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I decided to read Leila Marouane’s The Sexual Life of an Islamist in Paris after reading a brief review in The New Yorker. At first I agreed with the reviewer, who thought the “postmodern hijinks” at the end of the book were a bit much.
As I thought about it, though, I came to believe they were essential in telling the story of this confused man trapped between identities and lives.
The basic plot follows Mohamed, an Algerian immigrant to Paris who has changed his name to Basile, whitened his skin and straightened his hair in order to fit in with all the white people. Basile/Momo has lost his faith, and decides that at age 40 it’s high time he ditched his v-card. So, he moves out of his mother’s house into a nice apartment in a better Parisian neighborhood.
As soon as he moves out, he meets an Algerian woman in a cafe. She’s reading a book called Djamila and her Mother. The author of the book is Loubna Minbar, a name rather similar to Leila Marouane. From that point on, Minbar comes up constantly, and the women that Basile/Momo meets all seem to know the author personally. They tell sometimes conflicting stories about her, that she will take your life and turn it into a book and then run away, and that she’s really an Arab who changed her name to sound more white (as Leila Marouane herself did when she moved from Algeria to Paris–her birth name is Leyla Zineb Mechentel).
Basile so desperately wants to lose his virginity that I can’t help routing for him, but when he has an encounter with a woman named Djamila I knew something was up. The beginning of the book was very linear: it was the straightforward story of Basile getting his apartment and trying to get away from his mother. As time went on, it got increasingly less linear. We missed the beginning or ending of his sexual encounters (none of which ended with actual vaginal intercourse), and got bits and pieces of the story in fits and starts.
Loubna Minbar is the one thing that keeps all the stories together, and toward the end Basile/Mohamed begins to worry that the concierge at his apartment is actually the author Minbar, and that she’s writing a book about him.
And she is. Or at least Leila Marouane is. The beginning of every chapter goes like this: “I went back to my apartment, he said, thinking about blah blah blah.” “He said” or “he continued” is always right there, so you know from the beginning that while it appears the book is in first person, someone else is relating the story Basile himself told the narrator.
The concierge, who’s name is Lisa (another “L” name…), at the end tells Basile’s mother that he never leaves the house and that he’s constantly reading these books and thinks she is the author, which confirmed my suspicions that none of Basile’s sexual encounters actually happened.
While I did find this ruse frustrating, and I did feel slightly cheated and jerked around at the end, these “postmodern hijinks” did accomplish one thing fairly well. They illustrated with clarity how it must feel to be stuck between two worlds: Algeria and France, religion and secularism, mother and girlfriend or sexual partner(s). And indeed, that is what Basile/Mohamed is. Half the people in his life know him as Mohamed, the other half know him as Basile. He wants nothing more than to have sex, but he can’t get away from his mother (she calls him constantly). He constantly quotes Muslim scholars and poets, yet no longer prays or goes to the mosque.
Were these sexual “encounters” with these book characters actually real, Marouane would have been exploring a different set of problems (like feminism/masculinity and how men from patriarchal religions view women–a little bit of which we do see in the book). As it is, she’s wormed her way into the deep psychological cleft in Basile’s mind that is neither one thing nor the other that affects a good many young Muslim immigrants in France.
Basile’s delusions were rather quixotic in nature, and the whole book had a Don Quixote vibe to it. The purposes of the two books are also similar: Cervantes parodies popular Spanish culture, Marouane parodies and explores the issues surrounding Muslim immigrants in France. While Sexual Life was funny, I think Don Quixote is funnier, especially because we know he’s delusional, while we have to guess with Basile.
The book doesn’t conclude so much as end, rather unlike Don Quijote. After I shut the book, I was left with a vague sense of unease, which usually means a story has struck a nerve, or at least got me thinking. The lack of ending in this case is entirely appropriate. Basile/Mohamed has yet to reconcile the differences between his two selves, much as the rest of Muslim France has yet to figure out its own balance.
During the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh’s 2011 Winter Read-a-Thon, Jan. 8 – Feb. 19, I will be blogging about the books I read. For more information, to see a list of books I’ve read, go here.
- Hours read as of 2/19: 50
- Funds raised as of 2/19: $235
*Join the Facebook group, or Follow @metafictionblog on Twitter!
During the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh’s first ever Winter Read-a-Thon, I read a total of 50 hours and raised a total of $235 for my library!
I read the following books (links are to my blog posts concerning each book):
- Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut (audio book)
- Don Quixote by Cervantes (I’m still reading this… I’m taking my sweet time with it)
- Scott Pilgrim by Bryan Lee O’Malley (You can read a review I did of these books here)
- The Sexual Life of an Islamist in Paris by Leila Marouane (I just finished this last weekend and didn’t really like it, but didn’t really hate it, so I’m not sure what to say about it beyond that; article forthcoming)
- Close Range by Annie Proulx (an audio book that took over Timequake’s spot in my car since I didn’t have any other metafictional audio books; I’ll have to work on that)
In addition to those 4 1/2 books (since I’m only halfway through Don Quixote), I discovered just how much time I spent reading blogs, newspapers and magazines. Those five minute breaks at work and when I’m waiting for something really add up!
The Read-a-Thon was a lot of fun and I’m glad I was able to participate. Now I’ve got the fun job of collecting all the money and getting it into the library by March 7. Hopefully I’ll be able to collect my thoughts on The Sexual Life of an Islamist in Paris enough for a real post next week (I was traveling over the weekend, hence the late post this week… sorry!). I had put a hold on House of Leaves at the library at the beginning of the Read-a-Thon but it just came in late last week so I expect to start reading it this week or next week, so there should be lots of fun stuff coming up here at The Narrative in the Blog!
Oh, and if you’d like to participate in the Read-a-Thon, it’s not too late to make a one-time donation. Just shoot me an email at narrativeintheblog@gmail.com and let me know how much you’d like to donate!
*Join the Facebook group, or Follow @metafictionblog on Twitter!
February is Library Lovers’ Month, and Pittsburgh’s City Council will declare Feb. 15 “Love My Library Day.”
To celebrate and show my support, and to wish the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh a happy Valentine’s Day, I am sharing all the reasons I love my library. Please share why you love YOUR library in the comments!
One of the dinosaurs you can see from the library. Photo (c) 2008 Kelly Thomas
1. On the second floor of CLP Main in the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Oakland, a bank of windows let you look into the dinosaur exhibit of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. There are a ton of great nooks up here to browse some books, check out the dinosaurs and watch all the kids stare up in awe at the giant skeletons.
2. CLP has an enormous book collection, and you can request books from any CLP library and have them sent to your neighborhood branch for easy pick-up and drop-off. My local branch is one of the smaller ones, but thanks to this feature I can get any CLP book, and walk a few blocks to pick it up. Pittsburgh has more than 80 neighborhoods, and while there aren’t 80 library branches, wherever you live in the city you’re never too far from one of the 19 neighborhood branches.
3. It takes me about 10 minutes to walk to my local branch, the Allegheny Library. The Allegheny Library was actually the first Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, founded by Andrew Carnegie in 1895. It was housed in its original building until 2006, when lightening struck the clock tower and caused a lot of damage. (No, seriously, it happened! Read about it in the Post-Gazette and Tribune-Review.) In 2009 a new Allegheny library opened up the street. I attended the grand opening, and I got to sign the original 1895 guest book, which has the signatures of everyone who attended the opening in 1895, the signatures of everyone who attended the centennial celebration in 1995, and now everyone who attended the grand opening of the new building. Pretty cool, huh?
4. The Pennsylvania Room on the third floor of the main branch is the first place I go whenever I want to learn about my adopted city. I especially love the books of old photos, or the ones like Pittsburgh Then and Now which shows photos of various Pittsburgh locales in the past and the present. Another of my favorite finds from this section is The Steps of Pittsburgh, which in addition to detailing the history of the city’s more than 700 public staircases, provides walking tours for many neighborhoods.
5. CLP also has a large multimedia collection. DVDs, CDs, ebooks, audio books, eaudio books and more. I just bought a Sony eReader, and the ability to borrow electronic books from my library was a big factor in my decision. I especially love CLP’s collection of foreign movies. A few years ago I worked my way through most of the Spanish movies and found a lot of gems. They even have anime, documentaries, TV shows and work out DVDs.
During the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh’s 2011 Winter Read-a-Thon, Jan. 8 – Feb. 19, I will be blogging about the books I read. For more information, to see a list of books I’m reading, and to make a pledge, go here.
- Hours read as of 2/14: 42.75
- Funds raised as of 2/14: $202.38
*Join the Facebook group, or Follow @metafictionblog on Twitter!
Kurt Vonnegut presents an interesting theory about writers in his last novel, Timequake. In it, he says that most women writers are “swoopers” and most men are “bashers.”
Swoopers write “higgledy piggledy” and write a first draft as quickly as possible, and then go back and “painstakingly” fix everything that’s wrong. Bashers, on the other hand, write very slowly and work on each sentence until it’s perfect. “And when they’re done, they’re done,” says Vonnegut.
Now, as I stated in my introduction post to this series of posts about books I’m reading for my public library’s Read-a-Thon, the version of Timequake that I read was an abridged audio book. I make that disclaimer because whenever I read an abridged audio book (sometimes unabridged just aren’t available and I still use cassettes, so that makes them an even rarer breed) I’m terrified I will miss something important. So, in advance, I apologize if I miss something important. Blame the abridgment.
It’s interesting enough to think about the way we write and whether or not it can be more or less split down the gender line (if you’re a writer and you’re reading this, leave a comment and let me know which group you fall more into process-wise and maybe we can do an informal poll), but Vonnegut takes it a step further.
It was not entirely clear to me whether he meant “swoopers” or “women” when he said the following, but as he lumps them together I suppose we can assume he means both. He says that swoopers/women writers are happy to write about and record the lives of people who are “funny, tragic, whatever” without thinking about “why or even how they’re alive in the first place.”
Bashers/men on the other hand, chip away and break down the doors of what it means to be human and the nature of existence. Vonnegut then proceeds to tell an anecdote about World War II, in which he fought. Or as he calls it, “my war and Kilgore Trout’s war” (Kilgore Trout being Vonnegut’s fictional alter ego who appears in many of his novels). The anecdote, which shows us a former Nazi official who is dying, is meant to drive home the point that Vonnegut is a basher.
(I wish I could tell you exactly what the officer said to Vonnegut, but I don’t remember and the trouble with audio books is you can’t flip back and find what you’re looking for!)
Right in the beginning of the novel, Vonnegut tells us he’s been working on a novel called Timequake, but it didn’t work, and instead he wrote the novel we’re reading now. He refers to the failed version as Timequake One, and mentions it frequently, telling us what happened in the original draft. The fact that he abandoned a novel and entirely re-wrote it as a hybrid novel/memoir means that, in essence, his “bashing” did not work. His process failed (as the writing process is often wont to do). He may have struggled and sweated over every sentence, but in the end he had to go back to ground zero and start from scratch.
Granted, that doesn’t necessarily mean he got lost in swooper territory, and yes, sometimes stories and novels just don’t work. Because he does keep parts of Timequake One in the final, published version of Timequake, I will argue that he probably did have to “painstakingly” fix what was wrong, throw out what didn’t work and re-work what he wanted to keep to make it fit the new novel.
So, can anyone really be solely a swooper or solely a basher? Kurt Vonnegut, who claims to be a basher, shows us that sometimes it doesn’t always work to write that way, so based on that evidence, I have to go with “No”.
I will give him one thing, though: Vonnegut certainly chips away at the meaning of what it is to be human and the nature of existence. (But does that mean women writers can’t? No way! Margaret Atwood, is, I think, a prime example of a woman writer who does something similar to Vonnegut in her appraisal and exploration of human nature — but that’s another argument altogether.)
During the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh’s 2011 Winter Read-a-Thon, Jan. 8 – Feb. 19, I will be blogging about the books I read. For more information, to see a list of books I’m reading, and to make a pledge, go here.
- Hours read as of 2/6: 33.5
- Funds raised as of 2/6: $160.75
*Join the Facebook group, or Follow @metafictionblog on Twitter!
When watching television or reading books like Scott Pilgrim that draw heavily on pop culture, I have to ask myself: Has metafiction become “cool”? Does its use at random points in an episode or chapter indicate to the intelligent that the show or book is smart, and because it’s smart, funny as well?
The answer, I’m afraid, is a resounding yes. At least when it comes to this comic book by Bryan Lee O’Malley.
Be forewarned, there are tons of spoilers for the comic ahead. If you haven’t read it, you may want to go read it right now, and then come back and read this post. And no, watching the movie doesn’t count, because they hardly have anything in common. Despite what I’m about to say, I really did enjoy Scott Pilgrim (book and movie), so if you haven’t read it, do so!
Throughout the six-volume Scott Pilgrim, the characters make reference to previous volumes. In book six, for instance, Scott’s band mate Stephen Stills reveals that he’s gay to Scott, saying that it shocked everyone when he came out in volume five, but Scott seemed really busy so Stephen didn’t mention it.
In earlier volumes, whenever Scott’s other band mate Kim asks him what happened, Scott tells her to “read the book.”
On one hand, I really enjoyed these little moments because they are meta and worth a chuckle. They also add to the general goofy, fun, entertainingly awesome feel of the book.
But on the other hand, they don’t DO anything. They are useless, other than proving that Scott Pilgrim is not only pop culture savvy, but intelligent. If you removed them, the book would not lose anything. It would still be a book that breaks a ton of fiction writing rules and gets away with it because it is awesome (even if I had trouble getting behind Scott and Ramona, the story itself was great).
Another metafictional joke in volume 6.
This comic relies on video game tropes to give its story a back bone. Scott’s life essentially IS a video game. He has to defeat a series of increasingly difficult “bosses” in order to win Ramona’s love. Weird things happen, like traveling on “subspace” highways that are never properly explained. The lack of explanation is okay because that is the expectation the author sets up right from the beginning.
It’s also heavily influenced by Japanese manga and video game fandom in general. If you’ve never played a video game or at least watched someone play a video game, you probably will have a hard time swallowing Scott Pilgrim.
Because of the video game, manga and fandom influences, it’s a “cool” comic — in the nerdy way, of course. (But hey, being a nerd is “in” now, anyway.)
So, as I stated above, the self-awareness of the book adds to its over-the-top, ridiculous style. I mean, Scott already has to fight a dancing Indian man, an ex-skateboarder, a butch lesbian ninja (I’m sorry, half-ninja), and an evil overlord who rules the indie music scene with an iron fist and also keeps his ex-girlfriends in a weird tube-thing. So what’s a little metafiction?
Kind of stupid, actually.
You could argue that the book’s self-awareness points out how ridiculous Scott’s life is and that it’s funny. But seriously, does it really need a giant blinking arrow pointing to that? No, no it does not. That would be, as they say, beating a dead horse. And, the book is plenty funny without the “go read the book” lines.
Whether or not being funny is enough, the metafiction jokes rubbed me the wrong way. They fell flat. They didn’t add anything except easy, cheap laughs. Based on the rest of the writing, which really was good, Bryan Lee O’Malley is better than that.
During the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh’s 2011 Winter Read-a-Thon, Jan. 8 – Feb. 19, I will be blogging about the books I read. For more information, to see a list of books I’m reading, and to make a pledge, go here.
- Hours read as of 1/31: 24.75
- Funds raised as of 1/31: $121.38
As a parody of novelas caballarescas, or books of chivalry, Don Quijote does beautifully. But it parodies more than that.
In the prologue, Cervantes laments to a friend about how he has no “preceding verses” to preface his book, or lists of great philosophers and thinkers that he’s quoted, as do his peers (mainly Lope de Vega, a playwright — he and Cervantes did not get along, to say the least).
His friend tells him that he doesn’t need such things, because the books is whole without them, but suggests if Cervantes must have quotes, he should copy a list of quoted men from another book, because no one will be able to tell the difference, and what place does Aristotle have in the story of Don Quijote, a great knight-errant?
I could spend an entire post on the prologue, but it’s what comes after the prologue that I think is really brilliant and drives home the point of how frivolous the preceding verses and quotations are.
Cervantes goes on to write — get this — sonnets and poems from famous knights to Don Quijote, Sancho Panza, Dulcinea del Toboso and even Rocinante, Quijote’s horse. His point, with the sonnets, is that a work should stand on its own without a long list of quotations or heavy borrowing on another book.
His book is a parody, which means by necessity he relies heavily on other works. He does so not to puff himself up, but to show how ridiculous it is to do so: Don Quijote is no Amadis of Gaul, that’s for sure.
I missed these gems on my first read-through of the novel, which was in Spanish, in Spain, but alas, an abridged version. (I was okay with that at the time since it was for a class and there simply was not time to read the whole thing, which is part of the reason I’m coming back to the book now. Not to mention that it’s much easier to understand the jokes in my native tongue.)
Amadis of Gaul is the most famous book of chivalry, and was the most popular in the late 1500s when Cervantes was writing his masterpiece. Quijote often quotes Amadis, as well as other famous knights. So I picked the following sonnet to share (from the Signet Classic 1964 translation by Walter Starkie).
Amadís de Gaula to Don Quijote:
You who my sorrows once did imitate,
When I was scorned and hied me all forlorn,
To Peña Pobre’s beetling crags to mourn,
My joy transformed to penance by my fate;
You who of old your pitiless thirst did sate
With saltish tears that flow from both your eyes;
You who all tins and platters did despise,
And on earth what the earth gave you ate,
Live on secure that for eternity,
At least as long as o’er this earthly sphere
Fair-haired Apollo goads his steeds of day,
Your name for valor shall exalted be,
Your fatherland above all lands appear,
Your learned author, unique, men will say.
Taken in perspective, the above sonnet is hilarious, in my opinion, especially the last line. Cervantes may have been a bit bitter about his less-than-ideal life circumstances (he was always poor and suffered an injury that left his left hand lame), but he’s not being all that stuck up here. Certainly he’s elevating himself, but all of Don Quijote is one big joke, so it makes sense that he’s elevating himself partly in jest, as Don Quijote is elevated and “exalted for valor” in jest.
These sonnets add to the overall mood of satire and parody in the book, as well as pointing out how silly they are, not only in this book, but in any book. Amadis de Gaul, an “actual” knight who went on real adventures and fought real evils would never write this kind of thing to a raving lunatic who ran around with a barber’s wash basin on his head. But that’s why it’s funny.
Cervantes does skip the list of quoted authors and philosophers, but I think the sonnets from characters in Amadis de Gaul to characters in Don Quijote more than make up for its lack.
So now a challenge for you writers out there: Write a sonnet (or any kind of poem) from the characters in another book to the characters in one you’ve written or are writing. If you’re not writing a book, just pick two books and write a sonnet from one character in one book to a character in a different book. Leave your poems in the comments or link to your own blog. I’ll share mine next week!
During the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh’s 2011 Winter Read-a-Thon, Jan. 8 – Feb. 19, I will be blogging about the books I read. For more information or to see a list of books I’m reading, go here. I’m a little behind in hours this week, but not too much, and I’ve still got lots of time to catch up (I should have 11 so far to reach my goal of 50).
- Hours read as of 1/16: 9.25
- Funds raised as of 1/16: $47
About a month ago, after I finally got around to seeing the latest Harry Potter movie, I decided to re-read the books. I hadn’t read most of them since high school, and the last one since early in my college career, and none of them right after the other.
I also convinced my husband to watch all the movies, through the sixth, with me. Watching the movies again after so recently reading the books (I finished Goblet of Fire yesterday) brought some interesting tidbits to light.
The fourth Harry Potter movie is really the first one where major subplots have to be cut out because of the book’s length, but even in the first three the directors made some interesting choices in presenting the story. Aside from paring down the details to the absolutely essential, though, the thing that stood out to me the most is that in almost every action scene, the movies one-up the books.
Having dropped a screen writing class halfway through the first day during my senior year in college (they really expected me to sit through a four-hour class for a measly three credits?!), I’m no expert on screen writing or movies. But I have to ask one question: Why? What is the benefit of ramping up the tension in a movie, especially when other details or scenes are cut to make room for the additional action?
I’m guessing those who wrote the scripts will say it makes the movies more exciting. In any movie adaptation, things must be cut from the book. Regardless of how faithful an adaptation is (and I would say the first three Harry Potter movies are quite faithful as far as adaptations go), it will never be an exact visual replica of the book, because there simply isn’t the space or time to allow it. That being said, why cut more than is necessary to make room for more action, especially in books that are not inherently action-adventure?
If you haven’t seen the movies or read the books, you may wind up a bit confused as I’m leaving out most of the plots, sorry!
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
The first two-thirds of this movie follow the book closely. Things diverge slightly when Harry, Ron and Hermione chase Quirrel into the guarded chamber that hides the sorcerer’s stone. The movie takes a few of the enchantments that guard the stone and makes them more exciting, while it cuts out others completely.
- The first enchantment, the Devil’s Snare, has Ron screaming, panicking and almost dying in the movie (after Hermione tells Harry and Ron they need to relax in order to get past it). In the book Hermione saves them all by exposing the plant to light.
- The second enchantment, the room with the keys, has Harry chasing a winged key while the rest of the keys attack him. In the book, there is no attack. The challenge is to find the right key amid thousands of them, which the kids do by using logic, not speed or strength.
- The fourth enchantment, in which Hermione has to solve a riddle concerning vials of potion that will either kill them, do nothing, send them back to the Chess chamber or send them forward into the chamber containing the sorcerer’s stone. This enchantment was cut entirely from the movie, probably because it’s all intellectual, without any action.
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Two scenes stick out to me in this movie, though there were others that has more tension than their printed equivalents.
- When Harry and Ron follow the spiders into the Forbidden Forest, Mr. Weasley’s old Ford Anglia saves them from being eaten by Aragog’s children. In the movie, this scene is longer and involves a spider clinging on to the car, among other chase antics, that were not present in the book.
- Harry’s final fight against the basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets was much longer and more drawn out than in the book.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
This is the book/movie in which the omissions made in favor of more action do the most harm, in my opinion. A large chunk of the back story about Sirius, Lupin, Peter and Snape is completely left out in favor of more fighting and action sequences. The back story becomes important later on, especially in the development of Snape’s character. And you can’t really argue that Snape is unimportant. (Full disclosure: Snape is my favorite character!) So rather than allow time for Sirius and Lupin to elaborate on the back story, the following scenes were infused with more action:
- Harry riding Buckbeak the Hippogriff. In the book his flight is quite short and uncomfortable. In the movie it is long and glorious.
- The bogart scene with Professor Lupin. In the book, Lupin does not allow Harry a chance at the bogart because he fears Lord Voldemort would appear. In the movie Harry does face the bogart, and a dementor appears, and Lupin must save Harry.
- The entire sequence in the Shrieking Shack with Snape interrupting and Peter trying to get away. The movie elongated those action sequences, which in the book were quite straightforward.
- The scene where Lupin turns into a werewolf. In the book he simple runs into the forest, allowing Peter to escape. In the movie he and Sirius engage in battle and then, of course, he goes after Hermione and Harry.
Why these small details matter
While re-reading the books, I was struck with how tightly and beautifully plotted they are. J.K. Rowling’s prose may not hold up to the likes of J.R.R. Tolkien, but her plots are among the best. Perhaps they are cliche to a certain degree, but you can’t exactly say Lord of the Rings uses a new concept, either. The movies, of course, rely on the books’ plots to stand up. But in chopping away small (and large) details in the name of greater action, I think some of the beauty of the books is lost.
Harry Potter, in my opinion, is not an action-adventure story. The books are more about solving puzzles and mysteries than fighting evil. Even in later books, the object is to figure out Voldemort’s secrets, then find the Horcruxes. Ultimately the goal is to defeat him, and that of course involves a fight. But what goes into the fight is a long process of figuring out how to defeat him. In the books, each scene advances the plot or helps us better understand a character better.
But in the movies, the added action is gratuitous. It does not advance the plot or tell us more about the characters and therefore, in my opinion, detracts from the story.
For example, the reveal that Sirius is on Harry’s side and Ron’s pet rat was the one who betrayed the Potters is far more rewarding in the book version of Prisoner of Azkaban because as we read, we try to solve the puzzle. First, why is Sirius after Harry? Second, how could Peter Pettigrew be in the castle when he’s dead? The pieces don’t add up until the reveal at the end, and we are rewarded with the full back story and are able to appreciate the characters all the more.
By turning the movies into more action-oriented stories, I feel we lose a large part of what makes these books great, and what makes the characters truly compelling.
During the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh’s 2011 Winter Read-a-Thon, Jan. 8 – Feb. 19, I will be blogging about the books I read. For more information or to see a list of books I’m reading, go here. Although Harry Potter is not on that reading list, I am not yet far enough into any of those books to write about them.
- Hours read as of 1/9: 2.5
- Funds raised as of 1/9: $20.50
I love my library. I love reading. This is going to be the best fundraiser, ever.
It works like this: Between January 8 and February 19, I read as much as I can (I’m shooting for 50 hours). You sponsor me by pledging to donate a certain amount of money for each hour I read. The more I read, the more money the library gets. More information at the official website here.
To make it even better, I’m going to read metafiction. Metafiction that I get out of the library. And once I read it, I’m going to blog about it, right here!
Here’s my reading list, although the order may change, depending on availability of individual titles. I also can’t guarantee I’ll get through all of these during the Read-a-Thon as some of them are pretty lengthy, but I am sure going to try!
- Don Quixote* by Cervantes (in English this time!)
- House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski
- The Sexual Life of an Islamist in Paris by Leila Marouane
- Timequake* by Kurt Vonnegut (abridged audio book)**
- Scott Pilgrim by Bryan Lee O’Malley (comic book)
If you like my blog, if you like me, if you like metafiction, if you like books and/or if you like libraries, please consider sponsoring me, or supporting this effort by reading my Read-a-Thon related entries (they will be tagged with clpreadathon11) and commenting on them.
The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh is one of the oldest public library system in the United States, but its facing some major financial issues. We have to make sure our state government knows how much the library means to us and how it important it is to our community — and that is only one of the reasons I’m participating in the Read-a-Thon and blogging about the books I read. CLP is working on a major initiative to find a sustainable source of funding, and public support is one branch of that.
I, for one, am proud to support and use my library! (And so are the 2.6 million other people who visited the library in 2008.)
If you’d like to donate, please leave a comment or send an email to narrativeintheblog@gmail.com. I can’t take electronic submissions, so at the end of February I’ll give you my address so you can send me a check (made out to the library, of course!).
I’ve done the math for you already:
- $.10 x 50 hrs. = $5
- $.25 x 50 hrs. = $12.50
- $.50 x 50 hrs. = $25
- $1.00 x 50 hrs. = $50
- $2.00 x 50 hrs. = $100
Between a few friends and my family, I’ve already got three pledges for a total of $80 (assuming I meet my 50 hour goal). Not a bad start! If you’d rather make a one-time donation, you can do that, too. You can also set a donation limit if you’re making an hourly pledge (so if you would like to pledge $1/hour but can only donate up to $50, you can set your limit at $50).
*I own these two, so I won’t be getting them out of the library. The other three will be library books.
**I hate abridged books, I really do. I’m making an exception on this one because it was FREE and it’s getting pretty hard to find audio books on TAPE. And listening to audio books on tape in my old school (read: lame) car is the only way I stay sane while delivering newspapers as part of my duty as assistant editor of The Northside Chronicle.
