Books by the Numbers: How I Read My Way through 2014

You know how some football players put a sticker on their helmet for every sack they get? Well, if there was a reader equivalent-- I imagine it being quirky buttons on a Walrus tote bag --I would have 51 of them for 2014.

A selection of the books I read in 2014.

But my book kill count is just one number in my reading life. I thought I would look at other ways the books I read could be classified and counted; partly out of boredom, partly out of curiosity, but mostly because of an open spreadsheet on my computer with GoodReads on another tab.

Before quantifying these books, I would have described my reading life as "that of a lonely British man in the 1960s, quietly drinking a weak cup of tea." In particular terms, that would be mostly English (both in origin and language) and mostly male, with the works largely published before 1960. This year though I made a particular effort to read more works by women. Would this be the year an out and proud feminist (i.e. me) finally reached gender parity in her books?

Unfortunately, no. Only 22 of the books I read were by women, for a 43% XX rating. Though I'm doing well by my country--for every UK book, I read over 2.85 books from Canada. However, I remain firmly rooted in the Anglosphere. 80% of my books were from Canada, the UK, Ireland or the USA, but only two of these were translated from another language, French. Looking at the whole list, only 11 were originally published in another language.

I looked at genre (mostly literary fiction, probably because that genre is the miscellaneous drawer of the publishing world), and I looked at publisher. I found out that I read more books released in the same calendar year that I started reading them this year than ever before. And then I tried to quantify the racial diversity of the authors I read, before getting a real-word lesson in the fact that oh, hey, race is a social construct when I was debating how to classify an author based on a tweet of his I read once. Still, whatever White is, my list is That.

And so I've concluded that my reading list is a little more like me (white, female, Canadian) than I expected, but not as unlike me as I would have hoped, leaving me to wonder how that could change in 2015.

I could give myself targets. But I once made a list of 50 books I could read in the coming year, where I tried to collect as many books that were Canadian, written by women, and by racialized/people/of colour. The goal was to count it and find 25 books in each category; most of them needed to be all three for it to work and still leave room for the odd NYRB selection. Shamefully, only about ten things from that list were ever read. My reading habits can be pushed, but I found that I can't be quite that programmatic. My brain balks at the rules, and decides it wants to read something about shark attacks instead. Still, it's worth trying some sort of intention.

And then I should honestly answer the question of why it needed to be set at all.

Book Pile for November 20, 2014

1. Something I Will Read: Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood, on this Kobo. Or maybe some SciFi. I haven't picked my e-reader up in weeks (I tend to go through print-only phases) and it's probably time to make sure this still works.
2. Something I Am Reading: Mark Avery's A Message from Martha. It's about extinction, the "Martha" coming from the name of the last passenger pigeon.
3. Non-Fiction I Recently Read: Emily Horne and Tim Maly's The Inspection House: An Impertinent Guide to Modern Surveillance
4. Fiction I Recently Read: Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer's All the Broken Things

Canada Reads Thinkpieces

1. A Book I Did Not Like
The last time I paid much attention to Canada Reads was back in 2011. I was still living in BC, in an apartment that didn't have Internet, or a real oven. Listening made me feel connected to the east I had left, at least until some of the panelists started saying asinine things about graphic novels.

So it made me feel connected for all of an episode. Yes, this was the season where Jeff Lemire's Essex County was a contender, at least until Ali Velshi reminded us all that it's not "Canada Looks at Pictures." Well, okay then. Apparently, it's "Canada Reads Deeply Unfunny Funny Books" instead.

Yes, I finally got around to reading the eventual winner, The Best Laid Plans, except I did so three years too late. I should have waited longer, preferably forever. By chapter two, I had started to hate the narrator, by midpoint the book, and by the end I mostly just loathed myself for being able just to put the book down and walk away. The hero (one Angus McLintock) lurches from unlikely political triumph to triumph, layering the Scottish tics on so thick he basically ends up as Scrooge McDuck with an MP's office. While Angus has too much personality (he plays chess, is a stickler for proper grammar, builds hovercraft etc etc) the narrator has none. At least that's an improvement over the narrator's love interest. All she gets to do is talk about Canada's Senate (bad) and have elided sex with the narrator (presumably worse). When it comes to earnest Canadian content, my personal hell would probably be to listen to this on audiobook while my eyes are propped open, Clockwork Orange-style, to watch Murdoch Mysteries on loop. Gah!

2. A Person I Don't Like Now
Because I am a generous, sharing sort, I then complained loudly about a four-year-old book to anyone who would listen. Since this period coincided with the ongoing  Jian Ghomeshi story, the conversation would often shift to the ex-Canada Reads host.

"Martha," my brother told me, "you should really take down that comic."

My brother was referring to this comic, which was a half-joke on autobiographical indie comics, and a half-joke on myself. If you don't want to subject yourself to my art, it chronicles my failed attempt to talk books with CBC's Shelagh Rogers, and how that ended many dreams including that of producing the next CBC host, Banff Hunter-Ghomeshi.

Yes, there was a time that I found Jian to be sort of attractive, instead of just a fucked-up abuser enabled by the CBC and our prevalent rape culture. I'm not going to pretend that it didn't happen. And though I can say that I soured on him about two years after reading that comic, it wasn't because of the rumours. It also says something about how common they must have been if even I, the least connected person in Toronto, heard something eventually. I had just grown to dislike his interviews, and so when I heard that he liked younger women, and was far too creepy in pursuing him, I wasn't even concerned. Instead, I shrugged, like "Can you expect more from a man with that much cultural capital?" Of course I should have been, and I should have expected nothing more or less than the basic requirement of consent.

3. What I Read Now
That's all I have to say about Jian Ghomeshi, not because there isn't more to it, but because so much of it has already been covered in so many ways. Why women don't report, how our conversation about that in the strict terms of stigma ignores other factors, why people believed him, what the CBC knew, what they hid, the political economy of the situation, and even the ethics of his lawyers. I collected many of these articles for my friend in a spreadsheet on Friday, so she could use them in an article for her legal clinic. The spreadsheet contained dates, titles, authors, publications and key topics. I had to stop when I reached fifty entries. It was only a few hours of work, and more articles could have easily been found.

As a feminist, I had already been reading about many of these issues, but without the specifics of Jian. That may be why I feel so burned out right now. At least it's made people talk about sexual asault and reporting, I tell myself; at least more people now say the word "rape" when they talk about Bill Cosby. Even the prospect of a Ghomeshi-free Canada Reads is promising. But I still worry about the others that are still out there, and if we'll talk and write about them the same way when we find out.

Protagitron: Editorial Assistant, With Kung Fu Changes Tracking Action!

Greetings from... almost a month after my last post! Good Lord. I didn't realize that the soggy post about crying at work would remain front and centre for over a month, or else I would have written about a book cover, or my cat, or anything else to push it down the page.

This September I turned 27, wound up with a different job at work, signed up for two continuing education classes, got some bad news, and bought a new bike. I'm now an editorial assistant, so it should be little surprise that one of the classes is for copyediting. The copyediting class is a humbling experience - I went through school when teaching the fundamentals of grammar was out of fashion. I've read enough that I can fake it sometimes, 'sensing' that things are wrong without being able to explain why. Now I have to face that my understanding of when to hyphenate compound words is quite shaky, best described as 'when it doubt, hyphenate.'

I also find myself quietly resentful of the online message board, which is full of people's well-articulated questions about cases and tenses, that is, well-articulated evidence that they probably aren't working 9-5 EVERY SINGLE DAMNED WEEKDAY.

Yeah, you heard me, "Ruth." Take five minutes away from the keyboard, sometime.

I think I will like copyediting though. Reading every word very slowly and constantly referring to the style guide capitalizes on my all-consuming anxiety. I also yearn for consistency, and have a certain megalomaniacal urge to turn chaos into order, so style guides are right in my wheelhouse. I'll just have to remember that I can't rewrite everything to sound like me: sentence fragments, caps lock, and chock full of puns.

Cottage Reading

I've been meaning to write something to push the "O woe is me, I am so sad" post down to where it deserves to be. Below the fold! Away from here!

But work got in the way, which I suppose is a better reason for my silence than being overwhelmed by life in general. Some very kind friends got in touch after that post to see how I was doing. And while I didn't write it for that reason - I was angry, and tired of putting a cheerful face on a desperate situation, and wanted that feeling to go on the record somewhere - it was a pleasant side effect.

Other than that, the good ship SS. Protagitron putters on. I was reading The New Jim Crow, which was good, but as anger-inducing as a book about mass incarceration in the US (and on its way to a Canada near you!) needs to be. Then I had the chance to go to a cottage. The ideal cottage reading has at least three of the following five things: a dead body in its pages, embossed type on its cover, pink everywhere, sex scenes that aren't quite a hard X, and some historical aspect because come on, we're classy. The New Jim Crow has none of those things, though it is a very worthy book, so I left it behind.

Why I thought finally finishing Kamouraska was the right choice though, I'll never know. Let's relax with a fractured, jumpy, poetic narrative about a love triangle in 19th century Quebec! WHAT FUN! Bodices were almost ripped, but it turned out I was pinning all my hopes for cottage diversion on what felt like four sex scenes, three mentions of pus, and a lot of sleighs dashing through snow. It's a beautiful book, but the last thing you want to feel in an Ontario summer is the bitter cold of rural Quebec and/or a stifling marriage.

Of course, I also spent my time at the cottage hauling old shingles, so maybe my reading material was appropriate.

I can't wait for my next trip to the cottage, when I can finally unwind, pour myself a beer, and really lose myself in the diverting decadence and sparkling wit of, uh, Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano? Oh crap, I am not doing this right.

Pillow Blog: Four Books I'm Ashamed to Have Never Finished Reading

1. Ulysses - James Joyce: I sometimes miss teenage Protagitron (let's call her Protagiteen.) Yes, Protagiteen was a seething mess of hormones and pretentions, but she had spirit. For example, Protagiteen purchased a hardcover edition of Ulysses from a used bookstore in high school, convinced she would not only finish this modernist masterpiece, but complete understand it. Eight years later, the bookmark remains on p. 288
2. To The Lighthouse: Another book added to the to-read list in high school, except this one was never even started. I blame the patriarchy for that. And my laziness.
3. Infinite Jest: I meant to read this last year. I bought a copy and everything. I convened a book club around this, partly as a joke (who would have a book club on Infinite Jest?), partly to make myself read more of it. It didn't work. The voice of my generation sits, silenced, on my bookshelf.
4. The Bible: But it's not like I'll get in trouble for skipping this one, right?
   *pits of hellfire open beneath feet*
   ... crap.

Le Thief, C'est Chic

For the past few days, I've been on the cusp of a cold. Maybe a flu. It's not enough to be any one thing (and therefore keep me off work.) Instead it's just enough to make me feel mostly cruddy, even though I've tried to smother it with NeoCitran.

So I am medicating before Muay Thai with tea and a book. Arsène Lupin, Gentleman Thief, a collection of short mysteries by Maurice Leblanc, was purchased on Dan's recommendation. It's the perfect thing for this kind of mood. Lupin appeared in 1905 as a sort of French, deliciously felonious counterpoint to Sherlock Holmes, who so far has made at least one appearance in the stories. Holmes' abruptness - perhaps, to Leblanc, his quintessential Britishness - does not contrast favourably with Lupin's élan. 

I feel like I ought to read these with macarons in hand. Unfortunately the cafe only has muffins. How very Holmes-y of them.

Book Pile for July 17, 2013

It's too hot for anything but this. A book pile. Red and pink edition:

1. Next Classic Read: Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Thief by Maurice Leblanc
2. Next Canadian Read (whose cover I may have to hide on the subway): Maidenhead, Tamara Faith Berger
3. Current Classic Read: Demons, Fyodor Dostoevsky
4. Current Remnant of Pride Reading: The Naked Civil Servant, Quentin Crisp

Book, er, Magazine Covers I Have Loved: Lucky Peach #7

What my feelings about Lucky Peach lack in articulation, they make up for in volume. I love food, and writing, so you know I must love food writing - and yet Lucky Peach often seems of a piece with the bro-ified food culture that's developed over the past few years, a culture nourished in a petri dish of social media and an available all-caps key. I have never properly recovered from an early roundtable, which featured Anthony Bourdain and a few other food bros having a dick-swinging contest about "craft." 

But maybe this cover (credit: Christopher Boffoli), and the promise of a feature on curry 'round the world, will bring me back. Nearly white covers are always striking on a crowded newsstand, and the miniature boat in a sea of milk and Lucky Charms is witty and, well, charming. 

Book Covers I Have Loved: Algoma, Dani Couture

I have a mad crush on Invisible Publishing and their covers. It's a smaller Canadian publishing house, but I think their design work can easily stand with anything the big guys are putting out these days. For example, this lovely, stark cover for Dani Couture's Algoma. In spite of the unity of its colour palette, there's something unsettling about the whole. Maybe it's the shakiness of the font. All I know is that I want to order this. And Jonah Campbell's Food and Trembling. Actually, why not throw in this sinister cover for kevin mcpherson eckhoff's Forge and make it a triad? Judging from this Chronicle Herald story (worth reading just to have Invisible's founder, Robbie MacGregor, make you feel really lazy), design credit should go to Megan Fildes.

Book Pile for April 4 (And Introducing the Best Book Club)

1. Trying to Fall Back in Love With Toronto Text: uTOpia: Towards a New Toronto, Edited by Jason McBride and Alanna Wilcox
2. Silly Little Thriller Book: Bulldog Drummond, Sapper
3. Serious Business NonFiction: Lenin's Tomb, David Remnick
4. Up With Science Tract: Bad Pharma, Ben Goldacre

This will be the last exciting book pile I'll post for at least a month and a half, because from now on I'll be reading one book. At least it's a book that's about as thick as all four of these put together. I'm finally tackling David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. I had a brief wave of genius pass over me, when I realized that the Best Book Club would, first, be flexible on how much of the month's book you had actually read, and second, feature booze. So I chose a book that would be almost impossible for anyone to finish. And I'm telling anyone who cares to join to bring two bottles of beer to my house next May. The bottles will go into a mystery bucket, and then the readers will blindly pick from the bucket, getting to try two new beers before we all babble about the book. I am, however, making Girl Guide-style badges for anyone who actually completes Infinite Jest, because that kind of accomplishment should not go unrecognized.

Read Austen, Damnit

It's the two hundredth birthday of Pride and Prejudice, a novel that has a special place in my heart. Though anyone acquainted with the Jane Austen industrial complex - notebooks, cookbooks, keychains, miniseries, finger puppets, etc. - would probably say that's hardly unusual. Particularly among the straight, female, bookish breed I belong too. However, some things that may set me apart: I'm not holding out for a Mr. Darcy, though I finally stumbled across a few guys who appreciated my wit and reading. They just weren't independently wealthy or good horsemen. I don't wish to be transported back to Regency England, as I appreciate the right to vote and decent dentistry. And finally, it's not even my favourite Austen, because Persuasion exists.

 Still, I do think it's an incredible novel, both gracefully written and socially astute. I'm tired of critics looking to the work as a key to the secret dreams and desires of women. Considering the historical context, the stakes for Elizabeth in this novel are more than a happy marriage, but a bearable life and financial survival as well. If you're one of the few, unfortunate (and mostly male) readers who've ignored the book because you think it belongs to silly women who own more tea than ideas, please put your prejudices aside and read the book. You won't regret it.

Book Pile for January 27, 2013

1. To Infinity, and Beyond Confusion: Space from Zeno to Einstein: Classic Readings with a Contemporary Commentary, ed. Nick Huggett
2. Recently Read: Cakes and Ale, W. Somerset Maugham
3. Even More Recently Read: We Think the World of You, J.R. Ackerley
4. Soon to be Read: The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins
5. Reluctantly Read: Introduction To Probability and Statistics, William Medenhall et al.

Finding Cake Again

I can't remember where I read it, or when, but I do remember reading that the moment you realize you will never read in Remembrance of Time Past is the moment you realize you are no longer young. So I set it to read it a few years ago in a bid to LIVE FOREVER. Now that I'm two years older, I realize that literature doesn't work that way. But in spite of my time-ravaged face and (presumably) worsening eyesight, I've rounded the corner on the final book of Proust's work.

So, I asked for madeleine pans for Christmas. Cheated out of eternal life, I wanted at least to be able to dunk a fresh-baked madeleine into a cup of tea the moment I hit the final period. And thanks to that timely gift and Julia Child's recipe for Madeleines de Commercy (reproduced on hungry sofia ) I think I will be able to.

French recipes for baked goods are, of course, fussy as fuck, but these are worth it. They "humped" perfectly in the oven, and once cooled had a slightly crunchy exterior that was perfect for soaking up tea. Or forcing you onto a journey of remembrance, as the case may be.

Even Smitty approved.

Book Pile for September 29

1. Rageful Reading: Days of Destruction Days of Revolt, Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco
2. Nobel-Certified Novel: The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing
3. The Anti-Downton Abbey: Some Do Not... and No More Parades, Ford Madox Ford
4. Essays from My New Heroine: Beginning to See the Light, Ellen Willis

Book Covers I Have Loved: Butterfly in the Typewriter

Biography covers can be so dull. They all use the same portraits of major subjects, whether painted or photographed, and use a tasteful serif typeface. So I appreciate something different. Here's a cheeky take on the profile photo for Cory MacLauchlin's Butterfly in the Typewriter (designer currently unknown.) Take an image of a famous author, and paste in cutouts of the accoutrements of his most notable character. John Kennedy Toole meets Ignatius Reilly's hat, mustache, and yes- hot dog. It highlights the autobiographical relation between text and author, while pointing out that they're not homogenous. They just relate through sticky bonds.

Book Pile for July 2

1. Current (Incredibly Depressing!) Non-Fiction Read: The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures, Anne Fadiman
2. Next Cancon Read: The Lives of Girls and Women, Alice Munro (this time I won't be trying to read the laundromat's copy between loads)
3. "I Picked This up Because the Guardian Gave it a Good Blurb and, Yes, I'm That Kind of Person" Novel: King of the Badgers, Philip Hensher
4. Crime Does Pay Book of the Month: The Heat's On, Chester Himes
5. Autobiographic Comic Option: French Milk, Lucy Knisley
6. Better Keep Sharp Knives and Army Camps Away From Me: Forbidden Colors, Yukio Mishima

History Lives... ish

Much like other things in my life - *cough* lady business *cough* - my reading is on a cycle. CanLit followed by a contemporary novel, then a classic, and finally some non-fiction before we're right back to Canadian again. My dedication to this system is irrational, and limiting, but I can't abandon it. I am, however, open to manipulating it. Books can be from both categories, which comes in handy if there's another I would really like to get on with.

Recently, I tried being strict about the categories, which meant I read Esi Edugyan's Half Blood Blues (Canadian) and Hilary Mantel's Bring Up the Bodies (Contemporary) close together. They're both historical novels with pedigrees. Blues won the Giller, and Bodies is the sequel to the Booker-winning Wolf Hall. It would have been hard not to compare them while reading - objectively. Or to avoid finding the comparison more flattering to one than the other - subjectively.

Because, in spite of this powerful one-two punch of historical fiction, it's a genre I typically avoid. Why? A writerly tic I call the research dump. Here's an example:  

"It was the beginning of the western offensive. The Krauts hurtled through Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg. Every hour the lines of the map was changing. Day after the Coup, Lilah reported to us that the British ain't got a government, that some damn joker named Churchill taken over. Then the Frogs sent their armies north, and the Limeys opened up a front against the Krauts." (Half Blood Blues)

I suspect writers do it either because they want to get back to their characters and out of historical context, or they just want to show that all that time with the microfiche really meant something. Whatever the cause, it tends to make the narrative hurtle off its path (and into Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg.) But there is another way, as Mantel shows in Bodies:

"8 January: the news arrives at court. It filters out from the king's rooms then runs riot up staircases to the rooms where the queen's maids are dressing, and through the cubby holes where kitchen boys huddle to doze, and along lanes and passages through the breweries and the cold rooms for keeping fish, and up again through the gardens to the galleries and bounces up to the carpeted chambers where Anne Boleyn sinks to her knees and says, 'At last God, not before time!' The musicians tune up for the celebrations."

It takes Mantel at least 30% more words to give less than 0% of the hard facts Edugyan provides. The point of this passage -  that Henry VIII's first wife has finally died - is not even explicitly stated. But it says plenty about the social makeup of Tudor England, and the crooked path of its gossip, as well as how Catherine's death will be something less than mourned. This is all more interesting than the data of her death. That difference is why we pick up an historical novel, and not an encyclopedia. And why I'll probably return to one of these books, before the other.

The Bus Reader

A few weeks ago, I started a new job in Mississauga. For those of you not versed in Toronto geography, picture a postcard with the CN tower. Roughly, that is the center of Toronto. Now, start going west until you fall off the edge of a postcard and into a strip mall. That is Mississauga. Next, go east, past the other edge and into a concrete parking lot. That would be where I live now. The journey from point A to point B requires a long subway ride and an even longer bus ride, each trip taking an hour and forty minutes. 

Fortunately, this gives me over three hours, total, of prime reading time a day. That's at least 100 pages, unless I'm reading Saul Bellow's Herzog. For reasons unknown, my Mississauga bus gets suddenly re-routed over the Khyber Pass before it shudders into Islington Station. It's hard to concentrate on beautifully-wrought sentences while your ride is clearing two metre wide craters, so I gave up. Yes, the ride would probably be smoother if I didn't insist on sitting in the accordion part of the bus, pretending it's the same thing as a free ticket to Canada's Wonderland, but maybe Bellow could have written shorter sentences. It's called compromise.

And there's an art to picking out the perfect bus book. Either it's respectable enough to read cover-art, or it's a paperback so you can curl the cover around. But don't be too pretentious - you don't want to be that person reading Kant on the bus, because then you're likely that asshole putting their bag on the empty seat too. Then there is the question of value vs. volume. I favour a hefty book, but not so thick that it won't fit in my side bag. Unfortunately, I've started to feel like I've already read nearly every book meeting those criteria, which means I'll soon start in on Fifty Shades of Grey, which can only end in the gutter. That is, Metro, the free daily newspaper, or more accurately, "Stock Photo Daily."

Book Pile for February 16

1. Sure to be Depressing Novel: Darkness At Noon, Arthur Koestler
2. Mitford Fest Vol. 2: Love in a Cold Climate, Nancy Mitford
3. Mitford Fest Vol. 1: The Pursuit of Love, Nancy Mitford
4. Pretty Much Close Captioned This American Life Reading: Take the Cannoli, Sarah Vowell
5. The “Dipping My Toe into SciFi” Novel: The Chrysalids, John Wyndham
6. For My Ill-Advised Homesteading Dreams: Homegrown & Handmade, Deborah Niemann