March 2012: 2 of 3

Stuff I’ve Been Reading: March 2012

6. A Gate at the Stairs (40%) by Lorrie Moore. Familiar with some of Moore’s exquisite short stories, I thought one of her more recent novels was a fair gamble at a dollar, but I found it not to my liking, primarily because of the narrator’s stream-of-consciousness style. I left this book in the seat back pocket of an international flight in the hopes that it would entertain someone else more than it did me.

7. The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes. Is it bragging to confess that I purchased this novel in Shakespeare and Company, the famous English-language bookstore in Paris? (Yes.) Having read only Arthur & George, about which I felt ambivalent, I was worried that Barnes’ award-winning newest novel would not be to my taste, but my fears were groundless. Exploring issues of time, memory, character, and the unknowable minds of those we thought we understood, this contemplative novel slowly accumulates emotional weight as the protagonist learns to reinterpret his past.

8. Old School by Tobias Wolff. After I heard Wolff’s stupendous short story “Bullet in the Brain” read aloud on a podcast, I instantly began searching for his work. Old School was amusingly and unintentionally related to The Sense of an Ending in that both had to do with private boys’ schools; but Wolff’s novel is a bildungsroman of an emerging writer and paid homage to several well-known figures in literature. It would be hard to say which of the two I liked better, for I enjoyed them both very much.

9. Wit’s End by Karen Joy Fowler. On the return flight, I thumbed through Wit’s End by the author of The Jane Austen Club which I read many years ago when it came out and of Sarah Canary, a strange novel about journeying through the West in the time of the railroad. This novel, about a woman who moves in with her mystery-writer godmother after the death of her father makes her the last of her family, is a quirky getting-in-touch-with-oneself narrative dotted with eccentric characters and descriptions of California. I left it on the plane as well.

Probably you won’t hear much from me

for the next couple of weeks because I am going to be doing Christmas Traveling. Six nights with one side of the family, seven nights with the other, with intermittent internet. Also, good food, gifts, and fun times.

Merry Christmas!

That was a lot of food

1. Many Food. I just got back from a trip to see friends and family during which time I was either eating out or eating in. Turkey and ham. Mexican and Italian. Two kinds of apple pie.

2. Plus Some Shopping. I also did Black Friday shopping, although no doorbusting. I bought I Shall Wear Midnight by Terry Pratchett, though it is not yet clear how the protagonist Tiffany Aching, witch, intends to do so. No matter. There are Nac Mac Feegle, so the book is spectacular. If you don’t know who the Nac Mac Feegle are, you need to read The Wee Free Men right away.

3. But Mostly Words. Oh yeah, and I also wrote nearly ten thousand words during the duration of the trip. Despite having been in the car for almost six hours today, I’m exactly on schedule with my word count, at just shy of six thousand words to the end of the novel. That’s the end of Chapter Nine and all of Chapter Ten. Four days left. I plan to finish on the twenty-ninth, but if not, it’ll be the thirtieth. Either way, I will have written a novel that I quite like and for which I have serious and exciting revision plans in December and January.

June 21

I’ve been reading and writing, and I haven’t gone away yet, though I will, shortly, to Oklahoma for a while.  Until August.  But I’ll still blog.  Maybe.

I’m about ready to give up the Amelia Peabody series, which I’ve been reading for two months, but which has gone drastically downhill.  It’s such a shame!  I enjoyed the hilarity for the first few, but the three most recent have been decidedly lacking in quality.  Maybe I’ll give it one more book.  Because I’m generous like that.  But just in case, do you have any ideas for an alternate default series?  Light, easy, and fun, with plenty of books in the series already, and possibly a mystery?  (Don’t say Agatha Christie.  I’ve already been there.  Twice.)

I’m also working on a guest post for the American Literary Review blog, to which I’ll post a link when it goes up on Wednesday.  It’s about Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth.  It’s a good book, far better than my post about it.

I read somewhere that you should avoid beginning most of your sentences or paragraphs with “I,” because that’s egotistical and, ultimately, uninteresting.

I guess I’m egotistical.  Which I wouldn’t mind, if I could be this guy.

Anton Ego

June 16

1.  The two books I haven’t finished this month so far are Pointed Roofs by Dorothy Richardson, a remainder from my modern British fiction class that I opened to justify the purchase, and The Man Who Made Friends with Himself by Christopher Morley, which I was more than a little bit sorry to dislike.  I’d enjoyed Parnassus on Wheels, Morley’s whimsical first novel, but this his last novel lacked the same lightheartedness, I felt, as well as any discernible plot.  The main character was just too pithy for me.

2. The book I’ve set the former aside for is Stories, a collection of all-new fantastic fiction edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio.  I tore it open and read the first three stories in the bookstore and on the drive home.  So far, they have not disappointed.

3. I’m formulating a list of books to bring with me on my five-week absentation from my bookcase.  Books that are coming with me that I’ve already read are The Left Hand of Darkness and A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin, A Conspiracy of Kings by Megan Whalen Turner, Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis, The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope, about which I’m writing a paper, and Locked Rooms by Laurie R. King, which I plan to reread before segueing into Language of Bees, the next book in the series.  I consider this a modest list.

May 25

Hawaii was lovely.  Between spending time at the beach and the Hawaiian Chocolate Company that was in the lobby of the hotel, I saw tanned surfers and tourists with interestingly patterned sunburns, more shops than a fanatic could enter, the view from Diamond Head crater, lighthouses, waves, mountains, pineapples, Pearl Harbor and Punchbowl cemetery, and no fewer than seven Japanese brides and grooms in the hotel.  I ate too much, of course, but managed to avoid the worst of a sunburn, and sat for many hours on the lanai (patio) of our top floor room overlooking the rolling sapphire waves.

Here’s the only picture I took in Hawaii, standing on the lanai, looking down at a rainbow that seemed to end right at my feet.  In person, you were able to see three enormous sea turtles through the clear water.  As I say: lovely.

Hawaii

May 18

1. Hail Is Hell.  My car was damaged in a hailstorm this weekend.  The windshield shattered, and the car has dents on the hood, roof, and trunk.  Major dents.  Dents caused by ice cubes the size of baseballs.  The insurance company called the event a “catastrophe.”  The windshield at least is getting repaired, but meanwhile I decided I don’t like hail.  (If anyone wants to buy a perfectly functional, hail-dented car, do let me know.)

2. Hello and Goodbye.  I’m back from a trip and about to leave on a trip.  I’ll be gone tomorrow for a week to the only state that’s also an archipelago, where I will doubtlessly be one of the few tourists without a camera.  If you want to know what Hawaii looks like, you’d better google it, because you’re not getting any photos out of me.

3.  Things I Might Do on the Eight-Hour Flight. 

• Read a novel.
• Write part of my own novel.
• Edit either or both of two possible novels.
• Rewrite a short story.
• Listen to music or podcasts.
• Journal.
• Play sudoku (expert).
• Read another novel.
• Sleep.

And I’m quite looking forward to it.  Nothing makes an introvert happier than a long stretch of time in which to devise entertainments for herself.