Here’s another in a weekly series of what we’re reading.
More than 20 years ago, I bought a $4.50 paperback copy of Isabel Allende’s The House of Spirits at the original Borders Book Shop on State Street in Ann Arbor, Mich., before it went all chain-gang on us. I’m proud to say I knew Borders when it was just a wee little shop.
This was back when it was independently owned and operated by brothers Tom and Louis Borders. I think one of the brothers lives in Austin now and I would like to meet him someday and thank him for providing such a warm, quiet and lovely space for exploring literature.
Anyway, I never read Allende’s book but I hung onto it because I knew that someday it would beckon from the shelf. During last week’s rescue efforts of the miners in Chile I found myself rummaging madly through my old paperbacks, at one o’clock in the morning, in search of The House of Spirits. It really pays to hang onto things.
Other regulars on the table, or down below, if my cat Teddy has chucked them to the floor:
Black Water Rising by Attica Locke is my current everyday read. It’s a crime novel set in Houston. Jordan Smith loaned me this book a long time ago but I only recently started reading it. I am hooked.
But I am also easily distracted by old faithfuls:
An old paperback ($1.95) of Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons. I often find myself returning to books that knocked me off my feet in my younger years, just to read a few pages here and there and enjoy the rhythm of the words, in spite of the Russian-to-English translation issue.
The fall edition of Edible Austin magazine, because next to eating good food I love reading about food and the people who bring it! By the way, I met the editor of this mag, Marla Camp, a few years ago at a campaign fundraiser. It happens that we both worked at the now defunct Ann Arbor News during the Eighties. We worked in different departments, though, so we didn’t really know each other. Small world though, eh?
The latest issue of the New Yorker, and a mostly blank notebook for journal purposes. I should write more but what, with all these books? Who has the time?
Teddy sits atop the books of poetry. It’s hard for me to move beyond my favorite poets: Richard Hugo, Philip Levine and Ray Carver. Of the three, only Levine is still with us. Hugo and Carver left way too early. Their writing to me is very American. Very working class. Very, how do you say, manly. In each of these books there are one or two poems that I return to again and and again, usually for inspiration, or just to clear my head. Same goes for one obscure poem by Sylvia Plath.
Finally, there is a fairly new collection of poems by Kay Ryan, the current poet laureate.
This article appears in October 15 • 2010.
