Any book, when read at the right moment...

Bibliophile: An Illustrated Miscellany, by Jane Mount, is whimsical and lovely, a true miscellany.

I kind of love it for its lists and groupings, for its bookishness, for its celebration of books — not just their subjects, but their design, and the rooms where they were written and the libraries where they're held and the cats that hold counsel over them.

I hate it for neglecting some of the books I treasure (and how dare it include books I don't like!), for too much of this and not enough of that.

For example, there are six spreads related to food: Regional Cooking, Reference Cookbooks, Novel Food, Everyday Food Inspiration, Baking & Desserts, and Food Writing. Too many? Perhaps not enough for some people.

But only one spread addresses reading in translation; at a stretch, some entries touch on this through A Sense of Place and Journeys & Adventures. So yeah, that's one criticism — very anglocentric.

It's a fun and pretty book but short on substance. At times I thought rather than see all these mentions of books, I'd prefer to be actually reading one of those books. But then I was delighted to recognize an old favourite, and see that my local bookstore was included.

Although, one feature of the book I adored was not about books at all, but rather the chairs one might sit in while reading them. I want a whole book about that, please.

Clearly this project was a labour of love, and it reflects a very singular experience of books.

I know that any book, when read at the right moment, might make my life better, might give me a greater understanding of the universe and the other people in it.

A library between worlds

For a book purportedly about a library, The Invisible Library, by Genevieve Cogman, has very little librarying going on here.

"I and Mr. Strongrock are agents of a library which exists between the alternate worlds. Our task is to collect books for the Library from all those worlds, to preserve them."

That's the premise. While the laws of physics are upheld throughout the worlds, they allow for magical elements and creatures like fairies and dragons, vampires and werewolves. Each world is governed by forces of order and of chaos, in varying degrees. I don't really see how all this jives with the claim that science remains true, but blah, blah, blah, suspension of disbelief, it's just a lame excuse to tell stories about different realities.

This story covers one particular mission in one particular alternate. This world is very Victorian-era steampunk, with a murdered vampire, zeppelins, and mechanical alligators. Our librarians seem to have stepped into a conspiracy, though whether it's masterminded by the Fae folk, the Iron Brotherhood, or Luxembourg is not clear. There's a bit of penny dreadful about it, as our chief protagonist, Librarian Irene, herself notes.

The book she's after is a version of Grimm's Fairy Tales. We're treated to a small sample of it, but my sense is that the object of the chase could have just as easily been another type of artefact.

Librarians also have access to the Language, a type of magic that seems to depend on naming things very precisely, but it's mostly just mysterious and convenient.

So what is the point of the Library? Although it opens onto all the alternate worlds, librarians are careful not to interfere in the workings of those worlds. They collect knowledge, but squirrel it away without ever really using it or even understanding it.

The conversation shifted, much to Irene's relief, into a debate on poetry that lasted for most of the journey. She herself was mostly silent, being more used to acquiring it than reading it.

Which doesn't seem very librarian-like to me.

It's a fun book, but mostly forgettable. I've had trouble focusing the last couple weeks, so this book was easy, not too demanding, and provided some distraction. There were some funny bits, and it reminds me a little of the Thursday Next books, but without the clever literary references. I won't be searching out the subsequent volumes of Cogman's series.

Have books, will travel

For a cross-country train journey, people bring a lot of books. But I saw more people carrying them than actually reading them. It's too easy to be distracted by scenery, or sleep. I certainly read far less than I had hoped to.

Although it boasts an activity car, a dining car, and a panorama car, The Canadian clearly lacks a library car.

But I was heartened to see this book exchange basket at the train station in Jasper, Alberta, full of good intentions.

Library woes

A few months ago I rediscovered the library. I had in general thought the English-language selection of fiction pretty paltry. I mean, I'd always check if I was looking for something in particular, but it was often easier and more efficient to purchase a book online.

But then suddenly they had e-books.

Maybe they'd had them for a while. But suddenly they had selection. And I've been taking advantage regularly.

I decided I'd finally try out Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels, and I placed a hold, and I waited and waited and waited, and meanwhile I decided to check out another novel, and wouldn't you know, the very next day My Brilliant Friend became available and was automatically checked out to me. So two novels, neither of them exactly slight. One at a time. I finished one, so started the other, the Ferrante, but felt I was running out of time. No problem, I'll renew the loan.

Not so fast.

Renewing digital titles works a little differently than renewing physical books from the library. When you renew a digital title, it doesn't extend your lending period. Instead, it lets you borrow the title again immediately after your current checkout expires (if there are no existing holds) or it places you on the wait list to borrow the title again as soon as possible (if there are existing holds).

And I realized: back into the queue I would go. I might be granted access to book 2 in the series before I could renew, and finish, book 1.

This put me in the position of rushing home from work, racing to the final 60-70 pages in just a couple hours, instead of spending a leisurely holiday weekend with it.

I did it. I finished it, just under the wire. A short while later, wanting to review a scene, the book was locked to me. Imagine if a physical book would just, poof, disappear, when the lending time was up.

I feel a little bereft. I didn't get to finish the book in my own time, on my own terms. I don't have full and proper closure on it.

I love the instantaneity of the digital library, and I love the interface that allows to me to keep lists and ratings. I hate just a little that I can't choose to return a book a day late.

Three library things

The Library at Night
A virtual exploration of the great libraries of the world, inspired by Alberto Manguel's essay.

Step into a recreation of Manguel's own library. "The library in the morning suggests an echo of the severe and reasonably wishful order of the world, the library at night seems to rejoice in the world's essential, joyful muddle."

Exhibition at the Grande Bibliothèque (Bibliothèque et archives nationales du Québec) until August 28, 2016. (I'll review it when I see it, but sadly that may not be for a while.)

Fallout 4
Disclaimer: I've never played Fallout, but I've logged several hours watching other people play Fallout.

In the latest installment, players can return overdue library books, strewn about the wasteland, for valuable tokens.

"There's certainly no harm in including a library in an imagined dystopian future — if anything, it's a great reminder that overwhelming violence can destroy valuable culture and knowledge."

The Library
A short film about the romance of books.

"It still carries a magical feeling for me, this special kind of sanctuary full of knowledge, full of stories, all covered in a sense of quiet respect and revery." (via)

Subterranean reading

Underground New York Public Library

Local newspaper La Presse has built a profile of readers on each of Montreal's metro lines: Orange Line marathon readers, Blue Line students, etc.

Books sighted span the gamut — Alexandre Dumas and Jules Verne, Stephen King and George RR Martin, Umberto Eco and Stefan Zweig. Also poetry and nonfiction. The larger point is that metro riders are reading real books, as opposed to, I guess, more disposable material.

It should be noted that Montreal's main metro hub is situated beneath the Grande Bibliothèque.

Books that have made people miss their stop: The Hunger Games (poll winner by a wide margin), The Count of Monte Cristo, Life of Pi. You?

See also Underground New York Public Library.

"Now that's just showing off"

Finally, a glimpse of the TARDIS library.

Library at sea

I'd brought plenty of reading material with me, but as a public service to you, I embarked on a bit of research while on vacation. Yes, boys and girls, I've sailed the high seas — where by "sailed" I mean lounged by the pool with a margarita in hand on a boat so big you can't feel it moving, and by "high seas" I mean just the one Caribbean sea — and made my way, after a midmorning round of miniputt and margaritas, across the boardwalk, past the carousel, through Central Park, picking up another margarita en route, to scope out the library on the 11th deck (which housed nothing else worth remarking) — all so you wouldn't have to.

So just what exactly does the library of luxury cruise ship have to offer?

Monica Ali and Margaret Atwood through Iain Banks and JK Rowling to Carlos Ruiz Zafón. Mostly in English, though I spotted a few Spanish and French titles (unless all the foreign-language books were out on loan?).

There's a key posted to explain the system by which the bindings are colour-coded. A solid half of the library is fiction, but there are healthy sections of biography, history, travel, and self-help. I counted 15 books on ships and navigation.

You sign out a book by recording it in the log book by the door, but essentially it works on the honour system. There's a drop box for returns. Presumably there's an employee assigned to straightening up and reshelving.

In the few minutes I spent there, I saw a handful of people come and go, to browse, check out, and return books.

I had expected a flourescent-lit metal shelf strewn with tattered paperbacks. I found instead a cozy, traditional wood-panelled study quite at odds with much of the larger-than-life bluster splayed across the other 17 decks.

I spent most of my days as close to the sun and the water (and the bar!) as possible, but if I were confined to the boat for months, I'd be relatively content to have this library at hand.

A special gummy hell

Old or new, the only sign I always try to rid my books of (usually with little success) is the price-sticker that malignant booksellers attach to the back. These evil white scabs rip off with difficulty, leaving leprous wounds and traces of slime to which adhere the dust and fluff of ages, making me wish for a special gummy hell to which the inventor of these stickers would be condemned.

— from The Library at Night, by Alberto Manguel.

Pamuk's library

In The New York Review of Books:

During the thirty-five years I have spent writing my own novels, I have learned not to laugh at the books written by others, and not to cast them aside, no matter how silly, ill-timed, outmoded, outdated, stupid, wrongheaded, or strange they might be. The secret of loving these books was not, perhaps, to read them in the way their authors had intended.... The point was to read these books—strange, and indifferent, and interspersed with moments of astonishing beauty—so as to put myself in their authors' shoes. You did not escape provinciality by running away from the provinces, but by making it your own. This was how I learned to immerse myself in my slowly expanding library, and also how I learned to put myself at a distance. It was after I turned forty that I learned that the most powerful reason for loving my library was that neither Turks nor Westerners knew about it.

Beatitude

for every sweet lump of baby born that women croon over, is one vast rotten meat burning slow worms in graves of this earth

— from Desolation Angels, by Jack Kerouac.

How I came to know Jack
I've never read any Kerouac. That is about to change.

The celebration of the 50th anniversary of On the Road (published in 1957), while I recognize it as an important landmark of American literature, blah, blah, blah, did not inspire me to read it. Nothing about it captured my interest, honestly; which is kind of weird actually, in light of those things that generally do capture my interest. But there you have it: I haven't read Jack.

Then last week, I had to go to New York City, for meetings for work. And it so happens that our New York office is across the street from the New York Public Library. And it so happens that there's an exhibition running there till March 16: Beatific Soul: Jack Kerouac on the Road. Featuring the scroll on which On the Road was written (or a reasonable facsimile thereof).

I had a few spare minutes at lunch, and it seemed the library would be a worthwhile destination. And it was.

I had time enough to walk through quickly, and be astounded. A notice on Jack's view of sex and celibacy caught my attention, in which I read the above quotation ("every sweet lump of baby born that women croon over"! — isn't it beautiful?! (the idea being that the procreative act is the original source of all our misery on earth, all sweet babies die)) and I was lost, found, swept away, in love, and wanting to know everything about Jack.



What I now know about Jack
He loved Beethoven.
He loved cats.
He loved baseball, and managed fantasy leagues obsessively.
He loved his mother.
Not only did he author a classic — give voice to a generation — with On the Road, he supplied the titles for both Allen Ginsberg's Howl and William S Burroughs' Naked Lunch.
He kept a list of other artists' transgressions against the beat gospel (as it was in his view).
He put the beat in beatitude.

Beethoven and cats. That's all I needed to know.

An aside
I went to New York City, and all I got for my boyfriend was this lousy t-shirt. From the library.

I looked for Jack Kerouac at the bookstore on my return to Montreal. I didn't have much success at first. By accident, I stumbled across a locked glass case up against a column and not noticeably related to any one section. I had to ask for access to browse, and had to ask why it was under lock and key. Those titles identified as high potential for theft, the clerk told me. Bukowski, Burroughs, Camus, Philip K Dick, and Kerouac.