Category Archives: Books

Sunday, March 19, 2006 · 6:59 am

On marriage and bike races

First, Virginia Woolf, on marriage:

“But I was glad to come home, & feel my real life coming back again — I mean life here with L. Solitary is not quite the right word; one’s personality seems to echo out across space, when he’s not there to enclose all one’s vibrations. This is not very intelligibly written; but the feeling itself is a strange one — as if marriage were a completing of the instrument, & the sound of one alone penetrates as if it were a violin robbed of its orchestra or piano.”

Next, me, on bike races:

After a morning spent out in the cold, either racing or watching other races, I am thrilled to be indoors for the afternoon, cozy in my study, to read and write a bit. I rode in a men’s category 5 criterium (women can ride in certain men’s races), and stayed with the pack longer this week than last. That’s good enough. What I was mainly worried about was being the woman who caused a crash. Being a lone woman riding with the guys is fun at times because I get all kinds of attention the other dime-a-dozen men don’t (this is because not many women race, which is a bad thing, but extra attention and encouragement is the good side of the bad situation), but I don’t want people paying attention to me because I caused them to slide across the pavement.

A big part of going to bike races is talking to strangers who also go to bike races. I like the fact that you can tell very little about other people’s non-cycling lives (maybe you can tell something from the way they talk) and so I have conversations with people I might not normally. That turns out to be a whole lot of men in their 50s. I hear a lot of talk about bike gear (about which I know little) and a lot of blaming of things like “getting boxed in.” Hmmm. Not sure what I think about that.

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Filed under Books, Cycling

Saturday, March 18, 2006 · 6:59 am

Diaries

I am reading Virginia Woolf’s diary, Vol. 1, a bit at a time. I expect to move through it slowly. So far I am enjoying it, although the last stretch I read was mostly very short summaries of days spent walking and reading (if I didn’t know a little about what her mental life was like I’d be jealous), and not terribly interesting. But she has some great observations sprinkled in here and there, and I like to know what she is reading, and what she thinks about it. She was reading Pope in the first part of the diary and liking him a lot. Are there two writers whose differences are greater? As someone who claims some expertise in eighteenth-century literature, I should know him better than I do.

I’ve been a sporadic journal keeper myself; I kept one more consistently when I was younger. These days I mostly keep track of what I’m reading with a few thoughts about it and what kind of riding I’m doing. That is, until this blog. So Woolf’s diary is very appropriate reading for me now. I haven’t been a big diary reader (with the exception of … well, see my blogger name), but maybe that will change.

I returned Smiley to the library; there really is no point in reading through all her discussions of individual works. I’m fascinated by the idea of reading through a long list of novels (she spent three years on it) and am a sucker for long, involved projects, and I wish she’d said more about what the experience was like (did she get bored? did she long for nonfiction after a while?).

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Filed under Books, Writing

Friday, March 17, 2006 · 7:00 am

Okay, here’s my first post. I’m guessing that this blog will be more about books than bicycles, but I’m using both in my blog name because those are my two main obsessions. But I think I will have more to say about books. And I’m guessing also that I’ll have a lot to say about writing a blog itself — I’m not entirely sure how this will work, whether I will be able to post regularly (and be interested in posting regularly), what exactly I will want to talk about. But I’m interested in this because I’ve been reading a lot of other blogs lately and have become fascinated by them. I’m not interested in “creative” writing generally — “creative” as generally described — poems, fiction, plays — but I might like this sort of creative diary/non-fiction writing. At least it will be fun for me — an online diary.

So, I’m now reading Jane Smiley’s 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel, and am feeling ambivalently about it. She has some great theories about the novel — I like her wheel with the various genres that contribute to the novel, and I like her description of writing her own novel. But she has this weird way of refering to the writer as male and the reader as female. Why? And sometimes her theories seem too neat. She loves making broad statements about what the novel is versus what poetry is, and I don’t always buy it. Making broad statements like that will generally get you into trouble.

I’m now into the section where she is describing particular novels; I’m not sure how thoroughly I will read that part. It’s not really meant to be read straight through, but I find it very hard to put a book down without finishing it, and I might find her descriptions interesting, so for now I’m sticking with it. I want to be able to say that I’ve read the whole thing, and if I put it down without reading those descriptions, I can’t say that, can I? That’s the problem with keeping lists of books read — what about those things you read part of? Perhaps I should keep a list of partly-read books.

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