Readerama

So today was the last day of the Virginia Festival of the Book, but I officially finished last night at the fancy-schmancy authors’ reception at Carr’s Hill, where the president of UVA lives.

Like every year, I get all excited and start marking off my festival program as if I’ve mastered the human need to eat, not to mention take care of the boy, do my job, and all the rest. You could literally pack your schedule from ten in the morning until nine at night. Me, I went to four events, and I got sort of overwhelmed with brain overload and social contact as I do every year.

But I love the festival for the simple fact there there are an awful lot of fascinating books that I might have never discovered. I know writers, but mostly through Brain, Child. In my civilian life, most of my pals are teachers or professors or stay-at-home mothers. We, like most of America, get book recommendations from various media and whatever the bookstores decide should be facing out or placed on a table. If nobody decides that a certain book is The Next Big Thing (and it’s not motherhood-related), chances are excellent I won’t hear about it.

The festival provides this great serendipity. On the bus home from the reception last night, I got to talking with Carleen Brice, whose first novel is Orange Mint and Honey. We had a nice conversation (shared with another lady) and I looked her book up. Here’s a description from Publisher’s Weekly: “In Brice's accomplished debut, African-American Shay Dixon, a burnt-out grad student, has a visitation/fantasy/fever dream featuring Nina Simone, the high priestess of soul, who counsels Shay to go home. To do that, she must face Nona, the drunken failure of a mother she's not spoken to in seven years and blames for a harrowing childhood that left her emotionally scarred. Still, she takes Nina's advice, heads home to Denver and discovers that Nona's now an A.A. member with a good job, a lovely home and an adorable three-year-old girl, Sunny, Shay's half-sister. Their reconciliation is complicated by Shay's stubborn anger, Nona's A.A. sponsorship of a troubled young woman and Shay's sexual awakening. Brice's straightforward prose is dead-on in describing the challenges Shay and her mother face as they reconnect.”

I ordered that baby up toute de suite.

I went to the panel on which Logan Ward (who wrote See You in a Hundred Years) was speaking. I hadn’t heard of the other panelists, but I was totally charmed by historian Scott E. Caspar’s talk about his book Sarah Johnson’s Mount Vernon. Johnson was born a slave at Mount Vernon and, after the Civil War, returned to the historical home to work as an employee. Caspar pieced together Johnson’s life through a paper trail and the book is her story but also that of race and segregation in the nineteenth-century. It sounds super, and I ordered that one, too.

Okay, one more example: I’d planned on going to the panel on monsters at Friday at six, but Caleb’s school had its fundraiser and Steph and her family were in town. So I bought the books instead, and I’m about halfway through Paul Bibeau's Sundays with Vlad. It’s a nonfiction quest that looks at the historical and literary Draculas; the quest takes him all over the place, from the problem Romania has with promoting Dracula for tourist money to intellectual property law to the subculture of vampire-obsessed folk. His writing is funny and smart. This is so going to be a cult classic, at minimum.
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And hey! I got to meet Elizabeth McCullough at Cville Words. My first reaction upon seeing her nametag at the reception was to make finger guns at her, as if I were Isaac the bartender from "The Love Boat." I can’t take myself anywhere.

Bossa Nova With Me!

It's really beautiful here today, and it has been for the past few days. The grass is thickening up, and it's just starting to smell like a good time for reading on the porch swing. Last night, we drove to dinner with the windows open. The three of us had a really lovely time: a third-grader snuggled close to me, a silky oyster stew and thick bread, a tall glass of beer.

It seemed ridiculous that the night before, around midnight and just twenty minutes down the interstate, a sniper or snipers had set up on an overpass and fired into cars passing on the interstate. No one was seriously injured, from what I've heard. But it occurred to me what a mess everything is, that I can hold these two emotions: joy at the onset of spring and a lurking fear that the shooting wasn't an isolated occurence. (Update: police arrested two guys early this morning.) I don't know what it says, either, that the joy is winning out.

I wish I knew how to embed this, but I don't. Have a listen. It gives me chills in a good way.

The Anniversary of Steel

On Saturday, Brandon and I will celebrate our eleventh wedding anniversary. And by “celebrate,” I mean that we’ll probably make out in the kitchen while Caleb plays on his DS.

The traditional sort of gift one is supposed to give for the big eleven is steel. I’m just spitballing here, but one lucky guy just might get:

A. A Terrible Towel

B. Looking at him with this face.

C. Quoting, thoughout the day, lines such as “Shelby, drink your juice,” “Looks like two pigs fightin' under a blanket,” and “The only reason people are nice to me is because I have more money than God.”

D. A mix CD, featuring the works of Steely Dan, as well as Billy Joel’s “Allentown.”

E. A swordfight.

F. The Empire State Building.

If It’s Ugly and You Love It, Clap Your Hands

Many moons ago, Brandon and I went furniture shopping. We fell in love with a huge tangerine-colored leather couch, and somehow got caught up in the fantasy that this thing would last even an hour in our house. These are mean streets here, what with the dogs’ nails and the boy’s rivets on his jeans and the general hard livin’. (So hard we can’t even be bothered with the g’s.)

As nineties band Belly might say, sometimes there’s no poison like a dream. This weekend, my dream of living in a Pottery Barn catalogue officially died. We are the owners of some blue puffy furniture. It’s powerful ugly, and I love it.

In truth, it might not be so much ugly (unlike the camo armchair we saw at the same store) as tacky. Last night, I sat on the couch, the section that reclines. I pulled down the section with the drink holders. (You heard me right.) I saw down with my book and my beer and when Luna popped up next to me and started licking her paw, I nudged her, but didn’t freak out. This motherfucker is indestructible. However tacky the couch may be, indestructability brings its own sort of peace.

Thar she blows:

A Festival! Of Books!

Sorry about the light posting this week. I’ve been, as they say in the old country, busting my ass to get work done because next week is the Virginia Festival of the Book here in Charlottesville. Which means I will spend a goodly portion of next week being the book super-fan that I am. Last year, I saw Mary Roach speak. Mary Roach! And the year before that, I saw the New Yorker’s Hendrik Hertzberg. I’m afraid that I did the intellectual equivalent of throwing my panties. Worse, I’m afraid that I meant it.

This year, as always, there’s some great stuff. A.J. Jacobs, of The Year of Living Biblically, is speaking on the Nice Jewish Boys Gone Wild panel. Logan Ward, who wrote See You in a Hundred Years, is speaking on the Virginia Stories: Reconstructing the Past panel.

Jennifer Ackerman wrote Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream: A Day in the Life of Your Body, a book I’m dying to read. Her panel is moderated by Susan Tyler Hitchcock, who’s also a fabulous writer. Her latest is Frankenstein: A Cultural History. Susan is also participating in a panel called Dracula vs. Frankenstein: A Monster Mash of Fact and Fiction. A thousand years ago, as an undergraduate, I took a fiction writing class with the other guy on the panel: Paul Bibeau. I really liked his writing then, and I’m looking forward to reading his first book, Sundays with Vlad.

And if you happen to be around, I am requesting your presence at the panel I’m on, called Self-Help, Twelve Steps, and You. I’ll be doing the thang that I do with Practically Perfect. My co-panelist is Martha Woodroof, whom you might know from NPR or her book How to Stop Screwing Up: Twelve Steps to a Good Life and a Pretty Good Time. We’ll be at the City Council Chambers on Wednesday at 6 p.m., and the parking garage is right there. My inner Judge Judy is hoping there is a gavel for me to use.

Which Is More Awkward?

The remote control was lying on the couch; someone must have sat on it and changed the channel to a non-kid one. Nine-year-old son is home sick. After lunch, mother and son retire to the living room to watch some cartoons together. A commercial is on. Before mother realizes the content of this commercial, it's over and son has a question for her: "What is herpie?"

OR

Mother, daughter, and grandparents are relaxing after dinner. All agree they'd like to watch a movie from the on-demand feature on the satellite television. Daughter suggests "The Black Dahlia." It takes a while to get into. And then, maybe forty-five minutes into it, daughter watches in horror as the plot takes a turn. She is at that moment watching lesbian soft porn with her mother and grandparents.

I Think I'm a Groupie

I'm going to the They Might Be Giants concert tomorrow, and I just realized that this is at the very minimum, my seventh TMBG concert. If you are reading, They Might Be Giants, I'll be the drunk lady in the black tee-shirt with pet hair on it who shouts "WOOOOOO!" the loudest. Hello. Also, if I can put in a request?