Julie & Julia
Julie Powell
Non-Fiction
Read from 6/19 - 6/21
My grade: 7
Funny, Gross.
#24 - Your Money or Your Life
Your Money or Your Life
Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin
Non-Fiction
Read from 6/14 - 6/19
My grade: 10
Exactly what I was looking for.
#22 - Yarn Harlot
Yarn Harlot
Stephanie Pearl-McPhee
Knitting
Read from 6/6 - 6/8
My grade: 7
My dorkdom also has no bounds.
#41 – Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular
Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular
Rust Hills (seriously)
Non-Fiction / Writing
Read from 9/14/06 – 9/21/06
My grade: 8
I read this quite slowly, on purpose, because I really wanted
to get it. Like Dane Cook, I didn’t just listen, I LISTENED.
I incline naturally toward novels. Part of that is reading speed – short stories are so quick. Like commercials. That’s often unsatisfying. So I was trying to figure out what short stories are supposed to be doing. I often finish one and think, “Okay, but then what?” And they never seem to end with a plot-type resolution, but some kind of too-subtle character beat that I inevitably miss.
The main theme in this book is that every part of a short story is connected – i.e. a tale about an aimless character will have rambling language. I mean, I learned this in high school with the rest of you, but I guess it didn’t sink in. Plus, I sort of have my doubts. I’m sure that, for example, Hemingway could write a short story about an aimless character wandering around, and do so in four word sentences. I see why the writer and academic would want this unity of parts – to match structure to plot to language to symbolism, but I’m not sure it does much for me. Sadly, my response to overt symbolism is usually, “Okay, I fucking get it, desert = loneliness, stop telling me.” On the other hand, I miss all but the most amateurish symbolism.
For example, I recently read a short story in the New Yorker, the one with the depressed lesbian who loses her sort-of-girlfriend, takes up a career in peep shows, gets the girlfriend on limited terms, loses her again, and then it ends with her vowing she will quit the peep show job if however many minutes pass, and it ends with her counting them down. Okay, fine, I see that she has been changed, that through the story she has actually learned to let go of girlfriend, and maybe has decided to be her own person now. And I see that she is likely to quit the peep show. BUT! I honestly want to know what she does next week. It’s not enough to be shown some tiny change in her emotional outlook (or rather, having to infer the same). It doesn’t feel like a whole story to me. Hills actually addresses this obliquely, saying that maybe “story” isn’t the right word for these things, and he tries out “epiphanies” which, while he admits that's pretentious, does actually seem more apt.
Anyway, the book was fabulous, and really made me think about short stories and why they don’t work for me, and how I can work around that. I learned a lot about what the writers are trying to do, without feeling like I was stuck in English Literature 101. I hope that I will enjoy short stories more – I’ve decided to stop skipping the New Yorker ones – and try to engage them on their own terms, not as really short, bad novels.
#39 – The Know-It-All
The Know-It-All
A.J. Jacobs, Jr.
Non-Fiction
Read from 9/5/06 – 9/11/06
My grade: 7
A gift from friend of Rota, Anthea!
Well-written, in the line of Julie & Julia in many ways.
A light non-fiction read. I tried not to read implied insult into the choice of
gift. Hee.
Subplots about his rivalry with his father, and trying to conceive with his wife added a little depth.
Never boring, often pretty funny.
Oddly, even I started to get annoyed when he’d bring up tangentially related facts to family in friends, trying to show off his smarts. He started to wear on me a little in places, but the book is based on his insecurity about his intelligence, so that’s understandable.
