Some readings that I recommend . . .
everything is illuminated
jonathon safron foer
minor characters
joyce johnson
ferdydurke
wiltold gombrowicz
the observers
paul la farge
the unbearable lightness of being
milan kundera
crime and punishment
dostoevsky
the chosen
chaim potok
stargirl
jerry spinelli
by the light of my father's smile
alice walker
love in the time of cholera
gabriel garcia marquez
the picture of dorian gray
oscar wilde
soundless roar
ava kadishson schieber
how the garcia girls lost their accents
julia alvarez
me talk pretty one day
david sedaris
prodigal summer
barbara kingsolver
nickel and dimed
barbara ehrenreich
a heartbreaking work of staggering genius
dave eggers
the lion, the witch, & the wardrobe
c.s. lewis
the words
jean paul sartre
disobedience & a short history of a prince
jane hamilton
faith, madness, & spontaneous human combustion
gerald n. callahan
the second sex
simone de beauvoir
heaven's coast
mark doty
love's executioner & other tales of psychotherapy
irving yolem
minor characters
by joyce johnson
"...into literature and the chemistry of mutual influences and the duluoz/ kerouac saga in which all of them [authors of the beat generation] will appear & reappear & reencounter each other under their invented names."
"theres a school of wisdom about love that says the surest way to lose someone is to hold on to them too tightly- as demonstrated over & over again by the split ups of lovers, but also by parents and children. although there its more complicated by far. lovers, initially strangers, become strangers again; the tie between parent & child pulls and twist for a lifetime, taking on the strangest forms."
minor characters is a true story that follows the author, joyce johnson, as she grows up in new york city during the 1940s & 1950s. half of the novel sets us in her time and place (under the roof of cultured, jewish parents who proudly listen to her compose her own music) all the while parelleling her youth with the whereabouts of her future lover, jack kerouac. the second half of the novel is the story of twenty one year old joyce befriending beat poets & writers like allen ginsberg and her two year love affair with the notorious jack kerouac. joyce chronicals the roles of "minor characters" in the beat generation: the women who loved, inspired, and suported the movement but were never given credit. although i am not a huge fan of many "beat works of literature", i was suprised to find this book as compelling, honest, & beautiful as it really is. it is a fabulous afternoon read & i highly recommend it.
everything is illuminated (read first pages here)
jonathon safron foer
This story follows a young, Jewish-American writer's journey in his attempt to research his grandfather's life in Ukraine. Jonathan's goal is to find his grandfather's shtetl, Trachimbrod. He has a picture of a woman named Augustine who he believes saved his grandfather from the Nazis and wishes to find her. Jonathan has a vague idea about how to find her so he hires Alex, a young Ukranian man. Alex's blind grandfather and his seeing-eye dog, Sammy Davis Junior, accompany Jonathan and Alex on their hilarious, heartbreaking journey.
I did not read but listened to this book on books on tape. The narrator is wonderful and I think I got more out of listening to it than if I had read it. The first chapters are difficult to muddle through but it is worth it. Hilarious & thought provoking: I think it is one of my favorite books.
"do you know what a friend is, reuvan? a greek philosopher once said that two people who are true friends are like two bodies with one soul... make him your friend," he said again.
even if he is a Hasid?" i asked smiling.
"make him a friend," my father repeated.
crime and punishment
by dostoevsky
"wouldnt thousands of good deeds make up for one tiny little crime? for one life, thousands of lives saved from decay & corruption. one [murder] for [saving] hundreds of lives- its simple arithmatic."
the smell of spring reminds me of dostoevsky: lunches with john, candace, & ebeth debating the underground man and redemption. when i read this book last spring i holed up in my apartment and read it until i was done. i couldnt put it down.
star girl (read first few pages here)
by jerry spinelli
"throughout the day, stargirl had been dropping money. she was the johnny appleseed of loose change: a penny here, a nickel there. tossed to the sidewalk, laid on a shelf or bench. even quarters. "i hate loose change," she said. "it's so... jangly."
"do you realize how much you must throw away in a year?" i asked.
"did you ever see a little kid's face when he spots a penny on a sidewalk?" she said. when her change purse was empty, we drove back to mica. along the way she invited me to dinner at her house.
this is by far the best young adult fiction around. i save this story for rainy days: it is a quick, beautiful, & inspiring read each time. dont you agree, squirell? it is about a very eccentric junior high school girl through the eyes of a curious and admiring boy.
soundless roar
by ava kadishson schieber
memoirs, poetry, and art done by a woman who spent her teenage years hiding from the nazis on a serbian farm.
"i never saw my sister again. mother did return, but had lost the charming, playful attitude toward life that had made her such a strong influence on people around her. she never regained her joie de vivre, the way it used to be. that beautiful part of her was gone forever. dead as the loved ones she had lost- her husband and her daughter.
how the garcia girls lost their accents
by julia alvarez
"girls," tia carmen says, frowning. "thats no way to treat a man."
"yeah you guys," fifi agrees. "get off him. he's mine." we laugh but keep fussing over him, waiting on him as if we've never been to the states or read simone de beauvoir or planned lives of our own.
me talk pretty one day
by david sedaris
prodigal summer
by barbara kingsolver
the second sex
by simone de beauvoir
"the adolescent boy, too, undoubtedly dreams of woman, he longs for her, but she will never be more than an element in his life: she does not sum up his destiny."
"but, above all, the lie to which the adolescent girl is condemned is that she must pretend to be an object, and a fascinating one, when she senses herself as uncertain, dissociated being, well aware of her blemishes. the very face itself becomes a mask: spontanious expressions are artfully induced, a wondering passivity is mimicked... the body is no longer alive, it waits; every gesture and smile becomes an appeal."
nickel and dimed
by barbara ehrenreich
how does anyone live on minimum wage alone? undercover investigation from dennys to being a maid to walmart. hilarious as much as it is eye opening on (not) getting by in america.
a heartbreaking work of staggering genius
by dave eggers
the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe
by cs lewis
"dont you know who is the king of beasts? aslan is a lion- the lion, the great lion."
"oooh!" said susan. "id thought he was a man. is he-quite safe? i shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion."
"that you will, deaie, and no mistake," said mrs beaver; "if there's anyone who can appear before aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most or else just silly."
"then he isnt safe?" said lucy.
"safe?" said mr beaver; "dont you hear what mrs. beaver tells you? who said anything about safe? course he isnt safe. but he is good."
love in the time of cholera
by gabriel garcia marquez
"it was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of unrequited love . . ."there is bound to be someone driven mad by love who will give you the chance one of these days [to witness their body after suicide]." and only after he said it did he realize that among the countless suicides he could remember, this was the first with cyanide that had not been caused by the suffering of love."
"the truth is that she was a fearless apprentice but lacked all talent for guided fornication."
"He repeated until his dying day that there was no one with more common sense, no stonecutter more obstinate, no manager more lucid or dangerous, than a poet. "
the unbearable lightness of being
by milan kundera.
"the heaviest of burden's crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. but in the love poery of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by a man's body. the heaviest of burdens s therefore simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfillment. the heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become."
there is no amount of cyberspace to express the beauty i find in this book. the novel is mostly driven by philosphical thought and explores the question" is it best for one to live a weighty or light life?" i like to read books with a notebook at my side so i can jot down some quotes i find interesting. i found myself nearly rewriting the whole book in my notebook.
the words
by jean paul sartre
revelations of an only child as genious existentialist thought? perhaps i will be the next great existentialist.
"at time my grandmother would take me with her to her circulating library, and it would amuse me to see tall, pensive, unsatisfied ladies gliding from wall towall in search of the author who would satisfy them: he was not to be found, since he was i, that youngster who was standing under their very noses and whom they didnt even look at."
"the written word also worried me. at times, wear of mild massacres for children, i would let myself daydream; i would discover, in a state of anguish, ghastly possibilities, a monstrous universe that was only on the underside of my omnipotence; i would say to myself: anything could happen! and that meant: i can imagine anything!"
I live in the past.
I take everything that has happened to me and arrange it. From a distance like that, it doesn't do any harm, you'd almost let yourself be caught up in it.
Our whole story is fairly beautiful. I give it a few prods and it makes a whole string of perfect moments.
Then I close my eyes and try to imagine that I'm still living in it.
by the light of my father's smile
by alice walker.
"when she goes to the city she leaves me lounging in the swing underneath the oak tree. she visualizes me as a shadow, as her car zooms around the curves that take her rapidly down th mountain. she is listening to music i have not heard in many years. i realize it is flamenco, which is characterized by passion and profound sadness. she moans along with the woman who is singing- her hands gripping the steering wheel to the plangent cries of the singer & sobbing of violins."
ferdydurke
by wiltold gombrowicz
"i suddenly found myself in total isolation, only the schoolgirl was moving around and puttering in the parlor next door. no, no, this was not solitude- this was solitude with a schoolgirl."
*neat graphic interpretations here & here
the picture of dorian gray
by oscar wilde.
"but beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. intellect is in itself a mode of exageration, and destroys the harmony of any face.
disobedience & a short history of a prince
by jane hamilton
i love that both of these stories are set in chicago. i can identify the places and streets that she refers to throughout her stories. disobedience is about a 17 year old boy who finds out his mother is having an affair when he accidently reads her email. the plot moves around this ongoing event but the best parts are about his little sister, her passion for the civil war, and her civil war garb. this book explores relationships, the meaning of manhood & womanhood, and family bonds.
faith, madness, and spontaneous human combustion: what immunity can tell us about self-perception
by gerald n. callahan
"my grandmother had a penchant for saving things... on the plywood shelves of her closets, mason jars that once held apple butter or pickled tomatoes were filled with buttons, snaps, paper clips- everything she'd ever come across that she thought might be useful someday. immune systems do that, too, believe that most everything they come across will be usefull again one day... by the time we are adults, our lymph nodes- like my grandmother's mason jars- are filled with things we have been infected by. (this is immunological memory and it is as powerful as any memory in the brain.)"
the observers
by paul lafarge
"i had always thought of observatories as high places, but mine would be reached by stepping down. it didnt feel right... the observatory: when i'd finished nailing the siding to its exterior, it looked like a sort of low fortress established to defend our house from lake-borne invaders.i was delighted and couldnt wait until nightfall to try a few prelimimary sightings."
this is a hilarious, moving short story that i just happened to find in a writing journal. it is about a man who, after a break up, decides to move back home and build an observatory in his backyard. what he sees through his telescope is not neccessarily the stars.
heaven's coast
by mark doty
"I can feel how large, how essential this moment is as it's happening; that is what I have come to love about being an adult, to the extend that I can claim that title: that one knows more about how good things are, how much they matter, as they're happening, that knowledge isn't neccessarily retrospective anymore. When I was younger, I missed so much, failing to be fully present, only recognizing the quality of particular moments and gifts after the fact. Perhaps that's the one thing that being "grown up" is: to realize in the present the magnitude or grace of what we're being offered."
"I let my hands know him for the last time, that the body was moving away from me, sinking into itself. Perhaps that is the one thing the soul is: our outward attention, the energy and force in us that leaps out of the self, almost literally, into the life of the world.
The spirit is that in us which participates. It moves alone, like air or fire, and it moves with the body, lifting the bodies earth and water into gesture and connection, into love.
Without spirit, the body closes back into itself like an old piece of furniture, an armoire whose ancient wood is still fragrant, whose whirled grains and steady sleep refer back to the living tree."
love's executioner & other tales of psychotherapy
irving yolem
"I do not like to work with patients who are in love. Perhaps it is because of envy- I too crave enchantment. Perhaps it is because love and psychotherapy are fundamentally incompatible. The good therapist fights darkness and seeks illumination, while romantic love is sustained by mystery and crumbles upon inspection. I hate to be love's executioner."