Love the smell of old books? This bookseller would like you to leave
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
She was the town's "book lady" or "just the bookstore everyone goes to" so it's obviously been a disappointment when that wasn't the case everywhere as I've moved on and visited other stores; but it's impressions like that, as a child and growing up with that you are left with an idea on how booksellers are supposed to be like because it's what you grew up with as the normal thing; but alas the world is large and I'm sure this author has his reasons.
Edit: wanted to add an example of how fantastic this woman was at figuring people out; I remember going in around maybe ~8-10 years old and she picked 'Edward's Eyes' [1] for me; it had a profound impact on me as a child as it was so similar to my own life, even sharing the same first name as the narrator of the book.
I have a similar sort of relationship with bike shops. You can tell a good one straight away and it's nothing like a chain store.
My local one is in an ancient 4 story building with lots of back stairs and rooms. In the very top floor the owner keeps his own private collection, which if he's in the mood and you ask nicely he'll show you.
When you're a kid independent shops like that, book shops, computer shops, bike shops, are magic (and they're still pretty good as an adult).
1. Without the murders and other worldly shenanigans obviously.
nit: s/understated/overstated/
I love stories of little quirky & fable-like people who are known as "that X person", and they seem to be a master at whatever X is. Creates a real charming atmosphere wherever these people exist.
I've always been curious about the financial aspects of businesses like this. I find they can often shed some interesting lights on ways to streamline operations/financials.
My dad has been doing this with coins for a couple decades. Going over peoples collections with them explaining the history origins what they’re worth etc.
I did the math once and he makes about two dollars per hour. But he loves it.
Pro tip from his own words coins are a terrible investment.
Maybe they had some winners that made those losers profitable, but I have my doubts.
I’m increasingly finding one of my favoured modes of leisure to be a book and a wine bar. Were I to open a wine bar in retirement, decades from now, I’d be fine running it at cost, counting the company and conversation as compensation enough. Swap that to a subsistence model in a low-cost locale, and the business still holds.
Yes. Aperitif at a cafe in Italy scratches the same itch.
It's super low-end, but she's really nice. I don't go to her town very often, but I always stop by and give her $50 for 40 used paperbacks. We talk about them at the checkout, and she knows every one.
I know it's heresy to say on HN, but it's been my observation that there are a lot of people who run businesses not to get rich, but to enrich themselves.
I completely understand this. If you have money, why not run a business that either breaks even or loses a sustainably low amount of money? Making money for the sake of making money is as absurd as chasing political power for the sake of holding political power. Both involve confusing a means for an end. Money and power are only worthwhile if you can use them for something worthwhile that you care about. Otherwise, what's the point of putting in all that effort to obtain a means if you don't actually want to use it for something?
Palo Alto used to have seven (!) bookshops downtown; now there is but one but that survivor is indeed run by a pair of "book ladies" as you describe (except for the tea or coffee).
I had a vacation house in a small town of about 2500 people that had a similar bookshop with a bunch of the usual staples and a somewhat esoteric mix of others. In a very deeply "red" area the owner also carried a lot of books that would definitely not appeal to that crowd, and they sold well. She eventually sold the business and it became a boring bookshop.
One thing that matters to me is opinion. One day I decided I had to see what the fuss about Ayn Rand was all about. So I went into another favorite palo alto bookshop (now gone) and asked the owner where they were as I couldn't find them on the shelf. He got a funny look on his face and said, "Oh, we always keep a few around for thoooose people as he led me to the spot.
The permit for that building required that it be possible to turn it back into a live/film theatre. A friend of mine and I looked into turning it into a nightclub but in the end it was too much of a hassle (and Palo Alto is no longer the kind of place that has nightclubs and porno theatres (not the New Varsity!) downtown).
Yet right after the dotcom crash the bookstores that had multiple aisles of programming books shrunk the computer section to half an aisle. They told me however they could order anything I wanted. I used to browse the bookstores on Sundays. Now I browse the web and order what I need from Amazon. Have to think they did it to themselves.
It does bring to mind (to me anyway) the fantastic and charming movie about an old school booksellers running up against modernity, “You’ve Got Mail”. (1998)
1. "Wow, have you read all these books?" means "I never read books."
2. Scans shelves..."Oh that's a great book...I haven't heard of this author – any good?" means "I read a lot."
I'm used to the books and don't get any pride from them but it's amazing how quickly you can tell how literate someone is by their behavior in even a small library.
I have.. hundreds (I mean that literally - not tens, nor thousands; I don't know exactly the number) of books, a small number across a few rooms. Certainly fewer than you. Were I in your house, I might be inclined to ask if, like me, you slightly veer into ~hoarding~ collecting rather than having read them all; perhaps telling yourself you certainly will, as the backlog only grows ever longer, or whether I should feel ashamed because you actually have read them all and it's a much larger hoard.
I read a few tens of books per year but my queue is a couple years long. No big deal, I don't feel pressure to get through it.
Most people who love books have entire stacks that they haven't read yet. Because your love means there are just so many of them you'd like to have in your life. And the fact that even on a low income, the cost of reading often vastly outstrips the cost of buying (in terms of time) means that sometimes, you'll choose to collect more instead of finish what you have.
Is it smart? I don't know. I like to think that the unread books are like way posts showing me the direction into unknown terrain I'd like to explore but can't just yet. I have not seen the dragons, but the book reminds me "there be dragons". The joy is in knowing that the world is so much bigger than anything you deeply know.
Maybe that's hoarding. Maybe it's defining your place in the world. Maybe it's the comfort that you could know in a moment, if you but chose to.
If it gives you joy, who cares :)
I think this has to center around the question of whether you can get the books whenever you need them. First there is the effort. A book in your shelf can be accessed on a moments notice. This certainly matters for books you might want to reference. Second is price. Books can often be gotten for a bargain from a flea market or a library that is making space for new books, or a bookstore that goes bust. Third is the possibility that a book will just be unavailable. Maybe it gets banned or maybe society collapses around you and all copies are lost. This risk is low but not negligible.
Then there are also other functions a book in a bookshelf performs, apart from easy access. It's a nice aesthetic. And it can help inspiration and discovery.
There's a short story, I think in one of my New Hugo Winners volumes, in which a character responds to that question with something like, "who the hell wants a library full of books they've already read?!"
But yes, that's definitely the kind of question only someone who doesn't read much would ask. A great tell.
[EDIT] Or, I guess, maybe a kid from a certain kind of background, reader or not, which I think might have been the case in that story, but from an adult? Yeah, pretty good signal.
"... The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and nondull. He is the owner of a large personal library (containing thirty thousand books), and separates visitors into two categories: those who react with “Wow! Signore professore dottore Eco, what a library you have! How many of these books have you read?” and the others—a very small minority—who get the point that a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market allows you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary. ..."
1) The "unread" books constitute the "known unknowns". They confirm the fact that you have mapped out a little bit more of the "unknown territory of knowledge" and can go explore them whenever you are in mind.
2) Having a large set of "unread" books keeps your curiosity, motivation and a sense of "knowledge exploration" alive. These are the driving forces which make "existence" bearable. Most people do not get out of their immediate sensory gratification bubble and are unaware of the "intellectual joy" outside of it.
The above two factors have what has made "Civilization" as we know it, possible.
"They'd always ask it with the kind of voice people use in the presence of large sculptures in museums. They'd ask me, 'Have you read all these books?'" He waited again, but Billy Kinetta was not playing the game. "Well, young fella, after a while the same dumb question gets asked a million times, you get sorta snappish about it. And it came to annoy me more than a little bit. Till I finally figured out the right answer.
"And you know what that answer was? Go ahead, take a guess." Billy appeared in the kitchenette doorway.
"I suppose you told them you'd read a lot of them but not all of them."
Gaspar waved the guess away with a flapping hand. "Now what good would that have done? They wouldn't know they'd asked a dumb question, but I didn't want to insult them, either. So when they'd ask if I'd read all those books, I'd say, 'Hell, no. Who wants a library full of books you've already read?'"
Harlan Ellison liked to say that a lot, and I'm sure he wrote down in a book at some point.
How did you come to this generalisation?
I read a lot and have asked that exact question to friends who have a very large library
I also have several books in my library that I haven't gotten to reading or only briefly skimmed through parts of, so if someone asked me that question about library (which is only a few shelves, as the bulk of my books are on my kindle), my answer would be no
“"In the past I adopted a tone of contemptuous sarcasm. ’I haven’t read any of them; otherwise, why would I keep them here?’ But this is a dangerous answer because it invites the obvious follow-up: ’And where do you put them after you’ve read them?’ The best answer is the one always used by Roberto Leydi: ’And more, dear sir, many more,’ which freezes the adversary and plunges him into a state of awed admiration. But I find it merciless and angst-generating. Now I have falled back upon the riposte: ’No, these are the ones I have to read by the end of the month. I keep the others in my office,’ a reply that on the one hand suggests a sublime ergonomic strategy, and on the other hand leads the visitor to hasten the moment of his departure."
I have my business Zoom meetings in our (relatively small) library, with the bookshelves as the backdrop and I get this question every time!
if you believe books are a cultured activity for those with high intelligence, empathy, work ethic, desire to learn, or other high-brow drive, there will necessarily be those who only engage in reading aesthetically.
instead, let it be what it is: a pastime. no higher or lower than reddit or tv or mountain biking.
sorry, writers.
meanwhile, i know for myself that i almost never regret time spent reading. can’t say the same for the spent on hn/netflix.
so i don’t think it does much good to equate ways to spend time except as a coping mechanism for time poorly spent.
Let us not forget duty.
I personally love film and books but these days I love reddit and youtube more. But like when you read good books, it will not do to let the gatekeepers guide your passive atention. You must hunt the prey, break the bones and suck out the marrow yourself. You'll find plenty of emotional and intellectual sustenance on digital mediums if you put in the work. Even on hacker news!
Sure, if you believe you are born to yell at cars or whatever, the day you will do something different will be for the enjoyment of a duly exceptional vacation. But if you do not see the value of something, all chances are the issue is with your "eyes".
Incidentally: among the well recognized functions of books, they are there to have selected, better company that those in mentioned "social networks gone bad" - even taking special cases into account. (Of course, you have to be able to perceive what "better" is.)
Edit: about that «'intentionally'»: this is the way I think, this is the way I write. (Not precisely so, but the expression will be clear enough to those who want to understand it.)
> among the well recognized functions of books, they are there to have selected, better company that those in mentioned "social networks gone bad" - even taking special cases into account. (Of course, you have to be able to perceive what "better" is.)
-- The text of a book represents, in the "good cases", an as-best-organized-as-possible expression of the refined thought of an author. That communication from such author is "company" you choose. It is a "selected acquaintance", picked to enrich you. It can be better than many other options, which will contain less value.
-- With possible exceptions of very selected containers (whatever their elected term - 'subs'?) in «mentioned "social networks gone bad"», the general quality in the content found by commenters is very, very poor. So, the competition with a selected writer would be "not in the same league". If you took special cases of very well moderated, luckier containers, the collective effort could bring special value, yet we would be comparing quite different things (and the book would still be superior in some areas, e.g. structure).
-- So, you may compare "material intended for growth" (the book) and "an involving experience" (the popular social network), but of course there is value to be recognized in order to appreciate the difference. You have to be able to recognize "better company" - otherwise, of course you will see little difference.
>I think you are very wrong.
>Sure, if you think you were born to have fun, doing something such as reading books will be "fun" too, since it's different from your normal life. But you aren't actually seeing the real value in reading.
>One of the main reasons books exist is so my company can be more "high-class", since those who don't read often are usually not as fun to hang out with.
FTR I think this is an insane way of thinking, but I thought I would try and translate it to the best of my ability to words people can actually understand
I do not think the ideas of the poster are just "wrong" (though it's a very good term, originally meaning "giving the reaction of disgust (which can also be given by disapproval)"): I wrote «blasphemies» because the depreciate what has high value.
And those mentions of «high-class» and «fun to hang out with» are completely out of what was meant. And completely out of perspective: nobody told you you are there to have "fun". And one does not even meet people for "fun". It's your time, you are not there to waste it; "fun" is one part of it - "break", "completeness", "recovery" or whatever.
More that "«insane»", that way of thinking would be "childish" (and surely more), but it was not what was expressed - you put that in. And your reading fails on the guidelines about "strongest plausible interpretation" and "assum[ption of] good faith".
Edit:
Nonetheless, the translation «Sure, if you think you were born to have fun, doing something such as reading books will be "fun" too, since it's different from your normal life. But you aren't actually seeing the real value in reading» was quite close to the original intention - though not overlapping. With "«yell at cars»", for example, I meant to stress the improductive side, the "consuming the day without much focus on growth". In the idea that the opposite of "growth" is "waste" ("fun" already may contain some value).
He was, as I am and my father is, a very well-read man. It hasn't made us better people but it's sure made it easy to spot silly pseudointellectual BS.
Books are just dead trees wrapped in dead cows. I keep maybe 20 in my house. No better or worse than trying to signal with a Rolex or an instagram following. No better to learn from than YouTube or HN or any number of street corner conversations. Get your head out of your ass.
(Note: if the above is correct, and they are incomplete, then it's duly to roll the sleeves again, and be back to the "discrimination builders". Like for all of us.)
I am not sure about that «trying to signal»: it seems as if you interpret that somebody uses books to "show off". That would be completely nonfactual. They are there for you, why should one use them to display - that would be strongly inconsistent with their nature.
Now the core point:
**
books are explicitly the concretion of an effort towards development
**
as such, they are symbol and object "incarnating" something very high.
I do not understand the expression «Get your head out of your ass», but I consider it a friendly encouragement, for which I am sincerely grateful. To actually meet in communication, we would probably need more exchange though - I think we have probably not understood each other.
"Signalling" ?
Part of me has just died. Have you ever thought about not giving a toss what others think and just reading?
> not giving a toss ... and just
Is not that (per se, I do not understand it in the context) simply against the whole workings of communication?
A poster diminished the importance of books: I observed that they represent an effort of transmit knowledge and wisdom - which is something "high". The poster mentioned one specific social network: I observed that books represent selection in comparison (to randomness and noise). If anybody is in for the communicational game, those are the proposals. Somebody misunderstood: that happens. If one "does not give a toss", why spending the time (unless one uses the expression "spending the time" for the same that I called "yelling at [running] cars").
Zounds, this might be the most deliberately obfuscated and yet simultaneously poorly written diatribe I've ever read. You seem to possess a penchant for verbosity but an inability to smoothly couple your thoughts together.
And yes, just like any physical matter from a hobby, it can act as either a beacon or a warning signal to other like-minded people.
Edit: to show that «inability» you mention, somebody should provide better expressions. Mine are constructed with much consideration, and I have not found examples of better equivalents.
Help me/us instead with your «And yes ... like-minded people»: I do not understand it. (I do not understand «physical matter from a hobby», and I do not understand what is 'it' that «can act as either...».)
the fact you think you're being highly precise and terse and laughable at best. the guilletes are absolutely pretentious as fuck. I assume for somebody like you, your favorite fictional character is Ignatius Reilly. something about feeling seen
You can have all the reactions available in the drawer, but without "showing why" they are pretty wasted expressions.
> guilletes
I have no idea what that is. A web search did not reveal anything.
> Ignatius Reilly
Not acquainted, sorry.
> feeling seen
No idea what you are trying to say. Who should "feel seen"? In which terms, paranoia? Look: sorry, but I hope you do not consider yourself clear in turn.
> you wear a band t-shirt, you meet people who like the band
Ok, but I do not see how this is relevant to this whole discussion.
> being highly precise and terse
Sure, that is part of the attempt. The burden to interpret, analyze and synthesize etc., remains with the other side. I try to be as precise as possible to facilitate that (meaning: when you analyze something, the "mechanism breaks" if the pieces are "loose", "ill chosen").
groups tend to gravitate towards each other or coalesce around material indicators of similar interests. for example, people who enjoy the same music from the same artist see the artists t-shirt and form a relationship with each other.
similarly, some with a penchant for speaking or writing in a particular way, maybe a way that others would describe as "haughty", "cultured" - or as some might argue, "correct" - tend to gravitate towards each other as well.
the point is sometimes shitty communication is fine because you can just keep engaging as long as you are friends - or at least respectful. trying harder is simply way too tedious for the medium of the internet.
edit: i meant << guillemets >>. mb
Ok, but this is an international, multicultural forum, where it is supposed that different people come to exchange. Under the umbrella of the "intellectual curiosity relevant", all trades - here, you will meet the different, and many in the same page. Some people will think and write this way - it's the way they are, and very legitimate -, you know it in advance coming here, that you will interact with them.
Edit: possibly more clearly, if somebody writes in a certain way, and judges those formulations to be "properly working", do not expect stylistic changes just because. Joyce would not write like Proust - not just that they hated each other, simply that one would say "The formulations are or should be clear, why the efs should I write like somebody else!".
(Differences granted, I would call it a base that participants do not post replies like "I judged the language, hence BS", as some member took the liberty nearby - just saying. It is logically offensive.)
> cultured ... correct
It is not the same. There is no intention to appear "cultured"; "correct" instead is something that some may want to seek, for many reasons - to give the chance of interpreting correctly to anyone who wants to, for example. If "correct" stresses an idea of "cultured", that is a side effect. Surely many of us write this way (with more or less "care").
> engaging ... the medium of the internet
Ok, you (say) "will keep on chatting", but where is the exchange? Of what? We are dropping payloads here. Sure, «sometimes» other communicational factors prevail (stag party, whatever) but on HN... Mind you: flexibly, respecting a sense of community (I took the liberty of a rare off-topic joke just hours ago elsewhere, still curiosity-relevant hopefully), but this is supposed to be a purposeful environment.
Somebody comes with the idea that "reading is secondary", he will get the reply that Woody Allen joked that "women are secondary, breathing comes later" - and what comes first must then be cultivation. That books are a most respect deserving creation - the preservation of wisdom -, hence his perspective some will label "blasphemy", not just "disagreeable". That he may be missing a perspective, and that it may be better if one notices - just in case some inner gears start moving (very respectfully). That if he arrives to comparing books and a social website which, posts-wise, typically reveals civil devastation, he may be reminded that "books are selected company" - shocking that nowadays some may call this "smug", because normally the framework would be to make optimal choices!
> pretentious
Wait until the first doctor maims you, the first renovator ruins your house, the first moron ruins your life.
Then it will be clear that you must "strive" not just for your ideals (or even ambitions), but because you are a social actor and you have to be an asset, not a liability.
So, "pastime", "fun", "pretentious", "smug", "high-class", "bullshit" - I am tempted to quite a crude language to label the whole perspective, I am just restraining myself. You have to be not even "quite something" in what you are, which will reflect on others: you have to be "decent", and already that is very far to be possibly taken for granted. Not just for yourself or anything: because you can be a damage, and you are required not to be a damage. For duty.
Already if you operate among people, cultivation is not just an option.
--
Edit: I forgot (important point linking the above with another side of the importance of books): in many territories a socio-cultural crisis is evident where one of the main mechanisms to transmit civilization and refinement, i.e. structured society at the base, the "extended family" which includes the teacher, the older brother, the neighbour etc., is vanishing. This model was structured, some say "pyramidal" (the "older brother" takes care of the "younger" - the "elder" of the "younger" in general); other societal models (e.g. "online") are heavily random and noisy; even education is (stats also prove) living a dire crisis.
The "book" is, as I already stated, a "selected companion" that is remains even more fundamental in order to patch the gaps in proficuous relations that said crisis, made of distance and weakened roles, has created. Some of the best men we had gave us their wisdom for tradition - not a small gift at all.
Take from that what you will, since it's only a correlation found in one person's experience. Maybe reading indicates openness to the ideas of others? Maybe it indicates the ability to focus, to reflect? I don't know. But I've found enthusiasm for reading to be uncannily predictive.
maybe climbing indicates openness to challenging yourself mentally and physically. maybe it indicates the ability to focus on movement, to enjoy presence in nature. i've found enthusiasm for rock climbing to be surprisingly predictive.
the point is reading is not higher, special, or better. intelligence is not the only valuable Value
Juggling a kid with a full diaper while trying to buy some books and decide whether to risk the nearby public restrooms (also a shooting gallery) or try to wait to get home before changing her.
Now I have an explanation
Unfortunately, used book stores are a vanishing breed.
Boulder, Colorado had a great selection of bookstores. I remember going into one bookstore and being puzzled when I not only couldn’t find any of my favorite authors on the shelves, but I had never heard of any of the authors. It wasn’t until I left the store and turned around and looked at the store again that I realized it was an adult bookstore (I think it was named something like Kitty’s Books and the signage as to its nature was subtle).
Another fun moment was visiting a bookstore/cafe/literacy center in New Orleans and picking up a self-published game there called Cartoon Wars on the recommendation of the clerk on duty. I flipped through it back at my hotel room and realized it was created by someone I went to college with.
When I visited the UK, I came home with so many books, I had to declare my purchases at customs. Fortunately, I didn’t have to pay any import duty on them.
If you are referring to Iron Rail I am afraid it has been closed for a while. Neutral Ground is still around but not a bookstore.
What I remember was that their main clients for the literacy services were crew members from cargo ships.
It's huge, dank, bright, easy to get lost in, and deep.
Bring strong shopping bags, you'll need them.
Ordinary mold/mildew is not a good smell, triggers allergies, and nobody in their right mind "loves" it. Books get stored in places that get high humidity or flooded, and the results are horrible and toxic. If you order random used books off the internet these days there's a good chance they have a trace of mold smell.
On the other hand, non ordinary book odors vary widely, may be from decay, or the binding glue, (the glue decaying?) or who knows what, so how could you generically love them all even if you have arbitrarily peculiar preferences?
I admit that the above is mostly not based on memories of bookstores, but of a household full of books.
I personal "enjoy" it in the sense that I associate it with used bookstores. I wouldn't want a candle scent of it in my room by any means.
Also insults and truth are not mutually exclusive.
This is something particularly common with books/reading, where it becomes more of a performative act, to demonstrate to everyone else how intellectual/educated you are.
A lot of stuff may be listed cheaper online, but it's important to remember that customer service, atmosphere, and convenience* also factor into the price. I'd rather pay a small premium to enjoy a pleasant shop than pay for shipping from somewhere online.
*Convenience cuts both ways. I don't have Prime or anything like that so a local shop is the only way to get something same-day, but I recognize that I do have to leave the house and probably drive somewhere.
I want to hear about your personal experience of this.
If you have to imagine what bookstores are like, I assume you formed your opinion of readers elsewhere.
Libraries? I'm trying to imagine a performative reader in a library.
Or school?
Come now, did you really take that to mean I had to imagine the bookstore and not the customer?
But sure, a few examples:
- People who adorn their bookshelves with ornate "leather-bound classics" or other esteemed novels that that they haven't read and have no intention of reading.
- People who conduct all of their Zoom meetings in front of said bookshelf.
- People who make recommendations to others about how they should read such great works of Western Canon, e.g. the Complete Works of William Shakespeare, despite themselves having never read anything of Shakespeare beyond the required Romeo and Juliet in high-school.
If you went in bookstores all the time and never ran into customers behaving that way then why would you be imagining it and confirming a general pattern? Seems like you would have contrary evidence in that case.
>People who adorn their bookshelves with ornate "leather-bound classics"
Decorators use fake books. And fake flowers. And fake fruit. People are so used to fakery that they get upset when it's missing. Like when someone is interviewed and the transcript has lots of "um, er, ah". Because they're not reading prepared remarks from a teleprompter, the smartest person will never be that smooth extemporaneously.
Most of the books I put out on shelves are real books that I've read, but they're not there because I need them close at hand to reread at any moment. Also, I tend to skim a lot when something doesn't engage me, so I might fail a pop quiz on something I did read once.
>People who make recommendations to others about how they should read such great works of Western Canon, e.g. the Complete Works of William Shakespeare
The problem with Shakespeare's plays is that they're written in a foreign language, and it's often inflicted on people without even acknowledging that let alone trying to help them understand it.
I wonder if there are any adaptations to film with modernized subtitles and notes overlaid.
Plato has some commentary on the confusion of symbols with reality.
Reinforcement learning and cognitive science suggest that learning is deeply flawed, highly situated, but often useful enough in context. Generalization is not guaranteed. Aggregating human learning must be done very carefully or the errors will compound.
The Roca brothers managed to create a device (Rotaval) used to distill essences from different objects, after rubbing them with fat and dissolving it in alcohol.
Low quality video from the device (couldn't find any better): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blB7VYQCxZw
I think this is also applicable to a lot of us who like to read a lot.
This is one of the most fascinating books that I know of. I'm pretty well convinced that the world population of people who have read more than the very beginning and very end probably numbers roughly the count of my fingers and toes combined. Although I think many people
I also think the the only person who ever really understood the book was James Joyce himself. Fluency in multiple languages down to idiomatic expressions and deep etymology seem like strict requirements if you have never occupied the meatspace between Joyce's ears.
Any small portion seems somewhat comprehensible in its highly local environment, and a bit funny or witty in how it's written. But then it breaks down when attempting to connect that piece to the wider whole. And it all makes me feel like I'm reading extremely familiar words whose meaning I can't quite remember.
In refreshing my memory about it before commenting here it made me laugh to see that even the best Wikipedia can say about what goes on in the book is that readers have mostly reach a consensus (but only a consensus!) about normally trivial matter of fact such as the cast of characters, a little less so the plot, but that many other important details amount to poorly mapped terrain.
And because I was born with the usual amount of fingers andntoes, if I met a random person in passing, and they claimed to have read the book completely, I would look at them with as much belief as if they had said "I'm a very powerful leader of one of the G20 nations". Actually I might believe the G20 claim a bit more because I would consider it less likely for someone to make a claim like that when it could so easily be proven false if it was not true.
If I had not encountered the book long ago then I might believe it to be the output of an extremely oddly trained gpt-3 model. I don't mean that to be an insult to the book, it's just the best comparison I can think of to characterize it's contents in modern terms.
This is how fascinating Finnegan's Wake is as a literary work.
Quarks are named after a line in this book so I thought: well give it a try.
Do you have any idea how to tackle this?
Finnegan's Wake is another kettle of fish though! I wouldn't know where to start with that.
Also: I had a childhood habit of reading the last page of a novel before starting the book. The Wake is quite possibly the best book ever written to try that on.
I've read it all the way through three times. (I'm old.) It's worth the time, if you're willing to spend it.
Maybe I'm unkind, but I've never been a fan of the Wake. It's always seemed to me to be the sort of thing academics in English literature departments and lovers of abstract art really go for, but few other people can appreciate. (Nothing against literature academics or abstract artists -- it's just that their tastes are informed by things that don't inform most people's!)
If you want to appreciate Joyce as a more approachable author, 'Dubliners' is a great collection of short stories and not experimental.
I can't claim to have read more than maybe 50 pages total, most of them toward the beginning. One thing that helps a lot is to read it aloud, at least softly. And do so with an over-the-top Irish accent. It does make a bit more sense then.
Hah! I just went through the first page like that and the cadence of an Irish lilt and pronunciation and it did in fact help. I've been through the first page enough times, though none too recently, that doing this really made things click together in my head a bit more.
As I said, it's a fascinating book. As a linguistic accomplishment I cannot quickly think of a rival.
That's wild to me. What a weird thing. Is this primarily an Americanism? One of the things I miss the most about the UK is the bookshops, the second-hand bookshops, the weird one-pound-per-book barns in random villages, the book festivals, the charity shops where every book is a pound.
The idea of caring about, or wanting, a _book_ because of how expensive it is, is just so genuinely alien to me that I've gotten stuck on that sentence.
One buys sports cars and wine for enjoyment. The idea of buying the most expensive offering for its own sake is laughable.
One doesn't order an expensive claret to drink with fish!
In retrospect, and having felt that way, I realize that is an unreasonable hope. Very bad odds, if you even think it out for a bit.
On the other hand, interesting entertainment is often one lucky find away.
Although part of the issue is that mainstream bookstores perform curation based almost purely on popularity, which makes them terrible places to find much more than variations on Oprah's latest book club selection.
Fortunately these days I have my Kindle so I can still collect and read books as I want to.