World’s Fair

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Doctorow, E.L. World’s Fair. New York: Fawcett Crest, 1985.

This is another challenge book that I read out of order. It was supposed to be on the July list. The only reason for this out-of-orderness was I didn’t plan very well. Technically, I have two Early Review books and four challenge books on the way but…you guessed it, none of them are here yet. I needed something to read over the weekend after finally, finally unpacking from the trip, while waiting for laundry (seven loads) to cycle and while Kisa was at a Patriots game. While this was a chore chocked weekend I needed to do my own thing, too. Nothing beats uninterrupted reading!

World’s Fair is the brilliant story of a boy named Edgar and his life in the 1930’s in New York City. Spanning Manhattan, the Bronx and Brooklyn, all senses come alive with Doctorow’s descriptive narrative. From the bustling, noisy market places to the quieter mom & pop shops; from the silent synagogues to the crowded beaches of Rockaway, New York is on display through the eyes of a child. Edgar is the youngest brother in a musical family. As he grows up, goes to school and becomes more aware of the world around him, politics and economics become less abstract and more of a reality in his day to day life. He sees his parents not getting along, his brother becoming more adult (and less fun), grandparents getting frailer, and finally, his own life becoming more complicated.

I thoroughly enjoyed World’s Fair. It was a clean, straightforward book with lots of vivid description and emotion. Most of the time Edgar tells the story, but intermittently his mother Rose, or brother Donald will step in for a chapter. Even an aunt has a moment in the story.

Favorite lines: “I am roused from sleep in one instant from glutinous sleep to grieving awareness” (p 4), “My mother ran our home and our lives with a kind of tactless administration that often left a child with bruised feelings, though an indelible understanding of right and wrong” (p 13), “this was her way, to express concern from opposite sides of the crisis” (p 27), and “I lived in the weather of my mother’s spirit,  and at these times, after these visits, the sky grew black” (p 96).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter “New York, New York” (p 170).

Before the Beginning

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Morning Harbor

This is the time of morning I wait for. The air is still. The harbor rolls gently, causing the moored boats to nod to one another solemnly. One or two people wander by quietly. Somewhere, a truck starts up and birds mutter to themselves. There is quiet activity, a gentle buzz. The island is alive but at the same time it feels as though everything is barely stirring. Muted almost as though under water.
When I was a kid, no more than five or six, I used to sit on the top step leading up to our apartment. I would listen for the early morning coo of the mourning doves, watch the early bird birders with binoculars slung around their necks. The light was magical at that time of day. I remember waiting for something. Even now I couldn’t tell you what.

My husband can sit in front “Sunrise Earth” all day. Have you seen it? I don’t know who thought up this programming, but more importantly I’d like to meet the person he or she sold the idea to. It has got to be one patient person. I can just imagine the sales pitch: “I’ve got this great idea for a television show! Cameras record the sunrise…in real time. No soundtrack, no narration. Just the sun rising from different angles. We’ll capture bugs stirring, birds chirping…maybe the sound of water if it’s in the shot.”
Really, that’s all the show is about. Watching the sun rise. A bug may land on a twig for a few minutes. A bird might buzz a camera. A nearby brook may be gurgling away. That’s about it. For some (many?) it’s the equivalent of watching paint dry.

Me, I would like to see an episode filmed from my tippy top stair. Bring me back to the beginning – before the beginning of another busy day.

Stalkerish

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Dust sticks to wet paint
Doesn

I was perusing someone’s photos the other day when I got that eerie feeling they were a bit stalkerish. You know, that ‘Wow, that is really intrusive’ feeling. My only problem was I couldn’t pinpoint why I felt that way. I was enjoying the photographs until I got to a certain one that seemed to go overboard, get too close. The next one was more of the same and so I stopped looking – turned away from the discomfort I was feeling. I don’t think I’ll go back.

My experience with the photos got me thinking about home and the levels of intrusiveness I felt there. Early in our vacation Kisa, the boys and I were hiking the island. We stopped to catch our breath at a very popular landmark, and to enjoy the view. Of course there were tourists on every side and their conversations were easily overheard. “I can’t imagine what it must be like to live out here,” one woman exclaimed. “All these people walking through their back yards.” I snickered and Kisa cast a knowing smile. For years he has been hearing my gripes about tourists taking advantage of such an unusual place. They walk across private porches, set up easels in the middle of the only road, have lunch in obvious backyards, let their dogs dump in vegetable gardens. This attititude of I can do anything while I’m on vacation has been long debated. I’m not bringing up anything new. But, it made me wonder – what makes separates fan from fanatic, tourist from terrible?
In the picture above a woman has set up her easel on the dock. Look for the hat by the door of the silver truck. This dock is where 3-5 trucks converge to pick up island supplies, luggage, etc. It’s a more that busy, hectic place. In the bigger picture another woman has set up her easel in the shadowed portion of the road. Not only that but she has chosen a dangerous corner where she isn’t all that visible. She and the woman on the dock are lucky they didn’t get sideswiped!

Devil in a Blue Dress

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Mosley, Walter. Devil in a Blue Dress. New York: Pocket Books, 1990.

I have to admit I picked this book up by accident. I was vacationing and needed a quick book. Something to pick up while I waited for the pasta water came to a boil, or while the boys were still sleeping. I remembered this being part of the Challenge and decided to see if I could read it in less than 36 hours.

Devil in a Blue Dress is Walter Mosley’s first book and kicks off the Easy Rawlins series. Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins is a black war WWII vet prone to violent flashbacks. In the beginning Devil in a Blue Dress he is fired from his defense plant job and doesn’t know how he’s going to pay the mortgage next month. By the second chapter Easy has been hired to locate a missing girlfriend, a devil in a blue dress, as they say. Throughout the next 200 pages Easy faces his share of violence, sex, racism and mystery but in the end, discovers a new found career – private investigations.

My favorite line: “He put up his hand as if he wanted me to bend down so he could whisper something but I didn’t think that anything he had to offer could improve my life” (p25). It’s that kind of sense of humor and sarcasm that carries Devil in a Blue Dress. You don’t realize that Mosley is telling you more than a story. He’s giving you a social commentary on what it meant to be a black man, riding the line of poverty in the 1940’s.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter “Walter Mosley: Too Good To Miss” (p 169).

Got to Admit

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I have got to admit I’m going crazy. Everything around me is making me madly nuts. But, I’ve also got to admit I have no idea why. I’ve seen promos for some new show about a guy who is actually two different people and I’m convinced that’s my problem.

Take this stupid wedding favor I received at the dreaded Hell Has A Name wedding. It’s a blue crystal and silver rose in a clear crystal pot. There is a part of my that despises this knicknackytacky trinket. It’s only 1 1/2″ high so it’s not in my way, yet there is a part of me that doesn’t know what to do with it. But, there is this part of me that has to do something with it all the same. On this side of my brain it needs to have a purpose, a reason for being in my space. Instead, it just sits there looking remotely pretty.

Then, there’s the other me. I think back to how the bubbly bride hunkered down beside my table and explained the gift to me. Earnestly looking into my eyes she said it came from her country (and everything) and was veryvery special. While she didn’t elaborate on what made it special she had tears in her eyes. There was no way I was going to doubt her sincerity. I predicted I would love it, promised I would keep it. I did all this sight unseen (it was in a box I didn’t open until I got home). Then, I think back to my own wedding and how I hand cut tags for our ticky-tacky bells, an explanation of “why a bell?” in each one. I glowed at the thought of honoring my father, gleamed at the idea of passing on some history lesson (I was a reference librarian after all). I was proud of the bells and hoped people would cherish them in some way. Mom has them hanging on her baker’s rack in the kitchen, but she has bias. Really, I have got to admit they were just as tacky as the rose I am contemplating now.

So, back to the rose. What to do with this thing? The sweet side of me says why do anything? It’s sitting on a window sill, minding its own business while the sour side of me wants it gone, gone, gone. Truthfully, I’ve got to admit I don’t think this pushme-pullme attitude has anything to do with the rose on my window sill…

Emily Post

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Claridge, Laura. Emily Post: Daughter of the Gilded Age, Mistress of American Manners. New York: Random House, 2008.

Let me start by saying I love biographies. When I requested Emily Post as a July bonus book from LibraryThing’s Early Review program I really didn’t think I had a chance of getting it. After all, this would be my 18th ER book if chosen. Crazy. But, there is was, on my doorstep, without fanfare on Friday. No notification, no nothing. Just a hit and run from Mr. UPS man.

Because it came so late and unannounced I couldn’t fit it into my August list. The July bonus book became a September review just like that.

Emily Post is a biography laden with details – chock full of history and background. Reading it was like wallowing in words, almost too many words. At times I got bogged down by the excessive descriptive narrative while other times it helped explain Emily’s reactions to the lap of luxury world around her. This biography is not limited to Emily’s life but extends, in detail, to the people around her. What is important to note is Claridge’s exhaustive research into not only the history of Emily’s era, but the political and cultural climate of her time thus drawing a complete and compelling picture of Emily Post beyond etiquette.

Have This Time

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IMG_3586

I am trying really hard to not always write about the negative. It comes out so dramatic and unfailingly stupid. Except, it’s really hard to write about anything else when the sole purpose of the write is the rant. The negative is what got me here in the first place. Back in the day I would crawl around the rooms in my mind and pick out the crap that bugged me the lost. Writing was like opening a window and chucking the worst offenders out. While most of the stuff found a way to crawl back in, some of it was banished forever. If only one out of twenty crapoids disappears for good then mission accomplished I say.
Here’s the reality of my existence: I am dramatic. I am sensitive to the world around me and hypersensitive to how it treats me. When my mother tells me I’m not ready to handle a house (and maybe should get a condo instead) it hurts my feelings. How much of a failure after 40 can I feel? A lot. When people joke that my near-two nephew “didn’t kill me” I get nasty. It’s almost like these people still see me as 16 or something. I tend to shut down and shut out. Okay, so I won’t share the house-hunting antics with those who naysay. So, I won’t mention how my nephew made my heart fall out when he balanced himself on the edge of a 15 foot drop.
So. Those are my negative notions – the things I need to toss out of the attic. Will they find an open window in the basement? How soon will they crawl back into my head? I don’t know. Guess it’s up to me to secure the house. For now, I have. This time.

Postcards

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Proulx, Annie E., Postcards. New York: Fourth Estate, 2004.

This was a hard book to read. Really dark and disconnected. I prefer books that have more flow to them. I haven’t read a lot of Proulx. I have to admit I don’t really even remember the title of the one I did read. How pathetic is that? I’m looking forward to the short stories because I think they will have less opportunity to be so disconnected and choppy.

I think what struck me about Postcards was how powerful the language was. While the plot was hard and gritty, the way it was told was strong and confident. Almost like someone yelling emphatically, if that makes sense. It’s the story of a farming family in New England. They are torn apart by the departure of the eldest son, Loyal. He has just killed his girlfriend and left her body under a pile of rocks in a nearby field. While the death was an accident, Loyal’s leaving and the slow disintegration of the farm was not. Tragedy follows the family wherever they go. The beauty of the saga is how each chapter is punctuated with a postcard. It’s these postcards that illustrate the changing times both for the nation and the family. Loyal often writes home, careful not to tell anyone where he really is. He continues to stay disconnected and this is apparent in what he shares with his family.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter “It was a Dark and Stormy Novel” (p 128).

Heartbreaking Work

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Eggers, Dave. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. New York: Vintage Books, 2001.

I didn’t even have to touch this book to know it was going to be great. It landed on my desk upside down. the first words I read from the back cover were, “Yes lets and then can we leave and run in shallow warm water.” I was intrigued, to say the least!

It’s the story of Eggers as a young adult faced with having to take care of his younger brother after losing both his parents to cancer. It’s sad and funny. Witty and sarcastic. It took my much longer to read because I had to drink every little word. I read the Rules and Suggestions for Enjoyment of This Book, the Preface to this Edition, the Contents, Achknowledgments, even Mistakes We Knew We Were Making which contains notes, corrections, clarifications, apologies, and addenda. Too funny.

A few of my favorite lines:
“I have visions of my demise: When I know I have only so much time left – for example, if I do in fact have AIDS as I believe I probably do, if anyone does, it’s me, why not – when the time comes, I will just leave, say goodbye and leave, and then throw myself into a volcano” (p xiii)
“Beth and I take turns driving him to and fro, down the hill and up again and otherwise we lose weeks like buttons, like pencils” (p 55).
Then there’s this scene. I don’t know how to describe it other than to say I’ve been there: “I want to put the box somewhere else…The box which is not my mother cannot go in the trunk because she would be livid if I put her in the trunk. She would fucking kill me” (p 383). This is so, so, dare I say it? Heartbreaking.

BookLust Twist: Pearl really liked this book. It’s mentioned four different times between her two books Book Lust and More Book Lust. From Book Lust: in the chapter “Memoirs” (p 152), and “The Postmodern Condition” (p 191) and again in the preface on page xi. Then again in More Book Lust in the chapter “And The Award for Best Title Goes To…” ( p 12).

Dog Handling

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Naylor, Clare. Dog Handling. New York: Ballentine Books, 2004.

When it comes to chick lit I think there has to be a trick to reading it. At least for me there are two tricks. Suspension of belief, first and foremost…and the ability to laugh out loud at some of the nonsense.

Dog Handling is the story (cute story!) of Liv Elliot, a soon-to-be married accountant in London’s Notting Hill district. When Liv’s fiance breaks off the engagement she flees to Australia to mend her not so broken heart. Australia brings new friendships, a new career opportunity, new men (of course), and a whole new way of dating them. Liv’s outlook on life changes once she learns the rules of “dog handling.”

Traditionally, I am not a big fan of mind games, overextended cliches and predictable sappy-happy endings and Dog Handling had all of the above. It took me sometime to stop making Bridget Jones comparisons and seeing Liv Elliot in her own bumbling, lovable, all’s well that ends well movie. Once I was able to get past all that I truly enjoyed the story. The characters were delightful and the plot, humorous. It was a great summer read.

Favorite lines: “After all, a foreign city is a foreign city, and until she knew the precise location of the nearest places to buy newspapers, tampons, and beer she wasn’t taking any chances” (p 40).
“Liv had been cutting split ends off her hair with a potato peeler” (p 232). What a great idea!

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter “Chick Lit” (p 54). Where else?

September Is…Late

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September is…well. That’s a loaded dot-dot-dot if I ever saw one. Where do I start? September is my wedding anniversary and the anniversary of so many other things…and also my adversary of so many different things. I celebrate being alive in this month, but I also celebrate a death in me. Both are equally important to where I am in life, who I am to myself. There is someone across the miles who understands exactly what I’m not talking about. But, but. But! Back to the books. Now that I have cleared the cobwebs and in the name of good BookLust books, here’s what’s on the list:

  • Code Book: Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography by Simon Singh – In honor of the month the National Security Act was signed
  • Diaries of Jane Somers by Doris Lessing – in honor of Healthy Aging Month
  • Far Side of Paradise by Arthur Mizener – in honor of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s birth month
  • Good Enough Parentby Bruno Bettelheim – in honor of National Child Month
  • Nowhere Cityby Alison Lurie – in honor of the month California became a state

For LibraryThing and the Early Review program I have two books:

  • Emily Post: Daughter of the Gilded Age, Mistress of American Mannersby Laura Claridge
  • The Dangerous Joy of Dr. Sex and Other True Stories by Pagan Kennedy

(if you are keeping track, Claridge’s book was supposed to be read month last and I think Kennedy’s book is an August review…)

For the fun of it I want to read What I talk about When I talk about Running by Haruki Murakami because everyone says it’s the book to read. So, I will read.

 September is also a Rebecca show! My mother might be coming down for it. Dare I hope? That would be cool. I want to see if Sean is around…

Friend of the Devil

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They say the house has lost its character. Lost its charm. It’s no island home. Home no more. Electrified. Modernized. Resized. Beautified.

Italian tile bathroom. Slate counter tops. Stainless steel appliances. Wide arches. Leather couch. Tiffany window panes and copper hanging lanterns. Piece by piece, bit by bit, this artist’s home is dismantled, broken down and built back up as a modern day palace. Real nice. Someone said. Classy said another. At least they kept the artwork…Gone are the kerosene lamps, the rustic galley kitchen, the cozy rooms with creaking floors. More windows to let in the light. Less trees to block the wind. Everything is open, has flow.

There is a reason why the word “bittersweet” exists. Such negative and positive rolled into one mouthful we struggle to swallow. Bitter because the changes are so modern. Sweet because the changes are so modern. Room by room it’s a child growing up. Rooms like faces changing.

At least the view remains the same.

September is a Confession

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Golden Days End
Golden Days End

I am all messed up. Turned inside out and tired. Really, really tired. Here’s the deal. I went home with a reading plan in place. I knew everything I wanted to read and even the order in which I would do all this reading. I even made a big deal about lugging all that stuff home. It didn’t happen. I got to Maine and everything fell apart.

In a stream of excuses here’s what happened: I didn’t bring the right books. I didn’t bring enough to books. I chased my nephews around instead of turning pages. I scoped out the neighbor’s new porch. I gorged on blackberries and crab apples. I couldn’t make time for the library let alone the internet. I held hands with my husband. Hiked huge hills with great friends. Watched sunsets with a glass of pino between my knees. Ate savory and sweet scones from Sweet Bob. When I did pick up a book it wasn’t one on my list (Islands by Anne Rivers Siddon comes to mind).

So, here’s the deal. I just escaped paradise. I’m just back and I’m just out of sorts. I don’t want to take a shower for fear of washing away my island residue. Last night I slept with the light on because the silence on the street was not the silence of the ocean. For once, the cat wasn’t the compatible companion. I have no clue what books I am supposed to be reading for September. I have no clue and right now I don’t care.

So, September is: slogging through tons and tons of email. (Yahoo = 234, Google = 565, LibraryThing = 3, work = 199, RealEstate = 66). September is Rebecca Correia on the 12th. September is Sean Rowe’s new album. Otherwise, September is slow to start.

August Was…

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Where did August go? Sweet August raced by me like lightning in a stormy sky. For reading I was all messed up. I read two books out of turn and one completely by mistake! So much for planning! Anyway, August was:

  • All is Vanity by Christina Schwarz (Others will tell you Schwarz has put out better, but I say this one was good, too!)
  • Boy with Loaded Gun by Lewis Nordan (really, really interesting book)
  • A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers (another nonfiction…okay, I admit it. I read this out of turn!)
  • Postcards by E. Annie Proulx (really dark!)
  • Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley (I need to explain this one!)

What I admitted defeat on was Far Field because it just wasn’t light reading for the last month of sumer. I’ll pick it back up again eventually.

For the Early Review Program on LibraryThing:

  • Blackbird, Farewell by Robert Greer ( a really fun whodunit about a basketball star murder before his big NBA contract even began).

For the fun of it:

  • Top Chef: The Cookbook by Brett Martin
  • Islandsby Anne Rivers Siddon

August was also Sean Rowe, the Police, and Swell Season. It was getting a chance to hang out with really good friends, even for a second. It was Monhegan and a restoration of resolve.