25 Things You Didn’t Know about Diana Spechler

Diana Spechler, author of Who By Fire, is guest blogging this week as one of Jewcy‘s Lit Klatsch bloggers.  Her novel is about a family’s struggle for survival after the youngest daughter is abducted. 

I wanted to start my week of guest-blogging with a post about current events, specifically with an homage to the most current event on Facebook: the "List of 25 Things About Me."

1.     My siblings and I all have scars on our foreheads. Mine is from a car accident I had five years ago.

2.     Eight and a half years ago, at the gym in the Hyatt Hotel in Jerusalem, I got hit in the head with ninety pounds of weight.

3.     When I get depressed, I think about the car accident and the gym accident and wonder if my despair is the result of those blows, rather than of narcissism.

4.     My celebrity crushes are Neil Strauss and Shakira.

5.     I miss the northern lights.

6.     I dislike blue eye makeup.

7.     I brag about donating money to NPR.

8.     I am hopelessly in love with jukeboxes, and was once wooed by a man who promised, "One day, I’ll buy you your own jukebox."

9.     Another time, years ago, I fell in love with a man who thought he was Jesus.

10.    I feel comfortable with middle-aged women who wear too much perfume.

11.    I went to Catholic school for two years. I was the president of the whole middle school. My classmates attended my Bat Mitzvah.

12.    I faked a learning disability in my high school French class, and then got caught when my French teacher told my mother I was doing well with my French, considering.

13.    My drug of choice is Belgian beer.

14.    As a child, I had prophetic dreams.

15.    I once lost use of my right hand for eight months.

16.    Growing up, my whole family slept in water beds.

17.    I cried for eight hours over Fried Green Tomatoes.

18.    My favorite name of all time is Strom Thurmond.

19.    Sometimes I recommend books to people just because I like the titles.

20.    I fantasize about being an excellent pool player.

21.    I love the words salacious, quixotic, reciprocity, and light.

22.    Every morning of our senior year of college, my roommate and I turned on the TLC channel and danced in front of the television, sometimes for hours. For unclear reasons, we called it Ukrainian Aerobics.

23.    I like watching people expand and contract the screens on their iPhones. They look like magicians.

24.    In Turkey, when I was twenty, a guy selling rugs in the street offered me a job selling rugs in the street. I still fantasize about that alternate life, but now think it wouldn’t be much different from the life I live, or from any other life I might have chosen.

25.    I think the most interesting thing about these lists is the stuff the list-makers choose to omit.

Diana Spechler, author of Who By Fire, is guest blogging on Jewcy, and she’ll be here all week. Stay tuned.