Archive for August, 2008
A YUMMY MUMMY BOOK CLUB OF ONE
Posted 08.25.08 by annajohnson
The last book I read from cover to cover was BRICK LANE by Monica Ali. I managed to eat this book WHOLE over two nights in a country inn where we were attending a wedding. While everyone else was going karaoke loco in n open field, I was tucked up in bed listening to Marcello sleep and reading like a fiend. I felt the mother in this book…she barely spoke, but her inner life was given spark and flame by the delicate narration. We all have our occasional angry locked up in the house Bangladeshi house wife moments… don’t we? And if you pick up the book you will see a startling bridge erected between tradition and self discovery that is not simplified or sentimental in the least. The tension between duty and desire established so deeply in that story was a heavy load to bear as the author drew her characters with such a fine brush. Loved it.
Tonight I am half way through ME the amazing memoir by Katharine Hepburn. Kathy, as she calls herself, is captured in lots of great black and white photos but the best one, the very best, depicts her riding a skateboard at seventy odd. The woman is an Aries and a terrible show off but in many ways she is an ideal mother figure: gutsy, idealistic, arrogant and humble in turns, adventurous, self aware, salty. I love this one movie star because she is so singular. She makes soap and water seem sexy. It’s a good book to read when you feel apathetic or spiritually dry or just a bit used up by life. Biographies are delicious that way…especially when you get a domestic dose of the un-worldly blues. What better to break the dance of hand washed laundry and lentil marination than a juicy (and relatively innocent) anecdote about Spencer Tracy. The man she described as a human “baked potato.” I love reading truthful first hand accounts of their relationship. The human mechanics of love between people we will never meet.That is heart of great autobiography.
This memoir is quite lovely for that and for the staggeringly natural delivery of her words (heaps of !!!! and ……) and the cryptic wisdom. Here’s a chestnut: “Plain women know more about men than beautiful women.” I could contemplate that like a Zen Koan for a few weeks. Are we, the plain, obliged to know more? Does it serve anyone to know that much about a man? And any how the African Queen was not plain. She knew all the men who mattered of the twentieth century as a lover or an equal or both. What’s she on about? Like I said, read it when you feel low down, she’ll boot you into shape like a tall glass of lemon juice.
And finally….. while I’m in this mega brainy self improving dilligent up-swing let me urge you to log on to www.percivalpress.com to see the wonderful book list (and radical web links) that is under the heading WE RECOMMEND. I doubt this is the list of just one mind, but this publishing house is the seed the polymath and Renaissance dude Vigo Mortensen so maybe it really is his book shelf contents. What a very delicious thought. But exotic provenance aside, it is refreshing and exciting to see a small artisan publishing house pointing readers to books in all directions (and other publishing houses) with such a topical span and lyrical depth.
Looking at that list was like sitting down midstream at the best dinner party in the world.
I dream of tackling a stack of wisdom like this list and welcome responses from any yummies out there who are already doing so. Even if six half finished books are on the go in every corner of your house. All praise the ambition of starting ANY book…
I never belonged to a book club but I fell in love with my husband on the first sight of his CITY LIGHTS poetry books, beautifully kept, alphabetically arranged on a tall clean shelf in a quiet green room. Books are all promise and spell. I love their secret perfume.
What we read is what we dream… and what we dream must be what we come to live.
VIVA LA VIDA.
Till next month, KEEPING IT YUMMY.
XXX ANNA