Category Archives: books

Talking As Fast As I Can by Lauren Graham

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I’ve admitted before that I love Gilmore Girls, and I’ll admit it again here, which is why I decided to read Talking as Fast as I Can: From Gilmore Girls to Gilmore Girls (and Everything in Between) by Lauren Graham, which she wrote ahead of the Gilmore Girls “A Year in the Life.”

First, I want to clarify my feelings about Gilmore Girls. In so many ways, the plot (and yes, even some of the beloved dialogue) is predictable, formulaic. Sometimes it feels like the creators just had an idea and went with it before thinking for even one second about deeper meaning or complexity, and that’s okay. I just often find myself wanting more from the show, even as much as I am a fan.

I am a fan because I absolutely LOVE the premise. The premise is perfection. It is interesting, sometimes feminist, and idyllic. It is an always beautiful, quaint little New England town inhabited by colorful women who are living life joyfully and on their own terms. The men are mostly cool too–there’s very little of the sexist strife that pervades much of popular media today (and, unfortunately, real life too). The premise makes me love the show and all of the possibility it holds.

While women also have power in many popular shows, it is often a very masculine definition of power, with what feels like to me very masculine pursuits. Of course, my understanding of what is “masculine” is completely biased, but to me, many of the pursuits of Stars Hollow feel distinctly not masculine. It’s also just lovely to watch.

As for the book, I enjoyed it as Gilmore Girls fans will. Graham provides detailed insights into the films of the Gilmore Girls, both the original and the reboot. Graham is also a writer, and the book reads more like a collection of short stories and definitely ventures far beyond the world of Stars Hollow and into Graham’s career and life. Fans will like that too.

map of Stars Hollow

The Woman in Me by Britney Spears

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I continue to be impressed by the work of the ghostwriters behind some of the memoirs produced by key famous people recently. These writers effectively capture the famous figure’s voice, add genuine insight to their lives, and seemingly work under impossible deadlines, and that was the case with Britney Spears’ book The Woman in Me. The first half of the book is really interesting and insightful. Readers will likely learn things about Spears’ childhood that were previously unknown. The context helps add insight to the performer’s experiences later on.

What I appreciate about some of these ghostwritten books written about famous people is insight into the individual’s character and experiences, and what that says about humanity and culture. In the case of Britney, it’s really tragic just how she was used by everyone and what that says about our culture. The book lends some insight into that dynamic in ways that just don’t get captured in popular media (try as they may).

If the first half of the book is good, the last half or third of the book drags on a bit. The conservatorship seems like a thirteen-year fog, and that’s what readers feel too. There were relationships, but they lacked much depth and development (both in the book and perhaps in real life).

I wanted the conclusion to really sing with mind blowing insights into the human spirit, but that’s not real, I suppose. Instead, readers get the sense that Britney is still just surviving in many ways. Adding the context of her recent divorce, which is not mentioned in the book, readers can see that Britney is still figuring it out. It’s not perfect, or pretty, but she is alive, and that is worth celebrating.

(It is also true what they say about Michelle Williams–she really did a phenomenal job with the audio book.)

In the Distance by Hernan Diaz

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Over the Thanksgiving break, I read Hernan Diaz’s incredible book In the Distance. This is such a unique book, and as I read it, I marveled that folks at Coffee House Press were able to recognize it and publish it. (It then went on to be a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction!) I really do think it can be difficult to recognize books like these when they are submitted to publishers. The writing is obviously excellent from the beginning, so that helps it become recognizable, but there’s a surprising element of plot that goes on to drive this novel–and that’s requires a close read through to the end. As someone who reads a lot, I know just how big of an ask this is. Normally, a piece of writing needs to show itself off and say what it is immediately. This book shows itself off, but, in my opinion, is slow to reveal what it is.

As I read, new insights slowly emerged, making the experience at once both intellectual, but also emotional. That said, this book is also dogged and difficult and inconceivable at times, especially in the last half as plot and meaning start to cohere (congeal?) I found myself thinking the book was too extraordinary at times, but then reminded myself that books should tell the story of the extraordinary! Diaz integrates a kind of fanaticism in the great tradition of magical realism and is also both contemporary and traditional in its approach. This is a book worth reading and might make a great film too.

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

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Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens was (is!) a bestseller, very popular, and was made into a movie. It is also not the kind of book I typically read. However, more than one person recommended I read it based on a project I’ve been working on, and so I did. While I used to listen to books on CD (and even tape!) when I had long commutes, this is the first book I’ve listened to via an app, and, for the most part, I really liked the experience. Unfortunately, much of what I read is not available on audio, and I usually need to mark stuff up for my own writing and scholarship. So, I’m not sure how much literature I’ll actually be able to consume in this way, but it feels good to have the option. Sometimes.

As for this book, the first quarter is really quite good, gripping, some lovely imagery, and some complicated ideas that go beyond what’s portrayed in a lot of popular fiction. Usually by the first line or two, I get a sense of plot-based genre fiction, but this one kept up to muster well beyond the first few lines. In fact, some of the insights were truly profound and beautifully written (as far as I could tell via audio).

However, near the end, there is a lengthy trial, and, let me just say that I find trials to be about as interesting as football games, which is to say: usually, not very. Using the lawyers and police people to work through the ideas and the drama of the crime was just not my cup of tea. Of course I still listened through to the end and with interest.

There’s a lot of plot and tension built around who will sleep with the beautiful “marsh girl” and then later, whodunit, and I found myself wishing that the book could go beyond these relatively common tension points. In some ways it does, but it also doesn’t break with plot form. If it had in the last quarter of the book, like if Owens had really done the unexpected, I think it could have elevated this book to capital “g” great literature. As it stands, the author made something that would be a bestseller and would make a lot of money, and with writing that she could be proud of, and that’s very nice too. And entertaining!

Horse, Flower, Bird by Kate Bernheimer

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I recently read the short and delightful Coffee House Press book, Horse, Flower, Bird, by Kate Bernheimer. This is a delightful book of poetic prose pieces that are connected through haunting, sometimes confused, but always strangely familiar imagery of childhood, girlhood.

While reading this, I felt reconnected with the strangeness of being young and not yet fully understanding the world around me and the social expectations and information that would eventually become themes. Bernheimer is able to capture that world for me, which was stranger and more magical.

Reading it, I just found myself grateful that this quirky little book exists. Sometimes the world, and the literary world, starts to feel very similar to me, and this wasn’t that.

The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson

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The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson wasn’t on my reading list, but I dropped everything when I remembered I hadn’t read it. What a great book! First, it should be taught in graduate-level theory courses. (It probably is, but nothing like this was taught in mine.) We need more feminist theory like this that truly integrates the (deeply) personal with the philosophical. I can’t be the only one who gobbled this up, and I suppose I can do my part by quoting it and integrating it into my scholarship myself.

The blurbs about this book say it’s about art and philosophy, but, I don’t know, somehow those descriptions fail to capture what Nelson is doing, which is, admittedly, unparalleled and difficult to describe.

The book helped me understand some philosophy and culture more deeply through her insights and critique. Unsurprisingly, I clung to her thoughts on motherhood, joy, femininity, womanhood, and culture. Perhaps especially as a mother, I appreciated the spare, yet complex prose. What can I say–The Argonauts is yet another important book by Nelson.

Heaven by Mieko Kawakami

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I decided to go ahead and read Heaven by Mieko Kawakami this summer while I was at it, and, wow, this is a heavy, but, of course, excellent book. It is such a departure from the much more distanced and gentler narrative in Breasts and Eggs, which I also read and wrote about a few weeks ago.

I’m not sure how I missed this, but there is a heavy portrayal of bullying in Heaven, and I don’t think that’s a spoiler, but I do think it actually does need kind of a big “trigger warning” splashed across the front of this book because it.is.intense.

However difficult this book may be, it is excellent, as Kawakami is proving herself (to me) to be an excellent writer–excellent pacing, character development, and a deep emotional landscape.

As an aside, this book is also much shorter than Breasts and Eggs, but my copy also included an excerpt of Breasts and Eggs at the end, and I’m not quite sure why this choice is being made because the current version available of Breasts and Eggs is also an elongated version of the original, but I just wanted to add here that this length of book–just Heaven–is a great length, and I think Kawakami works really well within this frame.

Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country by Pam Houston

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I could have sworn it’s been 20 years since I read Cowboys Are My Weakness by Pam Houston in a beautiful little old home near Durango, Colorado (can you imagine a better location?!), but a quick search reveals that it was actually published in 2005!

What I remember is that Cowboys Are My Weakness was a transformational book for me. It was so real and so unlike anything I’d ever read before. Remembering this book is saying something because I started this blog to keep track of my reading!

When I realized Houston had written her most recent book, Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country, I was anxious to read it. The book is a collection of short stories, and the most pervasive thread is probably her own growth in adulthood and her increasing appreciation for, and rootedness to her animals and to the land–in this case, a 120-acre farmstead in the Colorado mountains.

As a woman who has also spent a good deal of time solo and who has also acquired her own little “slice of heaven” and sheep (even some Icelandic!) and other animal friends, while also working as a writer, teacher, and scholar, I was drawn to her story and her insights, like maybe she could lend a little guiding light. And she did. Somehow reading her writing feels to me like taking a refresher grad class in creative writing. What a gift!

Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White

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E.B. White is obviously untouchable as a writer, and that was my sense this time through Charlotte’s Web too. I read this as a child (or had it read to me). I also have vague memories of struggling to get through it while reading it on my own as a child. I probably tried too young.

Here’s the well-worn copy that we read.

This book works on a fairly pleasant surface level, but of course it’s dealing with more challenging questions of life and death too. Death is mentioned, but for my very young children, these details seemed to be glossed over.

Between this and Stuart Little, I have to say that I prefer Stuart Little, which goes a bit deeper into the subtleties of human nature. Still, Charlotte’s Web is a must read in childhood, and older readers might like returning to this as well, as it offers one of the most poignant and well-paced denouements of all time.

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

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What a great book! As you know, I normally do not read in this genre, but Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel was exceptional. I even found myself slowing down at the end to savor the final events.

Too often I find that “sci-fi,” if you can call this “sci-fi,” lacks emotional depth, is too self aware, too clever, too focused on an overt plot. (I know sci-fi lovers will argue about this with me all day long.) But, I’ll always be impressed when an author can bring it all together in the writing–emotional depth, development, and beauty.

This is a book that examines the “simulation theory,” and the meaning in life, by jumping through eras of time. Each era is described with sparse, but powerful language. I recommend it!