I seem to have a lot in common with Gretchen Rubin. Writing. Living in an urban setting. A tendency to be irritable. Would usually rather read than do almost anything else. A sense of wasting my life, letting small details of getting through the day override the greater aims I have. But I really knew I would like her book The Happiness Project when she started talking about Benjamin Franklin.

Ever since I first read Franklin’s Autobiography in undergraduate school, I have thought about his habit of tracking his habits as a tool toward self improvement. I remember the other students and the professor in my American Literature class mocking Franklin for keeping track of his “errata,” but thinking how much it reminded me of something I might do. But it never occurred me to actually try this method until Rubin’s book.

I have created a chart on a piece of paper that has the days of the week in columns, and the elements of my life I would like to make sure I accomplish down the side of the page. Eating breakfast, flossing, walking, reading poetry are all there. I also have some specific goals in terms of writing, socialization and business development listed. I quickly saw how this was a great tool for helping me focus my time, and make sure that I actually make time for the things I consider important but have been actually doing in a haphazard fashion.

Gretchen Rubin is also a great motivator because she details her own weaknesses, her failings, her perfectionism. Similar types of books have been off-putting to me in the past because they seem so high-minded. Here is someone showing her own imperfections while nudging us to improve our own.

Rubin also focuses on what she calls “Being Gretchen,” and is essentially a great place for all of us to start: focus on the things you like to do, are good at, and in work with your natural inclinations. Diets, exercise programs, and other setups to change habits frequently ask us to take on some imposed structure that goes against our natural inclinations. For writers, I think this is an important meditation in terms of how we write. there are so many books and websites out there about how to develop a writing discipline, how to write a book/novel/poem/how to blog/how to journal/etc. and, really, when you study the great writers in all of those genres, they each have their own idiosyncratic way of approaching the task.

Rubin also is very good at combining factual research with her own personal experience, creating a balance between expertise and real life. Nobody really likes a know-it-all who seems to have all the answers; we relate better to someone who eats junk food, snaps at her family,and wishes to change but doesn’t really want to be different person.

Gretchen Rubin’s blog is : http://www.happiness-project.com

I found out about Library Thing last May and immediately began entering the books I was currently reading. I could rate them, review them, classify them in all sorts of ways, see who else was reading them and what they thought. I even figured out how to add gadgets of books I am reading (see far right column) to my websites.

In January 2010 I moved, a daunting task for any book lover. While packing up box after box of books, I decided that when unpacking them I would catalog them all on LibraryThing. I am currently in that process, and am I ever glad I have done this. In picking up and looking over each book, I have relived many memories, discovered old friends (both of the book and people variety). Remembered who gave me books, where I bought books, how certain novels and poems made me feel, how one particular novel changed the way I thought about writing in general (Jacob’s Room by Virginia Woolf, which I am going to reread and blog about soon). My personal library contains my own personal history.

This sorting out of memories and possessions bring forth one of the great draws of Library Thing: books are more than dusty bound sheets of paper, they carry ideas and emotions and likes, dislikes, prejudices. This site not only gives me the chance to sort all of that out, but do it in a public way. Other people can see what books I own, see how I have rated or reviewed them.  Reading can be such an isolated activity, and so many of us have used books as an escape form others, so it is nice to find an outlet for book people that makes me feel a little less isolated.

I have connected online and through email with a couple of authors, but more importantly, I have revived the most passionate love of my life.

http://www.librarything.com

Photos below are from  LibraryThing.com, and are generic screenshots and publicity photos they provided.

Why do so many of us sit cold-hearted, distant when we read or watch a scene of a person’s death, vioolent or valiant, but weep copiously at description of a dog’s demise? It took Dean Koontz’s memoir about his special relationship with his dog Trixie to put these thoughts into concrete words for me. If at time s it seems as though Koontz is a bragging parent relating how gifted his child is, well… he is. Tricks, cookies, routines, walks, medical problems, uncanny events: all are things that anyone who has ever had a dog will realte to, and be glad someone with Koontz’s gift for words took the time to express so beautifully. Along the way we are let into the private life of a writer, glimpses of the challenges and rewards of being a successful novelist.

I connected with this book as a dog lover, savoring every story, every excuse as to why dogs are so supreme. Having lost my own dog in 2008, I knew exactly what Dean Koontz and his wife were going through at each stage of their dog’s life with them.

The book goes deeper than an account of a single beloved dog and becomes a sort of treatise on neo-romanticism. As the writer discusses his beleifs about innocence being an ideal state, I was reminded of William Blake. And his discussion of how his relationship with his dog brought about profound changes int he way he wrote and thought about writing, I thought of other Romantic writers (Coeridge and his defense of poetry especially seems reflected here). Likeso much of the fiction by Dean Koontz, this book is enjoyable on multiple levels.

Dean Koontz personal website: http://www.deankoontz.com

Dean’s dog Trixie has a web page as well: http://trixie.deankoontz.com

One of the perennial appeals of the country lifestyle is the sense of living simpler, healthier, more in tune with the planet. The idea of self-sufficiency holds great appeal for those of us who live in a world of ever-increasing specialization. Not only does this world of expertise leave us unbalanced as human beings, it takes away our power of how the things we do and consume affect the planet and even ourselves. While quite useful as a direct guidebook to all aspects of rural living, this book offers far more to people who never intend to live a rural lifestyle.

The wonder of this book is that it encompasses both the lure of the country for nostalgic reasons while offering the idea that country living can be the cure to advancing the way we live in the future. In its practical how-to explanations of the parts traditional-based, rural living, it offers explanations of why these practices have lasted so long. It also compares them quite favorably with their modern counterparts in terms of health and satisfaction.

For instance, in the section on gardening, a description of almost every kind of vegetable is given with growing instructions and cooking suggestions, but greater is the context and commentary for each that explains how contemporary large-scale farming methods often fall short.

Because of technologies like the automobile, computer, internet and such, many of us can live anywhere we like. Cities have their benefits, of course, and this book is not saying everyone should or could live in a rural area and make their own soaps and butter. Rather, the book is useful even for people who never even dream of wanting to grow their own vegetables because we all need an understanding of the context of the foods we eat and the products we buy. This is how I feel the writers draw us toward the future, by saying we should all be more aware of the choices we make.

This bit of criticism of the automatic way most of us live is softened and made more palatable by the style of Clarissa Dickson Wright, familiar to many of us as half of the Two Fat Ladies cooking team from the 1990s. Her personal feelings against supermarkets, American commerce and carrots are (except for the carrots) fully justified in facts and presented in a straightforward and entertaining manner.

This is a perspective that is not always easy to come by in the American media. We tend to focus on commerce, and nutrients and fat and cholesterol and pollution, but not on questioning the foundations of the way we live. It sounds like a lot for a manual on how to live a country life, but this book really is a worth look at by urbanites and suburbanites for its eye-opening perspective if nothing else.

Fiction: Novel: Historical Fiction

Gist: A young woman grows to maturity in Niagara Falls during and after World War I. She endures loss in many forms, testing her faith and her strength. Based loosely on real life events.

This is the story of Bess Heath, a young woman coming of age in Niagara Falls during World War I. Her family struggles and failings are rendered in exquisite prose, showcasing the female point of view in a way few novelists have achieved. Bess is pulled away from the expectations of her society and her family toward something she sense is more authentic, even amid a staggering amount of pain and loss. 

Tom Cole is at the heart of Bess’s fascination, and the mechanics of their relationship are beautifully and poignantly told through every phase, from their meeting to the very end. Bess’s point of view is also elucidated very well, but Tom remains mostly a predictable character. He is carved out of some mythical essence of nature/spirit man and the romantic notion of man versus the corrupting influences of modern progress. All we see of his personality is  the true but flat view of the strong, silent male, handsome and attractive to the sheltered young woman. Cathy Buchanan has set out to tell us a mythical tale, reinforced witha  grand setting with natural beauty that is awe inspiring, and told in a man who helps change the central character and helps her find herself. But we never get to see Tom as a human being, and while Buchanan shows us that she can write beautifully about sex, heroic rescues,and the emotions of war and battle, these pieces are not strung together into a believable male character.

It isn’t just Buchanan though; this seems to be a theme in novels of the last few years: a strong female voice, descriptively beautiful that illuminates the female mind. These novels have created great role models for women, except that none of them seem to understand (or care to) what masculinity is all about. They delight in writing graphic scenes of physical sex that don’t empower either person and only reinforce the concept that the men are in the story as an object, a set dressing. If these novels could give more than just glimpses of the male characters as real, and more importantly as connecting to the female characters and the readers in more than a romance novel way, the current crop of novels would be truly great. Without that, they remain entertaining escapist works that can appeal to unfulfilled women.

The novel has themes of environmentalism, war, and human greed woven into a family tale in a way that is quite commendable. The historic inspiration of the story is full of possibility, and yet the author’s notes at the end of the novel seem to invite questions as to why she chose to leave out or include certain events. It si as if she was trying to balance the outrageous, over the top, mythical aspects of the story with a more personal, psychological exploration, and it would perhaps have been better to focus more solely on one aspect or the other.

2007 Pulitzer Prize Winner for Fiction

Everything in The Road is reduced to the minimum; the language and writing style are stripped along with the lives of the characters. No linguistic decoration or extraneous description, luxury or sense of comfort. No neat tidy chapters or markers to tell us where we are in the book. No names for the characters.

What happens because of this is that we, like the characters, are forced with an immediacy, an identification with the events and the people. This immediacy creates a strong identification with the characters, and of all the apocalyptic and disaster novels and books in recent memory, this one comes closest to revealing the core of the human spirit. The essence of why life is worth living. Cormac McCarthy creates a poetic rhythm that shows how beautiful language can be used for unbeautiful experiences. W.B. Yeats phrase ” a terrible beauty” comes to mind. And yet the book leaves the reader with an oddly positive view of human nature.

A story about Hong Kong during World War II and after, it blends historical fiction, mystery and extreme realism as easily and successfully as it blends time and cultures. The contrasts of privileged society and the too painful realities of war– both experienced by the same characters– makes this a novel that is difficult to put down and painful to read at the same time. Everyone (Chinese, British, American, Japanese) and everything (circumstances, relationships, intentions) is clouded and nothing is truly clear until the very end. A well-crafted story by a writer who, in her first novel, has mastered contemporary narrative structure and who also has conveyed a sense of human nature.

This is done by telling a story in a place that is a collusion of cultures and traditions, in a time when that place is upset by the extreme unrest of wartime. This brilliant combination enhances and strengthens the real nature of the characters.

2009 Pulitzer Prize, Fiction

The most striking this about this novel is its structure: it is a landscape novel with the title character as a running theme or motif as a constant among thirteen stories. This landscape is lonely; each character essentially lives life within him or herself, despite living in a close, small Maine community. The narrative voice is strangely detached, heightening the sense that the characters are separate from one another. The reader is therefore kept at an emotional distance. Death is a frequent visitor to the characters, and marriages are presented as mostly contentious and negative.

A nonlinear, nonchronological narrative structure must be built with extra care so as not to confuse the reader. Strout reveals this as the greatest strength of this work: by keeping the narrative voice simple and clear, she avoids the complexity trap that has befallen so many experimental storytellers. Jumps in time are kept to a manageable number, and are cleverly elucidated.

Of all of the different interpretations of loss and pain that are portrayed, it its Olive Kitteridge herself that, surprisingly,  emerges as the most whole. The reader encounters different views of her from various perspectives as other characters give their views of her. We see her argue with her husband, son, and commit childish acts. But it is the revelation of who she is that adds depth and push to stories that otherwise would have a tendency to get sleepy. Olive is the type of character that leaves an impact far greater than her personality or actions might suggest.

The mature, embittered woman encountered early on becomes more so by the end, only the reader comes to understand Olive better by seeing different angles of who she is. Elizabeth Strout achieves the coveted feat of making us like an unlikable character , mainly by showing that Olive Kitteridge is human just like we are.

A young woman from poverty in the rural south goes to live with her lover on his farm after his entire family is killed in an accident. A story rich with details of people acting, living and thinking by themselves and yet forced to relate to one another.

Much has been made about this being C.E. Morgan’s first novel, and rightly so, because their is a depth of feeling, a wealth of human experience captured just so in the language. The author has a special gift for crafting a story; she reveals the exposition cautiously but with just the right intriguing pace. She doesn’t overstate, she lets the images do much of the work in telling the story.

One of those recurring images is sex, presenting here in a raw form. Aloma and Orren’s sexual relationship shows the powerful human need for sex and also the ways sex can be used as a tool. It is refreshing to see a female character honestly, directly face her sexual nature, but it comes off as sort of passively accepting what he world brings instead of taking ownership of the experience. The choices the characters make, not just sexually, affect not only themselves but others, and yet the characters seem so often pulled along by fate.

As beautifully written as the book is, it is a heartbreaking tale of people who do not know how to relate to one another. Aloma, the lead female character, blindly accepts conventional female roles, puts her own dreams of accomplishment last, and seems to value her partner primarily through sex. It sin’t that this isn’t realistically portrayed, but that it is profoundly sad. Again, though, it is a magnificently constructed novel in that it shows this sadness, these situations the characters are in, and it doesn’t try to judge or make tidy solutions. The reader can think about the story, and this is one story that promises to stay with the reader long after the book has been put down.

This novel takes Victorian themes of repression and stifling structure and applies contemporary psychological interpretations to them. It also offers a post-colonial interpretation of exploration and British cultural influence. Still, the Victorian setting heightens the exotic feel and the social constraints of the era add drama to rather complex human realities.

Taken as a whole, the plot is very simple: the characters suffer in fairly predictable ways, yet the metaphor of nature connected with good and evil, and the lush descriptive language used to build that metaphor, save this book from being another tiresome contemporary psychological novel. This is a moving and entertaining story. Structurally it maintains a good balance of descriptive detail and narrative movement. Because these characters seem so psychologically developed and self-aware, it is impossible not to wonder how these same characters would fare in a contemporary setting.