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.

Birthday books!

My birthday was about a month ago (yeah, I'm in denial!) and I got a lot of lovely books:

The film books at the bottom and the miniature book at the top are from my dad (we're both huge movie nerds, in our spare time at least). The Book of Perhaps Unnecessary Cursing and the thick paperback are both from my lovely boyfriend.

I also got a gift card from my Aunt Trish and Uncle Bob (& co.) which read, "If you buy books with a gift card, they don't count, right?" Well, if you insist:


Delightful! Birthdays are great, and my To Be Read pile is officially taller than I am. (Not that that's a feat; I'm quite short.)

Tinfoil Prize For Kurt Vonnegut, RIP

I'm not a lifetime Kurt Vonnegut fan like some of y'all. In fact, I read one of his books only because of this project. But as far as I'm concerned, if he had just written that one book he would still have made an indelible mark on 20th century fiction.

Kurt, this tinfoil fez is all for you.

Adieu, adieu, all's vanity

In this passage from Heart of Darkness, the narrator is traveling down the river in his interminable voyage Kurtzward, and wondering about his fellow shipmates whom he believes to be cannibals:

Why in the name of all the gnawing devils of hunger they didn't go for us--they were thirty to five--and have a good tuck-in for once, amazes me now when I think of it. They were big powerful men, with not much capacity to weigh the consequences... And I saw that something restraining, one of those human secrets that baffle probability, had come into play there. I looked at them with a swift quickening of interest--not because it occurred to me I might be eaten by them before very long, though I own to you that just then I perceived--in a new light, as it were--how unwholesome the pilgrims looked, and I hoped, yes, I positively hoped, that my aspect was not so--what shall I say?--so--unappetizing: a touch of fantastic vanity which fitted well with the dream-sensation that pervaded all my days at that time.

Conspiracy theory, and a new Chunkster.

I just finished Alexandra Robbins' SECRETS OF THE TOMB, a short nonfiction book which purports to tell the real truth behind the Skull and Bones secret society. Skull and Bones is a fraternity at Yale which is famous for potentially having its pledges lie in coffins and recite their sexual history (only part true, says Robbins!) and for being the party house of power, where both John Kerry and George W. Bush were members (true, although neither will talk about it). For those of you who saw "The Good Shepherd," Matt Damon's character was "a Bonesman." Skull and Bones is just one of many secret societies which have existed in the Ivy League through the years, but it's arguably the most famous because of its most powerful members.

I was inclined to take most of what Robbins says here with a grain of salt, when I noticed something... weird. Sure, I love a good mystery story, and Robbins herself was a member of a Yale secret society (she wouldn't say which) and got apparently a lot of Bonesman to talk to her under cover of anonymity. That doesn't explain, though, why my library copy of SECRETS... was missing several pages. It looked like someone very carefully tore out parts of three different chapters, so the page remainders were almost down to the spine. And given the context, I'm pretty sure some of the missing pages contain a description of the Bones building's inner sanctum, the so-called Room 322.

Very mysterious! It would be very easy for the secret network of Bones patriarchs (as the alumni are reportedly called) to order this kind of destructive work to be done. But does anyone want to go to her or his library and find out if the same thing has been done there? After all, I'm pretty close to Yale here...

Have I been caught in a web of International Conspiracy? Nah, I just wish I were.

---

In other news, I've made a few changes to my Chunkster Challenge line-up. As it is, I haven't started any of the books (bad! bad!), but a new Chunkster just fell into my lap this week. To wit:

Doesn't it look lovely? It's the second novel by Chandra (whose first book RED EARTH AND POURING RAIN I read several years ago) and my mom just finished it while she was on vacation. Yes, she really took it to the pool! Or so I imagine, because it isn't greasy with sunscreen and it doesn't smell like chlorine. But I'm going to go ahead and throw that up there, and do some arm curls in prep for carrying this 900-plus-page monster around on the train.

98. James M. Cain, THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE

Once I heard this very short novel was not a discourse on the postal system, but in fact a noir classic, I was all over it. I got my copy via Bookmooch and took it with me Saturday night while I was out with my friend Katy. (Gotta have something to read on the way home, but my regular read wouldn't fit in my going-out bag.) I read almost all of it that night between Times Square and my apartment and eventually put it down when I was too tired to finish the last 20 pages.

I'll try to write this without giving too much away: The book is narrated by Frank, a vagrant of sorts who stops at a Greek diner in southern California where the owner tries to convince him to stay and work for him at the diner. Frank doesn't want to settle down until he sees the owner's wife, Cora, who's really hot, so he stays there. Frank and Cora fall into lust, and he tries to convince her to run away with her -- but then they hatch a plan to kill her husband. (There are no postmen in the book; I found an interesting (but with spoilers) theory on Wikipedia about the title.)

Depending on what you've been reading lately, this book might be a breath of fresh air. In Cain's world there are no flashbacks or long stretches of dialogue; things happen very quickly (a lot more things than what I've described here, because I didn't want to spoil any of it) and it forces you to read in a different way to handle the punchier text. You don't have to slow down, necessarily, as much as realize that details of the plot are coming at you faster than the last book you read. It's invigorating, though, and I'll definitely be looking for other Cain books to pick up.

Many of his books have since been adapted to films, the most famous being "Mildred Pierce" and "Double Indemnity"; there are also two American movie versions (and several others from other countries) of "The Postman Always Rings Twice," the John Garfield/ Lana Turner version and the Jack Nicholson/ Jessica Lange remake. (Apparently the second is much racier; I didn't find the book that scandalous, but apparently the original film had to be re-edited because it was too shocking to comply with the Hays Code.) I'm adding the Garfield/ Turner to my Netflix queue right now.

Ellen vs. the Modern Library: 42-58

#100!

It's my hundredth post! I thought about combing through the archives to bring you a top 10 of my entries, but I thought that was a little egotistical. So instead, here are some books I've read recently, in haiku form.

Steve Pond, THE BIG SHOW

Big fuss but small crowd:
If Oscar falls in L.A.,
does anyone care?

Cheryl Mendelson, LOVE, WORK, CHILDREN

She's in a coma.
Do we want her to wake up
While we fall in love?

Janet Hirshenson and Jane Jenkins, A STAR IS FOUND

Casting agents get
No respect. Also, no one's
Like Whoopi Goldberg.

Judy Renee Singer, STILL LIFE WITH ELEPHANT (advance review)

No pachyderm can
Replace your cheating husband.
Elephants are better.

Julie Powell, JULIE AND JULIA

Merde!Aspic's gross! But
in the making, fulfilling.
Wish that I could cook.

Joseph Conrad sure loves the ladies!

Well, at least I could laugh at it:

It's queer how out of touch with truth women are. They live in a world of their own, and there has never been anything like it, and never can be. It is too beautiful altogether, and if they were to set it up it would go to pieces before the first sunset. Some confounded fact we men have been living contentedly with ever since the day of creation would start up and knock the whole thing over.

Oh, Joey. (From Heart of Darkness)

Seven

...is the number of books I've bought so far this year. The latest is Steve Pond's THE BIG SHOW: HIGH TIMES AND DIRTY DEALINGS BACKSTAGE AT THE ACADEMY AWARDS, swiped off the 75-percent-off shelf at Barnes & Noble last night while I was shopping with my friend Jen.

In the same amount of time, I have
Checked out 27 books from the library
Gotten 9 books to review

I don't feel sorry about buying THE BIG SHOW, not only for its unbeatable price of $4 but because I was caught out with it last night for a long time and it kept me entertained. (Locked out of the apartment. Sigh.)

79. E.M. Forster, A ROOM WITH A VIEW

Well, I said I was going to go back to my Modern Library dreams, and I just finished my first book of the year, E.M. Forster's A ROOM WITH A VIEW.

The room in question is a hotel room in Florence, Italy, in a hotel where two women, Charlotte and Lucy, are staying. Charlotte is older and is sort of Lucy's chaperone. Their first night at the hotel they meet a man and his son George who have the view, and offer it to the women. Charlotte turns them down, saying it wouldn't be proper for the two women to say where two men had been staying. Eventually she relents, and they take the room and become acquainted with the man and his son (the Emersons), as well as other characters staying at the hotel. Somewhat later, Lucy and Charlotte go home and the book changes to a more domestic scene.

I "got" this book via e-mail (Dailylit), which may be why I had a hard time getting into this one at first. Sure, we all have first and last names like the characters did, but keeping track of whose last name belonged to whom was a little distracting. And halfway through we get a whole new cast of characters as the trip ends. Still, there was a point at which it all fell into place. I only wish I could tell you where in the 89 e-mails that point lay...

If published today, I think this book may have been shelved under chick lit. "Lucy thought her life was perfect... until one trip to Italy and a sexy new suitor forced her to rethink it all." I'm thinking Marian Keyes. (And don't take that as a negative! While I lived in Spain I read a lot of Keyes books in Spanish, to pick up some slang and get a break from my course reading.) Then again, the whole social critique aspect of the book -- especially dealing with tourists abroad and the changing state of unmarried women -- would have to be updated substantially, although its questions are often still pertinent.

As for Dailylit, I'm going to keep using it, but I think it's best for shorter books. Some weeks I would let Monday through Friday's e-mails pile up, and I think if I had seen "Part 27 of 403" in the subject line I might have just given up entirely. So I'm going to take one of the shortest books, and one that I really should have read by now, Joseph Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS. Speaking of educational must-reads, I think everyone else I know was forced to read this in school at some point. Better late than never!

Ellen VS. The Modern Library: 41-59

I joined a book club! And a website.

I haven't belonged to a book club since I was in high school, and that was a right irregular outfit driven more by the snacks our faculty sponsor brought to morning meetings than by actual books. So one of the first things I did when I moved is sign up for a book group through a networking site I visit a lot.

The book they picked (and had free copies of, luckily) was Grant Stoddard's WORKING STIFF: THE MISADVENTURES OF AN ACCIDENTAL SEXPERT. Stoddard is a British guy who moved to the US for love and fell into a customer service job at the highbrow sex magazine Nerve.com, where he was forced to try all kinds of crazy things for his column "I Did It For Science." (To give a relatively innocuous example, for one column he flew to southern California, interviewed porn stars and had a walk-on role in a porn movie.) The whole book is laced with Stoddard's dry humor and his disbelief at being regarded as a sex guru just because he was willing to try almost anything for his editor, and only much later thought, "I'm developing a bit of a reputation, aren't I?" If I ever meet him, I would like to ask him whether, in fact, there was anything he would not do for science.

Maybe it was just my imagination, but when I was reading this on the subway yesterday I felt rather more disapproving glances than usual. Okay, the title is kind of a dirty joke, but the cover isn't inappropriate to carry around... right? It's not a book for kids, surely, but it's not as if there are pictures (although Stoddard is bare-chested on the back cover... horrors!) Maybe they were just staring at me alternately cringing and laughing with each new scrape Stoddard got himself into. I don't think I've ever felt the urge to censor my reading on public transit before. Then again, it's not every day an "accidental sexpert" writes a memoir.

I'm passing it along via BookMooch, something I finally signed up for after hearing on blogs like A Work In Progress about this never-ending parade of free books. Of course, I don't have much to be mooched at the moment, after the big pre-move weed-out, but I've now given away two books and have one on its way. I tried Paperback Swap and found it a little dictatorial (what with the, "Send it in 24 hours or we'll cancel it and slap you on the wrist" policy); BookMooch looks much more realistic for those of us who don't want to go to the post office every day.

Quotable Forster

Well, it isn't exactly quotable, but I enjoyed this section from A Room With A View:

He became self-conscious and kept glancing round to see if they were observed. His courage had gone.

"Yes?"

"Up to now I have never kissed you."

She was as scarlet as if he had put the thing most indelicately.

"No--more you have," she stammered.

"Then I ask you--may I now?"

"Of course, you may, Cecil. You might before. I can't run at you, you know."

At that supreme moment he was conscious of nothing but absurdities. Her reply was inadequate. She gave such a business-like lift to her veil. As he approached her he found time to wish that he could recoil. As he touched her, his gold pince-nez became dislodged and was flattened between them.

Such was the embrace. He considered, with truth, that it had been a failure. Passion should believe itself irresistible. It should forget civility and consideration and all the other curses of a refined nature. Above all, it should never ask for leave where there is a right of way. Why could he not do as any labourer or navvy--nay, as any young man behind the counter would have done? He recast the scene. Lucy was standing flowerlike by the water, he rushed up and took her in his arms; she rebuked him, permitted him and revered him ever after for his manliness. For he believed that women revere men for their manliness.

One resolution gone decently; others to follow?

In January I resolved not to buy any more books before I moved. Now that the move is complete (in the "All my boxes are in the state" sense, not in the "I can have guests over" sense) I can say that... I failed, because I have bought books, but I also got rid of more than I kept.

Most of my move was accomplished in the last week of February and the first two weeks of March. Before that I bought six books -- the Janice Dickinson one I blogged about, and five more at the employee bookstore where I was working at the time. (What can I say? The discount was killer.) At the same time, I left eight books on the swap shelf at the office library and returned several more galleys I'd borrowed from the free table while I worked there. I even left a book in Philadelphia's 30th Street Train Station, and sincerely hope someone is out there enjoying it. Since moving I have bought... one book. Either I am becoming more fiscally sensible, or the local branch of the New York Public Library is doing its job.

(I'd actually vote for the latter, because I currently have seven books out and a load of requests in the system. There's nothing like stopping in to pick up a request and finding five with your name on them. And my bookshelves look so dignified!)

I do foresee at least one more book purchase this month, but this one's my own fault: I borrowed the Anthony Lane collection Nobody's Perfect from my friend B. back in October, and I spilled coffee on it during a trip to IKEA. I should blame the discount manufacturers' commodification of lifestyle, but I am a klutz, and I'm going to buy him a new copy and keep the stained (but otherwise un-annotated) one for my library. B., if you're reading this, sorry.

One of my other resolutions? To update more regularly. I swear, this time's the charm.

I Haven't Been Reading?!

I was always confused when people said they "just didn't have the time to read" -- until this week when I became one of them.

It's true, friends. In the past week since I finished my temporary assignment, I have been busier than I thought possible. I've been getting a lot of things done -- but reading hasn't been one of them, mostly. The only time I've been reading is on the bus (and bus, and subway) back and forth between Current Apartment and New Apartment, and still, that isn't that much.

I am woefully behind on my reading blogs. I still haven't written up my third From the Stacks read which I finished in December, and I still have two books left to read (by, um, next Wednesday?) Any time I have I've been squeezing into reviews, and I'm still behind on those. I just got a letter from the library reading "Why haven't you come to see us lately? We miss you!" Actually, it was to let me know that I have a book that's two weeks overdue, but same thing, right?

Anyway, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. I am updating the sidebar as we speak, and posting should I hope be back to normal next week, when I get into New Apartment (although moving will probably continue forever).