The Book of Two Ways by Jodi Picoult

I haven’t read many of Jodi Picoult’s books, but kept hearing about this latest one, The Book of Two Ways. After working my way through a long collection by Jonathan Raban, I was in the mood for a fast read. And something distracting. A love story, this novel had a twist: the main character, Dawn, is a death doula who was a highly promising Egyptologist before a family tragedy changed the trajectory of her life, and she is now facing a choice between continuing on her current path or returning to her prior one.

If it sounds a little too death and tragedy oriented, don’t worry. This book is more about living than dying. But in writing about Dawn’s two careers, Picoult definitely gets deep into the details of both ancient Egyptian burial rites (including coffin texts like the real Book of Two Ways) and contemporary end of life care. When it comes to Egyptian culture, Picoult doesn’t just talk about the myths and mummies you may have learned about in middle school world history, but also gender roles, love poetry, and different periods and rulers. And, after reading about Dawn’s second career, you’ll have a better understanding of what happens to the human body as it dies. Which you have to admit is an unusual topic for a novel that is mainly about a woman in love with two men and successful at two careers.

All of the dying is described from Dawn’s professional perspective, so none of it was sad, really. If I felt sad about anything it was that the characters are all so damn rich, smart, beautiful, and exceptional at their jobs. There is one guy who is a driver’s ed instructor. That was comforting, even if he’s married to a well off artist.

Anyway, I enjoyed this book, it was entertaining and I enjoyed all the details about Egypt (there are even hieroglyphs) and about death doula-ing. It was so entertaining that I actually ended up staying up too late reading. And it was, as hoped, a fast read. If you’re looking for an escape from the news, The Book of Two Ways is interesting and distracting.

Advertisement

Read Full Post »

Minding the gap — books as comfort in times of change

This week and last have been strange. We’re getting ready to send Teen the Elder off to England for his gap year. I’ve been cooking by day (all his favorites) and reading by night, filling us both up with memories, seeking comfort in the solid beginning, middle and end of books as I deal with the fact that I am the mother of an eighteen year old who is about to head into the world. I’m thrilled for him, of course, but also feeling many other things, mostly a huge sense of difference: this is not like anything else our family has experienced, one of us moving out, at least for awhile, preparing to live in another country, while the rest of us try to carry on as normal. Next week, I expect, will be even stranger.

It’s also been a time of transition professionally, as I handed over the Events Coordinator position at Gibson’s and began training for my new reference librarian job. I’m excited, but also find myself suddenly able to read whatever I want without having to make time for events books, and so I checked out eight novels the last time I stopped at the library. Eight!  I felt like a kid again, wending my way out to the car with my teetering stack of books.

This month I started by reading books recommended to me, including a staff pick at the Rivier Library — 22 Britannia Road, by Amanda Hodgkinson.  I’ve read several novels set in or after WWII, many from the points of view of displaced people; this one is highly original. Hodgkinson’s skillful use of different points of view enhances the telling of this story about a Polish couple separated during WWII and reunited in England after.

Janusz and Silvana are trying to put together the pieces of their lives and live normally with their son, but there is much that they each kept hidden in wartime that is hard to reveal or admit in peacetime, even to themselves.  They have both experienced trauma and loss, and Silvana and Aurek, the boy, have experienced the very worst of man’s inhumanity as they hid in the woods of Poland. The novel alternates between the present and each family member’s remembered experiences.  Readers meet the people they knew during the war and the people in their new life.

Some readers might find the shifting perspectives confusing, but I think it’s perfect as a way to show the difficulty of pulling together fragmented lives after a period of complete turmoil.  It’s also just the right way to present people who are missing parts of their relationship — they find it difficult to pick up where they left off, because of the damage done, the secrets kept, the traumas felt.  Readers get a taste of this as the narrative shifts.

Hodgkinson is a talented writer who conjures a real sense of the strangeness not only of displacement but also of re-entry into society for veterans and civilian victims of war. She is very good at using small details to paint a vivid scene, like turns of phrase as the couple try to speak in a more British way, descriptions of the garden Janusz creates to try to rebuild a sense of normal family life, the second-hand clothes and shoes the family wears.

Left to guess about each other’s experiences, Silvana and Janusz make a mess of things, and then try to undo the tangle and put the family back together again — although I won’t give away how it ends, I will say it’s a pleasantly ambiguous denouement which will offer book clubs plenty to discuss. Hodkinson presents their story with gorgeous, cinematic scenes and vivid details that will keep you glued to the page. Aurek’s sections will break your heart. 22 Britannia Road is a searing, evocative book about the aftermath of war, the resilience of the human spirit, and the ability to love and trust when everything one has known has been destroyed.

Another heart-breaker is Ivory From Paradise. (Are you wondering about my choice of sad books?  Crying is cathartic, remember.) This one had been on my “to read” list. David Schmahmann revisists the characters from his earlier novel, Empire Settings, although I wouldn’t call this a sequel. When Ivory From Paradise opens, the grown children, Danny and Bridget, are dealing with their mother Helga’s final illness.  They end up in a legal battle with their stepfather over their father’s African artifacts, which Helga brought to London from the family home in Durban after both children fled during apartheid (you can read about those events in Empire Settings).

They end up deciding to return to Durban to hold a memorial service for Helga, who was an anti-apartheid activist and politician. As always I won’t give too much away, but do read these books if you’d like a different view of apartheid and especially post-Mandela South Africa. For Eben, the son of Bridget and Danny’s black nurse, and for several other characters, free South Africa isn’t holding up to its promise, and Danny, whose voice is the most dominant  in the novel, it’s bittersweet to return, to learn what’s happened to his family’s wealth, and to find out about his father’s collection and its provenance.

Like all of Schmahmann’s books, this novel is not only a story, but also a literary exploration of human nature, this time about the legacy a family’s secrets have, the ties we feel towards those who’ve come before and the ways family history can take on mythical status it doesn’t deserve. It’s also a meditation on loss — of childhood, of the reality we paint for ourselves in our memories when we face its real life counterpart, of the childish belief in one’s parents invincibility.  And like Schmahmann’s other work, it’s sad but also quite lovely. You may cry but you’ll feel better for it, and also feel better for having considered the ideas he brings to bear in the novel.

One more tragedy I read this month on the recommendation of a friend: Robin Black’s story collection If I Loved You I Would Tell You This.   Black writes beautifully and her virtuosity is clear — her stories are told from the point of view of characters of various ages, different sexes, and a variety of circumstances, and the range is impressive. I enjoyed several of the stories very much: “Immortalizing John Parker,” about an artist trying to paint a portrait of a man who is beginning to succumb to dementia,  and “The History of the World,” about adult twins on a trip to Italy are two favorites.

But as I told the friend who suggested I read the book, I felt “tragedy fatigue” as I read this collection; there was just too much suffering for me in one volume (although in fairness perhaps because of the other books I’d already read in August). I read a blurb about this book that said a little of it goes a long way, and I think that would be the best way to read it, with time and space between the stories. Black writes so tangibly of her characters’ pain that I felt myself rushing through to be able to put some of that behind me.

Another book I rushed to finish, but for different reasons, is Why Jane Austen by Rachel Brownstein. I wanted to finish the book before Brownstein’s visit to Concord — she read at Gibson’s, and since I invited her after meeting her last spring at JASNA Massuchusetts Region’s final meeting of the season, I wanted to be sure to attend. With the eventful summer, and the big changes going on in the bookconscious household, I had to read more quickly than I would have liked, and I plan to go back and re-read this book.

Brownstein’s book is what she describes as “associative criticism” — part criticism, part memoir, as she ties much of what she has learned about Austen’s longstanding widespread appeal to her own life and experiences.  At Gibson’s Brownstein told the audience that she has always admired Austen’s “precision of language.”  She also noticed over her years of teaching that Lionel Trilling’s belief that what’s said about Jane Austen is almost as interesting as the author and her work seems to be as true today as when he wrote it. Why Jane Austen is a lovely book about those two things: Austen’s enduring and self-perpetuating popularity and and what it is about the works that make people so wild about Jane.

One of the most interesting things Brownstein discusses is the sense of belonging Austen’s work fosters in readers. Austen’s writing style, her intimate way of addressing readers as if the are her “secret friends,” makes people feel like they are on a first name basis with Jane. Brownstein also points out  the beauty of Austen’s “tissue of words.” For example, Brownstein describes reading aloud from Emma in a deliberately enunciated fashion so that her students can “savour the slow, gradual elongation of the “e” from the  short indeterminate grunt . . . to the long emphatic screech.” (Go on, open your copy of Emma and check it out.)

She also discusses the way Austen’s books offer new things upon every reading: Brownstein’s son noticed something funny in the carriage ride conversation between Elizabeth Bennett and Maria Lucas in Pride and Prejudice that she herself had never caught.  And she admires how Austen tapped into the instinctive human desire to be “in the know” — Brownstein writes of her mother’s inviting a social outcast to tea in their home in Vermont in part so she could learn why the woman is shunned, just as many Austen characters trade in neighborhood stories.

Reading Why Jane Austen is like sitting down with a very smart, very well spoken friend who gently reminds you of how much more there is to learn about even our favorite books. And how important close, careful (and slow) reading is to our understanding of literature. Brownstein makes clear that a great writer like Austen incites conversation among readers of every generation, as the characters’  lives open into our own, no matter the differences between us.  Inspired by Brownstein’s wonderful answers to the question in her title, I’ve suggested a Jane Austen book discussion for the Computer Scientist, Teen the Younger, and I. Stay tuned.

I read two books of poetry this month.  I’ll start with Crave Radiance, by Elizabeth Alexander. If  her name is familiar, it may be because she wrote a poem in honor of President Obama’s inauguration in 2009, and read it as part of the ceremonies.  That poem, “Praise Song for the Day,” is a fine example of what I like most about Alexander’s work: it is deeply musical, well structured, and filled with references to familiar, ordinary people and experiences.

But that is only one kind of poem in this collection. Many others are devoted to historical figures and events in America’s past, particularly African American history. Some are sequences, like the poems in Miss Crandall’s School for Young Ladies and Little Misses of Color.  Others are individual poems such as “Affirmative Action Blues,” which is about, among other things, the Rodney King civil rights trial, and several poems address the AIDS epidemic.

Alexander also writes a great deal about her family history, and those are some of my favorite poems. “Fried Apples” is about how she recalled her grandfather “standing at the stove, cooking/ a pan of fried apples for us,” and  “began to take his measure.”  And sections of “Fugue,” a sequence of poems about growing up during the Civil Rights Movement, are about her parents. In “1971,” for example, Alexander conjures her young self walking with her father, an adviser to President Johnson: “Sometimes a poem remembers small things, like/’Hey Blood.’ My father still says that sometimes.”

The title of the book comes from the poem “Allegiance,” part of the Miss Crandall series.  It’s one of  my favorites, and also one that seems to sum up Alexander’s themes: when Prudence Crandall receives letters telling her “how brave,/ how visionary, how stare-down-the-beast” she is to run a school for colored girls, we are told, “Work, she says, there is always work to do,/ not in the name of self but in the name,/ the water-clarity of what is right./ We crave radiance in his austere world,/ light in the spiritual darkness.” Alexander believes in that water-clarity, and her poems ring with it.

Where does Alexander place her faith?  Where Prudence Crandall did: “Learning is the one perfect religion,/ its path correct, narrow, certain, straight./ At its end blossoms and billows/ into vari-coloured polyphony:/ the sweet infinity of true knowledge.”  It’s an old idea told well and beautifully: ignorance is the real evil, learning will free hearts and minds.

The other book of poems I read is by my friend and editor at the NH Writer, Martha Carlson-Bradley (who patiently whittles down my long Publishing Trends columns).   Longtime booksconscious fans may recall I wrote about one of her earlier books, Season We Can’t Resist, in 2009.  Carlson-Bradley’s new collection is a chapbook from Adastra Press, beautifully hand-set, printed, and stitched, called If I Take You Here. I read the book and then went to hear her read from it at Gibson’s. I was glad I did, because as is so often the case, her authorial asides really shed light on the book.

I knew from earlier conversations that these poems came out of Carlson-Bradley’s reflection that the farmhouse where her mother grew up and where she visited her grandparents exists only in memory now. At the reading, she explained that she was inspired in part by hearing Donald Hall describe his grandparents’ farm (where he has lived for many years) as a place where poems grow; she ventured to make her grandparents’ farm such a place, even though it’s been torn down. The book is a long sequence, and the individual poems don’t have titles. They’re meant to be read in order and in one sitting, which I was glad to hear, because I had instinctively read the book straight through.

In the opening poem, Carlson-Bradley invites readers to follow her as she enters the memory of her grandparents’ farm as if it is a physical place one can go, “The spring on the screen door/ stretching out/plays its taut,/ascending scale.” In the second poem, Carlson-Bradley tells us the house is not in the shape it once was: “The outer edges the first to go,/ the place that memory makes/ has trouble staying whole –”

You really should read this haunting and lovely poem for yourself, and see what Carlson-Bradley calls the “crumbling left margin,” a visual clue to what she’s found as she enters the farm house. The poem’s left justification is very uneven, with indentation varying line to line, alluding to that roughened outer edge. She told the audience at Gibson’s that she was deliberate in her use of visual structure, centering those poems which spoke to “eternal things,” such as the garden, and deliberately employing variegated indentation to represent her sense that visiting a memory as a physical place is a disorientation of time.  I can’t think of another book of poems whose structure so brilliantly compliments the theme.

In some poems, the language itself leads readers farther into the maze of memory — for example the poem which starts “Incessant, the wind/” has lovely repetition of sounds. In the first stanza, incessant, wind, and inside all share a short “i.” Later, “t’s” and “m’s” repeat, offering very different but similarly soothing accompaniment.  Further along “w’s” and longer o’s and “u’s” smooth the poem’s exit. It’s a very auditory poem, beautiful on the tongue and the ear.

Other favorites of mine are “A young woman’s face,” which describes an old photo fading, and “What I can’t imagine/ he can’t have,” which is one of the poems that best characterizes the relationship between memories and everyday realities, lost forever save in snatches we can remember. Someone in the audience asked how much of the detail in this book, including descriptions of many items from the house, are real and what Carlson-Bradley invented. Her reply: “Even when the facts weren’t right, it’s emotionally true.”  This reverberated with me as aesthetically similar to Danny’s experience in Ivory From Paradise — Schmahmann leads his main character to emotional truths even as he shatters the accepted beliefs Danny holds about his childhood in the novel.

If I Take You Here is about finding the truths in our memories of earlier generations, of people and places that were important to us. Just as Elizabeth Alexander writes of the way she takes the measure of her grandfather by recalling a moment in his kitchen, Martha Carlson-Bradley calls forth her grandfather in images — packing his dead wife’s things, preserving the fruits of his garden, calling out to his daughter.  As she shared her work, she said these poems “create a kind of anteroom between the living and the dead.”   There’s a sense of loss, but also a sense of what endures: lightning, autumn leaves, peepers’ calls, the sound in a shell, the smell of leaf mold or peonies, snow, stars, heat, and light.  Treat yourself to this gorgeous, handmade, heartfelt book. Or better, treat your library, so people in your community can read it too.

Finally this month, I began participating in a fun project: The Europa Challenge. One of my favorite people on Twitter and the blogosphere, The Boston Bibliophile, co-founded this blog, dedicated to challenging participants to read more books from the fantastic Europa Editions. Since I am already a fan of their books, I decided to dive in and read 4 Europa books (Ami level challenge) or perhaps 7 books (Haver level) by the end of 2011.  Since I’d already read The Hottest Dishes of Tartar Cuisine in 2011, I figured I had a head start.

In August I’ve read three more Europa Editions, so I’ve become an Ami!  First, I finished Concerto to the Memory of An Angel, by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt, which I received a preview of at ABA’s Winter Institute last January. I absolutely loved this book and want to read the rest of Schmitt’s translated work (he’s French). Concerto is a book of four novellas, with a wonderful section at the end called “A Writer’s Logbook,” where the author includes anecdotes about his creative process and some of the backstory behind his book. For the same reason I love hearing an author talk about his or her work, I really enjoyed the logbook section.  And, I found it charming that Schmitt welcomes the reader into his process, in a way.

I had the sense as I read that the stories, while not linked explicitly (no common characters or settings), were linked in spirit and theme. In fact, one thing I really like about Concerto is that it’s a story collection that really has its own over-riding narrative arc — everything fits, no story seems to be out of place, and they tell a bigger story when read all together. The logbook confirms that these stories share, for one thing, “Rita, the Madonna of lost causes, saint of the impossible . . . .” Schmitt says, “Saint Rita tells no stories, but through her, stories are told. ” Schmitt writes of the power memories and secrets have to harden or transform people, the redemptive effect of love and human understanding, the “ambiguity of goodness: what appears good to one individual provokes the misfortune of another. . . .”

I enjoyed all four novellas, but my favorite is “The Return,” about a man who finds out at sea that one of his daughters has died, but not which one. The rest of the story is almost entirely his thoughts as he deals with the news,and his intentional analysis of himself as a father.  While each story is tinged with sadness or anger or fear, every one of them includes some sort of redemption that makes the collection an uplifting affirmation of the human spirit.

Amara Lakhous‘s Clash of Civilizations Over An Elevator In Piazza Vittorio is also a book about the way the same experience can impact people differently; it’s a book about perceptions, prejudices, and stereotypes. Both funny and sad, this short novel takes places in an Italian apartment building and nearby. Different characters tell their sides of the story when one of the residents is murdered. Identity, character, and culture shift before our eyes as we meet the neighbors through different narrative threads.

This book reminded me of an art house film — I could picture the characters addressing the camera with their stories and grievances. Lakhous blends social criticism with humor and a dash of mystery as the book reveals the ways people judge and misjudge each other, the assumptions they make, the things they misread, even when they think they know each other well. While Clash is an interesting look at multicultural contemporary Italy (intriguing to read as Europeans struggle to decide whether multiculturalism is a failure), it’s also a book with universal appeal because of the comedic misunderstandings.  Even the characters felt universal — some of you may know an old lady who is overly attached to her little dog. Or a mico-managing tenant who leaves notes in the elevator about civilized behavior.

Finally, I read the absolutely brilliant Chalcot Crescent by Fay Weldon. Set in 2013, the novel imagines a world that has gone through a series of financial disasters (not only the Recession, but also the Bite), causing massive cultural and civic upheaval so that England is now run by NUG (the National Unity Government, made up of sociologists and shrinks), whose main task is to keep the ever shabbier populace fed.

The heroine of Chalcot Crescent is Fay Weldon’s actual sister, Frances, who her mother miscarried.  Fay Weldon imagines her as having lived a long, successful life as a feminist novelist. Frances is matriarch of a complicated family brewing with resentments and issues. As the book opens, her grandson is sitting with her as she avoids the bailiffs, who are knocking on her door, presumably to repossess the house. Or are they?

In the course of the book, Frances writes a hybrid fiction/memoir manuscript, as she speculates about what is going on — right in her own house — when several of her grandchildren and her best friend’s grandchild meet in Chalcot Crescent to plan a coup as part of an underground protest movement. Meanwhile, her son-in-law is rising in prominence in NUG in part because of his skills as a stem cell researcher (NUG has to create National Meat Loaf somehow), and Frances also writes about her daughters’ relationships with men and with her.  The reader is never sure what Frances has worked out and what she is fabricating — at one point, neither is she.

Frances reflects on her own life with humor and grace and a fair dose of attitude, from her childhood in New Zealand to teen years in post-war London, through the turbulent decades of her adulthood, filled with personal drama and public success.  The book is scary in that the dystopian aspects don’t seem all that far fetched.  The absurdity of the situation — an old woman trapped in her home, which she can no longer afford because of the collapse of the consumer driven economy, while her grandchildren dart through the community potato patch in order to elude government cameras, is delicious.  I hope to read more of Weldon’s work soon, perhaps the epistolary novel Letters to Alice on First Reading Jane Austen.

Teen the Elder and Teen the Younger spent August hanging out with each other and with friends, traveling (Teen the Elder spent a few days with his uncle in Seattle), and visiting with my dad when he came to New Hampshire. Teen the Younger continued to read manga and magazines (including the manga magazine Shonen Jump) and she did a lot of planning for her upcoming year of life learning. She has some interesting things in her “to read” pile: The Complete Sherlock Holmes, a book about Japanese history and culture, and several books on the art, design, and history of video games.

Teen the Elder finished a book about English culture, Rules Britannia, and he is reading a lot of instructional material for Logic Studio music writing/recording/editing/mixing software. The manual is 1300 pages long, and he intends to read it! He has mentioned several times that he’d like to re-read Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings books, which are some of his favorite reading of all times (Want in on a secret? The Computer Scientist and I are planning to hide a set of the books in his luggage for him to find when he unpacks in England).

The Computer Scientist has been doing several people’s worth of work at his job — he’s had a team member out on maternity leave, another has moved on to a new position elsewhere, and various vacation and hurricane related absences — and he is now coaching a 3rd & 4th grade boys’ soccer team (you can learn why over at his blog, The Grumpy Footballer).  So he also had a fairly light reading month in August. He’s still enjoying The Social Animal by David Brooks.

As for me, I have five more library books waiting (all novels, two of which are Europa Editions by Jane Gardham, whose God On the Rocks I read last winter), plus David Budbill’s latest poetry collection, Happy Life and a book about Carl Sandburg and his wife Lilian Steichen that my father lent me. Plus all the books already in my to-read pile. So, happily, I’ll get through the next few days and that first strange week of our whole new stage of life reading alongside Teen the Younger and the Computer Scientist, and knowing Teen the Elder is well supplied with books, too.

Read Full Post »

Playcation reading

Regular bookconscious readers know that the Teenager is a serious soccer player — last year at this time we were preparing for his trip to Germany to play with SQ Quelle Furt.  This summer’s soccer has been mostly in the U.S. (plus one game in Canada), but in a few New England states. Instead of a vacation or even a staycation, we had a couple of “playcations” — we drove around to wherever his Super Y team, the Seacoast Wanderers, were playing.

One week in July, the Computer Scientist determined we put 1084 miles on the car.  Really. That week started with a day at home. I rarely have a day at home with unplanned hours; I read two books and finished a third. Really!

The Preteen had been recommending books by Wendy Mass, and she left Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life on my “to read” pile. Ok, technically, there are three piles, plus a few assorted “to read” shelves, but I digress. The point is, my daughter recommended I read Jeremy Fink and I did, and I loved it!  I see now what the Preteen means when she admired the interesting story and “cool, unique characters.”  I found myself exploring Mass’s website and am using her outlining technique to try start a new writing project.

Among the things I admired about Jeremy Fink were the equally strong male and female characters, the plot that was unusual but seemed to be just exactly what should happen to these characters and how they should respond, and the combination of serious (even somewhat philosophical) ideas with very funny writing.  I can certainly understand why my daughter liked it. I did try to draw her into a conversation about the meaning of life, and I can see revisiting that conversation again. As you can imagine, at 12 3/4, she isn’t always open to a deep conversation with her mother.

The other two books from my playcation stay-at-home day were Kinship Theory by Hester Kaplan and In the Age of Love by Michael Stein, and I read them because the Computer Scientist and I have been attending the Tory Hill Readers Series, where both Kaplan and Stein were slated to read on 7/24. I chose these books because the library had them on the shelf when I went looking.

This experiment proved to me that going to hear authors in person is key to understanding their work. I had a hard time getting into Kinship Theory, which is a book about a woman who seems too clueless to be real. She is on the verge of wrecking her relationships with her best friend and her grown daughter, is divorced, is mean for no good reason to a widower she goes on a date with,  seems to be losing her grip on her excellent job, and has a tenuous relationship with her mother. And  — here is the part that was just too “eeew” for me — she is  a surrogate mother, carrying her daughter’s child.

Not only is the main character’s story riddled with life-altering disasters, but other characters in the book also act out in improbably destructive ways. But, when I heard Kaplan read from a forthcoming book, The Tell,  in Warner, I was able to hear aloud how beautiful her writing is, and during the question and answer session, she said something that made Kinship Theory click into place: her writing tends to explore the ways people think they know each other, but really don’t have a clue.  The book made more sense in light of this. Kaplan also revealed that the idea for the surrogacy plot came from a news article she read.

Stein’s In the Age of Love is a lovely, one sitting read. Had I only read that book, and not heard him read from his powerful nonfiction book, The Addict, I might have felt that his writing was just pleasant, with a hint of social consciousness (the protagonists in In the Age of Love are both educators dedicated to working with children in difficult situations).  Hearing him read from The Addict I realized another dimension of Stein’s work — close observation finely wrought in tough, smart prose that kept the audience leaning forward in their seats.

During Stein’s Q&A, the Computer Scientist, who has a screenplay partially written himself, asked a very good question: how is it that a person can be a doctor, a parent, a teacher and researcher at Brown, and a writer who’s been nominated for the Pulitzer and won other prizes?  Stein replied that he writes daily, but only for thirty minutes. This has stayed with me, echoing in my head every single day since. I mentioned this to a friend and she challenged me earlier this week to keep each other on track writing 30 minutes a day all month.  So far, so good.

Did I mention that Tory Hill also features live jazz after the readings, and fantastic desserts? Look up the reading series at your local indie bookstore or library and go hear authors!   I plan to continue working my way through Stein’s and Kaplan’s books. I also read Five Thousand Days Like This One by Jane Brox, who is reading with David Elliott this coming weekend. I’m now reading her new book, Brilliant: The Evolution of Artificial Light.

Brox has a distinctive prose style — packed with detail, backed with dense information, supported by research she seems to relish, but also very beautiful, with a clear, lyrical quality that is very pleasing to read. I enjoy the way her thoughts and observations lead into each other often from the personal to the sociological and historical and back; for example, writing about her family’s history in Five Thousand Days Like This One leads her to write about immigration, which leads to the history of mills and farms in her native Merrimack Valley and also into specific details like the meaning of food in her own family and the history of apple farming in her parents’ lifetime.

Brilliant is less ruminative, since Brox’s personal observations aren’t part of the prose (so far – I’m about 2/3 through), but it is fascinating, and Brox still explores her subjects broadly and deeply. I didn’t suspect before I began this book that kerosene would be a compelling topic, but I also had no idea where it comes from, how long it’s been in use, and why it works well for lamps. Even familiar history, like Ben Franklin’s experimentation with electricity, are fresh in Brox’s hands, and she brings a very thought provoking view of the socioeconomic history of light to readers as well. I never really considered before how different lighting has been through history for the haves and the have nots.

I look forward to hearing Brox, and David Elliott, who is one of my very favorite authors for young people. His books are funny for kids and for the adults who read to them, but funny with a backbone; you get a sense that kids who read these books might come away feeling they’ve met a kindred spirit, someone who gets what a challenge it is to grow up but trusts they’ll become their best selves. Whether you have a kid or not, try his books — your inner little kid will thank you.

I also finished three other novels during playcation month: Leah Hager Cohen‘s  House Lights, Farahad Zama‘s The Marriage Bureau for Rich People, and a book from Europa editions, The Companion, by Lorcan Roche. Cohen read during the Tory Hill series’ opening night, and I’d never read any of her books. House Lights is a coming of age novel about a young woman who wants to be an actress, and the way she discovers her budding talent during the same summer she begins to untangle the drama in her own family. It was a good read, and I’m curious to read some of Cohen’s nonfiction as well.

The Marriage Bureau for Rich People is a delight. Longtime bookconscious readers know that one of my highest forms of praise is to compare an author to Jane Austen. Zama’s book comes closer to Miss Austen in spirit as well as plot than anything I’ve read lately.  Mr. Ali, the main character who opens a marriage bureau, and Aruna, a young woman who comes to work for him, are two of the most delightful main characters I’ve met in a while. I gave the book four stars on Goodreads because it transported me to another place, it was a page turning read, and it was just plain fun.

The only thing that kept me from giving this charming novel five stars were some distracting asides which Zama interjects in order to help Western readers understand India culture and Hindu and Muslim practices and traditions.  I loved his descriptions of wedding ceremonies, of food (oh, the food!), even of the unbearable summer heat. Mrs. Ali sprays the cool stone floors of her home with water on a scorching day — I was wishing we had cool stone floors here in New Hampshire during the recent heat wave! But sometimes the vivid descriptions lapsed into “telling” instead of “showing,” and once or twice that was tedious.

But, I am going to recommend this book to the Preteen and any other young people who might like a charming novel of manners set in another country; it’s a book I would share with anyone of any age.  Zama makes very astute observations about human nature through the people who come to the marriage bureau, and he exposes some of the problems but also some of the joys of traditional arranged marriages. If you liked Baking Cakes in Kigali, or Alexander McCall Smith’s books set in Botswana, you’ll enjoy The Marriage Bureau for Rich People.

The third novel I read in July was The Companion, by Lorcan Roche. Not one I would recommend to any teen or preteen, nor would it pass the “Grandmother” test (would I suggest it to my grandmother?). It’s graphic and even perverse in places. But I didn’t want to set it aside, even when it made me squirm; this was one of the most tautly drawn stories I’ve read in awhile.

Roche carries readers down two paths at once: the story of Trevor, the main character, caring kindly and well  for a young muscular dystrophy patient, Ed, in New York City; and the story of Trevor’s  and Ed’s families. Just when readers think they know the truth about each story line, Roche introduces a series of strange and hard to sort out remembrances of Trevor’s life in Ireland, and by the end of the novel, it’s hard to know what the truth was.  It was a deeply unsettling and thought provoking read; I can’t say I enjoyed it, but I admire the skill it took to conceive it and write it.

Several of the other books I read this month were Gibson’s events books. In mid-July, we hosted Linda Greenlaw, and I read her newest fishing yarn, Seaworthy, ahead of her visit. I was looking forward to meeting her not only because of her larger than life tales of life as a sword fishing captain (she’s fearless, daring, smart, and capable, able to withstand the Perfect Storm, boat troubles, sharks, and unruly crew members), but also because of her book about life on the island where she makes her home, The Lobster Chronicles.

Seaworthy gave me the impression that Greenlaw is mellowing — she is still fit and strong and smarter than ever, but  she reveals a softer edge, honed by experience and also by the patience and calm she herself seems surprised to have developed. The book is a memoir about returning to sea to fish after ten years.  It’s interesting, fast paced, and yet also more introspective than I expected.

Greenlaw is a sharp writer, and she also puts on a good show for fans who come out to hear her read. We had a packed house, and she took her time answering questions  (some of which she’s been asked dozens of times — she had been out on tour for a few by the time she came to Gibson’s), telling stories, and signing for a long line.

I also read ahead for two coming events at Gibson’s: a book of essays by Jonathan Franzen, who will be the first writer in our new Writers In the Spotlight series at Capitol Center for the Arts in September; and a history book by Toby Lester, who will be in Concord next week. His reading will be at Red River Theatres, where he’ll be able to do justice to the digital slide show he’s prepared.

I have the advance reader copy of Franzen’s new novel, Freedom, which he’ll be reading from at our event. But I haven’t gotten to it yet, and perhaps because I was feeling somewhat intimidated at the notion of meeting an Important Writer, an Major American Novelist, the author of the National Book Award winning novel The Corrections, I was drawn to my friend Shawn’s suggestion to pick up How to Be Alone and read it first. I’m glad I did.

Franzen comes across not as an inaccessible, ivory tower intellectual, but as a regular guy who is a little freaked out by all the attention he’s had. I feel like I now understand much more about why he writes and why he loves to read. And I got a real kick out of his self-deprecating introduction, in which he admits feeling a little embarrassed at some of the things his younger self said in print about literature.  Who among us doesn’t look back and feel a bit squeamish about the way we might have come across when we were younger and “knew” everything?

How to Be Alone is not a memoir, it’s a collection of essays, some of which are about literary life, and some of which are quite personal. The pieces on his family’s experience of his father’s Alzheimer’s are heart-wrenching. His writing about his own struggles with being a writer, living purposefully, and trying to stay married are tender, but not sentimental.  I laughed at the piece describing the events leading up to his un-invitation from Oprah, and I found the straight creative nonfiction to be very fine journalism. The essays on “super max” prisons, privacy and disappearance in American culture, politics, and the “sex-advice industry” are absorbing and masterful.

Am I still a little intimidated to meet Franzen? Of course. But I feel slightly more prepared. I plan to look for The Discomfort Zone (a “tale of growing up in his own uber-sensitive skin” according to Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. I grew up in uber-sensitive skin myself), and I am really looking forward to Freedom, which will be at the top of the “to read” for work pile very soon.

I finished Lester’s The Fourth Part of the World last weekend, after an aborted attempt to read it aloud to my kids. I love to read aloud. I do it all the time, reading bits of whatever fascinating thing I’ve found in the New York Times or the Economist at the beach yesterday, for example, or sharing a passage of whatever book I’m reading with whichever sentient being is in the room at the time.

I have to pause here and say a word of thanks to the Concord Monitor, which ran a front page photo of Hampton Beach crammed with people yesterday. The Teenager took one look  and asked me if I had an alternative in mind for our planned beach outing. We went to a quiet beach somewhat north of Hampton, where there were far fewer people even after lunch, and we had a lovely day. No, I’m not telling you where. It won’t be so uncrowded if I tell everyone, will it?

Not too far into Lester’s book, we learned that medieval monks read aloud, too.  My kids had a laugh wondering if I am somehow descended from a read-aloud monk.  I wonder if there is a monastery anywhere today that offers “read aloud retreats” the way many cloistered communities offer silent ones?  If so, I’m there.

This is just a taste of the level of detail in Lester’s writing. I absolutely loved The Fourth Part of the World. It’s everything a good nonfiction book should be: packed with facts told in a compelling narrative that neither leaves anything out nor diverges into unnecessary fluff. The cover says it’s “the epic story of the map that gave America it’s name,” and Lester really leads readers all over the globe and through the mathematical, scientific, cultural, historical, and sociological developments that led to the exploration of the New World and our record of that exploration. I happen to love geography and maps, so that is a contributing factor, but even if you don’t, I promise this book reads like a highly informative adventure tale.  I am very much looking forward to this event — if you’re in the area, don’t miss it!

I’m hoping the Computer Scientist, Teenager, and Preteen will join me at some of these upcoming events. Authors are excellent models of life learning and passionate inquiry into topics of interest, after all, which is our educational philosophy. Meanwhile, they’ve been reading things that interest them; I wish that were the case for all kids (and adults), not just in summer but all the time.

Several times lately I’ve helped customers at Gibson’s locate a “summer reading” book from a list someone else says is good for them. I can tell you that the enthusiasm for such lists isn’t very high, based on my unscientific random sample. I helped a college student last week who is on her way to Roger Williams University and needed the Common Reading selection. She was irritated that the book cost $16 and told me she doesn’t like to read and really doesn’t want to read something “because she has to” over the summer.

Aside from questioning the wisdom of attending a liberal arts college if you hate reading, I felt sad that someone would enter into reading Tracy Kidder’s fantastic Mountains Beyond Mountains — a book I consider one of the best I’ve ever read — with such a negative view of what the experience will be like. Why? Because she feels forced to read something she didn’t choose. A piece in the New York Times science section this week backs up my belief that people benefit most from reading what they themselves select.

So what are the bookconscious kids reading? The Preteen, who just took a week of Manga drawing at Kimball Jenkins Art School and had very good time drawing and being with other kids who like Manga, has been reading two series: Fruits Basket and Gakuen Alice.  She says she likes the strong girl characters and interesting stories in the  Alice books; everyone has a special “Alice” or power. And she thinks Fruits Basket is funny, with a unique story (people are possessed by Zodiac animals and turn into them when hugged).  She’s also been devouring issues of her favorite magazines: Nintendo Power, Muse, and New Moon Girls (in no particular order).

The Teenager said he wanted to read something light and fun this summer. He chose The Human Story: Our History from the Stone Age to Today by James C. Davis.  A good sign that his interest in possibly being a history major reflects what he likes to learn. He also picked up a book at the library: DK Ultimate Spy: Inside the Secret World of Espionage. This brought back many fond memories of he and the Preteen immersing themselves in all things spy. They even enrolled in Spy University, a series of books and activities from Scholastic, and they both pored over the Usborne Spy’s Guidebook.

The Computer Scientist finished Baseball Codes, which he describes as a “technical and detailed book that is a good read for baseball aficionados. I felt on more than one occasion that the detail to prove the Codes was a bit overwhelming and overkill, but the anecdotal style made for a pleasant read.”  He also read Doctor On Everest: Emergency Medicine at the Top of the World, and said while it wasn’t the best written book he’s ever read, “the description of what it’s like to be in a supporting role for some of the largest egos on the planet was great, and his struggle with not summiting himself really put a personal touch to the book. Having read what I can about the 1996 Everest disaster, it was interesting to see it from such a different and fairly objective perspective.”  He also read some Star Wars “mind candy” while staying in the dorms at Dartmouth for the CASE summer institute last week.

Speaking of dorms, the Teenager and I are going on a last college visit trip this weekend, and then we’ll have seen eight schools. He expects to narrow that down to 3-4 to revisit and likely apply to. We’re deep into discussing the kids’ fall educational plans; the Teenager is probably going to study Shakespeare, he’s taking German and studying pre-calculus and thinks Precolumbian history of Latin America is an intriguing possibility. He’s still considering science subjects and senior project ideas, and is looking forward to the high school soccer season.

The Preteen is considering a Japanese class, and wants to study food history/culture/sociology — inspired by Muse. She’s studying pre-algebra and perhaps robotics and both kids will read and write across the disciplines.  They’ll each pursue their favorite forms of art — photography and drawing.

As much as I wish our original goal of learning all the time without thinking in terms of a “school year” had stuck as they got older (both kids consider summer “time off” — although I cannot resist pointing out they are learning whether they want to or not), I have to admit I really like this planning time. It’s so exciting, compiling reading lists and resources and exploring all the possibilities together.

When it’s time to stop making lists, I turn to my own reading, which right now includes finishing 52 Loaves by William Alexander, as well as Brilliant, and Dreaming In Hindi by another Tory Hill author, Katherine Russell Rich. I’ve also started The Case for Books by Robert Darnton and will read Day After Night by Anita Diamant — both authors coming to Gibson’s soon. I’m a little sad to see the Playcation summer end, because it brings us one step closer to the Teenager’s next adventures beyond our home.   Hopefully August will bring a few more beach days, a few more stay-at-home days, and some hammock time.

Read Full Post »

The Beautiful Game as reading enabler and disabler

I have spent a great deal of time and life energy on the Beautiful Game lately.  I’ve mentioned before that we spend a lot of time driving to and sitting beside pitches near (as near as a few blocks away) and far (the farthest we’ve been is Ottawa; yes, the one in Canada) where the Teenager is playing.  Bookconscious readers know that I’m a big advocate for toting a portable “to-read” pile in the car. Soccer enables my reading habit.

A tournament, for example, is a good place to get some reading done. There are all those breaks between games, long enough to return to a nice cool hotel room but not long enough to allow for anything as ambitious as sightseeing. Ditto long car rides to away matches, which are conducive to catching up on magazines and simultaneously sneaking in some reading aloud — a habit I adore and my family mostly endures. “Say, did you know pomegranate rinds are anti-microbial? Listen to this . . . .” Generally there is a good deal of surreptitious ear bud insertion at that point. Sometimes the Computer Scientist listens, but other times I’ll ask, “You don’t really want me to keep reading, do you?” And he’ll say, “That’s right.”  Sighing doesn’t solve this, I’ve found.

Interestingly enough, I am not alone in this tendency. Freelance writer Hillary Nelson explained that she reads choice bits aloud to her family too, in a piece she wrote for the Concord Monitor on the fantastic memoir, Coop, by Michael Perry. Nelson’s family, like mine, didn’t stop me when I read aloud from Coop on one of our soccer road trips. In fact all three of them guffawed at some of Perry’s hilarious and heartfelt memoir.

Then, all three of them (and my brother, who was visiting from Seattle) made it to Perry’s event at Gibson’s, which was a blast. If Perry tours near you, don’t miss him. He does a very entertaining reading, and like a good rock star, he reads oldies for die-hard fans and newbies who want to feel like they were there at the inception, and just enough new work to leave readers wanting to know what happens next. It’s easy to wonder, because even though Perry’s subjects are simple —  home, farm, family, friendship, growing up, finding (and losing and seeking again) faith, parenting, balancing to-do lists with living — he gives each vignette the full narrative treatment.

If you don’t think kidney stones are funny, you haven’t been to a Mike Perry reading. I loved Coop because it felt so real; as I read, I imagined Perry telling the stories in the memoir. Now that I’ve heard, him, I don’t have to imagine anymore. His voice on the page is strong, sensitive, smart, and often so funny I had to put the book down and catch my breath from laughing. In person, he’s all that as well. I plan to become a die hard and read the whole Perry back list, eventually.

Another book I read during a tournament weekend in Vermont was Mrs. Somebody Somebody, by Tracy Winn. Unfortunately, Tracy had to cancel her event at Gibson’s due to a health problem — we hope she is better soon. The book is wonderful, and just right for a vacation, when you may be setting your reading down frequently. Each of the linked stories in the book is set in Lowell, near a mill.  Some of the characters are mill workers, others are relatives of the mill owners, some just live and work nearby. Winn is a powerful writer — my grandmother would say she uses no extra words. The stories are rich and riveting.

On our trip to Ottawa, I took along Allegra Goodman‘s new novel, The Cookbook Collector.  It was an interesting read, but flawed. Neither of the two main characters seemed entirely plausible to me, and there were too many lesser characters passing in and out of the main storyline without becoming fully realized individuals.  Goodman writes well, so it was particularly frustrating to see glimpses of intriguing subplot go undeveloped, or find myself wishing she’d given readers more of a particular minor character’s views.

The story is set during the .com boom and bust of the late 1990’s, when the Computer Scientist was working for both a very large (the largest) software company and then a smaller one, so perhaps my quibbles are compounded by my familiarity with some of Goodman’s subject matter. The collector of the title is also mostly absent from the story, although his collection appears, in some chapters, in detail, and in others, not so much. Uneven is probably the best one word summary of this novel. The parts I liked, I liked very much, which made the rest that much more frustrating.

Traveling for soccer enables me to read during times when I would likely be doing household chores if were were home. But The World Cup has cut into my reading time, as I’ve been glued to the television with the rest of my soccer mad family. My daughter observed it’s the most time I’ve spent downstairs — typically, the domain of the Computer Scientist and the kids — all year. Even though the U.S. went out (something we watched in a pub in Ottawa with a few other American fans and a bunch of Ghana fans), the Teenager has an encyclopedic knowledge of the remaining teams and I’ve enjoyed keeping up with the tournament together. Well, he keeps up with it and tells me what I’ve missed or misunderstood. I’ve enjoyed his blog posts for Word of Mouth, as well as his own Beautiful Game blog.

Before the  World Cup started, I finished David Mitchell‘s The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.  I’d read Black Swan Green, and enjoyed Mitchell’s very fine writing. One of Gibson’s Random House sales reps gave me the advance reader copy of Jacob de Zoet, with the words, “you like weird books, don’t you?”

I didn’t get a chance to ask him in what way Mitchell’s book was weird and just dove in. I’d say now that it’s weird because Mitchell is one of the most praised writers of contemporary fiction, but he chose to deal with an obscure slice of Sino-Dutch history in a sprawling tome. Most highly lauded fiction writers, especially those known for mind-blowing innovations in form (Ghostwritten, number9dream, and Cloud Atlas were all noted for being structurally creative) don’t turn to relatively straightforward storytelling (although Black Swan Green was fairly linear).

But Mitchell isn’t most writers and never was. So why so why wouldn’t such a masterful writer be capable of writing any novel he sets his mind to?  And anyway, who cares? What’s important, it seems to me, is not whether this book is unusual as compared to his earlier books, but whether it’s any good.

And it is.  Jacob de Zoet is a wonderful main character, and so are the many other characters — many, but fully developed and each carrying his or her own weight in the story.  Japan on the cusp of the 19th century is fascinating, and makes an excellent location for Mitchell’s exploration of mankind’s tendency toward sloth, greed, power, and dishonesty. The many Japanese and Dutch officials who try to cheat and trample their way to the top are as compelling as any Dickensian villains, and honest Jacob, plucky Orito Aibagawa, honorable magistrate Shiroyama, gruff but good Dr. Marinus, all represent the better side of human nature.

But this book isn’t simplistic, even if it’s sweeping and cinematic.  Mitchell manages to keep readers in suspense, and to me, at least, the resolution was not obvious. I enjoyed the rich historical details, including a strong sense of the physical challenge of living in the late 1700’s. And I do like a novel that is also a well told tale, which this is, mostly.

The only part that lost me was the section in which Orito’s family sells her to a shadowy cult. I found myself turning back to try and understand why this happened (classic father dies, evil stepmother sells her up the river scenario, but hard to grasp at first).  It wasn’t really clear what was going on in the strange temple where Orito ended up, and who knew what about it. This was, perhaps, a deliberate mysteriousness meant to make the shrine’s wacko leader seem even more unhinged, illogical, and evil. It any rate I enjoyed the book enough that this murky bit didn’t bother me too much, and I definitely want to go back and read the rest of Mitchell’s work.

Another novel I read this month dealt with characters sometimes acting in illogical or even delusional ways — but not towards evil ends. Tom Rachman‘s The Imperfectionists was a terrific read. I admit I sought it out on the strength of one review by Christopher Buckley.  The review didn’t let me down — I loved this book. It’s the story of some of the people who put out an English language newspaper in Rome, over the course of the paper’s history.

Each chapter is a story about one of the characters, including one reader and a number of the reporters, editors, and staff.  I think the reason this is a novel and not a collection of linked stories is because the paper is the link; the links between characters are sometimes very loose, because some of them don’t even work for the paper at the same time.  A few characters return in later chapters as supporting cast, and the paper’s founding family appear, with each generation slowly screwing up the place. The overarching story is the newspaper’s fate in the hands of this odd cast.

It’s hard to put my finger on what I liked here — Rachman’s writing is excellent, and the novel’s structure is unique without being gimmicky. There’s something classically romantic about journalism, and also something endearingly quirky about some journalists; Rachman plays up both of these characteristics.  No one part of the book floored me, but The Imperfectionists was just thoroughly entertaining. One way of comparing it to The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet: Mitchell’s book would make a three hour sweeping costume drama, and The Imperfectionists would be a ninety minute indie film hit, with a lot of hip dialogue and a sketchy plot. You’d love them both, different as they may be.

One chapter of The Imperfectionists is set in Africa, where two other books I read in June take place. The Price of Stones is part memoir, part non-profit chronicle. Author Twesigye Jackson Kaguri comes from a small village in rural Uganda. As a boy, he heard about human rights and found a calling — he went on to Makarere University and then Columbia University and worked in human rights advocacy. But he never forgot the way his older brother returned to help people in the village, and as soon as he could, he did the same. He also began to learn about the scourge of HIV/AIDS as it tore through Uganda, the village, and even Kaguri’s family.

On one of his visits to the village with his wife, Kaguri realized that what he really wanted was to make a longer-lasting investment in his village than he could manage through emergency loans handed out as needed. Education had given him the life he felt blessed to be living, and education might also be the key to preventing HIV/AIDS. He told his wife, and then a few friends, that he wanted to build a school.

The Price of Stones is Jackson’s story, and the story of his founding the school and the Nyaka AIDS Orphan Project, which today includes support for the grandmothers who care for so many of the orphans, community programs like wells, a library, health programs, and an agricultural and vocational center, and scholarships for Nyaka School graduates to continue their educations.  One terrific thing about the book is that Jackson seems as awed by his own good fortune and the amazing success of Nyaka as anyone else. He is humble, but he is also a man of faith and he gives credit not only to earthly influences, like his siblings and mother, but also to God, from whom, he feels, all good things come.

I’ve always wondered how some people who are dealing with extreme hardship or tragedy curse God and others keep the faith. I met a woman on the porch of her tornado ravaged home a few years ago when the Computer Scientist and I, a good friend, and our children handed out sack lunches we’d made.  This woman had clearly been living in poverty before the tornado, and now her house was damaged. Glass, metal, and power lines twisted around her yard. But she raised up her arms, palms heavenward, and told me she was blessed, I was blessed, were were all blessed, right that moment, by a good God.  I was floored, and still am by that kind of abiding faith.

Jackson’s faith is challenged but never wavers, as he deals with village politics, a difficult father, and honest mistakes. But he manages to overcome loss of loved ones and friends, difficulties with bureaucracy and corruption, and discouraging words from some of the very people who will ultimately benefit from his nonprofit, and you get the sense that he will prevail, even though Nyaka AIDS Orphan Project is a relatively new nonprofit. I admire the way Kaguri mentions the hard stuff alongside the successes, and by the end of the book, you’d have to be pretty hard hearted not to be pulling for Jackson and the staff and kids.

Hearing Jackson Kaguri’s story in person was great — he came to Gibson’s. The Teenager had a game that night, so I suggested I might ask for the night off, but he wisely pointed out that there would be (many) other games, but only one chance, perhaps, to meet someone making such a difference in the world. True.

Talking to Jackson, like selling simple jewelry for BeadforLife, reminded me of how soul-satisfying it is to be in close contact with the source of a nonprofit. Large organizations often lose their founding passion and become a business like many others. Nyaka is small enough that when I donated some birthday money to their work, I got a personal email within 24 hours from Jackson, saying how glad he was to meet me in Concord and thanking me for getting involved in the project.

And you know what? I feel invested, like my small gift might really help a kid make it. I admire some large nonprofits, like Heifer Project and Habitat, but my donations to a place like that seem more likely to keep the lights on in a corporate headquarters than to really touch a life. I get that corporate headquarters need light to do their work. But my soul wants to hear a child laugh with delight when she opens a new notebook in a school in Africa, not hear a fluorescent fixture hum in an office in corporate America.

Speaking of Africa, I finished West With the Night by Beryl Markham last weekend. Gibson’s book club is discussing it on Monday.  I’d never read it before; it was on my long term reading list, because I’d seen it recommended many times over the years.  It was really something, mainly because Markham was really something.  Her unusual childhood seems both charming and alarming to modern sensibilities, but it clearly made her the fearless adventurer that she became.  The world she moved in was both privileged and primitive — many of her friends were quite wealthy, she worked with racehorses and airplanes, yet she lived in huts and stables and “roughed it” beyond most people’s comfort zones.

Hemingway famously wrote a letter to Maxwell Perkins telling him he had to read West With the Night, because he felt it “a bloody wonderful book,” and said Markham “can write wrings around all of us who consider ourselves writers.”  You can see what he means in passages like, “The forest had fallen back, giving ground with the grim dignity of a respected enemy, and fields were cleaned of the rocks and bush that had lent the the character of wilderness for centuries;” and “Like all seaports of the East, Benghazi is blatant and raw; it is weary and wise.”

One thing contemporary readers may find interesting is that Markham’s memoir has very few details of her personal life, especially as an adult. There’s no mention that Tom Black, who was her flying instructor and friend, was also her lover.  The book doesn’t mention three husbands, or other affairs.  Nor does it offer any glimpse of  how others may have viewed her unusual life, other than a brief mention of the press coverage of her trans-Atlantic flight in 1936.  This is a refreshing contrast with today’s tell-all, marketing soaked world, where even people whose 15 minutes of fame is due to some scandal have publicist spin doctors to sell their lurid stories.

A book that critiques the 24 hour bombardment of media and advertising in its own way is Sudden Anthem, which is Matthew Guenette’s first full length poetry collection.  Guenette is a NH native who will be reading at Gibson’s on August 5.  Sudden Anthem is a witty, sharp book, and the poems are tense with love/hate fervor for media, popular culture, and consumer/corporate culture. At least that’s my take — poetry is of course, a dance between reader and poet, but here’s my reader’s view:

“Li Poem” imagines classical Chinese poet Li Po ruminating on the meaning of executives letting off steam with office pranks (don’t trust the suits, Guenette seems to say, slyly), “Remember to Watch”  critiques a culture that values advertising over poems,  “Vortex: Super-Sized Supermarket” describes the ways a giant box store is a very strange place which offers “these false dichotomies we pretend to/pretending to us in a discourse/of freezing and thawing,/cleaning and pre-heating–paper of plastic.”

I also admired the tongue-in-cheek “Brief History of the Home Gym ” and “Interview,” a hilarious take on both questions and answers which asks, “What do on ramps gain from area codes?/Specifically, fair market value/for cupcakes . . .”  Other favorites among the hard hitting humor poems in the collection: “The Today Show,” which imagines Katie Couric in the middle of a war zone; and “Acknowledgments,” a hilarious send up of the ubiquitous page where poets bow down to the high and mighty editors of the Literary Establishment who have deigned to give them a leg up by publishing their poems in impenetrable journals.

A couple of Guenette’s poems surprised me with their softer, more introspective tone, and I liked those very much as well: “Metamorphoses,” reads a bit like an avant-garde film, full of small flashes of imagery paired with little brush strokes of figurative language; “Poem,” seems like it’s going to be as wacky and swaggering as some of Guenette’s other work but has an underlying longing that makes it quieter; and the title poem looks gently into the childhood of a poet.

Speaking of childhood, there’s an urgent sense around here that childhood is short-lived. We’ve been on our first college visit with the Teenager since my last bookconscious post, and we have seven more planned. Gap Year possibilities are also the subject of intense research and discussion. It’s all somewhat overwhelming.

A little bit of me wants to ask if I can get off this ride, but I know the Teenager is not ours to keep, no matter how much we enjoy his company. I wrote his transcript this week. If you’re new to bookconscious, this is because we are life learners; neither the Teen nor the Preteen have gone to school in the traditional sense, although the Teenager has taken a couple of college classes and is considering another for fall (German, in preparation for the aforementioned Gap Year).

The transcript writing was eye opening. When the Computer Scientist and I embarked on this alternative educational plan for our kids, we wanted them to feel free to learn in the world, and not be constrained by the narrowness of school — who’s to say what any one person should learn, in the vast body of human knowledge? We wanted to equip them with the basic tools —  literacy and numeracy, critical thinking, time and space to become themselves — and then see them soar to heights of creative inquiry we never had the chance to reach ourselves.

In reality, sometimes they just want to sit on the couch and play video games, or climb a tree, or hang out, like any other kids. But looking at the big picture of how the Teenager has found his passions and preferred learning styles/methods and then diligently pursued them has kind of bowled me over with gratitude that we could afford him that opportunity.  The transcript he has introduces who he is, what he cares about, not just what he knows.

Of course, we live in a world that wants to package students into quantifiable data. While we don’t grade our kids (instead, we ask them to return to anything they don’t understand until they’ve worked out the difficulties, which we feel is what they’ll have to do in the real world, anyway), I did quantify his autodidactic life into categories, course descriptions, and credits (representations of the amount of time he spent learning, which is ludicrous if the goal is to view life as a seamless learning experience). And I listed the books and other resources he used to guide his learning.

This month the Teenager was pretty focused on watching the World Cup and following the foreign and domestic press coverage. He also finished reading a book on the mental aspect of soccer called Playing Out of Your Mind. He says it’s really interesting stuff, and applicable to life, not just soccer. Although some could argue that in his life, there isn’t much separation between the two!

The Preteen has been warily watching all of this college planning from the sidelines, but she seems mildly interested, mostly because she admires her brother. She’s a little tired of the driving around for soccer, but she liked Ottawa, and she got to pick out a stack of books to take along. She’s also continued bi-weekly library trips.  Among her choices this month were some more Fruits Basket manga, and several books by Wendy Mass.

It’s fun to watch her find an author whose books she likes enough to read in succession. I’ve done that myself, many times. These days I mostly vow to read all of an author’s books but actually end up just adding them to the never-ending, always-expanding “to read” list. In the Preteen’s case, she read Mass’s A Mango Shaped Space several months ago, and noticed another Wendy Mass book on the shelf at the library, Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life.  She enjoyed both so she went back and got Every Soul a Star and Finally.

Of all of these, she liked Jeremy Fink the best, although she adds that she liked them all (evidence of that is that she finished them all; unlike her mother, the Preteen is able to set down a book she doesn’t like and move on). She thought Jeremy Fink was “kind of  an interesting story” with “really cool, unique characters.”  From a kid who has a t-shirt that says “I’m unique” and who is a pretty severe critic of the sameness of popular culture directed at people her age, that’s high praise.

She’s several books in her reading pile — Margaret Peterson Haddix‘s Found and Among the Hidden, and The Dead and the Gone, by Susan Beth Pfeffer.  That’s the sequel to Life As We Knew It, which describes a meteor knocking the moon out or orbit, with very serious consequences for Earth. The Preteen often starts a book and then starts a few more, and dips back into them at will. I used to be able to read several books at once but have found that as my life has become busier (and maybe as I’ve crept up on middle age), it’s too complicated to keep them all straight.

I also can’t seem to read more than a few pages when it’s horrendously hot, without falling asleep face down in my book. In contrast, the Computer Scientist has been reading more this past week. Last month he read another Star Wars book, The Rule of Two.  He said it was enjoyable enough, but he seems to have placed the Star Wars reading project on hold. He also read Blockade Billy, by Stephen King, which he said was well written but not among his favorite of King’s work. He liked the first part, which he said clearly exhibits King’s passion for baseball, better than the second. He’s currently reading (and has almost finished, in the comfort of our shiny new room air conditioner) Baseball Codes and Doctor on Everest. His to-read pile is in flux, but he plans to read Coop, since he enjoyed Perry’s reading so much, and to finish some books he’s started and then set aside.

I’ve just barely started The Companion, by Lorcan Roche, which Europa editions refers to as “subversive comic extravaganza,” and I have requested a couple of books by W.S. Merwin, because I always like to read or re-read the new poet laureate‘s work.   And my friend Shawn, who chairs Concord Reads, recommended Jonathan Franzen’s How to Be Alone, which I have out from the library. But in June I never got to the two books I had pulled to the top of my bedside pile, Novice to Master and Raising Demons, so I’m trying to be mindful and just enjoy what’s in front of me without worrying too much about what’s next!

And for now, that means signing off so I can go eat lunch with the Teenager (and maybe the Preteen; it’s hard to tell when she’ll be feeling sociable). And possibly with the Cat Who Adopted Us — complete with dramatic firefighter rescue from 35+ feet up a tree.  We haven’t taken her to the vet or named her yet, but no one has responded to our “FOUND — CAT” posters nor newspaper ad, and she keeps meowing at us and climbing endearingly into our laps, so it’s possible she’s ours, or we’re hers, anyway. She seems to like books — she purrs happily when I’m reading beside her on the screened porch. So she may as well stay.

Read Full Post »

Too much reading?

Sometime towards the end of April, the Computer Scientist said something that stopped me cold. He noticed my frantic checking of how many pages were left in whatever book I was trying to finish ahead of an event at Gibson’s or a library due date, and he said, “Reading isn’t even fun for you anymore, it’s just another deadline.”

Then he pointed out the stacks of books beside my bed, the pile of magazines in my favorite chair, and the many sections of the New York Times at my place at the kitchen table and said, “You don’t enjoy what you’re reading, you just see it as what you have to finish, and it stresses you out.” Have I mentioned he has a reputation for giving direct and insightful feedback?

As you can imagine, my immediate reaction wasn’t to say, “Thank you for your searingly honest critique, darling, I’ll change my frenzied behavior at once.” Instead, I probably made a face, and I likely said something defensive and possibly a bit rude, although I refuse to confirm or deny that.  Unruffled by my response, the Computer Scientist rolled over and went blissfully to sleep. I obsessed.

And you know what? He’s right. After this conversation, we had a couple of whirlwind weeks chock full of children’s activities, a visit from his parents, and my own visit with my mom in South Carolina. I had less time to read (except on the four airplanes and airports I passed through, in which I read four books), so I was forced to make hard choices.  I came to a series of editorial decisions about my reading.

First of all, when it comes to periodicals, I am going to let go of my inherited belief that if you pay for something, you’d better get your money’s worth by using it all up — when it comes to the Times or Economist or all of the monthly magazines we get, I am going to allow myself not to read every last article. Yes, they are expensive. But we subscribe to many of them in part because we believe in their existence and wish to express our support. I am still getting plenty of value for my money even if I only read the parts I find most interesting or appealing.

Second, I simply have to admit that it’s impossible for me to read every event book at Gibson’s, especially as our schedule fills.  If it’s something I would want to read anyway or feel curious about, I’ll read it; if not, I will outsource my pre-event reading to family members, friends, or co-workers.

And if none of them has read the book before the event, I’ll rely on the tools I already use as a reader: Goodreads and the many excellent book blogs that are just a Google search away. A quick shout out to my father-in-law — he wrote a very helpful brief  on Walking to Gatlinburg, which I had no time to read. Thanks!

I also came to realize, after my own mother told me I looked “tired” (code for “wow, those are some bags under your eyes, honey”) in the family Easter pictures, that I have to face the biological facts. I am past the age where I can stay up until 2 am finishing a book and/or writing a blog post, especially two or three nights in a row, and still feel (and look) human. No more all-nighters. Unless a book is so darn fantastic I can’t help myself . . . .

Of course, all of these decisions came at the end of the month. So I actually read fourteen books since my last post about a month ago. The last one which I stayed up until all hours finishing was The Help, by Kathryn Stockett, which I was reading in a hurry so I could mail it back to my aunt, who lent it to me and had a list of friends waiting for it. I loved this book. I wanted to be friends with both Skeeter and Aibileen.

I’ve read the criticism — the plot is too obvious, the whites too one dimensional and typecast — but I think the people who are bothered by The Help are squeamish at one of two things: either they are uncomfortable with how truthful Stockett is, or they hate to admit that a number one best seller isn’t mind candy.  I’d rather look at the total package — and I think this book  is well written and delivers a great story, memorable and fully formed characters, and page turning entertainment.

Just as not everyone in 19th century England was as mean-spirited or good as Dickens’  villains or heroes, Stockett doesn’t intend to say that all 1960’s Southerners fell into her characters’ molds, either.  The Help is a rollicking good read as well as thought provoking social commentary, packaged in a populist style —  just like Dickens. Kathryn, if you are ever in New England, I’ll drop everything to have you at Gibson’s!

Another novel that manages to be both social commentary and hilarious fun is Co-Opted, by Joan Bigwood. Joan’s sister, Kate, is my friend and rector at St. Paul’s church here in Concord. Her novel follows the transformation of a stylish and successful New York City mom, Francesca Wilson, as her family moves to Palo Alto in the dot.com era. Facing an abrupt lifestyle change, as well as worries about her aging parents, Francesca finds herself becoming involved in a co-op preschool. She discovers talents she never knew she had, and a community to help her through some difficult times. It’s a gentle book, and it’s funny.

Those same words also describe Carl Lennertz‘s delightful memoir, Cursed By A Happy Childhood: Tales of Growing Up, Then and Now.  This charming book is both a tribute to his own happy childhood in what was then a small, sleepy town on Long Island and a reminder to today’s parents that we shouldn’t over think so much. The book is a series of short pieces Lennertz wrote to his daughter as she was approaching the teen years — around the age of my own Preteen.

Even though his family’s life in Manhattan is different in many ways than my own family’s life in New Hampshire (and all the many other places we’ve lived), the book resonated with me. Lennertz writes about things we have all experienced as kids and parents — getting really into certain music, enjoying sweet corn, trying not to seem uncool, swearing (I chuckled over the swear jar — something we tried a few years ago to no effect) and even deciding what will define us as adults.  Both as a lesson in thoughtful reflection and a slice of childhood and parenting in contemporary America, Cursed By A Happy Childhood is welcome relief from both didactic parenting tomes and painful memoirs of unhappy childhoods. This book would be a great Fathers’ Day or new dad gift.

I read five other nonfiction books, including two books by authors who came to the store (Birdology, by Sy Montgomery, and Eaarth, by Bill McKibben), another book recommended by my rector, and two other books of essays: A Place on Water, which I gave the Computer Scientist a couple of years ago for his birthday, and How Did You Get This Number, by Sloane Crosley, which is coming out in June.

I read A Place on Water because Wes McNair was one of three poets reading at the Concord Audi at this year’s April poetry event, and he wrote one of the the three essays in the book. And, I adore his work — there’s no other way to describe it. His two neighbors on Drury Pond in Maine, Bill Roorbach and Robert Kimber, wrote the other two essays. This is a gorgeous book — really, each piece is so beautifully wrought, and yet feels as effortless as floating in a perfect little pond on a summer day. You’ll want a camp in Maine, badly, when you’re through reading.

Sloane Crosley is brilliant. I read the advance copy of How Did You Get This Number on a plane, and people stared at me as I laughed out loud. She is everything I love in an essayist — funny, smart, wickedly observant, interesting, and relevant. Her book is a little hip and edgy —  you might feel a teensy bit like you’re not worthy of her Manhatttan lifestyle (I did), but she also writes about her childhood and you’ll realize she is just like you, only cooler, when you read those parts. I’m definitely going back to read I Was Told There’d Be Cake, soon (update: I picked it up today at the library). It’s been on my “to-read list” (that pesky thing just multiplies like some kind of feral animal) for a long time, and Cake has been bumped to the top.

I enjoyed Birdology, although I was taken aback by some of the brutality — the chapter on birds of prey is not for the squeamish, or for quail fans (quick aside:  my in-laws were in town for Sy’s event, and my father-in-law is particularly fond of the quail in their backyard in California; unfortunately some quail meet their demise in the book). Sy is an indefatigable researcher, which is something I admire in a person, and she writes with such passion that even someone like me who is only mildly interested in birds can’t help being fascinated.

I was left with a deep admiration for hummingbird rehabilitators, chickens (they’re not dumb, it turns out), and parrot research that has led to breakthroughs in the understanding of language acquisition. My daughter came away from Sy’s event with a new phrase to torment her brother with: “cut the crap,” which one of the parrots Sy met said with relish. We now spend soccer games daring each other to yell that.

Eaarth is that rare volume that is not only an Important Book but is also humorous, instructive, and somehow even a bit upbeat, even though we’re more or less screwed if we keep adding CO2 to the atmosphere. Bill McKibben is one of the great men of our times — and we just had around 150 people in the store to hear him last night. Have I mentioned lately how much I love Concord?  I visited my mother in Columbia, SC, a university town of around 50,000, twice that if you include Ft. Jackson. Their indie bookstore closed. Concord, you rock.

As Hillary Nelson, one of my favorite freelance writers, said in her review in Thursday’s Concord Monitor,  Eaarth is also a “hopeful and, well, patriotic book, a testament to the durability and flexibility of American democracy. Only a writer as good as McKibben could pull off this feat.”  It’s true — and in person he is every bit as graceful and spellbinding as he is in print. Check out his work at 350.org. Join. Really, what are you waiting for?

Kate, my aforementioned rector at St. Paul’s Church, has been very supportive of our parish’s work welcoming refugees to our community. She told me her mother welcomed refugees in New England many years ago, and recommends This Flowing Towards Me by Marilyn Lacey, to anyone engaged in this ministry. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Lacey alternates between telling her own story of discovering her call to serve in refugee camps in Thailand and refugee resettlement in the U.S., and the stories of some of the remarkable people she has known.

Lacey takes her title from a Rumi poem; besides being a memoir of working with refugees, Lacey’s book also explores her personal experience of God “flowing” towards her in many ways, from a bulletin board notice to poetry to a church sign that caught her eye. She is an example of a person living a mindful life, open to the flow of spirituality, and willing to put her faith into action. But the book is not preachy — she tells it how it is for her, and if you’re not religious, you’ll still find plenty to admire and learn from in her travels to Sudan, Thailand, and many other places.

Poetry is certainly a door to inspiration for me — I felt so lifted by my close reading of the latest books from Maxine Kumin, Donald Hall, and WesMcNair (who were all brilliant, by the way — the reading was great fun, and the Computer Scientist came away an even more devoted Hall disciple), that I vowed to read poetry more regularly. I pulled two books off the “to read” shelf and dove in: Earthlight, by Hannah Stein, and Miracle Fair, by Wislawa Szymborska, translated by Joanna Trzeciak.

Earthlight inspired me to pull out a few of my own poems and get back in the saddle — I hadn’t sent work out for a long time, in part because I was tired of “hopeful” rejection letters that either told me the review in question wasn’t really looking at new work (despite guidelines to the contrary) or that my poems were “close.” And in part because David Alpaugh’s article “The New Math of Poetry” is enough to end anyone’s literary aspirations.

My favorite of Hannah Stein’s poems in Earthlight were “This Time, This Place,” about the poet’s experience of a Monet exhibit at the Art Institute in Chicago; “Grace,” with my favorite lines in this collection, “The sky has hoarded brightness/like armfuls of lilac;” “Loving a Mathematician,” which makes the list of my favorite marriage poems, and is a lovely tribute to right brain/left brain partners; and “All But the Blackberries Themselves,” a poetic tribute to greed but also just a delightful poem about summer’s abundance and the way it lures us.

Wislawa Szymborska, and for that matter Joanna Trzeciak, are on another plane. A Nobel laureate whose work is not well known outside poetry circles and readers of Polish, Szymborska writes with a wry humor and a searing eye for truth. Poetry can be a window into the meaning of life — you could read poetry to study philosophy, if you were dedicated and maybe a little bit mad.

Szymborska could be your gatekeeper, your guide, your boatman. Whether she is writing about something as simple as a drop of water on her finger (“Water”) or boundless as the concept of zero (“A Poem In Honor Of”), these poems require multiple readings to enjoy their nuance and depth. I want to wallow in this glorious collection for a long time. Translation, as I have mentioned in previous bookconscious posts, is an incredible art. I’m so grateful for the talented Trzeciak and other literary translators who bring this kind of work to their own languages.

While we’re discussing translation, I finally got around to reading a delightful little book I’ve had in my “to-read” pile for awhile now, Kitchen, by Banana Yoshimoto. This was another airport read. Despite its brevity, this was a perfect little book, witty and wacky and True with a capitol T. I have great admiration for both contemporary and classical Japanese literature — what a marvelous world we live in, that I, who have no Japanese at all, can enjoy Murasaki Shikibu, Haruki Murakami, Basho, Shiki, and others, whenever I like.

But I digress. Kitchen is a book I plan to keep around for when the Preteen is a bit older and interested in relationships. I think Yoshimoto is almost Jane Austen-like in the way she delves into the society of her characters and probes their expectations, pride, and yes, prejudices. She writes at once about Japanese culture that feels exotic and mysterious to Western readers, and about universal emotions that connect us all as human beings: love, grief, friendship, family, coming of age. Read this book. It won’t take you long, and you’ll feel richer for it.

Speaking of Jane Austen, you get the feeling that Tracy Chevalier was channeling Jane when she wrote Remarkable Creatures. I haven’t enjoyed any of her books as well as this one since Girl With the Pearl Earring. I think I was drawn to this Remarkable Creatures because I’ve always been fascinated by Mary Anning.

I never knew about her complicated friendship with Elizabeth Philpot (I guess I’d read only very brief overviews of Anning’s fossil hunting until now), and her even messier relationships with many of the leading men of science in England and France.  Chevalier’s novel is just what I look for in historical fiction — detailed, intriguing, and well drawn, with enough facts to pique my curiosity and a plot to keep me reading.  I’d like to read The Fossil Hunter, by Shelley Emling, to fill in the rest of the facts.

On Monday, Gibson’s Book Club will be discussing Per Petterson‘s Out Stealing Horses.  I read it before my recent travels, and then I took his next book (due out in August in the U.S.), I Curse The River of Time, along for the plane rides. I really enjoyed both, but I had my reservations about the ending of the forthcoming book. In fact, I read it over three times on the way home, hoping somehow that it might get better. I’m afraid it didn’t. Still, I enjoyed Petterson’s writing very much, and I maintain that like the other books in translation I’ve explored these past few months, my reading life is richer for having made connections with literature from other countries.

Out Stealing Horses is a good book club choice, and I’m looking forward to hearing what our group has to say about it. It’s a somewhat poignant book, with a protagonist who is looking back in old age at a series of events in his youth that impacted him profoundly. Set at the end of World War II and in contemporary times, the novel takes a hard look at many of the universal questions I found myself drawn to in the rest of this month’s books  — who are our family, and how do we relate to them and to our real and remembered selves at different stages in our life? Are our memories trustworthy? What is trust? Is absence a form of love?

While I was busily buried in books, making connections, and likely driving my family crazy with my book light, baggy eyes, and absent-minded lost-in-thought musings, my family was also busy reading. The Preteen continued to read manga, including +Anima and Gakuen Alice 2. She’s reading Through the Looking Glass, and she and the Computer Scientist are each re-reading Harry Potter books.

I remembered that we have The Cartoon History of the United States by Larry Gonick, and the Preteen is enjoying that. We read aloud the entire eleven volume A History of US by Joy Hakim a few years ago, but I figured given her long interest in comic drawing, this might be appealing.  She likes it enough that I pointed out Gonick’s A Cartoon History of the Universe, Volumes 1-7, and she carried that off to her reading nook.

The reading nook is actually a corner of her closet — she has a much larger closet than the rest of us, and it’s well lit. She’s decorated it with all kinds of cool things on the walls and ceiling, and she has a big comfy chair in there, next to some shelves where she can keep books and display artwork and other items. It’s a very cool place. But she’s not in there as much these days because a) the weather is nicer so she can get outside and b) she’s adopted a pair of gerbils, and she spends more time playing with them. She also read Gerbils: The Complete Guide to Gerbil Care by Donna Anastasi this month, which Jammin’ Gerbils recommends as the definitive guide.

The Teenager finished The Edible History of Humanity, which he enjoyed tremendously (he keeps reminding us that hunting and gathering worked well)  and decided to see what else I had on the history shelves. He’s been reading A History of Knowledge by Charles Van Doren. He told me he likes how in-depth it is for a book that covers so much time. This book has reminded him how much he’s always enjoyed learning about ancient history, and has led him to consider colleges with classics departments.

Meanwhile, he’s not quite made up his mind whether to go straight to college (he’s a junior right now) or take a year off. Especially since his once-a-reference-librarian-always-a-reference-librarian mother keeps giving him more information to consider. Right now he has The Gap Year Book from Lonely Planet and Kristin White‘s The Complete Guide to the Gap Year on inter-library loan. Makes me wish I was young again.

The Computer Scientist read Steve Almond‘s Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life, and he says, “Very enjoyable read for anyone that’s ever caught themselves a little too into a rock and roll band. Funny and insightful.” He also pronounced Steve Almond’s event the most hilarious author event he’s attended at Gibson’s.  Now he’s reading Lynne Olson’s Citizens of London, which bookconscious readers know I loved and recommended.  He’s considering a Star Wars read-a-palooza for summer.

What’s in my pile? I’m halfway through Jay Atkinson‘s Paradise Road, which is great fun so far, and I plan to read Peter Hessler’s Country Driving because his writing is brilliant and it was in at the library when I picked up the gap year books, and Sloane Crosley’s I Was Told There’d Be Cake for the same reasons. I also have Allegra Goodman’s The Cookbook Collector, and a book of Ted Kooser’s poems, and another of Donald Hall’s essays, plus a few interesting choices in the coming events books: The Boy Who Would Be Shakespeare and I Thought You Were Dead, to name two.

So, Computer Scientist, if you’re reading this? You may be right, I may be crazy, but it just may be a lunatic you’re looking for (thanks, Billy Joel).

Read Full Post »

Bailed out by books

Looking over what I read in March, I realized that most of the books, fiction or nonfiction were about saving something or someone. Am I seeking a metaphysical bailout through books? Possibly. As I’ve mentioned before, I am an unabashed fan of escaping into my reading pile when the world is too much with me.

As has been the case since last June, my reading list this month was informed by the events schedule at Gibson’s. Yesterday I realized we’ve had 89 events since I started. Phew! No wonder I’m tired. You can see a list of upcoming events here, and see what you missed here (scroll down to Past Events).

Last week we had two fantastic events. Ben Hewitt came to discuss The Town That Food Saved and we had a really great crowd of local food champions, CSA organizers, nature educators, farmers, gardeners, and people who like eating well. Ben is a really interesting guy and we could have talked all night. One thing I like about Ben and his book is that he creates space for questions and conversation, rather than claiming to have all the answers.

His book is about Hardwick, Vermont, and the entrepreneurs who have come together in the area around local, sustainable businesses. He delves into the sticky issues of whether profitability and sustainability can co-exist, profiles movers and shakers in the local food scene, and talks with old timers in the Hardwick area who aren’t impressed by the fuss. I was excited that NHPR’s Word of Mouth had Ben and Ton Stearns of High Mowing Organic Seeds on the show. Ben even brought seeds to share with folks at the book signing table at Gibson’s.

Last Saturday, Adrienne Martini came to talk about her memoir, Sweater Quest. Whether you knit or not, this book is a blast. Adrienne’s writing is smart, funny, and sharp.  The book traces a year Adrienne spent knitting an Alice Starmore sweater design called Mary Tudor.

Along the way, Adrienne tells readers about the Shetland islands, fair isle sweaters, knitting techniques, and the history and sociology of knitting. She also introduces some of the main characters in the Knitterati: movers and shakers in both the virtual and bricks and mortar communities of knitters, designers, and yarn shops. But this is also a book about the nature of of friendship, the challenge of being ourselves as well as being mothers, daughters, and wives, and the meaning of goals and their completion. Adrienne even touches on why knitting can save your sanity.

Reading Sweater Quest is like sitting down with a good friend. Adrienne’s tone is warm, conversational as well as wicked smart. I loved this book, and admit that it makes me wish I had time to take up knitting — I’ve tried it a few times, without much success.  But even without that in common, I can admire Adrienne’s excellent writing and her ability to make me feel at home in a world I know little about. Plus, I really want to know the secret of her ability to hold two teaching jobs, mother two children, spend time with her husband, and still have time to write (and knit one of the hardest sweater patterns out there).

Another book I read for work is No Good Deed By Dr. Lewis Mitchell Cohen.  This is a good example of a book I would not likely have picked up on my own, but I am glad I read. Cohen discusses end-of-life care and the medical and ethical issues surrounding it, through the stories of two nurses at Baystate Medical Center (where he also works) who were accused of murder by a fellow staff member.

Delving into history, religious and cultural beliefs, ethical and legal issues, and the personal, heart-breaking stories of patients, families and medical staff, No Good Deed is eye-opening, thought provoking, and at times, alarming. While the nurses at Baystate ended up cleared of wrongdoing, the book relates a number of other cases that ended badly for doctors or nurses. Through it all, Cohen manages to be very even-handed, and his empathy for all parties, even those he doesn’t necessarily agree with, is one of the book’s strengths. I admire his willingness to not only express his own views as a doctor of thirty years’ experience, but to also give fair treatment to other viewpoints.

I was struck by how many of the cases, from all over the world, hinged on misunderstanding, especially on the part of prosecutors, lawyers, and juries. Cohen’s book is troubling but also moving, and left me with a better sense of the complex issues surrounding palliative care, and the importance of communication between family members, medical staff, and those who are ill.  It seems that as in so many other situations in contemporary culture, there are many choices and considerations, but one heartening message of No Good Deed is that the staff who provide palliative care are often among the most dedicated and caring people you’d ever meet.

The rest of my reading in March was much lighter, although still relatively dark, fiction. In fact, each of the novels I read had a streak of danger, madness, hubris, or evil in it. Most of them managed to be funny as well. What does that say about contemporary culture? We’re think we’re doomed but we’ll go down laughing? Maybe, we take ourselves too seriously. If you want to lighten up, read on.

I picked up The Poison Eaters: And Other Stories, by Holly Black in part because Joe Hill mentioned Small Beer Press when he came to Gibson’s, and I enjoyed his other recommendation (City of Thieves).  In a Twitter post about it, I called this collection “creepy, in a good way.” But it’s recommended for 14 and up, and I’d suggest older than that, personally.

I don’t get the appeal of encouraging kids to read about sex, drugs, and violence by marketing it as YA literature. Of course, some people would say that I’m being naive, and kids are actually doing those things, so what harm can stories do? But I’m not so sure that argument makes sense. First of all, not all kids are, and second of all, why should literature join the fray? Good books can deal with really rough coming of age issues without being painfully graphic — look at Chaim Potok’s The Chosen, for example.

That said, Holly is a great writer, and her stories transcend creepy fantasy to explore human nature, culture, and community, among other themes. Her stories are  smart, funny, and thoughtful, as well as very entertaining.  Some of her characters manage to save themselves, some save each other. If you’re still a bit intrigued by unicorns and fairies but want something edgier, check out The Poison Eaters. And perhaps an older teen would enjoy this book — I just wanted to rant a bit about the general trend towards YA fiction that seems, to me, too harsh and in-your-face, and not quite hopeful enough.

Speaking of in-your-face fiction, I read Solar, by Ian McEwan last week. You’ve probably read the reviews, so I won’t go into too much detail here. Bits that were probably meant to be funny rubbed me the wrong way; maybe I just have a hard time laughing about climate change skeptics, status freak scientists, and investors who just want to milk the next green thing for as much return on the dollar (or pound or euro) as possible. I think if I hadn’t just read this week that about half the television weather reporters in the U.S. doubt climate change and a majority of Americans trust those same weather-casters more than other sources to tell them the truth about climate change, I might have chuckled more.

Also, McEwan works so hard to make Solar‘s main character, Nobel winner Michael Beard, a creep that it was hard to care much about what happened to him. Just about every character has a chance to save a bad situation or make a better choice and then don’t. I don’t need a happy ending every time, but I like to feel there’s something redeeming about someone or something in a novel, and this one left me feeling adrift. It was hard to tell if anything good could come of any of the people you’d just spent a few nights getting to know. I need at least a shred of hope.

An example of the kind of book I’m talking about — one that gives the reader hope in humankind, or at least hope in the transformative power of good storytelling, is The Girl Who Fell From the Sky, by Heidi W. Durrow. I was torn about whether I wanted to read it, because I’d heard enough about the plot to know that awful things happen to the main character when she’s a child.  I generally decide that if I want to be depressed about man’s inhumanity to man, I could just read the newspaper.

Durrow doesn’t hold anything back — in that regard, her writing is like Holly Black’s.  But like Black, she also lets her characters figure out that the bad stuff is only one part of this world.  Durrow’s troubled characters, especially Rachel and Brick, don’t just make you cringe when they screw up, they make you yearn for them to catch a break, and quietly urge them on.  By the end of The Girl Who Fell From the Sky, readers regret the painful things these characters have been through but know their world (and by association, ours) will, in the end, be alright.

Another novel I adored this month was First Contact, Or, It’s Later Than You Think by Evan Mandery.  Much gentler in many ways than the other fiction I read — even though the story involves the end of the world, preceded by a near miss with inter-planetary nuclear war — First Contact is zany satire.  Mandery manages to skewer everything from politics to PTA’s, and has fun with himself, too, by writing a “recursion” into the story after a child gives a scathing critique of First Contact when his mother reads it as a bedtime story.

I enjoyed the goofy jokes, the aliens who love Bundt cake, and the important roles Mandery grants raccoons in driving his plot.  But I also liked Mandery’s quiet hero, Ralph, and his idealistic girlfriend, Jessica. In fact, many of Mandery’s minor characters, including Jessica , some of the White House staff, and several of the Rigelians, are vivid enough to admire or empathize with. Or laugh at. It’s a sign of a good book when event the supporting characters are richly imagined.

Jessica and Ralph fall deeply in love, and they’re relationship resonated with me, because like Steve and I when we first met, they are reduced to phone calls because they are apart. (I know you want to know why — go read the book.) Perhaps because I associate this kind of deep conversation — wanting to tell the other person everything but also to listen and know everything the other thinks, feels, and dreams — with lasting, true love, I didn’t find the lack of passionate love scenes problematic. In fact, I thought many of the relationships in First Contact were lovely.

Besides, I got plenty of steamy passion in The Swimming Pool, a first novel by Holly LeCraw. LeCraw has tension and emotional drama down pat. Her depiction of one character’s postpartum depression makes you want to shake the other characters and yell, “Get her some help!” And the tragedy that haunts her characters is compelling enough to keep you turning pages without being melodramatic.

I could have done with a little less information in some of the sex scenes, however. My basic rule of thumb is, if you wouldn’t discuss it with your grandmother, it’s over the top. Don’t get me wrong. As Bookconscious readers know, my grandmother was very well read, and she happened to also have nursed a decades long soap opera addiction. (Days of Our Lives. I admit, I followed it too, for a few years.) So she knew from sex scenes.

But when we talked books, Grandmother and I both admired stories that made you sense the passion lovers shared without making you feel like you were actually watching. For example, no one doubts that Romeo and Juliet want to consummate their relationship, but Shakespeare didn’t need to describe intimate parts of Juliet’s anatomy to get his audience on board.

I know I’m hopelessly old fashioned in this regard. Another well written debut novel, The Summer We Fell Apart, had its share of lusty scenes as well. So perhaps this is just a literary trend I’m not hip to? (The fact that I just used the phrase, “hip to,” may be a clue — no one who is actually hip says that, right?)

Anyway, The Swimming Pool is part mystery, part tragedy, part love story, and maybe my problem is that the sex is extraneous to the emotional drama. There are some seriously hurting characters here, and I liked it best when the book focused on those stories, and the ways the characters began to heal. The affair distracts two of them, nearly to the brink of disaster, from the people they most need to help. LeCraw bails them out in the end, and again, while this book’s ending isn’t exactly happy, it left me satisfied.

Last night, I read the new-to-me parts of Maxine Kumin‘s Where I Live and Wesley McNair‘s Lovers of the Lost. Kumin, McNair, and Donald Hall are on the bill for this year’s poetry reading at the Concord Audi on April 21, put together by Mike Pride (retired editor of the Concord Monitor).  Both books are “new and selected” poetry collections, so I read the new, and skimmed the selected.

Before I started at Gibson’s I was working on what I thought of as an independent MFA — time and cash poor, busy with other committments, and generally wanting to avoid the grad schools churning out writers glutting literary markets with submissions, I sought my own study, reading both creative nonfiction and poetry, as well as fiction. Lately, I haven’t taken the time to read poetry as carefully — I read a poem most days, but I’m often in a hurry. Sitting down with Lovers of the Lost and Where I Live reminded me of how much poetry offers, and how much I love being mindfully immersed in it.

Both books contain wonderful surprises, new and old.  I’ve gushed about both McNair’s and Kumin’s poetry here before, and one of my favorite things about living in New Hampshire is being able to hear such fine poets in person. We’ve also enjoyed hearing Donald Hall a few times over the past several years, as well as Charles Simic and Sharon Olds.

Donald Hall can really electrify a crowd. My favorite Hall moment was at Gibson’s several years ago, when he read “Her Garden”  with it’s other-wordly refrain, “let if go, let it go,” in his deep, emotive voice. Kumin and McNair (and also Olds and Simic) read in what I’d call a more even toned, conversational style, but their words are certainly no less powerful.

Among Maxine Kumin’s new poems, I especially enjoyed  “The Victorian Obsession With the Preservation of Hair,” with stanzas shaped like beards cloaking the sad story of Longfellow’s attempt to save his wife from the fire that killed her as she was sealing enveloped with clippings of her children’s hair.  And among the “selected” — well, there are just too many favorites for me to do justice to them all.

I love that Kumin often plays with traditional forms, like sestinas and sonnets, but none of her poems are stuffy or unfathomable. On the surface, they are about utterly recognizable subjects, like marriage, gardens, animals, people. She makes these ordinary things into the very essence of being human, through beautiful language. Her work is sometimes playful (as in “The Domestic Arrangement” and “Almost Spring, Driving Home, Reciting Hopkins,” and “Seven Caveats In May”), sometimes thoughtful, ( “Sonnet In So Many Words,” and “Mulching”), sometimes reverent, (“Jack”), sometimes matter-of-fact, “John Green Takes His Warner, New Hampshire Neighbor to a Red Sox Game”), or piercing (“Waterboarding, Restored,” and “Extraordinary Rendition.”

Similarly, McNair writes of ordinary Americans, ordinary experiences, but his poems make these things wonders to behold. “First Snowfall,” for example, is one of the new poems in Lovers of the Lost. McNair paints a scene of fresh snow on a rundown rural town.  But he points us beyond the old semi trailers and collapsed barns, opens our eyes to this: “a snowplow/holding a small light/ahead of itself opening the street/that vanishes in the long drift and dream/of it, coming down/over the whole town/where everyone/ under every/last, lost/roof is now far away/and all gone/and good night.”  Gorgeous.

Another of my favorites among the new poems is “Love Story,” a funny, but also very poignant poem in which the narrator is pushing a car with four children and a dog inside it, the battery is dead, and he’s trying to get his wife to take her foot off the clutch at the right moment so the car will start. Their timing is off, until McNair reveals, “What was the moment/in the midst of our despair/when the engine suddenly caught/and you roared away and came back/for me, I got in by the soda can/on the floor and the dog now sitting/between us on the emergency brake,/the whole family smiling/as the trees broke apart faster and faster/over our heads — what, but a blessing?”

McNair’s breadth and depth is amazing. I don’t have space to go into them all, but among the “selected” poems I love “Small Towns Passing, “The Life,” “Glass Night,” “Why We Need Poetry,” “How I Became a Poet,” “The Rules of the New Car,” “Driving North In Winter,” and “The Man He Turned Into.”  I hope to hear many of the poems from Lovers of the Lost and Where I Live, as well as Donald Hall’s poems, on April 21.

It’s late and we’re all tired, dear readers, but there isn’t much more for me to tell. The Computer Scientist has picked up a couple of books here and there, but says he’s on a reading fast. Although, like me, he reads two newspapers and numerous magazines. He raves about Harper’s and says if he had to whittle our subscriptions down to one, that would be it.

I know he read Gakuen Alice with the Preteen this month. (For those who are keeping track, I officially have six months left to come up with another psuedonym for her. Heaven help me.) This is a manga set at a school for kids who have special talents — so the two of them went around discussing what their “Alice” talents might be. I love that they had a dad/daughter manga shopping trip and swap titles.  The Computer Scientist is also reading some manga the Preteen finished last month, Hollow Fields.

She is also still reading Alice In Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, which I got her in one volume, and she started another manga, Nabari No Ou set in modern times, but with ninjas. She decorated one of our Easter eggs with “ninja egg” written in wax, because, as she pointed out, the egg would be hidden. Like a ninja, mom (insert sigh and special look reserved for mothers of preteens, when they are at their most dense).

She also enjoys several magazines, and her favorite lately is Muse, because it is mostly about science and is “random,” which is something she and her best friend aspire to be. And even when the ennui around here is thick enough for a ninja to slice through, the Preteen likes the New York Times science section, which she reads most weeks.

The Teenager went through a pensive stage post-pneumonia; in last month’s post I described how he spent time thinking about things he’s enjoyed since he was little, like space, and photography.  He’s also been revisiting his interest in food — he’s always loved to cook as well as to eat. Several years ago, he read a thick book about the history, science, and art of woks and stir frying. Lately he’s been enjoying The Edible History of Humanity, by Tom Standage, who happens to be an editor at one of the his favorite magazines to browse through, The Economist.  He also got a big kick out of Rachel Mead’s profile of cashmere designer and life learner Brunello Cucinelli in last week’s New Yorker.

Most of the time, the Teenager is reading about heavy topics like the Big Bang, the chemical composition of athletic clothing or the physics principles behind a good shot on goal — or he’s reading about the latest injuries to plague his favorite players ahead of the World Cup. So I’m glad to see him reading for pleasure. I can tell when something has really caught his attention because he either thanks me for leaving it out for him (the New Yorker piece) or tells us something about what he’s read at dinner. Such as, that in some ways we’d be better off if we’d stuck to hunting and gathering.

Well, I have to bake our traditional homemade cinnamon rolls, which are rising overnight, and hide ninja eggs early tomorrow, so I’d better wrap this up. On my reading pile? I’m about halfway through The Help, thanks to my Aunt Dina, who lent it to me because the library list is lengthy. Today I picked up Remarkable Creatures because I have enjoyed some of Tracy Chevalier’s books (especially Girl With the Pearl Earring) and I’ve always admired the story of Mary Anning.

And I also picked up Cursed By a Happy Childhood on ILL, because Carl Lennertz sent me First Contact to review, and because Evan Mandery praises it in his acknowledgements — I’d never come across a note in which an author commends a book by his editor to readers, so I figured it was Not To Be Missed. And my two bedside stacks of coming events books and tasty looking advance copies (like Sloane Crosley‘s latest book of essays) are heaped with goodies.

I’m set, come what may — life can throw what it wants at me, but I’ll have plenty of books at the end of the day. May books be your bailout, too.

A Story of Medicine, Murder Accusations, and the Debate Over How We Die

Read Full Post »

Looking for quiet gifts

It’s been over five weeks since my last bookconscious post. In that time, I only finished reading four books, although I’ve got three others started and have dipped into several volumes of poetry. Two of the books I’m currently reading are all about grounding oneself in the quiet within an ordinary day.  I can’t seem to focus on that goal, despite a deep longing for it.

My writing life is in complete disarray. Yesterday I went out in the car to run an errand or convey various members of my household to various places 8 or 9 times (I lost track). While making a cake for my father-in-law’s 68th birthday, I had to start over after adding the wrong ingredients. In short, I’m in need of a rest or a re-balancing of some sort, although I don’t see one on near horizon.

One of the books I’ll be reading for months to come is Paul Wilson’s Finding the Quiet. This book caught my eye at Gibson’s, and after checking it out at the library, I decided it was one I should own. I have to be more careful about my book purchases, because I now have three piles of books beside my nightstand, another pile on the nightstand, and two more piles beside my desk, plus the ongoing “library list” of books I plan to check out.

Many of these are books I purchased at the Five Colleges Book sale last spring or picked up at the store or at the New England Independent Booksellers Association trade show — publishers provide booksellers with advance reader copies so we will get excited about the books. I came home from the NEIBA show very excited — with two huge bags of books! I am looking forward to reading the stacks (and to inviting several of the authors to Gibson’s to do readings) once I get through my current library pile. But I digress.

In Finding the Quiet, Wilson manages to condense much of what I’ve read in other books about meditation into very clear, bullet-pointed directions. Some people who are seriously into a particular school of meditation, or who have studied with a master, might find the book a little too basic or pared down. But I’m to the point where I’ve read a great deal of theory and am not making progress, so I want, and perhaps even need, a step-by-step meditation guide. Finding the Quiet is simple in the way an uncluttered but well designed floral arrangement is simple — there is plenty to study, plenty of detail to notice, but the basic lines are clean and clear.

Wilson actually advises readers to stop about 100 pages into the book and try the first practice he suggests for a couple of weeks. I’m at that point, and have already slipped in and out of regular practice, forgotten or misremembered half of the pointers, and even have fallen into the cold weather trap of convincing myself that I can meditate on my back underneath the down comforter if I try hard enough (it doesn’t work, I fall back to sleep). I’m determined to start fresh and stick with it, and stop my mind from racing the moment my eyes open.

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of welcoming an author who writes eloquently about the importance of those first quiet early morning moments. Katrina Kenison‘s Mitten Strings for God is one of those touchstones of my early mothering years. A  friend recommended it when my children were small and I was feeling very outside the mainstream in the suburbs of Seattle.

Many people I knew had their young children in foreign language, chess, swimming, computer, gymnastics, dance, music, and any number of other lessons. The neighbor children were so busy at ages 2 &4 that they had to schedule play dates with my kids instead of just coming over. My kids and I liked to play baseball in the back yard, sit in the tree fort the Computer Scientist built for them in the secret space between two enormous cedars, go to what they called the “Poohsticks” park (where there was a bridge perfect for dropping sticks into the stream and then hurrying to see them come out on the other side), or stay in bed on a rainy morning with a bag stuffed full of library books, reading and snuggling. If it was sunny, we often decided at breakfast to pack a picnic and head to the zoo.

I felt torn in those days, worried that I was denying my kids all the “enrichment” the culture around me was pushing for younger and younger kids, and yet knowing in my heart I didn’t care to give up our spontaneous, joyful time together. Mitten Strings for God made me feel like I had a wise friend reassuring me that snuggling, baking together, and pretending to pitch a wiffle ball to the entire Mariners lineup (whose many pre-batting rituals my son could mimic precisely) was good for them, and for me as a mother, and I should listen to my heart.

I was very excited when I found out that Kenison’s new book, The Gift of An Ordinary Day, is about the changes she faced and worked through as her sons became teenagers. I’m a little over halfway through, but it’s proving to be, once again, the wisdom I need for this point in my mothering journey.She writes about the ways that motherhood has helped her truly grow up — something I’ve told my own kids for years. I didn’t ever truly consider what I value, what is real and true and good in the world, and what I was just doing on autopilot because it’s what I’d been conditioned to do, until I had children, and faced the prospect of discussing life with them.

Now as I read Kenison’s new book, I have a child who is contemplating a different path than his mainstream peers — a year or more off before college to pursue a dream, and perhaps skipping the SAT’s, which so many people accept as an inevitable rite of passage.  I’m about to get into the section of the book where Kenison describes her own son’s decision not to take the SAT’s, and writes about the enormous pressures of the college application process, and how challenging it is for parents to resist worry and involvement. I can’t wait to find an afternoon to sit down and finish the book.

One reason I didn’t read as many books in September is that I was slogging my way through Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. I wanted to finish, because I was leading the Gibson’s Book Club brown bag discussion. After nearly setting it down for good, I managed to get through it. Although I like magical realism, and I love a meaty, challenging book, this one wasn’t my cup of tea. I found many of the devices that make it a unique piece of literature distracting.

I wanted to know much more about the Midnight Children, especially Parvati and Shiva, and how their magical powers manifested themselves.  Certain long sections of the novel, such as the description of Saleem’s time in the jungle,  lost me. And I didn’t like keeping track of so many possible sub-plots which were just story-alleys that didn’t really lead anywhere. Much of the difficulty I had is due to the fact that I have limited time to read and trying to pick up where I left off in such a complex novel was unsettling. I loved Haroun and the Sea of Stories, and I want to try Rushdie again when I have the time to devote to understanding his work better.

By the time I finished Midnight’s Children, it was nearly time to start the next Gibson’s Book Club book, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbary. Certain sections of this deceptively quick read are as challenging to penetrate as Rushdie’s most erudite prose. Barbary is a philosophy professor, and in our book club discussion I saw more clearly that she managed to express her views on aesthetics and the meaning of ethical living through the two main characters, Renee and Paloma, and to a lesser extent, through Mr. Ozu.

The group also discussed one of the things I didn’t care for when I first thought about the book — it’s scant plot — as a characteristic of the novel of manners, or in this case, a novel of philosophy and manners. When I considered it in that light, I liked it better. I’m still not crazy about the ending, but again, the book club helped me see that there wasn’t a great alternative.  We all agreed that the characters are well drawn, and that The Elegance of the Hedgehog is a tremendously witty novel. We concluded that this book would make a great film.

Speaking of film, I took time out last week, even though I really didn’t feel like I had time to spare, to go to Red River Theatres to see Bright Star. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and it brought Keats and Fanny Brawne alive so vividly that I am feeling compelled to add Andrew Motion’s biography of Keats to my “to-read” list.

Back to my current book pile: I’m in the midst of a Nicholson Baker read-a-palooza. I’ve got three of his earlier novels out on inter-library loan, and I’m currently reading The Everlasting Story of Nory. It’s wild — like being nine all over again, or being inside a nine year old’s stream of consciousness.  Baker must be a wonderful father, or else he vividly remembers the emotional complexity and creative chaos of his own childhood mind, because he doesn’t miss a thing in the inner life of his child protagonist.  I’ve also got Room Temperature and The Mezzanine checked out.

A few weeks ago, Nicholson Baker was in Concord to appear on my favorite radio program, NHPR’s “Word of Mouth.” We invited him to come to the store to sign books — we weren’t able to book him for a regular evening event, but the publisher was willing to send him over for an informal signing. Baker is an Important Writer, a serious literary star, and he turns out to also be very gracious and kind, clearly one of the book tribe (some authors, believe it or not, seem to belong to the marketing tribe, or even worse, the all-about-me tribe, instead), who was eager to see what poetry books we had on hand and seemed genuinely happy to be visiting the store.

I read his new book, The Anthologist and got a foreshadowing of what a down-to-earth, generous soul Baker is when I read his positive description of a small turnout for his protagonist’s poetry reading in an independent bookstore. Having recently dealt with an author nowhere near as talented who was insulted that very few people showed up for his reading, I’ve decided Nicholson Baker is “good people,” as my boss would say. Kindness aside, he’s also a genius.

In some ways, The Anthologist is like The Elegance of the Hedgehog, in that both Baker and Barbary are projecting a philosophy of aesthetics through their protagonists. In Baker’s case, it’s a defense of formal poetry, which his main character, Paul Chowder, is trying to get down on paper for the introduction to an anthology. Chowder is such a richly wrought character — you feel like you know him well by the end of this short book. The Anthologist is cerebral — there are plenty of musings on poetics, literary history, and human nature — but it is also funny, warm, and compassionate. There was something about it that made me feel as if I’d had a long satisfying discussion with an old friend when I got to the last page.

Part of my delight in The Anthologist was due to the fact that I wasn’t actually expecting to enjoy it so much. I was a little fearful, in the wake of Midnight’s Children, that I wasn’t up to the task of reading another Important Writer. Baker, after all, is known for the mind-blowingly new kind of novel he created with his debut, The Mezzanine. After enjoying The Anthologist so thoroughly, I had the confidence to read another book I wasn’t expecting to relate to easily, John Manderino‘s The Man Who Once Played Catch With Nellie Fox.

This time, my reticence was simple to source: this novel screamed “guy book.” I enjoy baseball (although not so much this October, with the Red Sox out of the playoffs), and the book received nice reviews when it came out in hardcover, but I wasn’t sure it would be a story I could get into. I was wrong.

Manderino, like Baker, creates a main character you want to root for.  Hank is struggling in his personal life,  and he’s at the end of a long and not terribly successful baseball career, playing for a  less than minor league team. Manderino leads readers through the final games of the season, and Hank’s ups and downs as he tries to make things right with his fiancee and her son, and sets out to better himself at the public library. What’s not to love about an author who sends his hero to the library? As he tells the story, Manderino weaves in multiple points of view. Even the librarian gets her say towards the end of the novel, and although she’s a minor character, I thought that was a lovely touch.

But it was also fitting. Despite the rough ballplayers and their seriously flawed social lives, this isn’t a jock book. The baseball action is interesting, but the meat of the novel is Hank’s crisis: is he washed up? Has he failed his fiancee? Can he reach her angry boy? Can he ever be the man he wants to be, the man who was once an innocent boy, full of dreams and potential, playing catch with Nellie Fox? Does his memory of that day, which he calls The Story, have any basis in reality, or has he relived it into something it wasn’t?

John Manderino is coming to Gibson’s on November 12, and I look forward to meeting him. The Man Who Once Played Catch With Nellie Fox is a dense little book, busting at the seams with longing, and with the difficult work of living out the ordinary in light of bigger dreams. Hank and his friends seem to me to represent the simple victory of choosing to be true to oneself and to the people in one’s life, even as life offers the temptations of self indulgence, self pity, or despair. Manderino’s characters are vivid and the story moves along. It’s an entertaining read.

Which is how the Computer Scientist described The 13th Hour by Richard Doetsch: an entertaining read. I brought it back from NEIBA, and knew it was the kind of book he’d enjoy. He said the concept — a man traveling back in time at set increments of time to try and save his wife from being murdered — was intriguing, and it’s a good thriller. It was fun to get him in on the advance reading. I’ll be able to hand sell this book now that I know something about it.

The Teenager joined us in reading some intriguing Norse literature last month.  Together, we chose some sagas to read as he was waiting for his Oxford University distance education course on viking archaeology to begin. I decided, when he first mentioned that he wanted to explore Norse works for our literary circle, to contact his Oxford tutor, David Beard, as well as a Harvard professor, Stephen Mitchell, whose website I found as I searched for Norse resources.

Both professors very generously shared their recommended reading lists for great Norse literature, and both also suggested the best translations. We ended up hunting down used copies of The Vinland Sagas, in the translation by Magnusson and Palsson, as well as Njals Saga. Bookconscious fans know the Teenager got very into T.S. Eliot last spring, so he also requested we get the Poetic Edda.  At Mr. Beard’s suggestion, I ordered Norse Myths by Raymond Page on inter-library loan. We each began exploring the Raymond Page book but have not yet discussed it. After a brief hiatus while grandparents visit, we’ll get into the Poetic Edda.

In September, the Computer Scientist, the Teenager, and I read and discussed The Vinland Sagas. We enjoyed those very much, and the Teenager said he found it interesting to compare the two (Saga of Erik the Red and Saga of the Greenlanders). He’s attracted to Norse literature in part because he is a Tolkien fan, and he found some sections of the sagas felt very familiar to him as grand, heroic adventure tales. He also noted that despite the age of these texts, they are enjoyable reads — debunking the idea that teenagers don’t respond to classics.

One other thing he noted was that the Vikings had no better relations with the Native Americans than later explorers did. Kids have a natural sense of justice, and mine have always been disgusted at the way native people around the world have been exploited or exterminated in the name of progress.  They didn’t need any “politically correct” text to figure this out. Eddie Izzard helped, however. I can’t tell you the number of times we’ve discussed a historical event (or a more recent one, like international squabbling over rights to polar waters), and one of the kids has said, “No flag, no country.” The Preteen hasn’t seen Izzard’s dvd’s in their entirety, but she knows the gist of this piece.

The Preteen read a heap of books in September. She’s a big re-reader, and she often revisits entire series, especially Harry Potter, but also Tintin, Time Warp Trio, and some of the Royal Diaries series this month. Another of the Preteen’s favorite re-reads in September, and she said yesterday perhaps her favorite book, period, was The Amaranth Enchantment, by Julie Berry.

A friend recommended she read the first four Sisters 8 books, which are another set of stories about orphan siblings, (why are there so many orphans in literature, anyway?) each of whom discovers she possesses a special “power and a gift.” My favorite thing about this series is that the authors’ eight year old daughter is credited as their co-author. The Preteen enjoys the artwork as well as the stories, and I hope to host this talented family at Gibson’s when the fifth book comes out next spring.

The Preteen also read The Demi-God Files, by Rick Riordan, which is a supplementary volume to the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. We just gave her the boxed set for her birthday, and she is psyched to finally get to read The Last Olympian, which she has had on request at two different libraries since late August. Popular books. Now she’s got her own set, plus a nifty map, all in a treasure chest. And the Teenager gave her a copy of The Demo-God Files, to complete the collection.

She also got an American Girl book called Earth Smart Crafts, and the two books about 2009’s “Girl of the Year,” Chrissa. Until recently, I would have told you she didn’t need to read about bullying. Some recent stories from friends about rampant meanness among middle grade and teen schoolgirls makes me wonder if it’s not a bad idea to know this is out there.  Generally speaking, I’ve found the American Girl books to be mostly practical, fun, and wholesome stuff, if a bit on the fluffy side, and my daughter loves them. I recently told a customer at the store that if you need a book for a young girl facing puberty, you can’t go wrong with The Care and Keeping of You.

I’ve written before about something I really admire in my daughter – the ability to put down a book that’s not interesting to her. This month, for her, that was The Graveyard Book. She did read Coraline, also by Neil Gaiman, and enjoyed that better, but still said it was a tad too creepy for her taste. I just about always force myself to read to the end, even if I’m not enjoying a book. But really, why do that?

We’ve been encouraging her to read history through literature, and in addition to the Royal Diaries, she also read Tomie dePaola’s For the Duration, the latest installment in his autobiographical 26 Fairmount Avenue series for kids. This one covers WWII, and the Preteen thought it was sad, but well done. She can read these books in one sitting at this point, but still finds them interesting.  We’ve often seen or heard something about the 30’s and 40’s or visited someplace and she’ll remember a detail from dePaola’s books. He is such a gifted storyteller, as well as one of my all time favorite illustrators. I’m glad she doesn’t feel she’s outgrown his stories. I haven’t, and I don’t plan to!

In Finding the Quiet, one of the techniques Wilson suggests novice meditators use is called “instant replay posture.” There’s a drawing that shows how to hold one’s hands and use that posture to trigger a psychological response and bring oneself into a peaceful, relaxed state. As I think over this month’s reading, and the calm, all’s-well-in-the-world feeling I get when I’ve read a really satisfying book or enjoyed a good conversation about books with friends or family, I see that the “quiet” is there for me even in the midst of what feels like a life that’s too full right now.

Conjuring peace is simple enough if I let myself feel like I’ve just finished The Anthologist, or a Jane Austen book, or a really good poem. All I need it to notice that gift, as Kenison suggests, that is in the ordinary day-in, day-out family life, even when life’s busier than I’d like. It’s there when I talk with my children and husband, or when we just sit near each other, reading. It’s not exactly the same as when they were small and snuggled close, asking me to read a favorite story again as soon as we got to the last page, but then, I’m not the same as I was then either (thank goodness). Books have been a constant for all of us, and that’s the quiet I’ll focus on.

Read Full Post »

April in paradise, part II: Dogs’ Night Out and Writers’ Day

After the reading at Gibson’s, I was primed for another evening of extraordinary poetry, an event I mentioned in last month’s bookconscious post — Dog’s Night Out. Mike Pride, the retired Concord Monitor editor and a poetry lover, organized this event and wrote about the three poets who graced the stage: Philip Schultz, Wesley McNair, and Sharon Olds.  You read that right — three blockbuster poets. Last year’s reading, Poets Three, featured Maxine Kumin, Donald Hall, and Charles Simic. Paradise, I am telling you, is right here in the Granite State.

The Computer Scientist and I decided to attend Dogs’ Night Out on a date, sans kids. We had a wonderful time. Concord is a small city, and you tend to see people you know whenever you go out. I ran into several fellow Songweavers (singing, one could argue, is musical poetry), a handful of Concord Reads pals, and other book-minded folks as we waited for the doors to open.

The Computer Scientist is a logistical and spatial genius, and he figured out the optimal spot for a height challenged person (me) to see the stage.  He is also a kind husband who is unembarrassed that his poetry geek wife had a notebook on her lap and took copious notes during the reading. As we settled into our seats we took in the art gracing the stage — a number of large wire sculptures of dogs.

Mike Pride opened the evening by explaining that the sculptures are the work of Monica Banks, who is married to Philip Schultz, and that he had first seen one of her dog pieces at an exhibition at the Fells here in New Hampshire in 2007.  When he met Schultz at the Pulitzer prize dinner last year, and invited him to read here, the theme of the evening — Dogs’ Night Out — took shape in Pride’s mind, because of Banks’ sculpture and several poems in Schultz’s Pulitzer prize winning book, failure.

Pride introduced Wesley McNair first, who I had the privilege to meet and speak with at the 2008 NH Writers’ Project Writers’ Day (quick aside: I also said hello after Dogs’ Night Out, thanked him for some advice he offered while signing a book for me last year, and introduced the Computer Scientist. McNair was warm and encouraging — what a joy, to talk with a gifted person who is so down to earth, and so willing to share his time with fans and students). Pride also pointed out that just as with the Poets Three reading, he asked each poet to read one poem by one of the others, and that each poet would be reading something about dogs, in keeping with the theme.

McNair opened with one of his own poems, “The One Who Will Save You,” which is a superb narrative piece set in central Maine, featuring a large mongrel dog. Next he read Sharon Olds’ “First Thanksgiving,” a lovely poem about anticipating a child’s return from college. McNair went on to say he became a poet to “talk about a broken family in a broken world,” and explained that his first poem was one word: “Wanted,” which he wrote beneath a picture he drew of his father. Then he read “How I Became a Poet,” which describes this first effort to create meaning, to transform ordinary experience with words.

McNair read other personal and family poems, including “The Good Boy Suit,” “The Book of A,” and “As I Am,” a poem that perfectly describes the state of absorbed distraction my family frequently notes in me. I sometimes worry that this is evidence of my lack of mindfulness, but McNair’s poem helped me see it as a different sort of mindfulness, in which one is present in that open space between the inner and outer worlds that Diana Durham mentioned in her talk at the Kalevala conference.

McNair also read a number of what I think of as his observational poems, such as “Smoking,” “Hymn to the Comb-Over,” and “An Executive’s Afterlife,” which he wrote years ago about an executive in hell. A timely topic, perhaps. These are not just poems, but cultural sketches, art work that is utterly accessible, that fit McNair’s own stated goal of writing “poems for the back pockets of Americans.” He closed with “It,” a poem that pokes fun at the way most of us are linguistically unspecific in our everyday speech.

Next Mike Pride introduced Sharon Olds. Through his introductions, it was clear that these poets came together to read because Pride is their common denominator — and McNair called attention to the fact that Pride is a wonderful advocate for the arts, and especially poetry, and his Monitor pieces bring poetry to a wide audience. He met McNair many years ago, and met Philip Schultz at the Pulitzer dinner. Pride drives Donald Hall to Harvard every year where he gives a talk with another poet, and one year that was Sharon Olds. In talking with her, they learned she was living in New Hampshire. Paradise, that is.

Olds opened with three poems by other poets: “The Garden,” by Schultz; and then two poems with dogs in them, “Dog Biscuits,” by Chase Twichell; and “Love,” by Ethan Stebbins. Then Olds began to read her own poems, opening with the delightful “Diagnosis,” a poem both humorous and profound in this age of experts. She continued with two other family poems, “High School Senior,” and “The Last Evening,” about being with her dying mother.

Reading poems set along the spectrum of female life, from babyhood to the death bed, Olds showed her evocative power. With a few words she conjures the enormity of human emotions, and sometimes probes the tender places nearly to the point of pain. If you’re a child or a parent, read Sharon Olds and you’ll shiver with recognition.

Olds also read “April, New Hampshire,” which is the most devastatingly beautiful funeral poem I’ve ever heard, and also a poignant tribute to Jane Kenyon and Donald Hall, and “Ode to a Composting Toilet,” which is hilarious, but like her other work, more philosophical than you might think if you just glance the surface. The poem set at Kenyon’s funeral also mentioned Hall’s dog. As we drove home later, the Computer Scientist remarked that her description of Hall looking eagle-like was eerie, and also really accurate.

Last, Pride introduced Philip Schultz, who opened with Wesley McNair’s “The Man He Turned Into,” praising McNair for the vulnerability in his poems — a characteristic of Schultz’s own work.  He went on to read the opening poem from failure, “It’s Sunday Morning in Early November,”  and other poems featuring his family, including “The Magic Kingdom,” a mindful poem about gratitude, and “My Dog,” a sad and wise pet elegy, as well as several parts of his long 9/11 poem from failure, “The Wandering Wingless,” whose protagonist is a dog walker. Schultz closed with two newer poems, “The Sweet Under Taste,” and “The God of Loneliness,” which the Computer Scientist said perfectly evokes being a dad.

I’d say the reading had a deeper theme than dogs, and these poets have more in common than knowing Mike Pride and being some of the greatest poets writing in America today.  McNair, Olds, and Schultz take the power of raw human emotions — straight out of everyday ordinary experiences like loving your partner, child, or parent, making your way in the world, doing work, or noticing what’s going on around you —  and hone those emotions and experiences into works of art. These are poems of the real world, poems with dirt and sweat and fear and pain, and yes, shit, in them. And they’re dead gorgeous, often witty, and incredibly wise.

I went to bed that night on a poetry high, only to wake up early to go to Writers’ Day, the spring conference of the New Hampshire Writers’ Project. If you write in NH and you don’t belong, join. The NH Writer newsletter, edited by Martha Carlson-Bradley, is excellent, and the events NHWP puts on are always well done. I signed up early for Writers’ Day, both to take advantage of the early bird price, and to get into my first choice workshops. I ran into a friend who said even though she registered early bird, many of her top choices were full.

This year’s keynote speaker was Meredith Hall, author of Without A Map. Her talk was inspiring, because her wildly successful writing career didn’t blossom until she was in her fifties. After a series of setbacks earlier in her life, Hall won a $50,000 grant, wrote a moving memoir (which she says came out as is — no revision needed!), watched it become a best seller, and heard from scores of people who wrote to tell her she’d changed their lives. It was hard to make any kind of practical take home notes for myself from this remarkable story. Hall herself admits her sudden success has been beyond her wildest expectations. The excerpts she read from Without a Map were lovely. I’ve put it on the long term “to read” list.

My first workshop session was “Writing In Open Forms,”  led by Jeff Friedman. We did two exercises, one on writing a poem about a color using all of the senses except vision, and the other on alliteration.  Despite having close to thirty people in the workshop, Friedman was able to have everyone read one of the two poems. He made some kind of positive comment about every piece, which is always nice in a one-off workshop where you don’t know any of your fellow poets and it’s excruciating to read a completely unpolished piece. He also gave us another exercise to do at home, which is a great way to end a workshop, with people eager to go out and keep writing.

“Mining Memory,” with Joseph Hurka, was my second session. Hurka writes fiction and memoir, and his books are on my “to read” list as well. I like to wait until after I’ve had a workshop with someone before I read their work, so I don’t form too many preconceived notions. Hurka talked about his belief that we all have profound stories in us, and that writers just need to work at figuring out the way to tell our own stories uniquely. He also talked about focusing on writing, not on what *may* happen later — publication, reviews, renown, fame. A grounding and important message.

Like Friedman, Hurka had us write a couple of exercises in the workshop, and left us with more to take home. I ended up with some interesting raw material for a project I’ve got in mind to combine poems and prose in a hybrid memoir. The exercises were short but really generated a burst of writing — people all around me cranked out a couple of pages in the brief time allotted. Hurka’s practical advice about what to do with these “mined memories” in terms of creating stories was helpful as well.

At my lunch break, I sat down at a table where I didn’t recognize anyone except Jeff Friedman. We talked a bit more about the poetry workshop. Several people at the table were talking about MFA’s, and I nearly felt brave enough to bring up my “independent MFA,” but then chickened out. After all, I was in their territory — most of the people at my table had MFA’s or taught in MFA programs. I spent the rest of the break networking, making sure I chatted with people I’d met at the Kalevala conference, readings, or other events. I also bought Friedman’s Taking Down the Angel, asked him to sign it.

My afternoon session was the most intriguing of the day. The exercises in the earlier sessions exceeded my expectations, and both Friedman and Hurka gave practical, helpful, encouraging writing advice. But this last session, “Getting Abroad,’ with Jim Kates, was a chance for me to try something entirely new and thought-provoking: literary translation.  I expected to just get an overview, but we actually tried it, and I’m hooked.

Kates, who is president of the American Literary Translators Association,  is clearly passionate about literary translation and that really made the workshop fun — his joy in this work was palpable. After reading some examples, and talking about the problems and issues literary translators face and what sets their work apart from literal translation, we split into two groups, one to work on a prose poem, and one to work on verse. My group had the verse, and the four of us each took a stanza of Rene Villard’s “Le Cemetiere De Saint-Nic.” Everyone in my group had at least a passing knowledge of French, but to make our work easier, Kates gave us a literal translation as well as the original French.

Literary translation brings together so many of my interests — reading, writing, the universality of human experience, the joy of discovering what’s unique in different cultures, the deep meaning of art, the creation of connections, knowing oneself and the world, relating one thing to another, contacting the space between the inner and outer worlds — it’s all there. Taking this workshop, with such an enthusiastic and accomplished person leading the way, was a fantastic finish to a couple of really intense weeks of thinking about writing.

I hung around for NH Literary Idol, which was a fun conclusion to the day, and went home full of thoughts and ideas. I had a great week of writing, and made a point of following up with some of the people I saw at the conference, which was one of my goals — to work on networking. All week, I also looked forward to the next book related event of the month, held last weekend: The Five Colleges Book Sale.

If you love buying books, check out the next post. The Five Colleges Book Sale is definitely a shopping paradise!

Read Full Post »

April in paradise

Maybe when you picture paradise, it’s someplace warm enough to sustain palm trees, or to support a brisk business in cocktail umbrellas.  I picture barely leafed out trees, mud studded with boot prints, boulders baring their lichen patched shoulders to the sun after months of snow cover.  In New Hampshire, April may or may not mean pleasant weather, but it does mean the rich literary landscape of my adopted home awakens as towns come alive with events celebrating poetry, libraries, and books.  I was able to get to two conferences, two poetry readings, an enormous book sale, and a book club publishers’ preview, so I thought I’d give bookconscious readers a taste of my April in paradise.

A few weekends ago, I spent a Saturday reveling in the mysteries of the Kalevala, the Finnish national epic poem. This fascinating program, put on by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire, caught my eye for two reasons. First, I had been trying to figure out what to do for a day long “artist’s date” for The Artists’ Way, and second, the Kalevala conference was free, thanks to sponsors and a grant from The NH Humanities Council.

The conference took place at an inn in Rochester, NH, near the seacoast. Driving over, I considered what I already knew about the Kalevala: it grew out of folk poetry and stories, which Elias Lonnrot compiled into an epic during a time of emerging Finnish cultural awareness after Finland gained independence in the first half of the 19th century. This much I knew from learning about Finland last year with my kids. From the pre-conference emails outlining the talks, I knew that the epic influenced Tolkien. That was about it.

The morning opened with a talk on Tolkien and the fantasy genre. Much of this material was familiar to me, having studied fantasy and mythology before I wrote a novel for young people (as yet unpublished), The Last Unicorns of Georgia. Quick aside to any editors reading this: it’s a middle grade novel about a New England girl whose family moves to the Deep South, where she finds that a small group of unicorns are living in the dense woods behind her house. At the urging of the unicorns’ matriarch, she uncovers a plot to harvest unicorn horns for use as a masking agent for athletes’ performance enhancing drugs.

My novel isn’t purely fantasy — it’s more of an eco-mystery which happens to hinge on unicorn mythology, but as I prepared to write it, I read several great fantasy books aloud with my kids, and I also read fantasy theory, such as Ursula LeGuin’s The Language of the Night, some of Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thousand Faces, and a number of essays in The Dictionary of Imaginary Places. I read about Tolkien, but I admit that although the Computer Scientist and the Teenager have both read his books, I haven’t (they are on my long term “to read” list).

Besides Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy — which bookconscious fans know the Teenager claims are so good they have made it impossible for him to find other books that hold up to the Tolkien standard of storytelling — some of our family favorites are the Harry Potter series, the Narnia books, Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising sequence, The Prydain Chronicles by Lloyd Alexander, Half Magic and other titles by Edward Eager, and the Eragon cycle.

So the talk on fantasy was appealing to me, if not exactly unknown territory.  The speaker, Clia Goodwin, gave a good presentation on “J.R.R. Tolkien and the Uses of Fantasy,” but didn’t add much about the Kalevala, except to say that Tolkien read the epic as a young man, Finnish was one of many languages he learned, and there is evidence he was influenced by the poem.  That said, Goodwin’s talk was very interesting, and later speakers built a bit on what she said about Tolkien’s views on the cultural rewards of fantasy — recovery, escape, and consolation  —  in terms of explaining the role of epic poetry and the Kalevala specifically in Finnish culture.

The next speaker, Diana Durham, is a poet as well as an Arthurian legend specialist who has written about the grail myth as a path to our inner selves. She gave an intriguing talk on “The Poet as Shaman.”  Durham opened with her thoughts on what poetry and mythology share — a reliance on symbolism to transform not only words, but the way the reader experiences words, and assimilates that experience into personal meaning or even healing. As an example, she read “Postscript,” by Seamus Heaney.

The rest of  her talk focused on the grail myth and how story, song, and poetry draw people out of their ordinary lives into the place where inner and outer worlds connect. She used Bernard Chandler’s photograph of the chalice well cover in Glastonbury as a visual metaphor for this idea, and referred to T.S. Eliot’s poetry, which happens to be what we’re reading for our book discussion with the Teenager this month. Like Goodwin, Durham spoke only peripherally about the Kalevala, but her presentation was fascinating. I am still thinking through her ideas on the way poetry and myth make meaning that transcends time and place.

Much of my “bookconscious theory on interconnectedness” has to do with the ways that we interpret ourselves through what we read, and the work interprets us, as we interact with it. In the process, we make connections for ourselves and with other people not just in reading, but in thinking about, writing about, discussing, reading reviews, and otherwise processing what we’ve read and placing it in our own mind map of what we know, believe, and love.  How many times have you read something written in another place and time and felt as if you belonged there? I don’t think that’s coincidence. We somehow identify ourselves in writing or music or art because in some primal sense we know those creations deep in our beings.

After a break for lunch, during which I let my head swim with thoughts of interconnectedness, the Kalevala conference re-convened, and Borje Vahamaki, a professor of Finnish studies, language and literature scholar, translator, and publisher, spoke on “Language and Meaning in the Kalevala.” He is in the process of recording audio CD’s of the poem, mostly in English but with a bit of Finnish to give listeners a sense of the original. Having heard him read just an excerpt, I’d guess the CD’s are fabulous.

Vahamaki is a Kalevala expert, and his passion came through in his talk, which was a quick introduction to Finnish history and language as well as a crash course in the Kalevala itself. Dr. Vahamaki made suggestions for delving more deeply into the Kalevala, and pointed out that the epic has inspired other writers, like Longfellow, and composers, most notably Sibelius, which perfectly illustrates the ideas we’d already heard about the impact of myth and poetry, and my theories that reading creates connections we carry into the rest of our lives.

The last speaker, Sarah Cummings Ridge, is a Maine resident of Finnish descent, whose father gave her a type of Finnish folk harp called a kantele as a wedding gift. In the Kalevala, the hero makes and plays a kantele made from a pike bone. Cummings Ridge said she had no idea when she received her father’s gift that it would change her life. She now leads The Maine Kanteles, and the group played a number of songs to end the conference.

The Kalevala event was one of the many activities of the Poetry Society of New Hampshire. Recently the group moved their monthly readings and open mic night to one of my favorite places: Gibson’s, Concord’s independent bookstore. April’s reading featured two New Hampshire poets familiar to bookconscious readers: Martha Carlson- Bradley and Alice Fogel. I was getting over a nasty virus, but I dragged myself out to hear these two wonderful poets read. Next time I am going to stay for the open mic (and maybe even sign up to try reading myself).

I was struck again by Fogel’s amazing use of language.  I mentioned in my post last year about her book Be That Empty that she also makes clothing — Lyric Couture is her fashion company, and it’s tag is “collaged fashions from reprised goods.”  Filtering the sound of her poetry through my somewhat illness addled mind, I was struck by how similar the two arts are — poetry and the creation of fashions. In both cases Fogel is piecing together things that at first may not seem to fit:  images and words, parts of other articles of clothing. Stitched together, the final product, whether verbal or visual, is beautiful.

I hadn’t heard Carlson-Bradley read before, but I read her book Season We Can’t Resist a few months ago.  I commented then that Carlson-Bradley has an eye for fine detail, and listening to her poems as she read, I noticed her observations of nature are scientific as well as artistic. In fact, both she and Fogel mentioned science as big influences in their work. Carlson-Bradley write poems rich in sensory detail that bring the reader right into the natural world near her home here in New Hampshire. If you’re not convinced by my contention that NH is a kind of paradise, read Carlson-Bradley’s poems and you’ll see our flora and fauna rival any old tropical rain forest, at least in their literary value.

Readings are a good reminder that poetry is an oral tradition as well as a written one, and hearing Carlson-Bradley read highlighted the way she beautifully connects human nature with the physical environment we live in. Poetry is an art especially prone to creating connections, and to exploring our connection to each other, and many poets have explored the man/nature continuum. I find Carlson-Bradley’s work particularly evocative because she writes about things many of us probably pass by in cars or even on paths in the woods, without noticing them or reflecting on their — and our — place in the world.

Check out “April In Paradise, Part II,” which I’ll post in the next couple of days, to hear about the rest of this amazing literary month.

Read Full Post »