"It is a complex pleasure and a difficult pleasure..."

Virginia Woolf on the duties and pleasures of reading:

[W]hen the moralists ask us what good we do by running our eyes over these many printed pages, we can reply that we are doing our part as readers to help masterpieces into the world. We are fulfilling our share of the creative task - we are stimulating, encouraging, rejecting, making our approval and disapproval felt; and are thus acting as a check and a spur upon the writer. That is one reason for reading books - we are helping to bring good books into the world and to make bad books impossible. But it is not the true reason. The true reason remains the inscrutable one - we get pleasure from reading. It is a complex pleasure and a difficult pleasure; it varies from age to age and from book to book. But that pleasure is enough. Indeed that pleasure is so great that one cannot doubt that without it the world would be a far different and a far inferior place from what it is. Reading has changed the world and continues to change it.

Today's Library Finds

I stopped in at the library on my way home today and found this tantalizing haul awaiting me on the hold shelf:

Nemesis by Jo Nesbo: I’ve not yet read any Nesbo, but I’ve developed an affinity for Scandanavian crime fiction, and his Norwegian mystery series featuring Detective Harry Hole (of which this is the most recently translated installment) comes highly recommended by Danielle.

Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan: Pollan’s In Defence of Food was one of my favourite reads last year, and I’m keen to catch up on his earlier work.

Paradox of Plenty: A Social History of Eating in Modern America by Harvey Levenstein: I think that Pollan led me to this one as well via the footnotes in In Defense of Food. I’ve got a lot of food books on the go these days, and this history should help set the context for many of the others.

Loose Girl: a memoir of promiscuity by Kerry Cohen: A review by ragdoll at My Tragic Right Hip put this one on my radar and I'm looking forward to diving in.

The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff: I can’t remember where I heard about this one, likely a newspaper review given the amount of buzz it appears to have generated. In any event, the marvellous Victorian style silhouettes on the cover catch my eye every time I walk into a bookstore, and the description on the book jacket has me thoroughly intrigued:

"In the wake of a wildly disastrous affair with her married archaeology professor, Willie Upton arrives on the doorstep of her ancestral home in storybook Templeton, New York, looking to hide in the one place to which she swore she’d never come back. As soon as she arrives, though, a prehistoric monster surfaces in Lake Glimmerglass, changing the very fabric of the town. What’s more, Willie’s hippie-turned-born-again-Baptist mother, Vi, tells her a secret she’s been hiding for nearly thirty years: that Willie’s father wasn’t the random man from a free-love commune that Vi had led her to imagine, but someone else entirely. Someone from this very town. As Willie puts her archaeological skills to work digging for the truth about her lineage, she discovers that the secrets of her family run deep when past and present blur, dark mysteries come to light, and the shocking truth about more than one monster is revealed."

Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert: I spotted this one in a random bookstore browse but showed uncharacteristic restraint in noting down the title and ordering it later from the library rather than buying a copy then and there. It’s a very thought-provoking book by a psychologist on how poor human beings are at predicting what will make us happy. It fits in nicely with some of the reading I’ve been doing lately about the mind and the brain. Plus the author is very funny and it’s already proving a pleasure to read.

If you’re getting the idea that I’m on a bit of a non-fiction kick these days, you’d be right!

My Reading Year

I confess that I haven’t kept thorough records this year. My list of books read in 2008 totals 75 titles, but I suspect that there are more that ought to have been included on that list that I failed to note down. That partially explains the significant dip from the 100 books per year that I’ve averaged since I started keeping track in 2005. What else might explain the deviation? It’s been a very productive year for me in academic research and writing which has meant lots of time devoted to reading articles, cases, and bits and pieces of books rather than books cover-to-cover. I’ve also been very scattered in my reading of late such that I find myself now surrounded by ten partially read books, some of them 500 plus pages, most of them more than half read, all of them very good books that I plan to finish, but not before the new year rings in. But enough about the books I didn’t finish. What of the ones that I did?

Of the 75 on my list, 62 were fiction, 11 non-fiction, and 3 poetry. They were nearly evenly split between male and female authors: 38 written by men, 34 written by women, 2 co-written by a combination of both, and one written by a pseudonymous author whose sex has not been revealed. The list is dominated by English-language authors from Canada, Scotland, England, and the U.S., but it also includes books by Australian, Chilean, Czech, French, Japanese, Norwegian, and Swedish authors. Eight were translations. I’d like to be reading more works in translation than that but, nevertheless, it’s a marked improvement from the one or two translations per year that I was averaging before I started seeking them out in connection with my 2007 “Reading Across Borders” challenge.

In fiction it was a genre-heavy year, with 40 of the 62 fiction titles falling into the category of crime fiction, and a further 7 into the category of fantasy (the latter a testament to my continuing love affair with Terry Pratchett’s discworld novels). In non-fiction, there was the usual smattering of biography, memoir and books about writing and/or reading. But also a number of books on running (my antidote to Olympic withdrawl) and on nutrition and food politics (always an interest but now, I think, elevated to a preoccupation). The poetry books were all contemporary, small press titles by Canadian authors. Three sounds like a scant number, but given that I rarely read poetry books cover-to-cover, opting instead to dip in and out, that number doesn’t accurately reflect the amount of poetry that I read.

One unusual feature of this year’s list of books read is the number of authors that made repeat appearances on it. The list includes seven authors by whom I read anywhere from three to six books in a single year. This can be accounted for by a combination of happy discoveries (new-to-me authors whose work I liked so well that I immediately sought out and read more of their books) and binge reading (it’s common-place for me to read several instalments of a mystery series in quick succession).

One all-too-usual feature of the list is that it has a resolutely contemporary tilt. It breaks down into 59 twenty-first century titles (18 of those published in 2008), and 17 twentieth century titles, with nary a one from the nineteenth century or earlier. (Yes, if you recall any of the bold resolutions that I made this time last year, that does mean that I didn’t finish War and Peace, or Les Miserables, or Don Quixote.)

If I were in a mood for making resolutions, I’d resolve to expand my reading horizons in 2009 by seeking out books from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, and endeavouring to read at least a few pre-twentieth century titles. But I’m not in a mood for making resolutions. I may take my reading in those directions, but I’m not making any promises in that regard to myself or anyone else. I’m going to read whatever I feel like reading whenever I feel like it. My only bookish resolution is to blog more often, or at least more consistently, in 2009.

Not "Influences" But "Acquisitions"

Mavis Gallant on influence and style:

There is no such thing as a writer who has escaped being influenced. I have never heard a professional writer of any quality or standing talk about "pure" style, or say he would not read this or that for fear of corrupting or affecting his own; but I have heard it from would-be writers and amateurs. Corruption--if that is the word--sets in from the moment a child learns to speak and hear language used and misused. A young person who does not read, and read widely, will never write anything--at least, nothing of interest. From time to time, in France, a novel is published purporting to come from a shepherd whose only influence has been the baaing of lambs on some God-forsaken slope of the Pyrenees. His artless and untampered-with mode of expression arouses the hope that there will be many more like him, but as a rule he is never heard from again. For "influences" I would be inclined to substitute "acquisitions." What they consist of, and amount to, are affected by taste and environment, preferences and upbringing (even, and sometimes particularly, where the latter has been rejected), and instinctive selection. The beginning writer has to choose, tear to pieces, spit out, chew up, and assimilate as naturally as a young animal--as naturally and ruthlessly. Style cannot be copied, except by the untalented. It is, finally, the distillation of a lifetime of reading and listening, of selection, and rejection. But if it is not a true voice, it is nothing.

From Mavis Gallant, "What is Style?" in The Paris Notebooks (1986).

Next Up at the Short Story Discussion Group

The story selected to serve as the focus of the next discussion at A Curious Singularity is Kelly Link's "The Specialist's Hat".

The discussion will begin on Tuesday, October 14th; participants are invited to begin posting their thoughts on the story at the A Curious Singularity blog then. Click on the title of the story above to access it online.

If you're not yet a member of the short story discussion group and you would like to join, please e-mail me. New members are always welcome! Of course, anyone can contribute to the discussion through the comments sections of the posts without officially joining the group.

Upcoming Discussion of Emily of New Moon

Over at Blogging Anne of Green Gables, we will shortly be turning our attention to another of Lucy Maud Montgomery's novels, Emily of New Moon. The discussion of Emily is scheduled to begin on October 15th. If you would like to participate but are not yet a member of that blog, let me know and I will send you an invitation to join. I'm looking forward to a lively discussion of my childhood favourite Mongomery heroine.

Audiobooks Worth Listening To

I was slow to embrace audiobooks. I take things in much better by reading than by listening so I had decided that audiobooks just weren’t for me. I’m much too apt to drift away while listening and lose the thread of the thing. But then I moved and my commute to work got substantially longer, plus I started spending a fair bit of time on the stationary bike or on the treadmill at the gym. And I recognized that both my commute and my sojourns at the gym would be enhanced if I could find audiobooks that would hold my attention. Through a bit of trial and error, I figured out that either a suspenseful plot or an engaging narrative voice does the trick (or, better yet, a combination of both), and I have since spent many a pleasurable hour listening to books. The very best of my discoveries, listed below, are the ones that have been sufficiently riveting to prompt me to applaud subway delays, or to extend my workouts by a few extra miles:


1. Anything by Terry Pratchett read by Stephen Briggs (the list includes Going Postal, Making Money, Thud!, Monstrous Regiment, The Wee Free Men, A Hat Full of Sky, and Wintersmith): I didn't think it would be possible for me to love Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels any more than I already did, but listening to them read by Stephen Briggs adds a whole new layer of enjoyment to the experience. The tone of his narration conveys Pratchett's wry humour perfectly and the voices that he creates for the various characters are marvellous. I hadn't given much thought to how a golem might sound until I heard Briggs' rendition of one—booming, echoey and, well, clayey, just as it ought to sound. And there's the precise, chilling tone of Ankh-Morpork’s Patrician, Lord Vetinari. And the inimitable diction of City Watchmen Sergeant Fred Colon and Corporal Nobby Nobbs. I could go on and on, but instead I’ll just urge you to listen for yourself.

2. Shannon Hale’s The Goose Girl, read by Cynthia Bishop and others: This one is a product of Full Cast Audio, a company that produces unabridged recordings of children’s books using a narrator and a full cast to bring to life the voices of the various characters. The formula works brilliantly here. I still experienced The Goose Girl as a book rather than as a play (there’s no abridgment or adaptation apart from the removal of the “he saids” and “she saids” rendered unnecessary by the format), but I think that the range of voices more effectively conveyed the depth and nuance of Hale’s novel than a single reader would have done. Listening to it not only prompted me to seek out more novels by Hale, but also more audiobooks produced by Full Cast Audio. I have no doubt that I will discover more excellent authors this way.

3. Meg Rosoff’s How I Live Now, read by Kim Mai Guest: This stunning novel by Meg Rosoff is set in the near future, or perhaps an alternative present, in which the bombs of an unknown enemy begin to rain down on England shortly after 15-year-old Daisy arrives there from Manhattan to stay with cousins she’s never met before. Reader Guest nails Daisy’s first person voice, beautifully conveying her teenage blend of cynicism, bravado, and vulnerability. The plot would have kept me glued to this one regardless, but even if it hadn’t, Daisy’s voice as rendered by Guest would have held my attention.

4. Henning Mankell’s Faceless Killers (first in his mystery series featuring Inspector Kurt Wallander), read by Dick Hill: It could be a dicey proposition, performing a work in translation, trying to make the characters sound Swedish in English (when, of course, in actuality they would just be speaking Swedish) without descending into a caricature of a Swedish accent. But Hill manages to strike the right balance here, ably conveying the atmosphere of Mankell’s novel as well as the voices of his characters. The only quarrel that I have with Hill’s reading is he makes all of the female characters' voices sound the same and rather shrill and sing-song at that. But Inspector Wallander’s universe is a mostly male one, so that discordant note didn’t often interrupt the flow of the book.

5. James Joyce’s The Dubliners, each story read by a different Irish actor: I wasn’t sure at first how I would respond to a single book read by multiple readers. It’s a short story collection, of course, but a linked short story collection, and I thought I’d prefer to hear it read by a single voice to add a thread of continuity, just as the author's voice does on the page. But, then again, the stories are told from the perspective of a variety of different characters, so why not represent that variety by employing different readers? Ultimately, I concluded that it worked. There’s a bit of unevenness. For example, Colm Meaney’s reading of “Araby” is oddly flat (oddly, given that Meaney is a talented actor and “Araby” a brilliant story). But for the most part, the stories are beautifully read. I particularly relished hearing each one read in an Irish accent that brought the rhythms of the language to the fore.

6. Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything, read by the author: I’m going to read this one for myself as well, as I couldn’t take it all in in one listen. But Bryson, who has an engaging conversational tone even on the page, has a very companionable voice and I very much enjoyed the feeling as I listened of being guided through that welter of information by the author first hand.

The U.S. Election Campaign through a Literary Lens

There's a very interesting article in the current issue of the New York Review of Books by Colm Tóibín which draws parallels between James Baldwin and Barack Obama. Click here to read it.

And so long as I'm recommending articles related to the U.S. election, don't miss James Woods on "the Republican War on Words", or George Saunders' brilliant satire of Sarah Palin's war on words.

The Immodesty of the Short Story

Steven Millhauser on the short story:

The short story concentrates on its grain of sand, in the fierce belief that there — right there, in the palm of its hand — lies the universe. It seeks to know that grain of sand the way a lover seeks to know the face of the beloved. It looks for the moment when the grain of sand reveals its true nature. In that moment of mystic expansion, when the macrocosmic flower bursts from the microcosmic seed, the short story feels its power. It becomes bigger than itself. It becomes bigger than the novel. It becomes as big as the universe. Therein lies the immodesty of the short story, its secret aggression. Its method is revelation. Its littleness is the agency of its power.

To read the rest of Millhauser's essay on the short story and the novel, click here.

Toby Litt's Advice to New Writers

Toby Litt's advice to new writers:

Don't write what you know. You don't know what you know. Surprise yourself.

For the rest of the Guardian interview from which this nugget comes, click here.