A Year-end Present to Yourself

Run, don't walk, to the nearest library, bookstore, computer or e-reader and get a copy of Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher.  Then set aside an afternoon or evening (it's a small book) for a joyride.  But be sure it is in a place where you will not be embarrassed to laugh out loud (really out loud, not just a smile) again...and again...and again on almost every page.

The structure of this novel is a series of LORs (letters of recommendation) written by a college English professor for his students, his faculty colleagues and a few fellow students from his graduate school days.  These are unlike any recommendation letters that you might imagine.  It makes me wonder what those letters are really like.

Julie Schumacher herself is a faculty member in the Department of English at the University of Minnesota and admits to writing "more letters of recommendation that she cares to recall."  Included in the letters are large doses of college politics, driven by the increasing tensions between the arts and sciences resulting from the pervasive budget constraints affecting most colleges these days.  But it is her arguments supporting the study of English and writing that will stay with you long after the laughter ends.

And if you are familiar with Melville's Bartleby, the Scrivener then so much the better (but not necessary.)

I am desperate to talk with someone who has read this book.  If that is you, please leave a Comment below.

Smart Girl

I don't read a lot of non-fiction, but I've always been an admirer of Tina Fey. I read an excerpt from her autobiography Bossypants in the New Yorker, and it was so smart and funny that I went to my friendly local library and checked it out. Fey started her career at Saturday Night Live as a comedy writer, and she's got the chops.

She has Nora Ephron's talent for witty self-deprecation, but mixed in with hilarious stories about her awkward adolescence, her ill-fated honeymoon cruise and her insecurities about motherhood, are doses of honest and practical advice about succeeding in a male-dominated field.

Here's one of my favorites: “So my unsolicited advice to women in the workplace is this. When faced with sexism or ageism or lookism or even really aggressive Buddhism, ask yourself the following question: 'Is this person in between me and what I want to do?' if the answer is no, ignore it and move on. Your energy is better used doing your work and outpacing people that way. Then, when you're in charge, don't hire the people who were jerky to you.” See what I mean? If you want to know her advice if the answer is yes, you'll just have to read the book.

On the Lighter Side

Sometimes I need a change of pace. After reading a series of a serious novels I was ready for a few laughs. So I turned to Nora Ephron's I Feel Bad About My Neck. Ephron's book is a series of essays about cooking, New York apartments, ex-husbands, reading, writing, purses - and most especially Growing Older. I'd like to pretend I've never had a discussion with my friends about turkey necks or the horror of wattles (and the advantage of wearing turtlenecks), but I'd be lying. Ephron has these same discussions and hers are a lot funnier. For example - “You have to cut open a redwood tree to see how old it is, but you wouldn't have to if it had a neck”. And then there's her observation that your neck never looks worse than when you view yourself from the backseat of a car in the rear view mirror. I thought I was the only one who had noticed this. And let me just expand on it for a moment. It's not just my neck that looks bad in that mirror. I have more than once been tempted to ask the driver to just drop me off at the Old Folks Home or the emergency room. Surely the rest of the people in the car don't want to be seen in public with me anyway. I mean, will I look any worse in my casket than I do in that mirror?

Where was I? Oh yes – Nora Ephron. The essay “On Maintenance” discusses this topic for women over forty. A simple Ephron definition: “Maintenance is what you have to do just so you can walk out the door knowing that if you go to the market and bump into a guy who once rejected you, you won't have to hide behind a stack of canned food”. It covers everything from hair (wanted and unwanted), nails and skin to exercise. Although I'm amazed to learn that a woman of her talents has not yet figured out how to blow dry her own hair, I completely agree with her theory that the increased use of hair dye has meant that more and more women look good in black. It can't really be true that “most everyone wears black – except for anchorwomen, United States senators , and the residents of Texas”, but it sounds right when Ephron says it. And her brief essay “Blind as a Bat” mourns the loss of such simple pleasures as reading a map or a pill bottle without finding your glasses. I think she could have added that the small print on price tags may in fact be a conspiracy to make older women spend more than they meant to. Are you really going to walk through Bloomingdale's with your reading glasses on a chain around your neck?

Other essays tackle more serious subjects, such as the death of a dear friend and a witty but scathing riff on her disappointment with Bill Clinton (“Me and Bill:The End of Love”). I have enjoyed Nora Ephron's writing for many years – her screenplays (“When Harry Met Sally”) as well as her essays, and I'm happy to report that her wry, witty, courageous observations still make me laugh.

Unintended Consequences

This is not a book to read while taking public transportation or in any other circumstance in which laughing out loud would be an embarrassment. A description of the book cannot begin to convey the enjoyment that lies in store. The book is small (literally, 5 x 7) and short (120 pages, practically double-spaced) – really two hours max if you are a slow reader as I am. But – to the point.

The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett tells the story of a fictionalized Queen of England who, in pursuit of her corgis, strays into a traveling bookmobile and the rest, as they say, is history. Or in this case, reading. Aided and abetted by a member of the kitchen staff, the Queen gives sway to a hitherto undeveloped passion for reading with unanticipated (her prime minister would say untoward) consequences. There are many literary references to authors and books (some familiar, others not) including a fictionalized meeting with Alice Munro; some insights into the life of a monarch; and some very profound observations about the delight, the purpose and value of reading. "Can there be a greater pleasure...than to come across an author one enjoys and then to find they have written not just one book or two, but at least a dozen."

I wonder if the real Queen of England finds this book so enjoyable. I guarantee that you as a lover of reading will.