So Many Books
I reblogged a post this morning discussing books, the acquisition of books, and when a person could possibly have too many, (*gasp*) yes, too many books. This got me to thinking, yet again, about my own collection – ahem – addiction.
You see, Spring is just around the corner. My husband just cleaned out our master bedroom closet the other day and I donated a trash bag of clothes to Goodwill. Nooks and crannies will be conquered. The stuff that has piled up throughout Winter will be organized. Although I clean the house every day, this is when the true disinfecting from top to bottom occurs.
And the biggest mess of my house is the part of me that I love to love the most…
Yes, those are piles on the floor.
Yes, those are paperbacks stashed in the window sill. (And an empty fish tank.)
You don’t want to see inside those cupboards… so many paperbacks.
Guardian of the Library
I don’t remember what the top of that end table looks like… and that basket underneath is filled with picture books.
That completes The Library. One day, the dream is for that room to be all built in bookcases. When that magical day comes, I’ll actually have lots of empty space on the shelves and nothing piled anywhere. I’ve done the math. Therein lies the dilemma when it comes to purging. Purge too soon and my shelves won’t be full. Too late and I could be on the next episode of hoarders.
Wait, but there’s more…
This is the “school closet.”
Kiddo’s shelf, comprised mostly of the books from my childhood.
Kiddo’s actual shelf – you know, the books she picked out. (And a few given to me at the baby shower many moons ago.)
The last one… I promise.
This is why, other than review copies, my goal for the last few years is to make sure I read more of what is already in my personal inventory… and attempt to avoid new purchases like the plague. I was largely successful in this venture in 2013 – here’s to continuing the plan in 2014. I will not allow myself to spend more than $100 on books this year, and I must give away more than I bring in. That is the goal.
What about you? Are you a book collector? A digital collector or physical copies? What is your vice and addiction? How do you decide what to keep and what to toss?
And lastly – am I a pack rat?
Bug Days
Homeschooling and reading go hand in hand. I don’t know how people who claim to not be readers attempt homeschooling. I don’t know how people can attempt to live life not being readers actually.
That being said, I read maybe a little *too* much in the grand scheme of things. And I’ll find any connections between something I can do while going over something my preschooler can do.
Like bugs and a Brian Kiteley novel.
So while I’m reading, “These beetles secrete a chemical, cantharidin, which blisters most skin.”
Kiddo is doing this:
When I read, “The beetles I caught today had lost their way. Several hundred Cow Dung Beetles in flight. Miles and miles of food, but not the sort they can digest.”
Kiddo has this action going:
Still Life With Insects isn’t as much about bugs as it might seem, but at least when Kiddo looks up from her bug studies, there’s an apparent theme in the house while I devour more literature.
Little Tiny Novels
Title: The Newton Letter
Author: John Banville
Publisher: David R. Godine
Genre: Fiction
Length: 81 pages
After publishing my novella (roughly 130 pages long), my editor and I decided to make the sequel to my novella much longer. The publisher wants a full length novel, but in our attempt for length we started to believe that length would equate higher quality.
Reading through drafts we found that for the sake of propelling the story and actually achieving the higher quality work we were looking for, large chunks of filler might have to be scrapped. So I set out to read some great short work, to make myself feel better about not being Kate Morton. And though I am no where near ever going to have the talent of John Banville, Panlo De Santis, John Steinbeck, or William Kennedy, there’s something to be said about reading these and knowing that a finished product is all about quality over quantity.
“When your story is ready for rewrite, cut it to the bone. Get rid of every ounce of excess fat. This is going to hurt; revising a story down to the bare essentials is always a little like murdering children, but it must be done.” – Stephen King, “The Horror Writer Market and the Ten Bears,” November 1973 WD
John Banville makes me crazy jealous. I want his brain in my brain ever so briefly… just long enough to write something amazing. Because everything he touches is amazing. Even just an 80 page bit of story written before I was born reads like his full length prize winners.
The lesson in this for me (because almost every book I read teaches me something) is that while doing these edits for the second edition of my novella, I also need to edit in some breaks between paragraphs. Visually there are some things that don’t flow. I can thank my first edition readers for pointing this out. Even if I pout a little bit, I am so grateful for all the criticism on my first work. I’m pouting that I wasn’t more diligent about catching these things before you read it, not that you caught these things. Anything any reader of mine tells me is something I truly do ponder in great detail.
“The worst advice? ‘Don’t listen to the critics.’ I think that you really ought to listen to the critics, because sometimes they’re telling you something is broken that you can fix.” – Stephen King
I want even my first work to be better. I want my second work to be even better than the first. Whether I achieve the length of a traditional novel or not, I hope the second book achieves the complete story arch of a traditional novel. Hopefully, one day, when I’m old and gray, I can write something I’m happy with. It won’t be John Banville, because I’m not him, but in the meantime I can adore him a lot and work a lot harder.
Like Calligraphy
Title: Voltaire’s Calligrapher
Author: Pablo De Santis
Publisher: Harper
Genre: Fiction
Length: 149 pages
You know it’s been a rough week when you’ve managed to 1. worry your best friends 2. drive your husband batty 3. inadvertently offend your readers 4. write not one, but two overly pouty blog posts and 5. manage to take a whole week to read 149 pages.
Especially when those 149 pages are so delicious.
Not just delicious, witty and divine.
De Santis doesn’t just write about calligraphy and a master calligrapher. He manages to make his words sound like calligraphy. And his story is woven with the same sly craftiness as runaway ink.
Normally, I would recommend someone read this in one sitting over a cup of the best dark coffee blend they have. I didn’t do that. I spent a week sucking down a chapter at a time – and his chapters are only a page to three at best.
There are castles and print shops, automatons, and poisonous fish… dark corners and forbidden candlelight… Oh my! What terrifying fun! You won’t regret diving into the adventure.
Elements of Safety and Coziness
I am trying to be more conscientious of italicizing titles. I pretty much never do it, even though I know it is grammatically incorrect not to do so. It’s just a little button, so why am I so lazy? Who knows, but it seems as of late I’ve been accused of all kinds of laziness, and I do not want my writing to be one of those things.
Unrelated, (but also an exercise of habitually italicizing titles I share) I want to catalog cozy lines… my favorite bits of words and phrases and sentences and paragraphs that come to me in books that relate how I want to feel about the world. Things like this:
“It was one of those moments when you know the world is as it should be, believe everything is good, and trust you will always be safe.” – from Voltaire’s Calligrapher, pg. 86
And of course John Banville’s The Sea, which I have mentioned before:
“Life, authentic life, is supposed to be all struggle, unflagging action and affirmation, the will butting its blunt head against the world’s wall, suchlike, but when I look back I see that the greater part of my energies was always given over to the simple search for shelter, for comfort, for, yes, I admit it, for cosiness.” – pg. 44
This line of thinking actually began as I was reading Pablo de Santis’ Voltaire’s Calligrapher, and while prepping to write a review I came across the above mentioned quote. Add to the fact that I’ve had Lana Del Rey’s “Born to Die” playing on repeat half the morning while I read and clean the house, and, well, it’s just one of those days.
It’s too cold outside. It’s too cold outside and it’s not warm enough inside to make up for it.
I was reading through the reviews of my novella as I prep a second edition to release roughly around the same time as the sequel and there’s mention of the story being too easy. The characters have too much ease in erecting the Bookshop, they don’t encounter any dilemmas or properly struggle as you would in real life. I agree. As a storyteller I failed in that regard. Wondering how I could have done such a thing without a second thought, I realized – this isn’t the book I intended to write. I’ve been working on a sci-fi piece for years, but necessity required I scoop something together and try to make a buck. I wanted it to be easy. I needed it to be easy. Life has been too damn hard the last few years and I needed something simple to bury myself. Perhaps I shortchanged my readers, something I hope to remedy with a second edition and a sequel, but honestly, it was exactly what I needed. Minus the loads of money it’s NOT making. Seriously, if you want to feed my family for a whole day, buy my book
The problem is, I don’t think half as many people read these posts as pretend to. If everyone purchased my book that followed this blog, I’d be able to pay all my bills for a month. It’s a dream. Things being easy is a dream. I suppose that’s why I wrote my novella the way I did. I just wanted to live in a dream for 130 pages. The one liners weren’t doing it for me that month.
And as I say every morning when I wake up, “I’ll do better next time.”
So I’m here summoning all my best to offer you guys for book two. I’m here writing all over my novella, trying to edit out all the typos the editors missed. I’m here wanting things to be cozy and warm – desperately missing the sunshine and every cozy moment I’ve ever had with anyone ever. Because the world is not safe. Things are not cozy. Bills don’t get paid on time, foraging is just as much a necessity as a neat thing to teach my kid, and every day and every moment is a struggle to continue to exist.
A Tidbit from Miss Golightly
A Thoreau quote is a good way to start a novel. Also, sometimes it’s good to choose a book based on its cover, and it’s nearly always good to have coffee and chocolate while reading. (at Cultivar Coffee & Tea Co.)
– Miss Golightly
I will be joining Miss Golightly in reading this book this week. You can join us too and discuss later! – Anakalian Whims
Poetry and Paint
Title:The Road Not Taken and Other Poems
Author: Robert Frost
Publisher: Dover Thrift Edition
Genre: Poetry
I have a hard time reading poetry silently. When I’m reading it in my mind, my eyes tend to skip over the words like stones on water.
But aloud – that’s a different story.
Nothing calms us faster in my house (the kiddo and I) than poetry, painting, and a little Alt-J in the background. I don’t know how I survived sadness and melancholy before Alt-J was a part of my world.
The latest masterpiece – age 3.
This week we read through a Dover Thrift Edition of Robert Frost: The Road Not Taken and Other Poems. Like most people, kiddo will probably be far more familiar with The Road Less Taken than any of Frost’s other poetry. We don’t just read it out loud when we paint, but out on the trails in the woods too. Poetry is appropriate for painting, Frost is great while tromping on leaves. He just has a woodsy feel to him.
Starting a new piece during a poetry day.
MORNING COFFEE: FRIDAY EDITION
Photo compliments of Hannah from Coffee Scribble. (Formerly known as Musings from the TARDIS.)
Moonhorse
Weekly Low Down on Kids Books
Title: Moonhorse
Author: Mary Pope Osborne
Illustrator: S.M. Sealig
Genre: Children’s Picture Book
I saw this and couldn’t pass it up. Mary Pope Osborne invades my house again! I love her.
I enjoy her complete ability to offer facts and history and in this case astronomy in the form of fiction. To pique a child’s interest in a nonfiction topic with a bit of fantastical fairy tale.
I’m trying to get more detailed and specific when I offer these reviews of my child’s favorite books, but she doesn’t always seem to understand the questions. Or perhaps, I don’t understand the beautiful simplicity of her answers.
Me: “Did you like this book?”
Kiddo: “Yes!”
Me: “What did you like about it?”
Kiddo: “The white!”
Me: “Because the horse is white?”
Kiddo: “With the red.”
The little girl in the illustration is wearing a red dress. I think bits of the story were lost on my three year old today, she was drawing her own pictures and sucking down a cup of milk. I think ultimately, what she may have been trying to tell me, in her distracted three year old way, is that she liked the illustrations and the use of muted color. But I don’t want to put words in her mouth.
If you’re building an astronomy unit study for anyone under ten, this is a nice bedtime story to add to your week. Personally, I wish the poetry of the tale was rhymed more, but I have a natural inclination to the sing-songy way of things.
Stuck in Love
A Movie Review for the Bookish at Heart
I was watching Stuck in Love, and probably about halfway through it, when my husband walked in and said, “You enjoying your book movie?”
It took me a minute. This movie was about a man who spends three years of his life waiting for his wife to return to him – even though they are divorced and she has married someone else. This movie is about the third year and how he handles the emotional struggles of his two nearly adult children. And yes, I realized after my husband posed the question, this movie is about four writers – lots of book lovers – and has many literary references.
Greg Kinnear’s character has won two Penn Faulkner Awards. His oldest daughter is 19 and has just published her first novel through Scribner. His younger son, also having been groomed to write his whole life, is a poet and short story writer obsessed with Stephen King. Jennifer Connelly (the ex-wife) can be found reading Joan Didion in bed. Books are tossed around the set like old friends and are active characters in the movie as well, perched on shelves and end tables, strewn across laps at the beach.
I had not noticed until my husband pointed it out. I had not noticed because it was so familiar. I had not noticed because I live with these stacks of souls trapped in bindings all over my house. Sitting at the kitchen table, watching the sun come up with my coffee, I look out at my table… just here, in the kitchen of all places, I have 10 books, a journal, and a day planner, piled around me. You’d think this was a proper writing desk except for the bowl of orange slices and blueberries, my daughter’s play dough bucket, a United States place mat, and a container of markers.
Granted the houses in Stuck in Love are much nicer than my own. Slightly bigger and the bookshelves are proper built-ins made of mahogany or some-such beautiful woodwork. The end tables were no doubt not retrieved from a neighbor’s discard pile. Yes, that black stone tile end table pictured here on the right came out of the trash. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with it and I could care less that it doesn’t match anything else in my house – I shall pile books on it. (Even though I’m supposed to keep all my books in the library and not let them trickle into the rest of the house. Keeping them out of other rooms requires a lot of daily maintenance.)
The people in Stuck in Love aren’t just richer than me, they’re probably much braver than me also. The daughter actually takes creative writing classes in school – whereas I took the safe route and studied marketing. They do what they feel – which results in a lot of really bad decisions. But one thing we do have in common, which I found really refreshing in a secular story, is have a permanence view of marriage. (You don’t find a lot of anyone who shares this worldview, not even among Christians: http://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?SID=11309913170).
I found a lot of online critics who gave this movie a ‘rotten tomatoes’ rating (the soundtrack, however, gets glowing reviews from everyone). I am not with them (except for the soundtrack lovers). I found it marvelous. It’s a beautiful story about genuine people with a lot of bookish bits. I gave it 5 stars on my Netflix account. I will re-watch it. I will probably compile a list of the character’s books at some point and add them to things to move up my TBR pile (the patriarch can be seen reading Jeffrey Ford as well, but I didn’t catch the title).
Not just for the book lists, the movie is filled with little quotable quotes, little tidbits for book-nerds and writers. Maybe that’s why I like it so much. That and I love that the dad teaches his kids to journal, that he allows them the privacy to write. I love that writing and reading are treated as means to live by, ways to learn, and how to pinpoint your emotions about your reality.
Something so obvious, that I didn’t catch at first glance and my husband did at a brief glimpse, this is a movie for book people.
Anakalian Whims 