How can one man be so endlessly disappointing?

Regular readers of this blog (who am I kidding?) will not be surprised to hear that I did not care for Portnoy's Complaint. Seriously. Why does Philip Roth hate me so?

I couldn't decide if this one just didn't work for me, that is that it didn't sell the premise (this guy is an absolute man-child jerk) or if I missed the premise (this guy is fascinating and his inner thoughts are insightful) and totally disagree and hate him. That's really what it comes down to, are we supposed to hate him? If so, why write about him? If not, please, he's vile.

But it is the 400th book that I've read, so go me! Now to figure out how to celebrate this milestone.

Here's another random picture:

Re-introduction to a feeling I don't wanna know

It is very possible that we already have a winner for my favorite in 2012. Anything is possible, I suppose, but it would be hard for something to beat Everything is Illuminated. Since this one isn't obscure, and there is a very good chance that you've read it, I won't spend too much time on the plot.

This novel is remarkable in the way that it utilizes and integrates multiple tones. Sometimes tonal shifts simply do not work at all, but when the author is sufficiently talented and the tonal changes bring the work's themes and questions into relief, you have something painfully beautiful. At first this book is hilarious, but then as you go in more deeply you start to see the absolute tragedy.

Ultimately, Everything is Illuminated is mainly interested in the interplay with love, forgiveness, truth, and moral courage. I know it has some serious flaws, particularly regarding misrepresentation of some of the historical events, but I still love it because it asks some searing, challenging questions, and has some amazingly beautiful passages:

But each was the closest thing to a deserving recipient of love that the other would find. So they gave each other all of it. 

"What if it was not in His power?" "I could not believe in a God that could not stop what happened." "What it if was man and not God that did all of this?" "I do not believe in man, either."

But you don't even like it, he said. You always complain after.
I know, she said. . .
Then why?
Do you like thinking about Mom?
No.
Does it hurt after?
Yes.

Then why do you continue to do it? she asked. And why, she wondered, remembering the description of her rape, do we pursue it?

Did you ever love me?
She turned her head from him. No. Never.
I've always loved you, he told her.
I'm sorry for you.
You're a terrible person.
I know, she said.
I just wanted you to know that I know that.
Well, know that I do.

"We were stupid, he said, "because we believed in things."
"Why is this stupid?"
"Because there are not things to believe in."
(Love?)
(There is no love. Only the end of love)
(Goodness?)
(Do not be a fool.)
(God?)
(If God exists, He is not to be believed in.) 

Love me - just for a bit...

Lately, my New Yorker subscription has been causing some problems again with my list project. I had been in a bit of a dry spell with it, which is sad in some ways but great for the list. Recently, though, there have been so many articles that I've wanted to read:

• Endurance for long-distance running as a metaphor for approaching life
• History of the cliffhanger
• The Zetas/drug trafficking
• The University of Chicago scavenger hunt
• Recent developments in hip hop
• Forensic linguistics

Among other fascinating topics.

This all reminds me of a conversation that I once had with someone before I subscribed to the New Yorker. To help set the stage, he was driving me around southeast DC during this conversation and quizzing me about my media consumption habits. At the time I had a free subscription to The Economist, but that was the only periodical to which I subscribed.

My not subscribing to the New Yorker shocked him, since according to him I am the kind of person who would subscribe to it. To me, what was shocking was that I had any magazine subscriptions at all; I mean, this happened in 2010, people.

I think that he eventually came to terms with this deficiency on my part, though I think it was a grave disappointment to him. Of course, this is the guy who doesn't believe that I love action movies, so his picture of who I am may not be the most accurate.

It’s the way I’m feeling I just can’t deny/ But I’ve gotta let it go

More food for thought! I identified a lot with this one for some reason. . .

I thought that you were trouble/ But I couldn't resist

I read The Driver's Seat. I wish I hadn't. Do not read this one. If you do, serious, serious, serious trigger warning. I mean it. I should not have read this book. On the other hand, it gave me a chance to practice some of my excellent strategies for dealing with secondary trauma.

I need a pep outlet

This blog may be suffering from mission creep, but whatever.

 As you can tell from the title of this post, I need a pep outlet. I have a number of mildly interesting hobbies, but nothing that lets me work out my pep. And I am nothing if not full of excess pep.

Thus, I am taking suggestions for pep outlets. To give you a sense, here are my current hobbies:

• Hip Hop
• Masala Bhangra
• Swing dance
• Barre
• Zumba
• Flying trapeze
• Reading books on the list
• Writing bad fiction

Also, I thought I would mention that the time stamps on these posts have no relationship whatsoever to reality. I always schedule them for random times.

Boy, you're dangerous/Yeah, you're that guy/I'd be stupid to trust

We are almost at the 400 mark, having been working on this project earnestly for the past three years. For whatever reason, I feel like reflecting at this point. I realize that 500 would be a more reasonable choice for that, but since I'm in the mood now and who knows how I'll feel in a year, I thought I'd go for it.

It has been an amazing, wonderful, challenging three years. I've learned so much, and I am so much stronger now. While I've certainly made my share of mistakes, I have no real regrets.

I never thought I would still be in DC three years later; in my own way, I've fallen in love with this city. I'll be here for the foreseeable future, perhaps indefinitely. Sometimes that absolutely terrifies me, and other times it feels wonderful to have this place be home.

I have been able to do the most amazing, humbling, fulfilling work; this has probably been the best part of my life over the past three years, and I feel so lucky to be in this position. Sometimes the work is wrenching, yes, but on the balance it is the most fulfilling and exhilarating work I can imagine.

I've made so many friends who mean so much to me. I tend to be a pretty private and independent person, but knowing that I have people who have my back no matter what means so much to me. I've dived back into dance in a serious way; happiness is finding a way to dance at least two hours a day, and my dance outlets here have been another DC highlight for me.

Oh, and I've read a lot of books; 313 from the list, plus whatever I read that wasn't on the list.

I'm a monster, not a pretty little girl

I happen to adore both Rushdie and Dostoevsky. These affairs were slow burns initially; I actually didn't care too much for the first by each that I read (The Satanic Verses and The Brothers Karamazov, respectively), but after a few reads I fell hard. Which do I like better, you ask? I follow my general way of dealing with life: I love the one I'm with (I'm very fickle).

Let's start with Demons/Devils, since that's the one that I read first. Prior to reading this I had read The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Love Them, which ended up serving me rather well in reading this one. I think I was able to move a bit more quickly despite it being a bit confusing, since I was already familiar with its arc. It's mostly confusing because people's motivation in the novel just do not make too much sense to me. It's an extremely political novel, and it is in some ways more a mediation on politics and power than on the human condition per se. It also involves secret societies, so that's fun.

Shame is stylistically quite different from the previous work, but it is also a concept novel. Rushdie uses magical realisim, of course, to explore his topic, which you can probably guess from the title of the novel. Like most of Rushdie's works, it is a pretty unflinching, stark look at people and the world. He doesn't just explore the concept of shame, but more on the violence and destruction that stem from shame.

I likely would not choose to write about these two novels together, but given that I am, the main point of comparison would be exploring the ways they use narrative and characters to explore concepts. Specific characters are not really people so much as manifestations of ideas in both novels. That said, they are rather different works.

I'll conclude by saying that I truly, truly hope that you do not get the title reference. I'm not proud of it, but it is such a perfect quote for Shame (and sort of me?) that I decided to just go for it.

I don't want to lie. I can't tell the truth. So it's over.

Food for thought!

Also, one more vacation pic (do pictures really make blogs more interesting? I'm not sure. . .)

I have hated and loved you/I have hidden behind you/But I finally see

So, once again we have been on holiday. During this brief journey we did read, yes, but actually not too much. We mostly watched internet videos. If you have any questions about Bruno Mars or Pitbull, I'm currently your girl, but I can't imagine that you do.

I actually did read Demons and Shame, both of which warrant some serious writing, but at the moment I'm still recovering from jetlag.

In the meantime, here is a vacation pic:

I may be bad, but I'm perfectly good at it

Today's list celebration is about things at which I am epically bad.

1. Deciphering song lyrics based on just listening to a song (seriously; I can't adequately convey how awful I am at this; for example, there is a song where I confused the phrase bad man with the word baby and addict with nanny, and yes, it did seem very different in my version).
2. Catching anything (specifically tennis balls/baseballs, but really anything).
3. Rolling my Rs (really hindered my Spanish career, but apparently good for a laugh for others).
4. Pushups (this one makes me sad; I want to be good at these and I've tried to improve; I still am awful).
5. Giving directions (I just make people more confused; I'm either too vague or too detailed, I vacillate between the two, and I tend to give based on the four cardinal directions which apparently is confusing).
6. Karaoke.

You almost wish that you could have all that bad stuff back/ So that you could have the good

Every summer I re-read Madeleine L'Engle's A Ring of Endless Light. And every summer I just sob. This is such a beautiful and sad book. I read it at a particularly critical time in my life, but it's not lost any of its power to really cut through everything and leave me with a renewed sense of hope despite everything.

The novel is mainly about death and loss, but it is also about time and love, and how the four interweave. Loss permeates the novel in such wrenching, constant ways, but there is still an immeasurable sense of hope. L'Engle references both a ring of endless light and a deep but dazzling darkness; perhaps the one cannot exist without the other. Love ultimately is loss.

The part that really gets to me and always hits me anew is the scene when the main character and her younger brother talk about death and heaven. The topic is difficult enough, though his idea about heaven is wrenchingly exquisite. What really always gets to me, though, is the main character's realization that her brother is growing up and is no longer really a child. Her sense of loss at this inevitable change is subtle, but certainly present; it's not that she wants him to stay young, but that she just sees the loss that comes as inevitably as the passage of time.

When I first read this, I was about the age of the protagonist, and this just hit so close to home. It still really does. There is comfort in her words: "and nothing loved is ever lost," and truth in “Maybe you have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light.”

Remember those walls I built/Well, baby. . . they're still there

Today's random list consists of things strangers have called me recently. Good times. Seriously, DC is the worst place I have lived in terms of street harassment (I acknowledge that Minneapolis isn't probably a good point of comparison; usually it's too cold). Most of these had modifiers.

• Babe
• Baby
• Chicka
• Child
• Honey
• Lady
• Mama
• Miss
• White girl

I've also been told to work it a few times lately, which always confuses me; it's too vague. The one that really confuses me, though is simmer down. That's happened twice, and I just don't get it. What does it mean?

Another one I don't understand is fine. To me, fine sort of means okay/all right/average. As in, "how are you?" "oh, fine." How is it possible to be super fine?

Not everybody/Knows how to work my body/Knows how to make me want it

Shall we talk about The Kreutzer Sonata (book 392 for me)? The truth is that I'd rather not. I've been wanting to read this one and wrap up Tolstoy, since though I love Russian novels I do not love Tolstoy generally. I still haven't forgiven him for War and Peace. I just can't.

I'm guessing most don't know what this little novella is about. Yay for you! Basically, it's about this train trip (so promising) where one traveler tells another about the time he killed his wife after discovering that she was having an affair. Tolstoy does not shy away from graphically describing this, and it was violent.

It's always interesting, I suppose, to read novels looking at the relationship between men and women/women's rights/gendered power dynamics from other time periods. And by interesting I generally mean maddening, of course.

While one could go in many directions if one needed to write a paper on this one, I was most interested in a short passage where the guy who killed his wife expounds on his views on women generally. His argument is that women have primarily been used by men for men's pleasure/enjoyment. That men have basically exerted control over women to exploit women for their own ends. He then goes on to argue that attempts to improve women's education, legal standing, political rights, etc. won't ever get anywhere because men will continue to view women mainly in terms of objects for their enjoyment, and that the only way for women to truly be emancipated is for them to not have sex (he says this generally; I assume he really meant with men).

One could, of course, go in many different directions with analyzing that argument, but what struck me most was how it completely ignores women's pleasure/desire and basically assumes that it does not exist. Since I don't want to get into a long treatise about women's sexual pleasure here, I think I'll just stop.

Gonna push it to the limit, give it more

Oh, oh, oh! Oh, goodness. I still have no words. So, this weekend I took a flying trapeze class. It was absolutely the most amazing thing I have ever done. Such an adrenaline rush, and so much fun. I am seriously obsessed now. On your first fly out they have you catch the trapeze with your legs and swing from your knees, and then you go from there. Just amazing. Now, I know what you are thinking (but you have a fear of heights!), but I already booked my next class and I am completely in love.

All I ever needed was the music, and the mirror/ And the chance to dance...

When people ask me what I'll do when I'm done with the list project I've always been taken aback. After all, there are millions of books out there; it's not like I'm going to be starved for options. Recently, though, I had an epiphany. They don't really mean to suggest that I wouldn't have plenty left to read. I think they probably mean to ask one of the following three questions:

Q. Do you have any particular plans for the books you'll read after finishing the list project?

A. Not really. Since I don't view this project as restricting my reading options (granted, the exceptions are few; Hunger Games, Mary Russell novels, books about number theory. . .) there aren't books that I am dying to read but can't right now. Non-fiction may seem like the obvious answer, but the reality is that most of the exceptions I make are for non-fiction right now. Actually, it might be more books that are not on the list but are by authors on the list, since I can't justify reading those right now generally (Edwin Drood for the win!).

Q. Are you going to attack any other challenges?

A. I'm not sure. Maybe not, since generally I find life pretty challenging, so that may be enough for me. But I could see this leaving a strange void in my life, so maybe I shall. That said, I can't really imagine tackling another 1,001 list. I don't have the attention span for the movie challenge, and with music I just like to listen to what I like, I don't tend to listen to stuff to expand my tastes (and my music tastes are pretty terrible, so. . .). I think I'd like to try something else, but I don't know at the moment what that would be.

Q. How are you going to celebrate?

A. This is another where I'm not sure. I want to do something epic, but I tend to not make plans more than three or four days in advance if I can avoid it, unless it involves transatlantic travel. As I said, it must be epic, and it must somehow have a sort of poetic connection to the project. I'm taking suggestions for sure. I've been thinking about maybe having a party for 500, perhaps with a literary theme. I tend to throw themed parties.

Since I have been bad about putting pictures on this blog, I added a random-ish one of me and my other hobby (it's old; the picture, not the hobby, that is; the hobby is current).