Riding into the New Year
January 1, 2012

2012 is here and how many of us are starting it with negativity? More than a few, I am willing to bet. I am talking of negativity built around guilt or stress or even “shoulda” thoughts, those often phrased at this time as New Year’s resolutions.

One of the great advantages of living with cats is that they never feel guilt: “Guilt? We don’t need no stinkin’ guilt!” Even as the vase, now in pieces, lays out the evidence of their misdeeds, they often look at it with disdain. But never guilt.

There’s a lesson in that, and it’s not that I should go around breaking vases. Rather, it’s that any changes I want to make in my life should be done because I want them. Take reading, for example. Do I feel I read too few books in 2011? I could say yes, but did I, really? I have other obligations—a full-time day job, a home, BiblioBuffet, friends, family, cats, a bit of exercise, and more. When I find myself feeling regretful, especially when others begin totaling up the number of books and pages they read at the end of the year in a kind of what, contest?, I sometimes find myself thinking, “well, I should read more” or, worse, “what’s the matter with me?”

The answer? Nothing. And no. I don’t need to read more. If I want to read more, I can but I have to recognize that something else or other things need to be tossed to make room for it. and maybe I cannot do alter things, or am unwilling to do so. If that’s the case, then I need to accept the fact that I am not able to adhere to an expectation that for me is unrealistic. I might wish things could be different, that I could spend two or three hours every day reading but the truth is that is not possible at this point in time.

So guilt goes out the window. I do what I can. One thing I did do in 2011 was to take a minimum of ten minutes after work and read on the porch or on the sofa. It isn’t my only reading time of the day, but it was meant, along with washing my face and hands (and after feeding the cats but before feeding myself), to be a transition from work to home that defined in a very physical way the separation between the two. And it’s worked. I’ve missed very few days of doing this, and I find it a wholly satisfying ritual.

That change is one I don’t think I would have kept at it for so long now if I had begun it with a sense of “I need to read more.” Rather, it was a positive choice. And it has become not a time commitment but a joyful period.

So, in 2012, I have decided to try focusing on one book at a time. Like many readers, I tend to have several books going at once, and new ones always look attractive. I like the variety of two, three or even four at once, but I have wondered, not for the first time, if I will read more comprehensively if I stick with one. Reading one at a time will allow me to go back, I hope, to that sense of losing myself in a book, where I don’t have this online article to read, that forum to check out, the new book to distract me. I want to go back to concentrated reading, the that “sucked in” pleasure I derived in childhood where it took a lot to pull me out of my book. And I’m about to find out. Right now, I am nearly done with the new 500+ page Dickens biography (including Cast List, Notes, and Prologue) undistracted by anything except sleep. And I’m quite enjoying the experience of focusing solely on that one book.

I am still considering other “reading resolutions” too, including not reading in bed any more. How about you? Got any guilt-free ones you want to share?

Upcoming Book Festivals and Fairs:
The new year is starting off with a bang. Three festivals are coming up this week.

Location: Key West, Florida
Site: Various locations around town
Festival: Key West Literary Seminar
Date: January 5-8, 2012
The theme of the Seminar this year is “Yet Another World: Literature of the Future.” Authors appearing include Margaret Atwood, Douglas Coupland, Michael Cunningham, Jennifer Egan, James Gleick, Robert Krulwich, Jonathan Lethem, Joyce Carol Oates, Dexter Palmer, George Saunders, Gary Shteyngart, Colson Whitehead, and more. The purpose is to explore the potential of the present moment, pursuing it through dystopian, utopian, and imagined worlds that shed light on our current condition.” The program begins with a keynote address on Thursday evening, then two-and-a-half days of more events, two evening receptions, and a farewell luncheon. All these are included in the cost, but there is a free session on Sunday afternoon beginning at 2:15 pm (and includes book signings by a number of the authors).

Location: Hartford, Connecticut
Site: XL Center
Festival: Papermania Plus
Date: January 7-8, 2012
On Saturday from 10:00 am to 5:00 and Sunday from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm, more than 150 exhibitors of books, prints, maps, autographs, and many other forms of ephemera will gather to share and sell their antique paper. Sunday there is also a free appraisal day between 11:00 and 2:00 where you can have one item related to the context of the show appraised for free. Admission is $8, though if you print out the pass on the page it will discount that by fifty cents.

Location: Riverside, California
Site: Riverside Convention Center & Plaza
Festival: Riverside Dickens Festival
Date: January 7-8, 2012
This year is the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens birth, and this incredible, wonderful festival is going all out for it. The featured book this year is A Christmas Carol, and There will be over 150 costumed performers portraying eminent Victorians and characters from Dickens’ novels; musical acts including harmony singers, bawdy belles, and sea shanties; waltzing to live music with lessons provided; a fantastic marketplace, military parade, the opportunity to see a gatling gun in action and to meet Queen Victoria. And it’s all free! Paid events include the special Pickwick’s Pub Night Fundraiser and a dessert performance by Gerald Dickens, the great-great grandson of literary master (his afternoon tea event is unfortunately sold out). There is also Bydand Forever, the Royal Victorian Tea Room and Music Hall, a Victorian fashion show, Evensong, Oliver’s Alley (for children), Mr. Fezziwig’s Grand Ball, and, yes, more. If you can make this, do so!

The Pub House:
Numina Press is a boutique house with two divisions: one that focuses on contemporary works “deemed to have outstanding literary or scientific value,” and the other that re-publishes forgotten classics. All Her Father’s Guns is a thriller involving politics, ex-spouses, family secrets, and the resultant “escalating cycle of revelations” that will bring satisfaction to none but dangerous thrills to all. The Widow’s Husband takes place in the mid-nineteenth century after the British invaded Kabul. (It’s an unusual historical novel in that its viewpoint comes not from the British side but from the Afghan.) News of the invasion still hasn’t reached the remote village of Char Bagh so the biggest news, which will transform the village, is that of the mysterious vagabond who has settled nearby.  In their classics line—which only has four books to date—is one of Jules Verne: Captain Grant’s Children, the story of two children who, upon finding a bottle with a message from their long-missing father, launch a rescue expedition. The problem lies in the fact that the original message was in three languages and partially destroyed by seawater so their one solid clue is vague. Where do they begin?

Imaging Books & Reading:
MacAdam Cage Publishing has released a copy of its Spring 2012 catalog, and the cover is one worth sharing. It’s excellent, very much in The New Yorker style.

Of Interest:
Nicki Leone, BiblioBuffet’s managing editor, has the most exquisite bookish room! Her nine images are enough to make one drool.

Until next week, read well, read often and read on!

Lauren