Year In Read, 2013

A year is long, or long enough that when the end of December comes around, when the days are so short they start becoming longer, when there’s no work to be done besides eating sweets and vague thoughts about self-improvement, it always comes as somewhat of a surprise.

My favorite part of this time of year is watching the dusk settle into the night and staring at the bare branches against the changing sky. That’s probably the best part of winter anywhere. The best part of winter in Denver is the way the snow doesn’t melt if it’s covered in shadows.

I don’t have any grand proclamations about 2013, or any predictions about 2014. In 2013, I read and in 2014, I plan to do the same. After the jump, the books I read last year.

Key
*Book club book
** Reread

A Hologram for the King, Dave Eggers
Half in Love, Maile Meloy **

Maile Meloy is one of my favorite short story writers, and for some sort of vague literary exercise, I typed up “Garrison Junction,” maybe her best story, here. 

Little Girls in Pretty Boxes, Joan Ryan

The Twitter-length takeaway: Don’t let your little girls have dreams that involve eating disorders!

Swamplandia!, Karen Russell*
People Who Eat Darkness, Richard Lloyd Parry

This is one of the best true crime books I’ve ever read. Anyone who is interested in Japan and being interested should read this book. 

The Centennial History of the Jews of Colorado, Allen duPont Breck

A gag gift, though the gag is that I read it. Do you know the inventor of Samsonite luggage was a Denver Jew, and he named the company after his biblical hero Samson? For more dinner party conversation facts, check out #COJews

Light Years, James Salter
50 Shades of Grey, E.L. James*

The best discussion at book club all year.

The Interestings, Meg Wolitzer
Generation X, Douglas Coupland
The Woman Upstairs, Claire Messud
When Everything Changed, Gail Collins
The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins*
Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls, David Sedaris

I didn’t love this collection of essays, but proof of Sedaris’s talent as a memoirist can be found in “Now We Are Five,” a brave account of his sister’s suicide.

Pigeon Feathers, John Updike 
Freedom, Jonathan Franzen **
Born to Run, Christopher McDougall
Where Did You Go Bernadette?, Maria Semple
The Lowlands, Jhumpa Lahiri
Where Men With Glory, Jon Krakauer *
Many Lives, Many Masters, Brian Weiss*
Independence Day, Richard Ford

Previously: But speaking of America

A Dangerous Place: California’s Unsettling Fate, Marc Reisner
The Kid, Dan Savage*
Dear Life, Alice Munro
Roth Unbound, Claudia Roth Pierpoint
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, Jeanette Winterson
Decoded, Jay-Z

I read three auto/biographies of literary figures in a row, and Jay-Z’s was the one that I enjoyed the most. Though I’ve been known to dance around to Izzo by myself, I’m not a huge fan of his music. It’s more that I find his story, his branding, and his cross-platform portfolio interesting. Jay-Z is living one version of the American Dream, and his telling of it is inspiring.

Previously read: 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007  

How The Year in Read Gets Made, or The Reading Habits of Rebecca Aronauer

My uncle records all the books he reads. I admired this; such a list was proof of something. When I graduated college and the period of assigned reading had ended, I began recording what I read, too.

During the year, I write down what I read on a wall calendar. This year was Bernese Mountain Dogs. 

After finishing the book, I record my name and the month and year I read it on the first page. 

For bookmarks, I use tickets, race bibs, and business cards. I try to match the scrap paper with the book.

It’s nice when the bookmark goes with the color of the book:

The Middlesteins, January, 2013, Paine to Pain Half-Marathon race bib

Or when a narrative component of the book matches up nicely with the bookmark: 

50 Shades of Grey, with the card of Office N. Huber of the Aurora Police Department, April, 2013.

The best is when both things happen:

The Centennial History of the Colorado Jews, with a train ticket from Grand Central to New Rochelle, my hometown, a place where Passover and spring break are the same week. 

Things That Have Been Great

The Brother HL-2270DW

Printing, or rather my continual disappointment of the life of inkjet cartridges, had been a source of some strain for most of my freelancing life. No longer! I got a printer that only prints and now I print, double-sided, old New Yorker articles like a baller/paralegal. Being able to look at the physical draft of a story I’m working on feels like the writer’s version of indoor plumbing – that is, a luxury that shouldn’t be one.

“One Radio Host, Two Dancers”

Ira Glass’s dance company came to Denver this weekend. Part of the fun was having no idea what a collaboration like this would look like. I went because I have faith in Ira Glass. The show is thought provoking and accessible, and only exists as a performance. It’s not a streamable experience, and if means allow, it’s definitely an experience that’s worth having.

Finishing a Story

I PDF’ed a story I’ve been working on off and on for the past 18 months, and I feel good about putting it behind the glass door of an Adobe file. I spend about seven hours a week writing, which isn’t that much. Most of the time, I feel like I’m not doing anything other than waking up early. Turns out, I was writing a story!

Whenever I hear “Scenic Life,” I feel like I’m in a movie. In this case, a movie about finding the best live version of “Scenic Life” to put on my tumblr. 

Lauren Collins: Between, South Korea’s Romance App →

You can have only one contact on Between: your significant other. In South Korea, more than half of twentysomethings have used Between. The app has become a synecdoche for commitment: whereas a boy might once have asked the object of his affections, “Do you want to be my girlfriend?,” he now says, “Do you want to Between?”

Book club for this article please. 

Just A Moment

I tend to blog more when I’m starting a new writing project, as a way to feel like I’m doing something even when I’m not working. For me, blogging is a way to try out phrases and ideas. Even if I’m not writing fiction, at least I’m at my desk, staring at a screen, thinking about how words go together. Blogging is the writing equivalent of 30 minutes on the elliptical. 

I’ve recently become obsessed with the idea that the best short stories are about a moment when something is true, or a truth about a character is revealed. So right now, I have a moment, but I’m trying to figure out who would be there and why. It’s confusing and difficult, and leads to a lot of moments of staring out the window and procrastination cleaning. 

The more I think about this Moment idea, the more I think the short form is more honest than the novel. The length of the novel implies that you’re getting the whole story. But there’s no “whole story.” Things continue even after that whale hunt that changed everything. A short story doesn’t make a promise to tell the whole story. A short story is just a true moment in a person’s larger life narrative. 

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. I’ve also been thinking about how pleasant this fall has been in Denver. It snowed in the first week of October, but then, for whatever reason, the weather has stayed in the 50s and 60s. Fall and spring in the West aren’t as fragrant and lovely as they are on the East Coast, where things are more verdant and fast-paced. Most of the trees turn yellow here, but every once in a while, there’s a tree that goes orange or red. Last month, I was a foodie for fall, and I took pictures of any tree that reminded me that fall in Denver was still worth having. You know me, always capturing the small moments.  

Crush

For the past three nights, I’ve had a dream about a medium-famous person. He’s famous enough that most people would probably know who I’m talking about, but not famous—or destructive—enough to be in the pages of US Weekly. 

Other than the fact that I’m not famous, this medium-famous person and I would get along, I think. We seem to have the same sense of humor, definitely like the same music, and, according to Wikipedia, have similar backgrounds. We could celebrate various holidays together with the same level of irony. 

One of my real-life New York friends, who is known in certain circles, though is not famous by any means, knows my medium-famous crush. When I wake up from these dreams, I think maybe I could get set up with this guy. And then I remember someone medium famous probably isn’t interested in starting something long distance. Hell, I’m not famous and I’m not interested in something long distance. 

In New York, it’s easy to be adjacent to things like fame and creativity. Bumping up against money isn’t hard, either. One of the best restaurants in the city is in a mall. A fancy mall, but still a mall. In Denver, I’m adjacent to the mountains, which, when considering reality, is much better for my quality of life. But for better or worse, or just honestly, I miss the chance to be adjacent to more unattainable things. 

But speaking of America, I just read Independence Day, which is about as American as books come. The book is set during the long weekend of our national birth, and our hero, Frank Bascombe, is a real estate agent. 

The book is long and often rudderless, but it’s worth reading if only because Richard Ford comes up with sentences that break you a part. One of my favorites was: “The world, as I told him, lets you do what you want if you can live with the consequences.” 

On first read, the consequence part of the sentence loomed large, as consequences are often impossible to imagine. On the other hand, doing whatever you want is pretty easy to conceptualize. In this framing, consequence seemed like a never-ending punishment for choice. 

I quoted this sentence to a friend, who had, as Ford would put it, a hardscrabble start. She thought it was an optimistic view. Not everyone has the freedom to face consequences. Another friend said the fear of consequences is what keeps most people in their place. (In either view, North Koreans—the ones who can’t defect and the ones who do anyway—are a powerful example.)

Sometimes when I’m nervous at parties, I’ll ask a stranger what he thinks the American Dream is. Recently someone said there’s a “pat answer,” and that answer is having your children do better than you. In Frank’s case, his child isn’t going to do better than him. But I do think Frank is living a kind of American Dream, and not just because he owns property and has a business. He is able to face the consequences of his decisions, which might be just what the founding fathers had in mind. 

Marathon as Melting Pot →

I love New York, I love the New York City Marathon, I love the local New York Times coverage of the New York City Marathon, but quoting a man saying that “No other city is as competitive [as New York]“ without qualifying it is like a bridge from Manhattan to Staten Island. That is: a bridge too far. New York is the best at a lot of things, but not running.

I spilled water on my computer and I have to wait for a few days for everything to dry out before I know the extent of the damage. It sucks, but this little parody song I came up with almost makes it worth it: 

Computer in a coma/I know I know/it’s serious

Three Things

Confidence; as a teenager? Because I knew what I loved. I loved to read; I loved to listen to music; and I love cats. Those three things. So, even though I was an only kid, I could be happy because I knew what I loved. Those three things haven’t changed from my childhood. I know what I love, still, now. That’s a confidence. If you don’t know what you love, you are lost.

I think about this Haruki Murakami quote a lot, I make conversation with it. I ask people what their three things are. Knowing three things is a lot to know; it took me like a quarter of a century to settle on my three. For the record, I love reading, writing, and running, though since I moved to Colorado and bought a bike, the last one has changed to being outside at large, which has less rhythmic prowess.

While this is a great and valuable pull quote, I think it’s misleading. Because knowing three things isn’t a panacea. Life can still be a bummer even with three activities or nouns that you enjoy. In a small, not super personal example, this last weekend, I was lonely. I went like 30 hours alone, which would have been fine if that had been the mood I was in, but it wasn’t. I wanted to be social and eat poached eggs or even talk into someone’s ear with a drink in hand. In short, I wanted to do more than reread the good parts of Freedom, bike in spandex, and write for 60 minutes without internet access.

Now it’s Thursday, and I’ve since been social, and that specific loneliness has passed. I can’t speak to what having three things has given Murakami beyond confidence. But for me, knowing what I like means even during bleak times, I’m doing something productive with myself. Maybe that’s a hyper American way to tackle being bummed. But I am an American, and I’m glad I spend my lonely times doing things I love.

Just Some Hippy Shit

One of the great things about living in Colorado is the bumper stickers. The other day, I saw one that said, “Guns Don’t Kill People, Abortion Clinics Do,” which, whatever you think of those values, is an elegant combination of offensive ideas. There are a lot of keep Christ in Christmas and Jesus fish on SUVs, but just as many stickers about “Karma” and “eARTh” on Priuses. This is a purple state after all. 

A few weeks ago on my bike, I saw one that said “If You Want Peace, Want Justice.” I was on a long ride, and I had time to think about this. While I appreciate the sentiment – Who’s against peace? Who’s against justice? – I think it’s misguided. 

“Justice” is a platonic ideal, and a subjective one at that. For instance, “justice” in the Middle East means different things to different people, and no one seems close to getting it. We strive for justice, but no punishment can bring back someone who has been murdered, remove the wounds of rape, or a thousand other extreme examples where no punishment can ever create true justice. 

This is not to say when wrongs occur that we should choose to be silent in the hopes of peace. But to predicate peace on the achievement of justice seems wrongheaded. We live in an inherently unjust world, but we can still strive for a peaceful existence.