I’m Amanda. I’ve got wide eyes, a smart mouth, and a MetroCard. And I’m not afraid to use them.
This week I read Gina Barreca’s Babes in Boyland: A Personal History of Co-education in the Ivy League. The book is extremely self-indulgent and consists of too many isolated conversations that aren’t really that clever, but Barreca thinks are just fabulous. (Are my terse conversation scripts like this? If so, my apologies).
“If you don’t have big breasts, put ribbons in your pigtails.”
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Back in high school, Sofia Coppola’s film adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides’s The Virgin Suicides introduced me to Todd Rundgren and Air. After finally reading the book, I really appreciate the film for maintaining the story’s darkly comic and elegant feel.
In a series of unforeseeable events, I’ve finished both books that I packed as in-flight reading. My first book was Frank McCourt’s Teacher Man. My second, the one that I finished this morning, is Tamara Draut’s Strapped: Why America’s 20- and 30- Something Can’t Get Ahead.
This is cheesy to admit, but finishing Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying made me feel like I’d earned membership into an exclusive club. By the end, I identified with Isadora and like her, felt it was time to reach my comfortable cruising altitude.
This week I read Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, an autobiographical account of the writer’s grief after her husband died of a heart attack. I’d never read Didion or her husband, but I was so smitten at the idea of two creative people creating a life together like that. The book shows how dependent Didion was on her husband - he was an editor, a cheerleader, the ultimate partner. Still, Didion never seems to talk of love too traditionally. She clearly loved her husband, but that’s a given. She focuses so much on their goals as people, as writers, as partners. The relationship seemed really cool. They didn’t love each other, because they needed each other. They needed each other, because they loved each other.
My desk is riddled with post-its on which I’ve scrawled lists, thoughts, phone numbers, ideas, and my favorite, sentences I wish I had written. I read and excavate what I feel are the best sentences or phrases. It amazes me every time someone else has written something that so deeply resonates with me. Writing is a gift you give to the world (and hey, it’s also free therapy). Reading is a gift you give yourself.
According to the NYC public school calendar, mid-winter break began last Saturday. I, however, have been on a mid-winter break for a few weeks. There’s been a lull, because students have completed (and likely bombed) the state English language Arts test and have had time before the state math test. Starting Monday, students and teachers will reluctantly return to school, ready for hasty and ill preparation for another test.
I read at least one book each week. This week I finished Bless Me, Ultima and Guess Again by Bernard Cooper. The latter was recommended by David Sedaris.
Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking refers to a lot of interesting research. It discusses both the power and problems that come from first impressions made in a blink. Consider size. Humans equate size, particularly height, with power and leadership. In the U.S. population, about 14.5% of all men are six feet or taller. In the Fortune 500 CEO population, 58% of men are six feet or taller. I had heard something like that before, so I wasn’t surprised.
