Ok, manuscript has been shipped! Yay.While I wait for edits to come back to me, I have some time to do the things I’ve neglected over the past few weeks, such as writing about what I’ve been reading. And taxes. I really have to do my taxes.

Committed – Elizabeth Gilbert: The most annoying thing about “Committed” was nothing in the book itself, but the reviews. So many of them started off with a snarky comment on how hard it must have been for Elizabeth Gilbert to write a follow-up to “Eat, Pray, Love”. Boo fucking hoo, Liz, the reviewers essentially said. Once that was out of the way, they’d get around to talking about the book. I suppose Gilbert encouraged this – “Committed” actually starts off with a note to the reader where she acknowledges the wild success of her previous book and emphasizes that she wrote the follow up for a very specific audience (a particular assortment of friends) because it was too difficult to write for the faceless hordes of new readers out there. Personally, I wish she hadn’t included the note. I couldn’t help but interpret it as some kind of apology that I didn’t think she had to give us. Anyway, as someone who recently got married, I was looking forward to “Committed”. In the end, I didn’t like it as much as “Eat, Pray, Love”, but that was mostly because I was never as torn up as Elizabeth Gilbert about marriage. It didn’t help that some of the marriage history stuff towards the beginning was dry for me since I had already read/discussed/pondered similar issues in women’s studies classes, read in zines or on blogs. While “Eat, Pray, Love” discussed desires that are universal (world travel, enlightenment, finding hot Brazillian lovers in Bali, etc), “Committed” is more niche. I’m glad, though, that a book like this is on the market and I think it might resonate with some of the women who read “Eat, Pray, Love” but might have never thought about these issues. (Also: I really liked this article by Jessa Crispin, always the voice of reason, defending Elizabeth Gilbert.)

Come Thou, Tortoise – Jessica Grant: I enjoyed reading this book, a quirky/sad/lovely tale about a girl named Audrey dealing with the sudden death of her father and coming to terms with new information about her family. I don’t mean quirky in an annoying way, but genuinely, kindly. For example, a tortoise narrates a section of the book, her father was killed by a Christmas tree, Audrey is called “Oddly” by her family and Uncle Thoby. These are the details that define the book. Odd and sweetly sad.

Consider the Lobster – David Foster Wallace: I’m starting to be ok with the fact that I’m bad at reading DFW’s fiction. I’ve tried to read “Infinite Jest” twice, and I failed both times. Maybe I’ll try a third time before giving up completely. Obviously I must be some kind of fraud to say I love the dude when I can’t even read his major work? Ah well. That being said, I loved these essays (and annoyed Andrew when, months and months and months after the fact I was all “Did you know this about John McCain? And this? And this?” when I read the McCain essay). Also, this is kind of related: someone recently found my site searching “Kirk Cameron Consider the Lobster”. Ha!

Book Update #2

As I mentioned in my last update, my manuscript is due on March 1st. After that I will be working with an editor. When I think about it rationally, I have plenty of time. The bulk of the manuscript is essentially finished - I have 13 stories at various stages. Some of them have already been published, so I can set those aside. Others have been workshopped, read by friends, and have generally been knocking around my brain for enough time that I'm fairly comfortable with them and the rewrites I need to do. The remaining stories are very new, a little raw, written in the past 6 months, as recent as three weeks ago. But as long as the bones are there, I have enough time to work through them. Right?

One of my challenges is firming up a writing schedule. In the past few years my day job has ranged from consisting of soul crushing hours to, more recently, normal ones with certain busy periods. I remember the feeling of starting to work regular hours: I suddenly had so much time! It was amazing that I could come home, cook an actual dinner, work on writing or see friends on a weeknight. I would get so much writing done, I told myself. And I did get more writing done, but because I was never a write every day kind of person, not as much as I had initially hoped. So, in order to rework my internal writing wiring, I've been setting deadlines for myself, assigning different days of the week to stories or tasks, and it's working, I think. I'll um, let you know.

I've also been reading "The Best American Short Stories 2009", edited by Alice Sebold. Soraya gave it to me for Christmas and it came at a time when I was thinking about what made stories work. I know thought has been put into the ordering of stories in the collection, but I prefer to treat best of anthologies as Magic 8 balls or tarot cards. I read stories randomly, trusting that it will lead me in the right direction. I know it's kind of new age-y, but this actually works. I mean, I know it's because a good story will always be a pleasure to read, but seriously, guys, sometimes it's uncanny. I read Victoria Lancelotta's "The Anniversary Trip", a story about a married couple that travels to Paris with the husband's mother, when I was rewriting a story about a couple that takes a significant trip of their own. I read Adam Johnson's "Hurricanes Anonymous" when I was fretting about voice, and man, the voice in that story really rings out. I had so much luck with the 2009 collection that I dug out the 2006 anthology, which I had on my bookshelves and, judging by the uncracked spine, barely touched.

It's my kind of hocus pocus.

To books in 2010!

Over the past 2 weeks, Andrew and I have logged about 4000 kilometres. We started in Montreal and visited various points in the Maritimes (Moncton, Halifax, but mostly Cape Breton where we spent Christmas) and then made a last minute decision to visit dear friends in New York City, driving through Maine (which always feels like the wilder, more remote cousin of Vermont to me) and Connecticut. In Cape Breton, we spent a lot of time doing what you're supposed to do at Christmas: eating. And I relaxed too, and breathed in a lot of clean, country air, and I read Ghosts by Cesar Aira, a novella set in Argentina. It's the holiday season in that book too, New Year's Eve actually, and a Chilean family is living in a construction site that will eventually be luxury condos. Ghosts live in the building too, and they fly around naked and covered in dust and do things like chill bottles of wine for the humans and invite the oldest daughter to a party at midnight. I also started reading Charles Portis' Dog of the South, and it's an amazing thing, this book, funny and strange, all these details about characters who get into the weirdest situations (another man has stolen not only Ray's wife, but also his credit card and car, and Ray sets out to track down the two lovebirds in Mexico), an aimless, sparkling road novel.

Once we left Nova Scotia, there wasn't as much time to get absorbed in a novel, but whenever I go to New York City I make sure to visit The Strand, the bookstore famous for having over 18 miles of books. The Strand is overwhelming and always packed with so many people and there is something about seeing so many books that sometimes makes me wonder what the point is of ever bringing another book into the world because they're all there already, shoved into talls shelves or piled on tables, and the prices! The discounts! But that feeling is fleeting and I will amble through and pick up books, put them down, pick up others and usually try to cap the amount I buy at 4 or 5. This trip I emerged with 2666 by Roberto Bolano, another Aira novella, Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace and a copy of Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem which I've read, but decided I wanted to own. These books, along with books I got for Christmas (Ovid's Metamorphoses, Virgil's Aeneid, 2009 Best Short Stories) and a book of essays about photography that I purchased at the Aperture Foundation gallery make up my reading list for the next few months.

I'm excited to read more books in 2010, to discover something that will make me feel feverish and excited or simply understood, that quiet, humming content you get when you read the right thing at the right time. Screw being overwhelmed by books at The Strand - we need all of those books, and more of them, because there are too many moments in our lifetimes and everyone else's lifetimes that should be documented or reflected or heightened.