More on the Reading Group, Still Thriving

After a hiatus of many months, a delay that just sort of happened rather than being intentional, the longtime Reading Group of which I am a part met last Sunday. Martha was our host, as always creating a warm and inviting place and afternoon for us. We shared wine, appetizers, and a delicious meal, while we talked and talked, catching up on everyone’s lives. Since we hadn’t met for a long time, we didn’t have a particular assigned book this time, but rather each person shared what she had been reading lately, and exchanged ideas of what else we could read. I have written here about this Reading Group on 1/26/10 and 1/8/12, and now want to write about it again because it is such a privilege and pleasure to be part of this wonderful group of six women, and I want to acknowledge and celebrate it once again. The group has now existed for decades, in evolving forms, and with some changes over the years, and has throughout been an ongoing mix of talk, books, and sharing of our lives, book-related and otherwise. I sometimes marvel at what we have created with this group: a rare and treasured community with much history. Our gatherings and our talks are pure joy. We look forward to many more years, many more meetings, many more books, and many more conversations.

San Francisco Chronicle's book blog: Bookmarks

Although I have seen mention of the San Francisco Chronicle’s book blog, titled Bookmarks, almost every week in the Sunday book section, I have never actually checked it out until now. I like the topics there; they are a mixture of San Francisco Bay Area topics and national ones. The most recent post tells the sad story of the closing of Black Oak books in Berkeley, after 33 years. The post points out that even though independent bookstores are now, after a steep decline, holding their own, there are still closures, especially because such bookstores often operate on a very narrow profit margin. If you are interested, and especially if you live in the SF Bay Area, check it out at http://blog.sfgate.com/bookmarks/

Blog "Follower" Issues

Google has informed me that it no longer supports “followers” who follow from non-Google sources. If you are one of those who got “cut” as a follower in the past few days (I don’t know if you got any notice of this or not), you can either rejoin through Google, or just continue to read the blog as before, and even comment if you like, without “following.” And you can always contact me directly at vandricks@usfca.edu with questions or comments. Let me take this opportunity to say thanks very much to all of you who read the blog, either as official "followers" or not, and either regularly or occasionally.

Library and Bookstore Conversations

I love the random conversations that occasionally spontaneously arise in bookstores or libraries. Just the other day, a man at the self-service checkout machine next to mine at my local library (sometimes I use the self-service if the librarians at the front desk are busy) looked over at the books I was checking out, and enthusiastically exclaimed, “Oh, you are going to read ‘A Manual for Cleaning Women’! I just came from a reading by the editor of that book, Stephen Emerson, who is a friend of mine. You are going to love the book!” We exchanged a few more sentences, and I left the library feeling that small but enjoyable glow of connection around shared book conversations, long or brief as they may be. Over the years I have had several of these brief, spontaneous conversations with other patrons of the library, other customers in bookstores, and with librarians and booksellers. There is always that same spark of connection. The topics don’t have to be profound; once a woman next to me at the bookshelves in a bookstore and I started laughing at the same time, because we were both in that familiar, identical, and parallel crouch with our heads turned sideways, reading the titles of books on the lower shelves. We had a chuckle and a brief conversation about this common bookstore posture, just one of those little experiences shared by frequent bookstore habitués. These brief book-and-reading-related conversations definitely brighten a booklover’s day!

"What Belongs to You," by Garth Greenwell

Lori Ostlund, author of the recent, wonderful, and very well-received novel “After the Parade” (see my post of 10/19/15), a few weeks ago recommended Garth Greenwell’s new novel, “What Belongs To You” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016) (my first 2016 title!). Since I value and trust Ostlund’s recommendations, I got and read the book. It is the story of an American man who seems to be in late youth or early middle age teaching English in Sofia, Bulgaria. He is gay, and the main focus of the novel is his meeting with and ongoing relationship with Mitko, a young hustler. Although the nameless main character and narrator pays Mitko for sex, they develop a further connection that is hard to define. There is lust, a kind of indefinable love, and a sort of friendship, yet there is still and always a transactional nature to their meetings and their complicated intertwined lives over a couple of years. There is an element of Thomas Mann’s “Death in Venice” story. Although those two stories, and the main characters, and the degree and type of connection between them, are all different, there is a common element of an older man from another country longing for and mesmerized by, even obsessed by, a beautiful younger man (boy, in the case of Mann's story) in the country he is visiting. Greenwell demonstrates how hard it is to categorize relationships. He also reminds us of how our heads and our hearts and our libidos sometimes lead in very different directions, and reconciling them is nearly impossible. All of this takes place in the beautiful but also sad and crumbling country of Bulgaria, where most of the young people feel they need to leave the country in order to have a life. The character of Mitko is an original, both very physical and transparent and yet mysterious and unpredictable as well. Despite his charismatic and gregarious personality, he doesn’t seem to find a way to settle into life; he drinks far too much, and is often semi-homeless, impoverished, and disconnected. Greenwell writes beautifully and evocatively about identity, sexuality, being an outsider in a country far from one’s own, and wondering what one is doing and where one is heading in life. I can’t say I “liked” the book, but I found it quite compelling.

No Books for Ten Whole Days!

I just realized I haven’t read any books, or parts of books, in the ten days since I returned from my trip to Italy. As I mentioned in my last post, I read several books during the trip. But since I have returned, because of a little jet lag, plus getting ready for the new semester beginning next week, I haven’t had time to read more than the newspaper and a couple of magazines. For me (a book addict, as you know -- not something I am necessarily proud of, but just a fact of my life), this is a long stretch of time without books! And I can feel it: it feels as if something important is missing. But although I know the next couple of weeks will be busy as well, I do have four books on hold and waiting for me at my local library, which I will pick up today, and I know I won’t be able to resist reading a bit here and there.

Gathering Reading Material for a Trip

As usual when planning for a trip, one of my very important preparations involves choosing what to bring to read. As I have mentioned here before, it is a delicate balancing act to make sure I have enough to read, and yet not so much that my bags will be completely weighed down. And no, I still haven’t converted to e-readers. Also, I prefer a certain type of reading material for trips: good writing, but not too demanding. This is especially important for long plane flights, such as the ones I took on the trip to Italy from which I have just returned. So I usually take several paperback novels, along with a selection of magazines and newspapers. Then as I read each book or periodical, I jettison it along the way, to make room for more reading material if needed, or if I am at the end of my trip, to make my bags lighter. When I am at my destination(s), in order to “top up” my reading material, I watch out for bookstores that sell books in English, and I usually find them. It is fun to browse bookstores in other countries, and of course I always feel at home in bookstores. A bonus, in Europe, is that I sometimes find books that have not been published in the United States, or at least not to my knowledge. During my 12-day Italy trip, I read six novels, one short story collection, several magazines, and newspapers in English (usually the New York Times International) as often as I could find them. Among the books, most were enjoyable but not memorable, which was fine; they served the purpose I chose them for. The exceptions, the two that were at a higher literary level and more memorable, were the esteemed writer Elizabeth Spencer’s 1967 novel, “No Place for an Angel,” and the also esteemed writer Rose Tremain’s “The American Lover and Other Stories.” The former had the added attraction of being partly set in Italy. But my favorite reading on the trip was the latter, the Tremain collection, one which I definitely recommend. Oh, and Italy was, of course, amazing!