A Valentine's Day Letter to Gianna

Dear Gianna,

Gianna, where has our love gone?

It's that time of year again when your girlfriend texts me looking for gift ideas for you on that day for lovers and then refuses to accept "Zorro, gift wrapped" as a legitimate suggestion. It's also a time to reflect on my state of loneliness in this cruel world. You used to at least fake-attempt to find me a companion to suffer through the world's miseries together. You don't seem to care at all anymore. And I'm so lonely! I should just give away the cat and end this struggle against my existential angst. Gianna, I know that your girlfriend says that you wouldn't want a cat for Valentine's Day, but he's a special cat.

Since you want me to suffer alone, I decided that I should embrace my solitude with the appropriate Friday night, Valentine's Day reading. I'd watch a Girls marathon on TV, but those ladies have friends. Sigh. I'm a ship adrift. Gianna, I thought you were going to set up an OKCupid profile for me. Maybe this will help inspire you.

Five books to read on Valentine's Day if you're as pathetic as Liz:

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer. Here's the story of a kid who graduates college, gives away all of his possessions, and wanders around the country in search of authenticity. He ends up in a broken down bus in Denali National Park. Spoiler: he dies. Happy Valentine's Day!

I loved Hotel World by Ali Smith. One reason I loved it is because the main character falls to her death in the dumb waiter shaft at the hotel where she works. Yep, she's dead for the whole book. It's similar to The Lovely Bones, but better written.

Sometimes it's good to keep things in perspective. At least this isn't a post-apocalyptic world in which it's just you and your kid wandering down a road and trying to avoid the gangs of cannibals roaming for meat (you). Thanks Cormac McCarthy. You always know how to cheer me up. For one thing, at least I don't have a kid. The Road is a feel good read if ever there was one.

Gianna, why can't you find me a soul mate like the couple in Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go? Their love is timeless, beautiful, and even though they are clones being harvested for their organs in a near future dystopia (spoiler!), they never stop loving each other.

You know what book I love? Revolutionary Road. This is the story of a perfect match. There are so many broken dreams and mounting disappointments, much like our relationship, dear Gianna, that I don't know where to start. Remember when we were happy, before you forced me to settle for motherhood and thought that one more kid, the one I didn't want, would make us happy? I am the Kate to your Leonardo, or something.

Happy Valentine's Day, dear friend.

Love,

liz

Valentine's Day, Liz Style

Even Jane Seymour's incredibly
tacky jewelry is more appropriate
for Valentine's Day
than these (admittedly great) books.

Ah, love. When talking about what we would post this week, Gianna suggested that we feature our publishers' best-selling titles for the lovers' holiday. After hanging up the phone, though, I realized that, having hugged two different people over the weekend (old friends visiting), I am emotionally spent and have little to offer you lovers. I'm going to sit here in my lonely house with my box of Little Debbie Nutty Bars and think about books that tell that special someone that you really, really (don't) care.

Ten Books You'd Be an Idiot to Give to Your Sweetheart for Valentine's Day (But Are Nonetheless Really, Really Good)

1. Revolutionary Road. I love this book and I was even the token fan of the movie, but seriously, if you gave this book to your wife, she'd probably take the dog and move in with her sister that night. Frank and April Wheeler have high aspirations of creative genius until they move to the suburbs, sell out for Frank's boring job and Mad Men-esque two kids, and April loses her acting career and will to live. This book blows a 1.7 blood/alcohol level, and, yeah, (spoiler alert) there's a botched abortion.

2. The White Hotel. D.M. Thomas wrote an erotic tale full of illicit love...between Sigmund Freud's son and a hysterical woman. Freud is the woman's therapist, she may be making the whole thing up, and really it's about the horrors of the Holocaust.

3. The Bottle Factory Outing. I love Beryl Bainbridge, and particularly this book. Brenda and Frida work in a factory that bottles Italian wine. The company has a picnic, and while one of the women is a born victim, the other is a brash fighter who wants to find romance and love. But instead she's killed and stuffed in a wine barrel. (Yeah, that's a spoiler too.)

4. Sophie's Choice. First: Holocaust. Second: A mother has to choose which of her children will survive. Need I say more?

5. The Virgin Suicides. What's creepier--the parents who smother their daughters so much that they begin to kill themselves one by one, or the boys watching across the street who silently witness the family's demise?

Oh my god!
They shot Bambi!

6. The Road. I think The Road is the standard bearer for bleak reads. Cormac McCarthy is one dark dude, so his version of the post-apocalyptic future involves a man and his son walking down a road, hiding from cannibals, and saving the bullets in that gun for the right moment.

7. Where the Red Fern Grows, The Yearling, Old Yeller. Nothing says "I'm not getting laid tonight" like giving your sweetie one of these classics about losing the family pet(s).

8. The Handmaid's Tale. Saunter up to your lady, wrap your arm around her, and then...read her the scene in Margaret Atwood's feminist dystopian novel in which the protagonist, Offred, fulfills her handmaid duty by having sex with Fred and his barren wife. Guess who's sleeping alone tonight! You are, hot shot!

9. American Psycho. Patrick Bateman? He gets off by admiring himself, fixating on the mass consumerism of 80's culture, and, you know, killing women. On the other hand, Christian Bale is naked in the movie version.

The cover is red!
It's perfect for V Day!
(No, it is not.)

10. Push. Sapphire's novel which became the movie Precious is all about an inner city girl learning to read. Also, she was sexually abused by both parents, has a child with Down Symdrome she named Mongo (short for "mongoloid"), and is pregnant with another child. She's on welfare and her mother beats her. And when she finally escapes...yeah, she has AIDS.

What's crazy about this list is that I really like these books (except for American Psycho, which isn't my preferred version of depressing). They are great reads (as long as the date isn't February 14th).

And yes, I'm still single.

New Year, New 30 Day Book Challenge, Day 6

Day 6: A Book That Makes You Sad (well this should be fun....)

no, not sad like this...

Gianna:

Today we are going make you sad. More than normal, if we do it right! We are choosing books that make us sad (yes, Liz has a heart). [Libel is a felony, LaMorte.] 

sad like this!

We are going to have to do some major narrowing down here because any good book worth its weight should make you sad. No, not Nicholas Sparks sad, but truly deep, can’t-get-away-from-it sad.

We have to disqualify memoirs and biographies because where would we begin (or end)? In fact, let's disqualify any non fiction because the first two titles that come to mind are We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families by Philip Gourevitch, and Alex Kotlowitz’s There are No Children Here, a book which is (sadly) still relevant all these years later. Let’s not go down the non-fiction road. [Coward.]

too sad.

The perfect kind of sad

I will stick with fiction. Perhaps I will simply choose the saddest title and go with the classic, The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall. Wait, we just want sad not suicidal. The Road by McCarthy is too obvious so that’s out. I guess any John Steinbeck will do, but how to narrow his work down to saddest? Oh, geez, how about Anna Karenina? Yea, you’re right, it’s too obvious again. In fact lets just stay away from the Russians altogether.

Ok, I have decided that it has to be a book I read at least two years ago, that I still can’t think about without getting sad. I end up with a three-way tie: Dorothy Allison’s Bastard out of Carolina, The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, and Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates.

The "this could happen"
 kind of sad

"can't shake" kind of sad

All three are fantastic books…all three are incredibly sad. Who wants to read these back to back to back with me? Show of hands? Yea, me neither. [Um...Liz?]









Liz: 

Okay, let's face it, I would guess that 98% of the books I love are "sad" according to most people. Gianna already picked several of my favorites for today's post.  No problem.  Let's talk Joyce Carol Oates.  Has she ever written a "happy" book?  I certainly hope not.  

I've decided to pick one of my favorite JCO novels, and the one that follows the life of one of the most tragic lives of the celebrity-obsessed 20th Century.  Blonde fictionalizes Marilyn Monroe's troubled life, making her both a believable, intelligent woman of aspirations, and a woman abused, scorned, dismissed, and destroyed. People sometimes are shocked to learn that Monroe was a book lover, but since all of you reluctant readers of our little blog shouldn't struggle with the idea of sex symbols as bibliophiles.  People are often overwhelmed by my beauty.  Shut up.  Hollywood is beating me down. Elton John wrote a song about me ("Tiny Dancer," obviously).  Marilyn Monroe married a baseball player...and my future husband is Hunter Pence. Marilyn Monroe married Arthur Miller...and I like to sing showtunes to the cat.  The only question to ask now is who is sadder, Liz or MM?

You don't have to answer that question.

Days of Love...and Lack Thereof, Day 2

Gianna:

[Gianna is so filled with love that she picked two books today.  Me?  I'm so full of gas that I decided to pass on the refried beans for dinner.]

Mary and O’Neil

Just as one would suspect of Justin Cronin, bestselling author of post-apocalyptic novel The Passage, he once wrote a love story. In fact, it’s a really wonderful love story with exactly zero vampires (although the body count is moderate).

Mary and O’Neil is a thoughtful book about finding love and solace when you least expect it. At times these interlinked stories can be heartbreaking, at other times sweet and funny. You come to realize pretty quickly that Mary and O’Neil are people you probably know, each nursing private hurt and tragedy. O’Neil has never really gotten over the sudden death of his parents and Mary has yet to completely heal from a pregnancy she chose to end years before. These two teachers meet while working at the same school when they are in their mid-thirties, never thinking that they had yet to find the love of their lives. Cronin flawlessly weaves these stories together, slowly revealing each of their past lives. 

Vaclav & Lena

 

I have written about this excellent book a couple of times; it made my Top 10 of 2011 where I believe I described it as a perfect love story. I am sticking by that statement. Non-asinine love stories are really hard to find, and this truly heartwarming story of two immigrant Russian children will be hard to top AND it's available in paperback Feb 7th. 

Both Mary and O’Neil and Vaclav & Lena are couples you won’t soon forget. They will make you believe in love again. Or make you believe that a romantic book doesn’t have to be silly.

Liz:


Many authors are plumbing the horrors of suburbia in their fiction.  Jonathan Franzen was featured on the cover of Time for his efforts on the subject.  One of the best books on the subject, and one of the best reads of the 20th Century, is Richard Yates's Revolutionary Road.  You know what's romantic?  Reading this book (or watching the intense and unsettling movie starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio) while pregnant.  No, I'm not and never have been pregnant, but I've heard it can mess with an expectant parent's head.  I'm all in favor.


Revolutionary Road is the story of a couple in love, a couple with dreams of returning to Europe, of writing, of living Bohemian lives in the manner of the Lost Generation.  And then Frank, the husband, discovers that he's not as apathetic about his office job as he thought.  He and April, his wife, buy their house in the suburbs on Revolutionary Road and betray their dreams and each other.  This novel is a masterpiece--if you like Mad Men I absolutely guarantee you'll like this book--and it's a chilling unraveling of a fairy tale relationship after April discovers she's pregnant.  

Best of 2011 Countdown: #5

TOP FIVE.  That's basically a guarantee that these books aren't crap, right?

Gianna:

The Storm at the Door
Stefan Merrill Block
Random House

Inspired by Block’s own grandparents (The Story of Forgetting was inspired by his family as well), this novel is in turns inspiring and heartbreaking.

In short, The Storm at the Door is about love, art, and madness. [...like Gianna's feelings for Liz.]  It is also about learning when to let go, and when to hang on. [When Moses was in Egypt land, let this Lizzie go.] It is the story of Katharine and Frederick. Katherine is completely taken by Frederick; he is talented, he is passionate. He thinks he will be a great writer. Yet their lives turn ordinary, and while Frederick’s drinking increases, so does his erratic behavior and inability to support his family.

He is diagnosed with manic depression (which he may or may not actually have) and placed in a hospital known for its famous patients (the hospital is based on McLean, where Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, John Nash, Susanna Kaysen, David Foster Wallace among others were all patients at one time or another – Lowell figures prominently in this book).

Stefan Merrill Block

My original blog about this book is here but I do want to mention again that The Storm at the Door is somehow better than The Story of Forgetting, which I never would have imagined I would say since I am so attached to that novel. But The Storm at the Door is more realized--a bigger, stronger, more mature book. I compared it a year ago to one of my favorite books, Revolutionary Road, and almost a year later I still feel it is good enough to be compared to Yates.

If you like Karen Russell, Kate Christensen, Chad Harbach and of course Richard Yates you must read Stefan Merrill Block.

HERE IS MY ORIGINAL POST:

I am not going to make a huge deal about this book. I am not going to make a fool of myself like I did with The Story of Forgetting. I mean, I really think people thought I lost my mind I talked about that book so much (by the way I totally lost my mind because of that book). Okay. Story of Forgetting was very good. It was excellent. This book is better. It’s more mature and the writing is better. It’s heartbreaking, in fact. Like Stefan’s first book this novel is based in part on his family (his grandparents' marriage), which makes it all the more interesting. Think Revolutionary Road. Yes, it is that good.

Liz:

Habibi

Craig Thompson

Pantheon

I appreciate graphic novels as a format that resonates with some readers.  I normally am not one of them.  My favorite books tend to be ones that I can lose myself within, beautiful writing that lingers with me for days and weeks afterward.  I'm a word person; I actually have a tendency to dream in prose rather than with voices and people (a sure sign that I'm mentally...not well, but you knew that, right?).  I like art, and I like the idea of graphic novels, but I always feel like I can read one in a couple of hours and be finished with it; they normally don't linger with me.  There are, however, certain graphic novels that shift my thinking and open my mind to the possibilities of this medium.  Persepolis was one.  Asterios Polyp was another.  And now there's Habibi, which may be the most accomplished literary graphic novel ever created.

Craig Thompson spent almost a decade creating Habibi, a book that draws from Arabian Nights and the Koran.  It is a story that's timeless and also current, a love story and a family story and a survival story.  A mystical story.  A story of language and beauty.  A story of hardship and sacrifice.

The artwork and script in Habibi is exquisite, and the author actually taught himself Arabic in order to create the book.  It's the story of Dodola, a girl sold into a marriage to a much older man, and Zam, a baby found in a basket in the rushes.  Dodola escapes from her husband when he dies, and the teenager finds Zam and rescues him. The two orphans find refuge in an abandoned boat in the middle of the desert.  Though both must sacrifice greatly for their survival, their love for each other doesn't falter.  The book transcends time to link the harems and adventures of ancient Arabia to the oil-funded urban sprawl of the contemporary Middle East.  "Habibi," by the way, means "my beloved," and that's sort of the way I feel about this wonderful book.  I implore you to find a copy and spend time with it.