My Christmas morning was full of books. Here’s what I found under the tree, along with a stocking full of an unconscionable amount of candy:

• Krazy and Ignatz: He Nods in Quiescent Siesta by George Herriman
• Y: The Last Man, Deluxe Edition Vol. 1 by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra
• Writing New York: A Literary Anthology ed. Philip Lopate
• The Invisibles: Bloody Hell in America by Grant Morrison and Phil Jimenez
• Northwest Passage by Scott Chantler
• Concrete Vol. 1 by Paul Chadwick

I also gave folks loads of books and indie self-published comics because they would like them, it would help keep bookstores and writers and artists going in these trying times, and because it’s fun. I can’t think of a better Christmas day then one where we are all sprawled out on the couch or living room floor reading our presents while the snow falls outside. That’s how Christmas was when I was a kid and how it still is today — for that day at least I’m only having an adventure, not just reading when I can on the subway or before I fall asleep at night. Books are awesome. So is getting them as gifts.

Here’s a beautiful video via the New York Times book blog that captures everything I just wrote in a much more eloquent way. Enjoy, and Merry Christmas!

Then my friend Melissa signed up for National Novel Writing Month last year and it sounded like too much fun. The premise? You just write 50,000 words in 30 days. They don’t have to be polished or good or even (I’m assuming) very novel-like. It’s a writing exercise, really — the kind that reminds you what it was like when you were a kid and writing was as simple as looking out the window in the morning and writing about the snow coming down until you got bored. Writing should be, as Neil Gaiman put it, making stuff up in your head and then writing it down. National Novel Writing Month is basically a hammer to break the emergency glass and get back to that. I’m looking forward to it.

The race began today and I’ve got a few words in the bank. You can check out my progress in the little gadget at left and on the NaNoWriMo site. And you should do it, too! Sign up here.

You too, Jessica! Write a novel!

I have four rescue animals – two cats and two dogs.  They are all wonderful creatures, affectionate and loving.  They don’t know they are supposed to be thankful that I rescued them and often act quite cavalier about their living situation (they are, plain and simply, spoiled).  Three of them have stable personalities with no issues that need managing. 

One of them doesn’t. 

He came to us as a four month old puppy and the first time I took him to the vet (the second day I had him) she said “He’s a bit timid isn’t he?”  I wouldn’t realize her understatement until many months later.  By then I had come to realize the little guy was afraid of the car (he puked once he got in), strange men on the street (or boys past the age of 15 or so), my father (even after he’d known him for months), statues of people, holiday decorations, the vacuum cleaner, nail clippers (the dog version and the human version), baby gates, cats, and inexplicably, the Stop N Shop Peapod truck.   Unlike Ollie, he was not afraid of his owner (me) but he did give Tim the fish eye occasionally, just to make sure he wasn’t up to no good.

When I began reading Ollie, I couldn’t help but remember the despair I felt when I realized my dog was not normal.  I felt that I had failed.  I thought that my first dog attempt was a disaster and it was all my fault (did I make him this way?).  That I couldn’t help this poor creature who was just terrified of the world.  I felt for Mr. Foster, I really did.  I’ve been there. 

But I’ve also been on the other side of it.  He is two years old now and he can ride in the car comfortably and he’s over most of his fears (unfortunately the vet one still sticks, as does the Peapod truck and strange men, though it’s tempered now).  The author is perfectly right when he says that bonding with him was the reason Ollie turned around.  A fearful dog needs an ally and if he doesn’t find it in his owner, woe to both dog and owner.  He is also right about patience, something I’ve had a hard time with and something that is probably the most important key to “rehabbing” a fearful dog.  There is, however, much more to it than that – walking and waiting – there is real work to be done.

Part of the problem of course is the difference between expectations and reality.  I can’t help but be frustrated with Mr. Foster (and consequently Mr. Grogan) for having such grand expectations about dog ownership.  Did they really think it would be easy? That a dog just raises and amuses himself?   It amazes me that in this day and age of the Dog Whisperer and shows like It’s Me or the Dog that people still get a dog thinking it will raise itself.  Thankfully both authors became disillusioned pretty quickly and their dogs have benefited, but what of all the other dogs whose owners don’t?  I’m torn about whether books like this are good because they present a real picture of life with a dog or if they make dismissive dog owners feel that it’s OK to keep ignoring real issues.

I’ve raised one dog now and our other pup is coming along.  One was initially stable and one was not, but I have to say that some days I don’t remember which was harder.  Puppies are work, regardless of their temperament.  They need consistency and training – something neither of the authors gave their dogs, at least initially. Thankfully they smartened up.  Though I love any book about dogs, especially ones about owners who love their dogs completely, I just don’t find it heartwarming to read about ineffectual, though well intentioned, owners stumbling around trying to gain control of their dogs.  Because it’s the dogs that suffer ultimately.  Unrealistic expectations are harmful to all dogs, particular fearful ones. 

My dogs aren’t perfect – far from it – but their imperfect behavior is not from lack of training and structure. We all work hard and if they don’t live up to some vague Lassie-eque ideal so be it; I love them anyway.  

Because I never expected them to.

Myla Goldberg from this Slate article.

Let’s face it, readers are at least a little bit geeky.  And I don’t mean you Opera Book Club, Joyce Carol Oates, or Nora Roberts fans (I continue to slam them, knowing there is no chance they are reading this right now).  I mean real readers of real books. You know, the kind who read (or write) a book blog. 

That geekiness doesn’t always have to be a bad thing.  I began liking to read because in my early elementary school years the readers were the smart kids.  And I very much wanted to be one of the smart kids, especially when I learned in the 3rd grade what “straight A’s” meant. What started out as purely academic and competitive turned into something more.  I got hooked on all the wonderful stories out there. 

As I got older and being smarter made me less popular I hung onto reading (which, it needs to be said, my peers were dropping it as fast as they could to become “cool” or a reasonable facsimile) because it is a solitary but never lonely activity.  It’s an excuse to be alone with your thoughts and a clearly identifiable activity which doesn’t make you (that) weird.  Parents don’t hound you for reading too much.  You can opt out of the latest innane schoolyard game quietly and without embarrassment by sitting on the grass with a new volume. If you’re home on a Saturday night you’ve always got something to do.

If you’re reading others don’t hang out with you because they think you are too smart for them (and therefore boring) , not necessarily because you’re a loser.   Or they call you “bookish” which sounds suspiciously like a compliment given to less social, but reading kids.  In school the smart kids are somehow allowed more leeway in the social awkwardness category (actually in life, for those of you who have ever met a brilliant but painfully awkward MIT grad).  There’s at least one positive thing about you – usually a way to get homework copied, or the answers on a test.   

Or it’s possible that these are all the reasons I’ve constructed to make my inner geek feel better. 

The Worst Years of Your Lifeis subtitled Stories for the Geeked-out, Angst-Ridden, Lust-Addled and Deeply Misunderstood Adolescent in All of Us.  I wouldn’t argue with that.  I don’t think anyone survives that phase of life untouched. 

Those of us with more outer than inner geeks are the ones who will pick up this book.  I would think those that have blossomed into secure, stable adults (is there such a thing, yeah I know of at least one) would not want to relive such a time.  I thought to find snippets of my own experience in this book of short stories.  However I was pleasantly surprised to find a vast amount of experiences that, though they matched the emotional  tone and quality of my own life, were oftentimes surprisingly different.  There are stories of boys who do dirty things with dolls, with their neighbor’s mentally challenged daughter, and with each other.  There are girls who slash their best friends face, have sex with their boyfriends in the bathroom at school and do a multitude of drugs while hanging out with homeless older men.  This collection, I would dare to say, covers the wide and wild range of adolescent experiences.  You will find yourself in there somewhere and likely you’ll find all your friends too. 

While the stories themselves are emotionally charged, it’s fortunately quite easy to keep a safe distance.  They are, after all, just words on a page.  Made up tales by someone else and not meant to leave a residue.  In some cases, even your own inner geek can look at someone else’s inner geek and go “well, that’s just crazy!”  and thus feel a little better about yourself.  These stories are both inclusive and exclusive and like a high school student warily eyeing up his peers, the reader can pick and choose which ones to delve into and which ones to run quickly away from. 

{Full disclosure:  I’m a little defensive lately.  My best friend got married in the last of the weddings for this season (what a relief) and we didn’t make it to rehearsal dinner before the “When are you getting married?” questions started.  I’ve mentioned before that reading keeps me sane and my choices this week are no exception.}

I’ve had my anti-bride rant already so I’m moving on to bigger prey.  In a long hot summer filled with wedding after wedding (really it was only three, almost four, but it seemed like exponentially more) I’ve become increasingly frustrated by social expectations being laid at my feet.  Everyone wants to marry me off. 

It still amazes me how rude some people can be.  When are you getting married is not, by any means, an innocuous or polite question.  And yet it’s completely socially acceptable.   Even if we excuse the blatant invasion of privacy there are issues with the semantics.  Firstly there is the “when” of it which implies there is no choice not to – it’s  pretty clear that this is not a question of “if” after all.  Secondly there is the fact that the questioner even has to ask the question, which implies that you’re taking too long (the poor, frustrated souls, I really feel for them).  This questions belongs, along with its sister when are you having kids, to a society where people had no choices in the matter – matrimony and childbirth were inevitable - and frankly, they had nothing better to talk about.  I for one think we’ve moved past that and our social manners should evolve as such.  Unfortunately it appears that I’m in the minority on this one.

I understand why people desire marriage for emotional, social and economic reasons.  They are just not my reasons.  I get why some women want the role, but I have a huge problem with people expecting me to be a wife.  My current frustration would seem to make Madame Bovary the perfect read for me.  Who better to represent the frustrations and confines of women in marriage and women in society?  Certainly her wifely (and womanly) restrictions were far more stringent than ours nowadays and it would be nice to think that 150 years has afforded women a little more room to breath.  But it turns out that Emma Bovary is that girl.   We all know at least one of her – the one who is never happy with anything she’s got, always looking for something new, or someone else to make her life interesting.  She’s looking for that one guy to make her truly happy (egads!) and in her search she obsessively latches on to anyone who will have her.  She’s a whiner and prone to temper tantrums.  She’s materialistic and immature. I hated her.  Though I could understand her ambivalence about her husband, I loathed her indifference to her child.  But I plugged along, it’s a classic for goodness sake! I grew increasingly irritated until finally Tim said, “Just put down the book!”

So I did.  Madame Bovary may be a classic, but it’s hard for a woman in 2008, with luxuries  like no fault divorce, financial independence and birth control so easily available to even fathom what she went through.  What was shocking in 1857 is blase now.  All of which could still be transcended except that, dare I say it, Emma was a selfish bitch. 

Still Emma and I share one opinion – that marriage isn’t always healthy for women (I would add that the almost inevitable result – divorce – is certainly bad for everyone).  So why are so called modern women still “choosing it” as a lifestyle, when they don’t have to?  This is the very question that The Meaning of Wife strives to answer. The cover clearly illustrates the cultural ambivalence towards wifehood.  The hand is giving the finger, which is adorned in large and sparkly diamond rings.  Which is it – a rude gesture or a proud (even defiant) display?

Despite being filled with inane phrases like “wifegap” “wifelust” and “wifelash” which clearly are meant to attract a hip, young audience, this is a serious book.  It’s abundantly clear that the word wife and the role of wife are fraught with emotion and Ms. Kingston teases out the historical and social reasons why, bringing interesting theories to light.  With so many cultural references – movies and recent chick lit books -  this book is intended for a younger audience, women on the cusp of matrimony or perhaps those who have already had a  starter marriage and are still pursuing the dream.

These women have the luxury of choices that their predeccesors (who in most cases, fought the battles that won those choices) could not have. Young women today have the ability to question the established lifestyles and invent new ones if they so wish.  As those of us who hear these insipid questions repetitively know, it’s not easy, but it’s also worth the thoughtful effort to have a life you want instead of the one people choose for you. It’s time to let people find the lives they want to live and exercise the options available to them (if they so desire).  It’s not just a matter of whether it’s “if” or “when.”

It’s time eliminate this question entirely.