All posts in: books

books
09 Oct 2010

on picturebooks and impatience

I posted these two articles to my Facebook wall this morning, before 8 a.m. I don’t like being all over Facebook like that, especially before most people I am friends with are awake, but I did it anyway. I’m weird. Get over it.

First, a video:

This is a little talk from David Foster Wallace, about the differences between commercial and literary fiction. Ignoring any inherent debates between the value of High Culture Lit vs. Low Culture Lit, I thought the most interesting part of Wallace’s argument was this:

Literary fiction requires time, it requires quiet, it requires focus and concentration, and it’s getting harder and harder to ask readers to do that.

I don’t know what the solution is to this problem: we can try to train kids to see the value and enjoyment of reading a book that’s “hard” or “dense,” but I think a lot of English classes ARE trying to do that and failing. I have always been A Reader and I made it all the way through an English B.S. without that appreciation.

So do we ask the writers of commercial fiction to Beef It Up? To trick lazy American readers into loving literary fiction?

Or do we give up the crusade?

And then there was this article from the New York Times:

Picture Books Languish as Parents Push “Big-Kid” Books

I’m sure there is a lot about this article that screams “ALARMIST!” “QUOTES OUT OF CONTEXT!” or “WAH! WAH! OUR BUSINESS SUCKS!” but after spending a semester literally knee-deep in picturebooks, I think there’s some truth to the changing perception of the picturebook and what it’s for.

When I was giving storytimes, I plucked picturebooks from the shelf at random, looking for something large enough to be visible around the room, something with short enough text to keep the attention span of my infant-4-yr-old audience, and maybe some repetition or humor for a little interaction.

It’s very easy to see picturebooks like this. I didn’t even LIKE picturebooks all that much at that point in my life, even though I was reading 2-6 every week.

And that’s because I was BUSY. I had a program to present, I usually had about an hour to make sure music and props and chairs and everything was ready. I wasn’t really thinking about the picturebooks at all, except as a means to the end-of-this-flipping-storytime-oh-my-gosh-this-is-exhausting.

A year later, I adore picturebooks because they are works of art, and not just any art, but this crazy, special art that somehow combines images and words to create an almost tangible story or an experience. And I don’t think most people get that. Maybe more people considered picturebooks to be a “Literary Experience,” during some “Golden Age of the Picturebook” in the 70s or whatever, but something changed.

The NYT article focuses on economic and educational causes, but isn’t that just another way of saying:

“We’re too busy balancing our budget and getting our kids how to pass arbitrary standardized tests to slow down and focus on something literary, or to encourage our children to do the same?”

This has been stirring around in my mind all morning.

In other news: I wish David Foster Wallace would have written a picturebook.

books
29 Sep 2010

library card exhibitionist

Checked Out

1. Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin & Joe Dominguez

2. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

3. Scarlett Fever by Maureen Johnson

4. The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan

5. Northanger Abbey

6. A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle

7. Monstrumologist by Rick Yancey

8. The Lord of the Flies by William Golding

9. A Life’s Work by Rachel Cusk

10. Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby

11. The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates

12. This Hole We’re In by Gabrielle Zevin

13. For Better: The Science of a Good Marriage by Tara Parker-Pope

14. Every Last One by Anna Quindlen

15. Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life by Amy Krouse Rosenthal

16. The Darjeeling Limited

17. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

18. After the Ecstasy, the Laundry by Jack Kornfield

19. Getting Things Done by David Allen

20. Dancing on my Grave by Gelsey Kirkland

21. A Happy Marriage by Rafael Yglesias

22. The Composer is Dead by Lemony Snicket

On Hold

1. Where I Want To Be by Adele Griffin

2. When in Rome

3. The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

4. Taking Flight by Kelly Rae Roberts

5. Shutter Island

6. Sh*t My Dad Says by Justin Halpern

7. Radical Homemakers by Shannon Hayes

8. My Hollywood by Mona Simpson

9. The Good Psychologist by Noam Shpancer

10. Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

11. Empires of Food by Evan. D. Fraser & Andrew Riman

books
28 Sep 2010

highway in the sky

I live in one of the most walkable cities in the US, a city that also boasts a slightly unreliable but mostly efficient public transportation system,

and I miss my car.

A lot.

I am that spoiled.

What’s worse is that I’ve never been a big driving person to begin with. I delayed getting my driver’s license in high school, and even after I did, I was the friend who everyone offered to pick up or drop off, because if they didn’t offer, I’d find some sneaky way to ask.

Also, I drove a 1983 Oldsmobile Omega that had a bad habit of losing the will to drive while idling at red lights and then refusing to restart for an hour or so. That might have had something to do with it.

And I didn’t buy my own car until I was almost 21, and I pretty much HAD to find one so I could get from my apartment to my classes. If I had moved to Appian Way rather than Deerfield Village, I wouldn’t have bothered.

But driving freely around the state and the country for 3.5 years really ruined me.

I miss NPR.

I miss buying drinks at gas station stores.

I miss blasting music and singing at the top of my lungs.

I miss having an extra sweater or hairband or pair of shoes or 75 cents stuffed in between the seats.

I miss road trips.

But most of all…

I miss being able to manage my extreme forgetfulness with a quick U-turn,

because on days such as today,

when I got up at 6 a.m.

so I could go to Starbucks for a few hours and work on a paper at my leisure,

and realize once my dear darling boyfriend has dropped me off,

that both the book upon which my paper should be written,

AND the extensive lunch I delicately packed, full of healthful snacks to get me from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m.

were both still in my apartment,

that U-Turn could have come in handy.

Alas, alack,

I am stuck

watching trains pull up and pull away at Brookline Village, waiting for one empty enough for one-more-person to squeeze on

(third time’s the charm!),

procrastinating on my homework, despite my best intentions,

and spending 10 dollars

at the lousy salad bar

again.

Car, I miss you. I hope to see you again, someday, in Auto Salvage Heaven.

books
22 Sep 2010

here’s the thing

Things I’ve Been Thinking About

I. Libraries

Is is too early for me to be TOTALLY jaded about my career? I’m researching young adult librarianship for a class assignment (topic chosen by me, based on my own interests), and I’m reading all this stuff about how libraries NEED young adult librarians and they are CRUCIAL to the fabric of the world and blah blah blah.

And instead of thinking “Oh, yeah, awesome, we are needed and loved and someday if enough people continue to need and love YA librarians, I can get a job!” I’m thinking: “Um. That’s baloney. There’s no research saying we need and love YA librarians, or that kids need librarians at all, and the people who are saying ‘Yay, librarians for kids!’ are either A) Librarians for Kids B) Authors of children’s lit C) Publishers of children’s lit or D) Pining for the fjords their idyllic youth. Why aren’t there designated librarians for 25-30 year-olds? 60-90 year-olds? (They probably use the library a whole lot more anyway!)

I am SUCH A CYNIC I CAN’T STAND MYSELF!

Also, I’m never going to be gainfully employed. It seems the only activity I’m morally comfortable with is opening the library’s doors and pointing patrons toward a bookshelf or computer.

II. Inward/Outward

I remember when I was a kid, 10, 11, 12 years old, I just really wanted to be nice.

I didn’t want to be popular or exemplary or talented or well-liked or funny or good at sports or music.

I just wanted people to talk about me and say, “Oh, Jessica? She’s a nice girl.”

I wonder when that stopped being my central thesis of life.

It was a little confusing though, because when I was at school, I was Nice Jessica, but at home, my parents seemed to think I was fairly rude, selfish, and uncooperative.

Also, my sister told me I was manipulative the other day.

Me? Manipulative?

Yes, I can usually figure out how to get what I want in life, but that doesn’t seem manipulative. Especially given that my sisters use all the same tricks I do: they just think I’m the manipulative one because I’m the one who taught them.

At exactly what point does one become TOO self-absorbed to function?

III. Fall

It’s here. It’s cold.

What do I do in fall, again?

Put away my flip-flops?

Buy cold-weather clothes?

Pick apples for applesauce?

Waffle over/get ready for NaNoWriMo?

Look at leaves?

I can’t remember.

IV. Books

I am disappointed, all around, by reading this year. I’m disappointed by my own lack of reading motivation, and by the books available for me to read.

The only books I crave are old favorites I haven’t re-read TOO many times, usually dispensed by my iPod via audiobook.

It doesn’t help when I have 500+ page, 6 lb obscure 19th Century novels assigned for class, distracting me from literary enjoyment.

V. My Cat

I have Mondays off this semester. I realized, last week, that I haven’t had a full weekday off to do as I please since late April.

And boy howdy did I miss cuddling with my lovely kitty.

She’s just so dang cute!

books
01 Aug 2010

The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin

I read this very popular memoir a few weeks ago with mixed reactions.

First, there is the inevitable “You are so blessed, why in the world are you telling me what to do with my life? Don’t you have a nanny to fire or something?” Of course, her writing style is humble and she acknowledges that fervently maximizing happiness is an endeavor of the privileged, but come ON. She’s a full-time writer slash stay at home mom who clerked with Sandra Day O’Connor in her lawyer days, and a quick Google reveals that her kindly husband is the son of one of those Goldman Sachs guys who got fired with a bazillion dollar severance the other year.

Come ON!

Anyway, I had some issue with the book besides my Upper Middle Class Lifestyle/Middle Class Paycheck jealousies. The writing was fairly boring. Every month, she tackled an aspect of her personal happiness by making any number of small changes. Then she’d discuss each change in turn, rarely returning to the habits to discuss their efficacy, how they fit into her life, et cetera. It was writing that lacked drama. Earnest, humorless nonfiction.

But even though I mentally tore down her premise and dismissed her writing abilities, damn it Gretchen Rubin, I still found myself wanting to fill out my own Ben Franklin checklist. I pored over what I would change in my life for a few hours, brainstorming, until I realized that I seemed not particularly interested in being happy. I just wanted to be perfect.

Hrm.

So I’m trying to step away from the anal-retentive self-monitoring for now (yesterday’s post being um… let’s just not talk about it). But especially given this upcoming One Year In Boston-iversary, I’ve been thinking a lot about leisure time, joyful activities, the things I do For Fun, and would never give up. Why do we enjoy something for days, weeks, months, and then abandon that joy? Sometimes I think all my endless self-improvement attempts are really just some kind of guilty self-punishment for enjoying anything, because if it’s fun, it must be bad for me. Sure, I don’t play The Sims anymore, or watch much TV, but wasn’t watching TV fun?

When I moved, I had to abandon a lot of my daily joys. Mostly because I went into voluntary poverty – no more shopping at Barnes & Noble, no more fancy new electronics, spontaneous road trips, new clothes. I also left some things behind, like those pesky Sims games, and my sisters, who are without a doubt the quickest way to find joy in a day that is otherwise bereft.

Other things were just forgotten. Things that were cheap or free, that I just forgot about.

So I’m making two auditory resolutions for the rest of 2010.

1) I will listen to a new album every week.

Not a mix CD. Not a Youtube video. Not that same Sufjan Stevens CD I’ve burned into my eardrums for years. Not necessarily something hot of the charts, or even from this decade, but something I’ve never listened to. Something fresh.

2) I will listen to an NPR program every week.

I miss having a car radio!

Suggestions?

books
22 Feb 2010

sometimes i feel like a toad

“Frog ran up the path

to Toad’s house.

~

He knocked on the front door.

“Toad, Toad,” shouted Frog,”

“wake up. It is spring!”

~

‘Blah,’ said a voice

from inside the house.”

~

from Arnold Lobel‘s Frog and Toad are Friends

~

Blah, I say.

Blah!

book lists
18 Feb 2010

doldrums

I’m in kind of a reading slump. After a semester of intense required reading of YA books of all sorts, and then a little winter break “Catch up with every cool book I missed out on while I was reading required books” and then a little bit of HOLYCRAPLOOKATTHESEAWESOMEARC madness, I’m in a weird reading place.

I indulged a craving for adult nonfic

Which left me

1) Intrigued

2) Comforted

3) Horrified

and

4) Planning on eating My Last Hamburger For The Foreseeable Future this weekend.

~

But not particularly satisfied.

I have a shelf full of perfectly pleasing YAs, some that I’d been anticipating the chance to read.

But nothing’s really pulling me in.

So I don’t know.

I’m feeling an urge to revisit my favorites. I want to read Sarah Dessen after Sarah Dessen, meet up with Jessica Darling. But maybe I just want something more expansive.

A book I can get lost in.

Books that feature descriptions of animal slaughter don’t really have that quality.

Strangely enough.

book reviews
03 Feb 2010

Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver

Popular Girl dies.

Then Popular Girl wakes up, in her bed, not dead, living her last day again.

Repeat.

Repeat.

Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

This book is definitely gripping. I won’t say it’s the best book of the year – the characters are hard to like, the story of “Popular Girl Seeing The Unintentional Damage Her Life Causes” a little too typical – but good gosh I couldn’t put it down. Lauren Oliver does a most excellent job in playing with the reader’s emotions and expectations. There is one level of the book – Samantha, stuck in a perpetual Groundhog’s Day cycle, struggling to solve the mystery of how to live this particular day in her life – and then there is another, the more interesting, theoretical level. Why is this happening to her? What will be the optimal outcome of this story? If she “wins,” does she get to live? What does it mean if she doesn’t?

And of course, there’s the visceral pleasure of ripping through the pages… the rapture of having to choose sleep over reading because you just can’t keep your eyes open.

Check this one out in March. Or you can borrow my copy.

book lists
24 Jan 2010

The Best YA Books You Haven’t Read

Kelly over at YAnnabe celebrated her one-year blogiversary by doing something really awesome. She threw the Unsung Heroes of YA Blog Blitz. Basically, she’s inviting kidlit bloggers to share their favorite YA books that nobody else has read. You can read all the official rules on her site, here, but that’s the gist of it. And she’s keeping a little running tab of everyone who participates, so you can browse for hours and hours through everyone else’s choices. Not that I have hours and hours to waste. I’m a grad student, here.

My Top 5 Favorite YA Books

…that you haven’t read

… but really should

1. Rats Saw God by Rob Thomas

I’ve read this book so many times I’ve lost count. So many times, my sisters and I destroyed the library copy – it was replaced and we got to keep the scrapped copy. Classic realistic, guy-why-aye-fic. Oh, and Rob Thomas is directly responsible for a young lady called “Veronica Mars.” If that doesn’t sell you, then I don’t know what will.

2. Fly on the Wall by E. Lockhart

Everyone’s read Frankie, and probably Ruby, too. But Gretchen Yee will always have my heart. This is quintessential YA, for me: strong voice, quirky storyline, a relevant ideological bent, and a little romance. One year, I read it three times.

3. The Realm of Possibility by David Levithan

A high school, full of characters, and each with their own story. Or, in this case, a poem. I really, really love this book. The poems stand alone in terms of voice and originality, but the real fun is the unraveling of the loosely woven schoolmates… who is friends with who? Which stories will come back again? Will everyone get a happy ending? Love, love this book.

2. Inside the Mind of Gideon Rayburn by Sarah Miller

Talk about hook: new boy at ritzy prep school, learning to navigate the social ropes… but Gideon’s story is told by the girl who is CURRENTLY SPYING INTO HIS MIND. Unbeknown to Gid, of course. How did this one slip under the radar?

1. Teen Angst? Naah… by Ned Vizzini

His latest YA is about to be a major motion picture. But before he was a fiction writer, Vizzini was a high school wunderkind, going to Stuyvesant High and writing for the New York Press and The New York Times Magazine. This, his nonfiction debut, is a collection of those essays and articles, personal missives on some of the more mundane aspects of adolescence. You know, like and Ode To Playing Magic The Gathering. That kind of nerd fodder. His stories are topical enough to inspire young readers to catalog their own lives via creative nonfiction, but well-written enough to shock the adult reader when he or she realized Vizzini was only 15.

books
04 Jan 2010

Reading Resolutions 2010

1. I will read at least 103 books in 2010.

2. I will read one work of fiction written by Barbara Kingsolver.

3. I will read all the 2010 Printz winners and honors.

4. I will read the 2010 Newbery winner.

5. I will read Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan

6. I will read Scarlett Fever by Maureen Johnson

7. I will read Hunger Games #3 by Suzanne Collins

8. I will read Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert

9. I will read Real Live Boyfriends by E. Lockhart

10. I will read a nonfiction book on the topic of religion or spirituality.

11. I will read at least 20 young adult fiction books released in 2010.

12. I will read a collection of poetry.

13. I will read a collection of short stories.

14. I will re-read Sarah Dessen’s books, in order of publication.

15. I will read the Twilight Series, unless it makes me gag.

16. I will read 5 books off my Book Bucket List (2 out of 5 does not count)

17. I will continue to keep track of my reading online (Eh, 90% counts)

18. I will get rid of the books I own that I will not be reading over and over again forever and ever.

19. I will read 99% of my assigned reading books.

20. I will read more like Mandy Brown discusses on her simply inspiring blog, A Working Library.

Reading must occur everyday, but it is not just any daily reading that will do. The day’s reading must include at minimum a few lines whose principle intent is to be beautiful—words composed as much for the sake of their composition as for the meaning they convey.

All other goals aside, these will be fun 🙂