detail from the book The Voice in the Hollow by Will Hillenbrand, Holiday House, 2023
Dear Book Lovers,
Thank you for your support in the past and welcome to the New Year!
A new year brings hope and resolutions. The idea we can all improve and do better. In the world of books there is always change and new ideas. Looking back on the past year of reading, there were many highlights and bright spots.
The announcement of Jon Fosse as the Nobel Laureate was surprising to many but not to staff member Nicholas, who has been reading Fosse for a long while and has kept a stack on his recommended shelf over the past year or two.
Fosse is a Norwegian playwright, poet and novelist, whose lecture at the Nobel Awards was titled “A Silent Language” where he arranged his inspirations and beautifully articulated the silent speech within words and the musicality of writing—a Silent Language that he derives from listening. “The act of writing is to me to listen,” said Fosse. “When I write I never prepare, I don’t plan anything, I proceed by listening. So if I should use a metaphor for the action of writing, it has to be that of listening. Thus, it almost goes without saying, that writing is reminiscent of music. And at a certain time, in my teens, I went more or less directly from only being engaged with music, to writing.” Fosse’s complete Nobel Prize acceptance speech can be read here.
Reading is also an act of listening—to the voice and music of the author where a kind of prayer or communion occurs each time a book is opened.
At this time of year I’m reminded of Shirley Schreidell, a retired English teacher who passed away in the winter of 2020 at the age of 96. She was a friend and one of the first customers in the 1980s who helped shape the bookstore. Shirley reminded us to be better readers, returning to the classics and great stories that shaped our culture and civilzation. Our repost this month is Shirley Schridell, a book lover.
Listening was a main issue in our last reading group selection The Hive by Camilo José Cela, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1989. The Hive, written in 1951, contained over 300 individual characters, but there is nothing crammed in or superfluous. The novel reveals the interior of a city, the daily action surrounding an urban Madrid café. Cela is a master of the common routines and human quirks that spin around us—going unnoticed, invisible. The Hive is plotless but totally engaging, an inspiring read that contains a sacred goofiness and deep humanity, a struggle of survival and ascension reminding one of the best Beat writing by Kerouac or Burroughs.
Our reading group selection for January is The Apple in the Dark by Clarise Lispector, a novel filled with brilliance—like a finely cut stone. It is the last book of Lispector’s translated in a series published by New Directions, edited and translanted from the Portuguese by Benjamin Moser, author of the great Pulitzer Prize-winning biography Sontag: Her Life and Work. Join us online when we meet to discuss The Apple in the Dark on Wednesday, January 31. Read more about this month’s reading group selection here.
Tom Bowden returns this month with thirteen new reviews of small press books in his column, i arrogantly recommend… His book selections are often unique, radical, rarely reviewed elsewhere and works deserved of attention.
Thank you again for your support and encouragement. We were overwhelmed this holiday, a great ending to a stressful year, so if you bought from us in store or ordered online from our affiliate page at Bookshop.org, we are grateful and recognize your contribution to our store. Wishing you all good health and good reading in the days ahead. There’s more to come!
Warm regards,
Cary, Colleen and the Book Beat staff
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