Tag: reading

Have you ever learned a critical lesson from an only okay book?

December 18th, 2014

A man without a wife can be lonely in a big black Mercedes, no matter how many readers he has. – Howard Jacobson

Have you ever read a book that just didn’t do it for you, but had one character, one scene, or one line that has stuck with you forever? You’re going through life, feeling sorry for yourself that you don’t have more time to write, and then BAM. You remember a line from a book you had otherwise forgotten, and you thank God you read it?

That’s how it is for me with the line above from Jacobson’s novel, The Finkler Question. The book itself was only okay to me. The characters, meh. Kind of endearing, but kind of annoying, too. The story was not funny in a laugh out loud kind of way, but was witty, in an internal chuckle kind of way.

But that line. I have come back many times to that line. And it made the whole reading worth it.

I met with a fellow writer recently to trade critiques, and our conversation gradually transitioned to where to submit, who pays, who doesn’t, you could pitch it this way for this publication, that way for that journal. She is far more seasoned than I am, and when I asked whether her writing contributes substantially to her family income, she responded, “It doesn’t supplement my husband’s salary, but it pays for my writing studio.” And I was instantly jealous. A writing studio! God, how I’d love a studio. A room of my own, with a window seat, and light on my face, and a door that closes.

But more than that, a designated room would mean that writing was more than a hobby. That it was something serious, that I had time to do, that I wasn’t squeezing into an hour here, a half hour there. I’ve got 17 pieces I have started, then abandoned when it was time to wake the kids up, or volunteer at the school, or shop for groceries, or meet the school bus. By the time I get back to the essays, the mojo is gone. I’m not with the feeling anymore, and I can’t finish.

At these times I get frustrated. I fantasize about having large chunks of time to focus on writing, to research, to finish pieces, to edit, to polish. I go into my head, mulling all those incomplete essays, thoughts for this one jumbling with ideas for that one, and I think, if I were alone, and didn’t have all these responsibilities, I could take care of these. I could get them out, get them done.

A man without a wife can be lonely in a big black Mercedes, no matter how many readers he has.

And then that line from The Finkler Question snaps me back to reality, reminding me what it would really mean, at this stage in our family’s life, if I dedicated that kind of time and mental focus to a life of words. Because that line, regardless of its context within the novel, is about more than the emptiness of fame and fortune, or the loneliness of the writer’s life. It’s about throwing yourself into something so deeply, dedicating so much of your attention to this passion, or job, or hobby, that you risk losing contact, sacrificing closeness, with the most important people in your life.

There will come a time in the not so distant future when our children leave home, and there will be silence where their voices once were. Like the writer in The Finkler Question who lost his wife, I will rattle around in our empty house, with all the time in the world to write, and every room will be a room of my own. I will think of the pies I made with our daughter, of reading The Old Man and the Sea with our son, of answering their questions about sex and bad words, and I will give thanks for that single line in an only okay book. The line that reminded me to take my time, to enjoy my kids. A woman can be lonely in a room of her own, no matter how many readers she has.

The Finkler Question, by Howard Jacobson. “Winner of the 2010 Man Booker Prize, Jacobson’s wry, devastating novel examines the complexities of identity and belonging, love, and grief through the lens of contemporary Judaism.” (Publishers Weekly)

During the holidays I will be republishing posts from my first couple of years on Butterfly Mind. My site has this fancy new look now, and since I don’t foresee myself writing a lot over the next couple of weeks, I didn’t want the makeover to go to waste. This post was originally published two years ago today, on December 18, 2012.
I’ll let fiction do it for me

August 11th, 2014

Last summer, when the kids and I were in Florida for vacation and my husband hadn’t arrived yet, I was PMS-ing. I didn’t realize I was PMS-ing – I hadn’t gone crazy yet. I wasn’t sad for no reason, I wasn’t monstrous to the kids, I didn’t go dark places in my mind or dredge up old sorrows that only surface when I’m premenstrual.

Then I watched Out of Africa. I had never seen Out of Africa. I bawled. I sobbed. Rvers of snot and tears streamed down my face, and as I choked on the emotions pouring out of me, I realized, Holy crap, I am PMS-ing. Hard core.

The next day, I was scoured clean. I didn’t go crazy. I wasn’t sad. I wasn’t monstrous, I didn’t go dark places or dredge up old sorrows, and it occurred to me that the movie had served as a proxy for my own emotions. I was able to cry out all of my hormones. I was able to release without having to enter into my trauma.

It felt wonderful.

I am currently working like I have never worked before. I am in a trial period for a job I really want. I mean, really, really want. My whole family is pitching in to make this happen. My husband has taken over food: planning menus, going to market, putting groceries away, cooking new dinners. The kids have taken over chores: scrubbing bathrooms, mopping floors, changing linens, lugging the vacuum up and down the stairs to de-crumb the carpet.

And me? All I have to do is figure out how to build the internet so I can help other people figure out how to build theirs*. No biggie. All I have to do is excel. No pressure. Every day my mind scales another vertical learning curve. I’ve got lists, and private blogs, and goals, and resources, and 20 tabs open in my browser at any time, and at least a dozen internet tools I’d never heard of until three weeks ago, and I’ve got custom web searches for reaction gifs and thesaurus words, and I’m interacting and writing, and interacting and writing, and interacting and writing all day every day.

And it is thrilling.

And.

It is exhausting.

At the end of each day my mind is gelatinous. My husband asks me questions when he gets home from work and I stare at him vacant eyed. My brain tries to rise to him then sloshes back down into a quivering mound.

At the end of each week, my emotional cache is overflowing, and I leak in inappropriate places. When I had a breakdown in the craft store checkout line last weekend, I knew things had gotten out of hand. The strain of wanting this so badly, and working so hard, and seeing how hard my family was working, it almost broke me. And then I remembered Out of Africa.

I decided to shelve the book I was reading for my Andrea Reads America project – the book I’d been working on for four weeks already and was barely managing to read two pages of each day – and, with a knowing in my heart, I trotted down to the basement book cases, my excitement mounting as I rounded the end of the banister, to the shelf that holds our favorite fantasy books.

I pulled Guy Gavrial Kay’s The Summer Tree off the shelf for the first time in years, and just the cover of it made me close my eyes and smile.

It was everything I needed it to be. I fell into the world in the first paragraph, and I turned pages like I haven’t turned pages in months. Most exciting, though, is that unlike my previous book, which was thinky and political and cerebral, this book makes me feel. The emotions that have been building in me through the want of this job find traction in the character’s stories. I laugh, and my throat chokes, and my heart aches, and I cry. I emote.

And I release. By proxy.

*I’m not really learning how to build the internet, but I am writing from a Jell-O brain. Please forgive my exaggeration poetic license.
Summer Book Bingo

June 10th, 2014

My Summer Book Bingo card as of June 9, 2014

In case there was any question of my coolness, let’s just put that notion to rest: I am currently playing summer book bingo.

But look how awesome that card is!!

As you may or may not know, I am in the midst of an epic reading project. I am reading three books set in each of the 50 US states, plus the District of Columbia, and because diversity of authors and characters is central to the project, my reading this year has expanded into subjects and genres and neighborhoods that I might have otherwise overlooked.

So when I heard Ann Kingman and Michael Kindness talk on their Books On the Nightstand (BOTNS) podcast about how they want to make summer reading fun this year – by designing Beach Blanket Book Bingo card and aiming for a Bingo by Labor Day – I was ALL. OVER. IT. I mean, look at those options! “Currently on the bestseller list,” “that ‘everyone’ but you has read,” “published in 2014.” That last is one I’m particularly excited about. I almost never read brand new books. The wait list at the library is always too long. But the next book I plan to read for Delaware, The Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henríquez, was published in 2014 and, get this, I am first on the wait list! It’s killing me to abstain from marking that box with a big blue X. I want to mark it SO BAD. I know I have to wait till I’ve finished the book, though, and I’m just thinking about how good it’s going to feel to squeak my highlighter across that square.

Some folks are attacking their Bingo card with a strategy: they plan to read titles tailored to a specific row on the Bingo card. In the spirit of Bingo as it is played in Bingo halls around the nation, I’m taking a more randomized approach. I’m going to carry on with my reading as I had planned, state by state, Connecticut to Delaware to the District of Columbia, each book a ping pong ball with a BOTNS category stamped on it, and see if I can manage a Bingo before Labor Day. Maybe I can even score a Blackout Bingo – maybe I can fill the whole card.

Do you want to play? Go to BOTNS Bingo! to print out your card; be sure to hit your refresh button to get a fresh card. Then read your books, start marking your boxes, and if you want to follow along with other Book Bingo players, check out the BOTNS Bingo thread on Goodreads.
Arkansas woes, post-Goldfinch spiral, and Henry Dumas is my savior

February 17th, 2014

Henry Dumas: Arkansas-born poet and short story author

Arkansas was kicking my butt, y’all. It began well, with me devouring Charles Portis’s True Grit in two days, but when I finished the book, I realized a good half of it took place in the Oklahoma territory. Should I count it for Arkansas on my Andrea Reads America tour? (Andrea Reads America = three books set in each state, with works by men, women, and authors of color)

On top of the True Grit dilemma, Arkansas was the state that spawned my Where are the ethnic authors? post. After reaching out to faculty in the University of Arkansas English department, I still didn’t have any works of fiction set in the state of Arkansas and written by Arkansas authors of color. I considered relaxing my fiction rule to read the professor-recommended nonfiction titles; I considered reading an Arkansas-set novel written by a novelist who has lived her whole life in New York.

I took a break from Andrea Reads America to read The Goldfinch while I ruminated on what to do about the Arkansas dilemma(s).

When I finished The Goldfinch, I was doped on excellence. I drifted through life in that post-amazing-novel daze where you haven’t yet blinked back into reality; I knew whatever followed was going to suffer, like those poor ice skaters who crash when they follow a gold-medal performance.

And what followed was Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. I’ve read the book before, and I know it is good, but it did not satisfy me this time. I wanted fiction. I wanted landscape. Caged Bird is nonfiction; it is soulscape. I thought, well, maybe I need something funny, something totally different from the literariness of The Goldfinch; maybe I need something light, something totally different from the seriousness of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

I found a murder mystery series set in Arkansas and written by Arkansas author Joan Hess (she satisfies my woman author criterion!), and I drove to our library to pick up one of the titles in the series, Misery Loves Maggody. I tried to like it, I really did. But the characters were caricatures – exaggerated and expected – and the settings, dialogue, and scenes were cliché after cliché after cliché. The murder didn’t even happen until more than 100 pages in. But more disappointing than any of that was that since I did not detect authenticity in the characters, I did not trust the setting either; the setting could have been a silly spoof of any Southern town – I didn’t get a feel for Arkansas from it.

In other words, Misery Loves Maggody didn’t work for me either.

I was a teensy bit frustrated at this point. Just a tinch. I still needed a non-Caucasian author, and I still needed a woman. One of the Arkansas professors suggested Janis Kearney, the Presidential Diarist for Bill Clinton. She is an African-American writer from Arkansas who wrote a biography of Daisy Bates, an Arkansas civil rights activist. She also wrote a memoir, Cotton Field of Dreams. Awesome, right? Woman and not white. Works set in Arkansas. Problems solved, right?

Neither were available at our county or University libraries. And as I’ve mentioned before, despite being an avid reader, I rarely buy books.

On the drive home after yet another trip to our county library, where I discussed the option of an interlibrary loan of Cotton Field of Dreams with the librarian ($3 fee, could be a few weeks before it shows up, maybe I should just order it), it occurred to me: why don’t I run a search for short stories? Surely there’s at least ONE short story out there by an ethnic author. That’s all I need. Just one.

So I searched.

I searched, and I found.

Henry Dumas. Born 1934 in Sweet Home, Arkansas. Called “an absolute genius” by Toni Morrison. Wrote poetry and – get this – short stories. Fiction! And? And! When I searched the University catalogue, his short story collection, Ark of Bones, with – praise the Lord – stories set in Arkansas, pinged “Available, 3rd Floor, Newman Library.”

The next day, after a trip to the 3rd Floor, Newman Library, I plopped down on our couch with Ark of Bones, and I nearly cried for joy. The stories are alive, and they are different from anything I’ve read in a very, very long time. If ever. They are dark and smoky, masculine and earthy, filled with mojo and magic; they read as if they come from a long line of souls buried deep in the earth. I imagine Henry Dumas was an intense man; he certainly had a reverence for the dignity of his race.

Most importantly, in what is surely the crowning accomplishment in his writing career, he rescued me from a post-Goldfinch spiral and an anti-Arkansas frustration. I am grateful to him for that. And I am grateful to the works that didn’t work: I would not have found Henry Dumas without them.

I decided to keep True Grit for Arkansas. It’s too great a book to leave out.

New, previously unpublished content Tuesday, February 18, 2014 on andreareadsamerica.com: Favorite quotes from Alabama literature. Be sure to check it out!

I am reading America: 3 books from each state in the US with the following authorships represented – women, men, and non-Caucasian writers. To follow along, please visit me at andreareadsamerica.com.
California: a fat wave* of options

February 16th, 2014

Holy cow, y’all. I’ve made it to California (in my reading project). After STRUGGLING to find suitable Arkansas-set novels written by Arkansas authors (it was a STRUGGLE. more on that in a future post.), I finally found three titles, and I finished reading my third last night. I woke this morning, ready to move on, ready to start my search for California-set novels written by California-based authors, and I am overwhelmed by the possibilities. Hollywood. San Francisco. California desert. Redwood forest.

Actually that last one, the redwood forest, is a setting I’d love to read, but I haven’t come across a title set there. Any ideas?

Anyway, I’ve got so many options I’m not sure what to do with myself. For the Asian-immigration experience alone I’m seeing four titles that all sound exciting (The Gangster We Are All Looking For, The Buddha in the Attic, Shanghai Girls, and of course, The Joy Luck Club). There’s an Indian-American title I want to read because I loved the movie (The Mistress of Spices). There’s a coming-of-age novel that I’ve already read and I’ve been looking for an excuse to reread (The Language of Flowers). There are recommendations from you (Ramona, Parable of the Talents), and recommendations from The Readers podcast (Tales of the City; A Way of Life, Like Any Other). There are a million light and fun and kitchy California-set titles, Hollywood and Malibu spoofs.

And then, of course, there is Steinbeck. I’m not sure I can read California without reading Steinbeck. I loved East of Eden and Grapes of Wrath, and maybe this is my chance to read Cannery Row, you know?

Sigh. I guess this is a good dilemma to have – to be presented with so many options I can choose whatever I want. If within 10 pages I don’t like a book, I’ve got a long list of backup titles and I can feel free to DNF. But where to begin?! Maybe I’ll start with whatever the library has in the format I want, right here, right now. It will be like closing my eyes and pointing, which from where I sit right now, is as good a way as any to pick my first book.

*A fat wave, according to Rippin H2O’s surf lingo, is “An enormous and sweet ride that comes along maybe once a day.” Reading that lingo list, with words like ducknweave (“on the bourbons”), grundle (“A totally ugly dude that thinks he’s really hot”), and party wave (“When more than one person takes a wave”) made me also want to read a California surfing book.

I am reading America: 3 books from each state in the US with the following authorships represented – women, men, and non-Caucasian writers. To follow along, please visit me at andreareadsamerica.com.
The Goldfinch: Dark Alleys and Golden Sunlight

February 6th, 2014

Sometimes we want what we want even if we know it’s going to kill us. We can’t escape who we are. – Donna Tartt

I took a break from Andrea Reads America to read The Goldfinch, the 756 page tome that was all the rage in 2013, for book club. Holy shizzle. By the final 200 pages you could barely pry the book from my hands.

Set in modern day New York City, in an abandoned neighborhood development outside Vegas, and a little bit in Amsterdam, The Goldfinch is the story of Theo Dekker, son of an absent alcoholic dad and a stable, art-loving mom. At age 13, Theo is suspended from school, and as he and his mom kill time at an exhibit before meeting the principal, the museum is bombed in a terrorist attack. Theo survives, but his mother does not. In the rubble among the dead, there is one man who is still alive, though dying, whom Theo bonds with in the still settling dust of the aftermath. The man, an antique and art dealer, gives Theo a ring and tells him where to take it when he escapes the museum, and he insists that Theo take The Goldfinch, the masterpiece Theo’s mom had been admiring, off the wall – to save it from destruction, yes, but also because the painting pairs with Theo’s soul.

The saga that follows is impossible to resist – PTSD, a 13 year old orphan living with a friend on Park Avenue, an alcoholic dad who whisks Theo off to Vegas, a friendship with a Russian boy named Boris, drugs and drugs and drugs, and always the painting, tugging, gripping Theo in its clutches as surely as alcoholism grips his father, as opiate pills grip Theo, as the chain grips the little yellow goldfinch to the wall.

The Goldfinch is dark alleys and golden sunlight, it is the constant grapple with who is good and who is bad, who is the right one to love, who is the wrong one; it is about how can I be any other than who I am. The Goldfinch made me want to be reckless. It made me grateful that I’m not. It gave me a new favorite character – Boris – though in real life I would never feel safe with him. The Goldfinch is art and sublimity. It is about being shackled to things against our will – objects, memories, addictions, genetics – and finding beauty in the darkness.

In it, Tartt captures the addict perfectly – the distortion between the addict’s internal world and his external actions, his justifications, his own belief that he is good even while he is behaving badly, the lying, the covering up, the brilliant high, the tar black low, the emotional depths, the passion for who and what he loves, the aspiring to great ends via shady, ugly means.

The Goldfinch, as any great art will do, showed me a life I’ll never know while making me see my life differently. The thing about this book, aside from Tartt nailing the the struggle of the addict, the wrestling with trying to be good while knowing you are acting badly, is that Tartt shows us we can never escape who we truly are, and what can we do about that?

The Goldfinch: A Novel by Donna Tartt. “A young boy in New York City, Theo Decker, miraculously survives an accident that takes the life of his mother. Alone and determined to avoid being taken in by the city as an orphan, Theo scrambles between nights in friends’ apartments and on the city streets. He becomes entranced by the one thing that reminds him of his mother, a small, mysteriously captivating painting that soon draws Theo into the art underworld.” (Goodreads blurb)