Reading

This morning, I was asked what contemporary authors I’ve read. At first, I couldn’t think of any. For someone who loves to read, it was a frightening feeling. Why couldn’t I recall anything sitting on the shelf by my desk? Am I reading and not retaining? Am I untouched by contemporary literature?

I don’t think so. At least, I hope not.

I think part of the answer lies in what I read, and why. Children’s fiction makes up a large part of my reading list—I’m working toward publishing children’s stories, so I’m reading children’s stories. Then there are the craft books, the fairy tale books, and the general studies books I use for my posts, my curiosity, and improving my work. Then come the pleasure books.

The last book I read simply for the joy of reading was Cat’s Cradle. This is not to say that I haven’t enjoyed many of the work-related books: Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies, Pretties, Specials trilogy has stayed with me, as have Shannon Hale’s Book of a Thousand Days and Lois Lowry’s Number the Stars. William Sleator’s The Boy Who Couldn’t Die sends icy breaths sliding down my neck whenever I think of it (and, by association, Kochkehi the Deathless). Ursula Le Guin’s Steering the Craft and Betsy Lerner’s The Forest For The Trees regularly whisper advice in my ear and Richard Bach’s Ferret Chronicles: Writer Ferrets Following The Muse is my go-to book when the rejection letter arrives and I need a little solace.

So what do I actually read when I’m not working? Even now, it’s a hard question to answer. Somewhat surprisingly, Facebook has come to the rescue with its Visual Bookshelf[1] Application. Linked to several databases, Visual Bookshelf allows readers to search, locate, and record the books they’ve read. For someone as forgetful as me, such a gadget is a beautiful tool. So, once I was back at my computer, I loaded up Facebook and started skimming my virtual shelf.

What contemporary authors (where contemporary is defined as published within the past few years) have I read of late? Am I locking myself into a specific genre? What do you think?

Well, there’s William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition and Spook Country, a pair of science-fiction-come cyber-punk novels; Terry Pratchett’s fantasy-comedy about the Ankh Morpork mint, Making Money; Maria Tatar’s Annotated Hans Christian Andersen and Annotated Brothers Grimm compilations (okay, so maybe as re-reads and notes on old tales, they don’t count); Martin Page’s marvellous How I Became Stupid; Ursula LeGuin’s Gifts (I’m in love with the simple yet emotional style of her story-telling); Seamus Heaney’s Beowulf (I read the Norton Anthology version back in 2000, then a good friend recommended the Heaney edition); Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (crossover); Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code (I know, I’m ashamed, but it came highly recommended); I’m still reading (and enjoying) A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini; Neil Gaiman’s Smoke and Mirrors (re-read, but full of exquisitely unusual stories); Sue Monk Kidd’s often gentle, occasionally harsh Secret Life of Bees; Tim Winton’s spare but somehow scenic Dirt Music (he has a fair bit of shelf space); The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan’s in-depth look at the history of four of the world’s most interesting plants; Piero Ferrucci’s The Power of Kindness (this is my favourite book at present—I’ll review it soon); Alan Alda’s Never Have Your Dog Stuffed (he’s a long time favourite actor of mine); Jaclyn Moriarty’s disturbingly believable yet occasionally darkly amusing I Have A Bed Made Of Buttermilk Pancakes; Irshad Manji’s The Trouble With Islam, a sometimes articulate, sometimes ill-reasoned look at Islam in the Western World; Melina Marchetta’s On The Jellicoe Road which, although technically YA, I found on my twenty-something sister-in-law’s bookshelf and read as a would-be adult novel while visiting home; and, of course, Stephen Colbert’s ridiculous and depressingly amusing I Am America And So Can You.

So why, when asked, can I not remember any of these books? It’s not that I didn’t like them. True, I found Making Money disappointing and The DaVinci Code a bit painful, but many of the above—particularly The Power of Kindness, Smoke and Mirrors, Gifts, Dirt Music, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, and On The Jellicoe Road—still chase one another about the corners of my mind. Each book has, in some way, affected me, moved me, challenged me and I often find myself returning to review a dog-eared page. But I think, as my focus on building a portfolio and improving my writing continues to grow, these books have set up shop in a private crook of my mind, a spot just for me where I can ruminate, revisit, and savour.

Or, I could just be even more forgetful than usual when put on the spot. But the first option certainly sounds better.

Footnotes:

[1]Another great widget is LibraryThing, which allows users to create widgets for their websites and chat to other, similarly inclined readers.