• Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. Frans got this for me back in 2006, right when we started dating, and occasionally we’ve read passages from it together. We started reading it again last night, and both agreed it should come on the trip.
• Patrick O’Brian: The Mauritius Command and Desolation Island (#4 and #5 in his Aubrey and Maturin series). My dad and I are both making our way through this series – he’s a few books ahead of me but I’m hoping to catch up this summer. Of course, if I catch up there will be squabbles over who gets a book first – right now he has most of the series with him in Seattle, where he scoured used book stores to collect them.
• Roberto Bolano’s 2666 (first volume). This has Parts 1-3. I’ve read 1, and was supposed to read 2 in June, and would like to write a little about each of them during the trip for the Read-Along.
• Jerzy Pilch’s The Mighty Angel. Not much to say about this one, just that I’ve been wanting to read it, and the small size makes it ideal for sticking in a carry-on.

Enough about sleeping habits. This is supposed to be a post about books. Without further ado, then, my current thoughts on books:

• I’m really enjoying Nigel Beale’s blog. Books, photos, musings, interviews. Unfortunately the photos don’t come through in the RSS feed (at least not on Google Reader) but it’s nice to pop over and browse the actual blog once in a while.
• And have I mentioned I LOVE Open Letter Books? Not just because they publish and write about great books, but also because they’ve sent me TWO freebies already. I just received Jerzy Pilch’s The Mighty Angel in the mail as a result of a giveaway on Facebook. How cool is that? I’m looking forward to reading it, but might save it for the Midwest Trip in July and focus on library books for the next two weeks.
• Words Without Borders is also fantastic. I’m halfway through their Pakistan issue, wishing they published a print version just so I could have a hard copy (yes, I know I COULD print them out myself). They also talk about extremely interesting things on their blog – for example, the fact that Dover has just published Emily Ruete’s Memoirs of an Arabian Princess from Zanzibar, which was originally published in German in 1886 and is apparently the first (auto?)biography ever of an Arab woman. Yes, I want a copy. Now.
• Ooh, what else? How about this: Tony (of Steph & Tony Investigate) has written an awesome review of Angels and Demons (the movie), which includes an evaluation of Tom Hank’s hair. I’m sure I’ll see the movie someday, but between their review and Bob Mondello’s review on NPR, I’m certainly not going to pay theater prices for it. As I’ve told my sister more than once: “Dan Brown? Don’t get me started on Dan Brown.” And then I roll my eyes dramatically. For effect, you know?
• One last thing, as this is getting pretty long. I just got a copy of Nadeem Aslam’s Maps for Lost Lovers from the library – I had requested it after reading an interview with Aslam in the Asia Literary Review. I’m loving the book so far – it’s about a Pakistani immigrant community in England and is beautifully written.

I think that’s all for now, as far as books are concerned. Frans is awake and it’s time for breakfast on our newly-rejuvenated back patio.

Friends of the Library is a pretty cool (non-profit) organization. They raise money and use it to support 51 public libraries on Oahu. Their money goes towards special programs, scholarships, continuing education for librarians, grants, and last-minute funding issues. They might even help out with book-buying in the libraries this year since funding has been cut so much.

The book sale starts on June 20th at McKinley High School. They’re expecting around 30,000 people and the first weekend is likely to be the craziest. Funny, Frans signed us up to work the first weekend! Hmm. I’m really looking forward to it though – it seems well-organized, and it’s totally for a good cause. Plus we get cool volunteer T-shirts that say “Got books?” on the back.

Clockwise from upper left:

-Wizard of the Crow by Ngugi* Wa Thiong’o (translated from Gikuyu by the author). CANNOT WAIT to read this. I think it was the first novel he wrote in Gikuyu, rather than English. Didn’t realize it was so HUGE. From public library.

-The New Yorker, summer fiction issue. I cannot remember the last time I bought a magazine. Kind of exciting! From Barnes & Noble.

-Sketchbook. Not to read, but to write in. My requirements for a writing book/journal are these: 1) spiral bound to lay flat when open; 2) hard covers for support when there’s no table; 3) no lines; 4) decent quality paper. This meets all the requirements. B&N.

-Asia Literary Review, spring 2009. Wow, this was an impulse buy! B&N.

-Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits by Laila Lalami. I was hoping the library would have Secret Son, but they didn’t. I’m looking forward to this one, though. My husband spent some time in Morocco . . . connection. From the public library.

-White Noise by Don DeLillo. I’ve never read DeLillo. About a year ago I randomly found a passage from this book quoted somewhere on the internet – something about photography, and a barn. That was enough to make me write down the title; now I finally got my hands on the book. Library.

*Sorry again – diacritics missing as I can’t make them work in WordPress.

In no particular order:

1. Silence by Shusaku Endo
2. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
3. Red Earth and Pouring Rain by Vikram Chandra
4. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
5. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
6. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
7. Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
8. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
9. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis
10. Matilda by Roald Dahl
11. Night Watch by Terry Pratchett
12. The Odyssey by Homer
13. The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel by Nikos Kazantzakis
14. Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
15. Beowulf (Rebsamen’s translation)

Ooh, this was a nice little exercise . . . this is an insanely random list, but all these books have been very important at different times in my life (and now). A lot of pleasant/curious/interesting memories were triggered while I was thinking about these.

Already read:

• The Conqueror by Jan Kjaerstad. I was lucky enough to win an advance copy from Open Letter Press. This is the second in a trilogy, but even on its own it was a wonderful experience. The first originally-in-Norwegian book I’ve read.
• Metropole by Ferenc Karinthy. Okay, I’ll admit it: I was initially attracted to this book because it’s about a linguist. And it sounded a little creepy, but in a good way. Loved it; plan to re-read it again when I am traveling myself.

Still to read:

• Wizard of the Crow by Ngugi Wa Thiong’o (translated from Gikuyu) – hey, this was on the original list! I recently read his book Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature and that (which was written in English) discusses the story and motivations behind his choice to write in Gikuyu. Totally looking forward to this one.
• 2666 by Roberto Bolano – is it one book or five?! Whatever. I just learned that Claire of kiss a cloud and Steph of Steph & Tony Investigate! are co-hosting a read-along of this book. The plan is to complete one section of it every month, starting in May. I think this is a good/interesting approach, as it sounds like Bolano intended for all five parts to be published separately.
• NPR got me all excited about Independent People by Halldor Laxness. Bring it on, Iceland!
• Tied for spot # 6 are Vilnius Poker (Ricardas Gavelis), Out Stealing Horses (Per Petterson), The Seducer (Jan Kjaerstad), and The Vagrants (Yiyun Li). Stay tuned.

We African writers are bound by our calling to do for our languages what Spencer, Milton and Shakespeare did for English; what Pushkin and Tolstoy did for Russian; indeed what all writers in world history have done for their languages by meeting the challenge of creating a literature in them, which process later opens the languages for philosophy, science, technology and all the other areas of human creative endeavors.

My native language is English, a language that’s just exploding with quality (and non-quality) literature. But this quote – and the whole book – helped me understand the importance of writers using in native/minority/indigenous/endangered languages. It’s not for the readership – obviously English would make a work accessible to more readers – but it’s for the country, the community, the people who speak the language.

*Sorry, there should be marks over the vowels here and in Giyuku, but I can’t get them working right on WordPress.

I’ve been flipping through it for the last half hour, reading bits here and there. And it is, as I say in the post title, a Very Fun Book. It’s full of all sorts of random facts and trivia about language, languages, and linguists. It has a Linguist’s Calendar, a (very funny) Linguists’ Guide to the Galaxy, and chapters on everything from written language to language change to tense, mood, and aspect. It’s not a book to be read cover to cover, but a book to be sampled, read at random, jumped around within. I wish I’d had this book when I was teaching Linguistics 102; it would have been a good supplement to our rather dull course reader.

I don’t have a Kindle. I think it’s kind of a cool idea, though. Convenient, you know? I read a lot of things on my computer – mostly PDFs for school, but I’ve also read tons of Terry Pratchett novels in TXT format. I read the New York Times online. I’ve bought the paper version ONCE so far this year, but I visit the website almost every day. It works better for me. Convenient, you know?

What am I getting at? There is certainly a tension between digital (Kindle/online/etc) and analog (real/paper/bound) forms of writing and reading. But I don’t always agree with the people who start ranting and raving that the digital stuff is going to be the death of books, the death of TRUE reading, the death of doing things the right way. I understand what they’re saying to an extent, but I think I see the value of both sides. I like my real books, but I like my blogs, and I think a Kindle might be nice. Can we have both? Can we accept that both have value, maybe to different people or in different situations, and not freak out because we’re scared about new things? Can we appreciate both tradition AND innovation?

Well. There’s my blog post for the day. Now I’m gonna go read a book. They both stimulate me and make my life richer. So there.