Reading - a life-long passion

As mentioned in my previous post, I didn't "win" NaNoWriMo 2011. Though I wasn't far off.

I blame November, Thanksgiving, and the seduction of The River Reader bookstore in Guerneville, a hundred or so miles north of San Francisco. Don't blame me if it's less, or more, than one hundred - travel and directions are not my thing, y'know?

We spent fours days in the environs of Guerneville, as we have for many years. There are several compulsory stops to be made, made compulsory by well engrained tradition by now.

One of them is the above-mentioned bookstore. A small independent store, they used to have a section of a wall dedicated to magnetic poetry, created by customers. Both of us left artily arranged words there over the years.

The store is eclectic in its stock, with local artists and writers well-represented.

So, why blame the proprietor for my NaNo fail? Ah well, the seduction of the books within. I always buy books there - it's one of the few places I buy "dead tree" books anymore. And I buy them by the armful.

The Natural Law of Water, poems by Kathleen Culver, caught my eye and her words caught my ear, and more than my ear.

I sat with the book, there in the bookstore and let the words sink in. I just like poetry. I like the art that transforms words, line, metre (forgive me, that's how I learned to spell it and how the word looks to me), shape, into feeling, into insight, into something that touches below the level of conscious thought.

And Ms. Culver can do this, and more.

A second book was A Radiant Life, by Nuala O'Faolain. Ms. O'Faolain was, among other things, a columnist and essayist for The Irish Times. This book holds between its covers columns of hers that span nearly twenty years.

Robust views, a clear-eyed perspective of Ireland and her society, and sometimes playful writing, the book is an education in the art of the column, the essay. And no small education on the realities of Irish society across the two decades they were written.

The title to the American edition, "A Radiant Life", is taken from the title of one of the essays. It tells of a young Irish-American woman, in whose honor there exists a statue in Japan. Maura O'Halloran became, at the age of 27, a Zen Master. And died but six months later in a motor accident.

Her book of journal entries and letters, "Pure Heart, Enlightened Mind", became another I had to go buy.

Perhaps it's not only the River Reader that has an eclectic collection of books.

En un pueblo de la Mancha...

I am currently reading Don Quixote, in translation for my Spanish is no longer up to dealing with the variant in use at the time of Shakespeare. Once it may have been, for I lived in Spain and was, for a time, fluent in the language. But that's now in the past.

The version I'm reading is a recent translation from 2009 by Edith Grossman, someone known for her translations of Latin American, rather than Spanish, literature. As the editorial review states: "...an honest, robust...Quixote for our times."

I've been drawn to the character of Don Quixote all my life, at least since I first encountered him. A long time ago, and far away, I had a VAXstation with the name DonQ. The company I worked for, Digital Equipment, had a world-wide network of computers before the world-wide-web was available. Each computer on the Easynet (as it was known) had a unique name - limited in the number of characters you could use.

I was unable to name my computer "Don Quixote" because of that. It's possible even "Quixote" was too long. Memory no longer delivers the details as it once did.

The idea of this madman wandering the world, seeing differently to all around him, has a definite appeal. Even knowing that the man was indeed mad, and the world was not as he saw it, does not take away - for me - from the appeal. Perhaps a quixotic view in and of itself.

It doesn't hurt that the book is regarded as the first modern novel and the finest, and last, of the very novel type Cervantes set out to satirize. There's something particularly elegant about that - which also appeals.

The image above is a Picasso - a print, you understand. It hangs on the wall of the office in which I do much of my writing. For a while it was the wallpaper on one of my smartphones.

Speaking of writing...I'm getting prepared for NaNoWriMo 2011. Prepared, or panicking. One of the two.

I've made sure I have sufficient writing pads for my words and ink for my fountain pen. This year I'm taking my Sheaffer Valor for a run across 50,000 words in 30 days. I have plenty of ink, and I may need it. In testing the pen this evening, I discovered it lays down ink quite generously. There'll be some bleeding through the page - and not just the writer bleeding red as he scrambles to the finish line.

There's still more work to do on my outline so I have an idea that will last through the 1,667 words per day. I'm certain the story's there, but I'd best have some basic bones in place on which to hang the meat of the tale.

To all engaged in this madcap endeavor, I say "Buena Suerte". It's a quixotic kind of adventure, no?

No - you may not buy this book!

And why ever not, I ask.

"The City and the Stars" by Arthur C. Clarke is one of Science Fiction's great works. I don't know how often I've read it. It bears re-reading.

And I bought it for my Kindle some time ago, from Amazon, in the US. I read it. Archived it. Today I was extolling the virtues of the book. We went to see what it cost on Amazon. Not there.

I thought I remembered buying it, nay buying and reading it, so I checked. Sure enough, there in my Digital Items it was. I clicked on the product information and the cover showed up.

And a note that it was not available to people living in the US. I live in the US. It is, however, available for purchasers from the Amazon UK site.

And there we have it, a concern I have about electronic books. If I want to read a book, but it's not published  here in the US, I get a friend or a relative to buy the book on my behalf (a friend of mine did that once for me - but instead of buying one copy of Paul Gallico's "Jennie", titled "The Abandoned" in the US, she bought six! The Lady C was ever thus.)

You can't do that with ebooks. Somehow, I'm not "allowed" own a book not made available in the US.

This is not good.

Lest anyone think that I'm not "for ebooks and e-readers", allow me to present my credentials. I've owned e-readers for well over a decade. My first was the Rocket E-Reader in the late nineties. The side of a large paperback and an ugly gray screen, it was a marvel in its day.

I progressed, after a couple of years,  to the Gemstar color e-reader, which had an Ethernet port (wired) that allowed, what today we would call, in-app purchases. In the end, I bought two of the Gemstars, as the device was discontinued after a few years.

Both of them are alive to this day. Both of them still capable of displaying the content they contain.

A Sony e-reader followed the Gemstar, later traded in for the next version of Sony's technology. Both versions were the new e-ink displays. The Sony still works, and still displays the over 100 books I own on that platform.

The first Kindle, then a Kindle DX, one iPad with Kindle software and now a color Nook (so I can see e-books I publish for that platform) mean that I am very much part of the e-book/e-reader enthusiast group.

Yet there is a restriction placed on me as a purchaser of books in the digital realm that does not, nay cannot, exist in the world of dead-tree books. In the world of dead-tree books I could phone a book store in another country, order the book I wanted, and have it shipped to me. I could even do so using the online-store of such a book store.

I cannot do that with an e-book - the store won't sell it and thus I cannot get it onto my device for reading.

I've just now tried to download the copy I purchased at some time in the past to my Kindle app. There's an error in synching - so no book.

This is not good.

On reading Irish short stories...

Hearing the sound
Of words
     As I read them

The morning
Fades away
     To deep silence

Home - is not a place
It is an echo
     You hear in your heart

Wanna write...gotta read

There's almost too much to read, what with Kindle and the number of "dead tree" format books lying about the house.

Most recently I've been reading Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro, a book of short stories I bought at the small bookstore in Guerenville over Thanksgiving this year. We always visit The River Reader when there, and just as always buy something(s).

In addition, I'm reading The Philip K. Dick Reader. Again, short stories, by a master storyteller.

If I want to write short stories, and I do, it behooves me to read some good ones. To enjoy, certainly. But also, and I find this is often how I read these days, to dig into how the story is constructed, how written, how the author communicates with the reader. How the shared world is constructed in that communication.

Last year, while reading the collected stories of Eudora Welty (I have yet to finish the book), I wrote what I consider to be my best short story yet.

What a panel of Masters is available to me, at whose feet I can sit that I may learn.

And what a delightful way to learn!