Once There Was a Little Nook

Back in October, I went with a friend to a Sherman Alexie reading at Barnes & Noble. I meant to write about it at the time, but there was a lot going on. I've just finished reading Alexie's YA (Young Adult) novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, so now's as good a time as any to play catch-up.

The only book of Alexie's I'd read before this was Flight, which I liked very much. At the reading, he read from his new book of short stories, War Dances. Like Jhumpa Lahiri, he writes mostly about the same types of characters; like her, his writing is nevertheless incredibly fresh. Even though they both revisit the same themes again and again, they bring them to life in new ways every time.

Alexie started off by making fun (gently) of the name of the new B&N e-reader, the nook: "You're obviously getting the wrong MFA graduates," he said. Actually - not that I know the first thing about branding - "nook" doesn't seem like such a bad name to me. The first two things I thought of immediately upon hearing the name were, in this order:

1. Kelly from The Office: "You can't just come into my nook and call me stupid, Dwight!" and "Get out of my nook, Dwight!" (from the World's Tiniest Bluetooth episode in season 5)

2. One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, by Dr. Seuss:

Once there was a little Nook.
On his hat he had a hook.
On his hook he had a book.
On his book was "How to Cook".
But a Nook can't read and a Nook can't cook,
so what good to a Nook is a hook cook book?

So really, I fail to see how "nook" is a bad name. And if that's bad, what makes "Kindle" good? See, there's a reason I didn't go into marketing.

Anyway, Alexie is a great speaker who manages to be both entertaining and serious in turn. He advised the audience to "Be nomadic" and "Get kinetic," and posited that "We're defined by where we come from." But at the same time, "The whole United States was created on the concept of leaving."

Some people leave their countries to come here. Others, born here, leave the place they're from and go elsewhere. The freedom that Americans so prize seems inextricably linked to mobility - the freedom of movement. Maybe it is part of the human condition to long for one thing or the other: we dream of leaving, we dream of returning home. But wherever we go, we carry where we're from inside of us.

"People take their same old lives wherever they go. No place is perfect enough to strip you of that." -Julia Glass, Three Junes

(I was looking for a different quote, something about ghosts, I think, but for once I couldn't quite put my finger on it, and I found this one instead.)

What I'm reading: The Girls From Ames by Jeffrey Zaslow

What I'm listening to: Bach cello suites; Blue by Third Eye Blind