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Five different ways to start the day...

2010-03-04T06:17:00Z

Jana knows five different ways to start the day. On Mondays she literally jumps out of bed, it is the only way to keep herself from burrowing underneath the flowered duvet and scratching the whole week. On Tuesdays she drinks tea and she rewards her healthy intentions by plugging in the tea pot and creeping back under her covers for five minutes. Occasionally, on Tuesday she goes to the shower instead of back to bed but she always takes too long and has to heat her tea water again then she feels bad for wasting electricity. Wednesdays she seldom goes to bed before three o’clock in the morning, but she doesn’t have to work until late in the afternoon so it’s ok. Wednesdays she simply doesn’t acknowledge mornings. Thursdays she doesn’t acknowledge evenings going to bed early and getting up at oh-dark-thirty and watch for the bus. Her handsome neighbor gets off the bus very early on Thursday mornings disappearing into his house not to be seen again until next week. Every week she considers going outside to wait – as if to get on the bus – just to see if she would have the courage to speak to him. She doesn’t actually do this though because she can’t figure out how to explain that she doesn’t care if she misses the bus (in case he speaks to her) and she has no idea where she would go if she must get on the bus. She thinks it’s a nice dream and next week she will be pluckier. On Fridays she rolls out of bed and sits on the floor. Fridays she cries her way out of bed. How can she not hate Friday mornings? They are always the same.

Thanks to Sarah Salway for today’s writing prompt.

Today's IJ

2010-02-22T17:21:00Z

Ennet House was not only founded but originally renovated, furnished, and decorated by the nameless local AA ex-con, who -- since sobriety doesn't exactly mean instant sainthood -- used to lead teams of early-recovery dope fiends on after-hours boosting expeditions at area furniture and housewares establishments.

Book Review: The Man Who Fell In Love With The Moon

2010-02-04T06:55:00Z

“If you’re the devil, then it’s not me telling this story.” is the first line of this beautiful novel about an orphan boy growing up in a bordello in Excellent, Idaho.

If you’re the devil then it’s not me writing this review. I loved this book like I haven’t loved a book in many years. I loved Out-In-The-Shed, Dellwood Barker, Ida Richilieu and her blue dress, her red dress and her white dress. I loved Damn Dave and his Damn Dog, Not-Really-A-Mountain, the human-being sex story and I loved the concept of killdeer, “If you act like you’re looking for killdeer, you’ll never find killdeer. You have to be killdeer.”

I was in awe of Tom Spanbauer’s writing and the way his name translated itself in my head to “bridgebuilder” every time I looked at the cover. It’s not an academic translation but one of metaphor – knowlege becoming understanding.

The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon is body writing a human-being-story. Unfolding origami body, revealing heart truth. Pernicious.

Book Review: Water Music

2010-01-20T17:16:00Z

Eeeeeeeeeeeee. This is my first read by T.C. Boyle and I had a great time although it took me two runs at it to get the whole thing down. I went into the bookstore with T.C. Boyle on my mind, having just listened to a podcast at NPR in which he talked about his newest book, The Women. It is a fictional account of architect Frank Lloyd Wright and the women in his life. A friend of mine recommended Water Music, the foreign language section of Wittwer had it, I bought it.

What struck me the most about the story was that the characters never came to rest. Four hundred thirty-seven pages and they were running flat out in every direction – either away from the consequences of their actions or directly towards the logical thing to do, even though it was obvious they had no chance to escape the aforementioned serious consequences. The story moves at a break-neck pace, Ned Rise, Mungo Park, and especially poor Johnson pay for every quiet moment with a chapter full of trouble.

The old man, nestled beneath his bush, sleeps on. Deathly still. His mouth hangs open, the pink bud of his gums and palate an hors d’oevre for the huge green flies that hover round the putrefact chicken. A column of ants has been using his foot as a highway, mosquitoes tatoo his cheeks and eyelids. Looking down at him so frail and motionless his bones in stark relief against the yellow muck, a terrible realization comes over the explorer. Old Eboe, last of the Jarrans, is dead.

Ah, but is he really dead, and what of that putrefactive chicken? What sort of a person comes up with this storyline? I jumped and squirmed. The language is not colorful, it is disgusting, stinky and delightful. Any author who makes a bushpig say: “snark snark” has a firm place on my Authors-To-Read-More-Of list.

From the back of the book:

The year is 1795: George III is dabbing the walls of Windsor Castle with spittle, Goya is deaf, De Quincey is a depraved prepubescent and young Ludwig van Beethoven is wowing them in Vienna with his second piano concerto. In London, Ned Rise, thief and whoremaster, is drinking Strip-Me-Naked with Nan Punt and Sally Sebum at the Pig and Pox Tavern in Maiden Lane. And, far from his native Edinburgh, the explorer Mungo Park is stranded in the Sahara, a prisoner of the Moors of Ludamar.

Water Music is the rambunctious account of two men’s wild adventures through the gutters of London and the Scottish Highlands to their unlikely meeting in darkest Africa, as they search for the source of the Niger, a river no European has ever laid eyes upon.