Fifty Two Fifty Two

Just joined, playing catch-up, recalling books read earlier this year:

1. The Situation and the Story: The Art of Personal Narrative, Vivian Gornick. Nonfiction. This was recommended by Lauren Winner in a writing workshop last year and I wish I hadn’t taken almost a year to read it. There’s much on constructing a persona (aka narrator), beginning with a lightning-bolt moment she had while listening to a eulogy.  My pencil was busy in the margins, and I will be reskimming it to better absorb some of those lessons.

Bottom line: She’s right when she writes, “I have learned that you cannot teach people how to write — the gift of dramatic expressiveness, of a natural sense of structure, of making language sink down beneath the surface of description, all that is inborn, cannot be taught — but you can teach people how to read, how to develop judgment about a piece of writing: their own as well as that of others.” That is probably how this book is most helpful.

2. The Genesee Diary: Report from a Trappist Monastery, Henri Nouwen. In which brother Nouwen complains about baking industrial quantities of raisin bread, reads widely, writes letters, follows the news, procrastinates, hauls rocks, cracks jokes, looks in a mirror and sees his needy side (“What do you do? Analyze more? It is hard not to see the neurotic dynamism”), all while on a seven-month retreat in an abbey in upstate New York, leaking onto the page his passing thoughts at their most petty and most beautiful. Look over his shoulder and you might see yourself in that mirror.

3. Jewel, Brett Lott. Fiction. A beautiful, astonishing, sensitive novel. One of the many things I loved about it is its portrayal of the intimacies and settlements of a long and fruitful and difficult marriage.

4. Light From Heaven, and 5. Home to Holly Springs, both by Jan Karon. I snobbishly dismissed the Mitford series, largely because of their Hallmark Shops tie-in, until they were recommended by three people whose reading tastes I respect and who do not know each other. Light but couldn’t-put-it-down reading. Someone is redeemed in every volume, and I’m a sucker for a good redemption story.

6. Happy All the Time, Laurie Colwin. She’s so good at drawing characters and loving them with all their quirks and prickliness. Another book with deft sketches of the mysteries of marriage. Several laugh-out-loud moments.

7. Real Sex: The Naked Truth About Chastity, Lauren F. Winner. Nonfiction. I wish I’d read this (though it didn’t exist yet) when I was in my 20s. I wish I had the guts to give it to some young people of my acquaintance.

“The choices we make every day — where we shop, what we do with our bodies, how we pass our time — form us. They shape the type of Christians we become. What we do matters — not because good behavior gets us into heaven, but because behavior, good and bad, creates certain expectations in us, teaches us certain lessons. This is one of the reasons we are taught to pray, even when we don’t feel like it — because regular praying will establish in us the demeanor and stance of praising God.”

I briefly wear my site administrator hat, simply to say that if you want a bio to show up when people click on your name, you should follow these steps.

1. Log in.
2. On the left sidebar of the dashboard, click on “Profile,” then “Your Profile.”
3. Here you can put links and information in the “Biographical Info” box. You can also change the value in the “Display name publicly as” box to have your actual name in full or in part (rather than your username) show up on this site.

Happy reading.

I’m here, your friendly site maintainer who has not yet finished a book, to let you know that we are soooo 2010.

Here’s our Facebook page.

And here’s our Twitter (@fiftytwo52). In theory, our blog posts here will automatically post to the Twitter account, so people can easily follow along and click through to what’s interesting. In reality, I’m still testing some technology out on it, so I can’t promise it will work off the bat. But I should have it in reasonable working order soon.

Carry on!

I adore books; from the perspective the stories bring to my life to the typeface on the covers to how they stack haphazardly yet cozily on my paltry shelves.

I love words; the ingredients an author molds together to describe, express and divulge always seem fresh and relevant, regardless of when they were written.

I enjoy character development; it gives me hope when life’s chapters don’t end as I planned.

DISCLAIMER: I am not a writer, a reviewer, a master of grammar or punctuation and certainly am not the most eloquent in a crowd.  I don’t mind spelling errors, I get agita before posting on blogs, and admittedly find this project quite daunting. However, I am committed and am looking forward to happily submitting to the “urgent words [just] waiting to be read.”

As ever, Lauren

(Not the movie, of course.)

Some of you have been asking how you can get an avatar (that little picture that shows up next to my name). I had to do some sleuthing, but I realized that it’s a Gravatar, which you can get by going here and signing up for one. Obviously, make sure you use the email address that you used to sign up for this site. WordPress, the framework that this site runs on, should pick up your Gravatar shortly after you create one.

You don’t need one, of course, but it’s nice to have a little personality on the interwebs.

So here’s a question: What book do you plan to read first in 2010? Or will you be finishing a book you began in 2009?

I’m somewhat obsessive about having a feeling of closure at the end of the year, so I always try to finish all the books I’m reading by the 31st. I’m not quite sure what I’ll be reading beginning January 1 – I acquired a bunch of books over break – but I’m pretty sure it will include Olive Kittredge, which is my book club’s next pick.

Only somewhat relatedly: You should now be able to put links or a short bio together, if you so desire, that will come up when people click on your name on the site. Check out the “Your Profile” section in the WordPress dashboard.

And we’ve now got a button for you to put in your blog sidebar, or really anywhere you want. Have at it!

Thank you all for inspiring me to read more intentionally this year. I’ve already added many of your recommendations to my to-read list on Goodreads. I know it will be a challenge, but I think if I include several shorter books (perhaps some children’s books) and even books on tape, maybe I could do it. And Santa was very good to me this year and brought me a Kindle – I love it!

Here are some good quotes on reading to help inspire us:

“A man is known by the books he reads.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Choose an author as you choose a friend.” – Sir Christopher Wren

“We read to know we are not alone.” – C.S. Lewis

“Read, read, read.” – William Faulkner

Oh, and here’s my 2010 book list. I use Goodreads, and I tweet.

Shameless promotion: I also edit this magazine.

Hello, friends, and fellow bibliophiles!

I’ve been doing some surgery on the website, as you can see. There’s now a page that lists the participants in the challenge. When people click on your name, they’ll get your posts.

If you want to have your real name display instead of your username, you should be able to do so by logging into the dashboard and changing the field that says “Display name publicly as.”

What should we be posting? It’s up to you. There are no rules. But in these last weeks before 2010 begins, you might post links to your book list, your Goodreads account, or your blog, or really anything else. Other good post candidates: what you read last year, requests for book suggestions, or links to articles and top ten lists you’ve found interesting. Once 2010 starts, you might check in occasionally and post lists of what you’ve been reading, maybe with a short capsule review or a star rating. It’s up to you.

Also, feel free to add the site to your favorite RSS reader, if you have one, and comment on other readers’ posts. Answer questions. Enjoy yourself.

You might also introduce yourself. Hi, I’m Alissa, and I made the site. I live in Brooklyn and I read a lot. I also write, edit, and teach writing at a little private college in Manhattan. The “52 books challenge” did not originate with me, but I like the idea a lot.

Obviously, we’re under serious construction here (I doubt this is the theme we’ll use). Things will start to look better soon, and we’ll have a place where you can put a book list, if you like.

In the meantime, though, feel free to log in and post a test entry, a “hello,” or something about yourself or books or chocolate.