yellow

just read this book that kind of blew my mind - actually i read two books recently that blew my mind - but in completely different ways. today i will focus on Yellow. which i just read in one hungry sitting. well, except for the first line that i read months ago when i decided to buy the book. this is a technique i have developed in the last few years for deciding on a book to buy. more and more reading the back of a book jacket makes me want to vomit for its neatly summed up cute as a button and tied with a ribbon synopsis. so i now ignore the jacket entirely. although kudos to those books that manage to do the jacket right - there are a few i've found. my new technique for purchase is as follows: being drawn to the cover immediately, the title, and then the first line of the first page. i used to just pick a page at random and read a line (and this has found me some real gems - including Benjamin Weissman's Headless) but i find (through intense research ;) that the first line is a better indicator than a line picked at random. i have, with this new carefully devised system found some beautiful books that i don't know how i would have otherwise found, and really i can only think of one time that this system has failed me. although that time that it failed, it failed me so totally i was forced to throw the book in the trash. the boyfriend said i should never throw out a book and while i might have agreed before, i had to answer now with, "Nobody Should EVER Read That Book - If By Throwing It In The Trash I Can Stop One Person From Reading It Then I Have Done The World A Favor." I tend towards the dramatic, can you tell? anyway, back to Yellow. i found Yellow by using my system and it is a perfect example of a book i never would have found without the system. the cover was nice, not my favortie, but the title Yellow compensated - i've always loved the color Yellow for some reason and that combined with the oddness and simplicity of it intrigued me. now the first line "The room is filled with the smell of oranges." Nice. Beautiful. Simple. Unique. certainly worth a try - and then on the way out (i.e. in closing the book) i came across this note by the author just after the deditcation. "In my ideal life I am arranged alphabetically. And I am never infected with nostalgia." Really beautiful. and more importantly perhaps, honest. razor blade honest. i love razor blade honest and beautiful at the same time. it is maybe what i crave most in life.

so back to the real point of this - why i was blown away. it was not a revolutionary story or anything so amazing as that - a very simple story about a woman really. but it was beautifully and interestingly written and i think so many women would identify with what Visman (the author) was writing. for me it was like she was looking right into my insides, all the neuroses and paranoia and sickness that people, particularly women i think, live with. the driving constant thumping of something that is wrong that you cannot quite put your finger on. well done.