Friday Ephemera #40

Van Gogh again. Still Life: Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers, 1888. Once more to the Vincent Van Gogh Gallery. I may be in a Van Gogh phase. I want to paint things (I do not want to cut off my ear). And now I have time, since I am officially moving home for the summer today!

Parnassus on Wheels

Parnassus on Wheels is really one of those perfect little books that you never expected to read. I got it last Christmas, and have been enjoying the look of it on my shelf, where it has sat since, unread. It's a lovely little 1955 hardcover, illustrated by Douglas Gorsline, and smelling pleasantly of Old Book. The story, by Christopher Morley, was first published in 1917, and is pretty much perfect.

Parnassus is Roger Mifflin's travelling bookshop, pulled by Peg the horse, with Bock the dog along for the ride. Mifflin, often called the Professor, is a funny, wise little man who travels through New England preaching a love of books and selling them. The story is narrated by Helen McGill, a middle-aged spinster, who meets the Professor one morning and decides to buy Parnassus and take up the bookselling life herself. Adventures ensue, naturally, of the sort one expects to find by the side of the road, fisticuffs and weather and so on. All of it, meanwhile, backed by a love of books and a need to hit the road once in a while, and see the world from a different angle. This is what Helen McGill does, and it changes her life thoroughly for the better.

This is a short book, only 160 pages, which didn't take me very long to read. This is sort of a perfect length, as it leaves you wanting more, but also knowing that more would make it a less perfect story. It's also a book that plays to almost everything I want out of a story--bookishness, domesticity, adventure, love. Parnassus on Wheels is one of those books which I am profoundly glad to have read.

Also, it occurs to me now that this qualifies for the Bibliophilic Books Challenge, which I signed up for back in December.

Counting the pages

I feel like I pay too much attention to how long a book is. I'm always flipping to the end to check the page count, and I always like to know how far away the end of the chapter is. I like to know how much I've read since I sat down and how much I have left to read. I'm sure I didn't use to do this. I do it far more with books I have to read for school.

Lately, I think I've gotten too used to class reading, and started to approach all books that way. I love reading until I can't sit still any more, and with a good book that can be a long time. But I never do that with books I have to read, and until recently it had been a while since I'd done that at all. I wonder if I could read school books that way? It would be an interesting experiment.

Does anyone else pay too much attention to the page numbers?

Foray into Chekhov

I don't read many short stories. I generally like them, but oddly they seem to take more work than novels. You have to consciously sit down to a short story when you want to read one, whereas you can always have a novel on the go and pick it up at any time, anywhere. Recently I've started up a new DailyLit book, though, Classic Shorts: Eight Stories for Summer, which I'm getting in my email three days a week. I've now finished the first story, which was "A Doctor's Visit", by Anton Chekhov. It was written in 1898, and is apparently also called "A Case History" or "A Medical Case" (so Wikipedia informs me). I've never read any other Chekhov, and this is an interesting introduction.

The daughter of a factory owner is ill, and the doctor is called to a factory just outside Moscow to see to her. Her illness, of course, is more mental than physical, a matter of her circumstances. But the story seems to have no real resolution. "A Doctor's Visit" is really all this story is, there and back. It is a passing meeting in different lives. A connection is made, perhaps, but it is not a connection that one expects to come to anything, and it may or may not do any good. But there is some simple beauty in the meeting, even in the factory and the uneducated, ordinary workers.

I've noticed before that I don't tend to enjoy reading stories set in Russia. I enjoyed this, though, so I think it's not the country but the cold. I don't like reading about cold climates in their cold seasons. This story is set in the spring, though, and I think that's what made the difference. An odd preference in my reading. I just like colour and brightness too much.

I may have to devote some time this summer to reading short stories. I'm looking forward to the rest in this collection.

The Princess Bride

The film version of The Princess Bride feels like a huge cultural institution to me, despite the fact that I've only seen it about one and a half times. Everybody knows, "Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die." Somehow the book is a bit less of an institution. Possibly this is because, at least for me, the movie is more satisfying.

The book operates on an oddly contrived pretense, that William Goldman is abridging a much longer work by a fellow named Simon Morgenstern, who comes from the country of Florin, in which the book is set, which of course does not exist. This has me thinking back to all my experimental theatre last fall, when I spent a lot of time considering the layers involved in stories. The movie, of course, opens with a sick kid in bed whose grandfather reads him the story, and once in a while they show up again when the kid objects to some part of the story. In the book, this sick kid in bed is in the past, being William Goldman, first introduced to the story in this way, and coming back years later to do the abridgment. His asides are often about the dull parts of the novel he has supposedly cut out, and he's created an entire story about his wife Helen and his son Jason, and trying to get Jason to read the book, and about legal troubles with S. Morgenstern's estate. It's an unusual storytelling device, and somewhat distracting, but it's often entertaining. It also allows Goldman to blame plot difficulties and unpleasant moments on S. Morgenstern. The ending of the book is a little sudden, and not very conclusive, and Goldman blames that on Morgenstern.

I've had the book for years, for unknown reasons, and I sort of wish I'd read it sooner. I did try, I just thought Buttercup was the stupidest name for a heroine ever, and couldn't get past that. I had very strong opinions about names and words in my younger days, I guess. I sort of still do; Buttercup just stopped bothering me. Anyway, it's a book thoroughly worth reading, since it is a "classic tale of true love and high adventure", and everyone can use more of that in their life.

Summer reading

I have a lot of plans for the summer. It's been a while since I've been able to make enough time to read as much as I'd like to, so that's definitely something I'll have to do. After reading dense political theory treatises and articles about education all quarter I'm reading for some fun, easy reading. The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane put me into a bit of a fantasy kick, so now I'm reading The Princess Bride, and after that I'll have to find something similarly fun and fictional. It may be a while before I read anything very serious.

I do have some serious reading plans for the summer in general, though. I have over three months without school, but there's still some education I want to do. I did like reading political theory, however dense, and I'd like to read some more philosophical and theoretical books. Possibly other works by some of the people I read for that class (Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, J.S. Mill, Marx, and Peter Singer). If anybody knows of a good into to philosophy type book that isn't too textbookish, please do recommend it.

I've also got a lot of nonfiction lying around that I'd like to read. I started Virginia Woolf's letters ages and ages ago, and I'd like to get back to that; I also have Charlotte Bronte's letters. I want to finish Victorian Visitors, read the chapters we skipped over in class of a couple of books, and finish The Odyssey (that's not nonfiction, but it's going in the same class of not being a relaxing lazy book). I've probably got loads of other nonfiction to read as well.

Apart from all that, I want to make art. I want to sew, I want to bake, I want to write, I want to do craft projects. I am thoroughly excited for summer.

Now I just have to get through two finals and a paper.

Friday Ephemera #39

Because you need more Van Gogh in your life. Lane with Poplars, 1885. Thanks to the Vincent Van Gogh Gallery, which is fabulous.

Picture this

Last Sunday Stuck in a Book came up with a challenge to find one image that sums up your reading tastes but doesn't have any direct association with books. I think maybe I've managed it. This is Design for a poster, by Alphonse Mucha, from 1897. I love this style of art, and I think it sums up my reading tastes in that there are definite hints of the magical in it, but it's also very calm and symmetrical. Nothing wild, but still with hints of the otherworld.

The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane

Sometimes, you read the right book at the right time. I got The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, by Katherine Howe, for Christmas, but it's been sitting on the shelf over my desk since, unread. When I finished reading The Doctor Trap I wanted to pick up something new right away, and though I'm still in the middle of Victorian Visitors, I wanted fiction. The Physick Book was the natural choice.

It tells the story of Connie, a Harvard graduate student in history, who goes to stay in her grandmother's ancient house in Marblehead, Massachusetts to clean it out in preparation for selling it. The house has no electricity and no telephone, and it's been empty for twenty years. Connie is meanwhile supposed to be figuring out a dissertation topic for her PhD. Her first night in the house, she opens a 17th century Bible and out falls an old key, with a bit of paper in it that bears the name Deliverance Dane. Deliverance proves to be one of the women accused in the Salem with trials of 1692, and the story unfolds from there.

I loved this book for much the same reasons I love Tam Lin--its elements of the academic world and hints (or more than hints) of fantasy and romance. The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane has so many wonderful strands of plot, clever foreshadowing, and characters who are not quite who they seem, which are finally drawn together in a clear and interesting way. This is not literary fiction, and in fact has many qualities of a thriller, but it is well-written and well-told, and it's a very good story. Thoroughly satisfying, so much so that I read most of it in great chunks over the holiday weekend. It's a good holiday book, is what it is, and it helped remind me how much I love sitting and reading for hours on end.

Book meme

Here's a meme which as been floating around the book blogs.

What is your favourite drink while reading?
Tea if it's just after breakfast. Water or maybe lemonade any other time of day.

Do you tend to mark your books while you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you?
I post-it note sometimes. I don't write in books, though I sometimes wish I did. I like buying used books which other people have written in.

How do you keep your place? Bookmark? Dog-ears? Laying the book open flat?
Bookmark. Periodically I always seem to come by big stacks of bookmarks from some promotional thing, so currently I'm working my way through bookmarks from the first Narnia movie, and a few left over from the stack of Lord of the Rings bookmarks I acquired when I was about twelve. If I don't have a proper bookmark to hand I use scraps of paper.

Fiction, non-fiction or both?
I love non-fiction, but always kind of forget about this in between reading it. Probably most of what I read is fiction.

Do you tend to read to the end of a chapter or can you stop anywhere?
I can stop anywhere, but I like to read to the end of a section or chapter if I can.

Are you the type of person to throw a book across the room or on the floor if the author irritates you?
I'm pretty sure I've never flung a book. I can usually tell pretty fast if I'm not going to like it, and then I give up on it. There are too many good books to read the bad ones.

If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop and look it up right away?
Only if I have a dictionary easily accessible. Usually I have a vague enough idea of what the word means to carry on without looking it up.

What are you currently reading?
I'm in the middle of Victorian Visitors, but I haven't read it in a while. Having just finished The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, I have yet to start anything else.

What is the last book you bought?
It might have been The Post-Office Girl, by Stefan Zweig. Not sure.

Do you have a favourite time/place to read?
I often sit in my bean bag chair just before bed time to read, when I'm getting all sleepy and comfortable. I don't mind much where I read, though.

Do you prefer series books or stand-alones?
I like series, but find them vaguely stressful sometimes. Mostly I read stand-alones. The only series I'm trying to work through at the moment is the Lord Peter Wimsey novels.

Is there a specific book or author you find yourself recommending over and over?
I recommend Tam Lin endlessly, and I seem to have recommended To Say Nothing of the Dog a lot lately.

How do you organise your books (by genre, title, author's last name, etc.)?
Erm, I sort of don't... I mean, I have a Tolkien shelf, and all the Jane Austen is in the same place, but other than that...

Background noise or silence?
At home NPR is nearly always on in the background, which I'm kind of immune to. It depends on my mood, the music, and the book, but I don't mind background noise.