Eats, Lives, Breathes Books

From StarMag.

SO MANY BOOKS, SO LITTLE TIME: A YEAR OF PASSIONATE READING

By Sara Nelson

Publisher: Berkley Books

(ISBN: 0425198197)

MY thoughts exactly, I wrote in my book blog on receiving a review copy of Sara Nelson’s So Many Books, So Little Time. I could easily identify with the cover art, and of course the sentiments. It’s a predicament book-lovers enjoy complaining about, but actually revel in. How could we not? It simply means that all is well in our world. Imagine if instead of having too many books and too little time, we had all the time in the world and too few books!

Thus, this book is, as I see it, a bit of a gloat: “Poor me: All these books. And I’m getting paid to read them!” Of course, Nelson denies it. She embarked on this project – to read one book per week for a year, and then write about the experience – so she could try to “figure out why I read what I read when I read it; how one book leads to another, and, of course, what it all means about me, my life, and the nature of reading itself.”

This may interest you, or not. If you’re looking for 52 book reviews, this isn’t what Nelson delivers. She has a lot to say about the books she reads, but relates it all to her own life and experiences so that her work reads like a journal of someone who eats, lives and breathes books. So, if you love books, read practically round the clock and see yourself and your life in the books you read, you should enjoy So Many Books.

You’ll find it irresistible when Nelson says something that describes exactly how you feel about reading and books. For example, have you ever tried, in vain, to make someone (usually not a book lover) understand why you like a particular title? “Explaining the moment of connection between a reader and a book to someone who’s never experienced it is like trying to explain sex to a virgin,” says Nelson with witty empathy.

Yes, I could relate to some of her observations and enjoyed her ballsy humour, but not the self-satisfied air that permeates most of the book. Nelson is master of the droll and insightful one-liner, but it’s so easy to be penetrating and amusing when it’s your own navel you’re describing.

Personally, I found her flippancy (“I even liked Sabbath’s Theatre. So sue me.”) irritating. Also, while honesty is mostly a good thing, her frank descriptions of her, at times, rocky relationship with her husband made me squirm on his behalf. The problem was not so much her candour as her glib manner when talking about him. Is nothing sacred? Apparently not in Nelson’s book.

Worse of all is her tendency to judge people by the books they read. Nelson spends a whole chapter justifying this, in my opinion, intolerable case of snobbery: she reveals that when a friend recommends a bad book, she “ends up reconsidering the friendship”! Thus, in Nelson’s world, book lovers are equal, but some are more equal than others. Therefore, if you are devoted to bodice rippers or restrict your reading to murder mysteries or bestsellers, you would be, in her eyes, a comrade, but a second- ... maybe even third-class one.

And then there’s the description of a visit to the late Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s home in Vermont. There, she sees a book “whose title is spelled out in angry red Asian characters”. Her host, Sabrina (the widow of Solzhenitsyn’s stepson) tells her that it is August 1914: Red Wheel ... in Malaysian!

Other Malaysian readers may well puzzle over the incident and share my annoyance. God only knows what language the book was actually in. Chinese? Arabic? Why didn’t Nelson check the accuracy of Sabrina’s statement? I daresay I care so much only because I’m Malaysian. It’s a small detail but it niggles like the bite of a tiny, persistent ant.

What I did like about So Many Books is that it has introduced me to a handful of titles that I’m now dying to read. Nelson can make a book sound like the most wonderful thing on earth, which leaves me thinking that she should have written 52 reviews after all.

Tales Rooted in Real Life

From StarMag, 16th January, 2005

Review by DAPHNE LEE

HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN FAIRY TALES

Translated by Tiina Nunnally

Edited and introduced by Jackie Wullschlager

Publisher: Penguin, 437 pages

THIS new collection of fairytales by Hans Christian Andersen was published late last year, in time for Christmas as well as the Danish writer’s 200th anniversary (in April this year). It’s a very handsome edition with rich red covers, gold-edged pages and a silky bookmark, and will make a beautiful gift for anyone, of any age.

In addition to the 30 stories (familiar and obscure) compiled here, there is also a chronology of Andersen’s life, an introduction by his most recent biographer, suggested further reading, a translator’s note, a note on the illustrations, and notes on the stories themselves. Therefore, you not only have a cache of wonderful stories, but a wealth of background information to enhance your pleasure of them.

For example, the brief synopsis of Andersen’s life included in the introduction offers the reader a revealing glimpse of a man who triumphed over the disadvantages of his working class background, yet was never able to totally shake off the stigma of his vulgar birth and upbringing. It affected all aspects of his life, most significantly his sexuality, and his stories reflect his constant struggle to be accepted by others and himself.

Anyone acquainted with Andersen’s stories is aware that they are often about pain and suffering, with no reward or redemption. Unlike the Grimm Brothers, Andersen did not always provide a happy ending and his characters are frequently tragically overcome by both desire and impotence (the little mermaid; Kai in The Snow Queen), destroyed by their own folly (the fir tree, Karen in The Red Shoes), or are tragic victims of social circumstance (the little match girl, the scholar in The Shadow). Even for those who are blessed with a rosy future (the ugly duckling, Elisa in The Wild Swans), great personal misery must first be endured.

Some might thus prefer Disney’s schmaltzy version of The Little Mermaid to Andersen’s heartbreaking original; might even consider the latter too dark and cruel for the consumption of little ones – sensitive souls will certainly have a good cry over the mermaid dancing despite feeling as though her feet are being pierced by hundreds of sharp knives.

In fact, Tiina Nunnally writes, in the translator’s Note, that the earliest translators of Andersen’s tales censored aspects that they deemed inappropriate for children. English versions were actually often translated, not from the original Danish, but from German translations that were themselves inaccurate.

As I don’t read Danish, I can’t tell how close Nunnally’s English rendering is to Andersen’s style and language, but experts have declared her work a great success. According to Jackie Wullschlager, a respected authority on Andersen, “(Nunnally’s) feel for Andersen’s slightly eccentric yet beautifully fluent and easy use of language makes this translation at once accurate, loyal to the original, and a joy to read.”

For instance, Nunnally is the first translator to use the preposition on, in The Princess on the Pea, which is more precise than The Princess and the Pea, and conveys more effectively the absurdity of the story.

I think she has indeed done Andersen justice because I can’t remember being as captivated by previous translations and adaptations of his tales. The writing is simple and graceful, crisp and lively, at times with an undertone of cheekiness, irony, sarcasm or menace.

Savour this book. Read one story per day, to yourself or a child. Read it aloud to enjoy fully the sound and effect of the words that paint vivid pictures full of colour, shadows and light.

If you’re a squeamish parent who trembles at the thought of exposing her children to descriptions of grief, violence and pain, rest assured that Andersen doesn’t always end his tales on an unhappy note. To be sure, in his world, the road to happily-ever-after is invariably strewn with thorns. But I believe that this roots the stories in real life and makes their magic even more a thing of wonder.

Wild Thang!

From StarMag, 2nd January, 2005

A ROUND-HEELED WOMAN: My Late-Life Adventures in Sex and Romance

By Jane Juska

Publisher: Villard, 273 pages

IMAGINE if your grandmother put an ad in the papers that read something like this: “Before I turn 70 at the end of this year, I would like to have a lot of sex with a lot of nice men. We can also talk, preferably about Venezuelan soap operas.”

Freaky or what? I guess we will never be entirely comfortable with the idea of our parents, never mind our grandparents, as sexual beings. The thought of the APs doing the wild thang is enough to put most of us off our dinner. Why is that? I mean, I’m 37 and in a few years I will probably be considered too old to “do it”. Yet, my first instinct is to gaze askance at 50-somethings and think: “They can’t still want to!”

Posing the question to a 20-something recently, I elicited retching noises and a derisive remark about wrinkly nether regions. (Her original words were much more colourful!) I think this book, A Round-Heeled Woman: My Late-Life Adventures in Sex and Romance, would definitely put her off her food.

In it, Jane Juska, a 60-something divorcee, describes how she relaunched her sex life by placing a personal ad, similar to the example above, in a national newspaper. The response she received was so overwhelming that she had to take a sabbatical from her job (teaching) in order to meet the men who had replied.

Juska is extremely frank about what happens during these dates, but don’t expect blow-by-blow accounts a la Penthouse magazine or even the average romance novel. It’s not that she skimps on details. Her meaning is clear as crystal, but when she describes her sexual encounters, there is nothing suggestive or titillating about her words or phrases.

However, while Juska is as candid as they come when she’s talking about sex, there is a tendency for her not to address other issues which crop up when she’s talking about her life in general. What becomes increasingly apparent about her is that while she’s confident about her right to have a good time, sexually, she seems less sure about her right to have more than sex, that is, a loving relationship.

Could this be anything to do with the fact that she was abused as a young girl? And could that experience also have any bearing on her alcoholism, her poor parenting skills (her son ends up homeless at 17) and her uneasy relationship with her own parents? Juska mentions all this in passing, but doesn’t make any attempt to make sense of any of it in relation to her little “project”.

So, this book isn’t the light-hearted romp it’s made out to be (the saucy purple jacket and frisky sub-title are misleading). Juska (and certainly her publishers) probably meant it to be an entertaining, enlightening and liberating look at sex after 50, but then she has inadvertently turned it into an account of an elderly woman’s attempt to find love through sex – not that she admits this for a second. It makes for a rather pathetic and depressing read. In fact, an undercurrent of sadness runs through the entire text, which is unfortunate really, because moralists will say, “Well, what can you expect from someone who behaves like a trollop.”

Ah, well, at the very least, Round-Heeled Woman makes a case for life not ceasing after menopause. When I was still practising as a nurse, my aged patients would often say that what they hated most about growing old was no longer being counted as feeling, thinking human beings. At a certain age, it seems, one is relegated to the rubbish heap, considered past one’s sell-by-date, and useless.

In I Look into My Glass, a poem by Thomas Hardy, an old man gazes at his reflection and wishes that his spirit were as wasted as his body. Instead, he laments, Time, to make me grieve/ Part steals, lets part abide;/ And shakes this fragile frame at eve/ With throbbings of noontide.

It’s a common supposition (and misconception) that one’s emotions and urges, including sex drive, wane with old age. A Round Heeled-Woman (this is an old-fashioned term for a promiscuous woman), at its most basic, acts as both a warning and a lesson. One can enjoy an active sex life for as long as one is blessed with good health. And if there are teens and 20-somethings reading this and rolling their eyes dismissively, imagine how stupid they’ll feel when they’re hale and hearty 70-year-olds and get called dried-up old prunes!