Favorite Authors – Page 6 – A Bevy of Books

What have you spent 10,000 hours doing?

I wrote a fan post to Malcolm Gladwell a few weeks ago after reading Blink, so it should be no surprise to any of you that I picked up another of his books, Outliers – this one about successful people and how they did not get that way alone. As with Blink, this book was filled with much food for thought – and that is exactly why I am now officially a Malcolm Gladwell groupie. He looks at everything from the birth dates of leading hockey players to the rice patties of Southeast Asia to the garment district in New York City during the Depression to show that time and place had as much to do with success as a particular person’s individual skills.

What he’s NOT saying is that people like Bill Gates aren’t talented, hard-working and motivated. What he is saying is that things like where you live, who your parents are and what you spend your time doing count as much as individual effort. Mr. Microsoft wasn’t just bright and skilled in math, he went to a school that had one of the earliest on-demand computers in the country, and virtually unlimited access to that computer where he could practice his programming skills. Without that, he may have become Bill Gates, regular joe.

The part I remember most about Outliers is the 10,000 hours theory. According to many different sources referencing many different skills, 10,000 hours of practice is what it takes to become a master at something – whether it be playing the violin, programming a computer or playing hockey. Ever since I read that chapter, I’ve been thinking about those 10,000 hours.

While I was reading it, I immediately thought of what I’d spent my 10,000 hours on – reading! Now, of course, I always knew that the reason I was good at English and analyzing literature was because I spent so much time reading, but this is ‘knowing’ in a different way. If 10,000 hours of practice is the amount of time it takes to master a skill – well, I hit that a long time ago – before I got to college. Obviously, I am an expert at reading because I love it – but I also had a big sister who taught me to read before kindergarten, and parents who encouraged reading, took me to the library when we couldn’t afford books, and never told me to put the book down and do something else.

I’m not here to make judgments, but I think – for some people at least – a re-framing of the definition of talent/expertise would be valuable. How do you get to be a professional ball player? – 10,000 hours of practice. That is a finite – if rather large – goal a person can chip away at. I find myself wanting to impress this knowledge upon my son somehow – not in a ‘what are you wasting your life on’ kind of way, but more of a ‘you can choose what you will be a master of – what is it that you will choose?’ And if what you want to be a master of is wasting time on the internet – well, at least you should be consciously choosing it! I wouldn’t be surprised if web-searching wasn’t something you could be employed for in the future. So maybe we should be less uptight about all that time our children waste on the weird things that interest them – those things could turn out to be something incredible if they are willing to put the time in.

It also puts new spin on those ‘mid-life’ career changes that used to be such a big deal (though increasingly, anyone who hasn’t changed careers 3 times by mid-life is an anachronism). But if you hadn’t hit 10,000 hours on something by your early 20s (when you had to hit the workforce), you may well have done it by your mid-40s and ‘suddenly’ have a new skill to market.

Maybe I’m making more of this than there is, but, as you can see, Gladwell’s got me thinking in new and interesting ways. And this is just one facet of a book full of insights like this!

Yes, I am a big fan of analysis and the human experience – why do you ask? Pardon me, I must get back to working on my second 10,000 hours of reading – or is it my third? Feel free to tell me what you spent your 10,000 on.

Bad Bev

I’ve been a big slacker lately when it comes to keeping my blog up-to-date – partly because it’s no longer a part of my real job and partly because it was making reading feel like an obligation – like I was a bad girl if I didn’t blog about what I was reading.

Not reading is absolutely not an option – that would be akin to being cheerful in the morning or not drinking tea. But not blogging – hell, that’s as easy as making toast. To add to the fun, writing has always been a weird thing for me. I love it, but the avoidance maneuvers I have in place make it difficult to be disciplined about getting it done – especially if there is no real ‘deadline.’ School papers, magazine articles, cover letters – these all come with built-in deadlines that force me to sit in front of the computer and shift gears from the Verbal Bev to the Written Bev. And the Written Bev is a happy girl, it’s just the gear-shifting that is a significant speed-bump.

I know this is yet another thing that – as a supposedly-mature adult – I should be doing. That is, living up to my promises (not blogging; one need not be mature nor an adult to blog, and many a mature adult has made the cut without a blog to their name, phew!). And I’m pretty good at living up to my promises and responsibilities – except when they are promises to myself, and responsibilities that affect only me. No one gets fired if I don’t write, my ‘A’ is not in jeopardy if I go 10 days without updating my blog. I just have to listen to the increasingly-irritated voice in my head that says I’m a loser for not doing it. It’s the same voice that yells when I send birthday presents late and don’t call my mother. I can ignore a certain level of bitching, but when the volume gets loud, something has to be done (and we all know I’m not going to call my mother).

So, to recap some things I’ve read lately – that I’ve decided in my all-powerful position as The-Boss-of-Me do not require a full write-up on this here fabulous blog:

I read the entire series of The Chronicles of the Cheysuli by Jennifer Roberson, borrowed from a fellow sci-fi fan and infinitely enjoyable. The books tell the story of a magical race (the Cheysuli, of course) who have been persecuted and lost many of their powers. If they can fulfill the multi-generational prophesy, there will be peace and a return of powers they’ve lost. No deep-thinking required here – like dessert for the hard-working brain. The first book and the last two books were the best (there are eight total).

I re-read Jack of Kinrowan by Charles de Lint. This is a two-book compilation of Jack the Giant-Killer and Drink Down the Moon. JoK is a fun re-telling of the Jack and the Beanstalk fairy tale in a modern urban setting. Not his greatest stuff, but – again – a good read.

I have also read The Book of Illusion and Outliers, but those deserve a space all their own, so look for them soon.

I apologize to those oodles of faithful readers out there who have come recently to BoB and been disappointed – but I can’t promise it won’t happen again. I may be a slacker, but I’m not a liar. Happy Reading!

Why can’t they all be this good?

The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields is the story of one person’s life as she experiences the 20th century (primarily) in North America. There are wars, depression, children, love, work, illness, death and everything else in-between. One of the first books I discussed here was Happenstance, also by Shields. I liked it, but had expected more. TSD was everything I expected from a Shields novel – well-written, surprising, technically impressive and full of interesting commentary on the human condition. Of course, you don’t have to take my word for it – it won a Pulitzer Prize, the Governor General’s Award (Canada) and National Book Critics Circle Award.

This is the good stuff. Every detail speaks to every other detail, and there are layers underneath the layers. One example: the title – The Stone Diaries – works on several levels. The book is a ‘diary’ of Daisy’s life – and her mother’s maiden name is Stone (though we know nothing about Mercy Stone’s family). Daisy’s father and father-in-law were both stone cutters in rural Canada in the early 1900s, and her father eventually made his fortune selling a popular limestone in Indiana. After Daisy’s mother dies, her father constructs a tower of stone around her grave. The tower becomes so big that it attracts tourists to the area. He also starts a stone pyramid in Bloomington after returning from a trip to Egypt, but never finishes it. These are only the references to stone I can immediately recall – there are dozens more.

The book has an interesting structure. It is written as a biography or journal – including letters from relatives and supposed family pictures – but is a work of fiction. The book is separated into different sections – Childhood, Love, Ease, Death, etc. Each section is presented differently. For instance, the section where we learn of the unusual circumstances of Daisy’s birth is narrated by an omniscient Daisy. Daisy tells how she imagines her birth (and the mother she never knew) based on the facts she’s been given. This is the only section where we truly get a first-person account of Daisy’s life – the part she had no personal recollection of.

After her husband dies, she writes a column for the local newspaper. This section is presented via letters written to Daisy – nothing written by Daisy herself or even any events narrated in a third-person. She is writing for a living, but we don’t see any of her writing. I am certain this is a deliberate attempt to illustrate her powerlessness, she has a ‘voice’ in her writing, but in the end she is ‘let go’ so a man could have the job.

There is a different form for each section, but it is never choppy or a case of style interfering with story-telling. I never lost interest and was always wondering what was coming on the next page. Shields is a master at conveying not just events, but experiences. This one goes in the permanent collection.

wouldn’t trade him for anything

So what would you do if you woke up in a strange room, in a strange apartment, and in a strange body? How do you convince people that you are you, not the guy whose face you’re wearing? And what do you do when you realize that almost no one knows you well enough to be convinced? That’s what happens to Max Trader. He is a boutique instrument-maker who has no family and whose only friend is a 13-year-old neighbor (who believes him, but freaks out because she thinks her mother has been ‘taken’ as well). And of course, the guy who switched bodies with him is not a nice guy – duh! What do you do when the world yanks the rug out from under you, when suddenly anything – good and bad – is possible? These are the questions posed by Trader, written by Charles de Lint.

In the realm of favorite authors, there are still degrees of favorite-ness to be delineated. On the short list of authors for whom I have a hard time finding the words to convey how much I appreciate their existence and contribution to my world, Charles de Lint is in the top 5. This is not a formal list, you understand. I don’t feel the need to assign a rank to each and place them above or below each other. Each is unique and cherished for different reasons, and I find all that grading and assigning of privilege annoying and counter-productive. (Others on the list include Barbara Kingsolver, Tom Robbins, Louise Erdrich, Terry Pratchett and Virginia Woolf.) So when I tell you that Charles de Lint is a favorite of mine, what I mean is that if you were to ask me the name of one author that you should read and enjoy in your lifetime, Charles de Lint is likely who I would mention. He is probably the least-known of my ultimate favorites.

It all started (for Bev) long, long ago in a galaxy known as Title Wave. My friend, Deb Day, and I both read a lot and often trade books. She was looking for something to read in the sci-fi section of Title Wave, and saw a book called Someplace to be Flying, sky blue with a black feather on the spine. That was all she could see, but it drew her attention enough for her to pick it up – and the rest is history. That book knocked us both out and I have since bought a dozen or more copies as gifts for other people. Her and I have since devoured everything he’s written, collecting them and re-reading our favorites. Thankfully, Title Wave gave us a steady supply of new and old de Lint, they must have known we were in need. And the municipal libraries in Anchorage also had copies of many of his stories – often filed under Youth Fiction. And while I won’t say that every book he’s written is a 10, de Lint’s got more hits on his roster than most, and several books on my default, read-again-when-you-have-nothing-new-or-because-you-need-a-reason-to-live list. Trader is not one of my uber-faves, but I only recently purchased it, so it was time to read it again.

Many of de Lint’s novels and short stories (and all of my favorites) fall into the category of Urban Fantasy. The setting is current era (right now, could be your street or town) but the story is anything but ordinary. The reinventing of Native spirits, fairies, hobgoblins and other creation myths and fairy tales often comprise a significant part of the plot and setting. In Trader, for example, two men’s minds are exchanged between their bodies. There is a lot going on—trips to the spiritworld, jilted girlfriends, Coyote relatives, artist/waitresses, mother-daughter relations, soul eaters and more – but the theme is about living your life and owning your decisions. And important questions like: What makes you who you are – how you look or the actions you take? Is it random luck or karma that determines your fate? One of the things I adore about de Lint is that there is always a higher purpose – he doesn’t just write fun fantasy books, he wants you to think about your own life. He wants to interrogate the world we live in and believes that we can change it for the better with everything we do. Anyone who has read de Lint will probably recognize several of the minor characters in Trader (such as Jilly and Joe Crazy Dog). I personally love it when an author uses the same city and setting to tell separate stories that add up to a whole world of people and events.

If you want to read de Lint at his best, pick up StbF, Forests of the Heart, Spirits in the Wires or Memory & Dream. Now I have to go read StbF… it’s been at least a year. Charles de Lint needs to live to be a hundred and write me 50 more books. I don’t ask for much…

I could drink a case of this…

I ‘discovered’ Joanne Harris after seeing (and loving) the movie Chocolat (a favorite of mine with an incredible cast: Juliet Binoche, Carrie-Anne Moss, Alfred Molina, Dame Judie Dench and the ever-fabulous Johnny Depp). Of course I took note of the fact that it was based on a book and went looking for other books by Harris. I read Five Quarters of an Orange a few years later and was also impressed, so I added Harris to the list in my head. I was at Powell’s a few weeks ago with $40 in birthday money, and Blackberry Wine was on sale for $5, so it quickly went into the basket – I didn’t even read the back.

Blackberry Wine is the story of a writer who’s drinking his life away after his first book succeeds wildly and he can’t follow it up. It takes a ghost from the past (both literally and figuratively) to wake him up to his life. It’s about listening to your conscience and not judging people. It’s also a book about the pleasures of life in a rural setting, connected to the land and the people who live and work with it. And all of that without a moment of preachiness or insulin shock. The other two stories I’ve read featured strong female lead characters, and – while this main character is a man – the book has its share of confident females. Sounds perfect to me.

For those of you that don’t like stories that jump around in time, this book is not for you (and why on earth are you reading this blog?!). The changes are clearly marked and easy to follow (at least IMHO) but you see Jay as an adult then a child and back again many times but at no time is the story confusing or unclear. This is not to criticize, merely to comment on the style [there are otherwise intelligent people in my life (Sista) that hate the non-linear style]. Some of the characters in Chocolat appear as minor characters in this book, but you certainly do not need to have seen or read Chocolat to follow the story.

One of the things that impresses me about Harris’s writing is her ability to create atmosphere. She is a master of the ‘show, don’t tell’ theory of writing (which may be why the film of Chocolat works so well – film is all show. Of course, I should probably read the book before talking about how well the book works as a film, huh?). She conjures anger, revulsion, joy and promise without a sour note. You smell and taste her stories as much as you hear them (the three I’ve read/seen have food as an important element of the story – hence their titles). I like how she gives you the details of plants and gardening/farming (since I know nothing about these things) and doesn’t beat you over the head with her theme (not original, but still well-done) that we reap what we sow – call it karma or quantum physics if you like. And of course, one of my personal favorite ideals – we are all responsible for our choices, and every day we can chose something new if we want to change our lives. Simple – yes. Easy – of course not. All of this wrapped up in a package I didn’t want to put down. Lucky for me, I was stuck on a plane to Alaska and had three uninterrupted hours to enjoy it.