Reasons to Be Happy, March 19, 2014

1. Eleven Days. This novel, by Lea Carpenter, is magnificent. It is a page-turner, almost a thriller, but it is also, unexpectedly, a novel of ideas. Ideas about war and parenting and love. I can quibble with some minor aspects of the book--Jason's motivation for entering the military was a little trite, some perspective shifts near the end did not work--but the core is solid.
   
   All I can really ask of a novel is that it sticks with me once it is finished. The best novels enable you to see the world from an entirely new perspective--to me, that is the purpose of fiction. This book did that. Read it.
2. Chloe Sevigny in Big Love. A bit late to the party, I know. I like to watch TV shows while I code during the day. I can't really watch anything I haven't already seen this way, but I am working my way through a lot of shows I've seen before. And now it's Big Love's turn, and I am absolutely blown away by Chloe Sevigny's performance Nicolette Grant. The premise of the show, in case you don't know, is that a polygamist is living in the Utah suburbs with his three wives. Nicolette is the prickliest, the most damaged, and the least overtly lovable of the three. But she is my favorite. I love Nikki so much, and it is entirely due to Sevigny's performance, which really allows you to see the hurt little girl that still lives inside Nikki.
3. Anthony Gatto, the world's greatest juggler, turns to construction. I enjoyed this story about a brilliant juggler who gives it all up for a construction business. I don't think I agree with the author's conclusion--he seems wistful that Gatto has left juggling, whereas I see it as smart. Not smart just because it's more profitable, although apparently it is, but because I have a long-standing belief in leaving the party while everyone is still having a good time. Gatto had a great juggling career, he left at its peak, and now he's doing something else he likes. That's not sad, that's the dream. The story is great, whatever you think about Gatto's decision to move on, and includes several juggling videos if you're into that sort of thing.
4. New Game of Thrones trailer. I feel like I should say something more articulate than "oh my god oh my god oh my god," but that's basically what I've got. Cannot wait for the new season.
5. A moment with Bert. So Adweek sat down with nine-year-old Albert Tsai--who plays Bert on Trophy Wife, which you are probably not watching but really should be--and the resulting interview is as charming and adorable as one might expect. Here is the best part:

   Marcia [Gay Harden] reads Harry Potter to me and I really enjoy that. We read it in between takes. Right now we’re reading the first book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. And Marcia does accents for every character, so that makes it even more fun!

   So even if this enormously funny and warm-hearted show isn't renewed, which will make me very sad, I can go through life knowing that that happened.

The Truest Thing I Read Today, March 18, 2014

There was no formal memorial service. David wouldn't have wanted one. But a few of his closest friends gathered other friends at a house near the Mall, and Sara went, and took Jason. There were lots of beautiful women, women she'd never met, and several of them seemed mildly drunk and very upset. Sara asked Jason's godfather, "Are these all the lovers?"

And he had said, "At Brecht's funeral, there were many mistresses, but everyone knew who the great love was."

"How?"

"She was the only one who wasn't crying."

"Thank you," said Sara, as if his anointment meant anything.

-- Lea Carpenter, Eleven Days

Reasons to Be Happy, March 18, 2014

1. There's proof of the Big Bang. Because I had a criminally dreadful science education, I didn't fully grasp the importance of yesterday's announcement about gravity waves. But I think this NPR post lays it out pretty well. Here is the gist of it:

   The Big Bang has been the dominant theory explaining the history of the universe for more than a half-century. But puzzles inherent in the idea (and in the data) led to a major addition to the theory in the 1980s: inflationary cosmology. Since then inflation, as it is called, has been a sometimes contentious but stalwart pillar of our cosmic understanding. To get inflation on solid scientific ground however meant finding ways to see farther back in time than ever before.
   
   And that is what has been announced today.

   Basically, this is really, really cool and opens up all kinds of possibilities for future research. And--bonus happiness--here is how scientist Andrei Linde reacted when he learned of the discovery.
2. I'm reading a fantastic new biography of Queen Anne. Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion, by Anne Somerset. I've always enjoyed Tudor history, but I knew next to nothing about the Stuarts. Anne and her sister Mary (who also preceded Anne as queen) prove to be absolutely fascinating women. Perhaps a little batty--when Anne's father James was king, Anne was absolutely convinced her stepmother faked an entire nine-month pregnancy and subsequent childbirth--but who wouldn't be when trying to live in the pressure cooker of an eighteenth-century royal court? Reading this book is like reading a shorter, less bloody Game of Thrones. That really happened.
3. Blissology is a thing. Blissology is Eoin Finn's yoga empire, which includes DVDs, podcasts, a blog, and in-person retreats and classes. I find both the word "blissology" and Eoin Finn himself just a bit too twee. (At one point, during a stretch, he tells us that we should feel like we are having "ice cream licked off your body." Really, Eoin? I mostly feel like I am stretching my hamstrings.) But oh, how I love his yoga DVDs. I own all of them and I do one practice every day. In an ideal world, would I be doing yoga in my basement instead of at a yoga studio? No. But we don't live in an ideal world and in the meantime my hips feel nice and loose, which as Eoin would tell you, makes me feel more youthful and reduces the effects of aging.
4. An anecdote in a Jaron Lanier interview. I'm not going to lie, the interview taken as a whole is thought-provoking and a little depressing. But it contains an intriguing little vignette that I just loved:

   One of my favorite stories, which might be apocryphal — I can’t tell you for sure that this is so, although photographers traded this story for many years. But the way the piece of folklore goes is that during the Civil War era, and a little after, the very earliest photographers would go around with a collection of photographs of people who matched a certain archetype. So they would find the photograph that most closely matched your loved one and you’d buy that because at least there would be representation a little like the person, even if it was the wrong person.

   Can you imagine? Imagine rifling through a stack of pictures looking for the one that reminded you most of someone you loved. Maybe it never happened, but it is such a lovely and evocative image.
5. Batwoman. Yes, Batwoman. I am an unapologetic geek, but I admit I am a little self-conscious about some of my interests. It's sometimes not socially acceptable to tell people that I--a grown-up responsible mother of three--like to read about superheroes. But I just started reading the 2011 reboot of Batwoman, and it is so good: moving and complex and interesting. I've read all of Batwoman: Elegy--which opens with an intro by Rachel Maddow, so I guess it's a little more socially acceptable--and I'm about halfway through Batwoman: Hydrology. Seriously, the stories here are great, and J. H. Williams's art is freaking gorgeous. If it makes you feel better, just think of the books as "graphic novels" rather than "comic books."

The Best Thing I Read Today, March 17, 2014

Her endeavor was misguided and wrong and maybe plain crazy, akin to someone waking up one day and deciding he's going to scale Kilimanjaro because he can't stop imagining the view from the top, the picture so arresting and beautiful that it too soon delivers him to a precarious ledge, where he can no longer turn back. And while it's easy to say this is a situation to be avoided, isn't this what we also fear and crave simultaneously, that some internal force which defies understanding might remake us into the people we dream we are?

-- Chang Rae Lee, On Such a Full Sea

Reasons to Be Happy, March 17, 2014

1. Alma in The Signature of All Things. Let me be clear: I cannot wholeheartedly recommend Elizabeth Gilbert's The Signature of All Things, even if it did make both the Tournament of Books and the Bailey's Prize longlist. I had many problems with it: Prudence's story, from beginning to end. Retta's story, from beginning to end. The character of Tomorrow Morning. The fact that Tomorrow Morning is named "Tomorrow Morning." The way Gilbert seems to just give up in exhaustion rather than coming up with a coherent, sensible ending. But I loved Alma. I loved her desire to know how everything works--everything, from her mother's accounting system to the growth of plants to the human heart. I loved that she seemed to have a perfectly productive and content life, most of the time, without being hung up on romance. I loved that there weren't a lot of scenes showing her longing for a husband and children. More than that, for reasons I can't quite articulately explain, Alma felt very much like a real person to me. Twelve hours after finishing the book, I am still trying to figure out how to manipulate the space-time continuum so that she and I can hang out and talk about moss.
2. The Morning News Tournament of Books. One of my favorite things about every March. Today's decision, pitting Kate Atkinson's Life After Life against Hanya Yanagihara's The People in the Trees, proved to be quite the shocker (the literary equivalent of Weber State beating Arizona in the NCAA tournament).
3. The Good Wife renewal. The Cancellation Bear had me worried--is it my imagination, or does the Cancellation Bear take a little too much pleasure in watching struggling shows bite the dust?--but CBS renewed The Good Wife for another season. Yay! And to add to my joy, last night's episode was stellar, incorporating Alicia's origin story; Elsbeth, one of my favorite recurring characters; some developments in this season's ongoing story arc; and a wandering anti-Semitic bear.
4. Introducing my sons to Better Off Ted. Despite what you may have heard, there are pleasures in parenting teenagers and near-teenagers, and chief among them is sharing your favorite pop culture with them. Case in point: this quirky dead-too-soon sitcom. Listening to the boys chortle over it made me feel very pleased to have kids with good taste whom I enjoy hanging out with.
5. Josh Radnor's "Song of the Day". I started following Josh Radnor on Twitter because of my obsession with How I Met Your Mother (he stars in it). But I will keep following him after the show says good-bye in a couple of weeks because I've gotten hooked on his "Song of the Day." (If you don't like Twitter, there is also a Spotify list.)