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Once again I have proof why I don’t do New Year’s resolutions. Just last week I said “less is more” when it came to my reading in 2011 and specifically mentioned cutting down on reading books for review. That sounded great — until those wily publishers came metaphorically knocking upon my door.
I got home Monday night to a stack of summer catalogs from publishers. It has hard to battle lust. Assuming all the books show up (which is not always the case), as of today I will be reviewing 14 books coming out between April and mid-July. Indubitably, my bibliolust surges when it comes to new books, particularly those I might be able to lay my hands on before they hit the street. Still, I passed on at least four other review copies I was considering requesting, which arguably means I was only operating at a three-quarters lust level.
Of course, the review list is without regard to the summer catalogs yet to show up at the door or the handful of books from a couple other publishers I haven’t requested yet simply because the advances are in ebook format. (No, the transition to e-books is not an easy one for this old fart). And, of course, Monday I also added a book to my “to read” list at the library and put one on reserve.
While “less is more” wasn’t a resolution, it is plain that when it comes to books more is, in fact, more — and the TBR shelves be damned.
I can resist everything except temptation.
Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan
At first, it was simply going to be a Weekend Edition item but then a contrasting item using the same phraseology I intended appeared, causing me to plunge into dangerous waters.
First was the news that a publisher is releasing an edition of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that totally eliminates the word “nigger” from the text. I know it’s a hateful word but banishing it from the book (apparently replacing it with “slave”) seems to also remove the context of the times in which it was written, an element to understanding almost any work. My thought upon reading this was that we were again seeing pc censorship run amok. (By the way, the publisher also intends to remove the word “Injun”.)
Then my exact thought, “political correctness run amok,” appeared in yet another story dealing with that word. A federal court judge in Philadelphia ruled that a former TV news anchor can sue for being terminated after he used the word “nigger” during a newsroom meeting. Essentially a reverse discrimination lawsuit, the anchor claims the Fox station fired him for using the word because he was white. He claims that in discussing how to phrase a news item, he was asserting that using the phrase “the n-word” actually gave the word “nigger” more power. In saying the case must go to trial, the judge wrote, “When viewed in its historical context, one can see how people in general, and African Americans in particular, might react differently when a white person uses the word than if an African American uses it. Nevertheless, we are unable to conclude that this is a justifiable reason for permitting the Station to draw race-based distinctions between employees.”
Yes, that word is offensive, as are many other words. But as Lenny Bruce said decades ago (see below), our fear and reluctance to address the core issue gives such words their power. Perhaps Bruce’s view and mine are too simplistic and you can never eliminate the hurt the word causes. Still, I firmly believe eliminating the word, whether from a Mark Twain book or a person’s speech, isn’t the answer. It just makes words like that more offensive and gives them a type of caché.
[T]he word’s suppression gives it the power, the violence, the viciousness. If President Kennedy got on television and said, “Tonight I’d like to introduce the niggers in my cabinet,: and he yelled “niggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggergigger” at every nigger he saw, “boogeyboogeyboogeyboogeyboogey, nigggerniggernigger” till nigger didn’t mean anything any more, till nigger lost its meaning– you’d never make any four-year-old “nigger” cry when he came home from school.
Lenny Bruce, The Essential Lenny Bruce
2010 was a record year in one respect. I read more books this year than in any one year since I started keeping a book diary in 1976. This year’s total was 127, quite a bit higher than the 111 from last year, the previous record. I attribute the number to 2010 being the first full year of “empty nesting.” With all three kids out of state, my wife and I spent more evenings and nights reading than in the past.
That may also have affected the total number of books I read from my monthly Bibliolust lists. In 2009, there were 66 books on the list and I read 38 (57.6%). Last year the total was similar (64) but I read three-quarters of them. And that doesn’t include about a dozen books I read from the 2008 and 2009 lists I hadn’t gotten to before.
There was frequent library use, with more than a third of the books I read coming from there. I also read a record number of books in ebook formats. The fact I bought a Nook means that should be expected — although it doesn’t mean I consider ereaders to be much more than an at time handy toy at this point. Finally, I read one less work of translated fiction than last year but I would have hoped for an increase given the number of books read all together.
There are a couple things that aren’t included. With one exception, the numbers don’t include graphic books because the short length of time most take to read leaves me unsure whether to count them. Given the substance some have, I may start keeping track of them broken down by length. It is strictly format, not length, that accounts for audiobooks not being on the list, even if I do listen to an unabridged edition. Those exceptions, though, would account for only a handful of books.
Looking more specifically at 2010:
Books Read: 127
Fiction: 63 (49.6 percent)
- Translated Fiction: 22 (35.5 percent of fiction)
- Languages: Spanish (6), German (5), French (4), Swedish (3), Dutch (2), Norwegian (1), Russian (1)
- Science Fiction: 9
Non-fiction: 59 (46.5 percent)
- History: 15 (25.4 percent of nonfiction)
- Autobiography/Memoirs/: 10
- Biography: 4
Humor: 2
Essays, Graphic Novels, Poetry: 1 each
Review copies read: 37 (29.1 percent)
Books reviewed: 43
Library copies read: 45 (35.4 percent)
Ebooks read: 18 (14.2 percent)
I am quite illiterate but I read a lot.
J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
Although the Bibliolust list this month is fairly standard in terms of size, the Report Card has improved. Seven of the 10 books I read in December were from Bibliolust lists as I went on a bit of a year-end bender. It will carry over into the new year, as the first book I’ll finish in 2011 is from the Bibliolust lists, I have another next in the reading stack and I am first in line at the library on two of the books on this month’s list.
End of the year “best of” lists helped contribute to this month’s lust list so as the “spring” books start coming out, there will no doubt be plenty of fodder as we move into the new year. (I already have a May release in my Amazon wish list). Here’s the first of 2011:
Book Lust to Go: Recommended Reading for Travelers, Vagabonds, and Dreamers, Nancy Pearl — I can’t say I’m a huge fan of the Book Lust books. Given that this one claims to be a guide to “literary globetrotting,” thought, it grabbed the armchair traveler in me.
Just Kids, Patti Smith — I’m not a Patti Smith fan so wasn’t too intrigued by her memoir of life in New York City in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It was on so many year-end “best of” lists, though, that I am getting it through the library. My concern is that it hit the best of and awards lists because it appealed to the NYC literati and media.
My Reading Life, Pat Conroy — I considered picking up Conroy’s collection of essays on books and his life as an author when it came out but, not having read any of his books, I wasn’t all that interested. enthralled. The fact it was second on the favorite nonfiction of 2010 list of a book blog I read regularly led me to put a hold on it at the library.
Still Alice, Lisa Genova — I learned of this book when I stumbled across it being the upcoming book for a book club at the local library. The fact the novel deals with a woman’s struggle with Alzheimer’s piqued my interest so I am on the reserve list for a copy.
Report Card:
Calendar Year 2010
- Total Bibliolust books: 64
- Number read: 48 (75%)
- Started but did not finish: 5 (7.8%)
Cumulative (September 2008-December 2010)
- Total Bibliolust books: 150
- Number read: 109 (72.66%)
- Started but did not finish: 9 (6%)
Books are the windows through which the soul looks out.
Henry Ward Beecher, “The Duty of Owning Books”
Bulletin Board
Worthwhile Reading in the Interweb Tubes
- Escape route (” The crucial point of a prison library may not be its book catalog: The point is that it is a library.”) (via)
Blog Line of the Week
Bookish Linkage
- The South Dakota State Historical Society Press is asking its authors and illustrators for brief blog posts on the topic why I love history.
- Meanwhile, the National Book Critics Circle asked its membership which book they would most like to see republished. (Although I’m a member, I didn’t respond largely because I was, honestly, too lazy to research out-of-print books.)
- In what may well be the first of several, Salon suggests a “great book” a month for the sesquicentennial (150 years for the math- or prefix-impaired) of the Civil War. (via)
Nonbookish Linkage
Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink and swore his last oath. Today, we are a pious and exemplary community.
Mark Twain, Early Tales & Sketches, Vol. 1: 1851-1864
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