A Bevy of Books

I have several friends/family members who are baffled by my habit of re-reading my favorite books. But I’m baffled by their bafflement. Doesn’t everyone revisit their book-character friends? Don’t they miss them?

I imagine that I first re-read books because I had a limited supply. My house always had books in it, but there weren’t hundreds. We made frequent trips to the library (thank goodness) but the end of one book did not always coincide with an influx of new reading material. And a time during which there is no book-in-progress is a predicament not to be borne.  As a result, I read every book that was in my house — sappy autobiographies of accident and cancer victims (Mom), mindless teen-girl fiction, Laura Ingalls Wilder , and Nancy Drew mysteries (older sister).

And when nothing else appealed to me, I went back to the books I had loved enough to acquire or been lucky enough to receive as gifts. The Chronicles of Narnia box set was (and still is) a cherished gift when I was 11 or 12. Anne McCaffrey’s dragon/fire lizard books were chosen as free ‘Reading is Fundamental’ books, and Madeline L’Engle’s A Swiftly Tilting Planet was permanently borrowed from the junior high library (sorry, Mrs. Hartner!). Lucy will once again discover that the scary wizard is really a kind old man, and Eustace will learn from being turned into a dragon. Menolly will escape from the thread, and find a place where she can be herself and thrive (and even fall in love). Meg & Charles Wallace will again blow my mind with a vision of the world as malleable and open to the will of every one of us.

I’m sure that winged unicorn on the cover was one of the reasons I picked this book up

But this doesn’t really explain why a woman with disposable cash and full access to one of the best libraries in the country still reads books she’s already read. Stories in which she has already discovered the surprises, admired the prose and pondered the lesson.

Why do I re-read them?

• Because I’ve forgotten some minor detail of the plot and cannot rest.

• Because my particular sad/angry/happy/wistful/etc. mood requires a book to match, and [insert book title here] matches that mood exactly

• Because the book in question blew my mind wide open in a new and unexpected way, and I want to experience that again — and likely go deeper in, where there are more new things to ponder.

• Because, once again, the end of one book did not coincide with an influx of new material. Or the available new material does not fit the current reading mood.

• Because the series is 17 freakin’ books long and I don’t exactly remember everything from Book One (first read in 1992), which will impair my ability to fully enjoy Book 17 the way I want/need/deserve to.

Seriously

• Because the series is (currently) five books long, the new one is expected next month, and I can’t wait so I re-read Book Four. Or maybe books One through Four.

• Because the series is 17 books long, and reading Book 16 reminds you how much you love those books/characters/plotlines, so you start over at Book One.

• Because my current book brought a previous book to mind, along with the urge to read that book.

• Because the book I just finished blew my mind wide open in a new and unexpected way, and I need time to sit with those new ideas — but since a time during which there is no book-in-progress is a predicament not to be borne, it is safer to re-read a book which I know won’t interfere with this pondering.

• Because that book broke my heart/gave me a new attitude/made me want to run away to Hawaii and I want to feel that again.

I’m sure there are dozens of other reasons why I reread the books I love, but this is the hit list (or possibly the top ten – hey, there really are ten of them!).

Where do you stand on the read once/ read over-and-over spectrum? Why? Hit me.

What have I been doing since January 2, 2012? What have I been doing? Hell, I don’t know.

I’ve been working [here], and [here]. Both volunteering and  working [here]. I’ve been living [here].

Moved to a new (much-improved) apartment [here]. Walking the riverfront.

This is what my walk home from work looked like recently. Now it’s much sunnier.

Walking the close-in East side of Portland and loving every minute of it. Met all kinds of cool and interesting people.

I live in a neighborhood that looks like this in the spring.

Traveled to Montana (more than four times, less than ten). Took day trips around Oregon looking at rocks. Flew to Arizona for sun and softball and Sista-time. Went camping in Eastern Oregon. Went to Las Vegas for a weekend with high school friends. Crocheted a few bags, a few scarves, a belt and some wristers. Sort-of loved and didn’t really lose. Lived through my first (business) IRS audit. Had a lot of deeply crazy dreams. Saw Amanda Palmer and Alanis Morissette and Sugarland in concert. Figured out what was causing the pain in my shoulder/back and made it (mostly) go away. Had an old friend come visit me for a whole weekend. Paid off my credit cards (all of them). Threw myself a birthday party for the first time in a decade or more.

Met Cheryl Strayed (Dear Sugar) twice and Lidia Yuknavitch once. Saw Glen Duncan and William Gibson (again) at Powell’s.  Read innumerable words on the internet. Proofed two books. Wrote six book reviews.

And read 156 books in 477 days. That works out to be one book every 3.06 days.

Good books. Great books. Decent books. The last book in the Wheel of Time series (finally. And also sadly). New (great) books by long-time favorite authors (Kingsolver, Erdrich, Bharati Mukherjee). Fantastic books by new-favorite authors (Glen Duncan, Lidia Yuknavitch, Tupelo Hassman). Books that blew my mind (Debt by Graeber), broke my heart (The Fault of Our Stars – Green), make me laugh (Redshirts – Scalzi), made me angry (Z – Fowler), and made me happy to be alive (well, all of them).

Seems like a good use of one and one-third years. But maybe I could spend just a bit more time writing for this blog in the 15 months coming up.

What have you been doing?

I’ve read some really great books lately and have been keeping them mostly to myself.  Today, the selfishness ends!

The Girl with No Shadow by Joanne Harris (whom I’ve slathered much love on here and here) is the next chapter of the story of Vianne and Anouk Rocher from Chocolat (the book, of course, not the film, though the stories are close enough that film-goers would enjoy it, I think).   It is every bit as wonderful as Harris’s best stuff.

It’s five years since we’ve been in Lansquenet and things are very different for Vianne. She’s given birth to a second child (Rosette) and has consented to marry a man she does not love.  She’s hiding from the world instead of trying to bring magic to it. Anouk is entering puberty afraid of herself, the magic inside her and the world around her, and wishes her mother was the woman she used to be.  Enter Zozie.

Zozie is everything Vianne used to be, but without the compassion and kindness. She is cool and interesting and not afraid to attract attention. She sees the potential in Anouk and wants it for her own selfish reasons. But in truth, she’s hiding even more than Vianne is – from herself more than anyone.

Harris’s writing is stellar, as always. The copy I have is the P.S. version, with interviews and background material, and I read every bit so I could live with the book and characters a little longer. I was visiting my sister and her family in the wilds of Northwest Montana and read it by flashlight in my tent, surrounded by the sounds of horses grazing around (and sometimes underneath) my tent late at night. The strange surroundings only added to the feeling that I was really in another world, living with Anouk and the others in Paris.

I’m not sure I can articulate what it is I love about Harris. It’s the same thing I love about a lot of authors, who write a lot of different stuff (Miéville, Chabon, De Lint, Shields, Kingsolver). Her works speaks of truths I knew but hadn’t recognized. Her characters are people I’ve been, or met, or would like to meet. I feel as if I know myself better at the end of the book than I did at the beginning. Her writing has a beauty apart from the meaning of the words. Her work helps me feel more strongly connected to the world.

It’s hard to turn the last page, sometimes, and let that go.

Alabaster by Caitlin R. Kiernan is a book of short stories about Dancy Flammarion (what a terrific name!), an albino girl who’s been tapped by some mystical/alien/supernatural forces to fight for the good guys – but this is no fairy tale or super-hero yarn. She’s a young girl who has lost her family, and wanders the world with a big knife in her duffel bag, waiting for the ‘angel’ to tell her where to go next, which monster she has to kill. Meanwhile, she doesn’t know where her next meal is coming from and may have to walk that 100 miles to the next town.

Kiernan is incredible. Her descriptions are spare on physical details and heavy in emotional weight. She sketches a separate universe in convincing broad stroke simply for the sake of hinting at (but by no means explaining) why Dancy has been tapped by these angels for the ugly job she’s had thrust upon her. I read Alabaster in May, and loved her writing so much I put some of Kiernan’s other novels on hold.

Silk is a frightening novel of strange deaths and creepy things hiding in the shadows – oh yeah, and spiders.  I feel like the book needs a warning label: DANGER: Reading this book may cause you to become arachnophobic, and arachnophobes may require hospitalization.

Horror really isn’t my genre any longer, but Kiernan’s writing is so fantastic I loved it anyway. I think – for me at least – the haunting comes from her writing, not from the plot. I was hooked to the end, and had figured out just enough of what was going on (this lady does not spoon-feed her readers, no sir) that I had to stick around and find out the rest. And while the plot was basic, Kiernan’s treatment of it was a perfect blend of detail and broad strokes.

Phrases like this one describing Savannah, Georgia:

the old city laid out wide and flat where the Savannah River runs finally into the patient, hungry sea. The end of Sherman’s March, and this swampy gem was spared the Yankee torches, saved by gracious women and their soiree seductions, and in 1864 the whole city made a grand Christmas gift to Abraham Lincoln.

reach out and smack you without interfering with the pace of the story. Me, of course, I stop and read it over a few times, letting it dance around my head and make pictures, teasing me with the idea that writing phrases like that is a goal I could live with.

I admit, most of the evocative phrases (that come immediately to mind) deal with darkness and what hides inside – and doesn’t always stay safely hidden – so her books are not recommended for those who can’t watch scary movies for fear of nightmares. I imagine her stories would have the same effect – as much for what she refuses to describe as for what she paints so tangibly for you.

I think I liked the short stories better because they were more about the language than the plot. Without the need to carry the story for more than a few thousand words, the focus is on making each word do the job of three, and the result (in Kiernan’s capable hands) is a joy to behold. I think that Chabon was the last writer whose dexterity I felt so impressed by, though they have little else in common. I also enjoyed getting to know Dancy over the course of those stories, and cared about her more than I did the characters in Silk, though I liked them well enough.

Alabaster is sometimes considered Young Adult fiction since Dancy is somewhere around 15, but Silk is definitely adult fiction (due to the inclusion of some ugly drug use and one sex scene that’s more than just hinted at – and I guess some [idiots] would say because that sex scene is between two women).

I found Kiernan via Neil Gaiman (what, you’re surprised? He has a real thing for the horror genre done well), but I think she’s my favorite recommendation so far. It’s funny, but many of the books/writers that Gaiman recommends… well, they really aren’t my thing. And I feel guilty for not loving them.  Which is ridiculous, of course. I don’t even love everything he’s done (least fave – Anansi Boys), why would I love every single book he’s ever liked? And of course, he’s let me off the hook – he also thinks it’s silly to expect everyone to like the same things all the time (he said so many times in his blog, no instance of which can I find right this minute so as to link to it). However, many of his other recommendations (artists and musicians, mostly) I’ve adored (Lisa Snellings!  – I must own a poppet).

Footnote: as I was writing this entry, I went looking for a copy of Alabaster I could call my own (having read a library copy) and was dismayed to see it out of print, with the least expensive copy being a used hardback for $60. However, my anger soon turned to joy when I found a $5 eBook copy and had it on my PC & my iPod in less than 10 minutes – and that while having to choose formats, download an app and figure out how to work it. And if my computer crashes or whatever, I can always download it again. I’ll never give up my paper books, but who can argue with that?

Ouch! I knew it had been awhile since I’d posted, but I didn’t realize it had been a month. I wrote a review for BookBrowse, and I went on vacation, and apparently did everything but hang out here for the last month. But I certainly did a lot of reading.

But today… I want to talk about random reading.

Sometimes you pick up a great book, and you can’t put it down. You read it every second you can – sitting at stop lights, while the guy pumps your gas (yay, Oregon!), waiting for your song to download. You stay up until 4am – with your eyes crossing and the words blurring on the page – even though you have a 9am meeting in which you must be dazzling. I love those books.

But sometimes – and not necessarily because the book isn’t fabulous – you don’t hunker down like that. For example, my random reading this weekend.

I am reading The Lonely Polygamist by Barry Udall. I’m also reading The Child That Books Built by Francis Spufford (which I’d left at home while on vacation). In addition, I’ve started Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky (purchased in N Hampshire and started on the plane home). And I started A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes, but I’m not sure I’m going to finish. I think those are the only books I’m currently reading.

Now, I often have a non-fiction book (or in this case, two) that I’m reading that doesn’t fulfill my need for narrative, so I have a fiction book I’m reading at the same time. I rarely have two novels I’m reading at the same time – in this case,  Jamaica wasn’t holding my attention, so I picked up Polygamist, which is a great book so far (halfway).

However, the internet has added a whole new dimension to my random reading. And twitter really feeds my desire for interesting things to read. Neil Gaiman, William Gibson, Amanda F. Palmer and Bitch magazine all post links to interesting things to read that I most likely would never have seen. Gaiman & Palmer have fascinating blogs, as does Lisa Snellings (fantastic artist), Michael Perry, Judy Krueger (about books), and the writers at The Box Car Kids (a laid-off mother of four, blogging to keep her sanity), Feministing (check the awesome logo) and Bitch Ph.D. (no relation).

As a result, my Sunday looked something like this:

sleep in
make tea
read Polygamist for 45 minutes (outside in the sun)
get hot & hungry, make lunch
check facebook/twitter while waiting for lunch to cook
find interesting link on twitter, click and read (stuff about library love, and Gaiman winning the Carnegie Award for The Graveyard Book)
wander over to page w/Gaiman’s blog (always open) and read another month’s worth of posts (currently in 2005 somewhere)
write in journal
pick up Polygamist again, read for 1.5 hours
vacuum, wash dishes and prep produce before it goes bad
twitter again w/cool links (watched a video with Katie Couric interviewing Gloria Steinem)
more Gaiman blog
watch movie (was going to watch The Lives of Other, ended up with Iron Man)
read Child That Books Built for 1.5 hours before bed

Some days, that kind of jumping around would make me crazy. But this weekend it was just what the doctor ordered (if there was a doctor smart enough to prescribe fiction and blogs).  I was happy all day long.

Even with the vacuuming.

(now, if you’ll excuse me, I must go catch up at Bitch Ph.D…)