This book is Mine!

I like to read books, it keeps me busy enough that the nag in me stays quiet and for that, my poor husband is very grateful. The first thing he says at the onset of a long weekend is "Do you have enough to read?". I usually laugh because I know I can be a major pain in the butt when I have nothing to do, so for a happy home, I would go to the library and load up for the week. I pick books if the title is interesting , different or just unusual. One such book is a memoir with this wonderful title "Another bullshit night in suck city" by Nick Flynn.Can you beleive that? How could anyone pass by such a cocky come on like that- it simply grabbed my imagination and I quickly picked it up and dropped it into my bag. Clean and simple style of writing - a good read .

Talking about memoirs, five or six odd years back, a friend recommended "Angela's Ashes" to me - interestingly because Frank McCourt was his English teacher in high school - Stuyvesant High school. Loved that book - even cried in some parts but laughed even more, which is high praises for a book that dealt with the grim childhood of an improverished Irish Catholic family headed by a drunk.Anyway, that book was quite the rage and even became a movie( did not see it ). I told everybody about it and talked about it so much that my copy went with a freind and even induced my neighbor to reading it . She could not finish it - said she could not take the poverty and hardship - it was just too much. Perhaps because her mom was Irish or whatever . Anyway, the funny thing was she went to Ireland later, visited Limerick and came back to tell me that the Irish are not poor anymore. Huh? The man wrote the memoir at sixty and he was less than 10 years old when the family was really really poor. Ireland sure had better shaped up in fifty years!

Sue Monk Kidd - her name is better than any book although her books are alright. I never understood why the "Secret lives of Bees" was such a hit. It was okay and so unbeleivable to have a white girl live with three black women at that segregated environment. Usually, I suspend judgements on the credibility issue but could not in that book. Perhaps, it was because I read the book after it was a bestseller and everyone was raving about it.Or it was just a bad time for me. I preferred the "Mermaid's chair" and was amused to see a newly married younger colleague shocked by the idea of adultery - even if it is in a book. I understood, I remember arguing with an older colleague ten years ago about the same sort of issue. I was a self righteous prig.

One of these days, I gotta create a list. If Oprah can - with all the thousand and one thing she does, so can I, esp. when I only have 1 job, no kids, don't cook and do household chores only on weekends. Which reminds me of " A million little pieces" by poor disgraced James Frey. I own this book - bought it before Lady O recommended it but based on a friend's say so. I was told it was a good book but very hard to read with all the blood and gore of addicts. So, it wa difficult and I thought the root canal with a tennis ball in lieu of anesthesia was a bit hard to beleive but I just thought this guy was tough and screwed up from all the drugs - so he probably had a high threshold for pain. Who knew what these drug addicts morph into ? Turns out he made a lot of those stuffs up. Go figure.

Reminds you of Kavya Viswanathan, another disgraced author/plagiarist albeit a Harvard sophomore. Anyway, what kind of publisher give a writing deal to a 17 year old whose only writing credit was the admission essay, a teenager who needed a consultant to help make sure she applies to Harvard with all the t's crossed and the i's dotted?

And then there are a few rare books that you read and you say " O my Gosh, this is my book, the one I was going to write! This book is mine - just haven't gotten around to writing it". Well, I have had my moments - the epiphany after someone has done all the work while you were dreaming.