Confessions of a Serial Book Juggler

Most nights, there is barely enough room in my bed for me to sleep. As I brush my teeth each evening, I’m forced to decide which bedmate I can boot to the floor (or, occasionally, my inadequately tiny bookshelf). The excuses pile up in my head like lines I would use to blow off last-minute plans: “Don’t worry, Jonathan Safran Foer, I’ll get to you soon!” “Alice Munro, you know I love your short stories, but I really need to focus on this memoir right now.”

It’s the apology-ridden language of an addict, only for me, the substance in question is less dangerous (depending on who you ask, at least) than drugs or alcohol: I’m a serial book-juggler, and despite my best efforts, I’ll probably always be one.

So what is a serial book-juggler, you ask? In the simplest terms, it’s someone who bounces back and forth between several books at a time, reading a chapter or two here and then abandoning the novel for a few weeks in favor of some other, attention-grabbing read. More complicated, for me at least, is the way these books feel like planets orbiting my life. In my car: three titles, one of which has been riding shotgun for the past two weeks, glaring back at me like a neglected puppy. In my living room: a neat little stack that my roommates have collected, through which they mean to say “Quit leaving books in the living room.” In my bed: well, let’s just not go there. The cat that once nestled next to my feet has been replaced with a hardcover copy of the Aeneid and a few copies of The New Yorker.

There’s an upside, if you’re the type to find silver linings. On the few occasions when some sneaky friend manages to get inside my room (usually, it’s so messy I bark out a quick, “Don’t come in!” and close the door), I seem like a very literary person. There have been plenty of times when an acquaintance has mentioned Elizabeth Bishop and I’ve said, “Oh, borrow my copy!” It’s a way to make friends, and then lose them very quickly when they realize that you’ll forgo social outings so you can save up for that new issue of McSweeney’s or whatever.

I’m not proud of it. It takes me ages to finish any one thing, unless that one thing happens to meet that perfect confluence of time/place/interests. I’ve been reading Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison for months, yet picked up the previously mentioned Paris I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down and gobbled it up in three days flat. Currently, I’m forsaking Don DeLillo’s The Names, a collection of indie short stories, and an MFA application guide in favor of an advance reader copy of a goth-themed YA novel.  

When I feel guilty or strange about my addiction to starting books, to juggling them all at once, the Pollyanna side of me says that these heaps of paper are like friends. With every relationship, there’s a cycle. Your best friends never leave – I pick up Bishop’s complete poems a few times a month. Sometimes, you make new ones. Sometimes, a connection fades, only to come back stronger when the seasons or your perspective changes. Other times, you just don’t jell. And you know what? That’s ok. Nobody likes everyone, and not everyone likes you. Sometimes your friends are hip, and sometimes they’re embarrassingly loud or geeky (Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, for my part).

I probably won’t change my ways. There are plenty like me out there, brows furrowing as they shove aside stacks on their bed each night. We are a secret union, this type, and when all the e-readers in the world go on the fritz, we’ll be there to lend you a copy of our favorite poems.

In Search of Jackson Brodie's Apartment

Tomorrow the 2012 Edinburgh International Book Festival begins in Edinburgh, Scotland.  Browsing the program is like reading the Who's Who of UK literary royalty - Pat Barker, Roddy Doyle, Ian McEwan and Ann Enright.  Not to mention the North American, South American and other writers that appear on the list of 800 authors that will be appearing across the next two weeks.  It's bound to be an exciting event.

Oh, did I not mention that I'm going?  I leave one week from today.  Tickets are in hand to some big names who will be reading while I'm there.  Could there be an event in the world that would be more tempting?  Not for me.

While I'm there I am in search of the wonderful apartment Kate Atkinson's main character Jackson Brodie occupies in the PBS series Case Histories.  I covet that place - former garage doors that act as a wall that can be opened to the outside!  I suggest reading the Jackson Brody series by Kate Atkinson.  The TV series doesn't depict the subtlety with which Atkinson draws our hero.

Check in on the blog.  There will be pictures and tales of the adventure to come.

Cheerio!  Ta Ta! Tarah!

Expat Lit: Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Rosecrans Baldwin disent "il ne faut pas pousser mémé dans les orties"

Alright. Confession time: I love France. I love Proust, I love croissants, I love Francoise Hardy. I love Midnight in Paris and the way the French can’t pronounce hard h’s. There are even a few real live French people I happen to like quite a bit that I met during my time at UNC. 

It’s weird, I know. I hope that you can still respect me, at least a little bit.

By virtue of my interests, it follows that I also really like books about France, especially those written by folks who (like me) weren’t born with the “je ne sais quoi” but have to trek over and put in some time abroad to earn it. There are three people I’ve read during my twenty-something years on the planet that have chronicled this search for baguettes and the right striped shirt quite aptly: Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Rosecrans Baldwin.

You might have just read those first two names, waved your hand dismissively at your computer screen and said, “Wow, Linnie, really obscure picks you’ve got there.” But bear with me. I’m going to try to get to the root of why these two famous expats and one less-famous expat have been so successful at chronicling life abroad where others have failed. Really failed –gag-inducing-Cinderella’s-castle-portraits-of-Paris failure. I’ve picked up certain books, gotten halfway through, and then wanted to chuck them out a window when the description of a stranger on the metro seemed eerily similar, in its voyeurism and sap, to a passage from 50 Shades of Gray. 

Thankfully, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Baldwin spare you the saccharine, the superfluous.  In A Moveable Feast, you get typical Hemingway: spare, sparse prose that might seem dry for an instant, then wallops you over the head with its beautiful phrasing and wordplay when you aren’t looking. Hemingway’s style works perfectly in his account of life with one of his many wives (I can’t be bothered to look up which one, in fact) and among his famous friends. Seriously, who else could get away with calling Gertrude Stein a boorish oaf? Where some of his works have their moments of coldness or detachment, you can pick up on his fondness for the city almost instantly here. 

There’s a characteristic that unites all three of these books (two of which are outright memoirs, the other of which draws heavily on Fitzgerald’s real life) – Paris (or France, in Fitzgerald's case), the beloved subject, is still liable to the same jibes and criticisms that all of the characters and events receive. It might still be sacred, but these writers aren’t scared of getting a little blasphemous, a little ornery.

I don’t want to bore you with the classics. They’re just good, ok? Just read them. We sell them at Flyleaf.

Know what else is good? Paris I <3 You But You’re Bringing Me Down. Rosecrans Baldwin’s now a Chapel Hillian, but his account of life in Paris was thoroughly enjoyable. I laughed out loud in the non-metaphorical internet way, and ended up typing out entire sections to send to friends in emails and Facebook posts. After too many years of French classes and francophilia, I ate up all the weird colloquial phrases and tales of weird city folk like candy. And there’s lots of oddity to take in. The French phrase in the title of this post means “Don’t push grandmother into the nettles.” Still figuring that one out. I don’t even think Rosecrans himself employs that one too often.

Who knows what draws us Americans to that city of light. I know I’d do a lot of things for a great pastry, or a chance to bump into Sofia Coppola on the street. But if you, like me, can’t afford to hop on a plane with your Louis Vuitton luggage… might I suggest a great book?

War and Art

Let me say from the start that I am a huge Pat Barker fan. I believe her Regeneration trilogy to be one of the finest collections of novels written about war and its aftermath.  My devotion and admiration for them is comparable to how I feel about Margaret Laurence’s Manawaka cycle.  For me, there is no higher praise.

It’s no surprise then that I was delighted to see that Barker has a new book coming out in October.  I asked for and received an advance reader’s copy from the publisher.  Toby’s Room is a slim volume that contains much to recommend it.  In fact, I can see reading this book multiple times gaining new insights on each reading. 

The story takes place during and shortly after the end of World War I (seemingly Barker’s favorite topic).  The titular character is Toby Brooke, a medical student who serves as a doctor on the front lines in France following his training at Slade School of Art in London.  (Barker’s previous novel, Life Class, is also set at the Slade with overlapping characters. Another trilogy in the making?)

Toby’s relationships are the center of the book.  Toby, his sister, Elinor, and her friends, Kit Neville and Paul Tarrant, all participate in the brand new world of walking wounded left by the war.  As an art student, Elinor studies the human body through dissection before the war and reconstruction of facial injuries afterward.  Barker is graphic about the damage done physically and emotionally to the service men.  Her ability to convey the change that war wrecks on individuals and to society as whole is compellingly empathetic, never preachy.

As an example, here is a passage about Paul relating his own grief over the loss of his mother to the grief Elinor struggles with throughout most of the book.

It seemed, looking back, that he’d grown around the loss, that it had become part of him, as trees will sometimes incorporate an obstruction, so they end up living, but deformed.

I'd recommend reading Life Class now and Toby's Room as soon as it is available in October.  

Not Quite Eden

Arcadia is the story of the Stone family who participate in one of the 1970s great commune experiments.  Bit, the first child of Arcadia, is the central figure.  Although Bit has greater perception than most children of Arcadia, he is aware of the dirt, starvation and general deprivation that occur around him.  The relationships are confusing and confounded by his naivety in the beginning of the book.  Things become clearer and more troubling as Bit ages reaching an understanding of the difficulties Arcadia’s families endure in their attempt to create a more perfect community.

Lauren Groff’s first book, The Monster’s of Templeton, introduced readers to a writer very concerned with character.  Groff doesn’t allow Bit to stray from his optimistic or idealized world view even when he experiences tragedies.  The reader can't help but hope for a happy ending even when it's unlikely to occur.

Hardcover: 304 pages

Price: $25.99

Publisher: Voice (March 13, 2012)

ISBN-10: 1401340873

ISBN-13: 978-1401340872

Shhh! I'm Trying to Think!

Do you know someone who abruptly leaves a party unannounced and the next day tells you she had a great time?  How about someone who says he gets “over stimulated” by large crowds or in big box stores?  Do you need a lot of down time in order to be sociable?  If any of this sounds familiar, you will want to read Susan Cain’s book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking.

Cain discusses the difference between extroverts and introverts in this book. The premise is not as simplistic as it sounds.  Cain isn’t arguing that there are only two types of people in the world, extroverts and introverts; she is investigating the characteristics of these two personality types and describing how American culture has come to     value one more than the other.

Cain offers examples of how introverted adults have developed coping mechanisms that allow them to be successful while dealing with their quiet nature. This book may be of particular interest to parents of children who are deemed shy or quiet. They may gain insight into their children through the eyes of the adults in the examples Cain provides.  

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

By Susan Cain

ISBN-13: 9780307352149

Published: Crown, 1/2012 $26.00

Rosecrans Baldwin May 1st, 7PM

Read Rosecrans Baldwin's hilarious new memoir.  Buy it here.  See him at Flyleaf May 1st at 7pm.

Months ago before I had the chance to read Rosecrans' memoir, I had the pleasure of attending a small dinner party hosted by him and his wife Rachel. The weather was nice enough that a long table on the porch was set. Before the introductions were done the hosts put a drink in my hand and made me feel comfortable. As evening darkened candles and hanging lights brought a pleasant ambiguity of place -- being out in the country, they brought me to the city, as if the lights were ambient glow of city buildings, of streetlights and signage. But if I were in the city, atop some highrise, I am sure these same lights would transport me to the country, the string of lights the stars, or somesuch. In other words, I felt transported and I attribute this to Rosecrans and Rachel. Unlike other doting hosts I have encountered, whose eagerness to please made me feel uncomfortable, their hosting style was so effortless, unobtrusively pouring wine, serving food and keeping the conversation going. Carafes of water were within arms reach of everyone -- so simple, so genius! Now having read Rosecrans' memoir, I can see how his time in Paris influenced him -- and not that any of the dinner parties in Paris I Love You, but You're Bringing Me Down went so smoothly, but that might just be it, that which makes his writing so compelling. Rosecrans has a clear eye for how things should go, so he is a great observer of when they do not.

Of course the memoir serves to show off his rare writing talents we previously saw in his debut novel You Lost Me There, the way his sentences surprise and delight and his amazing ability to convey character in a few quick lines. Take this paragraph introducing Bruno, Rosecrans' advertising partner:  
"Bruno was a late-thirties Parisian, stocky and morose. Year-round, he was reddishly tan, with a rosy flush that became a glower the more he drank. Bruno was roughly good-looking. His lips were plump, and one ear was scarred from rugby. There was a good deal in Bruno -- his sad confidence, his ponderous horniness -- for women to get hooked on. Over time, we'd talk a lot about girls. Bruno liked a good time. He liked wine, photography, gourmet food, the sea, and the hours he spent on Sundays repairing antique furniture. For Bruno, cigarettes were life itself. Same for his Yamaha scooter."

 Underpinning Rosecrans' writing is a kindness, humor and thoughtfulness that makes him so endearing as a memoirist, makes you root for him when his French lets him down in crucial awkward moments, but also when his French is satisfactory enough tell off a baffled telemarketer. This is probably why it is so fun to see him, with such natural humor and grace, in desperate moments of humiliation and confusion.

Please help me return the favor of a good host and welcome Rosecrans to Flyleaf Books on Tuesday, May 1st at 7pm.

--Land