The Year of Abandoned Books

Years ago, my husband had a bookmark listing “The Rights of the Reader.” Along with the right to skip, to dip in, and to mistake fiction for real life, was the all-important right to give up. No one likes to, but sometimes it is a worse decision to press on.

For me, it was a year of abandoned books. True to my half-hearted promise of giving up on books that --given a fair trial-- look like they won't pay off, I drop-kicked a number of titles in 2013. 

“Songs for the Missing,” a novel of a suburban girl who goes missing, failed to make me care. The word ‘boring’ comes to mind. 

My "Lost Illusions" experience was sad and disappointing. I'd really wanted to read the book this year, but the typo/error/major screw-up on p. 1 left me shell-shocked.

“Fatal Vision,” sorry, was just badly written. Good try, true crime. 

Ditto “No Apology” by Mitt Romney, which came off as a self-celebratory and poorly written campaign speech. 

At Good Reads, I ranted about “Galileo’s Daughter,” which turned me off as a feminist, and drew a comment from a fellow reader about what a shallow and immature person I am. I was sorry to get dragged into that, but hey, after much soul-searching I still agree with everything I said. Smile. 

"Birdsong," a WWI novel that had been on my to-read pile for years, was a disappointment I ditched. The ooey-gooey sex did me in - how Isabelle realized she was "born" to have sex with Stephen, to be "impaled" by him, and to feel his "sticky seed" between her legs. Oh, come ON. 

Richard Brautigan’s “In Watermelon Sugar,” a classic of hippie America, was written in a little boy voice that got my eyes rolling. “I get that it's supposed to be simple and innocent, but it would be helpful if it were also good,” I said in a brief review. 

There was a faint odor of something foul lurking through the pages of “The Tiger’s Wife,” which was only fully revealed after I gave up a good lick through and discovered the schmalzy acknowledgements.

Alas! I abandoned a couple others that are not worth noting. I read a lot of worthwhile books, too, which I’ll highlight as part of my year-end list in the next couple days.

Lorelei

It's been a long time since I made a Friday confession so here's one: I have in middle age bought a number of clothing articles that I never wore, and that I knew I would never wear. One year it was a woolen dress, skyblue, gathered at the waist and v-necked. Truth is I already had the same dress in practical black and loved it, and wore it, but when they marked the skyblue one down I bought it, too, knowing it was impossible. Who can wear skyblue? With what stockings, with which shoes? But if we buy paintings, or books for their covers, or a smooth stone to fondle, and pack beautiful photos away in scrapbooks to peruse once in a while, why not some beautiful piece of clothing we like to feel or look at? I still have the dress. It hangs in my closet like a raindrop that won't drop. When I saw it in the store it called to me like a Rhine siren.

in eerier days, the rights of the accursed were protected by feral laws

It’s a warm sunny day here, the kind of weather that makes you thirsty. I went into the office kitchen to get a glass of water. Our refrigerator has an ice cube maker, so I was really looking forward to a cold drink. On the shelf of glasses there was this really big glass. Wow, I thought, that’s just the thing. I picked it up and was filling it with water when it occurred to me that actually it was a vase.

Elsewhere among mistaken identities, this past week I have misread the word “earlier” as “eerier,” “accused” as “accursed,” “federal” as “feral” and “oarsman” as “orgasm.”

This made for more interesting reading.

friday confession

budge BULGE budge BULGE budge
BULGE bugde BULGE budge BULGE
budge BULGE budge BULGE budge
BULGE budge BULGE budge BULGE
budge BULGE budge BULGE budge
BULGE bugde BULGE budge BULGE
budge BULGE budge BULGE budge
**

So goes the slug.

I need to atone for one I killed when I was a kid. I sprinkled the poor thing with salt. It was a self-dare meant to impress my stepbrothers, which achieved nothing but disgust. Still, despite the self-loathing it inspired, it also perversely heightened my revulsion for slugs.

When I learned the German word for slug, I originally thought it was called the Nachtschnecke, or “night snail.” After literally years of wondering what slugs had to do with the night, I realized the real word is the Nacktschnecke, or “naked snail.” Nacht and Nackt sound very very similar. In any case, mystery explained! It seems so obvious now.

Maybe I’d like slugs more if they didn’t creep about crazy naked. Or if they limited their nakedness to the night. They’d look better in snug slug sweaters, like the one above. I’m thinking of adopting one from this knitter, who likewise suffers a slug obsession.

friday confession, on saturday

I really like the word dude. I know it reeks of creeps and is mostly a joke, and I never use it, but I think it is hysterical. I laugh just thinking about it. Sometimes when I'm down, I start pronouncing it all kinds of ways in my mind. I would like to use it aloud sometime, but I’m afraid. What if someone thought I was serious?! Sheesh, that would be that! Elsewhere, whenever I go to America I’m surprised how widespread the use of the word awesome is, at least among the under-40s, but also among some over-40s I know. I really don’t like the word awesome. I think it’s hyperbolic and kind of fake, like when you bite into a croissant and all these flakes go flying and you think, well, goodbye, I wasn’t destined to eat you. I guess it’s a generational thing. I have maybe once used awesome as a test. Which is more than I can say for dude. Other than that, I read something recently that said only middle-aged people (and older) use the expression “Jesus Christ!” I have to say I use that expression whenever I need it, but other than in movies I can’t recall any other living person saying it. I must be the oldest person left alive.

friday confession

Ages ago when I got a blackberry for work I used it only for email and occassionally for phoning. But since it's always in my purse and set to vibrate, if someone is calling me, I don't know until I check.
Anyway, my confession has nothing to do with that. It has to do with brick breaker. Like I said, ages ago, I had as little to do with my blackberry as possible. But about two weeks ago I started playing brick breaker. I don't know why. I had played it once or twice before and found it such a boring timesuck that I never gave it a second thought. But suddenly I was playing, and making such great leaps score-wise that my son called me a "freak" in a way he obviously considered a compliment.
But you know, I waste so much time already. In the time I spent ruining my eyesight aiming a blinking ball at some bricks, I could have finished one of the books I'm supposedly reading but actually very actively not reading.
Boy, I feel better already! I'm already on the road to recovery. This guy, however, is not.

friday confession: sticking to my ignorance

When Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio won the Nobel Prize for literature, I had never heard of him. A month later, aside from his luscious name, I still know nothing about him. I'm sorry about this, but life is only so long.

The Nobel site describes Le Clezio as an "author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization."

Actually what they said was "uppbrottets, det poetiska äventyrets och den sinnliga extasens författare, utforskare av en mänsklighet utanför och nedanför den härskande civilisationen".

Wow. Too bad I have such a long reading list. I do not think I will ever get to him.

friday confession: sort-of shotgun

We watched No Country for Old Men last week and it was great. I swore off violent movies some time ago, but I make an exception sometimes, at least when renting. Anyway, it wasn't until a couple days ago that I realized a sawed-off shotgun really is sawed off. It never occurred to me to consider the phrase. Guess I move, thankfully, in the wrong circles.

Anyway, it was a great movie, insinuatingly quiet, long landscaped, slow and taciturn. When the violence happens, it's focused. There aren't big bust-em-ups, rains of bullets or car chases. But the overall quiet of the movie makes the violence that does happen all the more potent.

friday confession

I wrote nothing today except this.
I wrote nothing today, except this.
I wrote nothing today.
Except this.

friday confession: leaky

I went through airport security with four different liquids on my person: a vial of perfume, a bottle of hair detangler, a juice box and some patchouli body lotion. Is security sleeping on the job or what? I actually didn’t mean to smuggle these over the border. But since I don’t associate any of these liquids with potential hazard, I forgot. At check-in they even asked me if I had any liquids in my hand luggage. Since I wasn’t planning to bring down the plane, I guess it just slipped my mind.

I do love the expression “on my person.” It rejects all slavery.

-Do you have any liquids on your person, ma’am?
-I carry most of them inside, thank you.

I do wonder how much good it does making everyone throw away their liquids and fluids at airports. Aren’t there other ways to screen for danger without trashing everything wholesale? We must be talking mountains of (wet) plastic garbage. We could start a new ocean.

Friday Confession: Late Sleeper

You’ll never find that line in my bio "she was born with a pen in her hand" or "she has been writing for as long as she can remember." I didn’t write a poem until I was 38 or 39 years old. I was born with a pen in the back of the bottom drawer of my desk.

My bio should say something like "When she began writing it was about 7 o'clock in the evening."

friday confession: singing in the wires

I like my greying hair. I don't have so many grey strands, but the lighting in my office elevator reveals every one. They're strong and wiry, different in texture than the brown. I'm almost sorry when one falls out, though it gives me the chance to inspect it closely. In all its literal brilliance.

Finding a grey hair always reminds me of when, as a kid, I'd find those colored telephone wires on the roadside. They stood out so sharply against the pavement. I wondered why the telephone linemen would leave those beauties behind.

friday confession: half a werewolf

My daughter got one of those girl’s how-to books that has a section on palm reading. She asked me if my ring finger is longer than the index, so I looked at my left hand, which I instinctively look at, and it was. "Good," she said, "that means you're creative." She went on reading and I checked out my right hand, and believe it or not my index finger on my right hand is longer than the ring finger! I never knew this! Right in front of my nose!

Everyone knows if your ring finger is longer than your middle finger it means you are a werewolf, but I figure I’ve come pretty far with my weird constellation and I am half a werewolf. Maybe I am an arrested werewolf. Or maybe I am active already - I do wake up pretty exhausted some mornings without any recollection of what happened while I was asleep. Supposedly asleep.

Anyway, I googled “ring finger longer than index” and found that this not only suggests I may be gay but I am also at risk for “a painful joint condition” called osteoarthritis, which affects the knees and hips. And I am very worried how I will pursue my nocturnal work as a werewolf, possibly a gay werewolf, bounding across moors and forests, leaping from behind trees onto my surprised victims, with bum knees.

friday confession

I write because I don’t like television.
I write to get revenge.
I write because it keeps me off the streets.
Because of the goblet and the alphabet.
I write because it makes me late for dinner.
I write because I’m not big on talking.
I write because of that guy waving out the window in the building across from me. Because of his beard and his star sign.
I write because I’m passive-aggressive.
I write because of the drunk’s Labrador.
I write because time tells me to.
I don’t know. Indulge me.
I write because of laundry and froth.
Pillar, plank and slab.
I write because of noodles for breakfast.
I write because who knows what could happen.
I write because what else is there to do.

friday confession: peeves & italian voodoo

I hate it when people over-pluck their eyebrows. It makes their faces look like fruit.

I hate it when you're taking the clean whites out of the washing machine and some of them fall on the cellar floor.

I don't like dyed or highlighted blonde hair. It's so obvious. Nevertheless, I have often fantasized about what it would be like if I highlighted my mousy brown hair.

I hate that plastic that ob tampons are wrapped in. It sticks to your fingers and won't goddamned come off.

I also don't particularly like the number six. There's something wrong with it.

Bonus! --->
Here's one from my husband. When he was a kid he had an action figure (read doll) called Big Jim. I don't know if this was like Action Jackson or GI Joe or what, but he kept it in his drawer. Before he'd go to school in the morning, he would dress Big Jim in clothes similar to his own.

friday confession: planet of the apes

At dinner I asked how many planets there are in the solar system. No one knew for sure.

Miles said three: earth, sun and moon.

Carlo, intoxicated as he is with the metric system, said ten.

Luisa took the 5th and Alex was almost right, having counted Pluto. I was off by one as well.

Luckily, ignorance was righted by a nearby reference book. We did better on which planet is closest to the sun, and the general order of things.

Actually, now I’m thinking Pluto may have been reinstated. What was the verdict?

Is it just us who can't name and number the planets without a collective effort?

*thx to oh my cavalier for the constellation of bees, which hangs in my study.

friday confession: happily left behind

I’ve never seen Sex and the City.
I don’t know the characters’ names on Sex and the City.
I don’t know which neighborhood(s) the characters live in.
I don’t care what neighborhood(s) they live in.
I don’t know the characters’ shoe sizes or measurements.
I will never watch Sex and the City.
I am wearing jeans today and a black blouse.
I don’t give a shit about Sex and the City.

friday confession: rejections!

Here some publications that have rejected my poems over the past 3-4 months: Anderbo, Bare Root, qarrtsiluni, Valparaiso and Terrain!

Once again, I have had to take my soothing Necktie Cape out of the closet.

friday confession: recidivism

Our faucet is broken. It seeps from the base of the neck, slowly flooding the countertop. I said to my husband, “We’ll go to Hornbach (Germany’s Home Depot) and get a new one.” He said he hates Hornbach, probably because he read something today saying such hardware stores are the equivalent of perfumeries for women. He wasn’t sure if that was a jab at men or women. I said probably men. Because I like perfumeries, too. I stop by a lot after work and spritz myself with something. Often it’s Mark Jacobs or Mark Jacobs’ Ivy. Today it was Ivy. I rationalize that I’m still trying them on, and can’t commit yet. Too bad I have only two wrists, and one nape to seep from.

friday confession: got a mule, her name is sal

Until this week I thought that the Suez in Suez Canal was Zeus spelled backwards. On Tuesday I learned it's a real place. Come to think of it, it would be cheeky for the canal builders to choose a name as a kind of trick. I think I may have gotten this notion from a crossword puzzle clue years ago.