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I Am My Own Wife by Charlotte von Mahlsdorf - This is a great autobiography/memoir. Charlotte was born Lothar Berfelde in 1928, and always knew that he was female although physically, his body appeared otherwise. He was born into a wealthy and open minded family, with the exception of his father, who was a tyrannical abuser. Charlotte is now the proprietor of a museum in Mahlsdorf, Berlin. She survived World War II and the Cold War with some amount of aplomb, and tells her story with lyricism and wit. Near the end of the book she says:
My dream: nobody asks about religion, color of skin, philosophy of life, sexual orientation, political party, wealth or social position. Jews and Christians, heteros and homos, blacks and whites are seated at a beautiful round table outdoors, telling each other ancient stories. And nobody is arrogant or repeats what was blabbed at the taverns. Nobody is suspicious of the other.
I bought this strange little book at a garage sale last year, based on the cover and title, and then, based on the cover and title, avoided reading it all winter, thinking it would be super boring. It turned out to be fascinating. It's also been made into a play, excerpts of which are viewable on YouTube. It's a book about a different sort of a life, and I'm so happy that I read it. If the play comes to Chicago, I will be first in line to see it.
Horrible Bosses - This movie showed up on HBO recently, and we needed something light to watch. It's light alright, and at the beginning and end, it's even pretty funny. The whole middle of this one is a struggle, though. Three guys have horrible bosses and decide to do something about it.
Shark Tank - This is a reality TV show where entrepreneurs try to persuade rich guys (sharks) to invest in their companies or products. The entrepreneurs are often deluded, and the sharks are sharp, funny, often sarcastic, often sympathetic, and I can't get enough of watching the whole thing. Sometimes you think the sharks are ready to invest, and they all bow out. Other times, you think they'll never go for something, and they love it. I love "reality" TV!
Girls - This is a new HBO show that directly counters the slick excesses of Sex In The City. Although funny enough, this too, covers sex in the city. It's a nutty little half hour about a group of smart but somewhat awkward yet confident 20-something college graduates making their way through their 20s. It's about the nature of friendships and relationships in 2012.
Something Borrowed - Sweet chick flick with Kate Hudson and Ginnifer Goodwin. If nothing else is on, this has just enough entertainment value to stick around to find out what happens. Kate plays the partying friend, and Ginnifer plays the straight smart girl. Somehow John Krasinski (Jim from the Office) plays Ginnifer's sidekick. Kate doesn't know that she's in a love triangle. Colin Egglesfield is the Tom Cruise look-alike at the center of the action.
Summer - This is a collection of short stories and poems about summer. Summer is my favorite season, and someday I hope to live in a place where it's summer all year. It's almost here this year, and I have no expectations after the past few years of dashed ones. All I know is that I'm going to get all this stuff out of the house at the beginning of it. I hope it stretches long and relaxing like the summer stories in this book, which will be available for purchase at my sale. Unless you're a good friend, and mention this blog. Then you will have to take the book off my hands for free.
On the purge front, I've gotten rid of a number of black clothes that had been clogging my closet with pleats and big shoulders. I have a couple of dresses that look great on the hanger, and GREAT from the side. However the minute I see myself from the front or back, forget it! Too bad I can't just be viewed from the side at parties. I'd keep them. But I can't, so I'm not. The closet is no longer full, but there is barely an inch to hang anything new, which works out perfectly because I no longer shop the way I used to. Still love it, just don't have the time for it in a changing and fickle marketplace.
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer - I've always loved novels that are narrated by precocious children, and this is no exception. It is narrated by an 11 year old New Yorker, Oscar Schell, whose life is complicated by his incessant thoughts and creativity, and sometimes hindered by his lack of emotion. Then something big happens in his life, and he can't wrap his mind around it, and has to come up with a way to understand his changed world. There is a modern existentialist bent to this story that is quite appealing. It's a very fresh read in between the themes, and I found it to be a rather wild ride.
This week I am continuing my whole house purge. Yesterday I got Steve to give me almost the entire day in the basement, and it looks much better. Today I am going through my closets. Last night I read a few online posts about clothes purging, and it helped. I am trying on every single thing, and looking at myself in the mirror, and if it doesn't look great, then goodbye and good riddance. My driveway sale clothes customers will love me this year! All I have to do is decide which things to throw on the table rather than on the hanging rack. I think the table offerings sell better and for more. Maybe two tables. One for the things I would have put on the table anyway, and the other for the things I would have put on the rack. OK, back to work. After I get rid of 5 or 10 more things (I'm in the guestroom closet which I had turned into the dressy closet a couple of years ago), I'll do my next post.
Emerald City and Other Stories by Jennifer Egan - I love short stories. You get into them and out of them. There's a little thinking, and always a way to put the book down between stories. This is a very modern group of stories. Their home base is Chicago, but they are not Chicago stories; most of them happen in other places or on vacation. Each of these stories was a perfect little jewel.
This week I got back out into our yard. I'd lost the gardening bug the year before, and last year I hurt my foot, so things had long been neglected. My basic designs have held up pretty well, and this year's small goals are to tweak and fill in. The larger goals are first, to clear out the huge overgrown yews in the corner next to our screened porch and create a lovely vignette anchored by a Japanese Maple tree, and second, to do something with our empty cement fountain. Pictures to come soon!
Our beautiful spring break in Puerto Vallarta was enhanced by two wonderful books.
The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli - This is a love story, a Vietnam story, and a photographer's story about a young American woman who went to Vietnam during the war and made a life for herself as a photographer for Life Magazine. It's beautifully told and the characters and the land are very real and mostly appealing, and when they cannot be real or appealing, they are sympathetic. The love story is layered yet uncomplicated, and weaves through the story that is the war and the photography in the most seamless way.
American Dervish by Ayad Akhtar - What it's like to grow up Pakistani American and sort of Muslim. I loved this coming of age story about a kid who has to make sense of so many mixed messages from so many sources, that you wonder how he is going to make it in life. Will he buy into the craziness and contradictions, or will his innate skepticism save him? It sometimes reads like a movie, which is fine, as long as they make it into a good movie. It's sad and funny and maddening, just like life.
How to Read the Air by Dinaw Mengestu - So happy this wasn't a vacation book. I started it the night we arrived home, and over 100 pages in, just flipped to the last chapter to see if anything ever happened that I needed to know about. The writing is somewhat inconsistent, way to wordy, way to conversationy, way to repetitious. It's two stories; one about a quiet guy whose marriage is breaking up, and the other about a trip that the guy's parents took before he was born. Although it's an African immigrant and second generation story, for me the layers didn't work and the parent part is all speculation. It's getting some press, but I couldn't get into it.
