Things I Love, Things I Hate, Things In Between: Volume 6

It's about time that I step back onto my soapbox....


Thing I Love: The Girls from Corona del Mar
This first novel by the extremely talented Rufi Thorpe performs the admirable and surprisingly rare-ish feat of writing a literary novel about women's friendship. Seriously, think about it. Take out the "chick lit" and try to list five novels that do justice to this topic. The story here is of two girls, Mia and Lorrie Ann, best friends growing up and into adulthood. Mia is the narrator and recognizable certainly to my world--smart, career minded, more admired than adored. Lorrie Ann is the beautiful, loved cheerleader type. This book allows each girl to be full characters and friends but also gets to the bigger point: how well can we actually know even our best friends? I like this book because it captures the way I feel about my women friends, from the love I feel for them to the conflicted feelings and hurts and occasional frustrations. Also, just announced, The Girls from Corona del Mar was named to the longlist for the Dylan Thomas Prize, an international competition that's pretty lucrative and prestigious.

Thing I Hate: Fireworks
Really? I get why people wait until midnight on New Year's Eve. That sort of makes sense. It makes no sense at all to wait until midnight on the Fourth of July. As a jumpy person, I become twitchy on the firework-related holidays. I am the human version of your spastic dog hiding in the bathtub.

Thing I Hate  Thing in Between: Receptions
Normally I'd rather attempt self-immolation than host a cocktail party, let alone two in one week. Occasionally, though, it's part of my work. This last week I hosted bookseller/book industry meet-and-greet gatherings for a new novelist, Merritt Tierce. Merritt has written a novel about a broken woman working in the restaurant business, and while it's superbly written and a realistic portrayal of the service industry, teen pregnancy, and the repercussions of broken dreams, it's not a book you necessarily recommend to your granny. I really like Love Me Back for its honesty and admire it for being unapologetic. So that's the book, and then there were a bunch of booksellers and publishing people and an author I'd never met. I was a bit anxious. Then the author's car service reservation...didn't exist and she didn't have a ride to the bar where we were gathering. She grabbed a cab and I received this text:

How I know I will get along with someone? Profanity flying before we've officially met. Merritt Tierce is a bad ass and I hope Love Me Back shakes up the literary world when it goes on sale in September.


Thing I Love: Veronica Mars
I admit it: this television series is one of my favorites and I loved the movie that premiered earlier this year. Veronica is my Nancy Drew. Did you know that there's a Veronica Mars book, Veronica Mars: The Thousand-Dollar Tan Line, that's a sequel to the movie and series, and that it's written by series creator Rob Thomas and coauthor Jennifer Graham? Did you know that it's every bit as pleasing as the series? If you like Veronica, you will like the book. Oh, and if you're an audiobook fan, Kristen Bell reads the book. Oh, yeah, and there's another book coming, too: Veronica Mars: Mr. Kiss and Tell, going on sale in October.

I don't ever want to see
your feet. This is the beach
equivalent of foodie pics
on Facebook. Ugh.

Thing I Hate: The Idea of Beach Reading
Of course I'm in favor of the concept of taking a break and reading a book. Feel free to do it in sandy environments. Terrific. Somehow, though, it seems that we are all supposed to go to the beach and sit in the sun and read fluffy books. It strikes me as a New England-y, East Coast, elitist trope, and it leads to way too many pictures of people's feet on my Facebook feed. Got it, you're on the beach. I do not need to see your bare feet for verification. Your toes gross me out. What's so great about beach reading anyway? Why don't we have mountain reading during the summer? At least the mountains are cooler and there's less of a chance of itchy undies. Also, people don't wear thongs in the mountains. I'd love to know how anyone can focus on a novel when a banana slinger strolls by.

Thing I Love: Gearing Up for the Fall
In my mind it's October already. Never mind that it's so hot that my iPod (loaded with audiobooks and living in my car) is too hot to work every afternoon, and I race to strip out of clothing when I walk through my door. (I love to text Gianna and tell her about my clothing choices. She loves it too. A lot. SOOO much. It's the best part of her life. "Lose my number" is code for "Do tell me more.") I'm spending my work days selling books to stores so that they can sell them to customers in the upcoming months. When the extraneous stuff is removed (expense reports, conference calls, airport security lines), I get to help connect readers to books and that can be fun. The new Ian McEwan novel The Children Act, which will spark conversation in particular now that the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court case has brought in religious and legal ambiguities, is coming. A polar exploration nonfiction adventure, In the Kingdom of Ice, hits my maritime history sweet spot. THE NAVIGATOR HAD SYPHILIS. YOU HAD ME AT SYPHILIS. There's a new novel from Richard Flanagan, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, that bring humanity to the darkness of a Japanese POW camp building the Burmese railroad during World War II. Station Eleven: the book that my colleagues and I can't quit talking about. Fall is fun. Fall is crazy and frenzied and chaotic, but it's also when we get to talk about books and know that we made a bunch of people happy for Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Festivus/whatever.

Things I Love, Things I Hate, Things in Between, Volume 4

See? Pi Day is a thing. I stole this picture from my
math nerd friend Mike's Facebook page. His math
nerd wife Elizabeth made this grasshopper pi(e). I hope
this serves as inspiration for Gianna tomorrow.

Thing I Love: Pi Day. Okay, nerds, tomorrow is Pi Day, March 14th (3.14). That means that Gianna needs to bring me pie. I love pie. Lemon icebox pie with the graham cracker crust. A warm peach and blueberry pie. The dutch apple pie with the crumb topping. Pizza pie. Fudge pie. I want pie. I'm sure that Gianna wants to bring you pie, too. You should email her all day tomorrow with your pie orders.

Thing in Between: Sales conference. I attended the Random House fall title sales conference a couple of weeks ago, in Sanibel, Florida. Sales conference is a bit of a challenge for me since it consists of multiple long days around people (even if I get along with those people). I need quiet time every day to keep from feeling overwhelmed. On the other hand, I get giddy when I see lists of books that I'll have the pleasure of reading and selling for the rest of the year. Jhumpa Lahiri. Margaret Atwood. Valerie Martin, who's a personal favorite author that more people should read.

The view at sales conference.
Or this would be the view if we
weren't in a conference room most
of the day.

There's a book on the fall list that I loved called Nostalgia by Dennis McFarland. I can't get it out of my head. It's a novel about a baseball player who chooses to enlist in the army when he realizes that he's having inappropriate thoughts about his sister, but finds out first hand how awful the battles of the Civil War really were. He suffers from what would now be diagnosed as PTSD and is sent to a military hospital to recover. He's worried, though, that he'll be considered a deserter and shot. Nostalgia is an incredible book with terrific characters and a compelling story. Yes, it's a Civil War novel and historical, but it is very much a contemporary story and deals with contemporary issues. The worst thing I can say about it is that you'll have to wait months to read it. Books like this make the fourteen hour days of sales conference absolutely worth every minute.

Thing I Love: A Constellation of Vital Phenomena. This book comes out in May, so the wait isn't all that long. Remember how we were right about The Tiger's Wife a couple of years ago? Trust me, this is the next great literary discovery. Author Anthony Mara is my newest literary crush. First, the book is set in war torn Chechnya. Second, the main character is possibly the worst doctor in the whole country, which makes him particularly compelling when he must convince the woman who is one of the best that he needs a job in her hospital in order to rescue his best friend's daughter. Third, this is a novel about unconventional bonds and the difficult choices people must make in extreme circumstances. Ah, yes, and Anthony Mara is a great storyteller. Add it to your list.  You're welcome.

Thing I Hate: That woman driving down the street over the weekend who was swinging her bra around through the sunroof of her car? Yeah, I pretty much hate her. South By Southwest should be held in August, when it's too hot to breathe and many fewer people will show up.

Thing I Hate: The lap child sitting in the plane next to me on the way to sales conference. I don't think I hate children any more than anyone else (in that I pretty much dislike everyone, old and young), and I think I'm fairly patient with kids crying and fussing. Nonetheless, "lap child" means that a supervising adult controls the child by holding it in his/her lap. In this case, the supervising adult allowed her kid to rub down my leg with a butt wipe (unused, thank god). She allowed her kid to spill water and cranberry juice all over the place. The kid pooped but the supervising adult made no effort to de-stink-ify my air space. And while I have no problem with breastfeeding in public or private, I'm a little uncomfortable with staring at anyone's nipple just four inches from my face. Gianna would argue that this is why I'm still single.

Yep, that's my arm, an iPad, and the wall
next to my colleague Pam's room. She loves
Mariah Carey in the morning. Who doesn't? 

Thing in Between: Mariah Carey. Yeah, normally Mariah would fall squarely in the category of a thing I hate, but in this case my colleague Pam hates Mariah more, so I had to rethink things. Pam happened to have the room next to mine at sales conference. I knew this, she did not. So it was a special treat for Pam to wake  up to "All I Want for Christmas Is You" playing through her hotel wall. I am sure it was a magical moment for her too.

Thing I Love: Did I mention that tomorrow is Pi Day? Gianna, I want my pie.

Things I Love, Things I Hate, Things in Between, V3

Thing I Love: The Random House Telephone Sales Department. Sure, they are my colleagues, but that's no guarantee that I'll like you. Heck, Gianna was once one of my colleagues. This group, though, makes me happy. First, they are professionals who do a great job of selling books to hundreds (thousands?) of stores. Second, they are team players who regularly chip in to help out toward the bigger picture.  If you're in a bookstore and there's a signed copy of, say, My Beloved World by Justice Sonia Sotomayor or the soon to be released Vampires in the Lemon Grove by Karen Russell, there's a good chance that the phones sales team set up that warehouse signing with the author. Most importantly, though, they are HUGE Baltimore Ravens fans, and they've had a great week. Also, they are 1,200 miles away, so I can take this picture:

The Random House telephone sales department, Ravens fans

And re-post it on Facebook as this picture:

I could used Photoshop, but cutting and pasting really points to my dedication
to a prank. They love me. (They threatened me. On a public forum.)

I'm pretty sure that the telephone sales department loves me too.

Marisha Pessl

Thing I Love: Fall books. Yeah, it's barely February, but we're beginning to hear about the upcoming fall books. There's a new novel coming from Marisha Pessl, the author who wrote Special Topics in Calamity Physics, which I loved. The new one is called Night Film, and holy hoo-hahs is it creepy. A disgraced reporter is fairly obsessed with the Oscar winning director Stanislas Cordova, a recluse who specializing in movies that combine Hitchcock-esque suspense and slasher films. They are freaky, and because of the content, they've become cult pictures only screened at secret gatherings. Then Cordova's daughter Ashley dies. Suicide? Foul play? What's going on at Cordova's mansion? What's up with the occult-like clues surrounding the case? And where is Cordova? Marisha Pessl's book has rep buzz already along the lines of what I heard for Justin Cronin's The Passage a few years ago. I flew through it, even at 700 pages. Seriously, 700 pages, three days. Mark it down on your list (and get comfy; it doesn't come out for quite awhile). This book is crazy fun and just creepy enough to keep you reading.

Thing in Between: The Super Bowl. Consider this: people watch the Super Bowl for the commercials, yet this is supposed to be the pinnacle of the NFL season. And those commercials? About 75% of them are less entertaining than an episode of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. Some--looking at you Go Daddy--are incredibly offensive. And the most memorable part of this year's Super Bowl was the power going out. So let's think about this: the game is so dull that a power failure was more entertaining than the "sport." Can we finally agree that baseball is a superior sport? Good. Spring training starts in a week and my team is set to lose 120 games! Go Astros!

More Tina! More Amy!
These two are invited to our
dinner party.

Thing I Hate: Seth McFarlane is hosting the Academy Awards. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler are not. Televisions need selective mute controls. If you haven't heard, by the way, Amy Poehler signed a book deal. If it's even half as good as Tina's, it should be terrific. (Thing I Hate: Amy's book isn't from Random House.)

Thing in Between: I know that I have hoarding instincts when it comes to books, but seriously, how is it that I live in a cruel circle of buying books, buying bookshelves to hold new books, then seeing that I have shelf space and thinking I need more books? I think that I've been hexed or something.

Who doesn't love a list? (Gianna)

Thing I Love: Book lists. Make a list and I'll read it. What did you read last week? I want to know. Also, I love that Gianna hates making lists. Torturing Gianna is a pleasure unlike any other. She whines quite a bit. I haven't suggested we tackle the Modern Library List, yet. She has it so good.

Things I Love, Things I Hate, Things in Between, Volume 2

Thing I Love Immature Humor.  Let's say that you're pals with Gianna, and let's say that the head of the CIA resigns due to an extramarital affair.  Even better, Book Land is involved because the woman of the night happens to be the good general's biographer.  And then you get an email from Gianna that asks if the lady's book about General Petraeus is really called All In.  And you know that Gianna is snorting as she reads the story in the Huffington Post.  It's a lovely way to end a busy work week.

Thing I Hate Contested election results.  Forget Florida.  How is it that Gianna is winning our Liz vs.Gianna poll on Facebook?  Well guess what?  Book Land is not a democracy, and the correct answer is always Liz.  Or at least the correct answer is always Liz as long as Gianna wants me to continue to correct her punctuation.

Thing I Hate Jellyfish.  I think I'm supposed to find them beautiful, but other than the amazing drawings by Ernst Haeckel from Art Forms in Nature, they just look like floating wounds to me.

Nasty.

Lovely.

Yes Jhumpa, you are allowed
to write books for me.

Thing I Love Fresh manuscripts.  Every Thursday, the Random House sales force receives an email listing all of the manuscripts posted in the last week.  Often these emails are the first hints the sales team sees of the books we will be selling months to a year from now.  And sure, we're surrounded by books and assigned reading all the time, but I never get tired of the possibility of new, great books that I'll have the opportunity to read and then share.  Here's the entire email I sent to a colleague last week:

Subject: manuscript                                        

Two words: Jhumpa Lahiri.
Squeeeeeeeeeeeee!!

It looks like there's a new Jhumpa Lahiri book for the fall of 2013.  That makes me happy.

Thing in Between. Cookbooks.  It's no secret that I don't like to cook.  Those people out there who read cookbooks for pleasure?  What the hell's wrong with you?  Do you need some reading recommendations?  Because we're here to help.  That said, I'm not averse to the joy of someone else cooking for me, which is why I'm giving copies of The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook to several friends.  One of my friends has been treating me to recipes from the SK blog for years, and my colleague Stacey has been making treats for her family and fellow telephone sales reps.  I'm pretty sure that she's going to send me cookies, and if you send me cash, I'll see if she'll cook for you too.  (No refunds.  No guarantees, and if you're Stacey reading this, no profit sharing.)

Thing I Love Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan.  The newest Ian McEwan novel goes on sale this Tuesday, and it's one of my favorites of the year.  Here is the Booker Prize winner and author of Atonement playing with the classic spy genre.  During the tedious part of the Cold War, 1973, a young woman is recruited by MI6 to join Operation Sweet Tooth.  Her mission: find susceptible writers and convince them to write pro-capitalist literature, thus combating Soviet pop culture propaganda.  Serena, our protagonist, finds an aspiring writer and convinces him that he's won a literary prize that will allow him to quit teaching and write full time.  She acts as his contact with the fictitious foundation, and eventually they fall in love.  Of course, their whole relationship is based on lies.  This is what McEwan does best--twisting characters through impossible scenarios and betrayals.  Good stuff.

Thing in Between Movie adaptations.  It's a bit cliche at this point to say that the book is better than the movie, even if there are instances when it's not true.  (The movie of Terms of Endearment was better than the book.)  This fall there's a movie version of my favorite book, Cloud Atlas.  I haven't decided if or when I'll see the movie, but regardless of the movie's quality, the publicity surrounding it has moved the brilliant novel onto the bestseller lists.  Here's a novel that takes some work--it's no young adult book masquerading as adult fiction, and structurally it's a challenge--and here it is selling all over the country.  That's something to celebrate.

Things I Love, Things I Hate, Things in Between (A New Series?)

Liz here.  So Gianna's computer is on the fritz (What can I say?  She bought a Mac....and....cue the hate mail!) and she can't send me the blog post she was supposed to send me a week ago.  She's sorry.  Really.  And it's Monday, and a government holiday, and I'm in a bit of a mood.  My head's a bit all over the place.  I thought I could wrap my brain around my brain by trying to categorize the random thoughts floating around in there.

We love Allison Janney. 

Thing I Love
Allison Janney.  Why?  I thought of her because the movie adaptation of The Hours is on TV right now and she was one of the subtle reasons I was able to tolerate this movie even though I loved the book too much.  And then I started thinking that AJ was also in the movie adaptation of The Help, and The Ice Storm in which she hosted the key party.  Also, she was C.J. Cregg on The West Wing, and she's tall.  What I'm saying is that I wouldn't protest if Allison Janney played me in the made-for-TV version of Liz and Gianna's Adventures in Book Land.  Gianna would play herself, of course, and since I think she has a massive crush on Janney, the TV version of our blog might be steamier than the real life one.

Thing I Hate
Insurance companies of all forms.  Back in August, my air conditioner broke on a Saturday and in the space of two hours my house temperature rose to 90 degrees inside.  I couldn't move Zorro away from the fan.  I called an air conditioning repair service and they fixed the broken motor.  This morning, when I finally got around to calling the home warranty company with whom I have a policy since I just bought my house in May, they refused to reimburse my $700 because I didn't call them first.  Go to hell, American Home Shield.  And yes, this is why I was in a bad mood today.

Thing I Hate
Doorbells ringing unexpectedly when I'm in the bathroom, unless...

Thing I Love
...the guy ringing the doorbell is an incredibly good looking man registering voters on behalf of the Democratic Party.  If all things between the parties were equal (and they certainly aren't), I'd vote Democrat based on the beauty of this guy.  I needed to update my registration anyway, so I gave my address and phone number to Mr. Beautiful.  If he "forgets" to turn in my form and then decides to swing by later to personally apologize with a backpack full of books on his shoulder, a tub of ice cream in one hand and a case of Diet Coke in the other, I will open the door again.  Why isn't E.L. James writing this fan fiction?  I am going to imagine that Mr. Beautiful is a grad student majoring in library science too.

Thing in Between
I'm currently reading a book called Dora: A Headcase by Lidia Yuknavitch.  It's a novel that takes Freud's classic Dora case study and turns it on its head, turning Dora into the master observer/analyst/subverter of norms by making her a teenage girl intent on messing with the mind of her therapist.  I loved Yuknavitch's memoir of her train wreck life, The Chronology of Water, and I think her writing is seductive.  And normally I can't get enough of mental illness as a theme in literature, but I haven't decided what I think of this book.  The Dora character is a fascinating and sometimes hilarious mess, but she's maybe too much of a teenager for me to tolerate.  When did I become this person?  I think I missed my teenage rebellion stage in reading, and diving into books like The Catcher in the Rye after a certain age makes them seem...trite? Whiny? Mean-spirited?  But Yuknavitch is an incredible writer and I am sucked into her story in spite of my ambivalence to the character.

Thing I Love
An unreliable narrator.  Dora, she certainly can't be trusted, particularly regarding her impressions of Sig, her analyst.  And I read The Talented Mr. Ripley last week and there's a book I can get behind.  Ripley is a most compelling sociopath.  Did you know that Ripley writer Patricia Highsmith was born in Fort Worth?

Thing in Between
Keira Knightley.  The actress has become the queen of the literary adaptation to screen, including this year's adaptation of Anna Karenina, which I will watch because Tom Stoppard (the guy who wrote the play Arcadia and the screenplays for Shakespeare in Love and Rosencrantz and Gildenstern Are Dead and Enigma (if you've never seen this smart thriller starring Kate Winslet, you've missed a gem) and Empire of the Sun (Christian Bale's first film)) wrote the screenplay.  But I'm talking about Keira here.  In the last ten years, Knightley has starred in adaptation of Pride & Prejudice, Atonement, Silk, The Duchess, Never Let Me Go, A Dangerous Method, and now Anna Karenina.  My problem, though, is that while some of these were good movies, Knightley is never the thing about them that stands out as remarkable for me.  Take Atonement.  I very much liked it, but I remember thinking that the little girl in it was incredible, and the cinematography would win an Oscar, and that I love a Phillip Glass score. Oh yeah, and Keira Knightley was in it.  Oh well.  I don't loathe her with the ire I generate for Kirsten Dunst, but I'm not seeking out her name in the credits.

The latest bookshelves
at my house are pipes.

Thing I Hate
I never have enough bookshelves.  I am reaching hoarder status with the books.  I think I have a problem.  I perform Google image searches of bookshelves and then drool.  Gianna's planning an intervention, and I just hope that Mr. Beautiful the voter registration canvasser comes along to convince me that I have a problem.

Thing I Love

More pipe bookshelves
at Lizzy's house.

The first real cold front swept through over the weekend and for a few blessed days, at least, the temperature is down in the 50's at night.  I love love love a cold tile tub filled with steaming hot water, a book in hand, and a long, long soak.  I'm often asked my opinion on the e-book revolution in the publishing industry, and my biggest problem with e-readers is that they aren't conducive to bathtub reading and I refuse to give up my baths.  So if you follow my reading on Goodreads and wonder how I can read multiple books at once, here's the deal.  I have the audiobook I'm listening to in the car.  I have the manuscript I'm reading on an e-reader for work.  And then I have the book I'm reading in the tub. I love my tub.

Nothing beats a bath and a book.

Thing I Hate
Recently a statistic was released that stated something to the effect that 55% of adults read young adult or children's books.  When I was a kid, I couldn't wait to read adult books, so I really don't get this trend.  I'm not saying that young adult fiction is bad; I'm saying that there are thousands upon thousands of books published every year that are age appropriate for a thirty-five year-old and I don't see what s/he gets out of reading books intended for fifteen year-olds.

Thing I Love
Baseball playoffs.  Go Orioles!  Go Giants!