Any very rare men out there?

Your Personality is Very Rare (INFP)

Your personality type is dreamy, romantic, elegant, and expressive. Only about 5% of all people have your personality, including 6% of all women and 4% of all men You are Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling, and Perceiving.

How Rare Is Your Personality?

Thanks to SFP at Pages Turned!

Austen Power! On Masterpiece Theatre

Time to lighten things up.

Have you seen this? PBS is running a Jane-a-thon, featuring ALL of their Jane Austen adaptations this month. Okay, it's too late to see Persuasion, but there is plenty of good programming left.

This is a fun site -- check out the men of Austen and the newsletter sign-up.

A loss for words

I've been wondering what to post here. It's only proper Netiquette, in my view, to follow up on my last blog post; I couldn't brush off a reply anymore than I could refuse to answer a sympathy card. I just am not clear about what to say.

I can and will thank everyone for their prayers and good wishes. Somehow, I feel there are many unseen hands strung all over the world for me, like invisible prayer flags. So comforting.

Beyond that, the news is uncertain. My father is in a skilled care facility (read: nursing home), where he will receive physical therapy to see how much mobility can be restored to him. At any moment, but no later than the next three weeks, he will need to be moved...somewhere. He will need care, and my mother can no longer help him by herself at home. His care may suck up every vestige of their combined savings, which would leave mother in the lurch for the rest of her life. It is not clear how long he will live. With skilled care, he could live another year or two. Or his heart could fail tonight.

I'm flying home to do what I can. My main goal is to say goodbye to my father.

Needless to say, most of my planned reading has screeched to a halt. I did find a book that provides some solace: Living without Regret.

I also find a measure of comfort in reading about how other people overcame difficulties in their lives: Isak Dinesen's bio by Judith Thurman and Maxim Gorky's memoir about his childhood are good company in this respect.

Thanks again, dear readers, for your thoughts. My life is teeter-tottering right now, but at some point it will tip upright and steady again. Words seem useless bits of flotsam right now, torn paper tossed into a wind.

Tough times

Dear Blogfellows,

I am having a bit of a time, I'm afraid. My father is very ill, and the family situation is rough. Blogging may be sporadic and fitful.

Please send positive thoughts and prayers our way.

A look back...and a look ahead

Happy 2008, everybody. I don't know about you, but I'm very glad the holidays are over and done with for another year. Frankly, 2007 was stressful. I switched jobs, for one thing -- and as I reread my journal, I realized that the year as a whole was riddled with anxiety. I took a major trip to Spain and Morocco -- a stress, yes, but a positive one. (Although getting traveler's sickness added a debit on the negative stress side.)

I thought I'd take a look back for myself at what I read this year. Although I lost my list when I had that Blogger sidebar snafu, I've recreated a fair proximation, give or take a few books. I am really impressed at what I managed to read in 2007, both in quantity and quality. One of my "reading resolutions" last New Year's Day was to read nightly -- and to read more classics. I can rightly say 'Mission Accomplished' on both counts. (Sans the aircraft carrier, of course.)

As for 2008, I have joined the Year of Reading Dangerously Challenge which, with Carl V.'s RIP Challenge, will probably be the most I will be able to manage. I'm straggling through Don Delillo's Underworld (I'm not finding the characters or story very interesting or progressing, but he's one of my "challenging" contemporary authors to read) -- as soon as I'm done (if I ever am!) I'm starting in on the third Proust volume, The Guermantes Way.

Below is my list of Books Read in 2007. Boldfaced titles are the ones I enjoyed and remembered most. The only "classic" that I did not enjoy was I Am Legend. I did not boldface Trilby -- it wasn't horrible; simply not in the same league as the others. All the rest were superb -- there is a reason they call them classics! Other thoughts on Reading in 2007:

* Joyous discoveries: Dracula -- a complete revelation. I didn't expect to enjoy this one as much as did. Runner-up: Hunchback of Notre Dame. I really struggled with the long detailed passages that took me out of the story. But the ending pulled everything together marvelously -- it took my breath away. Not many contemporary writers do that, you know!
* Authors to read more of: I just finished Murakami's After Dark -- it blew me away. I can't wait to read more of him. Alas, I cannot get my hands on my copy of Kafka on the Shore. Runner-up: Falling Man by Don DeLillo. I was intrigued by the fact that many DeLillo fans didn't like this book, and I admired it a lot. It seems that this book is not representative of his writing. So, it's time to read more...
* Best nonfiction: American Bloomsbury was a delight to read. On the other end of the spectrum, Imperial Life in Emerald City was disturbing to read...but worthwhile nevertheless.

As for this year, I just have one resolution to fulfill: Must*renew*library*card.

Cheers to reading great in '08!

Books read in 2007

Classic fiction
In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, Marcel Proust
Trilby, George Du Maurier
Portrait of a Lady, Henry James
Dracula, Bram Stoker
For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway
Persuasion, Jane Austen
Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen
Hunchback of Notre Dame, Victor Hugo
Love in Excess, Eliza Haywood
Don Quixote, Book 1, Cervantes
Voyage in the Dark, Jean Rhys
The Subterraneans, Jack Kerouac
Miss Lonelyhearts, Nathanael West
I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
A Child’s Christmas in Wales, Dylan Thomas


Modern/contemporary fiction
My Uncle Napoleon, Iraj Pezeshkzad, Azar Nafisi, and Dick Davis
Cat’s Eye, Margaret Atwood
Falling Man, Don Delillo
Slow Man, JM Coetzee
Memoirs of a Muse by Laura Vapynar
After Dark, Haruki Murakami
Windows on the World, Frederic Beigbeder
The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Nonfiction
Assassin’s Gate, George Packer
Imperial Life in the Emerald City, Rajiv Chandrasekaran
A Strange Piece of Paradise, Terri Jentz
Jane Austen, Claire Tomalin
The Beautiful Cigar Girl, Daniel Tashower
9/11 Commission Report
Sleeping Where I Fall, Peter Coyote
Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire by Morris Berman
The London Scene: Six Essays by Virginia Woolf
The Autobiography of Margaret Oliphant
American Bloomsbury, Susan Cheever
Ghost Hunters, Deborah Blum
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Dee Brown

Happy holidays everyone!

Wishing you and yours a merry Christmas and happy New Year!

Thanks to all of my fellow bloggers and readers -- you have enriched my reading life immensely, and for that, I am grateful.

Books I'd give for the holidays

There are some terrific ideas listed in my previous post. (Add yours, if you haven't already.)

My short list is below, books I'd give for the holidays to:

Fellow book bloggers (books that aren't widely known but that I've really enjoyed): Daughter of Earth by Agnes Smedley; Million Dollar Baby: Stories from the Corner by F.X. Toole; and The House of Exile by Nora Wahn.

My 12-year-old niece: Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen (oh, that she would read it!)

My 10-year-old nephew: Day of Infamy by Walter Lord or The Winds of War by Herman Wouk (tough call--he likes WW2 video games, and these books might be a little advanced for a kid--but this IS a wish list)

All my relatives who don't read because they don't make time for it: Swann's Way by Marcel Proust (serves 'em right)

All my friends who don't read because they don't have time: Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (if they read the first page, they'll be hooked)

Books I'd want for myself: Diary of a Bad Year by J.M. Coetzee (by the way, the New Yorker has a fascinating review by James Wood)

What books would you give for Christmas (or Hanukkah)?

Here are two holiday questions I hope you all will answer:

1. Which book(s) would you give for Christmas/Hanukkah?
2. Which book(s) would you most like to receive for Christmas/Hanukkah?

Maybe we can get a really nice list together!

A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas

What a charming, delightful book. The language is beautiful, as one might expect from Dylan Thomas. Moreover, there is a melancholy sense of nostalgia to it, the feeling you get as an adult remembering your childhood days of innocence and play.

I was so delighted by the illustrations by Trina Schart Hyman. Apparently, she was an illustrator for Cricket magazine and book illustrator extraordinaire. I am including an example of her work in this post, but I don't think it is nearly as charming as the illustrations for the Thomas tale.

Here is part of the text, which takes place at the end of the day when the family gathers for storytelling. The setting immediately brings on another memory. (The description of the gas meter ticking really got to me. It's such a fine detail -- something so small and specific you feel as if you had been there. The fact that this leads into another memory, makes it even more bittersweet: A child remembering his own childhood. You just know he is growing up!) You'll find the full text here. If nothing else, I hope you can listen to Thomas read his tale. There's something about a poet reading his words that brings the whole expedition to life.

Bring out the tall tales now that we told by the fire as the gaslight bubbled like a diver. Ghosts whooed like owls in the long nights when I dared not look over my shoulder; animals lurked in the cubbyhole under the stairs and the gas meter ticked. And I remember that we went singing carols once, when there wasn't the shaving of a moon to light the flying streets. At the end of a long road was a drive that led to a large house, and we stumbled up the darkness of the drive that night, each one of us afraid, each one holding a stone in his hand in case, and all of us too brave to say a word. The wind through the trees made noises as of old and unpleasant and maybe webfooted men wheezing in caves. We reached the black bulk of the house. "What shall we give them? Hark the Herald?"
"No," Jack said, "Good King Wencelas. I'll count three." One, two three, and we began to sing, our voices high and seemingly distant in the snow-felted darkness round the house that was occupied by nobody we knew. We stood close together, near the dark door. Good King Wencelas looked out On the Feast of Stephen ... And then a small, dry voice, like the voice of someone who has not spoken for a long time, joined our singing: a small, dry, eggshell voice from the other side of the door: a small dry voice through the keyhole. And when we stopped running we were outside our house; the front room was lovely; balloons floated under the hot-water-bottle-gulping gas; everything was good again and shone over the town.
"Perhaps it was a ghost," Jim said.
"Perhaps it was trolls," Dan said, who was always reading.
"Let's go in and see if there's any jelly left," Jack said. And we did that.

Always on Christmas night there was music. An uncle played the fiddle, a cousin sang "Cherry Ripe," and another uncle sang "Drake's Drum." It was very warm in the little house. Auntie Hannah, who had got on to the parsnip wine, sang a song about Bleeding Hearts and Death, and then another in which she said her heart was like a Bird's Nest; and then everybody laughed again; and then I went to bed. Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steady falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept.

The pleasure of pulp

Here's an interesting article from Bookforum about the nigh-forgotten genre of pulp. (Plus, you gotta love the illustrations.)

For example, did you know pulp fiction was written by men while almost all the classic English crime writers were middle-class women? It's interesting to observe how the crime genre of dainty Agatha Christie and dire Dorothy Sayers stowawayed across the Atlantic and morphed into the gritty American pulp of Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain. And why and how did crime and pulp hold sway over readers from the 20s through the 60s? Author John Banville speculates that:

Crime fiction flourishes in hard times. The fiction reflects the times, and the times color the fiction. There is a rawness in the pulp stories, even those by “literary” writers such as Chandler and Hammett, that is not due entirely to the exigencies of the marketplace. At their best, and even, perhaps, at their worst, these yarns express something of the unforgiving harshness and dauntless optimism of life in America in the decades between the wars. Of course, the plots are almost uniformly absurd.

There is some sort of grim fascination for me with scar-faced criminals and brooding detectives and loose women with felt hats and guns in their purses (tucked right next to the bold red lipstick). I can't get enough of James Cain, for instance: do yourself a favor and when you're in the mood for a martini, read Mildred Pierce and then rent the movie with Joan Crawford.

The anthology, The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps, sounds tantalizing. Do you suppose I'd shock Santa if I asked him to leave a copy of The Book of Pulps in my fishnet stocking?

What I'm Reading

Oh, I haven't posted much about books because I'm reading like a veritable demon! So, I thought I'd do a post about what I'm reading...

Hunchback of Notre Dame, Victor Hugo. At the halfway mark. I loved it until Hugo just veered into lengthy descriptions of architecture and religion. I resent his interrupting the fascinating plot and wonderful characters, even if I do see why he is doing it.

A Child's Christmas in Wales,Dylan Thomas. I received this yesterday and tore right through it. (It is a children's book after all.) The illustrations by Trina Schart Hyman are truly dazzling -- they really make the book. I thought the text gorgeous in spots, and will do more on this post, but the first reading puzzled me slightly.

Out of Africa, the Untold Story, Linda Donelson. I found this in a used bookstore -- obviously it was marketed to capitalize on the film. But, I really enjoyed reading about Karen Blixen and her turbulent life. I think all of her travails with relationships somehow speak to me just now. To wit (and I paraphrase):

On describing the relationship between men and women, she says: "Men are guests and women are hostesses." And she asked a man, "What do guests want?" The man said, "We want to shine, to be welcomed, to be appreciated for who we are and to be given a chance to be at our best....what is it that hostesses want?" To which Blixen replied, "To be thanked."

Isn't that brilliant? I found another book on Dinesen: Isak Dinesen, The Life of a Storyteller by Judith Thurman. This book, which I've just started, gives more reference to Blixen's literary leanings.

All of which means, I have to dig out all of my Dinesen books: Out of Africa, Shadows on the Grass and (I think) Winter's Tales.

A me-me-me meme

I was tagged by Hallie over at Belles and Whistles, so here we go...

5 things I was doing 10 years ago
1. Working in another division of the company I now am at today!
2. Probably dealing with my winter blues
3. Writing short stories
4. Hanging out with friends and avoiding relationships
5. Basically, doing everything I'm doing today, only 20 pounds lighter and with two different cats in the house


5 things on my to-do list today
1. Drafting text for a work project
2. Going to gym (which I did, only I found out it closed!)
3. Drinking lots of water (I just drank some more)
4. Eating well (oatmeal for breakfast, soup for lunch, and probably some veggie concoction for dinner)
5. Searching those horrid online dating sites fruitlessly (went on one called Ethical Singles yesterday. The only guy in my age range wrote in his subject line "Capitalism must end!" Uh, I'll pass...


5 things I would if I were a millionaire
1. Buy a house.
2. Set up a scholarship fund for writers.
3. Travel!
4. Hire a personal trainer and dietician.
5. Invest wisely.

5 things I'll never wear again
1. My favorite size 6 little black dress.
2. Neon
3. Palazzo pants (does anybody else remember those? See the little drawing above.)
4. Anything that reveals anything in the vicinity of a midriff
5. Platform shoes

5 favorite toys
1. Barbie dolls
2. Scrabble
3. My stuffed animals, especially Bess and Pinkie
4. Card games
5. Clue

5 bloggers to tag


Tara at Books and Cooks
Charlotte at Charlotte's Web
Kirsten at Nose in a Book
D. Chedwick

And anyone else who wants to take a stroll down memory lane with this meme!

Thoughts for Thursday - Moroccan Mint Tea

Have you all been following Maud Netwon's posts of Recipes from Writers? It's great.

Here's one that especially caught my eye. It was one of the most enjoyable things about my Morocco visit.

Laila LaLami's Moroccan Mint Tea:

Boil water in a kettle. Pour a little hot water in a tea pot to warm it up, then pour it out. Put in a rounded tablespoon of Chinese gun-powder green tea, then add a full handful of fresh mint. Add sugar to taste. (Most Moroccans like their mint tea extra sweet and would use about five tablespoons of sugar in a mid-size tea pot.)

Add boiling water, gently stir, and then let sit for about five minutes before serving (in a small glass, never in a cup.) If you like your tea pretty strong (i.e. Sahrawi style) place the tea pot directly on a very light fire and wait until foam forms at the top, then remove from the stove and serve. That’s about it.

This infusion is perfect with holiday cookies, or alone. I haven’t yet managed to screw this one up, and if I can make it, then, really, anyone can.

Planning a plan

The illustrious Bloglily asked fellow writers (including me, and boy do I feel like a sham) how they go about planning their novels.


Naturally, she and a few other authors have posted some nifty replies.

I'm still planning mine...

See, I don't really have a plan, and that is part of the trouble. To wit:

Plan A: In 2000, I quit my full-time job to freelance, because I had gotten some encouragement from some major authors and their agents. I was supposed to work on The Novel. Well, I was so freaked out by not having steady income, that I pretty much just focused on that. Now, in my defense, I did have a sort of a plan: I managed to join 3 different editing and writing consultant places, covering both coasts, which found me jobs for a small fee. That left me time to 1) write and 2) find other jobs. Which sort of worked til 9/11.


Plan B: When I found a full-time job after 9/11 I still managed to write and do many writing-related activities. I wrote and published several short stories, managed to win some fellowships and travel abroad, and somehow by a miracle, yet another agent contacted me about...The Novel. And, somehow I managed to work on The Novel--but in an uncomfortably haphazard way. That is, I did some free-writing and then I tried to come up with a plan. And then I reworked the plan. And then I reworked the plan. Soon, I was working on the plan more than...The Novel. Then the job became a nightmare of overwork, which left me little time for anything other than plugging the constantly sprouting holes in my soul from which the job sucked all life force.

Which leads me to...

Plan C: Okay, as most of you know, I quit said-nasty job and fled back to the erudite University environment, which has a comforting amount of vitality, learning, and stimulation. Hurray! Though this job has had a strikingly difficult learning curve (okay, I had to learn about 5 different computer applications), I can feel the life force of my soul returning. Therefore, I will be soon coming up with a plan to share with Bloglily and all of my fellow writers out there.

Until then, I am going to rip off ideas from Bloglily, Hob, Debbie, Nova, Relaxed Dad, Mike, and all of the others who post some plans out there. Courtney, are you listening?

Seasonal Invitation: Reading A Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas

'Tis the season to explore holiday-related literature!

I invite you to join me in reading and/or listening to Dylan Thomas' "A Christmas in Wales." Just the thing to curl up with in front of a crackling hearth, with a cup of eggnog, hot chocolate or mulled wine.

I will be reading the version illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman. I will follow that up by listening to Thomas read in the audio version. You can download this for free at Salon.com.

I will post my impressions December 14. You can email me your comments or links to your posts, comment here or comment on my December 14 post. I would love to hear your thoughts!

Peace on earth to everyone. Hope you can join in the merriment.

Friday Buzz: Joseph Conrad

This is an excerpt from an interesting Guardian article on Joseph Conrad, another author I'd like to explore more, especially The Secret Agent.

For Conrad, none of the big stories, from Christianity to communism to psychoanalysis (he met a disciple of Freud's in 1921 and was extremely scornful of the books lent to him), provided adequate explanations of selfhood. He had seen the decline and fall of too many men who put their certitude in equality or justice or liberty tout court. His fundamental position is revealed in a letter to his friend, the socialist Robert Cunninghame Graham:

Life knows us not and we do not know life - we don't even know our own thoughts. Half the words we use have no meaning whatever and of the other half each man understands each word after the fashion of his own folly and conceit. Faith is a myth, and beliefs shift like mists on the shore; thoughts vanish; words, once pronounced, die; and the memory of yesterday is as shadowy as the hope of tomorrow.

But behind the modernist sentiments and fabulous sentence-making, there is something else going on: an idea of moral and cultural dialectic, a sense of virtue as relative rather than fixed and static. By its nature, such a conception of virtue is likely to appear in negative form. As Conrad put it in his 1905 essay "Books": "To be hopeful in an artistic sense it is not necessary to think that the world is good. It is enough to believe that there is no impossibility of it being made so."

Thoughts for Thursday - Pan con tomate

I couldn't eat a whole lot in Spain due to the traveler's bug, but I could eat this. It's tasty, fast, simple. Thought I'd share with you today. Trust me: Delicioso!

slices of thick, rustic style bread
cloves garlic peeled and cut in half
small ripe red tomatoes cut in half*
extra-virgin olive oil
coarse salt or sea salt

*For the best flavor, use vine-ripe tomatoes, preferably home grown ones.

Grill the bread approximately 2 to 4 minutes per side on a barbecue or toast it lightly in the oven. Bread doesn't need to be toasted, either.

Next rub 1/2 clove of garlic over one side. Use a fresh piece of garlic for each slice.

Rub a cut tomato over the bread, pressing firmly to push the pulp into the bread, until the toast is covered with tomato; discard the skins and remaining pulp.

Drizzle olive oil over the bread and tomatoes; sprinkle with salt and if you'd like, add a couple grinds of fresh pepper. It's fun to serve guests with their own slices, garlic, tomatoes and a supply of olive oil and salt so everyone can make their own.

I suppose you can add manchego cheese, chorizo, or jamon -- but it's really quite good on its own.

Reading Dangerously...I like it!

Now that I'm back and refreshed (more on my vacation later this week, I promise! I actually need time to absorb all of the experience before I can write about it.), I've been chomping at the bit to get to a scholarship year -- that is, a year of writing and reading at a top level. Now that I work at a top University, I will access reading lists of the master's and PhD candidates. (Who knows? Maybe I can become a PhD candidate myself.)

Two ideas I like: Estella and Heather's "Year of Reading Dangerously." Okay, while I may pick and choose which novels in my 12 months, I admire their choices and will try to read along at least some of the time.

I also like this from Deweymonster: Reading from the New York Times Most Notable 100 Books of 2007.

I will probably combine the two.

In addition to continuing Proust, finishing Don Quixote and dipping into the NYT Most Notables, I want to tackle authors I've feared, classical literature, medieval literature, literary criticism, contemporary authors who are considered great, and some new names. Some of these authors include:

James Joyce
Homer
Virgil
Rabelais
Milton
Chaucer
Don DeLillo
Toni Morrison
Virginia Woolf
Philip Roth
Salman Rushdie
Stewart O Nan
Ismail Kadare
Orman Pahmuk
Gary Shteyngart
Voltaire
Goethe
Gogol
Willa Cather
Margaret Atwood

I wanted to write them down for posterity, so I have a list to work with for the upcoming year.

Plus, I've started Hunchback of Notre Dame, which so far, I love.

Girona, Spain II

Girona, Spain

This is a sculpture we saw in Girona, Spain. I have not been able to find out anything about it so far...but naturally I love it.

Postscript: Thanks to D. Chedwick, I found this link about the sculpture. I can't speak Spanish, and all I get out of the text is a bunch of PR about reflecting the cultural life of Girona. Can anyone else translate this? I was hoping it had something to do with writers who wrote even during Franco's rule.