Bursting at the seams

The vacation is over. We are back in beautiful San Diego, even if my body still thinks we're on eastern time. I've been waking up, wide awake, promptly at 4:00 a.m. almost every night. The kind of wide awake that definitely does not roll over and play sleep. So, I've been going to bed earlier and and earlier. And reading.

Now, before we left for ALA, I was sick, so I read. I also had to finish The Yiddish Policemen's Union --it was a compelling read plus it had 36 customer holds (reserves in SD lingo) so no way could I keep it out until we got back. Also, no way am I breaking my personal rule about never taking library books out of state. It always ends badly. So, three days and I finished it. Then there was a long airplane ride. Then I was sick some more. Then there was advance reading copies. Then there was fatigue. I mean exhaustion. Then another long plane ride...So this post, nu?

OK, I like to read Michael Chabon's work. I loved Wonder Boys, and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay was my best read of 2004. I really like Yiddish, too. So I was happy to spend time with the yids of Sitka. Apparently, Alaska is yet something else I know very little about. Five pages or so into the novel, I asked the Boyfriend, "Does Alaska have a large Jewish population?" He said something like "it's a fantastic construct." No duh, I said, and kept reading. And read and read about a film noir Aleyska. YPU is a murder mystery, with chess, music, kugel, slivovits, Orthodox gangsters, a Tlingit-Jewish sidekick, grey skies, heroin, a dead baby, a dead sister, a dead marriage--it's a wealth of an imagined world, with plenty of puns, jokes, satire, politics. A repeated refrain is "It's a strange time to be a Jew." A strange time and a strange place to imagine, to so fully realize. The hero says, "My homeland is my hat." Chabon's brainchild is a homeland, and all the alternatives, the negatives, the positives, rolled into an extravaganza.

Next up, The Control of Nature by John McPhee. My big bro recommended it. I have mixed feelings about McPhee. I like his writing. I think about going back and rereading Oranges. Unfortunately, like much nonfiction, McPhee puts me to sleep. The themes and stories of The Control of Nature really did interest me. The relationship of the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers, the cooling of the lava flows of the Eldfell volcano on Heimaey, Iceland, and the debris flows of the San Gabriel mountains. All interesting, even if McPhee did not set out to talk about geology. Of course, the 20/20 hindsight on the Mississippi was painful. Our puny attempts to control nature are painful. And really, it was good to have something guaranteed to put me to sleep. I'll have to look for some more nonfiction. Oh, I can start working on that Kumeyaay history! Yeah.

Moving right along, there were three ARCs that I started that I didn't finish. One's title was Marriage. I gave up before the main characters got married. Another had a suicide theme, and another was about someone with breast cancer. I was looking to escape, but not in those directions. Finally, I started Away by Amy Bloom. Away took me away, to Eastern Europe in the 1920s, and then the Lower East Side (Yiddish theater!), and then Alaska. It was an interesting counterpoint to the Chabon. Lillian has lost her entire family, mother, father, husband, and child, in a nightmare of violence against Jews in her village. She gets to New York, and finds her way into a job as a seamstress in the Yiddish theater. In no time, she becomes the mistress of the young prince of the theater, who uses Lillian to hide his inclinations elsewhere, and his father, who truly loves her. She learns English and is beginning to see a point to her life, when a cousin arrives from back home, and announces that Lillian's daughter Sophie is alive and living in Siberia with neighbors who stole her.

Lillian must leave to find Sophie, but neither of her lovers will help her. A friend helps her to stow away on a cross country train. She gets to Alaska, where she meets an ever-more-fantastic cast of characters: Gumdrop, an African-American whore, Chinky Chang, a Chinese grifter, Constable Arnold Gilpin, and the recluses of the Telegraph Trail. At some point, the suspension of disbelief was complete, and I would follow Lillian in her maternal quest anywhere.

I have to post this! I have read yet more...