Interlude 1

I’m vamping. I just started Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia, and, while I’m enjoying it, am not sure I’ll continue and/or have much to say about the first 35 pages. So… a brief interlude:

I wish I wanted to reread books I’ve loved. As a kid, I’d page through sections of Jane Eyre and Little Women that I had nearly memorized and found rereading them as pleasurable, if not more pleasurable than when I had first read them. My bookcase is filled with books I’ve read, but it’s more to have them near or look through than to pick up again. After David Foster Wallace died, I took out Infinite Jest, read the first page, and remembered images and moments and my enjoyment of the book and didn’t want to touch that time. There are books I’m afraid to reread, having adored them and now fearing not liking them or finding them simple or immature. Why is there so much comfort in rereading books as a kid (we read Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel so many times to my brother that we finally got him the LP, so he could listen to it on his own) but now it holds no interest for me? Ask me what a book I read is about and I’ll probably recall a bit of plot and character, but all I need to do is read the first page and generally the book comes back in a rush, the way a fragrance brings on a full-blown memory. I invariably will close the book and search for something new.

Pastries: Gourmet Rhapsody

If reading is analogous to eating (“I devoured that book”), and I thought I was starving for something big and filling, I’ve been happily surprised by the modesty and sweetness of Gourmet Rhapsody. Maybe I wasn’t hungry. Or not in the way I thought.

“No one was the least bit hungry anymore, but that is precisely what is so good about the moment devoted to pastries: they can only be appreciated to the full extent of their subtlety when they are not eaten to assuage our hunger, when the orgy of their sweetness is not destined to fill some primary need but to coat our palate with the benevolence of the world.” (Gourmet Rhapsody, p. 35)

Maybe I just wanted a really good pastry.

Gourmet Rhapsody, similar to Barbery’s The Elegance of the Hedgehog, is told from several characters’ points of view, a few of whom are also in Elegance. It’s a simple story of a world-famous food critic’s last 24 hours interspersed with short monologues about the great man, Pierre Arthens, from his estranged daughter, the concierge (our beloved Renee from Elegance), the homeless man on the street, one of Pierre’s disciples, and many others. Half of the book is Pierre’s as he uses his last 24 hours to reminisce about his affair with food and search through his past for one elusive flavor he yearns for before dying.

I love reading about food, even about dishes I know I wouldn’t eat. And Barbery writes about food as a metaphor for living and the small but satisfying pleasures of life. I don’t long to be eating the sardines that Pierre describes but I am invited into the delight it brings. In the meantime, I long for a cup of tea or bowl of sorbet while reading. While I think eating/drinking and reading are good partners (and believe I’m in good company; think of ice-cream sticky, or tomato-sauce splattered keyboards or the lone diner at the counter, book in one hand, fork in the other) chefs and writers might think otherwise, desiring that all attention be focused on the dish or book. But I bet Barbery isn’t one of the writers. Food is sustenance, as are stories. And put the two together and mmm, mmm!

In Which I Complain

I don’t have anything to read.

An idiotic thing to say, I know sort of like announcing “I’ve got nothing to wear,” while staring into a Carrie Bradshaw–size closet. More stupid really, since I’ve got a stack of unread books at arm’s reach and the library is eight blocks away. But, if I may stretch this metaphor a bit more—not unlike “I’m bored of wearing that,” or “I’m really not in a purple mood,” I want a book that fits me right now. I know it shouldn’t be nasty-funny. I know because I read forty pages of the very readable The Ask by Sam Lipsyte. But the book was aggressively clever and the protagonist reminded me of the short, funny, but sort of angry guys who were among the few to be interested in me in college. So I put it down. And I know the imaginary perfect-for-right-now book shouldn’t be solemn and quiet from having read the first beautifully written pages of Atiq Rahimi’s The Patience Stone. I’m far too impatient with everyone and everything right now to be engaged by a woman confessing to her dying husband in an unnamed Middle Eastern country. The problem is I don’t know what I do feel like reading.

Sarah’s Key, by Tatiana De Rosnay, awaits me at the library. But I’m skeptical. From what I know, Sarah’s Key, has two concurrent stories: 1) Paris, 1942, ten-year-old Sarah is arrested during one of the roundups of the Jews, but manages to hide her brother, thinking she will be returning in a few hours; 2) Paris, 2002, an American journalist is asked to do a story on the roundup and discovers Sarah’s story. There are so many good books about the horrors of World War II and I’ve read a lot of them, so I’m not generally drawn to reading another. But let’s see.

In case of dire emergency, I have Gourmet Rhapsody symbolically waiting under glass with fire hammer at hand. I loved The Elegance of the Hedgehog—a book I bought after reading it just so I knew it was in my vicinity. Gourmet Rhapsody is Muriel Barbery’s first novel published in English after Elegance, and I know nothing about it other than it’s slight and sweet. I’m hoping Sarah’s Key, will help shake this mood. I don’t want to waste what sounds like a thin mint of a book when what I really need is big bowl of macaroni and cheese.

Are We There Yet?

A bed and breakfast in Phoenicia, New York, is a long haul from the German housing project where seventeen-year-old Russian-born Sacha Naiman (of Alina Bronsky’s Broken Glass Park) lives. But it’s here—in a violet room with filmy white curtains and a claw-foot bathtub—that Sacha’s angry, intelligent voice grabs me. It doesn’t take long to learn that her fury derives from the murder of her beautiful actress mother, Marina. Sacha blames her mother’s compassion and romantic nature for her death. Her two dreams are to write a book about “…An Idiotic, Redheaded Woman Who Would Still Be Alive If Only She Had Listened To Her Smart, Oldest Daughter,” and to revenge Marina’s death by killing her abusive stepfather, Vadim, who shot her. The setting is grim: Sacha lives in the Russian ghetto in Berlin surrounded by brutish teenagers, superstitious neighbors, and hopeless alcoholics. But her vital prickly spirit overshadows the heat and despair of the projects. She’s bigger than her surroundings and bigger than the silence and Yankee simplicity of my room in Phoenicia. While I have no need to escape from my lovely environment, I slip away and hang out with someone contrary to the hushed feeling of my surroundings.

My private visit into Broken Glass Park reminds me of when I accompanied my ten-year-old pal, L., to an audition for a summer performing arts camp. Clever girl that she is, she brought a book along in case of having to wait for her appointment. Having spent far too much time waiting for auditions, I applauded her forethought; I envied her ability to leave that unpleasant anxious place of pacing mothers and hair twirling ‘tweens and spend her fifteen minutes prior to her name being called as privately as if she were in her bedroom. Watching her, I thought of my recent visit to the doctor—sitting in the examination room clad in nothing but a large paper napkin engrossed in T. Coraghessan Boyle’s sad and beautiful short story, “A Death in Kitchawank” in the January 18 New Yorker. Besides being transported from the charts of female reproduction, I enjoyed stepping into a bubble of privacy in a less than inviting setting. On the subway ride home, I secretly smiled as the 6’3” guy in sweats across from me who nearly tipped over his thermos of protein drink, so taken away was he by Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Turning Pages

I don’t know if it’s a girly-girl thing but I lose patience reading page after page of action. As I’m reading the sequence, I pointedly give up imagining two characters grappling, or cars following each other around curves and up hills. When I copyedit such sections, I force myself to pay special attention, using the same level of concentration I use with anything involving numbers, just to assure the sequence makes sense. Is it possible for guy 1 to pin guy 2’s left arm with his left leg if guy 1 is on his back? Argh!

I’ve read two books recently, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle and Dark Passages in which, at the climax I just wanted to cut to the chase, or after the chase really, and happily skimmed those sections. If I missed an important detail upon which a major plot point depended, I’d go back and root around until I found the necessary detail and then skim, skim, skim.

I’m not proud of this quality in myself, but I don’t believe the book is entirely blameless. Dark Passages, a mystery that features an unsympathetic protagonist, Libby Day, survivor of a gruesome triple murder, suffered less from my browsing the pages for essential plot points than Edgar Sawtelle. Libby is a well-developed and interesting character—a woman who has spent most of her life living off of the notoriety of the murder of her mother and two sisters. After having no interest in the guilt or innocence of her brother who was convicted of the murders, she is called upon to look into what might have happened. I hardly ever read mysteries; I’d much rather watch them as two-hour movies or PBS series. But Gillian Flynn kept me interested in Libby’s story—how she came to be the unlikable person she was and how, begrudgingly, she changes—as well as the who-did-it and why of the murder. The writer was so successful in creating a full story that, when it came time for the climactic action sequence, I skimmed…mmm, maybe only 5 pages. And when I finished the book, I felt satisfied with the resolution.

I skimmed the last 75 pages of Edgar Sawtelle just to see how—in 1970s Wisconsin—Wroblewski slavishly adhered to Shakespeare’s Hamlet. I no longer cared much about Edgar since, as Hamlet’s destiny was forced upon him (and the reader), I lost him to the heavy hand of the writer. I hardly read the last page. I suppose both of these books can be called “page turners,” but I prefer the straightforward compelling turning of Dark Passages to the indifferent scanning of The Story of Edgar Sawtelle.

I Can't Go On. I'll Go On.

I’m certain I’m trivializing the last line of Samuel Beckett’s novel The Unnamable; Beckett is writing about life, I’m talking about The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. On page 235, the specter (forgive the literary pun) of Hamlet alighted. There had already been strong indications of Wroblewski’s intention to use Hamlet’s story as an inspiration for Edgar’s—Edgar’s uncle’s name is Claude, his mother is Trudy, as in Claudius and Gertrude in Hamlet—but when the plot turn paralleled the play, I considered bailing. I didn’t want Edgar to endure the horrors that poor Hamlet undergoes in five long acts. Hamlet, in my brain, is inextricably tied to the story of Hamlet. He doesn’t exist as a character separate from his father’s demand for revenge and his screwed-up relationship with Ophelia. But Edgar, thus far, has had his own story.

I’ve experienced a similar feeling when watching a really good production of Romeo and Juliet—you so want the lovers to grow old and fat together feasting on excellent Italian food, that you think the stupid friar will get the news of Juliet’s faked death to Romeo in time, despite knowing that all goes terribly wrong. Likewise, even with a review’s promise of parallels to Hamlet, I had come to hope that Edgar and Trudy could be okay despite Edgar’s father’s death. Now I have an idea of what will happen. Or not. Perhaps Wroblewski chooses to use only the initial setup of Hamlet. Regardless. I’m reading on because a) I’m hooked and b) even if the writer introduces two Jewish pals from Edgar’s school named Rosenberg and Guildenfeld, he hasn’t let me down this far, and I trust him to carry me to a possibly familiar end in an interesting and well-written way.

Slipping Through the Cracks

Describing a book is almost as difficult as explaining a smell. “What’s it about?” we ask. “Is it happy? sad? funny?” We can talk about the writing— good, bad, breezy, dense. But the experience of living in a world other than the one we share— with characters familiar only to the person reading the novel— for an hour, a day, or weeks and weeks, how can you express that?

I’m not interested in certain characters and plotlines (e.g. alien abductions, talking animals, coming-of-age hipsters, crumbling marriages). My mom won’t read another book about dysfunctional families or mothers and daughters. My friend P. stays away from violence, while many of my male friends don’t read books with female protagonists. Our prejudices probably prevent us from reading some wonderful books. But every once in a while, one of them slips through the cracks.

I can’t tell you why I’ve enjoyed the first 100 pages of The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. Nothing in its flap copy, other than a mention of Hamlet, entices me to read it.“Born mute, speaking only in sign, Edgar Sawtelle leads an idyllic life with his parents on their farm in remote northern Wisconsin. For generations, the Sawtelles have raised and trained a fictional breed of dog…” “…it’s a novel about the human heart…” says Stephen King. If I look in a few reviews, I bet I’ll find the phrases “gentle soulfulness” and “evocative of the stoic American pioneer spirit.” Blech! Yet, I’m enchanted. After the PC coziness of The Brooklyn Follies and the cinematic romance and mayhem of Mosquito, I adore the quiet of Edgar Sawtelle. But “quiet” doesn’t mean slow or precious. Plenty has happened in these first 100 pages, and the complications have just begun (the book is 562 pages).

I read quickly and often skim long descriptive passages. David Wroblewski, maybe in deference to his mute protagonist, doesn’t waste words. So when he chooses to spend a sentence or two depicting the scenery, he also moves us forward. “That evening Edgar pulled two yearlings into the kennel aisle and got the grooming tackle. By the time he’d finished, the setting sun bathed the back of the house in crimson.” Pretty scene, but we also know it’s almost night now and something is about to happen.

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle reminds me of Wendell Berry’s Hannah Coulter in its portrayal of the beauty and depth of some mighty quiet people. Berry’s characters had a sense of humor about them that I’m not sure Wroblewski’s do. But it’s early yet.

Something Perfect

Endings, similar to New Year’s Eve and Star Wars sequels, are built to disappoint. Nevertheless, ever hopeful, I try to find a quiet, private place to relish the final pages of a novel I’ve enjoyed. There’s always the chance that I will read those last lines and feel satisfied and complete. More often I feel cheated, befuddled, or irritated.

Paul Auster faked me out twice within the last 50 pages of The Brooklyn Follies. Nathan Glass’s easygoing chronicle gained momentum soon after I last wrote. What had been a leisurely stroll through a rueful and pleasant emotional landscape went Disney on me— lots of interesting and potentially ugly complications worked out too neatly. Four pages before the end, Auster quietly unties the big red bow he’s wrapped the book up in. Nathan has an epiphany:

“I am no one…. Eventually, we would all die, and when our bodies were carried off and buried in the ground, only our friends and families would know we were gone…. Most lives vanish. A person dies, and little by little all traces of that life disappear.”

Nathan comes up with an idea to celebrate those unknown dead in a small but meaningful way—by creating biographies of them written from impressions and stories from their friends and families. He ends the penultimate chapter: “One should never underestimate the power of books.”

If Auster had ended there, with Nathan’s resolution as he steps out on to the avenue, I believe we would have landed in the right place. But three sentences from the conclusion Nathan tells us it is September 11, 2001, forty-six minutes before the first plane crashes. I groan aloud and ask, “Why? Why did you have to do that?” and perhaps, Paul Auster or any novelist would respond with, “What do you want from me?” And I don’t know what I’d answer. Something right. Something perfect. Something that may not always be possible.

Acknowledgments

The front matter of The Brooklyn Follies includes nothing more than a title page and dedication to delay its get-right-to-it first line: “I was looking for a quiet place to die.” Lest we think, Oh, dear, this isn’t going to be one of those kinds of books, is it?, Auster follows with, “Someone recommended Brooklyn…” Cheap joke? Maybe, but I don’t care. I already love this guy Nathan Glass.

Auster has already scored points with me by his lack of an acknowledgements page in the front or back of the book—very old school. Though I don’t have first editions of Jane Eyre, Persuasion, The Sound and the Fury, or Mrs. Dalloway, and therefore can’t be certain, I bet Charlotte Bronte, Jane Austen, William Faulkner, and Virginia Woolf didn’t thank their loved ones, writing groups, agents, and writing colonies at the end of their books. Yes, thanks to the current plethora of award ceremonies, (from the Bloggers Choice Awards to the GSN Game Show Hosts Awards) everyone gets to acknowledge the people who helped with their success, so why not authors? But directors, actors, and even games show hosts don’t make an appearance right after the film, play, or The Price Is Right to earnestly thank their support system. I’m being cranky, I know, and perhaps having spent time as a copyeditor, and taking no pleasure in having to track down the proper spellings of lists of friends and pets contributes to my bad temper. But after that little shiver, or sigh, or smile that one hopes to experience after reading the last line of a good book, who wants to turn the page and read about those who contributed to the process of making the book? Let me stay in Never Land! I don’t have to read it, of course. And maybe I’m just being a spoiled kid wanting my story clean without the messy encumbrances of the author’s life.

But to return to the pleasures of The Brooklyn Follies: Not a lot has happened (I’m just halfway in the book). Nathan Glass, in his sixties, dying, and recently divorced, moves back to Brooklyn after not having been there for 56 years. He meets up with his nephew, becomes friends with the local bookseller, and has minor adventures meeting other inhabitants of the neighborhood. And that’s it. But Nathan feels like my pal, and his exploits could be told over a bowl of chicken soup at his favorite diner; it’s a comfortable book with just enough cynicism to save it from being precious. Unlike most of my voyages to Brooklyn, I’m transported effortlessly.

Michael Ondaatje, Nick Hornby, and Me

There’s a lot of garbage in my mother’s car. Not candy wrappers and soda cans, but any variety of things, including bags of potting soil that have somehow gotten open, old dog toys, phone chargers, a Discman that no longer works, undefined plastic objects that look as though they have something to do with a radiator, or a sink, or I’m not sure what. Depending upon what is going on in her life, the items change. But there will always be a pile of books in the passenger seat, often from the library, and undoubtedly fiction. She may be transporting them but it’s more likely she has them in arm’s reach in case she has to wait somewhere.

I read Michael Ondaatje’s In the Skin of the Lion at least ten years ago, and yet I remember the encounter when Clara Dickens, after years of not being in touch with her lover Patrick, waits for hours at the other end of the phone. After apologizing for the wait, Patrick asks, “You’re not carrying a book?” and she answers, “That’s right. I forgot you’re the man who taught me to always carry a book….”

If I could I would carry a book with me wherever I wandered. But since I live in a city where my primary mode of transportation is walking, and I’m generally carrying at least one other bag (holding my version of potting soil, dog toys, or indescribable plastic things), I’ve stopped stashing my library hardcover in my handbag. In preparation for transport on the D-train, dental appointments, or a date with an established latecomer, I’ll bring The New Yorker, provided there’s something to read in it. If not, panic ensues, similar to the alarm I feel when going away on a trip without a surefire, long enough to last, good read. I rarely bring enough clothes (and never the right ones) but always bring too many books. Where does this fear originate? Could it be some sort of survivor neurosis that has been passed down in my DNA from literature-deprived ancestors?

Clearly Michael Ondaatje understands, as does Nick Hornby who writes in The Polysyllabic Spree:

“…my third son was born. I mention his arrival not because I’m after your good wishes or sympathy, but because reading is a domestic activity, and is therefore susceptible to any changes in the domestic environment….

“Shortly after the birth of [my] son, I panic that I will never be able to visit a bookshop again, and that therefore any opportunity I have to buy printed matter should be exploited immediately. Jesse…was born shortly before 7 a.m.; three or four hours later I was in a newsagent’s.”

The Polysyllabic Spree is a collection of clever, brilliant, and entertaining essays that Nick Hornby wrote for The Believer magazine about reading. Every month he wrote about the books he’d read and bought, and a whole bunch of other stuff—sort of what I’m trying to do. However, he writes beautifully and is far more insightful and interesting than I. He has two other collections of his columns, Housekeeping vs. The Dirt and Shakespeare Wrote for Money. They are engaging, and in lightweight, easy-to-carry paperback.

My Date with The Museum of Innocence

I pulled the plug—the bookmark, really—at page 54 of Orhan Pamuk’s The Museum of Innocence. That’s roughly 14 more pages than I usually give a book I know little about, but I figured Pamuk’s Nobel Prize earned him another 10 minutes or so of my attention.

I don’t remember why I reserved Museum. I probably saw it mentioned in The New Yorker, or maybe the Times book review and thought the story looked good. So when I picked it up, all I knew was that it had been recommended and that the guy who wrote it had won a big fat literature prize.

I start reading Museum in the afternoon, thereby reducing the sleepy element. And, not unlike I did with my blind dates of years ago, I scrutinize every detail. I open the book. Trouble already. Three epigraphs? Three? Come on, two is plenty. I read one, start the second and forgo the third. Then, table of contents, map, and in the back, a character index. I start thinking classic Russian novel: lots of description, great characters, not much dialogue; this may be slow going, but worth it. And then, surprise! The first chapter doesn’t start with a long narrative of the setting or a bird alighting on a pond, but with an easy open smile: “It was the happiest moment of my life, though I didn’t know it.”

And the first chapter moves; I’m having a good time. So I say sure, I’ll stick around. But as I read on, little moments and descriptions irk me. All the women are beautiful; the museum of the title is heavy handed. But I press on. It’s easy reading, lots of well-written plot and dialogue, but Kemal, the protagonist, irritates me. I can thoroughly enjoy a novel with an unsympathetic main character but an annoying one? Uh-uh.

I put it down with the intention of giving it one more try later, and look over at Dennis, who is absorbed in Michael Chabon’s book of essays, Manhood for Amateurs. He says he’s reading a good one, “Getting Out,” about the wonderful author David Foster Wallace who recently killed himself. I look hungrily at his moo shoo chicken to my steamed vegetables. He notices my envy. “Do you want to read it? It’s good,” he says.

And as if answering my, How long do I have to read about this guy I can’t stand and this world I’m not interested in? Michael Chabon writes:

“The world like our heads, was meant to be escaped from. They are prisons, world and head alike. ‘I guess a big part of serious fiction’s purpose,’ Wallace once told an interviewer, ‘is to give the reader, who like all of us is sort of marooned in her own skull, to give her imaginative access to other selves.’”

So Kemal? I dumped him.

Mosquito v. Literary Bigotry

I always feel a little cheap finishing one book and picking up another only an hour later. Blithely turning the last page of one book, and, reaching for another, as if it were just another grape to pop in my mouth, and not the result of a writer’s lonely labor of a year or two or more.

If it makes Roma Tearne feel any better, I savored the last ten pages of her novel even though I had a good idea how it would end. Mosquito takes place in Sri Lanka some time in the ‘80s or early ‘90s. The lush landscape of the book is juxtaposed with heartache and, at times, graphic violence. I knew a little about the Sri Lankan Civil War. I had heard of the Tamil Tigers and knew that Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch had deemed parts of Sri Lanka dangerous. And in the way that good love stories give you just the right amount of background about the country and conflict raging around our lovers, Mosquito provided me with enough to whet my appetite but never got in the way of turning the pages. Indeed, I stumbled on a Sri Lankan restaurant in my neighborhood, and despite being a spicy foods wuss, ventured forth to Sigiri (www.sigirinyc.com), where the delicious food and simple lovely surroundings mirrored the setting and style of the book. I used my mom’s book group Web site (www.planetbookgroupie.com) as a shortcut to learn more about the author and the war. Considering my occasional bigotry against books with “exotic” a.k.a. unfamiliar settings, I attribute my newfound interest in Sri Lanka to the book’s compelling story, good writing, and occasional surprises. The only time I felt “taken out” was in the latter half when the author wrote about the heroine’s artwork. Ms. Tearne is an artist (you can find pictures of some of her paintings online) and all of a sudden, when before I had hardly taken note of her writer’s presence, she stepped into the room as a loud critic writing about art. But I’m being persnickety. Mosquito is a good literary read that is bound to be made into a blockbuster movie. Check it out before Hollywood gets its hands on it. And if you happen to be on the Lower East Side, buy a bottle of wine (no corking fee) and visit Sigiri.

Tomorrow: how picking up a new book isn’t that different from a first, nearly blind date.

Filed Under S for Smith

Why the oblique title?

I had nearly given up hope that I would meet a guy whom I would love and who would love me. I had known good relationships and bad relationships, but was in the midst of a long period of being alone and was despairing. My optimistic practical-minded friend D. suggested we engage in the same list-making activity that she had used that led her to her long-term love, B. It took more than an hour and two large cups of hot chocolate at City Bakery to answer and record responses to her meticulous questions about what sort of person I wanted my love to be. Topics ranged from the superficial, “How tall should he be?” to the esoteric, “What zodiac signs would be good?” to the unfathomable, “How spiritual is he?” The idea was that the more specific I was about what I wanted, the more likely I would find him. When we finished I asked her what we did with the list: Was there some special receptacle? Some weird ritual? Bury it? Burn it? She looked puzzled. “You know, I have no idea. I threw mine out.”

After deep thought, I found myself in the third floor reading room of the main branch of the New York City Public Library looking for a rare non-circulating book by Dodie Smith. I had read Smith’s I Capture the Castle and loved it, and for no clear reason I chose her to be the guardian of my romantic wishes. As I waited for the page to bring me The Girl from the Candle-lit Bath, I realized that whoever requested the book next would find my list. What if he or she laughed at it? I reconsidered. It had seemed a perfect idea—now what?

The walls of the reading room are lined with encyclopedias, dictionaries, almanacs, and other big heavy reference books. Shelves are dedicated to volume after volume of The Encyclopedia of British Writers. The books looked untouched. I took down S, found Dodie Smith, slipped the list in, returned the book, glanced back at the reading room, and left. I haven’t been back, but a couple years later I fell in love with Dennis, who bears little resemblance to the characteristics described in the list.

Great story, Jen, but what does it have to do with the blog?

I chose the reading room and a beloved writer to provide a safe house for my hopes. What better place to leave a little bit of myself than a house of books and writers? And though the Web doesn’t provide ceiling murals or long wooden tables, it is a place where a reader or two may stumble across my musings about books and reading.

Maiden Voyage

There isn’t much that comes up on Google for “unemployed people blogging about reading.” Plenty under “blogging about books”: review blogs, writing sites, one site about books and cats. But I didn’t see much about reading, not that I looked hard.

However blogs for the unemployed abound. One (subtitled “Advice at the Intersection of Work and Life”) recommends focusing on an ambition and executing it. Alas, I don’t think this means going to the gym, cleaning out filing cabinets, or making one more vat of homemade soup.

In truth, I thought of writing this blog before the above recommendation. I was on the 14A bus from Trader Joe’s—prior to having done my extensive Web research. I was thinking about how I had whined to my husband, Dennis, about how, as usual, three of my reserve books had come in at once at the library. Space is a commodity even at the New York Public Library, and I can’t take the checkout person’s look of disapproval when I don’t take out all my reserves at once, which means reading all three in the allotted three weeks. Dennis suggested, given my current lack of agenda, that I pick them up, smile at the checkout person, and read all day. And something in the arrangement of the Kashi GoLean and Joe’s O’s cereal must have sparked inspiration. For there, next to the oatmeal, I thought, writing about reading, what a good idea!

I have time. Lots of it. It’s been a month and a half since I stopped working. The holidays provided some distraction, but now it’s just days of waiting. Waiting to hear about job opportunities, waiting to hear about theater prospects, waiting for e-mails from friends and colleagues, waiting for my hair to grow.

Oh, there’s plenty I could—should—do, but come on, until I get really desperate, I’m not going to sew new pillows or get a jump on my taxes. I’d rather just read, and write. And since planetbookgroupie.com abandoned its blog, I thought we could adopt each other as satellite pals, giving me “an ambition” and planetbookgroupie some content.

So herewith I launch a blog about reading. I’m not sure what that means. But I guess I’ll find out.

What I’m reading right now: Mosquito by Roma Tearne

Waiting for me at the library, under the supervision of the checkout woman: The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski

The Brooklyn Follies by Paul Auster

The Museum of Innocence by Orhun Pamuk