labwriter: 2011, thread nine, November

November Petunias

The purple and white petunia patch is back again this year, evidently planting itself simply by reseeding from last year. These bloom late and last until the first hard frost. Like last year, it is November 1 and we have yet to see our first real frost, so I have petunias again in November. These remind me of my dad, who loved planting petunias, and, maybe not coincidentally, his favorite combination was purple and white.

Here's thread #8

Here's thread #7

Here's thread #6

Here's thread #5

Here's thread #4

Here's thread #3

Here's thread #2

Here's thread #1




Books Read in November

1. Cross Country, by James Patterson. Part of the Alex Cross series. A solid 3 stars.

2. Out Stealing Horses, a novel by Norwegian writer Per Petterson. 4 stars

3. Hometown Appetites, a biography of food writer of the 1930s-1960s, Clementine Paddleford. 4 stars

4. The Litigators, a novel by John Grisham. 4 stars

5. Bird Cloud: A Memoir, by Annie Proulx. 3.5 stars

6. A Troubled Guest: Life and Death Stories, essays by Nancy Mairs. 2 stars

7. Elizabeth Street by Laurie Fabiano, a novel. 1 star

8. Katharine and E.B. White: An Affectionate Memoir, by Isabel Russell. 3 stars

Im currently reading a crime/thriller, pure entertainment fiction by James Patterson, part of his Alex Cross series: Cross Country. I picked this one up because I needed a slight, entertaining read, and the Alex Cross books fit both of those categories. I like his character, and I particularly like what Patterson has done with the Cross family in these books. The grandmother, Nana, is a real hoot. Patterson does a decent job with the crimes, as well. They arent too gruesome and you dont have to check your brain at the door when it comes to the solution of the crime.

I also chose this one as part of an experiment, to see how e-books at my library worked--getting it put onto my Kindle, finding out how long it can stay checked out, etc. Getting the book (once I found one that was available) was a simple procedure because I was directed to the Amazon website, and from there I downloaded the book from my Kindle account. I like being able to get e-books from the library, although at this time the selection is thin and the other issue is that we have a consortium of 10 small libraries sharing 1 copy of each e-book. I repeat this here with fear and loathing (although since its my own thread I will probably be OK), since the other day on another thread, when I mentioned being annoyed with my library, my comments flipped someone into crazy, and I was scolded for spoiling her entire day. Seriously? Anyway, thats the way of the world here at the present time for availability of e-books at my town library. I dont exactly live in Podunk, so Im not sure why my library is lagging so far behind the realities of the publishing/technology world as reflected in the 21st century. (Apologies for anyone living in Podunk.) They have recently spent big, big bucks to update the physical building; it might be an even better idea if they spent some money that would reflect on the future of libraries. Have they NOTICED that brick and mortar bookstores are going the way of the dodo bird, while book-selling websites are thriving? That might be a clue. Just saying. Not that Im against money going to libraries. Im all for it. However, if you dont mind, please dont mention *free* in the same sentence as *library services* here on this thread. The new building is costing our town and taxpayers a boatload of money.

Sigh. I still dont have my apostrophe key working. This reminds me of a letter I found one time when I was doing some research on Ellen Glasgow. Her literary executors were Frank Morley and Irita Van Doren. In a letter from Frank to Irita, he explains that his typewriter is on the blink and he has to replace the R with W. I dont believe for a minute that that was true; I think he was really just trying to get a laugh out of Irita.

Deaw Iwita:

I know this may look odd, but I hope weadable. It is undewmining my mowale but I hope not youws.

The letter went on for two pages and was screamingly funny. I dont find my lack of apostrophes even a little humorous, since the incorrect use of the apostrophe is one of my pet hates.

What a hoot!

I don't think our library even offers e-books. It may be that your library consortium are pooling resources to try and figure out what demand is and how to manage the e-thing.

Becky, as always, your comments bring a smile to my face. When I got the Nook last winter I was excited about the possibility of downloading library books onto the thing. However, I still have not managed to figure it out. It takes time for me to learn this stuff and the problem is that it takes days to check out an e-book, even when it is "available" - I gave up trying to figure out why. Electronic still means instant in my mind. So, when the book is finally really available, I no longer have the time or interest to sit down and learn what to do next. However, time marches on and I really need to make more of an effort. I don't know how long generic e-books have been available at our library, but I know that Kindle books are new this year. (Delay being due to extra cost? Licensing problems? Alignment of the planets?) That may be why there aren't so many copies available yet.

I am one of the biggest fans of public libraries around. I will never say that anything there is free. I tell people that they are already paying for it - through their taxes - so they may as well take advantage of it.

Love the petunias - enjoy the beautiful November 1 we are experiencing here in the Show Me state!

Happy New Thread, Becky! Lovely petunias!
I want to wip the "r" wight off my keyboawd so that I can be funny too!!
I'm not frequenting our public library right now for several reasons... I'd end up checking out too much stuff that I don't have time for and don't really want to read; they don't typically buy what I know I want to read; I hate reading under time constraints... I do offer them my tepid support with lots of books for the annual sale (which I missed this year, doggone it) and with the occasional memorial donation.

I'm not frequenting our public library right now for several reasons... I'd end up checking out too much stuff that I don't have time for and don't really want to read; they don't typically buy what I know I want to read; I hate reading under time constraints... I do offer them my tepid support with lots of books for the annual sale (which I missed this year, doggone it) and with the occasional memorial donation.

Peggy, my list of library issues could be copied almost word-for-word from yours. Im terrible about getting books back on time. Recently my account was blocked due to overdue fines. I figured, knowing how I normally roll, that I probably had inadvertently accumulated $20 or so in unpaid fines, since I had checked out several audio books for my August road trip. So I dragged myself over to the library to pay the fine in person as required so that I could check out my e-book, and to my further annoyance, found out that I owed-- wait for it -- a DIME. Arrrgh.

Also, to log in to the library website, I have to give them my 14-digit library card number. Now why in heck dont I have that memorized? It must be a personal failure on my part.

Sandy, when I finally found a book I wanted to read that was actually available as an e-book, when I clicked on it they gave me the option of the device I wanted to download the book to. When I chose Kindle, I was immediately directed to the Amazon website where I could download the book. Im thinking that you might find the same to be true for your Nook. I could easily be wrong, though.

Actually I just tried to do that at the library website, and I couldnt find a Nook download. Oh woe. Well, I guess the next thing to do is to ask your friendly librarian. Sigh. Isnt this gorgeous weather? My neighbor said (and I may have already repeated this here at some time) that if the weather was like this every day, we couldnt afford to live here--and shes right!

No, there is no Nook-specific download as there is for Kindle. The book has to be downloaded to the computer then transferred to the Nook. I can do that alright. But I'm missing some critical step which will allow me to actually open up the book for reading. I guess I need to just take the Nook over there and have someone walk me through it.

Reporting on my journey to the County Library. I successfully signed up for a new card. Yahoo. Now I have access to their databases, which is really why I wanted to get a card from there.

I found a copy of the book that sibyx (Lucy) was raving about on her thread: Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson. Now if I can just manage to get it read and back to the library in 14 days. Fortunately it is not a large book.

Raving, sigh, yeah, that just about captures me at this moment.

It looks to me like this book deserves the rave. I can hardly wait to get to it.

Re libraries... I think the e-book issues are pretty much across the board. Here in Brooklyn, where there are perhaps 60 branches spread across the borough, there may be only 2 or 3 copies of a very new ultra-popular title (when it's available at all). Sometimes I have to read it via Adobe's e-reading site (that's the Nook app), since I loathe the Nook, because it's not available in Kindle format. I would say a fraction of the titles, 1% or so, that could be acquired via e-Books are actually available, and the vast majority of those -- 95% or so -- only have a single copy in a single format. I don't know enough yet about the economics of this to understand why, but I do know the license expires after a certain # of people have borrowed the material. (Whereas a book is retired only after the pages start falling out... or becoming superfluous, at which point it can be sold for at least a few pennies.) I think the process is moving, but v.v. slowly, and it's the same everywhere except at very progressive libraries perhaps. The only substantive gripe I think I have (I don't consider availability a real gripe, because I can usually get the real book and because it's a library-wide issue that is getting a bit better) is that the rental periods are shorter -- 2 weeks instead of 3. The way to get around this on my Kindle is simply to download the book and then not turn on the wireless feature again until I have finished reading it! (That doesn't work on Adobe/Nook, alas...)

Becky, won't your Firefox/Explorer etc. let you save passwords? mine is 14 digits, but it's saved on the site, so all I have to do is click "enter". I do that with all my passwords -- Facebook, this site, Twitter, etc. I also keep a word file saved on my computer so I can just cut & paste if necessary.

The blessing that really makes the library work for me right now is that so much is online. I can renew a book (a real book, that is, not a cyber book) before it becomes due, for another three weeks - online. I can summon a book to appear from any one of those myriad branches to the Central branch or (when it reopens) my local branch (literally across the street) by putting a hold on it online. This is a big change that has taken place in just the last few years.

ETA: I love the petunias. My grandmother used to sing a song -- "I'm a lonely little petunia in an onion patch..."

Hi Suzanne. Thanks for your information re: the Brooklyn library. I guess its good to hear that libraries everywhere have these same issues with eBooks. I would hate to think that my library was hopelessly behind the times and not doing what they could to bring our library up to speed. One of my issues is that I have extreme library envy. I would give anything to have access to the NYPL system. Heck, I would give a great deal to still belong to the Denver Public Library system. St. Louis, in a word, sucks in comparison.

It looks as though for this eBook mess I should be blaming the publishers and not the libraries. I found this little blurb that was from Feb. 2011:

In the first significant revision to lending terms for ebook circulation, HarperCollins has announced that new titles licensed from library ebook vendors will be able to circulate only 26 times before the license expires.

Along with that, the library is allowed to make the eBook available to one customer at a time until the total number of permitted checkouts is reached. The article stated (and this was as of Feb. 2011) Macmillan and Simon & Schuster still do not allow eBooks to be circulated in libraries.

This comes from a blogger who seems to be quite opinionated and up on the issue:

Consumer market eBook vendors like Barnes & Noble and Amazon don't let publishers get away with the amount of nonsense that we get stuck with through library eBook vendors. I fault the publishers for not realizing what a huge mistake they are making by not realizing that new formats are opportunities--not threats to be quashed. I fault the library eBook vendors for not standing firm and saying "no" to asinine demands. And I fault the library profession for, to date, not standing up for the rights of our users. Our job is to fight for the user, and we have done a poor job of doing that during the digital content surge.

So this seems to be quite a complicated mess. I honestly had no idea.

And I agree with you. The online availability from libraries is a great boon. I just found access to the NYT archives through my library. The stupid paper recently set it up so that to view an article in the archives, you either need a subscription to the paper or you have to pay per article. Good grief. So it is hooray for me! to find the archives online through the library membership.

wow, I need to check on the library archives online thru the brooklyn library. I very reluctantly agreed to pay. I understand better than most the economics behind their decision to charge, and I admit that it's been a fab freebie for all these years, but it's one more expense that I wish I didn't have. I get the WSJ and Barron's online for free, thank heavens.

I had an e-mail exchange with a guy a few months ago who was trying to set up some way that Kindle users could donate their read e-books to libraries. I should circle back and see what came out of that.

Amazon is better at waging war with publishers, but still not great. It lost out over the battle over pricing, which is why so many titles now have the little logo that the price was set by the publisher. In some cases, I'm starting see ebook prices that are HIGHER than the "real" book -- eg Old Filth by Jane Gardam, where the ebook is, I believe $11.99 but I can buy the book for $10.19. Both are discounts from the RSP, but still...

>14 Chatterbox:. Amazon may have lost the battle with publishers, but something tells me its going to win the war--heh. But I know what you mean--the price of new books for the Kindle is distressing.

I won an October ER copy of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Cant Stop Talking, by Susan Cain. Its a book that should be right up my alley.

Oh my gosh. I just went to Amazon to check on the Cain book, and I see that they have a new thing for the Kindle--Kindle Owners Lending Library! All you need is a Kindle and Amazon Prime membership, which I already have for shipping (thats $79 a year and everything I order from Amazon thats part of their Amazon Prime program--like the SmartWool socks I ordered yesterday--is free 2-day shipping or $3.99 one-day shipping).

Heres how it works. Choose from *thousands* of books to borrow for free, including over 100 current and former NYT Bestsellers--as frequently as a book a month, with no due dates. Well, I am going to be all over this.

Wow, this is cool. You order the book right from the Kindle. The list takes you to *Kindle Owners Lending Library* and thats where you find the list of books. I dont work for Amazon, but I ought to--heh. You can now buy a basic Kindle for $79 bucks. I think I paid almost $200 for mine.

Im going to read Elizabeth Street, a historical novel by Laurie Fabiano about the Italian immigrant experience at the start of the 20th century.

Just slipping by -- nothing to say really as the problem for me with an e-book is that I'd have to read it on an e-book. I'll interestedly await word on Elizabeth Street.

Well, with me as with probably most people here, one book leads to another. I am reading the biog of Clementine Paddleford, a food editor for the New York Herald Tribune from about 1936 to the papers end in 1966 or so (dont quote me on that last date). Clementine was one of a kind. She flew her own Piper Cub all over the country, dropping in on a set destination that she would then write about for her column, *How America Eats.* She might stay for a week in one particular spot, writing up the story of how the recipe came to be (like New England Boiled Dinner) and interviewing the local expert. She put many of those columns with recipes into a book of the same name, published in 1960: How America Eats. In about 2009, a couple of women wrote her biography (which I will have more to say about later): Hometown Appetites.

That book led me to a new cookbook, written by one of the biographers and a woman who has written other cookbooks: The Great American Cookbook. The way that this book came about was that some enterprising editor somewhere managed to secure the rights of Paddlefords original 1960 cookbook. This book has been updated for a modern audience. One of the authors says, in the introduction, that they had to add instructions to the recipes like *Preheat oven* for todays cooks. I found that to be hilarious. Another thing she wrote that had me laughing, since I grew up with the 1950s cooking that Paddleford wrote about: *What do you do when you inherit a recipe collection that contains sixty-one recipes for pie but just three for broccoli? How about thirty-eight cookie recipes but only one--one!--green salad. . . . This can be a problem when you are trying to present a universal picture of a national appetite and offer readers ideas for what to make for dinner in an age when obesity is a national crisis.*

I went to my library website to see if I could check out this book. I had a hard time finding it because when I put in the correct title (The Great American Cookbook) I got no hits. I finally figured out that the book is in the database without the *The*. I requested a copy, but a little pop-up screen gave me the message that the book is *not requestable,* although I have no idea why. A further search turned up the message that 8 copies are on order, so that must be why I cant request the book just yet. Mainly I want to find out if this book includes the stories that Paddleford wrote up with her recipes. Its the stories that really interest me, but I want the recipes as well. Its pretty amazing to think that Clementine Paddleford was responsible for introducing American cooks to what now seems like old standbys: Key Lime Pie, Caesar Salad, New York Cheesecake, Southern Fried Chicken, Guacamole, and--Pizza! I will report back if I get my hands on this book. Its too expensive to buy sight unseen.

>16 sibylline:. You sound like my DH. He wont read anything on the Kindle. Whatever. The more I use my Kindle, the more I like it. I am hoping that Santa will consider my request for a Kindle Fire. However, sometimes those notes to Santa dont always get through.

Oooh--the Kindle Fire (colored screen) would work well with cookbooks. Heh.

So I had a free sample of the cookbook sent to my Kindle. The sample on the Kindle, unlike the sample online at Amazon, includes Clementine Paddlefords Introduction to her original 1960 cookbook. She mentions her travel (800,000 miles) and some of the regional specialties that she ran into. One of them was slumgullion. Oh jeeze. My dad managed a restaurant in the early days of his marriage to my mother, and even after he quit the restaurant business, he was the *official* cook in our house, even though unfortunately my mother made most of the meals (unfortunately because she was a completely uninspired, uninterested cook). One of the things we used to eat on Wednesday nights was slumgullion. I havent thought of that meal since I was a kid, nor have I encountered that particular term anywhere but in my dads kitchen. Clem, you had me at *slumgullion*--ha.

DH just reminded me of Slumgullion Pass in Colorado. When he was a kid, it was a crazy road that he and his dad and brother took in the pickup when they went fishing. He says that his mother made something called slumgullion stew--a sort of meat stew with a tomato base and macaroni. In our house the meat was ground beef, mainly because my mother couldnt be bothered with watching a pot for half the day.

You gotta love Paddleford. She says this about the recipes:

many were salvaged from batter-splashed, hand-written notebooks. The great majority had never been printed until they appeared in This Week {the Herald Tribunes Sunday magazine}. They are word-of-mouth hand-downs from mother to daughter. To get such recipes takes everlasting patience, and a dash of effrontery, too.

Maybe what I really need to do is get a used copy of the original book. DH is rolling his eyes at me as I write this.

Added. The Kindle sample makes me want to add this book to my recipe book collection. They have used Clems stories, but I think they have also modernized the recipes a bit--probably less sugar, less butter, etc. and also added some useful instructions. I guess this will also go on my List for Santa. Id like to see the book so I could know if there are any illustrations.

I'm taking my iPad to the library tonight for my book group. Our manager is also our group leader. I'm hoping she can tell me why the e-audiobook I downloaded from the library opened in Evernote which does not have audio capability!

Your ER book sounds very interesting. I'll look forward to your comments.

Love the petunias! You get such nice surprises from your gardening efforts.

i noticed the Kindle borrowing feature last night, too! Sadly, the list of books that I want to read that I haven't acquired is rather tiny so far. I borrowed one by Jenna Blum that I had heard reasonably good things about from some hyper-critical Amazon Vine reviewers, so we'll see.

Publishing industry right now is, my agent says, ultra-risk averse. Explains why one publisher would want me to do three to six months' worth of reporting and writing before deciding whether they are interested in the book and why another canceled a scheduled conference call for today on a few hours' notice. I'm depressed.

I noticed the ER book about introverts, look forward to your review. Love the petunias! Mine (pink) amazingly survived the ridiculous snowstorm last weekend, but they are less exuberant.

Hoo-ah! Visitors. Hi everyone.

Suzanne, I dont know a darned thing about business, but it would seem to me that any business that is ultra-risk averse is a dead man walking. Its little wonder that self-publishing is becoming an increasingly viable option.

Re: Libraries. As someone who works in a public library, I'm glad you figured out that it is, in part, the publishers that make it hard to get mp3s & ebooks economically at your library.

Rather than hijacking your thread, I'd like to invite folks to a conversation on my thread about the state of public libraries - personally, I think we've done a poor job of marketing/positioning the library in our communities. Circulation continues to rise, but funding continues to fall, and most people do not see them as necessary to the community. If people want public libraries, I think we need to have a conversation about what they are for, and how to fund them.

If people are interested in more conversation, rather than hijacking your thread, come visit me here at post 99.

Im reading an excellent book recommended by Lucy, Out Stealing Horses, by Per Petterson. This is one of those dark Norwegian things that I relate to on a very fundamental level. I had a gg-grandfather who sailed the North Sea from the northernmost tip of the Netherlands to Denmark and beyond, so maybe I picked up some of these dark Scandinavian genes somewhere from the long ago past.

Petterson explores themes that interest me: aging, loneliness vs. solitude, the value of living a simple life and how one achieves that.

The main character Trond is 67 years old and has moved into his last house, a rural cabin. With time the locals come to understand that he is there to stay, --not one of the holiday cottage crew who pile out here in their mammoth cars every Easter and summer to fish by day and play poker and swig sundowners in the evening.

He interacts with the people of the village at the Co-op or when he needs someone to fix his old car.

People like it when you tell them things, in suitable portions, in a modest, intimate tone, and they think they know you, but they do not, they know about you, for what they are let in on are facts, not feelings, not what your opinion is about anything at all, not how what has happened to you and how all the decisions you have made have turned you into who you are. What they do is fill in with their own feelings and assumptions, and they compose a new life which has precious little to do with yours, and that lets you off the hook. No-one can touch you unless you yourself want them to. You only have to be polite and smile and keep paranoid thoughts at bay, because they will talk about you no matter how much you squirm, it is inevitable, and you would do the same thing yourself.

Half of the book is flashbacks of Trond thinking about himself at the age of 15, living out in the wilderness, where he and his father would go together for the summer, leaving his mother and sister in the city. So you have throughout the book the contrast of the young man coming of age and the man nearing the end of his life, and each helps to illuminate the other.

Im thoroughly enjoying the book and wish I could sit today and read it to the end, but today is a day I cook.

Happy Saturday!

I ended up having to drop everything and sneak off to read it, so don't burn anything! I'm glad you are liking it so much!

Oh cripes. The apostrophe/double quotes key is not just a sticky key that needs to be cleaned or something, but is somehow dead on my laptop keyboard. Which means I will have to take my laptop somewhere to get the darned thing fixed. DH says he could program the key so that I could use some other key that I never use for the apostrophe, but--seriously?--I dont want to do that. Oh heck.

Another option, Becky, is to get a wireless keyboard and use that. I've done that to free myself up from having to hunch over the laptop, and it's very easy (and relatively cheap). You just plug the control gizmo into a USB port and take it away. It's an alternative if you don't want to be without your laptop, or one that you can use as a make-do solution until you're going on holiday or something else happens where you feel you can do without the laptop for a week or however long it takes to fix.

Thats a good idea, Suzanne. I might just do that.

I'm glad to see the love for Out Stealing Horses here and on Lucy's thread. This is my favorite Petterson book, although I enjoyed In the Wake and To Siberia as well. They all share that dark, brooding Scandinavian tone.

My husband wishes that I would put cooking ahead of reading! It's no contest for me. That's why they invented soup mixes and frozen pizzas. ;-)

Out Stealing Horses has been on Mount TBR for years. I just ordered it from the library.

Hi Donna and Morphidae. I am so close to finishing the Petterson that I really am going to have to call a halt to whatever it was I was going to do this afternoon and finish the book.

Dear, dear DH finally had a couple of hours to spend on my laptop this morning. I mean really, all he does all day every day is computer-related work. So the computers in our house often have issues--sort of like a hairdresser whose own hair looks like a whack job--ha. Anywho, at YouTube he found a *how to* about taking the keyboard off the laptop. Seriously, you can find videos about how to do all of this stuff yourself if youre even a little bit handy, and you can save the $75 charge for *looking at* your computer at the geek store. (They will charge you even more once they figure out whats wrong with it.)

Sometimes its just the individual key that has a problem, and there are videos about how to fix a key--and also how to diagnose whether its the key or the keyboard that is broken. In the case of my laptop, I need a replacement keyboard, which I was able to buy (from Amazon, who I guess sells everything in the world) for $20. Hoo-ray. Once you know how, its a pretty simple procedure to take the keyboard off and replace it with the new one.

This is marvelous!! Both that you love the Pettersen and that your keyboard problems will soon (we hope) be resolved.

Yes, the busman's holiday syndrome is unavoidable...... liked the hairdresser analogy!

>30 Donna828:. Donna, I meant to say to you that if I didnt really, really like cooking, there is no way anyone could get me to spend all the hours in my kitchen that I spend there. I think I like it because its a quiet place where I can work but also think, and best of all--nobody interrupts me when I am working there--haha. Then the finished product gets effusive praise for the simplest thing. Nobody really notices if I clean up the deck outside, but if I make bread and soup, suddenly Im some sort of domestic goddess. The whole thing is sort of hilarious.

Im finishing up the last quarter of the Clementine Paddleford biography, Hometown Appetites. Paddleford wrote for the New York Herald Tribune most of her career, I guess for over 30 years, and when the Trib folded in 1966 I guess it was, she kept writing a column for a Sunday magazine that had appeared and been more or less sponsored by the Trib. She was into her mid-60s or so by that time, and she had plenty of money to live on and multiple properties, but she liked to work, so she kept writing.

One thing I am so thankful for is that I live in a time when the Cooking Light people have been around for 25 years, creating and perfecting their recipes. When Clem was writing in the 1960s, it was the first time that she had to deal with people who were, in her way of putting it, *calorie mad*. Convenience was also big at that time, so the *dietetic* recipes were really something of a horror show. Example:

Low-cal Cheese Dip

One pint cottage cheese
One teaspoon garlic salt

Beat cheese and flavored salt together. Serve with celery sticks. Oh gag, haha.

I am not sure that the biographers give a balanced picture of this woman. It must be hard to be in the middle of a project and realize that your subject is something of a ridiculous figure. Unfortunately for the biographers, who seem to want to paint her in a consistenly positive light, that seems to be the case. They put a positive spin on her by calling her *endearingly loopy*; however, its pretty clear that while a lot of people found her loopy, the majority would not have added the endearingly. Frankly, I wish they had just been willing to go with who she was and not try so hard to round off the edges.

I know I read a book or heard something on the radio (or was it on LT, or was it YOU?) recently where someone described recipes as wretched as the above. Oh yes -- it was the thing about the cook at the White House that Eleanor Roosevelt inflicted on FDR. Was that you?

No, not me--but that sounds hilarious and also like something Ive heard about ER before.

#32 -- the key words there being "once you know how", I fear! That learning curve for me is so steep it will never be climbed...

Just wanted to flag that on the November Early Reviewer list there's a book that might be right up your alley -- it's a history of the Atlantic Monthly and all the people who have written for it, Republic of Words. If you don't want to run the risk of missing out on it, it's available for Kindle for only $10 for a just-published $30 book, which is one of those rare Kindle deals, methinks. (Or that's how I will rationalize buying it with the latest bunch of coins that I turn into Amazon gift certificates...)

Thanks for the tip about the Atlantic Monthly book!

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Yay! The new keyboard's working. Swapping out the old one for the new one took about as much manual dexterity as threading a sewing machine, and it also took about the same amount of time. So if you ever have a shop tell you your computer needs a new keyboard and they want to charge you $175 for time and materials--well, you might want to reassess. This cost me $20 plus the time it took me to find and absorb a YouTube video about how to do it.

I'm not reading much these days so there's not much of that to report.

You have your apostrophe back... Hurrah, the world is back in its proper orbit once more.

Yes! This is great news..... all those possessives and ellisions are at your command once more!

Lucy, take that key off your keyboard for a week. If you're like me, you'll feel like you've lost about 50 IQ points.

I'm reading In My Time by Dick Cheney. I admire Dick Cheney as someone with great personal integrity and expertise. The book is fairly plodding--the voice of the book is definitely Cheney's--but the information is fascinating. This is the book I'm reading at night. I'm doing almost no reading during the day.

This weekend I'm driving to Poplar Bluffs, Missouri to visit with a cousin I've never met--my 2nd cousin 1X removed. She belongs to a branch of my dad's family that farmed in North Dakota. My dad used to go to Uncle Pete's farm (her grandfather) every summer, to help out Uncle Pete and also to get him out of his stepmother's hair. This is a branch of the family who I know almost nothing about, so I'm looking forward to meeting my cousin. She's 74 years old, and she and her husband travel most of the year, visiting family. She puts me to shame, since I'm such a stay-at-home slug.

I just received a book in the mail that I know I'm going to dive into: Extraordinary, Ordinary People, a family memoir by Condoleezza Rice. She says her parents believed that there was nothing worse than being a helpless victim of your circumstances. I wish her parents and people like them were still around to talk to these whiners at #OccupyWhatever.

We've had a string of beautiful days here, so I've been working outside rather than reading. The weather will surely turn soon, so I'm trying to get as much done outside as I can.

I had a lousy day yesterday, not related to working outside in the beautiful weather. So I decided to read something that's entertainment-only: The Litigators by John Grisham. Grisham is definitely up and down, but I don't ask too much from a book like this except to be entertained. At his best, he's a good writer. This one is pretty good. At least I'm enjoying it.

Our weather has also stayed eerily warm..... I don't think we've ever been this organized and prepared for the onslaught of winter before!

I'm planning a re-read of Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop. I'm not exactly sure when I'm going to get to this book, but I'd like to get it started as soon after Thanksgiving as possible. Anyone who would like to read it along with me is welcome. I imagine I'm going to be reading this pretty slowly, since I'm going to be using the scholarly edition published by the U of Nebraska Press in 1999. This edition has a historical essay about the writing of the book and also contains quite detailed explanatory notes, written by a prominent Cather scholar, John J. Murphy. I've always wanted to read this book along with those notes. I highly recommend this edition, which can probably be found in most university libraries.

One note on the scholarly edition: it has also been published in paperback. The knock on the paperback editions of this series is that they leave out the photographs that were published in the hardbound edition. So if you're interested in going this route, I recommend that you find the hardbound version.

I'll get around to posting a separate thread here for anyone who is interested.



Here's the link to the separate thread. I'll also post this on the Wiki page under group reads.

I've starred your thread -- will be following with interest. I wish I could be reading it w/you but I am way overcommitted at the moment.

Too bad. It would have been fun to have you reading with.

I love reading with you, as you well know, but I am a mess at the moment and I am desperate to finish the big tome I've been reading with Roni, (it's sitting open at my elbow.... I'm determined to get to p. 600 tonight, at least) then I need a breather. I have read (and loved, it is by far my fave too) the Archbishop but I have never read anything by Mrs. Gaskell, which is a bit shocking to me and some folks seem to be preparing to read North and South starting on Dec 15.

If you ever liked John Grisham's books in the early days, or if you like courtroom fiction, and especially if you have a sense of humor about lawyers, then you might want to try his newest book, The Litigators. DH is in California on business for a few days, so today I treated myself to an extended day of reading. I've been literally laughing out loud at this book--for the right reasons, in the right places. Kindle says I'm 80% through with this thing. I can't put it down.

>50 sibylline:. Well, have fun with Mrs. Gaskell. North and South is one I've never read and sounds like it would be right up my alley.

I just can't leave 2011, my year of AmLit, without reading this Cather book, or at least starting it, since something tells me I might still be reading it as we turn into a new year. I promised myself that I would read it this year, so there you go. I still haven't decided whether I'm going to do another year of AmLit in 2012 or if I'm going to do British lit and then another AmLit year in 2013. Signs are pointing towards a second consecutive AmLit year.

I'm reading Annie Proulx's memoir, Bird Cloud. Bird Cloud is what she named her Wyoming home. I love the way she writes, and this memoir doesn't disappoint. In her fiction, "place" is always an important character, so it's no surprise that in her memoir, place is paramount.

She built herself what was supposed to be the perfect house on 640 acres of land in Wyoming, but early on in the book there is forshadowing that suggests she will have major problems.

Here's a quote on page 6 that caught my eye, as I try to figure out how I'm going to downsize my own book collection:

I need room for thousands of books and big worktables where I can heap manuscripts, research material, where I can spread out maps. Books are very important to me. I wish I could think of them as some publishers do--as "product"--but I can't. I have lived in many houses, most inadequate and chopped into awkward spaces, none with enough book space.

I started reading this book thinking it would be something of a writing memoir, but the chapter headings suggest otherwise.

I love Proulx's writing -- I'll be interested to hear your thoughts on this.

Oh dear, this is truly such an odd book. While I'm a fan of Annie Proulx (I was an early fan, when she was still using the "E" in her name), I find myself wondering why THIS book? I'm at 97/234. I'm interested enough in what she has to say to keep reading, but I'm also pretty sure that the professional reviews of this book must be scathing, and if so, I wouldn't be in a position to defend her.

So far the book is mainly about the troubles and travails of building her house in the Wyoming wilderness. She tells us how she had lived her whole life in small, inadequate houses, and when she was a child the family just kept moving, moving, moving. So on one level the book is about finding a place in the world and planting your flag there. I enjoyed her writing about her family genealogy, and in some places I could relate to her experience: "The separation from one's tribe creates an inner loneliness that increases as one ages."

So I get it that finding a place and building the sort of home she had always dreamed of was important enough for her to write about. But. . . she goes into such technical detail about the house that it makes my eyes cross, as in this: "The engineer apparently wanted to notch the cross-plied laminated veneer lumber (LVL) board to sit on the ledger board, but the truss company rep told Gerald that if he beveled the ledger board and added some bracketing to support, she would STAMP PLANS & BUILD. This was what Gerald had been waiting for and he said: 'Don't notch LVL.'"

Annie, seriously, I don't care.

Also, I'm bored with her extreme fussing over the "perfect everything" that she simply must find to put into this house. Have you ever had a friend who was planning the perfect wedding and couldn't stop talking about it for a solid year? This has that same feel. In a way I feel that I've been had, that buying this book helped her pay for the "wonderful, elegant but sturdy hand-made furniture, sensible but with a sense of humor," the Brazilian floor tiles that created the floor that was "almost" the floor of her dreams, the Japanese hinoki wood soaking tub, the stone kitchen countertop, "a slab of streakily wavering, striated peach and grey and umber that resembled ancient dry riverbeds seen from the air. That was The One." --You probably get it. Meh. She comes very close here to self-parody.

I did enjoy her relating the story of her bathroom mirror, constructed when she was in Nova Scotia or someplace: "Above the snooty sink hung a mirror with high-wattage bulbs blazing straight into one's face rather like something John Gielgud might have had in his dressing room. For an aging woman it was frightening rather than useful."

I'll report back if the second half is either significantly better or worse.

P.S. And there are no pictures. If this was all so important to her, enough to write a book about, then it seems she at least should have given us a few photos.

I have a lot to do today to get ready for the window guys who are coming on Monday, so I probably won't be around here much. However, I wanted to post this from Proulx's memoir:

For almost a year several times a week I mopped the ugly and very large floor. We called Mr. Floorfix frequently to ask when we could put sealer on the floor. "Not yet! Not yet!" he kept saying, although we told him the mop water was no longer picking up thrown-off stain, and the floor was everlastingly dull and dusty. {It was a cement floor that was supposed to be beautiful, polished, and stained a "deep orange-red color called Adobe.} It was really ugly and ruined the house. I began to think we would have to do everything over again, move all fifty-six bookcases, each weighing hundreds of pounds, and put something--what?--on top of the speckled, dusty mess. I started to think about tiles.

I'm trying to imagine a room big enough to hold 56 bookcases. And how many thousands of books would that be?

What an amazing image -- 56 bookcases... All one size? varying heights and sizes? My brain can't stop processing possibilities.

Great to hear about The Litigators. It's on my Kindle, courtesy of the Brooklyn Public Library. As I test, I put holds on the paper version and the cyber version, and the latter became available far more rapidly.

56 bookcases?? Good grief. You've convinced me, anyhow, that this is NOT the book for me. I love detail when it is really adding something but I can't stand it when there is OCD detail with no critical thinking (such as, would anybody but me care?). And 56 bookcases, well, I am guessing that would be upwards of 10,000 books, if each one holds approx 6-8 feet of books, could be more if they are tall. And the whole thing reeks of either insensitivity or braggadocio, neither one so attractive a thing.

>55 labwriter:, 56. I've been pretty critical of Annie Proulx's memoir, Bird Cloud. Truth is, it's a strange book, but if you give up the idea that it's a memoir and instead look at it as just Proulx writing about what's on her mind, then it's a better book.

I ended up feeling bad for her. When she bought the property, the real estate agent told her that the county maintained the road during the winter. Turns out that they did not. Since the wind turns the snowdrifts in that area into concrete, Proulx ended up with a house that was uninhabitable from October to March:

I now had a new house that had taken all my money and that was inaccessible to wheeled vehicles in snowy winters. By the time spring came I understood very well that spending winters at Bird Cloud would be impossible. Everything changed as I realized I would be semihomeless from October through March. Later it dawned on me that I would still have to heat the empty house.

Should she have checked with someone other than the real estate agent about the road? Yeah. Should she have spent every last dime on the "perfect" dream home? I wouldn't have. But still, I know the feeling of being halfway into something and having that sinking feeling that I've made a big mistake. I assume the thought occurred to Proulx sometime during the project, but she was so far into it that she had to continue. Shakespeare said it best in Macbeth: "I am in blood / Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o'er."

And this from Proulx: "Hindsight is cheap, but if I had known the unexpected and undisclosed problems of the chosen site I would not have bought the property."

I think the book would have been redeemed had there been more personal reflection and less blaming of others (constantly, throughout the book, she lets us know who is at fault for one disaster after another when the house is being built, and of course it's rarely Annie herself), but I guess she doesn't roll that way.

I gave the book 3.5 stars.

P.S. That reminds me. I've wondered if anyone here at the 75 reads Shakespeare. I never see anyone here posting about any of the plays. Just wondering.

59: Re Shakespeare, in recent days I've come across:
Tutored reads: http://www.librarything.com/topic/125440
A mention on SqueakyChu's thread: http://www.librarything.com/topic/126315#3044565
Which refers to Cariola: http://www.librarything.com/topic/126361

There's a Shakespeare group not on 75 though it doesn't look terribly active (The Globe). I feel as though someone mentions having seen a play or a new/old movie fairly regularly....... I try to see at least one play per year if at all possible, but I might not necessarily mention it here. Most recently, although that is getting to be almost two years ago I saw a very spicy performance of Love's Labour's Lost done by a modern day Globe Theatre company touring the US. They were superb! Just last night, as we ate dinner with friends prepatory to seeing my daughter who had a modest part in 'The 39 Steps" at her high school, we were discussing (lamenting) the demise of the small Shakespeare Festival Theatre Company that used to be a great summer treat in Burlington (VT) (Ended at least twenty years ago though!)..... I've been known to pick up one of the plays and reread it or part of it, but I also might not say anything here because, usually, when I do that, I'm just answering a question in my head, refreshing my mind, whatever.

I used to belong to a Shakespeare group; we'd meet every five or six weeks and discuss and read bits from one of the plays. But it kind of fell into abeyance after we'd been through the entire cycle and started up again, and I haven't felt the urge to resume. Although I admit that I'd like to go back to Henry IV one day soon, and perhaps read it alongside A Bloody Field by Shrewsbury by Edith Pargeter.

Well, thinking about it all, I realize I haven't read any Shakespeare--plays, sonnets--for about 3 years or so.

>62 Chatterbox:. I love the idea of the Shakespeare group. I would like to find a group like that. I had this covered for a long time when I was in school, since I always seemed to be reading some Shakespeare or other. The Pargeter looks good.

>61 sibylline:. We used to attend the Colorado Shakespeare Festival in Boulder--wonderful. There's one here in St. Louis, and I have no earthly idea why we've never attended. Just lazy, I think. That, plus the St. Louis summer nights aren't quite as pleasant as those in Boulder--ha.

I moved about 500 of my books out of the sunroom yesterday, since that's one of the rooms that is getting new windows tomorrow (thinking all the time about Annie Proulx and her 56 bookshelves). These books included my memoirs and literary correspondence collection. I put a whole pile of them together on my desk, of books about which I had an "aha!" moment--"I've really meant to get to that one." One of the books that was sitting on top of the pile was A Troubled Guest by Nancy Mairs. The book is 10 essays or so of reflections on death from the perspective of someone diagnosed with MS in 1972. It's not a book about MS, although certainly having the disease gives her a lens through which to look at the topic that makes her pov different from most. I've read other books of hers: Carnal Acts: Essays is the one that comes immediately to mind. This one is strangely unsatisfying, except in the chapters where she's writing about her mother and grandmother. I feel like there are things left unsaid or not quite said in these essays. They certainly haven't gripped me with their startling insight. I usually have sticky notes all over the place in a book like this, and in this one, although I'm at 167/195, I have none.

If you want to scratch a Shakespeare itch the CBC did an magnificent series called *Slings and Arrows* about the ups and downs a Shakespeare Festival type company. It is one of the best television series I've ever seen. Just astonishing. You live with the actors and all their doings while they are also putting together one of the plays to perform. There's not one moment in the whole thing that isn't inspired.

>64 sibylline:. Sounds good, Sib. I'll have to check it out.

I finished A Troubled Guest. She was evidently asked to write a book about death, her work supported by a grant from the Project on Death in America of the Open Society Institute. This book seems like a strange offering. I gave it 2 stars. It's not one I will keep on my shelf as part of my collection of memoirs.

I think @norabelle414 just finished Othello, so some in the 75ers read the Bard.

Becky, if you haven't read any by Edith Pargeter at all, I think you may like her novels. FYI, she also wrote the Cadfael mysteries under the moniker Ellis Peters, and if you didn't like her style there, you won't like the Pargeter novels. There's a massive quartet, The Brothers of Gwynedd, about the last "real" princes of Wales -- similar territory to that covered by Sharon Penman -- and a couple of other good tomes, including The Marriage of Meggotta. She doesn't require happy endings in her historical novels, and they are well-researched and compelling. Her non-historical novels (By Firelight, for instance) aren't quite as good, rather rambling and sentimental.

I was looking at Amazon to see what was available, and the paperback of A Bloody Field by Shrewsbury is now only $2.18!

I will take everyone's word for it that people at the 75 read Shakespeare. Since I read a small percentage of the threads here, I'm not aware of what everyone is doing. I need to be reading some Shakespeare. I used to always be reading one play or other, and for whatever reason it's been several years since I've read anything.

Thanks, Suzanne, for the noet about Pargeter. She sounds like one I would definitely like.

I'm not too happy right now, waiting for the window guys who were due in the last hour and haven't shown up yet. This kind of thing makes me a little bit nuts, having workers around the house. I like getting things done around here, but I'm not very good about it. We have set up shop in the basement, both of us and the two dogs. It's going to be 3 days of work, and they obviously need to be finished by Wednesday--this project can't slop over into the Thanksgiving weekend. It's bad enough to have them here this week.

I have a memoir by H.L. Mencken that I've been wanting to get to: Thirty-five Years of Newspaper Work. Once these window guys get here and get going, I hope to be able to concentrate on that for awhile today.

Good luck with this window project, I feel for you!

Well, they're finally here, an hour late, but they got right down to work. I will probably blabber on about this project since it's what's on my mind right now. How Annie Proulx could stand to go through what she did with that house (for 2 years) is beyond my understanding. They just put up crime scene type yellow tape around the front and sides of my house with bright orange signs attached to it saying "Warning! Lead Work Area. No Eating or Smoking." Good grief. The next door neighbor PhDX2 will undoubtedly faint dead away when they see that. I was told that this is thanks to recent government regulations, which are responsible for this project being about 30% more expensive than it would have been prior to 2008.

I'm also wanting to dig into another book that I found on the shelf when I was moving the books the other day: Letters of E.B. White. Most people, if they know E.B. White at all, know him as the author of Charlotte's Web or Stuart Little, which he was. But he also worked for The New Yorker for something like six decades, starting in 1927. Known as Andy at The NYer, he wrote the "Notes and Comments" pieces for years and was an essayist of note. He was also the "White" of Strunk and White of The Elements of Style. The original author of that book, William Strunk, had been one of Andy's professors at Cornell, so Andy White took on the task of rewriting the book and updating further editions throughout the years.

Andy White was married to Katharine Sergeant Angell White (she's the mother of Roger Angell, if you know the current NYer) who was the fiction editor at The NYer for about 50 years. Their story is pretty fascinating--an office romance, a messy divorce (hers) that her blue-blood family was hysterical about, etc. I've read Katharine's biography (Onward and Upward: A Biography of Katharine S. White), which is good, but unfortunately the biographer was constrained by having Andy White looking over her shoulder as she wrote the book. I would love to know the "real" story of Mrs. White of the New Yorker. She was a pistol, but you won't find too much of her difficult personality in the biography. She was a graduate of Bryn Mawr, Class of 1914, and she was one of the original editors of The NYer. Harold Ross wouldn't have made it without her. She was very New England and austere, sensitive to criticism, deeply private, and undoubtedly "difficult." This biography didn't include her work correspondence because it wasn't available at the time it was written. I'd love to spend some time with The NYer archives and read both the incoming and outgoing letters in her files.

Added. Just poking around the internet, I notice that Bryn Mawr has done a nice job of cataloging her letters, some of which are a collection of NYer correspondence. These 1400 letters were given by KSW to her alma mater--1400 letters to and from 250 correspondents. I'm just guessing, but I think this collection consisted of correspondence with authors when she was working from her farm in Maine. Just checking through the collection, they are mostly letters from late in her career. The bulk of her work correspondence would be found in the full NYer records collection at the NY Public Library. I'm still plowing through Ben Yagoda's book, About Town: The New Yorker and the World It Made. It's an excellent book, and he was the first to use the collection that is now housed at the NYPL, but I think I've been reading it since sometime last summer, so I'm certainly making poor to no progress on the thing.

I started flipping through another biog I found on the shelf of E.B. and Katharine White--Katharine and E.B. White: An Affectionate Memoir. I started reading this thing and couldn't put it down. I've always suspected that KSW was "difficult," but it's hard to find anyone who speaks candidly about her (well, I guess Thurber does, but his biog is door-stopping size, so it remains unread). This is a small memoir, written by a woman who was KSW's secretary for the last 8 years of her life. Oh dear, "affectionate"? I'm not too far into this one, but it seems that this book is payback for eight difficult years with KSW. She says that during her employment interview, KSW reminded her (then and many times afterward) of Queen Victoria.

We're all down in the basement while the windows are being installed--me, the dogs, DH, and our computers. It's warm, cozy, and quiet down here. I hadn't ever thought of using it as a place to work before, but it's very pleasant. The windows are going in quickly and they look good, so my anxiety level is much improved.

The windows are finished, a day early, so they did a good job of managing expectations. They also did a good job on the windows. Now we finally have a fully usable sunroom that DH will turn into a home office. It's a really lovely room, but we haven't used it for some years, since a freak nor'easter blew the open windows into the neighbor's yard. The fact of the windows blowing off was secondary to the huge sycamore limbs that ended up all over the yard.

Anywho, I'm reading the memoir by Isabel Russell, Katharine and E.B. White: An Affectionate Memoir. Good grief, this has to be the "Mommy Dearest" of memoirs by an employee of her employer. She was KSW's secretary for the last 8 years of her life. If the job was so terrible, why did she stay? And then why did she spend more time writing the book? It's really one of the worst hit-job sort of books that I've read. The tone seems cheerful and upbeat, but she seems to get in a zinger on every page: KSW would begin her Christmas planning in October, ordering everything by mail. "The seat of K's operations was a small town in Maine but I was reminded, through a succession of Christmases, of a squire's lady as the mistress of the North Brooklin manor carried her gift-giving to incredible lengths." KSW's complaints throughout the process were "bitter and often-voiced."

At night I'm reading Elizabeth Street, by Laurie Fabiano. This book was an experiment in trying out the Amazon.com e-library for the Kindle. You can keep the book as long as you want. I imagine that once I've finished it, the book will disappear from my Kindle. The book is about Italian immigrants to the U.S. around the turn of the 20th century. Elizabeth Street was where they lived in Little Italy, NYC. The young female protagonist was a midwife in Italy and continued her work when she immigrated, so that's of interest to me. It's a "good enough" read.

I'll be cooking today, so I'll wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving in advance.

Added. I've been looking around at some of the other books on the shelf that mention KSW. Brendan Gill wrote for the NYer for something like 60 years, and his book about the magazine is excellent: Here at the New Yorker. He pretty much doesn't have anything nice to say about Katharine White either. He calls her stubborn and humorless, and thought that she intimidated Harold Ross (and "done him good"). But he gives her her due: "Thanks in part to her, we would be not simply a funny magazine; we would be a magazine as serious, and as ambitious, as she was, and we would be much better for it." He said that she held E.B. White "hostage, giving her an obvious advantage over every other editor." It is said that KSW cried for a week after she read Gill's book.

Have a great Thanksgiving, Becky! Glad the windows are in and that they look so good. :)

I just wanted to add a little P.S. To all of you who are working the holiday or Friday or the weekend while the rest of the "world" it seems enjoy their 4 or 5-day "weekend," let me just say: I was an RN for 20 years and I probably worked 15 Thanksgivings, since "Thanksgiving night" somehow wasn't considered a holiday. It's tough on the person working and on the family, but all of us working those shifts do what we have to do, right? So to all of you working--and especially to all of you off-shift workers--don't stress out too much and try to be patient with friends and family who don't understand. And to those of you who have family working the holidays--be patient with them. God bless.

Yay! Windows in. Ahead of time.

Excellent!

Happy Thanksgiving, Becky!

I think you may have to actually return the book when you finish it, but suspect there will be a prompt to do that when you finish. let me know!! I still haven't started my Kindle loan...

Echoing what you said about shift work, etc. I was the standby reporter for my bureau for five plus Christmases running -- because I was single and childless. My observant Jewish colleague got the holiday off because he had a wife and kids at home... My bureau chief -- who I now consider a friend, to this day doesn't understand the various elements of that scenario I found/find annoying!!

A Happy Thanksgiving to everyone who celebrates the day! I have about half of my meal made, half more to go. We're not eating until about 4:00, so I might make it--haha. It's times like this when I could use about 3 or 4 sisters or sisters-in-law, and we would all get together and make a bang-up meal. But I have no sisters, one of my SIL's doesn't speak to me, and the other one is in prison--I'm not kidding. Families!

>77 Chatterbox:. We were very careful about that issue, Suz. Sometimes our head nurse would get it into her head that people who didn't have kids or weren't married wouldn't "mind" working Christmas. Every single year we would set her straight on that one.

So I'm reading Elizabeth Street at night, a novel of the Italian immigrant experience in NYC in the early 20th century, by Laurie Fabiano. While Fabiano has a good story to tell, based on her own family genealogy, the rest of the book is thin. She doesn't seem to have done much research into the time or the period beyond what she knows of her own family story. You simply don't get the feel of 1906, Elizabeth Street, NYC. Which is a shame, since there's so much there she could have worked with. Also, the dialogue is wooden and somewhat plodding. There's something wrong with the dialogue/narration ratio that I just can't quite put my finger on. Maybe it's just simply that she's tried to do too much with dialogue and her narrative voice isn't very strong. There's just something "off" there. She's also written a scene that includes a deposition that seems to me to be completely anachronistic--something out of a modern-day courtroom novel. It just didn't ring true to me.

While I'm reading this thing, I'm thinking of one of my favorite novels of all time that deals with the same time and subject, Mario Puzo's The Godfather. Puzo creates such a rich world of character, time, and place that the reader can get lost in it--lost in Puzo's dream. Fabiano, on the other hand, has created something akin to asking the reader to connect the dots. Reader reviewers at Amazon.com give this book 5-stars and glowing reviews. I'm not getting it. I have to believe that people who compare it to Puzo's novel have never read his book, published in 1969. Anyone who could compare the two works favorably has evidently become desensitized to the dumbing down of our culture. Or maybe all those 5-star reviews are from relatives--ha!

It's so annoying how book pubs grab at anything to get you to buy a book!

Happy T-giving to you! I managed to bake an apple pie yesterday -- the oven here is a convection oven you'll be glad to know, and now I understand why the fan is always blasting away in it....... (I've barely ever used it, but I did notice this feature last time, not knowing what it was). I thought it took a bit longer but the top is evenly browned.

I haven't been using my convection oven very much. "Convection roast" works pretty well, for vegetables and such. I need to practice with it more, but since I started baking bread (and found about 100 different ways to get the loaf not quite right), I haven't felt the need to try another new thing and take the plunge into learning the ins and outs of convection cooking. Is your fan noisy? I can't tell when mine is on, which is part of the problem for me, I think ("Is this thing really working?").

Have a very nice T-day.

Yes, this oven fan is quite loud. And the odor of whatever is cooking is very present!

I hate to hear that Elizabeth Street is so disappointing. I have it on my Kindle to read. The genealogy story line was what caught my interest, but if she didn't do her homework to provide historical background, I'm also going to be disappointed. I still plan to read it, but I've lowered my expectations.

>82 thornton37814:. Hi Lori. Fabiano has done a pretty good job with her main character, Giovanna, but I'm 68% finished with the book and last night I almost gave it up. I'm not quite sure why I'm still reading, but it's probably because of Giovanna.

One of the problems I was having last night was the oddly shifting point of view, which is often jarring and strange. Why am I all of a sudden in the head of a three-year-old child after chugging along in third-person omniscient? Then there's the dialogue. Oh good heavens, it's so bad; it often reminds me of the sort of dialogue you would expect to encounter on daytime TV. I guess one of the reasons I'm continuing to read this thing is that it's such a good example of bad fiction writing. She never does establish the narrator. I honestly wonder how many novels this woman has read.

Added. Out of almost 200 reviews on Amazon, 172 of them are 4 or 5-star reviews (132 are 5-star). Are you kidding me? Obviously this author is a better marketer than she is a writer.

I'm continuing to read the rather snarky (although well-written) memoir about Katharine and EB White by Katharine's secretary during her last 7 years, Isabel Russell: Katharine and EB White: An Affectionate Memoir. I've mentioned in an earlier thread that this is the "Mommy Dearest" of employer/employee memoirs.

So I've asked myself, why am I continuing to read this thing? One answer is that it's well-written. Another is that this book is a perfect candidate for an example when asking ethical questions about memoir-writing. What do you include/keep out of a memoir? This stuff is not black and white. I remember reading a memoir by Mary Gordon, titled Circling My Mother, probably one of the most courageous memoirs I've ever read. Gordon didn't sugar coat the very difficult relationship she had with her mother; however, I remember thinking that the voice of her memoir was superbly controlled--the direct opposite of the Mommie Dearest memoir by Christina Crawford. I'm moodling around about these issues while I continue to read the memoir by Isabel Russell.

I finished Elizabeth Street by Laurie Fabiano, and why I finished the book, I'm not sure. I'm giving it a one-star rating because my two-star ratings mean I either think or hope the book is going to get better. I knew this one wasn't going to get any better. I honestly don't want to spend another minute on this book, so I'll just let stand what I've already written. I wrote a review, based pretty much on everything I said here, because I think if I'm going to give a book a 1-star rating, then I owe it to the author to say why I thought it was so bad.

That is such a good question, B. What to put in, what to leave out, I mean. I've ended up feeling that there isn't much you can't put in - but it's all about how you do it, what state of understanding you have come to about your own life, and the people who brought you up (or failed to) -- I think of Mary Karr's book as nearly perfect in that regard. I'll come back in a minute with the title. The Liar's Club.

I just added some Mary Karr to my wishlist. Thanks. I'm almost finished with the memoir about EB White and his wife Katharine. I'll be back later to discuss that one. Today and tomorrow we are painting the new office. The windows are fab.

We did get a good start on the room today--we chose the colors and bought the paint and got all the painting tools/supplies spread out on a table downstairs. DH was amazed that I had all of that together and within reach. I didn't tell him that all those tools were handy only because I planned to get back to the painting last January. Anyway, it was the most painless start-up of this sort of project we've ever had. It's probably a 3-4 day project.

I'm sitting here finishing the memoir of EB White and Katharine Angell White by Isabel Russell. The writing of this thing throughout is top-notch. She adored EB White and she barely tolerated Katharine. I'll have more to say later.

The doorbell just rang. It was a young person holding a box of popcorn. Honestly, I didn't know if it was a boy or a girl.

Me: "Can I help you? Are you selling something?"

Person at the door: "No, you bought something."

Me: "I did?"

Person: "Your husband did. You owe me $22."

Me: "For that? Well, just a minute." I checked with DH and sure enough, he had bought popcorn and put the money in the drawer by the front door.

Me: "Here you go," handing over the money.

Person: Took the money without saying a word.

Me: "Uh, thanks very much."

Person: "No problem." And then ran off to the car that was waiting.

Now I have a box of microwave popcorn sitting in my kitchen that cost me $22. WTF? DH is the world's biggest soft touch for anyone coming to the door. He said this was a Boy Scout.

Seriously? He smelled of cigarettes, I said. Was he really a boy? I asked.

"Don't know," said DH, "but I tried not to let that get in my way. I just wanted to help the kid out."

I'm not asking for "manners" so much as I'm asking for basic communication and acknowledgement from one human being to another. What are the Boy Scouts teaching these days? This kid was about 14 years old. You knocked on my door, dude, I didn't knock on yours. Good grief.

I just returned Elizabeth Street to Amazon.com. It was a book I "borrowed" from Amazon, the same way you would borrow an e-book from the library. I was interested to see how this would work. When I was finished with the book, all I had to do was go to the "Manage Your Kindle" in my Amazon account, click on "Actions," and then click on "Return the book."

When you return a book it will be removed from your Kindle. Your notes and furthest page read will be saved for you should you wish to borrow it again or purchase it in the future.

Easy, schmeasy.

I just finished Isabel Russell's Katharine and EB White: An Affectionate Memoir. I was critical of this memoir in other posts here, calling it the Mommie Dearest of employer/employee memoirs. Having read the whole book at this point, I would have to say that my original assessment of the memoir was too harsh. I think I even called it one of the worst sort of hit-job books that I've ever read, but by the end of the book my assessment was more measured.

Isabel Russell was hired as Katharine White's secretary, and she worked for her for the last seven years of KSW's life. Because of illness and aging, increasing issues with her sight, and her own strong personality traits that had little to do with being an octogenarian, KSW was a difficult person to work for, particularly if you happened to be her personal secretary.

I think one of the reasons I had problems early on with Russell's presentation in this book was because she was writing about a woman whom she didn't meet until she was in her late 70s to mid-80s. I wondered, had Russell known KSW at an earlier time in her life--like in her 40s or 50s, for example--and had she written the same things about her, would what she wrote have struck me as being so negative and harsh? Probably not. I think what bothered me was that Russell's critique of KSW came at a time when Katharine was an old woman. She was a strong personality all of her life, and through her job of 50-some years she exercised a great deal of power and control. It seems to me that a lot of the behaviors that made her so difficult for a secretary to work for were mainly strategies used by an aging woman trying to hang on to accustomed influence and control.

I think that Russell had an ethical dilemma in writing this memoir that she didn't deal with effectively. There are parts of this memoir that have the emotional tone of revenge. Clearly Russell had been wounded at times, and maybe many times, by KSW's treatment of her. A first draft where she could have written all of that out, helping her come to terms with all of it, might have been a good idea. Then another draft and maybe another, where she might have eased up on some of her harsher judgments, probably would have been a good idea. I'm sure that Russell felt she was writing the "truth," but an acknowledgment that hers was only one truth would have given Russell more credibility as a fair memoirist. There is a lack of compassion for KSW in the memoir that is troubling.

The writing in this book was excellent, which only makes me wish even more that Russell had found a way to deal more effectively with the way she approached her issues with Katharine White.

This was a difficult book to rate. It was interesting and well-written, although, in my opinion, flawed. I would recommend it for anyone who is interested, for whatever reason, in reading about Katharine and E.B. White. Readers who are disposed to want pure hagiography about this couple obviously won't like this book. However, I think the book is useful in rounding out the public portrait of this couple. 3 stars

I need something to get that dumb novel out of my head--Elizabeth Street by Laurie Fabiano. I found a book on my shelf that I should have read long ago, but I'm glad I discovered it now--Ancestors: A Family History by William Maxwell. Unlike Fabiano, Maxwell has not chosen to write fiction; instead, he has written a family memoir.

I haven't read Maxwell before, but his novel So Long, See You Tomorrow gets high praise.

This afternoon I've been moodling around thoughts about the Isabel Russel memoir about Katharine Sergeant White while I've been painting the sunroom. There's a very good book by Linda Wagner-Martin, Telling Women's Lives, published in 1980, that Russell might have benefitted from reading when she was writing the White memoir. There's a quote in one of the chapters, "The Trap of the Stereotype": "Since when was genius found Respectable?"--Elizabeth Barrett Browning in Aurora Leigh. Isabel Russell might have used that angle: that KSW, a genius who used her gifts for finding new talent, was unlike "regular" folks, and in some respects this made her difficult but also in a way redeemed her difficult personality. It's a perfectly fair argument, and if Russell had worked this angle, she might have pulled off putting the same sort of information into this memoir without coming off as bitchy and self-serving. At least it's a thought.

I found another book on my shelf about memoir-writing that I want to re-read, a collection of essays edited by William Zinsser, Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir.

90: Oh? I see from following links that William Maxwell was born and spent much of his life in Illinois. Might this book shed light on my ancestors too?

What thoughtful and interesting writing about the Russell bio of KSW.

Maxwell is a good writer. I've read So Long, See You Tomorrow and it's not entirely unlike Out Stealing in some ways -- I mean the atmo. not the story itself. Or I could be entirely mistaken. I am a bit tired right now.

Nope, not crazy, I reviewed it thought it was stunning, 4 and 1/2 etoiles.

I was just reading William Maxwell's obituary (his dates, 1908-2000) and discovered that he was a fiction editor at The NYer for 40 years, working closely with Katharine White--heh. The obituary says they formed a "lifelong" friendship: "Long after both retired, they still wrote letters that began, "Dear Mrs. White," and "Dear Mr. Maxwell."

He wrote this for one of the NY magazines when he was almost 90: "Before I am ready to call it quits I would like to reread every book I have ever deeply enjoyed, beginning with Jane Austen and going through shelf after shelf of the bookcases, until I arrive at the 'Autobiographies' of William Butler Yeats." I think he's "our kind."

>91 qebo:. Yes, if your family followed the sort of migration pattern that so many did--like maybe from Virginia to Kentucky to Illinois, which is what he describes and also what one branch of my family tree did as well--then his descriptions of the time and place would probably be useful to you. He grew up in and wrote about a small town in Illinois--Lincoln.

>92 sibylline:. I'll have to check out that book.

This is Cyber Monday. There are some good deals on books at Amazon, for example: save 45% on the Best Books of 2011.

93: Before my folks were in Macon, they were in Lake Fork and Mt Pulaski, near Lincoln. One bunch came across from Dayton OH area, another bunch came up from Albion IL area and I don't know where they were before then. There are indications of PA / VA / KY, but nothing definite. I've added the book to my wishlist for when genealogical inspiration strikes.

>95 qebo:. I'm at 124/311, and I've gotten bogged down in the extreme detail about his Presbyterian ancestors. I think I kept reading this book last night because it was a cold night and I didn't want to get out of bed to get something different. Anyone who has Scotch-Presbyterian ancestors who did the Virginia-Kentucky-Illinois treck would get a lot out of this book. It may be that once he gets beyond this particular jag, I will like the book better.

>95 qebo:. I don't know if we ever discussed this book before, but it's a real gem for people who have ancestors from 1800s Illinois: Sugar Creek: Life on the Illinois Prairie by John Mack Faragher. Sugar Creek was in Sangamon County, but any first-generation midwestern community was probably very much the same. It's an excellent book.

I'm at 216/311 of William Maxwell's book, Ancestors: A Family History. I'm enjoying the last third or so of the book. It isn't what I expected, but it's an interesting read, particularly when he gets into what it was like to grow up in Lincoln, Illinois in the early 1900s.

I'm still painting the sunroom. I hope to finish tomorrow: second coat of the trim and second coat on the bookcase. I'm using muscles I didn't know I had. Oh well. What I really want to do is get back into the pool, but I'm content to skip my exercise for this week, since if I can finish this room before the weekend, then DH can move his desk back in there. It's turned out way beyond my expectations.

New December thread is here.