Role Models by John Waters

I like John Waters a lot. That is to say, I like him in the same way I like Werner Herzog. I have only a passing familiarity with his films, and I don't have an incredibly strong opinion on them (I mean, I LIKED Fitzcarraldo, but am I going to watch Fitzcarraldo again? Girl, please). As a PERSON, though, I love John Waters. He's an icon of subversiveness, yet he comes across as warm and likable. He can explain weird things in such a way that they seem normal, and vice versa. Most importantly, this guy is NOT ASHAMED of the things he likes. He puts it all out there in his book Role Models, which I seriously think has the best cover of any book I've ever seen in my life.

Listen, I'm saying this because I love you. If you're anything like me (and if you're reading this, you're probably a little like me), you're going to love this book. Drop whatever you're doing now and go get your grubby little hands on it. Actually, make sure you get the audio book. It's read by John himself and it is a real treat to hear him say things like, "I'm sorry, but I like Alvin and the Chipmunks more than the Beatles." Right now I am listening to the essay on Leslie Van Houten and it is blow-your-mind good. I may have made myself a promise not to watch anymore movies about cults (because of the terrible, disturbing nightmares I was having, and because I am one of the few people under 70 who really fears cults and thinks about them almost every day), but I didn't make any rules about reading books by iconic directors wherein one of the essays is about a member of the most notorious cult. Read this now!

Shortcomings - Adrian Tomine

First things first: I love Adrian Tomine. When H. and I visited Lauren in New York, I bought his bag at The Strand. This one!

I've loved him since high school, when all I knew of him was his comic in The Best American Non-Required Reading 2002. Yes, 2002. I didn't realize how long ago that was until I typed it out. Anyway, believe it or not, in 2002 the internet basically didn't exist for me. You're all, "The internet totally existed!" and, okay, yeah, TECHNICALLY it did. But in Winfrey-land, all we had was dial-up, and I'm pretty sure I didn't know how to buy books online.
Now that I'm living in the future, I was able to check out Shortcomings from H's public library, because now lots of libraries have large Graphic Novel sections. For some reason, I decided to read Shortcoming at 3 a.m. last night/this morning. I don't understand the things I do, either. It left me in a profoundly Disturbed Emotional State wherein I became convinced that my life was absolutely terrible. To be fair, there are some obvious flaws in my life, but overall things are not going that badly. Try telling this to 3 a.m. me, though. I actually couldn't get back to sleep. Do you know how often I have trouble sleeping? Never! That's how often!
Shortcomings is the story of a ceaselessly negative, depressed, and depressING young-ish man and the outright dickishness he inflicts on all the women in his life. It's also about being Asian. The best character was by far his lesbian Korean best friend (after reading this book, I feel like I'm missing a lesbian Korean best friend). Even though the main character is male, and even though he basically mistreats and uses every female in his life (especially his long-suffering girlfriend...the scenes between them at the beginning made me cringe), this book doesn't seem misogynistic. On paper, it sounds like something I would hate, but I really loved it. Read it! Just not at three in the morning.

Skinny Bitch

I decided to use this blog as my book log. Lucky you, internet! In order to gain your trust, I've decided to make a confession: I read Skinny Bitch.
As you might know, I don't believe in the concept of "Guilty Pleasures." If you like something, own it! "You like what you like.-" Papa Winfrey. But I actually do feel a little guilty about how much I like diet and nutrition books. They definitely don't add anything to my life, and I don't even believe in diets! At all! I think we should all eat lots of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, but every once in awhile maybe have 2 donuts in one day (that might have happened today)! I read Skinny Bitch on my Kindle because I was ashamed. Here is a summary of what I read:

"Hey, stupid fatty. Why are you eating so much shit? If you eat shit, you are shit, and you are DEFINITELY shit. Stop drinking alcohol and coffee, no smoking, no meat, no eggs, no dairy, no refined flour or sugar. You should just eat fruit for breakfast and salad for lunch, but also here is a list of processed, name-brand organic vegan foods you can eat. Also, you're stupid, ugly and fat. And you have cellulite. And a big ass."

That's the book. Also the entire middle section is about the cruelty of the meat and dairy industry, which is like duh, but also is like, I thought this was a diet book. Then the last chapter is like, "We were just kidding! We really love you and don't care if you're skinny, we just want you to be happy! And also be vegan." Um, too late, dummies. You spent the entire book insulting women and trying to shame them into becoming vegan. Also, there is a chapter on FASTING. Fucking FASTING. The authors write how you'll feel so "clean" and "light" and "pure" and WHAT? You ladies are enabling anorexics!

You should read this book if you want to feel bad about yourself. Even I started to feel terrible about myself, and while I have a lot of insecurities, my body isn't usually one of them.

The Second Book I Read on My Kindle

I don't know why it took me so long to read Never Let Me Go. Don't make the same mistake I did. This book will break your heart. Just looking at this poster for the movie (out on DVD soon!) makes me want to cry.

Do you like reading about complicated girl friendships? How about boarding schools? Or maybe adolescent relationships? Those are all of my favorite topics, and they are all here, along with some SCIENCE FICTION. That's right, I read science fiction. Okay, that's a lie. Actually I read science fiction in only three circumstances:
1. My boyfriend recommends something.
2. Book club pick.
3. It's not really science fiction.
While there are definitely science fiction elements to this book (in case you don't know anything at all about it, I will refrain from ruining anything for you. The less you know, the better the book will be), and while the plot hinges around a particularly ominous vision of a world not so different from our own, this book is much more about personal relationships. I should warn you that at first this book doesn't seem so sad. Just watch out! At the end, I felt like the emotional force of the book had snuck up behind me and clubbed me on the head.
It also must be noted that Carey Mulligan plays the lead in the film. Beautiful!

Unputdownable.

A few months ago, H. and I grabbed lunch at Tommy's in Cleveland. In case you were wondering, I do remember exactly what we got. H had a burger and I had a baba ganoush/falafel pita. FOOD BLOG! But that's not the point...the point is, Tommy's is attached to a little book store, where I found this book:

I picked it up because of the cover, then found out it was a children's book, then convinced H to buy it for me anyway. I just read it this week and I can't recommend it highly enough! It is meant for kids, so if you have a problem with that...then I don't know, you shouldn't be reading this blog. It was completely engaging from beginning to end, and I can't remember the last time I've been so involved in a book. It's surprisingly dark and even a little scary (but I'm very easily frightened). I'm reading the second one now!

Books of My Youth: Grandma & Grandpa's Basement Edition

When I was a kid, my grandma's basement housed a lot of things; canned fruits and vegetables, way-too-realistic-looking toy guns from when my uncles were children, a persistent mildew smell. But what I was most interested in, of course, were the books! A shelf in the corner held a relatively small but reliably strange collection of damp books, many of which I read on the long afternoons Alex and I spent there during the summer. I know it's such a cliche to reminisce about the laziness of your youthful summers, but man, it just seemed like we had endless amounts of time then. I could just pick up a book I'd never heard of and knew nothing about and not think about all the other millions of things I should be doing with my time. Okay, to be honest that kind of sounds like my life now. But it was just different somehow. When I think of summers spent at my grandparents', I think of Little Alex running around wearing an army helmet, stray cats that we terrorized (we were just trying to love them!), and rooting through those books in the basement.
Memorable books include a cautionary but still pretty tame story about teen pregnancy that I really wish I could remember the title of; a copy of 1984 that included a picture of George Orwell with a mustache added by one of my aunts or uncles; a young-girl-friendship book called The Secret Language; and this gem, which I just remembered today for no reason at all:

Tomas and his sister didn't have parents or something, and they were trying to avoid being found out by children's services or the welfare agency. It was all very Boxcar Children, but with a Puerto-Rican twist. That cover's been lodged in my brain ever since I first saw it. I wish book covers still had this delightful hand-drawn look. I would say that I want to save this book for my future children, but honestly, it's probably been overtaken by the mildew at this point.

Recent Acquisitions

For Christmas last year, H. bought me a really wonderful, thoughtful gift; McSweeney's San Francisco Panaorama. I actually still haven't read some sections of it yet (politics, sports), but I loved the comics and I pored over the literary supplement for weeks. It was exactly the sort of thing I've always wished we got with our newspaper; a thorough, magazine-sized contemplation of books. Besides a really charming interview between Miranda July and James Franco, the piece that most caught my eye was a column dedicated to out-of-print books. The words out-of-print always make my heart sink; whether it's a book or a little-known movie from the 80's (Electric Dreams, anyone?), the idea that something exists but isn't really accesible is a hard one for my mind to grasp. Anyway, this column was dedicated to Edna O'Brien's August is a Wicked Month, a book I'd certainly heard of but hadn't ever thought much about. The author of the piece described finding her copy at a used bookstore on a roadtrip in the midst of a relationship's unraveling. She ended the article by basically saying that if you ever find a copy, you need to buy it.
I immediately went on a hunt. Surely the internet, that great treasure chest, would prove to be my salvation. Not exactly...this book really was hard to find for a reasonable price, unless I wanted the Spanish edition, which was strangely easy to find. Of course B&N was out of the picture, as was my library, which has a long history of having every book/movie in the world except for the one I want at the moment. So for the last six months, I've been searching in vain.
This weekend, H. and I visited a bookstore in his town. It's one of my favorite bookstores because it's run by a charity that helps adults learn to read, or get their G.E.D., or learn English as a second language. All the books are ridiculously cheap, and since they're donations, the store has a pretty weird assortment. All hardcovers are only three dollars, and I've found some relatively new books. I got quite a haul this time, and as we were leaving, H. pointed pointed out a shelf and two boxes marked "FREE." As I idly picked up a copy of The Bell Jar, a purple paperback stuck out beneath it. "Holy shit," I dramatically stage-whispered to H.

I couldn't believe it. After six months spent searching, there it was, free for the taking! This isn't the sexiest cover available, but I'm not about to look a gift free-book-box in the mouth.
What are the sexiest covers, you ask? Well, there's this one. Edna O'Brien is basically the biggest bad-ass.

Then there's this one:

And then there's (eek!) this one:

The cover describes the book as "a fluid, sensual novel, throbbing with the heartbeat of desire." I assume I'll love it. In the usual nature of such things, I'm sure that this book is now available everywhere for a very reasonable price. But if you can't find it, feel free to borrow my copy.

Recommended Reading

One of the books my mom bought me for my birthday was called Little Bee by Chris Cleave. I love surprise book gifts like that; my mom's a big "Give me a list of what you want!" type of person when it comes to holidays, but really all I ever want is for someone to pick out books they think I'll like. We'd been admiring the cover one day at Barnes and Noble, and I think she bought it as much for her and she did for me. Which is just fine by me! I do that sort of thing all the time.
I was a little familiar with Chris Cleave before starting Little Bee, because I once took an English capstone dedicated to the effect/portrayal of 9/11 on literature. It was one of my dumber ideas...I don't know where in my anxiety-riddled brain I thought it would be cool to meet twice weekly and hear about one of the greatest catastrophes to ever happen in the U.S. To this day, if I see the words "September 11th" on a book jacket, I immediately put the book down (not kidding). I remember Chris Cleave's book, Incendiary, being very good, but still very disturbing.
I thought perhaps this one would be different, which is understandable given the copy on the back cover:

"We don't want to tell you what happens in this book.
It is truly a special story and we don't want to spoil it.
Nevertheless, you need to know enough to buy it, so we will just say this:
This is the story of two women. Their lives collide one fateful day, and one of them has to make a terrible choice, the kind of choice we hope you never have to face. Two years later, they meet again--the story starts there...
Once you have read it, you'll want to tell your friends about it. When you do, please don't tell them what happens. The magic is in how the story unfolds."

Well, that sounds cute! I thought to myself. Well, okay. This was a great book. I couldn't stop reading it, especially up until about the halfway mark. Not only did it have an unbelievable amount of momentum, but the narrators were charming and intriguing (one more than the other). But cute it was not. Totally horrifying and upsetting would be a better description. The book dealt with a lot of issues, chief among them the divide between the "first world" and the "third world," the concerns of the upper class vs. real problems, what sort of responsibility people of privilege have to help those who are disadvantaged, and the treatment of immigrants. But here is the moral of the story, in my opinion: Don't take a vacation in a country that's in the midst of an oil war! It will not turn out well.
This book will only take you a night or two to finish, and it's about 8 dollars or something on Amazon. Recommended!

On Being A Sorry Excuse for an English Major, or My Reading List

I have an English degree. This might surprise you if you've perused my blog. You are like, "I'm sorry, was your concentration in Creative Writing, or was it in Using a Webcam? Because this is terrible." You are awfully judgmental, but you're nothing compared to the Voice Inside My Head. There's a 24/7 dialog going on inside this little noggin that usually culminates in me shouting (in my head, remember!) about how I coulda been a contenda. It's a nightmare in there.
About 2.5 seconds after I graduated, I realized that there were huge, embarrassing gaps in my reading history. This wasn't something I expected. See, I've always been a voracious reader. When I was growing up, there were so many rewards for reading. Of course, Book It, but aside from that there was Accelerated Reader. I don't know if everyone else had this, but the general idea was that each book was assigned a point value. You took a ten question quiz on the school's ancient computers, received the appropriate percentage of points, and then accumulated those points in order to win prizes. Fabulous, fabulous prizes, like...MORE BOOKS! For having the most points in my grade level (huge nerd here), I got a boxed set of the Little House on the Prairie books. Also, a t-shirt, which I wore with misguided, nerdy pride.
In high school, I realized that while the rewards of reading weren't tangible,they definitely still existed. For one, I got to escape my life for a little while. I got to daydream about what the future might be like. Most importantly, I could feel better than everyone else. That's right, I used reading to fuel the sort of superiority complex that only a true outcast could really have. I had the patience to read almost anything, most likely because there was little to no intellectual stimulation at my public school (the only classes I ever studied outside of school for were Calculus and Physics, because like I said, I was an English major). I even read The Fountainhead, a fact that shocks me now. How did I slog through such a boring, long, terrible book? Because I literally had nothing else to do.
I assumed that college would introduce me to the rest of literature's classics, and that would be that. As it turns out, that didn't happen! I read some great books in college, but I still haven't read The Grapes of Wrath. Or The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Or Mrs. Dalloway. How did this happen? And what can I do about it?
My solution was to implement a reading list. At first blush, I leaned towards The Modern Library's 100 Best Novels. Plenty of people on the internet are working their way through this list of classics, and it seemed rock solid. On closer inspection, though, it was kind of lame. There are less than ten women on this list. And mostly white dudes. And, most importantly for me, not a lot of books post-1960. While I want to check out all of those novels, I wanted a list that was a little more interesting and diverse. So I found Time's 100 Best Novels from 1923 to Present. The date requirements solve my "too many old books!" problem, and it fits my most important rule: No Ayn Rand! I am not reading Atlas Shrugged, you guys, because I am not a naive, selfish 17 year old. Also, there are lots of fun, light-hearted picks on this list. Like Judy Blume!
I've been very, very slowly working my way through this list for a little over a year. I don't read books off the list continuously, but whenever I'm at a loss over what to read next, it is nice to be able to look at this list and make a pick. I still have a long, long way to go, but maybe someday I'll consider myself "well-read."

Cute Book Alert

Why, yes, all my photos ARE going to be of me holding a book up to my webcam. I think it adds a certain Human Interest. Actually, I can't be bothered to hook my camera up to my computer.
This is a great book I got yesterday. It's a good read if you are:
1) A creative type, but...
2) You have a job.
Oh, that's everyone! Good.

This book will tell you that writing for 15 minutes isn't anything to sneeze at. It's still 15 minutes more than you had yesterday, and something is better than nothing. Sometimes that's all you need to hear.
Also, there are illustrations of Bukowski and Sedaris! Too cute.

Happy Birthday To Me

My family and boyfriend bought me lots of books and DVDs.




I'm the happiest girl in the world.

I Like Food, Food Tastes Good

If you ever met my friend Dan, you would love him. If you're reading this, you probably have met him, so you know what I'm talking about. It's very clichéd to say this, but you know how some people just "light up a room," as the saying goes? Dan's that type of person, the type of person everyone likes. I can think of exactly one girl that didn't like him, but she was a crazy bitch who more than likely stole Dan's Talking Heads album (never proven, but Dan remains convinced). Over the years, Dan's become a part of my family in the way that close friends often do, and I think that my mom actually likes him more than she likes me. We first met at Kenyon college, where we were attending a two-week writing workshop for pretentious 17-year-old writers. Then, in what was either fate, divine intervention, or just an extremely likely coincidence since we had similar majors, Dan showed up in my very first class at Miami University. We walked from that class to Miami's Shriver Center to buy notebooks or something, and the rest is a purple haze of Prince-filled history.
One of Dan's favorite foods (and mine, too, I'll admit) was mini corndogs, referred as Mini Corn D's and served ONLY with honey mustard, which he would mix himself if necessary. I don't eat Mini Corn D's anymore, and I have a feeling Dan doesn't either, since he's become quite the chef as of late. While in college, neither of us were the gourmands we are today (ha), but Dan once bought me a wonderful cookbook that I still use.

This is one of the most fun cookbooks I own. It's all recipes from indie bands! Some of them are like, "Here's a sandwich I eat a lot," and then some of them are pretty complex. So far I've made two: Sweet Potato Biscuits by a band called Roots of Orchis and Rock 'n' Roll Rangoon (Crab Rangoon, der) by Headlights. Even though the latter is supposed to be eaten as an "appetizer," I am guilty of making a lot and eating them all for dinner on Friday. Major yums to both recipes! And the Sweet Potato Biscuits snuck some veggies into Chase and Dad's diets. Chase unwittingly ate, like, a fourth of a sweet potato.

The Lone Surfer of Montana, Kansas

This blog has been a little food-heavy, so here's what I've been reading.

I bought this book on a whim because it was cheap on BetterWorldBooks.com. I was happy to discover that Davy Rothbart snagged cover blurbs from Charles Baxter, Judy Blume, Ira Glass and Arthur Miller! I put those in the order of importance for me, but I think most people would probably reverse them. This is a breezy, fun read; it was a good post-Snow Angels pick, since Snow Angels made me feel a bone-deep despair that hung around for days. I knew I liked this book when one of the stories started with this sentence:
"We were on State Road 400 zooming across yellow Kansas and Sally and I were sore at each other."
Those sorts of sentences are like the fried eggs of writing, i.e. simple, unadorned gems that I will always happily devour. I'm reading about 5 books right now, as is my usual (annoying) habit, so basically I am never going to finish anything.

The Cheevs

Well, hey there, who is this fine gentleman?

It's John Cheever, of course!

Yesterday I went to the library's monthly book sale and I scored this Collected Stories for only a dollar. As is usually the case with me, it will be awhile before I get to reading any of the books I bought. My reading list is a mile long. I'm excited about this one, though. I've read a little John Cheever (I have a very distinct memory of staying home in bed one weekend night in college and reading one of his story collections), but I only remember two of his stories really clearly. Those two are, as any good former creative writing major knows, The Swimmer and Goodbye, My Brother.

Reading Some Books, Eating Some Food

Because I am a narcissist, I have this compulsion to write (in a public forum) about the books I'm reading and the food I'm eating. Of course, this is not exactly revolutionary, and I highly doubt anyone will read this, but at least it will provide me some sort of record, if nothing else.
Alex and I already have a blog, but this is the stuff that I think would bore him. Far better to put my long-winded ramblings in a blog-ghetto. Prepare yourself (who am I talking to?) not for insightful commentary on fiction or for sumptuous snapshots of cakes, but instead for uncomfortable personal stories that barely relate to something I'm reading and blurry, poorly-lit photographs of what I had for lunch.
I'll try to update soon with more details, but for now: I'm currently reading Snow Angels by Stewart O'Nan. Today I made an orange cream pie and at the moment I'm waiting for a poppyseed Bundt cake to cool.