What to write when you have nothing to write

Some days I think I have something I want to write about and then I realize that I really only have one or two sentences to say about it and so it doesn't seem worth the post. (Is this why Twitter is so popular?). Normally, I let these things die or else pad the post with photos of my cat, but today, I'm just going to throw them together incongruously in a single post. This post.

Websites like this one make me wonder if I'm not under-utilizing Dinah's incredibly tolerant nature and willingness to be photographed. I think I should start a line of greeting cards with her image.

I went for a hike in the Palisades in New Jersey this weekend. It was a beautiful day and the trail was surprisingly empty, but for a group of teenage girls. We saw them fleeing the scene after they spray painted a heart on some historic stone tower thing at the start of the trail. You give teenage girls everywhere a bad name, teenage girls of Bergen County.

I recommend the book Sea of Poppies. It's one of those books with a number of characters whose lives all intersect, but remarkably you still are able to care about all of them. It also offers some very compelling evidence for why you should never succumb to opium addiction.

I saw the movie A Dangerous Method this weekend purely because my friend wanted to go and it was showing at a movie theater that served movie themed food to you while you ate (a phenomenon which is apparently slow to reach the East Coast). I got "Jung's Beaten Biscuits" which I didn't really understand because do you really beat biscuits? Wouldn't there have been a better food to put on the menu if you wanted to draw on the S&M aspects of the film? Also, if they were beaten it was probably a bit too much because they were not fluffy and delicious, but rather the type of biscuits I imagine they gave to sailors on overseas voyages in the 1800s. I ate them only because I paid for them and because the apple chutney they came with was tasty, but it likely would have been just as good with something like "Freud's Over-analyzed Pork Sausages" had they but been on the menu. The movie was only so-so.

In other movie watching news, I finally arrested my attention from watching Law & Order episodes on Netflix long enough to actually watch a movie. If you like satires of college-kids-killed-off-in-a-cabin-in-the-woods type slasher movies that still have a fair amount of gore (albeit comedic), I recommend Tucker and Dale Versus Evil. Actually, you can really get the whole movie just from the trailer, so maybe just watch that instead.

Another near-victory at trivia night was thwarted by not knowing any of the noble gases other than neon. The only thing I remember about high school chemistry (being the last chemistry class I took) is that my teacher would go out to his car on lunch and smoke cigars.

Have a happy Mardi Gras readers!

Apologies for writing under the influence of eggplant parmesan and a couple of glasses of wine

I might not be doing the same amount of writing here for the next month or so because none of my readers pay me and my freelance employer does. More importantly, they except me to turn in 23,000 words on subjects ranging from rising ocean levels due to climate change to Wikipedia founder and technology mogul Jimmy Wales in the next month or so. (And by "ranging from," I really mean just those two things).

But really what is my writing but empty words trying to express experiences much better captured in images? To that end, here are a couple of photos from my beach weekend. Well, not so much weekend as a single summer Friday followed by two days of clouds and rain. Which really was fine by me because I was (mostly) confined to my keyboard penning lines from what will become the definitive biography of Jimmy Wales. And I know it will be the definitive text because there are currently very few sources in existence in the New York Public Library system devoted to the man from which I might draw my research. My only recourse has been to pore over various interviews Wales has given over the years. Through which I've determined he's kind of insufferable. So this is going to be a long 15,000 words. But that is my cross to bear. At any rate, enjoy these photos from Long Beach, NY--the jewel of Long Island.

The fact that there isn't broken glass on the beach make it worth the $11 for beach access. The beauty is just a bonus.

I'm only this carefree and looking at the world through rose colored glasses when on the Long Beach boardwalk on my way to BBQ legend Swing Bellys

See that sky? Talk about blue!

Taking photos of the platform did not make the train back to the city come any faster.

Also, I promise not to blog while drinking in the future. It might not help my writing much, but it certainly makes reading quotes from Jimmy like "I make the Internet not suck" easier to stomach. Until next time, readers!

Poems Enough

Today is my mother's birthday (Happy birthday, Mom!). This year is something of a milestone birthday, so I wanted to do something special for her. My mother is a woman of many talents: an artful painter and sculptor, a dedicated gardener, and (one day) a virtuosic banjo player. But above all, she is a life long writer--both of poetry and fiction. For her birthday this year, I wanted to publish her collected works of poetry into a single volume. At first, I wanted this to be a surprise and enlisted my dad to help gather her oeuvre. What I realized from the smattering of word documents he sent me was that my mother had written more than I realized, and many things were in varying stages of completion. I had no idea where to even begin to sort through what she would even want to have published. So the secret thing was out the window, and she contributed not only the book and chapter titles and where the poems should be organized, but also a thoughtful introduction tying the volume together.

Through the ease of self-publishing offered by createspace.com and with the enormous help of a very talented designer (whose unflagging devotion to this project, despite my many edits, prompts me to plug his Website again: www.stevedoredesign.com), we now have a finished book:The cover, although I forgot to credit it in the book (whoops! so much for the editorial check list!), is a section of one of my mom's recent paintings. It's something she did based on a photo of the Japanese gardens in Fort Worth.

I wanted to share my favorite poem from the collection, but it was harder to pick than I thought it would be. Instead, I'll just share one that I really like. It's about the constant spread of suburban sprawl (something anyone who has ever lived in the suburbs of Houston is quite familiar with). One day you're neighbors are cows in wide open fields, where you and your sister can pick berries of somewhat questionable health, and the next it's the inevitable grocery store/nail salon/laundromat mini mall.

Suburban Sprawl

We remember cows
Where grocery carts now graze.
In dove season shots rang out
Reminding us that hunters
Nestle in the cozy grass.

Then, we dared not walk
To Val-U-Drugs
Nor could we imagine how
Vast the space, once paved.

Mere grass,
Festooned with barbed wire
It seemed a part
Of our own backyard.

Now it is open, uninviting.

A beat-up taco van
Parked beside the winding road
Nourished the crews
Who straightened the road
Paving the way
For Taco Palace
And the storage place
(Painted orange and purple
To avoid confusion with the red white and blue
one
And the other two)
The day they broke ground
We vowed to boycott
Twenty-Four-Seven-Shop & Drop
And stick to homemade tamales
In honor of the fallen trees.

But sometimes you need something late at night

And it’s great to nibble a praline
Walking home
Pondering where the cows graze now.

I know the vast majority of my readers already have their copies soon to arrive in the mail, but if anyone would like to procure their very own copy of Poems Enough, you can do so from Amazon here. I realize I'm a little biased here, but if you can only buy one book of poetry this year, it should probably be this one.

Not your grandmother's Holocaust novel: A review

Way back in this blog's infancy (for those unfamiliar with the developmental stages of my blog: as reference I'll offer that at 6 months I've decided my blog has reached its adolescence), I wrote a book review and promised to keep my reader's abreast of books I found to be of particular note. Then none of the books I've read in the last few months really felt worthy of reviewing. Either I didn't enjoy them that much, enjoyed them but didn't think I could really recommend them to others, or they were so mainstream that anyone who hadn't read them probably had done so intentionally and with difficulty.

Much of my reading for the better part of the last year has been shaped by a book club I attend monthly at Idlewild Books (www.idlewildbooks.com). If you're ever in New York, this is a delightful independent bookstore that's worthy of a visit. And I'm not just saying that because the owner plies me with wine, pita chips, and lively discussion once a month. I've had mixed reviews of some of the books since I've joined the club, but they've all shared the link in common that they're books I would not have picked up and read on my own. However, this month's book was the first one I truly enjoyed. Or rather "was incredibly impressed by", as "enjoyed" is probably not the right word when describing a book that depicts such a horrifying version of humanity.


At any rate, the book is called Brodeck, or in some translations Brodeck's Report, and is one of the few novels by the French director and screenwriter Phillipe Claudel that have been translated into English. Claudel is apparently best known for his film I've Loved You So Long starring Kristin Scott Thomas. Although I haven't seen the movie, judging by IMDB synopsis, its looks to be about the same level of bleakness of subject matter. Full disclosure: for readers not looking for a rather dark read, this is probably not the book for you. It's set in an unnamed European village, and while the time and place are never really specified, it makes enough oblique references (and some rather direct ones) to clearly point to the Holocaust.

The novel is told in first person and in a very non-linear fashion. Brodeck, a villager who seems to skirt the outside of village society, is charged with writing an official report to absolve the other villagers of the murder of an outsider. In the process of writing the report, he confronts his own guilt and his experiences while a prisoner at a concentration camp. Because the time, while fairly obvious, is never specifically mentioned, it gives the novel and its atrocities an air of universality. During the discussion we would try to avoid destroying the illusion by referring to things as "quasi-Nazis" or "concentration camp-esque." The book at times reads like a parable, but also has elements of Garcia Marquez type magical realism and even fairy tales. There are many episodes where animals are used to make a point, although seldom are these stories or vignettes ever resolved or reconciled with the rest of the story. I'm not sure the last sentence makes it clear that I consider that a positive thing, but believe me, I do. The book is very complex and thoughtfully composed; even ends that are left loose are done with intention.

Overall, I recommend this book highly. Also, I promise to read more quality books (maybe even some happier ones) in the future. That way, I'll have something to recommend to you before my blog reaches its dotage.

An ape's world: a review

This isn't strictly speaking a "book blog," but in as much as I do read and have opinions, and for no other reason than because I'm looking for something to write about--I submit for you: a book review. Since I've moved here, the overwhelming majority of my reading has been done on public transport, which usually means getting through a 600 page tome like The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore would be a long process undertaken in 30 minute increments. However, in the case of this book, I found the pages turning themselves quite quickly both on and off the N train.


The book, by recent Iowa MFA graduate Benjamin Hale, chronicles the life experiences of a chimp who learns to speak and gradually gains many human life experiences through his ability to communicate--including how to both befriend and love humans (accounting for some of the book's....queasier sections). His memoirs are told in first person retrospect from a research facility where he is held for life for murdering a man. The conceit is one that easily could have gone either way, but because of Hale's deft use of language, Bruno's oddly pompous ruminations spin a fascinating and believable tale. In the process, through Bruno and the people and animals he enounters, the book examines what it means to be human.

When I first started the book, I was excited about recommending it to people because I found the idea so innovative and the writing so fresh. After I got a little further in, the number of people I would recommend it to dropped off slightly. It was still just as interesting a book, but the bluntness of language during some instances was mildly disturbing. If you can measure the strength of a book by how visceral your reaction or how long you remember certain images, then this book is a herculean one. That said, less than 30 pages in, after a certain scene involving a frog, I realized I could no longer, in good conscience, pass this one on to my mother's book club.

Overall, this was an extremely well-written story that I found both thought-provoking and enjoyable. Usually when I hear about a young, first-time novelist who inspires a bidding war or gets published by Twelve (the fairly recent publisher that only publishes one book a month, to great success), it fills me with jealously, increduilty, and bitterness (what can I say...that's who I am). This is especially true if the novelist is a psuedo celebrity of reality tv fame, but I digress. In this case, the praise, the accolades, and whatever the payout was were richly deserved.

(This review was written from a review copy from the publisher. The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore is to be released by Twelve in February 2011.)

Sassy in Strawberry

A few months ago, I wrote a book intended for a high school audience about the exciting subject of trading futures (especially commodities futures). I don't remember being terribly interested in reading about futures and derivatives when I was in high school, but then again lack of access to age-appropriate reading material on the subject might just explain why I didn't blossom into a lucrative investor to this day. (Case in point, my last intended money making investment was in the New York lottery.) At any rate, last week I got the page proofs in for the book. It looks lovely all laid out with photos and has a nice clean design. The only surprise was that the predominant color was a very bright pink. I was later told this color was "strawberry," but I think a more accurate descriptor would be "Incrediberry Kool-aid."

I wrote to my editor thanking him for the proofs and mentioned that I thought the pink added a certain girlish charm to the otherwise dry subject of futures trading. His response:

I know! I wonder if it's too late to retitle the book?

"Oh no You Didn't!: The Girlfriend's Guide to Smart Futures Trading"

"Ooo Snap!: The Sassy Girl's Guide to Futures Trading Made Easy"

"BFF: Big Futures Fun!!! The OMG Guide to Futures Trading and Becoming Your Financial Future's Best Friend, Forever"

I only hope this is possible before press time.