Saturday, December 21, 2019

2019 Challenge: COMPLETED - 2X19 and Mt. TBR

2X19 AND MT. TBR CHALLENGES

At the beginning of 2019, book challenge season, I posted a dual challenge for myself that I've been doing for seven years now. The goal of these two challenges is to clear some books off my TBR shelves, which is always a good idea.

I've now completed both challenges. I'm going to do similar challenges in 2020. Who else has TBR challenges lined up for the new year?

2X19: The first of my two 2019 challenges was a personal challenge I called the 2X19 Challenge and was to read 38 books off my TBR shelves. I've done the same thing since 2013 -- tried to read a "two times the year" number of books off my shelves. Of course, the challenge kept getting more difficult!

I plan to switch to one book for each year in 2020. There must be a challenge already planned for this. I've seen a few "read 20 books in 2020" challenges. Is there a "read 20 books on your TBR shelves" challenge? "TBR 20" or something?

MtTBR: The second TBR challenge I do every year is the Mt. TBR Challenge. Bev hosts this popular annual event on her blog, My Reader's Block.

I've now finished both challenges, although I will polish off at least one more and maybe another for the Mt. TBR challenge before we ring in the new year.

Happy Holidays!

2X19 CHALLENGE:
READ 38 TBR BOOKS IN 2019

COMPLETED



Because 2019 involved reading 38 books, I intentionally chose short books this year (short in pages, not height, but see below). My preference is for long, shaggy, plot-driven novels, so intentionally picking short books made me read books that have been sitting on my TBR shelves for a long, long time.

The results were mixed. There were a couple gems I am glad I finally read, like the Muriel Spark dark satire, The Abbess of Crewe and Levels of Life by Julian Barnes for the essay on grief. But a couple of the short ones I could have skipped, like the maudlin short story, Friend of My Springtime by Willa Cather.


MY 2X19 BOOKS


I took this picture last December when I planned the challenge, which explains the Christmas theme.  I read them in the order listed below: The first were New Year's resolution books; the next two I was excited to read; and the rest I read in order of height, from tallest to shortest, for no reason except I was feeling goofy. After I took the picture, I realized I had two Françoise Sagan books, so I swapped one for Wise Virgin.

A Year of Living Kindly: Choices That Will Change Your Life and the World Around You by Donna Cameron (my interview with Donna Cameron is here)

On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books by Karen Swallow Prior

The Girl from Oto by Amy Maroney (my interview with Amy Maroney is here)

The Shame of Losing by Sarah Cannon (my interview with Sarah Cannon is here)

An Affair with a House by Bunny Williams

Mark Hampton on Decorating by Mark Hampton

The Tenth Man by Graham Greene

Friend of My Springtime by Willa Cather

Licking Flames: Tales of a Half-Assed Hussy by Diana Kirk (my interview with Diana Kirk is here)

Queen of Spades by Michael Shou-Yung Shum

Zuckerman Unbound by Philip Roth

The Last Thing He Wanted by Joan Didion

The Robineau Look by Kathleen Moore Knight

Agents and Patients by Anthony Powell

Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson

A Woman of Means by Peter Taylor

The Poorhouse Fair by John Updike

Girl, 20 by Kingsley Amis

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

Slam by Nick Hornby

Lady Into Fox by David Garnett (James Tait Black Memorial Prize Winner)

Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot

Henri, le Chat Noir: The Existential Musings of an Angst-Filled Cat by William Bradon

The Great Mortdecai Moustache Mystery by Kyril Bonfiglioli

The Gift of a Letter by Alexandra Stoddard

Do the Windows Open? by Julie Hecht

Dirty Friends by Morris Lurie

Something Special by Iris Murdoch

The Imitation Game by Ian McEwan

The Small Room by May Sarton

I'd Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life by Anne Bogel

Wise Virgin by A. N. Wilson

The Little Book of Lykke by Meik Wiking

The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy

The Heart-Keeper by Françoise Sagan

The Abbess of Crewe by Muriel Spark

Levels of Life by Julian Barnes

First Love by Joyce Carol Oates



THE MT. TBR CHALLENGE:
READ A TOTAL OF 60 TBR BOOKS IN 2019

COMPLETED



Every year, I join the Mt, TBR Challenge on My Reader's Block. In 2019, I signed up for the Mr. Kilimanjaro level of 60 books. I tried this same level in 2018 and fell sort by two books. This year, I have to read 22 in addition to the 38 from my 2X19 Challenge.

I've read 61 books so far, so reached the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro and am still climbing. I will probably finish two more books before the end of the year. That won't get me to the next peak in Bev's challenge, but it will get a few more books off my shelves.

BOOKS READ

In addition to the 38 books listed above, I read:

Educated by Tara Westover

The Jewel in the Crown (The Raj Quartet, Book I) by Paul Scott

The Year of the French by Thomas Flanagan

The Day of the Scorpion (The Raj Quartet, Book II) by Paul Scott

The Towers of Silence (The Raj Quartet, Book III) by Paul Scott

A Division of Spoils (The Raj Quartet, Book IV) by Paul Scott

Staying On by Paul Scott (Booker Prize winner)

In the Woods by Tana French

Collected Poems by Kingsley Amis

A Man of Property (The Forsyte Saga, Book I) by John Galsworthy

In Chancery (The Forsyte Saga, Book II) by John Galsworthy

To Let (The Forsyte Saga, Book III) by John Galsworthy

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka

The Best of Friends by Joanna Trollope

A Sight for Sore Eyes by Ruth Rendell

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold John le Carre

Set in Darkness by Ian Rankin

I'd Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life by Anne Bogel

A Cat Abroad by Peter Gethers

The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World by A. J. Jacobs

Shattered by Dick Francis

The Hunter by John Lescroart



NOTES

Updated as of December 21, 2019.

Author Interview: Dawn Newton


In her new book, Winded: A Memoir in Four Stages, Dawn Newton writes about living life to the fullest after she was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. Her new book is available now from Apprentice House Press.


Dawn recently talked with Rose City Reader about her book, memoir writing, her health, and mindfulness: 

How did you come to write your new memoir Winded?

I’d been a practicing writer and college instructor for years, focusing primarily on fiction. I had a handful of short story publications and an even bigger handful of rejections for a novel I’d written. Shortly after my fall semester of teaching began, I experienced a series of events that eventually lead to a cancer diagnosis. I took the winter semester off work to adjust to my treatment, and I began journaling about my days and my apprehension about my diagnosis. I think if you have writing in your bones – and I’d developed the itch early in life, arguably during elementary school – you just go to writing as your therapy or your way to understand things. Up to that point, I’d focused primarily on fiction in my life, but I’d also been a writer in more mundane ways, writing drafts of thank you notes, scripts for difficult phone calls, and instruction manuals for babysitters. I’d never been a dedicated keeper of journals, but that winter, I started writing in one journal, filled it up, started another one, and just kept going.

You write unflinchingly but with tenderness about your cancer and your struggle with depression. Was it difficult to tell such an intimate story?

I like that phrase – “unflinchingly but with tenderness.” For me, the writing or telling of the story was different from the publication of the book. I am a straightforward person and talk honestly about a lot of things in my life to close friends and family. The first-person voice telling the story in most sections of the book tumbled out easily, as if I were talking things through with family members, friends, or my psychologist. Much more challenging was the idea of publishing these personal observations and struggles. I worried a lot about revealing too much about family dynamics and intense emotions, especially because a lot of people see my calm exterior and don’t realize that I’m rather intense on the inside.

On the other hand, I’ve struggled so much with depression over the course of my life that once I was diagnosed with cancer, I felt a strong urge to come out of the closet with my depression. That idea – coming out of the closet – filled me with both relief and with some trepidation. My biggest fear: Did I whine too much? Did I not take responsibility for my actions? I am quite hard on myself, so once I told the story, I needed to perseverate about whether to publish it.

Who is your intended audience and what do you hope your readers will gain from your book?

The intended audience is anyone who has ever suffered from depression, cancer, or a chronic illness as well as individuals close to those who’ve had that experience.

In terms of what I want readers to gain, initially, I don’t think I had an agenda other than a deep need for understanding. At the most basic level, I wanted to speak to a large-scale audience with the plea for understanding of one person’s story about parenting with depression and then cancer. Now that I can step back from it a bit, I think it is also a story about economics and how difficult it is to negotiate the world if you don’t have the right tools. My mother and father didn’t know much about getting a college education because they hadn’t gotten one themselves. But when I talked about being a writer, my father kept urging my sisters and me into computers. We were living in the late seventies, and he was so prescient about what was to come with computers. Unfortunately, I wanted to write. Thus, one of the key lessons I’ve learned is about the difficulty of being or becoming an artist if you’re raised in the working class.

A second lesson I learned is that in any sort of art, only a small percentage of people are going to “make it.” Which means you need to find a reliable day job that you can have for years, so you can secure reliable health insurance as well as some sort of retirement plan. And that’s ultimately where I settle, in terms of pinpointing a message that I’d like readers to gain -- all my experiences in being an artist and just a plain citizen lead me to this bolus of frustration with health care. I don’t want to be the person who speaks the dark, disillusioning message about the world not being a fair place, but in many ways, I don’t think we’re going to get anywhere in the world of American economics if we don’t recognize that health insurance or the lack thereof traps everyone, whether it’s the General Motors employee who stays in her job for 20 years because she knows the union will negotiate to get her family (particularly offspring) the best health insurance possible, or whether we’re the family of the cancer patient who doesn’t have the insurance to get the radiation necessary for extending survival, or whether we are the family of the late-twenty or thirty-something who takes her life because she’s got depression-based neurochemistry in her brain and doesn’t have the kind of job that allows her to seek out mental health treatment. So, I want to encourage readers to stay in touch with their capacity for empathy, whenever they can, so we can support one another. And we all need to appreciate the moments whenever we can.

Some people may shy away from a “cancer memoir” because they fear it will be unbearably sad. Yours is sad, but not unbearably. Can you give a little explanation of the treatment you get and your current situation?

Thank you for asking. One of the other soapboxes I occasionally climb onto is the one about how living with metastatic cancer is not the same as being in remission. Since there is no cure for most of the metastatic cancers out there, there is no remission. You get to live longer, but you are still getting treatment, generally. I take a generic version of the original drug I started on, Tarceva. The generic is called erlotinib, and I take 100 milligrams every day. It is a tolerable drug, although it has side effects that can create complications. For example, I have the “Tarceva rash” on my face. I took a stronger antibiotic than usual in the couple of months leading up to my book launch to help clear up the rash, but after the book launch and reading was over, I went back on the milder drug, minocycline, and the rash has re-sprouted pretty intensely. Thus, I am Cinderella without the slipper and the nice dress again. Avoiding the mirror.

I was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer because I originally had metastasis to the bones. Those spots are not currently active. However, every three months I receive CT scans to check on the lungs and bones. Every year or so, I get an MRI. The reason for the MRI is that the brain is one of the places to which lung cancer often metastasizes. I went for five years taking the daily pill before I had a significant finding on my lung scans; I then had stereotactic body radiation for a growing spot in my lungs in February of 2018. The oncologist’s goal is to keep the disease localized. But any mystery spot on my scan is fodder for more testing. I recently had to undergo a colonoscopy because of a shadow that showed up on my colon in one of my routine scans.

At present, I have a few questionable spots in my lungs, one of which appears to be growing. Even though I get a bit of a reprieve from worrying until my next appointment in February, my oncologist has already mentioned the possibility of stereotactic body radiation again early next year. It’s relatively painless, so no sweat, right? Except how many people can’t have this treatment because they don’t have the right health insurance, or any at all? And having these treatments and this worry of what’s coming next takes its toll on any type of personality, whether one has a tendency toward anxiety or depression or not. I just turned 60, and I have been telling people that with all the drugs, tests, side effects and anticipatory worries, I’m more like a 70-year old. It’s been great to have seven years on a drug that usually gives people 18 months, don’t get me wrong. But I am weary.

What did you learn from writing your book – either about the experiences you describe or the writing process – that most surprised you?

From the pure perspective of learning, I loved learning about writing memoir, and about my own limitations in working with that genre. In many ways, I probably learned how to write non-fiction essays before I learned about writing fiction. But I got a degree in writing fiction, and I spent the bulk of my early adult life studying it with various teachers and reading, reading, reading. I love writing dialogue, and although most of my fiction is quiet and not too talky, “scene” is a basic staple of writing for me in fiction.

But with non-fiction, or, in this case, memoir, I found that I avoided writing in scene, or at least the kind of scene that uses dialogue, which I refer to as “active scene.” I didn’t want to imagine dialogue from the past. I don’t judge anyone for doing do; I understand that with memoir, since so few of us can remember word for word those past discussions or arguments, we have to rely on our imaginations to fill in some of the details, preserving the basic remembered flavor or main emotion of a given scene. And yet, I found it difficult to do, especially since I wasn’t writing about the distant past but about events that were unfolding quickly.

I read a lot of memoirs, but I also read a couple of books about memoir that made me more comfortable with the sparse dialogue in my book. I learned a lot from Vivian Gornick’s The Situation and the Story, but I feel like I got “permission” to go with less dialogue from Sven Birkerts’ book, The Art of Time in Memoir: Then, Again. Like Gornick, Birkerts asserts that the memoirist “serves the spirit of the past, not the letter.” In his presentation of various memoirs and types to examine, he also discusses “lyrical seekers,” focusing on Woolf, Nabokov, and Dillard. I latched onto that label. I am not particularly poetic in my writing, but I allowed this label, “lyrical seeker” to give me permission to move away from narrative scene with dialogue to discussion or sometimes just description and imagery. Birkerts provided an appellation, and whether it’s accurate or not, I grabbed it to describe my approach and decided I didn’t have to work so much in active scenes.

What non-medical activities or resources have helped you the most since your cancer diagnosis?

One of the practices that my psychologist introduced me to as we dealt with my relentless depression is that of mindfulness breathing. I learned about it in conjunction with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), but also as a separate approach to well-being in general. I purchased The Mindful Way Through Depression: Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappiness by Mark Williams, John Teasdale, Zindel Segal, and Jon Kabat-Zinn, and started using the CD that went along with it, which happened to be narrated by Jon Kabat-Zinn. I fell in love with his voice. I’d included an essay about him in my memoir which I removed when I realized it was merely a plagiarized portion of one of the CD tracks along with a joke about the seductiveness of his voice.

But truthfully, the thing about his guiding style I was most struck by is the way he works with the depressed person’s tendency to be self-critical. He emphasizes repeatedly that you can’t do mindfulness incorrectly. This kind of affirmative support is huge for the depressed person who has the tendency to feel incompetent. I’ve talked to so many people who had the same apprehension about meditation that I did: you must practice, practice, practice, and do it in this one right way. Zinn debunks that idea. And I think that’s why “mindfulness” is more appealing to me than “meditation” although they might be viewed as the same. In addition to the Zinn materials, a friend also gave me Being Well (Even When You’re Sick): Mindfulness Practices for People with Cancer and Other Serious Illnesses by Elana Rosenbaum. It’s extremely helpful. I also do yoga classes when I can, to augment the mindfulness. I sing with a church choir, and I dance around my house from time to time, usually to Motown.

Are there other memoirs, either about people with cancer or other memoirs, you recommend?

There are two significant memoirs about cancer that I have NOT read, although I will someday. I was already writing my memoir when the book When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi came out. I didn’t want it to affect my writing, although I was obviously drawn to it. I bought it and made my husband read it, which he did for a book group discussion at his work. Then my daughter sent me "One Day," the Nina Riggs piece from The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying in the NYT Modern Love series, saying, “Mom, this is like something you would write.” I think about Paul Kalanithi and Nina Riggs often, especially when I’m not being appreciative of my “extra time.” I read Valerie Harper’s memoir I, Rhoda just after it came out. There is only a chapter on her cancer, but I have Googled her over the years and took it hard when she passed away this year; I believe she, too, took Tarceva.

As for other memoirs, I have read several of the mainstream stories; one of the not-so-mainstream is White Matter: A Memoir of Family and Medicine by Janet Sternburg, which I found powerful and humbling, with its mental health component. My interest in depression also led me to Jill Bialosky’s History of a Suicide: My Sister’s Unfinished Life and Darin Strauss’s Half a Life. And although it is more classic nonfiction than memoir, Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption reads like a memoir, and I think everyone should read it. The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson and Hunger by Roxane Gay provide pain, wisdom, and crucial reflection. I hope to read Patricia Hampl’s The Art of the Wasted Day next; I heard her speak once, and I loved her honesty.

Do you have any events coming up to promote your book?

Thank you for asking! On November 26, my 60th birthday, my family held a fabulous book launch, public reading, and birthday celebration at my church. It was one of the most memorable events of my lifetime. I was so touched and overwhelmed. In 2020, I have some readings and library events coming up in Michigan.



THANK YOU, DAWN!

WINDED IS AVAILABLE ONLINE, OR ASK YOUR LOCAL BOOK SELLER TO ORDER IT.