A Stack to Read

This is the stack (well, one of many stacks) at my bedside table. My mind has been much clearer in recent weeks. So I've been reading a lot and I'm hungry for more books.  I'm excited to see what these bring.  

I took this photograph yesterday, so I've already finished David Levithan's Every Day.  It has such an incredible and inventive premise (From the cover: Every day a different body.  Every day a different life.  Every day in love with the same girl.)  A premise that, in my opinion, would send any imagination soaring.  I had to know where Levithan would take it.  This book requires a steadfast suspension of disbelief (admittedly, I wavered a bit) but it did absorb me.  It surprised me. It made me think.  

What are you reading?

New

This is our friends' daughter, Little A, at the Central Park Zoo.  Truly amazed by all winged creatures. Birds. Penguins. Even bats.  Her face in total awe.  She looks at the world and it is new to her.  

Following her example, I look closer and decide it should be new to me.

I think, this is how I should write, as if I've never seen anything. As if I'm looking at the world for the very first time.

Embracing Imperfection

Today, I read this post from Jamie Catto on the Intimacy of Imperfection and felt as if I had been set free.

Catto suggests that it's not imperfection that is unattractive to others but the shame that comes from these imperfections.

These past few weeks (months? years? lifetimes?), I have struggled with, obsessed over, the idea of perfection.  Most recently, I've been overly concerned about it in the online space. I've felt as if I have to constantly revise myself. Every sentence, every word.  I've been very worried that the 'me' I'm presenting to the world is not the right kind of me. With this blog, my twitter and Facebook and email accounts, I have been given too many opportunities to delete, edit, and second-guess. 

How refreshing to step back, to understand that it's not the 'terrible' me I have to hide (for I am quite terrible) but the fear behind it that I have to shed.

So, I'll start small.  I'll start with a photograph on this (not-so) Wordless Wednesday.  There I was at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens with my point and shoot camera, pretending to be a photographer, trying to capture this dragonfly.  There I was, whining to myself that I did not have a good enough camera with an expensive lens, that I did not have an art background, years of photography classes, or even a basic knowledge of light.  There I was, crabby and pissed and stubborn but determined to take a picture of these delicate wings.

And what happened when I, finally, after snapping two hundred photos, captured that dragonfly in the right position, without it being blurred or shadowed or obstructed or just plain bad?

There was a freaking sign in the background.

To imperfection.  I start here.

Thinking of Marvin Hamlisch and Melody as Memory

With the news of composer Marvin Hamlisch's death, I am thinking of his song What I Did For Love.  It's a song I played over and over and over on my piano. The lyrics (by Edward Kleban) are beautiful.  But it is the piano intro, the steady porch swing quality of those early repeating notes-- that later come back to haunt again-- that is caught inside me.

It's interesting, the way music stays with you, how its rhythm becomes your rhythm. I always find it strange that you can hear a song in your head.  All of us can do it.  But how is it possible to hear without hearing?  How does melody replay itself as memory? 

It's been a while since I shared the Linda Eder love.

In memory of the people who give us the remarkable gift of song.

How to Discuss the Books We 'Hate'

For a long time, I've been struggling with how to write about books on this blog.  I would never call myself a 'book blogger' (though I do blog about books) and I would never call myself a 'reviewer' because I am still in an exploratory phase, trying, as I have been for years, to understand what a book review actually is (I am no closer to an answer.)

In deciding how far I wanted to take the discussion of books on my blog, I set rules for myself: 

1. I will never label a post about a book 'a review'.
2. In an effort never to be obligated to anyone anywhere, I will not accept review copies of a book. (Admittedly, I have broken this rule and it's getting really difficult to keep because I receive email pitches daily and sometimes I do want to read the book...) 
3. I will only share thoughts of books I love (or think are especially well-written.)

And the only reason that I had to set these rules for myself is because of these pitches, which I began to receive, seemingly out of no where, about a year ago.

Number three is the rule I feel most strongly about.  I see no reason to talk about books I dislike or even find mediocre on this particular blog. Since I eschew the label of 'book review blog' I feel no need to balance my blog with 'good' and 'bad' reviews (because, you see, they are not reviews.) 

And there are reasons beyond that.  Since the readers of this blog are predominantly writers, I go back to the thoughts of a screenwriting professor I once had in film school who said that we can't learn to write well by reading things that are poorly written.  Why would we ever watch bad films and spend hours talking about them?  What a waste of time. We're learning.

And then I go back to nursery school where I learned that if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say it at all.

However, 'niceness' in online book culture has been receiving quite a bit of scrutiny in virtual conversation.  And, for once, the discussion is not just about book reviewers writing about books, it is also about writers writing about books. 

Jacob Silverman wrote about The Epidemic of Niceness in Online Book Culture for Slate. Cally Jackson wonders Are We Jeopardising the Indie Book Industry By Being 'Nice'?

Lev Grossman meditates on the despair that comes from hating a book in this enjoyable piece I Hate This Book So Much: A Meditation.

And in a very charming 'By the Book' interview in the New York Times Book Review, author J. Courtney Sullivan said, "I would sooner eat glass than hurt feelings," when asked if she could name a book that disappointed her.

As someone who is still regretful about a comment I left on a blog over a year ago where I spoke poorly about a particular book and writer, the thought of publicly writing about books I dislike leaves me just as unsettled as Sullivan.

But I do wonder how important it is to the online literary community to write about the books we despise. Silverman implores us to 'think more and enthuse less':

A better literary culture would be one that's not so dependent on personal esteem and mutual reinforcement. It would not treat offense or disagreement as toxic. We wouldn't want so badly to be liked above all. We'd tolerate barbed reviews, some quarrels, and blistering critiques, because they make our culture more interesting and because they are often more sincere reflections of our passions.

In person and through email, I am ruthless when it comes to books.  I rant endlessly to friends about a book I wanted to throw across the room. I would never do that in this space.  Why?

I still believe in a culture of 'nice' on this blog.  I can't imagine it ever becoming something other than a space to recommend and learn from the beauty of the best books, rather than the ugly of the worst.

But I do wonder what we might lose by being nice?  Since 'best' and 'worst' are subjective is there not a natural balance out there anyway? And what does it say about ourselves that we are so fearful to publicly critique?

How private should the discussion be when it comes to the books we 'hate'?

Thoughts?

Up and Down

The kind of day metaphor becomes real life.

This morning, I needed to ride the elevator to my office, to floor two.  Before I knew it, I was at floor six and down again. But it did not stop.  Up and down.  Up and down. To floor six and down again.  The doors did not open, the ride did not stop, and the people I shared this elevator with, who I had not given a second glance, became people.

One woman with a thick Australian accent who claimed she might be sick.  Another with beautiful, rainbow tattoos sliding up and down both arms, who turned to humor So this is the kind of day it's going to be, she said with a nervous laugh.  The other who was not going to tolerate this under any circumstances, who threatened to push any button she could, something bright red with an X.  Please don't,  I begged. A girl with huge, thick glasses and wild hair who said not a single word.

So we agreed to press the alarm only (not the bright red button with an X!) and I became the spokesperson, speaking to the booming elevator voice of God (or the security guy in the lobby) We'd like to stop, I said, On any floor.  Preferably the first.  

We continued to ride. Up and down. We passed every floor, then passed it again in reverse. I had not expected a Coney Island elevator ride this morning.  No, I did not.

We were let out eventually.  I am grateful for that. My head is still dizzy.  And I am thinking about what it means to be caught in an endless up and down, waiting for somebody, anybody, to let me out.

On The City

This morning, the morning subway commute was less crowded than I am used to. I stepped on to find a little girl in a wildflower pink and purple dress.  She had huge blue eyes. Pink arm warmers wrinkled to her elbows. Dozens of light brown braids were fastened with rainbow crystal hair ties.

"We are on the city," she told her mother.

"In the city," she corrected.

"We are in the city, Gilly Gil!" She called out, fanned her arms, spun around the metal pole.  She paced the small space, back and forth, babbled incessantly, like a song. The rush of crescendo.  The whispering, skipping little notes.  She spoke to herself, to her mother, to the train, to this Gilly Gil, whoever Gilly Gil might be, until suddenly she marched up to me.

"We are in the city," she said. Her severe stare, such a sharp focus, so determined. "We are on the bus, the plane, the car."

"Or the train." I smiled.

"The B Train!" She shouted, sent her arms soaring to the ceiling.

"The F Train," her mother corrected.

"To the Central Park zoo!"

"To camp, actually," her mother said.

"Or the zoo."

"Not the zoo."

And again, that stare.  How did her mother handle this stare?  Day in, day out, this blazing blue, turned grey, turned cold, turned certain.  She was defiant.  "We are on the city."

I wondered, what she was trying to sort out in her Dr. Seuss riddled way.  Being in a city, on a train, going to a zoo, or not a zoo, speaking to me, a stranger, or to this invisible (or perhaps not so invisible) Gilly Gil.  How strange and, at the same time, wonderful, to be caught up in a trick of semantics, trying to place herself somewhere.