The pile of books on my night table has grown since Christmas, my
reading future right there within reach. These perfect presents provide
added security against idle moments and it is such a nice feeling to have choices made for me: how perfect -- nothing to decide.
As you may know from previous postings and from the newspaper column I wrote for years, I like lists. I like to know what other people are reading, especially people I know. There was a time when reading tips from friends came via postcard but now they come electronically. There are lists of bestsellers and recommendations via newspapers and publishers and that squid, Amazon. Book groups (I am not in one) abound, and it seems as if everybody is reading, reading.
My Ideal Bookshelf edited by Thessaly La Force (Little, Brown, 2012)
is like an assignment: select a small shelf and put on it a selection of books that you love, that changed your life, that inspired you, etc. etc.
The editor solicited more than 100 creative people, not just writers, and the results make such an interesting collection. Some of the people you've heard of -- some are probably good friends of the editor. I like it that
there are contributors I've never heard of. I like it that many of the shelves include books I would have put there myself.
I'll give you an example: Maira Kalman, a genius illustrator and writer, a person I admire above many! Her shelf includes two by Nabokov, two by Cecil Beaton, an Arbus, an Atget, I Married Adventure by Osa Johnson and a book on ceremonial uniforms. Kalman says, "I won't buy any books this week, then the next thing I know, I'm running to twelve bookstores and buying books as if I'm deprived." If you want a real treat, get Kalman's own book: The Principles of Uncertainty (Penguin, 2007) and think about putting it on your own shelf.
Here is another: Mary Karr. I've always liked the way she blats it out.
The Liar's Club (Viking, 1995) was my first Karr experience and I always used it as an example of made-up dialogue in a "true" memoir. Karr's list includes a Nabokov and poems by Pound and Eliot and Larkin. She includes To Kill a Mockingbird, Salinger's Nine Stories, and The House at Pooh Corner as books about the dispossessed and estranged, about people as weird as she felt herself to be. She also shelves Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, a book I'm reading now in slow doses, a nastier and more violent story than you can possibly imagine, told via razzle-dazzle writing so gorgeous it makes you suck your teeth.
Another good thing about this collection is the illustrations by Jane Mount. As you go through, you see books repeated and think of books
you'd put on your own shelf. It is a sweet, clever offering and I am so happy somebody got it for me!
Now the rest of the pile:
Elsewhere by Richard Russo (Knopf, 2012). A memoir about life in Gloversville, NY, of the 1950s, and mostly a tribute to his single mother, Jean, and the close-knit Italian family he grew up in. I've always liked
Russo and have read most of his novels, beginning with The Risk Pool,
(Random, 1988), most of them autobiographical, so I read Elsewhere as if it were about an old friend. You have to wonder why no photos or illustrations. What is going on, Knopf? This is one of your best writers!
Beautiful Ruins (Harper, 2012) by Jess Walter, a best-selling author I never heard of. It is a novel that jumps back and forth in time about a bunch of Hollywood people off the set of Cleopatra. You may remember the famous Burton-Taylor escapades generated by that movie and some of the cast spills over into this novel. The setting, a tiny hotel on an unknown Italian island, is home to several appealing characters who inhabit the story through the years. This bestselling novel seems to get ecstatic reviews and, though I finished, I grew impatient and skipped.
Full Body Burden: Growing Up In The Nuclear Shadow Of Rocky Flats
by Kristen Iversen (Crown, 2012). This is one of those sleeper books, a word-of-mouth success. Set in the small Colorado town that has been called one of the most contaminated plutonium sites in the U.S. where accidents were always called "incidents," Iverson tells a chilling tale of nuclear nightmare. I'll read it when I get up the power.
The Encyclopedia of Container Plants by Ray Rogers (Timber Press, 2010). First page I turn to: a big picture of a bird's nest fern, a favorite I have growing in a window here in Burlington. The snow is coming down hard outside and the fern looks at it, defying the season. Because my only garden space these days is a long, fairly wide terrace, I grow everything in pots. Each year seems to have a color theme, not exactly planned, but often coherent. Last summer, it was purple and orange: lots of marigolds and tradescantia. Now that I have this fine illustrated book, I might even
make a plan before I wander dazedly through the nursery aisles. Look! Here is a big pot of sedum, agave, kalanchoe, agave and echeveria -- all
colorful succulents that may withstand the hot, dry, windy conditions
three stories above the ground.
Bring Up The Bodies by Hilary Mantel (Holt, 2012). I read Wolf Hall
and look forward to this one which follows on. Ah, more Tudor history
with Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII, Thomas Cranmer and a large cast of Boleyns, Howards, Seymours etc. etc. Hard to keep it all straight and I keep going back and forth. Glad to have a real book here. The electronic version makes it impossible to refer to the lists, charts and family trees. I always read a book like this with maps, also. Sounds like work but is really study. Wish I could remember what I learn.
Dear Life: Stories by Alice Munro (Knopf, 2012). Who am I to say
Munro is depressing? I will give her another try. Surely, I've missed something.
In The Wilderness: Coming of Age in an Unknown Country by Kim Barnes (Doubleday, 1996). An author I never heard of with a memoir set in the big timber country of Idaho during the 1960s. Life in a shack built by loggers on company land? Sounds a little familiar. My mother was born in such a camp in Marlinton, West Virginia, where her father ran
a saw mill. This will be my next book. Thanks, Laura.
The Buddha in the Attic, a novel by Julie Otsuka (Anchor, 2011). Got all kinds of nominations and awards and I never heard of it. Getting deeper
down the well, is all I can say. Happy to have this little novel about a group of Japanese "picture brides" brought to San Francisco a hundred years ago.
With or Without You, a memoir by Dominica Ruta (Spiegel, 2013) was sent to me as an advanced reading copy. "My mother grabbed the iron poker from the fireplace and said, 'Get in the car.' I pulled on my sneakers
and followed her outside. She had that look on her face, distracted and mean, as though she'd just been dragged out of a deep sleep full of dreams. She was mad, I could tell right away, but not at me, not this time." So it begins -- another crazy mother and a smart kid who invents herself. I am drawn to these stories of the unprotected child and am glad to know Ruta has got herself a publisher with a national marketing campaign and big plans for promotion. Keep an eye out come March.
So many books. So little time. Thanks, everyone.
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