I went to the library yesterday to pick up some cookbooks on hold, and while I was there I perused the parenting section. I was amused by this juxtaposition:
I like to imagine that one person wrote the first book, and their son or daughter wrote the second.
I love this book. I just finished it tonight. It’s about a woman who counts. Everything. All the time. She’s got obsessive compulsive disorder of course, but after reading this story you’ll find yourself annoyed at how easily our culture pins labels on people. In the discussion guide at the back of the book there is the question, “Is there a difference between eccentricity and insanity? What is it?”
She finds love (Irishmen are always a good thing), she finds herself, and there’s an entire biography of Nikola Tesla* hidden in its pages. It’s a delightful read.
* I added that link for people who might not know who Tesla was. I was familiar with him and some parts of his work before the book, but I’d never seen a photo of him. The one at that Wiki page I linked to has him bearing a startling resemblance to Ralph Fiennes. I’m seeing another angle now on why the main character of the book swooned over Tesla.
I was craving something light and fun to read, so I picked two books set in a post-apocalyptic world of zombies. I KNOW, RIGHT? I find zombies more interesting than vampires. Just as many thrills, with a lot less backtalk.
These are YA (young adult) books, authored by Carrie Ryan. The writing is aimed at present-day teenagers, so you can absorb entire pages in about three seconds, letting you sail through the books in a day or so.
The first one, The Forest of Hands and Teeth, introduces us to a United States set far into the future, after an infection has broken out that has turned the majority of humanity into the undead. Only one pocket remains; a small village surrounded on all sides by a metal fence, and beyond the fence? You guessed it. A forest. A forest filled with what? Right. Hands and teeth. Zombieville. In the village we meet our heroine, Mary. She’s about to be betrothed to her childhood friend, who she likes well enough but whose brother, about to be married to her best friend, she’s in love with. It’s a book for teen girls, tell me you didn’t see this coming?
The village is ruled by something called the Sisterhood, a group of nun-ish types who tell everyone what to do, keep all the knowledge to themselves, and make Mary’s life miserable (see sentence ending last paragraph). I was intrigued by the entire set-up, but I felt frustrated at how little we really learn about the Sisterhood and how the entire story was basically, “Restless and knowledge-hungry Mary tries to learn more about her world, and is thwarted and learns nothing.” Lather, rinse, insert romantic angst, repeat.
Throughout the whole book she’s obsessed with the stories her mother told her about ocean, this mythical thing everyone else tells her doesn’t exist. Will she ever get there? The second book’s title sorta gives that away. She does get there, she finds another village, and the second book is much more interesting. In this story, Mary has grown up, and our heroine is her daughter, Gabry, who shares her mother’s knack for angsty teenaged love triangles. We learn a lot more about the world, a much wider variety of characters are introduced, and there’s many more possibilities for our heroine, which I enjoyed. It ends right smack dab at the beginning of what will obviously be a third book. Woot! More zombies!
Greg said that if I liked these, I ought to read World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, which was already on my Kindle (we share an Amazon account). I started reading the first chapter last night, and I was immediately, joyfully, ecstatically creeped out! World War Z is aimed at adults, and it’s chilling! Where Ryan’s books are perhaps a zombie appetizer for grown-ups, World War Z looks to be a thick, delicious stew of zombie love. I can’t wait.
I read The Great Gatsby for the first time about 12 years ago, and I don’t know why it didn’t make a bigger impression on me at the time. I’d forgotten whole arcs of the story in the interim. Last night, while reading it in bed curled up in the crook of Greg’s arm (while he read a Kindle book on his iPad – man, Kindle did a nice job with that app on the iPad), I actually gasped out loud when Tom broke Myrtle’s nose. By the time they had the big row in town when Daisy’s feelings for Gatsby were revealed to Tom, I was feeling desperate for something cheerful to happen. Then that horrible scene with Myrtle on the way home, and then Wilson finishing things off and only Nick left to pick up the pieces – by that point I was just depressed.
It’s interesting to me a book that’s in no small part about the emptiness of wealth can be this engrossing. Young people today (OH EM GEE did I just say “young people today”?) don’t share Nick’s disillusionment with money or class. Our culture seems hyper-focused on it these days. Everybody wants to live in the West Egg, and if you can’t make it work – either getting there or surviving there – that’s your own fault.
I love writing and I read a lot about blogging, and it’s disturbing how much advice out there is about “building wealth” with your blog, about monetizing everything, about ad placement and HOOKING YOUR READER WITH BOLD STATEMENTS, all this leading, of course, to more readers and more ads, and more money money money. Everybody wants to be the next Zen Habits or Steve Pavlina, making a yearly salary in a single month thanks to advertising.
I kept thinking; what would Nick think about the world now? Where am I going with this? I’m not sure. What does The Great Gatsby have to do with the internets? Maybe some, maybe not that much. This kind of rambling is why my blog isn’t monetized, right? Probably.
On to a more current selection:
The Uncommon Reader: A Novella
This was cute. It’s a story about the Queen of England taking up reading late in life, and how it changes her. I enjoyed it as a story of someone rediscovering reading, but I didn’t find it high-larious the way many reviewers apparently did. It was sort of amusing. That’s about as far as I’d go. There were parts that dealt with life as a monarch that I did find interesting, glimpses into the life that I hadn’t considered before. One example was the remark about how the Queen doesn’t have hobbies (at least not publicly), that taking up needlepoint would only serve to alienate the knitters. This is fiction of course, so who knows whether the Queen really does have hobbies or not (perhaps a secret room where she creates hemp jewelry or makes monster dolls), but one of the fascinating things about the monarchy is how blindingly extensive the effort at perfecting a public image can become. Those tidbits were fun.
I always feel a little guilty writing about something I didn’t enjoy that much. Of course, Alan Bennett will find this review and be like, “She goes from The Great Gatsby to blog advertising in a single paragraph – I’m so glad I AMUSED HER.” I don’t think Alan Bennett has much to worry about.
When I was a kid, I read for hours a day. I was never without a book, either tucked under my arm or in my bag, or in my hand – I often read and walked at the same time (that might explain some confusing scars). I remember in the 5th grade, a friend of mine (maybe my only friend) trying to explain why all the other kids thought I was weird. Their derision was split; half based on the way I wore bandannas on my pants a la Punky Brewster (oh yes, I did), and half on a word I hadn’t heard before. “You’re a bookworm.”
After I graduated high school, my reading slowed down. I don’t remember why, I don’t recall any specific incident or trail of thought that led to me reading so much less. I still always had a book with me, except now it was often a self-help book, as I was continually dissatisfied with myself. From there I moved to many years of reading about religion (having found myself – not in any book, it’s worth noting – it was time to find God).
At the beginning of this year I surveyed the last decade and realized that my vast library was basically a tribute to every hobby or interest I’d had in that time. I was awash in books about the violin, playing the guitar, website building, pets, gardening, HAM radio, beading, knitting, camping, bicycling, photography, homeschooling, unschooling, drawing, buying a house, selling a house, building a house, urban farms, homesteading, herbalism, massage, the simplicity movement, personal finance, raising kids, astronomy, Buddhism, yoga, sign language, nutrition, cooking, writing…..
…..but where were the stories? I could pick out maybe one or two a year. I was stunned. What happened to me? Sure, I was reading, but I wasn’t reading. I miss fantastical tales! I miss fiction! I miss biographies! I miss history! I was reading all the time to the kids, yet rarely for myself.
But why had I stopped? Had I outgrown reading? If I missed it, why did I ever give it up?
The answer surprised me. I realized that whenever I read fiction, I felt the weight of my obligations pressing down on me. Maybe it’s the quiet? Sitting down with a story, I was suddenly aware of laundry needing to be done, dishes needing to be washed, a table needing to be cleared. I would get a page in, maybe two, and then abandon the book to go putter. The subject-focused books I read didn’t feel that way, I think because my brain somehow classified those books as “being productive”. Learning about how to sell our house was being productive, as was reading about yoga or some other practice I was going to integrate into my life.
Watching a movie or a TV show didn’t seem to aggravate my squirrel-brain either. I was able to forget my chores, only remembering after the movie was over and I was putting away my tea mug that, WOOPS, the sink was full. I just spent two hours watching Sigourney Weaver blow away chest-bursters instead of filling the dishwasher.
The last few months I’ve been training myself to ignore my other obligations while I read a book. It’s the best thing I’ve done for myself, personally, in years. And it’s not irresponsible, as it might sound – my quest to get back into books has led to…
…Less stuff. I’ve been realizing how much I love to read, and how this pales in comparison to other things, which I can let go of. So I’ve been freecycling, and selling off parts of several other hobbies.
…Better housekeeping. The best way to calm that part of my brain that’s always rattled by things on the “To Do” list is to do a few of them, and then sit down with a good book. Now, I do chores so that I can read.
…A lot more inner peace.
…A lot more time spent at the library with the kids. We’re all picking out books now. I love our time together there, and so do Miles and Beth.
…My writing has improved. No, not a novel. I do almost all my writing privately. It’s the best (only?) way I have to understand my own feelings. Other people seem able to talk with a friend or just sit under a tree for a few hours and “get some thinking done”, coming away with a fresh perspective on a tough situation or a resolution to a problem. I have to spend those couple of “thinking hours” with a pencil and paper, or I’ll basically get nowhere. People close to me have often remarked, “This is what makes you a writer, that you have to write, that it’s not an option,” but truthfully I think it’s what makes me a mutant. At any rate, reading more has led to clearer writing, which has led to clearer thinking, which has benefited my personal life.
…An expanded sense of the world, a feeling that the world is both larger than I ever though, yet somehow more reachable than I ever believed. You just can’t help that. Reading opens you up. It just does.
…Personal inspiration. For example, I just finished a biography of Katharine Hepburn. That woman was amazing. I know she’s been dead for awhile, but for me she just died the other night, and I’m still thinking about her.
There’s more, but I think this is a pretty good list as it stands, and it’s time for my tea. I write this to encourage other would-be readers out there, adults who have maybe fallen out of the habit of picking up a good book, who find themselves reading the paper or how-to books or books about particular subjects, but who have temporarily forgotten the elation of a really excellent story. It’s never too late to jump back in! The water is just fine.
And if you fall asleep while you’re reading, that’s okay too….
Miles, 2004
