Tag Archives: Jonathan Franzen

Christmas Just Isn’t The Same

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It’s been a while – no real excuses except feeling too distracted to write – but not to read. I have a list I will share, but first – Joan Didion. I remember reading The White Album years ago, and when I heard of her death, I had to stop reading my current book to find an old copy. Her first line lives on as one of the best first lines of a book – “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” Enough to inspire me to reread it to discover what Didion’s words might mean to me now, forty years and a never-ending pandemic later, and if they would have the same impact. I struggled to think of a current writer who has the same impact with her clarity of observations.

Zadie Smith in her tribute to Didion in The New Yorker, noted:

“It is a peculiarity of Joan Didion’s work that her most ironic formulations are now read as sincere, and her sincerest provocations taken with a large pinch of salt. Perhaps when your subject is human delusion you end up drawing that quality out of others, even as you seek to define and illuminate it. How else to explain the odd ways we invert her meanings? We tell ourselves stories in order to live. A sentence meant as an indictment has transformed into personal credo.”

Joan Didion’s name may be more familiar to modern audiences than her work, except perhaps for “The Year of Magical Thinking,”(she wrote five novels, six screenplays, and fourteen works of nonfiction), but it’s never too late to read books guaranteed to inspire, jolt, and perhaps persuade you – “…while everyone else drank the Kool-Aid, she stuck to Coca-Cola …”

Books I Have Been Reading Recently

Never by Ken Follett – slow start but picks up into a roller coaster ride – watch out for the ending

The Book of Magic by Alice Hoffman – the fourth book of witchery – fun to read and wish you were part of the Owens family of witches

Cheese, Wine, and Bread: Discovering the Magic of Fermentation in England, Italy, and France by Katie Quinn – a better version of Eat, Pray, Love with the author’s tongue-in-cheek memoir, good information, and a few great recipes.

Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen – the first in a trilogy. The book made the Washington Post’s top ten for 2021. The story revolves around an associate pastor at a Protestant church in suburban Chicago who’s troubled by his own envy and adultery. “The novel presents an electrifying examination of the irreducible complexities of an ethical life.” Take the time to savor Franzen’s use of words, and the inevitable thoughtfulness he will instill in you, as you read.

The Party Crasher by Sophie Kinsellla – read just for fun – book candy

What I am Reading Now

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weil – I hope it has a happy ending…

Books on My To Read List

  • Gilded by Mariss Meyer
  • Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout
  • The Sentence by Louise Erdrich
  • These Precious Days by Ann Patchett
  • A Carnival of Snackery by David Sedaris
  • The Fran Lebowitz Reader by Fran Lebowitz
  • The Anomaly by Herve Le Tellier
  • Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune
  • The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan

Taking Off

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452257583My favorite part of flying is the take-off.  I like to close my eyes as the plane revs up its engines and begins the thrust down the runway.  Against all odds, the tons of metal carrying people in their seats, luggage above their heads and below in the cargo hold, pounds of water and fuel – all miraculously rise into the air.

I always know that moment; I can feel it as the plane rises up off the ground, and nothing during the rest of the flight offers the same exhilaration.   Recently, I zigzagged across the country, wondering if my checked luggage was following my erratic itinerary, but I enjoyed six take-offs in nine days, six ecstatic moments of floating.

As is my practice, I brought old New Yorker magazines to read during my flights – these were dated before the last Presidential election, so I ignored the predictions and focused on the articles.

shopping    Claudia Roth Pierpont’s amazing review The Secret Lives of Leonardo da Vinci convinced me to find Walter Isaacson’s biography Leonardo da Vinci when I landed.  A short piece by Jonathan Franzen – Hard Up in New York – about his life before he was as rich and famous as a writer can be,  inspired me to write this short piece.

When I finish reading, I usually offer the magazines to the flight crew, or drop them in the seatbacks as a surprise for the next traveler.  I’ve been tempted to leave them in the terminal with a code I’ve used for books in Bookcrossing, a website that allows you to assign unique numbers to your books, and use these numbers to track your books as they travel across the globe. I’ve released a few books “into the wild” – in designated public places for others to find.  Let me know if you try it.

And scroll down to see a picture of my travels on Instagram.

 

Maria Semple’s Favorite Books – A List to Check Out

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UnknownIn the New York Times By the Book  interview, Maria Semple, author of  Where’d You Go, Bernadette?” mentions Barbara Trapido’s “Brother of the More Famous Jack” –  out of print but miraculously in my library system.

Her other go-to writers are favorites of mine too (click on the highlighted titles for my reviews):

  • Lorrie Moore – A Gate at the Stairs 
  • Alice Munro – Dear Life 
  • Yasmina Reza – author of the play “Art.”  I remember seeing it, starring Alan Alda, years ago at Ford Theater; available in audio – might be worth listening; more recently she wrote “God of Carnage.”
  • Penelope Lively – How It All Began 
  • Edward St. Aubyn – The Patrick Melrose novels – 5 part series; start with “Never Mind.”
  • Michael Frayn – Skios  
  • Brady Udall – The Lonely Polygamist  

Books to Find:

  • The Keep by Jennifer Egan
  • Glaciers by Alexis Smith
  • Tenth of December by George Saunders
  • All That Is by James Salter

Office Girl is on that list, but after starting it on my Kindle, I decided it was one of those books “I was supposed to like, but didn’t,” and in Semple’s words – I bailed halfway through it.

New Books Published in April

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Whenever I read a promising review – usually in the New York Times or Washington Post – I immediately log onto my library site to order the book.  Inevitably, the library system does not yet have the book catalogued – or maybe even purchased.  So, I add the book to my list and promptly forget about it.

I have a friend who places his list next to his computer and checks into the library every day until he captures a place – usually the first or second in the queue.  By the time I remember to check, I am usually 50 or 60 on the waiting list;  popular “hot picks” sometimes place me at 273.  Of course, I could always buy the book, but what fun is there in that?

April has 4 new books I want to read.  And the library has yet to list them.  Maybe this will help me remember to keep checking.  If you get there first, please read fast and return the book for me.

            

Do You Believe in Magic?

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Rational decisions sometimes bow to unconscious habits. If knocking on wood makes you think the action might help affect your outcome, it might. In his article for the New York Times – In Defense of Superstition – Matt Hutson suggests psychological benefits to believing in magical thinking – despite the possibility that it may not really exist. What you believe to be true may be more powerful than reality.

Hutson cites the idea that “luck is in your hands.” Knocking on wood may not really add luck to your situation, but the action may “produce an illusion of control…enhance self-confidence…improving {your} performance…{thus} indirectly affecting {your} fate.” Participants who were given lucky charms actually performed better on tests. Believing in fate – “everything happens for a reason” – makes surviving life’s inadvertent traumas easier. And, if objects have the “essence” of its previous owner, could a pen once used by Jane Austen break your writer’s block?

Hutson has a new book with more possibilities for using magical thinking to get through life – The 7 Laws of Magical Thinking: How Irrational Beliefs Keep Us Happy, Healthy, and Sane. The unconscious is powerful, and what can it hurt to believe in magic? Hutson says…

“on some deep level, we all do – {it} does not make you stupid, ignorant or crazy. It makes you human.”

Why not? I plan to read the book and, in the meantime, keep rubbing the Buddha’s belly, watering my bamboo plant, and looking for rainbows. Do you think Jonathan Franzen would let me sit in his “battered green office chair” for inspiration?