The lost box of commas -- a year of women writers
I promised to read mostly books by women in 2009. I don't do "resolutions," but there are books I wanted to spend time with.
Nora Ephron's I Feel Bad About My Neck reminded me of what Sally from "When Harry Met Sally" might sound like as a 60-year-old woman. Kvetchy. I like Nora's writing, but when my son heard a clip from the audiobook version, he said: "Why are you listening to this? It sounds like one of your aunts."
Current Read: Girls Like Us, by Sheila Weller. I spent most of the 1970s with a crush on Carly Simon. Weller's book recounts the interwoven lives of Ms. Simon, Carole King, and Joni Mitchell, and how the their fame and excesses, along with those of their lovers, exacted a painful toll on all of them.
It's not gossipy, like People (pronounced "peep hole") magazine. On the other hand, Ms. Weller seems unable to write a paragraph without an aside, as indicated by an "em dash" (--) or parentheses. Magazine writers often do this, the result of writing or editing for bathroom reading. Her sentences are absurdly Faulkner-esque in length.
No reader should have to work this hard.
Memo to Sheila: take a breath, use a period, or find that lost box of commas. Please.
Next up: Alice Munro, assuming I survive the avalanche of em-dashes.
