Category Archives: reading

On staying home

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You really can’t be hip and stay home. Yet, there are times when staying home is not a bad idea, and being hip has is not always what it cracks up to be. Sometimes, the best thing you can do for yourself is heat up a cup of coffee, pull on a sweatshirt, open a book, turn off the television, and read something new. Sometimes you just need to get out of the street and enjoy a little solitude, a comfy sofa, a warm blanket. Yes, you can spend a lot time and money going to the latest clubs or restaurants, bars or whatever, but in the end, what do you really have? All experiences are fleeting and ephemeral and our constant drive to consume everything is driving us all mad. There has to be a point when, just to maintain your sanity, you need to stay home and make your own coffee (and not pay some exorbitant price for it). Of course, you won’t be famous for staying home. Nobody will know your name if you stay home, but then, do you want people to know your name, necessarily? If you stay home, you might get some much needed sleep. You might write a letter or read a book (made of paper). You might talk to your family. You might cook a meal–something healthy? If you stay home, you don’t have to put up with strange or odd people that don’t have your best interests in mind. If you stay at home one night, you might feel pretty good the next day.

On staying home

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You really can’t be hip and stay home. Yet, there are times when staying home is not a bad idea, and being hip has is not always what it cracks up to be. Sometimes, the best thing you can do for yourself is heat up a cup of coffee, pull on a sweatshirt, open a book, turn off the television, and read something new. Sometimes you just need to get out of the street and enjoy a little solitude, a comfy sofa, a warm blanket. Yes, you can spend a lot time and money going to the latest clubs or restaurants, bars or whatever, but in the end, what do you really have? All experiences are fleeting and ephemeral and our constant drive to consume everything is driving us all mad. There has to be a point when, just to maintain your sanity, you need to stay home and make your own coffee (and not pay some exorbitant price for it). Of course, you won’t be famous for staying home. Nobody will know your name if you stay home, but then, do you want people to know your name, necessarily? If you stay home, you might get some much needed sleep. You might write a letter or read a book (made of paper). You might talk to your family. You might cook a meal–something healthy? If you stay home, you don’t have to put up with strange or odd people that don’t have your best interests in mind. If you stay at home one night, you might feel pretty good the next day.

On unpacking my library

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Dedicated to the memory of Walter Benjamin. I moved from one office to another last week, which means I had to take down all my books, put them on carts, and unpack them in my new office. A simple enough task, but handling each book, picking a new location for it, tugs at the heartstrings and stirs old ideas from hibernation. You see, no one remembers all of the books that they have. This particular copy of “1984” was left on my desk in chemistry by someone–never knew who–in the spring of ’76. They had written my name it. My copy of “Ghost Story” came from the English book section of Casa de Libro in Madrid in 1979. Over the course of even a few years, one forgets individual volumes that were acquired in odd ways in dark, smelly, book shops off of equally dark and smelly streets deep inside a grimy urban setting. A copy of Borges’ short stories was a birthday gift from a beloved friend and still bears her dedication. I found a copy of Dante’s “Inferno” which was inscribed “To Helen, completely unforgettable, London, 1961.” I had completely forgotten several titles which I had never gotten around to reading, but I was warmly surprised to see old friends that I had indeed read, albeit decades ago. Having an analogue library, though quite superfluous today, appeals to my medieval sensibility of scribe. The physical presence of the books reminds me of how much there is to think about just being human. Flipping through familiar pages, reading familiar passages, gazing on forgotten book covers, I am often reminded of other periods, other times in my life when I lived in other towns and knew other people. My worries and concerns were different when I first read “Don Quixote” or “The Name of the Rose.” While I was unpacking I was assailed by both nostalgia and pathos, remembering a warm rainy afternoon in Madrid when I found that one book about Cervantes that I always wanted to read. Or perhaps it was a copy of “Cien años de soledad” that I found abandoned in a train station in Toledo (Spain). Some books had been gifts, and others had been borrowed by me, but never returned. I found an old, beat-up paperback of “Dr. Zhivago” that I bought for fifty pesetas from an outdoor vendor in the plaza of Alonso Martínez, which I read during the winter of ´84′-’85, one of the coldest winters in Madrid’s history. My copy of Shakespearean sonnets which was bought for less than a dollar out of a remainders bin at a mall in Mankato, Minnesota over thirty years ago which still bears my innocent marginalia of my youth. I had to throw away, with much regret, several books with broken spines and molding pages. At one time this would have horrified me, but these works are easily recovered given the digital nature of the internet. I noticed that I now have two copies of “The Lord of the Flies,” but that I still haven’t read it after all these years–I suspect I know what it’s about and don’t want to stare at the horror of humanity unleashed. I have dropped an ancient copy of “Beowulf” on my desk–a discard from my high school library. I first read this book when I was fifteen, so it will be a new read for me when I pick it up later this week. I will donate three boxes of books to the local library sale to make way for new titles because space is always finite for a book lover.

On unpacking my library

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Dedicated to the memory of Walter Benjamin. I moved from one office to another last week, which means I had to take down all my books, put them on carts, and unpack them in my new office. A simple enough task, but handling each book, picking a new location for it, tugs at the heartstrings and stirs old ideas from hibernation. You see, no one remembers all of the books that they have. This particular copy of “1984” was left on my desk in chemistry by someone–never knew who–in the spring of ’76. They had written my name it. My copy of “Ghost Story” came from the English book section of Casa de Libro in Madrid in 1979. Over the course of even a few years, one forgets individual volumes that were acquired in odd ways in dark, smelly, book shops off of equally dark and smelly streets deep inside a grimy urban setting. A copy of Borges’ short stories was a birthday gift from a beloved friend and still bears her dedication. I found a copy of Dante’s “Inferno” which was inscribed “To Helen, completely unforgettable, London, 1961.” I had completely forgotten several titles which I had never gotten around to reading, but I was warmly surprised to see old friends that I had indeed read, albeit decades ago. Having an analogue library, though quite superfluous today, appeals to my medieval sensibility of scribe. The physical presence of the books reminds me of how much there is to think about just being human. Flipping through familiar pages, reading familiar passages, gazing on forgotten book covers, I am often reminded of other periods, other times in my life when I lived in other towns and knew other people. My worries and concerns were different when I first read “Don Quixote” or “The Name of the Rose.” While I was unpacking I was assailed by both nostalgia and pathos, remembering a warm rainy afternoon in Madrid when I found that one book about Cervantes that I always wanted to read. Or perhaps it was a copy of “Cien años de soledad” that I found abandoned in a train station in Toledo (Spain). Some books had been gifts, and others had been borrowed by me, but never returned. I found an old, beat-up paperback of “Dr. Zhivago” that I bought for fifty pesetas from an outdoor vendor in the plaza of Alonso Martínez, which I read during the winter of ´84′-’85, one of the coldest winters in Madrid’s history. My copy of Shakespearean sonnets which was bought for less than a dollar out of a remainders bin at a mall in Mankato, Minnesota over thirty years ago which still bears my innocent marginalia of my youth. I had to throw away, with much regret, several books with broken spines and molding pages. At one time this would have horrified me, but these works are easily recovered given the digital nature of the internet. I noticed that I now have two copies of “The Lord of the Flies,” but that I still haven’t read it after all these years–I suspect I know what it’s about and don’t want to stare at the horror of humanity unleashed. I have dropped an ancient copy of “Beowulf” on my desk–a discard from my high school library. I first read this book when I was fifteen, so it will be a new read for me when I pick it up later this week. I will donate three boxes of books to the local library sale to make way for new titles because space is always finite for a book lover.

On Sherlock Holmes

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There are few characters in the fictional world of literary creations that are as pure as Sherlock Holmes. He is driven to solve the crime, not because he necessarily wants to see justice administered, but because the puzzle must be solved at almost any cost. I wouldn’t suggest that Holmes is obsessive or compulsive, but in a way, he certainly is. He doesn’t care about moral philosophy or the structure of the universe unless either of those topics would help him solve a crime. His ideas about crime and punishment are black and white, so his objective of putting the criminal away is clear and obvious. At the same time, he hasn’t the least bit for popular news, discussions of the weather, or sports, beyond his own training in boxing and stick fighting. Like most people, he loves to eat, listen to music, talk when the talk interests him, but the one thing he cannot escape in this life is solitude–no man is an island and Sherlock Holmes is no different. His ability to discern the important from the mundane and casual stems in large part from his willingness to narrate the facts of a case, but he needs an audience, and most of the time his sounding board is Watson. Watson is the sieve through which his reasoning passes. If he can tell Watson the story, he can figure it out. Holmes functions because of the power of narrative. He can work through the logic of the clues by building a narrative that makes sense, discarding incidental clues that may be red-herrings, and see through the smoke screen left by the criminals. In the end, the stories are all very similar about shame and hate, vengeance and envy, greed and stupidity, or love and jealousy, and Sherlock must sort out the facts without getting personally involved in any of it. Emotion is all too often the downfall of many a criminal, and Holmes works constantly to see through the intentions, let the clues speak to him, and resolve the problem at hand. Yet, I would also suggest that Holmes cannot do all of this work, wade through so much human flotsam and jetsam, and still be the least bit normal as a person. He’s interested in bee-keeping; this is his only outside interest that doesn’t appear to have anything to do with crime solving. Bees can’t really talk back, they have a collective conscience, they have no crime, their objectives are orderly and pure, free from envy, sloth, and ire. He admires them. If Watson were not there to act as chronicler and psychologist/therapist, Holmes would go crazy listening to the irrational world which surrounds him explode. Watson is the perfect foil for Holmes because he is a walking case to be constantly narrated and resolved, but Watson is also the perfect uninformed audience who needs the explanations to make the world return to proper working order again. After all, isn’t that what the detective does? Return things back to their proper place, pass out punishment, get the world to spin on its axis again, make sure the bad guys are put away, give a solution to the problem. Holmes wouldn’t be Holmes, really, without Watson, and Watson would just be retired, boring, military surgeon with a bad shoulder without Holmes. A more interesting symbiosis in the literary world would be hard to find.

On Sherlock Holmes

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There are few characters in the fictional world of literary creations that are as pure as Sherlock Holmes. He is driven to solve the crime, not because he necessarily wants to see justice administered, but because the puzzle must be solved at almost any cost. I wouldn’t suggest that Holmes is obsessive or compulsive, but in a way, he certainly is. He doesn’t care about moral philosophy or the structure of the universe unless either of those topics would help him solve a crime. His ideas about crime and punishment are black and white, so his objective of putting the criminal away is clear and obvious. At the same time, he hasn’t the least bit for popular news, discussions of the weather, or sports, beyond his own training in boxing and stick fighting. Like most people, he loves to eat, listen to music, talk when the talk interests him, but the one thing he cannot escape in this life is solitude–no man is an island and Sherlock Holmes is no different. His ability to discern the important from the mundane and casual stems in large part from his willingness to narrate the facts of a case, but he needs an audience, and most of the time his sounding board is Watson. Watson is the sieve through which his reasoning passes. If he can tell Watson the story, he can figure it out. Holmes functions because of the power of narrative. He can work through the logic of the clues by building a narrative that makes sense, discarding incidental clues that may be red-herrings, and see through the smoke screen left by the criminals. In the end, the stories are all very similar about shame and hate, vengeance and envy, greed and stupidity, or love and jealousy, and Sherlock must sort out the facts without getting personally involved in any of it. Emotion is all too often the downfall of many a criminal, and Holmes works constantly to see through the intentions, let the clues speak to him, and resolve the problem at hand. Yet, I would also suggest that Holmes cannot do all of this work, wade through so much human flotsam and jetsam, and still be the least bit normal as a person. He’s interested in bee-keeping; this is his only outside interest that doesn’t appear to have anything to do with crime solving. Bees can’t really talk back, they have a collective conscience, they have no crime, their objectives are orderly and pure, free from envy, sloth, and ire. He admires them. If Watson were not there to act as chronicler and psychologist/therapist, Holmes would go crazy listening to the irrational world which surrounds him explode. Watson is the perfect foil for Holmes because he is a walking case to be constantly narrated and resolved, but Watson is also the perfect uninformed audience who needs the explanations to make the world return to proper working order again. After all, isn’t that what the detective does? Return things back to their proper place, pass out punishment, get the world to spin on its axis again, make sure the bad guys are put away, give a solution to the problem. Holmes wouldn’t be Holmes, really, without Watson, and Watson would just be retired, boring, military surgeon with a bad shoulder without Holmes. A more interesting symbiosis in the literary world would be hard to find.

On reading for pleasure

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I bought a book the other day, and it is no great work of art, but it will be fun to read–action, mystery, good tough guys, hot sexy women, suspense, chases, gun fights, love scenes, evil rotten bad guys, breathless landscapes, strange religious manias, mistaken identities, stunning denouement, victory lap for the hero and his girl. There are times when you just cannot read another serious book for your research, another book on literary theory, another article of literary criticism before you start to question your own sanity. Reading for pleasure, for many of us academic ivory tower sorts, is a lost art, or at least we have forgotten that reading can be fun, a vicarious thrill, an intriguing mystery, a heart-breaking romance, an existential journey on blue roads, a search for meaning in a nihilistic culture of rampaging consumerism, a coming-of-age epiphany. Reading is fun, but when it is also your job you might lose track of the fun. If reading ceases to be fun, then it can only be work, and too much work makes Jack a dull boy. When I started out reading as a small child, all of reading was fun. I read about adventures, dinosaurs, soldiers and battles, inventors, magicians, wizards, flying. The world of fun reading is almost boundless. Later I discovered Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle, Daniel Dafoe and Bram Stoker, Stephen King and Peter Straub, and reading was still fun. Somewhere along the way, however, I went to college and starting reading things that were more informational and less fun and reading became a burden. Don’t get me wrong, I still loved reading, but when reading is a chore, you start to hate doing it, and even the books you loved in the past become a part of that burden and those chores. Nevertheless, even during college I learned to love Hemingway and Faulkner, Shakespeare and Wilde, Eco and Borges. They made me read Cervantes, and I found out he was a genius. Then I read García Márquez, Vargas Llosa, Rulfo, Castellanos, Allende, and Carpentier, and I was hooked on reading forever. Reading for pleasure is an escape for the imagination, a letting the monsters go, a moment to forget about the pressures of the day and let the mind wander into other places and times, to walk in the footsteps of heroes looking for the Grail, of detectives trying to return social stability to an unstable world, of explorers headed to the center of the earth, of a scientist traveling into time. So I have no problem with buying a nice, fat potboiler for reading on the plane, or before going to bed, or for a lazy Sunday afternoon. No, I can’t pull a don Quijote and lose myself in endless narratives of fantasy and adventure, but from time to time, it cannot really hurt. A giant here and there, an evil villain, a frantic chase across an urban landscape, climbing mountain, riding a griffin, skulking through an underground passage, a dead body or two, a tragic love affair (although all love affairs are tragic), impending doom. You know you love it too, a guilty pleasure that lurks within your library that you pull out and read from time to time. You feel nostalgic, you know every word, you remember entire descriptions, but it is a pleasure, and you will return time and time again, and you love it.

On reading for pleasure

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I bought a book the other day, and it is no great work of art, but it will be fun to read–action, mystery, good tough guys, hot sexy women, suspense, chases, gun fights, love scenes, evil rotten bad guys, breathless landscapes, strange religious manias, mistaken identities, stunning denouement, victory lap for the hero and his girl. There are times when you just cannot read another serious book for your research, another book on literary theory, another article of literary criticism before you start to question your own sanity. Reading for pleasure, for many of us academic ivory tower sorts, is a lost art, or at least we have forgotten that reading can be fun, a vicarious thrill, an intriguing mystery, a heart-breaking romance, an existential journey on blue roads, a search for meaning in a nihilistic culture of rampaging consumerism, a coming-of-age epiphany. Reading is fun, but when it is also your job you might lose track of the fun. If reading ceases to be fun, then it can only be work, and too much work makes Jack a dull boy. When I started out reading as a small child, all of reading was fun. I read about adventures, dinosaurs, soldiers and battles, inventors, magicians, wizards, flying. The world of fun reading is almost boundless. Later I discovered Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle, Daniel Dafoe and Bram Stoker, Stephen King and Peter Straub, and reading was still fun. Somewhere along the way, however, I went to college and starting reading things that were more informational and less fun and reading became a burden. Don’t get me wrong, I still loved reading, but when reading is a chore, you start to hate doing it, and even the books you loved in the past become a part of that burden and those chores. Nevertheless, even during college I learned to love Hemingway and Faulkner, Shakespeare and Wilde, Eco and Borges. They made me read Cervantes, and I found out he was a genius. Then I read García Márquez, Vargas Llosa, Rulfo, Castellanos, Allende, and Carpentier, and I was hooked on reading forever. Reading for pleasure is an escape for the imagination, a letting the monsters go, a moment to forget about the pressures of the day and let the mind wander into other places and times, to walk in the footsteps of heroes looking for the Grail, of detectives trying to return social stability to an unstable world, of explorers headed to the center of the earth, of a scientist traveling into time. So I have no problem with buying a nice, fat potboiler for reading on the plane, or before going to bed, or for a lazy Sunday afternoon. No, I can’t pull a don Quijote and lose myself in endless narratives of fantasy and adventure, but from time to time, it cannot really hurt. A giant here and there, an evil villain, a frantic chase across an urban landscape, climbing mountain, riding a griffin, skulking through an underground passage, a dead body or two, a tragic love affair (although all love affairs are tragic), impending doom. You know you love it too, a guilty pleasure that lurks within your library that you pull out and read from time to time. You feel nostalgic, you know every word, you remember entire descriptions, but it is a pleasure, and you will return time and time again, and you love it.

On the e-book

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This is the age of the e-book, whether that be Nook or Kindle or some other format, the e-book is quickly making huge inroads in the book market. For the first time, major best sellers are now selling more digital versions than paper-print versions. Is this the end of the paper book? I love paper books and probably have between five and six thousand. Some of my favorite and most beloved titles are prominently displayed in my living room where all guests might see them. The traditional paper book platform is so different than the digital platform that all comparisons must be apples to oranges. The e-book is a kind of a ghost, disembodied, phantasmal, incorporeal, non-existent. Without the digital platform of electronics and electricity, it is dead, but if you want to travel to Europe for the summer, and you want to take three hundred books, your only real option is a tablet with e-reader software. Yet, no one has a relationship with their tablet. It is impersonal, identical to all other tablets, cold, digital, icy. So in some respects the tablet with e-reader software is a practical investment for reading in situations where you can’t be near your library–I get that and have a tablet with the appropriate software, and I use it. Nevertheless, there is something about a book, a real book, a paper book with printing and ink and covers. They weigh something, they are solid, you can hold it in your hand, it will take up space in your bag, it will have a history, and it will be unique. Did someone scrawl a dedication in it when they gave it to you for some special occasion? Was it already used and old when it came into your possession? Did you find it abandoned in on a chair in an airport or did you buy it from a random street vendor on a corner in Madrid? Is it part of a special collection that you are rounding up? Books are tactile and create a visual space, which occupies in the mind’s eye of the reader. All different sizes, all different colors, some thick, some thin, some books you can use to prop open a door. They are relics, some sacred, some less so, but relics nonetheless. Each book represents a story, a human story of loss, of shame, of triumph, or heroism, or cowardice, of sacrifice, of wisdom, or justice. Whether it is a slim volume of love poetry that breaks your heart, or a thick tome on human tragedy that drags you through the cathartic agony of failure and redemption, books will move you to think and feel, and as you think and feel you will imbue a volume with your memories and emotions, and every time you see that book, you will remember your reading experience that was unique and will always be linked in your heart to a particular volume. I am not trying to invoke some ideal time in the past when book culture was ideal, nor I am suffering from romantic nostalgia founded on nothing more than an irrational yearning for some golden moment in my own history. Books are handy, uncomplicated, physical, analogue, simple, unambiguous, solid, sturdy, and helpful. Perhaps a happy co-existence of platforms is what we really need.

On the e-book

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This is the age of the e-book, whether that be Nook or Kindle or some other format, the e-book is quickly making huge inroads in the book market. For the first time, major best sellers are now selling more digital versions than paper-print versions. Is this the end of the paper book? I love paper books and probably have between five and six thousand. Some of my favorite and most beloved titles are prominently displayed in my living room where all guests might see them. The traditional paper book platform is so different than the digital platform that all comparisons must be apples to oranges. The e-book is a kind of a ghost, disembodied, phantasmal, incorporeal, non-existent. Without the digital platform of electronics and electricity, it is dead, but if you want to travel to Europe for the summer, and you want to take three hundred books, your only real option is a tablet with e-reader software. Yet, no one has a relationship with their tablet. It is impersonal, identical to all other tablets, cold, digital, icy. So in some respects the tablet with e-reader software is a practical investment for reading in situations where you can’t be near your library–I get that and have a tablet with the appropriate software, and I use it. Nevertheless, there is something about a book, a real book, a paper book with printing and ink and covers. They weigh something, they are solid, you can hold it in your hand, it will take up space in your bag, it will have a history, and it will be unique. Did someone scrawl a dedication in it when they gave it to you for some special occasion? Was it already used and old when it came into your possession? Did you find it abandoned in on a chair in an airport or did you buy it from a random street vendor on a corner in Madrid? Is it part of a special collection that you are rounding up? Books are tactile and create a visual space, which occupies in the mind’s eye of the reader. All different sizes, all different colors, some thick, some thin, some books you can use to prop open a door. They are relics, some sacred, some less so, but relics nonetheless. Each book represents a story, a human story of loss, of shame, of triumph, or heroism, or cowardice, of sacrifice, of wisdom, or justice. Whether it is a slim volume of love poetry that breaks your heart, or a thick tome on human tragedy that drags you through the cathartic agony of failure and redemption, books will move you to think and feel, and as you think and feel you will imbue a volume with your memories and emotions, and every time you see that book, you will remember your reading experience that was unique and will always be linked in your heart to a particular volume. I am not trying to invoke some ideal time in the past when book culture was ideal, nor I am suffering from romantic nostalgia founded on nothing more than an irrational yearning for some golden moment in my own history. Books are handy, uncomplicated, physical, analogue, simple, unambiguous, solid, sturdy, and helpful. Perhaps a happy co-existence of platforms is what we really need.