Recent reads and an unasked-for explanation

Since demolishing Jim Butcher's Changes, I've devoured four more books, all from my existing collection.

You see, I am a woman on a mission. I catalogued my personal library recently, clocking in at 500 books, which didn't include the miscellaneous books hiding out in my closet or on loan to people. Of those 500, about 375 were books I'd bought with the intent of reading them. Problem is, I always got distracted by shiny new books from the library and in the meantime I'd find more cool books to buy without reading, and thus the collection grew without being read... 500 books isn't the biggest, clunkiest collection, I grant, but it's still quite a bit, and pending a new job, I plan on moving--and I really don't feel like moving 500 books into what's likely to be a modest apartment.

Now, I am the type to re-read good books. However, most books are not re-read books--there are just too many books waiting to be read for the first time. So I've limited my library access to crochet books or reference. I am under firm instruction to read my own books and be merciless in determining whether they can stay or go. Some ground rules:

• Books have 50 pages to get interesting. This is a flexible guideline; a mildly promising book can have a stay of execution for however many more pages if I feel it is warranted. The idea is that I am under no obligation to waste time on a book that is uninteresting, thereby freeing myself up to move on to the next book.
• If the book is really, really, earth-shatteringly amazing, and I am absolutely certain I will re-read it at a later date, it can stay and join the ranks of "already read" books on my shelves. Neil Gaiman books, Douglas Adams books, favorites like Ender's Game--these all fall under this category. Many books do not.
• Books can be disposed of in one of several ways: 1. Sold back to the used book store, 2. Passed on to interested friends, and 3. Bookcrossed. The point is: they must go.

Like many people with full pantries, I often fall guilty of the pitfall of staring at full shelves and whining that there's nothing to devour. And yet, if I stare long enough and shift around the piles of overflow books, I can usually rustle up something. Most recently:

The King of Elfland's Daughter, Lord Dunsany - A classic work of high fantasy. I didn't exactly like this book and didn't really connect with many of the characters, and I was not a fan of his often flowery language. Yet somehow, it interested me enough to finish reading it to the inevitable happily ever after.

Survivor, Chuck Palahniuk - I did not like the two previous Palahniuk books I read-- Fight Club and Lullaby. They were too over the top and laden with shock for shock's effect. This one was a bit toned down--but no less satirical and scathing in its criticism of our culture. I wouldn't re-read this one, nor would I call it a favorite, but I actually enjoyed it. He spared our celebrity-obsessed culture no mercy.

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, Dai Sijie - Bittersweet little read of a book. One of many volumes that extoll the joys of reading and its power to transport us to other places.

Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year, Anne Lamott - Plowed through this one in a few hours of insomnia last night. It captures the ups and downs of the first year of parenthood in a refreshingly honest way--sometimes she outright resents the squalling kidlet, and other times he's this amazing creature that she can't imagine her life without.

Yes, that is a rather odd assortment to come from the same bookshelf, much less to read back-to-back, but eh. I'm eclectic.

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Now playing: Tunng - King
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Latest goings-on

In the background: a blanket I completed for a friend's wedding this weekend. Well, it's more of a throw, perfect to sling over the back of the couch or put over your lap on a chilly evening. The yarn is a thick chenille, using up about 6 skeins of my out-of-control stash. And no, you're not seeing things--the bands of color are indeed of varying widths, according to the pattern. More or less. I did add one more repeat, which does throw off the proportions a bit, but eh. It's a perfectly serviceable blanket, and the chenille makes it drape so nicely--it feels like a real, substantial blanket on your lap.

In the foreground: a cup of herbal acai berry tea. I love drinking red tea in a clear mug--it's like sipping liquid rubies or something.

Also in the foreground: the latest installment of Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series. That's a signed copy too, I'll have you know; I waited two hours in line for that. Ahem. Anyway, I've said repeatedly that it's a rare series that gets better as it goes, and Dresden Files is rare indeed. The stakes go up a little more each book, and in this one, hoo boy, did they. The pressure begins on page one and is unrelenting. "Changes" is an apt title--by the time the dust has more or less cleared, readers are left wondering where the series can and will go next. Some of the curveballs I saw coming, but others were gut-wrenching. I almost want to go back and re-read the previous 11 books to see what things I missed. Sigh. So many books, so little time.

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Now playing: Hot Water Music - Paper Thin
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Dork badge, plz.

I gleefully bought Pride and Prejudice and Zombies almost as soon as I heard about it. I devoured it as a zombie devours brains: with relish (figurative, I might add, not literal). Zombies aside, it was quite faithful to the original novel.

I can only hope the forthcoming Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters will be as delightful. I shall find out when I purchase it in September.

A paradox

On the one hand, finding in an unexpected place a book by a favorite author whose works are not typically available in major chain bookstores is gratifying; it's like finding a diamond in an unexpected place.

On the other hand, it seems a bit insulting to the substance of the book itself when it only costs 33 cents and is on the same shelf as a score of paperback romances.

Not that I objected, mind. I actually let out an audible squeal of delight when I found Derrick Jensen's A Language Older than Words at the thrift store, but I felt a bit like a bandit for having gotten it so filthy cheap, especially since it initially took me months of waiting on the library list to get it the first time I read it. A twenty-dollar list price, and I got it for 33 cents. Thrift stores rock.

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Now playing: Dustin Kensrue - Consider the Ravens
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Is my nerd slip showing? Sorry.

I always make sure to have some time to read even if it's only a few pages before bed or a chapter in a stolen pocket of time; a period when I haven't even that much time and energy to spare is truly a stressful one.

I can tell the semester is getting stressful, though--I've cast aside the Jane Austen in favor of, um, fluff. Yeah, I couldn't quite get into Sense and Sensibility, so I picked up Diane Duane's So You Want to Be a Wizard. I would say, "Ahhh... much better," but that seems like blasphemy. So I'll just say this: the latter is much more satisfying and entertaining a read at this moment in time.

She's a woman of my own heart, I think. This description of a library made me smile and nod in delighted agreement: "The library had been a private home once, and it hadn't lost the look of one despite the crowding of all its rooms with bookshelves. The walls were paneled in mahogany and oak, and the place smelled warm and brown and booky."

"Warm and brown and booky." I believe I now know how I am going to give my instructions to the builders of my dream country home when I am an old, contented woman.

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Now playing: Jason Reeves - In Between The Rain
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I'm a bad, bad girl.

Forgive me, bank account, for I have sinned.

I knew it was a bad idea to go to that place of dubious repute so soon after payday. I knew temptation would only be a heartbeat away, knew that before I could so much as register it, my pulse would commence to racin' and my will would weaken, and yet--I pursued temptation anyway. The first lapse was egregious enough, but to abandon all pretense of moderation in an episode that could only be described as hedonism--well, there is no penance great enough for that failing. I know my weaknesses, too--a glimmer of intelligence, a provocation of thought, a beauty that emanates from a homely, sometimes battered-looking source--

Damnit, I have no defenses against the wiles of a used bookstore that offers special sales to educators.

Banned Books Week

I've been remiss this week: the ALA's Banned Books Week started on Saturday and ends October 4. I've written about it before, last year around this time, coincidentally.*

I try to take the opportunity to read, or re-read, a banned or challenged book in its honor. This year it's Phillip Pullman's The Golden Compass. The first time I read it, I was 13--a very sheltered, conservative 13. I squirmed as I read it, sure that lightning would strike me down at any moment. But I read it anyway, intrigued, and no well-intentioned adult tried to take it out of my hands, a notion I have only in the last few years realized was radical. I'm not sure what censors are afraid of, but I was at the time quite grounded in religion, and as heretical as what I was reading was, and as thrilling as the aspect of reading the ideas was, 13 years of strong guidance weren't so easily discarded upon the fleeting fancy of an author's fictional conceit. Is it so radical a concept that children will encounter new ideas and sometimes ideas that are more mature or radical than what they may be ready for, whether those ideas are in book form or otherwise? Seems to me the route to go would be to encourage healthy inquiry and, as a parent, be willing to discuss those ideas with the child, not run around trying to eliminate them entirely...

My response to Pullman now? Well, I'm only in the first book of the Dark Materials trilogy, so I'm not yet into the deeper stuff, but I'm enjoying the tale all the same, and I'm definitely not waiting for the lightning this time around. Circumstances, encounters with new ideas, and the intervening years have quelled that original conservativism--some of which came in the form of books, but many from life itself. The Golden Compass is a tale of adventure and growing up--a timeless combination, and I'm enjoying it for that reason.


What about ye gentle reader(s)? What challenged or banned book will you be reading?


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Now playing: Bayside - Have Fun Storming the Castle
via FoxyTunes


* - Goodness, but I'm tired. That sentence actually entertained me.

Bookish adventures

For some reason, most of my reading this year has been sci fi/fantasy. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I've flown the nerd flag proudly for years now*. Most recent first.

Christopher Moore, You Suck: A Love Story. This is the perfect book for a busy, tiring week--it's morbidly entertaining, light, and quick to read. I could knock out a couple chapters before bed, get a few chuckles, and nod off. Actually first picked it up while waiting for a friend in a bookstore; read about 50 pages in one go, which says something about its ease of reading. The characters are, for lack of a better word, immature. The two main vampires were about 19 before they were turned, and their "minion" is a 16-year-old who alternates between valley girl and tragic goth caricature. I've complained about books with potty humor in them before, but I don't hold it against Moore, and indeed, a snickered quite openly at protagonist Tommy's response to the changes brought about by his transformation. Overall, a fun romp.

David Almond, Skellig. Re-read. Juvenile fiction. What I love about David Almond is the poetry in his language and deft handling of complicated issues. In this book, for example, he toys with the ideas of William Blake, death, and miracles, and he does this subtly--even though he writes "kids' books," I can re-read his books repeatedly, enjoying the room for interpretation he leaves.

Neil Gaiman, Stardust. Also re-read. Fantasy. Dry humor and an original take on old fairy tales. The recent movie was not entirely faithful, but also fun, for the record.

Patricia Gaffney, Wild at Heart. I asked my romance-reading aunt for a recommendation of a good romance novel, maybe one of her favorites. This was her rec. I will admit, it had a couple twists I didn't anticipate, but other than that, it's prety solid stock characterization and predictably outcome. Bonus points for a historical setting that didn't quite seem convincing.

Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time. Fantasy. Ah, this was golden. Religion and philosophy and death, delivered with irreverence and humor. I really do need to read more Pratchett. Up my nerd cred, so to speak.

Currently by the bedside: Paper Cities: An Anthology of Urban Fantasy. As far as anthologies go, this one's solid. I haven't skipped a story yet (halfway through), and it has enough variety to keep things interesting without seeming too far-flung and incoherent as a whole.

Sergei Lukyanenko, The Night Watch. This wasn't quite what I was expecting--for all the supernatural elements at work in this book, the emphasis is more on the suspense/mystery/political side of things. Some of the twists and turns had me struggling to keep up, which is probably why it's stagnated 2/3 of the way through. It's interesting, but not good bedtime reading after long days...

Currently in the car: Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses. I've decided to give audio books another try, now that I've got a long commute again. We'll see how it goes, but I tend to set them aside after the first CD or so. It's just not nearly as satisfying as actually reading the book myself. What might give this an advantage is McCarthy's amazing prose.

Next on the to-go-by-the-bedside stack: A recent XKCD comic strip reminded me that Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves was just sitting on my bookshelf, waiting to be read. So it's getting shoved to the top of Mount TBR. Also, I plan to read Ian McEwan's Atonement soon. Might as well put in a plug here: both these books made their ways into my hands courtesy of the good folks at Bookcrossing.


* - Because, you know, sci fi is more nerd cred than, say, a master's degree in Romantic-era literature...

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Now playing: Straylight Run - The Perfect Ending
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All hail Murphy

Ol' Murphy seems to pervade every aspect of life, even those aspects we otherwise designate as times and places for relaxation.

Example: the bookstore.

The Twit, if you must know, like many a misguided youth who's been lured by the siren call of reading, has a book stash that borders on small-library-branch-worthy. Sometimes she makes an attempt to rein it in, wrangling stray books and neglected titles into a bag or box to be sold to the used bookstore.

This brings us to Murphy's Rule of Bookstores #1:
The day one has finally mustered enough self-control to rid oneself of a significant number of books is the day that the used bookstore stocks the shelves with books that will sorely tempt that self-control and threaten to undo the progress made.

And Murphy's Rule #2:
The day after one has acquired a long-sought book is the day the used bookstore has said coveted book in stock.

Am I missing any rules here, bookish folks?

Classics

Small World Reads had a meme I simply could not pass up. After all, it involves books, I like books, and I also have been low on content as of late.

• What is the best classic you were “forced” to read in school (and why)?
• What was the worst classic you were forced to endure (and why)?
• Which classic should every student be required to read (and why)?
• Which classic should be put to rest immediately (and why)?

What is the best classic you were "forced" to read in school (and why)?
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Technically, I think I read this long before I was assigned it in a senior-level literature class in college. But when I read it for class, I was able to get so much more out of it--for the first time, I understood a book in terms of how it fit with its time period, understood how its narrative framing worked, and understood the critical debate surrounding it. In short, I had an amazing professor who made what might have otherwise been a "meh" sort of book into a fascinating one that became the basis of my senior thesis. And then I went on to get a Master's degree with an emphasis in Romantic-era literature...

What was the worst classic you were "forced" to endure (and why)?
I'm going with Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, not because it was necessarily that bad, but because I had to read it so many freakin' times. The heavy-handed symbolism can only be re-interpreted so many ways before the possibilities are exhausted.

Which classic should every student be required to read (and why)?
No title comes to mind right now, but it should be something accessible--not too old to be daunting, not young enough so as not to be tested by time. Not something overtly didactic, but not something too "fluffy." For all I know, this book may not exist. Or perhaps there are many books by this definition, and as many teachers to teach them to as many classes. In short, I don't believe there is one book every person should read. The literary canon is a good starting point, but by no means comprehensive or even applicable to every reader in every location or subculture.

Which classic should be put to rest immediately (and why)?
I think I answered this in the latter part of my response to the previous question.

More books

Inspired by a temporary (I hope) writing slump and a friend's new book review blog...

Five books I've read since the last reading post:


5. New Sudden Fiction: Short-Short Stories from America and Beyond. I just finished this one tonight, about a month after I started it. If you're interested in contemporary short fiction, this is a good starting place--it's accessible, and I was only rarely tempted to skip a story. When I've read other selections of short stories, they sometimes felt too abrupt, but these stories are paced well and feel complete.

4. Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil, Deborah Rodriguez. I wouldn't have picked up this book if I hadn't heard the author speaking at a literary festival I went to. I was impressed with the good humor and (com)passion with which she spoke about Afghanistan, where she initially went to do humanitarian work and ended up opening a beauty school and finding a sisterhood within its wall. The book's not an in-depth study of the culture (indeed, her cultural blunders are a frequent motif), nor is it particularly literary. It is, however, heartfelt. It provides a human face beyond the news images of burkas and AK-47s.

3. Tree By Leaf, Cynthia Voigt. Sometimes it just doesn't work so well to try and visit authors favored in one's adolescence. That's all.

2. Re-Birth (or The Chrysalids), John Wyndham. Sci fi rec from my boss. Classic motif of the society suspicious of mutation, with religious fundamentalism and evolution tossed in for good measure. (No, it's not about my home state, Kansas.) Some cataclysm, likely nuclear, has set society back, and mistrust of difference has been codified into religion, with any aberration considered a Blasphemy against God Himself to be banished to the wild Fringe. Against this backdrop, the protagonist has discovered he has the ability to communicate telepathically, a difference that naturally incurs the persecution of both him and the handful of others who also have the ability. In their flight, they learn more about the people in the Fringe and the people from further beyond, who each present a different definition of what it means to be in God's image, i.e. normal. Perhaps it was the young characters and the coming-of-age aspect, but this had the feel of YA fiction. Not that it's necessarily a bad thing, just an observation.

1. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Robert Heinlein. Another rec from my boss. This one takes place in 2075 (I'm pretty sure), when the moon has, much like Australia, been colonized initially as a penal colony. Like America, though, the "Loonies" have started to bristle beneath the colonial yoke. Protagonist Man, a computer engineer, finds himself drawn into planning a revolution along with firebrand revolutionary Wyoming (who, in typical fashion, starts out as a strong and independent woman and ends up taking a back seat...), a has-been professor, and a sentient computer with a sense of humor, Mike. The politics are intricate, the society's customs fascinating, the technology impressive (seriously, the NSA has nothing on Mike's capabilities), and the humor dry ("Never explain computers to laymen," Man says at one point, "Easier to explain sex to a virgin."). In typical English-major fashion, I was intrigued by the protagonist's syntax. In short, there's a little something for every reader in this one, although I will give a heads-up: this was, for whatever reason, a time-consuming read.

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Now playing: The (International) Noise Conspiracy - Guns for Everyone
via FoxyTunes

Recent reads

I keep lists of books I read in their entirety (if I toss a book aside partway, it doesn't count). Here are the last 5, in reverse chronological order, with commentary.

5. The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain: New Poems, Charles Bukowski. I've meant for a while to explore Bukowski's poetry beyond the occasional random poem or pop culture allusion. I enjoyed this collection, which covers a wide range of subjects from writing and poetry to social commentary to the women he knew to mortality. His style is very accessible and colloquial, if not a tad coarse at times. While a few poems seem to clunk along a bit, so many are filled with little gems of insight. I loved the poem "feeling fairly good tonight" for these lines:

Thou shalt not fail as a writer
because the very act of writing is the best protection
from the madness of the
world.

4. The Girl in Hyacinth Blue, Susan Vreeland. This novel traces in reverse order the ownership of a (fictitious) Vermeer painting, all the way back the painter and his subject. Along the way, the author explores the varying attitudes toward art and its role in everyday life, as well as how radically different meanings people can ascribe to the same piece of art. The book read like a series of short stories, and I clipped through it in an evening. It was interesting, but not earth-shattering by any means. Good escapist lit.

3. Messenger, Lois Lowry. Juvenile fiction (if it has chapters, it goes on the list). The reaction I seem to get re: Lois Lowry is something along the lines of, "Yeah, I know it's children's literature, but it's good." This is usually in regards to The Giver, a frequently challenged and thought-provoking book that can be read and re-read; I readily admit that I get more out of it now than I did the first time I read it. I'm digressing a bit. Sorry. I recently re-read The Giver and its companion novel Gathering Blue, and Messenger bridges the two and ties up loose ends and questions from the first two. Unfortunately, it ties up too many loose ends and almost, almost feels contrived. I might forgive this in another author, but Lowry set the bar high with the first two. Go read them instead.

2. Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood. This was one of the most disturbing, unsettling works of sci fi I've read in a while. And I mean that in a good way. As is the way with a lot of dystopic fiction, the pursuit of progress has backfired massively. In this case, genetic manipulation and the pursuit of perpetual youth have led to an extermination of the human population as we know it, leaving behind only "Snowman" and the childlike race he watches over. There's also a bit of a love story--triangle, actually--here, but it's the rise of enigmatic Crake that holds the narrative together. I highly recommend this one.

1. Straight Man, Richard Russo. Academic satire, recommended by a former prof. English departments, apparently, are a rich source for satire. The department chaired by Hank Devereaux Jr. is dysfunctional,--to say the least--paranoid, and petty. They are expecting budget cuts and are convinced their chair somehow has compiled a list of lay-offs. Hank's inability to give a straight, serious answer, as well as his contrarian nature don't help matters any. I... didn't really like this one. It seemed to lack the bite that fellow satirist David Lodge captured, relying instead on bodily humor and one-liners. Go read Nice Work or Small World instead if you'd like to see some real overeducated twits hoisted by their petards.

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Now playing: David Rovics - Anonymous / The Beggin'
via FoxyTunes

Found this list through the Bookcrossing.com forums: "The 9 Most Annoying People I Always See at the Bookstore." I will vouch for its validity. What gives me the credential? I, er, recognized the store in the picture as a Borders (corporate America is nifty like that--see one franchise, you've seen them all, whether it's the decor or layout).

I digress. A highlight:

FIRST-TIMERS
Hey, you who stormed in. Have you really never been to a bookstore before, or do you just enjoy drawing attention? You remind me of the old people I see at the post office who make buying a roll of stamps a 10-minute process of discovery and indecision. You gaze around in faux confusion for a moment before making a beeline for the help desk – or, aggravatingly to those of us waiting patiently in line, the checkout counter – and half-angrily ask, “Where’s (insert title here)?” as if you just arrived at the hospital emergency room and were looking for your trauma-victim daughter. Hey, Magellan, see those big signs hanging from the ceiling that point out the subject sections? That’s where you’ll find it. You’re in a nicely organized bookstore, not a vast warehouse of a Sam’s Club or Costco.

Some of the categories in the article are unique to huge chain stores (people who go just for an overpriced coffee), while others are more universal, like the above excerpt. Still, there's a way to avoid many of them: find your own local and/or used bookstores. It truly is a different demographic, generally scruffy looking college students and eccentrics. Bonus? If they're in the store buying, chances are they've sold back to said store--and what interesting reads I've found in the used book stores. That cuts down half the annoyances and certainly brings an element of serendipity to the book hunt and likely save money.

Of course, my problem is this: I can resist the $20 book I don't really need. It's the 20 books for $1 apiece that I can't pass by. Oi vey, this weekend ended up being a book binge.

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Now playing: David Rovics - Pray For The Dead And Fight Like Hell For The Living
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Multimedia Friday: Cormac McCarthy interview

One of the best books I read last year was Cormac McCarthy's The Road, followed in rapid succession by Blood Meridian. I read the latter upon recommendation from a friend and the former in spite of the dubious distinction of it being an Oprah book club pick.

Since then, I'm trying to read whatever McCarthy works I can get my hands on; currently, I'm working on Suttree.

McCarthy doesn't do too many interviews. One exception was an interview with Oprah. It was . . . good in some respects; you get a sense of some of his underlying philosophical and aesthetic ideas. And on the other hand, well, it appeared on Oprah. Some of the questions are asinine or downright obvious, but hey. Win some, lose some.

For this week's Multimedia Friday, I'm posting the first of the six videos someone was good enough to put up on Youtube so we snobs don't have to register with Oprah's site to view them. Enjoy.



And that's all I've got. I love that spring's finally here, but my allergies and sinuses sure don't.

Who you calling bookworm?

I have nothing against lending books to people. Most of the time I get them back, and if I don't, well, I hope the other person enjoys the book as much as I did. It's as simple as that. None of my books are rare first editions, and given that I buy used when I can, they usually are a bit worn already. Very rarely will I write in them, and if I do, it's usually to underline a striking passage.

But I wonder if anyone I lent books to within the last year or so noticed the notched pages.

I turn down as teensy a corner as possible on pages that have striking passages. Some books, like Blood Meridian and The Phantom Tollbooth, have about every other page notched. Why not just write, add my marginalia? I could, but frankly, I'm lazy. And besides, my system marks the page, not the passage, so I actually have to re-read to find it when I flip back through. And it's less obtrusive, more subject to interpretation. I may find the first line of page 97 stunning, but another person could skim over the page and find a gem of a quote in the second paragraph, and on re-read #2 or 20, I may fall in love with the last sentence of the third paragraph. Reading is, and always should be, about discovery.

Flipping through some of my books, I found this page marked in Herman Hesse's Demian, which I read for the first time this summer; on the heels of graduation, it spoke to me then. It still resonates:

"At this point a sharp realization burned within me: each man has his 'function' but none which he can choose himself, define, or perform as he pleases. It was wrong to desire new gods, completely wrong to want to provide the world with something. An enlightened man had but one duty--to seek the way to himself, to reach inner certainty, to grope his way forward, no matter where it led. The realization shook me profoundly, it was the fruit of this experience. I had often speculated with images of the future, dreamed of roles that I might be assigned, perhaps as poet or prophet or painter, or something similar.

All that was futile. I did not exist to write poems, to preach or to paint, neither I nor anyone else. All of that was incidental. Each man had only one genuine vocation--to find the way to himself. He might end up as a poet or a madman, as prophet or criminal--that was not his affair, ultimately it was of no concern. His task was to discover his own destiny--not an arbitrary one--and live it out wholly and resolutely within himself. Everything else was only a would-be existence, an attempt at evasion, a flight back to the ideals of the masses, conformity and fear of one's inwardness. The new vision rose up before me, glimpsed a hundred times, possibly even expressed before but now experienced for the first time by me. I was an experiment on the part of Nature, a gamble within the unknown, perhaps for a new purpose, perhaps for nothing, and my only task was to allow this game on the part of primeval depths to take its course, to feel its will within me and make it wholly mine. That or nothing!"

Awesome quote to start off a new year, yes? I need to re-read the whole book now.

Food for thought

Someone recently shared with me one of those stop-and-make-you-think quotes from Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. I've read it before (am about due for a re-read, actually), but if you haven't yet, it's a great book; most people are probably familiar with its anti-censorship theme, though Bradbury himself recently said it was actually about the dangers posed to reading by too much television watching. Either interpretation yields a rich, relevant message, and I look forward to re-reading the book with a new interpretive lens. Bradbury is a brilliant writer with brilliant ideas, including this one:

Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there. It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.

I read the quote once, was ready to pass it over, and stopped to process. I wonder, really, what I've touched and left an impression on--it's not the sort of thing we tend to think about in the rush, rush, rush of the daily grind. I teach, true, and I make some hand-crafted things; perhaps it's self-deprecation, but I don't think I've left my mark. Yet. And I wonder what that mark, that touch, will be, and on whom, and when. I like his word choice--touch--to reach out, to connect, to make meaningful contact, physical or otherwise, with another human being. It seems to be increasingly missing in our daily interactions. But I digress...

What about you? Who or what have you touched? What will you leave behind?

So many books, so little time

It's said that booklovers never sleep alone. I can top that (yeah, that's what she said). I like multiple books, often at the same time, for a little bed(side) variety. Right now, I'm reading The Zombie Survival Guide, Tim O' Brien's The Things They Carried, several recent issues of National Geographic, and Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire. Which one I read depends on my mood, and there are nights when I'm just too tired or have a headache. Lately, Desert Solitaire's been my pick.

Whoever sold it to the used bookstore originally bought it at an information center in Moab, Utah. I'm jealous. If the land is half as beautiful as Abbey describes it, the scenery must be breath-taking. However, it's not just about the scenery. Not at all. Abbey writes in the introduction,

This is not primarily a book about the desert. In recording my impressions of the natural scene I have striven above all for accuracy, since I believe that there is a kind of poetry, even a kind of truth, in simple fact. But the desert is a vast world, an oceanic world, as deep in its way and complex and various as the sea. Language makes a mighty loose net with which to go fishing for simple facts, when facts are infinite. If a man knew enough he could write a whole book about the juniper tree. Not juniper trees in general but that one particular juniper tree which grows from a ledge of naked sandstone near the old entrance to Arches National Monument. What I have tried to do then is something a bit different. Since you cannot get the desert into a book any more than a fisherman can haul up the sea with his nets, I have tried to create a world of words in which the desert figures more as a medium than as material. Not imitation but evocation has been the goal.

And from what I've read so far, he succeeds. Even throws in a bit of metaphysics. My own spirituality has been in what could, in the grandest of understatements, be referred to as a state of flux. In trying to sort that mess out, I'm not finding satisfactory answers in trite organized religions' tracts. Instead, I'm drawn to personal testimonies-- no, "testimonies" seems too didactic. Accounts. Questionings. Musings. Perhaps what I mean is personal spiritual experiences. (Even here I struggle with how to define spirituality, and even my final answer seems inadequate. And I'm quibbling with semantics, not the actual substance. A little more tussling, and I may have the exact word that I want, but no answer to the underlying question. I prefer words.)

Off track there. Sorry. That was supposed to lead into another great quote from Abbey. From a descriptive passage, he leads in to a description of a huge rock near the arches:

it looks like a head from Easter Island, a stone god or a petrified ogre. Like a god, like an ogre? The personification of the natural is exactly the tendency I wish to suppress in myself, to eliminate for good. I am here not only to evade for a while the clamor and filth and confusion of the cultural apparatus but also to confront, immediately and directly if it's possible, the bare bones of existence, the elemental and fundamental, the bedrock which sustains us. I want to be able to look at and into a juniper tree, a piece of quartz, a vulture, a spider, and see it as it is in itself, devoid of all humanly ascribed qualities, anti-Kantian, even the categories of scientific description. To meet God or Medusa face to face, even if it means risking everything human in myself. I dream of a hard and brutal mysticism in which the naked self merges with a non-human world and yet somehow survives still intact, individual, separate. Paradox and bedrock.

His words were what got me at first. There's poetry in his writing, and when I re-read the passage the first time, it was because I loved the way they sounded. Then I got into the ideas. We've still got a fair trace of romanticism in our culture, and the idea of going out into nature to find ourselves or some objective truth, removed from the sullying effects of "civilization," still resonates. What he proposes, at least in this passage, seems impossible. We're so caught up in ourselves and in the world we've created, we can't help but impose our all-too-human and all-too-fallible structures on our surroundings. If it's our humanity that makes us push for some metaphysical truth, and giving up that humanity is what it takes to find it... The idea is terrifying.

Urgh. My head hurts now. Mr. Abbey can sleep on my desk tonight.

"Not all who wander are lost"

Once again, Friday finds me exhausted, thanks to a long week of grading and teaching and hibernating in the odd moments in between.

I needed to break the routine today, the routine of "home, work, repeat ad nauseum." So I went to the library, ostensibly to get audio books for my grandmother to listen to in place of Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage. And I did get her books on tape, but I'd be lying if I said the time I spent wandering the rows of books was spent looking for her.

I associate the library with familiarity and relaxation, having practically grown up in various libraries. As far as I was concerned, the library was one cool place to hang out, whether it was the huge downtown branch of my childhood (there were globes about as big as I was! and they had a card catalog, which I knew how to use! and they knew me there!) or the first library I found when my family moved to a new city. Come to think of it, with an outlook like that, I never had a chance to be anything but a nerd. I didn't have many friends, but that was OK; friends often grow apart with time, but books and libraries are lasting friends.

The branch I went to today is one of the more familiar ones; I used to know a few of the librarians. I didn't see a familiar face there today, but I wasn't heartbroken--like the classic introvert that I am, I prefer my own company when I'm tired and overwhelmed. Books don't infringe on my solitude.

I wandered the rows of books without much order. I dabbled a bit in the nonfiction, hovering in the aisle with the literature books for a bit, searching for some poetry. I didn't find anything that tickled my fancy, though I did pick up some Thoreau, skimming through excerpts from Walden to land on a passage, ironically, about the value of solitude. After that, I darted over to the large print books, and then I wandered around in search of audio books. Finally, having completed the task I came for, I wandered fiction for a bit. I wasn't looking for any specific book or even reading titles; I just skimmed across the spines, pulling out an interesting looking one and just as arbitrarily putting it back. There were books at my fingertips and the smell of paper around me--doesn't get much better than that. My students had once again irritated me, so I was unwinding a bit. Once I had uncoiled, I paid more attention to the books themselves, bypassing the ones that had heart stickers on the spines (romance) and skulls (mysteries), largely ignoring the stickers that indicated a book was religious in nature--in short, ignoring the genre fiction. I didn't know what I was looking for, but I knew what I didn't want, and from there, I found a few books that may or may not be read by the time they're due in a month.

Still, it wasn't about the books themselves. I probably check out twice as many books as I actually read when I go to the library. The library itself and being surrounded by the books is the real draw. A much more efficient way would be to use the library catalog to make sure a specific book is there, or even place a hold if a book isn't, and I do these things when there is a specific book I want. But efficiency is something we have far too much of already; sometimes we need to slow down and be deliciously inefficient. So I wander libraries, enjoying the books and the quiet, lost only in my own thoughts.

Soapbox time

My mama raised a reader. I was allowed to run around in libraries, reading what I chose. I read and re-read the Little House books numerous times, but I'd also read, like any '80s-born girl, the Baby Sitters Club books. I liked the Choose Your Own Adventure books, but I also read Little Women and Anne of Green Gables (multiple times on both counts). The Secret Garden. Hatchet. Bridge to Terabithia. The Chronicles of Narnia. The Outsiders. A Light in the Attic.

At some point, when I showed signs of becoming too involved with the BSC books at the expense of "better quality" literature, my mother started steering me toward books like Robert Cormier's The Chocolate War, Jane Austen's novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. I resisted at first, largely due to the coercion factor (I've never liked being told what to do, and my adolescent self was particularly stubborn... unlike, say, now).

Slowly, though, I began to pick up those books on my own. I had the benefit of reading The Lord of the Flies on my own, not as assigned reading. The Giver was another I picked up and enjoyed and still re-read from time to time. I also read and loved 1984. Judy Blume's books were favorites of mine for a while, especially Tiger Eyes. Caroline Cooney's books were also up there on my "it" list. I've dabbled in Stephen King's books, and just last year read Catcher in the Rye for the first time, followed by the perks of being a wallflower.

Somewhere between my resistance to my mother's wishes and when I began to pick up the books on my own was where I found out about the concept of "Banned Books." Like any rebellious teen, the controversy made me seek out these forbidden books. I did so with my mother's blessing.

I was never forbidden from reading anything. Did I ever pick up books that were maybe a little too "mature" for me? Yes, and I was probably more strict a censor of my own reading than any well-intentioned adult would have been. Kissing? Umm... I think I'll skip that part. Uh-oh... he's touching--I think I'll return this book. "Bad" words made me squirm, but I think I either mentally bleeped them out, or else I secretly reveled in reading them, careful not to think them too loudly to myself. I may have been a strange child, but I knew my own limitations, and as I got older and more curious, I read edgier things. The concept of anyone trying to dictate who can read what, and moreover, trying to dictate what is and isn't "appropriate" for others, is one that strikes me as puritanical.

People who know me know that I will read just about anything. They also know that this whole "banned books" issue is one of my soapbox issues. Since I found the ALA's list of "100 Most Frequently Challenged Books 1990-2000," I've made it a personal goal to read every book on it. So far, I've read about a third.

This week is, if you've followed any of the links, Banned Books Week. It's as good a time as any to pick up a new book, or else dust off an old favorite. Chances are, some book you enjoyed is on any of the lists of challenged books floating around the Internet. Heck, if you broaden your criteria for "challenged" material, the list includes John Locke, The Canterbury Tales, Candide, and any number of Shakespeare's plays. There's a lot of good stuff out there that someone, sometime, somewhere, thought you shouldn't be able to read. Doesn't that just make you want to defy them?

Or if that won't, try this: Those books have been deemed subversive, sexually explicit, violent, offensive, and "too negative." Sounds like a ringing endorsement to me.

The beauty of silence

Over this summer, I've been reading voraciously--"literary" fiction, children's books, whatever I can get my hands on. I can never quite silence my English major's analysis as I read, but I've been marking passages of books that struck me as especially beautiful or thought-provoking, learning once again just to savor the words and ideas and images.

To break up the gloom of my latest Cormac McCarthy binge, I'm working on Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth. I missed this one as a kid, but now's as good a time as any to rectify that. Many passages either make me chuckle or groan with their puns and wordplay, but I found this one thought-provoking:

Milo walked slowly down the long hallway and into the little room where the Soundkeeper sat listening intently to an enormous radio set, whose switches, dials, knobs, meters, and speaker covered one whole wall, and which at the moment was playing nothing.

"Isn't that lovely?" she sighed. "It's my favorite program--fifteen minutes of silence--and after that there's a half hour of quiet and then an interlude of lull. Why, did you know that there are almost as many kinds of stillness as there are sounds? But, sadly enough, no one pays any attention to them these days.

"Have you ever heard the wonderful silence just before the dawn?" she inquired. "Or the quiet and calm just as a storm ends? Or perhaps you know the silence when you haven't the answer to a question you've been asked, or the hush of a country road at night, or the expectant pause in a roomful of people when someone is just about to speak, or, most beautiful of all, the moment after the door closes and you're all alone in the whole house? Each one is different, you know, and all very beautiful, if you listen carefully."

A bit didactic, perhaps, but it never hurts to be reminded.