Category Archives: reading

August 10, 2011   Stacey   in memoriam, reading, Stacey  
8

Writers on Goodbye

I had plans to blog today about a book-to-film article I read that I wanted to share following up on my post from last week. But then, on Monday, I heard the terrible news that my client, Jennifer Perillo’s, husband died suddenly at just 51 leaving behind Jennie and their two daughters, ages 8 and 3. I was so shocked and saddened by this news that it’s really taken over all my thoughts since. And just yesterday I learned that my 79-year-old cousin passed away after a long battle with cancer, so I’m thinking a lot about death and its effects on those left behind.

Many members of the food and blogging community have come together to support Jennie, who is loved by everyone who knows her. I initially met Jennie through another client, Shauna James Ahern of glutenfreegirl.com, who wrote such a beautiful piece about Jennie, her husband, writing, and community, that I felt compelled to share it with you all.

All of this made me wonder about writers and what motivates them during times of sadness. Writers who write personally, through blogging or memoirs, in particular. When something wonderful happens, they generally want to write about it. And when something tragic happens, same. Writers write. It’s what they do, and it’s to our benefit when someone with the uncanny ability to articulate in just the right ways what a painful situation feels like, looks like, and sounds like shares with us those feelings and experiences, and in a way that makes it relatable to the reader. Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking comes to mind. It’s about the sudden death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne, and the simultaneous severe illness of their only daughter. And Elizabeth McCracken’s An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination is another great example. This is also a memoir, about the loss of a pregnancy in its ninth month, a reflective and poignant look at a different, but no less painful, sort of grief.

I wonder if you have any favorite memoirs about loss. I’m not sure I actually want to read them right now given my state of mind, but I do appreciate the comfort that other people’s experiences can have on our own.

August 05, 2011   Rachel   Rachel S., reading, setting, writing  
4

City Mouse, Country Mouse

It might have been the abrupt change of scenery or the exhilaration of being behind the wheel of a car again, but as I drove out of the city and down through the cornfields and rolling hills of New Jersey and Maryland last week, I slowly became aware of a distinct change in my perception of, well, everything. Living in a city is so insular; the things I notice most often have to do with other people. Interactions with others are thrust upon me regardless of whether I want them or not. Whether it’s being smashed up against six other passengers on a crowded morning L train or vaguely being made aware of another’s existence as voices float in through an apartment window, you’re never really alone in a city.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing—methods of introspection and observation are subsequently adapted to suit city-living, it’s simply that I had forgotten how different it feels not only physically, but intelligently and emotionally to explore wider spaces. I began to notice scenery in a new way, different still from when such views were the norm and before I had lived quite as long in New York. Descriptors came to me and I recalled lines—some clichéd, others less so—from literature and film that made more sense from a more pastoral point of view. I began to notice myself more, too. Driving with the windows down on a long country highway with hardly another car in sight allows a lot of time for introspection.

I wonder, now that I’m back and can compare the two sensibilities with greater acuity, how this effect can apply in a literary sense. Just as one perceives books differently when read at earlier and later stages in life, surely the greater environmental impacts on a person can change this as well. And writing! Not only were my thought patterns altered, but I noticed modes of speech that I hadn’t employed since I’ve moved away from the shore came back in little spurts—phrases as well as dialect reverted back.

Of course, this escape was brief and could hardly change me permanently, but the ephemeral shifts are still interesting to note. I can’t help but wonder if my ideas for writing or taste in reading material would morph (again, I am sure only slightly, as I would of course retain my core sense of self). I can only see this as an invigorating and positive switch—like when you change shampoos and your hair is lustrous and beautiful for that first time with the new brand. And yes, I am now comparing writing to washing your hair. It’s Friday.

As it’s the season for vacations and scenery changes, does anyone have a personal anecdote or opinion on this matter?

August 03, 2011   Miriam   culture, fiction, fun, great books, lists, Miriam, reading  
10

Shoulda, coulda, woulda

Ask anyone at DGLM (Jane in particular) and they will tell you that I’m an insufferable bookworm.  When a simple reference to Kim Kardashian would make a more relevant point, I will cite Anna Karenina.  If we’re debating the merits of the writing in a manuscript we’re considering for representation, I’m apt to dismiss it by suggesting that the author is no Ivan Klima (or fill in some other relatively obscure Slavic author).  See what I mean?  Annoying.

Of course, I have a lot invested in turning my nerdy childhood, spent eating chips while buried in the pages of doorstoppers, into a source of irritation for my friends and co-workers.  They may have been partying while I was reading The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire but they have no idea how hilarious Gibbon’s footnotes were.

And, of course, like any pretentious book person, I’m terribly insecure about the books I didn’t read.  The gaps in my reading list are, as you can imagine, a constant source of embarrassment—not so much that I’m rushing to download those titles on my Kindle, but, you know….  For instance, even though I struggled mightily and valiantly through Romola, I never did get around to George Eliot’s Middlemarch. I did lose steam after the first volume of Proust’s 675-volume Remembrance of Things Past and I’ve never gone near a work by Herman Hesse.  This Today list of books everyone really should have read, reminds me that, well, there will always be books that I should have read, should read, haven’t read, and…probably won’t.

How about you?  What are the ones that got away for you?

July 26, 2011   Stephanie   fun, opinion, reading, Stephanie  
3

Heat retreat

Between the surface-of-the-sun temperatures, 900% humidity, and stinging sunburn running down my back (thanks for nothing, SPF 15), we are no doubt in the full swing of summer. And with that, mercifully, comes the summer vacation. Having previously blogged about which books should top that summer reading list, I thought it was interesting to read this piece at Salon about where to dive into those summer reads. I love the concept of a reading retreat—being able to shut out all distractions for a certain amount of time and tackle that pile of books we’ve all been meaning to get to for however many months or years.

While my own personal reading retreat in the middle of August will be decidedly less fabulous than the ones mentioned in the piece (rural Italy, England, etc), I do look forward to the retreat aspect. I’ve already got a teetering stack of books to choose from, now I just need to decide where to park myself…

With that in mind, do you plan to take any time for some getaway reading? Or will you spend that time writing?

July 25, 2011   Jim   fun, Jim, opinion, reading  
2

Cannibalism, Cage Matches, and Torrid Affairs

A few months ago, my delightful client Saundra Mitchell sent me an email explaining that she and three of my other clients were snowed in at a writers’ retreat, and they needed my advice: if they remained trapped, and one of them needed to be killed and eaten, who should it be?

A more diplomatic agent would have said that they were all indispensable and no one could pick between them. I, however, chose to take this question at face value and rationalized an answer. Happily, the client I dispensed to be eaten has a sense of humor.

In any case, it’s sometimes tough to come up with things to blog about, so I decided to employ Saundra’s help coming up with some topics. What follows are the first two questions she sent me along with my responses.

Saundra asks: “If you could put two modern classics (to hell with Dickens and Tolstoy) into a cage match, and only one would emerge, which two and why the victor?”

To make things difficult for myself, I’ll go with two of my favorite books of all time—Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon versus Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love.

Let’s start with character names. In one corner we have Milkman Dead and his sisters First Corinthians and “Magdalene called Lena”. In the other corner, we have Olympia Binewski with her siblings Arturo, Electra, Iphegenia, and Fortunato, called Chick. Neither Morrison nor Dunn is afraid to get really explicit with their references, so they’re pretty balanced here. For sheer memorabilty, this category goes to Morrison.

Let’s stay on the surface of those characters and go with crazy physical traits: Arty has flippers instead of arms and legs. Iphy and Elly are conjoined twins. Olympia is an albino hunchback dwarf. What do you have, Ms. Morrison? A washerwoman born without a belly button? Point: Dunn.

How about opening lines? Dunn: “’When your mama was the geek, my dreamlets,’ Papa would say, ‘she made the nipping off of noggins such a crystal mystery that the hens themselves yearned toward her, waltzing around her, hypnotized with yearning.’” Morrison: “The North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance agent promised to fly from Mercy to the other side of Lake Superior at three o’clock.” I’m gonna call this one a draw. In looking at them, Dunn’s is the more immediately captivating. There’s so much information tucked in that sentence about where we are, who we might be dealing with, and what kind of tone this strange, wonderful book will take. Morrison’s first line is, I would say, less immediately rewarding, but in the long run, it feels just perfect, tying so neatly into the book as a whole and forecasting what’s to come so subtly that you don’t know until you re-read the book just how tightly constructed it was from the get go.

Geek Love would be a scrappy fighter. It would play dirty; its moves would be unexpected; it would get in many a surprise blow. Song of Solomon would be a graceful fighter, standing solid but moving deftly and loosely when necessary. It would fight clean, and…while I do love Geek Love, it would deliver a knockout punch just as Dunn’s book began to tire itself out.

No one can outwrite Toni Morrison line by line. Some of her books aren’t perfect (though I’d argue heartily in support of the under-appreciated Love), but for my money, she’s probably the best living American novelist. But if you want to know what it feels like to have your soul stabbed, go read the one star reviews of her work on Amazon where people say she’s only famous because Oprah picked her. Killmenowplease.
Saundra asks:
“Do you know how to play Cliff, Marry, Shag? You get three options, and you have to pick which one you would throw off a cliff, which one you would marry, and which one you’d have a dirty nasty affair with. Sooooooooo… Cliff, Marry, Shag : Genre Edition: Paranormal, Dystopian, Historical? (I also think Cliff, Marry, Shag: Classic Novels and Cliff, Marry, Shag: New York Times Bestsellers editions would be hilarious.”

Let’s take the genres first. Also, does anyone else know this game under a different, less polite name? I’m used to “marry,” but the others are…different. So I’m going to have to marry paranormal. Yes, it’s a trend, and yes, it’s overpublished, and no, it can’t last forever in the same way it exists now. But by the same token, this is not a category that’s ever going away, and if I’m staying with one of these three forever, this is an incredibly easy choice for me as it’s where I’ve had my biggest success and it’s just a ton of fun. I’ll shag dystopian. Talk about trends! Listen, The Handmaid’s Tale is one of my favorite books of all time. And there are so many brilliant tales set after the apocalypse. I may be the ONLY person who watched the few episodes of a sitcom called Whoops! back in the day—it was a comedy about the post-apocalypse, and it was my jam. But on a whole, way too many people are writing books that are too similar and too familiar right now. This is a category that I think needs to be left to the masters (and they’re out there in spades) and too many folks are jumping on board and failing to understand the worldbuilding aspect. So, dear history, you’re going over a cliff. Historicals are, by and large, not my thing. There are periods in the past that I love to read about, and I love plenty of books in this category, but if one of these had to stop existing, I’d let nonfiction cover my need to know about the past and keep around the categories that show me alternatives to the present and possibilities for the future.

As for bestsellers, I’ll grab the highest three trade paperback novels that I’ve read: Room, A Visit from the Goon Squad, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Again, it’s almost too easy. Jennifer Egan is one of my favorite writers, and she pulls off a piece of her book narrated in Powerpoint, for God’s sake. This is the kind of gimmick that drives me insane, but not only is it incredibly well done, it feels necessary. Amazing. I’d shag Room. Which sounds so, so wrong, all things considered. I adored this book so I couldn’t throw it off a cliff, but neither would I want it for a life partner. Too many tears over too, too long. And that means that Salander’s going cliff-diving. I liked the book quite a bit, actually, but I found it formally clunky and more curiously interesting than actually fascinating. Sorry, my ass-kicking, tattooed badass.

July 22, 2011   Rachel   fun, Rachel S., reading  
10

Falling apart in my hands.

There’s a book I have that I bought for pennies at a giant second-hand book sale a few years ago. It’s one of my favorite books, but only for its antiquity. And I don’t mean it’s rare and pristine and I have it stored in a glass case somewhere. It just feeds into the nostalgia I have for bygone eras that I never even knew in the first place.

It’s a massive book written for women in 1904 all about the proper way to run a household. There are lessons on how to manage servants, detailing to duties of each, instructions on how much allowance one’s husband should give her per week depending on the size of the family and apartment. Ideas for decorating—should you want a green bedroom you really must follow Mrs. _____ (I can’t recall the author’s name) instructions. Pages and pages of menus and recipes are included, as well as proper ways to set tables and host guests. Home remedies for everything from measles to luxurious hair are worded in such strange and wonderful ways that I can’t help but read them aloud in appropriate accents.

The book itself is in okay condition—covers and pages are intact at least—and it has that wonderful really old book smell. Advertisements for other books and novelties are included in the foreword and I can’t help but wish for a little bit that I could travel back to the Victorian years to put all of my new knowledge to good use.

There’s just something about a really old book that draws me in. No matter the subject, I just want to hold it and leaf through the worn pages. There are others I have that I have no real desire to actually read, save for a few sentences here and there, and I realize that it’s probably a silly affection as they do nothing more than take up space, but I also have no intention of getting rid of them. More than aesthetic appeal, I relish in the idea that people, real people, a century or decades ago bought this book when it was brand new and thought nothing of it—it was just a product of their contemporary culture. I’ve already discussed my love of historical fiction, and this connection to the types of people who show up in the novels I read only helps to make them all the more real.

Am I crazy? Do you have any books that you love not for their story or function but for the sole fact that they happen to exist?

July 21, 2011   Jessica   Jessica, media, nonfiction, reading  
2

Reading Detours

I am a creature of habit; even in the boundless spaces of the internet, I march a well-beaten path between the New York Times, Salon, the Millions, assorted publishing sites and a familiar assortment of blogs.  Last night, in an effort to shake up my routine, I decided to explore some new sites. I began with Brain Pickings, which bills itself as “a discovery engine for interestingness, culling and curating cross-disciplinary curiosity-quenchers, and separating the signal from the noise to bring you things you didn’t know you were interested in until you are.” Although I found the description somewhat twee, the brains behind Brain did a good job engaging mine. Smart stuff, including the ambitious if not slightly ridiculous “Everything you need to know about culture in 10 books.”

From there, I poked around at The Atavist, one of the new on-line homes for long form journalism, the meaty, painstakingly researched magazine pieces that occupy the interstices of my life. Philip Gourevich’s article “Climbers” in last week’s New Yorker about the Rwandan Cycling Team is a perfect example. I read it on line at the grocery store.  (If you write in this vein, query me.) The Atavist, bless them, is also looking to monetize their content; they sell original long form pieces, complete with cool multimedia imbeds for the the iPad and iPhone for $2.99. $1.99 buys you a version suitable for Kindle.

I moved on to Byliner, another safe space for the embattled long-form, where I could binge on the collected works of any of scores of established writers and acquaint myself with some new ones.  At that point, relieved that long form journalism is being collected (the “curated” tag bothers me a bit: are these stories museum pieces?) I headed to a source for another endangered species, investigative journalism. I finally checked  out Propublica,  and felt reassured that the practice of muckraking is not so dated as the word that describes it.

I concluded my tour feeling pleased and slightly overwhelmed—as ever, so much to read, so little time. Until, of course, it occurred to me that during this whole exercise (ostensibly a departure from routine), I simply discovered more of the kind of stuff I like.  It’s hard to argue that any of the above, worthy as they are, were substantially broadening my horizons, prying open my mind. Plenty of thinkers have pointed out that the internet can allow us to spend time exclusively with others who reflect back our tastes and opinions. So in the interests of a more mind-blowing detour, can anyone recommend some good sites?

July 18, 2011   Jim   Jim, opinion, pet peeves, reading  
43

Throwing Books

Awhile back, I was hiding out from the aspiring authors at a writers’ conference (social as I am, I need SOME breaks), and reading the ARC for a much hyped young adult novel that was yet to be published. It was one of those novels with a huge six-figure advance, oodles of promotion, and people lined up ready to call it the second coming of great literature.

It started off strong, and I was pretty hooked. About 100 pages in, I started to have questions. So. Many. Questions. It was a fantasy novel set in a universe entirely created by the author. A world in which nothing made any sense. The world-building was scattershot at best, but based on the beginning of the book, I was ready to stick it out. After all, everyone loved this book, so I was sure it would get better.

It didn’t. Around 200 pages in, I was so frustrated that I hurled the book across the hotel room. I’ve heard people say they threw a book across the room. I had never believed people actually did it. And I had certainly never done so myself.

What killed me was the wasted promise. It’s one thing for a book to just be terrible. But for something to start out fantastic and devolve into stupidity is infuriating. For it to happen in a book getting a ginormous push? That made me want to start throwing pies at all involved—the author, the editor, the agent. Somebody should have realized that the book was constructed on a foundation of sand. And yet. And yet.

Imagine my delight when the book came out and became a bestseller. I mean, it’s possible I’m wrong about its qualities… No, you’re right. I couldn’t be wrong. Too unlike me!

What about all of you? Have you ever gotten so mad you literally threw a book across the room? And do name names–just because I have to be discreet doesn’t mean you do!

July 08, 2011   Rachel   great books, Rachel S., reading, recommendations  
21

In between sobs

I recently finished reading Patti Smith’s Just Kids (wayyy late in the game, I know) and you’d really think I’d have learned by now not to read particularly emotional things in public. It only leads to me pretending I’m not crying in coffeeshops. Or on the subway. Or in the park. Or on a bench.

Not so. Instead I ended up just kind of putting my head real far down into the book. Which looked totally normal, I’m sure.

I never used to be a book-crier. It’s only been in the past several years that I have become acquainted (well acquainted) with this phenomenon. I’ve always been a song-crier and a movie-crier, however, so I suppose this was only inevitable. Every part—no matter how clichéd or expected—that a movie director aims for tears, I’ve got them. In both books and film, it’s not always the saddest things that make me cry, but often it’s the most profound or deeply touching in any manner. In my many readings of Harry Potter, I never cried at deaths, but lose it completely every single time in that horrible epilogue when Harry names his son after both Snape and Dumbledore. It’s a terrible and trite construct on Rowling’s part, but it never fails to trigger the waterworks. Knowing it’s far from the deepest or saddest part of the series really only makes it worse.

I say worse, but I suppose I don’t really mean that. A book that can trigger that kind of emotional response, for whatever reason should be lauded. As much as it’s mildly embarrassing to tear up in front of a roomful of strangers, there’s always a bathroom to hide in. Too often people aren’t affected enough by the humanity in everything—life, literature, music—it doesn’t matter, so when the waves come over me, I always kind of love it. Simply being able to feel things in a world where people have come to pride themselves on their thick skins and jadedness makes me just fine about being a weeper.

In case anyone else shares in this, here are a few books that have made me well up satisfactorily lately: Just Kids by Patti Smith, There is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper and The Secret History by Donna Tartt. Do you have any to add?

June 30, 2011   Stacey   fun, lists, reading, Stacey  
1

Top 10 list, in June!?!

I thought I’d get ready for the barrage of end-of-year best-of lists early this year. I mean, why not use the half year point as an excuse to come up with a list of the 10 best books of the year…so far? It’s pretty silly, but Amazon has created this list, and while it’s subjective as all these kinds of lists are, it is an interesting peek into a mix of titles published this year that are incredibly diverse. And not all of them have been big bestsellers, or even very talked about, which is also worth noting. PW had their take on the list mentioning the emphasis on historical in both fiction and nonfiction.

I’m sure all of the authors and publishers are thrilled that Amazon is promoting the books so heavily on their home page. Free publicity seen by millions of eyes is not so easy to find these days, and this is sort of like mass hand-selling. Like those shelves in bookstores where you have Employee Picks. I always go there first.

Personally, I’m really happy to see a food memoir on there: Gabrielle Hamilton’s Blood, Bones, & Butter, which garnered a large advance from Random House and seems to be making its money back based on how long it’s been living on the bestseller lists. As well as The Tiger’s Wife, which I blogged about before. I’m still amazed this young woman has created what many feel is a masterpiece at the ripe old age of 25. And only one celebrity book—Tina Fey’s Bossypants, which has been pretty much universally praised, and the millions Reagan Arthur paid for it probably feels like a worthy investment for the publisher.

So check it out and see what you think. I wonder how many of these will make their way onto the best-of lists at the end of the year, and how many more great books will be released over the next 6 months. Are there other books you’ve read this year that you think should be on the list? Let us know, and we’ll take a look. Maybe we’ll even use Amazon’s list combined with your ideas for our next book club picks (there are 10 of us now so we need a lot of titles, and fiction only please for book club!).

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