Comments Posted on My Blog

Many of the comments posted on my blog are quite interesting and insightful; and they leave much room for thought.  I know that many blog readers don’t read the comments, so I’ll share some of them here.

My last post, The Year (of My Blog) in Review, prompted some sympathetic comments on behalf of the author, Nina Sankovitch, whose book,  TOLSTOY AND THE PURPLE CHAIR, I’d panned.  The book was a record of her year reading a book a day as a means of  “healing” herself after the death of her sister. 

About this post, two people I respect felt that I was, perhaps, a bit hard on the author and her book.

Karen wrote,

“Ouch, go gettem, Helen!  I admire a mind that is clear on her opinions….”

And Pamela wrote, 

“In defense of Nina Sankovitch (I have not read her book), I want to note that grief is a very strange country to inhabit and that she was probably doing the best she could to go on after losing her sister….  Maybe it shouldn’t have been a book—clearly, it wasn’t a book for you at that time—but I have read essays and letters and such by other people who took up books in times of grief, and one of the things they have in common is that almost every written word the grieving reader encounters, however trivial, seems to take on a different coloration and become a personal message from the Universe.  And really, that’s quite wonderful, isn’t it?  Anything written out of that kind of grief is almost like a letter from another plane.”

I suppose I was feeling a little defensive when I responded, as follows:

“My initial reflex was to feel chastened by suggestions that I have been hard and unkind in my analysis of Nina Sankovitch’s book.  (I faced the same discomfort when I had to grade my students’ papers!)

I certainly don’t want to be hard on people; but I do want to be honest.

It’s interesting to note that when I wrote some pretty awful things about Tolstoy in my post on WAR AND PEACE, not only did no one complain about it, but I was cheered by many.  Of course, it becomes more sensitive when it is a living author who is being discussed; nevertheless, I think it’s important to remain honest in one’s assessment of a work, no matter the circumstances. 

I’m certainly sympathetic to the author’s grief:  but it does not excuse bad writing.  If one can grant Sankovitch the right to use reading as a way to ease her grief, and for finding in each book a lesson to be learned and a reflection of her own experiences, we can’t grant her the right to make statements which mean nothing—‘The book is perfect, a genuine communication of the heart.’—nor to use a false premise for her ‘project.’

If reading can, indeed, ease her suffering, why must it be a book a day?  Why can’t books or authors be reread?  Some books that could have helped her might take longer to read; some favorite authors might elicit new insights in a rereading of them.  Choosing an inch-wide spine has nothing at all to do with reading as a healing mechanism; instead, it seems more like an arbitrary decision—or one which she thought would help her get a book published!

In this day when it is more and more difficult for good writers to get their work published, I think we need to be extra diligent in doing what we can to discourage publishers from publishing books of poor quality—or from publishing them because they have some kind of “gimmick” to recommend them.

 It’s not called literary ‘criticism’ for nothing!”

As for Tolstoy:  although most agreed with my assessment of WAR AND PEACE, several suggested that I give Tolstoy another chance by reading ANNA KARENINA.  So, I plan to do that—but not quite yet!

I made some errors in a few of my posts, and those were caught by readers. 

I’d said that one could see Jude Law’s HAMLET on Netflix, but I was mistaken.  The best you can do is see scenes from it on YouTube; but there are lots of scenes there, so you’d practically be seeing the entire play!

In my post, Some Thoughts About Books as Objects, I’d said that I had friends who had Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s set of Homer.  Well, I was wrong on 2 counts:  The set was of Euripides, not Homer; and my friends no longer own it:  they’ve sold it!  If you want to see those amazing books, you'll find them at the Armstrong Browning Library at Baylor University in Waco, Texas.

The post on What Makes a Good Personal Library prompted someone to say that “Most of the voluminous private libraries I’ve seen are for show only.” 

In my reply to that, I noted that this is certainly true of some private libraries.  After all, there are people who buy books by the yard or beautifully bound books of blank pages and the like (see The Year (of My Blog) in Review for more on that).

But I also commented that such people still chose books to look at rather than a collection of Rolex watches—which I’ve also seen in some houses I've gone to!  And I noted that

“many private libraries can be ‘personal’ ones as well—which is what I titled my post—in that books in them need not be valuable, but only important to [the owner] in some way:  important enough to drag heavy boxes of books from place to place, as I (and others) have done over and over again.”

The post on Public Libraries had Marash Girl tell us the sad news about her local libraries:

"Here's to the little local library, the library that is disappearing, the library that opened our hearts to books, the library that we walked to on our way to [school], the library that is not economically viable in the greater scheme of things.  After Newton, Massachusetts closed all of its village libraries, it built the most expensive high school in the U.S.  Go figure.  If kids don't learn to love books/libraries/knowledge from their earliest days, what good is the most expensive high school in the U.S.?"

I agreed with her:

"One doesn't need an expensive school. (Didn't Socrates do all his teaching in a grove?)  All one needs are good teachers and good libraries.  Now, even universities  build libraries at the outskirts of the school, or in one awful case, underground!  You can go to school in these places and never even know that there is a library!  In days of old, the library was the center of schools and communities."

In What Readers Can Learn from Woody Allen, I used Woody Allen to ask the question of whether or not it’s appropriate to focus on the life of the artist when analyzing the artist’s work.  The answer to this question is not so clear, as is indicated by Freckles’ comment:

“My first reaction is this:  actors, writers, musicians, sports figures, etc. are lauded for their talents and then burdened with the public’s need to like them.  Why?  Why do I need to like Woody Allen and approve of his life choices in order to enjoy his films?

Because he is famous, I am exposed to ‘inside information’ that would otherwise be none of my business.  I may not like the information, but the facts themselves do not detract from his talent—just from my ability to enjoy his talent.  For me, Allen’s ‘scandal’ does muddy the waters of what used to be clear enjoyment.   It sneaks up on me and puts a damper on things.  I have, however, made a conscious decision to continue seeing his films and to try to enjoy them.

Mel Gibson, not so much….

I’m glad Shakespeare didn’t have to contend with tabloids and documentaries; he would have never made it.”

And finally, in my last post I had photos of sculptures made out of books and asked the question, “are they ‘art’ or are they the destruction of books by other means?”

Is it a book?  Is it art?  Is it craft?

One commenter suggested that these were not art, but “at best, a form of recycling…”  But commenter Karen made an intriguing point when she wrote:

“I share your uneasiness about the implications [of sculptures made from books], and THAT is probably what makes them ‘Art.’  The fact that they were left on the doorsteps of libraries and bookstores anonymously adds to their mystique.  They are skillfully executed, to be sure, but skill alone does not make art.  It’s the imagination, the edginess it causes, the attention it brings to a world that is morphing so fast that one can hardly hang on to what they love before it is swept aside by the winds of change.  It’s a commentary on the changing nature of choice.”

Let’s hope that in all this change and with all these choices, books will maintain their important place in our lives and in society.

Have you a comment on any of the comments?

The Year (of My Blog) in Review

You can hardly pick-up a newspaper or magazine; can hardly turn on the radio or TV, without getting a rundown of the year in review.  Here's mine:  The 2011 Year of the "Books Books Books" Blog in Review – and a few additions to begin the year 2012.

There are only 15 posts on my blog.  I began it in August with the post, “What I’m Planning, more or less” which told a bit about me and my reading history, and what I planned for my Blog. 

What it didn’t say was that I began the blog in a fit of pique over a book I’d been reading called TOLSTOY AND THE PURPLE CHAIR.  It’s a “project” book, and project books annoy me—whether it’s a recipe-a-day or a book-a-day, such projects seem artificial to me, not a natural part of one’s day, of one’s life.

This book’s project was to read a book a day for a year.  And the project had strict rules:  no re-reading books that had been read before; no author could be read more than once; only books “with a width of one inch” (!) would be chosen; mystery books were for Sundays; books must be finished by midnight; and every book read must be written about.

Nina Sankovitch’s book was well reviewed in the New York Times, and it is that which prompted me to read it.   I’d hoped it would provide me with a list of books worth reading; and that I would glean new insights into books and writing.

But much of this book illustrates the author's struggle to justify her project, to give it a plausible purpose; but unfortunately, she does not succeed.    

Sankovitch’s sister died after a short and devastating illness.  As a result, Sanksovitch was 

“caught in a bramble patch of sorrow and fear.  My reading…was pulling me out of the shadows and into the light."

 She tells us that

“Now that [my sister] had died [and my family was devastated], I was doing what I could to recover…for everyone in my family.  I was reading.”

"In reading books, I was finding my sister again.”

And--perhaps most unbelievably!--she identifies her reading project and herself with 

“an impoverished Cuban man," a character in one of the books she’s reading, because they both have “hope for the future.  He has faith in Castro’s revolution; I have faith in the power of books.”

What?  (Or as my children would say, “Puh-lease!”)

Which leads to another problem with this book:  Sankovitch tries to shoehorn every one of the books she reads into a lesson that will ease the pain of her sister’s death.  Sometimes this works, but more often, it doesn’t.

So many books read much too quickly!  Ultimately, we learn little about them other than a bit of the  plot, and how the characters and the lessons they learn feel similar to Sankovitch's own experience;

So many books read so quickly that we, the readers, get little beyond a series of platitudes repeated over and over again in different words, no matter what she happens to be reading, as in:

“We cannot control events around us, but we are responsible for our reactions to those events.”

“The meaning of my life is ultimately defined by how I respond to the joys and the sorrows…”

“[The character] comes to understand then that his own sanity depends upon his accepting what he cannot change.”

OK: we get it!

And although Sankovitch states that “the purpose of great literature is to reveal what is hidden and to illuminate what is in darkness,”(?) when she does spend some time describing and analyzing her one-day–to-read-it books, she uses words and phrases that tell us nothing: 

“This book is perfect, a genuine communication from the heart.”

“[We are] connected to the rest of humanity...by the size of our hearts."

“The world shifts, and lives change.

“I would find...the always within never.”

Here, once again I must ask—“What?”

I know how difficult it is to write, so I hate to say it, but I think that the New York Times was wrong:  this is not a good book.  Sankovitch is probably a good reader and a good writer, but I think that here—perhaps because she turned reading into a “project” and read the books too quickly, chose some of them too poorly—she couldn’t do the books (or herself) justice.

So my blog was to be an antidote to this approach:  I would read books over and over again, I would write about books and film and theater; and as a slow reader, I wouldn’t predict how frequently I would post.

And that’s how it began:  Analyses of WAR AND PEACE, books of food writing; a review of Jude Law as HAMLET; a reflection on the difference between Live in HD and Live at the Met, etc.

And then, the Blog took on a life of its own.  I'd posted my musings about book auctions and books as objects, and these generated a huge—and surprising—interest from readers in many parts of the world.  So, the discussion continued:  of private libraries and public libraries; a bit about literary analysis which used the films of Woody Allen for its examples; thoughts about the rising fear that books—and bookstores—would soon be a thing of the past…  And here we are.

As these thoughts continued to reverberate, readers sent me suggestions for posts, and even sent me things to post.  Here are some of them:

Danny wrote,  “Here's a magnificent blog I thought you'd enjoy:  <NeglectedBooks.com>
I do enjoy it.  And it’s the perfect companion to the book I’ve been reading and which I highly recommend:  SECOND READING. NOTABLE AND NEGLECTED BOOKS REVISITED, by Jonathan Yardley.

The posts on Personal Libraries prompted Johanna to alert me to an astonishing and rather depressing article in the New York Times called “Selling a Book by Its Cover” which talks about “book solutions” and expresses surprise that there are people who want “more than pretty bindings: [they] wanted the option of being able to read [their] books.”  (Imagine that!)

The article tells of “books wrapped in silver paper to match the silver hardware in the room….

You think that’s bad?  It gets worse:  

“For the spa in Phillipe Stark’s Icon Brickell, the icy glass condo tower in Miami, 1,500 books [were wrapped] in blank white paper, without titles, to provide a ‘textural accent’ to the space.”  They bought “mass-market hardcovers that flood the used book outlets — titles by John Grisham and Danielle Steel, or biographies of Michael Jackson— because they are cheap, clean and a nice, generous size.”

And worse:  

“A TV news program wanted linen-wrapped books chopped in half to fit the shallow, faux-shelves of a political interview program.”

Moreover, the writer of this NY Times article thinks "book lovers" should be grateful that physical books are being “kept alive” by the “library artist” who is more “than a mere book dealer.”  (“Mere book dealer?”  That would be me…)

A not-to-be-missed slide show is included in this article, and the last 2 items in it are “books” that have been used as a medium for the creation of “art.” 

Which brings me to Andre, who wrote to me about this very subject:  “I thought these very beautiful and mysterious sculptures [made from books] which have been turning up anonymously in honor of libraries and books around the world was worth a look....”

I took a look, and here are photos of some of those sculptures:

 

Staying on theme by having a Tyrannosaurus Rex bursting from Doyle's LOST WORLDS

I don’t know what to make of this or quite how I feel about it.  Some of these are, indeed, beautiful:  but are they “art” or are they the destruction of books by other means?  Do they “honor” libraries or make a mockery of them?

I'm curious to know what you think about this.

So that was my Blog in 2011: behind us now. 

Now it's the year 2012, during which you have 365 (make that 363) days to: 

Read. 

Make art using any medium you like. 

Write to me as much as you want; I will always reply. 

            And most importantly:

Visit your local booksellers:  we are not and never have been “mere!”

- - - - - - - - - - -

Postscript: 

Apologies to those of you who receive blog posts via email for receiving an unfinished post.  I simply pressed the wrong button -- publish instead of preview -- and off it went.  (Could this have been the result of too much celebrating?)

The internet is an unforgiving medium; but I hope that you will be forgiving...

Thank you, and have a very Happy New Year.

What Readers Can Learn from Woody Allen

I’ve always liked Woody Allen.  Not so much the slapstick stuff – I usually can’t get into slapstick – but the wit, the insights, the ease with which he demolishes long held beliefs which few dare question:  he’s willing to say that the emperor is naked....

And he is funny.  Very funny.  Even some of the slapstick films have flashes of this wit, of comedy that’s not physical, but verbal.  In SLEEPER, one of his more slapstick films, a man goes into the hospital for an easy surgery; something goes wrong, and his body is “frozen” until he can be cured.  When he awakens in the year 2173, he’s told to reflect on the miracle of science he's been privileged to experience.  But he is not appeased:  to him, a miracle of science would have been to leave the hospital after a few hours and not have gotten a parking ticket!

And no one who has listened to the discussion of the dietary value of eggs – sometimes good for you, sometimes not – can help but be both amused and satisfied to learn that 200 years from now, it becomes a “well known” fact that things like wheat germ and honey are bad for you, while “tobacco is one of the healthiest things there is.”  And deep fat.  And hot fudge….

Satisfying, too, is the way he creates wish-fulfilling experiences we can relate to, as in this memorable scene from ANNIE HALL featuring Marshal McLuen:

I also love  -- and envy! -- the way he can “define” complicated concepts in one short sentence.  In STARDUST MEMORIES, he tells us that he took a course in existential philosophy.  On his final exam he was asked 10 questions he couldn’t answer; so he left them all blank – and got a 100% !

In the same way, he can define a decade – the sixties – in a sentence, tracing a person’s trajectory from hippy-dom to a career in advertising or finance.  And in ANNIE HALL, we see him describe an upper west side New Yorker in one spot-on sentence:

With ANNIE HALL, Allen began his more “serious” period of film making:  that is, while many of these films are still very funny, there is much less physical comedy, and there’s an increasing effort to deal with more serious subjects:  the state of the universe; the difficulty of interpersonal relationships, of preparing for the future, of knowing what one wants; the struggle to understand the purpose of one’s life; and the moral imperatives that must guide one’s actions.

Nowhere is that better stated than in the film MANHATTAN, and in particular, in the scene in which Allen talks to his friend while standing next to a schoolroom skeleton. 

Woody Allen in a scene from MANHATTAN

Allen confronts a friend who betrayed him, and his friend tells him not to “turn this into one of your big moral issues…. I’m not a saint, OK?”

Allen:  “But you’re too easy on yourself!  Don’t you see that?  That’s your problem….you rationalize everything; you’re not honest with yourself.  You cheat a little [on your wife], you play around with the truth a little with me:  next thing you know you’re in front of a Senate Committee and you’re naming names, you’re informing on your friends.”

Friend:  “You’re so self-righteous!  We’re just people!  We’re just human beings.  You think you’re God!”

Allen:  “I gotta model myself after someone!  …what are future generations going to say about us?  It’s very important to have some kind of personal integrity.  I want to make sure that when I’m [dead] I’ll be well thought of.”

You watch a scene like this, you hear these words, and you can’t help but think that Woody Allen, the creator of them, has admirable moral standards; that he is someone worth emulating.

And then:  he has an affair with the daughter of Mia Farrow (his “significant other”).  He has an affair with a young girl whom he helped raise.... 

What?!?  Really?!?

PBS TV’s AMERICAN MASTERS series recently devoted two nights to Woody Allen.  Here, he’s shown as the creative genius that he is; as the highly prolific and imaginative filmmaker; and one of the very few filmmakers to have complete control of the content and production of his films;

Here, he is shown to be more egocentric than collaborative – he won’t discuss film roles with his film's actors because he doesn’t like talking to them! – and one who seems to realize a great deal of what he wants in his films during the editing process;

Here, Allen tells us that his film collaboration with Mia Farrow went well “until things suddenly started to fall apart in our relationship…." (Talk about understatement!)

Here, in the very few minutes devoted to the subject in a 4 and 1/2 hour documentary, we are told that Woody Allen’s work did not suffer as a result of the sensational trial and custody battle that ensued:  that [like any narcissist], "Woody was able to compartmentalize” the different parts of his life.  And to rationalize: rationalize and ignore any unpleasantness.  "What was the scandal?" he asks in one interview.

This is so contrary to the dialogue he wrote for MANHATTAN (and for so many of his other films) that it's no wonder that Allen says in this documentary that he didn’t like MANHATTAN and was sorry that it had been released…!

But if Allen understands neither his misconduct nor the "scandal" it caused, his biological son, Rowan Farrow, clearly does. This is what Rowan said of his estrangement from his father:

"He's my father married to my sister. That makes me his son and his brother-in-law. That is such a moral transgression.  

I cannot see him. I cannot have a relationship with my father and be morally consistent... I lived with all these adopted children, so they are my family. To say Soon-Yi was not my sister is an insult to all adopted children.”

So:  What can readers learn from Woody Allen?  

Well, readers can learn that the writer is NOT the same as the tale he tells.  Or that he is ALL parts of the tale: the good, the bad; the moral and the immoral.  The reader can learn that, perhaps, studying the lives of writers and artists does not help in understanding the work; that the work must be examined on its own merits..

Woody Allen tried to tell us this himself in his film, SWEET AND LOWDOWN, which Netflix describes as a “fictional biopic about a jazz guitarist…that separates an obnoxious man from his heavenly musical ability.” 

You simply can’t interpret the art by using what you know of the life of the artist.

But on the other hand:

All those many, many films that feature betrayal and deception, like HANNAH AND HER SISTERS, in which Hannah’s sister has an affair with Hannah’s husband;

All those many, many films like CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS, MANHATTAN, WHATEVER WORKS, which pair old men with young – sometimes very young – women;

And all those many, many films that display a dilution and finally an abandonment of the moral standards he’d originally expressed in dialogue like the one in MANHATTAN. 

In 1989's CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS, the “hero” has his young mistress killed; it’s a crime he unable to bring himself to do by himself, and it is a crime he gets away with.  But the immorality of his actions and the fact that he is not punished for them changes him:  his belief in God is shaken; his understanding of the meaning of life is lost; and he is distraught, worried, distant, and filled with guilt and despair.

By the time we get to 2005's MATCH POINT, the “hero” is not only perfectly capable of killing his mistress by himself, but thinks nothing of killing her innocent next door neighbor so that the killings will seem the result of random robberies.  And after a short bout of sleeplessness and worry that he'll be caught, he becomes perfectly happy to have gotten away with it; perfectly happy to enjoy the good life he gained through murder; perfectly happy to move ahead and not give his heinous actions a second thought.

Why hadn’t we noticed this tendency of Allen’s?  Perhaps because it did not neatly fit our image of him; perhaps because this is not funny stuff….and we expect funniness from this "master" of film.  And the documentarians excuse him by never giving any of this more than a passing glance – even expressing admiration of him for being able to “compartmentalize” so well….

It’s hard to know how and if a writer’s life informs his work; it’s hard to know whether or not we do a disservice to the work by delving into the life. 

So:  Do we really know anything much about William Shakespeare?  And does it matter?

What do you think?

Public Libraries

There seems to be so much interest in terms of books as “objects” that one can practically have a blog devoted to that subject alone!  I have received heaps of email on the subject.  (Strictly speaking, email doesn’t really come in “heaps” – but it really felt like it!)  It’s quite an interesting subject, to be sure, and I will revisit it from time to time.

My blog post, What Makes a Good Personal Library, prompted a wide range of opinions, from “how fabulous to have a personal library,” to “how pretentious,” to “save trees by reading eBooks,” and everything you can imagine in between.

But there’s something about walking into a room full of books – whether it’s a library or a bookstore or a friend’s living room – that feels wonderful:  the scent; the muffled silence (as many sounds are absorbed into the walls of books); the colors and patterns of the book-filled shelves; the enticing anticipation created by all those beckoning spines….

While some libraries fill you with a sense of ease and comfort when you walk into them, others fill you with wonder – and awe. 

Public libraries are a luxury that all of us can enjoy.  In New England, every tiny village was built around its own library.  One might think that this creates an unnecessary redundancy, but local libraries can give you a very homey, welcoming feeling; it’s a place where you see familiar faces and know exactly where to look for the books you want.  It can be so welcoming a place that you are drawn to visit it more often than you might a larger and less intimate one.

But there are other libraries that offer a completely different experience.  When you step inside one of those, you often find that you need to pause for a moment, look around, survey the scene, and drink in the room’s  “landscape” before you venture further inside.

I recently stumbled upon a website which featured “The 35 Most Amazing Libraries in the World,” and the libraries are – amazing!  Each of the 35 libraries is photographed and described so as to explain why they were chosen.  It’s an informative list, and although I’ll be posting some photos here, I urge you to visit the site and look at them all.

I have been fortunate enough to have been in some of these libraries – Trinity College Library in Dublin, the Bodleian in Oxford, the British Museum Reading Room in London, the Vatican Library, the New York Public Library, Yale’s Beinecke Library, the Boston Public Library, the Morgan Library in New York, the Peabody Library in Baltimore, Phillips Exeter Academy Library in New Hampshire, the Library of Congress – and I can say that every time, my experiences exceeded my expectations. 

No matter how august the setting, how precious the books, how steeped with history the building, you can always find a friendly-faced librarian who is eager to show you around, to share the library’s treasures with you.  (And what treasures there are!)  Book lovers seem to love book lovers, wherever they appear. 

In a few of these libraries, I was given special, behind-the-scenes tours, and while that was, indeed, exciting, it’s the reading rooms – the rooms everyone has access to! – that gave me the most pleasure.  You can view and even touch unimaginable treasures in these repositories of civilization and history; you can do research; you can even read!  (I have to admit, though, that just looking and wandering around is what I most enjoy.)

When in such libraries, I feel much as my children did when they looked at our [temporarily owned] copies of the 2nd and 4th Shakespeare Folios; I feel the magic, the wonder, the awe.  I tread softly and touch slowly, carefully.  And I feel lucky.

Here are photos of some of the libraries featured on that website which I found particularly interesting.

The Stockholm Public Library was built in 1928, and I’m surprised at how modern it looks.  I love the way the visitor is surrounded by books, and that the books on the balconies are also open to view and are accessed by an open staircase.  Such balconies remind me of one of my “dream” libraries:  the one belonging to Henry Higgins in MY FAIR LADY!

Stockholm Public Library

Jose Vaconcelos Library

How’s the Jose Vaconcelos Library in Mexico City for modern?  While this  architecture can be considered impressive, I prefer the books to take center stage rather than the architecture.  Here the books don't beckon to me adequately, but perhaps it feels different when you're actually inside the building.



 The Library of Alexandria, Egypt, is another modern space.  If you’re wondering where the books are, at the moment there are only 500,000 books in a space that is meant to hold over 8,000,000!  

Library of Alexandria

It is hoped that this library will recreate the library that was known as the “greatest library in antiquity” before it was destroyed.

Phillips Exeter Library

Famed architect Louis Kahn designed the modern Phillips Exeter Academy Library.  The building won many architectural awards, and it was even used as a  commemorative postage stamp!  While this photograph emphasizes the architecture and looks rather cold, this is one of the libraries I visited, so I can tell you that it doesn’t feel that way when you’re inside.  There are many intimate spaces in which  small groups can gather, the collection is notable, and the books are very accessible.  

When I worked as a reference librarian and book purchaser for the  Howard County Library in Maryland, we got all of our inter-library loans from the George Peabody Library in Baltimore.  Howard County is midway between Baltimore and Washington D.C., and Columbia, a modern, “planned” city – the first of its kind in the U.S. – was built there.  With all the competitive people working in that cosmopolitan government and business corridor, it's easy to forget that Maryland is a Southern state and fought for the Confederacy during 

The Peabody Library

the Civil War; but when you step into the Peabody, you're quickly reminded:  those ornate iron railings on the balconies almost shout "New Orleans and the South!  It's a wonderful library.

The Trinity College Library Long Room has become something of a tourist attraction.  Those roped-off bays are a bit off-putting, but if you really want to do research, you can arrange an appointment and work there.  I love libraries that have such open “bays.”

The Long Room at Trinity College Library

The Morgan Library

The Morgan Library is also a museum, and the book shelves are gated so that you can’t really get at them but can only look at them as a kind of permanent exhibit. But the rooms are magnificent and the exhibits are always worth seeing.  Here, too, you can ask for permission to actually use the books.



The Chateau de Chantilly Library: what can I possibly say other than "WOW!"

Abbey Library of Saint Gall

I’ve never been to the Abbey Library of Saint Gall, but one 
of my favorite books is the exquisite 3 volume monograph of 
THE PLAN OF ST GALL published by the University of 
California Press in1979.  The original plan was drawn on vellum between the years 820 and 830 CE - and survived!  Astonishing that the public is welcome to use this library!

The New York Public Library

Sometimes I feel as though I spent a third of my life at the New York Public Library.  I lived and went to school in New York, and this was my library of choice.  It was a great and inspiring place to study - and a wonderful place to meet people, too!

The Boston Public Library was the first public library in the U.S. and is my current library of choice.  You can see from this photo what I mean when I say that some libraries are hushed, dreamy, and magical….

Boston Public Library

Beinecke Library

In addition to being beautiful and having an amazing collection of rare books and manuscripts, Yale’s Beinecke Library is also extremely high-tech. That central air-tight column of glass which houses and preserves the most rare of the books is a modern marvel; it’s even been featured in novels and film as the place where the good-guy gets locked into and must find his way out before he stops breathing – or where the bad guy finally stops breathing!

Reading Room at the British Museum

The relatively new Reading Room at the British Museum does not have the charm of its predecessor, but it has an impressive collection of books; and I love that such a wonderful museum has a library as its centerpiece.

 

For me, Oxford University’s Bodleian Library is the very definition of what a library should be.  One of the oldest libraries in Europe, it has everything:  impressive history, important works, and great beauty – inside and out.  It consists of several buildings, with the Radcliffe Camera Science Library the most beautiful among them.  I love this building so much that I actually bought a paper construction kit of it and made myself a small replica that now sits on my desk.  I love to look at it.

Radcliffe Camera of the Bodleian Library

The Library of Congress really does have everything:  it is the largest library in the world, “as measured by shelf space and number of volumes.”  And just think:  it belongs to us!  

Library of Congress

Wouldn’t it be great to travel to all the great public libraries in the world?  And in each of those libraries, you’d probably find a fellow book-lover eager to show you around….

But in the meantime: visit, support and enjoy your local libraries!

Guest Post: Reading "Rules"

Everywhere one looks, it seems that bookstores are closing or becoming cafés, or that they are selling things other than books:  book things, but not books themselves.    There is a constant lament from booksellers, publishers, writers and the media about the death of the book, the end of reading.  These lamenters tell us we prefer video and film and interactive games and books on tape to actually reading silently to ourselves.

Most recently, this sentiment was expressed on the cover of the NEW YORKER – one of several they’ve published in recent years heralding the end of book selling, book reading, and book buying as we know it.  (Not funny!)
 

But if you were to spend a little time “surfing” the web, you would be forgiven for thinking that the naysayers are not paying sufficient attention.  There are thousands of books sites on the web.  Practically anyone who reads puts up a blog about their book likes and dislikes; there are book review sites in which books are reviewed by committee; there are book discussion sites; book club sites; book seller sites; book author sites; “modern” book sites; “classic” book sites; science-fiction book sites; mystery book sites; chick-lit book sites; book-a-day sites; library sites; and even book sites which review other book sites!

It is daunting.

I said in my very first post, What I'm Planning More or Less..., that I am a very slow reader, and that I couldn’t possibly read all that there is to read, let alone all that I want to read!  Even dipping into these book sites takes more time than I can comfortably manage!

But help has come my way….

Since 1985, Judy Pollock – a close friend of mine for more years than I care to mention! – has been president of Language at Work,  a communication skills training company.  Judy has been a reading teacher, a professional actor, and a public speaker; and she has designed many courses that help others communicate more easily and confidently.  Her clients range from private individuals to businesses and government agencies.

But Judy has had a “hands-off” policy when it came to her friends, and it is only since I began this blog and have been whining to her about my slow reading that she has finally come to my rescue.  While I can’t say that I am now a speed-reader, I can say that I read much faster than I did only a few months ago.

I am posting here one of the things she sent me that I found helpful; I hope it helps those other slow readers out there, as well as those who want to supplement their reading skills.  If you have questions about her post or other communication concerns, you can email Judy directly; or check out her web blog to see what else she has to offer.

Happy reading!

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Reading “Rules”

Reading is wonderful, but not for everyone. What I frequently hear is, “How I can get through all the things there are to read?  I’m such a slow reader.”  Or worse: “I don’t have time to read fiction.” 

Slow readers can learn to read faster, and all readers can improve their skills. Contrary to what we’d like to think, efficient reading requires some work, and most of the strategies are appropriate for non-fiction.  But, if you can step up your non-fiction speed, you’ll have more time for luxuriating in your fiction!

Here are some things to try:

1.  Silence the voice that says you have to finish reading anything you start.  I give books 100 pages to convince me.  If you’re slogging through books you don’t like, no wonder you don’t have time to read anything else.  And how can you be excited about starting a new book if it means a mandatory sentence of 300+ pages! 

2.  Don’t think you have to read every article in the magazine.   Look for articles that you might want to read.  Tear them out; throw the rest of the magazine away.

3.  Don’t read every article in the same way.  Some will yield their treasures to you with a quick skim.

4.  Identify your reading places: watching TV, in bed, by the phone, in the kitchen.  Here is where you should stash potential reading material. 

Match the material to the place: some things you will skim quickly; some you want to read carefully; some you just need to review; some you want to curl up and read for enjoyment; some you have to work at.  

Now you have a stack of quickies by the phone to whip through while you’re on hold.  You have magazines for previewing in your TV watching chair. Your current book is by your bed, and the latest gobbledy-gook about your health insurance is on your desk where you will presumably be clear-headed and sitting up straight.

5. Preview everything you can.  Look at the title, subheadings, captions, side-bars, table of contents, index.  Many of us begin reading by starting at the first word and plodding along until we either forget what we’re reading or get to the end.  If you take the time to preview your document, you will actually SAVE time because: 

You may decide not to read it; 

If you do decide to read it, the previewing will make the reading easier, and your comprehension and retention will be greater.

6.  Try skimming as an alternative to a thorough reading:

Read the first few paragraphs.  Often the first paragraph or two will contain a little story meant to whet your appetite; skip quickly through the little story.

Read the last few paragraphs if they’re short; just the last one, if not.

Read the first sentence of each paragraph. And maybe the last sentence.

While your eyes are skimming down the page, be alert to any Stand Out words.  These are words that relate to the subject.  They can give you clues about the general idea, or even specifics.

 7.  While you’re reading, pay attention to the structure.   To untangle long sentences, look for Agent, Action, and, if offered, Object.  Who did what to what?  Try this sentence:

The tired farmer, although a mainstay of the economy, a model of persistence and tenacity, and a symbol of hope to those who espouse a simpler lifestyle, today, in spite of his dogged efforts, faces some difficult choices.

Many a valiant reader would be tired herself about halfway through this thicket.  If you see a hard road ahead, latch onto the agent. In this sentence that would be the farmer.  Now skim across the word weeds until you spot a nice action for him:  Aha! “faces”….and, helpfully right next to it, the object. 

This seeking of the Agent, Action, Object activity will help power you through long passages, and if you feel later that you missed something, it won’t be hard to go back and find the missing pieces.

8.  Look for key words that direct the traffic for you.  Read along in whatever direction you and the writer are going, but look out for signal changes. Words such as but, however, finally, therefore, also, indicate a change in direction.  When you get better at this, you can mutter little summaries to yourself as you go – great for comprehension and retention.

9.  The speed-obsessed usually want to know how they can increase reading time.  One drill is to practice on easy material, reading at your normal pace for 2-3 minutes, then at a reallyfastpace for 2-3 minutes.  Repeat for a while. Eventually your reallyfastpace becomes your normal pace.

10.  Finally, when you finish reading, recite a review of what you read.  The first few times you try this you might be horrified to realize that you are not able to summarize your reading, or even – gasp! – to say what the main idea was.  Carry on.  With practice, you’ll get better.  With more practice, this will become automatic (well, easier).  And – not surprisingly, your comprehension and retention will improve because you’ll be in the habit of reading for that little test.

Above all, reading should be fun.  If you employ improvement strategies in your non-fiction reading, you should be able to gain some fiction-reading time.  

And that rules!

What Makes a Good Personal Library?

It’s quite difficult to answer the question of what makes a good personal library. 

For some, it’s a collection of books on one subject of special interest to the owner:  Golf, Dance, Art, Science, Fiction.

For others, it’s one made up of rare books, coveted books, valuable books.

For still others it’s fine and beautiful bindings, regardless of the subject.

For me, it’s anything I’ve enjoyed reading and hope to dip back into again.

And other than books, what else makes a personal library?  Furniture, bookends, artwork, beautiful or interesting objects that are meaningful to the library’s owner.

My personal libraries – and I have two – are primarily made up of some of the duplicates from my bookstore, and of books that I love – important or not; and it encompasses a wide range of subjects. 

I have separate copies of some of the same books in my two libraries, as I can’t bear to be apart from them when I’m in my other home.  I don’t necessarily need to re-read all of these books, but just passing by and seeing them on my bookshelves gives me pleasure; and sometimes, a flash back to a memory from my past.

One such is a book from my childhood which disappeared but which I recently managed to find in a dusty old bookshop.  It cost pennies when I was a child, but it cost me a great deal to purchase it today.  And in re-reading it now, I can see why my mother chose to buy it for me when I was a young girl.

BEHOLD, YOUR QUEEN is the [quite embroidered] story of the Biblical Queen Esther. It's a “fairy tale” romance that little girls can love, and which makes Cinderella pale by comparison.  But Esther is not just depicted here as the penniless, beautiful maiden carried away by the handsome prince; she’s depicted as something of an “action figure," a powerful person in her own right, and one who never lets fear stand in her way as she almost single-handedly saves her people. 

(Perhaps Esther is the precursor to STAR WARS’ Princess Leah?  Or the inspiration for her?  If so, then creator George Lucas certainly knew this story well!)

Another pleasure of mine is enjoying so-called “quality” paperbacks.  (I presume they mean good quality…?)   They are larger than the paperbacks you find at the drugstore, (often equivalent in size to the hard cover) and are made of better paper - strongly glued and sometimes even sewn - and with clear, attractive type.  I have lots of these.  Even when I own the hardcover, I sometimes have one of these paperbacks along side it.  Why?  I don’t know why;  I just like them! 

Mine are very eclectic libraries, indeed!

But as I keep saying, books alone don’t make the library.  It’s also the artwork and the bookcases, and the rugs, and the furniture, and the like. 

I’ve moved a lot, and I’ve carried my books with me from place to place, from state to state, from house to house.  Depending on the other features of my library, the same books have a different feeling of importance or playfulness or both.

Here are some photos of a few of the libraries I’ve had through the years, including ones from the previous carnation of my store.  If you look carefully, you’ll see that many of the books, furniture and objects are the same, but the “feel” is totally different from library to library:  “serious,” relaxed, ornate, modern.

I design libraries for people, and I love to play with the settings.  Buying the necessary, the wanted books is easy; making the space one in which the owner would be happy to spend time – one which represents the “who” that the owner is or would like to be – is more challenging.   And more fun. 

Here is a link to an article in the FINANCIAL TIMES that shows the libraries belonging to several authors:  not just the books, but the book cases and other appurtenances in their libraries.  Without reading a word written by any of these authors, you might decide which of them writes books you might want to read, and which of them does not.  You might be wrong, but it’s not a bad place to begin, as a personal library can reveal one's soul.  

What kind of library do you have? 

What kind of library do you want?

More on Books as Objects

I’m delighted by the reception of my last Blog post, “Some Thoughts about Books as Objects.”  And surprised. 

Bookstores are closing wherever we look, yet there are book sites galore online; book clubs are flourishing, and people apparently still have strong opinions about books and how to treat them.

This post got the attention of many online book sites (two of which I am now enjoying regularly and will tell you about).  The one called Shelf Awareness has two newsletters, one for readers and one for people in the book trade.  On November 2nd, they had an excerpt of my post in their “Quotation of the Day” section.  Not surprisingly, the excerpt they used was of the very few things I said which referred to new books as objects.

Another enjoyable site but one which is not exclusively about new books, Beattie’s Book Blog, the “unofficial homepage of the New Zealand book community” (which I enjoy because many of the books they discuss are not available in the USA) also excerpted my post, but here, the interest seemed to be more about the difference in “feel” between a real book and an eBook.

And my guest blogger, Pamela Grath, referred to my post in her blog, Books in Northport, adding to the conversation there, as follows:

“My friend Helen at the books, books, books blog wrote recently about books as objects, her point being that there is more to a book than text. I’m sure Helen would not disagree that for those of us who love books, many various aspects—physical, literary, aesthetic and incidental—go into the object we love, and I bring this up because Helen originally wrote of old books, and then she and I and other readers subsequently made the segue, in the comments section following her post, into a discussion of new books as objects and what various people still find valuable in bound, printed volumes."

Later, she made a post of her own called “More on Books as Objects – and One Important Book on the Subject” that I think you will enjoy reading.

On the whole, the people who wrote to me were very positive about the future of books as “objects” in addition to their importance in providing information and pleasure. 

You can read the comments at the end of my post to see some animated and thoughtful opinions about the value of “real” books.  One of the people who commented is someone who publishes books “in all forms – electronic and paper,” but nevertheless, says that she always publishes “limited handbound copies of all [our] books, because books are magical….”

But not everyone agrees.  One person wrote to protest that the printing of books causes the killing of trees, while eBooks help save them.  That’s an interesting point – and would have been posted, had not the sentiment been expressed in some very unsavory language! – and is, perhaps, a topic that can start an entirely new discussion among readers.

The care and treatment of books is another aspect that stimulated a great deal of conversation. Opinions ranged from the extreme of thinking that books should remain pristine and not be marked in any way, to the other extreme of thinking that every inch of a book should be annotated. 

I’m a proponent of the latter: I believe that annotating a book – making it “yours” – is a gift both to yourself and to the book.  I believe that it enriches the reading experience even for those who come to read the book after you.  I know that notations in used books have called my attention to aspects of that book which I might otherwise not have noticed; have given me new insights, shown me other possible interpretations. 

Of course, collectible books of great monetary value are a different matter entirely.  With these, annotating-readers like me have a “hands-off” policy when it comes to annotating or even signing or pasting in a bookplate.  Here, you want marks only by people who have some collectible “value” of their own:  the author, an “important” previous owner, a Melville or other credible person whose opinion illuminates the work in new ways, and the like.   

Imagine if there were such a thing as Shakespeare’s annotated copy of Chaucer – or of Petrarch, from whom Shakespeare took many of his tales.  I would definitely not put my mark on a book like that!

So the questions:



Printed books versus Electronic books;
Writing in books or leaving the pages pristine;

What do you think?

Books?