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I finished reading two biographies of American female writers this week. One thing I found interesting was that, in a way, Julia Child and Nelle Harper Lee were living somewhat parallel lives at the time they were each working on their first (and in Lee's case, only) book: each worked throughout the 1950s on their masterpiece, finally publishing a successful bestseller in 1960 (Lee) and 1961 (Child). Each never had any children. But aside from that, they had little else in common. Reading Child's autobiography gave me new insight into the full life she lived, her wit, her charm, and her constant love of learning, of food, and of France. She didn't really find her calling until she was in her late thirties, and didn't become famous until she was in her forties. Harper Lee was in her thirties when she became well-known, but she had been writing for her whole life. And unlike Child, she never took to fame, and never enjoyed the limelight. Reading these books back-to-back was an interesting juxtaposition of two very down-to-earth but also very different women who were basically of the same generation (though Child was fourteen years older). Each was inspiring to me in their own way. Harper Lee worked on her book for years, hours every day, not bothering to be part of the "literati" or "networking" or submitting stories or excerpts to magazines to get her name out there. I wonder if that's even possible now, for an unknown author to publish a book. Perhaps I shall find out someday (that the answer is "no way"). Anyway, next up for me is a short story collection by Grace Paley: Enormous Changes at the Last Minute. Tags: books
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Potatoes au gratin bubbling in the oven. I love gruyere cheese a lot. Brian is home, relaxing in the office with his video game. Today we slept in late and then after breakfast went downtown for coffee and personal projects at the cafe. I've been working on my book this weekend. Started reading "You Can't Go Home Again" today. Waiting to get hooked, 35 pages in. So far it seems to be about this prick writer in New York whose method consists of a lot of neurotic behavior. Because he's a *tortured artist* and the writing process requires a lot of cigarettes and booze and insanity. He is also apparently obsessed with being famous and rich through the publication of his brilliant novels. Insert eyeroll. Anyway, I'm giving it another fifty pages to convince me to stick it out for the whole seven hundred. The book I finished yesterday, "Small Town Odds," ended up being pretty good. A nice little story, fast-moving, engaging, believable, and kept me reading. And you know, that is all a book ever needs. You can throw pretension and impressive ten-dollar words out the window when you have an excellent story, imo. Baseball game is on in the background. I can't believe Bobby Kielty is going to luck himself into a World Series ring. Tags: books
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+ most of the posts on my friends page from today are from people in Seattle. *~ oooooh ~* + I just cleaned the tub. It was groce. Most of the filth was just dust because we don't use our tub. Our tiny, carpeted bathroom has one of those split shower/tub deals. Never again, man. Never again. + moving really inspires one to throw away everything. Rena and Derek just moved back here from Brooklyn and were kind enough to give us a carload of not only boxes, but also four trash bags full of packing material (balled up newspaper). They are tha best. Rena I owe you lunch or something. As soon as my days are free, perhaps. + indexed the books we want to sell today. Brian made an excel doc for me so I can easily enter them into ebay. Or should I sell through Amazon? I've never tried that. Anyway, it's around 65 books, to be sold for between $1 and $12 each. Pain in the ass, but better than just putting them on the sidewalk so some junkie can sell them for crack rocks. + speaking of books for sale, if anyone wants an autographed first edition of "Lullaby" by Chuck Palahniuk, lemme know. + also: I finished reading "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh" and found it much to my liking. Extremely vivid, with authentic dialogue. If only I could write so well. My only complaint was that the characters were all of course very dysfunctional and not terribly likable. It happens. + and: I investigated a used book shop in my neighborhood that I usually don't walk into and was very charmed. They have a shelf dedicated to autodidactism. + after that I walked to the softball field and sat on the steps in the sunshine looking at the construction equipment. There is now a trench from one end of the field to the other, flanked on both sides by mounds of dirt. I thought about how when I was a kid, some of my favorite places to play were actually construction sites near my house. + dinner tonight will be free range chicken nuggets and rice. I will also be preparing a big salad to take to work with me tomorrow, my final Monday at my job. Tags: books
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I went downtown this morning after breakfast and did a little shopping. Well, I returned a purse I didn't like and bought a new one that I love. That's how I roll. After that, I met up with Brian at the Embarcadero Cinema and we watched a little Irish film called "Once". I really loved it, loved it so much. Though I gotta say the ending kind of made my jaw drop. Hope that's not a spoiler. It was just not what I was expecting. And yet a perfect ending in a way. Hey, kind of like the Sopranos? It's time to start thinking about our trip to Chicago/Michigan coming up in a couple weeks. We'll be doing a lot of driving, to Midland and back, which I think I have done at least three times now. The heat and humidity will be a novelty to me. Must remember sunscreen. Oh and I also bought a book today: "Dear Catastrophe Waitress". I started reading it and so far it's pretty good, though I am only slightly distracted by the use of the present tense, and I was disconcerted by the beginning where the story bounces from one year to the next in a series of very short vignettes. But it's okay. Just okay. We'll see. In a way, visiting a bookstore while in the middle of writing a novel is very very depressing and disconcerting and overwhelming. Just about every new paperback with a female author seemed to have the exact same theme: single girl in the city lookin for love! Seriously. I read a lot of back covers and almost every one started with a variation on "Emily had a perfect life -- a great job and great friends, but no husband!" WTF. I'm just worried that my story doesn't fall into any "niche." I mean, sure it has some universal themes like love and failure and loss. But it doesn't have a neat little ending with a wedding or a baby or whatever. Oh well. I'm still having fun, that's TRULY all I care about. Oh and one more thing: I decided to take a peek at my high school journal today. There is a VAST difference between my high school journals and anything written afterward. My god. This shit is so embarrassing I can barely read it. The only pleasure I get from it is seeing the names of my friends that I still call friends. That is pretty cool. I read the entry talking about the day I became friends with Jacob. :) But I would also do things like write little fictional stories with kissing and sex (um hi not explicit) in them even though no one would kiss me until my first year in college. For some reason I had this idea that CRYING after sex was like, super romantic. Oh my god. Tags: book, books, movies
music: Spoon: "The Ghost of You Lingers"
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My mom got me My Life in France by Julia Child for my birthday! I am really excited to read it as I love Julia Child, I love France, and have been interested in reading biographies and memoirs lately. She also knitted me a shrug. Which reminds me, I should probably try to bang out another ten rows on those gloves today. I get to decrease the size because I didn't realize before that the pattern was for a "size medium" hand, and I am definitely a size small in most things.