Give me books, fruit, french wine and fine weather and a little music out of doors. --John Keats

Friday, January 17, 2025

“Nobody Wants Your Sh*t” by Messie Condo

Now, was that really necessary?

Despite the fact that the note at the beginning of Nobody Wants Your Sh*t assured me that it wouldn’t just rehash all the same info from the previous book… it turned out it pretty much does. Reading it was necessary for me (I had to know what it said, just in case it said something useful). But I didn’t really come away from it with any new information.

Okay, that’s not entirely true. NWYS takes the first book’s question “does this make me happy?” and adds “what happens to it when I’m gone?” The concept of "death cleaning" is introduced: getting rid of all the crap that you don't really want anyway, to avoid passing that responsibility on when you pass on. And it addresses the issue of future plans for all the crap that you really do want, taking a good hard look at whether it will immediately turn in to crap that no one wants after you're gone. 

I was on board with the idea of death cleaning long before I started reading the book, and I was looking for concrete ideas and instructions. (I definitely didn't need Chapter 1, which is the motivation to do death cleaning.) Here are a few tidbits I noted: 

  • The author lists fifteen benefits of “death cleaning”, and suggests you focus on the benefit that “calls to you”. I’m going with “a deeper appreciation of what you have” and “a clutter-free space you can be proud of.”
  • Fear is not the best motivator; pick a motivator that makes you feel good instead. 
  • Make declutterring a priority.
  • Start small: declutter for five minutes a day, or get rid of one thing at a time. 
Guess what? This book was the first thing I decluttered when I finished reading it. 

Friday, January 10, 2025

“tidy the f*ck up” by messie condo

It’s been almost ten years since Marie Kondo both baffled and inspired me, but during that time I’m sure I’ve accumulated way more stuff than I’ve tossed. And I’ve never tidied a room, or even a closet, by removing everything from it and putting it all in one big pile to sort through. I’ve never been tempted to empty my purse nightly, or to thank my old belongings for their years of service before dropping them off at Goodwill. 

I have, however, retained the desire to pare down and tidy up. So obviously when I first saw this *new tidying book (*from 2019), I was tempted to give it a try. On closer inspection, I saw that it is marketed as a parody (which I could have guessed from the author's name if nothing else) so I initially gave it a pass. I don't have anything against a little humor, but I assumed this book would be heavy on the laughs and light on the actual helpful tidying ideas. 

But I kept seeing this book, and eventually I gave in and bought it. I think that's mainly because there is a sequel related to "decluttering before you die"--I think I've already mentioned that's a life goal of mine--but I figured I should start at the beginning. 

This is a quick, fun read, to the extent that I realized I was enjoying my way through it so fast that I wasn't really retaining anything, so I slowed down and started taking notes. And now you will be the beneficiary of said notes. This, in brief, is "the american art of organizing your sh*t":

1. Get rid of sh*t that doesn't make you happy (and anything that is useless). Do you like it? Do you use it? Do you need it--REALLY need it? Does it fit into the life you want? If the answer to these questions is no, especially if it is something you could replace cheaply and easily, LET IT GO. That includes the "shoulds" (I should keep this because . . . ) Start with the easy stuff--leave sentimental items for later, when you've gotten good at tossing things. Finish this step before moving on to Step 2! (Note: I can not get on board with the Step 1 advice about books to only keep a "desert island" selection. I LOVE having shelves and shelves full of books in my house. Besides, the author also says "let your home reflect who you are" and I'm nothing if not a reader and book-hoarder lover.) Obviously most of the work is in Step 1. 

2. Find a place for what's left. Store things where it makes sense! Keep it simple, and avoid stacking things: if you can't see it, you won't use it. Step 2 is the fun part (at least it is if you like to organize). 

3. Stop buying sh*t you don't need. This step is more of a mindset-change than a task, but that doesn't mean it won't be difficult. 

Some extra tips to remember: 

Don't expect instant gratification, but stop to appreciate the small victories. Don't aim for perfection, aim for happy. But to reach happy, you need to do some thinking. What makes you happy? Start thinking about how the things in your house make you feel, rather than focusing on how they look. Prioritize what's important to you. If you don't know what you want and why you want it, browse Pinterest or home decor magazines to try to figure out what you want from your space. The whole process will take work, and part of that work is getting past the laziness. You're never going to FEEL like doing it, so you need to just push through and DO it, knowing the result will be worth the effort. Because remember: mimosas are for winners!

Saturday, December 28, 2024

“Eileen” by Ottessa Moshfegh

Reading this book was a slightly surreal experience. I think that no matter what, I would have had the same response as I turned the last page (that response being,  “Well, that was weird.”). But pile on top the juxtaposition of the book’s setting (the East coat of the U.S. in freezing weather, and everything was ugly) with my own setting (vacation in Costa Rica, where it is never freezing and everything is beautiful) and the weird coincidences (the book takes place in the days leading up to Christmas, and I read it in the days following Christmas) and you get the surreality. I also oddly conflated this book with the one I read before it (the main character could be described as atypical, had a strained relationship with her father, and her mother had passed away previously) and the two I read before that (since this character kept mentioning her future in NYC). 

Eileen is a 24-year old girl who lives with her alcoholic ex-cop father and works as a secretary at the local prison for boys. Her life is filled with shame and disgust, mixed in with a bit of fantasy. She plans to run away to NYC at some point in the nebulous future, but currently she is… well, content is probably the wrong word, as she’s really just numbly moving forward in time, keeping her father stocked with gin and occasionally daydreaming about Randy the prison guard. Enter Rebecca, a beautiful redheaded new hire at the prison who surprises Eileen by paying attention to her, and who surprised me at least once. 

I’m so glad I had *something* to read, even if it felt like it knocked me a little off balance. 

Tuesday, December 24, 2024

“Rules for Visiting” by Jessica Francis Kane

I really loved this book. I hadn’t known at all what to expect from it. Some unknown amount of time ago, for some unremembered reason, I’d noted the title and author on a short list of Books I Want To Read that I happened to re-discover during Black Friday week, so I went ahead and bought it with only the knowledge that at some point in the past, something about it had interested me. 

As it turns out, this is the story of May Attaway, forty-year-old botanist at a local university (working in the grounds rather than as a professor) who still lives with her father and doesn’t really have any friends. She had a few friends in the past, but didn’t really make any effort to keep them, and hadn’t tried making any new ones for quite a while. 

But recently she had started to notice all the friendships going on around her, and had begun to wonder if maybe she was missing out on something. So when the university gifted her with an extra month of paid vacation to thank her for her years of service, she decided to use the time to visit her four closest friends from the past. 

This book is what I would describe as a treatise on friendship disguised as a novel. As I read, I realized I was looking for instruction in the same way I did with the handful of conversation-related books I read a few years back, only with a different outcome. I did not improve my conversational skills by reading those previous books (nor was I reassured that my current skills were adequate). With Rules for Visiting, while I didn’t gather any useful advice on how to make new friends, it did make me feel good about my cultivation of old friendships. 

Finishing this book was, however, a narrowly avoided catastrophe. We are on vacation, and (looking back now I can see it) I very stupidly only packed two books. And this was the second one. I just assumed I wouldn’t want to have my nose constantly in a book. (Do I know myself at all??) Luckily Sam dug up a book in our rental—and it’s actually one we have at home, on my TBR shelf. Whew! Disaster averted. 

Sunday, December 22, 2024

“My Salinger Year” by Joanna Rakoff

I really enjoyed this book, which coincidentally also took place in New York City, just like the last book I read

This is a memoir about a year in the life of Joanna Rakoff, which she spent as the assistant to a literary agent at Harold Ober Associates (or so Wikipedia tells me, as her book only ever refers to The Agency). One of said agent’s main clients was a man named Jerry or, as most of the world knew him, JD Salinger. 

One of Joanna’s duties at The Agency was to respond to Salinger’s fan mail, which he had requested to never see. Her official duty was to type the same scripted reply to everyone, only changing the addressee. However, as Rakoff read more and more of the fan mail, she found some of it so touching or soul-baring that she could not resist crafting more heartfelt replies. 

I’m going to tell you a secret. Years ago I had a friend, TF, who loved to ready maybe as much as I do, and we bonded over books. TF’s literary hero was JD Salinger (no matter how unoriginal that might be). I think I was impressed by this because I did not have a literary hero; I just liked to read. Well, anyone would like to meet their literary hero, right? I knew how reclusive Salinger was (though probably only because TF had told me) so I knew this was a total long shot, but I wrote a letter to JD Salinger… inviting him to have lunch with TF. (Insert crying laughing emoji here. This can kind of be equated to writing to Santa.) My letter, of course, acknowledged the fact that this was highly unlikely, but it never (or rarely) hurts to ask, right? I mean, TF would certainly never have lunch with Salinger if such a meeting were never requested. 

The short story is, of course, that TF never had lunch with Salinger. But I did receive a reply to my letter. (Not from Salinger himself, of course.) The letter was typed by someone who introduced themself as Salinger’s assistant, and in my memory the writer said it was a very kind request to make for TF, who was lucky to have a friend like me.

As I read Rakoff’s book, an idea occurred to me. Could Rakoff have been the one to reply to my letter to Salinger? The timing works out relatively well (Rakoff took the assistant job in 1996; I met TF in 1994 and would likely have written the letter between then and 2000, with 1996-7 as my best guess). The only thing is, in my memory the assistant was a male, and as Joanna signed her own name to her letters, I don’t know where I would have gotten the wrong idea about her gender. And really, Joanna’s boss could have had a male assistant before or after Joanna—one who took the same tack in terms of not sticking to the formulaic reply, but also one who never wrote a book about the experience (at least not one that I’m aware of). But it’s much more fun to think it was actually Joanna who replied to me. 

Monday, December 9, 2024

“Grief is for People” by Sloane Crosley

I wish I could remember how I heard about this book. I was thinking it must have been in Oh Reader magazine, but I flipped back through the most recent issue and didn't find any mention of it. My next guess is Bookstagram. Either way, when I saw Crosley had a new book out, I ordered a copy with hardly a second thought. It seems that my memory is full of how much I loved the first book of essays I read by her, and time has dimmed my disappointment in the second one

Okay so actually when I said I ordered this book with hardly a second thought, I kind of lied. I did read a few reviews first, including one I wish I hadn't. Some Amazon reviewer going by the name of John Berry stated, "In the context of a book about coping with the suicide of a best friend, the number of pages devoted to stolen jewelry seemed out of place." I feel like that one sentence colored my entire reading experience, and the insignificance of stolen jewelry next to the devastation of suicide really stood out to me. Would it have, if the contrast hadn't been pointed out to me ahead of time? That seems like a stupid question, where the obvious answer is "of course it would have," but I guess the real question is: would it have bothered me?

Honestly, when it comes right down to it, I don't think it actually did bother me. It was noticeable, but I was okay with it. To me, what Crosley was trying to say was that she found parallels between the burglary and the death, but also that she was well aware that the two situations were SO NOT THE SAME. And I appreciate that the writing was thought-provoking but not emotionally manipulative. I don't think it was full of universal truths about grief; rather, it has more of an "everyone grieves in their own way" vibe. And it included the biting humor and the taste of New York City that I enjoyed in Crosley's previous writing. 

Friday, November 22, 2024

“Murder in the Bookshop” by Anita Davison

My daughter (formerly known as Bookworm Child, though she is now no longer a child) gave me a great experience for my birthday: she ordered me a Blind Date With a Book from @TheMysteriousBookcase on Etsy. I got a package in the mail, wrapped in brown paper and twine, that included a mystery novel and a Galaxy bar! You can see photos here. What a great idea for a Bookworm Mom!

Unfortunately, the book itself was not . . . my cup of tea. (Groan. If you've read Murder in the Bookshop, or anything remotely like it, you get the reference.) I mean, you know I love Agatha Christie, and I love a good cozy mystery, so it wouldn't be a stretch to think I would like a murder mystery set in WWI-era London. But this one . . . the characters were all over the place. Was the protagonist a feisty heroine, or a brat? Was her aunt a feminist living on the fringes of society or was she a femme fatale? Was Hannah's love interest a cardboard cutout of Superman, his conspicuously broad shoulders dressed in Edwardian extravagance? 

The writing, generally, was not good. In the Acknowledgements, the author thanks her editors "for smoothing out of my clumsy phrasing" which makes me wonder how bad it must have been before said smoothing. I could not sink into the story because I was constantly re-writing in my head. And the plot was such a jarring mixture of pearl-clutching and tongue-in-cheek. Not to mention that on every other page, someone was making tea! (Gosh, I'm tired, I'll make a pot of tea. Oh, I just woke up, would you make me a pot of tea? Dancing makes me thirsty, let's make a pot of tea. Gracious, there's a dead body in my bookstore. This calls for a pot of tea. Oh, and it's my best friend . . . might as well start a second pot!) It honestly crossed the line from cozy to ridiculous.

Still, it was a mystery! And I remain afflicted by the inability to abandon a book once I've started reading it. So of course I read the whole thing, and overall it was a positive experience. I mean, some books are so bad that they actually make me angry. This one wasn't that bad. 

Sunday, November 10, 2024

“Beautifully Organized” by Nikki Boyd

My lovely husband gave me this beautiful book as a birthday gift. He knows me so well. If not a novel, this is exactly the sort of book that appeals to me. I've been slowly but surely working my way through our home, trying to organize and declutter, throwing some style at it along the way . . . Unfortunately, the  part of that last sentence that is most true is the word "slowly". I'm always on the hunt for some help, and for new ideas, but things are not progressing in leaps and bounds. 

I enjoyed reading through Beautifully Organized, but it wasn't the shortcut I was hoping for. I don't feel like I came away from it with tons of ideas (although I did note a few: I'm definitely going to try putting a few drops of essential oil on the cardboard tube inside a toilet paper roll, and maybe I'll put a sprig of rosemary in one of our clear soap dispensers). But as for the big picture: I still have a lot of work to do, and it's going to continue to take a lot of time as I focus on making improvements in small areas, bit by bit. 

The book itself was fun in the same way as How to Wear Everything. I may not have come away with a lot of specifics, but I was motivated to unload excess and organize what remains. And Boyd does provide a solid five-step framework for home decorating: Assess, Declutter, Clean, Organize, Beautify. The book doesn't include an overabundance of photographs (though there are enough to illustrate the main points), but that’s ok because my style does not match the author's (which consists mostly of white, grey, and silver--a palette I can appreciate, but a far cry from my colorful house). For me, the words were more inspiring than the photos.

Monday, October 28, 2024

“How to Wear Everything” by Kay Barron

A month ago if you’d told me I would read a book about fashion, I would have laughed at you while picturing Ross falling asleep next to Rachel at a lecture. If you’d told me I would pay full price for a book about clothes, I would have rolled my eyes and flashed you with my Half Price Books membership card (note: they don't offer one. But if there was one, and it were free, it would be well worn and easily accessible in my wallet). But that was before the plain white cover proclaiming HOW TO WEAR EVERYTHING in stark black lettering caught my eye at Indigo in Toronto. I was pulled towards it as if caught in a tractor beam. I picked it up and started reading and I wanted to know more. But then I saw the price and put it back down again. 

Various scenarios ran through my mind. Order it from Amazon (where surely it would be cheaper)? Put it on my birthday list? Forget about it entirely since it's Just Not My Thing? All this while wandering through the store looking for Sam and percolating an idea in the back of my mind which went something like this: I would find Sam, tell him about this book and how weirdly attractive I found it, tell him it was too expensive but then remind him it's priced in Canadian dollars so it's really not as bad as it sounds, and he would just smile at me with love in his eyes and say, "If you want it, you should get it." 

And that's pretty much what happened.

Just as weird as my attraction to this book is the fact that I really enjoyed reading it. Like, the whole thing. (Except for the chapter on maternity clothes which I skimmed through pretty quickly since I am of an age where that topic definitely does not apply.) I even (though I'm slightly embarrassed to admit this) took a few notes with outfit ideas. And, best of all, I have new confidence and impetus in getting rid of clothes that don't both look and feel good on me. Thumbs up all around! Hopefully next time you see me I will be looking newly chic. 

“Intermezzo” by Sally Rooney

Terrible news. I finished reading this book two weeks ago but never blogged about it. And now… I definitely haven’t forgotten about it, but nothing is fresh on my mind. Here's what I can dredge up from the muck: I enjoyed reading it, as expected where Sally Rooney is concerned, but for me it wasn't on the same level as Conversations with Friends or Normal People. It's OK, that's a high bar. And it's solidly on par with Beautiful World, Where Are You. (Although I just reread my blog posts for those three books, which made me think maybe I didn't love the experience of reading Normal People as much as my obviously almost non-existent memory tells me I loved it.)

To me, this book had less in the way of so-high-level-as-to-be-almost-unbelievably-intelligent conversations between characters. (Or maybe these conversations were so expected in a Sally Rooney book that I didn't even notice them this time around?) Which helped in the arena of not making me feel inferior. Not that the characters were idiots or anything--there were still a lot of really high IQs floating around--but they found other paths to superiority (like world-class chess skills and incredible beauty). 

I must admit I did not reach critical mass with this book, but that's OK too. I don't have to be desperate to finish a book in order to enjoy it. It's actually kind of a relief to be able to put a book down any time I need to. And I definitely did not have to force my way through, which is never a good indication.  

Monday, September 23, 2024

“The Two Loves of Sophie Strom” by Sam Taylor

When I'm down and troubled . . . all I've gotta do is read. It's been a rough week, but I had a day off work today, and I used it to its best advantage: I read an awesome book. 

You may find it difficult to avoid taking me for a shill, considering the fact that the author is also my co-blogger (and my co-everything, really), but nothing can change the fact that this is SUCH A GOOD STORY. I mean, I actually did read several different renditions prior to this finished one (which is part of the reason I didn't re-read it as soon as I could get my hands on it--I just needed a little time for the forgettery to set in first, so that it could seem almost new for me) and while every draft I read was great, this beautiful, polished, shiny version was the best. 

This is one of those excellent books where it's so real that you live it, and then there's the extra whipped cream and cherry on top: that one thing that makes it different, better, more intriguing than real life. That one little magical twist, something that couldn't actually happen in real life except maybe, JUST MAYBE, it really could? 

The story starts with Max Spiegelman growing up in Vienna just before the second World War. One night changes his life completely. One night changes his life completely. (Once you've read the book, you'll understand that wasn't a typo.) Max is half Jewish, which ends up a much more significant matter as time goes by. And Max's story is so rich and complex and compelling that I'm just sitting here trying to figure out how I can sum it up in a few sentences without spoilers and I'm utterly failing. And where does Sophie Strom fit in, you ask? She's only the love of Max's life . . and his other life . . .

Unfortunately, if you are in the U.S., you are unlikely to find this novel in a bookstore near you. It has only been published by Faber in the UK and Commonwealth. But if you have a chance to pick up a copy, I highly recommend it. 

Somebody totally needs to make a movie out of this book. Or, actually, a TV series! That's the way to go these days. 


Monday, September 2, 2024

“All That Is” by James Salter

Sam suggested All That Is for me, so I was a bit disappointed that this book and I were not friends through the first chapter. Lucky for me the rest of it wasn't about war, so I ended up liking it a lot more.

Would it be insulting to Salter to say that his writing is Hemingway-esque? Not that there's anything wrong with Hemingway's writing by any means, but that I imagine Salter would want his writing to be its own thing rather than derivative. Anyway, it's been far too long since I read A Farewell to Arms, but this book reminded me of that book--in tone and style if not in plot.

All That Is had more tentacles, though. Not in the sense of hooks by which it grabbed me (although it did that too), but in the sense of the way it spread out into side stories. Reading this book was like meandering through a big house, going from room to room and learning about the people who lived in each one. I'm trying to run them back through my memory and figure out--were they all linked to the main character, Bowman, in some way? I'm inclined to say yes, although with my memory you never know. But all of these people who were technically minor characters were fully fleshed. 

If I had to sum this book up in one phrase, I would say it's about all the sexual escapades in one man's life, but there's so much more to it than that.