Reading the Right Amount

I have decided to read less. Not less, really, but slower, so, inevitably, this does mean fewer books. The impetus for my first Resolution since 1978 (when I gave up self-improvement) is a . . . book: The Ode Less Travelled by Stephen Fry.

If you don't know Stephen Fry, first of all you aren't English, but second of all he's an actor, writer, director, poet, comedian and probably other stuff.

I thought his book would help me learn to like poetry, but it turns out to be a book on how to write poetry. That's all right; you usually like things better if you know the rules.

Fry starts by insisting the you read s-l-o-w-l-y. This is a formidable obstacle to poetry reading as far as I am concerned. I don't have time to read slowly. I don't read fast, but I read as fast as I can. There are so many books in the world and I'm having trouble getting to them all.

Reading all the books that one sees puts great pressure on a person, like counting the number of books read per year -- which, you will remember I've stopped doing. Well, you'll remember if you used to read my book blog.

But Fry has given me the idea that I'm doing it wrong. What's the point of reading if you're missing stuff because you're in a rush to get to the next book?

So, read less.

This will be harder than not counting. Part of counting included reviewing and that was work. I can always give up work.

I may keep you posted.

Books, Dogs, Television & Staples

I got through a book a day in the hospital -- the up side -- including an audio book the first day when my eyes wouldn't focus, and I was too sick to turn pages, anyway.

Endangered Species is really about murder and Loggerhead turtles, but has a nice riff on dog love: You can't control other people or their emotions. You can't make people love you. But dogs love you all the time; hence, their attraction. Pretty good analysis for a cat person. Later, there was a crack about Pit Bulls, but I figure it's an old book and she knows better now.
Before I was a dog owner, I was a cat person (still am) and I considered slavering love a sign of wimpishness -- on both our parts, the dog and the owner. I found it took less than 24 hours of unstinting love from Io Jima, my first Chow, to change my mind.

I watched a little television: the news in English, sport in German and rubbish in French. One afternoon I came across a health talk program entitled The Internet is Not Your GP (in French). Bwahahahaha! How to make your doctor hate you.

My staples came out this morning. Hooray, I can shower.

Eric by Terry Pratchett

Faust, uh, Eric is the Discworld's only demonology hacker. He manages to summon up Rincewind, the most incompetent wizard in the universe, along with The Luggage, the most faithful -- and scariest -- suitcase in literature. In an effort to fulfill Eric's three wishes -- to be immortal, rule the world, have the most beautiful woman in the world (the usual) -- their adventures take them on a journey through time and space.

Maybe not quite as good as some of the Discworld novels, but, in the Discworld, the adventure is not in the adventure; it's in Pratchett's knowledge of just about everything and the way he plays with it. A good ride through Faust, time travel and the big "bang." And other stuff.

The Best American Sports Writing (2004), Ed. Richard Ben Cramer & Glenn Stout

The best sports writing is generally not about the game, but about the people, the challenge, the struggle against inside and outside forces, the context, and occasionally, the great play, Great American Sports Writing has it all.

I'm game to go for the next one.

Pardonnable Lies by Jennifer Winspear

Oh, how I wanted to love this! A friend has been trying to get me to read a Maisie Dobbs mystery for a year and I wanted to please her. Lucky me, someone started a BookCrossing ray (post the book from person to person; last person decides what to do with it) and I joined.

If you wonder how I got through since yesterday (I wrote this the day after my last review, but am trying a new system of "publishing," so it didn't show up until now), the answer is: I didn't. The story is O.K. -- for all I know it's fantastic -- but the writing is awful. Winspear needs to re-read the text book chapter on "Show, Don't Tell." And especially don't tell me things that are obvious. Plod, plod, plod.

Another minority opinion.

Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah

My first read of the year arrived as part of the Not So Secret Father Christmas BookCrossing Exchange. I'm not sure what I've said that would indicate that this would be a good book for me -- most of the fiction I read is crime fiction -- but it was an excellent choice.

Paradise is a story of Africa, subtly told as a coming of age novel. Yusuf is sent away from home to live with his "Uncle" Aziz near the sea and to tend his shop along with Khalil, another boy pawned to Uncle Aziz for his father's debts. As the book follows Yusuf from age 12 to late teens, he learns about the complicated relations between master and servant, trader and villager, Islam and animist religion, learns the landscape during trading journeys, sees the effects of colonisation on the Africans, watches the coming of war.

This novel is a good companion piece to Alan Moorhead's histories of early African exploration and colonisation, all of which I also loved. Here's the African side of the story.

Reading Diary for 2008

Last year I started keeping a record of the books I was reading on my BookCrossing.com home page. After a couple of months, I gave it up; I figured, "Who cares"?

As it turns out, I do. Comes the end of the year and on the particular BookCrossing Yahoo group that I belong to, everyone lists their favourite reads of the year, what challenges they met, how many books they read, and so on. But I didn't keep records, so I had a hard time participating. I'd been on a roll, too. I was reading 12+ books a month at the beginning of the year.

I did my best with my favourites. I figured if I could remember them, they must be my favourites. But, of course, that isn't true. My memory of what I ate for breakfast this morning is pretty sketchy, let alone what I read, when I read it, and did I love it.

I certainly don't know how many books I've read. Mt.Toobie (my To Be Read accumulation) continues to fill two shelves, no matter how much I read. I buy books, but I also participate in BookCrossing and BookMooch exchanges.

And I get RABCKs -- Random Acts of BookCrossing Kindness -- in the form of more books. And NSS gifts: gift exchanges organised for Christmas (NSSFC -- Father Christmas; NSSH -- Halloween; NSSSS -- Summer Solstice; and other occasions that BookCrossers are good at dreaming up. And there are the twofer and threefer or other special offers from BookMoochers that keep my shelves filled.

I signed up for the BookMooch To Be Read Support Group. You may have read some of my reviews here. Every month I am supposed to designate two books from Mt. Toobie that I promise to read and review on the blog. I have been somewhat remiss lately.

So this year I'm getting organised! I've set up a Google document entitled What I Am Reading. (One day I must really do a post on how much I love Google.) You'll find a link to the left, under Books. I plan to list each book I've read and write a capsule -- or other -- review here. Then I can then use these reviews for my BookCrossing journal entries and my posts on the BookMooch blog.

Is that organised or what?

We'll see.

The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama

This book made me feel so good. Obama always makes me feel good. He is positive and optimistic without being unrealistic. He can explain the great divide in American politics and how it came to be, and make you understand that it's not just meanness of spirit that has brought us to this pass. He talks about values without making you feel that there are quote marks around the word. He discusses the constitution with love and intelligence as might be expected from a professor of constitutional law. He talks of race and religion without making you feel threatened by either. There are chapters on Family, Politics, The World. He identifies problems without malice and lays out ideas for solving them; ideas that are down to earth, practicable and appeal to the common sense of most Americans.

Vote for who you want, but read this book. You can feel good, too.

The year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

After 40 years of marriage and work along side the writer, John Gregory Dunne, Joan Didion became a widow over dinner. Their daughter, whom they'd just come from visiting, lay in a coma in the hospital.

In The Year of Magical Thinking, Didion struggles to comprehend what has happened to her. The dulled rhythms of the writing (if the world "dull" can ever be used in connection with Didion's prose) manage to express the flatness of her existence. The repetitive thoughts and phrases echo a mind before it is able to move on.

If the book lacks spirituality, as some have said, it is because, for Didion, there was nothing spiritual in the loss of her husband and the illness of her daughter. It was a black hole of devastation and the grinding effort that living became.

Didion turns to books to make sense of her condition. She searches for words that will lend comfort and fill the hole in her being; to make the hurt go away; to make it better. Nothing helps, except, perhaps, Emily Post, the mistress of etiquette from another generation. In the rituals of proper behaviour and concrete instructions for caring for the bereaved, Didion finds tradition something to lean on. There was always a reason for good manners, correct behaviour, the formalities of life and death.

And, in the end, there is hope. Not because there is redemption in suffering, but because she survived.

We all survive.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling

No spoilers!

J. K. Rowling is the best thing that has happened to children's literature since Lewis Carroll, Robert Louis Stevenson, Louisa May Alcott and Frank Baum. And she has finished up the Harry Potter series in fine form. After beginning to lose her way as her books got longer-- No. 6 was veering toward the leaden -- No. 7 is as good as it gets. We meet many of our old friends, the adventure rattles right along, and all is revealed in the end.

Thank you, Ms. Rowling.

Raw Dog Food: Make It Easy for You and Your Dog by Carina Beth MacDonald

(This mini-review was written for Rambo's Diary [see Links] and still appears there.)

If you're curious about a raw diet for your dog or confused by the all the conflicting advice and myriad "raw diets," this is the place to start.

Carina has distilled the literature into a concise and amusing guide to feeding your dog a fresh diet.

All the basics are here to get you started and keep you going. There is an excellent Resources section to further reading, suppliers and internet support. (Note that the Yahoo group, formerly known as BARF-Lite, is now RAW-Lite.)