I can't stop reading this book, yet I can't seem to finish it either. Instead, I find myself crawling through it page by page waiting for the slightly monotonous magical realist tale set in post World War II Iraq to come to a close. Many fascinating characters are housed within the pages of The Last of the Angles, but overall the book smacks of something intended for a middle aged ladies' book club.
The amanuenses of Joseph Conrad and Henry James meet by accident and one, unnervingly conniving as she is, convinces the other timid one to participate in a plot that she believes will make them immortal, in a certain sense (the literary sense). I was slightly enthralled by this piece of inventive historical fiction. But it was also disturbing. Anything that makes me believe in human nature a little less is disturbing.
I haven't read much further in this collection of novellas.
I can't wait to read Music for Landing Planes By. In the meantime, I've been reading Eireann Lorsung's blog.
After a week of waiting for the book to arrive from Amazon, it still hasn't come. I finally broke down and ordered it online since none of the local independent bookstores seemed to carry the book, even Modern Times which seems to have a rather good selection of small publishers and poetry titles.
I seemingly failed to keep this blog alive. But I've been reading. At the least, I was hoping to catalog my reading materials. Later, I could look back and find myself pleasantly surprised by the quantity of books I really have been reading.
So maybe it's time for a little catch-up.
I'm off to the library in a short while to attend the RADAR Reading Series, which is always wonderful. I might attempt to acquire some books at the same time. And after that, continuing on in the bookish theme of the evening, I might sit down and catalog the books I have read over the past few months. They are all sitting in stacks against my wall, as I have yet to acquire a bookshelf.
Right now I am reading The Extra Man, by Jonathan Ames. As most of his books are, this one is severely strange. There is something entertaining about it's perverse humor.
It is rare that I find a book in the free book pile at work that really strikes my attention. It was one of those rare situations the other day when I came across Ali Smith's contribution to the Cannongate myth series, Girl Meets Boy. The title might be deceiving. It is a contemporary retelling of Ovid's Metamorphosis. I am always surprised upon reading these modern myth re-tellings because they are all quite potent and relevant. As the title might suggest, the book is about gender, in part the point of intersection where two genders become fluid, and multiple. But the book is also about corporate culture, art and resistance. Not only the subject matter was fascinating, but the writing style was infectious. Reading the book was like entering the minds of the characters and following them around for a while. I didn't want the very short novel to end. But inevitably, I finished it quickly, then proceeded to flip back through to find the most wonderful morsels of language. I have loved all three of the books in this series that I have read thus far. Mostly, I just like how Ali Smith tells a story.
Occasionally, I have a weakness for young adult literature. It's easy to read, often adorable, and unriddled with the darkness that often plagues adult literature. Last week I came across the Minx series of graphic novels, targeted at teenage girls. The first one that I read had a bit of substance, as it dealt with the cultural importance of art, specifically street art, and presented some biting commentary on suburbia. The Plain Janes was the story of a girl who had been present at a cafe bombing, and as a result, her parents moved her to the suburbs where she attended the very boring local high school. Rather than fighting to enter the popular crowd, she fought to befriend the misfits by developing a guerrilla art project that made the whole town descend into irrational fear. The comic I am currently at the heart of is far less redeeming. Clubbing is the story of a rich, goth snob from London who is sent to her grandparents' house for the summer to prevent her from getting into too much trouble. But there is something infectious and adorable about these graphic novels for teens. They are like tv shows. And because I don't have a tv, they seem to fill the place that tv might if I had one.
I got this book when I worked for Utne magazine and only read the first story before I determined that it was necessary to send to my best friend. I knew she would love it, and was not as compelled to read the book as I was last week when I visited her and noticed the book on her shelf. I read it on the airplane home and was completely smitten. It was simple and weird and magical and I wished I could write a book just like it. When I finished it a few hours after I began, I didn't want it to be over. I was not through with her magic.
This is the best book I've read in a long time. Who can resist young, egotistical avant garde Mexican poets convinced that they are the next generation of underground literature?
I am stricken with some blogatory obligation to write something new. Either I haven't been reading much at all lately, or I have just failed to be enthralled by my recent reading material. I started reading The Archivist by Martha Cooley some weeks ago and was slightly put off by way in which the author decided it was a good idea to fuse past and present. I get the point of doing so--we are all haunted by our pasts. But it felt tedious to read. Then I picked up Alice Munro's The Runaway and Beth Lisick's This Too Can Be Yours. I enjoy Alice Munro's old fashioned style and astute sense of both place and humanity. But when I picked up Lisick's book, I couldn't quite take the humor. I really enjoyed her memoirs, but this book of short stories was just too over the top for me at the time I picked it up. I can certainly appreciate her use of humor, but it is so out of sync with my own imagination that it is difficult to accept at certain times. But I finished her collection of brief stories and decided I needed to go to the bookstore. Actually, before my trip to the bookstore, I started reading Queen of the Oddballs, a typical memoir written by a woman who grew up in the 70s and found her childhood experience unique enough to write it up and market it to women who like to read about what other women did while growing up female. It was amusing, but I still thought it was necessary to buy some new books that I chose myself rather than picked up for free at work. I came home with Weight by Jeanette Winterson, which is slightly less glorious than I had hoped, and The Lipshitz Six, by T Cooper, because I went to a book reading for this novel a few weeks ago and thought it might be worth reading.
My friend Melody is the illustrious editor of the new feminist anthology, We Don't Need Another Wave. She unfortunately doesn't live in San Francisco, but being the East Coaster that she is, recently made the big jump to New York City where she is in the process of becoming the queerest straight girl in the metropolis and co-habitating (platonically) with renowned feminist pornographers (it sounds rather exciting, really). Fortunately for those of us in San Francisco, she came to visit our city where she pedaled her wares this past weekend. I went to the readings she held at Modern Times bookstore and the Anarchist Bookfair, but really only heard the contents of the first. Most of the essays contributors read at the events were rather heavy. They deal with death and abuse and occasionally with the simple contradictions of growing up female. Despite (and because of) the weighty nature of some of the essays, the collection is really good. The book deals with serious things via the vehicle of the personal voice (which, I have to say, is quintessentially feminist).
I got tired of reading, and frankly, before the Jonathan Ames book that I just finished last night, I can't remember what I read. I probably didn't read much of anything the past few weeks. I did carry around this wonderful book of poems called Wideawake Field for a while. This was something that I did read. But given that it was filled with poems, it didn't take too long to read. It was surprisingly good--poignant, subtle, and occasionally sad.
Then, last Sunday, I started a book of stories/essays/columns by Jonathan Ames. It was hilarious. I read his book Wake Up Sir a few years ago and this one was just as funny and revealed some of the inspirations for the novel. When I borrowed the book from my sister, she recommended that the funniest pieces were "The Mangina" and another one that I can't recall at the moment. I found it difficult to determine which pieces were funniest, because they were all over-the-top.
Since beginning to write this post, I have attempted to start a few more books. I was not too successful in reading The Archivist by Martha Cooley. There was something strange about the way the author treated time. I was not particularly keen on the way the story jumped from past to present quite chaotically. The story is also about the relationship between an older man and a younger woman which I often find to be an unsavory subject.
Then this weekend, I picked up The Runaway by Alice Munro and had much better success in reading a large portion of the book. Actually, I spent the majority of yesterday afternoon on my bed reading said book, and I did find it rather pleasant in an odd sort of way. I did enjoy Open Secrets better, but I always like the close examinations Munro has of individuals and the progression of history in families, and small towns.
Yesterday evening, after finishing Jenny Hoyston's (of Erase Errata) new zine and eating my dinner, I discovered that I had misplaced my copy of The Best New Fiction of 2007 (I actually don't think that this is the real title). I couldn't get into most of the stories in the book (cancer seemed to be the dominant theme). But yesterday, while eating my lunch outside in the sun, I started in on a story about a young Vietnamese refugee who fled to San Francisco in the 1970s. The story was promising. But I never managed to finish it. Even now, I have no idea if I left it in the park, or if it is hiding somewhere under a mess in my bedroom.
It is difficult to trust a review copy of a poetry book, that is until it has proven itself not to be unmanageably hideous. I write poetry myself and often I do not understand how much of the published variety even manages to get published. I would be embarrassed if I published a volume that doesn't exceed the average book of poetry. This book proved not to be average in any way. First of all, it is written by an investigative journalist, thus records a set of experiences that are anything but average. It's about love and war and tragedy and poverty. Most good poetry, I would argue, is about these broad subjects of human experience. If I had my copy of the book on hand, I'd copy a few verses just to prove to you that this poetry is out of the ordinary( or otherwise, extraordinary).
If I was going to judge this book, not only for its cover (a bad photo of a tree with the sunlight filtering through its branches) but for its title, Male of the Species, I imagine that I usually wouldn't even consider picking it up. For the most part, I read books by women. I don't think I need an explanation for reading what I am drawn to. This book is written by a man, and as far as I can tell, it is about men, almost solely. Really, it appears to be centered around the theme, not necessarily of father hood, but fathers themselves (though after reading a bit of it, this theme does not stand for the whole book, but at least a portion of it). The one story in the collection that I have almost finished is about one son's quest to set his father up with the recently divorced neighbor. An uncle also features prominently in the story. Some of the dialogue is humorous, even witty. And it isn't a book to make you think, which is exactly what I was searching for the moment I picked it up. A few stories into the book, I'll probably get bored and stop reading. But my mood will most likely change and I might find myself on my couch this evening finishing the rest of the book.
After going home to read more of this book last night, I determined that it wasn't a pleasant read at all. The pervasive attitude of the stories disagrees with me. As expected, the book is very masculine. This is not always a negative thing. But in this case, I want to say that it is. The book is masculine in a broad-disrespect-for-life sort of way, an I see the world my way and my way is correct sort of way. This is the dark side of masculine--basically a fuck-you attitude to the world riddled with pervasive selfishness. A few stories into the book, I stopped, finding myself growing more and more disgusted with the characters. The one story I did appreciate, was titled The Artist At Work.
Last week, my prize book find was an advance reader's edition of the O. Henry Prize Stories 2007. Thus far, it has certainly lived up to its promise. Though a few of the stories don't appeal to me, each one is particularly well crafted. The language is inventive. The plots are riveting. The stories are diverse and capture something about humanity and the essence of narrative. Among the stories featured in the collection is one by one of my favorite authors, Christine Schutt. I do have to say, though, that her style no longer seems as riveting as it did upon first discovering her work. Because her writing is driven by language over plot, it is easy to weary of. Alice Munro's story in this collection, as always, has a keen sense of place and of history. It is interesting, and pleasant to read. There are plenty of other stories that caught my attention as well.
I don't often read novels written for children. Owing to their simplicity and the educational methods their writers slip into the pages, they are often boring. For example, last night I was reading a book called Introducing Sasha Abramowitz. It is filled with side-notes about certain words being on the protagonist's spelling list for school(i.e. the author's method of teaching her readers vocabulary). The plot is not particularly riveting. But it does have a certain charm to it that compelled me to continue reading. Now that I am almost to the end, I'll probably have to finish it before I find a child to pass it on to. The story is about a girl who lives at a college with her parents who are professors. The book is predominantly relationship based, but the quirk is that Sasha comes from a family of nerds and lives among college students who are her friends along side other children of faculty at the college. The story is superbly innocent hinting just barely at the beginnings of adolescence. This made it difficult to determine what age bracket the story is intended for. This book would have been one my mother approved of, meaning, it is probably not all that appealing to 11-year-old girls.
It would probably be more educational to read a sociological study, but reading this book is the next best thing as it is crafted with sociology and "scientific method" in mind. I never considered certain academic styles to be literary devices before, but Lydia Davis reveals that they can work as such (while providing a nice framework for an alternative plot-line). Breaking free of standard plot is the thing Davis does the best. The stories in this book of very short fiction range from a few sentences to several pages long. Style is elevated above character development. The stories often read like sociological or psychological studies. Some are like snipets of a conversation you might overhear on the bus. This is a highly unusual book.
These stories are about family, belonging, estrangement, and loneliness, and ultimately about being a woman and an expatriate. Souief conveys a sense of aloneness that can only come from someone who understand what it feels like to be a foreigner, not only in one's chosen country, but also in one's own family. The stories in this book are all about women, mostly mothers, living abroad. Some are Egyptian women living in England and others are English women living in Egypt. The words convey color, and sadness while remaining overtly simple.
