The Library Girl

Scattered

Not very much has changed for me in the last few weeks. I thought that I’d post again when I had gotten through the Bible. Well, I’m not near the end, but I am that much closer (still have 400 pages to go…). The thing is it can’t be the only book I read. In general, I usually have several going at once. At the moment, it’s more like eight and counting. For whatever reason, ever other book looks more delicious than the ones I’ve started. Then I get into those and still others catch my eye. 

I was craving a novel, but felt behind in my classics, so I reached for Anna Karenina, on the list but meant for later on in the year. It’s just so good and reminds me of how much I adore nineteenth-century fiction. Lucky thing I have a ton of it in the plans, although practically every selection is a brick. The binding in this one also hurts my fingers. The type dips too closely into the crease, which means I have to hold it a certain way, and that aggravates my arthritis. I wish publishers would think of these things.

Another phenomenon I’ve noticed is diminishing type size. In more than half of the classics on my shelf, the font is 8 pt or less. In French books, they just add ‘tomes’, but in English, they shrink the letters. I don’t even wear glasses but I probably will by the end of 2007. A month or two ago, I was wandering around a bookstore and noticed that there was Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in a single volume on the shelf. While it is true that it was abridged (a travesty in and of itself), it was unwieldy. If ever a book was not meant for paperback that was it. The letters were like tiny dots and it was three inches thick. Blech. There’s one I won’t buy…

So now I am faced with the end of January, and only five books finished. I am two discs away from the end of Mayflower; one disc into Good to Great; half-way through the Bible; 200 pages into The Great Transformation; 120 pages into Rwanda’s Genocide, 150 pages into Anna Karenina, 77 pages into Occidental Mythology, and 60 pages into a French book about Champollion. I wish I could just sit my tuchus down and finish one of them but it seems well nigh impossible.

Compounding this inability for completion is a new obsession with documentary films. My library has a great collection which I’ve recently discovered, and now I can’t get enough. I watch at least two a week, which, for a girl who hasn’t watched TV in years, is quite a lot. As long as there’s still learning…

This leads to that, which leads to…

The quest to get through classics has taken over my existence, although in an indirect way. Certainly it has slowed down my reading to the point where I’ve had to find new ways to get my book fix. It has also led me to branch off to related topics to find out more information about the classic at hand. In essence, I’ve created a complex Liberal Arts program for myself.

The first selection is the Bible, and it’s going slowly. I figured I had to start with this text, as millions have read it and even more refer to it. It must be the most referenced book in history. This of course has led elsewhere, to a volume on comparative Middle Eastern mythologies, and documentaries about the Israelites. Since I’ve only managed to get through the five books of Moses, who knows what else it will inspire. I’ve learned weird random tidbits too, like the fact that grasshoppers and locusts are sanctioned by God to be eaten (Leviticus 11:20 if you want proof). I must find out more about the Babylonians, who are fascinating.

Given my penchant for quantity with regards to books, I uncharacteristically started listening to not one but two audio courses simultaneously, one on famous Greeks, and the other, on ancient Rome. Despite their length, neither of these will count in the number of books read this year, meaning that by the end of the month, I’ll have read peanuts. Both of them, however, are really informative and quite suitable to this year’s project. Ultimately, despite the anal need to fill lists within given timeframes, the purpose of this classics enterprise is Knowledge, so there will be no more complaining from self-inflicted rules (promise!).

The problem is the other books, as in, when can I find the time to read them? Well, before bed I allow myself to read whatever I want (in this case a book about the French language). I also started a great ritual in the mornings when I get to work. Instead of shuffling through papers, for the first half-hour or so after I arrive I sit with my tea and read in my office. This has had the amazing effect of focusing my concentration. After I put the book away, I am wildly productive. Exercise has also proven helpful in that I can listen to a regular audiobook while doing it.

I think that my 50 classics is a pipe-dream for a single year, but by the time I get to the last one, I’ll know a whole lot more than I did. This multi-pronged approach will prove very educational, and allow for the pursuit of curiosity.

I’ll keep you posted on how it’s going.

As the Year Turns

It seems like I started this blog only a little while ago, while in fact it’s been just about a year. There’s so much to talk about that I don’t even know where to begin.

First, I guess, the vitals of 2006:

I capped off the year with 150 books read, which is about three per week. While this fell short of the four-a-week goal, I’m happy enough with it, given my new life circumstances.

Of those, 46 were fiction, 22 were audiobooks, and 19 were in French.

The most I read in one month was 18 books, in April.

My favourite books read this year were:

Fiction:
Beauchemin, Yves. Charles le Téméraire (just published in English as Charles the Bold)
Coe, Jonathan. The Rotter’s Club
Connelly, Karen. The Lizard Cage
Goldberg, Myla. Bee Season
Khadra, Yasmina. The Attack
Levy, Marc. Et si c’était vrai…
Liss, David. The Coffee Trader
Martel, Yann. The Life of Pi
Park, Jacqueline. The Secret Book of Grazia Dei Rossi
Rushdie, Salman. Shalimar the Clown

Non-Fiction:
Abu-Jaber, Diana. The Language of Baklava: a Memoir
Bader, Sara. Strange Red Cow and Other Curious Classified Ads from the Past
Friedman, Thomas. The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century
Levitt, Steven D, and Stephen J. Dubner. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Manguel, Alberto. A Reading Diary: A Year of Favourite Books
Moehringer, JR. The Tender Bar
Rapaille, Clotaire. The Culture Code: An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People around the World Live and Buy as They Do
Salzman, Mark. Iron & Silk
Walls, Jeanette. The Glass Castle
Wheen, Francis. How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World: A Short History of Modern Delusions

This coming year brings many new challenges and projects. I’ve already mentioned the classics one in a previous post, but I have people projects too. In 2006, it was my father who, despite having read only a few books in the last decade (all of which were business-related) became a pure Reader. He finished the year at 50 books, rendering me misty-eyed with pride and proving to me that I am a decent librarian. This year I have a colleague and friend to work on, and a series of people to get using the library. My work is cut out for me on more levels than you can imagine.

Happy New Year!