karen > Books: books-about-books-about-books‎ (110)

I heard a woman complaining to another woman.

The complaint was that this woman was involved with a man who kept giving her books, and though these books all seemed to be very good books, books that this woman wanted to read and intended to read, she simply could not keep up with the rate at which he was giving her all these books. Each time he gave her a book, the complaining woman said, the man insisted it was a very special book, a book that meant a tremendous amount to him, and regardless of its length or density, he had always read this book many times over. The complaining woman also had many loving things to say about the man who was giving her all this reading material, so I gathered that, if these books had meant a great deal to him, then they both likely hoped that all these books would mean a great deal to her, and yet how could they know if she had not yet read them?

Several times during this complaint, the complaining woman reassured the listening woman that she was immensely grateful to receive these books from this man, as she loved reading and did a great deal of it, though she read at a regrettably slow pace, a handicap she often tried to improve, though it seemed that her reading comprehension suffered when she tried to read too quickly, and what would be the point of reading if at the end of a book you couldn’t recall what you’d read? True, she did tend to forget many details of a book regardless of the rate at which she read it, but she felt sure that her memory loss was greatly exacerbated when she tried to force herself to exceed her natural pace.

The listening woman interrupted with urgency: Had this man ever accepted any books from her? Oh, yes, the complaining woman said. And he read each of them so quickly and so closely! She was running out of books to recommend, in fact, and though she was glad that the man seemed to genuinely enjoy the books she gave him, she had to admit she was mildly alarmed by how he always came back to her with some criticism about the author’s style or disposition, criticisms he delivered with such elegant judiciousness that, even though the complaining woman usually did not want to accept the intellectual blemish that the man had located in the book, she had to admit that he was correct in his analysis.

She had a particular shelf, the complaining woman said, where she was keeping all the books he’d given her. When she could find the time, she intended to read each of them so carefully, but she had her own work to attend to and various arbitrary commitments, as well as other books that he had not given to her that she wanted or needed to read for some reason or another. Often, she would take one of the books he’d given her in her hands and consider it, thoughtfully but not without a little fear, yet most of them were still on the shelf, not yet read.

We all remember things in our own way, she smiles, and we’re all correct…it’s emotional truth that matters.

Dear Professor Mansfield,

I am investigating a mysterious case and suspect you may be able to help. Let me explain.

An iPhone 4 is among a number of items belonging to a recently reported missing person. It is not associated with any mobile network and at first appeared to be blank, with no call records, music, emails, texts or photographs. Upon closer examination it was found to contain a series of deleted audio files: voice recordings in various encrypted formats, with dates that span eleven weeks in 2019. we recovered these files and deciphered them.

There are 200 files in total. We utilised specialist software and processed them in batches to speed up the transcription process. A key to this follows, along with the text. You will notice the transcription is phonetic, so spelling and grammar are quirky to say the least. On a number of occasions the software "mishears" or simply approximates words and phrases, especially when speech is in the vernacular. For instance, the phrase "must have" is frequently transcribed as "mustard." "Going to" becomes "gun a" and the town of Bournemouth is referred to variously as "bore mouth," "Bormuth," "bore moth" and "boar mouth." You will soon become accustomed to this and it should not interfere with your understanding of the material.

I've sent these files to you, Professor, in the strictest confidence. Quite apart from any personal connection you may have to the subject, your expert opinion on their contents would be very much appreciated. Call me when you've read to the end and we'll speak then.

Yours sincerely,

Inspector Waliso

Like most book people, there was a shadow in his face, a hollow echo in his laugh, that let you know he'd rather be around books than people. Who could blame him? It was why so many of us were in this business. People had let us down. People had broken our hearts. We liked books and animals and messy rooms full of things that weren't people.

My father was a man with huge, unrealistic dreams and absolutely no acumen for everyday life. What he had in abundance was alcoholism, grandiosity, and maybe manic depression. My mother had studied English at Boston University before she looked for someone to ruin her life and found my father. My parents were both terrified of trying to improve our lives, long sapped of the strength for any more risk. But they approached failure with cheerful bravery, making every move and step down seem like a new adventure for as long as they could.

Sometimes I can’t believe how quickly it went, and sometimes I can’t believe I was ever allowed to have been so happy for so long.

Sometimes I can’t believe how quickly it went, and sometimes I can’t believe I was ever allowed to have been so happy for so long.

The Clive Cusslers and mom bloggers might still be persuadable that Jake was a famous, or at least a “highly regarded” young (now “youngish”) novelist, but the would-be David Foster Wallaces and Donna Tartts who were certainly present in the pile of folders? Not so much. This group would be all too aware that Jacob Finch Bonner had fumbled his early shot, failed to produce a good enough second novel or any trace of a third novel, and been sent to the special purgatory for formerly promising writers, from which so few of them ever emerged. (It happened to be untrue that Jake had not produced a third novel, but in this case the untruth was actually preferable to the truth. There had indeed been a third novel, and even a fourth, but those manuscripts, the making of which had together consumed nearly five years of his life, had been rejected by a spectacular array of publishers of declining prestige, from the “legacy” publisher of The Invention of Wonder to the respectable university press that had published his second book, Reverberations, to the many, many small press publication competitions listed in the back of Poets & Writers, which he had spent a small fortune entering, and, needless to say, had failed to win. Given these demoralizing facts, he actually preferred that his students believe he was still struggling to reel in that mythical and stupendous second novel.)

"I’m starting as an adjunct at Hopkins this fall, but I’ve never taught. I might be in pretty far over my head.”

He looked at her, his reserve of goodwill, already small, now swiftly draining away. Adjunct at Johns Hopkins was nothing to sneeze at. It probably meant a fellowship she’d had to beat a few hundred other poets out for. The university press publication was likely also the result of a prize, it occurred to him now, and just about everyone coming out of an MFA program with a manuscript went in for every one of those. This girl, Alice, was quite possibly some version of a big deal, or at least what passed for a big deal in the poetry world. The thought of that deflated him utterly.

Being an avid mystery reader as an adolescent does not prepare you for real life. I truly imagined that my adult existence would be far more booklike than it turned out to be. I thought, for example, that there would be several moments in which I got into a cab to follow someone. I thought I'd attend far more readings of someone's will, and that I'd need to know how to pick a lock, and that any time I went on vacation (especially to old creaky inns or rented lake houses) something mysterious would happen. I thought train rides would inevitably involve a murder, that sinister occurrences would plague wedding weekends, and that old friends would constantly be getting in touch to ask for help, to tell me that their lives were in danger. I even thought quicksand would be an issue.