Too Many Books

by Sheila Connolly

Oh, no, you say—not again! You've heard it all before, right? Well, the problem hasn't gone away, and the last couple of weeks have introduced yet more complications.

Let's start with the Bouchercon conference, now a rapidly receding memory—except for the stacks of books. If you've never attending a writers conference, you may not know that when you walk in you are handed a badge and a bag full of books. Yes, a whole bag. These are contributed by publishers seeking to promote lesser known authors, but the bag often includes recent books by mainstream authors. Even Big Name authors: my bag this year included books by Sue Grafton and Sara Paretsky. It also included books by several people I had never heard of, but that's the whole point of promotion, isn't it?

I couldn't part with any of them. Usually at such conferences there is a place to leave or swap books, and this year was no exception. The problem was, I ended up taking more than I left. The sad thing is, at most of these swap tables there is usually one book that a great number of people abandon from their freebie bags. Can you imagine how bad the poor author must feel seeing stacks of his gift books sitting there, rejected? I couldn't bring myself to dump it, even though it was heavy. Of course, now that I've hauled it home, I have to read it.

And if the gift bag didn't provide enough books, there are people who will thrust books upon you, in hallways, at parties. How can you say no? The (usually unknown) author is standing in front of you, his (or her) precious work outstretched—what are you going to say? I hate the cover? I've never heard of you, now go away? I was raised to be polite, so I take the book. It may be a wonderful book, but I haven't read it yet. I haven't read the one I got that way last year, from two Scandinavian authors who were all but flinging their first book at everyone who walked by them. But I still have it.

For the first time, this year I mailed a box of books back after the conference. It cost about as much as the excess weight fee on my suitcase would have, and I didn't have to lug another twenty pounds of books through airports. A bargain all around.

But that's only part of the rampant book problem. I'm reading broadly for my forthcoming Irish series, and the first book in the series in due to my editor in a few months. I've been doing research on Ireland, mainly genealogy, for a decade now, and I've collected quite a few books, including classic references on Irish history, the Famine, etc. Many of those will give me a few hundred years of history, but not what's going on there now. For that I need recent histories, and books by current authors. Given that Ireland has been going through rapid and extreme upheavals over the past decade, I have to look critically at the source and the date of any book I pick up now, if I want to catch a glimpse of the Celtic Tiger and the devastation it left in its wake.

A perfect example:  the description of the Celtic Tiger,
and the description of its demise

Plus I'm throwing a young and not overeducated young American woman into the mix, and she has her own perspective from growing up in the heavily Irish communities south of Boston. I'm looking forward to the clash of cultures. But I want to get it right, which means more reading. I don't know if I'm glad or sorry that Whitey Bulger has finally been caught: he provided some great mythology about Southie, and there was even a theory that he was hiding somewhere in West Cork, which is where my series is set. So there's another problem: if I'd written this a year ago, I would look foolish. Who knows—by the time this book hits the shelves, Ireland could have come roaring back to fiscal health, or equally likely, it and several other European Union countries could have declared bankruptcy and trashed the global economy. How do I handle that?

And if that weren't enough, a well-meaning friend sent me a link to a site which offers free ebooks on Irish history and family records. The list is sixteen pages long, in teeny print. There is no way I have time to read even a smattering of them. The TBR pile of print books about Ireland is already three feet high and teetering.

So how do I cope with this avalanche? I have already acknowledged to myself that it is almost physically painful to give away or refuse any book. I mean, it's a book! I can't do it! And yet, I'm surrounded with stacks of books, for research or written by friends or much praised by critics, that I want to read. And there simply isn't enough time to do it all.

Alas, not my library, but I can dream (it's the Trinity College Library
in Dublin)

Bouchercon Afterthoughts

Sandra Parshall

Mystery conference panels, unavoidably, recycle the same topics year after year – like mystery plots, there are only so many – but now and then something genuinely absorbing pops up. At Bouchercon in St. Louis, the all-star panel about evil (“Evil Going On: Does evil truly exist or is it just human failing?”) was one of those high points for me.

The able moderator, Reed Farrel Coleman, and panelists John Connolly, Thomas H. Cook, Peter James, Laura Lippman, and Daniel Woodrell might all be expected to declare a firm belief in the existence of pure evil. That’s what they write about, isn’t it? But they were surprisingly, and refreshingly, conflicted in their opinions.

Connolly, an Irish Catholic, seemed to lean toward forgiveness for sins rather than condemnation for hopelessly evil behavior. Tom Cook pointed out that we are better than animals in many respects and certainly no worse. People tend to romanticize animals and claim they kill only for food or territory, but the truth is that some will kill their own kind for the sport and fun of it. Male dogs will gang-rape a female until she literally drops dead. (This sort of mating behavior is well-documented in a number of species.) If humans do things like this, they can expect punishment, meted out through an elaborate criminal justice system created by people for the purpose of suppressing our worst instincts and keeping us safe from one another. Humans do, at least, recognize destructive behavior when we see it. The writers on the panel were inclined to attribute that behavior to circumstances rather than bad genes.

Personally, I believe some people are born without the moral sensibility we define as a soul – and early experience destroys it in others – so I guess I accept the existence of pure evil in humans, although I am totally non-religious. I enjoyed listening to these wonderful writers talk about their own beliefs, though, and I appreciated the struggle some of them seemed to have with the question. Reading their books will be a richer experience for me because I sat in the audience during this panel.

Bouchercon is always an exercise in humility for me – little fish, massive pond and all that – but I’m used to it by now. I know that the Famous Authors I meet in passing won’t remember me next time (even if next time is 30 minutes later). I’m just another gushing fan, and that’s okay. I expect the polite smile, the drift of the FA’s gaze down to my name tag (“Who is this person?”). I keep it brief, because I realize they’ve never heard of me or my books, don’t know I’m also a writer. I go through this every time I see one of my favorite authors, but I still want to tell her how much I enjoyed her latest book. I interviewed her once, years ago, but I doubt she remembers. Publisher Weekly compared my writing favorably with hers, but I doubt she knows. This year the encounter took place on an escalator. The polite smile, the drifting gaze. I don’t care. I love her passion-filled books, love the direction in which she’s taking two of my favorite characters, and I told her so. Next time, she still won’t know who I am, but I’ll still tell her I love her books. I experience a tiny, tiny fraction of the positive interaction with readers that she has, but it always makes me feel good, and I figure she must enjoy hearing praise too.

Bouchercon 2011 was, as always, enormous and noisy and chaotic, a true feast for crime fiction fans. I salute Jon and Ruth Jordan and Judy Bobolik. It's a staggering amount of work, and I don't know how they do it.