- Title: Shopgirl
- Author: Steve Martin
- Year Published: 2000 (Hyperion)
- Year Purchased: 2002
- Source: A bookstore in Buffalo, New York.
- About: Yes, this is a novella by that Steve Martin. It’s a surprisingly quiet, well-written and effective story about a young Neiman Marcus employee making her way delicately through the post-collegiate world of adult dating and responsibilities. By the time she becomes involved with an older man, you are invested in the heroine and her choices. Martin makes her world intriguing and inviting, even though nothing much happens there. The ability to transform every day emotions, via imagination, into something fresh yet realistic, requires a solid and subtle skill. Although it’s now well-known how multi-talented the comic truly is (banjo, anyone?), twelve years ago this slim little volume was an eye-opener.
- Motivation: I was curious. It was on sale. I needed a quick read for the car ride home.
- Times Read: 1
- Random Excerpt/Page 21: “But that night, the voice does not come, and she quietly folds herself up and leaves the bar. The voice is to come on Tuesday.”
- Happiness Scale: 8
A Year in Books/Day 84: Picture This Debbie Harry and Blondie
- Title: Picture This Debbie Harry and Blondie
- Author: Mick Rock
- Year Published: 2004 (Sanctuary Publishing Limited)
- Year Purchased: 2004
- Source: Via mail, exact source unknown.
- About: This is famed photographer Mick Rock’s obsessively lovely visual tribute to Debbie Harry and, casually, by way of association, her bandmates in Blondie. It’s a reminder-for those in actual need of one-of how truly stunning, original and photogenic the singer has always been. He also throws in anecdotes about other rock and rollers who have been covered by his lens.
- Motivation: Going into this one, I had to repeat the phrase “Must not natter on about my love for Debbie Harry, must not natter on about my love for Debbie Harry…” The Blondie frontwoman is who I wanted to grow up to be: confident, talented, singular and beautiful. I still feel that way. I’m equipped with so many thoughts about DH that it is only with real effort that I pack them away for another day. I’ll move on to the next category before this becomes a 3,000 word essay or I stray into suspiciously flowery, fangirl territory.
- Times Read: cover-to-cover: 3/picture gawking: countless
- Random Excerpt/Page 103: “Not that her allure was any less potent, for her appeal did not (and does not) reside solely in her blondness. It’s an innate quality. There has always been a softness,a non-narcissistic casualness about the way she deals with her physical appeal.”
- Happiness Scale: 10++++++
Women Writing for a Change ‘Spring Fling’ Podcast!
A few weeks ago, I participated in a podcast for Women Writing for a Change here in The Queen City. Although I was puffy and a bit out-of-sorts due to major sinus issues, the entire experience was several sorts of fun. My kilt-clad honey was there for moral support; the organizers even invited him into “the circle” (quite the important thing), where he unleashed his singular brand of brash, intellectual charm on all of my co-writer-readers. There followed nearly two hours of creative rituals, snacks, networking, laughter and, of course, podcast recording.
As host Carol Stewart said in her intro to the ‘Spring Fling’-themed podcast, we are “sending forth words that are bold and necessary”. Twelve writers offering twelve entirely different perspectives, a dozen voices ultimately uniting in a rising and triumphant exultation to the new season; there is stunning individuality but a cohesive flow is maintained. Written in ten minutes on a Sunday afternoon, with the only goal being to stave off boredom whilst maintaining a comfortable laziness, my contribution is brief and humble. It initially appeared here as Intermezzo: The Sky is Flaunting Itself. It’s quick but descriptive; after reading it twenty times I’m still content with it and am glad that I did not embellish it for this recording.
I am the third reader in the first segment. Be sure to check out my friend Angela Muchmore in the second segment, where she reads a lovely original poem. The podcast is available as a free download on iTunes. It can also be found on the WWFC web-site.
[News]-Poet Adrienne Rich is Dead
Award-winning poet Adrienne Rich is dead. She was 82. More information can be found on The Rumpus or at the Los Angeles Times. I’d write more but I’m eager to curl up with some of her poems and a cup of tea. There is no better way to honor a writer’s memory than by reading their carefully crafted words.
“A thinking woman sleeps with monsters.”-Adrienne Rich
Quote
“The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.”-Oscar Wilde
A Year in Books/Day 83: Savage Beauty
- Title: Savage Beauty The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay
- Author: Nancy Milford
- Year Published: 2001 (Random House)
- Year Purchased: 2002-2004
- Source: Barnes & Noble
- About: This distinguished biography of the Maine-born poet is one hell of an intense, engaging read. It’s well-researched and superbly written, pulling you with ease and throbbing immediacy into the bohemian haunts of the Greenwich Village and Paris of the early twentieth century. Thanks to Milford’s contact with the poet’s younger sister, Norma, she was able to access Millay’s personal archives. It is at once nuanced and immense, revelatory and re-affirmative; the result is one of my favourite literary biographies.
- Motivation: Edna. St. Vincent. Millay. Seriously, her talent, intellect and life were breathtaking and bewitching. I also may or may not bear a striking physical resemblance to the red-haired poet. Really, I should write a one-woman show based on her life and cast myself in the role. Hmmm. Maybe I should start practicing that Down East accent.
- Times Read: Countless
- Random Excerpt/Page 78: “That was a remarkable note of affection, and it would not be the last time Edna St. Vincent Millay would win to her side an older woman who was in a position to help her. They were taken with Edna Millay. They wanted to assist her in any way they could, perhaps because in the careful structure of their lives they felt diminished. Her life would be grand, sweeping, urgent. Incapable of this themselves, they would help her.”
- Happiness Scale: 10
A Year in Books/Day 82: The Glimmer Train Guide to Writing Fiction
- Title: The Glimmer Train Guide to Writing Fiction Inspiration and Discipline
- Editors: Susan Burmeister-Brown and Linda B. Swanson-Davies
- Year Published: 2007 (Glimmer Train Press)
- Year Purchased: 2007/2008
- Source: Writer’s Digest Book Club
- About: This thick little volume offers some of the best writing advice I’ve ever read. Presented in the form of interviews, it captures disparate writers’ unique yet universal passion for the craft; mixed with sound, structured and common-sense, been-there-done-that advice, it completely lives up to its cover promise. It is one of the few inspirational resources that I have ever repeatedly consulted. Worth every penny, and then some.
- Motivation: I think that I was sent this when I was too distracted to mail in the monthly card and too lazy to return the book. I’m glad I didn’t, as I probably would never have chosen it otherwise. The writing gods fortuitously intervened.
- Times Read: Cover-to-cover/1; as reference: countless.
- Random Excerpt/Page 43: “When I was in college, I began to read Faulkner and Hemingway, two writers that changed my life. I hadn’t read anything so shockingly wonderful as those two writers, and what they could do on the page stunned me. I’ve never gotten over that shock, and don’t want to.”-Kent Haruf
- Happiness Scale: 10+++
Voices from the Grave #12: F. Scott Fitzgerald Reading ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ (Keats)
F. Scott Fitzgerald reading an abbreviated version of Keats’ ‘Ode to a Nightingale’.
This week’s ‘VFTG’ is a bit different, as it features a writer reading another writer’s work. I think this makes it doubly interesting!
A Year in Books/Day 81: Mortification Writers’ Stories of Their Public Shame
- Title: Mortification Writers’ Stories of Their Public Shame
- Editor: Robin Robertson
- Year Published: 2003 (Harper Perennial)
- Year Purchased: 2007/2008
- Source: This was a gift from my Mom.
- About: This volume offers up seventy first-hand, real-life stories of writers’ deeply humiliating encounters with the public. Names as luminous as Margaret Atwood, Edna O’Brien and Chuck Palahniuk grace the pages with their always-humorous tales of woe and embarrassment.
- Motivation: My Momma loves to indulge the writer in me (which, to be real, comprises a good chunk of who I am). She knows how to make her girl happy!
- Times Read: 1
- Random Excerpt/Page xi: “While there are occasional undercurrents of seriousness in these stories-a desire for something between expiation and exorcism, perhaps-their main intention it to make us laugh, while feeling a strong sense of ‘there, but for the grace of God, go I’. It is greatly to the credit of all the contributors that they have embraced their mortification so warmly-returning to the scene of the crime and leading us, hot-faced, through their hell.”
- Happiness Scale: 8
Quote
“Life is trying things to see if they work.”-Ray Bradbury
