Customer Nervous

For someone who spends so much time in a shop, I both disappoint and pride myself on how little I enjoy shopping. Pride because it saves a lot of money and suggests a good work-life balance, and disappointment because many of the things I need are to be found in shops. It’s a necessary evil for me much of the time. I don’t mind grocery shopping, and when it comes to most other things, I’m usually organised enough that there’s no last-minute gift buying or frenzied purchase of other essentials. I completely lose my cool, however, when it comes to the transaction of goods & services to do with physical appearance.

Most of the time, I don’t wear much makeup. This cuts down expenses, getting ready time in the morning, means I look way better in photos of special occasions, and reduces the time I ever have to spend buying cosmetics. This last point is key. I realised I’d have to buy some nice makeup for a wedding a little while ago, and since it was overseas, figured I’d buy it all duty-free, saving myself a little money and killing time at the airport because I always get there obscenely early anyway. I was with my mother, who shares my cosmetic-related aversion and proclivity for punctuality, and since we both had to remove our glasses to sample any kind of eye makeup, it was truly a case of the blind leading the blind. We fumbled along as best we could but realised we weren’t going to be able to do this alone. An employee approached to offer her assistance:

“Can I help you with anything?”
“Yes please. I don’t really know much about makeup, but think I need some foundation.”
“Ok, what kind of coverage do you want?”
“My… face?”

At this her eyes practically rolled out of their sockets. I was prepared to take whatever suggestions she offered but instead she let out a sigh. It was the sound an unimpressed cat might make when a new puppy is brought home. I bought the first thing she deigned to offer me a sample of, and to this day still don’t know what she meant by “coverage.”

“What about some lipstick?”
“Oh yeah, guess I’d better get some. I think I should be able to choose that on my own though, thanks all the same.”
“And do you need lipliner?”
“Uhhh…”
“They’re over here.”

I was even more confused. I didn’t have any, but did that mean I needed it? Is that the kind of thing anyone ever actually needs? I forewent the product on account of it sounding a little too much like dark magic. I ended up with foundation, lipstick, new eyeliner and eyeshadow (the only items I had any familiarity with but have probably been doing wrong for years) and free mascara for my expenditure. I put the lot on my credit card, grabbed my mother (who had cleverly taken a backseat to the proceedings) and rushed to the gate as though we were in some sort of hurry. I messaged Jenn to disperse my stress and unravel the mystery of lipliner. She told me that my decision to forego it was for the best and never to go makeup shopping without her. My relief was palpable, because to go back for lipliner would feel like reentering the gates of hell, and flagrantly gone against her second instruction. I got out of that shop, that airport, that country, as quickly as I could. I reentered the country and airport (but not the shop) a month and a half later, having put off the retraumatisation for as long as I could.

It did teach me a useful lesson in customer service though. I had admitted to the sales assistant up front that I was in unfamiliar territory, and am certain I looked at least half as scared as I felt. Even beneath the currents of perfume samples, she could assuredly smell my fear. What I needed in that moment was a basic makeup kit and some assurance, and while I was satisfied with my purchases in the end, as she looked down her perfectly made up nose, I felt about the size of the free mascara I’ve since used only twice. I already felt like an idiot, in need of help without disapproval. I’m prepared to admit that I was already very sensitive to even the slightest whiff of judgment in that department, but it felt lathered over me like shellac. It got me wondering if that’s how I come across when a customer at the bookshop asks for the latest 50 Shades instalment.

Disappointingly, I think I sometimes do, albeit perhaps to a smaller degree. Not only do I quietly enjoy feeling superior, I also have a very expressive face. My expressions of disapproval are never far away, and because I can’t raise one eyebrow without the other, half my lip curls instead and I fear I go around this world sneering at anything that causes me even the slightest displeasure. I’ve tried really hard to correct this though, and think I’ve been at least moderately successful because I still have a job. Two jobs, in fact, both focused on customer service. Mostly it’s friends and colleagues who bear my accumulated sneers, and because they have a solid sense of self and know it’s nothing personal, they laugh it off as a symptom of my curmudgeonly old soul and general world-weariness. They know me well.

So when a customer approached me in the bookshop and said she needed to buy a present for a kid, but didn’t know much about them or what their age group might be into, I was ready to help. It’s not her job to know what the youths are reading, it’s mine. She followed up with one proviso, however, that completely countered both productivity and intuition: she didn’t want to buy a book. Thankfully I was leading her to the kids’ section at this point, and as she was walking behind me, could not see my face. Even my most pronounced reactive judgment doesn’t reach the back of my head, and I had a couple of seconds to compose a response. How desperately I wanted to inform her that she was in a bookshop, that we sold books, that when someone comes into a bookshop to buy a present, they invariably leave with a book. But who would that have helped? Presumably she knew she was in a bookshop and hoped we were the kind that sold puzzles, board games, crockery and plant seeds. (These are all commodities which can be purchased at a bookshop I used to work at. Yes, even the seeds.) So hey, who was I to be judging her? Obviously I did or I wouldn’t have laughed about it with colleagues later or be writing about it now, but I realised I could do so without calling her out on her faux pas. I would’ve enjoyed a second of smugness as the insult sunk in, and then we both would’ve felt like fools. I’d have offended her and regretted it immediately. I showed her to the craft section instead.

I optimistically expect the makeup I bought to last me a good long while, and when it does run dry I’ll make an identical purchase online. There’s a lot to be said for cutting out the middleman, but my livelihood is as exactly that. I’m not paid for my snide comments, which I happily give away for free. If I weren’t so intimidated by potentially rude makeup salespeople, maybe I’d buy it with slightly more frequency. I don’t want to put people off buying books, and I have some great book-related conversations with customers. They’re not all as out of their depth with books as I am buying makeup. I certainly don’t want to put myself out of a job because I come across as superior and unaccommodating. I may have to begin my career anew as a makeup sales assistant. And who needs that?

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2017: Pretty Good Year

I won’t speak for the rest of the world, which at large has had a crazy old year; but my 2017 was a pretty darn good’un. I made new friends, visited new countries, skied new slopes, quit a job I liked for two jobs I like more, saw people I love marry people they love, played with new puppies, saw some great shows and live music, and of course read some great books. I rarely make new year’s resolutions: if there’s something I want to do (or think I should,) I’ll either do it, or I won’t. 2016 was an exception though, when I decided I wanted to read 100 books that year. I hit this goal with eight to spare, and decided for 2017 I’d just read as and when I wanted to. I didn’t read much in January (busy seeing the world and doing other things) and figured I’d fall far short of my 2016 tally in any case, but finished on 104.

The book I was most excited to read also turned out to be my favourite, so perhaps I’m a little bit biased, but I’m certain I would’ve loved Tin Man even if I’d never heard of Sarah Winman. Coming in second is Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman. This is her debut novel, so I came into it with no expectations, but knew very quickly that this book and I would be friends. My third favourite is The Idiot by Elif Batuman, which was a very pleasing novel to take my time over and get to know – the type of book where while not every sentence contributes to the narrative, I didn’t want to drift away for even a second for fear I’d miss one of the many moving one-liners.

An honourable mention goes to The Secret History by Donna Tartt, which has been around for a while, and I was just late to the party. My non-fiction pick goes to Just Kids by Patti Smith, and I don’t think you need to be a fan of her music to luxuriate in her writing.

There are quite a few books I read either because I felt I should have them on my list at some point (Little Women, a Sherlock Holmes and an Agatha Christie) which is not to say they aren’t worth their classic status. Plenty I read out of what I’d term “professional interest” – typically award winners, or the ones everyone seems to be reading/have read (Big Little Lies, The Girl on the Train, Eat, Pray, Love etc.)

More as an aside, I haven’t listed the times I’ve listened to Harry Potter on audiobook. Really this is because I listen to it in bed to help me drift off, have stopped and started all over the series for several years now, and it’s hard to put a number on the amount of times I’ve covered each book. Having said that, I’ve been gifted a copy of The Philosopher’s Stone translated into Scots, and also have some of the books in German. When I read those, they’ll definitely make the list.

Please let me know what you’ve read and enjoyed this year. As it turns out, even when I don’t set a goal of 100+ books, sometimes these things just happen and I don’t really do much else.

1. The Secret History – Donna Tartt
2. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
3. Outlander – Diana Gabaldon
4. Where’d You Go, Bernadette – Maria Semple
5. The Drifters – James A. Michener (this one was a reread)
6. The Natural Way of Things – Charlotte Wood
7. Just Kids – Patti Smith
8. The World According to Anna – Jostein Gaarder
9. The Carnivorous Carnival – Lemony Snicket
10. Furiously Happy: a Funny Book about Horrible Things – Jenny Lawson
11. Regions of Thick-Ribbed Ice – Helen Garner
12. M Train – Patti Smith
13. Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
14. See What I Have Done – Sarah Schmidt
15. The Graveyard Book – Neil Gaiman
16. Tin Man – Sarah Winman
17. Our Souls at Night – Kent Haruf
18. Down the Hume – Peter Polites
19. Big Little Lies – Liane Moriarty
20. Nutshell – Ian McEwan
21. The Journey Back from Hell: Memoirs of Concentration Camp Survivors – Anton Gill
22. Midnight Express – Billy Hayes with William Hoffer
23. The Girl on the Train – Paula Hawkins
24. The Slippery Slope – Lemony Snicket
25. Maus – Art Spiegelman
26. The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake – Aimee Bender
27. All the Bright Places – Jennifer Niven
28. The Return – Hisham Matar
29. The View from the Cheap Seats – Neil Gaiman
30. Bertie Plays the Blues – Alexander McCall Smith
31. If I Forget You – T. C. Greene
32. The Museum of Modern Love – Heather Rose
33. The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells – Andrew Sean Greer
34. What Belongs to You – Garth Greenwell
35. The Ruins of Gorland – John Flanagan
36. Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay – Elena Ferrante
37. The Lost Pages – Marija Pericic
38. The Girl from Everywhere – Heidi Heilig
39. The Idiot – Elif Batuman
40. We Were Liars – E. Lockhart
41. Men Without Women – Haruki Murakami
42. Carry On – Rainbow Rowell
43. The Girls – Emma Cline
44. Woman of Substances – Jenny Valentish
45. Reckoning – Magda Szubanski
46. Everywhere I Look – Helen Garner
47. What W. H. Auden Can Do For You – Alexander McCall Smith
48. A Study in Scarlet – Arthur Conan Doyle
49. The Nothing – Hanif Kureishi
50. Norse Mythology – Neil Gaiman
51. Flesh Wounds – Richard Glover
52. A Long Way Home – Saroo Brierley
53. The Ministry of Utmost Happiness – Arundhati Roy
54. Out of Orange – Cleary Wolters
55. Half Wild – Pip Smith
56. The Music Shop – Rachel Joyce
57. The Sun is also a Star – Nicola Yoon
58. The Weight of Him – Ethel Rohan
59. Go Ask Alice – Anonymous
60. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine – Gail Honeyman
61. Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief – Rick Riordan
62. The Magic Faraway Tree – Enid Blyton (reread)
63. Spectacles – Sue Perkins
64. The Last Painting of Sara de Vos – Dominic Smith
65. Candy – Luke Davies
66. Colombiano – Rusty Young
67. Fight Like a Girl – Clementine Ford
68. A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters – Julian Barnes
69. Gut: the Inside Story of our Body’s most Underrated Organ – Giulia Enders
70. The Last Great Australian Adventurer – Gordon Bass
71. Hunger: a Memoir of (My) Body – Roxane Gay
72. Commonwealth – Ann Patchett
73. Eat, Pray, Love – Elizabeth Gilbert
74. The Age of Kali – William Dalrymple
75. Between a Wolf and a Dog – Georgia Blain
76. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead – Tom Stoppard (reread)
77. Note to Self – Connor Franta
78. More Fool Me – Stephen Fry
79. Turtles all the Way Down – John Green
80. Sapiens: a Brief History of Humankind – Yuval Noel Harari
81. Nevermoor: the Trials of Morrigan Crow – Jessica Townsend
82. Sunshine on Scotland Street – Alexander McCall Smith
83. How to Talk About Places You’ve Never Been: on the Importance of Armchair Travel – Pierre Bayard
84. Sing, Unburied, Sing – Jesmyn Ward
85. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck – Mark Manson
86. His Bloody Project – Graeme Macrae Burnet
87. Born on a Blue Day – Daniel Tammet
88. Holy Cow: an Indian Adventure – Sarah Macdonald (reread)
89. The Underdog – Markus Zusak
90. Far from the Tree – Robin Benway
91. The Bricks that Built the Houses – Kate Tempest
92. When Breath Becomes Air – Paul Kalanithi
93. Neverwhere – Neil Gaiman
94. Lincoln in the Bardo – George Saunders
95. Going Solo – Roald Dahl
96. Feel Free – Zadie Smith
97. Goodbye Christopher Robin – Ann Thwaite
98. Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock – Matthew Quick
99. Devotion – Patti Smith
100. Murder on the Orient Express – Agatha Christie
101. The Spare Room – Helen Garner
102. Adventures of a Young Naturalist: the Zoo Quest Expeditions –David Attenborough
103. The Northern Lights – Philip Pullman
104. A Horse Walks into a Bar – David Grossman

 

Oh, and here I am with some of my best friends. We had sold out of Eleanor Oliphant, so last year’s fav stepped in.

What Belongs to You

I’ve been a particularly neglectful blogger these last few months. I’ve been kept busy with my two jobs, which has also meant I’ve had more money coming into my account since before I went to librarian school, which has meant money to go out into the world and do things, buy books and see shows, and enjoy the extravagance of three meals a day. What luxury! As such, I’ve spent less time fishing for ideas for the free entertainment writing a blog provides, and consequently don’t have a list of ideas for what I might write about. This post is all about banging the keyboard and seeing what comes out. Are you ready to wing it with me?

Good, I’m glad! Thank you for taking a chance.

I’m turning over that old piece of advice, to “write about what you know.” When taken literally, I think this sounds well-suited to essay-writing and not a lot else. It’s a way to get from A to B, to make a specific point, to get a particular message across. Most of the time I write to either find out what I know, think or feel about something. For me it’s a good way to clarify abstract ideas and arrange them in a way that makes sense. In my student days, it was an effective way to learn about something. I figure I was given a year to write a thesis because that’s about how long it should take to learn enough about a very specific subject, clarify what your thoughts are on it, and arrange them in a way that makes sense. And sometimes, like right now, I write just because I want to, which seems as good a reason as any, and better than many.

The first piece I remember writing was a letter to Santa. The second was, quite literally, a work of Enid Blyton’s. I copied out an entire Noddy book, traced the cover, stapled the whole thing together down the middle, wrote “Written by Erin,” on the front, then proudly showed my dad. I was flummoxed when he changed the cover to say, “Rewritten by…” and argued fiercely that I technically HAD written the entire thing, so could he please tippex over his two letter alteration. He duly explained my faux pas, that copying out an entire text did not entitle one to claim authorship. Given that it had taken me all morning to hand-write, illustrate and bind an entire book, I was decidedly unimpressed: for my next written work, I had to ask the teacher how to spell “funeral.” (Not even kidding, although I suspect this had more to do with the fact I had just been to one rather than a desire to attend another.)

I wish I could say it was an important lesson in plagiarism, but I think what it shows is probably that I was trying to write the kind of thing I wanted to read. I don’t think my later attempt to write a book called The Famous Four had anyone fooled. The four in question were completely different to The Famous Five but did find themselves in all the same situations. They also sported an uncanny resemblance to my school friends: I certainly wasn’t clever enough to come up with a racially diverse group of friends and a Sri Lankan character named Ruvani. I felt like these characters were my own though, so I put them in and called it original.

There was only one character who ever found herself in even slightly un-Famous situations, and she was an amalgam of a real person, every Blyton story I had ever read, and my own childish desires. The character Becky was usually a long lost sister who went to boarding school, could play the violin, run fast, had a dog; someone who had abilities I wanted and qualities I lacked. The real Becky moved interstate when we were six, though I kept her character in my pocket, to take out and imagine into new situations, as and when required. Presumably I got a little more creative as I levelled up at school and stopped writing about her, but for a couple of years this imagined Becky and I went on wonderful adventures in my head. They usually began with us finding out we were actually sisters (having never had one myself,) and she’d take me to boarding school with her where we’d have all sorts of fun solving mysteries and getting up to mischief. We were looked after by an older girl named Susan, who now that I think about it was lifted in her entirety out of Narnia. I must’ve outgrown Becky by the time Harry Potter came along, otherwise I’m certain we would’ve gone to magic school together too.

Reading over that last paragraph, I realise that my own fictions were nearly identical to something Enid Blyton might punch out, but in imagining myself into them, they became something I could experience more fully than passive observation might allow. Although I hadn’t exactly come up with them on my own, these stories belonged to me now. Perhaps it taught me to be in the real world where my actual best friend had moved to the far off land of Warrnambool. At the end of the following year, New Best Friend moved to Japan. The next one changed schools after two years, and a year after that the next moved to Tamworth. A year later, I was the one who changed schools, and it should perhaps come as no surprise to learn I spent most of the first term in the library. It was much the easiest way to feel like I was somewhere familiar.

Reading has the wonderful capacity to take you somewhere completely different while feeling wonderfully at home. And writing puts you right in the thick of it, with more agency than you might otherwise find you have.

Is “write about what you know,” another way of saying, “write about your experiences,” or “write about what you wish would happen”? Maybe that’s what I’ve always done, and changing details is a way to spice things up rather than protect anonymity, which my uninventive naming clearly failed to do. But I think the greater purpose is to turn What I Know into What Belongs to Me. All of this probably belongs on the more appropriately labeled shelf Things I Think. But if I start writing a story, you can be sure the goal will be to end up with something I’d like to read. At this stage there’s a strong likelihood it’d be set in Cornwall and about a rabbit named God, so now that my desire to write something has been satisfied, I think I’d best get back to reading.

Why they pay me the big bucks.

In the last few months I’ve begun work at two new jobs: one at New Bookshop, the other in a public library. Now that I’ve settled in to both, I have to say I’m living the dream. I see all the new releases as soon as they hit the shelves, and can either borrow them from the library or buy them with my enviable staff discount. It’s pretty perfect. When I left Old Bookshop, one of my colleagues said, “You leaving this place is like you dying to me. But knowing you’re going to a library is knowing you’re going to heaven.” It was touching, really, in a backward kind of way, and I took it as such.

Nevertheless, I’ve found myself undertaking tasks I didn’t think were strictly in my job description. It’s probably not such a stretch to imagine one might end up running story time at the bookshop. When The Boss asked if my colleague or I would read a few picture books out to 2-5 year olds, I said nothing. My colleague responded with, “Erin, are you glaring at me because you want me to do it?” That was exactly why I was glaring at her, as she well knew, and so the task fell to her. But then, wouldn’t you know, she wasn’t actually going to be in attendance on the day, so the task fell a little further and I somewhat reluctantly caught it. She had already chosen the books, so I took them home to practise. I surprised myself by how seriously I took the task: I read them aloud to myself, trying out different voices as the stories required. I watched the part of You’ve Got Mail where Meg Ryan’s character reads aloud to the kids. If a professional actress can do it, how hard could it possibly be?

On arrival at the shop the morning of the big day, it became apparent that the book selections were a touch ambitious: none of the attendees fit the 2-5 year age bracket. The Boss asked which books I’d feel comfortable with for our younger audience.

“Well, since this week it’s 20 years since Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone came out, why don’t I read that? I could do the illustrated edition. You know, for the kids.”
“You’d have to be able to read it upside down so the kids can see the pages.”
“I probably don’t even need to see the text. I think I know it well enough.”
“I know you do. But you’re not doing it. What was that one you were looking at yesterday, Things I Love About Me?”
“Oh yeah, I read through that but it didn’t turn out to be about me personally so I’m not sure.”
“Great, do that one. And what about Hairy Maclary?”
“I guess I could do Hairy Maclary.”

It was show time. I started with Stuck by Oliver Jeffers. One of the kids got up and walked off, which was mildly reassuring: no matter how I went, these kids were unlikely to even notice. They 100% could not tell the difference between me and a giraffe. The children then learnt about a few lovable things about me, including my eyes, nose, smile and toes. My kindness also rated a mention, which I felt was fitting given the circumstances. Hairy Maclary’s Bone was the hit of the day, and because a straggler toddled in right at the end, I grabbed another book off the shelf. In hindsight, Spot books are a bit long for toddlers whose attention spans the time it takes to say the word “truck,” but if there is ever a next time, I guess I’ll know for it. In the end we all survived, and none of us cried, not even me. Wonders will never cease.

Story time is one thing, but kid-related tasks are another ball game entirely at the library. Librarian school did not prepare me for slippery dip duty. Usually volunteers are given the job, but for unknown (although completely fathomable) reasons, they’ve been absent for several weeks in a row now. I’ve learnt to exercise what can only be called the patience and restraint of a saint, while supervising children who are noisy and disobedient. Not all of them are so bad, I should probably hasten to add, and I tell them they’re my favourites. I don’t know if there’s some rule about having favourite children in a library setting. If there is, I’ll circumvent it by saying I only have my least favourites.

Other than reminding myself that I’m there to do a job and am paid for my troubles, I keep my cool by telling myself it’s a very important job I’m doing. And I really do believe this part. If what I’m doing contributes, in one way or another, to introducing kids to books they’ll love, I’ve potentially seriously improved their lives. If it weren’t for these introductions when I was a wee lass, who knows what line of work I’d be in today? Possibly I’d be using my media & communications degree for something. But I did that for a while, and I think I probably had to in order to learn that actually I just really like books and am happier to make a career in bookshops and libraries than in an office. And possibly in the last week I’ve been reading to, and supervising the safe sliding of, the next generation of booksellers and librarians. Maybe they won’t remember a single word I’ve said, but maybe I’m helping foster a lifelong love of books and reading that will become one of the greatest joys of these little bairns’ lives.

I think I managed to impart at least some of the gravity of what it means to have a library card when I signed a little girl up the other day. I showed her and her progenitor how to use the self-checkout machines. She was visibly and audibly amazed at how it all appeared to work. When she asked, “how did you do that?” I told her it was with my magic librarian powers, that I’m actually a librician. The kid wasn’t falling for it, but as she left and her father told her to say thank you, she said, “thank you, librician.” I kinda hope that kid comes back and learns to love reading at least half as much as I do.

It’s a balancing act, for sure. It’s hard to remember these goals when a kid is wiping their snotty hands on me, jumping up and down while screaming “I’M A BUNNY RABBIT!” (I asked if she could be a quiet bunny rabbit and please save her hopping for later. She kept jumping and hit her head on the slide. I think I deserve a medal for keeping my laughter on the inside.) At these times, my goal is simply to make it out alive. In the words of J. K. Rowling, “Achievable goals: the first step to self-improvement.”

And that, my friends, is why they pay me the big bucks.

The Perks of Being a Bookseller

I’ve recently changed jobs, which is to say instead of selling books from a big shop in the city, I now sell books from a small shop in the suburbs. In name it’s the same position and utilises the same skill set, but a typical day in Old Bookshop looks quite different to a day in New Bookshop. I’m sure there’s good and bad to any job, however I’m in the quite fortuitous position of having liked my old job, liking my new job, and enjoying the perks that are part of the package.

It’s no secret that I like books; I’m following the wrong career path and writing a really incongruous blog otherwise. Books excite me. I chuckled smugly at my mother the other day because, being 30 years younger than she, there will be more new books published over the course of my remaining life expectancy than hers. It’s a ridiculous thing to feel smug over, because neither of us will live forever, and nearly the same amount of books will be published post-both-our-deaths. I’m all about taking the small victories where I can get them. Another of which is that I am privy to new books as soon as they are published, and now that I work for an independent, beforehand as well.

Before you ask (pointed glance towards my younger brother,) no I cannot get you a copy of The Winds of Winter. Not until the rest of the world can. Patience is a virtue I suggest you cultivate, as there’s no getting around that one, although I suppose you could try your hand at fan fiction if you’re getting really desperate. Anyway, my biggest problem right now is that my immediate To Be Read list is being overrun by queue-jumpers. I had my next four or five reads lined up, but every time I see an interesting title on the shelf of reading copies at work, I feel it my professional duty to dive in. Somewhere in my CV I’ve probably extolled my ability to manage competing priorities, and I think this is a genuine albeit very specific example of such. I could hardly contain my excitement when I discovered an advance copy of Sarah Winman’s yet-to-be-released Tin Man, and yet I had to until one of my colleagues was finished with it. Once I did get my greedy paws on it, I was prepared to cancel all plans until I finished it. I realised this would make me a crap friend and necessitate cancelling a lunch & ice skating date with a good mate whose birthday it was. Said mate understands this fine balancing act of time with people vs. time with books, and once our time-with-people requirements had been met, she and I sat in the back seat of the car, immersed in our own books, while another friend drove. Competing priorities managed.

But back to Tin Man. I’m reluctant to say much about it as I’m not sure of the protocol surrounding public announcements on something that is not publicly available until July 27, and I’m not a spokesperson for Sarah Winman, her publisher or any subsidiaries. Rest assured come the end of July, I’ll be singing specific praises atop every rooftop. In the meantime, I think it’s safe to tell you I loved the book and was heartbroken when it ended, mostly for the fact that it ended. I wanted to stay with it for a very long time, which is a solid indication that it will stay with me for similar duration. And I knew that this was the only time I could read it for the first time. I’ll read it again, and it will be the same and it will be different, or maybe it will be the same and I will be different, or perhaps the opposite is true. The first reading is done now either way and I’m chalking it up as a decisive win, man!

Free copies of brilliant books before the rest of the reading public are an obvious perk, and if you empathised with me through the previous paragraph, then you personally are another. Being around likeminded bookworms is another joy I hold dear to my heart. We don’t even have to have similar tastes (although it certainly helps) but if you like books, we will have a lot to talk about. I said exactly this to a girl I met on a bus tour around Europe earlier this year after I overheard her say, somewhere along a French motorway, she studied literature at uni. I was prepared to like her right away, and she and I had some brilliant conversations over the next month, and continue to do so from opposite sides of the world. Weeks later, in a bar in Prague, she told me how much she enjoyed witnessing a conversation between me and another girl, wherein I said I read 108 books in 2016, the other girl looked confused and asked “how?” and then I looked similarly confused because the answer seemed obvious. My whole trip was improved by the fact that I had identified an intelligent and bookish companion early on with whom I could discuss a whole world of ideas, including but not limited to what we had read. I still would’ve enjoyed my trip had my company been limited to those who respond to “I read a lot,” with “how,” but I wouldn’t have felt quite so enriched.

While I probably do spend more time reading than many of my well-read colleagues, at least I’m never met with confusion for it. I’ve been asked more than once if I’ve read everything, which as you can imagine strokes my already inflated ego, especially as it’s obviously so far from true or even possible. I’ll take the small victory once again though. I get a real kick out of talking books with these folk, the giving and receiving of personal recommendations, the lending and borrowing, and the disagreements we have over what constitutes a good book. I love that I can talk about my favourite things with some of my favourite people, and it’s all in a day’s work. Until a few weeks ago I worked with a particular chap with whom I’m also friends on GoodReads, and by glancing at each other’s profiles every now and then, literary discussions were generated without our even having to try. He’d hold up a book and say, “you’ve read this, haven’t you?” and away we’d go. Every few days I’d say, “what are you reading at the moment?” and that would see us through the rest of the day. Of course we did plenty of work besides, and it might take us several hours to exchange even a couple of sentences, but I found it reassuringly affirming to know I was in the right place with the right people. The funny thing is, he and I for the most part have pretty dissimilar literary tastes. And yet he reads my blog, I trust the recommendations he puts forth to me, and we’re never short on books to discuss. Which leads me to believe it’s not what we read that’s so important, or even why, it’s that we read at all that gives us (or at least me – I should not presume to speak for him or anyone else) this camaraderie and kinship. For me, our bookishness is my belonging, and another definite perk.

I’m super glad that working in a bookshop hasn’t ruined the act of visiting other bookshops for me, and I spent a lot of time hunting down bookshops and literary landmarks on my recent European sojourn. You could leave me in pretty much any city in the world and if I can find a bookshop or library, I’ll be happy, even if I don’t speak the language. Failing that, a café will do as I’ve always brought my own book with me. I’m a happy little bookseller, wherever I go. What’s more, my bookish travelling companion was happy to join me, and the one who didn’t understand how to read would charge on ahead, so I considered it another small win on both counts. I bet you don’t see accountants getting quite so excited to visit international accounting firms, or doctors with particular hospitals to include on holiday itineraries. Or maybe you do, but I bet they don’t look this excited. One might even say “perky.”

2016 Reading List

Last year seems rather a long time ago now, and given that it’s February, I suppose in a sense it is. I say “in a sense” because seven weeks in isn’t exactly quick off the mark for my first post of the year, but then again it’s all relative, and the last 30 years fall into the same “past” as my most recent sojourn. I was overseas from Christmas Day until February 9^th, and managed to fit rather a lot in, with surprisingly little reading, and evidently even less writing. In due course I’m sure my adventures will make appearances in other posts, but for now you may have my annual book tally to scroll through.

And I think it’s a pretty impressive tally, if I do say so myself. My goal was 100: I was on track after six months, a little behind at nine, and made it comfortably in the end.

My pick of the year goes to We are all Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler, and I knew within pages that this book and I would be friends. This was also one of the rare occasions I loved a book and felt confident my mother would too, so I forced it on her. And I was right; she did.

Honourable mentions go to The Mountain Shadow (Gregory David Roberts), A God in Ruins (Kate Atkinson) and A Little Life (Hanya Yanagihara.) Had I been on the judging panel for the Booker Prize, I would have awarded it to the latter rather than the verbose desert (that’s how dry I found it, and not the sarcastically comedic kind) A Brief History of Seven Killings (Marlon James.) Another decisive letdown was The Life of Elves by Muriel Barbery. I adore her first book, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, was disheartened by her second, Gourmet Rhapsody, and now fearfully suspect she’s a one-hit-wonder. I’ll probably read anything she puts her name to in the hope it’s even half as good as her debut, but my optimism will be cautious. As was my attitude towards The Return of the Young Prince (A. G. Roemmers), the sequel to The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery.) I worried that it would try, and fail, to be something it’s not, particularly as the original is such a formidable act to follow. The result was an absolutely charmless, trite and clichéd money-spinner that’s not worth the time to read and certainly not its RRP. At least I could console myself with the fact that I borrowed it from the library and wasted no money on my own copy.

I very much doubt I’ll read as many books this year as last, but am excited for some of the titles on my To Be Read list. Not to mention some upcoming publications; did you know Arundhati Roy has finally written another novel?? Get excited!! And please let me know if you’ve read any of the books on this list. It will give us something to talk about after you’ve tired of my travel anecdotes.

1. The Amber Amulet – Craig Silvey
2. The Inheritance of Loss – Kiran Desai
3. Look Who’s Back – Timur Vermes
4. List of my Desires – Gregoire Delacourt
5. The Mountain Shadow – Gregory David Roberts
6. A Brief History of Seven Killings – Marlon James
7. Good Omens – Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman
8. Rhubarb – Craig Silvey
9. The Unauthorised Biography – Lemony Snicket
10. Orphan #8 – Kim van Alkemade
11. The Strange Library – Haruki Murakami
12. The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
13. The Girl in the Mirror – Lumi Winterson
14. No Country for Old Men – Cormac McCarthy
15. After the Quake – Haruki Murakami
16. The Mirror World of Melody Black – Gavin Extence
17. The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy (reread)
18. The Life of Elves – Muriel Barbery
19. The Unbearable Lightness of Scones – Alexander McCall Smith
20. Before She Met Me – Julian Barnes
21. Lunatic Soup: Inside the Madness of Maximum Security – Andrew Fraser
22. The Austere Academy – Lemony Snicket
23. A Strangeness in my Mind – Orhan Pamuk
24. How to be a Woman – Caitlin Moran
25. The Midnight Watch – David Dyer
26. Chance Developments – Alexander McCall Smith
27. The Soldier’s Curse – Meg & Tom Keneally
28. Gotham – Nick Earls
29. A Little Life – Hanya Yanagihara
30. Still Life with Woodpecker – Tom Robbins
31. A Wrinkle in Time – Madeleine L’Engle
32. Brooklyn – Colm Toibin
33. Contest – Matthew Reilly
34. The Merciless – Danielle Vega
35. The Uncommon Reader – Alan Bennett
36. The Surgeon of Crowthorne – Simon Winchester
37. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society – Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows (reread)
38. Small Acts of Disappearance: Essays on Hunger – Fiona Wright
39. The Truth According to Us – Annie Barrows
40. Down Under – Bill Bryson
41. Go Set a Watchman – Harper Lee
42. Elsewhere – Gabrielle Zevin
43. Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape our Decisions – Dan Ariely
44. The New Life – Orhan Pamuk
45. My Brilliant Friend – Elena Ferrante
46. Unbearable Lightness – Portia de Rossi
47. Penguin Bloom – Cameron Bloom
48. Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination – J. K. Rowling
49. Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier
50. Cloudstreet – Tim Winton
51. The Ersatz Elevator – Lemony Snicket
52. An Apple a Day – Emma Woolf
53. The Music Lesson – Victor L. Wooten
54. The Vegetarian – Han Kang
55. Dubliners – James Joyce
56. Wintergirls – Laurie Halse Anderson
57. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child – J. K. Rowling, Jack Thorne & John Tiffany
58. The Wise Woman – Philippa Gregory
59. The Mammoth Hunters – Jean M. Auel
60. The Story of a New Name – Elena Ferrante
61. Fragile Things – Neil Gaiman
62. The Vile Village – Lemony Snicket
63. Anne of Green Gables – L. M. Montgomery
64. The Grownup – Gillian Flynn
65. The Importance of Being Seven – Alexander McCall Smith
66. Rope: A History of the Hanged – Amanda Howard
67. Pieces of Sky – Trinity Doyle
68. All the Light we Cannot See – Anthony Doerr
69. A Man Called Ove – Fredrik Backman
70. Nightmare in Berlin – Hans Fallada
71. The Empathy Problem – Gavin Extence
72. We are all Completely Beside Ourselves – Karen Joy Fowler
73. Jasper Jones – Craig Silvey (reread)
74. Goodwood – Holly Throsby
75. The Laying on of Hands – Alan Bennett
76. The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides
77. Hear the Wind Sing – Haruki Murakami
78. Pinball, 1973 – Haruki Murakami
79. Three Cups of Tea – Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin
80. Bridget Jones’s Baby: The Diaries – Helen Fielding
81. The Rosie Project – Graeme Simsion
82. Angel of Death Row: My Life as a Death Penalty Defense Lawyer – Andrea D. Lyon
83. A Separate Peace – John Knowles
84. The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo – Amy Schumer
85. The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu – Joshua Hammer
86. Tales from the Tower of London – Daniel Diehl & Mark P. Donnelly
87. It’s Kind of a Funny Story – Ned Vizzini
88. The Ocean at the End of the Lane – Neil Gaiman
89. Public Library and other stories – Ali Smith
90. The Return of the Young Prince – A. G. Roemmers
91. This is How you Lose Her – Junot Diaz
92. The Pause – John Larkin
93. There But For The – Ali Smith
94. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: The Original Screenplay – J. K. Rowling
95. The Hostile Hospital – Lemony Snicket
96. Hate List – Jennifer Brown
97. The Spy – Paulo Coelho
98. The Sellout – Paul Beatty
99. Writers on Writing – edited by James Roberts, Barry Mitchell & Roger Zubrinich
100. A God in Ruins – Kate Atkinson
101. The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains – Neil Gaiman
102. How to be Both – Ali Smith
103. The Reader on the 6:27 – Jean-Paul Didierlaurent
104. Literary London – Eloise Millar & Sam Jordison
105. The Secret Library: A Book Lovers’ Journey Through Curiosities of History – Oliver Tearle
106. The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao – Junot Diaz
107. Mr. Palomar – Italo Calvino
108. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens

Reader’s Block

Sometimes I just can’t read straight.

Most of the time this is because my glasses are smudgy or not on my face. Often it’s because I’ve stayed up reading past my bedtime and can barely keep my eyes open. Occasionally it’s because I have competing distractions or Big Thoughts that take up more than their share of my headspace. They’re greedy and inconsiderate, and right when I need to distract myself with a good book, the ability to do so escapes me. I lose all focus, which frustrates me even more. It seems like the worst thing in the world at the time but after a few days of replacing reading with Xbox and David Attenborough documentaries, my groove usually comes back of its own accord and normal services recommence along my 12-track mind.

Still, that period when I’m unable to read straight is a mild form of torture. Whatever problem that’s exhausting my mental capacity is made worse by my inability to lean on my favourite pastime. In trying to find a silver lining here, I suppose it reminds me that I have other interests that deserve attention occasionally, and sometimes I have to get a little creative to drag myself out of the funk by reading things I may not otherwise. Call it a useful exercise in diversification.

A few years ago I was in hospital with some broken bones, including multiple facial fractures. Hospital is a pretty boring place to be at the best of times (as though there’s ever a “best time” to be in hospital, even if you are only visiting) and the entertainment packages are non-existent. You’re not there for a holiday, after all, although they’re pretty cool with the BYOBook policy. Naturally I had my dear old mum bring me in a stack to wile away the hours, though these soon proved to be wildly ambitious. I couldn’t read more than a paragraph without immediately forgetting it. But hey, what did I expect? My short-term memory was shot. I couldn’t have told you what I had for breakfast. (With my faculties now restored, I can tell you with confidence that every meal I had for eight days was chocolate milk.)

Trying to remain optimistic, I lowered the bar a little. If I couldn’t handle a book, perhaps a magazine would do the trick. In hindsight I should probably have chosen something a little less demanding than National Geographic, and I was met with exactly the same problem. The pretty pictures did nothing to cheer me up and I burst into tears at the dawning realisation that I was in pain, bed-ridden and unable to read. It was a miserable state of affairs.

For all my shortcomings, I have to say I have exceptional taste in friends, and it was they who came to my rescue. I vaguely remember sobbing about my predicament when friends came to visit, and don’t recall suggesting or asking for a solution, since as far as I could see, I was doomed. But my good friends have passed a rigorous screening process, meaning they are all bookish, empathetic and resourceful. Completely independent of one another, two friends burnt an eclectic selection of audiobooks onto CDs for me, and unearthed discmen that probably hadn’t been of any use since the 90s but were perfect for right now. And their book choices were ever so thoughtful: from one of my favourites, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, because it’s familiar and I love it, to Marian Keyes, because Milan Kundera is hard work even when you don’t have a head injury. And Harry Potter, because obviously.

And then Twitterature. This volume is an orange Popular Penguin full of classics condensed into fragments of 140 characters each, the maximum length of a Tweet. The giver of this gift (as well as discman and CDs) is an English teacher, and I’ve no doubt it pained her to buy it. Under ordinary circumstances, we would both have turned our noses up at such wanton butchery of literature. But they were desperate times, and it wasn’t until months later that I realised just how considerate the gift of this book was. I could still read the classics for which I yearned, and she obviously had a much more accurate grasp on my current abilities. I couldn’t read a book, or a magazine, or even a page, but she got me through those dark days 140 characters at a time. And when that became too much, when all I could do was lie there and wait to be drugged up once more to my swollen little eyes, there was always someone to read me a story.

In time I managed to muster the brainpower for a Sudoku. My mum went out and bought a book of them for me, and while a fair amount of cheating ensued, I got through the whole thing. I read trashy magazines then newspaper articles, poetry then short stories, novellas and then, finally, novels. I now feel like I should have read an encyclopaedia to illustrate some sort of full-circle metaphor, from Twitter to Britannica with everything in between. But I have a smartphone, which really does cover both.

And hey, here’s something neat: I started writing this post because I found myself in exactly the pickle I described at the beginning. Big Thoughts had taken over the reading part of my brain so I decided to start writing. An instance where I would quite literally rather be reading, but it just wasn’t working for me. And now that I’ve done something else for a little while instead, I think I might be able to get back to it. There’s nothing like a reminder of that time I almost died AND couldn’t read to put things in perspective. I’ve also had David Attenborough on in the background and do not wish to discount his contribution. Maybe a few hours of being unable to read isn’t the worst thing in the world after all. It has to be close, and certainly makes a bad situation worse, but I’ll probably survive it.

I think I’d better listen to a Harry Potter audiobook though, just to be safe. It’s just not worth the risk.