quotable Gabrielle Zevin

We read to know we're not alone.  We read because we are alone.  We read and we are not alone.  We are not alone. (The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry)

I read The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry from start to finish this afternoon/evening. The novel is scheduled for release on 1 April 2014.  I recommend it highly.

disclosure (because we can't have an endorsement without a disclosure statement): I received a review copy of The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry from Algonquin Books via NetGalley. A review is forthcoming.

quotable Washington Irving (on his birthday)

In honor of Washington Irving's 230th birthday, a quote that I think will appeal to readers and writers alike -

If, however, I can by any lucky chance, in these days of evil, rub out one wrinkle from the brow of care, or beguile the heavy heart of one moment of sorrow; if I can now and then penetrate through the gathering film of misanthropy, prompt a benevolent view of human nature, and make my reader more in good humor with his fellow beings and himself, surely, surely, I shall not then have written entirely in vain.
                  - "Christmas Dinner," The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon¹

Irving wrote prolifically and eccentrically², and though he was one of the most famous writers of his day, he has suffered the fate of many dead-white-male authors and is now relatively unknown.³ Personally, I'm hoping that Fox's Sleepy Hollow pilot (in production right now) results in a series and that the series results in a renewed interest in Irving and his work beyond "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow."

1. Affiliate link. Also, I didn't double-check the source and am relying exclusively on the editor of The Wit and Whimsy of Washington Irving (link devoid of commission-earning potential), page 51, for source information.
2. I bet you didn't know he wrote a biography of Mohammed.
3. Except in Spain.

when you are feeling overwhelmed

A colleague shared this quote with me on a particularly trying day this week:

Take some small step today, and value each step you take. You never know which step will make a difference. This is much better than not trying to do anything.

It's from a December 10, 2012 NY Times article, "When Daily Stress Gets in the Way of Life" by Jane Brody, specifically from an interview with psychologist Tamar E. Chansky.

quotable Dr. Who

"You want weapons? We're in a library. Books! Best weapons in the world! This room's the greatest arsenal we could have. Arm yourself."
                                        - 10th Doctor, Doctor Who, "Tooth and Claw"

quotable Ursula Le Guin

I've had this quote up on my sidebar for a little while now, but since I know many people (such as myself) click through from their blog readers only irregularly, I'm sharing it in its own post. It's too good not to share. From her February 2008 Harper's Magazine article, "Staying Awake: Notes on the alleged decline of reading" -

The book itself is a curious artifact, not showy in its technology but complex and extremely efficient: a really neat little device, compact, often very pleasant to look at and handle, that can last decades, even centuries. It doesn’t have to be plugged in, activated, or performed by a machine; all it needs is light, a human eye, and a human mind. It is not one of a kind, and it is not ephemeral. It lasts. It is reliable. If a book told you something when you were fifteen, it will tell it to you again when you’re fifty, though you may understand it so differently that it seems you’re reading a whole new book.
– Ursula Le Guin

vivid figures of speech

I started listening to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea yesterday. Librivox has the F. P. Walter translation in its catalog. It's about 16 hours long.

"The philosopher Diderot has very aptly claimed that a man's bearing is the clue to his character, and this stocky little man was certainly a living proof of this claim. You could sense that his everyday conversation must have been packed with such vivid figures of speech as personification, symbolism, and misplaced modifiers. But I was never in a position to verify this because, around me, he used only an odd and utterly incomprehensible dialect" (somewhere in part I, chapter 8; emphasis mine).

Ah, I love that sentence.

why you really don't wish you were a character in a historical romance

When you read historical fiction (or some classics like Jane Austen's novels), you can't help but feel a wave of nostalgia. You imagine what your life would be like if you were born in whatever time period you happen to be reading about. During those moments you dwell on the idealized version of the past. You are always that lady of the manor rather than a housemaid or a tenant farmer. You contemplate the beautiful clothes, the refined manners, but never the logistics of really living during that time.

My mother has been reading The Women of the House by Jean Zimmerman (a book from our library, by the bye) and she just had to share the following passage with me:

[In the 1690s, no] woman, though, not even Catherine [van Cortlandt Philipse], would dream of shielding her nether regions by pulling on a pair of underpants, even when she menstruated. Women simply bled into their clothing--we're talking about roughly thirty years of monthly "accidents," except for the months a woman spent pregnant. [...] Perhaps the practice of ignoring the issue had its advantages: One historian surmised that far from finding menstrual blood a turnoff, men of the era perceived the aroma of a woman's monthly flow as intensely seductive. And that is fortunate, since bathing with soap and water still was actively frowned upon, with the inevitable gaminess ameliorated mainly by sachets sewn into clothes linings. (178)

As a nurse and proponent of personal cleanliness, this passage made her shudder. I believe the not-bathing part, but I'm skeptical about the bleeding-out. Either way, though, it served as a reminder (see post title).

being a librarian

A book is a fragile creature, it suffers the wear of time, it fears rodents, the elements and clumsy hands. So the librarian protects the books not only against mankind but also against nature and devotes his life to this war with the forces of oblivion.
- Umberto Eco¹

In my old job I was a Librarian. Yes, librarian with an capital L. I was an archivist, but I was also a Librarian (Senior Assistant Librarian for most of my tenure). Librarian is some academic libraries have faculty status so Librarian is a formal title indicating rank just like Professor. In this academic world not all librarians are Librarians and, yes, I freely admit that I occasionally caused a bit of uproar by using the term librarian (little L) unintentionally excluding people when others assumed I meant Librarian-with-a-capital-L.

While I served on library committees, worked with librarians on various projects, presented at library conferences, and occasionally prodded subject specialists to add certain titles to the circulating collections, I wasn't really a librarian. Or, at least I didn't feel like one despite by ALA-accredited degree and Nancy Pearl action figure.²

Now in this new position I really am a librarian. While I'm mostly a department head, an archivist, and a records manager, I oversee a library. There's a circulating collection and rare books and satellite libraries, oh my! And I'll be helping with many of the library functions as well as working on implementing an electronic catalog (yes, we still have a card catalog). It's quite exciting to be a librarian. In addition to learning about the collections under my care and about my new employer as a whole, I'm accustoming myself to thinking like a librarian more of the time.³

Since I'm not going to be doing book-of-the-month posts for the student services blog anymore, I thought I might occasionally feature a book from my new library's collections. These will likely be different types of books than I've usually featured on the blog since our collection doesn't include much fiction and is pretty geographically and historically specialized. It should be interesting and I think it'll help me get a better handle on the types of books we collect (our collection development policy circa 2000 is detailed, but it needs some updating).

1. The Name of the Rose (48). The quote doesn't really have anything to do with what else I wrote in the post (and is equally relevant to the archival profession), but I decided to include it anyway.
2. I have both the original and deluxe.
3. People often think that archivists view the world the same way as librarians. I'm as guilty as the rest as my simple explanation of what I do occasionally goes something like this:
   - What do you do?
   - I'm an archivist
   [silence accompanied by blank stare]
   - a special kind of librarian
   (though usually I've just said that I work in the special collections area of the library). However libraries and archives have different roles leaving librarians and archivists with very distinct points of view (some simplistic differences: secondary vs. primary sources, item- vs collection-level description, access vs. preservation). Thinking as an archivist I'm liable to want to throw out much of what I as a librarian should want to keep to ensure we have a robust collection.

this little valley: an update

"If I should wish for a retreat whither I might steal away from the world and its distractions, and dream quietly away the remnant of a troubled life, I know of none more promising than this little valley" (Washington Irving, Legend of Sleepy Hollow)

Some you know already know this and others may have speculated based on this post, but the big news is that I have a new job. I'm moving back to the area in which I grew up, the same area referenced in the Irving quote above. That (and the stress of leaving one job and starting another and weeding and packing our possessions) is why I have been neglecting the blog. I won't be fully settled until next month, but I am going to make an effort to begin blogging more regularly.

As I told my friend Nancy, the fact that I haven't been posting is really no one's loss as I've been reading a lot less than usual lately and what I have been reading is for the most part nothing to write home about.

it's not easy being green

"Unlike the dopey Oranges, who accepted their lot with self-effacing good humour, Greens never managed to rise above the feeling that no one took them seriously enough" (Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde, 4).

I was quite taken with that line when I first came across it and I meant to share this quote when I typed up my post about Shades of Grey.

My favorite color is orange, but in many ways I may be a Green (see post regarding hubris).

A side note about the color grey. Whenever I set down the word, I always have the feeling that I've spelled it incorrectly. I decided to do a little research and I found out the root of this orthographic¹ predicament. Apparently the difficulty stems from a difference in British and American usage. Both the grey and gray spellings are correct, but grey is standard for the UK and gray for the US.

1. orthography: the art of writing words with the proper letters according to standard usage (spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation).

Chicago

"She thrived immediately in the bleak, gray confines of the Hyde Park campus" (The Man on Whom Nothing was Lost, 275).

Russell's reading this book about Charles Hill and sharing bits of it with me. I just couldn't resist posting this quote. How I miss Chicago...

The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay

The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay by Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi

"He secretly regarded novels as quaint, irrelevant oddities--complex, imaginative enterprises produced by people who needed to dignify the interminability of their idleness" (283).

The protagonist of The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay, 25-year-old Karan, came to Bombay "in search of images that would reveal its most sublime, secret stories" (6). This revelation is also the aim of the novel, which follows Karan and his unexpected associates. Karan meets reclusive Samar Arora, a former child prodigy who decided to get out of the limelight while his musical career was still at his peak, on an assignment from India Chronicle. Samar introduces Karan to Zaira, a beautiful, but shy Bollywood actress famous enough to be known only by her first name. Zaira sends Karan on a question to the Chor Bazaar, where he comes across his eventual lover, Rhea Dalal, a homemaker who gave up a promising artistic career for her husband.

A writer has to be pretty gutsy to kill off one of his novel's most sympathetic characters a third of the way through it, even if his story is based on a real life murder. Honestly I wasn't sure whether the The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay would hold up once Zaira was no longer an active participant in its story. Luckily, it does. Zaira also continues to be a driving force in the novel even at the end of its story years after her death.

I was particularly taken with this passage:

Karan found that over time he had not come to forget Zaira, as conventional wisdom would have him believe; rather, he had come to remember her better. Her particulars were now sharp and resplendent, like the head of a spear. Countless details fretted in the air like disturbed mites before they slowly congealed to form something composite and solid, a thing that stood in direct, cavalier opposition to the haze of memory.
Reluctantly, sadly, he had come to accept that a human being was composed not only of everything that he possessed but also of all that he had lost. (293)

Book Doctor

Book Doctor by Esther Cohen

Arlette Rosen is the titular character of Book Doctor. As a book doctor, she is part psychologist and part editor, helping her clients put their ideas onto the page and reigning in unruly manuscripts. On the subject of fees, Arlette is quite philosophical:

My fees, first of all, are yours. I receive what you get per hour. [...] I am providing a service that is hard to evaluate financially [...] What is a novel worth? One dollar? One million dollars? Somewhere in between? What is it worth to you to write your novel? Fifty dollars? Three thousand? I'm afraid the way I resolve this question for myself and for my clients is to suggest that my work is equivalent in value to theirs. (28-29)

Peppered with often-eccentric inquiry letters from potential clients, Book Doctor chronicles Arlette's relationship with an unexpectedly enigmatic literary novitiate and how it changes her work and her life.

The novel's secondary protagonist is Harbinger Singh, a tax lawyer wants to write a book to compensate for the demise of his marriage. To his first meeting with Arlette, Harbinger wears a seasonably inappropriate wool suit (because he likes the color and how it plays off the color of his skin). While his occupation, choice of attire, and naïveté about how "simple" writing a book are strikes against him, the more time Arlette spends with Harbinger the more she sees his hidden depths and the more his unconventional modi operandi begin to effect her.

I like Book Doctor for the concept behind it and the author's writing, rather than for the story it tells. I didn't find the story particularly compelling nor the characters particularly sympathetic (to me, they were curious rather than relatable). I did, however, appreciate the composition and found myself making note of quotes that struck me forcefully. I shared one is in an earlier post. Here are a couple of others:

There was a time a while ago when I wrote letters all the time. [...] I stopped writing letters for a few reasons, I guess. I stopped being sure of what I wanted to say. Once I didn't have the easy material that being away provided, I really felt at a loss. (91-92)
~~~
I love to read. Love the endless stories. I like the hopefulness in stories, the romance and wariness and all the narrative past. What we remember, and how those memories become who we are. [...] 'There is no human being who does not carry a treasure in his soul; a moment of insight, a memory of love, a dream of excellence, a call to worship.' For me, that's what writing really is. Any writing. (62-63)

On a side note, while reading Book Doctor I found myself wondering whether (and to what extent) it might be autobiographical.

an update

I haven't been posting much lately. I've been busy and overwhelmed. I have been reading and I do have quite a few half-written posts here, there, and everywhere. I need to get back into the habit of posting regularly (even if my posts are short and imperfect) and that's my short-term goal.

To that end, I thought that I'd share a quote from Esther Cohen's The Book Doctor, which I'm reading right now:

She closed her eyes, and tried to imagine the glass contained an actual potion that could, in minutes, transform her into a chain-smoking Czechoslovakian novelist whose novels revealed a faith in love, in county, and in human kindness in the face of ever-increasing political disillusionment. Black and engaging. (127)

Love that.

hiding in the bookshelves #2

I found the following book in one of the book cases in the bedroom. (for an explanation of this hiding-in-the-bookshelves feature, see this post)

I really like Sarah Dunant. I first discovered her when I bought The Birth of Venus on a whim. I loved it and set out to pick up her other books. So far I've read In the Company of the Courtesan (another historical fiction, not as good as The Birth of Venus) and the Hannah Wolfe mysteries (Birth Marks, Fatlands, and Under My Skin).

Mapping the Edge by Sarah Dunant

People go missing every day. They walk out of their front doors and out of their lives into the silence of cold statistics. For those left behind it is the cruelest of long good-byes.
Anna, a self-sufficient and reliable single mother, packs her bags one day for a short vacation to Italy. She leaves her beloved six-year-old daughter, Lily, at home in London with good friends. But when Anna doesn't return, everyone begins to make excuses until the likelihood that she might not come back becomes chillingly clear. And the people who thought they knew Anna best realize they don't know her at all. How could she leave her daughter? Why doesn't she call? Is she enjoying a romantic tryst with a secret lover? Or has she been abducted or even killed by a disturbed stranger?
Did that person you loved so much and thought you knew so well did they simply choose to go and not come back? Or did someone do the choosing for them?
Dunant, a masterly British suspense writer, skillfully interweaves parallel narratives that are stretched taut with tension even as they raise difficult questions about motherhood, friendship, and accountability. In this compelling hybrid of sophisticated crime writing and modern women's fiction, Dunant challenges and unnerves us as she redefines the boundaries of the psychological thriller.

This one sounded intrigued so I started reading it this weekend. I have to admit that I was put off by the two possible storylines told simultaneously, but I decided to stick it out.

Here's a quote that struck me: "She had already begun to feel somewhat dissatisfied with her life, as if the inexorable march of feminism demanded that she always be better or braver than she was, not allowing her to rest or take pleasure from what had been achieved" (115).

The Poetry of Rilke

For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation.¹

The above is one of my favorite quotes. It's from Rainer Maire Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet.

I wasn't sure what book to use for the student services blog's book of the month for May, but my decision was made for me when a second review of the new Rilke collection showed up in my inbox.

The Poetry of Rilke, translated and edited by Edward Snow

One of the 20th century's most significant lyric poets, Rainer Marie Rilke was a modernist who never abandoned traditional modes. "Though Rilke was marginal in his own time, his lyrical waywardness is prized in our post-Romantic one; praised by only a small group of connoisseurs when he was writing, his poetry is now beloved" (Ange Mlinko, The Nation).

With The Poetry of Rilke Edward Snow offers a wonderfully substantive bilingual edition of Rilke's poetry to American audiences.

Snow is described by Craig Morgan Teicher (Virginia Quarterly Review) as "Rilke's best and most important ambassador to American readers." I think it quite possible, though, that Lady Gaga, with her Rilke-quote tattoo, may take over this role at least with regard to American youth.

Including more than two hundred and fifty poems, The Poetry of Rilke provides a thorough overview of the poet's oeuvre. It also contains complete translations of Sonnets to Orpheus and the Duino Elegies, Rilke's most significant work. The translations are printed side by side with the German originals for easy reference.

Regular readers of this blog will have probably surmised that I'm not a huge fan of poetry. I rarely post about it. It's not that I dislike poetry, but more that I'm not drawn to it the way I'm drawn to fiction. For me individual poems can be revelatory, but in many cases they feel like too much work.

In any case, I thought it might be nice to share one of the poems from The Poetry of Rilke. I didn't want to chose anything from the Duino Elegies or Sonnets to Orpheus, but rather a stand-alone poem.

Blue Hydrangea

These leaves are like the last green
in the paint pots—dried up, dull, and rough,
behind the flowered umbels² whose blue
is not their own, but mirrored from afar.

They reflect it tear-stained, vaguely,
as if deep down they hoped to lose it;
and as with old blue writing paper
there’s yellow in them, violet and gray;

Washed out as on a child’s pinafore,
things that are finished with, no longer worn:
the way one feels a small life’s brevity.

But suddenly emotion seems to flare
In one of the umbels, and one sees
A moving blue as it takes joy in green. (171)

I love hydrangeas (Hortensie in German, isn't that pretty?). Reading this I'm reminded of hydrangeas at the end of the summer.

1. The translation above is one I got online and tweaked a bit. "Liebhaben von Mensch zu Mensch: das is vielleicht das Schwerste, was uns aufgegeben ist, das Aeusserste, die letze Probe und Pruefung, die Arbeit, fuer die alle andere Arbeit nur Vorberietung ist" (14 May 1904 letter to Kappus).
2. umbel: a cluster of flowers with stalks of nearly equal length that spring from about the same point, like the ribs of an umbrella (umbel, umbrella: same root word)

Horseradish

Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid by Lemony Snicket

I like Lemony Snicket and his dark sense of humor (even though I will freely admit that I've only read the Series of Unfortunate Events through book four). I have to admit, however, that I was disappointed with Horseradish.

Some of the aphorisms are dead on

"Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant, filled with odd waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don't always like." (137)

and perfect articulations of things we tend not to give much thought to

"One of the world's tiresome questions is what object one would bring to a desert island, because people always answer 'a deck of cards' or 'Anna Karenina' when the obvious answer is 'a well-equipped boat and a crew to sail me off the island and back home where I can play all the card games and read all the Russian novels I want.'" (67)

Others are just kind of strange

"Having an aura of menace is like having a pet weasel, because you rarely meet someone who has one, and when you do it makes you want to hide under the coffee table." (123)

but that's to be expected of Snicket. Most, though, are forgettable, easy to just flip past, making Horseradish a very quick read.

quotable Auster

"Reading was my escape and my comfort, my consolation, my stimulant of choice: reading for the pure pleasure of it, for the beautiful stillness that surrounds you when you hear an author’s words reverberating in your head" (The Brooklyn Follies, 13).