Photo Tour: The Marais, Paris

Place des Vosges.

Jewish bakery on Rue des Rosiers.

Rue des Rosiers.

Bookstore.

Jewish Quarter.

Another Marais street.

Twelve Tips for Reading More

My only New Year's resolution this year was to read more so I was excited to see twelve tips for doing just that in my recent newsletter from The Happiness Project. I think numbers 3 and 5 will be most helpful to me.

1. Quit reading. I used to pride myself on finishing every book I started. No more. Life is short. There are too many wonderful books to read.

2. Read books you enjoy. When I’m reading a book I love—for example, I’m now reading A. S. Byatt’s The Children’s Book—I’m astonished by how much time I find to read during my day. Which is another reason to stop reading a book I don’t enjoy.

3. Use TiVO. It’s much more efficient to watch shows on TiVO, because you skip the commercials and control when you watch. Then you have more time to read.

4. Skim. Especially when reading newspapers and magazines, often I get as much from skimming as I do by a leisurely reading. I have to remind myself to skim, but when I do, I get through material much faster.

5. Get calm. I have a sticky note posted in our bedroom that says, “Quiet mind.” It’s sometimes hard for me to settle down with a book; I keep wanting to jump up and take care of some nagging task. But that’s no way to read. Incidentally, one of the main reasons I exercise is to help me sit still for reading and writing -- if I don't exercise, I'm too jumpy.

6. Don’t fight my inclinations. Sometimes I feel like I should be reading one book when I actually feel like reading something entirely different. Now I let myself read what I want, because otherwise I end up reading much less.

7. Always have something to read. Never go anywhere empty-handed. I almost always read actual “books,” but I carry my Kindle with me everywhere, so that I know I’ll never be caught without something to read. It’s a great comfort.

8. Maintain a big stack. I find that I read much more when I have a pile waiting for me. Right now, I have to admit, my stack is so big that it’s a bit alarming, but I’ll get it down to a more reasonable size before too long.

9. Choose my own books. Books make wonderful gifts – both to receive and to give – but I try not to let myself feel pressured to read a book just because someone has given it to me. I always give a gift book a try, but I no longer keep reading if I don’t want to.

And some tips from great writers and readers:

10. Randall Jarrell: “Read at whim! Read at whim!”
11. Henry David Thoreau: “Read the best books first, otherwise you’ll find you do not have time.”
12. Samuel Johnson: “What we read with inclination makes a much stronger impression. If we read without inclination, half the mind is employed in fixing the attention; so there is but one half to be employed on what we read.”

The Girls from Ames Book Club Meeting

Angela Bendorf Jamison, one of the eleven friends chronicled in The Girls From Ames, was our special guest at our book club meeting this month. Angela found us through one of our blog posts and graciously offered to come to one of our meetings. She answered all of our questions and updated us on the girls' lives. We had a great discussion about friendship and how it changes with the various stages of life. It was particularly interesting to get the behind-the-scenes scoop on how the book came together, the publication process and what's next for the group. Angela also posed for a picture with us - she's the second from the right in the back row.

Thanks for coming Angela!

"One rarely gets the sense in Roth that he would throw away his penis if he could."

So. That title is hard to follow. But I've been thinking about this essay by Katie Roiphe for weeks. It's an essay on the "great American male writers" and how they write about sexuality. Basically, she points out that the Great Male Novelists of the 20th century (Roth, Updike, Bellow, etc.) were, in their writing, explicit and misogynist about sex. Sex was aggressive, virile, dirty, and well masculine. It was often uncomfortably intimate. It wasn't sweet.

But this was problematic, for feminists. The women characters in these books were often hated, ridiculed, despite the male characters' extreme displays of physical intimacy with them. So, post-feminism, we moved on. But what happened? When the next generation of great male writers established a collective voice, it was shockingly asexual. Think David Foster Wallace, Dave Eggers, Michael Chabon. Intimacy with women was reduced to, well, cuddling. Intimacy has become pure and childlike. There may be emotional connection between men and women. It might be romantic, but, well -- it's just not very sexy. It doesn't involve the intimacy of true risk-taking, soul-baring sex on the part of the characters. And if it doesn't involve risk - how can it be a genuine emotional connection?

I have some reactions to this article.

1) Hell yeah, Katie Roiphe is right! I feel like I have no interest in reading Roth, Updike, etc. But I do feel this infantilization of adult love that shows up in the books of the writers she mentions, including my beloved Jonathan Safran Foer! How can it be a good thing for sex, or masculinity, to become childlike?

2) But what about the women writers? Where do Shriver and Atwood and Niffenegger fit in? They write about sexual relationships between men and women that don't seem quite so childlike. What alternate perspectives are they presenting? Are they more real? Or more fantastic?

3) There are other male writers Roiphe doesn't mention: McEwan, Perotta, Irving. We have read all three of them in book club. Are they just not "great enough' for her to consider? Because they present alternate, less conservative, and riskier versions of sexuality.

4) She doesn't mention the "pornification" of our culture. Perhaps we don't need to visit the great male novelists for sexual explicitness, because whatever variety of porn you want is everywhere. The barriers were broken by the 60s, and being dirty is just not a big deal. Or maybe since sexual depravity is so commonplace, with internet porn, that level of intimacy is not needed between real people (or literary characters) to get the same effect. That's a little scary.

But I agree with Roiphe that something is lost. There's got to be something in the middle between misogynist and childlike. Just not sure what the next wave of writing will show. Does this strike a chord with anyone else? Would love to discuss at book club!