| Updates From My Year of Reading One Book a Day |
October 29, 2009
I did it! I read 365 books and I wrote about each one. Yesterday I posted my last review of my 47th year. What an incredible year it has been! I gave into an addiction and found everything. My addiction is gloriously satisfying, the ingested substance is easy to find and cheap to obtain, and the results are undeniable, without limit, and available to anyone who can read. My addiction is books, my year was spent reading and writing, and I am happier, smarter, kinder, and more at peace with life now than I was before I began this year of surrender to books. The best part of this story is that the world of pleasure and joy and knowledge that I found is available to anyone who can pick up a book and take some time to start reading it.
And today? Today I am missing the writing of a review. It is so strange to sit down at my computer without having words tumbling out of me about the great/strange/funny/dull book I read yesterday. I read very few dull books and very many great ones, and I promise to keep reading and reviewing at least two books a week.
I am also working on a book for Harper Studio (division of Harper Collins) about the power and pleasures of books. I started the year with a motto of "great good comes from great books" and I have the year behind me now to prove it.
|
|
| 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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
|
| 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.
|
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.
|
|
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.
|
|
