To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

To the Lighthouse is one of the best books I’ve ever come across. I can’t truly verbalize why it is that I’m enamored with the text, its characters and its meaning (as it relates to my experience with it). Everything from the references to Tennyson and Hume to the painting which is an integral part of the story (if not its physical form) made perfect sense to me and made me feel like I needed to always be reading this story.

Having previously read and admired Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and being almost through with Woolf’s Orlando, I cannot for the life of me understand why someone has not urged and pushed me to read this book sooner (her other novels, though beyond beautiful, seem to somehow pale in comparison). Very quickly this book has become a favourite.

Thoughts, TSS

I haven’t been around lately because I was working on final touches for my MLIS application for graduate school. And it’s done. All of my recommendations are in, my personal statement, transcripts and GRE scores. I’ve done everything that I needed to do and am now playing the waiting game to see if I got in.

Since submitting my application, I’ve finished To the Lighthouse and Eating Animals. And have made great progress into Orlando. I’ve been trying to put together some coherent thoughts about both books but they’re both almost beyond words. If I do any kind of “end of the year” favorites – both of the books will be within the top five.

What happened in the blogosphere while I was away? Any news?

January

1. A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick (Thoughts) (Reading Life)
2. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (Thoughts)
3. The Ask and the Answer by Patrick Ness (Thoughts)
4. The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa (Thoughts)
5. The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford (Thoughts)

(1,576 pages this month, 5 books for the month. 1,576 pages this year, 5 books for the year.)

The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford

I’m inspired to learn about history through the things I read in fictional stories – books that tie in little snippets of truth to a story that makes history become real.

Reading The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet meant getting a peek into the history of the Japanese internment and how it affected the Seattle area. The story begins backwards. Inside the basement of the Panama Hotel, a hidden treasure is finally found, a treasure of personal items belonging to Japanese families forced into internment. And then Henry remembers Keiko.

Henry is from a traditional Chinese family. His parents sent him to the white school on a scholarship and counted on him to do well. Henry was the only Asian-American person in his school. Then one day, he comes to school and sees a girl who looks a lot like him, named Keiko, except she’s Japanese. Henry knows a lot about Japanese families, his father is dead-set against them because of the bad blood and wars between the two nations. They connect over their scholarship status, their mutual love for jazz and puppy love. Keiko’s family meets and likes Henry – knowing that they have a crush on each other. But Henry knows that his family would disown him or worse if they found out.

I was truly impressed by the detail and feeling of Seattle that Jamie captured. And the many little things that made his story so touching. It really makes you think about the history of a city when the Panama Hotel and Uwajimaya (an amazing store) are mentioned and you know where these places are.

The sappiest part of the story is of course the romantic part of the story but it worked so perfectly with the rest of the narrative. It wasn’t too sappy or overindulgent. It was subtle. And it touched me because I left a lot of people behind in my country whose names and faces still cross my mind. More than cross my mind, they are always there, in the back of my mind, as lingering thoughts and even large question marks.

And I think that’s why this story was particularly touching for me. A strange combination of living in Seattle and having an experience close to Henry’s. But I don’t think either of these is a prerequisite for enjoying the story. I think even without a love or understanding of Seattle, Ford is able to bring it to life for you. And even without a personal and emotional connection, Ford can evoke one.

Thank you to the folks at TLC Blog Tours for sending me this gem.

Happy birthday, Virginia

Your Voice Matters

Bloomsbury is ceasing to supply copies of the US edition of Magic Under Glass. The jacket design has caused offense and we apologize for our mistake. Copies of the book with a new jacket design will be available shortly.

The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa

Translated from the Japanese by Stephen Snyder

The Housekeeper and the Professor is a simple story with substantial meaning. We are introduced to three main characters – a former mathematics genius with a memory problem, his single-mother housekeeper and her baseball-infatuated son, Root (named for the uncanny resemblance between his head and a square root symbol).

Ogawa’s characters are memorable. The housekeeper is a polite and caring woman with an open heart. As the book progressed, she becomes more of a caretaker than a housekeeper and the role is fitting. Her simple and traditional nature  made her such a good friend to the professor; she understood his limits and tried hard to make sure he didn’t notice them himself. The professor knows he has memory problems. He keeps notes pinned to his suit that remind him of his shortcomings – the most important being “My memory is only 80 minutes long.” He shows his anxiety and passes the time by talking and asking about math. When he becomes really comfortable with an individual, he teaches them how to look at math in the same way that he does, explaining to them the rarity of perfect numbers, simplyfing equations, etc. As for Root, he’s just as considerate as his mother and really comes to the professor as a friend, in the end, even treating him like family.

The story itself is about the relationships that develop between the three main characters. Though the characters have no names, their stories are compelling without them. In fact, it makes it easier to generalize this story of love and friendship when the characters have no name. Even when some of them don’t have their memory.

The story is also about math. And I hate math. But I loved it in this story. The housekeeper doesn’t understand math but the professor is so patient with teaching it to her (and to the reader) that it starts to feel like something manageable. Since the professor’s memory loss plays such a great role in his life, math is what keeps him grounded. To him, it is almost a religion. When anything goes awry, he turns to math. To keep himself going, he does math puzzles – never interested in the prizes they yield but in the pride that comes with solving them eloquently. At one point in the story I almost hoped that math would save his memory but I had a feeling this was not that kind of novel.

This book is so comforting. It is life affirming and encourages one to look toward the happy things, to pay attention to the subtle details. And everyone should have a book they can turn to for that.

Ogawa has produced a large selection of work, but only one other work of hers has been translated into English. She’s an author to keep an eye out for.

The Ask and the Answer by Patrick Ness

It begins with the same sentence that The Knife of Never Letting Go ends with. “The End.”

Since giving away any plot points would ruin any chance at experiencing this book at its best, I’m going to only speak toward my feelings and reactions towards Patrick’s writing. If they don’t convince you to start reading the Chaos Walking Trilogy, nothing will.

The Ask and the Answer throws many new challenges at both Viola and Todd. And in these new situations, the path isn’t always clear; the lines between right and wrong are blurred. More so than The Knife of Never Letting Go, the second book in the series tests Viola and Todd’s knowledge and trust of people – as well as their character. That’s what made this book more compelling for me than its predecessor.

As someone significantly older than the target audience for this book, I was really pleased to see all of the “life lessons” that Ness tried to teach through his narrative. He introduced younger audiences to both the good and the bad about politics, war, slavery, violent operatives and human behaviour (namely manipulation and torture). It is by no means an easy book to tackle but I think anyone reading it, whether in its target age group or not will really be able to open their eyes to both sides of the issue.

This novel was paced a lot slower than The Knife of Letting Go even though it had three times as many plot points. Many of the negative reviews for the first book in the Chaos Walking trilogy cited its overly fast pace as one of the top reasons. The second book is much slower and really allows for a lot of character development to happen.

Ness is a master at what he does. Both of the main characters do very questionable things – but I never lost sympathy with them. Often, I thought to myself that I would make the exact same choice were I put in their situation. Another great thing about The Ask and the Answer is the way in which we learn information from characters. Things are so very subtle, they’re barely hinted at sometimes – but they can be key to understanding an upcoming plot point or the motivations of a character. I know that all authors strive to write in such a way where they show rather than telling but Ness has nearly perfected it.

The Ask and the Answer won the Costa Book Award Nominee for Children’s (2009).

January & February Events

Book Events

• Audrey Niffenegger – January 21st at Elliott Bay Books, 4 PM
• The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris – Reading and Signing – February 6^th at SPL University Branch, 2 PM
• Secrets of Eden by Chris Bohjalian – Reading and Signing – February 8^th at SPL University Branch, 6:30 PM
• Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese – February 9^th at Benaroya Hall, 7:30 PM
• Jim Lynch – Blom Lecture Series – Febraury 19^th at UW Suzzallo Library Room 101, TBA

Music Events

• St. Vincent / Wild Birds & Peacedrums / Fences – February 5^th at Neumo’s

Want to join me?

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

I used to be very intimidated by Virginia Woolf. I worried that if I read the famous Mrs. Dalloway that I wouldn’t like it or worse, I wouldn’t get it.

I finally read Mrs. Dalloway in my second year of university. I began reading it in the morning – entranced by the stream-of-consciousness writing – only pausing when I absolutely had to. I finished the novel by the end of the day, then re-read the last twenty or twenty-five pages.

I truly enjoyed her seeing the stream-of-consciousness format. I had encountered it with the Beats but the writing felt more sophisticated in Woolf’s Dalloway. The sentences weren’t just thoughts within the mind of one person, they were thoughts and actions pieced together in such a way that they washed over you naturally. In that way, her sentences are as fluid as those of Proust.

Reading it the second time around, I noticed how careful she was with her punctuation. Using double punctuation and carefully placed commas, dashes and semicolons, Woolf controlled the pace at which you read and received information. Reading it aloud, it almost felt as if you could use the punctuation to break her novel up into the most controlled and powerful poetry.

Plot-wise, this is a simple novel; few things happen that move the plot forward. Reading Mrs. Dalloway allows the reader to move freely thought the minds and hearts of the characters within Woolf’s world. This is what made the novel for me. And this is why I loved reading it in one day.

Experiencing the story in the same time-span as the characters really illustrated how much information and how many thoughts go through our mind a day, and how seamlessly they transfer from one topic to the next.

This won’t be my last time with Mrs. Dalloway. A fellow reader, Frances, took the time to mark any mentions of water that she saw in the novel. Seeing her list, I realized that I hadn’t identified it as a pattern (and one of the most important perhaps, as she drowned herself). Even reading it a second time, I was wrapped up in the narrative, in the long-sentences that are so hard to pull yourself away from.

The second time around was more beautiful than the first. The third will be even better.