Of Books and Bicycles

So Kate asks, “When and why do you read reviews?” And who am I to turn down a great idea for a blog post? As I consider my answer, I feel like I need to call it a confession: I don’t like reading book reviews of authors I’ve never heard of.

Well, that’s true when it comes to fiction and even more so for poetry. As for nonfiction, I love reading those reviews because I can often get the gist of the book without going to the trouble of … actually reading the book. The vast majority of nonfiction books that get published I’ll never read, and book reviews are a great way of keeping up with the ideas out there, a great way of learning a tiny bit of the latest in history, science, psychology, economics, politics, etc. etc. Sometimes I do end up reading the book; often, though, I get what I can from the review and move on.

As for fiction, though, that’s another story. The truth is that I feel overwhelmed by the number of novels out there and I’m sometimes resistant to new authors. I’m not especially pleased with myself for this; I’d like to be more adventurous in my reading. But I wait to see how widely a new name gets talked about, to see if the people I know, in person or online, talk about an author, to see what other authors recommend that person. I’m sure I’m missing out on a lot of good writing this way, but I don’t know what else to do, really, when my to-be-read list is already so long and I’m feeling too pressured by books I’m already aware of to take a look at new ones.

So I avoid those reviews of books that are completely new to me, unless I happen to glance at a sentence that catches my attention and then I might read further. But that doesn’t happen all that often.

The other problem with reading fiction reviews, for me, is that I’m bored by plot summary. I’m happy to read a plot summary after I’ve read the book because then it all makes sense to me, but beforehand? It’s hard work to make sense of a novel’s premise from a few paragraphs. I’ll read the reviewer’s opening hook with interest, but when the plot summary begins, my mind wanders and I’m off to the next review.

What I like to read about in a review are things like the reviewer’s sense of the author’s writing career and how the new book fits into it, or about writing style, or comparisons between the author under consideration and other authors, or the reviewer’s judgments about what works and what doesn’t. I find myself reading the opening and closing paragraphs of reviews because that’s where I most often find those elements; the middle gets lost in the plot summary.

As for poetry, I’m even less likely to take a risk on a poet I’ve never heard of before, so those reviews I generally ignore also.

Maybe I should make a point of taking a risk on a new author every once in a while. If I decide to make up some reading goals for the new year, maybe that’ll be one of them: to read a book by an author I’ve never heard of before and that nobody has recommended to me. So, readers, don’t give me any ideas.

I was fascinated by Bloglily’s post on difficult books, books she doesn’t finish because they just weren’t working for her. I’m going to steal her idea and talk about my own examples. She’s talking about books that she puts aside not because they are bad — an entirely separate category, I imagine, with its own list — but because she’s not ready for them for one reason or another. As an obsessive book-finisher, I don’t give up on many books, preferring to struggle on and suffer until the bitter end. But occasionally it happens, and then it rankles a bit. I feel challenged. I may have lost that round, but I’m coming back, one day when I’m stronger.

Bloglily mentions Henry James’s novel The Ambassadors, which is top on my list of unfinished books. I tried this book a few years ago, and just couldn’t for the life of me figure out what was going on. I looked around for some help on the internet and found a little bit, but I got annoyed that I needed a plot summary to keep going, and couldn’t get it on my own, and I said forget it. I did make it through The Wings of the Dove, another late James novel, with much sweat and perserverance, so I think I can get The Ambassadors; I just need the right conditions — a fairly calm, quiet, unstressful couple of weeks during which I can spend the time to get a handle on the story. Maybe, also, I need to learn something about reading slowly and about living with a little uncertainty. Maybe Proust will help me with that stuff.

More common for me, however, are those books that I’ve read twice, and come to like the second time around, when the first time I didn’t. Something about those books brought me back again, even after an initial bad response. Pale Fire is a good example; I had to read the book for a college class, and it left me kind of cold. I re-read it a few years later, and changed my mind entirely. There was something about the language of that novel, the excitement and intensity of the commentary that came after the opening poem, the playfulness of it all that I just couldn’t appreciate the first time, and came to love the second. I needed to learn something about the pleasures of experimentation with form and language, I think.

I had a similar experience with Don Delillo’s White Noise, which also left me cold at first. I’m not sure why I read it again, except perhaps because so many people loved it that I wondered what I had missed. When I re-read it, I finally got it — the humor and the social satire. Maybe I needed to learn how to read the type of book that doesn’t necessarily work to create emotionally-vibrant, psychologically-realistic characters of the sort I’m usually drawn to. I needed to learn how to read and appreciate satire. I think that’s true about me — I don’t always respond well to satire, preferring warmer, intimate reads that take me into the heart of a character rather than books that focus on the failings of people and of society from a more exterior point of view.

Thinking along these lines, maybe I should read The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann once again. I read it a year or two ago, and found it okay in places, downright boring in others. I’m guessing this is because of a flaw in me and not in the book. Maybe if I take another look at it again a few years from now, I’ll find its highly philosophical meanderings and its very slow pace intriguing and absorbing.

At any rate, many thanks to Bloglily for writing a thought-provoking post. I like the idea of giving certain novels a second chance — and giving myself one too.

So you know how I thought the introduction to my edition of Dracula was funny? Well, the footnotes are funnier. I’m discovering that my edition isn’t a typically academic one; in fact, I think it’s geared more toward gothic/horror fans, although the book proclaims the editor as “the world’s premier Dracula scholar” (which reminds me of Little Miss Sunshine …).

The edition has commentary by “leading contemporary horror writers, including Harlan Ellison, Robert Bloch, and many more” and this commentary is interspersed throughout the book, so that in between chapters I’m invited to step outside of the story and think about what some other writer has to say about it. Actually, though, I just ignore those parts. The book also has “Over 35 illustrations, including stunning new Dracula illustrations by Christopher Bing.” These are fun, but I was a bit perplexed to come across a drawing of Bram Stoker himself – again, it’s disconcerting to get caught up in a story and then get pulled out of it to consider what the author looks like. Why couldn’t they just let the story be, and keep all that other stuff to the introduction or an appendix?

But the footnotes are the most intrusive of all; they are frequent, with probably 3 or 4 a page on average and often lengthy. Many of them contain useful information – a LOT of information – on the history and culture of Transylvania, on vampire stories, on Stoker’s life and times. But many of them contain no useful information at all, and instead offer interpretations of the book, point out inconsistencies in Stoker’s storytelling, make judgments on the characters’ actions, and generally just get in the way – and make me laugh. The book mentions the dish “paprika hendl,” and in the footnotes we get a recipe. The novel says that the driver “cracked his big whip over four small horses, which ran abreast,” and the footnote tells us “In no Dracula film yet made has anyone depicted the horses harnessed in this way.”

Dracula says, “I love the shade and the shadow, and would be alone with my thoughts when I may,” and the editor muses, “A surprisingly melancholy passage. Is Dracula lonely? Why does he want Harker there? Is he really testing his English, or his social skills, as he claims?” And what are these footnotes – attempts at creating a reader’s guide, complete with discussion questions? Harker considers escaping from Dracula’s castle, saying, “I shall try to scale the castle wall farther than I have yet attempted. I shall take some of the gold with me lest I want it later,” and the editor gets moralistic: “A pretty lame excuse for stealing Dracula’s gold.”

But the best footnote of all is yet to come (and I’ve only read about 60 pages! Hundreds left to go!). First, the text: this is the scene where Harker is first attacked by the three mysterious vampire women hanging out in Dracula’s castle (and the text itself is pretty funny, if you read it in the right way):

The girl went on her knees, and bent over me, simply gloating. There was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive, and as she arched her neck she actually licked her lips like an animal, till I could see in the moonlight the moisture shining on the scarlet lips and on the red tongue as it lapped the white sharp teeth. Lower and lower went her head as the lips went below the range of my mouth and chin and seemed about to fasten on my throat. Then she paused, and I could hear the churning sound of her tongue as it licked her teeth and lips, and could feel the hot breath on my neck….

Here’s the accompanying footnote:

I have tried, calmly as well as passionately, to reproduce this churning sound with my tongue but without success. It may be a noise that only a passionate vampire can make.

I’m glad to know this editor is doing his research!

It would be better to read a less intrusive edition for my first time through the book, but I have to admit that the editorial apparatus is adding an entirely unexpected level of pleasure to my reading.

With that generic post title, I can write about anything! I’m finding myself with a whole lot of little ideas on what to write here and can’t decide what to focus on, so I’ll write a little about a lot of stuff.

First of all, while I won’t tell you you must read Alison Lurie because I don’t believe in telling people they have to read things (um … unless you’re a student in my class that is — in that case, there’ll be a quiz), I think it would be great if more people read her. I finished The War Between the Tates last night and loved it. It’s smart, extremely well-written, clever and satirical, but also warm in a way many satirical novels are not. I like reading academic satires now and then, and this book would certainly qualify as one, but I do sometimes find them rather cold and brittle. Give me some emotional warmth, and I’m happy, and I found it here.

I’ve discovered a number of writers recently whom I’ve come to love — writers that are new to me, although not necessarily to others — and I’m interested that they are women: Rebecca West, Colette, Alison Lurie, Elizabeth Taylor, maybe Anne Tyler (I liked her latest book a lot, but I’m not sure I’m inspired to go read more). I’ve sensed that when I think of “great” writers of recent times, let’s say the last 100 years, I tend to think of more male writers than female; maybe I’ve picked up biases from the educational systems I’ve gone through, or maybe it’s that male authors are written about and reviewed more often than female writers. Well, I know the latter is true; maybe, my point is, I’ve picked up a bias from the media as well as from my education. And now I’m poised to read Margaret Atwood for the first time (Alias Grace, although Dracula will come first), so maybe I’ll find another woman writer to love. And the poets — yes — I’d add Jane Kenyon, Jane Hirschfield, and Mary Oliver to my list of recently-discovered women writers whom I’ve come to love. The friend of mind who loves Anita Brookner was wondering why she hadn’t heard of Brookner before, and surely it has something to do with the lack of serious attention paid to women writers — still.

But at any rate — Alias Grace just arrived in the mail through Book Mooch, and I’ve got a rather embarrassingly large number of books still to come. I’ve sent out two books to people, and have received two and am waiting on five more. I’ve accumulated points (which is what you use to request books from others) by adding books to my Book Mooch list (1/10 of a point for each book), and by mailing a book to Canada, which earned me a whole three points instead of the usual one. I justify my greed by reminding myself that people like to get books mooched from them because they can get rid of what they don’t want and use the points they earn to get ones they do. I eagerly await emails from people saying they want books of mine. So I tell myself I’m making people happy when I ask them to mail me books. It’s true, I’m sure!

So here’s what I’m waiting on: Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, Marguerite Navarre’s The Heptameron (in the style of The Decameron but written by a woman), Mythologies by Roland Barthes (this one I can justify because the Hobgoblin wants it), Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine (I like this guy a lot, and I’m not entirely sure why), and John Kelly’s The Great Mortality, the book on the plague. I’m not sure why a book on the plague fascinates me so much, but it does.

And I finished the first volume of Proust. I loved it. I’ll have to write more on it later — that surely deserves its own post, not a brief mention in this random one.

One other thing: I’m considering moving my to-be-read books to their own separate shelf, something I’ve never done before. I’ve got some space on my bookshelves upstairs in my study where I do most of my reading that would work nicely. This would please and appease my obsessive, hyper-organized self (another way to sort things!), and it would have another benefit: I’ll put the books on the shelf across the room from me, which, since it’s not a very big room, I’ll be able to see quite clearly. That way, the books I own that I haven’t read will be before me at all times, tempting me (hopefully) to read them next instead of rushing off to the bookstore to buy more books.

Do you consider yourself a slow or a fast reader? I’d call myself a slow one. Obviously, such things are relative, but I’ve found that the Hobgoblin not only reads more books over the course of a year than I do, but that he seems to be able to get to the bottom of the page faster during those few times we’ve shared a magazine or newspaper. And I read book bloggers who seem to get through books awfully quickly, posting book reviews with admirable frequency. I think I’m slow in terms of the speed with which I process words and sentences, and if I read a decent number of books a year — this year I’ll probably read between 50 and 60 — it’s because I have a lot of time for reading, or, rather, I make a lot of time. The Hobgoblin and I just had a conversation about the things we could do if we didn’t read so much — things like keeping the house clean, the lawn neat, the pool free from algae (or, better yet, we’d have time to get rid of the stupid thing and do something better with the yard) — a list which is not particularly inspiring. We’ll continue to opt for the reading time.

I’m in awe of those who can regularly read a book in a day or two, who can sit down for a couple of hours and get through hundreds of pages. I must have read a book in a day at some point in my life, but I can’t remember when, and the book must have been quite short. I can read things fast if I make myself — student papers are one example of reading material I’ll rip through, eager to get to the end — but generally I’m happy to linger over words and sentences, re-read things, pause frequently and look up to consider a point, and let my mind wander.

Even more significant for me, though, is that I can’t seem to take in that much of a story in one sitting before I begin to get a bit anxious, feeling like I need a break. I need a lot of time to process what I’m reading, I think. If I read too much of a novel in one day, say more than 70-80 pages, or even less, depending on the novel, I feel as though I’m not really appreciating it, not really absorbing it. It’s like I can only comprehend a certain amount of action or information, or a certain number of plot events or character revelations before I begin to feel overloaded. And with nonfiction, it’s even worse — if I’m reading something full of facts and ideas I’d like to remember, I need even more time to process it — to think about it and make sense of it before I go on to the next thing.

Reading multiple books helps me with this problem — if it is a problem; if I feel like I’ve read enough of Proust, I can turn to my biography of Colette, or my book of poetry, or whatever else, and I won’t feel overwhelmed. I think this has less to do with the total number of hours of reading in a day than with the amount of any one book I can take in at a time, although I can’t hop from book to book for all that terribly long either — I’ll get restless.

So — while I’d love to be able to read more books than I do, I’d really, really love it, I’m not sure I could, even if I had more hours available in the day. I’d lose something by trying to cram too much in. I think that if I tried to read more than, say, 60 books a year, I’d have to force myself to read less well. I love the idea of days and weeks with not much else to do but read (and ride my bike), but the reality is that I’d be unhappy. So I’m just going to have to pretend that I will have an unlimited number of years to read what I want to read, and therefore that my slow pace doesn’t matter.