The Books of December

These are the books of the mid­dle of the grey sea­son here in Seattle. It’s been a good month for reading.

Books that I read:

Best American Poetry 2016 — Edward Hirsch, ed. (2016)

Not as love­ly and full of sur­pris­es as the 2014 edi­tion edit­ed by Terrance Hayes. This is more pre­dictable poet­ry from the major venues and it lacks the punch and pull of some ear­li­er vol­umes. Nonetheless, there are fine pieces of work here. And if you’re look­ing for a new to you poets this is always a good way to find them.
* why is the default orga­ni­za­tion alpha­bet­i­cal? sure­ly there are more inter­est­ing ways to arrange a vol­ume of poetry *

 

Visiting Privileges: New and Collected Stories — Joy Williams (2015)

What can I say? — Joy Williams con­tin­ues to pro­duce sto­ries and vignettes that chal­lenge our ver­sion of what a per­son­al nar­ra­tive means. And our notions of how peo­ple are con­nect­ed and dis­con­nect­ed from their milieu and from them­selves. I just read an essay that dis­cuss­es the sense of self vs not-self in regards to men­tal ill­ness. (See next mon­th’s reviews for more.) There are thin places in the psy­che where “I” rubs up against “not‑I” and the dis­tinc­tions become prob­lem­at­ic. This hap­pens in many of Williams sto­ries. And then there is the sim­ple joy of her language.
* who am I, when I am not who I am? and who are you? *

Eleanor and Hick: The Love affair that Shaped a First Lady — Susan Quinn (2016)

I stopped part way through this. The rela­tion­ship between Eleanor Roosevelt and her friend Lorena Hickok has been dis­cussed to death by ER schol­ars and while this book makes a good case for a tight­ly inti­mate rela­tion­ship bor­der­ing on a love affair between the woman it’s actu­al­ly a pret­ty dull book. How any­one can make sto­ry of a life­long rela­tion­ship between two pow­er­ful women who go on to change his­to­ry seem so dull? By mak­ing it most­ly a list of dates, and places, and excerpts from let­ters that pro­vides no great insight into either woman.
* reads like a trav­el­ogue to a dull country *

 

The Round House — Louise Erdrich (2013)

The very short ver­sion: a bru­tal attack on a woman results in a changed rela­tion­ship between a father and son. There are many char­ac­ters famil­iar to read­ers of Erdrich’s sto­ries here. They pop­u­late the edges of the sto­ry and bring per­spec­tive to a sto­ry of a woman trau­ma­tized, her hus­band who won­ders how to bring his wife back from the abyss, and their 13-year-old son, Joe who is thrust pre­ma­ture­ly in the adult world of imper­fect jus­tice. Fine writ­ing and char­ac­ters that we can care for, and Erdrich’s insight­ful exca­va­tions into the inte­ri­or of the human heart and what it means to love.
* what hap­pens when ado­les­cence runs up against the adult world *

Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer — Fredrik Backman (2016)

A novel­la. Told in the voice of man who is slip­ping into demen­tia. Grandpa sits in a square in a park with his grand­son NoahNoah. It’s a square that grows small­er and small­er each day as the mem­o­ries of his life time slip away. You’ll fall in love with the boy who sits watch­ing his grand­fa­ther and not quite under­stand­ing what’s hap­pen­ing to his hero. As well as feel a touch of com­pas­sion for the son who watch­es as his father con­fus­es his grand­son with him­self. It’s a sto­ry about slow­ly say­ing goodbye.
* Poignant. I read it on Christmas Eve — in one sitting. *

 

Wishful Drinking — Carrie Fisher (2008)

Carrie Fisher is hon­est, tough on her­self, and fun­ny. The book is relat­ed to the one-woman show that she did in 2008. (Filmed by HBO in 2010). While it retains many of Fisher’s char­ac­ter­is­tic fun­ny moments, it lacks the vocal and ges­tur­al tricks that Fisher used in the show to make the thing hang together.
* watch it, don’t read it *

 

 

As always click on the cov­er to see the book at Amazon.

The Books of November

These are the books that I read in November. I intend­ed to read a lot in November by not read­ing Facebook at bed­time. But it’s win­ter so most­ly I went to sleep.

Books that I read

Mr. Fox — Helen Oyeyemi (2011)

Confusing. I love Oyeyemi’s short sto­ries. And I actu­al­ly enjoyed read­ing this book. I just don’t real­ly know what hap­pened in it. There are three char­ac­ters. In some parts of the book the writer (St. John Fox) and his wife (Daphne Fox) are real and the writer’s muse (Mary Foxe) is fig­ment of the writer’s imag­i­na­tion. In oth­er parts of the book the muse is a real woman but the real­ness of the writer and his wife are in ques­tion. Or at least I think that’s what was going on.
I had to go and looked up a bunch of oth­er reviews to try to fig­ure out what I was miss­ing then I read this. There are, it seems, fairy tales (Bluebeard’s Wife in the main) and meta-fictions, and com­men­taries on state of mod­ern (male ori­ent­ed) lit­er­a­ture and it’s rela­tion­ship to the female. And a bunch of oth­er stuff that I man­aged to miss.
I was nev­er sure who the char­ac­ters were, where they were stand­ing, and which worlds were real and which imag­i­nary.  Am I read­ing at the wrong time day to absorb all this? Am I sim­ply an inat­ten­tive read­er? How can I claim to have loved read­ing a book that baf­fled me so thoroughly.
* maybe I’m just weird­ly attuned to qual­i­ty even when I’m not able to track the story *

Woman Hollering Creek — Sandra Cisneros (2013)

A short sto­ry col­lec­tion that touch­es on many of the same themes that Cisneros has been explor­ing since her first book. Identity is every­thing. For women in par­tic­u­lar, the task of find­ing iden­ti­ty in a world that denies us an iden­ti­ty at the same time that it forces it’s idea of our iden­ti­ty on us can be fraught with con­fu­sions and missteps.
In this col­lec­tion there are very short sto­ries (almost vignettes) that drop us into a sin­gle per­fect­ed moment, as well as much longer pieces that devel­op mul­ti­ple themes. All sto­ries are linked by loca­tion, that area of the southwest/Texas that strad­dles the US-Mexico border.
If you have no Spanish you might need to run a few things through the Google translator.
* being female is a uni­ver­sal dilemma *

The Whole Town’s Talking — Fanny Flagg (2016)

The Whole Town’s Talking traces the birth, life, and death of a Minnesota town and it’s inhab­i­tants.  Life, death, and the after life — lucky and unlucky in love — the machi­na­tions and com­e­dy of small town life, all of Flagg’s ele­ments, are here.
The slight­ly kooky but very wise woman who lives alone. The town may­or and his busy­body wife. The young lovers who age as we watch them. The town drunks (female and male). They all play out their parts on the town’s stage as the town itself moves from a farm­ing set­tle­ment in the 1880’s to a pros­per­ous middle-American town in the mid­dle of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry though it’s pass­ing away in the ear­ly twen­ty first cen­tu­ry as the inter­state and the mall and the big box stores kill off it’s old fash­ioned downtown.
The sto­ry is split between the char­ac­ters liv­ing in the town of Elmwood, Minn and those same char­ac­ters as they pass from life into the after­life  in the town’s ceme­tery — Still Meadows. It turns out that being dead isn’t quite as awful as we might have thought. The dead wake up in the ceme­tery and dis­cov­er that there’s com­pa­ny and con­ver­sa­tion.  It is a bit dull, gos­sip and par­lor games are about the only amuse­ments, but the arrival of a new (dead) per­son in Still Meadows is the occa­sion for much excite­ment as the res­i­dents catch up with the news from the out­side world.
I got an odd dis­tanced feel­ing from this book.  We, the read­ers, are in the same posi­tion as the dead at Still Meadows, not much hap­pens to us. We just watch the going’s on in a world that we don’t par­tic­i­pate in. Not my favorite Flagg.

* soft­ly lit and com­fort­ably homey, if not full of surprises*

Paying Attention

There are things in the woods.

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One of a Pair of Coyotes That Call Our Woods Home

Paying atten­tion is one of the fun­da­men­tal tasks of being human being. Paying atten­tion to what’s around us is a sur­vival skill.  Paying atten­tion keeps us from being eat­en by lions, helps us to find nuts and berries, and keeps track of our mates. But it is more, it is also one of the ways in which we indi­cate what things are impor­tant to us. It sig­nals what we val­ue and what we feel respon­si­ble for, even as pay­ing atten­tion changes our rela­tion­ship with those things.
Lately I’ve been think­ing about a par­tic­u­lar­ly local sort of pay­ing atten­tion. The atten­tion that I focus on the bit of the Earth that I feel par­tic­u­lar­ly respon­si­ble for, the small ground of 20 acres of for­est and pas­ture, the house and the busi­ness that make up Black Dog Farm. On any day there are sheep to feed and water, eggs to col­lect from under broody hens, dogs to be exer­cised and trained. Meals must be pre­pared, jobs attend­ed to, and the build­ings main­tained. All of these things and more must be care­ful­ly and mind­ful­ly attend­ed to lest a sick sheep or a clien­t’s dead­line escape our notice. Continue read­ing “Paying Attention”

The Books of October

There are not many books of October. It’s hav­ing been eat­en alive (as was my brain) by the events sur­round­ing Jim’s knee replacement.

Books that I read:

A House of My Own — Sandra Cisneros (2015)

I read this in bits while wait­ing around in the hos­pi­tal and in the first few days after we got home. It was a good choice. Most of these pieces are the pref­aces (to her own and oth­er books), lec­tures, and oth­er small pub­li­ca­tions that she has amassed over the years. Many of them touch on the ques­tions of what is home and how do we build one and what does mean to have or not to have a home. Home is con­sid­ered as a phys­i­cal space, as well as a set of emo­tion­al con­nec­tions, and the intel­lec­tu­al foun­da­tion of our work.
In one piece she is remem­ber­ing and mourn­ing the love­ly home of a friend in Sarajevo. It’s a dia­tribe against war in the form of a touch­ing mem­o­ry of and nos­tal­gia for a friend­ship and the place that evokes that friend­ship. Others are med­i­ta­tions on var­i­ous authors and artists that have been impor­tant to her work and its devel­op­ment. And some are straight biography.
* With a cou­ple of miss­es this col­lec­tion is worth tak­ing some time to dip into. *

The House on Mango Street — Sandra Cisneros (1991)

Cisneros’ first and most famous book. I read it when it was pub­lished but I haven’t seen it in years. It was men­tioned to me by a fel­low poet as being an exam­ple of mul­ti­ple prose poetry/narrative/short-short sto­ry bits wrapped up to make a nov­el. A plan that could prof­itably be used by some of my own work. So this began as a study, but I had for­got­ten how heart-felt the book is. It is a book of ado­les­cence, a time that fea­tures so many choic­es and twists and turns of per­son­al­i­ty. Cisneros man­ages to locate in each char­ac­ter and vignette the ele­ments that are com­mon to all of us.
* trans­gres­sive at pub­li­ca­tion, still insightful *

The Nix — Nathan Hill (2016)

A mon­ster of a book — run­ning more than 600 pages in print. There are so many plot threads that it’s as if the author thought he’d nev­er get anoth­er chance to tell a sto­ry and so he told all the sto­ries in one book. It starts with the pro­tag­o­nist moth­er aban­don­ing the fam­i­ly. The les­son that Faye leaves Samuel with as she departs his life at the age of 11 is that the things that you love the most will hurt you the most.
Sadly, I found the adult Samuel who nar­rates the book, (a stalled writer and failed col­lege pro­fes­sor with a com­put­er gam­ing prob­lem) dull as hell. Even the reap­pear­ance of his moth­er does­n’t make Samuel inter­est­ing. The sto­ry that he tells of his ado­les­cence and first love, a per­fect pic­ture of how bro­ken peo­ple infect oth­er peo­ple, is affect­ing. And the sto­ry of his moth­er’s ear­ly life, the secret that she keeps and then leaves Samuel and his father for is like­wise engaging.
But I can’t bring myself to say that I love the whole thing. I would have loved many parts of it as a much short­er sto­ries or a series of novel­las or some­thing that did­n’t sprawl all over the place with a pro­tag­o­nist that I just could­n’t quite sym­pa­thize with.
Several review­ers have called the book satir­i­cal. Well, maybe there are a cou­ple of bits are meant to be satire. The pla­gia­riz­ing stu­dent whose schem­ing plagues Samuel and even­tu­al­ly leads to his fir­ing might be satir­i­cal but it’s not clever enough for me to give a damn.
In the end I can only say — if you have patience you should read The Nix for Faye’s sto­ry and the rela­tion­ship between Samuel and his child­hood friend Bishop (twin broth­er to Samuel’s first love Bethany who remains his ide­al and gets a messy part lat­er in the nov­el) If you’re not feel­ing patient wait per­haps for Mr. Hill’s sec­ond nov­el which like­ly won’t be quite so packed with every damned thing that he could think of.
* all this and the kitchen sink *

The Books of September

September — the end of sum­mer — and still busy like sum­mer. A hand­ful of books read but noth­ing in the audio book list. I bought a lot of music this month.

The books I read:

Dogsbody — Diana Wynne Jones (1975/2012)

A pleas­ant young read­ers book. Not near­ly as sim­plis­tic as some of the stuff being churned out today. You’ll have to do some think­ing to fol­low along. It also helps if you know a lit­tle about dogs. The dogs here are very dog­gie, even if the dog at the cen­ter of the sto­ry is actu­al­ly a star that’s been sen­tenced to live a dog’s life on earth until he man­ages a seem­ing­ly impos­si­ble task. The child at the cen­ter, Kathleen, is a young Irish girl bil­let­ed unhap­pi­ly with her uncle’s fam­i­ly some­where in middle(class) England. No one is hap­py about the sit­u­a­tion. Kathleen’s res­cue of a near drowned pup­py only makes the sit­u­a­tion worse.
This is one book that man­ages to vio­late my num­ber rule one about dogs in books (thou shalt not kill the dog) with­out mak­ing me want to throw it across the room. Yes, I just spoiled it for you. Except that the dog does­n’t real­ly “die”, he… well it’s com­pli­cat­ed. Though I have to admit that Kathleen’s reac­tion at the end of the sto­ry is a lit­tle hard to com­pre­hend. I think it’s just a slight weak­ness in the writ­ing that makes Kathleen’s reac­tion seem so blank.
Really though, if you need a lit­tle some­thing to kill off an after­noon of couch slouch­ing while slight­ly ill you could­n’t do bet­ter than Dogsbody. (Or almost any Diane Wynn Jones book.)
* All dogs are stars fall­en to Earth *

The Poet, The Lion, Talking Pictures, El Farolito, A Wedding in St. Roch, The Big Box Store, The Warp in the Mirror, Spring, Midnights, Fire & All — C. D. Wright (2016)

Wherein one of the most influ­en­tial poets of the 20th cen­tu­ry and beyond lays out her the­o­ry of poet­ry in a series of prose poems and frag­ments that exam­ine not only her own work and that of her col­lab­o­ra­tions but also the work of a hand­ful of poets who influ­enced her. For a woman who died so sud­den­ly it seems pre­scient that she would have writ­ten a last book that so much serves to indi­cate the way for future read­ers and schol­ars to con­sid­er her work. If you are con­cerned with the poets men­tioned or the act of mak­ing poet­ry it’s a worth­while read. The Questionnaire of January that ends the work will pro­vide you with a life­time’s worth of inquiries onto the ways and means of mak­ing poet­ry. It also the longest title of any book that I have read. (That does not include titles that use a colon to make two sep­a­rate titles appear as one. Which I con­sid­er cheat­ing in the truest sense.)
* Wright’s Ars Poetica * 

The Lost Art of Dress: The Women Who Once Made America Stylish — Linda Przybyszewski (2014)

What can I say… it’s a his­to­ry, most­ly, of the Home Economics move­ment and the pow­er­ful influ­ence it had in ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry America seen through the lens­es of a hand­ful of women who taught, wrote, and lec­tured about the art dress­ing well on a rea­son­able bud­get. Here is where I have to admit that I am an absolute suck­er for old Home Ec pam­phlets and such. (Did you know that there is an entire dig­i­tized library of them?) This book is about the women who cre­at­ed them. And I would have loved it for a his­tor­i­cal sur­vey. If the author had left it at that. But it feels as if half the book is tak­en up with her histri­on­ics of the “mod­ern women are shame­less and ill-dressed” type. Yeah, I know — I have some pret­ty dire opin­ions on the mat­ter myself, but I’m not writ­ing a his­to­ry of the women who wrote about and influ­enced the lives of mil­lions of mid­dle and low­er class women in the first half of the 20th century.
I’m glad I read the book, it’s right up in there in one of my favorite guilty plea­sures but I’d have liked it a good deal more if it had stuck to its stat­ed top­ic. If you’re a fan of all things dress and dress­mak­ing you’ll enjoy it. If you look­ing for his­to­ry you’ll find the author’s con­stant inser­tion of her­self and her opin­ions unbear­ably unprofessional.
* Yeah, I’m old enough to have made that apron in Home Ec * 

13 Clocks — James Thurber (Marc Simont — Illustrator) (original 1950)

I like Thurber. There I said it. I like the man with the fun­ny dog car­toons and a lot more. This lit­tle gem of a fairy tale is either a fairy tale or a satire of a fairy tale or some love­ly com­bi­na­tion of the two, con­tain­ing as it does an enchant­ed princess, a brave prince, and evil duke, and some­thing that might be a fairy tale troll, or the weird­est fairy god moth­er ever. Whatever it is we are assured that it is the only one of its kind. Full of love­ly mumblety-pumbelty lan­guage that begs to be read out loud.
* Fairy Tales nev­er go out of style * 

Spill, Simmer, Falter, Wither — Sarah Baum (2015)

Two books with dogs in them in one month. That’s just not some­thing that should hap­pen. Two books with dogs in them that I actu­al­ly liked (well maybe not “liked” but appre­ci­at­ed) in one month is a mir­a­cle of some sort. I can’t say I liked this book. Liked would imply that it was a pleas­ant light-hearted read. This isn’t. It is any­thing but hap­py and light-hearted; it’s a dense, beau­ti­ful, lyric, trag­ic thing. In all the mean­ings of trag­ic. The pro­tag­o­nist has a trag­ic flaw that will guide and per­haps ruin his life. So does the dog. It’s odd to think of a dog as a trag­ic hero. But this one is. Perhaps through no fault of his own.
The writ­ing is lyri­cal. In the mode of poet­ry. In fact she uses a num­ber of poet­ic devices. There are many melod­i­cal­ly com­posed sen­tences, vary­ing line length, allit­er­a­tion. I even found pleas­ing exam­ples of slant rhyme. There is also a great appre­ci­a­tion of the nat­ur­al world fil­tered through malaise — is that the word that I want? The pro­tag­o­nist is some how very dam­aged and that dam­age col­ors his inter­ac­tions with the world in a fear­ful and awed way. His rela­tion­ship with the nat­ur­al world is some­thing that he’s build him­self. No one taught him about the birds and the plants that he so admires and that seem to bring him into touch with the only flow of time that he encoun­ters. All the rest of his life is a long, dull, fear-tinged now.

* A chal­leng­ing book to read but reward­ing in so may ways *