Or, How I Found Love Thanks to a Bluebird

Goodnight Tweetheart - Teresa Medeiros (Gallery Books, 2011)

It is getting to be the case that I can't read a serious book without having its lighthearted companion on the nightstand with it. And this was on an endcap at the library. I'm sure David Foster Wallace would appreciate the fact that while I was reading a novel that is in so many ways a meditation on presence and paying attention, I was also starting a short romance about Twitter, which is essentially a paean to short attention spans.

Abby is a writer who had an amazing breakout novel, and who is suffering less from sophomore slump and more from a crippling case of writer's block. Her agent puts her on Twitter so she can connect with fans and keep her name out there. And she immediately meets a guy, a literature professor. And most of the novel is the DM (direct message) banter between them. Lots of pop culture references, lots of flirtation, lots of ... well, mainly just flirtatious pop culture references.

There is a deeper undercurrent, of family and love and loss and connections and how they are difficult and frustrating and all that. And of course escapism, which is one of Twitter's strong suits. How does Twitter enable us to get away from who and where we are? And can that be a good thing? How strong of a connection can you really form with someone who you met in spurts of 140 characters? I spend a lot - a lot - of time on Twitter, so these are questions I've spent some time pondering. Answers? I might still need to get back to you on that.

Welcome back Erin

This has been a strange spring. Not in a particularly interesting sort of way. But strange. And thanks to things like Twitter, I spend too much time on the internet as it is. Which makes blogging seem a lot less enticing.

Anyway, there have been books in the last 6 weeks. A couple. All by female authors. So posts to come right now...

hilarity, delayed

I am still chuckling to myself about what is probably the funniest thing I've seen in the paper in ages...

Revisiting 2008

Running a program and being back in school don't exactly lend themselves to lots of reading and writing and thinking about reading and writing. Well, thinking some. I was constantly sad that I didn't have more time to read. Or didn't make more time to read. Probably both.

Anyway, I wanted to revisit a couple of the goals I had mentioned for the year. Last year I set the goal of finishing all of my 2007 New Yorkers before the end of the year. (And succeeded with 2 days to spare.) This year, I am still working on the November 17 issue. So I will finish this year 5 issues behind. (Also, it is dangerous to read coverage of Election Night, even now, while at the gym, b/c when you get all weepy and choked up, you then start worrying that people are thinking you are going to pass out b/c the elliptical machine is clearly just too much for you.)

I also joined the Russian Reading Challenge and made it through all 4 (plus one) of those books. In that post, I also claimed I would read another 5 books that I already owned. It appears that I read 7 (there were a couple more, but they were books I purchased this year, so don't count). In total, I read something more than 38 books. (There are some that don't get posts because they are texts for class or I am embarrassed about them. Plus I did a fair amount of re-reading of older books this year too. But anyway...)

Goals for next year? Honestly, I don't know what to expect. 2009 promises to bring a LOT of changes, and I don't know what that's going to mean for me and reading. I guess that I should commit to reading another 10 books that I already own. This would probably be easier if I selected them and listed them here, but that's just not going to happen. Not tonight.

Happy New Year to all! May 2009 bring a lot of happy change for us all.

New books are just more fun?

See? Just the other day I wrote about how I have a hard time reading the books I actually own. And today I come across a Booklist blog on the same topic. Based on this WSJ article and its comments, Keir Graff muses on the to-read pile.

And yet I still buy and hoard books. I’ve joked–joked–that I’ll have to quit my job as a book reviewer in order to read books. But given that I won’t, I imagine I’ll spend my first months of retirement doing math, dividing the number of pages per day I can read into the number of years I think I have left–and weeding my thousands of books to read accordingly.

Jesus, I hadn't even thought about doing that math. I need to get on this.

But it's mildly reassuring to remember that I'm not alone, b/c we all have more books to read than we ever will read. And we all let books sit for far too long. I think I might be unusual in that I am more likely to use the "But I will like it so much I just want to save it for a little longer" excuse. But in the end, it is still an excuse. And one that gives me time for re-reading Emma and watching deliciously bad teen shows.

Another thing I'm behind on...

For some reason, I never get around to reading Boldtype in a timely fashion. It arrives in my inbox once a month of so (except when it gets filtered into spam) and there it sits, waiting for me to realize that it'll only take me about 5-10 min to go through it.

BT is part of the Flavorpill network, which describes itself thusly: "Flavorpill loves culture. We embrace the high-brow, the underground, the low-brow, and the mainstream, and everything in between – as long as it's good." And BT does indeed have some good selections, alongside things that are just too too hipster for me. (And that link doesn't really get at the depths of hipsterdom.)

So why can't I get around to reading it? What is this procrastination?

BTW, did you know that Lily Allen, whose "Smile" brightened much of my spring, is a "passionate reader" who will be judging Britain's Orange Prize? Nor did I, until I read Boldtype.

Today in Google Reader

Google Reader is one of my new best friends. I love it. It makes keeping up with websites that I forget to visit regularly sooooo much easier. Except when I don't get to it for a few days and have a zillion unread stories to try to sort through.

Anyway, here's what I discovered along with my morning chai:

Ian McEwan and some other authors I don't really know were shortlisted for this year's Booker. I'm still waiting to get to read last year's winner, Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss.

Starbucks has come to Russia. (And looks awesome in Cyrillic - check the pic) And drinks there are expensive! Also of note: "Moscow has one coffeehouse for every 3,187 people. New York has one for every 365 people, and Paris one for every 126." I wonder what the stats are for LA...

Recycled Paper... mmm, my favorite

I have of late been dedicating myself to the daunting task of reading through the e-mails I have amassed in the past month. (One observation: I am beloved by several political mailing lists.)

While I was doing so, I came across an old Co-op America newsletter that had an interview with Sheryl Woodhouse-Keese, paper-recycler extraordinaire. Now I love recycling, but it never occurred to me to make it into a business. Woodhouse-Keese, on the other hand, founded Twisted Limb Paperworks, which turns office paper, junk mail, and more into unique and super-green invitations. Or, more poetically, "we blend our love of paper and colors with our desire to preserve the Earth's resources and to make a difference in our community."

Why didn't I think of this?! Anyway, Twisted Limb is doing good work. Check them out.

My unfortunate new obsession

I love Twitter, the web/text/IM 140 character "what are you doing?" application which is apparently sweeping the nation, b/c Barack Obama is now one of my friends.

But a more intriguing friend is TwitterLit, with roughly twice/day posts of first sentences of books. I love this idea. Would that we were all this clever...

Anyway, if you are a Twitterer, feel free to come visit me.