My mother taught me to read when I was three years old, giving me a head start on my studies. I became a complete bookworm, practically incapable of eating without reading at the same time, and in college, I was a huge fan of Canadiana and worked my way through Atwood and the complete works of Robertson Davies, despite a huge amount of required reading for school. And that’s all before I picked up Tolkien and Austen.

After college ended, I could hardly get myself to finish a book, to enjoy the activity, not for want of trying. I had years when I read one, sometimes no books at all. Had I read everything that was ever susceptible of pleasing me? Were videogames rotting my brain? Whatever the reason, I realized this and owned it. I thought of myself as someone who didn’t read; despite having the most avid readers as my good friends, I accepted being left out of all literary conversations. I just don’t read, I thought.

Then early last year over the holiday, I happened to pick up Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything, and nearly everything changed. Something about reading events that had really happened was so much more compelling than a novel. I gobbled it up and ravenously looked for more. I picked up and inhaled the biography of Elizabeth I, then friends lent me Bill Bryson’s Australia travelogue In a Sunburned Country. Hooked on non-fiction, I followed up exhilaratingly with Blink, Guns, Germs and Steel, A Short History of Progress, Freakonomics, Maus and Heroes of History. I was unstoppable!

It’s not the fact that I’m learning about the world that does it for me; it’s not the promise of more success at trivia, nor even the added compellingness of true stories. It’s the way non-fiction is written, to deliver information as directly and clearly as possible, that really turns me on. Call me impatient, call me producerly efficient, but when I pick up a novel now I feel the author knows where he’s going and is delaying getting to the point, the better to weave the tale. Non-fiction in comparison delivers the goods straight. I feel less… manipulated.

I’ll hopefully go back to fiction eventually, but for now, I’m going to ride this positive addiction as far as it takes me (which right now happens to be France, where Mary Queen of Scots is growing up).

 

So, before I left I asked for suggestions for vacation reading, and you really came through. I managed to crunch through three and a half books during my vacation, and here’s what I thought.

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
Okay, this is the “half” book, because I finished it on the road. Not Atwood’s best, but not bad either. Story within a story within a story told by an old lady remembering her life. You get the narrative of her current life, that of her youth, and that of a book written by her deceased sister. The obvious parallels between the three threads unfortunately fail to titillate. I had trouble getting into it (and I hear I’m not the only one), and then it was still too slow for my taste. If you want great Atwood, pick up The Robber Bride or Alias Grace.

All Families Are Psychotic by Douglas Coupland
This was the first novel by Coupland I’ve ever read, and I choose my words carefully here: I thoroughly hated this book. I’m at a loss to even know where to begin explaining what was objectionable about it, but here goes anyway.

The story concerns a family’s reunion in Florida on the occasion of the astronaut daughter’s launch into space. It is nothing but an unlikely series of Hollywoodesque events: it seems whenever any character drives a car, they have a spectacular accident, whenever any character goes into a store, the store gets robbed and the character invariably gets shot.

One of the problems is that this unbelievable narrative rolls on without any commentary, analysis, character development or, perhaps most objectionably, any real direction or theme. It’s just a bunch of unbelievable events.

I’ve read my share of books that were all action and pure fast food enjoyment. But I couldn’t even enjoy this book on that level! It is so far-fetched that I had trouble suspending disbelief: Three men think nothing of squeezing into the trunk of a car, because the female driver’s mad at them. Mom gets AIDS from her son when he gets shot (by Dad) and the bullet goes through him into her. Something like this happens every second page. And there’s no grand scheme to bring it all home.

The book and I were in trouble early on when, a few chapters into the story, the main character says something completely wrong and out of character (for the way I was imagining her). She just didn’t work. I had to try and consciously come up with an image of an uneducated, straight-laced housewife who would suddenly quote Kierkegaard. Gifted writers can make anything seem natural, but this wasn’t the case here. Moreover, the dialogue kept kicking me out of the story, every time I thought “nobody really talks that way!”.

What was very confusing about this was that the novel had been independently recommended by two friends whose taste I respect. Because of this, I kept expecting the author, in the middle of the book, to break the narrative and say “Just kidding! Here’s the real story!”.

Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Aaaaah… Now here’s another completely unbelievable story, but this one is extremely well written, such that the unbelievable ends up feeling completely normal. In case you’ve been living under a rock, Life of Pi is the story of a boy stranded on a liferaft with a royal Bengal tiger.

The book is written in delicious and evocative prose, yet it never becomes pretentious or draws attention to itself. It tells a story, plain and simple, an entertaining, touching, sometimes heartbreaking story. It’s absolutely terrifying, it’s laugh-out-loud funny. It’s also full of interesting lore about zookeeping, wild animals and religion. Life of Pi is real pleasure, the best book I’ve read all year. I will definitely pick up Martel’s previous novel.

The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger
This one was in T’s bookpile, and I picked it up when I finished mine. It tells the true story of the Andrea Gail, a swordfishing boat that sank in the biggest storm of the century, in the fall of 1991 (yes, the same Perfect Storm as in the Clooney movie). The book includes just the right mix of interesting background information, entertaining adventure tales and a journalistic attention to accurate detail. If you’re looking for a well-researched, entertaining vacation read, this book does the job perfectly. It’s what I’d call the thinking man’s thriller.

However, there’s another book in that category that I’d recommend even more. The Perfect Storm reminded me a lot of Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer’s first-hand account of the 1996 Everest tragedy which took the lives of eight people. I can’t recommend this book enough, whether you’re into mountaineering or, like most people, not. The extremes of human heroism, selfishness and folly in it hard absolutely incredible. Everyone I’ve lent it to (a diverse bunch, from Dr. Wank to my mother) has loved it.

Thanks for all the suggestions. I’m going to Texas next week, so I’ll be digging into the pile of suggestions again very shortly.

Blork just reminded me of an incredibly important issue I have yet to resolve, and I ask you for suggestions: What should I read on the trip?

Much like the tapes you listen to, the books you read on the road can significantly influence the mood and enjoyment of a trip, be it by making 7-hour train trips fly by or providing an alternate perspective from which to experience the journey.

When I’m travelling, I constantly hear my inner voice trying to put the various experiences into words, trying to intellectualize it all, to make it fit into my world view, to extract easily-formulated lessons. Reading, by providing another voice, helps me to quiet down the inner logorrhea and let go. For that reason, on the road I try to read books that take me out of my own world.

Java was a particularly good book trip for me, as I took in Dune (an excellent example of an “other world” book), Sense and Sensibility and The World According to Garp. I was lucky for those were the books I was able to acquire through trading with other backpackers.

I’ve been meaning to read The Art of Travel, but I think doing so on the road might lead to “meta-travelling”, self-analysis instead of living in the moment. Another one on my book pile is Life of Pi, which seems like a good choice.

Any wonderful ideas?