A Little too Weird.

I got this signed ARC of Little Weirds by Jenny Slate at my favorite local independent book store. (As a gift from the owner! I know they're not allowed to sell ARCs!) The owner got it at Book Con in 2019. I was excited because I liked Jenny Slate during her short stint on SNL and in the film Obvious Child, and her web series about Marcel the Shell with Shoes on is adorable.

Jenny Slate is clearly a talented writer. I was jealous of some of the phrases she turned. I thought this little book of essays would be a good one to breeze through on a rainy afternoon but it took me months to get through. I would pick it up and read one or two essays and put it down again. She creates vivid images and certainly has fun playing with words but so much of it is a run-on, stream-of-consciousness spiral.

Example: she's describing a garden and choosing the plants she wants. "The flowers looked like the shape of a fruit, and I always like it when those two images, fruits and flowers, gesture to each other. I like that and I always have, and I like it when fruit is in flower arrangements and I like it when flowers are in the salad or on cakes and I like it when fruits are on women's heads in their hats or if their whole hat is fruit." This is how 90% of the book goes, and it just wasn't for me.

Then there were little gems that jumped out at me, which made me want to finish it out and find more gems. She has an essay of nice things to do for yourself. There is a brilliant two-page essay comparing holding a big, unwieldy dog to trying to navigate life after a breakup and dealing with the person who broke your heart. There was a metaphor that for me sums up the physical feeling I also get when I'm dealing with being depressed and anxious. "I try to imagine the blood in my arms and all I can imagine is air being blasted through pipes made of paper." I thought I was the only one. And there is the brilliant way she imagines a conversation between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, if they could look at the way that humanity turned out and express their disappointment to each other. "This is not our fault."

So while overall Little Weirds was too weird for me, there were little glimmers in there that worked for me. I wouldn't say it wasn't a good book but the frenetic, run-on style isn't up my alley. I'll happily check out her next project, though. She has a lot to offer!

Tracking Your Reading

I am a list-maker. I love to make lists and I love to cross things off. I have all kinds of ways to do this. I use Goodreads.com for my reading lists: my to-be-read (way too long for this lifetime), my current reads, and my past reads. I confess that checking things off can just as satisfying as actually completing them. Maybe that means I have a sickness of some kind. ;)

I have been thinking of using Book Riot's reading log this year as well. I mean, it's not like I don't have plenty of time at my computer right now. ;) 

There was also a great episode of What Should I Read Next about how people track their reading. I was listening to it while I was driving so I need to go back and give it a re-listen and take some notes to decide if I want to try any of those things. For now, though, Goodreads has been my way to go.

Recently I listened to My Life With Bob: Flawed Heroine Keeps Book of Books, Plot Ensues by Pamela Paul. I did this as an audiobook. (Side note: A lot of times when I'm listening to a book while I'm hiking, I associate certain spots on the trail with parts of the book. With this one, I know that when she was talking about the trip she and her sister took to Auschwitz, I was hiking toward Pryden Falls in the Paugussett State Forest in Newtown, CT.) This book is a memoir about Pamela's life growing up as a reader and becoming the editor of the New York Times Book Review. She talks about her childhood, her family life, and her travels through Europe and Asia before beginning her career in earnest. It was refreshing, honestly, to read about the ways it went wrong and almost went wrong, because I know that when I've traveled by myself there have been some moments that in hindsight I really could have handled better! I'm glad we both ended up ok!

But through all of this, she has kept the same fat notebook chronicling all of the books she's read. She talks about how she was so protective of it and what happened when a boyfriend wanted to write his reading in it too. (How about get your own?) And I'm jealous because I didn't keep such a notebook! I I've gone into Goodreads at times and recorded books I know I read before I started using it. Part of it was for the thrill of list-making and part was sort of for record-keeping. ;) There's no way I'm going to remember everything I read in middle school but also I know that I read every Babysitters Club Book as soon as it came out, so if I look at the pub dates that will be easy to find! I can pinpoint a lot of books down to what grade I was in. I have a terrible short-term memory but lots of things from when I was a kid have stayed in there. 

I give this book 5/5. I learned about it listening to the Well-Read Podcast. :) I also enjoy Pamela Paul's New York Times podcast!