it is effing HILARIOUS. I really didn't expect it to be this laugh-out-loud funny. But it really kinda is.

The book is about a Korean-American kid who lives in an all-white neighborhood and is obsessed with girls. No, like REALLY CRAZY OBSESSED in the funniest fucking way (excuse my french).

Okay I'm not done yet, so I won't say anything else, but just as an example of the silliness that makes me laugh:

Nick (the protag) has just been forced to go to Korean church-

Practically everyone's daughter was named Sunny or Grace, and every son was Billy or Franky. No one else was named Nick. I wondered if Koreans emulated Italian Mafia families on purpose.
--[pg. 98]

Nick has just been called a banana - yellow on the outside, white on the inside. He is confused by the classification of being called "yellow"-

My face felt like it was turning red. According to art class, if my skin really was yellow, that would mean my face was actually turning orange.
--[pg. 104]

Oh man, seriously, I'm already a total fan of Dave Yoo, even though I normally never read stuff like this. Okay, I'll be back when I'm done with this book.

A literary meme

2009-05-07T22:10:00.004-04:00

1) What author do you own the most books by?
I was hoping to be able to say something really impressively literary, like how I own every book Edwidge Danticat's written, or how I own a lot of Haruki Murakami. Then my mind thought, series, so perhaps Piers Anthony or Orson Scott Card. Except, I realize, sadly, that the answer might actually be V.C. Andrews. I went through a phase in 8th grade where I read almost every saga she came out with. And since that generally meant like, 5 books per saga, I must own at least 20 books by her. Sad. And a waste of shelf space.

2) What book do you own the most copies of?
The Secret Garden. And not the same edition either, but various different versions, including crappy school copies, British editions, and beautifully illustrated hardbacks. My mom loves that book so she kept buying me new copies, as if the love could be distributed amongst all the different versions.

3) Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions?
No. That's one grammatical problem that I never even really think about. Is it bad I'm a writing tutor?

4) What fictional character are you secretly in love with?
I find Oscar Wao really endearing, but in love? No. Hmm, I can't think of anybody. Maybe it's because I like flawed characters in books, but who in their right mind would want to date anyone super flawed? I am ashamed to admit I did swoon over Edward from Twilight, until I realized how he was an accessory to Bella's insane neediness.

4a) What fictional character would you most like to be?
I can't say I want to be any of them, because seriously, if your life is interesting enough to be made into a book, it usually means your life is pretty fucked up. Even with a happy ending at the end, not sure I want to have to endure anything like that.

4b) What fictional character do you think most resembles you?
The ones I write about?

5) What book have you read the most times in your life?
I think I have read A Wrinkle in Time many many many times.

6) What was your favorite book when you were ten years old?
Probably A Wrinkle in Time. Or one of those dollhouse mystery books. Or anything about time travel and secrets in attics and stuff. I have a bunch of those at home that I've read a few times but I can't remember what they're called right this moment.

7) What is the worst book you've read in the past year?
Assuming we're talking about past year as in the past 365 days, I'm going to go ahead and say again how much I despised Jack Kerouac's Visions of Cody. Self-indulgent. And I pretty much will never read Kerouac again because of it.

8) What is the best book you've read in the past year?
It's been a long while since I've read anything I absolutely lovedlovedloved, but let me go through my backlogs of books. Okay, so in the past 365 days, the books that come to mind are 1. Kazuo Ishiguro's A Pale View of the Hills - possibly my favorite Ishiguro out of all the ones I've read 2. Alexander Chee's Edinburgh - in my opinion, really underpublicized and underread for how beautiful his prose is 3. The English Patient - which probably requires no explanation 4. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak - which is YA but I don't care because I really liked it and it made me cry. Clearly I love pretty prose and things that make me cry.

9) If you could force everyone you tagged to read one book, what would it be?
Cormac McCarthy's The Road. I still think it's fucking amazing no matter how many times I read it (and so far the count is at 3 times).

10) Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for literature?
I haven't really been following the big hitters for this past year so I can't really say.

11) What book would you most like to see made into a movie?
Hmm, I dunno. They almost always ruin a book when they make it into a movie, unless you're like, The Coen Brothers. Which, speaking of, they're supposed to be doing Yiddish Policeman's Union which should be awesome. Maybe something more genre, like I'm still waiting on an Ender's Game movie, though I'm also worried they'll fuck it all up.

12) What book would you least like to see made into a movie?
The Road. Which unfortunately apparently they've already done. I bet you it sucks.

13) Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character.
Uh. None I can remember at this juncture...

14) What is the most lowbrow book you've read as an adult?
Twilight and its subsequent sequels. Fosho. Or I suppose I could say my recent breeze through the Anne Bishop books could count too. I blame Jas and Frederick for those. Whatever. They were good.

15) What is the most difficult book you've ever read?
I don't like difficult, so I most likely didn't get through anything that was too difficult.

16) What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you've seen?
The only Shakespeare play I've seen (like a real play put on by real actors) is Julius Caesar when Denzel came to town. And that's not really obscure.

17) Do you prefer the French or the Russians?
Um. Wasn't a lit major so can't answer this question. I'll just say the Russians, since the half of Anna Karenina I quite enjoyed, and I love Nabokov (though I suppose he's more contemporary?). But I haven't really read any of the French so it's an unfair comparison.

18) Roth or Updike?
Haven't read any Updike, but the one Roth I read (American Pastoral) I was kinda disappointed by. So I choose neither.

19) David Sedaris or Dave Eggers?
I've never finished a Dave Sedaris collection, and I thought A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius was self-indulgent. I liked it when I first finished it but the more I think about it, the more I dislike it. However, I have What is the What on my shelf and I hear it's good, so maybe I'll choose Eggers when I'm done.

20) Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer?
I didn't like the little bit of Chaucer I had to read (he's the reason I decided to not become an English major), never finished all of Milton, but I quite liked the bit I did read, so my inclination is towards him, though that might be completely unfair.

21) Austen or Eliot?
This is when it becomes readily apparent that I'm woefully underread. I haven't read either.

22) What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?
All of the above. Ahaha. Well. Like, let's think here, never read Hemmingway, Faulkner, Updike, Austen, Eliot, the Russians, the French, Pynchon, the Irish (besides Lawrence who I hated), Joyce, etc etc etc.... In other words, I'm missing the entire Canon, but who cares about dead white guys anyway?

23) What is your favorite novel?
Again, The Road.

24) Play?
Um... I haven't really seen many plays. So can I say something like Inherit the Wind?

25) Poem?
Love at First Sight by Wislawa Szymborska. Yeah, I'm a sap.

26) Essay?
Eh? I don't think I've ever sat around and read "essays".

27) Short story?
Hands down, "Children of the Sea" by Edwidge Danticat, from her collection Krik? Krak! That piece reminds me every time of why I want to be a writer. Beautiful.

28) Work of non-fiction?
The Year of Magical Thinking. So moving.

29) Who is your favorite writer?
Edwidge Danticat.

30) Who is the most overrated writer alive today?
Like I said, I was quite disappointed by Dave Eggers' AHWOSG. But I haven't read enough to deem him overrated yet. Maybe Stephenie Meyer? Ahaha.

31) What is your desert island book?
A book that tells me how to survive on a desert island.

32) And ... what are you reading right now?
I'm reading quite a few books simultaneously. Cindy Pon's Silver Phoenix, David Yoo's Girls for Breakfast, and Tyler Knox's Kockroach. The plan is to get boy books out of my system and focus on female writers all summer as I attempt to bang out the first draft of my novel...

A politicalized short story should still be well-written!

2009-05-07T03:41:00.003-04:00

By the way, for this same class, I've been reading short stories from this collection called American Eyes, a collection of Asian-American short stories.

To be honest, I don't like most of the stories in this book. I get my workshop cap on and I find all sorts of holes in the stories, and I don't think they're all that well-written. I feel some of them are dangerous if not read critically, and I just in general am not a fan of these short little "Asian-American" stories because I feel like they're so short that they do nothing besides call attention to the woefulness of being Asian-American. It's not that I can't relate - I can - but beyond that, I'm not sure that these stories are good literature.

On the other hand, I try to keep in mind that these stories were published in the 90's, and back then, there probably wasn't as much dialogue on being Asian-American as there exists now. It was the time of Joy Luck Club, etc, so I suppose there was a place and time for those stories. I just wish they had been better....

More on being an Asian writer, I suppose.

2009-05-07T01:49:00.004-04:00

Today I attended a lecture given by Gene Yang, author of American Born Chinese, a graphic novel. I read this book about a year ago, but recently reread it for one of my classes. The lecture was excellent - Yang was funny yet insightful, and really entertaining as he explained to a largely non-Asian audience about the source material for much of the book.

As a Chinese-American, his lecture particularly hit home for me. I am by no means an Asian-American "activist". I never participated in those protests against, say Abercrombie and Fitch's "Two Wongs Don't Make a White" t-shirts or whatever, and I've never necessarily been politically active. Nonetheless, I also am extremely conscious of my hyphenated status in America, and this is especially on my mind when I think about being a writer who doesn't want to be niched. I wouldn't say that I'm self-loathing to any extent - I simply want to be judged on a basis that excludes my ethnicity.

Despite the fact that I now feel very comfortable operating within a non-Asian world, there was once a time when I didn't. When all I knew was Asia-Americana which has its own brand of American culture. And being within this culture meant that most of the time I didn't have to deal with the question of my ethnicity because everyone around me was just like me. But upon graduation, I was thrust into a predominantly white world, and suddenly it felt like an issue. Suddenly I wasn't entirely sure how to fit in and how people saw me. I didn't actually know how to relate.

Yang's lecture today hit home for me because he brought up all the stereotypes that have existed - both far past during Exclusion Act days and more current events - and I found myself getting worked up over everything he said, and being able to relate so well to the choices he made in his graphic novel.

Yet at the same time, I wondered what it said about me, that I don't want to be part of that dialogue in that way. I don't want to write a book about an Asian-American trying to be part of society. I don't want to write a book where "identity" is an issue in that way. I don't want to have to talk about Chinese people being dogeaters or being good at math (or not, as the case may be). I appreciate and wholeheartedly applaud somebody like Yang for bringing up the difficult nuances of this topic, and in a comic no less, but I shudder at the idea of ever having to do that myself. I want to be loved as a writer despite my Asianness - and I wonder if that is a bad thing. It's not that I don't think these issues are important, it's just that it's not what I want to write about. I want to write things that appeal to everyone, that are relatable to everyone. I don't want to write for an Asian-American generation.

This post has less to do with the book I suppose than with my thoughts about being an ethnic writer. The book is good - it tackles questions of identity, of how Asians are perceived by outsiders, but also how Asianness is perceived by someone who just wants to belong. It's about embracing your own self and learning to accept it. And it's really fun and funny to boot.

I guess I just got a swarm of feelings sitting there in the audience because I wondered if there's supposed to be a burden of responsibility being an Asian writer, to open a dialogue about these sorts of things.

But I kinda think the opposite. I want to show that Asian people think about things other than being Asian. We think about all the things everyone else does - question of family, of love, of ethics, of honor, of courage, of morals. And I don't want to have to write about Asian people in order to do it.

Oh, I'm sure one day one of my protags will be Asian. And I'm sure one day I may even write something about China. But I never want my Asianness to be at the forefront of what I write. I want it to be just a fact, like if my heroine were red-headed instead of a brunette, or liked books instead of liking movies, or was a vegetarian instead of a carnivore. Things that are important, sure, but only in so far that they give you a better understanding of the character in their situation, and not the focal point of the entire book.

I keep digressing here. I really did admire Yang's book and his lecture. His anecdotes pumped me up and I felt my anger simmering and my defiance wanting to shine through every time he showed me something offensive. I take great pride in my heritage and the images and examples he gave made me unbelievably angry. So good on him. And good on this book.

Surprise affect.

2009-05-04T03:12:00.003-04:00

I recently finished The Shadow Catcher for one of my classes. It's one of those books that I otherwise wouldn't have picked up, I'm guessing, but I found I actually enjoyed it.

The book interweaves two stories - one about Edward Curtis, a real-life photographer famous for having taken pictures of many Native Americans back in the late 1800s/early 1900s and his wife Clara, and the second about a fictional reimagined Marianne Wiggins who has written a book about Curtis.

I didn't think I'd like this book. Not that I thought I'd dislike it, but while I was reading it, I was kinda ho-hum about the whole thing. The writing is good, but I'm a person who waits to be affected and sucked in by a quiet beauty of a literary novel, and while The Shadow Catcher was fresh enough so that the reading was never a chore, it also didn't arrest me at first.

I did find the story of Clara and Edward intriguing though, and was frustrated as it was doled out in two chunks - I didn't want to go back to the present and just wanted to know what happened because I felt more invested in their story. The ending to their story however, gave me that affect that I wanted. It was a quiet sadness that I loved.

Because I was invested in the Clara/Edward story, I also thought I wouldn't really give a damn about the present tense stream, but the mystery that evolves was enough that I did want to read through it, just to know the answer. Therefore, the ending also surprised me by being more affecting than I'd expected, though to my taste, not completely satisfying. But just the slightest bit off, not enough for me to think it was bad. And so I actually liked this, to my surprise, because I hadn't thought I would, going in.

Also, I found that I became somewhat interested in the man Edward Curtis (who is a real person), but more so, I wondered how much of this was true, if perhaps Clara was the woman behind him who never got the credit she deserves. There's also a lot in here about sort of what "America" is made of -- specifically the West and being out West, and also just by nature of the material, about Native Americans, which I really enjoyed.

This novel is about what happens to the people who get left behind, really. It's quiet and creeps up upon you. No big drama, nor any crazy action. Not a lot happens in the book, but it definitely caught me in the end. It's a good read, though I wouldn't place it among my top favorites or anything.

Foodied.

2009-05-01T10:47:00.001-04:00

On a side note:

I have started a food blog. Because I love to eat and this place is not the place for food. Me and a couple of other girls (including Moonrat) are supposed to be contributing our food experiences. Because. We love food.

Come visit!

I love me a YA dystopia.

2009-05-01T01:03:00.003-04:00

So, I picked up The Hunger Games last night, thinking I'd read for a couple of hours and then put it down to sleep. Nuh-uh. I stayed up til 5, finishing every last word. Lucky for me I didn't have to be on campus til 1...

I love me a good YA dystopia. The Hunger Games makes me think of something of a cross between The Giver and Ender's Game, making it a really fun read. Katniss, the protagonist, is just fiery enough for her to be believable, but young enough that you feel for her vulnerability. I really liked this book -- it's really creative in its premise, it's exciting, and it's got the slight romantic element, that becomes part of a greater strategy. I loved hearing about the different costumes, the strange/scary muttations, and I salivated at the food she described. Really creative.

The only thing I do have to say is that the use of the present tense really jarred me at moments, where I felt it wasn't natural, and it would kinda take me out of the book, which I don't like. I think she could have written it in past tense and it would have been fine.

Okay, I was warned about The Hunger Games, so I didn't feel like hurling the book across the room the way others did when I got to the "End of Book 1" print at the end. But I am eagerly anticipating the next one....

YAY FOR CHINESE HEROINES!

2009-04-28T06:07:00.000-04:00

I just wanted to announce to everyone that my good friend Cindy Pon's YA debut, Silver Phoenix, is hitting bookstores TODAY! I haven't snagged my copy yet (will get myself a nice signed copy... or two) so I haven't read it yet, but I'm SO EXCITED for Cindy and SO PROUD that the day is finally here! And I'm sure her book -- a YA fantasy set in a fictional Chinese land -- is going to be awesome and fun... especially bc it features a strong Asian heroine.

CONGRATULATIONS CINDY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Monica Sone and a question of race.

2009-04-24T04:23:00.003-04:00

Final post and I'm all caught up! And then I swear I'll be good on maintenance (this is like cleaning... or dieting... I always promise maintenance. But entropy is such a strong force in the world!)

Monica Sone's Nisei Eyes is a biographical account of a Japanese-American girl living in Seattle during the 2nd world war. She eventually gets sent to internment camps when she's in her young adulthood, but much of the book details her experience being a first generation Japanese-American girl.

I liked this book. Mostly because I can identify, obviously, with the conflicted feelings of being both 100% Asian and 100% American, and yet at the same time feeling like you actually belong nowhere completely. Given when it was published (early 1950s), I think it's also really educational for people back then who didn't know much about Japanese culture or the Asian American experience. She does a decent job of deconstructing myths about subservient, harsh, unloving Asians and their families and highlights a lot of the dilemmas that come with being "hyphenated".

At the same time, I felt her treatment of Japanese internment was a bit too soft and fluffy towards the end and didn't necessarily punch in enough of the injustice of this incident in American history. Granted, Japanese internment wasn't like a concentration camp, but it is still appalling to think that so many Americans were forced to leave their homes and possessions and livelihoods to live in camps, and forbidden to return for so many years. The history of alienation against Asian Americans makes my blood boil...

An interesting note -

In the class in which we discussed this book, I am the only East Asian. I'm sure most of my classmates have no idea if I'm Japanese or Chinese or something else, but I find myself acutely self-aware when I raise my hand to make a comment. I think I purposely try to make my comments sound as objective and neutral as possible, because I don't want to be seen as saying something "representative" or for people to think I'm touchy. At the same time, when we do talk about certain things, I know that inside I have a very personal reaction to this concept of Asian alienation and stereotypes, and I also find myself inwardly trying to keep myself from taking anything in offense, despite my desire to want to blurt out my own knowledge. It's really interesting, because I don't think I've ever been in an academic situation discussing Asian something or other, and being the only Asian person in the room. I wonder if people are secretly taking sidelong glances at me to see my reaction, or if that's simply my own self-consciousness that doesn't exist.

The thing for me about being Asian is that most of the time I forget I am. Oh, I'm VERY Asian in a lot of the way I live my day to day life - I love karaoke, Asian food, have tons of Asian friends - but to me this is just the way I live my American life. I take it for granted that to be an American means everybody lives their life their own way. So I don't necessarily think about the Asianness of it. I think I forget I'm Asian most of the time until I'm forced to remember it. The way I forget all my friends are Asian until I invite a couple of white friends to a bday party.

We're reading a couple more Asian-American books over the next couple of weeks, and I wonder to myself if there's anyway that I can insert my experience without turning myself into somebody who becomes only represented by my Asianness.

It's the very reason I don't want to be niched as an Asian-American writer. To me, I'm just a writer. An American. Who happens to live her life in a very Asian-American way. But I honestly feel most of the time that I am just a person. And yet at the same time, I am also acutely aware of how my face might affect people in certain situations. How is that possible? To feel so raceless and yet so racial at the EXACT same time?

Blood Meridian vs. The Road

2009-04-24T04:08:00.003-04:00

Okay, I'm kinda reluctant to write about Blood Meridian in my state of "I just want to bang out my blog reviews so I'm all caught up" because I know this book deserves a thoughtful review. It is McCarthy's so-called masterpiece. But please bear with me, as I also just finished writing a 12-page paper on this book, comparing it to The Road.

The book was much denser than either The Road or No Country For Old Men, the only other McCarthy works I've read. It took me hours upon hours to get through the book (over the span of 3 days, so that I could finish it in time to write about it), and often times I had to go back and reread sentences. So in that sense, it's decidedly different from The Road.

Like The Road, it's freaking bloody. No. Way bloodier. The gore is so much that after a certain point, I found myself completely desensitized to it (much in the way that the inhabitants of the world probably were, hmm?).

I found it a dazzling, epic read, yet really really bleak in its outlook due to the senseless death and the way goodness pretty much is unrewarded. The judge, the devil incarnate, pretty much wins in the end, and that in itself was so depressing.

Also, I know this book is based upon a real gang of scalphunters that lived. This book depressed me so much, thinking about how terrible we were to the people who originally lived on this land, all in the name of "manifest destiny".

I was talking to E. about this book vs. The Road a lot via facebook the other day. Here is some of what we said (I'm posting this mostly because I'm too lazy to try to sort through all my thoughts on this book again):

Me: im writing my essay on pretty much how the two books are antitheses of each other, and how while BM reveals hopelessness/the dominance of violence in human nature over morality, TR does the opposite. speaking of the religion aspect of it though -- would u say that BM represents a perversion of God? I felt like I read it that way when I read it and I was going to write a para on how it's like that in BM versus TR (where at first you think God has abandoned them but then the father kinda sees the boy as an embodiment of God-ish), but I can't seem to find the citations I need for it and now I'm wondering if I just imagined it.

E: I think the key to thinking about religion and BM and TR is through these relationships. Arguably the Kid and the Boy are both the "christ figures" in the horrible stereotypical literary theory sense. But the question is what happens when they are taught by "good" or "evil". BM can actually be seen as really positive because The Kid, despite all the influence of the Judge, eventually rebels and goes from being someone of a questionable nature to someone of pretty solid moral character. The evil made him good. In BM the judge functions as the Devil. In TR it's the world. The world functions as the excuse people have for depravity, so in some ways it's a more slippery character. Both books look at religion through a moral perspective. In BM it's religion being warped that helps the Kid find a true sense of righteousness. In TR it's the world being warped that leads the Boy to religion... which may or may not be a savior depending on how you read it.

Me: i ♥ mccarthy. though (as you very well know), i find the road hopeful as all hell and i found BM to be depressing stabby stabby, and that's what my thesis is about. i mean the kid, sure, he starts getting a backbone, but he still kills that random kid in the forest at the end and anyway his "goodness" is unrewarded when the judge decides to axe him in the bathroom or whatever. creepy dude that judge.

E: I know what you mean. The Judge is the Devil! But he's just amazing that way, alternately fascinating/horrible/wonderful. The whole making gunpowder bit was incredible. We had such opposite reads. I find BM totally inspiring, while TR I had to like... look for some uppers afterward. HA!

Me: haha. i wonder what that says about us, that we read the same two books and read them in the complete opposite direction. i took the judge's triumph in the end as a final, the-devil-has-won-and-quashed-you-silly-moralists sort of win. hee!

E: I think that Blood Meridian is the more complex of the two books; The Road proposes a more black and white morality. Doubt also plays a really quiet, subversive role in BM that as far as religion goes delves into some of the more uncomfortable parts of Christianity. TR sort of whacks you over the head with it. I do love the starkness of the prose in TR tho... But I'm just a sucker for the over the top of BM. BTW a fabulous character study could be done comparing the role of the Judge in BM with the antagonist in Oates' short story Where are You Going, Where Have You Been. Same Devil, same seduction, two wildly different approaches. Not that I ever thought about that or anything... nooo.

Me: BM is definitely more complex in its layers, but i think the stark black and white quality of TR is exactly its point. here is a world in which morality is absolute and above circumstance, which of course is not the way the real world works, but perhaps in a world as stripped of civilization as the one in TR is, it's the only way humanity can ... Read Moresurvive. i think it makes a case against bending the rules, and how once u do that, things can quickly devolve to where everything becomes a free for all. BM to me is the flipside of the coin -- this idea that morality is simply a manmade construct, and that in fact, humans are governed by a survival for the fittest and a bloodlust inherent in all of us.

Okay, I know I really should take the time to write more about this. And perhaps I will. Later. I'm seriously burned out, guys.

Like a shadow that disappears

2009-04-24T04:04:00.005-04:00

The next book I read for my adolescent lit class was A Certain Slant of Light. It's about a lost soul who meets another lost soul that has taken over a body that was abandoned (the kid did too many drugs so his soul just abandoned ship). They fall in love, she finds another abandoned body to cleave to, and thus begins a journey of love and also of navigating through the lives of the people they now inhabit.

The book was interesting enough that I read it all in one night, mostly because it's strange and the language is more lyrical than most of what you see in some of these YA lit novels. The premise is strange yet compelling. Despite that though, now that it's been a couple of weeks since I read it, it's not necessarily something that sticks with me, if you know what I mean. It was entertaining at the time, and nothing bothered me about it, but it's also easily forgettable.

That's pretty much all I have to say about it.

Say no to drugs.

2009-04-24T03:57:00.003-04:00

I recently read Crank for an adolescent lit class of mine, not really sure what to expect. The book is really unconventional, written in a series of poems. Basically it's a story of a girl's descent into meth addiction.

First of all, I enjoyed the poems. I thought it was clever the way the words are set up so that you can get multiple meanings out of the same poem.

Secondly.. dude. This book is a pretty heavy horrifying moralistic tale -- rape, pregnancy, etc. It really made me fascinated to learn more about crystal meth addiction -- I confess I spent some time googling after I finished the book.

Lastly, the fact that this book is actually based upon the author's daughter's own story puts another layer on it. I spent some time googling that too.

I really liked the book, to be honest. It was definitely a cautionary tale, and at points perhaps a little too extreme, but it is crystal meth, which is some scary shit. As an adult, this book scared the bejeezus out of me, so I can only imagine what it does for its intended audience of teenagers.

(Yes, I'm getting lazier with my reviews. I just have such a tremendous backlog!)

Selfish love.

2009-04-24T03:50:00.004-04:00

I was trying to decide whether to pick up Victoria Redel's Loverboy or her more recent novel. At first I was going to go for the more recent one (whose name escapes me right now) because it sounded more interesting to me, but remembering that Vivian had reviewed Loverboy and had liked it, I decided to go with it.

Loverboy is about a mother who conceives her son through a one-night stand. Purposely. And she loves him a little too much. When he starts pulling away from her at a school age, she has a hard time coping. The book looks at the fine line between unconditional love and selfish love.

I really have mixed feelings about the book. I thought the writing was wonderful, beautiful, lyrical. But I found myself really uncomfortable with the subject matter, which was probably the point, but it was pushing the envelope to a point where I wasn't really able to be sympathetic to the protagonist. Her almost incestuous love for her child is really disturbing, as it's meant to be, but it alienated me a bit. I wondered if part of it was that I myself am not yet a mother, and I wondered if a mother could relate a little bit better how somebody less emotionally stable might love someone so much, it might become selfish to an extreme. Instead, I found myself making judgments, something I really didn't want to be doing.

I did think the writing was good, so I probably will still pick up her next book, where the subject matter seems like it might alienate me a little less.

Who are you remembered by?

2009-04-24T03:41:00.004-04:00

The only reason I picked up The Brief History of the Dead is because I'd been looking to possibly submit a story to a contest he was judging. Curious about him, I looked him up on BN. The cover of the book looked familiar, but I guess the cover and title alone weren't something that would normally get my attention, so I'd never bothered to read the back. However, once I read the description on BN.com, I was so fascinated that I put in my order online pretty quickly.

This was a book that I was sucked into immediately, from beginning til end. The concept is so original that you can't help but want to get to each next page.

The book is basically about a world, an "afterlife" where people go to after they die. There, they have normal lives, have jobs, eat, etc. They hold onto their identities and their memories of their lives on earth. The catch is that they only get to stay there as long as someone living remembers them. Once forgotten, they disappear, onto some unknown next phase of the cycle (heaven or whatever). Intertwined with this is the story of a young woman on Earth, who might possibly be the last living person, thanks to a massive pandemic that has wiped out everybody else.

The book is inventive and rich in its details about the lives that people live in this 2nd world, and the different people. Additionally, there's some great memories that he comes up with, highlighting the poignancy of the little things, as well as how important it is to remember things and people. My favorite moment is this memory where a man catches a girl's balloon on a roof as it floats by and he takes it back down to street level to return it to her. What a wonderful memory. So fresh and vivid.

The joy in this book isn't so much a plot arc - you kinda know where it's going - but to delve in the lives and memories of these people who are facing the end of the line and can now think about who they remember and who they are remembered by.

I really really enjoyed this book, and will probably pick it up again in a couple of years, because I feel like it's something that probably gets better with a second read because of all the details.

History lesson about the Holocaust.

2009-04-24T03:28:00.003-04:00

I picked up Sarah's Key at BN because it was sitting on one of those tables in the middle of the aisle. It sounded really interesting, despite the fact that it was yet "another Holocaust story". Not that I don't like the genre, but I've already read The Boy in the Striped Pajamas and The Reader this year. Nevertheless, the premise of the book sounded intriguing enough.

Sarah's Key weaves two differnt tales - one about a young girl in France who locks her little brother in a closet so that he'll be safe as the rest of her family is sent into concentration camps, the other about a grown woman journalist who is doing an article on the Velodrome d'Hiver roundup. As the novel progresses, the two stories interweave.

I had never heard of this particular angle of the Holocaust, so the book was really educational for me. The horror of it was that it wasn't the Nazis who did the roundup, but the French police, who voluntarily aided the requests of the Nazi government. Additionally, although the Nazis had only asked for adults, the French government, unsure of what to do with the kids that would be left behind, also took the children into custody, which meant that all of them died as well.

The language of the book could have been better - I felt the dialogue stilted at times, and I wasn't all that compelled by the story of the present day narrator. She wasn't particularly likable. But I was willing to overlook all of that as a framing device, just to find out more about the story. I guess inherently, something like this is compelling, so it's easy to be sucked into it regardless of language. Also, I wondered if the book was originally and French, and so was perhaps something about the translation.

Nevertheless, I did find the story content touching and heartbreaking at moments, and we all know that if a book can make me cry, well, I'm a sucker for it. So I still liked this a lot and recommend it. Plus, it was a really fast read.

You.

2009-04-24T03:21:00.002-04:00

I first heard about You or the Invention of Memory via NY Mag's Vulture blog, where Jonathan Baumbach was giving a reading. I googled, and found out that his publicist was giving out free copies of his book if you emailed her, so I went for it. Didn't get the chance to read it until I was in Belize.

The interesting thing about You is that it opens in a seemingly second person (though really, it's a first person just speaking to an unnamed "you"). In this intro, the narrator explains that this book is basically about some woman he's loved in his life.

What follows are several chapters of different possibilities of how the narrator and the anonymous woman meet, carry out, and end their romance. After a few of these, there is then sudden shift into explaining it from the POV of the woman who is supposedly the author's love.

I liked the concept behind the book, but it verged on being a tad too post-modern for me. I found myself wanting to know how things really happened, but even with the POV of the woman at the end, I found myself confused by the details.

Nevertheless, it was interesting, and I liked reading about all the incarnations a relationship can take, when ultimately it simply boils down to the love that one person can't forget throughout his lifetime.

A little Road moment...

2009-04-22T05:52:00.002-04:00

I am currently in the process of writing a 12-15 page paper on The Road vs. Blood Meridian. It's killing me, only because I haven't written a real English paper since junior year of college (and even then it wasn't really a PAPER, it was part of a take-home final).

I am so relieved I got special permission to at least write about this though. I might have had to papercut my wrists if I had to do the undergrad paper topics.

In any case, the only reason I mention this is because, as everyone well knows, The Road is my favoritest book ever (I can read it a million times and still be struck with the same emotions I got the first time around). And I don't think I posted anywhere one of my favorite moments in the book:

You're not the one who has to worry about everything.
The boy said something but he couldnt understand him. What? he said.
He looked up, his wet and grimy face. Yes I am, he said. I am the one.
--[pg. 259, The Road]

No matter how many times I read that section, I get chills, it's so beautiful.

7 pages written, 5 to go. I have so much to say, but at the same time, I'm having a lot of trouble organizing and making things relevant so it feels like I don't have enough and that I'm pulling teeth here...

MIA...

2009-04-21T07:35:00.002-04:00

Sorry. I know I'm super backlogged here (and backlogged at the new food blog I created!) but I'm so swamped with impending papers and stories and general school work as the semester winds to a close. I WILL get to all book reviews (however mediocre the effort) at some point. Trying to do one a day, but that's not working out so far.

Be back soon.

Sherman Alexie brings Native American experience forward.

2009-04-19T05:44:00.005-04:00

The next book on my list to talk about is Sherman Alexie's The Toughest Indian in the World, a collection of short stories.

I really liked this collection. All the stories deal with Native Americans trying to find their place in a country where, well, historically they've been driven out and watered down. Some stories I found more resonant than others.

My favorite story of them all is the last one, One Good Man, about a grown son and a father who is sick from complications of diabetes. His father mentions he's never been to Mexico, and so they go on a roadtrip, until, just shy of the border, his father gets too sick to travel anymore, and the son carries him over. It's really quite touching.

I hadn't read anything by Alexie prior to this, but I think he is definitely filling a niche here, and being a foremost voice for American-Native Americans (I know that's not a proper term, but you know what I mean), and bringing these experiences to the American public. I'm reading Blood Meridian right now, so these thoughts of what this country has done to Native Americans are at the forefront of my mind right now. This book definitely makes me reflect on what the experience for contemporary Native Americans must be like, and the unique struggles they encompass. I also just appreciate the humor and wit, yet poignancy that Alexie folds into all these stories.

The book is an easy read, and worth it.

I've been a bad girl!

2009-04-18T00:58:00.002-04:00

Okay, a million book review updates. I'll go through them one-by-one, but this pretty much means I'm going to give lackluster updates for most of the ones I just thought was good but nothing special. haha.

First up:

Patricia McCormick's Cut.

Synopsis:
About a girl who cuts herself and is institutionalized for it.

The book is really short, but it never hit the mark for me. I felt it was shallow, and the characters were shells. It never resonated with me, and as a person who understands the sort of driving force that can lead someone to a pathway of self-harm, I expected to empathize with the character much more. I didn't. This book is clearly written for adolescents, but I also felt it wasn't given adolescents enough credit. And the ending was too neat and pat. So I thought it was just a whatever read.

The end.

I owe a TON of posts on books I've read

2009-04-07T22:26:00.000-04:00

I promise I'll catch up soon...

Woohoo!

2009-03-21T05:22:00.002-04:00

I got into the program I wanted to get into. I am soon transferring out of this shithole of a school!

Alas. Just when I was beginning to love the city too.

Misleading title, btw.

2009-03-20T02:08:00.003-04:00

Today, one of my friends commented to me that I was becoming "a real slacker, huh?" Guilty as charged. I have one more week of school before spring break and I head off to Central America, and in that week I have:

- 1 workshop submission to write
- 1 short screenplay to write
- 12 papers to grade
- 3 stories to critique
- 2 books to read
- 1 midterm to study for

Not to mention all the errands I must get under my belt before jetting off.

So what am I going to do? Of course, I'm going to take this very precious work/studying time to catch up on my book blog posts! Yay!

First up:

I finished reading Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood for my adolescent lit class.

You know, the thing about this book is that it held so much promise. When I started reading it, I geared myself up to settle into a book that I thought I would love. The language was lyrical, staccato, affected. It's told from the POV of a 17 year old Chicano boy, in love with a girl named Juliana. It was raw and had this great beat to it that I was excited for.

Then [SPOILER] Juliana dies. No shit. 40 pages in. And I was like, alrite, maybe the rest of this book will flesh out their relationship and his relationship to her loss in flashback. No dice. Despite the title, she's never a major factor in the book.

I have other qualms, like it's too melodramatic for my taste -- too many people dying or having tragedies happen to them. I mean, I get that maybe this is a reality for some people, but for the sake of fiction it was too overwrought. Even the ending. It's like, nothing could go right for anybody, and I dunno, I think sometimes fiction needs to have a purpose, make something work, not have chaos for the sake of chaos. Even if it's to show that real life can be like this, it has to be done in a controlled way, otherwise it loses its meaning, and I feel like that's what happened here. And the characters just kinda came in when it was convenient for Sammy and for Saenz himself. They were never important until they were. It was never truly a cohesive book to me, which was a shame, since clearly Saenz is talented.

My favorite part of the book was the language. And the first sixty pages. Don't get me wrong, the book is still worth reading, but from a critical standpoint, from a writer's perspective (and possibly even from a reader's perspective) there were a bunch of craft problems with the text.

I wonder if an adolescent reader would feel differently about the book though. I suggested it to my sister, who's a very discerning reader for a 15 year old, because I'm curious what she'd think.

Mm. I had a couple of passages I'd wanted to note, but I forgot to mark them down and now I can't remember. Ah well. I guess that's that.

Good, but not great. A fast read, though long for a YA book.

What being sick does

2009-03-19T15:00:00.002-04:00

What I ate this past weekend, before getting sick:
Friday
Congee with pickles
Scallion pancake
An apple
Three street tacos
1 stewed taco
Guac and salsa and chips
Rice and beans
Diet coke
Sierra Nevada

Saturday
Dried mango slices
Eggs benedict with crab
4 glasses of marmosa (cran orange champagne cocktail)
Fruit salad
Strawberry crepe with brulee creme
Strawberry cupcake with cream cheese frosting
Vietnamese fried catfish
Spring rolls
Omu rice
Banana flambee
Blow pop
Two cocktails and a shot

Sunday
Iced coffee
Turkey leg
Chili lime corn on the cob
Dole whip
A bite of corn dog
Rice krispie treat
Caramel apple
Churro
Clam chowder in bread bowl
Steak gumbo in bread bowl
Fritters with fruit sauce
Hot coffee
Water

What I ate this week after I got sick:
Monday
Congee with preserved egg, pickles, mian jing and rou song
Hot tea
Sliced dried mangos
Water

Tuesday
Congee with preserved egg, pickles, mian jing and rou song
Hot tea
A shrimp taco from rubios (which made me sick)
Bowl of cheerios with skim
Water

Wednesday
Bowl of cheerios with skim
Peach yogurt
Cup of chicken soup
Water
Small antipasto salad
More cheerios with skim
Dried berries

Thursday (so far)
Bowl of cheerios with skim
Raisin bread pb & j & honey sandwich

I'm not sure which is more unhealthy. Though I do need to lose some weight before going on vacation next week. =P

Now all that's left to do is watch Kate Winslet.

2009-03-13T02:08:00.003-04:00

I finished The Reader in one night a couple of nights ago. It was a fast read - only took about two to three hours - and I'd wanted to get through it so I could watch the movie soon.

I liked the book, though again, here is an example of a book that I really wanted to touch me, but fell a little short. But, it might also have been that I read it at like 3 in the morning.

What I did enjoy though was sort of the way it played with your sympathies, and this idea of choice in an impossible situation. While you can never condone what Hanna does, through the eyes of this boy, you see a woman confused, lonely, and not nearly bright enough (but proud enough) to walk away from duties she's given. There's a lack of critical thought that's portrayed, a deficit she tries to make up for, and a real sense that her lack of education is something she wants to change.

As a Holocaust book, I'm not sure where it stands. It brings up some real questions about the nature of the Holocaust from the perspective of all the willing participants. It brings up the questions of how an entire country could have mindlessly followed Hitler's path of destruction and supported it, either actively or passively. Even now, you look back (or you don't even have to look back as it happens every day) and you wonder how decent people can be swayed such as to believe that such acts of brutality are not only normal, but necessary. That there is no alternative. And one wonders if like with any other trauma, there's a numbness and a need to "buy in" that goes with it. One does what one needs to in order to survive.

It interested me too, that the narrator himself was so numb and apathetic following Hanna's disappearance, and that he is able to watch most of the proceedings in a detached manner. It portrayed the compartmentalization that occurs, a process that is both necessary at times and yet incredibly damaging to a person.

In any case, I thought it was a good read. Nothing spectacular, but definitely made you think.

Guess I wasn't too good of a reader in 8th grade...

2009-03-13T02:01:00.002-04:00

Okay I read Catcher in the Rye for my other class recently. It's the second time I've read this - the first time I was in 8th grade, and aside from the part about the carousel and the Museum of Natural History, I don't remember much of it, and those were the parts I remembered liking. I remember wondering what the big fuss about the book was because I was just eh about it.

Well, shows what kind of reader I was back in 8th grade. My little sister who is in 9th grade right now told me Catcher was "awesome" and that Salinger was a "genius". She read that book in 8th grade too, so clearly, she's the more precocious reader.

Anyway, there's no point in really doing a "review" on this book, really. But I just wanted to record that in my second, much more mature read, I actually really really enjoyed it. I thought it Holden was such a sympathetic, wonderful character. So full of longing and confusion and the need to belong. And I'm a real sucker for awkward adolescent boy characters (see my love of Oscar Wao). There's something so endearing and tragic about poor Holden. So yes, this time around, I absolutely adored it.

Also, the carousel and Natural History sections are still just as good as I remember them being. :)

That's all I wanted to say!

Become extraordinary by vanishing..

2009-03-13T01:38:00.002-04:00

Ugh books, okay, where do I start?

I read Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping for class the other day. It was good, but not fabulous. I appreciated some of her ideas and some of her language, but it never moved me the way I think it was meant to. I don't think this is through any fault of Robinson's though - objectively I can see that it's well written. I just don't think think that her style of writing resonates with me particularly. It's not that it doesn't resonate with me either. It just didn't fully, if that makes any sense.

The book is very internally focused, which I kind of liked, but again, I never felt as much for the characters as I would have liked, and I'm not sure why. I almost did, but there was a certain amount of detachment. Nonetheless, the book did give me some ideas for my own novel, in the relationship between the sisters and in the general sense of detachment from the protagonist.

The book is quiet and moves slowly, but it's full of heavy and interesting ideas. Definitely a book you want to absorb slowly.

The end becomes much more philisophical in some ways, and interested me greatly. Possibly because my own novel examines memory and belonging, and this book dealt heavily with both. The idea is interesting to me, that memory is made sharper by loss, that in losing something, something becomes fuller.

The book is so full of loss and longing and waiting and disconnection. It really is a beautiful book, and yet perhaps the reason I never felt as emotionally involved as I'd like to have is because it's such a detached book. Detached the way the protag is detached. Who knows.

A few passages I did like, mostly towards the end of the book:

For need can blossom into all the compensations it requires. To crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow. For when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweetly as when one longs to taste it, and when is the taste refracted into so many hues and savors of ripeness and earth, and when do our sense know any thing so utterly as when we lack it? And here again is a foreshadowing - the world will be made whole. For to wish for a hand on one's hair is all but to feel it. So whatever we may lose, very craving gives it back to us again. Though we dream and hardly know it, longing like an angel, fosters us, smooths our hair, and brings us wild strawberries.
-- [Housekeeping, pg. 153]

I was angry that she had left me for so long, and that she did not ask pardon or explain, and that by abandoning me she had assumed the power to bestow such a richness of grace. For in fact I wore her coat like beatitude, and her arms around me were as heartening as mercy, and I would say nothing that might make her loosen her grasp or take one step away.
--[Housekeeping, pg. 161]

Memory is the sense of loss, and loss pulls us after it.
--[Housekeeping, pg. 194]

But every memory is turned over and over again, every word, however chance, written in the heart in the hope that memory will fulfill itself, and become flesh, and that the wanderers will find a way home, and the perished, whose lack we always feel, will step through the door finally and stroke our hair with dreaming, habitual fondness, not having meant to keep us waiting long.
--[Housekeeping, pg. 195]

But if she lost me, I would become extraordinary by vanishing.
--[Housekeeping, pg. 195]

When did I become so unlike other people? Either it was when I followed Sylvie across the bridge, and the lake claimed us, or it was when my mother left me waiting for her, and established in me the habit of waiting and expectation which makes any present moment most significant for what it does not contain.
--[Housekeeping, pg. 214]

Of my conception I know only what you know of yours. It occured in darkness and I was unconsenting. I (and that slenderest word is too gross for the rare thing I was then) walked forever through reachless oblivion, in the mood of one smelling night-blooming flowers, and suddenly - My ravishers left their traces in me, male and female, and over the months I rounded, grew heavy, until the scandal could no longer be concealed and oblivion expelled me. But this I have in common with all my kind. By some bleak alchemy what had been mere unbeing becomes death when life is mingled with it. So they seal the door against our returning.
--[Housekeeping, pgs. 214-215]

Then there is the matter of my mother's abandonment of me. Again, this is the common experience. They walk ahead of us, and walk too fast, and forget us, they are so lost in thoughts of their own, and soon or late they disappear. The only mystery is that we expect it to be otherwise.
--[Housekeeping, pg. 215]

In any case, it's worth reading, thought I wouldn't rave rave rave about it. But it is slow and beautiful, and if you're in the mood for something introspective and quiet, this is a book to read.

word cloud does not really include books?

2009-03-12T08:17:00.004-04:00

This, from wordle.net, is my cool new toy that I will be procrastinating with from now on. I did a word cloud for this site, and I really had to search to find the word "books". What does that say?

The problem with the idea of cultivating an internet presence...

2009-03-12T07:48:00.002-04:00

I think about "coming out" or so they say every once in awhile. I think about how writers are supposed to have online presences and so far mine is very restrained, very impersonal, and the kind of blog that will never garner a following because I'm so careful with what I post and am incredibly anonymous.

Then I remember (and anyone who knew me in college will also remember) how verbal vomit I used to be on my old blogs. Posting everything and anything for the whole entire world to see. Anyone who wanted to stalk me, could. And I have a hard time finding that middle ground where I give enough information about myself to make me interesting and show my personality without giving too much.

It's why I now keep an additional personal blog where I can hemorrhage all I want. For those friends of mine I love and trust. A place where I can control who comes in and out.

But it has crossed my mind that the best way to cultivate a grassroots following is online, before anything's even begun.

Well. I tell myself that when I'm done with the novel, that's when I'll think about creating an author blog. One that dissociates myself from this one so no one would ever have to know. Though that would potentially mean sacrificing the web friendies I have already who don't know me.

Internet is such a funny thing. I have the predisposition to overshare, so while I can't stop myself from blogging, I keep a very extreme line in how I blog, now that I've realized my tendencies. It's not that I'm an exhibitionist - not in the sense that I crave attention and air my laundry for the purpose of having everyone love me and read my shit and comment on it or whatever. It's just that... I used to not care. I felt I was being honest, with myself and with the world. I thought it was a way to vent and record and pretend that people were listening.

I know better now.

I fear that whenever I do create an author blog, it'll be a terribly boring one. Only because I secretly fear that I won't be able to accurately judge where the line should be drawn. And because part of me is a little scared of internet voyeurism and the judgment of people I barely know.

Hmm. This is what I think about at 5am, when I should be studying for a midterm. Or sleeping. Yes, sleep is probably the best option.

Character driving

2009-03-12T07:15:00.004-04:00

I just spent hours and pages... character sketching.

Yes. I'm a third of the way through my novel and I decided I needed to devote a bunch of hours to writing character sketches.

I have this problem. I am a secret psychologist (it was my undergrad major), and so I have a primal need to understand my characters down to the most minute of details. I can't write a story without feeling like I have a really good grasp of my characters' fears, motivations, desires... but to an obsessive point. I sit around and document how they feel towards everything, everyone, what their issues are with everyone, and why they feel that way. My character sketches read like a psych reading on somebody. I track their whole history, and I need to make sure that everything matches.

And I CAN'T write without having this guide to their personalities, because otherwise I have NO IDEA how they'll act.

I'm a character driven person, not a plot driven person. I usually have little idea what they're going to say or do from one moment to the next, and so I rely very highly on having my characters dictate to me what they're going to do.

This works half the time, but right now it's a bit of a problem, because I have some key plot points that, for the life of me, I can't figure out. I seriously just don't know. And it's making me very very very stuck. Everything I write just isn't right.

In the meantime, fleshing out my character studies has made me realize how much stuff I've left out up til now that at some point I'm going to have to go back and add. But right now, all I want to do is GET THROUGH the damn thing so I know how it ends. Then I can go back and tweak and change everybody's personalities.

Argh. I just have no freaking clue. I think I need to do some research. Le sigh.

Bad about book blogging...

2009-03-11T15:27:00.003-04:00

I've been lax about updating this site. Mostly because nearly all the books I've been reading lately are for class. I do have a couple of things to say, but just haven't gotten around to saying them... and to be honest, a personal blog (which I keep under lock and key!) is more fun to update. Haha.

But on things:

- I'm awaiting hearing back from the one MFA program I reapplied to so I know for sure where I'll be heading next year (but def away from this godforsaken program)
- I really need to get myself on a schedule of writing to force myself through my writer's block. Le Novel is driving me nuts
- God I'm tired
- I have a midterm tomorrow. I haven't studied. But I will! Because even though grades don't matter, I'm an Asian overachiever. DUH.
- Apple Cinnamon bear naked granola is delish.
- I'm going to Belize in TWO WEEKS baby. I really need to stop eating so I can fit into a bathing suit
- I bought 5 boxes of girl scout cookies yesterday in a moment of weakness. I am a total cookie junkie.

Okay I'll be back later to write up thoughts/reviews on books I've read recently.

Damn, I knew I should have applied to Columbia's MFA...

2009-03-11T05:39:00.001-04:00

Only because I didn't find out til now that James Franco attends there! DAMMIT!

http://gawker.com/374070/james-franco-to-sexify-morningside-heights

And he's publishing stories already? Haha.

http://gawker.com/5164853/celebrity+only-book-industry-comes-dangerously-close-to-publishing-writer

Sad addendum...

2009-02-19T06:00:00.000-05:00

Alfred Knopf died recently apparently. :(

My thoughts on the responsibility of the publishing industry to change.

2009-02-19T05:10:00.003-05:00

Jaysus. I just read the NY Mag article written back in Sept about the state of the publishing industry for the first time. Don't know how I missed it before, although I was dealing with a lot. Since then, the situation has gone from bad to worse. Scary.

I have some thoughts about this based upon the little I know about the industry. It seems to me that as a business model, it is just FLAWED. It's a mistake to take something like publishing - which originated originally to create "art" back in the day - and try to make it into a big business playing by the rules of capitalism. It's not a money-making venture, not at least, if you have the values of creating quality work in mind. Think about the idea of getting art galleries to become huge conglomerates, feeding artists big bucks and asking them to churn out 5 mediocre pieces of art per year or something, and then hoping that those pieces will sell big and return on your investment. Simply not possible. The creation of quality literature does not mesh well with your big business plan of pumping 7 figure advances into one dude and leaving everybody else out to flounder. It doesn't foster the creation of writers. It certainly doesn't help foster a relationship between writers and editors and publishers. So what happens when the Updikes and the McCarthys of our generation die? Who's left to replace them as the writers of our time? Nobody. Why? Because literary fiction is dying a slow death. The moral being sold is simple: write us the next big blockbuster shitty hit, and write it fast, otherwise don't bother. Literary fictionists need not apply.

This, is of course, a catch-22 in many ways as well. Readers dictate what's being sold (because publishers subscribe to the capitlist nature of business), and right now readers want fast-paced commercial fiction of whatever milieu happens to be hip at the moment. Publishers cater to this in order to keep sales up, and churn out more and more, losing big on gambles sometimes, but also making it big. In the meanwhile pushing out the guys who are steady and quiet and producing books with more modest sales. On the other hand though, the publishing industry holds sway over what is being produced and marketed to readers. They make certain types of literature available to people. They put it in the front display. They tell people what they should be excited about and they encourage people to want and expect the crap they often read.

I don't know about other writers, but the few I know all really seem to love and appreciate quality fiction. Yes, we all want to make it in, of course, and the current model seems like well, you have a shot at making it BIG, maybe, though who or what seems entirely a crapshoot (nobody knows. How do you know if you're going to be the next Stephenie Meyer? Quality of writing, content, genre - it all seems completely random). But on the other hand, we all equally lament the fact that the industry as it stands has seem to have lost its purpose. When I read this article, I thought, how nice, once upon a time, publishers existed because they cared about literature. Because they wanted to help great writers contribue something to society. They did it because it was important. Now it's near impossible to hold onto that mentality and still turn a profit it seems. There's SO MUCH on the bookshelves, and yes, as a lover of books I think that's nice. But on the other hand, I wonder how much of it is actually good. And how do I FIND the good stuff?

I kinda feel like the bubble is bursting here. For everyone in the world, publishing included. I hope that maybe this forces people to look hard again what the values of such an industry exists for. As a low-profit margin industry, I think it's a fallacy to be caught up in blockbusters that exist for half a NY minute. There's no way around being low-profit, then you might as well reinvent your business model to achieve the original purpose of publishing as it was in its purist form.

Easier said then done, I know. And it's already happened, so I don't see how it can be undone. As a writer, of course I love this idea that I can maybe make some dream advance of 7 figures (ha) and make it my career. But that's not why I got into it. And so, as a reader, I'd ask - no, PLEAD - with the industry to change the way it operates. I'm afraid that the way it's going, it's erasing literature as we know it. And pretty soon, we're going to be Hollywood in print, where everyone just awaits the next Adam Sandler movie and forgets that once upon a time, people went to the movies because it was an art form.

I don't know if that makes sense. It's just that the fate of publishing I think is bigger than just about a capital venture. It's about the masses. It's about the art we put out there. It's about what will endure, 100 years after we're gone? If Twilight is hailed as the best of our century, I might as well quit now. I got into this mess because literature is art. And I suspect that, for a lot of editors and agents, they did too. But the business model of publishing is killing that, and I just can't stand to see that happen.

Also: boycott the Kindle. That's just book blasphemy.

Sensory overload

2009-02-19T03:32:00.004-05:00

I just finished Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas for class. Jesus.

First of all, I started this book all thinking it was this fictional novel, until I read the back flap and saw it was classified as nonfiction/journalism. Um. Really? I think it's supposedly based on real events, but it's so wild that I don't see how this is JOURNALISM... I don't KNOW....

The only other thing I can say is that while the book was really funny at times, overall, the consistent barrage of sensory overload and craziness was hard to stomach, even for only 200 pages. I mean I guess that's the point, given that it's a book about an INCREDIBLE AMOUNT OF DRUGS but omg, by the time I got to page 100, reading the book was making me anxious. I was fine with the first half, but the more I read, the more tense I became, and not in a good way, but in a omg, this is just too much kind of way. Now I need to go like.. meditate to calm my nerves. That book itself was like a drug trip.

Um yeah. That's all. Geez.

Update on the WiP.

2009-02-18T04:09:00.005-05:00

My new strategy is: pound out shitty, completely unfleshed out, unstyled scenes. In almost screenplay style. Just to get general dialogue, location and action down so I know what the hell is going on in my novel. I figure the sooner I have a collection of scenes to work with, the sooner I can go back, piece them together skillfully, and then rewrite them with the tone and attention to detail I usually give my writing.

No, I'm not adding any of this to my word count. I don't think this kind of crap deserves to be in the word count. Word count only counts my nice, thoughtful sequential chapter writing.

The thing is, I'm not a great outliner for creative writing. I rarely know exactly what's going to happen when or where until I'm about to write it. So I pretty much write on the fly and figure it out as I go along.

The problem with this is that when I'm working with three different interwoven points in time, it's really hard to put it together nicely. It's like a puzzle to me, the placement and juxtaposition of a backstory with a present story. And I can't do it when I don't know all the pieces I'm working with.

I'm also leaving out a HUGE element of uncanniness that I mean to insert at some point.

Things I'm trying to consciously avoid doing:
- Use adverbs
- Use my commas to control people's breathing.

God, I'm churning out absolute shit here, but it's the only way I know how this story turns out. Trying to let loose.

=edit=

Wow, that exercise really worked. 3500 "shit" words. I wrote out an entire line of my story (sort of), and honestly, it broke my heart so much, I cried while writing it. Hahahhaa. Yay!

How romantic.

2009-02-12T23:09:00.000-05:00

PaperCuts just posted this: Customizable erotic novels! Woohoo!!!!

http://papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/11/yes-your-name-here-said-yes-i-will-yes/

Free books? All over that.

2009-02-12T05:13:00.003-05:00

I just saw this listing in DailyCandy:

You or the Invention of Memory
What: A delusional narrator relays his story in one long, obsessive love letter to a woman addressed only as “you.”
Why: For the honorable, uber-modern, and interactive publicity campaign called The New You Project.
When: Live reading, Sun., 7 p.m.
Where: KGB Bar, 85 E. 4th St., b/t Second & Third Aves.

Intrigued, I hopped over to the link. And, if you email the publicist between now and Vday, she'll send you a free book! Dude, I emailed her! I want to read a free book!

Also, I'm interested to see how this campaign works out. The publicist in me wants to know how a word of mouth campaign pans out for this book. So my interest in this is definitely two-fold.

I hope she sends me a book!

Blue is the color people turn in the dark.

2009-02-07T21:48:00.008-05:00

Okay, just finished Edinburgh.

This book is really beautiful and lyrical, in a way I didn't expect. I'm glancing over the back of the book now, and the word "arresting" from a review catches my eye. It's an appropriate assessment, I think. The language is mesmerizing, washes over you. I think it's appropriate that there's an entire section called "Blue", that there is an entire metaphor to be had about the color, that the cover is blue, because the feeling that came across me as I read this book was this feeling of being washed in a deep blue. I don't know what that means, but sometimes I feel and think and sense in colors, and this book was blue - not in the sense of "being sad" but just the hue, if that makes any sense at all.

This book is not an easy read. The content is difficult, makes one squirm. Issues of pedophilia and self-mutilation and suicide are dealt with earnestly, starkly, to a point where it sits uneasily with you. And yet, the story is told with such a compelling voice that you can't help but want to keep reading. I felt urged to go on, not in the way you want to watch a trainwreck, but in the way you want to hear the story of a trainwreck, gory details and all. Fee's story, and his telling of it, never made me feel overly sentimental or grief or anything particularly heartwrenching in a big way. And what I mean by that is that it was never cathartic sort of deep aching that was released with tears. Instead it is subtle, quiet, in the way it affects you. It's so intesnely horrifying that you, like Fee, feel almost detached from it, aware only of an uneasiness that spreads through your stomach. I squirmed a lot reading this book, felt traumatized from the very beginning. But maybe that's what's great about it. You live the trauma. You want that resolution.

The thing about this book is that, well, there is no resolution. Just like kids who live with this kinda thing in real life, there is no easy fix. You get to the end, and it's not that it feels unfulfilling - it's where it should be - but there's no ending with a shiny bow at the end. You take a deep breath and you move on. This is the best there is for now. I'm not sure how I feel about the ending to be honest - I'm still trying to process it and understand it. But it is what it is, and I accept it as the only way it could be.

The other thing I enjoyed about the book, especially in the earlier sections, was its love of music. As a person who, once upon a time, sang in a classical choir, was voice trained, and loves music, I thought the love affair with music and the power one's voice can have, was stunning and accurate, very fresh in paralleling a boy's sadness and insecurity and guilt.

I had a few issues here and there with Chee's choices. For one, I felt that Warden's section in his voice felt too similar to Fee's. There was little differentiation. I mean, I love Chee's voice, but once teenage Warden appears, it becomes apparent to me that this is Chee's voice, not his characters. I was fine with the voice being Fee's - an eccentric boy who has turned into a thoughtful man - but for Warden I wanted something different. It didn't sit well with me that he sounded too mature for his years, even if he has all that history and confusion. It didn't seem right.

Another issue (and forgive me if this offends anyone, as it's not my intention) I had was that it seemed a bit overloaded on the homosexuality in almost every boy that appears. I mean, I understand that Fee's world is surrounded by confused boys who have been molested (or not), but it began to seem strange to me that every boy Fee encountered in his life pretty much was or became gay. Or that even Warden himself would turn out to be gay. It seemed a strange coincidence to me that, especially in Warden's case, asked too much of me. This affinity Warden immediately feels for Fee (and vice versa) asked me to set aside too much. I can buy they end up in the same school, but this recognition of souls immediately? I don't know. It's not that I mind that the book was filled with mostly homosexual boys and men trying to deal with their issues, but it also seemed... easy, for lack of a better word. Too pat.

Nonetheless, I enjoyed the book quite a bit and I couldn't put it down. It's one of those books that should be enjoyed slowly and yet I found myself speeding through it (though it took me much longer than a book of 200+ pages would normally take me to read), despite its dense pages. At times I went back and reread certain portions of his text to absorb his words. I'm sure I missed a few good ones because I was going through it too fast (as I'm prone to do), but even then, there were so many passages I tabbed because they caught me. So here they are:

Tammamo, I decide, is mightier. For the man she loves lived to die a natural death, and the Greeks always kill the mortals they love, through design or accident. None of these gods would renounce their godhood.
--[pg. 25, Edinburgh]

I see as I watch, her comparison of our voices is a false one: a woman's voice is different, so very different, and hers, ridged by vibrato, cuts like a serrated blade, where we boys stab like swords - our voices tremble not at all. Knowledge, specifically knowledge of passion, makes you shake, apparently. As you answer for it before God, singing for your short, beautiful life to inch forward even by another minute. Even in the agony of loss is passion, is love, and measured against death this sort of pain is a feast, also, and requires a knife to carve it.
--[pg. 53, Edinburgh]

Under his instructions, I am to speak with him when I arrive, after school at four, and when I leave, at six. At no other time, unless, of course, he comes to find me. But these restrictions leave me feeling free inside the silence, which, inside his house, is as thick as the drapes that protect his dark house from the light that would bleach the color from the chairs and yellow all the books. Even in their pristine cases. The relief of nothing to say. I'd always prized silence for being the absence of other noises. In this house I come to see how one can prize silence for being articulate, as well.
--[pg. 81, Edinburgh]

Sex is asking someone to touch you where your skin is thinnest.
--[pg. 110, Edinburgh]

Hate is love on fire, set out to burn like a flare on the side of the road. It says, stop here. Something terrible has happened. Envy is like, the skin you're in burns. And the salve is someone else's skin.
--[pg. 152, Edinburgh]

Blue. Blue because it's the color people turn in the dark. Because it's the color of the sky, of the center of the flame, of a diamond hit by an X ray. Blue is the knife edge of lightning. Blue is the color, a rose grower tells you, that a rose never reaches.
--[pg. 191, Edinburgh]

Metal is like love, it takes its temperature from touch.
--[pg. 202, Edinburgh]

There were a lot of other passages that I thought were great, or observations, or metaphors, or turns of phrases, but I can't exactly go around typing out the whole book... In any case, I think this is a terrific read, if not exactly a heartwarming pick me up. It's a thoughtful book. And it makes me want to meet Alexander Chee, because he seems like a thoughtful kind of person.

Also, something else I wanted to mention (I keep thinking of more things!) - I really appreciated how Fee's being half-Korean in this story wasn't an overarching THEME in his book. Like, it was but only as it related to Fee himself and the main story he was telling. It's so refreshing to see a protagonist who is Asian (or half, rather) because he is and not because this is some Asian American/Hapa identity story. It was woven in effortlessly, and was an integral part of who Fee is as a person and how he views the world and the things he thinks about, but it was never a political issue in it of itself. As an Asian writer who is always trying to avoid becoming Amy Tan, I think that is so freaking AWESOME.

One last thing that just occurred to me as I looked over the cover. The cover shows the word "EDIN" and then "BURGH" typeset slightly below it. Which then made me think about it. And how really clever it is. Edin-burgh = Eden Burrow. Maybe I'm reading too much into it (but given Chee's consistent interest in words and wordplay, I don't think I am), but take that with all the underground tunnels and digging. And the fall from innocence. And the religious singing (Kyrie eleison). What an inherently clever little title that is so freaking perfect it actually floors me. I could never have come up with this. And of course, it gives the whole thing about tunnels that much more weight. Brilliant.

Okay I'm done. I'm off to google Alexander Chee. =D

A nice little writer's moment.

2009-02-07T20:05:00.004-05:00

I'm reading Alexander Chee's Edinburgh, courtesy of Moonie, who lent me her copy since I couldn't find it in Barnes. I stayed up late last night reading about 2/3 of it, and will be done before the day's end, with things to say about it and passages to quote. In the mean time, I thought this was a neat little writerly meta moment:

At the low edge of the sky, a bright smear. The slow burning, light pealing like struck bells at the speed of its passing. A bright tear in the night's dark belly.

Did you ever notice, I tell Alyssa, shortly before we leave the comet's company. How tear, as in to cry, and tear, as into rip or pull, how they're spelled the same? You could write them and someone reading would not know if you were crying or separating.

You'd know, she tells me. You would know.
--[pgs. 146-147, Edinburgh]

Interesting because after I read that, I went back to the first paragraph and re-examined the sentence, and realized I couldn't tell which tear he meant. It struck me. What a neat little moment, where Chee steps in and makes you notice his writing for a second, makes you think twice about what you thought you knew about what he was describing, and how the imagery is so different for both, and yet a little bit of both.

Understated prose

2009-02-06T03:33:00.002-05:00

I finished Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion for class a couple days ago. The only thing I've read of Didion before this was A Year of Magical Thinking, which I loved. Of course, knowing all of that, I was very curious to find out what kind of fiction writer she is.

Play It As It Lays is really accessible. Written with deceptively simple, sparse prose, it was a quick read. But I must say, the detached way it deals with some of the nitty gritty was simply cringe-worthy. But in a good way.

For instance, there's a scene where the protagonist gets an abortion. It's done in this horrible, detached way, where Maria is trying to focus on other things, other thoughts and this "scraping" noise and the doctor says something like, "Don't scream, Maria, people will hear you, it's not that bad". You don't even get from the narrator (a 3rd person close) that she's screaming, so that kind of outside detail totally hits you. In fact, any evidence of emotion is never disclosed by the third person narration, even though it very well could. Which struck me as interesting.

The depiction of the abortion made me, as a woman, cringe. I'm very strongly pro-choice, but this idea of a forced abortion was something that I could very easily identify with as being a traumatic experience. That was one of the hardest scenes to get through for me. Though, honestly, there's a ton of sections that are easy to read but HARD to get through if you know what I mean. I sometimes couldn't bear it. Not because it was over the top painful, but because it was so understated that it made me squirm, knowing what lay beneath.

The near-ending is sad. So sad, in fact, that my professor, who was reading it out loud to us today in class, teared up and got all choked up. But again, it's understated, and that's what makes it so powerful.

I enjoy Didion's prose, I really do. I wasn't sure how I'd like this book since stories about starlets living in the whole sex and drugs industry isn't really my thing. But Didion somehow makes it accessible and gritty while still maintaining a sense of sad beauty.

I liked this.

A book to revisit much later.

2009-02-06T03:01:00.002-05:00

I just finished The Maytrees, Annie Dillard's supposed last novel. (Right under the midnight mark!) I started it back in January before I went back to NY and then didn't finish it for a long time. In fact, I stopped right around when the novel takes a turn, so you could say I read it in two separate parts.

The book is slow, thoughtful, beautiful. I sometimes have trouble with books written the way Dillard has written hers - there is a lot of detail and beautiful abstraction that I don't quite grasp, mostly because I'm used to speeding through my books without taking time to digest individual sentences. However, I found that once I slowed down, I began to appreciate the book a lot more. This book is actually extremely touching and poignant, in a very quiet, understated way. And (and tell me what it is about these New England writers that they're able to do this so well!) the whole thing felt like a beautiful trip to the seaside, with the remorse that goes with it when the sun finally gives way to night.

The book is about love and life. No, really it is. The quietness of the book balances well with the scope of it. The interesting thing to me is that I understood the earlier sections of the book better, because they were things I could relate to. But towards the end, as we get to the twilight of their years, I found myself more and more lost - not that the writing became confusing or anything - but that the metaphors and descriptions used became more and more unfamiliar to me. And I suspect that these are themes that, because I can only imagine at, and have barely thought about myself, don't touch me nearly as deeply, and so the more abstract moments are harder for me to connect with. I do think this is a book I'll want to revisit in a few years, when I'm older perhaps.

I had a bit of trouble reconciling that the major dramatic event of the husband running off with the friend, was dealt with in such a quiet manner, and ultimately forgiven easily. But I also suspect that this is because in my short short life, I cannot fathom the kind of peace one might be able to develop over 20 years. While the angry me wanted some sort of justice met, it seemed appropriate that this love was complex enough that it allowed for quiet forgiveness. And I can only hope that I mature in such a graceful way.

There are quite a few passages I read that I felt were worth noting - however, in my first half of reading, I didn't have flags with me (and I don't write or dogear my books), so now I've forgotten. But a few from the second half:

What gave adults the cheer to tolerate their hypocrisy? Even his mother praised generosity and hoarded; she preached industry and barely worked. Perhaps every generation passes to the next, to hand down to yet more children, an untouched trunk of virtues. The adults describe the trunk's contents to the young and never open it.
--[pg. 96, The Maytrees]

Early with Lou , then with Deary, and again now, he returned to this: Why can love, love apparently absolute, recur? And recur? Why does love feel it is - know for certain it is - eternal and absolute, every time?
--[pg. 127, The Maytrees]

And forgiveness had nothing to do with it. They were both whole people, he and Lou. Whole old people. At their age forgiveness could be child's play if you knew the ropes, and so could be the nod that accepted forgiveness of course and moved on. Young, he would have thought any end, even dying, beat being forgiven, let alone by a woman, and beat asking for help, too, let alone asking the wife he left for help. Now he and Lou - if Lou was like Pete, whom he more wronged - could meet as equals. His asking would honor her goodness. His willingness to ask was part of what he now knew best: to think well of those you have wronged, let alone those who have wronged you. He hoped Lou's thinking had brought her there, too. He really hoped. Just till Deary died.
--[pg. 152, The Maytrees]

I did quite enjoy this book and would recommend it for people who can be patient and slowly absorb the richness of this book. I definitely want to revisit it again at a later point too, when hopefully some of the later text will resonate with me stronger.

Oh wait. I found a couple passages from the earlier part of the book I want to add:

He fell in love with Lou again and again. Walking, he held her hand. She seemed, then and now, to roll or float over the world evenly, acting and giving and taking, never accelerating, never slowing, wearing a slip of red or blue scarf. Her mental energy and endurance matched his. She neither competed nor rebelled. Her freedom strengthened him, as did her immeasurable reserve. Often she seemed the elder. She opened their house to everyone. Actively, she accepted what came to her, like a well-sailed sloop with sea room. Her face was an organ of silence. That he did not possess her childhood drove him wild. Who was this imposter she sang with in college - how dare he?

Their intimacy flooded. Love like a tide either advances or retreats, Maytree opined into a recent notebook. Their awarenesses rode waves paired like outriggers. Maytree thought Plato wrong: physical senses and wordless realms neither diverge or oppose; they meet as nearest neighbors in the darkness of personality and embrace.
--[pg. 46, The Maytrees]

-Until you have a baby, her mohter had said, you don't know what love is! Her mother volunteered this on the day of Lou's one and only wedding. -Oh, Lou wanted to say, go soak your head. After Lou brought forth Petie, she at once recalled her mother's words, forgave, and endorsed them. That her mother was so often right no longer irked her. As she would never irk Petie, now joyful in her arms. He sucked her nose. Later his pointy fingers made faces with her face. She never put him down. She must feel his skin on her, feel his cranium in her arm's crook, his belly on her belly, and smell his breath, his scalp, etc., etc. He obviously felt the same way. They were pieces of each other foully parted. When they had to separate, she took ever-deeper breaths as if air had no use. Her sternum and her ventral torso and arms ached. Maytree had some horseshoe magnets in the kitchen. She gave each a wrench to hold.
--[pg. 49, The Maytrees]

How age changes your perspective...

2009-02-03T04:10:00.002-05:00

I just finished reading The Tower Treasure which is the first in the classic Hardy Boys series. It was tons of fun to read (for class), but I have to say:

1. I don't remember this stuff being so cheesy/campy. I guess it's like watching the Brady Bunch. It's all gosh darnit, swell.

2. The Hardy brothers get along a little too well. Don't boys like.. fight or something?

3. I love the depiction of dating. They think some girl is awesome and they "date her a lot" and that's about it. By the way they describe it, you'd think they were just friends hanging out. Where's the romance? The spark? The boys treat the girls the way I treat... well... boys I'm only sort of friends with!

4. The mysteries state the obvious. I guess that's good for the kids reading, but for me I was like um.. is it that hard?

5. They don't really seem to go to school at all. Their dad even wrote them a note to excuse them from homework since they were solving mysteries!

6. I love how the depiction of family life is so ... traditional. Dad works, Mom makes picnic sandwiches...

7. I always thought the Hardy boys were like... 13. But they're actually like 18!

8. Women are depicted so funnily. One lady faints and needs smelling salts. I seriously never understood the whole fainting stereotype with women. How many women do you actually know who have actually fainted from some shocking bit of news?

That being said, it's terrific fun. Next I get to read Nancy Drew!