Shel’s Comments (group member since Mar 05, 2009)

Shel’s comments from the fiction files redux group.

These are great! I will take two Palahniuks and one Lump-along, please.

I will if Martyn promises to participate... :)

Wouldn't a group read of this one be awesome? :)

Uh-oh. My Sunday doing billable work has been seriously compromised.

Edith Wharton's Age of Innocence (I have no idea if it fits or not, I just wrote out the most decadent ingredients I could come up with)

kobe beef from cows who are only allowed to eat locally grown micro-hay and are sung to sleep with lullabies before being butchered, infused with truffle oil made from truffles discovered by pigs who are bathed every day in Mr. Bubble, 20 year old cheddar cheese made by the paws of kittens, impossibly artisanal bread made from flour ground between two stones by puppies, arugula grown exclusively by women who sing to it all day...

I think we should pick a book on the list and do a group read, just cuz. And also cuz we haven't done an organized group read in a bit.

And the fan of the book leads the discussion.

I can't wait to see how the final changed from the draft I read!

I loved this this little video so I thought I'd share it with you all...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7E-ao...

I want Murakami to win. That guy gets so far under my skin every time I can't shake him out. Goosebumps, tears, a broken heart, a whole heart...

I like JCO and have at times been compared to her with my own stuff (a lofty and probably undeserved compliment) but... I dunno... Nobel?

blah blar blech. i am bored by this garbage. you like franzen or you don't, you like picoult or you don't. "white male taste makers" is a stupid term, and is dismissive of all of us women out here who also make taste. i wish these women would just stop. they identify something they think is a problem and then they just complain about it. hey women! that's not helpful! it gets us exactly no where. shut up and write, or shut up and "make taste"! do something about it besides whinning, if you think the status quo is messed up.

COULDN'T agree more, Patty. The more we point out the "unfairness" and talk about how we're on the sidelines as women, the more it feels like what my son says of the girls in his class: If they don't get their way, (or they are going to get in trouble for something they did) all they do is turn on the waterworks or "make up some story" to get what they want.

I get the argument about the unfairness and I understand that there will always be hoops I have to jump through that others may not, but I don't think we solve it by standing there, holding our nose, pointing and yelling "But it's not fair!". Life's not fair.

We may be losing our allure, but our current export is our "culture" and that's hard to define...

Did Jonathan Evison just TYPE OUT "find yourself a nice church girl" ?!?!?!

My eyes aren't believing it.

Hm. I know someone who likes his stuff because, as he puts it, no one skewers white upper class America like Franzen. This is true. And it's amusing, sure.

Or, in the example of The Corrections, the way he captures the moment to moment hops a manic person might take internally, or the way the father feels in an aging body.... this is also true.

And while I agree with all that -- it's skillfully done -- the work lacks what I would call heart. I don't think it's a woman or a man thing. It's just that when I'm reading a novel, I'm looking for something not just superficially true, but emotionally true as well. Something that tells me what it means to be human. When the proper time is to purchase a Volvo is amusing but it's not how I get through the day.

Maybe that just says something about me as a person needing redemption or a big hug or some joy at the end of a difficult book, but if it does so be it.

For my money, DFW had both the skill and a huge heart. His heart is what makes his stuff live and breathe... and Franzen's heart is eensy weensy.

Jonathan wrote: everyman was terrible . . . this is where roth jumped the shark in my opinion . . .

I picked up American Pastoral a few months ago and, true to form and my experience with Roth, I really couldn't make it past the third chapter. I kept telling myself it's like medicine, it's good for you, he's an important writer... didn't work.

Was it Martyn who posted that article where Roth won one of those snarky awards for writing the worst sex scenes ever?

Normally I wouldn't judge writers or their work by how they write only about certain subject areas like that one. But this may be the area in which Roth's stuff just ... breaks for me.

Much of Roth's work really is about a shifting perspective on that part of being human... and for all that, it's really just horribly done. Every sex scene of his I've read seems to have a) a childlike glee that it's happening! with no deeper feelings than that and b) it's almost... abstract. Descriptions of parts. Again, no emotion, no perception other than parts touching. I get the impression that it's "everyman" sex and not specific to the character. Maybe to appeal to a wide cross-section of readers? I don't know.

I'm with Patty here. On all of it. I think we read Everyman and while I tried really hard to get into it... I really did... eh. It was OK but honestly what I remember most is his terribly lame description of what was supposed to be "adventurous" sex with his second wife.

So are you going on tour with Jonathan? He'll be in Chicago in February.

Ahem.

I guess that's what I mean by taking the books into myself the way that makes sense to me. That I can't remember details I'm mostly ok with until I meet someone who does remember them all, and then I feel like maybe I wasn't paying close enough attention. But I *was* at the time I was reading it. And, if I know I'm going to be having a discussion say, here, later on -- I pay really, really close attention and take a bunch of notes as I read. That seems to help.

As I've aged and my perspective has changed I take in different pieces of what I read, too. I also read different books -- give my attention to different things in them. Catcher in the Rye and Franny & Zooey being perfect examples of two books, written by the same guy, that have had radically different effects on me depending on the age I am when I read them.

Or like Brothers K, for example. Brian wrote about reading it on Facebook and I was all excited about what he thought of the chapter on active love, and on the dialogue with Satan. I don't even remember what chapters those were in and the names of the characters? Pfft, yeah right. But they are two of my favorite chapters I've ever read because of the thoughts Fyodor puts out there.

Not because they are lyrical or poetic, which 20 years ago, I would have looked for and focused on. I probably wouldn't have even picked up Brothers K, much less finished it, and definitely not loved it, because I had not yet learned to embrace the notion that life is messy. And if you don't get that one, Fyodor isn't a writer you will like, love or remember.

I'm sure there is some kind of deconstructionist way of looking at this too, but I prefer to believe that I really do make the books part of who I am, part of me.

:end ramble:

I have a terrible time with names, both in life and in reading. This caused me no end of trouble in college when I had to talk about a character in class or in a paper.

I have trouble with details, too, always have, and maybe it's getting worse as I get older.

But what I DO remember about books is what I learned from them -- what the overall meaning was to me. So even if I can't say "I love how in Chapter 2 this happens" as some people I know can -- regardless of age -- I still feel like I'm taking the books into myself in the way that makes sense to me.

And I agree with Kerry. Let's not be hard on ourselves. :)

Ahhh! One of my absolute favorite scenes in film EVER.

I've been meaning to pick that up, Adrian -- how are you liking it?