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<\/a>As Turkey\u2019s political situation destabilized through 2016, library memberships leapt by 24%. \u201c<\/span>In a time of terror, political uncertainty, and a coup attempt,\u201d says Turkish novelist and essayist Kaya Gen\u00e7, \u201cTurks took refuge in libraries.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nTurkish libraries are variously funded by taxes and by the banks. The previous headquarters of the Ottoman Bank, for instance, now houses 110,000 books and serves more than 47,000 readers in a library funded by Garanti, a private Turkish financial institution. Another Turkish Bank, Yap Kredi, opened its library of 80,000 books and hundreds of ancient manuscripts to the public this fall.<\/span><\/p>\n Turkish banks not only create oases of reading, they are publishers, too. Yap\u0131 Kredi, for instance, publishes Turkish translations of Ben Lerner, Ian McEwan, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Orhan Pamuk\u2014and it used its ATM machines to promote the Turkish Nobel Laureate\u2019s latest book.<\/span><\/p>\n Kaya Gen\u00e7, in his essay<\/a>\u00a0on Turkish libraries, describes long morning queues of people hoping to get inside the Atat\u00fcrk Library. During one of his own recent visits, he read Scott Sherman\u2019s Patience and Fortitude: Power, Real Estate, and the Fight to Save the Public Library<\/em>. <\/i><\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt takes time to see banks as saviors of culture, rather than its adversaries,” writes Gen\u00e7. \u201cBut this is the case in Istanbul today.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n In Britain, school libraries are in danger of extinction. Already, according to the library and information association CILIP<\/a>, \u00a030% of the school librarian workforce is gone.<\/span><\/p>\n Last week, literary luminaries such as Neil Gaiman and Antonia Fraser joined 150 signatories to a letter calling on the UK Secretary of State for Education to halt the decline in school libraries or \u201cconsign a generation to a lifetime of low attainment and mobility.\u201d The letter cites one school where, when a full-time librarian was on staff, <\/span>1508 books were loaned out to students. Over the same period, without a librarian, children borrowed only 48 books.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cLi<\/span><\/a> In Canada, the decline in teacher-librarians continues, despite <\/span>four decades of research<\/a> from Canada, the U.S., and Australia that indicates well-staffed, well-stocked, well-used school libraries correlate positively with student achievement.<\/span><\/p>\n Maybe we should call in the banks.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019ve long been an admirer of Ishiguro\u2019s novels and his approach to writing:<\/p>\n \u201c’Write what you know’ is the most stupid thing I\u2019ve heard,” he said in an interview<\/a>. “It encourages people to write dull autobiography. It\u2019s the reverse of firing the imagination. I\u2019m against any kind of imagination police.\u201d<\/p>\n For a time I exchanged emails with Ishiguro, determined to lure him onto our Kingston WritersFest stage. He was just starting to write The Buried Giant.<\/em> I was persistent in my appeals, until I learned about The Crash.<\/p>\n Most writers claim four hours is the limit for high-level creative output. Not Ishiguro. With\u00a0his wife, he devised a writing routine they call The Crash. For a limited period, Ishiguro ruthlessly clears his diary: Monday through Saturday he writes from 9 am to 10:30 pm, with an hour off for lunch and two for dinner. For this limited period, his wife takes on all the household chores (earning huge payback rights). Throughout the Crash, he writes freehand, not caring about style. The priority is simply to get the ideas surfacing and growing.<\/p>\n \u201cI find that when you\u2019re writing, it becomes quite a battle to keep your fictional world intact.\u201d<\/p>\n His advice to writers? \u201cProtect your mind from unwanted influence.\u201d Advice we might all consider.<\/p>\n Whether it was the definition or the ethics that were unclear, “complicit” was the one of the most searched words on Dictionary.com<\/span><\/a> in 2017. On March 12, the day after a Saturday Night Live <\/em>skit featured an ersatz Ivanka Trump marketing a fragrance called \u201cComplicit,\u201d searches skyrocketed to 10,000% above usual. On April 5, when the real Ivanka said on CBS \u201cI don\u2019t know what it means to be complicit,\u201d searches spiked to 11,000% above average. Complicit word searches shot up again on October 24 when Arizona Senator Jeff Flake, a longtime Trump supporter, announced his retirement saying, \u201cI have children and grandchildren to answer to, and so, Mr. President, I will not be complicit.\u201d He urged fellow Republicans to speak out because \u201csilence can equal complicity.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n In defending their choice of complicit as Word of the Year, Dictionary.com<\/span><\/a> said: \u201cIt\u2019s a word that reminds us that even inaction is a type of action. The silent acceptance of wrongdoing is how we\u2019ve gotten to this point. We must not let this continue to be the norm. If we do, then we are all complicit.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Gutenberg\u2019s Fingerprint<\/em>\u00a0kept me busy these past six months\u201424 trips, 17 cities, 37 events. The greatest pleasure was the conversations about bookmaking and reading, which yielded some surprising tidbits:<\/p>\n \u2022 80% of the high school students I spoke with across the country still prefer to read in paper<\/p>\n \u2022 An astonishing number of readers counted printers and typesetters among<\/p>\n their family and friends.<\/p>\n My own favourite printer, Hugh Barclay, the hero of Gutenberg’s Fingerprint<\/em>, is retiring from letterpress printing. He’s sold the press to my son Erik, the supporting actor of\u00a0the book, and Thee Hellbox Press<\/a> imprint will be put to bed in the spring. In the meantime, the last few copies of Hugh Barclay bookarts editions are for sale.<\/p>\n In October, when dense fog cancelled my island-hopper flight to Saltspring, I suggested enlisting Skype to transport me digitally across the Strait of Georgia to the Ganges Library. I listened as my co-reader Kathy Page<\/a> presented her work-in-progress, then engaged in a lively discussion with islanders on the future of books\u2014the profession of our love for paper made possible by digital technology. Thank you to Adina Hildebrandt of Salt Spring Books and her island team. \u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Winner of the Best Education Podcast Award for 2017, Grammar Girl <\/a>Mignon Fogarty loves language and knows how to use it. Great for writers\u2014and anyone who reads or speaks.<\/p>\n VIDA: Women in Literary Arts<\/a>\u00a0reports on the literary world through a feminist lens. Indispensable for those who want another view.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n<\/p>\nMeanwhile on Another Part of the Planet\u2026\u00a0<\/b><\/h3>\n
<\/a>braries<\/span>\u00a0turn a love of reading into something communal,\u201d says award-winning novelist Matt Haig.\u00a0<\/span>\u201cTheir value is social and even psychological as well as academic. A good library is the beating heart of a school.\u201d<\/p>\nNobel Words<\/b><\/h3>\n
<\/a>In October, Kazuo Ishiguro was awarded the 2017 Nobel Laureate in Literature.<\/p>\nComplicit<\/b><\/h3>\n
<\/a>Dictionary.com<\/span><\/a><\/span> has chosen \u201ccomplicit\u201d as the 2017 Word of the Year. To be complicit is to \u201cchoose to be involved in an illegal or questionable act, especially with others; having partnership or involvement in wrongdoing.\u201d To be complicit is to be responsible for something\u2014even if only indirectly. <\/span><\/p>\nNEWS FROM MY CASITA\u00a0<\/b><\/b><\/h3>\n
<\/a><\/i>I was thrilled that\u00a0Gutenberg\u2019s Fingerprint\u00a0<\/em>made the\u00a0Globe 100 Best Books of 2017<\/a>\u00a0list, alongside such excellent reads as Eden Robinson\u2019s\u00a0Son of a Trickster<\/em>, Kathleen Winter\u2019s\u00a0Lost in September<\/em>, Leanne Betasamosake Simpsons\u2019\u00a0This Accident of Being Lost<\/em>, Glenn Dixon\u2019s\u00a0Juliet\u2019s Answer<\/em>, Kyo Maclear\u2019s\u00a0Birds, Art, Life<\/em>, and Tanya Talaga\u2019s\u00a0Seven Fallen Feathers.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\nFROM THE\u00a0DEPARTMENT of How Time Flies<\/b><\/h3>\n
LINKS I LOVE<\/b><\/h3>\n
<\/p>\nBEST LITTLE BOOKSHOP
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