Book challenge progress

It's been a while, and there's too much to say, and much of it has already been said. (Last year brought two major relocations and the end of a five-year relationship, but after the earthquake and its physical and emotional aftermath, I think I can safely say that this year has already equaled it in insanity. Then there was that date I went on)

Anyway, as usual, the only way I feel like I can dive back into blogging is by talking about books. I'm still behind on the 50-book challenge (I've read 15 books when I should be at around 20), and even more behind with the blogging, and some of these books deserve much more attention than I've given them here, but if I try to do an individual entry for each book I'll never get this done.

6. Lady Chatterley's Lover, D.H. Lawrence
Penguin Books, 314 pages, 1928
I was quite disappointed by this, to be honest. I hadn't expected that the controversy would stand the test of time, but I didn't expect it to be downright sexually conservative, either. I did find the social commentary and anti-industrialist themes interesting--more interesting than the characters, to be honest, which is probably why I didn't enjoy the book. (Apparently it's been criticized in the past for being too transparent in its social commentary, at the expense of storytelling.)

7. Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates
Vintage Classics UK (Random House), 337 pages, 1961
This book works quite well into the post I'm writing about Rabbit, Run by John Updike, so I won't say anything about it here except that it is very nearly the perfect novel.

8. The Book of Tea, Kakuro Okazawa
IBC Publishing, 135 pages, 1906
I started taking lessons on tea ceremony recently, and decided to read this as a way of immersing myself deeper into the meaning and spirit behind tea ceremony. The book easily delivered on that promise and really brought the ceremony alive for me, with the unexpected side effect of making me understand finally this aspect of Japanese culture that I have been rejecting for all these years as cliche. I'm a little ashamed to admit that despite all my Asian American studies coursework, I once had a tendency to thoughtlessly consider the Japanese cultural arts (tea ceremony included) to be sort of outdated and inauthentic, something white people tried to push on me without understanding that Japanese America has long since moved on. But after learning and reading about tea ceremony I understand exactly why the Issei generation continued practicing it in the internment camps, and exactly what was lost when subsequent generations abandoned it to become more American. This is all just my personal baggage and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the book itself, but it is a wonderful introduction to the philosophy of tea ceremony.

9. Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann
Random House, 349 pages, 2009
This one took a while to draw me in--I didn't find the initial group of characters especially compelling. But gradually McCann brings in more characters and sketches out the connections between them, creating an intricate web of incidental attachments and people passing in the streets. After those slow first pages, it's a wonderful story.

10. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, Haruki Murakami
Vintage International (Random House), 180 pages, 2007, translated in 2008 by Philip Gabriel
When I picked this up, it had been a while since I had read anything; instead, I had been spending a lot of time at the gym, and I thought this book would be a good way to connect all that physical effort back to something mental. I love Murakami's style and would enjoy reading him write about just about anything, but what impressed me with this one was how well he knows himself, how intimate and concrete is his knowledge of his own strengths and shortcomings.

11. Life of Pi, Yann Martel
Vintage Canada (Random House), 354 pages, 2001
Life of Pi is just excellent storytelling--funny, sad, smart. I don't know what else to say about it; I avoided reading it for years because of all the buzz and finally became interested in it due to this (really old, major-spoiler-containing) Ask Metafilter thread. It has its flaws, which this review does a better job of describing than I could--the one that bothered me the most was that Pi's religious fervor, so important in the early chapters of the novel, is almost completely dropped as a theme once the survival story begins. But it was still a thoroughly enjoyable read.

12. A Wild Sheep Chase, Haruki Murakami
Vintage UK (Random House), 299 pages, 1982, translated by Alfred Birnbaum
I LOVED, LOVED, LOVED this and I can't even explain why. Like I said, I love Murakami's style and would read him writing about almost anything, but this time it was the story that captivated me--following the nameless protagonist deep into the desolation of northern Hokkaido, passing through sad hotels and forgotten train stations, all in pursuit of a magical sheep. It's like the protagonist says to the black-suited secretary who sends him on the assignment: "This all has got to be, patently, the most unbelievable, the most ridiculous story I have ever heard. Somehow coming from your mouth, it has the ring of truth, but I doubt anyone would believe me if I told them what happened today."

13. The Red Tent, Anita Diamant
Picador USA, 321 pages, 1997
The Red Tent re-imagines the life of a minor female character in the Bible; it's a beautiful, rich, sensory novel. My one problem with it was that after spending the first half of the novel with Dinah's four strong, funny, fascinating mothers, the story of Dinah's exile in Egypt (and her meekness and devotion to her controlling mother-in-law and absent son) is almost disappointing and definitely anti-climactic. Despite that, though, it was a pleasure to read.

I've finished two more books since I started writing this post, but I think I want to give them individual entries. Next up: Rabbit, Run by John Updike

This post puts the HELLA in HELLA ANGELENO

My graduation ceremony was on Sunday, so I got to spend a couple days in the city with Ray and Vy this week. Half off pizza night at Pizza Orgasmica and dim sum at Golden River were on the top of my to-do list.

Counterclockwise from top left: ha gow (shrimp dumplings), chive dumplings (on Vy's plate; they are very garlicky and my new favorite dim sum dish), chashu bao, noh mai gai (lotus leaf-wrapped sticky rice with chicken and Chinese sausage), hahm seui go (the dish that unfortunately has no English name, so they'll call it "meat dumpling" or "meat turnover" but then half the time you order the meat dumpling and it's a DIFFERENT meat dumpling and then you're like DAMMIT I WANTED CRISPY GOOEY GOODNESS), and... a different kind of shrimp dumpling, can't remember what it was called. The ones in the middle are yet another shrimp dumpling. Apparently Ryan asked a friend of ours who lives in LA Chinatown where to get good dim sum and he said there wasn't any (!!!), so I had to stuff myself in preparation for my return to the godless south.

After lunch we headed to Vital Tea Leaf in Chinatown to be screamed at and served tea by Uncle Gee (no relation to the other Gee we all know and love). As we approached the store he was busy trying to convince some tourists that his tea would make them sexy, so I walked up and said "We don't NEED to be any sexier, but can we have some tea?" which I'm pretty sure made me a prime target for his teasing the rest of the time we were there since I eventually ended up in a chokehold. This time there were some elderly tourists from Arkansas next to us, and seeing him play to them kind of ruined the effect, like when you're taken in by a magic trick but then the magician shows the trick to someone else and you see right through it. But I'd still recommend this place to anyone hitting up Chinatown--it's a comedy routine that comes with a sampler of 10-12 gourmet teas, free of charge.

(A note on photo quality: As we strolled around taking pictures Ray said he was thinking of buying a real camera so he wouldn't have to use his cell phone, and asked how many megapixels mine was. I looked at the sticker on the camera and said "Uh, 2.0?" He laughed and said his PHONE was 8 megapixels. I got this camera for my 17th birthday. I have no plans to upgrade. Deal with it.)

One of my favorite things about San Francisco is the views down side streets--everything is so packed together that there are unexpected glimpses of things wherever you go. Sometimes it's the Bay Bridge:

Other times the Transamerica Building or the Ferry Building:

One of the dangers of living in a place like this is that you start to think you're the center of the world. Even when I lived four blocks from the Pacific Ocean and would walk down there every day to bask in its immensity, I still knew that the city was at my back, beautiful and funky and free and alive at all hours of the day and night. I can't even begin to explain it--I was a little person in a big city, but I was so connected to it that I felt like I was the city, and nothing outside of it mattered. (Ever seen this New Yorker cover?) But I'm moving on again, and this time I want to feel small.