I'm Sorry, Nicole Krauss.

She had recommended it to me, so I felt obliged to read it. Nicole Krauss's A History of Love. I tried. I tried to make myself like it. I really did. From the start, it sounded too much like a bad Jonathan Safran Foer knock-off. To me, she just missed the mark with this story. The language at first sounds beautiful and deep and unique and what everyone wants in a book, yet it gets too much after a while. Just an overusage of an attempt to be special and profound. The character of Leopold Gursky, with his frequent "and yet"s became an uncomfortably tedious life to follow and I felt unnerved just reading about him, as if the story was a strange man was sitting in the corner of my room, picking locks all day. Alma, to me, seemed a thoroughly unremarkable girl whose slightly obsessive list-like storytelling format became sort of obnoxious and made her side of the tale seem oddly professional and boring to read. The entire plot of the story seemed to swerve all over the place and the whole "long lost book/love" thing sounded like the all too frequent theme of so many of today's stories. I just couldn't sit with this book any longer - I found myself longing to venture back into the cabinet of our classroom and pull our something else. That's the worst thing to feel when you're reading something. And I feel guilty while writing this post. I know my teacher, who is an avid supporter of Miss Krauss, will read this, and might even be appalled by my harsh view of her book. I feel like I was supposed to like it. But I couldn't. I had to abandon it on the side of the metaphorical highway to the destination that all books hope to reach a place in the hall of fame of awesome books. But hey, now The History of Love can chill with Wuthering Heights in the ditch by Exit 3.

And on a lighter note, I am currently reading a book whose morbidly hysterical jokes will soon be featured on an "Annie's Favorite Quotes" list on the right side of my blog. Hurrah! Congratulations, A Fraction of The Whole (by Steve Toltz). You are well on your way to the mental hall of fame.

The Allure of Pictures and The Printed Word.

Capacity by Theo Ellsworth is by far the most beautiful book I have held in my hands, read, looked at, pondered, understood, not understood. A squarish, thick graphic novel that I stumbled upon in my favorite comic book store. Looks like any other little-known, arty book in the store. Upon closer inspection, the pages contain a marvel in the world graphic novels. Capacity. A freakish, fantastic world illustrated in back-and-white pen drawings, meticulously detailed, each square inch of intertwined, cross-hatched flat space a world in itself. An audacious attempt to illustrate the images that appear so frequently in the author's head. Characters banter mischievously throughout the pages of the book, among the myriad of dots and dashes that come together to form a congested mass of wildly imaginative scenery and action. Hand-written words that are so natural you can tell they just came out of someone's notebook. It's not condescending; it's simple. Language that has earned plaudits from journalists, writers and artists alike. You could spend hours deciphering one of the pictures, the beautiful universes that muddle together into an image that looks like a winding, lopsided dream. The book begins with a strange, robotic illustration, also featured on the cover, that the author describes as "the reader". You are immediately placed (gently) into this story as a creature that fits in, so when the giant, ever-changing friendly beast places you on the chair he has so thoughtfully strapped to his antlered head, you don't feel so strange. The author does what many seem to forget - he makes you a character in the tale, and frequently interrupts the story to apologize for the strangeness, saying things like "Oh, by the way, are you still doing okay? Thanks for sticking with me through all of this! Here, have some more imaginary tea!" The author presents himself as someone who is hospitable, friendly, and perfectly human. We grow to like the author. This is really what sets Capacity apart from other books of its kind. You are not merely thrown into the world of fantastic creatures, mysterious cities, dark streets, and cryptic wizards offering you magic glasses. You are told the author's story in such a way that you forget about the insanity. He switches on and off from telling the true stories of his abandoned projects and his experiences of living out of a car. He then goes back to his dream-like histories, a welcome break from his somewhat lonely and obsessive life. The book is a like a Russian doll, a story inside a story inside a story. You would be confused if not for the author's frequent check-ups.

I was trying to pick a book out at Bergen Street Comics that day. This was before I had laid eyes on Theo Ellsworth's book. There was one I'd been eyeing for a while, a beautifully illustrated, wordless hardcover called Weathercraft. But, as I always do, I decided I would keep looking for a bit before making a big decision. I was a little bit put off by the fact that there was no dialogue or narrative in the book. While the illustrations were stunning, the experience of "reading" the book was like being

blindfolded, then dropped out of a plane and into a forest where there's lots of squirrels and stuff. You can sort of get a gist of what's happening by piecing together what little information you gather from your surroundings, but there's really nothing there to relieve your maddening curiosity and awkward misplacement. Capacity has a certain allure because of its conversation-like narratives and totally unpretentious descriptions, with an equally amazing supply of intriguing pictures. Sorry if I'm over-using corny analogies, but reading Capacity is like eating a chocolate bar with nuts in it or something else kind of chunky. Every bite of chocolaty sweetness is broken by a textural freakout of something else. A perfect balance and equilibrium between chocolate and nuts, words and pictures. Both are deliciously enjoyable, and this is what makes Capacity an incredible book.

There's No Looking Back Once It's Over

I know the feeling, even if I'm not "old". You're running out of time. You have a math test next period and the minutes swoop by your head, like vultures, mocking your anxiety. You're about to graduate from middle school to be passed on to the new life of high school. Whatever it is, every single day, we run out of time. The issue becomes more frequent as you grow older. More responsibilities, more tasks to complete. Your years are dwindling, and as you reach your senior citizen years, you are faced with the truth: in a relatively short period of time, you're going to die. It's a frightening realization, but yes, it has to be faced. We all spend our last years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, seconds, in different ways. For Leo Gursky in Nicole Krauss's The History of Love, he wants to spend his time on Earth being seen. To have everyone know that he was indeed living, and for one second know who he is. He wants to impact the people of New York because that's the only way that he will die feeling satisfied.

Some people live to be seen. They believe that is the purpose of life, to affect everyone they can and leave their mark on the Earth. But do you really need to be seen to make your mark? Is doing something mindless and unpleasant just because you think its the "right thing to do" the best way to spend the rest of your life?

I once saw this old movie called Last Holiday. Of course we had to make a second version starring Queen Latifah fifty six years later, but that's not the one I'm referring to. It's about this man who hears he's going to die in a very short period of time. The man goes out and spends all his money and is totally happy, feeling better than he ever has before. In the end, it turns out that the doctor mixed up two people's tests and that the man isn't really going to die at all. By now he has no money left, but he's made new friends and had the time of his life.

To me, this is the way to spend the rest of your life. You don't have to treat it as if you're about to die because you don't feel anything when you're dead. It's not like a math test, where you nervously anticipate it all day and feel the "I did so badly" feeling when it's done. When you're dead, you can't look back and think to yourself, "I did so badly". Why try to prove yourself and make yourself huge and important when you can just be happy? You only live once, and when it's over, it's over. Be happy while you're alive, and make some mistakes, because there's no looking back once it's over. Why do people feel badly about their mistakes? Why have we created a heaven and a hell? To prevent those mistakes. To scare people into being good, and because we can't bear the thought of not living at all. But I think that sometimes life is just one big mistake, and that we can improve it by simply being happy. I think you should just do what you want in life, and you shouldn't worry about the screw-ups because you won't be able to look back on them.

Leo Gursky is wasting his last years! He doesn't really want to be seen. The things that make him happy are his friends. Let's face it - after someone looks at him for a moment, they forget about him. Life isn't about making yourself known, it's about enjoying it while you can.

A Poem: Sudden Idea That Needed Posting.

Parted lips, heavily painted a shining red

she is beautiful

eyes so clear like a blue lake

you can peer all the way in

if you look hard enough

you can even see the bottom

although it is blurry

she likes cool music

her brain is molded into the shape of a daisy

she smells like fancy hand cream

the kind i want to buy

and when she dies

her body will still look young and supple

we will cut her open

we could even do it with a butter knife

her skin so delicate

and we will see her ribcage

empty

nothing but brittle bones shaped like a jail cell

no prisoner inside

no, heart was set free long ago

never to return

only one cloud of smoke will lift from that

beautiful,

empty,

chest

bearing the words

AT LAST.

and then it will fade away in an instant

fusing with the vapor from my english breakfast tea.

Being Futterman.

The name is not elegant: sounds like too-heavy stones being chucked into a murky lake filled with seaweed. Each syllable a new rock tossed. Futt-plop-er-plop-man-plop. It does not roll off the tongue, as words like effervescence or lemon do, delicately sliding out of your vocal cords like honey. Lemon is my favorite word, with lethargic being a close second. Neither sound anything like Futterman, which is too thick and too Jewish and sounds fat and unhealthy, I can feel my arteries clogging up as I say it. It isn't a movie star's name - I can't picture it being featured on a big poster: Starring Tom Hanks and Annie Futterman. It isn't glamorous. I couldn't be famous, or maybe I could if I was willing to change my last name to Lemon. But I'm not willing. It's not pride or family legacy that I'm concerned about. I just feel as if my appearance fits the name well. Slow and awkward and Jewish. I don't sound like lemon - lemon sounds like someone stingy and tart and flirty and Christian, and I am anything but. So changing my last name would be wrong, because no other name could sum up me, Annie, so well as the not-so-pretty Futterman.

She Drags You In By Your Feet. Wow, That Metaphorical Grip Is Really Strong.

As a fickle Futterman it is often extremely hard for me to find books that I truly enjoy. Most books I read are ones that I am really into at first, then the interest trickles down to a slow drip of thought, then diminishes altogether and I usually end up reading once a week for fifteen minutes at a time, or simply abandoning the book altogether. My list of consistently awesome books follows as such:

The Harry Potter Series

The His Dark Materials Series

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

The Hunger Games

Looking For Alaska

And I'm trying to think of others, but honestly, guys, it's hard. And this is why I often consider myself as someone who doesn't like reading. To me, a good book is something absolutely wonderful, yet a bad book can be a hellish experience to read. How do I know if a book is good or not? Recommendations and blurbs are not enough. I'd actually have to read the book! Books, although made of just paper, are frightening things to me. They can be brazenly passionate, horrifyingly grotesque, wonderfully compelling, or awfully and unbearably boring. I would rather not take the risk of stumbling across a bad book.

However. I had just had a hard experience with the book Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. It was long, it was very detailed, and it could be painfully monotonous at times. Yes, I know it's a classic, but that doesn't make it good, people. I abandoned it, as was inevitable. And so, I went venturing into Ms. Robbins' "Grown-Up Closet", as it is affectionately called by me, to find another book. I was attracted by the brightly colored, brand-new, dust-jacket-still-intact books, yet none seemed so compelling to me besides their seductive outer layers. Need I quote the saying?

The name Cisneros caught my eye at that point, and I immediately associated it with The House on Mango Street, one of my favorite books of short stories. I decided to pick it up and give it a try. The cover, while at first unappealing, attracted me because of its poetic and grammatically incorrect title, Woman Hollering Creek. Checking it out, I immediately opened it up and read the first beautiful lines of "My Lucy Friend Who Smells Like Corn". These lines are like no other - while similar to The House on Mango Street, they seem rawer, more rough-cut and deeper. Harder to swallow, to digest. Some of these two, three page stories are charmingly innocent, telling tales of Southern childhoods, ones that all children can connect to. They are nostalgic and told with a voice that is so complex that it sounds like both a child and a grandmother are narrating.

However. Some of these stories are filled with white-hot passion, experiences so intense that they are just barely hinted at. An indulgence, something that you feel like you shouldn't really be reading, but you want to anyway. The tragic love stories that just seem all to common and regular in Sandra's world. Cisneros does not over-glorify these moments, nor does she create women who are faultless and perfect. A relief from the overly-glamorous females in books and movies today. These stories, both the childhood tales and the moments of love, are brutally honest, with no detail or aspect dumbed down or sugar coated. Nothing really works out perfectly, yet the reader is always satisfied with the story's turnout. None of the characters are flawless and their dialogue is often crude and rough, yet somehow it always comes out perfect.

To me, this is what makes the stories in Woman Hollering Creek so appealing. There is a perfect equilibrium between honesty and charm, between mistake and happy endings. Sandra's writing does not make the reader feel either superior or inferior - we are completely at level with her characters. Although I haven't had the same experiences as these women and men and children in this book, the way Sandra tells the story is almost like she is dragging us into our world, sometimes against our will, so we truly can have these moments in our mind, and we can connect so deeply to these characters.

That's why this book is going on my list of consistent books. It's because the author is so skilled as to have the ability to bring the reader into her world, and not let go until the book is over. And even then, we still have that aftershock lingering in between our bones.

Do you know the feeling I'm describing? Are there any books you've read that offer the same sensation as Woman Hollering Creek? Comment and tell me what you think.

UNINSPIRATION.

Maybe it's because it's raining, or because my muscles are stiff with cold, or because I've listened to this Cornershop album too many times. I don't know. But I feel as if my brain has been pulverized into a mushy substance, swallowed by the monster of Bland-Land, and then spit back up again through my ear and back into my empty cranium where it's sadly rattling away and making the sound that a single dime makes when it's sitting, lonely, in your tin can bank. In other words, I'm running short of ideas.

I feel as if I am living in a world surrounded by talented people, like shining pieces of gold, and I'm that rock that accidentally got mixed in with the bunch. Why have I been placed in this community of wonderful writers? Why do I feel like none of my work is worth entering into a contest? Because it's not! Because my work is unoriginal, it's bland, it's unpleasant, and it never turns our the way I want it to. I look at my work and say, blech, you are bad. It's like white bread - fake, with no nutritional value and full of fluff and air. Why am i using so many analogies? I want to write something subtle and impressive but what comes out is like an attempt to copy someone else's work that just missed the mark. No ideas are coming to me and I bang my head on the table in such grief. How do these writers think of such lovely subjects to write about? I'm in a funk and I can't get out.

I need to eat something fattening.

i hate babies.

No, I am not cold, and I am not heartless...I just don't like them. The way they stare at me with their big, undeveloped, watery eyes, they have no manners. The way they must be fed by their mothers who attempt to force smiles and funny faces to make those little poison dumplings STOP CRYING ALREADY. The crying is by far the worst part. There's a baby that lives next door to me and her room is perpendicular to mine, and I hear her cry all night and sometimes I just want to stuff a sock in her mouth! Gosh! It's like, of all the things in the world to cry about, you cry about not being able to use the bathroom by yourself or because you're hungry or whatever. So thoughtless! Horrible things.

My theory, you ask? Gladly! Well. I think that immediately after the baby has been delivered and "tidied up", they must be put in large boxes, but not too large, and then shipped off to a baby processing plant in East Cambodia where they will live and develop under strict baby rules until they have reached a state of maturity and have earned their "I'm a Big Kid Now" diplomas INCLUDING the Futterman Seal of Approval. Then, and only then, will I accept a baby to be in the presence of myself. Until this happens, which will be soon since I am sending my proposal to the Baby Haters Union, I will look upon those tiny creatures with malice, and steal candy from them.