For the Love of Books

From StarMag

Review by DAPHNE LEE

Finally, an easy-to-read book about books, written for those who love to read books.

THE YELLOW-LIGHTED BOOKSHOP:
A MEMOIR, A HISTORY
By Lewis Buzbee
Publisher: Graywold Press, 216 pages
(ISBN: 978-1555974503)

MOST avid readers love nosing around other readers' book collections. And it's always great fun having a private snigger at a fellow bookworm's (so he says) reading preferences ... while looking suitably impressed of course! Readers love books like The Complete Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby, Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman and So Many Books, So Little Time by Sarah Nelson. Not only do they appreciate the recommendations (any excuse to buy books is welcome), it's terribly encouraging to discover that celebrity authors like Hornby are pretentious gits with dubious tastes. Plus, there's nothing like reading impassioned descriptions of books to make you feel like you've read them without actually having done so. So many books, so little time? Just let someone else read them for you and then read about it!

Oh, yes, reading about other readers' (famous or otherwise) reading habits is fun. But if you love books and reading, it doesn't necessarily follow that you'd be interested in the history of book making, publishing and selling. The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop is about all that. It's also a personal history of one man's passionate love affair with books.

The author, Lewis Buzbee, worked in a bookseller and publisher's representative. He recounts his experiences in both areas of the book trade, describes his love for books and bookshops, and interweaves his own stories with all things book-related, from bookstores and libraries to printing and binding to the technicalities like ISBNs (International Standard Book Number) and barcodes.

Just typing the above paragraph made my mouth water and heart beat increase, but then, it's always been my dream to own a bookshop. To me the book trade is steeped in romance. It's not just about selling the printed word. It's about dealing in dreams and mysteries and ideas. I also happen to have bookcases with sagging shelves and so it's fascinating to know that bookshelves weren't always where books were kept, and that even when the practice first started, books were placed horizontally, with their spines facing inward. It's also interesting that once upon a time, spines didn't bear the book's title or author's name. And that there were no spines for the longest time since books (as we know them today, or near enough anyway) didn't come into existence until round about the first century CE. Before that, scrolls were all the rage!

Buzbee has a relaxed, tongue-in-cheek, easy-to read style. And, whether he's talking about the invention of paper, the establishment of the lending library, or the rise of the softback, he presents his topic in a clear, concise and engaging manner. With Buzbee you, as someone who is interested in the subject, but not planning to write a thesis on it, learn exactly what you need or want to.

In contrast, a writer like Henry Petroski, in The Book on the Bookshelf, overloads the casual reader with facts, dates and details, delivered in a dry, academic fashion. Even anecdotes are related without humour or enthusiasm. Bookshelf covers similar ground to Bookshop but I couldn't get past the third chapter.

Buzbee lures you with tales of a love affair that started from the time he was a boy in San Jose, California, and then holds your interest with his infectious enthusiasm. He is candid and witty, personable and personal, never self-indulgent or pompous. His fascination with books is evident and the fascination rubs off. When you read Bookshop, you smell the books Buzbee lovingly describes, hold them in your hand and feel the magic and power of the words they contain.

And I love the trivia: John Milton received a grand total of £10 (RM68) for Paradise Lost. The sum was paid in two parts over seven years. In 2004, American publishers produced "between 135,000 and 175,000 new titles". If you live until you're 80 and read a book every week from the age of five, you'll have read 3,900 books by the time you shake off this mortal coil - and that's just one percent of the books currently in print!

One of my favourite chapters is Big Business, in which Buzbee talks about, amongst other things, remainders, ISBNs and the price of books. When discussing whether books are just too costly, Buzbee looks at what happens to the US$25 (RM86)one pays for the average hardcover novel: US$1.88 (RM6.50) to the author, US$3 (RM10.30) to the printer, US$8.87 (RM30.65) to the publisher, US$11.25 (RM38.88) to the bookseller. The bottom line is that books aren't so expensive after all. (As I mentioned earlier, any excuse to buy more of them).

In his penultimate chapter, Buzbee describes some of his favourite bookshops and bookshop-rich cities. There are some rather different but interesting ones, like the one near San Francisco that boasts a "walk-in humidor with a complete selection of cigars and pipe tobaccos"; and Walter Swan's One Book Bookstore, which sells Swan's first, self-published novel, and The Other Book Bookstore, which sells his second novel.

Buzbee, like all bibliophiles who don't live in 30 room mansions, does not have the luxury of keeping every book that passes his way. He only keeps books that he's sure he's going to re-read; the ones he's definitely going to read before he dies; and the ones he can't "bear to part with because of an aesthetic or emotional attachment". The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop is most definitely staying put on my shelf. It's a neat little hardback, with a lovely deep blue cover and a silver-tooled spine. The print is neat and easy to focus on, the pages thick, creamy and lovingly handcut. Inside, a heady mixture of praise and worship, facts and figures, memoir and history. I will re-read it often, I'm sure.

A Reader Unravelled

From StarMag

Review by DAPHNE LEE

THE COMPLETE POLYSYLLABIC SPREE: THE DIARY OF AN OCCASIONALLY EXASPERATED BUT EVER HOPEFUL READER

By Nick Hornby
Publisher: Penguin Viking, 278 pages
(ISBN: 978-0670916722)

I LOVE spying on people as they browse in bookstores. I pay attention to what the person in front of me at the cashier is buying. I always want to know what my friends and family are reading and what they have blown their allowance/pay packets on at their favourite bookshops.

That's why I love Nick Hornby's collection of articles about books. I was thrilled to see, on first flipping through this book, that each chapter begins with two lists: “Books Bought” and “Books Read”. If you are a book addict, you'll know that the two lists don't always overlap. If you own over a thousand books and you haven't stopped buying more, it's unlikely that you will read every book you buy the moment the shrink-wrap comes off.

First of all, there's the question of mood. You may want to (nay, need to) buy a book on the spot, but, years may pass before you feel like reading it! This is why my bedside table is stacked with books. I'm usually in the middle of at least three at any one time because I never can tell what I'll feel like reading first thing in the morning or last thing at night.

It's good to see Nick Hornby publicly identifying with and acknowledging the problem. Not that it really is a problem. It's only those spoil sports who read maybe half a book every couple of years who see it as such. Their main concern would probably be shelfspace or lack thereof, but if you truly love to read and like owning what you read (or will, one day, so help you God, get around to reading), shelfspace ceases to be an issue. Who needs bookcases when there are other kinds of surfaces that will as readily hold your books? Who says your wardrobe is only for clothes? Or kitchen cabinets are just for crockery? Has it ever occurred to you that there's a lot of useable space under your bed?

Anyway, if you're an enthusiastic reader and buyer of books (and if you're a Hornby fan) you will love The Complete Polysyllabic Spree. It comprises two year’s worth of the author’s column, Stuff I’ve Been Reading, for American literary magazine The Believer, and, besides revealing that Hornby buys a lot of books and reads a lot of books but that the lists don't necessarily overlap, it also describes the method-in-the-madness way he chooses his reading material; how one book or author leads to another; what makes him want to read more, and what puts him off the activity.

It's all written in a very chatty style. And at times Hornby also nags and whines, scoffs and simpers. But that's the book's greatest charm. You don't feel intimidated by Hornby. You don't think, “Cor, he's so widely read, how will I ever catch up?” and “My goodness, that book sounds deep! He must be a clever clogs!” Hornby is like that friend with whom you go book-hunting on weekends, who sometimes buys books simply because of their cool covers and who's looked at his copy of Candide for the past seven years and never ever felt the slightest inclination to read it. In short, a perfectly normal, ordinary guy who just happens to like reading.

He does read widely, but he's guided by curiosity and a desire to have a good time, not worthy reasons like the pursuit of knowledge and the quest for peace. We've all been at the mercy of people who stroke their chins and say stuff like, “Denise Robbins? What could a book by her possibly teach you?” Oh, yawn.

I have not learnt a whole lot from Polysyllabic apart from the titles of some books that I might very well enjoy and the fact that Hornby is, like me, the sort of person who panics about silly things like not having something to read (even though they live in a house where there is no where to park your bum because there are stacks of books on all the chairs). He is also the sort of person who might impulsively buy books on obscure subjects like the migration patterns of the peregrine falcon. I am much comforted by this fact as I once bought a book on fly fishing in New England.

Hornby is as funny, wry and sarcastic in Polysyallabic as he is in his novels, but this book is a much more enjoyable and relaxing read than his fiction because whereas his characters are always in the midst of personal crises and trying to come to grips with life, Hornby, the main character, so to speak, of Polysyallabic, is just a man wandering aimlessly through a wonderland of books, rambling on, rather pointlessly, but quite engagingly, about the delights and frustrations of reading. Well, it suits me anyway and I can't see why anyone who loves books wouldn't be just as entertained.

Sunday, January 28, 2007 in Book Reviews

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.