Lori’s Book Nook

It’s hard to believe, but yes, there are books I don’t want. True crime, boat repair, anything by Ann Coulter…

Here’s a list of the World’s Oddest Book Titles. Most of them I don’t want, but some would be interesting conversation pieces:

HISTORY: Learn about events that have shaped our world.
The Social History of the Machine Gun; 1975
Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun; 1995.
1587. A Year of No Importance; n.d.
Highlights in the History of Concrete; 1998

I like history, but I think I’ll pass on these.

…of having books I haven’t gotten around to reading yet. And books that I have no plan to read, because it’s a reference text, or a copy of a book I’ve already read, but wanted to own it. And books that I’ve started, but not finished, for whatever reason.

Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being is one of those books that I never got around to reading. It’s on my shelf — I think. It may not have survived my ruthless culling** before I packed books for the move.

But I don’t have to worry about it, I found it online, in its entirety.

Very cool.

**By ‘ruthless culling’, I mean I sold 1 large box, but still packed 35. Trust me, that’s ruthless.

Here, and at my more general, more absurd blog, I’m updating my links to include David’s Very Short Novels, Azahar’s Casa Az, and Archies’ Archive.

It’s about time, since I visit rather regularly, and they seem to visit me.

Enjoy their sites, if you haven’t gone already.

What is the quote I’m looking for? I’m looking for the one about the definition of knowledge is knowing where to find the information you need.

Just this morning, I bookmarked the International Music Score Library Project. Why? I’m not a musician, nor a musicologist, nor… I’m just fascinated that if I wanted a classical score, it’s available.

I also bookmarked Luminarium, an anthology of English literature, from Medieval times to the 18th Century. Again, why? It’s not like I’m ever going to read all of them (or any, even!).

My enormous bookmark list is a testament to my desire to be able to access the information I need, when I need it. [For those with the same mania, you might want to add Refdesk.com to your bookmarks, if you haven't already. Good for the mundane stuff of life, like currency exchange, etc.]

My husband asked me the other day, “How far are you into your 5-foot shelf?” I didn’t answer, because he wouldn’t understand. I’m glad I have them, because who knows when I’ll feel the urge to browse through Darwin or Plutarch, or pick up Cervantes (I think I have that one)…Okay, I’ll admit, I’m reading the Dante right now (For those of you who are interested in reading Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, I found a brilliant website completely devoted to it — the Princeton Dante Project.) — at least it’s sharing space on my bedside table with a couple others, and gets picked up every 3rd night or so.

Deep down, this is my need to own books. It’s not a competition thing (”The person with the most books wins!”), it’s not a possession thing — it’s a stored knowledge thing. I like being able to refer to a book in my library for (almost any) answers.

I’m assuming I’m not alone in this?

Did you know that we (not le gorille) are the chimp’s closest cousin on the hominid family tree? It’s a fascinating idea…and one of the questions that Jared Diamond’s The Third Chimpanzee is based on: If we are so similar, DNA-wise, what constituted the changes that created us — innovative, artistic, destructive humans?

So far it’s fascinating, somewhat eye-opening, and worth reading. And worth discussing — it’s the latest book for the BookTalk.org crew. We’re getting into it, and while still early in the quarter, some insightful comments have already been made (unfortunately, not necessarily by me!).

Read along with us!

We all need some mental relaxation periodically. I’ll often pick up a book I’ve read a thousand times, open it to the middle, and just ‘continue’ reading…calms me right down.

Yesterday, I picked up a bit of chick lit that had been sent my way (by BzzAgent actually — I participated in a preview of some upcoming books from Penguin, and they sent me one of the books…unfortunately, not the one I would have chosen), Your Big Break by Johanna Edwards. (A cute little story about a woman who works for a company that can be hired to break up with your boy/girlfriend for you, quit your job…)

It was morning, I was lying abed (again) with a cup of coffee, brought to me by my man, and I picked up this book. Its 308 pages were done by about 9:30 a.m. Maybe three hours (2 pee breaks, 1 break to get more coffee, and one to pour a bowl of cereal, which I brought back to bed of course!) to read through a $20 book.

No wonder I prefer 1) secondhand books, 2) meatier books. More value per word.

Am I alone in this? Does meatiness level contribute to your book buying? What are your criteria for buying a new (ie. not secondhand) book?

Two pieces of library news (well, one piece of not-news) came my way this morning, so I thought I’d share them with you.

First off, the news that a  man returned a book to the library after 47 years and paid his $171 in fines. Wow.

Secondly, via Nag’s book blog, is a story about librarians’ job to remove books from circulation…and how they’re using computer programs to weed out books not taken out in 24 months or more: Hello, Grisham — So Long, Hemingway?

This, unfortunately, is not a new story. When you stop to think about it, a librarian’s job is difficult. Librarians love books, and it is probably very distressing to delete classics to make shelf space for the latest bit of fluff.

If it makes you angry that Hemingway is making way for Grisham, then do something about it. Go to your local library today, and take out a couple of classics. Next week, borrow a couple more. If they’re circulated, they’ll stay. (The main character in the novel Bellwether by Connie Willis does this as part of her weekly errands…a great idea.)

If there’s one genre that we all feel we have a claim to, it’s travel writing. C’mon! Don’t you feel that you too could be a travel writer? It’s not that hard, is it?

Anyone can throw a 50-word review on an online travel community — I do it myself quite regularly at my new obsession, Gusto!. (If you’re so inclined, check out my profile.) But seriously — name a travel writer, who’s not one of these two big guns:
Bill Bryson

Paul Theroux

Today I want to introduce you to the man everyone should read (and aspire to write as well as), Pico Iyer.  Prolific, insightful, man-of-the-world — you get 200,000+ Google hits on the man. (Go ahead, explore. He’s been interviewed a lot, he’s written a lot, and he’s had lots written about him. And, he speaks well — went to a reading and Q&A with him once.)

I will give you a sample, and you can decide for yourself.

Years ago, my mom and I traveled to Vietnam, and stayed for a week in Hanoi, in the old part of the city. Gorgeous place, but I can’t describe it anywhere near as well as Iyer in this excerpt:

“And nighttime was the best of all in the old, and stately capital, as something ancient began to come forth from the shadows. I loved to bump along the lamplit alleyways after dark in a cyclo, a perfect pace at which to see and smell the spicy nights. In the gloom, the town was more mysterious than ever, the streets too dark even to read by, the little stalls half lit, the faces eerie in blackness. Lovers were eating ice cream by the waterside, and children traded cards of movie stars. Whole families sat at tables on the sidewalk, eating elaborate meals by the flicker of oil lamps. Couples sat cradled by their bicycles, or in the hollows of large trees. The air smelled of mint and a festival spirit. And it was easy to feel the lamps were burning inside the people too.”

[from the essay "Yesterday Once More" in the collection Falling off the Map: Some Lonely Places of the World (1993)]

Go check him out. You won’t regret it.

Just this morning, lying abed, cozy under my covers, two cats in attendance, a cup of coffee brought to me by my love, I finished reading Truly Wilde by Joan Schenkar. The scene was apt, as luxuriating in bed was one of Dolly Wilde’s greatest pleasures, as Schenkar illustrates by quoting Wilde’s letters.

But what a biography! Dolly Wilde was, by all (surviving) accounts, a very vivid woman who lived in the shadow of a truly (in)famous uncle, and died in a swirl of her own infamy. Could this woman’s life have been treated to the traditional biographical form? Being a playwright, Schenkar draws on her narrative proclivities to describe the virtually indescribable…a character who left only clues to her history, whose conversational style people remember, but not her bon mots…

Schenkar describes her version of the biographic genre:

“In finding ways to tell her story, I allowed Dolly’s own passionate interests to guide me: her feel for inventive imagery turned me to the vivid enlargements that metaphor permits; her contempt for time gave me the intense concentration that thematic — rather than chronologic — treatment enables; her unalloyed romanticism lead me to the ‘recreations’ that make up the next chapter of this book, etc., etc. From time to time, I have used different styles of writing in different settings to suggest Dolly’s own changing — and very elusive — states of being.”

And it is effective. Dolly is now haunting my thoughts. Her social circle, I see now, has reached its tendrils out to me many times, in my reading about salons, in my interest in authors of her time. Virtually everyone involved in Dolly’s life is someone who was someone, or was connected to someone. For a quick overview, look at this loving tribute site to Natalie Clifford Barney & her women-centered literary and social salon of the early 1900s.

I will leave you with Joan Schenkar’s final words of her acknowledgements:

“And I thank everyone who has ever saved a scrap of handwriting, an old love letter, or a fragment of photograph from the half-forgotten life of an unusual woman in the hope that it might be important; in the hope that she might be important.”

With that in mind, the future of biography is both more overwhelming, and bleaker, in light of the changes in technology. Passwords to blog & email accounts lost, forgotten, or not able to be found in the event of death. Hard drives erased, backups corrupted.

Or worse, having to sift through all of the random tripe we spew every day, because it is so easy, electronically.