Saturdays @ the South: A Bibliophile Confession on Book Anxiety

Spoiler alert!!

SpoilerAlert

I pre-read the endings of books.

Yup, that’s right, with many of the books I read, I flip to the back of the book to get a sense of the ending, often before I’ve finished the first 50 pages. Sometimes it’s the last chapter, sometimes only the last page or two, but book endings get read out of turn fairly often with me. While there are many of you who I’m sure are gasping in horror right now, I find this practice to be comforting, sound and in no way affects my enjoyment of the book overall. In fact, I find that it enhances my enjoyment of the book. For those of you who haven’t closed your browsers in disgust by now, allow me to explain.

If this is you, I understand. Stay with me on this one...
If this is your reaction right now, I understand. Stay with me on this one… (NBC/Universal. Friends)

I get book anxiety. I consider the characters in many of the books I read to be as real to me as the wonderful patrons that visit the South Branch. Book characters may not be flesh-and-blood, but they invade my heart and mind nonetheless and I feel engaged and empathetic towards these author creations. This makes for a wonderfully enriching reading experience, but it has a downside. When I start getting attached to a character, I start to worry for them as they enter into trials, tribulations or (often in my case) dangerous magical encounters. Because I’ve grown attached to them, I feel like I need at least some sense of assurance that they can come out of the situation OK (or if they don’t give myself time to prepare and/or grieve). For those who read to find out the ending, this may sound like utter blasphemy. But for someone who enjoys reading classics in which the endings are generally known in advance, having a sense of the ending of a story doesn’t preclude my enjoyment of it.

6084453c38f8c5029de3f272bc7b5e6c

Most people don’t read Romeo and Juliet in high school only to be surprised by the fact that the two lovers die in the end. But it’s still read in schools because Shakespeare’s language, plot structure and other elements of the play still hold up despite knowing the ending. The same goes for re-reading a favorite book. Knowing the ending allows the mind to free up and notice elements of the book that may not have been noticed before because of preoccupation with the plot. The same ideas apply to me, even just reading a book once. Knowing the ending frees up my mind to enjoy the plot’s movement forward and possibly notice other elements in the book that I might have missed because I was so stressed about this character making it or missing clues in a mystery because I’m too busy trying to figure out who the killer is. While it may not work for everyone, in the end, I end up appreciating the author’s work more once my anxiety has been eased somewhat. For me, the joy’s in the ride, not necessarily the destination.

AbridgedClassics1abridged-classics-books-shortened-comics-wrong-hands-john-atkinson-2

For the longest time, I thought I was the only one who disrupted the “natural” order of books. I encounter so many people who are protective against hearing spoilers and would never even conceive of looking at the last pages of a book prior to reading all that had come before. But then I had one of many wonderful bookish conversations with our blogger-in-residence Arabella and discovered that, no, I’m not the only one who does this. There are others who have book anxiety and simply need to know that a particular character makes it through until the end, or an animal comes through unscathed (a phenomenon so common, in fact, that there is an entire website devoted to knowing whether or not an animal dies in the movies) or even just to clarify a point that was suggested at the beginning and isn’t making sense partway through the book. So if you’re like me (and Arabella) and you sometimes just need to know that a character is OK, here are some (spoiler-free) suggestions where I’ve definitely taken a peek at the end.

3717690Death Descends on Saturn Villa by M. R. C. Kasasian

This is the 3rd installment in Kasasian’s Gower St. Detective series and I’ve enjoyed them all. Kasasian has created a delightful tongue-in-cheek Sherlockian-type London with a strong but flawed heroine (my favorite kind!) and a curmudgeonly misanthropic but brilliant anti-hero. The effect is engaging, entertaining and occasionally hilarious. However, this book had an introduction that completely threw me for a loop, compelling me to double-check the ending. My fears allayed, I ended up enjoying this book a fair amount because Kasasian changed the format a bit from the previous two books, keeping the series from getting stale.

3595130A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab

Despite the fact that when I read this book I knew full well that a sequel was coming out (it came out in March- woo hoo!), I still needed to flip to the end of this book to see how the characters fared. This book is well-structured with peaks and valleys of action and excitement while still creating characters with depth. Oh, and Deliliah Bard is another of those amazing female characters.

3540369Unspoken by Sarah Rees Brennan

When the Lynburn family returns to the small English town of Sorry-in-the-Vale, the sleepy state of the town gets wildly disrupted with magic and Kami Glass finds out that her “imaginary friend” is actually a flesh-and-blood person. This is one of those books that, even after I peeked at the ending, I still couldn’t believe it and despite knowing it, the reasoning behind it took me by surprise.

3639955The Clasp by Sloane Crosley

Crosley’s biting wit, usually demonstrated in essay form, is used this time in a novel that’s a modern take on Guy de Maupassant’s short story “The Necklace.” While I didn’t find the characters so well drawn and empathetic as to be nail biting as many of the other books I read, the action in the novel came together so quickly, I almost didn’t have time to flip to the end, but I still felt I needed to get a sense of the ending in order to appreciate the characters and the plot more.

As we have said before in different ways, all readers have the utmost right to read whatever they choose. But this not only applies to reading material, but also to the way a reader chooses to read books. Whether you like to take a sampling from the beginning, middle and end of a book so you know what you’re getting into, or you just like to flip to a few pages to ease your mind or if you hold the ending of a book as sacrosanct, never to be arrived upon until its appointed time, you have the right to read however you choose. I will always respect a reader’s right to be surprised just as much as I respect the right of the reader to take a sneak peek. Till next week, dear readers, I’m off to spoil another ending for myself…

Five Book Friday!

Ok, so it’s Tax Day, I know, I know….

And that’s why today’s Five Book Friday begins with a List Of Things To Make You Happy, which is among my favorite things to assemble for Fridays.  Enjoy!

1) This happy red panda, who is very, very pleased to see you today!

www.cutestpaw.com
www.cutestpaw.com

 

2) Some lovely daffodils, which I photographed just for you:

unnamed
I took this one.

 

3) Redefining “comfort food”, this lovely plush piece of toast that you can hug without worrying about butter stains.

20131202-food-plush-toast
www.squishable.com

 

4) This chair with build-in book shelf-things, which looks like one of the only such chairs in which I would actually want to sit for any length of time:

Bookshelf-chair-designs_1
www.homeandheavens.com

 

5) NEW BOOKS!!!  We are awash in new fiction selections this week, many of them featuring daring journeys to other realms, other worlds, or other states, in any manner of historical (or future) setting–here are just a few to whet your appetite:

Five Books

 

3703975Theater of the Gods: When this book first wandered into the Library, I opened it up to a random page, as I am wont to do, and saw a letter from a man who was about to be eaten by murderous trees.  Which, naturally, has me all in a dither to read the tale of M. Francisco Fabrigas, explorer, philosopher, and physicist, who takes a shipful of children on a trip into another dimension.  Having broken the bounds of conventional reality, Fabrigas and his troupe of interdimensional tourists encounter any number of bizarre and deadly foes, in a wild story that has drawn comparisons to Douglas Adams, Mervyn Peake, and Terry Pratchett…or, as The Guardian observed, “this antidote to formula fiction reads like Douglas Adams channeling William Burroughs channelling Ionesco, spiced with the comic brio of Vonnegut.”  If anyone needs me, I’ll be under the Free For All Display table reading….

3719905The Eloquence of the Dead: Irish journalist Conor Brady made quite a splash with his first historic mystery last summer, and this follow-up, featuring the deceptively complex Sergeant Joe Swallow, brings readers back to the murky and fascinating world of Victorian Dublin, where a pawnbroker has been murdered, and the lead witness has vanished.  Swallow is handed what seems on the surface to be an unsolvable case, and the approbation of a city on edge.  What he finds, however, is deep-seated corruption and a dastardly foe that lead Swallow to the very seat of British imperial power.  Brady packs his stories with loads of historic details and revel in the complications of Dublin society, making it as much a character in these novels as Swallow and his comrades, giving Kirkus plenty of reasons to cheer “The second case for the talented, complicated Swallow again spins a fine mystery out of political corruption in 1880s Dublin.”

3706554The North Water: Another historic setting for you; this time, though, the location is the Arctic Ocean, aboard an ill-fated whaling ship.  Ship’s Medic Patrick Sumner, a disgraced veteran of the Siege of Delhi, thought he had seen all the horrors that humanity had to offer, but the longer he spends with the crew of the Volunteer, particularly the savate harpooner Henry Drax, the more that Sumner becomes convinced that the worst by yet to come–particularly after discovering what is lurking in the hold of the great, doomed ship.  This is a tale of human nature and human endurance, set in one of the most foreboding places on earth, a perfect and terrifying escape that has critics raving.  The New York Times called this “a great white shark of a book―swift, terrifying, relentless and unstoppable…Mr. McGuire is such a natural storyteller―and recounts his tale here with such authority and verve―that ‘The North Water’ swiftly immerses the reader in a fully imagined world. […] Mr. McGuire nimbly folds all these melodramatic developments into his story as it hurtles toward its conclusion.”

3703647Daredevils: This time, our setting is the American West of the 1970’s, specifically Idaho and Arizona, and our protagonist is Loretta, a daring fifteen-year-old girl who is caught with her Gentile boyfriend by her strict Mormon parents.  When she is married off to an older, devout fundamentalist, Loretta finds herself surrounded by a strange family–including Jason, her husband’s free-spirited nephew, who convinces her to flee with him to the open road.  This coming of age tale features a wealth of vivid, utterly unique characters, ranging from the idealist to the sleaziest of grifters, who join Loretta and Jason on their adventures, and is full of the kind of descriptive detail that journalist and writer Shawn Vestal has spent a lifetime observing.  The San Fransisco Chronicle gave this book a glowing review, calling it “[A] full-throttle, exhilarating debut novel about faith, daring and the unexpectedly glorious coming-of-age of a Mormon teenager…This on-the-road novel takes twists and turns that are on no literary map you’ve ever seen…Vestal plays with points of view at a dizzying speed, so that at times the novel feels like a symphonic chorus…The writing, too, feels revolutionary in how it startles you…Ingenious, haunting, wild and hilarious.”

3738205Eating in the Middle: A Mostly Wholesome Cookbook: Andie Mitchell documented her difficulties with weight loss and self-perception in her book It Was Me All Along, and now, in her first cookbook, she shares with readers the dishes–and the stories–that helped her change her life for the better.  As ever, I am attracted by the pictures in cookbooks, and let me tell you…these look particularly delicious.

 

Until next week, beloved patrons–happy reading!

Yay Peabody!

Earlier this week, we helped to celebrate children’s author Beverly Cleary’s centennial in style.  And since that was so much fun, how about we keep on celebrating centennials?

Like Peabody’s own centennial, taking place this year!  (Cue the fanfare.  Cue the confetti.)

Peabody-gold23

Actually, if we’re all being honest with each other, it’s the 100th anniversary of Peabody’s incorporation as a city.  The area on which we–and the Library–now live was originally within the boundaries of Salem when it was founded in 1626.  In 1752, the land was incorporated into Danvers, and known to locals as the “South Parish”, after a Church that stood in what is now Peabody Square.  Because of this, when what is now Peabody first decided to go it on their own in 1855, the area was known as South Danvers.

According to editorials in local papers, it was apparently quite a struggle to get the mail delivered properly to South Danvers.  The postman kept delivering them to Danvers proper, and making the newly minted South Danversians rather miffed.  Partially as a result of this, South Danvers was renamed Peabody, after the great and generous George Peabody, in 1868.

Peabody, 1872
Peabody, 1872

Having finally settled on a name that made everyone happy, Peabody continued to grow and thrive, particularly thanks to the above- and below-ground rivers providing hydraulic power to run the numerous leather factories, tanneries, and, apparently, marble-making factories.  The potential for jobs was enormous, and, as a result, Peabody began to attract laborers from all over the world, and, particularly, from Ireland, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire.  One historical account actually notes that the area known as Walnut Street was so densely populated with Turkish immigrants that street signs and other notices were written in both Ottoman Turkish and English.

Yakub Ahmed, a Turkish immigrant, naturalized citizen, and leather factory employee
Yakub Ahmed, a Turkish immigrant, naturalized citizen, and leather factory employee

Thus, by 1916, things were going so well that Peabody became a city…a fact that brings us to the festivities going on in this year (check out the link for more details about said events!).  In honor of Peabody’s 100 years of Citydom, there will be a whole manner of celebrations, from a Food Truck Party to a Parade, and you are welcomed to be a part of it!

download (4)And, to get you started properly, why not stop by the Main Library and check out the sparkly book display featuring a number of books by and about Peabody’s finest–from the life of famed astronomer and mathematician Nathaniel Bowditch, author of The American Practical Navigator to CEO Jack Welch, to our newest favorite local author, Larry Theriault, whose delightful children’s book, 14 Steps Away came out last summer.  This display is a microcosm of Peabody’s past and present on the page, and is sure to get your centennial celebrations started off on the right foot.  If you were looking for reasons to brag about your hometown, or about your favorite library (ahem), then stop by, and have a look at our display!  Also, for those looking to delve even deeper into Peabody’s History, check out our Archives, and the sensational online exhibits featuring highlights from Peabody’s history, as well as from the Peabody Institute’s illustrious past.

As this Very Special year unfolds, we here at the Library will be highlighting some of the people and events that have made Peabody great and memorable, so check back here for updates!  In the meantime, I’ll be stocking up on the confetti…

And now, a word from Neil Gaiman…

It’s no real secret that Neil Gaiman is a favorite of ours here at the Free For All.  And it’s not just because he writes glorious books, and it’s not just because he does all the voices in his audiobooks.  It’s because he’s a fan of Libraries, too.  And, in honor of National Library Week, we wanted to share with you this lecture that Neil Gaiman gave to The Reading Agency in 2013 (which was subsequently published in The Guardian) in support of books, fiction, and Libraries around the world.  

Neil Gaiman Reading Agency Lecture20
Neil Gaiman at the Reading Agency

[…] Do not discourage children from reading because you feel they are reading the wrong thing. Fiction you do not like is a route to other books you may prefer. And not everyone has the same taste as you.

Well-meaning adults can easily destroy a child’s love of reading: stop them reading what they enjoy, or give them worthy-but-dull books that you like, the 21st-century equivalents of Victorian “improving” literature. You’ll wind up with a generation convinced that reading is uncool and worse, unpleasant.

We need our children to get onto the reading ladder: anything that they enjoy reading will move them up, rung by rung, into literacy. ..Another way to destroy a child’s love of reading, of course, is to make sure there are no books of any kind around. And to give them nowhere to read those books. I was lucky. I had an excellent local library growing up. I had the kind of parents who could be persuaded to drop me off in the library on their way to work in summer holidays, and the kind of librarians who did not mind a small, unaccompanied boy heading back into the children’s library every morning and working his way through the card catalogue, looking for books with ghosts or magic or rockets in them, looking for vampires or detectives or witches or wonders. And when I had finished reading the children’s’ library I began on the adult books.

They were good librarians. They liked books and they liked the books being read. They taught me how to order books from other libraries on inter-library loans. They had no snobbery about anything I read. They just seemed to like that there was this wide-eyed little boy who loved to read, and would talk to me about the books I was reading, they would find me other books in a series, they would help. They treated me as another reader – nothing less or more – which meant they treated me with respect. I was not used to being treated with respect as an eight-year-old.

But libraries are about freedom. Freedom to read, freedom of ideas, freedom of communication. They are about education (which is not a process that finishes the day we leave school or university), about entertainment, about making safe spaces, and about access to information.

I worry that here in the 21st century people misunderstand what libraries are and the purpose of them. If you perceive a library as a shelf of books, it may seem antiquated or outdated in a world in which most, but not all, books in print exist digitally. But that is to miss the point fundamentally.

acfca3ca07a730b2398dc495268c3866

I think it has to do with nature of information. Information has value, and the right information has enormous value. For all of human history, we have lived in a time of information scarcity, and having the needed information was always important, and always worth something: when to plant crops, where to find things, maps and histories and stories – they were always good for a meal and company. Information was a valuable thing, and those who had it or could obtain it could charge for that service.

In the last few years, we’ve moved from an information-scarce economy to one driven by an information glut. According to Eric Schmidt of Google, every two days now the human race creates as much information as we did from the dawn of civilisation until 2003. That’s about five exobytes of data a day, for those of you keeping score. The challenge becomes, not finding that scarce plant growing in the desert, but finding a specific plant growing in a jungle. We are going to need help navigating that information to find the thing we actually need.

Libraries are places that people go to for information. Books are only the tip of the information iceberg: they are there, and libraries can provide you freely and legally with books. More children are borrowing books from libraries than ever before – books of all kinds: paper and digital and audio. But libraries are also, for example, places that people, who may not have computers, who may not have internet connections, can go online without paying anything: hugely important when the way you find out about jobs, apply for jobs or apply for benefits is increasingly migrating exclusively online. Librarians can help these people navigate that world. […]

Books are the way that we communicate with the dead. The way that we learn lessons from those who are no longer with us, that humanity has built on itself, progressed, made knowledge incremental rather than something that has to be relearned, over and over. There are tales that are older than most countries, tales that have long outlasted the cultures and the buildings in which they were first told. […]

Albert Einstein was asked once how we could make our children intelligent. His reply was both simple and wise. “If you want your children to be intelligent,” he said, “read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” He understood the value of reading, and of imagining. I hope we can give our children a world in which they will read, and be read to, and imagine, and understand.

You can watch the full lecture here.  Say “thank you” to the Reading Agency while you do.  And thanks to Neil Gaiman, as well!

Happy Birthday, Beverly Cleary!

Everyday is a party here at the Free For All, but today is one of those days where we pull out the extra-sparkly confetti and the really fancy party hats…because it’s the 100th birthday of beloved children’s author, librarian, and literacy advocate Beverly Cleary!

920x920

Beverly Cleary was born Beverly Atlee Bunn in McMinnville, Oregon on this day in 1916.  She wasn’t a natural born reader, and spent the first two years of school in a remedial reading group, until her school librarian helped her find books she enjoyed reading.  Their mutual love of reading fostered a life-long friendship, and by sixth grade, her teachers told her that she should become a children’s author, based on her essays and love of reading.

Instead, she became a children’s librarian herself, after eloping with her husband, Clarence in 1940, and delighted in helping children find books that would engage and challenge them.  In fact, it was precisely because there were so few of those books on the shelf that Cleary took to writing.  As she explained to The New York Times in a 2011 article, after encountering a book where a puppy said: “Bow-wow. I like the green grass.”

“No dog I had ever known could talk like that…What was the matter with authors?”

She realized she could do better…and she did.

3637332More than 40 books and 90 million copies later, Beverly Cleary has become one of the most well-known and beloved children’s authors of the century.  From her outlandish and spunky Ramona Quimby to the intrepid Ralph S. Mouse, to the heartbreakingly honest letters found in Dear Mr. Henshaw, Cleary has spent a lifetime treating children like intelligent readers, and giving them characters to whom they can relate, and whose stories they could just plain enjoy.  As Cleary noted of her own childhood reading experiences, “If I suspected the author was trying to show me how to be a better behaved girl, I shut the book”.

Instead, she gave us characters who were–and remain–real, rambunctious, and beautifully empathetic, especially because of their mistakes, flaws, and boundless energy.  As Cleary noted to The Atlantic, “I have stayed true to my own memories of childhood, which are not different in many ways from those of children today. Although their circumstances have changed, I don’t think children’s inner feelings have changed.”

It turns out, she was 100% right.  In an online post from The Oregonian today, librarians, authors, and teachers from around the state have taken the opportunity today to thank Beverly Cleary for inspiring them, as well as their students, to keep reading, exploring, and adventuring.  As one librarian from Cleary’s former grade school (where the library has been rename in her honor) explains,

RAMONA-jumboStudents at Beverly Cleary School come to the library all smiles, and leave grinning as they clutch the books they can’t wait to read. Most all of them know that Beverly Cleary is a famous author who grew up in the same neighborhood they are growing up in. They also know that Henry, Ramona, Beezus and the other characters from Cleary’s books played in the park that they play in. In fact, many of them confuse Beverly Cleary with her fictional character, Ramona. When the younger students sit on the story steps in the library to listen to me read a story, some of them believe Ramona sat on those same steps to hear her librarian read to her.

But you don’t have to take my word for it.  If you would like to hear from the great Ms. Cleary herself, check out this interview below from the Today show that ran last month:

Then, come in and check out some of Cleary’s books for yourself.  For those who grew up reading her, it will be a perfect way to remember your childhood.  For those who haven’t had the pleasure–trust me, it’s never too late!

And, on a personal note, I would like to publicly thank Beverly Cleary, and Ramona Quimby, for teaching me how to tell time.

For the love of all that is good and fictional…

Why do you read fiction?

Fiction-Readers11

It’s a legitimate question, and one that really has no right answer.  Some people turn to fiction for the adventure, some to connect with people in a way they can’t in real life, some to escape real life.  Some read to learn, some read just because they love words and the way those words come together to form a whole book.

Frankly, it’s not really important.  If reading fiction makes you happy, you should read it.  No matter what genre, topic, or theme.

My stance on this was reinforced the other day when I read a blog post by Swiss-Anglo philosopher Alain de Botton, writing for Penguin’s UK website.  The post, titled “Alain de Botton on why romantic novels can make us unlucky in love“, frankly, set my teeth on edge.

Alain-de-Botton-001Alain de Botton begins by stating we should read fiction because it “it lends us more lives than we have been given”, which is a sentiment I think is really quite lovely.  He holds that fiction essentially allows us to live through the lives of others, and learn from their mistakes and decisions, all of which is just fine.  However, that is, apparently, where our amicable acquaintance ends.  Because, de Botton then goes on to state,

Unfortunately, there are too many bad novels out there – by which one means, novels that do not give us a correct map of love…The narrative arts of the Romantic novel have unwittingly constructed a devilish template of expectations of what relationships are supposed to be like – in the light of which our own love lives often look grievously and deeply unsatisfying. We break up or feel ourselves cursed in significant part because we are exposed to the wrong works of literature.

I honestly can’t begin to tell you how sick I am of other people telling me–or any reader, for that matter–that reading romance novels is bad, or “wrong” for them.  As long as romance novels have been popular, there have been people (particularly men, but I’ll leave that be for the moment) banging on about how romance novels will inherently make women unhappy and unfulfilled, because they provide false expectations of reality.

I read a great deal of fantasy and science fiction novels, in addition to romance.  I have never heard anyone voice concern that I may be harmed by these books.  No one seems worried that I will come to believe that animals can talk, or that I can time travel, or that I can shoot flames from my finger tips.  Yet, over and over again, I hear that I am in real danger of thinking romance novels are real.

Cyanide and Happiness / explosm.net

Let me be really clear about something: Romance readers are, demographically speaking, college aged women with careers.  They know very, very well that romance novels are fiction.

Now that we have established that fact, let’s also think about the purpose that romance novels do serve.  They are escapes.  They exist in a world where one doesn’t have to dust, or clean the toilet; where people can excel at interesting jobs; where soul mates are a real, tangible thing.  They are guaranteed happy endings.  And, as I’ve noted before, they explicitly affirm the heroine’s (and, thus, the reader’s) right to self-affirmation and individual happiness.  They teach us that we, as readers and as heroines, are capable of growing, of trusting ourselves, of respecting and loving ourselves.  Love is a reward for a journey of self-discovery.  The rest of it is frosting.  Delicious, sweet, decadent frosting.  With glitter.

36db83369ba61cbae2891a526d7842ce
Like this lovely cupcake.

Yet, according to Alain de Botton, “The Romantic novel is deeply unhelpful. We have learned to judge ourselves by the hopes and expectations fostered by a misleading medium. By its standards, our own relationships are almost all damaged and unsatisfactory. No wonder separation or divorce so often appear to be inevitable.”

By this same rationality, the current state of our environment can be attributed to too many science fiction readers believing that we will soon be moving to a moon colony.  Or that our foreign policy is the result of too many thriller readers believing that the Constitution is really a secret code handed down by the Freemasons.  Yet no one assumes that readers of science fiction or thrillers are that stupid or shallow.  Why, then, is it in anyway fair to think that romance readers have such a tenuous grip on reality?

Romance Readers
Romance Readers

I’m not sure if Alain de Botton hasn’t read many romances in his life, or doesn’t quite get them.  And that is fine.   As a very proud Library Person, I can say that he has every right to read, and to enjoy, whatever he likes.  If he would rather read more realistic stories about “real life”–whatever that actually is, that is terrific, and does not reflect on him as a worthy or intelligent person at all.   What I don’t, and will never, accept, is his assumptions about other romance readers.  We, too, have a right to read whatever we want, whenever we want.  And no one has the right to call that wrong, or tell us that “we merely need to change our reading matter”.

Screen-shot-2012-05-30-at-3_20_46-PMAs long as there have been romance novels, there have been people telling women that there is something wrong with the books, and with them, as well, for wanting to read about a world where their voices and their thoughts and their persons are fundamentally valued and important.   That’s not dangerous for anyone, and it certainly shouldn’t be considered unrealistic.

But until we stop judging genres–and their readers, we are not doing justice to the fiction we read, or the empathy that our fiction seeks to instill in us.

So, as we kick off National Library Week, we just wanted to take a minute to reiterate that you and your reading choices are always welcome here, no matter what anyone says.

Saturdays @ the South: Poetic Bibliotherapy

national-poetry-month

Despite T.S. Eliot’s immortal words, April is not always the cruelest month (though it can certainly be a meteorologically confusing one!), particularly when it is an entire month devoted to the celebration of poetry. April is National Poetry Month, and in the wake of our posts encouraging the overcoming of metrophobia, I feel it’s only appropriate to celebrate here on the blog. In fact, there is a confluence of events during the month of April that makes it a wonderful month to celebrate poetry. On April 29th, Mass Poetry will have their 8th annual Mass Poetry Festival, throughout that weekend in Salem. The quadricentennial of Shakespeare’s death will happen during this month as well, and just in time, a first folio of his collected plays was discovered in Scotland on the Isle of Bute. Finally there is a call for readers will be happening right here at the Peabody Library on April 16th and 17th, to take part in Homer’s poetic tradition in a marathon tandem reading of the Iliad, which our regular blogger Arabella has already mentioned and about which I am ridiculously excited.

images

Amidst these very outward celebrations, I think it’s worth mentioning that what is most meaningful in poetry is often a much more quiet, inward journey that is sometimes celebratory and sometimes merely a subtle change that isn’t even noticed until the impact is felt much, much later. Other times, poetry can be a source of bibliotherapy. In a fascinating  and moving article, LitHub published the observations of a poet who prescribes poems to those in need. Yes, you read that right. She believes in poetry as a form of therapy that can be prescribed to those who need it. Ronna Bloom is the Poet in Residence at Mount Sinai Hospital and the Poet in Community at the University of Toronto. She has taken a very boots-on-the-ground approach to bringing poetry to those who may not have considered it otherwise. She realizes that those she encounters (often people who have had life-changing diagnosis) may not want a poem and that some might consider her efforts frivolous and doesn’t push the issue, acknowledging ” My motto: everyone who is alive could use a poem. Whether they want one is a different matter….There are things poetry can do and things is can’t.” However, there are amazing moments in which she truly connects with her “patients” realizing that “the point is less about liking and more about finding the poem that catches the spark of the experience, with empathy.” My humble opinion is that empathy is one of the greatest gifts poetry give and I give Bloom a great deal of credit for not shying away from what many choose to purposefully avoid (in relation to both tragedy and poetry), gently encouraging them to embrace the possibilities of language.

There are certainly other way in which poetry can reach people. LitHub has also published an article on poems that have made writers cry, indicating the transformative power of poetry. And for all of us wonderful bibliophiles, Flavorwire has a list of beautiful poems specifically for people who love books. Clearly, there is a type of poetry for everyone, whether or not we have chosen to find it yet. For my part, one of my transformative poetic experiences was when I was writing a paper in college and had to choose a Shakespeare sonnet for my topic. After paging through lines and lines of love poetry (my sarcastic, single self getting a little nauseous) I finally ended upon a sonnet about unconventional love, one that didn’t uphold the love-object as an idealized, stylized figure. Shakespeare’s dark lady is the polar opposite to pretty much any convention that poets before and after Shakespeare valued, but the Bard understood that love isn’t always dictated by the conventions of beauty and despite what many would have considered flaws that couldn’t be overlooked, he found much to love anyway. This was one of several poems that made me stop and truly appreciate some of what poetry could do and fortunately, because Shakespeare is in the Public Domain, instead of sharing book recommendations this week, I get to share this poem with you.

Sonnet 130 by William Shakespeare

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red, than her lips red:
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound:
I grant I never saw a goddess go,
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare,
As any she belied with false compare.

 

Till next week, dear readers, I encourage you to find a poem that you’re able to connect with in some meaningful way. Whatever that meaning, it is entirely personal and doesn’t need to be compared with anyone’s idea of poetry and meaning but your own. Mass Poetry’s website has a delightful section called “Poem of the Moment” that may help you with this. I also encourage any interested readers to join the Peabody Library in celebrating a centuries-old tradition of the oral recitation of poetry, whether by reading or joining us on June 19th in Veteran’s Memorial Park. Perhaps you might even find personal meaning in Homer’s epic.

 

"Once you learn to read, you will be forever free." ~Frederick Douglass