Books v. cigarettes

George Orwell's Books v. cigarettes is a recent volume in Penguin's "Great Ideas" series. I'm a fan of Orwell's essays and, between the eye-catching title and the old-style Penguin cover design, I couldn't resist this slim volume of them. It contains a couple of my favourites, including "Confessions of a Book Reviewer," which I've quoted from here in past posts, and some I'd never read before, such as the title essay, "Books v. cigarettes." In the latter, Orwell sets out to prove that the buying and reading of books is not "an expensive hobby" that is "beyond the reach of the average person." I don't think it will ruin the suspense to tell you that he succeeds, and that he makes many entertaining observations along the way. Here's a snippet:

It is difficult to establish any relationship between the price of books and the value one gets out of them. 'Books' includes novels, poetry, textbooks, works of reference, sociological treatises and much else, and length and price do not correspond to one another, especially if one habitually buys books second-hand. You may spend ten shillings on a poem of 500 lines, and you may spend sixpence on a dictionary which you consult at odd moments over a period of twenty years. There are books that one reads over and over again, books that become part of the furniture of one's mind and alter one's whole attitude to life, books that one dips into but never reads through, books that one reads at a single sitting and forgets a week later: and the cost in terms of money, may be the same in each case.

That final bit would make a fine meme don't you think? List: 1. A book you read over and over again; 2. A book that has become part of the furniture of your mind and has altered your whole attitude to life; 3. A book that you dip into but never read through; and, 4. A book that you read at a single sitting and forgot a week later. I'll have to think a bit on which book or books I'd list under each category. In the meantime though, I recommend Orwell's Books v. cigarettes as a book for dipping into and reading all the way through (and I note that at $9.99 Canadian, it doesn't cost much more than a pack of cigarettes!).

The Book You'll Never Write

Today, during a noon hour browse at my university bookstore, I bought a most intriguing book by George Steiner titled My Unwritten Books. Its arresting cover image prompted me to pick it up, and its premise, as revealed by a quick flip through, proved irresistible. The book is comprised of seven chapters, each of which describes a book that Steiner hoped to write but didn't. The reasons for not writing them are as diverse as the topics the unwritten books were to have addressed. The jacket copy catalogues some of those reasons as follows: "Because intimacies and indiscretions were too threatening. Because the topic brought too much pain. Because its emotional or intellectual challenges proved beyond his capacities."

I have no doubt that you'll hear more from me about this book as I read my way through it. But in the meantime, I invite you to think about the books you'll never write. There's been a meme circulating recently which calls on participants to list the identifying features of a book they would write ("10 signs a book has been written by me"). So how about something of a counter-meme? Tell me about the book you'll never write, the one you'd like to tackle but won't, and why not.

Mission Accomplished

I had to go to five different bookstores today to find a copy of Andrew Lycett's Conan Doyle: The Man Who Created Sherlock Holmes. I’m not sure why it's in such short supply in Toronto bookstores. Certainly they weren't poised to take advantage of any interest whipped up by the enthusiastic review in this week's Globe and Mail. I arrived at the fifth store a few minutes after it was to have closed, breathless and limping from my mad dash over there. There was a salesperson posted at the door, I think for the express purpose of turning away latecomers like me. But she didn't. She recognized the title of the book I sought, nabbed a copy from a nearby display table, and hustled me into the line-up at the till with such cheerful efficiency that, before I knew it, I was on the streetcar home already immersed in my new purchase. A couple of chapters in, I can assure you that it is well worth the trouble it took to track it down. Here are a couple of snippets that the bookish among you (I know, that designation likely applies to all of you!) may appreciate.

On Arthur Conan Doyle's mother's love of reading:

Mary made full use of the [Philosophical] Institution's extensive library. At home her passion for reading became a joke: she always had a book in front of her whether she was knitting or feeding the children. Arthur later provided a fictional portrait of her as the 'quaintest mixture of the housewife and woman of letters … Always a lady, whether she was bargaining with the butcher, or breaking in a skittish charwoman, or stirring the porridge, which I can see her doing with the porridge-stick in one hand, and the other holding her Revue des deux Mondes within two inches of her dear nose.'

And his own:

As Arthur had begun to understand, such tales [adventure stories by his favourite novelists, R.M. Ballantyne and Captain Mayne Reid, that he read while at boarding school] gave him an escape from events around him. He later enthused about the vividness of his experiences on such occasions: 'Your very heart and soul are out on the prairies and the oceans with your hero. It is you who act and suffer and enjoy. You carry the long small-bore Kentucky rifle with which such egregious things are done, and you lie out on the topsail yard, and get jerked by the flap of the sail into the Pacific, where you cling on to the leg of an albatross, and so keep afloat until the comic boatswain turns up with his crew of volunteers to handspike you into safety: What magic it is, this stirring of the boyish heart and mind! Long ere I came to my teens I had traversed every sea and knew the Rockies like my own back garden … It was all more real than the reality.'

This biography is shaping up to be precisely the book that I have long wanted to read about Arthur Conan Doyle, and precisely the book I want to be reading right now. Funny, isn't it, the lengths some of us will go to, even with a house already full of books, to get our hands on just the right book for right now?

Reading in Ottawa

I spent last weekend in Ottawa where I had the great pleasure of reading at the Dusty Owl Reading Series. I was aware that Ottawa has a very lively literary community, and it was a treat to get to experience a bit of it firsthand. I reunited with old friends, hung out in person with some online acquaintances, and met a bunch of cool new people as well. All in all, a very happy visit.

However, trying to leave Ottawa on Monday in the midst of a fog of proverbial pea-soup thickness was not so much fun. I spent many hours in the airport getting bumped from one cancelled flight to another before Air Canada finally conceded that no flights were going anywhere that day. I then made a mad dash to the railway station where I had the good fortune of getting one of the few seats left on the last train home.

I dearly wished that I had brought my copy of War and Peace along. A 1200+ page hardcover didn’t initially strike me as a suitable airplane book, but if I’d realized my one-hour flight would extend into a twelve-hour journey, I might have given it a go. Of course, I wasn’t bookless. I’d finished the mystery novel I’d brought with me from Toronto (one of P.D. James's Adam Dalgliesh novels, picked up on the strength of recommendations from Danielle and Dorothy W., in case you were wondering), but I’d stumbled upon a well-stocked indie bookstore during my Sunday wanderings about Ottawa and replenished my supply with these purchases: The Year of Henry James: The Story of a Novel by David Lodge, Memoirs of a Novelist by Virginia Woolf, and Paris Café: The Sélect Crowd by Noël Riley Fitch (with marvellous drawings by Rick Tulka). It was Lodge’s book, which I’d been intending to pick up since reading an excerpt from it in the Guardian ages ago, that kept me well-occupied throughout all of the day’s delays—such a fascinating glimpse into the process of writing and publishing a novel.

The next time I go to Ottawa (and I hope there will be a next time soon!), I think I’ll just make it a train journey from the get-go, and, as ever, I will make sure to carry plenty of books with me.

(The above photo from my Dusty Owl reading was taken by Charles Earl. Check out his fabulous photo blog here.)

Books Given and Received

I trotted out this list already in a comment on LK's blog last week, but now that the gifts are all opened, I can post it here without fear of giving away any surprises. I always buy a book or two for everyone on my Christmas list. I get such pleasure out of trying to match up each person with the right book(s). For the most part, I'm told that I do pretty well. So, on to the list.

For my dad: Last Rituals by Yrsa Sigurdardottir (a gloomy, atmospheric Icelandic mystery novel) and Scotland's Books: the Penguin History of Scottish Literature by Robert Crawford.

For my mom: Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear and Findings by Kathleen Jamie (a wonderful book of natural history essays by a Scottish poet).

For my brother: Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life by Steve Martin and The Book of Dave by Will Self.

For my 13-year old-niece: Enter Three Witches by Caroline Cooney and How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff.

For my 10-year-old niece: Wild Girls by Pat Murphy.

And for Eric: This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession by Daniel Levitin and Making Records: The Scenes Behind the Music by Phil Ramone.

As for books received, well, no one gave me any books. But before you start feeling sorry for me, let me assure you it's not that nobody loves me nor that the people who love me don't know how much I love books. It's just that they've noted a distinct lack of control on my part when it comes to book buying and they've sensibly concluded that if I want a book, chances are I've already got it. However, I followed Bloglily's example and put a couple of books under the tree for myself, two that I've been very keen to acquire: The Art of Subtext: Beyond Plot by Charles Baxter and the aforementioned Scotland's Books: the Penguin History of Scottish Literature.

Now we can all happily read away the rest of the holidays.