Blogger Identity: It's All GOOD and Four Book Reviews

I know I promised to talk a load of rhubarb, and I will do so soon.

However, I want to take an interlude to reflect an important lesson I learned from my last post, and specifically, from a response to it by Mindy, and to share how that has helped me to tie up some questions with which I've been wrestling for some time regarding blogger identity. I also want to share some books I've been reading recently: four books, four different genres--novel, poetry, essays and raw food recipes.

First: the lesson. Mindy was baffled by my story about the triggering conversation with Phil, because I hadn't contextualized it as being a part of my eating disorder recovery/journey, and it seemed to her like I'd reacted to a compliment in a bizarre way.

To me, this was a wonderful lesson, both as a writer and touching the issue of blog identity. We should always be specific, give a context to the story and make explicit the purpose of telling the story. When we assume that our reader is smart and empathic, it behooves us to give her/him a framework within which to gather all the nuances and implications we're offering. As it was, I told the story from the side of my mouth, so to speak, because I'm still working out how to talk about that topic in a way that is interesting, potentially helpful to others and not triggering.

From here on, I intend to talk about sensitive things clearly and without fudging.

As for blogger identity, that discussion, together with this selection of books I want to review in a moment, cements my recent conclusion that it's all good! I can post several recipes per week and other food-related chat and still write a poetry blog. And vice versa. And body-image/recovery-related stuff, and nutritional research, and Alaskana, and gardening/homesteading: let's have it all on the table! Which means, I don't have to fudge anything and I don't have to think "Oh, I should be elliptical about this because my blog's not really supposed to be about that." This blog can be about anything that seems compelling and fascinating and worth sharing, and it may just so happen that words and food top the ratings most of the time.

OK? Good. Now to the books. The ground we're about to cover should amply illustrate this broader definition of 'blogger identity' I'm easing into.
First: a novel.

Two of the book clubs I'm a member of picked Abraham Verghese's Cutting for Stone for this month or next. Since it's a 600-pager, I know that the few of us who double-dip book clubs were glad that both clubs picked it!

I read it our first couple days in Oregon. I couldn't put it down (except when I really had to)! It's a fascinating epic grounded in Ethiopia but with tendrils in India, the Middle East and the USA (and, more distantly, Scotland), spanning a period of time from the 1940's to the 2000's. It has the slow pace and freight of a 'big novel,' with retellings of single events through the eyes of different characters. The characters are engaging, and the high population of unusual foibles in them somehow seems quite believable: I never felt that I had to suspend disbelief for the sake of the story.

The medical history and details were utterly fascinating to me, and since I'm lucky enough to be pretty familiar with quite a lot of Indian cultural stuff, seeing it framed in the exotic Ethiopian context was even richer. The turbulent history of Ethiopia through that time period provided a backdrop to the events of the book: together with specific medical problems of the area, this enriched, rather than hijacking, the plot.

There were a few infelicities of language dotted around here and there, but I know I'm super-picky about that kind of thing, and given the sheer mass of words, I forgave them (although I wish an editor had caught them!)

One last thing: Phil really enjoyed it too, and we have very different taste in books.

Moving on to Poetry...

Erin already posted a review of Nickole Brown's Sister a couple weeks back, warning that you wouldn't be able to put the book down. I concur: I read it at a sitting a couple days ago, and then started rereading immediately. Nickole was one of the faculty at the recent Writers' Conference here, and gave some wonderful advice, especially about style, revision and editing. I was lucky enough to get to talk with her some about my own work, and hope to continue a connection with her.

Aside from the meticulous visual presentation of each poem (an aspect of poem-revision that she really opened up to me: as I'm always saying, I'm not visual, and it's a revelation how manipulating the white space can do things for you)...aside from this, I was enthralled by the compelling onward drive of the narrative linking the poems together, yet mesmerized by the crystal, crucial lyricism that pervaded each one. I was also inspired by the courage the poems embodied. Peggy Shumaker gives the advice to "write what you think is taboo:" a squeamish injunction, and one Nickole fulfills in a tour du force of bluntness, provocation and mystery.

Essays next:

Our friend Lynn loaned me her copy of Lia Purpura's On Looking. Purpura is on the faculty at PLU and I'm planning to take a class with her at the Residency this August. She's a poet and translator as well as an essayist, so I'm particularly excited to connect with her.

These are meticulously detailed introspections and external observations, lyrical and fractured: gorgeous use of language and many unorthodox sentence structures. So many little things nagging at the corner of your eye: so many surprising disorientations she takes the time to evoke, beautifully, that I thought I was the only person who saw or thought about. It's one of those books that arouses a real feeling of kinship in me: that despite her different location, her different circumstances, many of which are made explicit during the essays, she is speaking for me. As me.

Finally, raw food recipes! I'm coming late to the game on this one...

...it was months ago, if not a year, that I recall many reviews of Ani's Raw Food Essentials on blogs I read, but when I found it on our library's "new books" shelf, I was glad to borrow it and take a look. It's been a while since I've had a big fat recipe book to leaf through.

I haven't tried any recipes yet--it's been barely a day, and I tend to read these books through like novels first. I love her attitude, energy and philosophy. I don't agree with everything that she says about different foods' merits and demerits, but that's probably no surprise. I do admire how the book is organized, with easy adaptations and morphs of one recipe into another, or 'accumulator' recipes, where several recipes are combined. Also, the emphasis on easy-to-source ingredients.

Here's my little complaint, though: why are raw food recipe books so often so poorly edited? It drives me nuts: per my 'blogger identity' conclusions above, readers--and writers--of raw food recipe books are just as smart, well-rounded, educated and deserving of well-edited books as anyone else! So why is this very well-written book by a very smart person made to look less professional because of shoddy editing? The most egregious example (so far): the top of p.31, the first page of a new chapter, contains a paragraph that begins in mid-sentence and has no relation to the facing page (a title/intro page) of any kind. There are other little typos too. In a recipe book, precision is reassuring.

If I had all the time to do all the good in the world that I wish I could do, and had not financial constraints, I would throw myself around a bit trying to put this right.

Do you have any major pet peeves that set you off like this? Any book recommendations, or 'must-try's from Ani's book?
Have a great Holiday Weekend!