the perilous towers of unread books

These are some of the ARCs that are patiently waiting for someone to rescue them from the back room of the bookstore and give them a chance to be read. Some of them turn out to be unsuspected treasures. My most recent favourites are The Ramen King And I by Andy Raskin (which comes out in May) and The Error World by Simon Garfield (which is out now).

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A customer asked me a question yesterday that I found both odd and troubling, in that I had to think more about what it meant to me and my attitudes towards literature than the question itself. She (and, yes, it was a woman, which may be important) asked me where the section for "women's literature" was. At first, I thought she meant books about women, women's health maybe, or feminism in general, but she meant books--fiction, to be specific--by women authors.

I've never seen a bookstore where the books of men and the books of women are separated out and tidied away in their own sections, and I can't quite see a point in doing so. But this woman (who seemed intelligent, polite, and independent) acted like the question was perfectly normal and reasonable. Did she only want to browse books by women? Did she want to read about women? Did she, perhaps, feel that she'd been reading too many books by men and wanted to see the range and possibility in shelves that only included the work of women? I don't know, and the part that made me pause once I registered it is, I didn't actually care. My first thought was, well, that would be a stupid way to organize books.

I never make a point to read books by women authors. I don't avoid them either. But out of the three books that I've read this month so far, all of them are by men. I like to choose my reading based on what looks shiny, appealing, or delightful, but every now and then I feel guilty and wonder whether choices in reading, when multiplied many times over, add up to some sort of statement, even if it's one of inattention or indifference.

(I've just counted the books in my reading now pile and there are seven by men and two by women.)

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I'm finding this interesting. The Booktrust in the UK has Patrick Ness doing a sort of online residency where he blogs about the process of writing and publishing a book (his most recent is The Knife of Never Letting Go). He's funny and direct and says interesting things, particularly about how stories eat up ideas. I'm also predisposed to like any organization that describes the location of their building like this:
We live in a lovely Victorian building between Wandsworth and Clapham Junction, wedged between a Huguenot cemetery and a traffic island.

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Also, the lovely and absurdly talented Toni Lum is dancing in NY this weekend with Danceworks Chicago as part of the Ballet Builders 2009 program. Toni is a joy to watch, always, and if anyone happens to be in NY, you should go see her.

pineapple nibbles

This morning my mom and I went shopping... There was this very odd event at the department store which involved breakfast-y nibbles, mimosas, terrible cups of tea, and a jazz band comprised of elderly men in natty plaid jackets. The band was quite good. So were the pineapple-ginger nibbles, which were basically chunks of pineapple, covered in bashed up mint and coconut, on little sticks. The shopping was tiresome; even at 9 in the morning there's a sort of manic frenzy around holiday shoppers that I find exhausting.

I've been reading The Modern Library Writer's Workshop by Stephen Koch and so far it seems mostly sensible. I love that he quotes Toni Morrison and J.K. Rowling in neighboring sentences on the same subject (character development). I also like that he never says anything with the whiff of "thou shalt not!" This quote, which Koch takes from Richard Bausch, is nice:

"Dream the story up, make it up, be fanciful, follow what occurs to you to say, and try not to worry about whether or not it's smart... Just dream it up and let the thing play itself out as it seems to want to, and then write it again, and still again, dreaming it through, and then try to be terribly smart about it."

Even though reading a book about writing is really one of my numerous techniques for putting off actually sitting at my own desk, I think this one is interesting.

I've just read this from Catherynne Valente writing on Jeff Vandermeer's blog, which I thought was funny. Mostly because I have a weakness for steam power/clockwork/Victoriana myself and the way she calls those sorts of stories "steampunk" and "clockpunk" was, I thought, very funny and appropriate.

I've also been reading bits of Jane Espenson's blog. She's a screenwriter and producer and her writing is very smart and funny. She also notes what she had for lunch every day. Like Cup of Noodle improved by a squeeze of lemon.

I think I'm becoming a bit of a blog junkie. They are just so addictive. It's a bit like reading the opinion section of a newspaper detailed exactly to my own tastes and interests. Every day there's something opinionated and personal to read about writing or reading or dancing or whatever, by people who I think probably have the brains and knowledge to back up what they say. Almost as tasty as pineapple nibbles, really.