The Library Girl

Presents

Every day, you should give yourself a little present, be it a cat nap in your office or a good cup of rich dark coffee (so said Special Agent Dale Cooper in the hit TV series Twin Peaks). It’s sound advice if you ask me. This week’s gift to self consisted of time off; two lazy days of not much more than reading, going for walks, and otherwise hanging about.

You’d think I’d have read a huge pile of books, but this wasn’t the case. I finished my four and am in the middle of two audiobooks and six other titles.

Suite française by Irène Némirovsky was excellent. I read it in the original French version, and it was long but worth it. This book is destined to become a classic. The author, who was killed in a concentration camp in 1942, wrote about her adoptive country just as the Germans invaded. The book is actually incomplete in this printing (only two of the projected five parts of the tale are contained therein), but each unit is separate. The first section represents the experiences of a variety of Parisian characters as they try to flee the capital, and the second, life in the countryside with billeted soldiers.

The next book of the week was The Rabbi’s Cat by Joann Sfar. A graphic novel that won the prestigious Prix Angoulême a couple of years ago, this was a great little story set in Algeria and told from the point of view of a witty cat who, for a spell, could talk aloud. As a rule, my favourite kind of graphic novel is the French-inspired variety. I love the dark lines and illustration style. I can’t wait for the rest of the series to be translated so I could buy them for my library.

The reputable and prolific orientalist Bernard Lewis wrote the next book, entitled The Multiple Identities of the Middle East. This interesting and short book does much to illustrate how different groups in the region perceive themselves and others. The text was full of tidbits (yummy), and pointed things out that I hadn’t thought about before. For example: in Christianity, state and church are completely separate from the get go; this is not the case for either Judaism or Islam.

The last book I read doesn’t really fit in with the rest, having to do with customer service and work, but I started it last week and had to finish it. Overpromise and Overdeliver was actually really helpful, discussing what the author Rick Barrera calls ‘Touchpoints’, which are the zones of contact between the customer and your organization. I think I shall pass this one along to a few of my employees, as it has a lot to teach.

Next week will be really busy and I likely won’t be able to read as much, but I look forward to it nonetheless.

Nothing to Read

Yesterday I was frantically trying to find something to read and nothing at all held any appeal. At the library, I scanned at least eight carts of books and found very few I wanted to take home. Of the mountain of books strewn around my house, none quite fit the bill; they were too dense, too big, not quite the right subject, too much about work, requiring note-taking, or the type was too small. I truly do want to read every book (especially the library ones) I have at home, but they all have their time, which clearly is not now.

Similarly, on numerous occasions, I’ve heard patrons say that they have a whole library full of books and yet nothing to read. The thing to do in such circumstances is to find out what kind of mood they’re in and then try to match it. If I were to do this exercise on myself, the result would be:

• Not too big: I just can’t bear another 500-page commitment. Actually, I’m presently reading Irène Némirovsky’s Suite Française, which is about that size, but that’s because it’s on a waiting list and I feel pressured. Give me 200-page books for the next while please.
• Easy to read: I have been gorging on these dense history tomes which, although excellent, are weighty. I don’t want fluff, but the words really have to roll along.
• Audio: This is quite the desperate situation. I just finished Jack Welch’s Winning today while baking muffins, and I have nothing at all for tomorrow. The thing is, the audiobooks are getting increasingly popular in my library, and the nummy stuff is just not on the shelf. That’s one problem; I also have to find one each for my husband and father, both of whom are ripping through them faster than I can replace them (I’m working on it Dad!).

Another of my present reading issues is that I own the books I really want to read the most. Under normal circumstances, this would hardly be construed as a problem, except that I have to get to the library volumes first. And volumes there are. While on vacation, I take only my own books in case I lose those belonging to others. As there is no vacation in sight, that doesn’t work. The result is that scores of books lay untouched, in piles, on my home office floor.

If I had my druthers, I’d be reading classics. I used to only read classics and then got off them when I started working at the library in order to be of the world and find out what people were actually reading. I long for them again.

Some of you may find it nuts that I won’t just read what I want, but it’s impossible. Perverted, ridiculous, annoying – maybe – but it cannot be helped.

Tomorrow I will go to work and browse. Ultimately, I find that to be the best solution to the ‘nothing to read’ disease. That, or having someone you trust pick one out for you.

Accessories

For about two years or so, my husband and I have wanted to order our very own American Library Association (ALA) Yoda READ poster. Today, we finally did. We also threw in the new Superman equivalent, as well as a READ stamp and umbrella, for fun. If I had my druthers, I could have spent whopping fortunes on the range of adorable bookmarks they have too. Maybe I’m a sucker for these types of things but I am not alone. You should have seen the crowds at the ALA store at the conference I went to in Boston in March. So many librarians needing their own Nancy Pearl action figure…

Book lovers in general like having the accessories that go with their bibliomania, especially the bookmark. To use myself as an example, I grab them whenever possible, no matter what the size, shape, kind of paper, image, etc. Actually, that’s not quite true, as I detest wide bookmarks, but apart from that, it’s an almost ridiculous problem. The bookmark must match the book in terms of size and style. I have hundreds of them in a drawer to choose from, and I literally get twitchy if my husband reads a book without one nearby. Some are amazingly attractive, while others are rather boring. I know several people who collect them, too, although most everyone at least appreciates them.

Today’s book is the reason I brought all this up in the first place. It’s a French volume called Bouquiner: Autobibliographie, by a woman named Annie François, who works for Seuil, one of the biggest publishing houses in France. It’s one of those common enough bibliophile books where the author discusses his or her reading habits or quirks, but hers are rather eccentric, and her writing, endearing and humurous. For example, she will neither dog-ear nor bookmark her spot; instead, she memorizes the page number she’s on. Salient passages are marked by the use of her fingernail, so as not to leave an obvious trace. While she reads in the bathtub pretty frequently, one day she gets the uncontrollable urge to dip her paperback in the water to see what would happen. She lies to friends who ask her to borrow her books, telling them that she herself borrowed it until they catch her out by reading the dedication inside the cover. Even though she loves them, she also tosses all dust jackets just because the book underneath is the real and naked thing. You have to love her.

Let me say a word about the term ‘bouquiner’, because it’s really meaningful in an all-encompassing way, and has no equivalent in English. Literally, it translates into ‘to read’, but it could also mean ‘to go about the business of books’, either to sell, buy, or deal in them as well. I love it conceptually and it sounds lovely when you say it aloud.

I would go on about the variations between the French and English books, publishing, and reading habits, but that will have to wait for another day. It’s so hot and sticky in my house that I cannot sit at my laptop for another minute.

Enlightenment

While in university, I managed to completely cut out French history save a brief three weeks in an intro-level European survey class. Why I could not tell you; it simply didn’t interest me. British history seemed less pompous somehow, and much more eccentric (and therefore more appealing). This state of affairs continued until 2002, when I went to Paris on my honeymoon. Partly because I’m a librarian, and also because of the type of personality I have, I spent the year before reading all I could get my hands on before my departure, in order to get more out of the experience.

It changed me. Since then I have steadily read French books, worn perfume and pointy high-heeled shoes and my hair in chignons. I tried my first ever crème brulée there (such bliss) and regularly drink wine and eat brie and baguette. I also got obsessed with the Enlightenment.

I’ve already told you about my admiration of Benjamin Franklin. Allow me to extend that to Voltaire, in addition to all the encyclopédists and philosophes of 18th century Paris. Not only did they collectively produce mountains of seminal and remarkably influential works that shaped our times, they did so under the watchful (and punishing) eye of authorities. Their collaboration is astounding, and their wit amusing, especially in the case of Voltaire.

This was definitely the reading theme of this week. It all started because I had my book club, which was on Philipp Blom’s excellent Encyclopédie: the Triumph of Reason in an Unreasonable Age. I wish this book wasn’t a sleeper in terms of sales; it really is very interesting and sophisticated. I adored talking to the public about the text and the times. Actually, on this topic I’ll talk to anybody who’ll listen.

The novel of the week (I’m so glad to be back reading fiction) was a French one by Jean-Michel Riou entitled Le Secret de Champollion. True to the title, it takes place during Napoléon’s reign. The book is divided into sections, each ‘written’ by one of the scholars on the campaign to Egypt. They all try to crack the code on the Rosetta Stone but cannot. Twelve-year-old Champollion is brought onto the team and by seventeen, he can. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this.

The last book, which I’m a hair away from finishing, is Voltaire Almighty: a Life in Pursuit of Freedom by Roger Pearson. Despite a glitch in his writing style, I really got into this one. If you want to know anything about the man and his times, this is a must-read. The type is smallish, but it’s not too dense intellectually. In addition, the author provides both a chronology and list of ‘characters’, which is always helpful. Every time I pick up this volume, I want to lock myself away and study/write. It has that effect. Is that enough of a recommendation?

Cities

Although I currently live in suburbia, a significant part of my soul rests in the city, downtown, in the thick of things. In French there is a lovely word for city-dwellers: les citadins. Naturally all urban centers come with flaws, which is why I moved to the outskirts of town, but the pulse and action of a metropolis are found on the pavement and in flashing windows, in restaurants and shops and crowds.

In larger cities, there is certainly diversity of every kind. While places like Montreal are made up of a mosaic of people, somehow the mix pales in comparison to a megalopolis like London or Paris or New York. In those towns, it feels like the world has converged, folding onto itself amid the architecture.

Kwame Anthony Appiah’s book, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers, explores the philosophy of that convergence in a global setting. Born to a British mother and a Ghanaian father, he presently lives in the United States where he is a professor. While he presents no answers, he certainly poses questions, to do with nationality and nationalism versus greater humanity, conversation, cultural relativism, belonging, and more. I liked this book, as it sets the stage for great talks on these subjects. It’s a good read for 21st century philosophy classes.

On a more localized but related scale, there is the second book I read this week, on Canadian cities. So young by European standards, they have unique characteristics unto themselves. John Lorinc's The New City: How the Crisis in Canada's Urban Centres is Reshaping the Nation, is a quick and relevant, albeit Toronto-centric read. The ‘urban crisis’ is one of poverty and pollution, but without the doughnut effect so prevalent in the United States. Citing Jane Jacobs and Richard Florida extensively, he applies their theories to a Canadian setting, particularly in the latter’s case. 

Since my husband and I booked a trip to London for the fall, you will probably be hearing more about that city in the weeks to come. Two degrees in British history and I’ve never been. For shame!