The Shelf: From LEQ to LES: Adventures in Extreme Reading, by Phyllis Rose
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The Shelf: From LEQ to LES: Adventures in Extreme Reading, by Phyllis Rose
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Phyllis Rose, after a career of reading from syllabuses and writing about canonical books, decided to read like an explorer. She "wanted to sample, more democratically, the actual ground of literature." Casting herself into the untracked wilderness of the New York Society Library's stacks, she chose a shelf of fiction almost at random and read her way through it. Unsure of what she would find, she was nonetheless certain "that no one in the history of the world had read exactly this series of novels."What results is a spirited experiment in "Off-Road or Extreme Reading." Rose's shelf of roughly thirty books has everything she could wish for―a remarkable variety of authors and a range of literary ambitions and styles. The early-nineteenth-century Russian classic A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov is spine by spine with The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux. Stories of French Canadian farmers sit beside tales about aristocratic Austrians. California detective novels abut a novel from an Afrikaans writer who fascinates Rose to the extent that she ends up watching a YouTube video of his funeral.Curious about the life of writers across a broad spectrum of time and space, with a keen interest in the challenges for literary women, Rose occasionally follows her reading with personal encounters. One of her favorite discoveries is the contemporary American novelist Rhoda Lerman, in whom she believes that she has found an unrecognized Grace Paley―"another funny feminist humane earth-mother Jewish writer." But Lerman, who becomes a friend, turns out to be not "another" anything: in addition to writing she now raises prizewinning Newfoundlands and "talks of champion canines with the reverence I reserve for Alice Munro."A joyous testament to the thrill of engagement with books high and low, The Shelf leaves us with the feeling that there are treasures to be found on every library or bookstore shelf. Rose investigates her own discoveries with exuberance, candor, and wit while exploring and relishing the centripetal nature of reading in the Internet age. Measuring her finds against her own inner shelf―those texts that accompany her through life―she creates an original and generous portrait of the literary enterprise.
The Shelf: From LEQ to LES: Adventures in Extreme Reading, by Phyllis Rose- Amazon Sales Rank: #1301533 in Books
- Brand: Rose, Phyllis
- Published on: 2015-05-19
- Released on: 2015-05-19
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 7.94" h x .76" w x 5.28" l, 1.00 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 384 pages
From Booklist *Starred Review* Literary critic and biographer Rose, author of The Year of Reading Proust (1997), takes us on another mind-revving reading escapade. This time she designed a literary expedition in which she read each and every book found on a shelf in the fiction section of the venerable New York Society Library, recording her adventures in “Extreme Reading” in a richly entertaining and enlightening chronicle. Among the many titles on her century-spanning, literarily diverse library shelf are the Russian classic, The Hero of Our Time, by Mikhail Lermontov; Alain Le Sage’s early eighteenth-century picaresque novel, Gil Blas; several books by Gaston Leroux, including The Phantom of the Opera; detective novels by the Edwardian novelist William Le Queux and today’s John Lescroart, and the canny and funny novels of Rhoda Lerman. Each book is a catalyst for provocative inquiries, inspiring Rose to consider the crucial truths gleaned from fiction, the lives of writers, the status of women writers past and present, the distinctions (or lack thereof) between popular and literary fiction, how libraries acquire and “weed” books, the value of reviews and literary criticism, and the many joys of reading in the digital age. A seasoned, open-minded, and passionate reader, inquisitive thinker, and delectably lucid and witty writer, Rose rallies readers to affirm our love of literature and libraries. --Donna Seaman
Review
“Simple but radical.” ―Elizabeth Taylor, Chicago Tribune
“Rose is consistently generous, knowledgeable, and chatty, with a knack for connecting specific incidents to large social trends.” ―Christine Smallwood, The New Yorker
“Immensely appealing . . . In encouraging us to be more independent thinkers, less swayed by convention and the critical consensus, more empathetic and open-minded, her book teaches us much about how to approach life as it does about how to read books . . . Irresistible.” ―Priscilla Gilman, Boston Globe
“Readers of ‘The Shelf' will feel befriended.” ―John Williams, The New York Times
“It's thrilling to see, in The Shelf, the happenstance and whimsy that sprang from a random grab bag of books. And the vastness of possibility those books (good or bad) possess is a terrific match for the vastness of Rose's intelligence, which swerves from scholarly to oddball, and from sophisticated to fun.” ―Diane Mehta, Bookforum
“A seasoned, open-minded, and passionate reader, inquisitive thinker, and delectably lucid and witty writer, Rose rallies readers to affirm our love of literature and libraries.” ―Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)
“If the world's greatest librarian held hands with the greatest English teacher you ever had and they led you into the middle of the Forest of Literature, Phyllis Rose's The Shelf would be right there, waiting for you. The Shelf is an exceptional, goofy, erudite, deeply thoughtful, and completely enchanting foray into the world of books. As Grace Paley said in another context, you'll learn something.” ―Amy Bloom, author of Away
“Phyllis Rose calls her irresistibly charming journey through the LEQ–LES shelf an experiment in Off-Road Reading. But the lesson I drew from it was that no matter what bookish road you take, whether it's a superhighway or a bumpy track that requires the literary equivalent of four-wheel drive, you're bound to enjoy the scenery if you're as interesting a reader as Rose.” ―Anne Fadiman, author of Ex Libris and At Large and At Small
“In her brilliant and original The Shelf, Phyllis Rose proves how much you can learn about yourself and the world just by reading any book you come across and thinking seriously about it.” ―Alison Lurie, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Foreign Affairs
“The Shelf is a surprising and wonderful book--a magnificent treat!” ―Alexander McCall Smith, author of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series
“It's always a pleasure to read Phyllis Rose. She ignites our imagination with her own intellectual curiosity, encouraging us to read widely and take chances.” ―Judy Blume, author of Summer Sisters
“Exhilarating, adventurous, original--Phyllis Rose's The Shelf is a reminder of what reading and writing are all about.” ―Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran
About the Author
Phyllis Rose is the author of A Woman of Letters: The Life of Virginia Woolf; Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages; Jazz Cleopatra: Josephine Baker in Her Time; The Year of Reading Proust: A Memoir in Real Time; and two collections of essays.
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Most helpful customer reviews
23 of 23 people found the following review helpful. Reading Without a Net By takingadayoff In The Shelf, literary critic Phyllis Rose is on a somewhat ridiculous enterprise -- she wants to read her way through a random shelf of her library's fiction section. She makes it slightly less outlandish by setting a few rules about the contents of the shelf she eventually settles on -- it has to include at least one classic that she wants to read and hasn't yet, there have to be several women authors, and if there is a run of works by the same author, she only has to read three of them.Still, the shelf she settles on is a pretty arbitrary collection of books, ranging across a couple of centuries, world views, topics, and literary styles. If faced with that particular shelf of books, I would admit defeat and move on. Phyllis Rose is made of sterner stuff, and plugs away, proving that what the reader brings to the book is at least as important as what the author contributed. She finds something of interest and even of value in practically every book, no matter how poorly written, or bizarre, or just boring.Even more remarkable, she can take these books, of varying quality and interest, and converse about them, in a very entertaining way. In fact, this is exactly the sort of book that would have been a good blog. As a book, it's excellent. Rose is constantly curious about the books she's reading, so she researches the authors, sometimes contacting them if she has a burning question about something. She makes her way through three or four different translations of the Lermontov book she tackled, and talks about the differences. She also contacted the book designer of one of the editions, which was unexpectedly revealing.Rose, with her background in academia, literary publications, and the publishing world, has a lot of insights to divulge, and uses the project as an excuse to find out even more. Her discovery of exactly how libraries decide which books to weed out when space is a problem was quite interesting.Five stars without question. It's the sort of book I couldn't stop sharing as I read it and it started several good discussions along the way.
23 of 24 people found the following review helpful. I wanted to like this book a lot more... By Helen This is a great idea - a book about reading. There's considerable promise at the start that we're going to be taken on a journey of prose. And not just the usual prose you'd expect to read about from a literary critic, but a much more randomised version as Rose elects to read the books in a New York library on the LES - LEQ shelf. She sets herself various sensible sounding rules - she doesn't have to read the books in order; if there happen to be several books by the same author then she only has to read three of them, and so on. There's even an element of real-life drama with storms as the opening backdrop.Indeed, there are many lovely parts. I was fascinated by her descriptions of the impact of different translations of the same book. I learnt a great deal also about the process of 'library weeding' where old books are discarded to make room for the new. Towards the end, I also loved her take on how difficult it can be for writers to create their own 'voice', while the conclusion was simply charming.However, there were many sections I really disliked. Somehow her own voice often came across to me as that of a sneering reviewer's (which is maybe why so many professional reviewers seem to adore this book...). This is curious considering that she also writes, "Negative reviews are fun to write and fun to read, but the world doesn't need them". Even when Rose describes the books she read that she enjoyed, I found nothing to encourage me to also go and seek them out for my own shelf. She states that literary critics wrongly favour the famous and canonical and then peppers her writing with constant reference to, you guessed it, the famous and canonical. There's a whole chapter decrying the gender inequality in prose, but she compares Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Weiner to Jonathon Franzen. To me, that's almost like comparing Lee Child to Hillary Mantel. I have nothing against any of these writers (don't get me wrong, I enjoy reading them all) but in an argument about pervasive sexism in literature, I can't see how they can be considered comparable texts.Rose is an excellent writer herself. In particular, I loved her phrase about a bad review becoming the 'death of the book baby' and I would suggest that if you want to expand your ideas on reading, then give this one a shot. There are parts to love: I just wish there weren't so many parts that I personally hated.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful. Inspiring! By Rituleen Phyllis Rose is the author of several nonfiction books including her biography of Virginia Woolf, A Woman of Letters and Jazz Cleopatra: Josephine Baker in Her Time. In The Shelf, Rose focuses on a quest to read a library shelf, LEQ-LES, in an Upper East Side Lending Library. As she reads Leroux, Lerner, Lermontov, and more, she details the paths these novels took her on, detailing her search to learn more about, and in some cases contact and befriend, the authors and their inspirations.I finished reading my copy of The Shelf while on the train home from work one sunny summer Friday (meaning I was home earlier than usual). I immediately drove into the public library near my house and, going into the adult fiction section, checked out their LEQ-LES shelf. I was surprised to find In God's Ear, one of the books Rose commends, available, as well as shelves and shelves of John Lescroart, evidence of Phyllis Rose's description of the man as a prolific mystery fiction writer. I didn't pick up any of the books (I have enough of my own to read at the moment) but I did walk through the stacks I haven't visited in a while, remembering when I had time to visit the public library instead of growing my own private one. Rose made me appreciate how hard librarians work, and described a few ways to protect the books that are forgotten but important--by simply taking them out, you're showing the library that this book is still wanted, and protect it for another few years.Moving from feminism to protecting libraries to fighting against parents who want certain books banned from school to showing appreciation for books in so many different ways, Phyllis Rose offers a wide range of books and their importance in society. I hope that more people read The Shelf and glean tips on reading well and protecting books. And maybe someone will go to their library right after readi
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