Category — books

There is a heat wave in Vancouver right now – 30 degrees Celsius with a humidex in the mid-30s.

Normally I’d be typing this at home in mine and Joe’s apartment – which is a lot like a meat-locker with comfortable furniture – but, even our basement apartment is not cool enough to work in right now.

So, I got myself organized and came to the library for 9:45 a.m. figuring it probably didn’t open until 10 a.m. When I arrived, already hot and a little uncomfortable in the early morning heat, I saw a huge crowd of people standing before the glass doors looking anxious.

My first impression was that I was in a George Romero film, but this time looking at things from the zombie’s point of view.

A bunch of slightly sun-sticky shamblers, hands clutching plastic protected books with bar codes on the front chanting “Books….air conditioning…”

I was surprised at the assortment of people desperate to get into the library so early. A strange looking man with a little suitcase on wheels, a young man who looked like a smaller version of David Bowie during his Ziggy Stardust days, and any number of students with heavy looking backpacks.

The glass doors slid open and we all went inside, some people rushing to favoured reading tables and others directly to the toilets.

I hunted around for a table where I could plug my laptop in and do some work, and found a great table on the first floor. Window view, shaded by the overhang on the building and wonderfully quiet. Then I discovered a huge mess of what looked like rebar with a plug at the end that lead directly to some dead outlets.

Damn. Bye bye window seat.

I headed to the information desk and after waiting for the woman there to stop her personal conversation with a fellow employee she looked at me. I asked her where I could find working outlets in the library and her helpful answer was:

“There are seven floors in this building, one of them is bound to have something.”

The look on her face clearly said, “What do I look like – an information desk?”

I took the escalator to the next floor and asked a woman at the desk there – she was much, much nicer and pointed me to the desk I’m using now. The only bad part is that it is directly over the kid section and there are no less than three crying children making their displeasure known.

So, I have some pretty serious doubts about getting any work done, but the people watching is nearly as interesting.

Two desks behind me is an older gentleman reading a newspaper, the desk to my left (across a small opening surrounded by glass and metal railings) is a rather serious looking young man staring intently at his laptop. I wonder if he is writing a similar blog post about the “weird red-head who keeps looking at me.”

I kind of hope so actually.

To my right are tall metal shelving units filled with books about writers. From here I can read the spines of a few: A Writer’s Ireland, The Idiot’s Guide to English Literature, Eliot, Joyce & Company.

And, to make things even more interesting there is a man setting up across from me with his HUGE Mac notebook. I mean, the screen must be 19 inches at least. He also just taken off his shoes – bare feet on the public library carpet. Ew.

Oh well, there is some comfort in knowing that I could get a medical book and look up the symptoms for athletes foot without too much effort.

Title: The five secrets you must discover before you die
Author: John Izzo, Ph.D.
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.
Pages: 167 (not including index)
ISBN: 978-1-57675-475-7
Price: $16.76 CDN

I don’t normally buy anything from the self help section of bookstores. I’ve always considered the fiction and literature sections to be all the self help I could need or want. I bought this book since it was the selection of the month for the book club I just joined. I opened it with the expectation that it would be full of new-agey, cheesy sort of talk about becoming one with the flow of the universe and eating more vegetables or something.

As it turns out, this book was actually not too bad.

The author, along with a team of people, interviewed over 200 people over the age of 60 (screened from a much larger pool of candidates) to find out the secret of their happiness. The interviewees were chosen by their friends and loved ones because they seemed to have a knack for being happy, and can look at their lives and say “I have no regrets and I am happy.”

The book is organized so that there is one secret per chapter so I found it very easy to read. I was also able to skip around a little in the book when I wanted to without worrying about keeping a storyline straight (or spoiling a storyline).

Speaking of spoilers, here comes one now: I’m showing you the man behind the curtain and revealing the five secrets (you’ve been adequately warned):

1. Be true to yourself.
2. Leave no regrets.
3. Become love.
4. Live the moment.
5. Give more than you take.

Not exactly mind-bending stuff.

These are all things anyone could have figured out on their own. However, there is something to be said for having them all collected in a book. I think the real difficulty of these “secrets” is incorporating them into your own life – especially as that generally involves a blunt self-appraisal of how you live and who you are and a lot of courage.

I did find parts of the book very repetitive – these secrets are really hammered home – and the third secret made me roll my eyes a little. The phrase  “become love” is a little saccharine for my taste, but I do agree with its meaning: acting like a self-absorbed jackass will ultimately lead to unhappiness (and probably a lot of loneliness since no one will want your company) so you should be nicer.

This book made me feel kind of guilty somehow though – like how I feel when I walk past people canvasing for charities downtown (“No thanks, just out for bus tickets!”), but I’m not sure this feeling is a point against the book. Maybe that little feeling of uncomfortableness is the point of the book.

The best part of the book (for me) was not Dr. Izzo’s explanations about what he means by these secrets. What stood out as I read and flitted from chapter to chapter were the direct quotes from the interviewees. The people Dr. Izzo and his team interviewed weren’t a bunch of young 30-somethings like myself who are only just starting to glimpse what it might be like to have some wisdom one day. These are people who have 30+ years on me and make me look like a silly kid – and what they have to say is valuable.

Their messages, in my opinion, were summed up best by the woman who said she always tried to think ahead to when she’d be old and grey and sitting in a rocking chair: would that woman look back at this moment with happiness or regret. If the answer was happiness, it was the right path.

Will I think that for myself when making decisions about my life? Probably not as often as I ought to, but at least it’ll be there in my head and I have the option of having a moment of wisdom.

I still stand by my opinion that the best self-help is found in the literature section, but Dr. Izzo’s book exceeded my expectations and gave me some food for thought.

Bookstores are one of my biggest weaknesses.

Rare are the days I can walk by one and not go in. Even rarer are the times when I go in and come out empty-handed.

I went into Chapters today with my friends Emily and Beau and within less than five minutes, I’d found a book: At Large and at Small – Confessions of a Literary Hedonist by Anne Fadiman (along with three other books, because I really am very weak-willed in bookstores).

Anne Fadiman is the sole reason I enjoy reading essays. After years of being forced to write essays in high school and university  – writing that seemed to involve sucking the life and joy out of every word ever printed – I was finished with essays. Then I stumbled onto Ex Libris – Confessions of a Common Reader also by Anne Fadiman and what a gem that book is! My copy is a paperback with a pale green cover and contains some of the most entertaining essays about being a book lover I’ve ever read.

That little green book hooked me and suddenly essays were not life-sucking, paper-wasting pieces of boredom; they were interesting, well-written comments on something I truly love: books!

So you can imagine how eager I was to dive into the new find.

After saying goodbye to Emily and Beau I took out my newest treasure and began to read at the bus stop.

Now, I can read anywhere (and frequently do) so I’ve got the skills to read and enjoy a book while being aware enough of the world around me to still catch a bus. I got on the #10, which was unusually crowded, and managed to find as seat at the very back. I sat and opened my book.

Normally, I’d pick up where I left off and the rest of the world would cease to exist. Today, I found it hard.

The guy one seat over to my left had the most piercing nose-whistle I’ve ever heard. The guy to my right was blathering on about the colour blue to the guy next to him at top volume. The bus’s brakes were in desperate need of some kind of tuning given the high-pitched screams of protest they made every time the bus came to a stop. Another woman was digging her in over-sized purse for a phone that was shrieking out Katy Perry’s I Kissed a Girl at a very loud volume (who knew faux alligator skin was such a poor sound barrier) not to mention the various kinds of music leaking out of people’s headphones.

It was nearly too much to tune out. I am not good at meditation – largely because I’ve only ever tried a handful of times and taming the monkey-mind is not going to happen overnight – so drowning out the people on the bus, and the surrounding traffic was not going well today. My immediate feeling towards all these noises (and their creators) was one of pure resentment.

I know the whole world can’t suddenly turn down the volume because I want to read – but that doesn’t stop me from wanting it. This resentment towards the noisy world coming between me and my books goes back a long way.

As a kid I remember not being able to find a lot of time to read quietly – there were always interruptions. Most of these interruptions came in the form of my mother’s voice: “What are you doing inside? It’s a beautiful day, go outside and play.”

You want to see resentment? Separate a kid from her book all in the name of “playing outside”. Anyone who really loves to read will fully understand my sulky replies, the irritated tone of voice and even the backchat that was usually some form of, “Why don’t YOU go outside and play and leave me alone?”

I still can’t understand how parents can desperately want their kids to be readers and yet cannot, absolutely cannot, leave their children alone when they DO finally pick up a book and get absorbed in it. The moment the outside world disappears for a reading child is exactly the moment parents start in on all the apparent virtues of being outside (though, even if the kid does go out, heaven forbid you come back dirty with tears in your clothes and scraped up knees!).

Anyway, after many, many repetitions of this, I got smart. I took a small bag (a red canvas child’s purse with a picture of Snoopy on it), packed a couple of books, some stolen cookies, and a juice box and hightailed it through the woods behind my aunt and uncle’s place directly to the local graveyard. Once there, I found a great and shady spot behind the mausoleum, sprawled out in the grass, and read to my heart’s content.

I can’t remember the name of the family buried there, but I hope they didn’t mind me borrowing a little shade while I read The Secret Garden or The Stand and ate some Oreos. The graveyard is maybe an odd place to find such happiness but it was well chosen. It was close enough to the house that I could get back fairly quickly, but far enough away that if Mum stood on the back step and yelled for me I’d be able to honestly say I hadn’t heard her calling.

I wasn’t an awful child, just determined to pursue my passion without all the commentary – and children need privacy and freedom the same as adults.

In the winter, I lived at the library (usually on weekends) and the librarian, Annie, was always glad to let me take a chair out of the way and read whatever I liked. I also read under the covers with a flashlight, I would read standing around in my room while listening for any sign of a parent (and stuff the book under the pillow and say I was cleaning up when caught), I read in the bathroom, on the bus, at recess, in class (when I could get away with it), on class trips including the over-night trip to Camp Sylvan and once even at a particularly bad company summer picnic.

Romeo and Juliet’s doomed romance was far more interesting than getting a loaf of bread from the freezer, or cleaning my room. Reading about the survivors of “Captain Trips” in The Stand (and my secret conviction that I would have been a survivor too) was much more entertaining than doing the dishes.

Even today, I still feel that same resentment at being pulled from whatever world I was inhabiting. Of course, the good thing about being an adult is that no one ever tells me to go outside and play if I’d rather read. Nor am I frequently interrupted to fetch things or clean my room and best of all – I don’t have to hide out in the graveyard with contraband cookies.

I sometimes think I should open up a reading lounge. People would come in with a book and sprawl out on a plush and comfortable rug or chair and then just zone out and read. No laptops, all cell phones on vibrate, no chatterboxes yapping about the colour blue – just some unobtrusive music and the sound of pages being turned.

How peaceful that would be!

I hear my own reading lounge calling to me; my very comfortable couch where I will read without further interruptions.