Another Literary Meme

Lifted from Nylusmilk:

1. When/how did you become an avid reader?
When I was still in elementary school. I got teased a lot for reading instead of playing outside during recess, but it comes with the lifelong hobby, eh? I just loved to read, and now that love’s carried into something of an obsession. Something about this object you call a book has forever grabbed me.

2. What is your favorite genre for adult/young adult books?
Scifi or fantasy, with more of an emphasis on scifi. Military history, literary criticism and contemporary fiction are quickly rising as my favorite genres, but scifi will always be my all-time favorite.

3. What was the most recent book purchased/given to you?
Recently given to me were Anna Karenina and The Legend by a book-loving friend of mine from my favorite message board. Also recently, I purchased The Memoirs of Helen of Troy by Amanda Elyot and a book by Roald Dahl whose title I can’t recall right now. (I love library booksales.)

4. Which book would you like to have that you don’t own?
I wouldn’t mind owning the book I’m currently reading: Gold and Gold by Walter Russell Mead.

5. What book did you think you would never read, but found yourself reading it after all?
Anything by Stephen King. I started reading his work when I was on a short story kick and bought Everything’s Eventual (again, from a library booksale), and my enjoyment of his fiction shot off from there.

6. Which do you prefer, libraries or bookstores?
I love both, but right now I prefer libraries. A public service that makes books free to borrow for the reading public should be appreciated to its fullest degree.

7. What’s the longest you’ve never picked up a book (to read for pleasure, excluding all school material - unless that’s really what you enjoy reading)?
I went without reading for several weeks a couple years ago. By the time I emerge from a Reading Zone on occasion, I sometimes need a break. Can’t read two books at the same time, either - that makes me feel burned out, no matter how far away the books are in subject matter.

TBR Review: The Green Mile

The Green Mile by Stephen King was my second read for the TBR challenge. Let me tell you: it’s a bit difficult to read an easy book like this one if you’ve got reader’s block, but I finished it. Woot! And remind me never to read two books at once. Gah - that nearly ruined me.

I’ve been a big fan of Stephen King for the last few years - in fact, you might say I’m something of a King apologist. Ever since I read Lisey’s Story, it’s been a bit difficult to think of King as a horror novelist. Bizarre, sure. Horrific? Scary? Nah. The Green Mile only convinces me that this is indeed the Number One fact about him, and from the little I’ve read of Duma Key, I refuse to view King as a horror novelist any longer. (And please don’t try to persuade me otherwise!)

The Green Mile is told from two different points in time by the narrator, Paul Edgecombe, who recounts his time as the chief prison guard for Block E, Death Row, at the Cold Mountain prison in 1932. The title of this book refers to the green-tiled path from prison cell to electricity chair, dubbed “Old Sparky” by its handlers. Enter John Coffey, sentenced to die for raping and killing twin girls, and the story comes to life as Edgecombe records it at the retirement home where he lives in the present.

This tale is told with King’s usual sharp eye for description and character development. I’ve noticed that in King’s most recent work, he artfully weaves the supernatural and the physical together, and the story that results produces a lesson about humanity in general. I suppose this is contributing to my insistent belief that he’s not a horror novelist, since how horror’s defined is really a question of a reader’s tastes. Even King’s early work demonstrated that lessons could be learned about man’s ability to handle that which he can’t control, whether it be strange, nasty creatures or unseen menaces. (If you ask me, only several protagonists of those early works were crazy enough to survive whatever strange supernatural force was thrown at them.) Yet, the protagonists in King’s stories are usually very human and pragmatic, and as insane, surreal and terrifying as their circumstances are, they persevere or die trying. In The Green Mile, the lightning rod for the supernatural causes that occur isn’t an unseen force or an oddity of nature - rather, it’s a man with healing powers and the ability to sense the evil or good in another human being. King’s most recent work doesn’t need total evil to push the lesson forward; instead, he takes a human being who can access another dimension of life, whether by supernatural means or even natural ones, and uses that person to demonstrate a trait about man’s nature. I’d like to think that The Green Mile started King on this track, although this way of telling a story was also used for Shawshank Redemption.

At any rate, The Green Mile is an excellent tale. If you don’t plan to read anything by King because of his reputation, do yourself a favor and at least try to check out this book. It’s not a horror story.

Booking Through Thursday: Paperbacks or Hardcovers?

This week’s question is, “All other things (like price and storage space) being equal, given a choice in a perfect world, would you rather have paperbacks in your library? Or hardcovers? And why?”

Oh, dear. In this not so perfect world, I prefer paperbacks because they’re handier to carry with me. I buy hardcovers if I can find them at library booksales, or if I’m too impatient to wait for the paperback version to come out. In a perfect world, however? I’d probably still prefer paperbacks. I know they can get wear and tear much more easily than hardcovers, but they’re still cheaper. ‘Course, in a perfect world a book’s cost might not matter as much, but old habits die hard. The wear on one’s paperback copy depends on how one handles it while it resides in her possession, and I try to take care of my paperbacks - especially if they’re already received a lot of wear from a previous owner.

A Bookish Meme

Poor Coversgirl - it’s been a little crazy since February started, so I’m just now getting around to posting my answers for a book meme she tagged me with (sorry it’s taken me so long!). Eva from A Striped Armchair created this nifty meme, and my responses follow below.

Which book do you irrationally cringe away from reading, despite seeing only positive reviews?
Anything by Dan Brown. Not that The DaVinci Code received strictly positive reviews, and the hysterical religious backlash when the movie premiered was just that: hysterical, but all things apocryphal about the Bible aren’t my cup of tea.

If you could bring three characters to life for a social event (afternoon tea, a night of clubbing, perhaps a world cruise), who would they be and what would the event be?
Thursday Next for bringing out the whackiness of everyday life (a party would be incredibly boring without her presence), Richard St. Vier for his smooth uncanny swordplay (not so much for entertainment but for security), and The Sandman from Neil Gaiman’s graphic novel series to make all dreams come true.

(Borrowing shamelessly from the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde): you are told you can’t die until you read the most boring novel on the planet. While this immortality is great for awhile, eventually you realise it’s past time to die. Which book would you expect to get you a nice grave?
Oh dear. The bad thing is that I tend to stop reading boring novels, so this could be any number of books.

Come on, we’ve all been there. Which book have you pretended, or at least hinted, that you’ve read, when in fact you’ve been nowhere near it?
Ha! Most likely The Gulag Archipelago.

As an addition to the last question, has there been a book that you really thought you had read, only to realise when you read a review about it/go to ‘reread’ it that you haven’t? Which book?
The Red Dragon by Tom Clancy. (For some twisted reason, Clancy’s the first author name that popped into my head for this question.)

You’ve been appointed Book Advisor to a VIP (who’s not a big reader). What’s the first book you’d recommend and why? (if you feel like you’d have to know the person, go ahead of personalise the VIP)
I’d start him out with a nice book of popular fiction, to get him reading, if anything. A Patricia Cornwell novel, perhaps?

A good fairy comes and grants you one wish: you will have perfect reading comprehension in the foreign language of your choice. Which language do you go with?
Hebrew or Canadian French.

A mischievous fairy comes and says that you must choose one book that you will reread once a year for the rest of your life (you can read other books as well). Which book would you pick?
Sherlock in Love by Sena Jeter Naslund.

I know that the book blogging community, and its various challenges, have pushed my reading borders. What’s one bookish thing you ‘discovered’ from book blogging (maybe a new genre, or author, or new appreciation for cover art - anything)?
Finding new authors. At one point in my young reading life I stuck with the authors I knew best - now I love finding reads by new authors all the time.

That good fairy is back for one final visit. Now, she’s granting you your dream library! Describe it. Is everything leatherbound? Is it full of first edition hardcovers? Pristine trade paperbacks? Perhaps a few favourite authors have inscribed their works? Go ahead - let your imagination run free.
Polished hardwood floors covered with Persian rugs. A three-story library with plenty of wooden shelves and adjustable lighting. Reading rooms, each with a different theme (one in particular would be the Candle Room, which would have a bottomless supply of candles one can read close to). A small kitchenette, dorm and washroom where I can stay if I don’t feel like going back to my own living quarters (which would likely be next door - I’m rather lazy that way). Large bay windows with a little seating area just under the sill and plenty of pillows. Definitely no leatherbound editions, just whatever I have in my current library.

I’m pretty sure every literary aficionado in the blogosphere has already been tagged with this meme. If you haven’t, here’s your chance: you’re it!

Poetry Reading

In honor of the Feast of Brigid (Groundhog Day), some in the blogosphere are celebrating by posting poems for the Brigid in Cyberspace Poetry Reading (HT: bookgirl). Following below is my contribution.

“Love Song”
Rainer Maria Rilke

How can I keep my soul in me, so that
it doesn’t touch your soul? How can I raise
it high enough, past you, to other things?
I would like to shelter it, among remote
lost objects, in some dark and silent place
that doesn’t resonate when your depths resound.
Yet everything that touches us, me and you,
takes us together like a violin’s bow,
which draws one voice out of two seperate strings.
Upon what instrument are we two spanned?
And what musician holds us in his hand?
Oh sweetest song.

Translated by Stephen Mitchell

In His Shoes Challenge Quickie Reviews

Soldier’s Heart by Elizabeth D. Samet:
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, since it combines two particular interests of mine: military culture and the love of books. Soldier’s Heart is replete with accounts of the marriage of these two themes, and Samet witnesses the birth of their children with eloquent prose and relevant tangents on the themes’ frequent appearances and influences in American history. I can’t imagine being in her shoes, but I’m happy that she is persuading her students, through literature, to look through the vivid canvas of war to its psychological, emotional and artistic effects on their careers as Army officers. In my opinion, this is how a military officer’s well-rounded education should be cultivated.

Kabul Beauty School by Deborah Rodriguez:
Rodriguez’s journey, as recounted in this book, was so interesting to follow. Take one American woman, mix in the post-Taliban Afghan culture, add her desire to help Afghan women become the breadwinners for their families, and you have something between a roller coaster ride and a missions trip. While Rodriguez’s gradual transition into the community of women in Kabul sometimes seems hastily described, the reader can’t miss her outspoken takes on Afghan local culture, or her many anecdotes about her successful students at the beauty school, her friends, her customers, residents, and her Afghan husband, Sam. The author’s story is unique and yet familiar to the reader: to find one’s true self might require stepping out of her comfort zone. Rodriguez does just this - hairdresser style.

Purposefully Reading

“Had she been asked if reading had enriched her life she would have had to say yes, undoubtedly, though adding with equal certainty that it had at the same time drained her life of all purpose. Once she had been a self-assured single-minded woman knowing where her duty lay and intent on doing it for as long as she was able. Now all too often she was in two minds. Reading was not doing, that had always been the trouble. And old though she was, she was still a doer.”

pg. 100
The Uncommon Reader, Alan Bennett

I’m certainly not old by any stretch of the imagination, but I’ve felt like I haven’t been doing much lately, either, by just reading. It’s been a few months since I worked on my latest story, yet it feels like a longer stretch of time has passed. Last time I read my story, I had no idea how I’d arrived at the last scene before the page dribbles away into blank white. As the main character in Bennett’s book notes on page 101, “You don’t put your life into your books. You find it there.”

It’s time to find mine beyond my latest reads.

To Read, To Redeem

I ran across this story a little earlier today:

NEW YORK — Like so many wiseguys before him, Lou Ferrante finally got pinched. After years of hijackings, beatings and other violent crimes, he was busted for armed robbery and sentenced to nearly 10 years in prison. Life behind bars was a shock to the smart-aleck kid from Queens who had joined the Gambino crime family. But even more shocking was how he spent his time.

While other prisoners slept, Ferrante would rise early to daven, reciting prayers of his newfound Jewish faith. He wore a yarmulke in the exercise yard and followed kosher dietary laws. He spent months in an upstate prison writing a Torah commentary but shoved it under his mattress when the Sabbath began on Friday night.

Desperate to pass the days, Ferrante began reading books for the first time. He took up writing and cranked out a 1,200-page novel that he now admits is terrible. As his sentence ended, he told anyone who would listen that he was a changed man and that Judaism was his rock.

“I figured that with Judaism, you don’t go through a middleman, you go right to the top guy and talk to him,” Ferrante said. “That’s how I used to handle business on the streets. It made a lot of sense.”

Released from prison two years ago, Ferrante, 38, began writing about his experiences. That memoir, “Unlocked: A Journey From Prison to Proust,” will be published in March by HarperCollins. When he sent a copy of it to “Sopranos” star Lorraine Bracco — contacting her through friends of a friend — he hoped to get a blurb. But she called him immediately after reading it and made a pitch for the film rights.

An argument can be made that reading renews the soul as much as the mind, and I don’t mean reading just the Good Book.

I almost laughed when I read this further down in the article, because it’s true:

Some might be tempted to dismiss Ferrante’s book, because the image of a tough guy reading the Talmud invites obvious jokes.

Yet read further, and one can see why a reader/writer like Ferrante has a story worth hearing:

“I thought about my life,” he wrote. “Why did I end up here, living with animals? I beat men up. I shoved guns in their mouths. I even bit people. I lived like an animal on the street. I didn’t realize it until I was placed in this zoo. I hated myself for being one of them.”

Review: Virtual Unrealities by Alfred Bester

My review for my first TBR read is a bit late since I finished this book about a week ago!

Virtual Realities by Alfred Bester is an excellent collection of his short stories, a couple of which were found after his death. I had previously read two of his novels, The Stars My Destination and The Demolished Man, both scifi classics in every sense of the word, so I expected to rediscover that noir-ish feel with which Bester infuses his stories. It’s as much a sign of the world he inhabited when he was writing as much as it is his own unique style.

Some of my favorite stories are “Galatea Galante,” “Star Light, Star Bright,” “Time Is The Traitor,” “Will You Wait?” and “The Men Who Murdered Mohammed.” I confess that I didn’t dislike any of the stories in this volume, but some of them were pretty strange. In “Fondly Fahrenheit” the reader meets a man and his android companion, the latter being accused of several murders across civilized space - but since man and android can’t distinguish between each other, who’s really the killer? In “The Pi Man,” the narrator must compensate for discrepancies in his environment by committing some of the most outlandish and horrifying acts - which doesn’t prevent his personal secretary from falling in love with him. Quite a few of these stories cross genres, as a matter of fact, but each is uniquely futuristic and even fantastical in foundation.

I haven’t had time to look for more of Bester’s work since I finished Virtual Unrealities, but I would recommend this book of short stories if you want to get a taste of his quick-witted, well-rounded prose. It’s somewhere between pulp and noir - excellent pulp and excellent noir - and either way you look at it, the stories still read well for our times.

Mythopoeic Awards Challenge

Yes, I found another one to join. The award for which this challenge is named has an interesting history and a sweet-looking list of books to go with it. Here are my seven reads for this particular challenge:

The Stress of Her Regard by Tim Powers
Sunshine by Robin McKinley
Thomas the Rhymer by Ellen Kushner
Waking the Moon by Elizabeth Hand
Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman
The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold
Solstice Wood by Patricia A. McKillip

I’ve read previous books by Gaiman, Bujold and Kushner, but not the other four. This should be fun!