Counterbalance

Good Stuff

The Week in Bookish LA is up at LAist and my goodness, this is a great week to be living in LA.  There's Maggie Nelson, Anne Enright, Colm Toibin, Amy Hempel, Russell Banks, Peter Carey, John Rechy, Charles Bock, Toby Barlow, Gayle Brandeis and so much more. You'd think it was book fair week!

I'll be making it to as many events as I can this week and hope to see you out there or back here when I provide blow-by-blow commentary on the events.

This week will also offer readers a glimpse inside my recent silence. Thank you all for your emails - I'm alive and fine and doing well. I've been taking stock, counting my wins and losses Didion-style.  The net: I need - no have - to do something with my life that matters. But that also pays the mortgage! So much easier said than done and so I've been exploring, investigating, sussing out what matters to me and what doesn't. Making a lot of noise blogging all day may or may not matter to me...so I had to explore it. And other things.

I do not have the answers yet, but I'm closer than I've been for a long, long time and I needed some distance from all the things that were weighing down on me to get some clarity. More soon. You may like it and you may not. We'll have to see together.

But for now: more book blogging.

Big Day

Big day. Please vote.

If LAist wasn't throwing a bash downtown to watch the Super Tuesday returns...

...I'd be watching Mark Sarvas, Amy Gerstler, Katherine Taylor, Darcy Cosper and Veronique de Turenne host an NBCC panel at Skylight Books tonight @ 7:30pm.  Fine, fine folks and promises to be a good discussion.

If you aren't at the LAist gig, you simply better be at the NBCC gig.

Got it?

*Regular posting will resume next week. Big. Things. Are. Happening. Stay tuned.

Housekeeping (Because Let's Just Call it What it Is, Shall We?)

I'm still wrestling with big things. My head throbs from the over-thinking and over-analysis and over-worrying about the state of my writerliness, the state of my author interviews (which should have been more plentiful this past week but I'm, well, over-thinking things and so obviously my questions were so bizarre and over-wrought that I had to self-edit and simply say no), the state of my daily gig (which is also in terrible flux and so I find I'm simply fretting, fretting all day long and don't know what, really, to do) and the state of so many other things.  Got that? Fretting over many things (some of which have absolutely nothing to do with me) +/- throbbing head = wrestling.

But:

• I managed to get through 3,000+ (yes, that's right) Google Reader posts
• I managed to get through 1,200+ emails
• I apologize to all those who were in town in December and January that emailed about getting together. I regret that I failed to respond to you because, damn, I would really have liked to meet with you and chat with you and talk books. And life. And other things.
• Full disclosure: I am studying up for my Wine Novice column over at LAist and I've not read a speck (a speck!) of new fiction so far this year. I'm feeling a little guilty about this, but also have so much to say about my voracious wine reading. Robert Parker Jr., watch out!
  
• I talked a big game last year about upcoming roundtables. I fully intend to get to them and to those of you who emailed about roundtable topics, I'll chat you up soon. Really.
• I still owe several Part IIs, a few Part IIIs, and even a few Part I's of readings I failed to get to. All in good time. Maybe.
• I've felt, lately, that this whole blog concept might need revamping, revising, revisiting, re-something.  I try very hard to share something different, something no one else is covering or at least not covering in quite the same way. If I ever feel (as I have these past weeks) that I'm just giving you more of what you could get elsewhere, I'll go silent again. I think. Still working through it, but in my endless over-thinking, I've at least sorted out one thing: I want what I do (everything I do) to matter. I know, simpleton-esque and naive. But there it is. From my day job to my writing to my writing about writing, I want the work to matter. Otherwise, why the hell else are we here?
• And so, this concludes the long, annual, house-keeping rant about what needs doing, what's brewing and what's on the horizon.

And back into the fray we go...

Silence of the Radio Kind

I've been reading a lot.
Writing too.
I've been coughing a lot more, though.
And aching.
And fevering.

So.

Posting will be light here until:
I cough less.
I ache less.
I return to a normal temperature.

Until then, happy reading and writing...

The Thank You Posts

Each LAist writer took time to write-up what they're thankful for this year - and they've been posting all day. My take, clearly too long, is now up as well.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Unpopular Opinions

My email Inbox would have me believe that I've pissed quite a few people off lately.  I thought the arrange books by color thing was bad. I was mistaken.  This, now, is worse. Here (so you may publicly make your grievances known) are the things that have irked you this week:

• My slight against Denis Johnson and not picking his Tree of Smoke to win the National Book Award. This, it seems, was not the most injurious of my offenses.  Oh no.
• Many of you felt it was obvious he would win and I was woefully off the mark by not even mentioning him. Yes, it WAS quite obvious that he might win. That doesn't mean I had to pick him as my favorite to win.
• While it was one thing not to pick him, it was quite another to tell you a day later that I didn't like the book. This is where, it seems, I stepped in the proverbial muck. Let me try again: It was not just a big novel by a big author - it was the seminal work from the man to date. To say it was well-written is to insult Johnson because, well, that is obvious. It is lovely in sections - whole passages were so exciting and full of energy that I was buzzing, even after setting it aside. Was the topic my favorite? No. Was the story my favorite? No. Is that my fault and not his? Obviously. What bothered me most, I think, is that every page felt like a bid for the National Book Award. Or some other important award. Every page felt big, orchestrated. As in: Hey look at me, I'm writing the big important novel. It reminded me of certain films that are Oscar-vehicles. You know what I'm talking about. Those films that are packed with power-actors, have the best cinematographer and a power-director, all assembled to shoot an Oscar-worthy script that deals with some seemingly Oscar-worthy subject. These films always feel forced, always feel like a bid for the Oscars.  They're not all bad, some of them are very good.  But you are aware of the bid for the prize with every line that is spoken. That's how Tree of Smoke felt to me. Trying too hard.  Is it a great novel? Absolutely. Would I recommend it to others? Highly.  Did I want it to win the National Book Award? No, because that seemed like a given. I hate givens.  Should you read it so we can talk more about it? Yes!
• My frustration with Freeman's biography rubbed a few of you the wrong way. It seems everyone is in love with her and this book. I also loved the book and highly recommend it. I just had some quibbles and I aired them.

A record week, then, in the number of my offenses.  All good fun, eh? I suspect (hope?) your ire will lessen once you are full of turkey and pie.

Awful Lag in RSS Feeds...

Am I the only one experiencing horrendous delays of posts into all readers? I recently signed up for my own RSS feed in several aggregators, so that I could better see what you see - and so I could get better at not screwing it up (like when I paste YouTube code into the wrong screen, etc.).  Yet in doing so, I've noticed something SO ANNOYING it makes me want to scream.  Every one of my posts only appears hours...sometimes up to three hours...after it's been posted on my blog.  Today 's last post, Events of the Bookish Kind, was posted at 2:28pm. Yet it appeared in my readers at 4:29pm. My first post of the day was at 9:27am, but it didn't appear in my aggregators until 10:44am.

Why? Why? Why? What can be done?  Is my blog bugging you as much as it is bugging me?

(Wonder how long it will take this one to appear...sent at 4:39pm PST for reference)

Bill Walsh Breaks My Heart

I have always been and will always be a 49er girl. Through the good years, the bad years and all the in-between years, they've been my team. (It follows then, that the Dallas Cowboys have never nor will ever be my team.) What that means is that Joe Montana throwing the infamous TD to Dwight Clark under the guidance of the best coach a team could ever have - Bill Walsh - remains a sports and, well, a life highlight for me. I suspect it will always remain a moment of supreme excitement, a moment that even now (I'm not even embarassed to say it) brings a tear to my eye (talk about people doing exactly what they are meant to be doing in life) when I think of it, so full of hope and promise and Bay Area-ness it was.  It held so much for the people who lived in SF and loved their niners...that you could mention that moment to anyone and if they'd also been there, you could easily become friends for life. Or at least for a few more rounds at the pub. The catch that led to Super Bowl 16. I have the books, the film, the signed posters. I could watch that game over and over again. And I have. Many times.

Those heady days of football under Bill Walsh defined for me what it meant to play with heart, to live with heart, to be creative, to surprise even the pundits, to make plays and run routes that no one else had ever dared to try.  While I don't play football and never have, growing up in SF during the Bill Walsh years made me a Walsh devotee all the way. No matter what came after. No matter what drama unfolded (I'm looking at you Mariucci) after Walsh left the helm or when he came back to the front office but wasn't able to do much.

And so - it breaks, breaks, breaks my heart to learn that Bill Walsh died today.  I have few words, just some tears. He meant so much to the Bay Area - so much. I don't even know how to put it in a way that would do him any justice at all.  So instead I post this, in lieu of any proper book content today, as a way to give a respectful nod to the man who managed my favorite team during the formative years of my life.  Perhaps I'll go watch those ever-so-sweet games again...and again...and again.  Thank You Mr. Walsh for showing us how to play with imagination and heart.  You were the bees knees, a truly class act in a sea of brutish foes, and you will be sorely missed.

When What You Claimed Never to Be True Becomes, much to your chagrin, True

What I vehemently denied would happen, what I guarded against at all costs, what I rolled my eyes at when I saw it in others -- has finally happened, I've seen it in myself.  Our impending nuptials are slowly taking over daily activities. Creeping their way into my daily work, distracting me while writing, veering me way, way off track when it comes to getting anything else done.  Families won't stay where they're meant to stay. Florists won't deliver for a reasonable fee. And the cake people have ruined my concept of cake forever. At this point, I'd rather make cupcakes myself, do the flowers on my own and say goodbye to the lot of them.  Sadly, this will only distract me further.

Worse still - I triple dog promised myself that I would never, NEVER, talk about wedding prep on a "lit blog" - but then the book Altared came out and it has some excellent writers in it and so, what the hell. This is the reality. This is me at this bizarre point in time. I've got bridal vertigo. Or something similar. This is, I believe, why people elope. 

But - I do see light at the end of the tulle-filled tunnel (there won't really be any tulle, who do you think I am?) and normalcy should return here sometime next week.  We're off to wine-tasting (just what every "will my dress fit me" bride should be doing, eh?) for a long weekend starting Friday. I'll be posting a bit up until then and will leave you with the yummy re-created Ondaatje post to enjoy over the weekend. 

Perhaps we'll just call this wine-tasting weekend "eloping" and get on with it...

Technical Smechnical

Events are conspiring against me. It seems from your emails that many of you cannot get to Counterbalance or are experiencing trouble accessing the site or some of the text is missing from posts or the images are askew, etc. In short - it seems the whole thing is a bit wonky. 

Sorting it out now...thanks for the heads up.