Category Archives: readin’ and writin’

Extremely Loud & Incredibly, Incredibly Close

Posted by plumpdumpling on May 18, 2011 – 12:00 pm
Filed under living in new york is neat, narcissism, readin' and writin', stuff i like, there's a difference between films and movies
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I got to Kamran’s apartment after work yesterday to find these signs taped in front of his building:

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close Filming

I know it really steps on a lot of people’s toes to say things like this, but I really feel like Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close means more to me than it does to anyone else.

Okay, maybe it means more to one other person. And maybe it means just as much to you. But it means a lot–a lot–to me.

I read it just after I started working at Barnes & Noble in December of 2005. I had lived here for just over five months and was, as I’ve previously embarrassingly admitted–crying all over the damned city. And of course the book is about walking all over the damned city. I missed my dead mom, and Oscar was trying to find a piece of his dead dad. I knew I was being manipulated by cutesy phrases like heavy boots, but I felt like my own boots were dragging me into the concrete, so I didn’t care.

My then-boyfriend kept asking me why I was reading this book that would make me cry two minutes after I sat down with it, but it was too beautiful to put aside. Ability to produce continual, pathetic tears or not, a well-written book still eases my mind. I haven’t been able to touch it since, and my copy sits on my bookshelf still tabbed with sticky notes on every other page to mark my favourite spots. And I’ll never forget the way the pages leading up to the end just fly by, building up to the climax so much that I felt like I could actually hear a trumpet fanfare in my head. Apparently this is something that happens to me with books I really, really love, because I remember it with my very favourite book, Dandelion Wine, and one of my other Top Fives, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.

So it seems really meaningful somehow that the movie version of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is taping right outside of Kamran’s apartment tomorrow. I feel like I should take off work to watch. I feel like I should have desperately tried to become an extra. I feel like I should rush the set and try to talk about the book with Tom Hanks.

But I doubt it means as much to him as it does to me.

In your FACE, Hanks.

The Very Worst Book I’ve Ever Read

Posted by plumpdumpling on April 28, 2011 – 1:30 pm
Filed under it's fun to be fat, readin' and writin'
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I need to rant about the book I’m reading right now. I originally noticed it years ago while working at the bookstore and was taken by the luscious legs on the front cover. The book was a great seller and was always faced out on the shelf to attract attention, so I would often happen upon the legs and give them a quick admiration while putting other books away.

It’s called Jemima J, although I used to accidentally call it Jemina J in my head, pronounced JEM-inna, because my brain evidently blocked me from thinking a woman could be named after a brand of maple syrup. Anyway, I suddenly remembered the book the other day, procured a copy, and finally read it after all these years.

And it turns out it’s horrible. Not just horribly written, although it is that, despite the main character claiming in the first few pages that she has a real way with words. But mostly, it’s just written by what must be a horrible person. Author Jane Green’s anti-heroine hates herself, calls herself disgusting, talks about how much others pity her, has no social life, can’t get ahead at her job, avoids the mirror, and can barely speak to her beautiful roommates. All because she’s fat.

And that’s fine. Maybe some overweight people actually do feel that way. Maybe some overweight people actually consider backing out of rooms just so their hunky co-workers can’t see their humongous backsides. And Jemima does have a humongous backside. She eats bacon sandwiches for breakfast, mayonnaisey salads for lunch, and entire sleeves of cookies after dinner to deal with her emotions, and every time she steps into a room, people stare at her, because she’s so freaking massive. Or so we’re led to believe.

At one point, after we’ve listened to this superficial, spectacularly boring narrator go on and on about how her life would be perfect if she was a size 8–apparently this was the model-thin in the year 2000–the author finally reveals her weight: 204 pounds. Which is a size–what? 14? 12?! I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t seem like the end of the world to me. But according to the author, Jemima has a double or triple chin (Can someone explain to me how a triple chin would look?), can’t walk down the street without having to stop to pound down a thousand calories or so, and can barely be contained in clothing. And she’s never had a boyfriend, because who could date someone that fat?!

Oh, oh, and here’s the better part: when Jemima finally decides she wants to get “healthy”, she joins a gym and stops eating. And gets down to 120 pounds in a couple of months! Yaaaaay, Jemima! Yaaaaay, eating disorders!

I’m sure there’s some really important lesson at the end of the book about being happy with yourself and not meeting creepy guys on the Internet and sending them Photoshopped pictures of your head on a magazine model’s body, but I’ll never know, ’cause I ain’t finishing this crap. My only consolation is that I didn’t pay for it.

Finding My Childhood on eBay

Posted by plumpdumpling on March 25, 2011 – 12:00 pm
Filed under readin' and writin'
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The book I remember most from my childhood is The Monster at the End of this Book, starring “Sesame Street”‘s Grover.

But there’s this other book I think about all of the time. It was small, square, and black and had a rudimentary drawing of a peacock on the cover. My mom was a master of character voices (the voice she used to anthropomorphize hers and my dad’s first dog, Gussy, was asked for by name by the whole family: “Do the Gussy voice! Do the Gussy voice!”), and I distinctly remember her reading with her famous gusto, “Green meanies roasting weenies. Meanies jump in yellow jello. They turn into yellow fellows.”

But for the longest time, I couldn’t find the book anywhere online. I would type “green meanies roasting weenies” into every search engine I could find, never with any result. Until one day. I was a college kid working at the Columbus Public Library at the time and happened to Google it during my break for whatever reason. And there it was:

Seals on Wheels by Dean Walley

Seals on Wheels by Dean Walley. It turns out the book was printed by Hallmark Children’s Editions for a very short time in 1970 and had long been out of print by the time I read it as a child in the 80s, so my parents must have inherited it from someone else. Newly armed with the title and author, my Internet search began anew, and I discovered a single copy for sale on eBay.

For three hundred dollars.

So now I not only wanted the book for my own memory-keeping, but I wanted to make it my nest egg in case of future tough times. My childhood bedroom had long since been cleaned out by my super-neat father, but I hoped to find it among the things he saved for me in the old wooden toy chest he had made for my younger self and went home one weekend to dig through it. But of course there was no book.

I’ve since had a Seals on Wheels eBay search saved and often get e-mails claiming that a copy is up for auction, but it always turns out to be some sort of seal for a truck tire. You can imagine my heartbreak.

But a real, legit copy turned up today for $50. And then I thought, “Hey, doesn’t Amazon sell used books, too?” So I checked, and it turns out they have two copies! And fifteen copies of the paperback version! FIFTEEN!! For six or seven years now, I’ve been feeling hopeless about this book and wondering if I should’ve just spent the $300 on it when I had the chance, and it turns out I could’ve had it for $30.

Now that it’s within reach, though, I’m scared. What if it’s not as good as I remember? What if it’s too painful to read now that my mom’s gone? Is it better to have my memories, or am I going to kick myself again if I don’t buy this thing?

Here’s the very insightful conversation Kamran and I had about the issue:

Not so helpful.

I’m No Good with the Alphabet

Posted by plumpdumpling on January 7, 2011 – 12:00 pm
Filed under readin' and writin'
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Aside from it being, you know, generally not good, notice anything funny about this scrapbook page I made in Tracey‘s store during my Thanksgiving trip to Ohio?

terrible scrapbook page

I knew something was wrong with it when I glued it down, but I just couldn’t figure out what.

Put Me at the Slow Reader Table

Posted by plumpdumpling on December 3, 2010 – 12:00 pm
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So the Selected Short Stories portion of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening and Selected Short Stories kind of sucks, huh? I guess an author isn’t obligated to write more than one inspiring work of early modernist feminism, but I was really taken aback by the difference between The Awakening and the rest of the book.

Of course, I didn’t get that Robert’s note there at the end meant he was never coming back until I read the Wikipedia article on the story, so maybe I shouldn’t judge.