Paper Trail

My to-read list is expanding faster than your waist-line around the holiday season (oh, *snap*!). There are more books on the planet to read than I can keep up with, and every time I get into one book, I learn of another that I need to conquer as well. The fact that I have book ADD doesn't help either.

For those not in the know, book ADD is when you get 50 pages into one, only to be lured away by the charms of another. I have commitment issues when it comes to reading. My eye wanders easily. I am easily seduced by sexy cover art, imaginative graphics, titillating cover blurbs. Oh, blurbs how I love thee! Snappy paragraphs that distill a book down to its very essence. The only enjoyment I ever found in academic publishing in fact, was editing blurbs. My boyfriend at the time told me that blurbs sounded like a snack food. He'd always ask me if I prefer them with mustard.

Anyway.

Last night I finished Special Topics in Calamity Physics, a book that many "important" people creamed themselves over. It was good and all, but I don't see what the big fuss was about. Yes, it was clever. Yes, it was well written. Yes, it was a riff on several Nabakov novels, crossed with The Secret History. Yes, it leaves a little breadcrumb trail of clues about how the book will end. And then it ends. I don't know, I was a little disappointed. I won't say anymore, as to not give it away. But if any of you have read it, and care to discuss it with me, please email me and we can dish.

Next up, I am supposed to read Grapes of Wrath for book club, but methinks I am going to skip that one. I majored in English after all, and had to slog through quite a few dull literary tomes in my day, and I think I've had about as much of that as I can take. Call me lazy, fire away. Then go and read the collected works of Henry James and Edith Wharton for Senior Seminar and tell me how devoted to classic literature *you* are.

So far this year I have read:

The Emperors Children (Claire Messud)
Elements of Style (Wendy Wasserstein)
Zorro (Isabella Allende)
On Beauty (Zadie Smith)
Heat (Bill Buford)
Special Topics in Calamity Physics (Marrisa Pessl)
The Washington Story (Adam Langer)
A teen novel by Meghan McCafferty, the name of which I can't remember
The Know it All (AJ Jacobs)

And one or two more I am blanking on.

Books I have tried to read recently but became distracted from include:

Veronica (Mary Gaitskill)
The Russian Debutante's Handbook (Gary Shteyngart)
The Rachel Papers (Martin Amis)

Veronica was simply too depressing. The RDH I grew impatient with. The Rachel Papers, I don't know. I guess something better came along.

My to-read list now includes:

Mergers and Acquisitions (Dana Vachon)
Foucault's Pendulum (Emberto Eco)
Summerland (Michael Chabon)
Absurdistan (Gary Shteyngart) (Absurd that it's even on my list as I didn't finish his other one)
Then We Came To An End (Joshua Ferris)
The Futurist (James P. Othmer)
The Line of Beauty (Allen Hollinghurst)
Winter's Tale (Mark Helprin)
Blue Angel (Francine Prose)
Selected essays from the million page Joan Didion reader I received for Christmas

I'm sure there are millions of others that I'm forgetting, and that too frustrates me. Knowing that there are great books out there that I haven't experienced makes me feel incredibly incomplete. And let's not even get into the non-fiction books I haven't read, although between you and me, non fiction doesn't excite me.

For me, enjoyment of a book boils down to one element: style. I eschew those written in wordy prose, dripping with adjectives and needless metaphors. I like my novels written in snappy, clever prose--bordering on spare, in face. I marvel at linguistic acrobatics, but not the variety that uses too many words to complete its feat. Likewise, over stylization bores me to tears. Plot is always secondary. Characterization, while appreciated, isn't foremost on my list of expectations.

Have you ever seen the movie Amadeus? In it, a figure in the court criticizes Mozart's music for "having too many notes," and alas, that is how I feel about many novels. Too many words.

So what's next? To what new tome shall I direct my loyalties now? Methinks a trip to Kramers is in order. Holler at me if you have any suggestions. Or holler at me for some other reason. I could use a good holler today.

Oh, and Lorelia just asked me how my own novel is going. On Saturday I divulged to her that I had a seedling for a story mind, and that I had even sat down to compose a few lines--a frustrating experience. It seems that whenever I blog, the words flow so freely, and yet when I sit down to pen actual fiction, my creativity freezes up. I suppose the fact that I have a general idea for what I want to write, yet no actual plot is a bit of a hindrance. So many decisions to make. I can't even decide on point of view, let alone what the damn thing will actually be about.