in the common hours

Nightstand update

A reading wrap-up for Friday Favorites this week. If this post looks long (it is), you could just read the list under Book Bag on the left.

I really enjoyed The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri. I admit feeling slightly resentful of the beautiful author on the backcover who writes so masterfully at such a young age. But my awe is stronger than my resentment. As a first-generation American, I felt Lahiri captured the dissonance one feels between the culture that surrounds and the culture of one's family, and illustrated it beautifully in the intimate story of one family.

It reads easily, in a way that so few literary novels do. I thought of Stephen King's essay in this year's edition of The Best American Short Stories:

Last year, I read scores of stories that felt ... not quite dead on the page, I won’t go that far, but airless, somehow, and self-referring. These stories felt show-offy rather than entertaining, self-important rather than interesting, guarded and self-conscious rather than gloriously open, and worst of all, written for editors and teachers rather than for readers.

His point applies to the modern novel as well, if you are reading more than chic-lit. Vamderbes' Easter Island and Patchett's Bel Canto exemplify this self-consciousness, where the writing becomes a distraction, even at its heights, because the story and characters have less life. I know a lot of people enjoyed those books---but, hey, this is my blog;-) To me, they were clearly the product of writing-workshop authors, missing all the personal intensity that used to be guaranteed in a first novel (and which flowed in abundance in Patchett's memoir Truth and Beauty).

I also enjoyed Steve Martin's memoir Born Standing Up this month---with gratitude to our public library. Despite my previous claims about my parents lack of album-buying while raising nine children, we did own the Wild and Crazy Guy LP, and I loved reading about the evolution of that act. Martin writes about his parents with humor, respect and honesty ---a rare feat. If you enjoyed the documentary "Comedian", and find humor fascinating in terms of what works and what doesn't, you'll enjoy this. I finished wanting more...but that's a good complaint.

Also got Alice Waters' The Art of Simple Food from the library, but then they demanded it back before I finished. The nerve! While I didn't notice anything exactly new, it might be worth owning. Her recipes are decidedly basic so that you can master them and then develop them further based on your taste or the season. For someone as recipe-dependent as me, that would be a big step.

Of course, much of this month's reading has consisted of rereading pregnancy books (thank you Elizabeth!). Amazing how quickly the mind forgets. Sometimes it helps just to have a book tell you, that's normal, don't sweat it (eg: the king of all charlie horses in the middle of the night).

With each pregnancy, Brian has read a book aloud to me and the baby at night, based on the idea that the baby will then know his voice well. I swear, when Aidan was born, he turned his head toward Bri every time he heard his voice. And I love being read to, so it's a great gift to me as well.

  First time round, Bri read Babyhood by Paul Reiser. Perfect: short chapters, sweet and funny. Second time around we chose Bill Cosby's Parenthood. A mistake. In our state of happy anticipation, the humor came off as cynical ("when will these kids ever move out?!"). This time around we picked up a book Brian's mom gave him by Tim Russert, Wisdom of Our Fathers: Lessons and Letters from Daughters and Sons. In all honesty, I can't imagine either of us ever reading it otherwise. Now I'm so grateful we are. At least one letter makes me cry almost every night, and some make us laugh out loud ("Gilipse pees no more"), but they are all a beautiful testament to the impact a parent can have. Definitely a future favorite of 2008.

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

That is the opening line to Michael Pollan's "Unhappy Meals", an article I read in the NYT's magazine last year. I jokingly told Mimi that it should have been on my 2007 list since it was one of the best things I read last year.

Now Michael Pollan has published it as a book, In Defense of Food. I haven't read it yet, but the reviews haven't mentioned anything yet that wasn't in his original article. That first line seems simple, but the catch lies in how little actual "food" we eat these days. I loved his advice to avoid any food that makes health claims---because to do so, it must be in a box, while the veggies still silently by, not waving any nutrient-flags.

We have a long way to go in using meat "as a flavoring more than a food", but it dispelled numerous misconceptions and is a voice of reason in a culture where the medical community changes their advice weekly.

Check it out.

Best of 2007, Part III: Nonfiction

One of my best "discoveries" this year wasn't a book but a website about books: Goodreads. Great way to share what your reading with friends, and to get their recommendations, though it can be addictive for  compulsive list-makers like me.  Actually I love having one place with all my book related lists (list for the library, wish-to-buy list, list for the boys, etc).

And it was from goodreads, specifically Wendy Smedley's list, that I rediscovered The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Bloom. I first read it in 8th grade, during a phase of reading Holocaust memoirs, but found it just as moving today. Corrie, her sister, and father were part of the underground resistance in Nazi-occupied Holland, and were eventually sent to concentration camps. Corrie is the only one who survived to tell their story---especially the story of her sister Betsie, and of the power of perspective and faith even when surrounded by hell itself.

It's All Too Much by Peter Walsh is a book I wanted for a long time, but couldn't  justify buying when its central theme is to acquire less. I gave in on a roadtrip, and am so glad I did. Like those TV shows that deal with debt, part of the pleasure is hearing about people who have a much bigger challenger than yourself. Suddenly the over-flowing file cabinet doesn't feel so shameful when reading about people who can't use rooms of their house. I've never seen "Clean Sweep,"  his show on one of those home improvement channels (our cable includes C-SPAN, WGN, TBS, and that's about it), but I really enjoyed his writing style and tone.

Unlike most organizational books, he says getting more boxes or systems or organizational tools aren't going to solve the problem. Clutter is caused by having too much; you have to get rid of stuff. I know this, but I still can't hear it often enough (especially since everything else in our culture is sending the opposite message: "you need this"/"you need more").

I also loved his point that while it is great to have a few objects that hold memories for you, or that are about future plans, the majority of things in your home should be about the present. Glad I bought this one, because I need to constantly remind myself of these lessons.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver was a library check-out, also a good decision. Otherwise I don't believe I'd have finished it. As much as I enjoyed learning about the mating habits of turkeys and the creative solutions her family arrived at during their year of trying to eat locally, I was equally annoyed with her often smug attitude and inaccuracies.

She makes sweeping generalizations about Americans, suggesting that few people and "none of our children" could answer any of her basic agricultural questions, such as when various fruits and vegetables come into season, or when to expect the last frost in spring. Maybe she just lived in a big city for too long...I don't know one person who couldn't answer those questions in our town.

Her intentions are good, and I'm glad I read it. I still buy bananas and pineapples (the "Humvee" of produce) on occasion, but I ask more questions about where our food comes from, especially our meat. She has all the recipes posted on a website, and her pizza crust has become a Friday night staple in our house. She even has me considering an asparagus bed in our garden.  I still love her prose, especially her explication of Thanksgiving as Creation's birthday party. Yet any recommendation would have to go with a warning : Condescension ahead.

A library check-out that I wish I owned is Harold Kushner's When Children Ask about God. I'm a big  fan of Rabbi Kushner. The second chapter's title reads, "If God isn't a bearded old man in the sky, then what is he?" I love his acknowledgment that no one has all the answers, after all we are finite beings attempting to understand the infinite. Therefore all these discussions with one's children are open-ended, and children are given permission to learn as they go, to develop their own relationship with their creator, instead of establishing a "grandfather" relationship of being expected to simply inherit their parents' beliefs and conclusions. I know some people are turned off by the title to Kushner's classic, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, but if you haven't read his very personal battle to understand the pain in the world, you're missing out. Skip all these titles and go get that one.

Honorable Mentions: Understanding Exposure (for SLR-newbies like me), Siblings Without Rivalry (because it's never too soon to prepare) , The Forest for the Trees, and A Mind at  Time (which I read out of order and still need to finish...).

Best of 2007, Part II: Fiction

Not a great reading year for me. People always  tease that you might lose your interest in sex after having kids, but it was my drive for fiction that diminished with each child. I got my groove back during the summer, and then didn't read any other novel for months.  It's a difficult balancing act for me---with a good book, I can easily disappear for a few days, which doesn't really work when kiddos are looking to you not only for meals and structure, but to be present. At the same time, I know I am a happier and saner mom when I get time to read and escape a bit.

Nonfiction and short stories have been my compromise, but I miss great novels.

  Best novel of the year: Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner

He has become one of my favorite authors, with Angle of Repose one of my all-time favorite novels now. While that novel is greater in scale and ambitions, its flaws are greater as well. At first I was slightly disappointed in Crossing to Safety's smaller scale, but what it does, it does perfectly. It does not try to contain whole lives, whole families, or whole landscapes in the way Repose does. Its focus is on the marriages of two couples, and their friendships with each other.

Even in the novel, Larry asks, "How do you make a book that anyone will read out of lives as quiet as these?" This is not an Irving novel; it has none of the bed-hopping or the betrayals one expects in a novel centered around four people. Instead Stegner makes a book one wants to read by creating characters as real as the people closest to you, and examining the demands and gifts of relationships. No other novel that I've read has so accurately portrayed the potential for both a heaven and a hell within a marriage.

One of my favorite passages: "I didn't know myself well, and still don't. But I did know, and know now, the few people I loved and trusted. My feelings for them is one part of me I have never quarreled with, even though my relations with them have more than once been abrasive."

Honorable Mentions:

Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy; I loved and hated this novel. Sue made me crazy, and men who allow women to treat them that way make me crazier. The worst is that Jude would often describe exactly what drives Sue, show that he knew exactly what she was doing, and yet, still do whatever she bid. And then Jude, indulging in his dreams again, while his family stands homeless in the rain. Yet, I was engaged enough to be enraged and did care about these people. Until it became melodrama..."Done because we are too menny" --oy vey.

Overall, there were many lines, paragraphs and ideas that made me flip to the front to confirm it was published in the late 1800s. I can only imagine the urgency and boldness one felt reading it when it first appeared.

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger; A fast, enjoyable read set in Chicago that has a unique spin on the whole notion of time-travel. I preferred the first third, dealing with Henry's visits to Clare's childhood. I found their marriage scenes much less developed, and intriguing aspects of the dynamic Niffenegger sets up unexplored. Several supporting characters are flat or stereotypes. What has stayed with me though is the dilemma Clare faces, having already fallen in love with the mature Henry, when she meets him as an immature man. She's in love with who he isn't...yet.

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho; This has been waiting patiently on my  shelf for years. I know people who love it, and others who hate it, so I was reluctant to begin. Yes, it is extremely repetitive, yes, it isn't necessarily original, and no, it doesn't deserve all the comparisons to The Little Prince. I don't understand how any American woman can read it and not be shocked that he hadn't returned for Fatima, "his true love", before going to the roots of the tree.

That said, repetition may be exactly what's needed when the message is to follow your dreams. The aspect I liked least were all the omens (such a subjective temptation), and my favorite was his dialogue with his heart. Love this passage:

"My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer," the boy told the alchemist...

"Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with eternity."

Up Next...Part III: Nonfiction

Bedside Books

I'm in a reading dry-spell. I haven't read a good novel since summer, and the stack by my bed is growing taller and dustier. Of the books sitting there, four are books I've already read, but want to reread. Three have been there for at least six months and may never be finished. Several are from the library, and, therefore, the only ones ensured of being read. Since having children, I read more nonfiction than fiction, because it doesn't demand that I abandon my family the way a good novel does. For that very reason though, a library deadline is a good thing.

History of Love was my favorite novel of '06, and I've been amazed at the mixed reactions of others. When I mentioned it to DB, she told me she gave copies of it to everyone for Xmas, while another friend didn't like Leo at all. Personally, I am in love with this old Jewish man, and can't wait to revisit him...eventually. Personal Strength-Spiritual Joy is written by my good friend Jan and her husband. So much wisdom in it, I'll always be rereading it. Finally, The Hiding Place is a holocaust memoir I read in high school and had completely forgotten until I was reminded by WS's list on Goodreads.

Two of the long term residents are Understanding Exposure,  on photography, and Joan Didion's collected essays, We Tell Ourselves Stories In Order To Live. Both are brilliant, and well worth their price, but they are the kind of books I enjoy a little at a time. I've been reluctant to find them proper homes because once a book goes on a shelf without having been finished, its fate seems sealed.

The library check-outs are mainly Harold Kushner, another old Jewish man with whom I'm in love. Best known for his classic When Bad Things Happen to Good People, Kushner takes scripture seriously without taking it literally. Definitely my favorite rabbi.

Please email some novel recommendations. I need some good fiction for the winter. This summer I read Jude the Obscure (yes, for the first time...I naively thought I knew what to expect); The Time Traveler's Wife and The Center of Everything. None of those, not even Hardy, compared to the highlight of my spring reading, Crossing to Safety. Maybe it was the modesty of its intentions, but it was oh so good.

I also read nonfiction this summer, but they were all library check outs. Deadlines work for me. Otherwise Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle would still be sitting on my bookshelf, unfinished, and making me feel guilty.

Instead, it's back on the library bookshelf, finished, and still making me feel guilty.