richardderus reads through 2009

Now let's see how far I get into the 75.

Well...I feel sure I will start with the group read of Pere Goriot by Honoré de Balzac. That starts 2009 off on an appropriately classy Frenchified tone, eh what?




Where the Books Are:
(note that the touchstones are within the reviews to avoid zillions of edits that would make me crazy)

1. I Should Be Extremely Happy In Your Company by Brian Hall...msg 10

2. The Fabric of Reality by David Deutsch...msg 14

3. Caesar's Vast Ghost by Lawrence Durrell...msg 56

4. In the Japanese Garden text by Elizabeth Bibb photos by Michael S. Yamashita...msg 64

5. One Writer's Beginnings by Eudora Welty...msg 91

6. The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery...msg 106

7. The Wedding by Elizabeth A. Rees...msg 110

welcome Richard!

Thank you kindly, FA. Nice to be here.

Hello Rich, nice to see you have joined the 75ers. I look forward to your review of Pere Goriot. I keep meaning to read that! Perhaps your brilliant review will prompt me to read it (or not!)

- TT

waves to richard ...

A belated "Welcome, richard"--I'm looking forward to your comment on this thread! I just discovered you had joined today. I'm especially interested in what you think of Pere Goriot because I have never read Balzac and wonder if I should remedy that.

I'm on the 50 challenge, but saw your new 75 thread and thought I'd stop by to say "hello." Will be interested in following your progress. See you at the Pere Goriot group read.

Welcome to the group, Richard. I look forward to reading your posts over the coming year.

richardear~

I decided to have a go at this too. eek.
Glad to see you here too.. =)

Well now, all this neighborly cheer positively makes me grin like a baboon, it does.

On with the show:

Book the first that I started (and finished) in 2009 was I Should Be Extremely Happy in Your Company by Brian Hall. Brief review is favorable, if the subject (the Lewis and Clark expedition) interests you zoom out and get it; if you have a taste for fictional treatments of family dynamics it's a good choice; the native american sections of the book are stylistically interesting but discontinuous with the rest of the book and not, in my opinion, interesting ENOUGH to make them functionally necessary to the book. It gets three stars and won't be sent to live with the Lord like so many others have been before it.

Milord, Old Goriot review forthcoming...about 70 more pp before I finish
*waves* at cameling
Hidy to thea and alcott
mckait, what kind of challenge is this to a lady who reads 75 books before lunch and then reviews and rates them by dinner time? Huh? I ask you.

;-0

I think we are ok with the baboon grinning at us and glad it is not his blue rear end :)

I Should Be Extremely Happy in Your Company is one of the books I hope to read in 2009. Thanks for your review and insight into it!

:P~~~~~~

oooh.. I have I Should Be Extremely Happy in Your Company on my TBR pile ... I'll move this up the pile and hope to get to it this year.

cameling and alcott, the Brian Hall is most definitely worthy of your reading, but I caution against making space for it at the expense of truly sexy and delightful books that you each may have on deck. I doubt a serious reader would be disappointed in it, but flaws and all, it should remain a second-rank read priority.

Not that y'all asked....

I report that The Fabric of Reality by David Deutsch is simply wonderful. Clear, well-turned prose, ample illustrative examples of his points, and a beautifully thought-out explication of the bizarre nature of reality as explained in the far reaches of physics. The fact that Richard Dawkins is cited as an inspiration for Mr. Deutsch's work should forewarn the spiritual seekers in the audience to avoid this book at all costs. It takes a very clear stance against there being a supernatural agency in the workings of the Multiverse.

Instead, Deutsch says that the Multiverse is weird enough to contain answers to all questions couched in numinous terms and to explain all phenomena and experiences the species has filed in the "supernatural" bin. His arguments are presented without condescension or hectoring, which is a common failing in the prose that wishes to "debunk" the spiritual experience. He simply explains how the experiences fit into the framework of the Multiverse. From there, he says, it's up to you the reader.

THIS is an attitude I can endorse and enjoy. I dislike the spiritual imperialism that says, "My way is Right and all others are Wrong," and equally dislike the materialist dogma that "There IS no spiritual and those who imagine there is are deluded and foolish." I want the arguments presented and then leave it up to me to decide what to do with the information presented. Please don't do my thinking for me! And that, laddies and gentles all, is what I feel Mr. Deutsch makes an overall successful stab at NOT doing. He favors the material explanation, and makes no bones about it; but he is very reasonable and reasoned in his advocacy, not shrill or hectoring.

A well-done work of enduring value in the cultural conversation about the nature of reality as we find it.

#14: Thanks for the input, Richard. I have it on the list of books to get to some time this year since I had it home from the library last year and never got to it, but maybe I will read it after I get to everything else on the list.

how goes the reading richardear?

I did not choose a new one for today, had a new baby born into the family
( my niece).. too busy for a new book. I believe my next one will be fluffy...
not sure..

>14 richardderus: Thank you, Richard Dear, for a well balanced and informative review of a well balanced and informative book. No one should be afraid to read contrary views of their beliefs. Provided they are presented in a reasonable tone of voice. I always try to state my own beliefs in a reasonable and positive way understanding that there are others who who hold contrary points of view.
(It's not their fault that they are not as enlightened as me! :)

- TT

>16 mckait: mckait, well...today's reading is Caesar's Vast Ghost: Aspects of Provence by Lawrence Durrell. I am about 2/3 into it, as an anodyne for the dreariness of this rainy Wednesday in which I have to go out and grocery shop, make photocopies, head for the postt office, and get the afflicted foot wet, with its historical result being an infection. So I am in a pet, as the saying goes, and should be ignored.

>17 TheTortoise: Milord, I completely agree! I read works of Christian epistemology because, although I am not a Christian (despite, well because of, the Catholic Church and Protestant freako cult extremes' best consolidated efforts), much of the world is and I think it behooves me to understand the terms of their debate.

richardderus - sorry about your foot and the dreariness of the day. Being in a pet is fair. But we won't ignore you.

"Protestant freako cult extremes' best consolidated efforts" sounds like what's happened to me in my years on earth, although I've always said that I had a face that launched a thousand conversions. On the street, in restaurants, on the way home from school (in high school), on the job. In a group of 20 or so people at a bible study one time, I was the one cornered and harrassed. Why don't they just leave me alone? The only advantage I had was not being raised Catholic. But I did have a boyfriend who had his hands whacked with the metal edge of rulers by nuns...

I live in a schizophrenic county (western end very conservative and Bible Belt, eastern end much more liberal), but work in a Bible Belt county.... sometimes it's just pure hell. But, knowledge is power and I also try to read about "the terms of their debate."

Hang in there!

me too... religion wise.. I do read it often.. all sorts..
Richardear.. I hope yourpoor foot is okay after all..

{{{{{RD}}}

Y'know, lots of us have this anti-religion experience due to what I call spiritual imperiailism on the part of the major monotheistic religions. They all know They Are Right. Two of the big three want you to be one of them and absolutely nothing on this planet is better planned out to make me say, "Pfui!"

In Texas, I was accosted fairly regularly by Protestant weirdos who would begin a conversation, "Are you saved?" These people would not take my walking away in silence as a social cue to leave me alone. No! Their Savior demands that they hector and lecture a sinner into guilt and self-hatred! Just like them!

*buzz*

No, thanks.

The Catholic parts were simply awful because the Church believes that we're all born in sin. Sin is part of what your mother does to you when she sinfully engenders you (with the sinful, evil practices of your father) and sustains your life and goes through an arduous passage to bring you into the world.

Only a celibate and/or someone who has never had a child could say something that stupid.

Oh dear. I'm on my soapbox, I see. Climbing down now.

Richard Dear, such bitterness!!! Actually, like you, I have opted out of the "spiritual imperialism" of organised religions. They give Christ a bad name!

They do not represent his teachings or his attitude and He should not be (but is) judged by their unChristian behaviour. Even the term "Christian" is now so loaded that it does not represent my stance. Incidently, Christ wasn't a Christian! He was Jewish.

I am simply a disciple without an agenda. That's the best I can come up with on the spur of the moment.

Sorry to hear you have footsie and jobby problems. Hope things will improve soon.

- TT

They do indeed give Christ a bad name, and Christian will, in the future, be a term of opprobrium.

I have no kick with the actual practicioners of the Christ-like way. It is simply that I run across them so seldom in churches that I don't associate them with Christianity.

I'm fortunate that I know two families that I feel "walk the walk" and don't just "talk the talk", although they are very vocal about their beliefs sometimes when I don't want to hear it. (example: 10 year old daughter of one family said at Christmas that she wrote back to Santa on a website about what the real reason for the season was - a little smugly, I thought - but hey! she's only 10). I respect and admire them mostly, even though I don't believe what they do. They still love me, and I still love them, so it's cool.

sidebar: I saw an exhibit of The Dead Sea Scrolls in Raleigh NC last weekend. Awe inspiring and emotionaly uplifting.

#23-24: I agree that the main problem with us Christians today is that running the mouth seems infinitely preferable to living the life.

>25 alcottacre: alcott, LOL! Well expressed!

>24 karenmarie: karen, WOW! Dead Sea Scrolls in person...I think my head would explode from the sheer weight of history these scrolls carry.

Fortunately mine didn't, but my husband almost had to drag me out kicking and screaming..... I wanted to stay in there and look at them for much longer than our 15-year old did. You're right about the weight of history. People thousands of years ago paintakingly wrote those scrolls, put them in jars, then.... flip to 1947 when they were discovered.

We also saw oil lamps, ink jars, a scribe's pen, what has been interpreted as a scribe's table, woven cloth, and, most exciting to the numismatists in our family (all 3 of us!) coins found at Qumran. There was even a coin minted in the reign (or whatever you call his term of office/power) of Pontius Pilate, with his name on it..... gave me goosebumps and shivers.

Oh. After the scroll room, there was a room with antique bibles from the 1400, 1500, 1600, and 1700s.... old testament and new, hand-written and printed. An old Torah.... all stunning.

To bring it back to a book-related theme/question - have you ever read any Elaine Pagels? A very good author, in my opinion.

The only Pagels I have read is The Origins of Satan. It was wonderfully presented, and full of scary insights into how demonization serves the psychic needs of a community.

Our demons today, I guess, are Muslims and porn. What does this say about us?

Antique Bibles...I lived in Austin for years, and went to see the two copies of the Gutenberg bible that the Harry Ransom Center owned. It is indescribable to be in the presence of the VERY FIRST printed books. Awe is a pale version of the word I'm looking for; something far deeper is called for and I don't know what it is.

The Morgan Library here in New York had a show once, long ago, of illustrated manuscripts...that was equivalent in a/effect on me; and seeing The Book of Kells in Dublin was...I don't know! It is a changing experience for a man as historically oriented as I am to be there with these items created by my fellow humans, used by them, treasured by them, passed down for a millennium or so by them, and now I, no one in particular, can go and see, experience, be there with these precious things.

Museums are one of Western "civilization"'s top achievements.

Excuse me for butting into the conversation...but Pagels Gnostic Gospels is not to be missed. I agree with karenmarie; Pagels is a very good author. Interesting thread here!

Edited to get touchstones to work, but they don't.

I would second the nomination of Pagel's The Gnostic Gospels; it was a very interesting book. One of the things that most attracted me to it was the extreme loathing displayed by reactionary religious groups to it upon its publication. ;-) I've heard her speak at Princeton and she's an interesting lady.

*sulphrous muttering*

This thread is SUPPOSED to be about the 75 books I actually read in 2009, not add fascinating books to the Amazon wish list. Stop it. Before I buy again!

Umm...I'm adding Pagel's Gnostic Gospels to my wish list now. I HAVE to stop reading these threads! Thats nine books so far this year and I've already ordered eight of them. That's one book for every day of this year. It can't go on.

>31 richardderus: & 32 Have you people no self-control! Get a grip. It's easier to tell others what you can't do yourself, isn't it?! :)

- TT

I confess, where books are concerned, I have absolutely no self-control, TT, so you will have to exercise it for me :)

>34 alcottacre:: Hmm, let's see now. No patience, no self-control, not a saint. Is there a pattern emerging here? :)

- TT

I told everybody I was not a saint! That was not my idea.

me too richardear, I was merely an innocent, when I was inspired by maggsie to sign on to this and what happened? I have already ordered at least one book and added a few more to my lists. Bah!!

I too, am free from self control when is comes to books..

*watches another book slide to the floor from the shelves trying to escape the overcrowded conditions....*

>36 alcottacre:, No, it was mine! Tee hee!

- TT

#38: Then you have no one but yourself to blame when I do not act saint-like :)

>39 alcottacre: Whoa, WWW, now I am to blame for your unsaintly behaviour!!! The usual excuse is "The Devil made me do it!" Not "The Tortoise made me do it." It just doesn't have the same ring to it, somehow. :)

- TT

I am rebelling and since you came up with the 'saint' you have to live with the consequences, TT.

Hmmm "The Tortoise made me do it" has a nice ring to it. You, devil, you! :-)

BTW richard, I stopped by to see what you are reading these days. Your are still reading , aren't you? :-)

>42 MusicMom41: LOL I wondered too :) Hey Richard, quite an active thread you've got going.

>43 suslyn: suslyn, you want ACTIVE, take a little look-see into alcottacre's 300-post thread!

My sainted aunt's 90th birthday celebration is over, my dear friend the Worldsaver is back to Roma and work with FAO, the Divine Miss is gone, and I have ten minutes to look at my personal Mt. TBR.

*contented sigh*

The Tortoise Made Me Do It,
Richard

#44: Richard, The Tortoise makes us do lots of things. Feel no shame in this, lol.

BTW - My thread only has (as of right now anyway) 241 posts, not 300. Let's not make it any worse than it actually is.

>45 alcottacre: WWW, 247 and growing daily. Blame it on the Boogie!

- TT

#45 and #46 - let's see. Alcottacre's 2008 challenge had 574 posts. That's 47.83/month. The 2009 thread has 271 already (as of 1:03 as she points out.) At 20.84/day, that extrapolates to 634.07/month. She's on an upswing!

Admittedly it will probably taper off some as people get less exuberant about posting, but I do agree that aa is clearly ahead in posts.

I think that in her case, there is a correlation between number of posts and number of books read.... she reads sooooooo many! Makes my head swim.

>47 karenmarie: karenmarie, alcottacre and mckait make me feel like the backward kid who read the SRA red level and couldn't understand it at all. HOW DO THEY DO IT?!

The Tortoise Made Me Do It,
Richard

good grief! I don't think I've thought of SRA since I read it 40 years ago! LOL

That sounds so familiar.... was that the color-coded levels that you had to do a timed read/answer questions? and if you got three correct you moved to the next level? If so, that was in 5th grade... 45 years ago...

That's the one, karenmarie! Fifth grade...people born that year are parents, and some are grandparents.

I feel old today because, I guess, I AM old!

I remember those little books. I LOVED them and went through them faster than the rest of the class. No surprise I guess. :)

>52 loriephillips:, I loved them too! I started at, I think, the silver level and then went to the gold level; I was so bored in reading class that my first girlfriend and I had a competition to see which of us could read the entire set the fastest! (She won, though I suspect her of cheating even to this good day.)

>OMG, your memory is MUCH better than mine. I don't remember the colors. Was there a brown? I seem to remember brown.

Red started it off; then there was blue; green; yellow; brown; silver; gold. Or so my memory runs. Old Blueyes (the girl in question) was a fellow silver-starter, and we were expected to make the (six each?) booklets in the two colors we had to finish last an entire semester! *snort* We were done in two weeks. Then we went back through to read them all, and that took five more weeks. The teacher found out what we were doing and...wait for it...SUSPENDED OUR LIBRARY PRIVILEGES for being show-offy. Our mothers, who cordially detested each other, united in a fury against the ridiculousness of this. Library privileges reinstated.

What was that woman thinking?! Punish a kid for wanting more work?!?

Book 3 of 75: Caesar's Vast Ghost by Lawrence Durrell. Subtitled Aspects of Provence, this gorgeously illustrated trip through Mr. Durrell's experiences in Provence over the course of three-quarters of a century (1920s to 1990s) was a delight. I don't habitually read books of the An Italian Education or Toujours Provence ilk. I tend to want to experience a place for myself, or simply not to care about it. This is an excellent book, though, because it's not larded through with carefully thought out "random musings" or cursed with the destination-article breathlessness that I experience in so many place-books.

Durrell's prose is a polarizing factor about the book. One will either enjoy its lyricism (eg, "What are the French really like? ...I found myself thinking back to my own early youth, to the first shock of my encounter--at about twenty years of age--with Paris. It was like a sudden unpremeditated chord on the piano--a chord I had never struck before. The city was full of a subtle sort of oxygen which mounted to the head." p27) or be repulsed by its phony-tony-ness (example above again). I was about evenly split in my decisions on his style, but in the end I felt I had so much more pleasure from it than I had wincing pains, that I came down on the plus side.

The lovely object of the book itself is a sheer pleasure to hold. It's an oversized book, though not a huge one; it's a four-color book with many nicely chosen images to illuminate the text. Arcade Publishing bought the book in from Faber and Faber, the UK originators of it, back in 1990-91. Its beautiful four-color endpapers, a riot of color in a drawing by one Oscar Epfs (of whom I have never heard), are exemplary of something I miss in today's more somber book production: A sense of the object "book" as a desideratum of its own, separate from whatever merits and qualities the text might have.

I don't recommend this to fans of Peter Mayle, but rather to fans of lyrical prose and leisurely impressionistic immersive reads.

I was in the blue birds reading group in first grade.. the teacher made me sit and listen to and correct the yellow birds. Way to make friends.. eh?

No idea how it happens RD but it has been this way for years.. reading too fast.

Does anyone in the UK remember reading from some books with children who had colour names? Roger Red Hat was one of them maybe??

And I also read too fast, when I was 9 and had just gone up to a different school (9-13) we were only allowed to take out books from the 'shelf' that matched the sticker on our school library cards. I had read mine within about 2 weeks, and had to 'prove' that I could read older books before I was given free rein to the rest of the books.

Maybe experiences such as these are the reason I have a dislike of libraries now.

#57 mckait - until I read the last part of your sentence, I thought you were in Blue Birds.... the Brownie equivalent for Camp Fire Girls. I was a Blue Bird.....

Then I saw the yellow birds part. A disappointment.

Hey, Richard. Have you read the Durrell's The Alexandria Quartet? I read much about Durrell on an LT thread, and, in true LT form, had to buy what I had read about. Luckily, I found a cheap set at a local library sale. If you've tackled it I would love to know your thoughts.

As to SRA...lordy, I haven't thought about that in years! I ripped, I mean ripped through the colors, as I suspect most of us here did!

>57 mckait: mckait, yeupyeupyeup...adults have so little comprehension of the social lives of kids. Correction by your peers = Ultimate Eterenal Hatred.

>60 theaelizabet: theaelizabet, I did read The Alexandria Quartet and was fascinated by the recursiveness of the storytelling. I still like Justine the best of them all.

sorry karen... lol
and richard, you are so right.. I am scarred.
truly

>62 mckait: et al So glad that didn't happen to me. I had serious asthma as a kid and was always with my nose in a book (on the playground, in the gym, etc.). No one discouraged me from reading, although maybe it would have been wise to redirect me just a tad :) We had a fab collection of legends from around the world, each book devoted to a country. They were wonderful. In elementary school I was a Gertrude Chandler Warner devotee (in the days before the add-on books).

Book the fourth: In the Japanese Garden, text by Elizabeth Bibb illuminating photos by Michael S. Yamashita.

This book was such a joy to find, to buy, to read...it has been a perfect experience. It's the Fulcrum Publishing edition in paperback of a book done by Starwood in 1991. As it's a paperback, my local Salvation Armani charged me 49 cents for it. It's in *perfect* condition. Rapture!

Then there is the gorgeousness of the book...photographs that are almost lit from within, they are so lovely. The printing job is adequate, but a little heavy on the cyan, making all the blues intense but the greens a little squishy. Very, very small quibble.

Above all else, though, is the subject matter...the gardens...the aesthetic of accepting nature's gifts of color, shape, and form, and designing the living landscape to make every angle and vista a reflection of this aesthetic, inviting meditation on the nature of life's seasons and the seasons of life...well. It is a restorative draught for my wearied, nibbled-at soul.

The Shinto spirituality of the gardens is not neglected in Ms. Bibb's essays on the gardens and their various histories. It is telling that the origins of this most Japanese-identified of landscaping modalities is a direct lift by the ancient Japanese from Chinese culture's gardening traditions. The borrowing went on until the 18th century, in fact, with the Ming/Qing garden trend that emphasized greenery and stonery at the expense of Western gardening's obsession with blooming things. It is one reason I so love Japanese gardens: they are not awash in messy, purposeless FLOWERFLOWERFLOWER plant FLOWERFLOWERFLOWER stuff.

I would recommend this book to anyone who feels hemmed in, pecked at, torn, or simply needs a respite from daily life.

>64 richardderus: in the Japanese Garden sounds absolutely wonderful. I will keep my eyes open for it. Lovely review, Richard.

Thanks, lorie! I hope you can find one...it's worth the search. Of course there are copies on Amazon starting at $3....

I found a post somewhere that you are awaiting a copy of Hedgehog..
sigh...

me too... and this is going to be my last purchase for a while, I think.. I have a few on their way including some mooches.. I get 4 a month from vine.. but, due to finances... ( Dan not working) buying is over for me for a while, I think....
unless I embark on a life of crime..

Well, cuddles, if you embark on that life of crime think BIIIG. Steal billions! That way they'll have to put you under house arrest and then you'd have time to read your ill-gotten gains. Hey, it worked for Bernie Madoff, didn't it?! And they'd have to treat you the same way or there would be howls of outrage.

>68 richardderus:,
Isn't that the truth...

good thinkin' richardear

want in? we could be the new Bonnie and Clyde

or sylvester and tweety or something..

Sigh . . . one of these days I will get to Lawrence Durrell. He is probably tired of sitting on Continent TBR - but then again, he has plenty of company.

>56 richardderus:: One of my better non-fiction reads last year was Prospero's Cell which is Lawrence Durrell's memoirs of his time in Corfu. It was interesting to compare the perspective found there with My Family and Other Animals, which was Gerald Durrell's account of roughly the same period...Lawrence being an adult and Gerald being the pre-teen younger brother.

TadAD--great review of Prospero's Cell. Looks like I'll have to add both books to the TBR list.

mckait, or should I say Bonnie, what's our first target? And shall we start a Thieves' Book Addiction Fund for our LT pals, too? Maybe everybody gets 250 free books...? (Betcha that'd make 'em hide us!)

>72 TadAD: TadAD, isn't it interesting how many Durrells are place-books? Hmmm.

I like the way you think richard Clyde.

*chortle*

mckait, we're a beautiful pair of biblioholics. We'll do anything at all to feed this need!

>75 mckait: and >76 richardderus:: may I suggest Clare Wigfall's The Loudest Sound and Nothing as a near-future read? A short story collection bought for me at Christmas, it features a retelling of Bonnie & Clyde from Clyde's perspective. Engrossing. (And the rest of the book is pretty fantastic too.)

That sounds perfect Flossie!

Clyde, I think I should head up your way, more to rob... all we have in my town is a McDonalds , a Pizza hut and a little "corner store".

C'mon, Bonnie, bring a ol' flivver fer getaway.

Oooh this reminds me of the auto museum outside of Lyon which is way cool. They have Hitler's parade car there among other things and much of the collection is house, amazingly enough, in a wonderful chateau.

mckait, ROFL

I thought I was the only person to remember that a Model T was a flivver!

suslyn, there was a car museum in Reno, Nevada, when I was growing up in Los Gatos, California (a place I dislike even unto this day), where my father would take me to look at the old cars. His older brother was a car collector for many years, and had a lot of 1920s and 1930s cars that he would go to old folks' homes (as we called them then) in and take the elderlies for rides.

Old cars is jus' plain ol' cool!

>82 richardderus: My dad and I went to an antique car show and I've never seen him so animated. He thought the world's total extant Metropolitans had to be there. He showed me the car he drove for his and mom's first date, etc. That was fun.

I've been away too long what's the politically correct form of "old folks' home"? I bet they just loved your uncle!

>83 suslyn: Suse, It must be the "The Last Stop Hotel" or The Old Bones Resting Place."

- TT

lol :)

>83 suslyn: suslyn, I believe the irreverent Lordship in #84 meant to say, "Senior Assisted Living Facility" or "Nursing-Care Residential Center."

My uncle's visits were the highlight of many a day. An old lady, very very frail, is the one I remember best: She got into a 1934 Terraplane with the biggest grin you ever saw...it was the first new car she and her husband ever owned. She chatted away to me (9yrs old) about how they shopped for all kinds of cars, and they almost bought a Reo, but she just loved the looks of that Terraplane.

I remember saying to my father that I was glad I got to talk to her as we left. He looked at me funny and said, for the only time in my life, "That makes me feel very proud of you." My uncle said she'd never talked so much since he'd been coming there. She died before he went back.

Wow Richard -- that made me teary. You made her day. So glad you got the opportunity to hear your dad say you were proud of him. If you evoked that at 9 I'm sure you did many other times as well. Mine said it once too... I'm counting it even though it was addressed to me and my husband as a couple. :)

*snort* fathers...I make sure I tell my daughter how proud her character and integrity make me feel. I remember how hard it was to be an adult, struggling to make it, and NOT having even validation...so no way do I do that to my own.

you are such a dearichard!

:)

The worst thing I can say to my oldest daughter is, "I'm very disappointed". That's when she knows she did something really wrong.

Book the fiveth that I readed:

One Writer's Beginnings by Eudora Welty. Well, so it wasn't the fifth I read it was the eighth but I loved it too much to bear not reviewing it right away!

The unassuming, delight-filled, unsparingly indulgent prose of Miss Eudora's fiction is surpassed in this expansion and revision of her Massey Lecture in the History of American Civilization, delivered at Harvard in 1983. For anyone unacquainted with Miss Eudora's literary output, I recommend starting with short fiction ("The Bride of the Innisfallen" is a good starter, followed by "Why I Live at the P.O."), moving on to her chef d'ouevre, The Ponder Heart; this memoir, all 104pp of it, should come after one knows whether one is able to appreciate the particularities and glories of Miss Eudora's work. While I think she would appeal to any able-minded reader, I know from experience that her beautiful sentences sound like preciosity to some readers: eg, "Over a stronghold of a face, the blue hat of the lady in the raincoat was settled on like an Indian bonnet, or, rather, like an old hat, which it was." ("The Bride of the Innisfallen")

This, to me, is equalled in English by Nabokov's terse clarity, and by little else; but it has been cited to me several times as unendurably cutesy or simply overwritten. I so completely disagree that it's hard to credit the opinion-havers with a shred of taste; however, there are tastes, and there are tastes, so I move on from my digression.

One Writer's Beginnings is told in a narrative voice much like her fiction; it is constructed like the linear tale that a life is when it is reflected on at leisure; and there are so many things in her history, from 1909 and her birth until her last entry in the lecture, a trip by train to New York during the Great Depression as a WPA junior publicity agent, that clearly formed a consciousness of time and place and rightness of things that she uses to such telling effect in her stories. An anecdote early in the book of her parents' morning routine of whistling and humming back and forth up and down the stairs phrases from The Merry Widow Waltz illuminates for me the means by which this shy, never-married lady "got" the signals of relationship that are so necessary to the parties in happiness. Another moment, the discovery of two nickels preserved in a hidden box, teaches me that Miss Eudora never felt any unmixed emotion (I won't tell that story, it must be read to be understood) and that is why The Ponder Heart is such a landmark in Southern ficiton.

The death of Miss Eudora's beloved father in 1931 is simply too painful for her to go into; she elides the details and leaves us to infer her pain. It fits with her lifelong lack of interest in talking about herself, but it leaves the reader without an anchor in what had to be a turbulent passage in her life. I can't fault the lady for her reticence, but in this as in several other areas, it would have behooved Miss Eudora to have let others guide her in preparing these talks so as to answer more questions.

Well, and therein the rub: It was the last thing she ever wanted to do, answer questions, and it's also why she wrote such marvelous stories, to answer them all unasked.

Miss Eudora Welty, thank you for it all, and a safe journey into the future for your gifts to us who follow along behind you.

On the wishlist One Writer's Beginnings goes, sounds wonderful. Thanks for the review!

I share your assessment of Miss Welty and it brings me great pleasure to know that she is still so well understood and revered by others. So many of her books and short stories came to my mind when reading your review. "Oh, but what about...?" When I read her, (me with my Texas upbringing) I hear the voices of my now deceased relatives, but one needn't have any ties to the South to understand the underlying humanity represented by her work. She's one of my favorite writers. I've read One Writer's Beginnings several times. I think it may be time for a massive Welty reread. Thanks for the insightful review.

Eudora's book sounds ponderous.

I am too world weary for ponderous, just now..
I am reading drivel~ more or les. Have finally picked Edgar off the shelf,
and I imagine that he will be my company for a few days.

You are moving along though, my friend. Drivel goes fast, ponderous takes time.

Oh dear, I made it sound ponderous...I meant to make it sound full of presence and yet not leaden! Well, in any event, mckait, I say fluff and drivel suits your current moods, so have at it!

>93 theaelizabet: th., what about a February group read of some sort?

A Welty group read would be wonderful!

I think so too...maybe a story collection group read? That would give others a shot at discovering Welty in small, complete pieces. Thoughts?

I never thought of One Writer's Beginnings as ponderous! I thoroughly enjoyed it when I read it a couple of years ago, so I heartily second Richard's recommendation.

Short stories may be the way to go, if not, then the The Optimist's Daughter, perhaps? I've got The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty, which is probably too long. Hard to choose among the individual collections, though. And I think only Collected Stories has Where is the Voice Coming From? I defer to your decision. They all sound great to me.

In case you've missed it, or if anyone else is interested, here's a link to Welty reading "Why I Live at the P.O.," "Powerhouse," and "A Worn Path," at the 92nd Street Y in NYC in the winter of 1953.

http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/11/22/specials/welty.html?scp=2&sq=eudora%20...

I just cannot come to grips with how to review The Elegance of the Hedgehog. It was a delightful book to read; it had some real and troubling flaws. I wasn't surprised by the ending, I was disappointed; it isn't a book I think it would be easy to end, though, in a satisfying way.

I think the translation serves the book brilliantly well. Alison Anderson wrote a novel in the 90s, Hidden Latitudes, that reminds me in structure and in tone of this novel; her translation is, no doubt, informed by this fellow-feeling germ. I would NOT say that Muriel Barbery was imitating the older book. I would say that Barbery hit the translator Lotto with Anderson, however!

So...meat of any review...would I recommend this book, flaws and all?

I do not know. That's why I can't write a %()(*!*^% review of it!

This is giving me agita and I need a cold compress for the headache.

*brings richardear a cold cloth scented with lavender and a tall cool drink*

ahhhhhhhhhhhhh

So nice to BE pampered! (Not that you would know, dear mckait, to my distress.)

((((((((((((RD)))))))))))

Well, I was going to try and help out, Richard, but it looks as if Kath has you covered . . . I hope you recuperate rapidly :)

Okay, review number 6 of 75:
The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

This book is a delightful disappointment, a hugely successful failure, a predictable page-turner.

Since I read a translation by novelist Alison Anderson, whose Hidden Latitudes I read ten or so years ago and quite liked, any comment I make on the writing of this book is misplaced. I don't know what Muriel Barbery's writing is like. I know that Barbery is well served by her translator. Anderson presents us with a text whose twining first-person narratives rather resemble the narrative technique she used in Hidden Latitudes to tell Amelia Earhart's imagined life stranded on a desert island.

What do Paloma, a twelve-year-old child of privilege and Renée, a fifty-four-year-old daughter of poverty have in common? The novel sets out to define their commonality of cause and kinship. That they are sisters under the skin is a set-piece of the book from the start. This really isn't good news, since the characters are not necessarily best understood as being in tandem; they share one central characteristic that organizes each one's life: They hide. Hiding from others, the masks required of those who are different from the norm, this rich seam is well and fully explored in this novel. It is even over-explored. Perhaps “beaten half to death” would be the way to say it. Paloma is far smarter than her elegant Parisian power-couple parents or her very bright (in an average sort of way) college-student sister. She begins her journey through the pages by announcing that, on her next birthday, she will commit suicide and simultaneously burn her home down. Adolescent angst, oh goody, was my first thought. Little Paloma with no problemas wants to kill herself, well sugar, go do that and leave old man Richard alone. Little by little, Paloma records in her two journals the few things she can find in her little world that make life worth living. It is these reflections and observations that make the meat of the book, that give us enough insight into this young person's development to make reading her philosophical ramblings worth the time and effort.

Renée, the adult in the piece, is even less obviously sympathetic; she's decided to hide her intelligence and be, to all outward appearances, the typical working-class occupant of a concierge's loge. She isn't that at all, and she reports to us in her first-person narration that she has no respect for those who employ her since they are so easily fooled into believing her crafted image. So far, so average. What makes this book's whole greater than the sum of its parts is the quality of the philosophical musings the two characters indulge in; they are very well worth the time to read.

I can't say I was happy with the ending of this book and I was distinctly irked by the revelation of the Great Buried Secret in Renée's past, it seemed so pat and contrived and predictable. Paloma's plot line resolves in a great whoosh of predictability, too. But this is a book that uses the formula (loners are people, too! Loneliness is bad! Look around you, there are treasures on every doorstep!) to a very satisfying-to-read end. On balance, recommended reading for anyone who likes underdog stories, and who has an interest in philosophical musings. Worth a read for anyone who simply wants to pass a few pleasant hours. Avoid at all costs if happy endings are the only ones you like. Don't bother with the book if you are looking for any sort of challenge in the reading or the thinking you'll do here.

Lovely review richardear. I can hardly wait to read it.
While the title alone is enough to entice me, the story sounds like an interesting one. I am pleased to have no challenges in my reads just now and it sounds perfect. Maybe it will show up today?? That would be perfect!

>106 richardderus:: thanks for an excellent review. I had been planning to pick this up but I might wait for it in pb.... it sounds like it might really irritate me and I'm not really in that kind of reading zone at the moment.

Y'know, FLossie, that is what I would suggest that you do. It's a good book, no doubt, but not one I would say anyone should make a priority out of reading.

Review seven of seventy-five:

I spent two very busy days, but made a little time to read The Wedding, all touchstones are wrong, by Elizabeth A. Rees. It's a YA novel based on the famous Jan van Eyck painting "The Arnolfini Wedding." Watson-Guptill, primarily an information publisher, did a series called "Encounters With Art" in which YA writers are asked to imagine stories based on or featuring famous works of art that are intended to illuminate (pun optional) the nature of painting and sculpture as storytelling media. Since humans are storytelling apes, this idea interested me.

Ms. Rees tells the story of young Giovanna, the bride in the painting, as she comes of age and discovers love and duty in her very different world. She falls in love with an unsuitable young man, a la Romeo and Juliet, during her first-ever night out as her father's arm ornament at a Burgundian court shindig in her new home of Bruges (recently arrived from Paris after her mother's death). While there, she also meets Jan van Eyck who asks for permission to paint her portrait. Her trip to van Eyck's studio is made still more exciting than it would be anyway by the...gasp!...appearance of the unsuitable love object!

Hijinks ensue. She marries dutifully, but wisely, knowing as she now does about the heart wanting what it wants, or else it doesn't care. The marriage lasts for forty years. Love? NEVER lasts forty anythings longer than maybe days.

Is this a book of brilliant writing? No indeed. Is it an entertaining book? Yes indeed. I like the idea of the series very much, and I liked the way Ms. Rees imagined the world of Bruges in the 15th century, and the way she wove fact and fancy together was deft and engaging. I recommend it withtout making a fuss about it.

>110 richardderus: Oh you jaded man. :) I've got 40x2 months of a wonderful marriage. My folks are about to hit 50 years and they still chase each other around furniture. Having lived with them on and off until I was 35 I can say this joyful celebration of each others' presence has been one constant.

Edited to fix pronouns!

>111 suslyn: Let's just say that, two marriages and several gay relationships later, and being the product of two serial monogamists, I am a wee teensy scoche on the cynical side.

Which is why, in the end, I am so very very pleased that my daughter married (THIS time) someone who is her friend first and all the fluffy fun stuff later.

Review eight of seventy-five is a short one.

Pere Goriot by Honoré de Balzac as translated by Marian Ayton Crawford. This simply has to be the most tedious translation of Balzac ever done. I do not have the smallest intention of revisiting the plot or the characters because they are readily Wiki-able. The translation is the thing here. A perfectly pleasurable read in French, it is just criminal to market this translation at this point in history. Penguin should hang its corporate head in shame for continuing to offer this terrible clanking juddering Ford Fiesta of a misrepresentation of Pere Goriot.

#113 richard

Which translator would you suggest? I bought a used paperback of Pere Goirot translated by Henry Reed because I plan to read it this year--for the first time. If this one is also unsatisfactory, I'm willing to get a better one because I hope to enjoy the book based on what those on LT who've read it have said.

The Reed translation is unknown to me. I can't say if it's good or bad, but I can say that the Ellen Marriage translation seems to me to be superior to the Crawford one (hell, I could do a better job!). Are the illos by one Rene Ben Sussan? If so, they're from the Ellen Marriage book's original publication about 1960 or so.

With a story this unremittingly unhappy, leavened only by the blackest humor, how one reads it is very important. It simply becomes a slog when the daughters are so stiltedly smarmy. Goriot himself doesn't get that many good lines here; Crawford steps on them. Blech.

I envy you being able to read French well enough to enjoy it. My vocabulary is just too small. But I can buy a house in French -- you wanna talk septic tanks or roofing? I'm your gal.

114 MusicMom41--I tried out two translations via the "look inside" feature on Amazon. I began with the Signet classic/Henry Reed translation, but switched to the Norton Critical/Burton Raffel translation early on because it was annotated (which really didn't matter) and contained some interesting critical essays. I suspect the Reed translation is livelier, but the Raffel is perfectly serviceable. As usual, I've rambled on too long! Good luck!

#115 richard & 117 theaelizabet

Thanks for the help. I think I'll read my Reed translation and try to find the Norton one at the library to read the essays.

BTW So far, my favorite translation of Beowulf -- at least in that genre I found him very readable (I've read Heaney and much earlier one for high school which I didn't care for--but I might have been too young!)

>116 suslyn: suslyn...La Petite Larousse was e'er by my side.

Just finished the wonderful, incantatory, delightful The Bestiary by Nicholas Christopher. Simply superb, and I give it four of five stars. One star off for a brief, positive mention of a cat as suitable companion for a human.

LOL "positive mention of a cat as suitable companion for a human." I wanted a dog, but got three cats. Um, could you talk to my husband? :)

You married a cat person? Knowingly? If you were blindsided by this character flaw and chose not to divorce him, well...you're a better being than I. If, on the other hand, you married him knowing full well that he was possessed of this moral defect, well then...on your (hopefully itching) head be it!

>121 richardderus: I had no idea! Complete surprise. He had dogs growing up, he was his mother's dog's favorite person ... so I thought a dog was a shoo-in. Mais non. He had to have a Maine Coon. And, this maybe a stretch for you to believe, this is a fairly doggy cat. He (actually all three) responds to 'come', 'no', 'inside', 'outside' etc. They greet us when we come home, butt our hands to be petted, sulk when we leave...

If I have to be stuck with cats, and I am, they're the best ones I could imagine having. And yes, I do itch, sneeze...

Yes, I've met a few Maine Coons. I did not squirt water into their ears, as I am wont to do with cats that come too close. But still...THREE of them...perhaps it's related to the fact that y'all're living in Romania. Bound to be a deranging factor.

Ahhh, I've always wanted a Maine Coon! The dog-like cat is how my cat books describe the breed (heck, their size alone tends toward bigger than a small dog!)... the main deterrent for me however is the amount of brushing I figure I'd have to do. Such long (beautiful) fur!

Oh richard....lol
it's a good thing you are sweet and kind as well as a crotchety cat hater.

my fergus was part maine coon.. alas :( O lost hime a few years ago :(
he was a rescue like all the rest, and I loved him madly.

One Maine Coon, two ASPCA brothers. The brushing is not a big deal, but the hair -- it is EVERYWHERE, I mean everywhere! I brush him mostly because he loves it. He even hops into the tub to let me know it's time to brush him. Of course it does reduce a teensy bit the amount of hair I have to sweep up as well. His daddy is 25 lbs. I was actually afraid to enter the room with the dad and his pal when I first saw them, but 'gentle giant' is right. None of my cats has ever scratched someone on purpose or hissed at someone. They're almost 2.5 yrs old.

>125 mckait: & 126 I want one! or two or maybe three. (sorry richard).

My apologies as well Richard. Tutu just adopted two rescue cats at her aspca -- they have 9, count 'em NINE, maine coons at that shelter. Get yourselves up therre tout suite! Rescuing a kitty from a shelter is a really good deed and one heck of a lot cheaper than buying a Maine coon!

Richard,

After my glorious last read (Painted Lives), but for me an emotionally-charged one, I wanted something a bit lighter. I picked up Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals. His quick wit had me laughing in the acknowledgements. And his style reminded me of yours here on LT.

>129 suslyn: suslyn...good heavens! Such praise!! Gerald Durrell's style is so witty and so erudite! *blush*

'Tis true, 'tis true -- I immediately thought of you, and wondered, 'gee wonder what Richard's written that I could get my hands on' :) He is good, isn't he. I'm really enjoying this charmer.

Alack and welladay, the romances I wrote in the 1980s are looooooooong O.P. and the writer's block I went through after my son died in a car accident when he was 2 means there is only a book I edited extant: "In Your Eyes." I think there is a copy somewhere on LT, even. If you want one, let me know and I'll mail it to you.

You're a prince!

Review nine of seventy-five:

The Bestiary by Nicholas Christopher

Sometimes a book just comes at you from nowhere. Unannounced, something about a particular work will summon something unexpected from its reader, something that feels important and shifts an atom or a molecule from left to right, from up to down.

The Bestiary did something like that for me. I began it with some small sense of its potential. I read Nicholas Christopher's novel Veronica earlier this decade, and was left with the feeling that I was about two-thirds of the way to a real experience, and left stranded by that last piece of unexplored territory between me and glory. What good writing, what good storytelling, what a letdown. I hoped for equally good writing and storytelling, plus a completeness I wasn't experiencing in Veronica.

Xeno Atlas begins the story of his life with the memorable observation, “The first beast I laid eyes on was my father.” Urgh, I though, another “my-father-failed-me” story. Still, there is so much in that sentence. There is menace and foreboding, and the foreshadowed sighting of more beasts. Continue, I told my cynical inner reader.

Lucky me, he did. Xeno tells us of his life as the left-behind son of a widowed Cretan sailor father, raised by his Sicilian maternal grandmother and Albanian nurse. The grandmother, we learn, is the granddaughter of a shape-shifting dryad; the old lady appears to become a red fox. The nurse is the closest thing to a normal person in the house, and her lovingkindness becomes a rock for Xeno's growing-up years. When, as is inevitable, the grandmother dies, Xeno is sent to boarding school in the wilds of Maine. It is here he will begin to come to terms with his father's indifference to him, and will discover the first traces of the Caravan Bestiary, the lost half of the universal bestiary that God used in creating the world. During the Flood, it appears that Noah got only one bestiary to guide his selection of animals, and the other animals were, it would seem, not pleasing to God and therefore to be abandoned. The Caravan Bestiary is the book recording their existence: Manticores, rukhs, griffins, gargoyles, sphinxes...all to be wiped out. Somehow that did not happen, and the Caravan Bestiary was proof of the survival of these terrifying other creatures.

Xeno begins a life-long quest for the Caravan Bestiary that takes him to every corner of the world. It is during his tour of duty in Vietnam that he re-connects with his boarding-school teacher who first mentioned the Bestiary to him. The vital clues that set Xeno traveling purposefully on the trail of this ancient book are discovered in a Hawaiian library, of all places. Xeno spends several more years chasing down clues and traveling across the Mediterranean several times, coping along the way with the loves and losses of any man in his twenties. His father dies; he learns the truth about his mother's family when he visits Sicily for the first time, and encounters for the last time his beloved red fox; he reignites and relishes his childhood love for Lena, a woman closer than a sister could ever be; finally, finally Xeno grows into the man we're rooting for him to become in his practical and urgent help for the real, living animals of Africa as he uses his inheritance to save endangered animals from certain death.

As if in reward, God (or whoever) brings Xeno to a church where he discovers so much more than he expected to find, and yet never actually beholds his longed-for prize of the Caravan Bestiary. What he finds is, without giving anything away, even better, even more surprising, and far more than he has any right to hope he will ever see.

I recommend this book to anyone who felt The Da Vinci Code was too facile and longs for a quest novel that will actually satisfy the real basis of the quest myth: “Know thyself.” I read this book, and at the end, I think I did know myself just a little bit better. I too am Xeno Atlas.

I have already put The Bestiary on the Continent.

BTW - Based on your recommendation, I got in a copy of The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears yesterday . I am hoping to get to it in the next week or so.

Oh richard, that sounds wonderful!

Could the book possibly live up to that review? I really do not need another book to add to the pile~ sigh

I have not picked up a book in 3 days~ major funk~
I am in the middle of The Seance and maybe will finish it tonight??

#136: I HATE book funks . . . and do everything possible to avoid them.

>134 richardderus: Your style is magical. I had a similar, but perhaps not quite as wonderful, experience this week too with Painted Lives. Through the characters journeys portrayed therein I came to know myself a bit better too.

Thanks for the marvelous post

Wow, thanks for the wonderful review. The Bestiary goes onto the wishlist.

>135 alcottacre: Stasia, oh good grief! I've never posted my review of The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears! Thank you for mentioning it! I hope that both books will be to your liking.

>136 mckait: mckait, no funks! nononono! A good solid tooth-callenging read is what you need. Get The Seance finished and move into meatier fare that makes your brain spin and your clock chimes bong.

The Eyre Affair should do it. Bless our porchy for making you do it!

>138 suslyn: suslyn, gee! Does that mean you want to read the Harlequin Historical I'm finishing up?

>139 lunacat: lunacat, goody! A copy sold is a good thing! I really hope you'll like it.

>140 richardderus: Bien sur ! LOL

ETA: Je ris, mais je suis absoluement serieuse !

It isn't so much a book funk as a personal funk.

If I could get myself to care enough to go and pick up the book I would probably read it. But.. ?

Maybe the weekend will help.

I might just pick that up after The Seance which is a good enough book.
I have to review it for vine and hope I can keep my personal blahs from coloring my review.

and yea... bless our porchy... and all of the nice 75'ers who hang out in this challenge :)

>141 suslyn: okay! I think it's required to be 15,000 words so this weekend or next week oughta see it done.

>142 mckait: sweetness, funk is a word that worries your friend Richard. Unfunkify long enough to call me! I need to know what's what.

During a funk period is a good time to go find a favorite comfort reread just to tide you over. Children's books, or a favorite romance or adventure book--it's like chicken soup. Hope you're feeling upper soon.

*rubs hands together in glee*

Review ten of seventy-five:

The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu

How wonderful it is to find a first novel that feels so accomplished and tells such an engrossing story. I can't imagine that real, enjoyable talent is becoming rarer in a world that contains such eloquent proofs of its health.

Mengestu tells the story of three friends, African immigrants all, who meet in Washington DC, for so long the home territory of nativist sentiment in our republic of exclusion. I don't think a recap of the plot will help anyone decide whether or not to buy the book, because its outlines are simple: Men seeking material success in the motherland of same are thwarted and, through effort and good fortune, succeed at things they weren't looking to succeed at...temporarily.

A fire plays a major role in completing the story, and since I am currently seeing a fireman, that caught my eye. It's not, to my surprise, used as a pat plot device, but imbued with a real sense of the inevitability of sadness, loss, and change in the entwined lives of three lovely characters. Naomi, to name but one, is a heartbreakingly well observed actor in the piece despite her tender years, and Judith her mother is such a deftly drawn, conflicted, real person that I was tempted to look her up in the phone book; as for Sepha, he can come stay with me until things get better. That's the kind of connection Mengestu's characters call forth in me, and I hope in you too.

Bravo, Dinaw Mengestu. Thanks. Write...well, publish...more soon, please. Recommended for all readers of fiction.

Review eleven of seventy-five:

The Delectable Past by Esther B. Aresty

Too yummy for words. A social history of cookbooks from inception of the idea of writing down recipes at all to the nineteenth century. I love books like this. I love the history of dining, the history of the food crops, the history in short of the world real people actually lived in during what we dismissively call "the past."

Added bonuses here are illustrations taken from these antique sources, recipes from the time updated to 1960s cooking methods (interesting how "fat" has become a pejorative term in cooking, boo hiss Susan Powter and Center for Science "in the Public Interest"), and Aresty's engaging and conversational tone.

Full disclosure: On reading the chapter entitled "18th Century England: The Good Housewives as Authors", I ran right downstairs and made a recipe of "Snowballs" (p124) and they were outstandingly good. They were also a lot easier to make than to eat, requiring a knife and a fork and a bit of patience to knock into. But hot damn, do I have a conversation starter for the next dinner I throw!

Recommended for readers of social-science books; readers of history books looking for a new slant on the subject; a must-have item for anyone who collects cookbooks, or uses them for more than just the occasional Thanksgiving pie recipe. Keep a drool rag handy, readers.

The Delectable Past was just added to the wishlist - it sounds like a lot of fun.

#147: As someone who enjoys food (rather too much in fact), The Delectable Past sounds right up my alley. Thanks for the review, Richard.

That does sound good. My best friend collects books about food. Was getting her Ruth Reischel for her bday but turns out she already has all three. Do you think this might be a good substitute?

>150 suslyn: I hate to hijack Richard's thread, but I just thought if you can't find The Delectable Past that I'd recommend either Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice or My Life in France as two of the best foodie books I've read in the past year or two. Heat, especially.

Thanks Talbin. I'll check with her husband to see if she has those.

Hey suslyn: I am about to review a book called Pomp and Sustenance, which is a culinary history of 25 centuries of Sicilian cooking with some SUPERB recipes...that book would be my pick for your foodie friend. I've found that books with recipes are almost always the way to go with foodie people. The Ruth Reichl stuff is fun, but it has a natural limit to use, unlike books that have recipes.

My two cents.

I agree about the recipes, but she seems to really enjoy these memoir type books. She has all the Reichel's, Julia's My Life in France... Now the Sicilian recipe book might be right up my alley! :) Thx.

ETA Seems like with a title Pomp and Sustenance it would be hard to go wrong :)

Twelve of seventy-five was Pomp and Sustenance by Mary Taylor Simeti.

How good it feels to immerse myself in the warm, welcoming world of Sicilian cooking and food ritual. It's a place I love going to, and this book gave me a lot of historical insight into things that left me verschmeckled on my visit.

The recipes, oh goodness, the recipes! They sound like food porn, they are so good. I am not the first to experience this, as the following quote from an 18th-century French traveler shows:

"Almost all the ragouts {sauces} of the Syracusans are composed of pork meat, an indigestible food {!}, which can do no other than whip up the blood, heat it and render it into a state of orgasm and continual effervescence." (p157)

Now I have eaten a lot of pork (bad, nasty pun at your own risk) over the past 50 years and I have YET to have errrmmm this particular experience. What in Heaven's name are they feeding these pigs, and how do I get some?!

When I was through fanning myself, I continued into the joyously brimming recipe sections that followed, describing cannoli, pasta alla carrettiera, and a timballo di maccheroni bianco, which features in a superbly sensual passage of The Leopard, that delightful Sicilian novel. I want to see if I can reproduce the "...masses of piping hot, glistening macaroni, to which the meat juice gave an exquisite hue of suede."

Thirteen of seventy-five is another cookbook. The trend here has to do with comfort reading. I plan meals and cook when I am upset, so this is a form of therapy for me in my recent loss of my adopted sister:

200 Years of New Orleans Cooking by Natalie Vivian Scott

Since this book was published in 1931, there has been a huge sea-change in attitudes on race. The uncomfortable call-outs of "Negro dialect" around many of the recipes are cringe-inducing today, though I for one find the chatty, personal tone of the recipe instructions to be charming. It's like it used to me when I was cooking in my mother's kitchen.

She was always a little surprised at how interested I was in her cooking habits, since she said I was going to have a wife to do all this stuff for me (neither wife could cook for sour owl shit, BTW); she came to see it as a boon when she realized it meant I could be sent to the grocery store with a menu and come home with the proper ingredients.

I reproduce here a weird little dish that shows how different tastes are today, and that chatty quality that I like so well:

"Celery a la Creme
Celery well-washed and scraped, cut into short lengths, boiled, and drained, appears appetizingly served with a hot white cream sauce."

Which apparently you already know how to make. I cavil at "appetizingly," since this dish appearing on any table at which I am seated is guaranteed to put me off my feed for several hours or until dessert, whichever comes first. And who on earth thought of BOILING CELERY?! Ugh!

But, in contrast, there are WONDERFUL recipes in here for strawberry beignets, for a corn fritter straight from heaven (made both for lunch today, my sainted aunt asked me to marry her), and for Fish St. Martin...3lb of fish, 1/2lb mushrooms, 2 dozen oysters, 2lb boiled shrimp and looooots of butter. I'll try this one soon. And maybe even share. Not so sure about that one, though....

>155 richardderus:: one for the other half's birthday list for sure... I do enjoy your reviews!

Thank you much, FlossieT! I know your other half will appreciate the gift of Sicily. It's such a wonderful combination of food, the necessity for life, and wanderlust, the necessity for intellectual stimulation that led us storytelling apes of humans to invent fiction in the first place, and sheer decadence!

#155: Definitely sounds like one I need to read! I will turn on all the ceiling fans in the house if necessary while reading it, too.

Fourteen of seventy-five: Maimonides: The Exceptional Mind by Israel Drazin

It isn't often that a twelfth century Jewish sage gets this kind of attention from a twentieth century non-Jew. I read Maimonides: The Exceptional Mind with the kind of absorbed attention that I am accustomed to paying to secular historical figures' biographies. I am not possessed of a God gene, it would seem, so I tend to avoid books about figures I associate with any religion; fortuately, this book made it under the radar.

Maimonides wrote, at the end of the twelfth century, a book called The Guide of the Perplexed. It was a signal contribution to world culture in that it specifically enjoins its readers to engage with the world they find themselves in, not a fantasy world of demons, angels, and magic such as the majority of Maimonides's contemporary co-monotheists inhabited. His book encouraged the use of rational philosophy in parsing the religious foundation texts used by Jews, and all other cults.

This book, while I give it four stars based on its content of explicatory and expository information about Maimonides, isn't for a casual reader. It is structured like a textbook, with section titles and section content questions; it's not written in particularly fluid prose, though it is certainly not poorly written at all; it is, in short, a teaching book. This is a noble and wonderful thing to be. It isn't likely to make the volume or the subject into a bestseller, though. It's well, well worth the time to acquaint yourself with the rationalist's mystic and the mystic's rationalist. It's easy to do this with this clear, concise, and elegant text.

Book fifteen of seventy-five: Life on Wheels: The A to Z Guide to Living Fully with Mobility Issues by Gary Karp

This is a deeply inspiring book. The author has revised this title into a second edition ten years after its first appearance. It's truly a resource book; I live with a mobility impairment, and with a 90-year-old whose mobility is decreasing; and this book, though not aimed at either of us, was so affirming of the value of life lived with far more severe impediments to mobility that I was cheered by it every time I picked it up.

Consider what I just said a moment. A book aimed at the newly paraplegic or quadriplegic, acknowledging their feelings and issues, is written in such a way as neither to depress or affront a fully abled person by its frankness and its positivity. Karp never cheerleads. That is a fatal flaw in a motivator. He does exhort, but he does so from the standpoint of a person who has traveled this road he's showing the reader since he was a vogorous 18-year-old changed by an injury into a paraplegic. He isn't anything different from anyone else you know; and that's his lesson to the newly wheeled: Neither are you. You're a person, act like one! I reduce his arguments to their absurdest simplicity for a review. His explanations and lessons are far more nuanced and absosrbing than I can convey to you in a review.

I like Gary Karp. I like his warmth and his humor and his intelligence. I'd like to have him and his second wife over for dinner. I can't imagine that a chair would make a difference to the wonderful evening I expect we'd have.

And that's exactly the message he's after sending. Read this book if someone you know has a spinal injury, BEFORE you say anything thoughtless. Read this book if someone you know is living on wheels. Read this book if you are at all interested in what the world looks like from waist height. You will not be sorry that you made the effort.

#160

This sounds like it would be a good read. I'm adding it to the TBR pile. Thanks for the excellent review.

>162 MusicMom41: MusicMom, oh goody! I think you'll derive a lot of pleasure out of reading it. I can see the reason we're all still talking about Maimonides most of a millennium later...he deepens the experience of being alive in the world with his clarity.

The love it hate it wizard said I will love it.. I have put it on my wish list...
Thanks RD.. considering where I work, and some of my friends, this looks like a helpful read for me .

((rd))

I think I'll stick the Maimonides book on my pile too - I read The Guide of the Perplexed a couple of years ago, so this would be a great follow-up, I think. Thanks for the great review!

Both are very good reviews, Richard! Good job!

mckait, you will love the Maimonides. I say this with conviction.

scaifea, it will expand your appreciation of Guide of the Perplexed, I feel sure.

msf, thanks! And this cold is keeping me from making sense, so that makes me feel even better.

*hands rd a hot toddy and a thermos of chicken soup*

*hic*

Thash my th...th...thir toddy

wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

>161 richardderus: My best friends own a handicap access company. Thanks for the review -- I'm buying them this book.

I am adding both the Maimonides and Karp books to the Continent TBR. I think it is going to be renamed Universe TBR in the near future at the rate it is going!

>170 suslyn: Suse, I think they will thank you up one side and praise you down the other! This is a rare experience for me, to feel uplifted by the aftermath of what I consider tragedy. A wonderful experience, too. Karp's a delightful guy, I bet, and I can't imagine how I would be one-third so upbeat in his place. Perhaps your friends could get a deal from Demos (the publisher) to give it out in bulk?

>171 alcottacre: Stasia, I think the Maimonides will illuminate your faith in a new and flattering light. While a rationalist, Maimonides cannot be accused of being anti-faith. I now need to read The Guide of the Perplexed so I can really get a handle on this fascinating new-to-me force in spiritual thought.

Good idea! I was thinking they could give them to their clients too... Great minds and all that ;->

>160 richardderus: Rich, congrats on your intelligent and insightful review of Maimonides: The Exceptional Mind by Israel Drazin. Sounds like a good down to earth exposition, which is rare in our rabid times.

- TT

I came by to wave at you on your thread since you said you are not visiting mine any more

*wave* *wave* *wave* *wave* *wave* *wave* *wave*

>175 alcottacre: Does this work? ok, I will also give it a try

*wave* *wave* *wave* *wave* *wave* *wave* *wave*

hmm

*wave* *wave* *wave* *wave* *wave* *wave* *wave*
Hiya Richard!

>175 alcottacre:/6/7 I'm feeling sea-sick!

- TT

Sea-sick would be a relief. I'm battling an unpleasant cold and I went to sleep this afternoon instead of writing, reading, or anything except eating (olives, salami, grated Gouda, hot olive oil, and bread...not even a cold can withstand that assault of salty goodness!).

Still feeling rotten. Must feed my sainted aunt. Cheers all.

Richard, I sincerely hope you feel better soon!

Sending "Get Well Quickly!" vibes your way--sniff, sniff!

So sorry. Wish I could drop off dinner for two. (Isn't McKait's smiley the cutest thing?!!)

That emoticon is the funniest I've ever seen, Suse!

Not better today, worse, and it's raining and I had no sleep to speak of and the garage door guy was here for hours so I had to make him lunch too, and I am in a grump about this dratted cold!

Beef stew for dinner. It's mindlessly simple and I love it, since I do a kinda Belgian thing and use beer for the stewing liquid.

Sorry you are not feeling any better today Richard! I hope you get better soon.

Well with menus like that I don't feel sooo badly that I'm not able to drop something off for you... Praying you're tons better soonest.

Sixteen of seventy-five:

The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck is a wonderful short novel by a master of his craft at the peak of his form. It is also his last novel.

Some people at the time it was published felt it was a wrong turning for Steinbeck (The Grapes of Wrath, Tortilla Flat) to abandon both the west coast that had made him famous and brought his considerable social conscience to the world's attention for an east coast grifter's POV. The Winter of Our Discontent is a story that has nothing but shades of gray. Everyone in it is shady somehow. That is, I think, what verschmeckled the reviewers and made the public angry. Up until then, there were clear-cut Good Guys and Bad Guys in every Steinbeck tale. Here...no, no one qualifies as all good or all bad.

The POV is of Ethan, a man who is the degenerate scion of a venerable family. He is married with teenaged kids, and he will do anything to support his family. Including, to their horror, work for an Italian grocer as his clerk. The nerve of the man, a son of the founder of his town, working for someone who *should* be his gardener, according to his friends and his kids.

Well, he thinks, how can I help it, we all gotta eat. So he hatches a plot that will restore the family "honor" by swindling a friend. He goes through with it. He gets what he wants. And, frankly, so does the "swindled" friend, an alcoholic prowling for his next few thousand drinks.

This isn't really Steinbecky stuff, it's too hard to pin down from a moral standpoint. On the other hand, it's superbly told, and it's amazingly well crafted, and it's undoubtedly the best thing Steinbeck wrote after 1950. Reviews were harsh, sales were poor, and Steinbeck lost heart for fiction after that. He published two travel books before his death in 1968, a mere 30 years after The Grapes of Wrath burst on the scene. Imagine the wonders he could have produced had he lived to an Updikey 80-plus.

Seventeen of seventy-five:

The Tales of Beedle the Bard is J.K. Rowling's kind-hearted attempt to cash in on Harry Potter's success in a cause most will see as worthy...aiding orphans around the world.

It is entertaining enough to have kept me from going bonkers on the train home from New York. It is not good enough to keep in my library, being precious and twee and simply too too.

I do not recommend it and I don't say flee screaming. Read it with no good memories of the Potter books or you'll most likely feel a huge let-down. Read it as a pleasant diversion, and make someone else buy it for you.

Eighteen of seventy-five:

The Praise Singer by Mary Renault was a re-read, I feel sure, since I was hooked on her stuff in the Seventies...yet I felt curiously unfamiliar with the book. I recalled some scenes, such as Simonides returning from home to rejoin his master Kleobis in their Samian exile; I found a lot of the book to be less clear in my mind than most I've read before and choose to re-read.

I put this down to the fact that as I was reading it in 1978 or 1979, I was disappointed that the main character wasn't gay and wasn't even very excitingly drawn. (Can you tell I was a youth who loved the Alexander novels, The Bull from the Sea, The King Must Die, The Persian Boy? Especially The Persian Boy, quite salacious!)

But, in the end, as a fifty-year-old who's tastes have matured (ha), I liked this book quite a lot. It was a lovely tale of how the world has always judged others by their looks and not their deeds or talents. It presents itself as a harmless historical novel, and examines human nature minutely, unsparingly, and with what can only be called a jaundiced eye. Renault was clearly irritated at the follies of mankind. It shows in such lines as this, spoken by Simonides in his old age: "I have never desired young maids, preferrinig ripe fruit to green; maybe it is because I feared their laughter when I was a boy." (p262, Pantheon hardcover edition 1978)

Still scared of the masses. Still subject to the fears and foibles of youth. Wiser? Renault is too good a writer to make you take her view. She tells her story, and leaves you to take her meanings.

Sheer pleasure, friends, and all too seldom met, when a storyteller trusts you to read, and read again, and reach your own conclusions. Read it and conclude, and you won't be sorry.

Nineteen of seventy-five:

Dinner at the End of the World by Antanas Sileika is a Canterbury-Tales-ish SF novel from the Great No-Longer-White North. Set on the semi-tropical shores of Hudson's Bay, the survivors of the global warming catastrophe are pondering what in the hell is to become of the world, and how to keep on keeping on. Along comes a stranger. He claims to have the means to save the planet, and will...but only if the folks he's with can convince him to do so.

Human nature dictates that us storytelling apes will always want our stories to be heard by someone, anyone, who will listen. When the audience is someone who holds the power of life and death over the whole species, somehow that kicks stuff into overdrive. The stories are what they are, but the real story is...why do we believe this man has the power he claims he has? Why are we telling our stories to someone who claims to be in a position to judge us, all of us, by the stories he hears in this place at this time?

Because...it means that everything is Someone Else's Problem, and Someone Else's Fault if nothing gets solved. This book is really quite a bitter little indictment of our entire sorry posse of poltroons, and it's told in such a straightforward and simple voice that it's quite some time before that becomes obvious.

A wonderful book, not to be missed.

I am adding books 16, 18, & 19 to the Continent and I do not want to hear you complaining about how many books from my thread that you have added - probably 0, anyway :)

hmmm you have me intrigued by 19 and I loved your advice re: Beedle Ha!

Twenty of seventy-five:

Word Play by Peter Farb is a fascinating look at what language DOES, what its parameters are in social terms. I thought this book was really interesting when I read it in the 1970s, and I have changed my opinion not one whit. Interesting.

But not sparkling! Dry writing is, one supposes, inevitable in books on such po-faced topics as why language works the way it does. I don't really understand why the academic world has such animus towards wit in writing! It's possible to be informative and amusing, just look at Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe.

Still and all, it's a recommended read for anyone who feels language is more than just sounds to fill up silence. You'll come away from reading the book with an entirely altered approach to each conversation you have.

they look like interesting reads, my friend.... I am getting into The Terror myself right now. Horror suits my frame of mind.. :P

#193: Thanks for the recommendation of Word Play, Richard. Sounds like something I would enjoy!

Oh, I think you'd really get a kick out of it, Stasia. It would never surprise me to learn you'd delved into this kind of subject, as broad as your interests are.

And mckait...I think, in truth, that you know this stuff already and might not need to read it. You're too astute a communicator not to have the points Farb makes down cold. And given the job you do, it becomes even more likely that you could write this puppy!

xoxo

#196: as broad as your interests are You've noticed that, have you? Now you know why I never finished college - I still cannot decide what I want to be when I grow up :)

>197 alcottacre:, why grow up? I think that takes the fun out of things. And you already ARE something...an autodidactic polymath. And a darn fine one, too!

Off to dream of electric sheep now.

#198: You cannot go to sleep yet, Richard! You have not made any comments on my thread about the books you are not going to read ever :)

ETA: Thanks for the compliment in calling me a polymath. I can only aspire to deserving that appellation.

Woot! I got my Early Reviewers copy of Full Meridian of Glory (touchstone seems not to be set up yet) by Paul Murdin...a history of the establishment of the Paris Meridian, once upon a time, a rival to the Greenwich Meridian or, as we call it now, the prime meridian. (Guess who won that fight.) I can't wait to read this, because the measure of the world, and by extension the cosmos, is fascinating and important. Thank you so much, SpringerVerlag and imprint Copernicus Books!

Twenty-one of seventy-five:

King of Cats: A Life in Five Novellas by LT's own author, Blake Fraina. I don't like Jimmy, our POV character, at all. Elliott makes me want to screech imprecations at him for being such a wussy. Adam annoys me, clueless hopeless wet Adam who can't figure out why he gets what he wants and then doesn't want it.

That said, Blake Fraina has written a well-crafted tale about people I hate like fury, and I think that's a good sign! This is a novel about the ways in which we humans fail to connect with ourselves (Adam, Elliott) or each other (Jim, all the women in the book with special emphasis on Amy), and what dire, horrible consequences that has in our lives. No one in this book is aware that being happy is a possibility, though Elliott is relentlessly chipper. It might look similar, but it's not the same.

The five stories of the book intertwine nicely, not leading into and out of each other so much as flowing inevitably and circuitously from each other's strongest and weakest points. The weakest story in the bunch is the last one, "Hidden History," because it of them all feels narrated, told, presented ex post facto, not lived before one's eyes as the others do.

I'd say the gay sexual content is sufficiently integral to the stories told that all but the most squeamish straight people should be able to read these hymns to dysfunction and its power without issue. I would encourage people in my Boomer generation to read the stories because, honestly, we just don't hear what Frainia's saying to us often enough: Actions have consequences, emotions have their own lives, and even the ones we leave are still with us.

#201: Richard, I will give it a shot when I can locate a copy. Thanks for the review and recommendation.

Twenty-two of seventy-five:

Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World by Dan Koeppel is yet another entry in the single-subject world of non-fiction. The narrowness of focus in books such as Salt and Cod and The Book on the Bookshelf and The Pencil and Longitude seems to be an increasingly preevalent trend in publishing. I am all for it on one level, since I like delving into the abstruse and wallowing in details that leave most people I know colder than a penguin's butt in the middle of the Antarctic winter; but on another level, I want to stop these publishers before they bore again with books inadequately edited and organized.

There are three pieces to the banana...the history of humanity's first cultivated plant (modern evidence from New Guinea shows human cultivation from 9000 years ago was of bananas, but for their corms not the fingers we eat today); the politics of the modern cultivation of the banana (the term "banana republic", which I have used without thinking for 30+ years, has a very literal beginning and a scarily modern ring); and the future of humankind's most basic and widely distributed food crop (essential to survival in several parts of the world, the banana is also under threat from several pests that defy modern chemistry to abate, still less conquer, and squeamish food-o-phobes in wealthy countries oppose all modern genetic engineering that could save the survival crop of many parts of the world). These three strands are awkwardly interwoven, with no obvious guiding editorial hand to make sense of their interrelation.

It's a shame, too, because this is a huge, important topic, and the author's not inconsiderable talents are well-used in bringing the facts to light. The loss of our American favorite banana, the Cavendish, from grocery shelves will be an inconvenience at most; the fact that two major American corporations are, double-handedly (is that a word?), responsible for the spread of the blights that threaten the world crop with the complicity of the American government, should mean that we as a country are liable to find solutions to the pressing problems of food security in the places we've so screwed over. Free. But that won't happen, you can bet on that.

Back to the book...too much narrative drive is lost in the author's back-and-forth cross-cutting of the basic story. I wish someone had said, "Yo Dan...first third of the book is the banana as a plant; second third is the politics of the banana; last is the science of the plant." I wonder if that was what they tried, and the interconnections of all the information prevented its success? I somehow don't think so.

It's a good-enough book on an important topic that SHOULD cause each person who reads it some discomfort at our societal callousness and myopia. I recommend it to those most likely to be irritated by progressive politics and social liberalism. Isolationists particularly encouraged to apply!

Great review, Richard! I'm putting that on my list because I agree it is an important topic. I'm sure it will irritate me. :-)

Have you read The Secret Life of Lobsters by Trevor Corson? I read it a couple of years ago and found it fascinating. It deals with the science, the industry, and the politics the lobster business. You might enjoy it. Corson is an LT author.

*sigh* another addition to the wish list, and it's from my own thread *muffled sob*

Can I never, ever catch up? What evil force in the Universe wants me always to be about a millennium behind in my reading?

I know! It's those Satanic cats! They're to blame, I just know it!!

Oh, SO perfect, Kathleen!

Richard, how did you EVER happen to pick up a book called King of Cats? I would have thought the title would preclude your even looking at the book!

Well I've read every post here, have laughed, smiled, sighed and added about four books to Mount TBR. Great fun, Richard et. al.

mckait. I. Hate. You.

Roni, I wouldn't have picked it up based on title, for sure...but the author was good about letting me know what it was really about and that made all the difference.

tiffin, welcome! Come back tomorrow or Sunday, when I'll post a review of Full Meridian of Glory, unless I die of toxic cat spit poisoning overnight.

Will do...I gather you are not a cat person? And is that an understatement?

Cats, tiffin, are minions of Satan. They are evil incarnate, and if they were smarter, would already have caused the extinction of mankind, which is their ultimate goal. Cats have toxic spit, much as do the cuddlier, kinder, less evil komodo dragons.

So no, not so much a cat person.

#205: I assume that your not wanting to add books to your Mount TBR is why you did not leave any comments on my thread this week, lol.

#211: I think I will find you a komodo dragon to send to you for your birthday . . .

Richardear ~ you love me and you know it. And I love you back.

>212 alcottacre: Stasia, I avoid your threads because I end up with at least a half-dozen new books on my wish list every dratted week! Now if you would confine yourself to reading and reviewing "The Journal of the Proceedings of the Mechanical Engineering Society's Actuarial Committee" and "Love's Throbbing Gristle"-type romances, I could visit and have fun! But NO! You have to read interesting books! And you seem to read them like there are sixty hours in a day! I can't keep up! I get pooped looking at the mount of erudition that is the Stasia Thread Group!

>213 mckait: mckait, yeah well...:-8

Actually, Richard is in a state of deep repression of his actual feelings toward cats because his unfortunate and tragically severe allergy toward their dander prevents him from expressing his true cat personality, and this emerges as the need to dis cats at every opportunity.

>215 mckait: *choo* Thagks awfly

>216 ronincats: ROFL I love your delusions! They read as well as any fiction!

Twenty-three of seventy-five:

Full Meridian of Glory: Perilous Adventures in the Competition to Measure the Earth by Paul Murdin is another entry in the popular science genre made famous by Dava Sobel's book, Longitude. It examines the difficult technical and intellectual feat of creating an accurately measured meridian line, intended to be an aid to mapping and navigation; like the Greenwich Meridian, which we today call the Prime Meridian, it was the zero point for measures of longitude on maps made in France.

The issues surrounding the measurement of the Paris Meridian were multitudinous, and the people involved in the project over the course of a century were legion. Voltaire, three generations of the Cassini family, the Marquise du Chatelet; a who's-who of French scientific inquiry, and all on their juciest worst behavior, it seems.

That is, to me, the premise for a wonderful, engrossing, informative read. This book, alas, is not that kind of endeavor at all. The problem lies, in my humble opinion, not with the author's talents but with his intentions.

Dr. Murdin is a perfectly competent prose writer, and possessed of a dry wit that is all too seldom on display. He has written an account of the story, and not the story, promised in the title. This book as it is now contains all the notes and the sidebars (unless this is a hardcover ARC, the sidebars in the text are criminally poorly handled and should cause the author's agent to lodge a strong complaint with Springer's legal department...the sidebars explaining people, places, and concepts are scattered within the text itself and not delineated by any design element other than smaller type, and are not positioned in any sort of logical order or relationship to the person/place/thing sidebarred!) for the real, juicy book of scientists behaving badly in their noble quest to make the world a better place and their place in it more secure.

Perhaps Dr. Murdin was flummoxed in his quest to write that book by the immensity of the cast of characters, mostly unknown to an average Eglish-speaking audience; perhaps he was stymied by the publisher's reluctance to present the marketplace with a huge tome on such an abstruse subject, seeing as it's hard enough to sell $27.50 books on more popular topics; perhaps he simply didn't feel like it was necessary to give us the details that bring a time and a place and a quest to full and vivd life.

I am so sorry that he didn't, since I feel certain that he could have and am positive that he should have, since the book as presented is simply not one that will capture and ignite the extant market of pop-sci readers' interest and garner word-of-mouth praise.

The field is still open, science writers, for a whacking great doorstop of a page-turner epic on this undertaking....

Good review, Richard!!

Well, I won't read it. No sense in getting frustrated.

I loved Longitude and thought Dava Sobel a more than competent writer. She made a complex subject understandable and although there was as much muddle in that story as apparently in this one, she made it a pretty clean and readable book.

>219 karenmarie: Thanks, Karen! Longitude was a delight, and as I am a pop-science junkie anyway, it was a book I devoured with glee. Sputnik and its ilk owe their very existence to Dava Sobel, so I've been mulling a neologism: "Sobelite science" as a category, implying that the work is scientifically sound, historically accurate, and literarily entertaining.

While alliterative, it seems so dry....

#218: I loved Longitude as well, but I think I will give that one a pass. Sorry, it was not better for you, Richard.

"Sobelite science" - I love it!

>221 alcottacre: Stasia...yeah, it's not the book to take you into the Singularity TBR state. You think "Sobellian Lit" would maybe work?

I loved Sobel's Galileo's Daughter.

tiffin - I've got it on my shelves but haven't read it yet. Maybe I should move it up in the tbr list....?

>223 tiffin: me too!

>224 karenmarie: oh my goodness yes! Like next up!

Interesting rdear, glad to see you around the threads :)

#222: Works for me!

Twenty-four of seventy-five:

I received, unpacked, cataloged, and finished First You Fall by Scott Sherman. Flawed, a first novel for sure, but very funny in many places, poignant in others, and a worthwhile read. Gay rent-boy sleuth has never resolved his feelings for closet-case first love; they meet again when rent-boy's good friend allegedly commits suicide, and first love is one of the cops investigating; hijinks ensue.

For a book featuring a rent-boy, there is surprisingly little...ummm, well, a fast consultation shows NONE...no graphic sex in the book. The author talks about sex a lot, but that's sorta what you expect in a book with this main character. That SHOULD win over a mainstream audience. There was only marginally less sex in the Brandstetter mysteries by Joseph Hansen, and they were hugely popular.

The mystery aspects of the book weren't its strongest selling points. I was sure I knew who the murderer was, and I was right; I had the murderer's motive all wrong, though, and that made a nice surprise. The satisfying resolution to the red herrings strongly appealed to my orderly side. The romantic complications were believable, and while I have never been a rent-boy (never pretty enough), I have been down the road that Kevin, our main character, traveled, though without the happy ending. Life so needs a better script, don't y'all agree?

Recommended for mystery fans, straight or gay, who like to root for the underdog to win; also to fans of the reluctant sleuth genre. The truly homophobic should not even try this book. The mildly, "ewww ick" homophobic might see something worthwhile here.

"The mildly, "ewww ick" homophobic might see something worthwhile here"

ha! that made me laugh out loud. I know way too many of those. Thanks for the recommendation, I really enjoyed your review :)

>229 girlunderglass:, thanks! I know a lot of these folks too, many of them my family. All is well so long as we don't imply in any way that I might have *ewww* s-e-x with the men in my life.

One particularly benighted aunt still asks me when I am going to find the right girl and settle down. I'm 49, Gladys, get a grip!

I had to google the term "rent-boy" to find out what it meant. Guess I'm not as up on my camp-ology as I thought I was. So it wasn't so good as a mystery? Gladys reminds me of the time two friends of mine (in a very long term relationship) got asked by someone "which one of you is the girl?". I couldn't breathe for about five minutes for laughing.

I was asked by my father once, "Who's the top?" I responded, "Why do you want to know?" The response..."I guess you are, your butt's so ugly."

I haven't got a lot of patience for snottiness any more. My family kicked it out of me.

"Rent boy" isn't self-explanatory? Gee, I guess I just have a dirty mind...I got it right away. *blushes for being revealed as the dirty old man he is*

232: Richard dear
*blushes for being revealed as the dirty old man he is*
then I am a dirty old woman ;-)

ditto FAM...... lol

Anita, Kath, we're in good company...after all, John Waters (he who directed Hairspray and Pink Flamingos) calls his seventy-year-old self "America's Filth Elder."

Go John, say I, following along two decades behind! Joining the conga line, ladies?

Well, I'm hopelessly naive about certain things, so I'll just tag along behind and hope I pick up the odd bit of info as you conga along. hehe

ETA: I loved Hairspray.

Reading along even if I don't say much :)

Twenty-five of seventy-five:

I had a little dogless time, so read a book without the cold-nose-in-the-face reminder that the dog is there: Since My Last Confession by Scott Pomfret.

A gay Catholic engages with his native church. I am not Irish, as Pomfret is, but am gay and was Catholic; I suspcted this would be a fun read. It was.

It wasn't, however, a single book, it was a series of stand-up routines written by a gay Irish Catholic SEC bureaucrat with an atheist boyfriend, out on a mission to save the Church from sinking into moral turpitude (too late!) under Bennie the Rat (Pope Benedict XVI, ne Joseph Ratzinger) on the issue of gay marriage.

Fun. Straight people will get as many, if not more, chuckles out of this than will gay guys. The recurring trope Mr. Pomfret uses to describe himself (a colleague at the SEC put his photo in a lineup with the 20th century's ickiest serial killers, and asked people which person in the lineup looked like a lawyer; Pomfret, a lawyer, wasn't selected once) is funny the first few times, but loses punch quickly; likewise his cute nicknames for the people in his quest-story for Catholic gay marriage support.

Read this book. It's good, but one SHOULD read it a chapter at a time between other books the way rocketjk does some books. Otherwise, it's like eating carrot cake as your vegetable.

Carrot cake isn't a vegetable? No one told me that!

Stasia, the cream-cheese icing wasn't a clue? You, o four-thread maveness, are best suited to advise me on a delicate issue: Should I begin a new thread now, since I have done one-third of my reviews, or wait until the statutory 250 is reached?

Is there a statutory 250? I thought it was a statutory 200. I would go ahead and start a new one if I were you. New quarter, over 200 messages, all that . . . But that's just me :o)

25 books! Congratulations! You should start a new one now, I think. A lot of people started a new thread right at the end of March/beginning of April. Personally I only count the number of messages approximately - I pay more attention to the months. So I'm going to have a new one every three months, making it a total of four throughout the year. (Q1: Jan-Feb-Mar, Q2: Apr-May-Jun etcetera). Other people count exactly the number of messages. And others count the number of books read. It's entirely up to you - that's one of the great things about these threads :)

Edit: clarity

>238 richardderus: Richard, have you ever read Bruce Bawer? I found his Stealing Jesus: How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity fascinating and powerful. I hear that his A Place at the Table is considered a classic.

>232 richardderus: & >233 FAMeulstee:: I thought "rent boy" was a British-ism so I'm glad it translates (eventually).

I'm going to make a note of your book in >238 richardderus:, even if it is like calling carrot cake a vegetable. My supervisor at uni was gay and a committed Catholic (as in, attended the Latin mass sort of committed) so I've always been intrigued by the effort that must go into reconciling those two elements of one's identity.

edit for truly dreadful grammar

#243: Roni, thanks for the mention of Stealing Jesus. I am very interested in it!

Hi Roni...I've read a lot of stuff about Christianity, but haven't read Stealing Jesus...I think it's one I need to read! Thanks.

Okay. New thread for books twenty-six forward is over here for them as wishes to follow along.

Drat! Now that I've gotten my copy of Stealing Jesus out, I want to read it again. Like John Shelby Spong's work, and Karen Armstrong's, this type of book needs re-reading every few years to stay strong in your soul. And I have so many other new books to read!! Richard, I highly recommend this book. Let me know your reaction if you do read it.

>247 ronincats: Roni, head over to the new thread for my response.