Citizen Reader

I'm starting to think it might just be me.

This week I had two books home that were both by women, and were supposed to be somewhat humorous.

The first, Valerie Frankel's It's Hard Not to Hate You, is a collection of essays about Frankel's belief that the hatred she's been suppressing for years might have expressed itself in cancerous cells that were found in her colon (and the discovery of a health problem that meant she was at risk for many gynecological cancers as well). She bases this on a line she enjoyed in Woody Allen's movie Manhattan: "I can't express anger. That's my problem. I internalize everything. I just grow a tumor instead."

Because Frankel decided early on not to show people when she was angry or bothered (stemming from young adult memories of putting on weight and taking grief for it at school), she starts to think it'd be healthier to let her anger out, which is what her essays here are about. Here she is, talking to her doctor:

"'As I was saying, when I'm expecting a check from a magazine and it's alte, I want to punch in the mailbox. When I email my editor about it and she doesn't reply, I want to throw my computer out the window.'

'I see.'

'I even hate my cats. They clawed my lilac to death. I raised it from a tiny shoot. I really loved that bush,' I said wistfully.

He nodded, made a note in his chart, and said, 'I'd also strongly urge you to find a way to reduce stress.'

Doctor's orders: The hate in me just had to come out." (p. 18.)

The first few chapters were all right; but it wasn't quite what I wanted.*

The other book was Laurie Notaro's It Looked Different on the Model: Epic Tales of Impending Shame and Infamy, which is another collection of essays. Notaro's known as a humorous author, but I've never been able to see it, and this book was no different. They're both bestselling authors, but along with Tina Fey, Laurie Notaro and Jen Lancaster make up my trinity of Totally Unfunny Women. But it must just be me; other people keep buying their books.

*Mr. CR wasn't as opposed to this book as I was. He looked it over and thought it was better than some other essay books by women that I've had home. But Mr. CR does not, to my mind, properly appreciate Hollis Gillespie, so I don't know how seriously I can take his opinion on this one.

Calvin Trillin.

I was so, so excited to get Calvin Trillin's new book, Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin: Forty Years of Funny Stuff, at the library.

But somehow when I got it home it just wasn't what I was expecting. It's a collection of Trillin's humorous pieces from the many places where he's been published: The New Yorker, The Nation, in books, etc. It's organized thematically; about five to seven pieces in chapters with such headings as "Biographically Speaking," "High Society and Just Plain Rich People," "Life Among the Literati," "Twenty Years of Pols--One Poem Each," etc. Because they're written by Calvin Trillin, all the pieces are funny. That wasn't the problem. I liked this bit, in which he suggests one of his wife Alice's economic suggestions:

"The true Alice Tax would probably inspire what the medical profession sometimes calls 'harumph palpitations' in those senators who used the word 'confiscatory' to describe a surcharge that would have brought the highest possible tax on incomes over a million dollars a year to 41 percent. To state the provisions of the Alice Tax simply, which is the only way Alice allows them to be stated, it calls for this: After a certain level of income, the government would simply take everything. When Alice says confiscatory, she means confiscatory...

Alice believes that at a certain point an annual income is simply more than anybody could possibly need for even a lavish style of living. She is willing to discuss what that point is. In her more flexible moments, she is even willing to listen to arguments about which side of the line a style of living that included, say, a large oceangoing boat should fall on. But she insists that there is such a thing as enough--a point of view that separates her from the United States Senate." (From 1990; pp. 109-110.)

The individual pieces were good, but for some reason I found the thematic ordering somewhat hard to follow. It threw me to learn that many of the pieces were published in the eighties or early nineties, and were sometimes about topics I just wasn't very familiar with. I think I would have preferred it in chronological order, so I could get a feeling for the context; or if the pieces' dates had been listed at their start so I knew "when" I was.

A bit early for Christmas.

Every year I can't get into the Christmas mood until after Thanksgiving; anything earlier just seems too early for me. As a result, I tend to miss a lot of the best holiday events, which for some reason these days always seem to be scheduled in November.

So this year I made up my mind to get in the Christmas mood earlier. With that objective in mind, I checked out the two-CD set Tinsel Tales: Favorite Christmas Stories from NPR. It was kind of a nice listen, but it turns out that the end of October is really still just too early for me to get into the Christmas mindset. There's pieces here about shopping, about how people in Chicago spend their Christmas Eves and nights out and about (Ira Glass tells that one, and includes anecdotes about people of the Jewish faith taking the opportunity of the holiday to go out for Chinese food and bowling), Christmas trees, etc. My favorite piece was by humorist Annabelle Gurwitch, who complains a bit about people who send out cards with a little piece of paper informing you that the sender has donated money to a charity in your name as your gift. She thought for Christmas that year she'd send out cards that said, "In lieu of buying you a gift I paid my recently raised health insurance premium." Tee hee.

So it was a nice little set if you're looking for something Christmasy. If you're looking for something funnier, I might suggest getting a recording of some of the Prairie Home Companion Christmas stories, which I listened to a few years back and thoroughly enjoyed. Either way I wouldn't listen to either of them until a little later in the season.

100 Best-ish Nonfiction Titles: Essays

Welcome to another day of our alternative "best-ish" nonfiction book lists, in response to Time magazine's 100 Best Nonfiction Titles list.

The other day it took me a while to post because I couldn't think of any titles that corresponded with one of the headings chosen by the Time listmakers, "Culture." With this post I had the opposite problem: I love essay collections. I'm supposed to narrow it down to just four titles? Impossible!

So here's what Time had to say:

Against Interpretation, and Other Essays, by Susan Sontag
A Room of One's Own, by Virginia Woolf
Slouching Towards Bethlehem, by Joan Didion
A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, by David Foster Wallace

Actually, I can't really argue with any of those four. I've tried and failed to read the Sontag, but I think the failing there was on my part, not Sontag's (I was giving it neither the time nor attention it deserved, and I probably never will; I wish I'd studied it in college when I had time. I do think Sontag is a skilled writer.). I also can't quibble with the choice of Woolf, although I've never made it through that book either. And I'm pretty firmly on the record as loving both Didion and Wallace (not his fiction, can't do it; just his essays) and thinking they are both important contributors to American writing of the last fifty years. So whatever I suggest today is simply in the spirit of additional suggestions.

The Braindead Megaphone, by George Saunders. Remember, we read this one for a Book Menage? It remains one of my favorite collections ever. I love Saunders's voice: smart, but somewhat frustrated; interested, but sometimes stymied by the world around him. I can't get into his fiction but this is a neat group of essays that deserved a wider reading audience.

Anything, (not a title, just any essay collection you can get your hands on) by E. B. White. Of course the man who co-wrote The Elements of Style was a master of essay style.

The Long-Legged House, by Wendell Berry. Really, any of Berry's essay collections are books you wouldn't mind having if you were stuck on a desert island. They're easy to read but you find new things in them every time. This collection is particularly noteworthy for Berry's essay opposing the Vietnam War (a timely issue, then; the book was first published in 1969).

Up in the Old Hotel, Joseph Mitchell. If you love New York City you've got to read this classic.

I know I'm blanking on titles right now; it feels like I should have at least one woman author on there (although if Time hadn't done it I would have listed something of Didion's). Anyone have any suggestions for must-read essay titles?

It's been fun to think about this category. I love, love, LOVE essays. I wanted to have a chapter of nothing but essay collections in my second reference book, The Inside Scoop, but I lost that battle, and I'm still a little cheesed about it, if you must know. Sure, there's essay collections scattered throughout the book (and indexed under "essays") but I maintain that good essay titles can be a challenge to find, particularly in libraries, where they tend to get all jumbled up together in the Dewey graveyard of the 800s, somewhere in among the poems and the plays where only the hardiest readers wander. Hmm. Maybe someday I'll make a list of 100 essay titles, just for giggles.

I'm not convinced on the evolution stuff, but I still enjoyed the read.

I'm not entirely sure why I checked out the title How Many Friends Does One Person Need?: Dunbar's Number and Other Evolutionary Quirks, by Robin Dunbar, but I'm guessing I saw it on my library's list of new nonfiction books and thought it sounded intriguing.

I wasn't wrong--Dunbar is a professor of psychology and offers here a variety of very readable science essays on evolution and other "evolutionary quirks" like why tall people seem to be more successful, why we laugh, what morning sickness could be for, and how many friends with whom we can really keep in actual successful contact (the number seems to be about 150, known as Dunbar's Number). For basic science writing, it's kind of light and easily understandable:

"Our brains are massively expensive, consuming about twenty per cent of our total energy intake even though they only account for about two per cent of our total body weight. That's a massive cost to bear, so brains really need to be spectacularly useful if they are going to be worth the cost. The consensus, at least for the primate family, is that we have our big brains to enable us to cope with the complexities of our social world...It seems that it is pairbonding that is the real drain on the brain. So let me ask: have you been struggling yet again with your partner's foibles?...Among the birds and mammals in general, the species with the biggest brains relative to body size are precisely those that mate monogamously." (p. 12.)

I enjoyed that a lot. Particularly in light of my and Mr. CR's recent and unsatisfying skirmishes regarding what constitutes a fair division of household duties.

So yeah, in bits, this is an interesting book. I did skip some of the chapters that were more blatantly about evolution, mostly because I just don't care about evolution as a subject at all.* If you're looking for a book that will provide some neat ah-ha! moments, you might like this one; but it will be liked best by those with a strong bent toward the topics of evolution and evolutionary biology and psychology.

*There is nothing I find more boring than the creationism/evolution debate. I don't even get why it IS a debate, frankly. If you believe that God can do anything, why is it hard to believe that God could create evolution? But much of that is probably my ignorance talking. I don't really know anything about the science of evolution, except that it seems to involve a lot of something I once saw on my brother's t-shirt. Two scientists, working at a chalkboard. On one side are equations, and on the other side are equations, and in the middle: "A miracle occurs." Evolutionary scientists always seem (to me, anyway) to be the types who say, "a million years ago was this, then a miracle occurred, and now we all have wider pelvises. At least we think it's because a miracle occurred, but we don't really know."

Why are books on reading always so boring?

One book I did NOT put a lot of bookmarks in recently was David Ulin's The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time.

Come on. Check that title. Can you blame me for thinking this was going to be a really interesting book?

Well, it's not. Or at least it wasn't to me. It turns out that Ulin's one of those book critics and writers who's always writing way above my head.* Maybe if I'd been an actual English major I'd be able to keep up with his references, but I wasn't. And I'm never going to have the time to correct that shortcoming (that is, to go back and read all the stuff I should read: more Romantic poets, Shakespeare, mid-twentieth-century classics, more world literature, etc.), and having that pointed out to me just makes me cranky.

Ulin's starting point is a discussion with his son Noah, who is having to read and "annotate" F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby for school. Noah tells his father, the book critic:

"'This is why reading is over. None of my friends like it. Nobody wants to do it anymore.'" (p. 8.)

Much as that statement disturbs Ulin, he has a feeling his son isn't wrong. From there he goes on to explore his own experience of reading, citing such sources as Frank Conroy's memoir Stop-Time, and explaining the creation of his own private library with such authors as Vonnegut, Mario Puzo, Philip Roth, E.L. Doctorow, and Joseph Heller. He describes his travels to Paris as a twenty-two-year-old and his discovery of the author Alexander Trocchi.**

As he describes his own lifetime relationship with reading, he does write some nice sentences of his own ("This is what literature, at its best and most unrelenting, offers: a slicing through of all the noise and the ephemera, a cutting to the chase.") but I never really felt this short book*** gelled as a complete or passionate treatise. Ulin himself never cuts to the chase--how and why are we reading differently now, David, and what does this mean for what we will read in the future? He just kind of babbles around, citing an author here and a cultural commentator there, mixing political stories with personal recollections. In the end I can't say there is one bit of this book that stands out to me, or that I could talk about with others.Which, to me, is where the real problem is with reading today. We don't read enough things that are worth talking about with each other, and if we did, we wouldn't have the time to. We're too busy programming our cell phones and Tivos. Or whatever the electronics are these days that people seem to love buying and programming.****

And, frankly? His son sounds like kind of a jerk to me, although I guess I should cut him some slack as a high-school boy.

*Here's a representative paragraph: "All of this suggests a complicated conundrum, between what we once were and what we are in the process of becoming. Such a conundrum is both personal and collective, having to do, on the one hand, with the way that in the floating world of cyberspace nothing is ever truly past or lost and, on the other, with the unintended consequences of this instant access, how it alters identity and memory. These issues, of course, have informed the human experience ever since there was a human experience." (p. 82.) I mean, I understand what he's saying but Christ, what a boring way to get there.

**I've never even heard of this author.

***It actually started life as an article, and I think it should have stayed that way.

****Not me. If I'm in a Best Buy for more then ten minutes I start to hyperventilate and have a panic attack. No fooling. It drives Mr. CR nuts--he once wanted to buy a new TV and get my input but I could never stay in the store long enough to give him an opinion. We still have his college TV.

Some old favorite authors with new books.

Last week seemed to be the week for reading new books by nonfiction authors I've previously enjoyed. First up: Catherine Friend.

I first came across Friend when I read her memoir Hit by a Farm: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Barn, about she and her girlfriend's experiences starting a working farm. Friend's partner, Melissa, was really the one with the interest in farming, so Catherine often just seemed along for the ride. (To which I can relate: I grew up on a farm but would have to be coerced--strongly coerced, say, by a world financial meltdown or apocalypse of some kind--to return to the farm.) That was a fun memoir. I also enjoyed her follow-up, The Compassionate Carnivore, which was a great book about eating meat while still like animals, and which made a strong argument for simply making better choices about the meat you eat (and paying attention to how and where it is raised). In that respect it was about a million times better than Jonathan Safran Foer's pointless Eating Animals.

So when I saw her new title, Sheepish: Two Women, Fifty Sheep, and Enough Wool to Save the Planet, I was excited to read it. This one, like her previous books, offers short chapters and a wealth of funny stories, but I struggled to find the cohesive story arc in this one. This is rare, as I am not normally a nonfiction reader who needs a lot of story.* It's divided into five different parts, with Friend chatting variously about the latest farm adventures (including a fascinating chapter about sheep getting pregnant at the wrong time of year); menopausal difficulties; some struggles in her relationship with Melissa; and an appreciation for the farm, the sheep, and particularly their wool. She shares some interesting tidbits about wool, its history, and its properties, but I must confess she lost me on her knitting chapters. Knitting for me is a lot like gardening: It seems like a good hobby and I feel like I should be interested in it, but at the end of the day, knitting comes in at about #434 on the list of things I want to learn how to do in my life, somewhere below curling my eyebrows but above sewing in general.

It was a fun**, quick read, but if you're looking for something more cohesive I'd start with any of Friend's earlier books.

*This is why it annoys me when nonfiction read for recreation is referred to as "narrative nonfiction"--just because something isn't a how-to, doesn't necessarily make it "narrative." But people need labels. I understand.

**It starts with a zap, literally, as Friend describes a young couple's tour of her farm and their reaction to the electric fence: "...the man looks down at the smooth wire running from post to post. 'Is this electric?' I nod. There's a yellow sign hanging from the top wire about thirty feet away. The sign says, 'Warning: Electric Fence...' He can't take his eyes off the fence. 'Would it hurt?' The guy's wife rolls her eyes. 'Honey, don't touch the fence.'" Of course he touches the fence. As a wife who probably (too frequently) rolls her eyes, I got a charge out of that one. Pun intended.

Matt Taibbi Week: Day 5

Well, I certainly hope you've enjoyed Matt Taibbi Week. Today, just a quick rundown of his books and his author bio for you. Do give him a try sometime. I know he gave me a lot to smile about this week.*

Taibbi's first book is titled The Exile: Sex, Drugs, and Libel in the New Russia (co-authored with Mark Ames), and is about his years spent in Russia, much of it editing an independent periodical called eXile. This is the only book of his I haven't read.

Then there's Spanking the Donkey: Dispatches from the Dumb Season, a campaign diary of sorts from the 2004 election.

Next, Smells Like Dead Elephants: Dispatches from a Rotting Empire, another collection of political and cultural essays.

In 2008 he published The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire, about his experiments going undercover in various religious and political subcultures. Promoting this book is when he did the great Daily Show segment about casting out the demon of anal fissures. (I liked this book a lot too.)

And then there was 2010's Griftopia: A Story of Bankers, Politicians, and the Most Audacious Power Grab in American History, one of my favorite books of the year and a truly depressing read. You should still read it, though.

Now check out one of the guy's author bios. I'm sorry, you've just got to like a guy with a bio like this (although this is an early one, and some info is outdated): "Matt Taibbi is a columnist for New York Press and a contributing editor to Rolling Stone. He worked for ten years as a journalist in Russia, where he edited the satirical magazine The eXile. He has also played baseball for the Red Army and professional basketball in Mongolia."

Come on. Professional basketball in Mongolia? I love this guy.

*A friend of mine once opined that she saw him speak at some sort of program and she was disturbed by how chipper he was. As in, how can a guy who knows all this and writes such seemingly cynical things about politics, culture, and finance possibly be chipper? Well, that just made me like him better. (I think he recently got married too, and if that's making him chipper, well, that's just too cute for words.) That reminds me of when Stephen Colbert was interviewing the great William Langewiesche about his book The Atomic Bazaar, and Colbert asked him how he could sleep (knowing what he knows about the inevitability of everyone, even nations that aren't the U.S.--gasp--getting nuclear weapons). Langewiesche didn't bat an eyelash as he answered, "I sleep very well." I don't know why I find that comforting but I do.

Matt Taibbi Week: Day 4

For the last few weeks, I've had the good fortune to actually get back to doing some reading. Mr. CR is aces about looking after CRjr, so lately I've grabbed a few minutes when they're having quality pop-and-son time to read a bit. Imagine my disappointment when I kept reading things that were okay, but weren't exactly had to put down, either. Until I got Matt Taibbi's Smells Like Dead Elephants: Dispatches from a Rotting Empire.

This book is another collection of political essays, with a few others on such topics as Hurricane Katrina (the essay on that subject is UNBELIEVABLE) and the teaching of intelligent design in schools thrown in for good measure. Published in 2007, it's amazing how long ago some of these stories seem. Jack Abramoff? Does anyone even remember Jack Abramoff? (We should--man, that guy pulled a lot of shit.) And yet, the more things change, the more they stay the same:

"Both sides were right, obviously, which made for the usual perfect comedy of American politics: two entrenched camps determined not to communicate, but still engaged in an extravagantly violent public waste of time and money, with no resolution visible, or even imaginable." (p. 92.)

Sounds like a paragraph about the current debt ceiling fight, doesn't it? It's actually about the 2005 legal case Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District et al. and the teaching of intelligent design.

And, anybody miss George W. Bush? This is how Taibbi sums up Bush's 2005 tour to announce victory in Iraq:

"God bless George Bush. The Middle East is in flames and how does he answer the call? He rolls up to the side entrance of a four-star Washington hotel, slips unobserved into a select gathering of the richest fatheads in his dad's Rolodex, spends a few tortured minutes exposing his half-assed policies like a campus flasher, and then ducks back into his rabbit hole while he waits for his next speech to be written by paid liars. If that isn't leadership, what is?" (p. 108.)

I enjoyed his previous book about the 2004 election cycle, Spanking the Donkey, but I think I liked this one even better. And I haven't even told you yet about his masterful essays explaining how Congress (doesn't) work and every idea you have about how bills and amendments get passed is laughably wrong--those are titled "Four Amendments and a Funeral" and "The Worst Congress Ever" and you just plain simply have to read them for yourselves.

Bleachy-Haired Honky Bitch: The re-read.

Sometimes I really like to re-read books. I do that more with fiction, but I always enjoy a second (or third, or fourth...) toodle through favorite nonfiction titles as well.

A case in point? Hollis Gillespie's memoir/essay collection Bleachy-Haired Honky Bitch: Tales from a Bad Neighborhood. I have no qualms reporting that I first read this one because I loved the title, and then I kept reading it because I really enjoy Hollis Gillespie. Although it can be taken too far, basically, I like people who swear. And Hollis swears. A lot.

I re-read this title because I was going to be giving a talk on memoirs and biographies to a lovely group of library professionals, and I wanted to have some examples of titles ready that have different "tones." The tone of Gillespie's book is much of what I love about it: feisty, profane, yet strangely gentle. That's hard to pull off. But she does it well:

"When I was seven I had a crush on Satan. Not that I knew who he was, I just based everything on his picture. In the illustrated children's Bible I remember one picture in particular, in which Jesus had just pushed Satan off a cliff, and Satan is sailing down through the air, a trail of red robes billowing behind him. He looked only slightly irritated at the inconvenience. He had hair as black as octopus ink, styled like Lyle Waggoner's, an impeccably groomed beard, and a deep sunburn. 'Course that cloven hoof was kind of a downer, but hey, other than that I thought he was hot.

When my mother came home from work that day I told her I wanted to marry Satan when I grew up. She looked at me gravely, then said, 'Kid, whatever you do, don't get married.'" (p. 274.)

Ha! What was also interesting to me about this book was how much I'd mis-remembered it; I remembered it as much more about her search for and making of a home in Atlanta, when really her home-buying adventures just take up a few chapters toward the end. It's also a bit more repetitive than I thought, and not quite as polished. (On the other hand, I think her collection Trailer Trashed: My Dubious Efforts Toward Upward Mobility is one of the best essay collections ever, that one's feisty AND polished.) But that's okay. It was still a fun re-read. And I even got Mr. CR to partake--I left it in the bathroom, and although at first his opinion of the book's author was not high ("she annoys me"), he eventually admitted that he enjoyed some parts of it.

Would a Kindle work in the bathroom?

I know very little about how Kindles or any e-book readers work. But I do tend to think that even if I got one, I wouldn't want it in the bathroom with me. For one thing, it seems like the sort of thing I would drop in the toilet, although I have never, ever done that with a book (or even dropped one while reading in the tub). But I'm pretty sure if something electronic and expensive was involved, I'd find a way to drop it in whatever water was nearby.

I also don't know if you have to fire them up when you're using them, or if they go right to your saved page. This is one of my favorite features of a print book: whenever I go to the bathroom, I can almost always get a few pages read of whatever book I've got going in there. Take this morning. I'm re-reading Hollis Gillespie's memoir Bleachy Haired Honky Bitch, which made me laugh the first time, and which I'm enjoying again (particularly as I believe Gillespie is one of our country's most talented and most underrated essayists). Here's the paragraph I got to read this morning:

"Like he should worry. Lary is almost immune to police. I couldn't even get the police to handcuff him when he was shooting at people running through the parking lot that abuts his backyard. Granted, they were burglars Lary had caught in the act of robbing his house, but I don't see how the police could have known that at first. I figured I'd at least get to see a SWAT showdown before matters got sorted. But no, Lary says they told him not to miss next time, and to just drag the bodies from the parking lot onto his property, thereby reinforcing a self-defense scenario." (p. 58.)

I try not to be a violent person, but that's kind of funny. I do love cops. But back to the point: I was able to get a laugh in about 30 seconds with my good-old hardcover book. Would it be that easy with an e-book reader?

Being Ariel Leve.

About a third of the way through Ariel Leve's essay collection It Could Be Worse, You Could Be Me, I still couldn't decide if I was liking it or not. At first I thought it was a little, well, a little too over-the-top "woe is me." (I just couldn't get myself to feel too bad for a woman who splits her time between New York City and London, and who is making a living as a writer.)

But somewhere in the middle of her essays she started to charm me. Leve is a journalist and writes for The Sunday Times Magazine, The Guardian, and other publications, so I'm not sure if these are pieces from a column or what; here, they're organized into thematic sections like "Getting through the Day," "Personality Defects," "Health Concerns," and "Not a Fan." They're deceptively easy--she'll take you along on a perfectly valid rant for a couple of pages, and then she'll throw in a last zinger of a paragraph that just wins you over. By the time I was done with the book I was sorry it was over.

I didn't have bookmarks handy where I was reading this one (an aside, for no reason: would it ever be acceptable to have a bookshelf in the bathroom? Or does that strike people as unhygienic?), so I'm just flipping through now and will share a couple of her asides--a lot of which made me feel very close to her. Consider:

On the week between Christmas and New Year's: "No-one expects any work to get done, the streets are empty, the pressure is off. Changing out of my pyjamas feels like an accomplishment." (p. 101.)

On going out: "Getting older has rewards. Behaviour that was once unacceptable is becoming what's expected. For instance, when I was twenty-five and wanted to stay home on a Saturday night, everyone thought I was a loser. My friends would nag me to join them: 'C'mon, you're young. Live it up!' I tried to explain I was barely interested in living. What makes them think I'd be interested in living it up?" (p. 107.)

Here's the truest thing I've read in a long time: "People say you live and learn, but sometimes that's not the case. Sometimes you just live. And keep going. Or what you do learn you forget." (p. 159.)

And here was something on low-maintenance and high-maintenance women that someone should have shared with Mr. CR before we got hitched: "A low-maintenance groomer with a high-maintenance personality is not considered a catch." (p. 252.)

I could go on, but you get my point. Actually, the back-cover* copy of this one gives a good clue to its contents. Does this make you laugh (after inwardly cringing, because it's what you do to?): "If someone tells her everything will be okay, she asks: How do you know?'" It made me laugh. That's what I ALWAYS think first when someone tells me everything will be okay.

*Speaking of the cover, you can't tell in the horrible graphic I've used, but in the stock photo on the cover of this one the person covering their head with a pillow is wearing a ring on their left ring finger, which bothered me, as Leve is clearly not married. Yes, I am demanding about my book covers. Find a different stock photo!

All dressed up and nowhere to go.

I really, really enjoyed Alain de Botton's book A Week at the Airport.

The book is based on such an enjoyably weird premise that I couldn't help but be charmed by it. De Botton, best known for his nonfiction books How Proust Can Change Your Life, The Consolations of Philosophy, and The Art of Travel, was invited by one of the owners of the newly refurbished Heathrow Airport* to hang around the airport and its connecting hotel for a week and write a book about the experience, as a sort of airport "writer in residence."

The result is a slim narrative divided into the sections of Approach, Departures, Airside, and Arrivals; and containing fantastic photographs by Richard Baker.** De Botton describes the airport, shares the stories of travelers and airport workers he interviewed, and muses a bit on the nature of travel and transience in our modern world. As always, his text is just a little bit full of itself ("The mighty steel bracing of the airport's ceiling recalled the scaffolding of the great nineteenth-century railway stations, and evoked the sense of awe--suggested in paintings such as Monet's Gare Saint-Lazare--that must have been experienced by the first crowds to step inside these light-filled, iron-limbed halls pullulating with strangers, buildings that enabled a person to sense viscerally, rather than just grasp intellectually, the vastness and diversity of humanity"), but his text isn't what I really enjoy de Botton for. I really just enjoy his ideas and the way his prose is a little bit ridiculous but still does a great job of making you feel you're in the situation he's describing.

So yeah, I liked it. Mainly I liked it because just looking at it made me remember the few airports I've had the good luck to visit,*** and the excitement I felt at being there and going on trips. I'll never forget Mr. CR's and my first morning in London--we got off the plane at Heathrow and stumbled our way, exhausted, to the attached Underground station to King's Cross, where we were going to have to catch a train for our five-hour ride to Edinburgh (on pretty much no sleep, mind you). Before we got on the subway we popped up to a surface exit where we could use the restroom, and London was waking up, with the sky just lightening, traffic starting to move, a bit of a brisk nip in the fall air, and airport and Underground workers taking a smoke break. It was all so different and sensually overpowering and I felt so untethered, what with being off my home continent and all. And I felt ALL of that again when I read this book. Fantastic.

*in London, England, another reason I was destined to like this book. And: it's only 107 pages long. Sweet!

**I love his photography, and it makes the book so much more enjoyable. Tons more adult nonfiction books should include pictures or photographs.

***I LOVE airports. I'd feel differently about them if I had to travel for a living, but once I had to kill like five hours by myself in the Detroit airport, and rarely have I had such fun.

Escapist nonfiction.

God help me, I enjoyed Lisa Scottoline's essay collection My Nest Isn't Empty, It Just Has More Closet Space.

I never pick on or look down upon anyone who reads fiction genres*, because I know there's plenty of escapist nonfiction fare I enjoy. This book definitely comes under the "escapist nonfiction" heading, as the essays are all about three to five pages long, primarily cover the trials of author Scottoline's daily life and family members (one family member, her daughter Francesca, even has a few essays from her point of view included), and are compulsively readable. I left this book in the bathroom and was able to polish it off in a few days; if you sat down to read it it might take you an hour. Deep stuff it is not.

But I find something about Scottoline very amusing. It's not like we're in the same stage of life**--she's in her mid-fifties and her daughter has finally left the nest and I'm just at the beginning of that whole child-raising scene. But I still like her. Consider:

"I have lots of grudges, maybe three hundred of them, and they're always with me, like a Snuggie of bad feelings."*** (p. 18.)

I also like how she talks (gossips?) about her family members:

"Most people have a list of Things To Do, but Mother Mary has a list of Things Not To Do. Or more accurately, Things Never To Do. At the top of the list is Don't Go To The Movies. Other entries include Don't Eat Outside With The Bugs and Don't Walk All Over This Cockamamie Mall." (p. 58.)

I loved that, as I too refuse to walk around cockamamie malls and eat outside with bugs. (My own such list is extensive and includes things like Do Not Go Camping and Do Not Touch a Sewing Machine.) But I digress. It's a fun book if you need something fluffy and you're not feeling like a novel. It's as good as her first collection, Why My Third Husband Will Be a Dog, and that takes some doing--humor follow-ups aren't often the strongest of books.

*Except Mr. CR, whose genre bookcases I mock ceaselessly, just because I'm a real gem of a wife.

**We also don't have much in common as she is a fabulously successful bestselling author.

***I'll admit it, I just find Snuggies funny. I find just SAYING "Snuggies" funny.

Kudos to Sedaris for trying something different.

Although I was never a huge David Sedaris fan (preferring essayist David Rakoff, just to be difficult), he's been growing on me of late. I think he tipped the scales when I listened to one of his essays about the medical care he received while in Paris.* It was a hilarious little piece about how he kept worrying about not having insurance, and giving the doctors his contact information in Paris so they could track him down for payment, and the doctors kept reassuring him they didn't need any of that stuff right away, first they were just going to treat him, and how happily shocked he was by the whole experience (as he was familiar with the American way, which belongs more to the "beat payment out, THEN treat illness" school), culminating in his resting in a recovery ward of the hospital, where they let him smoke, which made the whole thing one of his best days ever. Good stuff.

So I was excited to get his new essay collection, Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary. And, although I read half of it and got more than a few chuckles out of it, I'm not going to keep reading it. I'm not sure what they're called, but these are little essays/stories/fables told from animals' points of view, and they're nicely illustrated by Ian Falconer (of "Olivia" picture book fame). The title story, Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, is actually quite funny:

"The squirrel and the chipmunk had been dating for two weeks when they ran out of things to talk about. Acorns, parasites, the inevitable approach of autumn: these subjects had been covered within their first hour, and so breathlessly their faces had flushed. Twice they had held long conversations about dogs, each declaring an across-the-board hatred of them and speculating on what life might be like were someone to put a bowl of food in front of them two times a day. 'They're spoiled rotten is what it comes down to,' the chipmunk had said, and the squirrel had placed his paw over hers, saying, 'That's it exactly. Finally, someone who really gets it.'" (p. 15.)

There's no doubt about it, Sedaris is a sharp guy, and a good humor writer. But I've never been into these types of stories. (Allegories? Is that what they are?) They remind me a bit of James Thurber's humor writing, and although I recognize his talent as well, this kind of fable humor has never been for me. (And some of these tales, much like fairy tales, can get very dark indeed.) I much prefer something straightforward and cutting, by authors like Dorothy Parker. I always feel like I get Dorothy Parker, although I'm sure there's stuff in her essays that I'm missing too.

So: Kudos to Sedaris for mixing things up a bit. But for real reading pleasure I'll probably just get and re-read one of David Rakoff's books.

*I can't for the life of me remember where I heard this essay or what it was called; maybe it was on a "best of..." NPR tape or something.

 

Now I'm even starting to forget nonfiction.

I have a terrible memory.

Really. I always have. I always hated those memory games in school where you had to remember what pictures were on which face-down tiles, and it has not gotten better over the years. It does not help that I live with Super-Memory Man. We're to the point now where I'll tell Mr. CR something, and he'll say, I know, you told me that last week, and I'll say really?, and he'll say, good lord, do you remember any of our conversations? Pathetic.

But there is one area where I have always had a stellar memory: nonfiction books and titles.* For the most part I am very lucky in being able to recall books I read years previously, or the titles of books I never read but took note of. But it looks like even that is starting to go. Last week in browsing in the library I came across the title I'm Sorry You Feel That Way: The Astonishing But True Story of a Daughter, Sister, Slut, Wife, Mother, and Friend to Man and Dog, by Diana Joseph. It seemed vaguely familiar, but I couldn't remember if I'd read it or not. Then, this week, while I read it, I kept having the nagging feeling that I've read it before. But I couldn't honestly say with certainty one way or the other, which is disturbing, particularly since I rather enjoyed it. Maybe I read it and enjoyed it but not enough to make a note of it or imprint it to memory? Yikes. Even the nonfiction memory is going.

My memory aside, though, I enjoyed this book. It's a collection of essays about Joseph's relationships with her father, significant others, colleagues, and son. I liked it because I don't know that I have a lot in common with this woman (she sounds like kind of a wild child, and the high point of my misspent youth was skipping classes in college to take naps), yet there was something appealing about her stories and writing.** And, although we might not have much in common, I laughed out loud when I read this, in one of her essays about her son:

"My thirteen years of parenting this boy can be summed up in three sentiments:

I adore you.

What the hell do you want from me now?

I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" (p. 101.)

Ha. I've only been parenting a boy for four months and those are EXACTLY the thoughts I've been having. It's a good essay. It's a good book. Give it a try--and then a few months down the road when I talk about it again, please remind me I've already read it.

*I also used to have a spectacular memory for movies, movie trailers, and the personal lives of BBC actors, but that's starting to go too.

**She reminds me a bit of Hollis Gillespie, who is another wild woman who knows her way around the essay form.

Citizen Reader's Holiday Gift Guide: Wendell Berry

If you're looking for a great all-around author who might work for any readers for whom you are seeking gifts, you really don't have to look any farther than Wendell Berry.

The guy's a super-talent. Not only is he a thoughtful human being, but he writes in a variety of formats, and he writes well in all of them.* And, he publishes often enough that even people who are only interested in new books have lots of options. Some of my top picks:

Bringing It to the Table: On Farming and Food: A wonderful collection of essays about food, agriculture, and sustainability. This would make a good gift for anyone interested in those subjects, any of the more environmentally aware people on your holiday list, or anyone who simply enjoys good essay writing. Foodie readers might also get a kick out of this one.

What Matters?: Economics for a Renewed Commonwealth: Another great recent essay collection focusing on matters of economy and agriculture. This one would work for the sustainability crowd, but might also be of interest to any people you know who enjoy business or economics books.

Jayber Crow: Berry's finest novel, in my opinion. A classic. It would work for anyone you know who likes character- and setting-driven fiction, and doesn't mind a bittersweet twinge to their storytelling.

Given: New Poems: A poetry collection that might be good even for people who aren't crazy about poetry. Berry's poetry is just like his prose; clear but evocative, and timeless. Everything you want poetry to be.

*It's a bit disgusting, really, that one man got all this talent.

Citizen Reader's Holiday Gift Guide: Paul Dry Books

I am one of those annoying people who will not shop at Wal-Mart. I will shop at Target, if I have to, although I don't feel good about it. Now that I have a child to diaper and I've recently read a gazillion financial and political books that all seem to point to the fact that I can expect poorer economic times ahead, I'll admit I'm on the lookout for cheaper diapers. (Ideas, anyone? I've heard Toys 'R Us, but the last time I was there it didn't seem any cheaper than any other places.)

But by and large I try to avoid the issue by simply not shopping, or buying only secondhand.* When I DO shop, though, I often try to shop at local stores or from independent businesses. With that in mind, I'd like to suggest the purchasing of gift books from independent publishers (there's precious few left) or any local bookstores to which you have access. Hell, at this point I'll even consider Borders and Barnes and Noble local--they're struggling too.

Today's gift suggestions are from Paul Dry Books--a wonderful independent publisher based in Philadelphia. Although their entire catalog looks fascinating, some of my favorites from them include:

The Book Shopper: A Life in Review, by Murray Browne. A short treatise about a life spent around books, by a book reviewer.

Rocky Stories: Tales of Love, Hope, and Happiness at America's Most Famous Steps, by Michael Vitez and Tom Gralish. A beautifully photographed and truly inspirational book about people who run up the steps that Sylvester Stallone ran up in the movie Rocky, and why they do so. (It's stupid to say this when my link takes you to Powell's, where I would get a cut of the purchasing action, but this book is on sale at the Paul Dry website.)

Hotel Kid: A Times Square Childhood, by Stephen Lewis. An awesome memoir about a kid who grew up living in the hotel where his parents worked during the 1930s and 40s. 

Just check out their website; they've got a lot to offer. Any booklover, I would think, would find lots to interest them there.

*Although a lot of fun has gone out of this since I have become freaked out by the re-emergence of bedbugs.

At long last.

A new essay collection from David Rakoff!

I love, love, LOVE David Rakoff. I love him like I love William Langewiesche; without reservation but with more than a smidgen of awe. Whenever people extoll the virtues of David Sedaris, I always take care to suggest Rakoff to them as well--I like Sedaris, but for my money, Rakoff is the superior stylist.

You only have to look at the cover of Rakoff's new book, Half Empty, to know that it will be a pessimist's dream: there's a warning printed right on it that says "No inspirational life lessons will be found in these pages." The essays contained within vary by subject--from Rakoff's stature as a small child to his attendance at a porn convention to a bout with cancer (his third)--but they are all beautifully written.

The writing is one thing, but I also love Rakoff's tone. His book jacket declares that he's the guy who looks at things "through a dark lens," but I think you'll find that even at his bleakest he has a surprising gentleness. Consider this thought, as he muses on the things that people say to him when they find out he's being treated for a tumor:

"But here's the point I want to make about the stuff people say. Unless someone looks you in the eye and hisses, 'You fucking asshole, I can't wait until you die of this,' people are really trying their best. Just like being happy and sad, you will find yourself on both sides of the equation many times over your lifetime, either saying or hearing the wrong thing. Let's all give each other a pass, shall we?" (p. 217.)

Exactly.

The last paragraph of that essay's even better, but I won't spoil it. If you've never read him, it's time.

The finest Berry collection to date.

I'm very unhappy that I have to take Wendell Berry's essay collection What Matters?: Economics for a Renewed Commonwealth back to the library; it's overdue. I may have to break down and buy it--not only is it a fantastic collection of essays, it will now forever be connected in my memory with a time I've found somewhat trying but also memorable. By which I mean, I read most of this book after 3 a.m. baby feedings, when CRjr actually agreed to go back to sleep and I stayed up for a few additional moments, just to enjoy the quiet, the sense of being untethered that being up in the middle of the night gives you, and a granola bar.

The collection consists of five essays written recently, in 2009 (or 2006, in one case), and ten essays written up to several decades ago (1985, etc.). All have to do, ostensibly, with the economy, but they all have that special Wendell spin: looking at the economy in terms of not only money, but in terms of lifestyles and choices, as well as land and community stewardship.

They are, of course, sensational, which makes it all the sadder that the people who need to understand his principles the most will never read them. I didn't even bother to bookmark great passages (primarily because that would have involved heaving my ass off the couch, and I've done enough heaving around of my body and another little body the past few weeks), but also because there's a great passage on nearly every page. Here, I'll just open the book at random and I'm sure I'll find one:

"But the 'free market' idea introduces into government a sanction of an inequality that is not implicit in any idea of democratic liberty: namely that the 'free market' is freest to those who have the most money, and is not free at all to those with little or no money. Wal-Mart, for example, as a large corporation 'freely' competing against local, privately owned businesses, has virtually all the freedom, and its small competitors virtually none." (p. 182.)

Okay, I cheated a bit. That's from the essay "The Total Economy," the entire text of which is as brisk as that paragraph. Buy this one. Hand it out to people you know. Give it as a gift. Or, if nothing else, get it from the library and read it at 3 a.m., and be comforted that Wendell Berry is out there still saying the things he's saying.