And so I do not blog well in hotels so for this grouchy, rainy morning: a meme.
You have received this note because someone thinks you are a literary geek. Copy the questions into your own note, answer the questions, and tag any friends who would appreciate the quiz, including the person who sent you this.
Don’t bother trying to italicize your book titles. We know you want to…
1) What author do you own the most books by?
Beverly Cleary, hands down. She was pretty dang prolific.
2) What book do you own the most copies of?
We have a lot of copies of To Kill a Mockingbird because it’s Brett’s favorite book and so we have a couple of collectible copies. I’ve bought a lot of copies of This Way to the Gas, Ladies & Gentlemen and given most of ‘em away.
3) Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions?
You know, it does a little but only because I’m tired and my brain is extra itchy.
4) What fictional character are you secretly in love with?
Oh literary crushes! I’ve crushed on Will (Dark is Rising), Almanzo (after I saw his actual picture at about 13) and of course Ponyboy. The only recent crush I’ve had was on Fenno until I reread the book and decided he was a tiny bit of a prig. Not a big huge prig (I’m still too crushy to actual insult this imaginary man) but a tiny bit.
4a) What fictional character would you most like to be?
I never wanted to BE a fictional character. Sometimes I wanted to be in a story but as myself.
4b) What fictional character do you think most resembles you?
Sniff in the Moomintroll books. Petty and shrill. I aspire to be more Snufkin (another literary crush!!!). Actually, come to think of it, I identify with various moomin characters at various times in my life. Except for the Snork Maiden because I am not obsessed with my fringe.
5) What book have you read the most times in your life?
Probably the Laura Ingalls Wilder series.
6) What was your favorite book when you were ten years old?
Probably the Laura Ingalls Wilder series.
7) What is the worst book you’ve read in the past year?
This young adult book about a teacher molesting her student. It was a female teacher and the ending totally invalidated that she was molesting him.
What is the best book you’ve read in the past year?
I just read a couple of great young adult books. One was Weedflower (about the Japanese internment camps) and the other one was Anything But Typical about a boy with autism.
9) If you could force everyone you tagged to read one book, what would it be?
Hmmm. This Way to the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen MAYBE. I’m tired and if I thought harder it might be something different but maybe not.
10) Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for literature?
Oh lord, I don’t know.
11) What book would you most like to see made into a movie?
I think Bel Canto would make a great movie — directed by Ang Lee.
12) What book would you least like to see made into a movie?
Hmmm, maybe a A Wrinkle in Time because they’d probably cast Miley Cyrus or something.
13) Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character.
I periodically dream I’m having conversations with literary characters but they’re not all that weird.
14) What is the most lowbrow book you’ve read as an adult?
Angles & Demons.
15) What is the most difficult book you’ve ever read?
I don’t like Herman Melville.
16) What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you’ve seen?
I think I’ve only seen one play performed.
17) Do you prefer the French or the Russians?
Here I quote my friend Sonia, “Option C: the British!” But if I HAVE to choose, it’s not a fair fight because I’ve read more of the French.
18) Roth or Updike?
Neither.
19) David Sedaris or Dave Eggers?
Oh (sigh) David Sedaris, I guess.
20) Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer?
Shakespeare.
21) Austen or Eliot?
Austen.
22) What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?
I haven’t read any of the big Russian novels
23) What is your favorite novel?
This very minute? Bel Canto. No wait, Persuasion. No wait, Finn Family Moomintroll. No wait, Watership Down. Nevermind.
24) Play?
I’m a big fan of Edward Albee or was ten years ago (haven’t reread any lately) so what the hell, Zoo Story.
25) Poem?
I keep typing one and then changing my mind. I can’t decide between the cold plums in the refrigerator and the lanyard.
26) Essay?
Oh!! Shoot. There are SO MANY but I’ll stick with The Weight that Women Carry.
27) Short story?
Just one?!? My god, people. Well, since I just read it, the one by Ann Beattie about the couple whose child died and they come home from the party and sleep on the floor of the living room.
28) Work of non-fiction?
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
29) Who is your favorite writer?
That’s an unfair question. Hmmm, Barbara Comyns.
30) Who is the most overrated writer alive today?
Audrey Niffenegger (Time Traveler’s Wife)
31) What is your desert island book?
Oh gosh, that changes all the time. I guess Watership Down is plenty long, right? But what if it was a stressful desert island? What with the desert — no food, no water? Then I would want something comforting like Noah’s Beverly Cleary collection.
32) And … what are you reading right now?
I brought That’s How it Was by Maureen Duffy to reread on the trip but there hasn’t been time to read it. It’s a green book only it has a black cover.
Ummm, I tag everybody. That’s right — every single person on the internet.
A couple of you asked what writing books I do like so I’ll do a rundown of those although it’ll be an incomplete and ragged list. Can’t be helped because it’s the way my sputtering, busy little brain works. I’ll put it below the cut to save the LJ readers.
She showed up even though the roads are a mess from a snowstorm that blew through last night. It took me two hours to get from downtown to pick up Brett from work (he works about a mile from my house) because it was all stop-and-go traffic.
My accountability calendar is sorta helping and sorta not. It’s helping because it makes me work more than I otherwise would but it’s sorta not because it’s such slow-going right now. In fact, it’s a little bit like last night’s commute home (exhausting, frustrating, and with a bad soundtrack). Right now I’m re-reading some of the studies I set aside and taking notes on them in the context of this particular chapter. I’m also free-writing a lot to figure out what the chapter is about because I thought I knew but it turns out I don’t.
Anything I’ve ever written that was (in my opinion) any good was emotionally hard to write. I’m talking about the essays and articles that no one but me could have written — the ones that wring out my own voice even if the topic is universal. So I know that if I want this to be good, it’s going to be emotionally hard and so far I’ve got a denial block working that’s keeping me from getting to the heart of what I want to say. What I think is going on is that I don’t want to believe I’m as prejudiced against the fertility industry as I am or that I’m as angry about it as I am. (This is one of the things where my friends and family will say “duh” but since I’m the one in denial, I am really totally denying it.) I keep thinking I’m even-handed and I need to get the guts to make that leap and come down hard on the side of my opinion but I’ve got some work to do yet. A lot of this work is thinking-work and not writing-work so it’s productive but invisible and I know if I do this work, I’ll figure out my theme for this chapter.
I keep leaping ahead and going, “I really ought to interview so-and-so!” but I’ve done this enough times that I know I’m using that as an excuse to avoid the hard digging I need to do so instead I’m attempting to satisfy my “let’s put on a show!” self by making lists of all those interviews and books I ought to do and then forcing myself back, nose to computer screen, to free-write.
(Most of my free-write pages have “every little thing I want to say” at the top because Becca long ago gave me instructions to put down “every little thing you want to say” and then share it with her so she could help me find my thesis way back when I was first working on this book. For some reason putting this at the top of my file this makes my free-writing feel more productive than it would if I was just scrawling on paper. Also it reminds me that I have friends whose judgment I respect who believe that I do have things worth saying even if sometimes I don’t.)
I’m also reading a lot of non-fiction and enjoying the hell out of it. My inlaws gave me a $50 Amazon gift certificate and I was able to spend $49.97 of it (so I wouldn’t have to use a credit card) through the careful addition of used books to my shopping cart. These are the books I got:
- Journalistas: 100 Years the Best Writing and Reporting by Women Journalists
- In Fact: The Best of Creative Nonfiction (Annie Dillard’s advice alone is worth the price of the book)
- The New New Journalism: Conversations with America’s Best Nonfiction Writers on Their Craft (which made me realize that I do want to be Susan Orleans and that she doesn’t have kids)
The used books were mostly to add to my green books collection: The House of Dolls by Barbara Comyns (because I absolutely adore her), Getting a Life by Helen Simpson (because it’s all about how motherhood ruins your life and sometimes I have those days — thanks, Susan Orleans), and With Child in Mind: Studies on the Personal Encounter with Infertility (for my book).
Another book I’ve been savoring (one — maybe two, ok THREE, sometimes FOUR — essays a day, tops to make it last longer) is Deep in the Garden by Anne Raver. It totally reminds me of Kelly. Note Anne Raver also doesn’t have children. That Helen Simpson book is looking more interesting all of the time.
Madison woke up pretty soon after I hit “post” on the entry below. Brett is saying that we should rearrange our schedules in January so I can write in the evenings and I was thinking that in February — when we go to Florida for a couple of weeks — I can pull together a proposal from whatever I get done in January. I just need to hang loose ’til the holiday season is fully over (next Monday). I’m having a family Chanukkah party on Friday so I’ll need to get things ready for that and then there’s New Year’s.
My mom paypal’d me money for a haircut so I paid cash to the beautician and used the paypal to buy a bunch more green books off of ebay. I am greedy for green books. Here’s my collection so far: View image
As you can see, my green book collection has morphed to include books that by all rights should be green books or that are green books but I have them in non-green book editions or were earlier green books when the series was black or are later green books when the series sported nasty pink spines. If you are a woman and you visit my house and ask to borrow a book, this is where I head first but I won’t let you take one home if you’re untrustworthy; green books are too hard to find to just be loaned out like regular books.
I do believe the Virago books now include some male authors but you won’t find any in my collection unless someone grabs one for me by mistake. No, the green books for me are all about women writers. They’re my inspiration. Back when I did those featured authors every month (old timey blog readers will remember this), I usually pulled them from green book authors. My very most favorites? Barbara Comyns, Antonia White, Mary Webb, Mrs. Oliphant and E. H. Young. Oh and Elizabeth Taylor (she NOT of the violet eyes). I think Elizabeth Taylor’s The Soul of Kindness was my very first green book and that White’s Lost Traveler or Frost in May were early acquisitions, too. I was so excited when I found either the one or the other because it matched the first ones.
I used to buy my green books at a bookstore here in town that specializes in close-out books. I would go in there with ten bucks and come out with a stack of $1.49 Penguin paperbacks (orange spines). This is how I found Milan Kundera, Tadeusz Borowski and Face by Cecelie Pineda. Somewhere along the way a black Virago Modern Classic found it’s way into my shopping bag and the rest is history.
I found a bunch more in thrift stores in Portland. Portland has the best thrift stores for finding books probably because everyone there reads so much. (Portland has more book stores per capita than any other city.) That’s how I built up my pulp Alfred HItchcock presents collection and that’s how I amassed the bulk of my green books.
I still scan the clearance shelves of Half-Price Books for them but they’re harder to come by now. They continue to release some here in the states with the awful pink spines or with a green more pallid than the lovely pine color they used to have. But my best bet is doing a search on ebay and finding a used book seller with a nice big stack of ‘em and then combing through to find ones I don’t have. I really want the third book in Antonia White’s quartet (Beyond the Glass, which I got out from the library to read but MUST OWN) but the first two just seem much more easy to find.
This was a self-indulgent post. It made me happy to write it.
Brett put up the bookshelves in the playroom and I’m moving down most of my adult fiction and nearly all of the young adult fiction is now there. I’m trying to get most of my upstairs book to be vertical again (they’ve been crammed in to save space) and also I need to get my mom’s books out of her spare room.
It’s making me antsy.
Everytime I go through my books I find some to get rid of and some I should maybe get rid of but won’t. Also, I’m trying to sort them in my mind so that when someone says, “Hey, do you have a copy of XYZ?” I can say, “Third shelf downstairs, to the right.”
The top two shelves are the adult fiction, alphabetically, and at the end of the shelves is a space for anthologies. The next two shelves are young adult fiction and the bottom shelf is the YA books that don’t fit (again, in alphabetical order so it’s like from the Ws on to the Zs) and biographies. And then at the very end of that shelf (there’s a big space here) are the kids’ anthologies. I like the old books reading primers that have fables, fairy tales, etc. So we have some of those.
You need to understand that these are ginormous shelves that go across the back of the room. I thought that they didn’t look big enough but we keep putting books in them and they keep making space for more. It’s a heady experience.
Upstairs in Noah’s room are still the chapter books that he wants to keep near and dear. All the Beverly Cleary books (except for the teen romance ones) and Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle and then some odds and ends.
Mixed in with the adult fiction are YA books that are too old for a 12-year old to be reading w/out a heads up to the parents. You know, Robert Cormier and Nancy Farmer. Then that gets challenging. Some YA books have adult themes but are ok for a 12-year old and some YA books aren’t very adult but still should be in the adult section so you can pull them down later and surprise said teen. Like I don’t particularly think there’s anything wrong with some of Ursula K. LeGuin’s older YA books — meaning I won’t feel like I need to be at least somewhat aware when Noah picks it up — but it would bore him now and so then I’m not sure what to do. See, it has to be sorted right in my mind so when I try to apply logic, I get stuck. So I’m kinda stuck and very dusty.
The other shelf downstairs will likely be homeschooling activity books. But should I put the gardening activity books there or with the gardening books upstairs? This is the kind of thing that I have to think on. I have to sit down and picture myself reaching for the book and then seeing where I’m reaching.
Upstairs are my favorite fiction (all of my green books, the Alfred Hitchcock pulp short story collections, Grace Paley) and the non-fiction. I’m trying to keep better track of the non-fiction so I can find it when we need it for homeschooling. Also most of the poetry is upstairs (maybe all of it?) and memoirs so far are living up here, too. With the exception of kid memoirs, like Beverly Cleary’s autobiographies.
Picture books are on the bottom shelves of Noah’s bookshelf, Madison’s bookshelf, one of the bookshelves in the living room and one of the bookshelves in the basement. We have too many picture books (honestly, way too many) but every time I sort through, I can’t get rid of any. I’m trying to decide whether or not to pull out the non-fiction picture books and put them somewhere special. And the historical fiction picture books. I ought to organize them better so I can find them. Also the early readers maybe should be in one place — the Cynthia Ryland books and Dr. Seuss, too.
This is all very confusing to me. I know it makes for a boring entry but I’m thinking it out so bear with me.
So … onwards.
Back in the real basement (the unfinished part) are a bunch of stored books but I’ve gotten most of those out. All of the pocket paperbacks are now up on shelves. I don’t save pocket paperbacks unless a) they’re the only copy of a classic that I own or b) they’re neat copies. I have all of my dad’s old Hemingway paperbacks, which he used to buy at the dime store.
I’m getting rid of fiction that I enjoyed but don’t need to own. Again, this is in someways arbitrary and I’m having trouble with it. Like why keep Elizabeth Berg? The best reason is to give her to other people because she’s an easy read and my sister and mom (and some of my friends) will sometimes come over and ask for a book. Almost everyone likes Elizabeth Berg; she’s totally innocuous. But I don’t need to read her more than once. And then Ann Tyler. I love her but I don’t love all of her books. I have, I think, most of them, maybe even all of them. But I don’t need all of them only I can’t bear to start trying to figure out which — if any — I should get rid of.
I’m also a sucker for weird copies of things. We have three copies of To Kill a Mockingbird (one is an early hardback edition, one is an early paperback edition, and one is the copy I got in high school). We have four of The Little Prince (all inscribed so we can’t get rid of any of them).
That’s another thing. What do I do with books that someone has gifted and written a message in the flyleaf if I don’t really like the book? I no longer need Slaves of New York but a dear friend gave it to me 19 years ago and so I’m keeping it. His name is there on the inside cover so that’s gotta stay.
And upstairs I have books on adoption, infertility, education and weird kids (I like to read books about play therapy and kids at risk) except for Torey Hayden’s books, which are downtairs because they’re pocket paperbacks. Where to put my parenting? Hmmm, maybe in the tall bookshelves downstairs and then move the picture books over to the wall shelves.
OK, break’s over. Back to shelving.
