Books of '13: recommendations

It's still January, so by law, I can still write a summary post about what I read in 2013.  Also, because I run this blog, I get to make up the categories.  It's pretty awesome when you think about it.  

It was a pretty good year for my reading taste, although I was pickier this year than in some prior years.  I would have said I'd really enjoyed what I read this year overall, but I actually rated the smallest percentage of books "Highly Recommended" (in my Access database of books I read, of course) since 2006.  I also rated the highest percentage of books "Not Recommended" since 2009.  Yawn.  Onto the good books.

Best New Novel

Where'd you Go, Bernadette, Maria Semple, 2012

My friend Catherine Christopher recommended this book on a visit back to Pittsburgh.  I

read it in essentially one sitting on our long return flights from Korea in the spring (what a marvelous way to read a novel!).  It's a unique and dark story, told through unique narrative devices like letters and emails.  The first part of the book especially feels like a clever copy of a Douglas Coupland novel because of those devices.  Not only is the book set in Seattle, but Seattle is essentially a character in the book; its natural environment and specific culture playing their own roles.  The Bernadette of the title is particularly well suited to talk about Seattle because she's an outsider.  It feels like anything I say about the plot would reveal too much, so I'll just call it a page turner of the first order and recommend that you read it.

Best Old Novel

So Big, Edna Ferber, 1924, Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 1925

So Big is a wonderful novel that transported me to Chicago and its hinterlands at the end of the 19th and dawn of the 20th centuries.  It was a good time to read a Chicago novel because we've visited there three times in the past year to see family and friends.  I feel like I "got Chicago" more from multiple exposures, and having read this novel, I feel like I "get Chicago" even more.  It's always hard as a reader to know how a book was received when it was first published, but it strikes me that this story would have felt very "of the moment" to those reading it in the '20s.  In a way, it's an interpretation of how people came to lead their lives then based on how much Chicago was changing in the previous 40 years.  New money transformed some people's lives and created vast gaps between the rich and the poor.  Cultures that had persisted through immigration because of geographic community boundaries in the new world were starting to morph and break down through new tools of transportation and connection.  The more things change, the more they stay the same.  I fear that this review makes this novel sound like sociology, but it's really not.  It's just a good novel placed in its moment in history.

Best Non-Fiction

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking, Susan Cain, 2012

This book got lots of press when it came out, and I finally managed to get to it on my reading list and pick up a copy from the library.  It's a very interesting read in the vain of good business bestsellers with a tinge of self help.  Starting with research about how introverts and extroverts differ (chief takeaway - introverts are more sensitive to stimuli), she eventually touches on what you should do as a manager, spouse or parent of an introvert if you're an extrovert.  She makes compelling arguments that the world is tilted in favor of extroverted traits and that "shy" is a bad word.  She argues for making space for individual processing of ideas.  Split the tables apart in classrooms.  Let people work alone to generate ideas and then submit them.  This form of crowdsourcing is kinder to the introvert's pace of processing, but more importantly, it empirically produces more good ideas than group brainstorming.

Best Memoir: Woman

Orange is the New Black; My Year in a Women's Prison, Piper Kerman, 2010

With the Netflix television show being discussed at every gathering of the late summer and NPR fawning over it, I heard that the book on which the show was based was really very good.  This memoir is flat out fantastic.  An unlikely prisoner, Kerman describes her experience over a year in primarily a minimum security prison with some additional time at different facilities.  She has no idea what to expect, living among women who are largely of a different class from her.  What she discovers horrifies and heartens her and her readers.  I don't want to give away too much more.  If I have a quibble, it's that she sometimes stops short of describing why certain aspects of prison life were terrible, leaving the reader to fill in the blanks.  A friend who has read the book said she turned off the TV show after five minutes because it's "too raw".   Perhaps Piper was saving her dear readers by being oblique.

Best Memoir: Man

Attempting Normal, Marc Maron, 2013

I enjoyed this memoir/collection of essays.  Having listened to virtually every episode of Maron's WTF podcast and having watched his special (Thinky Pain) while reading the book, I found that the material wasn't particularly new.  I enjoyed it anyway.  Maron has worked hard to overcome a lot of demons, and he's really honest about the ways that he still hasn't.  He's not for everyone, but I find myself at home in his audience.

Books of '13: anti-recommendations

As usual at this time of year, I like to tell the Internet the highlights of what I read in the prior year.  I lead by warding you away from books I disliked.  That's as much of a service as telling you what I liked.

Worst of the year: novel

Not technically the worst, because there is one book I'm ashamed to admit I read, and that's Calico Joe by John Grisham.  It's complicated.  Not the book.  Oh gosh, not the book.  My reasons for reading it.  That's the complicated part.  There's also a novel I quit in the middle, which my Competent Wife will tell you I almost never do.  That was The Ashford Affair by Lauren Willig.  She's a Yalie, but her book dragged like an anchor, so I abandoned it.

The Privileges, Jonathan Dee, 2010

I got to this book through a review of Jonathan Dee's latest novel (A Thousand Pardons).  Given that this one had been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and that it would be easier to get at the library because it's a few years old, I decided to read this one first.  It's an engrossing novel whose narrative leaps forward in time from a couple's wedding to their small kids years to their teenager years to their grown children years.  As time goes on, the kids themselves get about as much focus as the parents.  In the end, it was rather unsatisfying for reasons of plot that I can barely describe without spoiling the novel.  So I won't.  It was a really ok beach read.  And you know what I mean by "really ok".

Worst of the year: non-fiction

Present Shock; When Everything Happens Now, Douglas Rushkof, 2013

I hate Douglas Rushkoff.  I'd never heard of him before hearing about this book on Marc Maron's podcast, but I hate him.  There was a sign outside my sister's high school that said "Much good work is lost for the lack of a little more."  Douglas Rushkof never saw that sign.  He is quite brilliant at cultural observation and synthesis.  He can name what's happening in a way that I have not seen other people do.  The problem is that in this book he just proceeds to name what's happening over and over again in multiple ways ad infinitum without ever getting to the "so what?" questions; without ever getting to what I as a person might do about the phenomenon he labels present shock.  It's relentless, this book, and then it pays off almost not at all.  He does coin the word "digiphrenia" to refer to when a person is physically in one place but mentally and emotionally is elsewhere thanks to a digital connection to that other place.  His example of a young woman at one party texting and facebooking the whole time to figure out what better party she should be at crystallizes the phenomenon beautifully.  Beyond that, he never gets to a worthwhile point despite all of his pointed observation and analysis.  Grrrrrr.

Conversation Observation

Although it's somewhat off-topic for this blog, I just wanted to publicly notice a certain kind of conversation that goes on these days.  Perhaps you had it with friends or family over the holidays.  The conversation is called Smart People Talking About Good Television.  David Broncoccio might amend that to be "About TV Worth Watching".  I may not be the first to have named this conversation, but if this is the first time you've encountered a name for it, you're probably saying "Oh yeah.  I've had that conversation."

A conversation like this doesn't lead a gathering.  In fact, the gathering has to be long enough to get past small talk, health updates, kid updates if you're that sort of person and impressive-sounding books and movies.  Then, based on something someone said, a participant in the conversation shyly asks if anyone has been watching Call the Midwife*.  And we're off.  Multiple things happen:
-People find those who have already watched what they've watched and - careful of spoilers - they revel in how much they like that show.  
-TV talkers avow plans to watch The Wire^ just after they finish the latest season of Mad Men*.  
-The persuasion also commences: Ohmygodyouhaven'tseenevenoneepisodeof New Girl^?!?
-A spouse bemoans her bad judgment in not starting Friday Night Lights^ with her husband.
-If anyone brings up the Big Bang Theory, people are talking about television, but Smart People are not Talking about Good Television.

It's fun, and it's OK.  The OK-ness of it feels new since about 2006.  Television started having these pockets of goodness that allowed smart people to come out of the woodwork about liking television.  Even as the medium (not Medium*) continued to be chock full of schlock, there were good stories with three-dimensional characters that people could discuss in polite company without feeling like idiots.  Since then, of course, the whole way we consume television has changed making it easy to catch up on shows that smart people tell you are good.

Here's my list, not in the least unique:
-Men of a Certain Age, discussed here before.  Two seasons on TNT now cancelled, available on DVD, but I don't think streaming anywhere.
-The Wire.  You know.
-Arrested Development.  But the new stuff on Netflix did not keep my interest.
-30 Rock.  May it rest in syndicated peace.
-Friday Night Lights.  Tim Riggins.  Tyra.  Crucifictorious.  Y'all.  My Competent Wife missed out on all of it.
-Modern Family.  Ty Burrell is the best physical comedian on TV.
-New Girl.  Adorbs.
-BBC Sherlock.  Has been on Netflix streaming, now on Hulu Plus.
-Downton Abbey.  I've heard some things that make me worried that I won't like it in season 4.  The plot has already shown some unsatisfying traits.
-Spy, a Hulu original, is cartoonish but pretty entertaining with a surprisingly deep cast.


*haven't watched it
^watched/watch it

Overheard 2013 Runners Up

As the boys get older the unintentional comedy gets sparser.  This year, Teddy made far

Nice faces, boys.

more oops funnies than Charlie did through the year.  In the interest of giving the boys equal time in the Christmas letter, the cutting room floor all belongs to Ted:

Holding his trembling hand toward something he wanted:

T: I’m using The Force.

P: How’s that working out for you?

T: Not great.

With an ice cube cooling his hot chocolate:

T: My ice cube weared out fast.

Dictating an email message to family members about losing his first tooth:

T: I lost my first tooth! Ya…a…y!  In ‘yay’, put 10 A’s.”

To go down memory lane follow the tag link for Christmas Letter to see how many cute things both boys said in past years.

An Everyday

An Everyday

a prose poem
November 2013

Almost as soon as I get into the 
night-lit bathroom on Saturday,
I hear the smallest knock one hears
in our house.

After my "Come in." (compliant
like his mother was as a child), he
enters, his hair a true sculptural 
artifact of sleep.  He never sleeps in long.

Running the hot water for my 
shave, I watch him paste up his toothbrush.
Rather than "Good morning", he says
"I need cold."

Sighing, I switch from
hot to cold for him.

Just like I do, he sticks the pad
of his pinkie into the stream to
see if it's cooled to his liking.

Then it's back to hot for my shave.
And we're standing side by side
Y shaving, 1/2Y brushing.

When I thought about being a
father, I thought about feeding
and clothing, looking out for health,
teaching children right from wrong
and how the world works.

I didn't think much about
shaving cream and toothpaste
squeezed out simultaneously.
I didn't contemplate
competing demands for hot and cold water.

I didn't reckon with
a roommate thirty years my junior
sharing the sink.

While I help them learn how to live,
I also live with them.

And the lack of these 
moments will make me miss
them when they have new roommates
in East Lansing or Lewisburg.

Quiet dinners and clean, orderly rooms
will make me miss them.
Already, when they're gone for just
a day, their mother and I mock-remind
each other of chores to do.
They are not there to remind.
How will we handle it when they're
not coming back to share our
space
anymore?

Talkin' Turkey

Teddy focuses on the fundamentals this Thanksgiving




I'm thankful for

• food
• God
• shelter
• my brother

Teddy's first contract

Our boys have always played together a lot.  We credit Charlie's kindness as a big brother a good deal for that.  He really loves Teddy, and he gives him time.  We've sometimes lamented that Teddy has skipped some of the kinds of play he might have engaged in at a given stage because he wanted to "play up" to the level  at which Charlie was playing.

They still do play together a lot, but the demands of middle school can really tax Charlie's availability.  It can be hard to say whether he still wants to play with Teddy the same amount but has too much of his time consumed by schoolwork and practicing his trumpet or whether he's starting to pull away from their tight playmate relationship.  He often wants to read when Teddy wants to play.  When Teddy complained to Charlie on a recent morning that Charlie always says in the morning he'll play with Teddy after school but then never does, I didn't want to hear the whining anymore.  I suggested to Teddy that he get a piece of paper and write down what Charlie said he would do and then have Charlie sign it.  Our home's general counsel was already on her way to work, so she couldn't review the document, but to my amateur eye, this looks like Teddy's first contract.

"You said you would play with me this afternoon"

It's simple and to the point - written in Teddy's own (downsloping) hand and signed by Charlie.  That signature might not hold up as evidence in a civil case, but an attorney must crawl before he can walk.

As it turns out, Charlie breached this contract.  He took an especially long time doing his homework that day, and the afternoon evaporated with no sibling play.  Teddy pointed this out to him.  Much like arguing with the referees in a sporting event, it won him nothing at the time.  On a later occasion in the week, however, a reminder of this welshing served as a guilt lever, and Charlie put down his book and went and played with little bro.  The argument that ensued over what they would play and in what order pointed out why contracts get very long and detailed.  LSAT prep begins soon, no doubt.