Moving Day!

As of January 1st, 2013, I'll be posting exclusively from my new site wine and a book.  Check it out for book reviews, reading lists, and all things literary, plus my style musings.  Hope to see you there!

Fantasy Holiday Wish List

Fantasy Holiday Wish List by agirlcalledjack featuring vince camuto

Review: The Miniature Wife and Other Stories by Manuel Gonzales

title: The Miniature Wife and Other Stories [support an independent bookseller and buy at Powell's]
by: Manuel Gonzales
genre: short stories (speculative fiction/science fiction)
pages: 304
published: January 2013
source: I received an advanced reader's copy from Riverhead via LibraryThing in exchange for an honest review.

Manuel Gonzales' first collection of short stories was a truly unique but quick read.  Ranging from the speculative to the supernatural, Gonzales' subject matter ranged from plane hijackings to zombie attacks, but to varied levels of success.

Some highlights:

• Pilot, Copilot, Writer:  The premise:  the main character, a writer, is on a plane that is hijacked.  Instead of the hijacker holding the passengers for ransom or rerouting the plane to a different location, the hijacker chooses to circle Dallas.  For about twenty years.  Now, the premise alone presents so many obstacles and creates so many parameters for a writer, but Gonzales manages to shatter them and creates a truly original piece.  One of the strongest pieces in the collection.
• The Disappearance of the Sebali Tribe:  Brilliant!   Love love LOVED this story.  The premise:  Two anthropologists almost pull of a hugely successful hoax on academia:  they publish study after groundbreaking study on a deeply isolated tribe THAT DOESN'T EXIST. Superbly woven together.  Tight, purposeful plot structure.  Bravo :)

Almost there:

• All of Me: The first of two (TWO!) zombie-centric stories in the collection, this piece is from the perspective of a zombie, disguised as the very much alive, going about his nine-to-five life, trying to resist the urge to eat the faces of his coworkers.  He also has a crush on a female coworker.  The voice is incredibly original and very funny, though I feel like the plot devolved from something super original to something super expected.

Skip these:

• Life on Capra II:  The voice Gonzales employed for the main character in this piece really didn't work for me.  He felt more like a caricature than a character, and maybe that was the point. There was a distinctly video-game-esque feel to the piece, as the action seems to progress, then regress, as if player one lost and the game reset to the beginning of the level, and the reader was inside the brain of the avatar. Regardless, the voice was just so over the top at times that made it hard for me to care about him or what happened to him.  Then there were the guns.  And the robot attacks.  And the swamp monsters.  It just got to be a little much.  I'm the wrong kind of nerd to appreciate that story.
• Escape from the Mall:  A story about a group of people trapped in a janitor's supply closet during a spontaneous zombie uprising at their local mall.  I feel like, even if you're not into horror/zombie movies, we've all seen this movie.  Over the past 3-5 years as pop culture became obsessed with all things zombie , this plotline somehow found its way into America's collective unconscious.  When I first started the story, I was excited.  I thought Gonzalez was going to do something really original with this very done premise.  Nope.  Personally, I feel like Gonzales took such creative risks and thought so outside the box for many of the other stories in this collection that this story just felt too easy.  It was a great starting point, but I feel like if, as an author, you choose to take on a premise that's been done to death, you better bring something original to the table, and unfortunately, in this case, Gonzales does not.

My personal feeling:  Gonzales shines when he sticks to more to the realm of speculative (particularly when the speculative topics delve into academic topics...it's clear Gonzales is, himself, super intelligent and very well read!) but struggles when he veers to far into the land of science fiction.  All in all, some blazing moments of brilliance tucked in between pieces with potential to be developed into something worth reading.  Definitely worth checking out from your local library.

Rubric rating: 5.5.

Review: The Fifty Year Sword by Mark Z. Danielewski

image via Goodreads

title: The Fifty Year Sword

[support an independent bookseller and purchase at Strand]

by: Mark Z. Danielewski

genre: fiction

pages: 285
published: 2005

source:  New York Public Library

The Fifty Year Sword was originally published in 2005 as a limited edition, and is usually only performed on Halloween night as a live shadow show.  This month, however, it was re-released by Pantheon Books and I jumped at the chance to get my hands on a copy.

Like Danielewski's previous work, the story being told is as important as how it's being told, which is as important as how it looks as it's being told.  As in House of Leaves, which used multiple fonts, colors and text layouts to delineate the different parts of the story, The Fifty Year Sword uses five different color quotation marks and illustrations that resemble embroidery to tell the tale.  

And what a tale it is:  the plot follows the local seamstress, Chintana, as she attends a local Halloween party where she watches a mysterious storyteller tell a tale to five rambunctious orphans.

Haunting and lyrical with strong characterization, this story written in verse is a quick read (I finished it while doing laundry), but still leaves quite an impression.  Definitely recommended.

Rubric rating: 8. 

My favorite passage from Paul Auster's "Oracle Night"

"Early in our friendship, Trause told me a story about a French writer he had known in Paris in the early fifties. I can't remember his name, but John said he had published two novels and a collection of stories and was considered to be one of the shining lights of the younger generation.  He also wrote some poetry, and not long before John returned to America in 1958 (he lived in Paris for six years), this writer acquaintance published a book-length narrative poem that revolved around the drowning death of a young child.  Two months after the book was released, the writer and his family went on a vacation to the Normandy coast, and on the last day of their trip his five-year-old daughter waded into the choppy waters of the English Channel and drowned.  The writer was a rational man, John said, a person known for his lucidity and sharpness of mind, but he blamed the poem for his daughter's death. Lost in the throes of grief, he persuaded himself that the words he'd written about an imaginary drowning had caused a real drowning, that a fictional tragedy had provoked a real tragedy in the real world.  As a consequence, this immensely gifted writer, this man who had been born to write books, vowed never to write again.  Words could kill, he discovered.  Words could alter reality, and therefore they were too dangerous to be entrusted to a man who loved them above all else.  When John told me the story, the daughter had been dead for twenty-one years, and the writer still hadn't broken his vow.  In French literary circles, that silence had turned him into a legendary figure.  He was held in the highest regard for the dignity of his suffering, pitied by all who knew him, looked upon with awe.

John and I talked about this story at some length...[John] said that the writer's decision made perfect sense to him and that he admired his friend for having kept his promise. 'Thoughts are real,' he said. 'Words are real. Everything human is real, and sometimes we know things before they happen, even if we aren't aware of it.  We live in the present, but the future is inside us at every moment.  Maybe that's what writing is all about, Sid.  Not recording events from the past, but making things happen in the future.' "

~Paul Auster, Oracle Night (page 220)

The Literary Link List

Links to pieces, old and new, on literature:  

• The Nobel Prize in Literature goes to Mo Yan.  Have you read any of his work?  I'm intrigued by the notion of "hallucinatory realism."  (via NPR).
• The National Book Award finalists have been revealed!  Congrats to two of my all-time favorite authors, Dave Eggers and Junot Diaz!! (via Publishers Weekly) Also, check out the coverage over at The Millions (they've got excerpts!)
• Newsflash:  Democrats are three times more likely to have read Jonathan Franzen novels.  In related news, fire is hot.  Check out this fun infographic over at Book Riot.
• Precious Moments Grey.  Absolutely.  "Names of Nail Polishes My 74-year-old Grandma Barb Would Just Love" over at McSweeney's Internet Tendency.
• I just read this part in Joseph Anton!  Salman Rushdie Meets Super Mario over at The Millions

What I'm Reading...

title:  NW

author:  Zadie Smith

published:  September 2012

genre:  literary fiction

NW has been my subway read for a few days now, and thus far, the seven years we've had to wait since On Beauty were well worth it.  Abstract and lyrical and refreshingly honest.  I'll let you know what I think once I finish.

title:  Joseph Anton: A Memoir

author: Salman Rushdie

published:  September 2012

genre:  memoir

I started reading Joseph Anton in honor of Banned Books Week, because, let's face it:  The Satanic Verses is pretty much the ultimate banned book (and also, in my opinion, one of Rushdie's finest works).   About a year ago, I saw an older documentary that focused on the controversy created by the novel's publication.  The documentary did a thorough job of explaining why some felt so strongly about the book, but I've wondered what living under a fatwa for almost ten years was like for Rushdie.  This book answers that question, and then some.  I'm about 200 pages in, and I'm finding it fascinating so far.  

title: The Polish Boxer

author: Eduardo Halfon

published: October 2012

A few months ago, I stumbled across the Kickstarter page for this book and was intrigued, so I was really excited to see it up on LibraryThing's Early Reviewers list.  I have a feeling, knowing my book-specific ADD, I'll start reading it before I finish the other two.

What are you reading this week?

Rapid Fire Reviews!!!!!!

My stack of books "to be reviewed" is out of control, so let's get right down to it:

title: Henry and June [purchase here]

author: Anais Nin

pages: 274

genre: nonfiction (diary)

published: 1986

source:  New York Public Library

Henry and June features collected entries from Nin's A Journal of Love (1931-1932) and tells of her powerful love affair with Henry Miller.  One of Nin's strengths is her ability to take complex, personal matters of the heart and lay them bare with such intelligence, insight and raw honesty.  Eloquent, brave and intensely personal, Nin's journal was nothing short of riveting.

Rubric rating: 9

title: Oracle Night [purchase here]

author: Paul Auster

pages: 243

genre: literary fiction

published: 2003

source:  New York Public Library

This was my first time reading Auster and I was impressed.  The man KNOWS how to tell a great story.  Oracle Night's plot is nothing short of brilliantly constructed.  It follows author Sidney Orr who, while recovering from an illness that almost killed him, buys a new blue notebook at a neighborhood stationary shop and starts working on a new project.  His next nine days are nothing short of bizarre. 

Auster's strength is his ability to create a story so compelling and so riveting...and the last 40 pages are nothing short of genius.  

Rubric rating: 8

title: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? [purchase here]

author: Jeanette Winterson

pages: 230

genre: memoir

published: 2011

source:  I won this book playing Name That Author on Book Riot 

(the answer that week was Vladmir Nabokov)

This book has been my subway read for the past two weeks, and having Winterson's company on my morning and evening commute as been nothing short of delightful.  In this memoir, she takes on topics such as literature, her childhood, religion, and sexuality, each with wisdom and humor. Make no mistake, Winterson's childhood was crazytown, but she handles the topic with such balance and generosity and grace...the result is moving.  

Rubric rating: 7.5

The weight of their words...

"What writing feels like us following and leading, 

both, at the same time."

~Susan Sontag, In America

Review: In America by Susan Sontag

title: In America [purchase here]

author:  Susan Sontag

genre: literary fiction

pages: 387

published: 2000

source:  New York Public Library

"Each of us carries a room within ourselves, waiting to be furnished and peopled, and if you listen closely, you may need to silence everything in your own room, you can hear the sounds of that other room inside your head." (page 27)

In America is such an expansive piece of fiction, in which Sontag takes on everything from immigration to life in the theatre (with the "re"), and from the nature of love to what it means to be American.  And she takes it on with an eloquence most can only aspire to.   The novel follows Polish actress Maryna Zalezowska, legend of the stage, as she and her close circle of friends leave Poland and immigrate to America to live the simple commune life.  Each chapter varies stylistically, which really showcases Sontag's versatility, and brings new life to many a well-explored theme.

I'm sure I have nothing super original to contribute to a discussion of Sontag's work, and given that I've only (yet) read 1 1/2 of her novels (I started The Volcano Lover years ago but for some reason never finished), I did some research post-reading.  I highly recommend listening to this podcast over from CBC Radio's Writers and Company from October of 2000.  First of all, I had no idea Sontag had such a low, resonant voice.  Second of all, she is just such a damned eloquent speaker and so fascinating to listen to.

The only part of the book that, initially, didn't really work for me was the last chapter, where Sontag has Edwin Booth go on an alcoholic tirade about life and truth and acting...it just seemed such a sad and almost oppressive way to end the book.  But then, during said podcast, Sontag spoke about what was going on in her life when she wrote the last chapter: she said she writes chronologically and was about 30-40 pages from the end of the novel when she received another cancer diagnosis.  Now, with that small glimpse into her frame of mind, I can understand where that might have come from and how wrong I was initially.  

Rubric rating:  Duh. 9.  I really want to read her nonfiction work on photography.

Review: Me, Who Dove Into The Heart Of The World by Sabina Berman

title: Me, Who Dove Into The Heart of the World [purchase here]

author: Sabina Berman

translated by: Lisa Dillman

genre: fiction

pages: 242

published: August 2012

source: I received an advanced reader's copy from Henry Holt via 

LibraryThing in exchange for an honest review.

"Okay.

     That's what I said to Pena and my aunt over the radio; they were awaiting news in the tower in the dock.

     I like that word very much: okay.  It's from the 19th century, the American Civil War.  Generals used to write it in their war reports when nobody had died that day.

     Zero killed = 0 killed = 0K= Okay.

     Okay, over and out, my aunt responded.

     Outside the radio cabin on deck, the man from Greenpeace tugged off the hood of his wetsuit.  He had brown hair with blonde tips like Ricardo.

     The most stress-free tuna catch on the planet, he said.  Congratulations.

     I corrected him.

     Except for those in Palermo, where they still use preindustrial methods. 

     No, he smiled.  More stress-free than those.

     And then he added:

     And 100% dolphin-safe." (page 112)

Me, Who Dove Into the Heart of the World follows the story of Karen Nieto, a woman who started her life as a feral child, and is later diagnosed an autistic savant who has the unique ability to put herself in the "shoes" of animals, specifically fish, specifically tuna.

From the back jacket: "Karen Nieto passed her earliest years as a feral child, left alone to wander the vast beach property near her family's failing tuna cannery.  But when her aunt Isabelle comes to Mexico to take over the family business, she discovers among the squalor a real girl.  So begins a miraculous journey for autistic savant Karen, who finds freedom not only in the love and patient instruction of her aunt but eventually at the bottom of the ocean swimming among the creatures of the sea."

Berman's plot is really engaging and very clever. Who knew a book about a tuna cannery could be so engaging? And Karen is such strong, fully realized character.  How Berman is able to completely assert herself into Karen's psyche and write so truthfully from her perspective is really something. The way Karen thinks and reasons is so consistent, so thought through down to the detail...such a brilliantly rendered character.  My favorite parts were when Karen described other people's emotions, and how she would have to consciously go into "relating mode" to decipher what people were feeling.  Reminded me of Dr. Sheldon Cooper...

...in the best possible way (he is currently my FAVORITE character on TV).  

What was fascinating was the way Karen chose to approach Descartes infamous statement: I think, therefore I am.  Karen would argue that we are, and then we think, and it's hard to argue with her reasoning.  Through Karen, Berman presents a way of looking at the world so vastly different than what's expected, but so refreshing and very much needed.

Rubric rating: 7.  I would love to read more from Berman.

The Literary Link List

Links to pieces, old and new, on literature: 

• Classics and cocktails?  Yes, please!  Classic literature and the cocktails they inspired over at Flavorwire
• Pie chart!  The most popular Kurt Vonnegut tomes over at PWxyz
• BookRiot rounds up the best literary TED talks.  Elizabeth Gilbert on creativity was simply delightful!
• Ezra Pound on literary criticism over at Brain Pickings.
• I want to read this book!  Alexandra Popoff discusses her new book  The Wives: The Women Behind Russia's Literary Giants over at Publishers Weekly.

Review: Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

title: Mrs. Dalloway [purchase here]

author: Virginia Woolf

published: originally 1925; my edition 1953

genre: literary fiction

pages: 296

source: my parent's bookshelf and now mine :)

GENERAL SPOILER ALERT:  If you've never read Mrs. Dalloway, and would like to discover it with no previous knowledge of the plot, I suggest you stop here.  Since it was published in 1925, I'm writing with the assumption that I'm the one late to the party (which is usually the case with the classics) and many of you lovers of literary fiction have probably either read it already or are super familiar with the plot.  So, if not, stop.  Now.  You've been warned. 

"So on a summer's day waves collect, overbalance, and fall; collect and fall; and the whole world seems to be saying 'that is all' more and more ponderously, until even the heart in the body which lies in the sun on the beach says too, That is all.  Fear no more, says the heart. Fear no more, says the heart, committing its burden to some sea, which sighs collectively for all sorrows, and renews, begins, collects, lets fall. And the body alone listens to the passing bee; the wave breaking; the dog barking, far away barking and barking." (page 58-59)

My parents are in the midst of a remodeling project (they're adding french doors that open onto a deck off of the dining room), and a crucial part of any home project is the purge, the figuring out of what to get rid of and what to keep.  On the chopping block was a bookshelf full of vintage books, mostly classics, that they'd acquired over the years.  With the exception of my recent splurge at Strand, I've been willfully resisting bookstores, so I'm excited for the shopping bag full of books that I'll be taking home to NYC bit by bit over my next several visits.

The first book from my haul I dove into was Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, chosen because it was referenced multiple times in Gregoire Bouillier's The Mystery Guest, and I wanted in on the references.

This copy was my mom's, evidently for a class in college.  I LOVED reading her notes in the front and back of the book (doesn't she have neat handwriting!?!), and it was pretty fascinating to see how they were teaching the tome when she was in college, though I wish I had read the notes after I read the book.  I kept looking for evidence of Clarissa's latent lesbianism and kept waiting for Septimus to finally crack.

I really enjoyed Woolf's narrative style.  It reminded me of a clean, steady continuous shot in a film, where the director is able to jump from one character's perspective to another seamlessly.  The shift between each characters' perspective seemed effortless and Woolf was able to weave the central characters' story lines together in a way that made sense and didn't seem forced (which is an issue many authors have when they try to compose a coherent novel comprised of multiple interconnecting stories).  

Like Joyce's Ulysses, Mrs. Dalloway takes place on a Wednesday in June (the entire 700+ pages of Ulysses takes place on June 16th, 1904), and like Joyce, Woolf is incredibly focused on the interior life of her characters, on the innumerable thoughts, experiences and impressions that collectively make up how an individual experiences the world. However, Woolf succeeds where I've often felt Joyce fails, in that her purpose seems to be communication whereas Joyce many times seems content with incomprehension and inaccessibility for the common reader (ex:  Finnegan's Wake).  To be fair, I haven't read Ulysses yet (I will!  It's on the list and is coming, along with a Bloomsday Reader, in that same shopping bag full of books from my parents!), but reading A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in high school left a bad taste in my mouth.  Even though both Woolf and Joyce are exploring the interior lives of characters, Joyce's exploration seems masturbatory and personal whereas Woolf's feels open and communicative.  Maybe I'll change my mind after spending more time with Joyce...

Balance and counterbalance seem to factor heavily into Mrs. Dalloway.  Woolf is constantly balancing two oppositional forces (desire v. duty, coming together v. falling apart, masculine v. feminine) and these conflicts serve to unify all the disparate action occurring over the course of the story: Clarissa pulling herself together at her dressing table in preparation for the evening's party balanced against Septimus' slow descent and unraveling to the point of suicide; her desire for Peter Walsh balanced against her dutiful marriage to Richard Dalloway; the vibrant Sally Seton of Clarissa's youth (with whom she shared a passionate kiss) balanced against the woman Sally becomes post-marriage to Lord Rosseter; women who feel deeply yet pull themselves together and press on balanced against the men, acculturated to feel nothing, who give up and fall apart.  There is just so much going on in terms of detail and imagery but it was all essential and working toward the common unifying themes.  Such a tight piece of writing!  Mrs. Dalloway is a master class in revision and paring down a lengthy piece to just the purely essential.

And the semi-colons!  Recently, I listened to UC Berkeley Professor John Bishop via iTunesU discuss Mrs. Dalloway, and he pointed out that her use of semi-colons were another example of coming together v. falling apart:  semi-colons take two sentences/ideas and bring them together, making them one sentence.  Pretty damn clever, Mrs. Woolf.  

Bishop also pointed out some interesting parallels between Woolf's life and that of her central characters of Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Warren Smith, which I hadn't realized because I haven't read much on Woolf's biography.  Woolf was a central member of the Bloomsbury Group, and often hosted parties and gatherings for those involved, so, like Mrs. Dalloway, a part of her life concerned the bringing of people together.  Woolf later committed suicide by filling her pockets with stones and drowning herself, allowing herself to come apart like Septimus.  Crazy how life imitates art.

Rubric rating: 9. I loved it and I'm excited to explore more by Woolf.  In fact, To The Lighthouse is on my nightstand...

The weight of their words...

"...'But it's always when a thing sounds not true that it is true,' he says.

Of course.  I know that...You imagine the carefully-pruned, shaped thing that is presented to you is truth.  That is just what it isn't.  The truth is improbable, the truth is fantastic; it's in what you think is a distorting mirror that you will see the truth."

~Jean Rhys, Good Morning, Midnight

For your listening pleasure: Leslie DiNicola: It's Alright

I caught my friend Leslie at City Winery on Thursday night, and thought I'd start your week off with a track from her new album.  Happy Monday :)

Leslie DiNicola's website

The Literary Link List

Links to pieces, old and new, on literature:  

• Betting on the Nobel Prize in Lit?  Head over to BookRiot and check out your favorite author's odds of winning.
• Darryl Campbell on what a book review should be over at The Millions
• Jeffrey Brown speaks with Tea Obreht over at PBS's Art Beat
• An interview with DT Max about his recent biography of DFW (which I need to own ASAP), also over at The Millions
• On sucking at reading challenges (which I can absolutely relate to, as I am currently biting-the-mat-on-the-verge-of-abandoning-altogether my 30 Before 30 personal literary bucket list due to total lack of self-control when it comes to new books) over at Dead White Guys

And now, James Dean reading.  Though he looks a lot like James Franco here.  Regardless, you're welcome.

Wordless Wednesday: Coney Island

Before we go wordless, a few words:  Sorry for the lack of posting!!  I'm not dead!  Well, almost, but not quite heehee.  I have been battling the cold/flu-like bug from hell and even sitting upright has been a struggle.  Boo.  I've been inundating my system with vitamin C and cold meds, so hopefully posting should resume in a somewhat normal manner soon :)  In the meantime, some images I shot on a recent trip to Coney Island.

Charles Simic in conversation with Tea Obreht at Stand, NYC

Monday night, I had the pleasure of spending an hour at Strand listening to former Poet Laureate Charles Simic being interviewed by Tea Obreht.  He read from his massive oeuvre (34 volumes!!!) and from his new collection of poems, Master of Disguises, and spoke a bit about his influences and memories that inspired his work.  

Simic was hilarious!  Approachable, with a self-deprecating humility, his work is grounded in his experience, but heightened by his masterful command of language and image. A few gems from the interview/discussion:

• Simic on writing poetry over a 50+ year career:  "The nice thing about poems is that you have no memory of how they were written."
• Simic on confessional poetry:  "If a poet is a good liar, I think that's fine."
• Simic talked about how important revision was in his work, about how he can write 4-5 pages and end up with a five line poem.  
• He also talked a lot about translation, and about how there are a few works he would love to go back and re-translate, because the more time he spends with a piece, the more things he discovers in the writing and meaning.

All in all, a great evening.  I discovered the work of a supremely talented poet and got to meet Obreht, who is unbelievably talented for being so young.

Some of Simic's work:

1.  Master of Disguises
2.  The Voice at 3:00am: Selected Late and New Poems
3. New and Selected Poems: 1962-2012
4. Sixty Poems 

My Strand Splurge

My name is Jacki, and I am incapable of leaving a bookstore without purchasing something.

**Hi, Jacki**

Last night, I went to Strand to hear Tea Obreht in conversation with Charles Simic (more on that tomorrow), and besides finally purchasing a copy of The Tiger's Wife, which Ms. Obreht signed (!!!), I ended up leaving with:

1. The Yellow Wall-Paper, Herland, and Selected Writings by Charlotte Perkins Gilman   I've wanted to re-read The Yellow Wallpaper, and Herland has an intriguing premise.  $6.50.

2. The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy   I had to return this to the library before I could finish it, and at $6.95, I'm all about buying my own copy.

3.  Great Expectations by Charles Dickens   It's on my list of classics I should really read, and at $4.95, I'm not going to say no.

4.  Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh   Loved it when I read it and have wanted my own copy. Can't beat $5.95.

5.  To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf   On the PW list of most difficult books that I am determined to conquer.  I LOVED Mrs. Dalloway (and I will share my thoughts with you soon!  Promise!) so I figured this was worth owning.  $6.95.

I love Strand's prices :)  

Bought any good books lately?

So excited!!!

The HIGHLIGHT of my literary life last year was reading Tea Obreht's The Tiger's Wife. I never officially reviewed it here, but it was nothing short of fabulous.

I first encountered Obreht's work when I read her short story of the same name in the New Yorker and was blown away.  Obreht seems to have an effortless command of everything I wish I could do as a writer: her work is richly researched, lyrical and vivid and deeply moving.  And she's 26. If this is what she's capable of at 26, I cannot wait to read her at 40.

Tonight, I'm headed to Strand to hear her in conversation with former Poet Laureate Charles Simic, and I'm super excited!!! I'm embarrassingly unfamiliar with Charles Simic's work, and I've never seen Obreht speak, so I promise to report back. 

In honor of Super Saturday at the Open, DFW on playing tennis...in the wind...

From his essay "Derivative Sport in Tornado Alley" from the essay collection A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace talks about the challenges of playing tennis in the wind (as Murray and Berdych are attempting to do right now):

"Wind did massive damage to many Central Illinois junior players, particularly in the period from April to July when it needed lithium badly, tending to gust without pattern, swirl and backtrack and die and rise, sometimes blowing one direction at court level and in another altogether ten feet overhead.  The precision in thinking required one to induct trends in percentage, thrust, and retaliatory angle--precision our guy and the other townships' volunteer coaches were good at abstracting about with chalk and board, attaching a pupil's leg to the fence with clothesline to restrict his arc of movement in practice, placing laundry baskets in different corners and making us sink ball after ball, taking masking tape and laying down Chinese boxes within the court's own boxes for drills and wind sprints--all this theoretical prep went out the window when sneakers hit  actual court in a tournament.  The best-planned, best-hit ball often just blew out of bounds, was the basic unlyrical problem.  It drove some kids near-mad with the caprice and unfairness of it all, and on real windy days these kids, usually with talent out the bazoo, would have their first apoplectic racket-throwing tantrum in  about the match's third game and lapse into a kind of sullen coma by the end of the first set, now bitterly expecting to get screwed over by wind, net, tape and sun." (page 9).

Think positive thoughts for Nole this evening!!!!

The Literary Link List

Links to pieces, old and new, on literature: 

• Have you heard the one about the time Jay-Z bought Zadie Smith a fish sandwich? Well, NYMag's Vulture has the summary of the NY Times T Magazine article.
• My personal Russian lit guru Elif Batuman discusses where she likes to write over at Write Place, Write Time
• Over at Daily Candy Deals, Jana Feifer's super cute Letters for Literacy totes are 60% off.  10% of the proceeds from each bag goes to "UNESCO’s Literacy Initiative for Empowerment (LIFE), which promotes adult literacy in 35 countries around the globe." 
• And Roxane Gay on "How to Be a Contemporary Writer"

Review: Global Weirdness by Climate Central

title:  Global Weirdness: Severe Storms, Deadly Heat Waves, Relentless Drought, 

Rising Seas and the Weather of the Future [purchase here]

author: Climate Central

pages: 214

genre:  nonfiction

published: 2012

source:  New York Public Library

One of my LEAST favorite political arguments to have with "people of alternate political persuasions" is about climate change. Over the years, I've read multiple books and articles by journalists and scientists that all arrive at the same conclusion:  the climate is changing because of choices made by human beings.  Yet some people STILL cling to the notion that this fact is subject to debate (?????), and this BLOWS my mind.  I feel like I've read enough to understand generally what's happening, but not enough to synthesize all the evidence and explain concisely and persuasively what's going on.  Thankfully, Climate Central does EXACTLY that with their new book Global Weirdness.

A few weeks ago, I caught Michael Lemonick on NPR's Fresh Air discussing the book and the goals of Climate Central, which prompted me to put it on my holds list.  Check out the interview here.

Climate Central is a nonpartisan nonprofit collective of scientist and journalists, and they do an excellent job of presenting climate science in a balanced, accurate way.  Global Weirdness is organized ingeniously:  each chapter addresses a specific question or concern about climate science in a researched but accessible, bite-sized way.  The authors are also really careful with how they present the info:  this is what we (as scientists) know, this is what we don't know, here's what we have questions about or are unsure of, here's our best guess and here's how we arrived at that hypothesis.  It was peer reviewed multiple times, and despite the scary subtitle, the version of the future they project, if carbon emissions continue at present levels (or even if they are stopped completely, which, let's face it, isn't likely) sucks, but isn't apocalyptic-sounding (which has been a critique of the green movement in the past).

Some of the best chapters (imho):

Chapter 17:  deals with the effect of the carbon we've already emitted into the atmosphere, and what will happen if (when) we keep emitting more.  They use a great analogy and include a diagram that's super instructive.

Chapter 49:  deals with freshwater and why there's so much talk about our diminishing supply.

Chapters 38 & 44: deals with hurricanes and addresses fears around the severe weather of the future.

One of the other general themes of the book is the difference between climate and weather.  Even some of my more enlightened friends have said in the past: "well, if scientists can't predict what the weather will be like next week, how are they really going to try to tell me what the weather will be like years from now?"  Global Weirdness definitely addresses this, along with so many other facets of science. The facts are alarming, but the tone of the book is not alarmist.

It's a quick read (I finished it on a day full of heavy commuting...4 hours spent on a train!) and is written in language everyone can understand, even if they don't have a background in climate science.  In fact, this would make a great beginning of the year read for any high school science class.

Rubric ruling: 8.5.  Absolutely accomplishes what they set out to accomplish.  And I haven't seen it priced at more than $15 anywhere, which is super for a hardcover, and really lends credibility to their mission (message over profit).