May 17, 2013 at 4:47 am (anthologies, Books, Conversations, Family, Recommended, Surprises, Traveling)
Tags: discoveries, Filipino writers, Just published, pets, plans, praise, Publisher's Weekly, short story, travel
Self got another rejection, this from The Collagist.
Did she ever share with dear blog readers that Manila Noir got a REALLY good review from Publishers Weekly? Yay! Big, big shout-out to Jessica Hagedorn, for doing such a smart job with the anthology (and La Hagedorn has a new story in it, too)
She bought a greeting card (with dolphins on the front) to give to son on Saturday, after his graduation ceremony at Claremont.
In honor of the occasion, today self delivered The Ancient One to the pet hospital, where she will board for the weekend. Self drove so slowly that at least two SUVs honked her. But never mind! The Ancient One has a tendency to car-sickness. She kinda let her bladder go all over self’s jeans (the only pair of jeans self has left, because four were in the suitcase that got stolen in Venice) when self was carrying her down. Despite smelling like pee, self made herself wander the San Carlos Farmers Market. This you can do in America: she’d never dare wander Bacolod smelling like pee, but here no one gives a hoot. It’s so much less stressful.
Because self and The Man have junkers for cars, every time we go south, we must rent. And this time, self decided to splurge a little, because she rented a Prius. And Holy Cow! She’s never driven a car that didn’t have an ignition. Only a wee button to press. Plus, there was so much unfamiliar electrical whirring going on, every time she did something (like switch from “Park” to “Reverse” mode) that self felt like she was operating from inside a battery. It was so much fun renting this car, because self was in the wrong line. She picked the shortest line, and only after she got to the front did she learn that she had been in the line reserved for “Executive Members of the Fastbreak Club,” whatever that means. But never mind. Rather than send her to the back of another line, the busy rep actually made the time to get self a nice car, and she even confided to self that she, too, had a birthday in July. “Which makes you a Cancer,” self said. “My husband’s an Aquarius. They’re supposed to be very incompatible with Cancer.” The sales rep said, “My husband’s a Pisces. Is that compatible with Cancer?” “Yes,” self asserted. “Pisces and Cancer go together like white on rice.” (Lordy, just see how self rattles on!)
Anyhoo, The Man is very excited that we will be on Highway 5. Because it passes Coalinga. And in Coalinga there are humongous ranches, including Harris Ranch. Which means steak restaurants. And that’s all he’s been talking about for days.
Today, self was in the Chef Shop in San Carlos and she saw so many fancy kitchen implements. Since son and his girlfriend are moving in together, self decided to give son a call and ask him if he already had a rice cooker. He said he did. So self was quite at a loss for what to get him. She decided to control her impulse to shop, and walked out of the store with only a ceramic butter dish. Pats on the back, self!
Stay tuned.
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May 5, 2013 at 3:49 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, Links, Lists, Recommended, Sundays)
Tags: biographies, book lists, hist, Just published, poetry, reviews, Sundays, Vietnam, war literature, writing process
Below are the books self is interested in reading after perusing the 7 March 2013 issue of The New York Review of Books. Her choices are nothing if not idiosyncratic:
Former People: The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy, by Douglas Smith: reviewed by Michael Scammell (Self admires the title of this book tremendously; she, too, has felt, many times, like a “former people.”)
Now All Roads Lead to France: A Life of Edward Thomas, by Matthew Hollis: reviewed by Helen Vendler. In a nutshell: “Thomas meets Frost in London in 1913, begins (for the first time since Oxford) to write poetry, feels guilty (in complex ways, including the fear of cowardice) about watching others die while he remains at home, decides to enlist, trains as an officer (in part for the higher pay), volunteers for the front, and courts death. When the death arrives (from a bomb blast in Arras) it is both shocking and unsurprising.” Tragic.
Several books about General David Petraeus, reviewed by Thomas Powers:
- The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War, by Fred Kaplan
- The Fourth Star: Four Generals and the Epic Struggle for the Future of the United States Army, by David Cloud and Greg Jaffe
In the course of the review, Powers cites three other fascinating books:
- The Centurions, a novel by Jean Lartéguy, about the lessons learned by French army officers captured by the Vietminh at Dien Bien Phu (“You’ve got to have people on your side . . . if you want to win a war.”)
- Street Without Joy, a “history of the long French failure in Vietnam,” by the French writer Bernard B. Fall
- Hell in a Very Small Place, also by Bernard B. Fall, about “a set-piece battle at Dien Bien Phu in 1954.”
And now, self must get going if she wants to catch the Menlo Park Farmers Market.
Arrivederci, dear ones.
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April 15, 2013 at 1:06 am (anthologies, Recommended, Sundays, Women Writers)
Tags: discoveries, Events, Just published, Menlo Park, Readings, short story, Sundays
Self hasn’t attended a reading at Kepler’s in who-knows-how-long.
It’s been a Menlo Park mainstay for decades. Self knew it first as a small purveyor of paperbacks, in a teensy shopping center off El Camino.
They moved to a much nicer space after son was born, right next to Cafe Borrone. Self gave a reading there for her first book, Ginseng and Other Tales From Manila.
For a while, there were fears it might close. But loyal patrons saved it. Now, the store soldiers on.
There were so many things happening this weekend: the ballet, Zack’s reading last night at the Bayanihan Community Center. Self couldn’t make it to Zack’s reading because the ballet was happening – So sorry, Zack! But this afternoon, when she saw that Tremors (The University of Arkansas Press), the anthology of Iranian American writers that Anita Amirrezvani co-edited with Persis Karim, she dashed over, and was so glad she did.
- Seven readers: six women, one man.
- One rude heckler (He tried everything to disrupt the event: clapping loudly, muttering things under his breath, even belching), unfortunately seated directly behind self.
- A fellow Stanford Creative Writing Fellow, Sharon May (whose story, “The Wizard of Kaho-I-Dang” was set in Cambodia, and told from the point of view of a man).
- And the very charming Anita Amirrezvani herself, whose first novel, Blood of Flowers, self remembered being so enthralled by, and whose second novel, Equal of the Sun, has just been published by Scribner.
And here they all are, post-reading!
Anita Amirrezvani (the tall woman in the center), with the contributors to the Iranian American anthology, TREMORS, at Kepler’s Books Sunday, Apr. 14, 2013
Aren’t they all just radiant?
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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April 10, 2013 at 2:02 am (Artists and Writers, Books, Lists, Recommended, The Economist)
Tags: art, book lists, inspirations, Iraq, Just published, nonfiction, novel, reviews, The Economist
Self has Don Quijote so much on the brain (it’s overdue at the Library: she better hurry up) that she even sees a theme in the latest book list: it seems to be a list of Quijotic Endeavours. After you read the capsule descriptions, see if you don’t agree, dear blog readers:
- A first novel, Ghana Must Go, by Talye Selasi (Penguin Press): A brilliant medical student from Ghana becomes the scapegoat in the death of a 77-year-old “Boston socialite, wife, mother, grandmother and alcoholic.”
- The “agony” of Iraq, described by Toby Dodge in Iraq: From War to a New Authoritarianism: “The collapse of the Iraqi state” allowed ‘ethnic entrepreneurs’ — “political manipulators of sectarian fears – to flourish.”
- An artist talks about his process in The Lost Carving: A Journey to the Heart of Making, by David Esterly (Viking): Esterly’s medium is wood. His inspiration was a 17th century woodcarver who went by the name Grinling Gibbons. When “a fire at Hampton Court Palace damaged a series of Gibbon carvings . . . Mr. Esterly was chosen to recreate” one of them, a “seven-foot-long cascade of fruit and flowers . . . This book is the story of the year it took him to do it.”
And, from The New York Review of Books of 27 September 2012, two very interesting reviews: the first by Jerome Groopman, reviewing God’s Hotel: A Doctor, A Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine by Victoria Sweet (Riverhead) and the second by Ezra Klein, reviewing The Obamas, by Jodi Kantor.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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March 18, 2013 at 5:00 am (anthologies, Books, Links, Lists, Recommended, Sundays, Women Writers)
Tags: Asian American Writers, California, Events, Just published, lists, Readings, Sundays
Just heard about this from the fabulous Donna Miscolta. Self is going, for sure!
Come to the launch for the 3rd of the Heyday series on New California Writing, edited by Gayle Wattawa and Kirk Glaser: New California Writing 2013: Shifts and Rifts.
When: Thursday, Apr. 11, 6 to 8:30 pm
Where: California Historical Society, 678 Mission Street, San Francisco
Tickets: $5 general admission, $20 book + admission
6 p.m. reception will have free tacos, beer and wine!
Readings begin at 6:30. Featured readers: Jodi Angel, Michael Jaime-Becerra, Elizabeth Creely, Chieun “Gloria” Kim, David Mas Masumoto, Zara Raab, Greg Sarris, Stephen Gutierrez, Robert Hass, Kevin Hearle, Sylvia Linsteadt, Donna Miscolta, Juan Velasco Moreno, Keenan Norris
The official announcement is here.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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March 14, 2013 at 7:17 pm (Books, Lists, Recommended, short story collections, Women Writers)
Tags: book lists, history, interviews, Just published, novel, reviews, short story collections, The NYTBR
The “By the Book” interview is with Garry Wills. In keeping with his stature as a heavyweight intellectual, his recommended tomes are mostly tremendously serious books, for example: Through the Eye of a Needle, by Peter Brown; David Balfour, by Robert Louis Stevenson; and The Acts and Monuments, about the upheavals of Reformation England, by John Foxe.
The Fun Parts, a collection of short stories by Sam Lipsyte, endorsed by Currently Famous Short Story Writer Ben Fountain
Schroder, a novel by Amity Gaige (Self realizes she’s already read a chapter of this novel; it was in One Story)
A couple of novels by chick-lit writer Lucinda Rosenfeld, including the just-published The Pretty One: A Novel About Sisters. According to reviewer Emily Cooke, “None of the women have the lives they once envisioned, and they won’t let one another forget it.”
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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February 21, 2013 at 1:37 am (Artists and Writers, Books, Recommended, short story collections, Women Writers)
Tags: book lists, essays, humor, interviews, Just published, memoir, novel, reviews, short story collections, The NYTBR
Short list, because self has to cook dinner tonight! Oh, what to do, what to cook, when to start, how much time to devote to standing before stove, etc etc
The cover of this issue of the NYTBR is a review of Karen Russell’s new collection of short stories, Vampires in the Lemon Grove. Self hates Karen Russell. She and her publisher always come up with the best titles. It’s not fair! Reviewer Joy Williams extols collection to High Heaven. OK, OK, self will read.
Katherine Boo is interviewed in “By the Book,” and she has recently read the following:
- Ben Fountain’s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (Self will overlook how much she detests that title, simply because, after all – well, a recommendation by Katherine Boo. Self means, come on!)
- Junot Diaz’s This Is How You Lose Her (Self also has problems with this title, but – Self! CUT IT OUT!)
- Cheryl Strayed’s Wild (Self’s been itching to read this for several months, and not just because of the title)
- Jeet Thayil’s Narcopolis (What’s this book about, self wonders? She loves the title)
There are other books, many others, self wants to read, but since she is TOTALLY OUT OF TIME, the last books she will mention are two by David Shields: How Literature Saved My Life and Reality Hunger (She likes the titles of both). The reviewer, Mark O’Connell, declares: “Shields seems interested in only those things – works of art, people, ideas – in which he can see himself. This, of course, is as much a device for literary self-representation as it is an advanced form of narcissism” which makes him seem, according to O’Connel, like a “high-functioning solipsist.” Since self doesn’t have time to look up solipsist, but assumes it’s not a favorable thing, she now really wants to read Shields’ books.
Alas! Farewell for the next couple of hours, dear blog readers!
Stay tuned.
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February 14, 2013 at 9:27 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, Lists, Recommended)
Tags: biographies, book lists, discoveries, historical novel, Just published, poetry, reviews, The NYTBR
Whew! It’s been a while since self perused a New York Times Book Review. They’re piling up!
But, anyhoo, the sun is shining, the neighbors’ parakeets are trilling, there is such furious activity in gardens all around self’s neighborhood, she doesn’t feel so alone weeding and fertilizing. Meaning: It is a great day.
So, here we are at last to the reason for this post: the books self is interested in reading after perusing a relatively recent issue (Only three Sundays ago!) of the New York Times Book Review, which she keeps thinking about discontinuing, but never actually gets around to. She renewed for another year in December.
The reason self can blog in the middle of a very busy day is that the list of books self is interested in reading is a very short one. Why, she has no idea. But, without further ado, The List:
- The Inventor and the Tycoon: A Gilded Age Murder and the Birth of Moving Pictures, by Edward Ball. Congratulations to Candice Millard for writing such an enthralling review! Thanks to Ms. Millard, self learned that the photographer Eadweard Muybridge liked to eat “cheese flies, tiny insects that hover around the tops of old cheese and that he used to gather up into packages and snack on as he brooded over his photographs.” Fascinating, absolutely fascinating.
- A couple of books about Christopher Marlowe, including:
- The Marlowe Papers, a biography of the dramatist written in verse, by Ros Barber (just published)
- Dead Man in Deptford, by Anthony Burgess (published 1993)
- Christoferus, by Robin Chapman (published 1993)
- Tamburlaine Must Die, by “Scottish thriller writer” Louise Welsh (2004)
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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January 27, 2013 at 6:33 am (Links, Recommended, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: Asian American Writers, bargains, Filipino writers, invitations, Just published, novellas, short story collections, The Lost Language
And here’s the link, dear blog readers!
It’s very experimental storytelling.
And it’s available FREE for a very limited time (NOT! You waited too long! Now you have to pay $2.99!)
If anyone is interested in reviewing Jenalyn or The Lost Language (more about this collection, below), please contact self so that she can send you review copies!
* * * *
And here’s something else: Because The Lost Language, self’s third collection of short stories, was published by a Philippine press, Anvil, it hasn’t been readily available here in the States. Self has told many people that, if they should chance to be in the Philippines, they should drop by their local National Bookstore or Powerbooks and pick up a copy there. That, or have a visiting relative bring over a copy.
But self has just discovered that Linda Nietes of Philippine Expressions (L.A.-based long-time purveyor of Filipiniana) gets a monthly shipment of books from the Philippines, so if you want a copy, all you need to do is e-mail her at:
linda@philippineexpressions.com
She has a Paypal account.
When self’s first book, Ginseng and Other Tales From Manila, was published, it was Linda Nietes who organized the launch in L.A. And she has done the same for untold numbers of Filipino and Filipino American writers. Really, self cannot thank her enough!
Stay tuned.
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January 10, 2013 at 3:55 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, Links, Lists, Recommended, short story collections)
Tags: book lists, discoveries, Just published, lists, novel, reviews, Russian literature, short story collections, The NYTBR, translation
A disclaimer: Self doesn’t read books that begin when the lead character is five (because nothing sticks in self’s memory before seven or so, so how can it be different for anyone else?) She’s not interested in books recommended by Arnold Schwarzenegger (the By the Book interview). She’s read three books by Oliver Sacks and that is quite enough (which is not to say the books weren’t good, only that self’s reading life is consumed by restlessness, an urge to discover new voices). She doesn’t read memoirs about animals. But she will read anything by Jose Saramago. And any book about exploration. And any book whose author has a Kafka-esque life story (She used to teach Kafka; fortunately, none of her students caught the slight tremolo that would creep into self’s voice when discussing “Metamorphosis”). She eagerly reads debut short story collections (especially when they contain stories set somewhere unexpected, like a nursing home).
Without further ado, here are the reviewed books that self would like to read:
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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