Show down: bookstore vs. library

bookstore

There is a bookstore in Nairobi that has quite an impressive collection (relatively) of fiction, and I have spent the past 3 months buying the last 3 books of the Endymion series by Dan Simmons. This past month I walked in, went straight to the wall with the science fiction type books, grabbed The Rise of Endymion, went to the counter, paid, and left.

It was good! A satisfying end to a satisfying series, and even pulled off the Messiah theme. So that went well. (incidentally, the first book is the most different in style of the 4, so if you aren’t captivated by the start, I still recommend reading it and then checking out the second book and seeing if that is more like it.)

library

The National Public Library is actually not small. It is certainly bigger than my hometown library in Scottdale, though not as a big as the Goshen public library. As with all libraries, the good books are mixed in with books that were written and published and then quickly forgotten – by anyone so unfortunate as to read them and probably by their authors themselves.

My estimation is that Kenya’s national library has a lot more of the forgettable books. A lot more. Religious fiction that didn’t find an audience abroad and so were donated by well-meaning English missionaries; polemic fiction donated by the Soviet Union during the fight for Africa’s loyalty in the Cold War; authors from abroad who fictionalize their accounts of Kenya and then generously give 10 copies to the national library; obsolete science textbooks; the Left Behind series; and countless books in a slow state of decay that have been re-covered, thus with no title on the outside, so that one has to take the book off the shelf and open the book to discover whether it is perhaps an unread Dorothy L. Sayers novel or whether, yet again, it is Nurse Jane’s First Job or John Goes to School, penned in the 1940s or 1950s by someone with an Urge to Educate and Morally Instruct.

I go to the library every one or two weeks during my lunch hour. One is only allowed to have 2 books checked out at a time, which is probably all for the best, considering my track record in returning library books on time. I always tell myself that I will spend less than 10 minutes finding a new book, and I always take at least 30 minutes. I have to establish if any new books have been added; check a few more of the many un-titled books for hidden treasures; consider whether I want to finally read the Rabbit books (Rabbit Run, Rabbit Redux, etc etc – I never have and am starting to doubt that I ever will); decide to give in and check out on the Everyman’s Library books that were donated by the British Council; change my mind (I don’t really want to read Robinson Crusoe today); in a fit of desperation consider checking out one of the German novels that are mixed in with the others (only once have I followed through on this – Kinder von Eden, a translation from what was clearly a not-very-good American novel. I skimmed through it, and I’ll say any German book that I can actually understand most of cannot be a good book); try and fail to find something I want to read in the mixed up section of poetry, drama, literary theory and, inexplicably, more of the Left Behind series; wander over to the children’s section and see if anything readable is over there (I have re-read some nice Roald Dahl that way); stare at the E.W. women authors - Edith Wharton, Evelyn Waugh, Eudora Welty - and try to remember the differences between them in order to determine which one I would actually like; give up on the E.W.’s, check in both the W and the S sections to see if there is any more Wole Soyinka; check if there is now more than the one Ursula LeGuin book (no) or the one Kazuo Ishiguro (no) or the one Michael Odaatje (no); finally settle on either 1) rereading a good book, 2) trying out an old classic that I never read, 3) taking an African novel in the hopes that I can manage to read the whole book without having to stop because of getting overly upset or overwhelmed, or 4) grabbing a book with a brightly colored cover, which at least means it was written, published, and donated in the past decade.

Recently, I went through that whole process and ultimately walked out with two books: Gulliver’s Travels and In Search of Lost Time (also known in its previous translation as In Remembrance of Times Past or something like that).

I sat down one night and read the first section of Gulliver’s Travels, where he visits the Lilliputians – the tiny folk. I think the next section is where he visits the big folk, and then after that I’m a bit vague – I know he visits a land of horses, and a land of stupid humans, I think. I think it’s a political satire…or commentary…or something. It’s funnier than I anticipated, although it does live up to my expectations in that now that I have put it down, I’m reluctant to pick it back up.

In Search of Lost Time is…amazing. I can’t believe I didn’t read any Proust my whole life – somehow I had the idea it was completely inaccessible and unreadable. Sort of like how I keep thinking I’ll like Ulysses, and then I can’t get more than 50 pages into it at which point I realize that I have completely no clue what is going on or who the characters are or what the book is even about (not to blame Ulysses. I recognize that it is a book of genius, i.e. way on out there beyond me). But Proust isn’t like that at all. It’s just beautiful and insightful. Hooray!

bookstore vs library

I’ve got to go with the library.

I am naturally thrifty, nevermind the fact that I am an MCC volunteer right now. And I am also naturally a risk-averse person, so going to the library frees me from the usual risks and benefits that I weigh whenever I hold a bookstore book in my hands. Will the experience of reading it be worth the cost, or will it be squandered money? (Would I have bought Proust? Even second-hand? No.)

But the freedom that I feel in a library goes beyond not being weighed down by financial consequences. When I’m in a library, I feel like the boundaries of my horizon have been pushed back. I am with others and any one of us could at any moment be plunged into greatness. And why? Because we all, as a society, have decided to support each other in this thing. We have decided that we value words, and that they and the knowledge they impart should be accessible to all. Isn’t that beautiful?

(But I’m still glad there are bookstores, especially used ones)

book vs. movie

Children of Men is a terrible book. Really, I don’t think it was just that I was reading it on the 14 hour bus from Kampala to Nairobi. It is just not good. Good concept. Great concept, really. But extremely unlikable main character (one of those who is intended to be unlikable but then you are supposed to find some good things about him, only I just get MORE annoyed with him as the book goes on), slow plot, and crappy ending.

Children of Men is a wonderful movie. Really. I heard it was coming out and was disappointed – yet another adaptation of a book that doesn’t deserve to be adapted. But I was completely wrong.

The degree to which the book was carelessly written, that is how much care was invested in the move - all of the thought that went into the script and the way that it is filmed, and the commitment of the actors, all of that caring is not in the book. I’m trying to think if there is anything from the book that made it to the movie, other than the very basic premise. None of the main plot points are the same; none of the same characters die; main character has different job, different motivations, different everything other than the fact that he drinks and smokes and wears an overcoat. One of the biggest difference is the larger societal reaction to the fact that humanity has lost the ability to procreate. In the book, one of the main results is that the youngest generation (by the time of the book and movie, the youngest are about 19 years old) being completely amoral and self-obsessed, and thus a threat to society. There is some side discussion about Britain becoming an authoritarian state to keep out refugees (I might be wrong about this – did I mention that when I read the book I was squeezed between a man with one leg on one side and his pair of crutches propped against the window on the other side, while cockroaches crawled over us?). But in the movie, keeping refugees out of Britain and rounding them up is the defining task of the government. Ah, it’s beautiful and thoughtful.

Also, the DVD has a documentary on globalization/capitalism/politics of fear/etc by the director, and it has philosophers and film critics and JAMES LOVELOCK! The Gaia Theory dude!! Seriously!

So, rare event: movie wins out over book!

The Good

The Fall of Hyperion – Dan Simmons

I decided to get back into spending my Worker Renewal money on books. I had randomly picked out Hyperion from the library a few months ago, and was surprised and pleased with it. Decided to actually purchase the second in the series, and was even more pleased. According to Wikipedia (John looked it up for me), this is sometimes described as a “space opera”. Yeah! In any case, I like it. Plot and character driven, with “science fiction-y” “futuristic” elements that add to the plot and transform the characters, rather than being gimmicks.

Julie & Julia – Julie Powell

Thanks to Hannah Dueck for bringing me this book all the way across the ocean and continents! It is a Really Fun book – I highly recommend it to everyone, but especially people who fall into one of the following categories:
- in their late 20s
- have ovarian cysts
- like to cook/read about cooking attempts
- like Buffy the Vampire Slayer (don’t let this scare you – it’s just that there are lots of glowing references about watching the show. yeah!)

I fall into all of those categories. I loved it! And I get extra points because it is non-fiction – memoir about setting the goal of cooking all of the recipes from Julia Child’s cookbook on French cooking for Americans and writing a blog about it and living in NYC and working for the federal government, etc.

a boy of good breeding - Miriam Toews

Thanks to Tasara Redekop for bringing me this book all the way across the ocean and continents!

My favorite passage about pudding – well, actually about making pudding – of all time. It entirely describes how I feel about it. One mother is giving advice to another:

“You know what you have to do, Knute?” said Marilyn.
“What.”
“You have to learn how to make pudding. It says on the box you have to stir constantly, constantly, and it takes a good twenty or thirty minutes before the stuff boils. So if S.F. is bugging you, you know, asking for this and that, you say, Sorry ma’am, do you want pudding or not? I cannot leave this pudding for a second.”
“Yeah?” said Knute.
“Yeah,” said Marilyn, “it’s great. I make tons of pudding and while I stir I read. Thin, light books ‘cause you only have one hand to hold ‘em. Josh can’t do a thing about it, so he actually amuses himself and I get a decent break. All hell can break loose around me. I don’t care, I’m making pudding.”
“That’s a great idea, Marilyn,” said Knute. “What happens when he gets sick of pudding?”
“I don’t know, I hadn’t thought of that. I’ll think of something when that time comes, though. Something less fattening.”

Endymion – Dan Simmons – The 3^rd book out of a 4 book series takes the premise from the first 2 books and then fast forwards to almost 300 years in the future and continues the story, only of course now it is a different story with a (mostly) different cast of characters. Things have changed drastically over the 300 years, and it is really fascinating what has happened.

But what I find so impressive is that I could start the book, be immediately disappointed to not be able to follow the characters from the first 2 books any further, and then almost just as quickly be once again sucked in to the new set of characters. I really, really am enjoying this series.

Ghost Children – Sue Townsend

Thanks to Tasara for suggesting this book from the library! Really good. Really great characters. Really well written. In a quiet way, very stunning.

But n Ben A-Go-Go – Matthew Fitt

Puggled. Snochterin. Paolo’s broo wis creeshit, the oxters o his battle tunic mawkit wi swite. The craitur’s guff wis on his claes. Owre his hauns. The caircass, no ten yaired doon the brae, wis awready stertin tae ming in the foreninn heat. Paolo’s hert banged at his chist like a steekit nieve. Jammy. He had been that jammy.

That’s a sample paragraph from this book. Set in 2090, global flooding leaving most of Scotland under water, with most people living on floating islands and all sorts of odd things going on that are kind of hard to figure out because holy crap the whole thing is written in Scots.

Published with a subsidy from the Scottish Arts Council, bought by the Ranfurly Library Service, and donated through Book Aid International, somehow this book made its way to the Kenya National Library Service. How weird is that?

Um, intensely weird. At least, it is to me. Someone else checked this book out before me, and I am So Curious about who it was and what they thought.

Overall, yeah a good book. Definitely seemed to me to be more than a gimmick to write in dialect – it was part of the overall storytelling. So that’s good. And Fitt did a good job of keeping old things and adding lots of new things to the way society is run and functions. Better than most of the shite out there being published that takes place in the future. Better than most of the shite that gets donated to the Kenyan public library system.

And...of course...Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
I can't even write about that yet. Give me some time.