The Birth of an Obsession

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When we were in San Francisco on the way back from Hawai’i I spent my timewalking from used bookstore to used bookstore while John was in meetings all day. I have been to San Francisco about five times, and John and I have done plenty of exploring. But this time I just put some Xs on a map and headed out into the sunshine. And it was so much fun, not just the bookstores, but the city itself. My quads and calves may have been barking from all the hills but my god, what an amazing city.

Anyhoo, while I went from bookstore to bookstore I had the same problem I had in Hawai’i at Talk Story. I had plenty of reading material and no real interest in random browsing. I felt the need to have some sort of mission. When I was in Green Apple Books it hit me. For some time I have been thinking about vintage editions of Signet Classics paperbacks. They have funky covers, really nice paper, and although they were published before I was born, I have fond memories of them floating around bookstores during my college days. So I thought, hey, why not start a Signet collection? They would be fun to hunt for at used bookstores, rummage sales, charity shops, etc. And it would be cheap. And they are fun to look at. And the earliest versions didn’t use pulp paper so the pages are really smooth and cool to the touch.

So at Green Apple I started to my obsession. Continued it later that day at another fantastic bookstore Russian Hill Books. And then soon after we were back from Hawai’i John was out of town for work so I drove out to Hagerstown and Frederick, Maryland and hunted for so more at Wonderbook.

I am not sure how far I will take this. But it is kind of fun for now.

Should male and female authors be segregated?

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In the tiny little town on Hanapepe on the island of Kaua’i we came across this great used bookstore. Easily the best used bookstore I have ever come across in Hawai’i.  When I lived in Honolulu in the 1990s there were only two used bookstores that I knew of, and both of them were really disappointing. I was so excited to see this on Kaua’i that opened about seven years ago.

I noticed the shop had some really nice bookshelves that looked awfully familar. Proof that the book world didn’t necessarily come to and end when Borders closed. Not only did they get good shelves for cheap, but one of the owners told me that local customers who had never been in before finally checked out his store when Borders closed.

The store had good stock and had tons of great fiction that would have been great for my vacation reading. But since I already have five books with me and the luggage was too heavy already. But I did buy a very cute little edition of Cranford.

One odd thing about the store is that they separate fiction by the sex of the author. So all the male authors are alphabetical in one section, and all the female authors are alphabetical in another section. The owner told me it helped people locate books when they couldn’t remember titles or author’s names. He said they almost always remember the sex of the author, so splitting it up by sex improved the odds of finding the titleless, authorless book the customer was looking for. I’m not sure I buy it. But overall this store is gem. It would be fun on the mainland where there were other bookstore choices, being alone on Kaua’i, the western most bookstore in the United States, it is like an oasis in the desert.

Oh, and by the way, the name “Talk Story” refers to a pidgin phrase that essentially means to tell stories, or even just chat. The Hawaiian equivalent of chewing the fat, or having a chin wag. As in “Auntie came over and all we did was talk story…”

I love the way the letters are on the laundry. Especially the ‘S’

Getting up early can be fun

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If you ever go to Kalalau lookout get up there by 8:30 in the morning. You will pretty much have the place to yourself. Just make sure you dress warmly. The cloud cover can be dodgy. I had been there three times previously and it was usually on the cloudy side and once almost totally socked in. But this time it was bright and blue.  Again the sun angles weren’t doing us any favors with the pictures, but it was really wonderful to be up there.

This is the widest valley along the Na Pali coast which we saw
from the water side on our first day.

This hibiscus was actually down on the coast near the Russian fort,
but it was such a cool picture I couldn’t help including it.

The Na Pali Coast and the island of Ni’ihau

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On our first full day on Kaua’i we got up at the ungodly hour of 5:00 AM so we could check in for our catamaran cruise along the Na Pali coast of Kaua’i and a snorkel stop just off the forbidden island of Ni’ihau. The Na Pali coast was astoundingly beautiful but because the sun was coming up over the mountains the photos are kind of backlit and don’t really tell the whole story.

The island of Ni’ihau (below) is called the forbidden island because it has been privately owned since the 1850s and is not open to the general public. We tried to book a helicopter tour that would take you over and put down on one of the beaches, but they didn’t have enough people going on the days we wanted to go, so we took this Na Pali cruise that goes over to Ni’ihau for a little snorkelling off the coast.  The owners of the island, a Scots/Kiwi family were (are?) strict Calvinists and required that those natives living on the island convert and follow Calvinist precepts. I think they are looking to sell. I wonder if the Calvinists convey with the deed?

Book Review: Grace Notes by Bernard MacLaverty

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I first read Grace Notes in October of 1997, soon after it was short-listed for, but didn’t win, the Booker Prize. I bought it on an extended trip to England after my two years in Hawaii and before I settled back down in Minneapolis. I am a little surprised I bought this hardcover book given that I tend not to buy HCs (especially when the author isn’t known to me) and I was on an extremely limited budget at the time and can’t believe I spent £15 on a book. That could have paid for a lot of scones with clotted cream.

When I decided to put it in my TBR Double Dare pile I had no recollection of what the story was about. I remember kind of liking it at the time and knew it had a musical theme running through it. I think what tipped me into a re-read was that, because of its cover and its association with that trip to England, the book has survived many a serious book cull. (Bought it in London, took it back to Minneapolis, moved it to Ithaca, moved it to DC, and then moved it to three different places in DC.) It seems to me that a book that has survived all of that deserves to be remembered.

Before I sat down to write this review I looked at my “books read” log to see when I first read it and I noticed that I had given it a 6 out 10 (which means “Almost liked it” on my scale). This time I give it a solid 8 which equates to “Almost loved it”.  I am not sure what I thought fifteen years ago when I first read it, but this time I was interested in the personal story, loved the way MacLaverty threaded the musical bits throughout the novel, and found myself laughing out loud in a few places.

The Story
Catherine McKenna is an Irish woman living in Glasgow and estranged from her parents who still live back in Northern Ireland. The novel starts with the death of Catherine’s father and then winds its way back through her life and how she got to be the promising young composer that she has become and how she got her daughter Anna and kept that fact from her parents until after her father’s death. One of the things I found fascinating about the story is Anna’s relationship with her Catholic faith and her Catholic parents. I left the Catholic church round about 1987. Even my life-long Catholic parents, fed up with hypocrisy in the pulpit and the pews, left the church sometime in the 1990s.

The thing about my family’s Catholicism was that it wasn’t dogmatic and it tended not to be judgemental. We were extremely active in our local parish. My dad spent so much time at church we used to joke that he would be saying Mass soon. And I was in the church youth group for four years, was the youth representative on the Parish Council, and was in the choir for seven years before going off to college. But despite all of that we weren’t the kind of Catholics who felt that other denominations were going to hell or that unwed mothers should be cast out, or any of the other hallmarks of the closed minded, mean-spirited, spiteful, superstitious, and unfortunately far too large wing of the church that has no problem covering up child rape yet thinks that gay marriage is going to bring about the end of the world. Anyhoo, since I am so far removed from that world these days, Catherine’s dogmatic and unforgiving parents seem quite anachronistic to me even for 1997. But I am probably kidding myself and that that kind of old school Catholic is probably just as prevalent as ever given the long tenure of the uber-conservative John Paul II and his once a Nazi factotum now known as Uncle Fester Pope Benedict. And lest I have offended any Catholics out there, if you are reading this blog you are unlikely to be the kind I rail against, and the Popes, having firmly put themselves in the political fray on countless issues deserve to be critiqued like any other political figure.

By the end of the book Catherine finds herself in a positive place and one can see how things might work out for her–even though many things are left unresolved.

The Musical Bits
I have come across very few good novels that include themes about classical music. Norman Labrecht does it well and Robert Ford’s The Student Conductor is a delight. Some Willa Cather does it but it seems a little more tangential or further in the background in her work. MacLaverty writes about music in a way that never really feels forced or name droppy. One really feels like composer Catherine is who she is. Not that I would know, but she seems to think like a composer and music is woven into all the threads of her life. One of the most amazing achievements is that MacLaverty describes Catherine’s compositions so well that I could hear them in my head, and really wanted to hear them for real. If only they weren’t fictional.

The Funny Bits
This novel is no comedy but it has more than a few witty obervations that made me chuckle and in one or two cases really laugh out loud.

Liz: “I must be getting old.”
Catherine: “Why?”
Liz: “I saw an outfit today in the cancer shop window I liked.”

Out of context this may not seem quite so humorous, but against the backdrop of Catherine’s depressed, frustrated life it certainly made me chuckle.

I can’t imagine too many of you are going to come across this one in your reading. But if you like books with musical themes or are doing one of those crazy “must read all Booker shortlisted books” challenges this is definitely worth pursuing.

                                            

Stuff you can see on Kaua’i

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The island of O’ahu (where Honolulu is) has about 905,000 residents. The island of Kaua’i which is about the same size as O’ahu only has 64,000 residents. You can imagine how different the two islands are compared to each other. Known as the garden isle, Kaua’i is lush and green, and, as you will see in the coming days, has quite a bit of geographic diversity.

Shelf Esteem No. 9

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Cozy Factor: The warm wood and the well-worn look of the books certainly give it some cozy, but it is hard to tell without seeing the rest of the room. I have hunch it may be a loft space so it may not have the coziness of a library but I bet the shelves add to the overall cozy of the room. I think the wood floors could use a rug.

The Shelves: I think they are beautifully made and are a nice warm color. They look like they adjustable which is kind attractive to me. Stacking books horizontally (as I do in some cases) might be difficult given the fact that the vertical members only up half way.

The Books: Lots of philosophy, lit crit, and poetry on the shelves. Very few discernible novels. The books stacked on the floor look like stuff that she picked up while aimlessly browsing the tables at her local Barnes and Noble. Three by Anthony Bourdain, an picture book of ironically bad hair cuts, the book Rats which I have read and has some fascinating information among the filler.

Is this person a reader? Well she appears to be reading right now…assuming this is her library, I would say that she is a reader, but her reading has changed. My guess is she was philosophy major and perhaps even got a Master’s degree before going to law school. Now that she is safely on the partner tract at work she is only now starting to read again after a decade’s hiatus. All the new books arranged in the foreground suggest that her current reading tastes are not as lofty as they once were.

The book I would read if I had to pick one: Mongo: Adventures in Trash in which author Ted Botha explores the world of trash in NYC and those who collect and reuse objects discarded by others.

        

My OCD also applies to kayak rentals

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Often when we are on vacation John suggests renting something: bikes, scooters, kayaks, canoes, etc. and it makes me crazy. Why? With the exception of scooters (riding in traffic on a tin can with a lawn mower motor, no thanks), these are things I actually like to do. So why do I resist? Because while he is thinking of the result (having fun) all I can think of are logistics.

I just started to make a list of the logistical details that overwhelm me and any desire I may have to have fun, and I am embarassed at how petty and inconsequential they are. Yet they often keep us from doing things. How has John put up with this for almost 10 years? There is also an inherited trait that keeps me from asking simple questions that could clear up some hesitation–it stems from a desire to not bother people and to not look like I don’t know what I am doing. How foolish is that? And then, to cap all of this off is my need to get places. I have a hard time enjoying journeys. Why can’t everyone understand that getting to point B is the point of everything. You can see how taking scenic drives are sometime lost on me. No John we can’t stop at that scenic overlook because we have somewhere to be…even when we don’t.

All of this means, that in every facet of my life, my initial reaction to EVERYTHING is “no”. I am getting better at keeping this “no” to myself. This is especially important since often times the “no” turns to “yes” in a matter of seconds or minutes. And if I don’t immediately articulate the “no” it gives me a chance a second or two later to not be a stick-in-the-mud. I am getting to the point where I almost seem spontaneous (almost) when we travel.  One of the ways I deal with it is to plan all the bits that are controllable to allow more space in between for spontaneity and things that are out of my control. But perhaps even more importantly is that I try not to worry about long strings of details that need to be dealt with in order to do something. Instead, I have gotten much better at just taking things one detail at a time. It’s not to say I don’t still visualize the whole arc of things that need to happen for a successful result. That, after all, can be a very good trait. But it does mean that I don’t obsess that every one of those things is going to go wrong and therefore we shouldn’t even bother trying.

Although I know John would agree that I have gotten much better about these things, I am guessing that he probably thinks I have some work to do.

Day Three
I took John back to Lanikai beach which is easily the nicest beach on O’ahu, and because of its location in a residential neighborhood is not subject to tour buses. The sand is fine and soft, the water is always perfect (except on the occasions when Portuguese men o’war are present), and the view is unbeatable. It is on the windward side of the island so it gets more cloud and rain than the Honolulu side of the island, but when the weather is nice Lanikai is the best.

And, WE RENTED A KAYAK.  There is a wonderful company called Hawaii Beach Time that not only rents kayaks, but they also rent chairs, umbrellas, coolers, and other beach equipment and they deliver to (and pick-up at) any beach on O’ahu.  It was brilliant.

We had a two-person kayak and paddled our way out this bird sanctuary off the coast. It was amazing. The water was gorgeous and the island was beautiful. I would do that again in a heartbeat.

This is a little grainy since it was taken on an iPad.
The island on the left is the bird sanctuary we kayaked out to.
Absolutely gorgeous.

After we were done at Lanikai we went back Honolulu via Makapuu and stopped more than once at scenic overlooks. In one case I even turned the car around to take a look at one. Progress.

Makapuu Beach Park

It was a spectacular final day on O’ahu capped off with an incredible meal at Town, a farm-to-table restaurant in the Kaimuki neighborhood.

Among other things Town had amazing bread and the best foccacia I have ever had.
And who knew that butter IN a pool of olive oil would be so delicious?
Photo credit: Pursuing Wabi