Cookbook Confessions

It was a weeknight at Barnes and Noble. The lights were harsh as usual, the whole place too well lit.  Or maybe it just felt that way---I wanted privacy for the deed I was there to do. I needed an off-the-beaten-carpet spot. Perhaps a corner near an under-trafficked genre . . . what about by that sale table of puppy calendars from 2011? Finding every discreet inch occupied, I gave up prowling and slumped back into the curve of a heavy wooden chair.  It was the worst possible place. In the middle of the store. At the end of an aisle. I carried on my despite the indiscreet location, desperate for my ends. On my lap was a stack of newly released cookbooks. I felt like I was about to do something bad.

And I was.

But let me explain.

I am learning to cook. No one I know is going to teach me how to cook. This isn’t because I know no one who is capable in the kitchen. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. I have several friends who are culinary professionals and I have worked beside some very talented chefs. My husband, too, is a natural around food, both in terms of consumption and production. He can improvise a meal in minutes. Yet here I am, still needing inspiration and some serious planning before even boiling a some water. I try to remind myself that becoming a good cook is a process. A journey.

This journey into cooking, as with learning all new things, takes one step at a time. My kitchen’s true north, thus far, is my discovery that there exists no better culinary cartographer than a slick new cookbook. They are my collective compass with their vivid photography, exciting personal narrative, delicious recipes; my ladders for scaling walls of recipe boredom, my ships for crossing the choppy sea of a weekday dinner.  Food is an adventure when presented in a beautiful book, and I hunger to be whisked away to France, Morocco, New York, the Deep South . . . They say you eat a meal first with your eyes.  I would add to that the grumbling imagination we feed far before the food is on the plate. At times my mind is sated in simply reading the lyrical titles printed on a pretty cloth bound spine.

Yet here is where I hit another wall: money. That cookbook compass can be quite expensive. I try to be patient and wait for these books to come at at my local public library, seeing as my tasting menu aspirations are really on a lunch special budget. But that never works. They're always snatched up in a flash. There are, for example, twenty-six holds on Tamar Adler's "An Everlasting Meal." More like an everlasting wait . . .

Which brings me back to the bookstore.

The man sitting behind me is breathing loudly and snarfing a candy bar. (Turns out the word “snarf” is in the dictionary, by the way.) Nearby, children are arguing over a wooden train set. Then I look around, eyes darting, and . . . and . . . I do it.

I take a photo of the cookbook on my iPhone. And then another. And then another.

It’s just like sexting, except that the rump pictures happen to be of roast beef in Around my French Table. 

Here’s my MO: I take a shot of the front cover so I remember the author’s name and the title. I take a shot of the index, then a shot of one recipe for a trial run.  I only allow myself to poach that one recipe, as if that makes my illicit photography any less rude. This photo test shoot is my trial run. I tell myself I'll buy the book if it delivers the goods.

Later that night, when I get home, I sit on the couch with my glowing phone an inch from my nose. I peer into the images, sliding back and froth between the choice shots, zooming in on certain spots.

It feels a little dirty at first, but I’m consoled by the fact that though I won’t be taking any of these cookbooks out to dinner, at least I’ll be making it for myself.

What Are You Reading (offline, that is)?

Carrie Allen Tipton writes and lectures about classical music, American popular music, religion, and Southern culture. Her work has appeared in many publications and is upcoming in Texas Heritage Magazine, Black Grooves, and the Oxford American. Tipton has presented extensively at conferences and has lectured for the Eroica Trio and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra; in 2013 she will speak at the Houston Bach Society. Her research has been featured on KUHF radio (NPR in Houston, Texas), in the Houston Chronicle, and in The One: The Life and Music of James Brown (R.J. Smith, Gotham: 2012). Following a Ph.D. in Musicology and a stint as a professor, she flew the coop of academia to write and edit more extensively. She lives in Houston, Texas, with her husband where they wait impatiently for the arrival of their first baby in December. She hopes their child will one day heed the profound wisdom of the television show Reading Rainbow and “take a look—it’s in a book!” More about Tipton can be found at www.carrieallentipton.com. When I was three, my mother enrolled me in group piano lessons. For the first month, I sat next to her on my tiny bench, hands covering my eyes. When she cautiously attempted to remove my little paws, I dug in, explaining that I “was not ready yet.” The thought of new paths may conjure thrilling visions of adventure to some, but to me they signify the peculiar torture of leaving the known and familiar, now just as they did then. But the month of piano lessons did pass. Eventually I took my hands off my eyes and put them on the keys. I kept them there long enough to complete a masters degree in piano performance. Turns out that change can be scary and good all at the same time.

Three decades later, I once again face bends in my own path. Where to turn for nourishment, for the reassurance that others too have set out on unknown roads and have found them to be good? To books, of course. Much of my reading this summer has explored themes of personal and communal exploration of unmapped territories. Here are a few that, in capturing the ambiguity of the gains and losses that come with change, may help you in your own journeys to new places.

Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues by Elijah Wald At the micro level, Wald writes of the personal exodus from the Mississippi Delta of bluesman Robert Johnson in the 1930s and his efforts to forge a career in the tough early years of the commercial recording industry. Wald simultaneously charts a broader unmapped path as he smashes his way through standard historical narratives. He takes issue with common notions in written blues history: that the genre represented a primal cry welling up from neo-African roots in the Mississippi Delta, isolated from contemporary pop music; that its early practitioners were unsophisticated musicians; that 1930s Black audiences heard the blues as a pure folk art rather than as commercialized pop music. Wald reminds readers that it is blues historians, not Johnson’s contemporaries, who elevated him to demigod status after his death. Using archival evidence for his assertions, Wald manages to scold blues revisionists and celebrate Johnson’s admirable output all at the same time. A new path indeed.

1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created by Charles C. Mann I learned of this book through an NPR interview with the author, immediately intrigued by his improbable ability to make agricultural history sound fascinating. The book does not disappoint in this regard, arguing that Columbus inaugurated the collision of previously-separate ecosystems and unwittingly launched globalization. Mann demonstrates this through quirky tales of staples such as the lowly potato, vastly entertaining as they meander clumsily through complex geopolitical contexts. Despite Mann’s fairly snappy and occasionally humorous prose, however, I often glazed over at the wealth of detail, guiltily skimming for the next cool anecdote. Additionally, Mann’s neutral stance on the ethics of globalization formed an interesting and uncomfortable undercurrent. I am more accustomed to hearing globalization roundly denounced, but appreciated the author’s encouragement to think about its positive aspects. If you’ve ever wondered how shiploads of bird guano helped reconfigure human civilization, this is the book for you.

The German Settlement of the Texas Hill Country by Jefferson Morgenthaler My point in mentioning this admittedly obscure book isn’t to imply that you should rush out and order it, but to make you wonder how your town or city or region Came To Be. My husband’s mother was born into one of the German communities that began forming in central Texas in the 1840s, and after a trip there we became curious about how and why these folks wound up on the other side of the world. Morgenthaler answered our questions many times over, relating how fallout from the French Revolution drove German nobles to finance the migration of underclass persons to, of all places, the republic of Texas. The book details the often-woeful and sometimes-humorous journeys of the Germans as they pushed forward in the Texas wilderness, surviving on bear meat and negotiating treaties with Comanches. Morgenthaler’s meticulously-researched book reminded me that the tale of new beginnings in unfamiliar places is the story of how all of us came to occupy our present plot of earth.

Mama Ph.D.: Women Write About Motherhood and Academic Life by Elrena Evans and Caroline Grant, editors Particularly germane to my own life circumstances recently was this collection of essays. By turns frustrating, funny, and affirming, it features the voices of female academics across a spectrum of disciplines, degree programs, and academic ranks. Some discuss remaining in the academy while raising children; others explore leaving to start a family. The book was sobering in its repeated structural critiques of academia’s inadequate maternity provisions. The writing of women who chose to leave university life upon having children deals honestly with the grief and deep embarrassment that often accompanied their decisions, but also points the way towards alternative career paths and new modes of satisfaction outside the academy for those with Ph.D.s. The book assured me I was not alone in my questions, struggles, and frustrations.

Among the Mad (A Maisie Dobbs Novel) by Jacqueline Winspear I hope you have already met Maisie Dobbs, a relatively new yet already much-beloved female sleuth. In my mind her only peer among fictional detectives is Harriet Vane, created by the great writer Dorothy Sayers, for complexity of character and full-bodied realness. Like Sayers’ Vane, Dobbs works in the interwar period in England. The books, and Dobbs herself, are shot through with shadows and scars of the first World War, and a major thread in the series is how Dobbs’ own wartime pain slowly and haltingly gives way to new beginnings in her personal and professional life, though never in a pat or easy way. In this book, as with all books in the series, Dobbs works her way through a new mystery related to the war that gripped Europe fifteen years earlier (the book is set in 1931). She also forges new inroads into her personal relationships, an ongoing theme for Dobbs’ character after the life-altering tragedies she experienced as a nurse during the war.

Grunge and the Goddess Girl

By Rhea St. JulienImage from the cover of In Utero

At the tender age of 12, I got my period, fell headlong into rock and roll, and unwittingly had my heart broken by the girl of my dreams. Let's start with the body. In a few short months, my skinny frame had grown a layer of downy brown hair over it, my thighs had thickened so fast I had stretch marks, and menarche arrived with such a torrent of muddy red blood that I was sure I had shit my pants. It was just my luck that I was wearing white jean shorts, at the mall, on the way to 5.9.7 from Claire’s. I tripped over my own feet rushing to the bathroom, and got the nib of the pencil I was carrying stuck in the side of my leg, which I can still see in there, 19 years later. It’s a permanent memento of that day, as if I don't already have a reminder every single month.

When I showed my mom my shitty underwear in horror, she threw a pad at me and said, "That's blood. Use this. Shower every day." That was about it. No big "Welcome to Womanhood" speech, no talk of the dreaded word "menses". My mother's unsentimental approach belied how she felt about all things woman-related (including me): they were a hassle. So, I figured it out like I did everything else, with my girlfriends. We tried to fit tampons up there, not knowing to take out the applicator, and having it all kill so bad we gave up and stuck to pads, even though they bulked out our cut-offs.

The one friend that seemed to do just fine with all things lady-bits was Lauren D'Agostino. Her long blonde hair shone as she ran full tilt down the soccer field, leaving all the boys and a few of us girls feverishly fawning in her wake. No matter how close I came, I could never catch her.

We spent hours, the two of us, in her huge attic bedroom, dancing to The Doors and Ugly Kid Joe, trying on outfits for the school dance and talking deeply about our families. The other girls in our clique could not for the life of them understand what Lauren saw in me. I was a perennial misfit, a “freak”, who got straight A’s but also had a permanent seat in the vice principal’s office. I was too everything: too smart, too wild, too loud, too poor, too fast. When Lauren dipped her Venus hand in my direction, inviting me into her inner circle, the collective population of my small town middle school took an inward breath, “HER?!” The girls we shared our lunch table with, who I can just call “The Melissas”, were positive I had stolen my place in Lauren’s BFF photo album from their shinier, worthier visages.

But there I was, despite all odds, feeding horses on her father’s farm and sipping hot chocolate he brought us in steaming paper cups. What no one understood was that since I wasn’t a friend that Lauren needed to keep up appearances with, she could really be herself with me. She was so buttoned-up in the lunchroom, attempting to keep her Queen Bee status, but with me she let herself go, trying out head banging and dressing up with me and another friend like Huey Duey and Louie for Halloween instead of a “sexy witch” like the Melissas.

I knew that I adored her, but I had no idea that I was actually in love with her, until, without a word of explanation, she dropped me. The Melissas were triumphant, noisily whispering throughout the halls about how Lauren and I were no longer, how one of the Melissas (whose name was actually Mary) had dethroned me, and how pathetic I was after all.

Absolutely certain this was all a misunderstanding, I ignored them and called Lauren’s personal telephone line, repeatedly. I imagined it ringing, pink and perfect on her trundle bed, and willed her to answer. But she never did. I wrote long missives about our friendship and how much I missed her, reminding her of all the fun times we’d had together, but there were no return notes from Lauren in my locker. She never spoke to me again. The following year, she headed off to a private Catholic school, so I blissfully did not have to see her beautiful face any longer, and be reminded of my unrequited love.

The truth is that while Lauren may have been more of herself with me, I was less and less of myself with her. I was so desperate to hold on to her that I contorted myself into her mold, pretending I liked 50’s-style boy-girl sock hop parties and banal trips to the mall, like the fated one where I bloodied my underwear for the first time. So, once Lauren broke my little 12 year old heart like a slinky stretched too far, I was free to explore my darker tendencies.

I found myself in Mystery Train Records, eyeing cassettes and CDs through my growing-out bangs, which I had to keep tossing back with a flip of my head in order to see the cover art. Music, particularly the “alternative rock” that was pouring out of Seattle at that time, fed the painful part of me that was sore over losing Lauren, and humiliated over proving the Melissas right. If had to be a loser like they thought I was, I was going to fucking rock out.

That Fall, Nirvana released In Utero, and I got on the Kurt Cobain train right before it was blown to pieces by his shotgun. With Heart Shaped Box on repeat, I yelped along, “Broken hymen of 'Your Highness', I'm left black/Throw down your umbilical noose so I can climb right back”. I couldn’t consciously conceive of the fact that I was wishing I had broken my dear highness’s hymen myself---I sub-knew it. The fact that I didn’t just miss Lauren or want to be her like the Melissas did, but actually wanted to be in her, and rub my hands up her blondy legs was never stated, not even in my reams of diaries. Instead, I howled along to Hole, Pearl Jam, and Stone Temple Pilots in my room 3 streets away from Lauren, hoping she would hear me, pick up the phone, and ask me to crawl back into the folds of velvet-girl goodness that I was nearly received into.

Lessons from a (really big!) rock concert...

Dearest Clara, Your father and I make great effort to get out and about, but somehow, making it to big concerts doesn’t often make the cut.  We must have gone to hundreds of musical performances, but only about a handful of huge shows that take up an entire stadium.  There’s no one reason specifically, but I think it has to do with our preference to be part of a smaller group that can offer greater connections, and being part of a crowd of tens of thousands is just too much for us.  Or maybe it’s because that as we get older, we tend to prefer more predictability, a set start time, a chair to sit on . . . But this week we had the opportunity to get out of our usual routine, and it helped me remember the sheer wonder and spectacle than can be behind a big show.  It was still tremendous to be part of such an energy that reverberated among 20,000 people, with lights, and dancing, and a sense of community with others that know and love the same music.  When you combine great music with fantastic showmanship, the result is unforgettable.

I can’t say that we will be adjusting our schedule to see these types of shows any more often than is our usual cadence, but here is what I’ll keep in mind for the next one:

• Think hard about those high heels: During my more carefree collegiate days, I don’t recall an event that I didn’t have heels on, and I don’t recall being all that bothered by it.  But now, nearly seven hours in heels, to include three hours of dancing and a 45 minute walk, made me wish I had brought a slightly bigger bag to hide those flats in.  All the same, if I had to go back, I’d still probably choose the heels.  I feel like they were appropriate for the artist we were seeing, and it made the night feel all the more special to get a little decked out---and they made your father look twice.
• Bring ear plugs: I know, I know, I really sound like I’m getting old.  But trust me, your hearing is something to protect, as are all of your senses, limbs and head.  You might not even think that you need them because you’re sitting far away.  We certainly were supposed to be, and got last minute seats (allocated dance space?) on the main floor, and that bass will make you reconsider.  Earplugs are tiny items, just pack them---I guarantee that you’ll still be able to hear the music---and the bass---just fine.
• Big concerts are best for big groups: We went just the two of us unexpectedly and we had a wonderful time, but sometimes, when a concert is really big, it’s because the artist is loved by many.  So many of the things that are part of the show, the interminable waiting for the show to start, yelling out the words to your favorite songs, reminiscing about favorite parts of the show, are best enjoyed as a group.  But don’t let not having a big group prevent you from going!
• Get in the spirit: Dress up . . . listen to the music before leaving . . . Big concerts are occasions, and chances are you had to book tickets in advance and for a fair amount of money.  Enjoy the full experience of the show, and that starts way before the singer starts singing.
• Book a taxi cab to meet you two blocks away:  When you leave a stadium full of 20,000 people, you’ll never get a cab, and public transportation isn’t any easier.  If you’re lucky enough to walk, do it (see first bullet).  Don’t underestimate how tired you’ll be after the show and better safe than sorry.  Book a cab to meet you a couple of blocks away from the venue in advance, that way your ride will be warm and waiting once you’re ready to go home.
• Make time for icons: Some artists are just one of a kind---they might have a unique sound, they might have been around for years, their music spanning generations; they might just be spectacular performers.  You’ll figure out who they are pretty quickly.  But if it’s someone that you think your kids will ask you about one day, make the time and set aside the money to go see that.  There is something to be said for being part of that experience---all legends leave us eventually so make sure you got the chance to see the ones that influenced you.

All my love,

Mom

An Ode to the Female Cop: Benson and Prentiss

Of the weighty Law & Order franchise, Detective Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit is the only female protagonist who really takes the lead. Other detective pairs which include females—Gorem & Eames, Logan & Wheeler, both of L&O: Criminal Intent—have a decided focus on the quirks, quips, and leadership skills of the male half. Female D.A.’s are frequent, but less protagonist-y. Olivia is by far the most prominent female hero to emerge out of Dick Wolf’s vast TV empire.

This is likely because SVU is like the “special episode” spinoff of Law & Order---it deals with, as the intro states, the “particularly heinous” crimes of sexual and physical violence against women and children. Accordingly, SVU has become the only one in the franchise to give equal, if not more, weight to a female investigator.

What’s interesting to observe is the ways in which, as a woman occupying the often masculine-associated role of NYPD detective, Olivia Benson both transcends and, conversely, highlights her gender at strategic moments. Like many female cops on TV, Benson isn’t, well, girly. She often wears her hair in short cuts. She dresses plainly. She even has kind of a low voice (not a huge thing, but we’d definitely be noticing if her voice was high-pitched and/or squeaky).

Yet very much of her character remains defined by her gender. As noted, it would seem that it was a deliberate choice to place a woman at the forefront of SVU because of the fact that it deals with crimes against women and children. Olivia is extremely sympathetic, touched deeply by each case she comes across and concerned deeply for each victim. She’s the one who sits and talks to them in a soft voice, coaxes out difficult-to-speak-about details, and gently advises that they take the stand to testify and put this or that bastard away for good. These all fall into line with "traditional" ideas about women's strengths.

And of course, the two lead detectives—Benson and Elliott Stabler (Christopher Meloni)—occasionally regress into tired gender role clichés. Olivia is sensitive! Nurturing! Gets emotionally involved in her cases! While on the other hand, Stabler is hot-headed! A tough guy! Gets physically involved in his cases—as in, he almost beats up dirtbag suspects in the interrogation room! The show tends to make up for this by having Benson and Stabler be both well-written and well-acted, but there is the occasional moment when you pull yourself out of the show long enough to go: “Really?”

Beyond relating to victims, Olivia has a more explicit connection to their ordeals---she herself is the product of a rape. And in one episode, Olivia goes undercover as an inmate at a woman’s prison where a guard is suspected of sexual assault, and she herself is attacked by the guard before she's saved by her team. In this case, she becomes a “special” victim herself, a situation that only she, and not Stabler, could place herself in (by the way, I'm not sure if that would ever happen in real life---a cop going undercover as an inmate? I don't know, I get all my skewed criminal investigation knowledge from these shows.)

In this last phenomenon, I’m also reminded of Emily Prentiss (Paget Brewster) from the crazy addictive serial killer show, Criminal Minds, which follows the work of an FBI behavioral analysis unit as they profile horrible, twisted rapists and murderers before they strike again (usually just in the nick of time to save the latest victim!). The subject matter is equally dark and grotesque, if not more so, than SVU, and the victims are, again, often women.

(There’s a whole subconversation to be had about the depiction of violent and sexual crimes against women as entertainment, and whether it is or isn't made more acceptable by the fact that the shows so clearly depict right and wrong and underscore the significance of such crimes—but that's for another day.)

There are three regular women on Criminal Minds, who tellingly remain at about fourth and fifth position in the cast photo phalanx (see picture)—yet they are important characters with a lot of screen time and subjectivity. Prentiss, like Benson, is a strong woman with minimal “gendered” qualities, a downplayed wardrobe, and a tough exterior. Yet she and J.J. (A.J. Cook) are often the ones who must “coax” a victim or bereaved family member, using their special lady powers to put people at ease.

In an episode where there is an outbreak of a deadly strain of anthrax, it is Prentiss and J.J. who we see struggling with the ethical quandaries of maintaining public silence about the disease in order to protect the greater good (which the men don’t seem to have a problem with). Prentiss fights the urge to notify a woman who lives across the street from their diabolical scientist suspect that she and her children may be in danger. And J.J. has a small emotional crisis about her own young son and the fact that, ethically, she can’t do anything to protect him in advance, because she has “inside knowledge” that the public doesn’t. The "mother" role often, overtly or subtly, plays into the female cop experience on these shows.

Prentiss, like Benson, has also used her gender to her advantage when dealing with suspects. In the interrogation room, she has flattered and flirted with sociopaths who tend to open up when faced with worshipful female attention. (These scenes are always a little sickening.) Meanwhile, Benson and Stabler have played on gender dynamics by playing roles when interrogating misogynists: Benson plays the bad cop who comes down hard on the guy, while Stabler winks and nudges—“women, right?”—and makes the guy think Stabler sympathizes with his woman-hating ways.

All in all, both shows produce interesting perspectives on the quandaries and ambiguities of gender in a fictional workplace that privileges traditionally “masculine” qualities; yet they often still reproduce traditional ideas about women's skills and perspectives. Benson and Prentiss are tougher than your average female character, but we don’t lose sight of the challenges they face and the separate circumstances they sometimes find themselves in as women, which is good. While there are clichés—the Benson-Stabler dichotomy, for example, or the repetitive "mother" theme—overall I think the net result of having heroines like these can only be positive in terms of female representation on TV. I mean, that is, if you can stand horrifically violent and disturbing plots.

What Are You Reading (offline, that is)?

Roxanne Krystalli’s passion for gender advocacy, conflict management, and international development has brought her to communities affected by conflict worldwide, where she has designed programs that benefit women in affiliation with international and community-based organizations. This journey has stretched from Egypt to Colombia, from Uganda to Guatemala, from the Balkans to Jerusalem. Roxanne is intrigued by questions of memory and forgetting, attachment and loss, home and away. She is a Joan Didion fanatic and, perhaps relatedly, a perpetual nostalgic. A fervent believer in the power of storytelling, Roxanne documents her journey on Stories of Conflict and Love. "Oh my God, we are going to die."

After three years of living and working in conflict and post-conflict zones around the world, I did not expect to hear the above sentence uttered outside a library in Boston, Massachusetts.

"We are going to die, I'm telling you."

This time it is neither of cholera nor of rocket fire, neither of a mine nor of malaria. You see, we will allegedly die of . . . reading.

"Four hundred pages. A thousand. Eighteen thousand six hundred and fifty eight." People try to calculate the number of pages we will have to read per week to complete our graduate coursework in law and diplomacy. We signed up for this, just as we did for that stint of work in Sudan or Colombia, in Uganda or on the Iraq border, and our freedom to parachute in and---most importantly---out will always make every page turn feel like a privilege to me. Imminent death does not feel like autumnal breeze, the laws of humanitarian intervention, or blank pages waiting for ideas to populate them.

***

If there came a moment of grief for me in this process, it had to do with having Susan Sontag stare at me every morning. It is the first time I can call a bookcase my own since I lived in my childhood home in Greece. It is firmly planted here, as am I---ready for roots to grow past suitcases and for books to gather dust on a shelf in a way that anchors me in place and time. When I celebrated the symbols of permanence, I had underestimated the power of book spines to stare you down on your way to yet another class with "Conflict" in the title.

They stare because they remember the era when you made time in your life for conflict and dreaming, for imaginary journeys and real footsteps in daring directions. It was the era of reading a book a day or a week, of carving out room for writing your own. Susan Sontag has a way of reminding me of previous selves and the reasons I loved them. "Man, you look . . . dead. Dead tired," someone will inevitably remark as I leave the library. Eyes may look weary behind glasses, but they now know to make time for Susan Sontag. She nags quietly from the shelf, making sure I carry the past into the present, forcing me to weave dreams together that previously seemed disparate.

Here is what is squeezed between Fighting for Darfur and Understanding Peacekeeping on those shelves that anchor me:

NW by Zadie Smith. It was neither White Teeth nor On Beauty that cast a spell over me, though I savored both of these books. It was Zadie Smith's Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays that shaped my understanding of reading and writing as acts of love. In Smith's own words:

"It seems like the big distinction between good art and so-so art lies somewhere in the art's heart's purpose, the agenda of the consciousness behind the text. It's got something to do with love. With having the discipline to talk out of the part of yourself that can love instead of the part that just wants to be loved."

While Zadie Smith's latest novel is not devoted to advice on words and love, it deftly places one in the service of the other, as she traces the webbed lives of four characters in contemporary London.

Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed. The problem with reading in tiny spurts, with eyes half-shut from fatigue and thoughts of humanitarian law swimming in your head, is that such mental states are not conducive to enveloping yourself in an imaginary universe and allowing it to sweep you away. They do not create the necessary conditions for magic; magic requires time and a desire to give in to a plot, regardless of bedtimes, alarm clocks, or beckoning libraries. Perhaps this is why I so appreciated Cheryl Strayed's ability to create magic out of directness, to bear beauty out of her honesty. This book was the product of an advice column Strayed wrote (anonymously, at the time) for The Rumpus under the moniker "Dear Sugar." One of my favorite Dear Sugar columns gave this collection of essays its name. Read that column here, and dive into the book with---as Strayed puts it---"the courage to break your own heart."

1oo selected poems by e.e. cummings. It was our umpteenth stint of long-distance love. He dropped me off at the airport two hours before writing that email; I landed in Dublin to a message whose  subject line declared "e.e. cummings never legally changed the spelling of his name." So it was E.E. Cummings who, in fact, penned "nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands" and "i like my body when it is with your body." e.e. cummings (no, really, lower case, I insist) feels like autumn, reunions, airports, emails, new beginnings, young poetry, younger selves, hands that are still small, hands that still love another.

Reborn Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh by Susan Sontag And, of course, there is Susan Sontag, with her published journals and notebooks, edited by David Rieff. Reborn is the one that comes back to haunt me, though I cannot resist As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh. Illustrated diary excerpts from the latter are available on Brain Pickings, in case you, too, like to start your day with "Can I love someone . . .. AND . . . still think/fly?" On 11/01/1956, Susan Sontag's diary entry read "We've been discussing the soul." A peak into that soul at the age of 17 and 23 and 39 is a mind-spinning journey. In January 1960, Sontag wrote "Inspiration presents itself to me in the form of anxiety." Her anxiety speaks soothingly to mine, her inspiration kindles my own. If there were a book spine to stare you down from the shelf until you remember your own humanity, this would be my chosen one.

***

Nobody has uttered "oh my God, we are going to DIEEEEE!" when faced with the prospect of reading a thousand pages of Zadie Smith. Eighteen thousand and fifty eight pages of Susan Sontag. Exactly two hundred and forty nine poems of e.e. cummings'. These are not the books for highlighters, fluorescent lights, squinty eyes behind glasses, or bad coffee. They are not the books for bright orange or bright yellow. They are for scribbling in the margins, for crawling under the blanket, for remembering and forgetting. For soft, warm light, open eyes, open hearts.

Hildegard von Bingen: Composer. Mystic. Nun.

The other day, Google ran a Doodle in honor of 19th-century composer/pianist Clara Schumann’s birthday, and it took me back to my days as an undergraduate music major. Yes, it’s true—before I was Miss History ‘n’ Pop Culture, I was studying to be a composer. I switched gears, but I still harbor a deep passion for music, and I still play piano. Mostly show tunes.

Anyway, I was reminded how, in my music history studies, of the dozens and dozens of important names we learned, there were maybe three female composers that came up. There was Clara Schumann---wife of Robert Schumann. There was Fanny Mendelssohn---sister of Felix Mendelssohn. But the one who always stood out for me—maybe because she stood entirely on her own—was Hildegard von Bingen, a Benedictine nun from the twelfth century who wrote, of all things, monophonic morality plays. Fun!

Saint Hildegard (she was “equivalently canonized” earlier this year) was another one of those historical women who seemed to do it all, with the added benefit of living an uncommon 82 years in medieval times. She was born in 1098 in Germany, and as a teenager, she was instructed in psalm-reading by the head of a local Benedictine community. When the woman died, Hildegard was elected the new head.

I should mention---Hildegard had been having these visions ever since she was a child, which she often described as in terms of bright lights. Modern-day physicians would attribute these “visions” (and the visions of many other medieval mystics) to migraines, hence the light sensitivity, which, all in all, is a perfectly satisfactory explanation. But I’d caution against getting too wrapped up in modern scientific understandings of things; for Hildegard, these visions were real, as they also were for many of those who surrounded her. And their very “realness” was the impetus for many of the great things she accomplished.

It was at age 42 when Hildegard had THE vision, the first one that would serve as the divine inspiration for her work. “A burning light of tremendous brightness coming from heaven poured into my entire mind,” she recorded. “God told me, ‘Write what you see and hear.’” And, in the Middle Ages, when God talked, you listened.

From then on, Hildegard was a writing fiend. She would produce a book on theology, two books on science and medicine, over seventy musical pieces, and go on four speaking tours of Europe. She did this all while recording her visions and managing her convents. Notably, she also held regular correspondence with kings and popes and important dudes like Abbot Suger, not easy guys to impress.

This story, I think, illustrates what she was able to achieve very well: In 1148, Hildegard claimed she had been commanded by God to move her nuns to a new location near the town of Rupertsberg. The monks over her head refused, wary of the expense and the loss of personnel. Hildegard then took to her bed, struck sick, too weak to move. Her sickness was, of course, attributed to her failure to follow God’s divine orders. Eventually, the abbot agreed with this interpretation and granted her permission to move to the new site, overruling the monks, and Hildegard got what she wanted. And within a few years, the Rupertsberg convent became so popular they needed to build a second convent just across the Rhine River to accommodate demand. Hildegard managed both.

It’s been noted that, despite her gender, Hildegard didn’t quite jibe with modern feminist ideas—that she sometimes spoke ill of women, associating them with weakness in accordance with dominant ideas of the time. Unlike her male contemporaries, she didn’t toot her own horn when it came to her musical talents, considering herself a mere vessel for the voice of God. (Note: This wasn’t an idea particular to Hildegard or women, however; Jorge Luis Borges notes that writers of antiquity such as Plato considered the poet nothing more than a “fleeting instrument of divinity.”)

But Hildegard’s attitude needs to be placed in its appropriate context, as do her migraine-visions. In fact, they’re kind of related. Much of Hildegard’s power was derived from her claims to legitimate communion with God; this was an incredibly effective means to personal agency in the Christian-dominated paradigm of medieval Europe. Her visions, her orders from heaven, her illnesses were tools from which she could carve out an autonomous space, provoke action from male higher-ups, and, ultimately, leave her mark on music history, religious history, and medieval history, something so few other women were able to achieve.

This is not in any way to say that Hildegard’s successful maneuverings within the system were planned or intentional. But it’s worth noting that, of the privileged few medieval women from the lower (read: not queen) classes who show up on the historical record, a large number were saints and mystics. There was no feminism in 1150. You did what you could.

In honor of St. Hildegard, who according to Wikipedia celebrated a birthday on Sunday (happy 914^th!), I recommend listening to one of her lovely compositions, like Spiritus Sanctus or O vis aeternitatis. Though solemn and ordered by today’s standards, for her time she was very original, breaking many of the hallowed rules of music theory to write soaring vocal lines and even (gasp!) switching modes in mid-song. For perspective, mode-switching didn’t become a la mode until five hundred years later.

Kinda makes you want to go join a medieval convent, doesn’t it? Or at least write a pretty song with a hurdy gurdy in it. I might just go do the latter.

What Are You Reading (offline, that is)?

In March of this year, Ally moved from Brooklyn to Leesburg, Virginia. While in New York, she worked as a barista and in retail in order to support her writing and acting habits. She studied classical acting in Oxford, UK, at The British American Drama Academy and English Literature at American University in Washington, DC. Ally and her husband (who is a musician and writer) decided to leave city life on a whim---their lease was up and instead of renewing, they packed up their two cats and moved into her dad's old hunting cabin in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. When she's not pickling poisonous spiders or getting charged by groundhogs, she's a kitchen helper to food writer Cathy Barrow and recipe tester for the Washington Post. She blogs about cabin life at www.thegreencabinyear.com The big comfy armchair in my living room is upholstered in a hunter’s dreamscape. Deer, geese, elk, and moose frolic across the fabric. There are pine trees and creeks and hunting dogs. This is my reading chair, my special spot reserved for reading only actual books. I say “actual” because I think of the printed word as a material thing in addition to its immaterial narrative. A book in the “actual” sense is a specific vessel as well as a world. Sure, I love e-books and laptops, but those mediums show you too much. They take you anywhere, everywhere. The actual book takes you to only one place, to one particular story.

You also get a whole different sense experience with an actual book. You feel the flex of a page heavy with a big glossy photograph. You notice how unlike in texture and weight the rigid cover is from the pulp flecked page. You can hear the spine crinkle and see the deepness of the black ink. Let’s not forget the smell, of course…the must or dust or that of crisp fresh paper.

When learning something new, especially a physical skill like gardening or cooking, I find it particularly helpful to learn from an actual book. That’s what this column is about for me – books that are teaching me new things. As I learn to garden, to cook, to read, I find that I enjoy the flipping back and forth through pages, running my finger up and down a block of text, and sandwiching in post-it notes and neon tabs to keep my place.

In short . . . Hooray for actual books!

Here is what I’m reading now:

New Book of Herbs by Jekka Mcvicar I’ve got a thing for Passion Surfing. Never heard of Passion Surfing? Well, that’s because I just made it up. Passion Surfing is when you find someone who is really passionate about what they do and then you catch a smaller version of their wave and see where it takes you. Usually my Passion Surfs are fun for a few weeks, then glide to a halt on the shore of boredom. But not so with Jekka Mcvicar. Her wave of enthusiasm has inspired me for a really long time.

This book gives guidance in planning new garden beds, growing herbs from seeds and cuttings, and also has sections about uses for fresh herbs in the kitchen and the home. There are recipes and how-tos and manifestos for organic gardening practices. There are so many helpful tidbits of information---did you know that using a seeping irrigation system rather than a spray hose will cut down on the spread of weed seeds? Neither did I! My favorite part of the book, however, is the last section that details 100 of Jekka’s favorite herbs. Jekka and I have been hanging ten so hard lately, I want to grow every one of them!

The Wild Table by Connie Green and Sarah Scott When I moved to western Virginia from Brooklyn I became obsessed with finding a particular type of mushroom called the morel. I imagined that finding this particularly delicious and wild delicacy would free me from the heartsick feeling I’d had since leaving New York. I missed my friends, my job, and the great theatres, cafes, and bookstores. I missed the feeling of “happening”, of hopefulness, of my phone buzzing in my pocket as a pal called me up for a spontaneous after work cocktail. When I got to Virginia all I saw was the traffic and the big box stores and the laser-eyed looks directed at my tattoos. And my phone? My phone became a still and useless rectangle of regret.

Strangely enough, the morel did help me adjust. It became my beacon of hope. I didn’t need anyone calling me if I was poking around in the woods searching for fungi. Soon I took a “grow-your-own wild mushrooms” class at a local organic farm and found a cool job through connections I made there. Eventually I even became more adventurous in the kitchen, which I also credit to my love of wild mushrooms---because if you spend a whole day searching for your food, you’re certainly going to put in the effort to eat it well that night. I found myself appreciating the beauty of Virginia after all. Morel hunting truly helped me see the world in a different way. But wait . . . not that kind of different way, I’m not talking about those types of mushrooms.

The Wild Table is a beautiful book filled with tasty recipes, brilliant photographs, and useful, easy to read information about preserving the morning fetch.  You can use this book even if you have no desire to go tromping around in the woods; just swing by your local farmers market.  If you are in the mood for some fungi fulfillment there’s a helpful “Wild Calendar” in the back that tells you when certain mushrooms and other natural treats are in season.

Living, Thinking, Looking by Siri Hustvedt This book is a collection of essays about a lot of stuff: desire, memory, sleep, literature, visual art. Oh yeah, and neuroscience. Can’t forget the neuroscience. (Except I do forget the parts about neuroscience and then I have to go back and read them over and over again…)  These topics might make you wonder how this book is making an appearance here, among all these other books about things you can eat. Mushrooms, herbs… ideas? Exactly!

In my journey to become a better home cook I’ve hit a few roadblocks every so often. Learning new skills takes some endurance. This book helped me reinvest in my quest to become a skilled cook because of how Hustvedt thinks about memory. She writes:  “it is clear that memory is consolidated by emotion, that the fragments of the past we recall best are those colored by feeling …” Good meals can be bookmarks in the brain.

The example that comes to mind is from my recent weekend trip to New York. I can only vaguely describe the events of that weekend as a whole. But ask me about that delicious meal I shared with my dear friend at a nice restaurant in the East Village? I can give you a play-by-play of the whole experience, not just about what we ate. I vividly remember our conversation, the energy of the room, even details of the place down to the type of air freshener that was in the bathroom. (A lemongrass diffuser, in case you were wondering.)

My dinner that night was pleasure distilled into three courses and a bottle of sparkling wine.  It was certainly a “consolidating” emotion I felt that evening – an emotion I am slowly learning to create again and again for myself, for my family, and for my friends.

The food will be for our tummies; the pleasure of eating it will be for our minds.

"New Girl," or In Defense of Zooey Deschanel

Zooey Deschanel’s hit sitcom “New Girl” will have its second season premiere in a couple weeks, and I’ll most likely be watching, because I love her, and I’m clearly not alone—in fact, if both her converts and critics are to be believed, she leads a massive charge of women ages 13 to 50 that want to get in touch with their inner sunshine princess.

Culminating in her role in 2009’s romantic comedy-ish (500) Days of Summer—in which she, paradoxically, plays the gold standard Manic Pixie Dream Girl in a film that shows the dream of the MPDG to be airy and insubstantial—Deschanel has made a name for herself by tweeting about kittens, by wearing thrift store dresses, by starring in too-cute Cotton commercials, by singing vintage songs in a husky voice accompanied by a tiny ukulele, and by essentially being, as Jada Yuan from New York Magazine designated her, the Pinup of Williamsburg.

“New Girl,” when it premiered last fall, featured promos about Deschanel’s “adorkable,” very Zooey-like Jess Day moving into an L.A. apartment with three guys---who just can’t figure her out! Cue billboards of Jess standing slightly apart in an oblivious, pigeon-toed stance, as three dudes styled to be average-looking give her “uhh . . . what?” looks from the other side of the poster. Jess is quirky, awkward, and yes, loves girlish, silly things like making pancakes and being sweet to everybody. Based on the promos, even I thought it might be too much Zooey-ness. But it turned out much better than I expected.

For one thing, “New Girl” is actually funny. More than other sitcoms on the air, which are either aimed at the 35-and-over parenting set or continue to be filmed on 1990s-style soundstages with live audiences, I relate to this show and its characters, from the fact that Jess meets her new roommates via Craigslist to the career, dating, life issues that they face as people in their late 20s/early 30s.

And despite the promos, Jess turns out to be a fairly solid character. Sure, she’s got fluffy interests and a sunshine personality, but she’s smart and surprisingly self-possessed. She owns her cutesy persona with pride. This is best illustrated in an episode where she squares off against Lizzy Caplan’s tough lawyer character—a bit of a straw (wo)man, maybe, but I appreciated the implied message about women criticizing other women for undermining their own position as women.

To sum up: Why can’t you love rainbows and cupcakes, if you really love rainbows and cupcakes? Why does that automatically cast you in a submissive role that sets all womanhood decades back? Why must we police other women’s behavior and circumscribe their choices? In the grand scheme of things, Jess’s brand of girlishness seems pretty innocuous when compared to, say, action movie trailers or Carl’s Jr./Hardee’s commercials. Though Caplan’s character also brings up a good point: if she acted like Jess, she’d never make it as a lawyer. But what is that really a comment on?

This particular debate seemed to indirectly address the controversy that surrounds Zooey Deschanel herself. More than most other actress/singer/public figures of her generation, Deschanel is often at the center of fierce feminist debates. For those on one side, she’s an unproblematic symbol of indie culture: friend crush, girl crush, actual crush, style icon. For those on the other, she represents everything that’s wrong with third-wave (read: new) feminism: the idea that it’s totally okay to be quirky, child-like, cutesy, and, yes, a Manic Pixie Dream Girl because we’re over women having to be tough to be strong role models.

Much of this criticism came out of the woodwork with the premiere of “New Girl” last fall. They contend that Zooey represents a flippant post-feminism that, while rejecting the more limiting female ideal of second-wave feminism (ambitious, successful, not crying all the time), reverts instead to a pre-feminist ideal that sees women as childlike, naïve, innocent, to be taken care of. More explicitly, the retro fetishism of the Zooey set creates a female character that seems stuck squarely in 1962, vintage Shirelle crooning and all.

The aforementioned Zooey set is much larger than Ms. Deschanel herself (though some would say she started the trend). It’s in cupcake trucks. It’s in Mindy Kaling. It’s in every woman who has bangs. (Read comedienne Amy Klausner’s vicious takedown of the whole phenomenon.) And ultimately, for critics, it’s seen as a step backwards for womanhood because it allows grown women to present themselves as little girls and thus infantilizes women everywhere.

On the one hand, I understand the danger in constantly presenting women as girls, and how that can be damaging in what is undoubtedly an ongoing struggle for gender equality. Read: We are not post-feminist, and any action taken with the assumption that we are is a misstep.

On the other hand: I love Zooey. And I believe my defense of her stems from two parts, one intellectual and one entirely not.

One part is simply not preoccupied with what she means for feminism. In other words, I love her dresses, I love her hair, I love her bangs. I want to be as cool as her. As I write this I’m wearing a bright red, slightly flouncy A-line skirt and something called Audrey flats and nibbling on a piece of cheese and brie and listening to “Friday, I’m in Love” on my tiny purple iPod, and the image this produces is, all in all, incredibly gratifying to me.

The second part is this. I find it problematic when we define the “ideal” female character within such narrow boundaries. While not prescribing a defined list of rules---i.e., women must wear pants—in the sense that we must repeatedly tell prominent female figures what they should not do, we are creating a limited space in which women are allowed to represent themselves. While it’s completely valid to criticize representations of women in media that are demeaning, or that reproduce negative tropes, or that seem unrealistic (see The Incredible Shrinking Liz Lemon), those criticisms must be tempered by an understanding that a huge part of feminism is women choosing to do what they want to do.

Can I be asked to break down why I buy into elements of this subculture and its imagery? You might as well ask a woman why stiletto heels make her feel sexy. Sure, we could get into the problematic gendered history of shoe fashion and how heels represent a tortured, demeaning misogyny and, in an ideal world, should be discarded altogether. But does that change how they make her feel? And are we going to convince a country full of women that they should convert to a standard-issue, progress-approved flat for the sake of the symbolism? That feels like treating a symptom of patriarchy and not a cause—and, at the same time, getting on a bunch of ladies’ cases for making their own life choices.

I might be overthinking the whole Zooey Deschanel case. Or, I might be criticizing others for overthinking it. I can’t quite tell at this point. Either way, I suppose the most I can do is recommend “New Girl” (which, if you want to know, also has great male characters who are also hilariously quirky and awkward), and leave you with something like “Leave Zooey Alone.”

Nothing new under the (wedding) sun

Last week, I wrote about DIY illusions, and I feel like I have to come clean. Roxanne’s comment reminded me that it’s nearly impossible to discuss DIY culture and not mention weddings. I did it, though—I churned out the whole piece without mentioning the “W” word once. As it turns out, my fiancé and I are awash in the final weeks of planning our wedding. Although the topic is at the forefront of my mind, I thought I’d do this space a favor and leave all of that wedding business out. I figured there’s already enough (and perhaps too much) internet real estate devoted to the chiffon/taffeta/burlap/mason jar dream of getting hitched with all the trimmings.

If you’ll allow me, though, I’d like to reflect a bit further on DIY culture, a trend that has both fascinated and bewildered me as we’ve navigated the wedding planning process since our engagement in March. Much of our wedding is “DIY,” in the sense that we’re doing it ourselves. The only professional we’ve hired is a photographer, so many of the logistical and material aspects of the day will be created and executed by ourselves or our loved ones. But this isn’t what I mean at all when I use the letters “D-I-Y.”

DIY culture, I think, is a pervasive sense that the material aspects of a wedding, or a home, or a life, for that matter, are only special and meaningful when they are crafted and personalized and customized by oneself, for oneself. There's certainly something special about the things we make ourselves, but the pressure to create-your-own everything can sometimes be overwhelming. Perhaps this anxiety is fueled by our overexposure to the intimate details of the lives of others and a resulting desire to differentiate ourselves.

Weddings are such a common life cycle event, but after you’ve ogled wedding blog photos from around the world, followed by a healthy dose of your 500 favorite Facebook friends’ weddings, “common” takes on a whole new meaning. It’s hard not to wonder whether there is anything new under the sun.

I went to a talk this weekend by Austin Kleon, author of Steal Like an Artist, and I couldn’t help but apply his perspective on creativity more broadly to weddings and other aspects of life too (I hope he doesn’t mind!). The idea is simply to get comfortable with the idea that nothing is completely original. Our creative works (and our homes and our weddings) are composites of the objects and the people and the ideas that have come before us.

This approach isn’t meant to be depressing, but rather freeing. What’s different and special each time a new poem is written, or a new couple gets married, is simply the remix of influences and the presence of the individuals themselves who are creating or transitioning or moving through life, like those who’ve gone before them. That’s all, and that’s enough.

Sometimes I’ve wondered in the past few months whether we’re doing enough to make our wedding feel personal or unique. We haven’t managed to cover anything in burlap or chalkboard paint (yet?), because we’re too busy arranging basic things, like matching up the number of chairs with the number of tushes. I’m relieved to be reminded, though, that everything we’re doing has been done before. What’s different this time is simply that we’re the ones doing it, together.

What Are You Reading (Offline, that is)?

Brooke Jackson is a freelance writer, self-proclaimed foodie, and blogger recently living in Chattanooga, Tennessee.  She received her degree from Auburn University where she studied accounting (and college football).  After graduation, Brooke figured out that she favored letters to numbers and began the vegetarian recipe and lifestyle blog, Veggie Table.  On her blog, she shares simple vegetarian meals that have been tested and approved by her meat-loving husband.  When Brooke isn't busy in the kitchen, she can be found sipping coffee at the local cafe, strolling the river front trails with their dog, or photographing her adventures in the city and its mountainous backdrop. Brooke Jackson, Veggie Table New Complete Vegetarian by:  Rose Elliot I've been a vegetarian for half of my life and had to get creative in the kitchen after marrying my husband.  Cooking meatless meals for someone who enjoys a medium rare steak has its challenges.  In order to keep peace at our dining table, I read recipes to learn more about different flavor combinations and cooking techniques.  Rose Elliot's New Complete Vegetarian was given to me as a gift, and I'm currently drooling over its every page.  With over sixty books under her belt, Rose is Britain's most influential vegetarian/vegan writer.  Her ingredients and words are so engulfing you can actually smell the aromas of each course being prepared.    This particular cook book contains hundreds of mouth-watering recipes covering a hostess' every need: sweet relishes and tangy salad dressings; veggie infused pastas and rice; made-from-scratch tarts and cheesy quiches; and delectable desserts.  Rose's ingredient lists are short and simple which works well for both the intimidated beginner cook or the expert chef.  Whether you follow a recipe step-by-step or put your own unique spin on it, this book is the perfect cooking companion.

Holly Roberts, Alabama-based Singer/Song Writer Just Kids  by: Patti Smith Just Kids is a memoir written by Patti Smith, the “Godmother of Punk.” I could try to summarize this book, but there is so much happening that I can't put my finger on one specific premise. It's an ode to art and music, personal expression and exploration, and companionship and love. Smith moved to New York City during the summer of 1967. It was at the end of a few artistic eras such as the Beat Generation and the Warhol Factory Years, so Smith found herself riding on the coattails of many fascinating artists. Searching for her own masterpiece, she made a vow that her life would be dedicated to creating and sharing her work. On that very night, Robert Mapplethorpe, who is now an iconic photographer, made the same promise to give himself to his art. Later on, while Smith was working at Brentano’s Books on Fifth Avenue, the two crossed paths and quickly became each other’s artistic guide and muse. They searched together while creating, painting, filming, writing, and capturing life. Smith and Mapplethorpe were young artists or "just kids" on the verge of both breakdown and breakthrough. They experimented their way through the late 60's and lived on the forefront of their wildest dreams.  During her time at the Hotel Chelsea, Patti also met some of my favorites such as Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, Allen Ginsburg, and Andy Warhol. NYC has always been a melting pot of sensations with a variety of people who have big dreams and enduring stamina.  Smith's descriptions are so poetically vivid that I found myself channeling her words as if they were my memories she recanted, constantly dropping the book to close my eyes and breathe.  Hooray for empathy!  Pick up this book, please!

Elizabeth Jackson, Environmental Management Consultant Thin Air: Encounters in the Himalayas by: Greg Child A few months ago, I read the story of Jon Krakauer's experience on one of Mount Everest's most fatal seasons and have been semi-obsessed with Himalayan adventures ever since. I love every aspect of it: the physical challenges the human body endures to climb these peaks; the devotion and sometimes detrimental commitment of mountaineers to reach the highest places on Earth; and the emotional and mental battles that altitude, stress and ego add to the journey. After listening to me share stories of the Himalayas as though I was part of the trek myself, a friend gave Thin Air to me. The book sweeps you away into a range of breath-taking mountains while sharing some of the most riveting stories of Himalayan treks. One feels the roller coaster of excitement, the heartache from the innate barriers of being in politically delicate regions of the world to fulfill their dreams, the language struggles existing in crucial relationships, the undefinable joy of reaching their goals, and the bonding and loss of friends. I highly recommend this read for those who are seeking an adventure in life.

Erica Peppers, Caught On A Whim  Life of Pi by: Yann Martel This is the story of a boy named Pi, who leaves India with his family to find a new life in Canada. While at sea, tragedy strikes and the unthinkable happens: Pi is the lone human survivor of a shipwreck and is stranded aboard a small lifeboat with an unusual assortment of companions. His only companions consist of a hyena, zebra, orangutan and Bengal tiger. Pi's courage and determination are tested as he must learn to survive on his own in the vast ocean while keeping the distraught wild animals at bay. Pi's story is one of hope, courage and self-preservation in the most unnatural of circumstances.

Natalie Waits Martin, English Teacher in Spain Killing Lincoln< by: Bill O'Reilly & Martin Dugard This summer I brushed up on my American history by reading Killing Lincoln. I´m sure that sounds like a dreaded 11th grade required reading assignment, but I promise this book is not what you think. There will be no exam afterwards and, unlike me, you probably won´t be asked to write a synopsis of what you´ve read. Yes, it is the true story of the Lincoln assassination in 1865, but it's also a thriller told from the perspective of both the assassin and the victim. As we all know, John Wilkes Booth was the man who shot the President. But what else do you know about him? This book takes you inside his world and details his thoughts, relationships and movements, especially in the days leading up to the murder and the days immediately following. Lincoln, on the other hand, becomes a character that you wish didn´t have to die as you are also taken away from John Wilkes Booth and into the White House to witness his conversations and fears in the days leading up to his fateful trip to the Ford theater. I found myself hoping that history would somehow rewrite itself and only wish more historic events were written this way.

What Are You Reading (offline, that is)?

Rebecca D. Martin is an essayist and book reviewer in Southwest Virginia. She's also a wife and a mother, a reluctant meal planner, a relaxed home keeper, and an obsessively avid reader. Her work has been published in The Other Journal, Kinfolk Magazine, and The Lamppost, and she is a staff writer for The Curator. She writes about books and domestic culture at www.rebarit.blogspot.com. When longtime friend and fellow writer Carrie Allen Tipton and I get together to talk books, especially books with nuanced considerations of family and homemaking, we can’t say enough. So here are in-depth reviews of just two books that are on our shelves lately. We hope you enjoy them!

Rebecca D. Martin Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Our bags were packed for vacation. Our small family prepared to set adrift and let the sand and waves and salted air breathe a simpler, richer life into us. I zipped the final duffle bag, sliding Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s Gift from the Sea into the top.

Morrow Lindbergh knew what we were after: the “spontaneity of now; the vividness of here” that would strengthen our small family. In this thin volume, organized by meditations on a handful of seashells (literal gifts from the sea), Morrow Lindbergh’s connections flow from an interesting 1950’s cultural critique to early Feminist philosophy to her own struggle maintaining a balanced, introspective life while housekeeping and caring for a family of seven. I hoped her thoughts about home and family, culture and womanhood, work and writing, nature and the sea would set my own thoughts on a good course for our beach week.

I also approached Morrow Lindbergh with some reservation. Here was a complex woman. She lost her first child in a horrific kidnapping and murder. She married early Feminist thought with troublingly hardlined notions of feminine identity. Her husband was a mid-Twentieth Century aviation icon who held racist ideals disturbingly in line with the Nazis. In later life, both Anne and Charles admirably championed environmental protection and preservation. She learned to fly planes when other women merely stayed at home. She recognized staying at home to raise children as a choice, a noble one. This was a woman who had things to say. But did I want to hear them?

I discovered I did. One of the significant and unexpected gifts I gleaned from this book was a sort of readerly humility, a willingness to keep listening to the end, whatever my responses page by page. And in the end, Anne Morrow Lindbergh was a person I genuinely liked, whether or not our worldviews aligned.

There are, indeed, many treasures to be found between the covers of this book. At times, Morrow Lindbergh’s prose grows pedantic, but in other moments it shimmers with a lovely, rhythmic give-and-take, and leaves the reader with gems, most notably her thoughts on simplification: “Not knowing how to feed the spirit, we try to muffle its demands in distractions.” Or, “What a commentary on our civilization, when being alone is considered suspect; when one has to apologize for it, make excuses, hide the fact that one practices it – like a secret vice!” Or, prescient of our current information age’s pitfalls (and she didn’t even have a Facebook account!):

“We are asked today to feel compassionately for everyone in the world; to digest intellectually all the information spread out in public print; and to implement in action every ethical impulse aroused by our hearts and minds. The inter-relatedness of the world links us constantly with more people than our hearts can hold.”

There is a kindred understanding here. I feel challenged to return home to our normal-paced autumn life and consider how I might simplify (a slimmer Facebook newsfeed, for a start) – and how I might love my family better in the process. Yes, I’m glad Gift from the Sea made its way into my duffle bag, and I’m glad I could overcome some of my hastier judgments in order to glean some of Morrow Lindbergh’s sea gift insights for myself.

Carrie Allen Tipton

A Southerly Course: Recipes and Stories from Close to Home by Martha Hall Foose

Someone else will have to review this lovely book as a cook. I am reviewing it as a homesick southerner. Martha Hall Foose’s recipes and stories emerge from her deep love of southern culture, a sentiment which I share and which remains a source of puzzlement to both of us.

In the introduction, she muses over why southern foodways exert such a hold on her, profoundly realizing that “it is perhaps because we Southerners are homesick for the place in which we still live.” Her poignant longing for the very earth on which she stands connects with my own desire to stand there once again. Like Foose, I was raised in Mississippi; like her, I left to learn of the wider world; unlike her, I return now only in my mind and twice a year for holidays. But her book has helped me undo my own exile this summer, to come back home again.

I first came to know Martha Hall Foose’s work at a cold Christmastime, the right time to snuggle under a quilt made by my great-grandmother in Arkansas in 1936 and read Screen Doors and Sweet Tea: Recipes and Tales from a Southern Cook. This, her first book, hooked me with its ingenious cocktail of stories, recipes, tidbits of culinary advice, photos, and mini-essays. I wasn’t the only one; it won the 2009 James Beard Award. The writing was elegant and funny and, thank heaven, deeply unconcerned with speed, ease, or health. The recipes called for mayonnaise and deep fryers, and celebrated regular afternoon libations.

In A Southerly Course, published in 2011, Foose expanded on this successful formula. Marked by her blend of formality and informality, its dishes run the sociological spectrum from congealed salads for bridal luncheons to crawfish bread for tailgating. Its arrangement in five sections, corresponding to the courses of a proper dinner, emphasizes her formal training at the French pastry school École Lenôtre. Ingredients such as mirlitons, sweet potatoes, and crawfish highlight her fusion of indigenous southern staples with highfalutin’ techniques. Unconcerned with political correctness, the author draws heavily on the hunting culture of the Mississippi Delta, her childhood and now adult home. She speaks of a world of monogrammed serving utensils and ladies’ luncheon clubs.

In her recipe for Custard Pie, dedicated to fellow Mississippian Eudora Welty, Foose said that Welty helped teach her that “you don’t have to leave the place that you love and know, that it is not a prerequisite that to understand home you must exile yourself to gain perspective.” For me, leaving birthed fresh perspective on the traditions, people, landscape, and culture that I grew up with a few states east of Texas, where I currently live—and which is most definitely not the South.

A Southerly Course reminds me that though I may live in exile, there are many paths back, through word, image, palate, and most especially, through memory. And if I keep flipping through this book long enough, I might just try my hand at the crabmeat casserolettes. At least I can eat well while I long for home.

The DIY Illusion

Long before Pinterest, which seems to have become the ultimate repository of DIY dreams, I was cursed with the insatiable desire to surround myself with beautiful and interesting things and to announce proudly to the world that “I did it myself.” This urge to emulate the creations and achievements of others extends even beyond the realm of tactile objects to skills and feats as well. When I visit a museum, I can’t help but think, “I will return next week and copy the masters!” When I discover that someone has written a poem a day for a year, I think, “What a great idea! I should do it too!”

This impulse has resulted in a number of false starts. I seem to recall joining one of those 356 groups on Flickr and subsequently following through for about three of 356 days. After reading Eat, Pray, Love, I bought an “Easy Italian Reader” and a yoga mat, both of which have seen embarrassingly little use since their addition to my collection of very-useful-yet-unused self-improvement tools.

I know I’m not the only one. Tutorials, how-tos, and advice columns make up some of the most popular information on the internet. We want to know, in 500 words or less, how to build our own websites, sweep own our hair up into classy side chignons, and paint striking works of modern art for our homes.

Don’t get me wrong—I love reading this stuff, and I love writing it too. I am a strong advocate for homemade food and handmade things and tools for self-improvement. But I often find that I don’t give enough consideration to the “yourself” aspect of DIY inspiration. I so easily forget to account for where I'm starting from. I see a hair tutorial and try to ignore the fact that my hair is the frizzy, chaotic alter ego of the long, silky locks in the photo. I see “Easy Italian Reader” and realize much later that I still can’t read it if my Italian vocabulary is limited to food terms.

This is not to say that we should all abandon our DIY dreams and leave the doing and creating and achieving to the experts and professionals. There’s certainly nothing wrong with gathering inspiration from the creations and achievements and adventures of others. But if I hope to cultivate motivation from the things that inspire me, rather than disappointment at my failure to replicate them, perhaps a bit more self-reflection is in order.

The DIY illusion is not the idea that we can do things ourselves. Every piece of inspiration we encounter broadens our sense of what’s possible. There’s certainly room in this world for more faith in what each of us is capable of. The illusion to be wary of, however, is that we can do new and unfamiliar things quickly and effortlessly, if only we had the right tools or the time to watch a five-minute instructional video.

So the next time I file away a glamorous photo or add a new how-to book to my wishlist, I hope to take some time to differentiate between inspiration and aspiration. Often what’s most inspiring about beautiful creations and fantastic achievements is not the glamorous photo of the end result to which we may aspire but the story of the person or people behind it, the combination of time, talent, learning, commitment, failure, and perseverance that made what’s possible real.

Why You'll Never Be Good Enough: Bodies in Magazines and Media

When someone compliments me on my appearance, I don’t believe them. OK, not all the time—but sometimes. I fully realize that this is reactive and silly, and I know that my occasional lack of confidence can be especially irritating to my boyfriend, who compliments me more than anyone else—why can’t I just take it? What, do I think he’s lying? Analyzing my instinctual reaction, in conjunction with the discovery of this recent study by University of Nebraska – Lincoln professor of psychology Sarah Gervais, I realized that often, a positive impression of my overall image triggers a negative array of thoughts, each little thought corresponding to a single part of my appearance that I don’t like. That single part is measured against an abstract composite ideal of female beauty and, invariably, falls short. Loop back to brain: “How can this compliment be true in light of this [clearly imperfect body part/feature]?”

Gervais's findings are intriguing, and while the headlining statement—Men Are Seen as People, Women Are Seen as Body Parts!—is a little sensationalist, there rings some truth in this statement. The images of women and women’s bodies that inundate us in the media—be they celebrities, fashion models, or disembodied legs/lips/torsos—are perfect. More and more, they converge towards a singular, mythic body that is flawless, without fault, and unworthy of a single criticism. What this does for women who don’t have that body (read: pretty much everyone, including most celebrities and fashion models) is inconclusive, but I’m willing to bet it's pretty negative in the aggregate.

Recently, former Us Weekly editor Janice Min wrote about her struggles with the unrealistic post-baby weight loss expectations that she believes are culled from media representations of celebrities. She realized that, when she had her baby, shedding pounds at celebrity-rate was close to impossible, especially considering the coterie of assistance most celebrities have at their disposal (trainers, dieticians, stylists, money). Jezebel was correct in pointing out the irony that this was coming from an Us Weekly editor—and not just any editor, but the one almost principally responsible for making post-baby weight loss celebrity stories in-demand over the course of the 2000s.

Considering Min's complaints (and her resulting diet book “for real women”), I’m stuck on a quote from a Daily Nebraskan story on Gervais’s study. According to both Michael Goff, senior lecturer in advertising at Lincoln, and Jan Deeds, director of the Women’s Center, media is merely a reflection of our subconscious objectification of women and not its cause. “Advertising doesn’t do anything magical with that (process),” Goff says. “It just exploits it.”

This feels like incredibly wishful thinking. If advertising isn’t the cause, that implies its blamelessness. Then what is the cause? Society? The dominant culture? The male hegemony? Is not advertising a part of society, a part of culture? It is certainly one of the most visible, most visual, and most recycled elements of our culture. How can the images that it continues to reproduce be blameless in our construction of gendered images and, consequently, our own self-image? If anything, these things are cyclical, absent of a singular “root cause”. I’d like to lay at least some of the blame at the feet of ad execs and women’s magazine editors.

I’ll end on this note. On “Project Runway” this week—an exploitative reality show that provides a window into the image-obsessed fashion world and uses stick-thin, pliable models and that I nevertheless absolutely love watching—the designers were challenged to create looks for “real women” who needed a makeover. Ven, a 27-going-on-50-year-old male designer with, let’s be honest, a bit of a paunch, was dismayed that he got the “largest” woman, and complained to anyone who would listen about how it was so unfair that he, a designer of women’s fashions, should have to work with proportions like these. When Tim Gunn asks what size his client is, Ven rolls his eyes and says, “I don’t know—a 14?!” Then he describes her proportions as “off.”

When we create an impossible ideal, and when that ideal is hammered into our consciousness by the fashion world, by magazines, by celebrity photo shoots, and—very often—by post-production manipulation, we all end up being “off,” and we all feel it. If advertising and pop culture are a reflection of our values as a society, then our values as a society are also reflections of our intake of advertising and pop culture. The cycle is end-able.

What Are You Reading (offline, that is)?

Sheila Squillante is a poet and essayist living in central Pennsylvania. She is the author of four chapbooks of poetry, A Woman Traces the Shoreline (Dancing Girl Press, 2011), Women Who Pawn Their Jewelry (Finishing Line Press, 2012), Another Beginning (Kattywompus Press, forthcoming, 2013), and In This Dream of My Father (Seven Kitchens Press, forthcoming, 2013). Her work has appeared widely in print and online journals like Brevity, The Rumpus, No Tell Motel, quarrtsiluni, MiPoesias, Phoebe, Cream City Review, TYPO, Quarterly West, Literary Mama, Glamour Magazine and elsewhere. She teaches writing at Penn State. I decided to ask my fabulous gal pals—astute readers and writers, all—from my MFA days at Penn State what they’ve been reading this summer. Even just seeing all of our names so close to each other here in print makes me wistful for days of gin & tonics together after workshop. (But not for workshop. Shudder. That you can keep.)

Jenn McKee is a Michigan-based entertainment/staff writer for AnnArbor.com and blogs about parenting at www.AnAdequateMom.com.

The Rise of Enlightened Sexism: How Pop Culture Took Us from Girl Power to Girls Gone Wild by Susan J. Douglas I’m currently reading Susan J. Douglas' The Rise of Enlightened Sexism: How Pop Culture Took Us from Girl Power to Girls Gone Wild, and it's funny and infuriating and thought-provoking all at once. Since my four year old daughter is in the midst of a full-on princess phase, I'm reading the book with an eye toward the discussions we'll have as she grows older and absorbs even more coded media messages about women and femininity; but it's strange how what you're reading often jives perfectly with events happening around you in real time. The book's starting point, the Spice Girls and their take on "girl power," are suddenly hot again, thanks to their reunion performance at the Olympics; and I'd just finished the chapter that's focused on the (d)evolution of women's magazines through the years when I learned that Helen Gurley Brown died. Good, perspective-sharpening stuff.

Camille-Yvette Welsch teaches at the Pennsylvania State University and her work has appeared in Indiana Review, Mid-American Review, and The Writer’s Chronicle among other venues.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See When the last living speaker of nu shu, a centuries old language spoken exclusively by women died, I was fascinated: so was Lisa See. See’s novel, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, chronicles the intense, marriage- like friendship sometimes contracted between two Chinese women called laotong, who spoke the language.  As the brutality of their lives unfolds—foot binding, marriage contracts, opium addiction, domestic abuse, death—nu shu gives the women a chance to both lament and celebrate each other and their friendship.  The novel offers an intimate, if depressing look at a language and a kind of relationship that gave voice to women who were traditionally both silenced and hobbled.

Danielle Magnuson (@DnlMag) is a writer and editor living in Hopkins, Minnesota. The Paris Wife by Paula McLain I reread Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises as a preface to Paula McLain's 2011 historical fiction novel The Paris Wife, written from the point-of-view of Hadley, his first wife. Hemingway’s writing is just as terrific as I remember from 15 years ago, but his characters drove me nuts. What a bunch of drama queens. The Paris Wife, as a modern-day accompaniment, is heart wrenching, with Hadley as the virginal, good woman and Ernest as the troubled young man drawn to her purity. I read The Paris Wife mostly in the bathtub in the final month of my own pregnancy. It was pretty heavy to read about the birth of their first child as I sat in anticipation of the same event in my life. The shifts in their individual indentities, the shift in their relationship, the way it all fell apart—by the end I was wiped out, emotionally.

Cindy Clem lives and (sometimes) writes in central Pennsylvania. The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis by Lydia Davis I’ve been dabbling in The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis since 2010 and have yet to finish it, not because I don’t like it but because it’s a Brain, and I approach it with reverence. Davis’s stories are spare, strange, cerebral.  They leave me delightfully at a loss and yet replete. The meticulous tracing of self-consciousness, the absence of emotional manipulation—this book is like Zen, but funnier. This title: “Meat, My Husband.” This passage:  “Driving in the rain, I see a crumpled brown thing ahead in the middle of the road. I think it is an animal. I feel sadness for it […]. When I come closer, I find that it is not an animal but a paper bag. Then there is a moment when my sadness from before is still there along with the paper bag, so that I appear to feel sadness for the paper bag.”

Sheila Squillante writes poems and essays and teaches at Penn State. Follow along at www.sheilasquillante.com. How to Train Your Dragon (series) by Cressida Cowell This summer, I am in love with Cressida Cowell’s How to Train Your Dragon books. I’ve been reading them with my son and they are just excellent. The ten books follow the unlikely hero, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III, the thirteen-year-old someday- heir of the Hairy Hooligan Tribe of Vikings, and his tiny, petulant, but sometimes selfless dragon, Toothless. The prose is smart and lush and equally adept at delivering wry, winking humor that will appeal to parents and gross-out, bodily-function humor that will make kids howl.  But for me, the smartest thing about these books, is that Cowell has wisely chosen to frame them as the memoirs of Hiccup as an old man, looking back on a glorious, well-lived, warrior’s life. What this means is that every time the clever but bungling, underdog protagonist ends up hanging by a thread in the maw of a Seadragonus Maximus, anxious seven-year-old readers who are hanging there with him can stop, breathe, and remind themselves that we know Hiccup will prevail because we know he lives to tell the tale! We can spend less time worrying about mortality and more time focusing on how interesting (if disgusting) it is to be so very close to a dragon’s GI track.

What Are You Reading (offline, that is)?

We're huge fans of Jenny Volvovski's work. She is a member of the award-winning creative group Also with Julia Rothman and Matt Lamothe. She has been re-imagining book covers for the books that she's read, and we've thoroughly enjoyed following along on From Cover to Cover. In our minds, any project that combines reading and design is awesome. This is no exception. Here, Jenny shares her reading list, along with her re-imagined covers. 

From Cover to Cover is a project I’ve been working on for more than a year now. It has a very simple premise: I read a book, and then design a cover for it. I started it because I love to read, and always think about a book’s cover before buying the book, while reading it, and after I’m done. I also wanted to have a project independent from my client work, where I could have the freedom to do whatever I wanted, without worrying about feedback and revisions. Book covers are a great medium for graphic designers because so much content has to be condensed into a single image. The cover has to relate to what's in the book, but also not give too much away.

I wanted all the book covers I made to feel like part of a series, so I gave myself restrictions; a color palette (green, white, black) and limited type choices (Futura, typewriter, hand drawn/handmade). I always prefer working with a set of limitations, so this made the project both more challenging and more fun.

Skippy Dies by Paul Murray

Skippy Dies will probably be made into a movie. It’s a very plot driven novel that follows the adventures of a couple of teenage boarding school boys (and eventually girls and teachers) at Seabrook College in Ireland. It covers typical school-age topics like love, and bullying, but also some very non-typical ones, like opening a portal to a parallel universe. The story starts with Skippy dying (this is not a spoiler) at a donut shop and that’s primarily why I chose donuts to be the main visual elements on the cover. Donuts are mentioned later on in the book as a metaphor for life. I also like to think of each donut being a metaphysical stand-in for the main characters in the book.

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

Cloud Atlas was recently made into a movie, and I am not quite sure how they pulled it off, but I would recommend reading the book before seeing the movie (sage advice). The book consists of 6 seemingly unrelated stories starting with travel journals of an American notary traveling in the Pacific in the 1850s, and ending (kind of) with the adventures of a clone in a post-apocalyptic future in Korea. There is a thread between all of the stories, which I will not give away, and as you turn the page and start over with each new narrative it’s really exciting to find out how the previous story relates to the next. Since so many topics, characters and time periods are part of the story, it was hard to pick a visual for the cover that made sense with all of them. So, I decided to make the focus of the cover the structure of the book. There are 6 stories, they start chronologically (earliest time period first). The first 5 are interrupted, the 6th starts and concludes at the center of the book, and then the initial 5 are concluded in reverse chronological order. So, the folded paper on the cover is a reflection of that. The type is printed on top of the paper, so some spills from one piece of paper to the other, like the overlapping stories. The shadows and the white paper give a “cloud-like” effect to the cover.

The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall

Since there’s a running theme of books being made into movies, the Lonely Polygamist fits quite nicely, as reading it feels like watching the continuation of the HBO show Big Love. The book follows Golden Richards, owner of a fledgling construction business, husband to four wives, father to twenty-eight children. He of course, is unsurprisingly cracking under the weight of all the responsibility. In order to deal with the stress Golden has an affair. And not-surprisingly this doesn’t solve his problems. For the cover of the book, I made the title and author name act as a family tree for Golden Richards’ family. He is represented by the white O in the middle, his wives are the bigger letters connected to him, and the smaller letters represent the children (there weren’t exactly the right number of letters to account for all 28 children, but I thought this was close enough). And, if you look closely, one letter stands away by itself with no linear connection - representing the affair.

Community, Women Writers, and Attractive Comediennes

With regards to “Community” fandom (and fashion, if you're Heidi Klum), you’re either in or you’re out. If you’re not a fan of the show, or haven’t watched it, you don’t understand what all the fuss is about. But if you are a fan, like me, then you won’t shut up about it. For those of you on the outside, “Community” is a manic, endearing, and ultimately brilliant half-hour comedy on NBC, soon to enter its fourth season. The plot centers on a group of misfit friends whose only commonality is that they attend Greendale Community College, where they regularly meet in a study group that doesn’t seem to consist of actual studying. Instead, crazy hijinks ensue! It’s produced some of the most ambitious episodes to hit prime time in years, including an entirely stop-motion Christmas episode (reminiscent of the old “Rudolph” style TV specials) and a 30-minute homage to the obscure 1980s film My Dinner with Andre.

It’s hard to describe exactly what it is “Community” does—genre send-ups, surrealist humor, endless pop culture references for the 20- to 40-year-old set—but whatever it is, it’s groundbreaking. And a large part of the credit is owed to the women who work on the show.

Creator Dan Harmon, at the recommendation of a female NBC studio head, made sure that his writing staff was comprised of half women. In an interview with the AV Club, he notes the difficulty he had in finding talented women writers—not because women aren’t talented, but because there just aren’t as many women writers to choose from—but that now he wouldn’t trade the gender makeup for the world.

Harmon: “The energy is different. It doesn’t keep anybody polite. We’re not doffing our caps or standing up when they enter the room. They do more dick jokes than anybody, because they’ve had to survive, they have to prove, coming in the door, that they’re not dainty. That’s not fair, but women writers, they acquire the muscle of going blue fast because they have to counter the stigma. I don’t have enough control groups to compare it to, but there’s just something nice about feeling like your writers’ room represents your ensemble a little more accurately, represents the way the world turns.”

Credit is also owed to the amazing cast, which notably includes three incredibly talented and hilarious women: Alison Brie (Annie), Yvette Nicole Brown (Shirley), and Gillian Jacobs (Britta).

Through the combined efforts of the writers and the actresses, the three female leads on the show are fleshed-out, complex, entirely human characters. Their personas are not entirely defined in relation to a more prominent male character. They aren’t wives, or love interests, or sidekicks. Despite the ostensible central lead of the show existing in Joel McHale’s egocentric ex-lawyer Jeff Winger, there’s a near-equal weight of importance given to each of the show’s seven main characters, and the women are just as interesting and well-explored as the men, if not more so.

In a totally engaging and lovely round-table interview with the Daily Beast, the “women of Community”—the three actresses plus writer Megan Ganz—dished on what made their show’s treatment of women special. This includes the, ahem, liberated sexuality of Gillian Jacobs’ character Britta. “The thing that is unique about [Britta] is that she is never the subject of slut shaming,” says Jacobs. “Like, she’s one of the only female characters that doesn’t ever get punished for having an active sex life.”

The sexuality of the women—most notably Brie and Jacobs, who are young and, by most people’s standards, hot—is an especially interesting point, when considering the use of sexuality as the defining spectrum for so many less-developed female characters on TV. It’s the age-old Mary Magdalene vs. Eve, slut vs. prude binary, which “Community” so successfully subverts. Jacobs goes on to note that when auditioning for high school characters in the past, she was dismayed at the way their representation was filtered and distorted through the male perspective—high school girls as seductresses, confident sex mavens; Ganz adds that these male writers often “remove all awkwardness from the teen experience.” The more complex and realistic sexuality of a character like Britta, and even the more subtle sexual evolution of a character like Annie, is refreshing in a landscape of women-as-seen-by-men.

There’s no real black-and-white, right-and-wrong guide to how a woman should portray her own sexuality. As with most things, the more agency she has in the process, the better, whether she chooses to show a lot or a little (so to speak). However, I have to admit I was taken aback to see this 2011 GQ feature of Brie and Jacobs, including a crazy suggestive photograph of the actresses in barely-there lingerie portraying a porn-worthy lesbian sex scene. As beautiful as they are, and as much agency as they may have had in creating this photograph, there’s still a real “ew” factor when imagining the relationship of this piece to the audience it’s intended for. You know—men’s magazine readers.

Not that overt sexuality is bad. To illustrate my point: take this scene in “Community” where Annie sings a sexy, wide-eyed, Betty-Boop-meets-Eartha-Kitt Christmas song, in what Ganz calls a send-up of the infantilization of female sexuality. It’s hilarious, and it showcases Annie’s sexiness without being exploitative—instead, with the song’s gradual devolution into nonsense words and floor-crawling, it becomes a self-aware critique of exploitation.

I suppose part of my discomfort with the photo shoot stems from the very different tone of the two scenes, and maybe specifically from the audience each one is intended for. Art isn’t created in a vacuum—there tends to be a dialectic between the creator and the audience out of which emerges the dominant interpretation of the work. Brie and Jacobs playing sexy on “Community” to an audience of viewers (mostly) in on the joke—and (mostly) appreciative of the very real comedic and performing talents of the two—feels legitimate, like there’s an end to the venture. Brie and Jacobs playing sexy on the pages of Gentlemen’s Quarterly, within whose audience the aforementioned criteria don’t exist, within whose pages instead women are regularly set on display as object of desire and/or decoration, feels exploitative. It’s sex for sex’s sake—women as fantasy creatures. Brie and Jacobs cease to be.

I’m in no way condemning Brie and Jacobs for this editorial choice-- nor for any other "sexy" photo shoots they choose to be a part of. They’re both absolutely fantastic and, in many ways, trailblazers. It's simply instructive that in our media, even wonderfully intelligent, forward-thinking, self-aware actresses such as these are inevitably represented in the visual language of a culture obsessed with sex and, particularly, women as sex objects-- and that there's a fine, often indistinguishable line between satirical and actual objectification.

What Are You Reading (offline, that is)?

There is a house---a camp, really---on a lake in New Hampshire that is owned by my husband's extended family. It houses many generations of strong women; a matriarchal household in every sense of the word. Bought in 1948 by my husband's great uncle and his wife, many of the women who now run the house during the summer and collectively supervise their kids running through the woods and swimming in the lake grew up traipsing through the same woods and swimming in the same waters. It's a family with deep roots and a well-documented tree, but one that is also made of people who have been brought in and enmeshed through skinny dips and grilled hot dogs. Stand in the kitchen long enough, and you'll hear one of the women say "did you hear about the time when..." before the rest of them break out in peals of laughter that carry down to the lake and across the water. The more time you spend here, the more clearly the ghosts materialize and give a sense of tradition to the rhythm of the day that has survived with the minimal necessary evolutions for over 60 years. Claude and Phyllis (the couple who bought camp) skinny dipping early in the morning and serving hot dogs and milkshakes for lunch; the bouncing Jack Russell terrier begging to be let in by appearing in two second intervals in the open top half of the Dutch door on the porch (after chasing a squirrel into its hole and getting his face stuck in its burrow); my mother-in-law first learning to waterski by sitting on the shoulders of her cousin as the boat pulled them both up. In these stories, the men are key players to be sure, but their narratives remain peripheral. The driving characters of the stories of camp are the women. I am weaving myself into the fabric of this family, first as a girlfriend, then a wife---a friend, a mother, an aunt. The Christmas before I married Jordy, the ladies of camp bought me a beach towel with my name embroidered on it. It was to be left here for the winters, awaiting my return each July. I took the gift as a statement: just as there was a place in the hall linen closet for my new towel, there was a place in this family for me. I've come here this week for a family vacation. My in-laws are here, and my husband has a rare break from work. This is more than a vacation, though. By coming here, I get to reconnect with women (and their kids) who I see maybe twice per year, but to whom I feel viscerally connected. They've held me in hard times, called me sister in happy times, and loved me unconditionally through both. For 64 years, the women of camp have gathered by the water, surrounded by bronzed children of various ages to discuss our lives, to discuss current events, to discuss what to make for dinner, to discuss what we're reading. We call ourselves "the ladies of the beach."

It's funny to have such a strong connection to the history of a family that is not biologically mine (in the abbreviation-language of camp, I am an NBR---a Non-Blood Relative). In many ways, I think that spending time with Jordy's family on land that they have shared for so long binds me to his family in a more raw and fundamental way than any other could. I learned to water ski the same way and in the same water that my husband and his entire family learned; my daughter jumps off the same rocks that my mother-in-law jumped off as a little girl, and we all make a daily pilgrimage to the ice cream shop where 2 generations have worked during the summer. The oldest of the third generation will be old enough to continue the tradition next year, and we are all eagerly awaiting her employment (though our waistlines may disagree). Connecting with Jordy's family this way encourages me to love him (and them) even more deeply, and in a sense for more time. Though my time moving forward is limited, I feel like with each summer here, I get time both in the present, and also in the past. It's a richer, augmented experience when you're layering summer on top of summer on top of summer. I recently picked up The Big House: A Century in the Life of an American Summer Home by George Howe Colt. It's a story of a summer house, like this one, and the family that inhabits it. I just started the book, but I love the way that the house and the land are intertwined with the family and its history. The author's memories of his grandparents are similar to the memories that Jordy has, and likely similar to the memories that Emi will have as she grows up. It was handed to me as soon as I arrived, looking for something to read. I just finished 1Q84, and needed something to thumb through at the beach in-between discussions of the latest article in People or Frank Rich's column that morning. Reading is an integral weft in the social fabric of the ladies at camp. We love books, we love to read, and we love to talk about what we're reading. Here's a sample of what's made an appearance at the beach this week. If some of the reviews seem short, it's because I made people tell me what they were reading as they were running through the house on their way to the beach, the grocery store, or to watch the Olympics (the only time, save for the U.S. Open, that the television is allowed on).

Lulu, 65 The matriarch of this house, Lulu, has made it her business to extend her family. She is the wife of Claude and Phyllis' younger son, John, and is at the center (though some days she would like to be removed from it) of camp life. A fellow only child, Lulu's philosophy is that there are always enough beds, and we can always make dinner stretch to accommodate a few more. Lulu is an honorary grandmother to most of the kids here, and is an honorary mother to all of us. She is the grandmother who waterskis and swears like a sailor and finishes the crossword in the Sunday Times, and she makes it her business to keep alive the history of camp (and with it, her husband's family). When you come to camp, you inevitably hear the stories of this place, and Lulu is often the one telling them. Tender at the Bone, Ruth Reichel "I love it. It's a memoir of her childhood with a very crazy mother and how food became so important in her life. She comes from a really crazy family, and she just by happenstance gets connected to a family that loves food, and she discovers that when the world isn't working well, you can make a good meal and all is suddenly right with the world."

Nancy, 70 Nancy's husband, Ricky, was raised with John, Lulu's husband. Both of their fathers were off fighting in WWII, and their mothers, Dot and Phyllis, moved in together. Both nurses, they were best friends, and each had two boys. They got double coupons and worked opposite shifts so that while one worked, the other watched all of the children. They shared jobs---Dot hated darning, so Phyllis did that, but Dot did all of the maintenance. The husbands were in the same medical corps in Italy. Ricky's family used to rent the camp next door when Claude and Phyllis bought this camp, and Nancy first came up to the lake when she and Ricky became engaged.

Nancy, through sheer luck, stayed up here the summer that I brought newly-born Emi to camp. She would rock Emi as Emi screamed and screamed, and she would sit with me through the seemingly never-ending nursing sessions telling me stories of her own family, in and out of which members of our family would dance. Asked about her favorite things about camp, she says, "The thing that always struck me was the intergenerational thing, the cocktail hour with the great grandparents, grandparents, aunts and uncles and kids, sharing stories and sharing time. All of the ages and stages and kids, and everyone just kind of took care of their own kids and other kids---kind of like how it is now. Oh, and coming down to the beach with all of these very professional, intelligent, highly educated women sharing stories from smutty magazines."

War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy "It's a book that I never in a million years thought I would read (even though I'm an English teacher), but my book club decided they would do it. I am fully immersed in it. The first 100 or so pages were difficult just because of the many characters and getting the names straight (and feeling intimidated by the fact that it's War and Peace). But once you get over that, Tolstoy is so fluid and so all-encompassing and he understands human nature and the big picture so well, but he includes detail to make it seem here and now. The writing is a narrative, so you read it for a story, but you also get a sense of the history and the philosophical and ethical issues that people thought about at that time in Russia (and even now): the nobility and the peasants; why people go to war. You're also brought back by the everydayness of the characters that he creates, and they become real. It's a great read. We were supposed to read 200 pages and meet and read another 200 pages, but I've almost finished it because I've become so involved with it."

Emily, 37 Emily and I became fast friends when she started dating Jordy's cousin, Evan (Lulu's son). She is one of the funniest people I know. She was married here at the lake, and I was one of her bridesmaids. She returned the favor for me when I married Jordy. Her daughters, 4 1/2 and 2 years old, sandwich Emi in age, and the three of them are quite a sight to behold when they are galavanting together on the beach. Emily now does the Sunday crossword with Lulu, and she's the only person I know who can beat Jordy at Scrabble.

"I just finished Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn. I loved it up until the very end, but I couldn't put it down---I was sneaking reads during work. It was a page turner, and you didn't know what was happening. It was a good mystery, and how you felt about the characters changed throughout the book at different points. I read The Art of Racing in the Rain at the beginning of the summer. It's written from the point of view of a dog---[she looks at me raising my eyebrows and goes, "I know, but it's really good."] the dog is this smart being, but because of how he was created (with a floppy tongue, no thumbs)---he's stuck with his thoughts and knowledge of things but no way to express himself. I just started reading Sharp Objects."

Alice and Claudia, 10 I've known Alice and Claudia (sisters, daughters of Jordy's cousin) since they were toddlers, speaking in one-word sentences and eager to investigate my shoes every time I came to their house. Watching them grow has been astonishing; if ever there were two more interesting 10 year olds, I don't know them. Alice is wonderfully imaginative and creative. This week, she made a magic wand for her brother out of a twig that she had stripped the bark off of in a striped pattern, and a vine woven around and anchored with pine sap. Claudia is thoughtful and funny and up for anything. She's also incredibly creative, and her wrists are buried in brightly colored friendship bracelets that she's made. The two sisters, along with their brother and cousins, are delighted to invite Emi to play with them, and are old enough to be able to tell her stories when she's older about her first years here.

Alice The Fingertips of Duncan Dorfman, Meg Wolitzer "It's about this dude who plays Scrabble, and he has a power in his fingers to read things with his fingertips. They're in a tournament in Florida. I got it for my birthday from Grandma and Grandpa. It was on the Chautauqua reading list."

Claudia The Son of Neptune, Rick Riordan "It's the second in a series the Heros of Olympus, which is the sequel series to the Percy Jackson series. It's about a boy, Percy Jackson, who's memory is taken by Hera/Juno, and he loses 8 months of his life with the wolf Lupa and her pack, learning to fight. Then he leaves the wolves and journeys to the Roman demigod camp and he's originally from the Greek demigod camp. I read the first one in the series and it was about a boy, Jason, who gets the same thing but goes from the Roman camp to the Greek camp, and he has to unite the camps before the prophesy can come true. It's so good, I've read it seven times."

After a bit of questioning, Claudia admits she's read it seven times because she's already read (or can't find) the other books in the top of the boathouse, where the girls sleep. I promise to take her to town tomorrow to get a new book to read at the local bookstore. She'll read it and give it to her sister and cousins---I imagine that it will end up in one of the bookshelves in the house, waiting for Emi to grow into it. As for our trip into town, I can't promise anything, but it will likely include an ice cream cone. I know all too well that in a blink, Claudia will be old enough to drive herself, and in another one old enough for me to take her kids for her while she catches a moment to read on the beach.

How It Began

When I am growing up, my grandmother often prints out thick packets of stories and legends about women who did things and sends them to me in large manila envelopes. After a while I have history and myth all mixed up, but I know more about Sacagawea and Joan of Arc, Jane Austen and the goddess Athena, than any of my friends in Mrs. Smith’s first grade classroom.

Every summer we make the drive to North Carolina to visit my grandparents. This time, I walk into the room where my sister and I always sleep and instead of the familiar stack of printed-out pages there is a small hardback book sitting on the bedside table. The cover shows a collage of train tickets, magazine photographs of the Eiffel Tower, and plastic figurines of women in traditional southern French dress. I like it right away. I have always judged books by their covers.

Postcards from France is a series of articles written back to her American hometown newspaper from a young woman spending a year living in Valence, a small city in the southeast province of Savoie. I finish the book in one day. I read it again the next year, and again, and again. Inside the back cover, in the careful, blocky handwriting of a child just starting to write, I inscribe, “This is a great book!”

From then on, I am completely obsessed with the idea of spending a year in France---of travelling the entire country, becoming fluent in another language, and making unforgettable friends. I will do this, too. And I do, in my own way.

What Are You Reading (offline, that is)?

Randon Billings Noble is a creative nonfiction writer living in Washington, DC.  A graduate of NYU’s MFA program and a former teacher of writing at American University, she currently writes the blog From the Hatchery while raising her 17-month-old twins.  Her essays have appeared in the Modern Love column of The New York Times, The Massachusetts Review, Passages North and elsewhere.  You can read more from her at fromthehatchery.com, randonbillingsnoble.com, and on Twitter (@randonnoble).  When I was halfway through my one and only pregnancy, I stopped reading.

Before this I had always read.  I don’t remember a time when I couldn’t read, and I was always a little jealous when I read about others learning to read – when C-A-T became “cat” and leapt off the page and into imagination.  According to my parents, when I was three years old we were driving by a billboard and I read “Rustoleum” right off it.  Rustoleum.  Impressive . . . but it doesn’t exactly leap into imagination.

In high school I tore through the classics assigned by my English teachers as well as the Sweet Valley High series I discovered on my own.  In college I branched out into Women’s Literature and Native American Literature and rooted back into Chaucer and the medievalists.  In graduate school I focused on Renaissance Drama until I defected from my English program into an MFA in Creative Writing.  There I read Proust, Bulgakov, Joan Didion, Andre Aciman . . .

I continued to read when I jumped the desk and became a teacher of writing instead of a student.  I read throughout my courtship with my husband and well into our marriage.  Then I got pregnant.  With twins.

The bigger I got the more immobile I became.  I was never on bed rest, but when your waist more than doubles in size and is heading towards the planetary, it’s tough to move around – even inside your own house.  For a few weeks I mostly just sat in a chair in our living room and read, but then I started to become stupid.  I couldn’t focus, even on the Sookie Stackhouse novels I was burning through on my Kindle.  Later I learned that your brain can shrink up to 8% during pregnancy.  Since I was carrying twins, I imagine my brain shrank 16%.

Finally they were born---each weighing well over seven pounds.  And for the next few months I was completely and happily consumed by them.  But then I started to miss reading.

When the weather got warmer, I began to take the twins out for walks in their fancy double-decker stroller.  One of our first outings was to the library.  Right by the front counter was a shelf of new releases whose breadth of subject matter made me almost giddy---a mystery set at Pride and Prejudice’s Pemberly, the latest installment in the Game of Thrones series, novels about werewolves (one starring Henry VIII no less), a collection of Alexander McQueen’s fashions, a thick volume of illustrated anatomy, a group biography of former North Koreans, a bunch of vegetarian cookbooks, The History of the World in 100 Objects.

I checked out three books that day and read them in less than a week.  My brain swelled like the Grinch’s heart bursting out of its magnifying frame.  I was myself again.  I was reading.

Here are some of my favorite finds:

Mr. Fox by Helen Oyeyemi St. John Fox, a writer, has gotten into the habit of killing off his heroines.  Mary Foxe, his made-up muse, objects.  She challenges him to join her in a series of stories where she, too, has a hand in their creation, and nine divergent fairy tales are the result.  The relationship between the writer and his creation grows more complicated, however, when Mr. Fox’s wife Daphne becomes convinced that he is having an affair and breaks into their narrative.  Will Mr. Fox have to choose between his fantasy muse and his flesh-and-blood wife?  Or will yet another story write itself?

One tale begins:

There was a Yourba woman and there was an English-man, and …

That might sound like the beginning of a joke, but those two were seriously in love.

They tried their best with each other, but it just wasn’t any good.  I don’t know if you know what a Yourba woman can be like sometimes.  Any house they lived in burnt down.  They   fought; their weapons were cakes of soap, suitcases, fists, and hardback encyclopedias.  There were injuries …

One day the woman stamped her foot and wished her man dead.  He died.  (And now you know what a Yourba woman can be like sometimes.)

She had a devil of a time getting him back after that one.

The Silence of Our Friends by Mark Long and Jim Demonakos, illustrated by Nate Powell I was immediately struck by this graphic novel’s cover.  I wanted to know what these two men were looking at, and with such different expressions.  In a way, they’re both looking at the same thing: their hometown in Texas where in 1968 a civil rights protest turns deadly and five black college students are charged with murder.  Larry Thompson is the black activist who leads the protest.  Jack Long (a fictionalized version of the writer Mark Long’s father) is the white reporter who crosses the color line to film it.  Jack invites Larry’s family to his house on the white side of town and eventually testifies – for the accused students – at their trial.  Amid the hatred, violence, and misunderstanding in this story, there are also fishing trips, barbeques, rodeos, realizations, redemption and, ultimately, a sense of unity.

In this scene Larry’s family is at Mark’s house.  The kids are sent outside to play, conversation stumbles and an offer of drinks is refused.  But then Mark puts some music on …

We Others: New and Selected Stories by Steven Millhauser This collection features stories about a mysterious figure who emerges in a commuter town to slap people – hard – before disappearing, about a boy infatuated with a girl whose one white glove hides an unbearable secret, about the creator of clockwork automatons who finds himself in competition with a mysterious rival, about a knife-thrower who marks the people who flock to see him, about a museum whose endless bewildering rooms call people to return again and again …

These stories claim to be about others, but we are more haunted by the way they reflect back on us.

The title story begins:

We others are not like you.  We are more prickly, more jittery, more restless, more reckless, more secretive, more desperate, more cowardly, more bold.  We live at the edges of ourselves, not in the middle places.  We leave that to you.  Did I say: more watchful?  That above all.  We watch you, we follow you, we spy on you, we obsess over you.  We crave your attention.  We hunger for a sign …

The Starboard Sea by Amber Dermont A sad tale of love and loss and the sea, but set at a New England prep school – not aboard the Pequod.  When his best friend and sailing partner commits suicide, Jason Prosper transfers to Bellingham Academy, a second-chance school for the privileged.  But even as he forms new relationships at his new school, he is haunted by his past and threatened by a secret he only slowly unravels.

One of the surprise pleasures of this book was the wordplay between friends.  Despite its rather dark plot, this microcosm of teenagers is full of intimacy, prankishness and wit.   I’ll leave the revelation of the title line, the starboard sea, for you to discover as you read, but this passage gave me a whole new appreciation for the creative usage of SAT vocabulary:

Cal’s mother, Caroline, had once made up a deck of vocabulary flashcards, encouraging us to quiz each other in preparation for the SAT.  Cal’s favorite word was ‘abrasive.’  He’d misuse it every chance he could, inserting it into sentences where it didn’t belong.  ‘This ham and cheese sandwich is mighty abrasive.’  ‘That’s some abrasive foot odor.’  ‘I’m going to get abrasive on this ancient history exam.’

And the book I just picked up this week: Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed This book is a collection of Dear Sugar advice columns from the online magazine The Rumpus.  Someone commented on Twitter that she was reading it with a highlighter but should have been with a tattoo gun.   As I leafed through its pages I felt the same way.

Every page of this book feels quote-worthy, but I’ll end with a piece of advice that Strayed, in her 40s, wrote to a woman in her 20s – something I wish I had read in that living room chair, trapped under the weight of 15 pounds of baby, feeling time slide away like a tide and wondering if I would ever get some fraction of my brain – my life – back.  Strayed writes:

The useless days will add up to something.  The shitty waitressing jobs.  The hours writing in your journal.  The long meandering walks.  The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people’s diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave under your arms or not.  These things are your becoming.

I hope this reading will be part of yours.