Ahhh books...
Nov. 6th, 2005 02:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatSuch a lovely day today, took my little walk - not much time, since still have to finish chapter 13 of novel and watch the netflix flick. But feeling quite accomplished.
I found, after hunting through 10 different book stores, including Amazon.com, a book about eating "gluten-free", no it's not the one I originally wanted - that is unfortunately either out of print or woefully unavailable, but I did find one that fits the same criteria. Granted it is for the "ceiliac or coeliac" depending on which side of the Atlantic you hail from, not for the merely gluten "sensitive" but I figure looking at the extreme case will give me some idea of how much elbow room I have to maneuvre in. It's called The Gluten-free Bible by Jax Peters Lowell - I found it at the small indie book store in my neighborhood, which has managed to stay alive even with the monsterous B&N hovering a few blocks away. B&N by the way does not have any books on gluten-free eating. Cost $17, much less than the Complete Gluten-Free Resource Guide I attempted to get from Amazon, which took them three months to tell me, oh so sorry but we can't find one.
Also grabbed the new edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves by the Boston Women's Health Collective. This book actually defines the difference between a food allergy and food hypersensitivity, which aren't the same thing. Many people get them confused. My friend CW is allergic to peanuts - every time she eats them her glands, lips, face swells or she gets a rash. I on the other hand am hypersenitive to glutens - every time I eat anything with gluten in it, I will over a 40 min, hour, two day or more period begin to show the following symptoms: physical depression, gastrointestinal disorder, irritiable bowel, headaches, tremor, fatigue, muscel or joint pain, congestion, and eczema. The reaction can show up more than 70 hours after digesting food, while an allergy shows up immediately. Also while you can grow out of an allergy or get a shot for one, there's nothing you can do about hypsensitivity. Just avoid those foods. So even not ceilac, still can't digest it and get bad symptoms.
Need to navigate around.
Then purchased Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes - the new translation by Edith Grossman, which read very well in the book store and made me laugh privately to myself. Quixote is one of those books I've always wanted to read but never got around to it for some reason. I think I may attempt it soon, somewhere between Patter Recognition and Storm of Swords, methinks.
Speaking of books that I always wanted to read but haven't gotten around to - bought Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. The paragraph Philip Seymore Hoffman read in the movie haunted me to such a degree that I ended up buying it today. Been flirting with the book for quite some time actually. Poetic prose. Also flirted with a new edition of Marcel Proust's Sodom and Gomorrah - which looks even more interesting than Swann in Love, which I've also been flirting with. Ahhh... it has been far too long since I allowed myself to go on a book buying spree. To let myself go this way, is almost a release.
I don't know what it is about me and books. I don't do this with anything else. I don't compulsively buy CD's or VHS or DVDs or knicknacks. Just books. Doesn't matter the kind - if there are words, I will most likely buy them. Comics, magazines, novels, etc. My only frustration is I cannot read fast enough to get through all the books I wish to devour. I envy people who can read quickly, who devour four to five books a week, who can make it through a book in a day and still have time to eat, sleep, walk, go out with friends, and write on the net - most of or rather 85% of my correspondence list appears to be able to do this. I don't understand how they do it. When I read a book, I'm often rereading each paragraph, it's as if I've read it twice in one sitting, trying to absorb the words into my body, make them a part of my mental landscape. To comprehend, to sink, completely irrevocably into another's head. There's nothing more magical than falling into a book, and I mean really falling, so you are no longer even aware that you are reading it, the words becoming pictures in your head and you are in the world. Absolutely.
William Gibson's Pattern Recognition is like that for me. Not so much a book one reads as falls into. So much so, that I have almost missed my subway stop a couple of times, jolted by the realization and annoyed that it is time to leave the safe confines of the pages.
My love affair with books began when I was very young, before I could read and it took so long for me to figure out how. I yearned to be able to decipher the words my parents uttered so effortlessly when they read to me, weaving worlds in my imagination with their voice. I wanted to be able to do that myself. And envied those who could. I remember when I finally did figure it - how my world changed. I started with Nancy Drew Mysteries - read every single one I could find. Then Little House on The Prarie Books, most of which had been read to me. Then Lisa Bright and Dark and the Zelphia Keatly Snyder novels...and then my aunt, my mother's older sister, who at that time had been a librarian in a school in Vegas that was made up solely of six graders - introduced me to the Chronicles of Narnia, The Circle of Light series, and Dark is Rising series. I remember sleeping with books as a child. I remember looking forward to the books my parents would give me on Xmas morning. And the school book fairs - where we'd order books from a catalogue and then have them delivered in class the next week. Gifts from the Gods. My favorite hour of the day in grade school wasn't recess but when the teacher read to us - books such as Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, the Great Glass Elevator, Little House on The Prarie, etc. And in Junior high I worked as a student aide in the library during study hall - in order to read all the books that were checked in. The backs of them, the excerpts.
Libraries grew out of favor as an adult - possibly because the one's I have access to have horrid selections. The one near my home in Brooklyn is abysmal and Kansas City's wasn't much better. Also I don't like having a time limit on how long I can keep the book or how quickly it must be read. Nor am I a fan of ordering something and waiting to pick it up. It takes me longer to read now than back than, because I have less time to read. During school - I could read between classes or at least as an assignment, now... But I am reading more and more now or rather again. My head has gotten quieter and I can concentrate. Spending less and less time in front of the tv. And more and more reading or writing or doing something else. Which is of the good, I expect.
At any rate, I appear to have once again added to my ever expanding bookshelf of books - more than I have time to read, yet I love that. The idea of having more books than I can ever possibly read - always something to pick up and sink into. Sometimes I think as long as there are books in my life, nothing is bad, nothing can really hurt, and I'm never entirely alone.
I found, after hunting through 10 different book stores, including Amazon.com, a book about eating "gluten-free", no it's not the one I originally wanted - that is unfortunately either out of print or woefully unavailable, but I did find one that fits the same criteria. Granted it is for the "ceiliac or coeliac" depending on which side of the Atlantic you hail from, not for the merely gluten "sensitive" but I figure looking at the extreme case will give me some idea of how much elbow room I have to maneuvre in. It's called The Gluten-free Bible by Jax Peters Lowell - I found it at the small indie book store in my neighborhood, which has managed to stay alive even with the monsterous B&N hovering a few blocks away. B&N by the way does not have any books on gluten-free eating. Cost $17, much less than the Complete Gluten-Free Resource Guide I attempted to get from Amazon, which took them three months to tell me, oh so sorry but we can't find one.
Also grabbed the new edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves by the Boston Women's Health Collective. This book actually defines the difference between a food allergy and food hypersensitivity, which aren't the same thing. Many people get them confused. My friend CW is allergic to peanuts - every time she eats them her glands, lips, face swells or she gets a rash. I on the other hand am hypersenitive to glutens - every time I eat anything with gluten in it, I will over a 40 min, hour, two day or more period begin to show the following symptoms: physical depression, gastrointestinal disorder, irritiable bowel, headaches, tremor, fatigue, muscel or joint pain, congestion, and eczema. The reaction can show up more than 70 hours after digesting food, while an allergy shows up immediately. Also while you can grow out of an allergy or get a shot for one, there's nothing you can do about hypsensitivity. Just avoid those foods. So even not ceilac, still can't digest it and get bad symptoms.
Need to navigate around.
Then purchased Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes - the new translation by Edith Grossman, which read very well in the book store and made me laugh privately to myself. Quixote is one of those books I've always wanted to read but never got around to it for some reason. I think I may attempt it soon, somewhere between Patter Recognition and Storm of Swords, methinks.
Speaking of books that I always wanted to read but haven't gotten around to - bought Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. The paragraph Philip Seymore Hoffman read in the movie haunted me to such a degree that I ended up buying it today. Been flirting with the book for quite some time actually. Poetic prose. Also flirted with a new edition of Marcel Proust's Sodom and Gomorrah - which looks even more interesting than Swann in Love, which I've also been flirting with. Ahhh... it has been far too long since I allowed myself to go on a book buying spree. To let myself go this way, is almost a release.
I don't know what it is about me and books. I don't do this with anything else. I don't compulsively buy CD's or VHS or DVDs or knicknacks. Just books. Doesn't matter the kind - if there are words, I will most likely buy them. Comics, magazines, novels, etc. My only frustration is I cannot read fast enough to get through all the books I wish to devour. I envy people who can read quickly, who devour four to five books a week, who can make it through a book in a day and still have time to eat, sleep, walk, go out with friends, and write on the net - most of or rather 85% of my correspondence list appears to be able to do this. I don't understand how they do it. When I read a book, I'm often rereading each paragraph, it's as if I've read it twice in one sitting, trying to absorb the words into my body, make them a part of my mental landscape. To comprehend, to sink, completely irrevocably into another's head. There's nothing more magical than falling into a book, and I mean really falling, so you are no longer even aware that you are reading it, the words becoming pictures in your head and you are in the world. Absolutely.
William Gibson's Pattern Recognition is like that for me. Not so much a book one reads as falls into. So much so, that I have almost missed my subway stop a couple of times, jolted by the realization and annoyed that it is time to leave the safe confines of the pages.
My love affair with books began when I was very young, before I could read and it took so long for me to figure out how. I yearned to be able to decipher the words my parents uttered so effortlessly when they read to me, weaving worlds in my imagination with their voice. I wanted to be able to do that myself. And envied those who could. I remember when I finally did figure it - how my world changed. I started with Nancy Drew Mysteries - read every single one I could find. Then Little House on The Prarie Books, most of which had been read to me. Then Lisa Bright and Dark and the Zelphia Keatly Snyder novels...and then my aunt, my mother's older sister, who at that time had been a librarian in a school in Vegas that was made up solely of six graders - introduced me to the Chronicles of Narnia, The Circle of Light series, and Dark is Rising series. I remember sleeping with books as a child. I remember looking forward to the books my parents would give me on Xmas morning. And the school book fairs - where we'd order books from a catalogue and then have them delivered in class the next week. Gifts from the Gods. My favorite hour of the day in grade school wasn't recess but when the teacher read to us - books such as Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, the Great Glass Elevator, Little House on The Prarie, etc. And in Junior high I worked as a student aide in the library during study hall - in order to read all the books that were checked in. The backs of them, the excerpts.
Libraries grew out of favor as an adult - possibly because the one's I have access to have horrid selections. The one near my home in Brooklyn is abysmal and Kansas City's wasn't much better. Also I don't like having a time limit on how long I can keep the book or how quickly it must be read. Nor am I a fan of ordering something and waiting to pick it up. It takes me longer to read now than back than, because I have less time to read. During school - I could read between classes or at least as an assignment, now... But I am reading more and more now or rather again. My head has gotten quieter and I can concentrate. Spending less and less time in front of the tv. And more and more reading or writing or doing something else. Which is of the good, I expect.
At any rate, I appear to have once again added to my ever expanding bookshelf of books - more than I have time to read, yet I love that. The idea of having more books than I can ever possibly read - always something to pick up and sink into. Sometimes I think as long as there are books in my life, nothing is bad, nothing can really hurt, and I'm never entirely alone.
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no subject
Date: 2005-11-06 10:03 pm (UTC)I'm with you; I can't resist buying books, even though my apartment is overflowing with them. I read compulsively, and I read quickly, so I go through a lot of them. I tend to read the mystery genre for pleasure, like a little light entertainment on a Sunday afternoon. Currently, I'm rereading the entire Charlotte and Thomas Pitt series by Anne Perry.
I'm never bored, or lonely, if I have a good book to read.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-06 10:08 pm (UTC)Assuming that's the one you were looking for, anyway.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-06 10:38 pm (UTC)Nods. So far today I've read three books, mind you, they were only a hundred and some pages. They are my cherished companions who I can always turn to if I'm feeling sad or anxious or just bored and they never fail to entertain me. Especially on a bad weather day like today when it's just too unpleasant to go outside.
!don quixote!
Date: 2005-11-13 08:14 am (UTC)I started rereading Don Quijote earlier this year, the 400th year since it was published. (The 2 diff't. spellings are because my copy in Spanish uses the "j": El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha.) It's going slowly, in fits & starts as my available time varies. But keep an eye out around ch. 8, where you can see that the cliffhanger has a long & honorable history, & ch. 9, for the unusual way Cervantes resolves it.
I originally read it in college, when I was majoring in Spanish. I bought it in paperback while I was on a 2-month summer studies program in Spain, & as far as I remember, I was only about a third of the way through by the time I went back home. I thought of rereading it around 10 years ago, but then I opened the book, which is quite thick (just checked: 673 pages), & was daunted when I saw how small the type was! But now the 400th anniversary has motivated me to give it another try. I'm not very far into it yet--see above re variable reading time--& already I'm seeing how much I've forgotten. We'll see how I do over the next few...I'm guessing months. Let me know what you think of the English version, 'kat!