One Year. 200 Posts.

June 18, 2013
Books, Food + Drink, Lists, Movies + Music, Personal
33 Comments

Post 200.

In some sort of splendid coincidence, my two hundredth post roughly coincides with my one year blogging anniversary, or blogoversary, as those less proper than me are wont to call it. After all, I am nothing if not grammatically correct – check out that first sentence. And I can’t tell you how many times I begin a sentence with and, but, or because. I’m notably fond of ending sentences with prepositions, which is nothing to be ashamed of. I’m also not afraid to wantonly use split infinitives.

For those who frequently read this blog (all 8 or so of you), it’s easy to discern my likes and dislikes. I like to reading good books, eating good food, consuming good drinks, and music. And obviously I just can’t help myself today (…non-parallel sentence structure).

Chocolate Cake

Just stick a birthday candle on that cake.

Because this blog is supposed to celebrate the intersection of life and literature, I’m going to share some of the life side of that (since I primarily share the literature portion). Here are 10 things you may not know about me:

10. I consider myself to have an eclectic array of interests. I enjoy most types of fiction, food, movies, and music – I’m also open to most genres and rarely become irritable. However, there are a few bands/musicians who set my teeth on edge (for no discernible reason): U2, Coldplay, Beyonce, Oasis, Creed, and Kings of Leon. Also, I don’t like the idiom set my teeth on edge.

9. This is my two hundredth post; I would’ve preferred to do a post like this for no. 199. Because it’s prime.

8. If number nine didn’t give it away, I’m a bit of a math nerd. At one point I was among the top 1% of math students in the US, receiving a near perfect score on my ACT and SAT math and science reasoning exams. I probably only like literature to be contrary. Could I get any nerdier? Yes – I graduated from university a few years early and I am an ardent defender of the Oxford comma.

7. I’ve only had my heart well and truly broken once. (And once is enough, isn’t it? After that particular incident I figure I can emotionally survive almost anything.)

6. I don’t have a favorite book, but I could narrow it down to 10 or so. Probably.

5. One of the most romantic things anyone ever did for (with?) me was watch Flashdance AND Pretty in Pink without complaining. I imagine it wasn’t easy. Separate, but related: I also had a crush on Bender from The Breakfast Club for a very long time.

4. I don’t have a favorite film. If asked, my answer greatly depends on my mood. However, it’s neither Flashdance nor Pretty in Pink.

3. I was born (and have stayed) a little old woman on the inside. Just ask my mother, I’m not sure she ever knew what to do with me.

2. I’ve always wanted to wear glasses (as all good librarians do), but I have perfect eyesight.

1. I became a librarian because of a character in a Stephen King novel. The fact that I enjoy reading helped.

So, 10 things you now know about me. You could write me an email titled ’10 Things I Hate About You’. Please don’t. It would make me sad – unless you gave the email a theme song sung by Letters to Cleo.

A few blog highlights:

Most popular post: NOS4A2 by Joe Hill
Favorite post: Donnybrook or Deliverance
Comments: 2,266
Spam: 6,624
Best insult: Reading my blog should be considered a form of torture.

So one year of blogging down and an unknown number to go. Everyone else celebrates their blog birthday with a giveaway, but I had no idea what to do. I briefly came up with one really odd challenge involving the periodic table. I am  not including it unless someone wants to work hard for a $10 gift card to amazon.

But sincerely, thank you to everyone who reads, it makes me happier than you might imagine. It’s a rare person who can put up with my sense of humor for long, so for those of you who have been following (and actually reading) for longer than a month have earned my utmost admiration.

(That amazingly decadent looking Salted Caramel Chocolate Fudge Cake is from Sweetapolita, thanks to Kate for suggesting it – she paired it with Lionel Shriver’s Big Brother.)

Summer Reading (or What I’ll Be Reading This Summer): A Top Ten List

June 17, 2013
Books, Lists
21 Comments

This week’s top ten list (as hosted by The Broke and the Bookish): books to be read this summer. But let’s just admit what this really is – a to-do list. I actually like lists if you couldn’t tell (the ‘Lists’ tab sort of gives it away, doesn’t it?). I get quite a bit of satisfaction from crossing things off. And as many of these are books I have for review consideration, I will likely get to cross them off by the end of the summer. Two birds, one stone and all that nonsense…

Swedish Summer

Let’s pretend my vacation will look like this. There will at least be canoes, but I am (sadly) positive they will not be in Sweden.

So here are ten books on my to be read list and ten books that are likely to be featured on this blog (save nos. 9 and 10, which I’ll be solely reading for pleasure). In no particular order:

10. We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver. Because I wouldn’t want Kate to hassle me.

9. The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe. I am going on vacation at the end of this month and bringing only this book with me (otherwise I fear it will never get read).

8. The Good Lord Bird by James McBride. I am fascinated by the Civil War, it’s one of my many nerdy traits (I use the word nerdy with the utmost affection).

7. Freud’s Mistress by Karen Mack and Jennifer Kaufman. I’ve never cared much for Freud, if only because I disagree with his dream interpretations. But this one is interesting.

6. The Engagements by J. Courtney Sullivan. Because I really loved Maine (the state and the book).

5. In Love by Alfred Hayes. A masterpiece folks, go read it.

4. In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods by Matt Bell. I’m reading this one currently. It’s confusing, for lack of a better word, but very beautifully written.

3. Save Yourself by Kelly Braffet. Because Dennis Lehane says its good, so it must be.

2. The Sound of Things Falling by Juan Gabriel Vasquez. All the early reviews have been excellent, plus it’s translated fiction which I working hard to read more of.

1. The Rathbones by Janice Clark. It only took eight words for me to want to review this book: A gothic, literary adventure set in New England.

What are you reading this summer?

Photo: Outdoor Academy of Sweden Flickr

In Love by Alfred Hayes

June 17, 2013
Books, Food + Drink
6 Comments

Although there are great novelists in every era, the 1950’s had more than its fair share. Steinbeck, Kerouac, Bradbury, and the egocentric Mailer (who I’ll forever remember as the man who can’t say fuck) had all recently published novels that would become highlights of their careers – East of Eden, On the Road, Fahrenheit 451, and The Naked and the Dead respectively. It’s not surprising, though thoroughly disappointing, that Alfred Hayes is often forgotten as one the great novelists of our time. In Love is an interesting, brilliant piece of literature that serves as an ode to heartbreak and a tribute to the blues.

In Love

In what was perhaps a precursor to Indecent Proposal, Alfred Hayes wrote his masterpiece – and it is a masterpiece – with In Love. The short novel chronicles the breakdown of sometimes torrid, oft tepid relationship between a man and a woman. The woman, still a little heartbroken following her divorce and loss of her child, is looking for something permanent, solid, not just a fleeting affection. The man, while he enjoys her company well enough, is too busy. Then one night, while she is out dancing, she meets a wealthy, if lonely businessman who is willing to pay $1000 dollars for a night with her. It’s the threat of losing her that reaffirms his ardent affection, but it’s too late. The novel, though melancholy, beautifully examines the intensity of desire, lust, love, jealousy, and, eventually, loss.

There are no heroes or heroines among the unnamed characters. The 40-year-old jilted lover is plagued by his failure and inability to commit, his young lover is described as beautiful but paranoid, and the wealthy businessman is awkward and sympathetic – none of these individuals inspire overwhelming affection yet you can’t help but experience the 40-year-old’s crushing grief. The style of prose is unique, meandering, and evocative. In highlighting the passages I found lovely, upon finishing the novel, I realized I had highlighted nearly half the book.

Here I am, the man in the hotel bar said to the pretty girl, almost forty, with a small reputation, some money in the bank, a convenient address, a telephone number easily available, this look on my face you think peculiar to me, my hand here on the table really enough, all of me real enough if one doesn’t look too closely.

It’s the latter part of the last sentence that I find haunting and all too relatable – “all of me real enough if one doesn’t look too closely”. The novel, though slim in size, is full of both the banality and the devastation that follow the end of an affair. It’s an unflinching, vivid, and honest piece of literature examining the failure to turn a meaningful relationship into love (despite love having been there all along). If we are not in love, who do we belong to?

We are sitting here drinking these daiquiris and the footsteps are all quieted by the thick pleasant rugs and the afternoon dies, you and I are expected, and that there’s somebody there, quite important, waiting for us? But the truth is, isn’t it, that all our purposefulness is slightly bogus, we haven’t any appointment at all, there isn’t a place we’re really expected or hoped for, and that nobody’s really waiting, nobody at all, and perhaps there never was…but there was in us something that permitted us to believe…that the intensity with which we set out must compel such a destination to exist.

Alfred Hayes, largely forgotten (assuming he was remembered in the first place – I suspect not), was a talented journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. He was nominated for two Academy Awards, including one for his work on Roberto Rossellini’s Paisan. He television screenwriting credits include scripts for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Nero Wolfe, and The Twilight Zone. He wrote numerous other novels and while the consensus says that In Love was his ‘great work’, he is probably best known for his poem ‘Joe Hill’, which was later set to music. It’s a shame that Hayes shared an era with so many authors whose work overshadowed his, although he also kept his private life private in a way that Kerouac and Mailer never did. Would Hayes be remembered if he slept with the notorious women of his day or spent his nights drinking with the literary crowd? I don’t know. I do know it’s a shame that In Love doesn’t get more recognition as the modern masterpiece it is. Read it, revel in the beautiful melancholy, and celebrate its re-release on July 23, 2013 as a New York Book Review Classic*. 5/5.

Daiquiri

Though I sincerely doubt the two patrons at the bar were drinking a Strawberry Daiquiri with Nectarine Basil Ice Cubes, that is what I’m recommending (I have mentioned my affinity for basil a time or two).

*I received a review copy of this upcoming release in exchange for my honest opinion.

1/2

Bad Dads: A Top Ten List

June 15, 2013
Lists, Movies + Music, Books, Pop Culture
10 Comments

As I celebrated fiction’s worst mothers in honor of Mother’s Day, I think it’s only fair I celebrate fiction’s worst fathers for Father’s Day. In an effort to combat the sentimentality of the day, here are five spiteful, violent, or just plain neglectful fathers from fiction and music. I happen to be an expert in the bad dad category (not that I have one anymore) – why yes, I’m being flippant about abandonment and death here – distasteful jokes for the win.

Jack Nicholson has a complicated family lineage of his own. In no particular order:

In literature:

5. Heathcliff in Wuthering Height by Emily Brontë. I consider Heathcliff a bad guy all around. Suffer, son, for I’ll never allow you to live near my enemy.

4. Humbert Humbert in Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. Even though he’s not her real father, it’s still inexcusable.

3. King Lear in King Lear by William Shakespeare. He wouldn’t know good thing if it stood in front of him. Obviously.

2. Tywin Lannister in A Song of Ice and Fire Series by George R. R. Martin. I cannot tell you how excited I am for the upcoming season, I’ll be positively gleeful after…

1. Jack Torrance in The Shining by Stephen King. Although you can blame the hotel all you want, Jack wasn’t exactly the model image of fatherhood before The Overlook overtook him.

In music:

5. Cat’s in the Cradle by Harry Chapin. It took me a long time to realize how sad this song was.

4. Janie’s Got a Gun by Aerosmith. Janie’s got a gun – and a good reason to use it.

3. Country Death Song by Violent Femmes. Just…no. Violent Femmes have some good options – runner up Gone Daddy Gone.

2. The Father Who Must Be Killed by Morrissey. Morrissey – always the picture of good cheer.

1. Story of Isaac by Leonard Cohen. God commands Abraham to sacrifice his son. Anything I have to say on this topic could easily be skewed as disrespectful (which is probably because it would be).

As always – thoughts? Suggestions? Obvious omissions aside from George Michael’s Father Figure…

Image

No One Could Have Guessed the Weather by Anne-Marie Casey

June 14, 2013
Books, Food + Drink
10 Comments

I can think of no better way to start a chick-lit (a term I despise) review than by quoting William S. Burroughs, ‘The American upper middle-class citizen is a composite of negatives. He is largely delineated by what he is not.’

And I am not a chick-lit reader.

I think personal libraries are incredibly insightful (and defining). You can tell what sense of humor a person has (if they have one), where their interests lie, and if they should not have books…what will not be happening (though I once knew a guy who kept Pride and Prejudice on his shelf as a ploy to get women, it worked quite well). I consider myself an eclectic reader, but there are a few genres into which I do not venture. And I do not venture into chick-lit. I often find it difficult to relate to the women and their particular issues – usually involving men, bad choices, too much shopping, etc. That being said, when I picked up ‘No One Could Have Guessed the Weather’*, I was both hesitant and intrigued.

No One Could Have Guessed the Weather

When Lucy, a wealthy London housewife, finds out that her husband has lost everything, she has a minor breakdown. Her life is over, right? She has to give up her housekeeper, her acupuncture, and her sons’ expensive school to live in a tiny apartment in New York City. At first she’s figuratively lost and resentful, until she meets a few other women she can relate to. First she meets Julia, who has just left her husband and two children, Christy, a trophy wife, and Robyn, whose once promising novelist husband refuses to grow up. Their four stories intersect, highlighting the wants, needs, and desires of modern women.

What made me hesitant to pick up the novel was the summary’s final line, “Sometimes what you need in your twenties is not what you need in your forties”. Although I worry about relating to twenty-somethings that just can’t seem to find the right guy or a flattering hairstyle, I was nearly convinced that I wouldn’t have any significant interest in forty-somethings with issues I can’t even begin to fathom (like starting menopause – and dear god what is the crispiness associated with menopause!?). However, I surprisingly revised my opinion when Lucy, hearing someone criticized for having a chip of ice on her shoulder, mentally corrects the person’s phrase to splinter of ice. Yes, that’s a Graham Greene reference. Consider me sold.

While this novel will certainly not make my favorite books list, it was an interesting and engrossing read. With the way the chapters are set up, the novel reads like a series of intersecting short stories. While none of the women are perfect, they are each (somewhat) charming in their own way. Most of the contemporary women’s fiction topics are covered: love, marriage, fidelity, money, wants, and desires. Where the novel excels is in the humor. There are several moments that will make you laugh and none that will make you cry – a perfect summer beach read.

Although the novel is certainly not perfect – does there need to be another novel about wealthy New York women struggling in their relationships – it is very readable. I didn’t relate to the women, but I was able to laugh with them (and, on occasion, commiserate with them) and sometimes that is all you need. If you like chick-lit, I wholeheartedly recommend Anne-Marie Casey’s charming debut ‘No One Could Have Guessed the Weather’. If, like me, this is the part of the literary pool that you rarely dip your toe into, it’s a nice change of pace (and there is a nod to Graham Greene). The novel is excellent for the beach or the plane, it’s short, funny, and unlikely to cause any irreparable harm. 3/5.

Summer Pizza

Given that the novel is set in New York and it’s rare that I will pass up the opportunity to recommend one of my favorite foods, today I am sharing a Summer Grilled Vegetable Pizza.

*I received a copy of this novel in exchange for my honest opinion,

1/2

The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls by Anton DiSclafani

June 12, 2013
Books, Food + Drink, Movies + Music
14 Comments

Not once did I ever have the privilege or pleasure of going to sleepaway camp. This simple fact, of course, means that I’ve romanticized this quintessential summer experience beyond all reason. Do I picture lazy days in the sun, lounging in the middle of the lake on a float, campfires, a little summer romance, and the best bunk mates and future lifelong friends a girl could have? Why yes, yes I do. Since I’m long past the acceptable age to participate in such blissful activities, I do the next best thing – I read lush, evocative (and often provocative) literature about exclusive summer camps for debutantes. If the genre ‘provocative summer camp literature’ existed, Anton DiSclafani’s debut novel ‘The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls’* would be the poster child for it.

Yonahlossee

Thea Atwell, age 15, has been banished from her Florida home. What for? We don’t know and finding out is half the fun. But it’s 1930, the country’s in the midst of the Great Depression, and a 15 year old girl has been suddenly and irrevocably removed from the only place she’s ever known – the obvious conclusion: boys. The place of banishment: the beautiful, secluded all girls’ equestrienne camp from which the novel takes its title. Thea is angry and lost, strong-willed and self-contained.

I was not so angry with my situation that I could not discern beauty.

In 1930, she simply does not fit in, but she soon learns the social hierarchy of the camp. The chapters alternate between Thea’s idyllic life in Florida and her new life in North Carolina. Each chapter reveals a little bit more of the event that changed Thea’s life. It quickly becomes clear that my obvious assumption was right – Thea had been involved with a boy, intimately. In her new life, Thea is just as helpless as she was with her family, simply because she is female. She quickly learns that the only power she holds is her sexuality and this realization will have repercussions for the rest of her life.

Because of me, Thea Atwell, a wrong girl if there ever was one.

While this coming of age tale is not perfect, it’s as lush, evocative, and yes, provocative as the storyline sounds. Thea Atwell is a young girl learning what her body is capable of – love, lust, desire, control – at the same time that women are encouraged to suppress such urges. It is no wonder she feels like a ‘wrong girl’. I think this is a sentiment that most teenage girls can relate to at one time or another. While this novel is not written for or marketed to young adults, I would’ve loved it as a teenager. The sexual undertones and innuendos leap of the page (many having to do with horseback riding). However it’s the mysterious, near-southern-Gothic handling of the revelation that keep the pages turning.

One of the novel’s strengths also serves as its primary weakness. Thea’s voice, though astute, observant, and not wholly likable, is slightly beyond what is believable in a precocious 15 year old (this coming from a former precocious, pretentious teenager). However, the prose is beautiful and the sense of place is wonderfully developed.

So many things were like that: you waited and waited and waited, and then it happened, and you were still you. I wasn’t sure yet if this was disappointment or a relief. It seemed to be a little bit of both.

Anton DiSclafani’s debut novel has its share of flaws, but it well worth reading – a good coming of age novel set in a decadent, Southern summer camp is not to be missed. If Thea sounds beyond her years and the initial plotting is a bit slow, this is more than made up for by the author’s sense of place, time, and her clear love of horses. 3.75/5. Perhaps my favorite quote:

I was a girl, I learned, who got what she wanted, but not without sadness, not without cutting a swath of destruction so wide it consumed my family. And almost me. I almost fell into it, with them. I almost lost myself.

But I was too selfish. I wanted, as Mr. Holmes put it, too much. And none of it was a decision, a list written out, a plan articulated. We have no say in who we love. And woe be to all of us, for that.

On a serious note, I find that last quote to be heartbreakingly accurate. Love is one of life’s greatest pleasures, but not when the love is deemed wrong or it is not reciprocated. You cannot choose who you love, but you can choose who to be with – you just have to hope that it will be one and the same.

Not being one to leave things too serious, please tell me at least one of you went to summer camp…? Or, like me, did your parents woefully deprive you of a quintessential summer experience? Aside from ‘The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls’, anyone read any good summer camp literature? Seen any summer camp films? My recent favorite: Moonrise Kingdom. Better yet, any thoughts on the cult classic Sleepaway Camp? You’ll be my hero if you’ve actually watched it!

raspberry muffinsThis novel had a lot of standard supper references, but the one that stuck out in my mind was, at breakfast one morning, the girls ate Raspberry Muffins.

* I received a review copy of this novel in exchange for my honest opinion.

1/2.

The Long, Hot Summer: A Top Ten List

June 10, 2013
Books, Lists
29 Comments

I’m going to complain about the weather (the same weather I just joyously celebrated the arrival of). I’m officially boring. For eight months of the year, it snows (October-May). I don’t like snow. For the rest of the year, it’s hot. If I had access to any type of cooling system, I might not complain, but I don’t. I sleep on the top floor of a Cape Cod. This refers, rather unfortunately, to the architectural style in which the home is built and not the location. And while Dirty Dancing makes 90 degrees at midnight (with the crickets chirping and the wind rustling through the trees) look romantic on screen – I assure you it’s not. There’s nothing cute about sticking your head in the freezer at 2 am for a modicum of relief.

Beach Reading

Just stick me wherever she is….

However, the upcoming season is synonymous with beach reading (as hosted by The Broke and The Bookish). While beach reading is typically associated with books of a lighter nature, that’s not really my style (if I can be said to have a style). So here are ten books to read during this long, hot summer – both classic and contemporary selections – in no particular order.

10. Islands in the Stream by Ernest Hemingway. Certainly not essential Hemingway, but it has a so-bad-it’s-good vibe going for it and some of the drunkest sex you’ll ever read (shouldn’t even have been humanly possible, but there it is…).

9. In the Tall Grass by Stephen King and Joe Hill. Admittedly, parts of this novella are gory, but there are dirty limericks to be found. Also poignantly illustrates why I’ll never stop at a deserted Kansas rest area. Ever. Except that one time…

8. The Fun Parts by Sam Lipsyte. If you prefer to laugh at the dark side of life (let’s call it satiric tragicomedy), Lipsyte is a good option. Warning: has boy humor. And this apt-for-Rory line:

I sound like the narrator of a mediocre young adult novel from the eighties. Which is, in fact, what I am.

7. A Hundred Summers by Beatriz Williams. Perhaps the only traditional pick on this list, but I need someone to remind me that there is such thing as happily ever after (of course, maybe I should read less Stephen King and more Nora Roberts). Bonus: lots of gin and pretty dresses.

6. Love Is a Canoe by Ben Schrank. Remember that summer you found out your husband was a philandering asshat? Or when you tried to save your marriage by visiting an elderly, emotional con-man who erroneously compared marriage to canoeing? No? Then read this book, it’s one release from 2013 I wish had gotten more attention.

5. Straight Man by Richard Russo. A hilarious look at campus life and the absurdity that is academia politics. I’m not a professor, but I was a teaching assistant in grad school and I currently have the pleasure of being a field mentor for a local university’s graduate program. Did you get that pleasure is supposed to be read sarcastically?

4. Abide With Me by Sabin Willett. Sometimes a summer romance is unforgettable and its end can cause unimaginable consequences. This is a modern (and perhaps better?) retelling of Wuthering Heights.

3. The Hamlet by William Faulkner. The Long, Hot Summer, starring Paul Newman at his finest, was partially based on the first entry into Faulkner’s Snopes trilogy. Below is an example of ONE sentence of what you’re in for:

It was that amateurish, that almost childlike, lack of premeditation and plan or even foresight of one who, depending on manipulation and not intellect in games of chance, finds himself involved in one where dexterity cannot avail, yet nevertheless attempting to cheat even at bald and simple draughts with an incredible optimism, an incorrigible dishonesty, long since become pure reflex and probably now beyond his control, making his dashing and clumsy moves then withdrawing his closed fist to sit watching with his little intent unwinking eyes the still, wasted, down-looking face opposite, talking steadily about almost everything except money and death, the fist resting on the table-edge still closed about the pawn or king’s crown which it had palmed.

You’ll feel smarter for it – promise.

2. Seating Arrangements by Maggie Shipstead. A whale explodes, an absolute cad falls from a rooftop, and there’s a New England summer wedding – a dryly humorous must read.

1. Donnybrook by Frank Bill. For those who like gritty, hillbilly literature – this one’s for you. If you read my review you’ll learn practically everything you ever needed to know about me and the etymology of the word donnybrook.

The weather is making it very easy for me to complain, it was over 100F today and will be a bit warmer tomorrow. It’s still spring mind you. I would pay an obscene amount of money for air conditioning, though not $22,000, which is what I was quoted.

Image found here - original source unknown.

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 613 other followers

%d bloggers like this: