The Library Girl

Montreal

For years if not decades, Montreal was a city in decline. A huge chunk of the population and dozens of businesses left (mostly for Toronto) after the 1980 referendum, and more still departed after the one in 1995 (mostly for Vancouver or Calgary). I moved out of my parents’ home the year after that, when they were practically giving apartments away, with first and last month’s rent free and more selection than one could dream of. I too contemplated leaving because prospects for employment were slim, especially in a town of under-funded libraries and two library schools. Ten years later, I wouldn’t dream of it.

Renaissance is definitely the word for it. That mot juste is also used by Jean-Louis Roy in his book Montréal: ville nouvelle, ville plurielle, which I read this weekend. Everything he states about the surge in growth of this city, I could feel just by walking down the street. There are signs that prosperity has returned, including everything from cranes to a dramatic increase in the costs of rent and real estate. People are choosing to move here instead of the inverse, and the same is true for companies.

In his books on the creative class, Richard Florida discusses what it takes for a city to attract the best and the brightest, which he narrows down to three Ts: talent, tolerance, technology. We have all of them in spades. Our population is also really educated on average, a state of affairs aided by the presence of four universities and scores of colleges. We are also truly bilingual in a functioning way. Florida’s books, especially the most recent (The Flight of the Creative Class) are really good, although the first two are less readable because of the amount of statistical charts. I heard him speak at a conference last year, and he was fabulous. City planners should listen up.

From a bibliophile and librarian’s perspective, this town has collectively never been more ‘book aware’. The opening of the Grande Bibliothèque last year resulted in the multitudes flocking to use the facility. Being World Book Capital meant that literary activities abounded, and the merger/demerger discussions put libraries at the forefront of citizen debate. I absolutely love our Salon du Livre, which takes place in the late fall, and we have a thriving publishing industry as well.

I am incredibly enthusiastic about all of this, and I do hope to contribute in some way to the intellectual life of a once-again thriving island.

The ‘End-of-Semester’ Rush

This is one of the first weekends that I finished my required reading by Saturday night. I don’t know what it was about this week, but my nose was in the books constantly. The theory is that my brain is so conditioned to final exams and papers at this time of year that it subconsciously launched into adrenaline mode, as if there were seventeen assignments due and less than a month in which to complete them. It’s the same influence that makes me feel smarter in the fall. Being a university student is something I miss very much, and I did it for so many years that it would be impossible to ever shake the associated habits (including, unfortunately, cramming for important projects). There is no doubt in my mind that I’ll go back one day. In the meantime, I shall have to stick to Tanya U, which is still filled with much learning, albeit of a more relaxed nature.

Two of this week’s books had to do with reading. The first, edited by the brilliant Anne Fadiman, was Rereadings: Seventeen Writers Revisit Books They Love. You may be surprised, but I got nothing out of it. You should know this about me: I rarely if ever re-read books unless I’m giving a talk on them. The reason is that there is so much out there to get to that it feels like stagnation going over the same ground twice. Perhaps I’ll feel differently after many more years of life and experience, but this is how it is for the moment. I know you pick up on things you may have missed, or see the text with different eyes, but it’s still fundamentally the same book. Since I don’t re-read, I didn’t much care for hearing about the revisitations of others, least of all for titles that aren't familiar. This volume only got picked up because Fadiman’s name was attached to it. Others will definitely appreciate it, so please don’t turn away because of this personal feedback.

The second book was Leave Me Alone, I’m Reading by Maureen Corrigan. Clearly, this author can be counted among the ranks of bibliophiles everywhere. She discusses her mania, how books overpower her house and how her career consists of reading. In between, she reveals more personal aspects of her life, such as her struggles both to have a child and wade through the waters of academia. I was enjoying this book thoroughly until about halfway through. I didn’t like the feminist/leftist discussions on various titles (the lenses felt somewhat dated), and couldn’t at all relate to the Brooklyn working class Catholic background that tainted her reading and in this case, somewhat overpowered her writing. Not that I have to relate to everything I read (far from it), but something in this put me off. That said, I would read others of her books in the future, or at least give them a chance.

I started reading the third book to my husband months ago and hadn’t finished until today: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll. While he had read it during his childhood, I had not. We started it as part of a new bedtime ritual, but quickly realized that it would take a while because of our sleeping habits. I go to bed only when on the verge of collapse which occurs, much to my chagrin, far earlier than it did ten years ago. By the time he joins me an hour or two later, I’m more often than not out cold. He then reads alone, being quite the night crawler and unable to unwind without some form of literary transition. Despite the deep allure of weighty slumber, it got done.

If you’re getting the impression that it seemed a bit of a chore, you aren’t wrong. While I loved the bonding with my hubby part, this isn’t my type of story. It’s too absurd and nonsensical, as Carroll himself stated repeatedly. Everyone should read it at some point, however, because of all the allusions and references made to it by writers, artists, and filmmakers ever since its publication in the nineteenth-century. One cannot accuse it of lacking imagery nor memorable characters. I think we'll read an American classic for the next bedtime pick, and then head back to Victorian Britain after that. On verra.

In the meantime, I’ll go spend some time with my husband lest he forget that he actually has a living and breathing wife.

Going Public

We’re currently digging through archives at my library so that we can put together a special anniversary publication. The exercise has been fascinating. I love going through historical documentation because it’s interesting to get a glimpse of what the library looked like decades ago, and what activities and services were offered. It’s also illuminating to track the values and norms of the times, and how they change (just to give you an example: we had a smoking room at one point).

One of the articles we’re writing is called ‘Growing up in the Library’. The fact is that there are thousands of people who have known this library their entire lives, who cannot imagine life without it. They had it when they were bouncing toddlers and their moms brought them to story time; they came here for all their school projects; they hung out here with their teenaged friends; and they took out books to help them find careers, love, and cars. They now bring their children here and continue the cycle. Even though they aren’t old yet (we’ve only been around for 40 years), we will continue to serve them well when they are. I say ‘here’ and ‘we’, but I could be referring to any public library, anywhere.

The beauty of public libraries (or one of them at least), is that they have offerings for every cycle of life, and people get out of them what they want or need. You can pop in, grab a book and go, or linger, talk to a librarian, sit and relax, attend a program and stay all day if you want. They are pretty flexible as far as institutions go, and mightily democratic.

Unlike schools, public libraries are places that people can pursue personal interests without a curriculum, or homework, or someone watching over them. When I was a kid, I took out the same Halloween book at least twenty times, maybe more. Nobody told me I couldn’t, or that I was wasting time (that’s a lie… My mother had something to say about that particular obsession after the third check-out, but I digress). Kids can find or create their own world at the library, and they are treated as individuals. I like to believe that we are helping them develop their personalities and cultivate their minds. Then we help them maintain it.

I’d be interested in hearing about your library memories if you want to share them. I’ve got to say too that I love what I do. Until next time.

Sunday Evening Stretch

There are many Sunday nights that I’d rather not read and instead spend time with my husband or preparing for the days ahead. Much as I love it, I wish I didn’t have to cram so much reading in on the weekends. It’s just impossible to get through books during the week, when I tend to take work home. The fourth book sometimes requires effort; it is the one that I’d drop every now and then if I could.

This morning I woke up once again with a linguistic bent. Howard Richler’s A Bawdy Language: How a Second-Rate Language Slept Its Way to the Top fit the bill. The author, a Montrealer, is one of the several solid English Language writers out there, in good company with Richard Lederer, William Safire, Bill Bryson, and David Crystal, to name a few. A Montreal Gazette columnist, he writes in a conversational way that appeals to an inquisitive but general audience. I very much appreciate the short chapters too. This would have made excellent bus reading.

After hours of housework ate up the afternoon (neatness, unfortunately, is not my forte), I needed to be transported. My ticket was Tracy Chevalier’s Girl with a Pearl Earring. No, I didn’t read the book years ago, nor did I see the film. Part of my personal library collection, it’s lucky to have even been cracked open this decade. That said, it read like a breeze. Not romantic, but subtle. You don’t so much get a snapshot of a town in 17th century Netherlands as you do a portrait of the domestic and private life in that time and place. I think that this book did so well because of that keyhole feeling the text imparts. It suited my mood perfectly.

I’ll sign off before today slips into tomorrow, but you can be sure I’ll return.

Words/Les mots

Two areas that I never tire of reading about are language and intellectuals - subjects which, fortunately, are vast and often connected. I go through degrees of obsession with first one and at the moment, it’s in full swing. For the first time too, my husband has jumped on the bandwagon. Even our joint audio course is related: the fantastic The History of the English Language, given by Professor Seth Lerer from Stanford University. Did you know (just to throw a tidbit at you) that the word ‘butterfly’ is a Modern English version of ‘flutterby’? Etymology is fascinating.

The transit book of the week was On Borrowed Words: A Memoir of Language by Ilan Stavans. We’ve met this author before, and I enjoyed this volume, although it is really different from Dictionary Days. It reveals a lot more about the author and his family, for one thing. He’s descended from Ashkenazi Eastern European Jews who moved to Mexico, where he grew up and learned to speak Spanish, Yiddish, and Hebrew. He then moved to the States and learned English, his preferred tongue. In this book he recounts his journey in search of identity through different family members, countries, and —ultimately — words.

The second text of the week is part of my effort to maintain my French. It’s about one of France’s most well-known public intellectuals, Bernard-Henri Lévy. The book, entitled BHL: une biographie, by Philippe Cohen, filled the gap in my knowledge about the now very controversial figure. He’s currently under fire in the United States for his latest work, American Vertigo, which is an account of his travels in the footsteps of Alexis de Tocqueville. His descriptions are not altogether flattering. For what it’s worth, he also always causes a stir in his own nation, albeit for different reasons. His fellow countrymen love criticizing him for everything from being exceedingly wealthy to being a media-hound; from not coming up with any ‘original theory’ to lying about some aspects of his past. This isn’t exactly a flattering biography. Maybe it’s because I’m Canadian, but I really don’t care about any of the above.

I’ve read several of his books and pretty much liked every single one of them. He writes well, and so what if he’s gone against the stereotype of the homely impoverished Parisian intellocrate? That he’s used the media to maximum effect is very clever, and that he’s opportunistic in what he writes about makes me take my hat off to him even more. I can appreciate a well-managed career, and will follow Lévy’s for some time to come.

You will hear much more about my pet subjects in the weeks to follow; of that I am certain.

Random Bibliographic Musings #1

When you read about book collectors and rare book dealers, you learn that more often than not, they hunt down first editions. As I was wandering through the stacks at work today, it occurred to me that pretty much every hard cover version of any book we have is a first. Most public libraries would have collections worth a mint if not for one tiny little factor: processing.

If driving a car off the lot halves its value, then processing a book does as much damage. Actually, it pretty much kills any and all monetary appreciation. By processing I mean, of course, gluing on pockets, stamping the library name, plasticizing the cover, adding a barcode and so on. That doesn’t even count wear incurred by use.

The purpose of any book in a public library is to be circulated above all else, otherwise the citizens’ tax dollars would be wasted. The more a book goes out, the more value the book has. Our currency, you see, is people. On a purely intellectual level, the ideas and language within a book are also not bound to pages inside two covers. Books are written for an audience.

I always wonder if an author would rather have his or her ideas widely spread, or sell a few copies more but have fewer people discuss or know about it. Public libraries, without a doubt, allow more people to access a given title. Most people would simply read less if there were no way to get a book for free. That said, if a library has even a single copy of a book and forty people take it out, that’s forty books not sold. But forty people wouldn’t ever have bought it, or read it, or discussed it. I’d say about ten might have; another few would borrow it from them; perhaps some might have sold it to a used book dealer, who would in turn resell it. Often it happens that runaway bestsellers do very well in both libraries and bookstores, but not always.

For publishers, it’s quite a predicament. I wonder if public libraries were invented in our day and age and didn’t have the weight of tradition, if they’d even be legal today. You can say that literacy is a public good, etc. etc. but in our times, money often seems more important. Then again, libraries are also major purchasers of books, so they kind of have to be catered to as well. To throw in another twist, people in the book business are usually bibliophiles to some degree, and I’m sure that many grew up loving libraries, which helped foster the admiration for books in the first place. Certainly they would not consider public libraries a threat to their livelihood. Hmmm…

I just wonder about things like this, hence, the title ‘random bibliographic musings’.

Memorable Memoir

Although I tend to follow my own path in terms of which book to pick up next, I force myself to read at least a few titles from a bestseller, ‘best-of’, or other kind of list, just to be in touch with my fellow readers, and in case there’s a gem I’d have otherwise not discovered. Tonight’s book - The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls - is one such title, and a fabulous memoir to boot.

Raised by eccentric parents in a nomadic and impoverished lifestyle, the author found solace in her siblings and eventually the (realized) dream of moving to New York. The story is about disillusionment on one hand, (in this case, with her alcoholic father), and tenacity on the other. Walls grew up too fast, and she is a survivor in a literal sense, once even eating margarine when there was nothing else in the house.

I really enjoyed this book, and for many reasons. The relationship she has with her brother and sisters is crucial. They really look out for one another in a way that siblings ideally should. If you have any, you know what I mean. I appreciated the author’s ability to step away from her upbringing and create her own life. She is highly likeable, too: tough, smart, protective, sensitive, and down-to-earth. The way she writes pulls the reader into her story, and you just want to keep going to see how she gets to be the author of the volume in your hands. This book is highly recommended.

Guys and Books

It is one of the great and tragic mysteries of the reading world that the male half of our species reads nowhere near the same amount as its female counterpart. This is a phenomenon that begins relatively young, and carries into old age. It has not always been this way, so you have to ask: what happened? Honestly, I don’t know, but does it ever bother me.

It’s not like there aren’t books to suit every taste imaginable. It’s not like there is anything inherent in the delightful process of reading that would drive men away. I know many men who read a lot, and who could be easily classified as bibliophiles to boot. For every one of them, however, there are certainly five or six women with the same designation, and even more guys who don’t read at all.

Public librarians across the U.S. and Canada are troubled by this. Downright perplexed, in fact. There are seminars and workshops given by experts on how to get boys to read, how to draw them into the library. The rising popularity of graphic novels in libraries can practically be attributed to this effort, and they work on some level. Still, it’s not enough.

I’ve asked my husband, now a bibliomaniac like me, why he read less in his teens and twenties. He had a few one-word answers: TV, videogames, computer, movies, and going out. If he were the type, one could add sports to the mix as well. Is this unique? No. I’d say his list covers most obstacles to male reading in that age group. He got into reading again by taking out books on those very subjects, and from there branched out. That’s a good place to begin. In terms of fiction, here’s another.

The phenomenon of ‘Chick Lit’ swept across the literary world in the late nineties and just gets more popular as time goes on. There is a male equivalent, called ‘Lad Lit’, or ‘Dick Lit’, for the twenty and thirty-something crowd. It hasn’t been as big, to be sure, but it’s still out there, no matter how low key. Leading the pack is Nick Hornby, but do check out Jonathan Coe, Irvine Welsh (of Trainspotting fame) and Roddy Doyle.

On this side of the pond, the McSweeney’s crowd is the way to go. What began as a literary journal has grown to much, much more than that. Involved, among others, are David Eggers, Michael Chabon, Jonathan Lethem, and Paul Collins. The last of these is my favourite of the bunch.

I just finished his most recent book called The Trouble with Tom : The Strange Afterlife and Times of Thomas Paine, about – literally - the resurrection and reburial of Mr. Paine’s body several times, in America and Britain. Collins loves digging into strange and neglected historical phenomena, and this is another manifestation of that. I suppose it’s false putting him with fiction, since he pretty much writes non-fiction, but he’s still with the gang, and a great writer.

I’m in the painful process of putting a bibliography together on ‘guy reads’ for the library. It’s only difficult because there is very little out there in terms of resources. I have my helpers, though, and please feel free to become one of them.

Audio Dynamite

Audiobooks are the best kept secret in the reading world. Once thought to be an invention for the visually impaired or long-distance driver, they are any and every reader’s best friend. I’ve worked in libraries for years, and I always disregarded them until last summer. Now, I’m a junkie. Trust me, once you listen to one, you’re guaranteed to be hooked and your reading habits will change forever.

These recordings, performed by professional actors, are available in a variety of formats. You’ll want to go for the unabridged ones, for the most part, unless you just want an idea of what a given book is about. In many cases, the audio version is even better than the physical book (as with the Harry Potters read by Jim Dale, or any title performed by Jeff Woodman). You can also get audio courses given by top university professors, put out by the Teaching Company or Recorded Books (in the latter case, the Modern Scholar series). This is a beautiful art form.

The main reason I love them is that people can squeeze more books into their lives during times that they would not otherwise be able to read. In my case, because I need to have several going on at once, I tend to take whatever I find even remotely interesting on the shelf. That has led me to many titles I might have missed under normal circumstances.

There is also the health benefit, which stems in large part from the reduction in stress, particularly if you spend time in traffic. Every formerly aggravated driver I know now looks forward to getting in their car because they have a good audiobook waiting. I use them to combat insomnia, especially the kind brought on by thinking about work in bed. I drift off into a fictional world and forget the running mental list of what has to be done the next day.

Times when you can listen to audiobooks: in the car; on public transit; in bed; while eating breakfast and getting ready in the morning; while cleaning; while going for a walk; while at the gym; while doing yard work; while painting rooms; while doing repetitive brainless tasks (like mending socks); while cooking…. You get the picture.

I just finished two which have been going for a few weeks now. The first is Son of a Witch, by Gregory Maguire. The author himself read the book really well, but I didn’t like the actual text as much, at least in comparison to his amazing Wicked. The Life of Pi by Montrealer Yann Martel was the second title, and it was great. The book itself won the Booker Prize, and the narration is so, so good.

Other fantastic audiobooks (besides the Harrys, my favourites): The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon, Bee Season by Myla Goldberg, and The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini.

If you haven’t yet discovered the marvel that is audiobooks, please render this kindness unto thyself and go pick one up.

Weight

Sundays for me are always filled with books. Because I don’t get the chance to read too much during the week, I stuff in as much as I can on the weekend. Today, for example, I read three volumes. Grant it, the last of them had to be a graphica, as my brain had just had enough. That has more to do with the type, rather than quantity of book, though.

I love social commentary titles because they force readers to think critically and keep informed about the world. The drawback is that they can be distressing, particularly when they discuss issues nearly impossible to remedy in any significant way. I know people who won’t read them because they feel too depressed afterwards, and others who read nothing but. I usually take them in doses, but today I didn’t. I’d not recommend two in a row.

Susan Linn’s Consuming Kids: Protecting Children from the Onslaught of Marketing and Advertising is one of many books out there on the subject of marketing to children. The author is a psychologist/ventriloquist, and as such she is more interested in imagination and play than economics. That said, what she discusses is not really new. I’ve read it so many times before, and yet I can’t seem to neglect any title I come across to do with this topic. I don’t have children, but I can’t help but feel grateful that Quebec has laws against advertising to kids under 13 years old (it’s the only place in North America that does). It’s a wonder youth could ever think for themselves anymore. The marketing machine is just so expansive and well-funded. Ugh.

That, of course, is nothing at all in the face of the thousands upon thousands of orphans in Africa left on their own each year because their parents have died from AIDS. Stephen Lewis’s Race Against Time, the Massey lecture for 2005, is bleak but excellent. Lewis works for the UN and has involved himself in Africa for over four decades. Where in the 1960s there was hope that the lives of those he met would get better with decolonization, today there is just so much death. He discusses the Millennium Development Goals set at the turn of 2000, and how they will not be met at this rate. It’s not that they can’t be; it’s that richer countries like Canada (and more egregiously the United States and Japan) do a fraction of what they could and should do.

With all the weight of the books today, I was mentally exhausted. The evening was topped off with The Dark Horse Book of the Dead, a collection of short stories in comic form about zombies. Don’t ask me how the walking dead are relaxing… Some of the stories were better than others, but aesthetically, the book is pleasing (in a dark and creepy way).

This coming week is flush with activity, and I have no idea what I’ll be in the mood to read. Certainly, a couple of audiobooks I’ve been listening to will be finished. It’s a long weekend with the holidays coming up, so maybe a thicker book is in order. I’ll let you know.