I abandoned My Hollywood by Mona Simpson because despite the good idea of writing about the immigrant women who supply stability for the lives of Hollywood types by raising their children, doing their laundry, etc., Simpson only wrote the idea, not a novel. And I don't think I will go back to it in the years to come, to try it again. I've lived here in the Santa Clarita Valley for 8 years, I've seen parts of Hollywood many times, and I don't think even total detachment from it, as there would be once I'm a resident of Henderson, Nevada, would compel me to go for it again.
But there are some exceptions with other books I've left without finishing, such as Dog On It by Spencer Quinn, a mystery novel that takes place from the viewpoint of Chet, a dog, and family to Bernie, a private investigator. I mentioned it briefly in an entry I wrote on May 6, 2009 (http://scrapsofliteracy.blogspot.com/2009/05/i-should-go-to-laundromat-more-often.html), and it didn't do anything for me then. So why would I go back to it now? What does it have that My Hollywood doesn't and likely never will?
It has novelty. Last month, I got a book catalog from Daedalus Books, detailing the new titles they had on sale. One of them was Three Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Story by Leonie Swann. It involves sheep that have been well-taken care of by their shepherd. He has read them a wide range of books every evening, thereby giving them much understanding about human nature, which helps after he is murdered and they set out to find out who did it. Yes, the sheep.
It stems from novelty in mystery novels for me. I tried Baltimore Blues, the first novel in the Tess Monaghan series by Laura Lippman, and not only did I really like Tess, I liked Lippman's descriptions of Baltimore, the way of the world there, as only she, a former reporter there, could possibly know. Every time she described some quirk of Baltimore, you could tell that she loves her city. After I read it back in March, I checked out of the library Charm City, the second book in the series, but never read it, because other books were crowding in, demanding their time with me. And I acquiesced to those other books.
Maybe that was the mistake. I liked that first book, and I should have gotten right into that second book, keeping up the momentum. It wasn't until August that I remembered how much I had enjoyed Baltimore Blues, and decided to order Charm City. And then, I started it at the beginning of this month. I still liked the city descriptions, but I didn't feel the same interest in Tess this time, nor of Lippman's Baltimore. This didn't feel like my territory, a world I could happily live in for a time.
In the same Daedalus Books catalog, I found The Book Stops Here: A Mobile Library Mystery by Ian Sansom. A mystery series revolving around a bookmobile? I love books, and I love libraries. I didn't want that book yet, though, because it's the third one in the Mobile Library Mystery series. So I ordered the first one from abebooks.com. And then I remembered that I have State of the Onion by Julie Hyzy, the first novel in the White House Chef Mystery series. I love the history of the White House and of its occupants. It sounds like it would be a series for me.
But I haven't read any of these books yet. Other books, such as The World in Half by Cristina Henriquez currently, have beckoned. It's not a delay of any kind, just that I go with what I spark to at the moment. I still have sparks for these books, and I will read them soon enough, because I'd like to have a mystery series I can get into, but one that suits me and my interests, including books, the library, the White House. Three Bags Full probably won't lead to a series, but sheep working to solve the murder of their shepherd? I can't let that pass me by!
And I've thought again about the Haunted Bookshop Mystery series by Alice Kimberly, about Rhode Island bookshop owner Penelope Thornton-McClure, and the shop's ghost, a private investigator murdered 50 years prior on the same spot that Timothy Brennan, the author of the Detective Jack Shield series (A series inspired by the exploits of that very PI), drops dead on during a talk he's giving about his books.
I like bookstores too, but I think I never continued with that series because of the haughty family of Penelope's deceased husband. I like the ghost aspect, and have always wanted to write something involving a ghost, but that never suited me. They were a jarring interruption in a wonderful world of books.
Also, for a while now, I've loved watching Antiques Roadshow, and remember fondly the antiques store we went to in San Juan Capistrano that had envelopes with "Burt Lancaster" mimeographed in blue (http://scrapsofliteracy.blogspot.com/2009/04/love-for-san-juan-capistrano-that-will.html). They were the real things, made for his production company. Now I regret not buying them, but I was utterly fascinated at the apparent history of the items in that store, the glass cases with antique dishes inside them, the old pop culture figurines, the lunch boxes, one of which I think had Howdy Doody on it, and the wisps of people you could find still attached to those items. You could imagine who might have owned it, for what reasons it's here, and who it might be for now. Maybe an antiques mystery series? I've found one called the Josie Prescott Antiques Mysteries by Jane K. Cleland, and I think I'll try the first book, Consigned to Death. It's not so much the mysteries I'm looking for (I usually half-heartedly guess at who the culprit is), but just these worlds with the same characters. I get that also with the Kingdom Keepers series by Ridley Pearson, which takes place at Walt Disney World after dark, or at least the first one did, and I ordered the second, third and fourth books in the series because of my undying love for Walt Disney World and the Disney name and all that it entails, and am anticipating the fifth book, which will be published next year.
My reason for trying Dog On It again is because I'm a dog lover. I grew up with a black toy poodle named Beaumont. He was a baby when I was three years old. Now we have Tigger, our part miniature pinscher, part Italian greyhound, and Kitty, our part miniature pinscher, part terrier. Kitty came from someone in Alaska who took in rescue dogs, and this household was also populated by cats, so Kitty adopted some of their traits, including walking fearlessly across the back of the couch and sitting right on the arm of the couch. A few days after she arrived in June 2006, she took over the rocking chair that we've had since I was a baby. She made it her own, and it's where she lays for part of the afternoon, and in the late night when I'm still up and everyone has gone to bed.
A dog helping to solve mysteries? I'll try it again. I would like to feel a connection to some series of books, one that hopefully goes ever on. All of these are possible starts.
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Keeping Magazines Close to Myself
This morning, while I was sleeping, stacks of books next to my bed fell. Call it a quirk of gravity and shoddy stacksmanship.
After breakfast, emptying the dishwasher, and a shave, I got right to it, reorganizing the books according to what I really want to read in the next few weeks. The books next to my bed are crucial. The ones across from my bed, on the other side of my room, I can pull them out whenever I feel like it, whenever some image or some line from another book compels me to seek out more about, say, Walt Disney World, but they remain where they are, the order of those stacks never changing.
As I stacked The Bookseller of Kabul atop The World in Half by Cristina Henriquez (Two I got from Big Lots last week when my dad decided to go there to seek out a new cell phone case), the ones I want to read next after I finish The Secret of Everything by Barbara O'Neal, I spotted a fold-out ad I had received in the mail from The American Poetry Review, offering up the prices for a subscription, and including covers of past issues, and a poem, "The Mysterious Human Heart" by Matthew Dickman, from the November/December 2008 issue. Dickman writes about going to a market in New York, looking for plantains, ginger root, and cilantro. I read the poem, and the desire for a new subscription stirred in me.
I had recently cancelled my subscriptions to Bookmarks and The London Review of Books because I don't enjoy reading book reviews, and by extension, I began to tire of these magazines. Bookmarks was good to see the covers of various upcoming books, and for plot summaries, but what more could I get from that that I haven't already gotten from Amazon and abebooks.com when I need it? I first considered Bookmarks to be a menu of possibilities, but then I determined in the following months that I like to explore on my own. I like to bump into books, to see one that captures my eye on Amazon when I'm looking up another one on the site. I loved my visit to Big Lots because I went to the book section without any idea of what I wanted. I would just know when I found it, and I did in the two aforementioned books, as well as Dog Days by Jon Katz, Eleanor Rigby by Douglas Coupland, and a few others. I didn't need a magazine to tell me what was coming up when I'd probably find out on my own anyway. I like the e-mails from Amazon, the "Best of the Month" ones because they gives me a small taste of what's available and to see what suits me. But it never pushes. I am my own literary explorer.
The only book critic I've ever liked has been Michael Dirda of The Washington Post, and that's because I had discovered his book, Readings: Essays and Literary Entertainment, while browsing Amazon and I loved learning about what sparked him to reading and why he's loved it for decades. I prefer an introduction like that. Show me a critic who started out as an avid reader, who devoured every single book they found, and I will read them, because their words will be suffused with that love, no matter how shoddy the book might be. Dirda's the only one I've found of that stripe so far, though I don't actively search for them.
I never found such personalities in London Review of Books. I learned of it by way of the personal ads it's apparently well-known for, selections that had been published in two books compiled by David Rose. I wanted to see what else this magazine offered and I had been impressed with the broadsheet size of it, that the writers within could concentrate so carefully on books. But what I found was concentration, never a sense of passion, which I suppose wouldn't fly with London Review of Books, unless there was an article by Alan Bennett, in which case it was the quiet passion I appreciated, of a man walking as I do through the vast universe of books, bending down to pick up whatever he finds in front of him, and reading in appreciation. But I never got that impression with the other articles in that magazine. It was as if those writers were sitting on a stately perch, looking down at all the books gathered below them, harumphing and sniffing haughtily about books they happened to read with two fingers perched at the spine, one in the spine and one behind it. It's intellectualism I cannot embrace. When I was reading How to Bake a Perfect Life while walking through the Walmart Supercenter with Mom and Meridith, and I got to the reunion of Ramona and Jonah, my heart swelled up big and I felt like I was going to be pulled up into the air, free to float and fly around in pure happiness. Right then, I wanted the entire world to know about this book. And that's the feeling I want to sense if I happen to read a book review. Dirda has that. Others don't.
So The London Review of Books was out too. But I wasn't searching for a new magazine to subscribe to in the way I was looking for a new hour-long show that I could be as passionate about as The West Wing. My go-to magazines are The New Yorker, Poets & Writers, The Oxford American, and Saveur, which is about food of all cultures and types, about cooking, about living life tasting everything you can and holding in your mouth that which you love so dearly. And it's not just the writing that expresses that, but also the photography. I've never seen food look like this, and only have there been a few times that I have seen it outside of a photograph, such as the Swedish meatballs at IKEA. There is a great comfort to such a dish, including the meatball gravy that goes on top of the mashed potatoes too, as well as the lingonberry sauce. It is like a security blanket. Saveur does that often, exploring what we are passionate about in food. The Oxford American does that with its Southern writing, with culture in much the same way, but publishes its own food issue never often enough.
I latched on to The New Yorker through John Boston, who had worked at The Signal for 30 years as its foremost columnist, humor and otherwise, to the extent that when we moved here and Mom saw his byline often in the paper, she thought he owned it. He was truly the heart and soul in this valley and it was an unforgivable crime when he left the paper after so much shoddy treatment. Boston had issues of The New Yorker on the bookshelves next to his desk, and let me take many of them home for my own perusal. I was fiercely attracted to the cartoons and a few writers, such as Patricia Marx, who is a terrific humorist, and whose second novel, Starting from Happy, I have but I still haven't read it yet. Other books have gotten in the way, also literally, because I'm not sure which stack it's in.
My subscription to The New Yorker lasts until September 2014, since I renewed it last year, and I don't intend to cancel it early, especially because of Amelia Lester, the 27-year-old managing editor, and her restaurant reviews. She lets the details of the restaurants speak for themselves, with slightly bouncy prose that I always enjoy. But what's always bothered me about The New Yorker, even though I know it's because of its prestige, are some writers of articles who get so overexcited about where they are. They're at The New Yorker! Their articles must sound like it with many exclamation points peppered throughout even though there's merely a comma or period there! They have to call their parents and let them know right away that they're in The New Yorker again!
Just write the article. Aim for the prestige that you want so much, but come on, an article about the AIDS epidemic probably should not have that kind of exclamation-point feeling in it. I enjoy that every week is a crapshoot, that I won't know what I'll be getting until I get that e-mail from The New Yorker detailing what's in the next issue. And when I open that e-mail, I cross my fingers and hope for a TV review from Nancy Franklin (my favorite TV critic) and a movie review from Anthony Lane (My favorite film critic, although there are weeks when Josh Bell, the film critic for Las Vegas Weekly supplants him). But I don't enjoy those articles that have that feeling of "OH MY GOD! I'M IN THE NEW YORKER!!!!!" I prefer subtlety in words. The power of an article will emanate from what you write about. John McPhee had no problem doing that. It works.
I get the same feeling from The American Poetry Review as I do with Poets & Writers, a devotion to the attempt at making the written word work in new ways, to reflect different minds, different cultures, different approaches to the world. Like Saveur, I feel like I can hold it close to me. It's mine. I will always find something in the pages to interest me. Just like there will always be food that's new to me to learn about in Saveur, and just like there's always a new method of writing to learn about in Poets & Writers, and just like there's parts of Southern culture new to me to learn about in The Oxford American, I think there will always be a new poem or a few in The American Poetry Review that will wrap its tendrils around my brain and heart, compelling me to reread those words, taking in each one, watching as it connects to the others, seeing what it creates that fires my imagination and makes my heart bloom. I get the same feeling while watching Jeopardy!, except for the emotional parts. I like studying how the questions were written, why they're written in those particular ways. It feels like The American Poetry Review will do that for me too, and why I subscribed for 3 years at $34.50. It's published 6 times a year, and that's a pretty good span of time to absorb the power of any poems that affect me so before the next issue comes out. And the balance of Saveur, The New Yorker, The Oxford American, Poets & Writers, and The American Poetry Review feels right. I can get what I want from all of them and feel satisfied every time.
After breakfast, emptying the dishwasher, and a shave, I got right to it, reorganizing the books according to what I really want to read in the next few weeks. The books next to my bed are crucial. The ones across from my bed, on the other side of my room, I can pull them out whenever I feel like it, whenever some image or some line from another book compels me to seek out more about, say, Walt Disney World, but they remain where they are, the order of those stacks never changing.
As I stacked The Bookseller of Kabul atop The World in Half by Cristina Henriquez (Two I got from Big Lots last week when my dad decided to go there to seek out a new cell phone case), the ones I want to read next after I finish The Secret of Everything by Barbara O'Neal, I spotted a fold-out ad I had received in the mail from The American Poetry Review, offering up the prices for a subscription, and including covers of past issues, and a poem, "The Mysterious Human Heart" by Matthew Dickman, from the November/December 2008 issue. Dickman writes about going to a market in New York, looking for plantains, ginger root, and cilantro. I read the poem, and the desire for a new subscription stirred in me.
I had recently cancelled my subscriptions to Bookmarks and The London Review of Books because I don't enjoy reading book reviews, and by extension, I began to tire of these magazines. Bookmarks was good to see the covers of various upcoming books, and for plot summaries, but what more could I get from that that I haven't already gotten from Amazon and abebooks.com when I need it? I first considered Bookmarks to be a menu of possibilities, but then I determined in the following months that I like to explore on my own. I like to bump into books, to see one that captures my eye on Amazon when I'm looking up another one on the site. I loved my visit to Big Lots because I went to the book section without any idea of what I wanted. I would just know when I found it, and I did in the two aforementioned books, as well as Dog Days by Jon Katz, Eleanor Rigby by Douglas Coupland, and a few others. I didn't need a magazine to tell me what was coming up when I'd probably find out on my own anyway. I like the e-mails from Amazon, the "Best of the Month" ones because they gives me a small taste of what's available and to see what suits me. But it never pushes. I am my own literary explorer.
The only book critic I've ever liked has been Michael Dirda of The Washington Post, and that's because I had discovered his book, Readings: Essays and Literary Entertainment, while browsing Amazon and I loved learning about what sparked him to reading and why he's loved it for decades. I prefer an introduction like that. Show me a critic who started out as an avid reader, who devoured every single book they found, and I will read them, because their words will be suffused with that love, no matter how shoddy the book might be. Dirda's the only one I've found of that stripe so far, though I don't actively search for them.
I never found such personalities in London Review of Books. I learned of it by way of the personal ads it's apparently well-known for, selections that had been published in two books compiled by David Rose. I wanted to see what else this magazine offered and I had been impressed with the broadsheet size of it, that the writers within could concentrate so carefully on books. But what I found was concentration, never a sense of passion, which I suppose wouldn't fly with London Review of Books, unless there was an article by Alan Bennett, in which case it was the quiet passion I appreciated, of a man walking as I do through the vast universe of books, bending down to pick up whatever he finds in front of him, and reading in appreciation. But I never got that impression with the other articles in that magazine. It was as if those writers were sitting on a stately perch, looking down at all the books gathered below them, harumphing and sniffing haughtily about books they happened to read with two fingers perched at the spine, one in the spine and one behind it. It's intellectualism I cannot embrace. When I was reading How to Bake a Perfect Life while walking through the Walmart Supercenter with Mom and Meridith, and I got to the reunion of Ramona and Jonah, my heart swelled up big and I felt like I was going to be pulled up into the air, free to float and fly around in pure happiness. Right then, I wanted the entire world to know about this book. And that's the feeling I want to sense if I happen to read a book review. Dirda has that. Others don't.
So The London Review of Books was out too. But I wasn't searching for a new magazine to subscribe to in the way I was looking for a new hour-long show that I could be as passionate about as The West Wing. My go-to magazines are The New Yorker, Poets & Writers, The Oxford American, and Saveur, which is about food of all cultures and types, about cooking, about living life tasting everything you can and holding in your mouth that which you love so dearly. And it's not just the writing that expresses that, but also the photography. I've never seen food look like this, and only have there been a few times that I have seen it outside of a photograph, such as the Swedish meatballs at IKEA. There is a great comfort to such a dish, including the meatball gravy that goes on top of the mashed potatoes too, as well as the lingonberry sauce. It is like a security blanket. Saveur does that often, exploring what we are passionate about in food. The Oxford American does that with its Southern writing, with culture in much the same way, but publishes its own food issue never often enough.
I latched on to The New Yorker through John Boston, who had worked at The Signal for 30 years as its foremost columnist, humor and otherwise, to the extent that when we moved here and Mom saw his byline often in the paper, she thought he owned it. He was truly the heart and soul in this valley and it was an unforgivable crime when he left the paper after so much shoddy treatment. Boston had issues of The New Yorker on the bookshelves next to his desk, and let me take many of them home for my own perusal. I was fiercely attracted to the cartoons and a few writers, such as Patricia Marx, who is a terrific humorist, and whose second novel, Starting from Happy, I have but I still haven't read it yet. Other books have gotten in the way, also literally, because I'm not sure which stack it's in.
My subscription to The New Yorker lasts until September 2014, since I renewed it last year, and I don't intend to cancel it early, especially because of Amelia Lester, the 27-year-old managing editor, and her restaurant reviews. She lets the details of the restaurants speak for themselves, with slightly bouncy prose that I always enjoy. But what's always bothered me about The New Yorker, even though I know it's because of its prestige, are some writers of articles who get so overexcited about where they are. They're at The New Yorker! Their articles must sound like it with many exclamation points peppered throughout even though there's merely a comma or period there! They have to call their parents and let them know right away that they're in The New Yorker again!
Just write the article. Aim for the prestige that you want so much, but come on, an article about the AIDS epidemic probably should not have that kind of exclamation-point feeling in it. I enjoy that every week is a crapshoot, that I won't know what I'll be getting until I get that e-mail from The New Yorker detailing what's in the next issue. And when I open that e-mail, I cross my fingers and hope for a TV review from Nancy Franklin (my favorite TV critic) and a movie review from Anthony Lane (My favorite film critic, although there are weeks when Josh Bell, the film critic for Las Vegas Weekly supplants him). But I don't enjoy those articles that have that feeling of "OH MY GOD! I'M IN THE NEW YORKER!!!!!" I prefer subtlety in words. The power of an article will emanate from what you write about. John McPhee had no problem doing that. It works.
I get the same feeling from The American Poetry Review as I do with Poets & Writers, a devotion to the attempt at making the written word work in new ways, to reflect different minds, different cultures, different approaches to the world. Like Saveur, I feel like I can hold it close to me. It's mine. I will always find something in the pages to interest me. Just like there will always be food that's new to me to learn about in Saveur, and just like there's always a new method of writing to learn about in Poets & Writers, and just like there's parts of Southern culture new to me to learn about in The Oxford American, I think there will always be a new poem or a few in The American Poetry Review that will wrap its tendrils around my brain and heart, compelling me to reread those words, taking in each one, watching as it connects to the others, seeing what it creates that fires my imagination and makes my heart bloom. I get the same feeling while watching Jeopardy!, except for the emotional parts. I like studying how the questions were written, why they're written in those particular ways. It feels like The American Poetry Review will do that for me too, and why I subscribed for 3 years at $34.50. It's published 6 times a year, and that's a pretty good span of time to absorb the power of any poems that affect me so before the next issue comes out. And the balance of Saveur, The New Yorker, The Oxford American, Poets & Writers, and The American Poetry Review feels right. I can get what I want from all of them and feel satisfied every time.
Monday, September 12, 2011
Another Thing to Love about "The Good Wife"
In my zeal for The Good Wife, my new West Wing, I've discovered another thing to love about it.
With the exception of the third episode, titled "You Can't Go Home Again," all season one episodes are one-word titles. Season 2 episodes are two-word titles, and season 3 episodes will be three-word titles. This show has my kind of writers, and I want them to make it to season 16!
With the exception of the third episode, titled "You Can't Go Home Again," all season one episodes are one-word titles. Season 2 episodes are two-word titles, and season 3 episodes will be three-word titles. This show has my kind of writers, and I want them to make it to season 16!
Saturday, September 10, 2011
First Lines from Books I Love #4: The Secret of Everything
About three or four months ago, sitting on some kind of odd, circular red seat near the fitting rooms at Target in Golden Valley, waiting for Mom and Meridith, I opened the Target Book Club edition of How to Bake a Perfect Life by Barbara O'Neal (which includes a letter from her to Target shoppers, being that Target plays a small part in the book, and she loves Target), and began reading. I liked the descriptions of mother doughs, and of Ramona's kitchen, but didn't get further than that. Out of curiosity about a month ago, I ordered How to Bake a Perfect Life, remembering that brief encounter, and began reading it on August 25. I remember that so specifically because I had written about it on the 26th (http://scrapsofliteracy.blogspot.com/2011/08/perfect-day.html). Because of that experience, I ordered from abebooks.com her previous two novels, her first, The Lost Recipe for Happiness, and her second, The Secret of Everything. Right when The Lost Recipe for Happiness arrived in the mail, I had just finished The Kingdom Keepers: Disney After Dark by Ridley Pearson, which merits its own entry soon, since I ordered books 2, 3, and 4 from abebooks.com, and am anticipating book 5 in 2012.
When I opened to the first page of The Lost Recipe for Happiness and began reading, I immediately began sighing with pleasure all over again, just as I had with How to Bake a Perfect Life. Imagine coming home from a hard, yet satisfying day of work. You've done some good in your part of the world. Your family or boyfriend or girlfriend comes home not long after, and dinner is many of your favorite foods. The mail has brought the latest issue of your favorite magazine. On TV, reruns, but in particular, a rerun of your favorite episode of your favorite show. Feel that bliss, that warmth, that peace, that love? That's what The Lost Recipe for Happiness feels like. That's why I ordered it, because I wanted again what Babara O'Neal had given me in How to Bake a Perfect Life, but also to see how she did it in her first novel.
With The Secret of Everything, I've found my favorite Barbara O'Neal novel, and my new favorite novel. This one will be going into my permanent collection (It's been a while since I've mentioned it: My permanent collection are the books that will move with me when we move; I also have collections of books around my room, but this collection is in two boxes that I use as shelves for now). O'Neal (a pseudonym, by the way, as she is Barbara Samuel) is a poet in a novelist's body. I want to give out more than just the first two paragraphs, but you need to explore this book for yourself too.
So here goes, the first two paragraphs:
"On a foggy August morning, Tessa Harlow had finally tired of her long wallow on the Santa Cruz beaches. Leaving her father's tidy little bungalow as she did every morning, she carried her breakfast down to the surf: a mango fresh from the local grocer, a hunk of sourdough bread, and a hefty cup of tea she bought from the stand on the corner.
Settling on the sand, she skimmed the thick outer skin from the mango and bit into the buttery flesh, mopping the juice from her chin with a bandana. The tea was hot and milky, sweet with real sugar, and the bread---while not quite as tangy as San Francisco sourdough---complemented the mango perfectly."
Now go find it, and bask in the words and descriptions of a novelist who is stunning in her approach to the world, poetry in paragraphs. As I read many descriptions, some on one page alone, I grinned wide, gasped a little from the beauty of her prose, and felt my heart swell over and over. This novel embodies what reading means to me.
When I opened to the first page of The Lost Recipe for Happiness and began reading, I immediately began sighing with pleasure all over again, just as I had with How to Bake a Perfect Life. Imagine coming home from a hard, yet satisfying day of work. You've done some good in your part of the world. Your family or boyfriend or girlfriend comes home not long after, and dinner is many of your favorite foods. The mail has brought the latest issue of your favorite magazine. On TV, reruns, but in particular, a rerun of your favorite episode of your favorite show. Feel that bliss, that warmth, that peace, that love? That's what The Lost Recipe for Happiness feels like. That's why I ordered it, because I wanted again what Babara O'Neal had given me in How to Bake a Perfect Life, but also to see how she did it in her first novel.
With The Secret of Everything, I've found my favorite Barbara O'Neal novel, and my new favorite novel. This one will be going into my permanent collection (It's been a while since I've mentioned it: My permanent collection are the books that will move with me when we move; I also have collections of books around my room, but this collection is in two boxes that I use as shelves for now). O'Neal (a pseudonym, by the way, as she is Barbara Samuel) is a poet in a novelist's body. I want to give out more than just the first two paragraphs, but you need to explore this book for yourself too.
So here goes, the first two paragraphs:
"On a foggy August morning, Tessa Harlow had finally tired of her long wallow on the Santa Cruz beaches. Leaving her father's tidy little bungalow as she did every morning, she carried her breakfast down to the surf: a mango fresh from the local grocer, a hunk of sourdough bread, and a hefty cup of tea she bought from the stand on the corner.
Settling on the sand, she skimmed the thick outer skin from the mango and bit into the buttery flesh, mopping the juice from her chin with a bandana. The tea was hot and milky, sweet with real sugar, and the bread---while not quite as tangy as San Francisco sourdough---complemented the mango perfectly."
Now go find it, and bask in the words and descriptions of a novelist who is stunning in her approach to the world, poetry in paragraphs. As I read many descriptions, some on one page alone, I grinned wide, gasped a little from the beauty of her prose, and felt my heart swell over and over. This novel embodies what reading means to me.
The $0.50 Bargains
I hate Panda Express. The mushroom chicken is ok, but every time my family and I leave, I feel just as empty as when I came in. I know the old Chinese food joke, but Panda Express has always struck me as serving Chinese food for bland corporate office worker types.
So when we were in the car today, and Dad suggested Panda Express for dinner, I objected. I appreciate that he's the driver on these errands, but I couldn't do it. I didn't want it, and even though we go once every month and a half or so, it's still too much.
We drove first to a barbecue place that had been written about in The Signal (That's how desperate we are to find anywhere new to eat, by relying on quite possibly the worst newspaper I've ever read, even though I worked there for a time), and it was small, with a few tables inside, and a big drive-thru, but the music was so loud, it was impossible to eat there without needing a hearing aid by the time you left. The only reason The Signal wrote about this place is because they don't know any better.
We drove to the north end of the Santa Clarita Valley, because there's a diner called The Halfway House, and it's almost in isolated territory, and therefore changed its hours in September, now open from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. seven days a week. Then Mom had heard about another barbecue place called Smokey Joe's. It's now being turned into a Thai restaurant, and Dad loves Thai food, so that'll be a possibility after they open on the 19th.
So where to then? I gave up. I told Dad that if he wanted to go to Panda Express, fine. I'd live with it. At that point, I was hungry and it didn't matter. He had also suggested wings, and that meant Wing Stop, and that would have been better than Panda Express. But then, even better, we spotted the KFC across from Big Lots. Yes! I could find something there without any problem! And most importantly, I could feel full after I ate.
We parked, and walked into the KFC. Every place we go to that's empty inevitably fills up after we walk in. It always happens. And when we went in, to the front of the line, a few people walked in about two minutes after. About seven in all. We could be a boon to struggling businesses.
I was thinking about a double breast fillet combo, but then saw a large popcorn chicken combo with potato wedges and a medium drink. No biscuit, but two biscuits could be had for $0.99, and I ordered all of that. Mom, Dad and Meridith ordered their choices, and we sat down at a table, and Dad saw that Big Lots was across the street and said he wanted to go in after to see about a cell phone case, since the last one he got was from there.
My heart started beating a little faster. Big Lots is excellent for discounted DVDs and books, both of which I love a lot. And sure, he could look for his cell phone case, but I was not leaving until I scoured absolutely every single DVD and book in that store.
We got to Big Lots and I sped for the DVDs. By the time I had looked at every single rack, I had seven DVDs, and I knew I wanted King of California (as a Santa Clarita souvenir, since part of it was filmed here, including at the Costco we have, and also because it represents the Santa Clarita I knew in these 8 years, the peaceful side trying to get out, but buried under all the plastic bullshit), and Running Mates, a TV movie from 2000 starring Tom Selleck as a presidential candidate with a devoted wife (Nancy Travis) and exes (Laura Linney, Teri Hatcher, and Faye Dunaway) all looking to get him elected president of the United States. I think I saw the trailer on the first disc of the first season of Mad About You when I Netflixed it and wanted to see it because of the presidential campaign aspect, and because I've always liked Tom Selleck, even when he's played the same kind of persona over and over. But as to the other DVDs, such as The Tailor of Panama, Cold Souls, and W., they were dependent on what books I found in that section.
And I found a lot. I first picked up The Good Good Pig: The Extraordinary Life of Christopher Hogwood by Sy Montgomery, part of the wave of books about pets that came out after Marley and Me became popular, evidenced by author John Grogan's blurb on the cover of this book. I never read Marley and Me and never will because I'm a dog lover and it's hard enough when it does happen without having to read about it. But a pig's love I can read about.
Then came Eleanor Rigby by Douglas Coupland, The World in Half by Cristina Henriquez, Dog Days: Dispatches from Bedlam Farm by Jon Katz, The First Thing Smoking by Nelson Eubanks, and Arroyo by Summer Wood (owing to my newfound interest in New Mexico, spurred on by The Secret of Everything by Babara O'Neal, which you will find out a little about in the next entry).
In the midst of finding these books, Meridith handed me The Bookseller of Kabul, about a man who provided the population of Kabul with books for 30 years, even through oppressive regimes. I know that I've been given a gift with my passionate love for reading, and I want to try to spark this in others, which is why I've been researching literacy organizations, especially impressed with the ones that give books to children of low-income families, giving them the chance to see what reading is and what it can become for them. I've found one based in Henderson that I want to be part of when my family and I finally move there, and that's why I sparked to The Bookseller of Kabul. I'm thinking of starting it after I'm done with The Secret of Everything.
While I selected these books, I gradually got rid of The Tailor of Panama, Cold Souls, W., and Carole and Lombard. I had chosen the latter because I wanted to see how James Brolin portrayed Clark Gable, but given a choice between movies and books, I'll take the books every time. Plus, I was adding up $3 and $3 and $3 and $3 and so on and didn't really want to pay well over $30 for my haul. There was one nice find in the gray $3 label on The World in Half corresponding to the book being only $2. But I still didn't want to pay so much.
At the register, after Mom, Dad and Meridith were done, Meridith was keeping closer tabs on the prices of my books than I was, only because she wanted to see that The World in Half scanned as $2. But then, something incredible happened: One book scanned as $0.50, after The World in Half. Then another. Then The First Thing Smoking scanned as $3, followed by three more $0.50 books. I ended up paying only $14.68! It felt like I had put 50 cents over and over into those sticker and other miscellaneous machines you found at the entrance of various stores with all those generally useless but fun plastic trinkets, and gotten something very cool every time.
So when we were in the car today, and Dad suggested Panda Express for dinner, I objected. I appreciate that he's the driver on these errands, but I couldn't do it. I didn't want it, and even though we go once every month and a half or so, it's still too much.
We drove first to a barbecue place that had been written about in The Signal (That's how desperate we are to find anywhere new to eat, by relying on quite possibly the worst newspaper I've ever read, even though I worked there for a time), and it was small, with a few tables inside, and a big drive-thru, but the music was so loud, it was impossible to eat there without needing a hearing aid by the time you left. The only reason The Signal wrote about this place is because they don't know any better.
We drove to the north end of the Santa Clarita Valley, because there's a diner called The Halfway House, and it's almost in isolated territory, and therefore changed its hours in September, now open from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. seven days a week. Then Mom had heard about another barbecue place called Smokey Joe's. It's now being turned into a Thai restaurant, and Dad loves Thai food, so that'll be a possibility after they open on the 19th.
So where to then? I gave up. I told Dad that if he wanted to go to Panda Express, fine. I'd live with it. At that point, I was hungry and it didn't matter. He had also suggested wings, and that meant Wing Stop, and that would have been better than Panda Express. But then, even better, we spotted the KFC across from Big Lots. Yes! I could find something there without any problem! And most importantly, I could feel full after I ate.
We parked, and walked into the KFC. Every place we go to that's empty inevitably fills up after we walk in. It always happens. And when we went in, to the front of the line, a few people walked in about two minutes after. About seven in all. We could be a boon to struggling businesses.
I was thinking about a double breast fillet combo, but then saw a large popcorn chicken combo with potato wedges and a medium drink. No biscuit, but two biscuits could be had for $0.99, and I ordered all of that. Mom, Dad and Meridith ordered their choices, and we sat down at a table, and Dad saw that Big Lots was across the street and said he wanted to go in after to see about a cell phone case, since the last one he got was from there.
My heart started beating a little faster. Big Lots is excellent for discounted DVDs and books, both of which I love a lot. And sure, he could look for his cell phone case, but I was not leaving until I scoured absolutely every single DVD and book in that store.
We got to Big Lots and I sped for the DVDs. By the time I had looked at every single rack, I had seven DVDs, and I knew I wanted King of California (as a Santa Clarita souvenir, since part of it was filmed here, including at the Costco we have, and also because it represents the Santa Clarita I knew in these 8 years, the peaceful side trying to get out, but buried under all the plastic bullshit), and Running Mates, a TV movie from 2000 starring Tom Selleck as a presidential candidate with a devoted wife (Nancy Travis) and exes (Laura Linney, Teri Hatcher, and Faye Dunaway) all looking to get him elected president of the United States. I think I saw the trailer on the first disc of the first season of Mad About You when I Netflixed it and wanted to see it because of the presidential campaign aspect, and because I've always liked Tom Selleck, even when he's played the same kind of persona over and over. But as to the other DVDs, such as The Tailor of Panama, Cold Souls, and W., they were dependent on what books I found in that section.
And I found a lot. I first picked up The Good Good Pig: The Extraordinary Life of Christopher Hogwood by Sy Montgomery, part of the wave of books about pets that came out after Marley and Me became popular, evidenced by author John Grogan's blurb on the cover of this book. I never read Marley and Me and never will because I'm a dog lover and it's hard enough when it does happen without having to read about it. But a pig's love I can read about.
Then came Eleanor Rigby by Douglas Coupland, The World in Half by Cristina Henriquez, Dog Days: Dispatches from Bedlam Farm by Jon Katz, The First Thing Smoking by Nelson Eubanks, and Arroyo by Summer Wood (owing to my newfound interest in New Mexico, spurred on by The Secret of Everything by Babara O'Neal, which you will find out a little about in the next entry).
In the midst of finding these books, Meridith handed me The Bookseller of Kabul, about a man who provided the population of Kabul with books for 30 years, even through oppressive regimes. I know that I've been given a gift with my passionate love for reading, and I want to try to spark this in others, which is why I've been researching literacy organizations, especially impressed with the ones that give books to children of low-income families, giving them the chance to see what reading is and what it can become for them. I've found one based in Henderson that I want to be part of when my family and I finally move there, and that's why I sparked to The Bookseller of Kabul. I'm thinking of starting it after I'm done with The Secret of Everything.
While I selected these books, I gradually got rid of The Tailor of Panama, Cold Souls, W., and Carole and Lombard. I had chosen the latter because I wanted to see how James Brolin portrayed Clark Gable, but given a choice between movies and books, I'll take the books every time. Plus, I was adding up $3 and $3 and $3 and $3 and so on and didn't really want to pay well over $30 for my haul. There was one nice find in the gray $3 label on The World in Half corresponding to the book being only $2. But I still didn't want to pay so much.
At the register, after Mom, Dad and Meridith were done, Meridith was keeping closer tabs on the prices of my books than I was, only because she wanted to see that The World in Half scanned as $2. But then, something incredible happened: One book scanned as $0.50, after The World in Half. Then another. Then The First Thing Smoking scanned as $3, followed by three more $0.50 books. I ended up paying only $14.68! It felt like I had put 50 cents over and over into those sticker and other miscellaneous machines you found at the entrance of various stores with all those generally useless but fun plastic trinkets, and gotten something very cool every time.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
I Got a Subbing Job!
The automated sub system called the house, and Dad picked it up because I don't know what my code is, and he has it written down. Meridith's working in his middle school already as a one-on-one aide to one of the disabled kids there, so the call was for me, to be a substitute campus supervisor tomorrow, with my favorite hours, 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Starts early, ends early.
I'm a bit disappointed because it'll be hot enough again tomorrow that I won't be able to do as much walking as I had hoped in order to drop a pound or two, but because of the heat, perhaps the kids will be calm tomorrow. I don't know what the new crop of 7th graders is like, since this will be my first time as a substitute campus supervisor in the new school year, but I look forward to finding out.
Made my lunch, got at least one book for tomorrow for my lunchtime and when I'm done with work (I'll look for another viable one before I go to bed), and all I need is a shower, and I'll cover that later. I'm psyched! A paycheck again!
I'm a bit disappointed because it'll be hot enough again tomorrow that I won't be able to do as much walking as I had hoped in order to drop a pound or two, but because of the heat, perhaps the kids will be calm tomorrow. I don't know what the new crop of 7th graders is like, since this will be my first time as a substitute campus supervisor in the new school year, but I look forward to finding out.
Made my lunch, got at least one book for tomorrow for my lunchtime and when I'm done with work (I'll look for another viable one before I go to bed), and all I need is a shower, and I'll cover that later. I'm psyched! A paycheck again!
Book Gambling
I love my future hometown of Henderson, and my future home city of Las Vegas, but I am not a gambler. I walk by craps and roulette tables, only pausing to watch the roulette wheel spin, because I like watching things spin. A few Vegas trips ago, my family and I were at New York-New York, and I blanched at finding $10 minimum blackjack tables. The most gambling you will find me doing there is sitting in front of a penny slot machine, playing one line at a time, not even hoping that that one line will turn into a jackpot a few times. I do it for a kind of unique meditation. I sit there, I watch the reels spin, I think about my life, my writing, what I want to write next, basically everything. And there's a total calm that comes over me. Vegas does not move as fast as TV and movies try to portray it. It does allow for moments like mine.
Instead, I gamble with books. Ever since my local library closed to transfer over to be controlled by the City of Santa Clarita and therefore be fobbed off onto a corporate outfit from the east coast, I've had no reason to go back. I don't want to sign up for a new card, I don't want to face a drastically reduced selection of books, which still is at about 250,000+, I'm sure, but when my library was part of the County of Los Angeles library system, there was much more room for discovery, such as when I found the works of Charles Bukowski and he became one of my favorites. Plus, even back when the library had closed in June, we were hoping to move to Las Vegas, and even though we're still waiting, I'm not going to start anything new there anyway because with luck, it would be a short time of use anyway.
I thank every known deity in this instance for abebooks.com, which has sellers all across the country with used books at hand, and therefore cheap prices and cheap shipping, sometimes free, although the $3.99 with free shipping usually means that it was $1 for the book and $2.99 for shipping, both factored in together. And I need books. It's how I live. So I started with the list of Amazon links I have to books I've been interested in, and ordered those which grabbed me right away. And then this collection grew and grew, and now my room looks like a library of sorts. I have a permanent collection of a little over 50 books, which will move with me when we move. I am not going to give up these books. The other books are tentative, based on how I feel about them after I've read them. Would I go back to these books like I do with my permanent collection? Would they provide me with continual inspiration? Those weren't my reasons for buying all these books. I wanted a steady stream of words to keep me nourished each day. I thrive on really good books. When I get deep into one, like I did with The Lost Recipe of Happiness by Barbara O'Neal, which I finished after lunch, my heart swells, making me feel like I could be pulled up into the air, free to float and fly around in pure happiness. I live for those stretches of time when nothing else in the world is around but me and a wonderful book in my hands.
And so I gamble again, now with a novel called My Hollywood by Mona Simpson, about the immigrant women who work for various Hollywood families. It's very slowgoing, hard to find a part of this story to settle into. The story of the main nanny, Lola, is interesting, but there's no spark, nothing in this world that I can settle into. I'm on page 50, and I'll give it about 30-50 more pages and see if anything takes. But if not, there are more books. It is the kind of gambling I like, after all.
Instead, I gamble with books. Ever since my local library closed to transfer over to be controlled by the City of Santa Clarita and therefore be fobbed off onto a corporate outfit from the east coast, I've had no reason to go back. I don't want to sign up for a new card, I don't want to face a drastically reduced selection of books, which still is at about 250,000+, I'm sure, but when my library was part of the County of Los Angeles library system, there was much more room for discovery, such as when I found the works of Charles Bukowski and he became one of my favorites. Plus, even back when the library had closed in June, we were hoping to move to Las Vegas, and even though we're still waiting, I'm not going to start anything new there anyway because with luck, it would be a short time of use anyway.
I thank every known deity in this instance for abebooks.com, which has sellers all across the country with used books at hand, and therefore cheap prices and cheap shipping, sometimes free, although the $3.99 with free shipping usually means that it was $1 for the book and $2.99 for shipping, both factored in together. And I need books. It's how I live. So I started with the list of Amazon links I have to books I've been interested in, and ordered those which grabbed me right away. And then this collection grew and grew, and now my room looks like a library of sorts. I have a permanent collection of a little over 50 books, which will move with me when we move. I am not going to give up these books. The other books are tentative, based on how I feel about them after I've read them. Would I go back to these books like I do with my permanent collection? Would they provide me with continual inspiration? Those weren't my reasons for buying all these books. I wanted a steady stream of words to keep me nourished each day. I thrive on really good books. When I get deep into one, like I did with The Lost Recipe of Happiness by Barbara O'Neal, which I finished after lunch, my heart swells, making me feel like I could be pulled up into the air, free to float and fly around in pure happiness. I live for those stretches of time when nothing else in the world is around but me and a wonderful book in my hands.
And so I gamble again, now with a novel called My Hollywood by Mona Simpson, about the immigrant women who work for various Hollywood families. It's very slowgoing, hard to find a part of this story to settle into. The story of the main nanny, Lola, is interesting, but there's no spark, nothing in this world that I can settle into. I'm on page 50, and I'll give it about 30-50 more pages and see if anything takes. But if not, there are more books. It is the kind of gambling I like, after all.
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