Dang good day.

What made it good:

1. two workouts
2. good oatmeal for breakfast. The best, really.
3. great consults with students in the Student Writing Center. The best, really.
4. put on my new red dress. Again: the best.
5. considered what shoes to wear--and made the right call.

Then, I got to read at The King's English, and it was wonderful.

I was just about to write about how the literary reading is such a strange kind of event. But you know? I really felt so lucky tonight, lucky and happy. So whatever--the generosity and goodness and pleasure of this event--the affiliation, the kindness, the love--and if literary readings are strange, well then, so be it, because at least tonight, this one was so wonderful:

6. my mom and dad were there. Mom! Dad! I'm so glad you were there!
7. my daughter and her husband came, and brought floral good wishes from all the kids, and we went to dinner afterward--perfect.
8. so many good friends came. my friends are truly the best.
9. and acquaintances and people I didn't even know came. Thank you, everyone!
10. people I love who couldn't make it sent me kind notes, so sweet.
11. Ann Cannon the Great introduced me, especially precious to me since we have known each other forever. So good.
12. The King's English is a class joint, you guys. Let's all buy all our books there.

I'm like a bliss bomb right now. So happy.

Reading list (and a few comments on the beginning of the semester).

I will read any laudatory article about Serena Williams whatsoever. Because I love her. But this is a very good one.

Next year in Scotland... (thanks to my daughter for this one!)

Not that I am the sort to think real hard about the stock market, but 'The stock market is not the economy' seems like a good mantra.

Recommended by Nikwalk: this and this.

Written by Nicole Walker: this.

This gorgeousness.

I could never.

The people, my moods, they have been up and down and up and down and up again. Perhaps the splendor of our Scotland trip has ruined me for my regular life. At least for now. Or maybe I'm almost over it. I worked out twice today, as if I were a high school football boy and as if I were doing two-a-days. That's what I told myself: I'm doing two-a-days. I am surprised, and why should I be, by the fact that the mornings are a little darker and the evenings fall a little quicker. Yesterday when I was doing pull downs, I heard Pat Benatar singing 'We Belong,' and I felt really, really good. If I were a karaoke person, this might be my karaoke song. I can sing all the parts. I won't deny that I sang it a little bit while I was doing the weights. I am not sick of Beck, 'Wide Open,' not one little bit. Tonight I had dinner with two colleagues, and we ate all manner of good things and sat on the patio and laughed while we ate. I came home and did one last orientation with online students who may or may not themselves be feeling dubious about the beginning of the new semester.

Fact: starting the new semester is an up and down and up and down and up again proposition.

To read:

This is the list I composed from looking at other people's lists. So, you know, 

a collage. Of books I would like to read. I am going to read one book a week, 

on average, or at least that is whatI'm hoping to do. So far I have read 

The Golem & the Jinni, The Testament of Mary, parts of The Best American 

Food Writing 2013, and I'm into the Mary Szybist and Frank Bidart 

books of poetry.

I hope to find many of these books in the library. Or else spend a fortune at 

bookstores (and on Amazon, let's be truthful).

What, pray tell, are you reading right now? And what do you hope to read?

Short notes to authors.

Dear Arnaldur Indridason,

I am enjoying reading Black Skies. In fact, when I couldn't sleep last night, I started it and read over half of it before finally going back to bed. It is haunting and grave, and I am pretty well impressed with how you manage to weave plots and points of view, all without fanfare or folderol. It's very good.

But where is Erlendur? I am worried about him.

No, really,

htms.

**

Dear Patrick Rothfuss,

I remember when I saw the ad for The Name of the Wind in the New York Times. I thought to myself I want to read that book. Literally, from the ad, not even the actual cover. The picture of the cover, in an ad, made me want to read it. When I finally put the title and my desire together with an actual book purchase, it was excellent. Maybe excellent for fantasy, but maybe just plain old excellent. I loved it.

I did what anyone does--I Googled you, and found out your story, which I loved--that you had written a great shaggy tome, and got a book deal, and the tome contained (of course it did) a trilogy-esque work--tripartite in scope. Oh yay! I thought. More book! More Chronicle!

But of course, you're still working on it. Look, I'm a writer too. I get it. But let me tell you this, Mr. Rothfuss: part two had about 25% too much land of faery. Maybe more than that--45% too much, even. So while you're revising part 3, a word to the wise: you might be overthinking it. One more word to the wise: don't overthink it.

love,

htms

**

Dear Fred Vargas,

Oh how I love and adore your Commissaire Adamsberg and his weird French-y world. I thought your most recent book was splendid, with its Northern European Gothic skeleton riders and what not. All full of woodsy woods and village secrets and Calvados. Well done!

Is there any reason we--and by we I mean you, obviously, although I like to think that I am entirely on your side--okay, is there any reason we couldn't be putting these books out at the rate of one a year? I know it would improve my life. They are, after all, procedurals. Shouldn't there just be a procedure for writing them un petit peu trop vite? S'il vous plait?

a bientot,

htms

My lecture library.

Today while I was slinking around the internet, trying to find out if Kate Bernheimer's book of new myths is out yet (it's not--this fall, apparently), I found this: an account of her current bookshelves, from the Sonora Review.

Here are some books on my shelves at the moment:

Metahistory
Hayden White


"In this theory I treat the historical work as what it most manifestly is: a verbal structure in the form of a narrative prose discourse." (Preface)





The Truth About Stories
Thomas King

"But don't say in the years to come that you would have lived your life differently if only you had heard this story. You've heard it now."

Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory
David Herman et al

"...the disnarrated comprises those elements in a narrative which explicitly consider and refer to what does not take place (but could have)."

Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights

Marina Warner

"The power of stories to forge destinies has never been so memorably and sharply put as it is in this cycle, in which the blade of the executioner's sword lies on the storyteller's neck: the Arabian Nights present the supreme case for storytelling because Shahrahzad wins her life through her art."

The Silent History
Eli Horowitz, Russell Quinn, Matthew Derby, and Kevin Moffett

"I guess the first element was that I wanted to create a novel that you could somehow explore."






 
In conclusion, I think we can all agree I need a detective novel to read, and not a moment too soon.

On reading.

Near the end of the year, last year, the year of our Lord 2012, I found myself not reading. Well, I was reading, of course: reading student portfolios and posts on the internet. By the score. Finding recipes, reading those. A magazine or so to leaf through.

But no books, nothing to lose myself in, no big stories. It was disturbing. I would say to myself, I've got to find a book to read. And then I would go on, not finding a book to read, thus reading posts on the internet and recipes and a magazine or so. It was a very sad state of affairs.

In the year of our Lord 2013, however, I have found myself reading again. This happened, largely, as I wrestled with myself over Lidia Yuknavitch's Dora: A Head Case. Which I was reading for my book group. As is the case so often, when I'm reading something that I need to read for some external purpose, such as a book group which I myself chose to belong to, I resist the book, which is obviously trying to be the boss of me. I put in my request to the library's robot, which obliged me almost immediately with the book, and also a Norwegian police procedural. In an absolute miracle of self-discipline, I required myself to finish Dora before I started the Norwegian treat.

I found the character of Dora to be excessively mean and I found her voice to be only intermittently in the author's firm control. Yet I found, as I resisted and persisted, that the book moved me and gave me things to think about, and I am still, in a sense, in the grip of Dora, a little.

I began the Norwegian procedural with great happiness, since I knew and liked the main character very much. About five-eighths of the way through the novel, when there were too many characters in an excess of jeopardy, I skipped to the final pages to find out who made it and who didn't. Then, I went back and read the remainder of the book slowly and carefully. It was excellent.

Next, I read the long-awaited third installment in a young adult series. Very gratifying.

In the meanwhile, I have assembled most if not all of the books I have bought but I have not yet read. That's how I came to pick up Joshua Ferris's The Unnamed, which I found to be devastating and beautiful. There were no apparent felicity conditions for my reading of it: it isn't part of a series, it's not a piece of genre fiction, and I did not read it for my book group. Instead, I picked it up because now, apparently, I am reading again. It is pure joy.

I KNOW!

Happily, I got an e-mail from the library's robot today, informing me that three of the books on which I had placed a hold were awaiting me on a shelf in the "Holds" section. I drove to the library after work and found not three but five books, each with a slip of paper in it with my name on it. I am reading, I am reading. I have books on deck. Life is good.

What shall I read?

Over the holidays, while I was organizing stuff, by which I mean "moving stuff from one place to another," I brought to the surface of my holiday-bedazzled brain this thought: "I should put all the books I want to/should read in the same place, so I will know what I have to read that I haven't already read."

Then I went and ate a couple gum drops and a couple cookies and surfed the internet and scrubbed out the lasagne pan and turned on the Christmas lights and watched sitcom reruns and slept, sort of, and woke up and ate some Frosted Mini-Wheats and thought, "Now what was it I was going to do again?" And hung up some clothes and did some laundry and downloaded some new music and made a list of the movies I want to see this week, if I see a movie every day, which, why shouldn't I? and read some stuff in my files and got the mail and asked myself, "Now what shall I read?"

The reality is, the people, that none of the books on my newly curated Books I Own But Have Not Yet Read shelf are books that have seized me by the epaulets and said, "Now listen, soldier, you need to get off that internet, straighten up and fly right and read me!" and made me say "Sir yes sir!" Instead of thus seizing me and whipping me back into reading shape, what these books are doing is looking at me balefully, pointing out my character flaws, such as

(a) lazy
(b) no stick-to-it-iveness
(c) unfocused
(d) am not Prince Hamlet nor was meant to be
(e) dawdly and unambitious

Okay, judgmental books, I get it, but you won't tell me the answer to the question: whatever shall I read? I have been in the middle of this one book  for so long that I have forgotten who the detectives all are and the main details of one of the two crimes. But Lord! I do not want to start it over, and heaven knows that I cannot move on to the last two books in the series until I finish it. Also, I fear my library's robot is not paying attention to me, since I put in a hold request for a book that is allegedly on the shelves, and yet I have heard nary a peep, nary a beep boop beep, from the robot. Robot, O Robot, wherefore dost thou turn thy book-reserving back on me?

What is there to do, then, but take pictures of the snow? I ask you.

Today's stats:

New music: Bombay Bicycle Club (thx jason mcf!)
walks: a short one at 10:45 p.m. in the breath-freezing cold
enjoying my life: lovely lunch with friends; dinner and a movie with my husband

I need a book to read.

--a book that is more compelling than the internet.

Dear reader: what are you reading?

Last night I dreamed that Mitt Romney was in my writing group.

This election needs to happen, and quickly.

In other news, my writing group is meeting tomorrow, at my house, which means a tart is in the offing, and also ratatouille.

Also, I wrote a draft of a new poem today.

Also, I got my necklace fixed, one with a super fragile chain. "Be careful, please," the jeweler told me after he (a) fixed my necklace and (b) gave me a reduced rate because he has fixed it so often. I did, however, feel slightly chastised. I should just buy a new chain, but I love this one because it is so delicate, which is a synonym for "fragile," which is a synonym for "breaks often." But I will be careful, whatever that may mean. I thought I was being careful.

Tonight we saw Cosmopolis, a David Cronenberg adaptation of Don DeLillo's novel of the same title. I was fascinated by this movie and the novel, but your mileage may vary. I was not sorry I saw it, not in the least.

I am currently reading this about Obama and Clinton. And also this, which is pretty dang interesting.


Tomorrow I will get up and make pie crust. And then I will add more stuff to my poem. In the new and improved version, I hope to use the literal translation of a Japanese song, "Sakura Sakura," that my nephew did for me. Thank you, my nephew!

Long form avoidance behavior.

A few things I've been reading lately:

they are awesome.

On the Williams sisters: this and this. I only just read the Times Sunday Magazine piece today; found the Kottke comment tonight. I liked the Times piece more than he did--it felt, to me, poetic.

On David Foster Wallace: this, this and this.  I ran into the review of the new D.T. Max biography of Wallace on Slate, and the other two links were in that review.

This is where I went to college. Or BYU, I forget.

I also listened to this, then ran into this (also via Kottke). After awhile, you run into enough of this stuff, and stop panicking, either because it's kind of fascinating, or because you've become numb, or maybe both.






Also this, which I'm sure you've already seen, plus this excellent comment from a local blogger, which you might not have seen. Loved both. Trying to come up with a cogent way to thread this into my online class. 

It goes without saying that I listened to and read most of the above instead of doing other, more worthy stuff. Obviously. So factor that in, however you do your factoring.

A good afternoon.

Today, because I was invited to read at the City Art Meltdown--between fifteen and twenty writers, reading for five minutes each--I spent the afternoon working on my two poems.

Back when summer, by which I mean "the period before the teaching starts," was winding up, I told myself that I would be able to find time to write several days or several hours a week. That has yet to happen. I am not giving up hope yet, but so far...so far, the teaching is occupying a fair amount of the space. I am going to have to work harder to find that time, to make that time.

But today, because of the reading, I spent a few hours working on a couple of poems. Revising poems. A very satisfying few hours. I worked in my office for a couple of hours, printed out my drafts, and went home. I told myself a story about how I needed a nap, and I set my cell phone alarm for forty-five minutes later, and closed my eyes, which felt very, very tired.

Two minutes later, I sat up and took out one of the poems, and read it several times aloud, editing as I went. I made those changes on my laptop and printed it out again.

I still think this poem--the Tom Jones poem, for your information--probably needs more work and more trimming. But it was in good enough shape to read, I think, and it was good to spend the time with it.

Now my task is to look at my calendar and make notes about where I can find an hour here, an hour there, to spend more time with writing.

Some stuff I've been

reading: this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this

watching: this

admiring: this and this

planning to eat soon: this, this and this  (yep, again)

looking forward to: this and this

hoping to wear this fall: this  (after it goes on sale)

crying about:  this and this, today (and also possibly this, a little, on television, for which there is absolutely no excuse)

listening to: this and this

finding heartstopping: this (like a time machine)

May I just say

that it was hot when we drove down the mountain, and then it was hotter. But the historian heroically hooked up the swamp cooler, and life looked better from that moment on.

Here's how I would summarize our Idaho sojourn:

• we saw lots of new places in and around the Island Park caldera
• I slept like a champ, most nights, and averaging out the sleep got at least 8 hours every night--sleep worth noting! Huzzah!
• read 10,000 books, or a lot of them anyway.
• ate mostly healthy food, and 
• got my writing groove on.

Now that I am back in my regular house, I am happy to contemplate

• having the coolness, due to swamp cooleritude
• eating mostly healthy food, but especially Mexican food--that's healthy, right?
• reading another 10,000 books
• sleeping like a champ (I hope I hope I hope I hope)
• writing two hours every day.

That's right. Two hours. Every day. It is good. You turn off the internet and you write. You pick up something you wrote yesterday or the day before, and add some more to it. You free write something using a topic or prompt or idea you thought of. But the main thing you do is you write words, and you do not do internet "research," which sometimes turns into internet "shopping," as in you buy a book you need because you need to know something. For your poem. NO. You turn the internet OFF and you write words. For two hours, and that is a promise, the people.

After I have written two hours, I plan to watch lots of movies. I consider seeing movies to be part of my purpose in life, which could be considered part of my job. And, therefore, since it is my job to see the movies, you can count on me: I will see them. I will see all the movies.

Variations on a book.

A few days ago on The Face, a friend commented that she was about to write by clearing a space on the table, reading a few pages from her "Bible" (which for her, that day, was The English Patient), turning off the internet, and writing. I loved this idea. I brought with me to Idaho a bunch of books that could serve the "Bible" role--for me, for a few days, it was Larry Levis's Selected--and I used this method to jumpstart my writing.

It was amazing to me, though, how deeply some of those poems have penetrated my...what, my tropes? images? paradigms? For instance, this:

I know this isn't much.
But I wanted to explain this life to you, even if
I had to become, over the years, someone else to do it.
You have to think of me what you think of me. I had
To live my life, even in its late, florid style.

That's from "My Story in a Late Style of Fire," from Winter Stars. I bought that book before the first meeting of the first workshop I attended, taught by Larry Levis. Evidently, I have been reading this poem for all the years since. It was, actually, shocking to me. I not only love this poem--it, in some sense, has become me. Or I have become it. I guess this happens with every book that, in some way, forms us.

I remember thinking quite clearly at one point in my life that I no longer wanted to keep having the same arguments. In a sense, I wanted to stop reading the same book. This is, of course, not possible, or at least I have not found it to be so. We keep reading the same books that have read us. These books--the ones that form us--are us. We are them. In this sense, we never really leave our old books behind--our old lives, our old ideas and commitments--we are always in them, they are always in us.

Right now, I am wondering if there's even a point to saying, of this phenomenon, this is terrible or this is true or any such judgement. I am wondering, what, in fact, the Bible is--the rotating cast of sacred books, or beautiful books, or searing, or visionary, or transformative books. Can you choose your Bible? or does it in some way always choose you?

My family used to love to play a little game, where we'd name the top five records, or books, or movies, or whatever--the ones you'd take with you to a place where you'd have those and no other. My kids would always joke with me that I acted like it was real--like I'd never be able to revise my list. I always put Leaves of Grass on my list of books, and I did always put the King James Bible. To me, whatever else it was, it was a book of beautiful language, and parts of it mean a great deal to me--words that feed me. Even when I'm choosing, my old book follows me.

If you are of the book--sacred or secular-- then books that choose you--or the ones that you choose--give you the frame for thinking and feeling. I feel I might never stop being able to read through the original books--the original books speaking, always, through every new text. At this point in my life, I'm not sure why I should even try, aside from understanding that mine--my reading, my writing--isn't the only way.

I am asking myself: what is it that my own poems are doing? what news do they have to deliver? what beauty of their own? what voice or beauty that isn't somehow ventriloquizing, quarreling with, revising, contradicting, singing the old books?

Larry Levis again, speaking in a borrowed voice--the voice of Whitman:

Now that I'm required reading in your high schools,
Teenagers call me a fool.
Now what I sang stops breathing. 

And yet
It was only when everyone stopped believing in me
That I began to live again--

Reading:

This:

All I could smell were damp clouds and water slipping through the tundra. I could not find what startled the bear. I could not smell the humanness, the incomprehensible scent that sends a full-grown grizzly running like a scared cat. I breathed deeper when the bear was a dot of gold light a mile away[.] ("Bear," The Animal Dialogues, Craig Child)

and this:

Some might claim that this is a book of solitudes. (Becoming Animal, David Abram)

and this:

We'd compete, daring each other to go as far as we could, marking our limits. "We're being chased by wolves, and we have to run," or "Whoever goes farthest's vizier," we said. I was the third-best southgoer in my gang. In our usual spot, there was a Hostnest in fine alien colours tethered by creaking ropes of muscle to a stockade, that in some affectation the Hosts had fashioned like one of our wicker fences. I'd creep up on it while my friends whistled from the crossroads. (Embassytown,  China Mieville)

and this:

I have to step
over the dark threshold
A hall.
The white document gleams.
With so many shadows moving.
Everyone wants to sign it. ("Signatures," The Great Enigma, Tomas Transtromer)

and this:

It isn't that I don't sympathize with the lassitude. I understand it all too well. Creativity demands an ability to be with oneself at one's least attractive, that sometimes it's just easier not to do anything. Writing--I can really only speak to writing here--always, always only starts out as shit: an infant of monstrous aspect; bawling, ugly, terrible, and it stays terrible for a long, long time. Unlike cooking, for example, where largely edible, if raw, ingredients are assembled, cut, heated, and otherwise manipulated into something both digestible and palatable, writing is closer to having to reverse-engineer a meal out of rotten food. ("Isn't It Romantic?" Half Empty, David Rakoff)

Also: writing, eating, sleeping, walking, internetting.

I said good day.

Reading.

I have Game of Thrones, and I've read about 60 pages of it, but it's due tomorrow, and it can't be renewed, because there are others waiting for it. I have two Nesbos, which I have set aside because I was reading Game of Thrones. I think I'll wait till summer to read it and its brethren, because I think I'll enjoy it more if I can get a run at it and then keep going. So I should start one of the Nesbos, or read some poetry or something dignified. Also, there's a pile of magazines. Sometimes there's too much to choose from. It's an absurd predicament. This is the kind of predicament that makes me feel tired of myself. Who complains about this? Me, that's who.

Anyway, tonight, we went out to fulfill the promise of my own New Year's resolution, to go to at least one reading a month. January was a wash, but there was also a lot of sickness in that month. I have written myself my own doctor's note for January. February, I've gone to two, but one of them was my own. I really enjoyed tonight's reading--I got to see the people, I fulfilled my own promise to myself, and the reading was good, some parts especially good. It made me want to write. Why did I forget this about readings? I don't know. But I'm looking forward to more of them now, if for this reason alone.

Sunday.

I am reading.

You may recall a recent resolution of mine to "always be reading," and I am enjoying this aspect of the adventure we're all calling "2012."

I recently finished Diane Keaton's memoir, Then Again.  Keaton isn't a stylist, but she is a collagist, and her assemblages in this book--of her own letters, diary entries, memories, juxtaposed with her mother's extensive journals and scrapbooks, make a book that is more than compelling--it's poignant and evocative.

While I was reading Diane Keaton--I had to stop at certain sad parts--I was also reading An Uncertain Place, which is a police procedural with vampiri, or people who were said to be vampiri. also, there are forays into both London and Servia, and the original vampire's name is Blagojovich, believe it or not. I love this series by Fred Vargas, with Commissaire Adamsberg. They always seem to be maybe just a little bit too whimsical and random, and then they knit together in such satisfying ways. The only problem with this series is that they don't get translated into English quickly enough. Get on it, publishers and translators!

Now I am reading a novel by Jo Nesbo, The Devil's Star. I fear that I didn't get the first book in this series, which means I will have to pull the history of this series together out of sequence, harumph. Even so, I loved the writing in this book from the very first paragraph. However, the Scandinavian detectives--they all have issues with alcohol, it seems. I don't think that's a spoiler. Also, the detective's name is Harry Hole. I'm sure that doesn't signify the same in Norwegian, but still.

I have piles of books waiting to be read when I finish off the Nesbo. There's another Nesbo and then another Scandinavian writer whose name I can't remember--it was a book/cover (and Scandinavian name) (and genre) scenario. Oh, and also another Scandinavian, but a different one. That's three Scandinavians. I also have piles of Le Carre, but possibly my motivation has slackened, since I already read Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. We'll see. I will start the novel and see. I really have loved other Le Carre.

Finally, when I was at Target yesterday, not buying shoes, I bought Mindy Kaling's book. I already put a hold on it at the public library, but I was like number 1257 in the queue (< -- exaggeration). I picked up the book and read the part that talked about "BFF Rights and Responsibilities," remembering my oldest friend. But then I put the book back and said to myself, get real, this book will come out in paperback or someone else will buy it and you can borrow it or 1257 people is not so many, it'll go like [snaps fingers] that! Then I picked the book up again and read where Mindy said that the ratio of getting ready to write (organizing snacks for writing and looking stuff up on the internet and getting comfortable clothes and making tea and what not) and writing itself was about 7:1.

Oh yeah, I bought that book.

2011 in books.

Here are the books I bought/read in 2011, in no particular order:

susan hill: all the inspector simon serailler series. the first I read was the pure in heart, and it was so good that I immediately read all of them, ending with the most recent, the betrayal of trust. sometimes her town, lafferton, seems a little too crowded with people to care about, but mostly that means she's a good novelist and not just a genre-ist. recommended.

best american poetry 2011: I will be using this to teach with in the spring. some fantastic stuff in there, including a poem by sherman alexie and three sonnets by olena kalytiak davis.

walks through lost paris: a journey into the heart of historic paris (leonard pitts): so interesting. I was maybe hoping a little for a sense of the medieval paris, but this focuses on the transformations of the haussmann era, which were vast. lots of amazing pictures.

understanding style (glaser). I heard this was more accessible than kolln's rhetorical grammar. this remains to be seen. I will (maybe) report, once I've taken a closer look.

fearless speech, foucault: bought because I saw it featured on brian kubarycz's website. the historian read it immediately, so I have his report on it. I must, in fact, retrieve it from his desk.

the kingdom of ordinary time & what the living do (howe): I heard marie howe read at awp last year and loved her. these poems are beautiful and plainspoken.

kindertotenwald (franz wright): to read for this month's book group. I really enjoyed wright's walking to martha's vineyard, so am looking forward to this.

an uncertain place (vargas): the latest installment in fred vargas's commissaire adamsberg series of police procedurals, which are, to my mind, almost folkloric, mythic in their uptake of the genre. I am reading it right now.

at home: a short history of private life (bryson): for book group this fall. still to read.

great house (nicole krauss): I really loved this. four characters and their circles are connected by a large writing desk which is in each one's possession for a time. in retrospect, I can understand the critique that the voices of the four characters should have been more differentiated, but I loved the intricacy of the plot and found the entire story very moving. 

a visit from the goon squad (jennifer egan): as dr. write says, perhaps this would have been better as a novel, with the most interesting stories more fully worked out. yet, just as she did, I loved this book anyway--there were so many parts that really seized my heart, and she's a very good writer.

wanderlust (elizabeth eaves): I recommended this book to my book group on the strength of an npr interview with its author. sigh. it was better conceptually than it was in execution. still, readable, especially if you slide over the iffy parts.

onions in the stew (macdonald): another book in the unending quest to find the one book that was in my parents' house growing up--it wasn't a children's or young adult's book, it was a novel or perhaps a memoir, I loved it, read it multiple times, but cannot remember the title or author or anything about it except that it had a yellow cloth cover and an illustrated flyleaf. alas, this is not the book I remember, although it does have a yellow cloth cover. betty macdonald was the author of the mrs. piggle-wiggle series, in case you want to know. 

eeei (byrne): "envisioning emotional epistemological information," is what the "eeei" stands for.  david byrne uses powerpoint as an art medium. I love that.

modern english grammar (oxford): everybody needs one.

crossing state lines: an american renga (bob dolman, carol muske-dukes): dolman and muske-dukes coordinated a massive renga project, where fifty-four poets wrote connecting stanzas of the same poem. an awesome undertaking, don't you agree?

I think I love you (pearson): for book club. loved this book--found it enormously moving by the end. featuring david cassidy as a character.

I don't know how she does it (person): after reading the above, I felt I had to read this. I read it in one fell swoop--it disturbed me and worried me and I found it quite good by the end.

the mystic arts of erasing all signs of death (huston): recommended to me by middlebrow. a little gory and a little unsettling, but ultimately this story of a guy who works for a crime clean-up crew and (of course) gets tangled up in some actual crime--pretty awesome. this charlie huston can write.

come on all you ghosts (zapruder): loved this. heard matthew zapruder read at awp, part of a panel on using history to write. his was the least literally historical, but I loved the flat yet somehow still capable-of-liftoff qualities of his voice, particularly in the title poem.

5 very good reasons to punch a dolphin in the mouth: comics and illustrations and other visual awesomeness. from the oatmeal, aka matthew inman.

that this (howe): bought this book as a consequence of hearing susan howe read at awp (sensing a theme here...). I don't know that this book is "readable," exactly, but it is beautiful--it has as a centerpiece text-collages taken from the jonathan edwards archive. 

bird lovers, backyard (field): I have dipped into this. it has poems/essays using factual and scientific material, blended with poetic and fictive means.

sacred sites: the secret history of southern california (suntree): adding this epic/historic poem/essay to my collection of works about southern california. there's a lot to learn, especially about the pre/non-historic. 

the book of ten (wood): this book of poems comes highly recommended. now if I can only find where I put it...

wise men's fear (kingkiller chronicles, day 2) (patrick rothfuss): I read this compulsively on my trip to scotland last March. it's the sequel to the name of the wind, which was the better book, maybe, but this had lots of pleasures. now rothfuss needs to get on that third volume, and make it snappy.

electronic monuments (electronic mediations) (ulmer): I love greg ulmer because he is an optimist. this is a fairly recent book, his meditation on the act of monumentalizing, especially in light of the debate about how best to officially commemorate the events of 9/11 in new york. he sees the memorials created by ordinary people as an alternative method of memorializing.

kiki smith: a gathering, 1980-2005: a volume to accompany a retrospective of kiki smith's work, which we saw at the walker art center in minneapolis. fantastic.

instant indesign: designing templates for fast and efficient page layout:  still learning.

the bridge (remnick): a wonderfully readable book about obama's life and political rise, ending with his election. I loved reading pretty much every word of this tome.

kraken (mieville): still in the middle of this. I love mieville--this centers on a squid-worshipping cult in london, and the theft of a giant specimen from the natural history museum. fast-paced, squalid, funny...also, there is a giant mess of a plot, which I may or may not be a little lost in. just saying.

bossypants, by the inimitable tina fey, who is so dang smart it is ridiculous. I loved this book.

the troubled man & the man from beijing (henning mankell): the last of the wallender novels and a non-wallender novel. both very readable and intelligent. may I politely say, one last time, that I don't find mankell to be the most amazing writer ever? I did love the character of kurt wallender, and the settings and the crimes, but I thought the books were uneven, or rather, some books were not as good as others. however: I did read each and every one of them. so there's that. adios, wallender. I will miss reading those stories.

the financial lives of the poets (jess walter): swell. just swell. a little absurd but still: swell. in that vein,

the anthologist (nicholson baker): also just swell. I loved both of these books that are, in part, about the literary life. 

I think there are probably some more...for instance, I may or may not have reread each and every one of the harry potter novels at a time of great stress. I found them comforting. but this list will do. 

I am in the middle of these books.

I am reading Great House for my book group. I'm about halfway through it, and so far I am finding it rather brilliant. Each new chapter brings you up short, because it is in the voice of a character you haven't met before, but whom you will discover to be linked to the threads of the other chapters/characters in some unexpected way.

I am also reading this book about Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher's several years spent in Dijon, back in the late 20s and early 30s. Her style is desultory and devil-may-care, and she apparently ate and drank like a wolf and a fish, respectively. And I can respect that. The historian gave me this book for my birthday. This may be the closest I get to living in France sometime. I hate to be pessimistic, but there you are. However, I think I can say without a trace of pessimism that this is the closest I will get to living in France in the late 20s and early 30s, and for that fact, I want to express my gratitude to this book and its giver.

I am also reading this book, another birthday book. Actually, I have only read the preface to this book. I am afraid that this book is going to make me cry.

I am also reading this book, given to me by my mom and dad for my birthday. I love its author. She is a true original.

I am also reading this very interesting account of several family journeys to the places on the American map (lower 48) that seem to have the least human habitation, as evidenced by a nighttime aerial map, which shows where there is artificial light. The places include a stretch of the St. John river in Maine, central Pennsylvania, southeast Oregon, and part of the Gila Wilderness in New Mexico. It is very interesting, as I too have a fascination with what is vast and empty.

This is a lot of books to be reading at one time. I am finding, though, that picking up nonfiction, particularly, a little at a time means I end up finishing more books than if I insist that I plow right through. I also have some books waiting in the wings, such as A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore, and Kraken by China Mieville, and some things I am supposed to read and watch, such as Andre Agassi's memoir Open and The Pianist, and the last season of Saving Grace and the first season of The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which I would very much like to do. I would, however, like to find an uninterrupted, oh, month, to do that reading and watching. A month in another dimension. Can't we, in this modern era, come up with the Uninterrupted Month Dimension?