Summer Reading

Summer reading, the required books we had to read during our breaks as students, is still something we, as adults, attempt to do during the summer months, as if somehow the days between June through August are any less hectic and stressful as the days during any other months. But this ritual of gathering books, usually much too ambitious than can be accomplished, is something all of us does consciously, much like getting ourselves mentally prepared to put on that bathing suit.

My summer reading has been eclectic, staring with a book I picked up during my conference in Aspen. I, like everyone else I know, read, devoured, savored, Ian McEwan's newest book. This wisp of a book is filled with the full emotional weight of a love that is lost forever because of the foibles of our nature--pride, unspoken words, hidden gestures, naivety, and the childish belief that you can recover what is lost.

I am now slogging my way through an annoying book, "Ten Days in the Hills," which is set in the hills of Pacific Palisades and Bel Air. The writing is not the problem, but rather the days the author describes. It is her attempt to provide a glimpse during the first ten days of the Iraq War, the war used as a pretext for the suspension of life for these assembled characters. None of it is believable, in the sense that the start of this particular war was so devastating for each of us to have barricaded ourselves within our houses. I don't recall the start of this particular war feeling ominous, really. I didn't see many of us fighting to prevent it from becoming a reality. Rather, it felt like each of us accepted it as a fait accompli. I think our passivity about this war was more a result of our country's collective shock over 9-11. It's only as the war has become what it is today, a terrible mistake, that people have become less passive about what is happening.

The characters are Hollywood types, or rather, people who live in and peripherally around The Industry. I guess if I hadn't left LA just a few weeks ago, I might be a bit more forgiving of this book. Each of these characters embodies one or more annoying characteristic of Angelenos. They are privileged, shielded from the ugliness down below those hills, and a caricature of the many types of LA people. The houses where the book is set is a character as much as any of the people speaking within the endless quotation marks. In many ways, the author did a remarkable job of describing characters, whose lives are untouched, unblemished by the vagaries of life lived below those eerily quiet hills. All of it feels much like a movie set, a replica of the real thing, all to be taken apart when the last frame of the movie is shot. Even their 'conversations'--and believe me, the entire book is one long conversation-- feels vaguely familiar, an assemblage of chatty talk lifted from various movies where the characters try hard to be seen as thinking, intellectual, and cerebral. It's as if the "Big Chill," got mixed with any of Woody Allen's movies, except there are no references to Kierkegaard. The worst insult about this book is the length. It is a very large book, and despite the size, the scope of what this author has to say is so slight. Funny, isn't it? Ian McEwan accomplishes within pages, about the size of one chapter in this tome, what this author is not able to in endless pages.

My compulsion about starting a book and finishing it is preventing me from giving up. Really, if I could dump it, I would. But my crazy, finish it at all costs nature is making me read on, regretting ever spending money on the hard cover, no less. I'm already looking ahead to what I will read next. After this fluffy ridiculous book, I am ready to sink my teeth into something that will give me pause, make me reflect, savor each sentence as one does a perfect summer berry.

Our cable at our house got shut off. It's fascinating what happens when you are no longer held hostage by the Box. Instead of the comatose viewing of endless PBS shows our child was doing earlier, he is now playing with his action heroes, his imagination engaged. Instead of getting our news from the local stations, we listen to NPR on the radio as I prepare breakfast. And after my son has drifted off to sleep, I sit and listen to music as I needlepoint. It as if we had transplanted back to the 19th century when women sat by the fireplace doing their needlework. The first few days without cable threw us into a bit of a panic. But as I thought about my son playing instead of numbing his brain by watching Clifford the Big Red Dog, I thought it might not be a bad idea to not have cable for the rest of the summer. I'm sure I will be singing a different tune at the end of this week if it doesn't get turned on. But it is still reassuring to know that one can survive, even thrive without being so plugged to the endless stream of dribble--otherwise known as television. I do admit I am missing some compelling new episodes of those obese kids Shaquille O'Neal is trying to whip into shape. But I'm sure that show will end up at some Video Store, so that I can view the entire season in one sitting.