I always dressed up for deadline days. Heels, skirt, smart green jacket. Magazine publishing has its rhythms and if the editor won’t dance to them, she can’t expect her staff to. I don’t float feature ideas in Fendi heels, and I don’t close an issue in Pumas.
-from “Little Bee” by Chris Cleave, my new read that is totally sucking me in, in a dangerous “may not accomplish anything else this week” way.
There was a joke he liked. Goes something like this. Two guys meet at the Pearly Gates and get talking. One says to the other: ‘How did you die?’
‘I froze to death,’ he says.
‘What did it feel like?’ says the first one.
‘Well, it’s uncomfortable at first,’ says the second. ‘You shiver, you get the shakes, there’s pain in your fingers and toes, it’s cold as hell, but then it becomes relaxing and you just go numb and fall asleep and that’s it. What about you? How did you die?’
‘I had a heart attack. See, I knew my wife was cheating on me, so I came home early one day, found her in bed, reading. Middle of the afternoon. How suspicious is that? So I ran round the whole house looking for the guy she was fucking. Down to the basement. No one there. Up to the second floor. No one there. Then I ran fast as I could to the attic, I knew he had to be hiding somewhere. Just as I got there – boom. I had a heart attack, and here I am.’
The second man shakes his head.
‘That’s so ironic,’ he says.
‘What do you mean?’
‘If only you’d stopped to look in the freezer, we’d both be alive.’
-from “Circle of the Dead,” by Ingrid Black
Apparently all I did in January was read. The choices in other categories were sparse, my friends, very sparse.
The best movie I saw in January was Coraline.
The best book I read in January was The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, which was just outright excellent. No doubt about it.
The best gig I went to in January DOES NOT EXIST. I didn’t see/hear any live music in January? WTF!
My favorite tunes in January were MGMT “Oracular Spectacular”, new Bon Iver EP “Blood Bank” and Why? “Alopecia.” I was also still listening to Frightened Rabbit “Midnight Organ Fight”. A lot. And other favorites from 2008.
Random personal highlights: Brunch with cousins; tail-end of Cat’s visit including brunch w/ Lauren-O and Petey Sweatshirt; Cinnamon-arranged Stitch ‘n’ Tweet; BStarG returned to TV: fancy dinner for T; Game Day! at my house; Party in Milwaukee; Spamalot. Huh. Pretty good month. In retrospect.
Lowlights? Stress at secondary browsing location. (Shocker, I KNOW.)
Eating: Stress is making me not hungry. Oh I’m still eating. But it just makes my tummy feel worse than it already does. Wouldn’t it be nice if this led to some unexpected droppage of excess poundage? (It won’t.)
Making: I did finish a bunch o’ matching nickname hats over the weekend. But I haven’t done much lately. Sure, crafting should be a stress reliever. But it is also an energy user and I don’t have much of that right now.
Reading: At home, as I mentioned already, I’m reading “City of Refuge” by Tom Piazza, which is mostly really good but also too sad to read on the El (I hate crying on the El!). Therefore in transit, I am reading “The Forest of Hands and Teeth” by Carrie Ryan that I picked up after reading this review and it is soooo good. (And actually it’s sad also. What was I thinking? Beautiful. But Sad.) But I’ve probably only got one more train ride left with it so I’ll have to pick out something else shortly.
Watching: BStarG. BStarG. BStarG. I think I will be crying Friday night. And by *think*, I mean there’s a 99.9% likelihood of that happening.
Listening to: Every single thing I bought in 2008. Shuffled. Working on my “favorites of the year” list because I think that’s really useful to have in, you know, MARCH or even APRIL. 😉 Hahaha.
Failing at: Managing. Things. such as 1) eating; 2) spending; 3) (which are both due to) stress. (Thanks to MissStephanie for my new category)
Pleased to meet you meat to please you
said the butcher’s sign in the window in the village.
–from “Domestic Violence” (collected in Domestic Violence) by Eavan Boland.
Shyla Bruno was doing a review of Philip Roth’s newest book, and Craig said, “You going with ‘Goodbye, Portnoy’ for the head?”
“No – listen to this – Allen came up with ‘The Gripes of Roth.’ ”
Craig waited a moment and then issued one of his patented, arch, stagey chuckles. “Bingo,” he said.
–from “City of Refuge” by Tom Piazza, which I bought after I read this (I myself am NOT much of a Lahiri fan) and am sooo enjoying. Enjoying in a tearful, maybe won’t read in public because I might start bawlin’, kind-of way.
Bought in Dublin, baby. An Irish poet my Dad introduced me to a few years ago when we were trading packages of “here’s some of my books you should read” recommendations, and I read (and told you about) one of his translations when I was home for Christmas a year ago. I was so excited to go into Hodges & Figgis (a GREAT bookstore in Dublin), stroll over to the irish authors section, and find a HUGE selection of his stuff. It was hard to choose what to buy!!!
I chose this one and I think I did well. A collection in two parts, a man and a woman, a story told, and then retold, mirrored from one part to the next, intertwined with other events. I read it several times over several days, and still want to go back for more. Certain images and themes repeat over and over again, with different details ringing in your head. Little moments, expanded, then contracted, then expanded. These were lovely poems and my regret is I didn’t buy another book of his when I had the chance. I’ll be searching out more, you can count on it.
(For those of you poetry scares off, these were very accessible. Readable even without pondering of the deeper layers, and the repeat images, and then connections tethered and severed…)
I enjoyed her debut novel last year. Then I got one of the stories from this book in my One Story subscription (which I highly recommend you treat yourself to. It’s cheap, it’s good, and it’s just one story. EVERYONE can make time for one story!!). I was so excited to see this collection come out and not one bit disappointed. Very, very good. Better even than her novel! My second favorite book of the year so far. Such an impressively wide range of characters and timeframes and situations and… And really, I cannot recommend these stories highly enough. They were all completely individual (sometimes a problem in short story collections), and completely engaging, and original, and UNEXPECTED. I’m in awe.
The second Charlie Bird book (here was the first). Bought in the Atlanta airport on the way home. No New Orleans this time, primarily set in the boonies of Maine (ha!). As with the first book, has an intense layer of psychology/mythology that somewhat overpowers (not necessarily in a bad way. mostly good, sometimes a little frustrating) what would otherwise be just your normal mystery novel. Makes everything creepier and ickier. Has some follow-up to the ending of book one, but I feel there is more to come with those relationships.
The follow-up to HeartSick, already out in paperback in Dublin, YAY! Just as totally fucking CREEPY and TWISTED and DARK as that one was. And just as damn good. Eeeeck!
Bought and read in Dublin, yay. An Irish writer…who sets his mysteries in America; this one in New York City and New Orleans. If you, like me, have British relatives and friends who get completely BENT OUT OF SHAPE when some American writer sets their books ‘cross the pond and gets little details wrong… Yeah, I kind of had to shake my head and laugh at seeing the opposite occur. (Not that he’s “British” being “Irish” but the correlation is there regardless.)
In some ways, it’s a mystery series like any other: an ex-cop Charlie Bird, with a sad personal history of violence, winds up involved in a mystery, has some criminal friends and some not, there’s really brutal murder and mayhem. The additional spin here is that this has far more than your average mystery’s amount of psychology and mythology running under it. Bird’s thoughts often go wandering off for a bit into an underlying sort of swirl of emotion and ESP like feelings. Sometimes it added interesting themes and I went with it; other times I wanted him to get back to solving the mystery already!
Dark, gruesome, brutal. Some horrible stuff happens to quite a few people. Pretty frakkin’ intense. (In a good way. Obviously.)