Category: reading

Small Wins

Today I finished reading my first book in Japanese. “Reading” and “book” are both perhaps exaggerations; the book in question is the first volume in a manga series called Shirokuma Café, widely recommended to beginning Japanese learners. It is 165 pages long, and it took me 7 months of painstakingly reading a page per day (whenever I had time, which during the working semester was not always) to finish it. Most of the text made use of furigana (phonetic transliterations in Japanese kana) of the kanji (Chinese ideographic characters), making it possible for a beginner like me to look up words even if I didn’t recognize the kanji themselves. With the help of an excellent online dictionary and an excellent online translator, I collected 25 pages worth of vocabulary notes that I will probably never use for anything but that serve as a record of my progress.

60 days ago, I accomplished something else that seemed worth celebrating: a 500-day streak practicing Japanese on Duolingo. And yet, I didn’t celebrate it, not anywhere: not on Facebook where my friends might congratulate me (I had already posted when I reached 365 days, so another post so soon seemed gratuitous). Not in conversations with anyone but my husband (he high-fived me, but that’s kind of his job). Not even here; I began writing a post about it, but quickly realized I had nothing to say other than what I and plenty of others had already written (don’t use Duolingo as your only tool, use the web version and not the app…even the title I’d chosen for the post, “500 Days of Duolingo,” was already in use by a NYT article). So I let that milestone pass by without acknowledging it outside my living room.

When I finished reading Shirokuma Café, I felt similarly disinclined to make a fuss about it (except, of course, by telling my husband, whose first response was sympathy, as he knows how much I’ve liked hanging out with Shirokuma-kun, Panda-kun, and Penguin-kun and participating in their adorable adventures each morning. Fortunately, I have four more volumes on my shelf, so I’m not sad yet.) But something stopped me from just closing the book and moving on. It seemed worthwhile to note this small achievement. So here I am.

A small win of this kind contains within it many other small wins: the first time I was able to recognize and understand a kanji I’d learned elsewhere; the first time I read an entire page without looking anything up (it only happened once, but still); the first time I laughed aloud at a Japanese pun. Stopping to acknowledge the advancements I’ve made since the day I decided to start studying Japanese a year and a half ago is something I need to remind myself to do, because in the moments when I feel like I’m making little progress at all (when, for example, I earn 57% on my morning Wanikani reviews), I need to remember the moments that show clearly that I’ve come a long way.

This morning, a handyman came to install a new bathroom fan for us, a task I wish I could do myself. I regularly feel shame about my uselessness when it comes to home maintenance, and that shame translates into nerves and mistrust, as I have no way to evaluate whether a contractor is doing a good job. One way I’ve chosen to combat this is to first look up YouTube videos about DIYing the task, and to then ask if I can hang out and watch and ask questions during the work, not to monitor but to satisfy my curiosity about the process and about the weirdnesses of our old and irregular house. By the time the handyman was done, I did not feel confident that I could install a bathroom fan myself, but I did understand why the fan I’d chosen was the best one for the job, how to use a fibreglass and aluminum patch plus some plaster to repair a hole, and what our very strange second-floor ceiling looks like inside. I know more about home repair than I did yesterday. High-five, me.

The main reason to celebrate small achievements is to maintain motivation, which is notoriously difficult when learning a language. Frustrations and setbacks are more likely to remain embedded in our memories (and in our visceral reactions, like the way we feel when we sit down to study each morning or when the bathroom fan stops working). Positive moments are less crucial to our survival (remembering which berries are delicious is important, but remembering which ones brought us to the brink of death is much more so); however, the positive moments are what make us want to keep trying even when we fail, as this article reminds us: “The positive feeling you get when you succeed is what ultimately builds confidence. It builds hope that you will be successful again. When you are confident and hopeful, that improves your ability to focus naturally. When you feel that way, you are more likely to concentrate again on a challenging task in the future because you will feel motivated to get that feeling back.”

So here I am, noting to myself and anyone else who’s interested that I just read an entire book in Japanese. Tomorrow I will start on a second one (probably Yotsubato!, another manga widely recommended to beginning readers). I will try to note whether this one goes more quickly, whether my vocabulary list is less extensive because more words are familiar, whether I am better at reading Japanese than I was a few months ago. And when I’m done, maybe I’ll buy myself a bottle of shouchuu or at least a nice plate of sushi, to embed the small win in my memory a little more firmly.

Please do the same for yourself – you did something today, however small, that you might not have been able to do yesterday or ten years ago. This is important! Give yourself a high five.

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Posted on by Siobhan Curious 11

A Japanese Study Routine

YouTube is full of videos with titles like “How I Became Fluent in Japanese in 4 Days!” or “My Journey to Knowing 10,000 Kanji Even Though Japanese People Ask Me Why I Bother,” or even just “Study Japanese Like I Do and Soon You’ll Be Really Jouzu [good at it]”. I watch these videos occasionally. They seem to be mostly by people who have made Japanese study their whole lives, or who live in Japan, or who live at home with their parents and so have limited responsibilities. They sometimes involve gauzy lighting, a massive collection of kawaii notebooks, and a pretty young woman with an ASMR voice writing perfect hiragana with a feathered pen.

As an obsessive but middle-aged person with a full-time job who lives in Canada and has terrible handwriting, I sometimes find useful resources in these videos but can’t relate whatsoever to the study routines. First of all, I’m in no rush and have no lofty goals. Also, if there’s one thing I’ve taken away from the ones I’ve watched, it’s that effective study routines are intensely personal.

I’ve found a method that works well for me. I can’t vouch for this being a good method. After a year of study, I still struggle to put together a simple sentence orally, I can’t read a newspaper article, and I can’t watch Midnight Diner without subtitles. But after a year, I still look forward to practicing a little bit of Japanese every single morning before work. And when I get the chance someday to immerse myself in some serious full-time learning, I will have a good head start.

(Please note that no one is paying me to mention any of these resources; I’ve found some stuff that works for me right now, and that’s it.)

Things I do every day:

  • Duolingo: I do one review lesson and one new lesson on Duolingo every morning. This takes 5-15 minutes. When I have more time, I do more. I currently have a 439 day streak, unbroken since my first lesson. I use the website, and not the app, which I find full of distractions. I haven’t tried the paid version, nor do I intend to.
  • Wanikani: This is a kanji-learning website. It is an SRS (spaced repetition system), meaning it introduces new kanji and then has you review them at longer and longer intervals until they are “burned” into your memory. Every morning I complete all my reviews (usually about 30 radicals, kanji or vocabulary) and then do one new lesson (5 radicals, kanji or vocabulary). This takes me around 15 minutes. Then I complete reviews as they pop up during the day, whenever I have a moment. I started using it in December, and have used it every day since I started. It costs money, but for me it has been well worth it.

Things I do most days:

  • Reading practice: If I have a bit more time in the morning, I do some reading practice. I’m currently working my way through a manga that’s often recommended for beginners, called Shirokuma Café (Polar Bear Café). It’s a very cute, quiet story about Shirokuma-kun and the customers at his café (Panda-kun, Pengin [Penguin] -kun, and so on), who go on adventures like becoming a part-time employee at the zoo or learning to drive, so it helps me start my day happily. (There’s a nice review of it here if you’re interested.) I started by reading the first volume from beginning to end, understanding very little but trying to glean meanings from context. Then I went back to the beginning, and I now reread a page each day, using Jisho.org to look up vocabulary and, when necessary, Google Translate and/or web searches to try to understand unfamiliar grammar. I have a Word document in which I list the new words in kanji, then hiragana, then English translation; this list won’t be of much use as a reference, but the act of keeping it helps me focus.
  • TV/Movies: For the past year, I’ve mostly watched only Japanese programming. Netflix is a real treasure box for this. They have almost all of the Studio Ghibli catalogue, as well as plenty of anime series and a bunch of reality shows (I just finished watching Love is Blind: Japan, which is fascinating; this review reflects many of my thoughts about it). I still haven’t found any J-dramas that I much like, but Alice in Borderland is next on my list to try. I don’t love anime enough to subscribe to a service like Crunchyroll or Funimation, but I do occasionally buy DVDs of series I can’t find elsewhere (Steins;Gate, for example) or things I can’t rent from AppleTV in the original language with English subtitles (a strange number of their films are only offered dubbed in Canada, like Makoto Shinkai’s Weathering with You). I have also found plenty of Japanese movies through my local library.
  • Music: I only listen to Japanese music these days. See this post for details.

Things I do once a week:

  • Language course: Monday is a very long day of classes and meetings, and then I have to stay at work to do my online Japanese course, because I don’t have time to get home first. I don’t mind. The course itself is not even that fun – we’re struggling beginners, we’re learning basic rote stuff, and we can’t even be in the same room together. Nevertheless, I look forward to it. It’s my only chance to speak the language, it reinforces things I’m learning elsewhere, it provides me with grammar explanations, and I get to hang out with people who, like me, are mostly learning Japanese for no other reason than that they love it.

Things I do occasionally:

  • Writing practice: I have a couple of kanji practice books that I dip into once in a while. I have a repetitive strain injury that makes all handwriting difficult for me, but I do find the repetition useful for memorization, and it can be quite fun to do a bit of copying while I’m listening to something.
  • Grammar study: I have the first volume of Genki, which I use more for consulting than studying, but when I have time I work through a lesson. More fun, though, is Japanese the Manga Way, an exploration of basic grammar through examples from manga. I take this book with me whenever I know I’ll be stuck somewhere for an indefinite period of time, like a doctor’s office. (Its ancestors, Mangajin’s Basic Japanese through Comics 1 & 2, are harder to come by and more focused on vocabulary, but they are also great).

Things I’ll Do When I Have More Time:

  • Sentence-a-day diary: As I continue to struggle with speaking and writing, I come across more and more recommendations to do something as simple as writing a sentence or two about my day as a regular practice. In fact, my very first Japanese teacher said that, given that I had a little more prior knowledge than my classmates, I could start doing this to speed up my learning, but I balked because it still seemed out of my reach. I’m ready to do it now, and it will be a good way to use the genkouyoushi notebooks I’ve been accumulating but haven’t found a use for.
  • Bunpro: I don’t have time to add another online practice tool to my routine right now, but as soon as summer vacation starts, I’m planning to look into Bunpro, a grammar practice resource. I’ve heard very good things, and grammar is my weakest point, so this seems like a good next step.
  • Individual tutoring: Several places in my city offer Japanese courses beyond the absolute beginner level, but apparently they are often cancelled due to lack of enrolment. As I approach this level, if I find myself without courses to do, I’m going to look into finding a tutor, either in person or through an online resource like iTalki, which comes recommended by a lot of people and is affordable.

My whole life I’ve had a hard time thinking of any of my activities as “hobbies.” It was as if I needed to believe that everything I did was leading to some great goal and therefore shouldn’t be diminished by such a term. Thinking of Japanese study as a “hobby” has allowed me to have a joyful and pressure-free relationship with it. I honestly love every second I spend with it, and that love has been my only objective and my only motivation. If that love starts to fade, I may flounder in my routine, and maybe even give it up – or maybe I’ll find another impetus. For now, though, spending anything from 15 minutes to a couple of hours on Japanese study every morning is a joy and a respite.

If you’re working at learning something – Japanese, the saxophone, tennis, cabinetmaking… – do you have a routine? Do you have experience with the resources I mention above, or recommendations for others? Please leave your thoughts in the comments.

Posted on by Siobhan Curious 0

My Top 10 Books of 2016

It’s time again for the list of books that I enjoyed most this year.  As always, only some of these books were published in 2016, but they were all a part of my 2016 experience.

the-trespasser1. The Trespasser by Tana French

I have loved all six of French’s “Dublin Murder Squad” novels, and when she has a new book out, it always makes my list. The Trespasser is close behind 2014’s The Secret Place in the running for my favourite. We revisit the two main detectives from The Secret Place, Antoinette Conway and Stephen Moran, but this story is told from Conway’s point of view, and she’s not doing so hot. She’s unable to let her guard down for a second, convinced as she is that everyone but her partner is trying to orchestrate her professional demise. When a new case lands on her desk – a pretty, stylish blonde is found dead in her own well-appointed living room – Conway can’t shake the feeling that she’s seen the victim somewhere before. As usual, the case looks simple at first but turns out to be anything but. After I finished The Trespasser, I went back and reread Broken Harbour, Into the Woods and The Likeness in quick succession, because there’s so much more to French’s novels than finding out who did it.

americanah2. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I’m cheating here – I’m only halfway through Americanah. I feel confident in my assessment, however. Ifemelu, a young Nigerian woman, leaves home to seek a fantasy life in America, and finds, of course, that America is no fantasy. Ifemelu’s alienation and moments of desperation are tempered for the reader by her humour, her eye for nuance, and her implicit but unshakable belief that she deserves far more than the people around her – white Americans, African-Americans, other immigrants, family, lovers, employers and friends – are willing to accord her. She returns home years later to face the changes in herself, the people around her, and her country. I haven’t gotten to that part yet, but I very much look forward to seeing what becomes of her.

shrill3. Shrill by Lindy West

Lindy West is currently my favourite essayist. She writes a lot about being fat, being a woman, pop culture, and politics – her recent articles for The Guardian have titles like “Disney’s Moana strikes at the heart of proto-Trump America” and “Dear Barack Obama, thank you for not being an evil robot accountant.” Shrill is mostly personal, and mostly about being a woman and being fat. Chapter titles include, “Are you there, Margaret? It’s me, a person who is not a complete freak,” and “You’re so brave for wearing clothes and not hating yourself!” One of my favourite chapters, “Lady Kluck,” details the fat pop-culture role models West remembers from her childhood, from Maid Marian’s chicken maid in “Robin Hood” to Miss Piggy (“she invented glorifying obesity. But also…is kind of a rapist”). You will find that chapter excerpted here. Also, you should follow Lindy West on Twitter. Unless you are fatphobic, in which case, she will destroy you. [Update January 3, 2016: turns out, you can’t follow Lindy West on Twitter any more. This is as much a harbinger of the apocalypse as anything else that’s happened in the last few months – or maybe it’s a preventative? Not sure, but her explanation is worth reading.]

another-brooklyn4. Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson

This is a story about childhood friendship. August grows up in Brooklyn in the 1970s and learns that being a girl is dangerous, but other girls can help. At the very least, they can spin the danger into a story, thus making it an adventure. She also longs for her missing mother and grapples with the reality of death. Woodson drew great acclaim for her young-adult novel-in-poems Brown Girl Dreaming (on my list of what to read next), and, having read this brief, absorbing novel for adults, I can see why.

eligible5. Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld

Because you are reading this blog, I figure there’s a probability of about 40% that Pride and Prejudice is your favourite novel. I’m a big fan of modern retellings of classics (see Zadie Smith’s On Beauty [a retelling of Howard’s End], Cathleen Schine’s The Three Women of Westport [Sense and Sensibility], Michael Cunningham’s The Hours [Mrs. Dalloway], Baz Luhrmann’s “Romeo + Juliet”, etc.) I didn’t love Sittenfeld’s Prep, her 2005 breakthrough debut, as much as the rest of the world seemed to, so I wouldn’t have thought of picking up Eligible if it weren’t for a host of excellent and intriguing reviews. It’s charming. Lizzie is Liz, a magazine writer in New York who, along with her sister Jane, a yoga instructor, is called home to Cincinnati to help the family when their father’s health takes a bad turn. Kitty and Lydia are orthorexic ninnies, Chip Bingley is the former star of a Bachelor-esque reality show, and Darcy is a pompous neurosurgeon. You can probably read this book in an afternoon, and I recommend it. So much fun.

nest6. The Nest by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney

The Nest is neurotic family drama at its sharpest. The adult Plumb children have been waiting their whole lives to inherit “The Nest,” a trust fund that is bound to resolve their myriad financial difficulties and keep them comfortable into old age. Their legacy is jeopardized by black sheep brother Leo, starting with a DUI accident in which his passenger, a teenage waitress, is maimed for life and now wants restitution. The siblings come together to try to find a solution, but of course, they each in their own particular way make everything worse. This is a juicy read, but also a moving tribute to the destructive and redemptive power of family love.

dietland7. Dietland by Sarai Walker

Plum Kettle is fat, and unhappy about it. She is waiting for weight-loss surgery and, in the meantime, works for a teen magazine, responding to letters from desperate readers.  One day, she notices she’s being followed by a mysterious woman, and thus begin her adventures. She discovers an underground community of feminist activists hell-bent on teaching women to love themselves, with sometimes deadly consequences. This novel starts out intriguing and becomes steadily more bananapants, so it is not for those who resist suspending disbelief. For the rest of us, it’s both a rollicking page-turner and a bold political statement.

what-the-dead8. What the Dead Know by Laura Lippman

Laura Lippman is now on my list of crime writers whose back catalogue I will devour. If this novel is any indication, she is both a skilled prose stylist and a master genre craftswoman, a rare combination in my experience (see Tana French, above). Responding to a hit-and-run, police discover a woman who claims to be Heather Bethany, the younger of two sisters who disappeared thirty years ago and were never found. However, the woman has no ID, and her story is inconsistent and unconvincing. The novel moves back and forth between the events around the Bethany sisters’ disappearance and the present-time interrogation of “Heather.” Couldn’t put it down.

hus-secret9. The Husband’s Secret by Liane Moriarty

Cecilia stumbles across a letter written by her husband, labelled “For my wife – to be opened only in the event of my death.” He’s not dead. Does she open it? This is a soapy, fluffy read, but it moves along briskly, and the narrative weaves deftly between Cecilia’s story and those of two other women whose roles in the story are not immediately clear. A good book to devour on the deck with a Campari & soda or two. After reading The Husband’s Secret, I went back to Liane Moriarty’s other novels, and was also impressed by Big Little Lies (which I have just learned will soon be an HBO series). I liked the others less, but look forward to reading her newest, Truly Madly Guilty, in the new year.

big-girls10. Big Girl: How I Gave Up Dieting and Got a Life by Kelsey Miller

You may see a theme emerging here. About seven years ago, I paid a lot of money to go on a well-known diet plan, and lost almost 50 pounds. I managed to keep most of it off for a couple of years, but, as is the case for most people who diet, I discovered that maintaining such a weight loss was beyond my capacity. After struggling mightily and desperately searching for anything – veganism! intermittent fasting! green smoothies green smoothies green smoothies! – that would get me back to a place where I received across-the-board approval for the way my body looked, in 2016 I decided that I am not going to waste one more second of the life I have left trying to control my weight. This led to a lot of reading, listening and thinking about body positivity, Health at Every Size, and intuitive eating. Is it possible to like one’s body – and, by extension, oneself – even if one is not “beautiful” in the eyes of everyone? I’m still not sure it’s possible for me, but books like Kelsey Miller’s memoir are very helpful. It’s a funny, honest and wrenching story about growing up fat and ashamed, but then learning that “fat” is a neutral descriptor, and that other people’s opinions of our (and their own) bodies, even those of the people we love and want to please most, are at best irrelevant and at worst poisonous. If you’re tired of hooking your self-worth to the wagon of your body size, and would like to be free of that nonsense, I have plenty of book, podcast and blog recommendations for you, starting with Big Girl.

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What did you read this year that you loved? Tell us below, and happy 2017, reading-wise and otherwise.

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Want to see lists from past years? Here are all my previous Top 10 Books posts on one convenient page.

Posted on by Siobhan Curious 13

My Top 10 Books of 2015

It’s time again for the list of books that I enjoyed most this year.  As always, only some of these books were published in 2015, but they were all a part of my 2015 experience.

  1. dykesThe Essential Dykes to Watch Out For 

You know me: always on the cutting edge of 30-year-old cultural touchstones. After loving – actually, loving seems like too mild a word – Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoirs Fun Home and Are You My Mother?, I decided to go back to her early work. I’d seen her collections around in the 90’s, and figured I’d get to them someday. I finally did this summer, in the form of this handy compendium, published in 2008. Dykes to Watch Out For is a hilarious down-to-earth, politically-charged soap opera full of wonderful, familar characters, and was my favourite reading experience of the year.

spec2. Dept. of Speculation

How can one be an artist, a parent and a spouse without being thwarted at every turn? This little novel poses this question without answering it. It appears on the surface to be the kind of fragmentary prose experiment that I have little truck with these days, but it’s a whole lot more than that. Its interiority is both absorbing and affecting. It’s also funny, and sad.

3.giants I Kill Giants

Barbara fights monsters. Some of them are real; all of them are real to her. This graphic novel is about a child taking control in any way she can, and eventually reconciling the world outside of her to the world in her mind. I cried a lot.

4. foldedThe Folded Clock

I used to read a lot of diaries; I guess this is par for the course for pretentious literary adolescent girls. This book reminded me why, although it’s a far more crafted and self-contained work than the rambling journals of Anais Nin and the other mentally ill writers that I loved when I was younger. Heidi Julavits is the person I imagined I would become, but never did: a beautiful, wry, successful writer who moves between her home in Manhattan, her hometown on the east coast, and international literary events, fixing her critical eye both inward and outward, dwelling in the past while struggling to manage the present. (I also read Women in Clothes this year, a massive project by Julavits, Sheila Heti and Leanne Shapton on women’s relationship to fashion and style. I was, in fact, obsessed with it, and it should probably be on this list too, but only one book per author is my rule.)

5. fangirlFangirl

Everyone loved Rainbow Rowell’s Eleanor and Park. Everyone loved it so much that I took several stabs at it, finally finished it, and even put it on my course on novels about adolescence, because I knew my students would love it (and they did). I did not love it. I didn’t get the hype. It seemed to me to be a typical yet somehow unconvincing love story, and I didn’t care for any of the characters involved. I did, however, love Fangirl, Rowell’s story of a socially awkward college freshman who writes fanfiction to fill the holes where her mother and twin sister used to be, and to cope with the challenges of caring for her erratic father at a distance, and integrating into a new landscape on her own. It’s a fast and funny read, and Cath, the protagonist, is someone I could both identify with and root for.

6. marnie2When Marnie Was There

I was inspired to go back and reread this childhood favourite of mine because of the release of an animated film version by the famed Studio Ghibli, makers of such stunners as Spirited Away. I haven’t seen the film of Marnie yet, but rereading the book – the story of a little girl who is sent away from her foster home to stay with an elderly couple by the sea, and who makes her first real friend, a mysterious poor little rich girl named Marnie who then vanishes – made me both happy and uneasy. It sent me on an extended quest to find a number of my childhood favourites, including some fairly obscure exemplars like The Changeling (still wonderful) and Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and me, Elizabeth (didn’t get through it this time.) The upshot: the books I loved when I was a child were all about loneliness, and about how friendship is never what it seems to be.

7. everythingEverything I Never Told You

The favourite child, beautiful Lydia, is found dead in the lake. The family goes to pieces, and then comes out the other side, bruised but renewed. This novel is entrancing: more than just a murder mystery, but with a murder mystery’s relentless forward momentum.

8.  killmymotherKill My Mother

I know little about the genres this graphic novel draws upon – pulp, noir, hard-boiled detective stories – but this book is terrific. The drawings are dark yet vibrant, the characters are the most complicated caricatures imaginable, and the story – beginning with a manic teenager with a vendetta against her mother, and winding through Hollywood and the South Pacific, movie sets and World War II island outposts – is riveting.

9.girlontrain The Girl on the Train

If you follow book stuff at all, you know all about The Girl on the Train, and have probably read it already, so I don’t have to say much. It was called “the next Gone Girl,” and it’s not, but it’s a juicy thriller, and good novel to take with you to while away hours on, say, the train. Rachel watches out the window of the commuter train she takes every day, and constructs stories about the people she sees, one couple in particular. Then she sees some new things, and learns that the woman she’s been watching has disappeared. Thrillery stuff ensues. It’s a good time.

10. Skim_bookcoverSkim

Another reread, another graphic novel. While revising my book list for my course on novels about adolescence, I put up a Facebook plea: “My list is nothing but white people! Please help!” Skim came up, and my first thought was, “Too short,” but then I thought, “That book was amazing; I should reread it,” and, having reread it, I thought, “Every teenager should read this book,” so it went on the course. The story: Kimberly (“Skim”) Keiko Cameron doesn’t feel like she fits anywhere, and is confused by her broken family, her best friend’s growing insistence that she try to be “normal,” and her amorphous attraction to her art teacher, Ms. Archer. When the most popular girl in school, Katie, is dumped by her boyfriend, whose subsequent suicide might be about his homosexuality, she and Skim bond. My students didn’t like it: too dark, too plotless, witchcraft!  You’ll like it, though, I promise.

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What did you read this year that you loved? Tell us below, and happy 2016, reading-wise and otherwise.

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Want to see lists from past years? Here are all my previous Top 10 Books posts on one convenient page.

 

 

 

Posted on by Siobhan Curious 5

Help for the Restless Reader

mgyp0LmIn recent years, I’ve become a restless reader.

I just can’t relax. Maybe it’s because I spend so many weeks of the year reading stuff I don’t feel like reading, including some really terrible writing, because I’m an English teacher. Maybe it’s because the Internet age has broken my brain. Maybe it’s because I’m an adult with adult responsibilities, like emptying the dishwasher and watching all four seasons of Scott and Bailey as fast as possible. Whatever the explanation, I look back fondly on my childhood days of curling up in an armchair or on my bed and reading for hours and hours, but I just can’t seem to do it any more.

This summer, a number of niggling projects have eaten away at my time, and I’ve felt even less inclined to abandon everything and read a book. Once the first of August loomed, though, a sort of reader’s panic set in. School is coming! I will have no time to do the things I want to do! All those library books will have to be returned unread! Read, dammit, read!

And yet the deficit in my attention remained, until I hit on a possible remedy.

I’ve heard references over the last couple of years to the Pomodoro Technique, a productivity aid in which you set a timer for 25 minutes and work intensively for that time, then take a 5-minute break, and then get back at it for another 25 minutes. I’ve never read any of the Pomodoro Technique literature or implemented any of the more complex elements of this technique, like tracking how many 25-minute increments a task requires, or recapping what was achieved in the last 25 minutes and reviewing before I take a break. (I have watched the little video on their website; that’s how I know these things are required if I want to be a “Certified Pomodoro Master”.)

However, I think a lot of teachers probably do their own variations on the Pomodoro technique. For example, I almost always grade papers one at a time, taking a short break after each to go put on a load of laundry, make a cup of tea, or go out in the garden to pick some tomatoes for lunch. Teachers also live our lives in defined and limited time intervals: the 15-week semester; the two-hour classroom block; the four-hour break between classes in which we planned to go to yoga but in which we’ll probably just eat chocolate and read our Bloglovin’ feed.

The Pomodoro technique, at least in its broad strokes, appeals to me, especially when it comes to really onerous tasks. I recently procrastinated creating a research questionnaire for almost two months; telling myself I only had to work on it for 25 minutes a day meant I finally got it done within a week. I think I could make it work for housecleaning, too.  (Maybe.) (Not holding my breath.)

But then a couple of days ago, I thought: I bet reading in 25-minute spells would make me a happier reader.

So I tried it. It helped that it was no longer 41 degrees outside (that’s 106 for you Americans), so I could spend my reading time on the deck. I set my phone alarm to a pleasant melody. I poured myself some sparkling water. I made room on my comfy patio armchair for the cat. And then I forgot about everything else I had to do for 25 full minutes.

After the alarm went off, I dumped the book I’d been reading into my library bag, because it was now clear that I hadn’t been making time for it previously because I didn’t really like it. I made myself a cup of tea. I emptied the dishwasher. I pulled a few more books out of my “unread books” pile, returned to the deck, and set the timer again. This time, one of the books grabbed me right away. I have been reading it in 25-minute increments for the last two afternoons, until it’s dark or rainy enough to go inside, make dinner, and crochet in front of the TV, no longer feeling any conflict about not reading, because I have more reading to look forward to sometime tomorrow!

As a result, I’ve had a beautifully relaxing and nourishing couple of days. In the morning, I write and go for a run, and take care of any other urgent tasks. Then I settle in, without feeling like I’m trying to fill a whole empty afternoon: I’m just taking 25 minutes to do something enjoyable, and then I can deal with something practical, briefly, if need be. For someone like me, who constantly feels like some important task is not being taken care of, this practice allows me to really sink into a book, come up for air, and then sink in again. It allows me to spend the last days of my vacation reading, something I’d been planning to do from the first days, but for some reason just couldn’t.

Things I’ve learned from this practice:

  • If you don’t feel like reading it for 25 minutes, chuck it. The world is full of amazing books that you want to read right now; go find one.
  • Whatever you think needs to be done instead of reading, it can probably wait for 25 minutes.
  • I need to create a reading space inside my house that is as comfy and inviting and peaceful as that deck chair.

I’m going to suggest this technique to my students, especially those who have trouble reading long texts: set aside a block of time to get your reading done, but break it into 25-minute intervals. Keep track of how much you get read in that time, and use that information to figure out how much time you need to read a given text. In between intervals, get up and move. Too much sitting is bad for you anyway.

Are you a compulsive reader who will shunt everything off to read all day? Or do you find yourself distracted by Facebook, work email, and the children’s’ need to be fed and spoken to? How do you make time for reading? This method is working for me, but I’d love to hear yours.

Image by sanja gjenero

Posted on by Siobhan Curious 19

Nellie Returns

Nellie and the Coven of Barbo is back! After a hiatus of a few weeks to wrap up the school term, I have returned to the regular publication schedule.

In today’s chapter, we pick up where we left off: kids have disappeared, other kids are concerned, strange conversations have been overheard, and now two classmates have run into one another down by the river in the middle of the night…

You’ll find the latest chapter here.

If you’d like to start at the beginning, go here.

Happy reading! And if you haven’t yet, please subscribe; chapters will appear once or twice weekly for the rest of the summer.

Posted on by Siobhan Curious 0

Time to Catch Up With Nellie

If you’ve been postponing reading Nellie and the Coven of Barbo, my YA adventure novel about preteen angst, new beginnings, and witches, now would be a good time to get caught up on the first 15 short chapters. 

Nellie will return on MONDAY, MAY 18, after I’ve plowed through all this test preparation, essay grading and research proposal writing.  While you’re waiting, check out the shenanigans of Nellie and her friends as they try to work out where two of their schoolmates have disappeared to, and why.

Let me know what you think!

Posted on by Siobhan Curious 4

Ten Chapters In: Thoughts on Online Serial Novel Writing

What are you going to do with your long weekend? Maybe you’d like to read the first ten short chapters of a serialized novel about a twelve-year-old girl who suspects something funny is going on in her small town of Gale Harbour, Newfoundland.  If so, you will find this novel, Nellie and the Coven of Barbo, over here.

So far, the process of serializing a novel has been 1. inspiring and 2. discouraging, in about equal measure.  I’m considering taking a break from the serial in order to reassess my decision to self-publish in serial form.  Here are some of the considerations.

1. Publishing in installments, giving myself deadlines, and knowing that someone is reading what I write as I write it: this is an approach that works very well for me.  Having struggled with long manuscripts throughout my writing life, I know that I become easily bogged down and demotivated. A slow and steady pace, out where people can see me working, is ideal. Blogging here on Classroom as Microcosm taught me this, and for some time now, I’ve been wondering if blogging a novel would have the same effect.  It has.

2. It is hard not to be a bit disappointed with the lack of response that an online novel receives in contrast to, say, a blog about education and pedagogy.  To give some perspective: when I was publishing posts weekly on Classroom as Microcosm, hits averaged at about 10,000 views a month; even now, the blog receives about 300 random views of archived posts per day, despite the fact that new posts are rare.  This is a drop in the bucket in the blogosphere, but it’s enough for me to feel that the blog is meaningful to others and not just me.  In contrast, when I publish a new chapter on Nellie and the Coven of Barbo, it receives about 30 hits that day, and a sprinkling in the days following.  The novel has 30 subscribed followers, most of whom are family and friends.  I am extremely grateful for these views and followers, and for the occasional encouraging messages I get through email, Facebook and face-to-face conversation.  At the same time, I feel that there MIGHT be other people out in the world who would enjoy this little story, and I have no idea how to get it to them.  Yes, I’ve built Classroom as Microcosm over many years and I’ve been blogging my novel for only a couple of months, but I realize now that I was expecting a bit more cross-pollination.

3. This leads to the question of promotion.  I am not comfortable with self-promotion, and I know I need to just suck it up and do it.  I share the links on StumbleUpon, Facebook and Twitter, and I’ve tried listing the novel with curators of serials, like Muse’s Success, WebFictionGuide, and Tuesday Serial. Some friends have kindly shared and retweeted links to the novel, and this has brought in some new readers, but none of these methods have been successful in increasing readership very much.  I have searched in vain for blogs that review self-published online serial fiction; they must be out there, and I’ll keep looking.  I’m even toying with the idea of starting my own, but I can only stretch myself so thin.

4. For the above reasons, I’m considering moving my online novel to a platform like Jukepop or Wattpad, forums that exist exclusively for publishing, promoting and communicating about serial online fiction.  It’s fantastic that sites like this exist, and I know a lot of writers get a huge boost from them. Here’s the catch, though: I have explored these platforms and browsed their offerings, and a lot of what is published there is…just not my thing.  I click on book covers and summaries and I have not yet felt the impulse to read more; when I’ve made the deliberate decision to read a first chapter, it’s felt like a duty rather than a pleasure, and I’m struck by how different the aesthetic is from mine.  I’m not sure my story fits in these places. On the surface, there’s no reason why not: it is, or will be, a genre novel, a YA/middle-grade adventure novel with a fantasy bent – but it’s quiet, slow and character-driven, in contrast to the most popular Jukepop and Wattpad stories, which seem to be big on plot and not so concerned about, say, the quality of the prose.  I’m SURE there are stories I’d love on these platforms, but I haven’t found them yet, which suggests that they may be…hard to find.

5. On a similar note: I should be reading lots of serialized online fiction, to get a sense of that community, but as a writer, I can’t invest my hours in reading fiction unless it’s really good, and finding the really good stuff seems to take an enormous amount of time.  I have a coffee table and a Kobo full of awesome library books; I need someone out there to put all the terrific online fiction in one place so I don’t have to waste my reading hours combing through everything ever published online.  Again: if I were a better person, this would be me. It probably won’t be me.  Has someone else done it?

6. Why don’t I just submit the novel to a traditional publisher, you ask? Don’t even get me started.  Well, do, if you’re really interested; I’ll be happy to get into it in the comments if you want.

7. One response to all this could be: why are you so concerned about who is/how many people are reading? Why not just write because writing is fun, and audience be damned? Well, that’s a good question.  The answer is: I have spent many years writing stuff and putting it in a drawer, and it is NOT satisfying, it is NOT fulfilling, and it is killing my desire to write fiction at all.  As I tell my students sometimes: the tool of writing did not arise so that people could indulge themselves in self-expression in their own little isolated caves. We learned to write so we could communicate.

8. Of course, it’s possible that the novel is just not all that good.  The positive feedback has mostly been from people who know me, and anyone who makes art knows to take “Great job!”s from loved ones with big grains of salt.  That said: my friends and family are intelligent, discerning and artistically accomplished people. I take their good opinions seriously. This novel is flawed, for sure; I would love to have a professional editor polish every chapter before it goes up.  That said, I think there’s something there. If you read some of it and you agree, I’d love to hear your thoughts.  If you read some of it and decide it’s a big pile of garbage…well, my skin may not be thick enough to take that kind of commentary right now, but I’ll let you know when it is.

Do you have advice? If you’ve self-published online, or know something about that process, or have any thoughts at all about what to do with a novel like mine in the bizarre world of publishing today, or know of terrific online fiction that is well worth the investment of my and your precious reading hours…please give us your thoughts on any of this. Even if you have read some of my novel installments and think they’re terrible (again: please don’t tell me), I’m sure there are other fiction writers struggling with these questions who would like to hear your ideas. I feel like there are terrific opportunities about to open up in the world of online fiction, but they aren’t quite there yet, and I want to know which direction we should all face so we can see them as soon as they blossom.

To read Nellie and the Coven of Barbo, go here.

 

 

Posted on by Siobhan Curious 17

My Top 10 Books of 2014

sigofallthingsIt’s time again for the list of books that I enjoyed most this year.  As always, only some of these books were published in 2014, but they were all a part of my 2014 experience.

This year’s list is compromised slightly by the introduction of the Summer Book Club, a totally fun summer project in which I posted about the best books I read each week.  Accordingly, I have linked back to reviews of Summer Book Club favourites, rather than repeating myself.  However, there are a few new entries here – I got a little bit of reading done even when I wasn’t on holiday!

1. The Signature of All Things: Elizabeth Gilbert’s blockbuster manages to be a thrilling 500-page adventure story about a 19th-century moss expert.  It is amazing.  Full review here.

2. Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?: New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chaz has written and drawn one of the finest graphic memoirs ever, about her struggle to care for her aging and loony parents.  Will make you cry; will also make you laugh until you fall off the couch.  Full review here.

3. Astonish Me: On the surface, a book about ballet, but really a book about the many manifestations of unrequited love.  Full review here.  Maggie Shipstead is my best discovery of the year; Seating Arrangements also blew my socks off.

4. The Middlesteins: Jami Attenberg’s family saga about how hard it is to love people, especially when they’re intent on destroying themselves.  Full review here.

thesecretplace_us5. The Secret Place: I was surprised not to see this book get more attention – it did not, for example, show up in the NY Times’ top 100 books of the year – but I may be a bit blind when it comes to Tana French.  As I’ve said before, I don’t read a lot of mysteries, but she is a consistent exception. This book is one of my favourites of hers, although that may be due to some of my other biases: I love stories about cliques of teenage girls, and have been a sucker for boarding-school stories since I was a child reading Enid Blyton.  In this installment in French’s Dublin Murder Squad series, Holly Mackey – whom we first met as a six-year-old in Faithful Place, which I reread immediately after finishing this one – is now a sullen teenager, and she shows up at the police station with information about a year-old cold case, the murder of a boy her age on her school grounds.  The Secret Place unfolds over a single day of interrogation, replete with lots of flashbacks.  The thing to love most about French’s books is her characters: Holly, her friends and enemies, her father, the police officer she turns to and his belligerent partner are all seductively drawn, and the atmosphere of menace that hangs over the school is due in large part to the very real teenagers within, and the lengths they will go to to be themselves, regardless of what it will do to others.

6. Asterios Polyp: A dreamlike graphic novel about an architect who floats out of his unraveling life and into a job as a car mechanic in the middle of nowhere.  Mysterious and moody, it has haunted me ever since.  Full (if brief) review here.

7. The Property: I love Rutu Modan’s graphic novels, and this one is no exception. Her bright, colourful, meticulous panels and her sharp sense of humour illuminate challenging subjects: in this case, a woman and her grandmother visit Warsaw on a mission that turns out not to be what the granddaughter expects.  Full review here.

the-dinner8. The Dinner: I sometimes say that I’m no longer capable of enjoying a book that doesn’t have a sense of humour.  I’m not sure whether The Dinner contradicts me or not.  If it does have a sense of humour, it’s a very bitter one.  It’s difficult to talk about the book without giving too much away, and it’s difficult to put my finger on just what’s so wonderful about it, aside from the easy, clean, yet unsettling narrative voice.  Perhaps its greatest strength is its ability to tap into the most unappealing thoughts we’ve ever had.  For example: imagine you walk into the only ATM in your neighbourhood, to find your path to the cash machine blocked by a sleeping homeless person and the air to be filled with an odour so vile you have to back out the door.  What is your first emotional response, the one you then tamp down because you are a good and empathetic person?  What if you were the sort of person who didn’t tamp down this response?  That’s what this book is about.  It’s impossible to put down.

bark9. Bark: If you’re a reader and also a writer, you already love Lorrie Moore and don’t need to hear too much more about her.  Birds of America is for my money the greatest short story collection of the 20th century.  Bark is also great.  The conceit – that of the various meanings of the word “bark” – was a bit thin to me, but it doesn’t matter; I kept falling over because of her turns of phrase and wry asides, gems like “My brain’s a chunk of mud next to hers” or “It wasn’t he who was having sex.  The condom was having sex and he was just trying to stop it.”  (I found those by just opening the book open to random pages.  It’s astonishing.)

nathp10. The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.: I picked up this book in bookstores a couple of times and put it down again because I thought, Really?  We need more books about self-important young male writers dating in Brooklyn? Then I had to go into the hospital for a bit, and for some reason, it struck me as exactly the book I wanted to read.  I read the first 100 pages lying in bed waiting for surgery.  Then, when I got home, I didn’t pick it up again for several months, until one day I finished a book and didn’t have another new one handy; I plowed through the remainder of it in no time flat.  It is the classic problem of the unsympathetic narrator who is revealing truths that may or may not be important – if nothing else, anyone who’s ever been a young heterosexual female artist will recognize Nathaniel and be impressed by Adelle Waldman’s ability to render his inner life so convincingly.  I had to admit, once I’d put it down, that I’d really liked this book in spite of myself.

What books did you love this year?  Tell me so I can read them!

Posted on by Siobhan Curious 3

A Book Blog For Teachers

Friend and reader Tara Warmerdam just pointed me to her wonderful blog, A Reading Corner for Teachers and Writers. I’m so glad she did: she writes about books in a way that is meant to be helpful to teachers, and it  really is.  Some recent posts discuss

If you are a teacher interested in using books in the classroom – whether you’re a literature teacher or not, and no matter what your grade level – I think you’ll get a lot out of Tara’s blog.  Go check it out!

Posted on by Siobhan Curious 2