By the Book

Dear Reader,

Reading a newspaper can develop into a satisfying ritual. As a decades-long Sunday New York Times reader, I have learned certain sections dictate slow, serious reading (Sunday Review), a fun-filled-skip-along pace, studded with eye candy, e.g., fashion and jewelry ads (Sunday Styles), or a studied approach (Book Review). News reports and regular features make finishing The Times a week-long affair. I savor. I laugh. I cry. I rage. I scoff. I turn the page or stop to copy a phrase or sentence into a notebook or clip an article to either save or send to someone.

A favorite Book Review reading plum is By the Book: a writer submits answers to a set of 8 questions. Even if the writer is new to me, I enjoy stepping into her/his life to find out specific reading habits or maybe pick up a few recommendations. Mostly, it is a way to be nosy about someone’s personal life without being annoying.

I decided it would be fun to answer the questions and invite you to do the same if the spirit moves you.

What books are on your night stand?

Mind you, many of us have no night stands, but it’s good to think about a life where I had the time to read several of the hundreds of books available to me. And that’s just in my house. Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Jane Kenyon’s A Hundred White Daffodils, Theodora Bosanquet’s Henry James at Work, and Karen Roffman’s John Ashbery’s Early Life. Pleasure reads are randomly chosen because we have a vast book collection, and I can simply pick a book and begin.

Describe your ideal reading experience.

Feet up. Comfortable chair. Indoors but able to look out the window occasionally (good for eye muscles, so I’m told). Quiet. No robo-call interruptions, actually, no calls would be best. Any weather – sunny, hot, snowing outside, not a lot of wind to distract or scare me.

Do you have any guilty pleasure books?

If the term describes books that are the cakes, cookies and muffins of reading, the “empty calories” for your brain, the guilty part would be thinking “Why am I wasting my time reading this book?” or “I hope no one sees me reading this book.” Whatever kind of book would do that would have been thrown away or given to someone. Guilty pleasure… I used to read a lot (meaning I had a collection of) books about serial killers. I made the mistake of sharing that with members of a writing class. It did not go well, because it became a subject of some teasing. For some reason, my need to read this genre has disappeared or maybe just subsided. There are bigger things to fear in life.

Has a book ever brought you closer to another person, or come between you?

Books brought me closer to my mother. A favorite time together was retelling a book I was reading for high school or college English class. She was one class (chemistry) shy of graduating from high school but had to quit to get a job – it was the Great Depression. Like a lot of very smart people who do not have a formal education, it didn’t stop her from being a devoted reader.

How do you organize your books?

There are two of us in the house. We both love books - reading them, going to them for fact-checking, buying more of them. We love seeing them all lined up on dozens of bookshelves in the living room, kitchen, home office, and garden room. I don’t even mind dusting them because I get to touch them. People have commented on our book-rich environment – “This is a house of books (and art)!” “Have you read all of these?” “Wow, you have a lot of books.” Bookcases have their own organizing principle by alphabet, author, or topic: poetry, art, autobiographies and biographies, novels, non-fiction quirky books, such as, Nicholas Basbanes’ A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books, a perfect book for this house.

What kind of reader were you as a child?

Thanks again to my mother, I loved reading. We always lived near a library, one of the advantages of living in a city (Buffalo) at a time when libraries were a valued part of a neighborhood. My mother never censored my reading, and I could go to any part of the library and bring home a stack of treasures. I know I became a writer because of these fortunate circumstances of birth. When I was five years old, I wanted a typewriter for Christmas, and was (quietly) insulted when it turned out to be a toy. Didn’t my mother understand how serious I was?

You’re organizing a literary dinner party. Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite?

After reading “By the Book” every week for years, you would think that by now I would have three writers seated at our table, which coincidentally seats only four people. Tough choices, even to imagine: Joyce Carol Oates, Charles Simic, and Donald M. Murray. Could this be a weekly event with a changing guest list? Can I alternate and invite artists? How about every third week, artists who are/were writers, too? Can I order take-out?