Bookish Acquisitions

I have been quite the good, responsible girl lately: I have abstained--and that is surely the only word for it--from purchasing scads of books. I realize that, if I followed my natural bent, I would need a separate building--and a large one--to house my collection. Oh, and I would be parlously close to bankruptcy. As such, I try to tether the passion as best I can. Yet, sometimes a book-addict must let loose. These are some recent acquisitions.

Deciding the order in which to read a new crop of books is almost more fun than choosing which ones to buy. It is a delicate, delicious process of anticipation; often it is also one of elimination. It helps to know which one to save for last. In this case, Simon Callow's Orson Welles Volume 2 Hello Americans, is the clear winner: it will be the last unread, sitting alluringly on my night-stand, impatiently awaiting its turn. The others will be read in rotation, constantly giving way one right after the other, a few chapters at a time. Perhaps, after a certain exciting or thoughtful passage, one will surge past the rest in my affections. For now, as I am in the early, heart-thumping stages of discovering all three, that shall remain to be seen.

Top Left: Proust at the Majestic The Last Days of the Author Whose Book Changed Paris by Richard Davenport-Hines (BLOOMSBURY)-Proust remains the King of pliant, serpentine, evocative language.

Top Center: She & Him Volume One-Zooey Deschanel's quirky, folky voice and thoughtful, simple and literary lyrics are my ideal accompaniment to reading.

Top Right: The Mammoth Book of Private Lives Edited by John E. Lewis (CARROLL & GRAF)-I have an insatiable curiosity about the inner drives of creatives and intellectuals.

Front Middle: Orson Welles Volume 2 Hello Americans by Simon Callow (PENGUIN BOOKS)- Volume 1 was superb.

Front Bottom: The Queen Mother The Official Biography by William Shawcross (ALFRED A. KNOPF)-Although I was sent this by mistake, it has already proven itself a keeper.

A Reading List a Mile Long:24 May Edition

When The Chef got the mail this morning, he immediately took the "Daedelus Books Early Summer 2009" catalogue and tossed it into the trash.He is certainly no enabler, I will give him that.His thoughts on the subject run the course from "You already have more books than you need" to "You can't afford to buy books right now".He muttered the latter as he pitched the precious trove of literary possibilities.'Tis true,I must admit, but it falls far wide of my reasoning.I love to think about books almost as much as I enjoy reading them.My reading list is destined to grow ever longer--I will never be able to keep pace with my desires.But no matter--perusing a catalogue is something akin to flipping through 'Elle'.I will never own 90% of what catches my fancy but I am all the richer for knowing that they exist.And,unlike haute couture, I can borrow all of the books that I want.I am currently quite intrigued with the following.

1-JANE AUSTEN'S GUIDE TO GOOD MANNERS COMPLIMENTS,CHARADES AND HORRIBLE BLUNDERS BY JOSEPHINE ROSS HENRIETTA WEBB ILLUS. (BLOOMSBURY) Although I have no interest in the worshipful cult that has grown up around the witty lady from Bath,I am an unabashed fan of her life and works (that I am an Austen myself makes this somewhat inevitable).This book is an exception to my rule:it looks genuinely engaging.We could all do with a goodly dose of manners, especially as filtered through the Austen sensibility.
2-ALDOUS HUXLEY COMPLETE ESSAYS VOLUME V:1939-1956 and ALDOUS HUXLEY COMPLETE ESSAYS VOLUME VI:1956-1963 ROBERT S. BAKER AND JAMES SEXTON, EDS. (IVAN R. DEE) A compilation series of the non-fiction essays of the famously hard-to-fathom Englishman (at least for high-schoolers trying to work their way through 'A Brave New World').Huxley's contribution to 20th-century literature was immense.These books offer up a fraction of his varied out-put.
3-JOYCE BY IAN PINDAR (HAUS PUBLISHING)I love biographies of dead writers, as I have mentioned on more than one occasion.James Joyce was truly the most fascinating of individuals.Of equal fascination to me is how biographers approach the man and his work in so many odd,convoluted,dense and deep ways, which insures that Joyce as subject will always seem as fresh and new as his writing.
4-ANGUS MCBEAN:PORTRAITS ANGUS MCBEAN,PHOTOS. TERENCE PEPPER, ED. (MONACELLI)Angus McBean was one of the finest photographers of the 20th-Century.His images of British stars from the 1930's onward are amazing:I can only imagine how fabulous this coffee-table edition of his work must be.
5-SUN VALLEY:ARCHITECTURE AND INTERIORS ALAN EDISON AND JO RABJOHN TIM BROWN, PHOTOS. (GIBBS SMITH)Sun Valley is one of the places in America that I would most like to visit--probably because it is so different from my native neck-of-the-woods.Couple that with my well-known love of coffee table books, and it looks like a winner.
6-ALL IS CHANGE THE TWO-THOUSAND-YEAR JOURNEY OF BUDDHISM TO THE WEST BY LAWRENCE SUTIN (LITTLE,BROWN)Buddhism,while ultimately not for me as a life choice, is a subject that I delve into time and again.I like the approach that this book takes, elucidating the long-history of Buddhism's dance with the West.
7-TRUE VAMPIRES BY SONDRA LONDON (FERAL HOUSE) I,like many,find the literary vampire (and its historical origins) of keen interest.However,this book crosses the threshold into reality, by profiling people who truly believe that they are vampires.I am not sure if the result of reading about such people will be horror or pity.
8-WAVE-SWEPT SHORE THE RIGORS OF LIFE ON A ROCKY SHORE BY MIMI KOEHL,ANN WERTHEIM ROSENFELD,PHOTOS. (CALIFORNIA)This appears to be an analytical-visual take on the gritty nature of coastal life.Rugged shores are some of my favourite places to visit. I harbor a kind of artistic-literary fantasy of living on the wild shores of New England or Cape Breton.As that is unlikely, I will make do with the occasional vacation and this book!
9-FLAVORS OF GREECE BY ROSEMARY BARRON (INTERLINK)You can chalk this one up to a combination of hunger and the fact that I ate at a Greek diner with my boss a few days ago.Oh,and because I really do love Greek food.I still regret not ordering Baklava for dessert on Friday.
10-CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG BY IAN FLEMING (YEARLING) I loved this book as a child, and was in the habit of dreaming myself into the story.That it was written by the man who gave us Bond, James Bond really makes me giggle as an adult.It is one of the little gems that I would love to read aloud to my (hypothetical) future children. Sigh.

Review:Apartment in Athens

Published just as the conflict it so intimately chronicled came to an end,'Apartment in Athens' was hailed as an important work that was sure to endure as a reminder of the very human nature of war. For good or for ill, the words of critics have no magical powers:they can merely thrust their opinions onto the reading public and hope for the best. Whether a volume sinks under the waves of oblivion or crests to lasting fame is entirely in the hands of the only gauge that matters:readers (and,to one extent or another, publishing houses).

That 'Apartment in Athens' was out-of-print for more than 30 years, republished by the New York Review of Books just a few years ago,is sadly anything but an anomaly. Popular in its own day, it was rather quickly forgotten in the affluent post-war culture of the Fifties. So much for icon status.Fortunately for twenty-first century readers, Glenway Wescott's tale of the desperately insular plight of a single, though tragically far from singular,wartime family is once again readily available.

The wrenching and understated realism of the drama is weighed on a minutely domestic scale that seamlessly nets the wide swathe of violence and upheaval, eloquently capturing the universal experience of war in the daily traumas and uncertainties of one Greek family.The setting of the action is as the title suggests--all but a few short scenes occur in the home of the once-comfortable Helios family.Their lives already dessicated by the death of their revered older son, the German occupation forces hardship after hardship on them.Their privations mingle with those of their neighbors until they are set apart as one of the families forced to provide room and board for a German officer.

For more than a year they house Major Kalter.The practical and psychological ramifications of living with the enemy are revealed in subtle, often mundane ways.The man that they easily come to think of as "their" German is,of course,more complex than his rigid adherence to protocol suggests.The lack of action in the first two-thirds of the novel serves to underscore the sinister tragedy when it finally comes.

For so much of Glenway Wescott's (1901-1987)career he was viewed as a boy wonder on the international literary scene--perhaps unfairly, given his immense and multi-faceted talent.Published in 1945, at the height of his powers, 'Apartment in Athens' gives us a subtle and fleeting glimpse of the richness he was able to develop in his maturation as an artist.

Capsule Review-"MAIN STREET" by SINCLAIR LEWIS

This article originally appeared in December 2004 issue of The Atomic Tomorrow. I am reprinting it here for Kate Gabrielle of 'Silents and Talkies', who loves Sinclair Lewis. Enjoy!!

Set largely in small town America in the second decade of the twentieth century, "Main Street" is a bold and unvarnished appeal on behalf of non-subversive individuality and practical feminism. Viewing marriage as something of a lark, and men as beings to be conquered, Carol Kennecott leaves her urban life behind to settle in the wilds of Minnesota, with her new husband, a doctor.

Artistic but insensitive, she sets out with a near-missionary zeal to bring culture to the inhabitants of Gopher Prairie. Initially tolerant of her odd ways, and her proud otherness, they are confident that she will soon soften her sharp individuality and learn to blend in, while she is arrogantly blind to the small yet genuinely artistic efforts of her neighbors.

We follow Carol, and her kindly ponderous husband, through a shifting mosaic of defiance, submission, flight, and compromise. She is not a heroine as such but a richly flawed woman; not always likable, she is deeply human. She grows and matures in the ways real people do, by starts and fits, with a sometimes imperfect understanding of what it is she is striving for, and working against.

The society that author Sinclair Lewis rails against,as opposed to that of Ayn Rand,his ideological opposite in the fight for personal sovereignty, is markedly our own. His ideals of individuality and freedom are attainable, though conditionally and at great cost, in this world. In Rand's novels, the only characters capable of achieving severance from the expectations of the world-at-large are such intellectually and physically superior specimens as to defy categorization as human. They are god-like inhabitants of a sordid, corrupt version of America; denizens of a fantasy universe of extreme and unthinking conformity.

Carol eventually finds a limited but hopeful place in the context of her chosen milieu, within the workings of fast-changing, modern society, where even the flawed, the weak, and the impotent can find ways to assert their uniqueness. That this is ultimately not enough to satisfy the spirit of humanity is the deeper truth that is hidden behind this story of one woman's struggle to adapt and thrive in an environment, and amongst people, she doesn't understand.

PHOTO: SINCLAIR LEWIS

REVIEWING MY COLLECTION: LIVING AUTHORS Edited by DILLY TANTE

I have a nerdy, abiding mania for several things. The one that has been with me the longest is my passion for reference books: dictionaries, encyclopedias, almanacs. Anything with the express purpose of imparting information and wisdom of a linguistic, geographic or historic nature sets my heart to twirling. As a writer, I also swear by all manner of odd and informative fact, trivia, date and biographical books. 'Living Authors'is the latter.

I picked it up around five years ago, from the discount purveyor Edward R. Hamilton Bookseller. I have scored some amazing finds from that catalogue but this has been the most used, appreciated and enjoyed.

It is a thick book, chock-a-block full of enticing, informative and brief biographies of, yes, living authors. The catch, which is exactly what made the tome so alluring to me in the first place, is that it was initially published in 1931.So, if you were hoping to read tasty tidbits about Dan Brown or Anne Rice, then this is not your volume. However, if you enjoy the works of some of the greatest writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, or want to discover lesser-remembered lights of that era, then it is well worth finding a copy. Mine is a 2001 reprint.

The book profiles nearly 400 authors, including a photo or illustration of each, as well as a description of their looks. You learn about their backgrounds, careers, and personal lives. While there is no gossip, there is trivia both odd and insightful to be found.

It has proven to be a handy, one-of-a-kind data resource for my columns and reviews, much-thumbed,and infinitely inspirational.'Living Authors' is the perfect book to flip open randomly, while sipping a cup of tea or lazing on the sofa. It takes you back to a time when the world was fertile with wordsmiths of every ilk who, even after separating the talent and the person, were bewitching, engaging and unique individuals in their own right.

Even if I had to eviscerate my collection, 'Living Authors' is one of the last volumes I would part with:it has a charm, approach and immediacy impossible to duplicate.

PHOTOGRAPH: Then-Living Author LOUISE BOGAN.

Banned From Books: A Reading List a Mile Long, Part III

Today is the last day of The Challenge: reading commences tomorrow. I am relieved to slip back into the homey yet challenging skin of being a reader, and my self-identification as such. I already feel as if I shall want to devour one of everything, please! This will make April as much of a challenge as March. Whittling down my wish-list is going to take a mental chisel of epic proportions--continuing to peruse that Daedalus catalogue is probably not the best use of my idle time. I am, sadly, too deeply engrossed to pull back. Here is Part III of my Reading List, straight out of Daedalus Early Spring 2009. It is probably a good thing that I have not broken the seal of the Bas Bleu catalogue that arrived a few days ago!

1-Love and Louis XIV The Women in the Life of the Sun King by Antonia Fraser (NAN A. TALESE)A soon-to-be notch on my post of biographies read, it is authored by the superb Antonia Fraser, who specializes in chronicling the lives of historical figures. Plus, the re-telling of the Court of the Sun King must read like the trashiest modern tabloid, wrought real.

2-La Dame D'Esprit A Biography of the Marquise du Chatelet by Judith P. Zinsser (VIKING)A peek into the life and careers of one of the most accomplished women of the 18th-Century.

3-The Thames: A Cultural History by Mick Sinclair (OXFORD) This is essentially a biography of the iconic English river. This would be a good place to call me a history geek and obsessive Anglophile. Go ahead. I know you want to.

4-Whores of the Devil Witch-Hunts and Witch-Trials by Erik Durschmied (SUTTON) The title is reason enough, don't you think? Persecution of women of power and influence was sadly wide-spread, even in otherwise civilized societies. I find studies of such endemic superstition, fear and greed incredibly fascinating.

5-Mary Magdalene: A Biography by Bruce Chilton (DOUBLEDAY) Rounding out the genre is a telling of the life of the woman who, in unknown and unknowable capacities, walked by the side of Jesus.

6-Letters of EB White Revised Edition EB White Dorothy Lobrano Guth & Martha White, eds. John Updike, forward. (HARPERCOLLINS) The world and insight of the man behind the extraordinary worlds of creatures Charlotte, Wilbur and Stuart is presented through decades of his letters.

7-Burning Bright by Tracy Chevalier (DUTTON) She wrote the lovely, evocative and believable 'Girl With a Pearl Earring'. All of her novels create, and re-create, in the most breathtaking capacity imaginable, lost eras and the human, complicated individuals who inhabited them.

8-Emilio's Carnival (Senilita) by Italo Svevo (YALE)His early masterpiece, dating from 1898.

9-Maxfield Parrish and the American Imagists by Laurence S. Cutler & Judy Goffman Cutler (CHARTWELL) Another lush coffee-table art book.

10-Toulouse-Lautrec in Paris by Franck Maubert (ASSOULINE) The life + artwork of the bedazzled, sordid legend.

11-Obsessed with Hollywood Test Your Knowledge of the Silver Screen by Andrew J. Rausch (CHRONICLE) I am, and I will.

Banned From Books: A Reading List a Mile Long, Part II

It was Tuesday night, warm, breezy and clear: post-dinner out with The Chef.I had to break out in a trot to keep up with him--the strides of a tall man are too much for me to keep pace with. He was through the doors before I could shout "slow down". I was led, surely quite knowingly, straight down the primrose path: that door opened into Barnes & Noble.

I followed The Chef around the many tables and shelves, up and down escalators, going whither he went, wherever his desire carried us, avoiding too closely anything that looked tempting to my eyes. I am in the waning days of MY GREAT CHALLENGE--this book fast, or intellectual famine--and did not wish to needlessly make things harder on myself.

Besides, I have been walking around with a large portion of the Daedalus Books catalogue swimming circles in my head. I unloaded some of my wish list a few days ago. Below, is Part the Second.

1-The Awful End of Prince William the Silent: The First Assassination of a Head of State with a Handgun by Lisa Jardine (HARPERCOLLINS)Call me morbid, if you must. The entire nature of the world and our future as human beings changed as a result of this single event.

2-American Cities: Historic Maps and Views by Paul E. Cohen & Henry G. Taliaferro (ASSOULINE)A big, expensive, interactive coffee table book. I have so many of these that, like my framed pieces of art, I have to routinely change them out in order to display them all. Still, there is always room for another, correct?

3-Charlotte Perriand: A Life of Creation by Charlotte Perriand (MONACELLI)A designer, she worked alongside legends (Le Corbusier, people!)and lived fascinatingly and singularly: this is her autobiography.

4-Jack the Ripper: Letters From Hell by Stewart P. Evans & Keith Skinner (SUTTON) In case you thought I was morbid with the assassination book.

5-Storm Warning The Origins of the Weather Forecast by Pauline Halford (SUTTON) I am fairly certain that reading this book will forever classify me as an utter geek yet I care not. Forecasting weather is still an imperfect science: we continuously whine about the erratic ability of our meteorologists. However, the leaps we have made in a couple hundred years is really impressive. This book tells the story of how far we have come, and why.

6-The Art of Burning Bridges A Life of John O'Hara by Geoffrey Wolff (KNOPF)Never the most popular man in literary--or life-circles, he is a mostly forgotten writer. In his day, he was brilliant, polarizing and famous. As I have stated before, I love literary biographies--especially when they are devoted to someone whose star was once bright but has since grown dim. Unfortunately, those are often the best writers.

7-Lighthouses of North America by Barry Pickthall (CHARTWELL) I break for lighthouses, really I do. If I see one on my travels, I must stop. While nothing short of towering reality can capture their beauty and history, a coffee table book is a good start.

8-D.H. Lawrence's Paintings by D.H. Lawrence. Keith Sagar, intro. (CHAUCER PRESS)D.H. Lawrence the artist, category visual, is given due notice and examination in this book. Finally.

9-Film Posters of the 60s The Essential Movies of the Decade by Tony Nourmand & Graham Marsh, ed. (TASCHEN) Films of the 60s as seen through promotional posters, full-size and in-color, published by Taschen. Enough said.

Banned From Books: A Reading List a Mile Long, Part I

I received the Early Spring 2009 Daedalus Books catalogue in the post yesterday. A book catalogue in my hands is, ordinarily, a thing at once dangerous and heavenly: it is porn, complete with alluring, tasty pictures.It is my ritual to grab a pen, throw myself into a chair, and hastily circle anything that catches my fancy or piques my intellect.The arc of my interests is wide, and ever-growing: there are many blurbs touched with ink by catalogue's end.Occasionally,when my curiosity gains the upper hand, I will add up the cost of every circled item. The figure is always embarrassing, even with a discount purveyor like Daedalus.

Even as the no-books challenge is winding down, I am still trying to quell and quash my desire--I will stop shy of calling it a need--to read, read, read! In lieu of picking up a book, I picked up that catalogue and marked my desires with a half-empty black pen, which is now drained and dry. Below is a sampler of some of the delectables, oddities and inspirations I found.

1-Bugatti Queen In Search of a French Racing Legend by Miranda Seymour (RANDOM HOUSE) I am a sucker for biographies of independent,odd and accomplished female souls.

2-Black Barty The Real Pirate of the Caribbean by Aubrey Burl (SUTTON) I have a sick fascination for all things piratical, historically speaking.

3-Eating with the Victorians C. Anne Wilson, ed. (SUTTON)I am a Victoriana nut and I love food. This tome seems like the perfect blend of sociological commentary ( food says loads about a people and culture) and cookbook. Yum!

4-Faces of Science by Mariana Cook. Intro by Gerard Piel (NORTON) While I am not a science fiend, I do find the minds and lives of scientists to be enthralling curiosities ( hello, Johannes Kepler). I also love photography.

5-Penicillin Man: Alexander Fleming and the Antibiotic Revolution by Kevin Brown (SUTTON) SEE ABOVE.

6-A Theatrical Feast in New York by Elizabeth Sharland (SUTTON) How, and where, famous thespians and playwrights pass the time before and after opening night.

7-DEAR FRIENDS American Photographs of Men Together 1840-1918 by David Deitcher (ABRAMS) Doesn't the title say it all? And, no, it is not erotica, at least not in any modern sense.

8-Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson. Ralph Steadman, illus. (VINTAGE) Sometimes only Gonzo will do.

9-Wordsworth:A Life by Juliet Barker (HARPER PERENNIAL) My gluttonous yearning for biographies of writers of every stripe will never be sated. Bonus points if it gives good coverage of his famous sister Dorothy,as well.

10-Dolce Vita Style by Jean-Pierre Dufreigne (ASSOULINE) Anyone who has ever seen even 5 minutes of the Fellini film understands why it merits a book such as this.

Painting:The Reader by Jean-Honore Fragonard

Banned From Books, Part IV-Bucherwurm

At this hour, I am deeply envious of the woman in the painting. Night is slowly descending and the light in my loft is of the same haziness as the boudoir in Hermann Fenner-Behmer's work. Perhaps she is reading by a slowly awakening light, in the morning's dawning, but I like to think that she is enjoying the languorous waning of a day that is passing into memory. The leavings on the table could be of any meal; I choose to make them the remains of an evening's repast. I, too, have tea nearby.Yet, while I remain mistress of my clothing, I am missing the key accessory of that engrossed reader, a book.

I have adhered faithfully to the outlines of this challenge:no books for the entire month of March, except for research purposes. No novels,no autobiographies, no enticing histories of anything, no poetry.I have been busy, and this very busyness, while exhausting, is what made the first two weeks fly by, what made the lack far less trying, or noticeable, than it would have been ordinarily.

I missed, initially, the book that I was then reading. I had been visiting the world contained within its pages, gathering its story to me at odd moments throughout each day, for a few weeks, intentionally lengthening the process. It was Charlotte Bronte's "Villette"; approximately one-third remains, waiting to be picked up again when the Challenge has ended.

The real sense of loss has been appearing in the last few days, pricking me for a few seconds before scuttling off again. Reading is not just a past-time, an addiction or an addendum to my character. So many things, vast and subtle, are caught up in the coils of this pleasure. I never realized, fully, how sensual an experience words are, for me, nor how many other vital enjoyments are joined to the act of reading.

Tea, fragrant steam rising off of eddying milk,housed within a familiar cup, rests on its saucer at my elbow. Too hot to bring to my lips, it cools as I read. Engrossed in the book, I forget about the liquid, I forget about everything but the words before me, the words and the scenes and emotions those words evoke. I forget about the tea until it has nearly become too cold for its purpose, catching it to my lips immediately before it is a waste, when its warmth is just right, downing it in three long gulps, Goldilocks-like.

I am sinking into bathwater; indulgently hot water, no bubbles, a few candles, and a book.Magazines are cumbersome and flimsy-only a book serves to pass the time,about an hour's worth if the water temperature stays elevated. A glass of wine, red, resting on the tub's edge between sips, aids my warmth, from the inside. Drops, light as mist, scatter onto a page or two. When dry, they are lightly raised, as braille.

Face-down on my bed, reposed comfortably as the woman in the painting, I am half-covered with a sheet, foot tapping, turning the pages of a book--spending the final moments of the evening on words, sentences and thought.Drowsily stretching, I fall asleep mid-paragraph;my curling fingers mark the page. I awake, slowly, to painful rays of light ,and the book with its freshly crumpled edges.

I am deeply envious of the woman in the painting.She is in full command of her simple pleasures: a book, a pot of tea, and the evening's dying light.

Painting:Der Bucherwurm, Hermann Fenner-Behmer (1906).

I've Been Challenged,Part 1 or:You Cannot Be Serious

It must have been a surprise to my family when, aged three, I rather matter-of-factly picked up a Little Golden Book and, with it right-side-up, began to read. No one, you see, had actually set out to teach me.It must have been organic, the natural result of an already marked fascination with the written word: even as a toddler, I wandered around the house clutching books in my hands, imploring every adult to read to me, please. At my grandparents' house, I would often slip away from my playroom, or anywhere else I was suppose to be, to go read in the hall coat closet. Yes, the coat closet: it is where a box containing all of my books was kept. After struggling to open the door, then again to snap the light on by pulling the long white string that dangled from the ceiling, it was easier to plop down and "read" right there, next to the vacuum and my grandpa's golf shoes. After awhile, my worried family ceased their worrying, as my whereabouts were set in cement.


There are a few commonalities to the hundreds of photographs snapped by my family during my first five years. Within the frame can be found me, my light brown musical teddy bear and books. "Start as you mean to go on" is a phrase that I have seen randomly popping up on the web in recent weeks. It is trite but manages still to neatly encapsulate the course of my life in the thirty years since I first decoded that Little Golden book.


My love for reading things in book form is fierce and adamantine. It is one of the tallest and sturdiest pillars of my being; my self-identity is en-coiled so completely with books that I am unsure if I could ever unravel it, even if I chose to try. This, then, is the very thing that has been asked of me: to forsake books for the entire month of March.


This gauntlet was hurled at me by The Chef, a seasoned veteran in putting challenges to me that at first seem cruel or needless and, on occasion, flat-out silly. He has proven himself on a number of these occasions to have a surprising depth of insight into my character and motivations.Example: Steak, the noshing of, by his birthday. I was a vegetarian at that time, something that I have since ceased to be. That is another story, however, but it is an example of a compelling coerciveness that I have never met in another person, save myself.


When he first suggested that I not read a book, except for professional needs, for an entire month--and a month of 31 days, at that--I took it for a joke. It was merely an off-handed comment, after all, spoken in his normal voice while he was dressing for work one morning. I would have expected such heterodoxy, if it was truly meant, to be accompanied by the opening of the very earth beneath our feet ,gale-force winds or, at the least, by a circling of ravens above our heads. As those things did not happen, I laughed off his suggestion as a jest.


But, no, the man was serious, and remains so. He maintains the position that it would do me good to be a non-reader for a month. I asked him if he thought it would do him good to be a non-breather for a month, as it nearly amounts to the same thing. I would not, could-not give such a ridiculous challenge a thought. What could I, or anyone, possibly gain intellectually, spiritually, philosophically or in any way that matters, by not reading books? The answer, now that it has come, is exoteric: how would I know? I have gone no more than a day or two, in all my years as a reader, without picking up a book or two ( or three) and greedily ingesting at least a few pages.


The first of March is a scant few hours away, and I remain undecided in my response. While I am reluctant to attempt something that seems to be designed to entirely impoverish my soul, I am not entirely unwilling. A month is not a lifetime, it is a gathering of days that will quickly disappear.I am wise enough to know that there is something to be learned from the brief absence of words, although what that is, exactly, is yet unknown.


If I take up this challenge, I will not be entirely bereft of words: the fast is for (non-professional) books only, leaving the internet and magazines open to my perusal.While I try to decide, I am going to take a cue from these rules. Instead of finishing the night with Charlotte Bronte, I am going to close it with the March Issue of 'Marie Claire' and a glass or two of wine.


Tomorrow, in Part II, I will contemplate a life without books while explaining why my life is contained,explained and justified, in so large a part, within them.

THE ABOVE PHOTO IS BY LIN KRISTENSEN OF NEW JERSEY. IT IS LICENCED UNDER THE CREATIVE COMMONS ATTRIBUTION 2.0. CLICK ON THE PHOTO TO SEE ALL OF THE INFORMATION.