why I can't finish a book

I've had the same list of books on my blog for months. You might think that I've just been too busy to update the list, but no. I'm still reading all of those books. Except for the Kimmelman one. That I finished. In addition to the books still on the list, I have also started reading the following:

Jane Smiley's 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel
The Best American Essays 2005
The Best American Travel Writing 2005
The Best Food Writing 2005
Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking (although that was only a brief encounter before giving the book to a friend as a Christmas gift, so it probably doesn't count)

And I did begin and actually finish two books:
Nicole Krauss' A History of Love
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, which I read because of recent hype and because I absolutely hated the book when I was a kid, even though I couldn't remember why. I wanted to see if I'd still hate it, which I did--but not as much as I remember. Now it seems trite and heavy-handed but I'm not sure that was my reasoning as an 8-yr-old.

I seem to have a problem lately. I buy books and I start reading them, but I never seem to finish them before I get distracted by another. The stack by the side of my bed is perpetually growing. I'm not sure what accounts for this. I could say that I'm busy, but in all the time I've spent reading each of the books, I probably could have finished at least one of them. You could say that I'm just disinterested in the books I'm choosing to read, but I do like them all--perhaps too much. Maybe I'm just indecisive, unable to commit to any one narrative or collection of ideas. I keep telling myself that I can't buy a new book until I've read five that I already have, but it never works, so the stack keeps growing. And then there are the books I check out from the library. Ugh.

my mother, the feminist

My parents stopped by to visit me on Saturday on their way to the airport to visit my brother and the new grandbaby. Even though my parents sometimes complain about how little they see me, they never stop by my house unless they are on their way somewhere else. But that works out ok for me. They brought me dinner (because they felt bad that I'd lost my voice again), and my dad drank all of my juice--which as supposed to be helping my voice. But I suppose it's ok since I probably drank all of their juice at some point in my life.

At one point in the evening, I was chatting with my mom about her book group, trying to give her some suggestions for her upcoming choice. Currently, they are reading The Good Earth, and I asked her how that was going. "I almost threw it away after the first chapter, it made me so mad," she declared. And she sounded genuinely angry. Her anger came from the way women were addressed and perceived, how the protagonist (or the protagonist's father? I can't remember) wanted a wife so that he wouldn't have to do housework anymore, that he would have someone to work for him. Growing up, my parents always seemed a bit dismayed at my feminist views on the world. I always knew the views came from my mother, but she would never admit it. So I am delighted that it's finally out, that's she declared her outrage publicly. There's no hiding it now, no pretending that I'm some weirdo with no apparent connection to their worldview.

the cut-up

Thanks for participating, folks. Here is the result (in the order they arrived, no alterations):


Instead, I sat in the car and read a map and spelled out entire sentences with my tongue on the roof of my mouth, where nobody could read them. Your minds and memories'll be totally absorbed. He grasped my hand weakly, and as I thanked him for the interview he blurted out "love you!"’ DON'T WASH OFTEN ALWAYS WASH INSIDE OUT NEVER WASH IN HOT WATER "How often do the robots stop by to visit and reconnoiter and update?" she wanted to ease the boredom a little But in lambasting the evil hegemony of the discursive practices of the powerful, I am, at times, keenly aware of my own power in this constructed space of the classroom. He tried to lay hands on my broken bone, whispering, “Jesus. Jesus heal this man.”


The players/sources:
line one: lisa b., from Badlands
line two: lisa b., from Invasion of the Body Snatchers
line three: clint
line four: sleepy-e, from GAP
line five: sleepy-e
line six: dr. write
line seven: ron
line eight: middlebrow


If you want to play again, additional entries are being accepted.

why didn't they consult me

This morning I was walking up my street to the Smith's, trying to like winter. It's that point in the year where I have to accept things as they are and realize that no matter how much I hate winter, it's around for at least three more months. Every year when the first heavy snow falls, I have to try to make myself happy--or at least marginally content. But as I was walking, it was clear that the people who live on my street were not trying to help my mood. First, there was the house that just went through a massive remodel. It used to be a simple house with an amazing garden. The house's gardens spilled onto the sidewalk, vines and flowers spreading everywhere. A lush canopy of trees hung overhead. In summer, walking past the house was always the coolest spot--for a few seconds, summer seemed irrelevant. Even in winter, the garden was beautiful, all of the plants transforming themselves, lovely under a dusting of snow. Now the garden is gone. The trees are still there, but there is no undergrowth, no over-abundance of growing things. If it were the same owner in the house, I would be hopeful that the garden would return. But I'm fairly sure it's new people altogether who appreciate a well-trimmed lawn (oh, and they built a fence accessed by a keycode). And then there was the distressed brick house. The brick on the house has always looked uncertain--red brick with old spatterings of pink paint, not quite scrubbed away by sandblasting. But it was wonderful, especially in the summer when the garden was full of poppies. Now, they are painting the house--brown. And not a rich, warm brown. No, it's a pale and mealy brown. Awful, really awful. I want to knock on the door and make sure they realize how awful the paint is, beg them not to continue.

a game of cut-ups: your participation requested

At semester's end, I need a little distraction, a little play. So, I suggest a writing game: cut-ups, where a piece of writing is created from randomly selected sentences and phrases. Your task: email me (mhelquist at gmail.com) a line of text (something you've created or something you've borrowed) and I will assemble the lines in the order they arrive. Once I have a chunk of lines, I will post the results here. You can send more than one line, but please send them in separate emails so as not to disrupt the randomness of the project. If you send lines from published texts, provide some sort of citation so we know the genesis of the final product.