Reading Around

Recent Reading

Restless Rereading

Much of my reading falls into the category of rereading, for I've been a serious reader for a long time.  I'm teaching Homer's Iliad this term and how many times, how many translations, have I read?  Many.  And yet I must reread to be there with my students, to know the text intimately, to be a reader.  And so I do; I reread.

When I am relaxing at home, I read, which often means rereading.  For I read as others listen to music.  Seriously.  And, so, I often reread restlessly, as I think of it.  I don't quite want to read the whole book, but I do want to live in the music of that book.  So, I read a chapter here in one book and a chapter there in another book and even glance into a third.  That's when rereading becomes restless.  Still good.

You can see such from the photo above: four books that offered different music, compelling music.  A heroic fantasy, a literary novel about deep swimming, a thriller with sailboats, and a crime novel with a compelling protagonist and a compelling antagonist and a compelling setting, the mountainous area of Montana.  Different tunes; different music.

All good; all appropriate; all wonderful.  I just wanted a bit of each.

What music am I listening to, reading from, now?

Rereading Byron's "Don Juan": Canto III

Lord Byron’s third canto is a long study in suspense—as we merge with pirate Lambro as he returns to his pirate-isle only to find all think he is dead, his daughter is having party-time, and some young man is wooing that daughter—and a detailed character-study of Lambro (displaced father, displaced authority, displaced pirate).  So much to notice while rereading.

We ought to teach rereading so much more.

Notes: Of Reading and Rereading

I read the way most folks listen to music, so there's an awful lot of rereading.  Often, a book deserves a second try or even multiple readings.  Or, I'm not the same man, not the same reader, that I was twenty or thirty years ago.  And, who listens to a great song and never listens again, right?

I have been thinking about the books I have reread again and again, and I think they fall into four or five categories.

No, I'm simpler than that: two or three.

Distraction, direction, and devotion.

I reread to be taken away from current events, current pressures, or I want background "music".

I reread for traction and to carry myself forward, to motivate myself, to pump up or to shake it all loose.

I reread as an act of prayer, as homage to great craft and vision and story.  I reread as a commitment to what the word can do beyond any other media.  I reread to explore and to embrace, to be exposed and to expose myself--all the nerve endings of mind and heart and soul--to story and character and action in the best senses.  I don't really have words myself for what I'm seeking, but it is a sacrament I seek daily, hourly, constantly.  Or, if not sacrament, at least immersion.  I reread to dive deeper, to swim beneath the surface of things, and to drown--if need be--in story.  (I hold my breath well, I must add.)

Background, motivation, and/or concentration.  Exposure.  Immersion.  Perhaps, an addiction?

All joy in various measures.

All fun in multifarious modes.

I read and reread the way most folks listen to music.  The way I listen to music.  The way I'll bet you listen to music.

Why don't you join me, if you don't already?

P.S.  Can something read be both distraction and devotion?
Sometimes, it can.  That's the magic.

Reading Fritz Leiber: Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser on the Royal Mile

Fritz Leiber and his The Swords of Lankhmar (1968) proved to be my boon companion during my recent European vacation.  I'd packed a stack of books, carefully chosen, from Lord Byron to Julius Caesar to Steven Erikson for the long flights, train rides, and potential deluges, but a last-minute snatch of Leiber's novel from a stack in my study as I was headed out the door proved the best choice of all.  I read around in Byron for Venice and for the Rhine, read around in Caesar for my Germans and Celts, read around in guide books and historical studies of Hadrian's Wall and such, but a slow passage by passage working through with Fafhrd, the Gray Mouser, and the diabolical rats of Lankhmar was the most satisfying of all.  Leiber's wit, his sense of humor and of rascally honor, his characters and characterization, and the plotting--this one early novel of Newhon, remember--all that, each element, stirred and teased me and pleased me as never before.  This is a novel I've read and enjoyed at least twenty times before, but The Swords of Lankhmar had never truly impressed me until this particular slow reading.

And the reading was slow, for I was busy traveling and sight-seeing, walking and paddling, the cobbled streets and crowded canals of a handful of European cities and towns--Venice, Munich, Bacharach, Edinburgh, York--as well as palaces and castles and pubs.  All of those places fit with the images of Newhon and Lanhkmar, with Leiber's fantasy world and its mix of Hellenistic, Medieval, and Renaissance qualities in manners, clothing, and architecture.  (So easy to picture the two heroes ambling down the back street of a town on the Rhine or even a Scottish close off the Royal Mile.)  As a normally quite fast reader, I was reminded to slow down, to savor the sentences and phrases, to note the particular wittiness of a line or the tactical wisdom of a portion of a plot pattern.  And, since rats are a particular menace in The Swords of Lankhmar, I even welcomed my one actual rat sighting in a canal of Venice, though we did have to back-paddle to make sure the little fellow didn't climb upon any of our kayaks.  (He pulled himself out of the water and into a crack in some foundation.)

I also followed a hint from Ian Rankin, author of the Inspector Rebus novels, and picked up a novel by Scottish author Muriel Spark: The Girls of Slender Means (1963).  A very different sort of book than Leiber's, but equally witty, equally bound by action and circumstance and character, Spark's novel is a valuable find for me.  Leiber works far more broadly, of course, and with entertainment his main goal, while Spark delves more deeply, for all her light touches of manner and speech, and leaves her reader in a literary place beyond expectation; at least, she did that to me, for me.  A wonderful juxtaposition, a fortuitous pairing.