Planning for 2012--The Reading Challenge

With the exception of Anna North's America Pacifica and Justin Torres' We the Animals, I haven't done as much reading as I would like. I'm finally reading The Yiddish Policeman's Union. I was pushed to get going on it so that I could sit in on classes with an11/12th grade English elective. I'm actually enjoying it quite a lot.

I have a lot of books I haven't read. Blame Iowa. Blame my book buying habits. Blame the insistence that I have a job and can no longer lounge about on my couch with a cup of coffee and a cigarette (on those days when I smoked, they were very, very, few) and get lost inside my books. There are so many things to blame but mostly, there never seems to be enough time. I have only knit one completed project this year. One. WTF? So....Next year, I'm knitting and I'm reading, and I'm writing.

Here's the starter list, the first 15 books that I'm going to attempt to tackle. Now, some of them are still in Iowa, some of them might be on their way as I write this. Some, I have yet to purchase.  I'll be adding and scratching off books from the list as I start reading. Since I decided not to join a formal reading challenge,--I couldn't find one I liked--I'm making my own. I'm calling it my: Read 100 Books from my TBR (to-be read) shelf, some of which might be considered "classic"works of literature and some I have not yet bought, Reading Challenge. 


(Feel free to make suggestions)


The Marriage Plot by Jeffery Eugenides
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
2666 by Roberto Bolano
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Endless Love by Scott Spencer
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
Io no ho paura by Niccolo Ammaniti (in Italian, I'm going to be ambitious)
Netherland by Joseph O'Neill
Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
Temple of My Familiar by Alice Walker
Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai


I will also knit one complete project a month. On the docket: Socks, shawls, fingerless gloves and headbands. I will attempt to sell the things I knit.

Wish me luck.

Thanksgiving

This year I was fortunate enough to celebrate Thanksgiving twice. The first was on the actual day with my family in Philadelphia--always a treat, always full of laughter and really, really, good food. The second celebration was with the Airman and his sister's family. I cooked. It was my first time making Thanksgiving dinner and I hope it won't be the last time I do so.


The Menu:

A turkey, named Matthew McConaughey (whose name is really hard to spell), was brined in kosher salt and Cajun seasonings. For roasting, I peppered it and stuffed it with fresh rosemary and sage. The result was a juicy bird with the right amount of saltiness. Next time I think I'll give it another coating of seasoning just for fun.

Green beans with bacon (cooked decadently in bacon fat).

Garlic mashed potatoes.

Mac and Cheese (I was way too conservative with the cheese and apparently afraid of salt because it was good but needed more of both).

Stuffing (from a bag but with some extra yumminess). Not bad. but I've never been a stuffing person and I think it shows in the preparation.

A small roast beast (beef). This actually turned out really nicely. Perfectly flavored--the butter coating I gave it before and after coming out of the over didn't seem to hurt it much either....

And for dessert: My grandmother's sweet potato pudding. (It would usually be pie but there was a gluten issue so I just made it pudding. It's amazing either way.)

The evening was topped off with cocktails at the glamorous TGI Friday's and then The Muppets, which was as good as I expected it to be. Though by the time we made it to the 11:15 showing, I realized that cooking all  day (starting with the 4:30 AM flipping of the turkey), made me very, very tired.

Today I'm taking it easy with a latte, and a good book while The Airman sleeps (he's back on night shift so he sleeps all day and stays awake all night. As someone said to me recently, his Circadian rhythm is all fucked up).

I like these lazy Sunday mornings. Book. Coffee. Breakfast. Someone you love in the next room. I could easily get used to this.

BTW, this is Matthew:

Oh, hey, yeah...I'm here...

Where have I been? In my head I post here all the time. No seriously, in my head I think, "I should put this on the blog." It's very likely that I've convinced myself that think is the same as doing. Like I think about writing letters of recommendation and then I don't actually write them but I convince myself that I've done and, well, yeah.....So, where have been? Let's see. Mostly Baltimore, but there have been trips to New Orleans, Boston, Philadelphia, Delaware, Delaware, Delaware.

Back in September, I went to New Orleans for a conference. It had it's ups and downs. Ups: I was in freaking New Orleans! Downs: I was on antibiotics and had a sinus infection. I basically went to my conference and then went to bed. I did some writing but give me a few paragraphs before I get to writing.

After NOLA, we took some kids to visit colleges in Boston. 'Nuff said. Though, it should be noted that we had an amazing dinner, Mexican/Cajun. Who knew?

The Philadelphia/Delaware trips are all connected. My aunt, my mother's youngest sister got married this past Friday. A few things: Please, don't get married on a Friday, or, if you do, don't ask me to be in the wedding(unless you're family/someone who I really, really, really want to be a bridesmaid for--think carefully before answering this question).

And I straightened my hair for it. 

The wedding was lovely. Not to be overly sentimental, but I can't think of anyone who deserved to get married in such a lovely ceremony more.  And on top of that, I remember being a little girl and wanting so desperately to be in my aunt's wedding (at the time she was engaged to her high school sweetheart who died in a car accident when I was in the 8th grade). I got to put her veil on the evening of the wedding--I can't even tell you how emotional it was. I was thinking of her, her sisters, my uncle who passed away back in 2002, and my grandparents who weren't there. 

I feel bad for The Airman. I'm a bit wedding crazy, now. He knows it, is very patient with me about it, indulges me even. He actually watches Bridezillas and Say Yes to the Dress, with me. He's a bit of a saint that way. When I wake up from being supremely tired from all the wedding nonsense, I'll probably get over it. In the mean time....We're approaching the six-month mark, [Applause, please...Fucking clap. I've never been good at this!]  and when I tell him I'm bored, he says, "You could be doing something like, I don't know writing your novel." When he says this I don't want to slap him, so I guess it's love. I want to slap my mother when she says things like that. Truth.

Did I mention the time he showed up at my house with flowers, champagne, and Maker's Mark? Yeah, I'm really, really, lucky.

So, you wanna hear about writing? I've done some writing. This goes back to my time in NOLA. I spent most of the time I was there sick, like nasty sick. So on the last morning when my head was a little clearer, I took myself over to Cafe du Monde shortly after the sun rose. I ordered a cafe au lait and some beignets and let my powdered sugar fingers do some writing. NOLA is a beautiful city. I can see how many people are inspired by the place. It reminded me of many cities that I'd lived in. Cobblestones like Philadelphia; a city that stays awake like New York;  a rich artistic history (music) like Iowa City (literature); and a people that love their city like Baltimore. I don't know if I could live there, but it was so easy to write there. The words flowed. Pages and pages. I wrote until I had to leave for my flight.

I had a second order of beignets.

Dinner for the Airman

So it's been four months with the Airman. He's still here. That's saying a lot. Anyway. He's a tad under the weather these days so I wanted to do something nice for him. I thought about making what my friend Jen calls "Jewish penicillin" but I went the Pioneer Woman route instead and made shrimp scampi.

Now, my mother makes this dish fairly often and it tastes really, really, good. She also puts about a whole stick of butter in the pot. I can't live like that. I like that my heart beats (fairly) regularly. I used slightly less butter and a dry white that was on the sweeter side. The end result was a flavorful but light dish that I would love to make for a crowd.

Here are some photos.

 

I done good.

In more writerly type news, the date is being set very soon for the first Hampden Writers' Workshop!!! It will be a one day seminar. We are also planning an Open House so that prospective students can meet the teachers!

Hampden Writers' Workshop: Big News!

Hampden Writers' Workshop: Big News!: "I'm very pleased to announce that author Laura van den Berg has joined the Hampden Writers' Workshop! Laura van den Berg’s debut collectio..."

Instead of writing my novel...

I'm blogging. Or thinking about blogging. But I suppose that since I have begun a post and written at lest two sentences, I am, in fact, blogging.

I did have some editing momentum this afternoon. And I actually made it out of the house to get some work done. Though I feel I have been foiled by the internet (the cafe I work out of didn't have internet until recently). The internet and the missing edited pages and the short piece I know I wrote last year about the main female character having an affair with her Ethics Professor while she was in medical school. I know I wrote and I don't know if I can re-write it because the first time it came our so well...I was really, really, angry at men and it came out very well in the fiction. I know I have it somewhere and maybe when I start packing up my house I can take some time to go through the dozens of notebooks and legal pads I have that contain the remnants of my unfinished works.

But now, I'm going to go back to novel writing.

We we we so excited. So excited. Part II

What? There's more? Yes! There is more!

My dear friend Justin Torres has a story out in this week's  New Yorker. I am beyond proud and excited for him. The story is exquisite. I had the pleasure and privilege of being one of Justin's classmates back in the good old day's (or something like that) in Iowa.

Seeing the success of my peers always makes me feel like I too can accomplish big literary things.

Justin also speaks about his work with Willing Davidson, a New Yorker fiction editor. You can read that here.

Lastly, Justin's first book We The Animals (I've read it. It's awesome!) will be out at the end of August. I recently had drinks with a Pulitzer Prize winning writer and we both agreed that "Justin Torres is going to go very, very, far."