JULIE & JULIA

FINALLY the Julie/Julia Project book has come out! It’s called Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen, by Julie Powell, Entertainment Weekly gave it an A, it’s great, and you should read it immediately. (I, dorkily, had it pre-ordered from Amazon. It arrived on Tuesday and I’m already halfway through, reading ravenously. But then, I have read the entire blog’s archives straight through two or three times.) I suffered a moment’s disappointment because I’d been hoping for a straight-up collection of the blog postings in book form (like the Mimi Smartypants book), but it’s more of its own story, though there are excerpts and adaptations from the blog. This is cool in its own way, because there’s a lot of contextual information in it I didn’t know when reading the blog. I could perhaps wish for more actual food descriptions—the book is more like a proper memoir, with reflections on the author’s past, family, and friends, as well as Julia Child biographical snippets, held together by the overarching food theme, but that’s probably what makes it more appealing to the general, non-food-obsessed reader. The blog was food in the foreground, real life hovering in the background, but the book is the opposite. Regardless, it’s wonderfully written and entertaining and I remain eternally jealous of anyone who can parlay their blogging into a lucrative book deal with Little, Brown (although if I were serious about wanting that for myself, I would work a lot harder at writing here instead of resorting to stream-of-consciousness occasional blathering).

ANIMALS IN TRANSLATION

Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior, by Temple Grandin: Grandin is autistic, has a Ph.D. in animal behavior, and works (among other things) designing more humane methods for 50% of the nations’ slaughterhouses. She believes, and argues very convincingly, that being autistic actually gives her more insight into animal behavior because her brain functions more like an animal’s (totally detail-oriented, visual rather than verbal, etc.). Not only are her ideas really fascinating, but they are also laid out very clearly and concretely, with copious examples. When I read science writing I often struggle to understand some of the more abstract concepts; my brain reads the words faster than it can process the ideas, and I end up going over the same passages again and again, trying to wrap my head around them while my eyes glaze over in boredom. But because of the way Grandin’s mind works, I think, she takes complex ideas step by step, one little bit at a time, using simple words and sentences but somehow conveying huge insights. I’m riveted and am learning a lot almost effortlessly. I’d almost forgotten how much I like reading about animals. When I was a kid I had simultaneous subscriptions to Ranger Rick, National Geographic World, and Zoobooks. Then somehow I grew up into a science-phobe.

FROM THE MIXED-UP FILES OF MRS. BASIL E. FRANKWEILER

Over the weekend I finally embarked upon my long-intended goal to reread a bunch of the beloved childhood books I still own (or have repurchased since foolishly getting rid of them at 15 when I thought I’d outgrown them). The first book was From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, by E. L. Konigsburg, which I remembered as that cool book where the kids run away from home and live in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I liked the story then (and still do now) because as a kid my recurring fantasy was to be trapped in a bookstore, library, or toy store overnight so I could have all that great stuff to myself. I suppose this is a common expression of the wish for independence from one’s parents, crossed with good old-fashioned greed. Reading about kids sleeping in antique museum beds or bathing in fountains was the next best thing to living my fantasy, so that’s what I remembered about the book all these years. I’d totally forgotten that the main plot is the kids solving an art mystery, and I’d also forgotten who Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler was or what part she played in the story. On revisiting the book, my impressions were as follows:

1. It’s well-written, but I was surprised at how brief and often sketchy it was. I must have filled in a lot of details with my imagination when I read it as a youngster. In my memory, Claudia and Jamie spent at least a month living at the museum, but in reality it’s only a week. The book never dwells much on their motivation for leaving what seems to be (in the few hints given) a reasonably happy and wealthy home, yet as a kid it all seemed perfectly natural to me. As an adult, I couldn’t keep my mind from constantly questioning: “Well, would they really be able to do this or this?” To her credit, however, Konigsburg does keep things pretty believable; I found myself skeptical when the kids set about trying to solve the mystery (whether a certain statue was sculpted by Michelangelo or not) by simply reading books at the library or looking for clues on the statue, and I was like, “Yeah, right, like they’re going to catch something that international art scholars have missed?” but ultimately they “solve” the mystery by talking to Mrs. Frankweiler, and the point of the book isn’t whether the statue is authentic or not, but the kids’ need to believe and investigate and have adventures. So, thumbs up to that, especially to it being conveyed with a minimum of exposition, in just over 100 pages. If that same story had been written for adults, it could easily have stretched to over 300 (much like Donna Tartt’s overwritten The Little Friend, which annoyed me even though I wanted to like it).

2. I think it’s so funny that as a kid I read books indiscriminately, never bothering to notice when they were written, and a lot of the books I read (at least, the ones I read over and over again and remembered) were not that contemporary. I could tell when a book took place in “the olden days,” like the Little House or Betsy-Tacy series, but a lot of classic kids’ books were from the 1950s to 1970s, and I really did not notice this, even when the details didn’t match anything I’d encountered in my life. I really thought the Trixie Belden books were being written right when I read them, and the fact that Trixie’s mom takes her shopping for a girdle in one book totally slipped by me. I remember being befuddled by references to “egg creams” in Harriet the Spy, “halter tops” in a Lois Duncan book, and the infamous “sanitary napkin belt” in Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret (I hear the publisher has actually updated that since I read it, since so many kids consult that book for actual information about periods). Yet my confusion never got in the way of the story; in fact, I never gave it much thought. Now that I have a lot more knowledge about recent history, it’s so interesting to look back at these books and see all the clues to the context in which they were written. In From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (published in 1967), the kids are trying to budget their running-away money, so there are many amusingly dated references to how much things cost (full train fare from Connecticut to NYC, for instance, is $1.60). I was taken aback by a description of Claudia washing her petticoats (it’s so natural to envision a 12-year-old girl wearing jeans, especially when running away from home), and there’s a quaint part where the kids type a letter on a typewriter that’s set out on the street for public use.* You’d think these things might have given pause to a 9-year-old reader in 1986, but I glossed right over them. I wish I could get so caught up in a story now, turning off my analytical mind. Still, it’s the contrast between my early impressions of these books and my analytical mind’s current thoughts that makes re-reading them so much fun. It’s the closest I can get to re-experiencing my childhood with “if I knew then what I know now....”

*Also, as an editor, I’m still puzzling over the fact that Claudia keeps correcting her brother’s grammar, even though a contemporary reader (myself included) would accept his grammar as perfectly normal. Claudia is apparently adhering to an extremely formal school of grammar probably taught in schools then, but not followed now, even by word geeks like me. I don’t have the book with me, so I can’t provide any examples, but trust me, it’s kind of amazing, really.

There will be a longish break (of sorts) in the rereading project. I’m rereading another kids’ book now, but it’s one I first read just two years ago—the fifth Harry Potter book. I’m trying to brush up on my Potteriana in preparation for the new book later this month. Since they’re both thick tomes, this will keep me occupied for a while. But when I do return to the rereading project proper, I’m thinking my next pick will be either Island of the Blue Dolphins (love that survival stuff) or Many Waters, by Madeleine L’Engle (in which the kids get transported to Noah-and-the-Flood times, and I’m still on a biblical-literature kick after Lamb).

P.S. I do remember reading another E. L. Konigsburg book when I was little, about some kids who discover Tallulah Bankhead living somewhere secret, like in a basement or something...? Ah yes, Amazon tells me it’s called Up From Jericho Tel, and it’s quite well-reviewed. Konigsburg wrote—oh, wait, has written; I think she’s still at it—an amazing number of books...maybe there are other good ones I should take a detour and read?

LAMB

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal, by Christopher Moore, is A’s favorite contemporary novel and I’ve been promising to read it forever. Luckily for our household harmony, I loved it. You should really just read the book, instead of listening to me try to explain why I loved it, but here goes: It begins with an additional apostle named “Levi who is called Biff” being raised from the dead by an angel and locked in a hotel room in modern-day St. Louis to write his gospel, and it just gets better from there. Some of the humor is a little crude (really, I would have been fine with fewer bestiality jokes), but then, the narrator, Biff, is a pretty crude guy, which is kind of the point—that Jesus (or Joshua, as he’s called) needs an average Joe to look out for him in the human world and keep him grounded. What’s so great is that the book walks a fine line very well—it’s awfully funny and irreverent and sometimes downright dirty, but not offensive. There’s never any doubt in it that Josh is the Messiah, son of God, performing miracles, etc. He’s just got a little more of a sense of humor (my favorite part is when he walks on water and then convinces Peter to do it too, and Peter walks out from the boat and is like, “Hey guys, look at me—” and then promptly falls in, and Josh cracks up and says, “Man, I can’t believe you fell for that!” And then he says, “Peter, you’re as dumb as a box of rocks. But you have a lot of faith. On this box of rocks I will build my church.”). It’s a very smart and well-researched book—like all good satire, the more you know about the original source, the funnier it is. (In that respect, it reminds me of Monty Python’s Life of Brian, which combines ridiculous jokes with more detail about the sociopolitical conditions of Jesus’s life than you get in most Sunday School classes and actual good points about the nature of organized religion.) It’s also surprisingly heartfelt and poignant in parts; you care about the characters, and the story, of course, does have its drama. But still, mainly comedy, nothing too deep. After all, in the afterword the author says he wrote the book to answer the all-important question, “What if Jesus knew kung fu?”

NEVER LET ME GO

I just finished Kazuo Ishiguro’s new novel, Never Let Me Go, and can’t quite decide what I thought of it. Most of the book was slow and quiet, with the narrator reminiscing about her youth at boarding school, and I didn’t really care for the characters—the narrator’s voice rubbed me the wrong way, her best friend seemed like a huge jerk, and the male component of their friendship/love triangle never had much personality. But there were these dark hints and undercurrents that made me keep reading as fast as I could, because the book takes place in a dystopian version of the present and *SPOILER ALERT* the characters are all clones who have been created solely as organ donors. After a brief and happy time at school, they become donors in their 20s and perform repeated donations until they die. This is of course an extremely chilling and disturbing thing to read about, but it’s always in the background of the book, rarely in the foreground—the characters never actually try to question or escape from their fates, which I think bothered some of the readers whose reviews I read on Amazon, but to me that’s the point of the book, like all Ishiguro books, that the narrator has internalized the norms of a repressive society and is to some extent deluding him/herself and the reader. I think Ishiguro is trying to portray the characters and their lives as ordinary, except for the One Big Thing, which is cool, except as a reader you keep thinking the One Big Thing is such a cool concept, you wish there was a lot more of that in the book and less about the petty schoolyard drama with the jerky best friend. Still, it’s beautifully written in parts, sad and moving, and there’s a lot to think about. I need to read something happier now.

THE POLYSYLLABIC SPREE

So suddenly I’m addicted to reading. OK, I was always addicted, but now I’m like the smack addict who has to start shooting up into her earlobes or between her toes or wherever (sorry, all I vaguely know about heroin I learned from movies), and when I’m not reading I might as well be seeing that creepy baby crawling on the ceiling and spinning its head all the way around, because I am that distracted by the desire to be reading. In addition to Assassination Vacation and The Men Who Stare at Goats, last week I also read the newest No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency book, In the Company of Cheerful Ladies (those books are always light on plot, but they make me happy); and Ruth Reichl’s newest memoir, Garlic and Sapphires, about her career as the restaurant critic for the New York Times. You know how much I love reading food books (especially reading about food while actually eating food, and I do much of my reading while eating breakfast and lunch), and this one was delicious. Her tales of having to dress up in elaborate disguises (entire new personas, really) to avoid getting special treatment when dining out were fascinating, and the food descriptions were delicious.

Then I read a very appropriate little book, The Polysyllabic Spree, a collection of Nick Hornby’s columns from The Believer in which he simply writes about the books he’s bought and read each month. I could pretty much read Hornby writing about watching paint dry (except I hated his most recent novel, How to Be Good, and so I’m slightly apprehensive about the forthcoming one), but in particular I love reading his criticism—even if he’s talking about a book I’ve never read or a song I’ve never heard. I folded down so many corners of pages with great quotes on them, the book looks like I’ve been chewing on it. I nodded right along with this:

I don’t reread books very often; I’m too conscious of both my ignorance and my mortality….But when I tried to recall anything about [a certain favorite book] other than its excellence, I failed…. And I realized that, as this is true of just about every book I consumed between the ages of, say, fifteen and forty, I haven’t even read the books I think I’ve read. I can’t tell you how depressing this is. What’s the fucking point?

Although I like that a few months later, he decides, “if I’ve forgotten everything I’ve ever read then I can read some of my favorite books again as if for the first time.” I also liked this:

Being a reader is sort of like being president, except reading involves fewer state dinners, usually. You have this agenda you want to get through, but you get distracted by life events, e.g., books arriving in the mail/World War III, and you are temporarily deflected from your chosen path.

This is precisely how I feel right now (well, how I always feel, but now more acutely). There are so many separate reading initiatives I’d like to embark upon—rereading my favorite books I can’t remember, reading the books I own but haven’t read, reading big fat classics I’ve shamefully missed, reading the complete works of authors I’ve sampled and liked. But then they keep putting out these shiny new books, and I put them on hold, and the library brings them to me. I’ve decided to try to cut back on my library use (except for my most coveted items), so I can concentrate on the first two initiatives above—but then the hold list keeps disgorging new trinkets (including this entire recent spate of books) that have to be read immediately, and other things get tossed aside. Right now I’ve got two more books in at the library and five more on hold, but when that subsides, I’m hoping to finally read A’s favorite book, Lamb, and satisfy my hankering to revisit some old kids’ books, because summer makes me want to read the kind of book I can finish in one sitting.

THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS

I just finished the newest book by another This American Life contributor, Jon Ronson, The Men Who Stare At Goats, and amusing, yet scary and mind-blowing examination of some of the more bizarre pursuits of the U.S. military—including trying to train soldiers to be “psychic spies,” walk through walls, and kill goats just by looking at them. Everything in the book sounds totally crazy, but then it’s corroborated by other sources and becomes downright disturbing—especially when Ronson details how a lot of these new-agey enterprisies, begun in the ‘70s, are now reemerging in the War on Terror. It’s a disturbing prospect, but, like Sarah Vowell in Assassination Vacation, Ronson focuses more on his own experiences tracking down the story, which still keeps everything somewhat humorous and entertaining. I wouldn’t ordinarily be attracted to the topic, but it’s all in the way Ronson handles it.

ASSASSINATION VACATION

I adored Sarah Vowell’s new book, Assassination Vacation—oddly, because although I’ve read all of her other books and moderately enjoyed them, I always find them a little disappointing (especially Radio On, such a good idea but so annoying somehow in execution), or at least not compelling enough to want to own them. But Assassination Vacation seems to have more substance to me, and it taps into my love of other people’s geeky obsessions, as well as my appreciation of odd historical factoids and my fascination with visiting random historical sites. Anyone who wishes they could tour every presidential library, shares an affection for the brown-on-white National Park Service font, or wants to be a docent when they retire will enjoy following Vowell’s stories of her travels visiting every site related to the first three presidential assassinations (Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley). The book is funny, but also informative and surprisingly moving—it makes history real in the best way, as well as post-modernly examining the endeavor of trying to experience history through the buildings and artifacts left behind. It was one of those books where while I was reading it, I was already looking forward to reading it again.

CONFESSIONS OF A TEEN SLEUTH

Confessions of a Teen Sleuth: A Parody, by Chelsea Cain, is a totally genius book that I highly recommend to any Nancy Drew fan. It professes to be the true memoirs of Nancy Drew (who claims her loser college roommate, Carolyn Keene, stole all her stories and published them as fiction, but got a lot of the details wrong). It details a number of selected adventures from the 1920s through the present, but Nancy actually ages as the book progresses—she marries Ned Nickerson, has a son (secretly Frank Hardy’s love child!), ages, obsesses somewhat pathetically over sleuthing when her heyday has ended (trying to adjust to life as a housewife, she repeatedly lowers her kid into a well so she can rescue him), and tackles “real-life” cases such as Hannah Gruen (her father’s German housekeeper) being accused of being a communist in the 1950s (turns out it’s all a plot by Richard Nixon to blackmail Eisenhower, who once had an affair with Hannah, to resign from office). The book manages to include and skewer most of the Nancy Drew universe in inventive ways—“tomboyish” George, of course, is a lesbian, and Bess is not in fact “plump” as she is described in the books (that was revenge from Carolyn Keene after Bess stole a guy from her at a party), but being described that way demolishes her self-esteem and turns her anorexic. Not only the Hardy Boys, but also Tom Swift, Cherry Ames, Donna Parker, Trixie Belden (well, her daughter, “Foxy Belden-Frayne”), and even Encyclopedia Brown make appearances. It’s hilarious and I wish I’d thought of it first.

FINDING BETTY CROCKER

Shout out: The first book D sold as a literary agent, Finding Betty Crocker: The Secret Life of America’s First Lady of Food, by Susan Marks, has been published by Simon and Schuster and I’ve seen favorable reviews in Library Journal and Entertainment Weekly. I’ve got my very own copy, thanks to E of St. Paul, and started reading it this morning. I’d probably have enjoyed it even if there wasn’t a personal connection, since it touches upon my loves of food books, early-twentieth-century social history, women’s history, and advertising/propaganda (not to mention the MN angle—did you know WCCO was started by the Washburn Crosby Company, which created Betty Crocker and became General Mills?), but how cool was it to look at the acknowledgments page and see D’s name right there? So cool. Way to go, D! Buy the book, everyone.

THE BLACK THUMB

The Black Thumb is a 1948 novel by Constance and Gwenyth Little. Through the “Book Lovers’ Page-a-Day Calendar” A’s mom gave me for Christmas, I found out about this great publisher, Rue Morgue Press (which seems to consist solely of a husband-and-wife team), that reprints all these vintage mysteries that have fallen into obscurity—many written by women and featuring strong female detectives. My library has about 20 of them. The Black Thumb is really fun so far—it takes place in the scarlet-fever convalescent wing of a hospital, contains an axe murder, and features a sassy crime-solving young nurse who carries on witty, bickering love/hate banter with a hot doctor. All this in just 150 pages, and considering how eager I am to find out whodunit (and whether Nurse Norma scores with the hot doctor), I should be finished by tomorrow.

HOW WE ARE HUNGRY

How We Are Hungry, Dave Eggers’ new book of stories: I can’t help it, I know a lot of people hate him, but I’ve seen him read three times and still maintain a fondness for him—I like the way he writes and I like his snark and he’s kind of hot, too. Also, when he signed a book for me, he drew a really detailed picture and I appreciate that. But nothing he writes will be as good as A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius to me. Some of his work since seems repetitive or self-indulgent, and I don’t like short stories much anyhow, though this collection reprinted “After I Was Thrown In the River and Before I Drowned,” a story I first read in Nick Hornby’s anthology Speaking With the Angel, and I was reminded how much I love it. Anyone who can make something moving and poetic from a story about running and jumping narrated by a very fast happy dog is OK by me.

JAMESLAND

I started Jamesland, by Michelle Huneven, at E’s recommendation. Turns out it takes place in L.A., and the author is a food writer for the Times who lives in Altadena, the next town over from me. The verdict: I really like this book. Every time I have to stop reading, I can’t wait until I can start reading again. There’s nothing fancy about it; it’s just a good, strong, solidly written book with compelling characters who are vaguely interrelated and trying to figure their lives out, which sounds like the kind of contemporary fiction I can never really get excited about, but for whatever reason I’m becoming deeply involved in this one. One of the characters is a descendant of William James—hence the title—so there’s a nice intellectual/academic angle (and a slightly spiritual one, too). Thanks for the tip, E!

EASTER ISLAND

Easter Island, by Jen Vanderbes: I picked this up because a review compared it to Possession and I love A.S. Byatt. It has sort of a similar structure, in that it’s about academics, one half of the story is in the past and the other half is in the present, and there is a mystery about the past to be solved, but it’s slighter and simpler (and, of course, about scientists and anthropologists studying Easter Island, not British literary critics studying poets). The end was a little unsatisfying to me—if anything, I would have liked the book to have been longer and dwelt on a few things more—but I do love reading stories about experts and intellectuals and researchers and long, hard work in the field, lab, or library (I know, that’s nutty, but it always seems so quiet and orderly and yet interesting). In that respect, it was extremely satisfying.

THE KNOW-IT-ALL

The Know-It-All: One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World, by A.J. Jacobs: A man who read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica and wrote a memoir about it. Reading the encyclopedia is totally something I’d resolve to do (but then fail), so I could sympathize with his quest. Now I don’t have to do it because this book summarized the experience and let me pick up all the good trivia. I liked that it was even organized in alphabetical order, but the encyclopedia material is interwoven with scenes from his life while he’s reading it, and various adventures and investigations into the nature of intelligence. Very addictive and neatly done.

DEVIL IN THE DETAILS

Devil in the Details: Scenes From an Obsessive Girlhood, by Jennifer Traig: A hilarious and fascinating OCD memoir. Traig kind of reminds me of a female, Jewish, more mentally ill David Sedaris. Of the various mental illnesses, I’ve always felt closest to OCD—I know I don’t actually have it, of course, but I understand the sensation. I am, of course, semi-obsessive about lists and organization and planning, and I often have worrywart compulsions, like checking my purse every five minutes to make sure my wallet’s still there (even if the purse has just been sitting quietly on my lap, zipped, with no way for the wallet to fall out), or running back into the house before I leave to make sure the oven’s not on (even if I haven’t used the oven that day). I also used to do this complex OCD-like counting ritual when I was younger, which involved counting things (tiles, stripes in the wallpaper, etc.) to the rhythm of whatever song happened to be in my head, and repeating it over and over until the end of the rhythm matched the end of the row of tiles or stripes or what have you. These aren’t full-blown compulsions, because I can resist doing them if I really want to, but this is why the book interested me so deeply. Standing just at the edge of that behavior, I’m curious what it would be like if I fell over the precipice. Reading the book did make me feel a little crazy, especially because I was reading it while getting ready for my trip, which by necessity involves a certain level of obsessive organization—gifts packed? Windows locked? Spare key out for petsitter? Add to this a certain amount of guilt about leaving the pets alone with only half-hour visits by a relative stranger, and suddenly I found myself unplugging the paper shredder on the wastebasket in case one of the cats accidentally fell into it and began shredding himself. My anxieties were running amuck, but at least, thanks to Traig, I could laugh about it. I really recommend this book.