How Do You Feel About the Printed Word?

I have a new widget -- I Pledge to Read the Printed Word -- on this blog (see left) that I found while reading one of the (too many) blogs I follow on my feed reader.

I embrace technology, particularly the extraordinary access to data and knowledge that it provides through the Web -- no, I'm not forgetting the also extraordinary levels of useless detritus, but for me, the pros far outweigh the cons. I also appreciate the value of a Kindle when traveling -- I wish I'd had one when I seemed to live on a plane during a past work life.

So I'm certainly no Luddite. Nevertheless, the printed page is to me one of the true wonders of the world, and I'll be forever in debt to Herr Gutenberg. Curling up with the Sunday Times or the book I'm currently reading (you MUST read this) is one of my great pleasures. Curling up with a Kindle? Not so much.

When I came across this wonderful "manifesto" from Mrs. Fischer's English Classes, I had to share it:

I, hereby, pledge to read the printed word. I pledge to hold books in my hand, to visit public libraries, to flip tangible pages, to read for pleasure and imagination, to pause from my reading to tilt my head heavenward to consider what information I have just absorbed.

I couldn't have said it better.

What do you think of "Mrs. Fischer's" pledge? Any thoughts on electronic readers such as the Kindle?

Image Credit: takomabibelot on Flickr
The Reading Girl (La Leggitrice), model 1856, carved 1861
by Pietro Magni (sculptor), Italian, 1817-1877
Collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

2008 Reading Redux

As usual, there were some standouts in the year's (2008) reading, as well as some clunkers. Reading is such a personal experience, 'though, that I hesitate to mention the latter, since my clunker may someone else's well-oiled machine. I'm reminded of The Memory Keeper's Daughter, which I read in '07 and thoroughly, deeply disliked. It was a selection of my book club, and at least half of the group -- and we have a large group -- thought it was terrific.

I had a great time reading or re-reading several classics -- Jane Eyre, especially. I'd forgotten what a smart and strong (and feminist) character Jane is. (I was so taken with the book that I wrote about it here.) I enjoyed my sojourn into Henry James country, re-reading some novels and savoring some short stories for the first time. I went on a bit of a Henry James jag and also read a very good biography, The Mature Master, the second of two volumes on James by Sheldon Novick, and an equally good fictional version of James's literary life by David Lodge: Author, Author.

Other books that have stayed with me -- which is one way I judge a book's value, with the caveat that some of the truly bad ones also won't go away -- include When Will There Be Good News, the third book in British author Kate Atkinson's series about Jackson Brodie (wonderfully written and cleverly crafted); A Long Way Down, by Nick Hornby (as usual in Hornby's work, funny and touching at the same time, but never sentimental); Per Petterson's Out Stealing Horses (a quiet, lyrical novel), Child 44, by Tom Robb Smith (a compelling thriller set in Russia during Stalin's regime), and The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, by Kate Summerscale. This last focuses on the actual murder of a child in 1860s England, and Summerscale uses her extensive research to explore the rise of the English detective and his role in English society. Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone, which I'm reading now, and which was written a few years after the case described in Summerscale's book, borrows much from that book's real-life detective.

I loved Three Junes, Julia Glass's first novel, which I came to late, after having read and enjoyed The Whole World Over a couple of years ago. I liked Willilam Gay's Twilight (no, not that Twilight), a strange, striking novel set in the Tennessee country in which the author lives; enjoyed The Accidental Masterpiece, essays on art and artists by Michael Kimmelman, and Valentines, a slim volume of poetry by Ted Kooser; and was nourished by poet Kathleen Norris's thoughtful The Cloister Walk, about her retreats in a Benedictine monastery.

Thankfully, I didn't read anything last year as unfortunate as The Memory Keeper's Daughter. Still, there were ho-hum books, the kind that take up time that could have been spent reading something one enjoys more. Among these were In the Garden of Iden, The Society of S, The Spellman Files, The Writing Diet, (a weight-loss book by Julia Cameron of Artist's Way fame) and Zen and the Art of Motorcyle Maintenance (what's with all the fuss over the years about this one?). But, as one good friend says: "If you like this kind of thing, then this is the kind of thing you'll like."

Here's to all the books yet to be explored in 2009. Happy reading.

[Photo Credit: Woman Reading by Henri Matisse]

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.

We Now Interrupt This Program...

A brief break from my posts about this summer's Penland experience, occasioned by my discovery of the blog slow reads. Glancing through the New York Times' books blog, Paper Cuts, I read a comment to a post about the lack of good essays in the current crop of literary blogs. The author recommended several blogs that he felt provided just that. One of them was slow reads. I plan to dig into it further, but the main conceit of the blog, the pleasures of reading slowly, struck a major chord. For me, not all books merit slow reading (what, as English majors, we used to call 'close reading' in college): if I'm reading nonfiction, and purely for information, for example, I rarely slow down. But there are books that offer many more rewards to the slow reader than they do to the speed-reader.

I couldn't resist including a few quotes from an essay by writer Teju Cole, reprinted in the blog, and titled, naturally, "slow reader:"

"One day I went to the bookshop and selected a pile of books—Svevo, Kafka, James, Calasso, about a dozen in all—and from each I read page fifty. Naturally, I often found myself in the middle of a sentence at the page’s beginning or end. But these are the fragments from which a life is made, like those snatches of conversation one hears on the subway, which are free-floating pages from a much larger and more intricate narrative. I eventually left the bookshop, late late in the afternoon, and it was as though I had been to the world’s greatest luncheon..."

and

"As for Love in the Time of Cholera, don’t even get me started. I've read the first hundred pages of that book no less than three times, Saint Ursula is my witness. The first time was out-loud to my wife, three pages a night. Maybe or maybe not I will eventually read the rest; more likely, I’ll go back and read the first hundred again..."

and

"Life is too precious to waste on fast reading; I bet Neruda says something like that in his Memoirs, but I haven’t gotten to that part yet."

And here's the first paragraph of an essay by Dave Bonta (who blogs at Via Negativa, another blog mentioned in the Paper Cuts comment), about the joys of second readings:

"Reading something for the second time is so much more satisfying than that first read-through. So many books withhold their full treasures from the first-time reader. Not that the first time can't be special too, of course: surfaces are beautiful, and not to be taken lightly. During that first, heady encounter with a text, it is not merely the words that entrance us. The typefont, the design, the texture of the paper, the look and feel of covers and slipcovers, even the smell of the bindings - if new - or the patina that comes with good use: these too are manifest occasions for pleasure and surprise.

"But few of us possess the skill as readers to avoid succumbing to that first-time excitement and finishing the book too soon. And to lay it aside at that point, never to return, would constitute not simply callousness but profound disrespect. Unless the book at hand be some cheap, manupulative thing, in which case even a single reading amounts to little more than "an expense of spirit in a waste of shame," as Shakespeare once said about something else entirely."

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

The Bookstore Cafe

The right coffeehouse is one of my great pleasures. Whenever I want to get in a good long spell of uninterrupted reading I head to a coffeehouse. When I have a writing project that I have to concentrate on, a coffeehouse is usually my first choice. Why a coffeehouse rather than home? Well, at home I tend to feel that there are other things I should be attending to, say, all the weeding I'm always meaning to do but never get around to. And, of course, there's that pleasant feeling of being alone but in good company. I'll talk to people in a coffeehouse that I probaby wouldn't talk to elsewhere. It seems that by virtue of being there, you're part of the same club.

Bookstores with coffeeshops/cafes are particular favorites. My very first was in the late 70s when I was in Washington, DC for a conference: Kramerbooks and Afterwords in Dupont Circle (its web site claims that it was the first bookstore/cafe in the country to feature cappuccino and espresso). When I moved to DC in the mid-90s, Kramerbooks had become a full-scale restaurant, and although its selection of books was still terrific, the food had started to wrestle with the books for attention, and the pace was too hectic for the kind of leisurely exploring that I like most.

It didn't take me long to find another great bookstore cafe hang-out, though. (Did you know that DC has the largest number of bookstores, per capita, of any city in the United States?). The wonderful Politics & Prose was one Metro stop and a nice walk north of my Cleveland Park neighborhood. The coffeehouse was downstairs; the seating, besides the usual table and chairs, consisted of a large, old, plump sofa and a couple of mismatched chairs. I was usually there a couple of Sunday mornings a month. I enjoyed my Sunday Washington Post with a cup of coffee and toasted bagel or big slice of pumpkin bread. I rarely left without buying a book (my post-breakfast browsing), but I never felt that it was part of the bargain for spending time there.

I should say that I'm an equal opportunity bookstore-cum-coffeehouse disciple. Given a choice, I'll opt for an independent, but I'm happy to spend time at Starbucks and Barnes and Noble too. (I'm also an equal opportunity book buyer. I buy at independent bookstores, chains, library book sales, flea markets, and online). I'm lucky now to live in a place that values bookstores and coffeehouses and the role they play in building community. As much as I find myself in them, I suppose I've come to take them for granted.

So it hit home today when I read an article in the UK's Guardian that the Iranian government has closed down the coffeeshops in four bookstores in Tehran this week. One of the coffeehouses is in one of the city's best-known bookstores, which regularly hosted readings by writers and had become a popular meeting place for literary types. The government justified the closures by saying that "the coffeehouses constituted an illegal mixing of trade," but critics believe that the move is aimed at restricting the gathering of intellectuals and educated young people, and that more closings will follow.

Such a small thing, I used to think, being able to enjoy books and coffee whenever and wherever you want, and being with others who want the same.

Re-reading Jane Eyre

I've had little time to post, what with all the reading I've been doing for my two literature classes, and some writing projects I've taken on. In one of my classes, The Brontes, we're reading one book by each of the Bronte sisters: Jane Eyre (Charlotte, right), Wuthering Heights (Emily) and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (Anne). I hadn't read Jane Eyre since high school, I think, and reading it this time around gave me a whole new perspective not just on the book, but on Charlotte Bronte. I now understand why it's become such a magnet for feminists. When you consider that it was written during a period (mid-nineteenth century) when women's roles were immensely limited and proscribed, Jane was definitely not a typical young woman of her times.

For one thing, she's always truthful and extremely direct. I was particularly impressed by the latter, since Jane's contemporaries in literature (and, by extension, Charlotte's) were expected to be circumspect and to avoid unpleasantess of any kind (which included saying anything that was less than pleasant or cheerful).

It surprised me how often Jane speaks of wanting freedom, liberty, adventure. Here she decides to leave Lowood (where she's been a student and for two years, a teacher) and advertise for a position as a governess:

"...now I remembered that the real world was wide, and that a varied field of hopes and fears, of sensations and excitements, awaited those who had courage to go forth into its expanse to seek real knowledge of life amidst its perils."

She's practical enough to recognize the limitations placed on her by the fact of her gender and by her circumstances, and that becoming a governess is simply another form of service, but still she yearns:

"A new servitude! There is something in that...I know there is because it does not sound too sweet; it is not like such words as Liberty, Excitement, Enjoyment: delightful sounds truly; but no more than sounds for me."

And when Jane, now at Thornfield, Mr. Rochester's estate, ruminates about her situation, which is, in fact, much better than that usually accorded the typical governess, she says:

"...the restlessness was in my nature; it agitated me to pain sometimes..." and

"...but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties; and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a constraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex."

Pretty radical assertions for the times during which Charlotte was writing. It's a wonderful novel for many reasons, most of which I'm sure I missed when I first read it. Now, in a very different way, I'm falling in love with Wuthering Heights and Emily Bronte.

Note: BookGirl is traveling all next week, and will be unable to post. Sigh...
She'll have to content herself late at night reading Wuthering Heights and Howards End (which she's reading for her other class).

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.

When the Promo Is Better Than the Book

Just finished Miranda July's short story collection, No One Belongs Here More Than You. I'm a big fan of July's, a modern day Renaissance woman -- filmmaker, writer, performance artist and developer of eccentric web projects. Here's her MySpace page.

July's work often features characters who are "on the edge" and "on the edges" emotionally and psychologically. This was fine in her film, the odd and touching Me and You and Everyone We Know (which she wrote, directed and starred in), since we followed the same characters throughout. In No One Belongs Here More Than You, we encounter a panoply of similar characters over and over, but without the continuing story line, so that the stories become, at best, repetitive and unsettling and, at worst, annoying and creepy. July's trademark off-kilter humor is still here, which is a good thing.

Don't get me wrong; there are some fine stories here, but the cumulative weirdness and the characters' relentless air of longing nearly kept me from finishing the book. And that would have been a shame, since two of the better stories, "Birthmark" (my favorite) and "How to Tell Stories to Children," are the last two in the book.

Regardless of how I feel about the stories, I love July's web promotion for the book (note that there's one more click after the black screen). It's particularly July-esque (although I was disappointed to learn recently that July's real name is Miranda Grossinger).

NoOne's Not Writing About Harry

First, a disclaimer: BookGirl hasn't read any of the Harry Potter books, so there's not much she can say about their content or quality. And since she's not a fantasy fiction fan, she's unlikely to read them in the future. Now...

Is there any newspaper on the planet that isn't running a Harry Potter story this week? The bigger question is whether we'll be reading anything different from what we read when the other books in the series were published. So far, I'd have to say that the answer to both questions is "no."

Last Sunday, Ron Charles, senior editor of the Washington Post's "Book World," joined the parade in his article, "Harry Potter and the Death of Reading." He cited some of the depressing statistics that we've heard regularly from others on his side of the Potter debate:

• A 1994 study by Alan Sorensen at Stanford University reported that "in 1994, over 70 percent of total fiction sales were accounted for by a mere five authors." (It's hard to imagine that the statistics have improved since then.)
  

• In 2004, the National Endowment for the Arts released Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America, which gauged the reading habits of America from 1982 to 2002. People were asked whether, over the past12 months, they had read any part of a novel, short story, poem, or play, excluding anything read for work or school. If they'd read the first two pages of, say, "Mandingo," (BookGirl refuses to link to this), the survey considered them literary readers. The results? The proportion of Americans reading "literature" declined from 56.9 percent in 1982 to 46.7 in 2002.
  

The Harry Potter phenomenon hasn't really changed this, says Charles. And although he doesn't mention it, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, federal tests administered every few years to students in grades 4, 8 and 12, seems to agree. NAEP found that "the percentage of kids who said they read for fun almost every day dropped from 43 percent in fourth grade to 19 percent in eighth grade in 1998, the year 'Sorcerer’s Stone' was published in the United States. In 2005, when 'Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,' the sixth book, was published, the results were identical" (read the full article in the New York Times here).

Understandably, Charles finds the diminishing number of readers of fiction discouraging, and he's equally disheartened by the people who tell him "I don't read fiction...I have so little time nowadays that when I read, I like to learn something." (Coincidentally, someone said virtually the same thing to BookGirl last week. One possible implication, with is so silly that BookGirl can't take offense, is that BookGirl, who reads mostly fiction, isn't interested in learning anything. The other, more important, implication is that one doesn't learn anything from reading fiction. This one does offend BookGirl.)

But Charles's main point is that the Harry Potter phenomenon isn't about reading at all, but about marketing. Being a Potter-Head, suggests Charles, is less about a gratifying personal experience with a book, and more about the experience of homogenization: becoming like every other Potter-Head:

"Perhaps submerging the world in an orgy of marketing hysteria doesn't encourage the kind of contemplation, independence and solitude that real engagement with books demands -- and rewards. Consider that, with the release of each new volume, Rowling's readers have been driven not only into greater fits of enthusiasm but into more precise synchronization with one another. Through a marvel of modern publishing, advertising and distribution, millions of people will receive or buy "The Deathly Hallows" on a single day. There's something thrilling about that sort of unity, except that it has almost nothing to do with the unique pleasures of reading a novel: that increasingly rare opportunity to step out of sync with the world, to experience something intimate and private, the sense that you and an author are conspiring for a few hours to experience a place by yourselves -- without a movie version or a set of action figures. Through no fault of Rowling's, Potter mania nonetheless trains children and adults to expect the roar of the coliseum, a mass-media experience that no other novel can possibly provide."

This was the only genuine insight in Charles's article, although his implication that a kid would want to "step out of sync with the world," rather than be just like every other kid, seems naive. And while I agree with Charles's premise, I'm also certain that there are those who read Harry Potter books not because they want to run with the pack, but simply because they're drawn to the genre and/or enjoy the characters and plot and want to see them develop.

Frankly, I don't understand why people feel that they need to take sides on Potter. I'm delighted to see kids pick the books up, and like many other adults, I bought one for a child whom I hoped to entice into reading more often. In fact, if the Potters get anybody -- including adults -- reading, I'm thrilled. Charles, on the other hand, is distressed that adults are reading Harry Potter instead of books he considers better entries in the fantasy category, such as "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell" by Susanna Clarke and Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials."

I appreciate Charles's point that there are many, many deserving books that sell many, many, many (add about 100 more "manys" here) fewer copies than the Potter series, and this makes me sad. Unfortunately, for those who read the Potters for the reasons Charles outlines, neither Clarke's nor Pullman's books would fill the need that the Potters satisfy.

So if folks want to dash down to their favorite neighborhood bookstore dressed as -- whomever --- to celebrate the publication of the latest Potter, more power to them! Who knows, maybe they'll walk out with another book in addition to the one they've long been anticipating (BookGirl is feeling particularly optimistic today).

Book Meme

I'm stealing this book meme from Book Dragon, another reader and bookmaker whose blog I read. Feel free to steal it in turn.

Science Fiction, Fantasy or Horror? I've never been drawn to science fiction or horror. If I had to pick, I'd choose fantasy, since there's a lot of leeway in how "fantasy" can be defined. Book Dragon, for example, mentions magical realism.

Hardback or Trade Paperback or Mass Market Paperback? There's something about the trade paperback that calls to me. They're simply more tactile than hardbound books and, of course, easier to carry around. That's important, since I never leave the house without a book.

Amazon or Brick and Mortar? I'd always rather be in a bookstore and always rather peruse books in person. Having said that, Amazon makes it sooooooo easy to find what you want -- and the pricing helps when you're buying art books and book arts books. (Now, say that really fast five times).

Barnes & Noble or Borders? Much as I like independent bookstores and frequent them, Barnes & Noble was one of the first, with its cafes and lounging areas, to create an atmosphere where customers could sit and peruse books, which is a good thing. They get some credit for that, and you'll see me there from time to time.

Hitchhiker or Discworld? Neither, but I do recall reading Hitchhiker years ago -- or was it the t.v. show? Hmmmmmm.

Bookmark or Dogear? Dogear? Never. If I don't have a proper bookmark, I'll use anything available -- a napkin, a leaf, a ticket stub. I actually have very nice bookmarks that people have given me over the years, but, mostly, I end up with the ones I pick up at bookstores.

Asimov's Science Fiction, or Fantasy and Science Fiction? Neither, although I've read the former and like what I read.

Alphabetize by author, Alphabetize by title, or random? I don't alphabetize. Instead, I group by genre. My husband, who alphabetizes within genre, is aghast.

Keep, Throw Away or Sell? I keep books that are meaningful to me or that I simply loved reading. I never throw books out. Instead, I either sell them on Amazon, or I donate them to my local library. My husband, when I met him, possessed every book he'd read since the age of 3; under my benevolent influence, he now has only every book he's read since the age of 12.

Keep dust-jacket or toss it? Keep. But really, who cares (Who cares?Aaaaaaarggggggggh! says my husband)?

Read with dustjacket or remove it? On. Like Book Dragon, I occasionally use the front flap as a bookmark.

Short story or novel? I prefer novels; I also like essays about books and reading -- Anne Fadiman's are excellent.

Harry Potter or Lemony Snicket? I didn't find the first Harry Potter very compelling (so sue me), and quit while I was ahead. I did read a couple of the Snickets.

Stop reading when tired or at chapter breaks? It's easier to pick up your train of thought when you've stopped at the end of the chapter, but I'm not, you know, religious or anything about it.

"It was a dark and stormy night" or "Once upon a time?" Definitely the former. Although it's hard for me to read that line now without seeing Snoopy.

Buy or Borrow? I don't like to borrow from friends, because I'm never quite sure when the mood's going to strike me to read a book, and also because I feel a bit of a responsibility to the person I borrowed it from to like the book (hugely neurotic, I know). I'm borrowing more than ever from my library these days, and electronic renewal has made that much easier. And, yes, I buy. And buy. And buy.

Buying choice: Book Reviews, Recommendation or Browse? Book reviews and browsing in equal measure. Recommendations less so.

Lewis or Tolkien? I'm assuming that the reference here isn't to Lewis's theological writing. In any case, neither. I'm really striking out on these author categories, aren't I?

Collection (short stories by the same author) or Anthology (short stories by different authors)? I'd rather read a collection of stories by one writer. It's fun to troll for recurring themes.

Tidy ending or Cliffhanger? Tidy endings can be very satisfying, of course, but since life isn't very tidy, open-ended endings resonate more.

Morning reading, Afternoon reading or Nighttime reading? My dream job would be Professional Reader. Not a book critic, not a book editor or publisher, nothing that required me to do anything with what I'd read other than enjoy it (or not). I can read any time, anywhere, but I read more in the afternoons and before bed.

Standalone or Series? The only "series" I truly enjoy are mystery series. Mysteries lend themselves well to continuing characters, and there's a certain comfort in continuity. I'd guess that about every fourth book I read is a mystery. It's like a sorbet between courses.

New or used? Both, but I don't want to read something that looks like the dog's chew toy. Have some respect for your books, please!

Favorite book of which nobody else has heard? I honestly don't know how well-known Sarah Caudwell is (sadly, she died in 2000) but I love the dry humor of her charming legal whodunit series: The Shortest Way to Hades, Thus was Adonis Murdered, The Sirens Sang of Murder, and The Sybil in Her Grave. For some reason, I have a thing for British women writers -- Muriel Spark, P.D. James, Penelope Lively, Penelope Fitzgerald. Someday I'll have to get that taken care of.

Top 5 favorite genre books of all time? Well, if you consider "literary fiction" (I hear my husband snorting now), then I can play. Even so, there's no way I can list a definitive five books, simply because I'd obssess, anxious that I'd left out THE book. Let's just say that I love these books among many others: Pride and Prejudice, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, The Great Gatsby, One Hundred Years of Solitude, and Alice in Wonderland.

Favorite genre series? I loved The Borrowers series as a child, and still do. Now, P.D. James's Adam Dalgliesh series comes to mind.

Currently Reading? No One Belongs Here More Than You, by Miranda July; Suite Francaise, by Irene Nemirovsky; Special Topics in Calamity Physics, by Marisha Pessl; and dipping, for what seems like an eternity (not that there's anything wrong with that), into The War Against Cliches, by Martin Amis.

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.

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.

Good Advice On Advice About Reading

"The only advice, indeed, that one person can give to another is to take no advice, to follow your own instincts, to take your own reason, to come to your own conclusions...After all, what laws can be laid down about books? The Battle of Waterloo was certainly fought on a certain day, but is Hamlet a better play than Lear? Nobody can say. Each must decide that question for himself. To admit authorities, however heavily furred and gowned, into our libraries and let them tell us how to read, what to read, what value to place upon what we read, is to destroy the spirit of freedom which is the breath of those sanctuaries. Everywhere else we may be bound by laws and conventions -- there we have none. "

Virginia Woolf, How Should One Read a Book?