book a week geek

Last week’s Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks made me wish I were reading science fiction.  This week’s I, Rigoberta Menchu (as told by Rigoberta Menchu) makes me wish I were reading speculative fiction.  Regrettably, in both cases, I wasn’t.  I am so deeply bothered by Rigoberta’s story.  This is one of those books that I want to tell everybody about.  I’ve read some speculations that the many atrocities Rigoberta witnessed as a peasant Mayan woman in Guatemala might not be entirely true, and while I respect that this should be addressed, I find it hard to forget the fact that someone, somewhere in Guatemala probably lived through one or more of these horrors–if not Rigoberta herself.  It seems implausible to discount all of the many horrible things Rigoberta may or may not have lived through.  This doesn’t cheapen the story of the Guatemalan peasant organizations and subsequent uprisings (at least not for me).    I am feeling a little scatter-brained, so:

A note about the book: the text of this book was taken from a series of interviews composed by an anthropologist.  As such, the book can get repetitive.  Should you read this book, I urge you to push through the repetition & the claims that not every word in this book is true.  If nothing else, you will emerge with a haunting retelling of modern Indian life in the Altiplano of Guatemala.  Should you choose to believe Rigoberta, you will emerge with a super critical eye with which to view modern coffee consumption, as well as a new reason to hate most people.

I (obviously) haven’t been blogging much (at all) lately (in the last two months).  This is for a few reasons: I am drinking less coffee.  I was on vacation.  OMC is temporarily living in Pittsburgh now.  I am taking a really consuming Spanish class.

Excuses aside, these are the titles I have read thus far in 2010:

Octavia Butler-Parable of the Talents
Ursula LeGuin-Always Coming Home
Maile Meloy-Half in Love
Eduardo Galeano-Book of Embraces

I also read half of Doris Lessing’s fucking remarkable Golden Notebook on the beach (this book is Not Beach Reading) and haven’t been able to get back to it.  One of my life goals this year is to finish things I start.  I am usually bad at finishing things I start.

Also,

Matt Ruff-Set this house in order

Brief summation of things: I wasn’t wild about Parable of the Talents.  I love Butler, but I was less than impressed by this (part of it is told in, well, parables & poems/hymnals, things which I have little literary tolerance for).  I doubt I will read the second book in this duo. I doubt I’m missing anything remarkable.  Most of the characters in this irritated me.

I have never read a LeGuin book before, but this was bonkers, and if it is any indication of the worth of the rest of her works, I will surely have to keep reading.  I first heard about Ursula LeGuin from a professor in library school, who was a Big Fan & made us practice cataloging on some of her books (the Dispossessed, which immediately attracted me by being touted as a sci-fi anarchist book).  Always Coming Home is hard to describe, but for the amount of work & love LeGuin poured into it alone, it is worthwhile.  It was described by a reviewer as “archaeology of the future,” which irritated OMC to no end, but which delighted me.

I don’t remember anything about the Maile Meloy book of short stories except that I had to read it twice because I evidently forgot everything the first time around, and well, lookee, I forgot the second time around too.  This is probably not a good indication.

Book of Embraces gets my wildest praise.  When I finished it, I was literally speechless.  Fantastic.

I hadn’t heard of Matt Ruff, but a virtual stranger recommended I read this book, and while ordinarily I wouldn’t listen to a virtual stranger, I took his advice upon seeing the cover, because frankly the cover is great:

This book is about, among other things, two young adults with multiple personality disorder.  I will listen to strangers’ literary advice more often, because I loved this.  It was confusing & sad & narratively exciting.  None of Ruff’s other books sound exciting to me, but I am content to chalk this up as a success.

Moving on.  I am winding up Rebecca Skloot’s Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.  If you read only one book this year, this should be it (I am not just saying this because I am thanked in it.  You should read it because it is fantastic.), although I will say it would be a shame if you only read one book this year.  Skloot is undertaking an impressive book tour to publicize this book, and I plan on attending most, if not all, of the Pittsburgh events because I love this lady that much.  This book leaves me in tears every few pages.  I wish it were sci-fi, but holy fuck, it’s a true story.  I will write more about this later.

I am so excited about 2010.  I want to read a million books.  All I want to do ever is read.  omg.

I might squeeze another book into this list before the year ends, but I also might just snuggle my way into 2010 instead.  Either way, this is the things I read in 2009, and while it’s likely I accidentally omitted a thing (or 5), for the most part, this is it.  What a year!  Plenty of good reads.  I am so excited for 2010 and fresh new fun readings!

• A long way gone: memoirs of a boy soldier-Ishmael Beah
• Apples & Oranges-Marie Brenner
• Plague of Doves-Louise Erdrich
• Love Medicine-Louise Erdrich
• Coffee at Luke’s: an unauthorized Gilmore Girls gabfest
• The Beet Queen-Louise Erdrich
• Sportswriter-Richard Ford
• Lucy Knisley-French Milk
• Leanne Shapton-Auction book
• Saïd Sayrafiezadeh-When Skateboards Will be Free
• Octavia Butler-Fledgling
• Tim Gunn’s Guide to Quality, Taste and Style
• Daniel V’s Guide to How Style Happens
• Michael Greenberg-Hurry Down Sunshine.
• Raymond Carver-Call if you need me
• Miranda July-No One Belongs Here More Than You
• Dan Savage-Skipping Towards Gomorrah
• Sarah Vowell-Take the Cannoli
• Koren Zailckas-Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood
• Jeffrey Eugenides-Middlesex
• Junot Diaz-Brief wondrous life of Oscar Wao
• Milan Kundera-Identity
• Octavia Butler-Wild Seed
• Isabel Allende-Paula
• Louise Erdrich-Master Butchers Singing Club
• Jhumpa Lahiri-Interpreter of Maladies
• Isabel Allende-House of the Spirits
• Isabel Allende-Of Love & Shadows
• Isabel Allende-My Invented Country
• David Rakoff-Don’t get too comfortable
• Louise Erdrich-Blue Jay’s Dance
• Isabel Allende-Sum of our days
• David Rakoff-Fraud
• Susan Jane Gilman-Hypocrite in a Poufy White Dress
• Sherman Alexie-Absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian
• Philip Pullman-His Dark Materials series
• Suzanne Collins-Hunger games series (2/3)
• Julie Powell-Julie & Julia
• Lorrie Moore-A gate at the stairs
• Octavia Butler-Kindred
• Fear & Trembling by Amélie Nothomb
• Ann Patchett’s Patron Saint of Lairs
• Time Traveler’s Wife-Audrey Niffineger
• Margaret Atwood-Year of the Flood
• Sherman Alexie-War Dances
• Julia Alvarez-In the name of Salome
• Lydia Davis-Varieties of Disturbance
• Kazuo Ishiguro-Never let me go
• Kelly Link-Stranger Things Happen
• Alice Munro-Too much happiness
• Alicia Partnoy-The Little School
• John Crowley-Little, Big
• Michael Greenberg-Beg, Borrow, Steal
• Robin Romm-The Mercy Papers: a memoir of 3 weeks
• Maile Meloy-Both ways is the only way I want it

It’s the most wonderful time of the year!  No, not Christmas.  BOOKLIST TIME.  There are a billion best of 2009 lists floating around out there, and as I am frankly tired of doing research for other people, you can find them yourself if you are interested.  What this means is I can reflect back on my year and regret some things I’ve read and look forward to kicking 2010 (CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS?  2010!!!?) off with some exciting new reads.

I have mined the following from a variety of lists, and after frowning at myself for not having read them earlier, I am hereby promising myself that they are next up.  Some are embarrassing.  Some probably suck.  Such is the nature of best of lists.

• • Lit: a Memoir-Mary Karr
  • Raymond Carver: a writer’s life-Carol Sklenicka
  • Under the Dome-Stephen King (I cave.  I really want to read this.  Blame the cover.)
  • Family Album-Penelope Lively
  • Follow Me-Joanna Scott
  • Museum of Innocence-Orhan Pamuck
  • Nocturnes-Kazuo Ishiguro
  • Dorothea Lange: a life beyond limits-Linda Gordon
  • The Mercy Papers: a memoir of three weeks-Robin Romm
  • A Paradise Built in Hell: extraordinary communities that arise in disaster-Rebecca Solnit
  • Both ways is the only way I want it-Maile Meloy
  • A Short History of Women-Kate Walbert

So what I am doing now?  I am reading Little, Big by John Crowley, which is essentially a 500-some page book about fairies and being secretly married to them and having your children kidnapped in the night.  I think that’s what it’s about.  It is one of those books that carries me along magically for about 25 pages and then drops me someplace weird in my sleep.  I obviously love it, because who doesn’t love weird fantasy books, but oi! is it ever long.

Last week I trucked through Alicia Partnoy’s The Little School, because sometimes when my life is getting me down I need to be shocked into relativity by something gruesome and awful and real, and this did that.

Next week I will happily reflect on my year of goal achieving.  More like 200FINE.  I love the end of the year.  Here’s to goals.

Post-Thanksgiving gluttony, I thought it might be important to get back to basics.  I have been altering this pasta salad recipe for the last few weeks, because I think it might be the most delicious food I have ever “invented.”  I am basically turning into your Italian grandmother.  Now, bundle up and consider this.

Measurements are, fyi, purely guestimation.

• 3 uncooked C of pasta, boiled as usual
• 2 C of bean assortment (any will do!  go nuts!)
• 1/4 C of white onion, diced
• 1/2 C artichoke hearts, diced (marinated or otherwise)
• 1/4 C sun-dried tomatoes (in my heart, I want to tell you to go all out with these, but they are expensive, unless you have a dehydrater like we did when I was a wee one.  In which case they are expensive only time-wise, or if your child is something like I was and keeps stealing them off of the racks while they are dehydrating.)
• black olives, chopped

“dressing”

• 2 Tbs olive oil
• 2 Tbs balsamic vinegar
• 1 Tbs spicy/dijon mustard (I accidentally used ball park mustard yesterday and was worried all afternoon that my salad might taste like a hot dog, but it did not.  Have no fear.)
• healthy dose of oregano, basil and pepper (salt is extremely unnecessary)

Mix ‘em all up and refrigerate.  Like most things in my life, this salad is better the next day.  If I ever write an autobiography, that will probably be the title.  Yields 4-5 servings.  If you are not afraid of tuna, I suspect it would be extremely delicious in this.

I spent a good part of my long weekend being tired and, as usual, a little sad, but also a good part was devoted to Alice Munro’s new Too Much Happiness.  Munro doesn’t need praise from me, so I will just say instead that a few stories from this book coincided nicely with the reading I have been doing lately on memory and its effect on older adults (this naturally is juxtaposed with public libraries, and my dear idols at StoryCorps, but that is neither here nor there).  The story “Child’s Play,” while not necessarily a happy remembrance, jogged something strange in me every time I read it.  At a time when I am worrying more than ever about losing hold of stories I’ve been told or stories I might tell, a work of fiction like “Child’s Play” (as well as the title story) have this daunting ability to  frighten and confuse a reader like, well,  me.  This shouldn’t be a discouragement.  Munro is a force to reckon with, and these stories left me somewhat hopeful (again, this isn’t about her, or the world, or something, this is about me) that someone somewhere is remembering something.  I am not 100% behind this, as far as Munro’s compilations go, but the title story alone is almost enough for this book to stand on.  I want to recommend that story to every person I know who is familiar with her writing.  Because it’s unlike her, and it’s strong (which truly isn’t at all unlike her), and it is inspirational.

Also, school is almost over, which means my life is starting to look like this again:

Ah, to be thankful for Tina Fey, and dogs, and new warm hats, and quilts from grandmas, and other comforting things.  I need a hug.

This is a reminder to myself that I am going to kick this semester’s butt and I am going to finish school and I am going to get the heck outta dodge.  GO ME.

This is also a reminder to myself that I read (upon the entire world’s advice) Stranger Things Happen by Kelly Link last week.  I felt lukewarm about parts of it, but liked the rest of it.  One of the stories was about a librarian (in her words, although in reality he was just a student worker who worked circulation, and I hate to mince words, but believe you me, this does not a librarian make) who has covert library sex on the regular, and I read part of this story on the bus next to a girl I know that knows that I work in a library, and the entire time I felt awkward thinking she thought I was reading weird fetishist stories about covert library sex on the regular, which I was, but which I do not do all that often.  I think Kelly Link has a weird and awesome brain.  It appeals to me.  I thought I had read another book of hers a few years ago that was full of jokes about math, and in this case, the joke was on me, because I didn’t understand any of them, but in retrospect I don’t think she wrote that book, and at this point it is totally evident that the end of the semester has completely taken its toll on me.  So okay, I like Kelly Link, and any complaints that I did have are forgotten at this point.  Basically, Stranger Things Happen went really well with my spooky suburban weekend in which I nearly had a brutal fight with three white-tailed deer and in which all I did was research Latin American literature and do a lot of walking in the woods with this little beastie:

In two weeks I will be a normal human being again, with a voracious reading appetite and MAYBE EVEN SOME FREE TIME.  Hang in there, kid.

Within December’s issue of Harper’s there is an article written by Matthew Power, with accompanying photographs by Aaron  Huey, titled the “Ghosts of Wounded Knee.”   I try very hard to not preach about my love of print media, but I have always very much loved the look of photos within Harper’s, as well as the font and the spacing and the style, blah blah, and Huey’s photos simply shine in this format.  This article is goddamn poetry.  I have always very much admired Power’s writing, but what was once simple admiration is now through the roof.  You, sir, are getting a letter from me.  The photographs are stark, and implying that they are telling does not do them justice.  My love of stories from the  Pine Ridge reservation is nothing new or surprising, but Power’s words & Huey’s photos churned my stomach all the more.  The interviews within are beyond hopeless, the stories are heartbreaking, and I can’t recommend it enough.

From an interview:

We’re Lakota warriors, and we should be able to take care of ourselves, but all we get is just the VA checks.  A VA check won’t even buy you a house.  I don’t know what’s going on.  I don’t care.  I hang out with all my homeless veteran buddies.  I’d rather be up here than be a burden on them.  I’d rather beg for food than beg them for food.  Soemtimes I see some of my friends, and they’re so very hungover.  See, we drink and we get drunk, and we sing, we take turns to sing military songs, we sing cadence or we sing Lakota songs.  Then we go to sleep.  Next day we do it again.  We don’t have no family anymore.

If nothing else, at least stop in Borders and flip through these pictures.

So where do we start?  Love may or may not produce happiness; whether or not it does in the end, its primary effect is to energize.  Have you ever talked so well, needed less sleep, returned to sex so eagerly, as when you were first in love?  The anemic begin to glow, while the normally healthy become intolerable.  Next, it gives spine-stretching confidence.  You feel you are standing up straight for the first time in your life; you can do anything while this feeling lasts, you can take on the world.  (Shall we make this distinction: that love enhances the confidence, whereas sexual conquest merely develops the ego?)  Then again, it gives clarity of vision; it’s a windshield wiper across the eyeball.  Have you ever seen things so clearly as when you were first in love?

Taken from pages 231-2 of “Parenthesis,” within A History of the World in 10 and 1/2 Chapters, by Julian Barnes.   I usually turn to Barnes to make me laugh, and that is why this essay was so shockingly gorgeous the first time I read it a few years ago.   I find something new, enchanting and quotable every time I glance at it.  Sometimes a girl just needs to cry at a lovely essay, right?

And, of course, it just wouldn’t be proper to quote Barnes without revealing just how fucking funny he is, so:

Should love be taught in school?  First term: friendship; second term: tenderness; third term: passion.  Why not?  They teach kids how to cook and mend cars and fuck one another without getting pregnant; and the kids are, we assume, much better at all of this than we were, but what use is any of that to them if they don’t know about love?

<3

I have always meant to read Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro) but always got side-tracked by other things.  Probably Buffy.  I finally did, and let me say, I’m glad I did.  I can’t do this book, or Ishiguro, justice.  I don’t even know how to describe it.  It’s kind of about clones who exist only to be organ donors, yet it’s kind of not at all.  Ishiguro handles this odd subject with a hell of a lot of quiet grace.  Half of the time, this book reads like a reflective memoir, and then the other half it’s fucking scary sci-fi.  Hell yes.  Loved it.

Recommended to: people who are hesitant to read sci-fi (I think this could act as a subtle introduction), people who are interested in dystopian fiction, people who are okay with laughing at uncomfortable things, people who can take the time to appreciate pretty little sentences.

p.s. Nova Scotia is amazing.  My new favorite place:

I read a large part of Varieties of Disturbance by Lydia Davis while flying over the patchwork of New England and the Atlantic Ocean and maybe New Brunswick.  I don’t know.  When I am flying I like to try to guess where I am (for a good ten minutes I was convinced I was looking at Cape Cod, at that ubiquitous spit curving up into the ocean) but I think I’m usually wrong.  Although that probably really was Cape Cod, thinking about it.  Reading Lydia Davis is not unlike this: it’s rare for her to name a location, a time, a season, or any identifying specifics about a narrator or character.  While Davis’ characters could literally be anyone (you, me, the girl next to me on the airplane), they are also distinctly no one.  For the most part, this is appreciable.  Davis has swiftly created a kind of universality that most authors would shy from.  Her characters are mysteries, and simultaneously, they’re not–because in the world Davis invents, it doesn’t matter who these people are, where they are, or what they are.  It kind of just matters that they are.

Davis tells stories in one or two sentences, in lists, in short vignettes, in jokes about grammar (!), an index entry (the entirety of which is: “Christian, I’m not a.”) and, most appealingly, in studies–as in “We Miss You: A Study of Get-Well Letters from a Class of Fourth-Graders,” which is-surprisingly and hilariously-exactly what it sounds like.  The fact that she can, and does, make a story out of one little sentence is exciting to me, in the way that I get excited about a pun or a joke between close friends that I understand.  To her credit, the wild variety of format and content within this collection make it utterly re-readable.  I have a feeling I will turn to this book again and again.

Davis is a talented observer, and this spoke to me as I sat in airports and simply watched people.  There is something to be said for noting your fellow travelers and passengers (and, well, also assigning them personalities and stories just for the fun of it).  This book is, frankly, excellent.

Now, I am off to eat chowder & snuggle.  Halifax ftw!