Reading & Writing Web Finds

Will Allison's ode to his wife's editing skills.
My personal experience attests to the beauty of harmonious marital writing and editing. I have benefited from my husband's helpful editing since before we married and have enjoyed our joint efforts on copy and content for three years.

Austin Kleon's advice to writers and creatives everywhere: How to Steal Like an Artist. Encouraging and inspiring.

Robert Lane Greene's post on the flexibility of English grammar. Sometimes rules aren't always clear, but one of my favorite things about English as a language is it's adaptability.

The last typewriter factory in the world is no more!

A group of Federal employees banding together to eliminate ridiculous acronyms in Acts of Congress.

Bossypants by Tina Fey

Bossypants is exactly what a reader expects from an autobiographical book by Tina Fey. You open it hoping to laugh until you pee your pants a little. You may need a spare pair of pants.

And you're dying to know, How autobiographical is 30 Rock, really? If you're a fan of the show and re-watch episodes repeatedly on Netflix Watch Instantly like I do, then you'll quickly realize that Fey borrowed from her personal experiences for material. And by borrowed, I mean like how I borrowed change from my older sister's bank as a kid and used it to buy candy cigarettes. (Do they even make these sticks of pure sugary coolness anymore?)

Fey's writing in Bossypants is deeply personal, occasionally vulgar and constantly hilarious. Amidst the revealing childhood stories and confessions are Fey's personal views on controversial and divisive subjects like parenting, feminism, gay marriage, abortion. Her practical tone and lack of rhetoric will make these ideas palatable to even those who disagree with her. She works her normalcy-mojo on unusual experiences, too, like photo shoots and hanging out with stars. This is why we love her. Fey is a celebrity, but through self-deprecating comedy, she makes it okay for us to be imperfect.

Anyone who liked Fey on SNL, Mean Girls, or 30 Rock is likely to be as crazy about this book as I am. Readers who vaguely recall who she is will have no problem enjoying themselves. Some of the book will be more appealing to women, but male fans should not hesitate to read it. It is super short and could easily be finished in one long, glorious day on the beach, but I recommend savoring it and reading a little at a time. It will be funnier that way.

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman (33)

Neil Gaiman is a thorough but interesting descriptor of setting and characters' thoughts. I watched the miniseries of Neverwhere that Gaiman wrote for the BBC in '96. Even ignoring the ambivalent acting, the Neverwhere TV series was flat without the constant inner monologues and strange, sometimes disgusting details.

In the novel, Gaiman created a world of life and death existing beneath our relatively safe one. He has a talent for writing repulsive gore, sympathetic and awkward heroes, and twisty adventures. I love tales of salvific journeys and renaissance revenge. There is something primal about the modern reader's yearning for medieval stories of violence and mystical experiences.

Neverwhere is not just empty enjoyment. It prompts some pondering over our cities' real underworlds. The London Below in this novel comprises the forgotten, the invisible, the outcasts, who normal people from London Above can't see. Gaiman's protagonist responds personally to an injured girl from London Below while his fiancee walks past in a hurry to dinner. Thought he fights and sojourns, and often whines and seems pathetic, Richard becomes the hero of the novel after this one small decision.

Copywriting: Successful Writing for Design, Advetising and Marketing by Mark Shaw (32)

Mark Shaw's Copywriting is pretty obviously a manual on how to write good copy for commercial purposes. The text is long, the font is tiny, and could it be any more conspicuous to read on the train (the cover is neon yellow in real life), but it was very helpful and a good start.

The best bits of this book were the examples of successful brands, including lovely photos of the products, and the interviews with copywriters and editors. I love that advertising funnels creativity in a way that can really birth something beautiful and intriguing. We all know good ads and good copy when we see them. I want to be able to know what is good before seeing it written by someone else.

Tinkers by Paul Harding (31)

Tinkers is the story of a family. The first (but also last) patriarch is George, who is dying. His family gathers around him as he fades away, hallucinates and experiences the last epileptic seizures of his life. It is a sweet and sad picture of a family as George's grandchildren read to him and shave his stubble and he recalls pieces of his life but is unable to speak and share them.

The omniscient, lyrical narrator alternates from George's death bed to his childhood home and his father, Howard. George tinkered with clocks in his retirement. Howard was a tinker by trade, fixing household items and selling wares from a mule-drawn wagon through the forests and farms. The reader also hears bits about Howard's father, a country preacher who wrote beautifully but was a bore at the pulpit. The families are different and fascinating. Epilepsy is hereditary and each generation reacts differently. Despite medical advances, the seizures are still shocking and sometimes frightening for the men who suffer from it and their loved ones.

The book is honest poetry. Sometimes Paul Harding's language is the cold meter of the cosmos, sometimes the warm and comforting rhyme of the grass and sunshine. I was lost in Harding's wandering poetic musings and detailed descriptions of clocks and tinkery items. It's been a while since I've read something written with such care.

Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller (28)

A lot of memoirs I've read lately have tried to balance guilt and regret with humor. Self-deprecation is easier to take with a spoonful of humor.

Miller doesn't try to alleviate the vulnerability in Blue Like Jazz with jokes. The book is full of his mistakes and he shares some very personal thoughts, but it never feels intrusive or uncomfortable, perhaps because it is so introspective. Miller is really pondering himself, his motivations, and his past. He really cares about knowing what he believes and treating other people with love and respect.

What I like best about Blue Like Jazz is that it reminded me, during a very selfish portion of my life, that I really need to care about the people around me. I need to stop letting little things bother me, show my affection in actions, and really admit my mistakes. Blue Like Jazz is about spiritual mystery and Miller's rise to spiritual, emotional, and social maturity.

Yeah, yeah, I know. I grew up in the church and just got to reading this book two years after college.

The Blind Contessa's New Machine by Carey Wallace (26)

A book of such beauty and sweetness could only be written by my lovely friend, Carey Wallace. I don't have a lot of published friends, so I am pretty psyched for her wondrous book and her reading tomorrow.

The Blind Contessa's New Machine is the story of a wealthy Italian woman in the 18/19th century as she grows up and becomes blind soon after she marries. I needed the first chapter or so to fall into the rhythm and accept the lushness of the setting and the focus on relationships. Like sci-fi, it worked best when I allowed myself to dwell in the imagined world and know the other dwellers. And though romantic, it reads nothing like fluffy, brainless chick-lit or a retold fairy tale.

The Contessa marries the local rich McDreamy and seems to have the perfect live. She's in love, privileged and has the resources to spoil herself with knowledge. But she loses her vision and it changes her perspective on life, marriage and her husband. Carolina also must depend on her inner life to feed her curiosity. The prose sharing her thoughts is like what I imagine was in Dali's brain or Chagall's dreams.

It's a short book - a charming, thoughtful, anti-fairy tale. Read it and support my friend!

Hiroshima by John Hersey (25)

John Hersey's Hiroshima tells the story of the first atomic explosion in Hiroshima, Japan. I hope we all learned about this and WWII in school...

But the history books don't detail the skin slipping off of victims' hands like gloves, dead babies crazily cradled by terrified parents, people who drowned because they were too burnt to move out of floods. While reading, I must have made a color wheel of faces for different shades of horror. Sometimes I just couldn't keep reading.

Hersey doesn't get poetic about any of the facts. His straight reporting only foils the bizarre tragedy, apparent randomness of survival from the bombing and following diseases, and the loss. So much loss.

Its an overwhelming story that I hardly want to remember. That's the point, if there really is any. To remember.

Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis (23)

I used to think that growing up would be awesome. I would have money, freedom and responsibility for determining my future. Unfortunately for my childhood dreams, growing up has been a series of disillusioning realizations.

Lately, books haven't helped muster optimism. The Imperfectionists was about work making life miserable. And Liar's Poker told the story flawed and unjust system that exists in the real world. A conservative- free market-capitalist-libertarian, has a certain faith in the market to balance the sale and purchase of goods and services according to what they are worth to the people selling and receiving them. Liar's Poker reinforced the lesson that this just isn't always the case.

Liar's Poker is hilarious and easy to understand. Michael Lewis wrote down his experiences working for a Wall Street company in the '80s as a bond trader. He sort of stumbled upon the job and admits to having no idea what he was doing at the time, so the descriptions of bonds aren't too technical or confusing. Don't get scared away knowing it's about trading mortgage bonds, the book is really more of a narrative featuring the ridiculous people who traded bonds than about the actual trading.

The stories of traders and Wall Street can really upset any belief in the fairness of the market as it is. Lucky for the reader, Lewis can accurately caricature his former bosses, so Liar's Poker doesn't gets too depressing.

Well, thanks, world, for being disillusioning.

The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman (22)

The Imperfectionists is arranged in short stories, which is getting pretty common in novels this year, about people who read or work at an international newspaper headquartered in Rome. I know very little about newspapers and reporting since I get my news from Infomania and Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, so I read the more general theme - the intersection of work and personal life. The various characters offer perspectives on office politics, a job's effect on marriage, hating a job but never leaving, and becoming useless in your career.

It's smooth and readable but not mindless and certainly not light or fun. As the book continues, there is a steady decline in the ratio of humor to depressing misfortune. Short chapters allow for a workday or nap in the sun to interrupt the story. Rachman writes well and honestly about people. Even if the reader has never traveled internationally or had any experience with journalism, there are characters from life in the story. Just don't pick up this book if you're in the mood for optimism. Even the epilogue is disheartening.

A Fortunate Age by Joanna Smith Rakoff (21)

Joanna Smith Rakoff wrote A Fortunate Age about a very detailed and specific subculture - Jewish, liberal, upper middle class, city dwelling Gen X-ers. The main characters are five liberal arts Oberlin grads. The book dips into their personal narratives as they go to grad school, make it big, make it nowhere, marry, breed, and halfheartedly try to remain friends in the decade after their undergrad days together.

I'm from a slightly different subculture. I lived a pretty homogeneous life until public high school, when I encountered and befriended people from different classes, religions, political parties. I remember hearing about the dot com boom, but I was really just thinking about Sailor Moon at the time. Because I and my closest friends are still childless and not quite 30, I think I'm missing something in Rakoff's novel.

The timing and style of the book are interesting in a jumbled way. Each character tells a bit of the story from a half stream of consciousness, half omniscient third person point of view. The reader experiences memories in the middle of action. Sometimes just as you get involved in a character's life, the chapter ends, and you're moved on to less sympathetic person. But it's like life. We narrate our own lives, judge our friends from our view, and hear mutual friends' theories on each other.

It's a serious and complicated novel about relationships and personal struggles. It's the post adolescent coming of age - which seems like how coming of age comes now a days.

Under The Tuscan Sun: At Home In Italy by Frances Mayes (20)

Frances Mayes's epic poem to Tuscany. Under The Tuscan Sun is slow and leisurely. If you're reading it in a recliner or in the sun, it's quite likely you'll just ease into a nap after a few pages. You won't be napping from boredom, but from a desire to siesta like the village in which Mayes makes her summer home.

The book arouses the jealousy of the amateur chef. Tales of bountiful home gardens blooming like Eden without any care, fresh ingredients from town markets, and quality olive oil and wine for cheap make the Key Foods down the street even more dismal. My fire escape herb garden fights to survive, but in Italy, wild sage and rosemary spread like dandelions. What a pleasure it must be to cook so simply and so well.

And that is the point, if there is any, of the book. The pleasure and beauty of life, even if you have to go to the Mediterranean to find it.

Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message That Feminism's Work is Done by Susan J. Douglas (19)

Sexism is still around and keeping ladies down. I agree with the basic message of this book that women still have to fight for equal opportunity. I also acknowledge that our society does little to support women at home and at work.

But I have to say that this is a very tiring book from an unimaginative feminist. The book is far longer than it ought to be to make her point. Douglas is repetitive and easily distracted with an irritating habit of interrupting important sentences with constant sarcastic asides that sacrifice clarity for labored humor.

I do appreciate her attitude and I loved reading the chapter on Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Xena: Warrior Princess, two of my favorite shows as a kid. Those fantasies of powerful women kicking evil butt were encouraging escapes for a tiny, shy girl with glasses as big as her head. Yet, the author did little to mention how media can encourage women or how media could or does further feminist causes. She only took hundreds of pages retelling 90210 or Xena or Boston Legal, shows she obviously enjoyed watching, explained how they supported the new sexism, and offered no counter examples.

Douglas has less than a basic understanding of economic theory or practice and she considers only one vision of how the country can support families: the federal government does it all. Apparently national day care is going to solve everything for women. Because the only men who can help us care for our children are the ones we elected.

Nudge by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein (18)

"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." Kay, Men In Black

Lay and professional economists are too optimistic about citizens' reactions to laws, markets, and incentives. I studied economics at a conservative college and slid into thinking that people know themselves and care enough to make relatively informed decisions about their lives. Thaler and Sunstein are honest about the human laziness and apathy that economists ignore, though they say it nicely.

Thaler and Sunstein make gentle, convincing arguments that people need a little nudge when making big , rare decisions with little feedback or chance for correction - mortgages, loans, health insurance, and other important things that people often mess up.

It was difficult to follow the flow of Nudge at first after a fiction binge, but the arguments are easy to understand and the writing is personable and earnest. Thaler and Sunstein build trust by exposing personal flaws to the readers, like forgetting to turn in health insurance forms at work for good coverage. It's a great read for people who are moderately interested in political issues, but are repulsed by the vitriol of current political discussion. It is balanced and logical without jargon or superiority. Plus, the elephants are cute.

Let The Great World Spin by Colum McCann (17)

Let The Great World Spin, a mosaic of stories in the tunnels of New Yorkers lives, is the best Manhattan-based novel I've read. The characters are caricatures, cliches, and exaggerations of New Yorkers. The story I liked best was the one with the most regular characters - a group of mothers meeting to commiserate over the loss of their sons in Vietnam. It was full of the tension, uncertainly, awkwardness and regret of real life.

It is a quick read because it is precisely written, with paragraphs of concrete examples pulled from characters' thoughts. It is also a good, fulfilling read, and pretty much worth all the hype.

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami (16)

Reading Murakami is like listening to someone describe a vivid dream. He writes in contradictions, broken metaphors, mystic poetry. Sometimes you're not even sure he knows what he talking about.

Kafka on the Shore was sometimes indecipherable, occasionally shocking, mostly lovely - full of art and music and natural beauty. There are a two characters I absolutely adored - Oshima, a wise, transgendered librarian assistant with a charming smile and Hoshino, a Hawaiian shirt-wearing truck driver who feels protective of grandfatherly types and learns to like Bach. It was a mystery, coming of age, epic journey fantasy. It felt like a race to the answers at the end of the book, but one through Wonderland. Most of the questions are left mysteries, and though that is a little confusing (like the whole novel), it's better. It wouldn't be as beautiful with all the secrets revealed.

Sophie's World by Jostien Gaarder (15)

Philosophy can and should be a part of our everyday lives. It elevates us, helps us understand humanity and the world, and is a part of culture whether or not most people are aware of its influence. I can't say that I agree with most philosophers who (unsurprisingly) assert that the philosopher is the highest level a human can reach. But I do agree with Jostien Gaarder, and my old professors, about the importance of the subject.

Sophie's World is quite a novel. It's now been about 20 years since it's first publication in Norwegian, but a book containing an understandable and concise history of philosophy is never irrelevant. The reader learns to become a philosopher along with the main character, Sophie. And what makes a person a philosopher? Asking questions, keeping one's mind open to possibilities, and learning from history. It's simple, really.

Graphic Novel - Chew (14)

Chew, Volume One, Taster's Choice
By John Layman & Rob Guillory

Chew is a crime-busting, gimmicky cop comic. Tony Chu is a vice cop and a cibopath - when he tastes something, he receives a vision of its past, like pesticides from an apple or the death of a cow from a burger. I think you have an idea of where this is going... how many disgusting things will Tony have to eat in his crime solving career? The possibilities are myriad and revolting.

There is a little more depth to the story than Fear Factor-esque gross-outs. There is a mysterious government conspiracy making chicken illegal to eat, a saboscrivner, and all of the things that make cop shows like CSI so fun and addictive.

The art is a perfect for the story. Harsh, intentionally sloppy, with caricature characters in full color. Y The Last Man is another conspiracy-ridden, mystery/action comic, but all the lines are clean and nearly every female character is Wonder Woman. Hardly a problem like that in Chew, and the comic is better for it. I like illustrators who are unafraid of drawing ugly characters.

Peace Like A River by Leif Enger (13)

Once when I was reading Peace Like A River on the subway, I bumped into a friend as I got off at my stop. She was right next to me the whole ride, but said that I looked so happy reading my book that she didn't want to interrupt me.

This is a story of a small family in rural Minnesota in the '60s. The protagonist is Reuben, an eleven-year-old with severe asthma. He adores his family and so does the reader. His father is the school janitor (what horror for a kid!), but is wise and kind and a man of such great faith that he performs miracles. Reuben's younger sister is Swede: fiesty, smart, and obsessed with westerns. His older brother, Davy, is convicted with murder early in the book. He is a cowboy type of hunk: he escapes prison, rides horses through the prairie, expertly wields a shotgun, and drifts in an out of his brother's life as he pleases, evading the law.

It is a great story, one that's been told and retold, but is always worth hearing. The familial relationships are precious and deep. The characters are well-crafted, and the landscape is unfamiliar and wild. Peace Like A River is also full of religious experiences, Biblical references, and talk of faith, but it never feels preachy. Perhaps because the reader sees it all from Reuben's perspective, with childhood bewilderment and awe at the separate world of adults.

On Beauty by Zadie Smith (12)

After reading The Elegance of the Hedgehog, On Beauty was uncomfortably corporeal. Zadie Smith's Love is not ethereal, philosophical, communal. Smith's Beauty is not a form or an idea. Beauty is in flesh, Love is in decisions.

This beauty isn't shallow - it is tangible. It manifests in people attractive and average, in paintings and music, poetry and actions. Something the reader has probably at least once seen and described as beautiful.

The Belsey family at the core of this novel is realistic. I keep saying that in these reviews - these characters are so real. But that's because real families fall apart, or fall into that limbo between deciding to tough it out and leaving the hurt and mess behind.

The only unbelievable thing is the recurring phrase "meant to" when anyone I know would say "supposed to." (Born and raised on the East Coast, I have never heard someone say "What am I meant to do?") It was oddly distracting.

On Beauty is intense and emotional. I think I'm still digesting it, a week later.