Diminishing Returns

Whoosh! Did you hear that? That's the sound of my home Internet connection actually doing what it's supposed to. After a few frustrating days, I finally got hold of a tech at Verizon and my browser no longer freezes every 15 seconds. Life is good!

Anyway, last night I finished the fourth book in Megan McCafferty's Jessica Darling series, FOURTH COMINGS. The series follows Jessica from high school, in the first and second books, through college at Columbia University in the third and in this book through life as a recent graduate in New York City. I expected to love and identify with this, being in similar shoes... but I didn't. I didn't even want to read it in one sitting like I did with CHARMED THIRDS.

I think that for me, my enjoyment of the books is related to where I am with regards to Jessica Darling. I read the first two books in 2003 as a freshman in college, and if I didn't look back on high school incredibly fondly, I had the nostalgia factor at least. But I didn't identify with Jessica as a fellow (if fictional) recent graduate at all. There's a scene in FOURTH COMINGS where Jessica goes to a job interview and, just when she thinks it's going well, completely sabotages herself. I saw myself in that scene, I sympathized, I thought it was done well--but there wasn't enough of that for me in this book. (Part of that has to do with the romantic storyline, which seemed believable except for the way Jessica acted in it.)

Of course, I'm not the target audience for FOURTH COMINGS, and I can definitely see how a middle- or even high-school reader would read about her life in New York and find a lot of meaning or inspiration in it. I swear I'm not just jealous of her incredibly cheap rent in the book. But I wouldn't recommend this to someone going through a similar chapter in her or his life--the humor is done extremely well, but this book just didn't speak to me in the way I was hoping it would.

So tell me, dear readers, what books do you most identify with right now?

Book cover image: Books-A-Million

Unlikely inspiration at work

Here's a book I came across today that takes the writing dictum "write what you know" to a whole new level. A substitute teacher collects hundreds and hundreds of notes students in her classes are passing, which according to policy she has to confiscate. Having collected them all, she sends them to artists to create art inspired by the notes. That's the premise of DEAR NEW GIRL OR WHATEVER YOUR NAME IS, a short collection that came out a few years ago from the House that Eggers Built, McSweeney's. I found out about it from a blog called Writers Read which asks published authors (including Trinie Dalton, the substitute teacher and co-editor of the book) what they are enjoying.

While DEAR NEW GIRL... technically isn't a narrative, from what I understand, it made me think of the interesting ways narrative can be used in books. I think the first book that made me aware of form properly was the YA "documentary novel" NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH by Avi, which includes phone conversations and scripted-out scenes to tell its story of a high school student in trouble. Novelists in the 19th century used lots of letters; nowadays, we could get a novel of instant messages (and I have a feeling one might exist, and it might not be bad!) Jeremy Blachman's book ANONYMOUS LAWYER lets its eponymous protagonist unburden himself through his blog, which eventually gains its own agency in the plot. One of my favorite short stories, Rick Moody's "Wilkie Ridgeway Fahnstock: The Box Set," is structured as a series of liner notes to a collection which functions as the biography of a quasi-failure through the music he liked.

But the novel I'd really like to see? One in which the entire narrative takes place through company e-mails--the treachery of the CC function, the banality of the company-wide missive, the accidental addressee. Someday in the future, when we're automatically inputting our wishes to each others' brains, we will forget how funny corporatespeak is. All you have to do is give your protagonist an e-mail account, for starters.

Things Terrible and Unguessable

"I became aware that on the other side of the Sea of Azof we had an interested spectator."

Last night I went to see a theatrical adaptatation of THE TURN OF THE SCREW, Henry James' suspenseful novella. Since I had never read it, and I was reviewing it, I hunkered down yesterday afternoon to hopefully enjoy this ghostly tale.

Now before I tell you about how ridiculously scared I was when I finished it, let me make this clear: I am not a person who enjoys scary things. I've read a little Hitchcock and a bunch of Agatha Christie novels, plus a random assortment of Stephen King left behind in my YMCA camp library*, but I get scared enough reading Harry Potter. This holds for other genres too -- not a huge fan of haunted houses, have only seen one "Friday the 13th" movie (and I don't remember which one)... oh wait, I absolutely love "Werewolves of London." There's the exception that proves the rule. So I shouldn't have been surprised that I was easily scared by what, in Jamesian style, is a pretty ambiguous story whose implications are more frightening than what is explicitly stated.

Essentially, the book begins with a man boasting that he can top another person's ghost story (which we don't hear), because his has not one but two children who see ghosts. The story he tells is from his sister's governess, who once took a job caring for two children in a big, scary mansion in the countryside. The children's guardian, their uncle, asks only that the governess never contact him about anything. Once she gets there, the governess starts seeing two different apparitions and comes to believe that the children are seeing them too, but won't admit it to her:

It was as if, at moments, we were perpetually coming into sight of subjects before which we must stop short, turning suddenly out of alleys that we perceived to be blind, closing with a little bang that made us look at each other--for, like all bangs, it was something louder than we intended--the doors we had indiscreetly opened.

Add a creepy housekeeper and a conveniently placed body of water, and yikes, let me go turn all the lights on my apartment.

I won't spoil the ending here, but THE TURN OF THE SCREW is really a work about perception. The young naive governess can't wait to move to the country to start her new position, but gradually she sees the house as a vise whose grip tightens on her every day. When she first meets the children, they are perfectly behaved little cherubs, but the governess gradually comes to distrust them and believe they are hiding something from her. In that sense it echoed James works like DAISY MILLER or WASHINGTON SQUARE, in which the opinions of "society" determine what people see in you--only here, the case for that perception being correct is much more muddied.

I may have been freaked out, but I was able to get over it eventually and enjoyed this quick read. It's a good thing I read the story, too, because the play took certain departures from the source material that I was able to pick up. I haven't finished the review yet, but I will link to it when I'm finished.

Picture: alibris

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* Didn't your camp have a library? Ours was a dusty nook off the dining hall, someone's donated collection supplemented by the paperbacks others had left behind in their cabins. And that's how I read THE DEAD ZONE, THE TALISMAN and other King books. Oddly enough, they didn't scare me at all.

Old Stuff

On the third day of NaBloPoMo, the mailman brought to me a BookMooch delivery -- a collection of essays on movies by Pauline Kael called KISS KISS BANG BANG. I've been making an effort recently to seek out collections of criticism since I would like to become a better critic myself. Two I enjoyed this summer were both by New Yorker writers, Joan Acocella's 28 ARTISTS AND TWO SAINTS (mostly profiles) and Anthony Lane's NOBODY'S PERFECT (mostly movie reviews from the past 15 years). Kael's complete collection has pride of place at home, but I've only read a few of her pieces.

Anyway, the previous owner of the book described its condition as "in pretty good shape for being 40 years old," so I wasn't surprised when I received a yellowing, cracked-spine Bantam Dell paperback which originally retailed for $1.25. I could not be more excited about this. As fun as it is to open a brand-new book, there's a particular charm to a well-worn copy, especially one like this which reminds me of my parents' library. The beat-up paperbacks of ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD and ATLAS SHRUGGED and George Orwell's diaries had traveled with my parents from dorm to crappy apartment to my childhood home (where they still live), clues to who they are as people before I was at an age to be able to read them. (Okay, I still haven't read ATLAS SHRUGGED, but maybe next time I go home...)

Thus my love affair with BookMooch continues! I also picked up a library request today, Kate Christensen's JEREMY THRANE, after reading an interview with the author on MaudNewton.com. Ms. Newton said she read all of Christensen's novels in one weekend, a tantalizing endorsement to be sure.

My "Last 5"

Today's post is going to take a page from one of my favorite podcasts, Cinebanter. The film critics responsible for the podcast have a feature called "The Last 5" where they talk about the last five movies they saw in theatres or on television. (Hey Tassoula and MichaelVox, I know you say it's a copy-written feature, so please know this is an homage. Listen to Cinebanter! It's hilarious and interesting.) Since I haven't been posting in a while (ahem... bad blogger), it might be useful to take stock of the last five books I read for fun. But first, here are the last five books I read to review:

V. Valerie Stivers, BLOOD IS THE NEW BLACK
IV. Abigail Jones and Marissa Miley, RESTLESS VIRGINS
III. John Elder Robison, LOOK ME IN THE EYE: MY LIFE WITH ASPERGER'S
II. Donald McCaig, RHETT BUTLER'S PEOPLE
I. Henrik Vejlgaard, ANATOMY OF A TREND

And now, my last five-for-fun (all, as it turns out, from the library):

5. Diana Peterfreund, SECRET SOCIETY GIRL. After finishing the GOSSIP GIRL series I wanted to try out some other inappropriate-for-my-age YA literature, so when I heard on IvyGate that a first-time author was writing a series about a fictional secret society, I thought that was worth a shot.
You know how I like secret societies! (And yes, the author went to Yale, though the book's set at a made-up school.) It was a fun, fast read, and I'm looking forward to the second and third books.

4. Seth Margolis, CLOSING COSTS. Three families interact with the same New York realtor in their quest for the perfect place: A retired couple decides to sell and move into something a little smaller; a dot-com mogul, his wife and their twins face a hideous renovation when they find a big-enough place with "great bones"; and an Upper East Side society wife is forced to move back in with her parents after a reversal of fortune. This book was fairly suspenseful while I was reading it, but all in all wasn't too memorable -- I enjoyed the New York landmarks and setting, though.

3. Mary Childers, WELFARE BRAT. I picked this book up on the recommendation of the blogger behind Sex Ed In Higher Ed, and I had a reaction very similar to hers (which you can read here). It reminded me of THE GLASS CASTLE in its lack of sentimentality, and in the way it contained moments where I had to put the book down, I was so frustrated with the writer's surroundings and the obstacles she faced.

2. Fiona Neill, SLUMMY MUMMY. A favorite book of the year by Vogue editor Anna Wintour, this is a contemporary novel along the lines of I DON'T KNOW HOW SHE DOES IT, chronicling the foibles of a mother of three in London over the course of the school year. Unlike I DON'T KNOW..., though, this mom's mishaps are hilarious, not guilt-inducing and shameful, and the ways the mom describes her fellow preschool parents (including the Alpha Mum and the dreamy stay-at-home father) are incisive.

1. Sara Voorhees, THE LUMIERE AFFAIR. This was an impulse pick-up at the library's New Fiction shelf, which I chose because of its subtitle, "A Novel of Cannes." The book follows an entertainment journalist from L.A. named Natalie, a first-timer at the Cannes Film Festival and who (as it turns out) has a tragic history associated with France and rooted in her childhood. As we find out in the opening chapters, Natalie's mother left her father while she was pregnant and moved to Paris, where she fell in love with an art dealer. On a jaunt to the country, Natalie, the mother and her lover are caught in a freak storm and struck by lightning; subsequently, Natalie is sent to live with her father in Arizona, and is only now returning to France. I was a little nervous after reading the first few chapters that it might turn into a conventional chick-lit type of book, but instead the plot thickens considerably and was quite suspenseful.

Phew. Leave your "last 5" in the comments! Have a good weekend.

Stuck

For the first time since I started this whole crazy Modern Library list, I have hit a book I'm really not sure I can finish. Last week I returned THE GINGER MAN (#99) back to the library without finishing it, the second time I have done so this year so far. I got a little further into it this time. I guess that's a success?

So far, the book is about an American expat and student who lives in Dublin with his wife and kid. Ostensibly he's making progress towards his degree at Trinity, but really he just likes to drink and carouse and stare at other women. I don't object to all of this, nor is the stream-of-consciousness narration entirely unfamiliar to me from reading modernists like James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. But I could only read a few pages of this book until my mind started crashing like my perpetually overloaded browser.

This is even more painful because the blurb on the front of the book? Is from DOROTHY PARKER. Yes, the Dorothy Parker who wrote "In April" and sat at the Algonquin Round Table and was best friends with Robert Benchley. If nothing else, I should do it for Dorothy.

Maybe it's time to hunt down a used version and give myself reading assignments, take a more regimented approach. Or maybe I should just track down the pub in that picture, order myself 12 hours' worth of Guinness and get cracking.

NaBloPoMo -- it's on!

Oh, you poor, neglected blog. Ever since I got a freelance job writing for a group blog, I fear I have forgotten you entirely. Maybe this will help:


For the first time ever, I signed up for National Blog Posting Month, a conglomerate of people who agree to post every day in the month of November. NaBloPoMo is inspired by National Novel Writing Month, which I have done before and which is amazingly fun -- but I don't have time for it this year. (I know, the whole point is not to put off your novelizing dreams any more, but I surely will do it again -- maybe in my own designated month next year. Also, I fear giving myself carpal tunnel.) Instead, I will attempt this slightly lesser feat and entertain you for the whole month.

If you're interested you can sign up for NaBloPoMo here. Look for today's real post later this afternoon.

Help! I've been memed!

Kimbooktu tagged me for a Book Cover meme! The instructions are as follows:
1. Enter your first name into Amazon;
2. Choose the first book you see that is "interesting or amusing."

Well, I had to scroll down a bit since I do share a first name with the much published comedienne/ entertainer, but here are a few that tickled my funny bone (no offense to the real Ellens to whom these belong):


Apparently, this series is about wine growers, not wine drinkers, but still: That first glass, it's dangerous!

My first thought: "Why does he have armor on his butt?!" It should be pointed out that I also have long blonde hair, although I do not wear it in braids when I am holding the shoulder of my bekilted warrior. The same author is responsible for this work of egregious punnery:

There are no words...


This cat probably thinks of murder all day.


If only it were a how-to.

I'm not going to tag anyone, but if you read this and decide to do the meme, let me know, and I'll link to it. (And yes, I'm surprised that Beverly Cleary's Ellen Tebbits didn't come up. I guess it's not that popular any more, alas.)

A helpful hint for writers!

Are you a published author? Are you thinking about killing somebody? Maybe you shouldn't write about your plan and publish it after the fact, as one Polish author did. When he suspected his estranged wife and a friend were having an affair, Krystian Bala killed the man and threw his body in a river; three years later, his novel Amok described a similar murder, except the victim was a woman. A tip on the similarities between the unsolved case and the book led police to discover more evidence (including a phone card Bala used to call his victim and his girlfriend the day of the victim's disappearance), and now, to a sentence of 25 years in prison.

Amok is described in the news story as "a work of pulp fiction set in Paris and Mexico, narrated by a young translator who moves from one sexual conquest to another, killing one of his lovers." Check out its creepy cover, at right.

This all reminds me that I've never seen the classic Hitchcock film "Rope," which I hear is really good.

Harry Potter and the End of an Era

Why yes, I was one of the 1.5 zillion (estimated) people who spent part of this weekend reading the adventures of A Certain Wizard. My mom surprised me with a pre-order, my first time getting one -- I didn't get around to ...ORDER OF THE PHOENIX until right before ...HALF BLOOD PRINCE came out, and borrowed that book from a friend after she did the midnight run and speed read. (In other words, I will take credit for the fact that ...DEATHLY HALLOWS is selling twice as fast as any of the other books.)

Even though I didn't buy a copy, I still went to a Potter party at the Shops at Columbus Circle, where I ate free grape-flavored cotton candy and tried to avoid the creepy adults dressed as Lucius Malfoy. Obviously, I should have gone where this blogger went:

At one point I asked Dolores Umbridge where the bathroom was (we were in the newly renovated library for the first part of the party) and she handed me an educational decree saying that I was prohibited from speaking.

Awesome. And here's a good disapproving Umbridge.

I was so worried UPS would leave me a package slip and dash that I left a note by my front buzzer. The poor delivery guy who showed up was carrying a stack of eight books -- guess there are other Potter lovers in my building! And then, partly because of my Deathly Fear of Spoilers, I sat down and read the whole thing in my apartment.

Summer reading and the giggles.

My first post for the Summer Reading Challenge is up. One down, fourteen to go...

Tonight I went to see Jen Lancaster, of Jennsylvania, read from her new book BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG ASS. The book is hilarious on the page, but it was really neat to hear those words come to life in Lancaster's particular presentation. She said during the Q & A that she was lucky to come from a very funny family but claims no comedy background for herself. Still, a story like a terror-inducing trip to the "girl doctor" is even funnier in person. She had me at "Hee."

BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG ASS took me completely out of my head at a time when I really needed something to laugh at. Lancaster's headed back to Chicago, but you should pick up this book if you need to laugh really, really hard.

I've got a golden broomstick.

In celebration of her ability to take the rest of her life off, J.K. Rowling is doing a midnight reading and signing in the U.K. for 500 lucky Harry Potter fans on July 21, the release of HARRY POTTER AND THE GREATEST BOOK OF OUR TIME. Ticket holders get a free book, too -- but if you're enough of a superfan to get into this, you probably have already reserved yours somewhere else (plus a back-up in case the bookstore of your choice runs out). Only seven seats for seven lucky U.S. readers, so ask your Grandpa Joe to buy you a... er, enter the sweepstakes.

Via About Literature.

Summer reading inspiration?

One of my fellow participants in the Summer Reading Challenge is tackling WAR AND PEACE this year. What a slog! I read it about four years ago and, unfortunately, retain very little except the Major Spoiler-y Events (as pretentious as it sounds, I liked ANNA KARENINA much better). Anyway, it turns out that Daniel Handler (of LEMONY SNICKET fame) is also a fan of the Big Summer Book, as he reveals in an interview with The Onion A.V. Club in the San Francisco edition (and posted on editor Tasha Robinson's blog):

I always read a big book every summer — I’m going to read The Aeneid this summer, so I’m excited about that. I don’t know why I chose it. Last year was War And Peace and the year before that was The New Testament, and the year before that was Don Quixote. It’s a nice, sort of braggy thing to carry with you all over the summer. My wife prefers short books, but I like one big book because I’ve always found the idea of summer reading to be kind of wacky, that when summertime comes there are all these articles that suggest really lightweight books for the summertime. It implies that for the rest of the year you’re reading all this super-intense stuff, which I just don’t think is really that common. I don’t think there are a lot of people who are like, “Thank God summer’s here. I’ve been reading Henry James all year long, and now I’m ready for a thriller.” Summer reading should be more challenging. And I think if you read a long book, then you begin to feel that your summer is mimicking that long book, and that’s pretty powerful. If you have a Moby Dick summer, that’s great. And The Aeneid is sort of an Odyssey-like story, so I hope that will shape my summer. Last summer I read War And Peace, and my summer was definitely full of high points and low points, so that was good.

Why save the fluff reading for summer, eh?

I've never read any of the Lemony Snicket series (although their new cover design, as seen above, rocks my socks) but I do recommend Handler's novel for adults THE BASIC EIGHT. It's not a big book, but if you like murder mysteries, books based around diary entries and high school intrigue amongst girls, you will like it.

Where did May go?

For twelve years of my life, May was always the busiest month of the year. Orchestra concerts! End-of-the-year tests! A family birthday and Mother's Day in the same week! Why I figured this year would be different, I have no idea... until I realize that I haven't posted here for a full 30 days. There's just something about May.

Anyway, it's almost June and I've signed up for the Summer Reading Challenge to get my own rear into gear. No review copies among this bunch... just fun books which have nevertheless been sitting around in my room for ages. Tell me what you think -- am I too ambitious?

1. Paullina Simons, THE GIRL IN TIMES SQUARE
2. Joan Acocella, TWENTY-EIGHT ARTISTS AND TWO SAINTS
3. J.P. Donleavy, THE GINGER MAN (ML #99)
4. Carole Cadwalladr, THE FAMILY TREE
5. William Styron, SOPHIE'S CHOICE (ML #96)
6. Iris Murdoch, UNDER THE NET (ML #95)
7. Pauls Toutonghi, RED WEATHER
8. Katharine Weber, TRIANGLE
9. David von Drehle, TRIANGLE (nonfic.)
10. Jeannette Walls, THE GLASS CASTLE
11. Jessica Cutler, THE WASHINGTONIENNE: A NOVEL
12. David Mamet, BAMBI VS. GODZILLA
13. David Gilbert, THE NORMALS
14. Adam Rapp, THE YEAR OF ENDLESS SORROWS
15. Henry James, THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY

If things are going well by mid-July I may tack on more books... followed by a substantive increase in my commute time in order to finish them. Just kidding.

Oh. My. Gawd. Becky, Look At Her Book.

I want 'em real thick and verbose
So find that volume double
Boy am I in trouble
Beggin' for a piece of that Dickens
So I'm lookin' at Russian littin'...

So your girlfriend drives a Rolls Royce
Playin' books on tape from James Joyce
But hearin' ain't like readin' in the back of her limo
My anaconda don't want none unless you got books, hon

--"Baby Got Book." Via reading under the covers.