Elizabeth is well read.

Elizabeth Howell is a web reporter for CTV Ottawa, a freelance journalist, and a  self-proclaimed “space geek.” She’s even watched live shuttle launches from the Kennedy Space Center!  She writes about all things space at her blog Pars3c.

What kind of a reader are you?
To borrow an idea from Volkswagen Blues, I like to think that all of the books in the world are part of a larger metaphorical book, kind of like a library of human knowledge, and every book is linked to another book in another way. It determines how I set out my reading.

Here’s how it works. I’m pretty slanted towards non-fiction, particularly business and philosophy and history. This means that every book I pick up references other non-fiction books the writer found useful. If I agree with their assessment, I open up the Ottawa Public Library’s website and reserve the book to pick up at the branch within walking distance of my place. Then I pick up the new book when it’s ready, and inside the new book are references to more books the new author found useful, and so on.

My favourite spot to read is on my couch with food and drinks on the table in front of me and the laptop within arm’s reach to look up anything the author cites. I should also mention that I read a lot of e-books through OPL, at least the kind of books I’m looking to skim quickly for information on personal finance or business. The 4-Hour Workweek is one example of this.

I always pack a book with me when I travel, as you never know when a train will be late or you get bored on a plane. I once read Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII during a 10-day trip to England, France, Switzerland and Italy, which was the best book ever during that visit since he seemed to prefer women from different countries.

What’s the most interesting book you’ve read about space exploration?
Norman Mailer’s Of a Fire on the Moon. Mailer had just made a failed bid to be mayor of New York City and also had been abusive towards one of his wives or girlfriends. Can’t remember which as the man was married so many times, for obvious reasons.

Anyway, he – a novelist – decided to attend the Apollo 11 launch (the flight with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on it) to do something different. He was surrounded by space geeks and fanboy journalists and he just didn’t get it. It felt artificial and plastic as most of the information was funnelled through TV screens or the overly able hands of NASA public affairs. He couldn’t find anything touchable in the affair, and it freaked him out.

So he did a bunch of reading, and a bunch of research, and found a weird poetry while writing out NASA acronyms or describing how a launch works, step by step. But he’s still biased and unsure and calling himself Aquarius in a failed bid to separate himself from the story. It’s hilarious and also skeptical in a way most rah-rah accounts of America’s space program aren’t.

How do you organize your bookshelf?
Since I use the library for most of my reading, I basically keep only research books at home for my stories on space exploration. I have one very full (including stacks) IKEA Billy bookcase of space books. I’ve spent 14 years collecting accounts of NASA and the Canadian Space Agency and I’m absurdly proud of some of the rare books I’ve come across during that time, like Canada in Space by Lydia Dotto. Blame my habit of preferring used bookstores for how I pick up stuff like this.

I have another Billy bookcase with old National Geographics from the 1960s and beyond with space themes, assorted magazines (again, mostly space) and a smallish library of the few books I allow myself to keep that aren’t space-related.

Being that most of my books are about space, it’s fairly simple – I just organize them by mission. Apollo 12 came before Apollo 13, and the Mercury program came before Gemini. If I come across a biography with an astronaut who was on more than one mission, I just pick the one they’re most famous for.

Is there a book that’s influenced what you’re doing or want to do with your life?
Lately I’ve been trying to map out a game plan for my journalism career that includes more education, but it took me a while to figure out how to achieve that. I felt like I was floundering, so I picked up The Alchemist again. It follows the quest of a Spanish boy looking for the Egyptian pyramids. I don’t believe Paolo Coelho’s assertion that you can achieve all your dreams against all odds, but by the same token the book does teach patience and goal-setting and taking advantage of opportunities when you are working towards something.

For example, while I was struggling to find the right college or university program for me, I was comforted by the part of the story where (minor spoiler alert!) the boy has to spend a year in a crystal shop building up his funds. All he does every day is polish crystal, but he works hard and eventually turns what could be a boring job into a roaring success that increases the profits of the shop owner.

So I reminded myself, “Hey, it’s okay not to know what you want to do next. You’re polishing crystal and readying for the next opportunity.” A few weeks later, I stumbled across the right program for me during a random night browsing the Algonquin College website.  I was accepted into the e-publishing graduate diploma program and will begin school again in September. On top of working, of course.

If you were a book what book would you be?
Everyone has a dog-eared paperback with pages falling out. You pick it up every so often, fold down pages, scribble illegibly in the margin, smear chocolate and spaghetti sauce on it, bend the cover all funny when you crush it in a briefcase or a purse to read on the bus. You basically abuse it because you love it so much.

The book looks and smells horrid to an outsider, but it’s still beautiful to you because it holds the memories of all the different readings you’ve ever had. And you’ll never let it go as you have your own notes inside of it showing your growth as a person over the years.

That’s the book I’d hope to be. Not pretty, perhaps not edifying to everyone, but useful to a small group of fans who take what I write and who make their own stories out of the material. And hopefully, be inspired to write books themselves.

Elizabeth’s Must Reads
The Bhagavad Gita
Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe
Julius Caesar by Shakespeare
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson