Reading My Life Away

Happy New Year!

2011-01-01T12:43:00.003-06:00

I have been extremely remiss in posting to this blog lately. I was pretty good in the beginning of the year, but then, I don't know what happened. I got behind, and then "behind-er"!

So here is a list of all the books I read this year, only some of which have been reviewed here (the titles of those books are links to the reviews). I've included here comments* on some of the books that I feel merit it, but that I didn't review. I've also split the list between fiction and non-fiction, and then vaguely into other categories.

*Okay, I've realized that a lot of these so-called "comments" are getting rather lengthy. So I'm going to stop now!

FICTION

Short Stories

Bierce, Ambrose: The Moonlit Road and other Ghost & Horror Stories
Burroughs, Augusten: You Better Not Cry: Stories for Christmas
Calvino, Italo: Cosmicomics
Finney, Jack: About Time: 12 Short Stories
Lochhead, Marion (ed.): Scottish Tales of Magic & Mystery
Various: I Do Two! An anthology in support of marriage equality

Graphic "Novels" and other stories in illustrations:

Chwast, Seymour: Dante's Divine Comedy: A Graphic Adaptation
Gorey, Edward: The Awdrey-Gore Legacy
Lancaster, Osbert: The Littlehampton Bequest
Niffenegger, Audrey: The Night Bookmobile [A perfect book for obsessive readers and library-lovers]

Mysteries:

Bidulka, Anthony: Flight of Aquavit
Greene, Graham: The Third Man, and The Fallen Idol
Grey, Dorien: The Secret Keeper (A Dick Hardesty Mystery)
Hammett, Dashiell: The Dain Curse
Herren, Greg: Bourbon Street Blues
Herren, Greg: Murder in the Rue Dauphine
King, Laurie R.: The God of the Hive
Maron, Margaret: Sand Sharks
Maron, Margaret: Shooting at Loons
McCrumb, Sharyn: The Devil Amongst the Lawyers
Muller, Marcia: Coming Back
Muller, Marcia: Locked In
Parris, S.J.: Heresy
Peters, Elizabeth: A River in the Sky
Taibo II, Paco Ignacio: Frontera Dreams: A Héctor Belascoarán Shayne detective novel
Twain, Mark: A murder, a mystery, and a marriage

Other fiction:

Bryson, Ellen: The Transformation of Bartholomew Fortuno
Cummins, Jeanine: The Outside Boy
Giordano, Paolo: The Solitude of Prime Numbers
Johnson, Todd: The Sweet By and By
Mantel, Hilary: Wolf Hall

Maupin, Armistead: Mary Ann in Autumn [Not a bad book, but I had the sense that Maupin was going through the motions, sort of like "Okay, I've done Michael Tolliver all grown up, now it's Mary Ann's turn."]

Moore, Christopher: Bite Me: A Love Story
Roché, Henri-Pierre: Jules and Jim
Rushdie, Salman: Luka and the Fire of Life
Simonson, Helen: Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand
Smith, Alexander McCall: Corduroy Mansions
Smith, Alexander McCall: La's Orchestra Saves the World
Smith, Alexander McCall : The Lost Art of Gratitude
Smith, Alexander McCall : The Charming Quirks of Others
Smith, Alexander McCall : The Unbearable Lightness of Scones

Story, Roslyn: Wading Home: a novel of New Orleans [One of my favorite books of the year, in which a jazz trumpeter comes home to New Orleans after Katrina to find his father. All about home and food and music and family. Lovely book.]

Wallace, Carey: The Blind Contessa's New Machine
Waters, Sara: Affinity

NON-FICTION

Travel/Geography/Place:

Dürer, Albrecht: Dürer’s Record of Journeys to Venice and the Low Countries
Theroux, Paul: Sailing through China
Forbes City Guide New York 2010
Kanter, Evelyn: Peaceful Places: New York City: 129 Tranquil Sites in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island
Wall, Diana diZerega & Cantwell, Anne-Marie: Touring Gotham's Archaeological Past: 8 self-guided walking tours through New York City
Carniani, Mario: Santa Maria del Carmine and the Brancacci Chapel
Sinibaldi, Giulia: The Palazzo Vecchio, Florence
Anon.: La chiesa di Santa Felicita a Firenze
Knopf Guides: Florence
Guida: Musei Scientifici a Firenze

Grandin, Mme. Léon: A Parisienne in Chicago: Impressions of the World's Columbian Exposition

Greider, Katharine: The Archaeology of Home: An Epic set in 1000 Square Feet of the Lower East Side [The author's co-op building was in the throes of rehabbing when she received a call in the middle of the night saying that everyone had to leave, that the house, which dated from the early 1800's, was likely to collapse at any moment. In trying to discover what went wrong, structurally, Greider delved into the history of the house, and, making lemonade from the lemon life handed her, wrote a book about the house, the history of the place where it stood, and the people who had preceded her there. Unfortunately, she intersperses this history with often incoherent philosophical musings on the nature of "home", and with descriptions of her aggravating co-owners and the trauma of not being a millionaire anymore (although still having a very large family home in a high-toned Virginia suburb to which to escape). Had she left the latter portions in a private journal, where they belong, this would have been a much better book.]

Janowitz, Rebecca: Culture of Opportunity: Obama’s Chicago: the People, politics, and ideas of Hyde Park
James, Rosemary (ed.): My New Orleans: Ballads to the Big Easy by her Sons,
    Daughters, and Lovers
Masini, Giancarlo: How Florence Invented America
Nencini, Franco: Florence: the Days of the Flood
Bissinger, Buzz: A Prayer for the City

Biography/Memoirs:

Canning, Richard: E.M. Forster
Caws, Mary Ann: Marcel Proust
Cooke, Alistair: Letters from Four Seasons

Fraser, Antonia: Must You Go? My Life with Harold Pinter [Taken straight from Fraser's diaries, the best parts are their early courtship and marriage, and the ending with his death. In between, they're just like any old married couple - except smarter and more famous!]

Glover, Jane: Mozart’s Women: His Family, His Friends, His Music
Green, Jesse: The Velveteen Father: An unexpected journey to parenthood
Jones, Judith: The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food

Kilmer-Purcell, Josh: The Bucolic Plague: How two Manhattanites became gentlemen farmers
Lyon, Andrea D.: Angel of Death Row
Mazaroff, Stanley: Henry Walters and Bernard Berenson: Collector and Connoisseur
Raymer, Beth: Lay the Favorite: A Memoir of Gambling

Reardon, Joan (Ed): As Always, Julia: The Letters of Julia Child & Avis DeVoto [I just have to say, thank goodness Bernard deVoto wrote a column about knives, and thank goodness Julia read it and sent him one. Because from such small things sprang a correspondence and friendship that led to the publication of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, which led to Julia on television, and thus to my being able to cook halfway decently! But the letters are also quite an interesting account of America during the Cold War, with comments on the Eisenhower-Stevenson elections, and on Joe McCarthy, in particular how the rabid anti-communist witch hunts affected Paul Child's work.]

Spring, Justin: The Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, professor, tattoo artist,and sexual renegade [As the title implies, Steward led quite a varied existence! He grew up in a small Ohio town, got a Ph.D. in English lit, taught in a variety of institutions, including many years at DePaul University in Chicago. He began working as a tattoo artist while there, and when he was eventually fired, turned to tattooing full time. He was a good friend to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas - indeed, he wrote a couple of mystery novels in which they feature. He was Thornton Wilder's occasional lover, had sex with Lord Alfred Douglas and Rudolph Valentino, and a lot of sailors, and kept records of all his encounters (and RV's pubic hair in a reliquary), which led to him becoming a key informant for Dr. Kinsey. Nevertheless, despite his active sexual life, he seems to have led a rather isolated and lonely existence from an emotional standpoint. Spring had access to a huge amount of material that had been stashed in the attic of Steward's executor, so this is really a definitive work, and a good read, as well.]

Steinberg, Avi: Running the Books: the Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian

Tomalin, Claire: The Invisible Woman: the story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens [Just as good as her bio of Jane Austen, and with the added difficulty of fighting off years of Dickens' admirers either defaming Ternan or trying to bury her existence. You will not look at Dickens the same way after this book, but you may well have a better understanding of why he couldn't write a well-rounded, psychologically full female character to save his life. As always, Tomalin tells us as much about the world in which Ternan and Dickens lived as she does about the people themselves. My edition is a later one, and has an added chapter which casts new light on the circumstances of Dickens' death. Tomalin's further investigations were spurred by the receipt of a letter she received following the book's initial publication, a letter describing a family story suggesting that Dickens did not die at Gad's Hill, but that his body had been transported there after his death. It is, of course, a story that at this juncture cannot be proved or disproved, but it is interesting to consider the steps that Tomalin took to investigate its plausibility, steps that show her to be a true scholar.]

Wills, Garry: Outside Looking In: Adventures of an Observer

Art & Architecture & pop-ups:

diBello, Patrizia: Women's Albums and Photography in Victorian England: Ladies, Mothers and Flirts
Chiarelli, Caterina (ed.): Fashion: A World of Similarities and Differences

Joseph, Wendy Evans: Pop up Architecture [There are a fair number of architectural pop-up books out, but most are historical, about famous buildings and/or famous architects. This one is different, because it is by the architect whose work it presents (in collaboration with the well-known paper engineer, Kees Moerbeek) and is intended as a presentation of her firm, an alternative to the usual monograph. The pop-ups are combined with photographs and texts describing the problem and process of designing each structure. A must!]

Mason, Christopher: The Art of the Steal: Inside the Sotheby’s-Christie’s Auction House Scandal [Intriguing, well-researched book on devious doings in the art world.]
Sloman, Paul: Paper: Tear, Fold, Rip, Crease, Cut [Altered books, and sculpture, furniture, clothing, etc. all made from paper, including a pop-up "book" that opens into a table lamp!]
Sommer, Robin Langley: Frank Lloyd Wright: a gatefold portfolio
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor: Kubla Khan: a Pop-up version of Coleridge’s classic
Haines, Mike: Wild Alphabet: An A to Zoo Pop-Up Book

Etiquette, manners:

Bennett, Laura: Didn't I Feed You Yesterday? A Mother's Guide to Sanity in Stilettos
Gunn, Tim: Gunn’s Golden Rules Life’s Little Lessons for Making It Work [Amazing how one man can manage to be charming and snarky all at the same time, and throw in a lot of good advice, and dish, along the way.]
Martin, Judith & Jacobina: Miss Manners Guide to a Surprisingly Dignified Wedding

Other non-fiction:

Buckley, Christopher: Wry Martinis
Fornaciai, Valentina: Toilette, profumi e belletti alla corte dei Medici: il tutto ben pesto, e incorporato con acqua di fior d’arancio
Hillerman, Tony & Bulow, Ernie: Talking Mysteries
Johnson, Marilyn: This Book is Overdue! How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All
Ogbar, Jeffrey (Ed): The Harlem Renaissance Revisited: politics, arts and letters
Pierce, Charles P.: Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free

Wilkerson, Isabel: The Warmth of Other Suns: The epic story of America’s Great Migration [Probably the best non-fiction book of the year. Wilkerson spent years interviewing people who had come up from the South to the North, over the period from just after World War I to after WWII. She alternates the stories of three of these people (a sharecropper's wife from Mississippi who came to Chicago, a citrus picker and union organizer from Florida who went to Harlem, and a doctor from Louisiana who ended up in Los Angeles) with historical data, data that shows that a lot of what we thought we knew about the people who came north just isn't so. They were generally better educated, harder-working and more stable, what some have called the "immigrant effect", for they were, indeed, immigrants in their own country. Like the folks who sailed steerage from Eastern Europe, Ireland, Italy, the African-Americans who came north had grit and determination, and weren't afraid to face a new life in an unknown bourne.   It's interesting to see the different ways Wilkerson's informants handled the change, who shucked off the South and who kept it with them, how in escaping one form of racism, they found another, how they raised their children and coped with a strange, new world. Gorgeously written, too. "Many of the people who left the South never exactly sat their children down to . . . tell them why they speak like melted butter and their children speak like footsteps on pavement . . ."]

The Blind Contessa's New Machine

2010-11-29T20:28:00.000-06:00

The Blind Contessa's New Machine, by Carey Wallace

Carolina Fantoni is a young, upper-class Italian woman. Shortly before her marriage, she realizes that she is going blind. She tries to warn her fiancé and her parents, but they do not listen. The only one who does is her neighbor, the eccentric Pellegrino Turri, who is in love with her. As her eyesight dims, she learns to maneuver her way through her new dark world, both physically and emotionally. She flies in her dreams. One day, she tries to write a letter; ink stains her hands. On seeing this, Turri invents for her the typewriter. It changes everything.

This small gem of a novel explores the world of a woman born into a rigid, upper-class society, a society with certain expectations and mores, that changes towards her and for her as she goes blind. The loss of that sense affects how she feels and thinks and reacts, and, in some ways, frees her.

This book, based on historical fact, is Carey Wallace's first novel, and a most promising début it is.

Wolf Hall

2010-10-17T20:38:00.000-05:00

Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel

One might be forgiven for wondering whether the world really needed another work of historical fiction on the subject of Henry VIII and any of his wives. At a certain point, one has had enough of the Boleyn sisters. Mantel, however, approaches the subject from a less romantic, but more interesting, point of view, that of Thomas Cromwell, secretary to Cardinal Wolsey and advisor to the king. Wolf Hall, with the exception of a brief chapter relating to Cromwell's youth, covers the years of Henry's struggle to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon and most of his marriage to Anne Boleyn. It is quite a sympathetic portrait of a man who is oft-maligned, but whose administrative genius and reformist accomplishments cannot be doubted. Those whose knowledge of Cromwell and Thomas More is confined to A Man for All Seasons may be surprised to find quite a different view of the two here. This period of English history was one of great change. It was a period of reformation, both religious and political, and Cromwell was at the center of events. As he delicately weaves his way along the path to power, evading dangers at every turn, Mantel's Cromwell also reveals himself to be a generous man, a patron of the arts (particularly Hans Holbein), a financial whiz, a clever and detail-oriented politician, but one who always has his country's interests at heart, as well as his own. At bottom, he loves England and he serves his king.

According to my Encyclopedia Britannica, "[i]f he had a private life, nothing is known of it." That isn't quite true. We know, for instance, whom he married, and that his wife and two daughters died, apparently of the "sweating sickness", within a short time of each other, and that he had a son, who married Jane Seymour's sister. But that's the bare bones. Nevertheless, Mantel has imagined for Cromwell a very rich private life indeed, and she manages to make it ring true to what we do know of his history.

Mantel writes beautifully, for the most part. Her dialogue is natural, and she has a fine eye for description ("gentlemen . . . wearing their fallen-fruit silks of mulberry, gold and plum"). My one quibble is that she generally uses "he" in place of "Cromwell", so that it is often difficult to know to whom she is referring, particularly when she is narrating conversations among multiple speakers. However, once one gets used to this quirk, all is well.

Suggested further reading:
Letters of Henry Viii, 1526-29: Extracts from the Calendar of State Papers of Henry Viii

The Lisle Letters: An Abridgement (The Lisles are several times referred to in Mantel's novel. I won't suggest you read all six volumes!)

Luka and the Fire of Life

2010-10-16T20:29:00.000-05:00

Luka and the Fire of Life, by Salman Rushdie

In the city of Kahani, in the land of Alifbay, lived the storyteller Rashid Khalifa, his wife, Soraya, and their two sons, Haroun and Luka. One day, the great circus called the Great Rings of Fire came to town. When the circus parade came by, and Luka saw the sad, mistreated animals, he cursed the Ringmaster, Captain Aag, and the animals stopped obeying and the fires burned the tents. So into the life of Luka came the dog, Bear, and the bear, Dog, from the circus.

Then into Luka's life came sadness, because Captain Aag took his revenge, and the storyteller, Rashid Khalifa fell ill and was like to die. One early morning, Luka saw his father in the yard, but wait! It was not his father, but his father's death, come to claim him. But, as in all good fairy tales, Luka made a deal with death, also called Nobodaddy, and Luka, Nobodaddy, the dog called Bear and the bear called Dog go on a quest to steal the Fire of Life in the World of Magic.

You will find in the story of Luka's quest reminders of the thousand and one nights and of video games. Rushdie has immense fun with puns and wordplay, and you will, too! Here in this world we find the old gods, from Greece and Sumer and Egypt and all the world, flying carpets and Fire Bugs. Nothing is what it seems, allegiances shift, and Luka and his companions must ever be on the alert, gathering and losing and regaining lives as they move on from level to level. Luka's love for his father causes him to defy Time, to risk his own life, and to conquer his fears.

If you haven't read Haroun and the Sea of Stories, don't worry. It's not necessary to have read that book to enjoy this one. But those who have read and loved the story of Luka's older brother will surely not want to miss the saga of the younger sibling.

Book sales and bookstores

2010-10-12T22:00:00.000-05:00

Book Sale

Every year on Columbus Day weekend, there is a huge book sale in my neighborhood. It's held outside, in the courtyard of a small local shopping center, so the weather, which can be problematic in Chicago in mid-October, is always a concern. This year, it was absolutely stunningly gorgeous, as though summer had made a brief reappearance to remind us of what we are going to miss in the coming months. It was sunny and the temperature reached the mid-'80s! Perfect for browsing books outside.

The sale lasts three days, and the final day is "$4 bag, $5 box" day. I skipped the first day, but wandered by on Sunday (well, I did have other errands in stores in the shopping center!), and bought just a few books, including a couple to take to Casa Italiana for their library. Then I went back yesterday with a large tote bag, and stuffed it with another couple of dozen. The books ranged from nature writing (This Incomperable Lande) and history (Agony at Easter: The 1916 Irish Uprising) to short stories collections, biography, law and illuminated manuscripts.

A good time was had by all, and money raised for the Hyde Park-Kenwood Community Conference, a worthy organization.

Bookstore

This is the "claustrophobic basement" that some people claim constitutes "part of the charm" of the Seminary Co-op Bookstore. Now, I like quirkiness as much as the next person, and it is rather fun to wander in and out of the narrow passageways and hidden rooms of this store that is housed in the basement of what is now the Chicago Theological Seminary (hence, the store's name).

However, it's also down a steepish flight of stairs, which means it's not easily accessible to the handicapped, and those narrow passageways can be a bit of pain at times. Now that the CTS is being converted to the Milton Friedman Institute for Research in Economics, the bookstore is moving. It's going to first floor and basement space, that will be designed by well-known Chicago architects Stanley Tigerman and Margaret McCurry, in a University-owned building one block away from its current location, and next door to Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie House (below).

The architecture critic for the Chicago Tribune did an article about the move, and one commenter (the same one whose remarks about the "charm" of the place I quote above) suggested that a one-block move "will make it much more difficult to draw customers". Well, if people are too lazy to walk one more block to what has been called one of the best academic bookstores in the world, then they are too lazy to be University of Chicago students. Bookstore manager Jack Cella sent a letter to members (of which I am one, as are architect Tigerman and the President of the United States) in which he states: The new store will have windows (imagine that!), will be completely accessible, and will have operational temperature and air circulation controls. How is this bad? Cella also says "We may bring a pipe along for the occasional customer who feels nostalgic for a place to bump his or her head." I hope that satisfies the commenter.

Art Book Swap

2010-10-09T21:41:00.000-05:00

Today, there was an art book swap at the Ryerson Library of the Art Institute of Chicago. It was sponsored by Regency Arts Press Ltd., and the New Art Dealers Alliance. People brought art-related books, and swapped on a one-for-one basis for books brought by others, as well as books donated by various organizations (there were a number obviously donated by the AIOC itself).

Now, my plan was to bring my half-dozen books, but be restrained and take fewer than I brought. Ha! You can imagine how that turned out! Not only did I take home the same number, but they were bigger. In fact, if I hadn't been limited to that one-for-one basis, I'd have picked up a few more. As it was, I had a pile of six, and kept saying, "Hmm, this looks good, too. Which of this pile should I not take?" And so forth. So no bookshelf space has been saved. Au contraire.

But it's not my fault there was this big, gorgeous slipcased book of albums and illuminated manuscripts from the Topkapi Museum in Istanbul! Or a very cool book of vertically aligned photographs of New York City, called, appropriately enough, New York Vertical. I picked up a biography of Peggy Guggenheim; a book of photos of Paris by Eugène Atget; Barbaralee Diamonstein's Remaking America: New Uses, Old Places, about the conversion of old and historic buildings to new uses; and Chez Elle, Chez Lui: At Home in 18th-Century France, a catalogue of 18th-century French paintings that show home life in that time and place.

Altogether, a nice little haul!

I asked the staff if they were going to do this on a regular basis, and they said they thought perhaps every other year. They'd had a lot of positive feedback, and I'm not surprised. There were several tables of books, and quite a variety of subjects, ranging from classical Greek art, through the Renaissance, to contemporary art, from paintings to glass to architecture, monographs and catalogues -- something for everyone!

Another day, another author event (and another book, of course!)

2010-09-19T22:25:00.006-05:00

For whatever reason, this week has been heavy on author events.

It started last Sunday. The Chicagoans among you know that many of us (recent surveys suggest as many as 80% of us) have never been reconciled to Macy's having changed the name of Marshall Field's. Every year at this time, there is a demonstration under the clock at the State Street store.

This year, following the protest, there was a book discussion and signing at the State Street Borders, just down the block, with Gayle Soucek, the author of Marshall Field's: the Store that Helped Build Chicago. There was much reminiscing about the glory that was Field's, as most of the people there were either former employees, former customers, or both. Soucek is currently writing a book about Chicago catastrophes, and she commented that it was noteworthy how involved Field's was (the store and the man) in helping during a civic crisis. She also said that her publisher told her not to "bash" Macy's in the book, but put a blurb on the back highlighting the controversy!

On Monday, I blew off my Italian class to go hear Tim Gunn talk about his new book, Gunn's Golden Rules: Life's Little Lessons for Making it Work. This was at the Michigan Avenue Borders, and, boy, I think they are going to lose some customers over the way the event was organized, or, should I say, not organized. They were handing out wristbands starting at 9:00 a.m., with several different colors, only the first two of which got seats. But when people arrived, they lined up in order of arrival, so that when the first two colors were called to be seated, people dashed madly from all over. When the signing started, they gathered the various color groups in different parts of the store, but the employees who were doing so couldn't be heard, so people wandered about haphazardly. There was a huge long wait, but at least we had books to read!

Gunn, of course, was charming, an oasis of graciousness and calm amidst the chaos and confusion. He really must have been exhausted, because he was signing books for a good three hours or more, way past the time the store normally closes. It's nice to see someone on a show like Project Runway trying to raise the level of discourse and maintaining decent grammatical and vocabular standards. Besides, he collects architectural pop-ups, so he clearly has good taste.

On Thursday, it was Audrey Niffenegger at the Harold Washington Library Center, talking about her new graphic novel, The Night Bookmobile. Technical difficulties prevented her from showing the photographs that she took, from which the drawings were derived, but she read the short story which was the basis for the Guardian serial which was the basis for the book. This is the first installment of a work to be called The Library; I'm definitely looking forward to the rest.

Today I went to the 57th Street Children's Book Fair, and staffed the Friends of the Library table for a couple of hours. There were quite a few authors in evidence, but I didn't get any, though I was tempted by The Sixty-Eight Rooms, by Marianne Malone, about strange doings in the Art Institute of Chicago's Thorne Rooms.

Miss Manners' Guide to a Surprisingly Dignified Wedding

2010-09-11T08:43:00.000-05:00

Miss Manners Guide to a Surprisingly Dignified Wedding, by Judith Martin & Jacobina Martin

Miss Manners would definitely not approve of the most recent wedding invitation I received. Let me count the ways. It was addressed to me "and guest". It's a rather over-the-top tri-fold shiny invite with a photograph of the happy couple, all tied up with a ribbon. The enclosure, in addition to providing a map of the location and information on hotels (good), listed two registry websites, one of which was to donate to the honeymoon, and the URL to the couple's wedding website (bad).

From general principles ("value dignity above self-glorification", "choose guests through bonds of family and friendship and try to arrange matters so these people will enjoy themselves", "do not live beyond your means and do not expect to be reimbursed by the guests") to specifics of the wording of invitations in a variety of situations and on to troubleshooting, Miss Manners and her equally mannerly daughter have provided an essential guide to creating a wedding that will be enjoyed, and remembered fondly, by all. Not only that, but these principles have been tested, and not found wanting, first by Miss Manners at her own wedding, ten years ago at her son's, and most recently at that of her daughter and co-author.

The style of the book will be familiar to admirers of Miss Manners' column and previous books, combining narrative with responses to letters she has received. Much of the advice she gives is nothing she has not addressed before, but her usual witty style keeps it fresh, and it all bears repeating. It is, unfortunately, obvious that it is still needed. It is hard to decide which money grab mentioned was more astonishing, the bride who wanted people to pay for the costs of her adopting a child or the one who included her bank deposit slip in the invitation!

The minute you hear that someone you know is engaged, give her this book (note, however, that "engagement presents" are not obligatory!) and hope it is not too late for her to heed Miss Manners' words: "Behaving well has its own rewards."

Peaceful Places: New York City

2010-07-20T22:14:00.000-05:00

Peaceful Places: New York City: 129 Tranquil Sites in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island, by Evelyn Kanter

New York City is noted for its hustle and bustle, its hurly-burly, its crazy energy. But sometimes, be you tourist or resident, you need a break, and Kanter will help you find it, wherever you are in the city.

I love the way this book is organized. The basic organization is alphabetical, from the African Burial Ground National Monument to the Yeshiva University Museum, but there is also a listing by area (the bulk are in Manhattan, but the other boroughs are well-represented) and another by category (such as "Enchanting Walks", "Quiet Tables" and "Spiritual Enclaves"). Kanter provides a short description of each place, accompanied by information about directions and hours, admission cost (if any, most of these places are free, though, when it comes to the shops she suggests, they are free, "but of course you are also free to purchase"!), websites, etc. She rates them on a "peacefulness" scale, and notes for some that they are not always serene, but tells you the best times to go. The High Line, a new park built on an abandoned elevated rail line, is a good example. I visited it on a weekday afternoon, and it was relatively tranquil, but at other times it can get quite crowded.

Kanter's narratives tell you why she recommends each place, what she likes about them herself, but also often include very personal memories. Knowing that the textiles of the Metropolitan Museum's Asian galleries remind her of her milliner mother's "pride in her precise stitching" or reading how a visit to Green-Wood cemetery and the grave of Charles Ebbetts brings back memories of listening to baseball games from her grandparents' home, makes this more than an ordinary guidebook.

Anyone who has spent time in New York will doubtless have her own special "peaceful places". Had I written this book, I would have included the Gubbio Studiolo at the Metropolitan Museum and the lovely little garden outside the Japan Society's galleries.

But I also found myself nodding in agreement with many of Kanter's choices, and making mental notes to visit others when I am next in New York.

I wish I'd had this book before I went to New York earlier this year! I'll definitely bring it next time I go.

Henry Walters and Bernard Berenson: Collector and Connoisseur

2010-07-10T14:45:00.002-05:00

Henry Walters and Bernard Berenson: Collector and Connoisseur, by Stanley Mazaroff

What are you going to do when you retire? When Mazaroff retired from the practice of law, he went to Johns Hopkins to study art history, wrote and article about Henry Walters' acquisition of the Massarenti Collection of Renaissance art, which became the foundation of Baltimore's Walters Art Museum, and conducted research at I Tatti, Berenson's villa in the Tuscan hills, reading a "treasure trove" of documents illuminating the relationship between Walters and Berenson. Then he wrote this book. So much better than golf!

Henry Walters was the son of William T. Walters, banker and railway magnate, and inherited from him, in addition to wealth and business acumen, a passion for collecting art in the service of the public. Whereas the elder Walters concentrated on contemporary American and European art, his son, like many other Gilded Age millionaires, was particularly drawn to art of the Italian Renaissance.

And you couldn't be a collector of Italian Renaissance art at that time without crossing paths with Bernard Berenson. Berenson was a most intriguing character, a self-made connoisseur and art expert, whose opinion was pretty much the final word on a work of art. If he said your painting was by Titian, it was, and if he said it wasn't, well,you sheepishly put it away. If in Casablanca everyone went to Rick's, in the world of late 19th and early 20th-century art collecting, everybody went to I Tatti.

When Walters bought, basically sight unseen, the collection of Don Marcello Massarenti, he knew that the attributions were likely not all accurate. He was buying the whole to get some of its parts, and he hired Berenson to vet the collection, write a catalog, and help him acquire additional works.

The relationship between the two was fraught. Walters was oddly uninterested in seeing his own collection, much of it remaining in its shipping crates for months. Berenson had lots of other fish to fry in addition to his work for Walters, When financial constraints began to limit Walters' buying, Berenson did something which damaged the relationship beyond repair.

Dealer Joseph Duveen was known in the art world to be unscrupulous. Walters disliked him, as did Berenson. Nevertheless, driven by the need and desire to be on a firm financial footing, in 1912 Berenson entered into an agreement with him, under which Duveen had the right of first refusal of any "first class Italian paintings" Berenson found, and Berenson would provide him with an appraisal and certificates of authenticity. This, in and of itself, is not so bad. But the agreement further provided that Berenson would get a 25% commission on any sales Duveen made of the paintings that Berenson found for him, and, on top of this, Berenson's identity was concealed under the use of a fictitious name. The conflict of interest is obvious.

We know now that Berenson's attributions, of Walters' acquisitions as well as those of other clients, were not always accurate. Many people have assumed that seemingly inflated attributions of Berenson's were due to venality, but Mazaroff makes the case that they were simply due to the manner in which attributions were made. Artists of the Italian Renaissance did not always sign their names. Contemporary copies, by the artists themselves, their assistants, and others, were common. What is known about an artist changes and affects attributions. Today, cconservators and appraisers have an arsenal of technical tools to assist them, chemical analysis of paints, X-rays to find underpaintings, etc. Berenson had his experience and his eye. It is noteworthy that his attributions wer not challenged at the time, despite the competition amongst collectors and dealers. And Mazaroff points out that the extent of Berenson's misattributions did not differ from that of other experts.

Altogether, this is an instructive book about art collecting and connoisseurship in the Gilded Age, and a fasinating account of the relationship between two men, each powerful in his own field.

Further suggested reading:
Being Bernard Berenson, by Meryl Secrest
An Illuminated Life: Belle da Costa Green's Journey from Prejudice to Privilege, by Heidi Ardizzone

E.M. Forster, by Richard Canning

2010-07-10T14:26:00.001-05:00

E.M. Forster, by Richard Canning

This short biography of E.M. Forster, part of Hesperus Press' "Brief Lives" series, is an excellent one. It is not, nor is it intended to be, an authoritative work on Forster's life and work. It is, however, a good introduction. In a strictly chronological way, Canning hits the high points, and in so doing, he provides insight into Forster's life, his relationships, public and private.

There's very little discussion of Forster's works, except insofar as they fit within the biographical story. Indeed, if there is any part of the book that could have been elimnated, it is the short last chapter, Afterlife, which is as close as Cannign comes to literary criticism. It seems oddly out of place.

While those who have read Forster will naturally find more in this book than those who have not, it can be read with appreciation by anyone, and any reader will find it informative. Definitely recommended.

A Prayer for the City

2010-07-10T14:18:00.001-05:00

A Prayer for the City, by Buzz Bissinger

" . . . he understood exactly what a city was about -- sounds and sights and smells, all the different senses, held together by the spontaneity of choreography, each day, each hour, each minute different from the previous one."

Oh, the city, the city! I am an urban person. I lived in the suburbs for years and it was hell. You couldn't walk anywhere because there were no sidewalks. There was too much "new". There was too much alike. Your neighbors were just like you. When I drove into the city, the moment I saw the skyline, the outline of the Sears Tower and the John Hancock Center reaching for the clouds, my heart would lift and I would begin to feel alive again. If I have any regret about moving back, it's that I waited too long to do so.

Ed Rendell loves Philadelphia. The two-term mayor took a dying city and tried desperately to resuscitate it. And Bissinger was there. In an extraordinary act of transparency, the Rendell administration gave the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist nearly unfettered access to the mayor and his staff. He was present at meetings public and private, he read documents and correspondence, he interviewed everyone. Mingled with the story of City Hall are the stories of four city residents: a shipyard worker, a grandmother raising her children's children and their children, a policy wonk and a "true believer" prosecutor. They, too, all love the city, and each is subjected to its traumas. Prosecutor McGovern and policy analyst Morrison had options. They could leave for the suburbs, not worry about crime in their neighborhoods or bad schools for their kids. Unemployed welders and inner city moms don't have the same options, and sometimes your love of place makes you want to stay. After all, "there may be lovelier lovelies, but never a lovely so real."

When he was sworn in, Rendell had a fight on his hands. The city was losing population, jobs, and industry. Nobody cared. Not the feds. Not the state. He had to make them care. There is the story of the Navy Shipyard, one of the biggest employers in the city for, literally, centuries. For years, it was threatened with being shut down, and, finally, the shutdown came. But a German shipbuilder had a vision, a vision to take the shipyard and turn it into a place that served the burgeoning cruise ship industry. Rendell fought to make that happen. He worked on financing and tax incentives. He went to the State House and he went to the White House. He called in favors and friends. Even when the Governor killed the deal, insulting and humiliating the potential buyer until he said "to hell with you", Rendell kept trying. This is one roller-coaster of a chapter!

This is no whitewash of Rendell. Bissinger doesn't shirk from describing the mayor's temper tantrums, his inappropriate behavior towards women reporters, his failures to connect with the African-American community, his egotism. But the picture we have of Rendell as his first term draws to a close is that of a lover who takes his beloved to shows and buys her pretty things, but knows that that, like flowers on an expressway berm, is merely window dressing. It is her heart and soul that matter most, and he will do anything to save her.

This page-turner of a book will uplift you, and it will break your heart.

Further suggested reading:
The Death and Life of Great American Cities, by Jane Jacobs
Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago, by Mike Royko

Dante's Divine Comedy: A Graphic Adaptation

2010-07-04T19:01:00.000-05:00

Dante's Divine Comedy: A Graphic Adaptation, by Seymour Chwast

Dante's Divine Comedy has, from its earliest days, attracted illustrators ranging from an anonymous 14th-century illuminator, to Botticelli and Blake and Doré. In our day, it has inspired the likes of Leonard Baskin, Salvador Dali and Barry Moser. So why shouldn't Chwast, of Pushpin Studios, try his hand? No reason.

But here's the thing. He didn't illustrate Dante's Divine Comedy. Instead, he summarized it and illustrated the summary. It's 127 pages, mostly illustrations. My copies of the Divine Comedy range from approximately 600 pages to more than 900, depending on the type size and the length of the notes/commentaries. You just can't do it in the space here allotted, and have it make any semblance of sense to anyone not already familiar with the work. Even then, most modern readers will need notes or commentary.

However, the drawings are fantastic! Picture Dante in a trench coat and fedora, meeting a bowler-hatted Virgil in the dark wood. Charon's ferry is a speedboat, Francesca's husband wears a wife-beater and carries a can of beer. On to Purgatory in a rowboat, where Nino Visconti lies in his coffin holding a machine gun and the wanton women of Florence are flappers sipping martinis. Up to Heaven we go, to find Emperor Justinian is a lounge singer and the crusaders ride in tanks.

I just wish that, rather than compress the text, Chwast had created these illustrations to accompany it.

The Transformation of Bartholomew Fortuno

2010-06-26T20:59:00.000-05:00

The Transformation of Bartholomew Fortuno, by Ellen Bryson

Though he didn't say "there's a sucker born every minute", P.T. Barnum might as well have done. Circus founder, freak show impresario, theatrical producer, politician, he made a livelihood from the gullibility of the American public. Bryson's novel is set in his New York City Museum, and is the story of Bartholomew Fortuno, the fictional "thinnest man in the world".

Fortuno believes that his body and the oddities of the other "Curiosities" are special gifts, "emphasizing different aspects of human beings". Into his world comes a new act, Iell the Bearded Woman. She is treated differently from the other prodigies, not living in the Museum with the rest, and seems to have some connection with Barnum not shared by her colleagues. Fortuno is intrigued, an intrigue heightened by Barnum sending him on a mysterious errand to fetch a packet for Iell from a Chinatown apothecary, who also gives Fortuno a root that will give him "what his heart wants". And so his transformation, on many levels, begins.

I struggled to get through this book. The characters never came alive for me. Though we gradually learn a good deal about Fortuno, where he comes from, what his life has been, he isn't, at bottom, a very interesting person. And we don't learn much about anyone else. The story itself drags, and is a slender reed on which to hang a novel, a novel that Bryson's writing isn't compelling enough to save.

Angel of Death Row

2010-06-19T13:59:00.000-05:00

Angel of Death Row, by Andrea D. Lyon

Full disclosure: I know Andrea, I've worked with Andrea, I've represented some of the same people, I know and have worked with people she writes about in this book. But I'm going to review this book all the same.

Andrea joined the Cook County (IL) Public Defender's Office at a time when there were very few women trial lawyers, much less criminal defense lawyers. She took a lot of guff from prosecutors, judges and colleagues, but she never let it stop her. By the time she left that office, she was the head of the Homicide Task Force, than which there are, in no small part thanks to Andrea, no better lawyers. She went on to found the Capital Resource Center, representing Illinois' death row inmates in post-conviction proceedings (the Center is now the Post-Conviction Unit of the Office of the State Appellate Defender), and then moved on to clinical work at the University of Michigan and the DePaul University School of Law, where she heads the Center for Justice in Capital Cases.

This is the story of how she came to be "The Angel of Death Row", as she was dubbed by the Chicago Tribune. She talks of her life, her family, and her clients in an easy, conversational style. It's not a book that's heavy on the law; that's not what it's about. It's about people. The people she works with, the people she lives with, the people she represents. The last are the most important. It's so easy to see criminal defendants as "the other"; Andrea helps us (as she has helped juries) see the man or woman, and how they got to be sitting in the defendant's seat. Some of the stories are horrific, some are sad, some are incomprehensible. But they are all stories of human beings whose lives went terribly wrong. Andrea knows that the "why" is as important as the "what" in these stories, and she is indefatigable in conveying that to judges and juries.

Andrea's passion for justice and her anger at injustice and the system that tolerates it are obvious on every page of this book.

Two New York City guidebooks

2010-06-13T16:10:00.004-05:00

I recently went to New York City, and took two guidebooks with me. The first, Forbes City Guide New York 2010, I had requested through the Amazon Vine program in anticipation of the trip. The second, Touring Gotham's Archaeological Past: 8 self-guided walking tours through New York City, I picked up second-hand.

Forbes City Guide New York 2010

I waited to review this until after my trip, but I'm afraid that first impressions were right. It's not a guide that I can recommend.

To begin with, although there is the occasional nod to the other boroughs, this guide should more properly be called the Forbes City Guide "Manhattan 2010". And trendy, expensive Manhattan at that. This is a guide for people with money. Forget budget hotels; there are hardly any moderately-priced hotels suggested. The same is generally true of their restaurant recommendations.

But what really drove me nuts was the almost complete lack of directions. You can't tell a visitor to New York City that a restaurant is located at 541 Amsterdam Avenue. You've got to give the cross-street. And the guide doesn't tell you what subway line to take and which station you need. There's a subway map at the back, but it doesn't designate the lines! Come on! Everyone in New York rides the subway! I guess they expect readers of this guide to take cabs everywhere, which I would NOT recommend. Why would you want to pay to get stuck in Midtown traffic?

On the plus side, they're right about the M60 bus to and from LaGuardia (best bargain in town!) and TKTS (the discount theatre ticket service), and they have most of the major museums and cultural institutions. But those can be found also in guidebooks that don't have the drawbacks of this one.

Touring Gotham's Archaeological Past: 8 self-guided walking tours through New York City

Now for the good one! The authors Diana diZerega Wall and Anne-Marie Cantwell, are professors of anthropology at the City University of New York and Rutgers University-Newark, respectively. They have put together these walking tours, in all the boroughs except Staten Island*, to help tourist and resident alike learn more about the history of the city.

Now, you might think that they're going to take you off the beaten track, and in some cases that's true. Most tourists don't get up to Inwood in Manhattan or out to the Bronx. But they do go to Ellis Island and Liberty Island, though they likely don't know that Ellis Island's Main Building was built on top of a Native American burial site, or that the island where the Statue of Liberty stands was a Native American shellfish-gathering station and hunting and fishing camp.

As Cantwell and Wall guide us along New York City's streets, we learn through the excavations that have occurred there much about the lives of the Native Americans who inhabited the area and the lives of the early European settlers. Pot shards and dog burials, bottles, dice and buttons, all have their stories to tell, and one of the great things about this book is that the authors teach us how to understand those stories. How do the skeletons in the African Burial Ground tell their stories of malnutrition, disease and physical hardship? How do preservation architects figure out when a house was built? What is it about artifacts found in one backyard privy that tells us they likely came from a brothel? The book is full of fascinating stories, and even if you don't go on all, or even any, of the tours, you'll learn a lot just reading it.

If you do decide to take book in hand and set out on a tour, you'll find that Cantwell and Wall make it easy. Each tour is accompanied by an excellent map, and though they cover a good deal of territory, all can be accomplished with a comfortable pair of shoes and a MetroCard (the authors give explicit transit directions for each, though it's always a good idea to check ahead of time in case of cutbacks and route changes!). You might want to take a standard guide along with you, in case you want to find a place to have a bite to eat along your route, though it might be more fun (and more in keeping with the "sense of adventure" the authors recommend) to rely on serendipity!

* The authors did not include the Staten Island sites because they are vulnerable to looting.

At Printers' Row

2010-06-13T16:05:00.003-05:00

At Printers' Row
Originally uploaded by mojosmom

What used to be known as the Printers Row Book Fair, and is now the Printers Row Lit Fest, was held this weekend in Chicago. As usual, I went. As usual, I came home with a bunch of books. Heavy (literally) on art books and memoirs. Herewith the haul:

Chicago's Left Bank, by Alson J. Smith
Passages from the French and Italian Note-books of Nathaniel Hawthorne
Tales of a Theatrical Guru, by Danny Newman (with a foreword by Studs Terkel)
Dear Genius: A Memoir of my Life with Truman Capote, by Jack Dunphy
Marion Mahony Griffin: Drawing the form of Nature
The Medici, MIchelangelo, and the Art of Late Renaissance Florence
Edgar Miller and the Hand-Made Home: Chicago's forgotten Renaissance man
Richard Nickel's Chicago: Photographs of a lost city

It was quite a nice day to browse, cool enough for a light jacket but not cold. I love warm summer days, but carrying a ton of books around when it's mid-'80s and sunny isn't always pleasant.

I have to say that I was shocked to find that the fair is devoting less and less space to books. I don't mind that they're doing a lot more author events. That's completely appropriate. But the fair is now shorter by one block, and much of the space was taken up by the C-SPANmobile, a "reading lounge" (read: furniture sales), a mattress seller and a car dealer. Look, I know they need sponsors, but this was ridiculous.

Adventures in Chicago with Marie Grandin

2010-06-10T19:42:00.002-05:00

The following is a guest post from Mary Beth Raycraft, translator of A Parisienne in Chicago: Impressions of the World's Columbian Exhibition.

Mary Beth will be in Chicago discussing this book at Women and Children First (one of my favorite bookstores!) on Wednesday, June 16, at 7:30 p.m. The bookstore is at 5233 N. Clark St.

Adventures in Chicago with Marie Grandin

While translating Marie Grandin’s 1894 travel memoir, A Parisienne in Chicago, Impressions of the World’s Columbian Exposition, I also had the pleasure of embarking on a lively behind the scenes tour of late 19th-century Chicago. A twenty eight old Parisian schoolteacher, Marie arrived in the city in August 1892 accompanied by her husband, the sculptor Léon Grandin. They would live in Chicago for ten months while Léon supervised the installation of the Columbian Fountain at the Exposition. While he spent his days in the sculpture workshops, Marie took full advantage of her freedom and circulated in the bustling streets of the city, attended cultural events, and asked many questions as she gathered information about American life for her travel account.

Determined to get a true sense for middle class American life, the Grandins opted to stay in several different boardinghouses near Jackson Park during their time in Chicago. In each boardinghouse, Marie had an opportunity to carefully observe the clientele whose routines, interactions, and manners she meticulously documented for her readers. Determined to go beyond superficial appearances, she delicately probed relationships between husbands and wives, parents and children, and servants and employers.

Pleasantly surprised by the independence and energy of Chicago’s women, Marie quickly undertook her exploration of the city. She began with walks in her neighborhood, strolling in Washington Park and along Drexel Boulevard, which she compared to the elegant Parisian Avenue des Champs Elysées. After getting settled on the south side of the city, Marie soon discovered that a tram car conveniently shuttled between Jackson Park and the Loop. The bustling city center, the Loop became the focus of many of her expeditions, including visits to department stores, the Chicago Public Library, the Athenaeum, and the Auditorium. In order to verify information, she went to the Public Library which at the time was located on the fourth floor of city hall at Lasalle and Washington streets. The Athenaeum building on Van Buren Street housed classrooms, offices, and studios as well as the growing collection of the Art Institute. Grandin’s friendship with two instructors at the Art Institute, Lydia Hess and Marie Gélon Cameron, gave her access to many activities there, including afternoon teas with faculty members. Also on her itinerary was the Auditorium Building, which attracted much attention during the fair for its stunning architecture and multifunction design. Marie and her husband joined distinguished foreign visitors at the elegant inaugural ball held there in October 1892 where she was struck by the sumptuous décor and the graceful dancers. She also frequented the commercial establishments of the Loop, including department stores where she admired the vast range of goods and Gunther’s Confectionary on State Street where she indulged her sweet tooth.

Armed with a letter of introduction from an acquaintance in Paris, Marie Grandin eventually gained entrance into Chicago’s highest social circle, becoming a habitué in the salon of Bertha Palmer’s elegant home on Lake Shore Drive. At the time, Palmer was busy with preparations for the opening of the Woman’s Building at the fair which Marie enthusiastically described as “without question one of the most interesting buildings of the entire site.” Indeed, Marie’s visits to the Woman’s Building and her conversations with individual women involved in the project provided her with a place and framework for thinking about what she had observed in Chicago in terms of education and gender relations.

While she admired Chicago’s modern cityscape and unusual tourist attractions, Marie Grandin was particularly struck by the relative freedom of American women. She was surprised to see girls and boys studying side by side in coeducational classrooms and young people socializing away from the watchful eye of a chaperone. Over the course of her interactions in boardinghouses, private homes, schools, and at the fair, she encountered a number of dynamic women who were passionately engaged in the social, cultural, and political life in Chicago. Although Marie Grandin had eagerly anticipated visiting the city and the Fair, in the end, Chicago’s women turned out to be the most dynamic spectacle of all.

Mary Beth Raycraft teaches French at Vanderbilt University and is the translator of Madame Léon Grandin’s A Parisienne in Chicago, Impressions of the World’s Columbian Exposition (University of Illinois Press, 2010). See www.aparisienneinchicago.com for interactive maps of Madame Grandin’s Chicago.

(Photo of Mary Beth Raycraft courtesy of the author)

Two that don't live up to the rest of their series

2010-05-23T18:24:00.003-05:00

21. A River in the Sky, by Elizabeth Peters

Amelia Peabody and her Egyptologist husband, Radcliffe Emerson, are off, not to Egypt, but to Palestine. Out of chronological order, this one is set in 1910, at a time when the Ottoman Empire was crumbling and the British were trying to stem German influence in the Holy Land. The Emersons set off, at the behest of the War Office, which is concerned that a bumbling archaelogist may or may not be a German spy, but in any case is likely to engage in a dig that will antagonize Jew, Muslim and Christian alike.

As in all Peters' books, the bad guys aren't always easy to tell from the good, Ramses Emerson gets into hot water, there are mysterious societies, and what's right and wrong isn't always obvious. Unlike many of her books, though, there's a sense that Peters was going through the motions, putting in the stock scenes - Amelia with her umbrella, Emerson ranting, women throwing themselves at Ramses. There's very little emotional tension, and, frankly, the motivations of the characters are almost buried.

Not Peters' best.

22. The Devil Amongst the Lawyers, by Sharyn McCrumb

I was really back-and-forth about this book. I love Sharyn McCrumb's Ballad series, but this one doesn't seem to quite fit with the rest, despite the presence of a very young Nora Bonesteel.

Based on the true story of Edith Maxwell, a young schoolteacher who was tried for murdering her father, this novel could have been written about a lot of high publicity trials today. Just as today, journalists tried to fit events into a pre-determined mold, not caring if what they said was true or not. McCrumb describes them coming down to the Blue Ridge from the cities of the North, expecting poverty and ignorance, and, when that's not what they found, saying it was, anyway. They decided first whether they wanted Erma Morton (the Edith Maxwell character) to be guilty or not, and wrote their stories accordingly. (Remind anyone of broadcasters like Nancy Grace?) The journalists aren't the only ones using Morton for their own ends. Her brother, the townsfolk, all have their reasons for wanting a particular outcome.

Into this mix comes a young journalist from Tennessee, Carl Jenkins, who knows this land and its people, and is shocked by the way the experts are covering the trial. Yet he is not immune. When his newspaper wants more "oomph" to his stories, he hits on the idea of bringing his young relative, Nora Bonesteel, to town. She has the "sight", and maybe she will "see" the truth and help him with his stories. Of course, she can't, because, as she tells Carl, "it doesn't work that way".

McCrumb has given her journalists interesting back stories that inform their present, the celebrity journalist Henry Jernigan and his years in Japan, sob sister Rose Hanelon and her yearning for love, Carl Jenkins and his need to fit in and "be somebody". I almost wish she hadn't wrapped up their futures in an epilogue, because I could have stood to have had them back again.

I think my small dissatisfaction with a novel I truly enjoyed otherwise was a sense that the "Ballad" part was just lying on top of the plot, rather than being an integral part of it. The story was good enough that it could have stood on its own.

There's a non-fiction book about this trial, Sharon Hatfield's Never Seen the Moon, that I'm going to look for.

How Florence Invented America

2010-05-04T21:44:00.003-05:00

20. How Florence Invented America, by Giancarlo Masini

In case you've been wondering where the heck I've been, the answer is: Florence and Amsterdam. I spent several glorious days in Florence, and then on to Amsterdam, which was also tremendous fun, but, thanks to a volcano in Iceland, I was there longer than expected. So I have been playing catch up, at home and work, but now I think I'm back on track.

And I will begin by talking about some of the books that I read on my trip.

When I travel, I like to bring books that are in some way connected to the places to which I am going. In fact, I found this one at a used bookstore and bought it specifically to read for the trip.

When I first picked it up, I thought it would be a lot of puffery and braggadoccio, but it was actually quite interesting. It's about Amerigo Vespucci, Giovanni Verazzano and Filippo Mazzei. It was particularly interesting to compare Vespucci and Verazzano's explorations, and their reactions to the native people they encountered.

I learned much more about Vespucci than I had known. We are told in school, "he was a mapmaker and so America got named after him." But that's a real distortion, because he was actually the first European "discoverer" of South America. Verazzano was the first European to set foot in Manhattan. There's a stone from the family castle enclosed in a wall of the Verrazzano Bridge.

Mazzei was trained as a doctor, and practiced in a wide variety of places, including Smyrna and London, but eventually headed to America, where his agricultural and ideological interests brought him into contact with, among others, Thomas Jefferson, whose good friend he became. His philosophical exchanges with our Founding Fathers influenced the War of Independence and, later, the U.S. Constitution. Eventually, he was involved with both French and Polish progressive movements.

These men may not have "invented" America, but they were certainly in at the "creation", so to speak!

A Parisienne in Chicago: Impressions of the World's Columbian Exposition

2010-04-03T10:04:00.003-05:00

A Parisienne in Chicago: Impressions of the World's Columbian Exposition, by Mme. Léon Grandin. Translated and with an Introduction by Mary Beth Raycraft

It is 1893 in Chicago. Just two decades earlier, the city had experienced a fire that destroyed a large part of it. Now it had been rebuilt with energy and innovation. Architects like William LeBaron Jenney, Louis Sullivan, and Holabird and Roche were introducing Chicago and the country and the world to the skyscraper. And Daniel Burnham and the firm of Burnham and Root were coordinating the building of the Exposition that was to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the discovery of America.

The Columbian Exposition brought to Chicago visitors not only from all over the country, but from all over the globe. Among them were the sculptor, Léon Grandin, and his wife Marie. But their visit was a lengthy one, stretching over ten months, for Grandin was there to work with Frederick MacMonnies on the Columbian Fountain. Fortunately for us, Marie Grandin, who had been an elementary school teacher in France, was curious, intelligent, a keen observer, and kept a journal, which formed the basis for her book, Impressions d'une parisienne à Chicago. Equally fortunate for us, Mary Beth Raycraft has given us a respectful translation as well as an introduction that provides us with background information about Mme. Grandin, and contrasts her experience and book with those of other French women writing about America.

What makes Grandin's observations more substantial than many others is the fact that she did stay in one place for so long. In her ten months here, she stayed in boarding houses and residential hotels; visited schools (as a teacher, a particular interest of hers), stockyards and department stores; and made friends with fellow boarders and the social élite alike (she gave French lessons to Bertha Palmer, chair of the Expositions Board of Lady Managers).

Of her first glimpse of Chicago, Grandin says, "The very appearance of [State Street] took me aback and gave me my first inkling of the immense sprawl and grand scale of this city . . . this idea was never dispelled." It's fascinating to read Grandin's images of Chicago, and her comparison of its habits, buildings, customs and people with those of her native France. She is shocked at the relationship between employer and servant, finding the latter insolent and lazy. But she finds the teacher-student relationship, their "easy rapport", far preferable to the "frigid dignity" found in France.

Grandin does not merely describe, she thinks about what she has seen, she makes considered comparisons and analyses. It's apparent from this that Grandin was a progressive and forward-thinking woman. Her descriptions of American child-rearing practices, the schools she visited, the treatment and behavior of women, all show this. "This tendency toward social mobility is certainly one of the American virtues that I appreciate the most. Nothing is worse than for an intelligent person to be boxed in and limited. Nothing is worse than being stuck, as only a sense of powerlessness, silliness, and stupidity can come from caged rats."

Perhaps it was this sense of freedom and mobility that led Mme. Grandin to say, as she left the United States, "I will come back!" And come back she did, sans husband. Raycraft's introduction gives an account of her life after Chicago, which shows (despite the minimal evidence available) that her intelligent curiosity and civic involvement continued to her death.

As a Chicagoan, I enjoyed Grandin's views of places and institutions with which I am familiar. I have attended performances at the Auditorium Theatre, where she attended a ball. I have shopped all my life at Marshall Field's, visited the animals at Lincoln Park Zoo, am a life member of the Art Institute. To "see" these things through the eyes of a woman of more than a century ago gives one a new perspective and appreciation of them, and, often, a sense of sadness at what no longer exists.

When I walk out the door of my apartment building, turn right, and walk a couple of blocks, I see in front of me the only building that remains standing from the 1893 Columbian World’s Exposition: the Museum of Science and Industry, which is housed in what was the Palace of Fine Arts.

If I keep going, past the Museum and across a bridge, I find myself in an oasis of serenity, an island set in small lagoons, graced by a Japanese Garden, the island also a remnant of that fair. A bit more of a walk, and I come upon a golden woman, “The Republic”, a replica of a larger statue that stood at the gateway Court of Honor. And just to the west is a long park for strolling, ice skating in winter, listening to jazz in the summer, the Midway Plaisance, which, during the Exposition, was a focal point of carnival-style entertainments.

So the history of the Exposition is dear to my heart, and I eagerly opened A Parisienne in Chicago. It did not disappoint. Grandin's writing, as revealed by Raycraft's fluid translation, has an immediacy that compels one to keep reading. The text is accompanied by a section of drawings and photographs of 1893 Chicago that show us what Mme. Grandin would have seen. The endnotes and index are a great help, and there is a selected bibliography for those who are intrigued enough to want to read further, be it about Chicago, French women writers, or the World's Fair. This is a wonderful addition to the literature of women's history, social history and the history of Chicago.

Website: A Parisienne in Chicago

Other suggested reading:

Fairground Fiction: Detective Stories of the World's Columbian Exposition, edited by Donald K. Hartman

World's Fair Notes: A Woman Journalist Views Chicago's 1893 Columbian Exposition, by Marian Shaw

The Fair Women: The Story of the Women's Building, World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893, by Jeanne Madeline Weimann

And for your listening pleasure:

Women at an Exposition: Music composed by women and performed at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago.

Didn't I Feed You Yesterday?

2010-03-30T22:40:00.005-05:00

18. Didn't I Feed You Yesterday? A Mother's Guide to Sanity in Stilettos, by Laura Bennett

On the third season of Project Runway, the first that I watched and the one that got me hooked on the show, there was a striking, tall redhead in her early forties who had arrived with vintage Louis Vuitton luggage and a bun in the oven. She went through the early months of her sixth pregnancy designing and sewing gorgeous clothes, and wearing stilettos. I was instantly a fan. (I still think she should have won the whole shebang!)

Lately, she's been emceeing on various red carpets and writing the occasional column over at The Daily Beast, about the vicissitudes of raising five boys (her oldest child, a daughter, is out of the nest) in New York City, while trying at the same time to maintain a career and one's sanity. Now she has written a book of essays (illustrated by fellow Project Runway contestant Robert Best) on the subject, with wry wit and a no-nonsense attitude.

Bennett has no patience with so-called "helicopter moms", nor with those who drown their own needs in their children's lives. As she puts it, comparing parenting with flying, you have to "provide yourself with oxygen first, or you will be of no use to your children." This sensible attitude and the sly humor with which she expresses it has, of course, driven some with no sense of humor around the bend, as evidenced by some of the comments left on her Daily Beast column. These same people huff and puff and say, "It's all very well for her. She has nannies!" But they miss the point. You don't have to have nannies or a successful architect husband to realize that your kids are human beings, you aren't perfect, and that you have to relax, enjoy your life, and enjoy your children (while they are children). If you can be fabulous along the way, more power to you.

I have no doubt that it would be great fun to share a martini and dish with her, too.

The God of the Hive

2010-03-27T14:41:00.005-05:00

17. The God of the Hive, by Laurie R. King

If you read my review of King's last book, The Language of Bees, you'll understand why I approached this book with some trepidation. But after some initial concern, I found that my fears were unjustified.

For those unfamiliar with King's Mary Russell series, know that she has married off inveterate bachelor Sherlock Holmes to a woman much younger than, but just as intelligent as, he. In her last, she also gave him a son by Irene Adler, as well as a daughter-in-law and granddaughter. So purists need not apply! And if you haven't read the last book, and don't want to know, read no further, because I have to give away some of that plot to discuss The God of the Hive. You have been warned!

When we last saw Holmes and Russell, they had rescued his granddaughter and his wounded son Damian, leaving for dead (or so they thought) the cult leader who had murdered Damian's wife as well as several other people. Circumstances had made Damian a suspect, and a warrant had issued for his arrest, as well as for the arrests of Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes, and Mary Russell.

The tale continues, told from several points of view. Holmes has taken his son off by boat, picking up a stray female physician along the way, and gone to ground in Holland. Mary and the child Estelle have found their pilot, and are flying off, but someone shoots at the plane, wounds the pilot, and they are forced to land in a forested area where they meet, and are assisted by, an odd man who goes by the name of Robert Goodman. In London, meanwhile, Mycroft has been kidnapped, and is being held prisoner by persons unknown for reasons unknown.

All roads, in this case, lead to London, as Holmes and Mary try to re-connect via the agony column of the Times, staying one jump ahead of the evildoers trying to find them, while Mycroft tries to figure out where he is and why. All sorts of complications arise. If the plot sounds rather intricate, that's because it is, and if I have any criticism at all, it's that the plot is a mite confusing at times (but that's the Intelligence Service for you!), and there are rather too many new characters introduced, some of whom, if you've read Dr. Watson's memoirs, you may have heard of before.

But King is a master of misdirection, and of story-telling. In Robert Goodman particularly, King has created a very intriguing character, the disaffected scion of a noble family and shell-shocked veteran ("that old responsibility dream" as Peter Wimsey once said). Indeed, I think my favorite parts of this book were those with Mary, Estelle and Robert, learning more about him, and watching his easy play with the child.

So I'm happy to say that, unlike with her last, I did find this one satisfying, and can say that King is back on track, and I am looking forward to more, particularly if the end presages what I hope it does.

Florence: the Days of the Flood

2010-03-26T22:05:00.000-05:00

16. Florence: the Days of the Flood, by Franco Nencini

November 4, 1966. The city of Florence, capital of Tuscany, repository of centuries of art and history, had prepared for the Armed Forces Day holiday. What happened instead was a flood that devastated the city, though the loss of life was not as great as would likely have occurred had it not been a holiday.

Franco Nencini, a Florentine journalist, writes in the days immediately following. He is not content merely to describe what happened, though he does so in depth and to great effect. He talks about why it happened, and anyone who watched in horror the news coverage of Hurricane Katrina's impact on New Orleans will weep with recognition. "The carabinieri . . . had no further boats at their disposal . . ."   "Not one of [the authorities] realised in time what was happening." "So many voices, so many recommendations! And at the time of the tragedy there was only silence and impotence." The story is the same. Inadequate equipment, inadequate warnings, loss of forest land to "act as a giant sponge".   The same jockeying for political advantage.

But there are stories, too, of great courage, of great dignity, of cooperation and ingenuity, even of humor in the face of disaster. Nencini tells the story of a young man who had clung to his roof for eighty hours, with no food or water. When food was dropped to him by helicopter, he did not eat, but crawled, "at the limit of his strength", along the roof, to share the food with others. "Priests, Communists, carabinieri, troops -- these were united in the great work, sometimes risking their lives, chronically short of food and sleep."

Only about 30 people died, but thousands were rendered homeless, businesses were destroyed, there were major food shortages, and the loss to the city and region's patrimony was immense. Ghiberti's great doors of the Baptistery were saved only because a gate miraculously held and kept them from being swept away in the flood's currents. Cimabue's masterpiece, The Crucifixion, was horribly damaged. "For two days monks and restoration experts went through the mud and water left behind by the inundation, recovering one by one the minute fragments of colour that had been flaked off by the water . . ."   In the weeks and months to come, a second flood would descend on Florence, but this time a welcome one, for it was a flood of art experts and volunteers (the "angeli del fango", angels of the flood) who came to help save its history.

This was not Florence's first flood by any means. The early days of November are a particularly vulnerable time for the city, and Nencini has included in his book descriptions of floods dating back to the 13th-century. In another familiar trope, Marchione di Coppo Stefani wrote in 1333, that "all the people of Italy regretted the damage that had been done in Florence and the loss of merchandise (which was inestimable), except the Cardinal, who rejoiced, saying that all had been done by God in return for the damage which Holy Church had suffered in Ferrara at the hands of the Florentines . . ."   I guess every age has its Pat Robertsons!

(For further reading, I recommend Katherine Kressman Taylor's Diary of Florence in Flood, and Robert Hellenga's novel, Sixteen Pleasures.)

La's Orchestra Saves the World

2010-03-14T21:55:00.001-05:00

15. La's Orchestra Saves the World, by Alexander McCall Smith

Not every battle of World War II was fought by soldiers, on the seas and oceans, on the beaches, on the landing fields. And if there were no combatants involved, some were still indeed fought in the fields and the streets, as ordinary English men and women went about their lives, riding out the storm of war, doing the small things that needed doing.*

This novel, a departure from McCall Smith's usual serial work, is about one such Englishwoman, Lavender Stone, in one small Suffolk village.

Lavender Stone did not go to Cambridge to find a husband, yet she did. While at Girton College, she met and was pursued by Richard Stone. Marrying him, she fell into an ordinary sort of marriage, gradually coming to love him as she had believed he loved her, only to find the idyll shattered when he absconds to live with another woman in France. La retreats to a cottage owned by her in-laws to lick her wounds, but is shortly called to go to France where her husband has been fatally injured in a freak accident. On the way home, her ship stops and the captain informs the passengers that England is at war.

Back in Suffolk, La begins to rebuild her life under the cloud of war. She must learn that life here is different from life in London, that people are different, that customs are different. As we have come to expect from McCall Smith, we are introduced to a variety of interesting folks, from Henry Madder, the arthritic farmer for whom La begins to do a bit of work, to Feliks Dabrowski, the Polish soldier and refugee in whom she takes an interest and who may not be what he seems, to her neighbors the Aggs and their odd son.

Gradually, La settles in. Then a chance word in a conversation with an Air Force officer gives her an idea, an idea that "came suddenly, as perfectly formed ideas sometimes do. She would start an orchestra." And so she does. Villagers and soldiers come together to play music, unifying the community in the face of a crisis that goes on, day after day, until they play a victory concert.

That concert is echoed years later, in the days of the Cuban missile crisis, when La brings the orchestra back together for a concert for peace, a time when, as I well remember, we all thought we were going to die in a nuclear holocaust. She chose "Bach for order; Mozart for healing", good choices, I think.

I don't believe that one can fully appreciate or understand this book if one does not take into consideration the great love that Alexander McCall Smith, a musician himself, has for music**, and his belief in its transformative power. It is music that brings La into her own, after a life that has been mostly reactive, a life that, as she herself says, has been that of a "handmaiden". Music, and the bringing together of others for the purpose of making music, helps her move forward into life and love.

* apologies to Winston for the paraphrasing!

** Surely the fact that he named a character "Leontine Price" is not accidental!

Bite Me: A Love Story

2010-03-06T21:15:00.002-06:00

14. Bite Me: A Love Story, by Christopher Moore

When we last saw our heroine, Abby Normal, Goth girl sidekick to a couple of vampires, she had bronzed them. And now she and her love monkey are all that stand between San Francisco and a giant shaved vampire cat. Actually, a lot of vampire cats. She must also battle her mother unit, who has no sympathy with Abby's desire to become Nosferatu. Poor kid. It's tough being a teenage emergency back-up mistress of the greater Bay Area night!

Typical Christopher Moore bizarre humor. (And it's not necessary to have read the preceding two books, Bloodsucking Fiends and You Suck, to enjoy this one.)

Locked In

2010-03-06T13:25:00.007-06:00

13. Locked In, by Marcia Muller

The 27th Sharon McCone mystery finds McCone hospitalized, paralyzed by a gunshot wound to the head, in a "locked-in" state, meaning that she can hear, she can think, but she cannot move or talk. At best, she can respond by blinking - once for "yes", twice for "no".

Her colleagues gather to try to find out who attacked her, delving through old files on the not unreasonable assumption that this was likely related to one of her old cases.

Ordinarily, Muller writes from McCone's point of view. But because of the situation in which she has placed her protagonist, this book is written from multiple points of view. It's a departure which I found interesting, and which worked, particularly as we also got inside Sharon's head as she responded mentally to what she was being told by others. Muller really captured the frustration that someone who is "locked-in" must feel, particularly if that person is ordinarily as physically and mentally active as McCone.

Although some McCone fans may feel there is not enough of her in this novel, I liked this unexpected twist.

Heresy

2010-02-28T21:52:00.007-06:00

12. Heresy, by S. J. Parris

This much is true: Giordano Bruno did go to Oxford in the spring of 1583, in the party of the Prince Palatine Albert Laski and Sir Philip Sidney, where he did engage in a debate on the Copernican theory.

On this thread, S.J. Parks (pseudonym of journalist Stephanie Merritt) has hung her murder mystery. The book opens as Bruno flees his monastery with the Inquisition nipping at his heels. We next see him on his way to Oxford, having traveled far both geographically and socially. By now he had become quite well-known as a lecturer in mnemonics and as a theologian, enjoyed the protection of Henri III, and, in fact, lived in England at the home of the French Ambassador, Michel de Castelnau.

At Oxford, he is immediately confronted with the effects that religious differences in England have had there. Though the Queen sought to consolidate Protestantism there through the appointment of Robert Dudley, Lord Leicester, as chancellor, previous Marian appointments meant that there was still Catholic presence there, and concerns about treason and espionage were not entirely unjustified. Bruno, as an excommunicate, would be unsympathetic to the papist cause, yet because he was a former monk and an Italian, many English Protestants would be suspicious of him.

Bruno has not been in Oxford long when his preparations for the disputation are interrupted by horrific screams, screams that turn out to be from the sub-rector, whose throat is being torn out by an Irish wolfhound. But how did the dog get into an enclosed, locked garden? Bruno is suspicious that this is not an accident. When he finds in the man's room a journal dated using the Gregorian calendar, and in that journal a cipher in invisible writing with the phrase "ora pro nobis", he is sure that something is amiss. A second murder follows hard on the first, and Bruno is plunged into religious and political intrigue.

I will say that I am not ordinarily a fan of books that use well-known historical (or, for that matter, literary) characters as detectives. And, frankly, the part of this book relating to the actual working out of the mystery was the least satisfying. (Honestly, there really aren't a whole lot of murderers who engage in the sort of intricate "message-sending" sort of murders that occur here.) I was much more interested in the playing out of the religious and political tensions between Protestant and Catholic, English and continental European, and how that affected life in Oxford, both for town and gown.

That said, it's quite a well-written book and I'd recommend it to anyone who enjoys mysteries set in Elizabethan times. Me, I've plucked John Bossy's Giordano Bruno and the Embassy Affair off the shelf on which it has been languishing and will let you know whether Bruno really was a spy!

Mysterious!

2010-02-24T21:04:00.011-06:00

8. Shooting at Loons, by Margaret Maron

An early Deborah Knott mystery, which somehow had escaped me! Knott, now judge, has been seconded to a town on the Outer Banks of North Carolina to fill in for an ailing colleague. She and a local boy head out looking for clams, and discover a body instead. And, of course, it won't be the only one.
The hook in this book is the tension between local fishermen and developers, wealth and the struggle to survive, rigidity and compromise, and the odd alliances that are often found in politics. As with all Maron's Deborah Knott books, this one is as much about place as it is about people, and it tells us a story about change and growth and North Carolina at the same time as it's telling us a story about murder and mayhem.

9. The Dain Curse, by Dashiell Hammett

Head to the west coast, where the Continental Op is called in to figure out a burglary and diamond theft for his insurance company employer. A suspect turns up dead, but without the diamonds. Then the guy who was burgled commits suicide, or maybe it wasn't. And he's got a wife who's behaving oddly and a daughter who is gorgeous, troubled, addicted to morphine and pretty sure that she's the victim of a family curse.

Things just keep happening here. Once you think everything's resolved, something pops up, generally a dead body. It's Hammett at his hard-boiled best.

10. Frontera Dreams: A Héctor Belascoarán Shayne detective novel, by Paco Ignacio Taibo II

I am so glad I picked up this book! This is actually the seventh book in the series, the fifth that's been translated into English, but there's a hugely informative essay at the beginning that fills the reader in on what went before. You need to know that Héctor has a body "impervious to wounds", that he was killed and resurrected.

When Héctor was a teenager, he had a sweetheart. Now she's a famous movie star, except that she's disappeared, and his daughter comes asking him to find her. This is about the literal frontera, the U.S.-Mexico border, but also the borders of reality and dreams, past and present and future, who we are and who we were and who we want to be. There are whores and narcotrafficantes, people who still have dreams and people whose dreams have died.

It's too bad that not all of Taibo's books have been translated, but you can bet I'll look for the rest that have been.

11. Talking Mysteries, by Tony Hillerman and Ernie Bulow

If you're a Tony Hillerman fan, I urge you to find this book. The bulk of it is an interview of Hillerman by Bulow, about Hillerman's work, how he came to set his books in Navajo country, how he writes, a lot of great stuff about the process of writing that should be of interest even if you're not a Hillerman devotée. There's also an essay by Hillerman on similar themes; a short story, a "Jim Chee mini-mystery"; and several drawings by Ernest Franklin, originally intended for one of Hillerman's books. This is a great glimpse into how an author works, where his ideas come from, and how he makes those ideas flesh.

This Book is Overdue!

2010-02-15T15:44:00.004-06:00

7. This Book is Overdue! How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All, by Marilyn Johnson

I requested this book from the Amazon Vine program because I love libraries and librarians. I thought I'd be reading a real discussion about the place of the library in this cyber-age. But I didn't get that. In fact, it's hard to say what I did get.

The problem is stated clearly and succinctly by the author early on (though I doubt she realized that she was describing her book!), when she says, "This is a story . . . researched partly on a computer in mazes so extended and complex -- every link a trapdoor to another set of links -- that I never found a sturdy place to stop and grasp the whole."

Her failure to "grasp the whole" has resulted in a book that is little more than a collection of anecdotes. Johnson has no thesis, no point, to tie these stories together. She jumps from a lengthy discussion about libraries and librarians on Second Life (and it occurred to me that it's been ages since I've heard anyone even mention Second Life!) to the serious matter of government intrusion into library records to decisions about archiving author records. (She actually spends nearly six pages on library blog entries about feces. Really.) She is uncritical about technology, so entranced by its usefulness that she cannot see its drawbacks.

And the book is too much about Johnson, her interactions, what she did, what she thought.

I'm not saying, "Don't read this book." You may find some of the anecdotes amusing or interesting. Just don't expect any serious discussion or analysis of the problems facing libraries and librarians today.

Murder in the Rue Dauphine

2010-02-14T12:07:00.003-06:00

6. Murder in the Rue Dauphine, by Greg Herren

Chanse MacLeod used to be a New Orleans police officer. Now he's a private detective. One day, he's hired by a young gay man, Mike Hansen, to try to find, and stop, the person who is blackmailing Mike and his older, rich, closeted lover. Before Chanse can get his teeth into the case, though, Mike is murdered, and the words "Faggots die" is written in blood on the wall. Though MacLeod (and the police) believe that the murder is more likely connected to the blackmail, the leader of a local gay rights organization insists that it's a gay bashing, and begins to politicize the murder. Then MacLeod, and the victim's neighbor, are shot at by someone shouting "Die faggots", and he begins to wonder.

Now, I have to admit that I figured out a good bit of what was going on before the end, but, after all, I've been reading mystery novels for literally decades, so I have a pretty good idea of what to expect. But there were some twists and turns here, and I do appreciate the fact that Herren doesn't fall back on the culprit or culprits' confession to solve the case.

This being the first of a series of Chanse MacLeod mysteries, we get a fair bit of back story about Chanse and the woman in his life, his reporter friend Paige Tourneur. Chanse has also just begun a relationship with Paul, a flight attendant, and I thought Herren did a masterful job of showing Chanse's ambivalence about it, from worrying that Paul might have a boyfriend in every airport to the opposite worry that Paul might be falling in love before Chanse is ready.

There's a long list of writers in the acknowledgements, and many of them are people whose work I've enjoyed over the years*. So to know that people like Julie Smith and Dorothy Allison saw something in Herren's work was certainly an incentive to read this. They weren't wrong.

*Story! Several years ago, I wandered into the Faubourg Marigny Bookstore (and could someone please design them a website, please?) looking for a book to read on my flight home. I was looking specifically for a book by Katherine V. Forrest, which they didn't have. But the young man suggested that I try instead Death by the Riverside, by a local writer, J.M. Redmann. Great book, and ever since then I've been hooked on the concept of looking for local authors wherever I travel.

The Unbearable Lightness of Scones

2010-02-13T09:15:00.003-06:00

5. The Unbearable Lightness of Scones, by Alexander McCall Smith

The latest in McCall Smith's 44 Scotland Street series is as delightful as its predecessors. Much is changing, though. Matthew and Elspeth are wed and both are adjusting to married life. Bruce, the pre-eminent narcissist and egotist, has turned over a new leaf, or has he? Against his mother's wishes, Bertie has joined the Boy Scouts! Unfortunately, so has his nemesis, Olive. But at least he has a new therapist. And The Pretender from over the water has returned to Scotland!

This series is always entertaining, frequently amusing, sometimes thought-provoking, and provides a lovely picture of the city of Edinburgh.

Women's Albums and Photography in Victorian England

2010-02-12T21:42:00.002-06:00

4. Women's Albums and Photography in Victorian England: Ladies, Mothers and Flirts:, by Patrizia di Bello

I recently saw a fascinating exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago called Playing with Pictures: The Art of Victorian Photocollage. The show displayed albums by several upper-class English women who combined the arts of photography, drawing and painting to create images that deconstruct the original meaning of the photographs in a way that precurses surrealism. Di Bello, who is a lecturer in the history and theory of photography at Birkbeck College, University of London, contributed an essay to the exhibition catalogue, and this book delves into many of the same themes of the exhibition.

Di Bello looks primarily at two specific albums: that of Anna Birkbeck (Lady Waterlow), created between 1825 and approximately 1847, and that of Lady Mary Filmer, compiled around the 1860s. Lady Waterlow collected in her album poetic and artistic contributions from friends, many of whom were well-known in their own time, such as Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and Robert Owen. Thus the album becomes evidence, through individual and personal connections, of the owner's participation in public, cultural spheres.

Between Lady Waterlow's and Lady Filmer's times, photography burgeoned. The phenomenon of the carte de visite, those postcard-sized photographs that were exchanged by friends and sold in the marketplace, allowed mass production of images that could then be used in a variety of ways. In Lady Filmer's album, we see images cut from cartes de visite placed in settings congruous and incongruous. She places images of men on painted parasols, just as other album makers placed images on teacups, luggage, sandwich boards and the like. Her access to images of the Prince of Wales, and her placement of a cutout of him in a prominent position on the page "Lady Filmer in her Drawing Room", is an indication of how a woman might use her albums to show her place in society.

Di Bello also looks at photography and albums in the context of the larger society. Such albums appeared in images in advertisements and in women's magazines. Photographs of aristocratic women, of the Queen and her family, were displayed in shops and reproduced widely.

It is di Bello's argument that the women who worked on these mixed media albums understood and were exploiting the way photography "sever[s] people from their original social context into another, created by the image-maker." She suggests that such albums are neither high art nor mass culture, but engaged with both. She notes that as photography lost its exclusivity, through mass marketing of images and easier-to-use photographic techniques, upper-class women began to use other means, such as photocollage, to personalize their albums and emphasize their status.

Having been much intrigued by the images I saw at the Art Institute, I was pleased to be able to read more about the subject. I would, however, caution that this is di Bello's doctoral dissertation. As such, it is written in an academic style that many may find difficult. Once the reader accommodates herself to the dense prose, however, she will be rewarded by interesting ideas and insights into a creative art that has too often been denigrated as nothing more than one of those lady-like domestic accomplishments expected of upper-class Victorian women.

Reviewed as part of

Book Blogger Convention!

2010-02-08T22:07:00.004-06:00

There's going to be a Book Blogger Convention in New York City in May, and I'm planning to go!

In an excellent confluence of events, the convention is one week before my college reunion. So here's what happened. The reunion starts June 3. I always go a few days early or stay a few days late to go to theater & concerts, visit museums, hang with friends, etc. This year, the plan was to go out on the Sunday or Monday beforehand. Now, I'm on the board of a local theatre company, and a play that was put on in Chicago in association with that company is headed to New York. The director will be in New York in April and May, coming back to Chicago the 31st. So I decided to go out on Saturday to hang with him and see the play before he leaves. But then I heard about the Book Blogger Convention on the 28th, and thought, "well, heck! Why don't I go out on Thursday and go to that?" So I am.

Then the BBC (Book Blogger Convention, not British Broadcasting Corporation!) people said that the registration for that would also get us into Book Expo, which is the 25th-27th. And, you know, I'd love to do that, but this is getting ridiculous! I suppose I could fly out on Wednesday and spend Thursday at BEA. But, oh, all those nights in a New York hotel add up! Thank goodness I'll be staying in the dorms for the reunion. Because I am so tempted by BEA!

Am I insane? Maybe, maybe not. But I am definitely excited!

Affinity

2010-02-07T20:15:00.005-06:00

3. Affinity, by Sarah Waters

I first met Sarah Waters work in Fingersmith, her very Dickensian novel, and one that I adored. Affinity is even better.

Margaret Prior is a young upper-class Victorian woman. Following her recovery from a suicide attempt, she engages in the "good work" of a prison visitor to the women's prison at Millbank. There, she is drawn to Selina Dawes, a medium who has been convicted of assault following a séance that ended with her mentor dead and a young woman traumatized.

The book is told in two alternating stories: that of Selina, telling of the events leading to the fateful night, and that of Margaret, beginning as she starts her prison visits. Gradually, we learn a great deal about Margaret. Her father was a scholar of Renaissance art, she his amanuensis. Her intellectual leanings made her feel a bit out of place from the rest of her family, and her father's death hit her hard. The loss of the long longed-for trip to Italy is compounded by the fact that her about-to-be-married sister is to honeymoon there, and her socially conforming mother cannot provide the sympathy or empathy she needs. All the more so because yet another loss cannot be spoken of. How can she reveal that she and her brother's wife were once, it seems, more than friends? Her inner thoughts, her psychology, unfold.

Selina is not opened to us so much. Her story is more of action. "This is what happened, this is what I learned, this is what I did." Not so much of "this is what I thought", "this is how I feel". Miss Selina Dawes, medium, becomes aware of her spiritualist powers, is taken up by the community and learns how to use those powers, becomes the protegée of the wealthy Mrs. Brink and ends up in prison. Selina comes to us more through Margaret's reaction to her than through herself.

Waters' descriptive abilities are extraordinary. Her limning of the physical and psychological constraints of Millbank prison are dead on. And this book contains what may be one of the creepiest passages of writing I have ever read. Margaret has gone to a spiritualist society, where she has seen moulds of human parts, including one which is supposed to be the hand of Dawes' spirit guide, Peter Quick. She imagines that hand coming to visit Selina in prison. "It would be silent, dark and very still; the shelves of moulds, however, might not lie still. The wax might ripple. The lips upon the spirit-face might twitch, and the eyelids roll; the dimple upon the baby's arm would grow deeper as the arm unfolded -- so I saw it now, in Selina's cell, as I stepped form her and shuddered. The swollen fingers of Peter Quick's fist -- I saw, them, I saw them! -- were uncurling, and flexing. Now the hand was inching its way cross the shelf, the fingers drawing the palm over the wood. Now they were parting the cabinet doors -- they left smears upon the glass."

Note the name: Peter Quick. That's no accident. Affinity's ambivalence over the question of "ghosts or madness", its exploration of psychological control, of possession, of power relationships, owes a good deal to Henry James The Turn of the Screw.

This is a stunning novel. And the end will rip you up.

Jules and Jim

2010-02-07T19:55:00.004-06:00

2. Jules and Jim, by Henri-Pierre Roché

This is the book from which François Truffaut made his iconic film. It's the story of two friends, Jules and Jim, who both love Kate, who marries Jules, divorces him to marry Jim, but doesn't, and goes back to Jules, but continues her affair with Jim, not to mention other men. She's basically a selfish, self-centered woman, and it's hard to see why they love her. One can understand, perhaps the initial attraction, but these relationships span the period from 1907 until well into the '30s, when they're old enough to know better!

So it's a curious book, and I liked the laconic style - short sentences, short chapters. Yet one never feels one knows or understands the protagonists, and Kate is positively unlikable.

(I read it in translation, which, for the most part, seemed good. But there's one extended section involving a Nordic woman named Odile in which, to show that she did not speak French well, the translator has her speaking in a rather annoying pidgin (the author?translator?'s word). "Many them at café want teach me. Me no want." Now, I have no idea whether that's a decent translation of how a Scandinavian who didn't speak much French would torture the syntax, but it was irksome.)

J.M.W. Turner

2010-01-30T20:57:00.004-06:00

J.M.W. Turner, by Peter Ackroyd

In the second of his "Brief Lives" series, Ackroyd delves into the life of the man who was arguably England's greatest landscape painter. A Londoner to the core, he was the son of a barber and his mother's family were butchers. He began drawing quite young and, having initially apprenticed with an architect, entered the Royal Academy when he was only fourteen years old.

This little volume is jam-packed with information about Turner's rise to the top of the artistic heap, how he worked and taught, his techniques, his rivalries. He seems always to have been working. Ackroyd cites a comment made by a fellow traveler in Italy, who, not knowing who his traveling companion was, described Turner as "continually popping his head out of the window to sketch whatever strikes his fancy."

It's also the story of his personal life; although he never married, he was a great one for the ladies and had more than one long-term relationship. His mother is believed to have died insane, but he was very close to his father, who lived with him and worked as his assistant.

This is quite a good little introduction to both Turner and his work.

The Autobiography of an Execution

2010-01-30T15:53:00.003-06:00

The Autobiography of an Execution, by David R. Dow

David Dow works in the belly of the beast. He's the litigation director of the Texas Defender Service, which represents death row inmates, mostly in federal habeas corpus proceedings (or what's left of them), and provides assistance to capital trial lawyers. The TDS' mission is to "establish a fair and just criminal justice system in Texas". Yeah, well, good luck with that one. In Texas, they'd as soon send you to Death Row as look at you.

This isn't, however, a diatribe against capital punishment. It's about how this work affects someone who does it, how you balance your commitment to someone whose life is, quite literally, in your hands with your commitment to your family. He misses the Hallowe'en visit to a haunted house he promised his son. His family goes on vacation without him. He tries to juggle overwhelming workloads and not enough time and resources, and how that means that his office can't do anything to help a man who believes that Jesus has arranged that he will walk out of Death Row, a mentally ill man who was allowed to represent himself at trial and on appeal.

The "hook" here is the story of Henry Quaker, a man convicted of killing his wife and children, whom Dow is representing. Then he receives a letter from another inmate, telling him that Quaker is innocent, that this man had hired another to kill a woman who had been stealing from him and that he'd killed the wrong person. What happened? Hell, this is Texas. What do you think happened?

There's one thing that bothers me about this book. Dow writes about the death penalty system that "the abolitionists' single-minded focus on innocence makes them seem as indifferent to principle as the vigilantes are." And there is something to that. But it seems to me that by centering this memoir around the execution of a probably innocent man, Dow is doing the same thing. It's as if he felt that writing about representing the guilty would somehow diminish his memoir, and I don't believe it would.

Dow tells the story of a childhood friend of his wife's, a famous artist, who, inebriated, reveals herself to be "racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, narcissistic, and altogether unlikable." Dow says that he realized that his "clients were better people than this piece of garbage, and they even killed somebody." But, you know, I take a different lesson. Katya tells him, "She's been my friend since she was eight years old, which is way before she was a terrible person. What am I supposed to do? Abandon her?" They remain friends for the same reason we ask juries not to kill our clients: we are more than the worst thing we've ever done.

(The names of people in this book have mostly been changed, some circumstances altered, in order to respect the confidences of clients. In an appendix, Meredith Duncan, a professor at the University of Houston Law Center, discusses the duty of confidentiality that lawyers have to their clients. I appreciated this very much, because it's something most people don't understand, particularly when it comes to people like the Cook County public defenders whose client confided in to them that he was responsible for a murder for which another man had been convicted. Counsel kept the secret for years, until the client, who had given them permission to reveal the confidence after his death, died. The lawyers were vilified, but they were right.)

The Lost Art of Gratitude

2010-01-24T19:42:00.003-06:00

1. The Lost Art of Gratitude, by Alexander McCall Smith

An Isabel Dalhousie novel.

I first encountered Alexander McCall Smith through The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, but for whatever reason that series did not hold my interest as much as this one, or his 44 Scotland Street series (the latest of which I have placed on reserve at my library). Perhaps it is because, to some extent, I identify with the older, intellectual Isabel Dalhousie (though having neither her wealth, her leisure, or her hot younger lover!).

Be that as it may, I enjoyed this most recent entry of the series, in which Isabel's relationship with Jamie, the father of her child, advances apace, while her niece Cat yet again chooses an unsuitable companion. Isabel is challenged anew by her nemesis, Professor Dove, who accuses her of plagiarism, and, once again, she bests him. She is also approached by financier Minty Auchterlonie, who wants her help in dealing with the father of her child, a man not her husband. All this leads to musings about trust, reputation and relationships.

As always, a pleasant read.

A Dybbuk

2010-01-18T16:13:00.003-06:00

A Dybbuk, and the Dybbuk Melody and other themes and variations, by S. Ansky

In Eastern European Jewish folklore, a dybbuk is the soul of a dead person that maliciously possesses the living body of another. Ansky's play, The Dybbuk here adapted as A Dybbuk by Tony Kushner, relates the story of a young bride possessed by the spirit of the lover who was rejected by her father. In this adaptation, one can see echoes of the phantasms that often inhabit Kushner's work, specifically Angels in America.

Also in this volume are a number of stories by Ansky that draw on the Hasidic tradition and from the Talmud and Kabbalah, as well as poems by him, and several folktales. There's an absolutely amazing piece in which the old man, Feyval, sues God in a rabbinical court for allowing the king of Romania to issue a decree banishing the Jews. Not to mention The Egyptian Passover, telling that story from a different point of view!

A thread of music runs through these stories. An old man, who had no time or money to study as a boy, wishes to study Torah, but cannot understand the rabbi's words. So the rabbi sings to him a "melody that contains all the beliefs of the Baal-Shem-Tov"* and the man understands. The spirit of a dead cantor enters the new one, and the rabbi must drive out that dybbuk with a melody of his own.

This book is a reminder of a world lost forever to the evil that is anti-Semitism.

* Rabbi Yisroel ben Eliezer, who is considered to be the founder of Hasidic Judaism

Love Among the Butterflies

2010-01-18T14:13:00.002-06:00

Love Among the Butterflies: the diaries of a wayward, determined and passionate Victorian lady, by Margaret Fountaine

This book is, in fact, a mere smattering of Fountaine's actual diaries, which began in 1878 and continued on until 1939, shortly before her death.

I hope that by now most of us are disabused of the notion that well-off Victorian/Edwardian women did nothing but pay calls and swoon in the orangerie. Those who still hold that view should read Miss Fountaine's diaries.

The daughter of a country clergyman, Margaret and her mother and siblings were left, after his death, without a great deal of money. However, as there were large, comfortable families on both sides, the widow and children were not what we would consider poor. Two of her uncles were quite wealthy, and one made provision for his sister's children in his will, resulting in Margaret's independence.

And, oh! what she did with it! She had fallen in love with a man who, frankly, didn't deserve her, and quite literally attempted to buy him, renewing acquaintance in a letter following her inheritance in which she boldly points out her good fortune. Fortunately, despite his positive response, nothing came of the relationship, and she was free to wander the world and leave us these diaries.

It was not uncommon in this era for young ladies of her class to study natural history, and Margaret's consuming interest was lepidoptera. She pursued this interest in Italy, Hungary, Turkey, Greece, the Middle East, and in 1901, in Damascus, she met a young Syrian with "grey eyes that were always looking toward me." For the rest of his life, despite separations, disapproval, and his marriage, they continued to look towards her, as hers did towards him.

She was always open to what was new, adopting first the bicycle, then the car, and ultimately the airplane as modes of transportation. She grew from a modest maiden to a woman fully in charge of her desires. She took risks, she never stopped learning, she reveled in life.

I am only sad that this volume ends in 1913. I'd like to read what she had to say about the next twenty-seven years.

The Light in the Piazza

2010-01-10T19:35:00.004-06:00

The Light in the Piazza and Other Italian Tales, by Elizabeth Spencer

More years ago than I care to remember, I saw the movie based on Spencer's story, The Light in the Piazza, with Olivia de Havilland, Yvette Mimieux, Rossano Brazzi and George Hamilton. A few years ago, I saw the Craig Lucas/Adam Guettel musical. I have now, finally!, read the book.

In the title story, a well-to-do American woman, Margaret Johnson, is traveling in Italy with her daughter, Clara. They make the acquaintance of a young Italian, Fabrizio Naccarelli, who falls in love with Clara. But Clara, due to an accident, is still mentally a child, and Mrs. Johnson had resigned herself to Clara's never being in a position to marry. Now she sees the possibility. Her struggle between her desire to see Clara settled and happy, and her concerns that her disability will prevent that, form the conflict. In Margaret Johnson, Spencer has created an interesting and strong woman, one who will do what she has to for her child's well-being. She is rational, practical, not seduced by the romanticism of Florence's light.

Spencer's women deal. In one of my favorite stories, The White Azalea, the protagonist is a southern spinster traveling in Italy following the death of her father, whom she had nursed through his final illness, as she had nursed her mother and an aunt. She had spent those years reading the classics, dreaming of Europe, and has followed that dream. But now a letter from her brother George ("the only boy, the family darling") arrives, urging her return home to live with and look after an elderly cousin. She literally buries the letter. Three cheers!

What else I read in 2009 - not yet reviewed.

2010-01-01T12:42:00.009-06:00

These will all be reviewed at a later date (really, I promise!), but I wanted to list the remaining books I read in 2009.

In no particular order:

102. The Light in the Piazza and Other Italian Tales, by Elizabeth Spencer
Link to review

103. Love among the Butterflies: the diaries of a wayward, determined and passionate Victorian lady, by Margaret Fountaine
Link to review

104. A Dybbuk, and The Dybbuk Melody and other themes and variations, by S. Ansky
Link to review

105. Fun Home: a Family Tragicomic, by Alison Bechdel

106. The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic, by R.K. Narayan

107. Fool for Love: New Gay Fiction, edited by Timothy J. Lambert and R.D. Cochrane

108. I Like It Like That: True Stories of Gay Male Desire, edited by Richard Labonté and Lawrence Schimel

109. Confessions of an Art Addict, by Peggy Guggenheim

110. J.M.W. Turner, by Peter Ackroyd
Link to Review

111. The Listener, by Shira Nayman

112. The Autobiography of an Execution, by David R. Dow
Link to Review

The Plan of Chicago: Daniel Burnham and the Remaking of the American City

2009-12-31T19:53:00.006-06:00

101. The Plan of Chicago: Daniel Burnham and the Remaking of the American City, by Carl Smith

The year 2009 marked the 100th anniversary of the publication of Daniel Burnham's Plan of Chicago, and, boy, did Chicago celebrate. There were lectures and exhibits and installations. Smith's book, a revision of the interpretive digital essay he wrote for the electronic version of The Encyclopedia of Chicago, is the story of how it all came together.

The city was exploding. In the 20 years before the Chicago Fire, the population grew from 30,000 to ten times that. By the time of the plan's publication, it was two million. It was exploding in other ways as well. The conflict between labor unions and capital often erupted into violence. The urban poor were crowded into dense and unhealthy tenements. And the city was governed by what Smith calls a "profoundly crooked group" in the city council.

But the city was also home to a group of civically engaged businessmen, people like Montgomery Ward, who fought to keep the lakefront "forever open, clear and free". Through private civic organizations, the Commercial Club and the Merchants Club, they determined to create a plan to alter the city's built environment. And the man they hired to create this plan was Daniel Burnham.

Burnham was by no means an unknown. He was one of them. He had been the architect behind the "White City", Chicago's Columbian Exposition of 1893. He designed their homes and their office buildings. He was joined in the endeavor by Edward H. Bennett.

Much of what we see in Chicago today is the result of this plan. The lakefront and the Museum Campus:

the Michigan Avenue bridge, that joined the streets on either side of the Chicago River:

and so much more we owe to Burnham and Bennett's work.

Casalinghitudine

2009-12-31T15:54:00.005-06:00

100. Keeping House: a novel in recipes, by Clara Sereni (Translated from the Italian by Giovanna Miceli Jeffries and Susan Briziarelli)

The title of this book in the original Italian is "Casalinghitudine", a word for which there is no English equivalent. It combines "casalinga", homemaker, with the noun ending also found in "abitudine" (habit), "solitudine" (solitude) and "negritudine" (negritude). It could perhaps be described as the embracing with pride, and from a feminist standpoint, of those things that are perceived as constituting "keeping house".

Cooking and food, for Sereni, represent a form of caring. The recipes here are placed in conjunction with events in the narrator's life, from her childhood, raised mostly by a grandmother and aunts, through her youth and involvement in radical politics, to her marriage and motherhood. Her relationship with food also reflects her relationship with her father, a journalist, politician and member of the Italian Communist Party, who also wrote about the history of food in Italy (a quotation from one work of his in fact ends this book).

In the recipes (many of which I have copied down to try), we find patience, love, complexity and simplicity, exactness and improvisation, like life.

I found this book quite engrossing, perhaps because I am of an age with Sereni and, albeit in the U.S., share some political experiences with her. I do think that readers with at least some knowledge of Italian culture and recent political history will be better able to appreciate this book than those who don't.

Read more about Clara Sereni.

The Dot & the Line: a romance in lower mathematics

2009-12-31T15:11:00.002-06:00

99. The Dot & the Line: a romance in lower mathematics, by Norton Juster

A sweet little romance, in which a sensible straight line:

falls in love with a dot, who spurns him for a squiggle:

But it all turns out right in the end.

Fashionable

2009-12-29T16:12:00.002-06:00

The People

94. The Allure of Chanel, by Paul Morand

Morand first met Coco Chanel in 1921, and in 1946 was invited to visit Chanel in St. Moritz, where he had extensive conversations with her, with a view to help write her memoirs. That project never came off, and the notes were put away and did not surface again until after Chanel's death, and were published finally in 1976.

It's pretty well known by now that Chanel created herself in more ways than one, inventing stories about her childhood and upbringing, but the reality of a young woman who broke loose from that past, lived in the era of Picasso and Sert, and changed the face of fashion in a career that spanned the world wars, can't be anything other than fascinating. No longer were clothes designed only for women whose lives were "worthless and idle"; they were for women who led busy lives and who, therefore, needed to feel comfortable in their clothes. Tossing out corsets and introducing menswear tailoring, Chanel anticipated the needs of women as the 20th-century advanced.

Because these are Chanel's own words and thoughts, this book provides an insight into the thinking of a woman who was not only a great couturier, but a woman whose influence still resonates today. I cannot help but be reminded of the Chanel exhibit I saw at the Metropolitan Museum of Art a few years ago. The exhibit juxtaposed Chanel's work with that of Karl Lagerfeld, who became head of the House of Chanel in the early '80s. The difference was stark. Nearly everything of Coco Chanel's could be worn today without hesitation, so classic are they. The designs of Lagerfeld, on the other hand, could have the date of design written on them.

The book is not, however, confined to Chanel and the world of fashion. She talks, also, about her private life, her amours, which would be a book in and of themselves.

95. D.V., by Diana Vreeland

I really adored this book. It's not written. Instead, it's rather obvious that the editors, George Plimpton and Christopher Hemphill, just sat down with Mrs. Vreeland and let her talk, and then pretty much transcribed the conversation as it had happened. And, boy, can she talk! A mile a minute is a conservative estimate. You zip through this book because you find yourself reading it as quickly as it was said. And it's full of italics! Vreeland's excitement and enthusiasm for whatever it is she's talking about are evident on the page.

What a life she led. Raised in a rawther social family, in London and Paris and New York, she married banker Reed Vreeland at the age of nineteen, and he was clearly the love of her life. She knew everyone, from Josephine Baker to Jacqueline Onassis with the Windsors in between, practically invented red, was fashion editor at Harper's Bazaar for twenty-six years and editor-in-chief at Vogue for eight, and ended her career at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute.

Remarks like "Unshined shoes are the end of civilization" and the famous "Pink is the navy blue of India" make Vreeland seem superficial. And, indeed, she herself said that she adored artifice. But she was also a very insightful, practical, intelligent and hard-working woman. She rightly says that the books one has read are the way you find out about a person. And although she says, "I stopped reading -- seriously reading -- years ago, she can talk about Tolstoy and kept The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon next to her bed. (More on Vreeland's books.)

If Chanel brought fashion kicking and screaming into the 20th-century, it was Vreeland (who adored and patronized Chanel) who made it part of the life of the woman-on-the-street.

96. Silver and Gold, by Norman Hartnell

Norman Hartnell left Cambridge without a degree, intent on becoming a fashion designer. With the financial assistance of his father, and the practical assistance of his sister, he established his own house, and ultimately became dressmaker to Queen Elizabeth II, among other royal and noble ladies.

It's popular to sneer at Hartnell, to call his clothes "dowdy" and "frumpish", but that's really wrong. Much of his work, particularly his evening wear, could, to the contrary, be called "over-the-top", with embellishments of jewels, fur and heavy embroidery. Indeed, he is quoted as saying, "For me, simplicity is the death of the soul." While his daywear for the Queen has been deemed "matronly", one must not forget that, when she was young, it was common for young, married women to dress in an older style. And Hartnell also talks about the various constraints that exist when designing for royalty: the use of pale colors to stand out in a sea of people wearing darker colors, a design that allows for the wearing of Orders, the need to "set an example" (as with wartime restrictions). As he puts it in describing the choice of colors for Queen Mary's visits to bombed sites, "Black does not appear in the rainbow of hope."

In many ways, Hartnell put English fashion design on the map. Most people would be hard-pressed to name an English fashion designer before Hartnell. There is, of course, Charles Worth, but he made his name in Paris. After Hartnell, the names keep coming: Mary Quant, Zandra Rhodes, Vivienne Westwood and so on.

This memoir is a must for anyone interested in fashion history, whatever their opinions of Hartnell's designs.

The Things

97. The Little Guide to Vintage Shopping: Insider Tips, Helpful Hints, Hip Shops, by Melody Fortier

This little book is an excellent guide for anyone who is interested in vintage clothing, whether it be to wear or to collect. Fortier provides many useful tips for buying in a variety of stores, online or at auction, and she clearly knows what she is talking about.

While no one book can make you an expert at identifying vintage clothing and materials, this is a fine start. Fortier discusses how to date clothes by the type of closures and the labels, how to determine what fabric a garment is made of, what construction to look for, general rules of pricing and how to care for your vintage find. I appreciated the sections devoted to hats, shoes and other accessories, because, as a self-styled "accessory queen", I believe that these items lend the finishing touch to any outfit. That pair of vintage gloves gives a certain "je ne said quoi" to any modern suit.

One area that I haven't seen mentioned in other books on the subject is "reinventing" vintage. If a garment is damaged, or a very common style, Fortier sees nothing wrong with customizing and updating it, and shows several examples.

The only real quibble I have is that I would have liked more illustrations to supplement descriptions of technical terms. But overall, this is definitely a book I'd recommend for inclusion in the library of anyone with a serious interest in buying vintage fashion.

98. The Classic Ten: The True Story of the Little Black Dress and Nine Other Fashion Favorites, by Nancy MacDonell Smith

One need not consider it necessary to own all of Smith's "classic ten" to agree that they are, indeed, classics. Many women lead happy and fulfilled lives never having put on a pair of jeans or sneakers. Others wouldn't dream of letting a pair of high heels into their closet, and many simply cannot afford pearls or cashmere sweaters. Nevertheless, the history of all these items makes for a fun read.

Smith not only discusses where these items originated and how they developed, but also describes their place in popular culture, particularly film (such as Audrey Hepburn's iconic little black dress in Breakfast at Tiffany's or Lana Turner's image as "the Sweater Girl").

But somebody needs to tell her that Harriet Vane was never Peter Wimsey's "paramour"!

Sicilian Tragedee

2009-12-24T15:16:00.004-06:00

93. Sicilian Tragedee, by Ottavio Cappellani

The theme is star-crossed lovers, but Shakespeare would be a bit startled at the casting. It's not in fair Verona that we set our scene, but hot Sicily. And the households are alike in their lack of dignity.

Take: Tino Cagnotto, theatre director, who is trying to stage an unusual production of Romeo and Juliet, while battling depression and wooing his younger inamorato, Bobo. Add: Alfio Turrisi, mafioso, in love with Betty Pirotta, daughter of a rival, said rival being all too happy at the prospect of getting the spoiled brat off his hands.

Mix in: various aristocrats, dueling cultural commissioners, and actors (never forget the actors!)

Result: plots, counter-plots, confusion, hilarity and un libro molto divertente!

Do Nothing But Read Day - The Execution

2009-12-20T23:16:00.002-06:00

I normally would have begun the day reading the Sunday paper, but it hadn't been delivered! So I started right in on book reading along with my breakfast. I then ensconced myself in my sunroom, with cozy socks and a pot of tea:

At various times, I had assistance:

I admit to the occasional lapse. I put up my Christmas tree yesterday, so every time I passed it on the way to the kitchen (to heat up more water for tea, fix lunch or dinner, etc.) I'd add a couple of more ornaments. The newspaper finally came and I deserted the books for a bit to read that. And I popped onto the computer to check my email and to post my progress in the LibraryThing thread.

By dinnertime, I had five books in the "read pile":

And here's the final result:

It's not really as much as it looks. I was already close to finishing three of the books (Vintage Shopping, J.M.W. Turner and Keeping House) and The Dot & The Line can be whipped out in about five minutes, as it's mostly images and very little text.

Reviews will be coming, but a few quick words on the books are in order. Vintage Fashion is a nice, practical guide to buying, The Classic Ten provides some history on classic fashion pieces, and D.V. is a hoot and a half! I'll be trying some of the recipes in Keeping House, which also provides an interesting glimpse into Italian leftist politics. The Dot & the Line was quite clever; I'll scan some of the illustrations when I review it, as they really make the book. Fun Home is a biographical graphic novel by cartoonist Alison Bechdel ("Dykes to Watch Out For"). J.M.W. Turner is one of Ackroyd's "Brief Lives". So it was quite a variety, but with an emphasis on fashion.

This was fun! I look forward to DNBRD 2010!

Do Nothing But Read Day - the plan

2009-12-18T15:40:00.002-06:00

So here's the plan.

Get up at my usual time, eat my oatmeal and read the paper.

Make another cup of tea.

Curl up in my comfy chair (see previous DNBRD post) and commence to read.

I have a couple of books that I have almost finished, so if I haven't completed them by Sunday, they are first up. Then I have put a couple of piles of books on the table you see next to the chair. There are basically two themes: fashion (because it's fun) and Florence (because I'm going there in April).

Now, I obviously am not going to read all of these, probably just a couple, but I wanted to have some choices depending on my mood. The options are:

Florence

Living on the Edge in Leonardo's Florence, by Gene A. Brucker
Florence in the forgotten centuries, 1527-1800, by Eric W. Cochrane
The city of Florence : historical vistas and personal sightings, by R.W.B. Lewis
A Traveller's Companion to Florence

Fashion

The classic ten : the true story of the little black dress and nine other fashion favorites, by Nancy McDonnell Smith
The fashion conspiracy : a remarkable journey through the empires of fashion, by Nicholas Coleridge
Silver and gold, by Norman Hartnell
D.V., by Diana Vreeland

(If anyone's read any of these, comments are welcome!)

Florence, a Delicate Case

2009-12-13T21:11:00.004-06:00

92. Florence, a Delicate Case, by David Leavitt

David Leavitt divides his time between Gainesville, Florida, where he teaches, and Florence, Italy, which residence has resulted in this charming little book, part of Bloomsbury's The Writer and the City series.

Leavitt concentrates on the expatriate experience in Florence, particularly the expatriate homosexual experience, even more particularly the expatriate English homosexual experience, in the person of folks like Norman Douglas (author of South Wind), E.M. Forster and Ronald Firbank. He does not entirely neglect the ladies, however, noting that "the English ladies who have gone over to Catholicism . . . may be the loudest presence of all."

Neither a guidebook nor a history book, though there is a touch of each, this book rather provides an atmosphere, a feeling about the city, from the point of view of one who is at one and the same time an insider and an outsider. It's full of delightful gossip, and one gets the sense that, like Alice Longworth Roosevelt, Leavitt thinks that "if you can't say something nice, come sit next to me."

And, if nothing else, reading this book has confirmed me in my desire to visit Florence.

What are you doing on Sunday, December 20th?

2009-12-08T10:56:00.001-06:00

Amanda Hyphenated has come up with this brilliant idea: Do Nothing But Read Day! Avoid the Christmas-shopping crowds at the mall. Have dinner delivered (pizza is always good). Make a dent in your TBR pile. (Lord knows, though, one day won't be enough for mine.)

Surprisingly, this is one day over the next couple of weekends that I don't have a get-together of some sort on my calendar. The goddess of books must have known something was up! So I plan to brew a pot of tea, curl up in that chair you see in the picture, and read! Why not join me?

Connections: Our Selves - Our Books

2009-12-06T18:09:00.007-06:00

91. Connections: Our Selves - Our Books, by Leona Rostenberg and Madeleine B. Stern

Miss Rostenberg and Miss Stern were an amazing couple. They met in the early '30s, teaching Sabbath School, and became partners in life and in the rare book business. I wonder how many young women today have any conception how difficult their path was. Feminists, scholars, entrepreneurs, unmarried, in a world where women were expected to be none of those things, they lived, in the words of the New York Times obituary of Miss Rostenberg, "in a universe in which it was not possible to live the way she wanted to. She simply ignored that impossibility, created her own universe and, in a small but exquisite way, changed the world."

Between them, they wrote or edited upwards of thirty books, and innumerable sale catalogues. This book is rather special, though. Here, they describe books that they have bought and sold over the years, but these are all books with special meaning for one or the other or both. For Leona, who had been told by a college professor not to set her sights too high because she was "a woman and a Jew", and who was distantly related to Alfred Dreyfus, finding Émile Zola's pamphlet, "L'Affaire Dreyfus. Lettre A La Jeunesse", was a dramatic reminder of intolerance. Madeleine, who is, of course, best known for her work editing collections of Louisa May Alcott's potboilers, writes of the acquisition of the first edition of one of Alcott's earliest works, Flower Fables (stories she created for Ralph Waldo Emerson's daughter, Ellen).

There is the book that they never sold, the 1591 Parma imprint of Angeli Bonventura's La Historia della Citta di Parma, with a binding embossed with the arms of George Carew, Earl of Totnes, a book Leona had lusted for ever since she had apprenticed with the antiquarian bookseller, Herbert Reichner. And there is the book they never wrote, a proposed biography of Belle da Costa Greene. The proposal was rejected, as Anne Haight was in the process of writing a biography. In fact, that biography never appeared, though Haight did write a biographical entry on Greene for Notable American Women. (There is now a biography of Greene, Heidi Ardizzone's An Illuminated Life, which I have previously reviewed.)

What books have gone through their hands! What places they have scoured and found! What stories they have to tell! To find a copy of the first Hebrew edition of Theodore Herzl's Der Iudenstaat (the book that inspired the Zionist movement) is one thing. To find it on Erev Rosh Ha-shanah is quite another.

I could go on and on about these connections, the serendipitous finds, the books that escaped only to be found again, but you might as well read the book, enjoy the stories, and marvel at the full and fulfilled lives of Miss Rostenberg and Miss Stern.

Madeleine B. Stern (from the New York Times)
Leona Rostenberg (also from the New York Times)

The Heather Blazing

2009-12-06T17:25:00.003-06:00

90. The Heather Blazing, by Colm Tóibín

In this quiet novel, Eamon Redmond, a High Court judge in Dublin, looks back, reflecting on his life. The troubled history of Ireland is there in his reminiscences and the turmoil of the modern world and a changing country is reflected in his own family.

The structure of the novel is deceptively simple. It is in three parts, each beginning as the law term ends, with a final case being heard or judgment being carefully crafted and delivered. Then Redmond leaves the courts to summer with his wife, Carmel, in Cush, County Wexford, the area where he grew up. I say "deceptively simple" because there is, in fact, a complex interconnection between the scenes in the law courts and the judge's summers, among the three years covered by these parts, and between the judge's present and his memories of the past.

The first and third parts begin with the same two sentences: Eamon Redmond stood at the window looking down at the river which was deep brown after days of rain. He watched the color, the mixture of mud and water, and the small currents and pockets of movement within the flow." That phrase, "small currents and pockets of movement within the flow", is a rather good description of this book, as Redmond recalls the "small currents and pockets of movement" within the flow that is his life.

I have seen Tóibín compared to Joyce, and it's not a bad comparison. His ability to show people's relationships and characters through the simple description of the mundane events of their daily lives, yet leading to a moment of realization, is very Joycean. His language is neither fancy nor stilted, but polished to a gem-like luster, each word perfectly chosen, and all strung together like a matched set of pearls.

Monster: Gay Adventures in American Machismo

2009-12-05T21:01:00.001-06:00

89. Monster: Gay Adventures in American Machismo, by Brian Bouldrey

In these essays, Bouldrey chronicles the world of the macho man from the point of view of a self-confessed "part-time opera queen" who once killed a bear (he wasn't only three, though). From rodeos to car racing, from bullfighting to boxing, Bouldrey analyzes male bonding and homoeroticism with wit and affection.

Despite the title of the book, it isn't all about "American" machismo, as Bouldrey also writes about his pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, conversations with a spa attendant in the Azores, and the aforesaid bullfighting.

The Magicians

2009-11-28T20:04:00.006-06:00

88. The Magicians, by Lev Grossman

Quentin Coldwater is a very bright teenager who lives in Brooklyn. He lives an ordinary life, in an ordinary house, with ordinary parents. He is entranced by a series of books by an Anglophile author about English children who move between this world and the magic world of Fillory. And he is bored with his own ordinary existence.

Then, on a day when he was to have had his entrance interview for Princeton, he finds himself instead on the grounds of Brakebills College, sitting an exam which will determine whether or not he will be admitted to that school of magic. Of course, he is, or we wouldn't have a book, now, would we?

The book is pretty much divided into several parts. The first, which is the bulk of the book, and, I think, the best, is set primarily at Brakebills. The students learn about making and controlling magic, and, as in all the best colleges, have a lot of exams to pass. Here they mature, learn their strengths and weaknesses, make friends (and lovers). In the brief section that follows, we find Quentin and his friends living and partying in New York City.

But they are restless, and when one of them finds a way into the world of Fillory, they go, and we enter the third part of the book, that without which a book about young people and magic would not be complete: the QUEST! (Dum dum dum dum!) Here, naturally, they meet a variety of creatures, human and non-, who variously help, hinder, harm, trick, save them, and whom they, in turn, help, hinder, harm, trick and save.

Although I found the ending of the book to be too abrupt and unsatisfying, in the main I really enjoyed it, particularly the characters and their relationships. How do you handle being different? Having to keep a secret? How do you manage going from being the most brilliant kid in class to being just another smart kid? How do you cope with being a magician?

From Bauhaus to Our House

2009-11-22T18:26:00.004-06:00

87. From Bauhaus to Our House, by Tom Wolfe

Nearly thirty years ago, Tom Wolfe put the architectural world in a tizzy when he published this essay attacking modern architecture.

Now, I'm not a big fan of glass & steel & concrete office buildings, but Wolfe is absolutely virulent on the subject. And therein lies the rub. He detests Bauhaus-inspired work so much that he has no perspective. He is guilty of the same pretentiousness and arrogance of which he accuses the architects whom he dislikes.

There is a great deal to be said against architects who prefer form over function, theory over practice. But any legitimate criticism is lost in this diatribe. Saying over and over again "it's ugly and I don't like the architects' politics" is not particularly persuasive.

A Rumpole Christmas

2009-11-22T14:12:00.005-06:00

86. A Rumpole Christmas, by John Mortimer

Five short stories featuring Mortimer's beloved barrister, Horace Rumpole, his wife, Hilda (otherwise known as She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed), and various other characters who will be familiar to readers of this series or viewers of the Thames Television show. (Inded, the cover illustration of Rumpole is the image of Leo McKern, who played the role in that show.)

Hilda manages to get Rumpole out of London for the Christmas break, once actually to a slimming spa(!), but murder and blackmail and old familiar faces follow him wherever he goes.

Because these stories were all first published in various journals at various times, there is a slight repetition of background, but that is to be expected under the circumstances. They are as delightful as always. But who could have anticipated that Mortimer would kill off Honoria Glossop!

On One's Best Behavior: Etiquette Past and Present

2009-11-14T19:15:00.001-06:00

84. Miss Manners' Basic Training: Communication, by Judith Martin

The subtitle of this book pretty much says it all: In which Miss Manners Explains the Proper Form and Choice of Technology for Messages Private, Professional and Public: When to Phone, When to Fax, When a Handwritten Note is Obligatory, a Form Letter Forbidden and a Chain Letter Out of the Question

I adore Judith Martin, particular when she is in her alter ego of Miss Manners. In this slim, yet meaty, volume, she takes up the question of communication in the age of cell phones and email. Really, people, it's not that difficult. Does the person really need to hear what you have to say, and, if so, right this minute? Do not expect them to drop everything to respond to you. Don't conduct business in the middle of a social engagement. The near-ubiquity of cellphones with the concomitant ability to be constantly in touch has, unfortunately, led some to believe that they should be constantly in touch.

In addition to the spoken word, Miss Manners discusses the written word. This encompasses not merely the question of the proper stationery and the proper salutation (my personal bugaboo, seen often in donor lists, is "Mr. John and Mrs. Jane Doe"), but the who, what and when of invitations, thank-you notes, announcements, condolences and the like. (No "and guest". As she rightly says, "Miss Manners is sorry if it is too much trouble to find out the actual names of the people you care enough about to invite to a formal occasion, but you must do it.")

With her usual style and wit, Miss Manners will help you navigate the really not so difficult waters of proper communication. (Q: "How do you get children to write thank-you letters?" A: "Well, how do you get children to do anything?")

And, for god's sake, if someone invites you to an event, no matter how casual, Rsvp!!!

85. The Essential Handbook of Victorian Entertaining, (adapted by) Autumn Stephens

Victorian upper-class Entertaining, that is. What a delightful little book! I admit to a passion for old etiquette books, and what Miss Stephens has done is to take bits and pieces from various unidentified 19th-century sources and created a guide to dinner parties, country house gatherings, and the like. While few of us today have the leisure to pay formal calls, or have footmen to receive callers' cards on a silver tray, much of the advice given is still quite appropriate, even if couched in language that makes us smile. Would we not all agree that an overnight guest "should have a comfortable room . . . with bed linen that is fresh and well aired"? Or that "[w]e have no right to offend people with our manners or conversation"? Such simple rules of courtesy and consideration never go out of style, though details of how to dress and the accepted hours for meals may change.

I am quite curious about one reference, however. "It is in utmost poor taste for a gentleman . . . to carry a little poodle dog (a man's glory is his strength and manliness, not in aping silly girls)." They did that? (Apparently, they did. A bit of searching reveals that the quotation is from a book called Modern Manners and Social Forms, published in 1889.)

Which leads me to my one criticism. It would have been appropriate (and proper) for Miss Stephens to have identified her sources. While the books she drew from are undoubtedly long out of copyright, courtesy (both to the writer and to the reader who may wish to know more) should be a sufficient reason to give that information.

How to Live with a Calculating Cat

2009-11-11T18:06:00.008-06:00

83. How to Live with a Calculating Cat, by Eric Gurney

Is there any other kind? Those of us who share our homes with cats will recognize the behavior of Gurney's cats right away, from their finicky-ness as regards their food to the fact that they "are not likely to sleep in the basket which has been purchased specifically for this purpose."

We are also treated to a gallery of well-known calculating cats, such as the Cheshire Cat whose "real claim to fame . . . is that he was the first cat to admit quite cheerfully that he was mad."

An amusing, and accurate, account of life with cats, accompanied by clever drawings. I am particularly fond of this illustration which shows a rare instance of cat and dog cooperation. (The caption reads: "Teamwork makes the impossible simple.")

Deep Purple

2009-11-11T12:24:00.004-06:00

82. Deep Purple, by Mayra Montero

Agustin Cabán, music critic for a San Juan newspaper, has just retired, and is writing his memoirs and sharing them with his editor. These memoirs consist primarily of his sexual encounters with musicians, and Montero writes of the connections her protagonist finds between music and sexual desire.

I had read other books of Ms. Montero's, Dancing to Almendra, and The Messenger, both of which I enjoyed and found intriguing. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for Deep Purple. It's basically one sex act after another, and emotional content is lacking. I don't mind the descriptions of sex. I enjoy good pornography and I enjoy good writing about sex. But this wasn't either.

The Reverberator

2009-11-11T11:23:00.006-06:00

81. The Reverberator, by Henry James

In our time, socialites, celebrities and people "famous for being famous" hire publicists and are content to have their private lives made fodder for the public press. Indeed, they are often complicit in the revelation of the most intimate details of their lives and seem to agree with the saying that "no publicity is bad publicity".

Henry James would be shocked. Simon Nowell-Smith points out in his introduction to my edition of this novel James' reaction to a public report of a private conversation between Julian Hawthorne and James Russell Lowell; he called it a "beastly and blackguardly betrayal". But he took an incident in which a young American who had been admitted into Venetian society wrote an account of that society for a New York newspaper, and was widely excoriated in Venice for so doing, and turned it into this charming novel.

The Dossons, father and two daughters, serious Delia and flighty Francie, are Americans in Paris. Coming over, they had made the acquaintance of George Flack, a journalist whose job is to find stories for an American 'society-paper'. He has attached himself to the Dossons, showing them Paris, while smoking Mr. Dosson's cigars, spending his money, and having a flirtation with Francie. He introduces her to the expatriate Impressionist portraitist, Charles Waterlow (possibly based on John Singer Sargent?) who begins to paint her portrait. During the sittings, she meets a young man, Gaston Probert, an American who had never been in America, having been born and raised in France, his father a "Gallomaniac", his sisters having married into French society (two into the nobility). Inevitably, Francie and Gaston fall in love, and, after her charm overcomes some familial objections of the Proberts, they become engaged.

All is going swimmingly, Francie is taken into the bosom of the Proberts, learning the ways of French society, until Gaston heads to the United States to take care of some business for his family, as well as for Mr. Dosson. While he is away, George Flack re-appears. One lesson Francie has not learned is that a young engaged woman does not go out alone with a young man who is not her betrothed. But she takes the view that Flack is an old acquaintance and what's the harm? The harm turns out to be that he, by judicious questioning and saying he merely wants to write about Waterlow's painting of her, sets her chattering about her fiancé's family, and the resultant newspaper story causes a storm. Francie still cannot quite understand the harm she has done. "I thought he would just speak about my being engaged and give a little account; so many people in America would be interested." What she doesn't grasp is that the Proberts do not want "people in America" (or France, for that matter) to be interested in their private lives.

The Reverberator was first written as a serial in early 1888, and published in book form shortly thereafter. James extensively revised it twenty years later, but my edition is that of the 1888 book. Nowell-Smith's introduction, which compares this and the later edition, shows that the revisions were not an improvement! The ease of language here, very different from James' later "tortuosity of expression", perfectly expresses the wide-eyed naïveté of Francie.

Her Fearful Symmetry

2009-10-31T14:49:00.005-05:00

80. Her Fearful Symmetry, by Audrey Niffenegger

It seems only appropriate to observe Hallowe'en by reviewing a novel in which one of the main characters is a ghost.

Elspeth Noblin and Edwina Moore are twins who have been estranged for years. When Elspeth dies, she leaves her entire estate to her nieces, Valentina and Julia, who are mirror twins, with the stipulation that they must reside in flat, overlooking Highgate Cemetery, for one year, and that their parents must not set foot in the place. When the twins arrive, they discover that although Elspeth may be dead, she still inhabits her old home. At first merely a felt presence, she gradually begins to be seen by, and then to communicate with, the twins, as well as her lover, who lives in the flat below.

Valentina and Julia have very different personalities. Julia is the dominant and decisive twin, who looks after asthmatic and timid Valentina. Each becomes involved with a neighbor, Valentina becoming attached to Robert, Elspeth's younger lover, and Julia spending time with Martin, the upstairs neighbor whose OCD keeps him indoors all the time and led his wife to return to her native Netherlands.

As their year passes, Valentina's desire for independence intersects with and is seized upon by Elspeth's ghost, who conceives a scheme to help her break free of Julia, a scheme in which they involve Robert. (And that's about all I can say without giving a lot away!)

I've been a fan of Niffenegger's writing for years, when I discovered her writing the catalog for Chicago's Center for Book and Paper Arts (though I don't think she writes it any more), and Her Fearful Symmetry did not disappoint. This is an eerie book, with surprises around every corner, beautifully evocative. At certain points, I found myself wanting to say, "No! Don't do that! It's a mistake!", and actually stopped reading occasionally because I feared what would happen next. I wasn't always right.

Readers of Niffenegger's other works with recognize the Gothic sensibility as well as a variety of familiar themes: rival sisters, pregnancy, odd physical characteristics (Valentina has situs inversus, in which the internal organs are reversed), wandering ghosts, flight (in both senses of the word). There were images which here are in words but that I recalled from her illustrated novels, The Three Incestuous Sisters and The Adventuress. In this novel, as well as The Time Traveler's Wife, she has taken ideas which in those novels are presented in isolated and (generally) unspecified locations and times, and placed them in the contemporary world, where they are all the more startling for their incongruity.

Venezia: Food & Dreams

2009-10-24T16:56:00.004-05:00

79. Venezia: Food & Dreams, by Tessa Kiros

In this culinary love letter to and about Venice, Tessa Kiros has gathered traditional Veneziani recipes for your delectation. Obviously, it's heavy on seafood, with many recipes for sardines, octopus, scampi, etc. The recipes are easy to follow, and before each she gives a little description of the dish or the process, or gives a serving suggestion. Her language is delightful; instead of telling you to cook the radicchio until it is soft, she says "until it surrenders its hardness".

Equal time must be given to the photographer and the book designer. The book is chock-ful of gorgeous color and black-and-white photographs of Venice and of the food. And, as an object, the book itself must be described. Heavy, with gilded edges and a wide black velvet book marker, it will definitely not be used in my kitchen. And that's one of the drawbacks. It's one thing to drip some oil or chocolate on my battered copy of The Joy of Cooking or Mastering the Art of French Cooking, but this one is far to elaborate to expose to the vicissitudes of la cucina. In addition, the American cook will likely find it difficult to locate some of the ingredients. Even in Chicago, with a good produce store down the street, I can't recall ever having seen radicchio di Treviso.

But never mind. I shall curl up with this book and a glass of Prosecco from time to time, and dream of returning to Venice, and the best sea bass I've ever had:

The Girl From Foreign

2009-10-18T11:22:00.006-05:00

78. The Girl from Foreign: A Search for Shipwrecked Ancestors, Forgotten Histories and a Sense of Home, by Sadia Shepard

Sadia Shepard parents were from very different worlds, her father an American-born Protestant, her mother a Pakistani-born Muslim of Indian descent. But in fact the third major monotheistic religion is also represented in Shepard's background, as her mother's mother was a Jew who converted to Islam upon her marriage. When she was dying, Shepard's grandmother urged Sadia to go to India to learn about this part of her history. Fulbright fellowship in hand, Sadia did so, and this book is the result (along with a documentary film - Shepard is a filmmaker).

Shepard's grandmother's family were members of the Bene Israel (or Beni-Israel), Indian Jews whose tradition says that they were shipwrecked off the coast of India, although the dates and reasons are varied, some saying it was after the destruction of the Second Temple, others that they arrived during the reign of King Solomon, and there are other stories as well.

It would be a mistake, however, to expect this book to be a history of the Bene Israel. It's not, and wasn't intended to be. It's a family history, the story of Shepard's family, here, in India, and in Pakistan (where they moved after Partition). In the course of learning that history, she learns about the present-day Bene Israel, a community that is diminishing, as the younger generation looks towards Israel as a homeland, but still striving to maintain its traditions. The book is also the story of how Shepard adjusts to living in India, her friendships and study there. She sees it now through her own eyes and that of her grandmother. Shepard also is trying to find out if she needs to choose one religious path, or if she can reconcile and merge the three traditions into which she was born. It's a struggle that she hasn't resolved, one that most children of mixed religious and ethnic backgrounds go through.

I was struck by the contrast between the warm personal relationships among Muslim, Jew and Hindi and the political conflicts caused by Partition. It's a great sadness and shame and wonder that the adherents of different religions can appreciate and admire and help one another, can be close friends and associates, and yet be willing to kill each other because they worship the same god in different ways.

For another book on the same subject, you might want to read Carmit Delman's Burnt Bread and Chutney: Growing up between cultures: a Memoir of an Indian Jewish girl.

Beni-Israel, from the Jewish Encyclopedia.

The Language of Bees

2009-10-18T10:31:00.005-05:00

77. The Language of Bees, by Laurie R. King

Although I am not ordinarily fond of books that take a well-known character of another author and place him (or her) in a situation that the originating author would have found ludicrous, it is nevertheless the case that I enjoy King's Mary Russell series, despite the fact that she has contrived to marry off Sherlock Holmes. That in itself is quite contrary to Holmes' nature as created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but, on top of that, she marries him off to a woman far younger than himself. And in this book, she has given him a son by Irene Adler (a/k/a "The Woman").

Russell and Holmes have returned to Sussex following a lengthy sojourn abroad (the details of which are available in King's previous books). One of Holmes' bee colonies has been engaging in very odd swarming behavior, but more seriously, his estranged son, a brilliant Surrealist painter, appears to announce that his wife and young daughter have disappeared. Mary and Holmes proceed to investigate, with Holmes attempting to do so while keeping his relationship with Damian Adler secret. Yolanda Adler's background is a dubious one, to say the least. That, as well as Damian's past involvement with the law, former drug addiction and shell-shock (what we would call Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) from his war experiences, cause suspicion to fall upon him when his wife's body is found. It appears that her murder may be related to other odd murders that have been occurring.

Although this book was a compelling read, it was, ultimately, a bit unsatisfying. For one thing, I am a bit tired of mysterious cults, and I'm afraid we're going to get more of the one that King created for this book. More seriously, though, is the fact that too many threads were left hanging, too many questions remain unanswered.

So only a mild recommendation.

Mr. Jefferson's University

2009-10-11T19:15:00.001-05:00

76. Mr. Jefferson's University, by Garry Wills

There are certain writers who can write compellingly about any subject to which they turn a hand, who can, even if the subject is one in which you would ordinarily have no interest, make you sit up late to finish "just another page". Garry Wills is, for me, one of those writers. So to have him write a book about a favorite subject (architecture) and a favorite historical personage (Thomas Jefferson) is a real treat.

Jefferson and Wills have a lot in common, both being men who did not confine their interests and erudition to even a few subjects. In addition to his political interests, Jefferson was an inventor, a designer, an architect, and not in a dabbling, dilettantish way. One of his projects was the campus of the University of Virginia at Charlottesville. Wills' book describes the result in great detail (perhaps too great for some, but not for me!), accompanying the text with elevations, preliminary drawings and photographs, as he lays out the relationship of the buildings with each other and with the landscape, and, more important, the aesthetic behind the choices.

But the book is not merely about the buildings. It also is a history of the politics behind the founding of the school, of the difficulties of choosing and keeping faculty in those early years, both fascinating stories.

I find that now I would very much like to travel to Charlottesville, with this book in hand, to re-read it in situ, and see the place through Jefferson's eyes and mind.

[University of Virginia, J.Serz, 1856], Special Collections, University of Virginia Library

On Jane Austen

2009-10-11T16:43:00.008-05:00

74. Jane Austen: A Life, by Claire Tomalin

If you read only one biography of Jane Austen, read this one. It's not only extraordinarily well-researched, it's as readable as Austen herself. Witty, detailing the Austen family's daily life, not shirking at scandal (cousin Elizabeth may have really been the daughter of Warren Hastings) and never presenting speculation as fact (though not failing to provide factual support for what speculation there is), Tomalin gives great insight into Jane Austen. She does not make the mistake of assuming that Austen's books are biographical, but does show how Austen (not unlike most authors) has taken the threads of her life, her friends and family, and woven from the briliant tapestry of her novels.

Tomalin provides a good deal of information not only about the Austens, but about the world in which they lived, what was happening in it of political importance, what life was like for the different classes, how people lived. Interspersed with the biographical material are thoughtful analyses of Austen's works, and Tomalin shows with great clarity how Austen's fictional world meshes with the one in which she led her life. This really should be required reading for anyone who complains that Austen doesn't share the modern view of what a woman should think and feel and do.

This is a truly impressive undertaking, and one which has well succeeded. Tomalin makes us feel that we know Jane Austen, the girl and the woman, as well as her relations and relationships, and, in so doing, allows us to take our well-read copies of the novels down from our bookshelves and re-read them with greater insight and appreciation.

75. Letters to Alice on First Reading Jane Austen, by Fay Weldon

Weldon's imaginary niece, Alice, wants to write a novel. What she doesn't want to do, despite doing a college course in English Literature, is read Jane Austen. Weldon sets out to show her why she should.

Weldon, as a novelist, has a rather different take on some of the received wisdom about Austen. She refers to James Austen-Leigh's famous comment about Austen covering her work when others entered the room, which has led some to speculate that she was ashamed of her work. Weldon notes that "[m]ost writers choose to cover their work when someone else comes into the room", not wanting to answer questions such as "And who is this Mr. Knightley?" One of the most delightful things about this book is to read a writer's take on Austen and her work and works.

But that's not all. Her description of Literature as a "City of Invention" is one of the best things I've read in a long time. Books are the buildings, writers the architects. I'm sure we can all name a few books that fit this description: Sometimes you'll find quite a shoddy building so well placed and painted that it quite takes the visitor in, and the critics as well - and all cluster round, crying, 'Lo, a masterpiece!' and award it prizes. But the passage of time, the peeling of paint, the very lack of concerned visitors, reveals it in the end for what it is: a house of no interest or significance.

Banned Books Week

2009-09-29T20:27:00.001-05:00

This week is Banned Books Week, an annual event sponsored by the American Library Association to celebrate the right to read, and to highlight the dangers of attempts to ban or censor books in the United States.

I grew up in a household filled with books. The regular trips to the library were a highlight of my childhood, and I well remember the exhilaration when I was no longer confined to the "Children's Section" (never mind that I had been reading so-called "adult" books for quite some time). Our parents never censored our reading. They might suggest that the book we'd pick was trashy, and recommend something else, but I never heard "You aren't allowed to read that" from them.

While I certainly understand why parents might want to monitor their own children's reading (despite the fact that I think it's a really bad idea), it appalls me that anyone would seek to restrict what adults or other people's children read. On a personal level, it is simply none of their business. On a civic level, it's dangerous. It restricts knowledge and learning, it prevents people from learning how to think critically and to form their own opinions. But, of course, that's what the censors want.

Here is a list of the top ten most challenged books of 2008 and the reason they were challenged. Go read one and strike a blow for freedom:

And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell
Reasons: anti-ethnic, anti-family, homosexuality, religious viewpoint, and unsuited to age group
His Dark Materials trilogy, by Philip Pullman
Reasons: political viewpoint, religious viewpoint, and violence
TTYL; TTFN; L8R, G8R (series), by Lauren Myracle
Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group
Scary Stories (series), by Alvin Schwartz
Reasons: occult/satanism, religious viewpoint, and violence
Bless Me, Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya
Reasons: occult/satanism, offensive language, religious viewpoint, sexually explicit, and violence
The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
Reasons: drugs, homosexuality, nudity, offensive language, sexually explicit, suicide, and unsuited to age group
Gossip Girl (series), by Cecily von Ziegesar
Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group
Uncle Bobby's Wedding, by Sarah S. Brannen
Reasons: homosexuality and unsuited to age group
The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group
Flashcards of My Life, by Charise Mericle Harper
Reasons: sexually explicit and unsuited to age group

And here's a poem by Bertolt Brecht (translation by Eric Bentley) that succinctly sums up an author's point of view:

When the Regime ordered that books with dangerous teachings
Should be publicly burnt and everywhere
Oxen were forced to draw carts full of books
To the funeral pyre, an exiled poet,
One of the best, discovered with fury, when he studied the list
Of the burned, that his books
Had been forgotten. He rushed to his writing table
On wings of anger and wrote a letter to those in power.
Burn me, he wrote with hurrying pen, burn me!
Do not treat me in this fashion. Don't leave me out. Have I not
Always spoken the truth in my books? And now
You treat me like a liar! I order you:
Burn me!

Unlawful Occasions

2009-09-24T20:47:00.003-05:00

73. Unlawful Occasions, by Henry Cecil (Henry Cecil Leon)

I've been reading Henry Cecil for ages. He was a barrister and judge, and his books are delightfully humorous accounts of activities in the law courts and lawyers' and judges' chambers. Every so often, I come across one of his works that I haven't read before. Unlawful Occasions is one of those.

Brian Culsworth, barrister-at-law, is sought out for advice one day by the tenant above his chambers, one Mrs. Venery. She has had a visit from a man who appears to be a blackmailer. I say "appears" because he is quite clever at avoiding a direct threat, but merely insinuates. At the same time, Culsworth is representing a man who is suing for his share of a win in the pools (lottery to us Yanks!). His client's habit of speaking his mind directly gets him in trouble in court, and Culsworth's efforts to get him out of it may expose him to the tender mercies of the blackmailer.

As with all Cecil's work, there's a twist or two, and the story is told with a dry wit that goes well with a gin and tonic.

Confections of a Closet Master Baker

2009-09-24T19:49:00.006-05:00

72. Confections of a Closet Master Baker, by Gesine Bullock-Prado

I begin with a caveat: do not read this book if you are trying to avoid sweets. Though not a cookbook, it has recipes. Luscious-sounding recipes. Recipes for things like "Starry Starry Night" cookies, which are nearly solid chocolate. Rock scones and cream scones. Tarts redolent of plums, pies redolent of apples. You'll want to put the book aside and head to the kitchen!

I'll be honest. I wasn't sure I'd like this book. "Oh, sure," I said to myself. "Another 'I got off the money treadmill and went to live the simple life on the money I made on the aforesaid treadmill' book." Blurbs like "A former Hollywood insider trades the Holywood Hills for Green Acres" don't incline me favorably towards a book. It was the baking part that tempted me.

But the book is better than the blurbs would have you think. Yes, there's a lot about Bullock-Prado's unhappiness in Hollywood, where she headed her sister's production company. But there is far more about the importance of baking in her life, the way it makes her feel to give people macaroons and receive their passionate thanks in return, the way a tart or a pie brings back to her memories of her childhood, of her mother and grandmother and the special times they had together.

As all such books must, it gives us stories of mishaps along the way to success. It didn't hurt that the national media was attracted to the story of "Sandra Bullock's sister opens bakery in Vermont". One would like to think that she'd have had a successful business anyway, though I doubt that the Food Network would have knocked on her door if she were Gesine Nobody's Sister. She is such a success that she has now closed the bakery about which she wrote here, and is concentrating on her online business and helping open a new shop in Texas (weird, that's a long way from Vermont, wonder how that will work?). It's kind of too bad, because it sounded like a great place, very neighborly and warm, the sort of bakery you'd like to have down the street from you.

You can read more about what Gesine is doing now at her blog: Confections of a (Closet) Master Baker: Idle Musings on Baking and a Few Good Recipes from a Nomad Baker.

(My thanks to Shelf Awareness and Broadway Books for the opportunity to review this book.)

Lamb to the Slaughter and other stories

2009-09-23T10:14:00.005-05:00

71. Lamb to the Slaughter and other Stories, by Roald Dahl

The title story in this collection of five is fairly well-known, as it is often anthologized. It's the one about the wife who bashes her husband over the head with a frozen leg of lamb, and then feeds the murder weapon to the police investigating the crime!

"Parson's Pleasure" and "The Bookseller" have similar themes. In each, someone is taking advantage of others' ignorance or weakness to trick them for financial gain, but is in the end hoist by his own petard. "The Butler" also involves trickery and deceit, but here a pretentious nouveau riche is caught by his butler and cook.

But the very best of these stories is Dahl's first published work, based on his wartime experiences. "A Piece of Cake" is a hallucinatory story of a pilot who crash lands in the desert between the Italian and English lines. Extraordinary writing: "I knew that the hotness was unpleasant, but that was all I knew. I disliked it, so I curled my legs up under the seat and waited. I think there was something wrong with the telegraph system between the body and the brain. It did not seem to be working very well. Somehow it was a bit slow in telling the brain all about it and in asking for instructions. But I believe a message eventually got through, saying, 'Down here there is a great hotness. What shall we do? (Signed) Left Leg and Right Leg.' For a long time there was no reply. The brain was figuring it out."

Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans

2009-09-20T10:54:00.005-05:00

70. Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans, by Dan Baum

New Orleans. There's no other city like it in the United States. It's southern, it's French, it's Spanish, it's African-American. It's the filé in the gumbo, the lait in the café, the feathers of the Mardi Gras Indians and the improvisation of a jazz ensemble.

And we nearly lost it. We nearly lost it all.

A lot of books have been written about Hurricane Katrina. I've read a bunch of them. This is one of the best, mostly because it's not merely about Katrina. After I came back from the Jazz and Heritage Festival in 2006, I wrote in my Live Journal: I picked up a book while I was there, Chris Rose's 1 Dead in Attic, a collection of his articles in the Times-Picayune. And in the eponymous article he writes about some homes in the Eighth Ward, where many of the Mardi Gras Indians live, and where they have "retrieved their tattered and muddy Indian suits and sequins and feathers and they have nailed them to the fronts of their houses." New Orleans has nailed its colors to its houses; it's not going without a fight.

This is Baum's effort to understand and explain, through the lives of nine New Orleanians, just what it is that makes people so devoted to this city, as poor and violent and corrupt as it was, just why they struggled (and still struggle) so hard to return and rebuild. He interviewed these folks (as well as friends, relatives and co-workers) for days, you feel that he knows them as well as he knows himself.

His interviewees are as varied as you'd expect: a high school band leader, a transsexual bar owner, the coroner of Orleans Parish, a single mom from the 'hood determined to have a better life, a millionaire king of carnival, the wife (later widow) of Big Chief Tootie Montana. Their lives are so different, and yet they intersect. Each in his or her own way has tried in their lives to make their city a better place. It hasn't always been easy. Wilbert Rawlins, Jr.'s devotion to his band kids, knowing that for many he's the only father, for some the only parent, that they know, nearly loses him the woman he loves. Billy Grace, Rex, King of Carnival, risks losing status to open up the krewes (those social organizations that drive Mardi Gras). Ronald Lewis fights for equal rights on the job, and starts a second-line club to "bring a little pride back" to the Lower Ninth. Setbacks don't stop them, so why should Katrina?

Rather than tell one person's story and then the next, Baum has told the stories in bits and pieces, chronologically, beginning in 1965, with Hurricane Betsy (described by Lewis as "a force of nature more powerful than his mom") and ending two years after Katrina. This structure gives the book such great force and drive that I finished it at about 1:00 in the morning, unwilling (unable, really) to stop reading. There's an incredible tension in reading the dates under each section, as we move closer and closer to that weekend in 2005.

When jazz great Irvin Mayfield was interviewed by NPR shortly after Katrina, he said "jazz is about taking what you have and making the best of it, and doing it with style". That's what these folks did with their lives, and are still doing to make New Orleans come alive again.

The Cat that Jumped out of the Story

2009-09-19T16:14:00.004-05:00

69. The Cat that Jumped out of the Story, by Ben Hecht

Ben Hecht, screenwriter, journalist, author of "obscene" novels - who knew he wrote children's books as well? I didn't, until I found this little volume at a used book sale. It's a charming book, about Catarinka, a black cat who came out of the moon, and who has a Great Secret, one which she is afraid other cats would find out. Her friends, the mice Itzel and Bitzel, try to discover it, but she resists. Then comes Mickey Lickey, the Worst Cat in the World, who will turn her into hash if she doesn't tell him! Catarinka, however, outsmarts him, by, well, that would be telling!

The text is accompanied by numerous black-and-white and color illustrations by artist Peggy Bacon that artfully evoke the world of the street cat.

Book Blogger Appreciation Week: The present & future blog

2009-09-18T19:42:00.003-05:00

The challenge: Tell us and this is really important, in 50 words or less what you love best about your blog! And then in 50 words or less where you want your blog to be by the next BBAW!

I love having a place to write about the books I read, the literary events I go to, and my general musings about all things book-related. But mostly, I love sharing with anyone who cares to read it.

Where do I want to be this time next year? More consistent in posting, with longer and more in-depth reviews. And, I hope, more readers.

Book Blogger Appreciation Week Meme

2009-09-16T14:15:00.001-05:00

I should have done this yesterday, but better late than never!

Do you snack while you read? If so, favorite reading snack?
I do occasionally. It's more likely to be when I'm home in the evening, so the snack will likely be an after-dinner, dessert-type snack - fruit, ice cream, something of that ilk. When it's ice cream, here's what happens when I'm done:

Do you tend to mark your books as you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you?
I rarely write in books (probably reminds me too much of college/law school days!). I won't say it "horrifies" me, but I'd rather not.

How do you keep your place while reading a book? Bookmark? Dog-ears?Laying the book flat open?
Bookmarks. I have zillions of them! Those cats in the photo above? Sometimes they'll sit on the book and hold my place for me.

Fiction, Non-fiction, or both?
Both. If a book is interesting and well-written, that's enough.

Hard copy or audiobooks?
Printed matter. When I began a long commute, friends said, "get audiobooks". I tried, but found that I could concentrate on the book or the road, not both. For the safety of myself and those around me, I gave up the books!

Are you a person who tends to read to the end of chapters, or are you able to put a book down at any point?

I can put a book down at any point, but I prefer to stop at a logical stopping point. If I stop in the middle of a chapter, it's not so easy to find the exact place where I stopped, particularly if I'm not coming right back to the book. So as the clock wends its way toward my bedtime, I find myself looking to see how many pages to the end of a chapter - will I stop now, or can I finish before bedtime? Sometimes, of course, the chapter is very long, and I must, however reluctantly, stop before the end.

If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop to look it up right away?
That depends on whether or not I'm near a dictionary!

What are you currently reading?
The Plan of Chicago: Daniel Burnham and the Remaking of the American City, by Carl Smith
Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans, by Dan Baum

What is the last book you bought?
I bought three at the 57th Street Children's Book Fair last Sunday, costing a grand total of $5.50 (mostly for the first book, a big hardback)
The Annotated Brothers Grimm (which has an introduction by A.S. Byatt, and lovely illustrations)
As I was Crossing Boston Common, a children's abecedaria/bestiary by Norma Farber
Teach Yourself Dutch, in anticipation of a trip to Amsterdam next spring

Are you the type of person that only reads one book at a time or can you read more than one at a time?
See "What are you currently reading?" above! I nearly always have at least two books going, usually more.

Do you have a favorite time of day and/or place to read?
No. Most of my reading is, of necessity, done in the evening at home, but I always carry a book to court in case there are long breaks, and when I'm on the bus.

Do you prefer series books or stand alone books?
I tend to read "stand alone" books. Although I do read some series books, I find that they pall over time. It's a rare author who can sustain a character over a lengthy series of books. Too often, they degenerate into schtick.

Is there a specific book or author that you find yourself recommending over and over?
Hmmm . . . not really. I tend to recommend books I've recently read and enjoyed, or a specific book to a specific person because I think it will suit her. But two that I do like to recommend are Dorothy L. Sayers' Gaudy Night and Italo Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveler.

How do you organize your books? (By genre, title, author’s last name, etc.?)
Literature (including lit crit and literary biography) is alpha by the author's last name. Books about an author are shelved with her books. Non-fiction is shelved by subject, and then further subdivided as needed (for instance, performing arts subdivided into theatre, film, opera, etc.) Deciding what goes where can result in tearing of hair and gnashing of teeth. Do books on kimono belong with "fashion" or "Japanese culture"? (Fashion) Is Frank Lloyd Wright in Pop-up "architecture" or "pop-ups"? (Pop-ups)

Then there are those piles of books on the floor because I've run out of bookshelf space. Those aren't organized at all. (I keep meaning to get around to it, really!)

Some of my bookcases.

Louisa May Alcott: the Woman Behind Little Women

2009-09-11T13:08:00.005-05:00

68. Louisa May Alcott: the Woman Behind Little Women, by Harriet Reisen

Could any woman with a shelf full of books by and about Louisa May Alcott resist a new biography* of her? What about one who devours Little Women and other titles yearly? Who is known to have corrected a docent at Orchard House who mistakenly called Beth the youngest of the March sisters? One who thrilled to the discovery of Alcott's thrillers, and leapt on a previously unknown (to her) bit of juvenile fiction? (A pause here to give thanks to the late Madeleine B. Stern.) This one couldn't. And pleased I am that I gave way to the blandishments of Amazon Vine, because this is a marvelous addition to the aforesaid shelf.

Louisa May Alcott was the second of four daughters born to the Transcendentalist philosopher, Bronson Alcott, and his wife, Abigail May Alcott (Abby). Alcott was one of those men with grand ideas and a head in the clouds, but little practical sense. (It has been fashionable to view Bronson Alcott as a bit of a villain in relation to his family, particularly Louisa. Reisen, I think, gives a more balanced portrait of him. Her description of his ups and downs, and the family history, suggests the possibility of bipolar disorder or depressive episodes, but she quite rightly does not draw that conclusion.)

So the family's financial situation was always unstable, and, as a result, so was their living situation. They moved four times in the first year and a half of Louisa's life, and many more after that. While living in poor circumstances themselves, the Alcotts had wealthy relatives, and that contrast clearly affected Louisa. She was driven to succeed, at least in part, to provide for her parents (particularly the beloved Abby) and sisters. But where the real Alcott wealth lay was in the life of the mind, in their connections to the intellectual and literary world of the New England of their day. They had regular and intimate contact with people such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller and others, who would appear, sometimes only slightly disguised, in Louisa's fiction.

Reisen does not merely tell us how Louisa lived. She also does an exemplary job of showing how that life, and the people with whom she shared it, showed up in her books. And she shows, too, how Louisa's day-to-day life affected what and when she wrote. Those blood-and-thunder thrillers, written as "A.M. Barnard" and rediscovered by Stern and Leona Rostenberg, helped fill the family coffers when times were tight, but they also gave Louisa an outlet for her desire for adventure and action, something difficult for a young woman of her class and time to find in the real world. She couldn't fight a war (though she could nurse, to the detriment of her own health), she couldn't run away to sea or "go west, young man!", but she could write.

In later life, Louisa suffered greatly from a variety of medical problems. Reisen revisits, with the assistance of medical experts, the question of what caused these problems and (ultimately) her death. Louisa herself, and her doctors, attributed her troubles to mercury poisoning resulting from the use of calomel as a curative during her service as a nurse. The doctors Reisen consulted show, quite conclusively, that this is not the case, and she posits that Alcott may have been suffering from lupus. Her arguments are convincing, but, again, she rightly does not insist upon the diagnosis.

Written in connection with the PBS documentary of the same name, this book is extremely well-researched and documented**, with an extensive bibliography and notes. It is one that I would recommend to anyone who has loved Alcott's work.

*Kudos to Reisen for correcting, on her LibraryThing profile (and elsewhere, for all I know), the publisher's erroneous cover blurb describing this as "the first complete biography" of Alcott.

**Here's serendipity for you! The late Madelon Bedell, in her book The Alcotts: Biography of a Family, makes reference to an interview she conducted with the then-96-year-old Lulu Neiriker Rasim, Louisa's niece. Try as she might, Reisen couldn't find the interview or a surviving Bedell. Then, well, let Reisen tell it: "One day I picked up a used copy of The Alcotts, and out of it tumbled a carbon copy of an August 1980 letter written by Bedell herself to Michael Sterne, then the travel editor of the New York Times, proposing a story. At the bottom of the letter was a return address in Brooklyn where, more than two decades later, Madelon Bedell's widower still lived." He helped Reisen locate and recover Bedell's papers, now on their way to Orchard House.

America Eats!

2009-09-09T20:19:00.008-05:00

67. America Eats! On the Road with the WPA: the Fish Fries, Box Supper Socials, and Chitlin Feasts that Define Real American Food, by Pat Willard

The Works Progress Administration was one of the glories of the New Deal. Although it employed millions of people, it is probably best known for the work it provided to artists and writers through the Federal Writers' Project and the Federal Artists' Project. One of the projects it embarked on was to document "how America eats", more specifically, to document local social gatherings at which food was served and thus describe "American" cookery and its importance to community. Despite the many writers and photographers who contributed to the project, the planned book (to be called America Eats! never came to fruition, but the papers were boxed up, and, though many were lost, many were preserved.

Decades later, Pat Willard had the brilliant idea of going back to the towns and gatherings visited by the FWP writers to find out if those traditions and foods were still around. Her book alternates excerpts from the original manuscripts with her own descriptions of what she found, grouped by themes such as "Agricultural Fairs", "Fund-raising Dinners", "Political Gatherings" and the like. (She also includes a few recipes, as lagniappe.) Willard found that many of the events memorialized by the FWP writers no longer existed or had been transformed (some weren't even remembered!), but others were still going strong.

As we travel the roads of the United States, eating dishes ranging from Brunswick Stew in North Carolina to barbecued salmon in Oregon, we learn, through the food and the reasons for the socializing, the history and culture of these places. Lucky Pat Willard, to taste so many good things. And I greatly appreciate her bringing the stories written for the FWP out of the boxes in which they'd been stores and into the light of day.

If I have any quibble with the book, it is with Willard's defensiveness about American cuisine. The food can speak for itself!

Revenge

2009-09-06T11:55:00.003-05:00

66. Revenge, by Hugh Holton

This book, a Detective Larry Cole mystery, is a posthumous publication, Holton having died in 2001. There is no indication that anyone has added to it, so I can only presume that Holton had completed it, or appeared to have completed it, before he died. I say "appeared to have completed it" because it reads like an early draft that needs work, a lot of work.

The plot revolves around a young woman, Morgana Devoe, whose guardian was murdered when she was thirteen, and who is intent on revenge. She arrives in Chicago intending to kill the murderer, and becomes involved with Cole's son, Larry, Jr. (known as Butch), who is a police cadet. It turns out that she is actually the daughter of Margo and Neil DeWitt, married serial killers who were Cole's nemeses, but who are now dead. Their multi-billion dollar holdings are now being administered by a very nasty piece of work, lawyer Franklin Butler, and his assistant, Susanne York, who is also out for revenge on a variety of people.

Revenge fails on many levels. While Holton's writing was never the best, his mysteries could generally succeed in the plotting. But the prose in this book is so stilted and repetitious that the best of plots could not survive it, and this is not the best of plots. It's all over the place, wildly incoherent, and he leaves a lot of loose ends. The ending is over the top, even for Holton, and includes a bit of graphic sex, something that I do not recall from his other books (though, admittedly, it's been quite a while since I read one) and which is, therefore, a bit jarring.

The absence of editing is evident, not only in typos, but in such things as the misuse of words ("implicated", where "implied" is clearly what was meant), wrong names being used, and what the film world calls "continuity". Morgana lives in what is described in the space of two pages as a "town house", then a "penthouse", then a "townhouse" again. In one place, her home is on North Sheridan Road, then on Lake Shore Drive. (The book is set in Chicago, and these are real streets that do not intersect.)

Because the book is set is a specific, real, location, at a specific time, details can and should be verified. As a lawyer, I'm particularly annoyed at the many errors in law and legal procedure, with which, as a long-time Chicago police officer, Holton should have been conversant. He should have known that no trial court judge could allow cameras in a courtroom, as that's a violation of Illinois Supreme Court Rules. He should have known that motions to suppress statements are heard pre-trial by a judge, not as part of a jury trial. While occasionally one must allow an author literary license so that he can improve the story or move it along, the errors in this book do neither.

The book is copyrighted by Holton's daughter, and I appreciate that she probably wanted her father's last work published, but it needed considerable editing and revision before being in publishable form.

A couple of places where I get books

2009-09-02T20:02:00.005-05:00

I acquire my books from a lot of places. Like everyone else, I have my favorite bookstores. I go to libraries and charity book sales, and I try to get advance reading copies. But a couple of the places I go are so interesting that I feel the urge to share.

The T.B. Blackstone Branch Library

The urge began a couple of days ago, when I went to my local library, the T.B. Blackstone branch of the Chicago Public Library. It is the oldest branch library in the system, having opened in January, 1903, and was built in his memory with funds given by his widow. Now, as it happens, I didn't go there to check out books (though, no surprise, I did). I went there for an event to celebrate the restoration of the library' murals, painted by Oliver Dennett Grover. They represent Literature, Art, Science and Labor. This is Literature:

You should have seen them before! They were so dirty and dark, and the fern-like design in the spandrels was practically non-existent. The conservators, (Parma Conservation) did an amazing job! You can see more, and some other photos of events at the library, here.

Seminary Co-op Bookstore

I'm proud to say that I'm a shareholder in this store! Not to mention happy to get the 10% off everything that gets me. It's actually three stores. There's a general interest bookstore, 57th Street Books, the A.C. McClurg Bookstore at the Newberry Library, and the mother ship, Seminary Co-op Books, which is located in this building:

Yep. The store is in the basement of the Chicago Theological Seminary on the University of Chicago campus, hence the name. It carries not only titles of general interest, but also textbooks for the university. And it's so big, you need a map:

I don't know why they don't still have this listing, but they used to have a section on their website titled, "Books by Members". There aren't a lot of bookstores that could do that! And they have a blog, The Front Table, in order to lay temptation in your path.

I do love this store.

Can Jane Eyre Be Happy?

2009-08-30T17:41:00.005-05:00

65. Can Jane Eyre Be Happy? More Puzzles in Classic Fiction, by John Sutherland

In this book, a follow-up to his Is Heathcliff a Murderer?, Sutherland seeks to answer questions that most of us have never asked. Some are unanswerable, except by reaching for that old chestnut,"even Homer nods"! But, for others, he actually comes up with reasonable (or not wildly unreasonable) explanations. And it's rather fun getting there.

Have you ever wondered what is in Heathcliff's will? Or what the Prynnes were doing in Boston? Neither have I. Nevertheless, I enjoyed Sutherland's attempts to answer these and other literary conundrums. He has a fine sense of humor, taking none of this too seriously. His disquisition on the question, "What is Elfride's rope made of?" (Thomas Hardy's A Pair of Blue Eyes, had me in stitches. It's not even necessary to have read the books (does anyone, not a college English major, actually read Ford Maddox Ford's The Good Soldier these days?), you'll find plenty of diversion, anyway.

The Memory Palace of Isabella Stewart Gardner

2009-08-30T12:20:00.007-05:00

64. The Memory Palace of Isabella Stewart Gardner, by Patricia Vigderman

Neither a biography nor a guide to the collection, but rather a meditation on the identity, the soul, of Isabella Stewart Gardner, this small volume is Vigderman's attempt to understand, through her collection, why Gardner collected what she did, why she displayed it the way she did, why she left it to the public the way she did.

This is a stroll through the Museum, pausing here and there, thinking about this piece or that. How does it fit with that piece over there? What might it have meant to Mrs. Gardner? Who urged her to acquire it and how was that person important to ISG? That is the structure of the book, in three parts, each broken down into smaller sections headed with the title of a work, its author and date. Something about that work inspires and speaks of the words that will follow. Thus, Helleu's Woman Threading a Needle calls forth thoughts of how ISG "threaded the needle" through a world where wealth and status did not necessarily allow a woman to "make her way into the kingdom of books" to one where she found "pleasant lifelong learning":

As Vigderman wanders through those rooms and corridors, she talks to us about Bernard Berenson, whose career ISG helped launch. We learn of art politics, and in-fighting in the lofty rooms of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. And, finally, Vigderman, joins old Boston and the clutter of Victoriana with the simplicity and grace of the Japanese tea ceremony through the figure of Okakura Kakuzō, first head of the MFA's Asian Arts department, and author of that book of philosophy, The Book of Tea. (The postscript, An Invitation to Tea, follows the form of the other three parts, but each subsection is headed with a caption of an illustration from the Kodansha International edition of that book.)

In the end, do we know more of Gardner than we did before we began? I think we do. Vigderman's digressive musings help to understand how ISG was both a product of, and a rebel against, her time and place.

Why this book is not available at the Gardner Museum's bookshop is beyond my comprehension.

Reviewed as part of

Please support your local independent bookstores!

2009-08-30T11:28:00.007-05:00

Yesterday, I had what I would ordinarily call an excellent book buying day. I bought a dozen books, at two different bookstores, at 50% and 70% off the normal prices. But it wasn't a good day, because the reason for the tremendous discounts is that, as of tomorrow, two wonderful bookstores in downtown Chicago will be no more.

(Photo by MICAH MAIDENBERG/Staff, Chicago Journal)

Powell's Books, on S. Wabash, couldn't withstand the rising rents in that gentrifying neighborhood. The stock will go to their wholesale warehouse. Athough they have two other stores, the building that houses the Lincoln Park branch is up for sale. The store will continue to operate until the building is sold (which, in this market, may be a while). At least, we have the small comfort that the 57th Street Store (my usual haunt, as it's a few blocks from my home) will remain open.

Much sadder, therefore, is the loss of Prairie Avenue Bookshop, which has been called the finest architecture bookstore in the world.

Part of the reason for the closure is that the owners are getting on in years (they've been running the place since it originally opened in the Prairie Avenue historic district in the mid-'70s - read its history here) and have been unable to find a buyer. But they were also contending with competition from the big box stores' ability to discount, and Chicago's increased sales tax and the resulting flow of buyers away from retail stores and to the internet. Unfortunately, those places may have the latest books, but they don't have backlists, they don't have old copies of journals, they don't have used books. And they don't have the sheer beauty and ambience of Prairie Avenue Bookshop. You went in and browsed bookcases with leaded glass, sat at a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed table, in a Charles Rennie Mackintosh- or Josef Hoffmann-designed chair, near a Louis Sullivan frieze. You can't do that on Amazon, and, now, you can't do it in Chicago, either.

So, please, if you care about stores like these, shop at them!

The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane

2009-08-28T20:21:00.001-05:00

63. The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, by Katherine Howe

Connie Goodwin is a graduate student specializing in colonial American history. She has just been accepted as a doctoral candidate at Harvard when she accedes to her mother's request to go to Marblehead to close up her grandmother's house, a house that had been sitting empty for years. Whilst clearing out the place, she finds an old Bible which contains a key with a tag on which is the name "Deliverance Dane". Her curiosity is aroused, and she begins a search for the identity of Deliverance, and for an old book, variously called a "physick book", an "almanack", a "grimoire". Meanwhile, her thesis adviser begins to behave very oddly, and the young man she meets and becomes enamoured of is the victim of a strange accident. And she, herself, begins to develop extraordinary powers.

Howe manages to capture both contemporary academic politics and 17th-century religio-social politics and creates a fascinating story of "bewitchment". She shifts easily between scenes set in 1991 and in 1692, and thus we are aware of things that will impact Connie's story before she herself knows them (in fact, she probably never knows as much as we do).

There are some loose ends, things that remain unexplained (for example, why is it dangerous for a man to be romantically involved with a Dane descendant?). I've also seen some criticism of this book on the grounds that it negatively stereotypes librarians, but I don't see it!

Oh, there really was a Deliverance Dane. The image below is her husband's Petition for restitution for Deliverence Dane, from the Massachusetts State Archives. The University of Virginia has created an online archive of documents relating to the Salem witchcraft trials held in various special collections across New England, which makes for fascinating browsing.

Heidenkind's Art History Challenge

2009-08-17T15:09:00.001-05:00

Thanks to Jemima's post on her blog, The Reading Journey, I discovered Heidenkind's Art History Challenge. Though I'm not usually the "challenge" type (I get antsy if I feel that I have to read a particular book at a particular time - too much like school!), this one speaks to me, perhaps because two of my current reads are in this field. I also like it because the framework encourages digression, of which I am a big fan! So, I will do this one.

The two books I am currently reading are The Memory Palace of Isabella Stewart Gardner, by Patricia Vigderman, and Confessions of an Art Addict, by Peggy Guggenheim, so you can probably see that my theme (at least to begin with) will be art patrons and patronage. But I see Venice? museums? collecting? as potential detours. We shall see.

Boston Books

2009-08-13T09:46:00.002-05:00

I've just spent a glorious week in Boston, and naturally prepared by reading books set there, about there, and so on. And took some to read while there and on the plane. So I have much to review!

To begin, there is, apparently, something about Boston that leads murderers to choose extremely bizarre methods of offing their victims. Two of the books I read were mysteries, and both involved very odd forms of murder. One cannot, it seems, eliminate a Boston Brahmin with nothing more than a bullet to the head or a simple stab wound. Oh, no! That would be déclassé.

57. Coign of Vantage, or the Athenæum Club Murders, by John McAleer

Someone is killing members of Boston's venerable Cart-Tail Club. The book begins with one member being knocked unconscious and locked in a freezer, where, of course, he suffocates. We learn that other members of the club have died in what had been written off as accidents. Our hero, who has just been proposed as a member, is a probabilities expert, and is asked to solve the mystery (discreetly, please, as befits a venerable Boston club).

It turns out that the murders are all connected to a woman who wrote pulp fiction years earlier, her work all based on secrets and transgressions of ancestors of the murder victims.

The motive ultimately makes little sense and the book is hard to get into. Too many characters are introduced too quickly, with too much esoteric gabbing. But once past that, it's rather amusing, though the satire is probably best appreciated by Bostonians.

58. The Dante Club, by Matthew Pearl

There really was a Dante Club, with many of Boston's 19th-century literary élite, that worked with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow on his translation of the Divine Comedy.

In Pearl's mystery, which ranges throughout Boston and Cambridge, the Club tries to solve the murders of various Boston brahmins, murders that are very specifically, and down to the last detail, replications of the punishments of sinners described by Dante in The Inferno.

The solution is not satisfactory - it's complicated and quite a stretch - and I'm not terribly fond of books that attempt to place historical characters out of their milieu. That said, however, Pearl does a decent job of evoking the atmosphere of Boston in 1865, particularly the "town and gown" conflicts and the aftermath of the Civil War. And certainly you will learn a great deal about Longfellow and the other members of the Dante Club, probably more than when you had to memorize their poetry in school (or am I dating myself? do you have to do that now?).

59. The Silent Traveller in Boston, by Chiang Yee

Chiang Yee was a Chinese scholar, poet, painter and calligrapher, who taught Chinese first in England, and later in the United States. Over a period of about four decades, he wrote the "Silent Traveller" series, describing his travels in various countries and cities around the world.

The Silent Traveller in Boston was published in 1959, but Yee's descriptions of the important landmarks of Cambridge and Boston are still relevant. I was glad that I had read of his visit to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, though I envied him his invitation to dine there!

It was most interesting to read Yee's comparisons of American and Chinese ideas and customs, as when he contrasts the New (and Old) England concept of witches with the Chinese. (At the end of the book, he comments on the McCarthy-ite "witch" hunts earlier in the '50s, and notes that Joseph Welch was a Bostonian and that "[t]he Boston spirit of love of universal liberty had acted again."

Yee has the artist's eye for detail, and he continually surprises by what he notices and the relationships that he sees. He has an intense curiosity and desire to learn all about the places that he visits, and we are fortunate that he shares his what he learns, and, more so, what he thinks, with us. The books are greatly enhanced by Yee's illustrations, both full page color pictures and black-and-white drawings, as well as poems which are given in both English and Chinese.

If you are visiting a city which Yee included in his "Silent Traveller" series, I would strongly recommend that you find a copy of his book and read it before you go.

60. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum: Guide to the Collection

This guide is an absolutely indispensable adjunct to a visit to the Gardner Museum.

Mrs. Gardner opened her museum in 1909. When she died in 1924, her will provided that nothing be changed or moved. All was to remain as she had left it. There was method in this, as she was an absolute genius at installation, and when she placed an item, she had a reason for that placement, particularly in its relation to other objects.

But there are no wall signs and the one page guides available in some of the rooms are not as detailed as one might like. And not all the rooms have them. Although this slim volume does not contain every item, either (well, there are a couple of thousand!), it does cover more of them, and gives more information. Because nothing can be moved, the guide can be very explicit as to where everything is located in a room or gallery. (My edition is from before the 1990 robbery, so it includes the stolen items. How sad to see an empty frame or a card saying "stolen". Someday an obsessive art collector will die, and his heirs, I hope, will return the ill-gotten goods.)

There's a short, but useful, biographical sketch as well, that will likely leave you wanting to learn more about this dynamic woman. If so, I'd suggest Douglas Shand-Tucci's biography, The Art of Scandal: The Life and Times of Isabella Stewart Gardner and Elizabeth Anne McCauley's Gondola Days: Isabella Stewart Gardner and the Palazzo Barbaro Circle.

61. The Complete Guide to Boston's Freedom Trail, by Charles Bahne

The Freedom Trail is a two and a half mile trail, marked by red brick along Boston streets, that takes you to some of America's most historic places, such as Old North Church ("one if by land, two if by sea"), Faneuil Hall, and the site of the Boston Massacre.

This little book is splendid, particularly for the individual who prefers to go it alone. A starting point at Boston Common is suggested, and directions are given from there. But the book is hugely informative, with lots of history told in an interesting manner. I particularly appreciated the extensive detail about who is buried in which burying ground. There is a good map, a list of hours and admission fees, information about wheelchair access, and the like.

My copy is the second edition, published in 1993, which I picked up at a used book sale shortly before my trip. I did not, however, encounter any outdated information, other than the fact that the "Big Dig" is now over with!

62. The Wordy Shipmates, by Sarah Vowell

Who were the Puritans? What did they really believe? Would you really want them living next door to you?

What you were taught in school about the Puritans and the settling of the Massachusetts Bay Colony is mostly bunk. There's a grain of truth in the "fled England to escape religious persecution", but only a grain. They believed in religious freedom - if you believed as they did. They were a bunch of contrary, ornery, fascinating folk.

Vowell's book brings to life these people who live in dry and dusty textbooks, warts and all. She does so with style and mordant humor. An excellent and enjoyable read.

Two Men Who Loved Books Too Much

2009-07-29T21:47:00.009-05:00

55. The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: the True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession, by Allison Hoover Bartlett

There are many kinds of book collectors. Some collect a particular author or subject matter, some incunables and others modern first editions. Most are rational, law-abiding citizens. But sometimes the urge to collect becomes an obsession, as with Sir Thomas Phillipps' desire to own a copy of every book in the world. (I highly recommend A.N.L. Munby's Portrait of an Obsession, a distillation by Nicolas Barker of the five volumes of Phillipps Studies.) And sometimes, as with John Gilkey, the subject of Ms. Bartlett's book, it causes the collector to turn to crime.

Gilkey was (is?) a book thief. He seems to have wanted books, not for their content, but to have them, to possess them as physical objects, and as a signifier of taste. But, not having the money to build his collection, he took the view that he had a right to have a collection and that, if book sellers charged more than he could afford, he could simply take them. He gathered, often through retail jobs, credit card information, and used this to purchase books.

Bartlett juxtaposes Gilkey's story with that of Ken Sanders, a book seller and one-time chair of the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America security committee, who became as obsessed with hunting down Gilkey as Gilkey was with hunting down books to steal.

Bartlett conducted extensive interviews with both, and one of the most interesting aspects of this book is the way its writing caused the author to become a bit obsessed herself, not so much with books, though she feels a bit of temptation herself, but with the story. She goes with Gilkey, during a time when he was not locked up, to a store from which he had stolen in the past. He reveals to her certain information, and she struggles over whether to pass it on, knowing that, if she does so, he might close his mouth to her and affect her ability to write her book.

There are those who, looking at my double-shelved bookcases, and the piles of books on my floor and most flat surfaces in my apartment, would call me a woman who loves books too much. I feel what Bartlett terms the "sensory enticement" of books, enjoy the feel of a heavy paper with deckle edge, the smell of a leather binding, the heft of a volume in my hand. But I cannot fathom stealing a book, however tempted, and would say, with the medieval scribe, that a book thief should have "his name be erased from the book of the living and not be recorded among the Blessed".

The book is well-written and well-researched (though I noted a couple of errors in legal procedure, these are minor in relation to the book as a whole), and is sure to please all who love books, detective stories, and the psychology of obsession.

56. Bibliomania: a Tale, by Gustave Flaubert

This small volume from the Rodale Press contains the short story by Flaubert, based upon the true story of a monk who, upon the dispersal of his monastery's library, set himself up as a bookseller in Barcelona. When a rival book dealer outbid him for a unique volume, the rival's home burned down and the man's body was found in the ruins. When the book was found in Don Vincente's home, he was charged with the murder and confessed to it, and others - all people who had bought books from him, books that he could not bear to lose. At his trial for murder, his counsel argued against the alleged motive, contending that the book was not, in fact, unique. This revelation upset DonVincente more than being convicted and sentenced to death!

Flaubert's tale does not follow Don Vincente's story exactly. Some of the alterations he introduces create a very different sort of character of his protagonist. Giacomo, the former monk, was not a librarian. Indeed, he can barely read. His obsession is for books as objects: "He loved a book because it was a book; he loved its odour, its form, its title". His desire for the unique book is "to have it for himself, to be able to show to all Spain, with a smile of insult and pity for the King, for the princes, for the savants, for Baptisto, and say: 'Mine, this book is mine!' and to hold it in his two hands all his life, to fondle it as he touches it, to take in all its fragrance as he smells it!"

There is a twist at the end of Giacomo's trial that shows how far a man may go to ensure that he and he alone owns a book.

The Rodale Press edition has suitably spooky illustrations by Arthur Wragge (one accompanies this review). Unfortunately, the translator is not identified.

The Newberry Library Book Fair

2009-07-26T16:09:00.013-05:00

It was a beautiful day today. The sun was shining, the temperature was, well, temperate, neither too hot nor too chilly. It was the sort of day when one should be outside playing. But, for many, including myself, the joys of perfect summer weather had to give way to the joys of the final, half-price, day of the annual Newberry Library Book Fair.

I fortified myself with a good breakfast, put a few cloth bags and a shopping cart in the car, along with the printed catalog of my collection (in order to avoid the danger of buying a book I already own, a happenstance that is not unknown!), and headed to the north side to join the line of anxious bibliophiles waiting for the doors to open. Now, it's not really necessary to get there 45 minutes before the start, but there is something rather cozy about hanging out in front of the Library with other readers, exchanging stories of great finds, commiserating with one another on the lack of bookshelf space, discussing the best strategies for book hunting, etc.

As is my custom, I headed first to Room 3, where one finds collectible books, as well as art, architecture, photography, Chicagoana and cookbooks. I made quite a haul there, with one book accounting for nearly one-third of what I bought in that room (you pay for books in that room separately).

54. It is Parodies on Walt Whitman, edited by Christopher Morley, and I found it as I was getting ready to check out. I picked it up, and started laughing right then and there! Some rather well-known names have pieces in this volume, including G.K. Chesterton and Ezra Pound. Quite a number are from British and British Commonwealth authors and journals such as Punch, which leads to poems about Oxford and punting and dons, and things like:

SONGS FOR THE CIVIL SERVICE

1. "To the Leaden Leaves they Turned"

Behold I am not one that troubles the Permanent Head or the
Minister.
The regulations never apologize, neither do I apologize:
I find letters dropped on my desk and each one minuted by the
Chief Clerk,
And I leave them alone, knowing that if I do others will come and
go forever.
When the proofs and the figures were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams to add, divide, and
assemble them,
How soon unaccountably I became sick.
Behold I am one that goes out for a walk and smokes.
(etc.)

There are parodies that capture Whitman's homoeroticism, poems about opera and cricket and Joseph Smith and the Spanish-American War. Israel Zangwill is represented by A Song of Advertisements and John Reed (of Ten Days that Shook the World) has

THE TENEMENT CLOTHES LINE

Wash! Flung to the four winds of Manhatta,
I, Walt Whitman, see this.
The simple, democratic wash of my camerados ---
Italianos, Muscovites, and even Americanos ---
Undershirts, underdrawers, kimonos, socks, bedclothes, pajamas;
PInk, red, green, of various tints, shades and colors;
Some with holes in them, some without holes in them;
Tattered, faded, patched, the Female's equally with the Male's I sing.

This is one funny book.

Okay, I got a bit carried away there! I meant to just list what I bought, but I couldn't resist telling more about that one.

I also found:

Jammin' at the Margins: jazz and the American cinema, by Krin Gabbard

The Journal of Major George Washington: An Account of His First Official Mission, Made as Emissary from the Governor of Virginia to the Commandant of the French Forces on the Ohio, Oct. 1753-Jan. 1754 (a facsimile)

The complete guide to Boston's Freedom Trail, which will come in handy on my trip there in August

Venice Botteghe: Antiques, Bijouterie, Coffee, Cakes, Carpet, Glass... A Handbook for the Self-Assured Shopper, which I hope will come in handy in the not-too-distant future!

Iain Pears' The Titian Committee

Shylock: a Legend and its Legacy

Fay Weldon's Letters to Alice on first reading Jane Austen

Reading Zen in the Rocks: the Japanese dry landscape garden

Talking Mysteries: conversations with Tony Hillerman (which includes a Jim Chee short story)

Unlawful Occasions, a Henry Cecil book that I don't already have!

Boccacio's The Elegy of Lady Fiammetta

The Story of Kormak, translated by William Morris and published by the William Morris Society, with plates of Morris' manuscript

The Narrowing Stream, by John Mortimer

Lincoln esteemed Washington, a collection of Lincoln's known references to the first President, by Edmond Meany

Women Chefs: a collection of portraits and recipes from California's culinary pioneers (including my sister!)

Smart collecting : acquisitions 1990-2004 : celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of the David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago (this is one of my favorite local museums)

The delightfully illustrated The zoo of Zeus: a handbook of mythological beasts and creatures, by Bernarda Bryson

John Betjeman's Ghastly Good Taste

Disbound and Dispersed: the Leaf Book considered, by Christopher de Hamel. This was a marvelous exhibition, and I was sad that I could not afford the exhibition catalogue. I could today!

Bella Chagall's First Encounter. This includes Burning Lights, which I already have, but has additional material.

Cynthia Saltzman's Portrait of Dr. Gachet: the story of a Van Gogh masterpiece

Culinary Herbs and Condiments, by Maud Grieve

The Art of the Cocktail: 100 classic cocktail recipes (which has gorgeous color photographs)

and last, but certainly not least, "Dear Julia--"; letters from Martha Freeman Esmond to her friend Julia Boyd, of New York, in the days--"When Chicago was young"

I also picked up a couple of books for my sisters: Zydeco, by Ben Sandmel with photographs by Rick Olivier, and Great Buildings of San Francisco: a Photographic Guide, by Robert C. Bernhardi. Both excellent books which I wouldn't mind having myself, should either turn out to be already owned by the intended recipient.

A good time was had by all.

Permissions: A Survival Guide: Blunt Talk about Art as Intellectual Property

2009-07-21T21:26:00.007-05:00

53. Permissions: A Survival Guide: Blunt Talk about Art as Intellectual Property, by Susan M. Bielstein

Susan Bielstein is the executive editor for art, architecture, classical studies, and film at the University of Chicago Press. In that capacity, she has dealt with the vexed and complex question of how intellectual property law applies to the visual arts, in the context of the use of images to illustrate academic texts.

Now, it would not be unreasonable for you to think that this is a subject that only lawyers could love, but you would be wrong. In Bielstein's capable hands, it is a fascinating and, at times, even humorous subject. The distinctions between copyright permission and use permission, the way practicalities (the need for a reproducible image, the desire to avoid offending an institution with which one may have to deal in the future) affect whether and how one requests permission, the intricacies of determining what is in copyright, these are the stuff from which she has created a volume that is of great practical use to the author, editor and publisher.

But the non-professional will also find it of interest. How does the ease with which technology allows reproduction of images affect these issues? What is the interplay between property rights and personalty rights and privacy? What effect does the institutional claim of copyright over images that are likely public domain have on future use? These are questions the answers to which concern us all, because they will have an impact on the availability of information. An example from my own recent reading comes to mind. I had read a non-fiction book about a Caravaggio painting, and commented negatively on the absence of images. How, I wondered, was it possible to write a book about a piece of art without showing us that art? I think now that it is quite likely that permission to use images of the work was denied. If that is the case, then I can say without hesitation that the book was much the poorer for it. Why an institution would deny such permission (or make the cost prohibitive) is, frankly, beyond me.

To make her points, Bielstein has included with every image information regarding not merely the copyright, but whether and how much of a fee was requested, how the image was obtained (JPEG, transparency, etc.), and sometimes lengthy explications of the image's status.

As she says, "Welcome to the Fun House."

Giovanni and Lusanna: Love and Marriage in Renaissance Florence

2009-07-21T19:56:00.007-05:00

52. Giovanni and Lusanna: Love and Marriage in Renaissance Florence, by Gene Brucker

In 1455, in Florence, Lusanna di Benedetto, a widow of the artisanal class, brought suit against the noble, Giovanni della Casa, attempting to prove that he had secretly married her, and that, therefore, his publicly celebrated marriage to another was bigamous.

Professor Brucker has taken the simple records of this lawsuit and has used them as the framework for a short, but information-packed, account of Florentine society in the 14th-century. This story of a woman who challenged class and hierarchy in order to protect her reputation and prove the legitimacy of her marriage has a great deal to teach us about the legal process of the time, the interplay and tension between civil and church authority, the relationship between social classes, gender norms, and, of course, marriage laws and customs. This book shows Brucker as not only a scholar, but a story-teller, one who can turn the dry papers of the law courts into a fascinating human narrative. In particular, he brings Lusanna and Giovanni to life. We can almost feel what they felt, and understand how their upbringing, social positions and expectations brought them, first, together, and then into conflict. I was, frankly, surprised to find how much I had learned from a book of slightly over 100 pages!

As one who believes that one of the great disadvantages of closed stacks and internet search engines is the minimized opportunity for digression and serendipitous finds, I was delighted to read that this book was the result of Professor Brucker's fascination with a story that he came across while doing research into another matter at the Florentine State Archives. Indeed, he temporarily abandoned that research to concentrate on this story. A man after my own heart!

The Last Trials of Clarence Darrow

2009-07-19T12:07:00.009-05:00

51. The Last Trials of Clarence Darrow, by Donald McRae

If you are going to write a biography of someone who has been the subject of as many books as Clarence Darrow has, it's not enough to write well. You'd better have something new to say. Unfortunately, McRae, while a decent enough writer for the most part, does nothing to add to our knowledge or understanding of Darrow.

For many years, Darrow carried on an extramarital relationship with journalist Mary Field Parton. He was clearly the love of her life (despite her marriage to Lemuel Parton); whether she was the love of his is not, I think, as clear as McRae suggests. McRae has taken this relationship, using Parton's diaries, letters between Darrow and Parton, as well as writings and interviews with Parton's daughter, Margaret, and has set it as a framing device for his description of three of Darrow's most famous cases, cases that came towards the end of his legal career.

The difficulty is that those cases (the Leopold-Loeb sentencing hearing, the Scopes trial and the murder trial of Ossian Sweet and his co-defendants) have been written about at great length. Here's one bibliography regarding Scopes, and this was compiled more than ten years ago! And the same source on Leopold and Loeb. Although writings about the Sweet case are not as extensive, they are readily available.

If the Parton connection had any relevance to, or effect on, Darrow's participation in, or conduct of, these cases, then the device would work. But, if she did, it is not apparent from McRae's book. For the most part, he simply quotes her diaries or her daughter's writing as to what she was feeling at the time of the events, or engages in speculation as to her or Darrow's reactions. Further, he takes Mary and her daughter (who was quite young at the time of these events) at face value, without seeming to take into account their biases. Should we really assume that Mary is correct in her assessment of Darrow's wife, Ruby, and his satisfaction or lack thereof in his marriage, when she wanted to be married to him herself? People are not generally objective about their rivals in love!

I have the sense that McRae thought there'd be a book in Darrow's relationship with Parton, but found that there simply wasn't sufficient source material to write a full-length book. So he used it as padding. This would have been far better off as an article in a periodical such as The New Yorker.

Finally, I am tired of non-fiction writers who really want to be novelists. Non-fiction is about fact. It is not about pretentious, overblown invention. The opening paragraph of the book gives a broad hint of problems to come. I have to quote that paragraph in full, with my comments, so you'll see what I mean:

"Darkness spread slowly across a city in tumult. It seeped through the burnt orange and faded [is that a verb or an adjective?] red streaks of a sky that softened the stone buildings towering over her [Who is "her"? The "darkness"? The "city"?] Alone in the Loop on a summer evening [well, that's arrant nonsense to anyone who knows the Loop!], Mary Field Parton picked her way through the teeming streets, slipping quietly past the blurred faces and babbling voices. [Wait! What happened to "Alone in the Loop . . . ?"] And the farther she walked the more she lowered her gaze, as if willing herself to become invisible. The dusk framed her own trepidation [huh?] as she went to meet the man she had loved so long."

Writing like this is guaranteed to lose me from the start.

Authors beware!

2009-07-19T12:04:00.005-05:00

I often read more than one book at a time. Recently, both books I was reading were Dreadful Warnings to Would-be Authors! Well, not really, but the protagonist of each was a writer who, in the course of trying to achieve success, encountered malevolence. While each book was actually quite different, each contained elements of fantasy or the supernatural. And each was excellent in its own way.

49. The Angel's Game, by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Anyone who loved Zafón's The Shadow of the Wind will be enthralled by this story of a young journalist who, after having made his name writing pulp fiction, is hired by a mysterious publisher to create the founding scripture of a new religion. Set in Barcelona in the 1920, the novel follows the career of David Martín as he becomes entranced by the beautiful Cristina Sagnier and ensnared by Andreas Corelli of Éditions de la Lumière.

We again find ourselves visiting the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, where Martín chooses (or is chosen by) a book called Lux Aeterna. (Odd coincidence: I reached this point in the novel just after listening to Morten Lauridsen's Lux Aeterna on the radio.) He soon learns that the author lived and worked in the house that he himself has bought, but the connections are, in fact, deeper and odder. As Martín hunts for information about that author and his strange employer, he is plunged into mystery upon mystery, and with him we haunt the dark side of Barcelona and of life.

Along with the darkness are humorous bits. When Martín ghostwrites a novel for a wealthy friend that is published at the same time as his own maiden effort under his own name, Zafón takes a jab at critics, as the former that is praised as "a mature, rich work of great quality" while the latter is dismissed as "perhaps this year's worst literary debut". Venal publishers come in for a bit of sniping, as well.

I think that it will be hard for Zafón to top Shadow of the Wind, but The Angel's Game is certainly a fine second novel.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón at International House

Zafón was recently interviewed by 57th Street Books' Tom Flynn, at the University of Chicago's International House.

Comparing The Angel's Game to The Shadow of the Wind, he describe the former as darker, and more complicated, than the latter. They are both parts of what he expects to be a four book "series". "Series" in quotes, because the order of reading is not critical. The experience of the reader will differ depending upon that order, as you combine pieces of a puzzle.

He wanted to use Barcelona as a character. In The Shadow of the Wind, the city was a stagnant, post-Civil War world, while in The Angel's Game, it is a city in turmoil, exploding with the violence of the Civil War to come. The book reflects the darker nature of the times.

In future books, says Zafón, we will learn more about the Cemetery of Lost Books. The idea for that place came to him originally in Los Angeles, a city that made him think about the destruction of memory. Driving around the county, and finding gargantuan second-hand bookstores like Long Beach's "Acres of Books", a store with corridors of books, housing a demonic cat. With the loss of such stores, we lose not just books, but ideas and a sense of identity.

On literature: many people who become writers experience literature as an ungrateful lover. LIterature tries to figure out the basic elements of life. When it works, it helps us better understand ourselves and the world.

What books made an impression on him? The world of books itself, of language, words, style. As a child he read everything. He has never trusted the labels we put on books. In his work, he is trying to communicate respect for books.

On the translations of his books: the translator, Lucia Graves, is the daughter of Robert Graves. She read his books and came to him with the idea of translating them into English, although she had never done so professionally. Reading the first pages she translated, he felt she captured the essence of the his book. They worked together - she would translate, he would review it and provide ideas. (He himself is quite fluent in English.) Says Zafón, you only notice a translation when it doesn't work.

50. The City of Dreaming Books, by Walter Moers

At Lindworm Castle in the country of Zamoria, every young dinosaur has an authorial godfather who is responsible for his literary education and training. When young Optimus Yarnspinner's godfather, Dancelot Wordwright, dies, he leaves his charge a manuscript of such surpassing genius, a piece of writing so perfectly right, that Optimus decides that he must find the author and learn from him.

And so he leaves home and heads for the city of Bookholm, a town that "reeks of old books", where the inhabitants walk with "stacks of books under their arms - indeed, many tow whole handcarts laden with reading matter". But as he begins his search for the mysterious author amid the city's five thousand antiquarian bookstores, it becomes apparent that all is not as it seems. Hidden beneath the city are labyrinthine tunnels where Bookhunters seek rare and precious tomes, and where danger lurks. Optimus finds himself trapped in this nether world, and must find his way back to the light. It is his adventures there that form the core of this delightfully exciting book, as he fends off living books (animatomes), spends time among the Booklings (each of whom has memorized the entire output of such literary geniuses as Aleisha Wimpersleake and Wamilli Swordthrow), and learns the secret of the Shadow King.

An utterly charming and amusing book, filled with literary puns. Many booklovers will appreciate the scene where, hypnotized by an odd form of music, the populace madly invades the bookstores, "sweeping books off the shelves regardless of title or author, price or condition . . . I had been smitten with an insatiable hunger for books and only one thing could cure it: buy, buy, buy!" Sounds like me at the Newberry Library Book Fair.