So a generous benefactor is sending me a camera, and because of that I am going to make a couple of special trips to places I have never been before in order to photograph them. TBD. But this is very good news.
I finally finished The Corrections, which was actually quite difficult a read for me, but in a good way. Franzen basically did everything right in that book, except for maybe the Lithuania chapter. But everything else was perfect, inspirational, and admirable. I don’t write books like that, and probably never will, but boy would it be nice to someday. I would just like to see what it’s like to see the whole world like that.
I also read Marcy Dermansky’s new novel, Bad Marie: A Novel, which is extremely satisfying, quick, sporty, funny, dark, and dirty. I read it in a day, maybe two. It had some lovely surprises in it (I’m not going to say what it’s about so as to not spoil the reading experience) and this great momentum and the prose was tight and addictive. “Beach book” has a negative connotation in the literary world sometimes (although we all would kill for certain people to proclaim our books as such), but I think this book would be fun as hell to take to the beach and you would not lose a single brain point.
Also Kate’s fabulous, juicy, whip-smart novel, Trouble, is out now in paperback. You could put that and Bad Marie in your bag and you’d be good to go for a weekend.
I’m going to read Matthew Sharpe’s upcoming novel next, and I’ve also got a stack of Gabrielle Zevin books, which my agent sent to me (we have the same agent) as an example, I guess, of Things I Should be Doing with my own work. Also a print-out of Patrick Somerville’s new book with Featherproof is sitting on my desk.
Someday I’ll finish Tinkers.
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My dear friend Cinde, who is the first friend I made in New York City in 1998 (literally: I had arrived the night before and gone to sleep in an empty apartment, and when I woke up at 8 AM, there was an after party in the living room thrown by my roommate after a night of clubbing at Twilo [ohgodTwilo], and Cinde was part of the party and I thought she was the sweetest thing, and she was and still is), is getting married this weekend. Raise a glass to one of the best girls around on Sunday night, will you?
