Library distillation

Perhaps it is the darker months, the long night time hours in which there is little better to do than sit and think and read, but I have been thinking a lot about my library. I wrote earlier this year about converting my dining room into a library, and we did this and it’s been an enormous success. It is a wonderful room. A room for sitting and reading and writing in. A room for discussions or calm contemplation. It is one of the best things we ever did, and it’s made our house a complete home for me.

There is, of course, still a limitation on space and though I have a library the library has only so many shelves and those shelves are pretty full. Early on I set myself a 1 book in 1 book out rule, though I haven’t stuck to it. An unexpected bonus (I think) of creating the library has been that my husband has started to read more, and we now have a stack of sci-fi books messing up my shelves which really ought to be integrated. I am not always the most giving of people, but affording my husband some shelf space in the library is a small sacrifice I find myself willing to make if it means that we can spend the cold winter evenings snuggled in the warmth of the library reading together.

This means that I need to free up some space. Despite having a whole shelf of space available when we created the library over summer, this has been swallowed up with new books. And there are more to come. I have been borrowing Virginia Woolf books from the library, but find myself wanting to complete a collection. There are the inevitable new books I can’t resist buying and though I use the lending library more the idea that there aren’t future classics out there that I will want to own is a silly one. I know I have a growing collection of non-fiction to accommodate. All this, and still a limited amount of space.

Perhaps it is the long winter months, or perhaps it is a side-effect of my advancing age. I’m not sure. But I have been thinking a lot recently about distilling my library into those books I want to keep for all time. This is a bit of a shift for me. I have been, for as long as I can remember, a seasoned consumer of books. I have read often, widely, I have been a follower of contemporary fiction and I have always been prepared to try something new (though I draw the line at 50 Shades of Grey, Twilight, Lee Child and Scandinavian crime novels. Everyone has limits). What I’m starting to realise is that I can try but not buy. There are these amazing innovations called libraries, they are wonderful places. If I’ve not read a book, I will not buy it. I will try it first. If I love it, if I will read it again, then it can secure a future place in my library. This strikes me as quite a groundbreaking idea.

I look at my shelves full of books and I think I have been brutal about strimming them down but I haven’t. I haven’t been truly honest about the relationship with all those books on my shelves. For a start, there are many books on my shelves I haven’t read. Perhaps some of them I’ll never read (I’m looking at you, Gravity’s Rainbow). Some of them I’ve hung onto because I have a full set even though I didn’t really like them. That accounts for Mishima’s Sea of Fertility tetralogy, and Proust’s In Search of Lost Time which I know I’m never going to get past the first book of (I tried, I became extremely bored). I have a full set of Murakami novels including 1Q84 which I hated, amongst others. Will I read them again? It’s unlikely. Why, then, am I holding onto them?

I realise, now, that I want my library to be full of books that are treasured to me. I want every book by Tove Jansson, including the full set of Moomins, because I have loved every pixel on every page of them. I want space to place the nice editions of George Eliot’s books that I’ll eventually acquire. There needs to be space for my Virginia Woolfs, for my Muriel Sparks for my Evie Wylds. There needs to be space for H is for Hawk (I have hinted heavily), Elena Ferrante’s Neopolitan series, everything by Yoko Ogawa. I can only create the space by being brutal.

There have been a lot of people recently talking about reading less, about re-reading more. Perhaps it is the influence of winter, of darkness, that pushes us back to the familiar, the friendly novel that you know will make you feel cosy and comforted. I know I feel like that. I’ve enjoyed reading Woolf immensely, but it is also nice to turn back to a familiar friend, to lose myself again amongst its pages. Fortunately Woolf is starting to feel like a familiar friend. At this time of year, I often re-read The Dark is Rising sequence, a series I have loved since I was a girl. There are few things that have been with me so long. Yet it isn’t in my library. How weird. It should be.

I can list the books that I own that I want to re-read again. The list wouldn’t be hugely long. It would include Woolf, Eliot, Bronte. It would include Kawabata, Laxness, Coetzee. There are more of course, but not a huge number. Perhaps it will be possible to free up that space after all.

Thoughts on reading women for 2014

At the beginning of the year I decided to try out the Read Women 2014 initiative, started by Joanna Walsh, aiming to raise the profile of female writers. I won't go into any detailed rationale as to why I thought this was worthwhile here, though this article gives an interesting insight into why raising the profile of female writers is so necessary along with some useful source links. When I started I made a general commitment, thinking that I might insert the odd male writer here or there as the spirit moved me. I knew there was a David Mitchell novel coming out, for example. I enjoy J.M. Coetzee, Don DeLillo and Cees Nooteboom and there are many of their books I haven't yet read that I'd like to read. So I didn't plan to follow it rigidly, but rather tried to choose female writers and see what happened.

So what did happen? For a start, I haven't read any male writers. This hasn't been intentional. I've seen the Mitchell book come out with interest and bought at copy, and I'll read it when I get to it. What I found when I started exploring the works of female writers was what a plethora of amazing writers there are out there, vibrant, exciting, brilliant writers. If anyone had the idea that female writers just weren't as good or as innovative as their male counterparts, read works by women for a year and you'll soon discover differently. There are the known great writers: Virginia Woolf, George Eliot, the Brontes, Jane Austen, Doris Lessing. Then there are the lesser known great writers: Evie Wyld, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Helen DeWitt, Elena Ferrante (read her), Deborah Levy, Jeanette Winterson, Hannah Kent, Helen Oyeyemi, Nadine Gordimer, Yoko Ogawa, Fumiko Enchi. I've discovered great writers from different cultures, from different time frames. I feel that I've barely got started, barely scratched the surface of the great writing that is out there.

What I've seen is that there's a disparity in the way writers are marketed. Maybe this is accidental, maybe not. It's a pattern. The latest book by Karl Ove Knausgaard has come out with a fanfare. There are t-shirts, posters, Karl Ove bingo cards. The latest Elena Ferrante came out with a whisper, you had to listen extremely hard to hear it (fortunately for me, I was listening). There are comparably brilliant writers, in fact I'd go as far as to say that Ferrante was better (blasphemy, I know). Why, then, no fanfare for Ferrante? When I go into my local Waterstones and look at the table display of great writers in translation, she isn't on it. She's on the shelf. I may, possibly, have then Ferrante-bombed the table display (she's on there now). I encourage others to do likewise. The latest Ali Smith came out with a whistle, David Mitchell with an orchestral symphony. Don't get me wrong, I love Mitchell. I celebrate his writing. He seems like a wonderful, personable man. I hold him no grudge, he deserves his success. But there's a disparity here, it isn't equal. Just look at the media frenzy over Murakami, yet Yoko Ogawa who is by far the better writer disappears quietly and barely a sliver of her works are translated. 

This saddens me. As a reader I want to be alerted to all the best writing, the most exciting books, regardless of the gender of the writer. I want to forget about gender and focus on the writing alone, but it seems that if I do that I will see and hear only those writers that the publishing houses want me to hear about, which in a large proportion seem to be men. When I receive the promotional e-mail from Guardian Books, the proportion of male to female writers they promote tends to be around 70/30. I ignore it now. I would miss entirely Elena Ferrante, whose work is vivid and passionate and painful and pure. I would miss Yoko Ogawa who brings a unique insight into the darker sides of human nature. I would miss Evie Wyld, whose work is deep and clever and near perfect. I would be a poorer reader for it. It is time for the publishing houses to look at themselves honestly, and make a change. They could start with their cover art philosophy for a start. I wonder how many men are put off reading a book written by a woman because the cover art makes it look like 'chick lit', when the descriptions suggest there's nothing in there for a man to be interested in. Surely sales will benefit if the book isn't gendered from the beginning?  

I haven't in any way regretted my (nearly) year of reading women. I haven't become less intelligent, I haven't become less interested in men. Why would I? A female perspective is as universal as a man's. Female experience is human experience. My regret, if anything, is that it seems necessary.  

Reading women has been a joyful experience. I have, now, in my sights a catalogue of amazing male writers and equally amazing female writers. I would like to extend that to encompass amazing Mexican writers, Saudi Arabian, Vietnamese, Korean, Kenyan, Peruvian, etc, etc. I want to experience the best writing out there. Only by reading diversely do I have a chance to achieve that. 

Reading Virginia Woolf

I have dabbled with this idea for a while, and I've finally made a commitment. I'm going to read everything by Virginia Woolf. I love Virginia Woolf. She was an amazing person, an innovator. Her writing is not easy, but it is worthwhile. I have tinkered around the edges of Woolf for a while, but it's time to make that commitment. I will read all her works in chronological order. That's not because I lack imagination, but because I would like to see how she evolves as a writer. 

I am starting with The Voyage Out. Works I've read before I'll re-read. Watch this space for more.

Do I feel some trepidation? Certainly. I am committing to a reading plan which will take me, at least, to the end of the year to complete. It is almost inconceivable that I won't be distracted by some new, shiny thing in that time. I am easily distracted. Wish me luck, and great reading. I'll share my thoughts on her books, on Woolf as a person, as I go along. 

On acceptance and aspiration: a dichotomy

We were recently camping at a campsite near Sherwood forest; a beautiful place edged by a shallow stream, a magnet to swim-suited children with fishing nets and Frisbees, with a plentiful spread of mature trees casting pockets of soft shade on the grassy banks. Perfect for sitting and reading while listening to the burble of running water and the distant shrieks of children, distracted only by the dazzle of electric-blue damselflies as they speed across the water, the scent of fire and charring meat, the buzz of an occasional wasp or bee. There is something blissful about having nothing to do but lounge in the soft grass, book in hand, a web of sunlight piercing through the gaps in the tree’s canopy, where the most pressing demand is the grumble of your stomach.

All this lounging time makes for great thinking time. There is something to be said for doing absolutely nothing, gifting ourselves some time in which to be non-productive, lazy, drifting, unengaged. It is something which is an anathema to Western society, in which all labour saving devices, the speed of the internet and cars and other technologies, has freed our time only so that we can fill it with something else, something ‘productive’, a means to an end. Even in our gap times, like travelling, there are now ways to fill it with something. On trains you can answer your e-mails or make an important business call, waiting in airports you can schedule business appointments. There is always something to do, and those days of staring out of the window, watching the clouds and the world go by are somehow frowned upon. What’s the value in clouds? One of the great things about camping is how, in the absence of all that technology and expectation, there is little else you can do other than while away the hours thinking, observing, sharing a conversation or the company of others. When it gets dark there’s little else you can do, and sometimes this makes me nostalgic for the days before street lighting, in which the family would gather around the fire and share stories, or snuggle together in bed and wait, sleeping or sleepless, for the next day.

For some people camping is boring, grubby, uncivilised. For me camping is a reset button. Camping helps me to recover who I am from all the noise that is otherwise happening around me. Camping helps me to remember what is important to me.

One of the things I was thinking about on this most recent camping trip was dichotomy. The word ‘dichotomy’ means “a division or contrast between two things that are or are represented as being opposed or entirely different” and the specific dichotomy I was setting my mind to was that of acceptance and aspiration. These are two things which are often set against each other: the idea that if you aspire for something more or better, to be better or different or to want something extra, that you cannot then be accepting of who you are and your situation in life. It is a criticism which is often levelled at Buddhism which teaches acceptance and humility: that through its teachings people learn to accept injustice and suffering and fail to challenge the ‘bad’ elements of human nature.

As I was walking along the side of the stream watching the clear water gush over the stones and the brightness and greenness of the weeds just beneath the surface, the flies buzzing just over the water, sunlight shattering and reverberating on the glassy surface, I felt at peace. I felt that all was well in my life, that I am fortunate to have a good situation, that my husband is a good and intelligent man, that my children are vibrant and happy, that I have a good job with good work colleagues, that I have a nice home in a great community, that I am in good enough health that I can walk for a long time by the side of this stream and feel good, that I live largely in the absence of pain and suffering and that if that was all my life was it would be a good life. In that moment I felt I could accept my lot, I could accept who I am as a human being in confidence, that I did not need or want to be anything else, I did not aspire to great riches or ownership of property, I did not want to be beautiful or a great leader, I did not want to be famous or infamous, I did not want people to look up to me or seek me out as a source of knowledge, I did not need to be a great writer. My life is good, and I’m grateful for it. I reached a place of acceptance.

At the point of reaching acceptance I also thought that perhaps this did not mean that my life’s work was over. I still want to learn Japanese. I would like to be kinder and more giving. I think that there is a lot of wisdom which is still out of my reach, which I will seek and grow into as I carry on my path through life. I would like to be wiser, and to share whatever wisdom I glean. I would like things in life to be better for women in general, though I think I am blessed with many advantages I know this is not the case for many women in the world or, in fact, for many women around me. I see disadvantage too often to ignore its existence. I would like to be able to communicate more creatively. I would like to be more considerate, a better listener. I could be a better parent and a better life-partner. When I look at my life, I do not think I have finished refining who I am as a human being. I still have work to do.

In conventional wisdom these aspirations negate my acceptance. Yet I still feel accepting and I do not think that one cannot exist without the other. I think it is possible to achieve acceptance and still hold aspirations. I think this is the danger of dichotomies, of reducing the complexity of life to a binary. That we must choose this or this. That every decision, every desire and every action we take in life is a choice between one thing or another. I wonder if this is a source of much conflict in the world: that we must choose between the ‘West’ and the ‘East’, that we must choose between Israel and Palestine, that we must choose between men and women, between ‘good’ and ‘evil’, between ‘capitalism’ and ‘communism’.

In thinking about aspiration and acceptance, it occurred to me that it is possible, as I felt it was possible in my case, for these things to co-exist. Co-existence, for whatever reason, seems to be considered an exception rather than the norm and yet we see co-existence everywhere and experience it every day. Perhaps it is the danger of being surrounded by so many stories which tell us we have to root for the ‘good guy’ and deride the ‘bad guy’. Perhaps it is inherent in the religions that people embrace that our life is reduced to a choice of belief or non-belief, of righteousness and wickedness. Perhaps it is in our political structures which set ‘liberal’ parties against ‘conservative’ ones, sometimes physically in the way the parliamentary buildings are set up. Perhaps it is something about the simplicity of language that forces us to choose between being selfish or selfless, kind or unkind, forgiving or judgemental. Yet in my experience few things fit so neatly into those categorisations. A selfish act can result in a great act of kindness for another. An attempt to be kind and giving can result in suffering. You can judge someone’s actions as being unworthy and yet still forgive them. Is it the intent the matters or the outcome? And what if the outcome is mixed (or the intent, for that matter)?

Life is complex, people are complex, the idea that they can be reduced to a simple either/or choice seems odd. Yet it is something that is done every day in the news, in seats of government and in households. Perhaps it is something we learn as children and never quite let go of. Yet here I am, accepting myself and letting go of this desire to put things into neat little boxes. A dichotomy? Perhaps, but I don’t think so.