8 by Amy Fusselman

I couldn't determine whether this author is a writer, or an obsessive journaler who got lucky. Maybe she's a little of both because her style's rather strange. Half daily life and half thought, this short memoir detailing everything from motorcycle lessons to adventures in alternative therapies. I couldn't help wonder if this author is in cahoots with Dave Eggers and co.. Really, she just has a very simple, honest voice, that details something that isn't simple at all--thoughts and memories and quite a bit of philosophy. While raising two young boys in New York, she grapples with her own childhood sexual assault. Amid the tumult of both child-rearing and the healing process, she reminisces about ice skating, monster trucks, and a few alternative therapy methods.. Figure eights are a recurring theme that tie the bits and pieces of this book together.

Like the author of 8, I am going to go back into this post and let you know that I am making additions after the fact. This was one of the most charmingly unusual parts of the book--the fact that the author let you in on parts of her editing process. Usually, I would think this was highly annoying and pretentious in that artsy sort of way. But somehow it worked. I couldn't help getting slightly annoyed at her transparency and intentional failure to shroud the writing process in the usual element of mystery. But in the end, I found it refreshing (how cliche does that sound!).

The other thing that I failed to mention when first writing about this book was her tendency to philosophize in a remarkably simple yet profound way. Amy Fusselman writes a lay person's phenomenology. I couldn't help but catch hints of Heidegger's unusual style, marked by the odd use of verbs. But rather than conjure up abstract and confusing metaphors, she uses simple ones that are easy to digest. The book is filled with musings on time. Time, is not particularly linear for Fusselman, nor is it purely a counting methodology to organize our lives. Time is space. Time dictates how we live in (and in front of and behind and outside of) our bodies. Without getting all woo-woo on us, she describes alternative perceptions of time, and healing. The best part is, she has a problem with the esoteric when it can't be explained. She grills biodinamic craneosacral therapists about the theories behind their practice to no avail, then goes on to explain it in her own way, based on her own understanding of how we occupy time.

Despite the fact that this book is not organized according to the usual narrative curve, or even according to the usual chapter-format, it doesn't seem overly chaotic. It lends to the feeling that this book is a journal made public. And who doesn't want to read somebody's journal. The format might be a commentary on the memoir genre itself. Or else, someone's lazy and knows how to justify it with all sorts of post modern literary theories. We never know what to do with the unexpected, so we just jam it into any pre-existing box we have. Or we deem it commentary on one of the boxes. I'd love to say this is the case with 8, but part of me thinks that this is just what the book is: one woman's musing on time, healing, and motherhood, rendered in no particular order except vaguely chronological.

Self Storage by Gayle Brandeis, part 2

I took a break from reading this book because it wasn't really that riveting and I acquired a stack of quite appealing reads while I was trying to get through this one. But after I finished The Accidental, I decided to take Self Storage up again. The more I read, the more disappointing I became in both the writing and the plot. This is ostensibly a plot-driven book. It's not really about the beauty of language or the construction of interesting sentences, despite the author's attempts to draw Walt Whitman into the book to serve as a common thread throughout the story. I am curious about this aspect of the book because I have no idea if she is going to draw the story together somehow with Whitman or center the main character's epiphany around it. But I stopped reading it again. The book became too annoying. It was reading like a bad movie plot, and it was a bit boring despite the author's attempts to spice up the story by making the neighbor run over the main character's daughter. I have no intention of picking up the book again. There are too many other things to read.

The Ten Minute Activist by The Mission Collective

The Ten Minute Activist is the project of a group of writers and activists based in San Francisco who call themselves The Mission Collective. More specifically, it is a book filled with oodles of information and world-saving tips--everything from how to power your house with greener energy to greener waste disposal and better gardening tips. The best thing about the book is that it is not just a how-to guide. It is also filled with facts galore, some of which you could rattle off at cocktail parties to shock new acquaintances like the following: 170,000 tampon applicators make their way onto the U.S. coastline each year.