Some accounting

How much money do you spend on books per year? This is a delicate question. I’m both willing and unwilling to learn the truth in this matter. But I did a little (very little) number crunching. At this point on 12/10, I’ve read 84 books over the course of 2021. Will probably get into the 90s, if not the big triple digit, by end of year. Of those 84, 18 were checked out from the library. And about 10 were either borrowed or came to me as free review copies. That means that if I bought 54 books in 2021, and assuming a hardcover price (why not) of $28 per, I spent at least $1500. But that’s not nearly the full amount. First of all, I buy books for multiple people in my household. I buy books that I need to own but either have already read or will read in the future. I replace books I’ve lost, I give books as presents for holidays and birthdays. I’m going to double that figure and say that a fair estimate would be that I spent $3000 on books in 2021. Of course I could know this much more accurately if I dug back into my credit card records but… who wants to do that, honestly.

All of this is leading somewhere, and I am mulling a project for 2022. More on that later!

Let me state for the record: I’m grateful for the privilege of being able to buy pretty much as many books as I want. I value indie bookstores as highly as possible. I’m a novelist, writing books is my job, and so I consider buying them to be part of the gig. And yet…

I also love a library. Lord do I love a library. Stay tuned.

my library lions, Patience & Fortitude

Robber Bride

I got hot and cold on Atwood and this one is no exception. Loved the ambiguity around the central (title) character, and the interweaving of women’s lives. But so much backstory, hanging on a thin thread of present action, left me antsy.

Swoon

If there’s something better than a cold drink and a brand new novel from the singular Margot Livesey, then I don’t know what it is. Started this one and I can already tell it’s a gem. Run, don’t walk.

The Equivalents

“Over the course of that first year, these five women knit themselves together into a friend group, a sort of institute within the Institute. They collaborated and debated and celebrated each other’s work. They saw each other as artists first and foremost and in this way differentiated themselves from the more bookish associate scholars. They did not have PhDs, but as the application had requested, they had ‘the equivalent’ training in artistic craft. Joking about the way the Institute compared artists to scholars, they called themselves ‘The Equivalents.’”

I am thoroughly enjoying this group biography of writers and artists in the first years of the Radcliffe Institute for Independent Study, a brave and risky venture initiated by the amazing Polly Bunting in 1960.

"Mom. MOM. Why do you keep SNORTING like that?!"

“Then I thought, Fuck a budget. I grew up poor and now I have money, so I’m going to spend it on Chanel nail polishes. I don’t know how you can possibly have joy in your life when you do shit like ‘balance your checkbook’ or ‘pay your minimum balance on time,’ and if doing those awful-sounding things means I can’t see four movies in one weekend, then I don’t ever want to do them. I can’t go to the library. I mean, first of all, what if someone else checked out the book I want? I’m not the only one reading the book reviews in the Times, so now I gotta put my name on a list after your aunt Karen and my elementary school principal, then just, like, wait for them to be finished? I would rather be dead.”

Old fashioned, and I mean it as a compliment

Haven’t finished yet, but am thoroughly enjoying. Sometimes you fall into a novel that is pure pleasure derived from excellent craft.

Dickens

“Too mixed to be a gentleman—but wonderful. The irreplaceable and unrepeatable Boz. The brilliance in the room. The inimitable. And, above and beyond every other description, simply the great, hard-working writer, who set nineteenth-century London before our eyes and who noticed and celebrated the small people living on the margins of society—the Artful Dodger, Smike, the Marchioness, Nell, Barnaby, Micawber, Mr Dick, Jo the crossing sweeper, Phil Squod, Miss Flite, Sissy Jupe, Charley, Amy Dorrit, Nandy, hairless Maggie, Sloppy, Jenny Wren the dolls’ dressmaker. After he had been writing for long hours at Wellington Street, he would sometimes ask his office boy to bring him a bucket of cold water and put his head into it, and his hands. Then he would dry his head with a towel, and go on writing.”

Ferrante fever

All you really need to know about how much I’m looking forward to THE LYING LIFE OF ADULTS is that I bought the original Italian edition months ago. And I don’t speak or read Italian.

Rodham

First of all, it’s one of the greatest novel titles that I can think of. And it’s a smart, compelling story that I just loved reading. Last weekend I took it to a bench by a park and read for an hour straight with the greatest of pleasure.

Re: the sex scenes. I thought this comment by Sittenfeld in a recent interview was completely on point: “In the novel, Hillary worked at a legal aid clinic... I have two female friends who are law professors. Both of my friends answered so many questions that I would ask about like, "If you work in a legal aid clinic and then you go into court, and then what are the words that come out of your mouth, and how many minutes are you interacting with the judge for? And if you go to see the client, what happens the first time?"… I sometimes would chuckle to myself as I was trying to wrap my head around family law or housing disputes in the early 1970s. I would think, "I already know that whenever I finally finish this book, I'm just going to end up talking about like, 'And then Bill put his tongue in my mouth.'" [Laughs.]