Category Archives: lit

“sung from the grave by a ghost who doesn’t know he’s dead”: Books Read in 2012

Another year in reading and I’m left tallying and questioning. Much of my research lately focuses on what counts as reading. A healthy portion of the books included here are audiobooks (I’ve mentioned previously they are usually listened to at double speed). Is that reading? As one of my students noted, it’s more like “like reading.” Similarly, the seemingly random line between what’s tallied and what’s not is problematic. My list favors the bound not the stapled. Early in 2012 I read Who Is Jake Ellis as a trade paperback collection of comic books. I am currently reading the second arc of this story, Where is Jake Ellis in serialized form, one issue each month as they are released. When this is done, these comics (and the many, many more that I’ll read) won’t be tallied here. Nor will the single chapters of books or many journal articles I’ll dive into. Nor will the hundreds of blog posts I’ll swim through. Or the Youtube comments or cooking recipes or the or the ortheorthe. I only catalog so much of my life and, at least for this annual post, I’ve decided it’s going to be things that are bound and things that typically have isbns. Further, as the number of YA texts I read continues to increase, I am interested in what is typically considered “academic.” For example, I guarantee you that reading Gossip Girl this year was a purely academic effort, despite the fact that it’s not counted as such in this year’s list. All that ranting being ranted, here’s the list:

Books read in 2012: 121
Comics and graphic novels included in reading total: 23
Books of poetry included in reading total: 2
Books reread included in reading total: 7
Academic & Education related books included in reading total: 21
YA and Junior Fiction books included in reading total: 32

A few thoughts and highlights (and here are my posts on books read in 20112010, and 2009):

In terms of fiction, I find myself thinking back most frequently to Steve Erickson’s These Dreams of You. There is a longer discussion of race, representation, and privilege within the book that I think Erickson somewhat glides beyond. However, it’s a book that I really enjoyed and was generally overlooked this year.

I spent more time this year with 1Q84 than any other book. It was a text that dragged me slowly and resistantly into its long and patient world. I found it stereotypical and misogynistic to begin with only to be pulled into the surreal double-mooned realm of Murakami’s latest off-kilter universe.

Not a whole lot, again, in terms of BSRAYDEKWTDWT (that is: Books So Ridiculously Awesome You Don’t Even Know What To Do With Them). However, Chris Ware’s Building Stories is such a great example of the genre that I’m reserving discussion of it for a future post on literacies, archiving, geography and exploration. Suffice to say that Ware’s work is so universally acclaimed that one has to just throw a digital rock and you’ll hit a link or two or three or four praising the book.

I really liked Many Subtle Channels by Daniel Levin Becker. Essentially an insider’s history of the Oulipo, the book is neither overly academic nor entirely focused on the landscape of experimental literature. Instead the unique personalities, voices, and movements of a group of writers emerge in a compellingly readable book. Anyone interested even remotely in the idea of “experimental” or playful literature should take a look at Becker’s book.

In terms of comics, I finally tackled Duncan the Wonder Dog and feel it deserves the smattering of acclaim it’s garnered from a generally small readership. A page from the book is at the top of the post and with nearly every page of the book as intricately labored upon as this one, the book’s depth and design match the complex ethical exploration of the relationship between animals and human.

Gabrielle Bell’s collection of comic diaries The Voyeurs was also a powerful image-based book I appreciated and continued to reflect upon this year. It reminded me of a hyper-verbal version of Lewis Trondheim’s Little Nothings series. The sequence detailing Bell’s experiences at the San Diego Comic Con were particularly entertaining to view.

Like his documentary films, I found Errol Morris’ Believing is Seeing engrossing and challenging. The questions about truth and image and representation reminded me of the best of some of Weschler’s book length profiles. Morris is deliberate in how he makes and develops a thesis and I can imagine each of the essays in the book acting as useful examplars for multimodal argumentation.

Finally, I concluded this year by tackling Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. All of them. I’m still reflecting over the relationship between the series and a certain boy wizard with a lightning bolt on his head. I’m also interested in the linguistic development of the book, particularly Sunny’s developing babble over the thirteen books and the way it exhibits a kind of double consciousness (if anyone has any academic texts related to the Snicket series, the are appreciated).

As 2013 approaches, I am halfway through Sergio de la Pava’s A Naked Singularity. The book’s frenetic jumps from courtrooms to meetings with clients to bitching about said clients to family gatherings to insane neighbors and more than a few encounters between the protagonist and Uncle Sam and a Chimpanzee make the book one I’m enjoying at a slow, winter’s pace.

Ongoing Conversations about Adolescents’ Literature, The Teaching Profession, and Literary Felines

The Adolescents’ Literature course I’ve mentioned previously now has a group page on Figment. You are invited to join our ongoing discussions throughout the semester. This week we are reading I am Number Four. Next Week we’re reading Looking For Alaska and then the Chocolate War and then Perks and then and then and… Participate in the fun!

The other course I am teaching, is a writing course for pre-service teachers. We will be focusing this quarter on writing about and advocating for the teaching profession. Our production will largely be public and can be followed at this blog. If you are interested in sharing work, ideas, or critiques you encounter as an educator, please get in touch!

Finally, if you have a friendly disposition toward cats or Tolstoy or both, my latest tumblr project, War and Peace and Cats is in full swing. Check it out. It’s purr-fect.

Adolescent Literature Book List, Fall 2012

Several months ago I asked readers from Figment to help me develop the syllabus for the Adolescent Literature college course I will be teaching in the fall. I wanted to share the finalized book list with everyone. While not all of the books on this came from Figment, the help I got from YA fans was invaluable. Thank you. I will be posting the reading schedule online soon as well. Our class discussions will take place online and I encourage anyone interested to join in.

Here’s the list along with the ringing endorsements of many Figment readers.

  • The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie
  • Go Ask Alice, Anonymous
  • Going Bovine, Libba Bray
    • “Going Bovine is a laugh-out-loud hilarious book about a teenager with mad cow disease. He goes on a cross-country trip to find a cure, and attempt to save the world, along with his annoying friend, a talking gnome, and occasionally a manic pixie dream girl. No one, not him, not the people in the world he lives in, not the reader, is exactly sure what’s going on or if any of it is real, but the craziness only makes it more interesting. It is, surprisingly, deep.”
    • ” Going Bovine is my favorite novel by her. The main character, Cameron, starts a lot like Holden Caulfield but unlike Holden, gets over itself. It’s the journey you wanted Holden to go on to get better. That was Going Bovine and all of its wonderful craziness.”
  • The Plain Janes, Cecil Castellucci and Jim Rugg
  • The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky
    •  “This is the book I most strongly recommend. I really hope you choose it. This book seriously changed me. The character of Charlie is just so beautiful and amazing and inspiring. I wouldn’t say the LGBT aspect of it is the most dominant, as much as an amazing coming of age story. There are some amazing quotes, and Charlie is intoxicating. You can’t not fall in love with him.”
  • City of Bones, Cassandra Clare
    • “The Mortal Instruments was Clare’s first series. It is very enjoyable and an easier enough of a read for many teens to have read it. It’s a blend of Paranormal, fantasy, some mystery and romance. I have already expressed my obsession with Harry Potter so seeing more than a dozen similarities between TMI and HP annoyed me. A lot. The series it self was captivating enough and was pretty good. Clare is a rather talented author and readers who might have not ever read/seen Harry Potter, Twilight, Star Wars, Buffy… everything else, may not notice its similarities. I liked it the first time I read it but after rereading it and reading City of Fallen Angels, I have realized it’s more similar to Twilight in its rip off stance than what I originally believed it to be. Though it’s quite devour worthy for teens.”
    • “It is amazing and appeals to pretty much everyone… :)”
  • The Chocolate War, Robert Cormier
  • Looking for Alaska, John Green
    • NOTE: I received A LOT of John Green recommendations for all of his books. I chose not to assign The Fault In Our Stars because I didn’t think I would be able to get through teaching without excessive tears being shed by instructor and students alike.
    • ” Two words: JOHN GREEN.”
    • ” As many people have said, anything by John Green. He has two Printz Awards (and deserves a third for his newest book). They are all amazing.”
    • ” First of all I just love it. It’s funny but emotional and interesting…You honest to god feel like the characters are your friends so it’s unbelievably enjoyable to read. Second, all the people who recommended it to me were boys. I, as a female, adored it and I think it’s pretty promising considering that I know and even number of boys and girls who loved the book. Thirdly, it got me thinking. There are moments in the novel that I literally, months later, cannot stop thinking about and for me that’s the best kind of book. There wasn’t some big revelation (hmm, that point is debatable, but I shall not debate it), but the big event of the book really stuck with me and the consequences were not only thought provoking, but something I don’t think lot of YA (that I’ve read anyway) go into as much detail about. I thought that was refreshing. It’s a very unique book in my mind.
      It’s probably my favourite book ever. I think that had we read more books like that in high school, more people (and a lot more boys) would enjoy English.”
  • Crank, Ellen Hopkins
  • Boy Meets Boy, David Levithan
  • I am Number Four, Pittacus Lore
  • Unwind, Neil Shusterman
    • I thought that book was beautifully done. It’s science fiction and deals a lot with moral questions. It all revolves around the Pro-Life vs. Pro-choice conflict.”
    • “I recommend this book to any person who hasn’t read it because it is so well-written and effective. I have read the book at least 3 times and still feel the impact of the message. I feel like it can also be good for either gender, even though I’m female. Additionally, I think the dystopian quality to it is reminiscent of The Giver by Lois Lowry (which is traditionally read in younger grades) and yet, Unwind is its own entity.” 
  • Y: The Last Man, Vol. 1: Unmanned, Brian K. Vaughn
  • Gossip Girl #1, Cecily von Ziegesar
  • The Pigman, Paul Zindel
  • The Book Thief, Markus Zusak
    • “It is amazing!!!and it has literary merit too 😀 It’s about the holocaust, so it’s pretty deep and sad..”
    • “I really loved the book, the Book Thief by Markus Zusak and I think that’s a great book to do for english class. It’s modern so it has the modern feel with a style of writing teenagers are familiar with but it takes during the Holocaust. I also LOVED the book Sarah’s Key which has a lot of true events about France during the Holocaust; I loved that one as well, but it’s more adult.
    • It’s a crime not to read this book. For realz.”

 

Rhizomatic Listening: On Shuffling Audiobooks

While in Los Angeles, I spent a lot of time sitting in traffic. Directly related to this, I spent a lot of time sitting in traffic listening to audiobooks. At one point, I got frustrated with the insanely slooooow pace at which most book are narrated that I started listening to audiobooks at double speed. The shift is disorienting at first, listening to a reader spin manically into hyper-speed. The thing is, I can only (easily) do that with books I download from Audible. CDs checked out from the library and MP3s I download have to go through a lengthy process to be considered “books” by my iPhone and are treated like music files, which is where things get interesting …

See, for a long time I resisted the shift from listening to an album to listening to individual tracks. But somewhere in the early 2000s I caved and my iPod is now filled with a rotating repertoire of evolving playlists created for specific times, moods, and places:

The success of these playlists is contingent on the iPod’s shuffle function:

Each playlist preserves a feeling, but never the exact same experience.

The thing is, if I switched from listening to a playlist to an audiobook, I would often forget to turn off the shuffle button. For books that are downloaded in Audiobook, again this can’t happen and even if it did it wouldn’t matter as much. Take for example a couple of YA books I purchased on Audible:

Each of these is a relatively short book and is downloaded (and consumed) as a single file. Rats Saw God is a solid uninterrupted 6 hour and 24 minute listen (or, if you’re like me, a 3 hour and 12 minute listen).

Even if you wanted to shuffle these books, you couldn’t. They are single files. It would be like creating a playlist with one song and hitting shuffle:

A Feast for Crows, a much longer book (topping out just under 38/19 hours of listening time) is downloaded as four separate files. You could shuffle these 8 hour tracks, but the narrative will have progressed so far ahead that it will become immediately obvious when the four chunks are not played in the correct order.

 

However, let’s take a CD or MP3 example. I bought a (DRM-free!) copy of Doctorow’s For The Win sometime last year. It is downloaded as a series of MP3s that can be easily burned to 13 discs. That’s a lot of MP3s:

If I don’t import these into a playlist in the correct order the 3 or 5 minute files will play in a haphazard fashion, creating a new narrative line not intended by the author.

And this is what I’ve been thinking about: the shift in narrative as a result of audio shuffle. Though time is cyclical for me (It’s morning then night and I eat breakfast and then lunch and then dinner and go to sleep), the ways I perceive and work throughout the day are anything but (I open Word to start writing and then get a cup of coffee and check my phone and write a paragraph and read a chapter of a book and then delete that paragraph and write a title for the Word document and yell at the dog for barking and then add a new sentence and then put on some music which reminds me to see if Martha Wainwright has a new album anytime soon-she does not-and then I start chatting with a friend online … and eventually write something of substance in the Word file).

Some novels incorporate the chance-element of shuffle into their structure. But they’re usually experimental and unfulfilling as traditional narratives. B.S. Johnson’s The Unfortunates gets close. It’s a series of pamphlets that are shuffled together to create a new novel for each reading:

Cortazar’s Hopscotch supposedly works in random-ish order.

I think a more controlled chaos could also work. I think of the three parts of Skippy Dies and, considering Paul Murray tells you exactly what happens by the end of the book in the title, wonder how my experience would be altered if I shuffled the three parts of the books. Ditto the five parts (and three bound volumes) of Bolano’s 2666.

 

I think of Deleuze and Guittari’s notion of the rhizome. A model for looking at research and culture, the notion of the rhizome differs significantly from traditional tree-like hierarchies. Seeing multiple points of entry and exploration, they write that “any point of a rhizome can be connected to anything other, and must be.” The world is shuffled. We curate rhizomatic experience everytime we create a playlist – a digital piñata of randomly falling sonic riches.

What would happen if I were able to curate my reading library and create a playlist?

“Today I feel like reading a Murakami playlist-not an anthology-but a new Murakami narrative shuffled only for me” or “I’m going to cozy up with a read-list of contemporary Russian authors in translation.” Or “You know, I feel like a discordant mix of John Ashberry and Shel Silverstein.”

Music products are being produced in this way now:

The latest release from Nicholas Jaar (on the right) is a cube of music with two headphone inputs. Listeners are subjected randomly to the tracks stored in the device’s memory. Pragmatically, I won’t know which song is up next or even what it may be called.

A rhizomatic listening experience is one that can be parsed every which way. Purists (myself included) would argue that this is a bastardization of the art form. “Hendrix wanted you to listen all the way through, man.” And they/we’re right. But it seems like print culture can by shuffled in ways to create new narratives budding from the old.

Fact Vs. Truth: About that Whole This American Life Retraction Thing

Mike Daisey: We have different world views on some of these things. I agree with you truth is really important.

Ira Glass: I know but I feel like I have the normal worldview. The normal worldview is somebody stands on stage and says ‘this happened to me,’ I think it happened to them, unless it’s clearly labeled as ‘here’s a work of fiction.’

The recent hubbub over This American Life’s retraction of their recent-ish episode, “Mr. Daisey Goes to the Apple Factory” has been thrilling to watch over the 24 hours of the announcement.

As someone that reacted strongly to the original episode and appreciated what seemed like a rise in investigation into the labor conditions of the devices I surround myself with, I felt like this was a necessary work in the same way that TAL’s “Giant Pool of Money” basically made clear the whole financial fiasco of the past few years in less than an hour. At its best, This American Life allows listeners to feel and empathize with big (sometimes confusing) ideas. It also  allows listeners to connect with people whose lives are nothing like their own. I felt kinship with Chik-Fil-A fanatics, prison inmates, and a mom with a certain contempt for the Little Mermaid.

Which all makes me wonder just how necessary “fact” is in my learning “truth” from episodes of This American Life.

Last month, while stuck in the middle seat of an airplane, I read The Lifespan of a Fact. It (like The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet) is one of those books I immediately felt the need to buy numerous copies so I could hand it to friends, strangers, anyone(!) and say, “Here, read this, please, it’s incredible just open it up and look at it!”

I mean seriously, look at this book:

The heated exchanges between an author and fact-checker surround the original, submitted manuscript. It is an initially confusing text to dive into and it is a worthwhile addition to BSRAYDEKWTDWT.

At the end of the day, The Lifespan of a Fact asks the same question that rears its head in the current This American Life retraction. Namely: what is the role of truth in advocacy, in journalism, in connecting human empathy with human crisis.*

My overall feeling sides with Ira and Co. and the browbeaten copy-editor, Jim Fingal. I tend to think that fact triumphs artistic revelry. Even when the writer or artist or media producer is really really good. At the same time, Daisey’s performance shed light on issues in a style that connected with people across the country. John D’Agata’s article on depression and suicide and Las Vegas gave me an insight into the town that now challenges how I see the city.

I doubt that anyone fact checks David Sedaris. And when Jonathan Franzen suggested that David Foster Wallace made up accounts for his non-fiction works, most people tended to think Franzen was a jerk.

We derive truth less from statistics and dates and transcribed quotes than from the nuanced tacit knowledge of being, exploring, and feeling. Though this is not a defense of Daisey (I suspect he, like Franzen, is also a bit of a jerk), I do wonder what is the role fact when I think people tend to listen to This American Life for truth.

 

*and lest you think that this book is a factual representation of author and fact-checker locked in a timeless tussle … again truth trumps fact.

Adolescent Literature and Asking The Experts for Recommendations

Do you know about Figment? It’s a reading and writing community for primarily young adults. And it’s awesome.

In any case, one of the first courses I’ll be teaching at Colorado State next year is focused on adolescent literature. Asking an avid YA-reading community like Figment to help develop the reading list for the course seemed like a no-brainer. So far, I’ve been thrilled with the suggestions and feedback that the Figment community has provided. I’ll be finalizing the reading list at the beginning of next month, so feel free to add your suggestions if you have not already.

Also, as I mention in the thread, I am anticipating having the CSU students interact with the Figment community through the site’s “groups” feature. I will be posting information about ways to participate in the class once it begins in the fall.

“There was always damage”: Books Read in 2011

Though I’m juggling the Marriage Plot, Pulphead, and a reread of All Star Superman over the next few days, now seems as good a time as any to review another year in reading.

Books read in 2011: 103

Comics and graphic novels included in reading total: 12

Books of poetry included in reading total: 2

Books reread included in reading total: 5

Academic & Education related books included in reading total: 26

YA and Junior Fiction books included in reading total: 26

A few thoughts and highlights (maybe you wan’t to compare them to 2010 and 2009):

Of the novels I read this year, The Instructions is the one that was least talked about that really deserves to be more widely read. Staggering in ambition, Adam Levin’s debut novel achieves in ways that, I felt, push contemporary fiction forward. (Than again, maybe I just really like books about child prodigies.) I also previously wrote about the fact that The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet was so good I bought extra copies to hand out to people (but mention it again in case you are looking for another child prodigy book that is absolutely incredible).

Though I only finished it two nights ago, Miranda July’s It Chooses You is a remarkable tome that documents (among other things): interviews with people selling stuff in the Penny Saver, writer’s block, tadpoles, a talking cat named Paw Paw, how to anger Don Johnson, and an ailing amateur actor with a penchant for writing dirty limericks for his wife. It’s a charming and affecting book that is worth reading regardless of your appreciation for July’s fiction, art, or films.

Not a big year for me for BSRAYDEKWTDWT or for poetry. However, I found Anne Carson’s Nox to be a thoughtful and powerful elegy that plays with form and text in ways that push at the limits of genre.

Though not usually one to read much science fiction, I found that in the second half of the year, I read four different books that deal largely with commerce and capitalism in virtual worlds. The role of gold farming, nostalgia, and free-will seeped in these texts that ranged from geared toward young adults to philosophical examinations of love and freedom within virtual spaces. Similarly, two different books I read dealt thoughtfully with the role of time travel and human connection. (And the way I ended up reading When You Reach Me may or may not have anything to do with time travel and alternate realities, depending on if you ask Ally, Peter, or Anni)

Though I perhaps initially picked it up because it relates to my research purposes (and because Cathy Davidson is an amazing blogger), Now You See It is one of the most fascinating and accessible books I read this year. I hesitate to offer any other description of the book other than to say that it changes the way you think about the way we are changing the way we think.

Summing up a year in pages and texts is a bit terrifying. In counting out each book and categorizing the handful that are willing to be categorized, I essentially trace out my own book-reading mortality. For example, if I average between 80 and 110 books a year from now through the future, I can get a reasonably close approximation of the number of books I’ll be able to read in my life. And when it becomes clear that there are only a finite number of books left for me to have time to read (let’s generously say 4500 books for the sake of argument), it makes choosing each book feel like an ever more precious decision. Do I really want to waste one of my remaining choices with a mass-market paperback? Or even worse, do I dare go back and read an old favorite? In many ways, choosing to be undiscerning and blissfully ignorant of the remaining number of books I’ve left to read is much more comfortable than essentially “measuring out my life in coffee spoons.”

Snooze-Buttons and Marginalia: Simulating Humanity

A recent conversation with Ally upon waking up from a nap:

Ally: Did you know when I tried to wake you up you said, “Can you pretend I hit the snooze button”?

Antero: Really? I did? So what did you do?

Ally: I came back ten minutes later to wake you up.

Antero: That’s amazing: A snooze button simulates the human action of snoozing. You basically simulated a simulation of a human action.

All this functions as a round-about introduction to the fact that I only now discovered that The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet has an iOS app. And it looks pretty cool. For a book that’s already pushing the general limitations of a printed page, it is exciting to see the text moving in even more directions.*

What I find troublesome, though, is the idea of tangible marginalia as a feature in the app. As the painstakingly detailed portions of Spivet’s notes now move beyond their geographically named “margin” to take center stage on the app, I wonder if the net gains of such features outweigh the losses. In effect, the process of reading an invigorating text like T.S. Spivet is in holding a book and seeing book-like conventions convey emotion, empathy, and humor in congruity with the main, dominant text.

Like a snooze-button simulacrum, the digital marginalia now mimics an analog mimicry of traditional human actions of annotation and transcription.

 

* I should note this was discovered belatedly as a friend on Twitter only now points me to the direction of Larson’s blog and homepage. [A movie adaptation of Spivet in the works!? Dios mio!]

Reading Updates

1. I’m having a problem with representation and race in Habibi. It is an extremely beautiful book but in terms of narrative and romanticizing the other, it’s problematic.

2. I am extremely impressed with Seven Days in the Art World. Only picked it up after reading through the controversy surrounding the book. As an outsider, I appreciate this look at the modern art world much more than the slightly tabloid-ish $12 Million Shark.

3. Lightning Rods is great. I wish more people were reading DeWitt’s book so we could talk about it.

4.  I’m somewhat using Goodreads. Just like everywhere else, I’m anterobot over there.

Wonderstruck – A Kids Book About Curation (and Other Stuff)

I’ve just finished reading Brian Selznick’s Wonderstruck.

The book’s title is an apt approximation of how I felt by the end of the 600+ page book. Selznick’s mixture of images and text is unlike anything other writers are doing. In Wonderstruck, he extends his unique storytelling technique by offering parallel narratives that cross in ways that elevate the emotional depth of the work.

Currently, I’ve been working on a chapter of my dissertation that, in part, looks at youth as curators and the transformative possibilities of this role. By taking ownership, labeling, collecting, and displaying ephemera within their communities, my students help guide a collective consciousness for their peers that establish opportunities for social improvement. The act of curation is a liberatory one. Or at least that’s what I’m arguing so far.

Wonderstruck finds its protagonist desperately holding onto the artifacts that make up an unclear past in search of meaning amongst them. Selznick’s narrative illuminates the personal  power of curation and imbues it with the same sense of wonder that I attempted to achieve in the ARG I created. The book opens up paths of discussion that I’d love to someday host with students.

Though its written for junior readers (Ally has just clarified for me that it’s “JFIC”), Wonderstruck is a book that–like his previous book The Invention of Hugo Cabret–should be read by just about anyone. And as much as I’m looking forward to the Scorsese adaptation of Hugo Cabret this Christmas (the trailer looks pretty great), I feel like Selznick’s books deserve to be picked up and experienced page-by-page.