Reading my own library (Ghost Story, by Peter Straub)

 In this series, Reading My Own Library, I attempt to read the books I already own. By "read" I mean, "finish", but also "attend to closely". A lot of the books I'm reading now are recent additions to my library, so part of the mission is also to go into the stacks a bit (a lot) and carve away at any stashes that might exist in the farther reaches of my catacombs.  By "catacombs" I mean, the books in my garage, in my office, in the back shelves (double stacked) of the lower reaches of shelves behind filing cabinets, in the tomes I've been hoarding for years. 

I was asking myself yesterday, "why did I buy all those books so long ago (over a decade ago), by Salman Rushdie?" I've never come even close to finishing a book by Rushdie.  The ethos of my current mission to read my own library would stipulate that I at some point finish a Rushdie book. I have several from which to choose after all!  With that said, it may take some time for me to actually do the Rushdie. This is a life-long project.

I recently finished Straub's Ghost Story. It's not a straightforward read, but it's also not difficult. I can see the popular appeal, but it's more of a weird story than a ghost story. The influence of Machen is profound, I think, and I'm glad I'd started making my way through the Oxford World's Classics edition of Machen's stories before I came to this Straub title. The baddies are unknowable monsters from another dimension. The monsters take on human form, but they are not supernatural beings. They are more like weird creatures that at times are seen as masses of white, writhing, worms, or as forest animals.  The worm bit has that tentacular edge that is truly of the weird.

But Ghost Story was published in the 1970s, making it way ahead of its time, at least in terms of this current resurgence of the weird, aka The New Weird.  As I got into this novel I realised how much more interesting a writer Straub is than, say, King. Both are, from what I understand, very popular novelists, and I'm sure (though not that sure) that some of Straub's other output must be a bit more pulpy than this. I am after all starting with Straub's (from what I know) most well-received work, critically speaking.

The form of the text is itself weird, weaving together different timelines, spaces, and dream-image sequences. These are mixed with such artfulness that it becomes impossible to know which one we're in.  This puts the novel well beyond anything like what Jackson was doing in The Haunting of Hill House, for example, which is just a straightforward haunted house novel (albeit a very very good one).

All I can say is, I'm proud to have tackled this fat novel without putting it down for any significant length of time.  Unlike the other book I'm in now, which after a hiatus of years, I've picked back up again at page 539, namely, He Knew He Was Right by Trollope. It's so easy to read though, so writerly and flowing, even as much or more than Dickens, that I'll have no problem finishing. Already a couple hundred more pages have flown past.  With HKHWR soon to be done, I feel like I'll be starting to do justice to 'reading my own library' at last!  

The Book Eaters (now back to Jane Eyre)

Did I mention I'm reading my own library? The latest book finished was The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean.

Immediately upon finishing this book I started reading Jane Eyre for some reason. Well, reason one: it's in my library so I must read it, and two: I hadn't quite finished it, and felt I needed to do Brontë's work justice.  Jane Eyre is a great read, by the way, and I speculated that maybe one reasom why Dean's own work reads so well is that she seems to be quite conversant with the emotions and inter-personal complexities of Victorian literature.  

I'm sure other authors are too, but aren't as good as Dean. One measure of how good a writer she is that the novum, if a work of fantasy can be said to have one, shouldn't really work, in theory.  But on paper it does! I was very sceptical at first. 

What it is, is this: there are people who are born vampires.  So far, so clichéd. However, these are what are called 'mind-eaters', meaning that when the mind-eater sucks the blood of someone, they also ingest all their memories and the vampire temporarily takes on the personality of the mind they've eaten.  These vampire mind-eaters can be converted to book eaters, another whole sub-population of vampire, by taking a special drug that is only manufactured by one vampire-family.

The plotting is spectacular, and the action is enveloping. The emotional connections between characters are drawn in a way that I don't think a male author could really pull off, and this is what I mean the the Brontë-ness of this book. 

I had no problem at all finishing The Book Eaters, and I can recommend it very highly.  Now, back to Jane Eyre!

Pnin

 In the spirit of reading my own library (as opposed to just acquiring books I don't actually read, or can't possibly get around to reading because it takes too long), I'm writing reviews of the books I complete. The latest is Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov.

This is the best book by Nabokov I have ever read.  There was only one point in the book where I read a sentence I couldn't parse (didn't understand the gist or the sense of it).  Usually I get the gist of Nabokov, with his word piles of adjectives and verbs and colours and senses and metaphors, big bulky bouquets of observation and perception.

For Pnin, the clarity of the bouquets is especially good, you can make out the shapes of his observations clearly.  The main character is really clearly delineated, an eccentric Russian-speaking professor who seems to have landed in New England from another planet. One moment he's hilariously eccentric and likeable, but then at other times bewildering and alienating.  

Pnin is a tragedy, an entirely avoidable ending brought upon himself by no one else. The university settings are realistic, the observations of campus life ring true, and we cringe for Pnin when his otherness becomes and tangible as an ideology or bad-breath. 

I understand this novel is formally innovative. The transitions between Pnin himself, his descendant Viktor, and the former tutee of Pnin who could've saved him, were she not rejected by the protagonist himself after he's fired from his job in which he's been underperforming for almost a decade, are wonderful.

It is these spatio-temporal transitions that are I think the formally interesting part of Pnin.  I did think of Nabokov's other novels while reading this: of Lolita, which I remember greatly enjoying, and which got me a bit hooked on Nabokov, in a way that might have mimicked a lot of other undergrads at the time.

Then Ada, which I only got through part of.  I've had Nabokov books kicking around my flat for a lot of my life.  I had a used copy of Speak, Memory for a time; Ada's and that one are gone though.  I feel lucky to have Nabokov back in my life.  Which one should I read next?

Reading my own library

My new year's resolution is to read my own library. A sub-question to the main question (can I read my own library?) is whether I can do so without acquiring any new books while I'm doing it.  Like most New Year's Resolutions this one probably won't last past February.  But at least that means two months of success, if I make it.

What started this research impulse was a recent shelfie in which I stacked up a bunch of books I really want to read, and realised that if I acquire new books while attempting to read the shelfie stack, then that attempted reading will most likely fail.

I'm going to try (as Yoda's "there is no try" echoes around inside my head) to write a review of these books as I finish them. 

I must clarify one thing: by "not buy any new books" I mean new books. Used books are still on the table because one of my favourite ways of socialising here in the UK is to visit my favourite charity shop bookstores and chat with the staff. Sam Beare's in Egham is a favourite; as is Bas Books in Bracknell. 

The last book I finished (not picture in the shelfie) was Pnin. I'm a few pages from finishing Ghost Story by Peter Straub. And I'm also pretty close to the end of Sunyi Dean's The Book Eaters. These are great places to start in the push to 'read my own library.'

In a couple of days then, I'll most likely start either the Priest or the McAuley.  I'll send out a twitter poll to decide which one.