Category Archives: Books

Dublin, where solo travel became social travel

Posted on by under Books, Chronicled Adventures, Travel

Every blog post I’ve written for every destination was first written in my journal. Because I was only in Dublin for three days and was very social for all three of those days, I never actually had time to write about Dublin in my journal. Now, two weeks later, I have to write about it from scratch, because it certainly won’t do to not have a blog post on Dublin. I think, had I not come straight from Edinburgh, Dublin probably would have been my favourite city on my trip to Europe.

If you know me, you know I am not a drinker. I am highly suspicious of what alcohol does to me (and have in fact never explored that fully), and for that reason I only like to drink with people I know, and then especially people I trust. Now, combine that with what you know about Dublin and the Irish, and what should have happened is that I spent my days in Dublin being extremely uncomfortable. That’s what I would have thought, anyway, and because that’s kind of what drinking in Vancouver is like: if everyone else is drinking and you’re not, it’s a little harder to have a good time.

But while the Dubliners certainly appreciated their drink (I found a number of posters throughout my hostel about the best ways to get over a hangover), the drinking culture seemed different from what I’m used to in Canada. It seemed as though the Irish didn’t need to be drunk to have a good time—which was lucky for me, because as it turned out, my experience in Dublin turned out to be all about the people. I was never lonely, which explains why there was never a journal entry written in that lovely city.

My new friend Grace (hi, Grace!) is American, but you wouldn’t have thought so as we ran all over Dublin together. I wasn’t sure if I was going to write about her in this blog post, but as I say, my experience in Dublin was all about people, and since I spent a good chunk of my time in Dublin with Grace, it seems right that I talk about her a little. Extremely social and extraverted, unafraid of the drink, and redheaded to boot, travelling with Grace felt like exploring Dublin with a local.

She also enriched my visit to the Guinness Storehouse, a place I probably wouldn’t have been so keen to visit had Grace not been with me. If it turned out I didn’t have enough funds to do everything I wanted, Guinness probably would have been the first to go, but boy, am I glad I went. Other than having a fantastic view of Dublin, the Storehouse truly felt like Disneyland for beer lovers, and you don’t have to be a beer lover to recognize it.

A friend spent some time in Dublin shortly before I arrived there (hi, Xandrina!) and she said to me that the Irish were so nice, and that it seemed much more genuine than the Canadian nice. Now, I love Canada, and I had only been in England and Scotland during that point in my trip, so I didn’t like the idea that the Irish were nicer than Canadians, but the Irish are truly some of the friendliest people I’ve ever met, in addition to being some of the funniest. The Irish seem to have truly mastered the art of socializing.

What I discovered in Dublin is that there is a verifiable Irishness to the people; it was something I picked up on reading W.B. Yeats’ poetry and Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest but could not quite put my finger on until I had experienced Dublin for myself. There is truly this incredible sense of belonging to a people and to a place which has not been home to the happiest of histories, but has fostered a sharp wit and easy humour. These people are as quick to laugh as they are quick to drink, and their hospitality is almost excessive and yet somehow so genuine. As I left Dublin, and eventually Europe, I read Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (a book I picked up at a bookstore by the River Liffey after having visited St. Patrick’s Cathedral, of which Swift was a dean) and was struck, again, by how strikingly Irish these writers are. I bought a book each from England, Scotland, Ireland, and France, to act as a souvenir of the place that I had visited, to help me remember the sense of Stratford-upon-Avon, Edinburgh, Dublin, or Paris. Although I didn’t get much of a sense of Dublin from Gulliver’s Travels, I got so much of a sense of the Irish people, and rightly so, because the Irish people truly are what made Dublin so great for me.

Brush strokes and spit

Posted on by under Books, Chronicled Adventures, Travel

Looking upon Vincent van Gogh’s paintings for the first time, I found myself incredibly moved. In a gallery of paintings and portraits featuring naked babies or figures from myth and legend, I was so drawn—perhaps inexplicably—to van Gogh’s Long Grass with Butterflies, Van Gogh’s Chair, or (my favourite) Sunflowers.

In Nottingham, I watched my new friend (a visual artist) peer closely at the paintings in the museums at Oxford. When I asked her why, she explained that she was interested in the brush strokes and how smooth they were. With that being said, and upon closer inspection, I realized that what I was looking at was actually manufactured light and shadow, that brush strokes should be evident, though they weren’t unless you looked closely.

Among other reasons, perhaps exceptionally thick brush strokes were why I was so drawn to van Gogh’s paintings. My first thought, almost exactly, was “Like a child.” Looking at van Gogh’s art, I found myself thinking of children finger painting with reckless abandon. I felt like the paintings evoked a sense of desperate aliveness, in contrast to what I knew about van Gogh’s life. (Thanks, Doctor Who.) More than that, van Gogh’s attention to colour was nothing else like I’d seen: I tired of the chiaroscuro style I saw in the previous gallery with Rembrandt, where I couldn’t see certain parts of the painting depending on the gallery light and where I was standing (and I liked to stand close to paintings now, to see brushstrokes, as you know). With van Gogh, everything is bright no matter where you stand… even the darkness, somehow.

I truly appreciated that everyone was drawn to Sunflowers. For a man with such a turbulent life to be remembered for the sunniest of paintings… I was so moved, so grateful that I got to be one of those people drawn to the simple vase of flora, to look so closely that I can see his brush strokes.

I wasn’t expecting to love Shakespeare’s Globe as much as I do. Watching Twelfth Night was not as I expected—for one thing, the show was quite a diversion from the original text—but I was delighted nonetheless, and watching the play was certainly worth standing for hours. (Although I might splurge on a ticket with a seat next time.)

The experience was a marriage of my top interests during my grade 12 year of high school, which was composed of late nights at the theatre and taking as many English courses as my school allowed. Because of this, my younger self was having a grand ol’ time at the Globe, although my current self certainly was, too. The Globe’s production of Twelfth Night turns the play into somewhat of a triple threat exhibition, and I was happy to be able to marvel at the amazing dance and song as much as their acting.

Anyone who knows me knows that my favourite thing, in general, comes in any form of top-notch storytelling, which Twelfth Night certainly was. You don’t have to understand Elizabethan or Shakespearean English to laugh at the jokes, to cry when the characters cry, to feel the sense of dramatic urgency or irony that the play creates. So the production was a success in my books.

I’ve discovered that the experience of art at its best is necessarily intimate. Leaning against the Globe stage, I could look into Orsino’s eyes, see Malvolio’s feet shuffle with every stressed syllable, hear Maria’s voice from her mouth rather than the speakers, even see Feste spit out his words on every bilabial stop. (Thanks, ENGL 330, for teaching me about bilabial stops.) These moments were when I forgot how tired I was, how much I wanted to sit down. Being so close to see eyeliner, or nylon stockings, for only £5!

Although I can’t believe I come across toilets that cost (only 20p, but still!) to use, or that some restaurants charge more for sitting down at one of their tables, I love London for the culture it shares so generously. I didn’t have to pay a penny to see van Gogh, and I’ve paid more for some meals than I did to see such an excellent production of a Shakespeare play on the very site where Shakespeare himself once stood. And for that, I may have to forgive London for charging to use toilets or eat in at restaurants.

All of these towns I’ve never heard of, racing past

Posted on by under Books, Observations and Reflections, Travel

Inside the train, up through the glass
My finger tracing
All of these towns I’ve never heard of racing past

– Amelie, “Times Are Hard for Dreamers”

Sitting alone, waiting for my train at Nottingham Station to depart for London St. Pancras, I find myself feeling rather anxious again. The comfort that I found in Nottingham with family friends, while reassuring when I was there, now produces an opposing effect as I leave them behind. I am finding that the freedom of travel—which I longed for so much a month ago while my mom was planning the family trip to Los Angeles—is overwhelming and frightening.

If home is found in the crevices of human experience, homesickness is most certainly found in the expanses of suitcase living: sharing a room, having to take toiletries with you to the bathroom and back, not being able to leave your belongings lying about. (Mommy, if you’re reading this: I leave my room messy because that’s just part of the experience of being at home!) I am excited to be able to leave my toothbrush on the bathroom counter, to unpack my clothes from my suitcase. (Maybe long-term solo travel isn’t for me after all. How distressing.)

For the first time since landing in England, it is dark and gloomy today, which reminds me of home and certainly helps me feel less anxious. With the greenery of the English countryside dampened by rainfall, England looks more and more familiar to my beloved Pacific Northwest.

Speaking of the English countryside, I’m not sure how I feel about it. I’ve never really felt like calling Vancouver the big city before, but having spent some time in Nottingham, I suddenly feel like quite a city girl. I love the outdoors, the open sky, seeing farm animals, and narrow, winding dirt roads, but I am excited to be in the city again—thus confirming for me once again that Vancouver, a city in between city and country, is truly the most perfect place for me.

Having said that, though, I don’t think I can stress enough how much the English midlands and the English countryside felt like home to me. As we drove back from Chatsworth House, widely believed to be the inspiration for Mr. Darcy’s Pemberley in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (one of my favourite books), I looked around at the grids of farmland separated by stone walls and hedges and I found myself thinking about Dr. Dalziel’s Honours seminar on storytelling, and Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd.

When I visited New York City, I was in the middle of reading Edward Rutherfurd’s monster book New York, and I felt familiar with NYC because of that book (and, of course, all of the movies and clichés), but what I feel in England is a truly different level. So many of the works that I’ve loved for so long, or have studied intensely—Harry Potter, Pride and Prejudice, Far from the Madding Crowd, Shakespeare’s plays and poetry—were set in England. British authors seem to have truly taken the advice “write what you know” to heart, and with this beautiful place, they had good reason to.

The most compelling argument for Mr. Cook’s Shakespeare conspiracy

Posted on by under Books, Chronicled Adventures, Observations and Reflections, Travel

In my final year of high school, I took Literature 12 with Mr. Cook, who was a firm believer of a Shakespeare conspiracy. When I say “firm believer,” I mean firm believer: he introduced the idea simply as though it was fact, as if it were common knowledge that “Shakespeare” was actually Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. One of Mr. Cook’s biggest qualms with the idea of William Shakespeare having penned “Shakespeare’s” plays and poems was the (alleged) unlikelihood that some small town boy from Stratford-upon-Avon could dream up the politics of the aristocracy or royalty, of foreign countries, far-off places.

Today, I visited Stratford-upon-Avon, supposedly the most convincing piece of evidence that William Shakespeare couldn’t be the father of British English literature, the literary genius that the discipline holds him up to be. You understand how the idea dismantles a great bulk of my academic field: though I am not the most familiar with Shakespeare’s works as far as an English major goes, and I am skeptical of the British white male canon in general, I was eager to make a pilgrimage to Shakespeare’s home.

Although it is quite a bustling tourist destination now, with shops and cafes and big tour buses rolling through it, the market town’s medieval grid pattern of streets is still preserved, for the most part, meaning that Shakespeare would have little trouble navigating the town if he were to walk through it today.

Far from high street and the Shakespeare Centre, however, it is different. “I like it here… it’s quiet,” my incredibly hospitable host, Tita Ma’an, commented as we walked to Holy Trinity Church and the site of Shakespeare’s grave.

Its oozing Englishness and quiet streets hardly suggest to me an inability to write about royalty or Verona. As we walked back to the Shakespeare Centre, I looked about me at Stratford-upon-Avon and thought: If I grew up in this town, I would enjoy nothing more than imagining thrilling worlds.

This is not to say that I feel like Shakespeare felt stifled in Stratford-on-Avon. When we visited Sherwood Forest later in the day, there was no signal, and all I wanted to do was write; I imagine Shakespeare felt far freer to focus on his writing in his small town than he did in London. More to that point, the houses of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust (Shakespeare’s birthplace, the garden now planted where his last house once stood, and the home of his eldest daughter) impressed upon me the value of family to William Shakespeare. The immense love, care, and heartbreak of Shakespeare’s family life show themselves in his work. From passionate sonnets to despairing parents who have lost their children, it is clear that life at home inspired Shakespeare as much as imagining Venice and Rome did.

Sitting in a cold Coquitlam classroom, the idea of alternative Shakespeares seemed almost possible. But walking through the streets and homes of Shakespeare’s life, you realize that the man did not need to live his plays to write them, and that beauty does not discriminate. Beauty—even of the simple kind—can beget wondrous beauty.

CWILA: my Arts Internship Program experience

Posted on by under Books, Career, UBC

Technically, my Arts Internship Program placement was supposed to end in August. It went so well that this ended up not happening, but I’ll get to that part of the story later. I wanted to reflect on my official Arts Internship Program experience, because I’m actually very grateful for it.

I applied for the Arts Internship Program in fall of 2015. (You have to apply first to the program and then into an actual internship placement.) I actually got waitlisted at first—I never found out why, but my theory at the time was that my interests were not exactly non-profit-related, so maybe the program didn’t really fit my goals. (Spoiler alert: I was wrong.)

After the program’s applying-to-internships workshop, I applied to five different internships, as recommended by the program coordinator. I kept the following things in mind: the causes I cared about, the time commitment (I was going to keep working part-time), and I also wanted to get an office position instead of a remote one, since I had done a remote internship the summer before.

Despite that last criteria, Canadian Women in the Literary Arts (CWILA) and their remote Communications Assistant position was my first choice. How perfect could it be? I, a self-described Canadian woman in the literary arts, in an office-y type communications position.

I also interviewed for West Coast LEAF, and although I still love their cause and remain interested in the organization, I didn’t get offered a position. (All for the better, I think.)

My interview with Judith Scholes, a CWILA board member, and Sheila Giffen, at the time the Executive Director and my would-be direct supervisor, went very well. Having had my fair share of interviews at this point, I now know that you sometimes just get feelings about certain employers, and I got that feeling with them. I was still a little green in the employment business at the time, so I was a little nervous, but I could sense that CWILA was the organization for me.

As a minority among minorities—a girl growing up in the Philippines who loved books—I understand what it means to be underrepresented in a field that you love. When I grew up dreaming about writing my own book, I thought about the fact that I had never seen a Filipino man (let alone a Filipina) publish a mainstream fiction work. Would it be weird, I thought, when I do that?

I told this to my future employers, and it’s one of the few parts of my interview that I remember. The other part is that I was curious about social media: I had checked out CWILA’s social media feeds, and was astounded I’d never heard of them before. I wanted to help CWILA spread their reach, and I wanted to keep them active online, where social justice thrives.

Although accounting for race still remains a difficult issue, CWILA allowed me to develop professional social media skills, and they did it with enthusiasm and encouragement. Sheila gave me the personal project of developing a social media policy while managing the organization’s social media feeds. I also had the opportunity to read and share the various interviews and essays that CWILA published, which, as a student of English literature, were incredibly exciting, especially when the interviews and essays were by people who I thought belonged only in textbooks.

Something that is frustrating about CWILA is that the many amazing people involved with it are so far spread out: from us here in Vancouver to my new direct supervisor and CWILA Chair in Halifax. Not only are we in different timezones, but we also have lives outside of the non-profit. Many of CWILA are academics, writers, editors, critics, etc. It is hard to stay on top of things, or get in touch, or stay on one page.

But this is also what I love about CWILA. When Erin Wunker asked me in July if I was preparing to move out of my position, I told her I would love to stay if they needed me. I’m so excited to be part of this organization while it is still growing. There is so much work left to do, and I am so excited to be part of it.

Vancouver Indie Bookstore Hopping

Posted on by under Books, Chronicled Adventures

In an unfortunate turn of events, I ended up with two final exams on Monday, August 15. (Of course, one of those exams was a drop-in lab, meaning I chose to have two final exams, but whatever.)

Because my transit home is just over an hour at best, I knew I would be staying on campus in between. After a friend cancelled on me, I–not being much of a crammer–brainstormed some plans of my own.

Taking transit every day to go to school means that there are a number of cool shops that I see on my way to the university that I never really have the time to visit. And now, of course, I did! So, once I got out of my first exam at 3pm, I decided to spend the next four-ish hours hopping the indie bookstores of the west side of Vancouver, from Alma to Cambie.

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Kestrel Books on West 4th and Alma

My first stop was the only one on West 4th, which is the street my (preferred) bus rides down to get to campus.  I’d seen Kestrel Books almost every day for the past two school years, so it was cool to finally go inside.

Kestrel was the smallest bookstore I visited that day, and it didn’t try too hard to be anything more than it could be. By that, I mean: there were stacks of books by the checkout table, but other than that, the store was neat and tidy and didn’t induce that feeling of claustrophobia that small used bookstores usually create. There were three main aisles, curling left into the back corner of the store.

The first aisle I went down, on the furthest right, contained fiction and poetry. It’s where I spent most of my time even after I ventured further in. I circled around the back and turned left (skipping the middle aisle), with a pleasant surprise at the end of the aisle.

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Guardian of the Children’s Books

Kitsilano has an awesome pet culture. They do love their animals.

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Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti

I deliberated between a copy of Shakespeare’s sonnets, Canadian poet E.J. Pratt’s Towards the Last Spike, and a beautiful collector’s library collection of Jane Austen’s novels (they were so small and beautifully bound!), but knowing that I wanted to visit other bookstores, I set a budget for $10 a bookstore and settled upon Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti, one of my favourite poems studied in my British literature course from last year.

Pleased, I walked down Alma from West 4th to West 10th, to White Dwarf Books, a fantasy & science fiction indie store. It was the only one I visited that day that I had already visited on a previous day.

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white dwarf books on West 10th and Alma

Unlike Kestrel, which was a used bookstore, white dwarf books sells mostly new books, so it is a well-organized and well-stocked store. When I went to Kestrel, there was a sign on the window proclaiming that it was air-conditioned. Although it was a hot day, I remembered finding this amusing (why advertise air-conditioning?). I did not find it amusing when I walked into white dwarf books, which is not air-conditioned.

Unfortunately, there was nothing that I really wanted under my $10 budget (I was looking for specific Terry Pratchett books, but in addition to not being the ones I was looking for, they were all new and so, over budget), so I walked out empty handed.

I hopped on the infamous 99 B-Line to visit two stores at the Macdonald stop. The first of these two was Vancouver’s self-described “legendary independent bookstore”.

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Pulpfiction Books on W Broadway and Macdonald

The first thing I saw in the bookstore was a poetry dispenser, which I thought was cute.

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Poetry for a toonie

Neat, tidy, and spacious (qualities that one does not usually associate with independent bookstores that sell used), Pulpfiction did not have a great selection of unique bindings, which is what I’m mostly interested in right now, but I didn’t spend much time browsing, since I found what I wanted pretty much right away. (I love Virginia Woolf.)

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The Diary of Virginia Woolf

 

I walked further down West Broadway to the “largest and best children’s bookstore in Canada”.

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Kidsbooks on West Broadway and Trafalgar

It’s kind of hard to be part of the literary scene of Vancouver and not know about Kidsbooks. Despite this (and the fact that I, of course, saw it whenever I took the 99 B-Line), I had never actually visited the store, which had recently moved further down West Broadway from closer to campus.

Kidsbooks is kind of a really, really magical place. I hope it’s still around when I have kids. Well, more than that: I hope it’s all over Vancouver, all over Canada by that time! It’s fun packed from wall to wall. More than just on the shelves, there are fun seats, toys on tables, eye-catching decorations, and books books books! It was lovely.

While sitting in a corner doing some research (there was free wifi, too!), a shelf of books about countries around the world caught my eye. I flipped through one about my home country (the Philippines) and was delighted to see the representation; you have to go digging for things like this in big corporate bookstores, so to find it in Kidsbooks made me happy.

I chose to do some schoolbook shopping, and I found one of the books needed for one of my upcoming Honours seminars. Unabridged and including the original illustrations (as per my booklist):

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Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

The next bookstore, had I had more time, would have been Chapters, but I didn’t have the time, so I skipped the biggest bookstore in Canada and headed to “Vancouver’s local independent store since 1903”.

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Book Warehouse on West Broadway and Ash

Book Warehouse, part of the Black Bond Books family, is like Kidsbooks in the way that it is independent but sells new (mostly). However, the store felt like a used bookstore in the distinctive way that the store organizes its sections.

After catching sight of Thomas King’s The Inconvenient Indian a few times (but not being able to buy it because it was over my $10 budget), I checked the fiction section for other King books in stock (and perhaps on sale). I loved studying Thomas King in Canadian and indigenous literatures last year, so I knew I would be happy with anything I found from him.

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Truth & Bright Water by Thomas King

With the sun setting over West Broadway at 6pm and a final exam awaiting me back on campus, I jaywalked, popped into Michael’s for a peek at their stock, and then headed back to campus.

I was, truthfully, quite tired, and my backpack was noticeably heavier despite my purchases being quite small, but I was certainly glad to have gone on my little field trip, and I was happy to have supported Vancouver’s local bookstores, especially given that the Tri-Cities’ last used bookstore closed this summer.

On a visit to my professor’s house for a little party she threw, I commented that it must be so nice to have so many independent bookstores in her neighbourhood (in Kitsilano). She looked at me and smiled and told me it was nice to hear that, because she had been thinking that she had been noticing fewer and fewer independent bookstores.

Four or five independent bookstores is great, but it’s also, at the same time, not good enough. So let this be your friendly reminder to give your indie bookstores some love. 🙂

The Jolly Olde Bookstore

Posted on by under Books, Chronicled Adventures

A few months ago, one of my old coworkers invited her Facebook friends to visit the Jolly Olde Bookstore, which was closing in the summer, completely extinguishing the old, used bookstore species in the Tri-City area. People mourned in the comments, talking about how half their bookshelves were filled with books bought from this store, about how nice the owner was.

The picture above is not a very good picture, but I think it captures the way it looked as I drove past it for the first time. On the corner of a tucked away street, next to industrial fences, an empty parking lot, and similarly old and run down businesses. I remember being struck by the giant “sale” sign in the window: how much cheaper could used books be?

As I entered, it looked exactly as I expected it would be. Old, dingy, crammed with tattered paperbacks and yellowed pages. The floors–what little exposed of them there was–creaked as you walked on them. Stacks on shelves, on the floor, and boxes, probably also filled with books.

“Is there anything I can help you find?” asked the man crouched on the floor, sifting through some books.

“No, thank you, I’m just looking around,” I told him.

“Good,” he said. “Because I wouldn’t have been able to help you find anything you were looking for, anyway.” He punctuated this with a laugh, and I laughed, too.

My first favorite bookstore was a used bookstore, and I never went there looking for anything specific. Do people ever go to used bookstores with a map? Or do they just forge trails into the unknown, knowing that any path they take will lead to someplace wonderful?

I had $20 in cash in my wallet, so I told myself that’s what I would limit myself to. I didn’t check prices as I picked up books. I assumed I could know when I was close.

I picked up four books. From the Canadian literature section, I picked up Shani Mootoo’s Cereus Blooms at Night. Mootoo had been interviewed by the non-profit where I’ve been interning since January.

In the “new arrivals” section by the front, adjacent to the Canadian literature shelf, I found Geek Love, by Katherine Dunn, whose death announcement had been made on Book Riot. I was intrigued by the title of the book that I had never read when I first saw the announcement.

In the literature section in the back room of the store, I picked up A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce (under the cover was the penciled in, and then scratched out price of $5; beneath it was scrawled, “some notes + underlining, As is $3.00”, as if additional thoughts and observations detract from the value of a book). I also refrained from taking a very large and heavy complete collection of the works of Charlotte and Emily Bronte.

The owner of the store saw me walking around and clutching the books to my chest. “Not going to leave empty-handed,” he commented.

“Of course not.”

In the poetry section in the shelf that blocked one of the entrances to the room that housed the literature section, I picked up a collection of poems by Dionne Brand, whose work I read in my Canadian literature course last year.

Knowing that I had homework to do, I pulled myself away to the table at the store’s entrance that worked as a checkout counter. The owner sat down and took my stack of books. He scribbled on a notepad, did some math, and named a price.

I heard six something dollars. Unsure if he said six or sixteen (it couldn’t have been just six, surely), I handed over my twenty.

He gave me my change: some coins, and two five dollar bills. I had budgeted for twice what I had bought!

In the shelf behind him was an enormous Yale Shakespeare. Golden, with white embossed text on the spine, I knew I would want to come back for it if it was still there.

“Tell your friends to come,” he said. “We still have lots.”

I assured him I would.

As I left, I couldn’t believe that it was the first time I was visiting the store. I had a month and a bit left to visit before the doors closed forever, so I knew it wasn’t goodbye, but it’s terrible falling in love with a life that has an expiry date coming up soon.

I don’t believe that people are reading less. I do think that people are not buying books in person as much anymore, but I know that people still love to read, and I know that people still love physical books. I don’t think that will ever change. But oh, how I wish beautiful souls like this bookstore would live forever.

Tatted paperbacks and torn covers

Posted on by under Books

I’m about to write another blog post, but before I do, I need to share this essay I wrote in my final high school English class… and I’m going to try and do it without flinching!

The store was aptly called “Book Sale”. We could not go to the mall without my asking to pass by, and we could not pass by without leaving with at least two new-old books. I took them all: tattered paperbacks with torn covers, with inscriptions made by previous owners. I covered those inscriptions with my own name, making the books mine.

It’s been years since I’ve visited Book Sale, years since I’ve found a similar place: a temple of sorts to the devout bibliophile. But a bookstore is a bookstore. As long as I have access to one, I cannot complain.

However, I remember when Borders closed. I remember how the Internet community of book lovers was outraged, disappointed, and yet—unsurprised.

While visiting family in California the summer before my graduating year of high school, my grandmother, mother, and I got lost in Old Pasadena, where I found a sign that read, “Borders Old Pasadena”, with an arrow indicating that it was up ahead. I was confused and intrigued. Had I found a survivor? Was this the last Borders standing? Had some resilient bookstores been left over, and was I lucky enough to find one of them? We continued down the road.

The building still stood. The large “Borders” sign remained, advertising its stock of books, movies, and music. But the windows were covered, the doors locked, the building empty. As we drove away, I felt almost heartbroken.

It’s the death of the conventional book, the world proclaimed, the year Borders closed. The rise of the e-reader. Barnes and Noble would be next. Hardcore bibliophiles rose up in protest, condemning battery-powered literature, holding tightly to those sacred, tattered paperbacks with their torn covers.

I thought about classmates, among them gifted artists and performers, opting instead for careers in science. I thought about friends and adults asking me, “What do you want to do with a degree in English?” About empty museums with unseen, unappreciated masterpieces. About limewire and 4shared and YouTube and all the ways you could listen to music for free. How it feels like I am witnessing the death of art.

At the same time, however, I cannot help but think…

It’s been years since I’ve returned to Book Sale, but I hope—I believe—that should I ever return, I might see a little girl crouched in front of the middle grade paperback section, where the books about horses and dogs and friendships and growing up are crammed, between mass-paperback romances and mysteries.
I can imagine her—and thousands or millions of others like her—lying on the couch for hours, pages denting to her sweating fingers. I can imagine her dropping the book in shock when it is revealed that Quirrell was Voldemort’s accomplice, not Snape. Hurling it across the room in protest when Aslan dies. Clutching it tightly to her chest when Anne finally admits that she loves Gilbert. Watching her tears fall and the ink spread when Sara Crewe lies alone in the attic, when Charlotte weaves her last web, when Jesse comes home to find out that Leslie didn’t make it to Terabithia.

The world has not always—if ever—been very accommodating to artists and their work. It is true, perhaps, that we do not need art to survive. Oxygen, food, water, a roof over our heads. To such a sophisticated species, survival is not a goal but rather a given.

Thinking of that little girl, however, I cannot help thinking—without the book-reading experience available to us, how could we survive? How could we survive without the teachings and the stories of those before us? How could we survive without what they have to say? How could we survive without each other?

I have faith in the traditional book because I have faith in us and our desire to be heard, to tell stories, to teach, to live, and to do more than just survive: it is for that reason that I believe that our art, whether digital or electronic or not, will outlive all of us, let alone disappear within our lifetimes.

Speed-dating the Literary World: My Summer Internship

Posted on by under Books, Career

Close to the end of first year and the beginning of summer, I was faced with a career crisis. (It’s a bit early in my career for that, I know.) I was comfortable as a cashier at my local grocery store. Even if it was not the most invigorating job, I could take time off easily, I could discreetly use my phone, and it was a really easy job. I told my highly ambitious and driven friend this–that I was comfortable and didn’t really mind staying at the grocery store–and she looked at me with that look and asked me, “But do you really want to be a cashier for a few more years? Is that where you want to be?”

This prompted a new bookmarks folder (“Opportunities”) in Google Chrome with over twenty links to literary-related internships and jobs (as well as a handful of non-literary-related opportunities that paid more than minimum wage, just to keep my options open, of course).

I received a few rejections, but not enough to faze me. (I even got one “reapply in December, when we have an opening!”) I knew I was up against graduate students, many of whom already had work experience in the industry. I did, however, get through a gate with book scout, Simone Garzella.

Despite the aspiring novelist and avid publishing world researcher that I was in early high school, I had never known that book scouts even existed. For the record, they are to books what sports scouts are to sports: they find the good ones and sell ’em. Specifically, if you wanted to get your soon-to-be-published/up-and-coming bestseller published in foreign markets, I was among the first people you wanted to impress.

After a horrifying and embarrassing incident involving attaching the wrong file to a kind of “audition” for the internship, Simone Garzella took me under his literally virtual wing. By mid-May, I was a remote intern for SG Literary Scouting.

The job was never stressful to the point that I wished it were gone. I never felt so overwhelmed that I was unhappy. There will be no sugar coating in this blog post: being an intern with SG Literary Scouting was stressful and overwhelming.  I had to read 100 pages of manuscripts and then provide a synopsis and a cogent opinion about those first 100 pages within 24 hours. I also often got these manuscripts between 8 and 11am, sometimes every day of the week, sometimes twice a week: a schedule contrary to my plan-months-in-advance attitude.

However, these are not complaints. Aside from being a student, being an intern with SG Literary Scouting is probably my favorite job yet.

I learned so much, about both the publishing industry and myself.

I learned what it takes to be a “good book”. I learned that, to be published, writing cannot just be a craft, despite what I must have believed when I was a starry-eyed NaNoWriMo winner, dreaming of becoming the next Christopher Paolini, published before finishing high school. A good book is not always the same thing as a published book, a bestselling book. There are trends and readers to consider. Of course, Younger Me, you can write for the sake of writing, but you cannot just do that and make money, and there is no shame in knowing that.

I’ve learned that there is not a complete checklist of criteria that will get you through the publishing door. I read books with awful cliches but pulled at my heartstrings and made me laugh and cry. I met characters who made me seethe and made me want to punch walls but ultimately got my approval because of it. I read wildly postmodern books, making statements about art and sentences and writing that are no doubt important statements but did not get my recommendation because, despite its beauty, think-deeply-and-complexly-about is not what the market is looking for.

I learned that I cannot work just from home. With Facebook and Tumblr and Twitter and even my email just a few clicks away, I cannot work from my bedroom–at least not very productively.

I also just love working with people….

It is not a well-known fact, but reading and writing at their best are not solitary activities. Reading and writing are made even greater when they become reciprocal acts, acts of humanity and communication and community. When you write with the intention to be read, your book becomes a different animal. When you read books and discuss them, stories take on new lives. Great books are “great books” because they have been shared and thought deeply about. Great books give good reasons to bring people together.

I’ve learned that, above all else, I still love books. I love wondering about books, authorial intent, decisions made regarding syntax and structure, and what you might think about it. I love books, especially good ones that make me want to share them with the world.

NEW YORK and My Week in the Big Apple

Posted on by under Books, Chronicled Adventures, Observations and Reflections

“Tucked into every nook and cranny of New York City are depths of history and billions of stories and lives to understand, and it’s truly a gift to even catch a glimpse of it.”
– me, on Instagram, 9 weeks ago

I fell in love with Edward Rutherfurd and his cities with his latest epic historical novel PARIS, published in 2013. It became such a precious book to me that it sat on my desk–even after being finished–for months. I started reading SARUM (his first novel, published in 1987) next, but I never finished it. When the plans for my family’s trip to New York City were made, I set aside SARUM for NEW YORK. But I’ll get to my summer vacation in a few paragraphs.

With eight hundred pages of relatively small print and multi-multi-multi-multi-generational storylines, Rutherfurd gives you the time and space to fall in love with cities, by every definition of the phrase, “fall in love”. He shows all the sexy (and seriously unsexy) close-ups, revealing both the dark corners and astonishing views of the city, embedding the universal themes of family, romance, and hardship as he shares these cities in unparalleled literary intimacy.

NEW YORK in particular is thoroughly American, even though Rutherfurd begins the story in New Amsterdam, which then becomes the object of a tug-of-war between the Dutch and the British and then the Americans and the British. The binding familial story is the Master family line, whose prosperity rises and rises and falls slightly but never completely falters, from their beginnings as successful Dutch merchants to Park Avenue lawyers. But the Masters were once aspiring Americans, which makes them exactly like the many other families and characters who join the cast of NEW YORK, which is why I say that the novel thoroughly American. The dreaming and working hard and achieving featured in the novel is the prototypical American dream, of course. But my favorite part of both NEW YORK and New York City was the layers of texture, culture, and people. It is what you make of it, whether that is a beacon of hope and power or a city of betrayal and loss.

By the time I landed in JFK, the half-Loyalist, half-Patriot Master family was right in the heart of the American Revolution. I knew of Bowling Green, Broad Street, the Hudson River, and Trinity Church.

On my first two days on the Atlantic Coast, we were mostly in Atlantic City in Jersey (my godmothers love slot machines), but we drove into “the City” from Queens, where my grandmother lives, before going to pick my cousins up from the Newark airport. I didn’t realize until then what a big deal those Manhattan skyscrapers really were. I used to just put aside what I’d heard about the Manhattan skyline, but there truly is nothing like it. Not even Los Angeles, and certainly not even Vancouver, fit the description of “concrete jungle” anymore, now that I’ve seen Manhattan.

I fell in love with Manhattan the way you’re supposed to fall in love: “slowly, and then all at once” (thank you, John Green, for the most accurate description of falling in love ever).

I fell in love with the hot and sticky Manhattan. I fell in love with the way the city and its humidity clung to my skin, I fell in love with the way it suddenly poured while we were in Times Square, like an overcompensated apology for the heat.

I fell in love with Manhattan sitting in my awful seats at the Met Opera, watching a tiny Misty Copeland dance in what looked like a shoe box diorama below me as she made history for the American Ballet Theatre as their first African American principal dancer.

I fell in love with being a tourist in the City, wearing my Statue of Liberty hat and having pizza on Wall Street, trying to grasp all the important decisions being made steps away from me, all the important exchanges that have been made, were being made, will continue to be made.

I fell in love with the smaller-than-anticipated Statue of Liberty and all she must have stood for and the way her meaning has changed over the years. As I gazed down at Ellis Island from the ferry, I–a Canadian immigrant–imagined how different it would have been to come up to the Statue of Liberty after months at sea, believing that a better life lay behind her.

I fell in love with the Manhattan skyline from above the East River, crossing the Brooklyn Bridge with tired feet, taking seflies with my family and feeling the cars rumble beneath us.

But the falling in love “all at once” came when my cousins and I went for a walk around Central Park and then took a peek into the Upper East Side. This picture, below, is one of our favorites. My cousins are GOSSIP GIRL fans, so they had to visit the Met steps, of course.

Another famous Manhattan stereotype is that it is busy and fast and you blink and everything’s changed, but gazing at the skyscrapers backing the Central Park trees, sitting on the Met steps and watching taxis and people go by, I didn’t feel busy and fast and stress. I felt life, pounding the pavement and reaching into the clouds, bursting at the Hudson and the East Rivers. And it was life unlike anything else I’d experienced before.

I’m so grateful to Edward Rutherfurd for giving me the chance to extend my week in New York City in so many different directions: temporally, spatially, emotionally. I’ll be back for you again someday, NYC. ♥

 

MY NEW YORK CITY BUCKET LIST

  1. go to the top of the Empire State building
  2. visit the Strand bookstore
  3. watch
    1. The Phantom of the Opera
    2. The Lion King
    3. An American in Paris
    4. Misty Copeland dance… not from the family circle
  4. come back for Magnolia Bakery

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