It's been said a million times before, but it is still true: no one finishes a book the same person as when they started, whether filled with a new understanding or just happier for the hours lost a good story.
- excerpted from the introductary remarks included on each WBN selection by Carl Lennertz, Executive Director, and Anna Quindlen, National Chairperson, WBN, U.S.
(A few reader pictures of WBN posted on my website Events Page)
World Book Night in America for 2012 distributed books from a list of 30 titles including classic serious fiction of the likes of Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried and Maya Angelou's I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings and books that step into cultural divides, such as Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible. Some books on the list introduce us to dystopias - the imaginary worlds of The Hunger Games, and Ender's Game, or drop us into strange, even shocking points of view, like narrator of The Lovely Bones. Many of the books on this year's list culled by librarians and critics are straightforward, compelling, enjoyable reads. Some are fiction with a nuance of differentness that as a good spice livens a dish, makes the book stand out - like a personal favorite, Bel Canto by Ann Patchett. Some stories might be difficult, challenging reads because of what the author has to say, which may be in opposition to our own cultural and political understanding, or expressed in a narrative manner we find difficult to embrace.
I picked Junot Diaz' The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao as my giveaway book for WBN, U.S. It is a book I value. Yesterday I received an email from one of the anonymous readers who received this book (I included my contact information for feedback). This reader reminded me that the value of a book is a complex thing. We value literature for many things - for originality or beauty of prose, for cultural veracity, for the degree to which the author stands in witness to human truth. There is the impact of the story, the characters, and the degree to which we as readers feel the story meets our expectations for a good read - are we expecting to be pleased, to like the ending, be moved to tears, educated, shocked, scared witless, left musing? Does the reader of Stephen King's The Stand expect the same thing from a book as the reader of Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake? The fluid reminder is that we read subjectively: We value, praise, and reflect on what speaks to us as individuals. There is no one book for everyone.
These comments from a WBN reader gave me pause for thought - "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is not an easy book to summarize. Not an easy book to even define. It’s not even easy book to say 'I like it' or 'I don’t like it' I know that the profanity , throughout the book, is part of the story, part of the culture and place of the book. The brutality, the hopelessness, the graphic destruction of humans is not easy to read or understand. I do understand the world can be an awful place, and lives are thrown away for the basest of reasons. But Oscar’s life is tossed away so he can finally get laid. That is not very wondrous to me, his life did not seem ‘wondrous’ at all. A nerd trapped in a very large body. Most of the book is not even about Oscar but his mother, sister and “aunt”. Maybe I don’t understand this book. I certainly do not understand why it was awarded a Pulitzer or was a best seller or why it is included in the World Book Night. It is a very difficult read, English to Spanish, footnotes to explain cultural and historical references, profanity and violence. Not the type of book I would give to a casual or non-book reader to entice them to read again. The Poisonwood Bible, which is also on the WBN list, is a book to entice a new reader, it too has conflict and uncertainty but it teaches about cultural differences and how peoples viewpoints can be so misunderstood because of not learning about the cultural basis of those viewpoints. Oscar Wao makes no effort to bridge a cultural gap, instead it describes people trapped by their culture and unable to escape it. Perhaps this book is well written, but I can’t get a grip the ‘why’ of the book. Why this story, why the acclaim, why should I want to know these people?... With all that written, I am glad that I read it. It is good for my brain to be confused."
This reader reminds me that meaning and value are subjective, and that books are part of this marketplace of ideas in which we pick and choose from the offerings of authors who give us the full benefit of their originality and differentness. I have learned as much about myself from books I hated as those books I loved. The discovery of emotional limits, of values so core it hurt to read them violated, even in fiction. I have learned there are places in imagination rough to go, journalism exposing harsh truths difficult to read - and I am the better human for it. I have learned empathy as a reader; aware of the great divide between my personal world and the world of those whose personal limits are stretched, broken, and routinely violated every day both in the real world or expressed and translated in fiction. Reading, they say, opens not just minds but tolerance.
Yet. It is not for me, the WBN committee, nor any other voice to determine what is important or not important, or meaningful or not meaningful in books. We are each of us, as readers, the judge of a book's worth. This is the great truth of books - an author puts out what a reader electively chooses to read. The reader values the book, and that's as it should be, in my humble opinion.
Read More
- excerpted from the introductary remarks included on each WBN selection by Carl Lennertz, Executive Director, and Anna Quindlen, National Chairperson, WBN, U.S.
(A few reader pictures of WBN posted on my website Events Page)
World Book Night in America for 2012 distributed books from a list of 30 titles including classic serious fiction of the likes of Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried and Maya Angelou's I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings and books that step into cultural divides, such as Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible. Some books on the list introduce us to dystopias - the imaginary worlds of The Hunger Games, and Ender's Game, or drop us into strange, even shocking points of view, like narrator of The Lovely Bones. Many of the books on this year's list culled by librarians and critics are straightforward, compelling, enjoyable reads. Some are fiction with a nuance of differentness that as a good spice livens a dish, makes the book stand out - like a personal favorite, Bel Canto by Ann Patchett. Some stories might be difficult, challenging reads because of what the author has to say, which may be in opposition to our own cultural and political understanding, or expressed in a narrative manner we find difficult to embrace.
I picked Junot Diaz' The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao as my giveaway book for WBN, U.S. It is a book I value. Yesterday I received an email from one of the anonymous readers who received this book (I included my contact information for feedback). This reader reminded me that the value of a book is a complex thing. We value literature for many things - for originality or beauty of prose, for cultural veracity, for the degree to which the author stands in witness to human truth. There is the impact of the story, the characters, and the degree to which we as readers feel the story meets our expectations for a good read - are we expecting to be pleased, to like the ending, be moved to tears, educated, shocked, scared witless, left musing? Does the reader of Stephen King's The Stand expect the same thing from a book as the reader of Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake? The fluid reminder is that we read subjectively: We value, praise, and reflect on what speaks to us as individuals. There is no one book for everyone.
These comments from a WBN reader gave me pause for thought - "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is not an easy book to summarize. Not an easy book to even define. It’s not even easy book to say 'I like it' or 'I don’t like it' I know that the profanity , throughout the book, is part of the story, part of the culture and place of the book. The brutality, the hopelessness, the graphic destruction of humans is not easy to read or understand. I do understand the world can be an awful place, and lives are thrown away for the basest of reasons. But Oscar’s life is tossed away so he can finally get laid. That is not very wondrous to me, his life did not seem ‘wondrous’ at all. A nerd trapped in a very large body. Most of the book is not even about Oscar but his mother, sister and “aunt”. Maybe I don’t understand this book. I certainly do not understand why it was awarded a Pulitzer or was a best seller or why it is included in the World Book Night. It is a very difficult read, English to Spanish, footnotes to explain cultural and historical references, profanity and violence. Not the type of book I would give to a casual or non-book reader to entice them to read again. The Poisonwood Bible, which is also on the WBN list, is a book to entice a new reader, it too has conflict and uncertainty but it teaches about cultural differences and how peoples viewpoints can be so misunderstood because of not learning about the cultural basis of those viewpoints. Oscar Wao makes no effort to bridge a cultural gap, instead it describes people trapped by their culture and unable to escape it. Perhaps this book is well written, but I can’t get a grip the ‘why’ of the book. Why this story, why the acclaim, why should I want to know these people?... With all that written, I am glad that I read it. It is good for my brain to be confused."
This reader reminds me that meaning and value are subjective, and that books are part of this marketplace of ideas in which we pick and choose from the offerings of authors who give us the full benefit of their originality and differentness. I have learned as much about myself from books I hated as those books I loved. The discovery of emotional limits, of values so core it hurt to read them violated, even in fiction. I have learned there are places in imagination rough to go, journalism exposing harsh truths difficult to read - and I am the better human for it. I have learned empathy as a reader; aware of the great divide between my personal world and the world of those whose personal limits are stretched, broken, and routinely violated every day both in the real world or expressed and translated in fiction. Reading, they say, opens not just minds but tolerance.
Yet. It is not for me, the WBN committee, nor any other voice to determine what is important or not important, or meaningful or not meaningful in books. We are each of us, as readers, the judge of a book's worth. This is the great truth of books - an author puts out what a reader electively chooses to read. The reader values the book, and that's as it should be, in my humble opinion.
Read More
