I've manage to catch some sort of plague-like infection and it's totally put a damper on my weekend. What I had intended to be a weekend filled with working on short story has turned into nothing but whining and coughing and sleeping and sobbing.
In general, I'm kind of a crybaby. Even on my very best days. When I get sick, I'm leveled. I sobbed through a "Roseanne" marathon this morning, and because that wasn't quite enough I decided to watch the original "V" I TIVO'd last weekend, and cried through a lot of that too. "The Amazing Race" too.
I didn't cry during "The Maltese Falcon" though, perhaps that's progress.
Read a fucking book, you're probably thinking. I thought that too, but the pressure and burning in my eyes made reading nearly impossible. In fact, I tried and gave up because it just wasn't working for me. Some people are really good at working through the sickness. I'm not one of those people. My brain doesn't function well when I have a cold. It just feels slower and filled with mud. I try to think, but fail miserable. I don't get jokes and barely understand what people are saying to me. It's not good. Really, all I'm capable of is laying around being generally unhappy and whining about how much being sick sucks.
It does suck. I'm going to bed.
I have to leave soon to bring my ailing Ruby to Ben's to see if he can't figure out what is wrong with her. But before I go, I had to wish a heartfelt congratulations to Dabysan and CarrieNation, who are getting married today.
I think I only read three books in all of October. That's damn near shameful. I will, however, blame my writing class on this. Where usually we read a majority of 12-18ish page short stories, this time around we're being bombarded by 6,000 word 28-page novel beginnings. It's been hell. Not just the sheer amount of words to read, but only a few of the novel chapters have been worth my time. In fact, one novel start was so offensive that the class was actually angry. Of course the complete lack of punctuation didn't help matters. It just goes to show you, domestic violence is not an issue you can make funny, right up there with rape, child molestation, and genocide. None of these things are funny. Let it be known.
On with the show.
BOOK ACQUIRED
Swimming Inside the Sun by David Zweig
Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem
Totally Killer by Greg Olear
Last Night in Twisted River by John Irving
BOOKS READ
Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon: This novel about identity, identity theft, the Internet, brotherhood, and more is probably going to make my top 10 best books of 2009 -- will blow your mind.
American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang: Even with an ending that comes off as a little convenient and coincidental, this graphic novel about growing up Chinese in America weaves together three different stories in a way that is sweet and funny.
Andromeda Klein by Frank Portman: A slightly disappointing novel by the author of the the fan-fucking-tastic King Dork is about a skinny weird girl obsessed with the occult and has a tendency to be a bit boring under the weight of all the magic research.
CURRENTLY READING
Every Boat Turns South by J.P. White
The Complete Essex County by Jeff Lemiere (which I actually finished today, but now it's November)
Last Night in Twisted River by John Irving
"If we don't fight hard enough for the things we
stand for, at some point we have to recognize that we don't really
stand for them."
-- Senator Paul Wellstone
"I find it absolutely intolerable to think that a woman's home can be
the most violent, most dangerous and oftentimes the most deadly place
she can be."
So Spin Ds + Sesame Street = all goodness in my book.
Some post-ironic hipsters that I know cannot admit to loving anything that doesn't have the blessing of Pope Chuck Klosterman and the Bishops who write for Pitchfork, but I am not one of those pathetic sheep. I'm proud to embrace that which I love.
Sometimes the heart wants what the heart wants and there is no way to explain it.
Every Sunday evening, I spend hours refreshing my neighborhood page. It's all command + R over and over and over again at my house. Command + R.
Each time the page refreshes and I don't see an update from Daby, I imagine my eyes dance with delight, and I can feel a smirk on my face. With each passing hour, I can feel a sort of glow start to warm my heart.
And then, then when I'm absolutely sure that he and his coterie of ass-kissing minions have forgotten, there's an update.
My hopes dashed, my joyous heart diminished.
Woe is me.
See, for the first time ever in my book-collecting career I have decided to separate the read from the unread. It's a bold move. In the past I've organized books by favorite status, some trumped up sort of topical nonsense I made up, and strict-alphabetical regardless of topic (fiction mixed with non-fiction, anthologies, references, it was chaos).
For the most part I am sticking with the segregation (fiction, non-fiction, and graphic novels/memoirs). It's just that now the unread will be alphabetized amongst themselves, just like the read. It makes sense in my head.
There are much more read than I first anticipated. I've already filled most of the four shelves of the big bookcase and I'm at T in Thompson. So not too shabby. When I first started I feared it would be much more lopsided, with the unread heavily outweighing the read.
I'm pretty pleased that there are 20ish books on the giveaway/donate table too. These are books that are both unread and probably built to stay that way, and others that I had read but don't need to keep in the permanent collection mostly do to their forgettable nature.
I'm hoping that seeing all the unreads together, pathetic and unloved will move to pick one up and read it. I've already made a plan to incorporate reading one "old" book a month as part of RP2010 (for the record RP2009 includes reading 56 books, 12 of which have to be graphic novels and 12 of which have to be short story collection).
In general, editing Minnesota Reads is just about my favorite thing to do. I love it. I love when people talk about books. Since I'm pretty much a free speech absolutist, I let all kinds of review fly on MN Reads -- good, bad, ugly -- whatever a reviewer is comfortable enough signing their name to, I'm willing to run.
Oftentimes, we get solicited by publicists, editors, and authors who would like us to review their books. Sometimes, we solicit publicists, editors, and authors wondering if they'll part with a review copy. All this is just a way to say we get a lot of free books.
Professional publicists, editors, and authors realize that sending us a book in no way guarantees they will get a good review. Hell, a lot of times it doesn't even guarantee the book will be read.
And then there are the unprofessionals -- they are a pain in my ass.
I've got one who has sent me not one but TWO separate diatribes because her feelings are hurt over a bad review. The woman is a little off and has decided that since the site is called Minnesota Reads that the entire state is against her.
It's hard, because I know that my job is to rise above it, to not respond to her e-mail, and not to defend our editorial policy. But it's so hard. SO HARD!
Grrrr. . . I hate thin-skinned, whiny people.
There were lots of books. But the best part was standing in line to get my copy of Lorrie Moore's A Gate at the End of the Stairs signed. It was only the best because I was standing behind Nicholson Baker (author of books like The Mezzanine, Vox, and The Fermata). It was a little surreal. It also made me wish I had read some of his book so that if the fanboy who was hanging on him ever stopped talking I could have said something to him. But I hadn't read his books and the fanboy never stopped. So I guess it was all good.
Lorrie Moore was amazing. I love her work so much that when it was my turn to talk to her I was rendered speechless (kind of like that time I met Mary Gaitskill and could do nothing but smile my face off). But you know, I still got to meet her and that alone was awesome.
