I’m finally reading Gone Girl. There is immense pressure in my social circle to see the movie, but I won’t go until I’ve read the book. I always do work better under a deadline. Ben Affleck is going to rock this so hard. Even if I didn’t know there was a movie, he’s what I would imagine Nick Flynn looks like.
It’s so great. Why didn’t anyone tell me it was so great? And by that I mean when everyone told me it was so great, why didn’t I jump on it immediately? When can I schedule time to read all the Gillian Flynn books?
O’re the Ramparts We Watched
Today, on the 200th anniversary of Francis Scott Key writing the poem which would one day become the national anthem of the United States, I write my thoughts on the best book I’ve read this year: All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr. This novel is the only place I have ever seen the word ramparts used aside from the national anthem, and it must be used 25 times over the course of the book. So many times that I finally looked up what it meant (how embarrassing to not know!).
Rampart:
noun
1.
Fortification.
a broad elevation or mound of earth raised as a fortification around a place and usually capped with a stone or earth parapet.
such an elevation together with the parapet.
2.
anything serving as a bulwark or defense.
Got it? No? Here are some ramparts right on the cover of the book:
Ramparts play an important role in the book, as one primary setting is a town in France nearly surrounded by water, definitely invaded by Germans, during WWII.
But I digress. I adored this book. I learned new things. I saw things through the perspective of others, including a blind girl, not a pun. And yet, the light we cannot see is not a reference to her blindness, that would be too obvious for such a multifaceted novel. I thought the novel was describing the German occupation of France from two perspectives: a French girl and a German boy. I thought that was a fantastic framework to use, one character from each side, one from each sex, children – so they “see” the war through less jaded eyes or perhaps become jaded as a result. The short chapters from each to really show the contrast in their lives. Each of them, in addition to being children, has lost at least one parent, so they are less protected than other children How terrifying that must of been (and yet Marie will tell us she is not brave, she gets up and lives her life, as she must). The light they cannot see is the good in others, the life of a child who does not grow up terrified by war? Oh the many perspectives on the same historical events, making one think of all the other untold stories we will never know. Fantastic.
Then I heard the author speak on the novel. The above wasn’t what he set out to write. No, he was writing about the use of radios in the war, the transmissions the light we don’t see (I think). The children were the framework to tell that story. And I thought how people look at the same thing in so many different ways To me, the radio was a minor character, not the point, to the author, something else. It’s his work, perhaps he should drive the meaning, but I’ve learned that what we perceive is how we view reality. So for me, it’s about these two characters and their perspective of the war. And I’m not wrong, and I feel I’ve gained from reading it and thinking about the story long after (especially the occasional end of chapter shocker which felt like it cut me).
Minor Spoiler alert
The only part I that was a bit much for me was the diamond story, which would vanish for long segments of the book. Let’s say the diamond ends up in the ocean. I could almost hear Celone Dion singing my heart will go on and Marie whispering that Werner saved her, looking back on it from 2014. No ‘you jump, I jump’, but still.
Read this book immediately. The story, the writing, the detail, you will not regret it.
What Matters
Today I received a stellar review, and acknowledgement from the head of my division in front of a large group of people of my achievements at work. Later I received an email that the shy, stand-offish cat that I’ve spent time playing with in my volunteer work at the local shelter, the cat that just recently came out of her shell and come over to head butt me has been adopted. The later is the thing that matters most and that I’m most proud of.
I need a new job/a new jam. Good luck and have a wonderful life, Patches. I will miss your sweet face.
Make the Library Books Stop!
I mean I should make myself stop. Late last year I came to the conclusion that I would die before I could read all the books I wanted to read. It didn’t help that I was in denial about my to be read list. Sure, I had an Amazon wishlist, but you couldn’t see all the books on one page (or I couldn’t figure out how to do it). Fourteen pages of an Amazon wish list isn’t that bad, right? Perhaps not, but the wish list didn’t include all the books in my home that were sitting sadly on shelves, waiting for their day in the sun. What if I wasted time reading a dumb book and never got to the most perfect book for me, the one that would make me understand everything, be the best person I could be and live free and happy? I stopped everything and created my favorite of all things: a spreadsheet. I typed all the books into it. I figured out how to export the wish list (not an option on Amazon at the time, except to GoodReads, which lets you export to Excel – natch!).
I would love to have an app that would allow me to easily drag and drop by priority and category (I need to prioritize fiction v fiction, and non-fiction v non-fiction, etc). I have found no such app.. perhaps I should figure out how to write one and do it. I digress. Now I have my crazy spreadsheet, my prioritized list and all is good. I’m feeling organized. It helps me see progress (I have already read this year the same number of books I read in all of 2013 – Gold Star for me!). I adore my spreadsheet. Nerd alert!
I could read from my list of house books or Nook books for probably years without having to look elsewhere, but that wouldn’t let me invest in all the new books or even recent books that everyone has read except me (how many times will I mention that Gone Girl is STILL on my list?). But sometimes I can not control myself. My read all the books.. even the recent ones. In my excitement to read all the books, though there is no way to read all the books, I occasionally go on a library jag. All the books: For free! In many formats! And then… the books come in. I must go get them. There is a deadline or (gasp!) fines ensue Yes, two weeks no matter how many other books are being juggled when the email arrives that the book is waiting. It’s easy to sign up. They are new books. It will take awhile for me to arrive at the top of the list. Don’t be fooled. They will arrive.. soon, and many at once.
How does one handle this? Choices must be made. One can try to read all the books, but one most certainly can not read all the books at the same time. So the library books move to the top of the priority list, because they are here and on a deadline. Gone Girl continues languishes as one of the books on my shelf. Somewhat of a kismet affect: you must read me now, you can’t resist reading me now, you will have to return me if you do not read me now (not technically true if one doesn’t mind fines and alarmed emails from the library). What to do, what to do?
Read on.. it’s the only thing to do.
The Power of a Deadline
Today is MLB trade deadline day. Something to obsess over. Something outside your own life that feels important. One should spend time fixating on every rumor, every possibility. After all that fixation will have impact on what happens, obviously. Blockbuster trades will result emotions completely in proportion to the impact on your life, right? No. So why do we do it? Is it something out of our control that we can fixate on so we don’t fixate on our own lives for awhile? Or is it that sports personalities are a part of our lives, especially baseball players, as they are in our lives daily for up to eight months a year. Maybe there is something to loving something, being passionate about something outside of yourself that is part of being human. How much you react or don’t react, how much time you spend on the rumors, options are a function of the room in you have in your life for such things.Many will think the time spent silly. But you love what you love, and that can’t be wrong. So bring on the rumors, let them wash over me. I’m more interested in the end result. For me it will most likely be that one of the best left handed pitchers ever to play for my team will be gone, treated badly by the ownership group that treats us all badly by making baseball into a pure money making machine rather than the joy of a small child going to the park for the first time, or sitting watching games with a family member being their first memory. I love baseball, and all the shenanigans that come with it. At 4pm or so today, my team will look different. At 4:01 we start the next phase of our relationship. How I let that affect me is up to me. As an adult, I will understand what needs to occur, but the child in me will hurt, knowing you let a hero go for reasons that only adults consider. The child in me will hurt; hurt because the world isn’t the place I thought it was, and my friends the players need to come and go.
Bring it on, MLB trade deadline. I’m ready for the craziest day of the year.
Listening to Literature..
Yesterday I mentioned genres I rarely read and how three examples now reside in my home, and that I’m a book thief, but let’s just skip over that. Another reading related activity I don’t partake of is audio books. Until I discovered there are free public domain audio books on iTunes.
So I decided to squeeze that in at the gym. I’m starting with Moby Dick, a book I’m embarrassed to admit I’ve never finished.
I’m not sure this is the best choice for audio book. One has to (and should) pay close attention to these lovely sentences and phrases. If you hear about someone falling off the treadmill, I’m the prime suspect.
Book Riot #BKR03
Imagine me jumping in the air with joy. Yeah!
This is my first Quarterly Book Riot book, or whatever it’s called, and I couldn’t be more thrilled. I’ve been thinking I need to branch out, read a genre I never read. Especially after BEA, where I continued my semi-amazement at the popularity of paranormal teen romance. But anyway, what do I never read these days: romance, sci fy and young adult (I know, I know.. everyone loves Eleanor & Park and The Fault of Our Stars). What is in the box:
Romance! Sci Fy! Young Adult! Plus other cool stuff like a library card pouch.
It’s like they read my mind…
Admission: I have read one romance novel in my life. I was ten years old and my older cousin left a beat up paperback at our house.
Shanna by Kathleen Woodiwiss
Sensing something exciting, I squirelled the book away to my room.. and Ruark Beachamp’s burning amber eyes, Shanna’s sea green eyes and bursting bosom.. well, they are burned into my psyche and are very much a part of my growing up.
I read the book a number of times during my teenaged years. My cousin looked everywhere for it, irrate. I never never admitted to taking it. At this very moment that book is in a suitcase I rarely use, in the back of the closet. I’m admitting it here for the first time: I own a romance novel and I’m a book thief. Thank you, Book Riot. I really do feel better about it now.
TBR: now up to 508. long exhale.
BEA Made Me Feel Bad
Again, this was my haul:
And I feel overwhelmed because so many books, so little time! Overwhelmed alert! I don’t even have anywhere to put these books in my house. No more room! Every inch of my bookcases are packed to brink.
I overheard someone at BEA saying they read about four books a week. Sure, perhaps she works in publishing, but… My jealously was in full affect. I’ve read 5 books in two months, granted one of them was The Goldfinch, which is 800 pages. I’m never going to get through what is already on my TBR list (which is organized in a spreadsheet) and with my new BEA haul, my list went over 500 books. 500! Perhaps I need to think of it as I was doomed from the start. There are hundreds of years of amazing books that can into being before I was born, with new ones arriving all the time. At this point, I’m just trying to stay ahead of the movie tie in coming out (Gone Girl, Hector and the Search for Happiness anyone). I really thought I HAD read This is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper. But I read The Book of Joe, Plan B and Everything Changes. I really thought I’d read Middlemarch eons ago, until I read the reviews of Rebecca Mead’s ‘My Life in Middlemarch’ and realized Dorethea was a character completely unfamiliar to me (then I went through an angry phase as I went to the only two remaining bookstores near my home, neither of which had Middlemarch in print, yet had stacks of {insert the name of a book you can’t believe is a best seller because it looks so dumb}. It’s a novel that feels like it should be owned in print, yes? ).
Ok, crazy rant complete. I need to spend more time reading. Why am I writing this?
BEA / Bookcon 14
BEA is a magical event, where folks in the publishing industry gather to share their love of books to be published, authors come to meet an sign these books, books are handed out like candy (That last part is my favorite).
I love BEA. I love a celebration of books and writing. I love being around others who celebrate books and writing.
Here is my haul:
I really enjoy seeing other people’s BEA haul photos. Every one as different as a snowflake, which shows there are diverse attendees as well as diverse book offerings, if not diverse speakers at Bookcon.
So it pains me to complain, but that won’t stop me (I can’t complain, but sometimes I still do). Last year I attended only on ‘Power Readers’ day and I felt like a second class citizen, though attendees had access to the full show. Being there on the last day came across as the mark of someone not serious about books. This year I attended ‘real’ BEA as well as the new ‘Bookcon’, which at the very least meant I was spared having to wear a badge with John Grisham’s picture, with the label ‘adult’. The lack of diversity on the panels has been well covered, examples here and here, leading to the addition of a well attended diversity panel. Pretty uncool…
However, on the day, there a few more offensive things:
1. The segregation of the Bookcon attendees from the BEA attendees. I’d love to hear the reasons for that decision, but I can say from speaking to other attendees, it came across as: the book loving general public isn’t good enough to interact with those in the trade. Hello, these people are your customers. They buy the books, they discuss the books in book clubs, they rave to their friends. They aren’t the great unwashed.
2. Complete lack of preparedness for the number of attendees
From the size of Bookcon corralled area, to the Bookcon employees/volunteers, to the size of the rooms, no one knew how to handle the crowd, especially how to handle long lines. I pitied the volunteers at the main doors having to explain over and over to Bookcon attendees that they had to use a different door. The attendees stared with a lack of comprehension, because was it was comprehensible. There were times when in was simply impossible to move. While standing trying to plot the next move, the woman next to me said: this is the line for Grumpy Cat. We’ve in it since 10:30 am. Her facial expression resembled Grumpy Cat’s and it said: I will be cut you, bitch, if you think you’re getting in front of us in this line. I made a hasty move away. In fact, I traversed over to the main, almost crowd free, BEA floor to recover.
Here are some suggestions: ticket the events you know will be popular. The Macmillian panels were all ticketed, and there were maybe 50 people at them. You really should anticipate the interest in Grumpy Cat, Amy Pohler and John Green. To see Amy, There is no excuse for some of the heartbroken tweets I saw from tweens and their parents, devastated at waiting two hours to see John Green, but couldn’t get in.
All of which led to: this is the closet I got to Grumpy Cat
I’m joking. I would have loved to meet Grumpy Cat, but one must make prioritization decisions. The line for Grumpy’s noon appearance started forming around 10am. The opportunity cost was too great. Sorry, Grumpy. Catch you some other time.
I realize this post is whiny. I’m just frustrated that would could have been an outstanding day was marred. However, the enthusiasm for books is real, the volume of people who wanted to celebrate books and writing is real and that we have an opportunity to do so is real. For that we should be happy.
In the end, perhaps my favorite experience of BEA / Bookcon was walking in Saturday morning behind a Mom and her three daughters, ages 10 – 15ish. One of girls started skipping with enthusiasm, announcing: we’re here! we’re here! Another generation of book lovers has arrived.
Got to go. I’ve got some reading to do..
Misongny
This post started out as a women in the workplace post: Lean In! The Confidence Code! (I’ve only read the Atlantic article, but I did download the book to my Nook – yes, I said Nook). But… recently news, Jill Abramson aside, suggests women’s issues are globally still lower on the hierarchy of needs. We are still on the physical safety rung. Some of us are fortunate to be upset at being called a bitch at work (let it be said: Bitch is a badge of honor at work. ‘Bitches’ get shit done. I’m not one bit sorry that men have issues with it).
This post started last week when I noticed that the topics on This Week with George Stephanopoulos were:
– Nigerian kidnapped girls (how dare they want an education)
– Sexual assaults on campus and the lack of response (not noted was the similar problems recently exposed on sexual assault in military. I would bet this issue is not new, just newly exposed.)
– Jill Abramson and being pushy. (I have no inside information on how she worked at the NY Times, but I know what it’s like to be called pushy and bitchy at work in situations where a man would not be called out)
Then came this shooting. Someone who is going to kill females because they don’t meet his needs. How dare they? I know he must have been trouble, perhaps mentally ill, and his family seems to have done what they could to address it, but.. it happened. And women feel unsafe every day in ways that most men do not understand. I highly recommend reading the #YesAllWomen twitter tag. Actually I don’t recommend it, I demand it. Immerse yourself in those stories. Women live like this every single day in the richest, most evolved culture on earth. And it’s worse other places. I’m not proud to tell you that though I put Jimmy Carter’s latest book, A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power on my reading list, but haven’t picked it up because I frankly couldn’t face quotes like (and I am not proud to tell you that):
UNICEF reports that more than 95 percent of all the women and girls in Egypt have been sexually mutilated. Well, this is a horrible affliction that is in more than 90 percent of Djibouti and all the women in Sudan, all the women in Somalia, all the women in Egypt and more than 50 percent in more than a dozen other countries.
http://www.wbur.org/npr/292429202/jimmy-carter-issues-call-to-action-against-subjugation-of-women
I could’t face it, but we need to because it’s not acceptable.
I hope This Week covers this shooting appropriately, though it is rapidly changing from a serious news program to a variety show, appealing to the lowest common denominator. An earlier tweet from them says they will be covering NFL lawsuits. Sure, it’s not right that the NFL doesn’t help with medical bills after making so much money off of the players, but they chose to play football. Women don’t chose to be women and the certain don’t chose to be targeted because they are women.
This topic is so large, it’s difficult to know where to start. I’m tired of: what if it were your mother, sister, daughter? What if it were a fellow human being?
Watch more with Jimmy Carter:
http://video.pbs.org/viralplayer/2365243875
Living Reflections 