Oops!

Thankful

This video -- made by Canadian director Andrea Dorfman using Tanya Davis's song, Art -- reminded me of the joy that art brings me. Making it, appreciating it, discussing it -- what kind of person would I be without it? I have much to be thankful for, and today is art's turn.



My mother tells me that when I was three or four years old, I memorized the words of a children's book she often read to me. When we had visitors, they would point to a page and I would "read" it, to their surprise. Was that my first memory of the rewards of reading? Maybe. What I know is that books were my portal to the person I am today. Reading led me to many of the other art forms that I've enjoyed over the years: theater, foremost, but also dance, music, the visual arts, photography, design, and the handmade object.

And now a different kind of "book lust" is opening new doors. Book arts has introduced me not only to the craft of making books, but to art forms -- like printmaking -- that I'd only admired at a distance in the past. The more involved I become, the more I realize that the beauty of the handmade book is its ability to take on many forms, both literally and conceptually. It can exist on its own as an artfully-made object -- a blank journal, say -- or it can serve as a vehicle for expressing large and small ideas that incorporate a range of art forms -- as in artists' books.

In my case, my appreciation of book arts is directly connected to my lifelong love of books and reading. And yet, some of my book artist friends are not readers. Hmmm. Sounds like a subject for another post. Happy Thanksgiving, all.

A Year's Reading: Part Deux

Yes, I did say in my last post that I was only listing "some" of the books I most enjoyed reading last year, but when I looked over my reading list again, I felt guilty about not mentioning a few more favorites:

The Places in Between is a book I likely wouldn't have read had it not been a selection of my book club. It turned out to be one of my favorites of the year. Rory Stewart, the author, is a Scot and a former British diplomat who was posted to the Middle East. The book is a recounting of his walk across Afghanistan. Some of the members of my book club thought the book too slow and some thought it a failing that Stewart didn't tell us "what to think" about what we were reading. I thought the book's pace and style fit the content precisely, and Stewart's even-handed way of describing what he encountered on his trip actually said a great deal.

I read T.R. Pearson's first book, A Short History of a Small Place, years ago. It was a wonderful discovery for me, and I've been reading Pearson every since. A Short History had a voice I'd never heard before (you'll either like this or you won't), and was very, very funny. Cry Me a River is a very different type of book. What Pearson's fictions shares, 'though, is his ear for language and his eye for character.

This year I read more "how-to" art-related books than usual. One I recommend highly is Steve Meltzer's Photographing Arts, Crafts and Collectibles. In addition to learning about photographing the subject matter, the book answered a lot of questions for me about photography in general.

I feel better now that I've told you about these... Happy reading!

Artist Credit: Reading Woman (c. 1670), by Pieter Janssen Elinga

A Year's Reading

Here's the list of the books I read in 2007. I've been keeping reading lists for as long as I can remember. I'm not quite sure why, other than to stay focused on reading, and to refer to when someone asks me for a recommendation. But it's also a good way to look back with a bit of distance to see which books left an impression, and which I might have done without.

It's a reminder, too, of the truth of the "so many books, so little time" adage. And that, even among those books I was able to read, so few left a significant mark -- books that I remember months later and still get excited about.

Some of these include Patricia Hampl's Blue Arabesque, a quiet, meditative book about art and artists (this was the first book I'd read by her and it won't be the last); The Mystery Guest, an odd little book (by Gregoire Bouillier) about....well, about the narrator's former romantic relationship, a bottle of wine, a party, and his role as the party's "mystery guest." It's much more, and perhaps much less, than that. I liked it a lot. Truth and Beauty, by Ann Patchett, is about her relationship with her close friend, the writer Lucy Grealy (see Autobiography of a Face). Patchett is a wonderful writer, and her description of her friendship with Grealy is alternately fascinating and infuriating, but always heartfelt and honest.

I'd never read Sharon McCrumb, but found The Ballad of Frankie Silver strangely affecting, perhaps because the setting is the mountain towns of North Carolina, where I live. The novel is based on the true story of the first woman executed (for murder) in the state. McCrumb is a terrific story-teller. Another favorite was Charles Baxter's The Feast of Love. I'd been hearing about this novel for years, but got around to reading it only recently. It's full of characters you want to know more about, and permeated throughout with a feeling of magic. It made me want to know Charles Baxter better, too. I enjoyed Balzac and the Little Chinese Princess, by Dai Sijie, a lovely story of two Chinese boys who are sent to work in a rural area of China during the Cultural Revolution. And I liked Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love. It was only after I finished the book that I remembered having read a novel of hers on a lark a couple of years ago, Stern Men, only a little about lobster men in Maine, that I'd much enjoyed.

Of the books I re-read, I fell in love again with E.M. Forster's Howard's End and My Antonia by Willa Cather. I admit that it was hard to read Howard's End this time without seeing Emma Thompson as Margaret Schlegel (Emma played Margaret in the film based on the book). No doubt that added to my enjoyment, but on its own it's a beautifully layered book. My Antonia was a lyrical journey. I don't remember being very excited about it the first time I read it (come to think of it, that was probably in high school or college). I'm convinced that a major part of the reading experience is the reader's readiness. They say that timing is everything, and it certainly applies to reading. Which is why re-reading, years after you first read a book, can yield such great rewards.

What did I not like? Well, perhaps the worst books are those that I think of as the equivalent of Chinese food: moments after you've finished them, you've forgotten them and are hungry for a real book. Usually, though, all's well while you're reading. To extend the metaphor, they're a little like comfort food. As to what I plodded through, The Mists of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley, a book I read for a book club, and My Name is Red, another book club read, top my list. They're very different books of course, and Orhan Pamuk received the Nobel Prize for his body of work recently. I found My Name is Red to be terribly repetitive, as if Pamuk wanted to make sure that the reader GOT THE POINT. The Mists of Avalon, which I understand is a huge favorite of many and a cult book of sorts, was also repetitive (and very, very, very long). But more than that, it wasn't much fun, and a book about the Arthurian legend (told from a feminine -- and feminist -- perspective) should be fun. Instead, it was preachy and pretentious.

I'm already into my reading for 2008 and looking forward to great new finds and some classic favorites. Happy reading in 2008!

My 2007 Reading

• The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
• Photographing Arts, Crafts and Collectibles - Steve Meltzer
  
• The Feast of Love - Charles Baxter
  
• The Tenant of Wildfell Hall - Ann Bronte
  
• The Brontes at Haworth - Ann Dinsdale
  
• The Man Who Smiled - Henning Mankell
  
• Howard's End - E.M. Forster
  
• Lord Jim - Joseph Conrad
  
• Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
  
• The Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley
  
• The Tattoo Artist - Jill Ciment
  
• Dead Clever - Scarlett Thomas
  
• The Ballad of Frankie Silver - Sharon McCrumb
• Lions and Liquorice - Kate Fenton
  
• Special Topics in Calamity Physics - Marisha Pessl
• Angelica - Arthur Phillips
  
• Homeland and Other Stories - Barbara Kingsolver
• On Chesil Beach - Ian McEwan
• Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith - Anne Lamott
• Digital Art Studio - Karin Schminke, et al.
• In Case We're Separated - Alice Mattison
• The Forest Lover - Susan Vreeland
• Truth and Beauty - Ann Patchett
• How to Read a Novel - John Sutherland
• The Orchid Shroud - Michelle Wan
• The Golden Compass - Philip Pullman
• Same Sweet Girls - Cassandra King
• The Art of Fiction - David Lodge
• The Amateur Marriage - Anne Tyler
• Cry Me a River - T.R. Pearson
• Have Mercy on Us All - Fred Vargas
• Drinking Coffee Elsewhere - Z.Z. Packer
• Polio: An American Story - David Oshinsky
• Friends, Lovers, Chocolate - Alexander McCall Smith
• Tell Me a Riddle - Tillie Olsen
• The Death of Ivan Illych - Leo Tolstoy
• London: A History - A.N. Wilson
• Balzac and the Little Chinese Princess - Dai Sijie
• Awake in the Dark: The Best of Roger Ebert - Roger Ebert
• Blue Arabesque - Patricia Hampl
• The Piano Tuner - Daniel Mason
• My Name is Red - Orhan Pamuk
• The Sunday Philosophy Club - Alexander McCall Smith
• Eat, Pray, Love - Elizabeth Gilbert
• The Mystery Guest - Gregoire Bouillier
• All is Vanity - Christina Schwarz
• Prague - Arthur Phillips
• Creative Collage Techniques - Nita Leland/ Virginia Williams
• Reading Like a Writer - Francine Prose
• Collage Techniques - Gerald Brommer
• Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic - Alison Blechdel
• My Antonia - Willa Cather
• The Places in Between - Rory Stewart
• Lady Into Fox - David Garnett
• The Keep - Jennifer Egan

Artist Credit: Woman Reading, by Mary Cassatt, top right

So Many Books, So Little Time

BookGirl never thought she'd have to admit to having too many books to read. But I'm starting to feel just a bit overwhelmed about my book commitments. A few months ago, I joined a second book club because I wanted more diversity in my book club menu. Last month, I signed up for two Lit classes because I wanted the opportunity to read and re-read some classics. Not to mention that my own personal list of TBRs (to be reads) grows by the day.

This month, one book club is reading Fingersmith by Sarah Waters; the other is reading Pope Joan by Donna Woolfolk Cross. Over the next six weeks, we're covering Lord Jim, Howard's End and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in my Early Modern Novel class. And over that same period, we're reading Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall in my class on The Brontes. I'm already nearly a book behind in each.

Right now I'm juggling Fingersmith, Jane Eyre and Lord Jim. I was interested enough in Lord Jim that I opted for my own Conrad mini-fest and just finished Heart of Darkness. And, a page here and a chapter there, I'm reading Charles Baxter's The Feast of Love.

I may have been a titch overambitious when I committed myself to all this. So much for tackling Middlemarch before the end of the year...

Artist Credit: James Tissot, Reading a Book

Seeing Through Others' Eyes

A C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) quote for readers, from Outside of a Dog (a book is a girl's best friend), who got it from Kapachino.

As an only child who lived a fairly sheltered life in a small town, Lewis's words remind me of the many doors that books opened for me: doors to magical new worlds, and because English is my second language, to beautiful new words. Unfortunately, I didn't encounter C.S. Lewis until I was an adult.

"Those of us who have been true readers all our life seldom fully realise the enormous extension of our being which we owe to authors. We realise it best when we talk with an unliterary friend. He may be full of goodness and good sense but he inhabits a tiny world. In it, we should be suffocated. The man who is contented to be only himself, and therefore less a self, is in prison. My own eyes are not enough for me, I will see through those of others. Reality, even seen through the eyes of many, is not enough. I will see what others have invented..."

And two more I liked:

"The safest road to hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts. "

"It's so much easier to pray for a bore than to go and see one. "

A Book Club of One

We learn from the UK's The Guardian that writer Yann Martel, Canadian resident and author of the award winning Life of Pi (among other works), has been sending books to that country's Prime Minister, Stephen Harper. (Harper has been criticized for not valuing the arts and for cuts in government funding for the arts.

In his one-man campaign to bring the arts to the Prime Minister, Martel mails Harper a second-hand paperback every other Monday. The books are "short and accessible," in light of the PM's busy schedule, and have included Strindberg's Miss Julie and a book of Hindu scriptures. Yartel sends an introductory note with each book.

"'If I knew he liked thrillers,' says Mr. Martel, 'I would send more of those -- perhaps a Chinese thriller.'"

BookGirl likes Martel's style.

Book Lust

One of the best things about blogs is that they remind us that we're part of a larger community. For a little over a year I've been finding and reading blogs that focus on books and reading. There are some that I think of as "professional" blogs -- Bookslut, say, or Identity Theory. But the ones I like best are those written by people whose business isn't books or publishing. These "bookbloggers" love books, reading, and words enough to take the time to write about them, and to do it well. They're the people who write about how they go about choosing the next book they'll read and the excitement of making the selection; the ones who go into a bookstore or library without a specific book in mind, just for the pleasure of perusing the shelves. They can't stop buying or borrowing books even though they don't have time to read them all. Some of them even read books about reading books (is BookGirl blushing?).

It's naive to think that these bloggers and I are kindred spirits, but I'm enough of a romantic to think that readers and book lovers do connect in some significant and fundamental way. (To those who would write BookGirl to say that she's wrong and thereby destroy her carefully nurtured illusion, she would prefer that you didn't.)

English is my second language. I have a vivid memory of my first grade classroom in the U.S. I received a mimeographed sheet with a series of illustrations and several words underneath each one. My classmates and I were told to circle the one word that best described the corresponding picture. At least I think that was our assignment. In any case, not knowing any English, I colored in the pictures and handed in my sheet. How I made it to second grade is still a mystery. Was it my proficiency in arithmetic? My good behavior? If so, the math skills diminished at a steady pace between grade school and college, and my behavior deteriorated once I learned enough English to speak to the student across the aisle.

My strongest memory of second grade is the reading class. There was a large box with color-coded tabs on the teacher's desk. Each tab corresponded to reading material that was appropriate to a specific reading level. By then I knew enough English to understand that the color-coded materials were used to assess the reading level of each student, who was then assigned to a peer reading group. Somehow, I managed to land in the top-level reading group by the end of the year.

At home I spoke the language of my native country, since my parents never learned to speak fluent English. But with their encouragement, and that of the teacher who helped me get my first library card, I became quite the library rat. I didn't get much guidance on reading material, though, so I was wonderfully, wildly, indiscriminate in my choices.

Other readers' backgrounds may be very different from mine (although I expect some are similar), but I like to think that we share an enthusiasm -- is it too much to call is a passion? -- that's difficult to explain if you haven't experienced it, but fairly simple to recognize in someone else if you have.

I guess it's not surprising that I'd take up book arts -- as in bookmaking -- and that I enjoy it as much as I do. And although I've been reading much much longer than I've been making books, I sense that there's an affinity among bookmakers similar to the one I've experienced among readers. I'm loving being part of another cool community that cares about books.

Book Cat

My good friend, Vicki, is an adventurous traveler. She travels light, and she takes the scenic route. I've joined her on some less intrepid trips: Venice, Vancouver Island, the Dordogne region of France. Lately, she's been in Croatia and surrounding areas. I enjoyed getting her emails from the road telling me about the nuisances she'd encountered getting from here to there, not because I was glad for her trouble, but because she always finished by saying what a great time she was having and what a great trip it was. It's that quality of taking things in stride that makes a real traveler.

I whine as much as anyone (as those who know me well can attest), but when traveling, I too try to be of the school that makes the best of any situation. We all travel little enough for pleasure as it is, and if nothing else, adversities make for good stories later. The difference between me and Vicki is that I rarely use travel to test the unknown, while Vicki does it all the time, without even realizing she's doing it.

The pix of the trip are still to come, but she sent me an advance photo that, she said, had her thinking of me when she took it. Taking a nap surrounded by books is surely one of life's simple pleasures. I wonder, though: are the 2 Euros for the books or the cat?

Helvetica Turns 50

Who knew? Helvetica is a baby boomer, too, and turning 50. According to the UK's Guardian, celebrations are sprouting for the "elegant uber-font." Do your part, America, by writing all your emails tomorrow in Helvetica, then treat yourself to a chocolate cupcake. Unfortunately, I'm not offered a Helvetica option on this blog, or I'd celebrate here along with you.

The Guardian, by the way, does an excellent job covering books, all the more noticeable in light of diminishing coverage by major metropolitan US newspapers (see the latest on this issue and learn how you can get involved in saving book reviews).

Slow Reading

There's no way I could come across an article on "slow reading" and not write about it, so for those of you who still care about such things (and I hope, hope, hope that there are many), Lindsay Waters, in an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, writes about how current society, particularly teachers of reading, conspires to get us to read more quickly. I guess my use of the word "conspires" tells a bit about my take on this, eh? Here's a bit (well, maybe more than a bit) of what Waters has to say, albeit a little pedantically :

"In departments of education, professors talk about the "fluency" that those who are learning to read need to achieve to become good readers. Unless one can digest the letters on the page fast enough, one cannot comprehend what one is reading. But once one learns how to read, there is a speed beyond which one stops reading in a truly effective way. I am convinced that most speed-reading is impaired reading, just like the sort you do when you have a fever or are tired or engaged in other tasks at the same time you are supposed to be reading. Unless you are very smart, speed-reading forces you to ignore al but one dimension of a literary work, the simplest information. What we lose is the enjoyment that made people turn to literature in the first place....

"I want to ask what reading would look life if we were to reintroduce, forcefully, the matter of time...The mighty imperative is to speed eveything up, but there might be some advantage in slowing things down. People are trying slow eating. Why not slow reading?...

"The role of literature is to mess with time, to establish its own rhythm. A new agenda for literary studies should open up the time of reading, just as it opens up how the writer establishes his or her rhythm. Instead of rushing by works so fast that we don't even muss up our hair, we should tarry, attend to the sensuousness of reading, allow ourselves to enter the experience of words."

We English majors (once an English major, always an English major, says Garrison Keillor) were taught to read this way in college. It was called close reading (it is still called that, isn't it?), and although not equivalent to slow reading, close reading requires that you read slowly, and the end result is much the same: a much richer reading experience. Wine lovers sip each glass slowly to give the wine time to reveal itself, and to give themselves time to savor the full range of its flavors. So with reading. Reading quickly doesn't lend itself to the pleasures of seeing layers of meaning in a sentence or understanding why the writer chose to use those specific words, or any of the other discoveries and joys of reading good writing. And, then, once you've found a book you truly love...well, there's always rereading.

Book Club Retreat

For the second time (our first took place last fall), one of the book clubs of which I'm a member held a weekend "retreat." Our book club was started by and is held monthly at Malaprop's bookstore, an independent bookstore that we all frequent (at right, some of our "retreaters," including, at far right, Malaprop general manager Linda Barrett Knopp). We convened late last Friday afternoon at a nearby retreat center and headed home early Sunday afternoon. In between we discussed two books and two novellas: David Oshinsky's Polio: An American Story, Haven Kimmel's She Got Up Off the Couch (ugh! -- the first book I've read for this group that I couldn't stand to finish), Tillie Olsen's Tell me a Riddle (which I loved), and The Death of Ivan Ilych by Tolstoy.

My own bias about book club reading is that fiction should rule the day, and that if non-fiction must be introduced, it should be in small doses -- say, four or five novels for every work of non-fiction. So I was disappointed to learn that most of our reading for the retreat would be non-fiction. As I said to my bookmates, fiction provides much more fertile ground for discussion. Beyond the actual topic and story, fiction, if it's good, offers many riches to mine, from the writer's style, technique, and syntax to structure, themes, and imagery, to the use of symbols, metaphor and simile (and more). It fascinated me, for example, that Tolstoy used the structure of his chapters to parallel the deterioration of Ivan Ilych's body (leading him to his spiritual birth) by making each chapter progessively shorter than the next: from approximately 300 lines in the first chapter to approximately 72 lines in the last; and that Tillie Olsen enriched Tell me a Riddle by using the voice, mouth (not just words, but coughs, screams, rasps, songs), silence, and listening in giving meaning to a story that's much about finding one's own voice. And I derived pleasure from a small thing: how Olsen helps move her protagonist from the specific to the universal by naming her Eva, as in "Eve," the Bible's first female creation.

Non-fiction can be a source of good discussion about the book's topic, particularly if that topic is controversial and/or timely, and you can certainly argue about whether the writer accomplished what she set out to do or told her story effectively. And, of course, I'm not denying that good writers of non-fiction may use literary devices to enhance the reading experience. But at the end of the day good fiction gives the curious reader much more to work with and explore. (This just cries out for a rebuttal from a non-fiction enthusiast, don't you think?)

Those issues aside, what a wonderful experience it was to again spend two days with smart and interesting women talking about BOOKS! Sheer heaven. A joy, too, to get to know each other a little better, since some of us rarely see each other outside of our book group setting. Not to mention the gratification of eating our way through the weekend, which as delightful as it is while you're doing it, is nowhere near as nourishing in its aftermath as the discussions.

Book-Love

What's in us that makes us respond positively or negatively to art? Trust me, it's not an issue that's going to be resolved by BookGirl anytime soon, but it continues to fascinate. I thought about this again last night following my Book Club meeting. Three of us, including me, loved the assigned book, James Meek's The People's Act of Love; two or three others were enthusiastic, while most either disliked the book or found it bewildering.

Here's the point in the story where I would usually say: "run, don't walk to buy this book!," but I'm trying to be more careful these days about keeping my audience in mind when recommending books. Of course, I've known for quite a while that my interests in art (particularly books and films) are not necessarily anyone else's (and, at certain times in my life, it's seemed like no one else's).

But there's more to it than that. For example, recently I realized I can't take for granted in this book club things I took for granted in my past book group in D.C. Those book pals didn't always agree about whether we liked the books we'd read, but we very rarely disagreed about which books to read. In this club, I'm less enthusiastic about the titles selected for reading (to be fair, from time to time, a book that I thought I'd dislike -- like The People's Act of Love -- turns out to be a wonder). One reason for the difference seems obvious: in the D.C. group, the members selected the books together; perhaps this group is too large to accommodate that process. And yet, if I'm honest, the democratic approach we espoused in my earlier club was more theory than practice: members put forward specific books and made a case for them, and the rest of us usually went along. Still, none of us felt that we were taking much risk, because, for some reason, we seemed to like reading the same types of books. Not always, but almost always. And, oddly enough, even those of us who didn't like a particular book were usually still glad we'd read it -- because, I surmise, we liked the type of book it was. Too, we read only fiction.

My analytical husband would say that the reason is pretty obvious: we were all either English majors or English-major "types," such as writers, or related wordsmiths, such as lawyers. I'd disagree with him on the sympathy between lawyers and English majors, but, that aside, he's probably correct that people with certain training or backgrounds are more likely to enjoy the same types of books. And since the group was started by friends, and grew by adding other friends, it's equally likely that we'd all have similar interests. My current book club, on the other hand, seems comprised of a wide range of readers, probably with a wide range of backgrounds.

But this can't be the whole story. Two very different people can love same book. Leaving aside issues of social psychology, which likely play a big role here, one possible explanation is that different people can love the same book for different reasons. In The People's Act of Love, for example, you can delight in the story alone. It's cinematic in narrative, has an intriguing and bizarre plot with a few mysteries thrown in, and has interesting characters. Someone else might fall for the language: Meek is an exceptionally evocative writer; there are sections of the book that are simply stunning, such as the pages that detail how the Czech battalion has been decimated over the five years since they left home. Another reader might prefer the tone: the black comedy style that Meek uses to indict just about everyone involved with the war. Yet another might be captivated by the artful way in which Meek weaves his themes through the novel: "love" is one of these themes, and it's defined in some strikingly contradictory ways by the main characters.

Still, this an argument that's hard for me to make. You can like a good book for the writing, OR for the story, OR for any one feature, but in a great book that you love, everything works together seamlessly to make the whole much greater than any one of its parts.

And since this is a book I love, I'll throw caution to the wind. Run, don't walk, to buy The People's Act of Love. It's a real treat.