Tag: books

Snowed-In

December was a grueling month.  Six-day weeks and long hours at the bookstore – ringing at the cash register, looking for obscure or in-demand titles. Mark Twain was this year’s sleeper success and difficult to get hold of, Cleopatra and Keith Richards were more predictably popular and easy to find. (Imagining the three of them – together for a fascinating and funny chat, delighted me.) Customers sure the book they absolutely must have because it is the perfect gift, follow me about the store, desperately. Cynically, I can already see this same book, sometimes with wrapping paper still attached, coming back to us. ‘Reason for return: Unwanted’, the cash register will ring again and again through the next few weeks.

But the holidays are almost done (only New Years – less an event for books) and today, I do not have to do anything. There is a daunting pile of laundry and in the refrigerator, only enough left-overs for another day or so – but no presents to buy, no major meals to prepare for. I feel free! After writing this, I may even get back under the flannel sheets to read or sleep some more. Oh, joy!  This feeling began yesterday afternoon as soon as I returned home from work (the dread day of returns) and pulled into the slippery driveway. I drove home so slowly through the treacherous, slushy streets, cheering on my little Subaru each time we made it up or down another hill without spinning out. Settling into the couch in front of the fireplace as Rob vigilantly stoked the flames all evening, I read three days worth of newspapers and a bit of my book between dozing and listening to the howling winds, grateful for our good walls and Rob’s amazing winterizing techniques.

Today, I get to stay home. As if to underline the point, the snow is still swirling, the roads from my window look totally white: I am snowed-in.  Oh, bliss! Not even the dog is asking for a walk yet.

Living with Books

When I ride the train, the subway, walk on a beach – and see someone reading, I always want to know – what?  When people are photographed or interviewed on television in front of a bookcase, I try to make out what titles are on their shelves. Because I work in a bookstore? Maybe, but also because I am nosy – it is as if I’m sneaking a peek at who this person really is by checking out their books.

My own bookshelves are packed to capacity – including too many books I have yet to read. Will I ever? There are titles that I feel like I should read — a great example being a huge tome: Tournament of Shadows: The Great Game and the Race for Empire in Central Asia by Karl E. Meyer and Shari Blair Brysac.  Autographed by these local authors and scholars – I do want to read it for a better understanding of this volatile region we have been so mired in – and so it stays and I think: one day. The same ‘should’ keeps From Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas Friedman on my shelf for years.  I cannot let go of these books nor my good intention to read them but other books always jump the reading queue.

Then there are the books I may want for reference – that get yanked from the shelf about once a year or so – Alternative Medicine: The Definitive Guide by Goldberg and The Art Book – a book published by Phaidon door-stop sized book I picked up once at a tag sale. It’s a fast-food kind of look at the history of art.  I have more cherished art and photography books I also found on sale and could not resist – the most recent find being Andy Goldsworthy’s Passage – this remarkable sculptor’s poetic works are created out of nature – powerful works of time and space – some of stone but many others of ice, leaves, the tides and now, only a photograph remains.  It sits on a table in my living room and I have looked at it maybe once but I am so glad it is there.

I have the powerful photography books by my friend Ron Haviv – his important documentation of wars including Blood and Honey: A Balkan War Journal – the war I knew. My Balkan titles can take up their own shelf and I have read them all, hungering to understand the madness that was my life for four years.  My collection began back in 1992 with Rebecca West’s classic Black Lamb, Grey Falcon and Misha Glenny’s The Fall of Yugoslavia. Later on, I added David Rieff’s Slaughterhouse, Peter Maass’s Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War. And perhaps the one most poignant for me, My War Gone By, I Miss it So by Anthony Lloyd – a powerful memoir of addiction to war and to drugs.  

The addiction self-help books have mostly been purged – in the hopes that the problem is also gone out of my life, I have passed them on to others who might find them useful.  But I have kept the memoirs – Beautiful Boy by David Sheff, Mary Karr’s Lit.

Over the years I have amassed a collection of signed titles that are impossible to part with – I see them as a legacy for my daughter. J. K. Rowling – the second Harry Potter title signed at an event at the store early on in her success.  Still, it was like hosting a rock star but she was lovely, signing well over a thousand books and looking every child in the eye and sharing a chat while signing with her arm in a brace.  My inscribed copies of Angela’s Ashes and Teacher Man will always have a revered place on my shelf with warm memories of my encounters with Frank McCourt.

There are books I can and should cull: novels I have read and never will again. Outdated travel guides – to Bali, Martha’s Vineyard (I have not been since high school), the Florida Keys (I have never been) parenting guides, cookbooks I never open – but as my eye scans the dusty spines, I think of a reason why I want each one to stay – a memory, the possibility I might one day need to check on the correct Serbo-Croatian word or refer to that book The Brain. I won’t though — the internet is too easy.  At least, I will dust them.

A Book to Read

I finished reading Let’s Take the Long Way Home by Gail Caldwell two days ago and like a good book will, thoughts of it linger in my consciousness. Yesterday, as I walked by a stack of them in the bookstore, a woman about my age browsed nearby.

“This is wonderful.” I held the book up.

“Hmm. I thought it sounded depressing,” she answered.

I paused, surprised. Depressing. Yes, of course a book about the loss of your best-friend might sound like a downer.  Why was I surprised at her reaction?

“Oh, no,” I said. “Poignant, yes – but very beautiful – not depressing.” I wonder if she picked it up after I left.

Earlier in the day, a woman looking for a new parenting book called Little Girls Can Be Mean and I agreed how puzzling it is that girls are indeed, so often mean to each other -much more so than little boys.  Yet later in life, women’s friendships are so rich and loving – more than what most men get to experience. Boyfriends may come and go but our girlfriends remain anchors and our loyalty, fierce. Years have sometimes passed without contact with some friends but when we reconnected, it was as if no time or space ever separated us. My friends are now tightly woven into my life. During bitter times, they held me together, letting me cry, reminding me to laugh.

One dear one is as far away as Tasmania and another is  across the street.  Most precious of all is the friendship with my sister, Anne. We have the bonus connection of genetic understanding as additional cement. We get each other immediately and on every level. This is what Caldwell and Knapp had.

Let’s Take the Long Way Home is a loving glimpse into Gail Caldwell’s enviable relationship with fellow writer and dog-lover, Caroline Knapp (Drinking: A Love Story and Pack of Two)  who died while still in her forties, of cancer.  This gem of a book was borne out of Caldwell’s loss. Affecting, (I made the mistake of reading the last chapter during a lunch break at work) but not depressing.

I am fascinated by grief – or maybe not really grief itself, but rather, how us humans process profound sadness, the inevitable and dread part of the emotional spectrum of life. Gail Caldwell opens a door to this dark room and amidst the shadows of sadness you feel grateful for the experience – all of it: the pain, the love, life.

Summer Weekend

Sunday – and I have barely touched my list of things to do. As always, if the weather allows, at the top is to get out on the water and yesterday, we did –  kayaking out around the islands, getting out to walk on sandbars and swimming – floating out where the snowy egrets feed, sparkling white against the green grasses and blue sky. It is easy to let the hours pass out there but eventually, the to-do-list beckons me, our stomachs rumble and we head back to shore.

The garden pays the price for these leisurely afternoons and the weeds are winning the battle.  I search between the green for things to pick and did make my kickin’ salsa with our jalapenos, one tomato from the garden and one from our CSA box, cilantro and red onion. So far, the only thing that the big pests have been eating are the eggplants. I have managed to pick only one slender purple-black fruit but now only find carved out shells of skin hanging on the vine. Since no one in my house particularly likes eggplant – including me, I consider them my decoy plants.  Except for bites out of tomatoes left by annoying squirrels, the lettuce, swiss chard, edamame and cukes have not been touched.  Of course, the mean-old ground hog who has decimated my garden in years past is probably just waiting for the lovely little soybean pods to appear before feasting.  But just in case we’re doing a vegetable swap here, I’m happy to sacrifice the melenzano.

Besides the housework, also getting short-shrift from me are the piles of New Yorker magazines, Sunday’s New York Times and an ever-growing stack of books. It seems impossible to keep up with it all. During my week away I managed to read three-weeks worth (does it really have to be a weekly?) dabbled in many memoirs and books but read The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman cover-to-cover loving every page.  Brilliantly rendered characters – each profiled in chapters that flesh out the life and death of a newspaper in Rome.  Now I am hooked in a ‘I don’t want to stop reading yet’ way on Little Bee by Chris Cleave, deservedly on the Best Seller List.  A page turner, with gorgeous writing.  I was particularly moved and impressed by his telling of grief – or rather, of aftermath of tragedy – because grief is too simple a word for the emotions in those of us left behind and he brilliantly, poignantly, captures the complexity of that undertow.

More Books

One of the greatest perks about working in a bookstore are the books.  Free books (Advanced Reader’s Copies –  ARCs – from the publisher), borrowed books (hard cover with a dust jacket), and discounted books (a generous employee discount). I get lots of books.  Currently I am finishing up a borrowed book: Orange is the New Black by Piper Kerman – a memoir of the author’s stint in Danbury prison.  Any glimpse behind the frightening walls of a woman’s prison piques my interest but this author’s experience is particularly fascinating because she is like me.  An educated, (we’re talking Smith college) white, proverbial good girl who did some stupid things in her early twenties. She’s smart, funny, insightful.  We all think we’d never be behind bars but it could happen to anyone. (Martha?)  I’m fascinated with our capacity to adjust and create a new normal, to survive what we imagine to be impossible, to make lemonade out of lemons. You get the drift. While the author writes an honest portrait of her own challenges she also gives us a glimpse at the lives of many of her fellow inmates. These are prisoners from the shameful ‘war on drugs’, prisoners of domestic violence, prisoners of addiction. While ‘what they did’ may be the voyeuristic question that lingers, it’s the getting through the days, the weeks, the months, the years that drives these women and this story. There has to be a better way than the insanity of our prison system. Beautifully done.

So what next?  The piles of books around the house are getting crazy. My arc pile has Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War by Karl Marlantes, The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall, Solar by Ian McEwan, The Swimming Pool by Holly Lecraw.  I picked these up because I either love the author (McEwan) the subject fascinates me (war experience, polygamy???) or because something in a review piqued my interest.  That’s why I bought Happy Now by Katherine Shonk – a novel about a woman whose husband committed suicide (research) but haven’t gotten beyond the first few pages.

Another recent purchase is  I’m Not Mad, I Just Hate You!: A New Understanding of Mother-Daughter Conflict – Surviving and Thriving During Your Daughter’s Teenage Years by Roni Cohen-Sandler – a local, smart shrink who specializes in the subject.  She was in the store for a talk when M was still a toddler and I remember that I liked what she said so many years ago so picked this up when I felt overwhelmed by a rare difficult spell with M. Things are peachy again so I’ve yet to open it.  I’m sure I’ll be reading it one of these days.

I also purchased Patricia Lanza’s Lasagna Gardening: A New Layering System for Bountiful Gardens: No Digging, No Tilling, No Weeding, No Kidding! which reads like a television infomercial. But it does work and is a great way to recycle newspapers and all that compost-able kitchen waste. This book I keep around like a cookbook – to dive into when I need it for adjustments and advice on individual crops.

So with only a few pages to go on the book I’m reading now, what next?  I might have to borrow the last Stieg Larson The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest – although I try to borrow less popular books so that if I love them, I can plug them. In any case, I’m spoiled for choice.  Now to find the time…

Food

Cilantro, mint, sage, spring onions, strawberries. The harvest begins!  Yesterday made a carrot, apple, ginger, mint salad with a yogurt, honey, lemon juice dressing. Roasted red pepper dip by blending cream cheese, cilantro and a touch of cayenne to give it even more of an edge. Strawberries are big and bountiful – the challenge is to get to them before the slugs and birds. Spring onions – fatter and more substantial than a scallion – are already forming scapes. I wonder if they can be eaten like garlic scapes?  Yesterday’s harvest was sliced thin and cooked in a skillet until they were crunchy bits – perfect to toss on top of the chicken cooked in a soy-ginger marinade with a preserved lemon thrown in for good measure.  A few leaves of sage as garnish for this crazy flavor combo.  After weeks of no inspiration, I am excited by cooking again.

In another few weeks we will be picking up our first CSA box of organic vegetables of the season. Always an adventure to open the box.  In the first weeks there will be plenty of greens – beautiful young lettuce, basil, garlic scapes, (pesto!) arugula and much tastier strawberries than ours. Then strange things like fennel and other vegetables I have to look up recipes for.  I have a weakness for cookbooks but in the end, use only three or so regularly.  Deborah Madison’s vegetarian cookbooks are fantastic – full of inspiring recipes using wacky veg.  A new favorite is Mark Bittman’s Kitchen Express. Rather than being in recipe format, the book is broken down by season with simple paragraphs giving suggested meals. Most of the ingredients are already in your cupboard and fridge but with Bittman’s guidance everything becomes more interesting. With just a few sentences of inspiration you can throw together simple meals, a catalyst for the kitchen.  That can of beans? Turn it into a burger that even your fussy kid will eat.  For something different try Japanese egg crepes or Peanut Soup. Yum.

Saving Daylight

Still trying to catch up from saving (losing?) that daylight hour and am slow to pull myself out of bed. The dark morning is hard but the extra evening light is worth it. Yesterday (Saturday), I worked for a few hours hosting the lovely author and chef Leticia Moreinos Schwartz with her new book The Brazilian Kitchen: 100 Classic and Contemporary Recipes for the Home Cook – a beautiful cookbook I had to buy myself after salivating over the photos and recipes like Red Pepper and Brazil Nut Pesto or Avocado Creme Brulee. Yum.  And the little sweet treats she brought for customers to taste – Brigadeiros – were scrumptious.  Food and good people – I was able to forget that it was a beautiful, first day of spring and I was inside.  And there was plenty of time in the remaining afternoon and evening to work in the garden.

When I got home, we leveled a Rose O Sharon shrub hovering over the corner of my vegetable garden for too many years.  I am loathe to cut down trees and shrubs where the birds might hang out. Not yesterday.  Without sentiment, we brought it down, opening up that corner  that has always become overgrown, blocking the sun from my tomato plants.  What bugged me most about this shrub was the shoots that spring up all around it – a flower garden next to the garage, the corner behind that we have been trying with little success to claim from the weeds and determined raspberry shoots.  Hundreds of little twigs that are Rose O Sharon offspring – they are poking out already, some tenaciously stuck in there, resisting my yanks. We worked for hours into the evening, the sky turning a deeper blue to dark with a sliver smile of moon up above. Ah, spring.

More Snow and Some Good Books

Dashed hopes of an early spring as we get walloped by another snow storm. Good thing I have my wall of ‘books-to-be read’ in place – a dam against the winter doldrums. Thanks to my sister for alerting me to Claire Keegan’s short story in last week’s New Yorker. She warned me that I would not be able to read it with dry eyes and of course, she was right. I’m talking sobs.  The next day I searched for more Keegan at the bookstore (yes, it’s nice to work in the proverbial candyshop!) and scooped up a collection of short stories, Walk the Blue Fields.  Not a sentence that doesn’t sing. Her writing is powerfully poignant without being manipulative. Familiar characters for anyone who grew up with an emotionally unavailable father. Publishers will have to go back and print more of her books because there were none available to order when I checked – lucky I found one on the shelf. If you’d like to read the story:  www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2010/02/…/100215fi_fiction_keegan

Shadow Tag, Louise Erdrich’s newest book also held me in an emotional headlock for the two days. I have so far to go as a writer – whew – each of Erdrich’s sentences are perfect and not one to spare.  An almost frightening thread of passions (love and hate) runs through the book, woven through gorgeous images of a frigid, winter.  But there is no reprieve when the thaw comes. Such smart and poetic writing and a compelling, painful story – very close to the bone.  Although I felt an all-too-familiar sense of dread throughout the telling of this doomed marriage, I could not tear myself away.

I am also reading an Advance Reader Copy of a book due out in March: If You Follow Me by Malena Watrous.  A young American woman goes to Japan to teach English not long after her father commits suicide. It reads a bit like a memoir – or maybe I think that just because I read everything with a comparative eye to my own book and wondering how to tell the story, weighing the pros and cons of telling a tale in fiction vs. non-fiction.  Watrous tells a good story.  She brilliantly captures the life of an expatriate in Japan and what a perfect setting for the shocking and strange, sad limbo land of being a survivor of a loved one’s suicide. Read this and you’ll fall in love with each of the strange and wonderful characters in this tiny Japanese village where the main character – Marina – finds for herself and brings to others, healing and hope.  A good read that I’ll look forward to hand-selling in the store.

What next?  I guess I could get back to the WordPress for Dummies book to try and figure out how to make this site a little more interesting…zzzzzzzzz.

Sleep, perchance to… sleep? And a rambling about books.

Sometimes I wake in the dark, early hours wanting to write about something. Go on, get up and write, I urge myself.  The bed is so warm and the air so frigid, I never do. In the light of morning, I have no recollection of what inspired me in the dark. Not surprising really, since these days, I never remember so much as a flash of a dream. Nights are delicious, nourishing voids.

Not that I don’t miss crazy escapades of the remembered subconscious, waking with a sense of  having had adventures -but only a little. In years past, I suffered so many sleepless nights worrying, that I savour this gift of solid sleep, these nights, slumped on the couch by 9:00 PM.

Most nights, I try and read before conking out completely, curled up under the quilt – what luxury.  The stacks of books-to-be-read continue to grow into teetering towers around the house.  Advanced Readers Copies picked up from work are on every table and stacked on shelves of already full bookcases.  Currently, I am hooked on The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson – a best seller that many friends and readers I share tastes with, have raved about.  I am half-way through and while crime thrillers are not my  usual reading taste, and the violence makes me wince, I  know I’ll need to read his next one too. Not exactly bedtime reading but I can’t put it down.  And still, no dreams (or nightmares!).

Borrowed from the store (a great benefit of my job) is Anticancer: A New Way of Life by David Servan-Schreiber, MD, PhD – a refreshingly, rare from an MD, holistic take on proactively dealing with this sucky disease. War of the cells and what we can do to stack the odds in our favor. Things we know, but I for one, need reminding of –  like layoff the white stuff – sugar, flour. Exercise. And drink red wine! Being positive and having friends – recently this attitude has taken a beating (by Barbara Ehrenreich of Nickled and Dimed fame for example)but I know what kind of person I prefer to be around and unless you’re really funny in your bleakness, I’ll choose the positive attitude any day.  Back to this book -it is interesting because the author is in this battle himself, and has survived past ‘the odds’ – something he poignantly addresses. This is the book I dip into between driving my teenager to and fro.

I even checked a book out of the library the other day – Pretty Birds a novel by NPR’s weekend edition, Scott Simon published in 2005, is my downstairs book.  I don’t know how I missed reading this since it is about Sarajevo during the war and I compulsively read anything on that time and place – whether fiction or non-fiction. The first few chapters of my memoir are set in Bosnia during the war so I can’t help reading other people’s work with a comparative eye. Of course, my story is more about the war of addiction and Sarajevo is the fitting (and true backdrop) for launching my story. I’ve only read a chapter but it’s already compelling.

Recent temperatures have been arctic and I long for spring – but I realize that when it comes, my reading time will shrink with the demand and draw of the garden and sun.  Maybe winter is not so terrible after all.

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