What We're Reading

Shouldn't shock anyone to hear this was another busy week. In addition to all my previous duties, as assigned, I'm now also freelancing for a local independent bookshop. I designed their first newsletter last week, and this week am working on their upcoming author signings. I'm not sure it gets much sweeter than that, but it does cut into one's reading time.

However, ipso facto and habeus corpus, I did manage to get some reading done. And here 'tis:

How I Write: Secrets of a Bestselling Author by Janet Evanovich (with Ina Yalof): Definitely an accessible, practical work of writing advice/instruction. I haven't read a word of Evanovich's fiction, but after reading this I'm betting her appeal lies at least partially in her gritty, street-wise sense of humor. Two overworked thumbs up!

The Sorrow of Sisters by Wendy K. Harris: Transita, in the U.K., is one of my very favorite small publishers. They specialize in writing by women about women of "a certain age," that is, 45 and beyond. Even though I'm younger than the perceived target market I can still most definitely appreciate the writing coming out of this small press. Sorrow of Sisters is one of those family sagas you want to curl up with in front of the fire. Brilliant stuff, especially if you've read and enjoyed Sarah Waters.

Jagged With Love by Susanna Childress - I'm pretty sure I mentioned last time I'd be reviewing this one for Jacket Magazine (though I'm too lazy to go through the steps of finding what I DID say last time), and I'm glad to say I found it utterly brilliant and inspirational. It even led me to try cranking out a couple of poems of my own, though how good they are I won't comment on at this juncture. Let's just say Ms. Childress doesn't need to look over her shoulder.

That's it for this week! Tune in next week for more. I hope.

- Lisa Guidarini
posted by Lisa Guidarini at 9/18/2006 02:40:00 PM

My first contribution to the IDT readers' blog--and it's a graphic novel! I'm not sure whether that's auspicious or ominous. Anyway, this is one of the better ones I've read this year.

I'd been getting a little morose about the state of the graphic novel genre--read enough of them and you can easily find yourself hemmed in by shoegazing white boys. I like some of those shoegazing white boys, but if I spend too long reading their stuff I start to feel like my iPod's "Alt/Folk/Indie" playlist is on endless shuffle. I love me some Sam Beam and Sufjan Stevens, but after you've been through them and the two Damiens and Jay Tillman and all those other sad white boys, you sometimes start to crave something a little different. Say, with estrogen. Or more melanin. Or Prozac.

Alison Bechdel doesn't have any more melanin than those guys, and she's not exactly cheerful, but she's a dyke, so points for her. You may know her from her longstanding syndicated strip Dykes to Watch Out For, or you may have smoked dope and read Kate Millett with her at Oberlin. Her latest book, Fun Home, is a memoir and a coming-of-age story. From there, it's all in the details.

Bechdel really does have a story to tell, which is a good start. Her father was a closeted homosexual who taught high school English and ran a funeral home out of their house. (They called the funeral home the "Fun Home." It took me a while to get that, mea culpa.) He was a demanding and distant perfectionist, and he spent his marriage having affairs with young men, some of them his students. Bechdel's mother was, for lack of a better word, longsuffering. When Bechdel was away at college, her father was hit by a Sunbeam bread truck and killed. His death may or may not have been a suicide. There's story in there, you have to admit.

Bechdel's father was a frustrated intellectual, a close reader of Joyce and Proust, and her memoir is shaped in part by an overlay of her own college readings of her father's editions of Ulysses and Remembrance of Things Past, complete with his notes to self. She uses the device transparently and self-consciously, pointing up her own need to add meaning to the sadly, frighteningly meaningless. At the same time, her art is clever and humane, loaded with the homely little details of childhood: saggy bathing suits, bad haircuts, socked feet.

More than anything else, the book's tone is relentlessly, recursively inquisitive--Bechdel is trying hard to understand her mysterious father, and her own conflicted feelings about him. It's rare to find a book exploring a woman's relationship with her father in such depth, and kunstromans (kunstromen?) for lesbian artists are pretty thin on the ground too. This puts Fun Home on its own sparsely populated island in the stream--unlike so many of those shoegazing white boy books, this one doesn't have a crowd of its fellows already out there in the market, providing some context and a ready-made audience. Maybe that's in its favor. It's an honest, original, sad, funny book. I was surprised by how moving it was, and by how much I liked it.
posted by Karen Munro, E-Learning Librarian at 9/15/2006 09:52:00 AM

Due to various factors beyond my control, like aging (28 now!), acquiring a new niece, and watching too much football, I've fallen a bit behind on reading. Here's a list of books I would be reading if I could pull myself away from reality and/or ESPN:

1. The Fellowship: The Untold Story of Frank Lloyd Wright & The Taliesin Fellowship by Roger Friedland & Harold Zellman - I read a clip of this book in a recent issue of Interview magazine which described the odd sexual practices (including forced gay coupling of non-homosexuals) that took place in FLW's architecture-obsessed fellowship. Weird.

2. The Littlest Hitler by Ryan Boudinot - I actually have two copies of this story collection by Seattle resident/Bennington MFA'er Ryan Boudinot but haven't yet cracked them open. Now that I think about it, our Ross Simonini is in the Bennington writing program and lives in Seattle. Maybe they're the same person, in some strange and complicated metaphysical way.

[TIME OUT: On my self-invented radio, Neil Young is singing about a place where "even Richard Nixon has got soul." I forgot this song existed. It is a song I enjoy: "Campaigner."]

3. The Zero by Jess Walter - A woman to whom I only speak when drunk has alerted me to the fact that Jess Walter's 9/11 satire (?) got a fancy review in the Wall Street Journal. Here's a clip of that write-up:

"The Zero" lacks any ritual sense of piety or sentimental tribute to the usual 9/11 truisms. Indeed, it recasts many of those involved in the cleanup effort -- from the street cops and FDNY "smokers" to the brass -- as cynical opportunists who brag that they've never bedded so many women and fight about which celebrities they get to escort around Ground Zero. The story also metaphorically paints U.S. attempts to crack terror networks as blundering at best, morally dubious at worst. But the book's brilliant ironies, its deadpan truths, its insider smarts and its everyguy hero may lead even skeptical readers to forgive the irreverent point of view. "The Zero" could end up as the "Catch-22" of 9/11.

4. Democracy by Joan Didion - Some old lady at a coffee shop hustled me out of my brand-new hardcover copy of Year of Magical Thinking (which I'd just finished) in exchange for a beat-up old paperback version of Democracy. In my own fantasy world I like to think the elderly woman scribbled secret messages about the universe into the decades-old novel, top-secret truths that will change my life and the life of the world. I don't want to open it and be disappointed, so I've decided not to open it at all, for now. That's symbolic of pretty much my entire existence. Thanks for asking.

-Matt Borondy
posted by Matt Borondy at 9/12/2006 09:40:00 AM

Wow, busy week, but I still did manage to squeeze in a few books.

I'm currently reading The Women of the House: How a Colonial She-Merchant Built a Mansion, A Fortune and a Dynasty by Jean Zimmerman, Pride and Prejudice by Do I Need to Tell You Dear God I Hope Not, and also a volume of poetry I was sent to review for Jacket Magazine, Jagged With Love by Susanna Childress.

The Women of the House is about early Dutch settlers in the New World in the 1600s, and the detail is fascinating. Being of Dutch ancestry myself, I have ancestors who settled in this country before it was this country. What's in this book outlines what their lives would have been like. Fascinating to me, but I'm sure your average history buff would also love it, especially if you're into either colonial history or the history of some of the strong women who helped form the United States. Inspirational stuff.

I'm reading Pride and Prejudice in order to lead the discussion for the online classics book group I've recently started up for my library. It's a re-read so many times over I can't even name a number. Four? Five? Twelve? Something like that. It's a truth universally acknowledged that I absolutely love reading this book, and I'm not sure I have a limit on how many times I'm willing to re-read it. Plus, Colin Firth was really hot as Darcy in the film adaptation. But I digress.

I've recently joined the review staff of Jacket Magazine, and Jagged With Love will be the first volume of poetry I've ever reviewed. What a way to start. It's often sultry and passionate, filled with plenty of pain and angst of the dysfunctional family variety. Add a hefty dose of creativity, a well-crafted turn of phrase, shake well, and you have one great read. But don't just take my word for it, Billy Collins awarded it the Brittingham Prize for Poetry. Susanna Childress is off to an auspicious start. Rock on, Susanna.

Leftover from last week's post, I have completed Mark Haddon's A Spot of Bother: A Novel. If you enjoyed the curious incident I don't see a reason on earth you won't love his latest. Two thumbs so far up I can't help fearing I look rather unsubtle, or, as Sponge Bob would say, FANCY.

A great reading week, though more disjointed due to the intrusiveness of blasted REAL LIFE. On I journey, tally ho and pip pip.

Read on, my good man!

- Lisa Guidarini
posted by Lisa Guidarini at 9/09/2006 09:50:00 AM

It's a shame that we have to outgrow Ray Bradbury. While his stories often boil down to a banal sentiment in the end, his language pulls you right into his fantasy worlds. "Kaleidoscope," featuring astronauts thrown from their ship into space, begins with three images describing the ship torn open as a "giant can opener," casting out men "as jackstones are scattered from a gigantic throw" who now appear like "a dozen wriggling silverfish" in the darkness. Space appears through images of down-home life in the Midwest that were the writer's trademark. Even die-hard fans of realism cannot help but dive in for a device that pauses the moment of death and allows these men time to resolve personal issues.

I just read Bradbury's stage adaptation of his story, "The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit," and here we have another vivid tale that outshines its banal theme. The story of six Mexican men who pool funds to buy a cream-white suit, which they believe will change their lives, goes pretty much where savvier readers expect. But Bradbury's sense of theatrics brings the sparks that recall his poetic short fiction. His description of the suit's appearance on the stage is vivid as ever: "We cannot see into the booth. We see only the reflected pure white, holy light of the suit shimmering out like illumination from some far Arctic floe. The men's faces are washed in snowy color. They peer in as at a shrine." The image crystallizes before you realize how dangerously close the language is to going over-the-top. The drama moves briskly with such pictures, and helps re-situate the action to different settings.

Stuart Gordon, the cult film director, made a screen adaptation of the play with Joe Mantegna that is, unfortunately, still awaiting a DVD release.

-Matthew Sorrento
posted by Matthew Sorrento at 9/02/2006 01:34:00 PM