A Long Way Down

A Long Way Down
by Nick Hornby
c. 2005
Riverhead Books: New York
333 pages

So I liked Nick Hornby's other books, especially High Fidelity, so when I saw this one on the "New in Paperback" table at Barnes and Noble, I decided to pick it up as a good bit of summer reading. In the end, it's not as good as High Fidelity, but this was an entertaining read.

A Long Way Down is about four people: Martin, JJ, Jess and Maureen. The story is told in sections with the narration switching between all four perspectives. They meet on the top of a building on New Years Eve. All of them have come there to jump, but none of them do. The book follows them for the next three months or so, documenting how their lives and relationships change after they choose to keep on living.

But it's not a warm fuzzy book, and these are truly flawed characters. In particular, Jess is NUTS, and highly annoying. She's abrasive, she attacks people verbally, with clear intent to harm. You hate her, and at the same time, you feel for her, and feel bad for her, because sometimes, life sucks. (As an aside, in the sections that are written from her perspective, there are no quotation marks, or as she calls them "speech marks" because she supposedly doesn't know how to use them. While not knowing how to use quotation marks was a cute little character point, and I can see where it helped the author to distinguish her style from the other characters, something that must have been part of the challenge of writing the novel from four different perspectives, it only made any dialogue in her sections difficult to read to the point where I think that something was lost in the absence of flow, but that might be just me.)

If you've read Hornby in the past, and you enjoyed his stuff, then by all means, pick this one up, although you can probably live with a library copy, because there's not so much meat to this one that you'll want to read it again, or passages so quotable that you'll want them around for reference when you are having that sort of day. This book is readable, it was a loverly poolside companion this past weekend, and I was compelled to stay up later to finish it off, but it will not be cracking any of my top fives.

If you haven't read Hornby, stop reading my gibberish and go read High Fidelity because that one is most definitely worth it.

One other little thing that I found highly amusing...

At some point in the novel, they start something of a book club, deciding to read books by authors that have killed themselves, in this section Jess said something that I just loved,

"We started with Virginia Woolf, and I only read like two pages of this book about a lighthouse, but I read enough to know why she killed herself: She killed herself because she couldn't make herself understood. You only have to read one sentence to see that." (page 189).

Now I'm not saying that I think that Virginia Wolfe was not a brilliant writer, but I can say that I did find the beginning of To The Lighthouse more than a tad bit dense the first time that I read it, and therefore, I found this reference amusing.

Also, randomly but amusingly, Jess starts this chapter with a reference to a poem that her character has never read, which also amused me. She says, "Someone should write a song or something called 'They Fuck You Up, Your Mom and Dad." Which of course is the first line of a highly amusing poem, which I will include here, because if you have not read it, you should have, and it's in moments like this that I can contribute the to education of the masses.

This Be The Verse
by Phillip Larkin

They fuck you up, your mom and dad
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-stylen hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can
And don't have any kids yourself.

The Life of Pi

The Life of Pi

by Yann Martel

c. 2001

Harcourt, Inc.: Orlando

319 pages

Ryan Pipkie gets credit for leading me to this one, even though it has been on my list of things needing reading for quite some time. Sitting in my room on the Wednesday evening when he and Heather randomly came to visit, he said that this was one of the books that made him get lost, made him sit down and read for hours on end. And then, like so many other good books, it was on the Summer Reading table at Barnes and Noble... which made it even easier to keep it in mind when I was looking for things to keep me reading.

This book has three parts, and all three of them are beautiful. In the first, Piscine Patel tells of growing up in India as the son of a zookeeper. Along the way, he learns to fear tigers, changes his name to Pi (as in 3.14...) and discovers the wonders of religions, simultaneously practicing Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam.

The most powerful parts of this first section are Pi's comments on faith and doubt. One of my favorites.

"I'll be honest about it, it's not atheists who get stuck in my craw, but agnostics. Doubt is useful for a while. We all must pass through the garden of Gethsemane. If Christ played with doubt, so must we... But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation." (page 28).

The conflict between Pi's three religions makes an appearance when the leaders of all three groups simultaneously converge on Pi and his family as they are out in the city. They all begin by complimenting Pi on his piety, but quickly switch to demanding that he "pick one."

I found these passages particularly interesting, because of my own view on God and religion, my belief that in many ways, all religions are true as long as you are using them as a means of striving for a truth based on love and compassion. Pi takes this idea, and allows it to and his faith to lead him to the practice of multiple religions, whereas I have taken it to allow me to talk to God and try to find reasons and faith on my own... the politics that come with organization can be so daunting when all that really matters is faith.

In the second section, Pi and his family depart for a new life in Canada aboard a ship with many of the animals from their zoo. Tragically the ship sinks, leaving Pi the sole human survivor aboard a lifeboat with a zebra with a broken leg, an orangutan, a hyena and a tiger named Richard Parker. Soon only he and Richard Parker remain, and Pi must survive a long and challenging period at sea with only the tiger as a companion. He decides to tame the tiger, to assert himself as the alpha male. At the point of this decision, there is a particularly wonderful passage about the nature of fear, which I'll quote in part, just because I like it.

"I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. ... It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease. It begins in your mind, always. One moment you are feeling calm, self-possessed, happy. Then fear, disguised in the garb of mild-mannered doubt, slips into your mind like a spy... You become anxious. Reason comes to do battle for you. You are reassured. Reason is fully equipped with the latest weapons and technology. But to your amazement, despite superior tactics and a number of undeniable victories, reason is laid low. You feel yourself weakening, wavering. Your anxiety becomes dread.... Quickly you make rash decisions. You dismiss your last allies: hope and trust. There, you've defeated yourself. Fear, which is but an impression, has triumphed over you." (page 161-162).

They survive and land in Mexico. (That's not a spoiler, the story is told from the perspective of an author who writes during a series of interviews with an adult Pi.) This second section of the book is the longest, and beautifully written. It's the reason that you should read the book yourself, because it is a wonderful story, and nothing that I can say here will do it justice.

The third section of the book consists of interviews with employees of the shipping company that owned the ship that sank and left Pi to his ocean adventure. In this section, Pi tells his story and is met with disbelief. And the reader is left to choose between two options, faith and doubt. Because in the end, this is a book about faith, and not only the faith of Pi and the moments of doubt that go through his ordeal, but also the faith of the reader. The reader is left to struggle with their own willingness to suspend doubt and accept things that seem totally absurd and impossible. They are left to choose between faith and doubt, between a greater and a lesser story.

The choice of the reader is the same as the deathbed choice that is presented in Chapter 22.

"I can well imagine an atheist's last words: 'White, white! L-L-Love! My God!' - and the deathbed leap of faith. Whereas the agnostic, if he stays true to his reasonable self, if he stays beholden to dry, yeastless factuality, might try to explain the warm light bathing him by saying, 'Possibly f-f-falling oxygenation of the b-b-brain,' and to the very end, lack imagination and miss the better story." (page 64).

In the beginning, it is claimed that this is "a story that will make you believe in God" (page x). But I still don't think that any story can really do that in an unwilling heart. There are stories that can for many people, but we have all heard these stories, and two are among the first that the author supposes when he asks if the story he is about to hear takes place "two thousand years ago in a remote corner of the Roman Empire" or "in seventh century Arabia." If those stories, and all of the smaller stories that we're all faced with every day, the stories where we find ourselves surrounded by love, aren't going to do it for you, I doubt that this one will either.

But here, as with everywhere else, if you choose doubt, you are left with something much much less: with death, with darkness, human weakness and evil, with falling oxygenation of the brain.

As for me, I choose the better story.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

by Stephen Chbosky

c. 1999

Pocket Books: New York

213 pages

"So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be." (page 2)

Jack had that quote in his profile for a while, it might still be there. I loved it when I read it there, out of context and away from the wonderful character that writes it, but I love it much more here embedded in the beginning of this wonderful book. And I love Jack for telling me to read it. I am going to steal that quote from Jack now, or at least make him share it. But now at least, I know where it comes from, so it's OK that at least a part of it is mine.

Jack was online talking to me when I started this blog, and he asked me that always dreaded question, "What are your top five favorite books of all time?" I hate this question because I am so moody when it comes to books. Some books are perfect in one moment, but unrelateable the next. I can be comfortable saying that Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game is my all time favorite, but that is mostly because I have read it so many times to be sure that I find it universally powerful. Other than that, I am always sure that I would be leaving something out. Books are like friends sometimes, or songs, there is a right friend to call on in every situation, a right song to make every mood bearable, but it is not always the same friend or the same song. Books are the same for me. To ask me to pick my five best friends or my five favorite songs would be equally cruel. I have enough love to go around.

But Jack said this was one of his favorites, and since I have very much enjoyed many of the other books on his list, and because he is Jack and I trust him, I went to the bookstore and bought it; thinking that if he was right in saying, "you can read it in a day," it would be a good airplane companion. (He was, it was.)

In this book, Charlie, throughout his freshman year in high school, writes beautiful, striking, naked, honest letters to someone he doesn't know. A journal with an audience that expects no reply, just understanding. He opens his first letter with,

"I am writing to you because she said you listen and understand and didn't try to sleep with that person at that party even though you could have. Please don't try to figure out who she is because then you might figure out who I am, and I really don't want you to do that... I mean nothing bad by this. Honest. I just need to know that someone out there listens and understands and doesn't try to sleep with people even if they could have. I need to know that these people exist." (page 2)

And I think that we all need that, that we all sometimes want that, to have an ear to listen and still be anonymous. To have someone try to understand without needing to know who you are. This is the essence of the blog in some ways. The explosion of blogs makes it clear that this is something of a cultural need.

Watching Charlie figure high school out is beautiful. He forms amazing friendships with an interesting group of seniors and gets special attention from a very involved English teacher. (It says he's TFA! Clearly someone read their curriculum about individualized instruction for advanced students...) This book is brutally honest about the development of these relationships, of Charlie's way of thinking about people, events, himself. Beautifully, painfully, relateably honest about the confusion that others cause in our lives when we just don't understand them, or when we don't know ourselves well enough to see what we want. A wonderful perspective on how sometimes, it really is easy to take advice too literally, to be too cautious, to stand on the sidelines and watch.

And that's sort of what you do reading this book. Stand on the sidelines and watch Charlie stand on the sidelines, (although most of the time he seems to imagine himself more guilty of this sin than his actions call for.) There are times when you want to outright cheer for him, times when you want to whack him upside the head, and times when you just want to hug him. The honesty of his letters have you seeing him as a friend by page 15. It's amazing.

Now for my one rant and one super specific but personally relateable moment.

Rant:

This book is "An original publication of MTV books." Now that in itself is not so bad. (If you can manage to put aside for a moment the "how the hell does the same group of people somehow behind both this beautiful novel and Jackass?!") What's bad is that I think that this deserves SO MUCH better than to be advertised as such. This novel is stunning, independent of the author's youth and apparent hipness. (His first film premiered at Sundance! He MUST be cool!) It should be grouped with, as it has been by reviewers, other acknowledged greats in the world of "coming of age literature" A Seperate Peace especially, it reminded me of Knowles in some ways from the very beginning.

Instead, it is included on a page advertisement at the back of the book with the huge boldfaced title Don't even pretend you won't read more. Other advertised titles include: Generation S.L.U.T. "A brutal feel up session with today's sex crazed teens" and A Hip-Hop Story "Words become powerful weapons as two MCs fight to be #1."

The one liner offered for this work of unguarded honesty is " Standing on the fringes offers a unique perspective on life. But sometimes you've got to see what it looks like from the dance floor." (Sounds like the tag line from a horrible teen movie, or even a bad action flick where the "dance floor" is a battleground to save the city. Enter Neal's movie announcer voice here: "One teen. One way. One de-sire!")

The facing page is headlined Your attitude. Your style. MTV Books: Totally your type. And includes Cruel Summer, the first in the Fast Girls, Hot Boys series!

I am offended for Charlie's sake. I feel that his dignity as a near perfect character has been reduced. That his struggle has been rendered mainstream and hip. His honesty has been commercialized. I am insulted for him, and for the author, who forgiving his "hipness" has produced something here deserving of something more genuine than this. It makes me angry, and I had to say something about it.

Super Specific Relateable Moment:

OR

This blog has become a blog about reading books about reading books:

Charlie says that his favorite book is always the one that he just read. I feel like I have something of the same mentality. While I don't love every book equally, or allow each thing that I read to eclipse those that came before it, I am not what you might call a discerning critic. I just love to read, and I just love books. Even books with things that really bother me, I enjoy the act of reading them, the world that they create, the way that they make me think. Even books that I can see have little to no redeeming value in terms of culture of literature or knowledge, or books with vapid and annoying characters. (Something Borrowed comes to mind.) I like them. I find something in them to enjoy, to make the time worthwhile. Often I can see the criticisms that others present, but that's not enough to make me say that a book is out and out bad.

For example: who liked Franzen's The Corrections anyway? It's EVERYWHERE or at least it was, but I don't know anyone that has anything all that wonderful to say about it. When Karen and Dan, who are the two harshest critics of that one, come up with all the reasons that they did not enjoy it, I can see their points. And while I did not think that it was worthy of all the praise that it apparently got from somewhere (was that somewhere Oprah?) I enjoyed it as I was reading it. While the whole was lacking, I found parts of it charming. Had I read it while keeping this blog, I would have found at least some nice things to say about it.

This is why I couldn't be a book reviewer, despite my reading speed and love of books and bookstores. People have frequently suggested that I could make a career out of reading that way, but I think that becomes more difficult when you honestly like the majority of what you read, and when you read fast enough, and obsessively enough to not resent time spent on less than perfect books.

Charlie's teacher tells him, when giving him The Fountainhead, "Be skeptical about this one. It's a great book. But try to be a filter, not a sponge." (page 165). Charlie ends his next letter with "The Fountainhead is a very good book. I hope I am being a filter." (page 167) That's me.

That being said, please remember that the only bad thing I even maybe had to say about this book is that MTV is marketing it in a way that is beneath it's worth. This is one that you really should read. Really.

"And all the books that you've read have been read by other people. And all the songs that you've loved have been heard by other people. And that girl that's pretty to you is pretty to other people. And you know that if you looked at these facts when you were happy, you would feel great because you are describing 'unity'" (page 96)

I'll finish this by saying a clear and loving thank you to the wonderful Jack for taking the time to recommend a good one. Sorry it took so long for me to blog it. I hope that the commentary is up to the standards of a book you hold so dear. I suppose that it probably can't be, but at least I tried. I loved it more than I can say here too I think.

And because there's no better way to end it,

"So if this does end up being my last letter, please believe that things are good with me, and even when they're not, they will be soon enough.

And I will believe the same about you." (page 213)

A Prayer For Owen Meaney

A Prayer For Owen Meaney
by John Irving
c. 1989
Random House: New York
617 pages

I picked this one up Barnes & Noble about a week ago. It was on the "Summer Reading" table. Someone, I don't remember who or when, told me that I would like John Irving, and I am seriously susceptible to the impulse book buy, so I picked it up. You have to love it when an impulse buy works out this well.

This is a beautiful, powerful, wonderful novel. It's tragic, but parts of it are extraordinarily funny. The characters are real, beautifully developed, flawed, lovable. They, more than anything, are what makes this book. I couldn't put it down, which means that it was a very good thing that I was left in the Oklahoma City airport for about seven hours on Sunday, because this took much longer to read that I imagined when I started. But it's wonderful and well worth it.

So now, added to that already lifetime long list of books that I want to read, is more Irving. If someone (maybe even the person that recommended him in the first place) would like to direct me to one that they think I would particularly enjoy, that would be ideal. It seems that there are a fair number of options. The Cider House Rules and The World According to Garp being the ones that I recognize, which doesn't really make them more or less likely to be next. (Unless they happen to be on a display table at Barnes & Noble.)

Basic overview of the story, John Wheelwright, our narrator, is a New Hampshire native, the illegitimate son of a woman who can trace her lineage back further than the founding fathers of their small town, all the way to the Mayflower. (Or at least his grandmother can, his mother doesn't seem to care overmuch.) John's best friend is Owen Meaney, the only child of a couple that owns a granite quarry, something like the family from "the wrong side of the tracks." Owen is an extraordinarily bright boy, with an even more extraordinarily strange voice, and his own unique set of ideas about the world around him, particularly religion. The book follows the two of them from around age 10 through their twenties, from the 50s to the early 60s. We hear about their exploits in the form of flashbacks, from John, now living in Canada in the late 80s.

This book deserves better than spoilers, so I'm not going to give you any, even things that happen in the beginning. But if somebody would please read it, or direct me to somebody who has, that would be great, because I would love to talk about it.

A couple of things that this book made me think about:

The one thing that pissed me off at the beginning of the novel was the author's tendency to tell you something about a character related to an event that is yet to happen in the narration, and follow it with some form of the phrase "as you shall see..." I suppose that the fact that this bothered me so, (I remember thinking, "I hope that he doesn't do THAT for the entire novel.") reveals my general attitude about foreshadowing as a literary device, which is basically that about 80% of the time, it sucks.

My thought on foreshadowing is this: there is a difference between foreshadowing and a self inflicted spoiler, but in my experience, few authors seem to know it. I don't want to know what's going to happen 100 pages too early, and if I do, I don't always see the point in continuing to read. I mean really, leave something to be discovered. (This is different than books where you know the ending, but you want the backstory. The "how did we get from THERE to HERE?!" kind of novel. Those are occasionally wonderful. This book has some elements of that in it as well, and that aspect is well done. You have to know what's coming, but you just don't see how.)

I think that well done foreshadowing should be transparent only after the event that it was suggesting takes place. The kind of writing that makes you look back at the earlier text and think, "My GOD! I totally should have seen that coming!" not, "Yeah, I totally saw THAT coming."

This book is not really guilty of that. There are a couple of things that I saw coming a mile away, and some things that I didn't see coming at all. Either way, the "as you shall see" bothered me, and got me thinking about that, so you get to read it since I'm not giving up any plot.

Another thing that annoyed me at first, to represent Owen's very odd voice, everything he every says is written in caps. I mean really, is that necessary?

Turns out, yes it is. It stopped pissing me off pretty quickly because I found myself able to hear him in a way that I never could have otherwise. Able to imagine how much the things he said must have stood out, how startled people would have been the first time they heard his voice. So annoying at first, but turns out perfect. Another reason, when reading and writing, to give something a try, even if it seems wrong initially.

I'm going to wrap up here with a passage. The point is that there are some really beautiful passages in this book. Thoughts on faith and God and America and a number of other topics that made me stop and think: just beautiful and elegant collections of words. Here's one of them, Owen Meaney (in his caps) on the death of Marilyn Monroe,

"'SHE WAS JUST LIKE OUR WHOLE COUNTRY - NOT QUITE YOUNG ANYMORE, BUT NOT OLD EITHER; A LITTLE BREATHLESS, VERY BEAUTIFUL, MAYBE A LITTLE STUPID, MAYBE A LOT SMARTER THAN SHE SEEMED. AND SHE WAS LOOKING FOR SOMETHING - I THINK SHE WANTED TO BE GOOD. LOOK AT THE MEN IN HER LIFE - JOE DIMAGGIO, ARTHUR MILLER, MAYBE THE KENNEDYS. LOOK HOW GOOD THEY SEEM! LOOK HOW DESIRABLE SHE WAS! THAT'S WHAT SHE WAS: SHE WAS DESIRABLE. SHE WAS FUNNY AND SEXY - AND SHE WAS VULNERABLE, TOO. SHE WAS NEVER QUITE HAPPY, SHE WAS ALWAYS A LITTLE OVERWEIGHT. SHE WAS JUST LIKE OUR WHOLE COUNTRY... MARILYN MONROE WAS ALWAYS LOOKING FOR THE BEST MAN - MAYBE SHE WANTED THE MAN WITH THE MOST INTEGRITY, MAYBE SHE WANTED THE MAN WITH THE MOST ABILITY TO DO GOOD. AND SHE WAS SEDUCED, OVER AND OVER AGAIN - SHE GOT FOOLED, SHE WAS TRICKED, SHE GOT USED, SHE WAS USED UP. JUST LIKE THE COUNTRY- THE COUNTRY WANTS A SAVIOR. THE COUNTRY IS A SUCKER FOR POWERFUL MEN WHO LOOK GOOD. WE THINK THEY'RE MORALISTS AND THEN THEY JUST USE US. THAT'S WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN TO YOU AND ME,' said Owen Meaney. 'WE'RE GOING TO BE USED.'" (page 431)

There are others, some maybe even better, although that one particularly struck me. Anyway, it's a beautiful book, and if you've read it, let's talk about it. If not, it's worth the time to read it, even if it takes longer than you think, even if you don't have a whole day to spend reading in the sunny OKC ariport. Right.

If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
by Italo Colvino
Translated from the Italian by William Weaver
c. 1979, 1981
Harcourt, Inc.: San Diego
260 pages

First of all, I have to apologize for the length of time taken to read this one. A whole week is way too long for me both as a reader and a new blogger. Alas, I was distracted this week by several events. An unexpected and glorious visit from some friends took up Wednesday, a night that I had set aside for reading. (And I wouldn't change that for the world.) On top of that, the research that I am doing at work seems to have found the beginnings of something that might be exciting (I say this with thinly guarded optimism). Therefore, I have been reading, but reading journal articles that hopefully help me frame what we have found in the context of the other research that exists on the topic (and in all the other slightly related areas that I got sidetracked to, because I am like that, and I can get pretty much anything right here at my desk. I love the National Library of Medicine.)

Anyway, assuming that most people don't care to read all the details of my thoughts on various articles from medical journals, we'll leave that out until I actually write a book about it.

To the book. I love this book. It is a book for readers. It is a book about the art of reading, the experience of reading and how greatly it can vary. It is about attitudes that people bring to reading and the essential purity and impurity of books. Loverly.

"The book should be the written counterpart of the unwritten world; it's subject should be what does not exist and cannot exist except when written, but whose absence is obscurely felt by that which exists in its own incompleteness." (page 171-172) Beautiful.

Chapter One of this novel (if it can really be called a novel) includes a passage that sucks me in each and every time; it is so perfect. A trip to the bookstore in which you (for the book is written in the second person, addressed to a "Reader") are assaulted by the army of books there waiting there. As a reader and a lover of bookstores, I find myself facing this challenge each time I walk into Barnes and Noble carrying both my extensive curiosity and my meager finances and time. I think that here, the challenge of leaving the bookstore with any of the money I came in with is beautifully captured. An excerpt:

"...but then you are attacked by the infantry of the Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered. With a rapid maneuver you bypass them and move into the phalanxes of the Books You Mean To Read But There Are Others You Must Read First... Books You Can Borrow From Somebody, Books That Everybody's Read So It's As If You Had Read Them, Too. Eluding these assaults, you come up to the towers of the fortress, where other troops are holding out: the Books You've Been Planning to Read For Ages, the Books You've Been Hunting For Years Without Success, the Books Dealing With Something You're Working On At The Moment, the Books You Want To Own So They'll Be Handy Just In Case, the Books You Could Put Aside Maybe To Read This Summer... the Books that Fill You With Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified. Now you have been able to reduce the countless embattled troops to an array that is, to be sure, very large, but still calculable in a finite number; but this relative relief is then undermined by the ambush of the Books Read Long Ago Which It's Now Time To Reread and the Books You've Always Pretended To Have Read And Now It's Time To Sit Down and Really Read Them... and so on. (pages 5-6)

Really, sometimes I wonder how I ever make it out of there alive.

The structure of this novel is fascinating. In it, the "Reader" starts, and is interrupted in the reading of, 10 other novels, which are reproduced as he reads them. Alternating chapters include the narration of events between these reading, the finding and losing of the books, and his relationship with the "Other Reader" a young woman named Ludmilla. (He meets her in the bookstore, is there anyone else out there that is always hoping to meet someone new in a bookstore, it seems such a great place to meet people, and yet I never talk to anyone. blah.) The story is rounded out with an extremely complicated cast of other readers, writers and manipulators of books.

Each of the ten novels is interrupted at a moment of suspense. This creates an interesting effect, because like the character of the reader, I find myself wanting to hunt down these books and read the rest of them, just to find out what happens next. Of course, they don't exist, and the stories here are, alas, perpetually unfinished. (If you are someone who needs endings, this is not the book for you.)

More powerful however, is the commentary in the narrative chapters that talks about the nature of reading. Here I found many moments that resonated with me, explanations for why one is a reader, what one hopes to find, and does find, in books. The contrast of the hope embodied by some readers with the resignation of others, the escapeism of some readers contrasted with others who use reading as a way of being more intimately connected to the world. It really is a commentary on the diversity and humanity of the experience of reading. And also on the nature of novels as existing in some intersection between what is and what's not. I could quote passages for pages and pages here, but I think you should all just go and read the book. Because the point is made therein that reading is necessarily, in some ways at least, a solitary process, and me telling you about it will just not be equivalent.

Speaking of reading alone, this afternoon as I read the final chapters, I found myself very sincerely wishing that I was fluent in Italian so that I could read the original. This book is, among other wonderful things, filled with a variety of complex words and sentence structures. I am sure that the translator has put very real effort into finding the closest equivalents, but I am also sure that a book written by the word lover that Calvino certainly is loses more in the translation than other works might, simply because the complexity of the language suggests, at least to me, that much of the word choice was very deliberate, and therefore, impossible to really translate, since languages often provide only the most approximate or cumbersome equivalents for words that are beautiful in the original. But alas, I am not sure when I will have time to learn the Italian (or any of the other languages that would open worlds of great books in the original language...) But reading through a translator is like reading with someone else. I'm not sure I like it. Alas

Still, if you are a lover of books and the potential embodied in the act of reading, and not a lover of neat endings, go out and get this one. It's involved and fascinating, parts of it sensual somehow almost to the point of physicality. In the moments in which I was reading it, it totally owned me.

"What makes lovemaking and reading resemble each other most is that within both of them times and spaces open, different from measurable time and space." (page 156)

Perfect.

Walking a Literary Labyrinth

Walking a Literary Labyrinth:
A Spirituality of Reading
by Nancy M. Malone
c. 2003
Riverhead Books: New York
208 pages

This is another bargain book buy. I found this on the shelf at Barnes and Noble shortly after I got the Barnes and Noble membership card: a little plastic enabler that lives in my wallet, crying out with an innocent sounding voice, "If you don't spend at least $250 dollars at Barnes and Noble this year, you got ripped off!" (Is there anyone out there worried about my ability to spend $250 at Barnes and Noble?)

Anyway, I digress. I picked this up because I was at the time shopping for something to inform my thinking about asking God for some help in changing some of my less empowering habits (still asking). My mother frequently tells me that I need to meditate, that I move too fast and do too much. (Actually, this is not only my mother, but she is the most insistent, although Andrew is catching up.) The jacket of the book promised a discussion of how reading is like mediation, like praying, and how reading can inform us on our quest to selfhood.

As a good reader, and a very bad meditator, I decided to give it a shot.

The book was written by a Catholic nun and an avid reader, who clearly sees that both her religious and internal life have been greatly informed by the books that she has read over the course of her life. While some parts seemed to drag more than a little bit, and some of the recommended reading is probably a little too focused on the theological for my current taste, the book as a whole spoke to me at a clear and personal level. She clearly has an understanding of the reading experience that is similar to my own.

Reading is for me, as well as for the author, a deeply personal, emotional and seeking practice. The books that I have read inform my thinking about other things in life, even when the connections are far from clear. Being a reader is very much part of my humanity, and of the way that I strive to become increasingly human. Perhaps the way that I most powerfully and successfully strive for a greater understanding of the world around me.

It was reading this book today that made me think of turning this summer's reading into a conversation with whomever wanted to take part, or at least a conversation with myself. The idea is presented in the book that reading is like a conversation, and I hope that for myself, writing this continues to be like a conversation, even if there are no other participants beside myself and the texts that I encounter. I have found, over the years, that writing and reading a journal is one of the clearest ways to converse with yourself. Especially given the fact that the constant and gradual change we undergo can be hard to see from the inside and in any single moment, but the contrast in our thinking at far separated moments can be stunning. Right.

Anyway. The book talks about reading in a couple of ways that I found moving and true in a very personal way. From the beginning, the author speaks of reading as a questioning and seeking process, and not just reading non-fiction as a questing for knowledge, but also reading fiction as a questing for understanding human nature and ourselves. She speaks of reading as a method for seeking our best selves, what we are meant to be. She speaks in one chapter of the quest for authenticity and the way in which reading informs that. The endless cycle of questioning, and therefore reading, and therefore questioning, and therefore reading, that pushes me forward as someone that really, truly, deeply loves books.

"We have questions about what we should do, how we should act. And we can make decisions that are right, based on objective value, on the truly good. But we make erroneous and bad ones too. Following the powerful impulses of passion, laziness, selfishness, weakness, prejudice, we choose what we want even when it is not good for us, regardless of the good of others. In all these ways, we and the characters we read about achieve, fail at, or refuse the self-transcendence implicit in our questioning. We zigzag between the authenticity that is achieved in self-transcendence and the inauthenticity of choosing or settling for less than we can be. . . But our questioning - our questing - is unending, unrestricted. There is always more to know and more to understand, more that we can become. And so we keep on reading. And so each book, no matter how fine, impels us to yet another." (33-34)

I love this, and were the rest of the book to have been unreadable, that passage alone would have justified the trip to the bookstore. But she also claims points that I find relate very centrally to my vision of reading and my vision of God. Claiming that you find both the books and the readers that you are meant to commune with at the time that you need them (something that I have always believed about more than reading, for my life is nothing if not charmed.)

One of the things that I found interesting, is that the author, as someone who is in tune enough with the spirituality of reading, is not someone who can read anywhere. She claims to be jealous of other people who can find some measure of peace in any environment by reading. "the stillness, silence, solitude and focused attention that reading offers is to be prized; it may be the closest some of us get to a spirit of contemplation in the hurried, noisy, scattered lives we lead. A good book can create a little hermitage for some people anywhere..." (73)

And I am one of those people. Someone who can find peace in a good book in the most dire of circumstances, the most tired of days, the most beaten of emotions. Reading for me is deeper and more relaxing than any meditation. And that is why I do it with such enthusiasm. Reading is a powerful, spiritual, sensual experience. One that compels me forward to more and more. One that makes me feel more aware, more connected, and more alive. I am not sure what more I could hope for from meditation, what more my mother hopes I might find.

Sister Malone ends the book with another passage that I found particularly touching.

"Now when an author puts the first word on paper or screen, she commits an act of hope. And every time we open a book, so do we. We hope for all kinds of things from a book - pleasure, knowledge, insight, intimacy, greater understanding of others and ourselves, beauty. But reading can also, in a deeper and more inchoate fashion, give us hope." (175-176)


It is with that hope in mind that I will read my summer away. Each book I open, I hope to find something there that I have never seen before, even in those that I have already read (as my next selection If On a Winter's Night a traveler is). That's the wonderful thing about books, there is something new in them each time, because they are, each one, a conversation. A conversation between the words on the page and the person that you as the reader are at that single moment. Anyone that has a favorite book that they have read countless times, recognizes this. For me it is poignent both in the experience of rereading and finding newness in the most familiar stories written by others and in rereading and finding new perspective on my own story through my journals. The words themselves may be the same, but the context and the emotion and the background can be so different as to give the same words new meaning, new clarity, new hope.

And that, I suppose, is why I am such a reader. It is as Malone says with the closing words of her epilogue.

"You do what you were made to do. Some of us were made to read and write. Thanks be to God." (181)

Peter and the Starcatchers

Peter and the Starcatchers
by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson
c.2004
Hyperion Books For Children: New York
451 pages

Allow me to start off this entry by saying something very important.

Dave Barry is amazing.

If you don't think that Dave Barry is funny, then I don't know what to tell you. Clearly you have no sense of humor. That is sad for you, but really not my problem. (If you do not think that Dave Barry is funny because you *gasp* do not know who Dave Barry is, go here and you will feel better.)

I got this book off the bargain books rack at Borders a while ago, specifically because Dave Barry had something to do with it, and as we all know now; Dave Barry is amazing.

The book is the back story to Peter Pan, how he found Neverland, Captain Hook and Smee, eternal youth, Tinkerbell and the ability to fly. This kind of story almost always fascinates me. It's good stuff, taking a story that we already know and love and giving the characters a history, making them a little more complex.

Being written for children, Peter and the Starcatchers contained rather less of the patented Barry wit than I was hoping for. But it had shining moments: little lines that reminded me who was, at least partially, behind it all.

Parts of it were a bit choppy. The chapters are waaaaaaay too short, even for a children's' book, even in the culture of ADHD. There is no good reason for a book to have 79 chapters (literally), even when it jumps around between a rather large number of characters. (Especially since I keep telling myself that I am going to stop at the end of the chapter, but then the chapter ends so suddenly and so soon, and I am not satisfied, and decide to read just one more chapter, 77 times or so.)

All that being said. If you have a son/daughter/niece/nephew/cousin/camper/inner child that is in need of a book to read, this is a good one. It's got everything a good bedtime story needs: good and evil, Pirates and Indians, ships and storms, magic, giant flying crocodiles, mermaids, talking animals, and of course, an entirely chaste romance (although, Peter at one point, does start to think that maybe, just maybe, kissing wouldn't be totally gross). The kids are smart and resourceful, the pirates are gross and stupid, and the magic is mysterious and cool.

Plus, you'll be starting your child on the path to an appropriate affection for the work of Dave Barry at an early age, and that is VERY important. Also, it's just the kind of good fat book that a child who wants to be a reader will feel good about. (Come on, who doesn't remember the satisfaction of reading a good fat book? It still feels good once in a while. The Brothers Karamazov anyone?)

But seriously, the book made me wish I had some kid to read to. It's fun like that. Peter Pan is always a cool story, and the book works in introductions to all the good little aspects of Peter Pan's world seamlessly and creatively. Plus it has little bright details that just made me smile. For example: The same kind of magic that is responsible for Peter Pan was responsible for DaVinci, who aside from all this code nonsense was a very cool person. Also, the pirate ship catches up to the super fast British Navy ship using sails made from designs for womens clothing that look like a giant bra. (I'm not even kidding. See page 103 for an illustration.) Good stuff like that.

And of course, we must remember, Dave Barry is amazing.

Kill as Few Patients as Possible

Kill as Few Patients as Possible
Oscar Landon, M.D.
c. 1987, 1997
Ten Speed Press: Berkley, CA
109 pages

Andrew, in his infinite awesomeness, sent me this book as a random present. It's a collection of essays "on how to be the world's best doctor" written by a witty guy with a private internal medicine practice out in California.

There's 56 essays in all, each a page or two long, most of which are highly amusing. Each essay is titled with a simple word or phrase meant to be read as the rules for becoming, "the world's best doctor" (Landon claims you can't officially have that title until after his death, but by reading and following the rules, you can be next in line when he heads to the big waiting room in the sky.)

The tone of the book is interesting, and I recommend it (as a very quick read) to anyone that's interested in medicine. (I'm obsessed with doctors, which of course is how Andrew knew that I would like it.)

Some of the rules are clearly good advice that I hope I will be able to follow as a physician someday. "If You Can't Save Your Patient's Life, Find Someone Who Can," is about recognizing when you need to send someone to a specialist in another area, and knowing the best one to send them to. "Make a Housecall and Be a Legend In Your Own Time," is self explanatory. "Call in Death as a Consultant," is a great reminder that patients trust you, and that a mistake on your part could be *very* bad, so you should keep the worst in mind and try to catch everything. And of course, the title "Kill as Few Patients as Possible," a goal that all doctors should aspire to.

Others of the rules are clearly good advice that apply to my life (and maybe yours) right now. "When You Make a Mistake So Horrible It Is To Die Over, Don't," reminds you also not to drink or mope too much over it either. "Don't Be Late For Your Own Happy Hour," reminds that there is a time to stop working and that you should put that into your schedule as well (And also suggests reading every day, good stuff. ) "Execute Insurance Forms at Dawn," means get the unpleasantness out of the way right away rather than letting it build up and hang over your head (as I often do.) And of course "Since Death is Very Still, Keep Moving" (Most of the time I think that I have that one almost down.)

Still, there's some advice that I am suspect of. "If You Don't Believe in Prescribing Valium For Your Anxious Patients, Be Sure To Take One Yourself," I'm not sure that giving all anxious people highly addictive medication is a good idea. In fact, in general I think that Dr. Landon is a little too comfortable with "doctor's little helper." Of course, this in part comes from the perspective of someone that knows that she doesn't like the way she feels when taking that whole class of medications, so perhaps don't take me too seriously. Maybe he's right. I don't have anxious patients, yet. 'Take Up A Hobby and Become a Multifaceted Bore Instead of a Simple One" seems to come out against my nature as a person that likes to do a lot (too much). Again, maybe I will give up my sketchbook and ultimate and all that jazz once I too have patients to worry about, but for the love of God, I hope not. I do think that people need hobbies and interests, even people with big important time consuming jobs. An article in this month's issue of scientific American Mind on burnout actually suggests that people with those kinds of jobs need a way to relax that much more. But I digress. Dr. Landon also seems to have a more lax attitude about journal reading than I plan to have, but then again, we all know that I am an obsessive reader, so I suppose that we can't hold it against him. (Unless that is you want to be treated with the most up and coming treatment for your random disease, in which case, you might want a better journal reader doing the treating, but again, I digress.)

There is some advice I just can't follow: Rule #1 "Be Jewish"

And then there's some advice that, in my opinion, is just plain BAD. I won't go into the whole tirade on why I disagree with, "Don't Let A Shrink Take Credit For Giving Your Patient Prozac," but if you would like to read my 176 page thesis on the topic, I suppose I could send you a pdf.

But despite my occasional differences in opinion, this book is highly enjoyable. He's amusing, if sometimes a little off, and it's a quick read. Future doctors of America should pick it up. It has a couple doses of reality that are probably good for all of us as we study for the MCATs and beyond. (Patients die, its horrible, but true. I still, after all my years of wanting to be a doctor, have a lot of trouble with that idea. I hope that will help to make me better.)

And remember, the best advice in the book, "Praise Nurses," saved me about 45 minutes of work, just today.

In other words, just be nice to people.

Something Borrowed

Something Borrowed
by Emily Griffin
c. 2004
St. Martin's Griffin, New York
322 pages

This is beach reading at its best (or maybe it’s worst). Something Borrowed is quick and relatable without much meat to it, and certainly no words that you don’t already know. This was vaguely satisfying in a voyeuristic sense. The characters are not overly complex, but you care about (two of) them enough to want to know what happens, and that gets you thorough it without much effort.

The main plotline of the book is this: Rachel (our heroine) sleeps with and falls in love with her long time best friend Darcy’s fiancée, Dex. The two hide their affair over the course of a summer in New York City. Rachel wrestles with the loyalty vs. following your heart question as she spends time planning the wedding as the maid of honor all the while sleeping with the groom.

(SPOILER ALERT!)

In the end, Dex calls off the wedding, doesn’t tell Darcy why, and tells Rachel he loves her. (Well I didn’t see THAT coming.) As they are stripping for some good old fashioned celebratory sex, Darcy shows up. Dex is hiding in the closet of Rachel’s apartment while Darcy confides in Rachel that she has been cheating on Dex and is (gasp!) pregnant with Dex’s best friend Marcus’s baby. She plans to marry Marcus and move forward with her life. (Oh, the plot twists!) Of course, after the confession is complete, she sees Dex’s watch on the nightstand, and all is found out. End of friendship, start of beautiful life for Rachel and Dex (and maybe Darcy and Marcus, but who really cares?) end of novel.

There were questions at the end of the book (for book club discussion) and the majority of them seemed mindless. I’m not sure that novels like these really have some deeper meaning, that the author even intends that. Isn’t it possible that the intent in simple entertainment, without really talking about the nature of friendship or the balance of relationships. Maybe? I don’t know. I feel like this was not so much a literary accomplishment as a successful diversion, the same way that Legally Blonde can be witty and entertaining without ever coming close to the realms of cinematic masterpiece. This book too is good at what it does without making you work for it. There is certainly a place for that.

If her intent was high art, the author has failed. But perhaps more realistically, I do think that the author intended for you to care about Darcy, to feel bad for her, at least a little bit. Sure she’s high maintenance, more than a little ditzy, and thinks the world revolves around her. Sure, her best friend is betraying her, and that’s rough. Still, I never liked her, never felt bad, always wondered why either Rachel or Dex put up with her crap for even five minutes, let alone long enough to become lifelong friends or an engaged couple. She’s annoying, and she agonizes over annoying things, like which is the right color of lipstick. Argh!

The end of the book included an excerpt from another book, one written from Darcy’s perspective and seeming starting off where this one left off. If the author intended for me to care enough about Darcy to buy another book, she has failed completely. Even here, where I was reading from inside her mind, at the point where she should have been most human (the story picks up her perspective at the moment she finds out just how badly she has been betrayed) I still found her unrelatable and one dimensional, selfish, self-centered, manipulative, and barely tolerable. I’m not neutral, I dislike her. I don’t care about her happiness, she deserves what she got. Interestingly enough, I do not dislike her enough that I want to read this next book in hopes that it contains the details of her downfall, as some good villains can make you feel. I just hate her. I want her to go away. Thankfully, the excerpt is short and she does.

Now maybe this comes from some measure of the distain I feel for the traditional "pretty girls" of which Darcy certainly is one. But even with that in mind, I can’t separate her from that type, in part because she has been so solidly written into it. She wants to be the center of attention even in her downfall. She’s manipulative to the last. It’s entirely obnoxious. (I suppose that the author might be able to claim credit for making me feel so strongly about a character, but again that is questionable when she’s written a book from a prospective that I find entirely loathsome and will certainly avoid.

The other thing that I found interesting was the gradual building of Rachel’s confidence. She seems through the book to sell herself short, especially in the presence of Darcy, (who again with the obnoxious apparently stole her first crush, and claimed to have gotten into Notre Dame where Rachel failed.) At the same time, Dex, who is clearly (aside from the whole infidelity thing) written to be every woman’s dream, (sexy, smart, successful, dark curly hair… that last one might just be me) sees Rachel as a sexy and obviously has since he first met her. I feel like, as the book develops, we as readers are meant to see that Rachel, while she is frequently hard in herself and sometimes has shockingly low self-esteem, is really rather fabulous, prettier than she thinks, sexier than she thinks, all around better than she thinks. There are times when you begin to think that despite the fact that she has spent her whole life living in Darcy’s shadow, that maybe, just maybe, she really is the "better girl" that maybe outsiders might she her as the pretty and unattainable one while Darcy is overcompensating by being obnoxiously outgoing and social.

To me, this characterization, this gradual development, feels like a fantasy. I think that this might be what makes this book sell, and what makes the author’s portrayal of Rachel so likable even as she betrays her best friend (which I suppose should not elicit too much compassion, even when the friend is so easy to dislike.)

What women doesn’t want that to be her reality? No matter how hard we are on ourselves, I think that a lot of us are hoping that people on the outside looking in think that we are lovely. Maybe, sometimes, on our most hopeful days, we think that’s the truth, the from the outside, all the faults are imagined, and in reality, it’s not a friend, but ourselves that is the "pretty one" at least in the eyes of the guy that you most want to think that way. This is the same strange thinking that keeps girls from killing themselves in volient ways. Even at the last, they want to be thought of as beautiful, they hope that they will be seen as pretty and tragic, as if they will get to enjoy that.

It’s like a Cinderella or an ugly ducking story. And that’s why those are so appealing. It’s a nice idea to have the dashing prince come up and sweep us off our feet. It’s a nice idea to have the underdog win, the nice girl turn out also to be the pretty one, the smart girl to get the guy over the dramatic party girl.

And so this book works, despite the predictability of the story line (of course he leaves Darcy, I mean really here people) and the forget-ability of the secondary characters (who are these people anyway? why do I care?). I did read the whole thing in only a couple of days. I did care about Rachel enough to want to read about her happiness when the inevitable left her with the sexy man by her side. It’s good stuff.

So, if you like girly romantic comedies where the right girl always gets the guy, and if you like the idea of the not-as-pretty girl turning out really be the pretty-girl, and if you don’t mind (or find satisfying) the downfall of the occasional shallow super-pretty girl, than this is the book for you. I maybe wouldn’t recommend it as reading for anyplace that isn’t sunny enough to get a tan, or to readers with Y chromosomes, but it’s fun in the dumb girly movie sort of way that can be very nice sometimes: brainless, but very nice.

Then again, I just wrote a whole lot on something brainless, so look who’s talking.

Introduction: Readaholic

For some reason, every year, there is something about the beginning of summer that takes me, a normally avid reader, over some unclear threshold into the world of what can only be called obsessive reading. I don't know why it happens, but it has been a consistent occurrence for as long as I can remember. The trend is clear all the way back to the summer in grade school (between 3rd and 4th or 4th and 5th grades) when I reached my goal of reading 10,000 pages and earned myself some absurd number of free Subway Kids Meals from the Wethersfield Public Library's summer reading program.

More recently, the memories are more pleasant and vaguely sensual. I remember sitting in the coffee shop across from BC reading, how it was too cold in the shop and way too hot outside, and how distinctly different the act of reading there was from the work that I did that summer moving furniture. The summer before last, I read a book a day for the weeks before camp started, waking up early to read before work, eating quickly to read something at lunch, and spending full evenings in the basket chair that Nicole and I acquired mod shopping. Last summer I read for hours in my room at TFA institute, and sometimes when I could grab a free moment during the school day. My reading felt like a little island in that world of stress and insanity and transition, and I plowed through books even though I shouldn’t have had time for any of them.

This summer seems no different, and as Memorial Day passes and the weather gets hot, I find myself again turning pages compulsively, reading a book every day or at least close to it. I can't stop myself. While in the winter I sometimes fall asleep before my head even hits the pillow (or in some cases, before I even think about the pillow, while sitting up and doing something else.) In the summer, sleep escapes me until I have read for a while. Sometimes I will not sleep for hours and hundreds of pages and not notice what is happening, leaving me sluggish in the morning when I intend to run, but no more likely to make it to sleep without reading the next night.

And I love it. It’s delicious and relaxing and exciting. I get involved in the stories and the ideas and want to read more and more: more by the same author, more on the same topic, more on some tangentially related topic that is mentioned casually in a novel as a side interest of one of the characters. More, more, more.

In the past, I have tried to write journal entries about the things that I read. I want to be the kind of reader that can keep it together to write notes about all the books that pass through my hands. I had claimed the beautiful leather journal that my mother got for me in Turkey for this purpose, thinking that I would want to keep my reading notes far longer than the random thoughts that repeat in my other, personal, less enduring journals.
But writing is painfully slow, and typing is blissfully fast. The difference, especially for me, is astronomical. I wrote almost all of the entry up to this point during a single six minute task run for one of my subjects. I couldn’t come close to that writing by hand. That combined with my compulsive editing, and my tendency to be long winded, and therefore to get hand craps, leaves me thinking that despite my potential desire to have these ideas bound in lovely Turkish leather, the reality is that to get them down at all I may have to accept a more electronic medium: hence the blog.

That and part of the reason that I want to write about the books as I read them is the fact that I would like to talk about them. I would like to hear if other readers agree with me, and get suggestions as to other books that I would like. I want my reading this summer to be a less self-centric and more communal process, at least as much as reading really can be.
I don’t delude myself into thinking that I am going to have some sort of cult blog following as I write this. That would be insane, and I don’t think that I am ready for a large audience, but the act of writing about the things that I read with the intent of ANY audience will inspire me to think about them that way, and perhaps one or two of you will have something to say back, which is always cool. And even if not, and it’s all for me, so what, I do lots of writing all for me.
So here we have it. Maggie reading her summer yet again, but this time, at least keeping track of it. And we’re off.

The book list will be perpetually updated. And I do mean perpetually. Let’s see how much a girl can read when she has to work and play ultimate and study in addition to just devouring pages. I think that it will still be more than I imagine.