June 11, 2007
Unbooks
Though I do love books, I have a particular aversion to books that aren’t actually books. I am unfond of gift books, decorative books, foam books, faking books, and faux books. I do believe that these inferior items unjustly ride on the coattails of a sacred object. And so it was quite remarkable when I fell in love with this treasure up in the Lakes, though the price tag put it out of my league. 
I suppose I have a particular aversion to books that aren’t books, unless the book happens to be a teapot.
June 9, 2007
Heft
To me, England is the land of books, and we came home with our carry-on full. From the bottom, shall we? The last three acquired at the airport Waterstones on 3 for 2, as we had pounds stirling to burn. A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka, which I’ve been meaning to get to for two years now, and comes recommended by my sister in law. Stuart chose The Book of Dave by Will Self, and I imagine I shall read it too. And Ian McEwan’s Atonement, because I’ve fallen in love with him and everyone says that this is the best.
Next we come to the 3 for 2s we got in Lancaster. Double Fault by Lionel Shriver who I adore. Pies and Prejudice: In Search of the North by Stuart Maconie, because we’re on our Northern kick. And So Many Ways to Begin by Jon McGregor, because I loved his last book, the reviews were great, and plus he lives in Nottingham.
Continuing on to my Persephone books, gifts from Bronwyn who must have read my mind. I got Hetty Dorval, the first novel by our very own Ethel Wilson. Also Kay Smallshaw’s guide How to Run Your Home Without Help, which I suspect will mingle useful, hilarious, and relictness. And It’s Hard to be Hip Over Thirty, poems by Judith Viorst (who wrote Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day).
Next we’ve got Making It Up by Penelope Lively, which was her newest book until quite recently, and I picked that one up in the Oxfam book shop in Lancaster. The last two books are also gifts from Bronwyn: How to be a Bad Birdwatcher by Simon Barnes, and more poetry with Mean Time by Carol Ann Duffy.
The shelves are bursting with delight.
June 6, 2007
Best books won
How cool! Best books won. Though I am on vaca, I could not resist spreading the news that Karen Connelly won the Orange Prize for New Writers for her magnificent The Lizard Cage, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie won the main Orange Prize for Half of a Yellow Sun. Absolutely brilliant, as these were two of the very best books I read last year.
May 31, 2007
The Printers
It strikes me that I’ve not yet given credit to UK indie band The Editors for their rather bookish name (nor for their melodramatic tendencies, lyrically speaking). And their name makes me wonder what other bands might be out their awaiting rock stardom: The Typesetters, The Copy-Editors, The Proof Readers, The Printers? The fun could, quite possibly, never ever stop.
May 31, 2007
Google is the lamest plot device
I am now completely absorbed by Janice Kulyk Keefer’s Thieves, which is an extraordinary literary mystery along the lines of Possession, but, dare I say, more enjoyable to read? And formidable based upon the fact that Kulyk Keefer writes about characters who actually lived. Layer upon layer of story, and what fun to unravel.
And it occurs to me that the internet might just be the worst thing that ever happened to narrative. I’ve been thinking about this as I read Thieves, which takes place in the late 1980s, and whose questions have to be answered without the convenient aid of a google search. I read a novel last week that did employ the google search as its primary plot device, and the whole thing was just way too easy, shapeless. Can you imagine Atwood’s Cat’s Eye if Elaine had been able to track down Cordelia via the tinternet? If Anne Shirley had googled a potion to darken her red hair to auburn, rather than purchasing said potion from a peddler. If Roland and Maud Bailey had used the internet instead, bypassing the need for them to meet. If any of Reta Winters’ immense knowledge and wisom in Unless had come from an internet search, rather than from her very own mind. Because a character’s store of knowledge tells us so much about them, and what they don’t know too, and to have a whole world of answers at their fingertips almost takes away the very point of a story.
May 29, 2007
Books on a plane
Just beginning Thieves, which must be finished before we go to the airport on Thursday. For one cannot take a library book away on a plane. What if one lost it?!
I’ve still not decided what to bring to read on the plane. I’ve got an issue of Vanity Fair, and it also might be the best time to finally read my beloved copy of Lancashire Where Women Die of Love. I do suspect it will be an awfully curious book.
May 28, 2007
Positively transporting
After Dark is the first novel I’ve read by Haruki Murakami. Previously I’ve read his short story collection After the Quake and his nonfiction book Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche. And it’s strange that it’s taken so long for me to start reading Japanese fiction; while I lived there, I hardly read any, too busy overdosing on fiction from the Britain I had left behind. Sometimes, I think, reality was something too much, and I wanted something different. But now that that world is far away from me, I am turning back to it through fiction. Positively transporting.
“Our line of sight chooses an area of concentrated brightness and, focusing there, silently descends to it– a sea of neon colours. They call this place an ‘amusement district.’ The giant digital screens fastened to the sides of buildings fall silent as midnight approaches, but loudspeakers on storefronts keep pumpingg out exaggerated hip-hop bass lines. A large game center crammed with young people; wild electronic sounds; a group of college students spilling out from a bar; teenage girls with brilliant bleached hair, healthy legs thrusting out from micro-mini skirts; dark-suited men racing across diagonal crosswalks for the last trains to the suburbs. Even at this hour, the karaoke club pitchmen keep shouting for customers. A flashy black station wagon drifts down the street as if taking stock of the district throuigh its black-tinted windows. The car looks like a deep sea creature with specialized skins and organs. The young policemen patrol the street with tense expressions, but no one seems to notice them. The district plays by its own rules at a time like this. The season is late autumn. No wind is blowing but the air carries a chill. The date is just about to change.”
May 24, 2007
Sense
Have you submitted your workplace haiku to Bookninja? I did today, inspired by the haiku they have posted (and by the workplace, of course). Read them here, including a few by my favourite poet Jennica Harper. And then submit your own!
Heather Mallick underlines why I perpetually sing her praises with her piece on challenging authority. Oh, when she writes, “I believe education is important for its own sake. It is the basis of civilization. I especially believe in the teaching of history./ I am an elitist. I want people to be well-read, to value books. Here’s my reasoning. Educated people are more likely to deny authority. People who don’t read don’t have an intellectual storehouse to help them think independently. They do what they’re told. They have an endless desire to please those in authority; they don’t know they don’t have to.” Has anybody in the whole world ever had more sense?
Maud Newton points me toward the following: the hierarchy of adjectives, which are rules you don’t even know you know; and a poem by Grace Paley. And it was my coworker (since we’re giving props here) who showed me this article on the evolution of phonebook catagories. No more shall you be able to look up a buttonhole maker, or carbon paper.
Today I met Erica G walking down Palmerston. I was on Harbord, reading and walking, and she pulled her own book out of her bag, which we discussed as we crossed the street, and then we said our farewells. I think it would be lovely if we all starting asking, “So what are you reading?” instead of “How are you?” when we met. The conversations might be better.
May 22, 2007
Worrying
I mentioned that I recently unearthed the “novel” I wrote when I was eleven, and a big problem I am having with the novel I am reading at the moment is that it utilizes many of the same plot devices. And I was not a particularly prodigious eleven year old, no matter how hard I tried. Hmm.
May 21, 2007
Today at College and Borden Streets
Normally I don’t condone graffiti, but I am a little bit sympathetic to the message being conveyed here.
