Deeply comforting.

Good time to read this book and think about how images shape our view of war.

I am thinking I’ll get a little brass plague made: This fodder for hours of reading pleasure made possible by a generous Kristina grant. I’ll put the plaque on big shelf that will house the books Kristina has given me. It is fitting that one of those books was So Many Books So Little Time. Sara Nelson begins her book with a description of the bookshelves made by her husband for her own extensive collection of books.
Sara set herself the task of reading a book a week for a year and writing about it. It sounded like an interesting project. I mentioned the book to Kristina and she bought me the book, which I tossed on the pile and forgot about until I saw Sara on Book TV last weekend.
When I first began to read I felt like I’d met a new friend, someone who shares my love of reading and has the need for a pile of books in every room. Some one like Kristina. And I enjoyed most of it. By the end I felt like I had gotten to know Sara, her husband, her son and a few of her friends. And I have a book list that is now greatly expanded.
But Sara and I read differently. Nowhere was that more apparent than in a chapter she writes about Anthony Bourdain’s book Kitchen Confidential. As it turns out Sara was “the chubby daughter of an extremely weight-conscious mother.” She says it her relationship with food is fraught with trauma. Her fat phobia in this chapter made my head hurt. She is funny. And self-aware enough to know that she lacks perspective in this area. She goes on to write about Bourdain and his bad boy toughness. I still haven’t read Kitchen Confidential. No particular reason. In part I feel like I don’t need some arrogant man telling me about what it’s like to work in a kitchen. I’ve lived that book. But if I owned the book I would eventually read it.
Maybe I need to call Kristine.
If I let fat phobia scare me off I’d hardly have anything to read. Sara reads more fiction than I do. So we might not be the best of friends but I did enjoy most of her musings on the life of a reader.

I know I read this
book years ago but I didn’t remember much of it. I
don’t think I had the emotional maturity to read it then. Even now there are parts of the book
that I know I pulled away from emotionally. It is a
devastating book. She managed to write a scene of
rape and incest in such a way that I felt
overwhelming compassion for the father and the
daughter.
The edition of the book that I’m reading has an
afterward by Ms Morrison in which she talks about
why she wrote it in the way she wrote it. She didn’t
think the book was entirely successful. She says
that, “Holding the despising glance while sabotaging
it was difficult.” And that, for me, is the experience of
the book. Having to hold the complexity of why
people are who they are and how they sometimes
pass misery from generation to generation. But, most
specifically, how the institution of racism shapes self
image.
And the book is about the poisonous qualities our
ideas of beauty hold. The ways in which they drive
us to madness. This is a book I can imagine needing
to read again.

I think I know why I have
such a hard time remembering these books. I read
them when I was young and wanted right to be right
and wrong to be wrong. Toni Morrison does not
allow for that kind of simplistic thinking.
Everything in this book, much like The Bluest Eye, is
about relationship. Relationships between women,
between women and men, between adult and child.
Individual relationships. Relationships to the
community. Relationships and history. And poverty.
And racism. And sexism. And hunger. Sula isn’t really
the center of the book. She is just one person in a
portrait of a town. But she is a vortex. An
explanation, of sorts.