31 Before 31....or How Failure Lead to Success

Oops.

I had all of these ambitious goals for things I was going to do when my boyfriend moved overseas. Like...make a quilt, and a really dense reading list, and write a novel, and get up every morning at 6am to run 10 miles, and cook everything from scratch, and find a cure for cancer, and finally get around to achieving that nagging chore of world peace.

Well, I did make a quilt. Behold:

That was definitely thanks to my buddy Jenn. She is amazing and can make anything and walked me through this quilt process step-by-step, almost every Sunday between October and March. I will do an entire post at some point to show you how this magical quilt came to be. 

I was also going to write a novel, and while that didn't happen, I did sketch out some pretty great ideas and I can feel some good stuff marinating. And I wrote Chapter One. That's always a good place to start, no?

But that whole 31 Before 31 list...oof, I utterly fell down on that. To refresh your memory, here was the original list:

1. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce

2. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad

3. The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing 

4. Lolita, Nabokov

5. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig

6. For Whom The Bell Tolls, Hemingway

7. The Rules of Attraction, Brett Easton Ellis

8. Breath, Eyes, Memory, Edwidge Dandicat

9. Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann

10. Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe

11. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Dee Brown

12. Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond 

13. The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan

14. Cities of Salt, Abdul Rahman Munif

15. Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand

16. The Satanic Verses, Salmon Rushdie

17. Native Son, Richard Wright

18. The Savage Detectives, Bolano

19. Jesus' Son, Denis Hale Johnson

20. Notebook, Agota Christof (NOTE - not "The Notebook" by Nicholas Sparks. Come on.)

21. White Noise, Don DeLillo

22. Anna Karenina, Tolstoy

23. Fear of Flying, Erica Jong

24. The 19th Wife, David Evershoff

25. As I Lay Dying, Faulkner

26. The Prophet, Khalil Gibran

27. A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf

28. Galapagos, Kurt Vonnegut

You'll notice it halts at 28. I kept meaning to add three more to the list, but the fact is, as I got closer to my deadline (my 31st birthday), it became more and more daunting to even THINK about more books. Those three empty slots haunt my dreams.

Here's what I actually read:

1. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce- skimmed, hated it

2. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad

3. The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing - started, never finished

5. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig - - started, never finished

7. The Rules of Attraction, Brett Easton Ellis

8. Breath, Eyes, Memory, Edwidge Dandicat

9. Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann

12. Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond - skimmed, actually really liked it, but nearly fell asleep during the thirty-some odd pages explaining carbon dating in detail

13. The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan

Wow...so...nine. Out of 31. 

I do still have ambitions to read the rest of the books on this list, but the pile of books beside my bed has grown exponentially. I've found that books seem to come organically into my life - a flirty affair with a cover in the library, a gift from a friend, a loaner from someone who talks excessively about "this book that you HAVE to read!!"....books find their way into your life, and they always seem to do so in such a seamless and perfect way that it felt almost sacrilegious to force-feed a reading list. A lot of these books I simply never got to, not because I haven't been reading, but on the contrary - because I've been reading voraciously as books have been sauntering into my life and pulling my attentions away from the homework I've assigned myself.

I've read some pretty fantastic books in the interim. And not only will I hand over these dreamy suggestions, but I'll tell you how they came into my life as well....

I. Love. Ann. Patchett. I think she is one of the most acutely beautiful writers I've ever read, and  although it's a total cliche, she has the ability to get you to accept human behaviors you might normally judge, and get too drawn into worlds where a lesser writer might leave you with  enough of a sense of distance that you're not too involved. Ann gets you involved. I didn't even know she'd written a new book until I happened to be in Target picking up sun screen and various items for our trip to Mexico, saw this, and read this thing cover to cover in the first 24 hours of the trip.

This was a Book Club pick, and a hilariously educating one at that. I find myself frequently mentioning parts of this book, like "Oh, speaking of pottery, DID YOU KNOW THAT ONEIDA  WAS ACTUALLY A POLYAMOUROUS COMMUNE IN UPSTATE NEW YORK IN VICTORIAN TIMES?!?!" I have tried to get multiple other people in my life, outside of Book Club, to read this book solely so I have more people to discuss it with.

After hearing about it so many times, and possessing a vague understanding of He-La cells, I heard an in-depth discussion on my favorite podcast - Stuff Mom Never Told You - while out on a run one day, and decided I needed to read it IMMEDIATELY. Thank God for the Kindle app on my iPad, and thank God for Enoch Pratt having ebooks that you can download instantly for free. 

A beautiful recommendation from one of my very best friends, Stupid, who shares my taste in contemporary literature and always has great suggestions. This dark novel explores the stigma and social pariah of AIDS and homosexuality in the 1980's told through the voice of 14-year-old June as she makes sense of the recent death of her beloved uncle. 

Quite possibly my favorite in this list - I read about it in a magazine, and  read it in  its entirety in one day. (Granted - I was in Mexico on vacation, so I had the time to spend reading entire novels in a single day.) Based on Ray Bradbury's 1954 short story, "All Summer In a Day," the novel is told through the voice of an adolescent girl. The crux can be summed up in this sentence from an Amazon review: "[t]he world is ending not with a bang so much as a long, drawn-out whimper." Essentially, one day, the Earth's rotation just suddenly starts to slow down. An hour at first, here and there, and then suddenly whole days of direct sunlight and complete darkness. Crops die, people get radiation poisoning, and the world is divided between "Clock Timers," who try to go on with life as normally as possible on a 24 clock; and "Real Timers," who revert to using the sunlight as a time keeper and thus will sleep for days at a time, be awake for days at a time, and exist in their own realm. All, of course, relayed to us through 11-year-old Julia, who is dealing with her parents' fighting, her first crush, and worrying about whether or not there will still be soccer practice.

I couldn't sleep one night, and bought this on Amazon Kindle (Thanks, The Gentleman!) and devoured it in a matter of days. I think I initially read about it in Elle magazine, but it's hilarious and dark and wickedly smart.

So, I utterly failed at my "31 Before 31" list, but I see success in that every book that magically comes into my life and turns out to be so utterly memorable is nothing short of a gift. And I do intend to read the rest of the books on my list, but I'm not so pressed for "getting them done" in a finite period of time. I'll leave that kind of stringency to workout regimens and excessive itinerary planning for vacations.

I do have a stack of books next to my bed that I've recently acquired through various means (gifts, library, random fits of whimsy) that I intend to work through this summer. But I'm sure new ones will be added, and some shifted around, and that's the nature of reading as a hobby - love and desire have to be the driving forces, not a timeline.

Or maybe that's just what terrible procrastinators say.

31 Before 31 Update

I realized the other day that I am over six months into my "31 Before 31" list (31 books I feel I ought to have read by the time I'm 31), and have so far completed four of the books on the list. 

To be fair, I've started three others.

Here's a recap of my list so far. I'm still three books shy of the complete list, but at this point, I'm looking at having to amend the list to be "32 before 32."

1. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce

2. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad

3. The Grass is Singing, Doris Lessing - changed to The Golden Notebook, started

4. Lolita, Nabokov

5. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig - started

6. For Whom The Bell Tolls, Hemingway

7. The Rules of Attraction, Brett Easton Ellis

8. Breath, Eyes, Memory, Edwidge Dandicat

9. Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann

10. Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe

11. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Dee Brown

12. Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond - started

13. The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan

14. Cities of Salt, Abdul Rahman Munif

15. Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand

16. The Satanic Verses, Salmon Rushdie

17. Native Son, Richard Wright

18. The Savage Detectives, Bolano

19. Jesus' Son, Denis Hale Johnson

20. Notebook, Agota Christof (NOTE - not "The Notebook" by Nicholas Sparks. Come on.)

21. White Noise, Don DeLillo

22. Anna Karenina, Tolstoy

23. Fear of Flying, Erica Jong

24. The 19th Wife, David Evershoff

25. As I Lay Dying, Faulkner

26. The Prophet, Khalil Gibran

27. A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf

28. Galapagos, Kurt Vonnegut

Here are my takeaways thus far:

"Let the Great World Spin," Colum McCann

An incredible book. Just incredible. At first, I wasn't sure where it was headed, but that's part of the point. The fictional story brings in narratives from a handful of different characters, all living in New York City in 1974 during the real-life event wherein French acrobat Phillippe Petit walked a tightrope between the World Trade Center buildings. The act seems to be a hinge point for all of these other stories to intersect, and the narratives see characters through Harlem prostitution rings, Vietnam, coke-fueled nightclubs, and the art world of the Village in the 70's.

"The Rules of Attraction," Bret Easton Ellis

I read somewhere that Ellis is the cockiest mofo to grace contemporary literature, and that he can essentially spit on a piece of paper and critics will bend over backwards to exclaim that it's the best thing since "Catcher in the Rye." 

The fact is, after reading this book, I'd say that if Ellis is cocky, he's earned the right to be. The book is an incredibly depressing look into the lives of 1980's college kids at a liberal arts New England college with nothing to do but spend down their trust funds, sleep with each other, drink every day, and perhaps go to class from time to time. I came to this book not wanting to like it and wanting furiously to see Ellis's pretension in every page, but I came away grudgingly having to admit that I liked the characters, liked the story, and thought that Ellis did a damn fine job of channeling ennui so passionately. It's not an easy thing to do, and he's somehow managed to do it. While I won't say that he's Salinger, he has his own voice and reading this made me want to read his other work. And possibly stream the 2002 James Van Der Beek film made from this book. 

"Guns, Germs, and Steel," Jared Diamond

I'm picking away at this one. It's dense, for sure, but ridiculously interesting and documents the reasons why some world civilizations became more advanced (with agriculture, medicine, buildings, etc.) and why some stalled out (like Australian aborigines). I borrowed it from a friend who condoned skimming some pages, and skipping others altogether, but with the endorsement that the overall book itself is fascinating. She was completely right - Diamond tends to go on highly scientific rants (I couldn't really give two shits about how accurate radio carbon dating is - whether you're talking about 39,000 years ago or 50,000 years ago, it doesn't register a difference in my mind and while I'm sure this inaccuracy would be a grievous error in the archaeology world, it matters little to none in mine), but on the whole his arguments are interesting, profound, and even common sensical at times. This is a book that will take me awhile to get through, and so tends to be one I'll pick up here and there while reading through some of the others on the list. "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" is the same way - it's dense at times, but overall a very satisfactory read yet not one that pulls me in the way some narratives can. Books like these tend to be snacks or appetizers for me. Things I pick at when I only have ten or fifteen minutes here and there, and not something I can sit and read for hours at a time.

I've also been privy to some pretty fantastic fiction lately that's not on the "31 before 31" list but that I've read for Book Club or because a friend told me I simply must read it.

"The Last Letter from your Lover," JoJo Moyes

I can't remember the last time I read a book in a weekend. But this one was it. It was compelling, beautiful, and I absolutely couldn't put it down. It begins with the protagonist, a total Betty Draper named Jennifer Stirling, waking up in London from a severe head injury after a car accident. She has a handsome husband who owns a company that manufactures asbestos; the hot new building material in the 1960's; tons of money, and what appears to be the perfect life. But as she tries to adjust from severe memory loss and get back into her glamorous, wealthy life she discovers that she was having an affair, and the book follows her attempts to piece together love letters and clues to figure out who her lover was - and if he died in the automobile accident that caused her injury. It's the perfect rainy weekend novel, and beautifully written. 

"Gone Girl," Gillian Flynn

Oh wait, you haven't read "Gone Girl" yet? Stop reading this blog, right now. Go get it. Read it. It'll take you about a day. Come back and let's talk about how amazing this book is, and how creeped out we are by the whole thing.

On that note, I'm gonna go finish my beer and read some more of "Guns, Germs, and Steel."

Words and Things

I am currently reading three books. This is not uncommon.

The first is the current Book Club book, which happens to be "Sweet Valley Confidential." Say what you will; those of us who grew up on Francine Pascal's fairytale stories of blonde twins in Southern California were chomping at the bit for this latest incarnation which sees both girls in their late twenties, Jessica already married and divorced, Elizabeth living in New York City and working as an off-Broadway reviewer. The writing is absolutely, undeniably horrible. Jessica prefaces every sentence with "Like," and Pascal seems to have schooled herself in the Harlequin School of Literature when it comes to cliches and descriptions. The story is predictable, the characters laughable. But it's perfect summer reading because it plays on nostalgia and, well, it's completely brainless. The kind of thing you can easily process after a three-martini happy hour.

The second is Junot Diaz's "The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao." And it is utterly fantastic; hands-down one of the best books I've read all year. This book has been following me around for years- literally. I was gifted a paperback copy, and it sat on my nightstand from 2008-2010. I finally donated it in a fit of ridding my life of things that made me feel like a failure: unread literature being chief among them. Almost immediately afterwards, Joel gifted me a second-hand hard copy of the book, and I decided that the Universe really wanted me to read it. It had come highly recommended, but for some reason it was just one of those books (like my copy of "A Moveable Feast" - another potential life failure on my part, unless I get cracking soon) that sat around and never got opened. Eschewed for a new Jane Green or the Book Club book I was supposed to begin three weeks ago.

The third is my lunch break book, "The Happiness Project" by Gretchen Rubin. It's a delightful piece of nonfiction that I nibble away at in thirty-minute increments, when I don't have errands to run or have to work through lunch, that is. I embarked on my own Happiness Project a year or so ago, and now find clean delight in principles I'd come up with on my own that I see reflected in Rubin's research. Reading this book now is a reminder to return to the constant practice of those principals, for which I'm grateful. If I had tried to read this book in the past, I fear it would have struck me as preachy or, worse, unrealistic. But having carved my own path to some steady flow of happiness in my life has opened my mind to other peoples' journeys as well. Sure, I might have thought, Rubin has the resources to go about studying her own happiness: she's not a twenty-something bartender laid off from her freelance job due to the media outlet's pending bankruptcy. She probably even has luxuries like "health insurance" and a retirement plan. What audacious wealth! Those years are, blissfully, part of my past now. It's a little easier to contemplate happiness when you're involved in a job that brings you fulfillment, and living a lifestyle that blends much better with your personality.

I go back and forth on the subject of writing my own book. Part of me wholly believes that I lack the life skills and determination to come out with a solid body of work at this point, and part of me sees this as procrastination. The things I learned in my twenties could certainly fill a book, and a funny one at that, but humor requires a certain amount of distance from life experience. I am just now coming around to the idea that decisions I made at 22, 23, 24 are downright comical in how uninformed and dramatic they seem now. But to parse through all of that and come up with a solid plot line requires a little more tying together of loose ends; something that I'm still dealing with.

I will say, I am no fiction writer. Real life is too rich, too amazing, too eerily coincidental for me to make things up. Certainly, I see a definitive value in dressing up the truth as fiction (because, let's face it, I'm also a consummate over-exaggerator-slash-storyteller), and I have a feeling that at some point whatever work I come up with will be a curious blend of the two, if that's possible. I fiddle around with word choices, with story ideas, but nothing yet has compelled me to sit down and churn out a solid book.

I've been told multiple times to just compile all the emails I write for trivia and turn them into a book, but I fear that my audience would be...two hundred individuals living in or around Baltimore City. Which is nothing to sneeze at, but in terms of royalties...not ideal.

Post-Race Sky-Gazing

Ran a hard race this morning and took about two minutes off of my time from last year. There were 7 races in between, over the last year, so this is Improvement. Still not my best time (which was an unprecendeted 24:11; in the pouring rain; on a hilly course) but felt good, so I'll go with that. Hit up brunch afterwards, then randomly decided to cash in a coupon for a full-body massage, and now going in and out of naps by the pool. Most excellent day.

In other news, hooray for New York and progressive policy-making. Perhaps the rest of the nation will follow suit.

In other news, Bristol Palin's memoir apparently reveals details that smack of sexual assault by Levi. Too many wine coolers on a camping trip in the wilds of Alaska. While I would never encroach upon any woman's right to the safety of her own body, I have to wonder why this is coming out now, years later, in a book. If BP is such an advocate for abstinence, why would she shy away from the vitally important message that sexual assault is something to be reported? Her mentioning of the incident in a memoir, long after the fact, cheapens it and relegates the act to the unfortunate hush culture of similar assaults. And where the hell was Grizzly Mom Palin, advocating for her daughter's rights to due process in the aftermath of what BP describes as confusing and without her consent? Busy proselytizing about teen abstinence and family values, no doubt.

I'm not going to try and debate whether or not what Levi may or may not have done in a tent on a camping trip constitutes rape. But I take serious issue with BP bringing it up now. If that's indeed what happened, speak out against non-consensual sex and underage drinking, and the relationship between the two. To do anything else smacks of an attempt to reconstruct a public image in the light of Good Girl.

Granted, I have not read the book, so I could be missing something. But the review I read mentioned nothing about follow-up to the incident or advocating against date rape and for the voices of silenced girls to speak out against their attackers. And that, to me, is a greater issue than worrying if BP might have remained a virgin until marriage.

In other news, the BF returns (hopefully) later this week from a long work trip overseas. I hope he brings me a pony, as requested. I do not think this is asking too much. Miniature ponies, when babies, are even small enough to pack as carry-on, and I'm sure customs will have no problems processing its sheer cuteness.