August 18, 2006
Gluttony
Sometimes I know that systematic reading is just an excuse to be a book glutton. Don’t think I don’t know this. I love hotdogs more than anyone I know. I am a bit out of control; I’ve taken up reading whilst walking home from work, but I haven’t been hit by a car yet. Has actually been quite fascinating. I have no problem following the text and navigating myself through the world, and everybody gets out of my way. It adds five minutes onto my half hour walk, but the five minutes are well spent.
Margaret Drabble is just as bookishly gluttonous as I am however. I know this because I got my latest letter from Bronwyn today, and my text-based treat was Drabble’s essay “The Radiant Way and After”, from the 1999 anthology A Passion for Books by Dale Salwah. Containing such declarations as “I am unhappy unless I have a book about my person”, and such fears as being caught in a lift sans book. She goes on to write about not loving books themselves so much, and vandalizing them something terrible, how our early reading affects us, desperation for (any) books while abroad (the same desperation that led me once to read “The Assassination of Marilyn Monroe” in Salzburg). And how it’s not a passion for books she has as much as “a passion for print”. When she was in Japan, she wrote, being unable to read was akin to being deprived of a sense and she found it hard to function. She finishes, “I need print like an addict. I could live without it, perhaps. But I hope I never have to try.” And now why I love Bronwyn is evident.
Now rereading Franny and Zooey. I read Wonder When You’ll Miss Me by Amanda Davis yesterday, and really enjoyed it. I wasn’t expecting to, and didn’t at first. This book was an expansion of a short story I had already read, and I found it difficult to get past that. I sort of felt like I was trespassing. And the beginning of the book was awkward, disjointed. I knew that the main character would run away to join the circus, which I didn’t think would be particularly interesting. I feel the same way about books that take place at circuses that I do about books that take place a magical boarding schools in mystical lands, but this is where the combination of Davis’s extraordinary story-making, story-telling and writing skills proved enormously effective. This was an excellent book. It made circus sideshow performers absolutely human, and had plenty of pachydermic content, which is always important to me.
Books in the news: On that difficult second novel. I like the idea of book biographies, but then again, I would. The Geek hierarchy. Poetry workshop in The Guardian. Most these links stolen from Bookninja and Maud Newton. I’ve been busy. Now that Stuart has a job, I have to do housework again. Yawn.
We are going to the island this weekend!
August 17, 2006
More Drabble Mania
For the first time ever, it appears that a Canadian book cover is far prettier than the UK edition. The above cover is from the UK Amazon site, and the one below from the McClelland and Stewart catalogue. How lucky then, to be on this side of the ocean.
August 16, 2006
It is out of necessity that I read excessively
(My frequent ramblings upon reading rendered into a vague coherence)
Bookishness has gone hardcore, if the broadsheets are any indication. John Allemang reads a book a day in The Globe and Mail and Jane Smiley is tackling one hundred novels in The Guardian. This year I also decided to read a little less leisurely, set a goal of 200 books read in 2006, and since then it has occurred to me that these reading marathons might be the literary equivalent of competitive eating. Champion eater Takeru Kobayashi devours fifty hot-dogs in twelve minutes and I wonder if my reading goal is similarly excess for the sake of itself. Six months in, however, I have found something to be said for taking reading this seriously.
Merely tracking my reading habits has been worthwhile, revealing patterns I would not have otherwise noticed. That I am clearly too prone to leaping onto bandwagons of the just-deceased, as indicated by the appearances upon my list by Muriel Spark and Jane Jacobs. I note further, the gender imbalance in my author selection— by May, I had only finished one novel by a man, assigned for a class no less. I realized that my library was saturated with recent works by Canadian women in particular. That it is a miracle that I’ve managed to read anything at all from abroad.
A record of books read has proved practical to have on-hand. (I am not alone in such obsessive documentation. The writer Annie Dillard has kept a list entitled “Books I’ve Read Since 1966”.) My list has distinguished stories and characters, long after I’ve scanned the last line and slammed the book shut. One day I was straining my mind one day to remember who had left her umbrella on an omnibus and upon reference to the list, of course, I realized that Virginia Woolf herself had done so, in the fifth volume of her diary, back in March. From the list, I realised that Grace Paley’s short stories in February were what had made Jane Jacobs’ New York so familiar when I encountered it in May.
The list also serves as a diary, of sorts. Upon reference, I remember reading Zadie Smith’s On Beauty just after New Years, or devouring Camilla Gibb’s Sweetness in the Belly on a bus ride to Ottawa during Reading Week. I recall the rainy day I read The Accidental by Ali Smith in its entirety, while I should have been doing my homework.
And what of the marathon itself? After nearly eight months, its most profound impact has been quite simply that I have read a lot of books. I rarely watch television or movies, and I always carry a book in case a reading opportunity suddenly arises. Admittedly, I’ve become a bit stupider socially and accounts of how I spent my weekend are often concerned with the adventures of fictional people. But I bet I’ve read a book lately that is relevant to any conversation you might wish to engage me in. These days, so attuned to reading, I’ve come to approach the world a bit like it is a book, interspersed with details to be noticed and facts to be learned.
Of course, the problem with any marathon is how fast the scenery flies by. So quantifying books threatens the quality of their readings, which is why I embarked upon The Great Summer Rereading Project. I have devoted my reading this summer to becoming reacquainted with books I read too long ago and have forgotten, books read too quickly and not adequately absorbed, or books I read when I was too young to understand them.
I started with Margaret Atwood’s The Robber Bride, which I first read at fourteen years and probably missed the point of. I’ve since revisited quite a few others, including Mrs. Dalloway, The Great Gatsby and In The Skin of a Lion and each was so different from what I remembered. What was once romantic now seems trite, the dull is illuminated and strange endings make sense. Rereading has been an exercise in self-discovery. I’ve also enjoyed deciphering my marginalia, and finding lost treasures between the pages, like the two dollar bill stuck inside The Robber Bride.
I am aware that there is probably fault to be found with such systematic reading. Is it an affront to its very leisureness to render reading such a chore? Surely a book is to be savoured. As with the competitive eaters, are hardcore readers testing limits that really need not require challenge?
But then again, any media consumption is a serious business, if the exhaustive cataloging of TV guides and the emergence of Personal Video Recorders are any indication. Music lovers obsessively compile playlists from thousands of tracks. Blogs punctiliously link to the corners of the universe. One could spend a lifetime reading magazines produced in a single week and the internet is bigger than the sky. And there is no business more serious than book reading.
In addition to the overwhelming number of wonderful books being published all the time, a reader has to contend with all the books published for thousands of years previously— the classics, the obscure, and the still-to-be-discovered. It is out of necessity that I read excessively. My list of books-to-be-read will always be longer than “Books I’ve Read Since 2006”. The sole problem with my reading marathon is that life is too short. And so however long mine stretches, I shall fill it with books.
August 14, 2006
Secret History
The Booker longlist! (And I have read none of it). I am rereading The Secret History by Donna Tartt at the moment, and loving it. I read it last in November of 2002, right before I met Stuart and while my home was a bunk bed in a youth hostel. I’ve blocked most of that period out. It’s a great book, and I am speeding through it. It’s more about story telling than the story itself- a little bit Heart of Darkness/American Psycho. Definitely worth a reread and the shortest 600 some page book ever.
Oh, and as of tomorrow, the entire Clare-Lawler household will be gainfully employed. That’s right, double income no kids! Conspicuous consumption, here we come. Well, at least until I go back to school. Wonderful news though. It has been a long long road.
August 14, 2006
Tea cups
I’ve recently developed the habit of inheriting tea cups, an odd legacy. Now I love tea as much as the next man (more perhaps), but I drink mine from tremendously cavernous coffee mugs that would horrify The UK Tea Council. These delicate cups with their tiny saucers are from a different world and I am not sure how to fit them into mine. For the time being, they live on the top shelf of my cupboard, but I wonder what they will come to mean eventually.
August 13, 2006
Not the bookshelf that killed Bast
The big news is that we acquired a new bookshelf this weekend, and now the books are stretching out and revelling in their new abundance of space, that is until I fill up this one too. But I think that will take some time. Though the Vic Book Sale is just around the corner, so you never know. The other news is that this weekend was full of funerals, families and birthday cake, and though I am supposed to go to another birthday party today, it’s all just been a bit much and I don’t think I can make it.
I finished reading Howards End this weekend. I read it in 2001 for a university course, and I liked it. I found having read Zadie Smith’s On Beauty has had an enormous impact on the original book, which was surprising. Obviously, Smith borrowed from Forster, but that in the borrowing, she can make a near-100 year old book so much richer was an interesting idea. It’s a very cool relationship, and I believe the subtlety of Smith’s borrowing is what made the exercise so effective. Anyway, I also noticed how much Howards End was far more about property than people, and it made me think about connections also with television shows such as my beloved Location Location Location, because I was reminded of Phil and Kirstie all the way through this book. Oh the connexions abound. Such fun…
August 10, 2006
Every thought is a possibility
In April I was walking down Harbord Street listening to the Indigo Girls sing “Mystery”, and it was a gorgeous sunny day and I heard the lyric “and summer’s beginning to give up her fight” and I laughed, thinking that summer was going to have to go on for a long time before that started to happen. Silly girl I am, not quite ever convinced that time won’t stand still because I want it to. I really am not sure that it will now, because now it’s August, which means summer’s fight is going to have to end sometime. I have noticed the tendency for this to happen. I don’t plan to ever despair getting old, but the end of summer will always break my heart a bit. And so we will savour what is left, and hope it comes around again. It is a gift every single time.
But then the next line of the song is “and every thought’s a possibility”. New seasons do that, just like New Years. Time to take stock, and see what has been accomplished and what still has to be done. Every thought is a possibility, and there are exciting projects on all sides. My Now Doing website has not been updated in ages, because what I’ve been doing lately isn’t very photographic. I am proud of what I have accomplished this summer; I’ve written six short stories that are strong, and my goal to have a first very very sketchy first draft of my thesis project is not an impossible dream. The year ahead will be spent filling out the gaps, and rounding the corners, and I am up to the challenge. In my working life, I have been part of a project that has broadened my horizons and been so very worthwhile, and has an enormous impact upon society, which is as much as one can hope for, even if it has rendered me rather sleepy of late. Stuart and I are at work on our second publication, “I Wish My Enemies Were Russians”, a collection of my poetry which should be available by the end of the month. I am also quite excited to be working on Echolocation this year as prose editor, and I am confident we are going to make something really excellent. And so these are the buzzing thoughts that keep me awake at night. All apologies for being somewhat wanky in this particularly entry, but on some mid-to-late summer nights, this should be tolerated.
August 9, 2006
Unless and The Fire Dwellers
This weekend I read my definitive favourite book, Unless by Carol Shields, as well as The Fire Dwellers, which was always my favourite Margaret Laurence novel. Although written about thirty years apart, these two books are so companionable, which I never would have noticed had I not read one right after the other. Both novels are mired in domesticity, wife and motherhood, and elaborate such clear truths. Though Laurence’s novel isn’t first person, Stacey’s voice is used throughout, and its wry tone is so similar to Reta’s. They both depict a mother’s ambivalence toward her children to a point, and then such a fierce and primal love. Though both are clearly feminist texts, yet there is a certain ambiguity that makes these stories real. I loved both of them. And particularly Unless, as usual. I absolutely adore Carol Shields’ ability to paint a happy marriage, and for that and other reasons, this book gives me faith.
