The books we are not ready to read yet

It was a book I thought would be just right up my alley. I found it at the library, it was a memoir (a genre I love to read), it was about England (I am an Anglophile and my sister is currently living there so I thought it would be good to learn more about the country), and it hinted at being funny. Here you go read the back jacket blurb for yourself (Ben Hatch Are We Nearly There Yet?)

It started out okay. In fact it was good. But then a certain incident was inserted into the narrative and my foreboding nerve was stimulated. Something was around the corner and I wasn't going to like it. I kept going. Then it struck like the blow that I received just last January 2nd - Stage IV Cancer. There is nothing that can be done. There are only months. Enjoy what time you have left. I'm sorry Ben Hatch, but I had to put your book down and return it to the library. My pain was too raw and I had no space in my heart to carry yours as well. I was still trying to process my own grief. I have a great deal of empathy for you but I couldn't go on.

There are several of those stories over the last few months I have tried to read. Long before Dad's illness I had read The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. Pausch shared with us the challenge of living out the end of one's life fully knowing of the outcome that awaits someone who's cancer can not be cured. I thought I could handle reading his widow's memoir Dream New Dreams. I'm sorry Jai Pausch but I couldn't do it. Watching my mother's grieving and knowing the pain she was going through putting her new life in order, I couldn't bear another widow's challenges as well. Perhaps one day I will be able to go back and read these memoirs by these talented writers and learn from their life lessons but for today I have my own story to process and write.

If on a winter's morning the traveler arrives....

Note the sticky tabs of learning

Okay I realize that it is not yet winter, the solstice is not until Friday, but it feels and looks like winter outside today. I sat cuddled under a blanket with my morning cup of coffee and finished Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveler just a few minutes ago. It has been one of those intensely rich readings, nourishing and challenging to the brain. He closed the book with a discussion amongst some readers at a library as to the meaning of reading. Each declared their own personal philosophy of why they read and yet as a reader each one made perfect sense to me. We read for all different reasons, yet all our reading is interconnected. It is a matter of our brain chemistry. As discussed, the new reading that we do is connected to what we have previously read. Just like the synapses in our brain are connected, so too are the memories of the things we have read. Haven't you experienced that yourself? As you read you are reminded of something, what was it? Was it in a book? Or a movie or TV show (remember they all started as a written word hatched in the brain of a writer)? Maybe even an event in your life since writers take and fashion the world into their creations. It has been a book that has made me think. I have had to think about my own reading while I've been reading.

The beauty of marking a book while reading is to go back and see what you marked. Don't you know that when I looked at the very first sticky tab, there was the start of the final discussion that the book ended with. Fancy that! A circle was started and completed. Would I have had that insight, had I not been tempted to mark that early passage because it struck me as such a profound thought? I could have finished the book with the memory of the ending most prominent as it was the last stimulus in my mind. Again brain chemistry is to blame. Pathways must be built and strengthened for strong permanent memories to take hold.

One other thing that attracted me about this piece of work was his allusions to matter and the chemistry of the world. Twice he relates the "matter" of a book: words, sentences, grammatical structure to the elemental particles of matter: protons, neutrons, and electrons. Or at least that's what I interpreted from those passages. Writing and reading are real and have substance just like that which makes up the universe. Underlying these two things, writing and reading, is the energy of the universe waiting to be explored and released, a universal truth that runs through us all since each of us is made up of the same matter. We are all just star dust which was generated when the universe expanded with a big bang, and there was light.  

If on a winter's night ....

I chose Italo Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveler thinking it would fit into my theme of winter or Christmas stories, little did I know it wouldn't be any such thing but something even more. Calvino died in 1984 when I was just graduating high school and going off to college. I would not have chosen this book to read at that time in my life. Do you think books find us when we are ready to read them? Something like the old adage that the teacher will come along when the student is ready.

I read the first page while standing among the stacks at the library and thought it sounded fun. The whole first chapter deals with you the reader. The conditions for reading must be just right before you can proceed. Are you the right temperature, if not get a blanket or open the window. Is the light level right, the noise levels (tell the family to pipe down), do you have something to drink at hand, are you sitting in the right chair? Finally when all is right with you and your world you can begin.

Now this book doesn't belong to me, it belongs to the library so I can not highlight it, or write in the margins. This is where I must praise the inventors of the post-it-note, they have expanded their product line to include these tiny pop up strips that come out of a highlighter which I can't use on this book, but I can stick a harmless tag on a page where I have found something I want to jot down later. This book is starting to have a collection of these little tags sticking out all over it.

This morning I came across this quote written by a character who is an author suffering from writer's block, "writing, must be the respiration of this reader, the operation of reading turned into a natural process," (p. 169). This thought piggy backed on a previous post about books being the oxygen to a reader. Here it is the act of writing that provides the breath of the reader. I am going to digress once again into my passion with biology. Only some organisms breathe, and that act is called respiration. Yet all living things must make energy in order to carry out their life functions and this is cellular respiration. To make this energy they must convert the food that they make (photosynthesis or chemosynthesis) or consume (herbivore, omnivore, or carnivore) into energy in the form of ATP. This process can take place in the presence of oxygen (aerobic respiration) or in its absence (anaerobic respiration).

Okay bear with me, biology lesson over. All of this made me think, is writing more like the act of photosynthesis where the inspirational light (for plants it's the sun) is stored in the words of the book (like a sugar molecule) which when read (cellular respiration) releases its energy once again within the mind of the reader? The law of conservation of matter/energy states that matter/energy is neither created nor destroyed in a chemical reaction it simply changes its form. So, are reading and writing the two sides of the equation? The creative energy of the writer becomes the energy of the reader. As a reader I know that what I read stimulates me to think in new ways. To apply lessons to my life. To share what I have read with others. As a writer isn't that what I hope to do for others as well. The energy of my thoughts seek to be shared with others. "If we assume that writing manages to go beyond the limitations of the author, it will continue to have a meaning only when it is read by a single person and passes through his mental circuits. Only the ability to be read by a given individual proves that what is written shares in the power of writing, a power based on something that goes beyond the individual. The universe will express itself as long as somebody will be able to say, 'I read, therefore it writes." (p. 176)

Italo Calvino, If on a winter's night a traveler, translated by William Weaver, Harcourt, Inc. 1981

Getting ready for Christmas vacation

Small tree decorated with
little bird flower picks.

I made a trip to the library tonight to bring back those items that were due and to pick up the next batch of reading material. The best thing about the trip was knowing that I have Christmas vacation starting a week from tomorrow at 2:39 pm. I can come home and enjoy my family, my home, and some much needed quiet time. Plus all that lovely free time for reading snuggled up by the wood stove with a warm mug of coffee, tea, or cocoa and the glow of the Christmas tree lighting the room. I've chosen a variety of new titles to read: Mitch Albom's - The Time keeper, Peter Mayle's - The Marseilles Caper, and Tony Danza's - I'd Like to Apologize to Every Teacher I Ever Had.

I've a confession to make as well. I love choosing books to give my mother as gifts because she always lends them to me afterwards. It's embarrassing to admit I pick things I know that she and I will both like.

A village Christmas Mystery

Thomas Kinkaid church with
Nativity Scene

 I finished listening to Rhys Bowen's The Twelve Clues of Christmas over the weekend. A pleasant English village mystery featuring the aristocracy, the lord and lady of the manor, the local inspector, the villagers - vicar and his wife, butcher, publican, postman, switchboard operator, the villian, and the spinster who has her finger in everyone's pie. There were an awful lot of bodies in this one. Then I got to a certain point and I could see the pattern behind the crimes. Yay me! I thought I knew who was the criminal as well.  Turns out I was right. Won't give away the plot or the solution. Read or listen for yourself.


Thomas Kinkaid designed pieces
that were part of a floral centerpiece

My little village consists of five little houses designed by the artist Thomas Kinkaid for Teleflora and FTD as the focal point of floral centerpieces. As my grandmother got older it was harder to find an appropriate gift so I got in the habit of sending her flowers at Christmas and these arrangements were a real favorite. Unfortunately, my grandmother (now 98 years old) is living in the nursing home where she doesn't have much space for knick knacks. I now have the collection and enjoy them all the more for knowing that they brought her joy and now they do the same for me.

Proof that Reading is Necessary for Life

Alan Bradley's newest
Flavia de Luce Novel and Holiday Mug

And I quote from the character of Ophelia (Daffy) de Luce, page 205 of Alan Bradley's I Am Half-sick of Shadows, "Books are like oxygen to a deep-sea diver...take them away and you might as well begin counting the bubbles." There, see right on the page was the proof I needed to support my honest belief that I would die if I couldn't read. Books are like oxygen, and the mitochondria in our cells can't carry out cellular respiration without it (oxygen that is not books). Cellular respiration is the way in which glucose in the blood stream is broken down into carbon dioxide, water, and transfers the energy from the broken chemical bonds to the energy carrying molecule of life called adenosine triphosphate, commonly known as ATP. Bet you didn't think you'd get a Biology lesson from this posting did you, but let's face it if you enjoy Flavia's antics you probably enjoy science enough to appreciate her passion for chemistry.

I myself am a fan of chemistry (I should be since I spend much of my day teaching it and biology to high  school students) and love to read about Flavia's plans for using her knowledge to outwit her sisters and the criminals she encounters. I won't spoil the out come of this story for you except to say our spunky gal Flavia comes through in the end.

As an aside, pictured with my copy of the newest Flavia novel is a holiday themed mug full of coffee. Caffeine, readers does not give us true energy, only food which is converted into ATP for all of life's energy needs can do that. Caffeine is a chemical that can play with our nervous system speeding up the activity of certain neurotransmitters and giving us the impression of energy. Watch out for it, too much of a good thing can be harmful.  Of course except reading. Then again, "She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain." - Louisa May Alcott

Inspiration for writing

A wise piece of advice I saw in a book one day was Betsy Woodman's quote "Never go a day without turning out a line." (p. 165) from her book Jana Bibi's Excellent Fortunes (Henry Holt & Company c. 2012). They were words used to encourage a writer. It was in this story that I learned that the Hindu God Ganesh is the god of writers.
I did a quick search to learn a little more and discovered that Ganesh is the Elephant headed god and is the Remover of Obstacles and the Lord of Beginnings. He is attributed to be the patron of the arts and sciences. Once I had read this I felt a kinship to Ganesh. I am a lover of the arts and of science and at this time in my life (mid-life that is) I truly find myself in a position of beginnings. Not to mention there are many obstacles in my life that I feel the need to be removed so that I can move forward. Isn't fascinating that Ganesh is responsible for these two duties, often we can not begin something new until we remove the obstacles of the old. Lately, I find that I am the biggest obstacle to my new beginnings. I'm trying to cling to the old ways which have not been working for me and hoping things will change, talk about the definition of insanity.

"It seems a bit mad," she said.
"Mrs. Laird," said Ramachandran, "the thing with madness is it often works much better than method. And when method fails, madness is absolutely essential." p. 133-134.

I like that. We're all a little mad here. (Thanks to Alice and her land of wonder)