Book Haul

Mary Gaitskill - Bad Behavior
Ford Madox Ford - Conrad
Henry James - Selected Short Stories
Louis Bromfield - The Farm (with a postcard from 1961 tucked inside)
Joyce Carol Oates - Telling Stories: An Anthology for Writers
The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction
Christopher Pike - Weekend, Remember Me, Bury Me Deep, Master Murder
Joan Didion - Play It As It Lays, Salvador, A Book Of Common Prayer

I stood amongst the seemingly endless rows of books, a full basket of them at my feet, and sent J a text: "I'm either in heaven or in hell right now."

Just half an hour before, I'd received a message from a friend about the Friends of the Library book sale happening in the next neighborhood over. I raced through the end of my work day and zipped over to the building, a sizable warehouse next to our local hardware store. Room after room of used books, aisles dotted with local browsers. The two women browsing the African American section for biographies, the 20-something boys in skinny jeans discovering Korean pop amongst the foreign records, the teenaged girl considering an Alexander Dumas, the old bearded man in a skull cap clutching a fabric tote and squinting at high shelves. Hunters like me, I thought.

"Can I help you find anything?"

"No, thank you." I reshelved a fiction anthology I'd been flipping through. "But I wish you were here longer than this weekend."

"Oh, we're here every Wednesday!"

My heart skipped a beat. One thing I miss about living in New York is spending hours disappearing into stacks of used books, trying to find that one elusive title that speaks to you. Read me. Own me. I'm cheap. I missed that hunt. I wasn't sure anything I was looking for would be here, but then like a gift there they were: the Christopher Pike books I've been craving as candy comfort. The Didion novel — a 1978 Pocket edition no less — I had wanted to revisit to inspire something I'm trying to write.

The Didion book appeared suddenly like a gold nugget in the bottom of a pan of gravel. I'd already found a trade paperback Play It As It Lays and a hardcover Salvador — books I'd lost to the move or to lending — and wondered to myself why you never see mass market copies of any of her books. And then, just as I was about to leave, there amongst the John Updikes and James Micheners, ragged by thumbs and bent at the spine, she appeared before me. Take me, I'm yours.

One hour and twenty dollars later, I was walking buoyantly to my car with a bag full of books. What was lost had been found. The snows had dusted the streets; my car door cracked with ice as I opened it and called J to tell him I was heading home. "I'm so happy," I said to him, my words collecting in a jolly frost, cheeks flushed from the hunt.

© Zan McQuade. All rights reserved.

The Scariest Books

Now that we live in a house where the walls are glass and the forest surrounds us, now that it's October and the chipmunks and squirrels are rustling spookily in the fallen leaves, I have the insatiable urge to terrify myself. I don't know if this makes me a sucker for some Vincent Price-esque marketing plan, tempted by plaster busts of victorian vampire ladies for sale at Home Goods and candy corn at the register, but a good fictional scare is what I want, and darn it if I'm not having the hardest time finding it among my shelves.

On Sunday, I read Shirley Jackson's (out of print) Hangsaman in one sitting, wooed by the fifties book jacket promise of suspense, only to discover it was more psychological drama than supernatural thriller (though there were two suitably creepy scenes that had me looking over my shoulder even as I read in the backyard in full daylight), and was only the tip of the Shirley Jackson nightmare genre, which I deeply envy you if you have yet to explore. Unsatisfied by a few spooky scenes at a women's college, I took to the internet and asked:

I received several responses on Twitter and Facebook, many of which I'd already read. Then I remembered that I had put together a list last year of the titles that scared me best, along with an explanation of what I love in a good spine tingle. I'll reprise the list here and add suggestions I received from friends and in the comments:

My original list:

Shirley Jackson - The Haunting of Hill House
Nicola Barker - Darkmans
Haruki Murakami - A Wild Sheep Chase
Jules Verne - Journey To The Center Of The Earth
Flann O'Brien - The Third Policeman
Alasdair Gray - Lanark
Mark Z. Danielewski - House of Leaves (seconded by @jessicaxmaria)
Elizabeth Bowen - "The Demon Lover"

Suggestions I received from others that I've read and can endorse:

Stephen King - It
Shirley Jackson - We Have Always Lived In The Castle (via Paris Review)
Sarah Waters - The Little Stranger (Hanne T)
Daphne du Maurier - Rebecca (Hanne T)*
Chuck Palahniuk - Haunted (Jenny G)

Suggestions I have yet to read:

Stephen King - The Dark Half (Sam)
Gillian Flynn - Sharp Objects, Dark Places (@xtop)
Angela Carter - Burning Your Boats (via Paris Review)
Guillermo del Toro & Chuck Hogan - The Strain (@CMYKaboom)
Tana French - In The Woods (@JunkyardArts)
Ira Levin - Rosemary's Baby (Tracie)*

And I realize at this point that I'm repeating myself, but James Hynes' list and Matthew Baldwin's list are worth investigating too. 

What am I missing? Does this need more Bram Stoker and Poe? Clive Barker's Weaveworld, anyone? Let's make the definitive list and all hide under the covers with our flashlights.

UPDATE: Jessica has posted a fabulously frightful list at lovelyish, and the aforementioned Matthew Baldwin is dedicating October to getting people into Lovecraft. Based on his recommendations, I read "The Dunwich Horror" the other night and was subsequently forced under the covers by a squirrel landing on the roof, that's any indicator.

*Denotes title was added after the original post

The Book I Want To Read Next

The action takes place on the edge of a forest. In a forest. In a loft apartment on Broome Street with a phonograph in the corner and a single flower in a bud vase on a wooden table. On a farm just after the hay has been cut. At the moment after the rain when the light from the streetlamps is doubled on the wet pavement. Autumn.

Main characters: A young photographer starting to lose her sight. Two young boys prone to adventure. A failed writer who drinks too much. A husband and wife. Slightly older, hobbies include painting (scenes in which paintbrushes are being cleaned) and gardening (scenes in which weeds are being pulled). They are described in a way that makes me picture them like characters in R. Crumb sketches. All hips and frizzy hair. They will share a bottle of wine on the porch. There may be a thunderstorm rolling in as they do. They will not take cover.

No babies. No suicides, nor period costumes.

Involves elevators that stop at semi-darkened floors. The antagonist is described as hairless. There are obstacles. Someone will speak in dialect, his words accented with apostrophes. There may be secret passageways. A small vial of something secreted away into a pocket.

The cover was once white but has now darkened to a warm beige. The font of the title is familiar and bright. The top right corner is becoming softened and rounded under the thumbs of multiple readers, and there is water damage: the first 30 pages curl up and down like a wave. VG, no jacket. The margins are free from notes, but on page 232, someone has underlined a passage twice with a dull pencil.

At some point, a character will cook a stew and enjoy the smell of it stewing. Other smells mentioned lovingly: grass, wet limestone, worn leather, church basement, neck. 

Items that will not be meaningful but will be present: blankets, lanterns, shovels, a mirror with an ivory handle, a butcher block, tin cups, icicles, a Guatemalan bag, a braided rug. 

Non-fiction, of course, carefully and elegantly translated from the Russian. Ends too soon. I will gasp on the final page.

© Zan McQuade. All rights reserved.

Panic on the Shelves of Bookstores

For some reason which the universe has yet to explain to me, despite the fact that as far as I know I do not have any children (yet), I often get added to Mommy Blogger lists. I have about as much to say about parenthood* as a sack of rice, and yet on Twitter I’m added to lists called “parenting” and “mommy bloggers attack.” I receive emails from PR companies about toy recalls, for Pete's sake.

*That is, of course, unless we’re talking about the film Parenthood, about which I have MUCH to say.

And yet I do not have children. I sleep in on Saturdays. I have an apartment filled with scissors on low shelves, shelves that aren’t secured to the wall with brackets. So I know next to nothing about parenting. But what I do know is that as soon as you’re about to have your first kid, you don’t know anything about parenting either, so you stock up on self-help books that tell you everything you need to know that could possibly go wrong with your child. Which strikes me a bit like feeling around in the dark for sharp objects with people shouting at you to turn LEFT! No, RIGHT! Warmer... hot... HOTTER... Ouch.

Enter Alice Bradley and Eden Kennedy, two lovely ladies (and, full disclosure: ladies I consider friends) who have written Let’s Panic About Babies: How to Endure and Possibly Triumph Over the Adorable Tyrant who Will Ruin Your Body, Destroy Your Life, Liquefy Your Brain, and Finally Turn You into a Worthwhile Human Being, the book that reminds us that you can’t have “self-help” without “hel.” (And “elf”?) This book turns on the light in that dark room of sharp objects. Where am I going with this? Let’s let Orson Welles explain further:

Don’t trust dead Orson? How about Mary Roach, who calls Let’s Panic About Babies “brilliant, funny, fabulous. Every pregnant human being should have a copy.” I don’t care if you’re pregnant or not: if Mary Roach calls it brilliant, it’s brilliant.

Do yourself a favor: buy a copy of this book for your currently gestating friends. Buy a copy of this book if you still have working ovaries. Buy a copy of this book if someone has ever pointed at you and shouted “BREEDER!” Or just buy a copy of this book because you like The Breeders!

(Seven dollars and seventy-two cents if you click on that link above. I spend more than that every week on cheese. Which, apparently, if eaten unpasteurized whilst pregnant leads to babies being born with seven eyes. It’s true. I read it in a book.)

* * *

While I’m here and pointing you towards things I think you should read, I thought I’d let you know about the short-term future of this blog. I’ve started to feel like blogging has become very insular. Like I’m shouting into my hat. Tumblr has felt more satisfying because it’s a better forum for discussion and sharing. I miss sharing links with you, amazing things I’ve read that you might not discover on your own. In the meantime, two very important projects on my plate have not been benefitting from my full attention, and every hour I spend writing here is an hour less devoted to these projects. (Hint: these projects don’t involve Todd Rundgren, Gidget, or pickling.) As a result, I may not be writing here as much over the next few months, but I’ll try to start sharing again. Beautiful things I’ve read, hilarious things, ponderous things. These things will often appear without my own commentary; perhaps just a little babbling brook of excerpts. Stay tuned, boppers... 

© Zan McQuade. All rights reserved.

2010 in Reading

It's strange to think that this little corner of the internet started out more or less as a place to talk about books: books that were fighting for my attention, the relationship between my own nostalgia and Somerset Maugham, the literary events I once had the energy to attend in my wilder days. In four years it's become an entirely different beast, a very sloppy and lazy beast with an increasing reliance on photographs and only a passing whiff of the books I tuck into my bag every day. This year was so chock full of extracurricular goodness anyway that -- apart from the two readings where I made googly eyes at David Mitchell -- reading (and readings) took the back seat. I started more books than I could finish, but of those I did finish, I wanted to share with you ten in particular that I would count as favorites in 2010.

(This all stems from a latent desire of mine to be asked to contribute to surveys like these, which in turn comes from the Jimmy Rabbitte bathtub interview. Nobody asked, Terry, but I'm going to tell you anyway.)

Of my five favorite books published in 2010, three were about music. Patti Smith's award-winning memoir Just Kids, the story of a friendship and an artist discovering herself, caused me to view her music in a whole new light. Then there was A Wizard, A True Star, Paul Myers' in-depth look at Todd Rundgren's years in the producer's chair (where he helped shape XTC's Skylarking and Patti Smith's Waves, among numerous other needle-worn albums), as well as Jennifer Egan's complexly constructed novel(?) A Visit from the Goon Squad, about aging musicians and their relationship with the passage of time. The other two books both had their own issues with the passage of time, featuring characters on the hunt for immortality: Scarlett Thomas's Our Tragic Universe, which inspired me to write about heroes, and Gary Shteyngart's Super Sad True Love Story, a book I haven't even finished yet, but which I would have included on this list based on the first chapter alone.

(l-r: Just Kids by Patti Smith, Our Tragic Universe by Scarlett Thomas, A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, A Wizard, A True Star by Paul Myers, Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart)

It was also the year I got to know Dawn Powell through both her collected letters and her novel Turn, Magic Wheel, a cutting and witty portrayal of 1930's New York arts society. I also finally read Mary McCarthy's The Group, a juicy book that friends have been recommending for years. There were also some live ones. I first heard of C.E. Morgan thanks to the New Yorker's 20 Under 40 list, and when I discovered she was born in Cincinnati on the very same day I was taking my first breath just an hour north, I felt compelled to read All The Living, her short novel about a woman in Kentucky whose finds solace in a church piano. Thanks to the praise of several friends, I picked up Kevin Fanning's How I Learned To Love You From So Far Away, a self-published chapbook of stories about our relationship with technology, and it had me rethinking every picture I take of a sunset. Finally, 2010 was the year I would read Ford Madox Ford's perfectly crafted novel The Good Soldier and come to realize exactly why this is the book Joan Didion re-reads each time she starts writing a new novel.

(l-r: The Group by Mary McCarthy, Turn, Magic Wheel by Dawn Powell, The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion by Ford Madox Ford, All the Living: A Novel by C.E. Morgan, How I Learned To Love You From So Far Away by Kevin Fanning)

And just so I'm not leaving the rest out (I never finish a book I'm not enjoying to some extent, unless it's for a book group), a complete list of all the books I read in 2010 can be found on Goodreads.

What did you read and love in 2010?