Green Reading: Eco-Friendly Tips for Booklovers

While I try to be green on a daily basis, Earth Day has got me thinking more about my not-so-green reading habits.  Generally, I buy paperback books from Amazon or B&N, read them, put them back on my shelf and wait for someone in my family to request one.  While this habit makes for a bookshelf worth bragging about, it has undeniably led to the destruction of more trees than I would like to think about.  In fact, according to Eco-Libris, more than 30 million trees are being cut down each year to produce the books sold in the US alone.  Yikes.  

Thus, I am going to attempt to change my reading habits.  Here is what I’m thinking:

(1) Exchange books with friends: After I read a book I know a friend would love I can mail it to them and request they do the same for me, or gift it to them for an occasion.

(2) Buy used: Amazon offers a ton of used titles, usually starting at around $2.

(3) Hit up the library: While I frequent the NYPL on fifth and 42^nd, I haven’t yet been to a library to check out a book. Come to think of it, I don’t even own a library card.

(4) Research which publishers offer books printed on treeless or recycled paper and support them by buying a book or two.

(5) Visit Eco-Libris to plant a tree for every book you read. Accepting Visa and MasterCard, Eco-Libris has made it easier than ever to plant a tree ($5 per tree).  Not only does this liberate your guilt, but Eco-Libris will also send you a sticker to display on your book’s sleeve so you can proudly show off your greenness.  Now that would make for a bookshelf worth bragging about.

Mass-Market Fiction: Love To Hate It

I confess I am a total book snob.  If you have The Da Vinci Code or anything written by Mary Higgins Clark listed as your favorite books on Facebook, it’s a total deal breaker. However, lately I’ve got to thinking about mass-market fiction and it’s place in the publishing world and I’ve come to realize it is one of importance. 

I recently read a blog by Assistant Professor of English Anne Trubek that maintained Publishers Should Start Using Birth Control, which argued that publishers should concentrate more on creating quality literature, thereby publishing fewer titles, than whipping out hundreds of titles a year for the sheer profitability. While I completely agree with the concept, it is altogether hopeless and highly idealized.  Ms. Trubek is forgetting that, sadly, not all of us are English majors and not everyone can appreciate the quality of great literature.  In other words, she is forgetting the average reader does not go home to curl up with Ulysess or The Sound and the Fury. In order for a publisher to be successful they must publish many books that they hope can become bestsellers in order to publish the few gems that not everyone will buy, but more often than not turn into those Pulitzer winners.

So keep reading your Mary Higgins Clark and Dan Brown novels.  This way, I can rest assured publishers are making enough revenue to take a chance on those great pieces of literature not many will buy in the first year or two, but will inevitably fall into the hands of those who can appreciate it.

I am completely aware my opinion comes across as arrogant, but as I confessed earlier, I am a total book snob.

For those of you who still defend the quality of mass markets I suggest you read this guy’s blog.

Book Review: Animal Farm

Written in 1964 as an allegory of the Stalin era, this distopian novella aims to criticize socialist regimes. Orwell details the story of the animals of Manor Farm who overthrow their farmer, a man too drunk to care about the conditions of his farm, and reestablish their home as an "Animal Farm". They quickly assert seven animal commandments, namely that all animals are equal. As time passes the smartest animals (pigs) slowly become more powerful than the rest of the animals, leading weekly meetings and allowing themselves special privileges. Soon the other animals begin forgetting the seven animal commandments and the pigs quickly assure them there was only a single commandment: "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others". Eventually the pigs begin sleeping in the farmer's house, drinking alcohol and walking on their hind legs- essentially becoming the very figure they worked so hard to overthrow.

Finally, the pigs invite other farmers to Animal Farm to resolve misunderstandings. Napoleon, the lead pig, declares the name "Animal Farm" is abolished and "henceforward the farm will be known as Manor Farm- from which he believed was its correct and original name". Clover, a horse looking in on the pigs and men, notices something had altered in the face of the pigs. "Clover's old dim eyes flitted from one face to another. Some of them had five chins, some had four, some had three. But what was it that seemed to be melting and changing?" After Clover watches the scene for a bit, Orwell concludes his novella with my favorite passage; "No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but it was already impossible to say which was which."

I highly recommend Animal Farm to anything looking for a quick, thought-provoking read. Orwell uses allegory not only to highlight the dangers of totalitarian regimes, but also to comment on what happens after a community establishes their freedom; inevitably that freedom is suppressed and leaders rise again to oppress. There were aspects of this story that reminded me of my favorite short story, "Harrison Bergeron" by Vonnegut- read it.

Animal Farm was my introduction to Orwell and I am going to put Nineteen Eighty-Four on my shelf to read. In her introduction to Animal Farm Ann Patchett highlights the very reason I liked this novella so much; "Like pledges and nursery rhymes, [Animal Farm] stays with us, a promise of what will happen if we ever surrender control of our fate to the system. Orwell never gave his readers the answers, just the worst case scenario for the questions".

On a side note, Animal Farm made me happy to be a vegetarian :)

Confessions of a Grammarholic.

One of my favorite blogs, Grammar Guard (www.grammarguard.org), ridicules the ungrammatical speech of celebrities, political figures and athletes, to name a few.  As a self-proclaimed grammarian, I find myself struggling to keep my mouth shut on a day-to-day basis when a friend blurts out “who” when the sentence merits “whom”, or when singular-plural agreement is thrown out the window (FYI: everybody = singular). One has to be somewhat of a language nerd to fully appreciate this blog, as Grammar Guard claims, “We’re passionate about language, and so are our readers”.

After perusing the blog today, laughing at celebrities who may be more beautiful than me but could stand to take a lesson in English grammar, I began thinking; why do we use the words we do?  What do the subtle differences between words that are commonly used, sometimes used or misused reveal about the speaker?  Are words a product of who we are or are we a product of our words?  If the way a person drives can reveal their personality type, can’t a study of their lexicon expose the inner-workings of their brain as well? 

While I am rarely inspired to read non-fiction, I decided to check out Amazon to find a book that can answer my questions.  The result: The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature by Steven Pinker.  While writing a paper on second language acquisition in college I read a few chapters of Pinker’s book The Language Instinct and actually still remember it 3 years later, which in my opinion, says a lot.  Anyway, I’m hoping Pinker’s newest book can teach me a thing or two about the relationship between language and the way the mind works.  "In The Stuff of Thought Steven Pinker explores how the mind works in a completely new style- by examining the way we use words.  What does swearing reveal about the emotional brain? What do the ambiguities of dating say about our social relationships? How do semantic niceties- like the ones that got our last two presidents into trouble- unmask our conceptions of time, truth, and responsibility? And what does the spread of new words (such as the mysterious term spam) tell us about social trends?"

 I’ll let everybody know whether or not it’s worth his or her time.  (See, singular-plural agreement- it's not that difficult).

 

Book Review: Lolita

A rejection of pedophillia, this novel hardly glamorizes or justifies the actions of Humbert Humbert. Rather, the novel offers a look inside the mind of a tortured soul. The moral abombination of paedophilia is delivered as almost acceptable, developing conflict in the reader who feels both revulsion towards this trully terrible act and empathy for this character Humbert who is seduced by Lolita, falls in love and ultimately has his heart broken. 

However, Humbert understands his obsession is driving him insane as he contemplates a poem he wrote and reveals, "By psychoanalyzing this poem, I notice it is really a maniac's masterpiece. The stark, stiff, lurid rhymes correspond very exactly to certain perspeciveless and terrible landscapes and figures... I wrote many more poems. I immersed myself in the poetry of others. But not for a second did I forget the load of revenge". While Humbert recognizes his struggle, he is content with pursuing it. Reading on, I actually began to pity Humbert and his tortured soul; his insanity and most of all his humanity. Humbert begins to understand the full extent of the damage he had inflicted upon Lo. "I happened to glimpse from the bathroom, through a chance combination of mirror aslant and door ajar, a look on her face... that look I cannot exactly describe... and expression of helplessness so perfect that it seemed to grade into one of rather comfortable inanity just because this was the very limit of injustice and frustration--and every limit presupposes something beyond it--hence the neutral illumination."

Spoiler Alert: It is the ending that truly reveals the inner-struggle Humbert has within himself. Humbert tracks down the man who took Lolita away from him- another man who has committed the same sins that Humbert has- and brutally kills him. Because this man represents what Humbert hates most about himself, Humbert is symbolically destroying another man for the same sins he hates himself for committing.

While I struggled through the first half of this novel (describing the most lecherous manipulation on Humbert's part) by the end I was consumed by it. It is an examination of the destructive nature of selfish love: selfishness kills love- it is a black hole that can never be satisfied- it is self-pitting and never looks outside itself. Lolita's words to Humbert years later sums this idea up; "He broke my heart, you merely broke my life".

On the shelf to read next: something a little more uplifting.

Recession Professions

I have been out of school for almost a year now, sending out resume upon resume to any job that is some-what related to what I want to do: work in publishing, ideally doing editorial. I’ve had a few interviews here and there and mostly get the same response; “we are looking for someone with more experience”. Okay, fair enough. Editing my university newspaper and interning at a small publishing house in Madison (I love you Bleak House) probably can’t compare to someone who has been in the industry for a few years. But how am I supposed to break into an industry that is firing more employees than they are hiring? How am I going to become an editor in a world where people would rather renew their Netflix subscription than their newspaper? Where ebooks are more talked about than actual literature? The thought is somewhat daunting.

I googled recession-proof jobs today and it doesn’t look pretty. Perhaps I should have studied to become a pharmacist (sorry mom) or a computer system administrator.  The only problem with that is that those things don’t interest me. What does is the written word (yeah, I’m a dork). So, the only thing to do is keep plugging away. Hopefully soon someone from HR will discover all the talent and drive I poses.

Okay, time to send out some more resumes… 

Reading Now: Lolita

After running across many references to this novel I decided to pick it up.  I am about half-way through it and am thinking of putting it down for good (I almost never do this). While Nabokov's wonderful use of language is something to be praised, the perverse subject matter has been leaving a sick feeling in my stomach. 

"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins." Nabokov begins this novel with these words, spoken by the aging Humbert Humbert, in which he is describing the "nymphet" Dolores Haze.  From the very start of the novel I have hated the speaker Humbert. His obsession with nymphets, a term used to describe girls between the age of nine and 14 who posses "the slightly feline outline of a cheekbone, the slenderness of a downy limb, and other indices which despair and shame and tears of tenderness forbid me to tabulate," is sick to a point of illness. Not only does he claim these nymphets have the ability to cast a spell over a man, but to be fully appreciated "the student should not be surprised to learn that there must be a gap of several years, never less than ten I should say, generally thirty to forty, and as many as ninety in a few know cases, between maiden and man". A little too twisted for my taste...

While I am tempted to throw this novel in the trash and never look at it again, I feel I have some sort of obligation to Lolita. I can't just leave her hanging in the balance of Humbert... Perhaps this reaction was one of Nabokov's aims; just as the main character is conflicted with his own impulses and desires, the reader is conflicted as well. Just as much as this book is terrifying, it is also gripping to the point where I feel I can somehow help Lolita. 

Regardless, the novel is truthfully written and examines the mind of predator obsessed with this prey. I am going to keep reading, for now.