I have a number of compulsive projects that are constantly going on, most in the form of lists. I’ve never thought they were detrimental to anything beyond cool points, but I’ve actually had this nagging worry in my head recently that horror of horrors, I might not fulfill my goal of reading 52 books this year.
[Cue slowed-down "Nooo!"]
It’s a big deal to me, a feat I’ve pulled off for the last three years. I think it keeps my brain limber. It certainly reduces the creepy amount of staring I do while commuting. What will the world come to if I can’t complete my mission?
Every week, I’m chipping away at one book. Now I’m working on two, and finishing the third tonight. Deedee and I are reading Fahrenheit 451 together, because she’s now a Ray Bradbury fan. I’m currently reading the delightfully macabre Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach. It gets a lot of raised eyebrows, as I read it during my lunch break and rush hour commutes. And I often laugh aloud while doing so. After using some Billy Collins poems in the last few weeks of tutoring, I’m now obsessed with reading his work again. Meanwhile, newspaper sections and the May issue of Real Simple sulk on the chest at the foot of my bed. Also, Life Coach gave me a number of magazines he no longer wanted.
I’m slowly working my way up to cat lady, if not the fulfillment of my reading goal. Pilly sweaters and piles of unread literature hoarded until Friday nights in? Check! Let me tell you about some books I recently enjoyed.
1. Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris
I heard great things about Ferris’s first novel, which captures the ins and out of a Chicago advertising agency. In fact, this is the novel I bought on sale the day I accidentally shoplifted at Barnes & Noble. The characters in Then We Came to the End manage to not come across as ones we’ve seen before in Office Space and The Office, both of which I love. I initially had a hard time remembering characters’ names and bizarre backstories, but didn’t want to part with any of them after almost 400 pages. There’s a cool jolt of perspective at the end and some chuckle-worthy moments. Here’s one:
Since becoming employed full-time again, he had grown aware of a phenomenon that seemed to happen only at work, or at least happened with more frequency at work than other places in life, and the phenomenon was this: one person would say something and the person listening would have positively no idea what he or she meant, but not wanting to appear rude, or worse, stupid, or alternatively, not caring to waste any more time, it was easier just to nod or laugh along than it was to pause and inquire what that person really meant… People were indifferent to what was said, or were preoccupied by other things, or had long ago concluded that what passed for speech during the course of a workday was mostly the babble of idiots. “So I thought, Would it make any difference, really? Would it honestly make a difference if instead of replying the way I would normally, I answered everyone with quotes from The Godfather?”
At the conclusion of the morning meeting, during which he had remained perfectly silent, as everyone was packing up their things, Benny had turned to Heidi Savoca and said, “‘I spent my whole life trying not to be careless. Women and children can be careless, not men.’” Heidi’s expression indicated she didn’t know where Benny’s comment was coming from, but more pressing than her confusion was her distaste for the remark itself. “That’s a very sexist thing to say, Benny,” she replied. Later that morning, Seth Keegan stopped by Benny’s cube to ask him a question about some revision for a project the two had been working on over the course of the previous two weeks. “Do you have a minute?” Seth asked Benny. Benny swiveled in his chair. “‘This one time,’” he said. “‘This one time I’ll let you ask me about my affairs.’”
This collection of New York Times articles covers various topics under the umbrella of class. I’m really interested in reading about experiences of gender, class, and ethnicity, because every instant of our lives is affected by them. No one lives in a vacuum; some of us are just better at denying these factors. The articles in Class Matters cover a gamut of subjects, from the implications of partnering with someone outside your class to how three New Yorkers of different castes handled the same medical emergency.
Talking about what kind of financial and consequently, social, legacy people are born into - and what should be done to make up for the unfairness of this - is touchy. Being college-educated and living in a dichotomous city of gross privilege and poverty, I both sighed and thumped my chest in recognition.
So many people want to shrug and say, “What’s a person to do? I happen to have lucked out, but I don’t owe the world anything.” I just don’t buy that.
A paradox lies at the heart of this new American meritocracy. Merit has replaced the old system of inherited privilege, in which parents to the manner born handed down the manor to their children. But merit, it turns out, is at least partly class-based. Parents with money, education, and connections cultivate in their children the habits that the meritocracy rewards. When their children then succeed, their success is seen as earned.
I really related to this one. Also, spot the pun:
Now, at thirty-four, she is back home. But her journey has transformed her so thoroughly that she no longer fits in easily. Her change in status has left Justice a little off balance, seeing the world from two vantage points at the same time: the one she grew up in and the one she occupies now.
3. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
I’m proud to say that I was digging this book before Diaz won the Pulitzer Prize a few weeks ago. With multiple narrators, it chronicles the saga of a Dominican immigrant family, including the eponymous “overweight ghetto nerd” Oscar. The verve in its language invoked me to share passages with co-workers, friends, and the kids I tutor. It’s been so long since I loved a book, and I loved this book. Oscar WOW! There’s so much I’d love to share, but you just need to read it yourself, after you read this snippet:
Maybe he was plain tired after four years of not getting ass, or maybe he’d finally found his zone. Incredibly enough, instead of making an idiot out of himself as one might have expected, given the hard fact that this was the first girl he’d ever had a conversation with, he actually took it a day at a time. He spoke to her plainly and without effort and discovered that his constant self-deprecation pleased her immensely. It was amazing how it was between them; he would say something obvious and uninspired, and she’d say, Oscar, you’re really fucking smart. When she said, I love men’s hands, he spread both of his across his face and said, faux-casual-like, Oh, really? It cracked her up.
She never talked about what they were; she only said, Man, I’m glad I got to know you.
And he said, I’m glad I’m me knowing you.
