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Better than Life by Daniel Pennac
Better than Life is a funny book that is not a novel but can be read as a novel. "Comme un Roman", its original name, translates "Like a Novel". Pennac describes the love of reading, from the beginning. His/our love of reading, as adults, belonging to a certain generation that grew up without the internet and their/the kids' love of reading, those who "we" are supposed to be the parents or teachers of. Pennac's writing is light and appealing, I was throught it in about two hours! Pennac shows a healthy sense of humor and a healthy nostalgia for the past. This is not a "how to make your kids read" book, it is more a book that makes you remember why it is that you enjoy reading yourself.
The Reader's Bill of Rights (in my last posting) is one of the most commented parts of this book and rightly so. My favorite one is the right to not read and the right to not finish a book. I also like the right to read several books at the same time. I've practised all three of them. In the right not to read we can also include those books that we keep for "later", when we're old, for "may be some day when I can deal with them", for "when I retire", for "when I have the time" or whatever we can substitute "later" for. I have my own category of those books and (sure enough) here it goes:
Dom Quixote
The Complete Works of Dostoyevsky
Ulysses by James Joyce
may be Henry James
The Complete Works of Samuel Beckett and Virginia Woolf
all of the missing Shakespeare
Put down like this, the list seems longer than I expected. Anyway, this is the kind of musings that Pennac's book provokes.
As for the category of books I could not finish...
War and Peace or anything by Tolstoi
The Spire by William Golding (I actually finished but it was painful)
Arabian Nights
and, except for Golding, I'll still get back to them!
Better than Life is a book to finish. It is funny, light hearted, warm hearted and it's like when you leave the theater smiling after watching a worth while comedy.