Recent Acquisitions

I should really finish a book sometime, but instead I got two new ones on my kindle:

I actually got "A Heart So White" in Spanish...google reminded me that this is a line from ol' Macbeth. Lady Macbeth says: "My hands are of your color, but I shame/ To wear a heart so white." The more you know...

This was a pretty strange, nice, busy weekend. I fiiiiinally put the finishing touches on my craft essay. I am not so impressed with myself, as far as that goes, but it was helpful in terms of my own writing, and thinking about writing a little historical novel. Ye historye, you guys.

I'm down in the DR, and here is what I am reading.

(My name is Ana, and I like to hide behind the written word. Also, I have chipped nails. I'm sorry if this isn't living up to the glamorous image you had in your head from reading so much fanciness that I've written. Also, this is my brother's room. I notice he has stolen my copy of The Westing Game. Guess what, jerk? I stole your Babar. What now? What. now.)

I miss Molly, but it's nice to be home regardless, sitting in my parents' little garden. I'm going to go put some workout pants on so I can...continue to sit here with Italo Calvino.

Did I get drunk with my parents last night? Yes, yes I did. Did I watch Nuria Piera afterwards? Yes, yes I did.

Some observations of very little consequence.

-Molly has the spatial awareness of Helen Keller, but none of the excuses.

-Wednesday is trash day (TRY TO REMEMBER).

-This weekend I'll be in New York. I hope I can walk a lot. I hope I can go to the Frick (it would be my first time). I hope it's nice. I hope I don't catch a silly old cold. But if I can't, and it's not, and I do, that's ok, too.

-Next on my reading list after "The Man Without a Face" are:

    -Finish "If On a Winter's Night a Traveler."

    -Finish "Empire Falls"

    -"Cloud Atlas", again.

    -"Backroads of North Carolina"

    -"Oscar and Lucinda"

    -"Strangers on a Train"    

I have this thing sometimes where if I really love a book, I won't finish it for a super long time, because I don't want it to end. When I was little, I would do the same thing with my desserts. I would take these pinky-nail sized bites of my brownie or what have you. The best part was when everyone else was done, and I was still working on mine for like ten more minutes.

So excited to start Masha Gessen's new book about Putin!

It just came out like two days ago and already the Amazon reviews are totally polarized. The Guardian called it clear and brave. I find Putin and his whole weird bear-wrestling thing so fascinating. I'm going to start it right after lunch...it'll be a perfect read on a cloudy day.

PS- I'm trying out a new format with tiny images and wrapped text. It looks better, doesn't it? Right? I mean, when the entry isn't super tiny like this one.

Pleased as punch.

I recently subscribed to both One Story and the New Yorker, because it was CHEAP (I paid like 60 for two years of the NYer!). Last year, I got a useless travel magazine that I read a lot and a food magazine that I didn't read at all. But I love this year's magazines! I'm so pleased! They're providing me with just the kind of reading that is perfect for when I take myself out on a burger date. Oh, you don't take yourself on burger dates? Some people are afraid of being out in public ALONEOMG, but I sort of enjoy the quietude I feel when I can observe people, which is delightful, while simultaneously not having to entertain anyone, and being able to retreat to the comfort of my reading. I feel like a small island in a river, or whatever, I'm not trying to write a poem up in this blog.

Anyway, speaking of burgers, I've been reading a lot of mormon hipster housewife blogs ever since that Salon article*. Maybe something that happens when you spend a lot of time in your house is that you begin to crave junk food, because they talk about burgers and donuts a lot. I identify with this very deeply. To the point where I've started to wonder if maybe I'm a Mormon at heart, which is maybe a sign I should pull back. However, all my favorite personal-life blogs have sort of petered out over the last year. This funny lady got a novel, and this person got married. So, yay, Mormons, for being available to my busybodyness.

So, my favorite by far is Nat. She's adorable. And she's funny! Then there's this girl, who has a really pretty life. I'm telling you this in case you needed something to read that was basically the literary equivalent of candy, which, who doesn't? Duh.

 *What happened was one of those really unfortunate things where you laugh at people who are exactly like you, except that they have some weird obsession or behavior, and then some ten minutes later, you yourself have acquired that obsession or behavior and are totally puzzled by it. HOW CAN IT BE THAT WE HAVE SO MUCH IN COMMON AND NOW ANOTHER THING...oh. I think this pretty much explains all of hipsterdom and why nobody likes hipsters.

On the docket

Tomorrow, I'm going to get my fall reading list for school, and then you'll get nothing but close, careful readings (not really) for like two months. I have so many books I'd planned to read before this happened. I think I have time to read at least one more thing before my books actually arrive in the mail, what with my procrastination and the USPS. Here are the books that I am considering maligning and misinterpreting before The Great Reading descends upon me:

"I Capture the Castle"

"At Swim-Two-Birds" (I started this, but I'm not fully committed)

"The Unbearable Lightness of Being"

A mystery, which might be either "The Terra-Cotta Dog" or "Death at La Fenice"

Oh, and I still need to read "Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper"

This reminds me that I own a whole lot of stuff I haven't read. I think this begs the questions: why do I still buy books?

I don't have an answer, except to say that I'm definitely going to get to "The Charterhouse of Parma" someday. And "Magic Mountain". And if I don't own them how can I get to them? What am I, a list-making magician?

The Imagined Conversations of Ill-Conceived Characters: Anthropologie Edition

Ijust got the newest Anthropologie catalog! It's super-exciting! Because I really enjoyed imagining a conversation between Ikea ghosts last week, this is going to keep happening to you, reader!

(Click on a panel to make it bigger.)

 

    
      

Ikea and a food memoir that I didn't actually read: my week in Florida.

Last week, I drove down to Miami to help my boyfriendmove into his new apartment. While I was there, I took Molly for 18 walks a day, and the only thing I read were Ikea instructions. Actually, there was no reading involved, because in the interest of saving money and confusing the hell out of everyone, Ikea manuals are basically furniture-making manga starring some ghost people. Because I was in their company (so to speak) so often, the Ikeapeople really started coming to life for me, and now I sort of think Ikea should hire me to think up and illustrate some of the Ikeapeople's stories. I actually put together a little something, based on the glorious day Chandler and I brought home a modular shelving unit for his pots and pans, just to show the people at Ikea exactly what I’m talking about:

 
 

Right before I left, I received Fuschia Dunlop’s memoir of eating in China, “Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper”.  Before I got it in the mail, I kept thinking ‘aaaaaaw shit, this better arrive before I go down to Florida for the week, or I'm gonna bust some heads*.’ I’m so glad it came in time for me to entirely neglect it.

In July, I was in Shanghai and I had a sort of awakening vis a vis Chinese food. The principal agent of that awakening: Sichuan dan dan noodles. Coming home from the restaurant where I ate them (Crystal Jade at Xintiandi, holla!**), still sort of dazed by what had just gone on in my mouth (also, because it was really spicy and my mouth was burning), I had this idea that I’d heard of dan dan noodles before, and it turns out I had, on The Wednesday Chef. That’s how I found out about Fuschia Dunlop.

I’d like to try making the dan dan noodles, but I also feel like every time I try to cook Chinese (or Mexican) food it ends up tasting not great. I live in a little city though, so I guess it’s bully for me, otherwise. 200-word-review to come!

*read: think about leaving a moderately snippy review on Amazon.

**I feel like I always misuse holla, but I refuse to look it up, because then my use of it would be so limited.

200-Word Book Review: Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time

 

Yes. I am reading an enormous, déclassé fantasy series. These books are probably, on average, 700 pages long, and there’s fourteen of them, and when I first noticed I thought ‘Whatever, I read A Suitable Boy. I read Tolstoy. I can handle this nonsense.’ I was wrong, because I’m on book five now, and I’m exhausted.

The good: A fully realized world very much in the spirit of Lord of the Rings, so it’s perfect if you’re looking to relive your childhood. You should probably not attempt to relive your childhood.

The bad: I’ve read about 3000 pages and one measly year has passed in the story. The characters are flat. SO flat. And dense to the point of stupidity. That’s ok for the first book, but by book four, you wonder why these people can’t seem to have more than about five different thoughts, which are:

-“Is Rand going mad?”

-“Light, no! [description of something already described 57 times before in the exact same words]”

-“Who understands women/men?”

-“I will keep this vital fact a secret from everyone, thereby extending the plot by a completely unnecessary 300 pages.”

-“I am tired.”

Me too, guys! Me. Too.

WG Sebald is my moon goddess.

After reading TheRings of Saturn, I decided I hadn’t had enough of Sebald’s unsettling, melancholy mix of essay and fiction (I was apparently the only person in my class to feel this way, but wevs those guys are stoopid), so I ordered The Emigrants, which I received today, and am so excited to get into. First though, I have to attempt Claude Levi-Strauss’s Tristes Tropiques, for all the wrong reasons, apparently, because the whole first chapter is about how people who entertain a fascination with adventure (“one of those unavoidable drawbacks” of being an anthropologist) are ridiculous. He makes a good point actually, which I’m not going to try to reproduce because I’m an unfair person, and also because I’m reading Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods, which is about…an adventure. Specifically, walking the Appalachian Trail. It’s full of just the kind of meaningless anecdotes and hackneyed information Levi-Strauss would have disapproved of. Especially to my liking is that it contains the usual Brysonian level of obsession with plants and animals that can kill you (see: In a Sunburned Country). I love that.