books
09 Mar 2013

time is on your side

If I had to make a list of the things I have spent the most hours of my life worrying, stressing, and fretting over, I think time would be the hands down, number-one, top of the list. I worry about being late. I worry about being early. I worry about not having enough time to finish assignments and work tasks before they are due. I worry about not having enough time to accomplish what I want to accomplish in my tiny, insignificant life. I actually expend time thinking about how I don’t have enough time. This makes zero sense.

This is all part of the perfectionist Cycle of Self-Hatred, where you set very high standards for the way you conduct your life and then beat yourself up when you aren’t “on” 100% of the time. Even though the reason you might not be “on” 100% of the time is because you are full of anxiety because of said high standards.

The cycle. I’ve been mired in it for a few weeks now. I’m still mired in it, I guess, maybe for life, but it’s been bad these last weeks of winter where I am feeling cooped up and carbed up and it’s too cold to clean my apartment much think complex, coherent thoughts. I am spending my time worrying and soothing my worry-brain with mindless Internet and then feeling crummy about wasting so much time.

Yesterday I picked up Laura Vanderkam’s 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think (on a recommendation from the reliably awesome Janssen of Everyday Reading. I’m only a few chapters in, but man, but as much as I hate the axiom “Right Book At The Right Time yadda yadda yadda,” well, shit, here I am.

In case you couldn’t tell, I am a huge sucker for nonfiction that captures conventional wisdom in a straightforward manner. Blame Michael Pollan – I read In Defense of Food in 2010 was taken to my knees. Nonfiction that takes an everyday concept – food, time, whatever –  and reminds you of what you know about it, in your bones, as a human. That you shouldn’t eat food that has ingredients in it that you don’t know what they are. That you shouldn’t spend time on activities that don’t give you pleasure or reward. Then, they reveal some secrets you probably didn’t know – that skim milk is full of additives to make it taste more milky, that the average American chronically underestimates the amount of free time they have in any given day.

And then, the good stuff –  little mind/life tweaks to help get you back on track to feeling normal. Some simple ideas to get your body and brain back on the right track, out of the cycle. Not feeling like a manic perfectionist or a yo-yo dieter or a worried lump of indecision who is surely going to die before she ever gets the chance to do X, Y, or Z. Just normal.

Here are some Time Tips from the few pages I’ve read of 168 Hours. I suspect that at least 50% of you who read this will say “yeah, duh, everyone knows that,” but the other half of you are probably high strung nutsos like myself who tend to forget the obvious under duress. So this is for you.

And for me, in five days, when I forget everything useful I’ve learned in life and succumb to the cycle.

  • You have 168 hours to kill in a week. Even if you sleep 8 hours a week and work 40 hours a week, that is more than enough time to do some stuff. Whatever that stuff is that you decide you want to do. If you don’t believe me, schedule out your next week, fifteen minutes at a time, and see how hard it is to fill the slots. Or, take Vanderkam’s advice and do the reverse: chart out your hours for a week – jot down when you do what – and then take a good hard look at your data.
  • I repeat: You have enough time. (See also: Daring Greatly)
  • Okay, so you have enough time, but you don’t know what to do with that time. I mean, you have some ideas of what you should be doing, what you want to accomplish, but that doesn’t lead to anything you are going to do instead of surfing the internet. Vanderkam’s suggestion to list 100 Things You Want to Do In Your Life is a good place to start, especially because you don’t frame it as a series of goals. This isn’t a Life List or a 101 in 1001 days or a 30 before 30; it’s just you and a piece of notebook paper and 100 Things You Might Like. You might hate them all, but that’s okay, and it’s a good place to start.
  • If you’re still feeling stymied, think about what you like to do and what you are good at. Do those things, even if those things are “sorting the sock drawer” and “reblogging pictures of cats for your friends.” Start your dreams from where you are and where you’ve been.
  • Did I tell you that you have enough time?
  • You meaning me.

 

 

 

2
life maintenance
07 Mar 2013

high school high

High school is on my mind lately. Maybe because I was actually *in* my high school just a few weeks ago. Maybe because I read a lot of YA so I have high school on the brain more than most. Maybe because yes, my ten year high school reunion is this year. I will not be able to attend, but don’t worry: last night I dreamed the entire thing, start to finish. It was in the school cafeteria, girls were wearing prom dresses, and my parents were there singing in some kind of a cappella group.
See that little red sign on the right-hand wall? My locker was just past that for three years. After the first year, I noticed that it didn’t actually lock, so I yanked it open every day without doing the combination. A few lockers down was my friend Kevin. His locker had a large hole in the bottom through which you could spy on a classroom. One afternoon Kevin stuck his leg down there and we locked him inside, because he was over six foot and about 120 pounds and he wanted to see if he could do it.
There was a day that I went to my locker after school was out and there was a boy there waiting for me. This was a boy with whom I exchanged smiles and waves in the hallway for months – he was a Senior, the drum major, and way too cute for me. And there he was, waiting for me at my locker.
He’d seen me dancing with another guy at the Winter Snowball. He wanted to know if we were dating. If he’d been waiting at my locker the day before the dance, the answer would have been no. Afterwards, the answer was “kind of.” I was with the other guy, the guy I danced with, for the rest of my days at that high school. My life went in one direction, not the other. In fact, my life went in plenty of directions that you couldn’t have predicted if you were reading about High School Jessica in her own YA novel, her own really boring Teen movie. High School Jessica skipped AP English took extra science classes and math, all the way through Calculus. Slightly Older High School Jessica thought she would get a journalism degree.
But then again, I also make a living dealing with the same books that inspired debates with my English teacher. I marched toward my persistent high school passion as a full-grown adult, and I still read books set in high school. I still think about my high school boyfriends (and almost boyfriends) more than is probably necessary.
Things change, things stay the same, etc.
(That does not mean I am sad about not being able to attend my high school reunion. No, no, no, the horrors. I can’t even manage to spend an hour in the auditorium watching my sister play the oboe without making posts like this no THANK YOU.)

 

books
05 Mar 2013

a book forgotten

I have been thinking about what books are in my personal canon and how they got there. When I wrote that post, I had some books in mind, but since then I’ve been second-guessing myself. I only read that book once – could it really have been that important to me? I felt inspired when I read that book in 2007, but it’s 2013 now – has my life truly been changed? This is why I generally try to avoid superlatives, lest I become completely paralyzed by the pressure to decide what books are BEST and what the word BEST means and excuse me I need to go write an academic paper on the topic before it makes any sense…

Books/labels/everything-else-in-life is more fluid than my perfectionist urges, and I try to lean into that fluidity when I can. Books can speak to you at one time in your life and then seem completely irrelevant or lame or poorly-written at another time. C’est la books.

But what about books you just plum forgot? I have also been thinking often about my Unread Library, probably because my writing & thinking space has a clear view of my blue bookshelf. When I look up from my typing or reading, there are half the books I own, all of them staring at me, most of them wondering if they will ever be read or if they will sit on that blue shelf, spines un-cracked, forever.

In the corner of the middle shelf is a book I have read, read more than once. A book I used to love but haven’t thought about in years and years and years.

Donna Tartt’s A Secret History was one of the first contemporary adult novels that really appealed to me. It is not quite a Secret YA novel, but it is set in a small private college, and definitely has a young person’s sensibility (please don’t call it New Adult). Protagonist Richard comes to college without expectations and a charismatic professor sucks him out of the sciences and into the highly useful field of “Classics.” The small group of students Richard studies with become his friends, even though they are all slightly off-center and hiding all sorts of dark secrets. Violent acts occur and Richard is caught in the middle of either a mystery or a cover-up, and life changes for everyone involved.

Senior-Year-in-High-School Jessica was all about it. When her English teacher challenged her reading choices yet again (“You need to read the CLASSICS!”) this was the first book she stepped up to the plate for, quoting reviews from the back of the book, arguing for its literary merit, its acceptance into the modern canon, that it was a damn good book and not at all fluffy or YA and everything else she found unacceptable for me, her sometimes-pet student.

It was maybe my first literary argument, maybe helping to unlock that Passionate!About!Books! thing that makes up so much of my identity. I read it two or three times as a teenager, called it my favorite book. And now it sits in the corner of my bookshelf, taking up space.

I could give it a re-read. I could donate it to a teenager who might like it. Or I could let it sit there forever, its spine reminding me of Senior-Year-in-High-School Jessica, whoever she was, and the books she liked an awful lot.

 

book lists
03 Mar 2013

reading wishlist: memoirs

I love a good memoir. Something about the pouring of the psyche onto the page is intoxicating. You can be famous and interesting and wise . You can have a completely boring life and do one interesting thing for a week or so.. You can be a questionably moral person. If you write a good memoir, it’s all good.

Actually, I sometimes love a bad memoir, too, especially if they involve Addiction or Fundamentalist Religions.. Ghostwriter-schmostwriter.

I’m currently listening to Monkey Mind: A Memoir of Anxiety by Daniel Smith on audio, and while the subject matter is awkward, extremely personal, and sometimes painful, I’m digging it. Because Awkward, Extremely Personal, and Sometimes Painful are the stuff of the decent memoir, right? Here are some more memoirs that have caught my fancy recently:

Drinking with Men by Rosie Schaap

I am a raging introvert who values a certain level of feminine propriety in my daily conduct. I am the last lady to drink in a bar alone. One our friends from Michigan moved here, to Boston, a few years ago without a clear trajectory other than to enjoy the fruits of City Living – one such fruit, for him, was Becoming A Regular At A Bar. I was judgmental, but time passed, and heck if he didn’t succeed in making some charming neighborhood bar friends. One of them helped me move into my apartment. My third story apartment. That is something special.

Rosie Schaap is a lady who seems to understand this something special, and while I won’t ever be a lady to drink in a bar alone, I might read her book while drinking alone on my couch.

 

Sugar in the Blood by Andrea Stuart

An examination of the author’s complicated family heritage, spanning generations, moving from country to country, and wrapped up in the business and exploitation of early America. This is the kind of book that fascinates me – part history, part memoir – but that I don’t know if I ever *read*. Although I will say, just typing that last sentence made me want to put it on hold and prove myself wrong… because that’s a reasonable way to aim your incessant sense of competition, naturally. Outread yourself.

 

Living and Dying in Brick City: An ER Doctor Returns Home by Sampson Davis

So, there was a little bit of time when I was in love with Atul Gawande and all I wanted to read was doctor memoirs. This may have also coincided with the longer bit of time when I watched Grey’s Anatomy reruns on a nightly basis. Since the words “ER Doctor” occur in the title of this memoir, I hope there is some medical drama, but this memoir looks like it focuses on the social issues surrounding Davis as he returns to his hometown of Newark, NJ after defying all sorts of odds to leave.

 

Give Me Everything You Have: On Being Stalked James Lasdun

I don’t know about you, but pretty much anytime I hear a dude talking about his “crazy ex-girlfriend,” I wonder what kind of douchey things he did to her. Surely, there are at least a few. That being said, I could listen to the other side of the story if it’s in the form of a dishy memoir. Lasdun didn’t have a romantic relationship with his stalker, but there seemed to be some conflation of a professor-grad student relationship. Scandalous!

 

Her: A Memoir by Christa Parravani

Parravani’s memoir focuses on her relationship with her twin sister, Cara, as they grew up together children of a single parent, found success as artists, and Cara’s subsequent downward spiral. If one of my sisters died, I would absolutely lose my shit; I will probably read this and just weep and weep and weep.

 

After Visiting Friends by Michael Hainey

I could really label any memoir with a needlessly specific category. This one I would call a Solving A Family Mystery That Has Obviously Done Some Emotional Damage to the Author memoir. Hainey’s father died when he was a child, under circumstances that were innocuous but lacking significant details. After a lifetime of wondering about those details – and dealing with the pain and grief that accompanies living without a father – Hainey sets out to put the mystery to rest.

 

Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom by Leonard Marcus

This is probably the least memoir-y of the bunch, and it was published in 2000, but Recovering Grad Student me is fixated on its existence. For those of you who aren’t exceptionally nerdy kid lit junkies, Ursula Nordstrom was the head of Harper & Collins children’s book division from 1940 to 1973. She had a tremendous influence over the books we now consider children’s classics, and the way we think about children’s books today. Do I want to read her correspondences with these authors, illustrators, and other kid lit legends? OF COURSE I DO.

 

Vow: A Memoir of Marriage and Other Affairs by Wendy Plump

I am getting married in six months. Good idea: reading memoirs of marriages to prep my mind to what is in store.

Bad idea: reading memoirs of marriages fraught with infidelity and extra-marital children.

We’ll see which side I land on.

 

 

1
books
01 Mar 2013

march

1. Today is the first day of March. March means my birthday (a holiday I usually like), St. Patrick’s Day (a holiday I usually hate), some basketball, there is some sun out when I get out of work at 5 p.m., and we all hold a sliver of hope that maybe, MAYBE the snow and freezing air and stuff is done with for the year. Just maybe.

2. If it’s light out after 5 p.m. and it’s not freezing or snowing, that means It Is Time To Start Running Again. Super excited! I am thinking of doing the Couch to 5k again because I find it much easier to get excited about  exercise when it’s only 20 minutes and I get to walk half of the minutes.

3. I am kind of stuck in a little reading rut. I haven’t finished a book in a week, which means I’ve been reading the same handful of books for at LEAST a week, most of them more. Boring. Boo.

How did I get so reading-impatient? How did my attention span become so small?

Oh wait, grad school.

4. Did I mention my birthday? Did I mention that I am old? So, so, so old. So old that this past week, my 10 year high school reunion became a thing on Facebook, and people that I thought I had completely forgotten and did not care about are making little red boxes pop up on my notifications and wow, I am old. If we could just refrain from taking about a 10 year college a cappella group reunion for a moment that would be great…. oh wait, that happened yesterday. Suddenly having urges to delete my Facebook account.

5. March means it is time to start looking for a new place to live. This is exciting (yay! a fancy new apartment! or at least one with a shower head that is taller than my own head!) but horrible. Mostly horrible. I’m angsting about leaving my neighborhood – I like it, but finding a place we can afford that has reasonable amenities is difficult. I try to get hyped up about another neighborhood, which is supposedly up-and-coming, so I Google it, of course, limit my results to posts in the past year… and find a bunch of articles about how 5 women got robbed at gunpoint near the T station IN THE PAST TWO WEEKS. Gaaaaaaah.

6. March also means I am going to two comedy shows. One is that rescheduled WTF podcast… and one is Nikki Glaser, of my favorite podcast, and it’s tonight! And it’s being taped for Comedy Central! And it’s free! Let’s stop being sick and melancholy and get excited about March! And also get dressed, because it’s morning and that’s what you do. Especially if you might be on TV later

 

1
life maintenance
26 Feb 2013

a plague upon your house

So I have been sick for a few days. Actually, I have been sick for most of 2013. I was well for a week or so earlier in the month, but who can really tell. Memories are fleeting; coughs, persistent.

There is probably nothing less interesting than reading about someone’s physical maladies, especially when they are stricken with the commonest of colds, but I just really can’t do much of anything beyond the basics: haul myself out of bed, haul myself to work, pour coffee in, leave piles of stuff all over the couch. I can’t even read, really: my eyes get a little blurry after a few minutes. I’m using that excuse for why I can’t put my laundry away, too: I can barely see my dresser drawers.

I’m not even that sick, but I think the virus has gone directly to my brain. My neurons are slow. I’m not sleeping well. Someone I share a bedroom with is snoring. Someone else I share a bedroom with woke me up last night at 2 a.m. with ten consecutive kitty sneezes. It’s just a sad sneezy time over here. I might need a minute to recover. Read amongst yourselves.

books
26 Feb 2013

these books

That thing where you are recovering from a busy trip out of town, an illness, your work inbox after you come back from vacation days and sick days, and you find yourself checking out a book you just read not six months ago, a book you’ve already read twice now, a book you don’t even entirely think you believe in.

And then you realize you have a comfort book. Probably more than one. Maybe they have something in common – an author, a genre, a time of your life when you first discovered them. A time when you were discovering many things about the world and your place in it, a time when your head felt cracked open and everything you read poured right inside. Maybe there’s something about the words and how they sound in your head as you read them, even if the cadence is a cross between a fairy distant memoir and an academic paper. Pop psychology. Lady memoir. Women making changes in their lives and the world, sharing their stories with you in a way that says “you can do this too.”

When you are well, you’ll go somewhere else: to your teetering to-read stack, to a book you read in grade school, or a dippy romance you’ve read a dozen times, or maybe something shinier, newer, with complex ideas and sentence structure, written for grown-ups even. These books will be there when you are well. For now, you can just read and re-read and re-read your re-reads.

Oh, these books.

assorted media
25 Feb 2013

ten movies

Operation: Watch! More! Movies! has been fun. I got The Boy in on it, and now once every week or so he’s all “so, want to watch a movie?” and then there is movie snacking and couch cuddling and other such enjoyable evening activities. A Saturday Morning Movie, before anyone else in the apartment is awake, is also recommended. Here is some of what has been watched in 2013:

Old School Comedies

Planes, Trains and Automobiles reminded me of how much I love Steve Martin.

I think my dad has told me a few hundred times that Trading Places was one of the funniest and best movies ever, and I can now say that I’ve seen it!

The Boy asked to watch The Producers, and then was slightly miffed that the original wasn’t a musical. Nine years of hanging out with me has its side effects.

One time, I showed Beetlejuice to a group of middle school students in a library and my jaw dropped at how offhandedly raunchy it was. And PG! So I obviously wanted to watch it again to make doubly sure that I am an awful librarian.

Ryan Gosling

Speaking of raunchy… yeah, that is the only reason I watched Blue Valentine.

Non-Old School Drama-Comedies

Did you hear 7 bajillion plugs for Sleepwalk With Me in 2012? I did! Thankfully, I liked it otherwise I would be indignant about all that hype. And we wouldn’t want that, right?

Non-Old School Drama-Comedies Starring Jason Segel

I found The Five Year Engagement to be exactly what I expected: a slightly off-center romantic comedy hinging mostly on Jason Segel’s ability to be charming. I was particularly charmed the Michigan location and how for awhile, the plot centered on how awful it was that Segel was turning into a Michigan-Mountain-Man.

Jeff Who Lives At Home was probably a better movie, and was less Segal-centered. Still nothing I would watch over again, but good Streaming-Netflix-Fun.

Serious Oscar Nominated Films

Um, yeah, the only Oscar Nom I could get my hands on at the library was The Pirates! in an Adventure with Scientists! I don’t think it will win (or will have won by the time I post this tomorrow morning…), but it was decently entertaining.

Sex, Drugs and Murder. And Cross-dressing.

I think we covered this one recently enough.

~

I meant to post this once I finished watching 10 movies, but I think I have actually already watched 20?? So what I’m trying to say is, I’m not even trying to live a productive, self-satisfied life anymore – I don’t write, I don’t do projects, I don’t exercise, I just watch movies. And acquire respiratory viruses. Which leads to more movies. And Breaking Bad. I’ll tell you about the other 20 movies another time. I need some DayQuil. The end.

 

book awards
24 Feb 2013

Alex Awards, 2013

I think this wraps up my gaggle of ALA awards posts for the season… I could keep going and talk about them all, of course, but limits are a good thing.

I have been enjoying looking back at last years winners and seeing which books I read, which ones are still on my radar. From last year’s Alex Awards, I didn’t read anything more than the book I’d already read, but everyone and their second cousin read Ready Player One and are still talking about it from time to time, I checked out The Night Circus three times without reading it, and I just put Salvage the Bones on my eReader.

One Shot at Forever by Chris Ballard

I have been thinking about high school sports lately, because wow, is there anything I don’t understand more than high school sports? I am the least sporty person alive. I played a few years of JV tennis while not being a sporty person and not really understanding high school sports. My brain-body coordination can’t be trusted. My ability to join in on a Team Mentality is lacking.

I could take all this and say “No, I should not read a book about a high school baseball team because I just won’t get it,” or I could say “I should read a book about a high school baseball team because I would like my brain to be more open to things the world seems to understand that I don’t.” That is the difference between an enlightened, wise reader and one who is not. I am not sure which reader I am.

 

My Friend Dahmer by Derf Backderf

It has just recently come to my attention that I probably know more about serial killers than I do high school sports.

This is a graphic novel about Jeffrey Dahmer, created by someone who knew Dahmer as a teen. This sounds right up my alley, but I have heard some mixed reviews from my friends on Goodreads. I will probably check it out, though, because graphic novels are just SO easy to put on hold, so check-out-able.

 

Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan

One thing I like about the Alex Awards is that it reliably highlights some high-profile adult books from the year that have teen appeal. Secret YA books are all around us! Adults, even adults who purportedly hate YA, read them all the time! And put them on their Best Adult Books for Adults lists every year!

This book is a magical-realism, pseudo-fairytale about a crazy bookstore. I should probably read this post-haste.

 

Where’d You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple

Cut and paste first paragraph previous. This book got so much buzz in the Fall, and was written by an Arrested Development writer. Again, I post-haste.

 

Pure by Julianna Baggott

I recognize the name “Julianna Baggott” because she has written adult books with teen appeal before. A cross-over author. Pure is a dystopia for adults… a cross-over genre. A cross-over cross-over.

Sounds intriguing, but I pretty much don’t read dystopias any more unless there is a gun to my head, so I will probably skip it.

 

Juvenile in Justice by Richard Ross

Out of this year’s Alex bunch, I’ve heard the most about this title. It is purported to be powerful – photography of juvenile detention facilities, collected over five years – but is not available through traditional book vendors, really. There aren’t even any new copies on Amazon! As someone who thinks a lot about how libraries build collections, relationships between publishers and vendors and libraries, and how awards shift publication practices, I’m interested to see how this one pans out. I, for one, would love to get my hands on it for my library.

 

Tell the Wolves I’m Home by Carol Rifka Brunt

I’m going to ignore the contents of this book and focus on the cover, since I am an unashamed, unabashed book-cover-judger. Love good cover art. Love love love it.

This is a great cover, right? A bear. A silhouette. A teapot (?). Ribbons. Hand-lettering. Swirly swirls. Love it. I put it on hold months ago just because of the cover. I’m glad it seems to be getting some attention for it’s literary contents because otherwise that would be a fine cover wasted.

 

The Round House by Louise Erdrich

The Alex Awards seem to have a steady relationship with the National Book Awards. Or, the National Book Awards have a strange favoritism for Secret YA Books. Or, Secret YA books are awesome and are universally loved.

Anyway, The Round House won the National Book Award, and here it is on the Alex List. I am number 44 in line on the hold list.

 

Girlchild by Tupelo Hassman

Any protagonist who is described as “the least likely of Girl Scouts” is a protagonist I’d like to meet. That is all.

 

Caring is Creepy by David Zimmerman

This book sounds like a completely frightening read – parents involved in drug deals, meeting strangers on the Internet, something that sounds like a teenage girl kidnapping a grown man… and I appreciate the title invoking the title of a Shins song that is probably the least frightening song in existence.

 

book reviews
23 Feb 2013

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz

I have mentioned this book about a dozen times in the past year, so now that I have finally read it, I should probably write up a proper review.

Except for the part where I don’t think I can. Call it what you will: unwillingness to approach a book with an analytical, professional perspective, unwillingness to exert the effort, the respiratory virus I am currently hosting in my body, post-vacation-itis, my tendency toward the mush and the gush. I don’t want to. So I won’t.

What I will do is tell you this: in the first chapter, we meet Ari, who is likeable but shy, looking for his people but worried his people won’t like him, a little angry, a little scared. Then we meet Dante, who has a bit firmer grasp on his place in the world, but is used to being an outsider. They are both fifteen, and they become fast friends in a way that neither can quite understand.

By the end of the book Dante moves away and then comes back. We meet Ari’s mother and father, who both suffer from traumas past they don’t talk about. We meet the heavy absence of Ari’s brother who is in prison and no one will tell him why. We know Ari so well that we know something is always wrong, something deep down, is unsettled.

It is settled by the end, don’t worry.

Reading this book felt like a dream. Saenz is does realism right, let me tell you. It felt like I wasn’t reading, but just slipping into someone else’s life.

Just as beautiful and awesome as you’ve heard all this time, and completely deserving of that Printz silver medal (among other honors…) Hurry along and read it.