"He's all my exercise, my mirth, my matter,
Now my sworn friend and then mine enemy,
My parasite, my soldier, statesman, all:
He makes a July's day short as December,
And with his varying childness cures in me
Thoughts that would thick my blood."
--William Shakespeare, A Winter's Tale
I used to be a big reader. And by "big," I mean lots, loads, oodles, gobs of input.
In undergrad, por ejemplo, I'd read a book a day. In grad school, I wasn't so much with the novels, but I'd easily clear that many pages, and more and sometimes in Spanish, French, and Italian. (And sometimes, drunk! Gotta multitask, my people.)
After I left the hallowed halls, what, five years ago?, I kind of left the bookshelves behind. Sure, I've read my share of Harry Potter and a smattering of True Literature (I could count 'em with my ten fingers and wouldn't even have to borrow the toes). Not quite the literary intensity of clearing the opus of Umberto Eco in 15 weeks. And then writing a thesis on it. (Did I just go elitist and cocky? I may have.) My reading has gone light--both in quality and quantity. (Yes, I did just imply that Harry Potter may not be quality reading material. Fun, yes. Literary, no.)
Now, if you're used to my writing style, you're probably waiting for the: "Until now." And then a line or maybe a graf about the literary revelation I had last night. How I read Moby Dick and Ulysses in one night and then submitted an article to Parenting magazine that compares both to my recent survival of toddlerhood.
You standing on that rug? Let me just pull that out from under you.
Nope, no such epiphany today. No, last night I read more of Eat, Pray, Love (yes! still!) and decided I wasn't going to let my academic past haunt my good-time present. As I was chomping at a memoir (that word would usually be delivered with a heaping cup of snark) and wishing I had some bon bons to munch along with it, I realized I wasn't so much missing the bon mots. I was Reading for Pleasure. Not to write about it or to teach it or to be one book closer to being "Well Read" or really for information. But for Pure Pleasure, for this thing called Personal Enlightenment.
And I realized, I likey! And, with Elizabeth Gilbert's help, I also realized that I don't have to feel guilty or apologize for who I am today, for what I read or what I enjoy, or for where I find my wisdom.
(Although an article about the Dick, Ulysses and the two-year old sounds intriguing. Don't steal it.)
I'm finally cracking open a book again.
I don't think this has happened since Harry Potter. [Editor's note: I stand correct. Kiki reminded me that I read, finished, and enjoyed Red Tent. Oops.] At least, not with any real commitment. Who knows how this will go. I opened up White Teeth about a month and a half ago. And Salt about six to eight months before that. And, dear books, I haven't gotten much past your covers. But it's not your fault. You are brilliant and thoughtful and funny and I madly adore your every word.
Perhaps a bit too much.
That may be the problem. I'm so enchanted with the words you cast on the page that I can't go past those delirious first impressions. I don't want to progress, I don't want to take it to the "next level." I just want to revel and bask in your well-crafted sentences, in your diligent research.
I'm afraid of losing you: of losing not what we have, but what we might have.
And so, I've left you, with bookmarks barely an eighth of the way through, to explore the bounties of yet another book.
I received this book as a gift from a new friend. She's not reading this blog. (But, Hi! You know, just in case I'm wrong.) She visited us here in Kansas City and, after a couple (re: several) drinks, we hit it off.
She's a "real" writer. So that helped. She wrote for a Politically Incorrect and that's all credibility and awe. But once I got past that, I found out that's she's really interesting, beyond her resume. And mostly because she's drawn to all the things I'm interested in: 19th symbolist art, world religions, amateur architecture, Jung, etc.
(Odd how that happens--how the proportion of interest increases with the scale of similar affinities. We like what we know. Not so odd how people who are drawn to 19th century something something are also drawn to Jung, world religions, architecture, etc. Not really. That's pretty much a given.)
After she left us, she did this incredible thing. She sent us all books. Bear got a book on Druids. I imagine because he WON'T SHUT UP ABOUT IT. (I beg, plead for him to turn off his caps lock, but sober or drunk, the man likes to talk some druid smack.) She sent Finn the Eric Carle book, "Papa, Can You Get the Moon for Me." And she bought me Eat, Pray, Love, a memoir by Elizabeth Gilbert (re: Coyote Ugly) that chronicles her post-divorce journey through Italy, India, and Indonesia. (Rumor goes it will be a star vehicle for Julia Roberts. Unfortunately and, yes, superficially, that could ruin the whole book for me. Regardless, New Friend sent thank-you books and that rocks.)
And so that's what I've traded you for. A memoir that chronicles yet another thirtysomething's foray into things spiritual. (Of the five women I've known who've gotten divorced, and I'm counting Gilbert among them, three of them have made a spiritual journey to India. I'm not saying, but I'm saying.)
Dear books already on my bedside table, I don't know how I feel about this new relationship. I'm only on page 46. It's part insightful, introspective, and enlightening--Gilbert does know how to write. But it's also part indulgent, narcissistic, and self-involved. (And yes, this comes from someone who writes a blog. About herself. Nearly everyday.) I could easily, and predictably, stop reading this tomorrow to retreat to your open pages, you books I started in, like, June. Or I could even betray the whole lot of you and start reading The Golden Compass.
Yes, I know, I'm fickle and unreliable. Yes, I know you don't really care. Because, whether you're read or not, I've already shelled out the necessary commitment (re: hard cash) that brought you into my home.
But I, too, am on a quest of connection. And whether that's found in a literary ashram or an alternative universe, or both, who knows.
I'm just glad my tickets are cheap.
I finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows at 11:51 p.m. last night. Now, quit your squinting, I'm not going to toss out any spoilers here--even though you've had ample time to finish the book. It's only 800-and-some pages.
This particular post is not so much about what I read, but how I read it. Sneaking it in a breakfast. Staying up an hour more after a particularly late night of writing. And then, last night, slamming down some 200 pages to wrap it up.
And all that done between phone calls (Where tomorrow night, sorella?) and text messages (519, safe to talk?) with my sister.
Each night for the past week, we'd meet for our long-distance book club over the phone, whine about Harry's whining, hatch our theories, and make our reading plans. Last night, we ended up calling each other every hour from about 7 p.m. to 12 midnight, to discuss unfolding plots.
I'll miss the characters, living and/or dead, but more than that I'll miss the urgency, passion, and sisterly small talk that Harry Potter brought to my week.
When I go to a restaurant (which I haven't done since 6:30 p.m. on July 3, longest extrahouse dining hiatus, like, ever), I tend to gravitate toward one menu item, and then systematically take all the romance out of the dining adventure by ordering that particular dish every single time we go to that restaurant. At Las Manitas (Austin), it was always enchiladas michoacan (unless it was too early, and then it was always huevos and chorizo). At Uptown (Bloomington), it was always the Popeye omelette. (Yes, I'm a pretentious speller.) At Cascone's (KC), it's the chicken spedini.
Obsessive dining choices. It's who I am. I've learned to accept.
And now, I have to further accept that I have passed on my OCD-lite to my child, forever chaining him to a literary palate that must be obsessively and repeatedly satiated. For the fourth night running, Finn has insisted that Chris Van Allsburg's Widow's Broom be included in the repertoire, with a side of Noah's Ark, the pop-up experience, and Kelly Asbury's Frankensquare. (Halloween doth not die at our house.)
It's an odd brew, stirred with a candied swizzle stick of contradictions and maybe even moral ambiguity. (Spoiler alert!) Some nasty neighbors attempt to burn a perfectly respectable and industrious broom (who, granted, had earlier catapulted a nippy dog into a distant spruce tree) at the stake. A vengeful God floods ("mama, did he kill them?") an almost entire, albeit wicked, population. The notorious, mismatched Frankenstein deals out the fair and the squares to all of his Halloween guests.
Certainly, the choices may get tired (and I've hid the books for tonight so we can get a little variety, I'll let you know how that goes) but let me tell you, the post-book conversing, comparing, and conundruming don't.
Reading someone's blog is weird, ain't it? I read only a few--those are listed over there, now down a little bit, underneath that. There. But I do get addicted to these lives, and not because they're dramatic or tragic or hold some Grand Truth, but because they're people slightly like me who are trying to say something honest, who are trying to figure things out, who are celebrating those very small moments in life that seem to get so easily and often squashed, chewed up, and/or spit out by so many headlines and soundbites and spewing sink pipes or, well, noses.
My reason for my blog: number 3 (not the spit out, the celebration. I do tend to overlist). It's just a record, people. For me, it's about sharing and connecting with the people I love and putting something down just in case . . . well, just in case.
But this blog I found recently has a different flavor--a little lighter on the introspective navel gazing. I came across it when I almost wrote a review of her show a few months back. And then I couldn't stop. Maybe you should check it out.
One of my students recently asked me for some book recommendations. She walked away some 30 minutes later (maybe dazed, possibly overwhelmed) with a bit more than she was asking for.
Silly girl, to ask such questions without a working knowledge of their potential implications. It's a bit like baiting a preschooler with candy before breakfast. Not done. (Unless, of course, he starts screaming.)
I toyed with giving her a rundown of what's on my bedside table: Zadie Smith's White Teeth, Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies, Matthew Collings' This Is Modern Art, Julian Barnes' Arthur & George, Ms. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (oh my God, did you read this? do you know? oh my God), Miriam Moss's Smudge's Grumpy Day, Mercer Mayer's I Was So Mad . . .
The titles at the end are the books at the top of the stack, re: most recently consulted.
I start strong.
That's what I could've done. But how do explain Mercer Mayer? On my bedside table? When we read to Finn in his room?
So instead, I started at 17 years old and gave her the Books by the Ages impromptu lecture.
Oh yes, I did. In rough order:
Heller, Rand, Morrison, Nabokov (which she hadn't read? what?), Garcia Marquez, Robbins (which she'd started. People still read that.), Jackson, Plath, Camus, Sartre, Bulgakov, Gogol, Turgenev, Lermontov (my Russian phase), Moore, O'Toole, Forester (which, if you'll remember, Finn has a head start on), Pynchon, Auster, DeLillo, Eco, Irving, Chandler, Austen . . .
(Are you seeing a pattern? Yeah, I saw it, too. Apparently not only do I have anger management issues (see bedside table and Russians and Camus), I also gravitate toward snarky white men.)
So that list took me to about 23, roughly and with some edits--and some lingering questions. If I had it to do all over again, would I do that much Kerouac? Would I even go near Gertrude Stein? Would I skip John Updike's "moral rectitude"?
But the point, I think, came from my realization that, like, everyone reads Ayn Rand at 18. That Plath (and Thompson and Miller and Nin) are definitely the reading material of weetwentysomethings. That I've met a lot of people who go through their Auster/Eco phase in their mid-twenties. Which got to me thinking, what would a book list look like for a midthirtysomething. What am I ripe for?
So I pose these two questions to you, dear reader, the very first questions I've posted to the blogosphere: What are your literary regrets? What should be included on a midlife reading list?
(And if you mention anything with babies or toddlers, it better be damn good. Damn Good. No Operating Instructions. No Little Earthquakes. No ZuZu Petals.)
(Don't make turn this blog around.)
