There are girls, there are girls, there are girls, there are girls

So many books try to pull off the trick of obliquely mentioning a Life Event in one of its characters' lives and then gradually unspooling it like a carpenter's tape measure. This one is worth it.

The newest resident of the titular camp is Thea Atwell, a doctor's daughter from rural Florida whose parents have sent her away for a transgression. Deep in the mountains of North Carolina, Yonahlossee is a horseback riding retreat for rich girls whose families don't know what to do with them before they get married -- though with the Great Depression looming, its target market is dwindling by the week. Thea's parents can pay, but her guilt about her upbringing is secondary to her struggles fitting in: Having spent almost her whole life on the family farm, she feels all at sea when it comes to navigating friendships with the other girls at camp. Her isolation is compounded at the end of the summer, when she finds out by letter that her parents intend her to attend Yonahlossee year-round, separating her completely from her twin brother for the first time in her life.

The first hundred pages of this book were very hard to get into as Thea adjusts to camp, but once the major personalities were set into play I couldn't put this book down. I roared through the last 200 pages half-afraid of what was happening to Thea (no spoilers) and worrying about how it was all going to play out. The intimacy of teenage girls in this book is at once specific to the time and place -- useless daughters of the rich, intended for good marriages and jeopardized by idleness -- and in a lot of ways universal to how girls interact in these types of closed systems. I'm currently working on something that references similar themes and picked this up without realizing, but DiSclafani's take on it is particularly interesting in how she hooks in the transgression to the airless world of Yonahlossee.  

Read this if you like: THE SECRET HISTORY, Cornelia Read's MADELINE DARE novels, anything about boarding schools.

Trivia: I didn't find this out till after I finished the book, but it was apparently the source of a bidding war before it was published. I can see that happening for sure. I'll be looking for her next one.

Summer reading -- again, for the first time

"When summer comes around, I think many people's thoughts turn to books, among other things... You have this stretch of time in some theoretical sense where you could be more ambitious." --David Haglund

Last week's New Yorker Out Loud podcast addresses the idea of summer reading with critics James Wood and Kathryn Schulz. (With a name-check of THE POWER BROKER, a book I have previously had ambitions of reading over the summer and still have not done, I admit sheepishly.)

I set the ambitious, possibly foolish goal of reading 50 books this summer. How far behind am I? Well, I'll probably have to read 3 or 4 books a week to do it. One minor aid, if you will permit me to be the bringer of good news, is that this summer in a U.S. Memorial-Day-to-Labor-Day sense is longer than usual -- Memorial Day was early, Labor Day is late.

I set this goal because I've been struggling with reading recently, and there is a thought I never imagined would come out of my fingers, but there it is. My reading time has become more fragmented, and with that comes the perception that it's been a long long time since I've read something that truly thrilled and enthralled me. I've read some books I really liked in that time, but they don't hold as much power over me because I'm always looking over my other shoulder. Wood talks about the use and power of structure in determining reading and what to read next, and I think that's probably what I need more.

Sure, but does forcing me to read more to make a particularly arbitrary goal mean I will enjoy it more? So far, yes! Last weekend I sent myself to the park to read, taking advantage of the sunny warm-ish afternoon, and passed a few blissful hours deep in my book. I might have done some reading otherwise, but removing myself from my laptop was key. It's good for the soul to do when it's possible.

Anyway, if you're still reading this quasi-manifesto, Goodreads won't let me set up a summer challenge, but I made a Summer Reading '15 shelf for your perusal. Already got some titles to blog about up there. It's going to be a fun summer.

All for the books

I bet everyone reading this could write her or his own edition of ONE FOR THE BOOKS, Joe Queenan's memoir of the reading life. With all the idiosyncrasies and curmudgeonry included, this book spoke to me as a reader even when I violently disagreed with him (which was often). It's great fun to accept or dispute any kind of book-related judgment; why else am I hear?

As I learned from Queenan's memoir CLOSING TIME, he grew up in working-class Philadelphia toting his paperbacks on the bus to and from horrible factory jobs and dreaming of a way out. That doesn't give him any sympathy for people who never read, but sometimes I got the sense of him reading and acquiring books as the creation of a wall between that old time and the present -- a bulwark of knowledge no one can take away from him. Queenan has primarily worked as an essayist (in sort of a pop culture-y P. J. O'Rourke vein), even producing several books of his own, but ONE FOR THE BOOKS doesn't cover that ground, instead beginning from the realization that all of us must have one day, that we won't have time to read all the books we want. Not even close, not even a little bit.

Among Queenan's pronouncements covered in this book: He hates e-books and all things digital. He will gladly fling aside any book that doesn't please him, except when he stubbornly decides to commit to the end (well, that one sounds familiar at least). He's ruthless about giving books away, except for the ones he compulsively re-reads every year. In that vein, he's definitely a re-reader, and a man who clings to books he may never actually get around to reading -- but only certain books. He hates most books given to him as gifts, especially the well-meaning ones. Heaven forbid you try to relieve him of the tomes he associates with the years he lived in Paris as a young man, even the ones he can no longer read in French (or the ones he never got around to, then or now). And while he mildly despairs of his son's taste in reading material, he's still pretty pleased the kid takes after his old man.

I'd put ONE FOR THE BOOKS right up there with Anne Fadiman's books on reading, Stephen King's ON WRITING or the Nick Hornby Believer essay collections. I have more in common with this 62-year-old man than most people I know. Queenan may hate the above company, but he'd get used to it.

SWEET TOOTH: Sometimes I swear these men are out to get me

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You know, it's funny, when I make my summer reading lists I don't often consider how all the books are related (apart from the most obvious connections). That LEAN IN and SWEET TOOTH sat next to each other on my list this year was just a coincidence and on their faces seemed to have nothing related. But the deeper Ian McEwan's 1970s spy chronicle delves into the more disorderly aspects of the espionage organization, the closer it resembled an example of an extremely sexist, dysfunctional workplace -- only one whose business is the business of state.

The spy in question, Serena Frome, is recruited from Cambridge to join MI5, after puttering around a little aimlessly with a math degree and a secret flighty penchant for books. A woman with little ambition other than to live in London rather than with her parents in their small village, Serena becomes involved with a professor who recommends her to a position at MI5, something she sees as fraught with excitement and mystery by the simple token of not being able to discuss her rather pedestrian filing and secretarial work. Then, unexpectedly, she is recruited for an operation called "Sweet Tooth," a sort of back-door propaganda program aimed at providing stipends to up-and-coming writers with anti-Communist leanings without them knowing that the government was behind it all.

Finally, some real spy stuff! Only, Serena's election for this program is primarily based on the fact that she is young, female and charming, the opposite of the cartoon MI5 agent. Serena herself doesn't think it will work as much as they do:

"I felt obliged to make some form of intelligent objection. ‘Won’t I be like your Mr. X, popping up with a checkbook? [The target] might run at the sight of me.’

"‘At the sight of you? I rather doubt it, my dear.’

"Again, low chuckles all around. I blushed and was annoyed. Nutting was smiling at me and I made myself smile back.”

If you're sensing a relationship beyond patronage, you are not wrong. Serena vets a Thomas Haley, a professor of no great fame toiling along on some short stories, and chooses him for the program. Then they embark on an affair, and things get really complicated.

Although Serena is trusted to run her own operation (or so she thinks), in the office she is given no favors from this designation; if anything her workload increases, because she is keeping tabs on Haley in addition to doing all the filing and paperwork. Her only male friend in the office drops her soon after and then comes back to give a big mansplainy speech about the business of spying because she has the nerve to be hurt that they hung out and he never mentioned he was engaged:

“’Are women really incapable of keeping their professional and private lives apart? I’m trying to help you, Serena. You’re not listening. Let me put it another way. In this work the line between what people imagine and what’s actually the case can get very blurred. In fact that line is a big gray space, big enough to get lost in. You imagine things—and you can make them come true. The ghosts become real. Am I making sense?’

“I didn’t think he was. I was on my feet with a clever retort ready, but he’d had enough of me. Before I could speak he said more quietly, ‘Best to go now. Just do your own work. Keep things simple.’”

Soon, Sweet Tooth consumes Serena's life; Haley is her only source of human interaction, after her best friend is let go from the agency (whose arc itself was really interesting and which I could've used more of) and she moves in with a bunch of unfriendly girls with seemingly "normal" jobs. Her roommates, after all, are just another group of people she risks discovery from.

SWEET TOOTH takes its time getting going but I was riveted from about 75 pages in, particularly at the contrast between the cloak-and-dagger spy work and the often dreary, sometimes hostile office environment. The feminist implications of her place in the agency, at a time when women were still relegated to the clerical side, bleed over into her work as Serena tries to read the expectations for her to succeed as an agent, knowing the odds are stacked against her. Of course because it's McEwan, you can expect a giant Whoa of a conclusion that you'll want to reread and a twist I found cruel but somehow fitting.

Summer's not over yet: Five "up at the cabin" books

This summer I found myself gravitating toward books about "summer places" -- second homes by the water, where the whole family can get together, maybe just one more time or maybe every year. I can't account for it except to speculate that my family's summers were never like that, so with the curiosity of the anthropologist I peered through those windows with extra curiosity. Whether you spent some time at your own summer place (or borrowed a friend's) this summer, or spent your vacation with central air, "Orange Is The New Black" or passport stamps instead, I recommend all five of these books for a getaway fix.

First, mood music:


Comedy: Jennifer Close, THE SMART ONE. I found Close's debut GIRLS IN WHITE DRESSES to be more captivating in concept than execution, but this take on twentysomethings in crisis struck the sweet spot between earnestness and sarcasm. The book begins and ends as the Coffey family and their three adult children visit the southern New Jersey cabin where they go every summer, the parents not knowing that middle child Claire is scheming to move back in, oldest Martha has no intention of leaving and youngest Max will end up seeing it as his only option. The problems faced by these three are as familiar to me as their internal logic to solve them is absurd. Read it, then (if you no longer live at home) send it to your parents with a blank thank-you note.

Tragedy: Ayelet Waldman, RED HOOK ROAD. A small coastal Maine town was the only place where the Tetherleys and Copakens could imagine son John and daughter Becca getting married, where the young couple expected to renovate a boat and sail around the world together. When the couple is killed on the way to their own wedding reception, the lighthearted party becomes a wake.  Waldman jumps from summer to summer in a surprisingly fluid way, eliding the winters to show the ways both families adapt around the loss, unthinkable as it still is. Much of the tension here lies in the conflicting attitudes of the Tetherleys, working-class year-rounders, and the Copakens, whose cultured roots are in New York and abroad but still consider themselves "native" Red Hook inhabitants -- a rift that complicates their healing after the accident.

Horror: A.M. Homes, THE END OF ALICE. I read a streak of Homes' novels this summer preparing for a column I wrote, and in some ways this is an outlier from her more typical suburban white-collar territory (Cheeverville, if I may?) Written as a series of letters between a convicted murderer and a 19-year-old fan, the murderer is convinced to offer up the story of the crime that put him there -- one with its roots in a summer cabin in Pennsylvania, where he moved to try and get away from his pedophilic impulses. Its summer scenes may not be the most memorable in this extremely disturbing, hard to put down book, but the fantasy of getting away from your worst self still attaches.
 Nostalgia: Stewart O'Nan, WISH YOU WERE HERE. Each time I read an O'Nan book I appreciate the author more, and this one is his most expansive yet: After her husband's death, Emily Maxwell decided to sell their summer cabin in upstate New York, but not without inviting her children and grandchildren to spend just one more week on Lake Chautauqua. As with THE SMART ONE, all the visitors bring their own secret problems, but struggle to do just what they always used to do up at the cabin, no matter how unnatural it feels. The multitude of perspectives from which the story is told creates meaningful doubt around how well the house has served its regular visitors, and how they relate to each other. Not every loose end is tucked in, and some questions remain unanswered -- just like with real families.

Subversion: Maggie Shipstead, SEATING ARRANGEMENTS. If you're knocking through this list, in whatever fashion, I suggest you get to this one last because it takes the idyllic cabin dream and neatly turns it on its head. The whole book is set over a weekend in Cape Cod at a picture-perfect wedding... or is it? Like O'Nan, Shipstead uses multiple characters' perspective to play them off against each other, often directly contradicting information another character gave as truth. But there's also a ton of plot packed into this premise; I laughed, I gasped, I told a ton of people to read it (and now I'm telling you).

Summer Reading: A Few Reasons Why Men Should Read LEAN IN, Too

I thought the coverage around LEAN IN, Sheryl Sandberg's business book on feminism and leadership published earlier this year, was ubiquitous till I talked to a man who'd never heard of it. Being seen reading it was common enough among my social circle -- 20 and 30somethings, primarily career-minded, urban, left-leaning. And women. Sure, a subtitle like WOMEN, WORK AND THE WILL TO LEAD and an author known for being a trailblazing Silicon Valley COO due to her gender is probably going to pull in a disproportionate number of female readers -- as well as Sandberg's topics of work-life balance and mentorship. It should be clear why those topics don't just apply to 50 percent of the population, but while I was deeply ashamed not to have read it around the time it came out, my male interlocutor was able to ask "What's LEAN IN?" with no embarrassment. Here are a few talking points I used to convince him to read it:

• The company man is dead, long live career planning. LEAN IN advocates that workers find ways to improve their companies' policies but also not be afraid to walk. Back when a breadwinner might stay at the same institution for a whole career, questions about role- and job-changing were much less common. Now most Americans can expect to switch companies, roles, even careers, not just those who might be planning for taking leave to start a family.
• Better leadership helps everyone. One argument for increasing women's participation in the work force which I had never heard before LEAN IN was to treat women stopping out like a brain drain. If 50 percent of the top talent in a given work situation is at risk of having to resign or stop out, that is a huge loss to the people who stay behind, not just those who leave. 
• Mentees need mentors. Sandberg devotes special attention to the important roles both male and female mentors can play in helping women advance their careers. Men could be in the position to help a female colleague out, or be mentored by one (and accept that help gracefully) -- reinforcing her importance at the office. This could be especially important in the type of company where a woman's day-to-day coworkers are all women, but upper management is disproportionately male. 
• Passive paternal parenting is for "Mad Men." The family structure of breadwinner-father, caregiver-mother has been essentially defunct for decades as most women in America (75%) work outside the home, and 40% are their households' primary breadwinners. Men are now expected to fully participate in parenting, and that's great, because just as with better corporate leadership, they have skills and talents to offer that shouldn't be ignored just because of their gender. LEAN IN's admonishment to pick a spouse who will be a good parent is a little uncomfortable to an unmarried person (I mean, how can you tell?!) but at least asking for, and getting, an active parent as a partner is well within reach.

Summer Reading 2013: Land Of The Free Edition

Reading list, activate:

Ian McEwan, SWEET TOOTH
Sheryl Sandberg, LEAN IN
Stacy A. Cordery, JULIETTE GORDON LOW
Joe Queenan, ONE FOR THE BOOKS
James Jones, FROM HERE TO ETERNITY
Robert Caro, THE POWER BROKER. I had it on last year's list and never got around to it, but this year I give myself no choice! I believe I may be more successful this year in general since 85% of my books are in lockup storage and it may be a while before I can get a library card.
Isabel Wilkerson, THE WARMTH OF OTHER SUNS -- One Book One Chicago selection for 2013
Jeff Chang, CAN'T STOP WON'T STOP: A HISTORY OF THE HIP-HOP GENERATION
Herman Wouk, MARJORIE MORNINGSTAR
Yael Kohen, WE KILLED: THE RISE OF WOMEN IN AMERICAN COMEDY
Samuel Butler, THE WAY OF ALL FLESH
Henry James, THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

Summer Reading 2012 wrap-up

I finished 7 of the 10 books I assigned myself for summer reading this year, 4 of them in August, and 3 of those in the last week. (To be fair, I had started THE TWENTY-SEVENTH CITY much earlier; the last week was just when I got around to finishing it.) On the bright side, I am pretty good at making deadlines! But what should I have done to make it 10?

I should have picked one longer book, not 3. The three books I didn't even touch all weighed in over 600 pages. My original thinking was "I'll take each of these longer books on a trip with me," but in the moment I wanted to take a bunch of shorter books instead. I still really want to read the Caro biography and the Yates short stories; less sure about Katharine Graham (but I'm open to argument if you think I'm wrong to demote it).

I should think about ranking the books on the list. I got a lot more done once I put the remaining books in an order from "I need to read this right now!!!!11!!!!" to "Nice to knock off, but not as urgent." Cold-hearted, but maybe necessary.

I should have finished more earlier, to allow myself that sense of accomplishment. Everyone loves that.

Summer Reading: Reading (and still reading) like a writer

There have been (and I have written about) a ton of blog-to-book adaptations, but Francine Prose's READING LIKE A WRITER is a book that should beget a blog.

This is an outsize request for an author who doesn't even have a website (as it seems), but hear me out: READING LIKE A WRITER is a useful but not that revolutionary guide to close reading for fun and profit technique, clearly compiled from Prose's years teaching writing here, there and everywhere. (If anyone out there is a professor, the scene of Prose cramming Chekhov in a Greyhound bus terminal might be inspirational... hopefully not too dispiriting. I loved it.) I don't mean to downgrade her advice, which overall is excellent. I didn't find it too earth-shattering, but only because I majored in it.

The real treat for me in this book was hearing about the authors Prose loves and looks up to, the ones she uses as models for her students and holds up as exemplary. It would be hard to come away from this book not wanting to read the aforementioned collections of Chekhov short stories, along with A SHIP MADE OF PAPER, Henry Green's LOVING, even treat A MOVEABLE FEAST to a second look. Her habit of using block quotes to illustrate especially good use of detail or dialogue or character serve as textbook examples without the textbook feeling. It wouldn't be too hard to extrapolate writing exercises from them should someone be so inclined; in almost all cases you see what she's getting at.

(This just in: Having written it several times, I am just now realizing how well suited Prose's last name is to her profession. She didn't marry into it either. Ah, should we all be so lucky.)

These passages are why I think Prose should have her own blog -- to call out exemplary parts of prose that she comes across in her reading, that can offer Teachable Moments. A SHIP MADE OF PAPER is one of the most recent books quoted (2003) and surely Prose has come across exemplars since READING LIKE A WRITER came out that could be similarly didactic. For concerns of time, the blog could only publish twice a week: The excerpt (maybe on a Tuesday), and then the professorial gloss (on a Thursday), and in between readers could speculate on what the device of the week is, and whether it's working, and how it fits into the overall work if they're familiar. Dear Professor Prose, if you need help with online strategy, just let me know! I would love to see what she's reading now, not just what she has read.

That's why I liked this book and will take several of its recommendations, but I probably won't go back to it. I'll stick to my personal pantheon of WRITING DOWN THE BONES, ON WRITING and LETTERS TO A FICTION WRITER.

How To Assign Yourself Summer Reading As A Grown-up

1. Sometime in mid-April, realize that the lines you are doodling on your legal pad at work are stacking themselves into the weeks and months of summer.
2. Request your vacation days, squeezing each for maximal sunshine and minimal expense.
3. Unearth the box of your summer clothes with a heavy puff.
4. Survey your bookshelves and wonder about how your summer will be.
5. Add one book that's almost too heavy to carry around by itself, your summer anchor, the kind of thing you can use to hold a corner of a towel down at the beach, the book that could set the tone for the whole summer -- at least you hope so.
6. Pile on three or four books about who you want to be, something bigger than your commute and your vacation plans.
7. Unearth the gifts you opened months ago, still dusty with good feelings.
8. And oh, how about those discoveries you made at bookstores in Houston and Portland, recycling someone else's hard labors into your own.
9. Top them all with something new that you have been looking forward to the symbolic event of buying, just to carry it out of the store in a paper envelope like a prize.
10. Stack them all precariously on your floor so when you hop out of bed every morning, to roll out your yoga mat on the beach or stand in a meadow in western Massachusetts with two economists and a composer, there they are.
11. Realize at the top of August that there's no way you could possibly finish all of those books. Take delight in that. Realize in a way that was the point. Wish anyway that summer would never end.

(Three books down, 7 to go this year.)

Summer Reading: Looking at Winston Churchill in all the wrong places

FORTY WAYS OF LOOKING AT WINSTON CHURCHILL is a meta-biography making the point that there is no such thing as objectivity in the genre. If you've got that point, you can probably skip this book.

I was very much looking forward to Gretchen Rubin's Churchill project; a self-described fan, she compares popular ideas about Churchill (that he was depressed, for example) as they have been depicted in different accounts of his life, sometimes making the case for both of them in the same chapter. (For example, one chapter argues that Churchill was a great politician, adept at working with people to achieve his ends; the other argues that he was not very well liked and points out all the times he was ousted and/or lost elections.)

This book made me want to rush to the defense of the biographies Rubin suggests are faulty (none of which I have read, to be fair), but also to point the finger back toward Rubin. If all biographers are fallible, then Rubin's account also lacks perspective in some critical moments, even as she admits that she personally tends toward lionizing Churchill. One of FORTY WAYS' forty chapters (get it?) is just a list of some of Churchill's bon mots, proving that he did know how to turn a phrase, but not much about the quality of his work overall. One is just a factual timeline, another a list of important people Churchill knew, which is great if you want to view him as self-aggrandizing, I guess, but it's not exactly a primary source. More troubling is the chapter titled "Churchill's Imperialism," making the case that he was very invested in Britain as Empire and that that philosophy helped shape his politics. This chapter would be better titled, "Not That He Was Alone At The Time, But Churchill Was Pretty Racist."
It's not a worthless project by a long shot, but if you want to read a biography about biographies I recommend Rick Moody's THE BLACK VEIL. (Note: Rubin is best known for the book she wrote after FORTY WAYS and one I liked more, a little cult hit called THE HAPPINESS PROJECT.) I did get a good laugh out of the chapter on Churchill and sex (summary: he didn't seem that interested, which everyone found or finds weird and tries to find the root cause) and on the tidbit that to keep his estate paid between government positions, one of England's finest historical figures was reduced to writing freelance articles with titles like "Iced Water" and "Is There Life on the Moon?" Profligate hack Churchill -- now there's a biography I want to read.

Summer Reading: JOSEPH P. KENNEDY PRESENTS the old Hollywood, same as the new Hollywood

Joseph P. Kennedy had a running start in life with a plum position at his father's bank and an alliance with the mayor of Boston's daughter. But that wasn't enough, he wanted to be bigger: he wanted Hollywood! And the more that the mini-mogul denied that he was in it for the renown, or anything above making money, the less convinced a figure he cut.  

As an outsider Kennedy was aided by the fact that the movie industry was going through huge changes at the time, from vaudeville and nickelodeons to "talkies," from the studio system of keeping directors, actors and writers on salary to job-to-job employment detached from particular studios. (Helpful note: Don't mention this last part to anyone working in the entertainment industry now because it will make him VERY angry.) Convinced that any studio could be fixed to turn a profit if it were put under his aegis, Kennedy outmaneuvered careerlong studio executives to get as full control as possible and moved through a series of troubled studios -- either streamlining or gutting, depending on your perspective. But in attempting to eliminate "unnecessary" spending and waste in his Hollywood, Kennedy met his match in two figures, director Erich von Stroheim -- infamous for his lavish productions and months-behind shooting schedules -- and actress Gloria Swanson, with whom Kennedy had an expensive affair for years.

This book illuminated for me a side of the Kennedy patriarch I had never seen, though his businessman's approach to the task at hand will seem familiar from any playbook of mergers or takeovers. He made his ascent with banking money, some of which was made under less than savory circumstances such as moving funds to shell corporations (Delaware!) and buying and selling among his holdings to profit, and largely got away with it. Author Cari Beauchamp gently suggests that Kennedy enjoyed his Hollywood exploits because he was, intellectually, right at the waterline -- it was his version of the stock market, and the stakes were satisfying. (Kennedy did fine on the real stock market, too -- too easy for him?) 

Kennedy, largely seen today as the thwarted politician pushing for his sons' success at all cost, is a fascinating character, but Beauchamp surrounds him with equally fascinating characters. Von Stroheim could be lined up against any number of "problem directors" today and give them a run for their money, and the saga of Frances Marion, one of the early successful female screenwriters who formed a power couple with Westerns actor Fred Thomson, illustrates how Kennedy used people whose expertise was valuable to him to move up in the film industry and then discarded their friendship as a tactic. In the end, it's hard to know whether Kennedy left satisfied by his Hollywood endeavors, because he did such an excellent job of pretending to be interested in his projects, not just the profits.

Summer Reading: Craig Marks and Rob Tannenbaum Make Me WANT MY MTV

I started watching MTV in secret when I was 11 or 12. I was just old enough to be allowed to stay home by myself while my parents were out running errands, and when I heard the garage door close I would creep up to my parents' room to watch their TV. I remember the texture of the purple corduroy pillow I would sit on to watch so I wouldn't leave a tell-tale crease in my parents' bed. I don't think I ever asked permission; I just knew it wasn't allowed.


Whatever was on, I would watch, but back then mostly I watched videos. This was the era of Prodigy and No Doubt, of Missy Elliott wearing a coat like a garbage bag and Fiona Apple rolling around on the floor. Biggie and Tupac had just died, but I wouldn't understand the significance beyond the tribute videos for a long time. I loved "Daria" and thought it might be fun to be on "The Real World" (this was back when they made them all get jobs and weren't full-time drunk hot messes).

I wasn't around to see the first golden age of MTV when the channel flipped on with "Video Killed the Radio Star," but nor do I feel insta-nostalgic for whatever JWOWW did last week. As a creation myth, Craig Marks and Rob Tannenbaum's oral history of MTV was an eye-opener for me, and even when I got to the aspects of its history I was familiar with, the detail they dug up over what must have been thousands of interviews made the retelling new.

Before delving into the videos we know and loved (or hated), Marks and Tannenbaum spend a fair amount of time explaining the way that the channel was shaped by its shoestring budget and casual operation. MTV began as a small pet project of a giant corporation with the budget of a rounding error, and couldn't afford to pay record labels for their videos (most of which were promotional pieces aimed at Australian or European audiences) -- so they convinced labels to air them for free, and played whatever they had. Cable owners didn't want to pick the channel up, so one executive begged Mick Jagger to record a commercial that would appeal to viewers to demand it -- the legendary "I Want My MTV" spot. They couldn't afford famous on-air talent, so they did a talent search and picked 5 unknowns to be the first "VJs," who look back on their time at MTV with fondness but feel a little cheated by their old contracts.

Some of the more salacious details about past misdeeds on sets and catering money going to less legal pleasures go unchecked, but Marks and Tannenbaum probably have at least one tidbit that will shock you even if you've heard it all. Mine concerned Rod Stewart, some lovely ladies and the River Cafe, a respectable upscale restaurant here in Brooklyn... and that's all I'll say about that. I'd recommend this book for trivia obsessives, people who like to wax nostalgic about the "good old days" of music videos and anyone who, like me, wishes to have been present at the creation.

A place I took this book in 100 words or less: Long Island City, Queens for work. Warehouses scrolling by on every block interspersed with views of the UN. A parking lot containing small planes instead of cars. Stained-glass windows on the platform of the elevated train, representing shops on the street and a train itself. I took a picture of the platform's Art Deco detail and accidentally captured a man in the foreground who was sitting in the trunk of his hatchback. Winds chased each other down to the river as if pulled by gravity. Sandals over cobblestones. Sunshine and no one.

Summer Reading 2012

Craig Marks and Rob Tannenbaum, I WANT MY MTV
Gretchen Rubin, FORTY WAYS TO LOOK AT WINSTON CHURCHILL
Cari Beauchamp, JOSEPH P. KENNEDY PRESENTS
Francine Prose, READ LIKE A WRITER
Jonathan Franzen, THE TWENTY-SEVENTH CITY
James Wood, HOW FICTION WORKS
Nick Hornby, MORE BATHS, LESS TALKING (pub. August) 

Robert Moses, THE POWER BROKER
Richard Yates, COLLECTED STORIES
Katharine Graham, PERSONAL HISTORY

Summer Reading 2011 Wrap-Up

Guys! A really exciting thing happened this summer!

I started "Parks and Rec" over and I finally got to the first Rob Lowe/ Adam Scott episode! "Is there a not-gay way to ask him to go camping with me?" Wait wait, wrong internet.

There was a funny article a few weeks ago on Salon.com where authors were asked what books they really read this summer, not the ones they had aspirations to finish. Not surprising, they (including Tom Perrotta, Laura Hillenbrand, and debut novelist Amy Waldman) all still got a lot accomplished even if it wasn't Proust!

Sailing through this summer without a list was easier than I expected. I still read just as much, maybe even a hair more than last summer, and I read a fair amount of random stuff. I'm also pretty far along in 2666, and that was my major project. The part where I've really fallen down was blogging about them, so if you're wondering why I am still writing about books that I finished months ago... hey, we're not on a strict editorial schedule here.

That said, I'd probably write another list next summer. It's just how I roll. Should I make a fall reading list? What was the best thing you read all summer? 

What President Obama is reading this summer

Via the L.A. Times: 

• Abraham Verghese, CUTTING FOR STONE
• David Grossman, TO THE END OF THE LAND
• Ward Just, RODIN'S DEBUTANTE
• Daniel Woodrell, THE BAYOU TRILOGY 
• Isabel Wilkerson, THE WARMTH OF OTHER SUNS

And the National Review adds:

• Emma Donoghue, ROOM
• Marianna Baer, FROST
• Aldous Huxley, BRAVE NEW WORLD

I had earlier read on Twitter that the bookstore the President went to was refusing to release his choices. Like he has anything of which to be ashamed! Maybe he was picking up the HUNGER GAMES trilogy for the kids and felt embarrassed? Maybe he's supposed to not read anything besides his briefings (in which case, not so much a vacation as "work in a different place")? I haven't read any of these but I find the list solid. How about you? 

"Summer is for paperbacks. Toss them in a bike basket, read them in the pool (iPads don't like water) or leave them at the cottage for next year's readers."

Oprah.com is on the vacation reading bandwagon with this list of paperbacks perfect to take out this summer, including a contribution by my friend Ruth Baron. (Arguably I'd replace SUPER SAD TRUE LOVE STORY with, hmm, maybe THE THOUSAND AUTUMNS OF JACOB DE ZOET [out in paperback this summer!!]. Otherwise, no complaints.) And as someone pointed out on Twitter, they never overheat in direct sunlight like electronics might. So where are we on that cabin-getaway-weekend, folks? I think it's hot enough.

Out on the rolling lawns again

I'm feeling pretty ambivalent about making a summer reading list this year. It is only this close to Memorial Day that I am free to admit that. I suppose I could bend to the local tendency and blame it on the weather; in the past few weeks here, we've moved from highly allergic semi-spring, to April in Seattle (or Atlantis, depending), and then jolted into what looks like summer. Where was the gentle crescendo? At least in Wisconsin we had two weeks, easy, of fresh warm days before the mosquitoes descended. On Saturday I had my bare feet in the Atlantic, and on Sunday I almost dug out my peacoat again.

I mean, it's not as if there's any danger that I won't read anything if I don't sit down and make a list. Last year I only read, I think, three books on my list, but it wasn't because, as a social-studies teacher once told me, my "brain was vegetating." I still read plenty. But I feel as though I have to defensively point that out in case I take up a soul-consuming video game habit in the meantime. Hasn't been a summer like that yet.

In my case I think it's a matter of balance; I'm feeling too regimented in other areas of life, hence the desire to ease off and just kind of read as I go. I'm also interested in the serendipitous ways of following one book into another, so it might be neat, rather than sticking to one list, to note how I end up in the books I end up in, and where the patterns are. (Swear this kind of notation won't take the place of Actual Blogging; I can just tack on an origin, or something.)

What I really want to do is finally tackle 2666, and also read something new in Spanish (suggestions? You know what to do), because I'd like to wake that muscle up for something. I could kill 2 birds and read 2666 in Spanish, but that feature would be better deemed Summer/Fall/Winter/Possibly Spring 2012 Reading, for which I do not have the patience. Yet I have that aspect which thrives on lists and metrics, that asks more, that tells me this is not enough.

End-of-summer kudos! Brittani Lopez read 325 books this summer to win the New York Public Library's summer reading contest.

Can't come to the computer right now

This is probably my view from over my book right now. Happy holiday weekend!

Photo: Paul Brady