Away, the Finger Lakes

Right now, I'm in Ithaca.

Ithaca is a city of reading and readers. It has at least three large used bookstores that I know of, and a great (study-friendly) Barnes and Noble.

I know I haven't been writing in a long time. I honestly intended to keep this up every day, but as we know, intentions stink. I caught myself up in a project that was much harder than I realized; I'm still at it, and don't know when it will get done. It's put the rest of my life on hold.

Right now, however, I'm enjoying the good reading, pleasant weather and the company here. I still owe an Unaccustomed Earth review, which I will finish shortly. There are other books, too. So many others. As soon as I finish this project, I swear...

Borders Sale

from the stonebridge institute of higher thinking

Since Borders is closing, I went to check out their store in Columbus Circle. Even though going-out-of-business sales are fantastic, I feel deeply upset. Ten thousand jobs, a legacy of community bookstores, and an icon are all gone. Now all that remains is Barnes and Nobles, and they closed the Lincoln Center bookstore earlier this year.

What the hell will I do when I want books?

Everyone ransacked the store. Magazines and notebooks lay strewn around, the Dean and Deluca's had been completely gutted to make room for something else, and the music section sat almost empty of CDs and DVDs. People picked books from the floor and the shelves, which were also for sale. Though customers picked up stacks of books in droves I somehow didn't have to wait in line for very long.

My local going-out-of-business Borders sale was just like this one. It's amazing how all of these big box stores can stand to be so similar to one another, even while dying.

When they closed that Barnes and Noble in Lincoln Center, I bought The Professor, by Charlotte Bronte. During this closing, I found Perfection by Julie Metz, a memoir about widowhood and coming to terms with the legacy of a dead spouse. Poor Ms. Metz. Her husband left behind quite a legacy. Though I'll get much more specific in my review, Perfection reminded me of A Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, which I loved. My opinion of Perfection, however, is much more qualified than that.

I will review that book after I finish Unaccustomed Earth, which I did re-read on the train. Due to signal problems I was stuck on the train for two hours, which gave me more than enough time for me to formulate my thoughts, but somehow not enough for me to express them.

Procedural Note

I finally moved into my room. It took me a few days longer than it should have, and I feel guilty about that false start. But now, I am in.

And this is what my life looks like:

Next, I'll be reading Unaccustomed Earth, by Jhumpa Lahiri and some Sharon Shinn, particularly from her Twelve Houses series.

And that's just the beginning. These aren't the only books I plan to have here. The bare shelves on the wall across from my bed will soon be filled with books from home. Because of the book storage situation -- and my mother's awesome, compulsive book-buying -- my house is at its wits' end. (Let me help you out, Mom and Dad!)

Look out for me.  I'm coming right back.

The Perfect Sentence

So, two things.

One, I just bought my favorite book: The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. I lent my previous copy to my sorority sister and good friend. She loved it so much she wanted her fiance to read the book. He hasn't touched it yet. I never got it back. Yesterday, I found Diaz's masterpiece at a library book sale. I held the pristine hardcover beauty in my hands and then bought it without hesitation. Three bucks.

Two, I'm moving.

These things might seem unrelated, but I love threadbare connections. Symbols, like crepuscular spirits. I found the book a week after I signed my lease. I still don't believe I'm moving because I haven't moved yet. For me, this week extends into infinity with no hope for relief or purpose. (I'll talk about my move later, when I can think about it; but these raw feelings persist, and prevent me from doing anything else.)

The moment after I bought The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, something shifted. My favorite book, come to rescue me from the doldrums, made me believe again. What does that mean?

This short paragraph by Martha Southgate explains it perfectly:

A few months ago, I got a poke to do one of those silly “do this now” things on Facebook. We were asked to pick up the book lying nearest to us and quote a sentence from it on a particular page–I think it was page 58. The book near me at that moment, though I’d read it sometime prior, was Junot Díaz’s The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. I grabbed it, flipped open to the directed page–and found there one perfect sentence. I remember thinking, “Damn, you can flip this book open anywhere and find perfection. Wow.”

On page 58:

Yes, the wildness was in me, yes it kept my heart beating fast all the long day, yes it danced around me while I walked down the street, yes it let me look boys straight in the face when they stared at me, yes it turned my laugh from a cough into a long wild fever, but I was still scared.

Lola's incredible, feminine voice hits hard across the page. The "long wild fever, the boldness, the abandon that comes from just not giving a shit anymore, makes this a perfect sentence. But it's that indelible image of a woman who hates her mother and is so much like her, who sharpens her anger as a weapon against her Dominican mother's noxious rage. It's close to my experience, too; my anger is a shade more passive-aggressive than Lola's, but my mother possesses fury as vast as Beli's fierce, cancer-addled rage. A perfect sentence is the sentence that sets the gong alive, makes me reverberate with its force.

That's what a Book with a Vengeance is going to be about. Soon, I will leave. I will leave my crazy house and I -- hope -- that I will never come back. I can get back to thinking again. I can get back to books again. After three years of living in silence, I can finally read again.