detailmuse 2013: more

(Continued from part one here.

Thread continues in part three here.)

---------------

Books read during the course of this thread:

Fiction
47. The Catcher in the Rye# by J.D. Salinger (4) (See review)
46. The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon# (audio) by Stephen King (2.5)
45. The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri (3) (See review)
40. Cannery Row# by John Steinbeck (4.5) (See review)
33. Enon by Paul Harding (3) (See review)

Nonfiction
49. The Wordy Shipmates# (audio) by Sarah Vowell (2.5)
48. This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett (4.5) (See review)
43. Hidden America# by Jeanne Marie Laskas (2.5) (See review)
42. Travels with Charley: In Search of America (audio) by John Steinbeck (3) (See review)
41. Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much by Sendhil Mullainathan/Eldar Shafir (3.5) (See review)
39. The Cooked Seed by Anchee Min (4) (See review)
38. Dad is Fat (Audio) by Jim Gaffigan (3.5) (See review)
31. Writers on Writing# (3.5)

Other
44. Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems by Billy Collins (4.5) (See review)
37. Woolgathering by Patti Smith (4) (See review)
36. The Pop-up Book of Phobias by Gary Greenberg/Balvis Rubess/Matthew Reinhart (re-read) (5)
35. Popville by Anouck Boisrobert/Louis Rigaud (3) (See review)
34. Sleeping Upside Down (poems) by Kate Lynn Hibbard (3) (See review)
32. A Clown at Midnight: Poems by Andrew Hudgins (4) (See review)
30. Some Kind of Love: A Family Reunion in Poems by Traci Dant, illustrated by Eric Velasquez (3) (See review)

# = read from my TBRs (acquired pre-2013; my goal this year = 40)

For more about my recent reading, see Part 1 of this year’s reading and my threads for 2012, 2011, and 2010.

Books read/reviewed during the first half of the year, with favorites annotated:

* = recommended
** = highly recommended

Fiction
27. Gone Girl# by Gillian Flynn (4) **
26. The Other Typist by Suzanne Rindell (3.5) (See review)
24. Vignettes of Ystov by William Goldsmith (3) (See review)
22. Edward Adrift by Craig Lancaster (3.5) (See review)
20. Big Brother by Lionel Shriver (3.5) (See review)
13. A Wrinkle in Time# by Madeleine L’Engle (4) (See review)
10. The Fault in Our Stars# by John Green (4) (See review)
9. The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout (4) (See review)
7. Olive Kitteridge# by Elizabeth Strout (4)
2. The Sense of an Ending# by Julian Barnes (4) (See review) *
1. Suddenly, A Knock on the Door# by Etgar Keret (4) (See review) *

Nonfiction
29. More Scenes from the Rural Life by Verlyn Klinkenborg (3.5) (See review)
28. Pitch Black by Youme Landowne / Anthony Horton (4) (See review)
25. Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal by Mary Roach (4) *
23. Pieces of Light: How the New Science of Memory Illuminates the Stories We Tell About Our Pasts by Charles Fernyhough (3) (See review)
21. Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think by Viktor Mayer-Schonberger / Kenneth Cukier (4.5) (See review) **
19. Dirt Work: An Education in the Woods by Christine Byl (2.5) (See review)
16. Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction# by Tracy Kidder/Richard Todd (4) (See review) *
15. Integrative Wellness Rules: A Simple Guide to Healthy Living by Jim Nicolai (2.5) (See review)
14. The Autistic Brain: Thinking Across the Spectrum by Temple Grandin / Richard Panek (4) (See review)
12. The Universe Within: Discovering the Common History of Rocks, Planets, and People# by Neil Shubin (4) (See review) **
11. Washington Schlepped Here# (audio) by Christopher Buckley (3)
8. Slouching Towards Bethlehem# by Joan Didion (4) (See review) **
4. Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog# by Kitty Burns Florey (3.5) (See review)

Other
18. National Geographic Guide to Scenic Highways and Byways, 4th Edition (3) (See review)
17. Slamming Open the Door (poems) by Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno (4.5) (See review) **
6. This Is Water by David Foster Wallace (commencement speech) (3) (See review)
5. The International Traveler's Guide to Avoiding Infections by Charles E. Davis (reference)
3. New and Selected Poems: Volume One by Mary Oliver (3.5)

edited to pull forward all my ytd reads

Writers on Writing, ©2001, acquired early 2000s

A collection of 46 short (~5-page) essays on a variety of facets of writing and the literary life, by well-known writers and originally published in the New York Times. I finally pulled it from my TBRs after a rash of positive comments about Louise Erdrich around Club Read, and an LT search showed me that I had an essay by her in this book (see excerpt below).

While the collection is not as engaging as, say, a volume of The Paris Review Interviews, it’s broader in writerly topic and more original in voice (see Jamaica Kinkaid’s essay) than other collections of its kind.

Some passages:

by Rosellen Brown, on unlikeable characters:

{F}or me it’s usually when a character begins to be thorny that he or she turns interesting. Stories of malfeasance, starting with Adam, Eve and the serpent, have always been far better, if more provisional, ways than spotlessness of soul to stir an audience to attention and meditation.

by Nicholas Dalbanco, on originality:

Imitation is deeply rooted as a form of cultural transmission; we tell our old stories again and again. The bard in training had to memorize long histories verbatim, saying or singing what others had sung. In the oral formulaic tradition, indeed, the whole point was retentiveness; the impulse toward individual expression is a recent and a possibly aberrant one in art.

by E.L. Doctorow, on film’s influence on literary verbosity:

The effect of a hundred years of filmmaking on the practice of literature has been considerable. {…} The twentieth-century novel minimizes discourse that dwells on settings, characters’ CVs and the like. The writer finds it preferable to incorporate all necessary information in the action, to carry it along in the current of the narrative, as is done in movies. {…T}he rise of film art is coincident with the tendency of novelists to conceive of compositions less symphonic and more solo voiced, intimate personalist work expressive of the operating consciousness. {…} In some of today’s film dramas 95 percent of a scene’s meaning is conveyed before a word is uttered; 98 percent if you add music.

by Diane Johnson, on theme:

{In} the process of writing, {…} there’s something too close to “thesis” about {theme}; the idea of imposing a preconception is anathema to a novelist who likes to imagine she is observing life and manners without any didactic intention and without forcing her characters to follow a plan. {…} But novels are never about what they are about; that is, there is always deeper, or more general, significance. The author may not be aware of this till she is pretty far along with it {…and then} the job becomes one of understanding and deepening or sharpening what is already written. {…} We fasten on the principal feature of the action. But what we get out of a book is the lesson or the theme…

by Louise Erdrich, on how learning her ancestral Ojibwe language changed her writing:

Ojibwemowin is a language of verbs. All action. Two-thirds of the words are verbs, and for each verb there are as many as six thousand forms. {…} Nouns are mainly designated as alive or dead, animate or inanimate. {…} Once I began to think of stones as animate, I started to wonder whether I was picking up a stone or it was putting itself into my hand.

by Walter Mosley, on keeping at it:

Writing a novel is gathering smoke. {…} The first day the dream you gathered will linger, but it won’t last long. The next day you have to return to tend to your flimsy vapors. You have to brush them, reshape them, breathe into them and gather more. {…} you have to work every day because creation, like life, is always slipping away from you. {…} One day you might read over what you’ve done and think about it. {…} That’s fine. {...} You have reentered the dream of the work, and that’s enough to keep the story alive for another twenty-four hours. {…} Given a day, reality will begin to scatter your notions; given two days it will drive them off.

by William Saroyan, on how to get to a story:

How do you write? My answer is that I start with the trees and keep right on straight ahead. {…} A writer writes, and if he begins by remembering a tree in the backyard, that is solely to permit him gradually to reach the piano in the parlor upon which rests the photograph of the kid brother killed in the war. And the writer, nine or ten years old at the time, can notice that his mother is crying at the loss of the kid brother, who, if the truth is told, was nothing much more than any kid brother, a brat, a kind of continuous nuisance, and yet death had made him the darling of the family heart.

by Scott Turow, on the audience for books:

I worked as a mailman. {…} By long-standing agreement -- explained to me in a most emphatic and furtive way by a colleague my first week -- mail carriers who finished early did not return to the post office until the end of the day. Since the public library was the only air-conditioned public building {…} I spent my free time there. {…For} eight weeks I read {Ulysses} the novel to end all novels for an hour and a half each afternoon at taxpayer expense. {…} I was troubled that the library’s single volume of Ulysses was there every day when I went for it, never checked out. {…} I thought inevitably of the philosophical riddle with which schoolchildren were routinely teased in those days: If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, is there sound? {…} Art -- or whatever it is I’m doing -- begins with the maker, not the audience. Capitulating to established expectations means abandoning that obligation to lead and is likely to yield the larded stuff…

Enjoyed reading those excerpts

Sounds like a fascinating book! I must have read these essays in the Times, but never knew they'd been collected into a book.

Oh that's going on the WL. I especially like what Erdrich said. Intrigues me. I had to read Silko's Ceremony for a Native American Art class and had such a hard time with it. I realized later it was because my thinking was too linear and so I couldn't make sense of that more circular way of thinking. This book would also fill an hole on my Dewey Challenge. Thanks for the great review and excerpts.

I'll also add Writers on Writing to my wish list. Thanks for bringing it to our attention, MJ.

Thanks bas, rebecca, mk and darryl. There’s also a volume 2 so if interested you might browse the list of contributors to see if you have a preference.

Here’s Louise Erdrich’s “Two Languages in Mind, but Just One in the Heart”.

Thanks for that link. I so enjoyed that article.

Great excerpts and thank you for the Erdrich link. I'm with mk on that one. I also linked Turow's point about not capitulating to expectations.

Popville by Anouck Boisrobert / Louis Rigaud, ©2009, acquired 2013

This pop-up book opens with a rural setting of grass and trees and a lone farmhouse and, over five more two-page spreads, shows the site’s architectural and infrastructural development into a crowded city. What struck me was how gradual the development was, until some sort of tipping point where it grew exponentially. Good pop-ups but not much to the book. You can watch a 1-minute video of the book here (audio alert).

This gives me a chance to recommend a couple good pop-up books: ABC3D (video here; audio alert) and The Pop-up Book of Phobias (video here).

That sounds rather fun!

Thanks for the links to the videos -- now I don't have to get the books!

mk: very fun, and rebecca: exactly! My library had to go outside its ~20-member consortium to get me Popville and it was disappointing. On the other hand, I just raised my rating to 5 stars for the book of phobias, definitely worth a real read.

Some of those phobias pages were pretty creepy. Those clowns (/shudder).

>15 ljbwell: Clowns are the devil's minions.
That was fun. Thanks for sharing.

>15 ljbwell:, 16: totally with you on clowns! That pop-up book has a bit of text with the pop-ups, and one sentence for "coulrophobia" (fear of clowns) says, “Children are cautioned to avoid strangers, yet are often obliged to spend birthday parties and other designated special events with clowns, arguably the strangest individuals they have ever encountered.” I recently read A Clown at Midnight, by a poet blurbed as humorous, but the clowns in those poems are creepy.

I will never forget Stephen King's It.

Enon by Paul Harding, ©2013, Early Reviewers arc acquired 2013

Most men in my family make widows of their wives and orphans of their children. I am the exception. My only child, Kate, was struck and killed by a car while riding her bicycle home from the beach one afternoon in September, a year ago. She was thirteen. My wife, Susan, and I separated soon afterward.

So begins Charlie Crosby in Enon, a short novel about that year and the grief and isolation he collapsed into following the loss of the only two relatives he had.

I enjoyed (and, even more, respected) Harding’s debut novel, Tinkers, especially its language and complexity. Oddly, what stayed with me most were some fleeting but touching references to the protagonist’s grandsons in that story, one of whom is Charlie, and I was looking forward to spending more time with him here.

Like his grandfather, Charlie structures his story as a frame from which to hang vignettes of backstory, some of which are beautiful and all of which popped me back into Charlie’s present day more startled each time at the depth of his grief-fueled self-destruction. But it took weeks of intermittent reading before my interest caught. Some of the vignettes are about people I didn’t get to know or care about. Many are about Charlie’s grandfather, who I cared deeply about in Tinkers, and yet never really felt his presence here; there were so many references to the grandfather that they felt gratuitous, and I imagine they frustrated readers who haven’t read Tinkers.

I could suspend disbelief that Charlie, who mows lawns for a living, could narrate so beautifully and philosophically. I couldn’t suspend disbelief that he was so isolated -- from the many more relatives he had in Tinkers that suddenly don’t exist here, and from the townspeople in a locale his family had lived for generations.

And unlike that touching grandson Charlie, this adult Charlie didn’t evoke sympathy. Until … late in the book, when I realized his behavior was less destruction and more something surprising and sympathetic, and that made the whole book worth reading.

You have made Enon sound interesting, and I am assuming it would be better to read Tinkers first.

>Colleen, Tinkers first ... or maybe instead :)

Enon comes out in September.

Also, Tinkers has a Pulitzer Prize going for it. If you don't warm to Harding, it'd be a shame to have read only Enon instead of only Tinkers.

MJ, that makes perfect sense. Thank you.

It was Darryl (Kidzdoc) who panned Enon. It still does not sound that great.

A nice review of Enon, MJ, which was much more generous than mine was. I didn't read Tinkers first, and I might have enjoyed this second book more if I had. Hopefully I'll get to it in the next month or two, and see if my opinion about Enon changes at all (although I doubt it will).

>Bas and Darryl I wouldn’t have finished Enon but for owing a review, and then I was glad I did. (I hate when that happens! I have enough trouble abandoning a book, unfinished, and when one does have an ending with a tiny payoff, it only makes me more hesitant to abandon the next.) We're not that far apart in rating (2.5 and 3.5 stars) but I know my tone turns from positive to snarly at around 3 stars.

Darryl I remember my opinion to you that Tinkers had so little about Charlie that I couldn’t imagine it necessary to read it before Enon. I didn’t realize Harding would pull so much of the grandfather into Enon (which I didn’t like and didn’t think well done).

Some Kind of Love: A Family Reunion in Poems by Traci Dant, illustrated by Eric Velasquez, ©2010, acquired 2013

This children’s picture book uses short prose-poems (to my mind here, simply prose) and full-color oil-on-linen illustrations to tell the story of an African-American family reunion in the Midwest -- the social activities that you can see, and the underlying love ... that, it turns out, you can actually see, too. It’s narrated in the perspective of a 10(ish)-year-old boy, though the voice and the details call a girl/an adult much more to mind -- which is fine, because that may be you, reading this book to a child. More than a book about how fun a reunion is, this is about how important family is.

Sleeping Upside Down (poems) by Kate Lynn Hibbard, ©2006, acquired 2013

I’ve been keeping a spreadsheet of poets, essayists and short-story writers whose work I want to read more of after discovering them in literary journals. Many don’t yet have published collections, but Hibbard does, and she was at the top of my list after I read Uses for Salt.

The main topics of these 39 poems are lesbian desire, failed love, and men’s harm to women. But rather than thematic, the collection felt one-note -- rehash and repetition, and I was disappointed. So when I read a blurb on the back cover that praised Hibbard’s “well-wrought sestinas,” I took the opportunity to look up sestinas (ack! dizzying rules, though perhaps a fun puzzle for poets), find one in this collection and study it. Then I reread the poem, expecting my new appreciation to make a difference, but it didn’t. The repeating words were all there, in the right places, but I didn’t much notice their echoes. Still, I’m glad to have explored Hibbard.

A Clown at Midnight: Poems by Andrew Hudgins, ©2013, arc acquired 2013

I am so early still in exploring poetry. But while I find my way overall, I’m eager to look at contemporary poets, and I was attracted to this collection from Hudgins, described as humorous. Well it’s darkly humorous -- as I should have anticipated from the title and as is confirmed by a quote from Lon Chaney as the epigraph to the title poem: “The essence of true horror is a clown at midnight.” It’s a great poem -- the most memorable in this collection of 58 -- and begins:

Down these mean streets a bad joke walks alone,
bruised head held low, chin tucked in tight, eyes down,
defiant. He laughs and it turns to a moan.

He repeats some of those words and phrases through the rest of the poem and, whereas the words of Hibbard’s sestina (msg #27) didn’t echo, here they do, hauntingly.

A couple snips I especially liked in other poems, this from Swordfish:

My fingertips marveled at the silvery shimmer,
already less silver, less shimmery than when it lived.
I never again should cause flesh this beautiful
to be less beautiful, I thought.

This from Now and Almost Now:

Under dawn light,
cars glow, and a paper,
heavy with yesterday,
reposes on the walk.

And my favorite (partly because I am nearly the “I” in it), Night Harvest:

From my neighbor’s dark garden I harvested asparagus;
I pilfered slender spears from their feathery bed
and clipped buds of American Beauty. All spring
and into early autumn I savored a fragrance
redolent of theft. Through summer I plucked squash,
beans, and more squash from his vines.
In the yard where I watched his daughter marry,
I divided hostas by moonlight and daylilies too,
keeping half. My neighbor’s dead, the house for sale,
and after dark his garden’s mine to love and plunder.

Woolgathering by Patti Smith, orig ©1992, hardcover ed w/photographs ©2011, acquired 2013

As fate devised, I pursued a path far afield from my {shepherd} ancestors, yet their {woolgathering} ways are also mine. And in my travels, when I see a hill dotted with sheep or a staff lying among the chestnut leaves, I am moved by a sense of longing to be again what I was not.

This small volume of 13 memoir-ish prose-poem vignettes was originally published by Hanuman Books in an even smaller 3x4-inch size apparently typical of the publisher -- “like a tiny Indian prayer book that one could carry in one’s pocket.” This new edition probably issued from the success of Smith’s Just Kids, and adds photographs (of Smith, by Smith, or from her archives) as evocative as the prose. It’s tender about childhood, family, and the dreamy temperament of artists, and sometimes so imaginative that I wondered whether it was true and even what it meant. I especially liked “Nineteen Fifty-seven” and “Kimberly,” which tell much the same story but in prose and poem, respectively.

I have Woolgathering on the TBR for a year or two now; I snapped it up because I loved Just Kids so and I'm sure that was why it was re-released (not because I loved it, but because others did too). Will have to dig it out.

It's interesting to follow your poetry reading.

Rebecca I've been on a bit of a bender. I had planned to read one more collection, by Philip Levine, but I'm poem-ed out. I just wasn't paying attention, and the work of a US Poet Laureate deserves better so I'll come back to it later.

Enjoying your poetry reading,, especially the clips from Andrew Hudgins collection. I suppose scrumping in your dead neighbours garden isn't so bad and it provides a nice surprise to the poem.

Barry, my neighbor died over the winter, and her daughter came on weekend days to clear out the house. When her lily-of-the-valley came up in the spring, I gave thought to some dividing...

Wonderful

Well I sure love the excerpts in 28!

Hum....I like the idea of the gardens at night whether the neighbors are dead or not.

and the Smith poems sound wonderful.

Nice reviews, MJ; A Clown at Midnight sounds particularly interesting.

Good review and agree with this sentiment -

The essence of true horror is a clown at midnight.

Clowns are creepy whatever the time though.

Thanks mk, Darryl and DieF. What is it about clowns!? I feel the urge to look up some psychology article about it.

Dad is Fat by Jim Gaffigan, audio read by the author, ©2013, acquired 2013

I heard of Jim Gaffigan and this book via a segment on CBS Sunday Morning, and figured audio would be the best way to experience the stand-up comic’s memoir on being father to five (so far) young kids in a Manhattan 2-bedroom, 5th-floor walk-up. He sounds like a Philip Seymour Hoffman who just woke up, and is amusing in the moment and then forgettable. Good audio for a car trip.

I grew tired of looking at stacks of unread magazines, and over the past few days I’ve skimmed the issues and torn out articles I want to read in full. There are well over 100 of them, ranging in length from one page to 20.

So I’m planning a project for August: read an article a day and post a sentence about it. There should be an article to fit even the busiest days.

40 - well I look forward to August even more then! and I'm laughing at you - well over 100 torn out! I have switched from mags to electronic mags but it has not helped. Then when I think something is really important I find myself going back to hard copies. o lord there just is no hope for me and magazines and books, but what a lovely quandary, right? I am going to be SO impressed watching you do this!

MJ, if you do find anything about the psychological reactions to clowns I'd love to hear about it or read it. The hospital I work at employs clown doctors from the Big Apple Circus, who make rounds several times per week to cheer up the kids. The nurses do get permission from the parents before the clowns enter the rooms, as a sizable minority of them (kids and parents) are terrified of them. From what I've seen the toddlers and younger kids love them, but the older kids are more likely not to, and sometimes one parent has to leave the room during their visit.

It would be interesting to see if there is anything regarding psychological reactions to clowns. I don't like clowns myself, but I know people who are terrified of them.

Good luck with your daily articles project MJ. I should probably do something similar, but I usually wind up recycling without reading. Such a waste.

I wouldn't say I'm terrified of clowns, but I'm not a fan. For me it stems from seeing a miniseries about the serial killer John Wayne Gacy. He lived in the town my parents grew up in, and there was part of the movie where they showed him volunteering as a clown at a hospital. I don't know of that's true, but it was really creepy. I think generally, there's just something scary about hiding a face behind all that makeup and the exaggerated features.

>41 mkboylan: mk -- I’m so looking forward to it! I kept just the articles I’m most interested in. A few are old -- one is a 2008 New Yorker piece on texting that I think will be interesting for its social history, so much has changed since then.

I’ve recently started accessing some magazines digitally through “Zinio” via my library card and it’s great for magazines that I skim or that are expensive to subscribe to. But for anything text-heavy, I like print and I do love a lush magazine in print.

>darryl, nana, japaul -- I wonder if clowns especially affect introverts, there’s all that visual noise demanding interaction even before anything else. And yes that hiding. We had one in the small town where I grew up, he attended parades etc., was named “Happy” but he was made up in a sad-face, which is confusing and crazymaking from the very start. I don’t like the episodes of Modern Family where Cameron plays Fizbo, but at least he’s a bit of a kick-ass clown and feels oddly safer.

Here’s a quick Psychology Today article and Darryl here’s a page of results for coulrophobia (including on pediatric wards) on Google Scholar. I only looked at the abstract for one, about family-centered rounds, with the results: Bunnies had the best overall improvement in parent satisfaction, anxiety, and resident satisfaction. Both intervention groups were successful at reducing attending interruptions. The clown arm was suspended by the Data Safety Monitoring Board before study completion due to adverse events. (!)

The Cooked Seed by Anchee Min, ©2013, arc acquired 2013

I was considered a “cooked seed” -- no chance to sprout.

That was Anchee (in Chinese, An-Qi) Min, left in the wake of China's Cultural Revolution to be a twentysomething with no potential.

I knew I wanted to read this memoir when I saw the author on CSPAN2/BookTV, in a segment from Chicago’s Printers Row Lit Fest where she talked about her incredibly uphill climb as a Chinese immigrant to Chicago during the 1980s (and later, near Los Angeles). Her words were inspiring, but it was her face in one moment that captured me -- as she recalled embarking on one particular goal, her gaze softened and moved from the audience toward the open air space above, as though to re-envision the goal. But her eyes didn’t rise to the height of Mt. Everest as would have been deserved; they settled middle-height. A woman who viewed an impossible challenge as a moderate one? -- this was a woman I wanted to know more about.

And I got it in this memoir, where Min relates her struggles to learn English; to scrape together an education, a living and a family; to stay ahead of deportation back to China; literally to stay alive.

Lying awake at night, I asked myself the question, “Who are you, Anchee Min?” If I ever had a chance to learn what it meant to “stay positive,” it was now. I did not yet know the American I was becoming, but I was sure that I was no longer the same An-Qi from China. {…} I could be crushed, but I would not be conquered. And that, I concluded, was who I truly was. Who I would be.

This is one determined woman. There is intensely hard work, deplorable living conditions, desolation from the scams that catch her. And finally joy with her successes, particularly when she begins to write. The memoir reads like a literary marathon -- fast and practical and straightforward, which seems like Min herself -- though to me, it slowed a bit when she got to easier times. Her passages about Chinese culture and the Cultural Revolution make me eager to read her prior memoir, Red Azalea, and I wager there’ll be no waning tension in those years.

I already have The Cooked Seed and Red Azalea on my wishlist, because Cariola gave them a wonderful review. It gives it even more weight to see another positive review.

Another good review for The Cooked Seed

Catching up from your previous thread...goodness I've missed a lot! First, I really appreciated your review of Enon. Perhaps I should give the book a try. Sometime. Then, well loved the Writers on Writing excepts, loved all the poetry reviews, especially A Clown at Midnight. I can appreciate the need to take a break. I'm reading Anne Fadiman's essays from Ex Libris at the times I would normally read poetry.

And terrific reivew of The Cooked Seed. You have left me very interested in Anchee Min.

Your review of Dad is Fat caught my eye; we just finished watching a very old stand-up routine of his (he had less hair then).

Great review of The Cooked Seed.

Thanks Colleen, Barry, Dan and avid. And dan I loved Ex Libris! Regarding Harding, I'll likely try everything he writes and I hope he can find inspiration outside the Crosby family.

I'm a big fan of Ex Libris too. I always have a couple of copies around to give to people.

>I always have a couple of copies around to give to people.
Rebecca I type with envy, you're so fortunate! Outside LT, most of the people I'm close to are readers but not of the Ex Libris-appreciating type.

Cannery Row by John Steinbeck, ©1945, acquired 2009

How can the poem and the stink and the grating noise -- the quality of light, the tone, the habit and the dream -- be set down alive? When you collect marine animals there are certain flat worms so delicate that they are almost impossible to capture whole, for they break and tatter under the touch. You must let them ooze and crawl of their own will onto a knife blade and then lift them gently into your bottle of sea water. And perhaps that might be the way to write this book -- to open the page and to let the stories crawl in by themselves.

Steinbeck does just that in this collage of vignettes about down-and-outs living near the sardine canneries of Depression-era Monterey, California. The broad story is of a group of people who want to show appreciation to their friend, Doc, a sort of marine biologist and all-around good guy. It’s beautifully written, evocative of men and place and -- who knew! -- Steinbeck can write fun. And it’s all the more meaningful to learn that Doc is based on a friend of Steinbeck, to whom the book is dedicated and in what grows to feel like a meta-appreciation from author to friend.

This is my third by Steinbeck, after East of Eden and Of Mice and Men. I’m interested that Hemingway’s novels have a much closer-in point of view than Steinbeck’s, but Hemingway keeps up an emotional wall whereas Steinbeck lets his characters feel. I’ll definitely read The Grapes of Wrath, probably Sweet Thursday (a sequel to Cannery Row), and maybe Travels with Charley.

Love that quote, not what I might have expected from Steinbeck. You have given me another reason to read Cannery Row.

Dan his gentleness surprises me too, given his typical author photos of a gruff man's-man. It's quick -- under 200 pages and I recall you've enjoyed the vignette structure.

You make me want to go and read Cannery Row again!

>avid I think it would hold up so well to a reread. I'm keeping my copy, too; it's shelved with an accumulating number of short, dreamy-feeling books.

I culled several stacks of unread magazines for articles of interest and put them in a big folder. I’m going to pull one to read each day in August. My first choice was by David Sedaris.

1. “Company Man,” from the 6/3/2013 New Yorker (read it online; open access is probably temporary)

A funny-tender piece about having overnight guests -- the extra guest room (or not), the extra bathroom (or not), being on your best behavior, and feeling bereft after guests have gone.

So, when the company leaves, I clean their bathrooms and strip their beds. If the guests were mine -- my sisters, for example -- I’ll sit on the edge of the mattress, and hold their sheets to my chest, hugging them a moment...

Well that was so much fun, I read three more by him!

2. “Long Way Home,” from the 4/1/2013 New Yorker (subscribers can read it online)

On the trials of getting visas and long-term visas, specifically Britain’s Indefinite Leave to Remain status, and getting it replaced when his passport is stolen.

Nobody likes having a problem, but having a convoluted, bureaucratic one is even more galling. When I explained it to people face to face, I would see their eyes glazing over, and, when I explained it over the phone, I could feel them turning on their computers and checking their retirement accounts.

3. “Memory Laps,” from the 10/24/2011 New Yorker (subscribers can read it online)

Chlorine pits is what {swimming pools} were. Chemical baths. In the deep end my sisters and I would dive for nickels. Toss one in and by the time we reached it half of Jefferson’s face would be eaten away. Come lunchtime, we’d line up at the snack bar, our hair the texture of cotton candy, our small, burning eyes like little cranberries.

Enjoy that passage, because Sedaris’s recollections of adolescent summers on a swim team turn funny-heartbreaking as they circle around his lifelong lack of paternal approval.

4. “Easy, Tiger,” from the 7/11&18/2011 New Yorker (subscribers can read it online)

On learning languages, including through the Pimsleur program (which he finds helpful for pronunciation but discounts because it’s memorization not understanding). Very, very funny; I laughed the same hard, wheezy laugh I did years ago when I read another of his language-learning pieces, “Jesus Shaves.”

I spent my time speaking English apologetically. Not that the apologies were needed. In Paris, yes, but in Berlin people’s attitude is “Thank you for allowing me to practice my perfect English.” And I do mean perfect. “Are you from Minnesota?” I kept asking.

In the beginning, I was put off by the harshness of German. Someone would order a piece of cake and it sounded as if it were an actual order, like “Cut the cake and lie face down in that ditch between the cobbler and the little girl.”

David Sedaris has such great wit. I loved listening to his book Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim.

You're doing it! This is so great!

For some reason, I've never been a big fan of David Sedaris, but I'm going to look for the Pimsleur article (all my New Yorkers are lying around, but not in any logical way), because I once tried to teach myself Spanish with Pimsleur and I found it frustrating too. (Also, I've retained almost nothing.)

>*waves* to Colleen, MK, Rebecca



5. “Unfortunate Events: What Was the War of 1812 Even About?” by Caleb Crain, from the 10/22/2012 New Yorker (subscribers can read it online)

I felt ignorant on the topic, but Crain says even historians remain fuzzy over cause and victor, so he explores the theories put forth in a couple of recent books on the matter. Turns out there were lots of contributing causes (including Tecumseh and the Indian Nation, which I want to read more about), but in the end it seems to have boiled down to Britain wanting to stop the US from indirectly aiding Napoleon and the US wanting the sovereignty it felt it hadn’t yet gotten despite independence. Very good article.

That last quote from "Easy Tiger" is too funny!!!

waving back! I love your little folder picture. It is perfect with the string, right?

Nice review of Cannery Row, MJ. I've never read it, so I'll add it to my wish list. I'll have to look at those New Yorker articles; I've been especially remiss in reading the magazine this year.

Enjoying the start of your article challenge. I was kind of talked into seeing David Sedaris live once, even though I didn't care for him. I was impressed, he was terrific.

Hi all, I'm really enjoying the articles but it's like having a bowl of M&Ms at hand; I'm feeling the need to read a "main course" (book)!

I found a shopping theme in another batch of articles:



6. “The Secret Shopper: The History of Shoplifting” by Jenny Diski, from the 9/26/2011 New Yorker (subscribers can read it online)

Much worse than losses from shoplifting is the possibility of waking the regular shoppers from the dream state that the stores have worked so hard to induce. {…} Better to let someone {shoplift} than, with a wailing alert at the exit and an unseemly public arrest, jar the contented paying customers out of their reverie.

This article discusses the book The Steal -- a “cultural history of shoplifting” from literary (with references to Zola’s The Ladies Paradise), psychological, class-status and legal perspectives. I appreciated the reference to department stores as “great machines for the simultaneous circulation of goods, women, and money.” A good article.

7. “Off the Shelf” by Patti Smith, from the 10/10/2011 New Yorker (read it online)

It’s finally dawned on me that I love Patti Smith’s writing and persona. In this one-page essay, she tells of being caught, at age 10, shoplifting a promotional volume of the World Book Encyclopedia from the A&P. A terrific piece. The link is above; go read it and warm your heart.

8. “Free Everything” by Miranda July, from the 10/10/2011 New Yorker (read it online)

The lesson I learned {from being caught shoplifting} was that I was now legally an adult so I didn’t have to worry that my parents would be called. I was free -- even my crimes belonged to me alone. {…I had} the freedom to steal, to self-destruct, to ruin everything.

On her several years of stealing and scamming; it feels like fiction. An okay piece. Reading her characters/situations makes my mouth gape open as often as not, but I’ve had an interest in her since 2007, when I saw her amusing book trailer and read the collection of stories.

9. “Ask Betty” by Judith Thurman, from the 11/12/2012 New Yorker (subscribers can read it online)

Profile of 85-year-old Betty Halbreich, a longtime personal shopper situated on the third floor of Bergdorf Goodman. She advises actresses and costuming crews and New York City’s uber-wealthy who don’t like to shop or don’t have the time or need wardrobe upgrades. An okay article. Takeaway: everyone stands and turns in front of a mirror in tried-on clothes, but don’t forget:

“How will it look when you walk or sit? How good is the fabric? What’s the taste level?”

10. “Smooth Moves” by Alexandra Jacobs, from the 3/28/2011 New Yorker (read it online)

Profile of Sara Blakely, inventor of Spanx, who’s moving into shapewear for men. An okay article. Most notable is her unwavering attention to the garments in use:

“When I first started, the hosiery mill had these plastic forms, size small to XL, and they would put the panty hose on a form and then stand back with their clipboards and say, ‘Yeah, that’s a large.’ And I’m, like, ‘Ask her how she feels!’ ”

{Blakely} learned from watching her husband that men remove their undershirts with a single, swooping gesture: hooking their arms behind their necks and lifting up from the neck band, rather than wriggling out of them arm by arm, as women do. “He was getting stuck in the Spanx!” she said.

March on! Thanks for these reviews and links - very fun. Love the M & M comparison.

I think I missed something: did you tear out the articles of interest from a whole bunch of New Yorkers and organize them in some way? How else did you manage to find this shopping theme?

This actually gives me the idea that I could do this too. Right now I keep my unread New Yorkers until I think there are too many piled up, and then I throw out the old ones. Or I keep a whole issue because there's an article I want to read and then it just gets buried in the pile. But if I tore out those articles . . . and kept them somewhere . . . maybe I would read them!

>MK you are a terrific cheerleader and I bet put it to good use in your teaching and therapy practice!

>Rebecca -- Yes Yes exactly to paragraphs one and two! I had falling-over stacks, mostly New Yorkers and New Scientists. I did not renew New Scientist last year, and finally in June did not renew the New Yorker until I catch up. (Of course, now every week the media talks about an article in it that I want to read.) I tore out articles, stapled the pages, organized them generally by length (short, medium, looong) and put them in a big expando file folder. I'd done this before, too; thus some oldies from ~2008. Then I browsed through them and pulled 50 or so as possibilities for the month. And it's remarkable how many sort of go together -- in a batch on parents/children that I'm reading now, I can imagine that a writer read one of the articles from 2008 and it inspired the idea for his in 2011! I feel much lighter not having all those issues around.

MJ, I think you've inspired me to go out and buy an expanding file!

>yay Rebecca, though don't get me started on file folders, a couple years ago I started buying pretty ones and am hooked.



11. “The Hungry Years: New Perspectives on Chairman Mao’s Great Famine” by Pankaj Mishra, from the 12/10/2012 New Yorker, (subscribers can read it online)

While still fresh from Anchee Min’s China (msg #46), I was interested to read this review of two recent books about Mao’s policies -- Tombstone, a Chinese account of the Great Famine; and Mao: The Real Story, an examination of how Mao patterned his Great Leap Forward after Stalin’s Soviet industrialization. Very good article. There’s a lot I don’t know about Chinese history, so almost every sentence here was new to me and instructive.

So, I bought myself a file folder yesterday, but I'm not completely happy with it and think a prettier one is in my future. I started tearing out articles this morning and faced the challenge of what to do if one article ends on one side of a page and another that I want starts on the other side; I ended up making a copy of one side. My other piling-up magazines are The New York Review of Books and a science magazine, so I may work my way up to doing the same thing with them. Then we'll have to see if I read the articles!

>I ended up making a copy of one side
That’s an idea. I had some of those and kept them as two-fers, but that just made the “front” article look long and basically buried the “back” one.

I am organizing my articles by general topic (i.e., literature, social issues, science/environment, etc., with a special section for my favorite, Jill Lepore), so it wouldn't work for me to have two unrelated articles stuck together. I like your more serendipitous approach, but I think I'll have a better chance of reading articles this way. I also ordered a nicer looking expanding file than the one I bought at my local stationery store.

My plan. was to scan everything and get the paper out of my house. never got further than buying the scanner. ah well, needed it anyway.

I’m still head-over-heels in love with paper. Books, magazines, stationary, office supplies. I switched from hard-copy calendars/planners to a Palm PDA for about 5 years late-90s/early-2000s, but now that I no longer have the device or the software, all the detail of those years is lost to me. I'm back to paper. Electronics/digital is fabulously efficient but I miss the pleasure.

12. “Let’s Get Small: The Rise of the Tiny-house Movement” by Alec Wilkinson, from the 7/25/2011 New Yorker, (subscribers can read it online)

I like my small house and am fascinated by “tiny houses,” which are built “for the sake of simplicity, frugality, or upright environmental living.” This article explores the tiny-house movement and profiles Jay Shafer, designer/builder and owner of Tumbleweed Tiny House Company. Tiny houses range 100-130 square feet -- “roughly the size of a covered wagon” -- and, being densely designed and hand built, can cost $300 per square foot to build (vs. $50-100 for a conventional house).

Shafer designs by subtraction. He began drawing imaginary houses, and they grew smaller as he started “to figure out what I could get rid of -- mostly square footage, because a lot of space wasn’t used that efficiently...”

I was most surprised that tiny houses are usually illegal to park and occupy -- they tend to violate building codes (which are developed by trade groups that promote bigger projects; “the smallest a house can be and still conform to the codes is about two hundred and sixty-one square feet”) and are thus difficult to qualify for a mortgage. Good article.

I love tiny houses!

Yes, but where do you put the books?????

Perhaps you could make the house out of the books? That is my one problem.

But then if you took a book out to read it, the whole house might fall down!

LOL this reminds me of Steinbeck -- I started Travels with Charley today, and for his road trip around the USA he buys and fits a pickup as a camper and then fills it with writing supplies including dictionary, compact encyclopedia and many reference books ... and then a full bar in case he wants to invite the people he encounters over for a drink. Passions will find their space!

Enjoying reading about your New Yorker articles and you and Rebecca organizing them. The tiny house article was very interesting - after I read it, I kept talking to random people about tiny houses. I was also thinking I should get some books about 20th c. Chinese history after reading the Mao review (also after some people here mentioned various books). I need to do something about my New Yorkers, they are starting to form piles.

>Maus -- they are starting to form piles
Haha, once they become animate like that, wait till you come home and find they’ve partied into a fallen mess!

Here’s a true tiny house that I came across via Science Friday, but the most creative small space I've found is this small apartment in Hong Kong (see a longer tour of it here).

A group of parent-child pieces over the next two posts:



13. “Becoming Them: Our Parents, Our Selves” by James Wood, from the 1/21/2013 New Yorker, (subscribers can read it online)

Personal essay where a middle-aged man reminisces about the “eternal boredom” of his childhood Sundays -- church followed by an overcooked meal followed by classical music on his father’s record player, which killed classical music for him ... until in his twenties, when it came “roaring back” so that now he can’t imagine life without it. And then he notices all the other ways he’s become like his father, and wonders whether we mourn our parents by becoming them. Good article.

But, of course, this idea of him is an old memory of mine {...} he is the middle-aged father of my childhood, not the rather different old man whom I don’t see often enough because I live three thousand miles away {...} So, even as I become him, he becomes someone else.

14. “My Mother Was the Fatter One” by Rene L. Todd, from the August 2009 Self, (read it online)

Personal essay by a woman who grew up with an overweight mother, struggled (unsuccessfully) to not follow in her footsteps, then is surprised by her mother’s middle-age weight loss and found-contentment. New footsteps to follow? Okay piece.

15. “Little Strangers” by Nathan Heller, from the 11/19/2012 New Yorker, (subscribers can read it online)

How do you nurture a child who may be unlike anything you’ve encountered before?

Book review of Far from the Tree, about parenting children with disabilities that make them so profoundly different from their parents that the generational “vertical identity” is replaced by a “horizontal identity” among peers that disrupts familial continuity. Good article.

Every child who isn’t like us is a potential window onto something more.

16. “Strange Inheritance” by Emma Young, from the 7/12/2008 New Scientist

{I}t has become increasingly clear that environmental factors, such as diet or stress, can have biological consequences that are transmitted to offspring without a single change to gene sequences taking place.

About epigenetics and how environmental factors turn gene activity on or off -- for good or bad -- by increasing or decreasing the binding of methyl groups that interfere with areas of DNA or surrounding proteins. (“Folate, for example, is a potent methyl donor. It is routinely recommended during pregnancy {...} because it reduces the risk of spinal tube defects if eaten around the time of conception. But {scientists wonder} whether it could also be inducing as-yet-unknown, damaging epigenetic effects.”) Good article; makes me eager to get to Evolution in Four Dimensions from my TBRs.

If {how we live} could affect our grandchildren, should we be more careful? Is so, in what ways? Should we be more concerned about the long-term impact of war or child abuse?...

...which leads directly (three years later and in another magazine) to:

17. “The Poverty Clinic: Can a Stressful Childhood Make You a Sick Adult?” by Paul Tough, from the 3/21/2011 New Yorker, (subscribers can read it online)

You can trace the pathology as it moves from the molecular level to the social level. {...M}any of the problems that we think of as social issues -- and therefore the province of economists and sociologists -- might better be addressed on the molecular level...

This article references the same methylation research as the New Scientist article above, and explores “the correlations between adverse childhood experiences {ACEs} and negative adult outcomes” (even in the absence of maladaptive behaviors like smoking/drinking/overeating) -- and Dr. Nadine Burke’s remarkable pediatric clinic in San Francisco. Very good article.

{W}e know that having a cholesterol reading above two hundred and forty milligrams per decilitre doubles your chance of heart disease. But {...} so does having four or more ACEs. {...I}t makes as much sense to try to reduce ACEs, or counter their effects, as it does to try to lower cholesterol.

18. “Bull” by Mo Yan, translated by Howard Goldblatt, from the 11/26/2012 New Yorker, (read it online)

Short story set in China late in (or just after) the Cultural Revolution, where a man recalls a boyhood day with his father at a rural cattle market. I was eager to read Yan, and enjoyed this story so much -- it’s emotional and riveting, vs. the stoicism I’ve experienced in the little I’ve read by other Chinese. And I think I noticed a nod to Chekhov (though not literally with a gun). I'll definitely read one of Yan's novels.

I would love to read that article on "The Poverty Clinic" - how interesting. I know there's such a thing as "broken heart syndrome" in medicine (it goes by more fancier names) - so the whole idea of ACE's (that's an acronym I've never heard of) affecting physical health makes sense.

Enjoying the reviews of the articles.
Keep 'em coming!

There is actually a Read Mo Yan group if you're interested in more:

http://www.librarything.com/groups/readmoyan

Enjoying your article reading.

>avid my copy is marked up a bit but if you‘re interested, leave a private message with your address and I’ll be happy to drop it in the mail.

>thanks sassy, I think I’ll choose Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out.

19. “In Plain View: How Child Molesters Get Away with It” by Malcolm Gladwell, from the 9/24/2012 New Yorker, (read it online)

A pedophile {...} is someone adept not just at preying on children but at confusing, deceiving, and charming the adults responsible for those children.

Profiles of three child molesters (primarily Jerry Sandusky and the Penn State environment) show how abusers perfect likeable personas, then patiently groom entire communities, and then carefully select victims and approach them in an escalating manner. A good, important article.

I’m reminded of security expert Gavin de Becker’s advice to consider “charming” a verb not an adjective.

MJ, I enjoyed a lot of Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out, although to a certain extent it wore me out. I liked Red Sorghum, the only other Mo Yan I've read, better.

Now that I've organized my New Yorker articles, I have yet to dip into the file and read any!

>although to a certain extent it wore me out
That does worry me a little...

I did a round of the articles-thing a few years ago and remember feeling lighter with the articles pulled and the magazines recycled. But I also didn't read them then. Now some switch has flipped (maybe that I won't let myself renew the mags 'til I catch up?) and I'm really enjoying them.

20. “The Transition: Lyndon Johnson and the Events in Dallas” by Robert A. Caro, from the 4/2/2012 New Yorker, (subscribers can read it online)

I would read Caro’s multi-volume biography of Lyndon Johnson if it weren’t 3000+ pages, and so was interested to see this excerpt of the day Kennedy was assassinated and Johnson took the oath of office. Most interesting were: 1) the worry that Kennedy might be just the first hit in a conspiracy that day to also target Johnson and then six Cabinet members all en route to Japan on one airplane; 2) Johnson’s transformation from a loser -- snubbed by his party, possibly to be dropped from the 1964 re-election ticket and facing Bobby Kennedy as a rival candidate in the future, and about to undergo public financial scandal -- to an immediately confident and decisive leader; and 3) Johnson’s public-relations involvement of Kennedys in his oath of office -- consulting Bobby on the logistics and ensuring Jackie witnessed it.

It’s 18 New Yorker pages and I don’t think I looked up once.

That LBJ article was the one that made me realize I have to read the Caro multivolume bio -- it's such a commitment, though, as you point out. It was indeed a page-turner, and how well I remember the day JFK was shot, even though i was only 10 years old.

Hello! Just catching up with your thread finally (I've had it starred for ages...) and have enjoyed reading so many interesting reviews and commentary. I really like your 'New Yorker Files'. The small houses debate and the LBJ look really good. Thanks for the David Sedaris snippets too - he is very witty. (We're very lucky in that we get regular doses of his on-stage stuff on BBC Radio 4 - all part of the good value we get for the license fee which I'm happy to pay.)

I'll look forward to more reviews and more New Yorker pieces as well!

>96 detailmuse:, >97 rebeccanyc: I don’t think I looked up once That's what the three volumes I have read to date are like, so don't let fear of the length of the works hold you back. I have yet to read the last volume (are you out there oandthegang?) but I'm really looking forward to it. By odd coincidence, I read the New Yorker article on Thursday.

#99, Sigh. So many other things I want to read . . . Maybe I'll make it a project for next summer.

Welcome Paul! I've heard nothing but good yet still haven't listened to Sedaris; I probably should remedy that. In the meantime I've found a couple more of his pieces hiding behind other articles so I have those to look forward to.

Rebecca and Sassy (and Maus back in msg85) -- books aside, it feels great to have read articles in common.

21. “The Pale King: Michael Jackson’s Ambiguous Legacy” by Bill Wyman, from the 12/24&31/2012 New Yorker, (subscribers can read it online)

”White folks, some young white folks, they run away from America,” Joe Brown, the father of James Brown, once said. “Black folks, they {…} tryin’ to get into America.” {…} For better or for worse, Michael Jackson, whose 1982 album “Thriller” remains the best-selling record in history, fulfilled this ambition more spectacularly than any black performer before or since.

Book review of Randall Sullivan’s recent Untouchable: The Strange Life and Tragic Death of Michael Jackson, a biography that suggests Jackson's “infantile voice, androgynous manner, ever-whitening skin, and de-Africanized features” may have been as much about distancing himself from his abusive father as about racial crossover. Good article; I mourn Jackson but really it's the 1980s Jackson I mourn. (P.S. Wyman says the biography is “chaotically organized and overlong.”)

22. “Sole Mate: Christian Louboutin and the Psychology of Shoes” by Lauren Collins, from the 3/28/2011 New Yorker, (anyone can read it online)

{S}omewhere between the Chalcolithic age and the Kardashians, shoes went from abetting to embellishing, and even impeding, the feet as a way of getting from one place to another.

Profile of shoe-designer Louboutin, whom I came away not liking much. I appreciate the art and illusion of the shoes, and enjoyed reading about wheelchair-bound women who wear fabulous shoes and his sighting of Louboutins on three women all wearing black abayas. But I felt close to disturbed by what he expects of women and a passage about a collaboration with David Lynch, *shudder*. I looked up some of his styles on Google Images and might browse a library copy of Christian Louboutin or, from my wishlist, The Seductive Shoes: Four Centuries of Fashion Footwear.

In the meantime, here's to balancing fashion with some reality:

The offices of fashion magazines often smell like locker rooms, owing to the rows of stale sneakers and ballerina flats that lurk beneath the desks of carless career women.

{At his first boutique, Louboutin noticed} that most American women had pedicures, and that most French women didn’t (“When I started, sandals were not a possibility for the French”).

Enjoying these. Loved the Pattie Smith essay. Intrigued by the discussion on Caro - i'm reading a book by his wife, Ina Caro. Also I have that Mo Yan, Life and Death are Wearing me Out, unread...

Dan, I swerved on Mo Yan -- found Shifu, You'll Do Anything for a Laugh (his collection of short stories) new on Amazon for ~$2 so bought it. (I see it's priced even lower now.)

I've half decided to read Caro's current volume on LBJ's vice-presidency and ascent to president, and his next (supposedly the final) about more of the '60s. Some reviews have mentioned that he tends to fill in prior info when needed for readers of later volumes.

23. “Drinking Games: How Much People Drink May Matter Less Than How They Drink It” by Malcolm Gladwell, from the 2/15&22/2010 New Yorker (subscribers can read it online)

”That drinking must precede alcoholism is obvious {…} Equally obvious, but not always sufficiently considered, is the fact that drinking is not necessarily followed by alcoholism.”

Explores the highly ritualized, high-volume drinking habits but low alcoholism rates of two groups (the Camba peoples of Bolivia and Italian immigrants in Connecticut) to theorize that when it comes to developing alcoholism, quantity matters less if keeping to socio-cultural norms.

An interesting point about alcohol:

Drunkenness is not disinhibition. Drunkenness is myopia. {…} Alcohol makes the thing in the foreground even more salient and the thing in the background disappear. {…} Put a stressed-out drinker in front of an exciting football game and he’ll forget his troubles. But put him in a quiet bar somewhere, all by himself, and he’ll grow more anxious.

24. “Staying Sober” by Andreas Heinz, from the April/May 2006 Scientific American Mind

Examines the changes in brain chemistry that cause the two highest risks to maintaining sobriety: conditioned desire (encountering familiar pleasant stimuli associated with drinking) and conditioned withdrawal (inability to feel pleasure/reward in activities other than drinking).

25. “Special Treatment: The Rise of Luxury Rehab” by Amanda Fortini, from the 12/1/2008 New Yorker (anyone can read it online)

This is somewhat about the treatment of addiction -- from AA to nonprofit residential care (e.g. Hazelden and the Betty Ford Center) and now to for-profit, spa-like facilities -- and mostly about one provider and his clinic in West Hollywood. Between a scam-ish sniff I can’t shake and addiction’s resistance to treatment: buyer beware.

26. “This Is Your Life: A Psychoanalytic Writer Urges Us to Just Deal with It” by Joan Acocella, from the 2/25/2013 New Yorker (subscribers can read it online)

Book review of Adam Phillips’s Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life. Actually, the subtitle seems at odds with Phillips's philosophy that “we should just live, as gratifyingly as possible, the life we have” and not grieve the woulda-coulda-shoulda what-ifs of paths we didn't take. Acocella’s is not a necessarily flattering review of the author and definitely not of the book (and reader ratings mostly agree with her). A pity, since the premise has some interesting philosophy and psychology.

27. “A Simple Medium: Chuck Lorre and the Rules of the Network Sitcom” by Tom Bissell, from the 12/6/2010 New Yorker (subscribers can read it online)

Not since Normal Lear {…} has one man so dominated the {American sitcom} genre.

Profile of writer/creator/producer Chuck Lorre (“Rosanne”; “Grace Under Fire”; “Cybill”; “Dharma & Greg”; “Two and a Half Men”; “The Big Bang Theory”; “Mike & Molly”; {and the upcoming “Mom”}) and his dedication to the old-fashioned multi-camera format vs. today’s single-camera trend. Called “the angriest man in television,” this fairly flattering article was published two months before the public blowup with (another angry man) Charlie Sheen.

Thought this was interesting about the two main characters in “The Big Bang Theory”:

Leonard wants more from life, which is his tragedy. Sheldon does not, which is his tragedy.

Gladwell on drinking and maintaining "socio-cultural norms" sounds interesting. Heinz article sounds sad.

Enjoy Shifu.

I love the way you're grouping reads by topic!

>Dan I see Mo Yan is prominent on your shelf of books you "most want to read."

>Rebecca I think I'll finish the month with some "singles" but then I have several more groups and think I'll keep on with them, maybe in weekly bunches.

Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much by Sendhil Mullainathan/Eldar Shafir, ©2013, Early Reviewers arc acquired 2013

Scarcity is not just a physical constraint. It is also a mind-set. When scarcity captures our attention, it changes how we think {…} By staying top of mind, it affects what we notice, how we weigh our choices, how we deliberate, and ultimately what we decide and how we behave. When we function under scarcity, we represent, manage, and deal with problems differently.

In this behavioral-economics exploration, the authors suggest that experiencing scarce resources (“having less than you feel you need”; here mostly in terms of money and time) “imposes itself on our minds” and causes profound negative effects on cognition and performance.

Like a software program running in the background, scarcity reduces “bandwidth”-dependent functions of intelligence and self-control, and tightens mental focus into a detrimental “tunneling” that excludes valuable information and perspective. And it becomes circular: “Scarcity not only raises the costs of error; it also provides more opportunity to err, to make misguided choices. {…} An initial scarcity is compounded by behaviors that magnify it.”

The authors set their thesis in the Introduction and then spend the book supporting it through research, case studies and anecdotes. It’s illuminating in terms of the cognitive effects of scarcity; the personal, organizational, and political implications; some solutions that aren’t currently working well (including education); and some tweaks that might make them work better. And though the authors discuss substantive stuff (poverty), "tweak" is an appropriate word because they show the large effects of small changes. For example, in a recommendation to build in “slack” (i.e. save for a rainy day), even just enough slack to cover a sprinkle can prevent a snowballing descent toward bankruptcy or the derailing of a project timeline. They offer other do-ahead tips to lessen the probability of poor decisions made later in a scarcity mind-set, e.g. make easy (but damaging) behaviors harder to do (say no to ice cream once at the grocery store rather than multiple times at your freezer), and hard (but beneficial) behaviors easier to do (automate payroll savings).

It's an interesting read with an easy flow, though somewhat repetitive and with no more actual information than some of the article-length pieces I’ve been reading this month.

Travels with Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck, audio read by Gary Sinise, ©1962, acquired 2013

Memoir of Steinbeck’s 1960 cross-country road-trip with his dog, Charley, traveling in a specially outfitted pick-up truck christened Rocinante (feeling like a “turtle carrying his house on his back”), and covering a broad oval from New York through the North and Midwest and West to California and then through the South back to New York.

I enjoyed his preparations for the trip and the passages about Charley (“Fft”!), nature and the outdoors. But this isn’t my favorite by Steinbeck, for at least three reasons: 1) I listened on audio, which I never connect with as much as reading; 2) it was read by Gary Sinise, whose voice had a snarl that felt at odds with the wonder and leisure of a road trip; and 3) I didn’t enjoy Steinbeck's interactions with people along the way, it felt preachy (only afterward did I discover that what used to be billed as Steinbeck’s heavy use of “fictional techniques,” is now acknowledged to be actual fiction). Bah.

>112 detailmuse: I find that there are a lot of actors who are not necessarily good readers.

Ed Asner read Scat by Carl Hiassen. His monotone sucked the fun out of it. I was also disappointed in a book read by Melissa Leo. I like her as an actress, but she left me feeling the reading was a little flat.

>Hi Colleen -- I tag each audiobook with "Read by {name}" and add a little happy or sad face if it was especially well or poorly done, as a guide to considering another book read by that person. I added a sad face to this one :( However: I've read reviews of the book that say Steinbeck's writing seemed grumpy, so maybe Sinise actually matched it?

I like the happy face idea. I have favorite readers, but I know I come across some that I think I've listened to previously, but just not sure. I keep waiting for a new book in Christopher Fowler's Bryant & May series. Tim Goodman narrates, and I think he is spot on. Plus the series is fun.

I think Gary Sinise plays a lot of grumpy characters. I wonder if that might just be him. :)

Two misses? The ideas Scarcity covers seem interesting. Too bad about the Steinbeck. I'm listening to my first audio book on my commute. I'm not sure whether I'm connecting with it more or less than when I read, but the experience is certainly different (and my attention to the narration could be better)

>Dan -- my attention to the narration could be better
This. I'm really only successful when distance driving.

I'm glad to have read Scarcity but I didn't need all the expansion/exploration of their premise. haha but yes: two misses, if you count:



Hidden America: From Coal Miners to Cowboys, an Extraordinary Exploration of the Unseen People Who Make This Country Work by Jeanne Marie Laskas, Early Reviewers arc ©2012, acquired 2012

This is not a place for people, this is not a place for people, this is not a place for people.

That thought came to Laskas while she was descending deep into an Ohio coal mine, and it likely came to her several times more during her research into this collection’s nine essays that profile people working at jobs relatively unknown to the general public. There are coal miners; migrant farm workers; NFL cheerleaders; air-traffic controllers; gun-store sales clerks; beef ranchers; oil-rig workers; long-haul truck drivers; and garbage landfill workers.

I love anything workplace-based and was excited to snag this. But between the time I won it and received it, I happened to read the essay about the truck driver in O Magazine … and was disappointed. So disappointed that I mostly put off reading the book for a year. Having finished it now, I rate it “okay,” 3 stars; easy to read, portions interesting, large portions I wanted to skip.

As the subtitle suggests, these are profiles of the workers and their lives/lifestyles, with less about the actual work/workplace. Only two primarily profile a woman (the cheerleader and the truck driver), and the cheerleader piece is terrible and seems wholly out of place in this collection that’s otherwise about America’s infrastructure (as does the gun-store piece, although it was my favorite). Though not exactly the same concept, I recommend Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed much more. I must get to Studs Terkel’s Working.

eta: touchstone

28. “Tax Time: Why We Pay” by Jill Lepore, from the 11/26/2012 New Yorker (subscribers can read it online)

Lepore takes the opportunity of this year’s 100th anniversary of the Sixteenth Amendment to summarize the history of American taxes and to urge continuation of a “broad-based, progressive income tax.” Information new to me included the reason for a constitutional amendment (while both Democrats and Republicans favored an income tax, President Taft “wanted to avoid signing a law that would end up going back to the Supreme Court” and be deemed a “direct” tax, which was unconstitutional at that time); and how frequently and hugely (range: 20+% to 90+%) the top tax rate has fluctuated. Good article.

Well you have searched for America and found it mostly hidden it would appear. Scarcity has an interesting premise, shame it was a bit disappointing.

>bas, that sounds true. A different experience in Saudi Arabia:



29. “Modern Mecca: The Transformation of a Holy City” by Basharat Peer, from the 4/16/2012 New Yorker (subscribers can read it online)

Excellent essay about the writer’s hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca) -- the rituals and his experiences, including his concern at Saudi Arabia’s extreme development and commercialization of the area surrounding Islam’s holiest site.

Toward the end of the long-ish article, I was confounded by the placement of this two-page photo of Los Angeles’ Santa Monica beach ... except that it reminded me instantly of Muslims at prayer and I wondered if it was an intentional comment about priorities?

Wow, lots of interesting reading since I visited last. And I'm sure you're getting so much more educated at the same time! ;-)

>Joyce it's made me more aware of the diversity of The New Yorker. While I was culling issues, I felt "so much to read/so little time" but am curious in retrospect about the topics of articles I declined to save and read.

MJ, I'm watching CBS Sunday Morning with my mother at the moment, which is currently airing a segment on pencils. It included a brief interview of David Rees, the author of How to Sharpen Pencils, the book you read and reviewed last year. The segment just ended, but hopefully you can see it online.

Darryl, sweet! That program is part of what makes Sunday mornings my favorite of the week.


We went to the Cubs game yesterday and I came now to belatedly post the "Win" flag -- an outcome the Cubs can't seem to get this year, especially at home. *gulp* Now I feel conflicted since they won against ... the Phillies. Darryl, Philadelphia was so well represented that it was impossible to tell the outcome of plays by the fans’ cheers!

Do you watch Cubs games on TV? Any thoughts on Jim Deshaies? I'm asking because I really liked him as an Astros announcer, and miss him this year.

Dan, almost never watch on TV so I don't know Deshaies. I grew up listening on radio -- Ernie Harwell and the Tigers -- and still enjoy that most.

30. “Germs Are Us: Bacteria Make Us Sick. Do They Also Keep Us Alive?” by Michael Specter, from the 10/22/2012 New Yorker (anyone can read it online)

{G}enes matter immensely, but one must take into account more than just the twenty-three thousand genes we inherit from our parents. The passengers in our microbiome contain at least four million genes, and they work constantly on our behalf: they manufacture vitamins and patrol our guts to prevent infections; they help to form and bolster our immune systems, and digest food {and} may even alter our brain chemistry, thus affecting our moods and behavior.

An article about the human “microbiome” -- the micro-organisms that co-exist within us and outnumber our own cells ten-to-one. It looks particularly at H. pylori (associated with gastric and peptic ulcers), which has become reviled to the point of attempted eradication, but which is now theorized to provide significant benefits during childhood and potential harm only in adulthood. Also suggests that the rise in C-sections (which prevents the baby’s inoculation with bacteria during the birth process) is contributing to the rise in autoimmune disorders (diabetes, Crohn’s, obesity, asthma). And looks at treatments -- probiotics (“Current products are ninety-nine per cent marketing”) and the transplantation of good bacteria (fecal transplants have had “astounding” cure rates in certain colon infections). (As an aside, Mary Roach’s Gulp has a very good chapter on fecal transplants.)

31. “Late Bloomers: Why Do We Equate Genius with Precocity?” by Malcolm Gladwell, from the 10/20/2008 New Yorker (anyone can read it online)

Where Picasso wanted to find, not search, Cezanne said the opposite: “I seek in painting.”

A very interesting article that references David Galenson’s Old Masters and Young Geniuses to examine differences between prodigies and late bloomers (e.g. Picasso and Cezanne, respectively) and suggest that the creativity of the first is “conceptual” while the second is “experimental.”

{W}e sometimes think of late bloomers as late starters. They don’t realize they’re good at something until they’re fifty, so of course they achieve late in life. But that’s not quite right. {…Galenson} suggests something else -- that late bloomers bloom late because they simply aren’t much good until late in their careers. {…} Prodigies are easy. They advertise their genius from the get-go. Late bloomers are hard. They require forbearance and blind faith. {…} On the road to great achievement, the late bloomer will resemble a failure. {…} Whenever we find a late bloomer, we can’t but wonder how many others like him or her we have thwarted because we prematurely judged their talents.

Looks like you finished the month on two terrific articles. Although...fecal transplants...really. I may try to set aside time to read those, especially that last one.

One book I read recently discusses how all great break through in physics are in youth (Newton, Leibniz, Einstein all had did their main work in their twenties) Wonder how that might fit in.

128 and sometimes the precocious ones end up being average when others catch up to them. Don't know what the stats are on that tho, just remember it being talked about in one of my texts. So many interesting perspectives.

MJ, here's the link for the CBS Sunday Morning segment on pencils:

Pencils get sharp before school starts

Wave your Cubs' "W" flag freely! The Phillies are mired near the basement of the NL East this year, and have absolutely no chance to make the playoffs, barring a historic run to the pennant. Sarah Palin would have a better chance at being elected mayor of Berkeley, CA.

My baseball loyalty this year has shifted to the Pittsburgh Pirates; I graduated from Pitt's medical school and saw several Pirates games at old Three Rivers Stadium when I lived there. The Bucs are about to break their 20 year streak of losing records (1993-2012), and barring a major collapse they will make the playoffs for the first time since 1992.

Thanks for mentioning the "Germs Are Us" article; I didn't read it last year, but I'l definitely do so this week.

Pencils get sharp before school starts

That's a wonderful story. I wish I could get paid $35 per pencil. I have one of those old wall-mounted schoolroom pencil sharpeners, so that has earned me the job of sharpening all of my granddaughter's pencils. One time when I questioned why there were so many every week, it came out that she was smuggling in several of her friends' pencils each time as well.

I like your granddaughter Steven.

Gosh, so many good posts here - staying 'caught up' is a pleasure. You're New Yorker mini-digest is very interesting. Love your comment about preferring listening to baseball than watching on tv - I feel exactly the same with football.

>Dan my reaction exactly! Except … over the past couple of years I’ve read about the amazing success with fecal transplants at resolving the hopeless and unrelenting misery of C. diff colon infections. I might even pursue it in lieu of a first course of antibiotics if I were in the situation. The physics breakthroughs sound consistent with the article -- conceptual revolutions when young, experimental evolutions when older. Myers-Briggs comes to mind; I wouldn’t be surprised to find prodigies are Intuitive whereas late-bloomers are Sensing.

>MK very interesting. I’ve added Old Masters and Young Geniuses to my wishlist.

>Darryl, thanks. btw two Phillies fans somehow squeezed between the metal bars of a Wrigley Field gate over the weekend, wanted cuttings from the outfield ivy. Oops! a misdemeanor. I hope you find something new to you in “Germs Are Us.”

>Steven she was smuggling in several of her friends' pencils
I love that! You would enjoy reading How to Sharpen Pencils.

>Paul thank you! I even “see” the sports action much better when listening than when watching. I suppose it’s because the commentary distills and focuses the action? Now why can’t audiobooks and I get along better?

>135 detailmuse: MJ, Maybe your reaction to audiobooks is the same as it might be if you were listening to a bad sports announcer. You have to like the reader, as well as the book. :)

>132 StevenTX: Steven, Love that story about your granddaughter and the pencils.

Good point Colleen. It's a pretty rare occurrence for me, but once in a blue moon I do have to abandon listening to a football commentary if it's a commentator whose voice I just can't stand. As on the whole I really enjoy a well chosen audio book, if the reader's voice is wrong - that's the end of the matter and I'' have to bail...however great the writer - as I discovered recently with my John Le Carre's Our Kind of Traitor.

Given the chance (typically during a big international tournament like the World Cup when such saturation coverage might present the opportunity) I'll happily turn down the tv volume so I can listen to the same match being commentated on by the more skilled (they have to be!) radio broadcaster.

>Paul -- I'll happily turn down the tv volume so I can listen to the same match being commentated on by the more skilled (they have to be!) radio broadcaster
Even in the stadium, people are listening on earphones. Commentary is good info, plus I wonder if radio creates a more connected/intimate experience?

>Colleen, you prompted me to look through my LT audiobooks to find my favorite book/reader pairings:

Edward Herrmann (reading Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand)
George Guidall (Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes)
Mirron Willis (When I Left Home by Buddy Guy)
Steven Crossley (Saturday by Ian McEwan)

I’m posting them as placeholders until I can look into what else they're narrated that interests me.

>135 detailmuse: I saw the headline about the fans who were arrested for trying to steal ivy from Wrigley Field, but I didn't know that they were Phillies fans. I love Philadelphia, but its sports fans can be extremely obnoxious.

>Darryl they’re Philly residents, even, so they’ll be back in Chicago next month for their court date.

its sports fans can be extremely obnoxious
Phillies hit a home run in the game I saw, and whoever caught it threw it back onto the field, standard operating procedure. haha ironic when the Phillies fans behind us said, “Well that’s rude” !!

>138 detailmuse: I have been listening to the Matthew Shardlake series by C.J. Sansom. They are also read by Steven Crossley. He is very good. I also love John Lee. I have enjoyed any book that he has narrated.

Philadelphia fans have no right to call anyone else rude, save perhaps for football hooligans in Europe.

Phew! A marathon read and I'm caught up. I'm loving your commentary on New Yorker articles, but I clicked on so many links that it took me much longer to get caught up. Fun stuff.

>141 NanaCC: Colleen, Steven Crossley got me through Saturday, after I'd sworn off McEwan following Atonement. I'll take a look at John Lee.

>142 kidzdoc: Darryl so true

>143 labfs39: Thanks Lisa, it's great to see you around LT again!

My favorite vacation settings involve nature -- forest or mountains or water -- and last week we had forest, hills, and water in upper Michigan and Mackinac Island, in variations of this:


The two figures above are a couple who were kayak-camping the 1300-mile route around Lake Superior. The man started a conversation with me when he noticed I was reading a different book than when he’d seen me earlier (I had finished Aimless Love and started The Invention of Solitude). With them subsisting for months on a total storage space of two kayaks, I can understand his attention to my book gluttony.


At the Tahquamenon River Falls, the water picks up colored tannins from cedars up-river. I've already downloaded to read (or re-read, I’m not sure) Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, which was set in the areas we visited.

Of course I didn’t think a light house operated with a bare 100-watt bulb, but how have I not known of these fabulous Fresnel lenses that surround the light sources in lighthouses?


We had fabulous days of hiking, biking, reading and eating -- including touring Fort Mackinac, which had a presence in both the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 (that New Yorker article in msg#63 was fortuitous reading).

Sounds like a fabulous trip!

Gorgeous spot! Thanks for sharing.

Your trip sounds wonderful.

#138 - My first audiobook was narrated by George Guidall. He was excellent. (The book is Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick.)

I generally hate TV announcers. Radio announcers have a nice habit of staying on topic, and staying within the game. TV announcers have the problem in that they don't really have any reason to describe the action in detail since you are watching it. So they drift into contrived commentary and often lose touch (in American football they are often further stunted by astounding stupidity). I still like(d) Jim Deshaies on TV, he just really gets the game.

What a wonderful way to kick off the fall. Your trip looks gorgeous.

Your trip sounds lovely and relaxing.

That does look like a lovely part of the country, and one I was unfamiliar with. Thanks for sharing it with us.

Thanks everyone for visiting! We really got away from our everyday. I didn’t do photographic justice to the geology of the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, but here’s Miners Castle --



-- and Google has terrific images.

Thanks for the beautiful photos!

Here’s another guy who sharpens pencils and sculpts their graphite points into art.

Weird: didn't the "Continue this topic in another topic" message use to pop up at the bottom of a thread after ~200 messages? Now it's earlier?

Those are amazing!

I’m swimming upstream in ratings on this one:



The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri, ©2013, arc acquired 2013

I loved Lahiri's two collections of short stories, I liked her first novel ... and I rate this novel "okay."

It opens on two brothers growing up near Calcutta during a 1960s period of Indian history (the Naxalite movement of rebellion toward Communism; that Stalin-Mao article in msg#73 was more fortuitous reading for me). They're so close in age and bond that they're nearly twins, but they pursue different paths -- one toward education and a career in science in the United States and the other toward the political rebellion. Following a tragic event early in the novel, the story becomes an exploration of family and culture and the ways that generations are affected and do (or don't) accept and forgive one another.

The opening evoked the Ethiopian/ Nigerian/ Afghani histories of, respectively, Verghese's Cutting for Stone, Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun, and Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns. I enjoy historical fiction but it's tricky -- getting history and fictional characters to combine into an interesting Story rather than a Lesson or Message. I grew sensitive to it with Adichie and Hosseini; maybe it’s common to second novels? -- readers’ praise of the interesting and unfamiliar settings in debuts spurs writers to educate in their seconds? And I was sensitive here too, until the story moved away from the history and I realized there wasn’t much story. Instead, there are numerous character biographies told in distant, third-person points of view that discourage reader attachment.

Lahiri's writing is assured but not beautiful and her content is interesting but without momentum. Considering what she accomplishes in her short stories, this novel seemed ultralight. In the whole book, I marked only one passage to excerpt; it’s meaningful in its hint of the generations-wide effects of events and decisions:

It was the English word {yesterday} she used. It was in English that the past was unilateral -- in Bengali, the word for yesterday, kal, was also the word for tomorrow. In Bengali one needed an adjective, or relied on the tense of a verb, to distinguish what had already happened from what would be.

That's disappointing, given the book is up for two major awards. I hope your next read is more rewarding.

Great to get a different perspective.

I'm not always in sync with the prize committees ... but more disappointing is that Lahiri is one of my favorite writers! I guess I'll stick to her short stories.

Nice review of The Lowland, MJ. Several of the members of the 75 Books group expressed opinions that were similar to yours, so you're in good company with them. I'll read it later this week or early next week, to finish this year's Booker Prize shortlist.

ETA: I noticed this weekend that the "Continue this topic in another topic" message now appears when a thread reaches 150 or 151 messages.

Thanks Darryl. I finished this next book earlier, but am happy I saved writing the review till now.



Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems by Billy Collins, Early Reviewers arc ©2013, acquired 2013

Divorce
Once, two spoons in bed,
now tined forks

across a granite table
and the knives they have hired.

Flock

It has been calculated that each copy of the Gutenberg Bible … required the skins of 300 sheep. --from an article on printing

I can see them squeezed into the holding pen
behind the stone building
where the printing press is housed,

all of them squirming around
to find a little room
and looking so much alike

it would be nearly impossible
to count them,
and there is no telling

which one will carry the news
that the Lord is a shepherd,
one of the few things they already know.

This is a compilation of nearly 150 poems, a third of them new and two-thirds pulled from four previous collections published in the 2000s.

It’s my introduction to Collins and I’m hooked. His poems are tiny stories, about everything, with turns of phrase and bursts of imagination. He so exposes his self, and his inspiration is clearly in the details of life (which resonates with me; my screenname and former blog).

My favorites include “Istanbul” (I felt I was getting the Turkish bath); “The Lanyard” (a boy’s naïveté of what it takes to raise a child); and (from a dad) the scathing/loving “To My Favorite 17-Year-Old High-school Girl” (video).

My only hesitation is they’re so accessible that I feel guilty about their ease and wistful that their lack of complexity doesn’t leave me turning them over afterward in search of understanding. I was interested that he claims a poet writes “3 flawless poems in a lifetime if you’re lucky” and I wonder what makes a poem flawless. I marked so many poems in the section from The Trouble with Poetry that I think I must read that whole volume. I’ve also added to my wishlist A Coney Island of the Mind by Lawrence Ferlinghetti --

the bicycling poet of San Francisco
whose little amusement park of a book
I carried in a side pocket of my uniform
up and down the treacherous halls of high school.

I don't read a lot of poetry, but I loved the images created by the Billy Collins poems. They may not be complex, but they are certainly examples of concise, descriptive language. Your review may inspire me to make my first poetry purchase in many years. Thanks!

Very interesting review of The Lowland, and I've just added Interpreter of Maladies and Unaccustomed Earth to my wishlist - not previously being aware of Jhumpa Lahiri - and they look great, so thanks!

>Lisa and Paul, those are two writers I'm thrilled to spread the word about.

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King, audio read by Anne Heche, ©1999, acquired 1999

Nine-year-old Trisha McFarland gets separated from her mother and brother while hiking a section of the Appalachian Trail in Maine. As she grows solidly lost, she grows grateful for the distraction of her Walkman radio and broadcasts of Boston Red Sox games (with relief pitcher Tom Gordon). King and the woods are relentlessly harsh to her, but it’s her inner self that will be the most dangerous or most supportive ... or is there actually something real and menacing lurking about her? King structures the novel as the nine innings and postgame of baseball, and Heche does a good job on the audio although she’s not exactly menacing.

Bottom line is this was boring -- there’s some nature and then some grossness but hardly any tension and never any real scare. I made several false starts on the hardcover over the 14 years I’ve had it, and finally listened on audio during a road trip. Forget horror and think child-resourcefulness, even suitable for child readers, say ‘tween and up.

I suppose you have to take some flack if you become a popular poet. I like his poems and any review of a poetry collection should include some examples. Nice one MJ.

I see you're listening to The Wordy Shipmates. Is it read by the author? She has such a distinct voice, and I can't imagine listening to her writing read by someone else. But I'm also not sure how long I could listen to her either. She's always very interesting when she's a guest on Jon Stewart.

>166 detailmuse: Reading something by Stephen King was on my to-do list this year but guess I'll not choose that one! Thanks for the warning. Have you read anything else by him?

>168 Nickelini: Joyce, I have listened to a couple of Sarah Vowell's books, and I thought they were good. Her voice is quirky, but it just seems to go with the books.

Enjoyed the Billy Collins examples. Thinking about his complexity. I have read poems of his either didn't have depth I could see, or that had a sort of forced depth, but I think his work hovers around a voice that is not easy to reach and when he does reach it and it does work, I think there is a lot there on several levels. It's also an easily accessible voice.

My favorite collection of his was Sailing Alone Around the Room...I read it a long time ago and don't remember much, but I still want to recommend it...and I love the title.

#170 - Good to hear that. I really do like her, so I wouldn't want something to change my mind.

Just catching up and interested in your view of The Lowland since you generally like Lahiri. Since I was underwhelmed when I read her stories some years ago, I think I'll skip this one.

>Thank you Bas. And Dan thanks for recommending Sailing Alone Around the Room, it looks excellent.

>Rebecca if your underwhelm had anything to do with topic, I hear Lahiri says that after The Lowland, she’s “done” -- and I think she was referring to the displaced-immigrant themes that dominate everything she’s written.

>Joyce, like Colleen I’m managing fine with Vowell’s voice, but I’d steeled myself for it going in. She uses a cast of a dozen others too, so far mostly popping in for quotes, and after her voice they startle me every time.

>Avid – I’ve only read a few by Stephen King, all long ago:
Cujo and Thinner which were okay
Carrie and Misery which were good (but that may be from remembering the film versions)
Maybe Christine and Firestarter which were forgettable

His memoir, On Writing, is very good.

I have one must-read by him in my TBRs (per Bragan, I think?) -- the four novellas in Different Seasons.

MJ, As I recall, what I didn't like about her stories was that i felt they were all kind of the same, so I think you have a good point there.

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, ©1951, acquired sometime after 1991

"This fall I think you’re riding for -- it’s a special kind of fall, a horrible kind. The man falling isn’t permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling. The whole arrangement’s designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn’t supply them with. Or they thought their own environment couldn’t supply them with. So they gave up looking. They gave it up before they ever really even got started."

The classic coming-of-age novel where 17-year-old Holden Caulfield recounts the weekend he drifted away from his life.

It’s evocative of the 1930s when Salinger was a teen, and of the 1970s when I was a teen, and of now. I re-read it during Banned Books Week and it angers me that it’s frequently challenged/banned because that only denies reality -- the reality of teen angst that will pass, and the reality that this teen narrator isn’t experiencing angst, he’s damaged in a way that might not pass. A contemporary version of this novel might be about a school-shooter.

"The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one."

Nice thoughts on a classic.

"The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one."

That's such a great quote. I owe this one a reread.

Thanks bas, and lisa it held up so much better than I expected, though for most of the way I wasn't sure it would. My grammar-checker wore itself out on just that little leading quote, flagging multiple passive voice and multiple end-of-sentence prepositions, and I had to smile at Salinger for breaking the rules.

I also love that quotation.

The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell, audio read by the author and a dozen others, ©2008, acquired 2008

I don’t have any energy to write this review. It’s history (Puritans) + backstory (interesting) + commentary (sarcasm rather than humor) + constant digressions/audio disruptions = meh. That said, Vowell’s enthusiasm about history is contagious. Since this is one of her lowest-rated works, I will try her again.

This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett, arc ©2013, acquired 2013

{T}he story of my marriage, which is the great joy and astonishment of my life, is too much like a fairy tale -- the German kind, unsweetened by Disney. It is the story of children wandering alone through a dark forest, past shadowy animals with razor teeth and yellow eyes, towards an accident that is punishable by years and years of sleep. It is an unpleasant business, even if it ends in love. I am setting out to tell the story of a happy marriage, my marriage, which does not end in divorce, but every single thing about it starts there.

That’s from the title essay* in this collection of 23 short, medium and long personal essays, all previously published in prominent newspapers/ magazines/ books from 1996 to 2012.

Patchett writes on a variety of topics (nuns; opera; censorship; trying out RVs; trying out for the police academy) but keeps returning to a core: divorce; family; dogs; home (Tennessee); reading and writing. She also chronicles her co-founding of Parnassus Books, an independent bookstore in Nashville.

Her Bel Canto is on my all-time Top 10 Fiction list; I’ve liked others of her novels less, and have two still in my TBRs. While this collection felt like a bunch of unrelated essays early on, those core themes helped it to coalesce later. And not only is there not a clunker in the bunch, the essays are almost uniformly excellent -- wise and optimistic. A terrific comfort read.

*Note: This review relates to Patchett’s collection of essays. So browse the tags, ratings and reviews on the work page with caution -- many of them relate to a standalone audio recording of the single, title essay only. The Combiners group cannot separate out the single-essay data.

My husband doesn't really like audio books, but on one of our trips up to Massachusetts, we listened to Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation. He calls it the dead presidents book, but he did enjoy that one. I agree that the addition of other people reading the quotes can be annoying. I think The Wordy Shipmates was my least favorite of her books.

That sounds like a great book. Comfort reads are always welcome and Patchett is an author I've wanted to read ever since I saw her on either The Daily Show or The Colbert Report talking about her bookstore. There were a lot of positive reviews on Bel Canto around here too.

>182 detailmuse: I've only read Bel Canto and loved it. I have Truth & Beauty and State of Wonder on my Kindle. I will get to them some day.

The Wordy Shipmates was weak. Assassination Vacation is her best -- she's not stretching for either material or humor. I do like her love of those dour old Puritans.

Bel Canto is one of my all time favorites too. The only other book of hers that I've read is Run, which was a bit disappointing. Which other ones have you read?

Bel Canto is also one of my all time favorites, and I had to be convinced to read it because all the hype turned me off. I then read some of her earlier work, which is good but not as good: The Patron Saint of Liars and The Magician's Assistant. I haven't been motivated to read her post-Bel Canto books as the reviews haven't made them seem appealing.

>Assassination Vacation it will be!

>Thrilled to see Bel Canto fans! Lisa see especially * below

Bel Canto was my first by Patchett and I agree everything else pales by it. I enjoyed the essay collection above more than her other works, which for me include:

State of Wonder -- good; a retelling of Heart of Darkness and it’s not believable when Patchett says that never occurred to her

*The Magician’s Assistant -- good; Lisa: a main (though offstage) character is Parsifal; I wasn’t familiar with the legend of Parzival but do remember how much it added to your reading of Matterhorn, so you might be interested in this novel

What Now? -- good; the text of a commencement address

Run -- I listened to part on audio years ago and had to return it before finishing; so I guess I was also disappointed, but have always meant to begin it again

I have The Patron Saint of Liars and Taft in my TBRs. I also want to read a pair of memoirs: Truth and Beauty, by Patchett on her friendship with writer Lucy Grealy; and Grealy’s Autobiography of a Face, about her lifelong cancer and the facial/emotional disfigurement it created in childhood.

Hmm, next time I see Magician's Assistant, I'll pick it up.

Nice review of This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage, which I'm about to thumb. Sounds very interesting to me, and I'm grateful you mentioned that some of the other reviews only refer to the audio version of the title essay. Haven't heard much about Ann Patchett before, but then I'm oblivious to lots of things!

Thanks Paul! Patchett's essays are a gentle collection, but then all of her writing is quite gentle.

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