in the world of the internet and not-too-outrageous international shipping, impatience thrives. yep. i was one of the those "particularly impatient readers" ...

The third volume in Stieg Larsson’s immensely successful Millennium trilogy, “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest,” finally goes on sale here this month. Except for “Harry Potter,” Americans haven’t been so eager for a book since the early 1840s, when they thronged the docks in New York, hailing incoming ships for news of Little Nell in Charles Dickens’s “Old Curiosity Shop.” That was before Amazon. This time, particularly impatient readers simply paid a premium and ordered the new book from England, where it came out months ago (though with the apostrophe in a different place, making the “Hornet” plural).
-  “The Afterlife of Stieg Larsson,” The New York Times, 2010 May 17

… except I didn’t pay a premium and saved myself weeks of what would have been agonising curiosity and $13, not including tax, instead, and it was much worth it.

(Of the three volumes, my favourite is The Girl Who Played With Fire, then The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, then The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.  Dragon Tattoo was amazing, of course, but I find myself nodding along with the writer of another New York Times Article:

The novels’ central appeal, however, remains Salander herself: a heroine who takes on a legal system and evil, cartoony villains with equal ferocity and resourcefulness; a damaged sprite of a girl who becomes a goth-attired avenging angel who can hack into any computer in the world and seemingly defeat any foe in hand-to-hand combat.
-  “A Punk Pixie’s Ominous Past,” The New York Times, 2010 May 20

It’s true:  Lisbeth Salander is badass, which isn’t to downplay Blomkvist because this is one of those scenarios where one is loathe to prefer one element — or book — over another.)

Also in Book Talk Land, I finished Let the Right One In recently — what’s with the sudden love affair with the Swedes? — which was consumed in a whirlwind 24 hours during the work week.  Despite my love for vampires and vampire lore, contemporary treatment of vampires isn’t one I seek out much at all, but Let the Right One In was well worth the time and movie tie-in cover.  (The film, as much as I’ve seen thus far, is also excellent, both as adaptation and as film.)

Currently treading my way through a pile of Sylvia Plath relevant material — I’m almost through with The Silent Woman (which amplifies my ambivalence and generally not positive thoughts towards biographies), moving quickly through The Cambridge Companion to Sylvia Plath (nothing new or enlightening thus far, but I appreciate the sections where Plath’s work is set in historical and social context), and ploughing my way through Letters Home (it’s a fast read, superficially fascinating but disappointing because of the expurgation and ellipses galore).

Currently sitting in the office, thinking of picking up Ted Hughes’ letters sometime soon.  Biographies and memoirs I might neither read much of nor care to, but journals and letters?  Deliver them to my doorstep as soon as possible, please!

the proust questionnaire, "vanity fair" version

01.  what is your idea of perfect happiness?
a good book, a cup of coffee, and a short stack of pancakes.

02.  what is your greatest fear?
forgetting how to laugh at everything.

03.  which historical figure do you most identify with?
sylvia plath.

04.  which living person do you most admire?
young people who have no fear to chase their potential and dreams within the boundaries of realism, a la alexander wang.

05.  what is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
the fear.

06.  what is the trait you most deplore in others?
ignorance, hypocrisy, and arrogance.

07.  what is your greatest extravagance?
a new book when the piles of to-be-reads could bury me whole.

08.  what is your favourite journey?
anywhere with a good friend, good conversation, and good food and drink.

09.  what do you consider the most overrated virtue?
selflessness.

10.  on what occasion do you lie?
a year ago i would have said, “on instances when the need for self-preservation asserts itself,” but i’ve since learned fully that self-preservation comes not through lies but through integrity.

11.  what do you dislike most about your appearance?
my nose.  and cold impression.

12.  which living person do you most despise?
self-proclaimed writers who’ve no respect for the craft (and yet manage to land book deals).

13.  which words or phrases do you most overuse?
"… nice," "not bad," & "oh, for fuck’s sake …!"

14.  what is your greatest regret?
not learning or growing fast enough.

15.  what or who is the greatest love of your life?
new york city.

16.  which talent would you most like to have?
perfect pitch.

17.  what is your current state of mind?
like a ten thousand piece puzzle poured straight out of its cardboard box onto a tabletop.

18.  if you could change one thing about your family, what would it be?
i’d add another sibling under my brother and make us a team of three.

19.  what do you consider your greatest achievement?
i self-manicure and bake killer sponge cake (which makes for killer jelly rolls with preserves and fresh whipped cream).  i also bake my own bread without a bread machine, albeit not as often as before.

20.  if you were to die and come back as a person or thing, what do you think it would be?
a black cat.  or a musician.

21.  if you could choose what to come back as, what would it be?
a black cat.

22.  what is your most treasured possession?
my macbook pro.

23.  what do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
wanting a relationship that eludes you.

24.  where would you like to live?
temporarily, tokyo to be a foreigner, no holds barred, and paris from whence to familiarise myself with europe.  permanently, it’s back to my roots to nest in manhattan when i’m young, brooklyn when i’m a little more grown up.

25.  what is your favourite occupation?
typographer.

26.  what is your marked characteristic?
stubbornness, a refusal to subscribe to the notion that “life sucks” or is made of misery, and curiosity.

27.  what is the quality you most like in a man?
intelligence, integrity, and the gall to stand up for his convictions and those he loves.

28.  what is the quality you most like in a woman?
self-respect, self-confidence, and a lack of obsessive preoccupation with her physical appearance.

29.  what do you most value in your friends?
comfortable silences, like-mindedness, honesty.

30.  who are your favourite writers?
tolstoy, camus, bronte, plath, steinbeck, murakami, and mcewan.

31.  who is your favourite hero of fiction?
[blank].

32.  who are your heroes in real life?
i don’t subscribe to the idea of heroes in the present day.  at least, not in the metaphysical sense.

33.  what are your favourite names?
christopher, sebastian, alexander.
cecilia, juri, natalia.

34.  what is it that you most dislike?
synthetic sounds.

35.  how would you like to die?
with a sense of finality.

36.  what is your motto?
in consillis nostris fatum nostrum est & the essence of existence is choice.

i'm reading it and am thoroughly enchanted, so i suppose i've just saved stephen fry from eating 40 hats

There are three deaths.  The first is when the body ceases to function.  The second is when the body is consigned to the grave.  The third is that moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.
-  David Eagleman, Sum:  forty tales from the afterlives

Who knew a neuroscientist could be witty, imaginative, and creatively literate?

David Eagleman’s Sum is a book you read slowly, chewing over each vignette like a morsel of the finest food you’ll ever consume.  It isn’t a collection you zoom through but one that says, Hey, there, slow down a bit!  I’m worth your time, I promise, and it glitters and sparkles in that pleasant way that makes you glad you’ve taken the time to pick this slim volume up and enjoy it.

Of course, at the time of this writing, I’m roughly halfway through, but each vignette simply gets better and better, so I type away these words with a measure of confidence in my opinion that everyone should pick this up and make a date on a breezy afternoon with a cup of coffee to tuck this little darling away.

(My only gripe with it is the cover.  It’s rather disappointing, especially considering that it’s from Vintage.)

i think i offended c.s. lewis by relegating his "till we have faces" as a toilet book because i can't find it ...

Some books are Toilet Books.  As in, you read them while on the toilet but not so much when you’re not.  Sure, you only get in a few pages at a time, but Toilet Books aren’t hefty, mind-altering volumes but light reading in both form and content — young adult fiction, in particular, works well.

Toilet Books from 2010 have thus far included Le Guin’s Gifts and Voices, that dude from Franz Ferdinand’s Sound Bites, The Phantom Tollbooth, and, now, Till We Have Faces.  Lewis might seem like a stranger author to take into the toilet, but Till We Have Faces is one of my least favourite books of his — as in, I dropped it a few years ago after I couldn’t even hit the halfway mark (but my least favourite Lewis is hands down his science fiction trilogy).

I picked it up again during my crazy-but-very-minimal book purge and clean out over the weekend and decided that, considering that I hadn’t been crazy about it before, it would be my next Toilet Book.  Maybe the years have changed my mind or maybe it’s just easier to swallow in four-five page chunks, but I’m enjoying it more than I did the first time around.  And, now, I’ve no idea where it’s gone …

Yeahhh …

Speaking of The Phantom Tollbooth, though:  The Phantom Tollbooth is a story I vaguely remember from childhood; I remember seeing the animated film and being rather confused; and, somehow, in one way or another, the book filtered into my consciousness a few months ago.  I finally picked it up a few weeks ago and started reading it, and I have to admit that I was disappointed in the same way I am with a lot of young adult fiction (which is one reason why I avoid YA fiction in general).

The Phantom Tollbooth was primed with potential as a concept and stuffed to the brim with clever ideas and plays on words.  It could have been amazing, brilliant even, but I felt like it walked down the trap that a lot of well conceptualised young adult fiction does and failed to deliver, only barely grazing its strengths and pulling itself down as though to be better understood and appreciated by a younger audience.  Of course, these are only my thoughts, but it’s a disappointment I come across consistently in high concept young people books I actually pick up to read (i.e. City of Ember).

The only young adult books I thoroughly enjoyed and weren’t disappointed by where the Uglies series by Westerfeld.  Of course, they had their weak points, but, overall, I’ve never been so engrossed by young adult fiction as I was when I was basically absorbing the Uglies series — pity that Peeps wasn’t nearly as good.  I hear Leviathan is good, though, even better than Uglies, so I suppose I shall be checking that one out soon.

Maybe I’ll have to fall back on Leviathan as my Toilet Book if Till We Have Faces doesn’t pop up soon … although, if Westerfeld delivers, Leviathan will be taken quickly off the Toilet Books shelf, and I’ll be needing another Toilet Book again …

"the small print of consciousness"

Ian McEwan is eloquent, witty, and quite British in demeanour and intonation.  He’s as well-put together in words as he is in print, and hearing him read his own words brings a new sort of power to them.  As he said tonight:

"One of the pleasures of reading is breathing the words."

Listening to speak tonight has cemented my opinion that he’s one of the rare gems in the literary world today, and I’m immensely grateful that I was able to hear him answering questions and laying out his thought processes tonight.

"I think literature is like a higher form of gossip."

He drew some funny correlations, but it’s true in some ways.  As humans work, we like to talk about people, peer into people’s lives, and, like he said, “to know what it’s like to be someone else.” 

One of the things I appreciated about him is that he didn’t try to doll out droll advice or comments on what makes a good writer.  He doesn’t keep rules when he writes (other than “show up at your desk”), but he made a good point when he said that hesitation is one of the most important tools for writers.  He isn’t one of those authors who churns out [identical] book after [identical] book, which is evident enough in his books, and, when asked how he wrote books as introspective of the human condition as Atonement or On Chesil Beach, he simply reiterated his point of hesitation.

"Each book’s got to feel like your first, and you’ve got to learn to write it again."

Also, interesting factoids:  apparently, a French Ph.D did a study that compared the differences between American and British version of books, and, apparently, from McEwan’s own experience, Americans are viciously enamoured with the comma.

There are many other things he said that I was unable to jot down, but, luckily, the conversation was recorded for podcast.

Oh, and:  On Chesil Beach is being adapted for film by McEwan himself (“I think of a screenplay as a novella”) and to be directed by Sam Mendes (!!!).  As McEwan said, there’s so little dialogue in On Chesil Beach that he couldn’t bear to let someone else write the dialogue.