The last of summer reading (an abbreviated book review)...

Well, today I realized that it is NOW-OR-NEVER. One week before school starts again and I figure that if I want to do any reading for fun I better do it now. Scanning my bookshelves was a little overwhelming. The pressure is on after all. I may not be able to really relax into another book until next May (sniffle, sniffle--say it aint so!). What makes it even harder is having just finished an EXCELLENT excellent book by Margaret Atwood. Bluebeard's Egg.

(SYNOPSIS: By turns humorous and warm, stark and frightening, Bluebeard's Egg infuses a Canada of the 1940s, '50s and '80s with glowing childhood memories, the harsh realities of parents growing old, and the casual cruelty that men and women inflict on each other. Here is the familiar outer world of family summers at remote lakes, winters of political activism, and seasons of exotic friends, mudane lives and unexpected loves. But here too is the inner world of hidden places and all that emerges from them -- the intimately personal, the fantastic and the shockingly real...whether it's what lies in a mysterious locked room or in the secret feelings we all conceal.)

While in Canada I decided to pay homage to a Canadian author and having never read Atwood's work before I took her with me from the book store to the campsite and had a hard time putting her down. Ouch-- the insightfulness with which she writes! The book is a collection of short stories, character sketches really--so emotionally honest (without being sentimental) that it almost hurts. I have a new-found respect for both Canadian authors and artists. But now what? Dang, it's so hard to choose another book after finishing a good one.

So today I started Sherman Alexie's Ten Little Indians which has been sitting on the bookshelf collecting dust since last year. I read one of the stories and was disappointed because it wasn't as good as Tonto and Zoro Fistfight in Heaven... that is, until I got to the end-- surprise! Ok, so he definitely writes like a man (I think I'm on a female author kick)... but I'll continue with the book, if nothing else, for the sake of curiosity.

But waiting for people to come look at the house made me antsy and unable to sit still for more than five minutes at a time. Open House, edited by Mark Doty caught my eye (not surprising--considering my obsessive personality. ha!) and since it's only on loan from a professor I picked it up and started reading. I find myself reading a lot of books of anthologies and collections lately. Maybe I'm just afraid of commitment. Oh, but right now I'm in the middle of a story that has inspired me to write! I would say more, but it's incubating. For now I'll just say: it's a good book. Trust me.

And last, but not least, I'm still working on The Jade Cabinet by Rikki Duccornet. I started this one after listening to Rikki read at the Writer's Conference. It's about a girl named Memory who tells the story of her mute sister and her eccentric family including her father who has a theory that language is only a pale copy to what it once was in the Garden of Eden. He spends his life studying the patterns of zebras, cats, and beetles in order to reconstruct this original language which was "so powerful as to conjure the world of things." Language, a species of magic. Rikki's in love with language. How can I resist her?

Excerpt: "There are those who say that the memory is like a collector's cabinet where souvenirs are tucked away as moths or tiny shells intact. But I think not. As I write this it occurs to me that for each performance of the mind our souvenirs reconstruct themselves. The memory is like an act of magic"

If only there was more time. I think I could read forever. But as you can see, I'm a rather disjointed person--reading too many things in too many different directions with never, never enough time! Sometimes I wonder what direction my own writing would take if I were to allow myself the opportunity to read whatever my heart desired for as long as I wanted. I guess it is a lot like wondering what it would be like to live deep in the Alaskan wilderness with no one to get in the way of myself. There are dangers either way. Still, the idea of it sounds wonderful.

Until then, I exist in perpetual confusion of what to read next.