I bought a book…

… called It’s a book.

This is an adorable picture book by Lane Smith that so accurately captures a reader’s love for books as well as a reader’s anxiety over the current status of books as an endangered species.

I am not sure how much a four year old would love this book, but I do so so so very much! Yesterday when I got the book, I went around the house hugging it. I was hugging this book, and also all books. I love the varying smells of different paper and ink combinations, the swoosh-swish sound made when you turn a page, and the fonts both elegant and serious.

I am displaying this sturdy hardcover picture book on my shelves. I stare at the cover that says “It’s a book.” This is a simple statement of fact of course, yet this also is what any bibliophile squeals when they locate a book, especially one he or she is fond of: “It’s a book. It’s a book! It’s a book.”

reading in public: Read what you want, including the weeks-old New York Times Magazine.

Reading the New York Times Magazine on the train has been an indispensible element of my Sunday routine. I first flip through the entire magazine, to the chagrin of whoever happens to sit next to me, to whet my reading appetite. Then I settle into my reading, starting from the very beginning with “The Way We Live Now” column. When I start to lose my concentration, or get antsy, or feel like briefly acknowledging the presence of the other people on the train, I look take a look around. In particular, I love to spot a fellow reader, especially a fellow reader of The New York Times Magazine.

I can’t resist checking which article the other person is reading. I am really just curious to see if at this moment, two strangers who happen to coincidentally be on the same car of the train, reading the same publication, are also reading the same article and possibly pondering the same ideas. But I must admit, if the other reader is on one of the longer pieces in the middle of the magazine while I am still enjoying the short weekly columns in the front of the magazine, I somehow feel behind in my reading. And if I happen to read the New York Times Magazine on a Monday or, gasp, a Tuesday, I feel a bit like a reading delinquent on display, a complete slacker who does not deserve to so effortlessly receive Virginia Heffernan’s witty column every week.

Then yesterday, I spotted another weekday New York Times magazine reader on the bus. I soon realized, after my compulsive checking of the article she was reading, that she was reading, not this past Sunday’s, but last Sunday’s magazine! I felt slightly superior, I am shamed to say. But then I realized that this lady does not care what anyone thinks of how much she is behind in her reading. She is proudly flopping the large thin papers of the two-week old magazine. I don’t really care either! I am going to read my super old periodicals in public too. Thank you brave lady who let life get her somewhat behind on her reading!

Normally, I don’t care if the book I am reading is 5 months old, 5 years old, or 50 years old. Granted news get old (and possibly irrelevant), I would enjoy my magazines and newspapers a lot more if I could just relax and ignore the imposing date printed on every page. A great lesson just in time: The New York Times last Sunday has already turned December-sized. It is thick with great holiday content like the fat book review and a holiday T-magazine. The date, especially on the Sunday paper with its surfeit of feature articles, shouldn’t be considered an expiration date… but a starting one.

And if that fails, I guess there is always reading these periodicals on a screen (e-reader, tablet pc, smart phone: take your pick). Then no nosy fellow commuter like me will be able to figure out if you are reading the current or the past edition of this or that publication, or if you are just starring at a blank screen to avoid making eye contact with people.

Letting go.

I had a major decluttering session last week and I came upon (one of) my dusty magazine racks. The old piles of New York Times in my navy blue IKEA rack symbolizes my naive belief that I can read, well, everything.

More words pour out daily, and a reader cannot keep up. It’s shocking and overwhelming to consider the amount of words that pour out each second, especially at a spiraling rate increase thanks to Twitter and such.

This is my shameful secret: I have “collections” of old periodicals—newspapers and magazines--that I can’t get myself to throw out because I haven’t quite “finished” with them. Of course I also have shelves and shelves of books I haven’t quite “finished,” but for some reason, it’s much more acceptable to have words bound in books than words bound in periodicals. But when all my piles of periodicals came together to an overwhelming heap of words I can only choke on, came crashing down was the belief or the desire to get through them all. So I decided take my first step to a manageable reading environment by throwing out the oldest pile, umm… I mean collection, of New York Times sections.

I am also trying to accept the fact that some things have to be left undone so that I can make room for new things, ya know, cut my losses. I figured that’s the grown up thing to do. So well, after I took a deep breathe (because it was a difficult decision but also because I did not want to breathe in the dust that soon would fill the room), I started making a paper recycling pile out of the old New York Times sections I would never read in full.

Initially I felt great! I was getting rid of a huge nagging burden (I think every one of my weekly to do list mentions something about attacking my periodical backlog… and it was never joyful to put that item on my list). I felt so free, free to fly over to current issues of nyt, vanity fair, in style, and huffington without feeling like I am cheating on the old issues that have been faithfully and patiently waiting for me. Adios yellowing hardening newprints.

But as I went further back into the past, I started getting nostalgic, which really proves that things get harder to throw out the longer you hold on to them, because with shared history, items become memory.

It was fun to go back in time though. I got to re-experience the New York Times the way it was a few years ago. Go back a couple of years, and the “Metropolitan” section was “The City.” The actual dimensions of the papers were larger. And is it just me, but did the New York Times Magazine contain more memoir like pieces than now?? In my decluttering/time traveling session, I got to relive some events that were vivid and hazy at the same time. For instance, there were Obama and McCain on the front page of 09/07/08 paper and Michael Phelps on the front page of 08/17/08 paper. But my journey ended on January 6, 2008, the earliest paper kept by me.

The recycling truck came and left with my really really old newspapers. I think I truly did the right thing for myself, even if my grandchildren won’t be able to see Obama selecting Biden to be on his ticket.

Whetting my appetite for children’s books

I know last August was a time when readers of children’s novels were eagerly anticipating the release of Mockingjay, the third and final installment of The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins. As for me, I generally dismissed children’s novels… until I read a pretty cool one last summer that got me hooked on children’s novels. When you reach me by Rebecca Stead was a very fun summer read. I don’t generally read Sci Fi (although I am really dying to read “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy), and honestly, I didn’t even know the book was going to be very  Sci-fi.

I read a nice review in the New York Times book review that made me want to read the book. Then I forgot all about it until a sixth grader lent me the book. I looked forward to the puzzle and a story about growing up in nyc. I loved the fact that it was such a New York City story and enjoyed how all the characters were so well developed. The abstract topics were balanced well by the ordinary concerns of a teenager involving friendship.

This book makes me want to read Young Adult books (well, maybe not the ones about cliques and vampires). I realize that children’s books can have a well written and sophisticated storyline. And it’s nice to read a short, concrete, digestible book once in awhile, a book you can read in one subway ride. Too bad today is the official first day of autumn and I feel compelled to read more serious books.

A lazy Saturday afternoon…

I have felt a tug or two but never a compulsion to read The Lovely Bones, Revolutionary Road, Twilight, or any other book before the movie version premiered. Still, I’m extremely annoyed with myself for not being able to pop in the 1995 Ang Lee directed “Sense and Sensibility” into the DVD player because it’s taking me a ridiculously long time to finish the book. I bought the movie at a great bargain weeks ago thinking that I’ll see the movie very soon when I finish reading the book. The DVD has been starring at me in its pristine, transparent wrapping, kind of judgmentally and impatiently.

Oh but it has become an event to read Jane Austen for me ever since I bought  the novels that came all bound together in a very pretty but unwieldy tome. Yes, it was one of those “complete works” door stopper. I love the ornate book, and I thought it a great idea at the time to get the enormous book since I had a great desire to consume all Jane Austen books and I can accomplish that task from one book. But since the book is heavy and entirely not portable, I don’t open the book in proportion to how much I love to read Jane Austen.  But today, I let tea in Alice’s lovely New Orleans teacup settle me into Sense and Sensibility, concerning myself with the frustrations of Elinor’s life. The hot weather outside also deterred me from reading some tiny book outside. I’d rather escape to Jane Austen world and deal with the living things in its many gardens than contend with the sweltering summer heat outside. What a blessing it is to be able to sit around on a Saturday afternoon sipping tea and sliding into Sense and Sensibility!

Dickinson is for the spring.

I started reading Emily Dickinson in April, when spring was the only fathomable season, to celebrate the poetry month. Today, a weekend away from the official beginning of the summer, I have finished my book of Emily Dickinson, all 1775 poems. Summer is my least favorite time of the year when the humidity outside matches the one in my mind, intensifying the stickiness I actually feel. There are people and other living things to contend with everywhere. So although I am kind of impressed with myself for having read all of Dickinson poems, coming to the end of that gray tome is quite sad.

The poems were so effective that just reading them would make me sneeze. But my sinus is slowly chilling out, and I am shedding my knitted hand warmers. I guess it’s time to stop reading about the raiment of nature and taunting eternity and get into my sluggish summer reading. 

Defying expectations

When you discover a surprising aspect to a person you thought you had all figured out, it can be pleasant or disturbing. Same goes for books. Books often take us on unexpected journeys, the kinds you couldn’t have envisioned just by looking at the cover or reading the author’s previous works. Readers love the thrill of finding worlds they know were previously unfathomable before and often find themselves in intriguing and fantastic realms.

Then there are books that take you on journeys you wish you had opted out of. I distinctly remember the disappointment and confusing I had endured in the seventh grade when I thought I had found a book in the vein of the beloved Charlotte’s Web. The cover had pictures of farm animals and the petite volume looked so approachable even shelved in the classics sections. Of course the book was Animal Farm and my middle school self kept wondering why the animals are sort of twisted and mean.

I had miscalculated again just last week. Remembering I had liked reading “No Exit” by Sartre in college, and noticing that the volume had three other plays in it, I grabbed the book for an interesting Saturday afternoon reading. I thought I would read three other plays about people sitting around in an ornate living room for all of eternity attaching words to their woes. All three plays were nothing like that.

The prose of those three plays came sharp and disturbing. I even had a nightmare about one of the plays. And I can’t decide if reading is wonderful or terrifying. What a risk we take when we follow the words on a page!