The Most Delicious Moment

You're wandering through shelves of books in the library. A spine catches your eye; you pull out the book and like the cover and title. On a whim, you check the book out.

You've never heard of the author. You didn't read the flap. You don't even know what genre the books is in; you found it in the adult section. Knowing absolutely nothing about the book, you begin reading.

You will love this book all the more because you met it separated from the world. It will feel like a secret friend, a buried treasure. Reading is an infinitely intimate act.

This sort of scenario rarely happens, at least for me these days. I read books by authors I like, or because a friend recommends them, or because the flaps are intriguing. In other words, I always have preconceived notions. But imagine sitting down with a book exactly as the author intended it: When the author started writing this book they didn't have a flap copy in mind; they weren't writing to an audience that had already read a review of the book. They were simply writing, letting their imagination play.

It's winter break so when I saw an intriguing title at the library, The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters, I grabbed it. I read the flap copy and decided to check it out, but by the time I sat down with the book, I'd completely forgotten what the flap had said. I know nothing of this book but the title.

In the midst of reading the first chapter, I realized I was caught up in almost-painful suspense, wondering where this book could possibly be leading. An ignorant but pretty girl in petticoats who likes to take tea, then a train ride with people in feathered masks, then an operating room-cum-theater, a current of eroticism surfacing. It begins delightful and witty but turns macabre. I was only in the first chapter but there were maybe five hundred pages yet to go. I couldn't guess at a plot arc, I didn't know what genre this was, the book wasn't easily fitting into any category. My imagination sketched out smoky possibilities.

This is the most delicious moment. This is the peak of reading. No matter how good the book is, by the end it will not be as good the smoky lines of possibility. There is nothing as good as the tantalizing unknown. Savor this moment.

Breaking Dawn

Breaking Dawn

Stephenie Meyer

(1973-)

It seems when it comes to Twilight no one is impartial; you either love it or despise it, and many people despise it and make it the butt of their jokes without having even read it. So I'm here to take the middle ground.
Within the first chapter or two of the last book in the Twilight series I seriously considered not reading it after all. The Twilight books have a bad rep for a reason.

There's all together too much whispering in the book. And heartthrob Edward may be physical perfection, but it seems Meyer forgot to give him a personality. So bland. I won't even go into the sexism issue in the books.

Every time a character made a joke, I would be surprised to find myself laughing. Or if Meyer had a good metaphor, I'd be like Wow.

I stuck with the book, and about midway it switched from Bella's perspective to Jacob's. Jacob is a werewolf, and I am so down with the werewolves. Jacob has much more personality than Bella or Edward. Suddenly the book had me. I wanted to do nothing but read it. I realized I hadn't given Meyer enough credit. For all of her problems, she can spin a good plot. And she’s funny.

When it switched back to Bella's point of view, it bogged down again. Back into sappy teenage vampire romance. But after the first few pages of that, it picked up once more. I finished it feeling quite satisfied. I really enjoyed it.

Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life (Review)

I was not abused, abandoned, or locked up as a child...I am not a misunderstood genius, a former child celebrity, or the child of a celebrity. I am not a drug addict, sex addict, food addict, or recovered anything... I have not survived against all odds. I have not lived to tell. I have not witnessed the extraordinary. This is my story.

So goes the Forward to Amy Krouse Rosenthal's Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life. You could call the book an extra-long lyric essay, or an unconventional memoir. As is not difficult to assume from the title, it's a compilation of encyclopedia-like entries of Rosenthal's life, relating to the reader everything from her childhood memories to how she enjoys cleaning her ears with Q-tips. It's funny and endearing. It's easy to relate to and discusses some of the little moments in life people don't often talk about. It shows that the little idiosyncrasies of strangers can be interesting, and catalogs some of those odd serendipitous moments in life we all experience.
This book is like having a conversation with a friend, and Rosenthal encourages a feeling of community by asking for interactions from the readers. On page 101 Rosenthal says she dislikes fictional descriptions of moons, but invites the reader to send her good descriptions of moons, which she posts on her website. She mailed a homemade pie to the one hundredth reader to reply to such a prompt.
As I began reading the encyclopedia, I thought it was witty and brilliant. But it can be tedious; I sometimes felt impatient. Some sections lack a depth that I would appreciate. It being an encyclopedia of Rosenthal herself, it's quite self-involved. This can be annoying.

Conclusion: Worth reading, but best to consume in moderation, like candy.

"Rainbows" from Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life

From Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life
Amy Krouse Rosenthal
(1965-)

"Rainbows"

If rainbows did not exist and someone said wouldn't it be cool to paint enormous stripes of color across the sky, you'd say yes, that would be very cool--impossible, but very cool. Children are totally tuned in to the miracle of rainbows--that's why they are forever drawing them. There's even something divine about spotting a tiny rainbow in a puddle of water or a splotch of gasoline. Oh, look! A rainbow! It would be nice to have some universal ritual connected with rainbows, along the lines of stray penny equals good luck, and car with one headlight equals, say, piddiddle/make a wish. Maybe: See a rainbow, eat a sugar cube. Or see a rainbow, put a dollar in a jar; then when you leave home at eighteen, your mother sends you off with your rainbow money. A friend once told me a story about how he was going through his five-year-old son's backpack and he found a picture of a little boy standing under a rainbow crying. His first thought was, Oh God, my son is having some serious problems. When he asked his son about the picture, he told him that he had been playing at school and he saw a rainbow and it was so beautiful that it made him cry.

Housekeeping Part II

It was evening. The sky glowed like a candled egg...
I toyed with the thought that we might capsize. It was the order of the world, after all, that water should pry through the seams of husks, which, pursed and tight as they might be, are only made for breaching. It was the order of the world that the shell should fall away and that I, the nub, the sleeping germ, should swell and expand. Say that the water lapped over the gunwales, and I swelled and swelled until I burst Sylvie's coat. Say that the water and I bore the rowboat down to the bottom, and I, miraculously, monstrously, drank water into all my pores until the last black cranny of my brain was a trickle, a spillet. And given that it is in the nature of water to fill and force to repletion and bursting, my skull would bulge preposterously and my back would hunch against the sky and my vastness would press my cheek hard and immovably against my knee. Then, presumably, would come parturition in some form, though my first birth had hardly deserved that name, and why should I hope for more from the second? The only true birth would be a final one, which would free us from watery darkness and the thought of watery darkness, but could such a birth be imagined? What is thought, after all, what is dreaming, but swim and flow, and the images they seem to animate?

Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping, the story of a girl whose grandfather drowned when his train slipped into the depths of a lake, whose mother drowned by driving her car into the same lake, is beautiful, subtle yet haunting. Each word is delicate yet heavy. I read it slowly, over a period of months, and I want to continue reading it, picking it up while at a lake, at night, on a train, or whenever the wind tells me to.

I Know a Man

I Know a Man
Robert Creeley
(May 21, 1926 – March 30, 2005)

Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note

Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note
Amiri Baraka
(1934-)