The estimable Harvard/MIT/Yale representative, Patricia Nelson, writes this week:
What’s a day without a bookstore? We cherish you all as wonderful retreats, browsing heavens, the perfect place to meet, the perfect date, the perfect outing with children, a wonderful daily oasis, a welcoming place of solitude, a magic theater of words, a generous place of discussion and shared passions, a constantly surprising calendar of authors and ideas, a communitarian center, a place of democracy in action.
The Guardian UK has been posting favorite bookstores for years, may I echo the sentiments of the Guardian’s Jeremy Mercer saying:
“Bookstores are sanctuaries. Places to lose yourself, escape the harsh demands of daily life, find new ways to dream and new sources of inspiration. I love all booksellers; anybody who helps spread the word is doing noble work. But my favourite bookstores are the small eccentric independents run by passionate and usually slightly mad book lovers.”
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“You should start,” he told his young friend, “with no skeleton or plan. The natural one will grow as you work. Knock away all scaffolding. Neither have exordium or peroration. What is it you are writing for, anyway? Because you have something new to say? It is the test of the universities and I am glad you have made it yours.”
From Richardson, First We Read, Then We Write: Emerson’s Creative Process, page 25, “Practical Hints” (University of Iowa Press, 2009)
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Now that the weather is turning cold, the type of book I seek out is one in which I can lose myself on a rainy day. For this purpose I highly recommend Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy (HarperCollins, 1994). At 1474 pages (and 2.5 pounds), this is not a book to be picked up lightly. But this sprawling, absorbing and occasionally comic novel has plenty of rewards for those who do. It’s surprising— 15 years after the novel was published and 57 after it is set— how many of the themes and events are echoed in today’s headlines from South Asia: Hindu-Muslim violence, Congress Party politics, and, of course, arranged marriages. The story is essentially about Lata, our heroine, and her mother’s attempts to find her a “suitable boy.” Encompassing four extended families, politicians, courtesans, judges, shoemakers, Calcutta high society and Ganges pilgrimages, the connecting threads of this book are a pleasure to discover. This book reminded me how much pleasure it is possible to get from the simple act of reading. I ended the novel not exhausted from the length but instead wanting to read more about the characters- and fortunately for me, a sequel has been announced, entitled- what else?- A Suitable Girl. I’ve ordered a copy for the store in case this sparks interest. Nicola DeRobertis-Theye, UPB Author Events Coordinator.
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“We too must write Bibles, to unite again the heavenly and the earthly world.”
That’s Emerson on Goethe in Richardson, First We Read, Then We Write (Iowa, 2009), which I am nominating for UPB’s Best Gift Book of the Year.
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Dinner and Reading Gatherings on the fourth Monday of each month
Join us around UPB’s great table, where we will eat and talk about reading in the slow lane. We will enjoy wine and edibles prepared by the Musical Offering’s genius chef Erick Balbuena, featuring many ingredients gathered from the Berkeley Hills. We ask everyone to bring a paragraph or a few words you love that must be read carefully, and savored slowly. Martin Holden and Bill McClung, hosts
6 to 8 on August 23, September 27, and October 25
$40 per person, wine, tax, and gratuity included
($15 for students and starving artists)
Reservations please at outreach@universitypressbooks.com
Or at the UPB Front Counter, or reply to this posting.
UNIVERSITY PRESS BOOKS/BERKELEY
2430 BANCROFT WAY 548-0585
Juan Garcia reading from "Soil and Civilization, January 2010
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Vincent Gillespie, J.R.R. Tolkien Professor of English Literature and Language at Oxford University and Distinguished Professor for Medieval Studies this term at Berkeley offers this to our Slow Reading endeavours:
Nietzsche Preface added to the 1886 edition of The Dawn:
I have not been a philologist in vain – perhaps I am one yet: a teacher of slow reading… Philology is that venerable art which exacts from its followers one thing above all – to step to one side, to leave themselves spare moments, to grow silent, to become slow – the leisurely art of the goldsmith applied to language: an art which must carry out slow, fine work, and attains nothing if not lento. For this very reason philology is now more desirable than ever before; for this very reason it is the highest attraction and incitement in an age of ‘work’: that is to say, of haste, of unseemly and immoderate hurry-skurry, which is intent upon ‘getting things done’ at once, even every book, whether old or new. Philology itself, perhaps, will not ‘get things done‘ so hurriedly: it teaches how to read well: i.e. slowly, profoundly, attentively, prudently, with inner thoughts, with the mental doors ajar, with delicate fingers and eyes.
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Dawn: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality, published in German 1881, and with a new preface in 1886. This quotation tr. J.M. Kennedy.
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“. . . a specialized, localized haven. . . University Press Books, offering a super and sizeable selection of niche. The store’s intimate aesthetic is more a dream-library than a place of business. And this reflects its mindset, for the store is no profit-maximizing firm, but its own special ecosystem, privileging the small and the slow, and savoring rather than consuming. Its genres pay respect to the particularity of literature, where fiction and nonfiction become laughable barriers. The store further challenges artistic norms in breaking down the author-reader boundary that most stores favor; the writer events are dialogue rather than diatribe. University Press Books is my Mecca for scholarship and thought. And to borrow the words of poet Brenda Hillman, it is ‘the love of my life. Well, one of them.’” The Daily Californian, 15 April 2010, Hallie Kutak, Co-Editor-in-Chief of Berkeley Poetry Review.
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Tamalpais Walking; Poetry, History, Prints by Tom Killion and Gary Snyder, cloth, $50, Heyday Books 2009
A premier Bay Area woodcut artist and one of our greatest living American poets collaborate on the most beautiful book I’ve seen this year—already a local bestseller because we should all own one. It is history, it is poetry, it is the history of local poetry and the art of local natural history. The woodcuts are the best Killions you’ve ever seen, 72 views of Mt. Tam, in prints a la Japonaise. Just the cover is a thrill, and that’s just the start. Christina Creveling, UPB Manager
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