The Art of Fielding

It is no secret among those who know me that I love baseball movies. I love them. Not more than all other movies, but definitely more than all other sports movies (as a group, anyway, specifics can prove to be exceptions). I think some of that has to do with being a kid in the late-'80s and the '90s, when movies like The Sandlot (probably my favourite childhood movie), Rookie of the Year, and Angels in the Outfield all came out. When I got older and realized that all the great baseball classics started either Kevin Costner and Robert Redford, I was hooked. I mean, Bull Durham? The Natural? Field of Dreams? Do sport movies get better than that? Anyway, the reason I'm bringing any of this up on a book blog is because I only recently discovered baseball books, and, at least as far as Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding is concerned, the appeal is much the same.

What I have always loved about baseball movies, and now books, is that they are never really about baseball. Baseball is the catalyst, it happens regularly throughout the movie, but it isn't what the thing is really about. Or, maybe it is, but it manages to tie in so many other things that it doesn't matter how much about baseball you know in order to enjoy it. Everyone gets the baseball metaphor, and that's enough grounding in the sport to understand any action that takes place on the diamond. 

My Bookshelf, 2010 edition

I'm not sure how I managed it, but somehow in 2010 I worked my way through thirty-four books. To be fair, some of these titles were lighter than others, but still, I think that's a pretty good number. I'm not really someone who goes for those year-long reading challenges (a book per day or a book per week, etc.) because I expect it would make me a less attentive reader, more concerned with the number of pages left than the page I'm reading. 

Anyhow, here's what I read last year (excluding, of course, magazines and newspapers). Of the thirty-four titles on the list: 11 are rereads, 8 are non-fiction, 2 are poetry, 23 are novels, and 12 are Canadian. Clearly, I need to improve my poetry and short-fiction reading in 2011. All in all, though, those numbers indicate a reasonably balanced bookshelf.

Just like the last time I did this, the stars indicate rereads – can you believe that until this year I'd never read a novel by Margaret Atwood or Kurt Vonnegut? Consider those holes filled.

What I read in 2010:

Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire*

Abel’s Island by William Steig*

American Ground: Unbuilding the World Trade Center by William Langewiesche

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness and Greed by John Vaillant

How Soccer Explains the World: An [unlikely] theory of globalization by Franklin Foer

The Writing Life by Annie Dillard

The Adventuress by Audrey Niffenegger

The Golden Mean by Annabel Lyon

Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut

Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden*

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

The Boy in the Moon: A father’s search for his disabled son by Ian Brown

Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones

Fiasco by Stanislaw Lem

The Dog Who Wouldn't Be by Farley Mowat*

The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman*

The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman

The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman

Summer Sisters by Judy Bloom*

Imperium by Ryszard Kapuscinski

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald*

The Sword in the Stone by T.H. White*

The Princess Bride by William Goldman*

The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis*

Bloom by Michael Lista

The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean

The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

Pitouie by Derek Winkler

Annabel by Kathleen Winter

February by Lisa Moore

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson*

By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept by Elizabeth Smart

This year, I'm looking forward to lots of new reading (and some rereading as well). At the top of my list are:

The Sentimentalists by Johanna Skibsrud

Storyteller: The authorized biography of Roald Dahl by Donald Sturrock

Hocus Pocus by Kurt Vonnegut

Come, Thou Tortoise by Jessica Grant

Tiger by John Vaillant

Here's to another great year of reading!

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Author memoirs are ify territory for me. On the one hand, I'm fascinated by their lives and their writing habits; on the other hand, if I know too much about them it distracts me when I'm reading their work. Maya Angelou said good writing reads as effortless, and I want to enjoy it that way without being bogged down by the backstory. But, there are always exceptions, and Haruki Murakami is one.

Murakami's memoir, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running came out two years ago. In it, Murakami details his life not only as a writer, but as a marathon runner, and by extension, about his musical taste. As anyone who as read any of his novels knows, Murakami references a lot of jazz and classical music, as well as a litany of North American pop-culture references. Those details tend to stand out in stories set in various parts of Japan, but fit perfectly into Murakami's personality (as far as he's described himself here, anyway).

The through-line of the memoir is the relationship between Murakami's writing and running. Before he became a novelist, he ran a jazz bar in Tokyo. After deciding he'd rather be a writer, he sold the bar to forge ahead as a novelist. But, after spending days sitting down, Murakami realized he was getting fat, so he started running. A year later, he ran the original marathon: covering the distance between Athens and Marathon.

Murakami has run marathons all over the world and completed several triathlons. For most people, training for those events would be quite enough to keep them busy. But no, Murakami has also written over a dozen widely-acclaimed books, worked as a visiting professor at several universities and maintained a marriage. How does he do it? Well, he does it the boring way: he comes up with a routine that works, and he sticks to it.

In a lot of ways, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running is centred around Murakami's four months pr preparation for the Boston Marathon. It is, at its core, a memoir about a routine that balances his marathon training with his writing. But Murakami is a writer who knows how to make ordinary things - like looking for a lost cat - into endlessly interesting and bizarrely intricate endeavours. He writes about running in way that draws in runners and non-runners alike, and balances the details of his training schedule with stories about his past and details about his writing processes.

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running isn't a long, drawn-out memoir; rather it's a snapshot of a man who refuses to only have one focus in his life. Murakami's life, as described here, explains a lot of the cultural references and themes of his novels without going into exhaustive detail. But Murakami doesn't give too much away; rather, like in his novels, he offers enough details to pique your interest, but leaves other aspects vague. Murakami draws you in, but doesn't let you get close enough to think you know it all. He's a great writer, and he knows exactly what turn of phrase will put you where he wants you, all the while keeping you engaged.

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
by Haruki Murakami
First published in 2008 (cover image shown from Bond Street Books edition)

The Sword in the Stone

Sometimes it just works out that you discover a great book because of a movie, and not the other way around. That is the case with T.H. White's The Sword in the Stone, which first made itself known to me (and, I'm sure many other people) through the Disney movie of the same name. But as good as that movie is (I love it as a kid), the book far surpasses it.

Generally, the story goes like this. Wart lives in Sir Ector's castle in the very ancient times of England when there were still valiant knights and dragons to fight and wizards and witches and Robin Hood (excuse me, Robin Wood – White clears history's name fumble quite nicely). Wart is not Sir Ector's son, though, that honour falls to Kay who is a couple of years older and despite all of his advantages, at least eight times more insecure. Anyway, Wart goes into the Forest Sauvage (old England has some suspiciously French names in White, which I suspect is a nod to the original Morte d'Arthur) and, after spending a rather harrowing night in the wild trying to retrieve a lost hawk, he stumbles upon Merlyn.

Of course, Merlyn knew he was coming because he ages backwards and because he's a magician. Wart and Merlyn head back to the castle and Merlyn becomes the boys' tutor. And, sure, he teaches them both all sorts of important things, but really he saves the best – and most cryptic – lessons for Wart. Merlyn, of course, knows that Wart is going to become King Arthur (his real name being Arthur) and he goes about preparing him for the job by turning him into various animals and letting him learn indirect lessons about valour and bravery and history.

The lessons are one of my favourite parts of the book. I like the way White has imagined the the different social codes and ingrained memories of the various animals. I also like that Wart isn't a natural as any of them. He has to learn to swim like a fish; he has to be taught how to fly; he is conscious of the way the shape of his body changes and White describes it all in a way that makes you think of how weird it would be to suddenly become a snake (or whatever). 

My other favourite part are the anachronisms. The story is full of them – because Merlyn a) ages backwards, and b) is not always very good at his spells, which means sometimes bowler hats end up in the 12th century – and the characters' reactions are perfect. Usually, they don't even notice because whatever is being mentioned or conjured is so foreign that they can't even begin to understand it. Merlyn, though, goes into fits over it, which is hilarious. Additionally, because the book was written in the '30s (prior to the outbreak of WWII), a lot of the anachronisms now seem really old fashioned, which adds another level of humour to the references.

Of all this, though, I'm not sure how much younger readers pick up. There are certainly points that are obviously funny and meant to make kids laugh, but there's a lot going on that would be so far over their heads that it can only have been written for their parents. It's a pretty quick read – certainly as face-paced as any thriller – and it's the sort of perfectly engaging book to bring on a picnic or something, during which you'll chuckle about something and the person you're with will want to know what's going on, so you'll have to explain to them something about a giant, at which point you'll realize that White has cleverly inserted a Hitler-Mussolini figure into the story who gets defeated before he does any real damage, and you'll wish that were really the case. And that's when it will strike you that, for all the lightness and the adventure, White's retelling of King Arthur's coming-of-age is also about England itself.

It's quite ingenious, really, how he buries that metaphor. And it works perfectly, elevating a children's story into something much greater and, in some ways, much sadder – but always gripping and almost always hilarious.

The Sword in the Stone
by T.H. White
First published in 1938 (cover image shown from Laurel Leaf edition)

World Cup of Reading

The World Cup ended three days ago, and my hangover was much less severe than I was expecting (although I miss the excuse to go out for near-daily coffees). But, there's something about packing that much emotion and focus into four weeks of sport that doesn't allow you to just walk away. So when I stumbled upon Words Without Border' Around the World in 32 (or so) Books I realized how badly I needed a little bridge like that to bring me from World Cup reality back to everyday.

Then, I started wondering how well my reading reflects the international scope of the world's game, and the result, I'm afraid to say, is woefully. So far this year, I have read books by authors from Canada, the U.S., England, Australia and Poland. I'm not sure it really gives me any extra points that one of these books was actually about soccer. Looking over last year's list I can add Japan and Iran to the tally. On Books Under Skin, I have recommended books by authors from Canada, the U.S., Australia, England, France, Belgium and Iran.

I must say, until I did a survey I had no idea how narrowly I was reading. I mean, I read widely in terms of genre, topic, style, length, etc., but when it comes to the nationalities of the authors I'm reading, there isn't much depth. Obviously, you could only ever read books from Canada, the U.S. and England and never run out of material, but that isn't the point. Other countries and cultures have a lot to offer in terms of style, perspective and wordplay. Some books I can read in their original language (well, French books anyway), but the art of translation is interesting in and of itself, and reading a book translated from another language adds an extra layer to the story.

So, in World Cup spirit, I am going to try and spend the next four years reading more widely, in the hopes of making my own bracket of books when the time comes. But, four years is a while away yet, so in the meantime I'll work on reading for the Euros, which will be in Poland and the Ukraine in two years.

Soccer and reading may not have any obvious correlation other than, of course, the importance of goals.

Image used a photo of the FIFA World Cup