The Book Lovers' Anthology compiled by the Bodleian Library, Oxford

I came across a most unusual book.  It had no author, editor, or translator, but it did have notes and an index of nearly 30 pages.  The Book Lovers’ Anthology found its way to publication when compiled by the Bodliean Library at the University of Oxford.  So we have no plot, no pictures, no characters – except for the thoughts and fancies of many noteworthy literary figures dating back to the ancient Greeks.  Therefore, all I can do is offer some tempting tidbits to make you smile, laugh, and occasionally groan.

In a letter to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Southey wrote, “Talk of the happiness of getting a great prize in the lottery!  What is that to opening a box of books!  The joy upon lifting up the cover must be something like what we shall feel when Peter the Porter opens the doors upstairs, and says, ‘Please do walk in, sir.’  That I shall never be paid for my time and labour according to the current value of time and labour, is tolerably certain;  but if anyone should offer me £10,000 to forgo that labour, I should bid him and his money go to the devil, for twice the sum could not purchase me half the enjoyment.  It will be a great delight to me in the next world, to take a fly and visit these old worthies, who are my only society here, and to tell them what excellent company I found them here at the lakes of Cumberland, two centuries after they had been dead and turned to dust.  In plain truth, I exist more among the dead than the living, and think more about them, and, perhaps, feel more about them” (4).

Not all the contributors are well-known.  C.C. Colton, and English Vicar, wrote, “We should choose our books as we would our companions, for their sterling and intrinsic merit” (6).  From this side of the pond, Washington Irving wrote in his Sketch Book, “The scholar only knows how dear these silent, yet eloquent, companions of pure thoughts and innocent hours become in the season of adversity” (9).  Ralph Waldo Emerson notes, “It is remarkable, the character of the pleasure we derive from the best books.  They impress us with the conviction that one nature wrote, and the same reads.  We read the verses of one of the great English poets, of Chaucer, of Marvell, of Dryden, with the most modern joy – with a pleasure, I mean, which is in great part caused by the abstraction of all time from their verses.  There is some awe mixed with the joy of our surprise, when this poet, who lived in some past world, two or three hundred years ago, says that which lies close to my own soul, that which I also had wellnigh thought and said” (26).

Bodleian Library, Oxford, England

Robert Lowe, Lord Sherbrooke spoke at the Croyden Science and Art Schools in 1869.  He exhorted the students to, “Cultivate above all things a taste for reading.  There is no pleasure so cheap, so innocent, and so remunerative as the real, hearty pleasure and taste for reading.  It does not come to everyone naturally.  Some people take to it naturally, and others do not, but I advise you to cultivate it, and endeavor to promote it in your minds.  In order to do that, you should read what amuses you and pleases you.  You should not begin with difficult works, because, if you do, you find the pursuit dry and tiresome.  I would even say to you, read novels, read frivolous books, read anything that will amuse you and give you a taste for reading” (35).  I have given this exact same advice to my students, who – in increasing numbers – do not read. 

So thank you Emerson, and Voltaire, Jane Austen, George Eliot, Samuel Johnson, Shakespeare, Dickens, Swift, Laurence Sterne, Milton, Tennyson, Thackery, and many dozens more.  The Book Lovers’ Anthology: A Compendium of Writing about Books, Readers & Libraries compiled by the Bodliean Library in Oxford, England should not be read like a novel.  Browse through and zero in on a favorite writer.  Open the volume to random pages and find all the wonders and delights of reading and books you share with these giants of literature.  5 stars.

--Chiron, 5/10/15

The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher Morley

After books about English Professors and literature – or perhaps before, it is an extremely close race – I love novels set in bookstores.  Christopher Morley has an especially warm place in my heart, since he is a Philadelphia native and a journalist to boot.  Novels by former newspaper people are a close third on my list.

Morley’s second novel, The Haunted Bookshop, starts out as a whimsical tale of Roger Mifflin, an eccentric owner and operator of the shop.  An interesting cast of characters haunts the shop.  Set in about 1919, the prose, attitudes, and viewpoints of the characters might seem a bit dated.  I felt the faint glow of O. Henry who died in 1910.  While Morley does not have a clever twist at the end, the story does take a radical turn on the last few pages.

One day, Aubrey Gilbert stops by the shop and proposes an advertising campaign to increase sales.  Roger will have none of it.  He claims, “The people who are doing my advertising are Stevenson, Browning, Conrad, and Company” (7).  Thus begins a cascade of literary references, which tempted me beyond all reason to catalog.  Once I started, I could not stop, and ended up with six pages, single-spaced of authors and works, much to the amazement of my book club.  Some mentioned items were well-known, others not so much, but only a few escaped my research.  This makes a daunting and most interesting reading list.

Aubrey persists without making any headway, but coincidentally, he does write ad copy for a Mr. Chapman, CEO of Dantybits Company, who also happens to frequent the shop.  Mr. Chapman has a daughter fresh out of “finishing school,” and he wants her to have some real-life experiences.  Roger agrees, and the young lady moves into the attic.

A peculiar set of booksellers – known as the “Corn Cob Club” -- also meet at the shop.  Mostly they decry the pitfalls and misfortunes of the bookselling business, as well as the theory and practice of stocking such a shop.

I have “haunted” many a shop like Roger Mifflin’s in my life, and I recognized the characters, the complaints, and the dusty shelves.  On one occasion, Roger is called to a noted bookseller in Philadelphia to appraise his collection.  The trip to the City of Brotherly Love turns out to be a fake, thus setting in motion the bizarre turn the story makes.  With some hours to spare before his return train to Brooklyn, Roger walks down Market Street to visit, Leary’s Bookshop, on 9 South 9^th Street.  Leary’s operated for nearly 100 years at that location.  It closed in 1969, and was known as the oldest bookshop in America.  I spent so many fond afternoons in Leary’s I could not recount them all.  I happened to visit the day they announced the closing.  I stood on the sidewalk with tears streaming as though I had lost a great, good friend.  Indeed, I had.

The copy I have is print-on-demand, and the editing and layout are atrocious.  If you order this quaint book, make sure a publisher is listed in the description.  The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher Morley will provide hours of fun – and not all of them actually reading – for anyone interested in books and literature.  5 stars.

--Chiron, 1/30/15

Why I Read: The Serious Pleasure of Books by Wendy Lesser

Every once in a while, I come across a book about reading.  Recently, I reviewed Rebecca Mead’s My Life in Middlemarch about reading George Eliot’s classic Victorian novel.  Francine Prose wrote, Reading Like a Writer for another example.  Now Wendy lesser has added to this collection with Why I Read: The Serious Pleasure of Books.

According to the dust jacket, “Wendy Lesser is the founder of The Threepenny Review, [an outstanding literary magazine].  She is the author of eight previous books of nonfiction and one novel.  She won a prize for Music for Silenced Voices: Shostokovich and His Fifteen Quartets.  She has written for The New York Times Book Review, and my favorite The Times [London] Literary Supplement. 

Lesser divides the book into convenient categories including, “Character and Plot,” “Novelty,” Authority,” “Grandeur and Intimacy,” and the intriguing “Inconclusions.”  However my favorite proved to be the “Afterword: The Book as Physical Object.”

Her style is chatty and actually fun.  She opens her prologue with, “It’s not a question I can completely answer.  There are abundant reasons, some of them worse that others and many of them mutually contradictory.  To pass the time.  To savor the existence of time.  To escape from myself in someone else’s words.  To exercise my critical capacities.  To flee from the need for rational explanations” (3).  Although I have never given it much thought, these are all reasons I read.

When I was about 6 or 7, I was already an avid reader.  I wanted more of what my mother would share with me before I lay me down to sleep each night.  One day, I asked my Dad where he learned all the things he did.  Is one word answer, “Books” hooked me and raised me from avid to voracious.

When Lesser starts a new book, she tells us, “”I open the cover and sniff the pages before I even start to read.  I always think the smell of that paper goes with its feel, the tangible sensation of a thick, textured, easily turnable page on which the embedded black print looks as if it could be felt with a fingertip, even when it can’t” (188). 

She also brings the interesting idea spatial aspect of a printed book.  She writes, “someone who remembers specific passages in the spatial way I do – as in ‘I think it was on the left-hand side of the page, not more than two or three pages before a chapter break” – becomes lost in the amorphous, ever-varying sea of the digital page” (189).  She mentions the conveniences of tablets and e-readers.

When she finishes a book, she holds “the pleasant weight of the closed book for a moment in my hands, as if to bid its story a silent goodbye, and then I turned it over” (204). 

Wendy Lesser and I are kindred spirits.  We both have the same devotion to the printed page in all aspects: vision, touch, smell, and, of course memory.  Get a copy of Why I Read: The Serious Pleasure of Books and explore in detail your love of reading.

--Chiron, 6/16/14

Here and Now: Letters 2008-2011 by Paul Auster & J.M. Coetzee

Way back in 1976, someone, whom I have long forgotten, gave me a copy of The Letters of William Faulkner. I never read any such collection, and I could not imagine it would be worth my time. The friend asked me if I had read the book, but I pleaded too much work, too many things to read, but I would get to it. After the third request, I decided to spend a rainy weekend with Faulkner. I was completely surprised at how interesting the letters were. Since then, I have amassed a nice collection of letters – mostly those of writers.

Recently published, Here and Now collects letters exchanged between Paul Auster and J.M. Coetzee from 2008 to 2011. I have read a few of Australian writer Coetzee’s works, but only recently discovered Auster. I admire both these writers, and I was thrilled when the book arrived at my door within a day or two of publication.

Paul Auster

J.M. Coetzee receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature

Paul and John – as they address each other – share wide-ranging but similar interests. An extended dialogue on sports was interesting, as were comments on the political situation in the U.S. and other parts of the world. History comes into play as well, since Coetzee was born in South Africa, but now lives in Adelaide, Australia. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2003. Auster lives in Brooklyn. He won the prestigious Prince Asturias Prize for Literature in 2006.

The real meaty bits of their correspondence, however, can be found in their discussions of writing and reading. I have added a half dozen books to my wish list, along with a few films.

Coetzee receives a letter from a woman accusing him of anti-Semitism. He asks Auster for advice on how to respond. He wrote, “Do nothing—or something […] write to the woman … and tell her that you have written a novel, not a tract on ethical conduct, and that disparaging remarks […] [of] anti-Semitism, are a part of the world we live in, and just because your character says what she says does not mean that you endorse her comments. […] Do writers of murder stories endorse murder?” (95). I have found myself defending a number of writers over the years in exactly the same way.

Auster also comments on reading, “Isn’t reading the art of seeing things for yourself, of conjuring up images in your own head? And isn’t the beauty of reading all about the silence that surrounds you as you plunge into the story, the sound of the author’s voice resonating inside you to the exclusion of all other sounds?” (177).
Oh, how I long for the days of letters coming from far away! I carried on (and off) an exchange with a pen-pal I got in high school for over 30 years. The onion skin paper, the strange stamps, trying to translate the German to English all held many, many fond memories. I still have the box of letters and small gifts I received. All that is lost in the age of email.

Try this slim volume of letters, and I am sure you will find a whole new world ripe for exploration. 5 stars

--Chiron, 4/14/13