October 2009
31 posts
The Fun Never Stops.
Like Julie Powell at the height of her blog year, I enjoy a level of recognition that can’t really be called “Fame,” if only because very few people obey Irene Cara’s command to remember my name. But once in a while, someone will call and ask me to participate in something weird, so this is my roundabout way of saying I have to put the book down for a while so I can go to...
September 2009
27 posts
"The Know-It-All." I'm Working On It.
As funny and charming a writer as A.J. Jacobs is (and despite his Joel Steinesque claims of low self-esteem and social awkwardness, you know he knows it), I will quote my late grandmother: he does go on. Reunion and family visiting and on-plane internet have thrown a wrench into my reading schedule, but I will get through this today. I WILL.
Another Example Of Julie Powell-esque New York...
Gothamist did a story on the Starbucks instant coffee launch, which is apparently not doing so well in New York. Says one unimpressed taster: “Maybe it’s a product for people in other cities. I don’t see it selling here.”
Because, you see, New Yorkers’ mouths work in a completely different way.
Update
Blogging has been light the last few days (which is to say there has been none), but reading continues apace. I’ve been at home for my 20-year high school reunion, catching up with family and old friends. I can reveal that at no time this weekend was I even a fraction as delighted with myself as AJ Jacobs is throughout “The Know-It-All.”
More to come from the plane back to Los...
Settle Down.
AJ Jacobs opens “The Know-It-All” by explaining how dumb he’s become. Sure, he used to be brainy back at Brown, but then he got a job at Entertainment Weekly, and all the pop-culture trivia pushed the smart stuff right out the door. This sets up a too-easy contrast between “useful” and “non-useful” knowledge, and reminds me of one of my major peeves. Frequently, when one is reading a Gawker or a...
My Year Of Everything rolls on...
I’ve had two heavy thinkers in a row, and as charming as they are, I need a cheap good time. I need someone who knows a good gimmick, and isn’t afraid to ride that bitch all the way to Citibank. I need…
Interesting Footnote Regarding "The Whole Five...
One of the books in the Harvard Classics series is Richard Henry Dana’s “Two Years Before The Mast,” in which the author’s failing eyesight compels him to put away his studies at Harvard and spend two years as a sailor. He returns to school an intellectual hero, which suggests that this life-change literary trend might be around 170 years older than I thought. Even our...
My Year Of Everything: Week Two DOWN.
I have reached the end of Christopher Beha’s “The Whole Five Feet,” which I enjoyed despite faintly wishing for Julie Powell to come in with a perky new haircut and a malfunctioning Cuisinart- the Beha household could use some aggressive whimsy. Beha’s a more intellectual writer than Powell, but they share a cerebral nature; they’re not NOT doers, but they’re...
You Want To Know About Reading? Let's Talk About...
I chose “The Whole Five Feet” as my second book because it, like “My Year Of Everything” itself, is about reading, and I was curious to see how a writer like Christopher Beha would make that passive act active and engaging for the reader.
And the answer isn’t clear just yet. His takes on the books themselves assume his level of education*; he expresses frustration...
The Harvard Classics
The Harvard Classics were compiled by Charles William Eliot in 1909, at the end of his four-decade tenure as Harvard’s president. His aim was to create the definitive reading list, a five-foot shelf of books that would provide “the literary materials from which a careful and persistent reader might gain a fair view of the progress of man observing, recording, inventing and imagining...
...And One Missed Opportunity.
Maybe this was what Julie’s blog was supposed to be about, and not the book- but I don’t find myself craving Oeufs en Gelée or whatever. For a book built around food, there was very little that made me want to eat. I was hungrier after “Fast Food Nation,” honestly.
I went straight to Wendy’s after finishing “Fast Food Nation.” That whole chunk about the...
One Thing Julie Powell Gets Exactly Right...
…is the timid pride one feels upon learning one has readers. This comes out in sarcasm: “I HAVE to get home. My readers NEED me,” followed by the quick, knowing laugh that signifies self-deprecation but is really self-preservation. It’s strange to have readers, stranger still to feel responsible to them. It’s much easier to joke that they don’t care and be right...
I Smell What Julie Powell Is Cooking...
…and I think I may just pick up In & Out instead.
A good book makes me want to be friends with the author. And for the last hundred-or-so pages, my mouse has hovered over Ignore. There are an awful lot of “sound your barbaric yawp”s and “decide of an evening”s; in print, as in conversation, that shit can wear you down.
I’m not sure what kind of book this...
You Just Never Know.
For much of the first half of “Julie & Julia,” Julie Powell rams down our throats how smart a cookie she is, how precocious a child she was, how poorly her clerical day job suits her. It’s pretty clear that Julie Powell is exactly the kind of person I would have known in my mid-1990s New York struggling-actor days. It’s almost terrifying when I reflect on it, but you...
Something From "Julie & Julia" (The Book) That...
The feisty friend who’s in rabbinical school. I bet they keep the friend, but de-Jewish her. Like, in the movie, she goes to rabbit school. To be a veterinarian. For rabbits.
But the plucky gal vs. raw bone marrow scene? I find myself singing “Suddenly I See” when I read it, that’s how filmable it is.
A New York move
I’m not going to pick these books apart, I promise. There’s already plenty of cruelty in the world, and I honestly respect people who take the risk to write about themselves in this climate. I mean, Gawker’s going to take a swing at you no matter what, and they don’t even bother to proofread anymore. (Seriously, how long before they start drawing semen on people’s...
A quick word about methodology.
The books I’ll be reading here are strictly in the immersive-journalism style. One specific, life-altering thing done for one full year. Off the top of my head I’ve got nearly a half-year’s worth, which is good, but in a few weeks I’ll really have to start digging. Or AJ Jacobs will have to write 20 more books, which does not seem implausible.
I may expand to include a few...
My new blog project that will get me a book deal...
You know how every non-fiction book in the last 4 years has been about the author doing some goofy thing for a full year and writing about it? The Year Of Living Biblically, The Whole Five Feet, The Bonfire Of The Brands, etc?
For the next year, I’m going to read one of those books a week, and I’m going to write about it. After 12 months of blogging, I’ll have my own book that will teach you how...
COMING TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8!
First book: “Julie and Julia.” See you then!
