A Major Reader

(dulciebarbara)

I’m currently reading through The Best American Essays 2010 at rapid rates. I am thrilled with each essay I’ve read so far, and I was particularly smitten with the foreword by series editor Robert Atwan. His foreword introduced me to the idea of “major readers” and “minor readers,” both terms suggested in Vladimir Nabokov’s introduction to his Lectures on Literature. Nabokov writes, “Curiously enough, one cannot read a book: one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader.”

And this idea makes sense, because as Nabokov points out, the first reading is merely the act of moving your eyes across the page from left to right and becoming acquainted with the “world” of the book. I agree with him. However. I have serious issues with being a major reader. I want to be a major reader, of course. It is one of the things that I take the most delight in and that adds so much depth and richness to my personal life. But I tend to read in circles, instead of rereading, and the list of books I’d like to read grows longer every day. So, for me being a major reader equals a major dilemma.

The only book I’ve ever reread is Jack Kerouac’s Dharma Bums. When we decided to hike in the Himalayas on our honeymoon, I decided I needed to read it again. Although it is not set in the Himalayas, it does in fact deal a lot with mountains, hiking, and more mountains. I thought it would be a good book to psyche myself up and get ready for our Annapurna circuit.

But, honestly? I have a fear of rereading. I am afraid that by rereading a book I’ve already read, I’m forfeiting time with another book I haven’t read. I know that sounds obsessive, but I am nothing if not obsessive about reading and books. (Not just books for what’s inside, but I am also seriously obsessed with books as objects, books as things.) There have been certain times in my life that I have read certain books and they have been completely of the moment for me. And there’s this idea in the back of my head that if I choose to reread a book, I’ll miss the “moment” I could have had if I had kept on reading new material.

It’s all quite melodramatic, isn’t it? I have a friend who rereads the same books over and over, and I don’t doubt that he finds something new and fresh in them each time. I do believe that great books will stand the test of a million rereads. "No book is worth anything which is not worth much; nor is it serviceable, until it has been read, and re-read, and loved, and loved again; and marked, so that you can refer to the passages you want in it, as a soldier can seize the weapon he needs in an armoury, or a housewife bring the spice she needs from her store." That’s John Ruskin from his lecture “Of Kings’ Treasuries” collected in “The Lamp of Memory,” which I read at the end of last year.

This is my dilemma. I’ve only so much time to commit to the act of reading (heck, to commit to anything before my time is up), and I can’t bring myself to spend that time rereading something. Can I ever be a Major Reader? And does it mean my reading is not worth as much if I’m not?

What books have you reread?

Reading in Circles

I recently posted a video on my YouTube channel about what I’ve been reading so far in 2011. Soon after posting the video, I finished up Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh and picked up The Best American Essays 2010 (BAE). And that’s when a circle that began earlier this month was laid out for me. I read in circles. It turns out that although I don’t read on a schedule or plan what books I’m going to read in the future, somehow the next book always finds me, or suggests other books that I should read.

from The New Yorker

A recent circle: Earlier this month I read a collection of George Orwell’s essays (Did you know his real name was Eric Blair? Neither did I), Books vs. Cigarettes. I liked it. I had read 1984 a few years before and bought this particular collection back when I was living in Exeter, England. I finally got around to reading it this year. Two books later, I picked up Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited and finished that earlier this week. Last weekend, I went to a dear friend’s house and borrowed a book. That book just happened to be Down and Out in Paris and London by none other than George Orwell. Only, that’s not all. So, when I finish the Waugh, I pick up BAE and what should I find inside but an article on George Orwell. THEN, because the circle is not yet complete, I was searching for Books vs. Cigarettes on Kenny’s Kindle to see if he could get it there. It wasn’t available, but guess what I did find. A book entitled The Same Man: George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh in Love and War. HOLY CRAP! If that’s not a circular reading pattern, I don’t know what is. I didn’t purchase Same Man and I have yet to read Down and Out or the Orwell essay in BAE (A Fine Rage by James Wood, first published in The New Yorker), but it still totally counts because I’m going to read it and yet another circle will be completed and probably in the process a new one begun. (Usually, my “circles” don’t consist of the same author again and again. It just so happened that Orwell was the common link this time.)

Most of my reading happens in this way. It’s half the joy I find in reading, the way literature is all connected in some regard. I understand that this makes me a big fat NERD, but who cares? As John Green said in one of his vlogs, “Nerds are allowed to be un-ironically enthusiastic about stuff. Nerds are allowed to love stuff, like jump-up-and-down-in-your-chair-can’t-control-yourself LOVE it. When people call people nerds, mostly what they’re saying is, ‘You like stuff.’ Which is not a very good insult at all. Like, ‘You are too enthusiastic about the miracle of human consciousness.’” 

(And no, I haven’t read Animal Farm. And no, I probably won’t read it. I have a particular sensitivity to animals suffering, being vilified, and oh yeah, dying.)

Right Now

I am in a weird mood, akin to grief in some way. Maybe grief's second cousin. I finished Graham Greene's The Comedians last night and I'm a bit sad it's over. I think I always feel this way after finishing a book - some more than others. I step into another place and live there for a while. I got used to the idea of Haiti and the Tontons Macoute with their dark sunglasses and jeeps. I was familiar with the Columbus statue where Brown and Martha would rendezvous. I was fond of Joseph, limp and all, and could almost taste his famous rum punches. Anyway, it's over. I've put it back on the shelf, next to Villette, which also brought me to tears and showed just how much one can still manage to understand while skipping paragraphs of French I should be able to read.

Perhaps this mood is amplified by my current musical obsession: Goldmund's The Malady of Elegance. Also, I am mortified that I am just now discovering The Kings of Convenience. Go listen. Now.

However, I am definitely excited at the same time. Amazing how dichotomous I can be, eh? Tonight we settled with our landlord another year's contract. We'll be in Wonju for at least another year in our current apartment. We'll be getting new flooring in the office and our bedroom PLUS! an air conditioner for next summer! Woot. We only have to pay for installation for the air conditioner. The year's rent is incredibly reasonable and we've saved just enough in our "housing" savings account to be able to pay it all in advance come January. I'm thinking of doing a few things to spruce up our bedroom because it's so boring, and yet it's such a lovely place to be. I've been reluctant to put much more effort into the apartment since we don't own it and we'll probably move out after this next year here. But I think that's silly now. I should strive to make wherever I am a comfortable home and even though I might not own it, I can somehow make it mine.

I'm also currently thinking about Christmas gifts! Sadly, I'm doing more thinking than anything else! I know what I'm making for some of my family and friends and I just need to get busy.

Well, that's about all right now. Oh, and since I opened with books, I'll close by telling you I'm a few pages into Dave Egger's Zeitoun. I'm a reading freak these days.

What are you up to right now?

It's Called Avoiding the Mess in the Kitchen

I have an entire kitchen to clean because I didn't get that done before we left for work today. And when I came home, I looked at that mess in there, and I turned right around and walked back out. I picked up my latest indulgence, Kurt Vonnegut's The Sirens of Titan, plopped myself down in the middle of the couch, and finished it.

Then, I looked at the dishes piled beside the sink, managed a glance at the winking food dryer telling me it needs to be emptied, remembered the salad I bought that should be washed and prepared tonight to make tomorrow easier, and I turned right around and sat down in front of my computer.

Perhaps I should allow the dirty dishes to motivate me to blog more often.

Anyway, I'm taking this procrastination moment brought to you by my messy kitchen to tell you about my reading lately. I mean to do this every so often, because I'm almost always reading something good. This month I finally discovered the perfect irreverence and winding narrative of Salman Rushdie in Midnight's Children. I loved the way the story spiraled around itself and you knew you were on a staircase, but sometimes couldn't figure out whether you were going up or down. It's long, but worth every sentence.

This past Sunday, Kenny ran his first half-marathon, and like the supportive, wonderful wife I am, I went and sat in the car for most of it and read. I ended up finishing Dave Egger's The Wild Things later that evening after dinner. The Wild Things is a novel that sprung from the screenplay he wrote with Spike Jonze for Where the Wild Things Are. The screenplay, of course, was based on the brilliant children's book by Maurice Sendak.  It's an imaginative, beautiful, heart-rending romp through childhood in the head of Max, an 8-year-old boy in his wolf suit. It's good. Read it.

And for the past few days, I'd been working my way through Titans. I love Kurt Vonnegut, without reservation. I love his black humor, satire, and wit. I enjoy sinking all the way into his outrageous worlds and the lives of his characters. My favorite Vonnegut of all I've read is Bluebeard followed closely by Breakfast of Champions. Everything is good, but those are particularly and perfectly weird.

And with The Sirens of Titan I've exhausted my collection of fiction at home, so I'll probably make a foray back into the depths of Young Adult literature we have at the library at school. Whenever I take my classes into the library each week to pick out their books, looking at the covers of all the books I read and folded into myself while I was in elementary and middle school makes me nostalgic, but in a beautiful opposite-of-sad way. Because I can reread them and relive and refold the stories back into myself in a different way, seeing new things, noticing new things. Sometimes I think good books are like good donuts. I've already tasted this kind, but that doesn't stop me from ordering them again and again.

Here, have a donut hole, courtesy of Vonnegut:

"It took us that long to realize that a purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved."

                                                          ~Malachi Constant / Unk / The Space Wanderer, Sirens of Titan

How do you avoid the mess in your kitchen? And what are you reading? Do tell.

Touchy Feely

Kenny is currently reading The Brothers Karamazov on my iPhone. He feels that once he has succeeded in reading Dostoevsky's tome in English, he will have reached some pinnacle of language learning and will then be magically filled with inspiration. I guess then, he's going to write something. In English? Not sure. But the thing is, it bothers me.

It bothers me that he is reading this novel on an iPhone.

I love my iPhone. It's like a permanent extension of my right hand. I'm absolutely enamored with this piece of technology that puts the Internet in my pocket 24/7. And with Korea's super-duper technology obsession, there's pretty much free wi-fi in the street. I read blogs on my iPhone; I read Tweets on my iPhone (isn't that what it was made for, anyway?); I read emails on my iPhone. But I do not read books. Nope.

I don't count it as reading. There should be a cover. There should be the turning of pages. There should be scribbling in margins, underlining sentences, bracketing paragraphs, and marking entire chapters. I also have a habit of moving the book around constantly as I'm reading it. It's a strange habit and I didn't know I did it until my best friend Kerri asked me why I was doing that to the book. I hold it in both hands and bend the pages away from each other, then let them fall back together. I don't break the binding, but I just read with this slow widening of the book, this back and forth motion with my hands. I often rub my right thumb over the pages I have left to read, perhaps measuring how much further our relationship will progress.

I love the snot out of my books. There's something about the weight of the page, the set of the type, the width of the binding that marries the story itself in my hands. I could possibly be blindfolded and handed any number of books from my collection and tell you without looking which book it was. I'm kind of touchy feely with my books. I also have an initial press that I clamp around the cover of most of my books when I get them. So, sometimes, while I'm subtly rocking my book, I'm running my fingers over the small ridges of the lowercase cursive d and my maiden-name b.

Maybe I'm a little neurotic about the act of reading itself. I'm okay with this. I'm never going to be a Kindle person, or any kind of electronic reading device person. I am well aware it is more portable, more affordable, more convenient. But it does not sit right with my insides. Something feels fake, forced, and disconnected. When I read a story, somehow it becomes a part of me and shifts things around in my guts, my heart. Maybe sometimes the shift is imperceptible. But it's there. And I feel it with a book in my hands, pages between my fingers, without buzzing or beeping.

So last night, after almost 4 hours of watching Kenny read The Brothers Karamazov in a coffee shop, I came home and pulled out the book itself. It felt so good. As I opened it and flipped through it, I remembered not so much the story in the book, but the way I had felt while reading it. The texture of the pages, the weight of it in my hands woke something up inside me. I said, "How can you not want to hold this?" I believe in good writing. And I believe that there is crap out there in beautiful binding. But when good writing and satisfying binding come together, it takes reading to another level altogether for me.

For those of you reading on a screen, the story remains the same. The words are in the same order, sometimes even on the same number of pages. But I still think there's something missing!

What about you? Are you a tactile reader or a technological reader?