Books Beneath Trees

I buy books en masse each year for Christmas, and this year was no different. And because no one for whom I buy my books actually reads this blog, I feel safe in divulging some of my now-wrapped presents.

Here we go:

For a certain dancer with a talent in the kitchen: Clean Food: A Seasonal Guide to Eating Close to the Source. For a southern California writer: Lit: A Memoir. For a nephew who isn't just an extraordinary swimmer, but also one heck of a fisherman, the gorgeously illustrated FISH: 77 Great Fish of North America. For a niece who is off to college in a year or so, pursuing her passion in science (and likely physics): The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science. For my dad, a former chief executive and still active consultant who yesterday brought me the loveliest planted gift (but more on that later): Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World. For my artist husband now working in new media: ZBrush Character Creation, Mastering Maya, and Ghostly Ruins. For my son, firmly ensconced in the advertising world: Read Me: A Century of Classic American Book Advertisements and Creative Advertising.

Finally, should my schedule afford me reading time, I've got Nothing to be Frightened of (Julian Barnes), Half Broke Horses (Jeannette Walls), The Piano Teacher (Janice Y.K. Lee), Something Must Happen (Ned Balbo), Eiffel's Tower (Jill Jonnes), The Perfect Square (Nancy M. Heinzen), and my own great-grandfather's Smoky Mountain Magic (Horace Kephart) stacked up near.

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Lit: A Review

I've titled this post "Lit: A Review," but on this blog, I don't write reviews; I save that voice for the Chicago Tribune. Here I write about a book's impact, about where I was and how I felt when I read it.

I read Lit while lying on the slender black couch where I spend most sleepless nights. I read it pulled up under the blue blanket that snuffs the perpetual winter chill. I read it in three sittings and would have been happy with just one, but life (my life) got in the way. I heard voices in my head: This is an artist working. This is a woman resurrected. This is a mother who genuinely loves. This is a poet-teacher who, within the pages of Lit, is teaching us how a book like this gets made. There are so many extraordinarily fine sentences in Lit. There are fragments torn from Heather McHugh, Terrence Hayes, and Don DiLillo; words of advice from Tobias Wolf; stories about good-hearted addicts; revelations of a gorgeous sisterhood. There is a lot of soul searching, a lot of desperate need, no small share of triumph, and—this is, perhaps, the biggest thing—no accusatory fingers pointed. Mary Karr has lived one hell of a life. There would be blame enough to go around, but no one gets blamed in Lit, which is to say that no one emerges as caricature.

Last Monday, in Room 209 of the Kelly Writers House, J.—in endless pursuit of a deeper knowing—asked if I'd heard the Mary Karr interview, if I'd read any of the book's excerpts on-line. I said that when I got home that day, Lit would be waiting for me on the doorstep. J.—no romantic—actually sighed. "You're so lucky," he said, and J., I am. But we're all lucky, as a matter of fact, that books like these get written.

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Lit

I said I wanted to read a good book, a very good book. I picked up Lit, by Mary Karr. I picked up Lit, and suddenly I wanted my son to have a copy, my students, my friends. In the middle of all my reading and wanting, my friend Kate Moses called, and I said, Lit. Lit. Lit., and she said, Did you get to the part about the wedding yet? and I said, I don't want this book to end. Sometimes I think I've fallen out of love with books. And then comes Lit, and I'm impassioned once again.

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Full Moon

This evening I chased the moon, a fine, swollen creature.

Earlier in the day I read Kathryn Stockett's The Help, which I wanted to like so much more than I did. I am addicted to nuance and to language as a reader; that is all I will say. Later on in the day, reading the opening chapters of Mary Karr's Lit, I felt my readerly self settling in.

Then came the moon.

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