One a Day

Something was changing for a long time. It took about a year to understand it, but now I do. People who've been coming here for a long time know that the original focus of this blog was on writing. For a long time I couldn't stop writing and I couldn't stop talking about it. I took classes and workshops and attended retreats and wrote the better part of two bad novels before I stopped to try to figure out what my problem was.

It became obvious over time, but what I found was the more I challenged myself with what I read, the more unhappy I became with what I was writing. A woman I met through blogging and emails came to Denver this summer and we finally met in person. She'd read the first hundred pages of my second attempt and what she told me came as a strange relief. She thought what I'd written was very good, but after getting to know me she had a hard time reconciling what I'd written with who I am. It didn't sound like me.

By that time, I'd stopped writing completely and I focused all my energy on reading. I'm glad I did. The truth is that I don't want to write something I wouldn't want to read and I'm not capable of writing that well. Maybe I never will be.

Over the past few months I've started writing again, but I'm not working on a novel. I have notebooks full of ideas and fragments and pages of gibberish that would make Gertrude Stein chuckle, but it's what I need to do now. In 2009 I all but abandoned poor Eudaemonia. I didn't know what to say.

Now, I think I do -- at least here on this blog.

I've finished twenty-one books since my last post about reading. Catching up won't be easy, but I have a plan. I'll write about one book a day until I'm caught up.

For those of you who are new here, understand that I'm not a book reviewer or literary blogger. I'm not even a college graduate. I'm just someone who likes books. My intent in writing about them is to capture my personal and not always rational opinions about the books. I don't presume to assign literary merit. I put a great deal of thought into what I read, so my going in position is that they're all "good" (as meaningless a word as it is).

Here's the list of books I've read, but not yet talked about. Tomorrow, I'll begin.

Death in Venice by Thomas Mann

Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon

Falling Man by Don DeLillo

Library: An Unquiet History by Matthew Battles

Saturday by Ian McEwan

The End of the Affair by Graham Greene

Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger

Night Train by Martin Amis

The Brain Dead Megaphone by George Saunders

Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut

Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes by Thomas
Cathcart and Daniel Klein

Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon

Mark Twain in Hawaii by Grove Day

Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon

A Gravity's Rainbow Companion: Sources and Contexts for Pynchon's Novel by Steven C.
Weisenburger

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

Catholics by Brian Moore

Lives of Girls and Women by Alice Munro

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov

Dangerous Laughter: Thirteen Stories by Steven Millhauser

I'd love to hear your thoughts about the relationship between reading and writing and of course -- about the books.

What I Read in January

Rather than just list the books I’ve read in 2008, I thought I’d copy what Tim Hallinan started doing and post about the books I’ve read each month.

Forgetfulness, by Ward Just is a book I picked up while browsing the front table at the Tattered Cover. This was at times a bit slow, but it explored some significant issues with regard to our post 9/11 emotions and views on terrorism and on being an American. I liked Just's narrative style and this book made me want to read more of him.

Josie and Jack, by Kelly Braffet: I bought this one based on Josephine Damian’s review. For anyone who reads Josephine’s blog, you’ll know I was intrigued by her enthusiasm for this one since JD starts far more books than she finishes. She’s a tough critic. I enjoyed the book and I thought it was well plotted and well written.

Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing, Illustrated by Joe Ciardiello. I hesitated to even list this one because it’s only 96 pages and most of them have illustrations or single sentences on them. I bought it when Tim Hallinan referenced it in his Writers Resources pages. It’s quite charming; it cuts right to the chase and is a good book to leave around just to have a quick reminder about some of the fundamentals. This would be the perfect gift for a writer.

Twinkle, Twinkle, by Kaori Ekuni was a book Tim Hallinan read and posted about a couple of months back. I was interested in it primarily because the chapters alternate between the points of view of a married couple. The book was translated from Japanese, so it takes place in Japan. The wife is a young, very confused and very unhappy woman who is married to a gay man. They both went into the marriage knowing what their situation was and the evolution of the relationship is painful and touching. I enjoyed this one quite a bit. It was a beautiful story.

On Love, by Alain de Botton was a book I learned about from this review at The Book Book. It is a novel about falling in and out of love, but it’s written in the style of a series of essays. I loved this book and kept reading passages from it aloud to Scott. He actually read it after I did and he very seldom reads fiction. I adore this author and have recently added four more of his books (all non-fiction) to my TBR stack.

Veronica, by Mary Gaitskill. I found Mary Gaitskill when I was bemoaning the lack of truly flawed female protagonists to Andrea Dupree, the director of my favorite place to learn writing, Lighthouse Writers Workshop. Andrea recommended Mary Gaitskill and I got what I was looking for. This was a gritty novel and when I think about how to describe it, the words that keep popping into my head are “grotesquely beautiful”. If I could craft one sentence as beautifully as Mary Gaitskill does, I would die a happy woman.

How Proust Can Change Your Life, by Alain de Botton. I loved On Love, but this one may have changed my life. In a series of chapters with titles like, “How to Take Your Time”, “How to Suffer Successfully”, “How to be a Good Friend”, and “How to Open Your Eyes”, de Botton explores topics by drawing on the works and the life of Marcel Proust. This is the best book I’ve read in a very long time. I’ve been eyeballing the mammoth copy of Swann’s Way on my shelf and trying to decide how soon I’m willing to tackle it.

The Sky Isn't Visible From Here, by Felicia C. Sullivan is the memoir of blogger and host of Writers Revealed, Felicia Sullivan. The author grew up in Brooklyn with a cocaine addicted mother who would never reveal the identity of Felicia’s father to her. The book alternates chapters recounting a childhood filled with poverty, insecurity and a rotating entourage of the men in her mother’s life, alternating with chapters of her own successful escape to Fordham and then to Columbia to pursue her MFA. Throughout her transformation from neighborhood girl to a successful Manhattanite, Felcia shares her struggles with identity, recreating herself and her plunge into and recovery from alcohol and cocaine addiction. Felcia’s mother disappeared the night before her college graduation and hasn’t been heard from in eleven years. This painful memoir recounts the struggle with this difficult relationship. I already thought Felicia was superwoman, but I am truly awed by all she's accomplished now that I know her story.

What was the best book you read in January?

A note to my Colorado blog pals. Please check out this post about an important bill going before the Colorado House Judiciary Committee on February 20^th. Please urge Governor Ritter to support this bill on the juvenile direct file law.

The Book Book

As if we all didn't have plenty of great blogs and sites to check out every day -- Even so, I've added this one to my Cool Sites sidebar.

The Book Book is a site with book reviews posted daily by people who read the kind of books I love to read. There are a number of reviewers and anybody can be one. Some books are reviewed more than once, so you can get viewpoints from more than one reader. I love this site because these people read all kinds of books, old and new. From the site:

"This is a site by and for geeks who like to keep a log of what they read. We finally figured out that a communal log is even more fun, since you get to compare notes with other geeks. If you're interested in a particular book, scroll through the labels for your title or author.

Wanna be a BookBook reader? Email Moonrat at moonratty@gmail.com and she'll set you up as an administrator."