The Bodies Exhibit: Why We Read Frankenstein
tags:
fiction, Frankenstein, Human Bodies Exhibit, literature, museum exhibit, reading, romanticism, Shelley
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, usually credited as the first true work of science fiction, stresses the fairly common themes of man’s overweening pride, his error in overstepping boundaries, and the often horrific events that follow such actions. In Shelley’s day, early 19th century, many in the…
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1 commentAyn Rand’s early unpublished fiction
tags:
Ayn Rand, books, fiction, literature, Peikoff, reading, writing
I picked up an old, yellowed copy of The Early Rand (Signet, ed. Leonard Peikoff, 1984) and have thoroughly enjoyed reading from her early unpublished fiction. Peikoff and Rand were friends. In fact, she was influential in his move from studying medicine to philosophy. He…
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In Over My Head Part 2
tags:
books, career change, I just finished, nursing, passion, reading, web design
In Way Over My Head! Part #2 So, the idea. I have this habit of really getting into the books I read. Well, the good ones, anyway. So when I finish one I enjoy, I want more. More of the character, more info, the next…
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In Way Over My Head Part 1
tags:
blogging, books, career change, passion, reading
In self help books the advise to make changes in your life usually is something along the lines of “get out of your comfort zone”, so right now, my life must be changing drastically. That, actually is the goal, but much like the goal of…
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leave a comment The rules of reading
You know how the way we read certain books and certain authors influences to a certain extent the way we understand them. I mean, we read books according to what they are supposed to be. It may not always be a critical process, but it’s…
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On books as sweaters (part 3 of 3)
tags:
Adorno, books, Gordimer, reading, reviews, Sontag
In the weeks since the book section of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution was closed down, many good articles have been written to analyze the state of literary criticism in the US (notably here), and after a brief survey of the litblogs, the furor seems to have…
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On Summer Reading
“I’m sorry, sir, but Dostoyevsky is not considered summer reading. I’ll have to ask you to come with me.” While everyone is out there pushing summer reading lists that are full of fluff, easy reads, I wonder why we don’t use these free summer days…
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A Bookish Challenge
I’d like to challenge everyone who reads this blog to do something for me. Answer me one question. What are the five books in your library (or memory) that stirred the greatest emotive reaction in you? What I mean is, what five (or more) books…
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On Subject Matter
tags:
reading
My reading choices are often (more often than I’d like to admit) driven by a book’s subject matter. I’ve not read or put aside many probably high-quality books simply because I’m not interested in reading about the subject. War, slavery, and other other such things…
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the alchemy of reading, part I
tags:
Alberto Manguel, books, Jeanette Winterson, literature, maitresse, Nancy Huston, reading
“It is part of the alchemy of books that the written word rewrites itself on the reader and that one thing becomes another as it passes through various states of change while remaining itself. Don’t tell me that books are not mysterious – they are.” --Jeanette Winterson
Last night, I settled into bed around eleven o’clock with the novel I started reading over the weekend. It wasn’t long before I realized my apartment had a curious sense of presence-- as if something were in the apartment apart from me and my dog. On cue, Baxter started to bark in the other room. Starting to get a little freaked, I got out of bed, put on my slippers, and cautiously opened the bedroom door. I caught a glimpse of movement across the room and jumped out of my skin, then realized I was seeing my own reflection in the mirror hanging on the bathroom door, which I had left open. Baxter barked again. I told him to calm down and go to sleep (trying to convince myself of the same thing). I went back to my bedroom, shut the door firmly behind me, climbed into bed, and slipped back into my book. I read for another half hour or so and then, putting the closed book on my nightstand, quickly turned out the light and pulled the covers over my head. If they can’t see me, I thought, the same thought I’ve had since childhood, falling asleep under similar circumstances, they can’t get me.
All that because I’m reading a book about vampires! The opening chapters of The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova, lay the groundwork for the plot in teasing, thrilling chapters that so far include mysterious appearances and disappearances, and a father who is too terrified to recount the story of his encounters with Dracula to his daughter and so can only do it in short increments. The text is aware of its place in the scaffolding of the Dracula myth, from the fifteenth century to the present day, but it is no less unsettling for this acknowledgment.
This kind of terror is what Jeanette Winterson alludes to in her recent article in the Times. In this essay, she observes that there are far too many books being published these days for anyone to read all of them, and indeed, quite few that are worth reading. How is one to cut a swathe through the literary bracken? The only real way to read, Winterson writes, is to “follow [your] eccentricities,” wherever they may take you. For example, here’s where Winterson says her own eccentricities have recently led:
I have just been reading Captain Cook’s Journals, which made me read Robinson Crusoe again, which made me think about island narratives, and has run me towards Boswell and Johnson in the Hebrides, Marianne Wiggins’s wonderful novel John Dollar and to Diana Souhami’s award-winning Selkirk’s Island, which made me order Coconut Chaos, her new book on Pitcairn.
Isn’t reading fun?
However, I have to disagree with her on one point: her outright dismissal of books on how or what to read, likening them to the “menu turistico beloved of nervous holidaymakers in foreign parts.” I take issue with this statement on several levels.
In the first place, my eccentricities have led me to the work of Alberto Manguel. Here’s how: While perusing in my local Barnes and Noble years ago, I came upon a paperback with an alluring name: The Mark of the Angel. I read the back cover and found it took place in Paris. Sold. An intellectual fascination (and something more, something more personal) with Nancy Huston was born. Last fall, hearing Huston would be on a panel at Festival America with Margaret Atwood and Edmund White (whose book on Paris I decidedly did not appreciate), I took my little self out to Vincennes to hear her. And there beside her was a deeply philosophical Argentinian-Canadian, whose comments and works mark him as the heir to Borges and Benjamin. “Je ne construis pas la vie sans lecture,” he said; when we read, the book becomes part of our “bibliothèque intérieure.”
It’s true: if you want to know who someone is, you can tell a lot from the books they own. And I don’t mean this as an elitist judgment-- it’s not to say that people who don’t keep books aren’t interesting people, or that people who buy and read chick lit aren’t intelligent, but that much can be gleaned about that person’s relationship to their mind and to ideas from their bookshelves.
After the panel, I went to the book tent, where I bought Une histoire de la lecture(1996) and La Bibliothèque, la nuit (2006) as well as a short work on Borges and added them to my “to read” pile at home. (Manguel also has a book called A Reading Diary: A Passionate Reader’s Reflection on a Year of Books(2004) that I’m hoping to add to my library.)
A few months later, they’re still in my “to read” pile; I’m thinking I may get to them in April or perhaps over the summer. Because I’m so interested in Manguel’s understanding of literature, and the alchemical process of reading, this provides a good reason for me to read his reading diary. If I respect a writer, such as Manguel, Winterson, Huston, then I will be interested to know what I can learn from their reading habits and journals that could in turn help my own reading and enlarge my understanding of literature and the world we inhabit. And I’m sure that Manguel will lead me other places, to writers I haven’t read, or to consider those I have in a different light. [Speaking of world we inhabit, Manguel now lives in a farmhouse in Poitou-Charentes. I wonder how I might angle for an invitation...]
I suspect, however, that Winterson was not alluding to works like those of Manguel, but perhaps to something like How to Read a Poem, by Terry Eagleton (2006), Catching Life by the Throat: How to Read Poetry and Why, by Josephine Hart (2006) , How to Read and Why, by Harold Bloom (2001), or So Many Books, So Little Time: A Year of Passionate Reading, by Sara Nelson (2004), which best seems to prove Winterson’s point: if there are so many books to read and not enough time to read them, why spend time reading about Nelson reading?
Which brings me to my second point, which will consider why we should in fact read Eagleton and Nelson on reading. But I’ve gone on long enough for now; that’s a post for another day. To be continued…
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Mamas, Don’t Let Your Bookworms Grow Up To Be Monolingual
tags:
reading, translations
So I’m thinking I’ll be reading and posting in the not too distant future about novels translated from Russian, and from Spanish, and from who knows yet, and I’m already wondering if I will know what the hell I’m talking about. When I do or…
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How much do you read?
tags:
reading
I want real numbers here. How many hours a week do you spend reading? I’m not talking about newspapers or online, but time spent sitting, book in hand, immersed in the text. I was trying to give myself some resolution on reading. Clearly, I do…
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What Kind Of Year Has It Been?
tags:
reading
I like lists. This will probably not come as a surprise. But when it comes to the time for end-of-year roundups, I’m like a kid in a candy store: I like reading everyone’s lists, I like arguing with them, and I like composing my own.…
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Favorites of 2006 Survey: Results
Recently, I posted a survey (here and here), asking readers to list their favorite reads of 2006, along with a few other book & blog-related items. 16 respondents completed the survey and the results are listed below.
Only unique responses are listed; if more than one person referenced the same work, the number at the end indicates frequency for that specific answer. More than one response was given to some questions. There is no significance to the order in any of the listings.
The books and blogs listed illustrate how varied lit-bloggers/bookbloggers are. Tastes may differ: one person’s favorite of the year might be your nominee for the worst book of the year. (At least one of the books below might have made an appearance if I bothered to compiled such a listing.) But, even when I disagree --and sometimes because I disagree—I love reading what other bloggers have to say about their experiences with reading.
I encourage you to check out any of the bloggers or the specific posts listed below if you are not familiar with them.
1. Favorite fiction book read in 2006
Straight Man, Richard Russo
Everyman by Philip Roth
The Birth House by Ami McKay
The Thirteenth Tale - Diane Setterfield (3)
Breakable You, Brian Morton
The Historian, Elizabeth Kostova
Winter’s Bone, Daniel Woodrell
Arthur and George, Julian Barnes
Lisey’s Story, Stephen King
Dreamtigers, Jorge Luis Borges
2. Favorite non-fiction book read in 2006
Me Talk Pretty Some Day, David Sedaris
Curse of the Narrows, Laura MacDonald
Devil’s Teeth, Susan Casey
Sweet and Low: A Family Story, Rich Cohen
Marley and Me, John Grogan
American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin
Blithe Tomato, Mike Madison,
Enrique’s Journey, Sonia Nazario.
Assassination Vacation, Sarah Vowell
City of Falling Angels, John Berendt
The Mighty and the Almighty, Madeleine Albright
On Beauty and Being Just, Elaine Scarry
The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, Michael Pollan
How Reading Changed My Life, Anna Quindlen
3. Favorite book-related controversy
Critics vs. Book Bloggers (3)
Oprah no longer leading a book discussion.
Judith Reagan (3) (one respondent called this a dis-honorable mention!)
Frey-Gate (4)
The one about bibliographies in novels because it was so irrational.
4. Favorite Blog Post
Lima Stew and Blender Tuna Mousse: Unrescued Recipes, Lily at Bloglily.
BlogLily’s Saying Farewell to Illness, Lily at Bloglily
The pitfalls of receiving free books, or how not to risk your book blogging credibility, Kimbofo at Reading Matters.
Pay it forward...and Win a Venator Survival Kit!, Colleen Gleason, For All the World To See.
Simply Wait, Patry Francis
interview with Patry Francis, Susan Henderson’s LitPark
Race report; or, isn’t it great when we all help each other out?, Dorothy, Of Books and Bicycles
“On Richard Russo’s Straight Man”, Litlove, Tales from the Reading Room
“Deliver Us From Thinking” Tim Sterne, Sarsaparilla
5. Favorite Daily Read
A Work in Progress (4)
P-S Shelf Life
Pesky Apostrophe (2)
SciFi Chick
One Whipped Mother
DoveGreyReader Scribbles, DovegreyReader
LitPark
The Hobgoblin of Little Minds, BikeProf
Bloglily, Lily (2)
Tales from the Reading Room, Litlove (3)
Box of Books, Ella
Of Books and Bicycles, Dorothy W.
Cam’s Commentary, Cam
Telecommuter Talk, Emily
Metaxucafe
6. Favorite Group Blog or Blogging Community
A Curious Singularity
BlogHer
Pop Goes the Library
MetaxuCafe (4)
The Slaves of Golconda (2)
The Valve
7. Favorite Blog Controversy
Critics vs Book Bloggers, summarized here (4)
Free Books at Reading Matters (3)
Anything to do with the romance blogs.
8. Favorite Commenter—the one who makes the comments almost as great as the post (on your blog or others)
Kate S, Kate’s Book Blog
Litlove, Tales from the Reading Room (4)
Booklogged, A Reader’s Journal
Carl V., Stainless Steel Droppings
Dorothy, Of Books And Bicycles
Danielle, A Work in Progress
Jay, Kill the Goat
9. Favorite Litblog-related Meme or Challenge
Five things you don’t know about me. Cited because “it gives insights into my fellow bloggers”. This one was everywhere.
The Halloween Meme Emily didn’t start it, but she loves a good meme. Link is to her post.
The Summer Reading Challenge by the bookjunkie. (Link is to her new blog home).
Carl’s RIP Challenge (3)
Cam’s Poetry Meme (3)
Litlove’s Reading meme There was also this one, “The Aspirational Meme”
Kate’s Early Reading Memories meme
One response to this question really made me laugh. It was this: “Yuck!” As I said before: there’s a lot of variety among lit-bloggers!
The Participants:
Only those who indicated in the comments on the original post that they had completed the survey are listed here.
Imani at The Books of My Numberless Dreams
Carl V at Stainless Steel Droppings
Dorothy W at Of Books and Bicycles
Litlove at Tales from the Reading Room
Maggie, at Maggie Reads
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