A Geography of Reading

"It is by reading novels, stories, and myths that we come to understand the world in which we live." -Orhan Pamuk

My Bookstore, My Community: A Love Note to Indie Booksellers and My Dad

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With any luck, the Postal Service delivered a package to my dad yesterday. He will have opened it by now and found my standard Father’s Day gift to him, a book. I send him books instead of ties because books are a language my dad and I share, and this year I was especially excited to be able to send him My Bookstore: Writers Celebrate Their Favorite Places to Browse, Read, and Shop edited by Ronald Rice. This book helped me understand just what it is I love about independent bookstores and even better, it filled me with happy memories of a childhood spent in bookstores. So this post is for you, Dad. Happy Father’s Day!

The Bookstore I Was Raised On

I couldn’t possibly tell you the first time I entered Twice Sold Tales in Moscow, Idaho. It was a used bookstore in a craftsman cottage on the edge of downtown. The store was filled, and I mean packed, with books (in shelves and piled on the floor) and because it was my first bookstore, the one my dad took me to often, it all seemed wonderfully normal. In fact, the office where I write today has many things in common with that little house (including book piles in inappropriate places and a closet turned into a bookshelf).

Before I remember my dad introducing me to Betty, the owner, I remember him loading stacks of paperbacks on her counter. She would tabulate the number of Xs stamped on the top of each book (each denoted $0.25 of value) and then pull out a plastic recipe box filled with 3×5 cards and subtract my dad’s purchase from the amount of credit he had on file. One summer, about the time I became engrossed in horror novels, I started going to the bookstore on my own. I was there so often that Betty offered me a job, to be paid in credit. I never did take her up on that, but I loved taking books out one day and returning them for credit the next. I used that store like my personal library and I was glad to pay the fee.

My dad took me to other bookstores too. There was the Waldenbooks in the mall where we waited in a long line (there must have been 20 people) every time a new Patrick McManus came out. It was such a family tradition that my brother and I have both laid claims on my dad’s stash of signed McManus books. We frequented Brused Books in Pullman and often ran into Bruce, the owner, at garage sales around town as he was replenishing his inventory. We spent time in BookPeople of Moscow (even before it moved across the street) although I never got to know Bob as well as the others. It’s a shame because I think he and I would have a lot to talk about now, but I wasn’t ready for that bookstore just yet.

We even had bookstores as destinations when we traveled including Half Price Books in the U District in Seattle (and every other used bookstore on the Ave). And of course, Powell’s in Portland. But Twice Sold Tales holds the most special place in my memory.

My Bookstore(s) Today

Now I live in Seattle and am surrounded by bookstores. It’s easy for me to go to Half Price Books in the U District or Capitol Hill (which is closing or moving) or Lynnwood. I still take my dad there when he visits. He thinks I’m humoring him, but really it’s for me. And not just because he sometimes pays for my armloads of books. I have boxes of books in the basement that I trade in on a semi-annual basis, but I get cash instead of little Xs on a card, so it’s not quite as romantic and the money often gets frittered away.

Bookstores are changing and so am I. The art books that draw my husband and me to the University Bookstore on the Ave are fewer in number. I rarely visit Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park (which has the best essays section) since my writing group up there dissolved. I nip over to Ravenna Third Place as much for the cafe as for the books. The monster Barnes and Noble at U Village that so excited me when I moved here has since closed, and the Barnes and Noble at Northgate (within walking distance), that I was thrilled to see go in now prominently features a Nook display next to the toy section. I most often do not find the books I’m looking for there.

The bookstore I most love is Elliott Bay Books. For over a year I held a weekly writing date with myself there. I wrote more letters than fiction, but that was good too, and invariably I came away with a book (or five) to add to those piles of books on my floor and in my shelves. I’m shy, though, and I don’t know the booksellers like I’d like to. I recognize their faces and they are always kind to me, but it’s hard for me to build relationships with many people at once. Maybe I’m waiting for my dad to introduce them to me (or me to them). And recently, I’ve been really busy, so I’ve been allowing myself to order a hard to find book from Amazon instead of asking at the bookstore like I know I should. Yes, I was seduced by Prime and I hate myself for it.

My Bookstore, the Book

What I loved about this sampler platter of writers’ favorite independent bookstores is that it reminded me of how central bookstores had been in my life. It showed me the community I was allowing to slip by not engaging with it. There are writers you’ll recognize in this book (Wendell Berry, Isabel Allende, Ann Patchett, and more) and some you won’t. Each writer gets a few pages to tell you about their favorite bookstore and four of the stores I named above are featured. There’s a kind of stilted insider lingo that develops in some of the essays (maybe because these writers know they are writing for devoted readers) that it took me some time to get over. It was good to read about other parents who have instilled a love for reading and bookstores in their kids, and that I’m not the only one who gets her books paid for.

But even when the stories start to sound the same (and some are wildly different), the collective voice is saying something I needed to hear. The bookstore, especially the independent bookstore, is the center of my community. It’s where I grew up and where I learned to love books. And it needs me to stay alive.

This book made me trek over to Elliott Bay Books where I bought an armload of books and then walked over to the park, sat in the sun, and read a book by Pico Iyer whose work I first encountered in My Bookstore. And that hour I took for myself to browse and read was a moment of stepping back into myself when I really, really needed it. And I’m grateful to all the people who have supported Elliott Bay Books so it could be there when I needed it. I will return the favor.

I learned this week that Write Bloody will be publishing a book of writing prompts I co-authored with Rebecca Bridge. Maybe that will force me to go in to Elliott Bay and all my other wonderful local stores and introduce myself so I can start building those bookseller relationships that my dad has in his home town.

Why Independent Bookstores?

If you don’t know what the fuss is about Amazon, you’ll understand by the end of this book. You can also read the Melville House blog. A quick summary is that they (legally) evade taxes, squeeze profit margins, and don’t exist in a physical space. I do buy from Amazon (movies, bags for dog poop, and other random items), but when I was looking for an affiliate program, a way to make a small amount of money off the many loving hours I put into this blog, I chose to work with Powell’s instead. And I realize that Half Price Books isn’t an independent bookstore either, but my family comes from Austin and my brother-in-law worked at the store in the U District for years, and I still know people there, so it still feels like home.

About My Dad

My dad’s coming to town next weekend. I’ll let him pretend he’s dragging me to Half Price and Elliott Bay if he wants. I’ll even let him pay for my armloads of books. Or maybe I’ll pay for his. I hope he’ll read My Bookstore: Writers Celebrate Their Favorite Places to Browse, Read, and Shop (which I purchased at Third Place) and remember some of the same wonderful moments I did.

Thank you, Dad, for sharing with me your love of books and bookstores. We’ll miss the Third Place Semi-annual Sale (June 15-16), but we should check out Magus and all the others next weekend and then Tattered Cover in September.

If this review made you want to read the book, pick up a copy of My Bookstore: Writers Celebrate Their Favorite Places to Browse, Read, and Shop from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Nicole Hardy’s Confessions of a Latter-Day Virgin

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nicole hardy confessions of a latter-day virgin coverIf I told you Confessions of a Latter-Day Virgin by Nicole Hardy was about a single, Mormon woman wrestling with her faith and her choice to remain a virgin, I wouldn’t be doing the book justice. Saying that it’s a memoir based on her touching Modern Love column might lead you to think the book was more about throwing off that faith and rebelling in the big city. But that isn’t true either. Let me explain…

About the Mormon Thing

Bur first, here’s my confession. I grew up with a lot of Mormons, but not the pious-types; instead, I ran around with the Jack Mormons. The first boy who broke my heart talked for months about how we would lose our virginities to each other, and then he slept with someone else. His brother swore he’d pledged his love to me with his CTR ring, but that had to be some other girl, too. So a tiny, ugly part of me hoped this book would reveal stories of weird Mormon conspiracies.

Instead, Hardy paints a loving picture of her childhood faith, even when you can tell she feels rejected by the doctrine and the way that “questioning feels, to them, like betrayal.” I won’t spoil the tender ways she deals with her faith. If you’re looking for a tell-all Mormon bashing, this isn’t that book, but you should read it anyway. She reminded me of the humanity of the church and how, a very long time ago, Mormon missionaries helped my family get life-saving vaccines when we were far from home and how they made us part of their family. Reading about someone parting with something they still love so deeply is much more nuanced and interesting than a hate-filled tell-all, and I learned something about compassion from the way Hardy handled the church.

What Does it Mean to be a Woman?

Hardy wrestles with many of the same issues all women face. Will I have children? Will I find someone to love me? Will I find someone I love and will I learn to love myself? And the stakes are raised by her Mormon upbringing with its expectation that the fulfilling life for a woman is as a wife and mother. Hardy writes, “There cannot be only one way to be a woman. My identity cannot be something I’ve never felt.” I loved the way she explored myriad paths to self-fulfillment and how she never impugns others for their choices even as she makes different ones.

“Not everyone has been raised to believe silence should accompany doubt. Not everyone has been raised in a culture of perfection: they don’t see a benefit in the shellac required to keep up appearances.” – Nicole Hardy

Dealing with Sexuality

One of the things I loved about this book is how unabashedly sexual Hardy confesses to being. From reading The Joy of Sex in fifth grade to becoming captivated by a discussion of frotteurism while at BYU, she writes openly about the sexuality that most girls feel but aren’t supposed to talk about. She shares her desperation and her successes and failures as she dates, still in search of the one. The book is open without being salacious. Of course I wanted to know if she finally lost her virginity, a question I felt revealed a lot about the weight that virginity carries, and I was glad she gave me the space to contemplate my cultural prejudices rather than immediately satisfying my curiosity.

Story of Becoming

“This is how it feels to stand at the precipice of a different, dreamed-of life. To know, even as it’s happening, that this is the day that changes everything.” – Nicole Hardy

Confessions of a Latter-Day Virgin is also the story of becoming a writer, and the day that Hardy decides to apply to Bennington, she writes simply, “There is a master of fine arts program for creative writing, which admits nine to ten students per genre twice per year. I decided to become one of them.” I wanted to stand up and cheer for her and the matter-of-fact way she embraced herself as an artist.

It’s also the story of becoming Nicole. You should read for yourself about the brave choices she makes along the way and how she becomes more and more of herself with every one. I learned from her courage every step of the way.

But What About the Writing?

True story: I was so immersed in reading this book on my way to work that I read it all the way from the bus, up the escalator, into the building and to my desk. And then I wanted to hide in the bathroom and read it some more. The writing is good and the story is engrossing. I was sometimes thrown by the use of present tense in flashback, but that didn’t interfere with my enjoyment at all.

Whether you’re a Mormon housewife who chose kids and the church at a young age or a proudly heathen and poly-amorous (or anyone in between), you’ll be touched by this funny, sweet, and candid book and you’ll fall in love with Hardy at the same time.

If this review made you want to read the book, pre-order a copy of Confessions of a Latter-Day Virgin from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Escape and Learn with Crete: A Notebook by Richard Clark

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No matter what the weather where you live is telling you, summer is almost here. That means it’s time for vacation and at the very least a less onerous reading list. Crete: A Notebook by recalls the best of Peter Mayle. If I told you the book was a memoir/guidebook infused with mythology, history, and geology, I wouldn’t be doing the book justice.

Memoir of an Expat

Richard Clark first moved to Crete to teach in the 1980s and he’s returned time and again. What this does for the book is give a loving portrait through time of the people and places of Crete. He is both part of the culture and not and what could have been a guidebook turns into a personal story. Together with Clark, you get to experience the philoxenia, the kindness of welcoming strangers. He doesn’t tell you about how locals might buy you a drink or offer you water, he shares endearing stories about the many many times it’s happened to him all over the island.

Cretan Mythology

Woven into the narrative are reminders and retellings of your favorite Greek myths and where they happened. Zeus was born on Crete and hid here from his father, Kronos, before he overthrew him. He seduced Europa nearby and fathered King Minos. Remember the minotaur? You’ll feel the story come alive as Clark visits the remains of the palace where that story originated. I even learned some things about Icarus I didn’t know.

History of Crete

From Chania, a town that’s been inhabited continuously for 5,000 years to the ruins of a palace abandoned in 1900 BC, Crete has an incredibly rich history. The island has been under Byzantine, Venetian, and Ottoman rule and parts of The Odyssey are thought to have been set here. Clark does a nice job of summarizing how these waves of influence have shaped each location and the people at large. There’s even an essay at the end on the current Greek fiscal crisis.

Geology

No less turbulent than the politics, Crete’s geologic history has included a major volcanic eruption, a part of the island that’s sinking, and an upthrust that caused one major port to rise above sea level and become uninhabitable. Reading about these violent changes somehow made the island seem even more enticing to visit.

Travelogue

At it’s heart, this book is a travelogue and you’ll learn words like “ouzerie” (place that serves ouzo) as you salivate over goat salads and Greek coffees. Clark describes the unique aspects of town after town and somehow manages to not make it all repetitive. You’ll get to know local characters like Nikos Kazantzakis and Ross Daly. Clark even touches on a few of the surrounding islands including Santorini for good measure.

If you’re looking to finally plan a trip to Greece or just need to read about someplace else, try Crete: A Notebook. You’ll learn more than you can imagine and be entertained all the way through.

If this review made you want to read the book, pick up a copy of Crete: A Notebook from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

The End of the Story: My Love/Hate Relationship with Lydia Davis

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This week Lydia Davis won the Man Booker International Prize and the world rejoiced–especially the world of short fiction (and short, short fiction) writers. Davis is a must-read in writing classes of all stripes. Although I’ve read a story or two of hers, it was her endearingly unrehearsed acceptance speech in which she defends translation (plus a bonus day off from work) that inspired me to finally open one of her books.

Beginning at The End of the Story

Lydia Davis The End of the Story CoverThe first novel by Lydia Davis, The End of the Story, is both a book about the end of a love affair and a book about writing a book. The first sentence folded into itself wonderfully, “The last time I saw him, though I did not know it would be the last…” The next couple of pages were spare and striking, but eerily familiar, like I’d read them before. It turns out that I had, and in fact Davis repurposed many of her shorts to compile this novel. I find that odd. Although I believe each writer has his or her obsessions and we write about the same themes over and over (sometimes even when we try not to), I like to think that each piece of work has a natural form that we are trying to shape the work into. This vague reworking of previous material seems like treating your own writing like “found” writing and I can’t imagine having the distance from my pieces to do that. But I also believe that Davis is in complete control of her tools, so I kept reading…

The Haze of Memory

“I’m not sure whether we walked on dirt or asphalt, what we passed, or how he walked next to me, whether awkwardly or gracefully, quickly or slowly, close to me or a few feet away.” – Lydia Davis

One of the most interesting things Davis does in this book is describe a shifting space of memory where she at once enumerates possibilities and signifies that the details themselves are unimportant. It’s accurate to the experience of memory, but I’m not sure it served the narrative for me because the details were so hazy that I had trouble engaging with the story.

Narrative Monologues

“I am inefficient in the way I work on the novel and that inefficiency infects other things I try to do… I still become confused and forget what I was doing when I left off the day before. I have to write instructions to myself on little cards with an arrow in front of each. I look for the arrow, read the instruction, follow it…” – Lydia Davis

Interspersed with the story of a love affair from the past is the story of the narrator today as she writes the book about the love story. It could be an interesting device, but the prose is too accurate for my taste to the experience of day-to-day life. By that I mean that it feels unedited and it took some serious patience to endure the writing blow by blows. Worse yet were the sections about what’s happening in the present time that has no relation to the love story and no relation to writing about the love story. One passage goes into the types of grasses that grew in a meadow before it was turned into a townhouse. It could be poetic if I really wanted to compare her relationship to that meadow, but there are no parallels between the two except that both changed with time. I wanted to edit this all out so badly, but it had to be there for a reason… right?

Part of me hoped that it would develop into a full-blown metafiction, but instead it reads like a roman à clef, and not a very artful one at that. Technically, Davis is drawing attention to the book as a work of art (so you could call it a metafiction), but her writing about writing is more pained than pointed.

Turning Words into Images

“No address of his was good for very long and the paper in my address book where his address is written is thin and soft from being erased so often.” – Lydia Davis

Like Grace Paley, Davis has a way with detail. But Davis’ language is less concise than Paley’s (in the above quote, I would have deleted the whole first clause) and Davis often draws attention to a random object that isn’t otherwise significant in the story. This happens late in the story when the characters are quite broken up and the narrator mentions the grey hair on the sink that a house guest left. In a book where I was searching for something to hold onto, this treatment of significant detail was further disorienting and I couldn’t tell (and at times ceased to care) what was supposed to be important.

Scene vs. Summary

One of the things many readers have remarked on about this book is that there’s no dialogue. More importantly, there are barely any scenes. Usually in a novel, the writer summarizes wide swathes of narrative to move you quickly through unimportant moments and then starts adding in detail and slowing down time to indicate that you’re coming up on something important–a scene–a critical moment in the development of the plot. But just as significant details are thrown around willy nilly, Davis doesn’t develop scenes in the book. Everything is related from a distance that was one more reason I found it difficult to engage with the story.

Am I Just Jealous?

Yes. Although I’ve read this book (originally published in 1995), it is strikingly similar to the first draft of my second book–a draft I hated for its self-consciousness, its lack of story, and my failure to step outside of myself when writing it. Though The End of the Story has gotten mixed reviews and many say it’s simply not their favorite of her books, I couldn’t help but feel if I had presented my book as it was to anyone, I would have been lambasted for the things I’ve mentioned above.

But then again, maybe I’m not jealous, because before I even knew of this book, I chose to begin rewriting my book into something I’d like to read. Maybe Davis’ writing is too close to my own and I can’t love it (especially in this form) because I can’t step far enough away from it to see the art of what she’s done versus how I would have done it. Maybe I need to give her writing some space before approaching it again. Promise not to wait until she wins the Nobel.

If you want to decide for yourself whether I’m being too harsh, pick up a copy of The End of the Story from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Coming Home with Truman Capote’s The Grass Harp

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truman-capote-the-grass-harp-coverMaybe the reason you can’t go home again is that you can never see all of what it was—you could only glimpse one angle of it and as you age you see another and then another, but the place you grew up and the people you grew up with are amalgams of all the ways you see them over time. That’s how I felt when reading The Grass Harp by Truman Capote before, during, and after a trip to my hometown, Moscow, Idaho.

How the Fates Wanted Me to Read Capote

My bedside table right now is stacked with thick books that are “good for me” so I’m lucky if I read ten pages a night. Which is frustrating for someone who likes to read a book in a sitting. One night I couldn’t take it anymore and went crawling through my to-read stacks for something slender, something enriching that wouldn’t be so hard. Toward the top of one of the middle stacks, I found this aged paperback, a book I like to believe was once part of my grandmother’s library, and I took it to bed. The novella and stories made for a slow read and I didn’t care because I loved every word.

The other reason I was fitful when I picked up this book was that it was just a few days before I was going home to Idaho for the first time in over five years. It was complicated. My mother and I hadn’t spoken for months because of something she’d said, but I knew I was long overdue on a visit. As Capote’s story unfolded, I saw some familiar characters. Verena was wealthy and in charge, but “the earning of it had not made her an easy woman.” Although Dolly “folded like the petals of a shy-lady fern,” it is her strength that ultimately leads to Collin, Catherine, Dolly to move into a tree. Still hiding in the branches of my own tree, I could empathize with Dolly.

The book is full of amazing (and true-to-life) descriptions of the people and situations of a small town likely culled from Capote’s childhood in Alabama. I spent my first afternoon back home at the Renaissance Fair revisiting moments from my childhood. Although I recognized almost no one, the types of people hadn’t changed. I called my mother that afternoon and we sat prettily in her lovely house, not talking at all about the troubles between us.

The next morning I read about how Dolly and Verena make their peace. I learned a little about family and what brings us together. I learned that they are not always the people we’d choose to be around, but that we are bound together nonetheless and how important that can be. I had a beautiful brunch with my mom and tried to be kind to her, even as we continued to not talk about our differences. She told me stories about her family and I listened. I told her what I’d been up to during all the months of silence. In her southern way, she talked around points to get at the heart of them and I realized this was familiar from Capote and that when things get really difficult, I write and speak this way too. When we said goodbye, she sobbed and sobbed and I drove helplessly away.

Capote and the City

My first morning back in Seattle, I read the story “Master Misery” which is about a young girl struggling to make it in the city who sells her dreams, literally, to an old man. It wasn’t an auspicious return, but, like most of the stories at the end of this book, is imaginative and metaphoric and wonderful to read.

You Said it’s a Slow Read?

Generally, “slow read” is a pejorative, but in Capote’s case, the book forced me to read slowly because every word was important. The sentences themselves were clean and simple, but there was a richness underneath them that I wanted to swallow whole and digest. So much for getting through a book.

“When was it that first I heard of the grass harp? Long before the autumn we lived in the China tree; an earlier autumn, then; and of course it was Dolly who told me, no one else would have known to call it that, a grass harp.”

That’s the first paragraph. You can see a little of what slowed me down, the inversion of the words “first” and “I” from how most of us would say it. The long, winding structure of the second sentence. But there is a richness there. I want desperately to know who is this Dolly with such wisdom. Is living in a China tree a metaphor? And what is the grass harp? TELLMENOW.

Capote subtly twists language in other ways that made me pay attention, and I loved him for it. Writing “brief case” instead of briefcase made me appreciate for the first time where the word came from. “Sunmotes lilted” was another phrase that made me swoon because the verb choice was so unusual and so perfect. But the phrase that made all the slow, close, attentive reading worth it was “Wind surpised, pealed the leaves, parted night clouds; showers of starlight were let loose.” I circled and underlined “pealed” and wondered how many copy editors had changed it to peeled, not understanding how this simple switch of vowels gave music to the language and the scene. It made me want to read the book all over again.

Coming Home to Capote the Writer

“I believe a story can be wrecked by a faulty line in a sentence.” – Capote

After falling so hard for The Grass Harp, I went back to Capote’s Paris Review interview. I’ve read all the interviews and have all the books (including when they were collected as Writers at Work), and Capote’s sticks has to be the one I underlined and annotated more than any other. Although it’s obvious from his writing how much control he has over his tools, I loved how his views on writing mirrored my own.

“Finding the right form for your story is simply to realize the most natural way of telling the story. The test of whether or not a writer has divined the natural shape of his story is just this: After reading it, can you imagine it differently, or does it silence your imagination and seem to you absolute and final?” – Capote

Few people would disagree that Capote is part of the literary canon, but I had forgotten how good he is. I remember In Cold Blood for the savageness of the murders rather than the writing, I remember Breakfast at Tiffany’s for Audrey Hepburn’s charming portrayal, and my vision of Capote the man is sparring with Dorothy Parker at some fabulous Manhattan cocktail party that I will never get to attend. But Capote was a writer and a damned good one. And despite the New York connections, he was from a small town like I am. The Grass Harp made me see appreciate him as a writer and appreciate where I come from. I scribbled down notes during and after the visit and I think someday soon that place where I came from will make it into my fiction or poetry.

My mom is having surgery this morning, again. It’s supposed to be routine, but none of her procedure ever has been. And yet all that spit and vinegar that makes her “not an easy woman” also must be part of the reason she’s alive after all of it and she will continue to live for a good long time. I am grateful for that. I am grateful that my grandmother gave me this book and guided me to read it when I did. I am grateful that Capote helped me find the voices of my own “grass harp, gathering, telling, a harp of voices remembering a story.”

If this review made you want to read the book, pick up a copy of The Grass Harp from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.