How Did I Get Here From There?

Wow, close call!  I almost didn't read this book.  Val loaned it to me last fall and I let it lay on the TBR.  Then, while I was packing books, I had a fit of pique about the large job before me, and decided that there were too many books in my apartment and I would   return this one.  After all, I didn't have the foggiest about who Claire Rayner (1931-2010) was.  As I was taking the book upstairs, my conscience smote me and I decided to peek in and read a couple of pages so I could tell Val that I'd tried it and it didn't hold my interest.  Instead, I was immediately hooked and couldn't stop reading.

 This memoir of Britain's favorite "agony aunt" who was also a journalist (primarily about medical issues) and a novelist is one of the best memoirs I have ever read.  Her story, up till the age of 20, is like something out of Dickens, complete with cruel, stupid parents, being evacuated with other children in London during wartime, an extended stay in a psychiatric hospital (for an overactive thyroid!) in Canada, and her repeated, plucky efforts to be independent of the abovementioned parents from the age of 14.  Her writing style crackles with intelligence and feels so honest.  More than once, she frankly admits that there's "a black hole in my memory" and she couldn't remember exactly what happened.  Many other memoir writers would have at least taken a stab at the truth whether they hit or missed it.

Rayner's coming of age and her training to be a nurse coincided with the birth of the National Health Service in England, so her comments and insights were illuminating to an American reader.  I was a little surprised at some of her views on medical practices (for example, although she trained as a midwife, she thought women should deliver in hospitals and she spoke out in favor of electric shock as a useful therapy for depression, and felt that "talk therapy" often prolonged depression), but her views, backed with a lifetime of observation and experience, were thoughtful and seemed to come from a place of deep consideration and compassion.  If I had been English and ailing in some way, I would have been perfectly comfortable having Claire Rayner as my advocate.

Find a copy of How Did I Get Here From There? and discover this vital and outspoken woman for yourself.  A big thank you to Val for loaning me her copy.  

So LOL Seollal Update: The End

My So LOL Seollal Reading Adventure ended with a whimper.  Not even a full-throated whimper.  A wimpy whimper.  I had trouble reading.  I want to blame it on the cold weather.  My brain felt crumbly, like the topping on apple crumble.  Oooh, apple crumble.  That sounds nice, right about now, served up with a nice hot cup of coffee.

Anyway...

On the last day of Seollal, I managed to read less than 50 pages of Shutting Out The Sun: How Japan Created Its Own Lost Generation by Michael Zielenziger.  Published in 2006, this book examines hikikomori, the young people who feel burnt out by the pressures of Japanese society.  Their way of coping is not to cope.  They drop out of everything and retreat to their bedrooms.   The author wrote in the introduction that later on in the book, Japan will be compared with its closest neighbor, South Korea.  I'm very much looking forward to that part, if I can ever get my brain out of PARK.

Teri, on the other hand, ended her So LOL Seollal not just with a bang, but a whole fleet of fireworks.  No apple crumble brain for her!  She finished The Apothecary's Daughter by Julie Klassen, breezed through The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving and in the waning hours of the challenge, started Fools Rush In by Janice Thompson.  She didn't seem keen on finishing it though ("The dog's name is Yorkie-Poo") and moved on to Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins.

Thanks, Teri!  Let's do this again, same time next year.  Or why wait?  Let's cook up another challenge!

Last thoughts:  If I'd really been thinking about this, I would have included a book about a dragon, perhaps a reread of The Paper Bag Princess.  Better luck next year.  I guess I have a while to figure out what's next on the Chinese calendar.

Teri and Susan's So LOL Seollal Reading Adventure

Time goes fast here.  It's Seollal again, which is how the Koreans refer to Chinese New Year.  The country will devote itself to this holiday for 3 days:  Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.   Transportation of all kinds will be nightmarishly crowded.  It's a great time to stay home and turn pages.

 With no conveniently nearby ancestors to worship, no beautiful hanbok to wear and no plump red envelopes coming our way, my mean reading machine friend Teri and I have decided that this is the perfect time for our first joint reading challenge:

So LOL Seollal  

Over the next 3 days, we will periodically count up books and pages read.  We've decided not to skip sleep (although pajamas seem to be emerging as the preferred dress code) and generally aim for having fun.  If  you're in Korea, or just in your pajamas, you're welcome to join us.

"It's probably all Enid Blyton's fault.": A Secret Seven Conversation with the Terrific Two

My Cracked Spinz book group read Puzzle for the Secret Seven by Enid Blyton for our September meeting. Unfortunately, I had spoiled any enjoyment I might have gotten out of the book by first going to YouTube and watching Enid. This biopic presents a rather unsympathetic side of Blyton. Helena Bonham Carter starred as the title character and she really nailed it. I found myself -- and still find, actually -- frozen by that performance from reacting to her work.

Luckily, help was on the way. Cracked Spinz members Val and Paul both grew up in England and read Blyton's Secret Seven and Famous Five books at a young age. I was interested in their "double-vision" --what they remembered all these years about the books and what is there for them now as adults. For a couple of weeks they carried on the following email conversation which they've generously allowed me to turn into a blog post.

Paul:  Hi Val.  First, thanks for reuniting me with the Secret Seven after our 35 year separation.  It was quite an eye-opener.  When I was a kid, I used to prefer the Secret Seven to the Famous Five - Blyton's original band of investigating kids - because I felt I could relate to them more.  The Famous Five were clearly upper class kids from another era, whereas somehow the Secret Seven felt more modern, more democratic.  I can't believe I really felt that way after just reading Puzzle for the Secret Seven.  I was surprised at how dated the mindset was.  Although it was written in 1958, these are more like little Edwardian kids, kids of the empire, with a belief in racial superiority and a duty of care towards the lower orders.  It was appalling really how they fixed up the gipsy woman's caravan, then thought nothing of walking into it uninvited to search for the stolen violin.  I definitely want to read a Famous Five book now to check if they are really more patrician than the Secret Seven.

I don't have any problem with these books still being published and read by kids today, but I wish they wouldn't tinker with them.  In this edition, they've updated the money with references to '50 pence' which didn't exist then, and kids being given 20 pounds - a vast sum in the 1950s - to go to the fair.  It should be kept clear that these books are period pieces and that these people and they way they think belong in the past.

Val:  Paul, I totally agree with what you are saying.  As a child, I found the storylines to be kind of comforting with the cosy tales of tea and parents who were around  but not interfering with adventure!  Reading it as an adult I kept getting tripped up by the language in particular.  They way Blyton describes the poverty-stricken woman is so negative.  Meanwhile, her oldest child is portrayed as being 'not quite right in the head' -- an observation which is unchallenged by any of these so called detectives!

What did you make of her usage of the 'SS' represented in symbols on group badges and the shed door?

I also felt myself getting annoyed at the gender stratification, with the girls often being left out of the most exciting projects.

Paul:  Dunno about the SS thing, but people have tried to make the Nazi connection with Blyton.  I just Googled an article in the Independent about how she seemed not to object to talk of appeasement at some party in the late 1930s - really poor stuff, a complete non-story (it actually has a gaudy "Revealed" headline too, but it doesn't reveal anything).  I doubt she was a Nazi-sympathiser then, but Peter out of the Secret Seven - I could definitely see him in a Gestapo uniform.  I'm not sure she always presents Peter as a hero, though.  He gets called an idiot in this book for insisting on passwords from people he knows, and Blyton really does paint him as an idiot in scenes like that.

And yeah, the sexism was something else that wouldn't be tolerated now.  The girls weren't allowed to investigate anything after dark!  I'd be interested to know what you think about kids reading this kind of thing now.  Do you think 21st century girls could, or should, enjoy these stories?

Val:  My guilty secret is that I saw a lot of myself in Peter!  His need for order and protocol made me cringe but nevertheless...I never thought about the fact that she was belittling him in those scenes, though now you say it, it makes sense.  I have a lingering suspicion that he was much more a reflection of herself.  If you have seen the film 'Enid' on YouTube you'll know what I mean.

The story you linked to seems to be a clear case of self-promotion for the writer!  While I do believe that she had a lot of faults, I would hesitate to paint her as a Nazi sympathiser on such flimsy observations.

As for the sexism, sadly I think these days neither boys nor girls would be really allowed to wander around so freely.  That's a terrible shame as crime stats (concerning children as victims of abduction or assault) really haven't changed since then.  It's all about perception, I suppose.  On that subject, I felt uncomfortable when the hired hand went into the caravan - where the blind child was sleeping alone - and forbade the kids from going in with him.  It's really hard to read this stuff without being influenced by cultural perceptions of appropriate behavior.

The stories seem so old-fashioned to me now, in the language as much as the attitudes.  I'd like to think modern girls would see through that, but can't be sure.  The shelves of W.H. Smiths were stocked so I have to assume somebody is reading these!

The foreword to this story was written by one of Blyton's [two] daughters.  Did you know they tell completely different tales of their childhood?

Paul:  That's interesting about how kids wouldn't be allowed to roam free like we did in the 70s.  During summer holidays we would be out of the house after breakfast sometimes, going on long walks or bike-rides with a butty*-box and coming back around 5pm for our tea.  It was all quite Enid Blyton-ish, I suppose.  (We also formed secret societies and had meetings in sheds and garages).  When we were a bit older we'd be getting on buses and trains and generally getting out and about in the world without adult help.  It seemed like a normal part of growing up but I'm afraid you're right that kids don't do that so much now.  I was walking to school without adult supervision when I was eight or so I think, half an hour each way.  It seemed perfectly safe because there was a couple of hundred other kids all walking the same way.  You'd be hard pressed to find a kid of any age walking to school these days.  All this must distance modern children from the Blyton stories even more, but clearly there is still an appeal.  What could it be?  Why are they still reading them?  I'd love to know.

I never felt creeped out by the bit about Matt in the caravan with the boy, but I've looked back at it and I do a bit now.  "Matt walked into the dark caravan making soft, comforting noises in his deep, kind voice.  Peter flashed his torch swiftly inside and saw Benny's dark head on a pillow in the corner.  Old Matt bent over him."  Is there something wrong with how we assess interaction between adults and children now?  Surely Blyton never intended to suggest anything untoward going on, but this passage does make alarm bells ring in our modern sensibilities.  (My cousin is a primary school teacher in the UK; she has been advised never to touch a child, even to comfort a five-year-old with a scraped knee).

I don't really know anything about Blyton's life, character or her relationship with her daughters.  It's interesting that they have different stories to tell though - were they a bit dysfunctional?

* sandwich - for our transatlantic readers

Val:  My life growing up was pretty much like yours.  We had a massive field at the back and spent entire days there making camps and wishing for a tree house!  We also had secret societies, though nothing much mysterious ever happened.  This led us to go looking for things.  I remember once we decided the bloke down the street was kidnapping people and cutting them up in his shed. (He was always in there banging about - it kind of fit.)  I'll never forget the day we were skulking about in the bit of the field behind his house, peering through the hedge and taking notes (lol).  Then the man himself came up behind us and asked what we were up to.  I have never run as fast in my life.

I wonder if kids today like the books for the same reasons I did - they represent something you can't quite touch but yet it all seems very real, like it could very well happen to somebody - not just you, and kind of comforting.  Maybe we should do some more research on this topic.  I'm going to ask about it on Twitter.

Maybe I noticed the (unintended I am sure) connotations of Matt's actions because I was reading it with an eye out for how it seems in current society and the entirely different place kids today occupy there.

I think I was about 10 or 11 when my mother told me that Blyton was 'not a nice person'.  I can clearly remember that this information upset me, and I read a lot more about it as I grew up.  In a nutshell it seems that she craved attention from children but had no real interest in her own.

I remember reading Noddy and Big Ears (very un-PC names these days), and I also loved Blyton's boarding school books.  Did you read more than the SS and FF?

Paul:  No, I never did read any Blyton outside of FF and SS, but I think you really got to the core of the appeal there, when you said that what happens to the kids in the books could, maybe, possibly happen to you and your 'secret club'.  A member of our secret club also had a sinister neighbour we used to spy on and keep notes about.  We imagined him getting up to all sorts of dastardly deeds and would often sneak into his back garden and try to look through his windows.  We got chased once or twice, too.  Our stories are really similar and it's probably all Enid Blyton's fault.  There were probably kids all over the country harassing perfectly innocent neighbours after reading her books.  Growing up in the suburbs was so boring that you always craved excitement and when it never came you just had to invent it.  Blyton was certainly an inspiration there, and it makes me think of her more sympathetically.  You don't critically examine your influences as a kid, but looking back, I think my childhood experiences were much more colourful because of what her stories egged us on to do.

I'm interested in how culture-specific all this is.  I'd like to read some Korean children's literature to find out what kind of examples it's setting.  I'm guessing there very different.  but the whole thing is skewed by chronology, Blyton being so dated, so you might have to go back in time for a true comparison.  Also, Korean children's literature today, as far as I can see is dominated by foreign stuff like Harry Potter - though I hope I'm wrong.

It's also interesting how most of our observations on this are sociological and not literary.

Bybee:  I have a question:  What would be the approximate age a child would become interested in Blyton?  Also, at what point would they have outgrown the FF or the SS?  Are there any books of hers that appeal to older children, like young adults?

Paul:  Probably started when I was sevenish.  I was done with em by the time I was ten, I think.  Val?

Val:  I am pretty sure I was into the boarding school books by 11 or so.

Paul and Val, thanks so much for agreeing to do this!  I hope you'll both decide to reread a Famous Five book and come back for another conversation.

Summer Stack

Below is a list of books that were neatly stacked up on my mom's coffee table and on the bedside table in the guest bedroom awaiting my arrival.  Most are from her book-reading friends.  A couple are things I ordered when I was still in Korea and had sent to my US address.  One is actually the result of my total susceptiblity to the siren song of the local indie bookstore. Which books belong in which category?  Let's look closely:

Rhett Butler's People - Donald McCaig.  I really don't like the trend of novelists bouncing off of a beloved classic, but will admit that some attempts are better than others.  I also feel kind of oogy and unpleasant when the Margaret Mitchell Estate hand-picks authors they deem suitable to write the sequels to Gone with the Wind that will inevitably be written.  I suspect that not only do they hand-pick, they breathe all over the manuscript and squabble about content. Having said all of that, I'm willing to give Rhett Butler's People a try.  For all of his prominence in Gone with the Wind and his snappy repartee with Scarlett O'Hara, Rhett is a rather shadowy and interesting character, deserving of a novel of his own. As the years have passed since my first reading, Rhett reminds me more and more of an antebellum Sam Spade.  No, he wasn't a private detective, but he could have been.  The Pinkertons would've snapped him up in a second.   I'm looking at the title page of Rhett Butler's People.  I'm slightly sweating and practically praying that McCaig didn't...mess Rhett up.  (Mom's Reading Friends category)

Sorry to be So Cheerful - Hildegarde Dolson.  A 1955 collection of witty essays and sketches that were first published in places like The Village Voice and The New Yorker.  I read this book years ago and remember it being even funnier than We Shook the Family Tree.  Did my memory play a trick on me?  I'll know in a few weeks.  I'm so delighted to have this book that I'm saving it up like a piece of candy. (Frenzied Overseas Ordering category)

Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese.  I received this book from a favorite blogger last year, but can't exactly remember who.  I'm almost sure it was Softdrink from Fizzy Thoughts.  So many good things have been written about this book that I'm a little scared of all the hype, but I'm going to go ahead and read it so I won't have to scan other bloggers' reviews anymore. (Frenzied Overseas Ordering category -- Softdrink had a drawing and I entered and won)

The Last Lecture - Randy Pausch.  I really don't want to read this.  Having read the first few pages, I know that Pausch is dying from cancer.  He and his wife were having some creepy discussions -- almost arguments -- in which he wants to go out in a blaze of glory with one last kick-ass lecture about the meaning of life and she's petulantly reminding him that if he does this lecture, he'd miss her birthday, which would be the last they'd celebrate together.  I'm proceeding with trepidation, but it's short, so I can muscle through.  If I had my druthers, I'd rather read How Shall I Tell the Dog? by Miles Kington, which is a memoir that deals with the author's iminent demise. (Mom's Reading Friends category)

The Wilder Life - Wendy McClure.  Everytime I come to America, my Little House on the Prairie mania (which is mostly book, with strong accents of TV)  kicks smartly into overdrive.  I loves me some Laura.  What's keeping me from pointing my mom's car towards Mansfield, Missouri right this very minute?  Not to mention that I'm still mourning that I missed Allison Arngrim's book signing at the Great Mall of America last summer.  Maybe this summer will be when I finally get to see the only episode of Little House on the Prairie that I've never seen -- the one where Laura gives birth to baby Rose.  Wendy McClure lets that "calico sunbonnet freak flag fly" for all of us nerdy bonnetheads. This book would not let me leave the bookstore without it, I swear, although Ma Ingalls would not approve of either my use of oaths or my spendthrift ways.  As a bonus, the book was mistakenly swathed in not one, but two dustjackets, so I guess it's ready for a long winter.  (Siren Song category)

It's Raining Books, Hallelujah

This continues to be my lucky month. Last week, my co-worker Mike came back from Canada "with a shit-tonne of books". He immediately sent out an invitation to friends and neighbors to come over and grab the old books he'd culled from his shelves to make room for the new. Since Mike's collection (as well as his sub-collections) is fresh and winsome with beguiling whiffs of quirkiness, I headed over there with The Spawn, who came to visit for a few days.

Although culling is becoming more and more of an elusive concept for me to grasp, never let it be said that I don't help out my friends in their time of need. Here's what I brought back to the now dangerously bulging Bybee-ary:

1. Mike Nelson's Movie Megacheese - Mike Nelson. Funny, funny guy. I already peeked into this 2000 collection and read his review of The Bridges of Madison County. It made me laugh in that embarrassing way that comes out all snortified.

2. Race Matters - Cornel West. I've heard a lot about this book and also read a couple of excerpts from it over the years.

3. Gang Leader for a Day - Sudhir Venkatesh. What began as a graduate school project turned into several years of friendship with a gang leader and an inside view of gritty life on the street.

4. How Right You Are, Jeeves - P.G. Wodehouse. My first Wodehouse book. Yes, that's a tear of joy.

5. Meridian - Alice Walker. I've only read her short stories and The Color Purple, so I'm eager to check out her early novels.

6. Music for Chameleons - Truman Capote. Except for In Cold Blood, I've never read any Capote. This looks like a nice mix of fiction and non-fiction in one volume.

7. King Solomon's Mines - H. Rider Haggard. Ever since reading The Lost City of Z, I've wanted to read some Rider Haggard.

8. Me Write Book: It Bigfoot Memoir - Graham Roumieu. I thought this was a children's picture book at first, so I grabbed it for the Children's Lit class I'll be teaching in now less than a week (eeeee!). Ooops. Here's an excerpt from near the front of the book: Stink Yes, everyone know Bigfoot smell like shit. Please make effort not to point out every time you see Bigfoot. Thank you. Oh well. Still looks like fun, and there's a bonus I just discovered: I was hoping that since Mike is Canadian and Roumieu looks like a French name, that Graham Roumieu was Canadian. Yes, he is! Yay, another one for the Canadian Book Challenge! Maple Leaf me!!!

9. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark. A nice Penguin copy with a still from the movie on the cover.

10. Of Human Bondage - W. Somerset Maugham. I already have a copy, but I love the Bantam Classic cover.

.

11. Love Me: A Novel - Garrison Keillor. Not sure about this one, but Mike, that silver-tongued so-and-so, glibly persuaded me to take it. I have a big culture gap concerning Lake Wobegon and Keillor, but he's from Minnesota, my new favorite state, so yah, you betcha, gotta give it a go.

Good thing I brought The Spawn along. I only meant for him to experience Mike's collection firsthand (he was mesmerized by the graphic novel subcollection), but he proved to be effective as my beast of burden. After that, he rested up and went to Suwon the next day to meet a former exchange student from his alma mater for lunch. Somehow, they drifted into a bookstore. That's my boy. He came back a few hours later with a copy of The Mist by Stephen King for himself and a copy of Carrie for me! That's my boy!

Reading In Canadian

I'm so pleased with (and TC&IB is shocked by) myself! I resumed the 2nd Canadian Book Challenge, Eh? this week and quickly polished off Anne's House of Dreams and Anne of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery. Finally, I can "leave" New Brunswick after so many months and get into the Northwest Territories. (Manitoba, I knew you for only a day.) I probably won't linger long in The Northwest Territories because I just finished the first chapter of Rainbow Valley, also by Montgomery. British Columbia, here I come! Damn, all this reading is making me hungry and thirsty! Poutine washed down with Moosehead? Tim Horton's? Both?

I'll have to take a break from all this Anne-love to read The Zahir by Paulo Coelho for book group. After The Witch of Portabello, I'm not really looking forward to it. No expectations -- I just want it to not to suck copious amounts.

Faulkner Guy loaned me Go Down, Moses. I appreciate William Faulkner and I'm reading the first story, "Was", but I'm going to need to get my bookmind right before heading back south. Tuffi is breathing impatiently through her nose. She's already threatened to march downhill and go live with Faulkner Guy. He's racing through my copy of Middlemarch like pigs through the corn.

This has been my best reading month in ages. I'm going to start working on my review roundup this week.

Her boo is her Boo?

My friends and family know that when they've got literature questions, I've got answers. For example: Remember that old book you checked out of the library in 11th grade and it had a greenish-gray cover, and it was about some doctor or lawyer marrying a younger woman who was a little on the trashy side? Sure, call me up. Yes, it's the middle of the night all over Korea, but so what? Cass Timberlane, by Sinclair Lewis, and he was a judge. And I was a sophomore in college. Yawn. You're welcome.

My latest lit question also concerns 20th century American literature, and it's a doozy. Before I begin, let me reassure you that I've got full permission to blog about this:

Friend: You know Boo Radley, right?

Me: You mean the Boo Radley from To Kill A Mockingbird, right?

Friend: Yes, of course! How many Boo Radleys are out there?

Me: I think there's an alternative band called that. What about Boo Radley?

Friend: You read that book, right?

Me: Sure, junior high.

Friend: Me, too. Get this: Last week [significant other] told me that he understands Boo Radley, that he identifies with Boo Radley. What the hell is that supposed to mean?

Me: I'm not sure. What do you think?

Friend: Well, he's painfully shy. And he hasn't worked in a while. Boo didn't have a job, did he?

Me: Boo was shy, but his problems went way beyond shyness and unemployment.

Friend: Like what?

Me: Well, I can't remember exactly. I haven't read To Kill A Mockingbird since 1976.

Friend: Same here. But the thing is, well, ever since he told me that he feels a deep connection with Boo Radley, I feel all...ewww....and...

Me: It's frosted your libido?

Friend: Yeah. I can't get Boo out of my mind. He's starting to look like Boo to me. I mean, it was nice and all that he saved Scout and Jem, but as far as hotness goes, no fucking way, excuse the pun.

Me: I know, Atticus is usually considered the hottie, although I kind of like Heck Tate, the sheriff. I think we should both go out and get copies of this book --

Friend: They have To Kill A Mockingbird in Korea?

Me: Oh yeah, it's everywhere. I'll be in Seoul on Friday anyway to get my ballot notarized, and there's a bookstore down the street from the American embassy. I'll get a copy and go through and highlight all the parts that mention Boo Radley. You do the same and we'll compare notes.

Friend: Can you break up with someone over this?

Me: God, this is starting to feel like Seinfeld. Let's reread first.

Booklife, It's A Good Life, And It's My Life

My abbreviated stump of a vacation/staycation finished on September 1st, and I went back to peddling English grammar, vocabulary and the joys of conversation. This semester, I'm teaching a class that meets Monday-Thursday, a class that meets every evening right around suppertime, and seven other classes that meet once a week. That kind of schedule will tear your bloghouse down room by room.

Happily, I jerked myself away from work long enough for the September 7th BOOKLEAVES meeting. We picked up a new member, Rebecca, who expresses herself clearly and succinctly and is a delight to talk to about all things bookish. While lunching at the Indian restaurant near Mitzi's apartment, we had an agreeable and extremely lively discussion about Persuasion, then the 8 of us headed back to Mitzi's to watch The Jane Austen Book Club. During the movie, we munched on freshly-baked cookies that Amber had brought, and Mitzi showed off her baking mojo, bringing forth peanut butter cookies and pumpkin empanadas at delicious intervals. After the movie, we chose A Spectacle Of Corruption by David Liss and The Road by Cormac McCarthy for our next two reads.

With a habitually heavy heart, I tore myself away from Seoul, but returning to work turned out to be a good thing for this bookworm. After 3-and-a-half years of working with me, my co-workers finally seem to be surrendering to my unwavering bibliomania. Martin and Zak both have copies of The Omnivore's Dilemma and are rigorously wading through it with promises that I'm next.

Saskatchewan Mike suddenly asked me one day if I'd read Ishmael.

"No, what's it about?" I asked.

"It's fuckin' brilliant; I'll bring it in," Mike told me, with an expression that suggested I was nuts for wanting an actual summary.

Willie from New Zealand is reading my copy of The God Delusion, and has reciprocated generously by loaning me what amounts to a Kiwi book explosion: The Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera, My Name Was Judas by C.K. Stead and Mr. Pip by Lloyd Jones. Cheers, Willie!

My new Aussie pal Belinda and I met up a couple of weeks ago when she came to Gumi, and she pulled The Pillars Of The Earth by Ken Follett out of her bag, telling me that she was reading and absolutely loving it. I had a bookish flashback to 2006, when I went to a book swap in Daegu and some guy came up and pressed this same novel in my hands and insisted that this was a wonderful novel, I must take this book home, I must read it. After seeing Belinda, I grabbed TPOTE off of the TBR shelf in my office, and began reading it. Wow. That book swap guy was right. Belinda was right. Let me add my voice to the chorus by echoing Saskatchewan Mike's abovementioned sentiment. Even better, my co-worker Evan saw me reading TPOTE in the lounge and asked if he might borrow it when I was finished. Wow again.

Even though my Welsh book buddy Pablo and I are no longer co-workers, we're also still exchanging books. He's really getting into Philip Roth's novels; he read Everyman earlier this year and borrowed my copy of American Pastoral. He also asked to borrow Beloved by Toni Morrison. He pressed his copy of Cloud Atlas at me. A few days later, I had a dream in which I decided I would call up Pablo and ask if he had any Evelyn Waugh I could borrow. Upon waking, I sent him an email instead, telling him about the dream, asking him if he had any Waugh, and how did he pronounce Waugh's first name?

Pablo replied: Don't know what's going on in your subconscious with that dream, and how I get into the mix with Waugh (Evelinn, I think) who I only know by repute is beyond me...saw some of the TV series Brideshead Revisted years ago and that was enough to deter me from sampling Waugh. Anybody who creates characters named Sebastian Flyte with an unhealthy preoccupation with teddy bears may encapsulate a certain type of Englishness but it does NOT resonate with us Celts.

So, anyway -- in spite of work, or because of it, my booklife seems to be thriving. The weekend coming up is a 3-day one because of Chuseok (Korean Thanksgiving). I'll use the opportunity to resume regular blogging.

A Box Of Books From Bronson

It was last Wednesday evening, and I had given up all hope of receiving mail for the day.


I was in CanadaBoy's office, playing with his dog, Ollie, and watching CanadaBoy razor recipes out of Men's Health magazine. Oooh wait...what's this issue? Josh Holloway on the cover? Shirtless, with his trademark cocky grin?...

A knock on the door. Annoyed, I looked over, wondering just who was messing with my Josh Holloway reverie. My frown changed to a smile. It was the campus post office student worker, and he was holding a box out to me and bowing.

CanadaBoy grunted and didn't even pause with the razor. He knew the drill: box, Bybee's office is next door...must be books.

Yep, it was books, all right. From my friend, Bronson. We went to graduate school together. He now lives in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. He looks like Vincent D'Onofrio.

Manfred Jr.'s share of the haul included a couple of books by Richard Roeper and a stack of new comic books. My share included:

With Six You Get Eggroll [movie tie-in paperback with Doris Day and Brian Keith on the cover]
Mutiny On The Bounty -Nordhoff and Hall
Daisy Fay And The Miracle Man -Fannie Flagg [Fannie Flagg's debut novel. I started reading it and got about halfway through and could not finish. The narrator is a young girl, but her voice feels too young and too thin and it just goes on and on for pages and pages. It's like hearing an unpleasantly high-pitched voice talking fast for hours and hours, and maybe it's saying something, but by that time, all you want is some aspirin and a billy club.]
All Creatures Great And Small -James Herriot
The Lord God Made Them All - James Herriot
Is There A Doctor In The Zoo? - David Taylor
Cat Stories -James Herriot
50 Great Short Stories -Milton Crane, Editor
Fiction 100: An Anthology Of Short Stories -James H. Pickering, Editor
Damon Runyon Favorites - Damon Runyon, foreword by Walter Winchell [this small paperback was published in 1943! There's a note at the front that says that our boys overseas need books, so when you're finished with this book, take it to your local public library, and they'll send it on.]

Wow, it's a great haul! Lots to look at. Thanks, Bronson!