| Reading and reviewing one book a day for one year |
From October 28, 2008 to October 28, 2009, I read one book a day and
wrote about each book I read here on my site. I wrote about what I felt
while reading the book, what I responded to, and what I gained. I also
offered some assessment of the book but my reviews are not typical
reviews. Next project? I will also keep reviewing two to three books a week here on Read All Day and I am writing a book blog for the Huffington Post.
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| contact me: sankovitch@readallday.org |
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I am very, very excited about my project with HarperStudio to write Tolstoy and The Purple Chair, a book about my year of magical reading, and about the power and
pleasures of books.
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For updates on the process of reading and writing every day,
READ BELOW.
See all the reviews at Book Reviews.
For a complete list of all books read, click here.
For email alerts of great books, click here.
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My Year of Reading
October 2008
I
am embarking on this 365 books project for a number of reasons. I love to read, and there is nothing I would rather do than read all day. So why not? I want to share my joy in reading and to encourage others to find in
books the pleasures and knowledge and connections and inspiration that
I have found all my life.
I also seek knowledge through my 365 project: I've learned
so much from all the books I've read and I need more. Both personally and in the world at large, I feel a little lost; what is my purpose in life, what is my place in the
community, where is our country, the world, heading? And
does any of this matter at all? Of course it does. Can I make a difference in how I live my own life, how I raise
my children, mark my ballot, drive my car, heat my house, treat my
neighbors? None of the issues underlying these questions are new: the themes of identity and responsibility and culpability and
accountability have been debated and explored and examined in the great
novels. Really. I've learned great lessons and been inspired by great writers. This year, reading one book a day, should be both intense and wonderful.
I am also seeking to assuage the sorrow I have felt since my sister died four years ago after a brief illness. This year I am the age she was when she died: 46. She was too young to die, she loved to read, I am fulfilling maybe even a fraction of the reading she should have had left to her. But I am not only reading to compensate, I am reading to endure. Books -- especially novels -- offer a window into how other people deal with life, its sorrows and joys and monotonies and frustrations. I can find empathy, guidance, fellowship, and experience through my reading. I will never be relieved of my sorrow for my sister. I am not looking for relief: I am looking for resilience.
What Books Will I Read?
For
my
year of reading one book a day, I thought there would be some limits on
what I could read; I thought I would have to keep the books to 300
pages or less. But what I've found is that on days that are
particularly open to me, I can read a longer book, 400 pages or
longer. I need to keep time every day to really think about what I've
read and to write a response to what I've read. I have no limits this
year, I am open to anything.
The
types of books I will read will fall primarily in the category of
literary novels and I will definitely indulge my taste for mysteries.
I'll also read some biographies, collections of essays, and short
stories. On some days, when life is particularly hectic, I'll read a
novella, maybe Balzac's The Girl with the Golden Eyes.
I
won't
re-read anything I've already read, and although I will read authors I
already know, I will not read anyone more than once during the year.
Each book will be new to me
and I look for recommendations of good books from readers of these
pages and from friends and family. Since my family includes four kids,
I'll
sometimes read a young adult book, including recommendations from my
kids who
have been right on with their suggestions in the past, books like Lion Boy by Zizou Corder or The Last Dragon by Silvana Di Mari.
Authors
I plan on reading over the next year include Paul Auster, Joseph Roth,
Phillip Roth, Haruki Murakami, Edith Wharton, Nadine Gordimer, J.M.
Coetzee, Jorge Luis Borges, Garcia Marquez, Grace Paley, Zadie Smith, the Brontes and Jane Austen
(is there any book of hers that I've missed?). I'll read a Dickens I
haven't read yet (Hard Times) and I'll try Woody Allen.
To
read a great book is a gift. A gift from the author to me and when I
pass that book on, it is the best kind of re-gift, a sharing of
pleasure and joy and knowledge to the reader who receives it. I hope
to inspire the passion and the joy of reading in all those who visit
the 365 project.
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December 3, 2008 -- More than one month of
reading has passed by and so quickly. I've read some truly great books
and some great great ones and only one or two duds. What have I
learned so far?
My goal was to read for understanding, of
myself and of the world. What I have come to realize in the past
thirty-three days is that great writers are great because they can
observe and report so acutely and accurately; from their observations a
story is told and lives are lived. Readers know the pain presented but
also witness the power of great beauty and hope. And yes, readers gain a real understanding
of what makes life worthwhile. How can any reader give up on life
when great books offer us so much to live for?
Over the past
thirty-plus days I have come to value certain necessary traits of great
writing. But first I want to say straight out that I no longer think
writing can be taught. The art of writing is an art that can be honed,
yes, okay. But story telling (fiction or non-fiction, poetry or play)
is a talent, a gift, a treasure. A good writer is lucky to have the
ability to string words together and then pull that string to make your
reader read on and on and finish with a sigh of pleasure, and a bit of
anguish (is it over already?) and a hunger to read MORE.
The
traits of great writing are: genuineness, truth, fearlessness. Say it
out loud, no fear, let your words flap in the wind and light up the sky
and bring in the readers, like a boat into a harbor. Write straight
and true and without a safety net. No safety net!! All the books I've
read and loved have taken a chance and won. They won me over with
their honesty and beauty. And I know the hard, hard work that goes
into making a novel or a memoir or a short story or a poem. Only hard
work and unfettered talent can make such beautiful and moving works of
words.
Thank you, all you writers and I am looking forward to the next 332 books!
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January
12, 2009 -- I've been reading now for over two months and I've read 76
books. This last month was a bit harder for me to keep up with the
reading, what with Christmas and New Year's and all the kids being home
for two weeks. But I did it, a book a day.
The reading
continues to be the easy part and the writing about the books I've
read, the harder part. But the writing has been an amazing experience
for me. Writing about what I read is making me think so much more
about what I've read. I've always enjoyed books but now I'm drawing
deeper into myself. It's like swimming down into a deep cavern of
water -- imagine the blue grotto, all glowing and brilliant -- and
drawing water into myself with my arms, parting the water so that I can
go deeper and deeper into the cave, to find out more and see the
connections, the shared characteristics of what makes a book glow so
brilliantly (makes a book great). Then I come back up again,
breathe and rest and think. I write about what I've read and
what I've been thinking. And then I share what I've written on this
website, with my daily postings. And all this happens within a
twenty-four hour period: read, write, share. Amazing, yes, and exhausting, yes. There are
days when I think I am tired, that I need a rest. But then I start
reading and I am energized again, oxygen in my blood replenished so
that I can take that dive again. And it is wonderful.
There
is
an ideal relationship between the writer of a great book and
the reader of that book. What I mean is that one party is openly and
genuinely communicating with the other party who is wide open to
receiving what is being said. On both sides, there is commitment to
communication: of how many relationships can you say that is true? How
many complain that the people in their lives are not listening or
understanding them? And who among us have anyone willing to sit and
listen for two hours while we go on and on? But a reader who sits down
to read is making that commitment to sit and listen. Saying "Lay it on
me,
I'm yours"? Of course, we readers have the option of shutting the book
and perhaps never returning to it. And even when we do finish the
book, we may misinterpret what the author is trying to say. But
between reader and writer there is a kind of pact. The pact is that
the writer will
lay out his/her genuine thoughts and ideas through the medium of the
best words and characters and plot he/she can work out, and that the
reader will commit to reading the result. It is a sharing that
perhaps is one-sided, in that only the writer speaks, but in the end it
is truly sharing, because one person's experience of writing is being
transmitted to another person experiencing that writing through
reading. It is a glorious intercourse between two minds, at its best.
A
question is thus raised: what is "at its best"? I believe great
writing comes from genuineness and commitment and taking chances and
very, very, very hard work. There is an element of inborn talent, of
having a knack at telling stories and holding attention and creating a
warmth (negative or positive) between characters and reader so that the
reader becomes invested in the book. Once the reader is invested, the
channel of communication (sharing) I spoke of above is forged and deep
and irreversible. Writing classes can teach tricks of the trade but
they cannot lay on the gift of writing where the gift is absent.
Another
question is raised: why does that greatness matter? It matters not
only because reading such books is a pleasure (reading just good books
can also be a pleasure, like a vacation for the brain -- see my
reviews of Dick Francis and James Patterson) but also because a great
book presents the world in a whole new way. Not the whole world
necessarily but a piece of the
world, or a person or a thought, presented in such a way that the
reader has not thought of before. Seeing an issue or a person or a
situation from a new angle changes the way your mind works, enlarges
your mind and enlivens it, as well. Much as going on a trip to a
country or place where life is different from your own daily life
changes you; think of everything from the students who went to France
on their Junior Year Abroad and came home wearing scarves or berets, to
the older couple who visit Florence for the first time and understand
the beauty possible in arches and columns and squares, to the high
school student who spends a vacation building houses in Central America
and finally realizes the luck of the draw in the ease and luxury of
life back home.
Seeing things in a new way changes you; there
is rewiring of the brain. There is a deepening and broadening of
thinking about everything, from even subtle changes in thinking about
anything. So far in my year of reading, I believe my brain has become
more robust and energized, and life all around me is better. To use the
diving metaphor again, the writer of a great book gives us, the
readers, a new tank of oxygen, allowing us to dive again and again into
life. Great good comes from reading great books.
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February 8, 2009 -- I've read one
hundred and three books now. Wow. How wonderful it has been! This
month I've read a lot more short story collections, I just went on a
roll of short stories, and it has been a great ride through Ireland,
Brazil, Croatia, England, and the Midwest. A travelogue of sorts, with
"place" beautifully evoked by all the writers. "Person", "place", or
"thing": the starter to charades. Short stories are like a game of
charades: the writer can talk but only within a very limited
space. With that finite number of words, the writer has to convey not
only "person" and "place" but the "thing" and that thing is the
STRUGGLE. For a short story to be good (for it to work) the writer has
to give us a robust place, defined people (or rather, characters;
humanity is not required just compelling-ness), and the movement of
those characters as they meet and overcome (or fail trying to overcome)
the struggle. The characters start at one point in their lives and we
watch as they move to a new point and change, for better or for worse.
A great short story makes us care, heart and soul, about the
movement, the struggle, the change. We care when the characters are
genuinely portrayed, when just a slight detail can define a whole
person. For example, "Martha's desire to leave waned when a flu clouds up her head and returns just as soon as she gets well again."
(from Claire Keegan's "The Forester's Daughter). We care when the
place where the story takes place breathes for us; when it is alive and
it cradles or rejects the characters within its orbit: think of the
Croatia of Novakovich, the Brazil of Coutinho, or the Ireland of Keegan (quoting now from "Walk the Blue Fields: "On
either side, the trees are all and here the wind is strangely human. A
tender speech is combing through the willows. In a bare whisper, the
elms lean. Something about the place conjures up the ancient past: the
hound, the spear, the spinning wheel."
I could be in all
those place and know someone who lived and struggled, and I am more, I
am richer, with another layer -- another ring in my bark -- for having
been there, having known the people and the struggle and the outcome.
That is great good coming from great books. I will try over the months
to come to read more short stories from authors writing in corners of
the world I've never been, places I've only heard whispers about. I
look forward to it.
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| March 23, 2009
-- As of today I've
read 145 books and so many of them have been great. I think a lot
about what it is that makes a book great and I've already written quite
a bit about it, in reviews and here in the updates. But one aspect of
great writing that I have not yet been able to articulate is the
necessity of fearlessness on the
part of the author.
An
author who writes without fear -- of rejection, of rebuke, of
ineptitude, of foolishness or seriousness, can write a great book. If
the
writer is free of fear, she can go out there and express every aspect
of a
story, the smells of the characters, the sight of the places, the
nature of the emotions, and the pull of the struggle being waged for or
against the characters.
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She can cover all the types of
feelings and sensations, the gripping, tensing, holding and imprisoning
(or utterly freeing) aspects of feelings that roll over her characters
or drown them, buoy them up, or rout them or tickle them. She can write
about big emotions and little emotions, she can write about the tiniest
detail of a dress or the complex pattern of full sunlight through trees
on to a summer lawn, and she can write about an evil lover or the
sweetest shop keeper, and all she writes will ring true, because she
sees it before her and she writes it down for us the reader, without
fear. Her story becomes a compelling truth, a book we can't put down.
The novel gives us images and ideas that we will hold for a long time
after we've finished reading: that is the gift of great writing.
The
best books are the ones that do not follow a formula or try too hard to
be a certain genre. When I read a book I know when I am being manipulated (messed with) and when
I am being told a truth. The best stories present a truth about life
in any way that the author finds best, even if it is in lies. An
author has to be fearless in just not
worrying about the verisimilitude of the story, or is it too romantic,
too gross, too quiet or too loud. If the author feels the scene is a
genuine, guts-out presentation of the ideas she wants to get across,
she has to go with it, go for it, and give it to us. She cannot worry
if her story will sell or tank completely (that's the agent's job).
She has to write without fear of refusal.
And
in that way writing is like living. We have to live fearlessly,
willing to go out and express ourselves without thinking about whether
we measure up or not. The only measurement that counts is our own, and
the only ruler we should use is one of our own devising: we determine
what is important to us, who is important to us, and what we want to
experience on the road of life. Of course there are limits: if you are
first and foremost a murderer, please go to jail. But most of us are
trying to make connections with the people around us and find pleasure
in the lives we have. If we can do that without trying to fit into set
ideas of how to behave, or how to project an image of success or beauty
or brains, but instead try to see and to share what we know, what we
enjoy, and what we desire, our lives can be better, richer, wider.
Great
books bring new notches to our ruler of measuring our own life. We
experience new ways of thinking and seeing and experiencing life and
the world; we feel pleasure in new ways, see happiness in new places,
and understand sorrow beyond our own sorrows. We may develop desire to
go somewhere or do something or try something completely new. And if
we are fearless, we will bring ourselves to meet those new notches, we
will rise beyond where we thought we might go, and we will understand
how much further we can go, in knowing and feeling and loving. Great
good comes from great books.
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April 14, 2009 -- Now
that I am over five months and 168 books into my year-long project of
365 books and book reviews/responses, I am ready to come clean on the
purpose of this year of reading books. Some of my friends know, others
may have guessed, and I'm sure there are nights of too many glasses of
wine when I have even confided in bare acquaintances my reason for
spending a year with books, lots of books. Not that the reasons I
wrote about here in October (see the 365 Project page) were untruthful: I wrote truly but with a saccharine flavor. Now I am ready to tell the truth as it hurts and as it is.
Four
years ago my oldest sister died of cancer. The illness was swift and
horrible, the death came only four months after diagnosis. I was
bewildered by the horror of my sadness in the first months after she
died: it was so much more overwhelming and unpredictable than anything
I'd ever felt. When each of my children were born I felt unbounded
love and gratitude and I still do. But I was not overwhelmed by love,
I was made super by it; I was not uncertain about when the waves of
love would hit me, I was wallowing and splashing in it. But with
sorrow over my sister's death, the pain and the anger and the anguish
was both a steady thumping against my brain and a sudden knife to my
gut that occur any time, triggered by anything.
I read up on
grief and sorrow and did not like what I read, all about the stages.
I've always been certain I am different from other people (this has
been both bad and good for me, depending on where I was in my life) and
the stages described in books and articles were just more proof of that
difference.
But as the months and years went on and I still
felt such pain and such sorrow over my sister no longer being here in
this life, on this earth, with me, I wanted to not be so different. Was
there anyone out there that could understand, or offer another view, a
consolation or a brotherhood at least? I had found inklings in my most
favorite pastime ever (no, not sex, although there are those who think
you die a little every time -- not me), the reading of books.
But
not just any books. Great books. There is nothing wrong with a good
book, escapism is a good goal for reading, I know that. But a truly
great book offers more than escape, it offers the proof that you are
not alone in the world. There are others out there experiencing
different events but having reactions similar to what you feel. A
great author knows about these universals of emotions, and can relate
through stories these shared experiences that are wholly unique and yet
share something, somewhere with someone. It is the sharing that makes
the stories good; it is the telling well, that makes the books great. I
found, through books, that I am not alone in feeling such horrors of
sorrow. I don't want advice on how to get over grief or accept my
loss, I want to know that I am not alone and great books offer me
company. Out of that company, I have found comfort and, yes, I do feel
better.
In books, in novels and memoirs and short stories,
authors discuss death. I would say it is the number one topic, with
sex coming in second. Death fascinates, it is something we are moving
towards from the moment we are born and we dread it, most of us. But
until we lose someone who we were completely and totally unprepared to
lose, we do not face the truth of our mortality. When my sister died,
I knew then I would die too. No doubt about it. If that brilliant and
beautiful and vibrant and needed (oh so necessary to me) person could
die, then anyone can and everyone will.
So I decided to read a
lot of books, but more than that, I vowed to read and then to think
about what I read and respond in writing -- my daily reviews -- to what
I read. My "reviews" are more responses that typical reviews, although
I do make clear what I like and what I don't.
I like
truthfulness and fearlessness in an author. I like chances to be
taken, and I want hearts and souls bared, not as a manipulation of my
own heart but as a sincere effort to show the world as it is, or as it
could be, or as it should be. Great books show me I am not alone,
that I can connect with others, that there is a humanity out there and
I am part of it, for better or for worse. For many people, life is
only misery, and I've read books that capture that. But for most
people, even in depths of misery, light can shine, beauty can
penetrate, relief and comfort can be found. I've found beauty and
truth and light, relief and comfort, and sometimes even great sadness
and hopelessness in the great books I've read. The shared experience --
the brotherhood of books -- has done me good. I am a richer person in
hope (for myself and mankind) and breadth (I know a lot more than I did
before -- books educate); I am more tolerant of different people and
different choices, and even more curious about everything; I am
impatient with falsity and pretension but hopefully more patient with
anyone who is trying to convey a truth.
And yes, I am now
less sad. Still grieving but not mired in sorrow. Just like my sister
would have wanted me to be, I am alive and moving and connecting. The
greatest line ever is from Forster's Howard's End: Just Connect.
Books make connections all the time. I hope I am helping my readers
with connections and books through my reviews. A simple goal, to
connect, but it makes a huge impact, when achieved.
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May 4, 2009
After
188 books, I find that the hardest part about the reading aspect of my
365 project is that it is really, really tough to read almost every day
about someone's biggest struggle, or trauma, or drama; it is mentally
engaging but also taxing to witness their struggle, follow along as
they slog through, growing and changing but also hurting and
agonizing. I am witness to horrors and atrocities, to acts of love and
to acts of the meanest pettiness, to the creation of a new persona or
the discovery of what was there all along, hidden underneath layers now
revealed through the pages of the novel.
I am
observer but also participant (if the book is well-written) because my
emotions are fully engaged, my heart is beating faster, my pulse is
strumming with anger or disgust or grief, my mind is somersaulting for
a solution, and I am hoping so hard for the relief of success or
reunion or resolution, or even peace and happiness, or at least a
little kick of joy. And if at the end or during the process of
reading, some truth is exposed, I am thoroughly knocked over, literally
and figuratively. Reading takes a physical and mental toll and to go
through that complete process every day is, like I said, tough . Glorious and amazing, but tough (not to sound like a Claudia from Moon Tiger -- the reading takes its toll but I am asking for it, I love it, my life is not tough).
And so I am finding that I do have to pace myself. I read Little Bee
and was blown away: what a wonderful book. But there was no way the
next day I could have taken on literature about the human condition.
Instead I chose science fiction: plenty of truth there but clothed in
tricks of future gizmos and realities, and providing some fun stuff to
think about. Okay, The Simulacra was perfect, clever and provoking and a fun conspiracy to unravel. So then the next day after The Simulacra I was ready for struggle again and I could read Moon Tiger. If I had read Moon Tiger immediately after Little Bee,
I would have hated it because I would have hated the narrator,
Claudia. So selfish and self-absorbed, tough for no reason, a woman
who had all types of opportunities and was still unhappy -- and spread
unhappiness! But no, I was able to tolerate her because I had one
day's break from the wonders of Little Bee and Sarah (Sarah a bit of a
Claudia until Little Bee came decisively into her life) and I will
always prefer Little Bee as a novel but at least I could read Moon Tiger without retching.
As
far as the writing every day is going, I am finding in some ways the
writing comes more easily now. The hardest review to write is of a
book that I've loved: I want so much to do it justice. No matter how
good or mediocre the book, however, it is never easy to read so much
and then to think so hard about it. My project is most definitely a
discipline and the discipline has been good for me, good for my brain,
for my heart, and for my writing. And good for preparing me for even
more and more reading and reaping. I am reaping what others have sown
and I want to share with you, who visit this site, through my reviews
all that I have gathered. I look for your comments, through the comments link. Your words serve to encourage me, push me, and inspire me to keep on going.
June 22, 2009
Summer
is here and my four kids are out of school. They'll hang out in the
yard, go to the local pool and beach, and attend a few weeklong camps.
And my kids will be reading. Books, lots of books, fiction and
non-fiction, silly and serious. All of it is good. Reading brings
pleasure, it brings adventure and travel and the thrill of living in
someone else’s skin for a while. Reading also brings skills: from
reading books, kids learn the basics of writing, how to construct
sentences, build arguments, create atmosphere, mold characters, and
plan out plots. And perhaps most importantly, by reading books kids
come to know themselves and find their place in the world. Reading
helps them to understand and define their values and their desires; it
helps them to identify with other people in strange and new places, and
it allows them to safely explore ideas of struggle, identity, pleasure,
love, friendship, loss, and sorrow, ideas that will keep them turned on
to life all summer and beyond. Without even realizing what is
happening, my kids will grow under the magic of books, will broaden in
knowledge and in emotional flexibility. I'm thinking of books as yoga
for the mind, keeping minds limber.
This year of reading
one book a day has been my own experiment into the impact of books on
the self. It started as a quest to quench the relentless sorrow I felt
over the death of my sister. My daily reading has been a salve for the
sorrow and so much more: it has been an adventure, a grand vacation in
the reading and a mighty struggle in the writing. I can't say I've
become a better person in my year of reading one book a day but I have
become a wider person, wider in experience, in what I will allow inside
to be felt, internally chewed and fought over, and absorbed. Through
my reading I am witness to other cultures, diverse points of view, and
varied life choices, as well as the crucial experience of failure and
of overcoming failure. The witness learns from what she reads: I have
become more self-aware, more outwardly focused (no more belly button
gazing), and definitely more grateful. Okay, so I’ve also become wider
in terms of my beam (a lot of sitting and reading) and I’m
sleep-deprived (a lot of writing), and at times, mentally wrung-out.
After all, every great book is about struggle and the success or
failure in meeting that struggle and by now I've been through over two
hundred thirty of those struggles. Reading so intensely takes its toll
but far, far greater it what the reading gives back. If such intense
reading has wrenched me from my moorings and set me out to sea, it has
also given me the compass, the sails, and the rigging to get where I'm
going, no matter where that might be.
So my kids will be
joining me this summer, not with a book a day, but with daily reading.
Because I know that through reading my kids will fortify themselves
with knowledge, indulge themselves with pleasure, and immerse
themselves in ideas. There is no better way to spend a summer, no
cheaper way to see the world, and no more joyful way to find and define
yourself.
June 23, 2009
Last week I read What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami.
I couldn't really place it on my great book list because while his
memoir is engaging and inspiring, it did not meet my own requirements
of having the character undergo change through struggle, nor was it
about the importance of connection, nor did it create a world or
landscape or background that was just so beautiful it became a
character itself in the book. But I did want to share just how
inspiring Murakami's memoir was for me. I was inspired by how Murakami
determines his own challenges by his own measurements of what is
important: he knows how to listen to himself and follow through on what
he wants. He decides that for him writing is the focus of
life, and he dedicates himself to writing, while understanding that
there are other aspects of life (for example, an active social life),
that he must give up. He writes novels because he loves to write and he
loves the lifestyle of freedom and solitary dedication, and so what he
gives up is not so onerous but nevertheless, he knows he cannot "do it
all." How refreshing that outlook and how I wish I could adopt it! I
also admired that he never made excuses for his failures: when he
suffers through periods when his avocation is
tiring or riddled with the responsibility of tours or lectures, he
goes with the flow because he knows this is the career that he wants
and so the down times are worth getting through. He does not
complain (whine) nor does he try to change things to suit himself (he
is a successful writer after all, he could throw a hissy fit and maybe
get away with it -- but he doesn't). He is
dedicated to doing his best. When he falls short of the best, he is
disappointed. But he just rededicates himself to get it right next
time. And finally, Murakami tries to see burdens as assets: he gains
weight easily and so he begins running. He sees that running is a good
thing, it will keep him healthy and fit in mind and body, but he would
never have tried it if he didn't put on weight easily. He spins the
easy weight gain into a positive of being healthier, not a burden of
exercise. And he falls in love with running. Nice extra. It is
important to always see the nice extras that life throws out at me.
Like the friends I've made through writing about books, all the
connections I've made with people through my reading and their reading
and our common love of books. Great good comes from reading great
books.
July 10, 2009
I am a follower of Forster's admonition from Howard's End
that people need "only connect" to find meaning in life. I try to
connect with people, books, ideas, places, emotions, hopes and fears
and dreams. Through this project of reading book a day for a year and
writing about it, every day I am connecting with what I read, what I
write, and the people who visit this site. I've made some good friends
through this project, people I never would have met but for my reading
and writing and posting, and I've reconnected with people from my past,
picking up those threads of friendship that had frayed. My project and
the reaction of those old friends to it, their active reaction of
responding to me, writing in their comments and experiences and
offering great books recommendations, has re-woven those friendships
and made them new, strong, interesting.
I have discovered
connections within my own family: my mother tells me that my Flemish
grandfather loved The Bridge Of San Luis Rey and the novels of Knut
Hamsun; my mother and sister and kids, voracious readers all, have
found new writers to read through my project and given me new names to
discover; and far-flung cousins are sending in recommendations.
Friends with whom I used to talk only about kids and school, I can now
spend hours with, rallying over books and ideas.
I am also
finding connections in books between what I have known, and what others
have experienced, and that has been a comfort to me. I've been tweaked
by humor and provoked by example; I've been lacerated by outrageous
contrast of experiences and invigorated by revelations of universals:
of what human beings everywhere are offered in life, and what the heck
we do with it. To paraphrase a review I wrote July 10, great books are
about what we squander, what we hold dear, and what we cannot hold
onto, no matter how hard we try. To again cite my favorite line from
literature, E.M. Forster in Howards End: Only connect, that is all we can do to bring something good in the time we have to the ones we know, and to ourselves.
July 25, 2009
I have been asked a
lot lately about my motive, goal, or purpose in reading one book a day
for one year and writing about it. How I answer tends to change from
week to week, with the goal staying steady (read and write about one
book a day) but the motive and the purpose more moody, temperamental,
and difficult to pin down. First and foremost, the motive is pleasure:
I love to read. I can modify this motive selfishly as having an escape
hatch from life and indulging my addiction to pleasure (in reading), or
I can be more outwardly-focused
in motivation, widening my pleasure to include the sharing of great
books with other book lovers and inspiring a love of reading in those
who are as yet still un-hooked on the pleasures found in books.
As for purpose in the project, some days I am just trying to figure out
what the hell I'm doing in my life, other days I want to find within
books a sustaining and broadening stance for living, and other days I
am just looking for connections through my reading with people, places,
history, and ideas.
But no matter how I define my motive or
purpose, the goal remains constant and the achievement of it is now
well within my sights. I cannot ignore the basic truth that I have
read a book every single day of my 47th year of life, and that I have
thought about each book deeply and written about each book honestly. I
have to allow myself to say: wow. What an accomplishment, what a feat
of discipline and of love. The discipline is doing this reading and
writing every single day, even on days full of other responsibilities
or distractions (although as soon as I sit down to read, I am wholly
there with the book -- I'm as crazy about reading as ever, and now I am
addicted to the writing about books, as well). And the love I'm
talking about is my love of books, well-written books with great ideas,
plots, characters, descriptions. The love is for my sister who
inspired me and was taken away too soon from her life of reading and
writing. The love is how my family supports me and how they have given
me the space in all our lives to undertake this project.
August 13, 2009
I began my year
of reading because I was a “bit lost” as I wrote back in October.
Instead of looking inward (I hate belly-button gazing -- see my Reviews of Memoirs),
I turned my focus outwards, looking to books to find other ways of
looking at life, surviving sorrow, expressing gratitude and forging
connections. I had meaning in my life but I also wanted to find further
inspirations of beauty and truth and comfort. And the reading has
worked for me, it has enlivened me and inspired me and wired me and
fired me up with ideas and visions and more and more questions about
life, the here and now, and what waits down the road, and what happened
long, long ago. I have found so much to wonder at, to cheer for, to
connect with, and to love, really love. And I have found so many
friends, people who also love to read and react to what they’ve read
and try new books, new ways at looking at things, and who have been an
inspiration to me.
September 10, 2009
Epiphany after reading, of all books, On the Line,
a celebrity memoir by Serena Williams. An epiphany about my sister,
who would be horrified to have the connection made between such a
memoir and her death. But Serena Williams lost her oldest sister
suddenly and horribly and so did I, and it was reading about her
experience that suddenly brought all the thoughts in my brain that have
been circling around my sister,
her death, my sorrow and my family's sorrow, together in one moment of
realization.
It is strange in a way, this powerful
insight coming so close to the end of my book-a-day year, and being
sparked by a celebrity biography. But I know that it has been a cumulative process, the books I have
read have been provoking and percolating and pit-stopping in my brain
throughout the year. And now I know. I know that I do not want to
define my sister's place in my life by her death. I do not want the
most important thing about my sister, the biggest part of her or the
most impact she had on me, to be how she died. I want, I choose, for
it to be how she lived. Because it is her life that matters, and
always will, not her death. Her place in my life is defined by
everything that she did, everything she showed me, the way she led me
to new ideas; it is every way that she was to me, as the oldest sister,
scholar, beauty, friend; it is the way I worshipped her and bugged her
and loved her. Who she was is what I want to dwell on, not her
horrible loss and my horrible pain but her wonderful life. I will
anchor myself with her life, and not with her death. Death took all
choices away from her, but not from me, and I choose to live on with
her beside me always, alive in my very good and happy memories of her
life.
Play on Serena, and win the US Open. Next year, the Belgians will win it all.
September 20, 2009
What
makes a book great? Good writing, of course -- but how does good
writing happen? I used to think that sincerity was the key to good
writing but after reading over 327 books, I see that sincerity is only
part of good writing. There are two other parts: hard work and talent.
Or call it magic. Or call it a gift, or a force. A force contained
and tamed and trained and then released, released through writing a
novel, an essay, a short story, a history, with words and sentences and
structure that flow, that entice and entrap the reader so that the book
itself cannot be put down, cannot be denied or ignored. And when such
a book is finished, the reader wants to call the writer and say "give
me more"; the reader wants to call everyone else and yell "read this
book!"
I
usually know within the first few sentences of a book that the writer
has the magic to hold me tight while transporting me far away; I know
almost right away that I will stick with this author -- or NOT --
through the whole book, that I am sunk in good and hard no matter
whether I am made ecstatic with the journey or uncomfortable with the
truth or sad with the reality or turned on by the randy bits and
disgusted by the yucky bits, I am there for the duration, and beyond.
It is that hook -- this is a good book!
-- that is the addiction for me, the addiction to reading. It is the
hook and line and sinker of being in deep, deep satisfaction, of
knowing that I am in for a good read, full of solid atmosphere and
interesting thoughts and beguiling characters and challenges left and
right and to the front and back -- that time will pass and I will look
up and not believe that so much time has passed, because this book is
just so good. It is a relief to start a book like that, a reassurance
that no matter what is wrong with the world, this part is right.
Books do not let me down, there are so many out there, even if I read a
book a day for ten years, I would never read all the good ones just
waiting for me to read them. Books are a reason to live, a cause worth
getting up for in the morning and all the reason I need to climb into
bed at night, books on the table beside me, waiting to be read.
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