Reading and the Burden of Books

Those who know me know I like books. A lot. In fact I'm trained as a library technician, all for the love of books. Two years of college to work with books and their friends, serial printings and electronic copies. Oh, and the people who use them, of course.

So I think it is safe to say that books hold a special place in my heart. I love the feel of a book's pages in my hands, I love the smell of a new book, the smell of an old book. I like how the pages yellow with time. The different fonts and typeset, the various formats and formatting. I just love the magic that comes from being able to jot down some random squiggly symbols and having them transport hundreds of people to another time or place; to transfer information from one mind to the other and have it be transformed in the process.

But books, they say, are dying. No one wants to lug around 100 pounds of dead tree when a few ounces of plastic and metal can do the same task. While I understand the sentiment, I don't believe its veracity- even as I jot my thoughts down in a purely electronic format. No, I believe the book has a long life ahead of it for many reasons. However that is not what I came to talk about.

I came to talk about the burden that books bring along, that ebooks have yet to capture. The unending library shelves weighted down with unfathomable numbers of volumes, all waiting to be borrowed, opened and read. Or, on a more manageable scale, the bedroom bookshelf. Approximately four cubic feet of shelving space loaded with novels, the occasional non-fiction, magazines and a three week old newspaper. Maybe a notebook or two, and a reading lamp.

Sound familiar?

This is where the burden comes in for me. These books waiting to be read, or reread. Their worlds and thoughts and speech locked away like tortured souls until someone picks them up and gives them a bit of love. Here is where the heart wrenches and the soul moves, for it is here you make a choice. Every book read is dozens of others left unread- for you cannot ever aspire to read them all.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy reading and all that comes with it. But have you ever felt, at an unsatisfying ending, that your time could have been spent better in another? That perhaps this book was merely masquerading to steal your time? It can lead to a paralysis of what do I read next- where you don't want to be strung along again.

Then there is the culling. Unless you have infinitely expanding space and money (congratulations if you do!) you cannot hope to house and hold every book you come across or enjoy. Choices need to be made. And that I can only liken to the the choice between children. Which do you feed and which do you send to an orphanage?

For some books this is easy- the ones you've read a few dozen times should likely stay. The ones you've read once and wanted to burn should probably go. But what of the ones you haven't read, or only mildly enjoyed? These are not easy questions, and I have no answers.

Even once you've decided which children to cast out, it then comes to deciding what to do with them. Do you toss them out with yesterday's spinach? Or send them to an unknown fate amongst used item vendors? Perhaps you try to find them new homes yourself, by selling them or giving them away. But does your responsibility end there?

And what of art?

Do we scorn those who use books in their art? If yes, then throw your first stone at I who have done so. I have defaced several books in my art journey, with little regret. Many others have done so as well. It strikes me as odd that we revere these objects so thoroughly, yet seem to value them so little. A paperback costs 25 cents at a garage sale, but to tear it up is considered most heinous by many. I understand the urge to protect the books, yet I understand the urge to recreate them as well. This is a dichotomy I cannot explain.

All in all I think books are a wonderful resource, if a bit weighty on their responsibilities. They make beautiful art, intact or not. And it is the responsibilities of books that I think will slow their demise. We have this learned connection and fascination with books that makes us revere them. And I think that will take a long time to go away.

Bookmarks - The Professor and the Madman

Sorry for the late post. I came home for the reading week and have run out of premade posts.

The Professor and the Madman is copyright 1998 by Simon Winchester. Published by HarperCollins.

This is what I would call a "creative nonfiction". It is a book based heavily on the story behind the Oxford English Dictionary.

It tells you the embellished facts about the two main contributors to the dictionary, Professor James Murray who headed the campaign for the majority of its run, and Dr. W.C Minor who submitted more than 10,000 entries to the work.

Minor was incarcerated for murder, and Murray was a professor at Oxford.

It tells their stories, using historical truths and backed up data... and filling in the gaps with narrative.

I like the style of this book, it goes back and forth between narrative and laying out pure fact. It makes everything bite sized. It helps that I am interested in language and dictionaries.

All in all a good gateway book to fiction from nonfiction or vice-versa.

Bookmarks - Cut

Lets follow a theme, I guess. Now don't go getting all worried on me, I've had this book on hold for a while, coincidence brings it so close to the last one (considering I read the last one three weeks ago, this one last week, whatevs.)

Anyway:

Cut, by Patricia McCormick, copyright 2000, published by PUSH, part of Scholastic.

This is another book about self-harm, however Cut takes place almost exclusively in an inpatient environment. Our main character, Callie, spends the first half of the book not speaking to any one. We learn through her internal monologue and description where she is and why.

McCormick gives a pretty accurate portrayal of the desire for self-harm, and an interesting back story for why Callie turned to it.
Not as powerful a book as Scars was, however.

It could still be a triggering story, but I found it less pushy and less disturbing.

It is nice to see a positive portrayal of the inpatient environment though. A lot of people tend to be frightened when they think of being hospitalized for mental health (I blame One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest for this, personally.), so it seems like a good thing to show teens that it isn't all bad.

_______

Side note, again I am linking a previous post about suicide/self-harm here for good measure. If you are feeling bad I suggest looking at that and/or finding a resource you consider helpful in order to feel better.

(Thoughts on Suicide)

Bookmarks - Scars

Scars, by Cheryl Reinfield, copyright 2010, published by WestSide Books.

I quite literally just finished reading this book.
Okay, no, because by the time you read this it will be a week or more later, but at the time of writing this, I just spent a bit more than two hours reading this book (and about an hour looking at some of the resources provided at the end).

Normally when I do these things (though I have done so few that I am not sure there is a "normally") I will wait a bit longer between the read and the review, to let my thoughts sit.

But I don't want to this time.

Scars is an incredibly powerful book, and it brought me to tears. And I'm not sure I can say that about any other book. I've been sad, and maybe had a tear or two (looking at you, J.K Rowling...) but this book made me cry.

And at the same time I could not stop reading it.

Scars is about a girl named Kendra who has been sexually abused, and doesn't know who did it.

Or, more precisely, she "knows" but can't remember. She's repressed it, I guess I mean.

So she is in therapy. And she cuts herself. A lot.

This book will almost definitely trigger you, if you have ever self-harmed. So, yeah, watch out for that.

What I loved about this book (other than it is a lesbian character (didn't know that going in) and that it shows a very real side of cutting) were the relationships Kendra had.

She had a therapist who was wonderful to her, a great teacher, a reasonably close gay, male, family friend, and a girl who is helpful to her.

She is an artist, and she sees the world through those eyes.

I quite like this book as it shows how things can go right though. She has a good support system, for the most part, and deals reasonably effectively with her stress.

The author has been through similar situations, and I think that is what lends this story so much credibility, so much believability.

All of Kendra's feelings were understandable, accessible, and (in my experience) true.

I would prompt those who know self-harmers, or abused persons, to read this book. It is... disturbing, yes, but I think it could also be a great way to understand a bit of what is going on in their thought processes.

I would also encourage people who do self-harm, or were abused, to read this book-- IF, and only if, they felt they are in a secure place and have resources available to them.

Because this book IS TRIGGERING. There are explicit accounts of self-harm, and less explicit, but still disturbing, memories of sexual abuse. Kendra's mind is in turmoil, and it is a bumpy ride.

If nothing else, I suggest picking this book up for the resource list at the back, which is pretty thorough and interesting.
_________

Side note, I am linking a previous post about suicide/self-harm here for a rounded out thing, if you are feeling bad, I suggest looking at that, or finding a resource you consider helpful in order to feel better.
(Thoughts on Suicide)

Bookmarks - False Memory

Another Dean Koontz book, False Memory is copyright 1999, and published by Bantam (Random House).

False Memory follows Martine (Martie) Rhodes and her husband Dustin (Dusty) as well as some people they know as Martie quickly deteriorates into an extreme case of autophobia. They become suspicious of a person who lends them help as everything wrong in their their memories starts leading back to singular-gender-neutral "them".

"Autophobia is a real personality disorder. The term is used to describe three different conditions: (1) fear of being alone; (2) fear of being egotistical; (3)fear of oneself. The third is the rarest of these conditions."

Mr. Koontz did a fair amount of research for this book into phobic disorders, and the book shows it well. All the panic attacks and other psychological things seem very real and entirely plausible.
Everything that is put forward in the novel seems entirely possible, if not even likely, while reading the book, and the characters seem real (though making some bad decisions).

Definitely recommend this book to everyone. Though be warned, you may well be questioning your own brain and memories after you read it.

Bookmarks - Blindness

Blindness, written by José Saramago is copyright 1995, though I read the English translation copyright 1997 (Prof. Juan Sager). First published in English by the Harvill Press, and originally written in Portuguese.

A man suddenly goes blind in the middle of an intersection and sets off a chain of events in which everyone (or very nearly) in the world is going blind for no apparent reason.

Camps are set up to quarantine the White Blindness and we are in the first of these following the story of the man's wife, the only (known) person who has not gone blind.

An apocalyptic novel as we watch the degradation of human dignity and decency, as well as society.

I don't know whether it is because this book is translated, or that Portuguese writing is inhereantly difficult (though I will go with the former), but this book was a chore to read.
The idioms and phrases (as would be expected) were unfamiliar to me, the spacing was just wrong.
I don't care what you are trying to prove, an exchange of dialogue should not be done all in one sentence.

Imagine two people talking:

"Hello, it is nice to see you."
"And you too, a lovely day we are having."
"Quite! And did you catch the game on the telly last night?"
"No, I'm afraid I missed it. Who won?"

Logical. It switches back and forth between the two speakers with clear distinctions, even without explicit he-said she-saids (though that would be nice, as it can get confusing it someone were to pause and not say anything, throwing off the balance.)

But in the story it is written such:
Hello, it is nice to see you, And you too, a lovely day we are having, Quite, and did you catch the game on the telly last night, No, I'm afraid I missed it, who won

And this will go on for (quite literally) a page or more.
Nothing to break the speakers except capitals(sometimes) and commas. No periods, no quotation marks, no spacing.
I think the most annoying times are when (as shown above) someone has a comma in their speech. Did the person change, or just part of the sentence?

Regardless of these technical issues, the story was engaging (enough for me to keep fighting the book) and was well written (as far as pacing and plot points go).

~*~ Also has been made into a major motion picture, if you did not know.

Bookmarks - This World We Live In

Hey guys, back with another segment of Bookmarks! I've tried to build up a cushion of posts, so maybe this weekly thing will work out. Who knows.

Next on the docket is a teen novel, it is This World We Live In by Susan Beth Pfeffer, and is apparently the third companion in a series (Last Surviors). Oops.
(Interestingly a quote on the rear cover by the School Library Journal says this: "It is a testament to the author's skill that This World We Live In can be read as a stand alone novel. In fact, new readers might not even realise that the earlier titles exist.")

Regardless, copyright 2010, published by Graphia, apparently an "imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing company". Yep.

Anyway. This was a reasonably good novel.

Set a year after the moon was hit by a massive meteor that altered it's orbit and started wreaking havoc on the earth's various systems.

Yes, it is a post-apocalyptic(PA) novel.

Set in diary format, we are listening to a 16-18 year old girl's life as things change for her and her family once more (as if the world coming to an end wasn't enough change!).
First winter starts to break, and the rains come. Then family arrives and bring new challenges and people into the mix.

The novel reeks of mother-daughter conflict, and left me wanting to yell at both of them to just f'ing talk to each other. A fair bit happens in the novel, and as stated in that quote, it is a perfectly good stand-alone novel.

All in all it was... mediocre. I liked it well enough, and read it through with no difficulty or slogging. But it is not raising any large emotions by any means.

A good read if you need a diary or alt-format book, an acceptable choice for a PA novel, especially for those just beginning to dip into the genre.

~*~ If you are interested in reading the previous two they are Life as We Knew It and The Dead & The Gone, both by Susan Pfeffer.

Bookmarks - Green

Heya~ Got a new segment I hope to run here on the blog.
But please don't get too attached, you know my track record for keeping projects going... Conlanging and You! and the Gooey Browser are still in the works. Just... slowly.

Regardless, this is my new segment, I want to say weekly, but it will likely be a bit less than that at some points (as I have things to do that stop my reading.)

This segment is called 'Bookmarks'. (So named after a pad of bookmarks my stepfather gave me for christmas). It is my way of reconciling with the last blog, Books in My Arsenal. The old blog was started as a way to keep track of things I had read, but I slowly twisted it into something far too formal for me to keep up with. This, I hope, will stay a lot more casual. A book talk, if you will, in text form. Just enough info to get you to want to read the book, but not enough that you know what it is.

So humour me awhile, and lets get this thing going:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

First book to come to light is fantasy novel that I keep mistakenly referring to as a teen novel (which it is not).

The book is called Green, and was written by Jay Lake, who also wrote Mainspring and Escapement, two books that I would like to post here later.

Copyright 2009 and published by Tom Doherty Associates.

Green starts out with no real fantasy elements. A girl is bought from her impoverished father and taken across the sea to be educated. She is taught all the things required of being a great lady, as well as some subvert defensive manoeuvres.

Eventually she breaks out of her bonds as a consort-in-waiting for the duke, and it is then that we fall into the major crux of the story.
There are magics and gods loose in this world, and Emerald cum Green is set to squash these powers.

A great adventure that is difficult to pull out of, Green is a novel with no spells or wizardry, but harkens back to a more spiritual and primal force of nature.

There are many sexual scenes, both overt and implicit, mostly lesbian (as well as a semi-interspecies relation, which seems to be a things of Mr. Lake's), and so I would not recommend this book to those who find those things unpleasant.
(I didn't know on picking it up that it was an other-sexual novel, I swear!)

Green is a character of indignant anger, great strength and strong (if varying) values. She fights for what she believes, and protects those she cares for fiercely.
While not the best role model, she is certainly a strong female presence and the novel should not be counted out when looking for a good back-seat lesbian story.

~*~ Apparently there is a sequel! Endurance (fitting title) by Jay Lake came out in hard cover in Novemeber (2011) and the paperback is due August 2012.

Three little reviews:`

As part of a school project I had to write some little reviews of some teen books (which, face it, are the bulk of my reading age group). I thought I would share them here, in keeping with that desire to mix in elements from my last blog with this one. (Though I have still not interspersed those posts). Click-through pictures for an Amazon link.

The First Rule of Torching: Cleanse with fire.

Z by Michael Thomas Ford is a fast paced action packed story of life after the zombie wars.

Josh is an average teenager, fifteen years old and loves video games. His favorite game is the virtual reality game of the zombie war, where he can play a Torcher and annihilate zombies.But w

hen another player of the game contacts him and asks if he would like to play for real, he is putting more than his mother's disapproval on the line. People are disappearing and his friends are acting strange. And then there is

the mysterious drug “Z" that he is growing more and more defendant on…

Mitty hates homework...

Especially his biology paper. So when he finds three old medical textbooks in his mother's decorating things, with an envelope of scabs in one, he thinks he is saved. Until he starts reading up on the disease. As things start speeding up and spiraling out of control, Mitty believes he has small pox, and that he is putting his home at risk. But before he knows it, he is more at risk than he could have ever imagined.

A fast and consuming book, Code Orange by Caroline Cooney will have you on the edge of your seat. Interspersed with real facts about small pox and viruses in general, it is also very informative.

Welcome to the Apocalypse…

If you enjoyed the Hunger Games you will love the story of Deuce. In the tunnels under New York tribes of people live, fight and die by rules set out by the oldest among them. Deuce has just recieved her name and has become a Huntress. Given the strange outsider Fade as a partner, Deuce's once easy to understand existence is widened and broken all together. On the run from her Tribe Deuce has to face the notions she once considered paramount to survival.

A steady and engrossing adventure novel, Enclave by Ann Aguire is the first book in the Razorland series.

-------------------

Anyway. If any of those sound interesting, feel free to go pick them up, or ask me about them. I quite enjoyed them all, but if they aren't to your taste no hard feelings.

And of course you are welcome to leave me a comment with the kind of book you like and I can try and recommend you one.

Life, update, yay?

I was trying to think of a witty portmanteau of "Life" and "Update" but I couldn't so you get what you got and you'll be thankful for it, dangit.

Anyway. Life is as life does around here. I've been going to work, coming home, dicking about, sleeping and starting over.

And I'm tired. Not excessively to the point of hypersomnia like I've hit before (46 hours of sleep is not normal, no matter how you justify it!)

Just, worn out from the day. I feel active and good while at work, and then after work rather quickly die down to kinda sore, kinda tired, before going to bed at a reasonable hour.

It's odd. It's so normal, it's odd.

And I'll tell you a secret. I kinda like it.

Now if it weren't for the drive to/from work, and the constant tension between family members, I'd be at a great place.

But as it is, I'm kinda just coasting. I feel good and strong, albeit a bit unhappy. But I'm not depressed like I was. I'm hoping that carries through the school year next year. Maybe I don't need to be on anti-depressants anymore. I'm doing well without them now.

Then again, maybe I just need more instant satisfaction like work can give me.

Oh, I pulled another eleven or twelve sheets of paper the other day; they're flattening out... somewhere. (Oh dear, where did I put them...). I've cleaned the vat out and frozen the pulp; I want to start a more major project... I don't know when. You'll get some updates on that when I know more. However I hope to put pictures of the love-note set I made up soon, I think they are nice.

But moving on; I've been to the library today after work, and picked up a few books. So I've reading. (I finished a shorter novel already- a teen fiction)

And I realised keeping the Books in My Arsenal blog going is silly; so, if I can work it, the old posts from there will be merging over here. If I can't, we'll be getting some updates here of those posts.

As for the conlanging series, don't expect that to be drifting into nothingness; I'm just taking a bit to figure how I want the next part to go.

I've been playing with pixels again, to the detriment of the conlanging work, I'll admit.

Whelp, with that, I'm tired and I have books and pixels to work on. I shall see you tomorrow!

A short response

So a teacher of mine (or past teacher? I'm not sure if this is the last we get of her? anyway: ) posted an interesting... post... about her relation with the short story. Read it here. It got me thinking about my relationship with short stories, and I started to write a Facebook response, but it got too long. So I thought I'd share it here.

Alex makes some good points on the thought of short stories. Their very nature can be annoying to people. They're just so dammed short! And yeah, that can seem like a silly complaint. I mean, it's a short story for a reason, right? But if you're not in the right place for one, it's like a kick to the teeth.

"Oh, good characters, neat idea for a plot annnnd-- wait, it's over? What?"

As I said, good points.

I'm on the other side of the spectrum, however. I have a hard time settling into novels anymore (though school may have been a big factor in that as I've devoured two novels in the last three days of being off school for the summer (though I slept through one day...). Short stories have kept me well fed for a few years now.

I didn't always like them though. In fact, I used to be so against them that I dragged my writing out into longer stories simply because I didn't want to be a short story author. Enter Letters Unsent, Letters Unwritten (or LuLu) and I started to see the appeal of shorter stories. Now I have a good number of anthologies in my collection and I have to say that I am all for them.

But what is drawing me to them? The short nature of the story is still frustrating to me, I still often find myself at a loss at the end, wondering where the rest of the story went, or feeling I've been abandoned.

And it isn't a lack of time that is making me read them. When you read a three inch thick paper-back of back-to-back short stories in a sitting, it may as well be a novel.

It is the very brevity of the stories. When you only have ten pages to get a point across, there is little to no room for flowery language. Only things of great importance are mentioned. Even if their importance is only to make you think that other things are not so important.

My interest in shorts may come from my found love of writing them. The author gets to play with a story that size. Where is the harm in writing an ultrashort? (varyingly defined as less than 1000, 100, 10 words. ) I can put out 1000 words in a half hour trying to get a paper done.

There is no fear of getting it perfect. You don't like it? Toss it. You've wasted nothing.

So you get to read something just a little more raw. If you don't like it, you've wasted nothing. Ten minutes.

So I'm glad she's getting back to short stories. A cut up look at the world(that is, could be, would be, was, never will be, isn't, etc) is a nice mirror to the daily life that plagues so many people this side of the globe.

Shorts are a zap to the brain of a new thought, new way of seeing. Easily digested, like precut cubes of meat. And like precut cubes, they shouldn't be the only thing in your diet. But they can become a staple, and can become a delicious alternative to the chewy steak-like portions of Pride and Prejudice, A Tale of Two Cities and Moby Dick.

Booklist

So Esquire (You know, that men's magazine?) made a list of books that all men should read.

Some of them are very good books, others just seem like an interesting change of pace.

Call of the wild by Jack London,

Invisible man by Ralph Ellison,

Deliverance by James Dickey,

Even the Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck) made it on there. (Sure, it's listed as being 'all about the titty', but it's still there)

Take a look, how many have you read?

Esquire's "The 75 Books Every Man Should Read"

Good Reads

Another Stumble'd site, Good Reads seems a lot like Shelfari, but minus the Trojan warnings I got there. So major ups on that.

A site that lets you organize and remember books you've read. And we all know how much I like organization/remembering sites.

It also lets you review them and gives suggestions for new books to read. You can also connect with your friends through Facebook, twitter and the rest of the major ones to read their reviews and keep up to date. Not to mention the sheer shock factor you get if you bring up a book they reviewed the next day!

So take a look and hit me up as ekobor if you like. I'm still in the process of transferring Books in My Arsenal over to this. (You may have noticed a lack of updates there. Yeah, When do I have time to read?!)