Technology Fail

I do fine with computers but audio devices flummox me. I can never find the cord I need to sync and charge my iPod and so it spends most of its life with a dead battery in the bottom of my purse. I’ve tried checking out audiobooks from the library to put onto my iPod but you have to install that Overdrive software and who can be bothered to fiddle around with all that? I just want something that will work right away, not something I have to build from the ground up. Hence my love of Playaways, those self-contained MP3 gadgets you get from the library with the audiobook already installed. Just stick in a battery, plug in your headphones and go.

Well yes, until you get a defective one like I have now. I’m part way through The Lacuna and the Playaway has croaked. I’ve ordered up the CDs from the library, but that brings me to the other problem with the Playaways – navigation. Where the heck am I in this book? All I have is a tiny screen that says 3-8 on it (and I don’t even have that any more now that the device is dead). What does that mean? What page is that? I feel disoriented not knowing how far I’ve read. How am I going to figure out which disc I should start with?

I know I could buy this audiobook from iTunes or rent it from Audible.com but both those routes involve money and hardware. I could download it to my Kindle (also $$), which has so far been a more reliable and accessible device than my iPod. But what I think I am going to do is just get the damn hardback book from the library. Nothing to set up. No cords to wrangle. No batteries to run down. Figuring out where I am should be a cinch. How about that?

Dog Tired

A friend lent me The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski. This is the first time I've ever read an Oprah book at the same time as everyone else, that is, this book is Oprah's Book Club choice right now. It's certainly well written, but I am not sure how much longer I'm going to be able to hang on. I just finished reading a chapter called The Stray. It was 22 pages about some characters trying to coax a stray dog to come in. Twenty-two pages! Give the dog kibble. Give the dog hamburger. Pet the dog gently. I just don't think I can take much more.

Bloody Bloom

Did anyone catch the wonderful interview with Doris Lessing in the Sunday New York Times Magazine? If not, you should read it now (it's very short and it's delightful). What I really liked was the part where she gives Harold Bloom the old heave-ho. "I can't be bothered with Bloom," she says. Neither can I, though I love Doris Lessing.

In fact, you could say that Doris Lessing and Harold Bloom bracketed my collegiate English career. The first book we read in Freshman English was Martha Quest by Doris Lessing. In Senior Conference (the capstone course for English majors) we did a lot of Harold Bloom. And it was through reading Harold Bloom that I became convinced that I was not meant to have an academic career, at least not with an advanced degree in English Literature. What a lot of hooey! (With apologies to my English Lit. PhD friends who obviously got something out of it that I missed.) Thus I was delighted to read Lessing's skewering of Bloom; it made me feel like maybe I wasn't alone in my failure to appreciate him.

Startitis

This is a term familiar to knitters. It’s when you start knitting something, but before you finish it, you start knitting something else. When you knit, a lot of the fun comes at the beginning as you see how the yarn knits up, and what the pattern looks like. Once you get going, it can sometimes just be a long slog until you're done. It’s not uncommon for knitters to have seven or eight projects going at once, all because of a bad case of startitis.

And so it goes with me and books these past few weeks. That Persephone book I started three weeks ago? Not done yet, because it started to be a slog about two weeks ago, and so I started reading The Italian Lover, by Robert Hellenga. Am I done that yet? No, because this week I started an Icelandic mystery by a new writer, Yrsa Sigurdardottir. Well, am I done that? Not yet. I haven’t started anything else, but I do have several tempting items stacked next to the bed….

Finishitis is a much rarer condition in knitters. Occasionally someone will blast through all their unfinished projects and announce that they’ve had a case of it, but personally I’ve never been afflicted. I still have half a mitten from 1994. But maybe the book version will hit me soon and I’ll finally have something to blog about (other than weird made-up diseases, that is).

2008 Tournament of Books (Groan)

I pay no attention to sports. (Surprise, surprise.) Usually it's not hard to ignore them. But what really annoys me is when sports-obsessed people force themselves into a previously sports-free zone and try to get me to play along. This explains my total irritation with The Morning News’s 2008 Tournament of Books. I can’t even bear to read the description closely enough to tell you how it works: something about brackets, and March madness, yada, yada. The list of competing books (which I perused with one squinting eye, so painful was it for me to look) was interesting, as was the list of judges.

Just so you know, I absolutely refuse to participate in this. But you might want to. And a tiny voice in my head says “well maybe if it results in more publicity for these authors and their books, that could be a good thing” but the more strident part of my brain says “oh shut up.”

Thanks to Dean Rader, at The Weekly Rader, for calling my attention to this travesty. He’s all in favor of it, so if you want to find out more, go on over to his page and have a ball.

Non Fiction Non Fun

See that thing down at the bottom of my sidebar called “Currently Reading”? I’ve replaced my old “Currently Reading” list with this one, from the Web site Shelfari. Shelfari is a social networking site for readers. It lets me set up my own “shelf” (in this case, containing the books that I am in the process of reading), and then Shelfari provides a widget that I post on my blog that can show you what is on that shelf. Click the book title link and you go to the Shelfari page about that book. From there you can read what other people have to say about it.

Okay, but notice how many books are on that shelf? What is my problem? I keep starting new books but not finishing old ones. I believe the problem is in the number of non-fiction books that I have started. I have been reading the essays in Cleopatra’s Nose for something like six months. Sometimes I really like it, but other times, not! And The Best Women’s Travel Writing is really a slog. I only read that while having ultrasound therapy on my elbow at the chiropractor’s office. I keep the book in my car so I can take it in to the clinic with me. Not the best recipe for getting through a book quickly. But I'll have plenty more chances to read it, since I spent the weekend using one of these and now my tendinitis is worse than ever. And finally, there is The Girls Who Went Away, which is completely changing the way I look at adoption, but which is also one of the saddest books I have ever read. There are certain days when I just cannot cope with it. Like, most days.

Which leaves two fiction titles on the shelf: one is an audiobook by Patricia Marx which is funny, but for some reason I can’t seem to get back to it, and the other is The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak. Now THAT, I feel like reading. It is absolutely great, and you will undoubtedly read a post about it here long before I get around to writing about any of the others.

2007 Wrap-Up

Blech, 2007. I’ve been putting off writing this wrap-up because I can’t think of anything interesting to say about any of the books I read this year. There were a few highlights: The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon, and The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett come to mind. I also really liked Anne de Courcy’s biography of Diana Mosley. Otherwise it was a dull dull year.

Well I think I know why: I’m choosing dull books! My overwhelming reaction to nearly everything I read this year was “ho hum, more of the same.” But when you keep reading books by the same authors, in the same genre, why should you expect anything different? Interestingly, I bestowed "A" grades on most of these dull books. What should we make of that? I think it means I liked the books at the time, but they had no staying power.

While I’d love to think I’m one of those people who can set themselves up with a challenge and stick with it, I know that I’m not. So setting some lofty goal like “In 2008 I will only read books by authors I’ve never read before” (or a similar challenge) just won’t work. I know myself too well. I have a narrow comfort zone and an aversion to change.

All is not lost, though. Lots of bloggers have offered up lists of their best reads of 2007, and many of these lists contain books that I would try. I thought the list at Reading Matters was pretty interesting, and also the list at Nonfiction Readers Anonymous, since I am always trying to get myself to read more nonfiction.

So here is a simple goal: I will read more books by new authors, and more non-fiction. I will also try a bit harder to read books that don’t immediately fit inside my comfort zone. How am I doing so far, you might ask? Half and half, I would say. Right now I am listening to an audiobook version of End in Tears by Ruth Rendell, an author I have been reading since 1981. While it doesn’t fit my new plan, nevertheless I am loving it, and can’t seem to stop listening. On the other hand, I am also sticking with Cleopatra’s Nose, by Judith Thurman, even though there is much to dislike here.

I am almost finished creating the complete list of books read in 2007. It's a tedious process to put in all the links, so I'm doing it in bits. I should post it in the next few days.

Quotation Dash Disappointment

What do you think of quotation dashes? (A quotation dash is a form of punctuation whereby dialog is indicated with an initial dash and traditional quotation marks are omitted.) Here is an example of some dialog that uses quotation dashes:

He ran to catch up with Jean as she headed toward the house.
--Are you coming with us?
--No
--Why not?
--I'm tired, that's all.
Jean opened the door and went inside.

I have recently encountered two books that used this approach and have reacted very negatively to it. In fact, I have (after a brief perusal) decided not to read either of the books. I find the odd punctuation so jarring and affected that I am pulled out of the story at every occurrence of it. The books I abandoned were The Book Borrower by Alice Mattison, and The Pickup by Nadine Gordimer.

I don't understand why a writer would adopt a format that is so off-putting. Why saddle your reader with something so distracting? It makes me angry. I feel like someone handed me a perfectly good book and then told me I had to read it while a siren went off in my ear at frequent but unpredictable intervals.