#lit

I was so excited about the Friends of the Library book sale I was vibrating, and seeing red.

Ithaca is a beautiful town with all sorts of delightful people and a ton of great gems that you have to do a bit of legwork to find, which I appreciate.

The town marries nature with metropolitan, academic with pop perfectly and it is most definitely my sort of town. A great place to visit with great food and I strongly encourage you to check out the Lincoln Street Diner and Felicia’s Atomic Lounge and have a Fig Manhattan or a Horny Ninjarita. 

Book 12 of 52: A Walk In The Woods by Bill Bryson.

It had its moments. For every one quarter funny there was boring to uninteresting to educational. I especially liked the parts where he railed against government forest conservation services. So this covered the spectrum in terms of passable non-fiction. I’m going to teach this alongside Harkaway’s The Blind Giant for my first year seminar next fall. Bryson’s snarky and cranky tone would probably echo mine if I decided to embark on an expedition like this one, but this does have points that would do well in a classroom setting. Though for every interesting classroom bit and funny moment, it was covered by whole passages of Bryson ruminating on the flowers and the trees and yeah you’re bored aren’t you. I was for at least half of this book. He doesn’t really have staying power.

Barda was up to the fight—any fight and then some. The world of fire that she was born into and the way she was raised had obliged her to learn to be strong, vigilant, resourceful, and submissive to no one. But her intelligence told her that conflict is a waste, of life and time and energy, and she regretted it. She had her own narrative—a history of sorrow, hardship, and achievement—and though it constituted only one part of the larger mythology of Kirby’s epic; it was her part; she had earned it. She saw the wrongness, the wickedness, the unreasoning cruelty of the world, and though had been trained to withstand it, her heart rebelled. Mighty, she used her strength and risked her freedom to help the weak. In time she would mutiny against the might-makes-right strictures of her home and attempt to form a partnership of pyhsical and intellectual equals—with Mister Miracle, her paramour, the love her life. In his company in rare moments of quiet, she doffed her armor, laid down her Mega-Rod, and made him a gift—both of them knowing full well its value—of her vulnerability, her sorrow, the pain of her childhood and youth. She was a Valkyrie with a brain and an aching heart.

This is Chabon on Big Barda.

Sometimes I see red when I read Chabon. Like—why even bother? I reread, but it does no good. Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop trying so hard to be like someone other than yourself. It’s like he knows and is dangling that carrot in front of me, a mile down the road knowing I’ll never close the gap because I have flat feet and running is hard for me.

Seriously: get over it and strive for it as a goal, keep being you, continue to give yourself the platitudes of cliché AA motivational posters. Strive for the best version of you, rather than you as Michael Chabon. Why can’t I get over this? Because I think about it too much.

Like every essay book there are selections that are good and some selections that are dull. The LEGO one comes to mind. This book is a book by a nerd becoming a Capital M-Man, father, husband, brother and I liked it for those reasons. There are some particular selections that got me thinking about my relationship; Chabon helped by enhancing the overwhelming awe I have for the amazing woman I’m seeing. She’s so sure, confident, worldly, and—unlike me—has it together. Like Nick from New Girl said: “I am not a complete adult!” She is. She helps me get over myself, peeling away my frantic neuroses like we’re repainting a room, driving away my lack of confidence, and finally getting me to be okay with whatever it is I’m doing. She’s leveling me out, together we’re building some amorphous thing that embodies both of our lives, and I’ve never been this okay with change in my life.

“I Feel Good About My Murse” is what did this for me. In it, Chabon reflects on getting a man purse, something I’m guilty of, but totally okay with.

“There is nothing brave or courageous or remotely Robinson-esque about my contemplating the carrying of a purse, any more than there is in my taste for pink shirts, though I was once informed by a mother of my acquaintance, half disapprovingly, that wearing a pink shirt was a brave thing for a man to do. It’s simply the case that as I get older, I seem everyday to give a little bit less of a fuck what people think or say about me. This is not the result of my undertaking to exercise a moral program or of increased wisdom or of any kind of willed act on my part. It just seems to be a process, a time-directed shedding, like the loss of hair or illusions.”

What I realized when reading this, thinking about my neuroses in my new relationship, is that I just need to let go of my little obsessive qualities, rather than trying to be as good as someone, because there is someone spending her weekends with me and she likes me for being me rather than who I’d like to be.

There’s another passage where Chabon and his wife are looking at a painting of a sailboat crashing through rough seas. He makes the analogy that the boat is their relationship—he’s waffling between wondering who is the rudder and who is the sail or the body of the ship. It hardly matters, because you’re navigating the rough seas together and because we’re suited to each other we can get through it—just by being ourselves. 

Book 11 of 52.

Tragedy.

I walked in the rain, hat perched over my forehead, collar raised, hands in my pockets.

After which I returned home.

Then I went out again to get something to eat.

Then I ate it. 

adkmogulbooks:

Below is a list of the books submitted for the Adirondack Center for Writing’s 2013 Adirondack Literary Award. Winners will be announced at the awards ceremony on June 2, 4-6pm at the Blue Mountain Center in Blue Mountain Lake.

Children’s Literature:

George Arnold
What’s an Elephant…

Read the rest of the nominees.

Passed on the Neil Gaiman, because I hear this is pretty great. 

charliehuston:A set photo from the HBO pilot based on my book, The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death.  This was a couple years back, did not go to series, but I have excellent memories.  Among them was watching that glop fired from a cannon with cameras rolling.  Note to self: When your gruesome imagination becomes externalized in physical form you may find occasion for self examination.  i.e. “Did I write that shit?”

thoughtpeach: Charlie Huston’s on tumblr sharing blood spatter. Everything is good again.

I am really excited for this show. Also listen to Chris and follow Charlie, he’s one of the best crime novelists.