19th February, 2010 by Christina - No Comments
There is no such thing as immortality. At least not as we know it. We die, plants die, eventually planets die and so do stars. I guess if you were to break things down to the atomic level, you could theoretically say we don’t die and that we just get reshaped.
As humans, the closest thing to immortality is to be written down in a book. It helps if the book goes on to be wildly successful and becomes a classic read by successive generations. Readers become so attached to characters that it becomes impossible for authors to kill them off. Can you imagine the uproar if J.K. Rowling had killed Harry Potter in the end? For good, not for that half/fake/temporary death thing she did there. Hell, killing Dumbledore was enough to almost get her lynched.
Sometimes, despite killing a character off, an author is forced to revive them in some way. Case in point, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the Case of the Detective’s Resurrection. Okay, there’s no actual story by that title, but after throwing Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty off a cliff, readers were so angry that Holmes ended up miraculously surviving before eventually returning to London. Doyle killed him off in the first place because he was so sick of pandering to readers. Ironic, huh?
Sherlock Holmes has gone on to be one of the most recognizable characters in literary history (thanks in no small part to the film industry and a certain deerstalker cap), and numerous sequels and adaptations have been written about him by other authors, including The Final Solution, an early book by literary superstar Michael Chabon.
More often than not, books about the famous detective focus on the logic behind uncovering “whodunnit” as it relates to a specific mystery. Despite two mysteries being presented in The Final Solution, Chabon’s story provides a subtle focus on Sherlock Holmes’s mortality. While he may live on through stories, as a man, Holmes is bound to die one day. Here he is not youthful or even sprightly middle-aged. Rather, he is an old man–one who is heavily alluded to but never named, 90-some-odd years old, ever closer to having one foot in the grave. The old man is well aware of his mortality and his encroaching end of days. He worries about having his body discovered in an undignified manner, a thought that dwells in his mind as his body–and mind–slowly falter a little more each day.
As pointed out elsewhere, Holmes only manages to solve one of the intertwined mysteries. It’s been such a long time since I’ve read any of his adventures, that I too missed the subtly suggested solution to the second. It’s somewhat easy to come to a general conclusion, having a solid background in Holmesian knowledge helps to see where Chabon makes references for the reader to draw upon.
I’m looking forward to return to my collection for a few re-reads and to compare notes on what Chabon hints at with what Doyle wrote. It’s exciting to see an author actively draw on the original mysteries rather than just on characterization when creating new mysteries for the detective whose death just never seems to come.
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18th February, 2010 by Christina - 2 Comments
While scrolling around etsy looking for a gift, I stumbled upon this:
The burlesque and book-loving side of me thinks it’s delightful and brilliant. Boobs! Books! Talk about stacked! And check out the book titles: The Naked Truth and The Bare Facts (can anyone make out the title of the last book?).
I already use a cigarette case for my wallet, otherwise I’d buy this in a heartbeat. Actually, I wonder if you can get the print in poster form…
This item is sold by tofunkytown for a whole $10. Ten Dollars! Okay, $9.99, same difference. They sell a variety of cigarette cases, including some others with a literary bent such as: Alice in Wonderland, Dune, Plup Fiction (this one is not the movie, although they have that too), Batman comics, 1984, and A Clockwork Orange.
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17th February, 2010 by Christina - 2 Comments
Committed. That’s an awkward word. It seems to be so often used in tandem with the words, “a crime.” You can be committed to jail, a life of drudgery, or to a mental hospital. So why anyone would want to use the same word in relation to what should be an act of love is beyond me. However, the word is also used in many positive ways. We commit acts of love and kindness, commit ourselves to charity work, and we commit ourselves to being supportive of our friends and family in their time of need.
Gilbert uses her latest book, Committed, to explore both sides of the word as it relates to making the commitment of marriage. Having gone through a rather unamiable divorce and a journey around the world to rediscover herself (as told in the bestseller Eat, Pray, Love), Gilbert uses the book as an excuse to work through her own fears and concerns when faced with the fact that her Brazilian-born lover with an Australian citizenship will no longer be allowed to enter the U.S. after abusing the visa process unless they get married.
While the purpose and reasons for getting married have changed over the centuries (Gilbert takes us through a basic history), over the past few decades it seems that changes have been drastic. During the Regency Era, more and more novels touted the desire for romantic relationships–marriage for love rather than for social, economic, or security reasons. The changes are compounded by the constantly changing shape of courting for arranged marriages to chaperoned social meetings to dinner dates to drinks to the current state of hook-up culture. It’s no wonder Gilbert, and many other people, have concerns with whether or not they ever want to get married. Going from a point where movies and fairy tales shape our desires for the perfect everlasting relationship to one of confusion and self-doubt is inevitable as we try to navigate the constantly fluctuating state of two people coming together. An act that should be easy is made less so when the outside influences of church, state, family, and media compound on top of our personal neurosis and baggage.
Despite spending much of the year between government ultimatum (and the desire to stay together after exchanging personal and private vows) and the paperwork going through, traveling throughout Southeast Asia, Gilbert’s second book is less about the act of a physical journey shaping your internal journey and more about a journey through time. By studying the history of marriage and different view points, she is able to create a meaning for marriage that works for her and is not foisted upon her by standard definitions.
They say that marriage is what you make of it–no two are alike. But our definitions and basic understanding 0f marriage confine it to a narrow ideal that can’t possibly explain what marriage is to all people. There is a famous quote said by Groucho Marx that ties back to the negative connotations of “committed:”
Marriage is a wonderful institution…but who wants to live in an institution?
But as Gilbert points out, for all the institutionalizing of marriage that has been forced upon people over the years, what makes or breaks the marriage is how the two people in it choose what it is to them and how to make it work.
Despite its best seller status, Eat, Pray, Love was not beloved by everyone. Gilbert points out in the introduction to Committed that writing a follow-up to a bestseller is a lot of pressure. I’ve already recommended Committed to a friend whose reasons for not enjoying the previous book don’t preclude her from liking the current. Likewise, I can see how fans of the first might find the second less enjoyable. Just as people go into marriage with expectations and have moments where they dislike their spouse, so too do we approach books with expectations and like some books by the same author more than others. I personally really like Gilbert’s writing style–it’s casual but slightly more formal than a conversation over coffee. Those who told me they did not like Eat, Pray, Love often had a problem with something Gilbert said or did along the way of her journey but liked the premise and writing style. With different subject matter and the approach to it, I think a number of people who couldn’t connect with the author the first time could quite enjoy giving her another shot.
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16th February, 2010 by Marcelo - 10 Comments
I’ve been in the e-reader market for over a year now. The Amazon Kindle never interested me due to the closed-off DRM-laden Kindle market and the inability to sideload files. I was briefly interested in Sony’s Pocket Reader because of its small size and low price. But then Barnes & Noble announced their nook e-reader and I got major gadget lust. It had a beautiful form factor, a brilliant mixture of e-ink and LCD touchscreen tech, and an open architecture that allowed sideloading of my own content. Thanks to a very generous Christmas present from my dad, I received my brand new nook a week ago.
My new nook (with case) feels remarkably like a book.
Quick verdict? It rocks. I love it and I’m going to be doing a lot of reading on it. If you want a very detailed review with tech specs and all that, I recommend any one of the many reviews you can find through Google. I want to focus on three main points/objections I hear from people when I talk about my nook:
1) I like the physical feel of books. I could never read books on a screen. I hear this one all the time from people who love books and love reading them. There’s a whole mythology here about the smell of old paper, the tactile physical sensations of thumbing through a crinkly classic, the old world musty airs of comfortable leather sofas and pipe smoke. My uncle Alberto, who refuses to even have an email address, wrote an entire book about this sort of thing. They see e-readers as a sterile and unfulfilling alternative, one that is trying to push their old pastime into the dustbin of history.
But here’s the thing–the nook (and most other e-readers) are designed with this experience in mind. The e-ink screen reads like paper, pure and simple. It requires good light, provides about the same page size as a trade paperback, and combined with one of B&N’s lovely flip cover cases feels surprisingly booklike. I’ve sat with this thing for hours, flipping digital pages just as I would flip real ones, getting lost in the stories the same way I would if they were on physical paper. There’s nothing sterile or soulless about it; on the contrary, it’s a solid extension of the same soulful process, the act of reading, that so many book lovers seem to love as much or more than the books themselves.
2) Why go through all the trouble with a nook or a Kindle when Apple’s iPad is going to change everything? It’s true–from a technology standpoint, Apple’s new tablet device is going to be sick. It’s going to have an iBooks Store that will compete with (and possibly eclipse) the Amazon and B&N offerings. The iPad can also play games, browse the web, check email–it’s extendable via all sorts of apps. Compared to the nook or the Kindle, which only do one thing, it seems like a no-brainer.
Except for that damned screen. Using the best e-reader app available (Stanza), I’ve read two long novels on my iPhone so far (Cory Doctorow’s Makers and a reread of The Stand by Stephen King). Stanza is amazing, a fully customizable iPhone reading experience that feels natural and intuitive. I was never annoyed by the iPhone’s small size when I read. But even with Stanza I couldn’t deal with the LCD screen. I spend my whole day working in front of a computer screen; I don’t want to spend my evenings staring at another one in order to read a book. It’s straining on the eyes; it causes headaches. For quick reading experiences like websites or a 15-minute quick dip into your book on the subway or something it’s perfect, but I can’t curl up for eight hours with an LCD screen and charge through an entire book. The iPad, with its brightly backlit LCD screen, would feel the same.
The beautiful e-ink screen requires light and reads like paper.
Enter e-ink technology. Unlike backlit LCDs that shoot light at your eyes, e-ink requires the same soft light a book does. The way it works is that a screen is coated with tiny capsules of ink that can be oriented to show black or show nothing. A signal from the machine tells each capsule on the screen how to orient itself in one go. Dot by dot it forms a page. With a press of a button you get another page. It’s a disastrous technology for computers, because it takes a whole second to refresh one page (whereas typical LCDs refresh 80 times a second). It’s also grayscale. So you’re not going to get complex animations or vivid color with e-ink, although the tech is getting better and within a few years you’ll start to see those things. But for now, black and white static images is all e-ink is good for. That sucks if you want to quickly browse the web and scroll through the news, but it’s perfect for the kind of application that requires a new page every few seconds at the most, and if that new page doesn’t require color most of the time–like a book. Another advantage is that the only power e-ink uses is for the initial orientation of the ink every time you refresh–it takes zero power to keep the e-ink where it is, so you can keep a page on your reader for hours at a time without using power (whereas an LCD is constantly refreshing and constantly backlit, a power hog). This is why Kindle boasts a battery life in weeks, not hours. Nook’s is slightly worse because it does employ an LCD screen for navigation purposes (that shuts off after ten seconds of not using it so you can read in peace).
And let me tell you, after reading two and a half average length books on this technology, it’s so nice. It’s the opposite of working on an LCD screen. The issues with slow refresh are totally invisible, especially when you’re in a nice reading-centered mindset. It’s a patient and calm technology, the opposite of the hyperfast computer ethos. This is what I love most about the nook. It’s not meant for computer geeks and tech nerds, almost all of whom will prefer the multitasking and much faster and slicker iPad. The nook doesn’t multitask, it doesn’t overload your brain with jargon and info. It’s a technology that goes at the pace of readers who hate how fast everything else goes.
3) e-books aren’t like mp3s, they will never replace real books; why buy a technology that’s not going to last? This is a broader extension of argument 1, aimed more at the overall trends of technology and what makes reading pleasurable. On this argument I would say that I agree wholeheartedly. e-books will never replace real books. Real books are too efficient and too good at what they do. Plus you can mark things in them, lend them, borrow them, and they are far far more durable than any piece of technology is.
So why invest in an e-reader then? Why pay for e-books at all? The answer is because the reading space is not a zero sum game. e-books don’t have to replace real books because they don’t do the same things. I love real books. I don’t love buying a big fat book every time I want to read something. I don’t like lugging three books in a bag while traveling that will just weigh things down. And I don’t like having to own all these books. Unlike my aforementioned uncle, I’m not interested in gathering books and building a library in which to house my esoteric collection. I have maybe a dozen of my favorite books that I keep. For everything else, I’d much rather buy an e-book. I will pay for the convenience of not having to store and take care of a physical object.
nook vs. The Stand. Which would you rather take on the go?
A perfect example of this was The Stand, one of my all-time favorite books. I have it in hardcover. It’s one of the rare books I like physically owning. It’s massive, over 1000 pages. It weighs like ten pounds and it’s at least four inches thick. Carrying it around with me on my daily errands is impossible. It’s so big I can’t even really curl up with it on the couch or take it to bed because it’s so imbalanced, especially at the beginning and the end. Even the mass market paperback of The Stand is a pain; it’s small in length and height, but it’s still crazy thick, which makes it impossible to put in your pocket and leaves a bulge in your bag when you take it anywhere. But the e-version, which I read on my phone, fit in my pocket. A nook version would be the size and weight of any trade paperback. Why go through the trouble of lugging some thick-ass book, too unwieldy to carry anywhere or use in any elegant way, when you can read the same text on a tiny light form factor?
And on top of this, I can do this with hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of books. I can own the entire output of any author I want and barely make a dent in my nook’s internal memory. E-books are teeny, they take up a fraction of the data even the sparest MP3 takes. You can fit hundreds of them on a gigabyte. My nook will store the library of books I want to read but don’t want to physically own.
What I’m getting at is that e-books are a complement to real books. I’m far more likely to invest time and effort in an e-book that’s available to me through my nook’s store or on the Internet than to take the time to go to the bookstore, seek out a book, buy it, take it home, read it, then find a way to get rid of it. I’ll read a ton of things I would never have tried if my only option was purchasing a physical book. On more than one occasion I’ve read a book electronically and then opted to purchase the physical book to keep in my permanent collection. E-books spur the purchase of real books, and more importantly they spur the exploration of as many books as possible. They help people discover new authors (I would never have found my beloved Rudy Rucker without his free e-book release of Postsingular). They provide a low barrier to reading something that would otherwise be an expensive hassle. They’re devices for people who already love reading, and so far my nook has only magnified that love. People who say e-books won’t last miss the point of having e-books.
If you’re a lover of books, you owe it to yourself to at least research e-reader tech. In my mind, the nook has its competitors beat. As time goes by I might post a few more impressions as they come to me. But I might be too busy reading.
****
Marcelo’s journey through books began like most book lovers: childhood addiction. But a long drought of reading that lasted through college and into his mid-20s curbed his book passions. It wasn’t until his best friend dared him to read Ulysses with her that he became hooked all over again.
A self-identified info-hippie and free culture enthusiast, Marcelo’s favorite library is the Burbank Public Library within walking distance from his house. He is currently putting the finishing touches on his first novel, which will probably never be published because it isn’t Ulysses.
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11th February, 2010 by Christina - No Comments
And so we come to the end of the return of the Love & Books series. I don’t have much to add to what I want to share today. By far, this was my favorite post of the original series. It mostly had to do with the two conversations I had–one in person and one over instant messenger–and the fact that both had me laughing.
If you can’t laugh at sex, what can you laugh at?
One night, back at his place, she noticed a book. How to Make Love All Night: And Drive a Woman Wild!
She looked at it inquiringly and asked him about it. John said he owned the book because you can never have too many techniques. So she opened it up to take a look and said to him, “Oh, no. No woman wants this. No woman wants to do it All. Night. Long.”
What surprised me was how serious the conversations seemed once transposed into a post to discuss how books affect our relationships (and in tandem, our sex life). The funny is great, but what was important was the difference in approaches that John took in regards to books about sex compared to that of Lizzy and our mutual friend.
At this point in her life, Lizzy was looking to settle down and thought she’d maybe found “The One.” He was great in many ways, except the sex. So she resigned herself to a life of bad sex; maybe it wouldn’t be such a terrible hardship. She did make him give up the book. The apartment building he lived in had a table in which the inhabitants would leave the occasional tchotchke for others to take. The book spent three weeks on the table (lingering long after the troll statues had been grabbed) and one day disappeared.
Eventually, Lizzy and John broke up. He apparently had big-time commitment issues that she’d been willing to overlook along with the lack of decent love making.
“[When] I saw [the book] immediately my suspicions began. This man was going to be bad in bed, or had issues with women. He didn’t know what to do or how to communicate with his partner regarding intimate issues. Of course, I chose to ignore all of that, which only lead to heartbreak later…but live and learn! All of my suspicions were true!”
Advice books are supposed to guide us and help us become better people, even between the sheets. Yet, more often then not we find ourselves complaining about both the ones marketed to us and for the opposite sex. I was sure, however, that there had to be some good books out there. Or maybe it was not so much the books, but how individuals approached the content. Discussing Lizzy’s story with another friend provided some insight that books about sex aren’t necessarily a warning sign and can at times rev things up between a couple.
There’s a lot of crap out there written by a lot of idiots. There are some that are pretty straightforward–encyclopedic. Some are fun and some are insightful.
I personally never look to a book for advice on sex.
I might read a book to learn more about areas of sex or relationships I don’t have much experience with…one can sometimes benefit from the experience of others, provided that the author is smart and has the proper attitude.
It can also be exciting at times to read about things that others have done even if you, yourself, would not necessarily do it…and that excitement can translate to excitement in your bedroom (or kitchen or living room or elevator, etc).”
Similar to advice books, no two people are so alike that a book is going to be a be-all end-all guide. Since the series came out, I’ve read a little more erotica, some sex-based memoirs, and attended an erotic literature reading–people are into different things and communication is the key for a couple to figure out how they work together. There is no final answer in a book that will solve problems in the bed. What books can do is turn up the heat a little…
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10th February, 2010 by Christina - 4 Comments
Well, folks, it’s official. Last week I opened an email asking me to be a panelist at the 2010 Book Blogger Convention (BBC) here in New York.
Truth be told, I was originally not planning on going. Book Expo America (BEA), the main event, recently moved from being a weekend event to being held during the week and BBC was scheduled to fall on the final day of BEA–a Friday. Despite living here, taking time off of work to attend the events just didn’t work too well for me. It’s not that I didn’t want to go, it just didn’t seem practical.
Michelle from GalleySmith contacted me to ask if I’d be interested in joining the “Writing and Building Content” panel. So I told my boss that I’d be taking a day off on May 28th and then sat down to reply to Michelle that I’d be thrilled to participate.
Regardless of niche, there are some absolutely incredible amazing bloggers out there–people who have fine-tuned a voice and style to their writing. Reading their works, I often feel humbled. It’s so flattering to be asked to share my process and advice. We’ll be discussing how we found our voice, developing unique content, technical aspects of writing, focusing content, and other writing related topics.
I’ve been writing since 1996 when I covered high school sports for the local newspaper and blogging in some format or another since 2000. Yup, I was one of those early bloggers who remembers the scandal of Dooce being fired when it happened and not when she reminds us of it. Through blogging I worked up the nerve to enter a short story contest and won second place.* Eventually, the various iterations of blog became a magazine for swing dancers after a lengthy article I wrote on the use of technology as an educational tool had no home (the only publication at the time having recently closed its doors).
Over the recent Christmas holiday, I went through a number of boxes in my parents basement filled with various bits of junk and papers from high school and college. Among everything else, I found two papers that had completely changed my perspective on what writing could be versus what we were taught it had to be.
The first was from my senior year English class in high school–an empowered rant about the parallel feminism in Antigone and A Doll’s House. For the first time I realized the power of expressing yourself through writing rather than the formal and formulaic style of essay taught in classrooms. The teacher wrote the following at the end:
This was a super paper, Christina; you’ve definitely saved the best for last. The content of this is exemplary. Would you mind if I made a copy of it as an example?
The second was the essay portion of a final exam in college. At the beginning of the semester, we’d been assigned a book each on a different historical figure and had to write up a brief account of their life for this essay in class. It was a surprise too, most people hadn’t bothered to read their book or had long forgotten the contents. Being in class at the end of the exam, there was no last minute reading crunch or scan through as we wrote. I lucked out in being assigned Queen Elizabeth, who I was mildly obsessed with at the time. When it came time to write the essay, I adopted a very informal tone, wrote in the third person as an obnoxious ”valley girl.” Most people bombed the essay portion while I pissed most of them off by throwing off the curve. What struck me was the professor’s note stating that while doing the same in other classes would not fly, he appreciated reading something unique among a number of bland samey-samey essays.
Neither essay was particularly well written. They were by no means bad, but looking back on them both, I realize they could use a vast amount of improvement. What is important was the confidence the reactions to them both garnered. Those essays and the guidance of an inspiring creative writing teacher have gone a long way in how I’ve approached developing my own writing over the past decade.
*If you have a moment to grab me at BBC, the story is hilarious–sort of my go-to party story because it’s funnier in person. Slightly horrifying too since it really happened to me.
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9th February, 2010 by Christina - No Comments
I still don’t understand, and don’t believe I ever will, why love has to be so difficult. I do think that maybe something as easy as liking someone has accrued all these mixed social standards and niceties over time so that we are confused not by love itself but by all the messages telling us how to go about getting love.
Falling in love, being in a relationship–they are complicated because we make them so out of fear and insecurity. Along the way, some crafty souls realized that acting on others’ fear was a FANTASTIC way to make money. And so the self-help advice book was born.
Most advice books that subject around dating are geared towards women. We are somehow incomplete without a man, we are desperate and our approach is all wrong. There is no room for being happily single and confidently quirky. They tell us we can only be happy when we find a man and to do so we must play by their rules. Advice books prey on the weak, those brainwashed by movies and romance novels to feel that with each passing year they are too old to find love. They believe we are gullible, and despite following their advice to the letter, we are still doing something wrong and therefore need to buy the sequel.
Almost all of the people who took the original survey said that while they’ve read an advice book here and there, they don’t own any or particularly feel the need to shell over $20 for someone to give them common sense advice or a list of archaic and ridiculous rules that are an exception. What works for one person or couple might not be the best approach to dating and marriage for others. Just as our concept of what constitutes love is unique and individual, so is our approach to relationships; our choices do not fit perfectly into the formula or rules of advice books.
Despite my disdain for such books, some do find helpful advice and comfort in reading them. Some even provide amusement. While I (and my survey respondents) may not seek advice from them, other people do–proof of which comes in the form of new books being published and regularly snatched up. While the worst books prey on our fears, the best can serve as a reminder for things we know but do not practice. My favorite part of the original post reflects this:
Yes, there might be a helpful one or two, but most are terrible and they’re all pretty much the same anyway even though dating and relationships are not “one size fits all.” Marge also chimed in, claiming that dating and advice books are not necessarily helpful but are interesting. When He’s Just Not That Into You was first published, many women claimed just that, “but I already know all this stuff!” However, as much as we may know, it’s easy to get caught up in bad habits and repeat patterns that are counter to what we know is a healthy way of acting.
It was the idea of already knowing what is presented in advice books that sparked the idea for this Love & Books series. Ari had written a post on Curious Illusion about finding herself again after the end of a relationship. She had received Single: The Art of Being Satisfied, Fulfilled, and Independent . She never got around to finishing the book and while packing for a move some time later rediscovered it only to realize she had learned how to be happy as a single without its help. Time and time again, you hear people say that it’s when they stopped looking or truly became comfortable with themselves as a single that they met the person of their dreams. Understanding your singleness and choices in dating is just as important as learning how to really listen to your partner.
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8th February, 2010 by Christina - 2 Comments
As I re-read all the original Love & Books posts, a theme began to emerge that I discussed in Redux Part 1. It’s not the act of reading or the books themselves that attract us to other people, but what the books say about them and their world view and whether or not that image fits with the values of the viewer. We judge them based on our own experiences and beliefs, which for readers are often developed through books. In the original Love & Books post “Judge The One You’re With” I wrote:
Possibly one of the reasons we judge people based on the books we read is that we recognize how books have shaped our perceptions of the world. Similar to the way romantic comedies slightly color how women hope to have their own “meet-cute,” books can do the same, and not just in regard to meeting the love of our lives. We change our eating habits, our politics, our fascination with slugs, and so on because we have a relationship with the books as well as with a gamut of emotions that are manipulated by the words on the page.
Recently, I began reading the site Ophelia’s Webb thanks to a guest series titled “All You Need.” Each writer takes a stab at exploring what love is to them. Carlos Miceli explored the idea of what love really is and the fact that movies often color our expectations in the post “Is It Really Love?“ In the comments, readers of the blog discussed how movies shape our desires and perceptions of love. Books do the same thing. Ask any ardent fan of Jane Austen and they will often tell you that they are waiting on their own Mr. Darcy. Austen is considered to be the grandmother of the “chick-lit” novel–books about meeting someone and falling in love.
However, her themes often run deeper than modern ”chick-lit”, addressing circumstances of women in her own time. I pointed out in the comments that love as we know it today is very different from what it once was. Austen’s heroines married because they had to. Because women had no income or rights other than what was provided by father, brother, or husband. Lizzie Bennett is one of the earliest examples of a literary woman insisting on marrying for love in a time where liking your husband meant you lucked out. Not all of Austen’s characters marry for love the way Lizzie and her sister Jane do. Marianne in Sense & Sensibility falls in love as it is presented in movies–the heady and passionate whirlwind of lust–only to have her heart broken before agreeing to marry the constant, loyal, and kind Colonel Brandon who can provide for her.
Love alone can’t carry a relationship because while we all share a generalized view, our own personal definitions of the word vary, and we all require our own concept of traits that create a successful relationship and make up a cohesive whole that we consider love. There is more to it than fluffy clouds and long days spent in bed. Love for each person is an amalgamation of feelings and values, one of the most agreed upon being respect. It is a key ingredient in love that makes both arranged marriages and marriages for love work. If you cannot respect your partner, how can you expect to like them, much less love them?
Much as we may want our partner to share our love of reading, what is more important is simply their ability to respect our need to find time to read. Likewise, we must respect them for their literary choices and give them time to pursue the things that they enjoy–things that make us love them for who they are in the first place. When I asked “Could You Love A Non-Reader?” it was reiterated to me that respect was a key component in making love what it is.
Ultimately, the key to a strong relationship is respect between both partners. As much as the avid reader may want to date another reader, we can’t always predict who we fall in love with. Sometimes that other person does not read much, if at all. This is where respect comes into play. One reader, Linda, let us know that in past relationships she was made to feel guilty about the time she spent reading and not paying attention to the other person. The guilting from her partners was not respectful to her interests. Linda is now married. ”My husband respects my choice to read and tries not to interrupt me while I’m reading.” Referring back to Marge, reading is a hobby and we need to respect our partner’s choices to spend time on their hobbies, whether they be reading, building a tiny ship in a bottle, or learning circus hula-hooping, and in turn we require them to respect our choices.
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5th February, 2010 by Christina - No Comments
I haven’t done a Stacked Stacks in awhile, and despite this photo of a shelf designed by Mike and Maaike having been around for quite some time, I wanted to share it with you all.
When we talk about books making us think, we often mean that the content of the book sparked our curiosity or caused us to contemplate and analyze our long-held beliefs (or in some cases, define what we believe).
Rarely do we mean anything beyond that. What makes this shelf so amazing is its combination of design (notches cut to the size of individual books) and its ability to turn design into art. Like books, art often makes us think–there is a message or implied meaning to paintings and sculptures, especially when the subject matter is religious in nature. What you can’t see in the long shot is that these books are,
The world’s most influential religious texts brought together and presented on the same level, their coexistence acknowledged and celebrated. -apartment therapy*
A commenter on Apartment Therapy described the shelf as a way to showcase “sacred objects”–in this case, the book’s contents are considered sacred to their respective religions. But sacred object can also be something more personal.
Displaying your books doesn’t have to just be about what looks pretty on the shelves or an arrangement idea you swiped from a catalog. The arrangement of books can say something about their content and their owner. The way you display them can be a work of art in their own right, a way to share a message or an idea.
Remember, meaning does not just have to exist between the covers.
*The comments in reply to the AT post prove the powers of art and books to make us think. Members of the site had a few thought provoking things to say such as: [More after the jump] (more…)
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4th February, 2010 by Christina - 2 Comments
After the Love & Books series was completed, I occasionally received notes telling me how much a reader enjoyed the series or their own thoughts on the questions and topics covered in the series.
Two different replies to my initial survey and kick-off post, Love In The Stacks, vetted the same idea–reading is a hobby. We often want the people we decide to date to have similar interests, but what I learned from these responses is that it’s not the hobbies themselves that are important, but the approach to life. Dating someone with hobbies and interests that you don’t share (or vice versa–they don’t share yours) can be a way to explore and learn about new things. In fact, wouldn’t dating a carbon copy of yourself be rather dull?
No two people are exactly alike. You will have your interests and they will have theirs. Not all hobbies will mesh, and that can lead to discord (you like to travel the world, they have no interest in leaving the town they grew up in), but others can be complimentary to one another. If your partner has no interest in reading it doesn’t mean you have to stop. It just means that you have to schedule your time appropriately–maybe you read while they work on that ship in a bottle or bring a book with you to their weekly softball game.
Respect is important in a relationship–you must respect their hobbies and interests while they must respect yours. Go ahead and use their interests as inspiration for the books you buy. They love space? Find an astronaut’s memoir and see if it will help you understand why they find the subject so fascinating. You don’t have to develop an undying love, you simply need to understand.
In the comments for the first Love & Books post, Marcelo made this observation:
For me it was never about someone who reads or doesn’t read as much as finding someone who was interested in something, a learner who isn’t above finding new things and trying new ideas out for size.
Readers are by nature curious. Through books we are constantly learning and must respect that for some people reading is not easy (various learning and reading disabilities) and that one can still have that same curious approach to life through other avenues of exploration.
My favorite part of the post touched on the theme as well:
All of this got me thinking about the people we choose to date. I’ve dated plenty of non-geeks and there’s a reason I think those relationships didn’t work out. There was a mental disconnect–we wanted to talk about different things. When one date mentioned (proudly) that he hadn’t picked up a book since high school, I should have been tipped off to run the other way. Our approaches to life were drastically different and we had nothing to talk about for the handful of months we were together. I learned through these relationships and through my singledom what it was I wanted in a partner, how I expected to be treated, and a lot about myself.
There’s a quote that came my way not too long ago. I have no clue where it came from, but it struck a chord with me and I’d love to give credit where credit is due:
Don’t date someone who’s exciting. Date someone who is interesting.
That’s the thing about geeks–those of us who read a lot and like to share what we got out of the book or who have really odd hobbies have a wealth of stuff to talk about. When you and the person you are with have a variety of interests, it opens new worlds of things to try, learn, and talk about even if your interests are different.
It wasn’t so much that there were no books in their homes as the fact that those exes had a complacent approach to life or whose existance centered around partying that did not work for me. I was dating exciting men who went out every night of the week, who were bold and charismatic–it was definitely exciting to be with the man that other women wanted, who would buy rounds of drinks, and get past the velvet rope. But there was little substance underneath that partying.
Where I found inspiration in books, someone else found it in music or movies or sports. It wasn’t the fact that they were not readers that made the relationships fail–it was the fact that we had vastly different approaches to life that were reflected in our interests.
Looking at my parents’ relationship, I can see this clearly–my mother has no interest in space or physics, but she understands that these are things my father loves–things that motivate and inspire him. So she attends his model rocket launches and listens to him explain some mumbo-jumbo that sounds like a the teacher in Peanuts cartoons. Likewise, you will find him helping her scroll through microfiche to find some elusive birth certificate as she tracks down the family tree. They have their shared interests and they have their time to individually go to their own thing.
What attracts us to someone in the first place is someone’s uniqueness. It would be a shame to lose that in the interest of only dating people just like ourselves.
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