What I'm reading now
I just started Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
I saw her read with Dave Eggers at the 92nd Street YMCA a few weeks ago. The reading was moderated by Norman Rush, and I basically went because I found Mating fascinating (if a bit of a problematic mess) and I was curious to hear what he would be like in person. As for Eggers, while I read Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius when it came out like every other misguided post-adolescent who spent time in the Chicago suburbs, until the reading at the Y, I was pretty tired of the Eggers/McSweeney's machine. Yes, it was great that he was doing literacy work with kids and that he married a beautiful fellow writer and all of that jazz, but frankly, all of the stories I'd read (in the New Yorker and elsewhere) after HWSG just weren't that good.
And yes, there's probably more than a bit of schadenfreude mixed in there. I'm human. (And yes, I love Avenue Q.)
Anyway, the reading. Rush was so sweet and grandfatherly that it kind of weirded me out, given what I remembered of Mating. Adichie had the most beautiful voice ever and was a gracious interviewee as well. And there was Eggers. Yes, he was kind of scattered and not really a great reader. But hearing him talk so passionately about Valentino Achak Deng, the subject of What Is the What, and the fact that Eggers is donating ALL -- not some, but ALL -- of the profits from the book to Deng's work setting up a school in the Sudan made me feel like a small, envious, jealous person. So What Is the What is next on my list.
