Still Fighting Against the Tide, October 2011

I consider October a good month for many reasons. Autumn can be spectacular in Oregon, and this year seemed one of the best. We had lots of sunny, cool days, perfect for walking through piles of crunchy leaves or drinking coffee in snug, warm places. It was also a good month for reading, as the number of books I purchased matched the number of books I read. I guess you could also say I limited my book buying until I caught up a bit on my reading. Either way, I held my own this month. In addition to catching up on several issues of Wired Magazine (my favorite subscriptions these days) I paged my way through some really nice fiction and some wonderful ideas about art therapy.

Books Purchased:

Raw Art Journaling, Quinn McDonald

Honolulu, Alan Brennert

Lotus Eaters, Tatjana Soli

Magician’s Assistant, Ann Patchett

Books Read:

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, by Lisa See, was a recommendation from my friend Sabine. I finished it this month and liked it so well I plan to continue reading in the series. Apparently there are three other books that follow generations of Chinese women. Snow Flower was the first, a story set in 19th century China. It centered on the lifelong friendship between two girls who used their own secret code called nu shu (or “women’s writing”) as a way to contend with the rigid cultural norms imposed on women. The book was both engrossing and heartbreaking. Reading it, I had the same reaction I had reading Kathryn Stockett’s book The Help last year, which could be described as a story about women who write a book as a way to contend with the rigid cultural norms imposed on African American women. Both stories remind me that senseless, pervasive discrimination can take such a strong hold that even those who are being discriminated against believe that they deserve it or, at least, that it will never change. Until, of course, it does. I find comfort in the fact that in both of these books, one of the best tools against discrimination was writing. Women finding their voices is very powerful.

The Magician’s Assistant, by Ann Patchett. I so enjoyed Patchett’s book State of Wonder recently that I eagerly prowled through her other titles. A book about magic seemed promising. The book opens after Parsifal, a handsome and charming magician, dies suddenly. His widow Sabine—who was also his faithful assistant for twenty years—learns that the family he claimed to have lost in a tragic accident is alive and well and living in Nebraska. The story follows Sabine’s efforts to reintegrate the different aspects of Parsifal’s life, while simultaneously piecing hers together as well. With beautiful prose and an interesting premise, Patchett was at her best in creating a tender, haunting portrait of grief. Reading it just after finishing Snow Flower, however, I didn’t find Sabine’s struggles to be as compelling as the 19th Century Chinese women of See’s book. Ultimately, it was hard to decide what the Sabine character wanted, or what she was willing to fight for, so I couldn’t decide if she succeeded in getting it.

Raw Art Journaling, by Quinn McDonald. The book is different from many of the other books I own on art technique and art journaling in that McDonald works on blending imagery and words in art. In other words, right up my alley. I enjoyed this book so much I immediately tried out one of the projects and wrote a blog post about it. See Art Journaling with Scissors and Starfish.

 

The Soul’s Palette: Drawing on Art’s Transformative Powers for Health and Well-Being, Cathy Malchiodi. Now that I think about it, reading this book also inspired me to try out an art journaling project and to write a blog post about it. See The Symbols We Live. I’ve always believed that writing and finding one’s voice can be powerful and transformative. I will probably never stop believing it. Or stop writing. However, I am increasingly intrigued by the power of art and art-making for cultivating intuition and inspiration. More on this later, I’m sure.

In the meantime, here’s to the novelties of November and the unending tide of good books.

Still Fighting Against the Tide

Last month, inspired by the book The Polysyllabic Spree, I published a dual list: the books I’d purchased during the previous month compared to the books I’ve read. One outcome of the exercise was to confirm that it is a losing battle; it takes much less effort and time to buy books than it does to read them. Still, it’s a battle worth fighting, and one I enjoy.

A few days after I’d written the post, our daughter Katherine and her boyfriend Ryan were in town visiting, and Doug and I invited Katherine’s dad, my ex-husband Kelly, and his friend Sabine to join us for dinner. They had read the post as well and we got into a wonderful discussion about books which outlasted the flank steak and the salad, and continued past dessert. Truly, life is enriched by evenings like these.

I had written that I had not read much Russian literature, and it turned out that Sabine had. She had also read a lot of Asian literature and recommended other books I might enjoy. Back and forth we all went, trading titles that we’d loved, and I ended the evening with continued gratitude for literate friends and family, and a growing list of books I wanted to read.

A good book can warm me twice: first, in the reading and second, in the connection it creates to other people who have read it as well. In comparing my lists for the month of September, I realized that most of the books I purchased and most of the books I read were those recommended by someone I know and whose opinion I trust.

Books Purchased: 

Stumbling on Happiness, by Dan Gilbert

The Girl Who Played Go, by Shan Sa

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, by Lisa See

End of Malaria, Bold Innovation, Limitless Generosity, and the Opportunity to Save a Life, compiled by Michael Bungay Stanier

Books Read:

State of Wonder, by Ann Patchett

The Girl Who Played Go, by Shan Sa

The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature, and Fowl Obsession, by Mark Obmascik

Stumbling on Happiness, by Dan Gilbert

Used and Rare: Travels in the Book World, by Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone

End of Malaria: Bold Innovation, Limitless Generosity, and the Opportunity to Save a Life, compiled by Michael Bungay Stanier

The first book I read this month was State of Wonder, and I had started reading it in August. It was the only book I found through a review I’d read in some magazine, rather than from personal recommendation. Patchett is a gifted writer, and it is a modern reinterpretation of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. I have to say, I was inexplicably drawn to Conrad’s book, so it’s not surprising I enjoyed Patchett’s version as well. Part murder mystery, part jungle book, it kept me enthralled from beginning to end.

One of the first books Sabine recommended to me was The Girl Who Played Go, by Shan Sa. The author is a fascinating character herself. Born in Beijing, she started writing at seven and was a successful poet by the time she was a teenager. (Based on the post I wrote last week, I’d say she was a conceptual innovator, just the type that could consume me with green-eyed jealousy if I weren’t careful). She moved to Paris when she was 18, and then proceeded to write three novels, all of which won awards. The Girl Who Played Go was one of them, and it is a meticulously crafted novel, set in a small village in Japanese-occupied Manchuria in 1936. Although unfamiliar to many Westerners, including me, Go is an ancient strategic board game. The narrative structure of the novel mirrors  a game of Go, with the chapters alternating between the first-person voices of the two main characters, each taking a turn in unfolding the story. The prose is spare, the story poignant, the setting evocative. Altogether lovely.

My sister Karla loaned me her copy of The Big Year, a book I’d somehow never heard of  despite the fact that it has apparently been popular enough that they’ve made a movie of it, starring Jack Black, Steve Martin, and one of my favorite actors Owen Wilson (have you ever seen Shanghai Noon?! I still laugh myself sick watching it). The Big Year follows the paths of three avid birders competing to see the most species of birds in a calendar year. Even if you don’t care about birds, the book is fascinating and engaging, because the book isn’t really about birding; it’s about passion.

My husband Doug came home from meeting a friend one day and said that the friend had recommended a book I might enjoy, written by Dan Gilbert, a psychology professor at Harvard. The book, Stumbling on Happiness explores the neurological foundations for how we imagine and prepare for the future, and the reasons why we’re often wrong about what will make us happy. Right up my alley, and the book also includes succinct, readable explanations for how our brains perceive the present and remember the past as well.

Used and Rare was published in 1997, and I had never heard of it. I probably still wouldn’t if my sister-in-law, Susie, hadn’t brought it for me when we met for coffee. Written by a husband and wife, it is a memoir of how the couple got into the world of book collecting. This sounds deadly dull, I know, even for a book lover, but Susie was so enthusiastic I gave it a go. I was honestly hooked after two pages and read it in a couple of days. It conjures the magic of holding a leather-bound volume in your hand, touching old paper, smelling the ink. Plus, it’s funny. Although I wonder about the future of printed books, I am deeply nostalgic for this kind of stuff.

I’m not sure if it’s fair to say that I’ve read the last book on my list, End of Malaria. First of all, it’s a really strange name, and that’s because it was created as a fundraiser for malaria prevention. Michael Bungay Stanier solicited essays of 64 thought-provoking writers, including some of my favorites, such as Brene Brown (who did one of my favorite TED Talks), Steven Johnson, Tom Peters, Seth Godin, Jonathan Fields, and Daniel Pink. The book is available for download on Kindle for $20, and all of the proceeds are donated to purchase mosquito nets to combat malaria. I actually downloaded a Kindle app on my iPad for the sole purpose of being able to purchase this book. Although I haven’t read the book cover to cover, I have read several of the essays, which is a good start. Even if I hadn’t read a word, however, I’d feel good about the purchase.

So that’s it for last month. I’m well into October now, and determined to keep reading, to keep learning, to keep fighting against the tide of books. If you have any recommendations for my list, be sure to let me know.

My Life in Books

About a year ago, I discovered an artist named Jane Mount who, like me, works at the intersection of art and books.  Mount, a painter, creates portraits of people’s versions of their ideal bookshelves. Check out her blog at “Ideal Bookshelf” and you’ll see what I mean. She’s painted portraits of collections of cookbooks or of children’s books, but mostly the common theme of the selections seems to be that the books were well-loved by someone. It was fascinating to scroll through the pages of paintings and to find one that included some of my favorite books along with some that I had never read. I came away with a list of new books.

I also came away with a challenge. If I were going to have Jane Mount paint a portrait of my own Ideal Bookshelf, which 10 or so books would I include. I spent about an hour scribbling lists. There were a couple of books that instantly came to mind–Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner, To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee,  Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver, Life of Pi, by Yann Martel, and Ivan Doig’s memoir This House of Sky. But what about the remaining spots? Which would I choose? How could I choose? I actually started feeling a little panicky. It seemed like I should know the answer to this question. I mean, what if I were suddenly being exiled somewhere and could only take ten books with me. It would be helpful if I already knew which ones I’d take.

But my ten favorite books? In which categories? I could more easily list my 10 favorite memoirs, or 10 favorite children’s books, or 10 favorite mysteries, or 10 favorite books on psychology. But the ten favorite of all?

It’s an impossible task, of course. If you are anything like me, you form attachments to books the way you form attachments to people, and for the same reasons. People fill different roles in my life and speak to different aspects of who I am. What’s more, different people have filled these roles for me at different times in my life. Just because one of my best friends in high school is not the same person as one of my best friends now doesn’t make her presence in my life any less meaningful. The same is true of the books I’ve loved. They’ve served me differently over time, but with the same kind of importance.

In fact, spending a couple of hours, as I just did, reviewing the books that have been important to you over time is an interesting way to explore your own biography. It’s telling your life in books. It may not have the specifics of where you were born and went to school and held a job, but it will give you an idea of what was important to you throughout your life. To test my theory, I thought I’d write a quick review of the highlights in my life in books.

Early Childhood:

Harold and the Purple Crayon, by Crockett Johnson, which I first remember being read on Captain Kangaroo, my favorite television show.

The Story of Ferdinand, by Munro Leaf.  I loved how Ferdinand would “sit just quietly” under the cork trees.

Velveteen Rabbit, by Margery Williams. What a great message, about what it took to become “real.” And those illustrations…

Elementary School:

The Hobbit, by J. R. R Tolkein. My father gave it to me one year for Valentine’s Day, and it was way better than chocolate, which is saying something.

Chronicles of Narnia, by C. S. Lewis. Lewis and Tolkein were friends, so it seemed natural. I wanted to be Lucy.

Strawberry Girl, by Lois Lenski. Lenski wrote books based on children who lived in many parts of the United States. I read all of them. It was while reading Lenski’s books that I decided I wanted to be a writer and a book illustrator.

Little House on the Prairie series, by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I remember getting so engrossed in a midwestern snowstorm described in the book that I was shocked to walk outside into the Colorado summer sunshine.

Junior High/High School

Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L’Engle. I developed my first crush on the boy character in this book.

The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne. This was so good to me, I couldn’t believe it was considered Literature.

Hamlet, by William Shakespeare. Reading and studying this book in my English class was like visiting a new world for the first time, and taught me that I wanted to live there permanently. Directly responsible for me becoming an English major.

Lord Jim, by Joseph Conrad. This was so dark and mysterious. I was hooked. I just recently finished Ann Patchett’s State of Wonder, which is her take on the same themes, and it took me back to my high school days.

College/Young Adult

Angle of Repose, by Wallace Stegner. This rocked my world. What more can I say.

Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott. Best book I’ve ever read on writing.

Where the Sidewalk Ends, by Shel Silverstein. A perfect antidote to the ennui and self-seriousness that can infect earnest college students.

Riverside Shakespeare, by William Shakespeare. I was, after all, an English major.

Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen. Loved this way before I saw the excellent film versions.

Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte. Read and re-read this while hiking in the moors in England.

Young Parent

Once I had children, I got to revel once again in the world of children’s books. My kids are grown now. It’s been more than a decade since I’ve read these books out loud. Still, I won’t give any of them away. Here’s a selection:

Eloise, by Hilary Knight. I loved this character even before I realized that she had a pug. And then I really loved her.

Olivia, by Ian Falconer. I have all the Olivia books. I even have an Olivia stuffed toy. I bought none of them for my children. In fact, my children bought them for me.

Have You Seen My Duckling, Nancy Tafuri. I have so many memories of reading this wordless book to my children, helping them find the missing duckling on every page.

If you Give a Mouse a Cookie, by Laura Numeroff. This one made me giggle even more than my kids.

But Not the  Hippopotamus!, by Sandra Boynton. This one is so fun, right up to and including the payoff on the final page.

When the Sun Rose, by Barbara Berger. Berger was from the San Juan Islands, which is where I found this book. I loved the lyrical story and read it so many times I could recite it, even today, from memory.

Vera the Mouse, by Marjolein Bastin. Vera is another in my collection of spunky, confident female characters, much like Eloise, Olivia, and Alice from the Cul De Sac comic strip. But I found Vera first.

This would at least get me through my twenties, and I’ll stop here. There could be sections for mysteries, memoirs, and others, but at least it’s a start. It’s a way to review my own history in a different way, and an invitation for you to do the same.

What would be on your list?

 

Fighting Against the Tide

This month, I finally got around to reading a book that had been lurking on my bookshelf for months:  The Polysyllabic Spree, by Nick Hornby. Hornby is perhaps better known for writing High Fidelity and About a Boy, books which, although I saw the movie version, I never bought the books. So, The Polysyllabic Spree is the first Hornby book I’ve actually read. It’s non-fiction, a collection of fourteen months of essays he wrote for the Believer magazine. The subject of each essay is a comparison of the books he purchased that month and the books he actually ended up reading. As he says in the first essay,

So this is supposed to be about the how, and when, and why, and what of reading–about the way that, when reading is going well, one book leads to another and to another, a paper trail of theme and meaning; and how, when it’s going badly, when books don’t stick or take, when your mood and the mood of the book are fighting like cats, you’d rather do anything but attempt the next paragraph, or reread the last one for the tenth time.”

It is, in fact, a book about reading books, which may seem to most people to be about as interesting as a book about, say, the history of salt. No, wait. I actually read that one, and it was surprisingly compelling. But you get my point. We don’t spend a lot of time talking about the activity of reading.  We talk a lot about what we read, but not much about how we read.

And there is always so much to read. Although I have been a lifelong bookworm, I despair at how many holes there are in my literary landscape. I confess that as much as I think I should have read what was considered the most important book of the 20th century,  I have never made it through Ulysses. I’ve never read War and Peace. I skimmed Canterbury Tales. As an English major, I’ve probably slogged my way through more of the classics than I would ever have attempted on my own, but still…. I despair of ever being able to call myself truly well-read.  And then there are all of the new books coming out which I’m sure are worthy of my time and attention. New research on psychology, great new fiction, biographies and historical accounts to fill in the gaps in my knowledge. Actually, I try not to think about it too much because I can make myself depressed. The best I can do is to keep fighting against the tide, to read what I can, when I can, and to enjoy the act of reading, which is why I found Hornby’s book both intriguing and calming.

Although I do not claim to be either as erudite or droll as Hornby (I think it must help to be British), I thought I’d follow his example, and take a closer look at my attempt last month to swim with the tide of books.

Books Purchased:

NurtureShock, Po Bronson & Ashley Merryman

How to See, How to Draw, Claudia Nice

Faith, Jennifer Haigh

Mrs. Kimble, Jennifer Haigh

State of Wonder, Ann Patchett

The Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain

Tell to Win: Connect, Persuade, and Triumph with the Hidden Power of Story, Peter Gruber

The Soul’s Palette: Drawing on Art’s Transformative Powers for Health and Well-Being, Cathy Malchiodi

Creativity, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Books Read

The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris, David McCullough

NurtureShock, Po Bronson & Ashley Merryman

Faith, Jennifer Haigh

Lost in Shangri-La, Mitchell Zuckoff

Children at Play: A Cul de Sac Collection, Richard Thompson

The Polysyllabic Spree, Nick Hornby

Some of Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain

Right away, you can see that I’m lost. I purchased more books than I read, which is sadly typical. Also typical, is the assortment of books I bought, an eclectic mix of fiction, art books, and psychology. Also, any book I find that purports to talk about the power of storytelling, such as Gruber’s book, Tell to Win, automatically gets my notice. I want to see what other people are saying about a subject that gets so much of my attention.

The biggest revelation to me about this list, however, was not what was on it, but how it got there. I am a die-hard book lover. I like the tactile experience of books–the weight in my hands, the smell of the pages, the smooth feel of the pages of new books, deckle-edged or smooth. I just love, love, love books.  However, with the exception of Malchiodi’s book, The Soul’s Palette, which I bought directly from the publisher, I purchased all of the titles as e-books.  I can’t get over how quickly I shifted since getting an iPad a few months ago.  In fact, both of the  Csikszentmihalyi books are titles I own in paperback and have read several times, but I wanted to have electronic copies on my iPad to refer to at whim, and to annotate more easily. As nostalgic as I am for the experience of curling up by a fire with a printed book in my hand, I don’t think I’ll go back. I love being able to carry so many books with me. It is so much easier to highlight and annotate my reading, and to search for my notes after the fact. I can increase the size of the type, so I’m not constantly tracking down my glasses. And if I come across the name of a character I know was introduced earlier but I can’t really remember who they are, I can search the name and refresh my memory in seconds. Really, I never thought I’d be saying these things, but there it is. I don’t know why I fought it so hard. It reminds my of my earliest rejection of answering machines.

So what did I notice about the books I actually read? Again, it’s a pretty eclectic mix, everything from David McCullough’s The Greater Journey, a 558-page tome (including notes and index) about the history of influential Americans who spent time in Paris, as well as the collection of Cul de Sac comic strips, a birthday gift from my daughter, and which I consider to be just as much an accomplishment to write. Twain’s Innocents Abroad was mentioned in McCullough’s book because Twain was among the stream of Americans who made such European excursions. Because I could download it on my iPad for free (do you see why I’m hooked?), it was easy to dip into alongside McCullough’s history.

Lost in Shangri-La is another in the long line of books I’ve read about World War II in the Pacific theater, which started with the research I did while writing Coming About for my client, Jack Jouett. It’s one of the things I love about working with other people’s stories. Inevitably, a person’s background will intersect with some aspect of history I know nothing about–gold mining in Colorado, the history of the Caribbean, aviation in China–and I suddenly have a reason to care. Just as inevitably, I’ll come across other books that relate to the subject and I’m off. Lost in Shangri-La  is the true story of a WWII military plane that crashed over an unknown and unmapped wilderness in New Guinea–nicknamed Shangri-La–and the rescue of the crash survivors. Most interesting, however, was being able to attach this book to the scaffolding of information I’ve been able to construct over time about this era in U. S. history.

Reading Po Bronson is my version of crack. He wrote a book years ago called What Shall I Do With My Life that I found so engaging I wanted to continue the conversation after I was done, so I sent him an email. He wrote back, too. With Nurtureshock, however, Bronson writes about how current research should change our assumptions about how children learn and develop. It was fascinating, and a guilty pleasure.

Faith, a novel by Jennifer Haigh, was heartbreakingly good. The narrator is a woman whose brother, a Catholic priest, is accused of molesting a young boy, and it was just so beautifully written. Believable emotional backstories for each of the characters. a masterful sense of pacing and dramatic tension. Heart-wrenching but ultimately hopeful. Reading books like this is bittersweet. I feel so far from being able to write something like this myself, but so, so grateful that there are writers out there who can. In fact, I downloaded another Haigh novel ten minutes after finishing this one.

And finally, Hornby’s book, which brings me back around. He is funny, self-deprecating, down to earth, and insightful. I recommend the book, although you’ll have to hunt around for an old copy, or order it online. It wasn’t available as an e-book, and isn’t stocked in the bookstores I visited.

I also recommend taking a few minutes to follow his example. What do you read? What do you want to read? What do you wish you had already read? And how do you strike a balance between them all? If you ever figure it out, be sure to let me know.

Where Good Ideas Come From