Reading Roundup: Adult Edition

Today is our fourth snow day from school, our sixth total day with snow on the ground. The amount of culture I have consumed on this little unplanned break is substantial; I've binged books, knocked movies off my Netflix queue, and thrown in lots of PBS programming to feel especially productive. Since it's been over a year, at least, since I was all caught up with posts on this blog, I've also decided to try and play catch up with the backlog of books I've needed to write about! If I keep reading at the rate I'm going without writing, this queue is going to back up forever!

Two great reading related things happened over winter break:

1. I got a new Kindle (I lost my Kobo back in October...so sad), which allows me to once again checkout random eBook purchases from the library on a whim. I didn't realize til it was gone how much I depended on it for actually broadening my reading horizons, being able to check out whatever I was in the mood for instantaneously and all.
2. Back in Colin's hometown for the holidays, we visited the library's book barn and got a serious STACK of books for something absurd, like $10. Once again, I was able to grab whatever looked appealing, bringing my reading outside of my 'to-read' list. 

Lately I've kind of mourned the fact that I rarely roam the shelves of the public library, bringing home whatever possible hidden treasure catches my eye. But I've also just realized that maybe I branch off my purposeful reading more than I think; the method is just different!

David Lodge's Deaf Sentence is my most recent instance of choice based on shelf appeal. It's one of those books that looks the right size, with the pages feeling good, and the cover piquing interest. Plus, the review snippets on the front and back covers even helped! This seemed like a charming, sort of sardonically humorous story.

That story is the one of Desmond Bates, a retired linguistics professor that's slowly losing life as he knew it to deafness. By now, he's used to the new daily annoyances of adjusting his hearing aids to the situation—though it's still an annoyance and not second-nature; he still turns it on or off at the wrong time, forgets to replenish batteries, etc. Likewise, he's struggling with the realization that he's actually becoming a nuisance to those around him; his special needs require others to adjust their own habits and instincts, and that's a burden he doesn't want to others to bear. Mostly, though, it's the unreliability of communication that's most bothersome, especially when it leads to accidental involvement with a seemingly personable graduate story who increasingly proves to be quite unhinged.

Deaf Sentence is definitely British. It's a great blend of quiet, situational humor—the kind that is funny as you experience but not funny enough to retell to an audience. We, the reader, are the ones experiencing here, so we can chuckle along with Desmond and sympathize with his plight. This is the kind of story that seems almost too simple to be anything, yet, you realize, is actually so universal that it seems entirely necessary to be written. A true take on the human experience, in all its frustrating glory.

Shannon Hale's Austenland is the last book I read on my Kobo, back on that fateful October flight. After leaving my Kobo on the plane the first go-around, I had to finish this book on my iPhone on the way home—not an enjoyable reading experience! This was, though, the perfect light book for a short weekend trip, one that I'm pretty sure has been in my queue since the Everything Austen Challenge back in 2010!

Jane Hayes is a young woman living in New York who's been dating for a decade and has nothing to show for it. She's grown frustrated with relationships and is on the verge of giving up entirely. Okay, so maybe she doesn't have the most realistic expectations; she's entirely obsessed with the ol' Pride & Prejudice hero, Mr. Darcy, and pretty much compares all men to him and all her relationships to his and Elizabeth's. (Surprise: her actual life falls short of that standard and continues to disappoint.) When a wealthy aunt dies and leaves Jane a fully-expensed trip to a unique English resort, Jane finally gets to live her dream of Regency living. Is it enough to kick the obsession for good, or will it only fuel the flames of unrealistic expectation?

I'll gloss over the fact I find this woman mostly crazy and more than a little pathetic, holding her life to a 19th-century English standard, because I guess that's looking at it with a little too critical, jaded eye. In actuality, Austenland is just a fluffy piece of enjoyable chick-lit; it doesn't try to be anything more, and rightly so. If you're an Austen fan, or just need a bit of light reading, this will do just fine.

I'd never heard of Issa Rae, and I'm pretty sure I was introduced to her memoiric (I am making up this word) essay collection, The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, through a Goodreads ad. Chalk this one up to another random eBook read, but I'm glad I ran across it; she's got a humorously observant voice.

So Issa Rae is known in pop culture from her various web series, the most well-known being the titular basis of this essay collection. In Awkward Black Girl (ABG) and her other web projects, Issa reflects mostly on the cultural stereotypes that exist for people of color, particularly her own inability to fit into that mold. She is critical but never aggressive; her observations are more enlightening—like "Ha! Did anyone else notice that this exists??? How ridiculous!"—and doused with a lighthearted sense of incredulity. In these essays, she chronicles her life as an ABG, navigating through middle school insecurities, workplace relationships, and adulthood realities, among others.

I realized quickly that the author and I are very close in age, particularly as she shares her middle school experiences with early Internet culture and chat rooms. I thought, "Yes! Finally another female who also had that weird early intrigue with world wide connectivity!" This is just the kind of episode that highlights her humor—it often comes from her self-deprecating voice. She walks us through the important episodes of her life, usually the ones that made her feel a bit like an outsider, but it's never somber; she's a comedian, not a victim. She is able, though, to connect these universal feelings of misplacement to her broader identity as a woman of color, reflecting on the disparities between the woman she is and the woman society says she should be. This essay collection is not only comedic, it carries a lot of substance beyond the humor.

Nonfiction | Tales from the Road

My first encounter with travel writer William Least Heat-Moon was through his well-known Blue Highways, a travelogue covering the backroads of America in the late 1970s. I never knew until recently just how well-known that book actually is. I thought he was some obscure writer I had uncovered by happenstance.

What I've learned since is that Heat-Moon has been doing this kind of exploring his whole life. He's made a career out of it, actually (essentially my dream job, should this whole librarian thing not work out). The more-recently published (2013) Here, There, Elsewhere: Stories from the Road is a collection of essays he's compiled from his life on the road over the past 30+ years. They range in topic from persons to places to events to abstract ramblings, but this is Heat-Moon's life, told 2,500 words at a time.

For an author like Heat-Moon, this has got to be an ideal, dream project. It's an opportunity to share all your work in your own forum, freeing the writing of any unwanted constraints placed by editors, with the space available to reflect or share context previously unknown. Heat-Moon is not a writer for the masses; his experiences are not dumbed down for a general audience. He writes with an intricate use of language, preferring big words over small to the point that sometimes a dictionary is a necessary accompaniment to his writing. But I don't get the sense that he's thumbing through a thesaurus for words with more syllables; rather, if he doesn't just naturally use such sophisticated language, I imagine he's actually doing semi-extensive research to find the very best word to capture exactly what he means. And when language is used in such a way, it's quite powerful and quite beautiful.

Few, if any, of these essays felt arduous to finish. I did, though, find several worthy enough to highlight and share:

"A Glass of Handmade" chronicles a search for quality beer in a time when large corporations had nearly completely absorbed small American breweries. The piece is originally from the mid-1980s when Lite beer was being forced upon consumers, changing the face of the beer industry. Heat-Moon and his companion, "the Venerable Tashmoo," embarked on a quest to find microbreweries that still reflected local traditions and culture in beer brewing. This is a fascinating piece, especially considering the massive trend back towards craft beer since its original publication. [Available online here.]

"A Little Tour in Yoknapatawpha County" shares an early experience with exploration when Heat-Moon journeyed through northern Mississippi—Oxford, to be precise—to find William Faulkner. This was back in 1961, when Faulkner was still alive and living at his famed Rowan Oak. Heat-Moon's hunt for the story behind the story man inspired my own visit to Rowan Oak during a recent roadtrip through Mississippi's Delta region.

"Wandering Yosemite" highlights the conflicting nature of our most majestic public spaces—at the same time, presenting an uninhibited, untouched depiction of the great scope of our local nature while providing the familiar modern comforts to the park's visitors. Can you truly experience the unbelievable without leaving your car? A great thought-provoking piece.

"Into the Antipodes" takes Heat-Moon on an all-expenses-paid trip to New Zealand where he discovers the local culture and wildlife. He captures the vastness of diversity—in landscape, wildlife, and custom—that is remarkably housed in such a small spread of land. Having recently been to New Zealand myself, this was particularly relatable and enjoyable.

And finally, "Not Far Out of Tullahoma" is an ode to the open road, sharing the American passion for the road and how it's ingrained in our blood and our national identity. Sharing the beginning of his own love affair with exploration, Heat-Moon highlights the growing trend in American vacations—where destinations draw tourists, veering away from the journeys that inspire travelers. This is an amazing piece that demonstrates the connection between us and transportation, and how this connection has evolved to change our habits and culture.

To me, Heat-Moon represents arm-chair travel at its very best, where it's not just about taking the snapshot to capture what you've seen but to capture the entire experience—to see and do and learn and think and reflect—and determine what it means.

Reading Roundup: Nonfiction Picks

In an effort to get through my lengthy backlog of books to share, here are a few varied nonfiction selections I've read as of late...(Sidenote: I started a draft of this post over a month ago. Whoops?)

Beginning with a memoir, Girl Walks Into a Bar... by former-SNL funny-woman Rachel Dratch answers the question she presumes has been on everyone's mind, which is, "Where has Rachel Dratch been since SNL?" To sum it up for you, she had a baby. It was unplanned. But it is great.

Dratch's memoir was probably published in the same vein as recent comedic releases by Tina Fey and Chelsea Handler. However, it completely lacked the universal comedic appeal that the two mentioned authors bring to their essay collections, which, though often containing personal anecdotes, tell them in a way that is just generally entertaining to read. This book did include some interesting tidbits and background info about her life and entry into show-business, but mostly it was a personal update that felt more worthy of a blog post. I enjoy Dratch immensely, but I just don't think she had enough to say to warrant a 240-page book.


I Was Told There'd Be Cake by Sloane Crosley is another book that had been on my to-read shelf since about 2009 but that I quickly realized is not the type of book I dig. Essays like these feel little more than extended versions of social media posts or emails to friends, and I constantly wonder how and why some editor deemed them worthy of an entire book that should be shared to the masses. It seems such a formulaic trend at this point—write about your quirky upbringing, or your weird transition to college, or random drug experimentation, or the terrible jobs you held. Do that all with a comedic flair and VOILA, book deal. I don't have a thing against memoirs, but I have a thing against the ones that don't share a unique or interesting life experience. And that's how I felt with this one. Some parts of her writing made me chuckle, but overall I just didn't really care about Crosley's unexceptional experiences.

Maybe I'm being too harsh, because I did really like a similar style book by Jane Borden a couple years back. Maybe that's what these editors count on—one random person somewhere in the world that is going to totally connect with a book and say, "OMG, YES," on every other page. For this book, I wasn't that person. But I guess who cares—to hell with all I've already said! Write on, Sloane Crosley! Write on!


Now, talking about life experiences... Rick Antonson' Route 66 Still Kicks: Driving America's Main Street is one I need to have—and until then will have to settle for just reading about! What happens is these two guys, Rick and Peter, decide to have the quintessential American roadtrip by following Route 66 from Chicago to LA. No interstates allowed; they have to follow the original route—in its entirety—as best they can. And they learn that task is much easier said than done.

The original Route 66 is tricky to follow. Stretches have been re-named, re-routed, abandoned. Guides and maps have evolved over the decades in such a manner to make it incredibly difficult to figure out what's new, what's old, and what's original. Rick and Peter have an entertaining dynamic—one is go-with-the-flow, one is a planner. Their own interactions are about as entertaining as their ones with the many varied people they meet along the way. What I really enjoyed about this book was the huge amount of history and culture included in the narrative. Rick's personal account is peppered with stories of local legend and famous figures that contribute to the route's lore in American culture. I read this as an eBook and marked several pages with interesting tidbits and beautifully-phrased, poignant passages. Unfortunately, my library copy expired before I exported my notes (my own fault), so I can't share any with you now...but trust they are there; it's your turn to find them!

Vacation Reading, Part II

Next on my very slow (sorry!) review of books I read on vacation: What I read in Nashville

Jeannette Walls' The Glass Castle has been sitting on my shelf for at least two years, but after a friend recently urged me to JUST READ IT, I moved it up in the queue. This one's had a lot of hype and been around for quite a while, so you probably already know it.

Jeannette grew up with some...interesting...parents. They were, at the same time, incredibly inspiring and incredibly negligent. I hesitate to specify any particular anecdotes so as not to sway your judgments one way or another, because this book has a very strange grey-area sort of perspective. It's written in brief snippets of chapters that are anecdotal, which make it, yes, unputdownable; it's a fast read and engrossing. But it's one of those stories that glides by on the surface as you're reading, and then when you stop to think about it, the questions pop up.

Like, isn't it interesting how Walls writes this with almost no subjectivity? Situations that enrage me, as the reader, are simply stated, without reflection or emotion. In fact, we feel more a sentiment of affection rather than anger—a sentiment that is reinforced by the fact that these family members remain a presence in each other's lives when you think most would want to move on and never look back, victims of a soon-to-be-forgotten dysfunctional adolescence.

And perhaps most importantly, how trustworthy is the author's voice? I can only attribute Walls' objectivity to the analytical adult perspective she possesses now, when looking back on memories decades old. But all these things she suffered through, all the thoughts and emotions she must have experienced as a kid and a teen, what were they like then? How would she have recorded her life in her diary, in the moment? Of course, this is a question for all memoirs, when a story relies on memories to be told.

Paris Was Ours by Penelope Rowlands is really a collection of 30-something essays or articles by a number of people who have, at some point in their life, packed up and moved to Paris. Because, really, who doesn't have that dream? I feel I can safely say that Paris is the only other city in the world alongside New York that has that "ooooOOOOoOo" aura of "living in Paris." It just has this style, this glam, these worldly cultural connotations, that make the idea of "living in Paris" something one feels they must do at some point in their life.

You know what I felt after reading all these stories? Afraid of living in Paris. Parisians are a unique breed of person (like New Yorkers) who have a distinct way of doing things (like New Yorkers) and aren't necessarily always kind to those who aren't native to their lifestyle (like New Yorkers). The thirty-two authors who contributed to this collection are diverse in age, profession, lifestyle, writing style...The stories weren't all glamorous, nor were they all intimidating. Some were humorous anecdotes, some were trivial observations. Overall, I think it painted a bit more realistic a portrait of the City of Light, making the point that it is a city with a profound influence on its inhabitants and their identities.

Review: Culinary pedant at work

For Christmas, a friend of mine bought me Julian Barnes's The Pedant in the Kitchen, the sole Barnes book I didn't have in my collection (although there are one or two that I still have to read, regretfully). And it got me off my lazy holiday bum and into the kitchen, so that I was creating some culinary masterpieces instead of eating refrigerated leftovers.

Barnes is quite the talented novelist - humorous and touching in each volume, absolutely stand out in his debut Metroland. In The Pedant in the Kitchen, he has collected seventeen short essays on food and cooking, describing his anal-retentive habits in the kitchen and his desire to keep by the (cook)book as he embarks on his culinary journeys. He can't stand celebrity chefs who create tv-tie-in cookbooks; he really doesn't like it when the recipe calls for a 'medium onion' - for how are you to determine what is medium? - and he truly disdains those who buy cookbooks for the pictures because, sagefully, he realises that no one is able to recreate the images, no matter how talented the cook preparing them is (so much goes into enhancing food photographs that it seriously would be impossible).


Barnes uses his masterful and trademark wit to detail his experiences and blunderings in the kitchen thanks to the help - and hurt - of Marcella Harzan, Jane Grigson and her Vegetable Book, Elizabeth David, Nigel Slater's Real Cooking, and The River Cafe Cookbook (in all its colours). He gives advice which includes - paraphrasing - you can never have enough cookbooks, but you always should feel as if you have too many; never buy a cookbook that has a tricksy layout, pretending to give advice on how to cook a three-course meal; don't buy the chef's recipe book when you leave a restaurant; never replace your old cookbooks for newer editions; and again, never buy a cookbook for the pictures. There is some solid advice from someone who came into cooking rather late.

The author informs us of how, in middle-incomed England, men generally stayed out of the kitchen, that it wasn't until Barnes was a twenty-something living on his own that he found the wonders of cooking, simply because he was forced to. He writes about former male incompetence:

[It] was clearly limited to such matutinal dabbling. This was made plain one
time when my mother was called away. My father prepared my packed lunch and, not understanding the theory of the sandwich, lovingly inserted extra items that he
knew I especially liked. A few hours later, on a Southern Region train to an
out-of-town sports field, I opened my lunch bag in front of fellow rugby
players. My sandwiches were sodden, falling to bits, and bright red from the
paternally cut beetroot; they blushed for me as I blushed for their contriver.

This then changes and Barnes starts eyeing his mother's cookbooks, starts going to the local fishmonger, his 'tattooed comedians': '"Have you got any bluefish?" I asked. "Bluefish," the monger repeated as if it were no more than a feed line. "We've got white fish, pink fish, yellow fish..." As he scanned his slab for further hues of jocularity, my heart sank.' He's unafraid to talk about botched dinner parties, or food gatherings with friends as he likes to think of them, because in the end cooking should be human, something that everyone should be able and technically is capable of doing. He appreciates that, and by the end of this wonderful little collection, you'll be able to too. At the very least you'll be able to laugh - or chortle - at these anecdotes, advice snippets, and axioms.

Review & GIVEAWAY: What the hell is a Gefilte fish?

I spent the first eighteen years of my life in the Bible Belt. In case you had any doubt, Protestant is the way of life there. Growing up, I knew a handful of Catholics and only two Jews. Two.

Then I moved to New York. I started hearing descriptions that involved one's Jewishness instead of one's Baptist-ness, and I had no idea what any of these characteristics meant. And though I've spent five years here and numerous hours with my friends in the "Jew frat," I still don't find much to which I can relate. Who knew that Challah bread was 1) Jewish, and 2) not pronounced like 'chew' or like 'chronic'? Well, not I, as the kids I babysit informed me last year as they ridiculed my Jewish naivety.

When I was approached with Sex, Drugs, & Gefilte Fish: The Heeb Storytelling Collection, I had my doubts—not of its quality or humor, since several top-notch actors, writers, and comedians contribute to this story collection, but if I had absorbed enough New York Jewishness to appreciate (or even understand!) the humor.

However, these stories on sex, drugs, work, and family are more like a casserole of angst-ridden, self-reflective hilarity with a little bit of Jewish flavor thrown in. The publisher describes it as "an examination of what 'Jewishness' means" to the stories' authors, but I think it can be relatable to anyone with an experience that is just so ridiculous, it becomes self-defining. The stories are occasionally vulgar, mostly hilarious, and always refreshingly honest. One of my favorites was about a 12-year-old boy who thought Bo Derek was a man, so he convinced his mom to take to him to see "10" to find out what was so special about "him." Another by actor/comedian Michael Showalter describes "mustorderitis," the phenomenon that forces one to order a specific item on a menu, even if you know it is going to be garbage. Face it...gazpacho from a diner in the middle of West Virginia is not going to be very good.

The stories are so short that I found it hard to put the book down. You'll keep telling yourself, "I'll just read another one...ok, just one more." I laughed throughout, but at the end, my question about gefilte fish still remains unanswered (see post title).


The fine people at Hachette have graciously offered FIVE copies of Sex, Drugs, and Gefilte Fish to our US/Canadian readers! Each of the below will get you one entry (max 3):

1. Leave a comment with your email on this post and explain gefilte fish to me! If you don't know, make something up and entertain me!
2. Tweet about it (@booknerds)!
3. Subscribe and let me know about it (if you're already subscribed, let me know about that, too!)

Contest is open until 11:59PM EST on Monday, November 9th. Winners will be announced the next day.

Good luck!

Review: And in this corner, the Herring Wonder!

Where to begin with Jonathan Ames’s new book? The Double Life Is Twice as Good is a fantastic read. Ames has compiled essays and fiction (and in this collection, there really isn’t a difference between the two) in order to create a riotous event. There are no dull moments; there is just pure hysteria. 

Ames seems to represent the age we’re living in: an age of instant honesty, where people/authors aren’t afraid to admitting their quirks and problems and secrets to an audience, where fiction and memoir and journalism don’t have any indelible lines that separate one from the other. He’s blunt with his sexual ‘deviance’ – and his friends’ too.

The first story, ‘Bored to Death’, is a Paul Auster-meets-Raymond Chandler detective tale, where the narrator pretends to be a private investigator to help a young woman find her missing sister. What starts off as a laugh becomes something quite sinister. (It’ll be amusing to see what HBO cooks up for this, as the story is the basis for a new series forthcoming.) This is probably Ames at the top of his game here, mixing all kinds of genres and techniques in order to tell this tale.

The journalism in the book probably is my favourite – although that’s pretty unfair to say, because every piece of writing in this collection is pretty solid. Ames gives us insight into the relationship of Marilyn Manson and Evan Rachel Wood, the celibacy and magnetism of Lenny Kravitz, the wonderful questions asked at an oral sex workshop, and the pure absurdity of a corduroy appreciation society meeting (Ames wears corduroy trousers as part of his ‘costume’). And there’s a pretty amusing piece on his boxing experience as ‘The Herring Wonder’, which is a career I hope he revives – although that’s unlikely as his age probably won’t allow for it.

What I found to be rather intriguing was the fact that his fiction, what he labels as 'short stories', don't have the same type of comedy within. They're actually quite sad and morose - in still a bright way. It's evident that he's employing bits of his life when writing his fiction (some of the aspects in the journalism and personal essays sections make their way into the stories) but, in this genre of storytelling, he decides to make said bits to have more of an existential quality. Like in the comic that ends the book, the refrain is 'I wondered if maybe this time, a neighbor would come check on me. But no one came. Doesn't anyone care that I'm dying in here.' It sounds like it's right out of Dostoevsky.

Ames is one author I would carry everywhere. The Double Life Is Twice as Good made me laugh out loud, so I’m sure I got a few stares on the subway. And since Ames and I are neighbours, I hope to cross paths with him on the street one day. Plus, isn’t the jacket just perfect?

AVAILABLE JULY 14, 2009

Simon & Schuster (Scribner)

224 Pages, Trade Paperback

ISBN 978-1439102336