Story Time at the Library

I have posted before about public libraries, school libraries, librarians, and browsing in libraries. I have also written about reading to children. Today I want to write about a combination of those topics: “Story Time” in libraries. Most public libraries, and some school libraries, have some variation of Story Time, sometimes daily, sometimes weekly. Librarians read to young children, lead them in song, have them repeat simple poems, and sometimes have them clap, move and dance. Sometimes puppets or small props are involved. Children respond with animation and pleasure; their laughter and bright eyes display their joy. They learn about the world of books, about language, about music and rhythm, about sharing the pleasure of books and stories, and more. Accompanying parents enjoy the experience as well; it provides special, memorable child-parent moments. When my daughter was small, I would take her to Story Time at our local branch of the public library, and was always impressed by the skill and enthusiasm of the children’s librarians, and by the joy the children expressed during these sessions. Twenty-five years later, I can still picture these happy occasions.

"Crampton Hodnet"

I recently ran across a copy of "Crampton Hodnet" (Moyer Bell, 1985), by the always delightful and insightful Barbara Pym. I have read it before, as I have read all of Pym's novels, some several times, but I couldn't resist reading it again. And who could resist a novel with such chapter titles as "Sunday Tea Party," "A Safe Place for a Clergyman," "Love in the British Museum," and "Edward and Mother Give a Tea Party"? The novel is set in North Oxford, among university dons and their families, undergraduates, nosy neighbors, and young curates. The central character, Miss Morrow, is a drab woman in her mid-thirties who makes her living as a paid companion to an annoying older woman, Miss Doggett. Miss Morrow's faded persona hides a very intelligent mind and a kind heart; she notices everything. There are flirtations, small crises, gossip, small trips, and other events...and always, always, people drinking tea together. On the surface, this novel is a light confection, and quite humorous. But there are, underlying it all, some serious questions about marriage, love, the single life, and what makes life worthwhile. There really is no author like Pym; I have always found her fiction enchanting and very funny, as well as thoughtful and thought-provoking. If you haven't read Pym's novels yet, you are in for a treat.

A Few Precious Books from My Grandmother

Because my parents both came from large families (I have over 50 first cousins and countless second and third cousins, spread around Canada and the United States), and because they moved so much, we are not the kind of family that has a lot of family heirlooms passed on from generation to generation. But we are a family who loves books, as I have written before, and I do have a very small handful of books that were my late maternal grandmother's. These are very precious to me. One is a small (about 5" by 7") hardbound volume, with a flower-sprigged and gold-gilted cover, of Thomas Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus." It is inscribed to "Fleta" (my grandmother's wonderful old-fashioned name), "Merry Xmas! 25-12-06." My grandmother would have recently graduated from high school at the time. It says volumes to me that this book would be considered an appropriate Christmas present for a young woman; somehow I can't imagine many families or friends today giving such a gift (alas!). Another book has her full married name inscribed in it, so she got it a bit later: an even smaller volume, in a dark green hard cover, titled "Masterpieces of the World's Best Literature, Vol. 8" (1905). I am not sure what happened to the other volumes in this series; perhaps some of my aunts, uncles, or cousins have them, or perhaps they have been lost over time. Some of the selections in this book, listed alphabetically by author's last name (this volume contains S-Z) and with great leaps through history, are essays, poems, stories or excerpts by Shelley, Smollett, Socrates, Sophocles, Stowe (Harriet Beecher), Thackeray, Tolstoy, Trollope, Turgenieff (the spelling this book uses), Washington (George), Whitman, Wordsworth, and Zola. Note that in this book, the "world's" best literature was heavily English, with a very few token Greek, Russian, and French authors represented. A third book, still smaller, with a textured brown cover and with my grandmother's married name written in her own handwriting on the flyleaf (why do we seldom use the word "flyleaf" nowadays?), is Longfellow's "The Song of Hiawatha"; this particular volume was published in 1898. These three lovely little volumes -- all so full of character, beauty, and literary history -- sit on my bookshelf, representing my family and in particular my dear grandmother (a teacher as well as mother of seven). I cherish them.

"Suburban Dreams"

My friend Beth Yarnelle Edwards has had exhibitions of her art photography all over the United States and Europe, and in India. Her work has been featured in many publications, including Harper's and The New Yorker, and has received multiple awards. Now she has had a book of her photographs published by Kehrer in Germany; there is also an English language version, soon to be available in the United States. These stunning color photographs are windows into middle class life in Silicon Valley, California, as well as in France, Germany, Spain, and The Netherlands. They are impressive in their composition and fascinating in what they reveal. One could spend a long time looking at all the telling details in each photograph. There's an older couple in their kitchen, several teenagers and children in their suburban bedrooms and playrooms, and several people in bed, just to name a few subjects. The settings are various rooms of various houses, often elaborately overdecorated but sometimes artistically spare, as well as driveways with basketball hoops, and garages. Each one suggests a whole world. Viewers become curious about the individuals, about the families, about the cultures that are portrayed; our imaginations are engaged. This book is a large, handsome one, beautifully produced; each photograph has its own page. There are introductory essays by the critics Robert Evren and Christoph Tannert that are illuminating, putting Edwards' work in context and helping readers see some of the artistic subtleties of the work. This is an impressive collection of photographs.

"Cross Channel"

On 5/21/11, I posted about how much I liked the stories in Julian Barnes’ new book, “Pulse.” I have now just read a much earlier collection of his stories, “Cross Channel” (Knopf, 1996). As you might guess from the title, these stories feature the visits, brief or extended over many years, of British people to France. The stories take place over a period of 300 years, and they capture some of the fraught feelings of the British about France: fascination, attraction, mystification, suspicion, arrogance, inferiority, superiority, envy, and more. I found some of the historical stories less appealing than those from the 20th century, but that is just my personal preference. The story I liked best was a haunting one titled “Evermore,” in which the main character takes a week every year to go to France and visit the grave of her brother, who died in World War I. On the way, she honors not just her brother but all the war dead by visiting other soldiers’ cemeteries along the way. She is old herself now, but she has made this honoring of the war dead her life’s work, and she will continue doing so until she cannot do it any longer. I had mixed feelings about this collection, but as I said, that might be due to my own preferences regarding time periods and subject matter. In any case, this theme -- the British in France -- is an interesting organizing principle, and Barnes, as always, writes intriguingly and well.

Memorable Children in Novels

I have posted lists of memorable characters (3/6/11) and memorable settings (3/11/11); today I list some memorable child characters in novels for adults. Some of these are children throughout the novels in which they appear; some start as children and grow up during the course of the novels. Some of these child characters are memorable in a positive way, some in a frightening way. They are a very diverse group. But in all cases, the authors’ portrayals of these children are vivid, and stay in my mind even sometimes decades after reading the novels.

- Pip (in Great Expectations)
- Jane (in Jane Eyre)
- Jude, called “Little Father Time” (in Jude the Obscure)
- Maggie (in The Mill on the Floss)
- Susan, Rhoda, Jinny, Louis, Bernard, and Neville (in The Waves)
- Miles and Flora (in The Turn of the Screw)
- Antonia (in My Antonia)
- Ralph, Jack, Simon, and Piggy (in Lord of the Flies)
- Sandy and Rose (in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie)
- Frankie (in The Member of the Wedding)
- Scout (in To Kill a Mockingbird)
- Phineas (in A Separate Peace)
- Holden Caulfield (in The Catcher in the Rye)
- Owen Meany (in A Prayer for Owen Meany)

"The Year We Left Home"

I think Jean Thompson is a wonderful writer, and have enjoyed reading her books ever since I discovered her fiction in about 2007. So I was pleased to read her latest book, “The Year We Left Home” (Simon & Schuster, 2011). This novel portrays an Iowa family over a period of thirty years, from 1973 to 2003. The Ericksons -- father, mother, and four children, as well as their various relatives -- are rooted in Iowa, but some of the younger generation feel the eternal call of young people to go “away” –- somewhere bigger and better and different. Yet there is always the countervailing call of the place and community called “home.” This push-pull between home and away, between the old and the new, between the known and the unknown, is a major theme in the novel, as is the eternal theme of the deep, primeval connection with family. The family events take place against the backdrop of national events such as the Vietnam War and its aftermath for veterans, the women’s movement, and the vicissitudes of the economy. The characters are very believable, and the story is compelling.

"The Love of My Youth"

I remember discovering Mary Gordon’s work when she published her first novel, “Final Payments,” in 1978; what a jolt of originality that novel was, and all her succeeding novels, stories, and nonfiction have been! So of course when I saw she had a new novel out this year, I found and read it. “The Love of My Youth” (Pantheon, 2011) tells the story of Miranda and Adam, who were the loves of each other’s lives during high school and college, until a great betrayal took place. While they were together, they spent one glorious summer in Rome; they now meet in Rome again, by chance, some 35 years later. They are each happily married now, with children. Wary of but drawn to each other, they spend three weeks walking, seeing the sights, sitting at cafes, and –- most of all –- talking. Gradually they relearn about each other. The novel goes back and forth between Miranda’s and Adam’s past and present together. This novel is a love letter to young love, as well as to the city of Rome, whose light and beauty is described in gorgeous detail. But to me -- probably influenced by being about the same age as the protagonists -- this novel is most of all about our relationships with our pasts. How did we get to this stage in our lives? What is our relationship now with the people we were all those years ago -- years that seem long and at the same time fleeting? How would our lives be different now if we had done this instead of that, been with this person instead of that one, moved to this city instead of that one? What happens when our pasts and presents collide? Have we kept the intensity of feelings we had about those dramatic and intense times in our lives -- especially the years of late adolescence and young adulthood? Or have we mellowed, moved beyond them, even let them go, as we have gone on to live our adult lives in predictable and unpredictable ways? “The Love of My Youth” brings all these questions to the fore.

On E-Readers and Libraries: No Comment

The following two items are among those in the "Fresh Ink" column of the San Francisco Chronicle's "Books" section today (5/22/11, p. G8) -- a telling juxtaposition. As Ms. Magazine's last page of each issue, a compendium of outrageous ads and other affronts, is titled: "No Comment."

Item 1: "Amazon.com has reached a milestone: The company now sells more e-books than printed books. For every 100 printed books sold, the retailer said, it sells 105 e-books. The company introduced its e-reader, the Kindle, in 2007."

Item 2: "Charles Simic, the poet, has written a powerful piece on the importance of public libraries. 'I don't know of anything more disheartening than the sight of a shut down library,' he writes in the blog post at the new York Review of Books (www.nybooks.com). 'Their slow disappearance is a tragedy, not just for those impoverished towns and cities, but for everyone everywhere terrified at the thought of a country without libraries.'"

"Pulse"

"Pulse" (2011) is an apt title for a collection of short stories that has its finger on the pulse of the (mostly) contemporary, (mostly) English characters in these very readable stories by the esteemed English writer, Julian Barnes. Representative of these educated, liberal, witty, self-aware characters are those recurring in the four very enjoyable "At Phil & Joanna's" stories, which consist almost entirely of lively, entertaining dinner party conversations. But the stories that most appealed to me, and will linger in my mind, are contemporary but with roots in the characters' pasts. For example, the two aging female novelists in the story "Sleeping with John Updike" are both resilient and canny, and both support and are critical of each other; they help each other survive and prosper, in a modest, low-key way, with only a few regrets, bravely borne. The best and most touching story is the last one, "Pulse," with its portrayal of the narrators' parents and their long and loving marriage. Their undramatic but rock solid and tender love for each other is the narrator's inspiration, yet makes his own failed marriage a sad contrast. But also inspiring and lovely is his great regard and love for his parents, and all he learns from them about love, courage, and grace...truly the "pulse" of life at its best.

"The Easter Parade"

In 1999, Stewart O’Nan (author of “Emily, Alone,” which I posted about yesterday) wrote of his great admiration for the late author Richard Yates, and of his concern that Yates’ books were less and less read. I share O’Nan’s concern, and I hope that the 2008 movie version of Yates’ great novel, “Revolutionary Road,” has drawn some readers to further explore his novels. I have just listened to the CD version of another of his novels, “The Easter Parade” (originally published 1976; audio version BBC Audiobooks America, 2009), and found it a very sad but powerful and insightful story. It tells of two sisters, Sarah and Emily, over much of their lifetimes; we learn of the story from Emily’s perspective. The girls’ father is a sad character who loves the girls but is destroyed by alcohol and depression and dies young; their mother lives much longer but the girls soon have to take care of her as much as she does them, and she too is felled by alcoholism. The family curse continues in both the daughters. Sarah marries and has children; she stays with her husband even though he abuses her, and takes refuge in drinking. Emily is the “free spirit,” loving and living with a series of men but never “settling down”; she too drinks too much. She is independent, always working, but a combination of alcohol, being left by a lover, and losing a job leave her in a vulnerable and sad position in her late middle age. The story is often grim, yet somehow there are sporadic times of optimism and even happiness throughout as well. Although the two women have less than optimal lives, Sarah has her family, and Emily has her independence and her lovers, and although they are very different in some ways, and don’t see each other often as adults, they have each other as well. The two women have a family bond that lasts, that forms a lifelong underpinning to their lives. Yates has much to show us about the difficulties of life, about the reasons people turn to drink, and about the destruction caused by alcohol. But he also seems to be telling us that no matter how difficult life gets, the thing that can -- if we are lucky -- buoy us up and connect us to the world is family.

"Emily, Alone"

Who can resist a novel that begins with the following epigraph from Virginia Woolf (from “To the Lighthouse”): “Could it be, even for elderly people, that this was life -- startling, unexpected, unknown?”? Not I, certainly. Actually, I chose to read this book, “Emily, Alone” (Viking, 2011), even before seeing this wonderful epigraph, when I heard the author, Stewart O’Nan, interviewed on the radio. I love the idea that the book is about an older woman, and that the author’s goal was to truly portray the texture and details of the day-to-day life of this woman. And he does so in a manner both realistic and engaging. Often writers writing about older people write condescendingly, but O'Nan does not. A person of a different age (fifty) and gender (male), O’Nan reminds us that literature springs from the imagination, and writers are not only capable of writing about those like themselves in the obvious forms of identity. Actually, this is not so much a book about an older woman as a book about an interesting and interested woman who happens to be aging, and figuring out what this phase of her life will be like. What is impressive is that she doesn’t allow herself to accept a smaller world, now that her husband has died and her grown children live far away. She enjoys the small pleasures of living alone and having fewer responsibilities, but she also rises to the challenge when her sister-in-law becomes ill, beginning to drive again (something that she had given up) and staying involved in the larger world. Nothing very dramatic happens in this novel, but there is great reading pleasure to be had in observing and savoring the events in Emily’s current life, what she thinks about them, and how she responds to them. I loved reading this novel, and the character of Emily will stay in my mind for a long time. Highly recommended.

Making a Dent in My Magazine Pile

The daunting “magazine pile” that has built up during this busy semester and that I posted about on 4/6/11 was getting taller and taller, but just recently, as my semester winds down, I have made a conscious effort to make a serious dent in this pile. I have had some success. A couple of evenings ago, I separated out all the Nation magazines, which I enjoy and learn so much from, but which come rather unrelentingly every week, making it hard to keep up with them. I decided to read the tables of content of these 8-9 back issues, and just read a few selected articles in each issue that I was particularly interested in. I did so, and was able to polish off the pile in one long evening. Another evening I did the same thing with the four San Francisco magazines that had accumulated, and with a couple of other magazines of which I had two or more issues waiting. Then another evening, I powered through five back issues of Vanity Fair (which normally don’t pile up like that, as they are so much fun to read!). And finally, I staged a sort of mop-up operation of all the strays, including magazines that are from organizations I belong to and that are often rather boring, but that I hate to recycle without paging through to make sure I am not missing anything. I do keep up with the New Yorkers and New Yorks, so they were up to date already. And voila: my magazine pile was down to just two magazines! And then today two more arrived in the mail.... I love my magazines, but I have to keep on top of them, or there will be another pile rising on the shelf before I know it. And there is still the pile of professional journals awaiting my attention .... That’s my next project....

"My Ruby Slippers"

I’ve had the pleasure of hearing excerpts from my USF colleague Tracy Seeley’s new book over the years she was writing it; for example, she gave a very moving in-progress reading from it when she was the USF NEH chair. Now I have had the pleasure of reading the book itself. “My Ruby Slippers: The Road Back to Kansas” (University of Nebraska, 2011) is a mixture of memoir, cancer journal, travelogue, environmental essay, reflections on place, and much more. Seeley’s family moved often when she was a child, and her parents’ marriage was difficult and complicated. She decided a few years ago to revisit the places her family had lived, and in particular to reacquaint herself with Kansas. After years in San Francisco, she realized that she had suppressed the Kansas part of her life and its imprint on her, and had even acquiesced to the belief common among many San Franciscans that all culture and beauty is on the coasts and not in the heartlands. In the course of several visits to Kansas, she confronts her feelings about her father and about moving so often, is reminded of all she loved about Kansas, and discovers new reasons to value and cherish it. Because she gave herself several years to absorb these experiences and her epiphanies about them, and to think and read and write about them and their contexts, this book has great depth, breadth, richness, and complexity. All the strands of the author’s background, her relationships, her experiences, her reading, her activism, and her passions (for teaching, for literature, for her family, for her husband, for the environment, for nature, for gardening, for meditation) influence each other and inform this wonderfully thoughtful book. Seeley also writes beautifully. “Ruby Slippers” is –- although sad and difficult in parts -- a pleasure to read. It is also a book that –- as befitting a publication from the lifelong educator that the author has been -- teaches readers much about our own relationships with the places we live, our families, our health, nature, literature, and love in all its varieties.

O, London!

As readers know, I am an ambivalent but devoted Anglophile. So I truly savored "A Symposium on London" in the Spring 2011 issue of The Threepenny Review (a periodical that I posted about on 3/14/10). In the "symposia" frequently published in that quarterly, various authors are asked to write about a given topic, and the contributions are varied, original, and often surprising; it is always a pleasure to read them. The current symposium is no exception...what a trove of riches! James Lasdun writes of coming home from boarding school to his family's house in Notting Hill Gate, just as the "flowering hippie culture" blossomed. Robert Pinsky tells the story of his year in London in the early 1970s, which was, "for a young American of my generation...like living in the past...the houses seemed like survivals from nineteenth-century fiction." Anne Wagner, living in London now, mourns what she perceives as the homogenization of London, and concludes that she is "going to have to settle for an imaginary London, artificially built up" out of bits and pieces of current and former aspects of the city. James Campbell, a Scot, writes about how he gradually came to identify himself as a Londoner, partly through his exciting discovery that Robert Louis Stevenson had lived in the same neighborhood that Campbell did. Wendy Steiner fondly remembers her three years in London in the 1980s as "a time of continual, uncanny exhilaration...." For her, "All those literary palaces and parks and seedy alleys that filled my imagination -- Baker Street, Kensington Gardens, Whitehall, the Strand -- now filled the literal fog of afternoon walks....The nightingales we heard on Hampstead Heath were Keats's nightingales, and the gathering shadows on the Heath took on a touch of the sublime as we recited Blake's 'Tyger'...." And Dee Shulman concludes her piece as follows: "I still wake up every morning and giggle with delight at the sheer bloody deliciousness of our fabulous, filthy, noisy, beautiful, scary, wildly exuberant London."

Sex, Marriage, and War

How important is sex in marriage and other romantic relationships? What happens when all the women in a New Jersey town find themselves under a spell that makes them averse to sex? In “The Uncoupling” (Riverhead, 2011), by Meg Wolitzer, the local high school puts on the ancient Aristophanes play, “Lysistrata,” about how the Greek women stopped having sex, hoping to pressure their men to end the war through a kind of sex strike. Somehow this classic play precipitates a current real life echo in the town of Stellar Plains. Especially affected are the formerly “ideal couple,” two popular teachers at the high school married to each other, Dory and Robby; this couple always thought their love and sexual life would last forever. Their teenaged daughter Willa (yes, named for the writer!), in the midst of her very first romance, is also affected by the spell. The novel is light and amusing, but also explores serious issues about sex, love, marriage, relationships, family, and more. It also resonates, without dwelling too heavily on this aspect, on the level of people wanting to do something, anything, to end the wars the U.S. is currently engaged in. Hmmm....could such a strike work today? (I know, I know...this requires all sorts of sexist assumptions about who is for war and who is against it, which I do not want to promulgate....but just for the sake of speculation....)

On Keeping a Book a Secret: A Small Dilemma

Writing this blog, like all activities, has its unanticipated small (very small, and fortunately very manageable) dilemmas. For example, sometimes I read a book and decide it would be perfect for one of my friends or family members for a birthday, Christmas, or other occasion, or "just because." (As regular readers of this blog know, many of my gifts to others tend to be books.) I also plan to write a blog post about that book. But if I know that the recipient in question reads my blog, I don't want to post before I give the person the book, in case they go out and buy or borrow the book themselves. The solution, of course, is simply not to post about the book until after I have given it to the person. This is not a problem, but sometimes it involves waiting days or even weeks before being able to post on that book. In that case, I usually write the post while the book is fresh on my mind, and save it to post a little bit later. (I am smiling a little as I write this, thinking that if this is the biggest problem I have all day or all week, I am extremely fortunate!)

"A Mercy"

Over the years, I have read all of Nobel Prize winning author Toni Morrison’s novels, as well as some of her nonfiction, and have admired and learned from all her work. For several semesters, I taught the novel “Sula” as part of my Women’s Literature classes. Morrison’s writing is both very realistic and at the same time lyrical, even transcendent. It is not always easy to read, in two ways: because of the difficult and sad subject matter (most often slavery and its consequences) and because of her allusive, nonlinear style of writing. I have just read her most recent novel, “A Mercy” (Knopf, 2008), and those two difficulties are as present in this novel as in most of Morrison’s. We read of the rather convoluted story of two European Americans in the North in the late 1600s, Jakob and Rebekka, reluctant “owners” of a young black girl, Florens. We also learn about two servant women –- Lina and Sorrow -- whose situation is less transparent: they are not slaves, but some aspects of their lives and employment are slavelike. We learn the stories of these characters, and of others such as the free black blacksmith and two men who are in a sort of serf-like position, Will and Scully. As each chapter begins, it usually takes the reader a few paragraphs to ascertain who is speaking, as each character tells overlapping stories, each in her or his own style, both about themselves and about the other characters. The wrenching ending explains what we suspected about why a mother was willing to give up her daughter at the beginning of the story. This novel, like all Morrison’s novels, is a piercing reminder of the oppressiveness of slavery, but also of the difficulty of life for so many humans throughout history; the pioneers – no matter what their race -- in the northern part of the United States have hard lives. Jakob and Rebekka are not bad people, and circumstance makes most human decisions less morally clear than they might initially appear. Yet finally the idea of any human being owning another is obviously indefensible, even for someone such as Jakob who took Florens to protect and save her from her former owner. This novel, like many of Morrison’s, is written in indirect, almost dreamlike, almost poetic prose, in which the lines between the “real” and the imagined are often blurred. There is always a thread of the spirit, of the unknown, running throughout the novel. Although I sometimes put off reading Morrison’s latest novel, because I know it will be demanding and painful, I always read her novels eventually, because I know they will also be rewarding and beautiful, and I know that once I have read them, they will stay with me forever.

Learning More About the Chinese People

The university where I teach, along with most American universities, has seen a huge surge in Chinese students over the past four years or so. Much of this surge -- after many many years of having few if any Chinese students -- is due to the new affluent upper class in China. It has been very interesting to learn from and about these students, and to learn more about China. To learn even more, I have been "reading up" on China a bit, albeit in a rather informal way. One interesting article I read recently was titled "The Grand Tour," and appeared in the April 18, 2011 issue of The New Yorker. If you are interested, you can read it at the web address below (or just Google it).

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/04/18/110418fa_fact_osnos?currentPage=1

This article tells of the increasing number of Chinese tourists around the world (a relatively new phenomenon, with the aforementioned increase in affluence allowing more world travel), but particularly in Europe. The author of the article, Evan Osnos, joined a Chinese tour group (most Chinese tourists travel in groups) in Europe, and writes astutely and informatively about what he learned during the tour. The tour guide seemed to do a good job of orienting and advising his travelers, although he passed on a few questionable stereotypes about Europeans. The tour tended to pack a lot of cities and a lot of sightseeing into a short time period. The group members were genuinely interested in learning about differences between China and Europe regarding culture, thinking, and lifestyles. Among other things, they compared the benefits of China and of the West; some felt that China's one-party system allowed the government to get things done quickly, something that didn't always happen in the West. On the other hand, some travelers felt that the Western system allowed young people more freedom to choose their futures. The travelers were an interesting mixture of being frugal and being willing to pay for luxury goods that would be much more expensive in China. Osnos had some conversations about the United States with some of his fellow travelers, in which it was diplomatically but clearly intimated that China would soon overtake the U.S. as a world power. This eight page article just describes one author's experience over a short time period, but I found the article very interesting and revealing. I will continue to read about China, in academic journals, magazines, memoirs, and fiction.

Guest Post: What My Nephew is Reading

After I posted on “Books In My Family” on 4/24/11, my nephew Eric, who is in his late 20s, responded with an interesting email, portions of which -- with his consent –- I am posting below as a guest blog. I love that he feels the same way about our family heritage of reading, and I am so appreciative that he is kind enough to give me credit for having a part in his being a lifelong reader. (Readers of this blog won’t be surprised to learn that I was the auntie that always read to the kids, took the kids to bookstores, and gave them books for every birthday and holiday and sometimes just for the fun of it.) I also always like hearing what people are reading, so I appreciate Eric’s eclectic list of what he has read this year, and what he is planning to read. You can see his interests in the environment and in religion, among his many areas of interest, both alternative and mainstream. I remember, for example, that when he was in college he once called me to tell me he was taking a course in Russian literature, was reading "The Brothers Karamazov," and wanted to discuss it; as you can imagine, that made me happy! So, without further ado, here is Eric’s email.

“I particularly enjoyed your post about 'Books in the Family.' I felt the same way the last time I visited, and really enjoyed browsing through Granddad's books. In a way I felt like it brought him into the present, being surrounded by the books that informed and inspired his life. I thought it would be fun to share with you what I have read/been reading so far this year:

PrairyErth (A Deep Map): An Epic History of the Tallgrass Prairie Country - William Least-Heat Moon
Zeitoun - Dave Eggers
Prayer and Modern Man - Jacques Ellul
Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology - Neil Postman
All Creatures Great and Small - James Herriot
Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes, and Values - Yi-Fu Tuan
The Naked Anabaptist - Stuart Murray
Walden - H. D. Thoreau
Watership Down - Richard Adams
The Power and the Glory - Graham Greene

My plans for Spring/Summer reading are Flannery O'Connor's Complete Short Stories, her Habit of Being (letters), a theology book about the role of Catholicism in her life and writing, and finally a book on Church history.

Thanks again, Aunt Stephanie, for encouraging me since childhood to be a life long reader; it certainly has enriched my life.”

Unsettling Coincidences

On two occasions during the one and a quarter years I have been writing this blog, I have read a review or blurb about a book that I have just written a blogpost about and found that it used the same adjective or phrase that I used. In both cases, this has unsettled me. I have not been sure whether to feel validated and “on target” or, on the other hand, unoriginal. Worse, I have been concerned that readers of my blog may have also seen the overlap, and may wonder if I am unduly reliant on reviews when I write my own “reviews.” This last question is a concern because I conceive of this blog as a way of expressing my own responses to what I read. Of course my posts are informed, directly or more often indirectly, by all the reading I have done over the years. I do read many reviews of many books in the course of my newspaper and magazine reading, and the reviews help me choose which books to read in the first place. I generally don’t read reviews of those books after I read the book and before I post about it, although I do so occasionally, as often a book is reviewed by different publications over a period of months and even sometimes years. Let me be specific. In my post on Ann Packer’s “Swim Back to Me,” posted just yesterday, I used the term “heartbreaking” but said that the stories offered redemption as well. This morning while reading the 4/24/11 issue of The New York Times Book Review (which had been on my “to read” pile) during breakfast, I saw an ad for the book that included a quote from an “O, The Oprah Magazine” review using the sentence “Ann Packer can break your heart – and she can mend it, too.” I do not read “O,” and I don’t believe I had seen this blurb elsewhere. Granted, neither “O” nor I was being particularly original with this word (heartbreaking) and this concept (breaking readers’ hearts and then mending them, or in my words, offering redemption). And I know that (as I posted about on 1/14/11), there is a limited universe of words and phrases to use in book reviews. Nevertheless, it was an unwelcome surprise for me to see the similarity of phrase and concept, and made me feel that I should be careful not to fall into using the most immediate phrases that occur to me when thinking about my response to a book.

"Swim Back to Me"

“Swim Back to Me” (Knopf, 2011) is a collection of short stories by Ann Packer, author of the well-received 2002 novel, “The Dive from Clausen’s Pier.” That novel was riveting, and these stories are as well. These stories display even more complex, mature writing than the novel did. Every single story is not only compelling but also very real and very wise. The fact that the stories are set in Northern California, especially Palo Alto and Berkeley, is of course of interest to me, and the stories certainly draw on certain aspects of those locales. But really they transcend any certain setting. The longest story (actually a novella) is the first one, “Walk for Mankind,” narrated by a young, insecure boy, Richard, whose mother has just left his professor father and who has become enmeshed in an increasingly complicated and ambiguous friendship with Sasha, a girl who recently moved to his Palo Alto neighborhood, and with her friendly and welcoming but somewhat odd family. The story is beautifully observant and acutely painful in the way the world of early adolescence often is. The last story, “Things Said or Done,” unexpectedly returns some forty years later to the character Sasha and her family, showing us the reverberations of the personalities from, and the events set in motion in, the earlier story. The characters in all six stories are sharply drawn. Marriages and families are the focus in most of the stories. These stories are all heartbreaking, even tragic, in various ways, yet portray redemption, or at least the possibility of redemption, as well. As an aside: I recently heard the author interviewed on the radio, and was quite impressed by her, as I was by these emotionally engaging, insightful, beautifully written stories.