in the middle of chapter 3

My name is Leila and I like to read.  It took me maybe 5 years or so after finishing law school before I was ready to get back to reading for pleasure, but I've been doing more and more of that during the last couple of years.  

This year I intend to focus on reading more books that are thought of as "must reads".  I'm part of a group on Goodreads that discusses any and all of the books referred to in (both editions of) 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die.  My total percentage read from the list is rather abysmal, so I'd like to try to get through 2 per month on average from the list this year.  My current main read is Infinite Jest, which I am totally loving, but I thought I might try to get through some of the classics on the list by reading a chapter per day sent to me via e-mail.  So today I ordered Middlemarch (a favorite of my friend Alicia) and The Picture of Dorian Gray from one such e-mail service.  

Has anyone had success reading books this way?  Do you feel you absorbed as much reading this way as if you have the book in your hands?  I'll report back my findings from this little experiment later this year.

lists: that's so meta! edition

I'm sort of running low on ideas for new lists. I guess it is good that I've made it this far into the month without too much of a struggle, but 7 more days of lists are staring me in the face and refusing to blink. So today I decided to go to the website of a book that I ordered but didn't ever receive -- Listography: Your Life in Lists by Lisa Nola. I ordered this book as a gift for a friend at Christmas time and I went ahead and ordered a copy for myself as well. They never arrived. Apparently the first edition sold out far more quickly than the author and publisher had anticipated and it appears that they might be back in print next month (very not helpful for my NaBloPoMo endeavors).

Anyway, I perused the listography website today. Apparently they've set up a community where members can create and monitor their own lists and share their lists with friends. So I sort of wondered whether I would be able to find any good list ideas from the profiles of the existing members. The short answer is no. The longer answer is a list of the types of lists that I found at listography.com:

• To Do lists (naturally)
• Movies I've Seen/Movies I Want to See lists
• Places I Want to Go lists
• Possible Future Career lists (maybe I should mention now, although it probably would become abundantly clear soon anyway, that most/all of the profiles I saw were of high school-to-college-aged folks)
• Crush lists
• Classes I Want to Take lists
• Favorite Books/Music/Artists/Videogames lists
• Things I Hate/Things I Love lists

in my heart it is March 21st

I guess I've screwed up the nablopomo assignment because technically I didn't make a post on Friday. Though I note, for the record, that I'm posting this at 2:45 on Saturday morning. Here is my quick list of how I spent my Good Friday (by the end you may understand how I managed to mess this blogging thing up...):

8:30 a.m. - Wake up. Relish in the idea of "working from home" today.
9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. - Watch basketball (including Georgetown game) with Mike at home. Spend a bit of time "working from home". Consider subject of today's blog list but decide to write it when I get home.
2:30 p.m. - Head out into lovely LA day in search of place to sit outside with food and beverages.
2:45 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. - Margarita, chips and queso at Fiesta Cantina (Weho), followed by carmel apple martini at The Abbey, followed by beer and sausage pizza at The Third Stop.
6:40 p.m. - Home to watch Indiana basketball game. Fall asleep immediately on couch. Awaken once or twice to see Indiana is losing. Determine nap is worthwhile endeavor.
11:00 p.m. - Wake up. Notice Mike has gone to bed. Go upstairs. Pick up Suite Francaise to read before falling asleep.
11:00 p.m. to 2:15 a.m. - Finish reading novel then read entire appendices non-stop, despite headache and dry mouth. Unable to put down book, even momentarily.
2:20 a.m. - Come downstairs for drink of water. Look at blackberry and notice a Yelp message from Ericka of City Elf (unrelated subject).
2:21 a.m. - Oh no!!! NaBloPoMo!!!! Crimey!
2:22 a.m. - Begin composing this post.

So, dear reader, what say you? Does this count? Sigh. If it makes anyone feel better (which it really shouldn't) I also forgot to send my friend Kathy her birthday greetings today too. Her birthday is March 21st. Off I go to write her an e-mail...

on the bedstand

I've been reading Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky on the recommendation of Ms. 'stina. It is an incredibly well-written novel centering on the German defeat and occupation of France in WWII. For those who don't know the backstory, Ms. Nemirovsky was a fairly well known Russian writer who moved to Paris prior to WWII and was in the midst of writing what is now Suite Francaise when the Nazi's rounded her up with the other Jews in 1942 and sent her to Auschwitz, where she perished. The book was intended to be in five parts, but only two were completed. The manuscript and her handwritten notes were hidden from 1942-2004, when they were discovered; Suite Francaise was published shortly thereafter. The style of the writing, the poignancy of the storytelling and the depth of the character development destine this book for a place among the classics. I just can't say enough good things about this book and I'm disappointed for the world that the Nazi's stole this literary wonder from us far too soon.

Anyway. Now that I've finished ranting, I figured I would give you my current list of pending reads (most of which are sitting in my bedroom, waiting patiently for their turns), in no particular order:

Emma by Jane Austin

The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream by Barack Obama*

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose by Eckhart Tolle

Water For Elephants by Sara Gruen

The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollen

I'm pretty excited about my reading list. Feel free to let me know if you have any thoughts/impressions about any of my selections. I love discussing books.

*The only one on the list that I don't yet own. I will rectify that soon.

list mania!

I've been reading a lot lately. I read for pleasure probably about 1-2 hours per day on average. So for my very first March List Blog 2008, I give you several lists in one. Sure, I could take the easy way out and stretch this out over several March List Blogs 2008, but what fun is that?

Without further ado, my recent reading lists (fiction/memoirs):

Great books I've read recently:
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld
The Trick is to Keep Breathing by Janice Galloway*

Good books I've read recently:
Fieldwork by Mischa Berlinski
What Remains by Carole Radziwill
Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl
Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris
The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy (hated the movie)
The Man of My Dreams by Curtis Sittenfeld
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

Bad books I've read recently:
Bitter Is the New Black by Jen Lancaster**
Sealed With a Diss by Lisi Harrison***
Fake Liar Cheat by Tod Goldberg
But Inside I'm Screaming by Elizabeth Flock****

Great book I am currently reading:
Night by Elie Wiesel


*Bought and read purely because the title was used for a wonderful Garbage song (The Trick Is To Keep Breathing, track 8, Version 2.0). Beautifully written Scottish novel documenting a woman's struggle with overwhelming depression and anorexia following the death of her lover.

**Did not finish. May at some point if I run out of all worthy reading material. The author's concept for the first half of the book seemed to be to make herself seem as annoying as possible, but with clever (she thinks) dialog. I found her exceedingly annoying (well done!) and the dialog not clever (oops!).

***Did not finish. It is in some sort of teen clique novel series. Determined quickly that teen cliques are just as annoying today as they were when I was a teenager. And the language they use! Indecipherable (kids today!). Mission accomplished.

****Bad may be a bit harsh. If I had a Just Okay category, I'd put this one there. It is a novel about a woman who seemingly has it all but ends up having a nervous breakdown, yadda yadda yadda. Just not as good as other memoirs/novels that cover similar ground. See, e.g., Prozak Nation, Girl Interrupted or The Trick is to Keep Breathing (on the Great list above).

Floating

Mike is sometimes a man of few words. And he's not one to throw around compliments willy nilly (though I do get "you look cute" from him quite often, it is only when I do, in fact, look cute*). So imagine my surprise when last night he turned to me and said, out of the blue, that I should write a book because I have a great writing style that is very engaging to the reader.

Better than a dozen roses. What a nice thing to say! I'm not sure I'm up to the challenge quite yet, but who knows what the future could hold?


*Which must be often. Hopefully I'm using the whole transitive property equation thing correctly, G.

On Blogging and (Other) Creative Pursuits

How many people blog and also keep a separate journal? It seems to me that in some ways they serve different purposes, though many people treat their blog as a journal. Generally I think that I try to produce a more finished product here than I would in a journal. I pick my words more carefully and think about themes and cohesiveness (this isn't always self-evident, is it?). I've been wanting to exercise my more creative side lately and I picked up a book yesterday that has me thinking more about taking time to put on paper more unfinished product. The book is about visual journals (or journals that include visual elements, at least) and theorizes that journals serve one (or more) of four principal purposes:

observation
reflection
exploration
creation

I've designated my new journal, which I'm doing my best to carry around with me and actually USE. Let's see if this project gets any creative juices flowing. Note: if I were really all about editing myself here, I would totally change that last sentence. "Creative juices flowing" does nothing for me. How cliched.

Songbook

Nick Hornby is one of my favorite authors. I'll buy pretty much anything of his that is published. Because he has rabid fans such as myself, he could publish a book full of his old grocery lists, and some of us would run out to try to find his favorite brand of peanut butter. Life is pretty good for Nick Hornby.

I'm reading Songbook right now. It is a collection of short essays written about songs that are important to him. This is a writing project that I can get behind. Music forms who we are and every person is coming from a different place when she thinks and talks about the music that she cares about. I'll likely never have the creative chops to write a novel during nanowrimo, but I should be able to write a few hundred words about the songs that make me ME.

So stay tuned. Maybe I'll tell you someday about how Fall On Me by REM changed my life or why Two Suns In The Sunset (Pink Floyd) and Our Time Is Running Out (Muse) both often reduce me to tears (kind of embarrassing to listen to in the car). I'm sure you wouldn't pay to buy it, but lucky for you I give this stuff away for free.

What songs would you like to tell the world about?

Read All About It!

I usually have one or two books in queue for my leisure reading, but suddenly I find myself with a growing list that I haven't been making much progress on. So I thought I would share. In the hopes that it will shame me into finishing a couple of books and just, well, because. I'll report back on how I like the books when I'm done. I'm considering adding a Currently Reading/Recently Read column on blog, so we'll see whether that materializes or not, too.

Currently Reading:

Then We Came to the End: A Novel by Joshua Ferris

This book follows the lives of workers at an typical large ad agency during the recession that followed the tech boom. I'm not quite halfway through it so far and my initial reaction of horror to be reading about a culture so similar to BigLaw has been tempered a bit. Joshua Ferris does a good job of putting the reader into the place of these people by using a first person plural voice that (surprisingly) works remarkably well. We don't know which (if any) of the characters the author purports to be, but he makes you feel like you are a part of the group. The only difficulty I've had is following (especially in the early going) which character is which because there are a number of names to try to couple with their plots/stories. That issue seems to have worked itself out at this point though.

Books To Read:

1. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

I'm in a newly-formed book club with some internet friends of mine and our first selection is Slaughterhouse Five, in honor of Vonnegut's death this month. I still haven't gotten my hot little hands on a copy yet, and I hear they are hard to come by right now, but I need to get on it already so I can discuss it with the group when I'm done. I guess I should be ashamed to admit one or all of: (a) I have internet friends, (b) I have never read Slaughterhouse Five and (c) I have never been in a book club before, but thankfully I have no shame. How freeing!

2. Ten Days in the Hills: A Novel by Jane Smiley

I thought this one looked interesting the last time I was randomly perusing amazon.com, and I was in a bit of a book lull, so I grabbed it. I like reading LA books, so I'm not letting the tepid reviews on amazon.com stop me. I'm not really a book snob anyway.

3. The Man of my Dreams: A Novel by Curtis Sittenfeld

I'm excited for this one. I really enjoyed her last novel, Prep, so I signed up months ago for the paperback release of her latest one. I've heard from other fans of Prep that this one isn't as good, but I have to see for myself. I'm a fan of Nick Hornby books that others would cast aside (How to be Good and The Long Way Down were both great, in my opinion). Prep is a very poignant coming of age story about a midwestern middle class girl who ends up at an exclusive east coast boarding school for high school and her trials and tribulations with trying to fit in when she feels completely different from those around her. And seriously, who made it through high school without some of those insecurities? I highly recommend it.

4. Will the Vampire People Please Leave the Lobby by Allyson Beatrice

I'm looking forward to reading this one because it was written by a friend of a friend (hi 'stina!) and I trust the recommendation. Also it sounds funny. The internet has introduced me to some wonderful people and I'm looking forward to reading about the adventures of a group of Buffy internet fans (or, uh, geeks). I think it is seriously cool the way the internet can bring like-minded folks who might never meet otherwise together. Amazing.

Hmm. I think that's all for now. If anyone has any good non-fiction books they care to share, I'd love to hear about them. I prefer to have a mix of fiction and non-fiction available to me at all times so I can suit my reading to my mood.

Embracing My Inner Hippie Chick

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about the late sixties/early seventies lately. I'm reading this book about the 1960's music scene in Laurel Canyon, which launched the careers of CSNY, Frank Zappa, and Joni Mitchell, along with David Geffen and other baby boomer music producers.

At the same time, I've been listening to the Hair soundtrack (broadway musical version NOT the movie version) in my car. In retrospect, I've realized that the Hair soundtrack was a very important part of my childhood. My sister and I knew every word to every song and would amuse ourselves for hours sing-screaming the songs and dancing through the house. As anyone who has ever listened to that record can tell you, it contains some lyrics and concepts that many people would not want to expose young children to (like, for example, the songs Sodomy and Colored Spade). So I spent a number of years in shock that my parents let me listen to it and even learn all the lyrics and run around blurting them out to strangers, family acquaintances and neighbors.

Now when I listen to it, I am less surprised and more thankful. I embrace my pseudo-hippie upbringing. I was too young to experience any of the hippie culture first-hand. I was born in the 1970's (barely), so I missed what was going on, and only had any exposure to hippies, the drug-culture and Vietnam after the fact. But even though I didn't realize it at the time, a lot of what my parents exposed me to then (inadvertently or intentionally) shaped who I am today and what I believe in.

I want to be a person who cares more about what people stand for than what they look like, who is able to reserve judgment and befriend others without concerning myself with our differences, but instead embracing our similarities. I kind of think that we should all strive for that.

In the Laurel Canyon book, I'm reading the part that dissects where things went wrong and what killed the creative spirit and hippie vibe of the late sixties folk-rock scene. The author's theories seem to center around two very distinct forces. The Charles Manson murders, which made people wake up and realize that not every hippie-weirdo-freak has good intentions, and led to the closing and locking of doors throughout Los Angeles (including in the free love canyons). And cocaine, which transformed the drug culture, including in Laurel Canyon, from the lazy, creative culture of pot and LSD to the non-stop, paranoid, no sleep culture of cocaine and amphetamines, and which, in the mind of the author, killed much of the creative spark in the music that was produced.

I think he is probably right. And for some reason, that makes me sad. I think I would have really enjoyed seeing that form of hippie culture at the time instead of learning about it as part of our history now. I think that, for a corporate lawyer, I could have made a pretty decent hippie chick. Well, except for the being-around-people-who-don't-bathe-much part.

So thanks, mom and dad. Peace, flowers, freedom, happiness.