New Year, New 30 Day Book Challenge

We haven't suffered through one of these Facebook-style list projects in over a year, which means that Gianna is getting complacent.  We can't let that happen. Plus, Gianna loves list projects. They keep her on her toes and give her regular opportunities to make crass comments about my nonexistent social life.  And I need the abuse lest I become too well-balanced.  So here we go.  Want to play along?

Day 1: The Best Book You Read Last Year

Gianna:

I don't know why I agree to do these lists. Liz enjoys making me crazy, and I guess I feel the need to make Liz happy. Maybe 2014 will be the year I refuse to do these Sophie's Choice type of lists but for now...here we go. We will be doing one question a day for the next 30 days.

favorite book of 2012

I really did love Beyond the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo, but if pressed (and I do feel pressed) I would have to say that Jeanette Winters memoir, Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal?, edges it out ever so slightly. I actually kind of feel guilty about it.

2nd favorite book of 2012...

I know Boo’s book is big, bold, and important [just like me!--Liz], but there was something so personal in Winterson’s memoir that my gut reaction is going to pick it as my year-end favorite. That’s it, not going to go back and try to change this later. I’ve made my choice. I guess. 

I will say without hesitation however,  Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal? is the best title of the year. It refers to a heartfelt question that Winterson's mother asked her and in fact, I think it's a question that many parents of gay and lesbians used to wonder (or maybe still do). Normal...no thanks. 

Jeanette Winterson...not "normal"

Liz

What can I say? I am a sucker for the John Cheever-esque family saga. Families broken open in the midst of their American dream lives satisfy my fiction loving soul.  Thus, I'm picking In Between Days by Andrew Porter as my favorite book of 2012 (followed closely by Adam Johnson's The Orphan Master's Son because I also can't get enough of the crazy that is North Korea).  Andrew Porter's first novel is terrific.

Andrew Porter

Living in the middle of Houston (America's center of urban sprawl?), the Hardings are a family starting to unravel.  Patriarch Elson was supposed to be a major player in the architecture community, but by mid life he hasn't lived up to his promise, and he's recently separated from his wife, Cadence.  Their older child, Richard, has just graduated from Rice, but instead of following his writing aspirations, he is lingering at home and working a food service job while attending parties at a professor's house at night.  And then there's Chloe.  Attending school in the East, Chloe is sent home unexpectedly and won't talk to the rightfully concerned members of her family.

This is a story of family, modern life, the rot under surface of "the good life." It's a book about unfulfilled dreams.  Best of all, it's a literary novel with terrific writing that doesn't bog down.  It's a book that's stuck in my head.

Best of 2012: Day 4

Right about now, I'm trying to figure out what Gianna is giving me for Christmas.  I am sure she's debating between Zorro related first aid accessories and a trip to Banff National Park.  It's a tough choice.  Anyway, here are a few more of our favorite books of the year.

Gianna:

Full Body Burden: Growing up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats by Kristen Iversen

Kristen Iversen

The term "full body burden" refers to the amount of radioactivity which can be safely tolerated by a human body through its lifetime.  These are the things you learn when you live downwind from a top secret nuclear weapons plant, as Iversen did. This is a fascinating account of Rocky Flats, the plutonium factory just outside of Denver.

I love talking about this book; it's an absolute page turner and completely riveting. It's what I like to call a ‘holy shit’ book. "Wait, there were barrels of plutonium sitting outside the plant for years and years…and they were leaking? Holy shit! Wait, there is literally tons of plutonium missing? Holy shit!" See?  [Look! Gianna bought Liz a first edition of Mrs. Dalloway, signed by Virginia Woolf in her signature purple ink? HOLY SHIT!]

This book has everything: government cover ups, nuclear accidents, plant fires, poisoned water, birth defects, and cancer. Don’t worry though, all ends well; Rocky Flats is now a wildlife refuge. You can camp there. Have fun.

The Plain in Flames by Juan Rulfo

Juan Rulfo

While not a new book by any stretch of the imagination, it is a new translation with two original stories restored in this version.

I’ve written about this book a bit, but I think it's worth repeating that I had never read Rulfo before, but this short collection is one of the best I have read in years. This book immediately went on my all time favorite list.  

Liz:

Wild by Cheryl Strayed

Sometimes good things happen to good people.  The Random House world was buzzing about Cheryl Strayed's memoir of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail--the anti-Eat Pray Love--months before it was released, and booksellers seconded our enthusiasm.  What we didn't know at that time was that Cheryl had been writing the "Dear Sugar" advice column for The Rumpus anonymously, and that what started as a standard advice column would become wise, compassionate ruminations on love.  We didn't know that Sugar would be revealed as Cheryl, that Vintage would publish the "Dear Sugar" essays as Tiny, Beautiful Things, and we didn't know that Oprah would restart her book club and select Wild as her first pick.  We certainly didn't know, either, that Cheryl would be relentless in her desire to meet readers and sign books.  I think she toured for about a year, all told, and she's hitting the road again when Wild comes out in paperback in 2013.

Cheryl Strayed

What we didn't know is Cheryl, but many of us had the opportunity to meet her in person, and many, many more readers had the opportunity to meet her through her writing.  As detailed in Wild, Cheryl hit rock bottom after her mother's sudden death (a rapid decline from cancer), the break-up of her family support, dead-end jobs, dead-end relationships, and self-medicating.  On a bit of a whim, she decides to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from Arizona to Oregon, alone.  Through mishaps and pains and the drudgery of placing one foot in front of the other, she begins to pull herself back from the edge.  Along the way, she sees beautiful landscapes and meets other hikers and comes to terms with her demons.  And the Cheryl in Wild is, from what I can tell, the real Cheryl--tough, wise, compassionate, and an author for whom we all cheer.  She's good people.

In Between Days by Andrew Porter

I love this novel.  I love this novel so much that I've written about it, like, three times before on our little blog.  Here's what I said one of those times:

Set in Houston (how often can you say that about literary fiction?), Porter's novel is the story of a family imploding.  Long married parents have split, the older son--a recent college graduate who wants to be a poet--is working food service and attending reckless parties at night, and the younger daughter, Chloe, has been asked to leave her college under mysterious circumstances.  The story gets rolling with Chloe coming home and refusing to discuss why she's no longer welcome at school.  Here is a classically told, great novel along the lines of a Raymond Carver or John Cheever, and I'm willing to state it here: one day Andrew Porter will win a Pulitzer or National Book Award.

Andrew Porter

Andrew Porter is a literary writer on the ascent, and my fervent hope is that he'll continue writing so that I can continue raving about his work.  I also sort of hope that he wins major awards so that reputable sources of information discover that we harassed him with our Generally Horrible Questions.  I want a writer to give an interview with Barbara Walters and state that his/her biggest regret wasn't the sex tape, it was the foolish decision to choose between Liz and Gianna (and the correct answer is still "Liz").

Generally Horrible Questions: Andrew Porter

A couple of years ago, I (Liz) discovered a short story collection called A Theory of Light and Matter by Andrew Porter.  I was hooked.  In Theory, I discovered an incredible writer, an old school writer in the best sense.  It didn't hurt at all when I learned that the author lived in Texas, and that one of my publishers, Vintage, picked up the paperback rights to Theory.  Jump forward a year, to sales conference and a dinner with editors at which I sat beside Andrew Porter's editor.  She began to tell me about the novel Knopf would be publishing, and I was bouncing around giddily (if internally).  That novel, In Between Days, lived up to my expectations.  Set in Houston and centered on a family in crisis, it's a marvel of a classic, literary novel--wonderful prose, well-written characters, and a gripping plot.  The parents have split after years of marriage, and their older child has just graduated from college and is searching for himself and his voice as a writer.  His younger sister, Chloe, has been in college in the Northeast, but she is sent home from school and isn't talking about the reasons.  Her arrival sets the novel in motion.  In Between Days went on sale this week, so now seemed like the perfect time to submit Andrew Porter to our horrible questions (might as well harass 'em before they are too big for us and they realize they can say no, right?).

Here you go--generally horrible questions for Andrew Porter:

1. You won the Flannery O’Connor Prize for Short Fiction for your short story collection, The Theory of Light and Matter. What exactly is the prize? Did you win a peacock? What’d you name your peacock?

Skippy is a lovely name for a peacock.

No, I didn’t get a peacock, but I got the next best thing. After winning the award, the University of Georgia Press (who sponsor the contest) flew me to Flannery O’Connor’s hometown of Milledgeville, Georgia to give a reading and visit her farm. The property itself is enormous and pretty amazing. You can see the barn where that famous scene in “Good Country People” takes place, the small house where the immigrant couple in “The Displaced Person” lived, and, of course, you can also see a bunch of peacocks! [...So...you stole the peacock?  That's excellent.]

2. Describe your literary odyssey—how did you become a writer?
Well, that’s probably too long a story to tell in detail here, so I’ll give you the short version. Like a lot of writers, I caught the writing bug in a college fiction workshop. Soon after, I abandoned my dreams of becoming a filmmaker, pursued an MFA at the University of Iowa, and then spent the next eight years or so looking for ways to support myself financially (mostly through teaching) while I finished my first book. It’s not an uncommon path these days, and it certainly wasn’t an easy path, but that’s the one I took.

3. I’ve never read _____________ and I’m so ashamed.
The Road by Cormac McCarthy. My students reference this book constantly in class, and I always feel embarrassed that I haven’t read it. I know it’s a short book, and having read a lot of his other novels, there’s really no excuse other than the fact that I have an eleventh-month-old daughter now and not nearly enough time to read.

For shame!

4. I’ve read ________________ and I’m so ashamed.
I’m going to plead the fifth here! [New rule in Book Land: "the fifth" is code for Fifty Shades of Grey.]

5. Your new novel, In Between Days, is set in the Houston neighborhood of Montrose. What is your connection to Houston and this neighborhood?
I lived in the Montrose area of Houston for one year on two separate occasions in the late ‘90s. I have a deep affinity for that area of Houston, in particular, and still think of my time there, and the city in general, very fondly.

6. On a sales call, we heard from your editor something to the effect that you actually lost your work and gave up writing for awhile (sorry I’m fuzzy on the details—it’s been months since I heard the story). Tell us about it?
During my second year in Houston, my apartment was robbed, my computer and back-up disks were stolen, and I lost the vast majority of everything I’d written up until that point in my life, including a nearly completed manuscript of my first book. I came very close to throwing in the towel at that point, but fortunately stuck with it and (eight years later) finally published my first book. [Recently my house was burgled and the thief/thieves ignored everything except my TV and Wii.  Did you have a note on your computer case that said "the good stuff's in here?"  I'm insulted that my thieves ignored my books and such.]

Andrew Porter

7. You teach at Trinity University in San Antonio. Liz attended Southwestern University in Georgetown. The two schools are rivals to the extent that Division III schools can be rivals. Why does Trinity suck so much?
Well, for Liz’s sake, I wish I could say that it does, but the truth is I’ve loved every minute I’ve spent at Trinity. Sorry, Liz! [I'm reworking my best book of the year list based entirely on this answer.]

8. The action in In Between Days is set in motion when the daughter of a family is sent home from college under mysterious circumstances. Did you start writing knowing what the issue would be, or did it come to you while in the process of developing the characters?
I actually made a conscious decision not to decide why Chloe was sent home from college until I was about ¾ of the way through the novel. I figured that if I knew the answer to this question I’d inadvertently give it away to the reader, so, the truth is, the moment the reader finds out what happened at her college is the same moment I found out myself.

Wrong Grail.
Prepare to age horribly.

9. Liz or Gianna? (This is a question we ask everyone, and the catch is that there is a correct answer. Choose wisely. Imagine you’re Indiana Jones and one of us is your Holy Grail.)
That’s like asking me to choose Lennon or McCartney, Gilbert or Sullivan, Bogie or Bacall. Can we call it a tie? [No.  The correct answer is always "Liz."  You have chosen poorly.]

10. What book(s) changed your life?
Where I’m Calling From (the collected stories of Raymond Carver), The Collected Stories of John Cheever, Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man Is Hard to Find, Crime and Punishment, Drown by Junot Diaz, The Coast of Chicago by Stuart Dybek, and, most recently, all of Maile Meloy’s books. [We love everything about this list!]

11. What book do you think is woefully under-read, and why?

Great pick!

One of my all-time favorite short story collections is Sweet Talk by Stephanie Vaughn. For over a decade it was out of print, but fortunately it was republished last February by Other Press. Everyone who loves short stories should read that book! [And this is a great pick.  Are you trying to make up for liking Trinity?]

12. What do you think distinguishes Houston as a setting for stories?
Personally, I’ve always been fascinated with the history of Houston, in particular the oil boom of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s and of course the subsequent crash. I think the prosperity and tragedy of those years really defined the city in certain ways and also greatly affected many of the people who lived through them. So, as a backdrop for fiction, Houston (and that period of time in particular) has always appealed to me. On top of that, I think the city, in general, is incredibly diverse, and as a fiction writer that gives you a lot of freedom to explore a lot of different types of characters from different cultural and socio-economic backgrounds living in pretty close proximity to each other. Of course, there are many other reasons, but those are just a few.

13. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being “I don’t follow baseball and therefore don’t understand the question” and 10 being “I’m so outraged that I’m in the midst of a hunger strike,” how upset are you about the Astros’ switch to the American League next year? (We’re big baseball fans, so we often ask baseball related questions. Gianna roots for the Cubs and therefore will be in therapy for many, many years trying to come to terms with her unending disappoint, and Liz is a lifelong Astros fan.)
Though I’m a lifelong Pirates fan, and therefore (like Gianna) constantly heartbroken, I do have a fondness for the Astros and strongly believe they should stay in the National League. So I’ll say an “8.” [According to our scale, 8 equates to "Bud Selig is the Anti-Christ."  That's acceptable.]

14. What are you working on presently? Care to give us a sneak peak? I (Liz) am your number one fan! Misery references are deliberate, Mr. Man.
I’d love to give you a sneak peak, but everything I’m working on right now is pretty rough. To be more specific, though, I have the beginnings of a new novel project and also a couple of new short stories in the works.

Don't be surprised if you meet Liz and she looks
like this!  

Thanks so much for the questions and your interest in my work. This has been a lot of fun!

Thank you!  Texas people--Andrew Porter is going to be reading and signing at BookPeople in Austin on Monday, September 10, at Brazos Bookstore in Houston on September 12, and at The Twig Bookshop in San Antonio on September 22.  We don't think it would be inappropriate to dust off the VW van and follow him around like he's the Grateful Dead.  I'm sure he likes tie-dye.

Sale Conference, More Awkwardness from the Land of the Socially Inept

Liz again here.  I returned from Florida and the Random House sales conference late on Sunday, and then have tried to recover and soothe the raving, blood-thirty beast (the cat).  Gianna says that I should post some more thoughts about sales conference.  I'm too scared of her not to follow her directions.

What's sales conference like?

Dr. Seuss hats for all!
Dignity for none!

• There's a lot of sitting in uncomfortable chairs, and for a conference at which books are discussed round the clock, there's never any time to actually read.  
• The bar in the hotel is designated as a hospitality suite, and if you wear your name tag you can drink as much as you want.  There are always a few people who think that gettin' sloppy with the colleagues is a great finish to a day...and there are always a few people who think that spending time in the hospitality suite is its own ring of hell.  
• Every company has its inside jokes and jokesters.  Some are actually funny.  More are not.  
• I always feel sorry for the tourists who are staying at the resort and are surrounded by hundreds of Random House employees.  That said, these people have the pool all to themselves all day.  I did have a view of the pool from my hotel room...so of course I took a bunch of pictures of the people with the man boobs testing the theory of water displacement eight floors below me.  
• Sonny Mehta is there.  Sonny is the Editor in Chief of Knopf.  We follow him into the bookish abyss with reckless abandon.
• Oh yeah, and we talk about a bunch of books, some of which are truly exciting.  

Here's an early tease for a book coming out this fall:

Andrew Porter teaches at Trinity University in San Antonio, and though Trinity is the hated rival of my alma mater, Southwestern University, I set aside petty rivalries of liberal arts institutions with Division III NCAA status (no scholarship athletes) for local authors.  Andrew wrote a brilliant short story collection, The Theory of Light and Matter, a couple of years ago, which ended up winning the Flannery O'Connor Award.  Now he's delivered his first novel, In Between Days.

Andrew Porter

In Between Days echoes John Cheever or Richard Yates, and I mean that as the highest compliment.  Much fiction these days either is post-apocalyptic or else off-putting-ly clever (clever for the sake of cleverness), and while I admire some narrative manipulation, it can also become tiresome.  Andrew Porter simply writes beautiful sentences about normal people in normal times...if one can claim that these are normal times.  His novel is set in Houston and is centered on a family coming apart.  The father, Elson Harding, an architect, has divorced his wife of 30 years, Cadence.  Their son Richard is adrift, still living at home after graduating from college and dabbling at writing poetry.  He's full of angst, naturally.  Their daughter Chloe suddenly has to come home from her East Coast college, though, and the circumstances around her arrival pitch the family into turmoil.  There's a tension here, as well as an attention to detail without getting lost in the details, that makes In Between Days one of my favorite upcoming novels.  I know it's very early, but jot down this title for the fall.  You'll thank me.

That's it from Florida, but here's one last picture for you:

Moobs.

30 More Days Book Challenge: Day 2

Day 2: Favorite Short Story

We're fans of the short form.

Gianna:

Short stories are my favorite format. Not because I am lazy (well…not only because I am lazy), but because I am completely mesmerized by the art. I want to spend a little bit of time talking about some of my favorite story writers and some of the first stories I read before I get to what will surely be an obvious choice for me.

When I was thinking about the first collection of short stories I bought and read on my own, it was – brace yourselves literary snobs - Steve Martin’s Cruel Shoes. Still have it, still love it. Deal with it. But the two stories that really got me hooked on the “stuff” were "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and "Where are You Going ,Where Have You Been?" by HRH Joyce Carol Oates. After reading the Oates, I went oh, so … and forgive me if you aren’t a literary person for using a pretentious book biz term…but I went “ape shit.” Then I read every JCO story I could find. From there it was done. James Joyce’s "The Dead," Raymond Carver (I went through a major Carver phase; shut up), "A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings" by Marquez broadened the stories that I read, Alice Munro remains one of my favorite writers (is she under-read or is that my imagination?), the oh, oh so beautiful The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien (this book takes my breath away – I will forever read whatever he writes – write it down - I am a sucka for Tim). Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri is a favorite. Amy Bloom, though I loved the novel Away, I will always prefer her stories – amazing story writer. Miranda July is insane – so sick with talent – her collection No One Belongs Here More Than You makes this list because she truly reignited my love of stories when I hadn’t read an amazing collection in a couple of years. She made me a believer again. July’s book would make my list of top 20 ss collections. Period. Lorrie Moore is a master and Birds of America is a work of art to the highest degree. If you have not read Birds of America, go buy it. If you have never read short stories, of if you think you don’t like short stories, or if you tried stories and didn’t love them, or if you think you don’t like me [I'm doubting my like at the moment], Birds of America is going to change ALL of that…MOST of that. It’s perfect. It is.

After all that it’s a little, well, awkward to now mention my actual favorite short story is not by Lorrie Moore; it is by Flannery O’Connor. Listen, it’s not easy to pick one O’Connor story, so I may change my mind later. "Good Country People." The thing about this story is you’ve got a woman who you sort of want to feel bad for because she has a prosthetic leg from a childhood accident, but she really is not very likable because she feels and acts pretty superior to everyone around her. She has a PhD and the country folk just aren’t up to her standards. Well, she meets a Bible salesman and she wants to uh… spend some time with him in the barn as the kids say. [They really do say that in my podunk hometown.  The auction barn was the place to party when I was in high school.  And more than one girl lost her virginity behind an auto repair garage.  I'm surprised more babies are named Ford or Mercedes in classy Woodville.  I digress....] Classic ending. Not one of the more gory O’Connor stories, but I would say it's actually her sexiest story. And by sexy there is a barn in the story….how’s that?

PS: Second favorite O’Connor story: "The River" which will break your heart (actually this may be my favorite...see it's hard to pick one. I hate this.)

Liz:

GREAT book.
You should read it.

Many of my favorites overlap with Gianna's.  I've already written of my love for "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" here, and I also think that Amy Bloom is a story genius, particularly with "Silver Water."  There's a chilling, Gothic story called "How Far She Went" by Mary Hood that will make you hold your breath at the end.  Faulkner's "A Rose For Emily" is required reading; I mean, Miss Emily's been sleeping with the corpse of her boyfriend for years.  You can't really beat that.  I love Annie Proulx's collection Close Range, which gave us "Brokeback Mountain."  Nam Le's The Boat and Andrew Porter's The Theory of Light and Matter are two amazing debut collections that declared two major talents emerging on the literary horizon.  Jhumpa Lahiri and Alice Munro are genre masters.

My favorite short story, though, is "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.  A story with Gothic tendencies, a woman's increasing insanity, and feminist relevance?  Yes, please.  (For the record, "feminist," contrary to the current backlash with women who seem afraid they won't land a man, is not a dirty word.  Neither is "liberal."  Moving on....)  A young married woman, struggling with hysteria (depression), is taken to the country for a rest cure.  Her husband positions her in an upstairs room in a house.  The room is decorated with a distinctive, ugly, yellow wallpaper.  As the woman's isolation becomes more and more extreme, she slips further into madness and the wallpaper becomes her fixation.  It's a creepy, compelling, perpetually relevant story.  It's also one that I heard read to me by my mother's students when I was a kid.  Yes, my childhood was screwed up.