writing about reading

My sister is a great reader. She's really good at it. What makes her a great reader, though, is not her commitment to reading only great works, as determined by those who purport to know such things. She's great at it because she does it a lot. All three of us do. We come by it honestly.

Our childhood home has a wall of reference books. Flanking the 1978 edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica (which was regularly splayed out in layers on the kitchen table as we reference-hopped from one entry to another) are sections about Ireland, dance, medicine, art, physics, & other subjects. I remember wanting to re-shelve the medical illustration books in the art section because the transparent overlays were fascinating & beautiful &, to my young mind, not much different from the books of marble statues. The diagram of the respiratory system had as much aesthetic value as the Pieta. But don't tell the Pope I said that.

We also had subscriptions to a wide array of magazines. Our parents are good at many things, but one thing they're REALLY good at is being curious. They wanted to know more about what was going on in the world, everywhere, in as many realms as possible. National Geographic, The New Yorker, Reader's Digest, The Economist,  Mother Jones, the Atlantic Monthly, Ms. Magazine, Time, Popular Mechanics, WIRED, the National Enquirer.

(Wait, what?)

The National Enquirer. What in the world did they imagine they would learn from a crappy tabloid with cyclical headlines about Bat Boy? So many things, it turns out. In the absence of myths, in the absence of a shared lore, we have Chupacabra, Elvis is Alive!, & the Blue Dot. If I wish very hard while touching this one imperfectly-printed circle of pure cyan, will my wish come true? Maybe! Is the Loch Ness Monster the last living dinosaur? A Catholic priest in Scotland says yes! So while we'd anxiously await our turn at our favorite magazines (I admired Tina Brown's moxie at getting longer stories in The New Yorker, though some of them were a real slog for me), it was always a special treat to follow it up with the serialized fiction of the National Enquirer. And I am not ashamed.

I may be biased toward the tabloids, though. Our family was featured in the Star, when I was about three. The topic: Two doctor sisters with a unique solution to child care. (They job-shared. Whomever didn't go into the hospital that day took care of ... seven children. The dads helped, too, of course, but that wasn't as tidy a story in 1981.) It was August. I look uncomfortably warm in a terry-cloth jumper. I have a perfect bowl cut. And a book in my hands. Like I said, we come by it honestly.

After you put down your copy of the National Enquirer, which will make you a better writer if for no other reason than it will expand your notion of the absurd, I'd like to share ... a list of great works, as determined by people who purport to know such things. Our Favorite Authors' Favorite Books of 2011.

In particular, here's a link to Colm Tóibín's recommendations as a reminder to myself:
a.) Read Tóibín's collection of stories, "The Empty Family"; and
b.) Read Tóibín's recommendations, too: Jeffrey Eugenides' "The Marriage Plot" & Craig Koslofsky's "Evening's Empire: A History of the Night in Early Modern Europe". Actually, this whole list makes me want to attack a library. ("Room" by Emma Donoghue sounds excellent.)

holy-day cards

I call them holiday cards here, though they may feature a Christmas tree or a Menorah or a Celtic (Pagan) cross or a snowy, secular Yosemite. I call them holiday cards because they arrive at the end of the year, & as we draw nearer to the marker between one year & the next, it's a convenient time to reflect on the good stuff & the bad stuff & to think about what we hope will come. It's something to do with the Solstice — the turning from a time of darkness to a time of bounty, of light, of hope. There's something holy about that.

[It could be argued that this turning from a time of darkness to a time of light happens every single day. What a holy day, Tuesday! But that is another post for another day.]

Earlier today, my friend Joe Anthony expressed his frustration & also his joy surrounding the holiday card tradition. He said he thinks the tradition is "stupid, shallow, & wasteful", yet still it makes him immensely happy. I agree: The tradition can be stupid, shallow, & wasteful ... if there's no thought put into it. But it can also be incredibly rewarding, both for the person who sends the card & the person who receives it.

I don't make holiday cards. I make cards (tiny books, more like) whenever the mood strikes me, unattached to holy days. Sometimes, it happens in July. Or April. Or September, or January, ... or December. I love giving them, & I love receiving them. The best card I ever got was bought from a store, probably years before it was sent. It was a Thank You card. It arrived on my birthday. I've moved at least six times since the receipt of that card, but I have it still. On the inside of this Thank You card were the following words:

"I didn't have a birthday card in my files for you, so I'm taking this opportunity to thank you for being a wonderful daughter. I'm proud of you. Love, Dad."

Read the first part of the first sentence, & you'll see an admission: Every other year, he has pulled a card with the word "Birthday" somewhere on it from a file, signed it, & mailed it off. There's a cheapness to that, a wastefulness, a shallowness. But keep reading, & (if you're me) you'll break down into a mess of tears, in public, as your father tells you the one thing you ever really wanted to hear from him. "I'm proud of you." Holy crap, Dad.

It doesn't matter to me if you spent days seeking out a card that better words your feelings than you ever could, or if you found the blankest of blank cards & wrote just the two things you needed to say, or if you hand-crafted a tiny novella & stitched the pages together with gold thread. Sincerity, gratitude, & love are never wasteful, never shallow, never cheap. I understand what you mean, Joe, about the potential for this tradition to be sad & sorry & small. And I understand, also, your joy at exploring the other end of this tradition's potential. I'm with ya. Get out the pens.