Book Report for October

I don't usually slog through books I dislike, but there were a couple of books that I finished this month for the sake of the author's reputation or for the sake of those who recommended them. Two of my loveliest relatives asked me to read the "Owl's of Ga'Hoole" books, which I did my best to appreciate - but failed miserably. The other book was by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle because I had read somewhere that it was the book of which he was the most proud. I listened to the Librivox version and really liked it at first. Later it dragged quite a bit and I was relieved when it was finally over. It was not a total waste because the writing was very good and the narrator (Clive Catterall) was outstanding.

Books completed in October:

1) Shoulder the Sky by Stevenson - reviewed here.

2) 1001 Short, Easy, Inexpensive Recipes - probably not an official book, but fun reading.

3) The White Company by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

4) The Kelpie's Pearls by Mollie Hunter - Hunter is an excellent writer, but it's a struggle for me to like books about white witchcraft.

5) The Capture by Kathryn Lasky - Ironically the themes of the first book were very adult (brainwashing, murder, kidnapping, etc.) but the writing was somewhere near a sixth grade level and was painfully bad at times.

6) Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman - reviewed here.

Books as Art 2

I was browsing through one of my favorite websites today and was horrified to see this version of "books as art." In this case books are decorations alone and obviously not loved and handled on a regular basis. The spines are hidden. How in tarnation are you supposed to find your favorite titles?! Makes me feel sad and chilly all over.

What Literary Villains are Reading

I read several books this week, but since none were worthy of a post of their own, I thought I'd share some thoughts I'd written down last year about several "bad guys" in classic literature who liked the classics.

First, Chapter 15 in Frankenstein shows the "monster" reading to educate himself. The books listed were Plutarch's Lives and Paradise Lost.

Second, was the reference to several titles being read by the bandit in The Count of Monte Cristo. Luigi Vampa had these literary gems stashed away in his underground hideout: Caesar's Commentaries and Plutarch's Lives. A later villain in CMC has read Don Quixote.

I'm ashamed to say that these villains are more well-read than I am!

Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman

Ex Libris came highly recommended by fellow bibliophiles because of its witty and incisive essays about books. And there was a lot to love about this book. Fadiman grew up in a bookish family (She used her father’s set of Trollope novels as building blocks) and both of her parents were writers.

In her preface she writes, “Books wrote our life story, and as they accumulated on our shelves (and on our windowsills, and underneath our sofa, and on top of our refrigerator), they became chapters in it themselves. How could it be otherwise?” Later she adds, “Between them, our parents had about seven thousand books. Whenever we moved to a new house, a carpenter would build a quarter of a mile of shelves… Other people’s walls looked naked to me.” (p. 125)

Bibliophiles can be a quirky lot and I chuckled with understanding over her confession of being a compulsive proofreader. “If you are a compulsive proofreader, you know it, since for the afflicted it is a reflex no more avoidable than a sneeze…” (p.82) She differentiates between readers who keep their books in pristine condition as “courtly” lovers from those who devour (i.e., dog ear, underline, love to pieces) their books in “carnal” fashion.

For years I collected lists of “must read” classics, but after a few decades I realized I could never read them all and had to choose those which really interested me. Fadiman assuaged my guilt with her essay on her parents’ diverse home library. She compares it to the library of another writer’s parents by telling of Diana Trilling “who had to wash her hands before she extracted a book from her parents’ glass-fronted bookcase.” Trilling’s parents are chided for this cold, calculating treatment of books. But “by buying his set of leather-bound classics en bloc from a door-to-door salesman, Trilling’s father committed the additional heresy, unimaginable to us, of believing that a library could be one-size-fits-all.” (p. 124) Hooray, I can finally justify my eclectic library!

I have mixed feelings about this book. On one hand Fadiman is an eloquent writer. And funny too. I loved it when she wrote, “I’d rather have a book, but in a pinch I’ll settle for set of Water Pik instructions.” (p. 113) On the other hand she’s indiscreet about her personal life which interfered with my enjoyment of the book. I know it’s hard to believe, but I managed to be inspired by her father’s books without one single reference to his paramours.

If you love books about books, don’t miss this one.

Books as Art

I spent last week in the home of my brother and his wife. They are both artists and book lovers so it was fun to see how they combine those two interests.

Shoulder the Sky by D. E. Stevenson

Wikipedia describes Stevenson as “a Scottish novelist of light romances”. Since I’m not a huge fan of romance novels, I felt the description failed to give a complete picture of the author’s work. Yes, it is lighter reading than Shakespeare. But the characters and story line are more complex than those found in your average Harlequin. Not only do the characters grow and develop, but the writing is beautiful.

This particular novel is the third in a trilogy (but stood alone quite well) and took place in the years just after the Second World War. During the war many children were evacuated from London and sent to other parts of Britain. Lizzie and her two children, Duggie and Greta, arrive in Scotland and make a new life for themselves. Stevenson describes them as “flotsam cast up by the storm of war.” (p.61)

Later Stevenson refers to Duggie’s insatiable appetite for books. “Duggie was eleven years old when he discovered the joys of reading. Before then he imagined that reading was an exercise performed at school – you did as little of it as you could, it was dull and troublesome – but when he started reading for pleasure it became a positive mania… Needless to say Duggie did not understand one half of what he read. He took his reading like a drug; he absorbed it as a drunkard absorbs whisky, and the everyday world became dream-like and unreal.” (p. 63)

Stevenson’s reference to my favorite book on page 184 sealed her as a new author friend. She must have liked Jane Eyre a lot because she wrote a book called Rochester’s Wife.

My only regret is that for everyone to “live happily ever after” one of the book’s couples had to get a divorce. I don’t mind books whose characters make tough decisions, but somehow this left me feeling unsettled.

My online search for more of Stevenson’s books shows that they are pricey – probably because they are out of print. So it was fun to find one at a library book sale for 20 cents last week. Thank you to Sarah for introducing me to this author.

Quote of the Week - On Words

(This G. K. Chesterton quote comes from The Ball and the Cross, courtesy of my literary niece, Anna.)

"Is not bloodshed a great sin?"

"No,"said MacIan speaking for the first time.

"Well, really, really!" said the peacemaker.

"Murder is a sin, said the immovable Highlander. "There is no sin of bloodshed."

"Well, we won't quarrel about a word," said the other, pleasantly.

"Why on earth not?" said MacIan, with a sudden asperity. "Why shouldn't we quarrel about a word? What is the good of words if they aren't important enough to quarrel over? Why do we choose one word more than another if there isn't any difference between them? If you called a woman a chimpanzee instead of an angel, wouldn't there be a quarrel about a word? If you're not going to argue about words, what are you going to argue about? Are you going to convey your meaning to me by moving your ears? The Church and the heresies always used to fight about words, because the are the only things worth fighting about. I say that murder is a sin, and bloodshed is not, and that there is as much difference between those words as there is between the word 'yes' and the word 'no'; or rather more difference, for 'yes' and 'no', at least belong to the same category. Murder is a spiritual incident. Bloodshed is a physical incident. A surgeon commits bloodshed." (p. 42)