Look Elsewhere?

Check out this really nice reading page I just discovered from reading the improbably titled blog round-up Damn Hell Ass Kings. I would love to design my own page (maybe not exactly like this, but I dig the four-color separation for various categories) like this, whenever I have time to learn Dreamweaver. The owner doesn't like magical realism, which is a MAJOR minus in my book, but I'd be willing to debate him over that.

I haven't had a lot of time to read lately, not as much because it's midterm season as because work has been quite hectic (the trouble with theatre box offices is, when it's show time EVERYONE wants a dang ticket!) and also because my boyfriend was visiting this past weekend for my birthday. Ah yes, my birthday! I got a couple of books on film from my father (who first pressed into my dirty little hands a copy of William Goldman's ADVENTURES IN THE SCREEN TRADE), including B-movie actor Bruce Campbell's memoir and a hilarious Fametracker collection, and I am eagerly awaiting a book (as yet unknown) from my mom. And lest I forget ATOMIC BODYSLAMMERS TO WHISKEY ZIPPERS: COCKTAILS FOR THE 21ST CENTURY, from my Francophile friend Ainslie (whom I met in Paris -- as I never tire of repeating). As soon as I get paid I'm going to pick up WHAT LOVE MEANS TO YOU PEOPLE, a debut novel from a blogger I've been reading for about four years now, which is so exciting I can hardly wait till it gets here.

I can't wait until spring break (two weeks hence!) when I can take a good week off and do some serious poolside reading. (Yes, I have been known to rock the poolside hardcover.) How about you?

The Great Answer Post

Okay, let's finish this...

#1: "There's never been an opera about me..." is from WATCH YOUR MOUTH, the second novel by Daniel Handler, the "ghostwriter" behind the Lemony Snicket phenomenon. I actually put down WATCH YOUR MOUTH after about 50 pages, not only because I felt like I knew where it was going but also because it was too gross. I guess I ought not to be surprised, given his current occupation. His debut, THE BASIC EIGHT, is more conventional (a high-school diary novel) but also, so far, less quease-inducing. This is one of my conquests from the Interlibrary Loan system, the source of many of my smaller joys.

#2: "The faces of the judges..." comes from the first, uneven novel by Cintra Wilson with the hilarious title of COLORS INSULTING TO NATURE. I think it was intended to be a Bildungsroman for the modern age, and the kitsch factor of it is astounding, but it got a little tiresome after I hit the 275-page mark. I recommend INDECISION by Benjamin Kunkel instead. I bought this book at the Brown Bookstore, which, alas, is facing corporate buyout.

That leaves #4, "Yesterday, I found Violet's letters to Bill." I'm not exactly sure how I got interested in Siri Hustvedt's book WHAT I LOVED except for the fact that it's a not very implicit roman a clef (I'm thinking of the "New Yorker" cartoon that reads, "More roman, less clef.") about Hustvedt, her relationship with fellow writer Paul Auster and her stepson, Michael Alig, now infamous for a New York City club-kid killing in the early '90s. (This was also covered in the book, and later the movie, PARTY MONSTER -- but that is a memoir. Reportedly. Not that James St. James did drugs during that era or anything.) Weirdly, the novel got the most attention for its connection with the murder, even though the murder is really only covered in the last hundred pages of th ebook, and then obliquely. It's no Margaret Atwood, but it's pretty good.

Next time maybe I should offer a prize or something.

Black Pawn, White Pawn

Continuing with the answers...

Besides Capote, Stephen L. Carter was the other outlier in the bunch because his book THE EMPEROR OF OCEAN PARK is a legal thriller with a pretty heavy hand. As I mentioned I borrowed it from my mom, who raved about it and then recanted when I finished, which was weird. The chess-game-as-race-conflict metaphor governs the book, and is about as subtle as, say, representing those conflicts with automobile accidents. (Sorry, I watched the entire Oscars last night. Give me a break.) Anyway, here's the first line, as narrated by the main character (a law professor at a very Yale-ish university) about his wife (a newly minted Supreme Court nominee):

"'This is the happiest day of my life,' burbles my wife of nearly nine years on what will shortly become one of the saddest days of mine."

Stay tuned for the final three!

In Lukewarm Blood

Nobody has a guess on my last post? You know, Truman Capote didn't have a guess either...and now he's dead.

Okay, I shamelessly ripped that off an old Herald house ad, but I think living or dead Mr. Capote would have recognized #5 as being the opening of BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S. I pulled out the tiny black-and-pink paperback I got at Dom Knigi in St. Petersburg, in which slang terms like "suitable for the Colony" get their own dutiful Russian gloss in the back. It cost 75 rubles (the receipt is in the back).

Here's #5 again if you don't feel like scrolling down: "I am always drawn back to places where I have lived, the houses and their neighborhoods. For instance, there is a brownstone in the East Seventies where, during the early years of the war, I had my first New York apartment."

I'll keep posting the answers this week one by one. Not that you can't still guess. Come on!

First Lines to Authors

Can you guess who wrote what? Answer in the comments to be proclaimed either a literary superstar, or just a really good guesser. NB: If you cheat and use Google, I won't be your friend any more.

1. "There's never been an opera about me, never in my entire life. Normally this wouldn't bother me. There hasn't been one about you, either, and besides, I'm still young."
2. "The faces of the judges revealed, although they were trying to hide it, deep distaste for the fact that the thirteen-year-old girl in front of them had plucked eyebrows and false eyelashes."
3. "'This is the happiest day of my life,' burbles my wife of nearly nine years on what will shortly become one of the saddest days of mine."
4. "Yesterday, I found Violet's letters to Bill. They were hidden between the pages of one of his books and came tumbling out and fell to the floor. I had known about the letters for years, but neither Bill nor Violet had ever told me what was in them."
5. "I am always drawn back to places where I have lived, the houses and their neighborhoods. For instance, there is a brownstone in the East Seventies where, during the early years of the war, I had my first New York apartment."

A. Stephen L. Carter
B. Cintra Wilson
C. Truman Capote
D. Daniel Handler
E. Siri Hustvedt