5Q5A: Lit Trek

It is cool to see that even professional bloggers and authors are using the five-point format now for current and topical stuff: like for instance, Tim Ferriss with his 5 Bullet Friday posts. After last night, and the past week, I need to make things simple.  Here it goes with my version . . .

Q1. You were in McNally Robinson last night. What was there that piqued some interest?

A1. It wasn’t so much about any one book, or even one genre. It was formats of some books that caught my attention and fascinated me (I swear, sometimes I have moments where I have bloody Asperger syndrome). More specifically, I was roaming around the foreign book section, and catching sight of books that were in dual language format, One language on one page, and the translated English text on the side on the opposing page. I thought that this would accelerate my learning and retention of the bits of grammar and vocabulary of my other learned languages. There was Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis there in the original German and in English in the same book, another collection of Russian short stories formatted the same way. I’m not so keen as to learn more Russian, but if I had to that would help (I’d still be kind of hopeless speaking it though). I also wanted to collect the French translation of 1984. I can recite lines and passages from that work from memory, and having that copy would probably be helpful in improving my comprehension of at least written French. I also looked around for the title in Spanish, El Señor de las Moscas, for a likewise translation of The Lord of the Flies, but I couldn’t find one.

Q2. Did you end up buying anything?

A2. No, I resorted to my dirty little Jason Bourne-esque espionage sort of trick of mnemonically processing the ISBN numbers of other books, and walking out of there to plug into library searches later for free. If that doesn’t work, I’ll tour around and hopefully find the same things in the used book stores at a better discount.

Q3. Last favourite read?

A3. It was The Bat, by Jo Nesbø, a Norwegian author. The first book in a series about the exploits of a Norwegian police detective, Harry Hole (and yes, I know some of you are snickering right now). I’ve been impressed by both the quantity and quality of the crime and detective friction that has been coming out of Scandinavia lately. That’s both interesting and puzzling, because it’s inspired and created in such an idyllic place to live in this world.

Q4. Next Canadian fiction read?

A4. After thinking about it, I should maybe hope to get my hands on The Mountains of Portugal, by Yann Martel. I would collect that one . . . and by honest means.

Q5. What are your greatest negative/positive issues or experiences at a bookstore?

A5. Firstly, I have no mental filter for handling all the interesting titles and subjects. Not many subjects are boring or off-limits. It gets to be too much for my brain after even a short while, because it is like it is trying to download and absorb everything I see on the shelves. That gives me option paralysis too easily. The titles and subjects too often get burned into my neurons, only to be stored as useless information. That might be OK for a trivia contest, but it doesn’t serve me well when I’m trying to focus on a finding a practical reference or interest. I often get headaches when I walk out of such stores like that. The positive I guess is perhaps being around follow customers with perhaps similar interests, or at least interests . . . period. At least I know most of them won’t be boorish hellraisers. However, it’s typically a 95% population of introverts in a book shop, and thus those there usually have neither the courage nor the social intelligence in knowing how to get to some point of trying to even greet each other as strangers.