Potpourri: What I’m Reading, and Other Things

Posted on May 8, 2012 by mare

Hello, world!

Let’s cut through all the bull and just answer the questions that I know have burned your subconscious each night since my last post— where on earth has Mare been, and has she even been reading?

The answer to the first is, yes, I’m alive! I just wrapped up my second semester of grad school. In the midst of all that, the new job has been sucking up a lot of time that I previously used to write my insightful book reviews — but then, does anyone even read this thing or care that I’ve been gone? It’s hard to keep up with blogging when you feel like no one cares about what you have to say, or about what you’re reading. Maybe if I did a Fifty Shades of Grey post, I’d get comments out the wazoo. And maybe I’ll finally break down and read Twilight, and compose loving odes to poor characterization, plots, themes and dialogue. Speaking of which, has anyone gone to see Titanic in 3D? No? Oh, me neither.

As for the second question, of course I’ve been reading! It’s all this chick does, besides all that office grunt crap. That, and plan as many vacations as I can into one summer. (It’s a challenge, but I think I’ll manage it.) I’m almost done Alice Munro’s Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage — and it’s phenomenal, really tight storytelling.

VIDEO: Alice Munro discusses age, “The Little Mermaid,” and Ireland

She has this ability to weave different plot lines together within a small space, while still creating a dramatic impact for the reader at the end. In this collection, she captures women in various stages of life and speaks to what is often dismissed as mundane or normal—yet, each portrait is so intense and so vivid. So far, I’ve found that the title story — “Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marrige” — to be the most poignant; this 2001 review from the New York Times seems to disagree:

“In the title story, which exchanges her usual naturalistic approach for a heightened, Carson McCullers-like tack, a cruel practical joke played on a lonely spinster by two teenage girls — they send her a series of phony love letters — unexpectedly results in her finding happiness and fulfillment.”

The reviewer, I believe, missed the point: that is, the story is not just about Johanna, it’s about the two teenage girls as well. The final line of this story just blew me away — I can’t get it out of my head.

I’ve also joined a book club that one of my co-workers has put together. We’re working on our first book right now, and we’re going to meet up and discuss it next week. I like that the first suggestion was a book that I wouldn’t normally choose for myself. It was in the Self-Help section of Barnes & Noble (I know, I know — shop indie; I will, I will, I promise). I’m not one who seeks out self-validation from these kinds of “memoir” or “step-by-step” books, but The Happiness Project has surprised me thus far. It’s engaging, interesting, and the author, Gretchen Rubin, is remarkably honest about her shortcomings, despite how minor they appear compared to say, the mass murder of civilians in Syria. I like that she’s so organized about her resolutions, and how she holds herself accountable with astounding task management skills.

I bought The Search, Chasing Fire and The Witness, which are the last three novels released by Nora Roberts. I know this lady doesn’t get a lot of love from the book review world, or even the general public unless you’re a middle-aged matron. (I used to read Nora in high school, and the overall comment I got from my classmates was, “Oh yeah, my mom reads her.” D’oh.) Still, you have to admire this woman: she has written 200 books—many of which have ended up as NYT bestsellers—, owns her own bookstore, co-owns a bed-and-breakfast in her home state of Maryland—is there anything she doesn’t do? I’m such a fangirl.

VIDEO (JUST FOR FUN): I’ve always wanted to use that spell!

Finally, I just got back from a lovely long weekend at a cabin in upstate New York, in a little hamlet in the Adirondacks called Lake Vanare (near Lake George). We stayed at a place called Hide-A-Way Waterfront Cottages, which I found out about through LivingSocial. Brian and I were so, so pleased with everything – cozy, quiet, peaceful, relaxing. It was chilly at night, for the most part, even though we didn’t have a gloriously sized supermoon to gaze at on Saturday night. We also hiked up Prospect Mountain, a misleadingly titled “moderate” hike, but the view at the summit was worth it!

Until next time, everyone!

Posted in Adult, Chick Lit, Short Stories | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

In Patagonia

Posted on January 28, 2012 by mare

“I pictured a low timber house with a shingled roof, caulked against storms, with blazing log fires inside and the walls lined with the best books, somewhere to live when the rest of the world blew up.”

This excerpt, taken from the first pages of Bruce Chatwin’s In Patagonia, encapsulates in a single sentence how I feel about the world on most days. Never mind the fact that the passage in question refers to the author’s childhood — the adults around him refer to the distant, exotic tip of the South American continent as somehow immune to what many believed to be the end of the free world.

(The Cold War, for those of you who, like myself, did not spend your childhood practicing nuclear fire drills and hiding yourself under a wooden school desk.)

In any case, the words struck a chord with me: here, in this book, a decade before I would exist, words had been written by what Anne Shirley would call a kindred spirit. Someone who, like me, suffers from a perpetual case of wanderlust and a love of the written word.

In short, I loved this book.

Chatwin spent six months in Patagonia in 1974. While the rest of the world was occupied with oil embargos, space travel, Watergate and bombings, the British writer journeyed to the southernmost tip of Argentina and Chile. The book he published in 1977 outlines the people and events of his own travels, as well as the stories and history that he gleaned from its inhabitants — a vibrant mix of European ex-pats ranging from his own Brits to Italians to Germans; Americans, including a fascinating account of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid; and of course, the indigenous tribes that have lived there for many thousands of years.

This is the book that has defined and served as a model for modern travel writing. The preface in my edition indicated that Chatwin was later accused of fictionalizing some of the stories included in the book. I think it hardly matters; it would be evident to anyone who reads the book from start to finish that Chatwin’s episodic accounts, though based in reality, take on a narrative form on their own that may neither be fact nor fiction, but heck — it’s a good read.

Now, I’m off to buy a plane ticket.

Posted in Adult, Travel | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Poetry: Ciaran Carson

Posted on January 14, 2012 by mare

Fellow office rats might already know about a great thing that I’ve recently discovered – the podcast – but indulge me while I rave about how these audio shows have revolutionized my working life.

NPR features widely on the list of these new-fangled podcast-beasts that I download as I perform my daily grunt work. I’ve expanded my listening repertoire to include Philly radio personalities Preston and Steve from WMMR as well as the Poetry Foundation’s “Poetry Off the Shelf,” with Curtis Fox. I’m also a new convert to “This American Life,” and if you haven’t caught up with the latest episode – “Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory” – then LISTEN IMMEDIATELY.

OK, on to literature.

The New Year’s episode of Poetry off the Shelf featured guests Jeff Gordinier and Rosie Schaap sharing some of their favorite booze-related works in literature’s highest form. I believe it was Rosie who read one from a contemporary Irish poet named Ciaran Carson, who grew up in Belfast and teaches at Queen’s University.

[Insert Irish drinking joke here – oh, wait, that’s overdone.]

Moving on—

The poem, “Hippocrene,” intrigued me, not in the least because he, for the first time, made a Bloody Mary sound appealing and…sensual – which is unusual for anything that includes the word, “haemoglobin.” So began an epic Internet search, which resulted in this helpful excerpt from his bio on PoetryArchive.org:

“Ciaran Carson (b. 1948) is the author of nine books of poetry and four prose works, and the winner of several awards including the Irish Times Irish Literature Prize, the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Forward Prize for Best Poetry Collection for Breaking News in 2003. His translation of Dante’s Inferno won the Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize, and he is an honorary member of the Irish Translators’ and Interpreters’ Association. He held positions in the Traditional Music and Literature departments of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland between 1975 to 1998, and is currently Centre Director of the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s University, Belfast.”

Carson’s history is incredibly fascinating. One of the poems that I keep coming back to — “Belfast Confetti” — is from one of his earlier works. Carson grew up Catholic in Belfast, and anyone who knows anything about 20th century Irish history can recognize this as significant. His parents chose to speak Irish at home, and so all of their children grew up bilingual – Gaelic at home and English at school. Carson’s poetry is very much influenced by the contours of language, and his use of them in “Belfast Confetti,” really illustrates this.

Listen or read here.

Now, what podcasts are you listening to?

Posted in Poetry | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Totally Tuesday Returns: [Belated] Holiday Edition

Posted on January 10, 2012 by mare

Santa Claus was especially kind to my bookshelves this year. He fulfilled my reading wishlist with some books that I’ve been hankering to dive into; most are written by writers on “the art of writing” (say that five times fast!) or books on craft itself. It’s a new “genre” (is that even the right term?) for me, and I hope that I’ll be able to review some more of these books in detail when I’ve actually read them, but for now I’ll share the list with you.

1. The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers by John Gardner
2. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott
3. On Writing by Stephen King
4. Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art by Madeleine L’Engle
5. Zen in the Art of Writing: Releasing the Creative Genius Within You by Ray Bradbury
6. Revision: A Creative Approach to Writing and Rewriting Fiction by David Michael Kaplan
7. Plot and Structure by James Scott Bell
8. A Writer’s Guide to Fiction by Elizabeth Lyon

I also got a gift card to Barnes & Noble, with which I bought a special leather bound edition of theChronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. Sure, I’ve already read them, but who can turn down such a pretty book?

Now, let’s hear what sort of reading you all did over the holidays! Any recommendations?

Posted in Fantasy, MFA | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

How to Craft and Break a New Year’s Resolution in Seven Days or Less: A Personal Study

Posted on January 9, 2012 by mare

As I have previously lamented here on the interwebz, my blogging discipline doth leave something to be desired. When I began posting last spring, I was taking a class at my local community college in children’s literature and seemed to have more time than I needed to read and comment on the books that have shaped me both as a reader and a writer.

Then, life happened. I finished the class, I was working, I wanted to spend my summer enjoying the outdoors and not in front of the computer, I worried about bills, I started graduate school — all these things and more contributed to Pea Green’s virtual blackout.

As I progress through my program with my cohort, one of my goals as a writer is to discipline myself into writing each day. Writing on the regular is not something that I have forced myself to do before, but it’s something that I want to work on to improve my craft.

That said, one of the first resolutions that came to mind for this year was to listen to my alarm clock. No snooze button for this chick! “I will get up each day at 6 am and write!” I said to myself.

And for three days, I did. I rose out of bed and walked across the room (because I have strategically placed my clock out of arm’s reach) and turned it off, bundled up in my purple slippers and pajamas, eaten breakfast, and walked back up to my desk with a steaming mug of coffee and let my fingers dance across the keyboard. I felt great, invigorated, ready to conquer the world, or at least the office, as I dressed for work afterwards. “I did it!” I said to myself. “I’ve fulfilled my New Year’s resolution!”

And then, the fourth day.

I felt sick. My head hurt. I was nauseous. I didn’t fall asleep until late the night before. “Just ten more minutes,” I said, as I walked to the alarm clock to turn it off. “I’ll lay my head down and get up in ten minutes.”

An hour later, I shot up in bed. I needed to eat, shower, grab a cup of coffee, dress, defrost the car — and, oh, wait, I’ll just write tonight, or a little bit later. And then I went to work, and then I came home with another headache, and oh — this person needs me to do something, and oh, now it’s time to go to bed. “Tomorrow I’ll write,” I said. “Tomorrow is a new day.”

And on the fifth day, the alarm’s beeping drilled through my skull and demanded that I turn it off. “Fine,” I said. “I’ll turn you off. But I’m going back to bed. I earned it.”

And so on, and so forth, and now I have reasoned myself out of writing every single morning since then with some sort of lame excuse like not sleeping, having a headache, or deserving to sleep in because, let’s face it, I don’t really work very hard.

Do you have any tips for keeping the writing resolution going? Leave some comments and help a girl out!

Posted in MFA | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment