Now that the library and bookstore Winter Reading Challenge is well underway I find myself having stimulating reading conversations with patrons participating in the challenge. What I need a reminder of now and then, is how we all read so differently and are challenged by different things. We also have different needs when it comes to being challenged. Many who read from the challenge list tell me exactly the same thing: "These books are so challenging."  What is interesting, however, is the different tone of voice when people say that very same sentence. Some people are excited about it, but for some, it just makes them tired and irritated (and yet, they have embarked on the reading-challenge journey, which I find particularly admirable). 

As far back as I can remember, my father has been reading In Search of Lost Time, the famous seven-part volume by Marcel Proust. (As a Francophone, he is reading it in French, A la recherche du temps perdu.) He reads the entire seven volumes all the way through, takes notes in the margin in pencil. Then, when he has gone through the entire seven books, he starts over. Every now and then he says, "I think this is the last time I'll read this." But he keeps reading. Now, at age 89, he is still reading Proust, amazed at the new things he keeps finding among the pages. He reads other books too, lots, but only Proust gets his undivided attention like that. 

I am not sure if my father challenges himself by reading Proust, or if it is the other stuff he reads that's challenging to him. Pouring over every word in the thick volume seems to come naturally to him. For me, reading across the library, non-fiction, young adult  novels, picture books, romance, is not the challenge. My challenge would be to make myself read more than one book by the same author. Even when I like the beginning of a series, I want something new when I'm done with the first book. 

How about you? What is your challenge? Do you push yourself when it comes to reading? Have you joined the annual library-bookstore Winter Reading Challenge? Try it!

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​Superior Writer Anthony Bukoski To Speak at Spooner Library
 
“I love this place!”
Superior writer Anthony Bukoski walks along 5th Street in his East End neighborhood, where he has lived most of his life. He points out Pudge's Tavern, which used to be the Warsaw Saloon, which then became Nadolski’s Tavern, then turned into Heartbreak Hotel—in Bukoski’s stories. The bar now stands out for its almost otherworldly flower arrangements in front of the building. An art gallery comes to mind, not a bar. And certainly not a Heartbreak Hotel. But Bukoski paints a vivid picture of the neighborhood as it was. Even before his time. And we see rough, stark, bare. Flowers? Not so much.

Walking south on 5th Street, Bukoski talks with passion about buildings and churches and schools in the neighborhood, some still here and some long gone. Just like in his stories, Bukoski seems to, in real life, see and hear the people and places that were here before us, as much or even more than he hears and sees what is here now.
 
Slices of the vast, gray Lake Superior can be glimpsed through openings in the Superior street grid or here and there behind an idle backhoe at a construction site. People wave. “Hi there, Tony.” He chats, waves, stops in the middle of a street for a conversation.

Bukoski’s sense of beauty is strong and odd, though he continuously refers to himself as a curmudgeon, a bitter old man, happy in his bitterness. He has a deeper respect for nature than most, and doesn’t seem to need lush parks or a vibrant downtown to love his city. You might say his love is unconditional.
“This is an ugly rundown city of ugly people,” he says, affectionately. “And I’m one of them.”

Bukoski speaks dreamily about the old ship yards, the grain docks, the ore docks and the beaches, untamed, with their cold, cold water. “Don’t let anyone tell you you can’t swim in Lake Superior.”

Bukoski’s books are like his personality; they describe life in Superior with complete acceptance of its many layers. And as Bukoski seems to walk with spirits of the city’s past surrounding him, so also do his stories. While steeped in Polish culture, there is a South American flavor to his storytelling, an element of Magical Realism: the sense of time as something almost biological, as opposed to chronological, a portrayal of the fantastical aspects of life where dreams and memories are so tangible you can almost touch them. Bukoski’s stories are deeply anchored in the Polish-Catholic world of Superior, but his details about the human condition and our common life will make his readers gasp with recognition. The stories are sometimes sad: a young Polish man jumping ship to seek refugee status but then changing his mind, whether from missing his home, or because he doesn’t want to be a burden, or because he fears a bad ending anyway; an old woman whose traumatic World War II experiences in Poland can only be healed by the waters of northwest Wisconsin, waters threatened by business interests, greed and stupidity. But love and affirmation grow in the dark soil of Bukoski’s stories; two Polish immigrants finding each other in their loneliness and, of course, the water, always the water, as a sacred entity and a symbol of hope.
 
While faith is evident everywhere in Bukoski’s books (as he does with everything else, Bukoski puts the Catholic religion as he sees it out there, raw and unfiltered, then looks at the whole mess with love) the closest thing to holy in Bukoski’s stories is indeed water. Bukoski gets incensed when talking about disrespectful treatment of water. Our water influences everything, he says. Lake Superior causes the weather that “makes the Poles and the Swedes drink.”  It creates fog. It brings sailors. It brought his own ancestors from Poland not terribly long ago. (And in Poland, the mighty Baltic Sea is located just to the north, just like Lake Superior sits north of Superior.)

Though he has spent many years away from Superior, Bukoski says he doesn’t want to leave anymore. He feels rooted to this place. “I believe in staying put,” he says. “I want to stay here because I know in June, I will find wild asparagus along the railroad tracks.”
 
Anthony Bukoski has five published collections of short stories that have received rave reviews in The New York Times, Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, to mention just a few places. His stories have been read on Wisconsin Public Radio’s Chapter A Day, and he himself has been featured on PBS. He has been nominated for a number of prestigious book awards, including The Pushcart Prize.

In addition to being a lauded midwestern writer, Bukoski is a UW Superior professor emeritus and a former Marine who spent a year in Vietnam.

Bukoski will speak at Spooner Memorial Library on November 10th, at 10 a.m. as a part of the library’s Patron Appreciation Day. November 10 (1775) is also the birth date for the U.S. Marine Corps. As a former Marine, this is an important date for Bukoski, and he feels especially honored to be speaking to library patrons on this day. 

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We’ve all read translated books, the classics perhaps—Kafka, Dostoyevsky, Voltaire—or newer books like Beartown by Fredrick Backman (translated from the Swedish by Neil Smith), Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson (translated from the Norwegian by Anne Born), or Spilt Milk by Chico Buarque (translated from the Portuguese by Alison Entrekin), to name a few popular examples.
            But is there something inherently good about reading books in translation as opposed to sticking with the vast English offerings?
“There is something really valuable about hearing about other perspectives, beyond the border of the English speaking world,” said Saint Paul based Swedish-English translator Rachel Willson-Broyles.
            Willson-Broyles is the translator behind a large number of new Swedish books – one of those practically invisible people building bridges to other worlds so that the rest of us can walk across.
Bridges, yes, but the “foreign” flavor still needs to be there, Willson-Broyles feels. When she translates (approximately four full-length novels a year), Willson-Broyles is careful not to lose what she calls the “otherness.” She wants the readers to remember that they are somewhere else, other than where the book was set. And retaining the “otherness” shouldn’t be done by using strange word choices or weird sentence structures. Translators have their tricks. A simple one is retaining place names in the original language.
 
Willson-Broyles’ career as a translator is as amazing as her rapid climb in the world of publishing. As a teenager, she heard a band called Ace of Base on the radio and fell in love with their music. When she learned that the band was Swedish, she began teaching herself the Swedish language. She applied to Gustavus Adolphus College south of the twin cities because they had a Swedish language program. And she got in. She continued on to graduate school at UW Madison, where she got a Ph.D. in Scandinavian Studies.
While at UW Madison, Willson-Broyles’ Swedish class was given an assignment to translate works by Jonas Hassen Khemiri (one of Sweden’s most celebrated contemporary authors). When Jonas Hassen Khemiri came for a campus visit, Willson-Broyles’ professor handed the author her translation and he was so taken with it that he told his publisher he wanted her to translate his book. Since then, she has translated many of Jonas Hassen Khemiri’s books for the US market.
            In addition… translating the difficult language of Khemiri made Willson-Broyles a name in the publishing world and today, she has as much translation work as she can handle.
All because of a now defunct band called Ace of Base.
 
So how do you translate a book? What does the process look like?
            Willson-Broyles reads the book she is about to translate first. Not all translators do, she said, but she likes to get a feel for the book before she begins. Then she simply opens a word document and the Swedish manuscript Pdf, all on the same screen. The first draft, she says, she tries to whip out as quickly as possible, not worrying about solving problems or figuring things out. Then she goes through the manuscript a second time, more slowly this time, line by line, to be sure it’s all there. “I always miss something the first time,” she said.
During this second draft, she does all the necessary research, makes sure she has understood everything correctly, that nothing is out of context. Somewhere along the line, Willson-Broyles sends the book to her dad, who reads, corrects, finds typos, makes sure nothing sounds awkward. Then she finishes up with her own clean-up draft, where she reads for flow.
            It’s not over yet. Often, if the book has an agent, the agent will read and give feedback about things that need to be changed. Then the editor goes through it, then the Swedish author. Lots of people weigh in. Some people might have found that annoying but Willson-Broyles is happy about. “I’m not an editor and I like knowing the book’s been edited by professionals.”
            Translation challenges abound, words and phrases that just don’t have an equivalent in English, for example. Or having to learn new technical language with hard-to-find terminology. (She is currently working on a legal thriller with lots of legal terminology, a challenge for sure.) And, she said, it is difficult to do the very best translation while also staying true to the original writing. “Sometimes,” Willson-Broyles said, “I feel I could take more liberties with sentence structure and idiomatic phrases. It’s something I think a lot about. I want to find a good balance.”
            Struggles aside, and lucky for us readers, translating is clearly Willson-Broyles cup of tea. “I’ve wanted to work with the Swedish language since I was 15 and I get to do it for a day job. I get to meet really cool people, people who make books happen for a living. And there is nothing like going to the bookstore and finding a book I translated there on the shelf.”

The book pile next to my bed has gotten out of hand. Even though the books are all the way down on the floor, when I turn my head in that direction, I can see the top of the book mountain over the edge of my mattress. It’s simply too much. Am I ever going to read that six pound biography about Stalin’s Daughter, or Seth Speaks, the beginning of The Seth Material , or Is That a Fish in Your Ear, about the theory of translation or wait, is that Thus Spake Zarathustra? Never going to happen. It’s all just wishful thinking.

The same problem is apparent when I look in the other direction, next to my husband’s side of the bed. He too, clearly has a book hoarding problem; a million books on weight lifting, some Buddhist stuff, poetry, what looks like a great number of short story collections, and a few scattered novels.

No matter how much we read, the mountains keep growing. For every book we finish, we bring in another two, or three, or five. From the bookstore, from the library, from friends who don’t understand that they are feeding an addiction, from family overseas, who feel we need to be less U.S. centered in our literary explorations.
Then I see this article:

“Why You Should Surround Yourself With More Books Than You’ll Ever Have Time to Read,” by Jessica Stillman

And voila, there it is, the justification for all of us book hoarders whose very happiness depends on not enough books, but too many.  We all know that books make us smarter and happier and more creative. But here is a case, not for reading them, but  for surrounding yourself with more books than you can possibly read. For example, the article mentions that legendary Italian writer Umberto Eco had a private library of more than 30,000 books which kept him “intellectually hungry and perpetually curious.” Yes!!!

Also Stillman, writer of this refreshing article on the positive aspects of book hoarding, points out that an ever growing library of books that we will have no time to read, gives us intellectual humility with its constant reminders of all the things we don’t know. Stillman ends the article with the humbling words: “All those books you haven’t read are indeed a sign of your ignorance. But if you know how ignorant you are, you’re way ahead of the vast majority of other people.”
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Be that as it may, in the end, I am just really, really happy to have any kind of justification for surrounding myself with books. 

Parallel Reading
By Eva Apelqvist
 
 
There are many things one might discuss in a library blog. Things like what is a library, who is the library here for, what does the library have to offer, what makes those of us working at the library tick, censorship (a big one), new websites or shelves or newsletters. I will start small, and with the most central thing; a great love, an obsession really, for books.

Something miraculous happens when you read several books simultaneously: The books start having a conversation in your head, sometimes about trivial things, but sometimes about the very essence of their stories.

Very recently, for example, in my head, “Lincoln in the Bardo” (by George Saunders) told Dan Rather’s “What Unites Us,” that President Lincoln could not have led his country so brilliantly through one of its most difficult periods in history, if it weren't for the fact the he allowed the spirits of "every man" to enter him (a very literal truth in the book) and be equally heard. “What Unites Us” answered that yes, indeed, respect for every man and woman, and also consideration for everybody's contributions, regardless of sex, race or creed, is essential to democracy. Then, what do you know… “Into the Water” by Paula Hawkins chimed in, in audio book format no less, that history lives on inside us, and historical ills will perpetuate themselves if we don't deal with them. 
 
 “Lincoln in the Bardo” is the story of President Abraham Lincoln’s ten-year-old son Willie’s time spent in “the bardo” after his death, bardo being a Tibetan Buddhist term for the state between death and rebirth. The story is told, amazingly, in 166 voices (appearing like a choir from an old Greek tragedy), but don’t let that deter you. You quickly get in the groove and the book offers a reading experience like none other. It also leaves you with a lot of questions, like: Who was Abraham Lincoln, really? And what if we were to allow ourselves to be influenced by the voices of the past (herein personalized and parodized to a degree that it makes you laugh out loud), in the choices we make?

Dan Rather’s many years reporting news might have made him cynical and bitter, but it is obvious from his grand democracy manifesto “What Unites Us,” that he has exited that stage of his life full of love and compassion for his fellow humans, and also wisdom about what will help cure our planet (hint: democracy and compassion) from what ails it (greed and disconnect). 

Then there’s Paula Hawkins’ fun crime novel, “Into the Water,” which tells the story of a long line of strong (inconvenient?) women and girls, from witches to high school students, and how the way they were treated in a small town in England through the ages influenced… well, everything.

While each of these randomly picked books were well worth reading for their own unique flavor, their proximity and crowding in my head – and the way they chatted with one another, reinforcing each other’s truths - made for a deeper, synergetic experience.