(Ed. note: The ritualized culling of books occurs in this column, so if you find this topic unsettling we suggest opening a new tab and pre-ordering a novel or nice paperback from your local independent bookshop before continuing.)
There comes a time in every reader’s life when, like it or not, you have to make some room on your shelves.
This tends to dawn on me when I’ve filled all available shelf space and have started making stacks on the floor. These towers were now teetering, and the semi-regular hardback avalanches were scaring the dog. It was time.
So I feigned enthusiasm to trick myself into working on the problem: Let’s do this, I told myself. We’re gonna get rid of some books! Fun!
First, I determined what would be staying, making detailed mental notes: That bunch. Oh, this whole shelf. These, and the other ones. Oh, those! “And you,” I said, touching the spine of one novel. “I will never forsake thee.”
Which books would leave? These: An obscure tome I bought because I saw a tweet about it, not realizing the tweet was criticizing its weaknesses. Bye! A water-damaged classic with the too-small print I knew I’d never read even when I bought it? Begone! That super-hot novel that was so talked-about for a few months 15 years ago that I was still meaning to get to? Later!
This was a slow tedious process, which I’m trying not to replicate here in print, so skipping ahead several hours, I had five boxes or so of books to go. OK, maybe four; I still might want to read a couple of these.
Anyway, by the end of my recent attempt, I had three boxes or so to go. Fine, then I let them hang out in my car for a few weeks in case any of them changed their minds, and then I started going around to the Little Free Libraries in my neighborhood and replenishing the ones in need.
That done, I headed to the library and dropped off those that remained. (While some nearby branches let you drop off boxes by a back door, I tend to drive to a library that actually acknowledges that they are taking the books, so I don’t feel like I’m abandoning them like a litter of defenseless puppies.) (I know, I’m already in therapy, but thank you.)
Boxes emptied, I felt free, no longer worried about the wear and tear on my car’s shocks from leaving boxes of books in there. I imagined the house would soon be cleared of stacks, its shelves replenished. I bought myself a coffee and overheard someone talking about what they were reading. It sounded good.
There was a bookstore on my way home. What could happen?
I would love to have ended the column on the previous line, but I’ll tell you what happened: The bookstore was having a 75 percent off sale and it was the last day. Really. I swear I’d had no idea. But when I went upstairs to just … look around, I saw a book I’d nearly checked out of the library just minutes before! Fate! Here it was, available and in need of a good home.
Yeah, I bought a crazy amount of books. Many I will surely never read. But here’s the thing: I’m reading one of them now, and it’s good so far. And the rest?
They’re in a neat pile by my desk. At least until they topple – whoops, gotta go!
Pile those books, high! (Getty Images)
Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child have all the answers
Authors Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child are the authors of “The Cabinet of Dr. Leng.” (Photo: Deborah Feingold / Courtesy of Grand Central Publishing)
Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child are coauthors of the Pendergast series; their recent novels include “Verses for the Dead,” “Crooked River,” “Bloodless” – and their latest, “The Cabinet of Dr. Leng.”Along with their collaborations, both have published acclaimed works on their own, including Preston’s “The Lost City of the Monkey God” and Child’s “Chrysalis.” Each had a go at our Q&A, and the responses follow.
Q. What’s something about your book that no one knows?
Douglas Preston: That’s a good question! “The Cabinet of Dr. Leng” takes place in 1880 in New York City, at the height of the Gilded Age. Constance Greene attends a grand ball in a mansion on Fifth Avenue where she is cornered by a persistent, plain-looking, highly intelligent and sarcastic teenage girl of 18 years of age, named Edith Jones. Jones disparages the ball and makes witty comments about it all. The conversation turns to literature and Jones mentions that her mother has forbidden her to read novels. Constance is shocked and tells Jones to disobey her mother and read novels in secret, hiding them under her bed. Here is the fact that no one—or very few—know about Edith Jones: she is the future Edith Wharton.
Q. Is there a book or books you always recommend to other readers?
Preston: To aspiring thriller writers, I recommend reading and diagramming “The Eye of the Needle” by Ken Follett. This is a beautifully structured thriller and it is worth dissecting and mapping out—to learn about pacing, chapter breaks, managing changing points of view, use of time, and other virtuoso effects necessary to write a good thriller.
Q. What are you reading now?
Preston: I’m reading John Irving’s “The Last Chairlift”—with great pleasure. And I’m reading a biography of Alan Turing.
Q. How do you decide what to read next?
Preston: I have a huge stack of books that will take me years to get through. I’ll never catch up, because I keep adding to it. I love both fiction and nonfiction. I have highly eclectic tastes.
Q. Do you remember the first book that made an impact on you?
Preston: So many books have made a major impact on me, but the one that stands out almost above all others is Tolstoy’s “War and Peace.” It truly is one of the greatest novels ever written, despite the mind-numbing first hundred pages, where all kinds of characters are introduced and nothing happens. If you can get through that, it’s wonderful. Another book that blew me away was Wilkie Collins’s “The Woman in White.”
Q. Do you have any favorite book covers?
Preston: Our publisher, Hachette, has a fabulous art department. I love the covers of “Bloodless” and “The Cabinet of Dr. Leng”—outstanding! The cover of “Bloodless” has a photograph of an angel on a tomb, and I was recently in the Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah and found the original angel, standing over a tomb. Dramatic and unsettling.
Q. Do you listen to audiobooks? If so, are there any titles or narrators you’d recommend?
Preston: Derek Jacobi’s narration of the Sherlock Holmes’s stories is sheer brilliance. What a pleasure to hear his voice bring alive those imperishable stories. Hugh Fraser’s renditions of Agatha Christie’s novels are also fabulous. And Rene Auberjonois’s narration of our own Pendergast books was absolutely extraordinary. We were both terribly upset at his death, not just because he was a wonderful person but also because we lost a great narrator for Pendergast.
Q. Is there a book you’re nervous to read?
Preston: My own, after they are published.
Q. Can you recall a book that felt like it was written with you in mind?
Lincoln Child: “The Silence of the Lambs” pushed all my buttons. It’s a great feeling, perhaps ironically so, to feel you’re in the clutches of a writer infinitely better and more intelligent than yourself, who’s at least five steps ahead already of what you speculate might be lying in wait.
Q. What’s something – a fact, a bit of dialogue or something else – that has stayed with you from a recent reading?
Child: A few lines from “Macbeth,” in the scene where Macduff learns that his entire family has been slaughtered. The way this unimaginably terrible news sinks in is so believably yet beautifully portrayed. As he tries to master his feelings, Macduff keeps interrupting himself, asking again and again in disbelief: My wife too? All my pretty ones? And when he’s urged (in the parlance of the last century) to, in essence, take it like a man, he says: “I shall do so; But I must also feel it as a man: I cannot but remember such things were, That were most precious to me.” I’m always poking myself to re-read Shakespeare, because when I do I’m continually reminded at (and astonished by) the subtle but almost unfathomable depth of humanity he’s able to conjure up through mere dialogue—and antique dialogue at that.
Q. Is there a genre or type of book you read the most – and what would you like to read more of?
Child: I’m afraid my curiosity skates across too many genres—both for personal and professional reasons—for me to choose a single one. But I seek most particularly another thriller that engrosses me as much as “Silence of the Lambs.”
Q. Do you have a favorite book or books?
Child: No, there are too many to settle on just one.
Q. Which books do you plan, or hope, to read next?
Child: I dip into lots of non-fiction books, to a greater or lesser degree, on science, history, medicine, computer programming, art history, etc., both because they interest me personally but also because they can provide great background information for novels. I’m trying to make my way through Proust. I’m constantly questioning why I’m making the effort, but so many people talk about his work as life-altering that I keep climbing the slope. The version I’m reading spans six volumes, and once I finish the second I’ll decide whether or not to continue the enterprise.
Q. Is there a person who made an impact on your reading life – a teacher, a parent, a librarian or someone else?
Child: Several, but my kindergarten teacher in Wales, a Mrs. Pew, has to take pride of place. She was the one who unlocked the wonderful and endless world of reading for me.
Q. What do you find the most appealing in a book: the plot, the language, the cover, a recommendation? Do you have any examples?
Child: Probably some alchemical combination of all those, plot and adeptness with language coming in first. I always appreciate a wry sense of humor, no matter how faint or subordinate to the text, in the books I read. There’s even a place for it here and there in all but the grimmest thrillers, as Doug and I have tried to demonstrate.
Q. What’s a memorable book experience – good or bad – you’re willing to share?
Child: I first read “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” as a college freshman, I think. It staggered me in the way it refused to hold the reader’s hand, just dumping him or her into the midst of an incredibly complex world of spies with their own lingo, morals (or lack thereof), and memories of past successes and betrayals. It took me a second reading, and the marvelous screen performance of Alec Guinness, until I truly understood the book as a whole—but I never regretted the journey.
Q. If you could ask your readers something, what would it be?
Child: I would ask: have any of my, or our, books inspired you to try writing something of your own—and if so, which book was it, and why?
• • •
Please write me at epedersen@scng.com to share news, comments or what you’re reading – or if you’re listening to something fantastic – and your comments may appear in the newsletter.
Thanks, as always, for reading.
Madelaine Lucas is the author of the novel, “Thirst for Salt.” (Photo credit KylieCoutts / Courtesy of Tin House)
A salty tale
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Rebecca Makkai, photographed here at her lake cottage in Vermont, is the author of “I Have Some Questions for You.” (Photo credit Brett Simison / Courtesy of Viking)
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“Unscripted: The Epic Battle for a Media Empire and the Redstone Family Legacy” by James B. Stewart and Rachel Adams is among the best-selling nonfiction releases at Southern California’s independent bookstores. (Courtesy of Penguin Random House)
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Bookish.
What’s next on ‘Bookish’
The next free Bookish event is March 17 at 5 p.m. with guests including Chef Ronnie Woo and more talking books with host Sandra Tsing Loh.
Also, if you missed it (or want to relive the action), you can watch our Noteworthy episode featuring our celebration of 10 Southern California writers who published memorable books in 2022.
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