Ahhh...domestic bliss

I'm pleased to report that the first 24 hours with my guy have been fantastic, in a very ordinary sort of way. It wasn't so much what we did, because we haven't done anything super-special. We had a nice dinner at a neighborhood restaurant last night, we worked on unpacking stuff, I worked today, and tonight we went grocery shopping and reconfigured the computers. He cooked dinner while I did the laundry, and then we watched a movie while we ate. It's boring as hell, but it feels so good to have someone to come home to, and to not have to do all that stuff alone.

He also assembled my pretty new computer desk! I'd been in the market virtually ever since I bought my Wal-Mart POS. It didn't hold up well to the multiple moves I made with it, and it was ugly and too small to begin with. I finally got a new one for my birthday this summer. It has a tempered-glass top, a gray keyboard tray, and side shelves for my tower and printer. I wish my work desk was this nice!

I am concerned that with everything going on, I'm going to run out of steam before NaBloPoMo is even a week old. I have two books "in the pipeline" right now, and I'm reading a third. Still, if I write about one tomorrow and one Tuesday, I will have had to finish my current book by Wednesday in order to have something for that night, and even if I do, what about Thursday? My sister still hasn't called me back, so I don't know how the party went. We'll see, though. I'm going to make a real effort to find new topics and stretch myself, because isn't this what NaBloPoMo is supposed to be about?

About me, as a reader

Thomas McGuane's The Cadence of Grass taught me something about myself as a reader: I have to be able to either empathize with or laugh at the main character (or one of the main characters) or I can't sustain interest. Which is exactly what happened to this book.

The book opens as Paul Whitelaw walks into his father-in-law's wake. He's estranged from his wife Evelyn, never got along with her family, and immediately gets into a confrontation with his sister-in-law, Natalie. The conversation consists mostly of her baiting him in a very stitled and not-terribly-subtle way ("But all that water under the bridge! The otherwise admirable but nonmeshing complexities of character, the lack of the children, the -- evidently! -- dimming prospects of a nonstarter in the workplace!"). The book started to lose me there. My interest perked up again briefly when the primary driver of the plot was revealed: old man Whitelaw's will. The Whitelaw family owned a bottling plant, and old man Whitelaw made Paul the CEO of it, denied everyone else an income from it except for matriarch Mrs. Whitelaw, and decreed that the plant could be sold only if Paul reconciled with Evelyn.

But I couldn't bring myself to care. Initially, I felt sympathy for Paul. What must it be like to be attacked by page upon page of stilted dialogue at your father-in-law's wake? He was just trying to be nice in that scene. Well, actually, that turned out to be the only time. Paul's an asshole. And not a complex, brilliant-but-troubled asshole like Dr. Gregory House. Not even a spoiled, egomanical, almost comical asshole like the characters in Plum Sykes' novels. Just a garden-variety asshole. He probably does park his car in handicapped spaces while handicapped people make handicapped faces, or use public toilets and piss on the seat and walk around in summertime saying "How 'bout that heat?" He's sleeping with his probation officer (long, boring story) and treating her like shit. He's hitting on Natalie when her husband's not around, despite the evisceration she gave him. His first order of business as CEO is to walk into the bottling plant and start treating everyone like shit. He's just an asshole, and the rest of them weren't sufficiently interesting enough to me to bother.

Before I committed my slamming of this book to the internets, I checked out what others had to say. The book jacket, not that you can trust them, makes McGuane out to be a distinguished writer. I'd never heard of him and wanted to do a bit of research before I sounded like the high-school student complaining in his final paper about what a shitty writer Shakespeare was. I noticed that this book got extremely mixed reviews, in the sense that the reviewer (whether a pro writing for an established magazine or "420lulubelle" writing for Amazon) either loved the book or hated it. There wasn't much middle ground, very few "This one was sort of OK" opinions. You can put me firmly in the "hate" camp.

Through Another's Eyes at the Public Library

During my first few weeks of college, I had a very eye-opening experience. I came from a suburban town where everyone was white. I mean, EVERYONE. I remember my initial reaction to The Cosby Show as one of surprise: where did they find that many black people, all of whom wanted to be actors? By college, I was worldly enough to know that most towns had more black people than my own, and had made my very first black friend before school even started, during orientation. LeSean joined an organization called Women of Ethnicity and invited everyone from our orientation clique to come on the overnight trip to the university's retreat that they were hosting.

I was hesitant to go, but didn't really know why. I asked LeSean if she was sure it was OK that I went. She assured me I'd be totally welcome, it was a great group of people, and I'd totally fit in. She was right on all but the last count. I was totally welcome, and they were a great group of people, but I so did not fit in. They played Monopoly with totally different rules. They used slang I'd never head before. We played a campfire game where someone would hum a theme to a TV show and everyone had to guess what show it was, and I thought, well, we all watch the same stuff, I can totally do this one. Guess what, it turns out that white people even watch different TV shows! I started thinking about the one black girl in my graduating class of over 200, and wondered, was this what it was like for her all the time? Did she go to school and find that no one liked any of the same stuff she did, and that she had no real way to connect with anyone, despite everyone being friendly enough? I learned that weekend that there were more ways to live than the one I'd been raised with. I'd never questioned that basic assumption the same way most of us generally don't sit and wonder if there are other colors than the ones we're familiar with. It was one of the most valuable learning experiences I've ever had.

My visit to the nearby library branch last week reminded me a bit of that. The closest one is within walking distance, although I didn't walk there. There are bigger and better ones a few miles away, but I needed to return my books pronto, and I also wanted to see this one because it's known for its collection of books in Spanish. So I went, and it was like the reverse of a library that serves primarily English-speaking patrons. The Spanish sections, even twenty minutes from closing time, were packed with everyone you typically see at a library: moms with little kids, high school students doing papers, little old ladies and old men. It appeared to be well-stocked, however, and well-maintained. The English section was shoved in a too-hot corner. The shelves were half-empty. The "New Books" section featured books that had been out in paperback for years now. Things were misplaced left and right, and oh yeah, I was the only one over there. This is what it must be like to speak Spanish as a first language and try to go check out a book anywhere else in the region.

There's a huge debate in this country over the Spanish language. The common line is (everyone say it with me now) "If they're going to come to our country, they should learn to speak English!" Setting aside the undercurrent of racism that I feel is present in this debate (I used to live near a huge Bosnian population and I'm sure they didn't all speak English, but I never heard a word about it), this is just not practical. As a Craigslist friend pointed out, learning a whole language can take years, and in the meantime, you will need to rent an apartment, get your utilities switched on, buy groceries, get a job, etc. Even if you were fluent in English, I'd imagine you'd want to be able to be yourself once in a while, to just be able to chill out with a book in your own language, written by an author who's well-known to you, and that references things you're familiar with. I'd also imagine that's especially important to Spanish speakers whose children know only life in America.

So while I'm sure that there are people in my fair county who work themselves up into a lather at the thought of their tax dollars going to support a library with a Spanish collection, I think it's an important service. I'm glad it exists, and if the night I was there is fairly typical, it's certainly getting the traffic to justify its continued existence. I probably will even continue to go on occasion, although I'm hoping to spend more time at the Wal-Mart-sized Central Branch now that I'm so much closer to it. I'm also hoping to learn the nuances of parking down there -- I used to get a ticket every time I went! Still, as I learned again this week, it's good to go someplace you don't really belong every once in a while.

The Countdown is On!

In just an estimated 30 hours, I will be living with my guy! I'm so excited. We've been in a long-distance relationship for five years, and have been together for seven. I can't wait. No more phone calls at night. No more long drives after a full day of work for less than 48 hours together. We'll be a real couple and I'm just so excited that I don't even mind that he's coming with a list of relationship issues that we need to discuss in person. I'm going to post during the day tomorrow because I want to celebrate with him tomorrow night. I found a cool restaurant in my neighborhood that I think he'll like and maybe later we'll hit some of the neighborhood bars as well, or go see a movie or something. Did I mention I can't wait?!

What's New to the right here?

That's right, I just joined NaBloPoMo! You can go here to learn more about it, if you're wondering what the hell it is. Basically, this means that I now owe you a post a day for the entire month, even Thanksgiving, even Veterans Day, all month long. Can I read that much? Can I move on from the most recent faboo book I read to discover the wide, wide world of Other Books Out There? Or will I wind up doing a lot of cheating by visiting the library every day and blogging about what I check out? We'll find out together, dear readers!

For those of you who have been paying close, rapt attention, my sister's date with destiny is over. I haven't heard from her how it went, as she immediately had to jet to another city to present at a conference, but I'm hoping to be able to get her to guest-blog soon...or at least to return my phone call so I can write a post about how it was.

There's some more book news I have, but I feel like I've got to ration it now. If I write about all the books I've been reading, plus my trip to the library branch in my new neighborhood, I'll just be out of stuff to say tomorrow and the next day, right? Tune in then...

Get out the tissues, and read this book

I've had a great run with books lately, as I recently bragged. But one of the best I've read is The Memory of Running by Ron McLarty.

My parents have a habit of leaving the same magazine in the bathroom for weeks or months at a time. being the compulsive reader that I am, I essentially had Stephen King's screed about this book and the publishing industry from Entertainment Magazine memorized at one point. King was mad because while he thought the book was truly excellent, it had no chance of seeing the light of day because it didn't contain any Prada shoes or Russian subs or serial killers.

Reading the book, I can see why King liked it so much. After that incident with Gerald's Game where I didn't sleep for about six weeks after reading it, I stay away from most of his work, just for my own mental health. I've enjoyed some of his non-scary stuff in the past, though, and this book reminds me a lot of some of that. It's set in New England, and everyone in it drinks regional beer and likes the Red Sox (hmmm, maybe it is a horror novel after all!!!!!).

It's very sad, just to warn you. If you've experienced any losses in your own life, you might want to wait on this one. The book opens with Smithy, a middle-aged overweight self-proclaimed loser, cleaning up the cottage after a fishing trip with his parents. They went back a day early while he dealt with returning the boat and cleaning and all. On the way home, they were in a car crash and both died hours apart. After the funeral, Smithy's parents receive a letter from a morgue in Los Angeles stating that they have the body of Smithy's only remaining family member, his older sister, Bethany. In shock, Smithy goes out to the garage and does a surprising thing. He gets on his old bicycle, and rides and rides and rides, out to L.A. to get his sister.

The novel is two stories in one: the story of Smithy's ride across the country, the people he meets, and his journey back to some semblance of himself, and of a life; and the story of Smithy's childhood and how his sister Bethany wound up in a morgue after having disappeared from their hometown nearly 20 years earlier. It's hard to put into words why I liked this one so much, except maybe that it seemed like real life, and it really made you feel. I'm pleased that this one saw the light of day, and I urge you all to take advantage.

A Peek into the Life

Observant readers of this blog may have noticed the name of A. Manette Ansay on my sidebar, on my list of authors I love. I own two of her novels. River Angel was purchased during a down period in my life, when a melange of work and love-related issues had me wandering the aisles of Barnes and Noble in search of something to cling to. The book had a lovely phrase on the cover, something about souls rising like dandelion seeds, so I bought it and took it home in the hopes that it'd make me feel better for a couple of days. It did. I also bought Vinegar Hill, which was her first novel, and read Sister once. All three books were very sad, although River Angel does end on a positive note, at least. They were moving and well-written, though. I was surprised when I saw her name in the non-fiction section, so I took that book, Limbo, home with me.

When I took my creative writing classes in college, the professors would always encourage us to write about what we know. It's amazing how well many novelists do that, once you learn a little bit about their lives. Barbara Kingsolver, for example, grew up in rural Kentucky, moved to the Southwest as an adult, and was pursuing a career in biology before she became a successful novelist. A. Manette Ansay's family briefly lived with her father's parents who loathed each other the same way the grandparents in Vinegar Hill did, and the grandfather was always threatening to tell everyone about the grandmother (he never did, and apparently took whatever her secret was to the grave with him.)

But that's not all I learned about Ansay in her memoir. I was surprised to learn that she has lived with a mysterious disability for over 15 years. She had been a promising pianist, but one day her muscles just refused to work. She had trouble performing even simple tasks, let alone playing the piano. She had to drop out and move back home. She went everywhere, tried everything. She saw every sort of medical professional known to man. They all had theories, but nothing helped. To this day, she doesn't have a definitive diagnosis, and she needs a wheelchair to get around.

Now, a book like this could've gone in a couple of different directions. It could've been a poor-me tale, or it could've been a heroic tale about how Mansay triumphed over adversity to become a successful writer. She doesn't tell it like that. She talks about it simply as part of her life story, a simple "this is what life is like for me". She talks about the crap she had to endure from complete strangers and the bizarre comments they'd make. Some make inane jokes ("Hey, don't go too fast in that thing or I'll have to give you a ticket!!!"), some make cruel jokes (she also said that guys loved to yell improper suggestions out of car windows, then laugh and drive away). Some ask her personal questions, as if she has a duty to explain to anyone who sees her why she's in a chair. Some express something akin to jealousy, implying how nice it must be to just ride everywhere. Some try to convert her. Some who had been her friends cut her off, blaming her affliction on herself. Others get all sanctimonious and tell her how she must've learned a great deal from her experience (she snapped at one such individual that maybe something terrible would happen to her one day, and she'd get to learn from it too).

But she's just trying to live her life, and it had been and continued to be a good one. Take away the parts with the illness and it'd be a quintessential American childhood: she grew up in the Midwest, with one brother, and was raised by loving parents. She went to church, got good grades, excelled at the piano, and as she got older, found out how far these qualities could take her. There's a lot of sweet, funny stuff in the book, as well as some of the darker fears and misunderstandings of childhood. You see her going from being a daughter to getting to understand her parents as human beings. You see her fall in love and get married, journey away from the rigid, judgemental faith of her childhood to a different understanding of spirituality, pursue one path and then change it. Without the illness, it's really like anyone's life. Which, I think, is part of the point she was trying to make. Her mystery illness was a terrible thing, and it was a thing that's shaped her life, but it doesn't define her.