Bibliography, 2016

Although I hate winter like nobody's business, I do love the last few days of December and the first few days of January.  It still feels like Christmas; even better than Christmas because the pre-Christmas stress frenzy is over. Everything seems new and anything seems possible as the old year ends and a new one begins.  I went walking early this morning in clear still coldness slightly warmed by thin pale yellow sunlight, feeling optimistic about 2017.

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It's the end of the year, so it's time to post my "what I read this year" list. I read a lot in 2016; I didn't even realize how much until I went back and looked at my list.  Here it is:

The Takeover. Muriel Spark. Apparently, Muriel Spark wrote this, and all of her novels, on 72-page notebooks purchased from James Thin, a now-defunct bookshop and stationers in Edinburgh.  I don't know why this idea appeals to me so much, because I hate to hand-write anything.  I cry like a baby when I have to write a check (after complaining for at least ten minutes about not being able to pay whatever bill I'm paying electronically.) And that whole observation has nothing to do with this book, because I only vaguely remember it, because it was the first book I read this year.  This was one of only maybe two or three Muriel Spark novels that I hadn't already read (and I've read some of them, including Memento Mori, The Girls of Slender Means, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, and Loitering with Intent, multiple times.) It's about a rich English woman living in Italy in the early 1970s, who is gradually robbed of everything she owns by a tenant who refuses to be evicted. There's more to it than that, of course, but that's the bare-bones plot summary.  It's not her best (read any of the other ones mentioned here if you haven't read Muriel Spark before), but it's still Muriel Spark, and so it wasn't a bad start to 2016.

Can We Talk About Something More Pleasant? Roz Chast.  This was one of my favorites of the year, by far.  I really love Roz Chast, and I bought this book in hardback, brand-new at Barnes and Noble.  It didn't disappoint. Although it's about one of the saddest subjects imaginable, the long decline and eventual death of Chast's elderly parents, it's strangely uplifting and hopeful.  Not as funny, obviously, as her other work, but when it's funny, it's high-larious.  And the book itself is beautiful.  Highly recommended.

The Beginning of Spring. Penelope Fitzgerald. I wrote a little bit about this one here. I just love Penelope Fitzgerald.

What's Wrong with the World? G.K. Chesterton. I'm a Catholic and a reader and writer, so I'm supposed to love Chesterton, but there's something about him that's not quite right.  His overpraise of women and our supposed exalted status, reigning as queens and supreme rulers of the home, blah blah blah, always reads as patronizing to me.  He's OK.  I can take him in small doses. I definitely prefer C.S. Lewis.

A Charmed Life, Mary McCarthy. I started reading this believing, for some reason, that it was a memoir or autobiography.  Even as I read the very novelistic description of Martha and John Sinnott and their marriage and home and life together, I thought that McCarthy was employing some sort of literary device, and that at any moment, she'd reveal that the Sinnotts were her grandparents or some other figures of importance in her early life.  It soon became evident that the book is really a novel.  I confirmed my suspicion by looking at the cover (in fairness to me, it's an e-book, so I had never actually looked at the cover when I started reading it), which reads "A Charmed Life (A Novel by Mary McCarthy.)" Not nearly as good as The Group, but probably none of her other novels are.

Our Man in Havana. Graham Greene. Another Catholic novelist.  That's four out of the first six.  Not an intentional theme for 2016 or anything.  This is a great novel; it's kind of Waugh-like in some respects-- a little more forgiving of humanity than Waugh, but it would be hard to find a writer who isn't. Very funny.

The Bean Trees. Barbara Kingsolver. I read The Poisonwood Bible years ago, and thought it was great.  This one was good, too, though I don't remember much about it, nine months or so later.

The Fountain Overflows. Rebecca West.  I wrote about this one here (same post as the one about The Beginning of Spring.)  If you can read only one Rebecca West book, then read Black Lamb and Gray Falcon, one of the best English-language books ever written. But all of her novels are great, too.

Local Girls. Alice Hoffman.  I bought this at a Friends of the Library used book sale.  I didn't know at the time that Hoffman wrote the novel on which the movie "Practical Magic" is based; had I known, I wouldn't have touched this or any of her books with a barge pole.  So I'm glad I didn't know, because I actually liked this very much.

The Mind of the Maker.  Dorothy L. Sayers.  Another Catholic.  Truthfully, I have never warmed to Sayers.  I find the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries tiresome, and I don't know why, because I love early 20th century English society novels.  Well, I love Wodehouse, and maybe I expect every other English society novel to be Wodehousian.  Anyway, this is not a novel; it's a Christian apologetics book.  I read it at night, over the course of a few weeks, and didn't absorb as much as I'd have liked because I was always exhausted when I was reading it, and I kept falling asleep--I think I started reading it when I was still adjusting to being back at work full-time.  I will probably re-read it.

A Separate Peace. John Knowles. I had to read this in high school.  Who didn't? I always felt a little guilty for not liking it.  I was an aspiring English major, and I thought that it was my duty and responsibility to appreciate whatever was officially considered good literature.  So I read it again, to either validate or overturn my earlier judgement.  Verdict: Neutral.  I appreciated it more than I did in high school, but I can think of 50 better 20th century American books that I'd make high school kids read before this one.

If You Lived Here, You'd be Home Now. Claire LaZebnik.  This is what I'm going to call a "Put Up or Shut Up" novel.  I liked it a lot, but I was also sure, after I finished reading it, that I could do a little better.  But I haven't. So that's the difference between what used to be called mid-list novelists like Claire LaZebnik and me.  She has actually finished a book and published it, and I have not.  80% of life is showing up, or something like that.

The Opposite of Loneliness.  Marina Keegan. She would probably have been a very fine writer if she hadn't died so tragically young.

The Americans: The Democratic Experience.  Daniel Boorstin. A bit of a slog, to be honest.   I love to read history, but this is my second Boorstin, and he's just not my thing.  Still, I learned a bit about everyday American life in the early to mid 20th century that I didn't know before, so it wasn't a waste.

A Woman in Jerusalem. A.B. Yehoshua. This was quite good, except for one annoying quirk.  The main character is the human resources manager of a large commercial bakery in Jerusalem, who is charged with investigating the circumstances surrounding the murder of one of his employees, a Russian emigre woman.  The writer insists on referring to the character only as "the resource manager;" the reader never knows his name. Although thinking back on it, I guess this was effective in some way; he's a man adrift, estranged from his wife, on rocky terms with his mother, with whom he lives; and not particularly secure in his job. Maybe he feels like a nonentity, and so that's how the reader is meant to see him.  Worth reading, and I plan to look for more of Yehoshua's work this year.

Away. Amy Bloom.  Astonishingly good.  The opposite of the "Put Up or Shut Up" novel, because no matter how hard I worked, I could never write anything like this.  Another story about another Russian Jewish woman far from home; this one alive, having barely escaped a pogrom that killed her entire family.  When she learns that the little girl whom she believed dead is actually alive, she goes back to Russia from New York to find her--only in the wrong direction, traveling on foot and by train across the U.S. and Canada, into Alaska (pre-statehood; this takes place in 1924) and eventually to Siberia. It's not spoiling the ending to say that it ends much more happily than anyone would ever expect, though not perfectly so.

Rocking Horse Catholic. Caryll Houselander.  So titled because Houselander converted with her family when she was a very young child--so not a cradle Catholic, but a rocking horse Catholic.  I learned about her from Heather King.  Both are brilliant.

Red Scarf Girl. Ji-Li Jiang.  As I noted last year, I like an occasional lighthearted and refreshing visit to the Cultural Revolution whenever I need a break from Stalin's purges.  Maybe this summer, I'll do some beach reading about Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge.  Party on, Wayne.

The Rothschilds.  I mentioned this one here.  Don't ask me to distinguish one Rothschild from another.  I read every page, but immediately suffered total non-recall.  Who knows how I managed to finish college.  Oh right, it took me over 25 years.

Monkeys. Susan Minot. Another one that I read a very long time ago, when it was first published in 1987.  I re-read it for the same reason that I re-read A Separate Peace: to see if I'd been right the first time.  Still great. 1 1/2 for 2.

Falling in Place. Ann Beattie. Selfishness and family breakdown in 1970s Connecticut. Very good, but depressing.

A Train of Powder. Rebecca West. I already wrote about this one, too, here.

Someone Will Be with You Shortly: Notes from a Perfectly Imperfect Life. Lisa Kogan. Filler reading; neither here nor there.

Rosewater. Maziar Bahari. Apparently, I'm not happy unless I'm living vicariously under a brutally repressive regime. Good to be prepared, I suppose.

Reading Lolita in Tehran. Azar Nafisi.  See above.  The fun never ends.

Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life. Amy Krouse Rosenthal. I have no idea what kind of critical reception this received when it was published, but I loved it. Apparently, she published a follow-up, Textbook, in 2016, which should appear on my What I Read in 2017 list, about a year or so from now.  Stay tuned.

With or Without You. Domenica Ruta.  I wrote about this one here. Domenica Ruta is a master of a very specialized art.  She can make squalor, loneliness, addiction, depression, and even monotony interesting and compelling. Not glamorous or appealing, but compelling.

Letters from America. Alistair Cooke. I read Memories of the Good and the Great a year or so ago, and so I picked this up at the previously mentioned library book sale.  Cooke was the BBC's American correspondent, and this contains some entertaining observations about American life and politics from a British observer, but the casual mid-century racism and sexism were kind of disturbing.

Trump: A Theory of Assholes. Aaron James.  My son bought this one. Truthfully, I didn't actually finish it.  The dry academic examination of the science of assholery was funny for the first chapter, but it lost me after that.  I just wanted to include it on my list, because Trump/Asshole.

7 Women. Eric Metaxas. A little disappointing.  I loved Bonhoeffer, and have a generally high opinion of Metaxas and his work (note how neatly I bypassed the need to use the possessive with a name that ends in "S"? Because I hate that.  I also hate when any number smaller than ten appears in print in numeric form, especially as the first word of a sentence or phrase. But that's probably just me.)  The Corrie Ten Boom chapter was especially disappointing, because I have read The Hiding Place at least 20 times; I have also read Tramp for the Lord,  and I didn't learn one single thing about Corrie Ten Boom after reading the Metaxas chapter (see, I did it again) that I didn't already know.

Every Exquisite Thing. Matthew Quick. No idea what prompted me to read this.  It's a misfit outsider teen romance novel.  If you've seen "The Fault in Our Stars" or "Paper Towns," then you've read this book.

Yes, Please.  Amy Poehler.  I like Amy Poehler (especially "Parks and Recreation," one of my favorite-ever TV shows), so when I saw her book offered as a $2.99 daily deal, I bought it and read it.  It's not that it was bad or anything.  I like memoirs in general, especially memoirs written by people whose lives are radically different from mine.  So I'm not sure what bothered me about this book.  Maybe she was just trying too hard.  Lots of mentions of New York City, Back in the Day--she even writes about "a Lou Reed sighting...like the first robin in spring."  Take a deep breath, Wannabe Nostalgic Baby Boomer, you're not even as old as me, for crying out loud.  I was waiting for a Woodstock story next, or maybe an eyewitness account of the Rolling Stones show at Altamont.  Sheesh.  Overall, though, it was fine.  Who am I to judge?  I wouldn't recognize Lou Reed if he made my latte at Starbucks.

Ship of Fools.  Katherine Anne Porter.  A German passenger ship brings a group of expat Germans, along with a handful of Americans and others, back to Germany from Mexico.  I wrote about this one here. 1933 Germany seems very relevant right now, but I've been thinking that for a long time now; before Donald Trump even rode down that escalator, in fact.

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Once again, a kind of crazy catch-all list.  Right now, I'm reading two more memoirs: Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run (in hardback; excellent Christmas present from my husband), and Ruth Reichl's Tender at the Bone.  Both are great so far, but I won't finish either until 2017.  Happy New Year!

Christmas Eve in Silver Spring

I saw two things yesterday: the video for "Christmas in Hollis,"  and an article about "hygge," which was apparently a contender for most hated word of 2016.  I had never even heard that word before, but I usually only become aware of cultural trends when they're already in everyone else's rear view mirror.

I'd never actually seen the Run-DMC video, even though I was young in the 80s, when the song debuted.  We lived in Philadelphia, which was the last major city to get cable TV.  MTV used to air almost nothing but music videos, but I didn't see most of them, because we didn't have cable. 

The family home depicted in the video looked a lot like the house that I grew up in looked at Christmas.  Small, even a little cramped; clean, but cluttered looking; and not temporary clutter, but the settled and lived-in clutter of thick carpet,  slightly mismatched, slightly oversized furniture and wallpaper, and surfaces covered with knick-knacks and framed pictures  Add in a Christmas tree that's bigger than the couch, presents, plates of cookies and dishes of candy, and a Nativity scene, and you have quite the cozy and abundant little Christmas scene.  

But not hygge.  Because hygge is not just warmth and happiness and home and hearth. It's  an aesthetic; one that doesn't include Hummel figurines and fake Christmas trees with glass ornaments and boxes of Russell Stover Christmas candy.  Hygge depends on uncluttered surfaces, warm but minimalist Scandinavian furniture, hardwood floors, and a wood-burning fire.  A hygge Christmas scene would include cashmere Fair Isle socks and real mistletoe and holly.  It definitely would not include "Christmas Vacation" playing on a big TV or a framed Currier and Ives print.  Homemade cookies and mulled cider: Hygge. Chips and dip in knock-off Spode Christmas dishes: Not hygge. 

I could make fun of this artificially authentic aesthetic all day long, but there's no denying its appeal.  I mock Real Simple magazine, but secretly covet the perfectly organized softly watercolored rooms that shine from its photo spreads.  I love stacks of perfectly folded color drenched blankets, stored on polished blond wood shelves.  I imagine a kitchen where a single handmade ceramic bowl, holding a few perfect ripe pears, sits alone on a gleaming countertop. But I'm also a little nostalgic for a less demanding aesthetic; a little more comfortable, and a little less austere. 

This being 2016 (almost over, thank God), the whole idea is further complicated by politics, because according to some cultural observers, only upper middle class privileged white people would ever aspire to anything as bourgeois and impractical as cozy home comfort or beautiful surroundings.  I'm too lazy right now to really break this down; I'll just say that the only thing that bores me more than identity politics is tiresome privilege narratives. When the revolution comes, I'm going to end up in a re-education camp. 

As usual, I'm trying to write this while I do fifteen other things (it's Christmas Eve; I'm busy) so I'm not sure how I'm going to bring this winding and pointless train into the station.  We're home now.  My house, not quite mid-century Scandinavian serenity, but not quite Christmas in Hollis sensory overload, is clean and decorated.  Most of the presents are wrapped, and the kitchen is pretty well-stocked with treats.  We're not around the fire, though; we're around the TV watching the Redskins.  Christmas Eve Mass at 6 pm.  Not quite hygge, maybe, but we'll take it.  Merry Christmas. 

Put a bird on it

There's a lady in my neighborhood who writes lovely little pieces for the neighborhood newsletter, describing local nature and wildlife, especially birds.  She's a good, if slightly flowery, writer; and her knowledge of flora and fauna (again, especially birds) is pretty impressive.  When the newsletter arrives in my inbox, I almost always stop what I'm doing to read the latest about the neighborhood's animal residents.

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I grew up in the city. We lived in Philadelphia, in a working-class city neighborhood of brick-front rowhouses with stoops that provided a two-step buffer zone between the street and your living room.  Our whole lives depended on man-made infrastructure--the electrical grid and the sewer system and the narrow surface streets over which trucks rumbled, carrying food and supplies.  Dropped in the middle of the wilderness, the average 1970s inner-city Philadelphian would look around for a corner store and, failing to find one, would crouch under a tree and wait impatiently for a bus or a search-and-rescue team (all the time thinking to himself “What—not even a park bench?  What am I paying taxes for?”) I read a lot—the Little House books and the Anne of Green Gables series were favorites—and I couldn’t imagine how life was even possible under nineteenth-century conditions.  “What do you mean, Marilla made Anne a dress?  Made it out of what? Leaves?” I would think to myself.  I knew that Laura Ingalls and Anne Shirley didn’t have indoor plumbing, but I didn’t allow myself to think too hard about the implications of that particular lack.  It was too much to contemplate. 

My parents noticed that all of us were completely urbanized and unable to cope with nature in any form.  They’d make half-hearted attempts to get us into the wild, taking us to feed the ducks at Valley Green or forcing us all to walk “back the creek” on nice days, but no one was fooled.  A five-minute observation of my parents in any outdoor setting was enough to demonstrate that they weren’t any better prepared to cope with the stern demands of nature than we were. We were city people. That’s all there was to it. 

I've lived in suburban or beach towns for over 20 years now, so I've learned a bit.  Nature isn't quite as shrouded in mystery as it once was, but I probably still don't know quite as much as I should.  Our neighborhood was built by the Levitt company in the late 1960s, so we're lucky enough to be surrounded by tons of mature shade trees of many beautiful varieties, but I can't distinguish one from another.  We have lots of wildlife, too, but nothing exotic.  Deer, squirrels, rabbits, foxes, occasional raccoons or chipmunks--even I can tell them apart.

The birds, though, are a whole other thing.  I know pigeons from starlings; and I know robins from bluejays.  A duck couldn't fool me by claiming to be a goose.  I'm pretty sure that buzzard is just a synonym for vulture; and in any event, I know to stay the hell away from them.  But that's the extent of my knowledge of the avian world, and as far as I'm concerned, it's as much as I need.

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It's been pretty cold here.  If you're reading this in Minnesota or North Dakota, then go ahead and roll your eyes.  I know that this is nothing compared to where you live.  But a high temperature in the 20s is very cold where I live.  Yesterday, it was no more than 15 degrees outside when I heard a bird singing, chirpy and cheerful, right outside my bedroom window.  I'd been up for some time already, so I wasn't annoyed with the bird, just puzzled.  Who are you, little bird, I wondered; and why on earth haven't you flown south yet? Aren't you all supposed to fly south?

Or maybe it was a cardinal, I thought, not knowing for sure whether or not cardinals actually sing.  My limited knowledge of cardinals was gained from viewing painted ceramic plates and mugs and salt and pepper shakers that depict snowy nature scenes, always populated by a lone cardinal.  It just occurred to me as I heard the birdsong: Do cardinals really like cold weather, or do bad artists just like to paint them against snow and pine trees, for Christmas-y contrast? White, green, and red--what could be more wintery and holidayish?

I'm a curious person, usually.  If I run across an unfamiliar word, I look it up.  When kids ask questions to which I don't have good answers, I do some research.  But it never (and I mean never) occurs to me to take a picture of an unfamiliar shrub and then try to find out what kind of shrub it might be.  I know that there are hundreds (probably thousands) of varieties of birds, and although I've always liked birds, I've never been inspired to try to learn all of their names and particular physical characteristics.  They all have wings; most of them fly.  That's enough knowledge for me.

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Still. Chirpy birdsong on an Arctic winter day? (Shut up, Alaska and Michigan.) I couldn't see the bird, so I asked Google if cardinals sing, and as it turns out, they do.  And their song sounds very much like the song that I heard outside my icy-cold window.  

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And that's likely as far as my nature study will go.  I have limited brain capacity. If I'm going to maintain my wide renown for being an endless fount of useless historical, cultural, and entertainment trivia; an ironclad authority on punctuation, and an outstanding speller, then I can't start using valuable brain cells on wildlife research.  Something has to give, you know?

C is for cookie

I had an idea for something to write, but I can't remember it now.  Maybe it was brilliant.  I'll wait around to see if it comes back to me.

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Nothing yet.

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This weekend is the first truly cold weekend we've had in some time, and surprisingly, I'm not 100% miserable.  I even went running* this morning.  No wind at all--still, overcast, and cold--it felt like Christmas.  

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Speaking of Christmas, I'm very well-prepared this year.  Ahead of schedule, in fact.  But next weekend is cookie-making weekend, and I'm not looking forward to it AT ALL.  The handful of readers of this blog might remember that I shared my feelings about Christmas cookie baking here, and about baking in general here.

Some people, I'm sure, look forward to baking Christmas cookies.  Some people treasure the pre-Christmas cookie-baking ritual.  Some people, I'm given to understand, even bake cookies for non-Christmas occasions, just because they like cookies; and apparently, they don't know how else to obtain them.

I told my 15-year-old son that I might take a picture of in-progress cookie-baking, and post it on Instagram-- hashtag #cookietimemotherfuckers. He says that that would be "cringey."

"What about #bitchbetterhavemycookies?"

"MOM."

Well, I thought it was funny.

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I still didn't remember the idea, but I have a better one now, and I wrote it down, so I won't forget it.  It's a non-blog idea, but I'll be back here sometime next week.  Maybe I'll live-blog cookie day. #ormaybethecookieswilljustbakethemselves.

* In the interests of full disclosure, "Running" = "Walking interspersed with jogging in short, uneven bursts."

Respect my authori-tay

I had to referee a high school swim meet earlier today, and I was a little rusty.  And by a little rusty, I mean that I actually Googled "high school swim meet referee when do you blow the whistle." It's not that I didn't know what to do, it's just that I didn't exactly remember exactly what to do exactly when.  I had a pretty good overall idea, but the sequence was a little fuzzy, and I was a bit vague on details.  Details like when to blow the whistle.  It had been a while, but in very uncharacteristic fashion, I decided not to worry about it.  It's like riding a bike, I reasoned to myself.

(That would be a funny comparison, if I could then immediately describe some hideous bicycle accident that I'd had at some point, but I'm pretty solid on a bike. I've fallen down while walking in or around my house three times in the last year, but no bicycle accidents to speak of.  Unless you count the time that I got hit by a car when I was riding my bike.  But that was a long time ago.  And it wasn't my fault.)

Just to be on the safe side, I downloaded the 2016-2017 edition of the high school swimming rule book, and it provided lots of helpful reminders of stuff that I already knew pretty well.  Nothing, though, about exactly when to blow the whistle.  I decided to wing it, even though that approach doesn't usually work out too well for me.  But all's well that ends well.  I walked into the aquatic center, put on the whistle, grabbed a clipboard, and it all came back to me.  Like riding a bike.