Posts under ‘Overbooked’

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).

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.

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.

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.