I Am… Therefore I Read…
Someone once told me I was the “most fascinating dichotomy” he’d ever met. I remember feeling bashful by this statement, not quite understanding what that meant, but nevertheless naked. It’s been an echo in my head for nearly a decade, and I can’t even remember his name. But I have a tendency to mull over echoes and since then I think I’ve pieced together a bit of what he must have noticed.
It’s something that I will always relate back to my heart – both physically and spiritually.
Physically, I have an arrhythmia. It is something that shouldn’t affect me as much as it does except that I identify with it so completely. It doesn’t hurt anymore, but I remember the pain and panic it inflicted in my childhood. It almost always startles me, but I know how to correct it. It is the ever present reality that my heart does not beat in rhythm with anyone else’s and most likely never will. It is the feeling of constantly having to search for a rhythm so much harder than everyone else, whether that be when singing, when running, or when cycling. I do not have an internal clock. I do not keep time or pace. I have to find a pace in others and struggle to match it. This is not a complaint, this is reality. This is what it feels like to be inside my ribcage. The only person who might understand this best (although she obviously won’t remember), is my daughter. For 40 weeks she lived inside that ribcage. Her heartbeat was steady and sure, completely healthy, and mine was obviously off. It was literally breath taking – as in I had to stop to catch my breath – because my heart was off kilter and it was instinctively trrying to match her steady, beautiful rhythm.
Spiritually – To my psyche, this minor detail of my life seems to bleed into everything. I was the girl in the top choirs who could not keep time. I remember my dance partner with his hands on my hip (forceful, not sexually) helping me sway… left… right… left… right… and when I got out of sync the gentle double tap and jerk and the whisper in my ear, “Left!” I am never in tune with the people around me.
I am good at calming myself down and remaining calm when necessary, but am completely startled and thrown off by surprises. I can pass dead bodies in the street after a car accident, see a decapitation, work in a bar, and deal with psychos in downtown ghettos more easily than I can choose something to eat off a menu of a restaurant I was not expecting to visit. I can seamlessly function in chaos, but a surprise from a friend, even if pleasant, can throw my whole day. I am adventurous but rarely impromptu. I am impulsive and simultaneously reserved. I am a sanguine melancholy.
I am often the one at the funeral unable to shed tears, put in charge of something practical. Yet, I’m also the one years later still nostalgic over the deceased when everyone else seems to have ‘gotten over it.’ I am excitable, and therefore perceived as sensitive; but was rarely in relationships prior to my marriage because those romantically interested in me thought I had no heart. I run hot and cold. I either like you instantly, or dismiss you altogether.
I find myself curling up with books most often, I think, because like singing and running and cycling and Kung Fu – there is a rhythm. There is a rhythm of words, a pattern. There is a goal – to understand the author, to live the story, to learn something new, to get to your destination (the far off place in the pages of the book if it is a good one, or simply to the last page if it is a bad one). Again, as I read, I hear the echo of that long lost person… I understand characters so well, and have little understanding of people.
My father in law saw my books once and said, “So you read to escape.” I was mildly offended. No, I thought, I read to accomplish. I read to learn. I read because reading is important. But last night, I realized, in a lot of ways he is right. I read because I have control over the circumstances in which I dive into information. I read to settle my nerves. I read to avoid decisions. I read because in theory it should be easier to be let down by a character than by a person. I read because sharing the friends I meet in books is up to me, I am somewhat in control of the chaos. I read because I can take a few days to figure out what a character means before I am faced with that character again – it’s easy, leave him/her on the nightstand until I’m ready again. You can’t do that with real people. There’s no time. You have to have feelings or not have them immediately, and to master in what degree. You have to decide what everything means immediately. And you have to react accordingly.
Scarlet O’Hara doesn’t care if I think she’s a bitch. It doesn’t matter that I am in love with Captain Wentworth and Howard Roarke, and neither one is saddened, happy, or jealous. Holden Caulfield is unaffected by my disdain for him and what I say about him or to him will not cause him to stumble – or grow. And I can get to know all of them as quickly or slowly as I like. Jay Gatsby is not going anywhere, I can soak up every nuance from now until eternity and not miss a beat.
Not missing a beat is important to someone who misses them all the time.
A Two Year Old Reads The Lorax
I sat down at the breakfast table with my daughter who will be two and a half in a month. It’s St. Patty’s Day, so I thought I would read something appropriately Irish to her over breakfast. I didn’t have much follow through, though, because my daughter looked at me with those big blue eyes, batted them, and said, “Read The Lorlax, Mommy, the Lorlax.” This pronunciation is a great improvement from when she was calling him the “Workass.”
So I went and got Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax and began to read. There was an interruption regarding her cereal, another about the dog, a few more about the characters in the book. Two pages in I shoved the book at her and said, “You read it.”
And this is how my two year old read The Lorax, along with great gestures and emphatic pointing:
“Town!
Grickle-grass!
Essepting Oooooooold crows.
TED!
Find the Lorlax! The Lorlax!
Baby Lorlax!
Butterfly milk!
Truffula Trees…
and seeds!
And Seed.
Last Seed.
The End.
Ok, Green Eggs and Ham, Mommy.”
A Tidbit from Miss Golightly
Bliss for Booknerds
Photograph by JJ Golightly
This gray San Francisco morning features a cappuccino, a Spanish manchego mushroom tart w/toasted sesame seeds and chives, and Coffee with Oscar Wilde. Bliss!
— at Four Barrel Coffee.
A Tidbit from Miss Golightly
“My dog and a book are ideal company when I feel sickly.” – Jennifer Joy Golightly
So Many Books
Title: So Many Books, So Little Time
Author: Sara Nelson
Publisher: Putnam
Length: 242 pages
Ironically, when I find myself so overwhelmed by my mountainous TBR pile I become crippled and damn near illiterate, I find that the perfect cure is a book about books. More specifically, a book with lots of lists and descriptions and lengthy lamenting of how many books there are in the world that are begging my attention. So my latest reading slump (if anyone but me were keeping tabs, they’d see I only read two books – other than children’s books – in the whole of October) I picked up a copy of Sara Nelson’s quasi-memoir detailing a year in the life of a professional book reviewer.
It’s short and sweet, and has a lovely methodical layout. Each chapter is dated, and dedicated to a week of time (I am assuming, as the whole purpose of the project was to read a book a week and write a bit on her life as she read said book, but I didn’t count the chapters and they are un-numbered). It was a pleasant read, I enjoyed the simplicity and quickness of it. But it also made me think, I found myself journaling after I finished every chapter.
She has a little segment on Then & Now, discussing the great reads of her adolescence and what she thought the first time she read it versus how she feels as a grown up and I found myself solidifying my plan to have my kiddo journal and document her own reading experiences throughout childhood to remember the titles and authors as well as her true feelings on the subject matter. Of course, we’ll keep it age appropriate, at first she will only be able to summarize briefly, but then she’ll have proof of the process of change and growth as a literary being. I’ve journaled my whole life, but not always with purpose. Purpose is a delightful thing to have. The ability to later compare your thoughts and feelings about literary ventures with such clarity would be such a treasure.
The chapter reminded me of my re-reading of The Great Gatsby earlier this year, and how much I truly enjoyed it. It reminded me of a need to re-read Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, which I always hated, but feel I was just too immature and boisterous to care about a man fishing. Typically, my Then & Nows are quite vague, but with all this recent documentation of my reading life, I’ll have a better view of my lit-brain when I’m 80.
But above all, the chapter reminded me that there is value in my re-reading. Often, my TBR pile is so high, I feel guilty when compelled to read something I have already read. Should I really be doing this? I wonder. I know Persuasion nearly by heart, shouldn’t I be tackling Bauer’s Ancient History, a book I’ve been slowly pecking through, and loving it, for almost a year and a half now. Shouldn’t I be immersed in George MacDonald’s Lilith, a book I’ve had for ages, but keep only relishing in the first chapter and never moving on – over and over again? The list goes on. And yes, there is a physical list in my own writing, with not nearly enough checked off titles because I continually pick up others.
Then Sara Nelson says, “If you want to make the book god laugh, show him your reading list.” I nearly died. YES! However, every so many weeks, I find myself sitting down to write a new one anyway. I find them therapeutic, refreshing, even mysterious as I tend to write them haphazardly allowing my subconscious to take over and just see what spilled out of the ink pen next. What has been hiding in the recesses of my bookshelf that my brain remembers is calling my name? I think that’s why book lovers revel in their lifestyle so much. Whether they care a lick about the mystery genre, every book lover enjoys a good mystery.
Being a patron of libraries and used bookstores, I often find myself in the middle of a mystery. Whether it be a random scribble in the margins: Secret meeting in the place at 8, password candles, or some such nonsense, highlighting or dog-eared pages, when a book shares owners all sorts of questions arise. Most specifically, for me, I often find stashed bookmarks in the books I read. Sometimes at the start of a chapter, or in the middle of randomness where someone either wanted to savor a line or simply gave up reading the book; sometimes it’s a receipt or a thank you note, birthday cards, and even checks… things people stashed and forgot about, or possibly the item just slid into the pages when the book was stashed into a purse or bag. I often wonder which of these is the story for whatever scrap I find.
SMB,SLT had a small post-it stuck between pages 54 and 55, the beginning of February 27th, chapter: The Clean Plate Book Club. Did they run out of time and have to turn a nearly over due book back into the library? Did they give up because they hated it? Or give up out of principle, because the chapter is about seasoned readers having the power to give up on a book if they aren’t interested in it, wanting to prove something to themselves? Did they simply mark the chapter because the ideas within its pages spoke to them? We may never know. It keeps the mind reeling, though.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the idea that mature readers, seasoned readers, are the only ones who can give up on a book part way. Nelson describes it as a reader’s rite of passage.
“Allowing yourself to stop reading a book – at page 25, 50, or even less frequently, a few chapters from the end – is […] the literary equivalent of a bar mitzvah or a communion, the moment at which you look at yourself and announce: Today I am an adult. I can make my own decisions.”
Funny, I always thought of it as something slackers do in high school. Post motherhood, I thought it was something I did because I killed brain cells while being pregnant and having a baby. Quitting kills me every time, but there are times that I feel compelled to do it, mostly because I either plan to finish it when I’m in a different mood, or I discover the author is what Paul Collins would describe as someone who writes ‘unequivocal crap.’
It seems, then, I am a late bloomer in, yes, even reading. I thought at least I had escaped that title in one thing in life, having been a very early reader. But apparently not.
The most interesting chapter for me, though, where I might leave a small post-it myself, is March 15th: Eating Crows. It’s all about recommending books to friends and how it can possibly damage the friendship. What if one likes it and the other doesn’t? What does this say about each person? How does this new information you have gathered about your so-called friend change the friend dynamic.
This is where I found myself saying, ‘Oh, hell.’ I’ve been around book nerds, book people, bookstore staff, customers, friends, family, the whole shebang, and this is the first I’ve heard about this dilemma. I recommend books to people all day, every day. It’s my favorite thing to do. If I recommend a book it is because I either liked it, or I truly think you may like it. May is a big word in this sentence. If you don’t like it, that’s your own business, but I’d love to discuss why and learn more about the world around me. It isn’t going to make me not want to be friends with you, that’s just shallow and dumb… even though I may secretly think that what you read is shallow and dumb, I know that somewhere someone is thinking the same thing about what I read – so why should it matter?
The next chapter about borrowing or loaning books is also silly to me. I don’t loan it if I’m not ok with not getting it back – usually. If that’s not the case, then I’ll tell you PLEASE PLEASE GET THIS BACK TO ME one day, and that only happens with someone who has already established a good track record. If I don’t say that, you may bring it back, or just consider it a gift if you fall in love with it. I don’t care. I have plenty of books, and multiple copies of some of my favorites. A book will not ruin our friendship unless you write one about me that is awful, spilling the beans that you’ve actually hated me all these years but haven’t said so because… Then, we might have issues. That hasn’t happened to me, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it did. And no, I don’t have anyone in mind, I’m just used to being surprised by what people think of me.
All in all, Nelson you served your purpose. I have a new list of titles to tackle, nothing you mentioned in your book because we have entirely different reading tastes. That’s not true. They are similar in the way a Venn diagram is similar. Not a Venn diagram, more like if there are four quadrants of reading (I, II, III, and IV), and I & II are two different kinds of book snobs and III & IV are polar opposites of I & II who read varying kinds of ‘unequivocal crap’, we are readers I & II. Still, we may not have the same, identical tastes, and in real life you would probably never want to be my friend, but I enjoyed your book and it has made me voracious for the piles and piles on my own shelves again.
A Tidbit from Miss Golightly
Sal and I walked to Lakewood to enjoy a book and the outdoors. Every day should be as temperate as this one. – Jennifer Joy Golightly
Banned Books Week
One of my favorite novels, Mrs. Dalloway
Yet, people find the book itself and the material in it threatening. I, on the other hand, find it fascinating.
In the comments this week: share your favorite banned books with me.
Challenge this week: read a book from a banned or challenged book list.
Visit DeleteCensorship.org to view lists of banned books.
Articles about Banned Books:
NPR on Grapes of Wrath
The Lord of the Rings Controversy
A Day With a Klemm
Klemm. When I looked up the meaning of my married name, I found a definition somewhat like this one:
German: from Middle High German klem ‘narrow’, ‘tight’, ‘scarce’, hence a
nickname for a thin or inhibited person, or alternatively a topographic name for
someone living in a narrow, precipitous place, from the Middle High German noun
form klemme ‘constriction’.Read more on FamilyEducation: http://genealogy.familyeducation.com/surname-origin/klemm#ixzz26eR2FcGy
So it should come as no surprise that we have some very interesting daily habits that coincide with being a small, introverted, hobbit-like soul, that does not emerge from the house for days at a time. First of all, we eat like hobbits:
- Breakfast – 7am
- Second breakfast – 9 am
- Elevenses – 11 am
- Lunch – 1 pm
- Afternoon tea – 3pm
- Dinner – 6 pm
- Supper – 9 pm
In between all these meal times is a whole lot of coffee, a morning cleaning ritual, and lots of reading.
I get really into my books and the characters involved. And with that engagement comes an intense need to invite them in my home the same way I would a welcomed but unknown guest. I prepare coffee, make sure we have had our meals and have later meals prepared, clean the house (sweep, mop, vacuum, do the dishes and wipe down counters) and then I am ready to sit down with my future new friends – the lovely people portrayed in books.
So, I’m writing this blog post in between Elevenses and mopping the floor. My coffee is ready (more than ready, I’m on cup two – and my cups are overly large mugs that fit about half a French press in each serving) thinking about Louise de la Baume le Blanc de la Valliere and how we are going to enjoy some afternoon sandwiches together. That’s crazy book nerd talk for: I am going to be reading more of Karleen Koen’s Before Versailles while I munch on chicken salad sandwiches (I’m addicted to HEB’s Rotisserie Chicken Salad) and sip even more coffee.
I do the same thing before I write. Which is probably why I’ve been working on the same novel since I was 14 years old. Karleen said yesterday that it takes her a long time to complete a book, and all I could think was: Thank God, I am not alone, because I am taking forever. If my debut novel is half as good as hers (Through a Glass Darkly) I feel as though I will have accomplished something in life. I just want to finish it, get it in print, and have a completed work that someone – anyone – will remember.
I spend days on end reading and writing and eating with my daughter. It is only for events, planned activities for her benefit, and my random extreme extrovert days that get me out of the house. (One day, my daughter will probably tell you her mother was a bit wacky, as when I take personality tests I come out equally extroverted and introverted depending on the day. Some have misused the term bipolar on me, but I got that checked out and I’m not.) Yesterday I spent the whole day at Half Price Books running around and giving things away… today I will huddle up with Louise and Louis XIV and whoever my daughter interupts me with (LadyBug Girl a constant play friend in our house).
The Importance of a Book Signing
Some people will tell you that book signings are old-fashioned, a thing slowly creeping into the world of publishing past. As both a reader and an event coordinator, I have strongly say that it is not.
As an event coordinator, I’ll tell you that yes, they can be slow. People don’t stop as often as they maybe used to. If it’s an author they are unfamiliar with they have a tendency to be stand offish, uncaring, or nervous. Fix this by offering candy or baked goods, or even a few free books, and you’ve sealed the deal. Like a sales person, all you have to do is get them up to the table. Your merchandise, a friendly face, and their sheer curiosity will do the rest. As an event coordinator I will tell you that you shouldn’t worry if not very many people buy your book that day, that’s not entirely the point of a book signing. The point of a book signing is to get your face, your name, your book titles and book covers lodged in their brain, constantly tickling the edges of their frontal lobes. Every time they see your work, for years to come, they will say in their head: I met him/her, I should buy this. In this day of e-books, many wont buy from you in a brick and mortar store, but will rush home and purchase a kindle edition.
As a reader with severe extrovert tendencies, I will tell you that it is incredibly exciting. Meeting an author, whether you love everything they’ve ever done, or just barely opened the first page of a book, or have never heard of them – to me – is so very exciting. I want to hear their voice and the way they talk, let their real voice intertwine a bit with the inner one I’ve imagined in my head. I want to know a few factoids, a few mannerisms, put their work in a greater perspective. Yesterday, when I met Karleen Koen for the first time, I just wanted to bask in her author-ness, in her bookishness. Of course, I ended up chattering hopelessly because that’s what I do, but my oh my how awesome it was to hang out and listen. It made me want to get home afterward as quickly as possible and finish reading the book that I had meant to finish before the signing. It made me want to buy the other books she has written, and all I can think about this morning is that there is a signed copy of Now Face to Face in hardback sitting on the shelf at the store… and how it needs to be mine.
My goal is to bring more book signings to Half Price Books Humble and one day maybe be as event filled as Murder By the Book in Houston. Book signings are not dead and they should never be dead. If you are an author interested in setting up a book signing, email me at andiklemm@rocketmail.com.
Anakalian Whims 