We just got back from our annual trip to the East Coast, where we did all the things we
Eric is a huge Formula One racing fan, and I have gotten interested in it during the past few years. Once I noticed that the 18-19 races per year were all in Fantastically Awesome places (Australia, Spain and all over Western Europe, Japan, China, Bahrain, Monaco, Turkey, Brazil, Malaysia, Singapore, and on and on) I suggested that over our lifetime together, we try to get to see all of them. Eric Lives the Dream, and I get to see Fabulous Exotic Locations. What could be better?
The small matter of having no money has been standing in our way, but this year we started the journey at the Grand Prix du Canada in Montreal. We flew the red-eye, dropped off Ainsley with my parents in New Jersey and drove the six hours north to the luxurious Travelodge By The Airport (which actually turned out to be awesome). For the first evening alone in years, I settled in to choose between the two books I had brought for the weekend.
These were The Road and Case Histories.
I open The Road and read the dust jacket blurb. Father, son, "burned America" ... not for me, missing my baby and worrying that something awful would happen while I was gone. Case Histories looked much more promising. It billed itself as a "literary thriller" and interesting psychological study. Sounds great!
Until the end of the first chapter, where the angelic three-year-old VANISHES and IS NEVER FOUND. OH MAN!
I've been mired in Historical Fiction in Medieval Times for the past month or so ... first, Pillars of the Earth and World
ANACHRONISTIC FEMINIST: Generally a noblewoman who, you know, doesn't want to get married, wants to go to school, run her own business, put off childbearing, keep her last name. Her ambitions are viciously squelched at least once, but then she Rises Again, better than Ever, to run the earldom or discover a new means of dying and marketing cloth. She Will Survive!
INEPT CRAFTSMAN: Boy, if this guy could get his act together, maybe the bridge wouldn't collapse and ruin the Fleece Fair for everyone.
TALENTED BUT ILLEGITIMATE APPRENTICE: This young man has all the skills that the INEPT CRAFTSMAN lacks, but he doesn't believe in God, or maybe he can't join the guild because he banged the CRAFTSMAN's daughter. His plans are genius, but they're always botched by the INEPT CRAFTSMAN.
AMBITIOUS CLERIC: Maybe the prior, maybe the bishop, maybe a lowly priest, he dreams of rising to Archbishop and then to Cardinal. He is shortsighted, which is ironic for a man of God, and always thwarting the Big Ideas of the A.F. or the T.B.I.A (who you know wind up together having Hot Medieval Unsanctified Congress).
BESTIAL NOBILITY: Rapes your daughter, steals your land. If karma doesn't get him, the plague will.
Doesn't that sound easy? I'm almost inspired to get started.
No. Not awesome at all.
I guess there's a little sub-genre these days in "Why are we so stupid?" books, which I've largely encountered by
Now I'm in the midst of Predictably Irrational, which somehow is the exact same book. I mean, same psychological experiments, same conclusions, same kinda informal "I don't know about you, but I ..." author tone. Different and better title, though! And great Mets colors! Anyway, both titles briefly inspired me to try to outsmart my own brain, but alas, to no avail.
Instead, I've enjoyed some brain candy lately, including Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follett (because I heard you had to in order to get your tax relief check) and most recently the totally inappropriate YA gem Boy Toy, which I read expecting to acquire for my library but now of course cannot. Why? Well, it's the heartwarming tale of a young teacher who has a torrid sexual affair with her middle school student! With some steamy teacher-on-student sex scenes! Really, how could I possibly recommend this to *any* of MY middle school students? I mean, I love all my Scrabble boys, I really do ... but Not In That Way.
Speaking of Scrabble, we are deep into Scrabble March Madness -- we have a whole elaborate tournament bracket, with "byes" and all, and it is just awesome. They are getting so good, and so hyper-competitive! Anytime some takes a little long over one of their plays, the cry of "Rain delay!" goes up all over the room and the guilty party is shamed into playing. In other elective news, the damn yearbook that has dried my soul to a desiccated husk has just gone to print and Scrabble got three shout-outs in the graduating eighth graders' farewell writeups. I'm so proud.
So Eric had his wisdom teeth out yesterday, and the surgery was "complicated." When the nurse dumped him out the back door, all groggy and anesthetized, we had the following conversation:
(Fill in the slurred words from bleeding tooth-wounds and gauze packing)
ERIC (eyes closed in car): uggg
ME: What do I need to do to take care of him?
NURSE: Lots of ice, blah blah blah, and bring him back tomorrow for an evaluation. Can you come at two-thirty?
ERIC: That's when ... you go to the dentist.
And again later, while he was high on Percoset (but before he passed out), we had the following conversation:
(Again, imagine the slurs and the overall pain)
ERIC: Turn on the .... computer .... I want you to look at an .... email ....
ME (super mother hen mode): OK, it's on, what is it?
ERIC: Ohh .... I lost my train of thought ... can you read me the ... subject lines ....
ME: "posted on craigslist", "evite from Heather" blah blah
ERIC: I ... remember now ... it's "Punish Her .... with a Full ... Nine Inches ...."
ME: Aw, I think you must have deleted it.
Ha HA! What a trooper, that man of mine.
In book news, I just read The Rising Star of Rusty Nail, a cute if not particularly artfully written middle-grade novel
I just started The Exception, which sounded so cool and got such good reviews that I had to immediately get on the library waiting list. But now that it's here, and I'm two chapters into it, it's just so damn Danish that I'm not sure I can keep up the slog.
As I have mentioned, ever since I became a parent I find Holocaust literature nearly unbearable in the visceral horror it elicits in me. Fiction, non-fiction, whatever ... it makes me want to stockpile food and weapons in case Anyone Ever Dares Threaten My Child.
Naturally, this is a rather large part of my job. So I try to avoid it in my pleasure reading, when I get to read for pleasure. And yet, somehow, in the past few weeks, during my Completely Debilitating Flu-like Symptoms, three (3) (!) ... no, wait, FOUR of them slipped into my bedtime reading. What the?
The Zookeeper's Wife was clearly the most brutal of the four, being a true story and taking place in Warsaw. Like most narratives about those who hid Jews, it manages to be both inspiring and admonishing -- why didn't more people do it and WOULD YOU DO IT? I think about this all the time, literally all the time. Who am I, in my position of (relative) privilege and (relative) power, who am I not speaking for? How do you judge history's nameless who Did Not Act? How should my own complacency be judged? Is it not the absolute height of hypocrisy to say "oh, the horror" and then send my time and money not to Darfur, or to lobbying ol' Zoe Lofgren and Mmes. Boxer and Feinstein, but to AT&T for my super DSL connection and my nifty cell phone and to my own bed to read escapist novels?
Yes it is. You can see why I try to maybe keep off these on a regular basis. No one likes her chai tea to turn to ashes in her mouth.
Anyway. Okay, so The Amber Room and People of the Book were both about priceless "degenerate" art looted by the Nazis (oh, shit, there's ANOTHER recent YA book I read about this: The Mysterious Edge of the Heroic World, by E.L. Konigsburg of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler fame ... no wonder I'm so spun up). Amber Room was Da Vinci Code-esque (although far more artistically crafted -- that Dan Brown is a Bad Writer) and not really worth it for the Thrill. People of the Book dealt with the Sarajevo Haggadah, and is AWESOME. And the heroine is a book conservator! Again, the tragedy is that the book's parade through persecution: expulsion, Inquisitions, Nazis, Serbs ... like a flip book of anti-Semitism through the ages.
I wanted to write more about The History of Love -- I really liked it -- but I'm drained and I have to go ponder my complacency.
I'm reading "The Deportees" and this about summed it up for me:
"Great days, when twenty-four hours weren't enough, when sleeping was a waste of time.
Now, he had the kids and sleeping was an impossibility. He never woke up in the same bed; he'd even spent a night in the cot, because Mahalia, the youngest, had refused to stay in it.
-- Not my comfy bed. That my comfy bed, she'd yelled, pointing at his comfy fuckin' bed."
Ha HA.
You're Ulysses!
by James Joyce
Most people are convinced that you don't make any sense, but compared
to what else you could say, what you're saying now makes tons of sense. What people do
understand about you is your vulgarity, which has convinced people that you are at once
brilliant and repugnant. Meanwhile you are content to wander around aimlessly, taking in
the sights and sounds of the city. What you see is vast, almost limitless, and brings you
additional fame. When no one is looking, you dream of being a Greek folk hero.
Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.
I guess because I feel old ...?
This was nevertheless a very quick and interesting read, following (go figure) the six days in October when the stock market loses more than 25% of its value. Fascinating how the stock market worked then, how trades were conducted and recorded (oy, the paperwork! all the poor clerks pulling all-nighters during this crash!), all the collusion, and how the bankers tried (unsuccessfully) to prop up the market by marching in to the exchange and placing large buy orders in a commanding voice for over the asking price (so low tech!).
My own copy lacks the humiliating "Wall Street Journal Book for Children" so prominently placed. So it's cool; I can read it on the train.
In honor of Black History Month, I've been reading some overdue middle-grade novels
In other news, my Scrabble elective started today and is filled with serious Scrabblers who are going to rock the house. I can't wait to start competition. Favorite word of all 8th grade boys: FAQIR -- used as in "What the FAQIR are you doing, blocking my triple word score?"
Another fun end-run around the F-word: "fuh-kidding." As in "Are you fuh-kidding me?" Have to bust them, but laughing secretly on the inside. LOVE middle schoolers.
Recent Comments
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Jane said:
Why has the damn yearbook dried your soul to a dessicated husk? read more
on rational? irrational? who, me? -
Kirsten said:
What is the What. Haven't read it, but I love that title. Poor Eric! What a miserable surgery--I'd repressed all... read more
on The wisdom of wisdom teeth ... -
livebug said:
Ah, yes, I remember that syringe. At first it was disturbing (it felt like injecting water Directly Into My Skull)... read more
on The wisdom of wisdom teeth ... -
livebug said:
Oh, I love The Mists of Avalon! In fact, I AM the Mists of Avalon, Ms. Lolita. Once you get... read more
on The wisdom of wisdom teeth ...
So, does the Mists of Avalon count in this genre? If so, I can just learn the code and look... read more
on Million dollar formula -- for you!