Finished reading The Glass Room in the early afternoon. I was sitting outside a cafe, damp cold and raining. When I got to the end, I started to cry. "I am Ottilie" reduced me to tears. Just as I was wiping my eyes, my friend stepped off the bus and we set off on our usual Sunday expedition. We laughed at me. Am I soft today or was that amazing writing? I will have to reread the last part to ascertain that.
I want to know what house Mawer was describing in his book. It exists apparently but it is never identified outright. Somewhere in the outskirts of Prague this glass house still stands.
Today was supposed to be a trip uptown to the Cloisters but the rain made us lazy. Wendy and I stayed in the Upper West Side. We watched a movie about Queen Victoria and ate terrible Chinese food and complained about the cold.
I have never been to The Cloisters. There is always an excuse not to go. In a way I was glad because I would like to see it alone. I have a strange love for buildings, there are structures I prefer to see alone. Mostly because I never know how I will react to certain places. The Maparium makes me catch my breath and I can never explain to anyone why that is. The Temple of Dendaur, not the temple itself but the room it is housed in, makes me sad and happy in the same moment.
This morning I found out that my friend Sara does know the violinist I was raving about in December. Her cousin went to high school with him in Livorno and her husband knows him from the chamber music world of New York. "Do you want to meet him again?" she asked me. "We could arrange it." My fanhood is not quite so devoted so I declined.
My twin friends are trying to fix up with a friend of theirs. He is kind and trust-funded, they tell me. He could buy you season tickets to the opera. I met this friend on Tuesday (not part of a set up), been to his big townhouse. I don't know about dating him because he is so shy it sort of hurts me, and I am happy to continue self-financing my expensive habits.
Last night I wrote many pages to add to the novel. I hesitate to use the N word. It scares me. The bursts of ideas amaze me, how for months on end I am backed into a corner not knowing how to go from one chapter to another and then suddenly, with two clicks of the mouse, everything falls into place. My haphazard prose has been there all along, it just needed to be organized. Here's hoping for more of last night.
Showing posts with label writers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writers. Show all posts
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Friday, November 27, 2009
Book Love
One of the first books I ever stole was The Heather Blazing by Colm Toibin. I still own that book (my old flame AL called it my trophy, this before I told him that I used to be a book thief which I think amused and then put him off). I still haven't read it. But just now I finished Toibin's newest novel Brooklyn and was fairly wowed. I wonder if I will pick up the other book(s) now? I mean to buy since I don't steal anything anymore.
Towards the end of Brooklyn, there is a passage that is simply gorgeous. I say this fully admitting that I am somewhat biased because it was a scene that could have been lifted from MY life, circa 2009 versus 1950s Brooklyn/Ireland.
The mother in Ireland avoids talking about the daughters life in Brooklyn. The daughter wonders why her mother doesn't seem to have any interest in her new life.
The reading A.D.D. has passed I think. Now I am on to compulsive book-buying and book-reading. Purchases in the last month:
*read so far
I'm missing a few more but this is what I can think off the top of my head. This happens to me in the fall -- all the good books come out and I go a little nuts.
When I was insane, jobless, newly single and newly un-mothered, I started volunteering at a bookstore downtown to keep myself occupied. It was a bit of a pain in the ass, customer service is not my forte. But now I realize that I love the time I spend at the store. I've found my niche -- I don't have to talk to anyone, the people who work there seem amused that I say very little but work faster than any volunteer needs to. I listen to old opera records in the sub-basement while I clean the old books. Sometimes some of the clients are there and we listen to the old music together. We don't talk to each other. The four hours go by quicker than I'd like and I'm always sorry I have to leave.
Beginning of this year when I was pregnant and A was in Upstate New York shooting a movie, I holed up in his apartment surrounded by his books. I imagined myself reading to my baby or a child at a later age reading next to me. Then I would freak out and smoke to banish the image.
Then after the abortion, I would sit around and cry and stare at my books, wishing I could find any one of them compelling enough to read and lose myself in. But those first few months were rough. I did everything half asleep. I read a lot of books and remember none of them.
It occurs to me that I expect my books to give me comfort. Or maybe it's not books so much as words. When I was 14, I wrote endless letters and I read shitty romance novels borrowed from the Los Angeles Public Library. All those words made me less miserable. And when I was happy, the words keep me from being too happy.
Good deal for a few bucks.
Towards the end of Brooklyn, there is a passage that is simply gorgeous. I say this fully admitting that I am somewhat biased because it was a scene that could have been lifted from MY life, circa 2009 versus 1950s Brooklyn/Ireland.
The mother in Ireland avoids talking about the daughters life in Brooklyn. The daughter wonders why her mother doesn't seem to have any interest in her new life.
The reading A.D.D. has passed I think. Now I am on to compulsive book-buying and book-reading. Purchases in the last month:
- The Museum of Innocence
- Lark and Termite
- Brooklyn*
- Love Begins in Winter*
- Generosity
- Gourmet Rhaphsody
- Prelude
- The opera reference book
*read so far
I'm missing a few more but this is what I can think off the top of my head. This happens to me in the fall -- all the good books come out and I go a little nuts.
When I was insane, jobless, newly single and newly un-mothered, I started volunteering at a bookstore downtown to keep myself occupied. It was a bit of a pain in the ass, customer service is not my forte. But now I realize that I love the time I spend at the store. I've found my niche -- I don't have to talk to anyone, the people who work there seem amused that I say very little but work faster than any volunteer needs to. I listen to old opera records in the sub-basement while I clean the old books. Sometimes some of the clients are there and we listen to the old music together. We don't talk to each other. The four hours go by quicker than I'd like and I'm always sorry I have to leave.
Beginning of this year when I was pregnant and A was in Upstate New York shooting a movie, I holed up in his apartment surrounded by his books. I imagined myself reading to my baby or a child at a later age reading next to me. Then I would freak out and smoke to banish the image.
Then after the abortion, I would sit around and cry and stare at my books, wishing I could find any one of them compelling enough to read and lose myself in. But those first few months were rough. I did everything half asleep. I read a lot of books and remember none of them.
It occurs to me that I expect my books to give me comfort. Or maybe it's not books so much as words. When I was 14, I wrote endless letters and I read shitty romance novels borrowed from the Los Angeles Public Library. All those words made me less miserable. And when I was happy, the words keep me from being too happy.
Good deal for a few bucks.
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