All Men Are Liars by Alberto Manguel

All Men Are Liars
by Alberto Manguel
Riverhead Books, 2012 (originally published in Spanish in 2008)
224 pages

Well, it's been months since I finished this book. Luckily I took good notes.

Originally published in Spanish, this is a novel in five distinct parts. An investigative journalist, Teradillos, is trying to get to the bottom of the story of a famous literary figure by the name of Alejandro Bevilacqua, an ex-pat Argentine who died under mysterious circumstances in Madrid. The first person interviewed is Alberto Manguel himself (in case anyone is curious, Bevilacqua is indeed a fictional character). Manguel tries to distance himself from Bevilacqua, whose body was found under Manguel's balcony when Manguel was out of the country, but is not very successful at it. The second part is told from the perspective of Bevilacqua's lover, the third from a character Bevilacqua spent time in an Argentine prison with, the fourth from another person in Bevilacqua's past, and the fifth and shortest from Teradillos himself.

Hmm. My notes begin: "I am too stupid for this book" which is an interesting statement. Let's dissect it a bit.

This is indeed literary fiction, and I don't read a lot of that. What's more, it's interesting and ambitious literary fiction that winds, maze-like, around itself. It doesn't take itself too seriously but it is serious. I haven't read widely enough to be able to follow all the perambulations and permutations, and I'm only just familiar enough with Latin American history to understand a little of what is happening. This is a novel about Argentina under a dictator, a novel about disappearances and corruption, exiles and torturers - even at a remove, being set as it is in Spain and France thirty years on from the events so central to the tale. What's more, it's about the ordinary faces each of these things have, about the banal people behind the atrocities, about the banal people who get caught up in them. And how those ordinary, seemingly boring people, can be fascinating in and of themselves.

It's also about how we tell stories about ourselves and others, and sometimes we know that we're crafting fictions and sometimes we're blissfully unaware of it, but we are nothing but our stories either way. It helps our case if we are in control of our own stories - the author and wordsmith in the third section, the man who was a prisoner with Bevilacqua, presents the most coherent and convincing tale of all of them, and yet because of the structure of the novel we're aware that it is just a story, even as we fully believe it.

In short, I'm not sure I am in fact too stupid for this book. I think I did pretty well with it, for all my inferiority complex about reading literary fiction. And I enjoyed it, too. Something I did do, though, was spoiled it a bit for myself, which was objectively stupid - don't read ahead in this book if you can help it. And even if you can't. Part of the enjoyment of it is letting it unfold slowly, letting the mystery slowly solve itself. I learned a fact too early by seeing something quite a bit further along in the story than I was myself, and I think I would have enjoyed it much more if I'd let it unfurl in the way Manguel meant for it to unfurl.

My notes on the first two sections are incredibly detailed, and then I read the third and got totally swept up in it such that I didn't bother taking notes, but it's the section I remember most vividly. 'Apologia,' the first, is told from Manguel's own "perspective" and while we learn the basic details of Bevilacqua's life through him, we also gain an incredible amount of insight into the character Manguel has created of himself - that he is a little self-indulgent, a little delusional, not entirely in touch with his own feelings. He repeats multiple times that he was not fond of Bevilacqua, that Bevilacqua foisted himself on Manguel as an unwanted guest; but one suspects Manguel was more fond of Bevilacqua than lets on even to himself.

The second section, 'Much Ado About Nothing,' is an about face. Manguel is a liar and a sad sack, full of himself and totally useless, generally. Andrea, the narrator of this section, is at least as delusional as Manguel, and less self-aware; she's a narcissist. Everything that matters, matters on her terms. She was Bevilacqua's lover, but it's clear to the reader that she was in love with her own idea of the man, not the man himself. The Bevilacqua she discusses is a very different one from the man Manguel tells us about - the two are almost irreconcilable, but because of Andrea's inability to countenance that anything beyond her own version of events and people might have merit, we give more credence to Manguel's version despite the fact that Andrea was objectively closer to Bevilacqua.

There's more to say about Andrea, but I can't without major spoilers. Suffice to say that even though she's not a terribly subtle character, there are some subtle ways in which Manguel (the author) reveals her to us. This story, though technically about Bevilacqua, tells us more about the people around him than about he himself.

The third section, as I say, is the most self-aware and the best-written, and the quality of the writing leads us to believe it almost unconditionally even though we know these are personal accounts by people with vested interests. We remain objectively aware that we are reading a story, one person's version of events, but we cannot help but lend this particular person weight because of the way he tells his story. There's quite a lot to be said for this.

The fourth section was where things fell down for me a bit, told as it was from beyond the grave. It explained a lot of things that were left as mysteries in the first three sections, and while it was... fine? I would have been okay if those things were left unexplained, or ... explained in a more subtle way, like the rest of the story had been up to this point. This section felt kind of heavy-handed, unlike the earlier portions. It was well-done for what it was, but I wasn't sure it fit.

The fifth section, Teradillos' own, was a satisfying, solid ending, but there's not too much else to say about it beyond that.

Do I recommend this book? I certainly read it quickly and I enjoyed it. What's more, I think I have enjoyed thinking about it even more than reading it. I don't think it's absolutely brilliant but it was engaging and thought-provoking, and it's hard to ask too much more from a book. For fans of historical fiction, Latin American fiction, and literary fiction especially, but even if you're none of the above, this is an easy read to help you stretch out of your comfort zones.

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
by Gabrielle Zevin
Viking Canada, 2014
258 pages

This is a book best read by people who love words and stories. It's not a heavy story (surprising, given some of the subject matter) but it's heavy on the literary references and book world in-jokes. This is an easy, fast read, gently funny and somewhat predictable, which makes it a very comfortable summer read, even for someone like me, who generally doesn't read a lot of contemporary fiction because I like to keep reality out of my reading space.

A.J. Fikry is the owner of Island Books, a small literary bookstore on Alice Island. It's a quiet place in the winter, and a very busy place with tourists - the summer people - in the few sunny months. Things are not going the way A.J. planned; his wife, and business partner, was killed in an accident, and business is slowing, and A.J. is not the sort of person who can attract business the way his vibrant, socially adept wife could. But things are about to change for A.J. and his small circle of friends and acquaintances, with the introduction of a small, abandoned girl into his bookstore and his life.

I think if anything I'd maybe describe this story as a bit of a love letter to short stories, a mild statement on the value of sharing books, and a bit of a fairytale. It struck me that it managed to be neither maudlin nor manipulative, both very easy traps to slide into with a book like this, which I appreciate hugely. It wasn't terribly deeply examined either, so while some very difficult things happen to some of the characters, I'm not sure how much staying power this book has with me in the grand scheme of things. Weeks after I've actually finished reading the thing, I'm still enjoying the afterglow but maybe not as loudly enthusiastic as I was.

One thing that did strike me as I was reading was the way Zevin used multiple narrators. I am not usually a fan of this technique in the way Zevin was using it. Many times certain narrators have very important bits of information that other narrators don't, and because we care about what happens to these people and the relationships they have with each other, it becomes very tense, wondering who will find out what when and exactly what the fallout will be, and suspecting it will be very unpleasant for everyone involved. However, I think because of the way Zevin handles her characters, which is gently, I trusted her. The tension was there, but not overwhelming, and left space for enjoying the other aspects the story. Namely the literary references and the book world in-jokes.

Also, her foreshadowing is pretty clear. The ending, though not its specifics, is telegraphed, and I saw it coming. I was supposed to. I appreciated this as it meant nothing was a huge surprise (or not much) and it occurs to me that I'm not wild about being surprised in books, at least not about some things. At least not in the usual course of things.

It's not a remarkable book, but it's lovely and charming and - I've used this word already a couple times, but it fits - gentle. It's funny and if it treads lightly, that's okay by me. A recommended speedy, very readable summer book. Book clubs will likely get some mileage out of it, though hard to know how much. It might be fun to pair a couple of the short stories that form the backbone with the book; the Flannery O'Connor alone packs a more visceral punch than the whole book, if you like that sort of thing.

Books by Larry McMurtry

Books
by Larry McMurtry
Tantor, 2008
5 discs

I would have done better with this if I'd written the review right after finishing the book, but so it goes. The difficulty here is that I don't have a lot of strong feelings either way. I picked this up because I very much like books about books, and I got some of that. I also got a bit of other stuff, and a lot of names that didn't really mean very much to me at all.

So, Larry McMurtry: he wrote Lonesome Dove. And Terms of Endearment. And, as he might put it, a number of other novels that have translated rather well to the screen. Though, contrary to what he seems to think, I actually do think of Lonesome Dove the novel first, not the television miniseries. This might be because I am a librarian, but I also think it's because that is indeed considered in some circles one of the best Western novels written. I haven't read it. I think I might, someday.

McMurtry has also written a number of memoirs, or nonfiction books that are rather wrapped up in his interests. Books is one of them, detailing the love of his life: buying, reading, and selling rare books. It starts with his first books, a gift from a cousin, a box of 19 boys adventure books to keep him company while he was sick in bed. By the time he had blazed through those books, some of them multiple times, he had started a lifelong habit he cannot stop: reading. McMurtry is a voracious reader, and originally started buying books just so he could read them, and then sold them only so he could buy new ones to read. But eventually he became a book scout, finding rare or desirable books, buying them from willing sellers, and then selling them to willing dealers. Eventually he became a dealer himself.

There are a couple of challenges here, and interestingly, none of them really ruined the book for me, though I'll admit I didn't love it. I did find it interesting; I don't feel like I wasted my time. But it wasn't as good as I hoped, and here are a couple of reasons why. First, and perhaps the fatal flaw here, was that I did listen to this as an audiobook. And I wasn't wild about the reader. Though there was a bit of a laconic southern twang in reader William Dufris' voice that I liked given that McMurtry is a Texan, he also read the book in a self-satisfied way that may in fact be the way McMurtry intended to come across -- but I hope not, and I rather think the whole tone of the reading missed the mark. It grated, sometimes; because of the reader, the author sounded more full of himself than I think he is based on the text. Occasionally I was able to separate the text from the tone, and I think the text was more intimate and chatty and less self-congratulatory than it sounded.

Also annoying was the tendency McMurtry had to kind of jump everywhere, and often not actually delve into a thought, or, more annoying, a story that he started. There were little snippets here and there, some picked up and many more not. Statements were made and then never taken anywhere. It is a short book, so there's some excuse there; it is the author's prerogative to finish or not finish his thoughts, but too much of that leaves a reader feeling unsatisfied. Further, we were promised discussions of interesting personalities in the rare and antique books trade, and we got some of that -- but not enough. McMurtry is almost careful to avoid talking about his fellow bookmen too much. Again, though, not sure how much of that lack was felt because I was listening. This is not a book that is meant to be listened to. (Actually, at one point McMurtry mentions his dislike of audiobooks. Point to you, sir.)

Particularly because of the audio format, the name-dropping was really noticeable. Because so much of it was name-dropping without context (though not all, and the parts that weren't were thoroughly enjoyable and interesting) this became a problem. I can't remember most of the names, although again, where McMurtry put flesh on his stories I do and would remember the stories if I came across the names again.

That said, the good parts are good. McMurtry provides a peek into a world sort of similar to the one I inhabit as a librarian, and yet totally different as well. I would love, if I had another life to live, to be an antiquarian bookseller. Hell, I'd love to be a rare books librarian, but I'm not looking for another specialty right now, particularly one with extremely limited job prospects. I love rare and old books, but not enough to make it my life, and listening to McMurtry it's clear that books, rare and old, are his. It's an interesting window into a fascinating world, and the little glimpses I got made me anxious to know more, made me wish to have the patience to comb through used book stores and junk yards and garage sales for those once-in-a-lifetime finds of first editions inscribed to mothers or lovers or even just well-wishers.

I generally like books by authors about books, reading, and writing. This one was a little light on substance for me to be entirely pleased, and though I got a few things out of it, I'm afraid I had dearly hoped for more. This won't stop me from reading McMurtry -- I'd like to try his fiction, particularly Lonesome Dove -- but I may steer clear of his nonfiction, at least in audio format. I feel kind of badly about that, because I think McMurtry is likely a lovely person, or at least, this book leads me to think so. Perhaps I would have better luck with a physical book, and I will keep that in mind.

Books & Islands in Ojibwe Country by Louise Erdrich

Books & Islands in Ojibwe Country
by Louise Erdrich
National Geographic, 2003
92 pages

Being among books is only half about actual reading, after all. The other part is talking about books with other people, a rich topic, and yet another is enjoying their presence.

Just to be clear about the labels on this post: I'm not claiming Louise Erdrich for Canada, as much as I'd love to do so. But a somewhat large chunk of the book takes place this side of the border so I've added the tag.

This was one of those serendipitous browsing things, though not in the sense of shelf grazing; more in the sense of I had looked up something in our library ebook catalogue and this popped up instead. I've always wanted to read Louise Erdrich (more so now) and I love the idea of the National Geographic Directions series, and ... well, I'm a little embarrassed to admit this: it was short. I wanted something short. Also, about books! So I downloaded this and here we are. A little ironic, as this book is at least partially about the love of books as physical objects. And rarely have I come across such a perfect defense of books as objects as the quote above. Hence, I'd love to have an actual physical copy of this.

The condensed version: as with all books in the Directions series, this is an extremely accomplished author taking a trip that investigates something dear to her heart, and then writing about it. In Erdrich's case, she's gone to do a tour of the rock paintings on the islands of Lake of the Woods, taking along her 18-month-old daughter, and then to visit the historic island home of Ernest Oberholtzer and his immense collection of rare books. Throughout the book we get discussions of books and their very personal appeal and importance to Erdrich, briefer discussions of islands and their importance, and lots of discussion of the meaning of the rock paintings and Ojibwe culture and especially the language, and occasional digressions into mothering.

I really loved this book. It's an important book, because of the notes on Ojibwe culture and language and because of the recognition that, in many ways, we're lucky either still exists -- she never harps on the role governments and the Catholic church (particularly the Canadian government) have played in the damage, but she doesn't shrink from pointing it out where necessary either. It's also a beautiful book, where it meditates on books and writing and language and the importance of all of these things, particularly to the author. And Louise Erdrich? Knows how to write.

The chapter on the language, Ojibwemowin, is intense, and it is beautiful, and fascinating. Six thousand different tenses of single verb are possible. Imagine the books you could write in that language. Imagine the poems! English is a fine language, never going to knock it except maybe an affectionate jab here and there. But imagine how much more precise, how much more vivid, a language like Ojibwemowin must be.

I also particularly enjoyed her description of Oberholtzer's island ("Ober's island") and its cabins and quirks of architecture, its library, the people and the food while she is staying there. Erdrich has an incredible grasp on descriptive language, and it shows to its best advantage here. I could visualize everything. And yet she is never purple in her prose, just perfectly eloquent. Makes for an absolutely delightful travel read.

More favourite bits:

We have a lot of books in our house. They are our primary decorative motif -- books in piles on the coffee table, framed book covers, books sorted into stacks on every available surface, and of course books on shelves along most walls. Besides the visible books, there are the boxes waiting in the wings, the basement books, the garage books, the storage locker books. They are a sort of insulation, soundproofing some walls. They function as furniture, they prop up sagging fixtures and disguised by quilts function as tables. The quantity and types of books are fluid, arriving like hysterical cousins in overnight shipping envelopes only to languish near the overflowing mail bench.

I want that house. I am working towards it. Yes, I work at a library. This is not enough.

Regarding summer trips, and don't I recognize this too:

Used to be, I'd pack six preteen girls, two dogs (large Aussies), and myself in along with a week of food, clothes, games, and drawing materials, for a trip to a whole other island in Lake Superior were I did research while the girls swam, screamed, ate, screamed, roasted marshmallows, screamed, read "Wonder Woman" and "Catwoman" comics, slept, screamed, and woke, screaming happily, for a week or two. I don't really know how I have accomplished anything, ever.

Lovely little book, well worth the time to find it and read it. Travel, culture, and lots of book talk. Highly recommended.

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

Northanger Abbey
by Jane Austen
Naxos Audiobooks, 2007 (originally published in 1817)
7 discs (unabridged)

Here is a case where an audiobook works a lot better than the print version for me. I've tried picking up Northanger Abbey a couple of times over the years (this book has the distinction of being one of the earliest entries on my formal TBR: number 7, to be exact) and it just never worked out between us. And the beginning, even as an audiobook, is a bit dry. But the wonders of a good reader reading an excellent, scintillating, clever story have once again pulled me through. I loved this whole experience.

Which is not to say that we always got along, the reader, the story, and I. I found Juliet Stevenson's delivery of Catherine Morland's voice to be irritating at first. But there are some subtle variations that start to make a great deal of sense, and by the end of the seventh disc I was mostly won over, though I still think she sounds stupider than the book (having read a few passages since) seems to suggest. Also, the story gets a bit... flat at the end. Almost like the author is in a hurry. Or perhaps she is pulling back, letting her characters get on with things without too much interference. (Now I know where Mary Robinette Kowal gets it from, I'm inclined to forgive her a bit for it.) At any rate, it's a wee bit unsatisfying.

But enough of the bad! Shall we see which passages I particularly enjoyed? Or perhaps a summary first?

Catherine Morland is a lovely, unpretentious, and perhaps just a bit callow young woman of seventeen, who is on her way to Bath with family friends, the Allens. She is quickly delighted and extremely impressionable, but also easy-going and generous with her affections. Not, perhaps, as the narrator might wish, an exactly perfect heroine for a Gothic novel... but entertaining nonetheless. In Bath she meets a number of new friends, chiefly Isabella Thorpe, who shares her love of Gothic novels, and Henry and Eleanor Tilney, who are well-off, intelligent, and good-natured companions. When Catherine is invited to spend time at the Tilney estate, grandly called Northanger Abbey, her imagination takes hold: the ancient Abbey holds terrors everywhere for a young, unattached woman... doesn't it?

It's actually all fairly complex, Austen-like, and there's a fair bit more going on here than first appears. It's a pointed skewer of the immensely popular Gothic novels of Ann Radcliffe et al, surprisingly postmodern (Jane got there first!), a romance, an examination of reading and language, an examination of the state of women, a look at friendship. And probably more, but I was only listening to this, after all, not doing a close reading. Oh, and it's funny. It's really quite funny, in that perfect, almost surprising way -- sometimes sly, sometimes droll, and every once in a while full-out amusing.

And as a lover of books since childhood, there are a number of parts that are entirely, utterly relatable. Catherine is convinced that she shall be the one to discover the Abbey's deep, dark secrets, just by virtue of... well, she's not sure exactly what virtue is going to help her, but it's what happens in all the books, is it not? Catherine: I have been there.

Perhaps I shall let Jane do the talking now. There are a number of quite quotable bits, things that delighted me quite a bit. The narrator is rather put out that her heroine is not quite a perfectly accomplished, desperate, and desperately unhappy Gothic heroine, and we get some rather ... shall I say gently exasperated? asides from her. Very dry humour, of the sort that likes to lull the reader into complacency and then give her a bit of a poke.

The progress of Catherine's unhappiness from the events of the evening, was as follows. It appeared first in a general dissatisfaction with every body about her, while she remained in the rooms, which speedily brought on considerable weariness and a violent desire to go home. This, on arriving in Pulteney-street, took the direction of extraordinary hunger, and when that was appeased, changed into an earnest longing to be in bed; such was the extreme point of her distress; for when there she immediately fell into a sound sleep which lasted nine hours, and from which she awoke perfectly revived, in excellent spirits, with fresh hopes and fresh schemes.

And this... Catherine speaks first, Henry Tilney second.

"... But you never read novels, I dare say?" 

"Why not?" 

"Because they are not clever enough for you -- gentlemen read better books." 

"The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid."

It's harsh, but I laughed out loud. Not that I would ever suggest someone who doesn't like reading a good novel is necessarily stupid, myself. Lots of very smart people prefer nonfiction. Some smart people don't like reading at all. Although there is a reading snob in me who whispers that someone who doesn't like reading at all... well, I shouldn't say it out loud. Bad librarian! I have to be aware of my prejudices. Apparently that is one. And not a helpful one, in my line of work.

This was a bit challenging to get started on, as I stated above. Now that I've been through the whole thing, I can totally see reading it (or listening to it) again. The payoff is entirely there, and it's a wonderful book. There is a good reason Jane Austen is still so popular after all these years. Dare I try Sense and Sensibility next? Because that truly is not one of my favourites. Or perhaps Love and Friendship? Or... well, the truth of the matter is that I'm already listening to Pride and Prejudice. Again.

Bellwether by Connie Willis

Bellwether
by Connie Willis
Bantam Spectra, 1996
196 pages

Have you ever had that weird thing happen where something you've read or heard in one part of  your life connects randomly and neatly with something in a completely different part of your life? For example, I finished reading Bellwether and then CBC's The Current had a major piece on the ethics of corporate policies preventing the hiring of smokers the very next morning. It was startling. It was also very, very cool to see how prescient Willis in fact is. And it gave me a whole different perspective on the real-life issue. And hearing people discuss the real-life issue gave me a bit of a different perspective on the book, too.

I adore To Say Nothing of the Dog. I was therefore very keen to get to this book at some point, and I was kind of feeling stuck with my reading. Darla had reviewed it not long ago, so it was on my radar. And my local library had this available as an eBook and it wasn't on hold, either. And like To Say Nothing of the Dog, this book is an ideal combination for me: amusing and not totally serious about itself, but with some serious intellectual meat and chock-full of literary references. Even better, this book is steeped in the poetry of Robert Browning and science lore.

Sandra Foster, our first-person narrator, is a sociologist and statistician working for a company named HiTek. She researches fads, and is currently trying to find the source of the women's hair-bobbing fad of the 1920s, a task she likens to the historical task of trying to find the source of the Nile -- but more difficult. In addition to her research project, she is coping with a hopelessly awful interdepartmental assistant, attempting to discover the secret of a chaos theorist coworker who seems to be totally immune to fads, and trying to rescue classic novels and poetry from being discarded from the local library due to lack of popularity.

There is not a lot at stake here, except for perhaps Sandra's funding and therefore job, and the extreme long-shot odds of winning a Neibnitz Grant, the most prestigious and lucrative scientific award around. Sandra is an engaging narrator, taking us on wonderful, erudite tangents that circle around to the relevant; sharp, funny, and sarcastic. So it becomes quite important to us that she get her funding, that she find the source of the fad, that she is happy. It is impossible not to root for her, even when she is a bit clueless (very rare) or a bit prickly (not quite so rare). It's also hard not to root for her because the things she's up against are often totally ludicrous.

If I had one complaint, and it's not even really a complaint so much as an observation, I don't think this book is quite as subtle as To Say Nothing of the Dog. (I know, I know, I keep comparing, and it's not entirely fair.) It's a short book, and the things Sandra is up against are so over-the-top it becomes almost impossible to believe that she wouldn't be able to overcome them. Management at HiTek is an amalgam of all of the worst possible things about management in a large corporation. Dr. Alicia Turnbull is terribly one-dimensional. Flip, the interdepartmental assistant from Hell, is ... well, the interdepartmental assistant from Hell. She's so awful it's almost impossible to comprehend how she could even make it through a day, doing things like feeding herself and walking up and down stairs. On the other hand, she is not one-dimensional. She's actually a pretty interesting character. Awfully horrifying, but interesting.

The thing is, it's fun. It's smart fun. It's satirical fun. So I can forgive the unsubtle, larger-than-life ridiculousness of what Sandra ends up observing and coping with herself. I can forgive the dig at libraries discarding unused materials, even the really good ones, to save shelf space (because it is uncomfortably true) and I can agree that there is a disturbing analogy to be made between human behaviour and the behaviour of a flock of sheep. It's funny, and it's not, because it's true.

Suffice to say, I think you should read this. It's not long and it's totally, wonderfully worth it. I have purchased Blackout sight unseen (while I was purchasing Bellwether at the same time) and I don't do that often. But Connie Willis is turning out to be an author I want to have on my shelves. She re-reads well, if both To Say Nothing of the Dog and Bellwether are any indication -- I finished Bellwether the first time, and am already halfway through it again. I've read To Say Nothing of the Dog three times now, with a fourth coming up when I inflict it upon my long-suffering genre book club. With both there are new things to be discovered, and wonderful writing to be savoured. And you will come out the other end feeling just a little bit smarter, and maybe even a little bit wiser.

Talking About Detective Fiction by P. D. James

Talking About Detective Fiction
by P. D. James
Knopf, 2009
198 pages

When I was growing up, my mother had a shelf full of P.D. James. I used to take the books down and look at them, fascinated by the highly stylized and candy-coloured blood drops on the covers. I particularly liked Shroud for a Nightingale and Cover Her Face, if I recall correctly. Later on I read Cover Her Face, and enjoyed it quite a lot, though I haven't picked up anything else by her since. I can't say why.

But at night now, with smallfry being Very Awake because she prefers sleeping in to going to bed early (she is a child after her parents' own hearts) fishy and I have started reading to each other. And as we're both interested in reading and writing, and both fans of mysteries, P.D. James' Talking About Detective Fiction seemed like a great place to go. fishy had already read it once, but he was doing some thinking about detective stories and wanted to read it again anyways.

Really, one couldn't ask for a better, more well-informed and well-read overview of the genre. James has the additional advantage of a long life lived; for example, she was reading the Golden Age detective novels as they came out, long before she thought to write a mystery of her own. This book isn't what I would call a guide, exactly, though she certainly has recommendations and in-depth discussions about some of the key works and players in detective fiction over the years. It goes approximately chronologically from Wilkie Collins to the Golden Age to modern detective fiction, does a bit of a side-trip through the American hardboiled sub-genre and spends a good chunk of time talking about the four grand ladies of the Golden Age (Sayers, Marsh, Allingham, and Christie), offering personal notes and observations on the genre as well as the observations of other critics and writers, and observations on literature and writing in general.

What makes this book great as opposed to just good and interesting is James' writing. She has a wonderful, distinct style, somewhat chatty but always impeccable, and she also has a very dry sense of humour that sneaks its way into the writing. As we were reading to each other, every once in a while one of us would laugh out loud. It's not always an easy book to read aloud; some of her sentence structures are a little convoluted, such that you'd start reading a sentence and it would turn out to be something completely different and by the end you'd have lost where you were supposed to put the emphasis... but generally the writing is clear and smart. It gives me high hopes for Death Comes to Pemberley, which I am quite looking forward to reading at some point in the future -- my favourite Austen characters couldn't be in better hands.

It doesn't hurt to have one of the grand masters of the genre take you for a bit of a tour of the last hundred and fifty years; P.D. James knows her stuff, has read a lot of books, and is cheerfully opinionated about the topic. As a librarian, I know that mystery is one of the most enduring and popular genres on the shelves, and James gives a pretty good argument as to why this is and should be the case. All in all, I'd recommend this little volume to anyone interested in detective or crime fiction, or anyone interested in literature in general even if you're not (or don't think you are) a fan of detective novels. Particularly recommended for people who work with the reading public and can't figure out why mysteries are so popular; this book will give you a direct line to why.

Hark! A Vagrant by Kate Beaton

 Hark! A Vagrant

by Kate Beaton

Drawn & Quarterly, 2011

166 pages

Whee! Kate Beaton! I preordered this when I knew it was coming out, and I loved pretty much every bit of it.

If you're not familiar with cartoonist Kate Beaton, get thee over to her website posthaste and remedy that. Her comics poke fun at literature (both the literature itself and the people who write it), history, and occasionally contemporary things. I can almost always get a laugh out of a Kate Beaton strip. In fact, I think some of her work -- enough of it to note -- is absolutely brilliant. Which is excellent, although it does mean that if she posts a rather mediocre strip it's even more devastating. Generally, the work in the book is the best, although there are one or two middling bits. I wouldn't worry about these, I only sigh because I know she can be so good.

The nice thing about the book, too, is that it compiles related strips in one place. So all of the French Revolution stuff is in one place, and all of the superhero bits, and all of the Teen Detectives bits, and (some of my favourites) the Goreys, where Beaton has taken a whole bunch of book covers drawn by Edward Gorey and then riffed on them -- judging books by their cover, to excellent effect. Often at the beginning of a set, there will be some commentary included, and what makes me happy about this is that it's not exactly that Beaton is explaining her jokes, so much as adding to them -- so what could be unfunny or too much information actually adds to the overall experience. Sometimes the strips are even better having read the commentary. Beaton is one funny lady.

Okay, so not a deep read by any means. But smarter than your average comic strip, and in some cases I even learned things. Those of you who like books, or history, or both, and have a sense of humour about things like the guillotine, should definitely check this collection out.

I leave you with this.

Seriously, go look at the website. Buy her stuff. Buy her book. Please make sure she keeps publishing stuff because a world without Kate Beaton's comics is a sad, sad world.

Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman

Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader

by Anne Fadiman

Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1998

157 pages

A sonnet might look dinky, but it was somehow big enough to accommodate love, war, death, and O. J. Simpson. You could fit the whole world in there if you shoved hard enough.

The above quote could just as easily describe this wonderful book of essays as sonnets. It is a small book, but so large in bookish scope and quotable bits and things to think about that I am afraid this review may be fairly long. It's a book that makes me excited about reading. I don't need much encouragement, it's true, but maybe I have lately; maybe this book has hit me at just the right time.

Ex Libris is a smallish collection of essays on books, reading, literature, and literary lives by editor and writer Anne Fadiman. The essays are short -- five or six pages each -- and they fly by too quickly. I actually felt quite saddened that there were no more at the end, and that's always a good feeling when it comes to books.

I think what I like most is that I don't always agree with Fadiman; I felt more like I was having a discussion with her as I read -- well, she was persuading and orating, and I was interjecting and commenting. I think she's fascinating, I learned many things, I love her outlook on reading and most things literary, but. This is a woman, who in the same essay, can write the absolutely marvelous sentence:

I can think of few better ways to introduce a child to books than to let her stack them, upend them, rearrange them, and get her fingerprints all over them.

And then she will go on to write in the same essay,

Our father's library spanned the globe and three millenia, although it was particularly strong in English poetry and fiction of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The only junk, relatively speaking, was science fiction;

Which makes me want to bash the book against the wall. It's not just that it's a horribly snobby thing to write (because I have come, at this point, to the conclusion that Fadiman comes by her literary snobbery honestly, and some people are like that, and fine) but it makes me sad for her. If an entire genre like science fiction (and what must she think of fantasy? or god forbid, romance?) can be dismissed so easily, how much she is missing. The remarkable, brain-tingling writing of Samuel Delany, for example, is better than most literary fiction I have read. Ursula K. Le Guin, with things to say about gender and belonging and truth and loyalty in the most creative ways. Entire challenging, interesting, shining works of art dismissed as junk because they happen to be written in genre. I know I can be a bit sensitive to this, but that sort of thing always feels like a punch in the gut, a complete dismissal of something that I both enjoy for fun and intellectually.

It is a testament to how much I enjoy these essays that I didn't throw the book, and in fact just shook my head in bemusement and kept reading. Because, like there is more to science fiction than space ships and aliens, there is far more to these essays than one throwaway comment, telling though it is. And it doesn't hurt, once in a while, to think about what it is I love about reading, and why I like reading what I do, and what books mean to me. And think, in detail, about how I might defend that position to someone like Fadiman -- or whether or not it needs to be defended at all.

Other essays are about books as objects, about used bookstores, about compulsive proofreading, about personalized inscriptions, about marrying personal libraries when the owners marry, and one of my favourites: an essay about the his/her dilemma. It deals with Fadiman's personal wrestling with gendered language, about the difficulty of sometimes placing equality over beauty in a sentence, and why it is necessary. From that came the following passage:

Long ago, my father wrote something similar: "The best essays [do not] develop original themes. The develop original men, their composers." Since my father, unlike E. B. White, is still around to testify, I called him up last night and said, "Be honest. What was really in your mind when you wrote those sentences?" He replied, "Males. I was thinking about males. I viewed the world of literature -- indeed, the entire world of artistic creation -- as a world of males, and so did most writers. Any writer of fifty years ago who denies that is lying. Any male writer, I mean."

I believe that although my father and E. B. White were not misogynists, they didn't really see women, and their language reflected and reinforced that blind spot.

This is particularly interesting to me given that Fadiman's father and E. B. White were both married to very accomplished women of letters, and both relied on them for artistic assistance and delighted in sharing the world of literature with them. Fascinating, thought-provoking stuff.

Fadiman is not a common reader, nor is she a common writer. She is erudite, clever, interesting, funny, and replete with new and unusual words (I am going to follow her example and list words in this book that I have never encountered before -- it is going to be a long one). It occurs to me that someone less talented may have come off as patronizing or full-of-herself, but Fadiman's essays come off instead as full of joie de vivre and completely, head-over-heels in love with language and the written word. She isn't using her fancy words to impress. She is using them because they exactly embody what she wants to say, and she just happens to have them handy for use. Her vocabulary becomes a gift to the reader.

This book is delightful, and I need to find my own copy. I'll also be keeping an eye out for her newer collection of essays, At Large and at Small. I recommend Ex Libris highly to anyone who loves reading, language, and most especially books.