What Place Leisure Reading Come September?

As if I don't have enough things to be concerned about, I am worried that I seem to be unable to read anything other than literature, articles, and just general stuff for my fall classes.

I'd like to be able to relax at least a small part of each day and read for my own self. There must be a way to do it, but I haven't yet found it. I think I'm having this difficulty because it's my first year teaching after 25 years away. I'm sure that's it. And I do love the reading I'm doing as preparation.

BUT, I want to be able to read a book for my own pleasure or knowledge, aside from my teaching life.

If you, readers, have any suggestions on how I can relax enough to just plain read, please let me know.

Authenticity and Memoir

I know the fates are against me completing this blog entry this evening. Ken is late for dinner returning from the Indian Lake region, and it's raining, so who knows when he'll pull in to the driveway. Could be any minute.


I began an investigation of the big bestseller from 2008 and 2009, A Long Way Gone. Many, many Australian reporters contested the authenticity of the memoir by Ishmael Beah, the boy soldier in Sierra Leone who later immigrated to the U.S.

The Australians don't say that he completely fabricated, but they adjure that the facts show he was only a boy soldier for about two months, not two years. To make a personal judgement one way or the other, one would have to pour over the reporters' articles and conduct additional research.

The publisher, Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, and Beah's agent deny all of the Australians' accusations. Whatever the reality, the book is an excellent case study in what I call the "Challenges to Authenticity Syndrome," an affliction which a number of memoirists have suffered. Of course there was the James Frey A Million Little Pieces fiasco, but despite the fact that he admitted fabricating, the book continued to sell very well.

What's your take on the authenticity issue in memoirs?

Back on the Blog Hopper Circuit!

The wonderful blog Crazy for Books has me back for a weekend of blog hopping. It's supposed to be in the mid-to-high 80s this weekend and I'm not one for hiking and bushwhacking in that weather! Oh, how I miss bushwhacking! I know lots of you in hotter climes will laugh at me because you endure temps that are much hotter. I do feel badly for you, truly.

So--This Week's Blog Hopper Question: How many books are in my "To Be Read" Pile?

Why, scads and scads, and piles and piles, of course! I don't think I'll count them all, but I will indulge myself, with wine glass in hand (please make it a mellow merlot), to peruse the shelves and piles of books unread.

Will I read a book out of my TBR pile this weekend? Highly unlikely, because I went to two libraries today and brought home more than a dozen books! But, and this is a big but, readers. I'm trying to read, or at least scan, as many memoirs written by young people as I can for my first-year college students who have signed up for my "Reading and Writing Workshop" course. These are students who need a year of intense work in reading and writing to be brought up to what is considered "college level."

I'm having fun preparing for this particular course, because the challenge is huge.

Anyway, we're going to begin reading and writing journals and diaries. Then we're going to move on to reading memoir. And writing about the memoirs we read. That's the beginning of the course. I brought home some genocide memoirs, written by survivors in Rwanda and Darfur, in particular--because I know these memoirs the least.


I found A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah, who now lives in the U.S. I have heard hints of problems with authenticity, and I will study these comments and complaints. Isn't authenticity always an issue with memoir? Another title is The Translator: A Tribesman's Memoir of Darfur. by Daoud Hari. Have not heard a single rumor of authenticity problems there.

My students will choose to read one book from a long list. Living up here in the mountains, it's easy to be removed from the world. But, at 18, they have all become citizens of that world. When I have my complete memoir list, I'll share it with you, and perhaps you'll suggest a book or two to for me to add to the list.

Eee Gads! These 15 Writers!

If you scroll down, you'll find my post of Publisher's Weekly "15 Most Under-Rated Authors" list. I finally had the time to seek information about each writer today. Yikes!

Nearly all of them were born in the 1960s. That's fine. I love the work of many authors born in that decade.

Yet when I located the descriptions of their novels and short stories, I shivered. None of them are mainstream writers. No problem there, but what I mean is only a few are mainstream literary fiction authors. The rest write literary horror, focus on S&M relationships and withdrawal from the world and universe, as well as being just overwhelmingly weird! There's a cop-out description, if ever I've written one.

Once again, in my defense, I'll say that I like the work of many young writers. But this group fills a house of horrors.

Yes, I'm exaggerating. You know I'm prone to that.


I will say that I am interested in the novels of Christine Schutt, particularly All Souls, which I have ordered through inter-library loan.

Anthony Doerr and Mary Gaitskill are the two other writers I'm interested in. But the rest!

Please don't take my word for this analysis. Select a writer or two and seek them out online. Read the descriptions of their books. Is Publisher's Weekly off the balance beam? Or am I? I'd be happy to hear what you have to say! Feel free to let loose with your opinions!

Wednesday's Child is Full of Woe

Yeah, yeah, I was born on a Wednesday. Both of my brothers were born on Friday, so they lorded their Friday birthdates over me. Remember, "Friday's child is loving and giving!" Huh!

But today I'm full of woe because I wanted to wax on about the 15 Most Underrated Writers and give a few of them their due. We've just been invited out this evening, so this post will have to wait for Thursday. "Thursday's child is full of grace."

Does anyone know who wrote that nonsense?

Til tomorrow!

15 Most Under-Rated Authors

Publisher's Weekly just published its list of the fifteen most under-rated authors. What do you think of the authors on the list? I'm embarrassed to say that I believe I know only the work of Mary Gaitskill and Anthony Doerr. Let's check the rest out!

Donald Antrim
Jo Ann Beard
Anthony Doerr
Deborah Eisenberg
Stephen Elliott
Steve Erickson
Brian Evenson
Percival Everett
Mary Gaitskill
Tessa Hadley
Kelly Link
Sam Lipsyte
Lydia Millet
Christine Schutt
Matthew Sharpe


I worked all day trying to get my head around the classes I'm going to be teaching. Several English composition textbook publishers have sent me books to review for possible course adoption.

Let me be honest. Some of them terrified me, a person who has been a professional writer for decades! If I were a first-year college student, and someone made me buy a 1000+ page book about college writing, that book would extinguish any modicum of interest I may have had in writing.

Writing needs to be simplified, not made more complicated, especially for students who are not the ablest and for whom writing is a difficult activity! Writing needs to be perceived as an activity that's within everyone's grasp.

I'm hoping to encourage at least some of my students to start a blog that's focused on an area of keen personal interest. I'll let you know how that turns out.

Classes start September 8th.

August 8th & Siri Hustvedt

If you tuned in earlier this evening, you'll be glad to know my computer glitches have been fixed.

Sunday, August 8th, my first day of freedom, was lovely. A long, long morning hike in beautiful weather with one of my best friends, then an afternoon spent at my desk gathering my thoughts for the fall semester.

I read half of The Good Psychologist by Noam Shpancer (scroll down to a previous post), and I'm finding it not only thought-provoking, but provocative as well on many levels. I'm looking forward to describing it in more detail and to interviewing Shpancer by e-mail during the coming week.


I'm overwhelmed by the vast number of books I'm longing to read, now that reading is finally physically and mentally possible. I'm interested in Siri Hustvedt's memoir, The Shaking Woman, published in March 2010, which describes her struggle to deal with an incapacitating anxiety disorder. She's an acclaimed novelist (The Sorrows of an American and What I Loved), and her husband is my favorite author, Paul Auster.

Wouldn't you love to see the Auster/Hustvedt house/condo/loft? They live in Brooklyn, and what I imagine is a five-story townhouse, full of rooms packed floor to ceiling with books. I imagine lots of nooks and crannies, each with a table perfect for writing. If you google "Auster Hustvedt home," a wonderful Telegram article from 2003 turns up and a revealing New York Times article, but the papers won't let me link to them here.

Music While Reading & Julia Glass's New Novel

Blog Hoppers! I fear you will be disappointed. I don't listen to music when I'm reading.

I luxuriate in the stillness of our mountain world. On our 3-mile road, there are only five year-round residences. I think if I lived in New York City I would certainly listen to music; partly to drown out noise, but also to create a sense of calm. I would probably listen to classical piano music--Chopin, for example.

But here on my forest green couch, I like reading while listening to the sound of Sophie's breathing (Soph is our golden retriever) and the rustle and whoosh of the wind. That's the best music of all.

But when I'm blasting away on the treadmill, I need fast, very fast, ROCK to keep me hopping!


I have a book announcement to make.
To be published in September, a new novel by Julia Glass, the National Book Award Winner of Three Junes, which happens to be the only book of hers I haven't read.



Her new title is The Widower's Tale. As is the case with her other books, there are multiple characters carrying many different storylines--all interwoven, intersecting, and interesting! I highly recommend her work. Do give her a try! I especially loved The Whole World Over.

On August 8th, I Turn to Reading!

As many of you know already, I'm salivating over the prospect of finally!! integrating reading back into my life once more. I think Sunday, August 8th, should be a day of celebration. I have no plans that day other than a hike with Cindy. The weather is expected to be spectacular. So after a beautiful hike and lively gabfest, it's off to bookland I go.

I'm twenty-five pages into The Island by Elin Hilderbrand and am hooked. But I want more than that! I want to touch the words of the best writers--I want to surround myself with piles of books--the biblio-equivalent of shoving twenty kinds of cookies into my mouth all at once. A gross image, indeed, until I remember that the cookies are books. To be truthful, though, I think I'd prefer cakes to cookies.


For the past few weeks I've been delving into Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife by the esteemed American woman of letters, Francine Prose. (Scroll to the far right to read a fascinating interview and a Prose editorial about her book. In her book, Prose underscores what many scholars of Anne Frank's diary have known for years, that the book was a deliberate work of art. That Anne Frank wrote it, edited it endlessly, revision after revision. She self-consiously was creating a work of art that she hoped would be read after World War II was over.

What I found most fascinating about Prose's book is her recounting of how The Diary of Anne Frank has been taught in schools, and the story of what happened when she read it with a class of Bard College students. Young people's responses are fresh, strong, uncomprehending of the world situtation, and full of admiration for Anne's hopefulness about the future of humankind.


An Urgent Recommendation: If you have not read The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank as an adult, you have not lived. Not yet. (I realize that's a judgmental, bossy statement, and I apologize.) I strongly encourage you to be sure to read the complete "Definitive Edition." As most people are aware, Anne's father Otto Frank strictly edited the book during the first three or more decades of its publication, striking out passages that involved Anne's awareness of her developing body and sexuality, her relationship with her mother, and much, much more. As an editor, he was too close to the book, which is an understatement.