Past, Present, Future

I wanted to take some time this week to look at books read, books reading, and books to be read—and make a request for suggestions from you, the readers.

Past

First of all, on retreat at St. Meinrad Archabbey last week I read for the third or fourth time Anne Fadiman's Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader. What a terrific little book of essays. After each one I hugged the book to me as I was so delighted with what I had read. Ms. Fadiman covers a lot of ground from former British Prime Minister William Gladstone's instructions on constructing the perfect library to her own collection of books on Arctic exploration to the mingling of her and her husband's vast libraries.

Lucky for me, my room in the guesthouse was right next to The Reading Room with its wooden library table and chairs surrounded by shelves of books. Some titles had a very religious slant—after all, I was staying at a monastery—but others promised a more spiritual flair. I searched to see if there was anything that struck my fancy and came across Sweeping Changes: Discovering the Joy of Zen in Everyday Tasks by Gary Thorp. Its gentle reminder: when you are sweeping, sweep...don't be pondering your next activity or your last one. In other words, stay in the moment with your dusting, folding, or mopping. Consider those tasks to be a form of meditation. It was a small book with simple illustrations at the head of each chapter. I knew I could finish it over my short stay and it proved to be a great choice, although I must admit housekeeping is not one of my strengths.

Present

As sometimes happens, two books I had on reserve at the library came available at the same time and I am ready to settle down with both of them. The first is The House of Unexpected Sisters, Alexander McCall Smith's newest mystery featuring Precious Ramotswe and Grace Makutsi of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. Oh, how I love being in their world.

The second is A Secret Sisterhood: The Literary Friendships of Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, and Virginia Woolf by Emily Midorikawa and Emma Claire Sweeney. I am really anxious to dig into this one as I have read good things about it.

Future

Photo credit: thekrystaldiaries.com

As winter is almost officially here—even though in Louisville we are still experiencing balmy temperatures—I plan to come up with a list of Cozy Books to have on hand. I am thinking more of favorite comfort books to reread that will hold the cold and dark at bay.

This is where I could use your help. Email me [bellebookandcandle(at)hotmail(dot)com] or leave a comment about what your Ideal Cozy Bookshelf would hold. I will put all our suggestions together in another post. 

Thanks. Looking forward to reading about your choices! 

By the Book with Belle

This morning I read a New York Times interview with one of my favorite authors Bill Bryson. The Q&A was in the newspaper's By The Book feature (here). As you might imagine the interviewees answer questions about what they are reading, what authors have influenced them, and other bookish inquiries. Past authors have included Sue Grafton, Simon Winchester, and David McCullough plus many many more. (Where have I been that I am just now discovering this column?)

Anyway, as I have no book to report on at this minute, I thought I would interview myself based on the Bryson interview. (I hope that I am not breaking any copyright laws by doing so!)

What books are currently on your nightstand?
I am reading on my Kindle Losing Ground by Catherine Aird and I have a paperback edition of The Egg and I by Betty MacDonald that is gathering dust as it has been there for so long. 

What's the last great book you read?
Carolina Writers at Home is tremendous. A collection of essays by many authors I was not familiar with. And it has these wonderful brooding, sepia-toned photographs.

Which writers, poets, journalists working today do you admire most?
Alexander McCall Smith, Bill Bryson, Mary Oliver, Billy Collins,
Anne Fadiman, Alain de Botton, Michael Dirda, Annie Dillard.

Who are your favorite travel writers and what is your favorite travel book?
Bill Bryson certainly comes to mind. I am sure I would get along with Patrick Leigh Fermor although I have yet to get my hands on any of his books. 

Which genres do you especially enjoy reading?
Mystery, vintage children's books (because my own childhood reading was somehow neglected), the humor of Dave Barry and James Thurber. Books about books.

Which do you avoid?
Anything too violent, romance novels, science fiction, pretentious literary fiction.

What was the last book that made you cry?
The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine by Alexander McCall Smith. Not that it was sad, but his characters are so touching.

The last book that made you laugh?
Drop Dead Healthy by A.J. Jacobs. He always makes me laugh.

The last book that made you furious?
Everyone is Entitled to My Opinion by David Brinkley. A lesson in how American political shenanigans never change.

Favorite poems?
"Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver. "Forgetfulness" by Billy Collins. Together these two poems could save the world.

Your favorite movie adaption of a book?
To Kill a Mockingbird. I am also very fond of the television productions of Lark Rise to Candleford and Cranford.

Who is your favorite fictional heroine or hero?
I must say that I adore Mma Precious Ramostwe and I hope that somewhere in the world there lives a woman just like her. And of course Nancy Drew set me off to a lifetime of reading mysteries. And I mustn't leave out brave Scout Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird.

Your favorite anti-hero or villian?
Well, I wouldn't call him a favorite, but I sure wouldn't want to meet Oliver Twist's bully Bill Sikes in a dark alley.

What kind of reader were you as a child? 
I was slow to enter the world of books. My second grade teacher sent home a note to my parents that I needed to read more for enjoyment. She would be so proud now!

What childhood books or authors stick with you most? 
The Nancy Drew mysteries and the tales of Mary Stewart and Daphne duMaurier. Also, Caddie Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Brink. As an adult I discovered Ms. Brink's The Pink Motel and was swept away by it.

If you had to name one book that made you what you are today, what would it be?
Travels With Charley by John Steinbeck. I read it when I was a junior in high school and it made me want to become a writer. And I did.

What author, living or dead, would you most like to meet?
I can't pick just one: E.B. White for his words, Agatha Christie for her plots, and P.G. Wodehouse for his characters.

What was the last book you put down without finishing?
Skippy Dies by Paul Murray and Little Face by Sophie Hannah. The titles both showed up recently on a list of mysteries to read but I couldn't get into either one. 

Of the books you've written, which is your favorite?
Well, unlike Mr. Bryson, I haven't written any books but as for my over 800 blog posts I would have to choose the ones about my literary adventures (The Grand Southern Literary Tours, One and Two) and my accounts of meeting various authors. 

Whom would you like to write your life story?
Bill Bryson. He would be able to take the jumble of my journals and turn them into a humorous tale.

I am having Issues....

Technical difficulties caused this

First, my blogger post editor window froze yesterday after I posted my text on Charles Lamb. It is still frozen today. It must be broken. No amount of Googling can produce an answer as to why that happened or what to do to fix it.

I reverted to the old blogger interface to get this information down. Now I can't find the photos that I want to post. I have already spent an hour on all of this which is way too much time.

I had some lovely pics of the pens I wrote about the other day. I will persevere and maybe some day I will figure out how to get them onto this blog.

In the meantime, I have finished At Large and At Small by Anne Fadiman, but by now I am so frustrated with messing about trying to get this post together that I will have to write about it another day.

The Unfuzzy Lamb

Charles Lamb
aka Elia
1775-1834

Anne Fadiman bemoans the fact that reading the essays of Charles Lamb, aka Elia, has gone out of fashion. And this from her essay on him entitled "The Unfuzzy Lamb" in her collection At Large and At Small that was published in 2005. I hate to think that even fewer people are reading him now seven years later. Maybe Ms. Fadiman and I are the only ones left.

If you love essays as I do, you will be as familiar with the name Elia as you are with Michel de Montaigne.

Lamb, born in 1775, did not have a charmed life, Fadiman writes. His sister Mary lost her mind and killed their mother, what he called "the family tragedy", when he was 21. He spent the rest of his life taking care of her and working as a clerk in a mind-numbing job that he hated and at which he was not really very good.

He began his career as an essayist to make money for Mary's keep as occasionally she would have to go back to the mental hospital for a while.  He wrote for five years - 1820-1825 - for London Magazine. When he retired from the East India House he retired from writing as well.

But what he left us, Fadiman writes, are 52 witty, sometimes dark, but always entertaining comments on books, witches, roast pig, ears, chimney sweeps. Nothing seems to have escaped his notice.

It has been a few years since I read with relish Essays by Elia, but you can be sure that I will be joining his company soon. Thanks to Anne Fadiman, fan extraordinaire.

At Large and At Small

On a bookshelf, next to Anne Fadiman's Ex Libris, is her other book of essays At Large and At Small. I should have included both of them as #7 in my List of 10 (List of 10). I started this second book this morning.

Ex Libris is all about bookish things. In At Large and At Small Ms. Fadiman takes a look at the whole world: Butterflies, ice cream, coffee, mail...

There is a large dose of bookishness in them as well. For example, in the first essay, "Collecting Nature", the reader learns that Vladimir Nabokov was a lifelong butterfly chaser and discovered several new species.

As usual, the reader learns some things about Ms. Fadiman as well. For instance, as children, not only did she and her brother chase, capture, and classify butterflies, they also founded The Serendipity Museum of Nature in a spare room in their house in Los Angeles. Here the two created displays of the skin of a garter snake, whale baleen, bird's eggs and nests, and scraps of fur - tiger, mink, rabbit - from the local furrier.

But that is not all. She writes: "Blowfish dangled from the ceiling on strands of dental floss."

Imagine that!

Eventually, the pickled and preserved contents of the museum were sold or tossed when she went away to college. She kept the seashells though.  

What a wondrous childhood she had and how glad I am that she writes to share it with me.

A Few Words on Pen-Bereavement

Penfriend in the Burlington Arcade
London

"Pen-bereavement is a serious matter." -- Anne Fadiman

I know how she feels. The above quote is from Fadiman's essay in Ex Libris entitled "Eternal Ink". She writes that her fifth-grade boyfriend gave her a fountain pen - she thinks he stole it from his stepfather. She didn't care and she cherished it.

She had the pen for years - into adulthood - and then one day it was gone. She thinks it perhaps fell through a crack in her desk and resides in some dark corner. She has never been the same. No replacement pen ever suited.

I only write with a fountain pen. I used to buy the cheap Schaeffer pens with the replacement cartridges of ink (black only, thank you very much) to write in my journal. The plastic barrels were red or yellow with a faux silver cap. When the nib began to scratch and the ink to blotch the pen was easy and inexpensive to replace.

Then on a trip to Paris and a side journey to Normandy, I strolled into a pen store in Deauville. There, I bought my first Waterman fountain pen. It had a green plastic barrel with a sort of Picasso-esque design and a top that firmly closed with a click. The nib was gold. I adored that pen and carried it with me for years, but alas, it disappeared.

I took it up a notch with my next Waterman. This one was given to me as a present (I got to pick it out) and had a marbled deep blue metal barrel and top. It also came with a lifetime guarantee. At one point the nib just plain wore out and the company replaced it. It recently had another issue with the cap and I have just not had the energy to pack it up and return it to Waterman for repairs.

Another Waterman I purchased from a tiny pen shop, the Penfriend, in the Burlington Arcade in London. It had a brown barrel and a medium nib which never really slid along the page to suit me. It too has disappeared.

Pen-bereavement for sure.

I do have a back up: a metallic blue Lamy fountain pen that I purchased in Savannah in 2010 and keep on my desk.

I discovered a few years ago that Pilot makes a disposable fountain pen, the Varsity. It costs $3.50 and I don't cry if I lose it.

I have a penchant for pens, as you can see. I also have a bejeweled dip pen and another dip pen made of blown glass from Italy. I have used them both, but the dipping and writing, dipping and writing does tend to get tedious.

In my desk are five or six dip pens that belonged to my grandfather. They each consist of a wooden barrel with the nib stuck into the end. I keep them because I like to think of him when I open that drawer and occasionally bring them out and put them on a tray with the others for display.

It somehow soothes me just to see them.

Ex Libris

Anne Fadiman

I have a new best friend - or BFF as she would be called today - Anne Fadiman. Actually we have been friends since 1998 when her book of personal essays Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader found its way into my hands. OK, so she doesn't know who I am, but by reading her essays on subjects as far reaching as North Pole exploration, the obsessive proofreading of menus, lost vocabulary, and inscriptions on a flyleaf, I have learned a great deal about her.

As part of my journey to reread books from my List of 10 (List of 10), I picked up Ms. Fadiman's book this morning and at once was comforted, amused, and informed by her thoughts. I especially liked her categorization of book lovers as carnal or courtly. Carnal book lovers write responses and comments in margins, underline passages, dog ear pages, have been known to use feathers as bookmarks and to start a collection of dead South American insects within the pages of a book.

I am not that person. I am a courtly book lover. As proof, to look at my copy of Ex Libris, you would not know that this is my third or fourth reading of it so pristine are the pages. I do notice a bit of fading of the dust-jacket's spine which causes me some distress. Anyway, as you can imagine, as a courtly book lover I always uses a bookmark, never fold the corners of a page, never underline, mark or in any way abuse A Book.

So this is where my BFF have a slight parting of the ways. On the one hand, she admonishes, "Just think what courtly book lovers miss by believing that the only thing they are permitted to do with  books is read them." But, she also admits that "the trouble to the carnal approach is that we love our books to pieces."

Literally, to pieces.

I can understand the idea of writing in books, making them your own, having a conversation with the author, but putting that idea into practice is just something I have never been able to bring myself to do. The most I might do is leave a faint pencil mark in the margin to highlight a passage. And then of course that gets erased once it has served its purpose.

I find it distracting to come across a carnal reader's comments in the margins of a second-hand book or even (god forbid!) a library book. Or underlined passages. 'What did that reader find so intriguing?' I begin to wonder and then lose sight of my own experience with the author.

So even though Ms. Fadiman and I don't agree on the carnal/courtly question, I still feel we will be best friends forever.

To Reread, or not to Reread, that is the question

I am not a re-reader. Once I finish the book, that is pretty much it for me. But I recently watched an interview with Shelby Foote and he said rereading was when you got to study what the author did. You know by now where she is going and you get to see how she gets you there.

Anna Quindlen said the same thing. She is a big fan of rereading. I could probably count on two hands the number of books I have found compelled to read again.

One is Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman. Another is To Kill a Mockingbird. One summer I reread all of the Annie Dillard books that I own: Teaching a Stone to Talk, An American Childhood, and Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. I have read William Zinsser's On Writing Well multiple times.

Within the past few years I also reread Travels With Charley by Steinbeck. That is the book that made me want to be a writer. I was afraid to read it again - the last time was in high school - because I didn't want to be disappointed or finish it and say, "What was I thinking? This is the book I based my entire life on?"

Fortunately it was just as compelling as I remembered it.

I feel like rereading a book you loved the first time is risky business. The emotions that you felt may be entirely missing the second time and that would be so disheartening. It is like visiting the house you grew up in now that someone else lives there. The images that you hold dear are superseded by the green carpet and the yellow wallpaper that the new owners have installed in your bedroom.

How do you feel about re-reading a favorite book?