My Semi-Detatched Readathon

I was all ready for the 24 hour Readathon last Saturday.


 Books:

The Teammates - David Halberstam

Less - Sean Andrew Greer

Bust Hell Wide Open - Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr.

The Crime of the Century - Hal Higdon


Snacks:

Big soft pretzel with cheese

Toffee bar with pecans

Coffee

Nachos

Coca-Cola with lime, extra ice


But...yeah. I couldn't get away for any meaningful length of time. Clearly, my Saturdays are not my own anymore.

What a showing. A few minutes here and there. A few pages, a couple of quick tweets. Maybe a total of fifty pages. Some of the snacks didn't get into my belly until it was all over.

Damn it, I want my Readathons back! I used to read 3-4 books per Readathon, and posted my progress for nearly every hour. My snacks were a thing of joy and beauty forever.

24 hours of reading is such a small thing to want. A tiny indulgence. For the uninitiated, it's a ludicrous thing; I understand that. I love it and I miss it. On some level, I even need it. At this point, I would even settle for a half-marathon.

I tried to be brave on Twitter and put a good face on it, but I feel thwarted.

Thwarted. Think about the sound of that word. It's an arrow released from the bow that misses the mark and lands somewhere in Hell's half-acre.

I'll go now and try to gather my hopes for October.

Cruel in Cheongju

Every time I visit my friend Teri in Cheongju, I always feel a bit of a sucker punch when we go downtown:

Notice the little satellite sign that helpfully reads "page 12".  What was I to think?  What would YOU think?

The first time I saw this, I was walking, yes indeed.  I was smiling, striding.  The theme from Chariots of Fire was crescendo-ing in my head, as were plans to move to Cheongju forthwith.  I rounded the corner smartly, looked past the coffee shop with an expectant smile and saw this:

My smile froze and fell.   I whipped through the five stages with a speed that would have impressed Elisabeth Kubler-Ross.

"A clothing store? No way.  The bookstore is probably upstairs, or around here somewhere. I just gotta look harder."

"What. The. Actual. Fuck.  Who in the HELL is responsible for this bullshit?  What kind of stupid idiot names a clothing store BOOK MARK???"

"Maybe there are some books about fashion inside. I don't mind; I can read about fashion, even if it's in Korean.  I really don't mind."

"Why go on??????  What's the use???  Later on, I'll be hungry and I'll probably see a sign that says Cheeseburger in Paradise and it'll just be another superfluous clothing store that markets size 0 clothing."

"Sigh.  Book Mark.  It's a clothing store, sure enough.  Sad but true.  Where's my camera?"


How many other bookworms walking about in Cheongju have felt the sting of this cruel mockery?  I guess it's mean and petty to hope that all of Book Mark's shoppers are merely of the window variety, but I can't help it.

Readathon: Hour 16-17

Oh, Readathon!  You're an adolescent now -- all gawky and opinionated and spotty.  You can drive. You've been to a few proms.

Pages read:  43

New ideas:  1.  I decided to do some research and see if I could catch some inter-league games in Kansas City while I'm home this summer.  No such luck.  The Cardinals/Royals games finish a week before I get there.

Snack:  Sour grapes, of course.

The DNF Files: Texas Hold 'Em - Kinky Friedman

I'm so surprised that this book is my first DNF for 2012.  How could I go wrong with raucous, delightfully profane and irreverent Kinky Friedman?  Even if I did, John Callahan, (who I've loved since I read his memoir, Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far On Foot) illustrated the book.  Since Callahan is no slouch in the irreverent department, I thought it was an inspired match.  

In the end, not even Callahan could entice me to continue past page 33.  Kinky doesn't have a whole hell of a lot to say, name-drops incessantly, and his jokes and witticisms are staler than week-old bread.  This book is the old gasbag at the party who is determined that you shall die of boredom, and that right soon.  You are smiling fixedly while frantically Braille-texting your friends to cook up an emergency excuse immediately.

Even with all of that, I could have stood it, if he (or his editor) hadn't done this:

See those boxed quotes?  There's no new information or clever page notes.  They merely repeat what is in the text on the page.  This is in case you didn't get it the first time that ole Kinky is a real knee-slapper, the 21st century's answer to Mark Twain.  Kinky doesn't deserve to be compared to Mark Twain.  He should be thumped on the head with a hardcover copy of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.  Repeatedly. 

 If my annoyance seems excessive, it's because I feel absolutely sure that this could have been a much better book with a little effort.  Kinky knew better, but he didn't do better.  Not all of his readers are Texans, happy smokers, morons, or a combination thereof, and he should appreciate that.

Check out the Callahan cartoons, but cut out on the Kinkster.

I Wanted That, But Now I Don't.

Although this 2003 book about shopping has some nice historical tidbits and occasional sharp observations and isn't very long (222 pages), I had to struggle to finish.  The author gives the impression that he had to struggle to finish writing the book.  I Want That! feels labored and a bit perfunctory at times.  Maybe it would have worked better as a longer book with more information about modern-day shopping or perhaps in a shorter form, like an article in The New Yorker.

 I'm putting this book in my cull pile and donating it to the bookshelf in the foreign exchange students' dormitory.  Maybe someone will appreciate I Want That! more than I did.

At least I enjoyed shopping for it.

Please Look After Mom - Kyung-Sook Shin

Does anyone else think that the cover of this book is a little creepy?  Doesn't the woman on the cover look sort of doll-like, waxen?  Even that shadow across the top part of her face doesn't quite save it from that posed look.  Maybe it's the hand, too.  Oooh, look!  I'm being distraught!  

Please Look After Mom is the story of a family whose elderly matriarch gets lost on a Saturday afternoon at Seoul Station when she and her husband come from the country to the big city to visit their grown children.  The family searches for Mom and in flashbacks, each feels guilt in whatever part they played in her disappearance, but the search efforts seem pretty lackluster.

I'm so grumpy.  I wanted to absolutely love this book and I don't.  I don't hate it -- I'm disappointed with some of the author's choices, but I love being able to recognize the history, culture, traditions and locations of the country I've lived in for the past seven years.  I also understand that the novel is going to play to Korean sensibilities much differently than it will play to someone with Western sensibilities.  I'm really pleased that it's an international bestseller.  Ever since I moved to South Korea in 2004, I've been waiting for that breakout hit.

'Hit' proves to be an apt word because author Shin unmercifully beats her characters as well as her readers over the head with the following message:  MOM GOOD.  FAMILY BAD.  In case the reader is in doubt, the parts of the book with the aloof, cranky older daughter (a novelist) and the horrible, self-centered philandering husband are written in second person, which gives the feeling of a tongue-lashing without end.

Seen through the family's eyes, Mom was perfect, but her gifts were taken for granted until she was gone.  She's a lot like O-Lan in The Good Earth, every breath a sacrifice for someone, mostly her children.  Seeing Mom in flashback, contriving for her family and trying to keep everyone from going hungry was admirable and made for good reading, but it just went on and on.  Mom becomes too good to be true;  she strains credulity.  Likewise, the family, particularly the husband, is a little too shitty.  Shin lays it on with a trowel and it starts to have the opposite effect that she intended.

But wait! Mom is not only the Korean version of O-Lan -- Mom is Korea itself.  Mom is kind and selfless Old Korea and the family represents thoughtless and soulless Modern Korea, which has run off and totally forgotten her.  She can wander through the darkest and dankest alleyways in Seoul, bruised and bleeding and time slips away while her family argues about what should go on a 'missing' poster that has a bad picture, erroneous information and a stingy reward.  

Does every book about Korea have to be an allegory?  For example, An Appointment with my Brother by Yi Yun-Mol was good, but of course the narrator is South Korea and the brother is North Korea.  Why does Mom have to be Korea?  Why can't she just be an old lady that got lost at Seoul Station?  It feels like Kyung-Sook Shin is straining too hard to force in all the elements of good literature.

Speaking of straining:  The novel is told from four points of view:  Oldest daughter, oldest son, husband, then Mom herself.  Four parts would have been an appropriately somber touch, since the number four in Korean sounds like the Chinese word for death.  However, Shin returns to the oldest daughter -- the novelist -- for a fifth section that feels awkward and amateurish and drags it all down.  If you just stopped after the fourth section, the novel would feel so much richer and you wouldn't miss a thing.  I promise.

Perhaps I would like the movie version of Please Take Care of Mom better.  I'm pretty sure there will be one.  I'm confident that this novel can be interpreted successfully.  Of all the art forms in Korea, cinema seems to be the one that is leaps and bounds ahead of the others.  A filmmaker would have a lighter and defter touch, using images to imply and inform.  Maybe a competent and wise scriptwriter adapting the novel  would pare down the dialogue and even give that clunky final section the heave-ho.  I hope so; I really want to love this story on some level.

No Bonnethead

I love the Little House books.  I can barely remember not loving them.  Like Amy in Beverly Cleary's Mitch and Amy, I liked to dress up in my mother's dresses (she had a yellow-and-white cotton summer dress with a full skirt that was just right) and play Little House on the Prairie.  I was always Laura.  My younger  brother got to be Mary or Nellie Oleson, or sometimes, Jack the bulldog.  In sixth grade, my first attempt at novel writing looked a lot like On The Banks of Plum Creek.  I was such a little calico freak that I secretly wanted a tin cup, a stick of candy and a penny in my Christmas stocking.

I always wanted my mom to like the Little House books as much as I did.  She watches the TV show from time to time, but never seemed interested in the series of novels.  I always believed they'd be right up her alley since they featured no talking animals, were based on true stories from Laura's girlhood and had plenty of illustrations.  I never gave up hope of bonding with her over the adventures of the Ingalls family.

Last summer, she seemed mildly interested when I was reading Wendy McClure's memoir of her Laura obsession, The Wilder Life   When McClure mentioned that Laura and her family actually lived for one whole year (1868-69) in Chariton county, the place where Mom was born, her interest spiked and we spent a couple of hours roaming the back roads between Rothville and Mendon, looking for the plaque that marked the Ingalls' brief homestead.  As we rode along, I knew she was ready for her first foray into the books. I would usher her into the world of Lit-Laura.  After waiting around more than 40 years, our Bonnethead time had come at last.

I didn't waste much time getting to the bookstore.  Ideally, I wanted to begin at the beginning with Little House in the Big Woods, the first book in the series.  (Actually, I wanted to buy the whole set right then and there, but I thought she'd be intimidated)  No joy.  The bookstore was fresh out of LHITBW, but they had Little House on the Prairie.  That would work.  It had the same name as the TV show and it's the most perfectly structured book in the series.  I brought it home to her, but before she could begin reading, my sense of going in order was making me crazy, so I went to the used bookstore and got Little House in the Big Woods.  The pig's bladder balloon!  Butter making! Laura's corncob doll, Susan! Charlotte! Pa's stories!  She couldn't miss out on all that.

Mom picked up LHITBW and started reading.  I was reading my own book, but I was also watching her read.  I wanted to be ready when she bespoke her enjoyment at intervals.  After a few pages, she put the book down and picked up her word search puzzle book.  No more reading that evening.  Aaaah, I thought.  She's savoring.  When she went to the bathroom, I quickly checked where the bookmark was: Page 30.

"Ma liked everything on her table to be pretty, so in the wintertime, she colored the butter."

The bookmark didn't move over the next few days.  What was going on?  I would find out.  One evening, my friend and former husband, Mr. Bybee, came over for a visit.  During a lull in the conversation, I told him that Mom had started reading the first Little House book.

"It's corny, " Mom said.

"Corny?"  I repeated.  "What do you mean?"  Mr. B. looked a little worried.  He knows how I feel about Laura and the gang.  After all, he was the one who gamely drove me to Mansfield, Missouri to see The Laura Ingalls Wilder museum back in the 1990s. He knew I wasn't going to take a judgment like "corny" lying down.

"Well, all they talk about is boring stuff like smoking meat and making butter step-by-step.  It's corny.  I guess they think kids don't know about any of this."

I was perturbed, but interested in her use of the plural pronoun.  After all, the Little House books were a joint effort between Laura and her daughter, Rose.

"Did you get to the part about the pig's bladder?"

Mom snorted.  "Yes."

"Oh," I said.

Corny?!  Dammit, I had screwed up!  I should have started her out with Little House on The Prairie where the Ingalls family didn't do chores --  they just got up and moved and got the hell across the Mississippi before the ice broke! 

Long story short:  The bookmark stayed at page 30 for the next 6 weeks, and it was still there when I walked out the door for the airport and as far as I know, it will be there until time immemorial.  I'm bound to sail my prairie schooner alone.  I love my mom, but she's no Bonnethead.

The DNF Files: A Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s

What a disappointment. I really wanted to love this book, but it seems scatty and unfocused. Author Ann Douglas crammed in every single bit of research she had done about the 1920s and the period leading up to that time, but it's too much. There are so many interesting individuals in these 600+ pages, but they are allowed one slim anecdote then she's bounding off to the next and the next. It's like being on an express train going 300 kilometers an hour and you're trying to look out the window at the scenery whipping past.
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A Terrible Honesty is crowded and teeming with life -- much like New York City itself, which was probably Douglas' intent. Since this book was published in 1995, it definitely predates Facebook and Twitter, but that's the feeling I get, like I'm reading my news feed after several days of not logging in. That's OK in that arena, but not so much in this one. I'd rather read several dozen books about this time period that have more focus and are researched in detail and judiciously presented. I appreciate the vast research Douglas put into the book and I plan to photocopy the excellent bibliographic essay at the back and transfer some of this material to my wishlist before returning the book to the library.

Things Left Undone: The DNF Files

One of my goals is to have a whole year in which I finished every book I started. This is not the year. Passionate Uncertainty: Inside the American Jesuits by Peter McDonough and Eugene C. Bianchi, is my first DNF. We parted company at the 100-page mark.

Although I was brought up Protestant, I've had a fascination with the Roman Catholic church for almost as long as I can remember. I've also been intrigued by the Jesuits who are legendary for their work as missionaries and educators. My Catholic acquaintances over the years have assured me that Jesuits are the toughest and the most brilliant of all the orders. When I read that the pope issued an order to shut the society down in the 1700s, (an edict which lasted about 40 years) that seemed to add to their badass patina. When I found Passionate Uncertainty at my library, I was eager to learn more. That's not this book's job, however.


Passionate Uncertainty is a 2002 sociological study of the American Jesuits AKA The Society of Jesus and it is much dryer and more academic in tone than I had expected from the title. I was expecting a stronger narrative style and a more thorough rendering of the history of the order. Instead, it's more of an inquiry into why the number of Jesuits has been dropping with great velocity even before Vatican II (1962-65) and what (if anything) can be done to reverse the trend.

Many Jesuits -- those who have stayed in the monastic life and those who decided to leave -- are quoted in the book, but it is nearly anonymously (they are identified by age and sometimes by career if they no longer have the religious vocation) and the quotes are used to bolster the assertions of the authors. The reader doesn't get to know any particular person's whole story. These men are data, but that's the type of book it is. This isn't what I expected, but then again, I am not the intended audience.

Minnesota: Do-Over

Right after returning from vacation, I wanted to do a rewind of Minnesota and do it up right, literary-style. It's true that I was riding on the Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Highway when I was in Sweet Valley, but I didn't stop at the Wilder museum there, nor did I visit Walnut Grove. I also wish that I could've seen F. Scott Fitzgerald's boyhood home in St. Paul and the Betsy-Tacy house in Mankato as well as Sinclair Lewis' home in Sauk Centre! Isn't there also a really huge bookstore out there somewhere? I won't say that I *hate* traveling with other people, but it's damn difficult to smother your quirks in the interest of harmony.

Speaking of Laura Ingalls Wilder, (well, kind of) I narrowly missed a chance to meet Alison Arngrim, who played Nellie Oleson on Little House on the Prairie. She was at the Mall of America in Bloomington, signing copies of her new book, Confessions of a Prairie Bitch on the 26th of July. Unfortunately, I was there on the 19th. So disappointing. Especially because, in my excitement, I misread the poster in the window. I rushed into the store precisely at 6 pm, hurried up to the cashier and fairly panted, "Where's the signing?"

"Signing?" The clerk looked uneasy.

"Yes, for..." I gestured at Arngrim's familiar smirking face.

"That's next Monday."

Oh. Shit.

Aloud, I said, "Oh, that's right! I'm on vacation, and I've completely lost track of time!" Then I fled into the fiction section to pout. By the time Alison Arngrim appeared at the bookstore, I would be back in Korea, sweating to death and serving up science to elementary and middle school children. For a moment, the prospect was almost too loathsome to contemplate, and when I was getting ready for work this morning, it still rankled a bit.

I didn't buy the book because I was pissed about not being able to get it autographed. I was very much pity party and FML. Sorry, Alison. If I'd gotten to meet you, I would've told you that Nellie's antics were the best thing about Little House on the Prairie, and kept both my father and me tuning in year after year.