The Third Gilmore Girl by Kelly Bishop

I listened to the audiobook of The Third Gilmore Girl by Kelly Bishop (narrated by the author). Someone in blogland recommended this to me, but I can't figure out who. If it was you, THANK YOU.

I was a fan of Gilmore Girls and honestly, Emily is the best character in the show. This is a memoir of Bishop's life and it made me love her so much. She got her big break as a dancer in the Broadway show A Chorus Line and never wanted kids, but always has rescue dogs and she's pro-choice and was a smoker for decades and believes in psychics. I adore her and I adored this book. I listened to the audiobook and if you're a fan of show biz stories with someone who doesn't really want to spill the tea and the most scandalous is gets is that she had pre-marital sex, this might be the book for you. 

5/5 stars - I adore Kelly Bishop.

Lines of note:

One of the many comments during those ironing talks that really stuck with me was her observation - not a complaint, simply her truth - once you have children, you'll never be free again. Apparently even as a little girl I sensed that freedom was going to be an essential part of my life because when she told me that, my first and only thought was, well, then, no children for me. (Chapter 2)

I feel like I had this exact moment of my own when I was a young girl. 

Your more likely to look for, as the Garth Brooks song goes, Mr. Right for Mr. Right Now. (Chapter 8)

I think Garth was the only non-Broadway musical artist mentioned in this book. You know what? I love Garth, too!

Don't cry because you think your best days are gone, smile because you had them in the first place. (Chapter 13)

Aging is a privilege. I repeat this to myself daily. 

Hat mentions (why hats?):

Without Kelly, I never would have been able to have a room completely dedicated to hats in the middle of New York City. (foreword by Amy Sherman-Palladino)

sparkly beige top hat (Chapter 3)

Rental Person Who Does Nothing by Shoji Morimoto (translated by Don Knotting)

Ariel talked about buying Rental Person Who Does Nothing by Shoji Morimoto on the Books Unbound podcast and it sounded like a crazy premise, so I immediately ordered it from the public library. By the time I listened to the episode where she said she didn't love it, I was already invested in reading it.

Morimoto was tired of the corporate life, where it didn't matter if he was there or not. So he stopped working and started a service where he was available to just show up, as long as he didn't have to do anything. 

In this book, Morimoto is interviewed by the editor who then actually wrote the book. He gave simple answers and the editor wrote it up. Mostly it's a series of anecdotes about the types of situations he played a part in - helping someone get their stuff after a breakup, trying a new drink at Starbucks with someone, going to concerts or other events with people, etc. 

I thought this was going to be a super duper fun book, but instead it just felt like it was written by a fifteen-year-old with a deadline. I'm not sure if that's the fault of the original answers by Morimoto or if it's the fault of the translation, but it seemed full of contradictions and repetitive stories. 

Consider: 

So what I really want as Rental Person is to have no defining attributes - no good points, no bad points. (page 54)

AND THE NEXT PAGE:

After a while I got fed up with it, and so I tried to dilute my ice-cream soda image, tweeting that I'd decided to switch my allegiance to lemon squash. I think it's good to tweet about changes like that. It makes Rental Person seem human. (page 55)

Pick a lane, Rental Person, pick a lane.

Anyway, it was an interesting diversion, but I think this is really a story about a disaffected, lazy man who doesn't actually think about things very hard. I wouldn't recommend this book unless you really love all things Japanese. 3.5/5 stars

Line of note:

There's certainly a difference between childhood and adulthood in terms of the cost of stress that friends or friendship involve. Friendship for an adult seems very complicated. Rather than all-around friends, people seem to have friends for specific purposes - friends to go drinking with, for example, or friends to play computer games with, and friends to go to concerts with. (page 143)

I think this is an interesting observation. Do you have all-around friends or specific-purpose friends? 

Hat mention (why hats?):

So I think I was very lucky that the first bit of headwear I bought wasn't a hat, a beanie, or a baseball cap - just a work cap. (page 53)

Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti

You know what Sheila Heti did? She journaled for ten years, put all of her sentences in alphabetical order, edited it down, and published the alphabetical sentences. That's what Alphabetical Diaries is. 

This was so magical. Heti writes frankly about her life from the banal to the interesting to the racy. I'm 100% sure if you took the lines from my journals for the last ten years and alphabetized them, they would not be nearly as insightful and poetic as this book was. I loved the repetition of certain phrases and how there was almost always juxtaposition in her feelings or thoughts throughout. I loved the way a cast of characters developed - Agnes, Lemons, Lars - even though time and plot meant nothing since the sentences were just mashed together regardless of when they were written. You see the relationships build and change even though you might be introduced to someone in the Bs and they don't show up again until the Ls.  I loved the brutal honesty of Heti's writing and it feels so intimate to be in her brain as she writes about all of the major themes of her life: writing, friends, boyfriends, worry about whether or not marriage is the right thing for her.  

I am 100% sure this is not the book for everyone. It's not even as cohesive as stream of consciousness, but rather is held together only by a wing and a prayer. It's disorienting and puzzling and beautiful and mysterious and mundane and prosaic. This was definitely a book for me. 5/5 stars

Lines of note:

 Actually, not that much is expected of you. Actually, people expect less of you than that. (page 8) 

The juxtaposition here is perfect. 

Alone in a room. Alone. Alone. Alone. Alone. Already I am feeling happier. (page 13)

I frequently found myself trying to figure out the timeline. Did the four "alones" come from the same journal entry or four separate entries? From a breakup entry? Why so enigmatic?! 

Be a pro, Lemons said. Be a woman. Be an individual, he suggested. Be bald-faced and strange. Be calm. Be cautious with your money. Be clean and attractive. Be comfortable and assured and confident in your work. Be creative, is what Pavel thinks people are told, and what is expected of a person, now more than ever. Be direct about the things you need that are reasonable requests, and apart from that, just enjoy him and your time together. Be impeccable with your word. Be miserable about the world. Be optimistic...(page 20)

Pavel and Lars sound like real jerks. 

DFW died. Did I betray him? Did I? Did not get much writing done, obviously. (page 33)

This whole sequence made me laugh so hard.

I wish I could wake up alone in oatmeal. I wish I could write about everything in a less completely narrow way. I wish I had never kissed him. I wish my head didn't feel so full of junk. (page 93)

This is not what I write in my journal, but I do indeed frequently wish my head weren't full of junk.

The world doesn't need anything from me. The world doesn't see me, no one is bothering to judge. The world has its place for all of us. The world is great, not mediocre, and I am a part of it. (page 173-174)

Also, it becomes clear that my journal is quite boring because I've never (NOT ONCE) pondered about the world in it. I suppose that's why my random journal entries aren't published. 

Things I looked up:

Glenn Gould (page 131) - a Canadian classical pianist

Yaddo (page 141 and 156) - nonprofit retreat for artists and writers located on a 400-acre estate in Saratoga Springs, New York 

Helen DeWitt (page 142) - an American novelist who lives in Berlin

The Married Man by Edmund White - Published in 2000, this novel is about an American living in Paris finds his life transformed by an unexpected love affair

Nick Laird (page 165) - a Northern Irish novelist and poet (neither here nor there, but if you are interested in what type of man NGS likes, look no further than photos of this man post-2020)

Hat mentions (why hats?):

Then it was raining, and I put on my hat and scarf and walked in the rain to Vig's place. (page 178)

We played a game with words in a hat. (page 199)

Dolly Parton Songteller: My Life in Lyrics by Dolly Parton

There is a prompt for the Pop Sugar Reading Challenge that is an autobiography by a woman in rock 'n' roll and there is exactly nothing about this prompt that gets me excited. I know, I know - Just Kids is great! everyone says. But I have a thing about excessive alcohol and drug use and I was not excited about this prompt. So I convinced myself that Dolly Parton Songteller would fit the brief well enough. 

I listened to the audiobook, which was nice because occasionally she'd break into song. 

In this "book," Robert K. Germann (who is never properly introduced in the book) asks Parton some questions and she answers by telling anecdotes. That's the structure. And, just like a few years ago when I listened to the podcast Dolly Parton's America, I got all pissy when Parton acts like being called a feminist or an LGBTQ ally is the worst thing in the world. I KNOW people love Parton and I do love her music, but every time I listen to these interviews with her, I get IRATE. IRATE.

(While we're on this topic, let's talk about the Garth Brooks situation. Fact #1: I'm a pretty big Brooks fangirl. Fact #2: He's been accused of some pretty gross sexual assault allegations. So I'm in a tough spot right now. Either I don't believe this women, which feels terrible, or I do and then my fandom, including several items of merchandise, several concert tickets, and literal dozens of album purchases feels terrible. I feel like I'm in a bad spot about this and if you see me in person, please don't ask about it. Also, if you see me alone in my car, chances are pretty good I'm listening to Brooks music. Don't be mad at me. I'm confused.)

But, whatever. Regardless of what she says in order not to piss of her Republican contingent of fans, she is a feminist and an ally. Whatever. This was fine. 3/5 stars

Here are my Top 10 Dolly Parton songs in order of date she published them. 

"Last Thing On My Mind" (1967) - duet with Porter Wagoner

"Joshua" (1971) 

"Coat of Many Colors" (1971)

"Jolene" (1973)

"Me and Little Andy" (1977)

"9 to 5" (1980) - This was the first song the DJ played at our wedding to get the dancing started. Now you know what sort of party we hosted.

"Islands in the Stream" (1983) - duet with Kenny Rogers

"Why'd You Come In Here" (1989) - Honestly, I thought this came out in the 1990s. 

"Rockin' Years" (1990) - duet with Ricky Van Shelton

"The Grass is Blue" (1999) - I thought this came out like ten years ago. LOLOLOL. 

Yesterday, I was in the grocery store with my husband when "Don't Fall in Love with a Dreamer" by Kenny Rogers and Kim Carnes came on and I was belting it out, pretending a can of pumpkin was a microphone (true story) and my husband just stared at me. Apparently he didn't know that song. Maybe I'm a Kenny Rogers superfan and didn't realize it?  I don't know. Also, my husband tapped out after "Jolene" and "I Will Always Love You" in naming Dolly Parton songs. How did I marry this man?

****************

What's your favorite Dolly Parton song? 

You're Never Weird on the Internet (Almost): A Memoir by Felicia Day

Do you think I read another book to try to fulfill my Pop Sugar Reading Challenge? I DID!! You're Never Weird on the Internet (Almost) by Felicia Day is my attempt to read a book that centers on video games. I tried really hard to read a fiction book for this, but it just didn't work.  Here's where I landed.

Do you know Felicia Day? I really only know her because she starred in a weird Joss Whedon project called Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Day is a multi-talented actress, gamer, and business lady. And in this memoir she talks about her life and how she got to where she was when this was published in 2015.

As someone who reads blogs, this felt like reading an extended blog post. She peppered her book with memes, photos, and random two by two tables. It was funny and I liked reading about how her relationship with her brother centered around videogames. I just thought it was missing something. I don't know what that something is - maybe a message? a bit of truth I can apply to my own non-gamer, non-business lady life? fewer insults aimed at physically and mentally disabled people? 

I had a friend in grad school who had a bookshelf above her desk at home. On one side of the bookshelf, she kept books that were her holy grails from authors and researchers she deeply admired, works she aspired toward. On the other side of the shelf she kept books that were a different sort of inspiration - the books that she didn't understand how they made it through the publishing process, but gave her hope that she could one day be published because her work was definitely better. AND FRIENDS! She is a published author! She's brilliant.

I am not saying this memoir is a book where I not sure how it made it through the publishing process. It's a funny book and she's a well-known person in certain circles. But I am saying that reading an entire book that was written like a blog made me think that maybe I could someday write something longer than a five hundred word blog post about my dog's health conditions. And I'm glad I read this book for that reason alone. 

3/5 stars

Lines of note:

My favorite movie is Babe, and if you even hum the theme song to it, I WILL start crying. One time I was introduced to James Cromwell, who played a gruff farmer in the movie, and I burst into tears when I touched his hand. Because it was so big and warm and he DANCED FOR HIS PIG. (page 35)

My favorite movie is Babe, too. Felicia Day and I are twins!

We arrived at Camouflage’s house after a few days (for a real name, let’s call him Tyler. Which was hard to remember in person anyway, to NOT call him Camouflage). (page 49)

This is real. I know Birchie's real name isn't Birchie, but it was hard not to call her by her handle when I met her IRL. 

My favorite was about a boy and girl arguing in a car about the morality of peeing in a McDonald’s without buying anything. (page 131)

Discuss in the comments. I have a strong feeling about this. 

A lot of people mock fandom and fan fiction, like it’s lazy to base your own creativity and passion on someone else’s work. But some of us need a stepping-stone to start. What’s wrong with finding joy in making something, regardless of the inspiration? If you feel the impulse, go ahead and write that Battlestar Galactica/Archie mashup fiction! Someone online will enjoy it. (Especially if Archie gets ripped apart by Cylons.) (page 210)

Preach it, Felicia. Preach it. 

What frightened me the most about my #GamerGate experience was the possibility that this could be the future of the internet. That the utopia I thought the online world created, where people don’t have to be ashamed of what they love and could connect with each other regardless of what they looked like, was really a place where people could steep themselves in their own worldview until they became willfully blind to everyone else’s. I guess the internet can be both things. Good and bad. (page 249)

The internet can be a harsh place. I am grateful for our little bloggy circle every day. 

Hat mentions (why hats?): 

Revealing that at rehearsal one day was quite the hat trick. (page 84)

...an outfit with a huge hat and sunglasses like Audrey Hepburn in a spy thriller. (page 163)

Half the time I put my “producer hat” on, I felt like I was playing dress-up. (page 165)

There were complications, of course, like when I discovered that most of the cast had never played a video game before, but I just put on the hat of “gamer consultant” (in addition to lead actress, show runner, and co-caterer) and plowed ahead. (page 167)

The Longest Race by Kara Goucher

I read  The Longest Race: Inside the Secret World of Abuse, Doping, and Deception on Nike's Elite Running Team by Kara Goucher and Mary Pilon because one of the prompts for the Pop Sugar Reading Challenge this year is a book about women's sports and/or by a woman athlete and all my bloggy friends recommended this one. Spoiler alert: I should have Nadia Comaneci's memoir instead. 

Huh. So I listened to the audiobook, which is narrated by Goucher herself and let me tell you, they should have paid someone else to do it because listening to her struggle through some of her own words (extenuating nearly did me in) was PAINFUL. AND! AND! She's another person who does not know the difference between the words woman and women and uses them incorrectly! Ugh.

So Goucher was a track athlete who was semi-successful in college, married a guy who was an elite runner, and then they both joined up with the Nike Oregon Project where she eventually became a more successful runner than her husband. But behind the endorsements and podium finishes, there was a lot of drama, including shady behavior on the part of her coach and teammates that culminated in emotional, physical, and sexual abuse. 

This is a tricky review to write. On one hand, Goucher is a victim. I feel terrible for her and what she went through. I can understand why she didn't tell anyone about some of the abuse.

On the other hand, she's hugely entitled? She lands a big endorsement deal that clearly says that if she doesn't race for 120 days, she won't get paid. So she gets pregnant, NEVER CHANGES THE CONTRACT, and gets upset that Nike won't pay when she can't race. Like...why would they? She's making more in one quarter than what I make in three years and she has the gall to complain about the bad health coverage? That she knew about before she got pregnant? Save your pennies like the rest of us plebes. 

I'm not saying these aren't terrible systematic issues in these United States. Health coverage tied to employment is barbaric and the maternity and paternity leave in this country is a joke. But literally every family has to deal with it. I don't know why she acted like it was unique to her or that it was so exhausting and trying for her. Try doing it when you're an hourly worker, Kara! Her inability to make any links between her experience and the experience of the average person was seriously pissing me off. 

And...is anyone really buying that she was clean? It's obvious to me that her morality is fluid (taking money from Amway, for example) and I don't buy that she wasn't doping. Sure, you threw that pill in the trash, friend. Sure you did. (This is also a 100% me problem, but there were a lot of verrrry boring race and training recaps. If that's your jam, great. It is not mine.)

Anyway. Yes, I believe that terrible things happened to her. Yes, I think having children in the United States is a very hard thing. Yes, I found this infuriating to read.  2/5 stars

Lines of note:

At home, she read us Anne of Green Gables and the Little House on the Prairie books, got us to the bus on time for school, and cooked our dinners...We dogeared the American Girl catalog as soon as it landed in our mailboxes. (timestamp 28:30) 

I always like it when some of the classics get namedropped in books. And if you were a woman of a certain age and didn't read the American Girl catalogs like they were magazines, we did not have similar childhoods. 

I was fine-tuning my ability to recognize the difference between and injury and good fatigue, the line between something is wrong with my hip and I'm sore getting out of bed.  (timestamp 2:26:00)

In light of my husband's recent rhabdo diagnosis, I'm trying to be exceptionally aware of this myself. Is this soreness, something that could turn into an injury, or an injury? 

I should have done it myself, told everyone that I wasn't going to practice, that I wasn't going to race that weekend. But I operated as if I had no choice because that's how I felt. (timestamp 5:24:16)

FFS. So many times this lady (or her husband) could have even looked for another job (with health insurance!) and instead she just kept on keeping on. I know I sound unsympathetic, but I swear I'd be a lot less pissy about the whole thing if she'd just attempted some other options (other teams, other coaches, other jobs, etc.). 

All Creatures Great and Small (All Creatures Great and Small #1 & 2) by James Herriot

All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot and narrated by Christopher Timothy was recommended me to as a riveting audiobook. Since I have recently become road trip lady, I was excited that it was available to immediately download and listen and spent the last weekend listening to it.

I had very vague memories of watching the show on PBS when I was a child, but as with most things I watch, this memory is mostly old cars going up and down hills and an occasional cow. 

This book was cozy and delightful, filled with whimsical anecdotes of Herriot's first few years as a veterinarian apprentice in the Yorkshire Dales. It's pretty low stakes, unless you're really concerned about whether or not cows died a century ago, but that doesn't mean that there weren't chapters where I was deeply concerned about the safety of other people on the road because I was crying (I'm mostly thinking of chapter eleven, if you need to know). There's a bit of medical grossness, but there were only one or two instances where I made a face because it was pretty gross. Most of it was very PG. 

I didn't love this narrator. He talked pretty slowly and even I, a loyalist to regular playback speed (it's how the performance was intended to be listened to - you don't speed it up when you listen to the Beatles or watch Dirty Dancing, do you?) was tempted to bump that up. But I did listen to the normal speed and sort of enjoyed the leisurely pace after a bit. It's a great antidote to the go go go world of 2024, especially the scenes where he just gets out of the car and looks around. 

I think you'll know from the above description if this is the right book for you or not. It's over fifteen hours on audio, so it's not a short listen, but it was an interesting one if you're into that sort of thing.

4/5 stars

Lines of note:

They had a toughness and a philosophical attitude which was new to me. Misfortunes, which would make the city dweller want to bang his head against the wall were shrugged off with "ah, well, these things happen." (timestamp 1:44:50)

I need to cultivate this attitude.

When Siegfried got an idea, he didn't muck about. Immediate action was his watch word. (timestamp 3:22:00)

I also need to cultivate the ability make and act on decisions quickly.

...seemed always to be at my elbow, filling up the enormous glass or pushing dainties at me. I found it delightful.(3:56:12)

Who doesn't like to be treated to the good life?

If only vetting just consisted of treating sick animals, but it didn't. There were so many other things. (timestamp 6:10:12)

People. By "other things," he means people.

Over my thirty odd years in practice I can recall many occasions when I looked a complete fool, but there is a peculiarly piercing quality about the memory of myself, bare to the waist, the center of a ring of hostile stares..(timestamp 10:44:35)

Do you have a memory that haunts you? It's not the big things that haunt me (the time I wrecked the car, CCed everyone in our department on an email with FERPA-protected information, or fell and broke my leg), but what keeps me up at night is an incident where I accidentally turned in a paper in college that had one page of a draft copy that had my copyediting marks on it instead of the final draft. Serious nightmare material there. 

I often had trouble identifying people outside their usual environment. (timestamp 14:22:46)

This is me. I am terrible about it. One time I saw a woman with a tiny baby in a coffeeshop and I knew that I knew her from somewhere, but I couldn't place her. She was so excited to see me and asked me if I wanted to hold her baby (and I did because I'm not a monster and this baby was teeeeeeeeny) and we had an entire conversation and I left feeling like maybe I was a monster because I still never figured out who she was.

She was a woman who worked at the organization where I had volunteered and had been on maternity leave for a few months and I only realized it when she returned to work. Apparently this is the post where I share with you all of my embarrassing stories. 

Hat mentions (why hats?):

When I first entered the hillside barn, I'd been surprised to see a little, bright-eyed old man in a porkpie hat settling down comfortably on a bale of straw. (timestamp 5:57)

Uncle took off his hat and scratched his head in disbelief. (timestamp 13:50)

I might have been in an office with the windows tight shut against the petrol fumes and the traffic noise, the desk light shining on the columns of figures, my bowler hat hanging on the wall. (timestamp 1:50:50)

A mass of curls, incongruous and very dark, peaked from under her hat. (timestamp 3:14:06)

...wore an ancient hat with a brim which flopped around his ears.  (timestamp 4:01:34)

"Don't you ever think of wearing a hat?" (timestamp 4:44:28)

...had removed his hat and was beating the dogs off with it. (timestamp 6:12:16)

...lashed out again with his hat and was gone. (timestamp 6:13:53) 

...but he had a stripy top hat, too, and a stick. (timestamp 6:34:52)

There should have been a beautiful woman in one of those pointed hats peeping out from that mullioned casement. (timestamp 9:59:26)

"I'll get me hat." (timestamp 11:37:53)

...expensive tweed coats and fur-trimmed hats. (timestamp 14:00:49)

The man looked down at the hat. (timestamp 14:48:14)

Corrections in Ink: A Memoir by Keri Blankinger

Lisa recommended Corrections in Ink by Keri Blankinger as one of the best books she read in 2022 and I thought it sounded interesting, so I dove in.

Blakinger was raised in a loving home, was a competitive pairs figure skater, but as a teenager she suffered from an eating disorder and then turned to drugs. She was living on the street, doing sex work to fund her habit, but her parents eventually paid for her to go to college. Very near the end of her time at college, she was arrested and sent to jail and prison on drug charges.

As with many memoirs about addicts, I really struggle with the romanticism of drug culture. Blakinger does accept that she was in a very privileged position (white, conventionally attractive, parents who could pay for things), but for the most part this book focused on her actions, but never really the reasons behind them.  Eh. Her depictions of life behind bars seemed to be kind of a b-plot after her spiral into addiction. 

The best part of the book was the last couple of chapters when Blakinger started talking about her career in journalism after she was released from prison. I do enjoy the topic of prisoner reentry and how journalists do work. Blakinger moved around from newsroom to newsroom before settling in at The Marshall Project. She does really interesting work on prison reform and prison advocacy and all of that was encouraging and fascinating and it was really not the focus of the book, despite how much I wanted it to be. 

Eh. If you want information about living in prison, listen to Ear Hustle instead.

3.5/5 stars

Woodrow on the Bench: Life Lessons from a Wise Old Dog by Jenna Blum

 

Bonney Teti from my beloved Pop Mom! podcast recommends many books that I end up loving, including Convenience Store Woman, which is a book I think about all the time, but would never have stumbled upon if not for her. She recommend Woodrow on the Bench by Jenna Blum and oh, boy, was it exactly what I needed.

Blum has had Woodrow, an adorable black Labrador retriever, since he was a puppy. He starts slowing down as he turns thirteen, then fourteen, then fifteen. Blum writes about what it's like to be the caretaker for a senior dog, how hard it is to know exactly when the moment is that you should call the vet, and how much she had come to depend on her dog as a companion and as a way to interact with the world.

Hannah is not a senior dog, but she is a special needs dog whose needs I did not anticipate when we first adopted her. But this book was reassuring to me. There's a quality of life calculator in the book. The scale is 8 (your dog is very sick) to 80 (what a healthy, happy dog you have) and when I did an honest assessment of Hannah, it was 59 (Zelda, for her part, is an 80).  That made me think that Hannah's not in the worst place ever. Sure, things could (and should) be better, but she's hanging in there. 

It was also reassuring for me to read about someone who is as obsessed with their dog as I am with mine. Blum basically did nothing but care for her dog for months at a time. And it was reassuring to me that Blum herself was in denial about just how very sick her dog was until the very last moment. People frequently tell me that "you'll just know" when it's time for you to decide to put your pet down, but I honestly don't 100% believe that and it was good to read Blum, who loved her dog very much, write honestly about how she probably waited too long.

Yes, this was a sad read. When Woodrow died, there were tears on my part. But I was happy to read this book to help me prepare for a future that I hope is many years away, but, if it's not, at least I will feel somewhat prepared. Maybe prepared is not the right word, but rather forewarned about the emotional devastation.  

It's not for everybody, but if you and your pet are codependent, it's probably worth a read.

5/5 stars

Lines I Read Out Loud to My Husband:

And although we had agreed not to let Woodrow on any of the furniture! Never! Ever! Especially on the bed!, one afternoon Andy came home from work and caught me napping with Woodrow next to me, the dog's head on my pillow. The look Andy gave us could not have been more gravely disappointed if he had caught me with another man. (page 7)

Just brilliant. I love how you have big plans when you bring home pets (or babies, I would imagine), but those plans go out the window so quickly. We were going to split Hannah duties and I'll leave you to imagine who does most of the Hannah caretaking in our home.

Like most Labs, Woodrow had his share of near-death experiences. His first came before he was a year old: we were visiting Andy's parents in New Hampshire. I'd warned them before we left Boston to put away anything that was food, looked like food, or could be mistaken for food, but since they had a Newfoundland and a German shepherd, dogs with normal appetites, they didn't take me seriously. (page 24)

Don't I wish my dog wanted to eat?  Ha. But I love how stereotypical Woodrow was in this book. He was not a Lab who acted like anything other than a Lab.

Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris

I have a great deal of admiration for David Sedaris. I once went to a book signing he had at our college's bookstore. I went to a live taping of This American Life where he was a reader (although on closer inspection of my memory, I wonder if it was actually David Rakoff). 

    Parenthetical break: I used to do things when I lived in the Twin Cities.  That is all.

I think Sedaris is best in an audio format. I feel like I would LOVE this book if I had listened to the audiobook. Instead, as with most short story or essay collections, it is a book filled with hits and misses.  I would divide the book up into about four different types of writings: those of his misspent youth, his travels, his hobbies, and fiction.

I can't even with the fiction that Sedaris writes. It's meant to be sardonic and maybe even satirical, but it's never funny or clever. So let's just assume that I basically skimmed through those stories.

I particularly like it when Sedaris writes about the strange things that occupy his time and his mind. There's a story, "Understanding Understanding Owls," about how he decided that he wanted to buy his boyfriend Hugh a stuffed owl. What he meant by stuffed owl, however, was a real owl that had been though the taxidermy process.  This is apparently illegal in many places, including the United States and France.  However, in the UK, the rules are looser, particularly if the bird died naturally or the "stuffed bird" was an antique. This led Sedaris to a taxidermy shop to purchase an owl and hilarity ensued. What I liked about this story was the strangeness of the topic. Who would think about taxidermy as a gift item? Even if you really like owls, why is a formerly live one a good present for someone you love?  It's such a gem to read about someone who loves something deeply, even if that something is utterly incomprehensible to you.

"Rubbish" is about how when Sedaris moved to West Sussex, he noticed that there was litter everywhere.  "The center of life is a little food shop, and walking to it on that first December afternoon, I saw more litter than I had the entire fifteen years I spent in Normandy." (215)  Instead of just bitching about it, he went all Lady Bird Johnson on that shit and started spending hours a day picking up trash.  It's so endearing to think about what a change he undoubtedly made in that community by simply doing a simple task.  I always think I should take a bag for trash out when I walk the dog, but I never do. Maybe reading this will give me some motivation to do so.

Anyway, it's a mixed bag, as always with Sedaris. I think you should listen to it, if that's possible for you.  But, it's still a funny look at modern life and worth your time.

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King

I have a good friend who admires Stephen King, both as a writer and how he made his way from his blue-collar roots to skyrocketing success.  She's talked about On Writing since I met her, way back in the early 2000s.  I am, however, skeptical of Stephen King, mostly because my experience reading The Dark Tower series was mostly just a sense of inconsistency and longwindedness.  

And this book starts with more than 100 pages of what King calls his "C.V." - a "curriculum vitae - my attempt to show how one writer was formed" (page 18). And I start to despise King all over again. I don't understand how most of the anecdotes he shares have anything to do with his development as a writer and it becomes more and more apparent that I despise this man and it's not clear why, but I'm pretty sure if I met him in person, I'd be hard-pressed not to punch him.

And then the book abruptly transitions into King's advice on writing and I hate to admit it, but I agree with him on most things. He and I have similar views on much having to do with writing mechanics and production.

1) If something is important to you, you have to practice.  If you want to be a good writer, you need to read and write every day.  I'm not a writer, but I am a reader and it doesn't matter how busy or tired I am, I always find time for it in my day.  You don't just get to be a writer, habit makes you one.

2) Everyone can be a competent writer.  Bad writers can become competent with practice.  Not all good writers can become great, but everyone can become just fine.

3) King writes: The adverb is not your friend (page 124).  He also writes: Is this a case of "Do as I say, not as I do?" The reader has a perfect right to ask the question, and I have a duty to provide an honest answer. Yes. It is (page 127). 

I know, because I mentioned it in my review of The Gunslinger, that King does not shy away from adverbs. And he really should.

4) King is pretty adamant the Strunk and White's The Elements of Style is the only style guide you need on your shelf. I agree with this.

5) King admits that he tends to be the kind of author who adds to writing in revisions,  but Strunk and White's "omit needless words" rules, along with an editor's advice that the second draft should be 10% shorter than the first, has led him to try to be more concise in his revisions. I think this is valuable insight.

So as I was reading, I found myself in agreement with a lot of what he had to say.  But I just felt like this book was full of advice that worked for King because he had so much privilege.  Consider:

When I'm asked for "the secret of my success" (an absurd idea, that, but impossible to get away from), I sometimes say there are two: I stayed physically healthy...and I stayed married." (page 154)

I have some quibbles with this (he was an alcoholic cokehead addicted to nicotine for a great deal of his life - how is that "healthy"?), but I also side-eye this entire sentence because while King does talk a lot about how his wife, Tabby, is integral in his writing process as his first reader, he doesn't acknowledge all the other shit she undoubtedly does for him while he writing: the child rearing, the cooking, the appointment making and taking, the cleaning, the endless emotional labor that takes place when somebody in the household closes the door to his office to write for 4-6 hours a day.  He gives Tabby only one sentence to acknowledge how crucial this is to his ability to write.

So he gives everyone the advice to write for 4-6 hours a day.  Well, what if you can't?  What if  you have other responsibilities, be it family or financial or other?  It just seems so short-sighted and I can't get behind his lack of appreciation for his place of privilege.

King also has an entire section about how plot isn't his thing ("I won't try to convince you that I've never plotted any more than I'd try to convince you that I've never told a lie, but I do both as infrequently as possible" (page 163)) because "first, because our lives are largely plotless, even when you add in all our reasonable precautions and careful planning; and second, because I believe plotting and the spontaneity of real creation aren't compatible." (page 163)

I rejoin: First, fiction is not supposed to be about our lives. It should be believable, but I don't want to read about where the characters parked the car and how much time they spent debating what flavors of Chex to buy at the grocery store any more than I want to read a meandering slice of life novel.  Furthermore, if you're going to write, let's say a hypothetical seven-book series in an apocalyptic western genre, it might behoove you to do some plotting so that in the last novel you don't have to include a scrimshaw MacGuffin in the last novel (ahem).  Second, if you don't think plotting and real creation are compatible, how do you explain the mystery story genre?  

But, as much as I want to bash on King (why do I dislike him? I mean, he's just a dude, right?), I found this book just so readable.  I think we can agree that King is unlikely to win a PEN/Faulkner award, but he is more than a competent writer. He's a good writer, maybe even a borderline great writer at moments. He writes with clarity and purpose.  I just wish he cared more about the same writing elements that I care about.

From the Corner of the Oval by Beck Dorey-Stein

From the Corner of the Oval is Beck Dorey-Stein's debut novel. It tells the story of a former teacher who, through what seems like chance and more luck than she deserves, ends up as a stenographer in the White House during the Obama administration.  She writes with a combination of hubris, candidness, and embarrassment. Dorey-Stein has a voice that is one of a kind.

I don't normally love memoirs. People's lives are generally not as interesting as they think they are.  And Dorey-Stein's life was, for the most part, incredibly normal for a 20-something. She was aimless in her career, she was the "other woman" in a relationship with a man who wanted nothing from her except sex, and she was a borderline alcoholic. She made bad decision after bad decision in a way that was not only predictable, but predictable in a way that made me want to reassure all the confident, smart, self-assure, and composed 20-somethings who are doing all the right things, but aren't getting anywhere in life, that they're okay and Dorey-Stein was just insanely lucky.  All in all, I though the parts of this book about her personal life were a terrible snoozefest. 

But, on the other hand, it was fascinating to hear about life in the Oval Office from the POV from a low-level staffer.  It was fascinating to see just how much of the life of a POTUS is determined by 20-something staffers who are suffering from frequent hangovers. It was fascinating to get a look into the planning of an international presidential visit. It was fascinating to think about how much of her life was a hurry up and wait.  Her personal life was not interesting in the least, but her professional life certainly was.

And Dorey-Stein can write. Even though I didn't really care about her personal life and I wanted to smack her repeatedly for her immature handling of just about every social interaction she had, I really was interested. I flipped through the pages, always wanting more.  Mostly I wanted more about what clothes she wore, how much she got paid, and what she packed on her trips, but in the end this is an author who was in an interesting place at an interesting time and she can write well.  I wish there were an edited volume in which all mentions of sex, booze, and cigarettes were removed, but the book does stand on its own. 

Three and a half stars out of five with the hope that Dorey-Stein does something else interesting in her 30s and writes another memoir, but figures out that life isn't all about hormones and Cape Codder cocktails.

The Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell

The Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell is the real-life diary of a book store owner in a small town in Scotland. Bythell and his ragtag bunch of employees and shop cat Caspian attempt to staunch the growing tidal waves of Kindles and Amazon purchases that will soon force all small bookstores out of business through the sheer force of their quirkiness and arrogance.

Oh, wait. I've given it away, haven't I?

I appreciate this memoir on two main fronts. One, yes, it's a reminder to me that I should occasionally buy an actual physical book from a small bookstore. Digital publishing is doing a number to publishing houses, actually writers, and bookstores themselves and while it may seem like spitting into the eye of a hurricane for me to make my purchases this way, I guess I'm all for meaningless acts of symbolism.  Two, sometimes the stories of the customers were incredibly charming. The man who found his father's Latin school textbook in the store? Coincidental and heartwarming. The small child who wanted to buy a book for his mom for Christmas?  Even my cold, non-childbearing ovaries squealed a tiny bit.

But Bythell himself is not someone I want to hang out with. I generally don't like memoirs because people who think they are interesting enough to write memoirs are usually over-confident, arrogant people and this book did not prove me wrong. Yeah, I want to sit around and read all day, too, but guess what? That's not how the world works. I'm sorry that you chose to own a small business and then you're upset when the small business requires more work than just reading.  Okay, so I didn't like Bythell. That doesn't always stop me from liking something.

The writing was also bad.

For example, at one point, he says "the customer was rude." That's all. No description of how the customer was rude or what the customer did, but just that the customer was rude. You know what?  I don't need this in my life.

I did finish the book, but I would not recommend this to anyone.

Here We Are: Feminism for the Real World, Edited by Kelly Jensen

Here We Are: Feminism for the Real World, edited by Kelly Jensen, is a collection of contributions that include personal essays, cartoons, lists, and poems from forty-four individuals. It was shelved in the young adult section of our local library and that's going to play in a little bit when I talk about this collection.

Like any collection with multiple authors, this one was hit or miss for me.

Some Hits:
1) Amandla Stenberg's piece "Don't Cash Crop on my Cornrows" grapples with the idea of cultural appropriation in a nuanced way that I really appreciated. There is a fine line cultural exchange and cultural appropriation, but there is an actual line and Stenberg seems okay with taking a stand on where that line might be.  She also recognizes in the last line of her piece why we should even have a conversation about cultural theft: what would America be like if we loved black people as much as we love black culture?

I think about cultural appropriation A LOT. I think about when I step into yoga class. I think about when I consider wearing a print that looks vaguely African in derivation. I think about it when I read books that seem to fetishize other countries. I think about when I listen to music. I definitely think about it when a sports game enters my world.  This essay spoke to me.

2) Brandy Colbert wrote a stirring piece, "In Search of Sisterhood," about the importance of black female friendship in her life and how important black representation in media is.  I was moved by her writing and the honesty she had in expressing exactly how hard it is as a minority to find people with shared experiences and how it's even harder when you find those people and you don't actually want to be friends with them.

3) I loved all the ideas for books I got out of these essays. Books that I've now added to my list include Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, All the Rage by Courtney Summers, Black Girl in Paris by Shay Youngblood, and The Elementals by Francesca Lia Block.

Some Misses:
 1) On page 14 (!), the author starts talking about faking orgasms. I know I'm a prude and maybe we should talk to our young women about why they shouldn't actually do this and encourage them to communicate with their partners, but, you know what. I don't actually think this is something that's worthy of page 14 status.  This is recommended for grades seven and up and I just don't think it's appropriate for a seventh grader. There.  Maybe if this had been in a more nuanced essay about sexuality and female orgasm, but it wasn't. It was a casual mention and I just found it out of place and way too early on in the book for my, admittedly prudish, tastes.

2) Matt Nathanson proudly declares himself a feminist. Great. But then he has to talk about it solely in terms of his daughter.  I really hate this. When men write about feminism, I, perhaps unfairly, hold them to a high standard. If men are going to tell women how to feel about being a woman, they better do it in a super nuanced way. Only saying you care about women because of your mother, sister, wife, or daughter is one of the biggest ways to get under my skin.  Maybe you should care about women because women are people, too, not just the ones who are related to you.

3) I know the editors tried to get a variety of types of writers (dancer, politician, songwriter). BUT THERE ARE SO MANY WRITERS. I think writing is great and I think making a career of writing is awesome, but it's also nice to hear about women being successful in other fields.  When I was young, the guidance counselor would always give me four options for jobs - teacher, nurse, writer, and ruler of the world (I would force him to write down that last one). I wish I had even known that there were other options available to me AND had narratives about what that life would have looked like.

Overall:
I would recommend this book to a young feminist, but not a very young feminist.

I would like to give Matt Nathanson a piece of my mind.

I would definitely hide the fact that I was reading this if my mom were visiting. 

I think it's a mixed success book, but I'm impressed with the gumption of the whole thing. 

H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald

Part grief memoir, part how to train a goshawk guide, and part literary reflection, H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald is a hard to pin down book. Macdonald's father dies and she gets what I took to referring to as her "impulse pet," a goshawk named Mabel. As she chronicles her own experiences with Mabel, she references T. H. White's own chronicle of his experience as a newbie falconer in The Goshawk.

Look, I'm American and don't really have a history with the tradition of falconry. Frankly, after reading this book, I think it's a bit cruel. The whole idea of taking a creature that it wild and forcing it to bend to your will is hard for me to swallow. I've written here about how I feel conflicted about whether or not I'm doing a disservice to my house cat (animals that domesticated themselves!) by preventing her from living her fullest life in the wild, so I'm guessing you can only imagine how conflicted I am by the idea of taking a creature that is in no way tame or domesticated. I don't understand and I often thought the entire process was unnecessary and I'm not sure what either party got out of it. 

But the writing in the book was delicious. 

"I once asked my friends if they'd ever held things that gave them a spooky sense of history. Ancient pots with three thousand-year-old thumbprints in the clay, said one. Antique keys, another. Clay pipes. Dancing shoes form WWII. Roman coins I found in a field. Old bus tickets in second-hand books.  Everyone agreed that what these small things did was strangely intimate; they gave them the sense, as they picked them up and turned them in their fingers, of another person, an unknown person a long time ago, who had held that object in their hands." (page 116)

Take a minute and sit with that. What do you own that makes you think these things?  I live in a 100-year-old house and I often think about the other people who have lived here.  What did they love? What made them happy? How often did they crank up the music and dance? What made them cry?  I'm not going to find Roman coins in a field (oh, Europe), but sometimes when we're cleaning things out we get just a hint of the history and it makes it all so real.

She also talks about how when she gets dressed in "real" clothes, slaps on some makeup, and gets ready to go to the outside world, she feels like she's putting on a disguise (page 179 - 180).  I think of it as putting on my armor, ready for battle against the tide of expectations from outside the home. But thinking of it as a disguise also makes sense. I'm disguising who I really am in order to become acceptable for others who don't really want to accept the unvarnished reality of me.

So basically what I'm saying is that I have mixed feelings on this book. It's definitely worth a read, but the diversions about White weren't particularly interesting to me and I kept getting riled up about how much I thought falconry was just not morally okay.  I thought it was an honest reflection on grief, which I kind of need right now, so that was lovely. I just don't know. I don't think I'll ever read it again and I don't want people to NOT read it, but I also don't think I can wholeheartedly endorse it. I think, if someone I know suffers a loss, I might suggest this.  Or I might just send them a giftcard to Starbucks.

The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi is Satrapi's memoir of growing up in Iran, leaving her family for Europe during the Iranian Revolution, returning to Iran as a westernized woman, and then her eventual self-exile.   And it's all done as a graphic novel.

It's a very honest telling of her story and the artistry of the panels is amazing. She tells stories of her own life that definitely put her in a poor light (becoming homeless, getting a guy arrested falsely) and I struggle to imagine if I would be as willing to put my own mistakes on the page in such an open fashion.  It also does a great job of humanizing the people of Iran - something that we don't always do a good job of in the United States. The stories of day to day life in Iran, through all of the political turmoil, were really some of the most remarkable pages.  The perspective of a young Iranian woman is one that I don't think we get much of and it's an important one to listen to, I think.

I didn't much like Marjane, though. I thought she was self-absorbed and indulgent. And, I mean, yes, of course she is - she's a child and an adolescent through much of the book.  But not wanting to be with this character meant that I would read five pages and put the book down for days on end, read another five pages and then put it down for another couple of days. I didn't want to read it and only managed to read it when I puposefully took it as the only book on a car trip.

So, yes, it's good.  And I think it's an important book.

But I would probably only give it 3.5 out of 5 stars. It's just not a book that speaks to me.