"Yes" is several hundred words long, in my language

I'd make a lousy book reviewer, since once I finish a book, I mostly just want to point at it and say "Yes" or "No" or "Uh". Not that I probably won't try writing real book reviews here in the future, but for right now, I'm pretty much sticking with what I know and how I know to do it. If you crave in-depth plot summaries and critical analysis and such, go click on "Maud Newton" to the right and then click on "Links" and then just keep clicking. You'll find something worthwhile out there. Then tell 'em I sent ya. Also, note that I'll probably limit my public "No" responses, since I hear that writers have learned how to use the Internet, and I've got no urge to burn off karma I haven't built up yet.

So: How to Breathe Underwater by Julie Orringer: Yes.

The yes/no dichotomy is kind of lame since the reading I've been doing lately, I've mostly been reading it while relating it to my own writing with some sense of "I want to do this" or "I don't want to do this" in mind. Those probably loosely map to the yes/no split but I think there's more shading. Like when I think of Infinite Jest I might think, "Yes; but I don't want to do that". Or when I think of The Corrections I might think, "Yes; and yes, I do want to do that; but, different." (I'm completely blanking out on any books that get an unqualified "Yes; and yes, I want to do that. Period.") Which is funny, incidentally, if you'll pardon the non-footnoted sidetracking, which will connect to what I say next: which is funny, since last year I did try to "do that," though well after I'd read Franzen's book. Mostly I "did that...horribly!!!" and have run screaming away from the writing of (or thinking about the writing of) novels to the safe though personally still somewhat foreign and forboding harbors of short story writing.

So--and here's where I "connect" with myself--in an effort to, you know, read a few short stories, I borrowed the Julie Orringer book from my girlfriend, who is cooler than me, and my reaction to it, in more detail, is something like: "Yes. And I want to do that. Maybe not the content of that, but the style or the feel of that. Yeah. Cool."

The majority of the stories gripped me, and most of them had me shifting in my seat with "Uh oh" and "Oh no" feelings throughout. In the good way. That might be the highest compliment I can offer to Ms. Orringer, so I think I'll leave it at that, because if I keep going, I'll blow it. "Yes."

So, on to The Invisible Circus by Jennifer Egan, in order to complete a completely accidental trilogy of books for the "finished it" pile that deal with teenaged girls. I swear I honestly didn't plan that, and only realized it tonight when I fished the Egan book out of the unread pile, and read the back cover, and set it down, and walked away, and a few hours later thought, "Oh crap, I'm stuck in a theme." After Circus I feel obligated to read something completely unrelated. Like, Naked Lunch, maybe.