via 
Hey guys! We’re having a bookswap next week. You should be there!
It’s been a while but we’re back!
Another race against time: I am halfway through 1Q84 with 400 pages to go and it is due back at the library on Saturday. Who knew checking out library books could be stressful? I have a lot of Thoughts and Opinions on Mr. Murakami’s latest, review to come!
The number of pages it took for Haruki Murakami to mention a cat in the 925 page long 1Q84.
Comprehensive preview of notable 2012 releases from The Millions.
" For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
— T.S. Eliot, “Little Gidding.”
How I Met Your Mother became available on Netflix Instant a few weeks ago and having missed most of the first few seasons save a rerun here or there, I have been watching the show from the beginning. I love this show because I can relate to the characters and their struggles, young professionals in NYC trying to figure out who they are versus who they expected to be, and who they’re going to be with.
Recently I’ve been struggling with trying to write my first novel, and staying mentally tough has been more challenging than the writing itself. I knew it was going to be the toughest thing I’ve ever done creatively, but I hadn’t anticipated the excruciating sense of inferiority and self-doubt, feelings that are amplified by anything and everything I read. It has made me question if I have it in me, whether I should just roll over and accept that I need to modify or scale back my dream into something within my grasp.
Last night I watched the season finale of HIMYM season four, “The Leap,” the episode where Ted has been struggling as an architect and is offered a teaching job but is adamantly against accepting it. Lily tries to talk him out of his lifelong plan to be an architect and to take the job in the following exchange:
Lily: Screw the plan. I thought I’d be a famous painter. Marshall thought he’d be an environmental lawyer. Robin thought she’d be a TV reporter.
Robin: I am a TV reporter. My show airs every morning at 4:00 AM.
Lily: Is that still on? Good for you.
Robin: Someone, watch my show!
Lily: Barney thought he’d be a violinist.
Barney: Lily!
Lily: Don’t tell me things!
Lily: (To Ted) Listen to what the world is telling you to do, and take the leap.
It feels silly to admit days later, but in that moment it was a direct line to the minimizing voice in the back of my head. I’m not going to give up on the idea of a book spine with my name on it, but it did raise an interesting point: when do we make a judgement call on Plan A and regroup? Is it better to stubbornly pursue a potentially unattainable dream and chase the idea that attaining it will make you happy, or find some middle ground and take the leap?
This month I’ve been tearing through my stack of “to-read” books in a race against time to pad the amount of books I’ve read in 2011. Since I started tracking the books I read each year in a spreadsheet this has become a sort of December tradition for me, albeit a deranged one.
I started off the month with Maine by J. Courtney Sullivan, for which I could write a six page essay about the problems I had with the flimsy plot and irritating characters. Next up was Blue Nights, Joan Didion’s memoir about her daughter, Quintana. I will read everything Didion writes and found sections of the book touching, so much so that the last chapter had me crying on the subway. Other sections had me nodding vigorously in agreement with the criticisms I’d heard, particularly that she excessively name drops. I was prepared to defend the name dropping because you can’t fault that she often mentions her friends, most of whom are coincidentally famous, but did I really need to be beat over the head seven times that Quintana’s wedding cake was from Payard?
After Blue Nights I unknowingly read three books centered on troubled marriages involving writerly spouses: The Astral, The Paris Wife, and Lady Chatterley’s Lover. I especially liked The Paris Wife, which is told from the point of view of Hemingway’s first wife and was as fun to read as Midnight In Paris was to watch.
Next up is Is Everyone Hanging Out Without me? 11 more days! Race against time!
" As I see it, the problem with Amazon stems from the fact that though it started out as a bookseller, it isn’t anymore, not really. It sells everything now, and it sells it all aggressively. Maybe Amazon doesn’t care about the larger bookselling universe because it’s simply too big to care. In a way it’s become, like the John Candy character (minus the eager, slobbering benevolence) in Mel Brooks’s movie “Spaceballs” — half man, half dog and thus its own best friend.
— Richard Russo, “Amazon’s Jungle Logic.”
