reading

Best Book Ever!

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I stumbled across Alan Bennett’s The Uncommon Reader while browsing the fiction section of the lovely but run down Mt. Pleasant Library here in DC. A novella of 120 pages it only took me about an hour to ready this little lovely. The story imagines the current Queen of England chasing after her corgis as they climb into a mobile library parked near Windsor Castle. Once inside to retrieve the dogs she feels obligated to check out a book. The result is that she ends up actually reading the it and going back for others. After a lifetime of meeting and knighting famous authors of all kinds, HM finds herself actually reading books for the first time in her life. For anyone who loves reading and/or is a bit of an Anglophile this book is a must. I hate to sound cliche or trite but this book really is a delightful romp. I wish it could have gone on forever.

I Finally Finished a Book

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You might notice from my list on the left side of the screen that I finally managed to finish a book, the first one of the month and the first one of the year. By this time last year I had already finished 7 books. I am not really sure what has been keeping me from reading these days but I sure have had a hard time finishing anything. Maybe it was just reader’s block. Now that I have finally broken through, maybe the next books will come in quicker succession.

Reading by the Decade – The Final Update

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Back in May I entered an online reading challenge to read 12 books from 12 consecutive decades in 12 months. I wasn’t worried about the volume of reading. I read tons. What I should have been worried about was my selections. The good news is that I enjoyed almost every book that I finished. The bad news is that I gave up on three of the twelve.

The Zola started out interestingly enough. I kind of had fun looking up descriptions of the diseases the characters suffered from. But it didn’t take long for that to get old. I set it aside in favor of something more interesting. As I have mentioned earlier, despite being 2/3 of the way through the Roth, I couldn’t be bothered to finish it. It just bored me. As for the James, I hope to pick that up again one day. Given my tastes in reading I feel like James is an author I should really like, but the only novel of his I have ever finished is Washington Square. Just think of all his great works that I could read if I can get over whatever obstacle is keeping me from enjoying him.

As I wrote in this November post, as I tried to pave the way for me not finishing this challenge, life is too short to read books one finds tedious.

1890s: Lourdes by Emile Zola
1900s: The Golden Bowl by Henry James
1910s: The Rainbow by D.H. Lawrence – 5/23/07
1920s: Point Counter Point by Aldous Huxley – 7/16/07
1930s: The Big Money by John Dos Passos (3rd in his USA trilogy) – 5/30/07
1940s: Dirty Snow by Georges Simenon – 5/20/07
1950s: Mountolive by Lawrence Durrell (3rd in his Alexandria Quartet) – 2/27/07
1960s: The Mandelbaum Gate by Muriel Spark – 7/1/07
1970s: A Word Child by Iris Murdoch – 6/4/07
1980s: In the City of Fear by Ward Just – 11/10/07
1990s: American Pastoral by Philip Roth
2000s: I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe – 4/20/07

Of Goals and Life (Or Rationalization 101?)

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Back in May, I drew up a list of 40 things I wanted to do by the time I turned 40 in August 2009. Earlier that same month I joined an online reading challenge called Reading by the Decade. I have already abandoned one of the items on the 40 by 40 list, and I am about to abandon the Reading by the Decade challenge. And I may even abandon another goal (#23) on the 40 by 40 list. What is my problem you ask? Why am I such a loser that I can’t achieve these simple goals? Life, I tell you, life. Not in the sense that life is overwhelming me and I can’t possibly achieve these goals. But LIFE, as in I am loving every minute of it. As in, life is too short to not enjoy every minute of it. As in, Philip Roth’s American Pastoral, as award-winning as it may be, is just too damn boring for me to care about even though I am 2/3 finished. The irony is that the big things on my list (quitting my old job and starting my new one) have given me a fabulous new lease on life that makes caring about the little things on my list (reading a book I find boring just to make myself a better person) far too tedious. I still have a book in my hands every free chance I get, and I am still going to check out and enjoy the giants of the literary world. But I no longer feel the need to impress myself or anyone else by finishing “important” but ultimately unfulfilling books. The same goes for my life. I will still take a stab at the important goals and even those that aren’t fun, but I won’t force myself to finish something just for the sake of crossing it off of a list. I could wax rhapsodic about my new job and about how in my former life as a federal government drone finishing a list was sometimes the only sense of achievement I managed to find. But I won’t. I am saving that for goal number 7 (Finish my novel).

Sunday Smorgasbord

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I have been accused of being a slacker–three weeks off between jobs and I haven’t posted anything since October 29th. The trouble is I need to be inspired, annoyed, or bored to really come up with anything interesting to write. I have been really inspired by my new job, but I don’t really feel like waxing rhapsodic about that here. At any rate, to satisfy the appetite of those hungry for more, I will lay a few things out on the table for you all to nibble on.

My New Job
Number Two on my 40 by 40 list. I really love my new job. I know that most new jobs have a honeymoon period where things seem rosy, but I have been down that path before and feel confident that I have found a fabulous fit for my skills and interests. I am working as a leisure travel consultant and I couldn’t be happier. It is a great mix of being social, talking about travel, and organization. It is like the job was created for me. Not only that, but my new bosses actually appreciate my point of view and listen to me. What a weird feeling that is.

My Old Job
Number One on my 40 by 40 list. I am really glad to be done with my government career. With the exception of some great co-workers and friends at the office, my old work life–the one I spent $50,000 training for at Cornell–really sucked. I am still fascinated by urban planning but trying to do that kind of work for the federal government was worse than awful. And with the feds huge presence here in DC, it is impossible not to be impacted by their bad urban planning decisions even if you work at the local level or the private sector.

DC in the Fall
Everything looks better to me in the Fall. Crisp weather makes me remember the things I love about DC. Just walking down the leaf-strewn, old brick sidewalks under a clear blue sky is enough to “give me a groove” as the other Mr. MyPorch might say. Travel + Leisure just noted in their city survey, that DC ranked number 1 in Architecture (must be the old stuff, because the new stuff is as boring and as pedestrian as you can imagine), number 1 in Museums and Galleries (I can’t argue with that, the pickings are wonderful and free), and number 1 in having a “Worldly” population (I guess that is true, there are people from all over the world, but it still seems a little too provincial). During the hot, disgustingly steamy summer, none of these things matters. The only thing that matters is air conditioning. DC is the furthest south I will ever live.

Book Roundup
I have been reading a fair amount lately as you can see from the list at left. Ann Patchett’s new title Run did not disappoint. It might be my favorite of hers. The Ward Just was a little boring to me. I usually really like his stuff but this one I found tedious in places. Although it was written in the early 1980s, its descriptions of Vietnam-era Washington certainly have some resonance today. I’ve just started Emile Zola’s Lourdes which is on my Reading by the Decade challenge list. So far I quite like it. I am struggling to get through Philip Roth’s American Pastoral which is also on that list. The only other Roth I have read is The Plot Against America and I loved it. With AP, I don’t really care about any of the characters. I have a hard time identifying with anyone who, in old age, still idolizes someone from high school. Then again I never idolized anyone from high school.

My Book Roundup
While I was between jobs I did make some decent progress on my own novel. I think it may actually be worth reading at some point.

The Millenial Generation is Scary
Tonight on 60 Minutes they did a piece on the Millenial Generation. I guess it is roughly those kids leaving college today. What a bunch of overly-coddled, entitlement-assuming, wimpy bastards they are. Can you imagine having your parents involved in your job searches and your job performance reviews like they were taking part in middle school parent/teacher conferences? Why aren’t these 20-somethings embarrassed by this? One of these Millenial wimps who is making money describing the shortcomings of his generation said that it was because they watched their families struggle making ends meet, giving their all to their companies, and still getting laid off. Boo f’in Hoo. Like they are the first generation to have to watch their parents struggle to make ends meet. No, the real difference, if there is any, is that they had to watch their parents struggle to pay for a lifestyle that they could not afford. They watched their parent’s struggle to cope with crushing debt caused by their inability to say no to their precious children.

The point of the 60 Minutes piece was that in the future labor market, as Boomers retire, these Millenial adult infants will be all that employers have to choose from. One them even said that if he is doing well at work, he would appreciate a letter to that effect sent to their parents. Can you believe that?! Could the Fortune 500 companies of the world please unite today (like climate change, we don’t have a moment to lose) to not allow that kind of molly-coddling to go any further. You want a six figure salary? Then you better cut the damn cord and stand on your own two feet.

I guess I found something to be outraged about after all. I probably won’t sleep well now…

Ian McEwan’s Latest Novel is Stunning

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As you can see from my reading list for the year (shown in the left margin of MyPorch) and posts here, here, and here, I love to read. And according to my spreadsheet of books read, I have finished five of Ian McEwan’s twelve novels. All of them have been pretty quirky. They tend to describe unusual and odd circumstances and characters. Yet McEwan has a way of making those oddities seem at least as normal, or as understandable, as they are twisted. His latest book, On Chesil Beach, is no different. Sure it is not twisted in the same way that The Cement Garden is (i.e., entombing a dead mother in cement in the cellar), but it is emotionally disturbing.

Despite their love for each other, the two main characters in On Chesil Beach (two virgins on their wedding night in 1962) lead isolated emotional lives which cause all kinds of complications on their honeymoon. Although their specific circumstances might seem foreign to those of who came of age in the 1980s or later, the challenges they face communicating with each other can feel awfully familiar. After all, emotion can interfere with even the best interpersonal skills. We have all had those moments where something is said or unsaid–often times unknowingly–that leads to confusion, hurt feelings, or anger. Those moments when language gets in the way of love.

There are other currents at work in this book far more disturbing than bad communication, but I am not going to talk about those issues here. I don’t want to ruin it for you.

The book is at times funny, beautiful, and devastating. Over the course of a year I read books that I end up either hating, tolerating, liking, or loving. And–not being a fan of self-help books–on rarer occasions I read one that grabs me emotionally and gives me something to think about. It is amazing that McEwan is able to do that in this smallish book of 200 pages. Go out and get this book.
SPOILER ALERT: Don’t read the comments left for the post if you want to discover one of the mysteries of the book…

It’s Here!

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The new novel by the lovely and talented Ann Patchett has finally arrived in bookstores. Despite my vow to not buy anymore books for a while (I have 104 unread books in my nightstand), I couldn’t pass up Patchett’s newest novel Run.

I am not going to read it just yet, I want to savor it. But I did want to make sure I got a first edition of the book before it was too late.

A friend of mine in New York gave me a copy of Patchett’s novel Bel Canto back in 2001. I loved the opera singer angle and thouroughly enjoyed the book. I followed up Bel Canto by reading every other book by her that I could get my hands on. They are all good. One of the great things about Patchett is that she is a writer who writes about things other than becoming or being a writer. Don’t get me wrong I love reading about literary lives, struggling or otherwise, but I am quite impressed by authors who write about worlds that are not noticeably autobiographical.

And I think she is as cute as a button. She looks like the kind of person with whom I want to sit in a cozy cafe drinking hot cocoa and gossiping. I have no idea why I think so. Maybe she just reminds me of friends I have had in my life over the years.

You may remember that this is not the first time I mention Patchett and her work. You can check out posts here and here.

Now do yourself (and Ann) a favor and go out and buy one or two (or all) of her books!