Making My List...

In a few days, I'll be compiling the list of all the books I read during 2012, first copying them over into the little "Book Woman" notebook someone gave me years ago, then posting my list here. I read awhile back that Art Garfunkel has kept a record of the books he's read since his teenage years. How I wish I had done the same.  But I didn't.

I have a system now, writing the title of every book I finish on the wall calendar that hangs in my laundry room.  Each year my son John tries to pick the most outrageous, hilarious calendar possible, and the laundry room is a safe enough place to hang it, out of everyone else's sight perhaps, but right where I can see it and record my day-to-day business. The book list, though, is most valuable to me.

For now, though, I am thinking ahead to the list of books I hope to get around to reading this coming year.  I have tried this kind of list before, and I rarely read half because other books make an appearance, and I'm lured away.

A few of the books on my to-read list come from friends.  One, nearly family, gave me a book her fifteen-year-old daughter bought for me because it's her favorite book, Walter Dean Myer's Monster.  I also plan to read The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grisson and Accordion Crimes by Annie Proulx, both on loan from a friend at work.  I also plan to read Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers, set in a Mumbai slum.  I also plan to read Ken Follet's Winter of the World, the second in his Century Series.  After meeting the author at the North Carolina Writers Network fall conference, I also look forward to reading Binocular Vision, Edith Pearlman's short story collection, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award.

I gave Anne Lamott's Help, Thanks, Wow! as a Christmas gift, but I plan to read it myself.  I also hope to read Zadie Smith's NW. I also think I want to read Louise Erdrich's Round House and Barbara Kingsolver's Flight Behavior.  I'm also holding on to my newest collection of Lee Smith's short stories Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger I bought when she spoke at our conference of English instructors.

I tend to claim not to read much nonfiction, but my list shows otherwise.  I am interested in reading Far from the Tree  by Andrew Solomon, about the experiences of parenting a wide range of "exceptional children."  I also plan to read through The Happiness Project starting in January, with a little side project of my own.

I'm also drawn to The Art Forger, based simply on the title and a brief blurb, and I liked Still Alice enough that I might want to read Love Anthony by Lisa Genova. Based on recommendations, I may also need to read Kevin Powers' The Yellow Birds and Junot Diaz' This Is How You Lose Her.

Since I don't live in a vacuum, in fact, since my world is peopled by readers, avid, voracious readers, I know that over the next few days, I'll be hearing what books others read during the holidays or received or gave as Christmas gifts, and there will go my best-laid plans.  Fortunately, I know that whatever else I'll be doing, I will be reading in 2013.

Making My List...

Swamplandia!

Occasionally, I'll have good intentions to read a novel based on recommendations from a wide range of friends or readers I trust. Swamplandia was one of those books. I started it, was interrupted, and I let it sit there on the night stand for weeks, months maybe.  Then I started over.  (Note:  It is almost always worth the trouble of starting from scratch when you have stopped reading a book. It seems like a waste of time, but it  grounds me again in the work.  Since I often re-read the first few pages when I finish a book, maybe this serves a similar purpose.)

Swamplandia is set in the swamps of Florida on an island housing a family-owned, nearly defunct alligator park--Swamplandia! (Yes, the exclamation park is part of the name and the book title.)  As the book opens, Ava Bigtree, the youngest daughter narrates after her mother, the great gator wrestler Hilola Bigtree, dies of cancer.  The  mother's death affects them all, as does the opening of the nearby World of Darkness, a hell-themed amusement park, less nostalgic than Swamplandia!  Ava feels compelled to train to take over her mother's role; her sister Osceola reads a book on spiritualism and falls in love with a ghost.  Brother Kiwi Bigtree runs away from home and takes a job at World of Darkness, hoping to save the family and the park from economic doom.

When Kiwi leaves, Russell begins alternating between a third person narrator of the segments involving him and the first person account of Ava, the not-quite-naive narrator.  When their father leaves the island for a long period, Ava ends up alone, her sister eloping with her ghost, Kiwi out of touch.  The arrival of The Big Man, a gypsy who rids the area of bird of prey, produces the real tension of the story as Ava innocently seeks someone to love and trust when left to survive on her own.

Russell's writing is often lyrical without drawing undue attention to itself.  She develops her setting so clearly I could feel the damp, could smell the swamp.  Despite the grand pretensions by their father, the self-proclaimed Chief, readers rarely lose sight of the real story--a family that falls apart after losing their mother.

Swamplandia!

Quality of Life--for Clones

I read Ishiguro's novel Remains of the  Day long ago, but I am still struck by the subtlety of the book, much of which Anthony Hopkins was able to convey wordlessly in the film version.  I recently read another of his  novels--one he published in 2006--Never Let Me Go, and I wonder whether, had I not known the books shared the same author, if I would have considered Ishiguro a likely candidate?

Though this novel might be classified science fiction, the characters were so fully human that I would not have suspected they were actually clones if I had not been told.  The world in which Cathy H. and her fellow "students" (the name preferred for clones by their "guardians") live is sometime in present day or recent England.  Kathy H., the narrator, is a "carer" in her thirties as she tells the story of her life, beginning with her years at Hailsham, an exclusive school for clones.  The life she describes could have been that of any teenagers raised in a boarding school.  Only gradually do readers realize the students are unusual in that they are clones, bred and raised eventually to become organ donors. 

Because this is the only life they have known and because they are given information about themselves often before they are mature enough to process it, they alternate between blind acceptance and curious scrutiny of their futures and their personal situations. 

Because the plot does not deal with the actual science behind their creation or their donation, it is mainly a character-driven tale, with a narrator who reveals more about herself that she seems to realize.  The relationship triangle involves Kathy H., her best friend Ruth, a controlling, manipulative queen bee, and Tommy, a boy first bullied because of his temper and lack of creativity who eventually becomes Ruth's boyfriend, even though readers recognize early on that he and Kathy H. are much better suited.

What strikes me most, looking back at the story, are the implications about quality of life.  Kathy and Tommy eventually track down two adults that played important roles in their life at Hailsham and learn that their time at Hailsham was part of an experiment, exposing students to meaningful lives of art, music and literature, before their inevitable deaths.  They learn that most of their clone peers in other situations are raised in squalor, more like farm animals or lab monkeys that esteemed individuals.

While some seem to imply the students were duped into creativity and lulled into complacency about their inevitable future, I wonder if the dominant lesson is that since everyone is filling time between birth and death, shouldn't the time be marked meaningfully?  Even after graduation, before they become "carers" for donors before becoming donors themselves, Kathy and her fellow residents are granted time to read and to write.  They have some access, though limited, to the outside world. They even choose to spend some of that time searching for or speculating about "possibles"--the source of their original DNA makeup--not unusual for any humans with  unanswered questions about our origins and our eventual destinations.

Quality of Life--for Clones

Where's Harry Potter?

I read the first Harry Potter long before it became such a phenomenon in the publishing world--Muggle or Wizard. Otherwise, I might never have started the series.  I often steer clear of books--or especially series--that seem trendy or faddish.  I'm glad, too, because I loved every one of the books.  I'll admit that I enjoyed all but the first two on audio, listening to the wonderfully talented Jim Dale creating all those different characters' voices.  More often than I like to admit, I sat in the carport waiting for a good stopping place.

When J. K. Rowlings' first "adult" book came out, I wanted to read it too, to see where she goes after Harry and Hogwarts.  I'm glad I read the book, and I think parts of it will stay in my head awhile, but I am so eager to talk to someone else who's read it too.

The book opens with the sudden death of Barry Fairbrother, suffering from an aneurysm as he and his wife were headed into the club for dinner on their anniversary.  As a member of a divided town council in the town of Pagford, his death leaves a "casual vacancy," requiring an election to fill his seat.  Rowling follows the lives in the town affected by Barry's death, most closely, the high school students one step removed, except for Crystal Weedon, a troubled teenage girl living the in controversial projects between Pagford and the larger neighboring town Yarvil.  Although she is first introduced as a brassy troublemaker at school, readers get to know her better in the home she shares with her mother, a recovering junkie, and the little brother Crystal protects and cares for.

Rowling takes readers inside the homes of the Walls, the principal and guidance counselor at the high school, and their adopted son Fats, bent on humiliating his father and living "an authentic life." His best friend Andrew Price, an acne ravaged teen, living with an abusive father, has developed a crush on Gaia, the beautiful new girl in town.  Gaia has moved, unwillingly, to Pagford with her mother, a social worker who came to live near her boyfriend Gavin--Barry Fairbrother's best friend--who is much less attracted to her once she moves to town. The threads connecting these and dozens more characters weave a tight web.

All the lives are intertwined, and Rowling's omniscient point-of-view moves fluidly among all the characters. No one, though, seems happy, even content.  Every character in the book seems to live in fear or to be plotting escape of some kind.

I was left with several questions:

First, did the book have to be so dark?  Honestly, the happy moments and the good relationships were so few.  In the end, I saw some hopeful glimpses, indications that at least some of the parent-child relationships (for those who were still alive, at least) might begin to improve.

Second, who was the protagonist?  I suppose I could envision the book as a Greek tragedy, since it ends in the classic scene of pity and woe, but I don't know that I truly identified with any of the characters.  I didn't even like some of them. Most of them.

All I need now, is someone else who's read the books so I can have an informed discussion.

Where's Harry Potter?

50 Shades of Book Snobs

     When the Wall Street Journal Online ran an excerpt from Joe Queenan's new book One for the Books, the story of his life as a voracious reader, he insisted I read it. Not enough that he send me a link, he waited as I located the story and watched as I read, certain it would strike a nerve.  He knows how I am about books. I love books. If I could find some career that required or allowed me to read all the time, I'd jump at it. Queenan is just as passionate.  He is also just as opinionated about his books as I am.  In fact, I notice that most people who love books are also strongly opinionated.

    Reading is such an odd pastime, one that is best enjoyed in solitude, but one requiring some kind of outlet or sharing.  I remember a column by a former Charlotte Observer book editor lamenting that her husband read but didn't want to discuss books with her afterwards. He did not, she declared "give good book." I heard Queenan interviewed about his book on NPR, and he was spouting his opinions--book clubs, he announced, are crap. (Okay, maybe I'm paraphrasing here.) He went on to point out specific authors whose works he considered beneath him.  Yet he admitted that he read lots of horrible books, many sent to him by self-publishing (therefore unedited) authors.  "I read those quickly," he said. 

Okay, then, I wanted to ask, which is worse, wasting time reading books you know in advance are not likely to be worth your time or reading a little airplane or beach fare? 

In a similar vein, I read one of those Ask.... columns in the New York Times magazine section. The question asked: whether or not one can count audiobooks when listing books read. His answer: No.  Again, I beg to differ.

Certainly when I started my teaching career, I felt the written page was sacred. Then I encountered a student whose learning disability--reading--had profoundly affected his education.  I suggested he try to listen as he read (insisting on the unabridged edition).  Afterwards, I realized that his comprehension and retention was far higher than many of the less encumbered students who had read thoroughly but only the print text.  Since then, I have become addicted to audiobooks, spending  almost an hour a day just driving to and from work. 

Since I'm also always reading a book as well, I sometimes can't remember a year later whether I listened or actually read a book.  I think I've always been an auditory reader.  In education classes, I learned that "subvocalization"--hearing the words aloud in my head--slows reading.  Well, guess what? I hear every word on the page (in the specific voices, usually).  That's the poetic effect of good writing.  I probably don't do the same when reading more expository texts. (Thank goodness, I don't hear the voice of the Maytag repairman when I read instruction manuals or Roger in India at the manual printing factory).

I won't even go into the ridiculous notion that reading electronic books is somehow less authentic than turning actual pages. I've licked my finger to try to turn the virtual page too many times before I remembered I was reading electronically.  I'll take my story fix, my word fix, any way I can get it.  But if Mr. Queenan can be persnickety about his books choices, so can I. And that's fine, as long as we don't impose our limits on one another.  Why, I'll probably read his book soon--not just the excerpts.

50 Shades of Book Snobs

Reading Lolita--in the Car

I felt like such a hypocrite. I'd read Reading Lolita in Tehran and I'd heard Azar Nafisi speak at NCTE. I'd read the other books--the ones by Austen, Fitzgerald, and James--mentioned in the work, but I had never actually read Lolita.  I had a general, fuzzy idea of  the novel's subject matter--creep pedophilia--but I honestly had no idea about specifics as Humbert Humbert and his stepdaughter Dolores travel across the U.S., presumably even through North Carolina. Who knew?

So when searching the library's audiobook shelves, my head atilt, I came across Nabokov's novel read by Jeremy Irons, a strong selling point, I checked it out.

I had no idea how clever, how darkly humorous the book would be. The voice of the narrator Nabokov creates is almost unintentionally self-revelatory.  Humbert Humbert is alternately self-loathing, apologetic, boastful, arrogant, analytical, spontaneous.  Lolita--Lo--Dolores is seen only through his eyes, but while she at first seems confident, even aggressive, Humbert unwittingly reveals a child, a victim plotting her own escape.

Because of the subject--the sexual abuse of a child--I would not recommend this novel to just anyone. In fact, there are some friends whom I would most decidedly tell, "Do not read this book." But after reading the novel--and yes, I do consider listening as reading--I completely understand why this clever, beautifully written, haunting book has earned its place in the literary canon.

Reading Lolita--in the Car

Statutory Reading

One of my facebook friends (one I actually know as a real person) posted a link to a blog essay decrying the way the joy of reading is destroyed in school in a kind of bait and switch move by educators who spend the first few years of school convincing students that "Reading Is Fun!" then assigning unappealing novels and dissecting them and over-testing. The author mentioned in particular, as I recall, two novels that often appear on high school required reading lists--The Scarlet Letter and Separate Peace, two novels I was also assigned to read in high school and two I have used in my classes as well.

On one hand, I believe there are so many wonderful novels from which to choose that it seems senseless not to pick the most appealing.  On the other hand, however, I know from personal experience that there will never be unanimous agreement on which books are appealing.  I know, too, that students--people in general--need to recognize the difference between reading for pleasure and reading to learn how to read critically, a life skill. Sometimes the only way to teach some reading skills --or at least the best way--is by using a common reading experience.

I remember author Ann Patchett speaking before the National Council of Teachers of English in support of teaching the classics--even instead of her own books. She said there are some books to which students should be exposed, even if you had to sit on their chests and cram them down there gagging throats.  (If I am paraphrasing here, I assure you I am close to her words.)  Former NC poet laureate Cathy Smith Bowers referred to teaching poetry in a similar manner as "Statutory Poetry," a term that made me smile.

In the opposite corner of this particular argument are those that say that when some of these classic novels are assigned to students too young or immature to appreciate them properly that we give them mistaken belief that they have actually read those works. With so many books are our disposal, even enthusiastic readers are sometimes reluctant to re-read a novel they loved, much less one they remember as boring or obscure.

I know some school systems prescribe the reading selections for students at different grade levels, but most teachers have at least some choice. I know those choices are often narrowed by book availability.  Gone is the day when students in most schools can be expected to buy their own books.  Teachers, too, have few discretionary funds for buying classroom sets of novels. Some get creative, writing grants to local or national donors. ( I recall turning to the excellent Donors Choose site when I was still teaching in the high school.)  Some spend their own money for books.  I know I built a decent classroom library in high school by handing out the Scholastic Tab book orders. Even seniors in high school bought books, letting me earn enough points to choose a few titles.

I believe teachers who bring our own enthusiasm about a work to the classroom, tempered by realism, allowing students to make valid criticisms even of the canon, can have a positive effect on readers. I think students should also have choice whenever possible.  By informing that choice, sharing a little about reading options, rather than relying on hearsay or a pretty cover, we can also lead students to books with the greatest potential to offer that most ideal of reading experiences--total immersion in a good book.

I know my own love of reading didn't come from multiple choice testing.  I think peer pressure to read had an early influence. After all, I even flew through those predictable stories about Alice and Jerry (our knock off version of Dick and Jane) back in the first grade,eager to see what books were next.

Statutory Reading