Book of the Night Club

Well, Crap!

Publishers Weekly reports that Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has asked its editors to stop buying books.

This is just too sad to contemplate, regardless of how long the "temporary" measures last.

Books a Million

This is the room that is meant to be our home office (more mine than his, because Richard actually has an office). Right now the room is a bit busy to be more than a storage facility, however...

Roughly 94% of everything in this room is books. Yes, books. Got something to say about it? I will have you know that I gave away 30 boxes of books to the local library for their Friends sale, and they were very grateful.

Once we get this room cleaned out and the books all sorted, we can sand and paint the room and make it more presentable. At which point, we may address the additional boxes of books in the basement...

David Foster Wallace, 1962-2008

Fuck

They say creative people are at a greater risk for mental illness. Not that someone who commits suicide is mentally ill, necessarily. I don't know for sure; it’s not my place to judge. I do know that feeling of hopelessness, the inability to believe that eventually things will be better. Having recently...okay, right now...been in that place of feeling like the world cannot change, I cannot change, things cannot be better or get better, things fall apart, things pile up, the dust and the dishes are always there, another evil person is waiting to take the place of the ones who are defeated, there's another hurricane coming, another train wreck, another plane crash, another suicide bombing. There are the things I can't unsay to people I love or loved, the things I can't say to people who are dead and gone, the things I keep doing over and over again to myself that make my life more painful than it needs to be, I know. Trust me, I know.

Even though I believe that no one can ever really be truly known or understood by another person in that way that we all deeply want to, I also think it's true that we're all in that place together, that there are always people who love you in their fumbling, frustrating, unsatisfying ways, and would want you around tomorrow. We all need to hold on to that as best we can, trust that once the worst is over, we’ll be able to look back into the blackness and laugh. Maybe bitterly, but that’s better than nothing.
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Quick Survey

Let's take a quiz...

Pretend you are me. Just...try. You can do it. You are being force-marched to your company's corporate headquarters for a 1-day meeting. You will be on a shuttle bus for about an hour, on a plane for about 4 hours, then at the hotel for a night, meeting, then a 5-hour flight home (you stop over in LA) back to SFO and an hour shuttle ride home.

How many books do you (being me, remember?) need?

a) 2 - one for each plane ride
b) 5- because you may get bored
c) 7 - this should stop you buying any books at the airport
d) 3 books and at least six audio books on your IPod, because at any moment, you may become bored.
e) Other (please specify)

Thank you for your support!

The Mistress's Daughter

I just finished the new A.M. Homes in anticipation of her April 16 event. I always get the adoption-related events; I asked for one once and since I am adopted, they seem to fall to me now. I suppose there are worse things I could claim.

This book didn't really do it for me, I'll admit. I'm always interested in adoption experiences, but this one could have elicited quite a bit more emotion than it did. It began as a brilliant, emotionally-charged piece in the New Yorker
in 2004. I can't find the essay online anymore, but here's anNPR interview Homes did around that time.

Like Ithaka, Homes’ parents sought her out, but her birth parents are not together like Sarah Saffian’s and never really were. Her mother was her father’s mistress, something that brings to mind images of Lana Turner in Peyton Place.

Given the strength of the original piece, I expected a more powerful, complete tale. Still, I know from experience that the issues brought up by adoption are complex and can take years to resolve, if then. Even though her mother died in 1998 I think she is still too close to the feelings to express herself as well as she does in her fiction.

One thing that struck me was how well the book illustrated how invested people are in their reality and how important that truth is to them. Homes wanted her birth mother to be someone other than she was, and her birth mother wanted Homes to be someone she wasn’t as well. I’m not sure either was prepared for the reality, and I hope I get a chance to discuss it with her in greater detail.

Neil Gaiman's Brain

it seems, sometimes skews in ways vaugely similar to my own.

On his blog today, he talked about a new book he's writing which is pretty much identical to an idea I had.

Oh, well.

Naomi Wolf Explains It All to You

In which Naomi Wolf talks straight about what the Gossip Girl-type books say about girls now, and what books like that are really embracing.

The spookiest part about the whole article is that apparently Cecily von Ziegesar (the author of Gossip Girl) has referred to her books as "aspirational", and seems to think that's a good thing.

I'm not against "light" reading, but I think there's a difference between that and books that seem to glorify girls as vapid, overly-sexualized, materialstic whores-in-waiting. I have issues with that.

Better late than Never

The U.S. Postal Service recognizes Children's Literature.

Moomin Madness

Publishers Weekly's comics newsletter has announced that
Drawn & Quarterly will release a five-book series collecting the Moomin comic strips by Tove Jansson. The first book should be out in September.

YAY! I love the Moomins!

Stephanie

Today is Stephanie Moore's 55th birthday. The celebration this year will be different than in the past, because today is her Memorial Service. She died of ovarian cancer on January 2nd, and now the world is much less bright.

Stephanie was an incredible teacher and endlessly inspiring; she had a presence unlinke anyone I'd ever encountered. I miss her and feel like I've let her down, which is no small thing.

I took some of her writing classes years ago, even though it seems like months. The last time I saw her we mused about it, how it seemed like only a few days ago that I sat on the couch in her living room, warmed by the fire, eating "kitty cookies" and drinking tea, feeling inadequate yet hopeful. I wasn't like the others, who all seemed to have a great deal of disposable income and free time to reflect and muse over plots, lots of people to bounce ideas off of, and most of all, talent. I didn't have that luxury or those gifts. At least I thought so; but Stephanie made me feel differently. Like maybe I could.

At the beginning of each class she'd read a quote from this huge grey book she had, I can't even remember its name. I want that book now, it seems strangely powerful.

Stephanie was one of those people that made you believe that you could do anything. Every time I saw her she told me to write, and that time was "wasting". I guess she'd know that better than most. I wish I had listened.

I sent her a card a few months ago, telling her that when she got better, I'd come back and be in her class again. Like I had that kind of power; like I could make her well. Was I arrogant enough to believe it? Not really. Maybe that's why it didn't work.

I do not grieve well in groups; that may have something to do with how I was raised. You just didn't show your emotions to others, even if you were all feeling the same thing. No matter what, you had to be okay. And I'm not okay right now, I feel sad and a little betrayed, but mainly I feel alone. She was one of the few people I knew who I honestly believed when she said I could write, and now she's gone. I really feel like I let her down by not trying harder, and I'm angry because I didn't need yet another person to disappoint. And also because I still don't have anything to say. I wanted her to see what everyone else saw, not what I desperately wanted others to see but didn't think was real. But she did; she looked into my soul and I think she could see what I really wanted and who I really was. And now she's gone, and one less person in the world can see me.

Harry Potter 6.0

Overall, pretty good. Much better than 5, which can't have been difficult. Reasonably easy to dance to.

I read it, as is my tradition, after I got home from the Harry Potter party at the bookstore. Got home about 1:30, read until 5:00, then slept until about 8:30 and finished the last 150 pages. The husband read it on Saturday, and I think he was pleased. I continue to love the Weasleys.

I don't particularly like the character of Harry Potter, who is really just another kid getting by on luck and personal connections like the entitled ones I knew in my youth. But I think he grew up quite a bit in this volume, and as a result I was much more satisfied. I'll be interested to see what the final story brings.

And I particularly liked the shout-out to Rupert Grint, who portrays Ron Weasley in the films. On page 485 one of the characters mistakenly refers to Ron as Rupert. Cute.

Books

Okay, I've had people asking me where the books are. Have I just stopped reading? Well, no, but I haven't been blogging much and when I do, I don't have a lot of time to do it. So the books get left in the dust, as it were. Also, sometimes I'm just emotionally incapacitated, and I spend all weekend reading book after book. No energy left to blog.

So I think I'll do monthly logs instead of daily ones. So around the first part of each month (beginning in August), I will just list the books I read that month. Fair enough?

Okay, then.

Pulp Fiction

I could browse through these wonderful pulp fiction book covers for hours. In truth, I probably have.

Equally fun is the online exhibit of pulp crime novels, presented by the University of Buffalo Library. Browse through the covers and you'll find all manner of weird, campy, misogynist, and creepy images.

Vote for my old DJ

kinda. Actually, I didn't listen to him when he was at his "pinnacle" station, which played a bit too much metal for my taste, as I did later on. But he's a finalist in a pretty cool Internationsl writing contest, so as a Nebraskan who does not find him as offensive as I find many other Nebraskans, I feel obligated to solicit votes on his behalf.

I'm suprised that I didn't know about Lit Idol, since I tend to follow British publishing pretty closely. But then again, I never tried to write a mystery, so that might explain it.

Book of the Night: Towelhead, by Alicia Erian.