Big Bang, baby

I've posted about reading lately. But I do watch TV, and my favorite show is probably Big Bang Theory (in the category of everything-that's-not-Mad-Men, which I love). I originally got into it because the characters live in Pasadena not far from my old home in South Pasadena (which for you geniuses out there is just south of Pasadena). It was really fun to hear them reference Old Town and see the Pasadena town hall out Sheldon's window. But soon I came to love the brilliant joke writing, and last night I watched the apex of the show - the episode from last season titled "The Maternal Capacitance." Christine Baranski as Leonard's mother, Dr. Beverly Hofstadter, was astounding. The central character of the show, Sheldon, met Leonard's mother and both of these characters are tacitly undiagnosed with Asperger's/autism. Now this wasn't brain science, but it was solid joke writing. The joke that sold me on the show last year went like this:

Sheldon: What are the odds that two unique people such as ourselves would meet?

Leonard's mother: Is that a rhetorical question or would you like to do the math?

Sheldon: I'd like to do the math.

Sublime.

Then of course there's this classic sequence:

There IS a Zoo in Las Vegas

This is the kind of thing I'm talking about!

Here's an example of Legos for girls then:





























and now:

http://belville.lego.com/en-us/default.aspx

It's a credit to them that Lego has learned to nail their demographic, but it's a loss to children - boys and girls - that what was a great non-gendered toy has become hopelessly gendered. Presumably boys won't play with girl Lego blocks and vice-versa. And let's not even get into the "crappyness creep" of the modern Lego play set as compared to the more utilitarian sets of blocks of my youth.

http://www.doublex.com/blog/xxfactor/i-miss-legos
http://www.feministing.com/archives/019627.html

Some great recommendations

So I think what I'm going to take up after Pat Barker's Regeneration is Diary of a Young Girl. It's a crime that I missed this until now and with Miep Gies death I feel it's a must. I'll buy that and the Royall Tyler Tale of Genji.

Torn

I'm torn between writing about our visit to church today or continuing the reading thread a little longer. I want church to ripen a little before I pluck it. Reading it is.

Thanks Ali, Amie and Hallie and Infurriated Squirrel (and darknessatnoon, an internet hero) for all your great reading suggestions.

One reason for the women-only guideline is that I want to limit my pool of available books and further I want to limit the pool to an area in which I am weak. I somehow managed to not read a novel for any high school English class and so I am struggling to catch up on the classics and the canon. (I don't think I'll ever read Silas Marner or Wuthering Heights, though, and won't get to them even this year, sorry.) I also want to read women authors because I've bypassed them for so long.

There is a long, cogent argument to be made that one simply doesn't have the time to read all the great books anymore. Since the fifties books have blown up and the numbers of great books, for many reasons, have increased by an order of magnitude. But I don't have the capacity for argument. I have to take two naps and then go to bed.

My list so far:

Patricia Highsmith The Talented Mr. Ripley
Banality of Evil
Little House on the Prairie
Queen Bees and Wannabes
Zadie Smith On Beauty and White Teeth
Stella Gibbons Cold Comfort Farm
PD James Children of Men
Marisha Pessl Special Topics in Calamity Physics
Lydia Millet

I'm also planning on buying Tale of Genji in the Royall Tyler translation and reading it throughout the year. I like having a bulky classic in reserve although I don't much like reading non-English books anymore. I got enough of that in college. But for Murasaki Shikibu I'll make an exception.

Oh, word, I'll go to bed now. I'm tired.

I don't read books

That's not true. I do read books. I just don't derive as much pleasure from reading as I once did. When I get a good book, I become completely obsessed with it and I have to read it all in one sitting which means, since I don't get any reading time until after 8PM, I am up until 4AM and then I am vaguely hung over the next day and can't even remember the book. I get one of these books once every three or four months. The rest of the time, I start a book and something about it makes me hate it and I stop it and take it back to the library. I hate not having a book to read, I feel like it is such a waste of my free time not to have something to read but I seem completely incapable of finding something that I can just enjoy over a week. I tried to join a book group last summer to help me develop a better, more casual relationship with books but I got tired of it by the fall.
I do not keep a list as my husband does of the books he reads. Only one book stands out as a truly satisfying read and that is Patricia Highsmith's "The Talented Mr Ripley" a really brilliant character study. Please put that one on your list, darling.

Girls, girls, girls! I mean women.

Years ago I had a conversation with my brother-in-law. He said the most shocking thing that I have ever heard. We were in Halfprice books. He said, "I don't read women." He didn't read women authors. To this day the baldfaced openness of that statement astounds me. Now I don't know if that is still true of him, if he was being hyperbolic at the time, or if his attitude has changed, that's not important. What is important is that it was very freeing for me. I had been laboring to want to like women authors and failing. I could read the occasional Margaret Atwood book - if it was short. I read freely for about three years - mostly men - but since reading Mating, which was written by a man with a strong female narrator and point of view I've had a change of heart. The contrast of male writer and female narrator made me think very deeply about the sex of the authors I read. I have been missing a lot by not reading women. Since my conversation with my brother in law I've read few women and haven't made an effort to work women authors - or authors of any particular stripe - into my reading menu. Until now.

My goal for 2010 is to read only women authors. The whole year. Now I know you might be thinking that it's patronizing, and it is. But it's also going to be a fun experiment. My hope isn't to like every book that lands on my plate but rather to attempt to read women without the pressure of any one woman author standing in for all others. If I simply can't get into a book, there is always another waiting in the wings.

I will only complete books by women authors, but I am still free to read magazines and articles and whatever else comes along by who ever, of whatever sex, writes it. This doesn't apply to reference either, I'm still going to read Dr. Sears Baby Book (that it's a child-rearing guide written by a man is something I am not even going to try to unpack).


I like fiction. I'm not looking to read the best management books by women, for example, but even my non-fiction will be women. I do want to taste the some of the best books by women authors, but I'm not in any way interested in gender theory or women's studies or any other academic viewpoint of reading. I want to read classics and and also modern. I'd like to find living authors that I like. The best analogy would be to cuisine - I'd like to find a cuisine of women authors (please don't unpack that it's a consumption metaphor). Every cuisine has appetizers and entrees, desserts and snacks. This is what I'd like to uncover.

To kick off the new year I've started with Pat Barker's Regeneration. That's staying close to home for me - a modern British Booker winner - that's just what I look for.

The only requirements for the year are Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf. Northhanger Abby has been suggested and To the Lighthouse seems like a good one.

What else have I on my plate?

Banality of Evil
Little House on the Prairie
Queen Bees and Wannabes

Who's our Wodehouse?
Our Twain?
Our David Foster Wallace?

Any other thoughts?

What should I read that my daughters should read? YA recommends are fine but please leave your J.K. Rowling and Stephanie Meyer at the door. I'm still an illiterate bougie snob.

Books in 2009

I tried to keep this list on Facebook, but it didn't work. I forgot to update it. There was at least one book in between Tim O'Brien and Kingsley Amis, but maybe not, I can't remember. I'm coming back to the blog to keep track of these things.

This is about par for the course in terms of quality and quantity of books. I'd like to increase both, but I'm pleased for the most part. I try to read what I like and also what is well regarded and I try to avoid trash.



The Winner!





Mating was the winner of the race - by far - I'd recommend it to anyone who enjoys reading. Just an amazing work.

In Defense of Food is required in order to unclench and get shit correct about food and eating. Fiction runners-up in a pack were Amis, Price, and Chabon. I like all these authors. But Chabon lets genre have it's way with him. Amis, I've come to believe, is... overrated is the wrong word, but my how people like him! Lucky Jim is a very good book though. Price surprised me and could have taken the top spot except that Mating was just too strong a runner. I look forward to reading one of Price's more well regarded books, like Clockers.



I have to point out Michael Perry. This book - Population 485 - is funny and bittersweet and is a good take on "real Wisconsin." Like "real" anything, "real Wisconsin" doesn't exist, but Perry comes close to describing it. He's a literary celebrity in Wisconsin and he'll probably come up with a national break out book soon.

Books I Read 2009

* Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
* ????
* If I Die in a Combat Zone... by Tim O'Brien
* The Battle for America 2008 by Haynes Johnson and Dan Balz
* In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan
* Home Game by Michael Lewis
* Population 485 by Michael Perry
* Matter by Iain Banks
* Tokyo Financee by Amelie Nothomb
* Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher
* The Inimitable Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse
* Brainiac by Ken Jennings
* Fun Home Allison Bechdel
* Lush Life by Richard Price
* Election by Tom Perrota
* Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon
* McSweeney's Joke Book of Book Jokes Editors of McSweeney's
* Mating by Norman Rush (!)

In my next post I'll reveal a startling goal for my reading 2010!