Best Question Yet

Over in the UK, Jen Campbell has been collecting Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops. All of us bookshop workers have our stories about customer oddities. This week though, I had a great question from a customer. I really enjoyed talking with him and figuring out what he was looking for. He asked me for a story book by a famous author from Canada. I was a bit mystified. He wasn’t sure that famous was the word he was looking for — English was a bit of a struggle for him. Famous was correct — he explained that he wanted a book by a famous Canadian author, better yet from Toronto, but he didn’t know who they were. “Like Shakespeare,” he said. “Ah,” I said. “Well, I can tell you who I think is like Shakespeare but not everyone will agree.” This seemed fine.

Off we went to the only Margaret Atwood book in the store. Remember, I work in a theological bookshop. Literature is not our speciality. We do stock The Year of the Flood, though, mostly because some Old Testament instructors (myself included) have used it in courses. I assured the young man that the book was indeed a story, and not too difficult. He told me he found Wuthering Heights difficult when he read it in university in Japan. I told him I hadn’t read WH as I don’t find it appealing. (English majors may now start wailing and bemoaning my education.)

I asked him why he was looking for this book, was it to help him with studying English? No, it was to help him to get to know about Canada and Toronto. “Hmm.” I said. “This book is about the future, and may not be what you are looking for.” I gave him a bit of paper with Margaret Atwood Cat’s Eye and Michael Ondaatje In the Skin of a Lion written on it. He did buy The Year of the Flood as I sent him off in search of other famous Canadian authors who write about Toronto. I hope he enjoys it. And the others too, if he finds them.

Meanwhile, I’ve been trying to think which other Canadian author is most like Shakespeare. If not Atwood, who? Do tell me what you think.

Recommended Reading?

A few years ago the Telegraph published a list of 100 novels everyone should read. Of these 100, I’ve read 15, own 4 with the intent of reading them, am actively interested in finding a copy of about 4 others, and have no intention at all of reading 2. My question is, why should everyone read these novels? What makes this the definitive list? Why should everyone read certain books?

I think part of the answer to why we continue to make lists of books everyone should read is the idea(l?) of a common culture. If we have stories in common, we will know how to talk with one another. Previously, the Bible provided a common fund of stories and proverbs and phrases that most people knew and could refer to. In our 21st century culture are literary novels and the always-debated canon of western literature replacing the Bible? Perhaps required reading lists only add to the Bible. Now we have even more to know.

Do you pay attention to these lists? Why or why not?

If I were to make a list of 100 novels everyone should read, I’d probably include many of the 15 books I’ve read that are on the Telegraph’s list. I’m not quite decided about The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I think my list might have more Canadians on it. I’d probably throw in Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay. Margaret Atwood is already on the list (Handmaid’s Tale), but Robertson Davies needs to make an appearance. I’m sure there are others. I think I’d add Harry Potter to the list. Potter has shifted the way people think about children’s literature, and whether you think that is good or bad, the fact is that Rowling’s books are a cultural phenomena. If we read for shared stories, everyone should read Potter.

What about you? What books would you include in your 100 novels everyone should read?

The Letter F brings you today’s post

is for Friends & Family who recommend or suggest books. At times they demand that I read books.

You may object that a friend or family recommendation is pretty similar to books suggested by conversations, which I’ve already mentioned in my list of How I Find What To Read Next. Let me make some distinctions between friend/family recommendations and books suggested by conversations. The conversations that suggest reading don’t have to be about books to begin with, and often the conversation suggests a book only afterwards, when I’m thinking about the discussion. Example from last week’s post, later reflection on the endnotes vs footnotes conversation got me thinking about the Bartimaeus trilogy, fantasy books that feature footnotes. When friends or family recommend books to me they are quite specific about the book they suggest, they often give mini-reviews of the book in question, and may follow up the recommendation by lending me the book.

Friends & Family often begin conversations about a book they are going to recommend with the question “Have you read X?” When I admit to not being familiar with that particular book, responses range from gasps of horror (“How could you not have read ____?? You are a book fiend/math person/geek/other descriptor as appropriate!”) to mild dismay (“Really? But I thought that X is the kind of book you read”) to lack of surprise (“OK, it might be outside your usual reading, but I think that this one is worth your time”). Then comes the pitch. The friend or family member who asks “Have you read X?” expecting a “no” answer may skip the response part and launch directly into their pitch for the book. “Oh you MUST read this.” The pitch then goes on to give reasons for reading the book and may give a synopsis of plot if that seems appropriate. If the book is of a particular genre, that may be mentioned in the pitch, especially if the recommender knows that I read the genre.

I like family and friend reading suggestions. If the book in question is thrust upon me as part of the recommendation it makes it easier for me to read the book. I’ve got a friend who doesn’t like it when people lend her books so she’ll read them. She tends to avoid those books. I don’t do that. I may not get to it immediately, but I will read the book. Friends & family may suggest books to me but I may forget what the book is called, or the author’s name. Those are the suggestions I don’t follow up on, not because I don’t want to read the book, or I mistrust the recommendation, but because I can’t think of the information I need to find the book. If the book is a bestseller or a movie is out based on the book, I’m more likely to remember what friends & family say about it.

Last year I read a lot of books based on recommendations from family and friends: Room, the first few Sookie Stackhouse books, Treason, and I’m sure there are more. Those are the ones that pop immediately to mind. I’ve got a few on my list for this year: Wolf Hall is one. A while ago someone recommended Neil Gaiman’s works in general, so I’ve got one of his in my TBR pile. The Restless Teacher is going to lend me Kate Atkinson’s most recent book because she really liked it.

What about you? Do you trust recommendations by your family and friends? Do you suggest books to them?

Follow up: Last week while writing the A for Author post I made the happy discovery that Atkinson and Atwood both have stories in the collection Crimespotting. I said I was hitting the library, and I did. I’ve just finished the book and quite enjoyed it, and recommend it. I don’t think you’ll find it to buy, you’ll probably have to go to the library. Hunt it down.

A is for Author, or, this blog goes alphabetical

One of the things I said I would do in this blog is talk about how I find the books that I read. I propose to do this in 26 blog posts each featuring a letter of the alphabet. Why? Because it gives me a theme for the next few weeks and that just makes writing posts easier to do for me.

Today’s post is brought to you by the letter

A

A is for Author. I often read all the books by a particular author. Once I’ve decided that I like author X, I look for books by author X at used bookstores or in the library. If I really really like author X, I’ll watch for new books they write and procure them as quickly as I can. Other times I know that author X is a reliable source of a certain kind of reading material and thus I go to that author’s work when I’m in the mood for that kind of material. This is all very vague and needs some specificity.

Let’s say A is for Atwood. I enjoy Margaret Atwood’s novels and her essays very much. I found that I don’t enjoy her novels written prior to The Handmaid’s Tale as much as I like her more recent material, so I ignore those. I tend to keep an eye out for the latest Atwood as I think I’ve read all her fiction written since The Handmaid’s Tale – oh wait except for Alias Grace. There is a new book of essays (on science fiction and speculative fiction) that I have not yet read and would like to acquire. I’ve squinted at a copy in a local bookshop a couple of times, but my To Be Read pile is teetering over and I’m not sure I’m in the right space to read that book just at this moment. I may be soon, though, and then I know where to look!

A could also stand for Atkinson, as in Kate Atkinson. I had lunch with one friend and coffee with another in the past two days and they both have read an Atkinson book recently. The Street Pastor borrowed Atkinson from her father over Christmas. The Restless Teacher read one Atkinson from the library and bought the latest one on her recent vacation. She is going to lend me Started Early, Took My Dog and I’m very pleased about that as SE,TMD is high on my mental To Read list.

Atwood and Atkinson are both authors I quite enjoy, but they write vastly different material. Atkinson writes quirky and dark mysteries and literary novels. Atwood writes quirky and dark speculative fiction and literary novels. Hmm, that makes them sound rather similar. Their particular kind of quirkiness is different. I haven’t heard anyone start out by describing Atwood’s work as odd. Lots of people I know start out by describing Atkinson’s work as odd. I need to be in a particular headspace for both Atwood and Atkinson, but it is a different headspace for each.

I went off to my favourite website for keeping track of what books which author has written and made the happy discovery that Atkinson and Atwood have both contributed a short story to the same collection, Crimespotting. This book has been added to my mental “To Find” list. It also features another author I like, Ian Rankin. Library website, here I come.

Fantasy Is Not Science Fiction (and vice versa)

Recently Margaret Atwood wrote an essay in “The Guardian” on genre – and she defined what she meant by the terms “science fiction,” “speculative fiction,” and “fantasy.” (I’ve referred you to this article before, I highly recommend it, go read it now. Atwood’s literary essays are always worth reading.) It annoys me, and I think it also probably annoys Atwood, that Fantasy books are often shelved with Science Fiction books in bookshops. The two genres are stuck together with the SFF label. My friend the Biologist recently asked me what the difference is. I’m afraid I gave her an extended lecture. Here is a slightly condensed version that may be slightly better thought through.

Fantasy is best exemplified by J.R.R. Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings books. They are books set in a completely other world with no apparent link to earth as we know it, except that people live there. In these other worlds there are also other creatures, like dragons, and elves, and wizards. Not all fantasy books have dragons in them, nor are all fantasy books swords and sorcery books, but they all have a not-of-this-world aspect to them. These other worlds might have technology (example China Miéville’s worlds), but the worlds themselves have no connection to this world.

Obviously this definition means that the Potter series is not strictly fantasy. It is connected to this world. Harry leaves for school from a London RR station that you can visit — and loads of people do visit it. I still think Potter is fantasy because Harry so clearly enters a different realm when he goes to school. Similarly, in the Narnia series, people travel from our world into Narnia and other worlds. In Guy Gavriel Kay’s Fionavar series people also travel from this world into another. Fantasy worlds are parallel to our world at most — but the key idea is that characters travel between worlds and the main world of the story action is clearly not this one. J.K. Rowling comes closest to merging her fantasy world with our reality. There are an increasing number of books that introduce fantastic elements into our reality. We might need a new genre for those works.

Science Fiction is exemplified by works like War of the Worlds or 2001: A Space Odyssey. It deals with the interaction between this world and the worlds possible out there in space. Lots of science fiction has little (if anything) to do with life on earth in the future, it has lots and lots to do with life in distant galaxies and how to get there, or at least how to travel around said galaxies. Or it can be about earth colonies on other worlds — like Mars or the Moon or things like that. Generally science fiction depends a lot on the technology available to people, and the technology available is often crucial in some way to the story. In some ways, if there isn’t a crucial piece of technology then some space operas are just another form of fantasy.

I like Atwood’s discussion of the difference between speculative fiction and science fiction. I find the distinction helpful. Some speculative fiction has a crucial piece of science or technology at its core; others depend on some other possible future course for humanity and for earth as we currently know it. Atwood’s definition means that most of William Gibson’s oeuvre should be classified as speculative fiction. Interesting thoughts.

Once I thought that if I wrote fiction I’d want to write fantasy novels and create an entirely different world. The more I read well-crafted Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Speculative Fiction, the more I admire people who can build a consistent and different world and make it live for readers. Some writers are spectacularly good at this (Rowling, Gibson, Atwood, Bujold to name but a few) and others are not. I feel a bit intimidated to even try. But I might yet.

True Confessions – A Saturday List

This week I decided to make a Saturday List in the spirit of the True Confessions listed when writing about P.D. James. I like books, but I find that people are constantly shocked by what I haven’t yet read. There’s such a lot to read! Here are my True Confessions about Books I Should Probably Read, But Haven’t Yet. (This is the Fiction Version of the list.)

1. War and Peace. A couple of years ago, my friend the Street Pastor and I challenged each other to read War and Peace because we both had a copy sitting on our shelves looking at us. The Street Pastor finished War and Peace. I didn’t. I started. I got through part one, then I decided to give myself a little break. Then the little break got a little longer. And pouf! the year vanished and I didn’t get further than part 1. Now War and Peace doesn’t just look at me from a shelf, it glares at me from my bedside table over the reading glasses of a bookmark. The thing is I liked part 1. I want to read the book. It just intimidates me with all the weightiness and seriousness of it. I’ve not read very many books in the Large Russian Novels category because of the intimidation factor. I read Anna Karenina, but that’s it. I need to get over this whole intimidation thing.

2. Anything by Michael Ondaatje. This horrifies my friend the Playwright who once had a cat called Ondaatje. I quite liked the movie version of The English Patient and realize that the book is probably better. I had a copy of In the Skin of a Lion that I cannot currently find. I’m sure it is somewhere in the stacks of books. I’ll find it, and I’m sure I’ll read Ondaatje someday. It just hasn’t happened yet.

3. Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood. I like Atwood’s books quite a lot and my friend the Peace Pastor thinks AG is one of her best. (I actually think the Peace Pastor likes it because there’s stuff about quilting in it.) I’ve got a copy, I started it once, but it just hasn’t stuck yet. I realize that timing has a lot to do with this. I’m worried that I’ve got a lot of expectations loaded onto the book and it just won’t live up to them. I need to stop worrying and just read the book.

4. Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen. Yes, I’ve read all the other Austen books, but not NA. Why? Why can’t I get over the fact that this is the last Austen book I can read and just do it? What am I saving it for? Am I being like Desmond on LOST carrying around the one Dickens book he hadn’t read so it can be the last book he reads? How will he/I know when to start reading? Too many questions. Clearly I’m a head case about this one.

5. Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll. “What???” yelled my friend the Constant Reader and her brother the Linguist. “You do math! You haven’t read Alice? What’s wrong with you?” (I’ve summarized what they said.) I quite enjoyed the Tim Burton take on Alice at the movie theatre. I then picked up a copy of the books to read. Haven’t yet. Too many other lovely things in the To Be Read pile. Possibly the expectations around the book are factored into my procrastination here as with Alias Grace.

This is a short fiction version of Books I Should Probably Read, But Haven’t Yet. Look for a non-fiction version coming soon!

What books do you feel you should read but haven’t  yet? True confessions please.

Sub-genres and Historical Fiction

I started looking at the whole idea of Alternative History this week and found that there is a field in academic history called “Virtual History” or “Counterfactual History” — which looks at what if questions and tries to be carefully academic while doing so. I even found a way this linked to theology as I saw a link on my titter feed to an article premised on the question What if we didn’t have Mark? (as in the gospel). This is exciting!

There is also a LARGE number of Alternate Histories, often thought of as a sub-category of speculative fiction or science fiction (the first term preferred by Margaret Atwood, and the second term a widely used catch-all genre for anything not-of-this-world). These alt.histories are also called Uchronia in some circles. These sorts of books include things I’ve read like Fatherland by Robert Harris, which is a mystery set in the 60s in Germany where the Nazis won a version of WW2. Another mystery set in an alt.history universe is The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michal Chabon. I quite enjoyed both Harris and Chabon and found their alt.history realities played out in an interesting and oddly realistic way.

I also found that there is another sub-category of historical fiction called Secret History. Possession is an example of a Secret History — in which history doesn’t change, but secrets from the past are discovered and so history is re-written. While Possession doesn’t deal with real Victorian poets, other Secret Histories do contain actual historical figures and supposed secrets about them. I like the concept of Secret History, but didn’t know there was a name for this kind of book. This is also exciting.

Oh the possibilities opened up by a google search or two — I’ve found two entire new categories for books that I sort of already used in my head, but didn’t know others used as well. Life just got better. I’m a weird geek, I know.

Jurassic Park — I mean Timeline

In my list of books I’ve read more than three times I mentioned Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton. While I’ve read JP more than 3 times, I’ve read Timeline at least as much and I like it better. It should have been my representative Crichton book.

Why do I like Timeline? I’ve mentioned before that I have a thing for time travel, and this book is about time travel in all its glory. It is one of the first books that I read about time travel that highlighted the dangerous aspects of that activity. It captures really well the serious culture shock that someone going through a time-shift would encounter. There’s loads and loads of stuff we don’t know about the past. We’ve very little clue at all really about how most of the world lived most of the time.

In this book of Crichton’s the main characters go back to rescue other people who are stuck in the past. The characters who go back find themselves in a war zone where they don’t speak the language well and have some severe culture shock. They are familiar with the area and time, because they work as archeologists and go into the past of their current excavation. The usual time travel discussion about changing history (is it possible?) is in the book, but with a very different twist. I really like this book because of the strong sense of place — the time-travellers know the area and see it at two different times, so are always thinking about where they are and how what they see in the past relates to how they know the place in a different time. Because they’ve studied the past, they think they can survive, but these experts find themselves in the middle of a really big learning experience, and the learning curve is pretty steep.

In a way Jurassic Park does a similar thing. A bunch of scientists think they have control of a situation, but it goes completely out of control, and suddenly the experts are in danger and are busy learning about things they thought they had down. Jurassic Park also attempts to connect the world now with the past in a realistic way, only instead of us going to the past, the past comes to us.

In both books Crichton has a tendency to lecture through characters speeches. I think he does this a little more frequently in JP than in Timeline. I’m not sure his science or math is totally up to speed, but I’m not up to speed on that math or science either really, so cannot say any more than I find it a bit fuzzy. But these are good books. They do near-future science fiction rather well. Margaret Atwood would probably call these speculative fiction, but they are both about science and the future, so science fiction will do for me.