Just Say "No" to Book Bullies

I'm enjoying several books right now, but it's too soon to chat about them. Instead, I want to rant a bit about an issue my 6th grader brought up. She's just been assigned a book that she's already read and disliked. Now, she doesn't have much choice but to re-read it at her teacher's behest. But often in one's reading life, books come up that someone or something presses upon you unbidden. "You should read this." "You MUST read this." "What? You haven't read THIS?" How "should" you respond?

My best self knows to listen and maybe take down the title and author for future exploring. But too often such pushing raises my hackles and perhaps predisposes me to dislike the book. Or the raves set you up with such high expectations that the actual imperfect piece of literature has to be a let down.

Sarah's assigned book was a case of the latter for me. For years I heard variations of "You're kidding! You're a nature nut and you write kids books (and your name is Julie) but you haven't read Julie and the Wolves? You must!" When it finally worked its way to the top of my stack, I'm sad to say I found it a bit tedious. I like other Jean Craighead George books, such as Nutik and the Thirteen Moons series and love My Side of the Mountain , so it could well be that I had simply heard to much about "Julie" for it to seem fresh. I'll probably give it another try sometime--if I feel like it!

And I'm glad it reminded me of an important issue for anyone using books as activism tools. It's one thing to let people know about a book and to express your admiration and passion for it. It's another thing to insist that a certain book or lists of books is The Standard Curriculum for naturalists/environmentalists/writers/whatever. I'll try to keep this in mind when my sometimes-too-strident opinions pop onto my blog post and when I make lists of recommended--but not required--reading. The photo with this post will help me remember, since that's Sarah, reminding me that it's better to play in the snow than read about it sometimes. I believe strongly that books and readers need to find each other (and sometimes must also part), and I don't want to bully anyone into reading anything.

Well, except A Sand County Almanac.

Books that Fly

I like it already. Andrew Blechman's 2006 book, Pigeons, starts with an anonymous quote, "Some days you're the pigeon. Some days you're the statue." I feel like the statue as I pack swiftly for a difficult family trip, so I was happy to find this book at my library. My first rule for picking a book to travel with is to make sure that you've read at least a little so you don't get stuck hauling a turkey (or pigeon) around for 100s of miles.

As I swooped through the library, a few other volumes also looked promising. One is Return of the Condor: The Race to Save Our Largest Bird from Extinction, by John Moir, another 2006 book. I know enough about the condor story to expect that the book tells a fascinating tale, rich in politics and passion, and I love a good fight between scientists over what's the right thing to do in a sticky situation. But I haven't read any reviews of the book, while I've seen a few of extolling Pigeons. I grabbed Return of the Condor, too, but I think I'll add it to the stack to read when I get home.

One other book came close to getting on the plane with me: The Gentle Subversive: Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, and the Rise of the Environmental Movement, by Mark Hamilton Lytle. This succinct volume not only explores the history of Carson's ideas about humanity's place in nature, but it's publication coincides with her 100th birthday this May. But I know enough about Carson's story of personal and political struggles to think she might not be the perfect companion in my statue-like current condition. Again, I think I'll let her stay home for future reading.

So it looks like Pigeons will be on the plane with me. If you'd lilke to hear Blechman talk about his book on my favorite radio program, check the archives of The Diane Rehm Show. And email me quick if you have other suggestions of books to add to my travelling stack, since my second rule of picking a travel book is to make sure you have a back up. Thanks!

Power Reading

I suppose it's inevitable that a blogger, especially a beginning blogger, would want to retract a post now and then. In fact, the very act of blogging about a book can make you more aware of your opinions & judgments, which usually leads me to question them. So ever since I complained that Jared Diamond's Collapse seemed too long, even redundant, I've been rethinking my position.

Now another book I'm reading is shaking my faith in my reaction and even approach to Collapse. My current book is Reading Like a Writer, by Francine Prose. The subtitle reveals the author's essential purpose: A Guide for People who Love Books and for Those who Want to
Write Them. Using a wealth of selections from master writers in various genres, Prose demonstrates techniques in reading necessary to appreciate (and possibly emulate) fine literary style.

I felt her hot breath of disapproval when I recalled how I sped through parts of Collapse. Prose says, "Skimming just won't suffice if we hope to extract one fraction . . . of what a a writer's words can teach us about how to use the language. And reading quickly--for plot, for ideas, even for psychological truths that a story reveals--can be a hindrance when the crucial revelations are in the spaces between words, in what has been left out."

I picked up Collapse because I wanted to learn how he supported his arguments that societies through history have, however unknowingly,chosen to deteriorate. By skimming and even skipping through Diamond's work, I may have been missing the very nuances of his work that would have left me more satisfied after reading it. Was I failing in my job as a reader to parse the author's sentences, paragraphs, and chapters more thoroughly? One of my mantras as a writer is that writing is a performance art. The reader brings meaning to the work, I believe, and, Prose would add, also an appreciation of process. To get the most out of a dense argument, the reader must be willing and able to seek out the best in a given volume.

Francine Prose helps me understand one way I may have gone wrong when she says, "Reading this way requires a certain amount of stamina, concentration, and patience." Of these key three, I seem particularly to lack reading stamina these days. It may be just having too many projects going at once, but I rarely read the same work for an hour at a time. I've seen plenty of advice on improving reading speed, but I'm not sure exactly how one builds stamina as a reader--longer books? more convoluted prose? reading marathons? But it's something I'll keep in mind now as a issue that can muddy my interpretation of a book & its value. Plus, it'll make a great excuse to lie in my favorite reading spot, pumping print to build my reading muscles instead of cleaning my house.

Starting on the Stack

Like most readers, I keep a stack of books (or more than one) waiting to be read. Now, I also have a stack for books to be blogged about. In fact I started the stack a long while before I started the blog, in the hopes that it might inspire (guilt?) me into starting. After all, I can't really clean up my space until the "to blog" stack disappears.

At the very bottom (really the beginning) of the blog stack is Jared Diamond's book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. The author presents a breathtakingly-thorough comparative analysis of several societies that, for varied but related reasons, undermine the ecological basis for their survival. For 592 pages, Diamond examines the errors of ancient Easter Islanders, Mayans, the Greenland Norse, contemporary Montanans, and others to reveal tragic flaws in human culture--notably, societal hubris--that separate us from nature and may lead to our destruction. Each case studied was fascinating, nuanced and convincing, and the contrasts between failed civilizations and more sustainable ones offered some rays of hope. Critics showered it with praise and it's won scads of awards and speaking invitations for the author. The book and author are all over the web, including this excellent video lecture.

And while I hesitate to argue with any of the applauding critics or happy purchasers, I still think that like too many books these days, it was just too long. More case studies or more details do not necessarily mean a stronger argument. It's not just a matter of limited reading time, or short attention spans, or even limiting unnecessarily turning trees into pages. It's more about the old Mark Twain saying, "If I had more time I would write a shorter letter." I'm having a similar problem with a children's book about oceans I'm currently working on--how do you write a meaningful chapter on salt water invertebrates, for example, in 500 words? Somehow, I'll have to distill what I want to say down to a few paragraphs, and leave out lots and lots of details.

I'm not trying to talk anyone out of reading Collapse. Rather, I'm giving myself permission to stop reading it and other books that fail or cease to satisfy, for whatever reason. If you need to for some reason (academic, cultural, or personal), you can always go back and try again. In the meantime, there are plenty of other books in the stack.