Tubby

To Kill A Mockingbird had not been stocked by the library when we were to read it for the First Tacoma Reads Together in 2001. All the copies were checked out so I took out a stack of other novels to read and started with an old favorite, Mrs. Wallop, by Peter Devries. Tacoma Reads Together has been a good experience as I, right then, continued with a novel I found, Uninvited Daughters, by Eleanor Spielberg. It had a setting of chilly houses and reading while making soup out of vegetables and beans, that late fall before Christmas reading novels fit in to the idea of that novel.

A novel by Kazuo Ishiguro reminded me of a few novels I had read in an English literature tradition. The style was very appealing to me. In When We Were Orphans is a usage of the term tubby - in the context two boys play has evolved into uncomfortable tests of courage -
"I can still see my friend, his tubby figure stiff with tension, his face, whenever he glanced back at me, shining with perspiration, willing himself a few steps further..."

I think the descriptive term tubby refers to the trunk of the figure and evokes a particular appearance I recognize.

But in our earliest year of Tacoma Reads Together, 2002, we read biographies of Charles Darwin in December and I brought in The Voyage of the Beagle, which I skimmed, and the CD of Bossa Nova music (not Joao Gilberto, but Jobim) which has a booklet with not one but two spines.