Best Part of a Book

I finished reading John Irving's Prayer for Owen Meany on Tuesday and am now happily starting in on Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss , a hard cover copy of the Booker Prize winner that the boyfriend gave me. When I finish a book, I add it to the list in the back of my journal. When I finish the journal, I transcribe the list into a (ridiculous) journal I keep that is simply a list of books. All this happened when I finished Owen Meany. Last night, I opened the Desai and got started on it. In between, I wondered, is the best part of a book the beginning or the end, the moment before you read it or the moment you close it for the last time?

I think the pre-reading phase depends on what kind of book person you are. There seem to be two types of book people. One is the library reader. These folks are either voracious readers or just sensible enough to not want piles and piles of books in their house. They probably also realize that it's pure frivolity to spend money on something that you are only going to use once, takes up space, collects dust, and is notoriously difficult to move overseas. These people are potentially sensible enough to not have and emotional bond with their unread books. The other type is the book keeper. There are several variations on this type, but I think they all relate emotionally to unread books.

I'm a used book collector and new book coveter. I adore new books and think that a brand new hardcover is true decadence. I remember the first hardcover book I bought for myself, Allan Gurganus' Plays Well with Others. In the fall of 1997, he gave a reading at the University of Chapel Hill and that Christmas I got a bookstore gift certificate. Gurganus' novel was a way to really spoil myself and it had great cover art, too. Now, you can get it used on Amazon for $0.06, what a joke.

The used book collector is the part that trolls thrift store and used bookstores and actually finds used bookstores a wee bit over priced. It's the part that buys anything by P.G. Wodehouse and stuffs a shelf with a double row of books to read. No one with a double row of books to read (and that's only fiction) needs to buy any books at all! And yet, this month, I bought more books. There's the Marx for Beginners that a friend told me about. It was written by Rius, who is apparently a quite well known Mexican comic-strip-drawing-type. Last weekend I picked up Amy Tan's The Bonesetter's Daughter and a book called Dealing with the Dutch that might be useful for work. Both were at the thrift store.

This is the pre-reading joy of books. It's a time when looking at them and thinking about what they might contain is exciting. Having a shelf of books to choose from when you finish a book is both luxurious and daunting. Luxurious because you can pick something to suit your mood; daunting because you know that you shouldn't buy any books with that many sitting at home. I have even had to thin the books-not-read shelf in order to make room for more books that I haven't read yet. That means I sent books back to a thrift store. Some of them came from a thrift store in the US and got sent to a thrift store in the Netherlands. It may very well have cost more to ship them than to buy them!

So there's the joy of having a book that you haven't read yet on one side and there's the satisfaction, or sometimes the disappointment, of finding out just what was between the covers on the other side. There is a ritualistic quality to both, especially for someone odd enough to keep and maintain a books-not-read shelf. I suppose it makes sense to save the in-between part for another post. But I'm curious what other people think, or if they think at all, about this. What is the best part of a book for you?

Brand new pet peeve...

The title looks like I could be selling a new stuffed animal (that walks and talks) for Christmas this year. In fact, I am correcting exams. Great fun, whatever they tell you, fun from start to finish!

To make it more fun and exciting, one of my (lovely) students put a handy dandy abbreviation guide on the first page of student's exam. Meaning instead of writing out words, student invented abbreviations just for student's exam that I get to look up in the handy dandy guide. Next time, hopefully student will just write out the words! I have no desire to experience correcting papers as an educational experience in handy dandy abbreviations.

Note to self: it is possible to over use the phrase "handy dandy." Shocking.

Exam time

It turns out that the end of the semester is as anxiety inducing for lecturers as it is for students. While I am getting sleep, I am also getting frightening emails from the "results administration" telling me that my grades have to be posted within 5 days of exams being written. 70 students each wrote a 2 hour exam for me. The exam consisted of short answers and essay questions. Now these papers are supposed to be graded within five working days. So, figure each student wrote five pages (haven't seen the exams yet) and they have half way decent handwriting (they probably don't). That's 350 pages of reading. And let's not forget that there are also project papers, about 12 left and 15 pages each. That's 180 pages, but on a computer, so more words, easier to read, minimal content or organization. Now I've got 530 pages of grading to do for just one class. Cramming for exams probably took less time.

It's no surprise that some teachers have clever alternative plans that are significantly less time consuming.

Mint tea is Moroccan

Yesterday I went to out for dinner in Amsterdam with some colleagues. This is sort of the theme now that the teaching semester is over, all the lecturers start to get the feeling that we have time on our hands. I, for one, feel like I'm getting more sleep than my students for the first time all semester! Of course in reality, none of this is true because yesterday 70 students spent two hours writing my exam and the "results administration" office expects all those grades to be entered into the computer by this coming Wednesday. So there are actually mountains of things that need to get done.

Dinner yesterday evening was a great diversion, though. Delicious Turkish food full of fresh vegetables. There were about 10 different dishes and each one of them had a distinct flavor and even texture. It was delightful - until it came time to order coffee and tea. Lately, I've developed a taste for mint tea after meals. It's probably all in my head, but it makes my tummy feel good. Lucky for me, though, I live in a country where fresh mint tea is currently all the rage and you can get it in every cafe. Naturally,when it was my turn to order I asked the waitress/owner/cook's wife if they happen to have fresh mint tea...

"This is a Turkish restaurant, mint tea is Moroccan."
"Yes, but you can even order it in Belgium! Do you have any kind of mint tea?"
"Mint tea is Moroccan, this is a Turkish restaurant."
"Um, OK then..."
(switching to English) "You see? This is a Turkish restaurant, mint tea is Moroccan."

The 50+ Dutch woman finally helped me understand... mint tea is Moroccan.

I should talk to u, tho...

I just got an email from a student who wrote "u" instead of "you" and "tho" instead of "though." Where are they getting this from? All the more reason that next year, among the pile of new handouts that all my students will receive next semester, will be the "writing a serious e-mail" handout. It will cover some of the basics...

• Always use a subject line. Otherwise, I can never find your email again, ever! Oh, and the subject should pertain to the content of your email, not you.
• Don't send a blank email with an attachment. It's thoughtless and there is a good chance that I will have no idea why you are sending me this document.
• Do not address your emails to "teacher" or "miss." If you don't know my name yet, don't email me.
• Do not write an email that says "I'll be there!" Where? When? What for?
• Always, always, always respond to email from your lecturers. If you do not confirm your meeting with me, I will not keep the time free! (frighteningly, that rhymes)

I may have to include a couple of other handy hints, like...

• If you send me a document, it's like handing it in to my mailbox. Put your name in the document!

Very happy that the semester is almost over. Now just a few days of my life spent correcting papers and maybe I will start breathing easy and sleeping normally again.

(edited 7 december 2006)

Bound Feet

The NY Times has an article about Chinese women with bound feet today. This painful practice is luckily outdated, but it turns out that there are still women walking around (!) in China today on bound feet that are as small as three or four inches long. There are number of websites with appropriately icky images, but Joseph Rupp has put together a number of oral histories and portraits that look at how this practice has affected these women's lives.

My interest in Chinese culture and Taiwanese history has peaked over the past year. On a trip to Malaysia in August 2005, instead of feeling like an American girl and a stranger in yet another country, I felt surprisingly at home. The way people interacted with each other made more sense to me than what I experience in Holland and I did not feel like a social oaf all the time. The trip got me thinking that maybe there is something to being half Taiwanese aside from the funny looks (mine) and good food. Now I'm reading my first book about Taiwanese history in snatches on the train and even thinking about trying the language again. It's an awkward and exciting time of discovery and curiosity.