The library’s book discussion group read “Reading Lolita in Tehran” this month. Personally, the book was a tough read. At times as I read about the oppression and fear these women were faced with on a daily basis, I felt like I was wading through a morass from which I’d never be free. Their resilience and spirit were amazing. I could write pages about what this book says to me as a woman, but what this book says to me as a reader is what I want to focus on here.
Azar Nafisi was and is a literature professor. Her discussions about literature from Jane Austin, to James Joyce, to Nabokov were often beyond me. Yet, as the book progressed what I kept wondering was why it was that novels and literature where so reviled by the Iranian regime, why it was literature professors that were questioned, intimidated and seen as revolutionary? Maybe scientists found themselves in similar situations and I just haven’t read about that. But I don’t think that’s the case. At least, that’s not the case Nafisi is trying to make. At its heart “Reading Lolita” is about the revolutionary, subversive world that fiction and novels open for us. Science, history, archeology all make us think, but it’s the ambiguity, the questioning, the opening ourselves to new and different ways of thinking and being that novels offer.
Religions, governments, parents even, have all come out against certain novels at one time or another. Reading fiction in general has been eschewed from time to time by different groups for reasons ranging from it’s "not real," it’s "not important," or it’s “just entertainment.” Nafisi’s book raises the question of whether what novels really do is open us up to questioning and thinking in ways that may threaten the status quo, the powers that be, or our own understandings and beliefs. From her perspective fiction, like many arts has the power to change the world. That makes it scary, and even subversive to some. So what have you read lately that rocked your world?
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Friday, January 8, 2010
Books in Winter
In the fantasy novel College of Magics, one of the wardens of the earth tells the young protagonist that she has done magic. “When?” she asks. “A year ago you made it snow in the cloister garden,” he tells her. “Perception and will. You perceived that is should snow. Behold. Snow.”
I can’t walk through the snow anymore without thinking of that line. Walking through the snow, my boots shush, pushing the snow aside. The temperature hovers around freezing, the air is heavy with moisture. It’s weather made for snowing. I can feel it in the air. It should snow and so it does.
Medium flakes, fluffy and heavy with water fall to the ground. They pile up. I feel their cool caress on my cheeks. Their melting wetness dots my glasses. They catch in my hair like dust in a cobweb. The valley is gray with falling snow, as if I’m looking through a veil. The cars going down the road across the valley sound as if they are far off, muffled by the whiteness that blankets my shoulders, covers my hat. The flakes fall down, caressing me, drifting to earth, just as they should. I can feel it, that sense that something is happening that is supposed to happen, something is unfolding just as it should.
The snow piles up along the bare branches forming little ridges waiting for that last flake which sends the whole mound avalanching to the ground. Flakes sizzle as they hit the power line. The air is electric, as if you can hear each flake landing. The trees on the hilltops are lined with snow, pines forming white pinnacles against the sky. The bare maples and ash trees stand, their dark skeletal frames outlined in white. The valley is like an ink drawing, dark trees against pure white snowy background, shades of gray filling the spaces in between. And everything is as is should be. Will and perception.
In all the moments of a day or a life, there may not be many that feel that way, but when the flakes begin to pile up on the ground, I scoop them up in my gloves as I walk along. They mold themselves into a ball, with almost no effort on my part. They seek each other out, longing to cling together, just like they longed to fall from the sky. They feel it just like I do this sense of rightness, this sense that yes this is meant to happen.
You can get that sense of rightness from a good book, too. The story that unfolds in a way that just feels right. You can also get the sense of snow and cold from a good book, which sometimes may be better than being out in it. Among some good snowy tales are the Scandinavian mysteries, which are growing in popularity. If you liked Stieg Larsson’s “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” try “Box 21” by Anders Roslund, “Snowstorm” by Åsa Larsson, “Frozen Tracks” by Åke Edwardson, or “The Water’s Edge” by Karen Fossum. There’s also some snowy non-fiction to choose from, too. “The Windows of Brimnes” is Bill Holm’s experience living in Iceland and Canadian Farley Mowat always provides good reading in books such as “Snow Walkers” or “High Latitudes.” So, enjoy the rightness of snowfall and a good read @ the library!
I can’t walk through the snow anymore without thinking of that line. Walking through the snow, my boots shush, pushing the snow aside. The temperature hovers around freezing, the air is heavy with moisture. It’s weather made for snowing. I can feel it in the air. It should snow and so it does.
Medium flakes, fluffy and heavy with water fall to the ground. They pile up. I feel their cool caress on my cheeks. Their melting wetness dots my glasses. They catch in my hair like dust in a cobweb. The valley is gray with falling snow, as if I’m looking through a veil. The cars going down the road across the valley sound as if they are far off, muffled by the whiteness that blankets my shoulders, covers my hat. The flakes fall down, caressing me, drifting to earth, just as they should. I can feel it, that sense that something is happening that is supposed to happen, something is unfolding just as it should.
The snow piles up along the bare branches forming little ridges waiting for that last flake which sends the whole mound avalanching to the ground. Flakes sizzle as they hit the power line. The air is electric, as if you can hear each flake landing. The trees on the hilltops are lined with snow, pines forming white pinnacles against the sky. The bare maples and ash trees stand, their dark skeletal frames outlined in white. The valley is like an ink drawing, dark trees against pure white snowy background, shades of gray filling the spaces in between. And everything is as is should be. Will and perception.
In all the moments of a day or a life, there may not be many that feel that way, but when the flakes begin to pile up on the ground, I scoop them up in my gloves as I walk along. They mold themselves into a ball, with almost no effort on my part. They seek each other out, longing to cling together, just like they longed to fall from the sky. They feel it just like I do this sense of rightness, this sense that yes this is meant to happen.
You can get that sense of rightness from a good book, too. The story that unfolds in a way that just feels right. You can also get the sense of snow and cold from a good book, which sometimes may be better than being out in it. Among some good snowy tales are the Scandinavian mysteries, which are growing in popularity. If you liked Stieg Larsson’s “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” try “Box 21” by Anders Roslund, “Snowstorm” by Åsa Larsson, “Frozen Tracks” by Åke Edwardson, or “The Water’s Edge” by Karen Fossum. There’s also some snowy non-fiction to choose from, too. “The Windows of Brimnes” is Bill Holm’s experience living in Iceland and Canadian Farley Mowat always provides good reading in books such as “Snow Walkers” or “High Latitudes.” So, enjoy the rightness of snowfall and a good read @ the library!
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