When I Knew, by Robert Trachtenberg (editor) (2005)
As it turns out, here I am reviewing books in November, despite NaNoWriMo. It is because I am avoiding working on my crappy, crappy novel, which is so very, very crappy.
Also, I wanted to let you all know that in less than a month I'll be changing my web site address to http://www.kristenvoskuil.com ---the same as it is now, but without the ":8000" at the end. I'm going to remind you in every review for awhile, assuming I remember to do so. It'll get annoying, but not as annoying as sitting there waiting for the site to load and then seeing a message about how maybe it's your fault it won't.
Oh, the book? The book I'm reviewing here when I'm not talking about my own stuff, yes, by all means let's get on with it. It's gay people writing about when they first knew they were gay. Many of the answers are funny. Some of them are funny at the expense of answering the question; in fact, many of the answers tell an anecdote about coming out, but not about the moment of self awareness the title requires.
I found some of the answers confusing, I suppose because I'd thought it was a false stereotype that gay men preferred feminine things as children--but so very, very many of the entries mention this sort of thing: wanting to wear dresses, wanting to play with dolls, wanting purses, etc. I had thought that sexual identity and gender identity were two entirely separate things, but perhaps they go hand in hand more often than I'd thought?
Well, it doesn't matter. The book is well worth reading, and in fact I own a copy. The look of the book adds a lot: drawings, cultural scraps, photos of the contributor at the age referred to in the entry, etc.
I Love Everybody (and Other Atrocious Lies), by Laurie Notaro (2004)
I can tell this book is supposed to be funny, but I read 100 pages and didn't even smile. I know that other people find it funny, because one of my top favorite bloggers--a woman who routinely makes me snort out a lung--thought it was hilarious. Also, on the cover is a quote from The Miami Herald saying "[Notaro] may be the funniest writer in this solar system"--but perhaps that was a little friendly rib at Dave Barry's expense? or perhaps those brackets are a total, total lie? Anyway, you might find this book so funny you need a new spleen, but I didn't laugh, and eventually I gave up waiting to.
Don't forget to change your bookmarks and RSS feeds and tattoos: the new web site address will be http://www.kristenvoskuil.com, no :8000 at the end.
Everybody Into the Pool, by Beth Lisick (2005)
I get the feeling, reading this book, that the author has been indulged her whole life. There's this "youngest child" feel to what she says, as if she loves to be the center of attention, loves to be different, loves to shock, loves nothing as much as a story about herself. I liked the book in spite of this. As an oldest sibling, I tend towards indulgence toward the babies. I roll my eyes at their inability to pull it together and act like grown-ups, but I don't shish kabob them. Her stories are pretty entertaining, even if I don't agree with her about how charming and funny it is to always be falling apart.
Hey, remember about the address change! Take off those :8000s! Right now, take 'em off! Well, not NOW now, because then you wouldn't be able to see the site for the rest of the month. But soon!
PostSecret: Extraordinary Confessions From Ordinary Lives, by Frank Warren (editor) (2005)
It is so fun to read other people's secrets, though of course when you know a postcard's worth, you want more of the story. This guy Frank Warren put out thousands of postcards asking people to write down a secret they'd never told anyone else, decorate the postcard, and mail it to him anonymously. He got responses that range from "I have to shave my toes (I am a woman)" to "I wish I was white" and "I started shooting heroin again" and "My sister and I explored each other sexually as children. As the older girl I feel guilty that I may have molested her."
The one that stays with me the most is "I don't wear my ring, because I don't love her. Not because I don't like rings." It adds so much to see the decorations: the one I just mentioned is decoration with a photo of a ringless man's hand, with the confession written on it in ink, ending with a little sad face. Many are little works of art.
This is a book I'm glad I own.
Why I'm Like This: True Stories, by Cynthia Kaplan (2002)
It was a mistake to read this during NaNoWriMo month. This book is full of excellent writing, and that kind of thing is hard to read when you yourself are in the process of generating stupid, boring, lame writing. What you want at times like this is bad, bad writing, so you can snort and think, "Well, what I'm writing is no worse than this, and this got published."
It was just a few days ago I was complaining about a book that had comments printed on the cover about how funny it was and yet I never cracked a smile--and here's another book that has the same sort of comments and a similar reaction from me, and yet this book I loved. I don't know why other readers talked about how very, very funny she is, because I don't think of her as that kind of writer. Cynthia Kaplan is the kind of writer where I read her writing and I recognize her. I keep thinking about how she is writing true things. She writes like she's confiding in you, like the words come out of her naturally in that order with no censoring. She makes it look easy, but what's she's doing is hard: she's writing about her ordinary life in a way that's interesting to other people--how on earth does she do that? THAT kind of writer.
I highly recommend this book. I also highly recommend that you keep in mind that as of December 1st you're supposed to go to your URL field and remove the :8000 from this web site address and then re-bookmark it, because if you don't you'll just get one of those pages that suggests you don't know where the hell you're going.
Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, by Amy Krouse Rosenthal (2005)
Perhaps you have been a victim of this in "real life": someone will be telling you a story they evidently feel is loaded with significance and maybe even mysticism, and you will be thinking, "Oh, uh huh," and not seeing it as anything very significant or mystical at all. And they finish telling the story and they pause, eyes wide and sparkling, waiting for you to say, "Oh, WOW!!! What an AMAZING STORY!!!," and it makes you feel depressed that they want that reaction from you. This happens so often in this book. She was explaining the word "acoustics" to her daughter, and then she realized she hadn't ripped off the page on today's word-of-the-day calender, and the word of the day was....ACOUSTICS!!! She was trying to remember the name of some guy, and two days later HE EMAILED HER!!! She has the word WOW on her wall, and her husband was creating art based on his feelings about September 11th, and he had to move the first W to make room for his amazing art, and what does that leave? OW, the very feeling we all had!!!
I do understand the concept of this book, however, and I LOVE it. The concept, I mean. The concept is that you put together a whole bunch of little snippets of things, some related and some not, in no particular order, and you end up with this treasure trove of little morsels: meaningful and whimsical, beautiful and sad, relatable and poetic. I would like to see a whole bunch more books like this, and hope that the success of this one will allow others with the same idea to more readily achieve publication.
Many of the entries in this book (the entries are alphabetical) are good, and I thought of them happily later. I really enjoyed it, and I enjoyed reading it, and I'm keeping it because I'll probably want to read it again someday.
Overall, though, I felt the author would have done better to weed out the things she found fascinating about herself. It is hard to put a finger on, but there is a world of difference between an entry about how it is a little known fact that you can make great croutons out of corn bread (interesting, gives me the impression that she is good with salads), and an entry telling me how she's known for her skills in assembling salads (boring, the kind of thing people say too often about themselves in the hopes that it will make them more interesting). A book with more of the original Pillow Book concept she describes and less "I just love words!" and "Here is a long timeline of my childhood" would have been genius. As it is, it's pretty close.