Booking Through Thursday, 4.September

"PEER PRESSURE
I" was looking through books yesterday at the shops and saw all the Twilight books, which I know basically nothing about. What I do know is that I’m beginning to feel like I’m the *only* person who knows nothing about them.

"Despite being almost broke and trying to save money, I almost bought the expensive book (Australian book prices are often completely nutty) just because I felt the need to be ‘up’ on what everyone else was reading.

"Have you ever felt pressured to read something because ‘everyone else’ was reading it? Have you ever given in and read the book(s) in question or do you resist? If you are a reviewer, etc, do you feel it’s your duty to keep up on current trends?"

When I was in junior high school, all the girls were abuzz over the Little House books, by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I was one of the unpopular girls, so it was awhile before I even learned the name of the series. After giving it exactly one try, I found the books too tame and easy for my tastes, so I returned them to the library. Was that peer pressure, or was it curiosity?

That was the first time I jumped on the bandwagon. The second time was when I joined a social group and read reference after reference to the Dune series, by Frank Herbert, in the monthly newsletters. I wanted at least an idea of what everyone talked about, so I tried one. It was love at first sight. The first three books entertained me for hours. Again, I think it was curiosity, not peer pressure.

Nowadays, though, I tend to resist bandwagon jumping at all, in anything. Why? I don't know. Perhaps there is little attraction to being or doing what the crowd is or does; the Road Less Traveled, don'tcha know. I am somewhat curious about things that "everybody" likes, and about a great many other things too, but I am very selective, now.

Booking Through Thursday, 28.August 2008

"If you’re anything like me, one of your favorite reasons to read is for the story. Not for the character development and interaction. Not because of the descriptive, emotive powers of the writer. Not because of deep, literary meaning hidden beneath layers of metaphor. (Even though those are all good things.) No … it’s because you want to know what happens next?

"Or, um, is it just me?"


Whether fiction or nonfiction, the thing that drives my interest is "what happens next," most of the time. In nonfiction where I know the basics of the story, I read to learn all the details. In fiction, I read not only for the plot, but also for the beauty and depth and richness of the language. A good plot cannot, for me, make up for clumsy or poor writing. I'll toss a book aside before I'll plod through mediocrity. I must confess to feeling this way about nonfiction, too. If a writer wants me to invest my time and interest, he has to produce something worth my while in more ways than one.
As a teenager, I put up with bad writing in order to see how the plots came out, but I skimmed along enough to glean the essentials only. I was more tolerant, then.
But I'll tell you something that really frosts my flakes: absurd twists in the tales. I go crazy when I invest time in a book only to have a plot resolution come completely out of left field. I understand that writers want to have clever plot twists, unable to be guessed, but do me a favor! Please, folks, don't insult us readers by pulling the ol' "it was all a dream" ending or something equally ridiculous.

Booking Through Thursday, 7.August

OTHER WORLDS
suggested by Miko
Are there any particular worlds in books where you’d like to live?

Or where you certainly would NOT want to live?

What about authors? If you were a character, who would you trust to write your life?

(This came to me when reviewing a Jonathan Carroll book - I’m not sure I’d like to live in the worlds of his books.)

I love the little villages and towns in English cozy mysteries. They sound charming - - filled with flowers, bowers and showers - - and the inhabitants often seem like people I'd enjoy knowing. But then again, so many folks in these places drop dead, and nearly always in nasty, horrid ways! Newcomers seem especially likely prey. So, although I'd like to visit or live there, I'm quite sure it would be hazardous to my health.

Booking Through Thursday, 17.July

"VACATION SPOTS
"Another question inspired by the Bunch of Grapes on Martha’s Vineyard having burned down on the Fourth of July.

"Do you buy books while on vacation/holiday?

"Do you have favorite bookstores that you only get to visit while away on a trip?

"What/Where are they?

"I’m still devastated about the Bunch of Grapes, even though I usually only got to visit it once or twice a year–it was such a vital part of my trips to Martha’s Vineyard. Its (hopefully temporary) loss won’t affect my day-to-day book habits, but it was such a wonderful store on one of my favorite places. Stopping there was such a strong tradition, and I’m going to miss it as part of my vacations. But it made me think–I always buy books when I’m away from home. They’re as much of a trip-souvenir as any t-shirt or trinket. Better, even! And it occurs to me that I can’t be the only one of us who does that, huh?"

It is, to me, a singular pleasure to have the time and leisure to shop for books while vacationing. It is treasured time to be anticipated as much as any other component of getting away from it all. I also enjoy the serendipitous times that permit spontaneous book shopping such as happened when I was near bookstalls at train stations.
Three of my best-loved vacation bookshops closed their doors several years ago. Imagine a rabbit warren furnished with close-packed, overflowing bookshelves, and you have the Brynn Mawr-Vassar Book Store in the Oakland section of Pittsburgh, Pa. A friend introduced me to it in the 1970s. The other bookshops were in downtown Pittsburgh, and they are closed now, too. I no longer remember their names. One of those downtown places was also a stationer's shop, a delight for me. A beautiful cat, named Smoky, was in residence and presided over the shop. The other store specialized in old, rare, out-of-print and unusual books. There was always something to see there. It was somewhat seedy, and the proprietors were peculiar, just the sort of place one reads about or sees in movies. It was the perfect setting for a murder mystery or ,perhaps, a magical fantasy.

My favorite bookshop is still a going concern, but I've been unable to visit it in a couple of years. It offers a dozen rooms of books in a graceful, old house that sat on a picturesque, green and tree-shaded city square. The shop was well-stocked and neat as a pin. It offered knowledgeable, personable clerks plus - - of all things - - a sweet dachshund that trotted freely among the rooms.

Booking Through Thursday, 10.July

"DOOMSDAY
"One of my favorite bookstores burned down last weekend, and while I only got to visit there while I was on vacation, it made me stop and think.

"What would you do if, all of a sudden, your favorite source of books was unavailable?

"Whether it’s a local book shop, your town library, or an internet shop … what would you do if, suddenly, they were out of business? Devastatingly, and with no warning? Where would you go for books instead? What would you do? If it was a local business you would try to help out the owners? Would you just calmly start buying from some other store? Visit the library in the next town instead? Would it be devastating? Or just a blip in your reading habit?"

A fire destroyed a bookshop in the city where I lived in the early 1990s. Newspaper coverage documented the grief and mourning of the shop's regular customers.

But that was in the days when newspapers were a societal stronghold, and before the advent of bookshops-cum-public livingrooms. Nowadays, I think most people suddenly bereft of their favorite spots would, by and large, have no trouble switching to any of the online booksellers. The Internet has supplanted Place with twenty-four hour availability and ease, among other things.

I lost my favorite bookshops over the years when I moved to other parts of the country. My last such place provided an experience, not just a place to buy then dash. It had all the things one thinks of when shopping in a small place: personal attention, atmosphere, character and moment. I miss it.

Local options here are the chain bookstores - - offering the chance to sit on chairs only 5,000 other people sat in before you! - - where I would pay full retail prices, and a secondhand-book store that will order new books on request. On a friend's recommendation I visited the latter...once. The dust was thick and the books greasy and grimy. I changed my reading habits to include the occasional visit to the (noisy!) local library for books I request ahead of time by phone.

Booking through Thursday

Do you have a favourite book, now out of print, that you would like to see become available again?

The White Witch, by Elizabeth Goudge. I've been reading this book (almost) yearly since I was sixteen, and it never has lost its magic. Goude's writing style is simultaneously descriptive and spare, conjuring the intimacy of half-gypsy Froniga's herb-filled cottage, as well as the violent world during the time of Cromwell. To this day, the scent of rose or lavender brings me back to the first time I read the book, and I imagine myself in another life, creating rose-petal conserve, perhaps - melanie

Booking through Thursday

Would you say that you read about the same amount now as when you were younger? More? Less? Why?

When I first read this question, I wondered...My goodness, how can I quantify my reading? Is "reading more" equal to finishing more books? Spending more time reading? Reading fatter books? Finishing more books?

I've always been a voracious and indelicate reader. I'll read almost anything except (and sorry, I don't mean to be a snob here, I just can't get into...) romances (and that says more about me than about the genre, trust me). I go through binges where I'll read nothing but biographies, or nothing but an entire series of paperback mysteries, or the entire works of Barbara Pym (for the 18th time, at least). Other times, I'll read poetry, or go through art books, or read Barbara Walker's stitch dictionaries as if they were cookbooks. (Actually, I don't read cookbooks. I don't cook.) I'll read Wilkie Collins, Stephen King (love his book on writing!), Charles de Lint, Alfred Bester, Louisa May Alcott...

Is this more or less than I read when I was younger? Well, obviously, I have a full-time job, and a full-time house, and a full-time husband... so I have less time to read. That doesn't mean I read less, and it doesn't mean that I don't get as engrossed in a book as I once did. If anything, I appreciate the time I grab for reading, knitting, and writing letters more than when I was young. (I appreciate everything more now, but that's another post.)

I think that's my answer. I can't really quantify whether I read more or less, but I appreciate my reading and time more.

melanie

Booking through Thursday

This week's question:

• I would enjoy reading a meme about people’s abandoned books. The books that you start but don’t finish say as much about you as the ones you actually read, sometimes because of the books themselves or because of the circumstances that prevent you from finishing. So . . . what books have you abandoned and why?

The book that comes to mind: Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections. I became interested in it when Oprah announced it.

• No, I do not read all of Oprah's books. I don't even like Oprah. In fact, sometimes I really dislike Oprah. But that's another story. Oprah has chosen some fine books. The Reader, for example, and We Were the Mulvaneys. I read the translation of Anna Karenina she chose because it had been years since I'd read AK and I wanted to experience her through a newer sensibility than Constance Garnett's.

Another admission: sometimes I allow my feelings about an author to color my response to the book. If Joyce Carol Oates or Cynthia Ozick has written it, I'm predisposed to love it. In this case, the whole Franzen/Oprah flap predisposed me to disliking the book because, much as I don't like Oprah, I think that any author who chucks an opportunity to meet a huge and hungry audience is foolish.

And dislike it I did - on its lack of merit. I got through, maybe, 70 pages before I chucked it. I hated every character, I didn't care about what they were doing or where, and I found myself thinking that Franzen should have been very grateful indeed to have had such mass exposure.

melanie

Booking through Thursday

Okay . . . picture this (really) worst-case scenario: It’s cold and raining, your boyfriend/girlfriend has just dumped you, you’ve just been fired, the pile of unpaid bills is sky-high, your beloved pet has recently died, and you think you’re coming down with a cold. All you want to do (other than hiding under the covers) is to curl up with a good book, something warm and comforting that will make you feel better.

What do you read?

(Any bets on how quickly somebody says the Bible or some other religious text? A good choice, to be sure, but to be honest, I was thinking more along the lines of fiction…. Unless I laid it on a little strong in the string of catastrophes? Maybe I should have just stuck to catching a cold on a rainy day….)

This one is easy. I read Emily Dickinson. She has been through it all, and can see me through all. (Fiction Just Will Not Do!)

The soul has moments of Escape-
When bursting all the doors-
She dances like a Bomb, abroad-
And swings upon the Hours,

As do the Bee - delirious borne-
Long Dungeoned from his rose-
Touch Liberty- then know no more
But Noon, and Paradise -

melanie

Booking through Thursday

Are you a Goldilocks kind of reader?

Do you need the light just right, the background noise just so loud but not too loud, the chair just right, the distractions at a minimum?

Or can you open a book at any time and dip right in, whether it’s for twenty seconds, while waiting for the kettle to boil, or indefinitely, like while waiting interminably at the hospital–as long as the book is open in front of your nose, you’re happy to read?

I am neither Goldilocks nor the Princess and the Pea. I can read anywhere, anytime, in any situation - unless the light is bad, in which case I become The Beast (only without his more attractive qualities...)

melanie

Booking through Thursday

There was a widely bruited-about statistic reported last week, stating that 1 in 4 Americans did not read a single book last year. Clearly, we don’t fall into that category, but . . . how many of our friends do? Do you have friends/family who read as much as you do? Or are you the only person you know who has a serious reading habit?

I was not surprised by the statistic. As a librarian for almost thirty years, I have seen how reading habits have changed. Where once, patrons would stagger to the circulation desk with a dozen books to check out, now they have three or four. Where once, we would have to buy a dozen copies of the latest bestseller, now we buy three or four. Perhaps, some of this trend can be attributed to the online booksellers, whose deeply-discounted prices make it more attractive to buy a best-seller than to wait for 3-4 weeks to get it from the library. More likely, people who once were casual readers have become less likely to read for any of a million reasons - I won't bore you with my cynical list of possibilities.

One of the details in the MSN article caught my attention - the notion that women are less likely than men to read biographies . I won't generalize from myself, since I'm a fiend for biographies, especially if they're about literary or intrepid women. (I'm itching to read the new biography of Gertrude Bell, for example.) I will generalize from my women friends, though - they (we) all read history, biographies, science, all manner of nonfiction, and we discuss amongst ourselves.

Another detail - or omission - from the article made me wonder whether the survey included audio books. I've seen discussions and debates on whether audio books count as "reading" - for example, check out this excellent post by Moonfrog and the comments below - and I've been rather surprised by some of the conclusions. For the record, I think that any medium that lets you absorb the author's words qualifies as reading - and I wonder who amongst the scoffers would tell, say, blind people that they aren't reading their "Books on Tape."

So, do my friends and family read as much as I do? Friends, yes, but wouldn't you expect that we'd choose friends whose passions complement our own? In fact, some friends astound me with the number of books they read, especially since they also knit amazing things, create and sustain splendid gardens, raise excellent children, work time-intensive jobs....Would that I had the energy and time-management skills to keep up with them!

(Family - not as much. Alas.)

melanie

Booking through Thursday : Indoctrination

When growing up did your family share your love of books? If so, did one person get you into reading? And, do you have any family-oriented memories with books and reading? (Family trips to bookstore, reading the same book as a sibling or parent, etc.)

My family reads. Always read. Always will read. It's our nature to read. No matter what else we do or don't do, that remains constant.
My best family-oriented book memory is a trip to the big Barnes & Noble store on Fifth Avenue in the late 1950s. While my mother was looking for art books about The Floating World, I wandered around the used-book section, where I found a lovely Everyman's Library copy of Jane Eyre, bound in red cloth, and only a dollar or two. I had a dollar or two. Reader, I bought it, read it, and still read it.

melanie

Booking through Thursday

One book at a time? Or more than one? If more, are they different types/genres? Or similar?

(We’re talking recreational reading, here—books for work or school don’t really count since they’re not optional.)

Monogamy? HAH! No way. I have no discipline, no plan, almost no discernment. Whatever comes along, if it looks delectable, I will taste it.

As for what I read - No rhyme, no reason - No, that's not true, because I am apt to be reading poetry and non-fiction together, along with fiction, which can be anything from classics to children's books.

(In fact, I have just joined a read-and-knit-along for Anne of Green Gables, and I'm looking forward to it as I would look forward to curling up with ice water and peppermints... no, that's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, which I also want to reread...)

melanie

Booking through Thursday

Have you ever written an author a fan letter?
Did you get an answer?
Did it spark a conversation? A meeting?


I've written to a few authors, but only received three responses. Joseph Epstein, whose collection of essays, The Middle of My Tether, delighted me, sent a typed postcard thanking me for my comments. Laurie Colwin wrote a short note. And Joan Didion, to whom I sent a letter of condolence on the death of her husband, sent a personal note on her lovely blue stationery.

I've met authors, but not through letters, only at book signings: Joyce Carol Oates, Alexandra Stoddard, Dominick Dunne, Alan Dershowitz, Marvin Kitman...

(Have you read Carolyn See's Making a Literary Life? One of the suggestions she makes is to write letters to authors. I really should write one to her.)

teabird

Booking through Thursday

Who’s the worst fictional villain you can think of? As in, the one you hate the most, find the most evil, are happiest to see defeated? Not the cardboard, two-dimensional variety, but the most deliciously-written, most entertaining, best villain? Not necessarily the most “evil,” so much as the best-conceived on the part of the author…oh, you know what I mean!

The worst villain: Gilbert Osmond in The Portrait of a Lady. He devours innocence and freedom for sheer sport - ruining Isobel's life, Pansy's life - even Ralph Touchett's, in a way, as his sufferings are multiplied by his generosity. Osmond's delight in the trappings of wealth and culture makes his heartlessness even more ironic.

melanie

Booking through Thursday

Okay, love him or loathe him, you’d have to live under a rock not to know that J.K. Rowling’s final Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, comes out on Saturday… Are you going to read it? This Ravenclaw will be reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows the moment it arrives from Amazon.uk. If I don't get it by Saturday, I'll have to hide in my closet to keep from being spoiled.

1. If so, right away? Or just, you know, eventually, when you get around to it? Are you attending any of the midnight parties? See above. I won't attend parties, but I will talk with my stuffed Hedwigs. It will be a comfort to us both.
   
2. If you’re not going to read it, why not?
3. And, for the record… what do you think? Will Harry survive the series? What are you most looking forward to? I am in the "Snape is a good guy" queue because I trust Dumbledore completely. I think he took Harry on the quest for the Horcrux as a rite of passage, to toughen him and to ensure that he could do anything necessary to vanquish (hiss) Voldemort. It was Harry's Bardo, facing what he feared, and he got through it.
   

teabird

Booking through Thursday

What with yesterday being the Fourth of July and all, I’m feeling a little patriotic, and so have a simple question:What, in your opinion, is the (mythical) Great American Novel? At least to date. A “classic,” or a current one–either would be fine. Mark Twain? J.D. Salinger? F. Scott Fitzgerald? Stephen King? Laura Ingalls Wilder?It doesn’t have to be your favorite book, mind you. “Citizen Kane” may be the “best” film, and I concede its merits, but it’s not my favorite. You don’t have to love something to know that it’s good.Now, I know that not all of you are American–but you can play, too! What I want from you is to know what you consider to the best novel of YOUR country. It might be someone the rest of us haven’t heard of and, frankly, I think we’d all like to get some new authors to read.In fact, while we’re at it–I’m curious about the geographical make-up of this meme. So, while you’re leaving your link to your post, tell us where in the world you are! (For the record, I’m in New Jersey, USA.)


My choice for the Great American Novel may not even be a novel ( it might be a novella): Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote. On one level, it's a light story about a golddigger who befriends a writer, moves into his apartment, and shows him the decidedly atypical slice of American life she has tried to enter.

Glam, bohemian parties present a background for a lonely, lovely woman who loves the glitter and freedom she found when she left her home, but fears attachments. She calls the men who give her the "tips" she lives on "rats," and she calls her cat "Cat" because a real name for the animal would represent too much of an attachment. Despite the patina of sophistication, she remains a naive, small-town girl who misses her brother and who allows herself to become an unwitting carrier of information for a jailed mobster.

I've always thought of Breakfast at Tiffany's as another iteration of the themes that F. Scott Fitzgerald iterated in The Great Gatsby. Like Jay Gatsby, Holly Golightly has come east to establish a glittering life for herself. Where Gatsby stared at the green light at the end of the pier where his unattainable Daisy lived and flung jewel-toned shirts to impress her, Holly stares at the unattainable jewels behind the windows of Tiffany's and tries to impress with witticisms. Both Holly and Gatsby are victims of the criminals and wastelands that underlie the glamour of New York.

(Incidentally, I love the film except for the gruesome, goggle-eyed, bucktoothed-gargoyle depiction of the Chinese landlord. Was such a depiction ever acceptable, or funny?)

I'm from Long Island, New York, which explains my affinity for both of Gatsby's Eggs and Holly's Manhattan.


posted by melanie

Booking through Thursday

What’s the most desperate thing you’ve read because it was the only available reading material?If it was longer than a cereal box or an advertisement, did it turn out to be worth your while?

Yes, it was. I was on vacation in Vermont, and there was almost nothing to read in the cabin. (It was bad enough being in the cabin, for reasons I rather would forget.) I'd brought along quite a few books, and I had read them all, so I started to examine the shelves, hoping I'd missed something readable amongst the fishing, hunting, and small-engine-repair manuals -- and I had : Island by Aldous Huxley. It was, as you can imagine, worth reading.
(It's been 27 years since I read it, and I have included it on my Dystopian Challenge for this summer, because it will be, as you can imagine, worth re-visiting -- especially since I won't be reading it while suffering through a my own, isolated dystopia.)
melanie

"Booking Through Thursday"

"Desperation
"What’s the most desperate thing you’ve read because it was the only available reading material? If it was longer than a cereal box or an advertisement, did it turn out to be worth your while? "
Labels! Toothpaste tubes, shampoo bottles, food labels of every sort, vacuum cleaner manuals, appliance warnings - - I've read them all and more in times of wild-eyed, panting, hair-on-end reading desperation. Many of those times were during adolescence when I was literally unable to do without reading something every waking moment.
Did it ever turn out to be worth my while? Sometimes. I found recipes on food labels, including one very tasty recipe that I've never been able to locate again in thirty years. I found some hilarious warning labels over the years, warnings that could almost cause one to despair over the state of mankind. I mean, really, who knew there were enough people who tried to use blow-dryers while showering or bathing to make warning labels necessary, or that enough people used shop vacs to pick up hazardous waste so that the manual had to tell us not do that? Thanks to my desperation reading, I learned that there is a myriad of misuses of everyday things.
(submitted by Moon Rani)

Booking through Thursday

Since school is out for the summer (in most places, at least), here’s a school-themed question for the week:

1. Do you have any old school books? Did you keep yours from college? Old textbooks from garage sales? Old workbooks from classes gone by?
2. How about your old notes, exams, papers? Do you save them? Or have they long since gone to the great Locker-in-the-sky?
   

Old school books - yes, I have some - a collection of Victorian prose, in case I want to dip into Carlyle and Pater again, a book about archetypes in literature for the course I took in Irish literature, a Donald Keene collection of Japanese fiction for a one-person seminar with a professor who was almost too grateful to have a captive student, The Riverside Shakespeare, and various science fiction novels written by women for a dissertation proposal. The novels are the only books I kept from my Masters, which some might find odd, since my Masters is in Library Science, and some might think the texts would have been useful. Some might be wrong wrong wrong.

Notes, exams, papers - some. I have a box of notebooks in the garage from my fifth undergrad stint. (No, I don't have five undergrad degrees. I took the long way.) Since I haven't opened the box since 1974, it's hard to know exactly what's in them, but I imagine I kept the notes from various lit courses, and from the only course I've ever taken that actually changed the way I think: biomedical ethics.

melanie