Guilty Pleasures

What, exactly, defines a literary guilty pleasure?

I know they exist, at least insofar as there are books I'm frankly embarrassed to admit I've read (no, I will NOT name names, so don't ask...publicly). But I'm not sure where the line is drawn between "fun, light read" and "guilt because I read."

 Guilt because you're reading about pleasure is another thing entirely.

Fantastic Reading with Elephant Rock Books

Just got back from Storrs, Connecticut, and I'm still glowing about the fabulous Roar Reading that Elephant Rock Books put on there tonight!

Mary Collins and Emily Lyon both read fantastic, funny, moving pieces, and the room was full--no small feat for a Monday night reading series in a smallish town!

Winter Reading List

Lately, for a whole host of reasons, I just can't. Even.

Seriously.

I'm all over my "real" writing (read: the three books in various stages of completion, and the essays, and the new freelancing gig, and the side projects with my humor writing partner, and, and, and), but this day job racket isn't cutting it in the middle of cold, dark January. Just getting through the days sucks any "even" I had right out of me, and every evening I wind up in a fetal curl on my couch, staring mindlessly at the TV,

Which is why I need a good book list.

I used to think that winter was the time for reading serious books, since you don't want to leave the house anyway, but I'm starting to question that; I have so little energy that I CAN'T leave the house. I certainly can't use what's left on Proust.

Of course I can't waste perfect summer days on something so mentally taxing, either. Or fall, coz that's my favorite season. It's possible I'll never read a serious book again. But that's another matter.

Point is, I need suggestions of can't-put-'em-down books to get me through these darkest of days.

So tell me the most recent book that fits that bill for you.

Help keep my brain from freezing up the same way my social life has!

How Many Stories Do We Have?

There's a theory that most writers have probably heard, and some readers would probably agree with in an ego-cripplingly short amount of time:

Every writer, great, good, or otherwise, really only has one story to write, and s/he keeps on writing it over and over.

Or, in the case of Harper Lee, just the once, then mic drop.

And that's how you kill a mockingbird. Bitches. 

Confessional: I Don't Like Short Fiction

If you're an intelligent, humanities-type person, I would wager that there are a certain number of cultural categories that you feel almost obligated to like, or at least grudgingly commit yourself to keeping up-to-date with.

You know what I'm talking about. The "this proves I'm smart" list. It includes things like:

• "Important" movies
• Semi-obscure scientific discoveries
• The vaguely defined world of art
• Philosophies
• Capitalized Literature
• lower-case bands
• World events
• Obscure cheeses
• Classic cocktails
• A genteel smattering of classical music, dance, and the theater

And, in certain circles,

• A mostly-smirking appreciation of current "pop" culture

The Patina of Culture

Oh, that's SO Jungian.

Of course in CountryName social norms are just completely different.

Well the [Post-Modernists/Medieval ruling classes/Oneida Community Members/Basically any other movement-era-group-schoolofthought] were generally much likelier to [pick your blanket statement] than we are today.

I'm not the only one who bullshits this way, am I?

WARNING: Writing Ruins Reading

Apologies for the click-bait title; it's not QUITE as dire as all that.

It's just mostly dire.

Now don't get me wrong--I'm still the kind of person who falls in love with books. Pushes them on every friend I talk to while the afterglow is still strong. Stacks new ones around the house, in tottering towers, all of them "ohmygod I have to read this right now," and none of them capable of preventing me from buying yet ANOTHER title the next time I pass a book store. Thinks about the characters, sometimes months later, as though they're real people who are real-life friends with me, capable of thinking about me back. All of that is me.

But the longer I write, the more I find myself incapable of turning off my "writer's brain" when I'm reading. I'll come across a sentence that's very expository and an alarm starts blaring internally, "INFO DUUUuuuuUUUUUMMP!" Or I'll catch a character looking in a mirror early on, just so the author has a chance to describe the length and texture of her hair, and the deep wells, or velvet pools, or piercing steel of her eyes. Cliche. Easy. Or I'll read a lovely description of something tangential to the story, like a sunset or a puppy's sorrow or abdominal muscles, and I find myself thinking "So? Who cares?" EVEN THOUGH I LIKED THAT PART.

The First IMPORTANT Book You Read

I remember dozens of books from my childhood.

I can picture myself breezing through any of the interchangeable dozens of American Girls books my mom had been forced to buy us on the dark, carpeted hallway that led to my father's tiny den. Or see me and my sisters snuggling up against my mother as she read us Laura Ingalls Wilder's novels, or cried through Where the Red Fern Grows. I remember gloating about the 437-page length of Amy's Eyes (though I now have no recollection whatsoever of what the book was about), a book I was directed towards after I exhausted my elementary school library's stock of John Bellairs stories, starting with The House with a Clock in its Walls.

But everyone has a FIRST most-important-book. A book that changed things for you, made you a reader, somehow inflected the literary life you've had since. 

I'll Never Let Go, Book! I'll Never Let Go!

So after a few months of "research" reading only (which amounts to SOME legitimate touchstone-choices, and quite a few this-candy-tastes-good YA reads), I was feeling a bit intellectually guilty.

Stupid Slate article messing with my head (because I can admit this much: I'm defensive first because I think she's totally uninformed and wrong, but second because I fear there's some grain of truth beneath the total wrongness).

So I picked up a grownup book a friend was vociferously recommending, and which, as a Pulitzer-winner, I should have read a while back, anyway: Olive Kitteridge. 

I am shocked at how much I'm loving this book, especially since it's structured as a bunch of short stories, a format I rarely respond to as readily as I do to the full-blown-novel thing. I'm totally absorbed. I even turned off the Real Housewives to get back to it last night.

I know. Whoa.

Grown-Up Reactions to Kid Lit: The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson)

My friend MK is a high-school librarian, so both of us read a pretty remarkable amount of kid lit. In this maybe-semi-regular-feature, we discuss it!

Jilly: First thoughts on this one?

MK:  Well, one of my first thoughts for this one is that we have the opposite problem with our narrator, who reads as older than 12 to me for most of the book.

Jilly:  Totally agreed. I'd put Percy at about 14

MK:  Yup. Especially since they make such a big deal of his dyslexia/problems in school early on (which I realize are later explained by his brain being wired for ancient Greek or whatever)—his vocabulary is awfully expansive.

Jilly:  I mean, with boys developing more slowly, generally speaking, he could have been 15, with his vocab, his punning, his proto-sex-drive. I feel like he and Annabeth were being set up as eventual love interests (in the series) and their awareness of all that felt older than 12

MK:  Actually that was the part the felt the most authentic to me-he teases her for having a crush on Luke, but I don't think there's sexual tension between the two of them at all.

Jilly:  I don't think they have sexual tension yet; I think they're being set up to develop it later.

MK:  I wouldn't be surprised if that's the case. I just think he's completely unaware of it, in the way that tweens can still be friends-ish with the opposite sex.

Jilly:  That's fair. You don’t think her crush on Luke felt more 14-ish? I felt like Annabeth's vibe was generally older, which increased my sense that Percy felt older, too. Like the anger with her dad could have been 15 for me.

MK:  Well, you said it yourself- she seems older because she's a girl. I think their relative maturity levels make sense.

Jilly:  I think they do, but she felt older to me AS a girl. Anyway, we can agree that the kids these days, they grow up so fast.

MK:  Hahahaha. Yes.

Jilly:  What did you think of the characterization of the myths and the gods etc.?

MK:  I liked it, but I also got this sense of "This will go PERFECTLY with our unit on mythology!"

Jilly: Percy's recall of all the myths sometimes felt a bit forced

MK:  YES. Especially from someone who is flunking tests on the subject!

Jilly:  I can't imagine ANY 6th grade class going into that much depth with mythology, either. That level of memorization is high school or older to my mind

MK:  I also found the "misunderstood troublemaker finally finds his place" narrative not overly believable, because the place turned out to be "among super intelligent nerds."

Jilly:  Yeah. The ways that he made trouble honestly felt more like the accident-prone kid than anything

I think part of that was Riordan playing to his audience of, presumably, 10-year-olds

MK:  Yes.

Jilly:  Like "HAHAHA HE DID WHAT???" But if that kid were in a classroom, I think most teachers' response would be exasperation, but they'd try to work with him. They'd also understand that a kid with dyslexia would need a different class load -- I mean, he was clearly attending private Manhattan schools. I find it hard to believe that his dyslexia would be allowed to totally dive-bomb his education at places like that.

MK:  Well right. They don't get any money if they kick him out.

Jilly:  All of this is definitely adult quibbling though; I doubt many 10-year-olds would be bothered by any of it, and it doesn't significantly impact the book, it's just some of what I see as a string of "convenient short-cuts" the author makes. Like a trope of YA is that authors want to get their kids not to have to deal with modern technology, because it's too awkward for them to manage.

MK:  Well, it also dates your books more quickly.

Jilly:  True. Anyway, Riordan had a good enough reason for that work around, but I feel like a lot of his explanations for those things--the "I just need to get the kid to place X or to not have thing Y around"--were a bit "convenient." Sorta like "meuh, good enough, let's get back to the underworld."

MK:  That's fair. I felt like he was doing The Odyssey for 12 year olds, but only some of the time.

Jilly:  Do we think the book will get kids into mythology in general? I feel like it could - it does make the myths feel human

MK:  I feel like it gets kids More into mythology if they already have an introduction. I just think it's introduced as sort of intermediate level knowledge.

Jilly:  What do you mean?

MK:  Like, Percy is "remembering" a bunch of stuff from class, but some of it seems like "Oh, we all know who Zeus is."

Jilly:  Oh, that's fair. Yeah, and for gods like Hephaestus, that sort of "duh, we all know THIS guy" thing is asking a lot.

MK:  Exactly. And I think references can get readers interested in learning more, but if there's a base level of understanding you need to even Get the reference, that's either frustrating or you ignore it completely.

Jilly:  Right--you skim right past it and never find that myth, or even think to want to. Like the Aphrodite cabin is only referenced as being monstrously vain.

MK:  Yeah, we definitely get the PG version of Aphrodite and Bacchus.

Jilly:  No joke. The Diet Coke? C'mon now. All of that said, I feel like it sounds like we didn't like this book, but I thought it was pretty charming.

MK:  Hahaha. Yes, it's very readable.

Jilly:  I especially loved that Percy wasn't Zeus's kid, which is what I expected.

MK:  Okay but how annoying was it that it took pretty much the whole book for him to figure out he has power over water? JUST GET IN THE DAMN WATER.

Jilly:  RIGHT? It was like, "I made a fountain move, then I somehow made pipes spit water on my enemies, then I felt immediately healed in water, and yet no one, truly no one, can determine who my god-dad-or-mom is."

MK:  "Weird, I get this strange feeling every time I'm near water...  must be a coincidence."

Jilly:  I guess I chalked that up to the author wanting to give his readers a mini-mystery they could definitely solve. Like the sense that they got it, YESSSSS! CALLED THAT ONE BRO!

MK:  Now I'm imagining a bunch of 10-year-olds reading it at the same time and being super smug. "Oh, you haven't figured out who his dad is yet?"

Jilly:  I mean...I would've been that 10-year-old. ATHENA CABIN TILL I DIE!

MK:  Hahahaha. By the way, knowing that there are a bunch of half-bloods running around, they sure give those assholes a lot of leeway for capture the flag.

Jilly:  no joke. That summer camp is a liability NIGHTMARE.

I Confess...

Even though I claim--I think truthfully--to love books, and even though my day job is not NEARLY mentally taxing enough to make post-work reading some sort of brain-strain, and even though I'm trying to launch my career as a full-time, capital-A Author...

...I watch a lot of TV.

And not all of it is good.

Yeah, yeah, I know...

I think TV has finally matured enough that most people grant it a greyscale of quality (one we've long since allowed for film and literature). It's no longer ALL brain-rotting; there's legitimate art playing out on television.

On the one end of said scale are blindingly-bright shows--in my mind this includes everything from Planet Earth to The Killing (Danish version)--that people consider enriching, intelligent, deeply layered, or any number of other words that imply that watching them is an effort not to just kill time, but to attain some level of cultural or intellectual literacy.

Then there's middling stuff, equally entertaining and well done, shows that people don't judge you for watching. I'm thinking Game of Thrones goes here, possibly Sherlock, and maybe my new addiction Orphan Black.

I think of these shows like I think of really well-executed genre fiction (which, if you haven't figured it out yet, I'm deeply attached to): some people still look down on them slightly just because they entertain, but if you're not a total snob, you can see that while they may not focus exclusively on matters of great philosophical weight, as well-written entertainment, they still add value to peoples' intellectual lives.

And then there's the other stuff I watch, the stuff that absolutely sucks brain cells out slowly through my ears (more quickly when I play Candy Crush at the same time). Really, I think the majority of TV falls into this category: the intelligence-rotting, time-wasting, lowest-common-denominator crap that I'm SO DEEPLY ADDICTED TO.

Not only do I know who this woman is, I DELIBERATELY LISTEN TO HER TALK. 

I now follow fully four franchises of the Real Housewives series. I will throw away 45 minutes of my life watching awful women--sorry, awful Dance Moms--scream at one another and generally eff up their children's lives permanently. I think I have seen at least 98% of the episodes of Ghost Adventures, something I tell myself I'm hate-watching, which, at this point, has become indistinguishable from just watching.

Besides, "hate-watching" is just a term smart people have made up so they can feel better about their lowbrow tastes.

Please tell me I'm not the only one who, occasionally, takes the braindead way out on a Tuesday evening.

The rest of you must have guilty TV pleasures, too, right?

RIGHT???

Slaughtering Sacred Cows: A Wrinkle in Time

Recently, I chatted with a friend about Harriet The Spy, a book that I was overjoyed to discover was even better than I had remembered.

But there are some books that you go back to, thinking that as certified "classics" they're sure to stand the test of time, and you realize that kid-you must have been much less discriminating than adult-you has become.

I'm sorry to have to say it, but that's what happened with A Wrinkle in Time.

I had only the vaguest memories of the book, and they were mainly that it was very complicated. I think I must have originally picked it up around the age of 7 or 8, and it was just over my head; jumping through space-time with a 5-year-old who speaks like an olde tyme BBC production was lost on me...

...as was the incredibly heavy-handed moralizing.

I know the idea of teaching a moral lesson in kid's lit isn't new; in fact for many people it's one of the many "musts" of children's stories. But the incredibly overt strain of indoctrination that permeates certain books--the Narnia series is the other prime example I can think of--is just so hard to ignore as a grown-up.

Rereading this felt like when I read Ayn Rand again at 20. At 14, it seemed SO PROFOUND. Being capable of picking up on an actual theme in a book--one which was intended, with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer--made me feel so smart that I thought I liked Rand's writing.

When I revisited it with a formed brain, it looked more like what it was: very thinly-veiled propaganda being spouted by wooden characters.

At least Madeline L'Engle wasn't a Randian...but she was clearly a devout Christian, and the ways in which her pet philosophy continually crops up in this book (and presumably the later titles in the series, none of which I'll be rereading) become just as ham-handed by the end.

That wasn't even my only issue with the book--L'Engle's 14-year old protagonist reads like a young 10-year-old, which is always a pet-peeve for me, and her main character traits seem to be stubbornness and wanting to hold hands, making her remarkably 2-dimensional for a book that explores a fifth one--it's just my most prominent gripe.

It's not even the content of the philosophy that's problematic, it's the way it's deployed: SO OBVIOUSLY. Am I the only one who just can't get behind this book? Have I just alienated everyone ever by calling a spade a would-be-indoctrination-manual?

Why do you read?

So I'm currently in the agent-querying phase with my novel. For those of you who have no clue what that means, I have three keywords: waiting, opacity, and rejection.

(For those of you who DO know what that means, you could probably add a few choice words of your own, no?)

Anyway, a big part of trying to find--and connect with--an agent that's a good fit for your work is finding one who reads like you write (which for me, at least, means finding one who reads like I read, too). 

There are agents who love "fast-paced plots that get my heart racing."

There are agents who like "unexpected twists with serious consequences."

There are agents who want "a world I want to come back to over and over."

There are agents who prefer "ideas I've never seen on the page before."

It starts to make you wonder, what draws YOU to a book? I think for me, I've whittled it down to two (main) things*:

1. Character
2. Unforgettable moments

*Besides the obvious: "good writing"--that's just a prerequisite

Every author wants to have characters "that breathe" (whatever that means), and to write scenes that are perfectly-pitched, that capture all the qualities of your characters and all the themes of your book, and are funny and tragic and poignant and true to boot. 

But not everyone READS for those. 

Do you read to know what happens to her, or to know HER?

When I think about books I loved versus books I just read, it always comes down to whether the people on the page are people I know, or at least COULD know. Could I guess what they'd order off a coffeeshop menu, or what they'd think about current politics, or whether they watch all of the sports? 

People are supposed to ask that about the characters they create, I want to know it about the ones YOU create. 

And when I describe a book, I might sum up the plot, but whether or not I LOVED it depends on your ship-in-a-bottle moments. I read plotty books, too, but I don't really care whether or not a plot is really driving the story--or whether it's even really present, particularly--if each of the moments you spread out before me individually suck me in. It's why I love Nabokov and Vonnegut and why I've never really gotten into mysteries. I don't care about whodunnit nearly as much as I care about why they'd ever want to do it in the first place.

It absolutely seeps into my writing; I'm confident that I can put together a really well-done scene (and as a writer, for me to say I'm confident I can do ANYTHING well means it must be a particularly strong suit), but plot never feels as vital to me. 

Do other people read this way (here's hoping some of the agents I'm querying do...)? I'd love to know what makes a book "can't miss" and what makes it "can't remember" for everyone else...

"There is no reading..."

"...only rereading."

Thanks for making me feel deficient in yet ANOTHER way, Vladimir Nabokov.

Of course as with so many of his pronouncements, I think Vivian Darkbloom was onto something here (a name I would never have known for an anagram the first time I read Lolita); the first time we read a book, we're plowing ahead for plot, trying to understand the fundamentals of character, and otherwise focusing on what's HAPPENING...it's only later that we can appreciate the minutiae of any really great work.

But what about only-maybe-great works? Do they benefit from this kind of careful attention, or would they shrivel up and die under such intent, scrutinizing light?

I'm especially scared to not-read-but-reread some of my childhood favorites.

The ones I've gone back to over and over throughout the years, of course, are safe--nostalgia has built a wall of "always gonna be awesome" around them (I'm looking at you, Lord of the Rings series).

But what about all those books I tore through at 8, 10, and 13--the John Bellairs novels that defined my 3rd-grade experience? Or the Victoria Holt romances my mom (possibly ill-advisedly) put me onto in the 5th-grade, and which made me feel so desperately grown up? Or all the "aren't I so SMART" real-literature-books I dutifully worked my way through in middle and high school?

I'm afraid to go back to those, and also desperate to--there was a period between ages 15 and 19 where I actually thought I liked Ayn Rand because it was a "grown-up" book I understood. I needed those four years to realize that simply identifying an author's dear-god-with-a-sledgehammer messaging wasn't the same as agreeing with it (or enjoying the prose).

...but I needed to reread it to realize that.

I'm having the thankfully fantastic experience of liking Harriet the Spy even more than I remembered right now--what other "classics" (or even just "ubiquitous offerings") hold up as well when you're an adult as they did when you were a kid?

Maybe more importantly, which ones don't?