Category Archives: What are you reading?

Sep
01
2014

10 Books That Shaped Me

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I generally try to avoid all of those email and Facebook chain letters. I’m always flattered when someone includes me in a group of friends whom she thinks would be inspired or uplifted by the message  but try to dodge them all the same. I feel bad, but what can I do?

But now I’ve been asked by two girlfriends the Top 10 books that have inspired me over the many years I’ve roamed this planet — like the dinosaur that I am — and I am having a hard time resisting the urge to share. I mean, what narcissist who reads a lot wouldn’t want to bore you with the books that have made her tick?

So, Denise Swanzey and Staci Seltzer, thanks for letting me remember the books that have helped shape the weird person, weirder mom and navel-gazing writer that I’ve become.

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1. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.: Judy Blume

Boobs, periods, boys: They were mysteries back when I first read the book in fifth grade and they continue to stump me almost 40 years later. Perhaps it’s time for a re-reading.

 

 

 

 

 

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2. To Kill a Mockingbird: Harper Lee

The only good thing that came from leaving my tiny Catholic grammar school after my parents’ divorce and moving an hour south was getting to read this book in the public school I attended in 8th grade. Up to that point, the only stuff I’d read for school came out of a box on a giant glossy card (ugh that discouraging SRA Reading Program). I couldn’t believe my good fortune that I got to read an actual novel for English class (because it was English and not Language Arts back then).

 

 

 

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3. Childhood is Hell: Matt Groening

Long before The Simpsons debuted on The Tracey Ullman Show, I adored Groening’s subversive “Life is Hell” cartoons in The Village Voice and stumbled across this collection while browsing a midtown Manhattan bookstore during my lunch hour from my low-level job as a glorified secretary at a women’s magazine. I spent the afternoon doubled over in my cubicle covertly reading about the “16 Types of Dads” (Fun Dad, Fear Dad, Lord Dad) and “Your Pal the TV Set” (“Is TV the coolest invention ever? Well, DUH.”). It’s now become one of my 11-year-old’s faves and that makes me feel like I’ve succeeded as a parent.

 

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4. Bossypants: Tina Fey

I’ve read it twice and listened to it countless times during car trips up and down the Eastern Seaboard. My teenaged daughters adore it and I even let my little guy listen to it and am convinced the strong feminist ideas mixed with Fey’s deadpan humor totally override her liberal use of the “f” word. I think he’ll be a better man for it and will know how to use the term “motherfucker” in the right context. Score.

 

 

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5. The Middle Place: Kelly Corrigan

My college girlfriend Honeypot — aka The Senator — sent me a copy of Corrigan’s first book long before I knew I wanted to be Corrigan. Her memoir about the place we find ourselves in mid-life between our parents and our children, with a little cancer thrown in, showed me that there was a place for people who wrote like I did.

 

 

 

 

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6. The Twilight Series:

I gobbled up the first three books in about a week and mostly during a trip I took out west with my three sisters. I even had to stop at a bookstore near my sister’s home in Marin County to pick up book #2 and found myself often referencing vampires and their proclivities throughout the trip. And somehow, the series in a weird way made me want to end my marriage and find a dude that would take care of me like Edward. I am still accepting applications for that position.

 

 

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7. The Honeymoon’s Over: True Stories of Love, Marriage and Divorce: Original essays by 21 writers

I read and re-read this collection of essays during the turbulent final years of my marriage and they helped me feel a little less alone. The writers showed me that there could be life on the other side, and you could even write about it.

 

 

 

 

 

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8. I Feel Bad About My Neck: Nora Ephron

Funny. Self-deprecating. Shrewd.

Shards of brilliance: “Never marry a man you wouldn’t want to be divorced from.” 

And: “When your children are teenagers, it’s important to have a dog so that someone in the house is happy to see you.”

I mean, what’s not to love?

 

 

 

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9. Wild: Cheryl Strayed

I read Strayed’s memoir about going off and finding herself while I was sailing around the Greek islands and, well, finding myself. Enough said.

 

 

 

 

 

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10. Eat, Pray, Love: Elizabeth Gilbert

Okay, obviously I’ve got a thing for chicks going off and finding themselves. But, as chronicled in detail here, listening to Gilbert read her memoir for a few weeks this spring really helped set the stage for a lot that happened in the heart department this summer. I highly recommend it.

Jun
27
2014

My Summer Reading List

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This is totally not what’s happening in my bedroom. That would be weird.

I have a grotesque number of books stacked around my bedroom. Like, I hesitate even taking a picture of the situation, lest you think I am a total nut.

There are young adult books that my daughter has recommended, like Rainbow Rowell’s “Attachments.” Some novels lent by my friend and fellow writer including Ann Pachett’s “The Patron Saint of Liars” and the new Sue Monk Kidd book from another reader friend. There are books on writing screenplays and memoirs and just writing in general, a few by Dani Shapiro (who I actually have been reading lately). Something called “Yoga and the Quest for True Self” that I will probably never get around to and of course, self help books galore – like “The Five Love Languages,” that sounded like a really good idea at the time I ordered it off Amazon late one one night. And then there’s “Middlemarch.” Fucking Middlemarch. It’s like always there, all 853 pages of it, just mocking me since I started reading it on a sailboat in the middle of the Aegean last August. Reminding me of all that I’ve yet to have accomplished.

My Kindle is also not immune to the log jam of unfinished and never opened reads. “The Husband’s Secret” lost me once we found out what his secret was and I only read a few of the short stories, I am ashamed to say, in George Saunder’s “Tenth of December.” I never even started Katherine Boo’s “Behind the Beautiful Forevers” or Elissa Schappell’s “Blueprints for Building Better Girls.” Then there’s Pete Hamills’ “A Drinking Life,” Stacy Schiff’s “Cleopatra” and the third installment of “The Game of Thrones” series I never got around to, probably because I’m so busy watching it unfold on my television. But don’t worry, all three Fifty Shades of Grey books were quickly and thoroughly read because they are the literary equivalent of eating a bag of Doritos in one sitting. Great at the time and thoroughly addictive but in retrospect, kinda unhealthy.

Anyway, not to get all ambitious, but I think this summer is the summer I start getting through all of the reading material I actually spent money on. I mean, if you tallied the costs of all the unread books both physical and digital I have purchased, it’s got to add up to at the very least, a really nice pair of shoes (which is another item I probably own more of than I really need).

So, as part of my plan to spend my afternoons this summer accompanying my little guy to the beach so he can Boogie board his heart out in the cold Atlantic surf with his little buddies, I would like to spend my time reading stuff I already own. Maybe with, like, one exception.

So, I think my top five books to start will be:

  1. “The Patron Saint of Liars,” by Ann Patchett
  2. “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” by Maya Angelou (book club selection)
  3. “Tenth of December,” George Saunders
  4. “The Outlander,” Diana Gabaldon (okay, I’m buying this because I’m hot to try the series and love that sci-fi stuff)
  5. “Middlemarch,” George Eliot (because everybody seems to love it and if I can read “War and Peace” I can get through this, dammit)

What have I read lately?  Well, I just finished the recently-released novel “Bittersweet” the other night, which got amazing reviews in Entertainment Weekly and People but left me sort of cold. I was hoping for more of a shocker at the end after the whole build up throughout the novel that, according to Amazon, “exposes the gothic underbelly of an idyllic world of privilege and an outsider’s hunger to belong.”

I finished Julia Fierro’s “Cutting Teeth” last week, which was a fun skewering of a Brooklyn play group that goes off to spend the weekend at a Hamptons beach house and plenty of hipster angst ensures. It’s the perfect smart beach read and kind of made me glad I had teens and not toddlers to deal with nowadays.

What about you? Do you feel bad about all of your unread books or are you better at reading what you already own (maybe that’s my problem, that I always want what I don’t already have)?

And don’t forget to let all of us know what’s on your summer reading list for all of those good people that don’t have already have a queue of books lined up next to their bed or in a cloud somewhere.

Happy reading!

Feb
20
2014

Are You a Goodreader?

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photo-9In my semi-retirement, when I am not eating or thinking about eating or making lists of things I’d like to be eating, I find I am catching up on things I was never able to get around to while I had a job.

Things I just didn’t have the time to do.

So now, when I wake up early in the morning, I reach for my journal before blogging on my laptop, which lets me filter thoughts and feelings a little bit better between my brain and the Internet.

I went snowshoeing not once but twice this past week and felt unhurried, able to take in the stillness and silence of the snowy woods and not have to worry about missing a call or coming up with some piece of content for work.

And I’ve also been reading a lot more during my unemployment. I finished two books I had started in the New Year — Still Writing, by Dani Shapiro and The Goldfinch, by Dona Tartt — and am determined to finish Middlemarch by the end of the month.

If it kills me.

And while I probably should be doing things like updating my LinkedIn profile and finding useful ways to utilize Pinterest for my blog, I found myself playing for a while on Goodreads yesterday instead.

Do you know that site? I am pretty late to the Goodreads party, since there are already about 20 million users who can make lists of books they’d like to read and rate and review books they’ve already read. So after I spent about an hour cruising through categories like “Popular book club books” and “Most read,” adding books I’d read to my shelf and marking the ones on my wish list, I quickly amassed over 100 titles.

It was like taking a walk down memory lane. I got to wave at some of the YA books I’ve been loving lately (The Fault in Our Stars and Eleanor and Park), books from my childhood (Charlotte’s Web) and books my children and I snuggled up to read over and over when they were young and yummy (Where the Sidewalk Ends).

And then I realized that it would be fun to see what was sitting on the shelves of other readers who I know, but was pretty limited as I had but one “friend” on Goodreads — my 19-year-old daughter. Out of 20 million users, that seemed kind of sad (even though she is excellent company).

So I tried to “friend” my real-life friend and voracious reader Susan, and quickly realized after Susan accepted my request and saw what was on her bookshelf, that I had indeed friended the wrong Susan.

My Susan definitely wasn’t currently reading Read Happiness: The Power of Meditation. She’s my Anglophile friend who leans more towards the World War II European experience than crunchy chewy self-help tomes.

So then I thought, why don’t I use my blog to try to make friends on Goodreads?

And so here I am.

I’d love to know what you’re reading (and listening to, too). What’s kept you sitting in your driveway or staying up way past your bedtime?

Let’s be friends. I think you can find me using the email amy@amynameisamy.com.

As for my own quick reviews, I was hesitant to get involved with the new Donna Tartt book, I’d heard mixed things about The Goldfinch, but I ended up loving it and have thought of the characters often since I finished it last week and had discussions about who should play Boris and Theo if it’s ever made into a movie.

And for someone who generally can’t even remember what happened on an episode of “True Detective” or “House of Cards” the minute the credits start to roll, that is impressive.

And I also fell head-over-heels in love with Ann Patchett after reading her collection of essays last month called This is the Story of a Happy Marriage. It’s made me want to read every piece of her fiction (aside from Bel Canto, which I read years ago) and make a pilgrimage to her bookstore in Nashville.

I legit want to stalk her (in a very friendly, non-threatening way).

Anyway, go friend me on Goodreads so I can see what’s on your virtual bookshelf and we can compare notes.

Maybe it will inspire me to crank through Middlemarch and move on.

Happy reading.