magpie's shiny things

A lot of December and January was tak­en up by read­ing tech­ni­cal books for a writ­ing project. So the recre­ation­al (?) read­ing took a back seat. Here’s the com­bined list.

Read:

M Train — Patti Smith

Feels very impor­tant. I’m not sure why a book that fea­tures a lacon­ic cow­poke dream fig­ure and a lot of vis­it­ing ceme­ter­ies and grave sites should feel so impor­tant. But it does. I gave it to a friend who is in the mid­dle of read­ing it and points out that Patti Smith is poet first. Poetry relies on a lot of tech­niques that more dense than those used in prose (few­er words, more obvi­ous struc­ture.) The need to dig deeply into each state­ment might be part of the appeal for me.

* I’ll be pon­der­ing this for a while. * 

A God in Ruins — Kate Atkinson

Follow on to her Life After Life. Sort of. It takes up the sto­ry of Ursula Todd’s younger broth­er Teddy who flew a Halifax for the RAF, crash land­ed in the sea, then again in Germany, and nev­er expect­ed to find him­self liv­ing through war, let alone into the late 20th cen­tu­ry and beyond. Life is a con­fus­ing place some­times and Teddy’s life has it’s odd — seem­ing­ly out-of-place moments. You’ll love his grand­daugh­ter and come to despise his daugh­ter (though I’m not cer­tain that the author means you to.) The end­ing two sen­tences are opaque to the point that I don’t under­stand them and I fol­lowed the book close­ly. (Yes, I could go look up some reviews and analy­ses and fig­ure it out, but do I want to? Not real­ly. Too much expli­ca­tion can be as bad as too little.)

* Sun and Moon are not just bad names for children. * 

My Life on the Road - Gloria Steinem

* Sadly dull. * 

 

Casablanca Screenplay

One of the greats. I read it most­ly to learn for­mat­ting for screen plays and to look at the struc­ture of the thing. I can judge the tim­ing of plot points bet­ter by pages that I can by minutes.

* Just watch it. * 

 

Song Dogs — Colum McCann

I read this years ago. The book I read this month is not the book I remem­ber. I could be wrong about which McCann I read. Or I could be a dif­fer­ent (old­er) read­er. This time the points of con­nec­tion and dis­con­nec­tion between the son and his father seemed entire­ly nat­ur­al. I’ve been told that you have to be care­ful read­ing McCann lest his voice infect your own work. I’ll nev­er sound like a middle-aged Irish guy. I don’t think. Even if I do not final­ly drop all of the extra­ne­ous hem­ming and haw­ing and qual­i­fy­ing that goes into my aver­age sen­tence. (See the word “final­ly” in the pre­vi­ous sentence.)

* a clas­sic of father/son awkwardness * 

Listened to:

Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic again. Because I need­ed the boost. It is like­ly going to be a book that I revis­it reg­u­lar­ly. Odd that. I gen­er­al­ly hate self-actualization books.

 

 

Mycroft Holmes — Karem Abdul Jabar with Anna Waterhouse

It lacks the snap and smack and acer­bic wit that we asso­ciate with Sherlock Holmes. And does­n’t play up to Mycroft being the smarter less socia­ble brother.

* Meh. * 

 

Radiance — Catherynne M. Valente

A world in which we have col­o­nized all of the plan­ets but movies are still shot on film and often with­out sound. There’s a mur­der(?) mys­tery at the heart of it. I got lost a whole bunch of times. But I liked what I could track well enough that I’m going to read the book. (Which I’ve just fin­ished doing as I write this and am grate­ful that it was my sec­ond attempt at the story.)

* I’d tell you about the cal­lowhales but that would spoil it for you. * 

The Bone Clocks — David Mitchell

Having been con­fused through much of the sto­ry when I read it — lis­ten­ing to it made it much clear­er. Especially the use of sep­a­rate nar­ra­tors for each of the six sec­tions. Which made the point of view changes more obvi­ous. A good sto­ry, but not deep or intel­lec­tu­al. Immortals fight­ing the vam­pires (in essence) isn’t any­thing new. Throw in a cli­mate change dri­ven world col­lapse at the end and … well that part seemed gra­tu­itous. Mitchell writes well but some­thing keeps me from lov­ing his work. Probably the lack of orig­i­nal­i­ty in plot even though it is hid­den under an orig­i­nal or at least sophis­ti­cat­ed structure.

* is it pos­si­ble to fall in like with an author? * 

Listened to:

Big Magic — Elizabeth Gilbert

Good on cre­ativ­i­ty and she reads her own work nice­ly. Good enough that I start­ed lis­ten­ing to it again just a day or two ago.

* self-help worth your time *

StarDust — Neil Gaiman

YA nov­el about a mag­i­cal boy and a shoot­ing star girl. It’s Nice to see a boy as a magical-hero.

* the master *

Pump Six and Other Stories — Paolo Bacigalupi

The short sto­ries that came before The Windup Girl and The Water Knife. Some inter­est­ing insights into the world build­ing that went into both novels.

* good short fiction * 

Furiously Happy — Jenny Lawson

Either you love The Blogess or you don’t. I think she’s hys­ter­i­cal. I can total­ly under­stand why some peo­ple don’t.

* only if you can laugh along with the men­tal­ly ill * 

Palimpsest — Catherynne Valente

The first CV that I ever read. Lush, chewy, sat­is­fy­ing prose. It’s not the eas­i­est sto­ry to fol­low but worth the trou­ble. And the way that she plays out geog­ra­phy as a sex­u­al­ly trans­mit­ted dis­ease is stunning.

* mag­i­cal real­is­m’s latter-day cousin *

Deathless — Catherynne Valente

Several Russian fairy­tales and leg­ends mashed togeth­er into the sto­ry of one girl/woman and her rela­tion­ship to the Tsar of Life. Taking in the var­i­ous rev­o­lu­tions and wars of Russia in the first half of the 20th cen­tu­ry. It ends on an odd­ly hope­ful note for all of the dis­as­ter that befalls the main char­ac­ters. And it is a real­ly disaster-full book. Much clean­er more stream­lined writ­ing than a lot of CV’s more recent work. (Not count­ing her chil­dren’s books.)

* Utterly Russian *

Read:

The Antelope Wife — Lousie Erdritch

More about the Native Americans of the Dakotas. This one has a more chal­leng­ing nar­ra­tive struc­ture than Love Medicine. Worthwhile read from an author that I will con­tin­ue to seek out.

* worth the effort to piece togeth­er the nar­ra­tive threads *

The Signature of All Things — Elizabeth Gilbert

Botany is good. Multi-generational epics are good. Strong, if flawed, women are good. Adding them all togeth­er is good. The his­to­ry of a fam­i­ly her­itage of plant hunters and loves gone ter­ri­bly wrong. Serviceable writing.

* if you have the time it’s worth your while *

You Are Badass — Jen Sincero

Yuck, just yuck. Read it based on a trust­ed friends rec­om­men­da­tion — “It’s not like any self-improvement book you’ve ever read.” It’s exact­ly like every self-improvement book I’ve ever read except with more swear­ing. The Laws of Attraction are bull­shit — even when you dress them up with words like ‘bull­shit.’

* why am I even link­ing to this? *

What Poets are Like: Up and Down with the Writing Life — Gary Soto

Some poet­ry, some prose, a lot of reflec­tions on a long career.

* light read­ing for writers *

Speak Easy — Catherynne Valente.

Sadly, I gave up on this one. The sto­ry of a 1920’s apart­ment build­ing and it’s denizens. It’s sup­posed to be a mash up of the twelve danc­ing Princesses and the courtship of Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald. The exag­ger­at­ed jazz-age lan­guage was too hard to make it through to the sto­ry. And the sto­ry did­n’t real­ly appear. It’s all par­ty and apart­ment. I might go back and fin­ish it lat­er. But for the moment I need clean­er prose in my head. I think I am falling out of love with an author crush. But Palimpsest will always be with me.

* thank heav­en I did­n’t buy the lim­it­ed edi­tion hardback *

Late, because well, it’s late.

Books Read:

Library of Souls: The Third Miss Peregrine Book — Ransom Riggs

Not as good as the ear­li­er books in the tril­o­gy. You can tell in places that he’s added mate­r­i­al (gen­er­al­ly sen­tence or two of descrip­tion of the appear­ance of a char­ac­ter — a walk-on part as it were) that is based on need­ing to add a pho­to­graph at that point. The pho­tographs con­ceit has worn itself out. Otherwise it’s good enough and enough like the oth­er books to make it a quick read. There are bet­ter books. A lit­tle dis­ap­point­ing as a fin­ish for the trilogy.
* only if you need to find out how the tril­o­gy ends *

Man’s Search for Meaning — Frankl

Not all that. Beloved by many. Reducible to “for life to be worth hang­ing onto in the face of evil and sep­a­ra­tion it has to have mean­ing”. How you find that mean­ing is left as an exer­cise for the read­er. We already knew this. I was dis­ap­point­ed I expect­ed some­thing con­sid­er­ably more pro­found about the nature of mean­ing in life.
* if every­one else is read­ing it, oth­er­wise skip it *

Consider the Lobster and Other Essays — David Foster Wallace
The god of foot­notes (I love a good foot­note) pon­ders the ways of the world and the moral impli­ca­tions of boil­ing lob­sters. Also some bits of lit­er­ary review The one on the mak­ing of Garner’s Modern American Usage is a live­ly waf­fle on the ques­tion of descrip­tive vs pre­scrip­tive gram­mar and dic­tio­nar­ies. His medi­a­tion on Frank’s biog­ra­phy of Dostevsky and his work in rela­tion to the Russian philoso­phies of the day is of inter­est only to the weirdos in the crowd who read too many Russian Romantics in high school and stud­ied phi­los­o­phy as under­grads — oh wait that’s me.
* if you love a good foot­note or won­der about lobsters… *

The Virgin Suicides — Jeffery Eugenides

Weirdly nar­rat­ed by a voice that uses “we” and pro­vides the point of view of a group of teenage (bare­ly) boys. The sub­ject of their obses­sion a group of five sis­ters, all of whom com­mit sui­cide over the course of one year. That sounds awful. But it’s not. You’ll come to love the girls and to sym­pa­thize with the boys — who are drawn into a mys­tery that goes beyond the rea­sons for the sui­cides and plumbs the depths of what it means to be an adolescent.
* worth your time. can’t speak to the movie. *

Anagrams — Lorrie Moore

Bored by a third of the way through and dropped it. I pre­fer her short stories.
* Middle-aged aca­d­e­m­ic angst *

 

 

Citizen: An American Lyric — Claudia Rankin

I’m not sure how I feel about this. I’m not too fond of oth­er peo­ple (a whole bunch of big name review­ers) telling me that I’m sup­posed to be impressed and react in a cer­tain way to some­one’s work. It leaves me cold. And I think that cold­ness affect­ed my per­cep­tion of this book. From the hood­ie on the cov­er to the vignettes of every­day racism as expe­ri­enced by the poet, the point of the col­lec­tion of poems is obvi­ous. The per­son­al­iza­tion of racism in the US makes an impres­sion. If you’re a ten­nis fan or know a ten­nis fan Rankin’s per­spec­tive on Serena Williams’ expe­ri­ences is worth read­ing. There are oth­er pieces that spoke to me. But some parts — the video scripts in par­tic­u­lar — that are so mud­dled that I could­n’t keep what was going on straight.
* prob­a­bly required reading *

Non-Required Reading — 2014 — Daniel Handler ed.

How can a bunch high school stu­dents chose such an excel­lent col­lec­tion of writ­ing? Stories, poems, non-fiction pieces and some that flit between all of these. There are a cou­ple of clunk­ers that show the youth of the edi­to­r­i­al board. But on the whole the qual­i­ty and depth of the cho­sen mate­r­i­al will restore your faith in the think­ing pow­er of today’s high school students.
* this series is always worth your time *

Invisible Cities — Italo Calvino

Is this Venice? Or are these tru­ly cities of the imag­i­na­tion? — vari­a­tions on some eter­nal Platonic City. The explor­er Marco Polo describes for the Emperor Kubla Khan the cities that he has vis­it­ed in his trav­els. Each city is a small chap­ter per­haps even a prose poem. I love this book. I reread it every cou­ple of years to remind me how many vari­a­tions there on any one pat­tern. Also I love Calvino’s writing.
* How can I make you need to read this? *

Works and Days and Theogony — Hesiod, trans Stanely Lombardo

Read excerpts from it in Freshman Humanities. Revisiting it as research for a screen play. There is more humor in it than I remem­ber. The trans­la­tion is good if a bit more casu­al in tone than I think of when I think of trans­lat­ed Greeks.
* real­ly, the Greeks could be funny *

 

Listened to:

Angel Maker — Nick Harkaway.
Romping fun from the sec­ond world war to mod­ern England. With steam­punk bees, a fab­u­lous hero­ine, and a revolt­ing dog.

* Harkaway’s best *

Listened to:

The Night Circus: Erin Morgenstern -
This is a repeat. I loved the book and enjoyed lis­ten­ing to it a cou­ple of years ago. I revis­it­ed it on the morn­ing walks ear­ly in September. I still love it. Ms. Morgenstern has been some­what pub­licly work­ing on her next books for sev­er­al years. I hope to hell she’s not stuck with the sopho­more jinx. though she admits that Night Circus took her a long time and many sub­stan­tial revi­sions to get right.

The Name of the Rose: Umberto Eco -
I love Eco. This was the first of his nov­els that I read years ago and I remem­bered lik­ing it. Now, not so much. He’s as dis­cur­sive as Stephenson but the detours and expli­ca­tions of the here­sies of the 13th (?) cen­tu­ry sim­ply did not hold my atten­tion in the same way that Stephenson’s digres­sions on the nature of mon­ey and the bank­ing econ­o­my or the arcana of cryp­tog­ra­phy did. Clearly I skipped the dull parts when I read the book. That’s a test of how well a dis­cur­sive writer holds up their end of the author/reader bar­gain. Can you lis­ten to the work? Because when you’re lis­ten­ing all the parts get equal weight (time) and there is no way to skim the dull bits. A les­son to learn for writers.

Ready Player One: Ernest Cline / nar­ra­tor: Wil Wheaton -
A clas­sic in the genre that I’ve nev­er both­ered to read because I’m not a game play­er. The last games I played were the text adven­ture games when they were first played on ter­mi­nals con­nect­ed to big com­put­ers in the labs at school.
Likable char­ac­ters and a stroll down late 80’s mem­o­ry lane. It does­n’t hurt that Wheaton has a real love for the book and the 80’s. It comes through in the narration.

Read:

The Poisonwood Bible: Barbara Kingsolver -
A mis­sion­ary fam­i­ly go to the Belgian Congo in the ear­ly 1960’s as the colo­nial era ends. The nar­ra­tive is told in five voic­es, each of the women in the Price fam­i­ly get­ting to tell por­tions of the sto­ry. The voic­es are con­vinc­ing — though you’ll prob­a­bly hate read­ing (lis­ten­ing to) the old­est daughter.
I thought is was going to end at about 60% of the way through. When Mrs. Price and her three remain­ing daugh­ters (no, that is not a spoil­er you learn that one of the daugh­ters is “left in Africa” at the begin­ning of the book) escape the vil­lage and more impor­tant­ly the clutch­es of the hor­ri­ble mis­sion­ary Rev. Price. I think that the rest of the book is inter­est­ing, but it does­n’t have the nar­ra­tive impe­tus of the first half. There is too lit­tle inter­ac­tion between the remain­ing female mem­bers of the fam­i­ly. Through out the first half of the book the sto­ry was about the rela­tion­ship between those women. Then sec­ond half of the book the sto­ry is about the rela­tion­ship each woman has to her own past. Still… I sort of liked it. And I under­stand why it would be an Oprah pick. (Not all Oprah picks suck. Seriously. But you can count on them to be cen­tered on rela­tion­ships between women.)

Second Hand Souls: Christopher Moore -
A follow-up to A Dirty Job. More about the a lit­tle girl who is Death and her helpers. It’s not quite as fun­ny as A Dirty Job, but it’s worth an afternoon.

The Devil in the White City: Erik Larson -
A ser­i­al killer at the 1893 Columbia Exhibition in Chicago.
It’s a dull depic­tion of the killer and a pret­ty bor­ing retelling of the Fair as well. Of inter­est only in that you get to see FL Olmsted work­ing at the end of this life and the cre­ation of the Ferris Wheel.
There are bet­ter ser­i­al killer books (even from this peri­od of time) and there are bet­ter his­to­ries of the Columbia Exhibition.
It’s also incred­i­bly poor­ly writ­ten, to wit, the only depic­tion of the ser­i­al killers psy­chopa­thy is giv­en as “those eyes” over and over and over again.

Marie Antoinette’s Watch: John Biggs -
A love­ly thing for watch geeks, or any­one who finds the inter­sec­tion of his­to­ry and tech­nol­o­gy fas­ci­nat­ing. Recommended by William Gibson who is a bit of a watch nerd. This book traces the his­to­ry of the most famous of the Breguet watch­es, the 160, orig­i­nal­ly com­mis­sioned for the French Queen and fin­ished decades after her death. Stolen from a muse­um in Israel in 1983 and returned under mys­te­ri­ous cir­cum­stances in 2007.

Love Machine: Louise Erdrich -
A com­plex sto­ry about com­plex fam­i­ly rela­tion­ships set on the Chippewa reser­va­tion in North Dakota. A set of short sto­ries from mul­ti­ple points of view that show the rela­tion­ships between the char­ac­ters from dif­fer­ent points of view and let the read­er slow­ly come to under­stand more about the peo­ple and places involved. Perhaps more than the char­ac­ters them­selves know.

Life After Life: Kate Atkinson -
What that stu­pid movie Ground Hog day should real­ly have been about. We fol­low Ursula Todd, born on a win­ter’s night in 1910, through mul­ti­ple iter­a­tions of her life. In each one she makes a dif­fer­ent cru­cial deci­sion that either ends in her death or in a path that diverges from her pre­vi­ous life. I expect­ed to get bored by wan­der­ing along the same path so many times but Kate Atkinson man­ages to reit­er­ate the events of pre­vi­ous lives with­out retread­ing ground. Lives span the first and sec­ond world wars and on almost into the 21st cen­tu­ry. Only once did the sto­ry veer off into “no real­ly?” territory.

Tomcat in Love: Tim O’Brien -
Professor of lin­guis­tics, Thomas Chippering is a very unlik­able man. He thinks of him­self as a con­nois­seur of women. But also as faith­ful man who has been wronged all his life. The men­tal gym­nas­tics that goes through to main­tain his self-image are laugh­able. In a dark­ly com­ic way.
I like O’Brien’s writ­ing. I did­n’t like Chippering — you aren’t sup­posed to like him but you are sup­posed to empathize with his ongo­ing attempts to keep his self-image intact in the face of increas­ing evi­dence of his infi­deli­ties and respon­si­bil­i­ty for all of the mis­for­tunes that befall him. I could­n’t quite man­age it. The book is worth read­ing none the less for the writ­ing and the weird bits were the nar­ra­tor goes off on tan­gents about how indi­vid­ual words have come to have their mean­ings twist­ed for him.

Birds of America: Lorrie Moore -
Short sto­ries by one of America’s mas­ters. Realism, if you like that sort of thing you’ll like the book. She’s one of my models.

 

Middlesex: Jeffery Eugenides -
The first line of this book is:

I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remark­ably smog­less Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emer­gency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.

What is the mean­ing of gen­der? Is it fixed at birth? Set by upbring­ing? Or flu­id through out our lives? Big ques­tions that are nev­er real­ly defin­i­tive­ly answered. Which is rather the point of the book. It’s also a sprawl­ing Greek saga of three gen­er­a­tions. With lots of enjoy­able char­ac­ters and well hid­den secrets.

—-

I am still look­ing for a tran­scen­dent book. One that sur­pris­es me with both it’s writ­ing and it’s sto­ry. Haven’t got­ten there on any­thing late­ly except per­haps the Lorrie Moore short sto­ries and Middlesex — though nei­ther reach­es all the way to tran­scen­dent. Only close.