Midlife Crisis Bingo Recap: Out of Time

Welcome back to our 2021 Leaning Stack of Books Midlife Crisis Bingo recap. Today we'll focus on the Out of Time square. Hopefully you have a minute to take a break from all those time management conversations you're having with your young adult. I know it's a constant race against the clock to get it all done.

 

Here's a reminder of the description: It seems like just yesterday that you were a teenager waiting impatiently for the thrill of adulthood. Now the sink is backed up, there’s a stack of bills to pay, and the child you’ve been nurturing all these years with your love and energy just called you “Karen” when you asked him to put his dirty socks in the hamper. Today is kind of a bummer. Take this opportunity to read something about a time long ago. Or read about the future. Or both.

 

For this square, I read Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell. I loooove this author. This book was recommended to me when it came out in 2020, but I. Just. Could. Not. Pick. It. Up. I was not – and am still not, really – ready for a book about a viral illness that wipes out lots of vulnerable people. But this was a stunning novel (a rare 5 stars for me on Goodreads) -- gorgeous all the way through. It's a fictional account of the marriage between William Shakespeare (who goes unnamed) and his wife, who is called Agnes in this telling. Hamnet is one of their children, and the reader gets to understand the dynamics of this family as the plague sweeps through their town. I sobbed and sobbed at parts of this story. If you have any pandemic-related grief or anger or dismay at all, be warned.

 

Reading Hamnet makes me wonder about novels that have too much of a connection to big, painful things happening in real time. In March 2020, Emily St. John Mandel, whose novel, Station Eleven, is set after a pandemic wipes out most of civilization, tweeted: “Maybe don’t read my book right now.” I recently finished Gary Shteyngart’s Our Country Friends, which is set in the early months of the pandemic. Critics love it, but for me it was just too soon. I don’t need to revisit those early months where everyone was rubbing hand sanitizer on their pizza boxes and hoarding toilet paper. Not yet.

 

One of the things that I love about O’Farrell is that she has an extensive backlist. I keep discovering more. She has a signature voice in all her work, but you can really see the development of her writing over the years. I particularly loved The Hand That First Held Mine (2010) and The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox (2014). I just learned today that she has a new one coming out in September, called The Marriage Portrait. It appears that she got some work done while I was doom scrolling the internet during quarantine.

 

While this Bingo topic prompted us to read about the past or the future, there’s another way to think about being “out of time.” Feeling like you’re running out of time to do the things you want to do is a key theme of midlife crises. And there’s a whole self-help industry around finding strategies to seize the day. Of course, those books and their pearls of wisdom are competing with bills and meals and mortgages and Facebook for our middle aged attention. And also, seizing the day competes with sleep. In my twenties, I was a “let’s stay up and watch the sunrise” kind of person. Today that’s still true, except for the staying up part.

 

When is it important to make the most of every moment? The urgency behind that idea makes my blood pressure rise. It often seems that we sit between two poles – doing all the things all the time at a breakneck pace and feeling badly about it or doing very little and feeling badly about it. See how I judged myself above for my lack of accomplishment during the pandemic? And experts and marketers are hell bent on giving us whiplash – Life is short! Hurry up! or Slow down! Smell the roses!

 

I just confirmed my inability to hurry up and seize the day AND my inability to meditate meaningfully about the world around me by slowly spelunking through the internet. My search term was “middle aged advertising.” It turns out that some companies are targeting middle aged people by using the phrase “the new young.” Give me a break. That’s kind of like when my life partner and I were trying to get our toddlers to accept the fact that they couldn’t always be the first one to do things. We coined the terms “first first” and “next first.” That way, everyone got to be first all the time. We felt pretty pleased with our parental ingenuity. The strategy worked for about 5 minutes, and then the kids put down their pacifiers and told us that they wouldn’t allow us to perpetuate trophy culture in our household.

 

Get up and make your dreams come true, my new young friends. Or lie on the floor and stare at the ceiling. Both paths are perfectly acceptable. We’re all winners here. 

 

 

Bingo Questions Answered! Plus, Reading Update From the Empty Nest

 

 

Hello, February!

 

I wanted to update you all on my progress through my midlife crisis. Both of my children departed the nest last month and journeyed to their sub-optimal Covid-era college situations. That’s right – my nest has no tiny birds in it anymore! Most of the time, I am happy to celebrate my lack of responsibility by having potato chips and bourbon for dinner while watching movies from the 80s. Also, Midlife Crisis Bingo has helped. 

 

 

Speaking of which, I appreciate that so many of you are Bingo-curious! Many of you have contacted me in an effort to clarify the rules. Here are a few examples:

 

1)    Can I read cookbooks?

2)    Can I read children’s literature?

3)    Can I read comic books?

4)    Can I read art books?

5)    Can I read sports books?

6)    Can I read really short books?

 

My answer to all of these things is YES! Read whatever the heck you want. Everything goes. There is no such thing as the Bingo Police. 

 

But hold up, my life partner just told me that I am a liar. When he asked me if he could read one book this year and put it in every single square, I said no. “Isn’t that a rule?” he asked, smugly. I have since made a set of punitive rules specifically for him. Moreover, I am making him fill out a nightly reading log and do a plot summary of each book he reads if he wants to get an A in Bingo. 

 

For the rest of you, I want to show you how most things that I read will naturally find their way to a square, especially in these early months. Here are the books I read in January. I will show you which squares (descriptions of squares are here) they could possibly inhabit. 

 

You can print this card here

 

Eat a Peach by David Chang: This is a memoir by the creator of the Momofuku restaurant in NYC. He discusses a variety of things, including what it’s like to be an Asian American restaurant chef in a historically white arena; the role of creativity in the restaurant business; and his own struggles with mental illness. Squares where this book could work for me: Spring Chicken; Hero and Sidekick; Free to Be You and Me; Life Unlike Your Own; Delicious; Truth Be Told.

One Grave Too Many by Beverly Connor: I have been kvetching a bit about reading too many books with too little plot, so I decided to have a plot sundae with all the toppings. I have a soft spot for police procedurals with female forensic detectives at the helm, and I found an old series that is new to me! This is the first book in the series. The main character is a specialist in mass graves who decides to exchange that depressing career for a gentler one in a natural history museum. Murdered bodies turn up anyway. Good times! Squares where this book could work for me: Free to Be You and Me; Most Comfortable Sweatpants; Get a Clue.

Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu: This book won the 2020 National Book Award. Most of the narrative is in the form of a screenplay. The main character, Willis Wu, is an actor of Taiwanese descent. He is limited by the very few roles available to Asian and Asian American actors, roles that blur ethnicities into stereotypes. Underneath the story about film roles is the story about the actual roles that immigrants from Asian countries and Asian Americans fill in American society and the ways that structural racism constrains those roles. Squares where this book could work for me: Spring Chicken; Made It Big; Free to Be You and Me; Life Unlike Your Own; Hot Topic. 

 

The Year of Living Danishly: My Twelve Months of Unearthing the Secrets of the World’s Happiest Country by Helen Russell: This British author and her husband move for a year to a seaside house in rural Denmark and contemplate why the people they meet claim to be so happy. They encounter all sorts of unfamiliar and kooky Danish traditions. She also finds herself confronting the deep and vast state reach into its citizens' lives -- which is so supportive (education; health care; work/life balance promotion) and also constraining (taxes; rules). Squares where this book could work for me: Spring Chicken; The Great Escape; Long Trip; Free to Be You and Me; Life Unlike Your Own; I Wonder; Side Splitter.

 

Oona Out of Order by Margarita Montimore: This is a light, breezy version of a time travel novel. In it, the main character lives her life jumping between years, all out of order. You could go deep and ask questions about whether you’d want to change events if you already knew the outcome, or you could just let easy books stay easy. Squares where this book could work for me: Spring Chicken; Out of Time; Free to Be You and Me. 

 

Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie: This novel won the Pulitzer Prize in 1985, and I first read it in 1993. So this was a second go-round for me. The story focuses on two American professors as they embark on a sabbatical in London. It’s about roles and faking and hiding and acting and obscuring and crafting an image of yourself based on expectations. Squares where this book could work for me: Long Trip; Made It Big; Free to Be You and Me; Always Meant To.

 

The Magical Language of Others by E.J. Koh: This was an intensely powerful memoir of a Korean American young woman whose parents left her to fend for herself at age 14. She connects her personal experience of this trauma with the long history of trauma of her female relatives in Korea. This history alternates with actual letters her mother sent her during their separation. The letters are in multiple languages, and she explains how translation became part of her sense-making of her place in her own story. Squares where this book could work for me: Spring Chicken; Might Sting a Little; Free to Be You and Me; Truth Be Told.

See how easy Bingo is? Don’t overthink it. Just play! Please tell us about what you’re reading and which square(s) the book might fulfill. 

 

I will end by sharing one final question from a reader: What do I get if I do this? 

 

First of all, I appreciate your mercenary approach to Bingo. I’m guessing you want a pony. Unfortunately, I can’t afford postage on a pony. But if you play along, you might get some good conversation. You might make a new friend. You’ll get some camaraderie during a time of isolation. And one lucky whole-card-finishing participant will win a book at the end of the year. It might even be a book about ponies.

New Year, Old Books

It is the real first day of my new year. By that I mean that school starts again for the kids, and it’s no longer OK to spend the entire day on the couch watching the piles of holiday debris grow and tilt on every surface. Of course, like every day in my life, the world has thrown a wrench into my well laid plans to Get My Sh*t Together (2019 resolution, already withering on the vine). One kid woke up with a fever, and our next door neighbors have decided that this is the day to clean out their vents. A big truck pulled up in their driveway, which is mere feet from the side of our house, and the suction process has commenced its ear shattering song. As I write this, it is 7:30 a.m., and I am already reneging on many of the commitments I made to myself (Hello, Internet and your many seductions).

But this is a book blog, not a whine blog (or a wine blog…if I started one, could I sip while I type?). I have decided, as part of the project to eliminate some of my many piles, to make 2019 The Year of the Backlist. And with that decision, I have chosen for the second time to join Roof Beam Reader in the TBR Challenge.

Here’s the premise: I pick 12 books (and two alternates) that were published before 2018 and that are languishing on my shelves (or leaning in a random stack in the closet, or gathering dust on my nightstand). I vow to read twelve of them over the course of the year, thereby reducing the clutter of things undone. This project is good for me because I have two reading habits that conflict: 1)I love to buy books; and 2) I check out hundreds of books from the library. The library books tend to win my attention because of those pesky due dates and even peskier fines. And what happens is the growth of the aforementioned piles and the general hauntings of unread pages.

I have to admit that I tried this challenge four (!) years ago and failed. Or, I suppose, I could reframe the experience and say that I was able to read five books from my incredible leaning stack, leaving just nine to clatter around my house. I am putting a few of those original TBR copies back on this list this year.

I have attempted to make a list that incorporates all the of things I like to include in my reading life – authors from different backgrounds, a mix of genres and topics, and a healthy assortment of challenging and “easy” reads.

It’s time to get started! Here’s the list:

1)    The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison: I got to page 111 of this book of essays before getting distracted. I was loving it and always said I’d need to go back to the beginning and try again. The first one describes the author’s experience being a medical actor, a practice patient for medical students developing their empathy skills. The receipt I was using as a bookmark says that I bought it new at Powells Bookstore in Portland, OR in May, 2017.

2)    Bel Canto by Ann Patchett. I have always wanted to read this book, and yet I always pass it over for other things. I know that several of you have read this and loved it. I admit to shying away from it because both the terrorist and the opera elements of the description been off-putting. It was on my 2015 TBR list, and I’ve had it on my shelf for at least a decade. I fear that I borrowed it from someone and never returned it. Sorry.

3)    Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: I love this author, and I enjoyed Half of a Yellow Sun, Americanah, and Dear Ijawele,or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions (here is my blog post). One of my kids read this novel for school, and this is his copy. I don’t know where it came from, but it includes a 2016 receipt from The Cheesecake Factory (Pumpkin Cheesecake and Chocolate Hazelnut Crunch). Was he reading it while eating?

 

4)    Arcadia by Lauren Groff (alternate): I like Lauren Groff (though here's my conflicted review of Fates and Furies), but I’m not really interested in communes, which is the setting for this novel. I remember hesitating when I bought it at Brazos Bookstore in Houston, Texas in 2016. You know how it is when you really want a new book, but nothing really calls out to you? It was one of those days.  I’d rather read Florida by this author – that one is also on my nightstand – but it was published in 2018 and doesn’t qualify for the challenge.

 

5)    The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin: This one came highly recommended from a friend, and it’s by a Pacific Northwest author. From the price tag, it looks like I bought it used at Powells Bookstore in 2016. Historical fiction is not my go-to genre, which is probably why it has sat unread for so long.

 

6)    The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma: I bought this one new at Bookends and Beginnings in Evanston, IL in 2016, after it was highly promoted on the Book Riot Podcast. And then the New York Times called the author, “the heir to Chinua Achebe.” Nonetheless, the violence promised by the description has put me off. I am hopeful to get over my hesitance and try it.

 

7)    Mr. Penumbra’s 24 Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan: This is another one that friends have recommended, and I really enjoyed the author’s Sourdough last year. I bought this copy used at Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park, WA. I don’t usually gravitate to fantasy-ish books, but I hope to be charmed. A magic bookstore? OK, I’ll bite.

8)    Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok: I bought this Advanced Reader copy at the Friends of Seattle Public Library book sale for fifty cents more than five years ago. I know you're not supposed to buy unpublished copies, so my apologies to the literary world. I’m a sucker for an immigration story, so I’m not sure why this one has languished on the shelves for so long.

 

9)    Commonwealth by Ann Patchett: Another Patchett! I started this one in 2016 just as we were starting our house remodel. I read 75 pages and set it aside. I seem to remember that this was the time when I went four months without reading, because I was too overwhelmed by picking out paint colors and hinges and baseboard styles.  I got this copy for Christmas, and Santa found me a British paperback edition before the American version came out.

 

10) The Bookshop Book by Jen Campbell (alternate): I also got this one for Christmas in 2016 and it was set aside for the house remodel extravaganza. The description says that the author goes around the world visiting bookstores. What’s not to love about that!? I have this down as an alternate, but now that I’m looking at it, I might read it first.

 

11) H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald: I bought this copy from the remainder table at Third Place Books, Ravenna in Seattle. Everyone I know said it was fantastic nonfiction about grief, but I haven’t picked it up because I’ve been worried about ending up miserable. I want to read great things, but I don't want to propel myself into a sobbing heap. What a readerly dilemma!

12) Fresh Complaint by Jeffrey Eugenides:  I got this one as a gift, and the gifter knows how much I enjoy this author. I looooved Middlesex (and, fun fact: Eugenides went to my high school, albeit several years ahead of me). This is a collection of short stories, and I am notoriously bad at getting through short stories.

 

13) The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson: I know that this book the best thing since sliced bread, and I love sliced bread. I promised to read it when I participated in Nonfiction November years ago, and it was also on my previous TBR challenge list. I received this copy in hardcover for Christmas, maybe in 2010.  I don’t know why I am intimidated by this book, but it is time to overcome whatever it is that is in my way.

 

14) We Were Eight Years in Power: A Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates: One of the essays in this collection, Donald Trump is the First White President, knocked me down when I read it in The Atlantic in October, 2017. And I have written before how Between the World and Me changed me forever.  I bought my copy of We Were Eight Years... at Powells when it first came out, and it has been staring at me from my nightstand ever since.

 

My plan is to update you along the way as I successfully navigate my way through this list. I'll be keeping track of my progress on this entry, adding completion dates and links to reviews:

The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Arcadia by Lauren Groff
The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin
The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma
Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan
Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok -- READ 1/19
Commonwealth by Ann Patchett
The Bookshop Book by Jen Campbell
H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
Fresh Complaint by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates

And if you’re interested in joining me, you can find the “rules” at Roof Beam Reader. Or you can just read your own backlist in your own way, but please let me know how it’s going. I hope you play along!

Onward!

Review of Last Night at the Lobster by Stewart O'Nan and Thoughts About Nagging Books

The Last Night at the Lobster by Stewart O’Nan is one of those books I’ve been meaning to read forever. I would see it on library or bookstore shelves and say, “Self, you should read this one. You love Stewart O’Nan.” But I have passed it by consistently in favor of frontlist titles.

When I was in New York earlier this month, I found it for an obscenely low price at Strand Book Store, so I bought it. Crazy! And rather than having it perch precariously on the top of my leaning stack until the end of time, I decided to take on this 146 page book immediately.  Crazy again! I’m just trying to do the unexpected in my reading life.

O’Nan has made a name for himself for writing about small moments in working class New England, and this novella is no exception. This story follows Manny, a manager at a Red Lobster in a failing mall in Connecticut.  He is surprised when the corporate office unexpectedly decides to close his restaurant, shuffling him to an Assistant Manager position at a nearby Olive Garden restaurant. The reader walks step-by-step with Manny on his last shift at the Red Lobster, on a snowy night in December.

If you’re looking for something with a plot, turn away now. But what is remarkable about this book is that as Manny grapples with personnel issues and fills ketchup bottles and mops the floor, O’Nan paints a portrait of such palpable, deep longing for meaning in a meaningless situation. Manny has deep pride in his work, and he wants that work to matter – to his employees, to the corporate office, and to his customers. He wants real relationships with the people he works with, and he wants them to want real relationships with him. Ultimately, he craves connection and relevance, even if all evidence suggests that he resembles a lobster in a tank, with claws taped and fate sealed.

I have read four other O’Nan titles: Snow Angels, Songs for the Missing, The Odds, and Emily, Alone.  Songs for the Missing is my favorite. It’s topic? You guessed it: grief. O’Nan does have a new novel out this year called West of Sunset. That one is about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s last years, and that topic doesn’t particularly interest me. Let me know if you read it.

I have to say that it feels great to have finished a book that has called to me for years. The cosmic list of unread books nags at me, as does the realization that I will never be able to get to them all. Perhaps I will create a 2016 reading challenge called Get Off My Back, Nagging Books!

What books do you never seem to get around to reading?

Review of After You'd Gone By Maggie O'Farrell

This will probably not come as a surprise, but I just read another book about grief. The book jacket promised family secrets and intrigue, and yes, those things are part of the story. But boiled down, this is yet another book in my string of books about sad sad sad sad.

That said, I enjoyed this book quite a bit (assuming “enjoy” is the right word for sad sad sad). Maggie O’Farrell is one of my favorite contemporary authors. I particularly love two of her books -- The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox and The Hand That First Held Mine.  I think that O’Farrell is notable for her spider web writing. The reader is held at a distance at first but is quickly pulled tighter and tighter into the center of the drama.

After You’d Gone was O’Farrell’s debut novel, published in 2002. The story focuses on Alice, who begins the book by getting hit by a car and falling into a coma. The reader knows that something bad has happened in her life, that she has witnessed something difficult. The narrative jumps back and forth in time, allowing the reader to learn about her family and her marriage and the events leading up to the accident. In addition to being a book about grief, this is also book about loyalty and deception. For whom would you sacrifice yourself? Does the truth set you free?

It took me a while to ease into this story, mostly because the time and narrative voice switch often – in the same chapters and without warning. I struggled in the beginning to figure out who was speaking, and the organization felt a bit clunky.  In those ways, the book definitely seemed like a debut. But as much as I didn’t want to be reading about grief, I think that O’Farrell nailed it. I felt every aching minute. The tangible quality of one character’s pain gave me a good glimpse of what a fantastic writer O’Farrell would soon become.

When you find an author that you enjoy, do you tend to go back and read his or her entire catalog? Do you find that satisfying? I think that I would have liked this book even more if I had read it before I had read all of her others. Here’s an old column from the New York Times Book Review about backlists in the book business.

And you can find an interview with O’Farrell here and here.

After You’d Gone is on my 2015 TBR Pile Challenge list.  I’m making slow and unsteady progress toward my goal of finishing (and freeing!) 12 books that have been sitting on my leaning stack for too long. Of course, if I succeed at my challenge, I have a sneaking suspicion that I’m going to reward myself by putting new books on the stack.