My Year in Books 2011

Didn't get as much reading in this year as I would have liked, plus I'm eating chocolate truffles for breakfast, but what can you do? Here's what I did manage to squeeze in this year.

(1) The Marriage Plot - Jeffrey Eugenides

My favorite review of this book compares the Leonard-Madeleine-Mitchell love triangle to the Felicity-Ben-Noel love triangle. This love triangle isn't much of a triangle and is more like a line or a circle - with the second guy standing on the sidelines or off in India the entire time rather than fighting for the girl, but hey - it's Eugenides, not the WB.

(2) Meeks - Julia Holmes

This is a debut book on Small Beer Press that also deserves a TV comparison. Basically, it's a literary rendition of what would happen if Kafka was in charge of reality shows. In this book, bachelors have to find a wife or else they'll end up with hard-labor factory jobs and will eventually be executed.

(3) We the Animals - Justin Torres

This is a teeny tiny novel by a Stegner Fellow that managed to garner most of the literary hype this year.

(4) A Visit From the Good Squad - Jennifer Egan

Probably my favorite book that I read this year. I loved the first chapter and the next few lost me, but once I was back on board, I couldn't tear my eyes away. I found myself wanting to think of it as a collection of short stories rather than a novel. I don't need to love every short story in a collection. It's okay to simply love 75% of them, and I do. I had some concerns about the chapter written in Powerpoint, but it turned out to be interesting rather than gimmicky. I can see why it won the Pulitzer Prize.

(5) Let the Great World Spin - Colum McCann

I didn't read these back to back, but this is structurally similar to Goon Squad - with each chapter following a different character that is only tangentially related to another one. Chapters were hit or miss for me. This was a Book Award winner. I liked it, but I would like to see the major literary prizes awarded for traditional novels again rather than these pseudo-short story collection novels.

(6) The Book of Clouds - Chloe Aridjis

Loved this book. I found out about it while out with a friend. We were talking about my novel and he mentioned that he watched his friend write her first novel while in Berlin and that she just set a deadline of when she would mail it off and be finished with it (whereas I continued to tinker with my first novel forever - probably not done yet). Anyway, I picked it up because I was intrigued by her process and found myself utterly charmed by this book. It's set in Berlin and has a lovely surreal quality to it. I got copies for several friends.

(7) Freedom - Jonathan Franzen

I think I read this book at the beginning of this year, but it might have been last year.

(8) Top Secret Manuscript

Can't really say anything about it. It's not out yet. It hasn't even been sold yet, nor has it been finished, but the author is going to be on an LA Times list of writers to watch in 2012.

What did you read?

Rick Moody at Black Clock Launch Party

I just returned from seeing Rick Moody read at the Mandrake from the most recent issue of Black Clock. The reading also featured Merrill Feitell, Seth Greenland, and CalArts alum Sara Gerot. The reading and party were fantastic. I love the Los Angeles literary scene. So rich, yet unpretentious. People are approachable. It seems like lately magazines like Slake and Black Clock have done a good job of fostering a community for L.A.-based writers and publishers.

Though there are many famous writers who call Los Angeles home, it's slightly unexpected and therefore in some ways easier to form connections between writers/lit journals, if only to rival the scene in New York.

Tonight was a great example. My friend Nina and I were approached by a very interesting fellow in a three piece suit who runs a lit magazine and just moved here from Paris yesterday. Over a post-reading dinner I learned that in addition to editing, he is writing a novel and his agent is someone who is currently considering my manuscript in New York. What are the odds? He is also a fascinating character. I feel like I could learn something from him. Why not get off a plane, walk up to two strangers, make new friends and go to dinner? Isn't that how this socializing thing is supposed to work? No one ever explained to me that you could do that.

Nights like these make me annoyed about having to leave L.A. for San Francisco, though there are great friends there. I just think one of the best things about Los Angeles is that the creative industries are the dominant fields. I also think one of the worst things about being in Los Angeles is that the creative industries are the dominant fields; and on that, I do not care to elaborate!

Tri-Coastal/ Gunman at Sunset and Vine

I've had this idea that I could take "work vacations." What's a work vacation? It's getting paid to go somewhere else. Work is required, and no vacation is involved, but at least there's an airplane.

Downsides: complicated taxes, pets, and the inability to plan dinner next week because no one will get back to me on exact dates and things.

Now it looks like I'll probably be leaving town in a matter of days. I have a job in San Francisco lasting 2-8 weeks and then another job elsewhere. Notice the gigantic range in time frame. I'm not too keen about that either, but I'll take it.

With a 12% local unemployment rate, it's time to get creative to pay the bills. Somehow my life has flipped around backwards, and I work when I go other places and do not work (more accurately: write full-time) when I am at home. Hmmm.

See ya, Hollywood. I'll come back when you employ me. Also, I'll come back when you stop shooting people.

Everyone hear about the gunman at Sunset and Vine today? A man opened fire at random cars on Vine Street outside the Kinko's. I almost went there in order to print/photocopy new hire documents. I guess the man was angry and he wanted to die, but instead of shooting himself he shot at the passing cars on Vine Street. He was shot dead by a cop who was working on a nearby movie set. When this transpired, I was at a post office a few blocks away, wondering why there were several helicopters parked in the sky.

There have been many shootings lately in places that are too close for comfort. It seems in many cases, these people just wanted to die. There was a shooting at U.C. Berkeley, a gunman in Issaquah (where there is no crime), and now this disgruntled person in Hollywood. I got this crazy head-in-Gravitron feeling just thinking about it today. I could have easily driven down Vine Street but instead drove a different route.

I still need to get my passport photocopied but I don't feel much like doing that right now.

Crazy video: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/12/hollywood-shooting-video-gunman.html

It is cold. I am cold.

Well congratulations, everybody. You all have me on tenterhooks. California DMV, I'm talking to you. Entering Week 5 with no license now. Yes, California is the 7th largest economy in the world by country, but we are also turning into Third World country, at least as far as the government is concerned. I went to the usually-speedy post office this afternoon only to find a line of 45 people standing around mumbling about how the other local branches have just closed. Seriously, what's going to happen to the mail? They're threatening all sorts of things. I already don't want to go anywhere near the DMV here (last time I went to the downtown branch a riot literally almost broke out due to the two-hour wait thanks to the shut down of other local branches). Do we even still have schools? I haven't seen one in a long time, so I can't verify that.

Speaking of tenterhooks, there's not a peep from the You-Know-Whos, but that's starting to feel like an abusive relationship. Now some prospective employers have thrown their hats into the ring and are in the process of ignoring me post interview. I'm sure they'll get around to it eventually. I did manage to book a Food Network producing job about six months in advance, so I guess that's something. However, I would like to get some other work between now and then, on account of having to pay the rent and stuff.

I'm just a tad cranky. It has been frreeeeezing here. Like, see your own breath freezing. The cat is not happy. He ate my rapini tonight.

It was 35 degrees on my night hike this week. I just played a softball game in three shirts and a wool hat while doing jumping jacks. Some of the biggest guys did not show up on account of the cold, so I got to play center field and managed to hit a triple while freezing my nuts off. We won 21-3 despite having a roster of only 9 players, so that's a good thing. Play-offs are steadily approaching, and I'm hoping to be in town to finish off the season. This is the first time my team has had a shot of taking home the trophy.

In other braggy news, I recently produced a documentary on a wheelchair-bound athlete for a sports network and was glad to find out that people like it. The Hall of Fame apparently e-mailed the network to congratulate them. I had mono and turned old during this period, so I'm glad it worked out for everyone.

Hurricane L.A.

Been kind of a nutty week around here. I left for a very quick, very short trip and came back just in time to escape the windpocalypse 2011, or whatever people want to call the rainless hurricane event that made it seem like a large bomb went off in Los Angeles. As soon as I arrived at my softball game on Wednesday I realized we had a problem.

(1) My car was shaking violently in the parking lot due to winds that did not exist before I left my house. My car felt like it was going to blow away like the plastic garbage in American Beauty.

(2) The wind was so strong that it picked up all of the dirt on the field and threw it into the sky. Sirens were wailing all around us and streetlights were out everywhere. Little did we know that the winds were up to 80mph. That's basically a hurricane, right?



Some of my friends are still without power, but I live in a bomb-proof abode that's survived many earthquakes, thank goodness.

When I went running today I saw that a man was trying to cut a very large fallen tree down from a power line using a handsaw while mumbling something about his cable TV being out. Good luck with that, Sir.

If Only Life Could Be a String of Dinner Parties

It's been an interesting past few weeks, punctuated by four dinner parties. First, my friend Brett came down from San Francisco and a few of us put together an impromptu dinner party in which Allison and I made the exact same dish - hers was pasta with squash and mine was pasta with zucchini. All of us ate pasta with a side of pasta. Luckily, she also sauteed kale, so there was something green on our plates as well.

Then there were the two Thanksgivings. Those were both great and extensively blogged about, at least by me - in the post below.

Thanksgiving was so much fun, in fact, that when I had to go up to San Francisco on short notice, I roped my friend into throwing a dinner party. Just a few days prior she had offered to cook me lasagna and throw me a party and order me a nice chocolate cake her husband got for his birthday - all in hypotheticals. Let's just say we made this happen, and that it was so much fun.

I introduced the other seven guests to a wonderful parlor game called "Telephone Pictionary" which involves writing phrases and drawing pictures and passing these phrases or pictures (alternating) down the line to be further translated into pictures and phrases. Let's just say we busted a gut or two laughing.

There was also a camping trip that happened somewhere between these dinner parties. I went in order to try out rock climbing, but the most memorable part for me ended up being the food we ate around the campfire. My camping friends are gourmet and they brought all of Whole Foods along with them, including fleur de sel, ginger, garlic bunches of kale, quinoa, pesto, TCHO chocolate for smores, multi-grain pancakes with syrup and butter, broccoli, cauliflower and brioche.

I tried to recreate this quinoa-pesto-kale concoction last night in a real kitchen with a real stove, yet somehow I failed. Tonight I will try to recreate the roasted brussel sprouts from my two Thanksgivings.



Is there a more perfect form of socializing than having your friends over for dinner? I think not.