A Work in Progress

A Reading Evolution, or My First 'Grown-Up' Book

A combination of reading this post and rereading this post and a comment made to one of my own recent posts has made me wonder what books I was reading as a child/teen that were actually written for adults?  Do you remember the first adult book you read as a child?  I had to think long and hard, and honestly I haven't come up with many (not many specific titles anyway), though surely there were plenty.  I wish I could say that I was reading books by Louisa May Alcott or Jane Austen or Agatha Christie (as so many others seem to have read) or something that is at least considered decent (worthy--though exactly what is "worthy" reading is perhaps a post better left to some other day?) literature. 

I feel as though I shouldn't admit to any of this. However, I'm afraid I was reading books with a more tawdry spin by the likes of V.C. Andrews.  As a matter of fact I am sure I can count Flowers in the Attic as one of my first "adult" books read as a teenager!  And I can almost guarantee that I read the sequels, too, but I think I probably tired of these stories and didn't plow my way through the whole V.C. Andrews oeuvre...I read lots of books by Phyllis Whitney.  I know I read Judy Blume's books (both for teens and adults--one of my favorite authors back then), and I bet there was a whole array of romance novels thrown in for good measure.  I can already tell you what kind--swarthy, handsome pirate takes young beauty captive...well, you get the idea.  Ack.  Please tell me I am not the only one with a less than illustrious reading past?  In college I think I think I read a lot of nonfiction--at one time contemplating studying international studies and living somewhere exotic and working in an embassy.  It wasn't until I spent a year in Europe and then later worked in a bookstore that I started refining my tastes (my own personal literary redemption).  It wasn't just Stephen King or Dean Koontz, but it was Margaret Atwood, and Rita Mae Brown.  I even dabbled in a little Simone de Beauvoir.  I remember the summer I came home from living in Austria, I came across Jack Kerouac's On the Road and all of a sudden my reading world turned upside down.  And it has been evolving ever since. 

What I am not reading...

Perhaps I should start with what I have been spending my time with...that would be a daily dose of War and Peace, and an even heavier daily dose of Kept by D.J. Taylor.   If you have read W&P or are currently reading it--I don't  quite know what to think of the lisping character (Denisov)--especially as they prepare to go into battle!  I have a hard time thinking what he must sound like in Russian.  Not that people in other countries don't lisp, but it just sounds strange in my head as I read it.  Shots have been fired, a soldier has died and Nikolai Rostov has had his first taste of battle.  Sometimes when I open a book up I feel like there is this cast of real characters who all have to take their places when I start reading again.  When I close the book they all sort of freeze or sit down and relax until I get back to them.  As for Kept, I wonder if I will ever finish this book.  It is quite good!  Although I have never read Dickens (yes, bad, I know), I recently watched Bleak House, and I think most people have a sense (at least I do) since Dickens is so Huge, what his books are like.  So far Kept feels like a cross between a Wilkie Collins and a Charles Dickens novel.  A large cast of characters, seedy people, lawyers, illegal activities, a maid in the know, a parson, and a lady in the attic.  It took me a bit to get into it as there are many different story lines, which seem to be tying in with each other, but now that I see the connections (some of them at least) I want to read and read.  The problem is that I feel like I am reading and reading but my bookmark doesn't seem to be traveling too far back in the book.  Does this ever happen to anyone else?  I completely expect this from W&P, but I feel like I should be making better progress (actually that I should be done by now!).  Definitely I will finish this week!  And I am juggling my mysteries and Emily Carr a bit as well along with these two. 

As for the books where the characters have been on an extended break and are just waiting for me to get back to them so they can take up their positions on stage...poor old Oak Apple.  I won't even admit when I started this one.  I am in the mood to read it too, but now I fear I will have to start from the beginning again.  I broke down and checked out The Virgin Queen DVD again from the library.  I seem to be in a very Elizabeth mood lately.  The Oak Apple is part of a series of books that follows one family throughout the history of England.  Although the setting for this book is after Elizabeth's reign and during the Civil War, it still has that historical/Elizabethan setting feel to it.  Let's see, I think this must be book 3 or 4 in what is going to be about 25 books total (I have nearly all of them in paperback by the way).  At this rate I may be a while in getting anywhere near the 20th century!  Both Scoop and The Island of Dr Moreau have not yet even been started.  However, as August is just around the corner I will need to get them out and get going on them.  They look to both be fairly quick reads and I hate to read them too soon before discussion is due to start.  I have not forgotten about Mary Wollstonecraft.  This is typical of me though when it comes to nonfiction.  I start out strong then waver, but I will eventually get back to it.  I suspect that I have more unfinished nonfiction read than fiction reads, which I hate since nonfiction books usually sound so good to me!  I did start Oroonoko.  With just over 60 pages, I have to read it!  I was afraid that I would struggle with the text, but it does seem quite readable actually.  Just ten pages a day and I could be finished in a week! Hmm.  Sophie's Choice is really an excellent book, though you wouldn't know that from how long it has been sitting on my night table.  Once I get started I do quite well with it, and I need to pick it up and read a bit each day again.  That leaves The Observations.  This is quite like Kept, which is why I have not been picking it up lately.  They are too close in setting and time period and I think it is better to read one Victorian drama at a time!  What books are you not reading?

A Cool Bookstore on a Hot Day

A cold (vanilla bean) frappucino in hand, I spent a little bit of the hot afternoon today at the bookstore.  Of course I couldn't let a coupon go to waste, so a visit was called for.  I usually always take a list of books I want to look at, but I didn't bother today.  I wish I would have however, as I want to read Dorothy Sayer's mysteries from the beginning.  Surely I thought I would be able to tell which was the first, but I couldn't quite figure out the correct sequence.  They had several, but there seemed to be gaps, so I just guessed.  Unfortunately I guessed wrong--you can see her bibliography here.  I chose Strong Poison. In Gaudy Night, it is mentioned that Harriet Vane was on trial for murder, and this is the book about just that event.  That's all right, I will get to it eventually!  As for my other choices--Dubliners by James Joyce (I have noticed more than a couple people reading Joyce now, but I will start with his short stories and keep it simple...I hope), Straight into Darkness by Faye Kellerman (hideous paperback cover--I checked this out from the library when it was new, but didn't finish it--I figured I could splurge on the paperback as I really did want to read it), How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain de Botton (okay, so no Proust for me right now, but I thought this would be fun, and I could at least read about Proust), Casanova in Bolzano by Sandor Marai (a novel about Casanova by a Hungarian author who was compared with Garcia Marquez!), A Country Affair by Rebecca Shaw (a nice "gentle" read), and finally Katherine by Anya Seton (a new author to me--"the classic love story of Medieval England"--why not?).  After complaining about Pages and Bookmarks magazines, I bought copies of both of them, as well as the new Somerset Studio.  This should keep me busy for a while....

Reading about books...

My first issue of Bookforum has finally arrived.  I know it has been out for a while (being the June/July/Aug/Sept issue!), but I am still thrilled to get it.  Some time ago Stefanie posted about various literary magazines (too lazy, and too warm to go searching for the exact post), which prompted me to think about subscribing to one.  Of course this makes me want more (ever greedy for words I am).  Although I enjoy Pages and Bookmarks magazines, they seem very commercial to me.  I usually buy them when I see a new one at the bookstore, but I feel like I generally don't learn anything new or find books that are completely new to me.  They write up and review the same books that everyone else seems to.  I am hoping that Bookforum will be more off the beaten path--written more for readers.  It seems to me that the other two magazines are more for publishers to sell their books--not that I am going to stop buying them--book news is book news.  It would be nice if there were magazines about popular books, as well as unknown books and presses and authors, and then a nice sprinkling of literary articles in it as well.  Any other suggestions?

The new Bas Bleu catalog has also arrived.  I know I frequently mention this, but they do such a good job with it that I am always happy to get it in the mail.  I always go through and mark what I want, but that inevitably I don't order (though I do add to my wishlist or try to get it from my library).  My fantasy shopping cart?  1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die--yes, I know this has been discussed over and over--old news and all that.  But I have never seen it.  I discovered that my public library owns copies, and I am now #5 in the waiting list.  The Girl in the Green Glass Mirror--I love this title--more art in fiction.  New Yorker Literary T-Shirts--wonderful--I may have to buy the Dostoyevsky one!  The Novel 100--definitely one to find in the library--since you have to check out the lists!  Book Lovers' London--since this is the closest I'll be getting to any sort of vacation.  Reading Women--I really do want this one--will have to add to my wishlist.  For the Love of Libraries Postcards--need I say more?  What Jane Austen Ate and What Dickens Knew--all those details you don't usually read about.  Selected Shorts: Lots of Laughs--sounds like fun!  And one more...My Favorite Books Journal--may have to get this one, too!

The new Book Page was out at the library.  It is the "reading for summer's last days" issue, but to be honest on first glance I am not sure if I spotted anything I can't live without.  You can check this list out from The Times (London) of their 100 best summer reads or Oprah's - What You're Really Going to Want to Read This Summer--both links thanks to Bookglutton.  Just in case you need some good books to finish out the summer with...

How Should One Read a Book? (by Virginia Woolf)

Can I possibly quote this entire essay to you?  Actually you can read it here in its entirety, if you like.  I am always very interested in reading about books and reading about reading (if that doesn't sound too strange?).  Woolf's essay starts:

"In the first place, I want to emphasise the note of interrogation at the end of my title.  Even if I could answer the question for myself, the answer would apply only to me and not to you.  The only advice, indeed, that one person can give another about reading is to take no advice, to follow your own instincts, to use your own reason, to come to your own conclusions.  If this is agreed between us, then I feel at liberty to put forward a few ideas and suggestions because you will not allow them to fetter that independence which is the most important quality that a reader can possess.  After all, what laws can be laid down about books?  The battle of Waterloo was certainly fought on a certain day; but is Hamlet a better play than Lear?  Nobody can say.  Each must decide that question for himself.  To admit authorities, however heavily furred and gowned, into our libraries and let them tell us how to read, what to read, what value to place upon what we read, is to destroy the spirit of freedom which is the breath of those sanctuaries. Everywhere else we may be bound by laws and conventions--there we have none."

I especially like that she says each must decide the question of which play is better (or no doubt which novel, or poem or biography).  And I like the idea of "the spirit of freedom which is the breath of those sanctuaries (libraries!)".  I am always going back to that question of what to read.  How to choose.  Woolf goes on to say:

"Most commonly we come to books with blurred and divided minds, asking of fiction that it shall be true, of poetry that it shall be false, of biography that it shall be flattering, of history that it shall enforce our own prejudices.  If we could banish all such preconceptions when we read, that would be an admirable beginning.  Do not dictate to your author; try to become him.  Be his fellow-worker and accomplice.  If you hang back, and reserve and criticise at first, you are preventing yourself from getting the fullest possible value from what you read.  But if you open your mind as widely as possible, then signs and hints of almost imperceptible fineness, from the twist and turn of the first sentences, will bring you into the presence of a human being unlike any other.  Steep yourself in this, acquaint yourself with this, and soon you will find that your author is giving you, or attempting to give you, something far more definite."

She talks about reading novels, biographies, and poetry.  Reading must be done widely.  And then she says "we have only to compare".  You start out as a friend to the author in reading, but become judge after you have finished--as a friend, though, you can't be too sympathetic and as a judge you can't be too severe.  This is not as easy as it sounds.  Once the book is closed you only have the impression of it to compare to the impression from other books.  Maybe this should be left up to the "gowned and furred authorities".  But no!

"We may stress the value of sympathy; we may try to sink our identity as we read.  But we know that we cannot sympathise wholly or immerse ourselves wholly; there is always a demon in us who whispers, "I hate, I love", and we cannot silence him.  Indeed, it is precisely because we hate and we love that our relation with the poets and novelists is so intimate that we find the presence of another person intolerable.  And even if the results are abhorrent and our judgments are wrong, still our taste, the nerve of sensation that sends shocks through us, is our chief illuminant; we learn through feeling; we cannot suppress our own idiosyncrasy without impoverishing it.  But as time goes on perhaps we can train our taste; perhaps we can make it submit to some control."

There is so much more in the essay, and I recommend reading it (a mere 8 pages printed out).  Just as many have said--to be well read you have to read a variety of books--a lot of books, and it has to be a lifelong process.  What it all comes down to, though, she says--and here I am in complete agreement--is essentially reading is its own reward. It is a pleasure unto itself.

Spunky Heroines

I love books that have strong female lead characters.  Take for example, Emily Carr, from The Forest Lover by Susan Vreeland.  She broke boundaries at a time when women were meant  to be a good wife or daughter.  The book opens in 1906 in British Columbia, and Carr has just travelled alone to a Native village where few outsiders venture.  She does this despite the disapproval of both her family and society in general.  She befriends the Native people whom others look down upon as "primitives".  And she paints like no one else paints.  She wants to put on canvas what she feels for nature and for these Native people.  I am only about a third of the way into the book, but I can already tell you I like Emily Carr.  Books like this fall into a sort of grey area for me, since Carr was a real person and this is a fictional account of her life. How much is real, and how much did Vreeland take artistic liberty with in terms of the story.  I have not read too much yet about the actual history of Carr,but I have looked at some of her art so I have an idea of what the paintings described in the book actually look like. 

Another character that looks very promsing is Harriet Vane from Dorothy Sayer's Gaudy Night.  I think I will have to go back and start at the beginning of this mystery series by the way.  In the beginning of the book Vane is thinking about going to her school's (Shrewsbury) Gaudy Night (a college reunion).

"It was all so long ago; so closely encompassed and complete; so cut off as by words from the bitter years that lay between.  Could one face it now?  What would those women say to her, to Harriet Vane, who had taken her First in English and gone to London to write mystery fiction, to live with a man who was not married to her, and to be tried for his murder amid the roar of notoriety? That was not the kind of career that Shrewsbury expected of its old students."

The book was written in 1936 and I am assuming it was set in that period as well.  How can you not be intrigued by Harriet Vane?  Since this is my first Sayers mystery, I am not sure exactly of the dynamics of Vane and Lord Peter Wimsey.  I believe I read, however, this is the one mystery where she takes the lead so to speak.  She seems sort of self deprecating so far, but I think she knows what she's about. 

As I am juggling several books at once, the other book that has a strong female protagonist is Jacqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs in Messenger of Truth.  I have followed Maisie through three previous adventures, and I am sure I have mentioned here that I really like Maisie Dobbs!  Maisie grew up with only her father, and went into service as a young woman.  She was lucky as the woman she worked for became her benefactress and helped guide Maisie, who proved to be smart and spunky.  She went off as a nurse, lying about her age, to France in World War I.  She lost her fiance to shell shock.  It was through her mentor, Maurice Black, that she came into her own.  She became a private detective (or what I have noticed that they call an "inquiry agent"), but her spin is that she also happens to be a psychologist.  It is funny--sometimes you read about the same character over and over and they nearly become like real people to you!

Ubiquitous Authors

Have you noticed lately that wherever you go, far and wide, that there are certain authors and certain books that seem to be everywhere at once?  I know I am easily influenced by what other litbloggers are reading, and quite often come away from my daily blog reading with more books to add to my ever growing list.  Am I the only person left who has not yet read Jose Saramago's Blindness?  Even Amazon lists nearly 300 reviews of the book.  I am tempted to buy it, but it sounds so heavy, that I am not sure I am in the right mood for Saramago.  It has definitely been added to my list, though.  M. Proust also seems to be quite popular these days.  If he isn't popping up on blogs for his own fiction, he seems to be popping up in other author's writings, too.  I would love to read In Search of Lost Time, but that would be like reading War & Peace three times in a row!  I better stick with W&P.  So far there has been lots of soirees and talk of war, but I think I am finally about to enter the battlefield.  A welcome change, I think. 

Time and time again, however, I find that Virginia Woolf is mentioned in so many contexts, and by so many people (and not just lately, but steadily I see her mentioned), that I can't ignore her any longer.  It is not that I want to ignore her, but she seems such an icon of literature, that how do you even approach her?  Just looking in my library's catalog--a keyword search brings up over 300 titles.  As an author, we should have 80 of her books.  Yes, 80.  She boasts 69 different subject headings.  I know there are many authors who were prolific, but I am amazed by her.  And my library, while not small, isn't really massive either--so no doubt this is really only a sprinkling of her work and works about her! 

I have read Woolf before--To the Lighthouse (after college, and it was quite difficult--that is my sole recollection of it!), and Mrs. Dalloway (for a book club, of which I remember a tad bit more).  I am not planning any comprehensive study of her, but I wouldn't mind dipping into her work a bit.  I have had on the top of my TBR pile The Voyage Out, which I have been wanting to read, but I keep getting sidetracked.  I would like to read something of her earlier (non-experimental) work, as well as some of her essays (and the Lopate book includes a few, I believe).  And if you haven't heard of Pennyworth Books (go check them out--lovely new books)--they have a nice little selection of works by and about Woolf (for the cut rate price of $5 each!), and I plan on ordering a few to add to my very small collection.  It is bad enough going to a bookstore and browsing and wanting to pick up something new, but how do people resist the temptation of buying/wanting to read all the interesting books everyone else is reading and talking about on their blogs (always harder to resist than books sitting quietly on the bookstore shelf)! 

The Detective Story - American Style

I have read that noir mysteries, or what is known as hardboiled mysteries was an American reaction to the cosy mysteries so well known and written in Britain.  You can read about the american innovation here.  I have read noir mysteries before, but this is the first time I have thought about what I was reading in relation to the mystery genre in general. 

This weekend I finished the fourth book from my Summer Reading Challenge list.  The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett was quite a jump from my last book, which was an Agatha Christie mystery.  Whereas cosy mysteries are all about solving a crime--usually the murder of someone (and you generally know who the suspects are and are given the clues to solve it yourself), hardboiled mysteries have murder, and other violent acts--but solving them doesn't necessarily seem to the be the main priority (at least in my very limited experience).  As a matter of fact, I wasn't even sure I was going to find out who comitted the initial murders in the novel.   

The character of Sam Spade appears only in The Maltese Falcon and several short stories by Hammett.  Per wikipidia "Sam Spade combined several features of previous detectives, most notably his cold detachment, keen eye for detail, and unflinching determination to achieve his own justice. He is the man who has seen the wretched, the corrupt, the tawdry side of life but still retains his 'tarnished idealism'."  Femme fatale, Brigid O'Shaughnessy  hires Spade and his partner, Miles Archer, to find her younger sister who has run away from home with a man.  Nothing is as it appears.  Miles is killed along with the man he was meant to be tailing (the sister's boyfriend).  What ensues is a race to find a black bird--the Maltese Falcon, complete with various shady characters who would easily shoot you in the back in order to retrieve the bird.  There were times when I was reading the novel that I wondered if Spade was as corrupt as the criminal(s) he was trying to bring to justice. 

I really liked this book.  I liked the writing style, I liked the way the action moved along quickly, and while the character's morals were very ambiguous, I liked them as well (most of them anyway).  Earlier this year I read The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain, and later I will be reading Raymond Chandler's Farewell My Lovely.  These three authors are considered the biggies when it comes to noir/hardboiled mysteries.  I am interested in reading some of their successors as well eventually (particularly Cornell Woolrich, who wrote the short story that Alfred Hitchcock's film "Rear Window" was based on--one of my very favorite movies!).  I have already added the film adaptation of The Maltese Falcon to my Netflix queue--it is considered a classic in its own right. 

Next up: Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers.  I have never read Sayers, but I have heard good things about her--and finally a female sleuth!

The Writer's Perspective

I have read and enjoyed Andrea Barrett's fiction (particularly The Voyage of the Narwhal-- a novel of "arctic and personal exploration").  So when I started reading the next essay in the 2005 Best American Essays anthology, I was happy to see it was an essay by Andrea Barrett; "The Sea of Information".  She writes about a fellowship she received at the New York Public Library in 2001, where she was doing research for a new novel.  As it happened, her fellowship began September 10, 2001. 

"Like many writers, I found myself unable to write in the aftermath of the attacks--not just fiction, but anything.  What was the point? I thought at first, and for a long time after.  But of course there's always a point: reading and writing are two of the ways we make sense of our mysterious, sometimes terrible, world.  There were reasons why, all through the autumn months, the Main Reading Room at the library was packed with people reading newspapers and books, searching for material on-line, talking to each other and to the librarians.  Eventually I took my cue from those people pouring in off the street.  It was through reading, which grew into a more directed kind of research, that I first began to try to grapple with what had happened."

I mentioned before that Barrett had been inspired to write a novel based on a old book she found about tuberculosis.  Although what had happened in New York was fresh in her mind, she found herself "driven not toward these renderings of what surrounded me but away towards other times and places in which similar events--events that felt analogous --had taken place."  What I love about books and reading is that no matter what has happened personally, or internationally--it is rarely new.  History has a sad way of repeating itself.  And you can usually find something that has been written that mirrors your feelings and emotions perfectly, because probably someone has gone through it already.  Barrett concentrated her research and reading on the events that were happening around her characters--WWI particularly--the setting of the novel she was writing. 

"Why was I reading all this?  Why do all this work, especially when I wasn't writing and didn't know if, when I started again, I'd find a way to use any of it?  And especially when I might more usefully have been out in the world, helping someone, fixing something, cleaning up the rubble or raising money or aiding the families of the dead.  Instead I read, which is what I do.  I read like that--I have always read like that--because it's the only way I know to deeply inhabit a world other than the limited one of my own experience.  It's the way I sink into the hearts and minds of invented characters, who incarnate themselves in the odd intersections of apparently disparate fields, and who then, if I'm lucky, manage to understand  and articulate what I cannot.  Reading, which gives me access to lives I haven't lived, am not living, probably won't live, is how I find my way to writing: in this case, how I found my way back to writing."   

I don't think you have to be a writer to relate to the last few sentences in this paragraph.  I think reading, for me anyway, is a way to understand the world and the people who inhabit it, and their actions, which at times can seem incomprehensible.  I may feel the same things that characters in a book feel, but they give words to those feelings. 

One More Bookshelf, and One Nosy Cat

If you have a cat or know a cat, you know exactly what my cat is trying to do.  She is #1 smelling the book on the end, and #2 contemplating whether she can wedge herself into the small space there at the edge of my books!  Unfortunately for her, she is too large for the space and had to content herself with smelling.  One last bookcase.  My book room is now filled to the brim with bookcases--I can't fit anymore, even if I wanted to.  I don't like feeling claustrophobic (and I wish this area was a bit more aesthetically pleasing, and when I win the lottery I will buy a big house with a huge library inside it--though I do have a lovely movie poster from when Angels and Insects was made into a movie hung on my door--so that helps), but I don't like seeing my books piled on the floor even more, so bookcase it is.  And this was even on sale.  And do you notice....there is even space on each shelf!  My husband said I need to buy more books to fill it up...hahaha.

This little shelf contains--top shelf: books about books, reading, readers, and bookstores, as well as books of essays (I have a few by my bed as well, so I can easily fill that shelf), and the pathetically small number of plays that I own.  Yes, limited to one Ibsen and a very few Shakespeares.  I need to work on this area of literature.  Shelf number two:  poetry, and books about poets, and books of letters of poets.  Another area I feel quite inadequate in!  I need to read more poetry.  Where did I read about someone reading three new poems every night before they go to bed?  A blogger?  A character in a book?  Wherever, I think it sounds like a good idea.  Poetry is another hazy area for me where I don't feel like I am "getting it".  But this is best left to a post all of its own some other day!

Finally the last shelf has anthologies of a sort.  There is some mythology, fairy tales, and anthologies of international literature, or special topics, so to speak.  I thought I had many more, but all my literary travel anthologies are somewhere else.  It is hard to decide what goes where, but as long as I can find it, that's all that matters.  I am quite pleased to have it finally displayed in a more appealing and sensible manner.

One more little photo.  Victoria noticed that I have some books by Dorothy Dunnett on my night table.  I have the first in the Lymond Chronicles just waiting to be read, The Game of Kings.  You can see I devote the top shelf of one of my bookcases to her books.  There are six Lymond books featuring Francis Crawford, which are set in 16th century Scotland.  Then there are eight Niccolo books (House of Niccolo) featuring Nicholas de Fleury set in mid-15th century Europe.  I know these are meant to be read as a set, but I think Lymond comes first even though the Niccolo books are more of a prequel.  I have read none of them, but have the best intentions of starting them.  I first came across Dunnett when I was working in a bookstore.  I found a remaindered copy of one of the later Niccolo books and it always stuck with me.  Eventually I collected all of the books, as well as the two (not one, but two!) companion books that help explain all the references in her novels.  I tend to equate her with Umberto Eco (also never read, but am forever in awe of).  Another incidence of "I want to read this, but will I understand everything?".  Difficult or not, I want to read these!

And I promise, no more show and tell---am I boring you already?  Besides I have no room for anything else new anyway.