Dad is Fat, by J. Gaffigan

It makes me sad to report that Jim Gaffigan's Dad is Fat was not very funny. I suspect that I feel this way because I'm not a parent myself and the entire book is a compilation of parenting anecdotes. I laughed all of one measly time. Once! And at what? A photo caption, of all things.

The author went on vacation with his family and, as many Manhattan families do, brought along their babysitter. In the book, there's a picture of the whole gang standing in front of Mt. Rushmore, but the sitter's face is blurred out. The caption reads something like, "Our babysitter quit the day we returned to the city."

Woe is the sitter duped into a travel job with five children. No matter how generous the compensation may be, there's a reason why some career nannies will not travel with their families. That reason is called sanity.

I caught Jim Gaffigan at a comedy club many years ago. His standup act was the only clean one the entire evening. In an era when legions of professional comedians make their living by simulating one crude sexual act after another on stage, Gaffigan is a class act. I admired his career that night and I still do. I just hope that I'll enjoy his next book.

Burn Down The Ground, by K. Crews

Paying absolutely no mind to the book I should be reading for book club next week, I've been breezing through some fluffy memoirs instead. I say fluffy because when you compare any modern prose to the treacherously slow, reserved, and tempered style of Edith Wharton, pretty much everything feels light and airy and let-your-hair-down fun.

I had caught a powerful radio interview given by this author's husband. It was only in passing that he mentioned that his wife had her very own off-the-wall personal story to tell. What he shared was that Random House published her memoir and that her childhood was "fucking crazy." What he didn't mention was that his wife is a hearing child of two deaf parents, one of whom was an angry, abusive drunk, who raised their children in an eternal haze of marijuana smoke while living in a makeshift home in the woods without running water. And yet Kambri Crews' memoir opens with her on her way to visit her father. In prison.

I'm fascinated by tales of humans born and thrust into the care of people who probably should have waited to get their acts a tad more together before jumping into parenthood. There are a lot of us that share this common thread. We tend to be resilient on good days and sad, quiet souls on bad ones. Crews' memoir is a testament to the good days.

Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House, by M. Daum

I came across an article by LA Times columnist Meghan Daum. She wrote about being a childless woman {+}. Here was a successful, smart, married woman authoring a thoughtful, positive, non-preachy opinion piece about a topic that even twenty years ago, would have marginalized her. It was awesome. I discovered this article after listening to a radio interview she had given last year. She was well-spoken and articulate. Her pitch was light, her tone feminine, but her voice, I picked up immediately on a nervous energy. Her speech raced through thoughts packaged in large, rambling sets of words. And yet, her thoughts were neither unstructured nor without direction. I found it curious that the voice over the radio waves conflicted with the sure, confident tone of the article I had read. It made me want to read her books. I selected her most recent, published in 2010 by Knopf, Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House.

I absorbed Daum's serious and silly memoir flabbergasted at how much I could relate. I came across so many lines that could have been lifted straight out of my brain. So uncanny they were that I even re-read some paragraphs, finding it difficult to believe how parallel her tale ran to my own current narrative. I spent my entire afternoon with the book. I would pick it up again around midnight, only turning in after I finished the last page at three in the morning.

The quote above makes it seem like this book is a wacky tale of a depressed woman, but it is not. I chose it because it was the first line that made me take pause. I caught my breath, finding great comfort in the knowledge that someone I had never met, and will probably never meet, had written down words that so amply encompassed everything I'd been feeling. There is greatness in that. Daum's story is full of humor, if not embedded in her somewhat neurotic tendencies, but that is exactly what made it feel very real. Deep thinkers often hyper-process information, overthinking the most mundane of events. It is this very habit that makes their stories entertaining and never anything less than honest.

If you have a sense of humor, and / or are in your late twenties or early thirties, and / or find yourself in a spot where you don't want to be, I think you could relate to Life Would Be Perfect. If I may make a suggestion, avoid sitting on a bench for five consecutive hours reading it. That boney part in the center of each of your butt cheeks? My bum's so sore today, I can't sit on a chair without a cushion.

Tina Fey Grew Up In My Backyard

When I wrote hyacinth tea in the last post, I meant hibiscus.  HIBISCUS.  The internetz is saying that hyacinth tea is, in fact, very much poisonous.  I'm still here and not strong enough to combat poisonous teas, so yeah, hibiscus it was.  I don't know how I mixed up the two, but if I'm being honest, I will probably mix the two up again at some point in the near future.  Nothing sticks, I tell you.

Moving on to bigger and grander, more fascinating news: I have been reading this summer.  Woo-wee, have I been reading.  I've been sluggishly moping around with brain-splitting headaches caused by my terrible dry eyes to prove it.  The amount of ibuprofen I've consumed this summer is alarming.

Tina Fey's Bossypants was just as bad as I thought it would be, which doesn't mean that I didn't enjoy it.  I've always had an interest in Ms. Fey's talent and success.  She grew up in a neighborhood adjacent to mine.  By virtue of the fact that we were raised drinking the same tap water, there's a certain level of camaraderie in that, you know?  Before we moved to a Philadelphia zip code, it was an apartment complex in Upper Darby where I learned to eat solid foods, walk, and potty-train my baby doll.  It's a real wonder how I would carefully position my doll on top of my potty training bowl (there's a picture to prove it), but my own behind?  Not so much.  Let's just say that I was not a good potty trainee.

Bossypants was a good, light read.  In two short sittings, while I didn't laugh out loud or find her stories particularly engaging, I smiled whenever she mentioned one of the many neighborhood landmarks that I had forgotten about.  From the local parochial schools, the aquarium, the hair salon where I had also gotten a hideous perm, and to the local Dairy Queen where my mother always got her vanilla cone dipped in a butterscotch shell, I recognized them all.  It was the act of pulling these small memories from a time so long ago that kept me turning the pages.

It wasn't that I have particularly fond memories from that time period; it was that pieces of those memories were familiar.  The mind is a funny thing.  It so readily and willingly settles for the odd comfort that only the familiar can offer.

By Patti Smith

Success.  I weeded my way through half a growing pile of magazines and publications that was annoyingly taking up prime real estate in my bedroom.  About 140 square inches to be (sorta) exact.  That doesn't seem like a lot to you?  Then you must live elsewhere, outside this city's limits in a dreamy town where you have windows in each room, actual built-in closets, and kitchen counter space wider than your sink.  Living spaces here are... very humbling.

It seems that the fall and winter of 2011 was a busy time, although I don't remember why that could possibly have been.  I know this because the aforementioned pile had a ton of New Yorkers from that period.  One of the October issues had a collection of essays, Sticky Fingers, about events that involved the act of stealing, penned by well-known creatives.  Miranda July's was rather disappointing, but isn't that always the case with talented people you so admire that your expectations are set too high from the onset?

I took to one piece so strongly that upon reading the last word, I tore out the page, thinking of displaying it somewhere, although where, I hadn't the faintest idea (please see first paragraph).  Patti Smith's short and touching tale reminded me very much of the hardback children's books for sale next to those hefty encyclopedia volumes at our local supermarket.  Is there anything more classic 80's than a book display at the end of the baking goods aisle?  Although my mother regularly frowned upon my growing reading habit, especially inside dimly lit cars and in bed (I was ruining my eyesight, she said), she let us bring home a few picks over the years.  They're probably exactly where I left them, inside the yellow night table in the bedroom my grandparents took when they visited.

This short story affected me in a surprising way.  I bet I'm not the only reader who says so.  Give it a scan if you have five minutes.  I think it'll speak to you, too.

And yes, those are chocolate chips scattered across the page.  I got tired of reaching into the narrow opening of the bag over and over again, so I dumped a handful out in front of me.  That's right: no plate.  I don't have kids who can learn bad habits from me, so I'm ok with this.

Off the Shelf
from the October 10, 2011 New Yorker {+}
by Patti Smith

When I was ten years old, I lived with my family in a small ranch house in rural South Jersey. I often accompanied my mother to the A. & P. to buy groceries. We did not have a car, so we walked, and I would help her carry the bags.

My mother had to shop very carefully, as my father was on strike. She was a waitress, and her paycheck and tips barely sustained us. One day, while she was weighing prices, a promotional display for the World Book Encyclopedia caught my eye. The volumes were cream-colored, with forest-green spines stamped in gold. Volume I was ninety-nine cents with a ten-dollar purchase.

All I could think of, as we combed the aisles for creamed corn, dry milk, cans of Spam, and shredded wheat, was the book, which I coveted with all my being. I stood at the register with my mother, holding my breath as the cashier rang up the items. It came to over eleven dollars. My mother produced a five, some singles, and a handful of change. As she was counting out the money, I somehow found the courage to ask for the encyclopedia. “Could we get one?” I said, showing her the display. “It’s only ninety-nine cents.”

I did not understand my mother’s mounting anxiety; she did not have enough change and had to sacrifice a large can of Le Sueur peas to pay the amount. “Not now, Patricia,” she said sternly. “Today is not a good day.” I packed the groceries and followed her home, crestfallen.

The next Saturday, my mother gave me a dollar and sent me to the A. & P. alone. Two quarts of milk and a loaf of bread: that’s what a dollar bought in 1957. I went straight to the World Book display. There was only one first volume left, which I placed in my cart. I didn’t need a cart, but took one so I could read as I went up and down the aisles. A lot of time went by, but I had little concept of time, a fact that often got me in trouble. I knew I had to leave, but I couldn’t bear to part with the book. Impulsively I put it inside my shirt and zipped up my plaid windbreaker. I was a tall, skinny kid, and I’m certain every contour of the book was conspicuous.

I strolled the aisles for several more minutes, then went through the checkout, paid my dollar, swiftly bagged the three items, and headed home with my heart pounding.

Suddenly I felt a heavy tap on my shoulder and turned to find the biggest man I had ever seen. He was the store detective, and he asked me to hand it over. I just stood in silence. “We know you stole something—you will have to be searched.” Horrified, I slid the heavy book out from the bottom of my shirt.

He looked at it quizzically. “This is what you stole, an encyclopedia?”

“Yes,” I whispered, trembling.

“Why didn’t you ask your parents?”

“I did,” I said, “but they didn’t have the money.”

“Do you know it’s wrong?”

“Yes.”

“Do you go to church?”

“Yes, twice a week.”

“Well, you’re going to have to tell your parents what you did.”

“No, please.”

“Then I will do it. What’s the address?”

I was silent.

“Well, I’ll have to walk you home.”

“No, please, I will tell them.”

“Do you swear?”

“Yes, yes, sir.”

My mother was agitated when I arrived home. “Where were you? I needed the bread for your father’s sandwiches. I told you to come right home.”

And suddenly everything went green, like right before a tornado. My ears were ringing, I felt dizzy, and I threw up.

My mother tended to me immediately, as she always did. She had me lie on the couch and got a cold towel for my head and sat by me with her anxious expression.

“What is it, Patricia?” she asked. “Did something bad happen?”

“Yes,” I whispered. “I stole something.” I told her about my lust for the book, my wrongdoing, the big detective. My mother was a good mother, but she could be explosive, and I tensed, waiting for the barrage of verbal punishment, the sentencing that always seemed to outweigh the crime. But she said nothing. She told me that she would call the store and tell the detective I had confessed, and that I should sleep.

When I awoke, sometime later, the house was silent. My mother had taken my siblings to the field to play. I sat up and noticed a brown-paper bag with my name on it. I opened it and inside was the World Book Encyclopedia, Volume I.

Booking It

After hoping for years that I'd be invited to join an established book club by an unknown someone (could have been anyone, really), somewhere (preferably within three subway transfers), and somehow (e-mail, posted letter, singing telegram, I'm not picky), and then pathetically failing at obtaining such an invitation, I caved.  I did the only thing I could do: I pulled a classic nerd move and started my own.  At our first gathering, someone pointed out that the subject line of my e-mail invitation was "Booking It."  Have you ever heard anything so clever?  Our second meeting is scheduled for later this month.

This, this is a good thing.

Escape from Camp 14, by B. Harden

I zipped through Escape from Camp 14 over the course of two short nights this past spring.  This coincidentally happened to be right before the media reported news of a failed North Korean missile launch.  If you're like most Americans, you probably don't even remember the incident, that's how insignificant a country the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is.  All you really need to know is that the North is notorious for spending most of their resources on their military and arms, including nuclear weapons, and that they are super secretive, rarely engaging with other countries except China.  Every once in a while, they will sink a ship or shoot a missile and declare themselves the greatest nation on earth.  It's kind of their m.o.

Before I go any further, if you're in the same camp as those folks at the London Olympics who raised the South Korean flag when a North Korean team appeared, it's kind of embarrassing for you, so you might want to take this opportunity to note that there are TWO Koreas.  The sensationally hilarious Gangnam Style video {+} is from SOUTH Korea, the one that enjoys a healthy free trade market and a thriving economy.  If you meet someone in the States and they identify themselves as Korean, chances are that they are 99.999999% from SOUTH Korea.  Don't even bother asking which Korea they're from because it makes you sound like an idiot.  NORTH Korea is the one with the funny-looking roly poly leaders dressed in brown suits that no one knows what to do about because they cut their nation off from the rest of the world.  

As a Korean-American with parents born right smack in the middle of the war, you'd think I'd know a thing or two about the circumstances that led to the current humanitarian crisis in North Korea.  I've cobbled together a general understanding of the history, but it's choppy at best.  All I know is that today, the North's citizens lack a lot of basic necessities and freedoms, including food, clothes, and warm shelter.  I've watched a few horrifying documentaries tangled with sad stories of how so many from my grandparents' generation have never been reunited with their families since they got stuck on different sides of the 38th parallel during the war.  The two Koreas are polar opposites in almost every which way.

Escape tells the story of a North Korean defector, an account by the only known surviving escapee from a North Korean labor camp.  His story confirmed the little I knew about the North Korean government.  Egomaniacs run the country.  The country's official name is a misnomer.  Starvation and brainwashing propaganda are the norm.  Short of declaring war on and colonizing North Korea, there seems to be little that any country, individual, or organization can do to better the lives of its citizens.  Escape is not a happy read.  It's a sad testament.

If anyone would like my copy, I'd be happy to send it your way as long as you promise to forward it to another friend who might be interested in this man's story.



Thank you to Viking/Penguin for sending this book my way.  Rarely a fan of historical non-fiction, I found this semi-memoir style much more palatable than books with more traditional sociological or autobiographical takes.  I hope that in time, the rest of the world will gain some visibility into North Korea's story.

Fifty Shades of Grey, by E. L. James

When I caught the SNL bit on this popular erotic read this past spring, I had to turn to the internet to figure out what it even was.  Yah, I'm aware that I take "living under a rock" to a whole new level.  I skimmed an article or two and promptly decided that I was not in the least bit interested in reading porn.  In true Julia style, I was feeling mighty meh about hopping onto this bandwagon.

On Monday night, a copy of the nefarious Fifty Shades of Grey materialized from Soeur's bag.  I smirked, mildly amused that a copy of this wanton book had somehow landed in my home.  Of course she'd have a copy.  You should read it.  Not great, but keeps you turning enough pages to keep you awake on the red-eye was the gist of her feedback.

I had heard that Fifty had outsold the final Harry Potter book.  Let's face it: that's impressive.  Outstanding, even.  So that very night, I opened my mind and had a go.  I whipped through the first two hundred pages.  Not much happened, but it held my interest enough that I picked it up again last night.  A few pages in, I got stuck.  I could not, for the life of me, move past page 231.  That page starts a chapter with a disturbing description of the protagonist naked and shackled to a bed.  Spread eagle.  There was also some mention of leather in there.  Maybe a whip?  Or a belt?  I don't remember.  All I know is that the visual images forming in my head were gravely stressing me out.  I could not get my eyes to read through the sentences, no less finish the paragraph.  I closed the book and removed it from my bedstand to the living area.  I could not have it near me.

Utterly baffled doesn't even begin to cover it.  Why do people want to read about a woman tied down to a bed and whipped?  Isn't that the least arousing and most frightening thing imaginable?  How did this outsell the last Harry Potter book?  The world of sadomasochism eludes me.  Psychologically, it seems seriously unhealthy.  Damaging.  Not good for the soul, mind, or body.  Surely, I must be missing something here.  Why do I find this so vile and disturbing while millions of readers are making this book a bestseller?  And now there are plans for a blockbuster film.  Wha?

Stranger things have happened than a ridiculously successful erotic book trilogy about two beautiful people like Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele.  That's not new.  But it is extremely unsettling to know that this book has been so well-received globally - as in, translated-into-several-dozen-languages globally.  Human beings are strange creatures.  I guess as hard as I may try to understand and accept, mass behaviors will never cease to surprise me.  What I do know is that halfway through page 231 of book one of three is probably as far as I'll make it on this bandwagon.

The Dive From Clausen's Pier, by A. Packer

It was the last summer Friday of July yesterday so a grand plan was in order.  After work, I was to walk out of my office building, cross the street, and catch the Madison Avenue bus straight to the Met.  I had even brought my camera with me - with a fully charged battery!  But I detoured a few blocks from the bus stop to pick up a library book I had ordered and drop it off at home.  Harmless.  Here's where I foiled my own plan: I stopped to eat lunch.  Mandarin oranges, the canned kind, put me over the edge.  I sipped on the cold sweet liquid between bites of mandarin orange and stared at the book on the table.  I convinced myself that I could just read the first chapter.  You know, to get my feet wet and have something to look forward to after the museum.  Before I knew it, it was pouring buckets of rain outside, I was on page one-hundred-something and gee, that ache to check out Anthony Caro's steel sculptures on the rooftop {+} suddenly went whoosh out the window.  It seems that I enjoy dedicating long hot summer Friday afternoons to reading novels straight through.

I'm waiting to hear if I'll have the chance to Skype into a book club that a friend started, but even if they don't have room, I'm glad I read this.  The Dive From Clausen's Pier is a story about a young midwestern girl from Wisconsin who ditches her high school sweetheart fiancé for New York after he has an accident that leaves him a paraplegic.

I had never read anything by Ann Packer before, but darn if the prude in me didn't cringe when I hit a couple of her racy sex scenes.  The story is to the point, the characters uncomplicated and formulaic, but colorful and honest.  Packer relies heavily on dialogue, which makes for a quick read.  My hunch is that this 2002 novel appealed to the masses because it's really almost a coming-of-age story about the investments we make in young love, friendships, and ourselves.  Who doesn't want to read about that?

My five words on The Dive are: self-awareness, perspective, boldness, freedom, and compassion.

Please Look After Mom (엄마를 부탁해), by K. Shin

On Thursday at 10:09 p.m., an e-mail notification arrived that a book in my queue had arrived at my local NYPL branch.  After work the very next day, carrying half gallons of ice cold milk and OJ in a loud crinkly Food Emporium bag, I checked out this hardback copy of Kyung-Sook Shin's Please Look After My Mom. I went straight home and did a load of wash.  As soon as I hung the last bra to air dry, I grabbed the book, a plate of mini banana muffins, and a cup of that ice cold milk.   (Do you know that organic milk really does taste more milky?  Scary to think why).  Aside from exchanging a few texts with Soeur, for the next few hours, I would do nothing but read clear through to the last page. 

It was the first book I had started and finished in one sitting - in years. 

It was the first book I had read by a Korean-Korean (read: not Korean-American) author - ever.

It was the first book I had read that was originally written in Korean - ever.

It was the first book I had cried through - ever.

This last fact is a big one.  I don't really cry.  For writing that I didn't find exceptionally compelling in one way or another, I can only come up with one explanation for my tears: I got caught up in the emotional tumult of the main character and its distressing parallels to my own family's living narrative.

Shin's novel is a simple story simply told.  A mother travels to Seoul from her home in a small village to visit her children.  At a subway station, she disappears, and the story revolves around her city-dwelling children's collective journey to locate their uhmmah.  The author is a bestselling novelist in Korea, but I would guess that the English version, released only this spring, will not be well-received by the American market.  (This, for example, is an amusing NPR piece).  So much of the Korean way relies on the painfully unspoken.  (Or maybe that's just my parents' way?)  Inference is paramount, a cultural nuance Americans might hesitate to identify as an acceptable form of communication: this lack of transparency might suggest that there is more behind the clean and uncomplicated words of this book's English version.  It's clear that some of the plot's basic rhythm gets lost in translation.  For example, "Aunt Peggy" is much easier than "second eldest aunt's husband." If it weren't for my hazy familiarity with some common daily aspects of Korean life like nursery rhymes and foods, I would have been left scratching my head instead of dropping big salty tears on the couch.  

I won't say more, but will leave you with five words on why 엄마를 부탁해 made me flood tears: resilience, survival, sacrifice, duty, and desperation.  It might be glorious, but there's a whole lot of grief that comes with that glory.