Interlude: Other People's Bookshelves

I don't want to make my shelves jealous, but I love browsing through other people's book collections, especially if they're readers like me. I can spot a kindred spirit by their books: by the variety of theme and type, by the way the books are organized, and by the person's willingness to talk about their books the same way others talk about their pets or their kitchen.

Get ready for an onslaught of library porn. I found a tumblr on the subject.

 There's an indefinable something that distinguishes a book lover's from a layperson's collection. I can tell at a glance who has a true library and who just has a place where the books go. The presence of so-called genre writing is a big clue. If there's a lot of sci-fi and fantasy hanging around, that person is probably a reader; ditto for comic books and graphic novels, especially if they're prominently displayed where visitors can see them. There's still a big of shame and stigma attached to enjoying genre writing, so a willingness to display such works and invite comment says the reader ain't give a damn what other people think of her interests.

Why yes, I do own every book every written about Rubicks cubes.

Variations on theme are another clue. Readers who are really in to reading tend to go for depth and completism. The BF has "The Sun Also Rises," "This Side of Paradise," and "The Great Gatsby"; he also has many books on the subject of the Great Depression and the art and design aesthetics of the 1920s and 30s. R's bookshelf has "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian" and "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," so it's not surprising she would also have a non-fiction book called "Teaching Race in the Classroom."

I'm a bit hard-pressed to explain my own thematic elements. Maybe it's like tickling: you can't do it to yourself. I may have to get someone in here to look at my shelves and explain them to me.

And finally, a true reader and book-lover will always have something to say on the subject of organization. My friends J and L organize alphabetically by authors' last names, like a proper library; the BF shelves his books (and DVDs) chronologically by the year they were published/produced; right now I'm shelving by height, though I may organize them by color in the near future, just for a change. It's never haphazard. There's always a reason the books are set up like that, and the book-lover desperately wants you to comment on it so she can explain her system.

It all began when I saw "Beauty and the Beast" as a child...

 This post was originally going to be a review of Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried," which I borrowed from R's library. But while I enjoyed the book and could probably mash my brains into saying something witty and profound about the text, what I'm actually thinking about this morning is the fact that I'm going to R's apartment later today and will be able to browse through her books again. That's what I'm really excited about: other people's bookshelves. It got me to thinking about the people I've known and the book collections I've had--no other way to put it--relationships with, and decided to say something witty and profound about that instead.

I may just be a hawa'e maoli (collector urchin) when it comes to books and want to pick up every book I see and glom it on to my body to conceal me from predators.

Turtles and sharks will be baffled by my impenetrable armor of cornflakes

But there's more to it than that. I like other people's bookshelves because while reading tastes are a very personal thing, a bookshelf is rather public in nature. A bookshelf is an open display of a person's inner world and imagination, what they like, what they think about, what they desire. It's a strange mixture of the public and the private that endlessly fascinates me for its potential to both reveal and conceal the truth of a person's being.

Sauron knows what you think about at night. For shame.

Now why do I get the feeling other people are going to stop showing me their bookshelves?

Review: "Geisha: A Life"

You may have read over at my other blog that I'm swamped with work stuff right now, so it's an interesting coincidence that this book popped up on my radar. "Geisha: A Life" (2002) is a memoir by Mineko Iwasaki that describes her training and career as the most successful modern geisha in Japan. At one point in her life, she worked for five years straight without a single day off, and lately, I've been feeling her pain.

Just to be clear, I'm not reviewing "Memoirs of a Geisha" by Arthur Golden. In fact, Iwasaki sued Golden over his book, because he listed her as one of his primary sources after he promised to protect her identity. She wrote her book as a kind of anti-Golden account, even stating in a few places that she wants to clear up the misconceptions that outsiders have about geisha and the world of the karyukai ("flower and willow world," basically the districts in Japan that house geisha and cater to their clients).

The book itself is a quick read. I've actually read it twice since my busy time started. I found it compelling for the world it described, though the writing itself is a bit dull. As far as memoirs go, it commits the fatal sin of telling-not-showing, using the "This happened to me, and then this happened to me, and then I met this person and we did this together" method. Shirley Jackson she ain't. But Iwasaki is a fascinating person who has led such an interesting life that the dull writing almost doesn't matter. She's giving away intimate details of one of the most secret and misunderstood societies in the world. How can you look away?

I'm biased in favor of this book to begin with because modern Hawaii culture is greatly influenced by our Japanese population, and I recognized a lot of the festivals and art forms described in the book. Furthermore, I played taiko drums for many years under both Japanese and American teachers, so I recognized many of the techniques and attitudes Iwasaki's teachers used on her during her training. Of course I never got within a hundred miles of the kind of talent and mastery that a geisha has over her chosen art form, but it was all familiar enough to make me feel a bit nostalgic.

Final Grade: C. Recommended for those interested in Japanese culture, geisha, and sticking it to the imperialist white man who tramples the dignity of your profession.

Review: "Flight Behavior" by Barbara Kingsolver

I felt so confident that I would love Barbara Kingsolver's latest novel, "Flight Behavior" (2012) that I actually bought it. New. In hardcover. I had an option at the time, because I had a gift card to the fabulous Greenlight Bookstore, to purchase two of her earlier works in paperback, but went for the shiny new book instead, because I've followed her career and she tops herself with every subsequent work she publishes. Hot damn, I thought, new Kingsolver and gift card to afford the hardback. I am one lucky Big Island Rachel.

Luxury goods!

But no. Just--no.

"Flight Behavior" wasn't as big a disappointment to me as reading Monique Truong's mediocre "Bitter in the Mouth" after her superlative "The Book of Salt." That let-down was a literary tragedy for me because I just loved "The Book of Salt" so very much. I will get around to reviewing it someday, I promise.

This was merely a disappointment, considering that it came close on the heels of "The Lacuna," which literally made me clasp my chest and cry out in pain at one point. And I recommend Kingsolver's "The Poisonwood Bible" to anyone who talks with me about books for more than two minutes. (I really regret not buying those two books in paperback at Greenlight when I had the chance.)

What both of these books have in common is that they deal with sweeping historical events from the perspective of the rather insignificant individuals caught in the middle of them. The overall effect humanizes these big, almost unfathomable occurrences that shape countries and cultures. There's something so intimate and personal about her stories, something immediate, that both transcends and illuminates time and place in Kingsolver's novels. You never feel like you're reading "historical fiction."

"Flight Behavior" attempts to do the same thing, but instead of discussing Communism in the Americas ("The Lacuna") or the de-colonization of Africa ("The Poisonwood Bible"), this book is about climate change. The every-man that walks us through the issues of the day is Dellarobia, a young mother in the Appalachias who discovers a colony of monarch butterflies on her in-laws' property. The monarchs should be at their winter home in Mexico, but have instead come here, because of climate change. A media circus swirls around the butterflies appearance, a handsome scientist moves into Dellarobia's barn to study the phenom, and she realizes that she has some tough choices to make about the unhappy life she's built for herself.

This is not a bad book, by any means. I read the whole thing, after all. I really like Dellarobia and feel for her plight. She married the boy who got her pregnant in high school, and while he's a good man, she's just too quick and smart for the kind of the life he can offer her. She loves her kids, but resents the hell out of the limitations of stay-at-home mothering. And she's poor. So poor, gang.

Poverty in modern America is a big theme in this book, and I sort of wish it had been the sole focus, because Kingsolver describes it so well. I loved the scene where Dellarobia and her husband have a fight in the dollar store as they attempt to put together a "real Christmas" for their children on a $50 budget. The book lingers over details like their truck on its third engine, the lack of protein in their diets, the shoddy stitching on their cheap clothes, and the free lunch forms Dellarobia gives to her son to take to school.

Much like Edith Wharton does in "Ethan Frome," Kingsolver illuminates the dark reality of the American dream, where all pathways to salvation and happiness require an amount of money that is simply impossible for the protagonists to acquire without an act of evil, wanton destruction. A lot of the tension in "Flight Behavior" comes from Dellarobia's father-in-law, who wants to sell the timber rights of the butterflies' mountain to a logging company to pay off his debts so he doesn't lose his land outright. If the mountain is logged, it will effectively mean the extinction of the species, because so much of the North American population is wintering on the mountain. And worse, it will only pay the debt for a month or so, leaving the family right back where it started. It's a short term act that will have permanent repercussions.

Anyone else hear the whistling of the symbolism sledgehammer as it swings down toward your head?

Here's where the book falls apart for me. It's about climate change, and when I say that, I don't mean that climate change is the larger issue in which these characters' stories play out; I mean it's about climate change. There's long passages where scientists explain how climate change works, what greenhouse gases are, and why every argument that states climate change isn't happening is wrong. There's protesters and activists camping out on the butterflies' mountain. There's media personalities describing how they'll put the spin on the story to make it seem like climate change is a matter of controversy in the scientific community. And at some point, all of this tips the balance, and the book stops transcending its theme. It becomes polemic, its agenda too transparent, and I feel like I'm being preached at.

It's such a shame, because I feel like certain aspects of this book really do keep that balance. The preacher of the community makes some great arguments about God wanting humans to be responsible stewards of the planet, showing that the issue of climate change isn't as clear-cut as rational, science-minded people on one side and stupid religious people on the other. The scenes about poverty show that planet-destroying habits don't come from a place of selfishness or evil, but from need and lack of affordable alternative options. Dellarobia's whole situation is symbolic of climate change: she just sort of went along with everything and made the best decisions she could, until she looked up one day and realized that she was fucked.

But all of that deftness and subtlety is thrown out the window whenever people sit around a table and talk about climate change. It feels so clumsy and forced, like that part in George Orwell's "1984" that is just a passage from another book analyzing how totalitarianism works. Did he think his readers wouldn't understand it without the scholarly essay? We have just spend a hundred-odd pages with characters living in that society, I think we know what's going on.

I don't love all of Kingsolver's books. I didn't even finish "Animal Dreams," one of her earlier works. But the talent and skill she's accumulated over the course of her career made me expect a little more from "Flight Behavior" than was actually delivered. It's an okay book. It's just not great.

Final grade: C+. Recommended for those who like family dramas, stories about the American frontier, environmental issues, and butterflies. 

Review: "The Haunting of Hill House" by Shirley Jackson

Shirley Jackson is one of those secret-famous authors. Say her name and you're likely to get back a lot of blank stares, but say the title of her work or an adaptation of her work and watch their eyes light up. "That's who wrote it? What was her name again?"

Most schoolchildren in America are familiar with her short story, "The Lottery," about a small town that ritualistically murders an individual every year to ensure good harvest and good fortune. It's such a classic that you might know it by heart without remembering the first time you read it or saw it referenced in other TV shows and movies. "The Simpsons" referenced it in their golden years ("Dog of Death," season 3, episode 19), and even "South Park" took a stab at it, no pun intended because the townsfolk use rocks ("Britney's New Look," season 12, episode 2).

The subject of today's post, Jackson's 1959 novella "The Haunting of Hill House," has twice been adapted as a movie called "The Haunting." The first movie from 1963 is supposed to be pretty good, a classic of horror cinema, which is why I haven't watched it. I'm a pansy. I saw the 1999 remake on TV one night, but only because it's too shitty to be scary, even for me. I don't recommend it, though I do recommend this Nostalgia Critic video review that compares the two versions.

As I mentioned, I'm a pansy when it comes to horror. I actually read "The Haunting of Hill House" in the day time because I was too afraid to read it at night. Was my fear justified? Yes, but maybe not in the way Jackson intended. Horror and ghost stories depend a great deal on atmosphere, and Jackson certainly knows how to create that brooding sense of danger and fear. But for me, the book was a bit defeated by her own premise, which is that the characters are gathering in the big scary haunted house specifically to study and observe the phenom of a haunting. Some of my fear immediately goes out the window when the characters know that they're being haunted and talk openly about their impressions and observations of the ghosts' activity.

I think Jackson was trying to show how the power of ghosts and fear can hold up even under scientific scrutiny, and while it's an original premise that raises a lot of interesting questions about the concepts and conceits of the ghost story genre, it doesn't necessarily make this ghost story any scarier. The scariest parts of this book are the bits that veer away from the scientific and dive right in to the cliche: the whispers of the townsfolk and caretakers, the knockings and voices in the night, the disorienting dimensions of the house itself.

Where "The Haunting of Hill House" really shines is the character development. Jackson is great at creating dialog that feels both natural and revealing, if a bit archaic to modern readers, given the time it was written. She's a master of the "show-don't-tell" technique (which is why teachers love her work so much), and she gives these stock characters depth and dimension, making them fully realized individuals instead of just archetypes. Two characters that bumble in toward the end of the book--the pushy psychic and the Teddy Roosevelt-esque headmaster--are referred to in the narration only by their names, but their dialog is so wonderfully descriptive and personalized that I knew as much about them after three pages than I knew about the other four characters after spending an entire book with them. All writers aspire to that level of skill, but few will ever reach the heights that Jackson did.

Maybe that's why more ordinary readers don't know Jackson by name. She's a great example of a writer's writer, known to those who write and those who study and teach writing, to the point that you might read something of hers and think it feels every familiar, because so many bigger, more famous authors are inspired by her *coughStephenKing*. I consider her one of the Great American Writers and highly encourage you to check out her oeuvre, which is widely available at your local library and online for free in my cases.

Final Grade: B+. It gets a few points deducted because it scared me. Recommended for those who like horror or ghost stories, meta works that skew the genre, and writers who could learn a thing or two from a hidden gem of American literature.