2008

Phantoms on the Bookshelves – Jacques Bonnet

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My friend Clare has struck gold again with Phantoms on the Bookshelves by Jacques Bonnet, which she got me for my birthday a month ago.  Admittedly it was on my Amazon wishlist (and thus must have been mentioned by someone in the blogosphere… was it you?) but girl still done good.  I’ve added it to my 50 Books You Must Read About not simply because it’s wonderful, but because it is so perfect a book for the bibliophile blogger.

Published in 2008 in French, and translated by Siân Reynolds in 2010, Phantoms on the Bookshelves is a sort of memoir and sort of essay collection about what it is like to live with and love books – but on a scale few of us can imagine.  Bonnet is the proud owner of several tens of thousands of books – about 40,000, if memory serves – and talks about people with similar numbers of books as though they were in secret fraternity, which is rather adorable.  Better yet, he is first and foremost a reader, and his books reflect that:

I’m talking about a working library, the kind where you don’t hesitate to write on your books, or read them in the bath; a library that results from keeping everything you have ever read – including paperbacks and perhaps several editions of the same title – as well as the ones you mean to read one day.  A non-specialist library, or rather one specialized in so many areas that it becomes a general one.
People who collect books primarily for their value, or who think a first edition is infinitely preferable to a tenth, are anathema to the whole-hearted lover of reading – I could empathise so much with Bonnet, although I have no plans to have a library quite as large as his.  I can see myself getting to ten thousand, though, especially if I use Bonnet as my conscience – he has the delightful habit of many bloggers I know; being able to justify any and all book purchases.  I’m sure some of you are longing to write in the comments about betraying libraries or cutting down trees or the lust of avarice, but Phantoms on the Bookshelves is not a book for common sense responses, it is a book for illogical aspiration and unashamed book-adoration.

But practicality is certainly not left behind.  I love reading about the ways in which people organise their bookshelves, and this is all the more important if books are likely to disappear forever if disorganised.  Bonnet writes fascinatingly about finding space for big collections, and about the various schemes he has considered for his own collection – which reveals it to be far broader than I can boast.  He worries about where to put authors born in Yugoslavia, now that it no longer exists, what to do with his Frisian books, and all sorts of other considerations which my largely-British largely-literary library has never really had to worry about.

His chapters on not just on organising bookshelves, of course. He writes wonderfully about reading itself (‘every time you open a book for the first time, there is something akin to safe-breaking about it’), about diaries, dictionaries, destitute authors, and – heartbreakingly – those libraries lost to destruction.  Not just Alexandria and the like, but personal libraries lost to fire, and what the possessors did afterwards.  Bonnet also suggests – another way in which these bookshelves are filled with phantoms – that the enormous library is possibly a doomed creature:

we may be pretty sure that vast and unwieldy personal collections of a few tens of thousands of books are likely to disappear, taking their phantoms with them.  This little book is being written from a continent which is about to be lost forever
He blames e-readers, I think, but perhaps the premium of space will also play its part.  But I can’t see why there wouldn’t still be just as many people who can afford to have this luxury as there were before…

The mark of a great book about books is whether or not familiarity with the titles mentioned matters.  One of the reasons I love and cherish Susan Hill’s Howards End is on the Landing is because so many of the authors she writes about mean something to me, either through having read or meaning to read.  I love Alberto Manguel’s books on reading, but tend to skim bits about Borges (and love the bits about Lewis Carroll).  Well, Jacques Bonnet mentioned maybe one book I’d read, and another couple I’d heard of, and it didn’t matter at all.  Even though a sizeable portion of the books mentioned have never been translated out of French, I still loved reading about them.  That’s impressive work, Monsieur Bonnet.

I name-checked Manguel there (and a review of A Reader on Reading is forthcoming) – I love his books, but not in the same way that I love Phantoms on the Bookshelves.  Manguel is a great reader, of course, but he is almost always scholarly at the same time – Jacques Bonnet is more like the friendly face at your book group who will enthuse about managing to squeeze another bookcase into the corner of the living room.  More of a bibliophile friend, in general.  Phantoms on the Bookshelves certainly isn’t a philistines’ book by any means, but nor does it alienate with erudition.  It would be another perfect Christmas gift for the bibliophile in your life (or to drop heavy hints about) – it was the perfect birthday gift for me.

A Year of Mornings

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The book publication I’ve been most eagerly awaiting is one with almost no words. Which might not say much for Stuck-in-a-Book’s literary credentials, but perhaps you’ll understand when I tell you what the book is…

I’ve eulogised about the blog 3191 before – this post could scarcely be bettered by a teenage girl waving pom-poms and screaming ‘Oh my gawwsh, they’re so, like, awesome!’ For those who haven’t come across their blog, either pop over there and have a look, or go to my post linked above to read what they do. In brief, two people living 3191 miles apart took photos every morning and posted them alongside each other – now they do the same in the evening. Beautiful and unexpected coincidences, symmetries, contrasts would appear – both are brilliant photographers, focusing on the details of normal, domestic life.

So I first in line to Princeton Architectural Press to ask for a review copy, when I found out that A Year of Mornings was going to be published in book format. And it’s delicious. The book is out in the US at the beginning of October (though their blog suggests it’s out now, so maybe they know best) and out on Amazon.co.uk a bit later – though the date there is changing every now and then. Keep an eye out. The pictures aren’t done quite how I expected – the photos are done in pairs, as on the blog, but the sets of two aren’t all the same size, and are at odd positions over the pages. It kinda works, but sometimes means my favourite pairs are rather small (20th June is perhaps my favourite, but honourable mention must go to 11th July) – but this is a small quibble.

Mav and Steph, with Princeton Architectural Press on design, have created a truly beautiful, wonderful book of photographs which demonstrate talent without being pretentious or off-putting. This would make a lovely coffee table book, or a great gift, and I can’t thank Karen/Cornflower enough for pointing me in the direction of their blog over a year ago.

Welly-Throwing

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Today’s title is one of the suggestions I’ve had, in the face of Readers’ Block (or, since I’m just one person, Reader’s Block) – I *think* I did do welly-throwing – or welly-wanging – at a village fete once, but I’m probably not ready to take it up as an Olympic sport just yet. So I’ll carry on trying to shift the block, and get back to my normal Stuck position. Annoyingly, a headache has been added to the mix. On the bright side, today I completed my European Computer Driving Licence, which can be stuck squarely onto my CV, though it would be an exaggeration to say I yet understood Access or the finer workings of Excel. Part of the amusement of the course was trying to unlearn everything since about 1998, when the test was made. Formating a floppy disk, anyone?

The book I’m currently reading bits of here and there is The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop by Lewis Buzbee, which I bought when meeting online friends in London. It’s ‘a memoir, a history’ of Buzbee’s life with books – working in a bookshop, working as a publisher’s sales rep, just generally living and loving books – and interspersed with this is the history of books and booksellers. What a lot of times the word ‘book’ was in that sentence – what’s the opposite of aversion therapy? The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop isn’t overly sentimental, since Buzbee has had to understand the commodity aspect of books, but he speaks with a voice which every booklover will recognise and respond to:

When I walk into a bookstore, any bookstore, first thing in the morning, I’m flooded with a sense of hushed excitement. I shouldn’t feel this way. I’ve spent most of my adult life working in bookstores, either as a bookseller or a publisher’s sales rep, and even though I no longer work in the business, as an incurable reader I find myself in a bookstore at least five times a week. Shouldn’t I be blase about it all by now? In the quiet of such a morning, however, the store’s displays stacked squarely and its shelves tidy and promising, I know that this is no mere shop. When a bookstore opens its doors, the rest of the world enters, too, the days’ weather and the day’s news, the streams of customers, and of course the boxes of books and the many other worlds they contain – books of facts and truths, books newly written and those first read centuries before, books of great relevance and of absolute banality. Standing in the middle of this confluence, I can’t help but feel the possibility of the universe unfolding a little, once upon a time.

The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop is materially beautiful, with deckled edges and thick paper, but much more significant is the kindred spirit you’ll find inside. If anything can make me remember how much I love books, this should do it.

Halfway to Venus

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Halfway to Venus sounds like a Science Fiction novel… but when the Venus in question is of the de Milo variety, things become clear. I don’t know how to introduce this non-fiction book, as… well, it is about living with one arm, and the history of amputation in literature and reality. But Sarah Anderson, the author, says how much she hates to be thought of as “the woman with one arm” – and Halfway to Venus shouldn’t simply be labelled “the book by the woman with one arm”.

Sarah Anderson (pictured below, in a photograph by John Swannell) had synovial sarcoma, a variety of cancer, as a child – which led her to have her left arm amputated at the age of ten. ‘I recall feeling that if I could only put into words how much I didn’t want this to happen, they would have to listen to me; and the fact that I obviously hadn’t been eloquent enough I saw as some kind of failure on my part.’ Anderson’s coping strategy, she writes, was not mentioning it; assuming others couldn’t notice. Amazingly, Sarah was 19 before she asked her parents, “What happened to my arm?” The central strand of Halfway to Venus narrates her experiences whilst growing up, and also career-wise and relationship-wise – from the travel bookshop which proved inspiration for Notting Hill to potential ‘acrotomophiles’, who are attracted to ‘amputees’. In fact, much of Anderson’s examination is not herself, but others – a refrain throughout is that other people are the major issue; trying to anticipate their reactions, but resenting having to be the one to smooth things along.

This, as I said, is the central thread – but Halfway to Venus is so much more. I was a little uncertain about reading the book, lest it be simply misery lit. of the variety which pervades all bookshops, but nothing could be further from the truth. Anderson embarks upon a fascinating and very readable history of amputation, lack of limbs, and the arm and hand as considered through time. As long ago as AD 80, Quintilian wrote ‘other portions of the body merely help the speaker, whereas the hands may almost be said to speak’ So many facts leapt from the page – did you know, for instance, that nine out of ten people can’t identify their own hand from a selection of photographs?
Woven alongside Anderson’s autobiographical narrative, and this anatomical history, are excerpts from many other books, mostly autobiographical, concerning life without certain limbs or hands or feet. These offer a rich collection of viewpoints – and, unsurprisingly, those writing them are as different from each other as any other selection of people. Anderson’s own feelings towards her amputated arm aren’t clear cut either – sometimes she writes that she hates any reference being made; at other times she appreciates the directness of Americans she met. She enjoys participating in a One-Armed Dove Hunt (!!), but usually avoids any such grouping. A few things baffled me – she, and many others, consider prosphetics as trying to ‘be something you’re not’. I wear glasses – further down the spectrum, but still a prosphetic, in as much as it gives my eyes sight they wouldn’t have in my unaided state. Where can the line be drawn?

It is to Anderson’s credit that Halfway to Venus brings out so many questions and reflections and reactions. A very honest book of autobiography, it is also a fascinating compedium, and with an engaging writing style which is all too often omitted from well-researched non-fiction.

Before I go, must just mention a new blog – Oxford-reader – as you can see, from the same hallowed city as Stuck-in-a-Book, and with many of the same tastes. Do go along and toast her addition to the blogosphere.

Shorter Than Fiction

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It’s always difficult to review collections of short stories, or even consider them in one’s mind effectively. Should they be treated as ten or twenty separate works, or as one work? Sometimes there is an obvious linking style – as with Katherine Mansfield, say – which makes every narrative unmistakably by the same author, even if you can’t put your finger on the reason why. Other writers, like Clare Wigfall (whose The Loudest Sound and Nothing I talked about last August) have a huge variety and range in their style. I don’t think either approach is intrinsically superior, but the former is lot easier to make generalisations about!

Two short story writers have sent me their debut collections recently, both of whom are rather prolific and much-published in various publications. Balancing on the Edge of the World by Elizabeth Baines, and Words from a Glass Bubble by Vanessa Gebbie. I think the best way to chat about these books is to pick the story from each which I most enjoyed, and which is fairly representative, and use that as a starting point.

The blurb to Baines’ Balancing on the Edge of the Worlds says the stories are all about power – the keeping, losing, grasping or relinquishing of it. That’s probably as unifying a theme as any, but it’s probably easier to suggest a unifying style. Baines’ writing has a soothing softness to it, but somehow each story feels haunted and uneasy, until a turn (nothing so histrionic as a ‘twist’, if you can see the difference) justifies this foreboding. But even with uneasiness, and occasional tragedy, that softness remains.

The story I wanted to pick out is ‘Compass and Torch’ – in the third person, an uncertain boy on a trip with his Dad, whom he doesn’t often see. ‘The boy is intent. Watching Dad. Watching what Dad is. Drinking it in: the essence of Dad.’ The awkwardness of their relationship – with its latent closeness, and surface of discomfort – is portrayed so exactly. We see it first in relation to the torch, of which the boy is so anxiously proud:

The boy is chattering: ‘Have you brought one too, have you brought a torch?’ ‘Oh, yes!’ Is this a problem? the boy suddenly wonders. Does this make one of the torches redundant? For a brief moment he is uncertain, potentially dismayed, a mood which the man, for all his distraction, catches. ‘We can use both of them, can’t we, Dad?’ ‘Oh yes! Yes, of couse!’ Then a swoop of delight: ‘We can light up more with both, can’t we?’ ‘Oh yes, certainly!’ The man too is gratefully caught on a wave of triumph. ‘Oh, yes, two are definitely better! Back-up, for a start.’
I shouldn’t dream of telling you the end of this story, except that it is done calmly in a couple of sentences, and won’t leave your mind for some time. Baines’ stories are executed with a subtle smoothness, and a precise portrayal of human relationships – both the surface of them, and what goes on underneath. A great debut.

Words from a Glass Bubble by Vanessa Gebbie has an equally varied group of scenarios, narrators and themes – but her voice is rather harsher, more concerned with the gritty and the earthy. Occasionally a quieter voice creeps through, which leaves one staring at the page at the sheer pathos Gebbie can create. ‘The Kettle on the Boat’, for instance, where parents quietly take their Inuit daughter away on a boat; she narrates the journey, and leave her for adoption: “If I am not there to help, how will Mama know when the fish are ready?”

The one I wanted to point to, though, is ‘Cactus Man’. ‘The Kettle on the Boat’ was my favourite, but ‘Cactus Man’ is perhaps more representative. ‘Spike’, an enthusiast and collector of cacti , wants to discover his real name because he is getting married. He visits a social worker who can look through his files and tell him.

‘I was saying how unusual your case is.’ ‘Can’t be doing with too much usual.’ ‘Sorry?’ ‘We feed off being unusual, us lot.’ ‘Oh, I see’.

The story is one of muted disappointment, understated grief and an eventual path of hope for Spike. Gebbie is at her most subtle here, and manages to evoke the lives of her central characters completely, visualised through the stilted attempts of Spike to gain a firmer grasp on his identity. There is nothing so saccharine as a ‘love conquers all’ message here (however true that may be) but a sense that hope can be found amongst fragility and discouragement.

Both collections are published by Salt Publishing.