further response on Marginalia

Posted on March 10, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Well! Wouldn’t you know. Coincidentally… do you believe in coincidence? Maurice Blanche, mentor to Maisie Dobbs, says that coincidence is the messenger of truth… but coincidentally, my Shelf Awareness email of the day opens with the following quotation from NPR’s Andrei Codrescu:

I’m reading a new book I downloaded on my Kindle and I noticed an underlined passage. It is surely a mistake, I think. This is a new book. I don’t know about you, but I always hated underlined passages in used books…. And then I discovered that the horror doesn’t stop with the unwelcomed presence of another reader who’s defaced my new book. But it deepens with something called view popular highlights, which will tell you how many morons have underlined before so that not only you do not own the new book you paid for, the entire experience of reading is shattered by the presence of a mob that agitates inside your text like strangers in a train station.

“So now you can add to the ease of downloading an e-book the end of the illusion that it is your book. The end of the privileged relation between yourself and your book. And a certainty that you’ve been had. Not only is the e-book not yours to be with alone, it is shared at Amazon which shares with you what it knows about you reading and the readings of others. And lets you know that you are what you underline, which is only a number in a mass of popular views…. Conformism does come of age in the most private of peaceful activities–reading a book, one of the last solitary pleasures in a world full of prompts to behave. My Kindle, sugar-coated cyanide.

–Andrei Codrescu on NPR’s All Things Considered

How’s about that, hm? Rather a different take on Sam Anderson’s concept that I discussed in yesterday’s post. Just thought you might be interested. I fully sympathize with Codrescu’s feelings about having other readers’ impressions imbedded in what I’m reading: it clouds my experience. Even if I do care what another reader thinks, I want to hear about it after I’ve read the work myself, unsullied, the first time. What do YOU think about writing in books? Sometimes, never, always? Of course only in books that belong to you. Right?!

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Marginalia

Posted on March 9, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Thank you to my mother for sending me this interesting article from the New York Times Magazine. Sam Anderson riffs, “What I Really Want Is Someone Rolling Around in the Text.”

The idea is this: for Anderson, the best and defining part of reading is writing in the margins. He jots notes and underlines and otherwise marks up his texts, which enriches his reading as he goes, as well as his future readings. And he’s concerned that in an age of e-readers, his “‘marginalia’ – a self-consciously pompous Latinism intended to mock the triviality of the form” – will perish. Because you can’t write on an e-reader. Yet.

And then Anderson changes key and explores all the wonderful possibilities the e-reader offers. Surely a stylus that allows one to “write” – handwrite – in the margins of an e-reader isn’t far off (I’m not up on these things, maybe it’s already on). But Anderson theorizes about the shareability of these margin notes, and this is where he catches my imagination.

I’m not a big fan of marginalia, myself. I had an English teacher in high school – a wonderful teacher, who I loved and who taught me so much of the love of literature and the small understanding of it that I enjoy today. She taught margin notes. She took up our personal copies of books we read for class (my first experience with Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises, for example) and actually graded us on the highlighting and margin-note-taking we did. But it didn’t catch on for me. I probably did annotate a few books after being in her class; but then I stopped, and thank goodness. These days it irritates me to no end to find margin notes in a book I’m reading – even if the notes are my own! (They tend to be from high school, which may be part of my irritation.) They distract me from what I’m trying to read – the book itself. I want to hear from the author, who I assume wrote everything she or he wanted to in the text of the dern thing. Footnotes are welcome. But I’m not generally interested in some third party’s footnote, thank you very much.

But. Anderson offers me tantalizing concepts like… “reading, say, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and touching a virtual button so that — ping! — Ernest Hemingway’s marginalia instantly appears, or Ralph Ellison’s, or Mary McCarthy’s.” Wow! (Okay, maybe he did grab my interest with Hemingway; but the others are almost as tempting :).)

“Old-school marginalia was – to put it into contemporary cultural terms – a kind of slow-motion, long-form Twitter, or a statusless, meaning-soaked Facebook, or an analog, object-based G-chat. (Nevermind: it was social, is my point.)” Well put, sir. I get it now. I get the sharing of margin notes – on purpose, that is. I don’t appreciate the random margin notes of strangers left in public library books I check out, mistakenly correcting a published author’s already-correct grammar, and then being corrected again by the next library patron. I do NOT want that. But Anderson’s way is better: with an e-reader with marginalia-sharing capabilities, I could get only the notes I wanted. And when I wanted – so that I could read a text first unsullied, and then consult my friends or admired (even dead!) authors for their thoughts.

I also appreciate the larger theme that I take away from Anderson’s article, one that librarians (and booksellers, and publishers, and authors…) are discussing a lot these days. Reading and writing are changing; the e-reader format offers a great many reasons for concern – are we going to go out of business? But it also offers opportunities. I can’t begin to think of them all; luckily there’s a lot of thinking going on out there. Our challenge, as librarians, booksellers, publishers, writers, readers, consumers, is to be creative about the ways in which e-readers (and a host of technological changes) can offer us new and positive change, rather than just bemoaning what it’s costing us. So, good job Mr. Anderson, and thanks Mom. 🙂

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Teaser Tuesdays: Pardonable Lies

Posted on March 8, 2011 by pagesofjulia


Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

* Grab your current read
* Open to a random page
* Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
* BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
* Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

I finished An Incomplete Revenge last night, and enjoyed it so much! (My post will be up on Monday, in timing with the Maisie Dobbs Read-Along.) So I started right in on book #3 which I had skipped over: Pardonable Lies. I DO like my Maisie.

So today, from page 149:

Maisie left London before seven in the morning, her clothes, books, and papers packed in a small case of dark brown leather with straps across to ensure her belongings were secure. She carried her black document case and wore a gray-and-blue tweed jacket with a pale gray silk blouse, light gray woolen trousers, black shoes, and, to top off her ensemble, a dark gray hat with a broader brim than usual, a black band and a dark blue feather on the side, which was attached to the band with a deep blue stone in a sapphire cut.

You know, I said earlier in our read-along that the fashion details weren’t my cuppa because I’m pretty fashion-unconscious and all, but I’m changing my mind. I really enjoy being able to picture these details, and I really appreciate Maisie’s style; she’s simple but classy, even elegant, even if Priscilla does think she’s too plain. That’s how I see her.

I think this passage sees Maisie off on her journey back to France for the first time since the war, and I happen to have a fairly strong, foreshadowed feeling that things don’t go well for her there. But doesn’t she look smart heading off? I like the items like the black document case, and her nurse’s watch, that follow her through the series and whose histories we know. It gives a neat sense of continuity; it’s rewarding us for reading the whole series. (And here I am out of order, sigh, what else is new. I like it fine this way though.)

I am enjoying Maisie yet again! Stay tuned!

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Crossings.

Posted on March 7, 2011 by pagesofjulia

I have a few things to share with you today. They aren’t books, but you might be interested anyway.

First, last week I discovered a new-to-me concept called postcrossing. (I was alerted to this concept by write meg!. Thank you Meg.) The idea is an international exchange of postcards – yes the really actually hardcopy kind. It’s not pen-pals; you don’t get from the person you give to. But you send postcards to people around the world (and you get a short bio from them so you have something to write about, if you’re having trouble with that part), and then you get them, too! I really like the idea. It means you get snail mail that is pretty, personal, and not bills or catalogs. So, I signed up immediately upon reading Meg’s post and clicking the link; I’m in! And then I sent my first 5 postcards, to Germany, Austria, Ukraine, Taiwan, and Russia. BUT. I didn’t use enough postage, and I didn’t put my return address, either. So guess what? At lunchtime today I’m going to go buy some international postcard stamps and start again :-/ Ah well. I’m still in! And I’m going to get postcards!

So how funny and coincidental that right after discovering postcrossings, I came across a similar project. (Now that I am trying to retrace my steps, I have NO IDEA how I got there. Sorry.) BookCrossing works a lot like postcrossing does: you register and get a unique identifier code for your postcard or book. This allows the postcard or book to be tracked – so if it’s a postcard, you get credit for having sent it, and you get more postcards coming to you. If it’s a book, you can see where its travels take it – if its recipients are logging it on the website, that is. This is much less likely with BookCrossing, it seems to me, because you can just leave books around, wherever, or hand them to random people, who may or may not care to get online and log their receipt of them. I would guess they wouldn’t, very often. Whereas, in postcrossing, the recipient of your card actively requested it, and is actively participating in the same system, whereby one only receives a card if one gets credit for sending cards; therefore I would guess everyone is fairly interested in logging them into the system. (Also, postcrossing recipients, by definition, have internet access and are comfortable with the system. This is not something we can assume when handing out books or leaving them on park benches.)

I think BookCrossing sounds like great fun, but I won’t be joining that one. Why? Several reasons. I think there are a number of similar programs online (PaperBack Swap, for instance), where people can trade and send books around. Another reason that comes to mind was discussed today over at Tales From the Reading Room: people who are not actively seeking out free things (as the postcrossing participants are) don’t necessarily place a high value on them. I think litlove (the above blogger) is right on target when she points out that “free often means without value,” or at least is perceived that way.

But mostly, I guess, I won’t be BookCrossing because it’s sort of what I do for a living, which is a beautiful reason not to play, really. In the hospital where I work, I run a small library that distributes reading materials. We have a nice collection of hardback books that we purchase new, catalog, and circulate just like your local public library; and just like a PL, we want them back and will ask you to pay for them if lost. But we also have a large collection of paperback books, donated by the boxful every day, that freely roam the hospital and beyond. These books are very much playing the BookCrossing game (minus the tracking), and they make a huge difference to our patients, caregivers, visitors, and staff and faculty. It means that there’s always an abundance of free and various reading materials randomly distributed in our little world, and that’s a beautiful thing.

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Midweek Miscellany & hemingWay of the Day: on Spanish whisky

Posted on March 2, 2011 by pagesofjulia

I have a sprinkling of things to share with you today.

One. I have updated my blogroll (look right–> and down some) to include all the blogs that I (try to) visit every day. And you will see ABOVE the blogroll, a short list of My Very Favorites. Check ’em out.

Two. I have a very favorite blog post of the day to share with you, too: it’s a review of a book called To Bed With Grand Music by Marghanita Laski and you can find this delightful post here. I am super intrigued by the idea of this book, and it’s completely due to the discussion of it by the Book Snob, so thank you Book Snob! This one goes on the list. Check that out, too.

Three. I am still reading By-Line: Ernest Hemingway, and still loving every minute of it. I may have to put it down at some point to pick up An Incomplete Revenge, the next Maisie book. But fortunately, as a collection of short pieces, By-Line is a pretty good book to put down and pick back up. I should also confess to now being in the middle of no fewer than five books. Hm. (The others are Whatever You Say I Am by Anthony Bozza; The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien; Dust by Martha Grimes; and The Club Dumas by Arturo Perez-Reverte. Eclectic, a bit.)

Four. Now for my daily quotation out of By-Line.

Beer is scarce and whisky is almost unobtainable. Store windows are full of Spanish imitations of all cordials, whiskies and vermouths. These are not recommended for internal use, although I am employing something called Milords Ecosses Whisky on my face after shaving. It smarts a little, but I feel very hygenic. I believe it would be possible to cure athlete’s foot with it, but one must by very careful not to spill it on one’s clothes because it eats wool.

(from Hemingway’s dispatch on Sept. 30, 1937 from Madrid, in covering the Spanish Civil War. incidentally the subject of perhaps my most favorite novel ever, For Whom the Bell Tolls, for which Hem pretty obviously collected his material during the very time when this dispatch was written.)

Does this make you laugh? It does me. I’m having a good day of laughing while I read; I usually laugh at the posts of Useless Beauty, books i done read, TERRIBLEMINDS, and Hyperbole and a Half, too. It’s a good day when you laugh out loud while reading.

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Hemingway’s recommended reading

Posted on March 1, 2011 by pagesofjulia

In reading By-Line: Ernest Hemingway, I have been struck several times over, now, by his graciously recommending books that I should be reading. I have compiled them here for you in case you are as interested as I am:

Anna Karenina, Tolstoy
Far Away and Long Ago, W.H. Hudson
Buddenbrooks, Thomas Mann
Wuthering Heights, Bronte
Madame Bovary, Flaubert
War and Peace, Tolstoy
A Sportsman’s Sketches, Turgenev
The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky
Hail and Farewell, George Moore
Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
Winesburg, Ohio, Sherwood Anderson
La Reine Margot, Dumas
La Maison Tellier, De Maupassant
Le Rouge et le Noir, Stendhal
La Chartreuse de Parme, Stendhal
Dubliners, James Joyce
Yeats’s Autobiographies
Midshipman Easy, Marryat
Frank Mildmay, Marryat
Peter Simple, Marryat
L’Education Sentimentale, Flaubert
Portrait of the Artist, James Joyce
Ulysses, James Joyce
Tom Jones, Henry Fielding
Joseph Andrews, Henry Fielding
The Open Boat, Stephen Crane
The Blue Hotel, Stephen Crane

…as well as “all the good De Maupassant, all the good Kipling, all of Turgenev… Henry James’s short stories, especially Madame de Mauves, and The Turn of the Screw, The Portrait of a Lady, The American -” here he is interrupted by the young writer to whom he has been dictating. (The young man says he can’t possibly write all these down, and Hemingway promises to give him more the next day; “there are about three times that many.”)

The list I’ve compiled here for you comes from two different articles. In the first, he’s basically discussing boredom, not having the opportunity to hunt or fish, and having already read for the first time all “the best of the books”; he says he “would rather read again for the first time [these books] and a few others than have an assured income of a million dollars a year.” In the second story, Hemingway portrays himself as pestered by a young struggling writer who has traveled to Key West to beg for his advice and help. Hemingway employs the young man and is tortured (it would seem) by having these advice-giving sessions, in one of which he gives a slightly different list of books that it is “necessary” a writer have read. I have bolded for you the ones that appear in both of his lists.

So how do we feel about this? Well, first of all I feel shamed, because I have read exactly THREE of these books. Dear, dear! I’m not exquisitely well-read but I generally feel I’m above-average. (Don’t ask me what the average is, that’s a whole new subject. I am especially above it if the “average” is those kids on Jersey Shore. They write books too, you know.) I have read Wuthering Heights, Madame Bovary, and of course The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, all three of which I absolutely agree are outstanding and timeless books. So do I need to follow Hemingway’s advice? Well, as I’ve said before, I consider myself awfully a fan of his. I am inclined to want to read the books he considered “best” and “necessary.” These generally sound like solid pillars of a person’s education who wants to call herself well-read. I shall put them on The List but you know how that goes. The List is pages and pages long.

What about you? What do you think? Are you inclined to take advice from Papa? (Perhaps you despise Papa. Some people do. It’s allowed.) Or what about your favorite author – would you feel strongly about reading the books he or she described as “best” and “necessary”? How about the fact that there is only one book on his list by a woman? How bothered are you by this? I’d love to hear your feelings! Thanks and have a happy Tuesday!

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back from the weekend, with very little reading, just a touch of Hemingway.

Posted on February 28, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Hello friends. Thanks for bearing with me. Life is busy. I have this job, see. And I’m taking this class in Database Searching which is fab but takes up time. And I’m trying to be back on this bike and train for the Ouachita Challenge, and we took that vacation, and, and. Thanks for bearing with me.

I had a great weekend, very productive. On Saturday I got to ride bikes with the Husband who made it home from Newark earlier than expected; we planted a tree and did some yard stuff; my mother brought us a beautiful quilt she made for us; and I finally photographed for you of a beautiful set of bookshelves the Husband made (several weeks ago now). Pictures:

Mother and Husband with swamp cypress oak and whimsical wheelbarrow herb garden


whimsical wheelbarrow herb garden with dragonfly


Encyclopaedia Britannica bookshelves, courtesy of Husband (please ignore electronic mess)


close-up Encyclopaedia Britannica shelves


beautiful "union" t-shirt quilt courtesy of Mother


This is an elaborate, beautifully crafted quilt made up of (cycling) event t-shirts belonging to the Husband and myself. It is our wedding gift (we will soon be married 3 years, this is not a fast process) from my Mother and it’s a “union” quilt because it symbolizes our union, combining our two histories of bicycle racing as it does. It’s so lovely, we don’t know what to do with the little dogs who like to muss up bedcoverings.

close-up of quilt: notice Chihuahuan Desert Challenge (earlier incarnation of the trip we just took to Big Bend) and above, the Warda Race (earlier incarnation of the race I did yesterday)

Aren’t I a lucky girl? And that was Saturday.

Yesterday – Sunday – I headed out to race Bikesport Presents the Warda Race. Without boring you too much (hopefully), I will say that I have gotten fat & out of shape while being off the bike for an unexpectedly long time this past fall & winter, and I knew this race would be a rude awakening. So, I did the reasonable thing and signed up for not the Category 2 Men, not the Category 1 Women, but the Pro Women’s race. This got me an extra lap of pain and suffering and embarrassment in my currently-undersized spandex. It went as expected. But, this kind of pain and suffering is going to get me back on track. I’m now less than 5 weeks away from the Ouachita Challenge, so it’s time to get to work.

This busy, productive, and happy weekend did not leave time for much reading. I don’t think I did any reading, in fact. So today I’m back on By-Line: Ernest Hemingway, and very happy to be. I shall make a few bookish remarks so this blog doesn’t seem too much a sham, ok?

I really enjoy reading Hemingway’s short articles and dispatches. I can’t believe it took me this long to pick up on this little pleasure. I have always loved him and have devoured all his novels, several of his nonfiction works (and I think you really have to love Hemingway to get through Death in the Afternoon – or bull-fighting, perhaps – but I actually did enjoy it), and I THINK I’ve read all his short stories – I’ve got a collection of collections. But somehow this collection of his journalism has eluded me til now.

These are short pieces of writing, covering his international travels, war and international politics, fishing, hunting, and general lifestyle. It seems that then, as now, this man’s life was of some interest; he had outrageous adventures (how much he’s elaborated or exaggerated them, would be a subject for another post) and saw outrageous sights. Hemingway’s fiction was heavily based on fact, and I fear his journalism might be tinged with fiction, especially where the Exploits of Papa are concerned. This is one of the mysteries and controversies of Hemingway. It may not be a popular feminist position to take, but I adore Hemingway for his work, even if he wasn’t a savory character – let alone a good husband. To any of his wives.

I was contemplating today, as I read some hunting-and-fishing stories he wrote for Esquire, that one of the Hemingway’s most beautiful and rare talents, is that he makes me care about things I don’t care about. I don’t care for hunting or fishing. These activities are not interesting to me; and in some cases I find hunting downright distasteful. But when Hemingway describes the way a fish, or a bird, moves, or the battle between the fisherman and his prey a la The Old Man and the Sea, or when he describes the experience of the bottle of icy cold white wine he’s had stuck down in the cold trout stream all day – I can taste the wine, and I care about the fish. He makes me taste and feel things very vibrantly, even things I’ve never experienced. He’s a very visceral writer.

In the same way, I’ve always said one of my favorite things about the Drive-by Truckers is their ability to make me care about things I don’t care about. For example, car racing is not interesting to me. But just about every time I hear a recording of them playing Daddy’s Cup (and I’ve heard it a lot), I cry. Take a moment and listen, yourself. (The video portion of this video is just filler. You’re there for the audio. Close your eyes.)

I’ve even sent the Husband (who does care about fishing) a short article by Hemingway to read, and the Husband, who doesn’t read, did enjoy it. The Husband prefers to DO things rather than sit around and read about them (we don’t watch movies, because two hours is too long to sit down – I love that he’s a do-er), but perhaps he can appreciate that Hemingway makes his reader feel the action, the doing of it.

I may be moving slowly these days, but a nice compilation like this, of short stories, or newspaper articles, or what have you, is just the thing for a part-time reader. Thanks for bearing with me and my busy life, and have a happy Monday!

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Messenger of Truth, by Jacqueline Winspear

Posted on February 28, 2011 by pagesofjulia

So. As I discovered earlier, I read this book out of order. Somehow I thought I was on book 3 and this turns out to be book 4 and although I do have book 3, Pardonable Lies, I haven’t yet started it.

Even so, Messenger of Truth was my favorite Maisie book yet. She got more human, more multi-faceted, in my opinion. She was tempted by friendship with Georgiana; that speaks of human weakness. She gets lonely. This has been one of my complaints about Maisie, that she lacks this human quality, so for me this developed her. We can see she’s still not ready for a romantic relationship, though. At least she’s now struggling with the question of it.

On the other hand, I’m also still enjoying the macro view of the world, if you will. Maisie and Billy have slightly different perspectives, but both are bothered by the haves vs. have-nots issue. In past books, discussion of the war and the post-war depression have given me a similarly satisfying treatment of the larger world. I want Maisie to be a real person; but I also like it when Winspear deals with these macro issues.

Here comes the SPOILER:

I was surprised that Winspear let Lizzie die! I guess I have to respect her for going whole hog. It’s realistic that she would die, I guess.

I still find the series interesting. I still look forward to seeing what’s going to happen to Maisie. I still intend to read book 3. :-/ But… there’s still something a bit… sanitized or somehow not entirely, grittily human about this series, for me. On the other hand, I like Maisie so much that I bought THIS!

see! my new cloche!


Call me Mad for Maisie 🙂

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Booking Through Thursday

Posted on February 24, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Whew! Must say I needed this little inspiration for today’s post. It’s been a crazy busy week and I’m nowhere near ready to relax. But I found a topic that I needed to answer!

Hosted by Booking Through Thursday, this week’s question asks: All other things being equal–do you prefer used books? Or new books? (The physical speciman, that is, not the title.) Does your preference differentiate between a standard kind of used book, and a pristine, leather-bound copy?

Easy! I vastly prefer old books! Not that I want them stained, stinky, or falling apart. But I don’t need them to be new or pristine. I like books because I like the words printed inside them, and I need to be able to read the words, simple as that. I’d prefer not to have highlighting or comments in the margins (unless they’re mine – that can be interesting, to see what I noted in high school!) but I’m pretty tolerant in general. So dogeared pages or some minor damage that leaves them readable is fine with me; really it’s probably a bit better, because I have less anxiety about messing up a brand-new copy. Uncracked spines make me nervous. A copy with some history on it is comforting and comfortable. A few of my favorite, most memorable books – like Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle and Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test – I read for the first time out of battered copies older than I am that belonged to my parents. I love those copies; they’re irreplaceable.

When people shop for books for me for presents (oh boy!) I always ask them not to buy new copies, but to buy used paperbacks. For one thing, I used to commute by bicycle (sadly, those days are gone, for now at least) and carry books to and from work; the lighter and smaller for these purposes, the better. This is still true for carrying books around, of course, I just do less of it by bike. And, your money and mine both go further when buying used paperbacks than when buying new. I really think I just like the history of the actual, physical book, though.

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vacation reading: a series of short reviews

Posted on February 23, 2011 by pagesofjulia

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. Still a good story! Spooky and short, it’s a bit reminiscent of Poe. Action-packed and efficient. I would not have sworn I had read this before, but now I recognize that I have. What a classic. I highly recommend this as a bang-for-the buck, action-packed, early sci-fi spookster with a bit of meditation on the human condition. Not sure if I should count this for the Classics Challenge as its a re-read. :-/

Worth Dying For by Lee Child. (audiobook) Surprisingly good as audio. I wasn’t sure. I’m such a BOOK purist that audio doesn’t always work for me; but it can’t be argued with on a road trip. Part of what made it special, too, is that I got to share it with the Husband, who doesn’t normally read. He got really into it, and we shared this suspenseful adventure together. That’s priceless.

Classic Jack Reacher! He’s such a Rambo. It’s a bit comical in the over-the-top violence and general bad-ass-ness, but I eat it up. It’s great fun. We both enjoy the slight absurdity of it, while also appreciating that we can count on this guy to get it right. And I finally begin to understand, at least a little bit, what was so frustratingly up-in-the-air at the end of 61 Hours. This may be my favorite Reacher novel yet.

The Ballad of Typhoid Mary by J.F. Federspiel. Opening quotation: “Life is strange and the world is bad.” (Thomas Wolfe) This sets the tone.

This is another creepy story. It’s historical fiction, and I have made a note in large letters to read up on the concept of Typhoid Mary and how much we know about her in the real world. She was a carrier of typhoid fever: she never got sick herself, but she made people around her sick, to the tune of several hundred at least. She was a cook, passionate about cooking for people, despite seeming to understand that she was killing them. She wasn’t a serial killer; she didn’t do it on purpose; she just didn’t let it stop her. What can we expect, in an age with poor understanding of hygiene and the spreading of disease, of a poor, uneducated, abused & orphaned young woman with no opportunities who suspects she might, in some way, be responsible for all these deaths around her? This was a fascinating read, and another very short one, too.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks.This is a collection of case studies, or short stories, or essays, by a neurologist who also fancies himself a philosopher with literary leanings. It was quite attention-grabbing, and I had to keep putting it down to tell the Husband stories. Reading about brain injuries or anomalies of the brain is infinitely more interesting to me since I had my bad wreck and experienced some brain injury and healing of my own. The most interesting thing about a number of these cases is that these patients often don’t realize that anything is wrong!

Sacks’s approach is to contemplate the relationship between mind, body, and soul, which perhaps too few of our hard scientists do. It still ended up a bit on the hard-science side for me, perhaps; he made a number of references (unexplained) to other hard scientists, which made it a bit less accessible to us laypersons. But I loved the stories, the concepts, possibilities, complexities of the human mind.

In the Woods by Tana French. I’ve been hankering for more of Tana French since reading Faithful Place. I really fell for that Frank Mackey! This one opens with immediately recognizable poetry-in-prose, stark, gritty, and strongly Irish. Then I was disappointed to recognize a familiar story: grown male detective forced to confront unsolved childhood trauma of missing friend(s). Argh! But I guess why mess with a good thing…

Oh man. I stayed up nearly all night to finish this book. (and this, in a place where I LIKE to get up to watch the sun rise!) Same story my head; it did have its plot similarities but it was so gripping and spooky, like a ghost story, except even spookier because there was nothing supernatural at all, just creepily realistic human nature. I can’t wait to get the next book!

Side note: the beautiful, tragic, doomed, perfect friendship reminded me somewhat of One Day by David Nicholls, which had an entirely different tone to it.

Echo Park by Michael Connelly. (audiobook)Another highly enjoy audiobook! This one unabridged, thank goodness. (I realized AFTER we listened to Worth Dying For that it was abridged, and now have to go back and read the book.) Connelly, for all that he’s sort of stark and black-and-white, also strikes me as a poet; I love that Bosch “educates” his ice with vodka. That’s unique! I’ve read this book before, but it’s been long enough that I still enjoyed the mystery. I like all the background or frame elements in Connelly, like the jazz (and I like that the Library of Congress, and some clever librarian there, make an appearance in relation to the jazz), and the audio format took advantage and gave us a few jazz riffs in the background here and there, which was a nice touch. I hadn’t really thought about using music on on audiobook, and actually, there were some other snippets of music added that I didn’t think worked so well; but jazz behind Connelly is a strong choice.

Whatever You Say I Am (the life and times of Eminem) by Anthony Bozza.I put this in the same category as the Hefner biography, actually. These are some highly controversial men, offensive to many if not to all, who have impacted our world; without making a value judgment, I can say I find them interesting to read about. My feelings about Eminem are complicated, just like with Hefner. (I was talking with my Pops the other night along these lines and we put Reagan in the same category but that’s a whole new can of worms.) I haven’t finished this book, am less than halfway through, but I can say I really enjoy the way Bozza puts his reader fully into a time and place. For example, to help place us in the year in which Eminem was working to release his first album, he gives us a full rundown of the musical hits and award winners of the year in various categories, as well as what movies and television were hot. Now, I’m not generally all that up to date on pop culture, but this worked for me; it really evoked a time in my life. I think that works for all of us, because isn’t sound or music second only to smell as a mnemonic? Doesn’t hearing a particular song take to you a time and place? At any rate, I’m enjoying this biographical study of a controversial figure.

And finally, By-Line: Ernest Hemingway. As I’ve said, I’m enjoying reading Hemingway’s usual tone and style, that I know so well, used in journalism. I hadn’t read any of his journalism before. I guess the nonfiction I’ve read would be Death in the Afternoon and A Moveable Feast, and then all that fiction that’s so heavily autobiographical. Any Hemingway I can get, I like.

I’ll keep you up to date on the books I still have to finish; and I have a few Maisie books waiting for me. I might finally be caught up!

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