Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in it won't kill you's LiveJournal:

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Sunday, October 18th, 2009
8:00 pm	Lucy, adult fiction by Jamaica Kinkaid. Purest, strongest flood of profoundly foreign-to-me voice; I couldn't begin to predict the narrator's moves but never doubted their absoluteness. I want to know whether this novel feels like home to a lot of people but the reviewers I found all seem to be guessing, as I am; if it were a smidge more accessible, I'd try it on my kids, because I have no idea whether they're 10% or 80% closer to it than I am. Essays by James Baldwin. Direct and challenging; still important (are white people fascinated with the achievement gap (nomenclature shudder) precisely because it reaffirms that success means being more like us?) but makes me wish fervently that he were here to think about the world my kids live in now. Appreciate recommendations of anybody working now who is as much a seeker, as unconstrained. Project Yes, a middle-grades novel by Sara Holmes. Below-average craftsmanship in service of not much story; tells rather than shows not only nuance but the existence and resolution of conflict, so that key scenes read rather like the "Yes, and..." game that features prominently. Flickers to life briefly over a tonally jarring moment of adult grief; if Holmes wants to submit herself to my advice column, I can certainly reveal to her what book she actually wanted to write. Where People Like Us Live, a young-adult novel by Patricia Cumby. Stronger prose in service of, or concealing, even less story; Cumby is the gifted stylist whose two-in-the-morning stream of consciousness earned the grudging B Holmes was busting her butt for. (time suck)
Saturday, October 10th, 2009
3:53 pm	The Boatwright, a new play by Bo Wilson. Deceptively easy; sets up for luminous, breath-stopping ending with invisible grace of real magic. I haven't read enough plays to do this properly yet, but reminds me, if anything, of W;t. (time suck)
Friday, October 2nd, 2009
9:49 am	A La Carte, young-adult fiction by Tanita Davis, recommended by Ebony Thomas in best part of essay kerfuffle (see below), and read all in one go Sunday morning for sole purpose of breaking enchantment cast by extraordinarily heavy and dense novel loaf of which I have read something like three pages a night on average for the last six weeks and which I yesterday boldly sent away to wait in the car. Both prose and plot lack polish, but there is easy, authentic emotional energy that makes me eager for her fourth and fifth efforts. And bottlenecked behind actually finishing a real book, The Glass Castle, adult memoir by Jeanette Walls, read by Julia Gibson. On being raised by a pair of unusually creative but thoroughly egocentric six-year-olds; dangerous, heartbreaking, and on rare occasions glorious. Bought a classroom copy mostly out of curiosity regarding what my students will make of the wildly irregular Venn patchwork between this genre of neglectful parenting and the ones with which they are familiar. Similarly The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, adult fiction by Junot Diaz, read by Jonathan Davis with Staci Snell. Good bones, but the prose is so distractingly careless I longed for fast forward. I had an essay published, and then somebody I wrote about wrote an irate response, and then I wrote back, and then the Internet chimed in. Hurting somebody's feelings isn't my first-choice approach to writerly prominence but there were interesting moments and interested parties should email me for the link. (time suck)
Wednesday, August 19th, 2009
8:31 pm	My friend Rachel's project is funded. Teh Internet FTW. (: (time suck)
Sunday, August 16th, 2009
11:09 pm	Salem's Lot, adult fiction by Stephen King, last read the summer before seventh grade when I worked through most of his then-catalogue. For me it is surprisingly predictable; it doesn't do much more with its notions than populate them and hit "run," and with rather less specificity and showmanship than his usual, which still puts him miles ahead of almost everybody else. Sentimentally, however, informative. (time suck)
Friday, August 14th, 2009
1:40 am	Okay, so when I've had a DonorsChoose project some of y'all on this list have been AMAZING and made MAGICAL THINGS happen in my classroom and it was total FAIRYTALE FAIRY GODMOTHER and so forth. And now my friend Rachel has a DonorsChoose project of her own that is kajillion kinds of awesome because she is the most wonderful history teacher of all time and she teaches at a vibrant and diverse but underresourced NYC school and she will use this funding to supplement content instruction with teaching kids to read and to love reading AND I can actually link to it here (I don't with my own because of the whole, you know, Super Sekrit Identity) SO if you feel inspired to support some great teaching and learning directly, that's your button to click for today. (time suck)
Thursday, August 13th, 2009
11:39 am	Fly By Night, a middle-grades novel by Frances Hardinge, recommended by Meg Rosoff. 60% unfollowable Stephensonesque faction-caucus internecine meeting minutes, 30% strong voice and story and characters, and last 10% when she breaks clean and fast for the ideas she cares about, lovely. It's at least entirely different from the rest of what's out there. Hoop Roots, adult memoir by John Edgar Wideman, begun and abandoned, which happens approximately as often as you've seen me note it here. I've managed to float with his current a time or two in fiction, give up on wanting things to happen or on wanting to know what they are once they do, but there's just not enough separating this one from a very talented I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO WRITE I LIKE CHEESE CHEESE CHEESE style of freewrite. (3 hours |time suck)
Sunday, July 26th, 2009
1:46 pm	Quick and dirty, just catching up: Shadowland, adult fiction by Peter Straub. Pure metastory metamagic; shows Gaiman what he's trying for; last 1/4 can't quite be done, though. Duma Key, adult fiction by Stephen King. Bo told me King had gotten stronger and he has, but that there's nobody writing better about being a grownup rather sharpens the disappointment when the giant magic spiders still roll on up. Perdido Street Station, adult fiction by China Mieville. Another really lovely writer apparently laboring under some sort of Gadget Expo/ Battle Showdown gypsy curse. The Screwtape Letters, adult fiction by C.S. Lewis, read by John Cleese. Funny and so fucking smart. Had to pause periodically to sort out which bits I can live by and which I have to almost-regretfully set aside. (And I'm glad I went out of my way for the more-one-man-show-than-audiobook Cleese version.) Flood, adult fiction by Andrew Vachss. Interesting mostly in relation to Safe House; this man hasn't yet begun to sweat in defense of the clarity (I say simplicity) of his vision. A Single Shard, middle-grades fiction by Linda Sue Park, read by Graeme Malcolm. A fine and truly unusual small object, like the monkey figurine in the story; fairytale-stylized, but not in any style we know, and mostly about the making of art, in a way that I imagine will mean nothing to most children and everything to a few. I cried at the end. Eurydice, a play by Sarah Ruhl, starkest-thus-far illustration of "it's not a text, it's instructions," in that it would be 100% indecipherable if I hadn't heard a little about its performance and still comes pretty close. This particular self-study syllabus would work a lot better if it came with a Portkey. (time suck)
Saturday, June 27th, 2009
10:04 pm	The Glass Menagerie, a play by Tennessee Williams, whose insufferability seeps up through the stage directions unto the narrative frame, but, you know, classic, etc. Getting Out, a play by Marsha Norman, bit of a reading-strategies challenge but kids will love it if they manage. I'm bothered by Norman's sense of badness as a coherent and nearly metaphysical force in us, as therefore killable, but I suppose I'm taking it rather more personally than intended. Doubt, a play by John Shanley, and says A Parable right on the cover, so I suppose we can't complain when the characters tack sharply. Except they're so much more interesting when they don't. Which is enough of the time to fascinate. Haven't decided, quite, whether watching counts, but thus far this year Tom Stoppard's Arcadia; Shakespeare's King Lear, the Paris Hilton version; Bo Wilson's Mona's Arrangements, both with and without seventh graders; and Sam Shepard's True West. Typing on phone from airport in future. Can you tell? Posted via LiveJournal.app. (time suck)
Thursday, June 25th, 2009
12:08 am	Shining City, a play for adults by Conor McPherson, more Theatre 101. Brutal and either scary or redemptive or both. Recommended, particularly September 2009 Richmond-area productions. In composing blog appositives, as well as in attempting to assemble a drama section for my independent-reading library, I've become uncomfortably aware that there is no such genre as Young Adult Drama. If you think of plays seventh graders can read and love by themselves, please advise. The Devil in the White City, adult nonfiction by Erik Larson, recommended by preraphaelite, who's usually Right About Everything, but not about this being novelly enough even for the likes of me. I learned a lot about the World's Fair and Industrial-Revolution Hot Or Not, if you're into that sort of thing. (4 hours |time suck)
Tuesday, June 16th, 2009
10:36 pm	A Mercy, adult fiction by Toni Morrison, in audiobook, read by the author, who swings through her language with such transparent naturalness that only when I went back to look at it via amazon did I realize it could arguably scan as difficult. Audio might really be her right medium. I'm not so sure about the storytelling in this one, I'm not so sure she takes me anywhere important or new, but I'll go pretty much wherever with her and she knows it. On deck: Devil in the White City, Shadowland. (time suck)
6:36 pm	Notes for a War Story, adult graphic novel by Gipi. Picked up for the same reason my kids choose it -- after long slog, was in the mood for something I could finish quickly. Still forced to assume much of what's happening is over my head because the bits I get are like not-quite-as-good-as little novels. Safe House, adult fiction by Andrew Vachss. Tight and tasty, except for a couple of uneasy moments in which one suspects Vachss might actually not be kidding. (time suck)
Sunday, June 7th, 2009
4:29 pm	Declare, adult fiction by Tim Powers, recommended by a friend, curiosity regarding whose motives powered me through the last let's say eight ninths when very little else could have, though even that intention proved optimistic in the end. Neal Stephenson squared minus the, you know, characters and stories and information; 500+ pages of ship positionings. Whatever I did, I apologize, truly. (time suck)
Sunday, May 24th, 2009
10:07 am	Theater Games for the Lone Actor, nonfiction by Viola Spolin, because my library didn't have the other one. The kids more or less demanded a theatre workshop and I couldn't bring myself to refuse them but I am learning my own valuable lessons about exactly what happens when you're skimming furiously to stay a chapter ahead of the class. It's a quite worse problem than teaching, say, the writing of poetry, at which I'm not particularly gifted but at least have worked and received training; if I do this again, I'm afraid I'm going to have to sign up for some sort of theatre experience myself, after all these years of not checking that box. Anyway, the book: Much the mystical edge of the, you know, useful classroom advice, for the layperson not particularly readable, but if I don't get all the way through Improvisation for the Theatre and so don't post about it, this might be my only opportunity to heartily recommend the thing itself. I'm beginning to guess that Theatre as much as Literature is a right place for teaching seventh graders to read and think. On deck: Declare, Shadowland, Impro, Improvisation for the Theatre, The Partly Cloudy Patriot, A Mercy (audio). (time suck)
Wednesday, May 20th, 2009
6:58 am	Tender Morsels, fiction by Margo Lanagan. Marketed as young adult but presumably only because it's at the rarely-labeled intersection of fairy tale and adult and ADULT. Delicate and gorgeous, for me, so much so that I haven't wanted to think too hard about it yet. A stronger, surer Weetzie Bat, maybe. Till We Have Faces, reread, adult fiction by C.S. Lewis. Theory delivered with the force of prophecy. Absorbing, difficult to resist, or read resistively. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, reread if skimming for high school counts, which it probably doesn't, adult fiction by Mark Twain, mostly in audiobook, but I returned it and can't ascertain the reader. I can't quite tell what he's doing most of the time, whether he's trying to be funny or so angry he can hardly breathe, and I'm not sure whether that's his thing or my lack of context. And (so?) anything that strikes me as subtle and fine is subsequently pounded flat into four patterned chapters; nothing nice is ever not tedious. If anybody reading along teaches this, I'd love to know how. (time suck)
Saturday, April 25th, 2009
2:20 pm	Also the opening chapter of Laura Miller's The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia, and thence to the opening chapter of C.S. Lewis's An Experiment in Criticism, both pleasing in just that quantity. (time suck)
2:16 pm	The Diamond Age, adult fiction by Neal Stephenson. Some very cool bits, and some tedious bits about things not quite so cool, which distinction I'm sure is more mine than textual, and some lovely and eloquent claims for story, undermined by careless contradiction of same whenever overexcited about shiny bits. As usual, I lost or never quite acquired track of characters, factions, and ship positionings, so I can't justly evaluate how much fun it all amounts to (to which it all amounts.) Looking forward to the eventual sleek and streamlined 110-page young-adult novella I can really get behind (behind which I can really get), which probably means I don't deserve to even place a library hold with his name in it. (time suck)
Saturday, April 11th, 2009
4:42 pm	The Clean House, a play by Sarah Ruhl, for ongoing Theatre-With-An-RE (Because-I-Didn't-Have-Enough-Knifetwist-Usage-Affectations, Gee-Thanks-SO-Much) Appreciation I. If Lucky is the text for Why Story, this is it for Why The Stage, I think; gets purest pain so exactly right, distilled way beyond realism, that it becomes very funny. I can imagine, at the end of this, feeling like we'd traveled long and intimately together, all of us watching, long enough to argue and tell stories and finally agree together yes, that's what it's like, isn't it? If I'm picturing this right, then I'm maybe starting to understand better. (time suck)
Monday, April 6th, 2009
2:42 am	Lucky, adult nonfiction by Alice Sebold. If I ever taught a class whose sole objective was making children understand, why words, why story, this would be the key text. She takes a deep breath and aims herself straight down the edge of her precipice, she's got steering but no brakes, she tells the hardest part in the first thirty pages, no flinching, no pausing, it's intense and you know she owns it. It's impossible to look away and -- well -- I learned a lot. Recommended, but brace yourself. Beasts of No Nation, adult fiction by Uzodinma Iweala, in audiobook. I picked this up off my Critically Acclaimed Possibly Relevant list and thought, I know every single thing that this is going to be like, and then rejoined, how unfair, like every Holocaust or slavery novel's just the same, and everybody loved it, come on, everybody's not stupid, and you know what, I was right the first time. Interestingly bold postcolonialist gamesmanship, though, using invented broken-English dialect to represent rhythms of African language. Un Lun Dun, young-adult fiction by China Mieville. Witty and inventive magic of Harry Potter, minus the compelling characters and relationships such as they are and story suspense such as it is, but the prose is easier on the eyes. If the previews for the first HP movie comprised more than half of what you love about the heptology -- or if you remembered The Phantom Tollbooth as better than it turned out to be when you went back to it -- this is for you. Thirteen Reasons Why, young-adult fiction by Jay Asher, in audiobook. This might be... thinking... yeah, this might be the book that's pissed me off the most, ever. Certainly in recent memory. The writing's lazy as hell and the plot relies on readers' having no experience with the mechanics of actual high school life and the one jot of narrative tension is resolved at about the 3/4 mark with "actually, no, that wasn't a thing at all" and none of that's even what bugs me. And when I say bugs I mean infuriates and offends. The premise -- and I'm about to try my damndest to spoil this book for you -- is that a high school girl has killed herself and left behind thirteen audiotapes, one about each of the thirteen people whose betrayals forced her to it, plus complicated instructions for the delivery of the full series to each of those thirteen. There is no catch. There is no twist. There is no redemption. From the text as written, it is difficult to avoid concluding ALL of the following: (1) The petty cruelty of high school students has the power to rob its victims of their bodies and selves. (2) There is no fighting back. There is no assertion of self. If they decide to hurt you, you bleed, and you become weak. (3) Suicide is a not unreasonable response to an accumulation of such cruelties. (4) The suicide of a victim can serve as punishment for the perpetrators of such cruelties. (5) Along with petty cruelty, rape, failure to stop a rape, drunk driving, sexual harassment, lack of respect for the privacy of others, gossip, objectification, and phoniness can be more or less equated as crimes of betrayal. There is some meaning to be derived from distributing responsibility and penance more or less equally among their perpetrators. (6) The worst, cruelest thing you can do to a girl is believe her to be sexually active when she is in fact wholesome and pure. (7) It is appropriate for a girl who is believed to be sexually active to consider herself ruined, not just socially but personally. (8) Suicide gives you a voice. Finally you will be able to tell your story. Finally people will listen. Finally they will understand how they have hurt you and they will be sorry. (9) High school students and teachers who failed to pick up on warning signs are to blame for your suicide. If you have ever failed in this way, however, you deserve them. (10) Fortunately your peers can redeem themselves by paying closer attention to the next girl they catch in dark lipstick. I mean... I don't know. I don't even feel snarky. I'm just horrified. How are people digging this? (11 hours |time suck)
Monday, March 16th, 2009
9:48 am	Sleeping in Flame, adult fiction by Jonathan Carroll. One of those times when a book finds you at just the right moment; deals with love and magic and being a writer and works densely and joyfully in language so that every line brings surprises but never to show off, always to guide and gladden. It'd be interesting to ask a roomful of readers on which page each thinks the realism leaches away. (At one time in my life I'd've said 8 or 10, but now I think I hold out til 60 or 70, and I know people who'll give him well into the three digits.) The Hunger Games, young-adult fiction by Suzanne Collins. Absolutely she'd have to work a hell of a lot harder to qualify the premise for adult literature, but on balance there's a lot here for which I'm willing to suspend unimpressedness. For one thing it's FUCKED WAY UP which always cheers me in literature for adolescents and for another though it doesn't quite work as a novel there are flashes of freaky-fearless prose that I think will reward careful readers with some seriously weird dreams. (time suck)