Vacation reading

It's been a while since I wrote about books, so I'm going to tell you all about last month’s vacation week reading. It's a mixed bag, as always. 

*****

We rented a beach house for a week in August, and I like to try to read a book off the shelf in whatever beach rental I end up in, and I did that this year, too. Most of the books on the bookcase in the sunny corner of the bedroom of our 2022 beach rental were pretty much trash but I found a copy of Colm Toibin's Brooklyn amid the dreck, so that was my beach novel for the week. Brooklyn is one of only a very few books whose movie version I prefer. That is not to say that it's a bad book because it's not. The writing is really beautiful. But novels are about characters for me, and I liked Movie Eilis (Eilis, pronounced “eye-lish,” is the main character) and I didn't much like Book Eilis. Movie Eilis is reserved and the viewer understands that this is because she is homesick, introverted, and just a generally quiet person. Book Eilis is also reserved, but that’s mostly because she’s a bit of a snob. Lace Curtain Irish, my dad would have called her. 

This is not a compliment. 

After her return visit to Ireland, Movie Eilis clearly comes back to her American husband Tony because she loves him, not just because terrible Miss O'Brien blackmails her with a threat to expose her secret marriage. Book Eilis seems only to return because she has to. But let’s be fair to Book Eilis. Movie Tony is obviously very lovable, and Book Tony is a bit of a cipher. There’s nothing wrong with him, he’s just not a particularly compelling character. He could be any reasonably nice guy. Still, the bitch married him. 

*****

Did you come here looking for sharp and cogent literary criticism? How many times do I have to tell you not to do that? 

*****

After Brooklyn, I read another beach book, this one a purchase from my favorite store, a used book shop called Barrier Island Books. I should write about the store because I’m clearly not capable of writing about the books. Note to self. I’ll get to that later. Anyway, the book that I purchased was Carrie Fisher: A Life on the Edge, by Sheila Weller. I am a Carrie Fisher super-fan, and so this book told me practically nothing that I didn’t already know, but I didn’t read it for information. I read it because I wanted to revisit a world that Carrie Fisher was still part of. Carrie and her mother Debbie Reynolds were both American archetypes (the rebellious and spoiled but neglected Baby Boomer Hollywood child and the Midwestern no-nonsense up-by-her-bootstraps tap-dancing, singing, smiling never-not-working movie star mother) AND absolutely individual and different from anyone else of their time or any other time. They were living proof that people are like snowflakes and fingerprints: no two alike. There will never be another Carrie Fisher or Debbie Reynolds, God rest their souls. 

*****

If you’re still reading, you just learned a little bit about Carrie Fisher and pretty much nothing about the book (it was good, BTW). I’m 0 for 2 on the book reviews, aren’t I? Well, you were warned once, and if you’re still hanging, then that’s on you, isn’t it? Caveat emptor, know what I mean? 

*****

I’m a very big fan of Christopher Guest movies, especially "Best in Show." And as anyone who reads this blog knows, I am also a very big fan of Nora Ephron. And if you draw a Venn diagram with Christopher Guest movies in one circle and Nora Ephron’s entire oeuvre in the other, the intersection will absolutely contain Parker Posey. When her book You’re on an Airplane popped up in my Kindle recommendations, I did not hesitate. Plus, I love quirky memoirs. This one is premised on the idea that you and Parker Posey are sitting next to one another on a long flight, and she tells you stories about her life. The premise is good though the execution is not consistent. She drops the airplane theme for a bit in the middle, and then in a late chapter, she ends a paragraph with a sentence that goes something like “Oh thank you, I’d love some peanuts.” I had no idea what that was supposed to mean and then I remembered that Parker and I are supposed to be on an airplane together, and the flight attendant is offering us a snack. 

Not long ago, I read Chuck Klosterman’s The Nineties (which requires a whole separate post and I don’t know if I’ll ever get around to that) and he didn’t mention Parker Posey even one time. This is a serious omission because if you want to understand nineties pop culture, you can do no better than to consider the very existence of Parker Posey’s movie career. No other decade before or since could possibly have produced Parker Posey, movie star. Parker Posey has lived an interesting life, and she is, not surprisingly, a very good writer. I recommend this book. 

*****

OK, I’ll give myself ½ credit for that last one. And yes, I would love some peanuts too, thank you. 

*****

I used to read a book in a single day all the time. Now, between legitimate busy-ness, eyestrain, and ever-worsening adult ADD (I assure you that this is a thing), it often takes me a week or more to finish a book. But I can cram a ton of reading into a vacation week. I almost forgot about this last one (really the first one), because I started it a few days before I went on vacation and finished it that weekend. 

Emma Goldberg’s Life on the Line: Young Doctors Come of Age in a Pandemic is a book that I would never have read on my own, but the medical students were reading it as part of orientation week activities, and so I read it too. Goldberg writes about six young New York doctors who begin their residencies several months early during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic. I won’t tell you any more than that (oh, you didn’t actually expect me to review this book, did you?) except that reading this book dragged me right back into the middle of 2020, which is a time that I do not care to revisit right now or likely ever, and yet I still really liked it. 

******

Brooklyn is the only one of these four books that has earned serious literary recognition (though I’m betting that Life on the Line will eventually win some prizes). I think it was even a Man Booker Prize finalist. And I’m not saying it shouldn’t have been because it is a very fine book. But I rank it fourth of these four, and it’s not even close. If you haven’t seen the movie, then you might like it better than I did. Just don’t read it expecting Saiorse Ronan, Emory Cohen, Jim Broadbent, and Julie Walters (who is absolutely hilarious as Eilis’s landlady Mrs. Kehoe). 

You know what? Just watch the movie. I almost never like movie versions of books and I really NEVER like a movie better than the book on which it is based, but never say never, I suppose, because here is one case in which the movie really is superior to the book. 

*****

And another thing. I AM going to write about The Nineties. I’ve already started, in fact. And it’s no better than this hot mess. Fair warning, as always. Watch this space.