If only I had a few more hours in the day… October 27, 2010

My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.  -Anton Chekhov

30 Books Everyone Should Read Before Age Thirty 

(look at how I’m choosing to overlook the questionable grammar in the article’s actual title–point for me. Everyone…they…how hard is subject-verb agreement, people-who-love-books-enough-to-make-that-list?)

I don’t remember how I got to this site, but it’s actually a pretty good list. There are a few lists I like a little better out there, like this MLA list from 2006 (that one has some recent titles I wouldn’t necessarily include), but it’s still worth a scan. I’ve only read 14, and three of them happen to be in that stack that just got swept off my nightstand into a box.

I guess I’d better get on it. My twenty-something clock is up in January. Tick, tick, tick.

Can you hear that ticking sound, too? It’s awfully loud over here.

Getting out of hand, even for me October 24, 2010

You know what the saddest thing about this stack is? It just got tossed into a moving box. My book collection (the only thing I have that piles up and escapes my obsessive, compulsive desire to throw things away) has been packed away since we moved from Tennessee to Iowa last year. Now that we’re back in Nashville and about to move to a new house next weekend, I think it may actually be time to unpack them this go-around. We’ll see if I can manage to feel permanent.

The theme of this current stack is loosely “what I should have read in high school–or did read and can’t remember because I was too busy doing what stupid high-schoolers do,” with a few heavies and fluff stories mixed in for good measure. I just re-read All Quiet on the Western Front and The Things They Carried and, as a result, keep dreaming I’m under heavy enemy fire that causes my helicopter to crash.

I’ll update y’all sometime next year when I find that box again and actually get to read these. Deal?

An unexpectedly good read August 19, 2010

I keep writing posts in draft and forgetting to finish them. Today is my day off, and I’m trying to convince myself to participate in a webinar (Is there a more evil concept ON THE PLANET???) on a new assessment tool in a few hours. Enter bloggy procrastination! I also need to finish FL Part 2.

In typical Vanessa fashion, I’m halfway through several of the “brain food” books I said I was going to read next, and they’ve been abandoned in various hiding places throughout the house. I have a stack waiting for me. However, I got sidetracked  by this little novel.

From the back cover: Uneasy with the sacrifices and social demotion of motherhood from the start, Eva fears that her alarming dislike for her own son may be responsible for driving him so nihilistically off the rails.

I first picked it up because of what I perceived to be the main subject matter: a school shooting. However, the story is really about the aftermath of such a massacre (fictional), set two years later. Here’s what I found intriguing–it’s told from the perspective of the mother of the student who murders seven classmates and two adults. The story is really about the mother and her journey as she tries to forge a new life while grasping for understanding of what her son has done and why. I’m not sure I can really express how much I liked this book without giving away too much of the storyline, but the writing is EXCELLENT. I love the way the author turns her phrases and describes one mother’s deepest, never-discussed emotions. This is trite, but it’s just smart writing, for lack of a better phrase. The story is told is a series of letters to Eva’s estranged husband. The tone is dark and brutal, and Eva is full of neuroses and self-doubt that I think any parent can commiserate with. Her humor is ironic, and the story almost reads like satire at times. Obviously, the subject is heartbreaking and disturbing and sometimes offensive, but that’s sort of the point. This character is screaming out in her letters what she can’t say in her real life, to real people–she somehow comes across as totally unhinged and unshakably serene all at the same time.

I don’t follow the best-seller lists, and this came out in 2003, so I’m probably well behind the times in discovering this writer. Better late than never, right? I’ve read several hackneyed stories as the popularity of this topic surged after Columbine and all the other tragedies, and they mostly just annoyed me. I’m referring to any fictional recreations–the documentaries on the actual events are fascinating to me.  This one is the exception. Pick it up. It’s just under 400 pages, and I flew through it because I wanted to get to the resolution. GOOD STORY.

What’s on my nightstand, Summer Edition July 20, 2010

I’m not sure how, but I have found some minutes to read this summer. I intentionally chose a lot of lighter books (though, it turns out, these have pretty dark themes–oops), mostly chick fiction and such. It’s just so nice to get lost in a story that’s not your own. Here are a few I’d recommend as worth the time stolen away to sneak in a few pages at a time.

I assume you have at least one small or not-so-small person constantly clamoring for your undivided attention, as I do. If you happen to have the time to read these luxuriously alone, just don’t tell me about it, okay? I’d just as soon assume everyone is as frazzled as I am.

The Piano Teacher, by Janice Y.K. Lee

 

The World Below, by Sue Miller (a quick read, but the first fiction book I’ve read in years that made me grab a pen to underline phrases I liked. It was all marked up by the end–a sign of a good read!)

 

Paint it Black, by Janet Fitch (one of my favorites this summer and also quite marked up by the end)

 

The Reader, by Bernhard Schlink (another very quick read, loved it as well)

 

The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, by Kim Edwards

 

So, to counteract some of that estrogen-laden reading list and to get my brain back in school-year mode, here are the next three in my lineup (plus some romantic classics if I can round them up):

Quirkology: How We Discover the Big Truth in Small Things, by Richard Wiseman (he also wrote The Luck Factor)

 

Delivered From Distraction, by Edward Hallowell and John Ratey

 

 The Narcissim Epidemic, by Jean Twenge and W. Keith Campbell  (Twenge also wrote Generation Me)

I write like… July 19, 2010

http://iwl.me/

A friend posted about this funny little website that analyzes your writing style and tells you what famous author your writing most closely resembles. I find this intriguing, though I did exactly zero research into how it actually makes this determination. It’s the literary equivalent of reading your horoscope, right?

So, I popped in four or five blog entries, and this is the guy who came up every time but one.

David Foster Wallace

I consulted Wikipedia because I was totally willing to put all of 19 seconds into finding out who this guy is, and now I want to go grab a few of his books to add to the pile of unread books on my nightstand. It’s more of a tower than a pile at this point, really.

Oh, I went and flipped through a few of his books at Barnes & Noble. The one I wanted to read is over 1,000 pages. I think that one will have to wait for Christmas break.

I just cannot keep up with all the books. I’m trying. I want to read them all. ALL.

Here’s one excerpt from the Wiki entry: Wallace’s novels often combine various writing modes or voices, and incorporate jargon and vocabulary (sometimes invented) from a wide variety of fields. His writing featured self-generated abbreviations and acronyms, long multi-clause sentences, and a notable use of explanatory footnotes and endnotes—often nearly as expansive as the text proper.

He also suffered from crippling depression for over 20 years and killed himself in 2008, but that’s neither here nor there.

I think.

Sounds about right to me. I make up words, write entire posts composed primarily of run-on hyphenated sentences, and use as many parentheses as periods.

Pretty spot on, random word analyzer. Good job.

What’s on your nightstand? January 11, 2010

Okay, escapism.

I typically have about 2-3 books going at once, depending on where they land around the house. The other day, someone asked me what I liked to read, and I found myself unable to answer. That’s a simple question, right? I have a feeling my book collection (were it it not packed into assorted boxes located in various states at the moment) makes me look a little unbalanced. I have a little of everything, and if I owned every book I wanted to, I would have thousands and thousands. Actually, I would just own them ALL if I could. All the books. That’s practical.

The answer, which came to me about three days later, is: I like a good story.

That’s it, really. I like a story that, depending on my mood, makes me think/cry/smile/remember/forget/imagine/learn/re-think. I’m partial to some authors, but it’s a fairly small list. I like to read new authors and hear new voices. I want a story that makes it hard for someone in the room to get my attention when I’m reading it.

I’ll resist the urge to edit this list to make me appear more intellectual than I am. Honesty counts for something, right? Here’s a sample of what’s actually on my nightstand right now (it’s a little girl-fiction heavy):

The Street (Ann Petry)

The World Below (Sue Miller)

The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins)–My friend Nathan keeps me up on what all the kiddies are reading…

The Queen’s Mistake (Diane Haeger)

Places to Look for a Mother (Nicole Stansbury)

 

I’m mostly reading fiction at the moment–but I like books on social psychology, historical figures, true crime novels, doomed love stories…I like rich words and paragraphs that take some time to sort through and absorb. I like numbers and back-stories. I will even pick up the rare self-help book. I won’t read a straight-up romance novel, and I won’t read Christian fiction (hold your fire, I just don’t). I just took a stack of books back to the library, and for the life of me can only remember the title to one (totally different from everythink else in the stack, but fed my analytical-nerd side nicely):

I also have The Time Traveler’s Wife  on my waiting list, and a big long list of classics to re-read. Not that I have time to read any of these, mind you. I’ve been reading the same paragraph in The Street for about three days, but I’m trying.

Tell me the last phenomenal book you read.

Sidebar: I always wonder what’s going on when a blogger is posting, especially when I know there are tiny people around. Baby Girl is sitting across the table from me with a tub full of dry pinto beans and about 20 tea cups, serving me some “very hot hot cocoa.” Just so you know.

Her contributions to the book club lean a little more Eric Carle and Dora the Explorer. I’m dealing as best I can. Oh, how I hate Dora.