My sister and I used to call it Barnes & Nobles.  If it was Barne's, it only seemed fair that it should be Noble's too - or perhaps it was just a slight ESL hiccup.  I still slip into the possessive on occasion, as does my sister, but now we have Amazon - a simple easy-to-read tri-syllable.

I used to love to read.  As a Korean kid growing up in LI and northern NJ, I was as studious as my classmates were scrappy.  They had baseball fields and soccer pitches, I had chocolate factories and giant peaches.  I chose Choose Your Own Adventure in lieu of actual adventures, that is if any were to be had in my uniformly drab suburb.  Later as a middle school misfit, Salinger and Vonnegut were appropriately sarcastic proxies for my emerging pathos.  But by the time high school rolled around, the only kind of book I opened had matches in it and a striking surface on its cover.  Distractions multiplied.  No point could remain peripheral, everything demanded simultaneous focus.  The pace of the world seemed incompatible with sitting still.  The only book I've endeavored since middle school is 100 Years of Solitude, which felt like it took a good part of a century to complete.

I dub the Aughts "The Age of Abbreviation".  Shorter=better.  BTW, if this was a tweet, I would hit the 140 character limit right about...

SMS, GPS, HD, PSP, WTF?!

Reading a book is an exercise in patience.  Nothing but words on the page to engage you.  No links down the side, no tabs across the top, there's only one bookmark and you can't sync it with your iPhone.  For most of my early 20's, something electronic invariably came between me and information.  Bach via MP3, Bergman via DVD, blogs via TXT - each medium providing a reassuring means of instant flight - the skip button, chapter next, back browse.  Books are tyrannically sequential, the only action to anticipate is an anticlimactic page turn.  Since my rendezvous with Marquez, I've been literarily celibate.  That is until a couple of months ago.

Books I read this winter: The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis, The Year of Magical Thinking, Play It as It Lays, Speedboat, Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand and the World She Made and every Malcolm Gladwell.  I came to notice that everything I was reading had one thing in common.  All the authors are women (the latter being the only exception, and the rumors about him are not true).

Film directors are rarely women, something I've always found puzzling.  Kelly Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy (2008) was one of the best movies I Netflix'd this year.  It's just as gut-wrenching as its ostensible predecessor, De Sica's Umberto D (1952), but chooses to devastate in a manner that is more patient and exacting.  Fragments of misery are lovingly gleaned, instead of heaped.  The same could be said for De Sica's contemporary Antonioni, his Y chromosome notwithstanding.  Antonioni's perspective is a decidedly feminine one.  His L'eclisse (1962) gives its female lead, Monica Vitti, a cool complexity commonly absent from male-directed romances.  This unique respect he gives his characters, both male and female, makes L'eclisse a love story rooted in reality - one we can see ourselves in, experiencing the crushing absence and loss in colors as vivid as monochrome celluloid permits.

This difference between male and female (or female-minded) directors is, I believe, one that can also be found in authors.  My affinity for the feminine, left wanting in film, is fulfilled by literature.  I loved every book I read this winter.  In fact, the act of reading itself, sitting sedately with this non-digital rectangular solid, has become its own joy.  Lydia Davis' short stories are small masterpieces (if anyone missed her beautifully poignant Christmas story on the Times Od-Ed page this week, I highly recommend it).  Joan Didion's voice is resonant in its nakedness, humble revelations set forth from an abyss.  Renata Adler is brilliant, her wit sharp, her flow spasmodic.  And Ms. Rand, well, any description, objective or otherwise, deserves its own post - let's just say that the 1,100+ pages of Atlas Shrugged were a grueling test of patience, but worth it.  Another woman deserves a mention - who also happens to be a writer and recommended three of the books I read - my sister.

Next on my reading list is Alice Munro's new collection - the hardcover, not the Kindle edition.  Or if I'm in Union Square, I'll just pick it up at the Barnes & Nobles.  LOL.