Where I'm Reading From: The Changing World of Books

Tim Parks takes reading seriously. Seriously enough to talk about reading bravely, boldly, without fearing to step on our brittle book-lover toes. Parks dares to talk thoughtfully and critically about whether we can really talk thoughtfully and critically about our readings. He says we can and then he says we can't. Both are, of course, true.

You have never read someone who writes about reading so brutally and lovingly at the same time.

Ι started writing this review, a day after I started reading Tim Parks book, because there were so many thoughts in my head, so many questions I didn't even know I had.

Why do some of us feel compelled to get through a book we hardly like, while others (like yours trully) give up once they realise that it is a waste of time?Why do we feel members of a greater community once we read a novel which is accompanied by world-wide success? And even feel guilty if we don't like it at all? How does our upbringing, or our family values influence our appreciation of this genre or that? Why do we tend to value foreign literature more than our own country's? Tim Parks tries to answer all these questions and many more.

There were moments when I lifted my eyes from the page to think on the issues examined in his essays. His language is simple, informative but not didactic. I had the feeling that I was participating in a discussion with a very eloquent and very friendly teacher, a colleague. Not to mention his excellent essay about the Nobels which convinced me as to the absurdity of having such a competition, in the first place.

There was, however, something that bothered me. Repetition. There is information that is mentioned so many times that it becomes tedious. E.g. the fact the he lives in Italy or that one book fair in France. Also, I found that the number of authors he focuses on is rather limited. We are forced to think of DeLillo, Roth, Faulkner, Borges, Hardy and Lawrence too many times, as if they are the epitome of Literature alone and nobody else. Well, no, they are not. This problem becomes much more obvious towards the end of the book.

Perhaps, this repetition is the trap that lays there for all teachers. We- and I'm speaking from personal experience, pleading guilty to the crime- tend to repeat things over and over again to help our students understand. Otherwise, you don't teach, you don't inform. You impose, you give a lecture that accomplishes nothing. So, I must conclude by saying that I wish I had a professor like Tim Parks in university.