Booking Through Thursday--Manual Labor

Here's today's Booking Through Thursday question:

Writing guides, grammar books, punctuation how-tos . . . do you read them? Not read them? How many writing books, grammar books, dictionaries–if any–do you have in your library?

I have a couple of old stand-by reference books that I use, mostly The Elements of Style by Strunk and White and The Chicago Manual of Style. But I don't refer to them that often, really. Maybe I need to check in with them a little more!

I also hear a lot of good things about Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss, which is supposedly an entertaining book.

This Booking Through Thursday question is now prompting a confession I have to make. I'm addicted to books about writing. I am married to a writer, and I write some, too. So it's not entirely inappropriate. But I think I've carried it a bit too far. I'll list a few of my favorites here. And this is just a sample, not the whole writing reference library. Okay, here goes:

Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, by Anne Lamott. I love Lamott's personal style, and I especially like the anecdote that inspired the book's title--I use it to inspire myself when I'm stuck, and my kids when they have a particularly troublesome homework assignment.

Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within, by Natalie Goldberg. Goldberg is a Zen Buddhist and her approach to writing is both accessible and reflects her beliefs.

Writing To Learn, by William Zinsser. A great reference if you're writing non-fiction.

The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers, by John Gardner. The subtitle says it all. Gardner's style is very readable.

The Fiction Writer's Silent Partner, by Martin Roth. This is a sort of cheesy book put out by Writer's Digest but there's nothing better to get you unstuck.

Backwards & Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Plays, by David Ball. This is really a book about reading plays, but it really helps you understand dramatic structure, which is a must for any kind of fiction writing, not just plays and screenplays.

Okay, I could go on and on. Scary, really. I also love a bunch of memoirs about writing, including Annie Dillard's The Writing Life, Louise Erdrich's Blue Jay's Dance, and then there are all those great books out there about books and reading...

Los Angeles Library Funding Crisis

I got a flurry of emails today about the crisis in funding for Los Angeles public libraries. Evidently cuts in the city's budget are going to means big cuts in the libraries' budgets, and now the city's librarians are fighting mad.

A friend who is a children's librarian at one of the nearby branches says she no longer has a budget for books. And the librarian at my nearest branch says that, except for a small stipend they were were given in February, they have not been able to purchase any materials since December of last year.

Los Angeles has a huge library system, housed in some architecturally amazing buildings. It would be a shame not to protect, nurture, and grow the system.

The city's librarians and the Library Foundation of Los Angeles have created Save the L.A. Public Library, an advocacy group for libraries. According to the Library Foundation and Save the L.A. Public Library's websites, here's the background:

Faced with a citywide budget shortfall, elected officials are proposing deep cuts to the Library department budget that will result in:

1. Reducing the book budget by $2 million This is a 22% cut from last year’s book budget, and a 33% cut from two years ago.

2. Closing the eight regional branch libraries on Sundays, due to a reduction of staff positions.

3. “Short-term layoffs” of Library staff, which may further reduce library service.

And they've also put together what I think is a convincing list of reasons to fight the cuts:

The proposed cuts to the Library budget come at a time when:

People want more books, not less. The Library was unable to fill more than 300,000 requests for books last year, because the book budget has been cut 33% over the last two years to $7.7 million for the Central Library and 71 branches. The Library serves the largest population in the U.S., yet for per capita book spending, the Library now ranks 23rd among the 25 public libraries serving populations of over 1 million. The Library has only 1.6 books for each resident of Los Angeles.

People want the library to be open more hours, not less. The Library experienced record use in three key areas: more than 16 million visited the Library; more than 15 million books were checked out; and the electronic resources were used more than 110 million times. In a 2005 survey, keeping libraries open longer hours was among the top three requests from library users. Libraries must be open on Sundays, not closed as proposed in the budget, to meet the record demand for library books, computers and programs.

The Library gives kids a real alternative to gangs. At a time when gang intervention is among the city’s top priorities, the Library provides anti-gang education programs, workshops that help kids explore educational and career opportunities, peer groups that build self-esteem, and more.

Supporting education means supporting the Library. The schools can’t do it alone, that’s why the Library provides children with books, computers, homework help and libraries that are open when schools are closed. The Library also provides the largest after-school program in the city designed to build literacy skills in children and keep them reading outside the classroom. With more than 70% of LAUSD third- and seventh- grade students scoring below the national average in reading, and nearly 90% of eighth- grade students scoring at or below the basic level in writing, the Library’s resources are more critical than ever.

A strong Library is good for business. An educated workforce is essential to successful business. Yet more than 50% of the Los Angeles area’s working age population suffer from low literacy skills. To battle the devastating personal and social effects of illiteracy, the Library operates free Adult Literacy Centers in 19 libraries citywide and provides self-tutorials on its Web site. The Library’s free collection of books, databases, education-support programs and other resources provide all people with the tools they need to succeed.

They've convinced me! I'm going to write the mayor's office now!

I'd love to hear what you--and especially you librarians or library studies students--think about this library crisis...

The Uncommon Reader, by Alan Bennett

I finished Alan Bennett's novella The Uncommon Reader over the weekend. It was a lovely little fairy tale about why people need to read, and I enjoyed it immensely. Alan Bennett is one of my favorite British playwrights--he wrote The History Boys, The Lady in the Van, and The Madness of King George. In this story, he imagines what it would be like if the Queen of England suddenly began to read as a pastime.

It starts with the Queen visiting the mobile library van that is parked outside the palace, because she feels a sense of duty after her dogs have disturbed the van and its occupants. After borrowing her first books out of that sense of duty, she soon gets sucked into reading, and her casual hobby becomes an obsession. I won't give it away, but it ends with the country a changed place because the Queen has become passionate about books.

It's a slight story, but cleverly done, and I almost always love books about reading--it's always nice to have someone affirm the importance of books, reading, and writing in our lives.

I also enjoyed Bennett's conjecture about what it means to be Queen, what her priorities might be as a monarch, and how she would deal with people, based on her training, background and unique position in the world.

And there are some wonderful quotes about reading, writing, and the intellectual life.

When describing how uncomfortable the library at the palace was, how unsuited it was to curling up with a good book, and indeed, how inaccessible the books there were, the Queen thought:

No, if reading was to be done it was better done in a place not set aside for it.

Here's another quote I liked:

The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference: there was something undeferring about literature. Books did not care who was reading them or whether one read them or not. All readers were equal, herself included.

And here's another quote, one I had to smile at, as I remembered times I have been impatient with some authors, including Henry James:

She was not a gentle reader and often wished authors were around so that she could take them to task. 'Am I alone,' she wrote, 'in wanting to give Henry James a good talking-to?'
'I can see why Dr. Johnson is well thought of, but surely, much of it is opinionated rubbish?'
It was Henry James she was reading one teatime when she said out loud, 'Oh, do get on.'

So, this is a charming little book about the power of reading, and I have to recommend it to all of you avid readers out there. I also remember that Stefanie at So Many Books wrote a wonderful review of this book, so please check that out here.

Grammar Power!

There's a little car I sometimes see parked in my neighborhood with a great personalized license plate. It reads GRMR PWR. Now, I could be misinterpreting it, but I call it the "grammar power" car. It's an unassuming little vehicle, but I like to imagine it's the transportation for a grammar-correcting superhero. Maybe his name is "Captain Apostrophe". Maybe he's riding around town, correcting the grammar, spelling and punctuation on all the billboards and signs, keeping the public safe from split infinitives. Wouldn't that be great?

Booking Through Thursday--Vocabulary

Today's Booking Through Thursday question was suggested by Nithin:

I’ve always wondered what other people do when they come across a word/phrase that they’ve never heard before. I mean, do they jot it down on paper so they can look it up later, or do they stop reading to look it up on the dictionary/google it or do they just continue reading and forget about the word?

My answer is that it really depends on the book, on the word, and on where I'm sitting while reading! I usually don't look up words while reading unless I really can't get them from context. If I am struck by a particular word, often I'll write it down and look it up later. That's probably because there isn't usually a dictionary nearby. Every once in awhile a book begs to be read with a dictionary (or dictionary.com) within easy reach. But that's pretty rare for me. And if I'm reading in bed, forget it--no way I'm looking anything up. Or writing anything down. So those words are just lost to me. My poor vocabulary, it's probably decreasing rather than increasing these days.

How about you?

Sunday Salon

When I first decided to participate in the Sunday Salon, I thought it would be easy to find time to both read and write about it on Sundays. I mistakenly thought I read quite a bit on the weekends. But I've since realized how wrong I was! Last Sunday, for example, I only read The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Go Away, Big Green Monster!...though I did read them both at least six times. This weekend we have houseguests, so it's even harder to get a few pages in.

But I did manage to sneak away and read some of Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul: Memories and the City, which I got from BookMooch. So far I'm really enjoying Pamuk's very personal style. In speaking about his family's apartments, he describes the gallery of family photos kept by his grandmother. Once enshrined there, a family member's photo was never moved. His musings on the family photographs resonated with me:

My prolonged study of these photographs led me to appreciate the importance of preserving certain moments for posterity, and in time I also came to see what a powerful influence these framed scenes exerted over us as we went about our daily lives...(I) was pulled in two directions, wanting to get on with life but also longing to capture the moment of perfection, savoring the ordinary but also honoring the ideal. But even as I pondered these dilemmas--if you pluck a special moment from life and frame it, are you defying death, decay and the passage of time or are you submitting to it?--I grew very bored with them.

I'm not very far into the book yet, but I appreciate Pamuk's blending of memoir with the history of his beloved city. His gift for description makes the city come alive--and makes me want to visit Istanbul someday!

I was also inspired by Pamuk's writing about his city to include a photo I took of my own city. In it I'm parked along Hollywood Blvd, and the Hollywood hills are behind me in the mirror, veiled in a typical Los Angeles haze.

National Poetry Month

As all my book-blogging friends know, April is not only the cruelest month, it is also National Poetry Month.

Like he did last year, my friend Greg is making a herculean effort to write a poem a day. He's posting his daily poems at his poetic blog, Gotta Book. And they're always funny!

Melanie at The Indextrious Reader has been posting about poetry this month. I've particularly enjoyed her choices!

Kate at Kate's Book Blog has a poetry challenge for the month--check it out! She says: The challenge is simply to post about poetry at least once in the month of April. The post could be a review of a collection of poetry, a broader meditation on the work of a favourite poet, or a detailed analysis of a single poem. Simply posting a poem doesn't count unless you go on to say something about that poem. The idea is to dare to be critical (as in analytical, not necessarily negative) and venture an opinion.