A bit of a hectic week this week! I just got another job (another bookstore!) – my current job will be finishing up at the end of this year – and started training for that this week as well as working at the other place still, catching up with good folk and planning our trip to Sydney to see our favourite band twice next year, summoning heavy rain fall which happens to coincide with Slash’s solo in “November Rain“. (No, really. We were sitting at a balcony at a bar having a few drinks and listening to the nostalgic 90s music the bar was playing. November Rain came on and Matt says to me, “wouldn’t it great if it just started raining as the solo came in.” Slowly, as the song progresses it starts getting overcast and dark. As the song is building toward the solo, it starts spitting with rain. The final solo comes in and torrential downpour! It was amazing, straight from a film.)

Every bookstore seems to be having massive sales at the moment, bookstores on ebay seem to be slashing their prices all over the place and the Book Depository now charge in Australian dollars with free worldwide shipping (and enter “HAPPY99X” at checkout for 10% off all purchases, the code will be valid until December 11). It’s just the waiting around for them to arrive that’s annoying. So much for the age of instant gratification.

• Carson McCullers: Her Life and Work by Oliver Evans
• The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
• Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

Virginity is an aspect of human sexuality that is not usually given the same critical attention as others, it is largely accepted as a state of being which just exists. In Virgin: The Untouched History Hanne Blank challenges our perceptions and assumptions about virginity and uncovers a rich and varied social-cultural history and shifting medical perspectives.

The first section of the book is titled Virginology – a look at the medical and scientific side of virginity, both now and in the past, and in particular the specifics of the contentious hymen issue. Here Blank also touches on what virginity has symbolized – the supposed pure, untouched state of heavenly, magical virtue – and the significance and purpose of these representations. The lengths that some women took to “prove” their virginity is often horrifying, but the circumstances which force them to have to prove it even more so.

The value we place on virginity is precisely that, placed upon it, and not intrinsic either to human beings or to virginity itself.

While this first section is incredibly interesting, the second section of the book – Virgin Culture – is so well written and captivating, ripe with information and insight into virginity’s place in society and culture over time.  Blank does talk mainly about female virginity because it has been loaded with much more meaning than male virginity. Blank posits that female virginity was desired in a marriage to ensure the paternity of the children produced by the marriage. Female virginity then played a socioeconomic role, a valued commodity within the patriarchal marriage market. Historically, our understanding of virginity has moved from one related to socioeconomics and kinship to one of experience, identity and personal autonomy.

This section also discusses the virginal saints and the place of virginity in Christianity and the Bible, Elizabeth I the Virgin Queen, Elizabeth Báthory and the blood of virgins. There have been numerous fascinating examples of virginity throughout history, and Blank manages to cover a wide variety of them here. Looking at contemporary views of virginity she discusses government involvement in creating a moral agenda in schools through the promotion of abstinence programs.

The Centers for Disease Control, the federal medical research organization responsible for addressing infectious and chronic diseases, had until 2002 been conducting research into “Programs That Work,” sex-education curricula that had been proven through empirical review to effectively reduce risky sexual behaviors. Of the five they identified as effective, none were abstinence centered. Since 2002, however, the CDC has discontinued this research program and the program’s findings have been removed from public view at the CDC’s web site. Other CDC statements praising contraception in a public-health context have also mysteriously vanished from the CDC’s online offerings, leaving, instead, statements of presidential and other official support of abstinence programs. It seems reasonable to surmise that high-ranking opposition to anything other than the official virginity-until-marriage agenda has created something of a chilling effect on the CDC’s ability to conduct and present scientific research on reproductive health issues.

One issue I do have, and I have this problem with all so called popular non-fiction works, is the lack of adequate recognition of references and sources. I understand that it is a space issue – but the selected biography cannot even begin to touch on all the resources that Blank must have used.

Apart from this minor, probably pedantic, objection, Virgin: The Untouched History remains a well researched, deeply compelling and insightful look at how our attitudes toward human sexuality change over time and how these changes represent wider transformations in society at large.

Taming the Black Dog: A Guide to Overcoming Depression by Bev Aisbett (2000)

Unlike 90% of the online population, I’m not entirely comfortable with exposing all my intimate, personal details on the web. I still believe in private and public, and find lamebook equal parts horrifying and laughable because of what people think is acceptable to share with their close and not so close friends and family. Reviewing this book is difficult in that it challenges my ideas about how much to talk about myself and what I’ve been going through – which are revealed because of why and how I came across this book. Obviously, someone doesn’t just pick up a title like this to pass the time on the public transit system or as a lighthearted beach read. So yes, my psychotherapist recommended I read this book because I, like so many others, suffer from depression.

Working upon Winston Churchill’s famous characterization of his depression as the black dog, Aisbett personifies depression as a dog. Written in as an easy to understand outline of the symptoms of depressions, illustrated by the dog character, Aisbett offers an unusually humourous look at depression. While reading it I was laughing out loud, admittedly also with tears in my eyes, at recognition of my own behaviour in this somewhat slovenly dog, cutely named Blackie. She recognizes the vicious cycles at work in depression, and offers the first steps necessary toward a recovery while at the same time making the reader aware of the difficulty in changing behaviour and thought patterns. I would have liked more in the way of guidance but understand that would be almost impossible because it is such a personal process. It is a lot easier to read about a cartoon dog changing his behaviour than it is to actually put that change into action, but Taming the Black Dog has given me another perspective on the suffering/healing process.

I’ll admit it is very possible I went a little overboard this week, but this is what happens when your sister tells you about a street near her house with a multitude of good book shops with strapping young bookstore lads manning the counters. Resistance is futile.

• The Crystal World by J.G. Ballard
  

  Book Loot: Week Ending November 22nd, 2009

• The Drought by J.G. Ballard
• Rushing to Paradise by J.G. Ballard
• Virgin: The Untouched History by Hanne Blank
• Underworld by Don DeLillo
• The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
• The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
• Carnal Knowledge: A Navel Gazer’s Dictionary of Anatomy, Etymology, and Trivia by Charles Hodgson
• A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes
• Ironweed by William Kennedy
• The Sickness Unto Death by Søren Kierkegaard
• Days of Reading by Marcel Proust
• The Little Friend by Donna Tartt
• Julian / Williwaw / The Judgement of Paris / Messiah / The City and the Pillar by Gore Vidal

I went into the secondhand bookstore, completely expecting to hand over hard-earned cash in exchange for novels, the guy who works there – who usually gives me a significant discount anyway – gave them to me as a gift? I mean, that was a really wonderful thing for a rainy Sunday morning, but it doesn’t excuse the ridiculousness of this week’s haul.

There’s always this fabulous list of Reasons for Buying Books to try and ease the guilt.

Book Loot: Week Ending November 15th, 2009

Another very small loot this week..

• The New Black: Mourning, Melancholia and Depression by Darian Leader
• Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer

The Leader book looks really interesting, all about how perceptions and treatments of depression have altered over time, and how our current method of dealing with it has strayed from traditional psychoanalytic approaches. I was a bit of a psychoanalysis nerd when I was at university, I loved Freud’s theories – especially those related to death, mourning, melancholia and group psychology – and made use of them in my undergraduate thesis. It wasn’t especially fashionable to be into Freud, but luckily my advisor was an exceptional Freudian scholar who encouraged my dedication of psychoanalysis, and Freud really, at that time, helped me come to a greater understanding of the world around and within me. God, that sounds terribly earnest, but hey I was young. It’s too easy to dismiss Freud on the basis of some of his questionable life choices and his more controversial theories, but I still think that some of his work is very valuable. Ahem, in summary, Leader is a practicing psychoanalyst and I’m very interested to read about how he interprets modern depression.

I love the cover art as well, from Francisco Goya’s ‘The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters’:

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith (1943)

Whenever A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is reviewed or discussed, the discussion always seems to be coloured by a wistful golden nostalgia. This nostalgia is less likely to arise from the particular time the story takes place – the 1900s, though the place, Brooklyn, and the circumstances of struggling through poverty could contribute; rather I think this nostalgia comes from the way that Betty Smith captured the small moments and nuances of childhood experience.

“People always think that happiness is a faraway thing,” thought Francie, “something complicated and hard to get. Yet, what little things can make it up; a place of shelter when it rains—a cup of strong hot coffee when you’re blue; for a man, a cigarette for contentment; a book to read when you’re alone—just to be with someone you love. Those things make happiness.”

In Brooklyn in the early 1900s Francie Nolan, a perceptive and intuitive girl is growing up in difficult circumstances. She is devoted to her singer-waiter father, a hopeless drunk, who Francie largely ignores his faults in favour of a blind adoration; lives with her staunchly realistic mother, and has a close relationship with her favoured younger brother Neeley. The story is only mildly interesting, recounting episodic events in Francie’s childhood and adolescence, but I just did not feel emotionally connected to the characters or their hardships. There was never, really, the sense that they wouldn’t be able to get through it, despite the setbacks, and because of this, there is no real drama or urgency to the story.

From that time on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood. There was poetry for quiet companionship. There was adventure when she tired of quiet hours. There would be love stories when she came into adolescence and when she wanted to feel a closeness to someone she could read a biography.

I enjoyed the message that education is indispensable when it comes to personal growth, in particular to those without the social or financial standing required to “move up” in society, and there is some insight into the necessary losses that come with growing up, and Francie’s passion for reading is something I can relate to, but overall, I didn’t feel strongly either way toward this book. I struggle to see why A Tree Grows in Brooklyn has come to be regarded as such a classic, and I can only assume that nostalgia plays a large part. Not to say that nostalgia is an inherently negative way to assess something which has touched us as readers, but I think it can get in the way of our judgment or appraisal of a text. However, that gets us involved in a dialogue which is way too knotty and complicated for an otherwise lovely, leisurely Sunday afternoon! Cup of tea, anyone?

The Rum Diary by Hunter S. Thompson

Hunter S. Thompson’s foray into fiction began with The Rum Diary, which he started writing in 1960 when he was 23 years old, but wasn’t published until 1998.

Paul Kemp is a journalist sent from New York to work on a small, failing newspaper in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He spends most of his time at Al’s a small bar and food joint with his fellow journalists, a gang of near-crazy, volatile drunks. It is Hunter S. Thompson so you would expect some wild adventures to follow but it is unusually restrained.  Everything – the strange events, the mundane daily activities of the journalists – is told in a weirdly detached voice, which reads rather blandly. It doesn’t have the trademark Gonzo energy.

By the time we got to the street, I could see the first rays of the sun, a cool pink glow in the eastern sky. The fact that I’d spent all night in a cell and a courtroom made that morning one of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. There was a peace and a brightness about it, a chilly Caribbean dawn after a night in a filthy jail. I looked out at the ships and the sea beyond them, and I felt crazy to be free with a whole day ahead of me.

The blurb makes a point about the narrative centering on Kemp’s barely suppressed lust for a colleague’s girlfriend, Chenault, but this never really eventuates. When it does come to the surface, it is nowhere near as interesting as the what is going on in the newsroom. The frantic, harried attitude of the journalists keeps them all on edge, but again, this tension never really reaches a breaking point. When the climax does occur, it happens so quickly, and is written in such a blunt and disconnected way that it loses the potential effect.

Then came noon, and morning withered like a lost dream. The sweat was torture and the rest of the day was littered with the dead remains of all those things that might have happened, but couldn’t stand the heat. When the sun got hot enough it burned away all the illusions and I saw the place as it was – cheap, sullen, and garish – nothing good was going to happen here.

The Rum Diary is a little disappointing, it doesn’t even begin to compare to Thompson’s non-fiction and journalism. It shows just how far he evolved from writing lacklustre fiction to the trailblazing non-fiction madness which made him a countercultural icon.

It’s been rather quiet around these parts lately and for that, I apologize. I now have all of my assignments for the semester completed and handed in, and while working on them over the past couple of weeks resorted to my favourite procrastination technique – Gilmore Girls and knitting – totally rock and roll, I know; and didn’t find much time for reading. I visited the libraries over the past couple of days and stocked up on some books to start reading now that I am on “holidays” and I’m very, very much looking forward to it. What else are 34°C days for if not finding an air-conditioned space and reading?

On to the acquisitions for the week!:

Book Loot: Week Ending November 8th, 2009

• Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story – Chuck Klosterman
• Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace

The copy of Infinite Jest was secondhand, but it had the original cover price sticker on it – put out on the shelf in July 2009. It’s clear from the spine that the original person (whose name is written on the first page, but I’m not about to publicly call them out on it.) didn’t read it but … July 2009? That’s a pretty quick turnaround. Oh well, their efficient tendency to not hoard books they haven’t read is the gain of one who does hoard books they haven’t read (yet). Summer project perhaps?

And something very dear to my heart:

Yes, a recording of Carson McCullers in 1958 reading excerpts from The Member of the Wedding, The Ballad of the Sad Café and the Heart is a Lonely Hunter as well as some of her poetry. I got this for an absolute steal on ebay and I absolutely plan on arranging to get it digitized. What you think I just have a record player lying about amongst all those books? Googling this baby only brings up 8 results – well 9 I suppose once this entry gets indexed.

And, finally, some of the stuff I have out from the library at the moment, who knows how much of it will actually get read:

Library Loot - Week Ending November 8th, 2009

Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain by Maryanne Wolf

Proust and the Squid is an interesting look at the history of literacy and the evolution of the written word, and how the brain has evolved and adapted in order to learn how to read. Using multiple disciplines – psychology, history, linguistics and neuroscience to name a few – Maryanne Wolf takes us through what has happened over human history and how reading ability develops over a lifetime.

The first section on the development of writing and reading through history was fascinating, well-informed and researched and written in an engaging, always easy to understand style. Socrates was concerned about how knowledge defined by the written word would impact the tradition of orally learned knowledge; but he was also concerned with the ways in which the written word would prevent the ability to engage in dialogue in order to critically approach information. Wolf makes some interesting points about how the historical apprehension about the move from oral to literate culture mirrors that of our change from a literate to a multi-literate culture, or whatever you want to call the information overload nature of the world we exist in at the moment. The manner in which we receive and process information is changing rapidly again, and so what ways will the brain have to adapt in order to make sense of this world? How will it lead to further changes in the brain?

I believe that reading, in its original essence, [is] that fruitful miracle of a communication in the midst of solitude.
- Marcel Proust

The second section on reading development in young children is equally fascinating, bringing insight into just how complex an act it is, amazing that so many of us have managed to do it!, it gave me fresh appreciation of the act of reading itself. The third section on dyslexia is Wolf’s prime area of study and you can tell it is something she is knowledgeable about, and her writing here is passionate, but it lacked the immediate interest of the first two parts of the book.

Overall, Wolf has produced a book in which the writing is engaging, insightful and informative. It will make readers consider the act/art of reading and give a new admiration and understanding of the pleasures that reading offers.

The library sale turned out to be a bit of a bummer. I turned up, eager to spend some cash on pre-loved books in the name of charity, only to be disappointed. I didn’t see anything appealing. Plus, the jostle of vicious pensioners crowded around the one trestle table was just too claustrophobic for me. I had actually – shame, shame, shame – budgeted for spending a pretty penny at the book sale, so at least I have that money to save for a rainy day. Until then, another week and no new books. Also, every link that I gathered for this week seems a bit boring now that I look over them, so it’s a very quiet Book Loot post this week.

NaNoWriMo starts today, and for those of us that don’t have the drive or motivation to write 50,000 words in a month (“That’s not writing, that’s typing” as our good friend Truman once said.) a few of the good folk on 43things have committed to writing a hundred words each day in November. Hey, you may scoff, but at the end of the month that’s still 3000 words of my great Australian novel (ahem!) to be written that weren’t before.