October 7, 2010
Two factors
Harriet is ill! And I am reading Emma Donoghue’s Room! These two factors conspiring to eat up all my time, take away my sleep, and make me incredibly conscious of how everything I say and do shapes my child’s world.
September 28, 2010
When Fenelon Falls
I wrote about my adventures this summer in the land of (almost) no bookshops, and had determined that this area of the Kawartha Lakes region was about as unliterary as they come. And then, this Sunday at the Word on the Street Festival, I discover hot off the Coach House Presses is When Fenelon Falls by Dorothy Ellen Palmer– somehow this unliterary land has generated a book of its own. Having spent about fifteen childhood summers in the vicinity, in addition to a week in August, this book is now a must-read, and though Palmer’s story takes place long before I came along, I am sure some bits will still be quite familiar.
September 28, 2010
On rereading Nikolski
During Canada Reads 2010, I was championing the champion Nikolski, but of course I was a little bit concerned because I’d read the book two years before, and what it if had changed in the meantime? Because books do that, of course, or at least their readers do (which I had to discover with a great deal of nausea once the day I sat down to reread that once-beloved Priscilla Presley autobiography Elvis and Me, but that is another story). So I decided that I would reread Nikolski, to ensure that my championship remains appropriate, and it’s with a great deal of pleasure and relief that I can announce that it has. I will say, however, that it’s not a book that is necessarily better the second time around (as Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin is, which is why I’ll be reading it for a third time in the next week or so) but it’s just as good, the prose just as rich, the text just as, um, textured. It’s a puzzle of a novel whose pieces fit together absolutely perfectly, the sum of its parts less remarkable than the fact of the summing itself, which is brilliant. In short, Nikolski is a book about books, the spells they cast, the paths they travel, and the paths they set us on.
September 22, 2010
Congratulations
“The idea that as a literary person there are a certain set of books you must read because they are important parts of the literary conversation is constantly implied, yet quite ridiculous. Once you get done with the Musts — the Franzens, Mitchells, Vollmanns, Roths, Shteyngarts — and then get through the Booker long list, and the same half-dozen memoirs everyone else is reading this year (crack addiction and face blindness seem incredibly important this year), you have time for maybe two quirky choices, if you are a hardcore reader. Or a critic. And then congratulations, you have had the same conversations as everyone else in the literary world.” –Jessa Crispin from The Freedom World
September 16, 2010
9 Tips for the Book Blogger in your life
I’m going to feign me some authority now, because this October marks ten years since I started blogging, and also because CBC Books so kindly just included me in their list of “Book Blogs We Appreciate”. This on the occasion of Book Blogger Appreciation Week, because apparently it’s been 52 weeks since the last one, and I thought that since I appreciate book bloggers too, I might impart a little bit of what I’ve learned in my career as a world-famous, would-be pickler. Feel free to chime in and let me know any I got wrong, or any you think I missed.
1) Book bloggers are not unpaid substitutes for publicity people or literary critics (and see here for an interesting piece on book blogging as unpaid labour). We are readers, and this is the best thing about us (and see here for a talk I once gave on this very subject, and Virginia Woolf’s quote about the responsibilities of the common reader: “The standards we raise and the judgments we pass steal into the air and become part of the atmosphere which writers breathe as they work”).
You do have a responsibility– take it seriously. But also, don’t take yourself too seriously.
2) In line with the first point, our obligation to the publishers that send us free books is to be the best and most honest readers we can be. This can be difficult– initially, I found making contacts with publishing people a bit overwhelming, and this was all happening as I was still finding my feet as a reader. I think some of my early reviews were too generous, though perhaps hindsight will always have that effect. But it took me a while to get confidence in my own opinions, to understand that while publicists are just as concerned as I am with fostering a strong literary culture, they’ve also got a product to sell. Our priorities are not always exactly the same, but that is okay. You’ve just got to know what your own are.
3) We have to buy books. Lots of books. Free books aside, if we don’t buy books, who will? Buy new books, and used books. Shop at Chapters if it’s the only show in your town, but if it isn’t, shop somewhere else. Buy books from small presses, buy poetry. Buy translations. I once read a quote by Annie Dillard regarding karma, and the obligation to buy new hardcovers if you ever hope to make money from the writing life yourself, and I think she’s right. If fostering a strong literary culture is what you’re after, buy lots of books (at full price!). If you are broke, then buy just one.
4) Accept free books with discrimination. It is expensive for publishers to ship books to us, so we’re doing not them a favour by receiving a book we have no intention of reading. Also, accept free books with discrimination because your time is valuable, and why read something that you’re not interested in? And because one person’s house can only hold so many books, and eventually, your postman will hate you.
5) Original content!! Don’t copy text from the publisher’s website– write about the book in your own words. Don’t merely recap literary gossip– what is your own particular take? And if you don’t have a take, the world won’t end because it’s lacking your two cents. You don’t have to write about what everybody else is writing about. What interests you? Write well, and write long (but not too long). And aim to be a better writer all the time.
6) Read an author or a book first before you agree to take part in promotions. Don’t be afraid to say no if the author or book is not your thing, or is not in keeping with your blog’s focus. We should aspire to mean everything we write on our blogs.
7) We should all blog like nobody is looking, if only because very often, nobody will be. We should write only to satisfy ourselves, so that the writing is inherently worth the trouble, and also because that kind of writing has a passion that shows.
8) Avoid taking the link bait! Very often, desperate newspapers will write terrible articles that insult us and ours in an effort to enrage us. They don’t actually mean what they’re saying– they just want hits from the links you post, but don’t lower yourself. Only link to awesome.
9) And along those lines, make your blog a portal rather than a virtual brick wall.
August 19, 2010
Sometimes just laziness
Hmm. I’ve written before about how much I love recurring secondary characters throughout an author’s works, which creates the sense of a self-contained universe with millions of tiny whirling lives that I’m privy to glimpses of– in books by Margaret Drabble, and Barbara Pym. But how interesting then to read in a letter from Pym to Philip Larkin: “With me it’s sometimes just laziness– if I need a casual clergyman or anthropologist I just take one from an earlier book. Perhaps really one should take such a very minor character that only the author recognises it, like a kind of superstition or a charm.”
July 30, 2010
The Proust Questionnaire
For my entire life, I’ve been waiting for someone to ask me The Proust Questionnaire, and so you can imagine my joy when Open Book Toronto came calling. Read my answers here!
July 27, 2010
Books I am taking away
All right, I have settled on the books I am taking away with me next week on vacation, none of which I’m reading for any reason except for pleasure (hooray!). And yes, I am being too optimistic with the amount of reading I expect to get done (because there will be swimming, and canoeing, and Scrabble, and… no other distractions. Oh, except Harriet). But can you imagine if I happened to get through all the books, and there was nothing next to turn to?
I am taking The Millstone by Margaret Drabble, because I love the Drabble and reread one of hers every summer, and have chosen to reread this one because someone loved its literary baby. And to read for the first time, Changing My Mind by Zadie Smith, A Few Green Leaves by Barbara Pym, Darwin’s Bastards by Zsuszi Gartner (ed), and At Large and At Small by Anne Fadiman.
July 25, 2010
What I expected
Harriet (aged 14 months) likes teacups, Miffy, and books, and so my job here is basically done. And though she’s changing all the time (starting to walk, starting to talk!), her recent engagement with books has been particularly fascinating. She’s started to make real connections between the books we read and the actual world, pointing out dogs within pages as she does on the sidewalk. When we pull out Hand Hand Finger Thumb, she goes to get her own drum off her shelf so she can play along with the monkeys. We’re rereading The House at Pooh Corner at the moment, and she points up at her mobile when she hears Pooh’s or Piglet’s name. When we read Kisses Kisses Baby-O by Sheree Fitch, and get to the “slurpy, burpy” page, she starts pointing to her breastfeeding pillow. When we read Ten Little Fingers, Ten Little Toes, she shows us all the appropriate digits. Tonight when we read Goodnight Gorilla (on the occasion of a trip to the zoo) she went insane, but I think that was only because she was tired.
It’s all very exciting though, partly because there was once a time when Harriet was about as engaging as a wall. But mostly because I love books and she seems to like them too, and they’re such a wonderful thing for us to enjoy together. It’s the one of the few illusions I had pre-motherhood that has turned out exactly as I’d expected.
July 24, 2010
The extended lives of books
As I’ve previously complained, the worst part of being a fan of Barbara Pym is that her books are hard to come by. Most new bookstores don’t stock a big selection, and the used bookstores don’t either because Barbara Pym is not disposable and people who own her books usually have to die (or be put into a home) in order to be parted with them. Such a parting precisely the way I managed to add six of her novels my library this morning.
No, I didn’t have to murder any little old ladies, and the one in question is still alive, but she’s reached her “put into a home” years. The contents of her home for sale around the corner from my house, and her books! In alphabetical order! All the novelists that I like best (and then some). I picked up two more Elizabeth Bowen books too, Silent Spring (which I’ve read and loved), What Maisie Knew to reread and The Wings of the Dove for the very first time. And Night and Day by Virginia Woolf. All paperbacks, and therefore fifty cents each.
I’m currently reading The Yellow Lighted Bookshop and just finished the bit about the long, long lives of books, and how they’re recycled like almost no other object. I think that Mary Hackney would be pleased to know that her books (and the various scraps of paper she left within them) are going to another good home where they’re sure to be alphabetized.
I picked up The Complete Works of Shakespeare further down the street. It was sitting on the roof of a car. I know the etiquette for books in boxes on the sidewalk (though you do have to watch it– someone might be moving) but not for books sitting on the roofs of cars. So I made up my own rule, and it was “Yoink”. Which might be another case of bibliokleptomania.
Oh well.
