One for the Books
One of America's leading humorists seriously examines his own obsession with books. Joe Queenan became a voracious reader as a means of escape from a joyless childhood in a Philadelphia housing project. In the years since then he has dedicated himself to an assortment of idiosyncratic reading challenges: spending a year reading only short books, spending a year reading books he always suspected he would hate, spending a year reading books he picked with his eyes closed. In One for the Books, Queenan tries to come to terms with his own eccentric reading style -- how many more books will he have time to read in his lifetime? Why does he refuse to read books hailed by reviewers as "astonishing"? Why does he refuse to lend out books? Will he ever buy an e-book? Why does he habitually read thirty to forty books simultaneously? Why are there so many people to whom the above questions do not even matter -- and what do they read?
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Community Reviews
Queenan is refreshingly opinionated from a reader who's "reading life" cannot be separated from his actual life.
"For me, books have always been a safety valve, and in some cases-- a deux ex machina. Books are a way of saying: This room seems to have more than its fair share of bozos in it. Edith Wharton may be dead, but she's still better company than those palookas."
"All my comments refer to the physical act of reading. I do not listen to audiobooks, for the same reason that I do not listen to baked ziti; it lacks the personal touch."
"Picasso produced hundreds of great paintings; Ralph Ellison wrote one great novel. Art is hard, but literature is murder."
"The past almost always seems cozier that the present, because you can no longer remember the fears and uncertainties that clouded your future at the time. And whatever the case, you were forty years younger. The unpleasant episodes in those long-vanished decades get edited out of our memories..."
"Decades go by without anyone breathing a word regarding Italo Svevo, Italo Calvino, or anybody else I admire named Italo. Among my favorite writers are Marcel Ayme, Ivan Doig, J.G. Farrell, George Bernanos, Thomas Berger, Junichiro Tanizaki, Robert Coover, and Jean Giono. I have never once been engaged in conversation about these writers. Perhaps I travel the wrong crowds."
"All technology is corporate. Certain things are perfect the way they are and need no improvement. The sky, the Pacific Ocean, procreation, and the Goldberg Variations all fit this bill, and so do books. Books are sublime, but books are also visceral. They are physically appealing, emotionally evocative objects that constitute a perfect delivery system."
(on ebooks and ereaders...)
"... they are useless for people who are engaged in an intense, lifelong love affair with books. Books that we can touch; books that we can smell; books that we can depend on."
"Putting James Patterson next to Marcel Proust is like displaying Babe Ruth's uniform alongside Three Finger Brown's. It's as if the library expects some knucklehead, discovering that Along Came a Spider is currently out on loan, to declare, "Oh, well, I guess I'll just borrow In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flowers instead."
"The case can be made that it is better to read drivel than to read nothing, on the theory that people will eventually tire of garbage and move on to something more meaty, like trash. I believe that this may sometimes occur with the young, but I doubt that it ever happens with adults. Adults do not suddenly tire of reading Nora Roberts and jump up and exclaim: "Screw this crap; by God, I'm going to give Marcus Aurelius a rip!" People read bad books because bad books serve their needs."
"Bad books are not good books written in a less literary style. Bad books are bad books. They have bad prose, bad ideas, bad characters, and bad themes. Bad books are written by people who would never even think of writing a good book. What would be the point? You'd only end up like Gunter Grass or Nadine Gordimer or Doris Lessing, Nobel Prize winners whose masterpieces were now in the process of getting purged from the stacks of the local library."
"I told the assembled librarians that while Attila the Hun would always be at the gates of Rome, I didn't see why it was necessary to invite him in as a keynote speaker. By discarding tradition, librarians were digging their own graves. In the new command model designed for libraries, at least as delineated by this techno-twit, librarians would have no reason to exist."
"Middlemarch is the last book I will ever finish. I'm not going down without a fight. I have started it six times; I am now 312 pages into it; but it is much like the mandolin or snooker or tantric sex; something I would dearly love to master without ever believing for one second that I would actually enjoy the experience."
"...this is what happens as one approaches old age and its concomitant, death. Life becomes a zero-sum affair, where every second spent reading mediocre books is time that could be spent reading great ones."
"The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is badly written and is for all intents and purposes voyeuristic porn. The nonsense about Lisbeth Salander as a feminist role model is twaddle; she's a sociopath with piercings."
"...crummy books only lead to more crummy books. There is a direct line from Slaughterhouse-Five to War and Peace, from the Red Pony to The Red and the Black, Sister Carrie might pave the way for Anna Karenina, but Carrie would only pave the way for Cujo."
"Each reading experience is personal. You have this moment now. It can only exist in the present. So it's stupid to think that you can re-create if for someone else."
"When I asked my daughter if reading was escapism, she answered: "No, reading is the opposite of escapism. It is introversion so extreme that you come out the other side of yourself."
"The presence of books in my hands, my home, my pockets, my life will never cease to be essential to my happiness. I will never own an e-reader. I have no use for them. A dimly remembered girlfriend's handwriting will never take me by surprise in a Nook. A faded ticket to the Eiffel Tower will never out of a Kindle. I am a Luddite, and proud of it."
"For me, books have always been a safety valve, and in some cases-- a deux ex machina. Books are a way of saying: This room seems to have more than its fair share of bozos in it. Edith Wharton may be dead, but she's still better company than those palookas."
"All my comments refer to the physical act of reading. I do not listen to audiobooks, for the same reason that I do not listen to baked ziti; it lacks the personal touch."
"Picasso produced hundreds of great paintings; Ralph Ellison wrote one great novel. Art is hard, but literature is murder."
"The past almost always seems cozier that the present, because you can no longer remember the fears and uncertainties that clouded your future at the time. And whatever the case, you were forty years younger. The unpleasant episodes in those long-vanished decades get edited out of our memories..."
"Decades go by without anyone breathing a word regarding Italo Svevo, Italo Calvino, or anybody else I admire named Italo. Among my favorite writers are Marcel Ayme, Ivan Doig, J.G. Farrell, George Bernanos, Thomas Berger, Junichiro Tanizaki, Robert Coover, and Jean Giono. I have never once been engaged in conversation about these writers. Perhaps I travel the wrong crowds."
"All technology is corporate. Certain things are perfect the way they are and need no improvement. The sky, the Pacific Ocean, procreation, and the Goldberg Variations all fit this bill, and so do books. Books are sublime, but books are also visceral. They are physically appealing, emotionally evocative objects that constitute a perfect delivery system."
(on ebooks and ereaders...)
"... they are useless for people who are engaged in an intense, lifelong love affair with books. Books that we can touch; books that we can smell; books that we can depend on."
"Putting James Patterson next to Marcel Proust is like displaying Babe Ruth's uniform alongside Three Finger Brown's. It's as if the library expects some knucklehead, discovering that Along Came a Spider is currently out on loan, to declare, "Oh, well, I guess I'll just borrow In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flowers instead."
"The case can be made that it is better to read drivel than to read nothing, on the theory that people will eventually tire of garbage and move on to something more meaty, like trash. I believe that this may sometimes occur with the young, but I doubt that it ever happens with adults. Adults do not suddenly tire of reading Nora Roberts and jump up and exclaim: "Screw this crap; by God, I'm going to give Marcus Aurelius a rip!" People read bad books because bad books serve their needs."
"Bad books are not good books written in a less literary style. Bad books are bad books. They have bad prose, bad ideas, bad characters, and bad themes. Bad books are written by people who would never even think of writing a good book. What would be the point? You'd only end up like Gunter Grass or Nadine Gordimer or Doris Lessing, Nobel Prize winners whose masterpieces were now in the process of getting purged from the stacks of the local library."
"I told the assembled librarians that while Attila the Hun would always be at the gates of Rome, I didn't see why it was necessary to invite him in as a keynote speaker. By discarding tradition, librarians were digging their own graves. In the new command model designed for libraries, at least as delineated by this techno-twit, librarians would have no reason to exist."
"Middlemarch is the last book I will ever finish. I'm not going down without a fight. I have started it six times; I am now 312 pages into it; but it is much like the mandolin or snooker or tantric sex; something I would dearly love to master without ever believing for one second that I would actually enjoy the experience."
"...this is what happens as one approaches old age and its concomitant, death. Life becomes a zero-sum affair, where every second spent reading mediocre books is time that could be spent reading great ones."
"The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is badly written and is for all intents and purposes voyeuristic porn. The nonsense about Lisbeth Salander as a feminist role model is twaddle; she's a sociopath with piercings."
"...crummy books only lead to more crummy books. There is a direct line from Slaughterhouse-Five to War and Peace, from the Red Pony to The Red and the Black, Sister Carrie might pave the way for Anna Karenina, but Carrie would only pave the way for Cujo."
"Each reading experience is personal. You have this moment now. It can only exist in the present. So it's stupid to think that you can re-create if for someone else."
"When I asked my daughter if reading was escapism, she answered: "No, reading is the opposite of escapism. It is introversion so extreme that you come out the other side of yourself."
"The presence of books in my hands, my home, my pockets, my life will never cease to be essential to my happiness. I will never own an e-reader. I have no use for them. A dimly remembered girlfriend's handwriting will never take me by surprise in a Nook. A faded ticket to the Eiffel Tower will never out of a Kindle. I am a Luddite, and proud of it."
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