reading is dead sexy

men who read are really sexy.

i was riding the bus this morning to work [shameful, i live only 1 mile from my building!] and spotted one of my favorite seattle sights:

a man reading.

i started to analyze - is this boy in front of me really sexy, or is it his book? i examined his face with my critical eye and decided he was not unattractive, but what really grabbed my attention was the pocket size Flannery O'Connor short stories [by a very notable publisher, i might add] in which he was engrossed...and the way he held and absorbed such a lovely piece of fiction. i stopped lusting after this 22 yr old and then sought to disprove my theory with more data...thereby imagining the men i know, dressing them up with a book (and a pipe, and crossed legs, and a watch-fobbed three-piece suit - okay i am thinking of val as doc holiday) and immediately thought of them as entirely sexy. (this was mildly disturbing).

there is something aloof and challenging in a man that is not distracted by my perfume or clicking heels...something beautiful about how the book grabs him from my womanly wiles. i am engrossed in him because he cares little about me.

is that fucked up?
(alas, i digress)

when i was a teenager fantasizing about how popular and sexy i was, i always imagined myself in a library, smartly dressed - showing a tantalizing but still subtle amount of leg, long hair in bun, glasses precariously teetering on my nose, and completely entertained by the big dusty book in front of me. everyone would be entraptured with how smart i was [because you can tell this by watching someone read] and i would own the universe of sexy.

i have grown out of this fantasy (somewhat. okay...fine, i admit to dreaming about the outfits i will wear as a bookstore owner), but my definition of sexy still remains:

smart

aloof

elegant

untouchable

disclaimer:
what you read in public makes/breaks this theory for me. if the youngling had been reading anything, well...let's just say..not of my taste, i would have foregone his sexiness and gone right back to working on mine...by opening my book.

my advise boys?
choose your books carefully. read in public. use it to pick up women.
after all, books are the new babies.

~mme. bookling

Count Lev Nikolayevich "Deathwatcher" Tolstoy

I finished The Death of Ivan Ilych yesterday.

(I was in front of a fire...in front of a forest).

It's still ringing in my ears...tempting my thought inward and upward.

This is such a bare bones, eerily matter-of-fact, and somber (though never morbid) read. I love the dramatic irony, the telling of death before the telling of a life, which reminds me of our own inevitability of death. I think we often watch our lives like one would watch a movie or read a book - watching things (sometimes mindlessly) unfold right before our eyes, and despite knowing that we will die (and what to do with this knowledge?!), how we go along hoping for a different end somehow. How can we see life with meaning when we know it will end? Honestly, the only answer I have come to lately is art. I think art is the answer. I think leaving behind something that will mark the world with your thumbprint - the original soul work that only you have produced, your words, your paintings, your music, your thoughts, the work of your hands, and even your children. Without these things, I can honestly say that my life would have no meaning.

Ivan Ilych's main struggle is not his eventual demise to death, but the preposterous spiritual and philosophical nagging that tortures him on his deathbed. His internal quandaries eventually lead him to ask the inevitable question, "Have I wasted my life?" Throughout his struggle, he cannot stomach this question, much less the answer, "I have done everything society expects of me. I have worked hard, provided for my family, remained virtuous..." and because of these answers, the question of waste continues to nag him. He is entirely sure that he could not have lived his life any differently.

Until the very end. He finally ultimately sees that his life was wasted, unexamined, unfruitful.

In the edition I read, Ronald Blythe writes an especially enlightening introduction that examines this existential dilemma. Where Ivan Illych is surprised and offended at his physical death and spiritual nagging, Blythe tells the reader of this contradiction with the writer himself. He calls Tolstoy a "deathwatcher." Tolstoy never wanted to be surprised by death and even worse, never wanted to be nagged by spiritual questions at the end. He wanted to live his life - every moment - to the fullest.

In this foil of Ivan Ilych to Leo Tolstoy I find immense challenge.

Taken from Wikipedia

Tolstoy obviously thought little of men who lived with no intentionality towards a spiritual life, yet the opposite of this is Tolstoy's obsessive observations of death and decay. I see flaw in too much of either ideology, but I certainly can identify to Tolstoy's death watching.

Sometimes, it all seems so absurd.

This life.

We all struggle and fight and love and die.

I know I will find magic in all of those nooks...

But today,

it all seems like a big funny joke.

There is plenty of hope in the afterlife.

But hope for this life is a struggle for me.

Some call it enlightened.

Some call it cynical.

But my faith never has been and never will be simple.

All I know about faith and hope is that we all

die

trying.

And damn it,

I will suck every fucking ounce of meaning out of this life.

Even if it kills me.

Which it will.

morosely yours,
madame bookling

the winner

i was debating what to read next.
i have agonized.
i have listed list after list after [joyous] list.

i watched the new BBC version of Sense and Sensibility last night, and afterward, wandered over in my stockinged feet, tear-stained face, and disheveled hair to my bookshelves.

i sat in front of them.
i touched and smelled them [a veritable fondling].
i organized, arranged...listened.

and the winner reveled its Russian self,
and my e.s.p. was right again, as i had a hunch i would pick this one.
but then i couldn't find it last night; it got lost among the other opuses.

until i did.
i found it.

ladies and gents,
i give you.

my next book choice...

From the winner

From the winner

go bury your nose in a book.
like the geeky bookworms you are.
every one's doing it.

~le madame bookling

Steinbeck, Winter Lists, and Hobros

I finished Cannery Row last night in the bathtub.
I didn't intend to finish it there, but I only had 20 pages to go, and couldn't bring myself to put it down.
The water was getting chilly too...

I have to say, this little book was the suprise of my reading year. I picked it up because I needed a smaller work to ofset my non-fiction mammoth, SP's Journals. I also picked it up at the recommendation of my hobro, Brian. (Turns out that kid isn't all hobo, but ACTUALLY SMART).

My goodreads review:
From the beginning, Cannery Row was akin to sitting on the porch with your grandpa while he smokes his pipe and tells the tales of a disjointed but delightful community, full of reality, beauty, touching kindnesses, the frailty of human isolation, and the melancholic nostalgia of lost love.
I wasn't expected to be touched by this work or even think of it as important in terms of Steinbeck's career, but I believe this little gem to be tantamount in importance to Grapes of Wrath or East of Eden - and even more nuanced and subtle than those works. But three Steinbecks in three years makes it official; it's a life goal to read them all.

I am continually impressed and intrigued with how Steinbeck writes his characters - so terribly touching, really heartbreakingly sad, and surprisingly courageous, witty, and strong. He is unabashed in who he wants us to love and who he wants us to be challenged by...I appreciate the clarity of voice and direction he gives his reader while still allowing the reader to think/conclude for himself.

WINTER READING LIST

- something russian, still have to narrow it down, but thinking The Death of Ivan Ilych - Tolstoy OR perhaps The Brothers Karamazov (if I am feeling especially ambitious!)

- Watership Down

- Another Steinbeck, must research

- Finish A Wrinkle In Time series - L'Engle

- Till We Have Faces -Lewis

- Pilgrim at Tinker Creek - Dillard

What about you?!

~mme. bookling