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-Hello, and welcome to "Book Lust."
I'm Nancy Pearl.
My guest today is Donna Seaman, author, book reviewer,
and all-around great reader.
In fact, one of the best readers I've ever met.
Donna, thank you for being on the show.
-Nancy, thank you so much for having me.
I'm so honored.
-Well, how could I not?
Your book is called "River of Books: A Life in Reading."
As soon as I saw that, I thought, oh, this is --
what a good opportunity to talk to Donna.
So this is your memoir of sorts.
Your book memoir, maybe, let's say,
or as you say, a life in reading,
a life surrounded by books.
Why did you want to do this book?
-Well, thank you. Yes, it's a curious thing.
I'm not one to talk or write about myself very much.
So this is an invitation to contribute
to a new series called Ode Books,
a small press venture
to have brief books about places devoted to books
and about reading.
So I followed the great Paul Yamazaki,
who had the first Ode Books, A "Reading in the Room."
Paul's at City Lights,
the legendary bookstore in San Francisco.
I was the second,
invited because of my long tenure at Booklist
as a reviewer and just,
as you said, an all-around book fanatic.
When I was invited to write it,
it was not necessarily going to be a memoir,
but I didn't want to write, sort of, literary criticism.
I wanted to tell a story.
And I know you'll understand this,
I didn't feel that I could really write about my work.
It's kind of fraught, you know, sensitive and all that.
So I thought if I go to the past,
if I tell the story of how I ended up where I am.
I would be free to write in a really open narrative way
and call out books that really shaped me as a human being.
-Yeah, I think one of the --
a couple of things about the book
that just really stood out was the way
you wove your personal life and your family
with this growing love of reading.
And the other thing that I --
when I was reading the book,
I just underlined -- you had so many wonderful quotes.
Well, the quote that you have where she said,
she gave him a hard time.
People do what they can. I just thought --
-We have the same sense of humor.
-Yes. I thought that was just great.
So when you're reading, I know that you read far and wide
and you read so freely.
I think you talked in the in the book
about reading Shakespeare freely.
What does that mean? What does that mean to you?
-That means to me that I had a need,
a hunger to understand things.
Especially how humans feel and think.
Books are the great portal onto the inner world
that remains so mysterious to each other.
I wasn't crazy about school.
I know this surprises people.
I seem like the sort that would be a good student,
and I really was not.
I was bored. I found it really restrictive.
I really didn't like being a child at all
because you're treated so -- you're patronized.
Everything's trivialized and simplified.
Somehow I just knew that was -- none of that was true.
So I followed my curiosity
and everyone was always talking about Shakespeare
and you're supposed to read Shakespeare in school.
I enjoyed much more just reading it on my own
and trying to puzzle it out.
And I read over my head a lot as a kid, of course.
So going back to it, you know, it's humbling,
but also curious about what you can pick up on your own.
And I'm not dismissing teachers in any way or English teachers.
I had wonderful teachers, certainly, who taught me a lot.
But I also had my own agenda. -Right.
And I think sometimes a teacher can introduce
a work in a certain way that that helps you understand it.
But there's something so different about encountering it
on your own and working your way through it.
What was your favorite play of Shakespeare?
Do you like the comedies? -No, guess what?
"King Lear" is my -- -Oh, my gosh, Donna.
-I know. A little grim. I do enjoy the comedies.
I do like "Midsummer Night's Dream" a lot, but --
-Yeah. Yes. What do you look for in a book?
What is the entryway for you into a book?
-The entry really is the writing.
I really am very much a word by word reader.
I just want beautiful,
excellent, clear, ringing reading of language.
I want to read something that's,
you know, artistically created and it can be about anything.
It can be in any form.
But the first thing I notice is just that quality of the prose.
I'll read informational nonfiction as well
because I want to learn and understand things.
But when I encounter that really thoughtful, careful writing
that -- you know,
really searching for descriptions and metaphor,
I just -- something, you know, it's like cellular.
I'm like, thrilled by it entirely.
My entire person responds to that, like to music,
and to art, and good food, you know, all that stuff.
It kind of transcends the surface.
So that's what I look for first.
-And who, for you, would exemplify that?
What writers do you --
when you -- so you're sitting in your office
at Booklust-- Booklust?
Booklist magazine and books are coming in fast and furious
and you can see what you want to review.
And, you know, we always look for your reviews
because they're, first of all,
so well written and second of all, so insightful.
How do you choose what you're going to review?
-Yes.
So I mean, you know, I follow certain writers, of course.
And when I think of exquisite writing,
I mean, I think of many people.
I think of Alice McDermott, for one example,
Siri Hustvedt, you know, I could name many.
Claire Messud is another really fine writer
who's had a recent book, the poets.
But if -- and I also, I make it a point to read new writers.
You know, I love first time novelists, for instance.
So Zadie Smith is another kind of model.
You know, I'm sort of thinking about people that,
you know, maybe they're sort of my standards in some way.
-Yes. Right. Right. -Yeah.
Just that -- you know,
that really giving yourself over to the intricacy of language,
to the subtleties of meaning, you know,
that -- you know, to use a word
that is really hitting on what you're trying to say
and that you're trying to say something nuanced and important.
So yeah, that's the kind of thing I look out for.
-Are there -- I know people will want to know this.
When do you stop reading a book? -Yeah.
You mean if I decide not to review it?
Yeah.
-If you decide not to review it,
or if you are just reading it outside of your job.
-Well, if it's that, then pretty quickly.
I mean, I'll give it a spell.
I also have learned to put a book down and give it some time.
You know, sometimes it's me and not the book.
You know, I'm distracted. I'm upset about something.
I'm hungry, whatever it is.
So I'm like, I'm not going to blame the book at first go.
So I'll come back to it.
If I come back to it
and it still seems dull, flawed in any way,
incoherent, I'll just let it go.
It's not a happy thing for me.
I'm not the sort of critic that wants to say negative things.
I do not.
I don't -- it's really easy and kind of fun to be snarky,
but I don't.
That's not my mission at all.
I want books to be read. I really do.
And I give them I give them a good shot, a fair shake.
-Yeah, you definitely do that.
What you said about putting books down --
about how much of our mood influences, you know,
where we are at the -- at that moment in our life,
certainly influences how we respond to books.
And I do think -- almost 80%,
I would think somewhere around then -- around that number,
is how much mood influences, you know,
whether we like a book or not.
And I know you read -- I mean, I'm just guessing,
but I suspect that you read "Old Filth" by Jane Gardam.
-Oh, wow. That's going back. Yeah.
-Yeah. Yeah.
So that whole --
that triptych of the three books,
I just read those and I realized that I had tried --
I had copies of them
and I realized I had tried to read them in 2002
when "Old Filth" came out.
And I just couldn't -- I couldn't get into it.
It didn't grab me.
And then I picked it up about a month ago
and immediately read the second,
"The Man with the Wooden Hat"
and then the third, "Old Friends."
And I honestly felt they're perfect novels.
-I mean, they're just -- oh, my gosh.
Now I want to reread them.
-Yes, reread them, then we can talk about them,
because I just -- I've interviewed a lot of authors,
as you have,
but I've never interviewed Jane Gardam, and she's 96.
And I don't know --
I would really love to talk to her about whether that was --
that whole triptych -- people call it a trilogy,
but I think it's a triptych. -I like that better.
Yeah. -Yeah.
Whether she had that in mind when she started "Old Filth."
-Right. Right.
-But I don't know that that would ever -- she's in England
and -- but her earlier books,
"A Long Way from Verona" and "Bilgewater,"
very different from "Old Filth," but the writing is so fantastic.
-So true, and it's interesting.
I think, you know,
it can be your mood and also maybe your place in life.
It just didn't speak to you earlier.
Yeah. Yeah.
I have found that, too, definitely.
Especially in sort of demand -- like, poetry,
I think, is the toughest thing. There's days where I just --
I do not have a poetry brain to save my life.
I can't do it. -Uh-huh, yeah.
-And certain poets, too.
I will try and I'm like, yeah, okay.
And then other times I'm like, oh, this is it.
So it really does vary. Yeah.
-I really thought that one of the best --
when Twitter was Twitter, there were a lot of poetry posted.
And I found some wonderful poems because of that.
You know, being able to just see those and get into the --
do you have favorite modern contemporary poets
or do you just read?
-I do. I love Jane Hirshfield a lot.
And of course,
my mind always goes blank when people ask me these questions.
-Well, Stephen Dunn,
do you like -- did you --
so Stephen Dunn was one of my favorites
and I was very sad when he died.
Yeah. -That's right.
Oh, gosh. Yeah, there's so many.
I'm trying to think who I'm reading recently.
I'm about to read Amy Gerstler's new book,
and I really like her work.
-Uh-huh. Louise Gluck.
-I love, you know, like -- yeah,
nature loving people like me, Mary Oliver is a great favorite.
And I've been recommending Mary Oliver a lot to people lately
who want to know what to read for some solace
and for some clarity.
So yeah, those kind of work.
-Are there books that you go back to?
Do you do a lot of rereading
or are you so without time to do that?
-Without time? I don't do a lot.
I do some, but, you know, not a lot.
I have a long list of books I wish I could reread.
And there's plenty of poetry on there.
I go back and reread things.
You know, for this book, I reread a lot,
which was really fun and interesting to me.
Re-reading Leslie Marmon Silko was a great revelation
because I -- it was ceremony in particular.
It was one that I read probably too quickly.
That was really great to go back to.
So periodically, I do.
And that's my excuse for picking up children's books, too,
like "The Little Prince,"
which I dearly love and feel like I need once in a while.
And for various reasons,
I've read Sandra Cisneros
"The House on Mango Street" many times,
because I often -- I interview Sandra or do things like that.
And that's a book I just always marvel over.
So there's certain books
I just kind of return to for practical reasons,
but find them very inspiring.
-You sort of return to the river of books.
-Exactly.
-Yeah. Yeah. -Yeah.
-Are there books --
when you were talking about children's books,
sometimes I think that the experience
that I've had rereading favorite children's books was --
made it a mistake for me to do that.
That it's better to have the, you know...
-The memory? -...the memory of it,
rather than trying to recapture that wonder
when I first read it.
-Yes, I understand that.
Yeah, I haven't done that with a lot of books.
Just, you know, again, like something will come up,
some project will come up or something,
or I'll be reading like a biography or something,
and an author will be fixated on some book.
And I'll be like, oh, I wonder why.
And I'll take a look at it.
But I haven't -- even for this book,
I didn't spend a lot of time on the kids books.
And I kind of outgrew kids books pretty fast.
I wasn't really all that patient with them, frankly, so --
-Yeah. Yeah.
-I read, you know, a couple of the ones that really struck me.
And I loved rediscovering Dorothy Sterling's "Mary Jane,"
which I --
-Uh-huh.
Yeah, I was glad that you talked about that in the book.
-Because that was a huge book for me and many other people,
as I learned going online.
I couldn't remember the name of it.
That's how -- but the feeling it left in me,
the things I learned from it.
And then I became really intrigued
with Dorothy Sterling herself.
What a great story.
And so, I'm glad you mentioned
that there was quotes in this book you like
because I wrote twice as much as fit in here
and had to cut you so much.
And a lot of what got cut were longer excerpts
that I'm enamored of,
but just, you know, didn't fit what we were trying to do,
which was [indistinct] -Right.
Oh, now that makes me wish I could read the uncut version.
-Thank you.
Well, I'm hoping to use -- turn some of it into some essays.
-Uh-huh. A long essay, I hope.
-Yeah.
Yeah, in the book -- in "River of Books, A Life in Reading,"
periodically throughout the book, you have lists.
So talk about
how you decided what lists you were going to include
and how you went about making those lists.
Thank you. Those are fun. So while I was working on this,
I kept pushing back against the urge to make it,
you know, sort of,
oh, I don't know, I guess seriously in a literary way.
I wanted it to be fun.
I mean, I hope that some of it's funny
and some of it's very personal.
And I think because I write so many reviews,
I just wanted to do something different.
Like, in my last book I wrote about women artists.
So I didn't write about books at all,
which was really exciting for me.
But my editor was like,
you should talk about the criteria for your book.
You know, what are you looking for?
And I said, oh, yes, you're right, I should.
You know, sort of an "Ars Poetica" or something.
But I thought -- I kept thinking about the river,
and about boats, and things that I'm fascinated by.
And I was thinking about
how river pilots take soundings of the water,
so they don't run aground.
So I wanted to do soundings of books.
And so I ended up writing those lists.
And I originally called them soundings,
but that didn't make sense to anyone.
So I gave them --
-Well, the one I thought was --
the list that I was taken with was what I hope for in books.
And did -- -Yeah, thank you.
-Did these just new perspectives,
old stories told with fresh insights,
the pursuit of social justice.
It's such a diverse list that you hope for in books.
And I think when you read this list,
you get a sense of you, that -- of your approach as a reader,
but also as a reviewer. -Yeah.
-You know, and what your -- I mean, I don't know, you're --
Donna, I am being utterly --
like, you are probably the best reviewer.
You and Ron Charles, let me say that.
-Okay. Yeah, that's right. -Yes.
Yes, so -- but do you ever get tired of it?
-Of reviewing?
-Yes.
Of judging, of feeling that with every book you're judging.
-That's a really interesting question.
Thank you for that tremendous compliment.
I'm always very humbled by the books I read,
so I don't feel like a judge.
I feel much more like an interpreter or a journalist
taking someone through a journey, through a book.
And that's really how I look at it.
-Wow. -Yes, exactly.
I don't ever feel above it,
or -- and I have -- I really struggle with like,
best list and, half of the year.
I mean, I really agonize over that.
Whereas when I'm one on one with a book,
I really feel much more -- I just want to report on it.
I feel very much like a reporter.
Here's where this book takes you.
Here's the voice I'm hearing when I read this book.
Here's the people I've met.
Here's the issues they're facing.
Here are the conflicts.
And, you know, is there a moral compass in this book and why?
I mean, that's what I'm really looking for
and really care about, and want to share and describe.
And that's how I review.
You know, I like to certainly praise the writing
and find good adjectives for that.
But also just,
you know, just be really precise about what goes on in this book.
So that's how I -- -Yeah, I mean,
I think that what your reviews do is invite
the reader who's reading their reviews, to share with you,
your response to the book.
And without saying this is the best book I've ever read,
or you know,
just putting -- looking at each book as an individual.
Yeah.
-As you do with works of art,
as you do with people and animals,
you know, every living entity. So yes, that's it.
So I don't feel that I'm judging so much as responding.
And even, you know, like,
almost sort of trying to harmonize with it a little bit.
Like, here's how -- there's the experience.
Here's what it is. I think it's excellent.
See what you think.
-When you're doing --
when you were writing this book,
you were presumably at home working on it.
And did you not find -- yes, right there where we're looking.
Did you find it distracting to work at home?
-No, no. -No?
-No, I mean, I'm -- yeah, I'm a total homebody.
I'm happy to work at home.
I'm always working at home.
What I found distracting was worrying about work
while working on the book,
because, you know, Booklist is a relentless beast.
And also what I found distracting was I really
often didn't want to write about myself and my very kind
and wise editor just kept saying to me, it's great.
The stories about you are great.
Put more of that in, that kind of thing.
So that was my struggle.
I wanted more books, less me.
I was encouraged to have more me and a little less book.
So that's when I would get a little derailed periodically
and, kind of -- but I think it was --
-Oh, go ahead. Yeah.
-That balance was important to me.
I really wanted there to be as many books as possible.
-Yes. And now that,
you know, we hope you'll do a long essay with many,
many quotes that yes, more books.
Are you surprised that you ended up where you are in your life?
Is that a shock to you
or did you -- there wasn't a clear path
that I could discern in the book.
-Exactly. I think I am often surprised.
I'm immensely grateful because I really --
you know, I teach sometimes and speak to young people and people
ask me about my career.
And I always, kind of, laughed at myself, my career?
I never thought about a career.
I was not a very practical person,
and things were different then.
I think there was a lot less pressure to, you know, conform.
And I wasn't like -- I'm still not like,
a super materialistic type of person.
So I need money, but it wasn't my big focus.
So I feel very lucky.
It seems -- I sort of joke in the book
that I was destined to arrive here.
You know, I never knew there was a magazine called Booklist
for a long time, but I always made book lists.
So when I heard about it, I was like, wow, that's kind of funny.
That kind of sounds like me.
So it was very much feeding my habit, sort of,
following the book.
Some people follow the money, I follow the book.
So I meandered around like a river does.
And when I did end up at the American Library Association
at ALA and Booklist, I'm like, oh, baby, this is it.
This is it.
I'm very much a not-for-profit type of worker,
and the mission altogether of the organization
of preserving our freedom to read and supporting public
and school libraries, it all just rings so true to me.
-Right.
Is there another book in your future?
Oh, I hope so. I hope so.
I want to go back to writing profiles.
"Identity Unknown" was profiles of seven American women artists.
And I had a -- I love research, as you can imagine.
Right?
So the research -- and the research on that was thrilling.
I went to museums
and had works hauled out of vaults and storage,
and all that kind of thing was great.
Now I'm thinking about writing profiles about people
in publishing, about writers and, you know,
unsung editors behind the scenes.
People that people don't know about.
And like, you know,
historic book review editor types, people like us.
So I'm starting to do a little research on that
and thinking about that.
Even agents would be interesting --
-That's great -- --- to talk about.
-- real characters. Yes, yes. -Yes, but, you know that --
I mean, it's a fascinating ecosystem, the world of books.
And, you know,
everyone thinks they have to be a writer to participate.
And I'm always like, no,
there's many other ways to be part of this world.
And it's such a rewarding place to be.
-Do you ever think about writing fiction?
-I do. I do.
You know, I've taken a little -- tried it now and then.
It's hard.
And of course, I have such high standards.
-Yes, yes.
-So I know you ventured into fiction.
-I did. I did.
I thought it was --
and I did it because of the characters that had come to me
and they wouldn't leave.
And I loved them, you know? And in a way,
I wish that I hadn't published the book
because I could see that I would still be writing about them.
-Well, there's always the second novel.
-Right. Redux, right? "George and Lizzie" redux.
-I would love that.
Yeah, well, I always think may life be long.
I do have some -- there's some people I want to write about
that I don't think I can find out enough about,
you know, to actually do a biography.
or profile, or something.
And that tempts me as -- for fiction.
-Yeah.
And for nonfiction, for your -- you know,
focusing on the book world, the publishing world.
Is there somebody that you're just,
you know, fantasizing about interviewing,
about looking at their --
-Yeah, I haven't gotten that far yet.
-That far, okay.
-I've been looking at people of the past.
But yeah, so we'll see.
-You can you can tell Donna,
I'm just so eager to read whatever you write that...
-Oh, good. -...I'll be there.
-Maybe we'll share some ideas.
-And if you want to share some more quotes with me,
feel free to send them. Let me just say again,
before we end that I think that any reader will just love
"River of Books, A Life in Reading."
So thank you for writing the book
and thank you for being on the show.
-Oh, thank you so much, Nancy. This was such a deep pleasure.
I can't tell you. So enjoyed our conversation.
-Thank you.
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