191/365/Books

Four years ago, in a discussion with a friend, I learned of the existence of the Amish romance novel. According to Wikipedia, works in this literary subgenre are referred to as “bonnet rippers.” I’ve never read a bonnet ripper, but I did subsequently rent a movie based on one, The Shunning. I don’t remember it vividly—I never remember plot points vividly—but it kept my interest long enough to see how it turned out. Plus, Amish.

190/365/Books

My book group should kick me out.

Back when I was a full participant in my book group, back when I went all the time and read every book, back when it bugged me when people didn’t talk enough about the book, back when I finally accepted that it was really a supper club, back before I told everyone that I would no longer be hosting book group because I wasn’t going to make dinner for 18 or 20 people anymore because I really just can’t face that (and really, that’s why they should kick me out, for not hosting, but so far they haven’t, possibly because I haven’t shown up even once this year so they haven’t had opportunity), I did, over the course of its first fourteen years, host (or co-host) eight times, and these are the books that I made the group read:

—Ernst Jünger/The Glass Bees

—Virginia Woolf/Mrs. Dalloway

—Barbara Ehrenreich/Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting by in America

—Dorothy Baker/Cassandra at the Wedding

—A. J. Jacobs/The Know-It-All: One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World

—Marjane Satrapi/The Complete Persepolis

—Kathryn Stockett/The Help

—Sonya Cobb/The Objects of Her Affection*

*Written by Lali’s daughter, for those of you who know Lali.

189/365/Books

I can hardly keep up with reading this group’s blog posts, let alone write any. But the result of reading your posts is making me incredibly nostalgic for pre-job growing-up summers when pretty much all I did was hole up in my room and read book after book after book. I miss that life. I don’t see a way back to it.

188/365/Books

I’m behind, as always, so a rerun:

I’m a reader—although I don’t read as much I’d like to—and of course I can make all the arguments of why the book will be better than the movie, of how much more detail and texture and exposition the reader gets, how possibly more actively involved reader is than watcher. Still, having loved a book, I can love its movie, in part because I love movies and in part because I have accepted that it’s not fair to compare two entirely different media (apples and oranges).

I remember the first time I felt betrayed by a movie. (Many of my friends have heard me rant about this one.) One of my favorite books, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, had been made into a movie, for some reason called Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I was excited to see it. I went to see it. Had the abbreviation WTF been in my vocabulary at the time, it would have been useful to describe my reaction: WTF have they done to my book?

Since then, of course, I’ve grown up and realized that books are books and movies are movies. I’ve even revisited Willy Wonka and cut everyone some slack. Still, when Johnny Depp starred in an extremely faithful-to-the-book version, I couldn’t help but feel a bit redeemed. (And yet they did add a completely unnecessary backstory for Wonka—seems everyone has to tinker.)

187/365/Books

In April, I think, when Alison I were “rescuing” a few things from the house like family photos, some of which were then shared at my father’s memorial service, I stole a boxed set of two beautiful hardback books: Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. What makes this 1943 set so special is that both books are illustrated with wood engravings by Fritz Eichenberg. They are stunning. I vividly remember reading this edition of Wuthering Heights, loving the artsy two-column format of the pages. I am 99.99% sure that my mother will not notice their absence, given the thousands of volumes in the house. Sometimes one chooses to not ask for a no.

(Check out this slideshow someone posted.) 

186/365/Books

Ever since I read Tourist Season (still my favorite, a book in which Floridian terrorists are killing off tourists for all the right good-cause reasons), Carl Hiaasen has been my guilty-pleasure author (although I’ve yet to read his 2016 Razor Girl). Last week, while I was in Maryland, there was a mass shooting in nearby Annapolis at the offices of the Capital newspaper. Hiaasen’s brother, managing editor and columnist Rob Hiaasen, was among the five dead. All of these shootings are desperately heartbreaking and rage producing. I’ve never read anything Rob wrote. But I’ve spent a lot of hours reading his brother. And there’s something about that, as I’m sure you’ll all agree, that makes it feel closer.

185/365/Books

You’d think with fewer than 100 pages to go, I would have picked up Life of the Skies last night. But no. Instead I dug out Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, one of my favorite books. When I heard that someone was making a musical of it, I was skeptical; but then I heard some Fresh Air interviews that interested me. So I went to see it on Broadway and completely blown away by it. Tomorrow I’m dragging Tim to a regional theatre production, hoping it’s good. Last night I wanted to look at the book.

Bechdel is coming to town July 14, the very day I leave for a couple of days away with Tim. It’s killing me. I want to get my books signed. Maybe I’ll find someone.

And if you don’t know about the Bechdel test, you should.

184/365/Books

I feel sorry for The Life of the Skies: Birding at the End of Nature. Not because it’s a bad book. On the contrary, it’s quite good. But it’s the book I was just starting when the shit hit the fan at the beginning of the year. Luck of the draw, I guess.

After our birding trip in September, when a fellow birder highly recommended the book to Tim, I got it for him for his birthday or Christmas or some December holiday. He read it quickly, then passed it to me.

I believe I have taken the book with me to Maryland six times. Most of the time, I read nothing on these trips. I barely read at home since all this happened. I have opted for alcohol and television.

Last night I made it to page 237 (after having to reread most of a chapter). I’m fewer than 100 pages out!

I did sneak an “easy,” poetic book in a couple of months ago. Luckily, chapters in Life of the Skies book can stand on their own.

Maybe soon I’ll be a reader again.

183/365/Books

“How many books do you think are in this house?” Alison asks me.

“Between 5,000 and 10,000?” I hazard, an extreme range, I realize.

“I was going to guess 7,000,” she says.

I think of glass jars of jellybeans or gumballs, guessing contests, wondering if there is a practical way to get at that number.

182/365/Books

My freelance life used to require the APA’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders as nearby reference. The newest incarnation, DSM-5, separated hoarding disorder from OCD into a distinct entity with the following diagnostic criteria: 

1. Persistent difficulty discarding or parting with possessions, regardless of their actual value.
2. This difficulty is due to a perceived need to save the items and to distress associated with discarding them.
3. The difficulty discarding possessions results in the accumulation of possessions that congest and clutter active living areas and substantially compromises their intended use. If living areas are uncluttered, it is only because of the interventions of third parties (eg, family members, cleaners, or the authorities).
4. The hoarding causes clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning (including maintaining an environment safe for oneself or others).
5. The hoarding is not attributable to another medical condition.
6. The hoarding is not better explained by the symptoms of another mental disorder (eg, obsessions in obsessive-compulsive disorder, decreased energy in major depressive disorder, etc).
7. Specifiers
1. With excessive acquisition
2. With good or fair insight
3. With poor insight
4. With absent insight/delusional beliefs