January 6, 2009
Thoughts about used books
(Via Bookninja): Should we be ashamed of buying used books online? The article discussing secondhand sellers who work through sites like amazon specifically, where you can get a book for a penny plus the shipping/handling costs. I have used amazon second-hand sellers to purchase books, though usually as a last resort because a) the book I wanted was available nowhere else including the library, and my local bookshops or b)I was a student and couldn’t afford it otherwise (and also couldn’t find it in my local bookshops. I always looked first, never missing out on a reason to visit a local bookshop of course, and also because once the shipping/handling was involved, a used book online or off was about the same price). I would suppose that buying new books this way (incl. review copies, which are often available before the book is even in stores) is more than a little tacky, however. But then it is only in the past two years that I’ve become so privileged to be able to spread my bookish dollars so lavishly– not everybody can afford to drop $40.00 on a hardcover in order to feel (deliciously) smug about doing the right thing.
A bookninja commenter makes the very good point that using the library at the very least would provide authors (in Canada) with a small amount of money through Public Lending Rights— nothing a writer could live off of, but it’s the principle.
The problem is not with used books, however, but rather the emptiness of the online exchange. The NY Times article makes a comparison between such exchanges and Helene Hanff’s 84 Charing Cross Road, Hanff’s “classic account of a woman in postwar New York who bought her books from a London shop she never saw” noted as being “ahead of its time.” But the whole book captures the rich exchange between Hanff and the booksellers at Marks & Co. Antiquarian Booksellers, who encouraged Hanff’s book buying habits for years and years, supplementing her own requests with their recommendations– in short, doing what local used bookshops are meant to do, which is fostering a literary community, albeit via epistle. Local is a decidedly a relative term, and Hanff’s story is not the same at all.
I enjoyed a piece on the Guardian blog last week about Britain’s charity bookshops. Suggesting it lessens the compunction of depriving authors of the royalties if you know a few quid is going to Oxfam instead. The article noting the impeccable organization of most of these shops, the skill of their clerks at spotting a special book’s value. There is a charm to their shelves, which will always feature a copy of Hilary Mantel’s Fludd. When I lived in England, I was an avid browser, and found many a treasure that brought me to the till. And I feel that authors did ultimately benefit from my purchases, or at least the ones who’re still publishing did, because these shops gave me a route to their discovery and so many of them I’m devoted to now.
Are there any cousins more distant than new books and used ones? One eventually becomes the other, of course, through a certain evolution, but takes on a new kind of value with the change, will become a different kind of cherished. New books have their crispness, their cleanliness, and their smell– their margins at least are a tabula rasa, and a reader can feel like an intrepid explorer venturing out to see the world. Whereas used books wear their history on their pages, with their stains, their own peculiar smells, and stray hairs stuck inside. The names written in and then crossed out on the inside cover suggesting the hands that may have flipped through these pages, the people who might have read them. Suggesting all the readers in the world.
Any reader with integrity will understand that used books have their place, that new books have quite another one, and the problem really isn’t the system at all. Rather, the problem is these supposed “sheepish” bargain hunters who keep bargain hunting anyway, and whose articles should probably be headlined instead, “I’m cheap and a bit of a wanker.”
January 5, 2009
Hear me read.
Today I’m the reader reading at Julie Wilson’s marvelous Seen Reading, and I’m reading from Rebecca Rosenblum‘s Once, from the story “The Words” which I’ve loved for years– this passage in particular. I am reading in a bathroom with a book launch crowd outside, and Julie Wilson had to teach me to say “ennui”, but the rest I knew already.
December 31, 2008
The pause before the scones
Before heading downstairs to bake the final scones of 2008, I pause to post some New Years wishes. For 2009, I make no resolutions, because things will be changing whether I will them to or not, and certainly, I am no longer (as) in control of it all. During 2008, we drove down some amazing highways, saw new places (California!), found a new home, I read 155 (some) extraordinary books, I’ve written and published an amount that satisfies me, had fun in all kinds of weather, and enjoyed myself much in the company of family and good friends. For 2009, I wish health and happiness to those around me, a fat kicky baby in my arms, to read some more extraordinary books, and at least two handfuls of truly good days.
December 23, 2008
Phoebe Gilman
Somehow it took me until yesterday to learn that Phoebe Gilman died in 2002. She was a really marvelous author and illustrator who had such an impact on me as a reader. I still remember her visit to my elementary school, and how exciting it was meet someone who’d created such a wondrous thing as a book. I can still recite most of Jillian Jiggs by heart. I also remember how Phoebe Gilman told us that she thought Jillian’s little sister was called Rebecca, although the character went unnamed in the story, and so I am excited to see Rebecca’s name was made official in subsequent Jillian tales. I am excited also to note that Gilman left such an extensive literary legacy that will bring her work to avid readers for generations to come. 
December 23, 2008
A Passion for Reading
The text of my presentation for the December 9 Art Matters Forum “A Passion for Reading” has been posted online. I addressed the ways in which literary blogs promote a passion for reading, and how, as Virginia Woolf wrote, “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.”
My co-panelists’ presentations can be found here and are well worth reading.
December 23, 2008
Crumbs
On “slummy mummy” writing: “[these] writers know these idiosyncrasies aren’t really faults but bargaining chips… The domestic preoccupation seems so much worse because the women are complaining about domesticity without moving beyond it.” Via Maud Newton, Laura Miller on rereading The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe: “Narnia is a mongrel thing, and so is Christmas. As is often the case, this mongrelizing is the source of its strength.” Could Curtis Sittenfeld’s fictional reassessment of Laura Bush have been all too misleading? Macleans covers Rebecca Rosenblum’s marriage to Robert Downey Jr. The Edible Woman is Seen Reading (aside: last time I read this book, I thought it was dated and politically irrelevant, however brilliant. An essential literary artifact. And then it was sometime last year when I was restless, and everybody told me I should have a baby, and I started feeling a bit like a cake. And now I am having a baby, and of course I’m thrilled about it, but I’ve realized I was wrong about The Edible Woman).
December 18, 2008
Family Literacy Day: January 27
Though our baby is still very small, and is also translucent, we’ve been reading to it regularly ever since it acquired working ears. (This is a very bookish baby– it acquired its first book while still an embryo). And while there are plenty of sound scientific reasons why reading to our baby is a very good thing, I’ll admit that I like reading stories for the sake of reading stories, and even more so, I appreciate being read to too. So while I’m not sure that the baby really knows what’s going on, being so busy beating its tiny heart and turning somersaults, even if it’s more for us, I think this is the best kind of selfish.
For all of you lucky, lucky people out there, however, whose children have already left the womb, I would like to turn your attention towards Family Literacy Day. Created by ABC Canada, the tenth Family Literacy Day will be held on January 27, and planned events include the setting of a Guinness World Record for “Most Children Reading with an Adult in Multiple Locations”. (The record to break was set in 2006, with 78,791 kids.) The chosen book is Munschworks 2.
Find out more here about how to get involved, whether at home with your family, or at a local event.
December 17, 2008
Thinking in circles, about big and small presses
As you might have been able to tell by my waffling tone, I was not altogether comfortable with my “Top Eleven Indie Picks of 2008”. Not with the books themselves, for the books are very good, but with the very fact that I made such a list at all. As though the books by independent publishers that I’d read this year were a sideshow, “a subspecies”, or do I even dare to say it, a ghetto? Because I don’t mean to imply any of these things. No, I don’t mean that at all.
The problem is this, I think. That my original Top Eleven Picks of 2008 was assembled in very vague terms. These were most certainly not “The Best Books of 2008”, but rather a list of the ones I liked best, and I am conscious enough know that what I like best and what is the best is not necessarily the very same thing. Particularly because I’m the sort to fall in love with a book because it contains a teapot, or references the postal system, and these are two of my favourite things.
I like fiction that innovates, I like books that challenge what I feel or believe, I admire a book that attacks me like a pipe to the head, but I’ve just got this thing about books I can curl up inside like a warm blanket. Or books that recreate the world and let me walk around easy in it, as opposed to one that makes a whole new world that I’ve got to think a lot to discover. Perhaps if I didn’t read corporate documents for eights hours every day, this would be different, but at the moment I like a book that grabs me and holds me, and even pushes me along. (If I only read books like this I would be in a coma, but I do require them on a regular basis.)
Which is to say that many (but certainly not all) of my Top Eleven books were old fashioned good reads, which is mostly what I talk about here at Pickle Me This. They may not have rewritten the book on how to write the book (though I’ll argue for a few) but I loved them true, and that was sort of my sole requirement.
But I did so enjoy my year of more intensive reading of independent publishers, and when I reflected that I’d missed them in my picks, I was more than a bit regretful. But I was hardly going to just slot them in between the lines, and hope that nobody noticed. I loved these books for different reasons than I loved the others, and it wasn’t so much that they couldn’t play with the big boys, but rather they were playing a whole other game. Which, of course, is as dubious a statement as any other– there is certainly nothing decidedly “Indie” to link each of these eleven books, but I couldn’t help but think of them differently. Why? I’m not sure.
But I am not sure I’m totally wrong about this– I’m still not comfortable, but I can’t help but acknowledge a difference between fiction from big publishers and small ones. Just like how, try as I might otherwise, I read a difference between fiction written by men and that by women (for example). Always, always, there will be exceptions (I’m waving at you, Ian McEwan!), but I am thinking in general terms. I am thinking of the Orange Prize, and how instead of a ghetto, I see it as a celebration of something uniquely itself. Similar with the small presses then, instead of just a sideshow, although to imply that small press books couldn’t make it on my main list is definitely offensive, and I see that now. Further, that these books were as good as they were but didn’t get on my list is making me reconsider how I evaluate what I read.
Anyway, I expect to make full sense of this around the same time I finally read Anna Karenina. So probably don’t hold your breath.
December 12, 2008
Indie Explanation
This year I’ve done a tremendous job at succeeding at my annual goals (mainly because they were very flexible [e.g. “Buy a house or move”, “Sell your novel or publish a whole bunch of other stuff”. 2008 was perhaps the year of the “or…”]). I am also pleased that I managed to meet one goal I didn’t even get around to making (though I meant to), which was to read more books by independent publishers.
But perhaps life made the goal for me, however, because so many indie books found their way to me this year. I read so many through fabulous initiatives like Fiery First First Fiction, and events like The Scream in High Park and the Eden Mills Festival, and then of course by word of mouth. Reading so many independent books has made 2008 a remarkable reading year.
But then it occurred to me that my Top Eleven contained none of these books. And as I tried to figure out why that is, I came up with two reasons. First, that independent publishers take risks that the big houses don’t, and so the results are more mixed, however incredible notable, important, brilliant. And second, which is related, my list is appealing to pretty mainstream tastes (such are often my own). I feel pretty sure about offering my Top Eleven up to anyone and figuring they’ll hold some appeal. This is not always the case with the independent books, which I’m sure neither writers nor publishers see as a wholly bad thing.
But they deserve a list of their own, surely. Top Eleven Indie Picks, for those readers looking for something challenging, alternative, off-the-wall and wonderful. So a list is to-be-posted, but first I wanted to write an explanation of why it appeared.
December 12, 2008
What a lucky one am I
Last month I was invited as a blogger and a writer to participate in the 33rd Art Matters forum, an initiative of Their Excellencies the Right Honourable Michaëlle Jean, Governor General of Canada, and Mr. Jean-Daniel Lafond. The theme of the forum was “A Passion for Reading/Le désir de lire”, and I had to accept the invitation, naturally, as it was irresistible however terrifying. How fortunate that terror can be swallowed too, because these last two days I’ll remember for the rest of my life.
First, the forum. Even before I met my co-panelists, I suspected their conversation would make for something very special. I’ve attended plenty of forums and literary events in my time, but never heard people speak from these particular backgrounds, and all speaking together no less. The other panelists were Margaret Eaton, President of the non-profit adult literacy foundation ABC Canada; Geneviève Côté, Governor General’s Award-winning children’s book illustrator, author, and arts educator; and Miriam Cusson, whose work as general and artistic director of Le Salon du Livre du Grand Sudbury has helped to cultivate a thriving Francophone literary culture in that city.
The forum was so much fun. Each panelist was so vibrant, well-versed in her particular point of view, and each of our presentations so complementary. (I will post a copy of my presentation in the next few days). The atmosphere was exceptional, each of us with something to share, nothing to prove, and ever-supportive of one another. All marvelously presided over by our moderator, CBC Arts Reporter Jeanette Kelly. I learned so much from the others, and from the presentations by the Governor General and M. Lafond. The audience clearly felt the ambiance to be as warm as I did, no one shying away from sharing their own perspectives on passionate reading, and everyone had something important to contribute. I was honoured and proud to be a part of this extraordinary event.
Another overwhelming aspect of my experience was the opportunity to spend the next two nights as a guest at Rideau Hall. I was so fortunate to be joined by my five panel co-participants, who were exceptionally good company and made the experience a lot of fun. Our rooms were magnificent, decorated with brilliant Canadian art, furnished beautifully, outfitted for everything a guest could possibly require, and oh, the comfort. I’ve never in my life been to anyplace so nice, and I’m not sure when I’ll have such an experience again. We were treated so well, a particular highlight being our breakfast on the veranda– a glassed in porch with the sun shining in and the snow-covered grounds of Rideau Hall on show. I could have lingered there forever, the conversation with these women so exciting and inspiring. Rideau Hall is impeccably run by a staff whose object seems to be their guests’ comfort, even if that guest is ordinary me.
And then there was the presentation of the Governor General’s Literary Awards last evening, which the five of us were so fortunate to attend. The atmosphere at Rideau Hall was electric as the guests arrived, well-dressed men and women who appeared in their element, and then the writers, artists and publishers dressed in the nicest clothes they’d ever put on in their lives. All ecstatic to be in attendance. The Governor General made a tremendous impression, the artists’ acceptance speeches were so moving and inspiring, and when all rose to sing our national anthem at the end of the event, I’ll confess to crying a little bit. The evening had been so moving, and I was once again proud and honored to be a part of it. It made me think of any cries of elitism, which should be shot down by the simple fact they let me in. And that once a year, at the very very least, we do celebrate our country’s literature in such style. That these artists have it affirmed that what they do matters, and I can only imagine how satisfying that must be after the struggle and sacrifice required to succeed in the arts at all.
I am not sure I even suspected how truly marvelous days could be (and we all know that I do collect good days like postcards). My respect for Michaëlle Jean knows no bounds, I think, and I am awed by her intelligence, her demeanour and elegance– class personified. I have met some lovely people I hope to know for a while, and made fabulous memories. And now to be home again, where the staff aren’t so agreeable but it’s where I belong. What a lucky one am I.
