Monday, June 25, 2007

Life in the Way

I hate it when life gets in the way.


that's all I'm saying! I've been trying to finish Extremely Loud for the past week or so, but I just can't seem to find time to get through those last 10 pages or so! Between my brother being here and Drew leaving (and having to work on his going-away memory book) and then meeting Rob and kind of having to deal with everything that came along with that, it's just been a busy time. And it makes me sad, because I'll lie in my bed and look at the pile of books on my floor, and I really do want to get through them all! Because I know they're fabulous books. I can feel it. They all just feel heavy with that weight of...literacy. I don't know. I'm probably not making any sense. But let me just say this about Extremely Loud - I don't think I've ever read a book that has so many beautifully, wonderfully, fully sad passages. And I'm not talking sad in the way of death or dismemberment. I'm talking sad in a crushing way. The kind of sad that you can just feel in your chest, way down in the pit of your stomach. The kind of sadness that is almost beautiful - the kind that crushes your heart and makes you want to gasp and sob and just stop breathing, if only for a split second. I hope you all know what I'm talking about, because I'm really not sure I know anymore.

Other than all of that, the only other interesting thing to have happened to me in the past week or so has been my college orientation, which took entirely too long and was filled with entirely too much pointless information. I did, however, end up with quite a cool schedule. Between my "Queen and Contemporary Culture", "Honors Introduction to Ethics" and "Language and Culture in Latin America" class, I'm actually really excited to start going to class! Among other appealing aspects of the college life, of course!

Sunday, June 17, 2007

Reaching Mecca

That's right, folks, I did it! I finally finished Special Topics, all 517 pages of it, including the final exam! And I have to say, I ended up having mixed feelings about it. Feel free to stop reading HERE if you want to avoid any type of spoilers:

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that whole "the main characters dad is actually a member of a mythical freedom-fighting cult" thing. And I also didn't really see how a lot of the things ended up piecing together, and felt that there were more than a few moments that seemed a bit of a stretch (i.e; a well placed phone call that just so happened to spell out the secrets of the mystery with two and a half chapters left to go). The book probably could have been cut down about a hundred pages without really loosing anything, and a few of the characters just kind of disappeared (after Milton called Blue a bad kisser in front of the whole group, the whole group just kind of disappears until graduation, where only their names are mentioned. And, along that note, I'm still not sure how to feel about the whole Milton/Blue relationship thing - I haven't decided if it was supposed to be a genuine hookup or just another Blueblood scheme to embarrass Blue, though I tend to lead toward the second option) END SPOILERS. But, even with all of that, there were still some pure moments of beautiful, heart-wrenching prose:

"Never try to change the narrative structure of someone else's story, although you will certainly be tempted to, as you watch those poor souls in school, in life, heading unwittingly down dangerous tangents, fatal digressions from which they will unlikely be able to emerge. Resist the temptation. Spend your energies on your story. Reworking it. Making it better. Increasing the scale, depth of content, the universal themes. Those around you can have their novellas, sweet, their short stories of cliche and coincidence, occasionally spiced up with tricks of the quirky, the achingly mundane, the grotesque. A few will even cook up a Greek tragedy, those born in to misery, destined to die in misery. But you, my bride of quietness, you will craft nothing less than epic with your life. Out of all of them, your story will be the one to last."

"You'd be surprised - Communism, Capitalism, Socialism, Totalitarianism - whatever '-ism' it happens to be doesn't matter all that much; there will always be the tricky balance between the human extremes. And so we live our lives, making informed choices about what we believe in, stand by them. That is all."

And, after all is said and done, I read the last page and just kind of sighed. It was one of those heavy sighs, the kind you utter after completing something of importance - that melancholy kind of sigh that means "now its over, and I'm not sure how to feel". For a first summer book, I will say that the entire thing was rather fantastic, although I'm ready to move on. And speaking of which, the next book, which I've already started, has proven to be even higher on the list than Special Topics. I'm about 50 pages in to Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Johnathan Safran Foer (who, in case you were curious, also wrote Everything is Illuminated, which is a fantastic book!) I won't write about it quite yet, because I'm only a little bit in to it and want to give it some time to grow, but I will say that I have a feeling that, based on the first to books of the summer, it's going to be a great summer for reading!

PS: For those of you keeping score on the personal end of things, my brother and sister have both left, which makes the house a spooky kind of empty (and I really do miss them like crazy. It sucks having that whole "heavy heart" thing). Drew leaves a week from Monday, which scares me and already makes me panicky and sad, so I try not to think about it. Other than that, I don't work this week, so I'm sure I'll return shortly!

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Full House

That's right. I said it. Full House. Unfortunately, I didn't mean it in reference to the loveably sacchrin-sweet TV show once staring a pre-bulima Mary Kate Olsen. I am, in fact, referencing my own house, which is currently full of my brother, his wife, his 16-month old son Jackson, my sister, her signifigant other, and their 2 year old daughter Aubrey, as well as my mom and dad. That is a lot of people, and a lot of action, in a not-all-that large house. You may in fact be wondering why I have chosen to tell you this. The only reason I bring it up is that all of these people have drastically impeded my ability to read or focus on much more than "where are the babies", "will you grab me that baby spoon" and "I think someone just fell down the stairs. Uh-oh." I've been making so progress in Special Topics and have kept Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs by my bed to squeeze in a few pages before passing out, but that hasn't been going to successfully, either.

I have, however, recently picked up another 8 books from the library, which I have no intention of returning on time, which brings my "To Be Read This Summer" list to about twenty books. If I do the math correctly, I have approximately 8 weeks, which means about 3 books a week, which means a book about every day and a half. And while this may intimidate some people (and I'm not going to lie, it intimidates me a little, too) I am pretty sure that this won't be an issue. A few of the books are re-reads (as in The Kite Runner and Kafka on the Shore, which I remember loving, but I'm a little shady on the details, hence the re-read) and a few of the others are truly just fluff reads (I'm not planning on taking long with, for example, Devil Wears Prada or a short story collection by the FABULOUS Megan Mcafferty). So hopefully I'll get through the list, as most of them are the kind of modern classics that I feel it necessary to read before I head out to the wide world that is college. I feel as though I've covered most of the classics, thanks to phases that took me through Shakespeare, all kinds of poetry, the Beats, Victorian Literature, and most of the NYU undergraduate reading list by the time I was 15 (yeah, I can hear you laughing. So?) So now I plan on focusing on modern stuff, and have been aided by the Three-For-Two tables at Borders.

The only thing I think I'm going to be missing this summer is a longer trip kind of thing. Something akin to a road trip or some other kind of vacation, mostly because this is where most of my heavy-duty reading gets done. I can't really read at work (I mean, I guess I could technically, but I'd get weird looks, and I work with most of my friends, thus lunch = social hour) and I don't really have a lot of time at home (and my parents thought I'd never develope a social life) and its just the kind of thing where it's not a huge bummer, but it would be nice....

.....on a side note, I recently saw the movie Match Point with one Mr. Johnathon Rhys Myers and one Ms. Scarlett Johanson, and it was fabulous. I have always been a fan of Woody Allen movies, but this one imparticular. I know that this is technically a book blog, but I just wanted to mention a recent affinity for this movie and Bright Eyes. If you haven't seen/heard either one, I suggest you give them both a try! And with that, I sign off.

Saturday, June 9, 2007

Break On Through

I got about half way through Special Topics in Calamity Physics before I hit the proverbial brick wall and got that soaring headache that accompanies too close a reading and forcing myself to pay attention. It's not that the book is bad - it really isn't at all! It's actually one of the best books that I've read in quite some time. But, at a soaring 515 pages, it's not one of those books you read all in one sitting, as I originally set out to make it. The parenthetical comments galore, the frequent annotations, and the voracious side notes make the book less of a walk in the park and more of a slog through the swamp of academia. But the charactes and PLOT(!!) keep me reading, page after page, and chapter after chapter. Another interesting aspect of the game is to read each chapter title and try to figure out what each title has to do with the contents of that chapter. I mean, it sounds dull, but sometimes the real relation can be a stretch!

But anyway... I have, possibly unexcusably, taken a small break from the loveable tome that is Special Topics for some lighter reading. I recently picked up a book from the library entitled Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto by one Mr. Chuck Klosterman. I'm only about half way through the first chapter, but I already believe this man to be somewhat of a comic genious. Within the first thity pages, he has attacked not only Coldplay, but John Cusak in Say Anything, Woody Allen, Sid and Nancy, and Teen Wolf. It's brilliant, and there are few parenthetical comments or annotations! And though I do feel bad about the fact that I am reading two books at the same time, I just can't put them down now!

Friday, June 8, 2007

How to Breathe Underwater

How could I have forgotten to talk about perhaps one of the best books of short stories I've read in...well, perhaps ever. How to Breathe Underwater by Julie Orringer is a collection of short stories that all seem to focus on so-called "coming of age" or "growing up". And while there are a few stories that I would just skip, such as "Stations of the Cross" or "Pilgrims", both of which strike a nerve in a not-so-good way, most of the stories are beautifully written and inspire the reader to just...think. Perhaps one of my favorite stories in the entire collection would be "Isabel Fish", which is about a young girls quest to become okay with the water - and her brother - after being involved in a car crash that kills her brothers girlfriend. The story is sad and beautiful and introspective and excellent (there goes that lack of critical insight, yet again).

While I'm usually not a huge fan of short stories - I don't really like the whole disjointed nature of compendiums or collections, and the time needed to individually reflect on each story isn't an investment I'm usually willing to make - these stories were all to absorbing not to love. Orringer crafted 9 stories, and perhaps the biggest complaint were that, towards the end, many of the stories began to run together. This may be due to the fact that I stopped taking so much time to reflect on the stories individually, but is more likely due to the fact that plot point and characteristics began to repeat. I also noticed that many of the characters or situations involved Judiasm or Jewish people. This is neither a good nor a bad thing, just something to notice.

Having finished these reflection-inducing books in such a short amount of time, I'm ready to move on to a new list of summer reading. Special Topics in Calamity Physics is currently on the front burner, but what with a fantastic trip to your local neighborhood library, and borrowing more than a few books from Anna, I now have a fairly impressive list of books to be read before August 11th (the day I leave for KU) including the Interpreter of Maladies, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto, Confessions of a Shopaholic, and TWO supposedly-fantastic Johnathon Safron Foer books. I feel myself getting that familiar feeling of book-overwhelming-ness beginning to set in, but I'm pretty sure that as long as I take it one page, one chapter, one book at a time, I'll be more than just fine!

Thursday, June 7, 2007

Begin the Begin

Xanga is dead. Facebook provide little room for a daily posting without severe forms of mockery. And so, I have come to blogger to feed my insatiable want to write about the minute details of my daily life. I have, however, decided to dedicate this particular blog to a subject much more important than the un-necessary details of my life. I have decided to cemement a place for myself and my books in the eternal effervescence of the internet.

That is write. I intend to write here about the books I read, the books I desire to read, the books I have no desire to read for all the world, and all other topics so related to my almost diseased compulsion to buy, read, and talk about books. I have a best-books list on facebook. I have a Librarything account. I have every other available form of book-related internet site. Why not have one where I can write for myself about the books I read, and the books I want to read. And so, the adventure begins...

The book I have most recently finished would be Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower. This would be the second time I have read this book, and I find myself being as contemplative about it as the first time. This is the kind of book that requires a darker room, some Iron and Wine and perhaps a strong cup of coffee. The book, a psuedo-diary written to an anonymous friend by a young boy named Charlie, makes the reader realize just how hard core and indie their life is not. The characters in the book, although occasionally flat and one-dimensional, make you want to be friends with them. The prose is stark, yet strikingly beautiful:

"When we got out of the tunnel, Sam screamed this really fun scream, and there it was. Downtown. Lights on buildings and everything that makes you wonder. Sam sat down and started laughing. Patrick started laughing. I started laughing. And in that moment, I swear we were infinite."

Probably one of the few problems I would have with this book is just how young the narrator sounds. I mean, yes, he is only in ninth grade, but sometimes the way he speaks makes him sound as if he is much, much younger than that -think maybe sixth or seventh grade. But its a small problem to deal with for such an amazing book. Perhaps I really am not critical enough. There are few books that I have read that I dis-like. If I don't like a book, I usually stop reading it. But there are also few books that I have read that have made me want to change something about myself, my own writing. This book has done that.

-Chelsea.

About Me

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I'm a 24 year old newlywed, getting my library science degree all while working in a bookstore and trying to find some of the big answers in the big books - and the small books, while I'm at it. I'm interested in all types of fiction and personal non-fiction, all procedural cop dramas, and a fair portion of the TV that airs on the BBC3! I care about sustainability, agricultural ethics, independent documentaries, and admitting freely that I don't have all the answers - and may never - but I'm trying to have fun while I figure it out!