Reading the Booker Books, Post 3: Nobel Overlap

As I perused the list of Booker Prize winners in preparation for reading them all this year, I saw some names I recognized – and many I didn’t. For example, I already knew and loved Margaret Atwood. Then I learned that Kazuo Ishiguro had just won the Nobel Prize in Literature: he’s a Booker prize holder for The Remains of the Day (1989), but I’ve only read his speculative dystopian novel, Never Let Me Go (2005). So I decided to see what kind of overlap there is between the Booker and Nobel prizes.

Since the Nobel Prize in Literature began to be awarded in 1901, it has been awarded 110 times to 114 Laureates (some years, during the two World Wars, no prize was awarded), while the Booker Prize did not begin until 1969, so there is not as much overlap as one might expect. Also, the Nobel Prize is international, and while there is now an international Booker prize, my goal this year is to read the winners of the "original" English-language Booker prize. So, the overlapping center of the Venn diagram contains only five authors: V. S. Naipaul, Nadine Gordimer, William Golding, John Coetzee, and now Kazuo Ishiguro.

What is interesting to me is the lack of overlap: Toni Morrison won the Nobel, but has never won a Booker? This question led me to the discovery that the Booker prize did not become open to American writers until 2004, while the novel that I believe to be Morrison's best (and most original), Beloved, was published well before that, in 1987.

Then I perused the list of Nobel winners. Many names I did not recognize at all (Roger Martin du Gard? Ivan Bunin?); others I recognized, but have not read more than excerpts from (Eugene O'Neill [sorry Dad], Luigi Pirandello). If I were to set a reading goal next year of one book for each of the 114 Nobel Laureates in Literature, I will have already read complete works by :

1. George Bernard Shaw
2. Pearl Buck
3. Andre Gide
4. William Faulkner
5. Ernest Hemingway: I taught Faulkner's and Hemingway's short stories in grad school
6. Albert Camus: read The Stranger in high school for French AP!
7. John Steinbeck: I have been seeking an occasion to teach the little-known The Winter of Our Discontent. A timely examination of honesty and accomplishment in the modern age.
8. Jean-Paul Sartre: more French AP!
9. Samuel Beckett
10. Isaac Bashevis Singer
11. Gabriel Garcia Marquez: but I read One Hundred Years of Solitude so long ago I would definitely re-read it.
12. William Golding (Booker Prize winner): I am looking forward to reading something of his other than Lord of the Flies.
13. Nadine Gordimer (Booker)
14. Derek Walcott: definitely due for a reread
15. Toni Morrison
16. Seamus Heaney: taught his translation of Beowulf
17. V.S. Naipaul (Booker)
18. John Coetzee (Booker)
19. Patrick Modiano: merci, French book club!
20. Kazuo Ishiguro (Booker)

That brings my number down to a manageable but still hefty 94 books for next year's Nobel Prize reading project. Who's with me??

Next up: Reading Book #1, P.H. Newby's Something to Answer For

Reading the Booker books, Post 2: Amassing the Books

Once I decided to read all the Booker Prize winners this year, I started amassing the books. I want to have them all (and read them all) in print, just so I can see them all together in one place. Also, I like to have shopping goals, like completing sets.

I already had two of the ones I’d read previously, The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood (in fact, I’m pretty sure I have everything she’s published in book form), and The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje, which I read shortly after it came out in 1992; it must have been the summer before I began graduate school.

That left 50 to buy, and I was able to get 21 of them through Paperback Swap. (Great site! You post books you don’t want, request books you don’t have, and you only pay postage for the books you send.) That got me off to a running start. But many of the books I needed weren’t posted, or had long waiting lists.

This holiday season, I was lucky enough to receive some gift cards to Barnes and Noble (thanks to my students) and Powell’s Books (thanks, Dad), so I was able to purchase some online. Then I started scouring thrift stores and used book stores, where I picked up a few more.

Then I got impatient and started buying them online, used, from Thrift Books, Better World Books, and eBay. As of today, I am only waiting on the most recent one, Lincoln in the Bardo, which I bought new from the publisher with a discount for being on a teacher panel. Despite being as thrifty as possible, I’ve spent at least $100 (not counting the gift cards) getting the 50 books I didn’t already own.

I had to clear a shelf, of course – The Booker Bookshelf -- and then, being me, I had to label them. Each book now sports a colorful Post-It flag on its spine with its year and number, 1 through 52. I plan to read them in chronological order, except for Hilary Mantel’s *two* winning novels, #44 and #47, Wolf Hall (2009) and Bring up the Bodies (2012), because the second is a sequel to the first, so I will read them together. I also got the audio book for the second one, so I can listen to it in the car, and get on with book #45 after Wolf Hall.

Also, one of my book clubs (I belong to three) generously agreed to read Roddy Doyle’s Paddy Clark Ha Ha Ha (1993) with me, in early March. Since it’s almost February and I haven’t started yet, I doubt I will be at book #28 by then, so I’ll read that out of order, too.

Next up: Booker Prize winners and the Nobel Prize in Literature!

Booker books 1-51, on the Booker Bookshelf

2018: My year of reading the Booker Prize winners, post 1

Hello! My name is Stephanie. I teach French and sometimes English, and my biggest hobby is reading. I read over a hundred books a year. This year, I decided to set myself a challenge: read all the winners of the Man Booker Prize. The idea for the Booker Books reading project came out of a discussion with my husband Charles, and sloppy reading of a Wikipedia article. 

Like I said, I read a lot, so I’m always saying things like “That book was awesome!” or “This book just isn’t grabbing me.” So Charles asked me once, what makes a book great to you? I thought a bit and decided on originality. I love books that do something I haven’t seen before, an idea that I keep coming back to. For example, a book I keep thinking about years after finishing it is Kevin Brockmeier’s The Brief History of the Dead. In this novel, all the dead go to a great city, where they continue to live -- as long as someone alive remembers them. Then, an epidemic wipes out almost everyone on Earth… Of course, originality is not the only thing that makes a book great, and I recognize that it’s very hard to do anything original; as a certain bard once said, there’s nothing new under the sun. 

Around the same time as that conversation, I went to our school’s “booktail” hour (books + cocktails = best. idea. EVER) where one of my colleagues talked about George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo, the latest Booker prize winner. I had heard of the Booker prize, but didn’t really know exactly what it signified. So looked it up, and found it is awarded for “the best original novel written in the English language and published in the UK.” In my haste (I was probably on my phone) I saw “MOST original novel” and thought wow, that’s exactly what I want to read, the most original novels!  

It’s called the Man Booker prize, not, alas, after a booklover named Man Booker, but for two publishing houses. The prize was first awarded in 1969. In 1970, 1974, and 1992, two prizes were awarded, so there are 52 for me to read now, and there will be 53 by the end of the year. I had already read three of them: The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje (1992), Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin (2000), and The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes (2011). I once started Life of Pi by Yann Martel (2002) but didn’t care to finish it. Looks like I’ll have to try again.

Next post: getting the books!

Dazed and Bemused

Confused about nonplussed and bemused? You’re not alone.

I must admit that nonplussed and bemused are not words I use a lot. But I’ve been seeing them in writing more and more, and most of the time, they are not being used correctly.

What do you think nonplussed means? If you think it means something like “calm, unfazed,” you are not alone. But that is not correct. It actually comes from Latin “non plus,” meaning “no more,” and it describes that feeling when you are so flabbergasted you have nothing more to say. Picture a nonplussed person as slack-jawed and tongue-tied in disbelief.

If you mean “unfazed,” you could try “impassive” or “stoic,” but not nonplussed.

Similarly, I keep seeing people using “bemused” when what they really mean is “amused.” Though these two words obviously share the same root, muse, they are not synonyms. We all know what amuse means: to distract, in a pleasant way. “To bemuse” means to distract in an unpleasant way – “to confuse” or “to befuddle” – much like nonplus.

So, if what I am telling you leaves you flabbergasted, tongue-tied, and confused, then you are nonplussed and bemused. You’re welcome. 

Compliment vs. Complement: A Complimentary Lesson

The confusion over compliment and complement is an easy one to rectify! Both words share a Latin ancestor, complere, which means to fill, and which also gives us the words comply and complete.

Complement is more closely related to complete, hence the e. If your scarf complements your eyes, it’s not saying, “Hey, eyes, lookin’ good!” It is completing or harmonizing with your look. 

http://www.ausphotography.net.au

Compliment comes from comply. I learned this reading Shakespeare: when Hamlet is making fun of the sycophantic dandy Osric, Hamlet says, "He did comply with his dug before he sucked it," meaning that Osric is such a stuffy stickler for proper behavior that he would pay his mother's breast a compliment before nursing. (I do wish I could find that scene for you, with Robin Williams playing Osric to perfection, but alas, poor Yorick, it seems you must watch all four hours of Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet to see it.)

Y turns to i when you add an ending:

Happy → happiness

Twenty → twentieth

So, the verb comply turns into compliment, which can be both noun and verb. But what do flattering words have to do with obedience and compliance? Actually, you are complying with or satisfying etiquette when you make a compliment. Hence the phrases “with my compliments,” or “compliments of the house,” or even "pay a compliment." A complimentary gesture is a gift of good will and welcome that satisfies, complies with, or fills expectations.

Easy mnemonic:

Compliment has an I, because it’s about stroking the ego. It’s all about me, myself, and I!

Complement has an E, because it’s about complEting something Else.

Et voilà! With my compliments.

How to make your family name PLURAL for holiday greetings

Hello and Happy Holiday Season from VocabLady!

Perhaps you are preparing to send out holiday cards and invitations. I hope so; I love getting mail (hint, hint). Here are some tips on handling your family’s last name. I know, it's not really vocabulary, but it's important. 

1. Are you just saying “Happy ChrisKwanzHannuNewYear from the Smiths”? Then all you need is a PLURAL. Follow these steps:

A.    Add -s to your last name, as I did for the Smiths.

Examples: The Turners. The Simons. The Gagas.

B.     …unless your last name ends in an -s sound already, as in the letters s, z, x, ch, or sh. Then add -es, just like you would for any word like that, such as boxes or glitches.

Examples: The Lucases, The Schwartzes, The Foxes, The Fitches, The Galoshes. (I couldn’t think of a last name that ended in -sh.)

C.     NEVER, under any circumstances use an apostrophe!!!

2. However, are you saying or implying something about your home? Welcome to the Smiths’, for example? That’s really “welcome to the Smiths’ HOME,” and in that case, you MUST use an apostrophe to create a PLURAL POSSESSIVE. The apostrophe goes after the plural formed above, in part 1.

Examples:

• You’re invited to the Flatts’ annual Egg Nog Fest.
• Please come help us decorate the tree at the Hugheses’.
• Welcome to the Millses’!

WRAP UP: It’s that simple: add -s or -es; only add an apostrophe when referring to your home (or something else your family possesses). Happy

HanKwanLangSyneMas, everyone! And to all a good night.

SubLog: The Story of Taylor from Minnesota

Last week, I subbed for Mrs. S., social studies teacher. At the beginning of 6^th period, a young man came in. When he saw I was a sub, he introduced himself to me. I must say, that is exceedingly rare. There are whole days when I sub for about a hundred kids, and not one introduces himself.

“Hi, I’m Taylor,” he said. “We just came out here from Minnesota.”

“Pleased to meet you, Taylor from Minnesota. I’m Ms. T.”

His class turned out to be one of the not-so-great ones that day, because some young man took it upon himself to liberate some candy from a bin the teacher kept in the corner. I turned around to find an open bin half-fallen over, and three boys frozen in place, looking at me wide-eyed. I spent the rest of class periodically urging the row nearest the candy to do the right thing.

Toward the end of class, a student in the row next to the candy suspects asked, “Were we good?”

“You would have been fine, except for the candy incident.”

“Oh, that was Isaac.”

Isaac, one of my three prime suspects, neither confirmed nor denied the accusation, and the bell rang with me still not fully convinced.

After class, I happened to see Taylor from Minnesota kneeling on the floor in front of his locker, gathering his books. I squatted down next to him and asked quietly, “Hey, Taylor, did you see who took the candy?” I had seen him throwing me meaningful glances in class, and I even scanned his worksheet when he turned it in to see if he had written me a note, but nothing. He looked all around, to make sure he wouldn’t be seen talking to me, and whispered, “It was Isaac.” I thanked him and added his testimony, anonymously, to my note for the teacher.

Today, I saw Taylor again, in a last-period science class full of kids who would not shut up. It was hot in the room, but I had kept the windows closed because of a noisy construction project outside. Turns out the kids were noisy enough to drown out the jackhammers. When they started to complain about the heat, I saw my chance.

“Okay,” I said, “if you can be quiet for one minute, I’ll open a window.”

They could literally not be quiet for one second. Not one. As soon as a kid made a noise, another kid called out his name, setting off a chain reaction of noise. Then someone said, “One window won’t make a difference, we might as well talk.”

In the midst of the chaos, Taylor raised his hand for help. I helped him on a question, then got called away by a child wanting a bathroom pass. Another one threw pieces of crayon every time I turned my back. Then I tried to quiet a fight. Then I scolded a boy who had not been in his seat more than a minute at a time. Taylor sat there patiently with his hand in the air. I helped him on another question, but the same whirlwind of distraction pulled me away. Finally, the class ended. Most of the students tumbled out the door as fast as possible, but as I straightened their pile of papers, I saw Taylor still in his chair.

“Can you help me now?”

The poor kid was literally unable to work with the noise and distraction around him, and unable to get the help he needed because I was stretched too thin, trying to keep thirty kids on task. He sat in class twenty minutes after the bell rang and patiently finished his work, the work he could not do because of the inconsiderate, disrespectful fools surrounding him, him and the other handful of kids who cared. How wrong is this, that learning could not take place in class? How many other kids just gave up when he persevered? Kids like Taylor are the exception, not the rule.

And I found myself wanting to tell Taylor’s family from Minnesota, get him out of here. Get him into a public magnet school, or a private school, or a better district, because it doesn’t really get much better here until students can be in all honors classes. Maybe 10^th, 11^th grade. He’s in 8^th now. How long will it take for a kid like Taylor to just give up, to say it’s not worth it, and to start behaving like the rest of the troublemakers? And what a sad loss would that be?