time flies: with dahl and a few grim(m) fairy tales

good grief. it’s march, and my last post was back in january. i’d say something about time flying and having fun and all that. but i wasn’t having fun. in fact, these past few months, i’ve been having the opposite of fun: work. and lots of it. a never ending stream of it. so much of it that it’s been pouring out of my ears.

and in the meantime, i’ve had no time to read. i mean, i’ve been “reading” the same two books for oh, about a month and a half now. and they’re good books too, so i know it’s not them; it’s most definitely me.

Philip Pullman‘s Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm is deliciously well . . . grim. who knew there were so many fairy tales in the grimm canon that are so frankly marvelous? needless to say, i much prefer these wicked, raw fairy tales to their disney-fied, toddler-friendly versions. some of these stories are so shocking (women eaten by cannibals, men’s eyes pecked out by crows, etc.) that i can never tell where they’re going. in fact, the only thing i can predict with a degree of certainty is that the good guy/gal will usually prevail in the end. but perhaps not before something truly (and deliciously) appalling happens.

the good news is that i’m almost finished. the bad news is that i’m almost finished. these stories have been uniformly good if not great, even the more familiar ones. however, a few standout favorites have been “The Juniper Tree,” “Six Who Made Their Way in the World,” “The Two Travelling Companions,” and “Hans-My-Hedgehog.” i’m not finshed yet (still 50 pages to go), but i’ve read enough to know that i highly recommend it. i’m talking 4.5 bookish cheers here.

the other book i’ve been snailing my way through is The Best of Roald Dahl by (you guessed it) Roald Dahl. i never really got into Dahl’s children’s stories. i think i read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory way back when, but that’s about it. this, however, is a collection of Dahl’s adult short stories. i don’t know about you, but i didn’t know Dahl even wrote adult fiction. and boy does he write adult fiction. ladies and gents, this is good stuff. i mean seriously good stuff. these stories are smoothly told, tightly plotted, and wonderfully macabre. for a taste, try reading this copy of “A Dip in the Pool.” it’s a critical favorite.

i’m only halfway through this (259 of 520 pages), which is alright because i’m in no hurry to see the back of this book. i love this feeling i get when i’ve discovered a new author. dare i say it? yeah, i’m going to say it: it’s almost magical. it’s like falling in love with reading for the first time. it’s too soon to assign bookish cheers, so i won’t. but, all the same, you should check out these stories, even if you think you don’t like short stories. hell, you should check them out especially if you don’t like short stories. if dahl can’t make a believer out of you, probably nobody can.

bonus track: a clip of the phenomenal Derek Jacobi reading an extract from Dahl’s short story, “Georgie Porgy.” unfortunately, i can’t find a full clip, but this should be enough to whet the appetite.*

* i’m generally unmoved by audio books. i tend to find the voice acting too distracting and much prefer the sound of my inner voice. but Jacobi is an unquestionably skilled narrator. if anyone could make a believer out of me, it’d have to be this guy.

gary shteyngart: giving it up for two covers, a spine, and at least 40 pages

i remember hearing about the literary kerfuffle surrounding Gary Shteyngart and book blubs a while back. the way i recall it, it happened a few years ago, but the Google tells me that it happened as recently as last year. it started (or maybe, restarted?) back in august when A.J. Jacobs, author of the frequently funny nonfiction”humble quest” books like The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible*, wrote an article for the new york times book review. the article was about copious book blurbing, and you can’t write an article about copious book blurbing without mentioning Shteyngart, the godfather/whore (choose your own adjective) of book blurbing.

so, if you don’t already know, the deal is that Shteyngart loves to blurb books. well okay, he doesn’t love it, but he also doesn’t like saying no when he’s asked to write one. so the long and short of it is that he’s blurbed a lot of books. like a lot. like over a hundred. and they’re blurbs, so they’re positive. and nobody trusts you if you’re positive about a lot of books. Shteyngart’s blurbs are doubly problematic because they’re not just positive, but exuberantly positive. See blurb of Aravind Adiga’s White Tiger (“An exhilarating, side-splitting account of India today, as well as an eloquent howl at her many injustices. Adiga enters the literary scene resplendent in battle dress and ready to conquer. Let us bow to him.”)

some people have wondered whether Shteyngart even reads the books he blurbs. others have wondered if his blurbs are glowing just because they’re his friends’ books (he must have a lot of friends). me, well i‘ve always wondered what the big deal was. are people buying books based on blurbs alone? i‘ve been known to read blurbs just like the next gal, but if i‘m looking at a book, it’s because i‘m already interested it. i might be persuaded to go ahead and buy it if more than one author whose writing i enjoy or reviewer whose taste i respect has something nice to say. but i‘m not going to buy it just because Gary Shteyngart (or A.J. Jacobs) alone said it was good. it’s one of the few cases in my life where quantity matters more to me than content. so again i ask, what’s the big deal? especially when, let’s face it, the blurber is so damn good at it? See blurb of Patrick DeWitt’s The Sisters Brothers (“DeWitt’s dirty realism makes me want to roll in the mud with him.”). if tweeting book reviews paid (good) money, Shteyngart would make a killing.

so, obviously i don’t get the whole fascination with Shteyngart and his book blurbs. but i still thought this Ed Champion-produced mini-documentary about the whole thing was pretty great. it’s tongue-in-cheek funny with a hint of serious exploration. kind of like a Shteyngart blurb.

in case you were wondering, here’s a link to the Gary Shteyngart blurbs tumbler.

* Jacobs also wrote The Know-It All: One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World (which i read back in ’05 and thoroughly enjoyed, from what i remember) and, most recently, Drop Dead Healthy: One Man’s Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection. Jacobs should call his books “the perfect man” trilogy. i suspect that Jacobs’ light-hearted writing masks a much more profound cultural statement about our fascination with mental, spiritual, and physical perfection. there’s always something both silly and sad and maybe a little hopeful (can he do it? can he really do it?) about Jacobs’ endeavors. after all, they’re really just a magnification of what many of us try to do every day, especially this time of year: try to live a little better, and move a little further down the path to perfection.

Jacobs takes the idea of self-improvement to the extreme. in so doing, he forces us to ask, is it worth it? really worth it? buddists would probably say no. i don’t know what i think. i‘m curious about what Jacobs thinks. i think i might finally be ready to finish The Year of Living Biblically, which I abandoned with intent to return years ago.

Related articles

• Leninglad! Celebrating 10 Years of Gary Shteyngart, Contemporary Literature’s Hairiest, Funniest Author (observer.com)

steve almond speaks: the thrust of good sex writing

so, the literary review recently announced this year’s winner of the “bad sex in fiction” award (via bookriot). apparently, thanks to the fact that E.L. James  doesn’t qualify (no erotica or bdsm novels allowed), this year’s the award went to Nancy Houston for her novel Infrared. Infrared included such gems as, the “undulating space where the undulating skies make your non-body undulate.” Yeah . . .

Houston had some stiff (ha!) competition this year. personally i think Tom Wolf’s Back to Blood should’ve won for, “Now his big generative jockey was inside her pelvic saddle, riding, riding, riding, and she was eagerly swallowing it swallowing it swallowing it with the saddle’s own lips and maw.” seriously, guy. pelvic saddle ? (incidentally, James Wood has an excellent review of Back to Blood in the new yorker).

it does make me wonder, where’s the good sex in fiction award? for that matter where’s the good sex in fiction? i mean, i read my fair share of romance (no, not 50 Shades) and i refuse to read a romance author who can’t write a good sex scene. after all, it’s romance. sure, not all romance is about sex or even has sex it it. but when i read a romance i expect there to be sex and i expect it to be well-written. i’m rarely disappointed. it’s only when i read literature that i get nervous for the writer if i see a sex scene around the corner. usually it’s not that bad but that’s because most writers cop out as soon as naked body parts begin to touch.

which reminds me of an essay i read a few years ago by Steve Almond called “Hard Up for a Hard On” (found in The Writer’s Notebook: Craft Essays from Tin House). it’s a fantastic essay on all that’s wrong with fictional sex scene writing and how it can be improved. Almond wisely notes that

The central reason that people muff – I said muff – their attempts to write sex is because they are putting pressure on themselves for the scene to be sexy. And any time you feel pressure you start making all the mistakes associated with pressure: the unnecessary similes and metaphors, the needless obfuscation, the genital euphemisms, the fancy words that wind up feeling imposed by the author instead of experienced by the characters.

he goes on to write that the best sex writing isn’t about how good the sex is but the way it reveals something about the characters, which is “what really matters.” Almond provides several compelling examples of good sex writing (see, for example, Spending by Mary Gordon). none of the excerpts are particularly concerned with being sexy. and in so doing, they end up being – you guessed it – sexy.

i won’t provide Almond’s excerpts here because they’re fairly long and i’m frankly too lazy to type them. but i leave you with this final quote from Almond’s essay, which is my favorite:

Real sex is compelling to read about because the participants are so utterly vulnerable. We are all, when the time comes to get naked, terribly excited and frightened and hopeful and doubtful, usually all at the same time. You [author] mustn’t abandon your characters in their time of need. You mustn’t make them naked playthings with rubbery parts. You must love them, wholly and without shame, as they go about their human business. Because we’ve already got a name for sex without emotional content: pornography.

bonus reel: “bad sex in fiction awards 2012: hunting for dirty books” (“you dirty cake”)

world war against me: a hollywood massacre

so i squealed when i saw there was finally a movie trailer for World War Z. Max Brooks’ novel of the same name ranks as among the scariest books i‘ve ever read. and it’s about zombies. and it’s great. and, if you like zombies, you should read it.

and maybe, even if you don’t like zombies, you should read it. because, like all great zombie stories, the novel’s not so much about zombies as it is about human nature and how world would react to a global catastrophe. the frame of the novel is a reporter who’s interviewing survivors ten years after the end of the war. the interviewees discuss how they survived the war and what role they played. it begins with a chinese doctor who first encounters the zombie disease and ends with soldiers and mercenaries who participate in the final battles.

but, as i’ve said, despite its title, the book’s not really about zombies or even about war. those things are just the scary, edge-of-your-seat frame. World War Z is really about how governments failed to react to the spreading disaster; how pharmeceutical companies sold fake cures; how heroes turned into cowards and everyday people became heroes. for a 342-page book, it’s surprisingly wide in scope.

which is why the trailer for the movie was  . . . disappointing. i like brad pitt. i was happy to learn he was attached to the film. say what you will, but he’s an actor who takes his career seriously. but. the trailer makes the film look like just another war movie as seen through the eyes of an “only-you-can-save-us” super soldier. sigh . . .

i’ll go see it. because it’s based on a book that i really enjoyed (and hope to read again in the near future). in the meantime, i’ll hold out hope that the movie trailer features brad pitt because brad pitt sells when the movie itself is actually wider in scope. i’m probably wrong, but hey, a girl can dream.

p.s. just please, oh please, don’t let it be as horribly disappointing as The Golden Compass. now there’s a film i wish i could erase from my memory. (i still don’t know how a movie with nicole kidman, daniel motherf-ing craig, and ian mckellen could be that bad. but stranger things have happened. i guess.)

psa: started early, lost my book

public service announcement: i lost my book.

description: Started Early, Took My Dog, by Kate Atkinson. Soft cover. Green and yellow hues. Woman with a green umbrella. no dog.

Bookmark: Southwest boarding pass from Chicago  to Baltimore (i think)

last seen: well, in my bag really. but i think i removed it to dig for something. possibly during Bookish Guy’s mom’s wedding (anniversary: Nov. 22). i don’t remember taking it out. but i absolutely never leave the house without a book. wedding or no. and i was completely bookless that evening. all i had in my bag was my wristlet/wallet, my house keys, a couple of disposable contact lenses, my phone, chapstick, a few crumpled receipts, and a spattering of crumbs. (obviously whatever i was searching for was monumentally important)

further notes: dagnamit. my book. my precious. well, okay i wasn’t married to the darn thing. as evidenced by the fact that i’m not now, as we speak, buying a replacement copy. i mean, i was enjoying it. but not as much as i’d hoped. i still think Case Histories was the best Brodie book. this one seemed to be missing the spark and excitement of CH. the characters weren’t dreadfully boring, but they weren’t very exciting either.

still. my book. if you see it, let me know. but feel free to read it before you do. i won’t be replacing it anytime soon. and hell, you might even enjoy it more than i was. though, if possible please try to save my place.

p.s. favorite part of the novel: jackson sucker-punching a guy abusing a small dog. total bad-assery.

in other words, “empathy”

Via the millions:

“In another experiment, people who went through this experience-taking process while reading about a character who was revealed to be of a different race or sexual orientation showed more favorable attitudes toward the other group and were less likely to stereotype.

“Experience-taking changes us by allowing us to merge our own lives with those of the characters we read about, which can lead to good outcomes,” said Geoff Kaufman, who led the study as a graduate student at Ohio State.”

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

huh. “experience-taking.” i’ve always just called it “empathy.” also, i thought people have been arguing for years now that fiction/reading teaches empathy. decades maybe. (centuries possibly?) but still. it’s a facinating study. and all the more reason why white-washing is a seriously dangerous problem.

dahl (and a couple of ghosts) over sushi

the menu is disappointing.

the outside had looked so promising too. it had reminded me of when i lived in japan and visited the local izakaya after work. finally, i thought. i’ll have a nice cold japanese beer and some fried japanese food. totally unhealthy and absolutely delicious.

“table for one, please.” and a seat at the bar.

MP’s out of town, which means i can meander home whenever it strikes my fancy. i’m dead on my feet tired, but i’d rather sit in a noisy bar than go home to order expensive but ultimately unsatisfying take-out.

this is going to be delicious. i’m just hoping i can restrain myself. if i see a succulent chicken-skewer i might break my vegetarian diet. yeah, i might. maybe.

the place is hopping. but that’s no surprise given its location. the trendy part of town where the beautiful people meet for after-work drinks and conversation. i don’t consider myself trendy or beautiful but i live around the corner and this is the first place i thought of. so i guess i’m just lazy.

“you been here before?” the woman next to me asks. she’s asian, mid-thirties, very pretty. gorgeous silver ring on her ring finger.

“who me? no.”

“are you from here?”

this strikes me as odd question. hardly anyone here is from here. if they are, they probably don’t live here, in this neighborhood. you have to ride the train to where the out-priced low income residents live to find somebody from here. gentrification has been on an unrelenting march through the city since at least 2005.

“no.” i say. “but i live in the neighborhood.”

finally, the menu. and it’s . . . sushi. all sushi. i didn’t come to this restaurant for no stinkin’ sushi. dreams of clogging my arteries with sweet, succulent fried food – dashed. why is it so loud in here anyway? and why is the waitress taking so long? and now that i think about it, even the beer doesn’t taste right.

“i’ll have a tofu sushi roll and a california sushi roll, please. thank you.”

this is more like what i wanted

utterly bummed.

maybe roald dahl can cheer me up. confession: i’ve never read a roald dahl book. i saw willie wonka & the chocolate factory when i was younger. i didn’t care for it.

i’ve heard a lot about dahl as an adult. i have no problem with reading YA novels, but dahl’s books seem a little too young for me. maybe when i have children and read to them, i’ll read James and the Giant Peach or Fantastic Mr. Fox. but for now, i find them a little intimidating.

(yes, i’m intimidated by children’s books. i also don’t like silverfish and most small fury things that scurry. i do like squirrels (which is probably why i think this is so funny.))

but then, i found a roald dahl book in the bookstore entitled Roald Dahl’s Book of Ghost Stories. well. i like ghost stores. plus, i didn’t know dahl wrote adult fiction. i bought it thinking it would be the perfect way to read dahl and some old fashioned ghost stories. what could go wrong?

so, fine. i’ll eat my sushi and enjoy a couple of ghost stories. the first one is “W.S.” huh. well this is weird. there’s a name at the top of the story: l.p. hartley. i wonder who that is. but nevermind. the story’s protagonist whose initials are w.s. is receiving strange postcards from someone whose initials are also w.s. does he have a split personality? is he sending strange postcards to himself? . . .

half-way through my sushi. laying off the asahi beer. it’s making my stomach unhappy.

next story: “Harry”. there’s a name at the top of this story too: rosemary timperly. what’s up with these names? the book is called Roald Dahl’s Book of Ghost Stories. who are all these other people. . . oh. so this is a collection. put together by roald dahl. of other people’s ghost stories. oh. well, that whole plan to read dahl’s writing didn’t work.

but who cares! almost finished with my sushi and “Harry” is getting good. the kid is talking to thin air. she has an imaginary friend. she calls him harry. imaginary friends are never good in ghost stories. things always go badly for someone . . . yup, always.

two pieces of sushi left. half a bottle of asahi gone. the crowd has picked up, and the waitress brings my check. $15 for sushi and a beer. not bad. and dahl did cheer me up. it wasn’t his writing, but he has excellent taste in ghost stories. this collection would be perfect to read in the fall. but it was 95 degrees outside today and fall seems too far away.

i doubt i’ll return to this restaurant. but dahl – well thankfully he’s coming home with me.