For Me, Love Is a Set of Poofed-Out Cheeks: The Book List
Welcome to the first entry on the 2007 Book List. You’re in for thrills, chills, spills . . . okay, enough with the rhyming, let’s get to the books, shall we?
I have read only one book in 2007. January was an odd month. It was alternatively fast and slow, and it was compounded by my system going haywire—I mean my biological system, not my computer system (although that did change over, mind you—I forget that I haven’t introduced the HP dv6000t to the blog yet). My mind was never fully on reading, though I began a new book on the first of the year. Not surprisingly to me and my habits, I have not finished that book, but another one.
Love Is a Mix Tape by Rob Sheffield came recommended by the Barnes & Noble Members Newsletter. It was a discounted new book, and the book sounded interesting if not a little bit heartbreaking just in time for Valentine’s. In it, Sheffield describes meeting, falling in love with, and losing his young wife unexpectedly to a pulmonary embolism. Using mix tapes he created before, during, and after his life with his wife, Renee, Sheffield constructs the geeky guy meets cool girl story around the music of the times. Music, he says, is what brought them together; it was the rest that they had to work at in order to stay together. But they did stay together, becoming first an unlikely couple and then marrying by, it seems, pure happenstance.
One of the best chapters in the book discusses the death of Kurt Cobain prior to Renee’s death. I vaguely remember when Cobain died—I seem to recall a lot of overhead shots of his house and the reports of finding a body. While I have grown to like Nirvana’s music in these subsequent years, at the time I was not fan and did not understand the music (give me a break—I’d really just come back from Mexico where cheesy 80s pop was still the rage). I did not get this fascination with a singer’s suicide, especially since it’d been predicted and rumored so many times already. Sheffield’s chapter on Cobain brings that afternoon of overhead shots into sharper relief, reminding me that not only did a singer die, but a husband and a father died. Was he a good husband and father? I don’t know, but those two labels are powerful descriptors to keep in mind as you get closer to the moment of Sheffield’s loss.
The idea that Sheffield and his wife connected through music is a bit alien to me; while I love me some tunes, I can honestly say that IP and I did not connect through music. Our tastes are wildly different, and when they do converge, it is only for the briefest of moments. He’s a self-described metal-head while I enthusiastically embrace the old folk tunes of Simon and Garfunkel. We’re both Johnny Cash, Weird Al, and sometimes U2 fans, but when you compare our iTunes lists, they are vastly different; and rarely the twain shall meet. I often joke that if we were to get married, “Amish Paradise” would have to be our first dance because there’s probably little else we could agree on (and admit it—it’d be fucking funny). Sheffield’s use of music to weave the story of his life with his wife is touching and fitting for an editor at Rolling Stone—you would have to be very jaded to not find this book likable, or you would have to seriously detest 80s music and grunge.
I finished reading the book on Sunday night. I was not in a happy mood at the time, being mad at IP. However, as I read the chapter where Renee dies—Sheffield describes her as taking one step and then collapsing—I internally flinched. No matter how much I was PO’d at my boyfriend, the idea of losing him like that is an unbearable one. I fumed, but I asked myself what I would do if that happened to us. The answer is this: I would lose it. Maybe for only a short time, but I would most definitely lose it for a while. I know, instinctively, that IP would want me to move on (just as I would want him to move on), but the idea of never being able to hold his hand again has the power to tear me up inside. If I were to think about it too much (I am typing this fast), I would break down into inconsolable tears. All our jokes, quirks, secret language, and routines—there would be no one to share it with anymore, and I know I’d want to die, too. Love Is a Mix Tape makes you pause not only because it is powerful, but because it reminds you that losing your loved one is always a possibility. I recommend it for three reasons: to remember those songs we all kind of liked, to remind us how fragile life is, and to show us how strong love can be.
And no, I am no longer mad at IP. It’s very hard to stay mad at the man who gave you “Amish Paradise”.
Onto the first 2007 book list:
Finished:
1) Love Is a Mix Tape by Rob Sheffield
Re-read:
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Currently Reading:
1) Galileo’s Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith and Love by Dava Sobel
2) Helen of Troy by Margaret George
Waiting To Be Read (Already Purchased, Got as Gifts, Borrowed from My Boyfriend, or Otherwise Accessible without the Use of Funds, But Not an Assurance That I Will Read These Before I Buy More Books):
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