Two more!

I'm well into the school year, but before returning to Skidrow, I read Junot Diaz's short story collection, Drown, and The Street of Crocodiles, by Bruno Schulz. Both were phenomenal. I'm out.

Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson

I completely forgot; I finished this book a few weeks ago. In fact, I remember avoiding logging it on here--mostly because I wasn't sure what I would say. Housekeeping came highly recommended from friends and family, and I was looking forward to the beautiful command of language everyone claims Robinson has. For me, it was a bit of a slough to get through, simply because of the total lack of plot or forward motion, but some passages were, indeed, endowed with an unbelieveable grace and beauty. I agreed with the critic who felt as if Robinson had been storing up material for the novel her entire life. It is, in it's own way, a kind of masterpiece, but I'm not sure if I appreciated it as much as others I'd heard from (including Nick Hornby) were able to. Gilead was on my to-read list as well; maybe I will give Marilynne Robinson another shot.

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Michael Chabon

I wanted to read The Mysteries of Pittsburgh the minute I finished Michael Chabon's recent nonfiction collection, Maps and Legends. My usual taste in debut novels runs averse to post-graduation coming-of-age tales, but I found Chabon's to be entertaining without the usual trite-ness of the genre. It definitely helped that the copy the library held for me was one of HarperPerennial's much-adored Olive editions:

The story, involving the Pittsburgh Jewish mafia, a mysterious Cloud Factory, and party scenes that echo The Great Gatsby so vividly that I was unsurprised to learn that Chabon had read F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel immediately before writing his own, runs a bit into the territory of the fantastical. Art, the protagonist, is dealing with such powerful issues--his bisexuality, his relationship with his mobster father, the death of his mother--in such a haphazard way that the novel never risks entry into the gooey, mushy arena of the typical coming-of-age story. Essentially a good book about summer, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh might be the perfect book to round out my past four months of reading.

I'm starting The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories before returning to Skidmore, and I hope to get farther into it than I did when I began it in April. Until then...

Voices from the Storm: The People of New Orleans on Hurricane Katrina and Its Aftermath

As ashamed as I am to say it, this oral history, Voices from the Storm, is something I'd usually never pick up at a bookstore, and the only reason I got it was because it was on sale for $5.00 at Timothy McSweeney's garage sale. Once I received my copy, however, the stories absorbed me within the first ten pages. The meticulously edited interviews with fourteen survivors of Hurricane Katrina--young, old, single, mothers of nine, black, Arab-American, American Indian, white--were compelling not just for the stories they were telling but also the way in which those interviewed spoke. Many of the interviewees' very poor education hadn't even equipped them with the vocabulary to describe the atrocities they witnessed. The surprising variety of their stories amazed me also: one man, after weeks of rescuing neighbors and strangers, was arrested and held in jail without bond or a phone call under suspicions (unfounded and racist) of terrorism. (For more on this man Abdulrahman Zeitoun, explore Dave Eggers' recent work of nonfiction, Zeitoun.) Many families were stuck in New Orleans' infamous housing projects; one man was wrongfully imprisoned for a traffic violation the night before the storm hit and was trapped inside his cell when guards abandoned the prisoners. Each story is affecting in its own way, and definitely allowed me to better understand the magnitude of the suffering Katrina--and, to a large extent, the U.S. government--inflicted upon hte residents of New Orleans.

Maps and Legends: Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands, Michael Chabon

My dad gave me Maps and Legends because he'd read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (an essential for next summer's reading list) and loved Michael Chabon's prose style. I did too--at first his unbelieveably long sentences and the occasional archaic word threw me, but I soon adapted and grew to admire the individuality of his writing. Maps and Legends is a collection of essays--Chabon's first--and one worth reading. The collective theme of the book lies in its subtitle; Michael Chabon is writing in defense of borderlands from literary to ethnic, on which he writes remarkably well, considering his passion for both genre literature and his Jewish heritage. The collection inspired me to add Chabon's first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, to both The List and the hold shelf at the library; I hope to continue my foray into Michael Chabon's writing.

The Immoralist, Andre Gide

I picked up The Immoralist a few years ago at the Brown Elephant and have been looking forward to reading it for a while. It was published in France in 1902, and was extremely controversial for what the back of my Penguin classic edition deems its "frank defense of homosexuality." A short novel, The Immoralist is narrated by its protagonist in the form of a monologue to the narrator's friends. I expected it to be much more thrilling that it turned out to be, but I suppose that is the fault of the time at which it was published. Still, it didn't engage me; it felt dry and monotonous. I should have known that if Gide published it and went on to win the Nobel Prize in 1947, it wasn't going to be any Queer as Folk. One can always hope...

Indie bookstore #3

Bookworks
3444 N. Clark
Chicago, IL
(773) 871-5318

In pursuit of my books for classes next month, I've been searching used bookstores near and far and went into the heart of Wrigleyville this past weekend to a recent favorite of mine: Bookworks. Not atypical of an urban used bookstore, Bookworks is cramped--and crammed--but they have a wonderful selection and a helpful and friendly staff. They buy used books, sell CDs, are open late, and are in a great, stimulating location in the Lakeview neighborhood. (If you're looking for a snack, head a block south on Clark to Pick Me Up, my favorite all-night cafe and diner.) I wasn't able to find the rare-ass books my professors have assigned, but I enjoyed a rainy Saturday morning much more than I would have at home.

Newberry Library Book Fair

I went yesterday and can barely bear to speak of it. It was the first day I was available to go, and the fair runs from Thursday to Sunday (with a preview night for rich people on Wednesday night)... I can't go on: I didn't find a single book.

Native Son, Richard Wright

"Native Son" was, by far, the best book I've read this summer. It is a masterpiece of American drama that, tragically, I found as much application to contemporary Chicago (and the rest of the United States) as I would have found in the decade of its authorship, the 1940s. I connected deeply with Bigger Thomas' oppression and the oppression of Blacks and Communists in the era "Native Son" took place, in part because of the parallel oppression gay Americans face today. Among other things, this novel is a critique of blame and the notion of collective guilt, and the way different racial, ethnic, and political groups view one another.

I never thought I'd find myself including what is essentially a political novel (Richard Wright was a staunch member of the Communist party in Chicago, and the book's themes and characters surely reflect that fact) among one of my favorite books. However, since finishing "Native Son" nearly two weeks ago, Bigger has not left my mind. His story tapped into a quiet anger I didn't know I had, infused me with deep guilt at having implicitly taken part in the oppression of others, gave me a better understanding of Black America today, and allowed me to compare experiences of oppression across communities.

I can't do the best job I'd like at describing how thought-provoking and startling "Native Son" was for me, but I hope that it is included more often on required reading lists--not just for African-American-focused courses or political science courses, but for American literature and history as well.

A Natural History of the Senses, Diane Ackerman

Many know Diane Ackerman for her most recent novel, The Zookeeper's Wife. While I haven't read the latter, A Natural History of the Senses urged me to investigate. My second nonfiction selection of the summer, Ackerman's book lives up to the promise of its title--and more. Getting dry only near page 250 of its 300-plus pages, the rhythm picks up shortly thereafter, leaving the reader with a sense of accomplishment at having absorbed so many interesting tidbits of information on the five senses, and at having, in a sense (pun entirely intended), recharged: For after completing A Natural History of the Senses, I was made aware of the wonder of my functioning body for perhaps the first time. Since I'm not as aware of trends in recent nonfiction as I'd like to be, I can't be sure, but from what I've read in the Tribune and heard from friends, it would seem that Ackerman's book ranks with some of the best of those pop-science books (a la "Bonk," "Freakonomics," etc.) that have graced the bestseller lists in the last few decades. I'd definitely recommend A Natural History of the Senses to anyone looking to beef up on interesting party facts. (Why do you think I read it? Girls always chase after those witty intellectuals.)

• Orphaned calves are wrapped in the skins of stillborns so that the mother of the stillborn will nurse the orphan--if she can't smell that the calf is her own, she won't nurse it.
• Those with smell disorders also find their sex drives lowered and have problems with their long-term memory.
• Touch is ten times stronger than verbal or emotional contact.
• In medieval times, a knight wore a lock of his lady's pubic hair into battle.
• Women often have colder hands and feet than men because when temperatures lower, the body automatically sends blood to protect her reproductive organs from freezing.
• Potato chips were invented in Saratoga Springs in the late 1800s.
• Those who crave carbohydrates are attempting to raise their levels of serotonin, as do those who suffer from seasonal affective disorder; ingredients in most carbohydrates have been tested and results show them to increase personal contentment.
• Humans can talk for exactly the same reason they can choke so easily: their larynx lies lower in their throat than the larynx of any other mammal.
• One's perception of color can be effected by emotions and memories associated with the color.

These were just a few of the surprisingly interesting things Ackerman dug up to include in her book; if you find any of them as intriguing as I do, I'd suggest checking it out.

Confessions

While on the subject of books that I've crossed off of the List incomplete, I figure I might as well confess: I have abandoned more than a couple books this summer. Guilty as charged: They are classics of great literature; how can I expect to be a decent reader or writer when I can't even get through ----?; I've got to give them a fair shot... I'll admit that I didn't get past page 50 in any of these books, but I've got to be frank--I wasn't enjoying them. So I figured I'd just set them free and move on. Maybe they are the kind of books I will appreciate when I'm older. After all, if I'm stowing Proust for my over-the-hill years, why not save a few more?

Abandoned books:
The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing
The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers
The Jungle, Upton Sinclair

Didion, Woolf, and Baldwin: Exempted excerpts

"I have sometimes dreamt, at least, that when the Day of Judgment dawns and the great conquerors and lawyers and statesmen come to receive their rewards--their crowns, their laurels, their names carved indelibly upon imperishable marble--the Almighty will turn to Peter and will say, not without a certain envy when He sees us coming with our books under our arms, "'Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them here. They have loved reading.' " -Virginia Woolf, "How Should One Read a Book?" (245)

I realized that I've been meaning to read three collections of essays, Joan Didion's The White Album, Virginia Woolf's The Second Common Reader, and James Baldwin's Notes of a Native Son just in order to read, respectively, "The White Album," "How Should One Read a Book?", and the title essay of Baldwin's collection. I know that someday I would like to read these books in their entirety, but because of the ambition of my reading list, I'd like to bench these three collections, having read the essays I was most excited for. It's probably a mortal sin to not finish these magnificent, heralded books (The New York Times called Woolf "as nearly perfect as Heaven grants it to a critic to be" upon the 1932 publication of The Second Common Reader), but I'm confident I will come back to them soon. For now, consider them enjoyed, appreciated, and checked off the List. (Postscript: After reading and loving Native Son, I may have to get my own copy of Notes of a Native Son; I feel like I could connect to Baldwin's essays deeply right now.)

"We tell ourselves stories in order to live. The princess is caged in the consulate. The man with the candy will lead the children into the sea. The naked woman on the ledge outside the window on the sixteenth floor is a victim of accidie, or the naked woman is an exhibitionist, and it would be 'interesting' to know which. ...We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the 'ideas' with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience." -Joan Didion, "The White Album" (11)

Woops

I got more books.

The Second Amendment:

• A Natural History of the Senses, nonfiction by Diane Ackerman (Barnes & Noble; I know, I know)
• Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson
• Drown, Junot Diaz's short story collection
• Speaking with the Angel, original stories by the likes of Dave Eggers and Zadie Smith, edited by Nick Hornby (cheep-cheep at the Brown Elephant)
• Snow, Orhan Pamuk
• A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry ("A whole quartah?! Gee, thaaanks, mistah!")
• An unblemished, hardcover copy of The History of Love
• A vintage hardcover copy of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, an old favorite (for $1!)
• Maps and Legends, Michael Chabon (a gift from my pops)

I also found a pristine copy of In Cold Blood for the brother, and my girlfriend got Middlesex for $1.50. Not too shabby, Howard Brown, not too shabby.

I'm going up to Wisconsin with the Kenealys and plan to conquer more than a few books out in the hammock with a root beer. I've been slowed up by my recent crafting obsession, visits from faraway lovers, and assigned readings for my class at the Newberry--this week: two short stories by James T. Farrell, but I hope my week away will get me back on the (not too) straight and narrow.

Fun Home, Alison Bechdel

Sometimes a magical thing will happen to me: I'll pick up a book and read the first few pages and suddenly, somehow, find myself finishing it within hours. This happened with "Fun Home," a graphic novel described by the author/illustrator as a "family tragicomic." A general explication of the lesbian Bechdel's relationship with her closeted father, the novel proved to be a deep, feelinged probing of the heretofore exhausted subject of father-daughter relationships--something I couldn't have expected from a graphic novel. It's a quick read, but one that will stick in your head for days or weeks afterward. An excerpt is below:

Half-Price Books

No, the title of this post wasn't just meant to lure you in. I forgot to write about the first two bookstores I've stopped in as part of the Chicagoland bookstore exploration I mentioned here. I have yet to make a journey into a neighborhood like Lincoln or Hyde Park (that is, a neighborhoos with bookstores at every intersection), but I hope to before the month is up. For now:

1. Half-Price Books, Records, and Magazines
14 Countryside Plaza
Countryside, IL
(708) 579-1770

My family and I drove out to Half-Price Books a couple of weeks ago after my mom and I stumbled upon it on an earlier pilgrimage to JoAnn's Fabrics. It's well-worth the drive (although they have five locations in the greater Chicagoland), because sprawling suburbia allows for the store to have a massive inventory. They buy books whenever they're open, but beware: I only got $4.50 for a stack of unread paperbacks and I ended up spending almost $30.00. They ainno stoops at Half-Price, but all their books are in excellent condition. I left the store with a hardcover copy of "Martin and John" (Dale Peck), a hardcover Modern Library first-edition of Richard Wright's "Native Son" (only $4.95!), "How to Be Alone" (Jonathan Franzen), a $2.00 copy of Ian McEwan's "Saturday," and a like-new edition of "The Polysyllabic Spree"--how fitting!

2. A.C. McClurg Bookstore
at the Newberry Library
60 W. Walton
Chicago, IL
(312) 255-3520

I've been taking that class at the Newberry for four weeks now, and it wasn't until I had shown up an hour early for class yesterday evening that I finally had the opportunity to browse through the McClurg Bookstore. I wasn't aware of their lofted second floor, and was glad to spend nearly the entire hour up there in the quiet space. What McClurg lacks in its amount of literary fiction (I'd say only 1/10th of their inventory), it makes up for in selection--and they're always willing to place an order for you. I found the environment--a library--to be especially pleasing. Few spoke above a whisper, and there weren't any pesky employees looking over my shoulder. I'd recommend a visit to the Newberry any day, but be sure to stop by the Bookstore when you do.

Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser

Assigned to read chapters 1-3 of "Sister Carrie," for my class in "A People's History of Chicago," I had heard nothing of the book previously. Its publication was quite the scandal, as the 557-page novel chronicles the rise of a single woman from a factory girl in Chicago's wholesale district to one of New York City's most popular comedic actresses. Throughout the story, Carrie Madenda exploits the men who are drawn to her--the main reason for Dreiser's censorship upon publication in 1900.

After reading the first three chapters, I was compelled to continue and wound up deeply invested in the book's themes of vanity, materialism, class mobility (or lack thereof), perfectionism, and the hardships of poverty. I suppose my reading it came at the perfect time; a few of these topics had been on the mind since reading Yates' "Revolutionary Road" this past Winter, and maintained relevancy in the daily news. I found myself wanting to recommend "Sister Carrie" to friends interested in social change, in the world of theatre, in turn-of-the-century Chicago, in Austen-esque love triangles... "Sister Carrie" has it all.

My new homepage

http://www.literago.com/

Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov

For some reason, it took me an incredibly long time to finish this classic novel, but I'm very glad to have done so. I've never read anything like it, and, honestly, doubt that I will. Humbert Humbert's voice was a lesson in skillful narration, making it easy to understand Nabokov's distinction as a master of language. Every bit a love story as it was a memoir or a kind of mystery novel, Lolita is a classic that I am glad to have added to my literary repertoire.

Here is Nabokov himself, looking a little too much like H.H. on a road trip, hangin' out the side of his best friend's ride:

Printers Row

Good morning! I have been a delinquent blogger for far too long, probably due to the struggles I'm having with Lolita and a slight decrease in my amount of free time. Regardless, I come bearing updates!

1.) I've decided to include on this blog a few tales of another exploit I've had marinating for a little while now: an exploration of Chicago's independent bookstores! Partially inspired by Printers Row, I've realized how few bookstores I've been to in the city and I want to remedy that this summer. I'm making a list of ones catered to my interests (leaving out, for example, bookstores selling exclusively histories of the American military--of which I've encountered more than a few) off of Centerstage Chicago and Newcity Chicago. The blog paper moustache was devoted to checking out indie bookstores, but it hasn't been updated in three years, so I figure my adventures are fair game.

2.) I started taking a class at the Newberry Library called "A People's History of Chicago, 1880-1960." We're reading historical fiction about different eras of Chicago's history, so Sister Carrie, The Jungle, and Native Son have been added to my reading list.

3.) The Maze Branch of the OPPL hosted a discussion of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, so of course I had to go. Thumbs up to the pretzels and lemonade, thumbs down to the four old ladies who didn't finish the book because they couldn't read the footnotes.

4.) Finally, PRINTERS ROW! It's been a whole week, I know, but, to be honest, I had sort of forgotten about my responsibilities as a member of the literary blogosphere.

Despite the dreary, chilly, rainy day, I spent all day Saturday browsing the tents--from 10 am to 6 pm. I left with 2/3 of the books necessary for class ($7.00 total), two pristine Didion books (one for a gift), and some very, very cool old letterpress blocks. I heard Dave Eggers speak and met him at the signing that followed. I worked the 826CHI tent for a couple of hours and went home satisfied, with just a touch of hypothermia.

Adult Summer Reading Program

Starting today and running through August 7, my favorite neighborhood library (the Oak Park Public) will be hosting their annual Adult Summer Reading Program. You get a free reusable grocery bag if you're one of the first 100 to submit a log (super simple: just fill out personal info like name, address, etc. and the book title and you're in), and for each consecutive log submission, you are entered to win prizes from local sponsors. Score one for the nerds.

The Lazarus Project, Aleksandar Hemon

This novel has garnered a kind of ridiculous amount of area praise for its part-time setting: the city of Chicago. I'll admit that it was pretty cool to read about the main character, Brik, grabbing coffee at the Kopi Cafe in Andersonville and meeting his wife on the steps of the Art Institute, but most of the story took place in Eastern Europe; Brik hails from Sarajevo.


I'd read reviews (stellar) and seen it in various bookstores for months, but what really motivated me to grab The Lazarus Project from the OPPL was the fact that Hemon was going to be in conversation with Joseph O'Neill (author of Netherland) at next weekend's Printer's Row Lit Fest, and I happened to snag two tickets.

Problem: I didn't like the book. Something unknown motivated me to finish it, but my primary issue--a rare one for me--is that I didn't enjoy Brik's company or his outlook. His marriage is a failure, he has no confidence in himself as a writer (he's researching for a book about the 1908 murder of Lazarus Averbuch by the then-Chief of the Chicago Police Department), and for most of the book, he is sunk in a deep depression. I think I might've enjoyed The Lazarus Project more had I not begun it on the same day I finished The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. The prose styles of each author couldn't be more different; I had created such a connection with Diaz's Yunior, and the connection was severed by Hemon's Brik. His sentences contain a unique beauty (interestingly and impressively enough, Hemon is a recent learner of the English language), but their subject matter didn't enthrall me the way Diaz's did. I'd say it was just too quick a transition from a book that I have yet to stop thinking about; I may have made a mistake by using The Lazarus Project as a "rebound" book.

The First Amendment

I've realized the error of my ways and have come to the conclusion that I have no choice but to revise my summer reading list. I forgot so many books and want to feel as if I'm making some headway, so here it is, in full, as of today: Saturday, May 30, 2009.

Amendment #1:
The Savage Detectives, Roberto Bolano
Running with Scissors, Augusten Burroughs
The White Album, Joan Didion (and/or other Didion)
The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov

Reading Lolita in Tehran, Azar Nafisi

Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson
Nine Stories, J.D. Salinger
Chicago Stories, various authors

There we go. I accidentally began rereading one of my favorite books last night, so it may be a couple of days before I get to another one off the list, but I feel better having admitted my lack of loyalty to the original list. Another confession to make: I treated myself to a hardcover Everyman's Library edition of Lolita (again from Barbara's), despite the public library having the same copy on hold for me right now... I couldn't help myself. Oh well; it was $20 of my hard-earned babysitting money well spent.

Besides the two books I have paid full-price for, I've been doing pretty well for myself picking up books for quarters at garage sales around the Chicagoland area and at the Brown Elephant Resale Shop on Harrison Street in Oak Park. Proceeds from the Brown Elephant go to the Howard Brown Health Center, which has provided health care and wellness programs for LGBT persons across the U.S. since 1974.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz

Normally, I'm a sucker for elegant, poetic prose; in most books I've loved, the plot has been a secondary concern. However, the first thing I did after turning the final page of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao was to copy my favorite sections into a notebook and slide the title onto the shelf I reserve for my favorite books. I couldn't put this novel down. On the cover of my paperback edition, Michiko Kakutani called Diaz's writing style "adrenaline-powered prose," and I couldn't erase her unbelievably apt description from my head. The narration almost harries the reader, but never failed to maintain my complete absorption; I came to intimately know and envision every character in my mind's eye; I developed a new interest in the history of the Dominican Republic. I'd recommend, highly, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao to anyone, from a fiction-avoider to a college English professor.

I'll also say here that if you ever run across an opportunity to hear Diaz read or speak, take advantage of it. He read from Oscar Wao in Gannett Auditorium at Skidmore College and, despite his Pulitzer, the turnout was disappointing. He was as hilarious and irreverent as the narrator he created in Yunior, and made it a really good time.

Zoology, Ben Dolnick

A post chronicling yet another impulse-buy curtailing my progress on The List:

I picked up an advanced readers' edition of Zoology at Unique Thrift Store based entirely upon two facts: 1) It would cost me $0.33, on sale, and 2) The cover featured an endorsement by Jonathan Safran Foer, who I named as one of my favorite writers in my last post. It was a very quick coming-of-age read that allowed me to deviate from The List for just a day, and was ultimately a fine debut for the young Dolnick. It seemed the teensiest bit predictable to me; but then again, I'd imagine it to be a difficult feat indeed for a writer as young as Dolnick to produce a debut as widely-heralded as Adam Langer's Crossing California--which is what I expected Zoology to mimic. I appreciated certain turns of phrase, but Dolnick's style was a bit too sparse for me. Unique, certainly, but underdeveloped as well. The novel's protagonist, Henry Elinsky (a character who seemed a bit too autobiographical for my pure-fiction-loving comfort), describes his first love with amazing accuracy; perhaps it was this theme that justified Foer's analysis: "Ben Dolnick is a writer of incredible sensitivity. Zoology exploes the tricky journey to adulthood with honesty, humor, and generosity." My favorite sections were two, again near the close, in which Dolnick described Henry as he searched for Newman, the lost Nubian goat, or Henry on another similarly farfetched young-adult-novel adventure, and would chronicle his interesting, often irrelevant, thoughts in italicized parentheses. It was here that Dolnick best captured a nascent adult's perceptions of the world--a task that I felt was attempted throughout the entire novel. At one point near the book's end, Henry realizes, "My problems were as ancient and as beautiful as icebergs" (228), perhaps summarizing the book's essential subject: the passage from the prematurely world-weary realm of the teenager into adulthood. Zoology was a bit disappointing, but because of its brevity, I don't regret taking the time to read it.

I've been deviating markedly from my original summer reading list, but have been getting to a lot of good books via the Oak Park Public Library. I just picked up Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson and The Lazarus Project by Aleksander Hemon, two books I'd had on hold at the library and in my mental reading list for quite some time. I've also just begun The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, the book that launched The List in November when Diaz came to speak at Skidmore College. Away for a weekend at the farm in Wisconsin, I hope to get through a couple of these books before beginning a classic. I'm feeling Dubliners coming on...

The View from the Seventh Layer, Kevin Brockmeier

Running around downtown Oak Park with a list of errands, I stopped into Barbara's Bookstore at Marion and Lake, and I, of course, left with a book. It's a dangerous world we live in; The View from the Seventh Layer set me back $14.95, but I just couldn't resist the Vintage Contemporaries edition (a true weakness of mine) and doubted I'd find a copy at a resale shop anytime soon.

I was turned onto Kevin Brockmeier after reading "The Year of Silence," a short story of his that appeared in Best American Short Stories 2008, edited by Salman Rushdie (which, by the way, is an excellent collection--a wonderful birthday gift from my friend Sarah). The stylistic elements of Nicole Krauss and Jonathan Safran Foer come through in many of the stories Brockmeier has included in The View from the Seventh Layer, his most recent collection of short stories; Brockmeier tends towards the fantastical much more often, though. Krauss and Foer, the reigning power couple of Brooklyn's literary scene, hold the top two spots on my list of favorite authors, and I was hoping Brockmeier could climb the same mental pedestal on which I've placed Krass and Foer.


While I enjoyed the book overall, individual stories appealed to me more than others and I found that I appreciated the author's meditations on mystery and philosophy more than the fantastical and futuristic. Four of Brockmeier's stories are titled "A Fable..."--the most lasting stories probably being "A Fable Containing a Reflection the Size of a Match Head in Its Pupil" and "A Fable with Slips of White Paper Spilling from the Pockets." In the latter story, a man unknowingly purchases God's overcoat at a thrift store and begins receiving prayers on notes that appear in the coat's pockets. It is this brand of romantically-magical realism that I admire in Krauss' Man Walks Into a Room and The History of Love; "A Fable with Slips of White Paper Spilling from the Pockets" was exactly the kind of story I anticipated from this collection.

I've checked out a novel of Brockmeier's, A Brief History of the Dead, in order to read more of his writing. The View from the Seventh Layer convinced me to stay tuned for more of Kevin Brockmeier's work, but did not incline me to crown him a budding favorite author of mine.

The Year of Living Biblically, A.J. Jacobs

I will admit here that I predicted Jacobs' 332-page memoir of his year as a Biblical literalist to fall into the same category as Bill Maher's Religulous, and that I was proven wrong. I saw the Maher documentary when I was halfway through The Year of Living Biblically (2007), and condemned it as an immature way of proving the point with which I anticipated Jacobs to conclude: that religious fundamentalism is ridiculous and only for the simple-minded. However, by the end of Biblically, Jacobs--a 38-year-old Manhattanite and editor of Esquire magazine--has become not only refreshingly un-jaded, but also a follower of those Biblical laws that should matter most: He is grateful, goodhearted, and conscientous. Jacobs does not criticize those who manipulate the scripture, rather he says:

...there's nothing wrong with choosing. Cafeterias aren't bad per se... The
key is choosing the right dishes. You need to pick the nurturing ones
(compassion), the healthy ones (love thy neighbor), not the bitter ones.
Religious leaders don't know everything about every food, but maybe the good ones can help guide you to what is fresh. (328)

Jacobs' writing is not the most innovative, and around Day 120 I put the book down for longer than I should have, but the insight the author gleaned from particular Biblical passages kept me engaged. Overall, I'd recommend this book to anyone in need of a Bible 101 crash course, a few laughs, or a light--and enlightening--summer nonfiction read.

Stuff I've Been Reading

In The Believer, Nick Hornby wrote a monthly column entitled "Stuff I've Been Reading." In it, he chronicled his experience as a buyer, reader, and general hoarder of books, listing the books he bought and the books he actually ended up reading each month. Hornby's columns can be found in the September 2003-August 2004 issues of The Believer, published by McSweeney's, or in two collections: The Polysyllabic Spree and Housekeeping vs. The Dirt.

As I am currently unemployed for the summer and am anticipating the necessity of an intellectual project, I'm going to imitate Hornby and begin my very own "Stuff I've Been Reading" column, published here, in a decisively less public forum than in The Believer. I suppose I'll begin with my summer reading list(s). I've got leftovers from 2008 and a nascent one in the back of my notebook for 2009. Here they are, combined:

THE LIST
1984 and Animal Farm, George Orwell
The Audacity of Hope and Dreams from My Father, Barack Obama
The Awakening, Kate Chopin
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz
Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon
Disgrace, J.M. Coetzee
Dubliners, James Joyce
Gimpel the Fool and Other Stories, I.B. Singer
The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers
The Immoralist, Andre Girde
Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
Plays Well with Others, Allan Gurganus
The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories, Bruno Schulz
The Tin Drum, Gunther Grass
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
White Teeth and On Beauty, Zadie Smith
The Year of Living Biblically, A.J. Jacobs

It's easy to see that my list runs heavy on the "Books to Read Before You Die"; as a rising junior English major (and nerd, apparently), it stresses me out that I might not have read every classic piece of literature before graduation. Thus, The List.

To start off my quest, I checked out The Golden Notebook, Plays Well with Others, and The Year of Living Biblically from my trusty Oak Park Public Library this morning. I had the last book of The List recommended to me on Friday night by a friend, after telling her I'd taken a course in "The Bible as Literature" this past semester at school. I wrote my final research paper on Biblical translations and their effect on literalists' view of homosexuality, prompting her suggestion of Jacobs' book. As for the Lessing and Gurganus choices, I read "To Room Nineteen" and "Thirteen Feet of Water in My House" in an English course this Spring and was intrigued by Lessing's style and the topic of the Gurganus novel.

I've got some unpacking to do, and am starting my volunteer job at the Ernest Hemingway Museum this week, but I hope to get a taste of the Bible book and at least one other before the boxes and boxes of books I shipped home from school arrive and distract me. Wish me luck!