16 posts tagged “books”

I don't make New Year's Resolutions. But if I did, one of them would have been to carve out more time for reading again, even if it was just a few minutes a day while on the treadmill in the gym or during that lovely stretch of time between getting in your PJs and under the blankies and dozing off to sleep.

I haven't quite been able to make time every day as I hoped, But last night, after Lee and I had the yummiest pizza ever (sweet peppers, pepperoni and onion), I curled up and finished the book I've been working on since New Year's.

 

This is the story of Trudi Montag, a German woman born a dwarf. Mostly, it is the story of how Trudi ekes out a life and manages to survive during the reign of Hitler, when being someone who was "different' in Germany was just about the worst fate imaginable.

But it is more than that. It is not just Trudi's story, but that of her entire town of Burgdorf as seen through Trudi's vantage point. Because she is small and "different," the people of her town confide things to her that they wouldn't to others. And even when they don't, Trudi uses the fact that they often dismiss her presence or don't really notice her at all as a way to observe behaviors and actions they'd be much more careful about hiding from others.

This is a beautifully woven tale of a town in a horrible time. It isn't just a war story, as it starts with Trudi's childhood and carries on after the war. It is so many stories woven into one tapestry, and sometimes they all blend together.

I can't say that I "liked" the stories, which is different than saying I didn't like the book. The lives seen through Trudi's eyes and her own life were often heartbreaking. Throughout the book is the theme of surviving when you are different. Hegi draws disturbing parallels between Trudi's childhood as someone who was often ostracized for being different and the fates of many of her Jewish friends and townspeople. She also shows vividly how the boys who are Trudi's tormenters during their school days grow up to become soldiers who are molded into men who can do what they are told in the concentration camps, destroying the lifes of others because of their own fear and indifference.

It isn't a pretty story. There's a lot of heartbreak, from Trudi's mentally ill mother to the fate met by many of her friends to the guilt and sorrow and division her town feels after the war. Through all the larger stories, Trudi comes back to her own home and her own life and her own struggle with being "different."

There are moments of beauty and even joy in it though, as Trudi comes to accept both herself and many of her townspeople. There is also her triumph when she learns to use her unimposing stature and the way people - even German soldiers - think of her as "less than" and "incapable" to become someone who helps fugitives during their journeys away from peril.

This isn't a book to read when you're looking for a feel-good story or a fast-paced page turner. But if you're in the mood for beautiful writing that weaves many flawed but sometimes amazing lives together into one tale while taking an often brutal look at our differences and darkest fears and how they ultimately make us all somewhat similar, then it is a wonderful read. This was the first thing I'd read by Ursula Hegi, and I will definitely add her other books to my reading list.  

Often, when I'm looking for something to read and don't have the time or inclination to hit up the bookstore, I just raid my mother's spare room. It is home to a gazillion books she's collected over the years.

The last time I was there, I came across a hardback copy of Black House, the sequel to Stephen King's/Peter Straub's jointly written novel The Talisman. I finished rereading The Talisman earlier this summer, so I figured this was a good time to start in on the sequel.

Last night, as I was reading, I realized that this book wasn't one of my mother's after all. It was one that had been given to me a few years ago.

You run into some wonderfully interesting people at The Pub. Several years back, I reconnected with a guy I knew vaguely from high school, Wes. He'd become something of a regular on Ye Olde Barstool. It seemed for a while that he was there just about every time I stopped by (which made sense, since he was always there).

Although just a few years older than me, his life had taken him down a much rougher road. He had medical issues, addiction issues, and financial issues, all stacked one on top of the other like a haphazard Lego concoction. But in spite of all the crazy crap he'd gotten himself into over the years, he was an avid reader and something of an aspiring writer.

He told me one night that reading was what he liked most about being in jail, a place I think he'd spent way more than his share of time. He said this with the casual offhandedness that I'd describe how I spent a free Saturday morning.

"When I have to go in, I just use the time to hit up the library and clear out my head," he explained. He made his semi-regular jaunts to jail sound like going off to college. But in spite of his strangely skewed version of life and the things he always seemed to get himself into, there was just something kind and hopeful about Wes. I know that sounds strange, but there it was.

It was more than just his view on time in jail that made Wes .... different. Another thing was his aversion to shoes. He just flat-out hated them. He was always coming into the bar barefoot, and it didn't matter whether it was August or January. 

"Don't your feet get cold?" I asked him one bitter night, and got a "oh, hell no, honey." So I asked him if he'd ever thought about the fact that he was trekking those bare feet into the men's room every hour or so, and we knew damn well that drunk men don't exactly have the best aim. 

"Never thought of that," he said, after a moment's consideration. But he still wouldn't wear shoes.    

One night we got to talking about Lord of the Rings, and the next time I stopped by the pub I brought him in my finished copy of the trilogy and gave it to him, joking that now he wouldn't have to go to jail to get something to read anymore.

Shortly after that night, he left town. We'd talked about his plan a bit. He was moving to the Eastern Shore, to try to get away from our city and the people and habits that kept landing him in all sorts of holes. He was hoping to start over in a quiet, rural area and find some peace. Do some reading on a back porch instead of in a jail cell, maybe.

But before he left, he brought his copy of Black House up to the pub, and since I wasn't there he asked my mom to make sure I got it. Mom said he was so excited about giving it to me - I don't think Wes had many "book exchange" types of friends.

My own life turned upside down for a while not too long after that. Nothing like his, but my own version of falling on my face and floundering around for a bit. I wasn't doing a whole lot of reading during that time period. By the time I got back into the swing of my more normal habits, I had forgotten about the book. So it has sat at my parents' house all this time, just waiting for me to remember it and the friend who gave it to me.

I hope he found his back porch, complete with leaves rustling in the trees and crickets chirping in the background. I hope he kept it together and has a lawn to trek through barefoot. And I hope he's still reading.

Thanks, Wes.

Another weekend flew by. I guess I kind of caught this one by the tail and held onto it, though, since I have today and Tuesday off too!

 

So, we spent Saturday morning and most of the afternoon at Dundee Creek, on a spur--of-the-moment fishing outing:

 

We packed a picnic lunch, a blanket, my book, and Lee's fishin' stuff. We neglected to pack "Off" or any other bug repellent, and I became a feast for the bug-critters. Lee was smart enough to wear long pants, so they just got his arms. I was a smorgasboard.

I'm not a fisherperson. But I love to get out and spend a day just being near the water. I take a book and clear my head, and wander around exploring with the camera, capturing bits and pieces of nature that intrigue me. Like this:

 

And this: Remember those little troll-dolls that were hugely popular several years ago? This tuft of grass growing by the water made me think of their hair:

 

So I'm all about just being outdoors and losing myself in a book and exploring the world around me. Lee, however, is all about the fishin':

 

He caught tons of little fish - white perch and something called a "croaker." He threw them all back because they were too small to do anything else with. He considered using one for bait, but I pouted because he'd held it up to my face and it made these little scared fish-mouth faces at me, and so it got to live too.

So no big catches, but lots of fun.

 

Yep, that's MY way of goin' fishin.

Still on my quest to read or re-read as much Stephen King as I can by summer's end, I'm now reading Black House. It's the follow-up to The Talisman and co-written by Peter Straub. So I sat and read in the sun while the bugs ate me. Lee tried now and then to educate me in The Fine Art of Fishing. But I was not a willing pupil when it came to things like looking at the bloodworms he was using for bait.

They were disgusting little creatures with teeth-things and wriggly gooey bodies. They made me think of the shit-weasels from the last King book I read, and I told Lee as much.

"Well, as much as you get into those books, I figured you'd like them," he teased.

"I READ about the shit-weasels. You're TOUCHING the shit-weasels. There's a difference," I explained. It made perfect sense to us, but I think the family on bikes who picked that moment to coast by our little site thought we were strange.

So I left him to baiting his hooks with shit-weasels, and he left me to my study of how a wonderfully demented brain can make you create stories that keep you from having to get a day job:

 

 

And all was right with the world:

 

I'll call this one "Me and My Pre-Season Alien Look."

 

I was just goofing around with the camera Friday night, trying to get a picture of me getting my Steelers mojo on for the first pre-season game. (The win was good, by the way. Breaking Charlie Batch wasn't.)

But then this photo came out with the big "come into the light" glare on my face, and I decided it pretty much summed up the night. Because in addition to watching the Steelers, I finished "The Dreamcatcher," which is an older Stephen King book about alien invasions.

I am really not a sci-fi alien person at all. If I'm gonna read scary, I prefer crime novels or ghost stories. But I've committed to reading as much of Stephen as I can this summer, so I stuck it out. Plus, the characters were interesting.

How ironic is it though, that I NEVER read sci-fi alien stuff, and the one time I do, the aliens bring with them something the people in the novel refer to as "Shit-Weasels?"

I'm not gonna talk about what the shit-weasels were, because really, it was disgusting. But it seems I'm just destined to find weasels everywhere.

Even though I've posted little bits of this and that this week, I feel like I've been mostly MIA. There's been a lot going on at work - politics and budget stuff - that has had my head spinning. And just the day-to-day stuff, too, like trying to spend a little less time at the computer and a little more time moving around to keep my butt from growing.

Last night before bed, I sat down to read a little of The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon and ended up finishing the whole thing. It's a short read for a Stephen King book - less than 300 pages. And a very good read at that.

As I read, I realized what it is that keeps me from being able to put King's novels down. It isn't the suspense or the horror or even the weird and outlandish nature of some of the things he imagines and creates. Lots of writers do that and do it well. It is the genuine affection he has for his characters, even when they're flawed and broken. They aren't just the people there for the scary thing to mess with so the horror story can happen. They are so funny and quirky and flawed and brilliant and stupid and mean and kind and messed up and getting it back together that they're real.

That's the writer I want to be. But first, I'm gonna have a weekend. And then figure out how to handle all this work stuff.

Happy weekend to all of you too!

 

This is me just home from my used bookstore trip and wondering which one to dive into first.

 

I think I have enough Stephen to read or re-read to keep me busy for a while. Let's hope it inspires my own creativity.

You know, I could have also chosen to call this "Me and My Monday" post "Me and the Works of My Hero." I don't want to BE King, because I'm too used to living life without peeing standing up. And besides, I often wonder if the imagination that lets him weave these kinds of tales also keeps him awake at night. I'm pretty sure it would me. But man, I'd love to write like him.

I ended up choosing "The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon" for my first read.

And I feel like I've already had a happy, full day.

Growing up, Lee lived near a fleamarket that he remembers visiting frequently as a child. We've been saying "one weekend we'll go there" almost since we've known each other. Well, today, we finally did.

I've never been one to buy other people's "junk," and I'm not going to start now. With a tiny house like ours and two pets who can climb on anything, there's really no point. But it sure is fun to browse through all the collectibles and knicknacks and try to imagine what's gone on in the rooms where they sat on shelves, collecting dust and silently observing. People were selling everything in this place, from lapel pins to replica battleships to baby bunnies.

We did find a self-powered lawn mower that got Lee all giddy and excited. He hates the electric mower I had here when we got together. The sad thing is, I got almost as excited about a dirt cheap copy of Green Day's "American Idiot" CD as he did about the mower. That tells you which one of us is the practical one, huh?

So we left the flea market with a new mower in the back and Green Day blaring from the van stereo, and made our way to our next stop.

My mother and sister have been frequenting a used book store near where my sister used to work. They've talked about it so much that my curiousity has been mounting. That, and my sudden overwhelming desire to own everything Stephen King has ever written, whether I've read it before or not, and including everything he wrote as Richard Bachman. Can we say "hero worship?"

The Book Nook is a tiny little bookstore - long and narrow like old city rowhomes. They've crammed as many shelves as they can into the store, and the aisles are so narrow I don't think you could shop in them with a baby stroller and not get stuck. Books are piled at odd angles all over the place, mostly lying on their backs so that more of them can be stacked on the shelves. You can barely see the clerk, a tiny older woman, over the stacks of books lining the counter.

In other words, I went to the flea market and heaven today. One of my versions of heaven, anyway. The other is a beach with a reclining lawn chair and a fruity beverage. We puttered around in there for a while, and I left with armloads of King paperbacks.

So now I've got American Idiot playing the background, and I'm armed with enough reading material for the whole summer. I call it keeping in touch with my writerly side. Just because I'm suffering a serious case of writer's block when it comes to my own fiction doesn't mean I can't get a spark of energy here and there from reading or re-reading a writer I only dream of being.

Oh, and for lunch? Big fat strawberries dipped in caramel. Gooey happiness.

Weekends rock.  

This is that time of year that I tend to slack on reading, only because there's so much to do. Spring cleaning, yard stuff, and enjoying bright, blue-sky sunny days before they give way to the humidity of summertime take the spotlight, and curling up with books sits on the backburner, waiting for that time of year when I take up weekend poolside reading at my parents'  house.

Even so, I did recently finish reading Charles Baxter's Saul and Patsy:

 

 

I hadn't read Baxter before, although he's written several novels. After reading this, I'll definitely be looking for more of his writing.

The story is of a young couple who move to the Midwest and start a life and a family in a place that is remarkable perhaps only in its flatness and conformity. It is strip malls, old farmhouses, trailer parks and the day-to-day life of people who live in a rural version of suburbia.

It is mostly a love story, and what drew me in was the way Baxter manages to make such an ordinary yet extraordinary love interesting. I was never much on romance novels, but read enough of them to know that what makes them entertaining is that rush of first encounters and attraction, the conflicts and struggles the couple go through in order to end up together. Once the author mates them, and they move into the "status quo" stage, the novel ends. After all, that's supposed to be the mundane and boring part of life, and romance novels are about looking back on the thrill of new loves past or dreaming of some infatuated, all-consuming romantic future. They aren't doing dishes and paying bills and going to work, that's for sure.

But the beauty of Saul and Patsy is that they've already hit the status quo phase before the reader even comes into their lives, and their relationship is still delightful and frustrating and interesting. Saul is no knight in shining armor - he's idealistic and moody and a chronic worrier who obsesses so much about his place in the world that sometimes, if I were Patsy, I'd have told him that if he wanted to know where he was, he should grab his own butt cheeks, look over his shoulder, and there he would be. Patsy is pretty and smart and kind, but she's also so practical and day-to-day that sometimes you wonder why Saul is still so in love with her. She is sometimes wonderful and sometimes drab in her ordinariness. The beauty of the book is that as they live their cookie-cutter lives, as they bicker and laugh and play Scrabble and watch their daughter grow, you really come to understand that it is all the little flaws that drive them crazy that also leave them helplessly and permanently in love with each other. 

In their relationship, Baxter makes the normal beautiful. The book also describes itself as part comedy and part horror story, and there is that, too. A Jewish teacher in a town full of predjudice, Saul finds his heritage turned against him by the students whose lives he tries to improve. He learns that sometimes the minds he tries to open would prefer to stay closed. His students are tragic, heartbreaking, terrible and yet somewhat frightenly endearing, as are many others in their narrow-minded community. There is an undercurrent of violence, ugliness and destruction that comes to the forefront in spite of all the everyday ordinariness going on.

And in the background of it all, there are the subplots of many other struggling and sometimes comic characters - Saul's midlife-crisis enmeshed mother, his ridiculously handsome and successful brother, Patsy's cynical but kind co-workers at the bank, an elderly and somewhat demented neighbor who makes them cookies both to be neighborly and because she's not sure Jewish men eat them and would like to find out, and the guardian of one of Saul's students, who wins a big-screen TV at a fair and has the door of her trailer temporarily removed so she can get the thing indoors, then accepts the fact that her idiot box leaves her with no "living room" in her living room.

All in all, it is a wonderful read, filled with various slices of life, funny and frightening and everyday, coming together to create a dysfunctional but somehow functioning community. I wasn't quite sure how I felt about the ending, as there were loose ends and promises of both horrible and good things to come, but no way of being sure which would happen. But I think Baxter intended it to end that way, because the whole novel was a look at real life, and that's how real life is.

   

For some odd reason, Stephen King has always been able to speak to me in a way that very few writers do. He entertains millions, for sure. But when I read something he’s done, it doesn’t just entertain. It haunts me.

 

When Misery came out, I was at the height of my dreams of being a published, famous writer someday. After I read it, I still craved writing and weaving stories the way a thirsty person craves water. And I still wanted to be published. But the fame part no longer held much appeal, and I started inventing pseudonyms just in case I ever actually did make it.

 

I have a story like that, some little anecdote, for almost every encounter I’ve had with King. Even his stranger, more outlandish tales have gripped me. I curled into a ball in the movie theater when I saw Pet Semetary. And that damn cat made me fly out of my little huddle and kick the man in front of me in the head. Luckily, he had a sense of humor and I hadn’t yet discovered big clunky boots.

 

And now, there’s Duma Key. I haven’t gotten far, maybe a third of the way into it. I read King slow on purpose, savoring every chapter. On a Sunday afternoon, I curl on my couch, right in the soft patch of sunlight that has filtered in through the window, thinking this must be what it feels like to be cat. That patch of sunlight works especially well for this book. I can feel the tropical sun on the Gulf Coast, feel the sand under my toes, see the blazing sunset and hear the grinding sound of the shells swaying in the waves.

 

It sounds so pleasant, this experience. And it is. But it hurts like hell, too.

 

The main character in Duma Key is a man who lost a limb, damaged a hip and suffered severe brain injury in an accident. He’s recovering, but is sometimes unable to put words together. He thinks words wrong sometimes, is the only way to describe it. He thinks char and burn for chair. He can’t remember names. They come to him if he takes some long, roundabout trip down memory lane, but often only then. The trips he takes through the doors in his mind to call up words and names often have nothing to do with the thing or person he’s trying to speak about. To remember his new assistant’s name, for example, he thinks about the fact that he’s in Florida, and in Florida there are hurricanes. Hurricanes make him think of weather stations on TV, which makes him think of a newscaster who shares the assistant’s first name.

 

Sometimes these tricks work. Sometimes they don’t. When they don’t, he feels unrelenting anger, a desire to lash out and hurt someone. And we all know how well King describes those kinds of emotions.

 

I knew a guy who had a stroke when I was a teenager. We were something a bit more than friends, dating but not quite a couple. He was only 22 years old, a healthy and active guy who had never done anything more mind-screwing than drink a beer now and then, a volunteer fireman who took me to the airport on Sunday afternoons so we could watch planes take off and land. That was the closest I’d come to flying for another decade.

 

After his stroke, he had difficulty using his right arm and leg, and had to swim his way slowly and painfully back to most of his vocabulary. I would go with his father to see him in the rehab center, and we’d take turns playing checkers with him long into the evening. It was the one activity that didn’t frustrate him, the one thing he seemed to be able to do after the stroke just as well as he could before it. I’d play with him while his father read the newspaper. Then we’d switch, his dad his next opponent while I did my homework. He never tired of playing.

 

He lost a lot of words. It took painful effort for him to tell us to change a channel and put the football game on, or to ask me about some of our mutual friends. Liz, the girl who had introduced us, became “blonde.” Her boyfriend, Fred, became “football,” because he played for the high school team. He could remember football for Fred, but not for the game itself. I became “Colleen,” which was the name of his ex-girlfriend.

 

Years later, my grandfather would suffer a stroke too, and end up at the same rehabilitation center as this friend. Only unlike my friend, my grandfather would never walk again, and would regain only a handful of words. His stroke was several years ago now, and since it he has only said “yes,” “no,” “Happy Birthday to you,” “I love you,” “shush” and “shit.”

 

He says “shit” a lot.

 

Sometimes, I can see my grandfather struggling for words. They’re right there, on the surface, but he can’t get them to move from his mind to his mouth. You can see him trying. There’s a glimmer of hope, followed by frustration, then anger, hot and red and burning, and then finally the look of someone who is more than bone-weary as he sinks back into his chair and refuses to try anymore.

 

He has learned to communicate with us through pointing, mumbles, half-words, and gestures. He can explain without speaking what he’d like on the TV, what he wants to have for dinner, what clothes he’d like to wear, that he’d like to see a particular photo, or that he thinks he needs a shave. He is sometimes the first to laugh at something funny someone else is saying – something that will eventually have everyone in the room chuckling. But his laugh comes first. So we know he understands, that he’s not just mimicking the laughter of others to look as if he does.

 

How frustrating must it be to get it but not be able to say it yourself? To articulate basic needs with gestures and grunts but not be able to tell a story or share a memory or explain a wave of emotion?  

 

He was a carpenter and a gardener, a birdwatcher and a fisherman. He built dollhouses and porch swings, went hunting and disappeared by himself into the woods for hours, just to be with nature. He had more hobbies than anyone I knew, all of them active. His only bad habit was the occasional overload of breakfast food. Now, the only thing he loved to do that he can still manage is watching sports on TV – baseball, pro and college football.

 

I see that anger in him when he wants a word and it won’t come. I see it less and less these days, because he’s pretty much given up on them ever returning. I saw it in my friend, too, my young friend who mustered up enough of that rage to call the words home over time, probably because he knew that at his age he had a long winding road of living left … far too long to be without them.

 

I never really put those faces of anger together though, never really understood what they were. Until I saw them through the eyes of Stephen King’s accident victim, felt them each time his Edgar goes on a word hunt and finds what he’s looking for to be elusive.

 

I don’t read Stephen King looking for understanding of things that have happened in my own life. That’s what poetry and chick flicks are supposed to be for. But somehow, it is in King’s bizarre worlds where I always find those a-ha moments, buried somewhere in the pages or almost jumping out and smacking me in the face.

 

Haunting.

 

 

 

You ever read a book that makes you repeatedly go "hey ... I know that guy. And that girl. And that one, and that one ...," but the thing is, you don't quite want to ADMIT that you know them?

For me, that was this read:

 

 

This books is almost always mildly disturbing, like an itch of recognition that you can't quite scratch. It is that way when the main character thinks back on the sterile, safe life, work and relationship he left behind in Florida, when he's drunk and getting his butt kicked, when he's hung over, when he's falling for a pot-growing stranger who lives on a hippie commune, when he's conversing with his dead grandmother's blind, drug-dealing lover, when he's in the supermarket, and when he's hanging out with a group of militant lesbians who aren't sure whether to help him or smack him around for having a penis.

And while you're being disturbed, you're also laughing out loud at the absurdity of life and the pure, graphic humor of the writer. At least, you are if you're me.

This is another one not exactly for the feint of heart. But if you can take it, you'll be doing yourself a disservice if you DON'T read it.

You'll never think about rednecks, hippies, or anyone in between quite the same way again.

I loved this book, although there was no neatly packaged happy ending and the images it left me with were kind of like a horror movie without the horror. I loved that it could make me squirm with discomfort and laugh all at once. If there was any one message in it, it was that for those who have lived their whole lives in a stagnant, backwater, bizarrely intertwined community, their neighborhood and rituals are their damnation. But for an outsider coming into such a community after living life in a neater, cleaner, more sterile and less inbred world, the very same place can be a salvation of sorts.  

Although I must say, I'm still traumatized by the mutant weasels.

Next up: Duma Key by Stephen King.