A park to read in: The High Line

Okay, it's not even open yet, but it's not every summer New York gets a new park, either! The High Line has been put atop an abandoned elevated track (under which I used to cross, nervously, every day) used for "trains laden with meat, milk and produce" on the west side of Manhattan, and I can't wait to get up there and see how it looks.

Time Out New York reports that bikers will not be welcome on its narrow paths, but it will still be insanely crowded despite not offering free drinks or movie tickets. Still, with a little patience I'll be able to get a glimpse of it sometime this summer. (I would read at the insane Standard Hotel behind as well, if I could find an excuse to stay there.)

Photo: lrechis

It didn't suck but I didn't cry either

I'm pretty sure when I joined the Internet I signed a statement forcing me to comment on books by blogging A-listers. So about Heather Armstrong of Dooce's memoir IT SUCKED AND THEN I CRIED: The blog is better. Can you take the cuffs off now?

IT SUCKED... follows Armstrong's first pregnancy, the birth of her daughter Leta (now 5) and her struggles with post-partum depression. Dooce.com, for the 5 people on the Internet who are not familiar yet, began before Armstrong was a parent or even married, and gained its author notoriety when she was fired for writing about work. But "getting dooced" does not a popular blog make, even though it helped Armstrong gain exposure; instead it took a magic formula of "regular, interesting content" and "online marketing." What I'm saying is, I don't begrudge Armstrong for being able to support her family from Dooce, even if at heart I am a "web-based writer" mindlessly going on the attack.

Non-readers of Dooce will probably enjoy IT SUCKED AND THEN I CRIED more than I did. Even though I wasn't reading it regularly when the events described in the book happened, I was comfortable with the style, and there are some very funny scenes (including one involving Norah Jones and a purloined bottle of wine). But overall, it just didn't either captivate me or make me laugh like her hatemail responses or that time she compared her marriage to "Rob & Big." Normally the danger in a blog-to-book adaptation is that not enough new material is added to the blog, but in Armstrong's case I think she didn't pull enough from the blog that I was able to recognize the narrative I'd read before and get some context on it. Most of it I found forgettable, except the graphic bits about pregnancy which will give me medically-themed nightmares.

Bookmarks

A few odds and ends while the coffee takes hold:

• Speaking of celebrity book deals, Dick Cheney is shopping a Bush White House memoir (not surprising). What is surprising is that someone leaked the news that he wants at least $2 million for it, which suggests he's willing to take less than what Sarah Palin reportedly got for her HarperCollins deal (current estimates: $7-$11 million, not including what they're paying her co-author). On the other hand, Lynne Cheney's publishing experience should be a real help if he's planning to write about the last 8 years as a racy lesbian escapade.

• Eat food, not too much soft serve, mostly plants: After initially dropping it due to the economy or agricultural pressures, Washington State University (alma mater of my uncle) will once again be requiring its freshmen to read Michael Pollan's THE OMNIVORE'S DILEMMA for the fall, and thanks to a generous donation will get to hear Michael Pollan speak when they arrive. We didn't have a "common reading" book my freshman year, although one year when I was a peer adviser my charges were assigned to read John Edgar Wideman's PHILADELPHIA FIRE. I don't think any of them did and we never talked about it. Sorry, Mr. Wideman.

• It's great that we have this juicy yet official biography of Gabriel Garcia Marquez for the record on the Colombian magical-realist author, but still I must protest: where is the other two-thirds of his memoir? First volume LIVE TO TELL THE TALE (VIVIR PARA CONTARLA) only covers his life through around age 18. I'd rather read that book than "I don't think I'll ever be able to forget Condi. And most of all, I will never forget that one night. Working late on the yellowcake memos. Just the two of us..."

Author: Buy my book even though I don't read

"Sometimes people write novels and they just be so wordy and so self-absorbed... I am a proud non-reader of books. I like to get information from doing stuff like actually talking to people and living real life."

- Just in time for BEA! It's Kanye West, whose seemingly content-less book THANK YOU AND YOU'RE WELCOME hit stores this spring, being contrarian and illiterate. Is that the best way to honor your late mother, the former English professor?

Clearly the only revenge is to consume as much of West's four albums in print as possible. In fact this morning quite unrelated to this news I actually Googled some Kanye West lyrics, and then I read them.* Take that, O AutoTuner.

*Sometimes I do this just to marvel that it can be done after years of listening to songs over and over to copy down the lyrics. Kids these days with their search engines!

This blog is four years old

On this day in 2005 Wormbook threw open its digital doors under original moniker Ellen Versus The Modern Library with the post Why? I wrote my first review of Edith Wharton's THE HOUSE OF MIRTH, a book which has become one of my favorites (and deserves a better treatment than the one I gave it back then).

556 published posts later (counting this one, which in itself is questionable) I still haven't finished the list. It's okay, I will someday. Thanks for reading.

Summer Reading 2009: Third time's the charm

It just wouldn't be summer without a wildly slightly ambitious bunch of titles -- mostly this list, with a few additions. (Only ambitious because, and I don't know why I'm even bringing this up, I finished one of the books on last year's list. And I still haven't read THE POWER BROKER.) Some paperbacks, some hardcovers, all awesome? We'll find out.

Jhumpa Lahiri, UNACCUSTOMED EARTH (finished 6/11)
Joseph Berger, THE WORLD IN A CITY (finished 6/17)
Edith Wharton, ETHAN FROME, but let's keep this just between us (finished 7/12)
Mark Harris, PICTURES AT A REVOLUTION (finished 8/14)
Richard Yates, COLD SPRING HARBOR (finished 8/15)
Jonathan Coe, THE RAIN BEFORE IT FALLS
John Lahr, SHOW AND TELL
Markus Zusak, THE BOOK THIEF
Sheila Weller, GIRLS LIKE US
Herman Wouk, MARJORIE MORNINGSTAR
David Wroblewski, THE STORY OF EDGAR SAWTELLE
Henry James, PORTRAIT OF A LADY

I'm also toying with participating fully implicated in Infinite Summer, a new project (found via 52 books) sponsored by The Morning News aiming to get a group read of David Foster Wallace's best known novel going this year. I am attracted by their claim that if you start INFINITE JEST on June 21st and read 75 pages a week, you will finish the book in September -- in other words, the jest is finite. And if you think that will be the only horrible joke I would make about reading the book should I take the plunge, you are mistaken.

Tao Lin: Evil or genius?

Author Tao Lin (YOU ARE A LITTLE BIT HAPPIER THAN I AM, EEEEE EEE EEEE) is either bravely spoofing the "literary establishment" (quotes intended) or being a real jerk. You decide!

The facts are these: Lin sponsored a short story contest with an entry fee and a cash prize, then entered a story of his under his girlfriend's name. The story won the contest as judged by a third party whose neutrality is questionable. Lin came clean about the ruse but refused to return the money, giving eight reasons including "if [girlfriend] won the contest it would promote her blog, [redacted], and the rest of her internet presence" and "I currently have ~$1300 in my checking account." (My favorite: "The internet would seem funnier and 'happier' to me if [girlfriend] won the contest, in ways that would cause life to seem 'more amusing.'" Ah, the classic "Can't you take a joke?" defense.)

I have never read any of Tao Lin (or as he styles himself, tao lin)'s work, although I did accept his friendship on Goodreads. But from years of sleeping on copies of WRITER'S MARKET I know there is many a scam out there designed to ensnare would-be writers by promising them fame and taking their cash. I can only assume that Tao Lin was attempting to archly comment on the commercial value of art and the futility of gaining market share for print in a nonreading world with this stunt, 'cause otherwise, he'd just be an asshole, right?

ETA. A few reads from around the Internet on what Tao Lin may or may not have done:

• The author's response says "misinformation" is to blame, pointing out that the media "won't cover something that isn't 'newsworthy' because things not 'newsworthy' don't get as many hits as things that are 'newsworthy.'"
• The judge of the contest maintains his independence, says he "would not 'defraud' anyone, in this way."

Dial 30: Getting lost in Michigan's largest bookstore

"Looks closed to me."
"Are those busted windows on the fourth floor?"


We had been driving around looking for a restaurant that turned out to be in a different city entirely. It wasn't serendipity, we had the address, but as we passed the door the aroma of the yellowed pages of a thousand paperbacks overpowered us.


We were told by the cashier on walking in that, should we get confused, we should go to the middle of each floor and dial 30 on the house phone. The store directory ran the length of six printer pages.


John K. King Books occupies an old glove factory on West Lafayette, a few blocks from the Red Wings home rink in Joe Louis Arena. (NB: there have been better ways to promote a city's sports franchises than a series of signs reading "The Beard Is Back.") According to its history, the owner started selling used books and antiques in high school and the store began its life in Dearborn.


I gravitated to a small pink sign at the end of the hallway promising $1 books (among them Dominick Dunne's ANOTHER COUNTRY NOT MY OWN, a memoir by Ruth Gordon and THE CORRECTIONS). A ruddy long-haired clerk who found me there poked at his glasses and then a mole with one finger as he announced to me the locations of every other $1 shelf and cart on each floor.





Most of the stock consisted of older hardcovers which called to mind happy afternoons in the stacks of a college library. The signed books on display tended towards the Box of Paperbacks genres, but no snobbery was admitted: One of my favorite sections was the TV and movie tie-in section, full of books you didn't realize existed of movies you maybe caught on TV when your babysitter thought you were asleep.


I found myself alone in general fiction somewhere around the Mc's. As I looked out the window the city bathed unselfconscious in the early afternoon sun. Back over the bridge, a sign directed drivers to the "Tunnel to Canada." The creaking down the row eventually stopped and I imagined myself a sort of benevolent ghost haunting shelf to shelf, barely even a breeze.

Always true to New York in my fashion

My major travel month ended last night as I touched down in Newark, and I'm looking forward to not leaving my city of residence for at least -- hmm -- a little while. I think I never love New York so much as when I am about to leave again, making the relationship more than a little dysfunctional, but everybody knows about absence and the heart.

Not surprisingly, it seemed like everything I read on the road reminded me of New York. In some cases, the city was cast as a fantasy in a character's mind, its outlines no more solid than a cloud; a naturalized Italian whose husband has gone missing in Gina Buonaguoro and Janice Kirk's CIAO BELLA dreams of escaping her concerned in-laws and running away with an American G.I. to dance in its ballrooms, while the escape route of a gay high school student in Nick Burd's THE VAST FIELDS OF ORDINARY doesn't even have an image associated with it, it's just a destination.

It's a fiction author's right to do some invention, or at least creative manipulation, of the place she or he is writing about -- yet I still love catching one in a lie. Two weekends ago I actually set down Sara Shepard's THE VISIBLES in the middle of a diner scene while I tried to figure out whether there was a diner on the described Village corner and, if not, whether there could have been one since the scene took place several years ago. (If there was, it's gone now, although the pizza place mentioned as being across the street from it lives.)

Nonfiction authors don't have that privilege, even if the scenes they describe must have vanished now. The Commodore Hotel, where Nikita Khrushchev attended a gala in Peter Carlson's K BLOWS TOP, is now a prosaic Hyatt, but the Waldorf-Astoria, where he attempted to preempt a national meeting of dentists who used the opportunity to do a little flag-waving, is still open for business. (To be fair, it is owned by Hilton and has replaced the hyphen in its name with what looks like an equals sign for reasons passing understanding.) "K" took in many ways the classic New York visiting-dignitary route, minus the stop that no one would see coming in 1959 -- Ground Zero.

Iced Coffee Not Pictured

In Detroit I saw Michigan's self-proclaimed largest bookstore, and I have no reason to doubt that it was. But I walked away empty-handed, for I am faithful to my long-unfinished paperback, whose completion I am delaying still while I use my laptop to put the "douchebag" in "bookworm hipster douchebag." I know, I know, I know. Back to reading.

Reading and drinking, the sequel

I picked the wrong weekends to go away this month! (Well, I didn't pick them, they picked me, but that is not the point.) I already missed the New York Lit Crawl, and this week's recommendation of a thing I cannot attend but you should is the Hudson Valley Literary Festival today in Hudson, NY. Visit with your favorite small presses from 11 to 4 at the Hudson Opera House and then hit the free reading at Hudson Wine Merchants. Free wine and recent confirmed Pearl Jam fan Joshua Ferris, who by dint of getting his second mention on this blog this week is now suspected of having a new novel coming out. You know, how stars turn up on talk shows or have tabloid affairs "conveniently" right before their blockbusters are released. Veeery interesting.

Reading on the Road: Is your bed made? Is your sweater on?

Off to a wedding in Michigan, and this time I didn't even try to pack light (formalwear!). I'm bringing 5 books again, because I have even more time to kill in transit. Hey, did you know Detroit Metro Airport has a Jose Cuervo Tequileria? Who wants to do shots and talk about Ellroy?

Yes, I'm bringing LA CONFIDENTIAL and hoping that this will be the trip when I finish it, drinks or no drinks. (No drinks, likely; my attention span is short enough.) Along with the regular review cohort I've also got Mark Helprin's DIGITAL BARBARISM, which I'm sure also goes great with lime and a little salt. (Oops, forgot to run that through the Blurbinator! What I mean is: "Piquant and bitter... leaves an unforgettable taste." I haven't read the book yet.)

Suitable for packing, drinking, fretting, pining, memorializing or whatever else you are doing this fine Friday:


Photo of books reflected in a Cuervo bottle: carolinabeiertz

ETA: after this post was written but before it was published, the author discovered that she had left her cell phone in New York. On the bright side, Books 5, Phone 0 would make a great epitaph.

Not a pedestrian life

Lawrence Block, mystery author and accurate prostitute locator, is also a marathon racewalker, depression survivor and memoirist, according to USA Today:

Fifteen years ago [Block] abandoned another memoir, fearing it would be presumptuous or premature, before what he calls "the Age of Relentless Reminiscence, wherein graduate students earn MFA degrees by writing down their life stories, some of them even factual."

But if he's old "to be getting into the memoir game," he figured, "I'd better do it while my memory was still intact."

But wait, there's more! He also co-wrote the screenplay of the last Wong Kar-Wai film "My Blueberry Nights" and likes to travel whimsically:

Block, a native of Buffalo, and his second wife, Lynne (married for 26 years), are partners in an intermittent "Buffalo hunt," visiting 84 places with the word Buffalo in them. It's "an essentially purposeless odyssey," he says.

This Qwantz cartoon may or may not offer some solace to the would-be writers in the crowd:

Bryant Park Word For Word Announced

It's going to be a busy summer for the organizers of Bryant Park's summer reading series. I've never hit as many of these as I'd like to, because most of them are during the day and you have to work pretty close to the park (or have inattentive management) to take full advantage, but here are a few that jump out at me:

TODAY, May 20: Charlie Todd of Improv Everywhere. The creator of the MP3 experiment has a book? Nifty.
July 1: Readings from HEAVY ROTATION: TWENTY WRITERS ON THE ALBUMS THAT CHANGED THEIR LIVES including Joshua Ferris on Pearl Jam and Stacy D'Erasmo on Kate Bush. Someone even wrote about ABBA for this book. Hmm, which album would I write about...
July 8: "Writers of New York" with Jonathan Ames, Joseph O'Neill, others.
August 5: McSweeney's editors (thus unnamed) on how to write and publish fiction. When I picture this event the audience is full of hipstery celebrities with burning questions about the novels they've stashed in the bottom drawer (John Krasinski) or the experimental epic poem they can't seem to finish (Natalie Portman).

Unrelated to reading: the park also announced its film festival for the summer, and while it has the worst crowds of any such series it may have the nicest lawn.