Vanessa’s Noteworthy Reads of 2012

Looking at the list of books that I read this year, I noticed there weren’t any books that spring out as definite favourite reads. But there are two books I want to mention simply because they surprised me and had something unique.

1. De Eeuw Van Mijn Vader by Geert Mak

As the title gives away, this is a Dutch book. Although some of Geert Mak’s other books have been translated to English, this one has – unforgivably – not been translated. A translation would be: “My Father’s Century”. Geert Mak is a historical non-fiction writer. I usually don’t read books from this genre but several people recommended this book to me and I’m glad I took their advice and read it.

Goodreads and to the Future

In the beginning of this year, my fellow Cecile’s Writers recommended Goodreads to me and I recall looking at them thinking Good-what? After a thorough explanation I could completely understand why it would be right up my alley. So I signed up, familiarized myself with the platform and before I knew it, I was checking every morning to see the latest updates of friends that would often inspire me to read more or to discover new literature. More importantly, I finally had a place to track my own reading and rate all the books I’ve read… fantastic! If you’re a bookworm or neurotic organizer like I am, Goodreads is basically heaven.

Fellow Bookworms

All that aside, I have managed to make many friends on Goodreads – both readers and writers – who have enriched my literary life. Every time I have a new friend I race to check their books and what we’ve read in common so I can measure up where I stand in comparison and how similar our reading tastes are. This in turn helps me to decide whether their recommendations or reviews will be of particular interest to me. Fortunately, I have many such friends (you know who you are) and all I can say at this point is that I’ve never had such a long reading list in my life… to think I use to grumble about not being able to read enough when the list was just a quarter of the length!

Reading a Book Twice: Fun, Healthy or Just a Waste of Time

I’ve just started reading The Devil and Miss Prym by Paulo Coelho for the second time. This book is on my top-five best-reads list. When I recommended the book to a friend, he asked me what happens and I couldn’t answer him. I know precisely what I felt and learned when reading it, but I’m fuzzy on the details.

Time to read it again, I thought. I wonder if it will make as big an impact on me as it did the first time I read it 12 years ago. I’m a bit worried I am going to be disappointed.

Why Fiction?

In C.S. Lewis’ book An Experiment in Criticism, I found a thread of thought that was both engaging and insightful where he proposed a thought experiment involving literary criticism.

Lewis suggests that books should be judged by how they are read rather than how they are written, and that readers should approach any book they read for the first time without prejudgment. Any book that motivates a reader to want to reread it is then a work of art regardless of label or genre. The most succinct passages I found were those of his epilogue, which pretty much sum up the book:

Are Reviews Ruining Your Reading?

Reviews are fun to read and fun to write. I’ve actually written a couple of reviews for this blog. But there is an inherent problem with reviews. Perhaps this only happens to me (though I’m almost sure it happens to more people).

Sometimes, when I’ve run out of books that appeal to me, or the books I have on my ‘to read’ pile have little to do with what I feel like reading, I go to Amazon.com or Goodreads.com and I type ‘list’ and the genre I’m in the mood for. There’s always a list with a book that looks interesting. Reviews and other people’s likes and dislikes help me find something to read. Great.

Is Non-fiction Vital to You as a Creative Writer?

Textbooks = *yawn

I know for myself that reading hasn’t always been a picnic in school or college. There were always books that didn’t appeal to me but I had to read and study if I wanted the grades that I aimed for… I’m thinking here of titles like ‘Understanding Statistics’ or ‘Advanced Physics’ (I had a science track). Don’t misunderstand me though, I loved learning and acquiring new knowledge, and I still do. But such books were boring, the explanations difficult and dry, the layout and format horrendous, and don’t even get me started on the price tags!

In school, I had to depend ultimately on lectures and reading books that I thought were worthy enough to impart the necessary knowledge. I recall in high school tossing aside the curriculum textbooks for Advanced Physics and Economics and consulting instead the relevant chapters from ‘The Feynman Lectures on Physics’ and ‘Positive Economics’, since these books “explained” their text in a way that I could digest the information.

Reading Layers

I find there are three layers that I analyze whenever I read a piece of fiction. And while it’s difficult to take in all three layers at once, with practice and awareness, it becomes feasible.

Reread

A writing teacher once told me to reread any book that I thought was really good immediately again, after finishing it. When I’d asked why I should bother since there were so many great books to go through, the teacher said that the first time you read a book, you’re too engrossed on the journey of the character(s) and eager for the outcome, to really bother about appreciating things like diction, structure, style, subtext and so on.

Although this made a lot of sense, it took me a while to actually do this. I later attributed it to the fact that the right book which I could immediately reread had not yet landed on my hands. Until I read The Old Man and the Sea. If I like something or if a piece of art speakes to me, then I’m more

The Off Button

So how does this work?

That’s my favourite and often used question whenever I’m fumbling around with a technical apparatus, like cookers or electronic devices. Even devices that I use daily – my digital TV – pose a challenge. Each time I want to turn on the digital radio or television is an adventure. (Not to mention my laptop, which seems to have a life of its own.)

CritiquingMode.exe

Turning things off, however, is not much of a problem. I give all the buttons a try and if those fail, I just unplug the device – unplugging has never failed me.

But I’ve finally found something that I cannot turn off by pressing a button nor is unplugging a solution (that’d be kind of radical).