I Can't Complain: (all too) personal essays

by Elinor Lipman
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013.

Ever since I read The Inn at Lake Devine in 2009, Elinor Lipman has been one of my "go to" authors when I need some light and fun fiction. So when I saw she'd come out with a book of essays - many of them previously published in various newspapers/periodicals - I had to check it out.

These thirty-one essays composed of broad subjects - family, writing, love & marriage - are truly delightful reading. She's funny one moment and making a thoughtful point the next, and even though she's in a different season of life than I am, her observations made me laugh and cry. I could completely relate to "No Thank You, I Think," in which she talks about why she now says "no" to some invitations. I, too, sometimes want to say "no" just to sit at home and read, and it was nice to know that someone else can not only admit it, but says so with aplomb. In one section, she talks about many aspects of being a writer, from looking for (and providing) blurbs, to the anxieties and frustrations involved in being the author at an event. Her essays about her husband, from a Coupling column she wrote regularly as the "long married" woman, were funny and heartwarming. A highly enjoyable read for anyone who enjoys humorous essays or getting to know a favorite author.

Into the Looking-Glass Wood

by Alberto Manguel
San Diego, CA : Harcourt, 2000.

I was first introduced to Alberto Manguel's essays through The Library at Night, an homage to libraries private and public, and a rumination on reading including philosophy, history and literary criticism. Into the Looking-Glass Wood is similar in erudition and style but, much like the book from which he takes its name, its topics are all over the place. In this, you will see more of the man and perhaps a little less of the reader.

Libraries and books are my passion, so naturally I feel more drawn to a book where every essay is about that, and one theme builds on another in a natural progression. That's not to say that I didn't enjoy this collection: "St. Augustine's Computer," a rumination on the tension between books and technology, is worth the price of the book alone, and "Taking Chesterton at His Word" caused me to download a few of that author's books on my e-reader to rectify the fact that I've read nothing by G.K. Chesterton. It simply means that, as a different person with different interests from Manguel's, I was less than enthralled with some essays that had very little meaning or interest for me, personally. Another reader may appreciate more than I the essay on erotic literature or would have read Richard Outram to more ably connect with what Manguel had to say about him. So though I found it to be a mixed bag, I can fairly confidently recommend it to readers of books about books with the suggestion that there's something for everyone, and it's worthy of thought and discussion long after reading.

More Baths Less Talking

by Nick Hornby
San Francisco, CA : Believer Books, [2012].

In this collection of "Stuff I'm Reading" columns that Nick Hornby writes for the Believer magazine, he is back after a hiatus of, well, not writing such columns, that he finished in Shakespeare Wrote for Money. The essays in More Baths Less Talking cover about a year and a half (May 2010 to November/December 2011) of reflections on what he's read. Each column starts out with two lists - books bought and book read - followed by an essay filled with humor, his life, and most of all books.

I love these columns. There are now four books in the series that can be read in any order, but it is fun to pick up a new book and remember past columns to which he occasionally refers. While Hornby's taste is generally quite different from mine, I nevertheless always add a book or two to the ever-growing to be read list while dipping into these collections. Mostly, though, I just enjoy getting into the head of another reader, someone who loves books as much as I do and who can write about it in a cogent, interesting, and funny way. Reading these books always leaves me wishing I could write my own column like that, but I know I could never do it as well. I shall have to settle for reading (and rereading) Nick Hornby's columns, and wishing that the columns and his books were longer.

A Passion for Books

edited by Harold Rabinowitz and Rob Kaplan
New York : Times Books, c1999.

The subtitle summarizes this collection better than I can: "A book lover's treasury of stories, essays, humor, lore, and lists on collecting, reading, borrowing, lending, caring for, and appreciating books." The only things in this collection left out in the subtitle are comics and quotes on books and reading.

Do you love to read? Do you love books just for the feel of them, for their presence in your home? Then this sort of collection, a book about books, is likely the type of read you'd be drawn to whether I had anything good to say about it or not. Fortunately, I found it to be a lot of fun dipping into this collection, whether reading for a prolonged period of time or trying to fit an essay into my lunch break.

I especially enjoyed "Lending Books" by Anatole Broyard, "Pillow Books" by Clifton Fadiman," "Invasion of the Book Envelopes" by John Updike, and "Why Does Nobody Collect Me?" by Robert Benchley. On the whole, the essays on collecting interested me less than others - but then, I'd be surprised if such a collection met my individual reading tastes precisely. This is the sort of book I would enjoy owning so I could simply read a selection of my choosing whenever I wanted and leave the rest behind. (Oh, let's be honest, what I'd really love to is to have a hundred such books and select my own favorites for compilation!) Recommended to all who would immediately identify themselves as Readers, and even more so to collectors.

The Best American Travel Writing 2009

edited by Simon Winchester
Boston [Mass.] : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, c2009.

This collection of 25 travel articles written in 2008 is the tenth collection of Best American Travel Writing. A list was first culled by series editor Jason Wilson, and further pared down to the 25 articles selected by Simon Winchester. The collection begins with Winchester's introduction, an interesting short essay in its own right contrasting the American vs. British attitudes towards traveling the world, and bemoans the lack of geographic aptitude of Americans in general. The essays he has selected include a wide range of writing style, location, and purpose. It's impossible to succinctly summarize all twenty-five articles, so I will just focus on two to give a broad idea of the scope that is included.

One of the essays I thoroughly enjoyed was "The Mecca of the Mouse," by Seth Stevenson. Originally published on March 28, 2008, on Slate.com, the article takes the metaphor of a religion to vacationing at THE vacation destination, Disney World. In a week of visiting, Stevenson sees several parks, and observes such things as the rides, the intended purposes of theme parks such as Epcot, and the people who visit (pointing out, for example, that a great many adults visit without kids at all). While I didn't always agree with his conclusions, he makes some good points regarding the artificiality of it all, and I found his article both entertaining and thought-provoking.

"Hotels Rwanda" by Jay Kirk, originally published in September, 2008 in GQ, is equally thought-provoking, though perhaps more sobering. The descriptions of where he goes and what he does with his three friends almost sounds like a bunch of college kids out for a lark, until you realize that his travel destination is Rwanda, only recently opened up to tourists since the genocide in 1994. History - and it is an odd thought to read of anything that happened in my lifetime referred to as "history" - has a way of intruding in his trip, striking an odd balance between having a good time, partying, and seeing endangered species in the wild, with the memory, horror, and memorials of ethnic tension, upheaval, and war.

Some travel purposes and destinations interested me more than others, but all were fascinating in their own way for highlighting a different facet of a region - ecology in Honduras, for example, or the government of Burma/Myanmar. While I still may not be the best at geography (I had to look up the locations mentioned in more than one essay), I really enjoyed this glimpse of a variety of regions around the world. It makes me want to read more globally, both in fiction and nonfiction, and maybe pick up another book of travel essays while I'm at it.

A Fascinating "Reading Life"

My Reading Life
by Pat Conroy
New York : Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, c2010.

"In a reading life, one thing leads to another in a circle of accident and chance."

Taking a quote from the final chapter in Conroy's book was the closest I could come to describing the book itself. I suppose it's most accurate to call this a book of vignettes, all tied to the reading, writing, and most of all life of Pat Conroy, all three of which are closely related for him as he makes clear in this collection.

I came to this book having never read Conroy's fiction, or in fact any other book he's ever written. I found an author interview in a magazine that intrigued me, so I put the book on my list to read. I picked it up ready to rush through - enjoy, of course, but read quickly - because it was due back at the library soonest, and I love books about books. But Conroy wouldn't let me rush. I read quickly, yes, but because I had chunks of time here and there and I put aside my other reading to make time for this, because each part of his story wanted me to give my full attention. Every sentence wanted to be considered. One essay made me cry, another made me laugh, and I had to wait before I read the next so that I could separate them out and give each its due. Conroy made me want to pick up War and Peace to read right now, and maybe to add Military Brats by Mary Edwards Wertsch to my list of books to check out from the library. He made me want to read at least one of his novels to see if I like his fiction as well as his nonfiction. I thoroughly enjoyed this glimpse of his love for literature, for story, and for language.

The Essays of E.B. White

by E.B. White
New York : Perennial Classics, 1999.

This collection of thirty-one essays by E.B. White is as delightful as it is varied. The essays are arranged by subject - the farm, the city, and memories, to name a few - but even within these subjects, the collection showcases the breadth of White's thoughts and interests. In one, he discusses "The Death of a Pig," a short but powerful piece that gave me a glimpse of the man who would save the pig in Charlotte's Web. In another, he wrestles with the troubles of hydrogen bomb testing and disarmament, never giving a definite Answer, but provoking thought in himself and his reader.

I took several weeks to read these essays, not out of any lack of enjoyment but because of the need to savor each and pause between them. I've come to the conclusion that collections like this need to be owned rather than borrowed so that I can take my time and muse over each one instead of trying to hurry through and evaluate the book as a whole. I loved White's sense of humor, which permeates every essay and includes a few good one liners about politics, "progress," and even himself. In the foreword, he writes, "The essayist is a self-liberated man, sustained by the childish belief that everything he thinks about, everything that happens to him, is of general interest." Though I can't say much about general interest, I can say that this collection was to my interest, and I would love to own this collection to dip into whenever I like.

At Large and At Small

by Anne Fadiman
New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007.

In the Preface, Anne Fadiman quotes her father's regret that the familiar essay is dying, and declares her intention of this book to be her contribution to continuing the genre. She defines the familiar essay as one that includes both the personal (the "at small" of her title) and the general ("at large"). Each of the dozen essays in this collection also include the large and small in terms of topic, ranging from ice cream to Samuel Coleridge, as well as exhibiting Fadiman's broad knowledge base in literature and vocabulary.

One of my favorite essays was "Procrustes and the Culture Wars." Not only was it a topic that I was interested in - the culture wars as seen through four questions regarding one's interpretation of capital-L Literature - but also my personal response in reading was pondering what my own response might be, what my own essay on the topic might be like. Even when I disagreed with her points, the essay was thought-provoking, smart, and witty.

One of the greatest strengths of this collection is Fadiman's ability to make disparate subject matter interesting, forcing me as a reader to only read one or two essays at a time, because I wanted to fully absorb what she was saying and think about the subject, rather than moving on quickly to something else as I could have done. Until now, I had only read Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader, her collection of essays on books and reading which is one of my all-time favorites, but this collection has convinced me to try more of her titles.