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

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Sunday, April 29th, 2012
12:04 pm	Fifty Shades of Grey, fanfiction by E.L. James, from a work friend, for a book club. Most of the way through I was happy to smile and forgive -- for the crayon-fisted prose, for the nonsensical human choices, for the bizarre ambivalence toward sex and kink in what was widely described as a romance -- I went around saying, "Listen, he picks her up in a HELICOPTER, I think the writer's telling us fairly clearly that we might as well relax and enjoy ourselves, if you don't like the helicopter then write your own damn porn, right?" At the very end, she gives a big Fuck You to her own protagonist, and I felt stupid for seeing anything other than contempt in any of what had come before. Bad not only in terms of craft but also in the same way that literature that teaches and enlarges love is good. Forgot to say about A Soldier of the Great War: The big reveal at the end seemed inevitable and necessary from the beginning; hundreds of pages of what seemed like willful obfuscation of it leached its power. (time suck)
Monday, April 23rd, 2012
12:22 am	Death Comes to Pemberley, adult fiction by P.D. James. We aren't meant to think much about the actual mystery -- we aren't given any of the relevant information until the resolution -- and so what's left is Pride & Prejudice fanfiction, of better quality than most but not all of what you'd find in the online archives, and without any of that medium's redeeming slash scenes. Smut, two adult novellas by Alan Bennett. Competent, interested, honest, a solid B+ student, but never for me escaped the short-story ceiling of "Some stuff happened, um." A Soldier of the Great War, adult fiction by Mark Helprin, author of Winter's Tale; it's tempting to call both a Boy Thing and leave it at that. Helprin's best characters are orthogonal to any recognizable reality and his best prose is the same way. An alien intelligence, not for use in life on this planet, not therefore less beautiful. The Rock and the River, young-adult fiction by Kekla Magoon, rereading before teaching. Solid and satisfying; if storycraft were 20% stronger it'd qualify as classic. An Evening of Long Goodbyes, adult fiction by Paul Murray, author of recent favorite Skippy Dies. Here the marriage of caricature and heartbreak worked less well for me; I didn't like caring about protagonists who alternated as the butt of Murray's joke. Interesting maybe as an object lesson in getting it wrong as a step toward getting it right. The Rebel Angels, adult fiction by Robertson Davies, because of knowing the name but not the work. Today's theme seems to be skill, craft, the simple workmanship that identifies the Real Writer, apart from the merits of the project. Maybe there is something old-fashioned in my reading, or maybe sturdy writing lasts longer; the sloppiness that bothers me in some much-admired contemporary fiction is almost always absent from the literature of before I was born. I care about the characters and follow the plot not due to any precarious pyrotechnics but just because he's doing his job. Here his ideas about men and women and sex and love are so profoundly dated or maybe just bizarre that the steady chug of the underlying story engines is actually sort of heroic. Two Girls Fat and Thin, adult fiction by Mary Gaitskill, picked up in the Used Book Room for no good reason. Very very strong. Also very strange, and strange about sex, but I suppose in ways I more readily recognize. Middlemarch, in audiobook, again, as usual. (time suck)
Monday, March 5th, 2012
5:07 am	The Tiger's Wife, adult fiction by Tea Obreht. Another one of those novels I would adore if it were a whole lot better than it is. Magic, story, love, etc., but the prose thunks hard enough to make the rest irrelevant. There Is No Dog, young-adult fiction by Meg Rosoff. A concept, and not a terrible one, followed by a whole lot of lazy typing. Sadface. Alan and Naomi, middle-grades historical fiction by Myron Levoy, reread from childhood. Grimly nihilistic, anti-redemptive in a way no adult Holocaust novel in my recollection has been. The Devil's Arithmetic, middle-grades historical fiction by Jane Yolen, reread, but I skimmed some parts this time. Yolen is one of those writers who just doesn't do it for me, though I recognize that her cheesiness is inherently no cheesier than what strikes me as simple and beautiful in e.g. Hilary McKay. Skippy Dies, adult fiction by Paul Murray, from my sister. Funnier, sadder, sharper, in brighter colors, literature with the contrast turned way up; wonderful to read. Through My Eyes, children's memoir by Tim Tebow, skimmed. Student blurbed it best: "He just keeps praying about football games and stuff." The Pink Motel, children's fiction by Carol Brink, from Bo. Egg whites, bubbles, a tiny pinch of sugar, and a very light touch; not the sort of construction much in use in current children's literature. Great Expectations, adult fiction by Charles Dickens, read by Frederick Davidson. Like a very good writer pulling a three-day NaNoWriMo bender. The plot never makes much sense but there's certainly plenty of it and the characters can't help being a little wonderful whenever they happen to wander through. After I finished and before I'd gotten around to downloading anything else I listened a little to Middlemarch as usual, which made me laugh out loud and sniffle a little in the car as usual, and did its usual gentle disservice to whatever else I happened to be reading, e.g. Pride and Prejudice, adult fiction by Jane Austen, re-read, mostly because of Death Comes To Pemberley next in the queue. (time suck)
Monday, January 2nd, 2012
1:18 am	Voyage of the Dawn Treader, children's fiction by C.S. Lewis, comfort reading. Many lovely bits, but separately, like an unstrung necklace. Special stars and hearts for Chapter 10, The Magician's Book. Home, adult fiction by Marilynne Robinson. Godchild to deep favorite Gilead, at the end of which one wonders, in the midst of joy: but what about Jack, where is his novel, how does it end? This is that book; I would prefer not to believe that is why it has less to offer. We Could Be Brothers, middle-grades fiction by Derrick Barnes, for the boys' homeroom book club. Thickly, awkwardly, improbably didactic; strip away the preaching and only badly faked urban-in-scare-quotes dialect remains; kids loved it. I think I wrote this essay already. Eros The Bittersweet, adult criticism (pity there isn't any other kind) by Anne Carson, gift from Carolyn. Literary theory as poetry, made up of texts rather than words. Made me laugh delightedly on the subway, though I'm glad I don't do it for a living. Marcelo in the Real World, young-adult fiction by Francisco Stork, recommended by Ebony. Opens with a lucid and powerful narrative voice gradually muddied in the service of a much less interesting plot. Next time, stay with the voice, dude, let it guide you where it wishes, it's a much greater gift. The Haunting of Hill House, adult fiction by Shirley Jackson, recommended by Bo. A related problem, resulting in a different infelicity; the Psychology bits are very fine, and the Thrilling segments are beautifully written, but I never trusted the parts where they moved one another, as opposed to simply occupying the same house. Dream Boy, adult fiction by Jim Grimsley. Strange and beautiful and very sad. Very much about love. On a different day, maybe this is the one that would've had me rolling my eyes, but it wasn't. The Diary of A Country Priest, by Georges Bernanos, translated by Pamela Morris, because mentioned by Gilead's narrator. Some keen ideas I could more or less pretend to follow and a lot I didn't understand at all; like reading the meeting minutes for an ancient Mayan interfaith bowling league committee. A useful reading-instruction object lesson on the point at which inferring background information becomes impractical. Glad I read it, though. (time suck)
Sunday, November 13th, 2011
1:54 pm	Gilead, adult fiction by Marilynne Robinson, reread. Loved it as much as I have ever loved reading literature; how much more it meant to me this time around makes me feel grateful for the certainty that we are still and always growing up. Still and always rereading. (Which by the way would probably be a more accurate name for the class I teach.) I Lock My Door Upon Myself, adult fiction by Joyce Carol Oates. A fairy tale. In an unusual reversal, questions about story and sex and love kept distracting me from questions about race. Like the narrator, I am afraid to think that love might be what it is in this story. The Scarlet Letter, adult fiction by Nathaniel Hawthorne, read by Kristen Underwood. What seemed insufferably tedious and overwrought in high school now feels leisurely and lovely. The OMG SYMBOL SYMBOL siren still makes me laugh, though. There is so much good and challenging and classic literature that's so much more about adolescent concerns; sucks that this one novel, so particularly about surviving what comes after that, ends up representing all of old-fashioned literature to kids who wrongly conclude as I did that they hate it. House of Holes, adult fiction by Nicholson Baker. Goofy and sexy, an unusual mode effectively summoned, if inessential. (time suck)
Sunday, October 23rd, 2011
3:03 pm	The Gift of Fear, adult nonfiction by Gavin de Becker, again not a cry for help but so often cited by favorite Carolyn Hax I wanted to check it out for myself. Sloppy, bombastic, badly written, and given to namedropping, but also fascinating. Like a straight, unstylish lecture from somebody whose single asset is extensive knowledge and experience, which has often been my favorite form of instruction. Made me feel smarter. (time suck)
Sunday, October 16th, 2011
8:02 pm	The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, adult fiction by Carson McCullers. Just never trusted it, didn't believe her characters or their wants or their voices, so the effect was a lot like sitting down to watch somebody write a couple hundred pages of a story they've invented. That or I'm just jealous; McCullers was, the back cover reminds us, "all of 23." Al Capone Does My Shirts, middle-grades fiction by Gennifer Choldenko, for learning teams. Kids will dig it but it's one of those books (Coraline is another) that is ten times stronger and sadder for the grownup reader, whose eye is drawn to the graver drama playing out just offstage. (time suck)
Sunday, October 9th, 2011
10:30 am	Catching up: When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult times, adult nonfiction by Pema Chodron, recommended by Carolyn, not a cry for help or anything. (: Self-evidently powerful tools for staying alive and awake though there's a sense of tourism for me toward any approach to life in which the well-being of the self is the central project from which one trusts the rest to flow. No Biking in the House Without a Helmet, adult nonfiction by Melissa Fay Greene. If you are the sort of person who laughs or cries for stories about life with children, you will. But in the end I was frustrated by not knowing whether the kids were fundamentally all right, or not, and I was afraid it might be coyness covering for "actually, no." All the Pretty Horses, adult fiction by Cormac McCarthy, a reread. Pure; old work crafted with new tools. The History of Love, adult fiction by Nicole Krauss, read by George Guidall, Barbara Caruso, Julia Gibson, and Andy Paris. Has stories, and writers, and love, and stories in love; knows just where it ought to be beautiful and where it ought to be sad; isn't, unfortunately. I know how much she hates the comparison, so I won't. Summertime, adult fiction by J.M. Coetzee. Remembrances of a South African writer named John Coetzee, a limited and unsympathetic character who understands very little about his life. Strange, difficult, insists by its skill that we seek to understand better than we can. The Secret Soldier: The Story of Deborah Sampson, children's fiction by Ann McGovern, serviceable as a three-day skip over a hundred years of our classroom timeline, and also as a reminder for me to think hard about what it is I ask children to do when they're reading books that are merely serviceable. A Picture of Freedom, middle-grades historical fiction by Patricia McKissack, writing for the Dear America series. Serviceable in the extreme. Nightjohn, middle-grades fiction by Gary Paulsen, a reread, and our next class text. He's compelling as always but we'll have to read Douglass in the middle for some lived sense beyond authorial assertion that literacy and freedom mean something to one another. How I Was, young-adult fiction (I think?) by Meg Rosoff, read by Ralph Cosham. What she does well, minus the otherworldly grace that abides for me in How I Live Now. I'll still read anything she gives me. (time suck)
Sunday, August 28th, 2011
9:11 pm	An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England, adult fiction by Brock Clark, picked up at Goodwill on the strength of the title. You've probably heard me characterize failed-in-my-opinion Newbery winner Criss Cross as an adult novel about children; even the most sophisticated young readers I know need a clearer trajectory than it offers. This book is the inverse, an innocent's telling of adult concerns. It is about truth, and love, and whether these are simple questions with yes/no answers, or on the other hand nuances, gradations, to be weighed alongside a thousand of life's other little measurements. The narrator is himself simple, or maybe even what was once called simple; whether his voice is more affecting, or more infuriating, may depend on which the reader believes. Snow, adult fiction by Orhan Pamuk, inherited from Doug's library. When I read Victorian or Japanese or maybe even black American literature I know that I don't know exactly what the characters mean by romance or shame or good manners; but joy and hope and sorrow and longing feel much the same and so the rest can be inferred and maybe even noted for future reference. Here, however, either every abstract noun has been maliciously mistranslated or else Pamuk's Turkey is entirely beyond my human experience; neither "love" nor "fear" nor "poetry" mean anything I can decipher into my own language. The numerous American critics who describe this book as hilarious and moving and edifying are either way better readers than I am, way more Turkish than I am, or way bigger liars than I am. The Liars' Club, adult shitty-childhood memoir by Mary Karr, recommended by Carolyn. An unusually good storyteller with unusually unwavering faith in resilience and love as originating in seeing as clearly as possible; squarely in the Purity of Truth Club herself. If the reader wants more in the way of answers, of summations, of what things really meant, perhaps she reveals only her own preference for the world with a beginning, a middle, and an end. (2 hours |time suck)
Thursday, August 4th, 2011
11:22 am	The Elegance of the Hedgehog, adult fiction by Muriel Barbery, translated by Alison Anderson. A Mad Magazine parody of a highbrow novel: rich people are snooty, nobody appreciates the secret geniuses, and there's a lot of barely decipherable mumbling about Beauty and Art and Truth. If it cracked even a hint of a smile it would be very funny. Madeleine is Sleeping, adult fiction by Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum. Lovely, drowsy whispers, a morning dream whose images one feels no need to untangle into sense. Might be unreadable if not on holiday. (time suck)
Sunday, July 24th, 2011
4:49 pm	The Secret History, adult fiction by Donna Tartt, a periodic re-read. Not about love. Forgot from earlier, God of Carnage, a play by Yasmina Reza. Funny, if we don't hope for more. (time suck)
Saturday, July 23rd, 2011
1:48 pm	War Comes to Willy Freeman, middle-grades historical fiction by James & Christopher Collier. Right coordinates, not a good-enough book. Hope that's not the sort of compromise I'm going to find myself making. Letters from a Slave Girl: The Story of Harriet Jacobs, middle-grades fiction by Mary E. Lyons. Better to hold out for the original, I think. (time suck)
Monday, July 4th, 2011
11:24 am	Along those lines, Morning Girl, children's fiction by Joseph Bruchac, which we are told to read as revelatory -- I believe it is blurbed as "crucial" -- because of being fairly boring about the lives of Native children. Enemy in the Fort, children's fiction in the American Girl History Mysteries series by Sarah Masters Buckey. A little lazier than even a trade series ought to be, not teachable, but harmless. (time suck)
Saturday, July 2nd, 2011
4:01 am	I'm moving up to the sixth grade with my students and my intention is that we'll read a whole year of American historical fiction, in order, with extensive background study. I want my kids to develop some sort of rough mental timeline that assures them from now til forever that Martin Luther King Jr. didn't free the slaves. Thus for our first trick: A Light in the Forest, middle-grades fiction by Conrad Richter, reread from childhood. Racially weird, dated, and suggesting minimal actual research. The Courage of Sarah Noble, children's fiction by Alice Dalgliesh. Racially weird, dated, and suggesting minimal actual research. Also, boring. The Sign of the Beaver, middle-grades fiction by Elizabeth George Speare, reread from childhood. Racially weird, dated, and suggesting minimal actual research. First chapters of several other colonization-era novels, most of them racially weird, dated, and suggesting minimal actual research; a handful aggressively Native-aware, and tedious. Blood on the River, middle-grades fiction by Elisa Carbone, the current leader, not an exceptionally elegant novel but thoroughly researched; equally interested in the colonists and the Powhatan as political entities with complicated interests; attentive to human particularity; and plot-driven as summertime reading should be. Published 2006; it should come as no surprise that the comparative reading of children's literature is where I get my warm fuzzies about our progress as a nation. Candidate for Book 2, Chains, YA fiction by Laurie Halse Anderson, a re-read, and the source of the original idea for this project, still lovely, but unfortunately I think a little bit too hard. Working my way through A Short History of the United States, nonfiction condensed to absurdist comedy by Robert Remini. Aggrieved sigh. This is my punishment for what I did to the AP US exam back in 1999. Not fair. Unrelatedly: The Keep, adult fiction by Jennifer Egan, author of recent favorite A Visit From the Goon Squad. A prayer offering to story magic. That it feels quiet, natural (*), almost small, unflavored with ambition, is a hell of an accomplishment if you stop to think about what's actually in it -- that is, the accomplishment is that you don't. (*) Aside from one (in-my-opinion) misstep. The Outcast, adult fiction by Sadie Jones. On love and terrible suffering; much more intent on the latter, but at the last grants salvation from the former, leaning perhaps harder than it should on the assumption of a shared point of faith extrinsic to the text itself. Strong, though. (3 hours |time suck)
Monday, June 20th, 2011
5:03 am	Cider With Rosie, adult memoir by Laurie Lee. I finished this almost a month ago and have been bogged down in Augie March, and in audiobook Tristram Shandy, ever since. Enough. I'll come back to 'em later. Or I won't. Lee writes beautifully and it seems to me that beauty is his guide, that he writes toward melody and sound more than toward sense or story, so, not quite for me. I'm sort of tempted to preempt all future blurbs with this review I found online for the unfortunate-sounding recent Auel release: "My wife has all the books in this series and I was happy to get this one as soon as it was available. It's a very thick book and should give her hours, if not weeks of enjoyment as she reads it cover to cover." Adjusted for actual book thickness, obviously. (time suck)
Sunday, May 22nd, 2011
8:42 pm	Sharp Teeth, adult fiction in verse, sort of, by Toby Barlow. Werewolf noir, violent and convoluted, but wants to end on the Triumph of True Love. Puzzling. I read something else after and I truly can't remember what it was. Guess I'll know whenever I accidentally pick it up again... (time suck)
Thursday, April 21st, 2011
8:50 pm	Cold Mountain, adult fiction by Charles Frazier. Shares historical moment, and attention to the inner life of a woman alone, and ready easy loveliness of image, with Ahab's Wife; but about as much happens in this entire novel as in any one parenthetical of the other, and for all its brooding elegance it's a little bit boring, at least until the very end, when for twenty pages it sweats for its payoff. Buzz: A Year of Paying Attention, adult nonfiction by Katherine Ellison. Some strong and funny and poignant moments to do with becoming a better adult to the children in our lives, but these keep devolving into (a nonfiction person would say "introducing") tedious term-paper-research passages whose disorder is less appealing. Most-favorite Middlemarch, adult fiction by George Eliot, this time read by Gabriel Woolf, and yes I did go right around back to the beginning again. In which well-intentioned people suffer for their flaws and truly horrible people are redeemed by their humanity and (my sister's version) even the protagonists are a little bit annoying; for me this is best love, strongest wisdom, literature for how to live in the world. The Tower, The Zoo, and The Tortoise, adult fiction by Julia Stuart. 90% twee and tedious but I cried at the end. A Visit from the Goon Squad, adult fiction by Jennifer Egan, who won the Pulitzer the day I finished, and I'm pretty sure she deserved it. Prior experience with the sex-drugs-rock-and-roll genre makes this reader wince in expectation of nasty people doing bad things and being unhappy; but it is an only slightly unreasonable flattery to call Egan an heir of Eliot herself. Though life and time are not kind to them, Egan serves her characters with that same strongest love which comes from seeing clearly. She is cousin to David Mitchell, too, for redemption in a hard world. Lovely and surprising and I've already gone and ordered her earlier one too. At the end are two experiments, one I loved and one I didn't. That's okay. She earns them. Stardust, adult fiction by Neil Gaiman. Story for the purest pleasure of it; a deceptively simple gift, because really how often after earliest childhood may we be told a fairy tale for the very first time? Thinks it is about love, but isn't really; makes me wonder how differently its magic would work if he were to write it again now. Maybe he will. (6 hours |time suck)
Sunday, March 13th, 2011
1:30 am	King Matt the First, children's fiction by Holocaust hero Janusz Korczak, translated by Richard Lourie. Difficult to identify what % dated versus purely and timelessly peculiar and grim. Kids, so far, are liking it. World War Z, fictive nonfiction by Max Brooks, recommended by Doug. Brooks is roughly the King inverse; he does feelings and relationships rather less persuasively than military-logistical minutiae -- but his enthusiasm for the minutiae is irresistible. Am still largely incapable of reading actual information about important non-imaginary world events. Girls, I know, right? (time suck)
Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011
8:38 am	White Oleander, adult fiction by Janet Fitch. I almost quit on her in the first chapter, for hanging around too close to the Pat Conroy table, hoping he'd notice how poetical she was, but then the characters took over, and they are very strong. Love is in this novel natural disaster: irresistible, unmistakable, and destructive beyond all mortal scale. Stayed up late to finish, though she ends more or less where she began, so that I sort of wished I hadn't. (time suck)
Monday, February 21st, 2011
1:28 pm	Disgrace, adult fiction by J.M. Coetzee, picked up for fifty cents on an impulse to live among more books of my own, and it was just the one I needed. Works more like music than literature; offers loveliness in patterns that echo and shift and contrast without suggesting any declarative meaning, any claims that ought to be expressed in words. Art for a world after love. What Would Joey Do?, middle-grades fiction by Jack Gantos; third in the series. Makes perfect sense in the Joey progression, but crosses the line at which the tension between lightness of voice and heaviness of concerns is too uncomfortable to be interesting, at least for me. Major, life-threatening, ongoing, terrifying domestic violence, played for cartoonishness. Wince. Chocolate Fever, middle-grades fiction by Robert Kimmel Smith, for learning teams. So thoroughly silly that the occasional lazy grab toward moral-making can't get a good enough grip to slow it down. Fun. (time suck)