Lookee!

This isn't a made-you-look joke (maybe only because I didn't think of it until now). But you may not be as excited as this would-be Epicurean (I think I'm slipping the other way, though, into Stoicism. Or miserism) when I quit stalling and just tell you. A book, two books! Yes, and...? This is a blog about books. Well one's a dictionary-cum-language guide and the other a seminal feminist work. Do you see?!

This silence perturbs me... It is a simple question.

What was that? Your silence is a sign of trust? Nice catch. Because there is nothing strange about me slobbering over these books, as you know. Words are so embedded in the way we interpret the world, as people and societies. And one little book holds all or most or, okay, some of them - did you know the most comprehensive version is 20 volumes long?

And this dictionary contains notes about the usage of the word, and not just an idiom or two listed in italics and the etymology. There are columns and columns making pages and pages of notes. Just on one word at a time. It took one entry before I popped the thing under my left arm:

except, excepting, except for ... except is preferable to  excepting and except for as the preposition meaning 'excluding'. Excepting would be slightly unidiomatic... and except for slightly informal, and both are best avoided.

The entry continues for one more page. Yep, that was it. The moment I fell. (Not into Stoicism. I was in the second-hand bookshop hiding away from... it.) There is more, though, fear you not! Being second-hand, it is old. An old, hardcover Reader's Digest edition, printed in black and white ink. A first edition and the start of a library of such things.

Actually, an addition to a growing library of such things. Being an editor, I am armed with several versions of the same dictionary, as well as style guides,an online subscription to a style manual, spelling guides, punctuation guides, dictionaries per subject and more general books about language. So, I suggest you accept my changes with good grace and back away, barbarians! Wait, no, wrong audience.

The thrum of words caught between a cover, the weight of the book and the smoothness of its cover in my hands... The book hunter's elusive reward. And here it was. Here it is. It has been too long, my friend.

Not one, but two, friends. The other is a ragged-looking paperback. B format, if that means anything to you. It looks like those orange and white Penguin editions from the 80s.White spine. Bolded title. The author's name is roman type.  The cover black as a background to a single image in the foreground. Lines of praise on the back.

The cover image is horrifying, to be honest. I don't do well with... this sort of thing, so I almost put it back. An illustration of a woman's skin hanging from a pole, in the shape of a pair of dungaree-shorts. Even the implication of violence makes me queasy. Which is, I realised, the point. Not convinced, I opened to the contents page. Every chapter has a one-word theme and heading such as these:

LOVE - Egoism

SOUL - The stereotype

BODY - Bones

I will not go into my views on feminism in today's, enlightened society (except to say that all sorts of '-isms' are institutionalised (that's my politician word) and bred into us unwittingly (that's my writer's phrase)) (oh and that there is evidence, let's talk after class). You know, I'm already angry, just writing that. Just angry enough to... do nothing, I guess.

Nothing, except read these books, and think about their arguments, and craft some of my own, and write another book.

Maybe you do think I tricked you. If I were you, I probably would. Because I'd be you and not me, the me who collects dictionaries and looks up to stringent feminists. The you that I'd be would really still be you and you have other obsessions and opinions, dreams and horrors. Unfortunately though, and in defiance of the inflated claims of digital revolutionaries, this is one-sided conversation.

Synecdoche Ulysses

"A book lover should never go into publishing." I have written on this theme before. Many times before. This blog is aweary of this theme, I imagine, cracking like the spine of a paperback. (I stole that quote from Italo Calvino and paraphrased the grandeur out of it.) Well, glue that spine straight, set it in a cast, cover up the cracks with a nail file and a marker... Because that book needs to carry some extra weight.

Ulysses. The James Joyce version. Epic in a different way. (And no, I'm not comparing this blog to that tome - you always get antsy right about here. I should leave the second paragraph blank, just for you .The Point? Granted, sometimes this is where The Point bares itself. But said Point defies convention! Even if its existence depends upon it.)

Back to spines and books with heavy burdens. I am not a shameless name-dropper. I own said epic. I have pried open the covers and run my forefinger beneath a page, ready to turn it over. My ownership is proclaimed with a green bookmark. I even have an opinion about the book and author. But I have started it twice and never made it past page 96.

That is not an invitation to stop reading, you. Pay attention.

My bookshelf contains some equal and some lesser tomes. Roberto Bolano's 2666, Murakami's trilogy, Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections, another James Meek. Most of them unread. I also have a Kindle. Ditto. A library card, with a slightly higher rate of success. But ditto. And a magazine app to which my subscriptions get delivered. And ditto.

Time. I imagine Time as my scapegoat, on a leash, trotting at my heels towards a bridge underneath which a troll lives. As I get nearer, I realise the goat is the troll, and I wake up sweating. Like most bibliophiles, I need many lifetimes to read the books I own as well as many more for those I want to read. Having nine lives, though, is as realistic as a troll on a leash. Or even just a troll, I guess.

Turn on your heel and back to my career and here we reach my standard gripe (no, this is not The Point). Who wants to dissect an object they love? Intellectually, perhaps. But physically? I spend at least seven out of my allotted nine lives grappling with that.

This blog has been as lonely as a Skeleton Coast ghost town for about two weeks. So have most of my social media accounts. (This is not how I define my life. I swear. By my scapegoat.)  I have been publishing. At silly hours. Doing silly, mindboggingly boring things. Convinced that these things, these assembled bits and pieces will change lives.

This is not just a job. This is passion - not a passion. Just, passion.

"A book lover should never go into publishing." Perhaps not. Unless there are (lucrative) career opportunities for people to read. I can think of lots of reasons to reskill, find another industry or find a wardrobe to hide in (with a book obviously). Most of those reasons are scattered in posts around this blog - many of which, I'm afraid, weren't labelled because they like the darkness of that wardrobe.

Ulysses, that big lug, is the part that best defines this whole: Do you really want to read something created by someone who doesn't think that book will change your life? Do you want to read something that you don't think will change your life?