Trying to look smart?

It turns out that one in three consumers polled in London admit that they bought books "to look intelligent." And that few actually read the books they buy.

When did reading become a matter of social appearance rather than a wonderfully enjoyable escape?

And what does it say about me that I was seen by dozens of people yesterday when I was reading Poetry Magazine?

Jessa Crispin uses this information to give guys advice on what to be seen reading. Funny stuff.

a little bit of a rant

I did hope not to use this blog as a forum for ranting, but sometimes you just have to let it out.


As an Asian-American, I'm subjected to a lot of stereotypes. Now, while the actual number of comments has diminished through the years, the fact that I still hear them remains a source of a lot of incredulity. Apparently, I'm not the only one who thinks this. James Yeh has this hilarious little commentary on stupid things people say to Asian-looking folks. And while you're at it, check out his blog. Good stuff.

I have had three proposals from complete strangers. Hello!? We aren't all mail-order brides looking for a way to stay in the country. Some of us were born here and actually speak without accents. Imagine that.

Advice: We (Asian-Americans) know that we look "exotic" and sometimes your curiousity is ovewhelming. Go ahead and ask what our background is, but please don't ask, "What are you?" My standard reply is "Human," or "Female."

Literature for the mind

A friend (whose opinion means a lot to me) recently recommended I read The Brothers Karamazov. I was never that interested in Russian literature and maybe slogging my way through War and Peace didn't help.

I stumbled across this marvelous article about Apostolos Gerasoulis, the mathematician behind the search engine "Ask Jeeves." It tells a great deal about the creation of and ideas behind the search engine, but the one part that stood out for me was the following quote:

"At first, he was a pretty bad student, until he discovered the principle of abstraction in the stories by Dostoyevsky."

A nice thing to hear about for those of us with a mathematical and literary bent.

New gadget!

I'm not usually much for gadgets, but I recently received an iPod nano for my birthday. (Yes, it wasn't long ago.)

Heh. No wonder the Apple users are such fanatics. This gadget is easy to use and great for my walks and workouts. Plus, I get the added benefit of seeing people eye it with envy. (I want an Apple computer, too, but that will be years away...)

I've already loaded 117 songs on the thing, and am deciding what part of my large CD collection I want to add. Heh. It seems I can never have too much Steely Dan.

Fun.

We pause for this baseball note...

It's not easy being a National League fan. Neal Pollack thinks so, too.

"I'm an old-fashioned National League purist. I stand firmly against the designated hitter and believe that NL games are more sophisticated and interesting. Even during the prime juice years of McGwire, Sosa, and Bonds, there was still a pitcher hitting ninth; baseball isn't baseball without the double switch."

Needed a laugh...

And I got one.

I couldn't stop laughing at Gene Weingarten's article...

Enjoy.

A Cask of Whine

Busy busy times for me -- pardon the hiatus. A few notes:

• My baby brother turned 40 yesterday. Happy birthday, David! We'll be the same age for a couple weeks now.
• I confess I could NOT finish A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers. I read so many rave reviews and had friends recommend it. Heck, even the gal at the bookstore waxed rhapsodic when she saw me buying it. But I'm sorry. I found it extremely self-absorbed and so full of self-congratulatory cleverness and Gen-X-brand angst, that, after 100 pages and many derisive snorts and rolling of the eyes, I just gave up. I didn't even find the writing particularly catchy. Sorry. I just couldn't do it...
• The Giants are out of the playoffs.
• And maybe I'm just having a bad week, but does anyone else actually find this funny? (Really... I am easily amused, usually.)

Yet another biography...

It's no secret that I love Shakespeare's plays. What a lot of people don't undertand about my love of the work, however, is that it doesn't necessarily translate into a desire to read about Shakespeare himself. I do have a copy of Stephen Grenblatt's Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare in my pile of books to be read. And some kind soul gave me a copy of Harold Bloom's Shakespeare: The Invention of the Humana few years ago. (I am reluctant to admit I haven't picked it up.) But the truth is, I'd rather pick up a copy of a play and re-read it than read a biography or any treatise about his work.

But it seems that there are always new biographies coming out. I don't plan to read Peter Ackroyd's biography, despite the good press on it so far. But I am intrigued that Bill Bryson is working on his own Shakespeare bio. I adore Bryson's writing... I may have to get that one.

The Secret Life of Bees

I just finished reading Sue Monk Kidd’s novel The Secret Life of Bees. My initial reaction was that it is a beautifully written coming-of-age novel. The descriptions of the American South in the 1960s are tender and lovely.

The story revolves around Lily Owens, a 14-year-old girl growing up in Sylvan, S.C., on a peach orchard with her father and a housekeeper. The story jump starts when Rosaleen, the black housekeeper, goes into town to register to vote. She encounters some white men bent on preventing her registration, and ends up beaten and in jail. Lily helps her escape, and the two of them run away; Rosaleen from jail and Lily from her abusive father. Lily’s mother is gone, dead from a gun accident when Lily was four, that may or may not have been caused by Lily.

Lily’s only clue to anything in her dead mother’s past is a photograph and a picture of a “black Madonna” with the words “Tiburon, S.C.” scrawled on the back. So Lily and Rosaleen head to Tiburon, where they meet with three sisters who run a honey farm.

The story’s basic themes involve Lily’s search for a mother and that love transcends race. The book is beautifully written, with often poetic and achingly lovely descriptions. But, as Lily matures and searches for clues to her mother’s past, the book becomes a bit too pat. The coincidences made me wince a bit and as I pondered the book, I found myself wondering about some of the details in the book. For example, if the setting is the Deep South in 1964, why didn’t anyone say anything when Lily and Zach drove into town? There’s a big fuss about a group of black teens throwing a bottle, but none of the white men involved in the fracas mention Lily. Wasn’t this less than ten years after the murder of Emmett Till, who was lynched for allegedly talking to a white woman?

I enjoyed the book, though it is not usually the sort I like to read. It is rare when I pick up a book that is aimed at the “chick lit” crowd. This book is not necessarily in that category, but the marketing of it seems to be towards the same group. The writing is exceptional, however, and I would recommend it just for the beauty of the prose.

A couple excerpts:

“When I looked up through the web of trees, the night fell over me, and for a moment I lost my boundaries, feeling like the sky was my own skin and the moon was my heart beating up there in the dark. Lightning came, not jagged but in soft, golden licks across the sky.”

“The first week at August’s was a consolation, a pure relief. The world will give you that once in a while, a brief time-out; the boxing bell rings and you go to your corner, where somebody dabs mercy on your beat-up life.”

The joy of reading

Yesterday was the first day of school for my kids. I woke to cool air and Morning Edition on the radio. On Mondays they air a series called This I Believe. It is a series of audio essays by various people, famous and not-so-famous, speaking about what they believe.

This morning's essay was from Rick Moody about The Joy and Enthusiasm of Reading.

"I believe in the absolute and unlimited liberty of reading. I believe in wandering through the stacks and picking out the first thing that strikes me. I believe in choosing books based on the dust jacket. I believe in reading books because others dislike them or find them dangerous. I believe in choosing the hardest book imaginable. I believe in reading up on what others have to say about this difficult book, and then making up my own mind."

What a wonderful beginning to a day.

Unstable Particles

• In accordance with The Lynne Truss Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, the press is having a hard time deciding whether to go with the official version, or be grammatically correct.


• Shakespeare Was, Like, The Ultimate Rapper.


• Kit Weinert gives us Rules for Modern Poets to Live and Maybe Roast By, and he does it beautifully…


• “Really, rhyme or not rhyme isn’t the issue for a poem. What matters is whether a poem is good or not, true or not”

Useless research

I've stumbled across some odd, useless and obvious "studies" done in the name of serious science, but I've finally found one that is obvious as well as apt!

Now I know my profession has a less-than-exciting reputation, but I have never felt the need to justify it. Heck, I can easily get a job almost anywhere. But it's funny how so many accountants get defensive about the work they do.

The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales provided a robust defence of its members.

A spokesman said: "The area of tax accountancy is anything but dull. Our members get to work in all sectors of the economy, including small businesses and the media and entertainment industries.

"Many of our members lead varied and interesting lives, taking part in activities such as trekking around the Alps for charity and being involved in local community projects, such as working in deprived areas. "

Some of them can even write...

Summer fun!

August 18th is Bad Poetry Day.

Like we need a day for it... I believe there is more bad poetry around then there is any other art form. I realize this is subjective, but it's just too easy to do.

In fact, let's try it! Send a bad poem to cordelia248(at)yahoo(dot)com (in the proper formatting, of course), and I'll post the finest (worst) here.

Go write!

And I'll be back intermittently until the kids start school. Sorry for the days of silence.

An essay by a poet

I have mentioned before that I have a difficult time writing prose. I lack the organization and the sense of pacing to write much prose.

Vivé Griffith writes an amazingly beautiful essay in The Gettysburg Review that illuminates many of these feelings on why and how I write:

"I never learned how to tell a story. Try as I might, I can never quite place a beginning, a middle, an ending on things. I get confused, and my endings become beginnings, my middles endings. Or I forget what happened and make something up. Or I think I can see the full sequence, but I get impatient on the way there.

I have learned instead to create moments. I am in love with moments."

Her love of moments is illustrated in the the subject of the essay, her father. She uses her poet's sense of word-painting to give us a sad, sweet picture of him.

"Here’s the thing: my father uses my poems to sell timeshare. He sits across those cheap metal folding tables that seem to be a staple in every timeshare office and says, “Let me show you a poem my daughter wrote.”

What kind of poems sell timeshare?"

It is this sort of writing that sets my fingers itching to write. We'll see if it helps...

And on the lighter side...

I just finished The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde, a book I discovered later than I'd planned due to the fact that I thought his name was either a typo or something made up. Apologies to Mr. Fforde.

I loved this book. I admit, when I heard the premise for the book, my first thought was that it would be either eye-rollingly ridiculous or too clever for the average reader. It may have been the latter, but I loved it. (I consider myself an average reader, but my friends and family tend to disagree.)

I am not a huge fan of alternate histories. While I believe they are good as exercises in stretching our historical perspectives and cultural imaginations, many I've read take themselves too seriously. There is little serious about The Eyre Affair.

The setting is England in 1985. Time travel is routine, and the French have revised much of history. Literature is serious business. The heroine is Thursday Next, a Special Operative in Literary Detection (a LiteraTec) who is chasing an evil criminal, Acheron Hades, who's just stolen the original manuscript of Dicken's Martin Chuzzlewit. He has also kidnapped the inventor of a device - the Prose Portal - that allows people to cross into the literary world. After Hades removes and kills a minor character in Chuzzlewit (only remembered thereafter by people who've read the book before 1985), he acquires the original manuscript of Jane Eyre and kidnaps the Jane.

I had a delightful time reading this book. It did, occasionally, get a bit caught up in being clever and scholarly, but the pace and wit were fast and addictive. The book is sprinkled with literary references throughout, but being well-read isn't necessarily required to enjoy the book. I loved the hilarious names (a corporate bigwig named Jack Schitt...!) and not-so-subtle jabs at literature. When a zealous Baconian knocks on the door to preach about dubious Shakespearean authorship and distribute literature (they heckle performances of Hamlet, too), I knew this was my kind of book.

After I finish the new Harry Potter book (yes, yes... I have kids and I happen to like the books), I plan to start in on Lost in a Good Book, the next Thursday Next novel. Heh.

Particulate matter

Sorry for the silent period. I've been out of town visiting parents, in-laws and other wonderful people. Or I've been enjoying Reno in July (this really is a great town...!).

~~~~~~~
I've always loved reading a good book review. This, however, is the first book review that made me laugh hysterically and made me wonder about this ummm... book.

~~~~~~~
And a brief interview with poet Juliana Spahr brought a smile.

"I like poetry because it helps me think. It helps me resort data. It lets me list things and then think about the shape of the list. I am not sure I can make poetry do much more than this. I don't trust poetry when it tells me what to do without resorting the way I see things first. "

Check out her poems, too. Simply lovely, in my opinion...

~~~~~~~
And does anyone want to finance a year-long trip to Stratford for a poor accountant/blogger who happens to adore Shakespeare? Sir Ian McKellen as King Lear... Patrick Stewart in The Tempest... I think I may be salivating on the keyboard.

~~~~~~~

Sublime prose

If you asked me to list my five favorite authors, who made it on the list would usually depend on when you asked me. But (aside from Shakespeare) the list would always include Mark Helprin. I've read Winter's Tale five times, and A Soldier of the Great War and Memoir from Antproof Case twice.

Mark Helprin's prose is sublime. He can transport me like no other author can.

Harvard Magazine profiles Helprin:

"The study where Mark Helprin writes his novels and short stories, essays, speeches, letters, and Wall Street Journal columns is a spectacular room. Fifty feet long and nearly 30 feet wide, it holds two desks; there’s a fireplace at one end, and some fishing rods hang aloft on display. Everything is in immaculate order."

I wish I had the time to rave about his writing, but I need to get ready for a trip. Just go out and read his work (his new novel, Freddy and Fredericka is just published). You won't be sorry.

Opinions?

I never should have put a stat counter on this site. I see just how much it doesn't get read. And I get no feedback unless I prod and bully my friends. Is this normal? Is this a problem with a lot of people? Is there so much out there that what I do gets lost in the noise? Do all the well-written literary blogs offer enough that I don't make a dent?

I don't get feedback, so I have no idea if the few people who read this even like it.

And all the good literary blogs link to each other. And all the really interesting news I stumble across is already yesterday's news. Is it a conspiracy? Someone stop me before I get paranoid!

Okay. I got that off my chest. Whew. Go back to your lives...

~~~~~~~
In some news that's actually worth mentioning: poetry can save your life. Or at least it can in novels. Are there actual instances of this, I wonder?

~~~~~~~
And in baseball news... Johnny Damon reads and writes, too. Heh.

~~~~~~~
And a short poetry interlude... brought to you by Samuel Menashe. Lovely.

No thank you

I have an extensive list of books I want to read before I die (and no, I'm not going to go into them here), and even more I can probably go without reading.

Now, I love science fiction, but it is so easy to find bad sci-fi, that I choose my books with care. The Traveler by John Twelve Hawks isn't set to be released until tomorrow, and I admit I was a little intrigued by it. I suppose I shouldn't have read how they were going to market it.

Interest in "The Traveler" can be traced partly to its editor, Jason Kaufman, who edited "The Da Vinci Code"...

Uh oh.

And speaking of books I am not going to run out and buy...

Robert James Waller has a new novel.

"He bent her like the wind bends sienna wheat in a high plains summer," Waller overwrites, "and eventually came to know that loving Susanna Benteen took you as near to Truth as you can get without dying."

Why is it men can get away with writing like this and not have to have Fabio on the cover?

Particles

More randomness in one place:

• A marvelous conversation with Rebecca Goldstein about Gödel and the Nature of Mathematical Truth. With this gem, "Mathematicians and physicists are just as guided by principles of elegance and beauty as novelists and musicians are."
• And I'm not the only person who thinks The DaVinci Code is just bad. Key quote: "Well, of course I knew it would be bad. I just didn't know that it would be that bad."
• Okay... OKAY... I'll try out Story Code. Even after Jessa Crispin raked it over the coals. And I'll also try out Love Reading. I'll be back with a review. Maybe I'll get some good recommendations. I have always been accused of being nauseatingly optimistic.