Actually not so much. Life continues to be really good, thankfully.
The Bean just turned 11. She got a new bicycle, and pre-ordered the next Rick Riordan book. It comes out on October 8; she'll have read it a half dozen times by Halloween.
The Peanut, earlier this month, realized that 1) it is, in fact, August, and 2) September is next. She did a little fist pump/victory dance thing in the kitchen. That is how psyched she is to start fourth grade.
This morning, I asked them to finish up their "Dig Into Reading" logs for the public library so that I could turn them in for them when I went down there later. (The logs are due today, if you want to participate in the ice cream social/puppet show event that marks the end of the summer reading program). The Bean handed me a log with attachments, saying that she only wrote down books that she actually liked or would recommend. She is a reading machine.
The Peanut has been reading a lot, as well. They are both enthusiastic readers. It's the accounting for it that trips the Peanut up, a bit. She doesn't like to have to keep track of these things. Tell her to read a book, and she's happily absorbed for hours. Tell her to write down what she read and for how long, and she can't find a piece of paper, or didn't look at the clock, or doesn't remember the author. You see how it goes. Anyway she sat at the kitchen table, pencil in hand, trying to come up with a list of things read that's respectable enough to turn in to the library.
She wanted to know if the subtitles from the part of that X-Men movie* where the evil guy is in Russia might count as summer reading? "Probably not, but I did read them, Mommy."
Can't argue that.
Evidently our vacation has been more cinematic
than literary. We watched all the X-Men movies. And for the record, there are also
subtitles in part of Star Wars.**
She also wrote down that every week she reads all the police reports in the local newspaper. Our recent favorite is one in which a man walked into the police station early on a Saturday morning to report that someone had stolen his pants the night before. Said pants were later discovered in the bathroom of the man's house.
It's cool, living in a town where so much of the crime is imaginary. It's also frequently the best part of the newspaper.
So that's been our summer. We've swum at the lake, played with friends, done Camp Invention and archery camp and summer basketball and generally whatever else we felt like doing.
Mr. Sandy has been working flat-out on a very exciting scientific proposal. He surfaces for meals, and to oversee plumbers and such. Someday, our addition will be done. Someday.
Me? I tried stand-up paddle-boarding for the first time, which was really fun. I sprained my ankle playing backyard badminton, which was really not. I've been writing professionally a wee bit, which is excellent. I need a new computer, which is not. All is well, on balance.
Still a few weeks' worth of fun to fit in before school starts. I wonder if there are any subtitles in the Batman movies?
*X-Men: First Class
** It's the part where Greedo the bounty hunter finds Solo in the cantina in Mos Eisley. But you knew that, right?
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Saturday, August 10, 2013
Sunday, March 04, 2012
I am the Lorax. I speak for... well, Universal Studios, I guess.
I'm going to be a wet blanket on this one. I don't think a movie should have been made of Dr. Seuss's book, The Lorax. Remember the Lorax? Who "speaks for the trees, which you seem to be chopping as fast as you please"? The folks responsible for Despicable Me made a movie of it.
That is, they churned out an uninspired, bland, predictable story to justify charging people to see a movie-length CGI production featuring some elements of the original. They call it "Dr. Seuss's" The Lorax, but it isn't really. It's hard to imagine that Dr. Seuss would've been down with the idea of Lorax-based merchandising.
I was planning to refuse to see it out of principle; then the Peanut was invited to a Lorax birthday party, so as long as she was going to see it, the Bean wanted to, and I was kind of stuck.
So here's what it is. Thneedville is a walled community without trees, where fresh air is supplied by a corporation run by an evil little man and his thugs. Nobody minds. Our hero is a kid who loves a girl who paints pictures of trees on her house and dreams of seeing a real one. To win her affection, he goes off to find her a tree, and locates the Once-ler, who in intermittent flashbacks tells the story of what happened to them.
It's boring. They made The Lorax boring. There's very little of the original text in the script, and a lot of nothing added to fill time. Betty White (voicing the hero kid's Grandma) and Danny DeVito (voicing the title role), Zac Efron and Taylor Swift, cool as they are, didn't wow me.
Adding to the wretchedness: it has songs. The young Once-ler carries around an electric guitar, and now this is a musical.
They took The Lorax, stripped it of its simplicity, wisdom, and wit, added flat, stock characters and music not worthy of a good advertisement, threw in some obligatory cute animal bits, and spat it back out at a public ready to open their wallets. Universal Studios hasn't missed a trick - the movie contains several sequences that will make great rides in their theme parks.
Remember the villain played by Ken Jeong in Furry Vengeance? Basically the same villain here. Remember Alvin and the Chipmunks? Add fins, and you got yourself some Humming-Fish. Thneedville with its bottled air is not unlike the spaceship carrying everyone around in Wall-E. I don't think there's an original angle in this whole film.
If you see it, you won't have a horrible time. It's not actively unpleasant (except for the singing, gah!). You might even like it. My problem comes from setting the bar too high -- from believing that anyone who really read and understood this story, with its message about conservation and corporate greed, would never turn it into something as vapid and forgettable as this, let alone stamp Loraxes on stuff and go "biggering and biggering and biggering and biggering." In an arrangement that busts the irony meter into tiny outraged splinters, this Lorax is now being used to sell cars. I am the Lorax! I speak for the Mazdas!
It's the height of cynicism to have done this, and I hope it's a colossal failure.
That is, they churned out an uninspired, bland, predictable story to justify charging people to see a movie-length CGI production featuring some elements of the original. They call it "Dr. Seuss's" The Lorax, but it isn't really. It's hard to imagine that Dr. Seuss would've been down with the idea of Lorax-based merchandising.
 |
| the original |
So here's what it is. Thneedville is a walled community without trees, where fresh air is supplied by a corporation run by an evil little man and his thugs. Nobody minds. Our hero is a kid who loves a girl who paints pictures of trees on her house and dreams of seeing a real one. To win her affection, he goes off to find her a tree, and locates the Once-ler, who in intermittent flashbacks tells the story of what happened to them.
It's boring. They made The Lorax boring. There's very little of the original text in the script, and a lot of nothing added to fill time. Betty White (voicing the hero kid's Grandma) and Danny DeVito (voicing the title role), Zac Efron and Taylor Swift, cool as they are, didn't wow me.
Adding to the wretchedness: it has songs. The young Once-ler carries around an electric guitar, and now this is a musical.
They took The Lorax, stripped it of its simplicity, wisdom, and wit, added flat, stock characters and music not worthy of a good advertisement, threw in some obligatory cute animal bits, and spat it back out at a public ready to open their wallets. Universal Studios hasn't missed a trick - the movie contains several sequences that will make great rides in their theme parks.
Remember the villain played by Ken Jeong in Furry Vengeance? Basically the same villain here. Remember Alvin and the Chipmunks? Add fins, and you got yourself some Humming-Fish. Thneedville with its bottled air is not unlike the spaceship carrying everyone around in Wall-E. I don't think there's an original angle in this whole film.
If you see it, you won't have a horrible time. It's not actively unpleasant (except for the singing, gah!). You might even like it. My problem comes from setting the bar too high -- from believing that anyone who really read and understood this story, with its message about conservation and corporate greed, would never turn it into something as vapid and forgettable as this, let alone stamp Loraxes on stuff and go "biggering and biggering and biggering and biggering." In an arrangement that busts the irony meter into tiny outraged splinters, this Lorax is now being used to sell cars. I am the Lorax! I speak for the Mazdas!
It's the height of cynicism to have done this, and I hope it's a colossal failure.
Friday, January 07, 2011
Yep, I still read.
I finally updated the "books on my nightstand" section of the right sidebar. Willard Randall Stearne's biography of George Washington, begone! I was so disappointed in it. After reading David McCullough's wonderful John Adams, I thought it would be cool to read biographies of all the Presidents (in order, natch), and somehow chose this one of Washington. That was over five years ago. It was a poor choice. I'm sure it's well and carefully researched, but it was boring. How can that be?! George Washington's life and times! But yeah. The writing bored me so much that it took half a decade to finish the book. So I should be on to Jefferson, next, but I'm reading Ron Chernow's Alexander Hamilton first. It's already promising. Lesson learned: don't buy these weighty books in a hurry. Ask for recommendations, and take longer test-drives at the bookstore.
I read a fair bit while we were out west. There were a lot of garden-variety weekdays with the girls in school, Mr. Sandy at work, and with inclement weather and/or too little time for a drive to the mountains or the coast. Some of those days, I headed to the library to read whatever caught my attention.
One strange rainy morning I read The Bell Jar -- Sylvia Plath's semi-autobiographical novel about a young woman's descent into mental illness, her suicide attempt, and her treatment -- in one sitting. Now I wouldn't say don't do that, exactly, but if you do, be sure you're in a resiliently good mood when you start. Particularly if you are a woman who (ahem) sometimes feels she doesn't quite belong where she is, who ever doubts her self-worth, and who is even somewhat prone to dark moods, or who has ever, ever thought of killing herself.
Fear not, I also read fluff. Jennifer Weiner's novels are always fun -- quick, witty reads and good stories. I read Best Friends Forever, about a woman whose childhood pal arrives at her doorstep desperate for her help after decades of estrangement. Wacky adventures naturally ensue. It was entertaining, but to my mind, not her best. If you're new to Jennifer Weiner, start at the beginning, with Good in Bed, a very funny novel about a humiliating break-up and Our Heroine's life afterward, or Goodnight Nobody, in which a mother of toddlers doesn't fit in at all with the perfect mommies in her new town, but becomes obsessed with solving the case when one of the perfect mommies is murdered. At some point I will get Weiner's latest, Fly Away Home. It looks to be a bit different from the others, with a more mature protagonist, and possibly without the once-fat-sensible-heroine/skinny-kooky-friend motif that is becoming just a little bit tired with BFF.
There's more, but hey. That dishwasher's not going to empty itself.
What are you reading?
I read a fair bit while we were out west. There were a lot of garden-variety weekdays with the girls in school, Mr. Sandy at work, and with inclement weather and/or too little time for a drive to the mountains or the coast. Some of those days, I headed to the library to read whatever caught my attention.
"To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is the bad dream.How, indeed. The lure of the novel is its perspective - the reader is on Esther's path with her, and when she tries to kill herself, it seems almost reasonable. Unnerving in 1963, still unnerving today.
How did I know that someday — at college, in Europe, somewhere, anywhere — the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn’t descend again?"
There's more, but hey. That dishwasher's not going to empty itself.
What are you reading?
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Yikes
I just got an email from Barnes & Noble suggesting that I get a jump on my holiday shopping, and oh by the way someone in my life might enjoy reading this:
I can kind of understand their recommendation, because I am a fan of horror fiction, and this cover made me jump. "Spoken from the heart"? The photo shows a creature who might like to remove my beating heart from my chest with her fingernails.
Seriously, does poor Mrs. Bush not look like she vants to suck your blood, here? Who on God's green Earth was her stylist, and does this stylist live above ground? Why didn't anyone SAY something - or was this the best of the options? Good grief, with friends like that, she doesn't need enemies.
But if she has any enemies, they are likely to start wearing garlic.
I can kind of understand their recommendation, because I am a fan of horror fiction, and this cover made me jump. "Spoken from the heart"? The photo shows a creature who might like to remove my beating heart from my chest with her fingernails.
Seriously, does poor Mrs. Bush not look like she vants to suck your blood, here? Who on God's green Earth was her stylist, and does this stylist live above ground? Why didn't anyone SAY something - or was this the best of the options? Good grief, with friends like that, she doesn't need enemies.
But if she has any enemies, they are likely to start wearing garlic.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Arrival
Overdue greetings from MWCUville! (To recap: Mr. Sandyshoes, on sabbatical from his home institution, is visiting a Major West Coast University for the fall semester, so we have all moved out here for a few months). It has taken some time to get used to our home-away-from home. It has taken even longer to get around to writing about it, but now the girls are in school, Mr. Sandy is at work, a routine has happily settled upon us, and Noted and Blogged is back to noting and blogging.
The house we're living in is almost a hundred years old, has three stories plus a finished basement, and is full of nooks and crannies, window seats and little closets. It's a far cry from our own 1980s, basic Cape-style box.
The owners of the house are professors with grown children. They are good-humored, thoughtful people, and I liked them immediately on my arrival last month to officially begin our tenancy. We did a quick tour of the property, me taking notes on how often to water the plants, etc. I really, really don't want to wreck the joint.
Their home is full of antique furniture, Tiffany lamps, Oriental rugs, and walls and walls and walls of bookshelves filled with all the volumes two academic lives can accrue. There are books on feminism, literature, politics, geography, language, history, sociology, poetry. Books in English, French and Arabic. Initial shelf scanning revealed nothing by Stephen King or Carl Hiaasen... maybe there is a "guilty pleasure" shelf to be discovered later. In any case it feels good to be renting from nice people who read a lot.
We wrapped up the tour in the formal living room. Over the mantle, there is a painting of domed dwellings closely gathered on a hillside beneath a burning orange sun. To either side of the painting is elegantly framed Arabic calligraphy, with intricately patterned borders in jewel tones. I haven't the foggiest idea what it says, but it's lovely to look at. The man said gently, "I am from a Muslim country, and this is Arabic writing. If it bothers you, or if you think it might offend your guests, please just set it aside and I will put it back when we return." I was embarrassed for our whole country - this is what it's come to, that he felt he should say that to make me comfortable? I could only shake my head -- of course I wouldn't take it down, it's beautiful. He then showed me some old photographs "of the oasis near the cave where I was born." "It's not every day you meet someone who was born in a cave," I said. He looked at me, smiling. "No," he replied. "Americans do not understand this."
I received the house keys, unloaded boxes from the car, and we shook hands and parted ways. They left for the airport to begin their journey across the globe. I headed north to reunite with Mr. Sandyshoes and the girls where they'd been visiting friends after their flight from Boston. Though it would be another week before we dipped our toes in the chilly Pacific and I declared my trip across the continent officially completed from ocean to ocean, the solo part now did feel complete, from house to house, from home to home-away-from-home.
The house we're living in is almost a hundred years old, has three stories plus a finished basement, and is full of nooks and crannies, window seats and little closets. It's a far cry from our own 1980s, basic Cape-style box.
The owners of the house are professors with grown children. They are good-humored, thoughtful people, and I liked them immediately on my arrival last month to officially begin our tenancy. We did a quick tour of the property, me taking notes on how often to water the plants, etc. I really, really don't want to wreck the joint.
Their home is full of antique furniture, Tiffany lamps, Oriental rugs, and walls and walls and walls of bookshelves filled with all the volumes two academic lives can accrue. There are books on feminism, literature, politics, geography, language, history, sociology, poetry. Books in English, French and Arabic. Initial shelf scanning revealed nothing by Stephen King or Carl Hiaasen... maybe there is a "guilty pleasure" shelf to be discovered later. In any case it feels good to be renting from nice people who read a lot.
We wrapped up the tour in the formal living room. Over the mantle, there is a painting of domed dwellings closely gathered on a hillside beneath a burning orange sun. To either side of the painting is elegantly framed Arabic calligraphy, with intricately patterned borders in jewel tones. I haven't the foggiest idea what it says, but it's lovely to look at. The man said gently, "I am from a Muslim country, and this is Arabic writing. If it bothers you, or if you think it might offend your guests, please just set it aside and I will put it back when we return." I was embarrassed for our whole country - this is what it's come to, that he felt he should say that to make me comfortable? I could only shake my head -- of course I wouldn't take it down, it's beautiful. He then showed me some old photographs "of the oasis near the cave where I was born." "It's not every day you meet someone who was born in a cave," I said. He looked at me, smiling. "No," he replied. "Americans do not understand this."
I received the house keys, unloaded boxes from the car, and we shook hands and parted ways. They left for the airport to begin their journey across the globe. I headed north to reunite with Mr. Sandyshoes and the girls where they'd been visiting friends after their flight from Boston. Though it would be another week before we dipped our toes in the chilly Pacific and I declared my trip across the continent officially completed from ocean to ocean, the solo part now did feel complete, from house to house, from home to home-away-from-home.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
in which I am 40-something-else
Concluding Birthday Season I in our family, I am now Even Older. (Doesn't that get on your nerves, when people who aren't remotely elderly talk about how oooollld they are? Mine too. Get off my lawn. Oh wait. OK, I'll get off my own lawn. But I'll be back on it before long, as it's about to need mowing.)
I had a lovely birthday, which started when my lovely husband made sure I was exempted from getting our lovely daughters ready for school. I was supposed to sleep in, but was wide awake at the usual time. Grrrr. He also made me a beautiful chocolate cake, and I can now say definitively that the chocolate frosting recipe on the back of the unsweetened cocoa label is much superior to the one I'd been using for years. Riveting news, I know. But chocolate frosting improvements are always cause for good cheer.
I got a fishing pole and a Nancy Drew book and a Black Eyed Peas CD (the one with the boom-boom-pow song that I can't stop singing. "Them chickens jackin' my style," and stuff!) and Season 3 of The Muppet Show. The Muppet Show makes me very happy. Also a new novel, socks with flamingos on them, and a Life Is Good t-shirt. And it is, folks, it is.
In other news you will be delighted to know that I finally finished the biography of George Washington that I've been reading on and off for FIVE YEARS now. Of which more later. My cat-herding exemption was for one morning only, so I'd better hit the hay.
I had a lovely birthday, which started when my lovely husband made sure I was exempted from getting our lovely daughters ready for school. I was supposed to sleep in, but was wide awake at the usual time. Grrrr. He also made me a beautiful chocolate cake, and I can now say definitively that the chocolate frosting recipe on the back of the unsweetened cocoa label is much superior to the one I'd been using for years. Riveting news, I know. But chocolate frosting improvements are always cause for good cheer.
I got a fishing pole and a Nancy Drew book and a Black Eyed Peas CD (the one with the boom-boom-pow song that I can't stop singing. "Them chickens jackin' my style," and stuff!) and Season 3 of The Muppet Show. The Muppet Show makes me very happy. Also a new novel, socks with flamingos on them, and a Life Is Good t-shirt. And it is, folks, it is.
In other news you will be delighted to know that I finally finished the biography of George Washington that I've been reading on and off for FIVE YEARS now. Of which more later. My cat-herding exemption was for one morning only, so I'd better hit the hay.
Monday, April 12, 2010
They say you can't judge a book by its cover, but I think you can judge a town, or a school, by its library.
This week is National Library Week, in which we celebrate libraries and librarians, and their contributions to our communities. Environmentalists say every day is Earth Day; I say true dat, and also, every week is library week. I spend a lot of time in libraries.
In my daughters' school library, parent volunteers have always been helpful for checking books in and out, shelving them, putting books in order when they aren't, and rescuing books that have been mis-shelved and might as well be lost to anybody looking for them in their correct place. This year, we're not just helpful, we are essential free labor.
Thanks to (somehow unanticipated) cuts in state funding and decisions by the Superintendent about what jobs to cut in turn, the library aides in each of our K-8 schools were laid off before Christmas. Our school of some 900 kids now has just one person to manage the circulation and condition of the entire collection. She's supposed to do this on top of teaching research skills to each of the classes that come in at their assigned times and helping the children that drop in individually or in small groups throughout the day. I can tell you it's impossible. My volunteer day is a typical one. There's already a library class in session when I arrive in the morning, and two more classes of 22 or so kids each come in and out before I finish at noon. There are projects for each of them; sixth graders might be doing reports on Presidents, fourth graders on constellations, and second grade might be hearing a story and learning how to find fiction they like. Each kid puts a couple of books in the return cart on their way in. Each kid checks out a couple of books on their way out. A few will need speaking to about overdue or missing items. Several ask for help finding what they're looking for. ("Do you have any books on dinosaurs/Greek myths/kittens/Star Wars/raising cattle/Tom Brady/origami/Uganda/the moon?" I have more or less memorized the entire Dewey Decimal system.) There just aren't enough minutes in the school day for the librarian to do all she does personally with the students and completely handle the circulation and shelving of books. We volunteers fill some of the gap.
The Bean volunteers in the library too. After hearing me talk about the district's budget problems,* she tried hard to come up with a way to help out. (She wanted to give her school principal her tooth fairy money, because the school needed it more than she did. How do you explain that a dollar won't help the school one bit, even if it represents her whole heart?) We decided that because she especially loves the library, we would help there together. So once a week, the Peanut and I join her after school. Bean shelves series fiction and easy readers, I make a dent in the nonfiction, and the Peanut disappears somewhere with a book of her own (heck, this wasn't her idea). When it's time to head home, the Bean's pride is palpable, and the return cart is in better shape for the next day. We're doing what we can.
Public libraries have been in the news around here lately because municipal budgets, like school budgets, are stretched impossibly thin. Boston is looking at closing several of its branch libraries. My Cape Cod town will likely cut public library employee hours (if not entire jobs) and reduce its operating hours.
Adding insult to injury, our public library is also recovering from its basement having badly flooded. We had a crazy lot of rain this March, and groundwater is high. The library basement rooms are used for meetings and programs and story times and a children's play center and lots more besides. They'd just had new carpet installed, and it's all ruined. They pumped out the water and it came in again. It'll be weeks before the space is usable.
I visit the town library often, maybe twice a week, to exchange our stack of children's books for different ones, and hunt down the novels my book groups are reading plus whatever looks interesting besides. We borrow DVDs and audiobooks as well. Lots of families do all that and more. The library's a busy, busy place.
People more eloquent than I are going to talk a lot this week about how libraries are the heart of their communities. I think that's true. Libraries house all we know about ourselves, the world, and beyond. Public libraries ensure that all this is available to everyone. It is an awesome, venerable function, because, as a free society, we value that. Don't we?
Maybe not. Last week on Cape Cod's local news and talk station, a morning show discussion began of the proposed library closings in Boston, and I heard one ignoramus host say to the other that she thinks libraries are "obsolete, because you can always go to a bookstore." Yes! She thinks that because you can browse at a bookstore without buying anything, that's functionally the same as having a public library. And of all the stupid ignorant things I've heard from that silly twit's mouth since someone thought it was a good idea to pay her to squawk into a microphone, that beat all. Well, I thought. Here, at last, will come the callers telling her what a dope she is. But no. In came the calls wondering yeah, why do we need libraries, anyway? Stupid libraries. Stupid, money-needing libraries.
Oh. My. God. I had to turn it off.
This is what we're up against, friends and supporters of public libraries: people who think Barnes & Noble is an effective substitute.
Looks like we do need National Library Week.
*probably wondering aloud why we've laid off all the library aides, yet maintain a high school ice hockey program which has made local headlines for 1) the bad behavior of its players and fans and 2) the girls' and boys' teams not having equal facilites (illegal, btw, and I'll give you one guess which team got the short end of that stick).
In my daughters' school library, parent volunteers have always been helpful for checking books in and out, shelving them, putting books in order when they aren't, and rescuing books that have been mis-shelved and might as well be lost to anybody looking for them in their correct place. This year, we're not just helpful, we are essential free labor.
Thanks to (somehow unanticipated) cuts in state funding and decisions by the Superintendent about what jobs to cut in turn, the library aides in each of our K-8 schools were laid off before Christmas. Our school of some 900 kids now has just one person to manage the circulation and condition of the entire collection. She's supposed to do this on top of teaching research skills to each of the classes that come in at their assigned times and helping the children that drop in individually or in small groups throughout the day. I can tell you it's impossible. My volunteer day is a typical one. There's already a library class in session when I arrive in the morning, and two more classes of 22 or so kids each come in and out before I finish at noon. There are projects for each of them; sixth graders might be doing reports on Presidents, fourth graders on constellations, and second grade might be hearing a story and learning how to find fiction they like. Each kid puts a couple of books in the return cart on their way in. Each kid checks out a couple of books on their way out. A few will need speaking to about overdue or missing items. Several ask for help finding what they're looking for. ("Do you have any books on dinosaurs/Greek myths/kittens/Star Wars/raising cattle/Tom Brady/origami/Uganda/the moon?" I have more or less memorized the entire Dewey Decimal system.) There just aren't enough minutes in the school day for the librarian to do all she does personally with the students and completely handle the circulation and shelving of books. We volunteers fill some of the gap.
The Bean volunteers in the library too. After hearing me talk about the district's budget problems,* she tried hard to come up with a way to help out. (She wanted to give her school principal her tooth fairy money, because the school needed it more than she did. How do you explain that a dollar won't help the school one bit, even if it represents her whole heart?) We decided that because she especially loves the library, we would help there together. So once a week, the Peanut and I join her after school. Bean shelves series fiction and easy readers, I make a dent in the nonfiction, and the Peanut disappears somewhere with a book of her own (heck, this wasn't her idea). When it's time to head home, the Bean's pride is palpable, and the return cart is in better shape for the next day. We're doing what we can.
Public libraries have been in the news around here lately because municipal budgets, like school budgets, are stretched impossibly thin. Boston is looking at closing several of its branch libraries. My Cape Cod town will likely cut public library employee hours (if not entire jobs) and reduce its operating hours.
Adding insult to injury, our public library is also recovering from its basement having badly flooded. We had a crazy lot of rain this March, and groundwater is high. The library basement rooms are used for meetings and programs and story times and a children's play center and lots more besides. They'd just had new carpet installed, and it's all ruined. They pumped out the water and it came in again. It'll be weeks before the space is usable.
I visit the town library often, maybe twice a week, to exchange our stack of children's books for different ones, and hunt down the novels my book groups are reading plus whatever looks interesting besides. We borrow DVDs and audiobooks as well. Lots of families do all that and more. The library's a busy, busy place.
People more eloquent than I are going to talk a lot this week about how libraries are the heart of their communities. I think that's true. Libraries house all we know about ourselves, the world, and beyond. Public libraries ensure that all this is available to everyone. It is an awesome, venerable function, because, as a free society, we value that. Don't we?
Maybe not. Last week on Cape Cod's local news and talk station, a morning show discussion began of the proposed library closings in Boston, and I heard one ignoramus host say to the other that she thinks libraries are "obsolete, because you can always go to a bookstore." Yes! She thinks that because you can browse at a bookstore without buying anything, that's functionally the same as having a public library. And of all the stupid ignorant things I've heard from that silly twit's mouth since someone thought it was a good idea to pay her to squawk into a microphone, that beat all. Well, I thought. Here, at last, will come the callers telling her what a dope she is. But no. In came the calls wondering yeah, why do we need libraries, anyway? Stupid libraries. Stupid, money-needing libraries.
Oh. My. God. I had to turn it off.
This is what we're up against, friends and supporters of public libraries: people who think Barnes & Noble is an effective substitute.
Looks like we do need National Library Week.
*probably wondering aloud why we've laid off all the library aides, yet maintain a high school ice hockey program which has made local headlines for 1) the bad behavior of its players and fans and 2) the girls' and boys' teams not having equal facilites (illegal, btw, and I'll give you one guess which team got the short end of that stick).
Monday, June 01, 2009
The Nine, by Jeffrey Toobin: Must-Read Nonfiction
I recently finished this terrific book about the United States Supreme Court: The Nine, by Jeffrey Toobin (2007). It's being widely read at the moment, which is a good thing.Having studied rocks in school, I don't know much about judicial philosophy. I had a general idea that on one hand there are "strict constructionists" -- people who believe the Constitution should be interpreted according to its words, period -- and that on the other, there are those who believe that the Constitution embodies the venerable principles on which our country was founded and on which it continues, but also note (at the risk of stating the obvious) that everything changes over time, so it makes good sense to apply those principles with that in mind.
I learned that there's a wacky branch of strict constructionists called "originalists," who believe, basically, that we should have only laws that the Founding Fathers would have made, and no others. Never mind all the world experience, social change, and technological advances that have occurred since 1787 -- not to mention the impossibility of communing with the Founders to elucidate their precise opinions on matters before the Court. To oversimplify and editorialize: the originalists, substantially backed by religous wingnuts, are hoping to take over the Supreme Court -- and they might, in fact, do it.
The Nine sheds much light on this and other issues, through a mix of legal history and exposition of the character, values and personal stories of the Justices of the Rehnquist and Roberts courts. Some in my reading group found it too heavy on the case history . We all loved reading about the personalities involved, which are complex and fascinating, and not nearly as easy to like or dislike as you might hope. Tidbits: Did you know that Justices Scalia and Ginsburg have a close friendship born of a shared love of opera, and that their families celebrate New Year's together each year? That Clarence Thomas drives around to NASCAR races (a venue at which you may be unsurprised to learn he is rarely recognized) in his RV during the summer recesses? That Justice O'Connor did her best to get Justice Souter married off during their years on the bench?
The whole thing makes for fascinating reading.
The likelihood of Supreme Court appointments to be made by this administration had my 2008 vote for POTUS decided long before a single candidate had even formed an exploratory committee. If you have any doubt whatsoever about the importance of the current nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Court, this book will dispel it. Prepare, too, to do some thinking about what the phrase "activist judge" really means.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Sleeping with the Offspring
I'm writing tonight from the Holiday Inn Express in Mystic, Connecticut, a half-step up from the Best Western around the block, where we had been staying for the last couple times we'd come down to visit the aquarium here. This year, after a weekend trip to my beloved western Massachusetts, I made a solemn vow: no more staying at the absolute cheapest (decent) place in town, if only because that's where kids' sports teams and the like end up. Plenty of people my age have long since sworn off mediocre hotels. I was late to adopt the policy myself, as it seemed needlessly overindulgent. However, one night at the Comfort Inn in Hadley, MA, besieged by preteen boys with lacrosse sticks and not an adult to be seen, is all it took to solidify my resolution. Never again. I still can't justify staying at the Hilton, but two stars is no longer enough.
So here I sit, with wine and wifi; life is good. The rest of my lovely family is asleep behind me, but I'm not ready to hit the hay myself. I'm going to stay up sipping red wine till I'm bound to sleep heavily enough not to be bothered by the Bean's knees in my back, or her elbow in my gut, or whatever it turns out to be tonight. You wouldn't think it'd be such a challenge, sharing a double bed with someone not yet 50 lbs heavy and only yay tall. You'd be wrong. The Peanut is even worse... she sleeps on her back with her limbs splayed like a giant capital X. Plus she talks in her sleep -- alarming, senseless little declarations that leave you uncertain what might come next. Oh sure, she looks all kinds of cute and snuggly, with her little blankie and whatever stuffed animal is currently in highest favor. What could go wrong? Ha. I've let her share my king-sized bed at home, when Mr. Sandyshoes is traveling. Somehow I always end up cowering crosswise across the bottom of the bed, barely out of reach of her cute little feet, while visions of whatever dance in her cute little head up where mine is supposed to be.
Anyway. The girls were really hard to settle down last night... the first night of a weekend trip always seems to be a tough one... and we had to threaten them with turning around and coming right back home. That Bean just wouldn't go to sleep. This morning, the Peanut wouldn't *stay* asleep. Another thing I've learned about staying in hotels: you should always bring one of those enormous binder clips along, in case the light-blocking curtains don't completely close on their own. It's surprising how often this is a problem, what with hotel rooms being intended specifically for sleeping in. Our present room is big enough and has most of the things we need, but there's a five-foot gap between where the heavy drapes end. That's plenty of space to allow the entire bright insult of early daylight to fill the room, adding to the injury of hours spent next to one of the offspring. Naturally Mr. Sandyshoes has rigged up something ingenious to correct the curtain problem, but I'm thinking for future reference, one of those binder clips would save a lot of rigging.
Our most successful hotel sleeping strategy has been to split the girls up. They don't share a room at home, and it doesn't seem to help them settle down if they're set up right next to each other in a hotel room. So we get a room with two double beds, divide and conquer. We stack pillows so they can't look over at each other, then we say goodnight and retreat with a book to whatever space is left us in the nook between the door and the bathroom, until we're ready to go to bed ourselves. Tonight's room has quite a bit of space, so that's nice. Sometimes there isn't anywhere to go... which is why I ended up reading Tucker Max's I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell* in the bathroom of our room at the Comfort Inn in Hadley, which actually seems sort of appropriate in retrospect.
I should sleep. More on the aquarium etc. in another post. In the meantime, what hotel chains have you found are best for staying with your kids? Any hints (besides "get a suite") for making it more restful? How about hints (besides "drug them") for settling excited kiddos?
*If even half the things Tucker Max says about himself are true, he is a genuine asshole, but a sometimes-funny one. My college roommate said she read this book and thought of me. I don't know what to make of that. I'm assuming she thought "sandy shoes will laugh at this book," not "this asshole reminds me of sandy shoes in earlier days," but I am afraid to ask.
So here I sit, with wine and wifi; life is good. The rest of my lovely family is asleep behind me, but I'm not ready to hit the hay myself. I'm going to stay up sipping red wine till I'm bound to sleep heavily enough not to be bothered by the Bean's knees in my back, or her elbow in my gut, or whatever it turns out to be tonight. You wouldn't think it'd be such a challenge, sharing a double bed with someone not yet 50 lbs heavy and only yay tall. You'd be wrong. The Peanut is even worse... she sleeps on her back with her limbs splayed like a giant capital X. Plus she talks in her sleep -- alarming, senseless little declarations that leave you uncertain what might come next. Oh sure, she looks all kinds of cute and snuggly, with her little blankie and whatever stuffed animal is currently in highest favor. What could go wrong? Ha. I've let her share my king-sized bed at home, when Mr. Sandyshoes is traveling. Somehow I always end up cowering crosswise across the bottom of the bed, barely out of reach of her cute little feet, while visions of whatever dance in her cute little head up where mine is supposed to be.
Anyway. The girls were really hard to settle down last night... the first night of a weekend trip always seems to be a tough one... and we had to threaten them with turning around and coming right back home. That Bean just wouldn't go to sleep. This morning, the Peanut wouldn't *stay* asleep. Another thing I've learned about staying in hotels: you should always bring one of those enormous binder clips along, in case the light-blocking curtains don't completely close on their own. It's surprising how often this is a problem, what with hotel rooms being intended specifically for sleeping in. Our present room is big enough and has most of the things we need, but there's a five-foot gap between where the heavy drapes end. That's plenty of space to allow the entire bright insult of early daylight to fill the room, adding to the injury of hours spent next to one of the offspring. Naturally Mr. Sandyshoes has rigged up something ingenious to correct the curtain problem, but I'm thinking for future reference, one of those binder clips would save a lot of rigging.
Our most successful hotel sleeping strategy has been to split the girls up. They don't share a room at home, and it doesn't seem to help them settle down if they're set up right next to each other in a hotel room. So we get a room with two double beds, divide and conquer. We stack pillows so they can't look over at each other, then we say goodnight and retreat with a book to whatever space is left us in the nook between the door and the bathroom, until we're ready to go to bed ourselves. Tonight's room has quite a bit of space, so that's nice. Sometimes there isn't anywhere to go... which is why I ended up reading Tucker Max's I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell* in the bathroom of our room at the Comfort Inn in Hadley, which actually seems sort of appropriate in retrospect.
I should sleep. More on the aquarium etc. in another post. In the meantime, what hotel chains have you found are best for staying with your kids? Any hints (besides "get a suite") for making it more restful? How about hints (besides "drug them") for settling excited kiddos?
*If even half the things Tucker Max says about himself are true, he is a genuine asshole, but a sometimes-funny one. My college roommate said she read this book and thought of me. I don't know what to make of that. I'm assuming she thought "sandy shoes will laugh at this book," not "this asshole reminds me of sandy shoes in earlier days," but I am afraid to ask.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Amazon fail
This is upsetting. In case you haven't heard -- the internet has been all abuzz about this so forgive my repetition -- here is my understanding of what's going on:Over Easter weekend, Amazon.com appears to have removed sales ranking information in its listings for some books it deems to be of "adult" content. No listed sales rank on Amazon means those titles don't always come up when their subjects are searched for on the site. If the book isn't in anyone's search results, it's not likely anyone's going to come across it and buy it.
Now, that alone should really piss you off. Who is Amazon to decide what is and isn't "adult" content? The way the site works, masking sales rank information becomes, effectively, a form of censorship.
But it's worse than that. The deranking has been shown to have happened preferentially to books about homosexuality, transgenderedness, rape, or feminism; or with gay characters, or by gay authors.
A biography of Ellen Degeneres was deranked; sexually explicit biographies of famous heterosexuals have not been.
The official word from Amazon is that this is a "glitch" and they're working on it. That seems implausible for a couple of reasons: 1) At least one gay author had his memoir deranked back in February, and the explanation wasn't "oh, sorry, our mistake"; rather, he was told his book had been deemed "adult" and that the action was deliberate (it was subsequently reversed, and he dropped the issue). 2) In a response to a concerned author this past weekend, one Amazon representative stated outright that it was a deliberate decision.
There's a ton being written about this, and updates are happening faster than I can read or copy links. Google "amazon rank," or "amazon fail" if you're interested. On Twitter, the hashtags are #amazonfail and #glitchmyass.
I have deleted my wish list at Amazon (fear not, you can buy me Fiestaware at Macy's) and won't be doing business there unless and until this is appropriately resolved. However, even if the whole debacle proves to have been a huge mistake/fuckup/misguided effort by an overambitious homophobe in middle management, and even if a probable explanation and sincere, convincing apology are issued, it's been kind of a wake up call as to how much influence Amazon has; how one corporate entity can effectively block any book, or genre, or type of author it decides it doesn't like.
Unsettling, at best.
Update: a reasoned take on this is presented here. It does seem likelier that this is an artifact of some outdated filter, ineptly effected, than that it is due to institution-wide homophobia on the part of Amazon.com. (My favorite quote: "Indeed, I suspect that dozens of Amazon executives and PR professionals will be having hurried meetings in Seattle this Monday morning, and that consumption of antacids at those meetings will be at an all-time high.") Still -- it bothers me a lot. When all of a sudden the top result of an Amazon search for books on homosexuality is some crap book for parents about how to prevent it in children -- something is wrong. Granted, I don't know for sure what that top result would have been on Friday. But color me skeptical.
Saturday, February 07, 2009
Recently Read: The Phony Marine
This is Jim Lehrer's 16th novel. Yes, the PBS news guy. I didn't even know he wrote novels. Anyway, it is a quick, quirky little read. Our hero is the bland, middle-aged Hugo, an able suit salesman at an expensive men's clothing store in Washington, D.C.. Recently divorced, he spends his free time online. On an eBay impulse, he buys a Silver Star won by a Marine in Viet Nam. When it arrives, he goes for a walk wearing the lapel pin that accompanies the medal, and thus begins weaving his peculiar tangled web. Hugo finds out that all kinds of things are different when people think you are a Marine... but that you don't have to be a Marine to make all kinds of things different.I think it is supposed to be funny; I know some readers thought it was a hoot. To me it read more like a basic morality tale. A little trite, but sure, something to think about.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Walking the Shores of Cape Cod
Six years ago, when the Bean was new and tiny and I carried her everywhere on my chest, I thought it would be fun if we walked around Cape Cod. Literally. I thought it would be a good idea for me and the babe to hoof it around our fair peninsula's every mile of shoreline. Double distance, because we had to walk back to the car on our every excursion.
Well, maybe it was and maybe it wasn't a good idea, but one thing's for sure: the Bean grew a lot faster than I had opportunity to hike. Over time, we did walk every mile of beach in Sandwich, from the northeast end of the canal out to Sandy Neck in Barnstable. And I looked out at Sandy Neck, a lovely six mile stretch of barrier beach with a parking lot at one end, and I thought, hm. Twelve miles, averaging, say, two miles an hour, is six hours walking - a long time for a baby. I knew I wasn't going to do the whole thing.
My inner purist protested. I sympathize with Appalachian Trail purists, thru-hikers who won't take side trails to cut off even a quarter mile here or there of the AT proper. The compulsion to walk only and exactly along The Path, be it marked in the physical world or just in the mind -- I get that. However, motherhood forces all kinds of compromise, and flexibility is growth, right? Right. It was time to modify the grand plan.
It made more sense to go 'round the Cape walking only as much as we felt like of every reasonably accessible beach, instead of every single inch of shoreline, be it sand or muck, public or private. Walking mucky marshes is unpleasant and potentially dangerous; people do get stuck. We'll stick to sand. Public beach access points can be hard to find along some stretches. I'm not above walking on private beaches in wintertime when nobody's there to care, but I'm not going to sneak through people's yards for the sake of not missing a hundred yards of otherwise inaccessible shoreline.
With our newly flexible guiding principles, we did an incomplete but still long walk down Sandy Neck, and have since walked the north side beaches of the rest of Barnstable, then Yarmouth, Dennis and Brewster. We don't go in summertime because of the crowds, and because I'm too cheap to pay for beach parking. These aren't issues after Labor Day, but soon enough the weather interferes. Sometimes I'll think it's a great day for a beach walk, pack a lunch, get to where we left off, get the girls out of the car, and in approximately 90 seconds they want to go home. (Grrr. Whose children are these?) Needless to say, the goal is now both flexible and long-term. I could easily be in my 60s by the time we reach Monument Beach in Bourne. At least, if I need to be wheeled along after that, there's the paved bike path along the canal that'll bring us back to the Sandwich end, where I started with the baby Bean.
The baby Bean, after one of our walks. Good for a couple hours, but not six.
Salt marsh out the window.
Sometimes when I tell people about this back-burner hobby of mine, they say, "oh, someone did that and wrote a book..." and the small part of me that ever considers writing anything for publication thinks well shit, someone did it already, but another part thinks, hm, maybe he knows how to avoid guard dogs in Osterville -- that could come in handy. So I found the book. It is Walking The Shores of Cape Cod, by Elliott Carr (1997).
Without little ones in tow, and with someone to do car shuttling, Mr. Carr was free to undertake the route of the purist, braving the muck and swimming channels when necessary. (Shoot, his wife even swam across Falmouth Harbor, in the path of incoming vessels. That's just nuts.) The book has a chapter for each segment of his walk, with helpful maps and tips about when to walk (low tide, if possible). He did Thoreau's famous hike along the outer Atlantic beaches -- a trek I imagine we will significantly abbreviate -- and concludes, essentially: eh... don't do this unless you really have to. All that walking on a sloped beach, one leg higher up than the other, eventually gets really uncomfortable.
There's a fine line between "long satisfying hike" and "pointless forced march." In my experience, you don't find the line until you've already committed to completing whichever character-building experience it turns out to be.
Carr's book is more than a hiker's log. He reflects on many of the fundamental problems facing Cape Cod, as he walks areas where they're especially evident. Development and private vs. public interests are common themes. People come here to enjoy the shore, right? Nobody vacations here because the Cape Cod Mall is a unique or wonderful shopping environment, or moves here because Yarmouth has a world-renowned school system. Yet much of our beautiful shoreline is inaccessible or not used to best advantage. Clearly we've lacked planning, where development's concerned. Beach erosion is another issue; even if counter-erosion measures were effective, and there's plenty of evidence that they're not, is this a worthwhile use of public money... particularly to protect private beaches whose owners refuse public access?
Whereas beaches in most coastal states belong to everyone, Massachusetts still operates under a 360 year-old ordinance that allows private ownership of the area between high and low tides (wading in an inch of water at low tide is fair game). Cape Cod has 427 miles of shoreline, two thirds of which are private. Here, as elsewhere, we struggle to balance public good and individual rights. Carr sees this contest manifested on many segments of his walk. His observations are at once sharp and gentle:
I'm almost looking forward to that part, myself. By then the Bean might be a teenager, prone to total embarrassment every time I say or do anything, and there I'll be with my feet wet and a copy of the 1641-1647 Colonial Ordinances in hand. I'll let you know how it goes.
Well, maybe it was and maybe it wasn't a good idea, but one thing's for sure: the Bean grew a lot faster than I had opportunity to hike. Over time, we did walk every mile of beach in Sandwich, from the northeast end of the canal out to Sandy Neck in Barnstable. And I looked out at Sandy Neck, a lovely six mile stretch of barrier beach with a parking lot at one end, and I thought, hm. Twelve miles, averaging, say, two miles an hour, is six hours walking - a long time for a baby. I knew I wasn't going to do the whole thing.
My inner purist protested. I sympathize with Appalachian Trail purists, thru-hikers who won't take side trails to cut off even a quarter mile here or there of the AT proper. The compulsion to walk only and exactly along The Path, be it marked in the physical world or just in the mind -- I get that. However, motherhood forces all kinds of compromise, and flexibility is growth, right? Right. It was time to modify the grand plan.
It made more sense to go 'round the Cape walking only as much as we felt like of every reasonably accessible beach, instead of every single inch of shoreline, be it sand or muck, public or private. Walking mucky marshes is unpleasant and potentially dangerous; people do get stuck. We'll stick to sand. Public beach access points can be hard to find along some stretches. I'm not above walking on private beaches in wintertime when nobody's there to care, but I'm not going to sneak through people's yards for the sake of not missing a hundred yards of otherwise inaccessible shoreline.
With our newly flexible guiding principles, we did an incomplete but still long walk down Sandy Neck, and have since walked the north side beaches of the rest of Barnstable, then Yarmouth, Dennis and Brewster. We don't go in summertime because of the crowds, and because I'm too cheap to pay for beach parking. These aren't issues after Labor Day, but soon enough the weather interferes. Sometimes I'll think it's a great day for a beach walk, pack a lunch, get to where we left off, get the girls out of the car, and in approximately 90 seconds they want to go home. (Grrr. Whose children are these?) Needless to say, the goal is now both flexible and long-term. I could easily be in my 60s by the time we reach Monument Beach in Bourne. At least, if I need to be wheeled along after that, there's the paved bike path along the canal that'll bring us back to the Sandwich end, where I started with the baby Bean.
The baby Bean, after one of our walks. Good for a couple hours, but not six.Salt marsh out the window.
Sometimes when I tell people about this back-burner hobby of mine, they say, "oh, someone did that and wrote a book..." and the small part of me that ever considers writing anything for publication thinks well shit, someone did it already, but another part thinks, hm, maybe he knows how to avoid guard dogs in Osterville -- that could come in handy. So I found the book. It is Walking The Shores of Cape Cod, by Elliott Carr (1997).
Without little ones in tow, and with someone to do car shuttling, Mr. Carr was free to undertake the route of the purist, braving the muck and swimming channels when necessary. (Shoot, his wife even swam across Falmouth Harbor, in the path of incoming vessels. That's just nuts.) The book has a chapter for each segment of his walk, with helpful maps and tips about when to walk (low tide, if possible). He did Thoreau's famous hike along the outer Atlantic beaches -- a trek I imagine we will significantly abbreviate -- and concludes, essentially: eh... don't do this unless you really have to. All that walking on a sloped beach, one leg higher up than the other, eventually gets really uncomfortable.There's a fine line between "long satisfying hike" and "pointless forced march." In my experience, you don't find the line until you've already committed to completing whichever character-building experience it turns out to be.
Carr's book is more than a hiker's log. He reflects on many of the fundamental problems facing Cape Cod, as he walks areas where they're especially evident. Development and private vs. public interests are common themes. People come here to enjoy the shore, right? Nobody vacations here because the Cape Cod Mall is a unique or wonderful shopping environment, or moves here because Yarmouth has a world-renowned school system. Yet much of our beautiful shoreline is inaccessible or not used to best advantage. Clearly we've lacked planning, where development's concerned. Beach erosion is another issue; even if counter-erosion measures were effective, and there's plenty of evidence that they're not, is this a worthwhile use of public money... particularly to protect private beaches whose owners refuse public access?
Whereas beaches in most coastal states belong to everyone, Massachusetts still operates under a 360 year-old ordinance that allows private ownership of the area between high and low tides (wading in an inch of water at low tide is fair game). Cape Cod has 427 miles of shoreline, two thirds of which are private. Here, as elsewhere, we struggle to balance public good and individual rights. Carr sees this contest manifested on many segments of his walk. His observations are at once sharp and gentle:
I never saw a new house that looked as good as the open space which it replaced. That, in a nutshell, is the Cape's dilemma. Every time another house is built, a seller realizes the value from the land, a buyer is made happy to be the latest to cross the bridge, and a realtor, a banker, a lawyer, and a builder all make a little money. But, another piece of Cape Cod is gone, particularly if the new home is on the shore and the owner chooses to close the beach.As to guard dogs, I didn't get any practical advice. However, to their almost-amusement, Carr and his wife were physically removed from a Nantucket Sound beach by local police, who arrived in two cruisers, having been summoned by neighborhood security guards in their two cruisers. Nice, huh? I suppose a middle-aged couple taking a walk represents a huge threat to the quality of life of the mansion set. Four cars and flashing lights required, pronto.
I'm almost looking forward to that part, myself. By then the Bean might be a teenager, prone to total embarrassment every time I say or do anything, and there I'll be with my feet wet and a copy of the 1641-1647 Colonial Ordinances in hand. I'll let you know how it goes.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Two and a Half Books
My book groups and I have been reading some interesting stuff.
I can't say enough good about Nathaniel Philbrick's Mayflower. It is, yes, the story of the Pilgrims' establishment of Plymouth Colony in 1620, and its growth and struggles in the decades that followed -- but this is a story most of us probably don't know very well, obscured as it’s been by centuries of myth and sentimental overlay. I knew that the Pilgrims arrived near wintertime, and had a tough go of it... after reading Mayflower, I'm amazed any of them lived to procreate. I had a general sense that the region's Native populations had a more complicated political structure than the traditional telling of this story has us believe, and it was fascinating to learn those details. And I had a very hazy recollection of King Philip's War from high school American History -- that is to say, I'd heard the words "King Philip's War" before -- but, wow. Now I know. And so should you -- but even though you'll feel all virtuous and wicked smaht afterwards, reading Mayflower isn't like taking medicine. Philbrick has a real gift for telling history through different, compelling points of view. It makes for a richly informative work, and a reading experience like delving into a fat, complicated novel. This is not a book to scan in short bursts, though, so give it a couple hours at a time. It's a fascinating read. Southern New England residents especially will love the maps.
The Yacoubian Building, by Alaa Al Aswany, is an Egyptian novel, a best seller there since its publication in 2002. It’s kind of a soap opera centered on a Cairo building, from the poorest, who crowd its roof, to the aristocrats, businessmen and politicians who occupy its spacious, elegant apartments. If you can keep the characters’ names straight, then this is a book that can be read in short sessions, though you won’t necessarily have to, as it keeps its pace, and it’s not too long. It isn’t an especially well-written novel – he’s no Khaled Hosseini -- though translation may account for some clumsiness of phrase. Still, The Yacoubian Building is engaging, and its characters’ relationships are interesting, if sort of dismal. We follow the coming of age of the doorman’s son and his sweetheart (and learn what different things that means, for a young man and a young woman), the scheming servants of an aging aristocrat, the sexual exploits of the aristocrat and others, the corruption of “elected” officials, and a homosexual romance. Most of these stories have tragic arcs, as if the author is trying to show that life in Cairo causes people to bring out the absolute worst in each other. The novel has a curiously depressing effect that isn’t entirely abated by the happy note on which it ends. I would be very curious to hear if Egyptians find it that way too.
Sarah Vowell’s Assassination Vacation is just terrific -- also, sadly, I’m just not going to finish it. Inspired in part by the intensity of her despair during the Bush administration (almost over! almost over!), the author goes on a mission to find out as much as she can about the people who were unbalanced and dangerous enough to kill Presidents. (“Hello there!” she waves from the pages of her prologue to the FBI agents who will doubtless be assigned to read her book.) Assassination Vacation is the wacky account of her dragging people along on trips to scores of historical sites, some world famous, some bizarrely obscure, connected to the assassinations of Presidents Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley. Vowell is funny and insightful; the perfect historical tour guide. The Lincoln stuff, which I loved, takes about half the book. For whatever reason I couldn’t get to Garfield. After many months I admitted defeat; it appears I’m just not going to get to Garfield. But I recommend you take this jaunt at least as far as I did. It’s a hoot, and you’ll learn stuff.
Phew. What's on your nightstand? The books, I mean. The books.
I can't say enough good about Nathaniel Philbrick's Mayflower. It is, yes, the story of the Pilgrims' establishment of Plymouth Colony in 1620, and its growth and struggles in the decades that followed -- but this is a story most of us probably don't know very well, obscured as it’s been by centuries of myth and sentimental overlay. I knew that the Pilgrims arrived near wintertime, and had a tough go of it... after reading Mayflower, I'm amazed any of them lived to procreate. I had a general sense that the region's Native populations had a more complicated political structure than the traditional telling of this story has us believe, and it was fascinating to learn those details. And I had a very hazy recollection of King Philip's War from high school American History -- that is to say, I'd heard the words "King Philip's War" before -- but, wow. Now I know. And so should you -- but even though you'll feel all virtuous and wicked smaht afterwards, reading Mayflower isn't like taking medicine. Philbrick has a real gift for telling history through different, compelling points of view. It makes for a richly informative work, and a reading experience like delving into a fat, complicated novel. This is not a book to scan in short bursts, though, so give it a couple hours at a time. It's a fascinating read. Southern New England residents especially will love the maps.
The Yacoubian Building, by Alaa Al Aswany, is an Egyptian novel, a best seller there since its publication in 2002. It’s kind of a soap opera centered on a Cairo building, from the poorest, who crowd its roof, to the aristocrats, businessmen and politicians who occupy its spacious, elegant apartments. If you can keep the characters’ names straight, then this is a book that can be read in short sessions, though you won’t necessarily have to, as it keeps its pace, and it’s not too long. It isn’t an especially well-written novel – he’s no Khaled Hosseini -- though translation may account for some clumsiness of phrase. Still, The Yacoubian Building is engaging, and its characters’ relationships are interesting, if sort of dismal. We follow the coming of age of the doorman’s son and his sweetheart (and learn what different things that means, for a young man and a young woman), the scheming servants of an aging aristocrat, the sexual exploits of the aristocrat and others, the corruption of “elected” officials, and a homosexual romance. Most of these stories have tragic arcs, as if the author is trying to show that life in Cairo causes people to bring out the absolute worst in each other. The novel has a curiously depressing effect that isn’t entirely abated by the happy note on which it ends. I would be very curious to hear if Egyptians find it that way too.
Sarah Vowell’s Assassination Vacation is just terrific -- also, sadly, I’m just not going to finish it. Inspired in part by the intensity of her despair during the Bush administration (almost over! almost over!), the author goes on a mission to find out as much as she can about the people who were unbalanced and dangerous enough to kill Presidents. (“Hello there!” she waves from the pages of her prologue to the FBI agents who will doubtless be assigned to read her book.) Assassination Vacation is the wacky account of her dragging people along on trips to scores of historical sites, some world famous, some bizarrely obscure, connected to the assassinations of Presidents Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley. Vowell is funny and insightful; the perfect historical tour guide. The Lincoln stuff, which I loved, takes about half the book. For whatever reason I couldn’t get to Garfield. After many months I admitted defeat; it appears I’m just not going to get to Garfield. But I recommend you take this jaunt at least as far as I did. It’s a hoot, and you’ll learn stuff.Phew. What's on your nightstand? The books, I mean. The books.
Friday, October 17, 2008
I should still get to bed on time, though.
I've started reading in bed again lately, and I've noticed that when I stay up late reading a book, I never wake up feeling as horrible as when I stay up late on the computer. I think it's because the light from the monitor keeps my brain jumpy after I've gone to bed. Putting a book down seems a gentler transition to sleep.
Richard Russo's Bridge of Sighs is this month's book group selection. It's pleasant enough, but I really hope I want to spend 528 pages with these characters. That I checked does not bode well. It's like looking at my watch during a movie...
... which I didn't do even once during Burn After Reading, the newish Coen brothers caper starring John Malkovitch, Tilda Swinton, George Clooney, Frances McDormand and Brad Pitt. Malkovitch plays a pompous ass washed up CIA analyst who loses his job... you can't fire me, I quit... and starts living in his bathrobe, drinking too much, and writing his memoirs, a cd of which is found on a locker room floor by two cash-and-brains-poor gym employees (Pitt and McDormand, both funny), who try to sell it to the Russians (of course! Wouldn't you?). Affairs are had, schemes are schemed, entanglements ensue. As happens with other Coen brothers films, I laughed out loud in places nobody else did, and sometimes didn't laugh when everyone else did. Weird. At any rate, engaging wackiness, good performances, go see it.
What's entertaining you these days, or keeping you up late?
Richard Russo's Bridge of Sighs is this month's book group selection. It's pleasant enough, but I really hope I want to spend 528 pages with these characters. That I checked does not bode well. It's like looking at my watch during a movie...
... which I didn't do even once during Burn After Reading, the newish Coen brothers caper starring John Malkovitch, Tilda Swinton, George Clooney, Frances McDormand and Brad Pitt. Malkovitch plays a pompous ass washed up CIA analyst who loses his job... you can't fire me, I quit... and starts living in his bathrobe, drinking too much, and writing his memoirs, a cd of which is found on a locker room floor by two cash-and-brains-poor gym employees (Pitt and McDormand, both funny), who try to sell it to the Russians (of course! Wouldn't you?). Affairs are had, schemes are schemed, entanglements ensue. As happens with other Coen brothers films, I laughed out loud in places nobody else did, and sometimes didn't laugh when everyone else did. Weird. At any rate, engaging wackiness, good performances, go see it.What's entertaining you these days, or keeping you up late?
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Who knows, maybe hollering at 'em worked after all.
Since my last post, the girls have been playing together happily, the way they usually do. I sent them out in the rain ... out out out out OUT! They went up the street a bit -- sisters in pink raincoats, under a ladybug umbrella -- to watch rainwater flow into the storm drain (I tried not to recall Stephen King's It too vividly). Now they are back, playing "garden." Whatever that means. They get into these lengthy pretend scenarios, and replay and replay them. This is a new one. Hopefully it doesn't include whatever power imbalance had them screaming at each other earlier.So I have time for some free association. Play along every Sunday at Unconscious Mutterings...
she said ____ :: I thought _____.
- Hearing :: impaired
- Aggression :: channel
- Charged :: ion
- Traveler :: airport
- Hydrate :: water
- Detox :: rehab
- Qualify :: pass
- Prison :: cell
- Frontal :: nudity
- Pep talk :: bullshit
Hm. I guess I'm not open to pep talks. I was thinking especially of the business environment pep talk. I so don't miss consulting... shudder.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
"The Last Gift Of Time"
My book group had an interesting discussion last week of The Last Gift of Time: Life Beyond Sixty by Carolyn Heilbrun. Not being over sixty myself, and never having heard of Ms. Heilbrun, I wasn't expecting to relate much, but whatever. Most of the rest of the group is in their 60s and beyond, so I was interested in what they had to say. Turns out there was plenty to think about. Last Gift is a collection of essays about some universal themes of women's lives, brought into sharper focus through decades of experience and reflection. However the essays are of uneven quality, and as I found the ones toward the beginning of the book pretentious and dull, it was kind of hard to get into.
Heilbrun begins by saying she'd always planned to commit suicide at seventy, feeling that useful life would probably be best wrapped up at that point. However, reaching seventy, she chose not to do herself in. Thinking of her life thereafter as "borrowed time," each day actively choosing to live on, gave it more power than she might have felt it had otherwise. Fair enough. She goes on to discuss the need for solitude, a theme to which I expected to relate, but to my reading her essay about it came off peevish. She has three adult children and a companionable marriage, a Central Park West apartment and a house in the country. Plenty of space. Yet at sixty-eight, she buys herself another house, to be alone. And at this point I am thinking... yay you, Carolyn. And I mean it -- I think it's great that she had both the self-awareness and the means to create the kind of place that makes her feel most fully realized as a human, and the fortitude to carry it through in her later years. But this was written from such a place of privilege -- luxury, really -- that I'm sorry, but it's dull as dirt. I wouldn't publish my journal, please don't bother me with yours -- especially as I've just come from reading Greg Mortenson's powerful book about his work building schools for impoverished girls in war-torn places. You know, making the world better for people in real need, instead of sitting on one's ass thinking about how it might be made better for oneself.
Eventually I found points to relate to and admire. Heilbrun's essay On Not Wearing Dresses was short and to the point; she relates, with humor and satisfaction, her decision to dispense with ever again wearing dresses and nylons. Her true self, she feels and has always felt, is androgynous. What freedom to declare in one's sixties not to be subject to what society expects you to wear by the accident of your assigned gender. I thought it was terrific - a bright spot among the forgettable pages of introspective muck.
Having since learned more about Carolyn Heilbrun's distinguished career and accomplishments as a writer, critic, professor and feminist, I can judge all the introspection somewhat less harshly. Still, it isn't the kind of thing I most love to read.
Incidentally she did kill herself at 77, leaving a note that said simply, "The journey is over. Love to all. C."
Thursday, April 24, 2008
READ THIS BOOK:
The incredible story told in Three Cups of Tea, by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin, begins in 1993, when mountaineer Greg Mortenson was climbing down the Baltoro Glacier from K2, the world's second highest peak. He lost the trail and got separated from his companions. Disoriented, emaciated, cold and hungry, he wandered into the Balti village of Korphe, in northeast Pakistan. This is one of the poorest places on Earth, yet its people cared for him as for one of their own. Recuperating from his ordeal, Mortenson got to know them well:As his strength returned, his power of perception sharpened. At first, in Korphe, he thought he'd stumbled into a sort of Shangri-La. Many Westerners passing through the Karakoram had the feeling that the Balti lived a simpler, better life than they did back home in their developed countries... but even after a few days in the village, Mortenson began to see that Korphe was far from the prelapsarian paradise of Western fantasy. In every home, at least one family member suffered from goiters or cataracts. The children, whose ginger hair he had admired, owed their coloring to a form of malnutrition... the nearest doctor was a week's walk away in Skardu, and one out of every three Korphe children died before reaching their first birthday.
Powerfully moved by the children's determination to learn under any conditions, Mortenson made them a promise: "I'm going to build you a school." Thus began a relationship that would change all their lives, and a humanitarian campaign that would change the world.
Without retelling the whole amazing story (read this book!), I will say that the tremendous effort to fund and build the Korphe school eventually grew into the establishment of the Central Asia Institute, of which Greg Mortenson is the director. Over the years, Mortenson has assembled a tough, diverse, capable team of dedicated people -- drivers, bodyguards, mullahs, suppliers, accountants, you name it. Driven to provide the world's neediest with basic education, he has overcome incredible obstacles -- everything from language barriers, passport trouble and interrogation by his own government, to floods and rockslides, to gunfire, imprisonment, and fatwas issued against him.
Working with local leaders and using local resources, CAI has built many schools, women's centers, and water projects in the poorest, most remote, most volatile and war-torn places in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
And you have to ask yourself, what better way is there to promote peace than this? What better way to fight terrorism than through balanced education? Through helping people out of poverty? Through promises kept, and genuine good will? Maybe that comes off impossibly naive. But reading Mortenson's story, you can see, it works, and for a tiny fraction of the cost of everything we're trying instead.
In any case, it is an uphill battle, in a time when West-hating Islamic fundamentalists with suitcases full of Saudi Arabian cash are building Wahhabi madrassas, "the most virulent incubator of religious extremism," at a truly alarming pace. This is where the militant jihadis come from. Many of them are children whose families have no other place to send them for any kind of education, as the Pakistani government appears to have largely failed its people in this regard. Room, board, clothing, learning, all paid for? It's too good to turn down for many.
"I don't want to give the impression that all Wahhabi are bad," Mortenson says. "Many of their schools and mosques are doing good work to help Pakistan's poor. But some of them seem to exist only to teach militant jihad."It's worrisome.
...By 2001, a World Bank study estimated that at least twenty thousand madrassas were teaching as many as 2 million of Pakistan's students an Islamic-based curriculum... Not every madrassa was a hotbed of extremism, but the World Bank concluded that 15 to 20 percent of madrassa students were receiving military training, along with a curriculum that emphasized jihad and hatred of the West at the expense of subjects like math, science, and literature.
(It's worrisome and infuriating, when you look at where the attentions of our own government have been instead of to this most basic facet of the problem. One might wonder, if one were especially cynical, what's more important to this administration -- ending terrorism, or maintaining a "War on Terror." One might. Mortenson's book doesn't go there... that'd be me, wondering.)
Three Cups of Tea leaves off in 2003, as CAI staff are basically running the show in Pakistan, and Mortenson turns his primary attention to Afghanistan. There, the Taliban has been defeated for the time being, but the Americans have neglected to follow through on their promises of reconstructive aid. Message received by the Afghans: the U.S. government doesn't care about that part of the equation. Undaunted, Mortenson again risks life and limb just to reach the part of the country that most needs his help.
In the acknowledgments, Mortenson writes: "What motivates me to do this? The answer is simple: when I look into the eyes of the children in Pakistan and Afghanistan, I see the eyes of my own children full of wonder -- and hope that we each do our part to leave them a legacy of peace instead of the perpetual cycle of violence, war, terrorism, racism, exploitation, and bigotry that we have yet to conquer."
Amen, Greg, and God bless you.
Read this book, everyone. Buy it through ThreeCupsOfTea.com.
.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Knocked flat.
Some goddamn virus has been kicking my ass for a couple of days now. Two nights ago I didn't sleep hardly at all for shivering -- I just could not get warm, highly unusual for me. I was shaking, teeth chattering, the whole 9. Next day I felt like I'd been hit by a truck. I hung out on the couch groaning and the girls had a "movie day" (Monsters, Inc. We dig it. I do an excellent Roz when I'm feeling myself: "Your stunned silence is very reassuring.")
Last night I was warm enough, but the all-over aching makes it really hard to stay lying down, so again, little sleep. Today: worst. sinus. headache. ever. More hanging out on the couch groaning, hoping my head doesn't explode in front of the children. And now, I'll try to sleep again. I hope I've turned the corner on this thing; I don't want to stay on the couch groaning for another day.
[/whining]
In between groaning and holding my head, I watched Blood Diamond this afternoon. It's a 2006 movie about a Sierra Leone fisherman named Solomon Vandy (Djimon Hounsou) whose village is stormed by rebels with machine guns mounted on pickup trucks who shoot and/or mutilate as many people as possible, for no obvious reason except that it's what they do. His wife and girls barely escape. The rebels take Solomon's son for their child army, and they take Solomon to work in diamond mines.
He finds a diamond -- a big one -- and manages to hide it before government forces take over the mine and throw him in jail, where Danny Archer, a diamond smuggler (Leonardo DiCaprio) happens to have landed in the cell across the hall, and gets wind of it from one of the rebels who suspected Solomon was hiding something. Danny's connections spring them both, and they form an uneasy alliance to get the diamond and Solomon's family back. Danny cares only about the diamond. Solomon cares only about his family.
American journalist Maddy Bowen (Jennifer Connelley) cares about bringing the story of conflict diamonds to the world. In exchange for solid information from Danny, she helps them get where they need to go.
Along the way, an awful lot of people are shot and maimed. We see what's happening to Solomon's boy as he's brought into the rebel army, and it's just horrifying. This is not an easy movie. I think it was a good movie (allowing for some typical Hollywood oversimplification -- the "issue-tainment" factor), but I hated the things I saw. Just so violent, and with the news out of that part of the world not so far off from the fiction -- well. Upsetting.
How's this for complete contrast: I also finally finished Henry Beston's The Outermost House, which he wrote about a year (1926) spent living alone in a cottage on the dunes on the outer beach of Cape Cod. It's the opposite of upsetting.
You can't whip through this book; it takes its time. Beston is a self-described "writer-naturalist." He details the sights, sounds, and smells of his time on Eastham Beach (now called Coast Guard Beach), and his observations of all manner of life there. I have to admit, the bits about birds I sometimes found slow going. But then I'd find myself in a calm and happy place, after a paragraph such as this:
Lovely. There are lots of passages like that, that just capture a moment so beautifully. In another of my favorites, Beston describes seeing the lights of the nightly Coast Guard beach patrol:
Does that idea, of spending a year living by yourself in a tiny cottage in the dunes, appeal to you? I think I could do it, but it would make me a little [more] weird. I like some solitary time, some silence. But a whole year. Hm.
.
Last night I was warm enough, but the all-over aching makes it really hard to stay lying down, so again, little sleep. Today: worst. sinus. headache. ever. More hanging out on the couch groaning, hoping my head doesn't explode in front of the children. And now, I'll try to sleep again. I hope I've turned the corner on this thing; I don't want to stay on the couch groaning for another day.
[/whining]
In between groaning and holding my head, I watched Blood Diamond this afternoon. It's a 2006 movie about a Sierra Leone fisherman named Solomon Vandy (Djimon Hounsou) whose village is stormed by rebels with machine guns mounted on pickup trucks who shoot and/or mutilate as many people as possible, for no obvious reason except that it's what they do. His wife and girls barely escape. The rebels take Solomon's son for their child army, and they take Solomon to work in diamond mines.He finds a diamond -- a big one -- and manages to hide it before government forces take over the mine and throw him in jail, where Danny Archer, a diamond smuggler (Leonardo DiCaprio) happens to have landed in the cell across the hall, and gets wind of it from one of the rebels who suspected Solomon was hiding something. Danny's connections spring them both, and they form an uneasy alliance to get the diamond and Solomon's family back. Danny cares only about the diamond. Solomon cares only about his family.
American journalist Maddy Bowen (Jennifer Connelley) cares about bringing the story of conflict diamonds to the world. In exchange for solid information from Danny, she helps them get where they need to go.
Along the way, an awful lot of people are shot and maimed. We see what's happening to Solomon's boy as he's brought into the rebel army, and it's just horrifying. This is not an easy movie. I think it was a good movie (allowing for some typical Hollywood oversimplification -- the "issue-tainment" factor), but I hated the things I saw. Just so violent, and with the news out of that part of the world not so far off from the fiction -- well. Upsetting.
How's this for complete contrast: I also finally finished Henry Beston's The Outermost House, which he wrote about a year (1926) spent living alone in a cottage on the dunes on the outer beach of Cape Cod. It's the opposite of upsetting.You can't whip through this book; it takes its time. Beston is a self-described "writer-naturalist." He details the sights, sounds, and smells of his time on Eastham Beach (now called Coast Guard Beach), and his observations of all manner of life there. I have to admit, the bits about birds I sometimes found slow going. But then I'd find myself in a calm and happy place, after a paragraph such as this:
One March evening, just as sundown was fading into night, the whole sky chanced to be overspread with cloud, all save a golden channel in the west between the cloud floor and the earth. It was very still, very peaceful on my solitary dune. The whole earth was dark, dark as a shallow cup lifted to a solemnity of silence and cloud. I heard a familiar sound. Turning toward the marsh, I saw a flock of geese flying over the meadows along the rift of dying, golden light, their great wings beating with a slow and solemn beauty, their musical, bell-like cry filling the lonely levels and the dark. Is there a nobler wild clamour in all the world? I listened to the sound till it died away and the birds had disappeared into darkness, and then heard a quiet sea chiding a little at the turn of tide. Presently, I began to feel a little cold, and returned to the Fo'castle, and threw some fresh wood on the fire.
Lovely. There are lots of passages like that, that just capture a moment so beautifully. In another of my favorites, Beston describes seeing the lights of the nightly Coast Guard beach patrol:
Every night in the year, when darkness has fallen on the Cape and the sombre thunder of ocean is heard in the pitch pines and the moors, lights are to be seen moving along these fifty miles of sand, some going north, some south, twinkles and points of light solitary and mysterious. These lights gleam from the lanterns and electric torches of the coast guardsmen of the Cape walking the night patrols. When the nights are full of wind and rain, loneliness and the thunder of the sea, these lights along the surf have a quality of romance and beauty that is Elizabethan, that is beyond all stain of present time.So, Cape Cod fans and/or naturalists, give Henry Beston's year in the dunes some of your own time. Well worth it.
Does that idea, of spending a year living by yourself in a tiny cottage in the dunes, appeal to you? I think I could do it, but it would make me a little [more] weird. I like some solitary time, some silence. But a whole year. Hm.
.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
"Water for Elephants"
Water for Elephants, by Sara Gruen, is the story of Jacob, a young veterinary student who's about to complete his degree and join his father's rural practice when his parents are killed in a car accident. It's 1931; hard times have taken everything his family had, and Jacob is left with nothing. In grief and desperation, he jumps on a moving train. Turns out it's a circus train -- fortunately for Jacob, this circus could use a vet. Unfortunately, it's a second-rate circus run by truly cruel people, and he has to watch his back as well as the animals. Needless to say, he grows up fast.
Jacob tells his story in flashback. He is ninety, now, or ninety-three; he doesn't really know. He's in a nursing home and beginning not to recognize his children and grandchildren. The circus comes to town, and triggers memories that seem more real than the face he sees in the mirror.
This is a really good yarn, and an absorbing, fast read. It's also well-researched. Gruen truly evokes the life of a Depression-era circus behind Jacob's touching story; her characters are vivid and real.
Some in our reading group thought that the ending was overly fanciful; I can see this criticism, but forgave it. Part of the novel's charm, I thought.
Highly recommended!
How 'bout you, read anything good lately?
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
Whatcha readin'?
I installed this nifty widget on my sidebar that shows what I'm reading. It comes from librarything.com, which is a great site; the blog widget's a tiny fraction of what it does.
Seems I can't read just one book at a time. My book groups read things monthly, and I always have longer-term or additional reads going too. So the list will change every few weeks, and maybe I'll post more about books than I have been, or maybe I won't.
Sometimes I don't have much to say about 'em. For instance, I recently finished The Sea, by John Banville, and although he's obviously a very good writer, and there is rich vocabulary and a certain intriguing rhythm to this novel, its characters are vile and/or inaccessible, so the book left me feeling appreciation but also a sort of distaste. Hardly a wholehearted recommendation. Yet it won the Booker prize, so what the heck do I know.
At any rate you can expect that George Washington bio to be weighing down my "currently reading" list for the next decade or so. After I read David McCullough's John Adams, which was wonderful, I was so enthralled with the joy and virtue (!) of reading Presidential biography that I made an informal vow to read one a year, starting with Washington's. And... that was probably 5 years ago now. The biography of Washington that I chose is a miserable slog compared to John Adams. I am too stubborn to quit it and get a more readable one, too easily distracted from it to ever get through the dang thing.
Do you like to read? What's in your stack?
Seems I can't read just one book at a time. My book groups read things monthly, and I always have longer-term or additional reads going too. So the list will change every few weeks, and maybe I'll post more about books than I have been, or maybe I won't.
Sometimes I don't have much to say about 'em. For instance, I recently finished The Sea, by John Banville, and although he's obviously a very good writer, and there is rich vocabulary and a certain intriguing rhythm to this novel, its characters are vile and/or inaccessible, so the book left me feeling appreciation but also a sort of distaste. Hardly a wholehearted recommendation. Yet it won the Booker prize, so what the heck do I know.
At any rate you can expect that George Washington bio to be weighing down my "currently reading" list for the next decade or so. After I read David McCullough's John Adams, which was wonderful, I was so enthralled with the joy and virtue (!) of reading Presidential biography that I made an informal vow to read one a year, starting with Washington's. And... that was probably 5 years ago now. The biography of Washington that I chose is a miserable slog compared to John Adams. I am too stubborn to quit it and get a more readable one, too easily distracted from it to ever get through the dang thing.
Do you like to read? What's in your stack?
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