In My Shopping Bag 2010/11/29

I haven't had time to read, but wanted to share with you some books I bought today:

This is Issue 35, published by my favorite author Dave Eggers (see earlier post).
I've been collecting since Issue 1.



Edited by Dave Eggers, a collection of writings assembled by high school students,
sourced from places you and I would never have the time nor opportunity to
come across, like low-circulation literary reviews and blogs.



This is the 3rd instalment of the brilliant Knuffle Bunny story, starting with Trixie's first words,
with second story about Trixie going to pre-school, and now hot off the press this one about
Trixie's first overseas trip. I just read it to my daughter, she loved it!

In My Shopping Bag 2010/11/26

I haven't had time to read, but wanted to share with you some books I bought today:

For a friend

Multiple copies for friends and for our bookshelf

Multiple copies for friends and for our bookshelf



For my daughters' bookshelf



For a friend

  

A. J. Jacobs

Speaking of "trivia-lovers", The Know-It-All is a memoir of the year the author spent trying to read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica.

A writer for Esquire magazine, A.J. Jacobs is the archetypal 30-something New Yorker, and his writing reflects this. I read this book in 2007, the year in which I became pregnant with my older daughter, which made reading about the author's encyclopedia quest alongside his sometimes funny, sometimes frustrating tales of his and his wife's attempts to have a baby all the more enjoyable.

I eagerly bought Jacobs' follow-up book, The Year of Living Bibically, his memoir of the year he spent following the bible as literally as possible. Again very relevant to my own life because the book included musings on his toddler son, and I read this around the time my older daughter was turning one. In addition, my husband and I were starting a dialogue about when and how to expose our daughter to religion (he's Christian, I'm Buddhist).

It seems so flippant to learn about Christianity from a humor writer, but after reading this book, I really gained a better understanding of my own feelings and opinions regarding Christianity, religious belief and spirituality.

Mental Floss

The Mental Floss History of the World: An Irreverent Romp Through Civilization's Best Bits is the book I read while I was in the hospital (see earlier post). I loved the witty writing as well as the content, despite not being much of a history buff or nonfiction reader. I especially enjoyed the coverage on the early historical periods. By early I mean early: organized in chronological order, Chapter 1 starts at 60,000 BC and doesn't romp through the 1800's until page 266.

Now I know the difference between the Mayans and the Aztecs. And I would love to return to Rome for another guided tour of the city, where I first heard mention of the Etruscans and the Moors; it's nice to have this historical reference now.

The authors also did a good job with China. My brother and I spent a few childhood summers staying with relatives in Taiwan to learn Chinese. I barely remember the Chinese idioms and morality stories that we were taught, but can easily recite the Chinese dynasties in chronological order (rote learning works!). And the authors actually pointed out the key events in each of those dynasties, sometimes against the backdrop of what was happening concurrently in Europe.

This book is a must-read for anyone who loves to inject trivia into conversations.

On a more philosophical note, it's interesting that in the developed world today, people expect and almost demand a leisure-filled and meaningful life. Throughout the ages, 99% of the people were poor and suffering, toiling hours on end to survive from hand to mouth. (Interestingly, this book notes that the Jews were persecuted in every period of history.) Few ancestors seemed to be searching for self-fulfilment; there were so many mass deaths brought on randomly by lawlessness, plagues and wars, regardless of social class or geography. Understanding that past generations lived in ignorance and general insignificance makes me feel even more grateful for the abundance in my life.

On Perspective

One of my favorite authors is Alice Munro. (Back in the 1990s, I briefly worked on a case with her son and was more in awe of the fact that he was Alice Munro's son than his reputation as a litigation lawyer.) Her prose is uncomplicated and her stories artfully capture the human condition. Her latest offering is a collection of short stories, (cheekily) titled Too Much Happiness.



I bought the book earlier this year, purposely choosing it for its short story format because sometimes it is weeks before I have time to continue where I left off. As with all beautiful writing, I found the time to continue and finished the book in the course of three consecutive evenings, in the last evening reading until just before the break of dawn. Like young children's literature, short story fiction is a genre that requires so much precision. The characters in Too Much Happiness are recognizable and relatable, and the vignettes that the writer chooses for developing these characters are genius.

To me, perspective is getting out of the drama of our own lives and daily interactions, in order to appreciate that everyone else has a story too. Two weeks ago, one of the babies in our newborn daughter's room died; my husband and I felt so sad for the parents, whom we had seen making regular visits up to the day before their baby's death. When my husband shared this with his colleague, the colleague made an interesting remark: everyone who works in the finance industry (and complains about his job) should spend one week a year in a hospital.

Alternatively, I suggest you read Alice Munro for similar effect.

Preemie Mom

In my first post two months ago, I spoke of my high-risk pregnancy but fully expected to be posting many more musings on books until the baby was born. Well, our new baby surprised us all and arrived very early, three months before my due date. She's still in the hospital, and will likely stay there until my original due date in December.

In the week leading up to baby's birth, I was in the hospital on a variety of medication to try to delay labor. I brought along Captain Corelli's Mandolin (mentioned in my earlier post) and Mental Floss' History of the World. During the quiet periods when things were under control, I read History of the World. (I love the first chapter of Corelli, but lost interest after attempting half a dozen more chapters.) History of the World, with its piecemeal format of short chapters and sidebars, was easy to digest, as well as interesting and full of humor... will share thoughts on that another day.

Shortly after our baby girl was born, I received the following poem from my brother. The first time I read it, I laughed aloud. Fifteen minutes later, I read it again and I bawled my eyes out. Blame the hormones. Thank you Dee for sharing this poem with me. And a big thank-you to all family and friends who have provided us with their prayers, positive energy and love.

How Preemie Moms Are Chosen
(Adapted from Erma Bombeck)

Did you ever wonder how the mothers of premature babies are chosen?

Somehow I visualise God hovering over earth selecting his instruments for propagation with great care and deliberation. As He observes, He instructs His angels to make notes in a giant ledger.

"Beth Armstrong, son. Patron Saint, Matthew. Marjorie Forrest, daughter. Patron Saint, Celia. Carrie Rutledge, twins. Patron Saint ... give her Gerard. He's used to profanity."

Finally He passes a name to the angel and smiles, "Give her a preemie."

The angel is curious, "Why this one God? She’s so happy."

"Exactly," smiles God, "Could I give a premature baby to a mother who does not know laughter? That would be cruel."

"But has she patience?" asks the Angel.

"I don’t want her to have too much patience or she will drown in a sea of self-pity and despair.
Once the shock and resentment wear off, she’ll handle it.
I watched her today.
She has that feeling of self and independence that is so rare and so necessary in a mother.
You see, the child I’m going to give her has her own world.
She has to make her live in her world and that’s not going to be easy."

"But Lord, I don’t think she even believes in You."

God smiles, "No matter, I can fix that. This one is perfect - she has just enough selfishness."

The Angel gasps, "Selfishness? Is that a virtue?"

God nods, "If she can’t separate herself from the child occasionally, she’ll never survive.
Yes, here is a woman whom I’ll bless with a child less than perfect.
She doesn’t realise it yet, but she is to be envied.
She will never take for granted a 'spoken word'.
She will never consider a 'step' ordinary.
When her child says 'Mommy' for the first time, she will be present at a miracle, and will know it.
I will permit her to see clearly the things I see… ignorance, cruelty, indifference, prejudice… and allow her to rise above them. 
She will never be alone.
I will be at her side every minute of everyday of her life, because she is doing my work as surely as if she is here by my side."

"And what about her Patron Saint?" asks his Angel, pen poised in the air.

God smiles, "A mirror will suffice."

Losing and Finding

Carrying on from my last post, I wonder if one needs to identify with a story in order to really enjoy it.



That was certainly the case with The Joy Luck Club. I remember reading it and being engrossed in the story, laughing aloud at descriptions of life with Chinese immigrant parents. I also remember excitedly sharing favorite parts of the story with my best friend from Chinese school, with both of us declaring in unison that I was Waverley. (I spent eight years of Saturday mornings at Chinese school. Very grateful now for my Chinese language skills, but back then, resentful because my non-Chinese friends in my earlier years were enjoying Laugh-Olympics and other cartoons from the Saturday morning line-up, and in my teens, they got to sleep in.)



There is no part of Life of Pi that I can readily identify with (but then, who could relate to such an fanciful story?), and yet it is one of the best books I have ever read. My experience may have been heightened by the fact that I was on a lazy beach resort holiday in either Phuket or Bali. The storytelling was so captivating, I couldn't put it down. For months afterwards, I was recommending it to anyone who was interested, and yet I wasn't even able to properly describe the plot, let alone the allure. "Just read it!" I kept urging.

A great read is when you find yourself in a book, and can also be when you lose yourself in a book.

I'd Rather Read a Cereal Box

When trying to find Captain Corelli's Mandolin a few days ago, I was reminded that I need more bookshelves, because my paperback fiction collection has been pushed to the back of our double-depth shelves.

Or perhaps, one of these days, I will sit down and give some thought to maybe editing my book collection and possibly even parting with a few books. I still have my Canadian Collegiate Dictionary from the late 1980s, even though I've been looking up words online for more than a decade. And I just read in the newspaper that Oxford may be publishing only an online version of its multi-volume Oxford English Dictionary when the new edition is ready in a few years, because it doesn't expect much demand for the printed version.

     

Two books I will part with before my college dictionary: The Bitch Goddess Notebook and Little Children. The first book I bought at the airport many years ago, before I started to buy hardcover only, because the title caught my eye. (Reading a hardcover book compared with its trade paperback version is like having home-delivery food served on my own plates and with proper utensils rather than eating from styrofoam containers and with disposable chopsticks.)

The second book was a gift from a girlfriend; she had bought me half a dozen best-sellers to read when I was pregnant with my daughter. When I went to Amazon.com to add the book cover image to this post, I noticed that Little Children had been made into a film starring Kate Winslet and Jennifer Connelly. I'm bug-eyed.

I don't remember the details of either story or my reading experience, I just know that when I finished reading them, I thought to myself, "Wow, what a waste of my time." I must have found the plot formulaic, felt annoyed by the characters, been unimpressed with the dialogue, or all of the above.

The Book before the Film

          

This past weekend I read The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. I was thinking about what to read next, and saw that a UK survey of readers' favorites had listed Captain Corelli's Mandolin in the top 25. The provenance of my copy is memorable. It belonged to a man I sat next to on the plane. He had finished reading it near the end of a long flight, during which we had some polite general conversation, and asked whether I'd like to have the book since he was, in his words, done with it. This happened more than 10 years ago and I remember the incident because I found it so foreign that someone could so easily part with his book.

Being on partial bedrest, I've prescribed myself a list of physical "don'ts", including climbing, reaching on tiptoes and crouching. So I had to ask my husband to climb up to the top of our bookshelf to help me find Corelli's Mandolin. He looked and looked and, insisting that I had no such book, named each title in the vicinity of where this book should be. When he called out Hitchhikers Guide organized under "A" for Adams, I asked for it to be passed down to me. How fun to discover a forgotten book. (My husband patiently continued the search, and found Corelli's Mandolin under "D" for de Bernieres instead of under "B" where I had asked him to look.)

          

As I started to read Hitchhikers Guide (which, by the way, is also listed on that same UK survey), I realized to my dismay that I had already seen the movie a few years back. Dismay because generally I don't like to see the film version before reading the original book. Often times I am inspired to read a book after learning of a soon-to-be-released film version, just so I can read the book first, before watching the film.  Recent examples include: Everything is Illuminated, The Hours and In Cold Blood, all of which I loved both book and film versions.

As expected, I had barely gotten through the first dozen pages of Hitchhikers Guide before I found myself waiting for the part where Arthur Dent is beamed onto a spaceship. I was reading without really savouring the writing, and instead kept anticipating what I knew would be the next "scene". The book was fun and easy to read -- I ended up having to put it down and pick it up again several times over the weekend, and had no problems with starting where I had left off -- but I suspect it would have been more deliciously funny if I didn't know what would be happening next in the story.

Rhythm and Rhyme

A few days ago, out of nowhere, my daughter started singing, "Swing low sweet chariot, umma umma carry me home." It's one song out of 3 CDs full of children's songs that she listens to in the car (sung by Raffi, our favorite children's entertainer), and she hasn't listened to music in the car for a few months now. I attribute her recollection to the fact that we've been reading aloud to her for hours a day since she was a baby.

I remember reading somewhere that song lyrics are the foundation for children to learn about words, and to become interested in rhymes, poetry and the magic of the well-written prose.

Recalling songs from my childhood, I'm surprised that, in a primary school in the Vancouver suburbs, our teacher taught us English songs like "Drunken Sailor", American songs such as "It's a Long Way to Tiperary" and Australian songs such as "Waltzing Matilda"; was it just that teacher or was the school curriculum so "cross-cultural"? I'm certain I didn't know the meanings of what I was singing back then, but I loved the way the words rolled out.

I love reading poetry out loud, and nowadays reading children's stories aloud to my daughter also brings me joy. One talent I wish I had: the ability to recite my poems by heart, at least my favorite ones. (Another wished-for talent would be cooking.)



I still have my 1983 edition of The Norton Anthology of Poetry. In recent years, I've tried other poetry collections, including Harold Bloom's The Best Poems of the English Language, and even the latest edition of The Norton Anthology, but they don't compare to the comfort of knowing exactly where to find the old favorites, as well as the tiny thrill of discovering a new poem, in my dog-eared copy.

Mommie Dearest

Last night, over dinner with friends, we got on the subject of children reaching puberty before age 10.  Apparently there is a Korean saying that describes children as "not naive, yet pure".  One friend who works at an international school here in Hong Kong commented that, while many of her schoolchildren are worldly because their parents expose them to a wide range of positive experiences, they have yet to develop a truly mature perspective because they are in fact more sheltered than their counterparts in North America.

I thought about my two-and-a-half year old daughter. The lower quarter of our bookshelf is filled with children's books and she is free to choose whatever she wishes to flip through or have us read to her. However, I've put Where the Wild Things Are on an upper shelf out of her reach, partly because it is next to Dave Egger's The Wild Things but mostly because I'm afraid she'll be frightened by the monsters or negatively influenced by the angry tone of the story. Am I being too protective?

When I was growing up, my parents never even glanced at the covers of the books I was reading, let alone censor any of them.  And that's how, at the age of 10 or 11, I got my hands on my first trashy novel, which I remember reading over and over (I loved to look at the photos and see that I was reading about real people).  A daughter's tell-all about her physically and psychologically abusive movie star mother Joan Crawford, my copy of Mommie Dearest was hidden under my bed because even I was aware that it was age-inappropriate.

Parents today are too child-centric, focusing so much on the needs and feelings of their children. My parents are universally acknowledged as awesome parents, but I know that their children's sleep schedule was not of much concern when they brought my brother and me along (with sleeping bags in tow) to late night mahjong sessions with their friends.  And yet that's not so bad, is it?  How different would I be today if back then, my parents were actively involved in what I read or never allowed me to stray from a strict bedtime routine?

Perhaps parents today are child-centric because they worry their children will grow up to be like Christina Crawford.

Dave and Chris

This past weekend, friends came over for dinner and one of them recognized my complete collection of McSweeney's Quarterly Review.  In addition to very original content, I also enjoy the humorous copyright disclaimers and introductions from guest editors (such as Viggo Mortensen and Judy Blume). 

     

MQR was created by Dave Eggers, one of my favorite writers. The first work I read by him was A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.  I bought the book because of the title.  It was my first experience with "stream of consciousness" writing and I found it so contemporary and hip.  I wanted him to be the father of my children because I imagine him to be a cool dad who creates a stimulating and fulfilled home environment; our children would be so articulate and brilliant! (I had similar fantasies about Chris Martin after attending a Coldplay show.) 

Last year, I bought another book because of the title and loved it.  (The word "northern" reminded me of one of my favorite songs from the 1980s, "Life in a Northern Town".)  Imagine my excitement when I learned that Vendela Vida, the author of Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name, is married to Dave Eggers!  Since then, my fantasy has been revised: my husband and I live in the Bay area and are best friends with the Vida-Eggers family, enjoying great Napa wines and exchanging literary banter.