Read, Pray, Love (or at least Like)

Not that she needs any more marketing, viral or otherwise, but I attended Elizabeth Gilbert's Literary Arts talk at the Schnitz the other night, and have to say I found her totally charming -- smart, funny, warm, down-to-earth and unaffected. I liked her much better than I liked her book.

I bought a ticket because I was curious about the E.P.L. phenomenon: A woman in her very early 30s writes a book about her spiritual quest; it sells a bazillion copies, spawns an adoring cult of (mostly female) readers, and remains #1 on the New York Times bestseller list for more than a year and counting. I'm still a bit squicked by the fact that so many people apparently regard one woman's experience as the key to getting their own lives in order. But I came away believing that Elizabeth is genuine, and a mensch, and I don't begrudge her her good fortune. I'm sure she'll be relieved to hear that.

This is so cool, and this other thing isn't

The most excellent Multnomah County Library system honors its volunteers for each year of service by purchasing a book in their name and marking the occasion with a personalized bookplate. How cool is that?

We get to choose the overall category -- fiction or non-, adult or kids' -- and the general subject area, and can opt to be the first person to check it out. I'd specified Animals/Pets as my first choice, adding "preferably cats." No surprise there.

Joan from the Woodstock branch, where I volunteer, called the other day to tell me my book was in. It's The Animal Dialogues: Uncommon Encounters in the Wild, by Craig Childs, and it has a photo of a mountain lion on the cover. Perfect, as Abbie and China Rose can attest. I started reading it at the dentist's office yesterday, and I think it'll be good. One so wants books in which one's name appears to be good.

Speaking of animals, I saw a small sign yesterday in the window of one of those do-it-yourself dog-washing parlors that seem to be everywhere in town (though I've never actually seen a person and/or a dog in the process of bathing or bath administration). It read: "This establishment is run solely for the entertainment of Bob the cat."

And speaking of the dentist's office, oh argh. I don't have strong feelings one way or the other about my dentist; he seems competent, and about 18 years old. But I walked in yesterday and, ta dah, they've gone all rock star on me. Literally: A sign in the reception area proclaims "We give your teeth the rock star treatment." Thickly hung on the walls are large framed b&w prints of celebs ranging from John Coltrane to John Lennon. (Many of these people I'm pretty sure had awful teeth.) The door to the dental inner sanctum is stenciled "Backstage." I'm not too sure that metaphor works at all, but: whatever. The toilet has a gold star on the door, with the annotation "dressing room." Along a hallway, Rolling Stone covers, many dating from before the dentist himself was born. In the john, framed album covers. Some extremely tasty choices, but that's beside the point.

Sigh. Undoubtedly the new decor sprang from some dental marketing magazine, probably called Dentistry Now! or Modern Tooth. I could riff on this superficial glam veneer bullshit forever. I do like my hygienist, but I sat there in the waiting room totally turned off and thinking "Hmmm, this might be my last visit to this establishment."

Ironically, the receptionist/office person mentioned, as I was leaving with my bag of dental freebies, that as of next month they were no longer accepting my dental insurance plan. Well then. I believe I'll be looking for another dentist. Anyone know a good one? S/he doesn't have to be a rock star.

The year of reading books

One of my intentions for 2007 -- I don't do "resolutions" anymore -- was to make more art quilts. I'm in awe of friends like Terry and Gerrie who are so insanely productive. I started out strong, but by the time spring rolled around, the lure of the garden was stronger. By summer, I was spending entire afternoons in the back yard, simply reading for pleasure.

That's an accomplishment, too, I've decided. I was one of those nose-in-a-book kids who had to be coaxed to go outside and play. After I started my own business in the '80s, I had no time for anything but professional journals, user manuals, manuscripts I was editing, and other required reading. Reading for pleasure -- and books in particular, as opposed to just magazines -- had somehow drifted to the bottom of my priority list. This year I gave myself permission to read -- obsessively, if I felt like it -- again.

For whatever reason, I decided to keep track of the books I read this year. Here they are in chronological order, fiction and non- intermingled. I've put asterisks next to the ones that I particularly enjoyed or that resonated with me for some reason.

When I reviewed the list just now I was struck by how little fiction I'd read -- just seven books out of three dozen. I would have guessed more. I was also surprised to realize how many of the nonfiction titles are biographies or personal memoirs. I never used to be drawn to biography. Perhaps opening yourself to the possibility of learning from other people's lives is another function of getting older. Or maybe it's a matter of seeing how their experiences stack up against yours. I've gotten into the habit of reading the obituaries in the paper, too.

The Year of Magical Thinking (Joan Didion)
I Feel Bad About My Neck (Nora Ephron)
Mycelium Running: how mushrooms can help save the world (Paul Stamets)
The Mayor of MacDougal Street (a memoir by Dave van Ronk)
1000 Places to See Before You Die
The Beast in the Garden: a modern parable of man and nature (David Baron)*
Out (a novel by Natsuo Kirino)*
Kafka on the Shore (Haruki Murakami)*
Photoshop Elements for the Digital Photographer (Beckham)
Digital Photography with Photoshop Elements (Cromhout & Fallon)
Songbirds, Truffles and Wolves (Gary Nabham)
Island of the Colorblind (Oliver Sacks)
Complex Cloth (Jane Dunnewold)
Transforming Fabric (Carolyn Dahl)
The Happy Isles of Oceania (Paul Theroux)
Alice Waters and Chez Panisse (Thomas McNamee)
Not Buying It: My year without shopping (Judith Levine)
Infidel (Ayann Hirsi Ali)*
Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood (Rebecca Wells)
The Memory Keeper's Daughter (Kim Edwards)*
Eat, Pray, Love (Elizabeth Gilbert)
The Breakaway Japanese Kitchen (a cookbook; Eric Gower)
The $64 Tomato: How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity, Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for the Perfect Garden (William Alexander)
Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (Bill Bryson)
Bee Season (Myla Goldberg)*
Unbuilding: Salvaging the Architectural Treasures of Unwanted Houses (Falk & Guy)
Plant This! (Ketzel Levine)
The Breakaway Cook (cookbook; Eric Gower)
American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Bird & Sherwin)*
Children of Men (P.D. James)
An Exhaltation of Larks (James Lipton)
The Perfectionist: Life and Death in Haute Cuisine (Rudolph Chelminski)
Not Enough Indians (Harry Shearer)
Final Gifts: Understanding the special awareness, needs, and communication of the dying (Callanan & Kelley)*
Bush on the Couch: Inside the mind of the president (Justin Frank)
Dishwasher: One man's quest to wash dishes in all 50 states (Pete Jordan)

I'm still reading the last two; an interesting juxtaposition.

Looking back on my year of reading books, I suppose I actually have accomplished something. Portland has many fine independent bookstores, which I patronize especially when buying gifts or books by friends. But I also bow deeply in the direction of the excellent Multnomah County library system and the ability to browse the catalog and reserve books online. Also, I've found that due dates, like the deadlines that used to drive my professional life, are an enormous incentive to productivity.

Maybe next year will be the year of doing art. I'm thinking seriously that imposing some deadlines in the studio might be the key to making that happen.

Just another fall weekend

This weekend was Wordstock, and I timed my visit to hear Harry Shearer talk about his new book. I've had a low-key mini-crush on him since the last time I saw Spinal Tap, several years ago. He's adorable, smart and wry, a killer combination, though for whatever inexplicable reason he is not on The List.

Our friend Jen took Amtrak to Portland this weekend. Her daughter Laura is a sophomore at Reed. I remember when Laura was an infant. She delivered Jen back to our door this afternoon wearing high lace-up combat-ty boots (though I'm sure I'm missing a style nuance or two here) and a white terrycloth bathrobe. It's a look. It says... stayed up til 4:30, slept til noon; what do you want? I had a clueless mom (referring to my mom, rest her soul) moment, but bit back the impulse to say "Hey, Hallowe'en was last week." Needless to say I did not take a photo. I'm not that uncool. Here's another picture of Harry instead.

Beach Break

Jer and I took a midweek break and headed to Newport for a couple of days. We stayed at the Sylvia Beach Hotel in Nye Beach, which I'd heard of and wanted to visit even before we moved to Oregon. "You'll either love it or hate it," folks said; we loved it, as I knew we would. It's a rickety four-storey structure built in the early 1900s, perched on a bluff, and geared toward book lovers. (The original Sylvia Beach operated the Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris during the Hemingway-James Joyce-D.H. Lawrence-golden expat years.) No phones, no TV, no Internet. But there is a library on the top floor, with funky yet comfortable chairs facing the ocean, where I spent about six hours one foggy afternoon.

Each room is named after a writer. We stayed in Emily Dickinson. The in-room reading material included several biographies and volumes of her poetry, plus a couple of creepy portraits. Stell-a is, of course, the Tennessee Williams room. The F. Scott Fitzgerald room is reputedly furnished with several bottles of gin. Two cats have the run of the establishment; the orange guy, whose name I didn't catch, beats on Shelly, the tabby; then she chases him, and so on ad infinitum.

Breakfast is included in the room rate. Dinner, served family-style, is available for a reasonable fee. We ate at the hotel the first night. When the hostess announced that a round of Two Truths and a Lie was a dinnertime tradition at the Sylvia Beach, my stomach turned over; I am so averse to "icebreakers" and get-acquainted games of any kind. But we were seated with half a dozen accomplished and entertaining liars and, fortified with a couple of glasses of wine, actually had a great time trying to figure out which of each person's three autobiographical statements was, in fact, not true. Despite my inability to remember the title of my supposed doctoral thesis, most people thought I was lying about being tattooed. I guess I just don't look the type. My husband is sociopathically adept at keeping a straight face while describing his totally bogus career as a travel writer.

At breakfast the next morning we sat with two of our tablemates from the night before, about whom we knew a great deal, of course, already, plus another couple from Portland. The conversation ranged from spirituality and religion to global warming to family dynamics -- definitely not small talk. One of the side effects of staying at a hotel that caters to readers, the proprietors have obviously figured out, is informed and quick-witted discussion. The restaurant is called Tables of Content, which sounds a bit twee but which turns out to be a brilliantly appropriate name. The next evening's dinner we'd booked at April's, across the street. Our meal was very good, but not nearly as much fun as the night before.

We really enjoyed Nye Beach itself. The coastline is beautiful and the community seems artsy and laid-back. Benches seem to be a local form of self-expression. That, and signs of various kinds. I'll put up a few examples on flickr