Nom de Plume

Adriane works in the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Advancement, which is to say that she doesn’t have a very meaningful career. She is single and (at least in the beginning), not too happy about it. She is looking for love in all the wrong places, i.e., her boss. In other words, Adriane is a prime candidate for a great chick lit novel in which girl gets love, girl evolves, girl finds meaning in her life, and then girl lives happily ever after.

Only that isn’t what Adriane On the Edge is about. Nope, not at all. Oh, perhaps in a peripheral, parodic sort of way Adriane stays the course, but she blows off center far too often into the inexplicably bizarre.

For one thing, she is damaged goods. Both her parents committed suicide, which is pretty much guaranteed to put one in lifelong therapy. For another, her choices are far too strange and circumstances seem to conspire against her. She gets arrested as a hooker when dared to flash someone (it’s an undercover cop); she pours her heart out to her court-appointed therapist only to have him die during her session (she thinks he’s asleep); she finally parts with her dead father’s golf clubs by selling them to a swinger (and ends up seeing him, not fully understanding what his lifestyle entails).

Told through a series of chapters — almost shorts — we as readers get slices of Adriane’s life and the often surprising things that happen to her. Sly and humorous, I would recommend.

One postscript: If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, what does it say when the different sections of a book reminds you of something else? The chapter on the dog chewing her ear off reminded me of the woman who recently had a face transplant. (This, by the way, is a story that disturbs me greatly: the fact that she now wakes up to someone else’s face seems less odd to me than the fact that she never woke up while her dog was chewing off her face, and didn’t realize there was a problem until she tried to light a cigarette.) There’s the one in which she has the removed tumor in a jar on her desk, which reminded me of that Margaret Atwood short story, Hairball. (Read it if you haven’t already.)

Well, I guess I’m a couple years behind the curve on this one, but I finally picked up a company of Eats Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. I almost ended up not reading it at all after the introduction by Frank McCourt, who really bugs the living daylights out of me. (Oh, sure I devoured Angela’s Ashes like everyone else when it came out, but the subsequent book was full of a brogued whine that was hard to take — “Ach! Poor me, an innocent Irish lad.” I suppose it was well-punctuated though.)

But you know what? Truss is hysterically funny and she illuminates punctuation with grace, ease, and a lot of humor. I’m glad to see that I’m not alone in bemoaning the errant apostrophes of vegetable stands and in shop windows. I’m happy to discover that I am not the only one completely addicted to the semicolon. In other words, I have found my peeps!

She also gives a history of each punctuation mark. When did it first appear? What was it initially used for? Truss answers all these questions, throws in a good many literary references and trivia — and the result is a delightful book. I did have some minor quibbles with some of her preferences; for example, she decries comma overuse while I think she could use a few more. But those are personal preferences and are neither here nor there.

Dannie Faber has the perfect life: she is a successful children’s book illustrator; her grown children are doing well; she spends most of her time living in a modest house on Cape Cod, where she feels most at peace. Then we discover that her husband Tom, who teaches at MIT, lives primarily in their their house in Boston. And in the beginning we accept this with equanimity — after all, there are many different types of relationships.

Then a wealthy hotel magnate constructs a monstrous house reviled by the neighborhood — the trophy house of the title — disurbing Dannie’s equilibrium in more ways than one. Her 30-year old daughter comes home because of a failed relationship and an existential crisis due to unfulfilling work. The book editor that she has worked with for years wants to meet in New York in person. Tom, who has been distant, embarks upon an affair and leaves her. She begins her own affair with the editor, David. Even her best friend on the Cape isn’t immune from change; she quits running her bed and breakfast and moves in with the hotel tycoon, a crass, materialistic man.

Although Dannie ends up divorced and living with David in New York, she isn’t happy living in the city, and proposes the same compromise that she had with her husband: they live alone and then get together on weekends. And this is what struck me about the novel: she starts out in a marriage that isn’t really a marraige and ends up in a relationship that isn’t really a relationship.

Ultimately, Dannie is someone who has accepted mediocrity. She clearly states that she became an illustrator because she didn’t have the talent to become an artist. She lived with Tom for years, pretending that they were happy. The book closes with her doing the same with David. Although many may not agree, I ultimately found this to be a terrifying book, not because of subject matter or suspense or ominous Jaws-like music or anything like that, but because it so clearly illuminates the compromises we all make to be with the people we love.

I’ve been feeling like I’m coming down with something all day, and so at 5 popped into bed for a quick little nap. The next thing I knew, it was 8:30 –and midway through my Wednesday night pottery class. Oh the guilt! I figured I might as well do something useful, and catch up on all the books I’ve read recently. I am, once again, woefully behind.

Let me say first of all that I have loved previous Nick Hornby novels: High Fidelity; About a Boy (made into an execrable movie); and How to Be Good, which is probably my favorite. So I was pretty excited when A Long Way Down finally made its way into my hot little hands after 54 holds at the Seattle Public Library.

The novel is about an unlikely foursome who meet on New Year’s Eve as they each plan to off themselves off the roof of Topper’s House, the most sought after London destination for suicides. As a result of all piling onto the roof at the same time, they form a strange alliance that straddles the different worlds they all live in. There’s Martin, the former morning TV host who has lost his career, family, and self-respect after having slept with a 15-year old. There’s Maureen, the primary caregiver of a comatose, severely challenged son. Then there’s Jess, who’s a young, exceedingly ill-mannered girl with a very unhappy past, and JJ, an American musician who is wallowing in misery because his band–never very good to begin with–broke up, and his girlfriend dumped him.

The novel is told from the perspective of alternating viewpoints, from one character to the next, and on to a fairly predictable ending. In other words, they all realize they never wanted to do it in the first place. I found the novel not bad — indeed, one of Hornby’s abiding strengths is exploring his characters as thoroughly as they were real people in therapy. His deft characterizations and authentic voice render most of his protaganists both memorable and believable. Martin, Maureen, JJ, and Jess are no different.

However, I found the circumstances of their worlds colliding to be so staged that it cast a damper on the story. Yeah, the characters were believable — but that they all meet on New Year’s planning to commit suicide? And they don’t just scurry off into the dark to nurse their wounds? It all felt so artificial and posed and it was hard to get past.

This guy is amazing. Send in your pix and he’ll provide a free estimate on his blog.

This eBayer has the same card I just had framed.

For those of us living in South Seattle, good picture framing services are hard to come by without major traveling. I had been using the Columbia City Art Gallery’s services, but they have very limited hours — and the guy was never there during the four hours a day they are open. Then I stumbled upon The Mitered Corner, which is owned and operated by a delightful woman named Terry (whose mother does the books). Terry is a real gem–not only does she do beautiful work, but she’s also great about making recommendations about what will look good. When I dropped off four prints two weeks ago, I spent an hour there chatting, looking and frames and matting, and chatting some more. And here are the results:

Terry also recycles matboard; instead of throwing away the scraps, she precuts them into various sizes and sells them for a couple of dollars each. This was a godsend, with all those woodblock Christmas cards; I framed a good number of them — complete with conservation matting — for a very modest price.

At risk of sounding like a blogomercial, I am so pleased and can’t recommend her highly enough.

Does anyone in Seattle know of a good accountant? April is looming …

According to Wired:

Mociology n. The study of how people adapt and use wireless technologies, from buying concert tickets to organizing political rallies. The field gets its name from mobile and sociology - and has already spawned an offshoot, mocio-economics, the study of how companies can capitalize on all this mocio-activity.

I love it.

And if you’re looking for a word of the day e-mail subscription that gives you words you don’t already know, check out Erin’s Weird and Wonderful Word of the Day from Oxford University Press. Recent entries include:

fankle
a Scottish word meaning ‘to tangle or entangle something.’ It comes from Scots fank, which means “a coil of rope.”

telmatology
the study of peat-bogs. The adjective for peat-boggian, if needed, is turbarian, and the Scottish dialect word for peat-bog is yarpha.

feuillemorte
an adjective meaning ‘having the color of a dead or faded leaf’ (i.e., brown or yellowish brown). It comes from the French for ‘dead leaf.’ Other, less Frenchy forms are filemot, philemort, and phillimot.

and my personal favorite thus far:

photuria
phosphorescence of the urine

What does Harry do while I work? Oh yeah, he’s heads down too, completely bewitched.

“Are we doing anything this weekend?” Steve asked last night over dinner.

“No plans,” I said.

“Can we do something?”

“Sure. What do you want to do?”

“I want to go to Port Townsend for the Wooden Boat Festival.”

“Okay,” said I. “Let’s do it.”

Then Steve got excited. “Maybe there’s some surfing on the strait.”

“It’s cold.”

“Yeah, but I’m hardcore!” He patted his belly. “Let’s do a weekend.”

I agreed. We’ve been pretty housebound for the past few months. If he’s not working Saturdays, then we’re working on the house in our haphazard manner.

The next thing I knew, Steve had pushed away from the table. He rummaged around downstairs and came up with a surf board. Then he propped it up against the art wall. The art wall is our paean to excess; we have far too many pictures, so a lot of them are going on a single wall. It’s a work in progress.

“Look!” he exclaimed, surveying it with immense satisfaction. “If fits perfectly. I think we should hang it there for good.”

As Wade puts it, a “fun or sad interweb game” in which you google “Unfortunately, yournamehere.”

“Unfortunately Zia died in the 1988 plane
crash.”

“Unfortunately Zia was initially brought to the public’s attention for all the wrong reasons.”

“Unfortunately, Zia and Sonia who complete the new foursome have not been brought
up to react in horror.”

“Unfortunately, ZIA does not protect data once an application has read it.”

“Unfortunately, Zia was wrong this time and west won with the queen.”

Rose Olds is born just to be abandoned. Saved from a garbage heap by Lord Geoffroy Lovell in answer to his prayers for an heir, the baby is taken home and named after his sister, who fell out of a tree and died many years before. Geoffroy had an unhealthy obsession with his sister when she was alive–and an even more unhealthy obsession with her memory. So great is his grief that he retained her governess, Anonyma, who now holds the post of house librarian and who, to exclusion of all else, pursues a scholarly obsession with the poet Mary Day. Thus, when the baby girl is brought home, Geoffroy sees her as the incarnation of his dead sister and marries Anonyma to provide the child legitimacy.

Which is all very good and well, but there’s a hitch: Rose Olds is not, in fact, a girl. She is a boy. And she doesn’t discover the fact until she’s ten years old. And this leads to a gender-bending confusion of identity that culminates in the family being kicked out of Love Hall by pecuniary relatives intent on their own gain. But the poet Mary Day saves the day, as surprises everyone but Anonyma. As it turns out, she is more closely connected to Love Hall than anyone had guessed, and the novel proceeds to its predictable ending.

I first chose this off the library shelf because it sounded like Middlesex meets The Crimson Petal and the White. And it was, with the merest tip of Tipping the Velvet, a dash of John Irving, and a even a sprinkle of Charlotte Perkins Gilman. As a result, I wanted to like it. I really, really did.

But I didn’t. Oh, I didn’t hate it or anything. Its imagery was delightful, both whimsical and endearing in its peculiarity. It was one of those start and stop novels; I lost interest in the pages of sometimes didactic explication, only to be drawn in again with great, well-written scenes. But overall, the story plodded, especially after Rose discovers that she is actually a she.

In my recent rereading of all things Austen, I plucked Mr Darcy Takes a Wife off my bookshelf again for a quick reread. And while my original post on the book still stands, I wanted to add a couple of things.

The story’s pretty good — perhaps a little over-the-top and sometimes unconvincing. Darcy is unremittingly uxorious; Elizabeth adapts to gracious living with complete ease. Neither rings absolutely true to character. Still, it doesn’t really matter because, after all, this is a romance, and we are all so grateful for having a continuation of Pride and Prejudice that we’re willing to overlook a lot.

The language, on the other hand, is appallingly bad. Midway through, I started getting really irritated with the howbeits and albeits. There’s at least one per page. In fact, the whole book reads as though Berdoll first wrote in modern day English — and then went back and tortured her prose into twisted convolutions of itself. Harsh? Perhaps, but sobeit.

3 Names You Answer to:
Zia
Z
munshi

3 Parts of Your Heritage:
Indian (dots, not feathers)
Indian (feathers, not dots)
Norwegian (!!!)

3 Things That Scare You:
Dentists
My never-ending hypochondria
Deadlines

3 Everyday Essentials:
Sleep
Caffeine
E-mail

3 Things You’re Wearing:
Jeans
One of Steve’s flannel shirts
clogs

3 Favorite Songs:
Silence
Silence
Silence

3 Things About the Opposite Sex That Appeal to You:
Broad shoulders
Strong hands
Steve, basically

3 Things You Want in a Relationship:
Someone who makes me laugh (got it)
Support (got it)
A househusband (don’t)

3 Favorite Hobbies:
Reading
Pottery (this is new)
Blogging

3 Things to Do Before You Die:
Finish the two novels I’m working on
Live overseas again
Become filthy rich and famous writing, so I can live overseas again

3 Places You Want to Go:
India again (slated for this year, again)
China
England for stately home tours

3 Ways You’re Stereotypically Female (or male if you’re a guy):
“Do I look fat? No, seriously.”
Sappy commercials make me teary
I really hate the fact that I’m only 32 and already going gray.

There is such a thing as too MUCH customer service.

Take, for instance, my car dealership. After I bought the car, I received a phone call, asking me to rate on a scale of 1 to 10 my experience buying a car. Then I got a questionnaire in the mail asking the same thing. I was happy, and I told them so.

When I drove off the lot, they didn’t have the rubber mats I wanted. So I picked them up a week later. Another phone call. Another mail in questionnaire.

Last month, I got an oil change. Yep, you guessed it. A phone call. And today, I just got the mail-in questionnaire.

This is the thing: I really am very happy with their customer service — they are prompt, courteous, and really do go that extra mile.

But.

I really hate this assiduous followup. It gets irritating.

This is for Barbara.

He nailed pretty much everything else though.

What’s with this news about the Dept of Justice trying to get google’s databases? What’s this about job boards being required to retain old resumes and make them available to employers? And then there are the constant attempts to “Disnify the Internet”? I mean, c’mon people, porn FUELS the Internet, and it doesn’t make me very happy to google myself and find my name on some disgusting site involving animals because some bot grabbed random words out of separate posts, but hey, I live with it. I’m a good old fashioned liberal who believes that the government SHOULD be involved in improving peoples’ lives and ensuring fairness — but this isn’t fairness, this is Big Brother. Meanwhile, all the things that help us as a society just got slashed from the budget.

You know what this is about? This is about stupid people who can’t adhere to a standard code of conduct for themselves and who then demand the government get involved. Can’t stop your teenage kid with rampaging hormones looking for pictures of girls? Pass a law! Stupid enough to buy a genuine Ming vase off eBay for the screaming deal of $9.99? Scream fraud against eBay. And it’s about people who are so terrified of a possible terrorist attack –and, by the way, equally stupid people who voted this moron into office in the first place — that they’re willing to sign away not just their freedoms but everyone else’s too. Because they’re just too stupid and short-sighted and IGNORANT of the way totalitarian governments work.

Which is what this one is becoming.

Unsurprisingly, I have lots of pronunciation peeves, and nothing is more guaranteed to make me cringe than these:

Applicable. The emphasis does NOT fall on “plic”; rather it’s on the first syllable. To pronouce it otherwise reminds me of an icepick. Which is bad, and possibly even fatal.

Realtor. Relator?

Patina. Again, the emphasis is not on the second syllable, but the first. Patina does not rhyme with the name Katina, which in any case sounds like a Vegas stripper. Or, more recently, Katrina, which should be avoided at all costs.

Potable. If it were pronounced with a short “o,” there would be another “t” and then you could plant it. End of story.

Mischievous. Where does the extra “i” and related syllable come from? Miss-CHEE-vee-us? It’s MISS-che-vuss.

On a semi-related note (well, peeves, not pronunciation), there seems to be a tendency to take foreign words and double them up with their English counterparts. Duvet cover. Futon mattress (or pad). Chai tea.

Hmmph.