I did something really radical over this long holiday weekend: I took off. And I read for pleasure. Pleasure. No manuscripts. Just. What. I. Wanted. To. Read. I read Nicholson Baker’s The Anthologist, which my best friend from graduate school gave me. If you give a fig about poetry, don’t miss this book. It’s dishy and funny and all too true about the bitch-fest aka the world of poetry. It’s terrifically entertaining and sad and sweet. Really, I laughed my ass off, but then again I’m always up for a good discussion of trochaic verse.
Also, I’m a die-hard Philip Roth fan. ( I can’t stand it when people say they hate Roth because he’s misogynist. That’s precisely why I read him, among other things. That said, were you to reject him on those grounds, this book would give you ample reason, and yes I’m talking about the strap on dildo three-way with two young women and our aging protagonist.) Look, not one of his better novels (should have been packaged with his last two as a collection of three novellas if you ask me, which no one is), but there was still one thing I loved about it and am glad I read it because I’ll remember it my whole life.
I also caught up on a few New Yorkers. I find when you have a backlog of more than a month or six weeks of New Yorker magazines it really gets to be a burden. Still, I fell in love with this poem. And I read two of Sam Shephard’s short stories from his forthcoming collection. I was crazy about them, and still find myself thinking about them. Anyone read anything good over the holiday break?
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Betsy Lerner 
I’ve been reading short stories by Jim Hanas. I especially like his short story ‘Miss Tennessee’ about a couple that communicate by pretending to be talking to their dog. Hilarious. Hanas makes a lot of his work available for free download on his website: http://www.hanasiana.com/
Betsy, reading your blog makes me so excited about books!!!
Nicholson’s in the pile after Tracy Kidder. And I’m
talking Soul of a New Machine, though, not the new stuff. And the latest Roth has the most brilliant jacket I’ve seen in a long while.
I know. I love the jacket, too. It’s a Milton Glaser. http://www.miltonglaser.com/ There’s nothing better than a perfect jacket.
That was me anon, before. But looking at the Baker jacket– is that a reference to WCWilliams?
I’m reading – or should I say, attempting to read – a pile of books including And Here’s the Kicker: Conversations with 21 Top Humor Writers by Mike Sacks, and The Best Creative Nonfiction Volume Three edited by Lee Gutkind. No novels right now. Just finished Julie and Julia as well as The Orchid Thief. And just finished the turkey leftovers.
I started Austerlitz (W.G. Sebald) and don’t know what to make of it.
I’m catching up on some issues of the The Sun that have been piling up.
And, I read The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams. A poetic, edgy, page turning novel. Check it out. I couldn’t put it down.
I snacked this holiday on books and mags stacked bedside: New Yorkers, Margaret Atwood’s “Surfacing”, some of Denis Johnson’s “Jesus’ Son”, some of Lorrie Morre’s “Self-Help” and an odd ball book called “The Geographical History of America or The Relation of Human Nature to the Human Mind ” by Gertrude Stein.
Agree about Shephard. Have never read Roth. Will now.
One of the sad things that has happened to me since officially becoming a writer is that I find it hard to get totally swept up in a book anymore. I still long for those days when I would sink into the sofa and into a book and then surface hours later and not know where I was. (I think the peak was when I was about 10–although I “became” a writer much later.) When I read now, I am always trying to learn something about craft, and I am always hyperaware of what effect another’s work might have on my own, good or bad.
I think it’s because when I’m working on something, that is the most fascinating story in the world to me, and so the bar is set very, very high for whatever else I might be reading. I also get picky about reading something that is similar but not too similar, etc. etc.
That being said, I am currently reading The Sea, by John Banville, which won the Booker a few years back. His language is amazing, extraordinary. It is sucking me in by the sheer beauty and brilliance of his craft.
Also, last August I wasn’t getting much work done (on vacation with my kids), and I felt a little freer about what I’d allow myself to spend time reading. The Shadow of the Wind was amazing. I also loved Marisa Silver’s The God of War (not just because of Henry either). And recently I went back and read some Peter Taylor, who is always so subtle and sly.
I’ve got The Swimming Pool LIbrary by Alan Hollinghurst to read this week for my book club–it looks good.
And thank you for mentioning the Nicholson Baker–I had been circling that one and now I will pounce, because of your recommendation.
Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest. Am feeling very noir.
I read THE MAGICIANS over the weekend. Well, 48 hours of it. I couldn’t put it down. Lev Grossman for the win!
I read “My Life in France”, the Julia Child memoir . Her husband’s nephew, Paul Prud’homme, (Julia’s co-author) crewed a vat of old letters and interviews with Julia into a ship-shape manuscript and he does a bang-up job getting her voice on every page — you have to love a gal who owns up to her nickname, “Juke the Puke”. The book (like the movie that was based on it) is a terrific spiel all about Getting Published; but I might not be the most objective reader when it comes to that.
I also read “House of Cards” by David Ellis Dickerson, about how he wrote greeting cards for Hallmark while working through his fundamentalist Christian upbringing. It made me think three things: One, I wonder why there aren’t more workplace memoirs; Two,Boy, the stakes are really high for memoir writing these days if you have to write so explicitly about your repressed sex life just to get a book deal about writing about Hallmark cards (I would have been happy just to read about the office politics at Hallmark, thank you); and Three, Since when did “contributing” to This American Life become a platform??
And Four: “House of Cards” is one of the very, very few books I’ve read that gets better in the second half.
Oh, right: I was also reading the Harry and David catalog, which is torture for someone who dislikes all fruit, Pepper and Onion Relish, or chocolate covered pecans as much as I do. Even the popcorn has inedible stuff in it (like cashews). Are you sure you wouldn’t like a nice cat instead?
I refuse to succumb to the tyranny of a mounting pile of New Yorkers, and often pitch them all into the recycle bin, unread. What? Why are you looking at me like that? Then I eat a Twinkie or three and watch back-to-back episodes of Keeping Up With The Kardashians until my eyes bleed. Did you think I was all highbrow or something?
I just read Mary Karr’s Lit (fabulous), Ron Koertge’s Strays (also fab) and Jonathan Franzen’s book of essays How To Be Alone (some fab, some not my taste, all incredibly well written).
Sarah Manguso’s memoir, Two Kinds of Decay. She recently gave a reading at the public library here in Gainesville.
The latest Cheever bio.
Lit by Mary Karr.
Also, the companion book to the PBS film, In the Steps of Marco Polo. Too many freaking typos in that one, but what an adventure!
I love Philip Roth also, but have not read much of him, just Everyman.
Howards End. Awesome.
A wonderful travel memoir, The Way of the World (L’Usage du monde) by Nicolas Bouvier. The Swiss author and his artist friend Thierry Vernat set off from Belgrade in 1953 to drive, over the course of a couple of years, to the Hindu Kush in a tiny Fiat. This is one of the NYRB editions; what a great series that is.
A stunning and lyrical young adult novel–Birdland by Tracy Mack. Next on my list, the young adult novel Marcelo in the Real World ….
great stuff!!