Which Words in Blurbs Attract You to a Book?

I’ve written before that certain words in book reviews and book blurbs attract me, and certain others are almost always deal-breakers for me. I imagine you have the same experience with blurbs. Here’s an example of words used in a full-page ad for the novel “The Vegetarian,” by Han Kang (I saw it in The New York Times Book Review, 2/7/16, p. 5). I don’t know anything else about the book than what I saw in the ad, which contained blurbs from various authors. The words in the blurbs that were positive for me: beautiful, unsettling, terrific, complex, scarily familiar, incredible, stunningly moving, searing, painfully tender. The words in the ad that turned my interest off, at least to some extent: violence, terrifying, surrealism, Kafka, strange. Of course if I read an actual review, or leaf through the book at a bookstore or library, I will have a better sense of the balance of these elements, and a better sense of whether it is a book I might want to read. (P.S. After I wrote this, I noticed that there is a review of the book later in the same issue of The New York Times Book Review. I read the review, and it sounds well written, powerful, and very depressing. I think it might be the kind of book I would admire but not enjoy.)

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.