Some ascribe this to his natural genius; while others think that incredible effort and toil produced these, to all appearances, easy and unlabored results. No amount of investigation of yours would succeed in attaining the proof, and yet, once seen, you immediately believe you would have discovered it - by so smooth and so rapid a path he leads you to the conclusion . . . Such was Archimedes.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Such was Archimedes
Doesn't this sound like Doyle's depiction of Watson describing his own response to Sherlock Holmes? This quote is Plutarch describing Archimedes.
At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances
At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances by Alexander McCall Smith
From the opening paragraph:
From the opening paragraph:
Professor Dr. Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld's birthday fell on the first of May. He would not always have remembered it had the anniversary not occurred on May Day itself; as a small boy he had been convinced that the newspaper photographs of parades in Red Square, those intimidating displays of missiles, and the grim-faced line-up of Politburo officials, all had something to do with the fact that he was turning six or seven, or whatever birthday it was. Such is the complete confidence of childhood that we are each of us at the centre of the world - a conviction out of which not all of us grow, and those who do grow out of it sometimes do so only with difficulty. And this is so very understandable; as Auden remarked, how fascinating is that class of which I am the only member.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Feline Memoriam
She was just an American mutt cat. People hardly noticed at first, but she was a calico. White across most her body, she had a splash of black on the crown of her head, lapping up on one ear, a splash of gold on her cheek and a smudge of gold by her nose and then a beautiful gold and black tail. She had the tiniest, daintiest, and the most beautifully pink paw pads you could imagine.
She joined us as a kitten, in October 1994. At church, a semi-feral mother cat had had a litter of kittens which, for reasons unclear, she had nested in a trellis, twenty feet above ground. Daily, she would, one by one, carry the kittens down to the ground and then back up the trellis. Eventually, the church staff began capturing the kittens as they became old enough and found homes for them among the parishioners. We took one. But still there were more kittens. With a two and a half year old boy and a two month old girl, and two other cats at home, Sally did not feel like there was quite enough going on and thought that if one kitten was good then two would obviously be better.
The call came one week while I was away on business. Sally trekked down to church, children in tow and in hand. Another kitten was available. "She doesn't seem at all friendly, I don't think you will want her with small children in the house" she was told. Sally instructed our boy to sit down against the wall and to be quiet and still. He sat as infinitely flexible children sit: back straight up, legs straight out in front. "Open the cage. Let's see what happens." Bennett jumped out, trotted over to Price, lay down in his lap and started purring loudly. That was all that was required to secure a place in Sally's heart and a new home.
So she joined us. Late Friday, I returned home, digesting the week's events, writing reports in my mind, figuring out how to analyze a client's business problems. Washing up before joining the family for dinner, I registered that there was a cat litter box in our bathroom. Hmmm. Wonder why that's there? But I just registered it. Other more important things to think about.
At dinner, Price could hardly contain himself. Despite coaching from Sally to not say anything and to see how long it would take before I noticed that the cat population of the house had increased by fifty percent, after two or three bites of dinner he burst out, "Daddy, did you see what was in your bathroom?" I could only look at Sally, "You didn't."
But she had. And so Bennett joined us and became a part of our family adventures. Quiet, shy and self-effacing, she was hardly to be seen when visitors were about. But when we were on our own, she would find whoever was still, snuggle up to them and softly purr contentedly. She took to jumping into the crib with baby Sarah, always curling up in the crook of her arm, two little lives bound together from the beginning. It has been one of those cherished small pleasures in my life to come into a room and find one of the kids reading and there, no matter what posture they were in, would be Bennett. Lying in their lap, snuggled up by their face, on their back, crouched on their legs. Somewhere. And purring.
She was a well travelled cat, one of not too many that circumnavigated the globe. She moved with us from Atlanta to Australia. There in that wonderfully strange land, she stalked geckos and huntsman spiders in the house, chased mynah birds out of the kitchen and fended off Australian possums trying to climb through Price's louvered windows.
She came with us from Australia to England where she had to reside in quarantine for two or three months. Fortunately she was relatively close to us and Sally and the kids could visit her periodically. They would be shown down the hall of large cages, somehow squeeze all of themselves into her cage and then be left for an hour to commune and share their ham sandwiches. Never aggressive, Bennett could be forward when there was a whiff of ham in the air.
Then back to Atlanta. Around the globe and with a world full of experiences, she was back where she began, back to the familiar.
The family has grown. The two and a half year old is now sixteen, towering above Bennett's visual horizon. The baby girl is a lovely young woman with a tender heart. Another boy came along, noisy and energetic but capable of gentleness where an aging cat is concerned. There have been other pets, a magnificent Boxer dog, guinea pigs, hamsters, gerbils, frogs, etc. They have come and they have gone but Bennett was the quiet mistress of the pet world in the house.
This last year, age crept up on her. She slowed down. Always petite, she lost weight. Always stalking, this past month, she was now being stalked. In the past week it was clear the time had come. And now she is gone.
She was just an American mutt cat, but she was loved. She was one of those small, gentle, quiet, ornaments of life. She brought her own measure of grace, beauty and contentment. Rest in Peace.
She joined us as a kitten, in October 1994. At church, a semi-feral mother cat had had a litter of kittens which, for reasons unclear, she had nested in a trellis, twenty feet above ground. Daily, she would, one by one, carry the kittens down to the ground and then back up the trellis. Eventually, the church staff began capturing the kittens as they became old enough and found homes for them among the parishioners. We took one. But still there were more kittens. With a two and a half year old boy and a two month old girl, and two other cats at home, Sally did not feel like there was quite enough going on and thought that if one kitten was good then two would obviously be better.
The call came one week while I was away on business. Sally trekked down to church, children in tow and in hand. Another kitten was available. "She doesn't seem at all friendly, I don't think you will want her with small children in the house" she was told. Sally instructed our boy to sit down against the wall and to be quiet and still. He sat as infinitely flexible children sit: back straight up, legs straight out in front. "Open the cage. Let's see what happens." Bennett jumped out, trotted over to Price, lay down in his lap and started purring loudly. That was all that was required to secure a place in Sally's heart and a new home.
So she joined us. Late Friday, I returned home, digesting the week's events, writing reports in my mind, figuring out how to analyze a client's business problems. Washing up before joining the family for dinner, I registered that there was a cat litter box in our bathroom. Hmmm. Wonder why that's there? But I just registered it. Other more important things to think about.
At dinner, Price could hardly contain himself. Despite coaching from Sally to not say anything and to see how long it would take before I noticed that the cat population of the house had increased by fifty percent, after two or three bites of dinner he burst out, "Daddy, did you see what was in your bathroom?" I could only look at Sally, "You didn't."
But she had. And so Bennett joined us and became a part of our family adventures. Quiet, shy and self-effacing, she was hardly to be seen when visitors were about. But when we were on our own, she would find whoever was still, snuggle up to them and softly purr contentedly. She took to jumping into the crib with baby Sarah, always curling up in the crook of her arm, two little lives bound together from the beginning. It has been one of those cherished small pleasures in my life to come into a room and find one of the kids reading and there, no matter what posture they were in, would be Bennett. Lying in their lap, snuggled up by their face, on their back, crouched on their legs. Somewhere. And purring.
She was a well travelled cat, one of not too many that circumnavigated the globe. She moved with us from Atlanta to Australia. There in that wonderfully strange land, she stalked geckos and huntsman spiders in the house, chased mynah birds out of the kitchen and fended off Australian possums trying to climb through Price's louvered windows.
She came with us from Australia to England where she had to reside in quarantine for two or three months. Fortunately she was relatively close to us and Sally and the kids could visit her periodically. They would be shown down the hall of large cages, somehow squeeze all of themselves into her cage and then be left for an hour to commune and share their ham sandwiches. Never aggressive, Bennett could be forward when there was a whiff of ham in the air.
Then back to Atlanta. Around the globe and with a world full of experiences, she was back where she began, back to the familiar.
The family has grown. The two and a half year old is now sixteen, towering above Bennett's visual horizon. The baby girl is a lovely young woman with a tender heart. Another boy came along, noisy and energetic but capable of gentleness where an aging cat is concerned. There have been other pets, a magnificent Boxer dog, guinea pigs, hamsters, gerbils, frogs, etc. They have come and they have gone but Bennett was the quiet mistress of the pet world in the house.
This last year, age crept up on her. She slowed down. Always petite, she lost weight. Always stalking, this past month, she was now being stalked. In the past week it was clear the time had come. And now she is gone.
She was just an American mutt cat, but she was loved. She was one of those small, gentle, quiet, ornaments of life. She brought her own measure of grace, beauty and contentment. Rest in Peace.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Sometimes the solution is just waiting to be found.
One of the issues with which we have wrestled at Through the Magic Door is the incorporation of an appropriate rating system for books. One that is meaningful, descriptive, reliable and not subject to gaming. A rating system that addresses the world as we find it, rather than the world as we might want it to be.
In the next iteration of our advanced search database on the site, we will be incorporating a rating system that we hope meets these criteria.
There has, however, been one unresolved issue. We have Highly Recommended (HR) books (with appropriate descriptions and examples of what that means), Recommended (R) books and Suggested (S) books. We even have a category of books, Possible (P). P books are those that are pretty pedestrian or flawed in some way and are unlikely to appeal to the average reader but might be happily read by individuals with a strong interest in the topic or genre.
But what to do about those books towards which we as parents raise a skeptical eyebrow? Books which our children may enthusiastically want to read but of which we are deeply suspicious in terms of taste or values? Books about gastrically impaired canines (Walter the Farting Dog), sartorially challenged kids (The Adventures of Captain Underpants), trans-species (?) romance (Twilight), socially twisted mean girls (Baby-Sitters club), the linguistically challenged (Junie B. Jones), etc.
Books which under most circumstances we would definitely not recommend except that they are books which kids love to read at a certain age. Books that, in their own fashion, do help build the habit of reading despite their content or nature. Which is the greater good, more reading or reading fewer, "better" books? Of course that is a false dichotomy. In fact, the raison detre for Through the Magic Door is in part to make sure parents can easily find the really good books that are likely to appeal to their children in place of the aesthetically challenged fare being hawked so indiscriminately. None-the-less, no matter how many good books you may make available to your child, like as not, there will be a phase (or two or three) when your child wants to read something that is highly suspect in terms of either aesthetic quality or in terms of behavioral norms that are being advanced.
The problem is compounded by the fact that we only review books we believe are likely to be worthwhile to some child and parent. We don't invest time in reading or reviewing a book in order to trash it. De facto, if there is no review then we either haven't read the book or we have read it and it is not one we would recommend.
So how to deal with books that we have read and don't recommend but recognize that children will want to read anyway because it is the hot item on the publishing circuit and being heavily promoted or because their friends are reading it or because it touches on the inappropriate? "Eskimo", to use Mrs. Gilbraith's euphemism in the wonderful Cheaper By The Dozen.
We don't want to necessarily promote these books by drawing attention to them but it is not appropriate to stick one's head in the sand and just pretend that they don't exist and aren't effective in getting some children to keep reading? That is the problem we have been wrestling with.
In this quarter's ever delightful Slightly Foxed, (the literary magazine that is dedicated to bringing attention to wonderful books from the past few years or century that have drifted from the limelight), there is an article, Nobody Ever Writes to Me, by David Spiller regarding the six volume collection of the correspondence, The Lyttelton Hart-Davis Letters, 1955- 1962, between those classic old-school literary figures George Lyttelton and Rupert Hart-Davis. Their very names evoke a lost age that was only a blink of the eye ago.
As an aside, I should warn readers that Slightly Foxed is an incideous magazine for anyone infected with even the mildest strain of bibliophilia. In a house bursting at the seams with books and no place to put even the normal volume of new acquisitions that I make, the last thing I need is to be lured into new purchases. Collected correspondence between literati from fifty years ago, is, in the normal course of events, virtually at the bottom of my list of books to watch out for. More than at the bottom. Down the well. Way down.
And yet Spiller has done what all the writers in Slightly Foxed do. He has piqued my interest. He has ignited a spark. I know that, should I come across this set of books in my visit to bookstores, there is a high likelihood that, despite my prejudices, other interests and lack of space, those books will be coming home with me. Subscribe to Slightly Foxed if you wish but beware.
In his article, Spiller comments on how Lyttelton and Harte-Davis corresponded about many things but among other items, they wrote of literature and of books and how despite the differences in their ages, there was a high degree of agreement and judgement. He mentions:
I think we have there the answer to our rating dilemma. To HR, R, S, and P we can now add BBCR - Bad But Compellingly Readable.
In the next iteration of our advanced search database on the site, we will be incorporating a rating system that we hope meets these criteria.
There has, however, been one unresolved issue. We have Highly Recommended (HR) books (with appropriate descriptions and examples of what that means), Recommended (R) books and Suggested (S) books. We even have a category of books, Possible (P). P books are those that are pretty pedestrian or flawed in some way and are unlikely to appeal to the average reader but might be happily read by individuals with a strong interest in the topic or genre.
But what to do about those books towards which we as parents raise a skeptical eyebrow? Books which our children may enthusiastically want to read but of which we are deeply suspicious in terms of taste or values? Books about gastrically impaired canines (Walter the Farting Dog), sartorially challenged kids (The Adventures of Captain Underpants), trans-species (?) romance (Twilight), socially twisted mean girls (Baby-Sitters club), the linguistically challenged (Junie B. Jones), etc.
Books which under most circumstances we would definitely not recommend except that they are books which kids love to read at a certain age. Books that, in their own fashion, do help build the habit of reading despite their content or nature. Which is the greater good, more reading or reading fewer, "better" books? Of course that is a false dichotomy. In fact, the raison detre for Through the Magic Door is in part to make sure parents can easily find the really good books that are likely to appeal to their children in place of the aesthetically challenged fare being hawked so indiscriminately. None-the-less, no matter how many good books you may make available to your child, like as not, there will be a phase (or two or three) when your child wants to read something that is highly suspect in terms of either aesthetic quality or in terms of behavioral norms that are being advanced.
The problem is compounded by the fact that we only review books we believe are likely to be worthwhile to some child and parent. We don't invest time in reading or reviewing a book in order to trash it. De facto, if there is no review then we either haven't read the book or we have read it and it is not one we would recommend.
So how to deal with books that we have read and don't recommend but recognize that children will want to read anyway because it is the hot item on the publishing circuit and being heavily promoted or because their friends are reading it or because it touches on the inappropriate? "Eskimo", to use Mrs. Gilbraith's euphemism in the wonderful Cheaper By The Dozen.
We don't want to necessarily promote these books by drawing attention to them but it is not appropriate to stick one's head in the sand and just pretend that they don't exist and aren't effective in getting some children to keep reading? That is the problem we have been wrestling with.
In this quarter's ever delightful Slightly Foxed, (the literary magazine that is dedicated to bringing attention to wonderful books from the past few years or century that have drifted from the limelight), there is an article, Nobody Ever Writes to Me, by David Spiller regarding the six volume collection of the correspondence, The Lyttelton Hart-Davis Letters, 1955- 1962, between those classic old-school literary figures George Lyttelton and Rupert Hart-Davis. Their very names evoke a lost age that was only a blink of the eye ago.
As an aside, I should warn readers that Slightly Foxed is an incideous magazine for anyone infected with even the mildest strain of bibliophilia. In a house bursting at the seams with books and no place to put even the normal volume of new acquisitions that I make, the last thing I need is to be lured into new purchases. Collected correspondence between literati from fifty years ago, is, in the normal course of events, virtually at the bottom of my list of books to watch out for. More than at the bottom. Down the well. Way down.
And yet Spiller has done what all the writers in Slightly Foxed do. He has piqued my interest. He has ignited a spark. I know that, should I come across this set of books in my visit to bookstores, there is a high likelihood that, despite my prejudices, other interests and lack of space, those books will be coming home with me. Subscribe to Slightly Foxed if you wish but beware.
In his article, Spiller comments on how Lyttelton and Harte-Davis corresponded about many things but among other items, they wrote of literature and of books and how despite the differences in their ages, there was a high degree of agreement and judgement. He mentions:
Both men read Ian Fleming, whom Lyttelton described as 'bad and at the same time compellingly readable'.
I think we have there the answer to our rating dilemma. To HR, R, S, and P we can now add BBCR - Bad But Compellingly Readable.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
The House of Christmas by G.K. Chesterton
The House of Christmas
by G.K. Chesterton
There fared a mother driven forth
Out of an inn to roam;
In the place where she was homeless
All men are at home.
The crazy stable close at hand,
With shaking timber and shifting sand,
Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
Than the square stones of Rome.
For men are homesick in their homes,
And strangers under the sun,
And they lay on their heads in a foreign land
Whenever the day is done.
Here we have battle and blazing eyes,
And chance and honour and high surprise,
But our homes are under miraculous skies
Where the yule tale was begun.
A Child in a foul stable,
Where the beasts feed and foam;
Only where He was homeless
Are you and I at home;
We have hands that fashion and heads that know,
But our hearts we lost - how long ago!
In a place no chart nor ship can show
Under the sky's dome.
This world is wild as an old wives' tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
Round an incredible star.
To an open house in the evening
Home shall men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Thunderstruck
Thunderstruck is Erik Larson's most recent book. Previously, he has written among others, The Devil in the White City, which I have not read, and Isaac's Storm, which I have read and which I highly recommend to anyone interested in history and/or natural disasters.
I similarly recommend Thunderstruck. Larson adopts a particular story-telling stratagem which does take a little getting used to, but it does work in the end. He has two stories to tell, one of the development of wireless telegraphy by Guglielmo Marconi and the second of a mild mannered wife murderer, Dr. Hawley Crippen. Larson tells these two stories as separate but interleaved tales and for the first half of the book this is a little distracting but as you approach midway, the logical connection becomes more compelling. It works. Larson is a storyteller in the old fashioned, strong narrative style of Walter Lord.
I have had this book for some while, repining in various stacks around the house. I kept putting off reading it because I have in the past read two, three or maybe even four chapter length accounts of Dr. Crippen's crime and I knew of its significance in terms of wireless telegraphy. I am glad I did eventually pick up Thunderstruck and begin reading though. Larson is a masterful story-teller and brings to life this fascinating period of technological progress and social change. A sample paragraph of his very evocative writing style:
I similarly recommend Thunderstruck. Larson adopts a particular story-telling stratagem which does take a little getting used to, but it does work in the end. He has two stories to tell, one of the development of wireless telegraphy by Guglielmo Marconi and the second of a mild mannered wife murderer, Dr. Hawley Crippen. Larson tells these two stories as separate but interleaved tales and for the first half of the book this is a little distracting but as you approach midway, the logical connection becomes more compelling. It works. Larson is a storyteller in the old fashioned, strong narrative style of Walter Lord.
I have had this book for some while, repining in various stacks around the house. I kept putting off reading it because I have in the past read two, three or maybe even four chapter length accounts of Dr. Crippen's crime and I knew of its significance in terms of wireless telegraphy. I am glad I did eventually pick up Thunderstruck and begin reading though. Larson is a masterful story-teller and brings to life this fascinating period of technological progress and social change. A sample paragraph of his very evocative writing style:
Despite the war Hawley enjoyed a childhood of privilege. He grew up in a house at 66 North Monroe, one block north of Chicago Street, at the edge of an avenue columned with straight-trunked trees having canopies as dense and green as broccoli. In summer sunlight filtered to the ground and left a paisley of blue shadow that cooled the mind as well as the air.
Monday, November 17, 2008
British and American Favorites
As an inveterate list-keeper, I am always interested in comparisons between one time period and another, and between one place or culture and another.
In the past year a major establishment newspaper in the UK and one in the US both, within six months of one another, asked their readers a slight variant on the basic question - What were your favorite childhood books? The UK paper, The Daily Telegraph, ran their question January 17, 2008 and the US paper, The New York Times ran its question July 19, 2007. The Telegraph had 189 commenters leaving one or more suggestions. The New York Times had 1,031. The Telegraph readers identified 430 separate books that they recalled fondly from their childhoods whereas the larger number of Times' readers mentioned 977 separate titles.
The results are of course completely unscientific but, as is often the case, the less rigorous the method, the more interesting the speculative discussion arising. The Telegraph and the Times both occupy similar societal/journalistic positions as papers of record and probably are reasonably similar in terms of the income/education/professional occupation profiles of their readers. The Times' responses might have a slightly greater emphasis on fantasy and science fiction as the question was asked in the time period around the release of the final instalment of Harry Potter.
OK; enough caveats. Below are the results from the readers of the two papers. Listed first are the top twenty individual titles specifically mentioned by the readers in each country. There is then a second list of authors where readers indicated something along the lines of "All of Roald Dahl" or "Everything by Louisa May Alcott."
There are four titles that show up on both the UK and the US lists; The Chronicles of Narnia, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and Charlotte's Web. There are also four cross-over authors; Roald Dahl, Dr. Seuss, Enid Blyton and Isaac Asimov. I am amazed that Enid Blyton made it onto the top twenty list of authors on the Times' list. I can only speculate that a good number of Canadians must have snuck across the internet frontier to put in some votes. None-the-less it is interesting that the four cross-overs should represent two quintessentially American and two quintessentially English authors. Other surprises - Poe, Alcott, Milne, Nesbit, Andersen, Dickens, Kipling, Verne and C.S. Lewis each show up on only one list, and not even necessarily on that of their country of origin. Hmmm.
In the past year a major establishment newspaper in the UK and one in the US both, within six months of one another, asked their readers a slight variant on the basic question - What were your favorite childhood books? The UK paper, The Daily Telegraph, ran their question January 17, 2008 and the US paper, The New York Times ran its question July 19, 2007. The Telegraph had 189 commenters leaving one or more suggestions. The New York Times had 1,031. The Telegraph readers identified 430 separate books that they recalled fondly from their childhoods whereas the larger number of Times' readers mentioned 977 separate titles.
The results are of course completely unscientific but, as is often the case, the less rigorous the method, the more interesting the speculative discussion arising. The Telegraph and the Times both occupy similar societal/journalistic positions as papers of record and probably are reasonably similar in terms of the income/education/professional occupation profiles of their readers. The Times' responses might have a slightly greater emphasis on fantasy and science fiction as the question was asked in the time period around the release of the final instalment of Harry Potter.
OK; enough caveats. Below are the results from the readers of the two papers. Listed first are the top twenty individual titles specifically mentioned by the readers in each country. There is then a second list of authors where readers indicated something along the lines of "All of Roald Dahl" or "Everything by Louisa May Alcott."
There are four titles that show up on both the UK and the US lists; The Chronicles of Narnia, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and Charlotte's Web. There are also four cross-over authors; Roald Dahl, Dr. Seuss, Enid Blyton and Isaac Asimov. I am amazed that Enid Blyton made it onto the top twenty list of authors on the Times' list. I can only speculate that a good number of Canadians must have snuck across the internet frontier to put in some votes. None-the-less it is interesting that the four cross-overs should represent two quintessentially American and two quintessentially English authors. Other surprises - Poe, Alcott, Milne, Nesbit, Andersen, Dickens, Kipling, Verne and C.S. Lewis each show up on only one list, and not even necessarily on that of their country of origin. Hmmm.
| UK (The Daily Telegraph) | USA (The New York Times) |
| Enid Blyton | Judy Blume |
| C.S. Lewis | Roald Dahl |
| Arthur Ransome | Beverly Cleary |
| Beatrix Potter | Robert Heinlein |
| Roald Dahl | Isaac Asimov |
| Aesop | Jules Verne |
| Rudyard Kipling | Dr. Seuss |
| Willard Price | Ray Bradbury |
| William Shakespeare | Enid Blyton |
| Charles Dickens | Jack London |
| E. Nesbit | Louisa May Alcott |
| Hans Christian Andersen | Mark Twain |
| Malcolm Saville | Albert Payson Terhune |
| R.L. Stevenson | Madeline L'Engle |
| Captain Marryat | Edward Eager |
| Dr. Seuss | L.M. Montgomery |
| G.A. Henty | A.A. Milne |
| H. Rider Haggard | Agatha Christie |
| Isaac Asimov | Edgar Allan Poe |
| Jacqueline Wilson | John Bellairs |
Friday, November 14, 2008
Book Connections
One of the many attributes of books are their function as routes of connection. Connection between distant partners in a one way conversation; connections across time; connections into imagined realities.
A minor aspect of this connectedness between readers through the medium of a book is the detritus of reading that attaches itself to a book. If you are an avid frequenter of used-book bookstores, as I am, you will know what I mean. Aside from the thrill of finding a book you had heard of but never seen, of finding a new author whom you are willing to try out when it only costs three or four dollars as opposed to twenty, of finding some magnum opus on some narrowly focused topic which appeals to you, there is also the occasional shiver of connection when there is some visible mark of the prior reader.
Sometimes this mark is an irritant. Fine books which someone has dog eared, or worse yet, highlighted or underscored are a particular disappointment. 'How could they?' Then there are the signs you come across that prompt you to try and imagine some vanished scene. This piece of buttered toast, these cracker crumbs, this splash of spaghetti sauce - just what were the circumstances that immortalized them in these pages?
More intriguingly are the signs and evidence of the prior owner as a person. Certainly if they have signed their name on the inside cover. Sometimes there is even a telephone number or address indicating that the book was so valued that they wanted it returned if they became separated from it. Occasionally the book is sufficiently old that the telephone number is simply a town name and a four digit number. Imagine what the environment was for this book when your phone number was only four digits.
Perhaps my first exposure to the thrill of connecting through books occurred when I was ten or twelve and in the first thralls of what was to turn into a lifelong fascination with Egyptology. We were in London for a few days, an interlude on the way from somewhere to somewhere. I spent the morning and early afternoon in the Egyptian galleries of the British Museum. Coming out of those wonderful hallways of imperial collecting, I crossed over the street to the line of bookstores that then faced the Museum, each specialising in some aspect of history. Making my way down the line, I came to one that focused on archaeology. Entering the doorway, the magical door, I came into a wonderful bookstore of floor to ceiling bookshelves, a bustling elderly lady behind the counter, the smell of musty old books and furniture wax, and the feeling that the people who were in there were the people that were meant to be there. The distant but real affiliation one feels for fellow bibliophiles.
At that time, I had a particular fascination for a British egyptologist, Sir William Flinders Petrie, who had conducted digs in Egypt and the Middle East from the 1880's through the 1930's. Asking at the counter whether they had any of his works, which I did not see on the shelves, the elderly gentlemen who appeared to run the store with his wife, said he thought he had some in the back. He disappeared for five or ten minutes and came back with four or five volumes of Petrie's works. What a find and in nice condition as well. From the 1890s, they positively emanated an aurora of ambassadorship for their era. I fortunately could just afford them and happily made my way back to our flat.
It was only there that I discovered that two of these books had been owned by E.A. Wallis Budge, a fellow Egyptologist and contemporary of Petrie. Budge had not only signed the books but there were occasional marginalia scattered throughout where he either agreed with or disputed some observation of Petrie's. I felt like I had suddenly come into possession of a truly magical thing, this book that had been held and handled and marked by another Egyptologist whom I had read of and admired. It felt as if I were casting myself back in time and reading through his eyes.
I am not sure I have, since that time, come across anything quite so evocative, but there have been plenty of minor items. Yellow faded newspaper reviews tucked into the back of the book where clearly someone has been taken by a review of a book, cut it out, and made their way to a bookstore to buy the book. Sometimes it is as small as some torn pieces of paper with little notes wedged in at some important passage; important to that long ago and often long passed reader. Occasionally there is money used as a bookmark - a twenty dollar bill is the highest denomination I have yet come across - Thank you long ago prior reader!
All of this is brought to mind by a book I have just finished. I have been sampling mystery writers from the early and mid twentieth century, particular authors that are gifted with capturing the essence and feel for a particular place and time. Raymond Chandler was a real pleasure but also Ross Macdonald, Rex Stout and others. I have also been enjoying Sjowall (Sweden), van de Wetering (Netherlands), and Mankell (Sweden again). And then there is Georges Simenon and his Maigret. Apart from rendering Paris of the 1930's - 1960's, there is the pleasure that Simenon was so prolific. As long as you enjoy the Maigret stories, there is always another new one to find - more than a hundred novels and short stories.
I picked up a copy of Simenon's Maigret and the Killer at Book Nook. It sat in a stack for a while till I recently pulled it out and began reading. As I did so a slender book mark fluttered to the floor. A Common Reader book mark. The book is not inscribed so I know not who the former owner was. But we apparently did have a point of connection beyond Maigret and the Killer.
A Common Reader was a wonderful little book catalogue company back in the 1980s through the early 2000s, run by Jim Mustich. Their catalogue was always a pleasure to read, independent of whether there were books you might wish to order. It was truly a reader's community of kindred spirits. The catalogue was of such quality that I know of many readers who saved them as they might a book. This was not just another piece of junk mail. They focused on the little known treasures and on customer service. For seven years, when my career took me overseas to Australia and the UK, A Common Reader was a link back to the US reading community and they heroically shipped large numbers of books to me in out of the way places. Like so many others, A Common Reader fell victim to the commercial tundra-like conditions that is the modern book business. They went out of business in 2006, leaving a mournful reading community with fond memories.
And bookmarks. We share that one additional connection, whoever had Maigret and the Killer before me. We both like Simenon and his Maigret books and apparently we were both Common Readers.
A minor aspect of this connectedness between readers through the medium of a book is the detritus of reading that attaches itself to a book. If you are an avid frequenter of used-book bookstores, as I am, you will know what I mean. Aside from the thrill of finding a book you had heard of but never seen, of finding a new author whom you are willing to try out when it only costs three or four dollars as opposed to twenty, of finding some magnum opus on some narrowly focused topic which appeals to you, there is also the occasional shiver of connection when there is some visible mark of the prior reader.
Sometimes this mark is an irritant. Fine books which someone has dog eared, or worse yet, highlighted or underscored are a particular disappointment. 'How could they?' Then there are the signs you come across that prompt you to try and imagine some vanished scene. This piece of buttered toast, these cracker crumbs, this splash of spaghetti sauce - just what were the circumstances that immortalized them in these pages?
More intriguingly are the signs and evidence of the prior owner as a person. Certainly if they have signed their name on the inside cover. Sometimes there is even a telephone number or address indicating that the book was so valued that they wanted it returned if they became separated from it. Occasionally the book is sufficiently old that the telephone number is simply a town name and a four digit number. Imagine what the environment was for this book when your phone number was only four digits.
Perhaps my first exposure to the thrill of connecting through books occurred when I was ten or twelve and in the first thralls of what was to turn into a lifelong fascination with Egyptology. We were in London for a few days, an interlude on the way from somewhere to somewhere. I spent the morning and early afternoon in the Egyptian galleries of the British Museum. Coming out of those wonderful hallways of imperial collecting, I crossed over the street to the line of bookstores that then faced the Museum, each specialising in some aspect of history. Making my way down the line, I came to one that focused on archaeology. Entering the doorway, the magical door, I came into a wonderful bookstore of floor to ceiling bookshelves, a bustling elderly lady behind the counter, the smell of musty old books and furniture wax, and the feeling that the people who were in there were the people that were meant to be there. The distant but real affiliation one feels for fellow bibliophiles.
At that time, I had a particular fascination for a British egyptologist, Sir William Flinders Petrie, who had conducted digs in Egypt and the Middle East from the 1880's through the 1930's. Asking at the counter whether they had any of his works, which I did not see on the shelves, the elderly gentlemen who appeared to run the store with his wife, said he thought he had some in the back. He disappeared for five or ten minutes and came back with four or five volumes of Petrie's works. What a find and in nice condition as well. From the 1890s, they positively emanated an aurora of ambassadorship for their era. I fortunately could just afford them and happily made my way back to our flat.
It was only there that I discovered that two of these books had been owned by E.A. Wallis Budge, a fellow Egyptologist and contemporary of Petrie. Budge had not only signed the books but there were occasional marginalia scattered throughout where he either agreed with or disputed some observation of Petrie's. I felt like I had suddenly come into possession of a truly magical thing, this book that had been held and handled and marked by another Egyptologist whom I had read of and admired. It felt as if I were casting myself back in time and reading through his eyes.
I am not sure I have, since that time, come across anything quite so evocative, but there have been plenty of minor items. Yellow faded newspaper reviews tucked into the back of the book where clearly someone has been taken by a review of a book, cut it out, and made their way to a bookstore to buy the book. Sometimes it is as small as some torn pieces of paper with little notes wedged in at some important passage; important to that long ago and often long passed reader. Occasionally there is money used as a bookmark - a twenty dollar bill is the highest denomination I have yet come across - Thank you long ago prior reader!
All of this is brought to mind by a book I have just finished. I have been sampling mystery writers from the early and mid twentieth century, particular authors that are gifted with capturing the essence and feel for a particular place and time. Raymond Chandler was a real pleasure but also Ross Macdonald, Rex Stout and others. I have also been enjoying Sjowall (Sweden), van de Wetering (Netherlands), and Mankell (Sweden again). And then there is Georges Simenon and his Maigret. Apart from rendering Paris of the 1930's - 1960's, there is the pleasure that Simenon was so prolific. As long as you enjoy the Maigret stories, there is always another new one to find - more than a hundred novels and short stories.
I picked up a copy of Simenon's Maigret and the Killer at Book Nook. It sat in a stack for a while till I recently pulled it out and began reading. As I did so a slender book mark fluttered to the floor. A Common Reader book mark. The book is not inscribed so I know not who the former owner was. But we apparently did have a point of connection beyond Maigret and the Killer.
A Common Reader was a wonderful little book catalogue company back in the 1980s through the early 2000s, run by Jim Mustich. Their catalogue was always a pleasure to read, independent of whether there were books you might wish to order. It was truly a reader's community of kindred spirits. The catalogue was of such quality that I know of many readers who saved them as they might a book. This was not just another piece of junk mail. They focused on the little known treasures and on customer service. For seven years, when my career took me overseas to Australia and the UK, A Common Reader was a link back to the US reading community and they heroically shipped large numbers of books to me in out of the way places. Like so many others, A Common Reader fell victim to the commercial tundra-like conditions that is the modern book business. They went out of business in 2006, leaving a mournful reading community with fond memories.
And bookmarks. We share that one additional connection, whoever had Maigret and the Killer before me. We both like Simenon and his Maigret books and apparently we were both Common Readers.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
The power of literature
From Esme Raji Codell's Educating Esme. Codell relates her experiences as a first year fifth grade teacher in a new Chicago inner city school. One anecdote pertains to Estes, our featured author on May 8th, 2008.
After lunch each day I read aloud to them. We push the desks out of the way, pull down the shades, and turn off all the lights, except for an antique Victorian desk lamp I have. It is a very cozy time.
I was reading them The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes, about a Polish immigrant girl who is so poor that she wears the same dress to school every day but insists that she has a hundred dresses lined up in her closet. The girls tease her mercilessly until she moves away. Her antagonists discover that she really did have a hundred dresses . . . a hundred beautiful drawings of dresses. Oh, God, it took everything not to cry when I closed the book! I especially like that the story is told from the teaser's point of view.
Well, everything was quiet at the end, but then Ashworth asked if he could whisper something in my ear. He whispered, "I have to tell the class something," and discretly showed me that he was missing half of a finger. It was a very macabre moment but I didn't flinch.
I faced him toward the class and put my hands on his shoulders. He was trembling terribly. "Ashworth has something personal to share with you. I hope you will keep in mind The Hundred Dresses when he tells you."
"I . . . I only have nine and a half fingers," he choked. "Please don't tease me about it." He held up his hands.
The class hummed, impressed, then was silent as Ashworth shifted on his feet. Finally, Billy called out, "I'll kick the ass of anyone who makes fun of you!"
"Yeah, me too!" said Kirk.
"Yeah, Ash! You just tell us if anyone from another class messes with you, we'll beat their ass up and down!"
Yeah, yeah, yeah! The class became united in the spirit of ass-kicking. Ashworth sighed and smiled at me. The power of literature!
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Force but no motion
I am enjoying a book by Esme Raji Codell, Educating Esme, an account of her first year as a teacher. A wonderfully enthusiastic teacher, she has a stubborn and plain-spoken streak that comes across in her writing. Speaking of her attempts to make classroom teaching exciting and memorable, she comments on those who are more concerned to conform to the accepted and who speak out against innovations.
"But certain people just think it's their job to freak out. As long as they're freaking out, they feel busy, like they must be doing work. Getting upset is force, but no motion. Unless we are moving the children forward, we aren't doing work."
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
Posts
