Slowing Down is Hard To Do

Even with the best of intentions, I have read 64 books this year so far.   To be fair 45 of those books were manga (more on that later!), but still... it's a lot.  It's not easy to slow down.  I have many talks with myself about doing something else, and it's always an argument!  I think the biggest reason I haven't made any new blog entries over the past year is because I whipped through books so quickly that I didn't give myself the chance to think about what I read, let alone think about what I might want to say about it.   I wasn't going to do that again, so here I am late Sunday night, thinking about a book I read over a week ago.

No-one forgets their first dystopian... or at least it was that way for me.  Thirty-four years ago I read 1984 by George Orwell as part of high school English.  It was my second book by him (having been subjected to Animal Farm  by a really mediocre teacher which spoiled any possible appreciation I could have felt for it at the time).  I was blown away!  This book was remarkable, enraging, and  sinister.  When I was an adult, one of the first things I did was buy as many of George Orwells' books as I could get my hands on.   But still... even with the advent of the movie  in 1984, and that amazing soundtrack by The Eurythmics, it was not something very relate able, because Orwell's world Oceania seemed so removed from my own.

Not so with The Circle by Dave Eggers.  It was a gripping read, I kept hoping that the protagonist Mae Holland,  would get out somehow, but I was forgetting how that went for Winston Smith in 1984.  I shouldn't have been surprised at all, because without even knowing anything about this author, or his motives behind writing this book, I can firmly state that this is an updated version of that classic dystopia 1984.   I know it so well, but I didn't start to suspect it until Mae began public speaking, and quoting her insipid slogans that became mantras for the masses.  I admit at that point I was looking for more evidence to support my supposition, and I found a lot of it.   I'm not criticizing Eggers for doing this.  He did a splendid job of updating this essential story, hence making it eerier because it is so close to us now, technologically and socially.  

Last week, on the day when I had just read that part of the story about the wrist bands in the novel I had a student come in to see if I could charge his Fitbit... spooky!  It galvanized me in a different way, and it still upset the apple cart!  And it was a relief in other ways in that I am not a big user of social media (I rarely post), and I don't use a lot of apps.  Honestly, the most useful ones I have are all book related.  

Like other books that have inspired me to make changes, The Circle has inspired me to work on communication with people, have face to face encounters rather than leaving things to an email or a text.  As well, I am firmly entrenched in the anti-twitter camp.  I thought it was stupid when it first came out, and I think it is just plain rubbish now (especially considering a certain leader's over-usage of it).   Last year I saw a poster or two about using social media responsibly, so I think, given a chance, I will help to promote that too.

I am not a technophobe.  I love having so many resources at my fingertips, doing the job that I do, accessibility to information and it's many forms is, in my opinion, vital in the role of a librarian.  But at the end of my workday I switch everything off, and go home.  Do something different.  Meet friends for walks or coffee, go to the local library, listen to music or an audio book on my commute to and from work.  Cook food, clean the house, work on my crochet, take naps.  Read.  Live. 

Tales From the Inner City.

Can you believe it?  I got this book last year as an Early Reviewers book ( I bet you thought I was going to say... "Can you believe it? She's writing!"). 
Yeah... I know.  It has been too long since last I wrote.  But really, I was just so engrossed in my new projects, and in my new library.  It was overwhelming!   I mention all of this because 2019 (Happy New Year!)  is a new start for me.  I have been ultra-focused on reading a lot without putting too much thought into the process, and I have now applied the brakes.  It isn't easy to stop.  I have this compulsive and passionate drive to just read, read, read!  But after I opened this book to it's first story, I realized I couldn't just consume this book. 
 I am no stranger to Shaun Tan.  I have loved his books for years, so getting this one to review was a tremendous gift and an extraordinary privilege.  I paused after every story, even deciding to go back and re-read  Tales From the Outer Suburbs just because I thought it was a set.   Which it is as far as Tales go.  It was like a warm up I suppose for the main event.   Inner City is so much more.   I think that this is the kind of book that you can go back to and get more from than you got the first time around. 
These stories can be put up there with the greatest... Ray Bradbury.  The words paint such intense and abstract pictures in your mind, and, even knowing his art, I was often surprised by his own artistic interpretation of what his words have wrought.  I admit I don't know enough about his process.  Does he paint the pictures first and then write the story or is it the other way around? 
However it is done, I recommend that you do what I did, and resist looking through the book first.  Just take it one story and one picture at a time for a sublimely surreal experience.

Busy (personal)

  Ever since I started my new job last September I have been cramming like crazy, familiarizing my self with my new library, trying to find out what I can bring to this new relationship, and what I can do to make it grow (yes...it is a relationship, and hopefully, a long-lasting one).  I have always thought that libraries are all about accessibility and it has been a driving force for me to make the library where I used to work a safe, comfortable place where you can indulge in books, learn how to use them, and be confident where you go that a library is a good place to be, and somewhere you want to go. 

Same with my new library.  So far my projects have been familiarising myself with our collection, and with the students (which has been a really challenging thing to do as the format is completely different in a high school library than in a primary school where I saw all the kids every week.  At my new place, it's a trickle of students in comparison).

It was overwhelming to say the least, and everything felt so strange.  There's no way to candy coat it, but I had to leave my old job because for the past five years or so I have been working under a very horrible supervisor, and I felt that it would be unbearable to work another year under her dictatorship.  So on top of the newness of a my current library, I was overwhelmed in another way... I wasn't used to living without this constant oppression, so in consequence I was floating instead.  I had to learn how to float!  It took a while to learn how because I was crushed for so long.  After four months at my new job... I'm still floating!

  

So this is a roundabout way of saying that I have been very busy, so busy that I have not been able to write about what I have been reading, but I hope to change that this calendar year, because I have a plan and a couple of goals to reach and it would be very exciting to share my experiences as well as my new focus, young adult books,  with everyone.  

More on this very soon!

Out of Wonder

I LOVE this book!  Picked up from my local library this week, it caught my eye because it is a Kwame Alexander book, plus the cover is so colourful and inviting.  The art is done by Ekua Holmes (who has become an person of interest). 

Not only is the art colourful, it has texture (I found myself running my hands across the pages expecting to feel something different, lumps and bumps and fabric, tissue paper, moss), the different applications throughout the book complementing each poem and poet featured.  I have always loved an artist that applies different mediums to achieve that rich look that is fascinating to look at and fun to figure out how it was done. 

The poems themselves (homages to different poets) were like love notes to them, honoring their styles and showing a respect and admiration of each poet's work.  At the back of the book is a short biography of each poet featured.   I feel really lucky to have been able to read this wonderful book.     

The Scottish Play?

Not really!  Nope, not at all (well, okay... there was this one guy who had a very short part...)
In my new job working in a secondary school library, I now have access to a variety of plays by Shakespeare (some that I have not seen yet), so I chose a version of Macbeth featuring Ian McKellen and Judi Dench.  Why?  I like to study something thoroughly and I have been studying Macbeth all year (trying to pace myself between viewings and essays about the play).  There are only a few movies left to see and I have been surprised by a bonus showing of the play on CBC from the Stratford Festival, Ontario (which to my mind is the best one I have seen yet... Macbeth and his lady had serious chemistry, and the witches gave me  the shivers!).  But I'm digressing here...

This play, whilst performed by excellent actors, was not Scottish.  As a matter of fact their perfect, well-spoken British accents just threw me off completely and it was only when Judi Dench entered the scene that things began to come together into something that interested me.  Judi Dench was perfect... despite the accent, I could look past that into her performance which was chilling to the bone and nothing I have ever seen her do before.  When she lost her mind it was disturbingly convincing... she is a master of her craft.

 I love Ian McKellen, but I don't feel that Macbeth was his best role.

Despite this, it is a good story, and at the end of every play I have ever seen attributed to William Shakespeare I have been entertained, even if I did't like the format very much.

The form of this play was very simple; a room with lighting and a few props to indicate different scenes, it was very effective in presenting this version of the play as a psychological thriller, making it suspenseful, honing it's focus to the language of the play and it's participants.  With that purpose in mind, of making this something to mess with the mind  some things became truly worse, like the drooling and frothing at the mouth of the prophetic witch and the gore that was on Mabeth's hands (it's not a play to watch while snacking!).
It's not my favourite version, but just watching Judi Dench's Lady Macbeth is worth putting up with the rest.

Reading Macondo

It was with great pleasure that I studied five of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's works last summer.  Reading his books for pleasure was one thing, analyzing them was another.  Interpreting what the author meant was profoundly illuminating and deeply satisfying, it has changed the way that I read now, especially Garcia Marquez's works.
 Doing some research of the the periods indicated helped to develop a better understanding of what was meant (or at least what I think he meant) by the author.  The course Reading Macondo, hosted by Universidad de los Andes in Bogota, Columbia provided lots of information, videos, and a timeline of Garcia Marquez's life.  This information was extremely useful in being able to understand the author's references. The books studied were as follows:
 Leaf Storm (where the term means more than just leaves blowing in the wind!

 No One Writes to the Colonel (where a fighting cock is significantly important but in more ways than one)

 Big Mama's Funeral, a collection of short stories that pack a powerful wallop (this is where Garcia Marquez reminds me strongly of Ray Bradbury).

You can only see the Spanish title above, but an English copy of the collection can be found in this book Collected Stories where you can find four collections of his works.

 In Evil Hour was another story told in the same town as the one that No One Writes to the Colonel is based, and is what I think to be a way for the author to express his feelings about The Violence (a dark time in Colombian history).

 and last but not least, One Hundred Years of Solitude 

Since listening to the book last year, I have read this two and a half times, making copious notes and finding things that were missed my first time through (which is in a way why I think I would like to listen to stories after I have read the book, or in some cases like  Ulysses and Gravity's Rainbow do it simultaneously).  I really enjoyed the experience, laughed a great deal, and had a wonderful time finding connections to his previous works.  These references are scattered throughout (also one or two I have found from books that weren't in the Reading Macondo course which were stories he thought of after publishing this one).
All of these books were worth a second (or third) look.  Garcia Marquez really was a genius.
I had meant to continue on with another course directly after, also on Garcia Marquez, but after such an intensive study of the Macondo books I felt I needed a break.  Also, I have made some changes in my professional life... I have moved from an elementary school library to a high school library!  It means whole new genres I haven't given much attention to and a whole new realm of literary possibilities.  It's very exciting!

Lolita Revisited (spoilers)

Whilst reading the first portion of this book, I felt that it was important (because it was important to the author) to read Lolita again.  If any of you have read my initial response to this book  there is no doubt what my initial feelings where.  But after reading Nafisi's thoughts on the book, and also learning about unreliable narratives from my course How To Read A Novel, I saw that maybe my initial response was biased by my own personal experiences and feelings and that maybe I had missed something.  So I did it... again.

This time, to make it easier, I decided to listen to the audio book narrated by Jeremy Irons (who was also Humbert Humbert in the movie) and he was a perfect choice (for the narration...I'll never see the movie so I can't say how he was in that).  

It was just as disagreeable for me to listen to as to read, maybe more so because having the story read to you by someone you can picture in your mind, and someone who can act who adds emotion, depth and dimension to the role making the novel almost graphic.  Despite all that I tried to listen to it objectively, I wanted to try and see what Nafisi saw, and perhaps something more.   

So what I am going to do now is something I usually avoid... I am going to get into specific details, dig a little deeper than before to see beyond my original perceptions of this book.  

I have to admit, I didn't see too far beyond what I already saw the first time, but before I talk about that I want to say that this time around I was more aware of Humbert Humbert and his perfect understanding of how much of a monster he really was.     

In a nutshell Lolita is about desire, the unhealthy desire if an older man for a tween aged girl, and the lengths he went to, to get this girl.  He moved into her house as a border, married her mother so that he could stay there (and gain access to his Lolita).  The mother discovers, his predilection, but dies before she can do anything about it, so now Lolita is Humbert's for his own pleasure.

Here are some specifics.  I stated in my first blog that I thought that all of these characters (husband, mother and daughter) were awful, selfish and spiteful and I still believe that.  If the mother had not felt threatened by her own daughter's growing sexuality, if she hadn't tried to get rid of her so she could enjoy Humbert for herself, if she hadn't been so selfish, if she had thought more about her daughter's welfare rather than her own needs, things would have been very different.    

 Lolita was a very spiteful and selfish young girl and I still believe that to be the case especially after she initiated sex with her step-father.

While I do agree with Nafisi that Humbert raped her, and continued to use her for his own selfish needs, there was something very wrong with Lolita as well.  She seduced her mother's new husband!  How did she think life would be like after that?  Did she think she could go home from camp and play Happy Family with Mom and her new Daddy-O?  It's pretty clear in the book, she didn't know her mother was dead when she had sex with Humbert, so what was she thinking?  Obviously (hopefully), she wasn't, and Humbert, as the predator he is, just couldn't resist his obsession.

Sadly, for Lolita, it was what I would call some very severe consequences for that particular action and she paid for it for the next two years of her life (basically being kept as Humbert's little sex slave), though I think she remained complicit because of his manipulations and her own fears of having no where to go.  

So I have concluded, after doing this re-read, that my own personal perception of this novel hasn't changed a jot, but I do have a deeper understanding of the characters involved.  I think that when I also re-read the section in the book Reading Lolita in Tehran concerning Lolita, I will have a better understanding of Nafisi as well.  One last thought... this book was written from Humbert's honest, twisted, manipulative, and highly nauseating point of view, could you imagine what it would have been like from Lolitas?