things that might be better than a new library book

What is better than getting a new book from the library?

No, really, I'm asking. I have some thoughts about what might be better, but I'm not convinced, particularly because I just picked up a delicious book {The Girl You Left Behind}, and every day, I can't wait to crawl into bed and start reading.

{Given that I recently wrote about how much I just want to hang out in bed, ever since I put on my flannel sheets, you may be concerned that I'm spending too much time in bed and not enough time upright and going about my normal day. Fear not, though: I am upright right now, and I manage to muddle through the days, no matter how much time I spend thinking about how I'd rather be in bed with a book.}

Things That Might Be Better Than a New Library Book

1. Maple-bacon biscuits. Any recipe that begins with "Fry the bacon until crisp. Then pour fat into a measuring cup and stick it in the freezer; you will be incorporating the solidified fat into the dough" is a recipe for me. The step where you drench the crispy bacon in maple syrup only intensifies the pleasure.
2. Staying inside on a rainy day. But then again, this activity is only made better by having said library book that you want to devour. Imagine it: Fireplace. Wind whipping outside. The smell of a caramelized onion, Gruyere, and ham tarte filling your home. And you on the couch with your book. It is almost too perfect, isn't it?
3. A surprise of a card in the mail from an old friend. There is nothing like being reminded of why you're friends with someone: the way she can pull out just the right words, the way she knows what to joke about in a tongue-in-cheek reference to some shared memory, the way she can convey in just a few lines just how deeply she knows you. Add to that the delight of finding something other than a bill in your mailbox, and you have a serious contender for something that is better than a new library book.

But that is where I stop.

I cannot make it any further because I am thinking of my book and my bed. And maybe, one day when I finish this book, I will tell you about why you should rush to your library and get it right now. For the moment, I will say: This book, The Girl You Left Behind, involves France, World War I, impressionism, tempting descriptions of those unforgettable French meals, and a mystery.

Now do you see why I have no time for anything but reading?

l is for lunch

Recently, I've been reading books that either explicitly or implicitly remind me to slow down and appreciate the moment where I find myself.

From MFK Fisher, I've been sampling The Art of Eating, which is a book of essays on the joy of food. If there is anything to make you savor a moment, it is an essay on rich meals shared with a wealth of friends. Reading this book, you can't help but plan a dinner party in your head, one that hopefully comes off like something out of a Katharine Hepburn film.

For me, it doesn't hurt that MFK {should I start referring to myself as KA?} lived in Aix-en-Provence for a while and wrote a book about that little town where I lived, too, for a bit. Map of Another Town: When I read that for the first time, I was very much convinced that I was back in Aix, so when I looked up from the page and saw just the normal street outside my normal suburban apartment, I felt let down. Reading about MFK sitting in a cafe on the Cours Mirabeau felt like reading a much more literary version of my own journal.

In one essay in The Art of Eating (in this series called "An Alphabet for Gourmets"}, MFK writes, "A is for dining alone, and so am I, if a choice must be made between most people I know and myself. This misanthropic attitude is one I am not proud of, but it is firmly there, based on my increasing conviction that sharing food with another human being is an intimate act that should not be indulged in lightly."

And that is firmly what I believe. She wrote out my thoughts long before I was alive to have them, and here I am, nodding along with her through the rest of her essay. Is is good to take pleasure in the small moment of eating alone; MFK and I know this.

Take right now for instance. It is lunchtime at work, and I'm surrounded by the din of other people's conversations. They are discussing the Bears game; I don't have much to add beyond an awareness that they are playing tonight.

Or they are talking about how much Halloween candy they still have at home and should they bring it in? {No, by the way, is the answer to that. We have enough here from everyone else who thought of that idea first.}

These people around me are talking about any number of things, and I get to wrap myself up in their dull roar, their hum of connection. It is all to me nothing but so much background noise, and I sit here alone.

Oh, don't feel sorry for me. I'm looking out the window at this November drizzle and thinking of Normandy. This rain is a Normandy rain, a kind of rain I got to know quite well when I lived there. It is gentle and persistent, but here today, it is warmer than a typical rainy day there—at least in my memory. But it's quiet and beautiful, and I walked to the train station this morning sans umbrella—in honor of those Normans who see little need for an umbrella on a day like this, a day when it's barely but constantly raining.

Eating alone, I can let my mind wander, and that is why I don't want you to feel sorry for me: because in these moments at lunch, I don't have to think of anything particular or do anything productive. I can just be here, at a slowed-down pace, taking in where I am.

Just like MFK.

the draw of flannel sheets

I have had a problem this week: getting out of bed. You see, I switched to my flannel sheets and fluffy duvet for the winter—no more sleeping under a thin but handmade quilt as I do for most of the year. Cozy though that may sound—this dreaming protected by tiny, precise stitches from my great-grandmother's hands—it's never quite warm enough when the wind slices outside.

Last Sunday, I pulled out my flannel flowered sheets and immediately wanted to get in bed. It was only 4pm, though, and I still had a Halloween party to go to. {Perhaps my costume could've been bedhead?}

Through the party, all I thought was: bed, bed, bed.

Oh, I also thought about Little Pug, who was dressed up as a devil and was, of course, the belle of the ball.

But when I wasn't accepting compliments on my devil dog, I was imagining flannel and how I'd rather be eating in bed than eating little smokies at a party. And I really love little smokies.

You can see, perhaps, why I don't get invited out much: because I spend my time wishing I were reading alone while surrounded by flannel. Who needs human contact when you have winter sheets?

for darkness shows the stars: a new take on jane austen

I swung by the library last night after work to pick up a new book.

At home, I am surrounded by books, and in case you can't tell from that widget over there on the right {scroll down: see the one called "Also, I Heart Reading"? Yeah, that's what you need to be looking at}, I'm almost always reading multiple books at once.

Stacked around my apartment in odd places—no, let's not call them odd. Let's call them quirkily surprising places. Let's call them proof that I love reading; surely I must if there is a stack of books on top of my microwave.

And on that tiered lamp from Target; one of the other shelves is currently holding nesting dolls from Russia {well-travelled and literate and a stacker!}.

And by my fruit bowl.

I am surrounded by books wherever I go, and so it's always surprising when I find myself uninspired with my selection. I have—literally but not in a hoarder kind of way—stacks of books to choose from. Books that at one moment I found interesting enough to buy but that, at this moment, aren't meeting my reading need.

I read multiple books at once to fulfill multiple reading needs. I like non-fiction for the weekends and travelling, when I have more time to read.

I like literary prose for the early mornings, when I do my best writing.

And I like engaging stories for bedtime, and that was what I was missing. I was trying to read literary prose {Dearly Beloved, a stream-of-consciousness novel by Anne Morrow Lindbergh—yes, that Lindbergh—that makes me think of my beloved Katherine Mansfield} at bedtime, and instead of calming me and transitioning me into sleep, it somehow made my dreams fantastical and memorable and I woke up more than I usually do.

No, that wouldn't do at all, so I swung by the library last night to pick up For Darkness Shows the Stars, a young adult book set in a dystopian future.

Nothing says "will not give you fantastical dreams" like "dystopian future," eh?

Oh, but it's more than a dystopian future: it's a re-imagining of Jane Austen's Persuasion in that dystopia.

Last year at this time, I re-read Persuasion {you can read about it here}, so maybe this is just my Persuasion season. Maybe next year, I can read a utopian future re-telling of it.

But for now, I hope in this For Darkness Shows the Stars, I get:

• discussions of how many pounds a year a man has: Unless this dystopia has no money and therefore no way to judge a man by how much he's worth.
• a silly, overdramatic scene that takes place on the pier in Lyme Regis: If you've read Persuasion, you'll know that there's a pivotal scene involving some jumping that is too precipitate, poor communication, and an unfortunate hitting of the head on the pier. I think in this re-telling, Lyme Regis should still exist—it should represent some indestructible part of society, and it should be the only place left to have fun, even though, in the movie version of Persuasion at least, it looks like a wet, windswept, unfun place to be.
• a letter written by the Wentworth character that makes the rest of the story worth it: As I wrote about last year, I will read 234 pages of that story, just to get to the point where Wentworth passionately declares his love—in a letter. {Um, sorry if you've never read the book. I probably should've said: SPOILER ALERT.} In this dystopian future, I will accept a hologram communique {you know, like in Star Wars} as the form of this letter.

quebec in pictures

Place Royale on an early morning run: It got that name when they installed the bust of Louis XIV there. It apparently wasn't enough for him to have Versailles and to be called the Sun King; he also needed this square—considered the cradle of French civilization in North America—to be named after him.

Samuel de Champlain saying to Quebec, "I totally discovered you and claimed you for France. Why is Queen Elizabeth on your money now?"

He's probably also, from his perch on that plinth, thinking: What, the governor's house I built back in 1620 on this ground high above the St-Lawrence River wasn't good enough for you? You had to build the Chateau Frontenac, a fancy hotel, here instead?

Un bol de cafe au lait, s'il vous plait: Coffee in a bowl. I'm going to start offering this to people when they come over for coffee: Would you like an espresso, a Waffle House mug, or this bowl from Ikea?

In France, you can have cafe au lait in a bowl with breakfast—the better for dunking your bread and jam in, you see. But here in Quebec, I discovered you can get it any time, even with lunch, and they won't look at you funny. Bonus points for Quebec.

The only fortified city left in North America: Quebec has also left its cannons out and pointed in various directions. They are ready, should anyone ever try to take them back from the British.

Unless it's themselves: there is a separatist movement here in Quebec, much like how some people in Texas would like to secede from the United States. I'd say if the Quebecois want to be their own country, they can all just hole up in the fortified city, drinking their bowls of cafe au lait, and putting those cannons to good use.

Problem with my plan and why I'm not in charge of countries: The cannons don't work any more, there are no longer doors on any of the gates into the city, and even though the French had the high position and the fortifications, the British still beat them on the Plains of Abraham in 1759.

I would most definitely go to church there, assuming it's an Anglican church, which is a big assumption here in what was once the seat of a Catholic diocese that stretched all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.

Actually, there is an Anglican church in Quebec—Holy Trinity. It was the first Anglican church built outside of the British Isles, and did you know that it has a section set aside specifically for members of the British Royal Family? No one else can ever sit there, which makes it even more exclusive than the Royal Box at Wimbledon.

Un autre bol de cafe au lait: This one at brunch at Le Clocher Penche in the St-Roch neighborhood. I'm reading the book The Table Comes First: Family, France, and the Meaning of Food by Adam Gopnik, and should you ever want to really enjoy eating alone {as I often have to do on work trips like this one}, bring that book.

You can read about the glorious social history of the restaurant and the recipe, all while eating. It will make you appreciate where you are, not feel like the odd (wo)man out in a restaurant of people enjoying conversation and each other.

Later, when you're back with people and you don't have to eat alone, you can dazzle them with trivia about what the French Revolution has to do with the restaurant.

Le Sang des Saints: My meal at Le Clocher Penche, and fyi, that translates to "the blood of the saints." It was boudin noir, a poached egg, pears, and caramelized red onions served over naan with a balsamic reduction. If I purposely forget that "boudin noir" is blood sausage and if I purposely forget how it's made, I love it so much. It makes being forgetful worth it.

The most photographed hotel in the world: That's what they say about the Chateau Frontenac, so I thought I'd add another picture to the count.

remains of the day: surprising new perspectives

All I have to say on this rainy September evening is stolen from Remains of the Day.

I've been reading this over the last week—took it to Las Vegas with me, even, and if ever there was a place that called for a fastidious English butler {worried about propriety and dignity}, it is not Vegas.

But the restrained prose of Kazuo Ishiguro {I've been practicing saying his name} is like a whisper in an old stone church in Devon. He builds, in such quiet ways, to staccato shocks of emotion, not at all unlike someone in heels stepping into that church just when it was at its most hushed.

This is a beautiful book, one to read slowly, and one that fits with this time of autumnal change. Even the title makes you want to get a cup of tea and sit in an armchair toward the end of the day—and look out at the setting sun and sigh.

While on the plane back from Vegas—and thinking ahead to a trip next week to Quebec City, Quebec—I read this:

As I say, I have never in all these years thought of the matter in quite this way; but then it is perhaps in the nature of coming away on a trip such as this that one is prompted towards such surprising new perspectives on topics one imagined one had long ago thought through thoroughly.

And that is all I have to say today: that and I wish I were curled up in my armchair reading. I would devour Anne of Green Gables and Persuasion and The Lone Pilgrim and that would feel like I was "coming away on a trip."

Instead, though, I'll read Remains of the Day in bed at night and get on a plane next week away from the here and the known—and I'll see what I find on a little trip away.

a wagner matinee: thinking of willa cather in nebraska

Shostakovich's 5th Symphony is on the radio—it's Saturday night and Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion is featuring the St. Olaf Orchestra, and that's what they're playing.

Shostakovich. Just saying his name makes you sound like you're in the cultural know, as if you've taken in hundreds of concerts in hundreds of gold-edged halls from London to St. Petersburg and you can remember each of them with clarity that rivals the tone coming from the St. Olaf first-chair flute.

Shostakovich. I say it aloud in the car. I'm out on the edge of the prairie—Garrison Keillor reference there, don't know if you caught it—and heading east on I-80. I'm in Iowa but thinking of Nebraska and Willa Cather.

It must be the classical music: she wrote a short story called "A Wagner Matinee," and it's hard now for me to look at the prairie and not think of its main character—an old woman who years before gave up the music and culture and dances and high teas of Boston for a Nebraska farm and the man she loved. She returns to Boston in the story—leathery, work-worn hands, eyes that have squinted in the sun for too long, having heard no music since she left the East but splayed notes coming from an out-of-tune piano. Her nephew takes her to a Wagner concert, and it's no longer the prairie she hears and sees but the life she could've had.

The music crescendoes in the story, and I've always wanted to be sitting next to that old woman—no, more than that. Willa Cather makes you feel that you are that old woman: living and thankful for a life on the prairie that has its own richness, songs, color, and crescendoes, but at the same time, yearning {secretly, quietly} for the clash of the city, the hush of the concerts, and the beguiling knowledge that you're in the center of it all.

The concert ends. The Flying Dutchman and Tannhauser are over, but Aunt Georgiana doesn't want to leave. Her nephew thinks, "I understood. For her, just outside the door of the concert hall, lay the black pond with the cattle-tracked bluffs; the tall, unpainted house, with weather-curled boards; naked as a tower, the crook-backed ash seeldings where the dish-cloths hung to dry; the gaunt, moulting turkeys picking up the refuse about the kitchen door."

Out on I-80, I understood, too: with Shostakovich strains filling the car and abandoned barns and windmills, cows in their pasture, and dried out fields of corn {oh, the drought} filling the landscape, I understood.

The 5th Symphony became just the right soundtrack for that moment on the road. The swelling stings matched the swell of the hills, and I thought about what gumption, what daring, it must've taken to move out to the prairie and try to make a life here, as Aunt Georgiana did in the story and as my family did generations before me.

The piece ended and the audience at A Prairie Home Companion clapped. Wild applause for the orchestra, and I pretended it was a round of applause for all those who made the prairie a home so that years later, I could drive across it on a freeway and marvel at the orderly beauty of agriculture and hard work.

dinner alone with annie dillard {part 2}

And who wouldn't want to learn about writing from Annie Dillard?

In other words: what I gleaned about writing from the book Holy the Firm—and then put into a book report for my summer writing class.

Read the beginning here.

----------

Write in the Voice that Works for You (Syntax Can Go by the Wayside)
I get the sense reading Holy the Firm that I’m reading Annie Dillard’s journal.  She’s writing in spurts; she’s writing in half-sentences and quarter-sentences, and she’s writing, at times, like she’s praying.

Holy the Firm has the feel of Virginia Woolf’s or James Joyce’s best stream of consciousness:  there is the feeling that these thoughts are tumbling out of Annie Dillard’s brain, and this propels you to keep reading, to keep going, to tumble with her until she ends up making a beautifully profound point.  And you feel that the only way you could’ve gotten there is through her breaking-all-the-rules syntax.

Now, normally, I’m all for rules, but in a book as personal, reflective, and spiritual as Holy the Firm, breaking the “rules of good writing” is perfectly appropriate. It gives it a raw quality that is part of what drew me in so deeply in that Argentinean restaurant in Houston:  who cares about steak when there are words like this to read?

For outside it is bright.  The surface of things outside the drops has fused.  Christ himself and the others, and the brown warm wind, and hair, sky, the beach, the shattered water—all this has fused.  It is the one glare of holiness; it is bare and unspeakable.  There is no speech nor language; there is nothing, no one thing, nor motion, nor time.  There is only this everything.  There is only this, and its bright and multiple noise. (pp 67-68)

Or what about this?

Hoopla!  All that I see arches, and light arches around it.  The air churns out forces and lashes the marveling land.  A hundred times through the fields and along the deep roads I’ve cried Holy.  I see a hundred insects moving across the air, rising and falling.  Chipped notes of birdsong descend from the trees, tuneful and broken; the notes pile about me like leaves.  Why do these molded clouds make themselves overhead innocently changing, trailing their flat blue shadows up and down everything, and passing, and gone?  Ladies and gentlemen!  You are given insects, and birdsong, and a replenishing series of clouds. The air is buoyant and wholly transparent, scoured by grasses. (pp 72-73)

Following these phrases can be dizzying, but by letting the thoughts twirl, Annie Dillard invites us in.

I have so much underlined in Holy the Firm—words and phrases that stuck out to me—but as I went back to find examples of her free-flowing, unstructured voice, I discovered that often to get to the root of why I underlined a word or phrase, I had to read back a few paragraphs.  I had to start the journey again to remember why the ending place was so significant, and I like feeling that I’m along for a wordy adventure with a writer.

The Routine of Writing
I don’t have specific excerpts from Holy the Firm for this lesson; it’s more a lesson from Annie Dillard’s life.  I have yet to read her book The Writing Life, but from her works that I have read, I know that she is a routine writer:  she writes whether she feels like it or not.

Getting across your message—those nebulous thoughts in your head—is not always an easy task.  In fact, it rarely is, and the writing advice that seems the most useful and most mundane is:  write every day.  Be in the practice of writing—even when you despise every word coming out of you.  You sometimes have to write ugliness to get to the prettiness underneath; you sometimes need to start down one path to realize that the story you need to tell is actually a path taking off from that first one.

In Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard talks about taking the same walk every day—to the point that she is so in tune with nature and the changing world around her that it almost seems like an extension of her.

This is how, in part, we should see writing:  as something we do every day so that we can feel more connected to the world around us.  Annie Dillard teaches me this, just in the way she writes.  It’s as if she’s saying:  pay attention to the world, and you will have things to say.

In Short, I Wish I Were Friends with Annie Dillard
I felt like, in a way, I had dinner with Annie Dillard in Houston.  Reading Holy the Firm while sitting at my table for one—fending off the waiter who asked if I’d like to stay after close and open up a bottle of Malbec with him—I forgot that I was in a strange city.  I forgot that I’d been gone from home for five days.  I forgot that my head was spinning from all the meetings I’d gone to.

I was in Annie Dillard’s world—seeing the moth, smelling the air on Puget Sound, looking for God in the small things.  And that, for me, is good writing:  when it takes you away from where you are, and when you close the book, you start to see the world around you in a new light.

blue nights

Every now and again, you come across prose so perfectly on point that you can't stop reading.

This is how I feel with Joan Didion.

This is how I felt when I opened Blue Nights and read:

In certain latitudes there comes a span of time approaching and following the summer solstice, some weeks in all, when the twilights turn long an blue. [...] You notice it first as April ends and May begins, a change in the season, not exactly a warming—in fact, not at all a warming—yet suddenly summer seems near a possibility, even a promise. You pass a window, you walk to Central park, you find yourself swimming in the color blue: the actual light is blue, and over the course of an hour of so this blue deepens, becomes more intense even as it darkens and fades, approximately finally the blue of the glass on a clear day at Chartres, or that of the Cerenkov radiation thrown off by the fuel rods in the pools of nuclear reactors. The French called this time of day "l'heure bleue." To the English, it was "the gloaming." The word "gloaming" reverberates, echoes—the gloaming, the glimmer, the glitters, the glisten, the glamour—carrying in its consonants the images of houses shuttering, gardens darkening, grass-lined rivers slipping through the shadows. During the blue nights you thing the end of day will never come. As the blue nights draw to a close (and they will, and they do) you experience an actual chill, an apprehension of illness, at the moment you first notice: the blue light is going, the days are already shortening, the summer is gone.

Two hours later, I stopped reading, and it was the latest I had stayed up since...since who knows when. That a book about grief and love and life and aging can keep me awake says quite a lot about the book. {Similarly, that I keep falling asleep reading Margaret Thatcher's autobiography may say quite a lot about that book.}

The book is not on an easy topic, a fact that was brought home when someone in my office, after listening to me praise its wonders, asked for a summary.

"Well, you see, Joan Didion had a rather traumatic 20 months; she lost her husband suddenly {and subsequently wrote The Year of Magical Thinking about that journey of grief}, and then her daughter died. So Blue Nights is about her loss but also about her life with her daughter. It's about memory and how it can get muddled. It's about love and how it can get muddled. Did I mention the prose that makes you long to sit with Joan Didion over a cup of strong black coffee—and just listen?"

Blue Nights isn't easy, but it's honest. Real. Scathing. Introspective {at times, you feel like you're reading her journal, and you think perhaps you should close the cover and put it back where you found it}. Emotionally dizzying.

But oh, it's achingly beautiful.

Please go get Blue Nights now, should you be in need of a little pretty prose in your life. I know I generally am.

grief is very dislocating

I lay in bed reading Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, and time and memory twisted together, in and out, tying knots here and there, until I didn't know where to start pulling to unravel it all.

The book was talking about grief—about how Major Pettigrew had lost his wife six years before, but that time has not entirely run straight since then.

"I am sorry I did not have an opportunity to meet your lovely wife," said Mrs. Ali, handing him a cup.

"Yes, she's been gone some six years now," he said. "Funny really, it seems like both an eternity and the blink of an eye all at the same time."

"It is very dislocating," she said. Her crisp enunciation, so lacking among many of his village neighbors, struck him with the purity of a well-tuned bell. "Sometimes my husband feels as close to me as you are now, and sometimes I am quite alone in the universe," she added.

Reading that, I was back in Iowa last Memorial Day weekend for my grandpa's funeral.

And I was talking to him the night before his surgery as he explained what they were going to do to his heart and how it was risky but it was a risk he had to take.

"They keep telling me, Zooey," he said, using the family nickname only he still used, "that there are three major risks." He launched into them like a businessman giving a presentation on investment strategy.

"One, my kidneys could fail. Two, my heart could fail. Three—three, damn it, I always forget this one...oh, that's right, I could die."

I didn't have the heart to ask how he could possibly forget that last one, and instead said something vaguely encouraging like, "Well, it'll all work out for the best."

Even those of us who use words for a living fail to come up with the right words at times.

And I was on a walk with my friend Katie a week after his funeral, talking about how my emotions were 3 millimeters under my skin {"Must be the grief," I told her. "Usually, I can keep them more in check but not in an unhealthy way, I promise."} and about her engagement and wedding planning and oh yes, of course, I'd be a bridesmaid.

And I was standing on my parents' back deck in Iowa, looking out over the Mississippi before the visitation and listening to a voicemail from my friend Amie. "Kamiah, I have the best idea: we should go to France and see the lavender fields in bloom in early July. Now, I know it's practically June now and I know you like planning things, but I think we can pull it off. Call me."

Time around when my grandpa died has become all smashed together—with anything that happened or was planned then.

Katie's engagement.

My trip to France.

Another friend's bridal shower.

The summer writing class I started the day before he died.

I can't think of any of those things without instantaneously feeling like right then, in that moment, the funeral is happening. But also in that moment, I'm talking to him the night before his surgery.

It is very dislocating.

As I stood, for example, at the front of the church in Katie's wedding, I was thinking of him,

and the Mayo Clinic where he'd had his surgery,

and how he couldn't remember the third complication,

and how my sister the Air Force captain stood at attention as the flag that had been draped over his coffin was folded and presented to her,

and how I'd had that talk with Katie a week after his funeral.

All those thoughts came to my mind unbidden, but they came because her engagement is tangled up with his death, and I don't know how to extricate it.

It's all mixed up in my head, all these events, and I don't think I knew how mixed up until I read about Major Pettigrew.

on pushing 30

"The one thing you should know about me is this: I'm the consummate good girl."

That's how the back cover of a book by Whitney Gaskell begins. The book is a pinkish-purple, and the cover involves a swirly font—looks like it could've been handwritten by a 15-year-old hoping to appear fancy—and high heels.

I tell you all these cover details because, contrary to that saying, I most definitely judge a book by its cover. I am seduced by typeface, clean design, and—although this is on the inside of the book, so perhaps it makes me seem less judge-y of outward appearances—hefty, creamy paper. No, saying that I like the touch of a book doesn't make me seem less superficial.

Maybe re-phrasing this way helps: the sensory details—the aesthetics, too—of a thing add to the reading experience.

You know it's true: the weight of a book in your hands, the smell of the paper, the pressure in your fingernail when you dogear a page to mark a favorite passage. These details are valid.

And these details, when applied to the Whitney Gaskell book I found next to Wives and Daughters at the library, said:

I am chick lit.

I am set in either a big East Coast city {preferably NYC} or a small town that is based not on the reality of small town life but more on the idealized but updated Donna Reed version of small town life. In this small town, there is a charming cafe that rivals Starbucks and has vegan options, even though in a real small town, you'd be going to something called the Dairy Barn for your Maxwell House drip coffee and ham salad sandwich at lunch.

I will have a protagonist who is either in publishing or a lawyer. Regardless of which it is, she will have the same amount of money and be able to buy scarily expensive shoes a la Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City.

Those high heels may figure prominently in a scene where she meets a man who is perfect for her. She will meet him just after breaking a heel.

Or she will meet him the one time she doesn't wear the heels when she runs a quick errand—dashing out of her hardwood-floored, granite countertopped, vintage-feeling apartment that could be used for a photo shoot for Anthropologie. She will meet him when she hasn't done her hair and when she's wearing sweatpants and old running shoes.

I would make a good movie starring Katherine Heigl.

Chick lit can be so comforting in its predictability.

Chick flicks bring the same comfort. You know that Katherine Heigl is, indeed, going to get together with whoever it is after they go through a spell of "No, I hate YOU more! Also! Look at my adorable pencil skirt! Also! Have you met my whacky but endearing friends? Also! I think you're self-centered, but aha, I just learned that you can make an amazing coq au vin. You're full of surprises; I think I'll stick around."

Sometimes, you just want predictable comfort. Actually, a lot of times I want predictable comfort, which may be why I like Jane Austen so much and why I was at the library to get an Elizabeth Gaskell book in the first place.

I decided to go for the predictable comfort of the Whitney Gaskell book, too, because:

• the book is called Pushing 30: And I am, indeed, pushing 30.

  I did not get this book as either a) a guide {how can I make the last month of my 20s hilarious and worthy of a chick flick? And if I were to be in a chick flick, who would play me? I wish Audrey Hepburn were still available. I would also accept Mary Tyler Moore.}

  or b) a reassurance {OMG, THIRTY. THIRTY MAKES ME WANT TO TALK AND WRITE IN ALL CAPS.}.

  On this whole turning 30 thing: I'm not freaked out at all/delving into over-analyzation/starting to act like I'm wise beyond my years/thinking wistfully of college/officially declaring myself a spinster/planning on finally losing all inhibitions and partying until I forget how old I am.

  But I will read a silly book about someone else turning 30.

• the protagonist—Ellie—called herself the consummate Good Girl: And I relate to that, although she does talk about washing her make-up off every night, even when she's tired. If that is a sign that you're a Good Girl {and not, you know, going to church and singing in the choir and spending nights in Vegas reading Persuasion}, well, then, I may not qualify. I get really tired and lazy—and FYI, start to make a lot less sense—at about 10pm.
• the back cover talks about Ellie's pug: Honest-to-goodness, I was thinking that I could put the book back on the shelf.

  The story sounded so-so—and SO trite, actually. It's about how Ellie, our adorable lawyer who lives in Washington, DC, meets a man twice her age, and she immediately falls for him. But, OMG, can she finally have some happily-ever-after happen to her with "the one man who's so wrong for her, he's perfect"? {What does that even mean?}

  Plus, I could relate to Ellie only it that she was almost 30 and a Good Girl with a Clean Face {sometimes, on my part}. The rest of it—dysfunctional family {that's right, family, I don't think we're dysfunctional! Do not take Thanksgiving as a chance to prove me wrong!}, hating her job {Dear People I Work With: I like my job.}—I didn't relate to at all.

  Even from the back cover copy, I could tell I wasn't going to be all that invested in her family/hating work problems. Most likely, if we were friends in real life, I'd tell her to pull herself together.

  But then, there was this: "...and she's somehow become enslaved to her demanding pet pug Sally." A pet pug! Just like mine! Maybe this book will be portentous for the next month before I turn 30, especially since I dress up my pug like this:

  

  If that little face doesn't say "demanding pet pug," I don't know what does.

Turns out I shouldn't have let the mention of a pug sway me. In general, that's actually a pretty good life principle to live by: do not be swayed by pugs.

I didn't make it beyond the first chapter where Ellie meets The Older Man—while, GASP, running an errand in her sweatpants because she had a home-hair coloring disaster! How could she let herself go out in public like that? Oh, such tragedy! Oh, and her pink hair!

I hope you can tell from the number of exclamation points that I had very little sympathy for her. I did have a little for her pug, though.

And from now on, I will stick with Elizabeth Gaskell when I'm in the G section of fiction at the library.

when it turns cold, my thoughts turn to england

When the weather turns cold and damp—just as it's been this week—my thoughts naturally turn to England, and my reading choices soon follow.

My mind associates the wet cold with England because:

• That's what it was like when I lived there. It was a semester abroad—the fall term—and while I'm sure there were sunny days, what I mostly remember is wet leaves, an ineffective umbrella, and slick steps outside the National Portrait Gallery, where I'd go to look at Wallis Simpson, the American divorcee who caused a king to give up his throne. In her portrait, she almost smirks haughtily down at you as if she's in on a joke. {The punchline for that joke may be, “...and then I almost destroyed the monarchy!”}
  
  I was drawn to her portrait time and again, possibly because other wings of the National Portrait Gallery involved many, many oil paintings of people in lace collars who looked like they'd been eating lumpy porridge for every meal for 13 years.
  
  In Wallis' portrait, though, she has a sprig of flowers pinned to her blue shirtdress, and when I looked up at her, she seemed to be saying, “Oh, forget these British people. They're a tricky lot to figure out, so show them some American gumption, just like I did.”
  
  It seems silly to say now, especially after reading more of her story and seeing how she was portrayed in The King's Speech, but when I needed a boost on a foggy day in London-town, I'd go visit Wallis, my fellow American. She made the rain and cold and loneliness seem laughable, like a big joke that we were both in on.
• of that scene in Sense and Sensibility when Marianne and Margaret Dashwood are on a rainy walk through the Devonshire countryside. “Is there a felicity in the world superior to this? Margaret, we will walk here at least two hours,” Marianne enthuses over the little bits of blue sky peeking through, as Jane Austen describes it, “a showery sky.”
  
  Don't say things like that, Marianne—that thing about felicity and walking. You are the personification of flights of fancy in Jane's world, and I think I should let you know: she's using you to teach a lesson about how impulsiveness and unguarded emotions lead to tumbles down rain-slicked hills overlooking the sea. Literally and metaphorically.
  
  Going on and on about blue sky and the animating gales of a southwesterly is not going to end well for you, Marianne, so you may as well come in from the rain and embroider something.
  
  I am so like Elinor. Thank heavens. But that also helps explain why rainy days make me want to stay inside with a book, preferably one set in England.

I went to the library recently with this goal in mind: get something set in England.

Having just re-read Persuasion and wanting to avoid appearing like a one-trick pony {not that I'm concerned about my personal brand, but I do think it should be more than "I am obsessed with Jane Austen"}, I decided to expand beyond Jane; I went for Elizabeth Gaskell.

That's Elizabeth Gaskell of Cranford, Wives and Daughters, and North and South.

The Elizabeth Gaskell who wrote in the mid-1800s and who has been so good to the BBC and its desire to make every book written in the 1800s into a period drama they can cheer the nation with on Sunday nights through the cold, damp England fall and winter.

I pulled Wives and Daughters off the shelf and then glanced to the right at the book right next to it. This is one of great pleasures of the library, by the way: going to a section where you need one book, and then taking a look around to see what else that section has to offer.

If I'm ever in a reading bind—and it does happen, especially when I have no seasonal promptings to read things set in England—I pick a letter and then go to that section of fiction. With my head tilted and my fingers tracing the spines, I don't let myself leave until I find a book or two, maybe even something out of my typical reading likes.

Right next to Wives and Daughters was a book by Whitney Gaskell. 'Maybe she's a great-great granddaughter!' I thought, nerdily excited by this idea of a modern-day Elizabeth Gaskell.

I stood on my tippy-toes to pull the book down and saw there was no way in heck I was checking this book out.

That is, until I read the back cover.

-----

I'll tell you why soon, I promise.

countdown to anne of green gables

Next Tuesday night, I'm leaving for Prince Edward Island.

Enter squeals of delight about Anne of Green Gables.

Or maybe you're squealing in delight yourself, in which case I hope you're somewhere private and not at work or in a library or on the train. If you are, pull yourself together. Think of Marilla giving you a stern look; that always works.

I have wanted to go to PEI since I was a very little girl. I read Anne of Green Gables for the first time when I was eight or so {I'm looking to my mother for corroboration here}. We were on vacation out West somewhere, and so in the middle of the desert and in the mountains, I spent my days reading about this charmed Canadian island and a girl who used words that were too big for her.

And by "spent my days reading" I clearly mean "spent my days pretending to be the girl who used words too big for her."

I acted out conversations with Diana Barry, aka my/Anne's best friend.

I sat next to a stream and tried to come up with a fairytale-inspired name for it, just like Anne would've done. Dryad's Bubble? Excluding the fact that I just stole that from the book, I thought it was a rather perfect name.

I made plans to memorize "The Lady of Shalot" and potentially act it out if I could talk any of my real friends—not just imaginary Diana Barry—into it.

I thought way more than I should have about puffed sleeves and pinafores. It's hopeless to think about clothes like that when:

• a1a) it's the late 80s. Shoulder pads are not the same thing as puffed sleeves.
• b2b) you're in Utah or Colorado and you've been camping for 2 weeks straight, changing clothes only every third day or so. Why bother? was the family motto. Get one set of clothes as dirty as possible; it's not like you're taking a shower every day when you're camping in a place with just pit toilets. Or no toilets at all.
• c3c) it's 100 degrees in the shade. I managed to focus all my energy on the puffed sleeves and ignore the rest of the clothes requirements that come with wanting to pretend to be Anne of Green Gables, ie, wool stockings and petticoats and collars up to way-too-high and corsets. Basically, I just wanted to wear a pretty dress and go to a dance. Or maybe recite "The Lady of Shalot." And have Gilbert Blythe clap for me.

After I read Anne, I gave the book to my mom to read. We then had a now-famous* conversation:

*I mean famous in the "we tell this story at family functions" kind of famous. Clearly not famous in the Justin Bieber kind of way. OMG, I can't believe I just mentioned Justin Bieber on my blog with Jane Austen in the title. Now there's a mash-up.

Little Mia: Mom, why are you crying?

I should, before going on, point out that I remember this conversation taking place in a field of poppies. That may not be correct, although I do know that on one of our trips, we stopped in a field of poppies on our way back from an attempted space shuttle landing.

No, not like we were landing the space shuttle. Like—it was supposed to land in California, but high winds or something diverted it to Florida or perhaps Texas. We were not there, in Florida or Texas; we were in California, and my mama had thought it would be cool to show her nerdy daughters a space shuttle landing. And it clearly would've been; by that point in the trip, I obviously needed something to pull me back to present-day America, and nothing says America like space, the final frontier.

So I'm pretty sure that we stopped in a field of poppies on that trip, although now that I think about it, poppies have opioid-like properties, don't they? For all I know, I was drugged by the poppies and now have incredibly muddled memories. Or maybe I'm thinking of The Wizard of Oz.

Let's just assume we were, in fact, in a field of poppies having this conversation.

Mama: [holding a Kleenex to her nose] It's because of this book.
Little Mia: That book? The Anne book? That's not a sad book. There's puffed sleeves! And a little girl with a temper, just like me!
Mama: [pulling Kleenex away from her nose, staring at her youngest daughter with something like, "I'm not actually sure you came out of me" on her face] She's an orphan and no one wants her! That's sad, don't you think?
Little Mia: Yeah, I guess. But that's nothing to cry over, is it? It's not like you're an orphan, and besides, she gets to live in Green Gables in a room with a big window that looks out on to a tree, just as if she were sleeping in the tree.

I should also point out that it was my dream to have a room on the second floor of our house. I was on the first floor, and while it was all right, I felt that I belonged up high. After reading Anne, I was sold even more on the idea of having a tree right outside my big window.

Mama: Well, I'm still sad about it.
Little Mia: Do you think the Wicked Witch of the West is flying over us in this field of poppies?

And that, friends, is when my family figured out that I'm not really a "crier." And started to worry a little bit about the state of my emotions.

Next week at this time, I'll be in Anneland, preferably wearing puffed sleeves and making overly-dramatic statements. Heck, even if just one of those things turned out to happen, I'd be thrilled. My money is on the puffed sleeves thing coming true.

alone in the kitchen with an eggplant

In the mail yesterday, I got a book I'd ordered from Amazon: Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone.

A friend was over for dinner, so I wasn't dining alone last night, although I do most nights, a fact that doesn't make me sad.

We had a dinner that featured zucchini and red new potatoes, along with hamburgers and ice cream sandwiches {those last two things were not eaten at the same time, of course}, and after dinner, we took baby pug for a long walk.

A late afternoon rainstorm had finally broken the heat, and I was wearing jeans for the first time since the beginning of July when I'd been in France.

As enjoyable as the evening was—and should my friend be reading this, I want to stress that I was so grateful for all the laughing we did—there was a hush of anticipation within me the whole night.

When she leaves, I can read my book about dining alone. I kept thinking this and then shaking my head to shake the thought away.

When one of your best friends is sitting across the table from you with a hamburger on a pretzel roll in her hands, you probably shouldn't be thinking about reading in bed.

But I was, and I just needed to admit that.

That's how excited I was for this book, which combines two of my loves: writing and food.

The title is the same as an essay by one of my favorite writers, Laurie Colwin. In her essay, there's this delicious paragraph:

Dinner alone is one of life's pleasures. Certainly cooking for oneself reveals man at his weirdest. People lie when you ask them what they eat when they are alone. A salad, they tell you. But when you persist, they confess to peanut butter and bacon sandwiches deep fried and eaten with hot sauce, or spaghetti with butter and grape jam.

For a moment, let's relish that incredibly smart idea of a peanut butter and bacon sandwich. That is yet another example of combining two of my loves.

Moving on, let's think about cooking and eating alone.

I do it out of circumstance: I live alone, so most nights, it is just me. And I love it. Some people have to learn to love eating alone {or living alone}, but I took to it {to both of those things} with gusto and gumption.

As much as I love family dinners—and my family ate dinner together every night when I was growing up—and as much as I love dinner parties and having friends over for dinner, to me, there is such pleasure in spreading out the paper in front of me at dinner time.

Or reading a book of essays at the table.

Or even watching TV while eating. {Don't tell people I do that; it's a little secret of mine.}

There is such pleasure in making precisely what you want to eat and then sitting down in a space that is wholly yours and enjoying it: the quiet, the food, the time.

I realize not everyone feels this way. You, for example, might not relish cooking and eating alone.

Tell me: do you? Do you think dinner alone is one of life's pleasures?

book report lessons

Confession about the last two days' posts: they were pulled from a book report I did for my writing class.

A book report! When was the last time you did one of those?

Don't you kind of want to do one now?

Although the more grown-up word for it is: book review. Then you sound slightly knowledgeable and like maybe the New Yorker is going to come to your door.

So here is part 2 of my book report/book review: in which I describe what I learned from the book.

{Read part 1 here.}

-----


From Jancee Dunn's family-centered memoir Why Is My Mother Getting a Tattoo?, I learned several things.

Culling from Your Life Is Entirely Appropriate, But People May Start to Get Nervous Around You
My brother-in-law once said to me, after I'd rhapsodized about fall and the transition into winter, “You're going to blog about this, aren't you?” {You can read the resulting blog post, if you want.}

It wasn't in a complimentary tone, but it showed me that other people are aware that I'm watching them and watching my life for stuff I could write about. Apparently, I'm not sneaky enough about it.

You have to do this; it's kind of the point of a memoir or of my particular form of creative non-fiction—the kind that tells daily life stories with a zany spin. You need to pay attention because even the smallest events can be worked into essays.

Jancee Dunn does this very well: she blends multiple stories so well that it’s not until you get to the end, after following all these strings, that you realize they do go together and demonstrate a bigger lesson that the individual stories by themselves could.

Case in point: Chapter 12, “Don’t Be Weird.”

The main point is that Jancee is sometimes socially awkward, so she meshes all these little vignettes of dinner parties and speaking without thinking. She jumps to how because she’s a writer, she’s in her own head all day, so interacting with the outside world can be challenging—and her husband’s reaction to that.

There’s a story of the two of them eavesdropping on other people in a café {that’s not weird, right? Besides, if I'm making people I know nervous by eavesdropping on them, don't I have the right to make other people nervous, people I don't know? That just seems fair.}. There's a digression to how she buys the ugliest treats at bakes sales so that whoever baked it won’t feel bad, and it all wraps up with a day-in-the-life-of-Jancee sort of story.

What about all of that goes together? But it doesn’t feel disjointed because you realize by the end that the string through all of this is: we’re all weird, so embrace it.

Lesson: Find the string in your stories and pull. Also, ignore looks of suspicion from family members and friends. When you're on The Ellen Degeneres Show promoting your book, you can mention them or their business or whatever, and they'll probably forgive you. Probably.

It's Not All About You
There’s this tricky, almost contradictory, thing about memoirs: they have to be about you, but they can’t only be about you.

In memoirs, you sort of have to be self-centered, but for a memoir to really work, it has to expand to the universal. You need to get yourself out of the story as much as possible so that people can see how they relate to it.

But take this into account: for people to want to read your memoir, you have to be interesting. People need to like you and be invested in you before they can even get to the “here’s what I have to say about life in general” ideas.

So memoir-writing is about finding balance—talking about yourself enough but not too much. Jancee does this well. She gives very specific details about herself so that we can get to know her, but she also expands all of her stories beyond herself.

For example, when talking about how she prepares for trips, she says, “Truly, I was my father’s daughter. We both loved making folders and filing them in neat rows inside pristine file cabinets with color-coordinated labels” (25).

See? Enough detail to make you get something new about Jancee, but it doesn’t turn into a treatise on organization and how wonderful she is at it. Although, truth be told, that is a treatise I would read. I'm the girl who just travelled to France with a binder full of notes, printed bus schedules, and train reservations, all of it in sheet protectors.

And an example of how she can expand to the greater picture, from her essay on watching her parents deal with their parents’ deaths: “It was difficult for me to grasp, in an age when no event is too small to be videotaped, the blunt finality of never hearing your father’s voice again. It was harder still, as a member of the most analyzed generation in American history, to imagine shying away from questions that didn’t seem remotely personal to me” (102).

See? In an essay on her family dealing with grief, she helps readers question their own approach to grief and finality and mortality—that takes a soft touch, let me tell you.

Lesson: Be personable and chatty, if that works with your personality, but remember: it’s not all about you. You may have the most exciting things happen to you every day, but what’s the bigger picture you can show through your writing?

I’m no longer angry at Jancee Dunn. I do appreciate her book and what she can teach me about my own writing. I just wish her mother hadn’t gotten a tattoo.

{But note to my mother: I actually never wished that you hadn't gotten a tattoo, contrary to my incredibly vociferous reaction to your tattoo.}

you know who you sound like?

I hate Anne Lamott.

Not really.

But isn't that a dramatic beginning?

Here's the non-drama truth: People often tell me that my writing reminds them of someone else's writing.

“Oh, do you know who you sound like? Anne Lamott. She had the funniest story...well, yours is funny, too. You're both so sharp about your faith.”

And that's why I hate her.

I also get: “You're just like David Sedaris, only maybe less bitter and without the slightly frightening ability to impersonate Billie Holiday.”

I take these comments as compliments because I'm sure the people saying them mean them as compliments. Besides, if you have to be compared to someone, Anne Lamott is pretty good company.

I also choose to take these as compliments because if I don't I will scream. And maybe cry, although I'm not known for that. I will cry and scream and wail and generally gnash my teeth because when I read writing that sounds like my own—but better and published—the inevitable question comes up: so who cares about what I have to say?

That's an unfair question, mostly because it's based on comparison, which, if you ask me, is the root of all evil. {Adam and Eve wanted something God had, so I may be on to something there.}

Comparison never gets you anywhere but frustrated. I tried to remember that when I showed my mother the piece I had written on her tattoo, and she said, “Oh, I read the most hilarious book called Why Is My Mother Getting a Tattoo? And Other Questions I Wish I Never Had to Ask. That's just like your story!”

Yes. Just like my story but with a snappy title that encapsulates everything I ever wanted to say about my mother's tattoo, and in fact my working title for my story was "A Question I Shouldn't Have to Ask."

I decided to face my nemesis, Jancee Dunn, this woman who had stolen my writing and my specialness {if I can't be known as the straight-laced girl who over-reacted to her mother's tattoo, what can I be known as?}, head-on: I checked out her book from the library. And I laughed my way through it, but also grew in my hate for Jancee. Her stories all sounded so...familiar.

She wrote about parents who send newspaper clippings with short notes attached; I've written about that, too. {Twice, actually! Once in relation to my mama's new iPad and once just yesterday when I talked about some of the articles I've gotten from my mama.}

She talked about her parents moving out of their home—the one she was raised in—and how she fought that; I've been mulling over a story on the same theme. {Not that my parents have left my childhood home, but the threat of it a few years ago, along with the promise that they're retiring to Canada, was enough to upset me.}

She talked about an obsession with bad-for-you-food; I'm known for my obsession with hot dogs.

Basically, I love Jancee because she's familiar, but I hate her because I can hold her book in my hands. But I did realize that Jancee's writing could be a good role model for me.

Reading good writing makes it easier to write good writing {that isn't a very good sentence, but you get the idea}.

And whether you want to write poetry or a novel or a memoir, you should be immersed in good writing from that genre. It'll teach you, both subtly and overtly, what works well and what you want to avoid.

Coming tomorrow: What I Learned from Envy. Or Jancee.

{You can jump ahead to part 2 here.}

anagrams and a book review

I went to the library the other week to get another book off my Library Reading List {read about how I got this list here—it involves the eHarmony of literature}, but shock and sadness, they were out of it.

Didn't they know to reserve a copy of every book on my list for me? Apparently not.

I went to get The Hand that First Held Mine by Maggie O'Farrell, and I ended up with The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, which is also by Maggie O'Farrell. I figured—oh, close enough.

But oh, I didn't figure on this book making me stay up past my bedtime. It takes place in present-day London and India of the 1930s{ish}. I didn't figure on getting lost in the language and being filled with a strong impulse to be in England, on a coast pondering my life.

I didn't figure on finding a passage that summed up a little of what I was going for in that poem I wrote for my grandma. I ask in there: Did she pass down her gestures, as well as her brown hair, in the family DNA?

It's something I've wondered. We all look for smile similarities or a family nose when we look back on old pictures. Am I in this face? Would someone know that we were related? Is that where I got my funny ears?

But what about mannerisms? Do those get passed down, generation to generation, as we imitate our mothers, who are imitating their mothers, who are imitating their mothers?

I don't know. I don't know how my great-great grandmother held her head when she was reading or sewing.

But in this book by Maggie O'Farrell, there's an older family member who's been secreted away for 61 years: the younger generation didn't even know she existed. When the older and younger meet, the older woman is a direct line to the past—and she can see her own mother in this younger woman.

So this is the passage that I read late, late one night, and thought, Now, that is what I'm going for in my poem:

From all her family—her and Kitty and Hugo and all the other babies and her parents—from all of them, there is only this girl. She is the only one left. They have all narrowed down to this black-haired girl sitting on the sand, who has no idea that her hands and her eyes and the tilt of her head and the fall of her hair belong to Esme's mother. We are all, Esme decides, just vessels through which identities pass: we are lent features, gestures, habits, then we hand them on. Nothing is our own. We begin the world as anagrams of our antecedents.

Anagrams of our antecedents. Makes you want to rush to your family pictures, doesn't it?

the poetry home repair manual

I'm reading this book right now by Ted Kooser called The Poetry Home Repair Manual. It has a picture of a toolbox on the front, which serves to remind me that poetry should be a practical thing, built on a solid framework that people can relate to.

At least that's what I go for in my poetry. I know there are other kinds of poetry. The kind where you get to the end and say, "You must be much deeper than me, dear poet, because I understood about three words in there, and one of them was I."

But then I think of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, that lengthy poem by TS Eliot that I tripped into in 8th grade and immediately adored. I didn't understand much of that poem then—I understand a modicum more now and I think I will always be re-reading it to find new layers—but the flow of the language entranced me.

Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

and

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

and

For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons

I didn't even drink coffee in 8th grade, but I read that line and knew it was right. I heard in it: the world is one empty social obligation after another.

Oh my. Such drama and such falsehood. My social obligations at that age amounted to showing up to school on time, doing my homework, participating in a sport, and going to youth group. How empty! How vain! How unfulfilling! How my life was going nowhere!

But I was 14, remember, and at 14, you have perfected world-weariness, an ennui with all you find around you, even though, in coffee spoon terms, you are still in the womb.

So Prufrock goes against everything I go for in my own poetry.

It's dense.

You have to be very well-read to catch all the references, these asides that are practically inside jokes for the literary elite.

There's this thing in Latin at the very beginning, for Heaven's sake.

But I still love it. I read Prufrock, and I am somewhere else. I am someone else. I am in someone else's head, and it turns out he has the same ponderings about the world as I do, as we all do: Am I special? Where do I fit in? What am I doing with my life? Am I significant to anyone else?

And TS Eliot managed to convey all of that in this lyrical, flowing style—in this poem that, if it were a house, would be a country estate in Berkshire, complete with a butler and staff of 40.

That's what good poetry, good writing, should do. No, I don't mean it should imitate a country estate, or even a shack in the country. Good writing should help you connect with the universal.

We all find ourselves in this world, and what does that mean? Good writing helps you start to put your finger on it, whether that good writing comes wrapped in Prufrock or in Ted Kooser.

Whether it's practical and creates an image you can relate to—driving through traffic, say—or whether it's symbolic and creates a feeling you can relate to.

That's what good writing does, and that is why I keep reading. And writing.

the library reading list

Because I'm me, I bought a condo just down the street from the library.

Well, that's a simplification, isn't it? {But sometimes, broad strokes of generalities work better for getting a point across. From that one swath, you know that I love reading.}

I bought my condo for many reasons, but a major selling point was that it's so close to the library. We're talking pretty much closer than walking distance; it's like trip and roll a little bit distance.

And I trip my way over there quite a bit, but do you ever feel like you're in a reading rut?

I do sometimes.

I have shelves and shelves full of books. I even have a special section for books I bought {at book sales or used book stores or wherever they happened to cross my path} but have yet to read.

You would think this would give me ample rutless roads for reading, but no, it doesn't. Sometimes, I look at books upon books in the library and think, 'I don't even know where to begin. I'm going home.'

And when I get home, I watch TV.

I probably shouldn't admit this—me the English major—but there you go. Now you know one of my secrets, if watching TV can be considered a secret, which I don't think it can.

Because I'm me, I don't like to stay in a rut for long and so when I saw that my library offered a program called BookMatch, I jumped at it.

You get to take a quiz! It's like the Myers-Briggs of reading!

A librarian takes time to review your answers! It's like being graded!

You get suggestions of what books to check out! It's like eHarmony, but with books!

Clearly, this BookMatch idea resonated with my soul: my quiz-loving, grade-loving soul.

Please note that I left out "eHarmony-loving" soul. Not that I don't like it—it just seems a little odd to have your soul love a computer algorithm with really slick commercials.

I got my BookMatch results just a few days ago, and let me tell you, I opened that email as if I were a presenter opening the Oscar envelope, or some other over-used example of opening an envelope.

Suffice it to say: there was a lot of excitement, and when I read through my list, I felt that I had won Best Actress.

When a reading list can make you feel like Meryl Streep, a librarian has clearly done his or her job well.

Because I'm me, I've turned this BookMatch list into a personal challenge: I will read all these books this summer. And you know, if I'm inspired, I'll write about them, too.

Should you be interested, I'm starting with Let the Great World Spin.

Oh, hey, you could read along with me and then we could turn this blog into a book blog {with random forays into wherever else my mind goes}.

Actually, I don't know about that idea. But I do know this: reading is fun and getting out of a rut is even better.

The Library Reading List

Too Much Happiness
{Alice Munro}

Let the Great World Spin
{Colum McCann}

The Surrendered
{Chang-Rae Lee}

Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China
{Jung Chang}

The Hand that First Held Mine
{Maggie O’Farrell}

The Women
{T. Coraghessan Boyle}

Your Oasis on Flame Lake
{Lorna Landvik}

on being a hostess

This is, believe it or not, a revision I did of "my secret life of eating." You'll see the same concepts in here: the idea of image control, of presenting things not quite as they are in reality (is that bad? is it compartmentalization? is it smart?).

Both of these, by the way, started from a prompt about secrets: what part of you do you protect?

Final note: so there are three girls in here, and I called them Katie, Rachel, and Jessie. If your name happens to be Katie, Rachel, or Jessie, and you're my friend, don't worry: I'm not talking about you. No, really, I'm not.

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The girls are coming for dinner at 7:00, so at 6:46, I’m doing what every good hostess does with less than 15 minutes to go: I’m hiding evidence that my life is not as I present it to perfectly be.

Dinner itself is simmering. My apartment smells as it should. Almost everything I make begins like this—

Heat 1T of olive oil over medium heat.
Add 3 garlic cloves, finely chopped, and sauté.

The pork chops with warm plum sauce I’m serving Katie, Rachel, and Jessie are no exception. And because of that, my fingertips still smell like garlic (and will until tomorrow morning) and underneath the tangy sweet smell of the plums cooking in the skillet, there’s that familiar base of garlic.

I take a breath and know that the plums are just beginning to drip with their juices. Almost time to transfer them to the oven with the rosemary-rubbed pork chops.

Yes, my apartment smells as it should. Welcoming. Content.

Which is not how I feel as I do image control on my life, as evidenced by how I’m currently shoving a stack of papers under a pillow on my bed. These are mostly papers about how to use my HSA insurance, bank statements, and already-paid-but-not-filed-away utility bills. I know these very important papers do not belong under my pillow, but it is the best hiding place I can think of on short notice. I can guarantee that none of the girls will come sit on my bed, and so no one will know my secret.

I fluff the pillows as I kick a stack of books under the bed. I’m hiding the clutter, not the fact that I read: if anything, I want people to think I spend all my free evenings reading instead of watching TV. Hence the TV armoire that hides the TV and the giant bookcase that reveals everything.

When people come to my apartment for the first time, they often get stuck in front of the bookcase, head angled to read the titles. My books are categorized by genre and then alphabetized by author. Alcott, Alvarez, Atwood, Austen, Austen, Austen.

“Wow,” people often say. “You must really like to read.”

“Oh, I do,” I reply, ending with a breathy emphasis that implies that my English degree is being put to good use. “I’d read every night if I could,” I say—of course not mentioning the nights I get sucked into Law & Order or Frasier or The Simpsons or even Wife Swap.

It’s 6:56.

The pork chops are in the oven, doing their final cooking. The table is set, complete with wine glasses and cloth napkins. I believe that cloth napkins immediately elevate the elegance of any meal.

I just need to throw the asparagus under the broiler for a few minutes when the pork and plums are done.

I made the dessert, peaches Melba, the night before. Its various parts—poached peaches, vanilla ice cream, and a raspberry coulis that took over an hour to make—are just waiting to be put together at the perfect time.

6:58. I open the bottle of wine and get a head start on the evening. It’s best to be relaxed and look like a party is already going on, even when the first guest arrives.

7:00. The doorbell buzzer rings. I’m betting it’s Rachel, who is so punctual, it makes me think she waits in her car until one minute before the appointed hour—and then rushes to ring the doorbell just on time.

I smile at this image, this panicked rush to be punctual to a dinner that’s supposed to be low-key, and then re-tie my apron strings.

Sometimes, we all need a little dress-up boost to help us act the way we know we should. With the apron on, I feel more like the role I decided to play tonight, more like the hostess, cook, friend.

More like someone who wasn’t rushing around 15 minutes ago with sweat on my upper lip, in a panicked flurry to look Real Simple presentable for a dinner that’s supposed to be low-stress.