sarah gilbert > Recent Status Updates

I'm not entirely sure I love the artifice of this book; how the author recreates conversations between scientists as part of her storytelling toolkit. she spends rather too much time describing their demeanor, conversations that are devised by combining public statements and papers and interviews. It's very arch. I'm greatly enjoying the content, though; it's expanding my quantum physics understanding

I'm not entirely sure I love the artifice of this book; how the author recreates conversations between scientists as part of her storytelling toolkit. she spends rather too much time describing their demeanor, conversations that are devised by combining public statements and papers and interviews. It's very arch. I'm greatly enjoying the content, though; it's expanding my quantum physics understanding

the end is so full of the sense of ruining/unruining, so many questions; what do we say to staunch the raw heart we've bloodied, when we ourselves are still wounded? How can we prevent a relationship's doom just when we've decided it's easier to go alone? of course it's easier. but it's better not to. and that's the question we answer, a little, but still the mystery remains like the echo the rain in the trees.

This is the part where my heart breaks for Joanna

this book gets into, not just the character of the women and men who people it, but also the city in which it is set. falling in love with characters is easy and this book is as much a love story about Portland and its citizens as it is Joanna and Malcolm. xo, Portland.

I am finding myself deeply relating to Joanna, though when I first met these characters I thought she was so unlike me, with her struggle to find a career that suits her, her early disheartenment with the adventure -- teaching English in the Czech Republic -- she thought would change her life. Her relationship with Nate is exactly the sort I got into in my 20s; surface-sweet and practical.

I'd forgotten to mark my progress through the book; I've missed a lot. but I especially wanted to note how beautifully Tartt handles the desperation of the love for Pippa, how such and twisted and wrackingly sad and yet true and lovely it is. I love how he loves her.

feeling some hope here; there is an especially nice space where Dubus' characters find beauty in the parts that are unlike their old loves, and I appreciate it. I'm not sure, though, if any of the female characters come off as truly relatable and empathetic

Sheryl St. Germain's "A Country You Once Lived In" is, as one of the book's editors said to me yesterday, "a public service announcement to women." It's also brilliantly written and heart-rending. It's my kind of dark work.

The piece that comes next, 'Porn Star' by Elane Johnson, wouldn't probably have struck me as so much fun (it IS fun, it's great!) if it hadn't been placed right after it. Brilliant.

Rachel Peckham's story 'A Lesson in Merging' was so unlike the story I read before it, on moonshine, that I had to take a death. And it hit a little too close to home. feeling for Rachel, and wanting to find and friend her. what a life she must be leading now; I have so many questions.

while I am all for realism, and indeed Dubus's characters seem as real as the day is long, their lives seem so full of striving after something I don't want. "success" that's missed the point and the boat. the characters are all reeling into hurt and empty, material, two thousand teens-style Willy Lomans. so far I worry this may break me.

two pieces other than mine in this book, however, have struck me as very important and nuanced evaluations of how viewing an act as "sin" brings us to dark places and, possibly, through them into light; "Fat" by Sarah Einstein and "Out of the Woods" by Gail Griffin. "Fat" had me shivering by the end in grief. "Out of the Woods" had me wracked with Virginia's black/white man/woman sex/violence social fabric. oohhh.

I have an essay in this book ('No Other Gods'), and so the first thing I read upon opening the book was the three editor's notes/introductions, in reverse order, looking for a reference to my piece. When I saw that there was none, this was my first clue that my piece is rather unlike the others. Mine is more dark, a story of scratching out a new perspective on sin; the others, for the most part, are less agonizing.

seriously furious at Betsy Wolf. you know, a little furious at Ash, too. I think they could so easily have seen Goodman for who he really was -- they could have forgiven him, but they had to SEE him. I would have been ok with forgiveness. I'm not ok with dissonance.

Read through the crazymakers while dealing with a bonafide crazymaker in so many ways. But laughed when I got tot he part where crazymakers leave a mess all over your workspace... ummm, that's me. I'm my own crazymaker. Also "crazymakers hate schedules... except their own." also known as, how I live my life (I just don't expect an artist I know to take my kids to school. I drag my own sorry behind to school.)

'...each time his gaze moved toward her, she received a new, pleasing little bang of his interest.' Love that. And this book, tho I'm often wondering if I can actually like Jules. I can't exactly pinpoint why I don't like her... maybe because, if we'd known each other in high school, I'm afraid she wouldn't quite like me.

suspecting I may be far too self-confident for the artist's way. Trying it anyway. Starting tomorrow!

If one is going to shirk her work and stay up too late binging on a book, it should be a book like this, a metaphor for metaphors, a trick of religion and history, a prophetic fantastical totally true tale of art and propaganda and terrorism. I can't wait to go back and underline everything. I can't wait to take up the Telling.

'She knew too many poets. She knew more poets, more poetry, she knew more grief, she knew more than anybody needed to know.'

Started this earlier this week, and already am using the producer-consumers in my blog posts. Love how brazen Le Guin is, here, throwing her invented words and concepts into the first two paragraphs. Masterful. '...taking a break from the sensory assault of the neareals she had to partiss in, in the daytime, under the other sun.' Gorgeous and ripping.

finished this one in a rush, too. gulped it down like a multivitamin.

read in a rush, stacking my reading list with more Ursula.

A good book to read on a rainy Saturday afternoon; and a good antidote from modern fantasy YA. (I'm looking at you, Michael Scott.) the nuance of human emotion and failing is what makes these books work; the quiet natural world held in balance but for magic is what makes the dramatic tension hold; the rhythm is lucid and deep. 'Ged's spells were cogent and potent...' yes, Ursula, and so are you.

Up to this point is intro and history, cleverly selected & written well (but not so well or so clever as Heather Arndt Anderson does). And here is where Emily's thesis gets issued. "The idea -- that feminism, while well-intentioned and important in many ways, went "too far"," destroying homemaking. Emily disagrees. She thinks other forces destroyed homemaking, and today, our domestic activities have other meanings.

this book reads like one of those dense, quiet 90s movies full of bored privileged children, 'Heathers,' or that one with Demi Moore. Or it just reads like Jeffrey Eugenides. The first part is difficult; lots of re-reading to figure out who is who, and what their talent or distinguishing characteristic is. Ethan, the ugly one is the only easy character, he's pegged from page one. Slow but engaging reading.

part of the hardest part about this book is that many of the most intriguing works discussed are as-yet-unpublished (and many of them are even unfinished). *I* want to read the one about the blue child in the Gaza strip! I want to read the trilogy of books written for nanowrimo! Shucks.

loved the part about grief, and how it doesn't act as it should /according to the literature and prevailing wisdom. I've felt this too, about my boys. A little less in love with the section I'm reading now, about the search for a new school; I realize this is a memoir and not a how-to guide, but this seems less universally connecting and more personal. I, well, I'd have been hurt, too.

I've been meaning to read Seeing Ezra since before it even came out; not only are Kerry and I friends, but I too have a child on the spectrum, and he's Griffin's age, and we're a part of the same city, the same kind of engine that intervenes and judges and diagnoses. I didn't quite expect the twin emotions of recognition and surprise; though my journey was so similar it was also so different...

Crazy Enough is part of my quest to read all the creative nonfiction nominees for the Oregon Book Awards, and the winner, so I began. Storm was so shocked to win she almost fell going up the stairs. And she was winningly happy, her book came with it the promise of her amazing performance (as I've heard) doing this material onstage. But, it reads like a long blog post, complete w/slang and eye-rolling and punchlines.

it's the thing about Oregon writers; we're so numerous and so possessed of overlapping-but-still-distinct circles. So this is one of those circles, or a few of them; the writers who know Laura Stanfill, the energetic and lovely editor, and the writers who know writers who know her. What this is more than anything is a way to get to know a circle that only distantly intersects with mine.