Sometimes, Once Is Not Enough

Study cites most re-read books
Shakespeare, Harry Potter among titles mentioned

The Associated Press
Aug. 5, 2004

Lisa Clemmer, a 37-year-old bibliophile from Richmond, Va., remembers thefirst time she read Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple.” She was in college, atVirginia Commonwealth University, and Walker’s novel introduced her to a worldshe knew nothing about.

“The Color Purple” proved so transformative that Clemmer has read it four times. “I like to go back just to reinvigorate that feeling. I get all tinglyfrom it. It moves me to a different time and place,” says Clemmer, who just a year ago last read Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning story of blacks in rural, segregated Georgia.

Clemmer’s taste is not unique. According to a study by the American LibraryAssociation, “The Color Purple” ranks among the fiction most commonly re-read. Others include the Harry Potter books, the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, JaneAusten’s “Pride and Prejudice” and Shakespeare’s plays.

“I think books that get re-read have characters or scenes or lessons that people want to go back to again and again,” says Neal Wyatt, the head of an adhoc ALA committee that analyzed what books are re-read.

“Some books need repetitive readings just to feel like you got it. And sometimes it’s not even fair to say the books are re-read because you’re a different person each time you read them,” Wyatt said.

Also cited by the committee: F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby,”Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House on the Prairie,” Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” and A.A. Milne’s “Winnie thePooh.” The ALA committee was composed of both librarians and editors with the trade publications Library Journal and Booklist.

(Continue reading the article here.)

I must admit that, aside from reference books, I rarely re-read a particular book. If one has made a tremendous impact on me, I'll just clock it as 'a great read' and move on - I don't have a desire to read it again.

I'd like to put it down to a lack of time - I barely have time to read a book the first time around, much less have a go at it the second time. I just find that there are too many books out there which I haven't read that I cannot afford the time to read books that I already have.

What can I say? I'm a voracious reader; just not a re-reader. I envy those who are, though.

A Hilarious Legal Satire

The first lady of the United States, Elizabeth Tyler MacMann, is charged with the murder of her philandering husband, the President, by allegedly hitting him with an antique spittoon. To defend her, she reluctantly engages Boyce "Shameless" Baylor, the fiance whom she dumped for the President 25 years ago, as he is the best lawyer in the nation. Never popular with the press, the first lady's impending trial has the whole nation in a frenzy.

The summary above may read like the synopsis of a typical Fabio-adorned romance novel but trust me, the book is not.

No Way To Treat A First Lady is a wicked first-class satire, a rollicking riot. It is wholly absurd and impolitically correct at places but you just know not to take it seriously. When Buckley's novel is read as a farce or a comedy, it is fabulously funny and makes for great reading. I laughed out so many times and finished the book in three hours. The whole story is smart, sharp and slick, and the main characters trade fast and furious witty quips akin to Singaporeans on the North-South Highway.

I'd never read Christopher Buckley before and after doing some research, found out that he's been called "America's best and surest political humorist". Now I'm determined to hunt down the rest of his books. Here's an excerpt from No Way To Treat A First Lady:

His secretary announced simply, "It's her."

There was no ambiguity as to who "her" might be, not after the force twelve media storm of the previous weeks. The country was convulsed. Seven-eighths of the nation's front pages and the evening news was devoted to it. If war had broken out with Russia and China, it might have made page two.

"Shameless" Baylor had spent much of the previous seventeen days wondering if Beth MacMann would have the balls to call him.He was, at age not quite fifty, the top trial attorney in the country. He had been the first lawyer to charge $1,000 per hour, which-for too long-had been considered the unbreakable sound barrier of legal billing.

There were half a dozen second-best trial attorneys each of whom, naturally, considered him- or herself the top trial attorney in the country. But none of them had been simultaneously on the covers of all three weekly newsmagazines, none had been portrayed in movies by a famous British actor pretending to be American. None owned a professional baseball team. And, to be sure, none had been married and divorced four times. The previous record had stood at three. That he had any assets left after such serial marital wreckage was perhaps the greatest testament to his courtroom skills.

Profiles of Christopher Buckley from BookHelpWeb and Greater Talent Network
Interview with Christopher Buckley from Double Think

Disappointing Reads

I'm in Penang for a self-imposed 'reading holiday'.

Since arriving late Thursday, I've devoured finished two books and I won't make any apologies when I say that they were not exactly high-brow literature stuff: Blow Fly, the latest Kay Scarpetta thriller by Patricia Cornwell, and PS, I Love You by Cecelia Ahern.

For 14 months in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 10 women have mysteriously disappeared, presumedly abducted and killed, but no have been bodies found. Former Chief Medical Examiner of Virginia and coroner extraordinaire Kay Scarpetta is 'lured' by a prisoner on death row, a French madman by the name of Jean-Baptiste Chandonne into the case.

Chandonne was nicknamed the Werewolf due to his abnormally abundant body hair and facial disfigurement. By comparsion, his fraternal twin, Jay Talley, is described as a blonde Aryan god. As a tag team, they preyed on women: Jay would get and bed the woman, then leaving her to Chandonne to be, er, devoured.

Chandonne was captured and sentenced only because he had tried to kill Scarpetta in a previous novel and is obviously still obssessed with her. In fact, so is Jay, who is still at large with his girlfriend and errand girl, Bev Tiffin. In another fact, it is Jay and Bev who have been abducting and kiling the women in Baton Rouge.

What follows is a cat-and-mouse game between the authorities and the killers, interspersed with a plot to bring down the rich and powerful Chardonne family who is involved in the organised crime. So you could say that Chardonne and Talley don't exactly come from good stock.

Incidentally, the ones involved in the operation to break the crime ring are Scarpetta's niece Lucy Farinelli and Scarpetta's long-time friend and associate, Pete Marino, with a little help from Scarpetta's ex-boyfriend and FBI head honcho, Benton Wesley.

Oh yeah, Benton Wesley was supposed to have been killed six years ago by Jay Talley. But apparently he was not and is now on a witness protection programme. However, Scarpetta doesn't know this and thinks that he is very dead. Hence, her downward spiral emotionally.

I've read all, if not most, of Cornwell's Kay Scarpetta novels so I think that I'm in a good position to say this: Blow Fly is a big disappointment cop-out.

Cornwell has made a major backtrack and introduced an incredulous plot twist to explain this backtrack that I can neither fathom or accept. I kept hoping that she would present a stronger and more valid reason to do so but there was none.

Wesley's death some two novels and six years ago should have been maintained. He was a major influence in the Kay Scarpetta's series and was a trigger for many threads and plots, sure, but his violent death, while shocking at the time, made what Scarpetta had been dealing with even more poignant and raised her character in my eyes. This new development has made me pity her because it's seems to playing with her already fragile mind.

Because I couldn't wrap my head around his resurrection, I couldn't relate to the whole story which spoiled it for me. Sure, Cornwell has tried to tie up everything nicely but what use is the nice fancy ribbon if the wrapping paper has many holes in it? She seems to be trying to milk an exhausted series and has resorted to this because she has run out of ideas.

Following Blow Out, I wanted to purge myself of the violence and went into PS, I Love You. The premise was nice although not novel: a young, grieving widow, Holly Kennedy, discovers that her husband, prior to his death, had prepared monthly loves notes for her to get through the rest of the year.

We follow her then as she refuses and then tries to move on with her life with his 'encouragement'.

OK, so it was sappy. One-third into the book, I was flipping the pages to the part where the husband's notes were revealed in the beginning of each month. There are certain parts which touched my heart certainly, especially when Ahern describes Holly's grief and yearning. And I could understand Holly's touching adherence to the instructions left by her husband as she desperatesly tries to cling to his memory.

However, the story didn't engage me and couldn't sustain my interest. Which was a pity as there are parts where it was good but they were few and far between.

Maybe, since this was her first book, Cecilia Ahern will do better next time. Apparently, the book's been sold to Hollywood. As a point of interest, she's also the daughter of Ireland's current prime minister.

These two books have not dampened my determination to go through some more books in the next few days, though. Onwards!

Interviews with Patricia Cornwell:
The Guardian UK
NY Journal News

Interviews with Cecilia Ahern:
The Globe And The Mail
The Guardian UK