Author: Chris

Living with Books

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I once heard an interior designer say that she often told her clients to group their books by color before shelving them. I imagined it. And even though I liked what I saw, I knew it wouldn’t work for me, because when I want a particular book, I want it instantly. Even though I own many books and have books in every room in my house, I still know where I can find what I’m looking for quickly. My first floor bookshelves hold books that I refer to on a regular basis; my end tables are piled with books I’m reading or am about to read. Library books have their own space. The table by my bedroom has “quiet” books—in tone or subject matter—that I like to read before turning off the lights. Upstairs I keep books that I’ve read and expect to reread along with a growing pile to donate. And depending on the amount of books in a given area, I may sort them by genre or topic. It works for me. But I can’t help thinking what it would be like if we shelved our books in the library by color. No doubt, we’d all become browsers.

—Chris

Remembering Your Firsts

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A friend mentioned that she just finished reading Spurling’s new biography of Pearl S. Buck and thoroughly enjoyed it. I shared that my appreciation of Buck started in childhood when I gave my very first book report on The Good Earth. My friend said the first poem she ever memorized was William Wordsworth’s “Daffodils” and can’t look at daffodils without saying the lines aloud, or in her head, to this day. We both laughed.

—Chris

People Not Characters

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Hemingway wrote: “When writing a novel a writer should create living people, not characters. A character is a caricature…” Maybe. Like most readers, I want the people I read about to be believable, interesting, engaging, and live a long time in my memory. Here are a few of my all-time favorite people: Fitzgerald’s Gatsby, Nabokov’s Ada, Strout’s Olive Kitteridge, Ford’s Frank Bascombe, Updike’s Rabbit, Didion’s Grace Strasser-Mendana, Zafon’s David Martin, T.C. Boyle’s Walter Van Brunt, Frank Lloyd Wright, actually most of the people Boyle has brought to life.

Care to share your favorite people?

—Chris

A Story for our Time: Short

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I really love short stories. I like the way they move, their conciseness, their ability to tell me something I need to know in around 20 pages. When I want just a glimpse into someone’s day, I go to Carver. When I want a short story that reads like a novel, there’s none better than Alice Munroe. (How does she get all those people, events and histories into so few pages?) I like to read a whole collection by a single author. Or come upon a new author in an anthology or magazine—it’s like speed dating: Small investment of time may net lasting relationship.
It surprises me that today, when we want everything fast and now, more of us don’t read and appreciate short stories. Here are a few of the reasons why I do:
“A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” – Hemingway
“Dusk” – Salter
“All Shook Up” – Boyle
“A Day in the Country” – Chekov
“The Dead” – Joyce
“The Lovely Troubled Daughters of Our Old Crowd” – Updike
“The Year of Silence” – Brockmeier
“The Progress of Love” – Munroe
“Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?” – Carver
“A Lesson in Traveling Light” – Eisenburg
“The King of Sentences” – Lethem

What are your old and new favorites?

—Chris

Top 10 of 2010

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These are some of the books I loved in 2010 and why:

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen for making me see that with too much freedom comes too much responsibility

The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them by Elif Batuman for showing how passionate (read crazy) people can be about literature that moves them

Earth (The Book): A Visitor’s Guide by Jon Stewart for HeheheheHahahaHAAHAAHAAHAA

Write Like Hemingway: Writing Lessons You Can Learn from the Master by R. Andrew Wilson for pointing out the nuances of the writer’s greatness

Solar by Ian McEwan for showing the possible dark side of success

Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon for being a literary page-turner

The Road by Cormac McCarthy—wow

Mr. Peanut by Adam Ross for not talking about Bay Village, Ohio in the fifties in the obvious way

The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks and Giants of the Ocean by Susan Casey for making me want to move to Maui and become a tow surfer—and I can’t swim

Little Richard: The Birth of Rock ‘n’ Roll by David Kirby for the memories, especially for…”Tutti Frutti aw rootey, Tutti Frutti aw rootey, Tutti Frutti aw rootey, A-wop-bop-a-loo-mop-a-lop-bam boom!”

—Chris

Cleveland’s Last Newspaper Era

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Remember having a choice of great local newspapers with which to start and end your day? Let John H. Tidyman remind you.

In his newest book, “Gimme Rewrite, Sweetheart…” Tales from the Last Glory Days of Cleveland Newspapers,* Tidyman lets you listen in as veteran newspaper men and women talk about what it was like to write for Cleveland’s major metropolitan dailies—the Cleveland Press, the Cleveland News and the Plain Dealer—during the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s. What makes this book a good read is hearing the reporters describe in their own words the joys and agonies of competing to break a story, to tell it better, to make it memorable. So does hearing the story behind the story of some our local-turned-national news events: the Kent State shootings, the Sam Sheppard trial, the Beverly Jarosz case plus plenty of community happenings like the Hough Riot, Cleveland’s mafia fights and more. These wonderful reporters, editors, photographers, writers, critics all help to bring back yesterday’s headlines. The black-and-white photos of the newsrooms with typewriters, teletype machines, and very few women, present the realities of the past. The way we were. And who better to share this story than Tidyman, an ex-reporter of the Cleveland Press, and Cleveland publisher, Gray & Company.

~Chris

*Given by the publisher to our library for the purpose, and pleasure, of reviewing.

First Sentences

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Ahhh, that important first sentence. It can force us to read the next sentence (or not), it can open up the entire story (or not), and it can communicate so much more than the actual words (or not). The sentences below did all that, and more, for me.

We tell ourselves stories in order to live.

The White Album by Joan Didion

 Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

 Cassandra Devine was not yet thirty, but she was already tired.

Boomsday by Christopher Buckley

 The center was not holding.

Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion

 For many years Henry Kitteridge was a pharmacist in the next town over, driving every morning on snowy roads, or rainy roads, or summer-time roads, when the wild raspberries shot their new growth in brambles along the last section of town before he turned off to where the wide road led to the pharmacy.

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

 It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

 The first time I laid eyes on Terry Lennox he was drunk in a Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith outside the terrace of The Dancers.

The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler

 This is the story of what a woman’s patience can endure, and a man’s resolution can achieve.

The Woman in White by William Wilkie Collins

 In Haddam, summer floats over tree-softened streets like a sweet lotion balm from a careless, languorous god, and the world falls in tune with its own mysterious anthems.

Independence Day by Richard Ford

 I will be her witness.

A Book of Common Prayer by Joan Didion

—Chris

Biographies of Writers

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Why do so many of us enjoy reading biographies, especially biographies of writers? Currently, I’m reading Raymond Carver: A Writer’s Life by Carol Sklenicka, recognized in The New York Times Book Review as one of the “10 Best Books of 2009.” A few months ago I took home Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor by Brad Gooch, a book that made it to The New York Times Best Seller List. We’re loving them!

 When I open a writer’s biography, I turn first to the index and search out WRITING, then terms like: “composition process,” “development of work,” “ground breaking aspects of,” “literary influences,” “notebooks,” “subordination of everything to writing” (ooh this is going to be good), “on writing,” “writing as a vocation”—well, you get where I’m going: I think a lot of us readers are looking for the answer, the secret. If only we can understand how Carver, for instance, does what he does, then maybe we can, too. If he can turn his life experiences into stories, well, why not try? And if he can sum up the last years of his life in one word: “Gravy”—and mean it—doesn’t that make each of us want to choose our word? Maybe when we pick up a writer’s biography, we’re looking for that similarity, that connection to greatness: Carver drinks coffee; I drink coffee; I, too, can be a famous writer.

—Chris

Speak to Me

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Some people read for story. Not me. I read for voice. I have lots of  favorite “voices” including Didion, Capote, Hemmingway, Marquez, McPhee, Smiley, Ondaatje, Brookner, T.C. Boyle and Richard Ford to name a few. Because they use their own real voice, they speak with such power and conviction. They can me tell me anything and I believe it. They can take me anywhere and I’m there. Maybe it’s their unique sentence pattern, word choice, or attitude that sets them apart; I’m not sure what it is, but I know it when I read it. Usually, I can tell if a voice speaks to me after reading just a few paragraphs, so naturally I find my best reads by browsing, preferably in a quiet library or bookstore. (WHY DO BOOKSTORES PLAY MUSIC!) When I find an author with a voice that engages me, I inevitably read his/her entire body of work and pray for that next book. Until then, I continue to search for that next voice.  

 —Chris

Top Ten Books

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These are some of the books I loved in ’09 and why:

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout for its realism

 This is Water by David Foster Wallace for helping me put things into perspective

 Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell because I just like the way he thinks

 Bright-Sided by Barbara Ehrenreich because her unique insights and wit make me laugh

 The Book Thief by Markus Zusak for talking about good and evil without preaching 

 The Man Who Loved Books Too Much by Allison Hoover Bartlett for its uhh… passion

 One Fifth Avenue by Candace Bushnell for a charming glimpse into a true NYC neighborhood

 The Sportswriter by Richard Ford for voice

 The Angel’s Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon for amazing storytelling

 The Financial Lives of the Poets by Jess Walter for its motley group of genuine characters

                                                                                                                                                                                    —Chris