labwriter: year one, thread two

With 27 books down and a third of the year almost gone already (how is that possible?), that means I'm pretty much on track for hitting my goal of 75. What's more important than the actual number, however, is the fact that I'm reading more. I'm almost sure to slow myself down with a humongo novel like War and Peace at some point--and that's fine if I do.

I'm also challenging myself to read more Books Off the Shelf (BOTS), another group I belong to. I'm trying to read half new and half BOTS, and that's going pretty well also.

My first thread can be found here




January

1) Alice Hamilton, a Life in Letters. Ed. by Barbara Sicherman. 5-star
2) William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism. Robert D. Richardson. 5-star
3) House of Wits: An Intimate Portrait of the James Family. Paul Fisher. 3.5-star
4) Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime. John Heilemann. 1/2-Star
5) 102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers. Jim Dwyer. 4-star
6) Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee. Charles J. Shields. 3-star
7) Eugene O'Neill: Beyond Mourning and Tragedy. Stephen Black. 3-star
8) Prince of Fire. Daniel Silva. 3.5-star
9) The Ruins. Scott Smith. 2-star

February

10) George S. Kaufman His Life, His Theater. Malcolm Goldstein. 4-star
11) Rebecca West: A Life. Victoria Glendinning. 3.5-star
12) H.G. Wells: A Biography. Norman and Jeanne MacKenzie. 3-star
13) The Clock Winder. Anne Tyler. 3.5-star
14) First Family. David Baldacci. (Abandoned--lousy book)
15) The Bookseller of Kabul. Asne Seierstad. 3-star
15a) The Moonflower Vine. Jetta Carleton (group read) 4-star

March

16) A Child of the Century. Ben Hecht. 3-star
17) Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight. Karl Rove. 3.5-star
18) Hidden Lives: A Family Memoir. Margaret Forster. 4-star
19) Rebecca West: A Life. Carl Rollyson. (Abandoned)
20) Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster. Jon Krakauer. 4-star
21) Appetite for Life: The Biography of Julia Child. Noel Riley Fitch. (Continued reading this one into April--finished April 17.) 4-star
22) Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness. William Styron. 3.5-star
23) Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen. Christopher McDougall. 4-star

April

24) The Education of Henry Adams. Henry Adams. (group read) 5-star
25) Empire A Novel. Gore Vidal. 3.5-star
26) In My Blood: Six Generations of Madness and Desire in an American Family. John Sedgwick. 2.5-star
27) Sometimes the Magic Works: Lessons from a Writing Life. Terry Brooks. 4-star
28) The Blooding. Joseph Wambaugh. 3.5-star
29) Hawk. Brian Neary. 4-star
30) Act of Treason. Vince Flynn. 3.5-star

May

31) Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs. Wallace Stegner. 3-star (group read)
32) Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow. 5-star
33) Innocent by Scott Turow. 3.5-star
34) Clover: The Tragic Love Story of Clover and Henry Adams and Their Brilliant Life in America's Gilded Age by Otto Friedrich. 4-star
35) Adventurous Alliance: The Story of the Agassiz Family of Boston by Louise Hall Tharp. 2-star
36) The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl. 3.5 stars
37) Life Work by Donald Hall. 5 stars

Most of my posts are just notes or musings, mainly to myself, about what I'm reading. I like to post what I'm thinking about the books as I go along. This is as close to a reading journal as I'm probably ever going to get.

Welcome to the multi-thread club, Becky!

I finished memoir I was reading: In My Blood Six Generations of Madness and Desire in an American Family. This book was about six generations of the Sedgwick family, written by John Sedgwick. I've come across these Sedgwicks in my reading pretty frequently (Ellery Sedgwick, the editor and owner of the Atlantic magazine, Catherine Sedgwick, an early American novelist, Christina Sedgwick, married to the novelist John Marquand, a couple women in the Ames family who were somehow hooked up to the Sedgwicks, Edie Sedgwick, the tragically screwed up 1960s "It" girl), so I wanted to know more about the family. I also enjoy reading memoirs, particularly family memoirs.

I'm vascillating between giving this a 2 or a 3 star rating. My 2-star rating says something like, "I kept reading but I don't know why," which pretty much describes how I felt about the book. If John Sedgwick were my friend and he had given me this to read in ms form, I would have told him to read some good family memoirs so that he has a template in his head--and then revise this thing. The first third was all about Generation One, Theodore Sedgwick. So much information about the one guy got to be a drag and a snore. I just didn't care. It also seemed like the author used this thing to get back at his father. What he had to say about him was pretty brutal; it had the tone of an adolescent who has never grown up. Since the author himself was in his mid-50s when the memoir was published, he seemed to be in a place where he was embarrassingly stuck on his adolescent angst about a father who didn't pay enough attention to him.

Whatever--now I know about the Sedgwicks, as much (or more) than I ever really need to know to put the family into perspective. I'll give it a 2.5-star rating, which seems fair.

Thanks, Stasia!

#3: I think I will be passing on that one.

I did put Family Portrait by Catherine Drinker Bowen on hold at the local college library and hope to have it soon.

I hope you enjoy the CDB memoir. She's an excellent writer, is very skilled at biography, since that's what she concentrated on all her writing life, and she uses that skill to write about her own very interesting family. I think hers was more interesting than the Sedgwick memoir for at least a couple of reasons: one, her family is more interesting than the Sedgwicks; and two, she didn't go back six generations. Instead, she gives a lot more detail about her brothers, her famous artist aunt, her mother, etc. It's a shame the book is out of print, because it's excellent.

#6: I am a big fan of CDB ever since I read her Miracle at Philadelphia many years ago. Her Adventures of a Biographer was a favorite when I read it a couple of years ago. So much so that I bought it for my personal library.

>7 alcottacre:. Yes, I agree--I loved both of those. Another difference between the two books is that CDB writes about her family as a "type"--we lived at this time in this place and that's what people like us were like. Sedgwick, on the other hand, writes of the special-specialness of the Sedgwicky clan. Bleh.

I figure with starting a new thread and a new month, and splitting the year up into thirds, with the first third behind me, then now is a good time to look critically at what I've read so far this year and see if there's anything I want to change. I spend a lot of my time reading, so I think it would pay me dividends if I were more intentional in my reading. I know myself well enough to know that I won't make a list and follow it, but I should at least make a good-faith attempt to put together some goals for the second third of the year.

Here's what I've read in the last four months.

Letters/Correspondence. I read one of these. I have many, many volumes of correspondence on my shelves. In the next four months, I would like to double what I read in the first four and read at least two volumes. That's not a big difference, but it's a step in the right direction.

Biography. I read nine biographies, the most of any category. That's a little over two a month, which I think is plenty--and probably about right.

Memoir. I read six memoirs. That's a little over one a month. I think that's about right--to read either one or two memoirs a month.

Current Events / History. I read three of these, or a little less than one a month. Two of these in four months would probably be plenty.

Adventure/Non-fiction. I read three of these. Again, two is plenty and one is probably enough.

Fiction. I read eight fiction books, which is two per month. I'd like to increase that to three per month. My total number of fiction books for the month would also include literary or classic fiction.

Literary or Classic Fiction. I read zero of these--Anne Tyler's book comes closest of the fiction that I read, but it really doesn't count. I need to read two of these every four months. If the book is really large, something like War and Peace, then one would be OK. It is simply not acceptable to read none.

How To, Writing. I read one of these. I would like to read at least two in four months.

Group Read. I was involved with two group reads in the first four months of this year. That seems like plenty.

Abandoned Books. I set aside two books as not worth my time. I would remind myself that while sometimes a plowing through a book is worthwhile, for various reasons, it is not always necessary or even a good idea to finish every book.

So what do I have for the next four months (ending the end of August):

Correspondence, 2 (one every 2 months)
Biography, 8 (no more--less would be OK, especially if I read more correspondence or memoir; two per month).
Memoir, 6 (one or two a month)
Current Events/History, 2 (one every 2 months)
Non-fiction (adventure, etc.), 1 or 2 (one every four months)
Fiction, 8 (two a month--minimum)
Literary or Classic Fiction, 1 or 2 (depending on length--OK to read one if it's a big, baggy novel)
How to, Writing, 2 (one every two months)
Group Read, 2 (that's plenty in four months' time)

See how this goes for the next four months and tweak it next time as necessary.

I should also include at least one volume of short stories or poetry.

Nice list of goals, Becky. I wish I were as organized - and disciplined!

Congratulations on the fruits of your work!
That's an impressive list and an impressive set of goals. I read as though I think I'm immortal; pick 'em up, put 'em down, finish, not--------actually, the randomness continues to make me happy. Oh well.

>10 alcottacre:, 11. I'm the least left-brained, list-driven person you will ever meet. I won't follow this list, but having the list helps keep me honest and it makes me take a real look at what I'm spending my time on. Otherwise, I tend to read straight supermarket "Number One" seller-junk.

I've never done this before--keep track of what I read, except for the books I buy and put on my shelf. Well, I take that back. When I was 10 years old or so, we kept a Summer Reading list. I really wish I'd kept a reading journal all my life, at least a list of books I read. That's one reason I've entered all of the fiction on my bookshelves by the year it was published. For the most part, I read the fiction the year it came out, so that gives me a pretty good idea of the fiction I was reading in the 1970s, 80s, etc. I've dragged that goofy collection of ratty paperbacks with me through every move I've made since I was 19 years old. More than once my husband asked me, "Why do you keep those?" I'm so glad I did, because it's really the only record I have of what I was reading back when.

Well, Peggy, I'm stalling--I really don't want to tackle HA this morning, but one more day and it's done! See you on the other thread!

Hi Becky,

Your goals are inspiring. I tend to keep mine in my head, and they take the form as vague goals such as "read more nonfiction." However, I have consistently kept a list of books read since 1987. In 1997, I started a book journal with my reflections about what I've read, and this has evolved into what I write on LT. Btw, I don't have all those books read entered into my LT library. Some books are best forgotten.

See you at the Lemonade Springs.

I'm done! I'm done!

That said, I am very intrigued by your list of goals. Perhaps when my life calms down a little bit I will think up something along those lines.

I have kept lists since forever..... really out of self-defense because whenever anyone asks me, "What movie have you seen/ book have you read/ etc. " I immediately go blank......

I do need to mark this day somehow--the day our group read FINISHED The Education of Henry Adams. Now I never again have to wonder what this book is "about." This was a tough read, but we made it through in under a month. Next time I go slogging around in such unfamiliar territory, I will take a map.

From the ridiculous to the sublime. To "reward" myself for sticking with tEoHA, I've ordered the newest Scott Turow, Innocent. In this book he returns to his beginnings, Presumed Innocent. I'm going to re-read that one in anticipation of getting the new one in the mail--sometime the first week of May. Yes, I bought it NEW and paid the full (discounted) price at Amazon--something I very rarely do.

I've also started a WONDERFUL biography about Clover Hooper Adams, the wife of Henry Adams: Clover The Tragic Love Story of Clover and Henry adams and Their Brilliant Life in America's Gilded Age. Thank God, the author, Otto Friedrich, understands the biographer's art. After reading just 50 pages of this thing, I know I would happily read ANYTHING else he's written.

#15: I will have to check into the biography of Clover Adams. I learned of her through Patricia O'Toole's book, The Five of Hearts, and would like to learn more. Thanks for the recommendation, Becky.

Stasia, I also ordered The Five of Hearts since I've had such a good time hanging out with Henry Adams and his friends. I'd be interested in hearing what you thought of the book.

#17: It's funny because reading The Five of Hearts was one of those books that sent me scurrying around to learn more about the people involved, which is what I remember most, more than the book itself. I liked it at the time I read it, I just do not remember a great deal about it. I has been at least 5 years since I read it. Sorry I cannot be more helpful, Becky.

Stasia, I am very often in the same boat, remembering an impression I had of a book but not a lot of detail.

It is good to know I am not the only one! I will have to dig out my copy of The Five of Hearts and give it a re-read - if I can locate it.

I like to read more than one book at a time unless I have a particular reason to push to get a book finished. I also like to balance a fiction with a non-fiction.

I started a third book last night, I Thought of Daisy by Edmund Wilson (1895-1972), published in about 1927. Wilson was one of those people described as "a man of letters." He was a book critic, writing for The New Yorker and others. His reviews helped sell American readers on Hemingway, Dos Passos, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, etc. Daisy was his attempt at being a novelist.

He was married to the novelist Mary McCarthy, a marriage that both admitted was a "mistake." I don't know what it was about the years when people of his generation were in their--oh, late 20s to early 50s--but for some reason, adultery was a thing, and Wilson was no different--a dedicated serial adulterer. I have a biography on my shelf about him that I would like to get to, and I also just bought a volume of his correspondence. His was probably the last generation of great letter-writers. This volume of correspondence was taken from the 70,000 of his letters that were saved. He knew and wrote to just about everyone in the literary world of the 1920s and 1930s. Edmund Wilson the Man in Letters, published in 2002.

I've started Daisy before without success. It might help to read the book along with his journal from the 1920s. He bases characters in the book on real people: for example, "Rita Cavenaugh" is Edna St. Vincent Millay (Wilson and Millay were quite an item at one time, evidently--hard to square that with the dour old balding sourpuss he is almost always pictured to be). I guess I'll try the same strategy with this book that I used on the Julia Child biog: limit myself to about 10 or 20 pages a day until I catch fire with the thing. If I don't, then I'll read it at the pace of just a few pages a day.

So that's three at once: one of them a fascinating biography, so I'm not having any trouble getting through that one; one is Scott Turow's first book, a re-read, just mainly for fun, anticipating his new book coming next week; and one is the Wilson book.

Happy reading to all.

So here's the deal: I'm so torn over which book to read "most." My biography of Clover Adams is excellent. However, I just received Scott Turow's newest book, Innocent, in the mail today--it's still so new that Touchstone or whatever it's called doesn't work.

My plan was to re-read Turow's Presumed Innocent from 20 years ago, because the new book is a reprise of the characters from that book. I thought I would have NO TROUBLE knocking out the PI book. Instead, I've been having so much fun with the Clover biog that I'm only on pg. 42 of the Turow (400+ pages!). Oh dear.

Anywho, the Clover Adams book. She was Clover Hooper, who married Henry Adams, the one who wrote THAT BOOK, The Education of Henry Adams. Yes, that one. They were both "older" when they married--Clover almost 30 and Henry 30+. Why in the world she chose him--who knows? So what did he do? He dragged her on a year long wedding trip the second they were married--to Europe, to meet all of his friends, and then up and down the Nile--good grief. She pretty much hated all of it, yet it also sounds like she was a good sport, as much as she could be. But get this--guess what she was reading? MIDDLEMARCH!

What did that mean? "Perhaps nothing," writes the biographer. You must love the "perhaps."

I like Clover. I know that she doesn't come to a good end, but I do hope the time she has left isn't all bad.

Yee-ha! Becky, I won *Innocent* from ER and am looking forward to its arrival. I don't think I'll reread Presumed Innocent unless I find that I can't get along without it.
Thanks for continuing to post about Clover. I can't get anything else right now, but I'm not forgetting her.

It was very much 'the thing' to do that Nile trip.

Middlemarch! Incredible!

Oh, Peggy, that's very cool. I hope it's good. I don't think you'll need to reread PI.

Someone else I was reading about did the Nile thing--and it was written about in great detail. I think it was M. Carey Thomas, president of Bryn Mawr. The whole thing sounded very odd. Poor Clover, to be dragged away from her family like that for a year.

I finally was able to get into Presumed Innocent and now I should blast right through it. The book was first published in 1987, and what I'm struck by is how slow the beginning seems, which seems an acknowledgment of what another writer has said about today's desire for speed in entertainment. Terry Brooks in his book on writing, Sometimes the Magic Works: Lessons from a Writing Life, writes of speed as "the central component of most forms of entertainment." Two hour movies, television in ever-shortened segments with rapid scene shifts, video and computer games. He writes about how things have changed for fiction writers in just 30 years or so: "I began The Sword of Shannara, way back in 1977, with a long descriptive passage that set the scene and gave the reader a leisurely first look at one of the protagonists. Really, I meandered about for almost the first hundred pages. I got away with it then, but I wouldn't think of doing that in today's entertainment climate."

I would be willing to bet that in Scott Turow's new book, Innocent, based on the same characters as the book 20 years ago, we will see him "getting to it" with a much faster-paced beginning.

The Touchstone "magic" isn't working for me today on the Terry Brooks writing book.

...today's desire for speed in entertainment.

Isn't that the truth? I'm not so sure it's a good thing, especially in reading. I know many people swear by the Pearl Rule -- if you're not "into" the book by the end of the first 50 pages, chuck it! -- but that just doesn't work for me. Unless I clearly hate a book I will usually give it the benefit of the doubt. Mainly because I've done my due diligence by either reading reviews or listening to people I trust before I even choose a book.

I liked Presumed Innocent when I read it years ago. Looking forward to both yours and Peggy's thoughts about the sequel.

I've got about 100 pages to go in the Clover The Tragic Love Story of Clover and Henry Adams and Their Brilliant Life In America's Gilded Age biography. If I'm reading the author, Friedrich, right, and if he's reading Clover right, then she was quite the personality: abrasive, hypercritical, and very bright. One review that I read states that Henry Adams destroyed all of Clover's letters, diaries, and photographs. I don't know if that's true, but I imagine that it is, because Friedrich has included good notes in this biography, and he states the life of Clover Adams can be deciphered mainly from the letters she wrote to her father. This would seem to indicate that the blurb about Henry's destruction of her papers is correct, since if other letters existed, I'm sure Friedrich would list them. There is a volume of her letters to her father that came out in 1936, edited by someone named Ward Thoran. The quotations from her letters in this biography that Friedrich has included show Clover to be a fairly outrageous female; on the other hand, Henry Adams comes off as something of a misogynistic prig and a fool. In a letter that is probably to his friend Gaskell in England, Henry wrote: "Our young women are haunted by the idea that they ought to read, or to labor in some way, not for any such frivolous object as making themselves agreeable to society, nor for simple amusement, but to 'improve their minds.' They are utterly unconscious of the pathetic impossibility of improving those hard, thin, one-stringed instruments which they call their minds, and which haven't the range enough to master one big emotion, much less to express it in words or figures" (185). One only wishes that his sister Louisa Catherine were still alive to KNOCK HIM DOWN for making an idiotic statement like that one. Even if he saw his wife Clover as an exception to this rule, and it's not clear to me that he did, Henry Adams would have been a serious PIA for someone like Clover to live with. I am STRUGGLING here not to say, "No wonder she killed herself." There, I said it.

I'm looking forward to reading the edition of her letters.

Edited for clarity and the usual fat-fingeredness.

You always read such interesting stuff, Becky. Not always stuff I would read, but interesting, none the less.
And I love how outspoken you are about them! Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one in the world who thinks things like "No wonder she killed herself."

Hi Terri. Well, I've always been that way--spouting off about one thing or another. As I've gotten older, I've at least tried to moderate my behavior somewhat in that I don't always need to have the last word. I've been pretty much shunned at Facebook for my bad behavior--ha. What I think at LT is this: it's my thread and I'll say what I want. No one needs to read it if they don't want to. Where I get into trouble is when I forget that I'm on someone else's thread and I start acting up. Oh well.

#30: What I think at LT is this: it's my thread and I'll say what I want.

As far as I am concerned, that is the way it is supposed to be!

I absolutely love Clover Hooper Adams. I wish she had her own biography. I like the biography by Friedrich, but it was written in 1979 and skewed towards telling the story with Henry Adams in the forefront--although the biographer doesn't exactly spare Adams.

Clover took on Matthew Arnold when he came to the U.S. to give lectures on democracy and education. She had met him in England and found him to be "facile and gay and full of talk," but after a few dinners with him decided he "lacked weight." She had suggested that he come to Boston to give the Lowell Lectures, which he did. At this point, she found him "vain and pretentious. He offended her, at the start, by indulgently observing that 'In Boston, there is no fashionable society, is there?' When Clover replied that there was indeed, he showed 'extreme incredulity,' and so, she added, 'I had to suggest gently that fashionable people never go to lectures.'" Snort.

Henry Adams wrote a novel titled Esther the year before Clover died which is clearly based on her (and on a lot of other people he knew). His descriptions of her looks and her "mind" are certainly not flattering, but I thought this sentence was interesting, quoted in the biography: "She is interesting. She has a style of her own . . . . She gives one the idea of a lightly sparred yacht in mid-ocean; unexpected; you ask yourself what the devil she is doing there. She sails gayly along, though there is no land in sight and plenty of rough weather coming."

A small group of us read The Education of Henry Adams together recently, which is mainly why I decided to read this biography of Henry's wife, Clover. The link to the Adams read is here.

I found this description of Henry Adams by Friedrich to be very insightful: "A writer of genius, a thinker of sharp perception, a political reformer of high ambition, Adams devoted much of his life to an almost willful cultivation of failure. It was he, he insisted, who had rejected the family professions of politics and law, who kept repeating that his journalism was worthless and his teaching meaningless. Some of this was a pose, of course, yet nonetheless sincere, for we eventually become, as has been said more than once, what we pretend to be."

'The cult of failure' I suspect is a folkway in some Wasp /New England families....... an option that a person of a certain temperament (usually artistic as opposed to entreprenurial/go-getter) feeling out of place in their family can adopt. I can think of a number of writers whose alter egos (Say Rabbit in the Updike series) are 'loser' personas. Even though they (the authors) end up very successful and well-respected in real life, there is a subtext to me of the discomfort they feel not having taken the road more travelled -- law, banking and so on. My father was a devoted member of this cult.

This was a beautiful post, B.

>34 sibylline:. Life is complicated, ain't it? I just love Hal's description of Clover as a "lightly sparred yacht." If he'd only left it at that and left out what he wrote about her looks or her mind. I think Clover was a person who seemed tough and very together to other people, but on the inside she was much of the time a perfect mess. I ordered the edition of her correspondence with her father. She was a smart cookie and also an astute observer of the social/political scene.

I finished the book, Clover The Tragic Love Story of Clover and Henry Adams and Their Brilliant Life in America's Gilded Age--quite a mouthful for a title. Friedrich writes an interesting and insightful chapter about Clover's suicide and suicide in general. It's interesting that two years before this biography, he published a book called Going Crazy: An Inquiry into Madness in Our Time. The one review of the book that I read called for more "method" in the book, saying it was a "large, confusing book on a large, inchoate subject." Hahaha--in other words, a mad book about madness. Imagine that one!

This is Friedrich on Clover: "Why did she do it? Why does anyone do it? 'No one ever lacks a good reason for suicide,' said Cesare Pavese, the novelist, himself a suicide.

Some may find the topic morbid or depressing. I find it fascinating, and I wish we had more from Clover about her last months, much like the diaries and letters of Virginia Woolf. If you read Woolf's letters towards the last months of her life, particularly those to her sister, it's clear that Woolf knew she was descending into madness again--and she simply couldn't put her family through that one more time, particularly with the anxieties people had about the war. What Woolf also makes clear as a bell in the letters and diaries is how painful her situation was, something that people who have never exprerienced depression really don't understand--that life can be so painful with the disease that suicide actually seems like an upgrade.

I suspect that Clover knew where she was headed as well. And much as he seems to have felt a sense of guilt about his wife's death, I think it's pretty clear that there was nothing that Hal could have done or not done that would have changed things. Clover's sister would eventually throw herself in front of a train; her brother threw himself out a third-story window. Henry Adams married Clover knowing she had this "thing" in her family history (or, as his brother Charles Francis said when Henry married Clover Hooper, the whole family is crazy as bats--I'm paraphrasing, but that's pretty close).

I would rate this book as 4-star. There were draggy places where I wished that Friedrich hadn't gotten so bogged down in politics. Overall, however, it was a fascinating book, and it left me wishing that someone in 2010 would write a new biography of this fascinating woman.

The dramatic tension of your thread -- about whether or not you will like what you are reading -- makes it very entertaining. I am very happy this was a good one!

I have to read it of course, but I trust your judgment of Hal's limited view of her. It is to be hoped it didn't contribute to her problems. Men of that era don't seem to get it that they have forced these women to BE THAT WAY by educating them so badly and expecting so little. Wharton, who educated herself with great stubborness and application, is scorching on this subject.

edited to untangle a mess!

Lucy, you're hilarious--the dramatic tension of my thread, indeed.

Honestly, my read on it is that there wasn't a darned thing Henry could have done to keep Clover from drinking that potassium cyanide. Fortunately, all indications were that she probably died quickly.

I've finished the Clover Adams biog, so . . . what's next? My list of goals for the next three or four months indicate some criteria for my next read:

1. It should be a BOTS (Books Off the Shelf).

2. It should be non-fiction.

3. It probably should be something other than a biography. One of my goals is to read two volumes of literary correspondence in this next quarter or third of a year or whatever it is--so this seems like a good time for one of those.

I've been reading quite a bit recently about the Adams family (Henry and Clover). Another woman of that time and place was Louisa May Alcott, born 1832 (Adams was born in 1838; Clover was born in 1843).

That's it then: The Selected Letters of Louisa May Alcott, edited by Joel Myerson & Daniel Shealy, with Madeleine B. Sterne, associate editor.

#35: it left me wishing that someone in 2010 would write a new biography of this fascinating woman.

Have at it, Becky!

>39 alcottacre:. Not me, Stasia. The only way biography-writing "pays" is if you are doing it because you're a PhD somewhere and it's part of your publish or perish professional strategy. Alternately, if you manage to write a once-in-a-lifetime blockbuster-seller biog like David McCullough's Truman, then you can make it financially and/or professionally worthwhile. Otherwise, all those books with the remainder marks are just too completely depressing.

P.S. Volumes of correspondence are even worse. I can't tell you how many like-new copies of literary letters I've bought on amazon.used for $0.01.

I guess I should put here, "Spoiler Alert." If you intend to read the book, then you might not want to read this post.

Being somewhat more attuned than I used to be to the "how-to" of writing fiction, I'm interested to see how Scott Turow wrote his Presumed Innocent and whether or not it works. Oh, it works, alright.

I'm so enjoying Turow's first-person narrator character, Rusty Sabitch. He's a chief deputy prosector who is on trial for murdering a colleague--and oh, by the way, also his lover. Turow's portrait of Barbara, Rusty's very put-upon wife, is brilliant. I just finished the part where Rusty is contemplating going to prison. He knows what he's facing if he's convicted. He knows that he would rather be dead than go through what he will have to live through if convicted. For added poignancy, Rusty has an eight-year-old son, cute and goofy as only an eight-year-old boy can be. Anyone who has been a parent can relate to Rusty's nightmarish musings about losing out on the next years of his son's life. Thrown into prison, for something he didn't do. The first-person narrator gives the reader access to this man's mental agonizing--those 3:00 a.m. hours when he can't sleep, thinking about how his life has become impossibly screwed up. We can feel this man's agony: "If I am convicted they will take me away from him . . . . the thought of missing the remainder of his young life shatters me, breaks me into pieces."

Presumed Innocent is a smart book, better than I remembered. Maybe it's because the books that have come after it that are "like" this one have become increasingly badly written.

#40: Too bad. I enjoy a good biography (and on occasion, a good book of literary correspondence - have you read Arthur Conan Doyle's?, BTW).

I can't believe there are no reviews here yet on Turow's new book, Innocent.

So go for it!

I just fell off my chair laughing.

Time for knee pads and helmet? LT is dangerous!

I'm adding to my list of "Currently Reading" a book about the Agassiz family of Boston, Adventurous Alliance, a book published in 1956. Clover Hooper (later Adams) was sent to Elizabeth Carey Agassiz's school when she was a girl, supposedly the best school in the 1850s or so to send a girl from Boston. Elizabeth Agassiz started her school in her own house in Cambridge. She later went on to start "the Annex" which became Radcliffe.

#47: Was Elizabeth Agassiz related to Louis Agassiz?

Yes, she was his wife.

OK, thanks, I was just curious.

I found your second thread. I've starred it and will return often.

>51 Whisper1:. Hi Linda. Thanks for dropping by. I enjoy your posts as well. I was interested to read what you thought about Vreeland's book, Girl in Hyacinth Blue. Did you also read Girl with the Pearl Earring? A different author, but similar strategies--except I think Chevalier kept her book in the Vermeer's period. I meant to post this on your thread when I saw the Hyacinth book. I'll paste it in there now.

I want to thank you for your recommendation of Family Portrait by Catherine Drinker Bowen, Becky. I finished it in the wee hours this morning. I very much enjoyed the book.

Oh, I'm very glad you liked it. I thought her family stories were so interesting!

#54: Yes, they were and it was clear that she loved her family, warts and all.

Because Stasia pointed out that Catherine Drinker Bowen's father was a previous President of Lehigh University (where I've been employed for 25 years), I now want to read the book.
I'm adding it to my list.

How did you hear of this book Becky?

Regarding Girl in Hyacinth Blue, it wasn't a stellar book, but it was interesting. The author was highly creative in weaving many different stories. I found her writing a bit stilted though.

>56 Whisper1:. Linda--seriously, with your connection to Lehigh University, you really ought to read CDB's book. I'm trying to think how I found that book. Looking at it gives me no clues. I'm thinking I probably found it at one of the nearby used bookstores. I've had it for quite awhile--maybe 15 or 20 years. It was published in 1970. It may have been when I was picking up books on biography writing--she's written a couple of them, including Biography: The Craft and the Calling. I see on her list of books that she also wrote a history of Lehigh University. She's a wonderful writer, one of those people you would be glad to read no matter what the subject.

I bought it super cheep on the unmentionable used side of the mega book purveyor......

I wonder if I'll have a difficult time obtaining it. I'm going to check with the Lehigh library folk.

Thanks again for the recommendation.

#57: She's a wonderful writer, one of those people you would be glad to read no matter what the subject.

I agree!

the unmentionable used side of the mega book purveyor......

You're hilarious. It's OK, you can say it, amazon.used.

>59 Whisper1:. Seriously, I hope Lehigh has the book, since she writes wonderful first chapters about the family's move to Bethlehem and her years there as the daughter of the president of the university.

One of the chapters is "Bethlehem, 1905." Another is "The President's House."

Then--Lucy, this is for you--she writes about the cottage at Beach Haven on the Jersey SHORE. Heh.

Seriously, this is another one of my favorite books. Her aunt was the artist Cecelia Beaux. It's simply an AMAZING family--every one of them. I've read her letters at Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe. I love this woman.

See my post at >41 labwriter: about Presumed Innocent. I just finished the book. It's better than I remembered. Forget the movie. It's really hard to believe this was Turow's first work of fiction. It was published in 1987, and not to take anything away from Turow, I tend to think there was more editorial involvement with first-time authors back then than there is now.

PI is a dark book. If you're looking for a sunny, happy read, then this isn't your book. I guess one thing I can say about it is that I definitely understand this book better now than I did 25 or so years ago, particularly the "how did my life get here?" mindset of the first-person narrator. People make mistakes in their lives that they don't expect to make--and mistakes have consequences. And yes, on consideration, what these people did, both of them, was far more than a "mistake"--maybe a terrible, terrible misreckoning. When I was young, I arrogantly believed that person messing up couldn't be me. I was wrong. Life has a way of making you eat a load of humble pie, and Turow really gets it.

That's all I have to say. I'm gonna give this book 4.5 stars even though my rating system doesn't account for the half-step between 4 and 5. Who cares, it's my system.

I'm really looking forward to his new book, Innocent which is a reprise of these characters. From a marketing standpoint, what a brilliant move, although I don't mean that all he's done is write a cynical book. But what the new book will do, if it's good, is draw in a whole new generation of readers for his stuff. Good for him, he deserves it. I'm not expecting it to be, but wouldn't it be something if Innocent is up to the standard of the first one? It's on my bedside table, and I hope to get to it soon.

P.S. So I go to PI at LT to put in my star rating, and the first thing I see is a one-star review. Doll, you just don't get it. The person says she (I'm assuming it's a she, I didn't really pay that much attention) "guessed who did it" and didn't bother to finish the book--"too many words" is my guess. So go read some James Patterson, maybe he's more your speed. Heh.

Edited for content addition. Touchstone is screwed up, as it often is.

Hi Becky,

I loved Presumed Innocent and also have Innocent in my TBR pile but unfortunately it's a library book which must go back in 8 days. I'm not sure I'm going to get to it but I'm really looking forward to it. I'll be anxiously awaiting you're comments to see if I should break down and buy it. I also may reread Presumed Innocent based on your review.

Pat

Hi Pat,

Well, there's always the strategy of overdue fines--ha.

Meanwhile, I have Innocent from ER ready to go, but I can't find my copy of Presumed Innocent. I can put my hand on a copy of every other Turow, but *PI* is missing in my moving and shifting of Mt. Bookpile. I hate myself.

Oh Peggy! Boy, do I know the feeling. Well, maybe you don't really need to re-read *PI* to enjoy *I*. I'm eager to read your ER review.

I did something last night that I told myself I would not do--I started the new Scott Turow novel, Innocent. Well, if you didn't like the "brooding" figure of Rusty Sabitch in Presumed Innocent, then you'll like him even less 20-something years later. Personally, I love the guy. He's having his 60th birthday, and it's really messing with his mind. His co-workers throw him a surprise party which he finds "morbid" but about which he "pretends to be delighted."

I didn't get very far. Turow uses multiple first-person points of view this time. I'm a little bit worried about whether or not he will pull this off, but I'm hopeful because there's every indication that this guy is a careful craftsman.

If I don't get some work done this morning, I'm going to be fired.

Hey Lucy, you're into multiple points of view. Do you have any good models for that?

I hope I can find *PI* but I've spent a couple of hours looking so far with no luck. (I did find an uncatalogued box on the library floor which is now in my LT library.) SO, I'm hoping I can read Innocent with what I remember. I remember liking Rusty and not caring for Carolyn Polhemus (Is that right? I remember her name because DH's favorite professor was Polhemus.)
You didn't ask me, but my gold standard for muliple POV's is The Jewel in the Crown, the first novel in *The Raj Quartet* by Paul Scott. He may have been a horrible human being, but I love and adore those books and will now have to fight myself to keep from rereading yet again.

Hi Peggy. Yes, you have the Polhemus name right.

Thanks for the tip about the Raj Quartet novels.

I'm going to fail at this -- but off top of my pointy little head: Hardy? Dickens? Woolf? Contemporary: Rick Russo? Michael Ondaatje? and doesn't Annie P. jump around at least in That Old Ace....? Aargh. I have to think about it. oh oh - Trollope.

What I admire in Hardy is the ability to go way way wide focus and then to zero in so close like with a microscope almost.

Yeah, I guess when you start thinking about it, there's quite a lot that come to mind. Bleak House--one of my favorites. Certainly Faulkner. Jeeze, thanks for the Russo reminder. I've been meaning to get to him: Empire Falls, Bridge of Sighs.

Lucy, you are, quite simply, a great resource.

Peggy and Lucy, you just added 6 months of reading to my list--or possibly a lot more. Good grief, I just read the first review of The Jewel in the Crown at LT. Yikes.

We somehow ended up with all of (The Raj) in this one huge volume with tissue thin pages -- Knox and I decided to rip it apart in the end into sections -- it was not possible to hold this book up to read it....... so we don't have it any more since we shredded and trashed our copy! Bad bad cats! (That is a quote btw from "That Darned Cat" A Disney masterpiece.... )

Edited to add -- awww thank you Becky!

You TRASHED your BOOK? Good grief, how huge is this thing? Something along the lines of West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, I'm thinking. Or maybe Richardson's Clarissa, or, The History of a Young Lady.

Apropros of nothing, I read the cut-down version (about 1/3) of Clarissa when I was getting my lit degree. What a hoot! I loved that book, and I promised myself that someday I will read the whole thing. Has anyone read it? It's on my shelf, calling to me. It wouldn't be that big a deal, do you think? Just a 500-page novel times 3. With a font of about 4. Heh. The reviews of this book at LT, some of them, are hilarious. This one ("panickyfright") gives it half a star--I'm not kidding. You CANNOT give my favorite book half a star. Her review: A book so thoroughly unpleasant it would almost be worth reading were it not also staggeringly long and jaw-droppingly tedious.

Talk about multiple points of view! I can't remember how many characters appear, but with each new letter from a new person, the pov of course must change.

Now I can't even remember why I cared--oh yes, worrying over Scott Turow's ability to deal with multiple pov in his new novel. I almost wish he wasn't doing that, since I thought he did such a good job with the one first-person 20 years ago.

Good grief, what a strange day. Flight of ideas. May need to up the meds.

I haven't yet entered all my college reading..... but I did read some Richardson, Clarissa and Pamela (w/ Shamela), never got to Sir Charles Grandison though, and I could read them all again, really. The one who does me in is Smollett. Humphry Clinker just about has to be one of the most funny books ever. And I liked Roderick Random too, though I can barely remember it. I also love Henry Fielding. And Daniel Defoe. I love them all. Those guys could write! And I always felt they were more 'like' us than the 19th century folks, so much less hung up. Not stuck up or stuffy or preachy. It was really a revelation to me at the time (age.... 20 or so....)
There is a very funny disambiguation notice on the Tobias Smollett author page.....

Edited to try to get Tobias Smollett to turn blue, but he won't.

I got a LOT out of college -- I didn't really have a social life (by choice) at college; all I did was read, and go into NY to see old movies at MOMA -- It wasn't my first time living away from home, so I had already done the whole bad girl thing and was thrilled to be in an environment where I could largely decide for myself what I wanted to study and how.

I got my lit degree one class at a time while working nights as an R.N. in Labor & Delivery. Some nights I got 10 hours of reading done; other nights I didn't get a bathroom break. But going to school as an "older" student, doing one class at a time, in some ways had a lot of appeal.

Oh and I did a LOT of babysitting for young couples in Bronxville in order to support my habit of going into New York to see movies...... Then I would go to that amazing bookstore.... oh gosh..... I forget its name now. HUGE used bookstore and then, this was so silly, I would go and have a drink all alone at the Algonquin and dream. I had a fantasy then of being an editor at the New Yorker. The only problem that arose was a pretty unsurmountable one (besides all the other problems I never had to consider) namely that I would have to live in New York City. I have nothing against New York City, but I don't belong there. You know how that is. Oh dear.

Was it The Strand?--home of 18 miles of bookshelves, or some such thing? I'm just guessing.

I don't think your having a drink at the Algonquin was silly--I think it's cool. Those people in the 1920s, the women, especially, who got those jobs at the New Yorker--like Katharine Angell White?--they were in the right place at the right time.

Well, duh, yes it was The Strand. I more or less haunted it.

The day I visited The Strand was one of those days that you would want to live over if you could. My friend from the Willa Cather Colloquium (in 2005) and I went to The Strand. We had so much fun that day. She's the one who showed me how to "do" the subways--Subway 101. I bought us both a Strand bag, to this day one of my most-treasured possessions.

Lucy and Becky

Simply dropping by to say how much I'm enjoying the enterchange of conversation between you two.

Yep....but I want to go back for a moment to *Jewel*. I think that the 4th review is the only one that shows much insight into the book. I also like it for PoV because he shows so many people looking at the main event and its parallel. It is never boring! I love the whole quartet and the coda, Staying On which won the Man Booker, I think......I also think as sort of a consolation prize for none of the quartet having won.
Now chat on! I've been in NYC only twice and in those two times for fewer than 5 days. Oh well.

I got so carried away boasting about my college reading that I forgot to say, that the paperback in question was huge. I mean, ridiculous. I think it was a QPB special? I don't know they exist anymore, but I was a member for awhile until I realized that I was getting mostly books I either didn't read or, like the Quartet, were in a ridiculous format. I swear it was four inches thick with tissue paper pages......

Hi Linda, I'm glad you enjoy it. I certainly am having a wonderful time.

Oh Jeeze, Lucy, I realized looking at my post about the Strand that it couldn't have been 5 years ago. It was in 1998--not that it matters--but that's how my head does time these days. I can't believe how fast the days, months, years go by.

I used to be a member of Book-of-the-Month Club. Like you, I realized I was getting a lot of books that I didn't read, but what made me quit the club was when I read a novel (I wish I could remember what it was) where two neighbors had two identical book collections, one of regular first editions and the other of BOMC editions--one worth a lot of money and the other worthless. I quit the club the next day, not because I was so much into first editions, but because I was mad about feeling duped.

Hi Linda--thanks for dropping by!

Post edited for typing errors.

>73 labwriter:. re multiple pov in Turow's new novel, Innocent. It turns out that he's not doing what I thought he was doing--multiple first-person pov. No. His protagonist, Rusty Sabitch, is again first-person. But he moves away from that in other chapters into a sort of normal but sometimes bastardized, sometimes out-of-control third person pov.

He's also jumping around in time, which may be why he changed around the pov. This may be turning out to be a sort of a strange book. I don't want to say too much about it here yet. But it may be worthwhile to use as one of those books for "figuring out" what the writer is doing. Does it work? We'll see. I'm really not all that far into it yet. The beginning still seems slow to me, just like with Presumed Innocent. I hesitate to say it, but the writing, in general, doesn't seem as good.

People have complained that Turow "has a problem with women" because his female characters aren't too appealing or something. So I've been watching for that, and what I decided while I was reading last night is that NONE of his characters are all that likeable.

In Turow's new book, Innocent, Rusty Sabitch at 60-something is not someone I would like. What we need is a likeable narrator who will show us why we ought to care about this guy. Unfortunately, we mainly see Rusty only through first-person--or through the eyes of people who generally despise this guy for one reason or another.

If I could, I would ask Scott Turow the question, "Hey man, why should we care what happens to your protagonist?" He's screwed up his life--AGAIN, in much the same way that he did the first time, showing he learned NOTHING from his mistake before. People make mistakes, but when they make them again, you end up having a whole lot less sympathy for them.

Don't get me wrong, the book is entertaining, and I'm thinking that if we get to courtroom scenes again, then it will pick up, since Turow is so good at that.

One of the reasons I like this book is because Sabitch has an only child, a son, born in basically the same year as my son; he's been married to Barbara for about the same number of years as I've been married; he's hitting 60, as I will be doing all too soon--so a lot of the dark issues that Rusty Sabitch is dealing with are not all that far from things in my life as well.

Edited for the usual typing errors.

The Turow book again. I took a break from my work on my other books to read more of the Turow, since I'd like to finish the thing.

Chapter 13: Now he's taken us into a new first-person head, Anna, one of the main characters, and I won't say who so that I won't "spoil" the book for those who haven't started it. This is a really crazy book, jumping back and forth in time from chapter to chapter. Now we're jumping from the inside of one character's head to another. The first-person pov was stable as long as it was just Rusty Sabitch; now we have a new player. Why?

If there's a reason for making the reader work so hard, I haven't found it yet.

And I mean "work so hard" from the standpoint of time in the first half of the novel--not from multiple points of view. I just don't understand his time-jumping in the first half. I guess one thing that it does is to keep the reader guessing, keep surprising the reader by withholding information at certain points. I almost have to wonder if Turow is doing it to keep himself amused.

Edited with the last paragraph to explain myself.

I'm almost through the Agassiz family biography. Such an interesting couple, Louis and Lizzie Agassiz. If I would leave the Scott Turow book alone, I could get through with the reading I'm "supposed" to be doing a whole lot faster.

I'm about halfway throught the Turow book, Innocent. I'm still finding that I'd like to have a talk with Scott Turow about his book. He's made his protagonist into something of a dumbass. You want to shout at this Rusty Sabitch, "Are you kidding me? You're going to throw away your life for her?" Frankly, it doesn't ring true. You say to yourself, reading this thing, an intelligent and self-disciplined man who has been a judge for 20 years, who for 20 years has sat in judgment on self-destructive and screwed-up behavior--surely this man wouldn't do what Turow has him doing.

I think I laughed out loud a lot more with what Turow was doing (in places he meant for me to laugh, that is) in his book 20 years ago, Presumed Innocent than I'm laughing with this one. It was one of the components of Turow's writing that made me like the first book so much. It was quite simply a much more intelligent read than this second book. I don't have the feeling that he has the same respect for his readers that he did years ago--maybe for good reason, who knows.

I'm also feeling that Turow lost out on an opportunity to give the reader some colorful background about place. He created this supposedly fictional midwestern town in the first book; the second one is set in the same town, but really it could be anywhere since Turow has added so little of the color of place to this one. I think it's a lost opportunity. Maybe I'm expecting too much.

fat-finger editing

Becky, I love reading your posts. It's good to know I'm not the only one who argues with authors and characters while I read. I call it "interactive reading!"

>88 tloeffler:. Thanks, Terri!

I finished the biography I was reading of the Agassiz family of Cambridge, Mass--Adventurous Alliance. As I said in my review, I can't really fault the author for the way she wrote this book, as it was published in 1959; I think a woman writing (mostly) about another woman often wrote in this sweet, friendly way in older biographies like this one.

I read the book because in my reading about Radcliffe and Cambridge and Boston I've come across the Agassiz name quite a bit, and I wanted to know who they were. Elizabeth Agassiz was instrumental in starting "The Annex" which later became Radcliffe. She was a fascinating woman who (very nicely, very kindly) wouldn't take no for an answer when she was starting the school. Her husband, Louis Agassiz, was himself an interesting personality, a prominent innovator of the study of natural history. He seems to have been something of a "head-in-the-clouds" sort of guy, and I think his career was probably greatly boosted and his way made easier by his very competent wife.

I'm looking at a Wikipedia article about Radcliffe which says that Winthrop Sargent Gilman was the "founder" of Radcliffe. The article points out that Elizabeth Agassiz was the first President of Radcliffe, but it doesn't say anything more than that about her.

I would say that the Wiki article is wrong on at least a couple of fronts. First, they seem to have the wrong Gilman. It was a man named Arthur Gilman who, when he was looking for a school for his daughter Grace, got together a committee that would sponsor a school for girls, taught by Harvard professors. Elizabeth Agassiz was central to this committee; she was the guiding hand behind the new school for girls that would eventually become Radcliffe. It was natural for Mrs. Agassiz to be part of the committee for the new school because she had run her own school for girls in her home for several years prior to the Civil War, a school she started out of a need to supplement her husband's income. Mrs. Agassiz was a widow when she joined the committee to sponsor the new school; with her Boston and Cambridge social cache and impressive persuasive skills, she was able to collect the money needed for the Annex. No money, no school.

An excellent resource about the history of the Seven Sister colleges, Alma Mater, by Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, contains a chapter about the beginnings of the Annex and Radcliffe College.

Love the discussions and commentary about books going on here. And I'm with you in believing that your thread is yours to say what you want.

Hi Bonnie, Thanks for you kind words. I love your discussion of children's books on your profile. I have hundreds of children's books that I want to add to my library, books I read to my son when he was small. Looking back on those years of life with a kid, I feel so fortunate to have had a son who loved to have stories read to him. Those hours and hours of reading are literally some of the best hours of my life (and I hope for him too). One of these days, when life settles down a little, I hope to volunteer with something to do with reading at the neighborhood elementary school.

A day for finishing things. Scott Turow's new book, Innocent, is finished. It was a pretty entertaining read, but not as good as his first one with the same characters twenty years ago, Presumed Innocent.

I gave it 3.5 stars. That's all I feel like saying about it now.

So today I finished two books, one fiction and one non-fiction, which means I need to replace them with something. I need to give that some thought. Later.

So what comes in the mail today from amazon.used, but the most AMAZING book: The Letters of Mrs. Henry Adams. I read Clover's biography and also the Education of Henry Adams. Published in 1936, this book was listed in the bibliography of the Clover biog.

First of all, it must weigh 10 pounds. Seriously. And it's simply packed with her letters. I wasn't expecting a book of this size. As an added bonus (big bonus!) the book contains many of Clover's photographs.

I love to read biographies, but maybe even better, I enjoy books of correspondence. The language of the letter tells so much about a person.

I've decided to put the Louisa May Alcott letter collection aside, since I didn't get very far with it anyway, and read these letters from Clover. So that solves the dilemma of "what to read" for my non-fiction book.

I am very green. A very jungly east of the mississippi green!

#93: Cool beans on scoring the Clover book. I cannot wait to see what you think of it, Becky.

For my fiction book, I've decided to go back to The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl. It's one that I started in about 2004 and put aside--who knows why--but not because I didn't like it. Wow, what a book! Actually, I'm glad I waited because I know a lot more now about the period and the place: Boston/Cambridge 1865, Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, and James T. Fields. My new friend Louis Agassiz even shows up in this one.

This is a whodunnit, of all things, with murders inspired by scenes of The Inferno, which Longfellow is translating, helped along by Holmes, Lowell, and Fields in their Wednesday night book club meetings. Pearl says that one of his themes is about the power of reading together and reading collectively. I love that.

Also, Pearl has an amazing website to go along with the book--and he's obviously been quite busy since this one was published, publishing two more--

The Poe Shadow and The Last Dickens, and the website: matthewpearl.com

P.S. And absolutely the opposite of stuffy, this guy is hilarious, poking fun at himself, his subject, and even his readers. The few reviews I've read of this book seem to miss that.

Seriously, I cannot believe what I just found--a biography (1994) of Clover Adams. Guess the title--go ahead, guess.

Yes! The Education of Mrs. Henry Adams. I'm falling off my chair laughing. A review at amazon says that the book began as a dissertation. (Well, dahling, what book didn't?) This reviewer, who seems to know what she's talking about, says that the first edition of this book was published in the late 1970s. Evidently it has an excellent bibliography, which might be enough to make it worthwhile.

Clover is such a wicked wit. Of course the 1936 edition of her letters is going to be whitewashed--that's to be expected, I guess. We'll see. Maybe not necessarily. The biography I read written around then about Amy Lowell was screamingly funny in its disclosure of the "real" Amy Lowell. What a character! She would have loved it.

What we need is someone to make a movie about Clover. Then she will come into vogue, and her primary documents will be released in unexpurgated form. Ya think?

P.S. Oh LT! No review of this book there, just one rating--one-star. Pffftt.

Here is lush green #2! I'm off to Amazon even as I type!!!!!
(Do you do screenplays, Becky???)

ETA: too rich for my blood Did you see/know about the novel Refinements of Love: A Novel about Clover and Henry Adams by Sarah Booth Conroy? Wonder whether it's any good......

I heard about a novel of HA and Clover--the novelist evidently decided that HA murdered his wife. I don't know whether that was a "real" conclusion or if it was written tongue-in-cheek. Is this that one? Oh yes, I think it is.

Refinements of Love--touchstone isn't working at 100% today.

OK, so this is from Library Journal, and as those of us who made it through the Education know, this is just pure bunk: Henry, who is cold-hearted and vain, forces Clover to conceal her literary and artistic talents and to demonstrate servile deference to his every word and deed.

The novel might have some sort of hilarity value. The LJ, straightfaced, I assume, describes the author as conducting "in-depth historical research to produce this hybrid tale of fact and fiction." Sigh.

Thanks for digging this one up, Peggy. I read about it somewhere this morning, but couldn't find the title.

I just want to add, because I think there are people here who don't care for amazon.usedbooks, and I don't know why, since many or maybe even most of the sellers are used bookstore sellers themselves, and selling their books online allows them to keep their stores open--but I digress. This is what I want to add: I received a note with this Clover Adams correspondence that I think is very special--hand-written, no less.

Becky: Since I have not heard back from the two messages I sent you via Amazon on the condition of this book, I am shipping today.

Please know I am not fully pleased with sunfade on spine & a water stain on back cover.

Before leaving any feedback let's work out an adjustment or return so you are satisfied.

(Signed)

I just love that. It's a beautiful book and I wouldn't dream of sending it back. I got it for a very reasonable price, compared to the other copies listed. I told the guy I loved the book and feel lucky to have it--and we're good. Case closed. So we're both happy.

Some days are like this--another great find: Daughter of Boston: The Extraordinary Diary of a Nineteenth Century Woman. Caroline Healey Dall kept a diary of 45 volumes from 1838 at the age of 16 to 1912 at her death. The woman editing this book is the Dall editor for the Mass Historical Society. Wow, what a job. Seriously, I want "do-overs" and I want a job like hers. She concentrates in this volume on the years from 1838-1865 (I assume there will be more?). Publishers Weekly calls these diaries, even in their exerpted form, "a true historical find." I bought it for 1 cent, used.

Wow! and I'm off to Amazon again. You scooped me on the letters, Becky. The next low price is $24. I'll put in my 1¢ plus shipping about the marketplace too. The booksellers are so eager for 5-star reviews that they bend over backwards to be far more accomodating than I'd expect. If I have something that smells even faintly like a bad experience, the seller has so far been more than willing to perfume the deal......

.01 book! How incredible that it is a good one at that!

I got lucky on those letters, Peggy. I'm really excited about the Caroline Healey Dall find. Well, it's 65 degrees here in my town, so I'm going to go enjoy the beautiful day. I should work in my garden, but instead I'm going to read.

And you're right--that's 1 cent plus shipping, but cheaper than my time plus gas to go searching for this book at the library.

I did not care overmuch for The Last Dickens. Perhaps I should give The Dante Club a try.

Do you think they make a few more pennies off the postage? It probably includes 'time spent' -- and it is interesting to wonder why and how it is more profitable to sell a book for a penny than to simply toss it...... hmm... maybe because then you might have a customer who will remember you and come back? I've gotten quite a few .01's over the last few years and I puzzle over it in those idle moments..... (like waiting for things to *load*)

My theory, dear Sib, is that the whole profit is in the shipping and handling. I recently ordered two books from the same seller but paid the entire $3.99 for each of them although they shipped them in one package. I don't begrudge them their profit, and the penny price moves the inventory. I do also look for the sellers that I know.

Right. I imagine that's the deal. Plus, there is a 'profit' in simply moving inventory, I imagine.

Hey Becky, since the discussion has moved on over there, I thought I'd answer your question about my finding WES's intellectual snobbery understandable here. I don't know how much of this is pop psych and how much I'm reading in from my own experience. As the only bookish person in his family, he had not only to understand the good stuff, he had to find it on his own. I know from personal experience about all the missteps and time wasted for want of a helping hand, and I came from a family of readers; they were, among my parents' generation, uneducated readers. My father's mother and his grandfather were both college-educated, but Great-granddaddy was an admirer of Cicero and Tennyson more than Shakespeare, so even if I had known him, I'm not sure how much good he would have done me. Well. This seems to be about me and not WES. I think we most value what we earn at great cost and are proud of it, so reminders of what we were or easily might have stayed are bound to make us uncomfortable. In some folks that comes across as snobbery. All very pedestrian, but that is what I was implying!

Oh, that's really good, Peggy. I knew you had something you were chewing on there, and I wanted to hear more about it--"all the missteps and time wasted for want of a helping hand"--boy, you put it well. I'm the first person that I know of in my family (except for one brother of my father's), since my ggrandfather in the Netherlands, to go to college. In fact, three of my father's siblings were forced to quit school in the eighth grade to help with their father's ever-growing family. These three were very, very bright people who would have done much with a good education. My father would have as well, but it just wasn't in the cards for him. So on the one hand I can relate to Stegner, but on the other hand, I want to say to him, "Listen, you really haven't had it so bad."

Thanks for sharing your story.

I'm presently reading one of the most enjoyable books I've landed into in a very long time--The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl. So if y'all don't hear from me for awhile, it's because I've got my nose stuck in a book. Ha.

That is beautifully expressed indeed, Peg.

Wow, look at that, Sib--posted at the same minute.

I've noticed we cross post -- we must have similar work cycles. LT is my 'reward' for good behaviour. Which I deserve today, btw, as I did six pages of revision. I managed one page yesterday, and nothing at all for at least a week before that.

>114 sibylline:. Thumbs up on that one. LT needs a "thumbs up" for these posts.

Yeah, when it gets to be about 4:00 or so, depending on the day, I figure it's time to see what my friends at LT are up to. Unless I'm at the computer all day, in which case I will sneak a peak--which is deeply wrong of me. I am in a very silly mood. As my mother used to tell us, when my sibs & I were falling down laughing about something, and with no apparent ironic understanding of her own words, which would cause us to further collapse, even though we didn't know the word "irony,"--"You kids need to straighten up!"

I sneak peeks too but once I'm done breakfast mostly I'm not *allowed* to write anything until I've *done* my work. Or whatever it is I've decided is the number one task of the day. Of course, sometimes I can't stand it and have to post.

You have many rules. I should have more. I think INTP's don't "do" rules, although I may be wrong but I'm pretty sure I'm right.

Oh crap--whose thread is this, anyway? Oh, good, it's mine. Whew.

I know -- every now and then I get sort of carried away and forget I am on someone else's thread......

I kind of go by the 'my thread is your thread' and vice versa philosophy :)

There you go......besides, as I look at the threads and the latest posts this morning, it looks as though Stasia owns the whole place, and rightly so. Your comments are always welcome.
Becky, I just dropped by to say that I'm not trying to be obnoxious - just giving and taking - and I am eager to know why you reacted negatively to the "Sense of Place."
Meanwhile, I have resisted The Dante Club for some screwy internal reason that I'm not about to track down. I'll be looking for what you have to say about it because it has also looked attractive.

Hi Peggy. I appreciate your question--and would never take it as obnoxious. I guess the particular line that got to me this morning was this one: "I share the guilt for what members of my species, especially the migratory ones, have done to {our world}" (201). I guess I'm just not up for another environmental "oh how guilty we are all" finger-wagging essay again. It wasn't that bad--he had some good things to say--so I thought I would just let the people who appreciate that aspect of his philosophy weigh in.

This is my second try at The Dante Club. I don't have any kind of reading journal for any of the years I might have tried reading this, so I don't really remember why I stopped. Matthew Pearl says that there are "no prerequisites" for enjoying the novel, but for me, knowing more about the time and place (1865 Boston/Cambridge) has made the novel more enjoyable. I'm also reading some Dante along with it. That's not necessary, but again, I think it makes the novel a better experience.

Becky
It sounds like you are having a fine day.

Hi Linda. I wanted to tell you that I love your garden pics--so beautiful. My gardens are a mess this year because I've spent so little time in them. Plus it's been very, very wet. We're having rain this morning, so I can work inside without even thinking about squeezing in some time for my weeds.

Hope your day is great!

Oh my, the weeds are growing like...well, weeds(!) here as well, Becky. I've steered clear of Matthew Pearl, but may give The Dante Club a whirl if you keep loving it.

I see the conversation about Bluebird/Lemonade has spilled over into your thread. I've enjoyed our group read tremendously...and the book is pretty good, too. :-) I think the sun is trying to peek out between the clouds so I may go pull a few weeds.

OK, I've only just fuond your thread - it all depends on what time I check, and some great threads languish for ages. Now I'm going back to read 125 posts...

Edited to add that I really enjoyed Game Change!

>126 cushlareads:. Thanks for stopping by! All I can say about Game Change is, "different strokes for different folks"--ha.

I have a question for everyone: How many pages a day do you read?

I know, what's a page? But let's say we're sort of averaging. Say you have a 400-page novel (have you noticed how many novels these days, regardless of the font, seem to run to about 400 pages--maybe a little less?). If you're reading a 400-page novel and it's one that requires at least a fair amount of concentration--say it's not just something you pick up to totally rest your brain--how many pages of that would you read a day?

Or if you read more than one book at a time, do you limit yourself to a certain amount in one so that you can get to the next one?

Or do you not worry about it at all? Since I've started keeping track of things here at LT, I know I'm reading more than I was, say, last year. But I'm sort of bummed that I'm not reading more.

I'm feeling like I don't get enough reading done per day, and I think the only way to push myself is to "assign" myself to a certain number of pages a day. I'd like to know what other people do. If you have a minute, could you let me know?

If I have a large book, I try to read 50 pages a day at a minimum. A lot of times, if I'm reading an essay book (Stegner comes to mind), I find I can only read one at a time. Then I move over to something else. I don't worry about it ever, but sometimes (especially if it's a slog), I have to make myself. 50 pages doesn't sound a lot, but I work 2 jobs, and my reading time is generally from 10:00 to 11:00 at night. I've been known to deactivate the light timer and read longer for a great book, though!

I'm such a lazy slob. Terry makes me feel bad. SO. Since retirement, I haven't stopped to count. I guess I read at least 50 pages a day, but it's scattered among at least 4 books as a usual thing. Let me count today's reading so far: 21 + 12 + 23 + 14 + 5 = 75 pages of 5 different books, none of them demanding (except for Infinite Jest which is in an easy place right now) and I'll read some tonight. I'm doing more than I thought, and it pleases me, but I look at these days with no work and think I should be doing more. Also, this was an at-home day when I did my volunteer stuff for only about a half hour, so that isn't typical.
Thanks for asking, Becky. I would never have known otherwise.

Well, "Penny," you have at least no paid work. I can't believe I called you that, by the way. But I'm sure like everyone you're plenty busy.

Terri, if you're working 2 jobs, then I would think 50 pages a day is outstanding.

Thank you both and I hope others will add their 2 cents.

I've been trying to read 100 pages a day, and unless I just really concentrate on "getting it done"--like almost force myself to do it--I don't get 100 read, at least most of the time. It seems like that ought to be a minimum, since I don't have a paid job right now either (although I have a writing project that takes up a good bit of my time). But still--100 pages doesn't seem like it should feel like such a stretch.

I guess I'm wondering if my brain's going soft or something. Didn't I used to read faster, I think? Oh good, something else to worry over--heh.

Don't worry, Becky! If you think about it, I'll bet you are reading better than you ever have in your life. Aren't you? I'd say quality outweighs quantity every time.

>128 labwriter:: What an interesting question, Becky. How many pages a day do you read?

My short answer is 94. I arrived at this number with simple arithmetic...dividing the number of pages I've read so far this year by the number of days.

However, a better answer would be that it varies. I'd say anywhere from ten pages to 200 pages, depending on time constraints and what I'm reading. I usually have 2 to 3 books going at one time. Right now it's easy juggling with 1 fiction, 1 NF, and 1 story collection. This may be more than my allotted 2 cents, but I would never assign myself a certain number of pages. That would put reading in the realm of cleaning toilets or some other drudgery.

My eyes get tired so it depends on the print -- but I probably read an average of 75-100 pages a day.....but there are days when I can't read much at all. ..... I read a little less quickly than I used to, mostly stopping to reread passages because I feel I may not pass that way again, so why not really savor something I like. I reread a few books -- especially these days great books that I read in my teens and early twenties.

I don't read any kind of novels back to back, even of quite different genres, I just can't do it, but I like switching from non-fiction (and within non-fiction I could switch from, say, a biography to a book of nature essays -- but not from bio to history or nature essays to literary essays.....) I generally have a book of poetry going although I might pick it up and put it down for months, reading one or two at a time...... although I mainly read poetry in the summer. I try to read the New Yorker while I eat lunch, it drives me nuts, but I can't give it up. I don't even count those pages -- all those columns!

Should I be worried Becky? oh gosh, my brandy is all gone, and so am I!

Hi labwriter.

That's an interesting question and something I've thought about too since I've been on LT. I've noticed for 300 page contemporary fiction or historical fiction novel that I'm enjoying, I'll finish it in 3-4 days.

I'm reading Middlemarch now and I love it, but I'm only reading 30-50 pages of it a day--sometimes because I'm reading something else or because I'm tired that day.

Books I can't put down--like Water for Elephants--I just loved that--I finish in 2-3 days and get very little sleep.

I've always thought of myself as a slow reader (I'm the slowest in my family. My mother and sisters read much faster). For a long time I blamed that on studying science (and I do read textbooks and journal articles slowly), but I think since I've been on virtual bookshelf on facebook and LT I am reading faster. Maybe because I'm picking better books by looking at reviews and suggestions.

Middlemarch--one of my favorites. I want to re-read it. Soon, I hope. Enjoy it. Thanks for your comments.

From your comments here, it seems reasonable: 50 to 75 to 100 pages a day--somewhere in that range. That makes me feel better. And Peggy, I don't know if I'm a better reader, but I'm becoming a more intentional one.

#128: I average about 5,000 pages in a week (I had to look at my book journal to know that), so I guess that is somewhere around 700 pages a day. I really do not keep track.

ETA: I do set reading goals for each day, but only as a way to keep track of library books, group reads, TIOLI Challenges, that kind of thing. I do not beat myself up if I do not make the goals. I agree with Donna above when she says that would put reading in the realm of chores rather than pleasure.

It's interesting reading this.

For me it varies, but it's usually around 50. But my reading is so bitsy - usually 10 minute bits, until the kids are asleep (which isn't till about 9). Or I read while I'm waiting at the tram stop, or walking with the buggy (tricky). If I'm down to the last 100 pages of a good novel, I usually blitz them. Weekends are better, because then I'll usually get a few hours without the kids, and the beauty of the trams over here is that I get 18 minutes of uninterrupted reading time from our place to town!

Yes - the blitz! The other day folks got dinner an hour late while I finished up a book.

There is a cyber post-it on my dashboard (I can't believe this terminology -- or -- that I am familiar with it) that says Middlemarch winter -- I think that is because there has been a little chatter of reading it in the late fall .... I insanely have gleefully signed up to read the Aeneid sometimes soon (we're still trying to figure out what translation, prose or verse, blahblah --) I've tried reading it on my own and I've always bogged down, so I am excited about the energy of LT readers buoying me along. We picked it as summer fare as it is a 'hot' love story -- but I won't read many pages at a time, you can bet.

Thanks for the input everyone--I'm gonna go read. Heh.

I'm feeling freed up this morning because I've finished our Wallace Stegner group read. I enjoyed it very much, especially the give-and-take of the group, but I'm glad the book is done because now I can get more reading done. I tend to "write long" in these group reads, so they take up a good bit of my early morning time. That's OK, really, since writing is writing, and one of the things I like to do in the early morning is get words on paper--well, metaphorically speaking, most of the time.

Has anyone read the books by Julia Cameron, either The Artist's Way or The Right to Write? They've both sold millions of copies. One is about creativity in general and opening yourself up to finding your own creative life; the other one is more focused on writing. Anyway, one of her recommendations is something she calls "morning pages," a basic tool of stream-of-consciousness longhand pages--she recommends about three pages or so. She calls these a "primary tool of creative recovery" for people who feel their creativity is blocked in some way. I find posting about the things I'm reading here is another good tool for just getting the words flowing for my other writing.

As I was looking through her books again, I came across a chapter about something she calls "crazymakers"--and getting them out of your life. These are enormously destructive people who are themselves usually blocked creatives who literally will steal your time--steal your life, if you let them. "Crazymakers are those personalities that create storm centers. They are often charismatic, frequently charming, highly inventive, and powerfully persuasive. And for the creative person in their vicinity, they are enormously destructive." These are people who love drama. Over the past five years, I had let two crazymakers into my life, one out of a sense of "duty" and one out of a sense of "fun." Both of them nearly destroyed me, and I believe Cameron and her book saved my life. She certainly saved my creative life.

Anywho, I'm realizing that I need/want (I don't see any difference there) to read more, so like I said in the post above this one, I'm gonna go read. Bye for now.

I had a further thought about my reading program -- although, first, I think 100 pages is a do-able amount, on average.

I've realized that I do have a method, it's so automatic, I don't even think about it any more. Except for when I am reading a 'fun' book -- and I would include all but the toughest fiction, I tend to look through the book I am about to read, assessing the print, the number of pages, length of chapters, the subject matter and toughness of the material -all those things - and come up with an idea of about how much will makes sense, per day. With essays, I only read one at a time, although I might read two or three in the course of a day. Ditto with short stories, usually, unless they are interconnected. There are exceptions to that. Some short story collections are fine to read right through, the net effect, builds up into something not unlike a novel, even when the stories themselves are different. Cheever's complete stories was like that. All part of a continuum.

Oh heck, I just lost my post. Well, maybe later.

I've never stopped to think about a 'pages per day' concept. I just read when I feel like it (and have the time) and plug away until something else demands my time or I fall asleep (I always try to read myself to sleep... haha). I don't think I'd want to assign pages to myself, though... I don't want reading to become a chore, as others here have said.

But that's the way my own brain works, perhaps a reading schedule would be perfect for someone else -- as long as it doesn't induce false guilt on the days you don't read enough! Who needs more guilt and stress, anyway?

The "assignment" word seems to have hit a nerve with some people--heh. I obviously don't see using the goal of a certain number of pages per day as constituting a "chore" for myself, or othewise I wouldn't do it that way; rather, I see it as a strategy--a reading strategy. It actually worked quite well for me when I was getting my lit degrees. I needed that sort of discipline or I would have been like most of the other students in my classes--perpetually behind.

I guess I'm to a point in my life where I wish I'd taken all these years of reading a little bit more seriously and been more intentional; not read quite so much junk and set for myself a few more goals. I developed some very bad reading habits when I worked nights as an R.N. in Labor & Delivery. Like the "beach reads" that someone wrote about (maybe it wasn't even on this thread--I can't find it just now), where you need a book that won't distract you from remembering you have kids in the water, I got in the habit of reading books that demanded nothing and that simply helped get me through a slow 12-hour shift (not that there were all that many of those, either, although it did seem to always be feast or famine).

There's no guilt in my strategy, no stress--in fact, exactly the opposite. But thanks for the pov. It's interesting to see how other people look at things.

Edited for fat-fingered typing.

Going back up a few posts...is there a way to search for 1 cent books on amazon? I'd like to see what's available for that price. Or do you just search for the book you want and hope someone's selling it for a penny?

Angela (amwmsw04)

Hi Angela. What I do is find the book I want and then go for the best price. I don't think they have a 1 cent search, but that's not a bad idea! And you probably know that you have to add shipping to that price.

What do you write about?

If you don't mind my asking on this thread...I'm new to LT and still getting the feel of what should be discussed where :-)

147- Ok thanks. I figured the book would cost at least $3 with shipping, even if they use media mail.

Hi Dawn. Whoa--you're a pediatric ICU doc in Lexington? Years and years ago I worked as an R.N. at the Baptist hosp in Lexington in L&D. My husband worked in the lab at the U of Kentucky. We were only there for about 18 months, but it was an experience I'll never forget. The young girls from the "hollers" would come to our hospital when they were in big-time trouble with their pregnancies. Their whole families would come as well, parking their vehicles in the parking lot and staying there until they could all go home together. It was quite an experience, working with them.

Sure, you can ask anything you want here, at least on my thread--and thanks for asking. I'm writing a novel set in the 1920s, Manhattan mostly. I do a lot of reading so that I have a back story for my characters--stuff that will never make it into the novel, but information that I feel I need to know if I'm going to write this thing. For example, right now I'm reading a whole lot about Boston in the 1860s-1900s because my main character was born there in about 1900. I know what block she lived on--I even know what house she lived in. It's a whole lot of fun.

Gee, Beck, you never told me that. I just sort of assumed that with a handle like "Labwriter" you were doing technical stuff. Wow! Also a Wow! for the interesting life. (Hi, Dawn! I'm thrilled that you asked her! - and welcome!)
Back to the planned reading. I used to plan; I should plan; I'm having so much fun not planning. I used to give my high school students a schedule for reading their long-term assignments with the starting date and the day the reading was due so that they could figure how much they needed to read a day to get it done. I was chiefly appalled at how few of them could divide the number of days into the total pages. The idea of compensating for weekends or other days off was too advanced. I thought it was a useful tool. They ignored it.
(Digression........This is one of my favorite "here's how bad it was" stories. I had a kid in junior honors English who was barely scraping by with a D- but who did something minor but distracting every single day in class. When I finally got his mother to school for a conference, I handed her the list of his misbehavior (animal noises, popping a balloon, dropping books, etc.). She looked at it and said, "Aw honey, were you that bored?" I thought, "O.K. We can all go home now," but as we chatted and he objected to learning basic grammar, he said, "I have friends at Chapel Hill and they say they've never had to identify the subject of a sentence. I thought I was being incredibly smart and answered, "Well, I'm not surprised. That's pretty basic stuff. It would be like asking you to write out the multipication tables. When was the last time you did that? He said, "Algebra II." Then I knew it was time to go home.) I'm happy to announce that my blood pressure no longer shoots up when I remember that one. And I'll return your thread, Becky.

Hi Peggy. Yeah, I worked in Labor & Delivery: 10 years in Denver, 2 years in Lexington, 10 years in St. Louis. I went to school part-time during the 10 years of work in St. Louis. I taught writing for awhile after I finished my master's until I figured out that I couldn't do that plus get my own writing done--plus, as an adjunct instructor of writing at the city university, I was barely making gas money. But I really did love the teaching.

Oh, I can so sympathize with your story about the kid and his animal noises. The best thing for me about teaching at the university was that NO ONE from the English dept. ever observed in my classes. I was let loose to do pretty much anything, providing I taught five essays during the semester. For the most part, I had good rapport with my students, and the department didn't seem to care about the occasional student who flamed me. I did, though--wow, they could really be so mean. I know what you mean about the blood pressure shooting up--I had the same issue. I'm much calmer now--heh.

My worst faux pas as a teacher was to enthusiastically greet a student I bumped into at the supermarket. It turned out she didn't want her friends (two were with her) to know what she was up to -- she even complained to the school (a Community College) that I had violated her privacy..... there was a bit of a ruckus as they assumed I had done something inappropriate, at first, and it took some time to sort it out...... and obviously, I had greeted her happily because she was terrific person,student etcetera. She did eventually apologize and in a way we almost became friends over it -- she was an exceptionally bright person and I really did regard her highly which she also was not used to. That was my last semester, I think, they are sort of blurred now.... but I also feel like, I was young and in some ways, insensitive and oblivious to how dicey it can be, socially, to be pulling away from your origins -- anyhow, if I teach again, I will be more careful in those kinds of situations. I suppose for you Peg, that couldn't happen as most everyone knows everyone?

Holy cow--complained to the school because you greeted her in a friendly way in public. Sigh.

Hi Becky. Wow, it is a small world. I work at UK Children's Hosp. And yes, we have a varied and interesting patient population :-)

That's a great time period for a novel, so many social changes occurring. Fascinating how writers create their own vivid worlds.

So I'm blasting my way through my current fiction read, The Dante Club. Actually I'm sort of slugging my way through. The physicality of the book: it really matters to me how the book is put together, in terms of page size, margins, font, etc.--and that's become a real issue for me with this book. The font is so tiny, I find myself really struggling to read this, particularly at night. This is a nice trade paperback edition, so I don't know why they've done this, except that maybe they wanted to keep the book to under 400 pages. I think this would be a different reading experience for me if it were a hardback book in a decent sized font. There is simply no way I can read much more than 50 pages a day of this thing, so I'll be spending a full week with the book. And yes, as my previous posts indicate, that's become an "issue" with me, since if every book I read took a week, then I would come out with something like 50 for the year (doing the higher math--heh), and frankly 75 for the year seems like a bare minimum. However, I've decided that the book is worth it.

I have to chuckle at some of the LT reviews--"too many historical details." Um, dude (overused, but it seems appropriate here), it's called an HISTORICAL NOVEL for a reason: "If he'd just stayed with the murder mystery instead of trying to give us a history lesson, the experience would have been more appreciated." Seriously. Another reviewer complained about "too many words." Just hang a sign around your neck: "I'm a dork."

I am loving Pearl's depiction of the poets: Holmes, Longfellow, and Lowell. He also throws in the publisher J.T. Fields. Last night my friend Agassiz even made an appearance. Peal knows his stuff: he is absolutely solid in his research of these men and the time and place, 1865 Boston/Cambridge.

A cheery little book this is not, however. Pearl has written a murder mystery, and if you're at all squeamish about gory murder scenes, then your time is probably better spent elsewhere. Although if you can get through The Inferno, then you can probably get through this one. Pearl says in an interview in the back of my copy of the book: "The violence is a signal of the power of literature--of the way in which literature can escape our control. Personally, I'm not a violent person at all. I'm a vegetarian!" I found that comment hilarious, especially since one of the murders involves maggots. Heh.

I passed the halfway mark last night; I'd like to make some headway on this today, but my weekends aren't always under my control, if you know what I mean. Plus, we finally have some sun outside this morning, which means I'd better get outside for awhile and tend to my weeds.

Happy reading!

Edited for a tiny bit of content.

#156: It sounds like that one is better than the one of Pearl's that I read, The Last Dickens. I will have to find a copy.

Well, Stasia, it may be though that Pearl is Pearl, and what you didn't like in the Dickens book you would also find in the Dante. But who knows? Did you see his second book about Poe--The Poe Shadow.

>150 labwriter: Wow, Becky, I also thought labwriter referred to some kind of technical work but now I can see the connection between your two different career paths. I'm really impressed (but not surprised) that you're working on a historical novel. It's so interesting to hear about your process and the things you look for. I agree about the importance of the look of a book, especially the font sizes. I just got a used copy of Crossing to Safety that I ordered only to find the font size so small, I don't think I'm going to want to read it.

>151 LizzieD: and 153 Peggy and Lucy, I had to laugh at both your stories!

>128 labwriter: Back to your question, Becky, about how many pages a day you read--I probably read about 50 pages a day and have been thinking about how to structure it more because of having to read several books at the same time. In the past, I felt I could only read one at a time but right now, that's not possible. One of the things that eats into my reading time is my growing obsession with LT (my husband says I need to look into LT Anonymous).

So I have a question, how much time do you spend on LT each day vs. how much time do you spend reading each day?

Ha--LT anonymous. That's hilarious.

I need to run off, I'm pushing my time limit, as usual--need to be somewhere at 9:15. I'll just say that "labwriter" was something I made up one day for a user name and it just sort of stuck. Under my feet at my computer, always, are my two black Labs.

No! Don't make me go to LT Anonymous!!! I won't do it! I won't do it!! Seriously, I spend too much time here; I'm afraid to calculate it. I have plans to back away and spend what's gained at the piano. Really.
Lucy, that's an incredible story. Since I taught at the high school, I would not be in for that particular misstep. My problem is not remembering names even from 5 years ago. (We have a 4X4 schedule which means that I got 6 classes a year, 3 each semester, so the same number of students but with less time to learn them.) (Also, my hometown is not so small that everybody knows everybody else - even among one's own racial group, and there are 3 main ones, not to mention a growning Hispanic and Asian population. So, I could make some similar mistake any day.)
I have ordered *DClub* from pbs, doggone it, Becky!

>159 phebj:. Pat asked, how much time do you spend on LT a day? I think that's a good question, especially for someone like me who has been whining lately about not getting enough reading done.

The short answer is, probably too much. I'm here frequently during the day for short periods of time (sometimes less than a minute) because I sit at my computer a good part of the day. I know I spend too much time here when I'm in the middle of a group read. I really enjoy them (3 so far), but I know I have to limit myself to the number I get involved in. And that goes to something I've been learning over the last few years about protecting my time. I'm several years into a long writing project--working on a novel. What I've found out is that people in my life (some people, of course, not all) seem to feel that because I don't earn a paycheck, then it isn't "real work" and I can break away from it to--go to lunch, work on a committee, "volunteer" my time for someone I don't know all the well who needs a ride to (fill in the blank). What I've learned is, the only person who is going to protect my time is me. I need to protect myself from other people, but I also have to protect myself from myself. I've gotten involved in some really goofy, convoluted projects (like helping my cousin set up his alpaca farm) that have destroyed my writing schedule--my own fault.

I guess that's a long way of saying that I need to watch myself on this site, and make sure I'm not spending too much time here. I have some strategies for that, like limiting the group reads, limiting the number of groups I belong to, limiting the number of reviews that I write. Also, I don't have to put all of my books into my library here this year; I can slow down my pace on adding books to my LT library, and put them in over 3-5 years instead of 3-5 months. Another strategy for limiting my time would be to come here less often during the day. I guess that's one of my new "goals," along with trying to get my daily reading pages more consistently at 100/day.

Probably more than you wanted to know, Pat.

Becky, I loved your comment about having to protect yourself from yourself (and helping your cousin set up his alpaca farm)!

I also check LT numerous times a day so it's hard to say how much it all adds up to but I'm thinking I'm on LT about an hour and a half to two hours a day (of course, that includes time related to LT--like reading newspaper book reviews, book blogs, Amazon and putting books on hold at the library). I probably read 2-3 hours a day if I can (it varies). One of the "problems" with LT is that I discover so many additional books that I want to read that I sometimes can't just relax and enjoy the book I have because I want to get on to the next one. As problems go, it's not the worst one I can think of.

I like imagining your two black labs under your feet at the computer. I also have a dog (who I think is more than a little jealous of my labtop).

I support that public pledge! I'm just not ready to take it yet.
Cousins! I had a cousin who tried an emu farm, but I didn't have to help!

This is a good, albeit unnerving discussion.....I am finding that allowing myself to read comments here and there during the day, but usually only posting once am and once pm seems to keep it in reasonable check....... An hour or less, I think is the goal. I write shorter posts, or I try, and fuss over them a little less, I see it as a bit of an art form, actually, so I'm trying to master it. The one that gets me in trouble is the 'peek' just before bedtime.......

>165 sibylline:. Right--"When are you coming to bed?" I hear that one a lot, and I'm sitting at the computer thinking, just another minute or so, knowing that I'm also cutting into my nighttime reading time. All I can say is, at least we're not bored--right?

Time spent on LT? I do not think anyone wants to know. Let's just say enough to check every thread every day.

Night owls have a substantial advantage where LT and reading are concerned. Not nearly as much activity at night :)

I also waste time sometimes writing comments I never post. I'll read it over and think bleh, or blah or boring or not at all addressing the topic at hand.... I'm really trying to nip that in the bud. Recognize before I spend time on it that I probably won't send it.....

The Dante Club, by Matthew Pearl. I have about 75 pages to go out of 350 in this book-of-the-tiny-font, and I have to admit that it's beginning to feel over-long, repetitive, and tedious. It seems like he could have wrapped up the story about 50 pages ago. I was entertained, up to a point, but now I'm ready for the end. This is Pearl's first novel, so I'm willing to cut him some slack. Overall, it's been a clever, impressive read, but now I find myself counting the pages to the end. I still wonder if some of that impatience isn't connected to my difficulty with reading the overly-small font.

I'm going to be seriously annoyed if the "murderer" turns out to be a character that has barely been introduced. I'm supposed to be looking for a "surprise" ending--well, you know for sure that the main characters didn't commit these murders, because they're well-known historical figures: Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes, and Fields. I just hate it when mystery writers wrap up their who-dunnits with characters who have barely been heard from, up until the last chapter--characters the reader can't possibly care a fig for. That always seems so cheap. Well, another day and I should have this thing finished.

Too bad, but maybe it will get better again.

"Dante, my dear Wendell, was a man of great personal dignity, and one secret of his dignity was that he was never in a hurry. You will never find him in an unseemly haste--an excellent rule for us to follow." Spoken to Oliver Wendell Holmes by James Lowell. Maybe I'm in an unseemly haste to finish the book--ha.

I'm practicing my shorter posts, as per Lucy's idea:

Interesting people, interesting comments. Good luck with the writing, Becky. Eager to hear the final word on The Dante Club. Over and out.

Yep.

#169: I think I will not put The Dante Club in the BlackHole after all. Pearl had the same trouble (being over-long) in The Last Dickens and frankly, I do not have the patience to go through it again. In The Last Dickens I thought the murderer all too easy to spot.

Stasia, do you ever sleep?

Yes.

Ok I am fair snorting my breakfast out my nose reading these short posts. I can't decide between Yep and Yes as the out and out winners....

Neither

If you're looking for short posts, then that would be Sibyx, not me. I don't write short because I don't edit these posts--much. To my own suprise, I finished The Dante Club yesterday. I thought it would take me one more day. This isn't the sort of book that I would classify as an easy read, by any means. A reader who likes biography will definitely find this to be a more enjoyable read than someone who doesn't. I don't think someone necessarily needs to be well-versed in Dante's works, but if I hadn't known something about James Fields or James Russell Lowell, for example, then I don't think I would have particularly enjoyed the book. My favorite part of the book was the way he brought these characters to life, particularly Fields, Lowell, Holmes, and Longfellow. I thought the whodunnit was somewhat secondary.

I would rate this book as a solid three-and-a-half stars.

If the whodunnit is secondary, then I may give The Dante Club a try after all.

After I finished The Dante Club last night, I was thinking about my next fiction choice--should it be something that complements what I've been reading or something entirely different? As I was falling asleep, the thought that came into my mind was Little Women. Perfect.

I don't know how many times I read this book when I was a kid--probably three or four. My favorite edition has always been the Illustrated Junior Library, c.1947. I desperately wanted to own that edition when I was a kid, and one of the big disappointments of my 10-year-old life was when I received for Christmas a cheap abridged edition. So a few years ago I bought myself the exact edition that I coveted in my youth--and that's the one I'm reading today. There's something about the font they used in this edition that is exactly right for this book. The illustrations also fit in my mind how scenes from the book should look.

I've also decided to switch back to the Selected Letters of Louisa May Alcott as my non-fiction read. I think it will be fun to read the two of them together. I've read both the Stern and the Saxton biogs of Alcott, although neither of them recently; there's a new one out (as of 2009) by Harriet Reisen, Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women. Anyone read that one? It's new enough that it's still fairly pricey on amazon.used.

Edited for added content.

#181: Little Women remains one of my all-time favorite books though I have read it innumerable times. Maybe it is time for me to re-read it too. . .

I dare not hunt up my childhood copy of Little Women for fear that I'd read it again. It was not spectacular as to illustrations, but it has stood the test of time and many, many readings. What did you Alcott -lovers think of March? (My response was like a lot but not love.)

Peggy, I haven't read March. I just put it on my ever-growing wish list. Ooooh, I love one of the LT reviewers who calls the main character "an arrogant knob." Heh.

#183: I have not yet read March, Peggy, although I am slated to do so in May for the one-word TIOLI challenge. I will keep you posted.

I read March for a book club several years ago and would have to agree with Peggy--it was good but not great.

Good to know, both of you.

I've just started a short book called Life Work by the poet Donald Hall. This is not a book of poetry; rather, it's a memoir, sort of a musing about the value of work in a person's life.

"There are jobs, there are chores, and there is work," writes Hall. "Reading proof is a chore; checking facts is a chore. When I edit for a magazine or a publisher, I do a job." Writing is Hall's life's work. "But because I loved my work, it was as if I did not work at all." Hall is a poet, and so he knows how to make words count. This is a beautiful book. I've had it in the stack, waiting for a good time. Now is good.

Life Work sounds charming.

That sounds like a treat indeed, and inspiring.

I might not be able to put it down. Good thing dinner is under control--heh.

For those who did the Wallace Stegner group read--or read the thread--Hall writes of moving to New Hampshire in 1975 to live in the farmhouse his great-grandparents bought in 1865. Talk about a sense of place!

This is why I wanted to make this post--I love this. His grandmother played the organ in the church that was 2 miles north of that house for seventy-eight years, from the age of fourteen until she was ninety-two.

I want to share this long passage from Donald Hall about his mother because it touches me so deeply.

This is from 1992, as he indicates. Hall was 65 years old at the time.

Today I receive a letter from my mother Lucy in Connecticut, eighty-nine years old a month from today in the house we moved to in 1936. The letter tells me that she made chicken soup the day before, and froze ten portions. Making chicken soup is not a trivial accomplishment on the corner of Ardmore and Greenway in 1992. Lucy's mind is fine but her body is painful; arthritis hobbles her; spinal stenosis bends her over and makes it difficult for her to walk to the kitchen or the toilet, her two destinations. She cooks for herself--and for us when we visit once a month to gossip and do errands--in five-minute bursts. She must sit back in her recliner, after five minutes, for pain to recede and breath to return. For herself, she freezes meatloaf slices, portions of chicken, tripe. Yesterday--she writes me--she also finished two aprons, which she makes as presents or for the fancy-work table at our South Danbury Church Fair. She tells me she's almost done reading the large-type Amy Tan we brought her last month. Day before yesterday, she tells me, she wrote five letters, and maybe tomorrow she'll answer the other four that she still owes. . . .

Becky, Life Work sounds like a wonderful book. Thanks for the recommendation. I have it on hold at the library.

My local college library has Life Work, so I will try and get a copy through them. It sounds wonderful!

Definitely on my wishllist, Becky! Lovely passage, thanks.

More from Hall's Life Work.

"When I hear talk about 'the work ethic' I puke. CEOs talk about it, whose annual salaries average 130 times their workers' wages. Whatever the phrase purports to describe, it is not an ethic; it is not an idea of work's value or a moral dictate but a feeling or tone connected to work, and it is temperamental and cultural."

Hall reminds me of a book I have on my shelf but have only minimally explored: Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do, by Studs Terkel.

Then Hall goes on to write about his wife's garden: "I call it work and so does Jane although it is voluntary and produces no revenue. . . . Her garden is work because it is a devotion undertaken with passion and conviction; because it absorbs her; because it is a task or unrelenting quest which cannot be satisfied."

Then Hall's phrase, to prove again that he's a poet: "hymns of dirt-work."

I'm so convinced that we too often discount our own work because we don't make a paycheck doing it, because it doesn't produce revenue. I work at my computer and at my yellow tablet every day on a writing project that may or may not ever be published. I like to think it will, but if it isn't, then is it worth less to me as work than if it is? I have a relative (not anyone who lives in my home) who discounts what I do--"How do you sit there day after day, doing that, frittering away your time?"

Here's another long quote from Hall. I am completely over the moon about this book:

"When I sold lightbulbs door-to-door for the Andover Lions Club, every October a woman in Danbury told me about how much she had canned that year. She lived in a small rickety cottage, almost a shack, with an old propane cooker. Each year her prodigies increased in prodigiousness. She told me: "This year I did 347 peas, 414 string beans, 77 peaches, 402 corn, 150 strawberry jams." She talked plain, the New Hampshire way without affect, but I felt pride surging in every century of Ball jars, self-worth assembled in dense rows of vegetable love packed into her root cellar. And as I listened I thrilled with her, felt her pride with her and for her. Four hundred cans of corn! Did her family eat four cans of corn all day each winter? Heavens, no. Every time I visited, I took home several examples of her canning."

Remembering back to our Wallace Stegner group read, and the argument he had with himself about people who moved on and those who stayed put (Wallace, we recall, was a "nester"--a word he gave to himself). Donald Hall has something to say about the issue as well:

"The people who stayed home in the countryside--while others left for Massachusetts and Ohio and California, for the cities and the suburbs, for better paying work--were not merely the feckless ones, the lazy or the stupid. They were the people for whom place and family came before anything else, not as ideas or ethics but as necessities of feeling. Their genes inhabit my cousins who live where they were born."

Like a lot of people at LT, I read more than one book at a time.

After I finished The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl, a novel set in 1865 Boston, I decided to follow it up with a re-read of an old favorite, Little Women. Then I thought, why not also read Louisa May Alcott's book of correspondence, The Selected Letters of Louisa May Alcott.

So here's how that's going. Of course, Little Women is great. I'm enjoying "getting" the allusions to all sorts of things that I had no clue about when I read this when I was 10 years old. Jo March is reading some great stuff, and I'll post on her reading one of these days.

However, as much as I'm enjoying Alcott's novel, I can't say the same about her letters. I can't figure out if it's just the people she's writing to or if she's just a loony letter-writer. She has all kinds of goofy "family" baby-talk language, which I guess is understandable if 1) you're writing to family; and 2) you're about 10 years old. She was also an abysmal businesswoman when it came to her own writing. Granted, I'm not to the point in the book yet where she's written Little Women, but she was dealing with magazine editors on a regular basis, and frankly it's a wonder they ever printed anything she wrote. Now before someone says, "Well, it was typical for that time for women to be self-effacing and not to be particularly good businesswomen," I would point out a woman of about the same period, Sarah Orne Jewett, who was a strong advocate for herself and for her own writing. She ate editors for lunch, in a very nice way.

Additionally, Alcott's letters simply aren't all that interesting. They don't compare in any way to Annie Fields', Sarah Wyman Whitman's, or Sarah Orne Jewett's--or to Clover Hooper Adams's (I left her out). I think it's a matter of education and also of class--class because of the people one is exposed to. Although that doesn't really work either, because Alcott was some sort of cousin of Annie Fields', and she stayed with her in Boston for several months on at least one occasion--and the letters from that time are as dull as ever.

I have a copy of Alcott's journals on my shelf, so I guess it would be somewhat interesting to take a few years and compare the letters to the journals to see if there's any difference there: The Journals of Louisa May Alcott, edited by Joel Myerson & Daniel Shealy.

So. . . that's the direction my reading is going in today.

So about 10 minutes of reading in the journals--evidently Alcott had a rather severe self-editor when it came to her letters. The journals are far more interesting--full of spunk and snarky little details about people that make me laugh and like her a lot. So I think I'll put the emphasis on the journals and more or less skim and skip through the letters.

Interesting that she adopted different personas -- for journal and for letters -- her inner life perhaps more free than her public and family one?

>201 sibylline:. There was a darkness to her inner life that she couldn't have shared. However, her letters to her her older sister Anna ("Meg") don't sound much different in emtional tone than the ones to a friend in Kansas. What's up with that?

Her journal for 1868, when her writing was going well and she was paying off her parents' debts: "Perhaps we are to win after all, and conquer poverty, neglect, pain, and debt, and march on with flags flying into the new world with the new year." That word "neglect" is disturbing.

Anywho, by coincidence I received in the mail today the newest Alcott biog, by Harriet Reisen: Louisa May Alcott The Woman Behind Little Women. I was a little bit hesitant to get this one, since I already have two LMA biogs on my shelf. But it was reviewed well, so I thought I'd give it a try. It turns out that she and a friend spent TWENTY YEARS putting together funding for a PBS documentary of LMA's life. Obviously she's not just a transient Alcott observer. Then this paragraph in the book's preface grabbed me, and I was very happy I got the book:

"Like so many other girls, I fell under the spell of Louisa May Alcott when my mother presented Little Women to me as if it were the key to a magic kingdom. I was taken into Louisa's story so completely that a book with covers and pages has no place in my memory of the experience. While I was there, by my mother's decree, normal life was suspended. Jelly omelets were delivered to my room on bed trays, and sleep was optional. At such a time, school was out of the question. Jo March was coming to take up residence in my heart, a companion for life, to endow me with a little something of Louisa Alcott's own wise, funny, sentimental, and sharply realistic outlook."

If you are an LMA fan, then you probably ought to beg, borrow, steal, or buy this book. It's not yet out in paperback, but it will be soon. That means it must be available in libraries just about everywhere.

Becky, I read Little Women as a child and haven't really thought too much about it since but this biography sounds good and I'm going to put it on my library list to check out. I'm enjoying your posts about your ongoing reading.

Becky, I am intrigued by all of this - especially of reading the letters and journals in tandem (tri-andem?) with a good biography. I'll be looking for the latter and for Annie Fields. (I read V.Woolf's letters and journals that way and found the contrast between them very revealing. People apparently gave VW gifts just to receive thank-you notes which were uniformly charming. Her real take on them was often sharper than flattering.....I'm guessing you won't get that much with LMA.) Anyhow, thaks for suggesting a very interesting study! Enjoy!

#202: If you are an LMA fan, then you probably ought to beg, borrow, steal, or buy this book.

OK, that was enough to convince me. Just do not tell my hubby I ordered yet another book!

I'm adding the biography to my wishlist too - LW and the other 3 were wonderful when I was a kid.

OK, I've checked to make sure I'm posting on my own thread. I feel a rant coming on:

I HATE FACEBOOK. Why do I ever go there? Because that's how I keep between my brother and his friend, at my expense. So, I had a temper tantrum and deleted every photo from my facebook account. Ha Ha! That track of (some) of my family. The last time I had a facebook meltdown, I had posted a new profile photo. Big deal, right? My younger brother commented that it looked like Sigourney Weaver in Alien. Wow. Huh. Well, I chose to take it as a compliment. Then one of his friends (female) chimed in and said, "No, it's more like Shelley Winters." Shelley Winters? Oof. I mean, I don't even know you, b-itch, so where do you get off with that kind of comment? Then there was an "hilarious" back-and-forth will show them. Now my profile photo is a picture of a daisy.

Since my little meltdown, I've pretty much stayed away from FB. But yesterday, like a total lunatic, I allowed myself to get drawn into a conversation (from her side it was more like spitting nails than "conversing") with the daughter of my husband's cousin. Yes, really. I know better. So we have this sort of semi-semi-nasty back-and-forth, and after a couple of comments (and after she escalates the nastiness by about a factor of 100), I think to myself, "Whoa, what am I doing? Shut up, close facebook, and let her have the last word." She's 30 years old, she's lived with a guy since she was 18 years old, he will never, never commit to her in any way, but she knows it all--just ask her. This is the young lady who graduated from the U of Washington with a reading level that would make Dr. Seuss proud--if only her spelling matched her reading comprehension. Sigh. Oh, and did I mention she reminds me of her great-aunt, my mother-in-law, who every year for 35 years of my marriage to her son mentioned on our anniversary, "They said it wouldn't last"? They're like genetic twins. Yikes. Only his mother was intelligent.

The moral of the story is, stay away from that stupid, stupid site!

Wow, what happened to my first paragraph? Dunno. Hackers, I guess, who love FB. Heh.

Uh oh, feeling a rumble on the Richter scale..... epicenter, near St Louis, MO......

Your story brings to mind Lucy and Charlie Brown and the football.....

Obviously I have too much time on my hands today. I did some good work, though, and I've gone back to read a bit in the Donald Hall Life Work. He talks about interrupting his writing work with a "chore"--don't you love that? Make another cup of coffee; go to the mail box; for me it's, sweep the driveway of the newest crop of sycamore leaves. Did you know that sweeping (or any repetitive activity) alleviates depression? Something about releasing endorphins.

He fractures me--he kills me. Six-hundred drafts of one of his poems, "Another Elegy." I tried so hard to get my students to understand revision. I love this man.

I hope to get Life Work from the local college library in the next few weeks (I am hoping, perhaps vainly, since I am still waiting for Paddy Clarke and I put in that request 2 weeks ago now.)

Love the Facebook rant, BTW!

I've been enjoying Donald Hall's Life Work, reading it in small pieces, trying to make it last. Tonight I sat down to read another small section, and before I knew it I had finished the book. I see there are no reviews of the book on LT. Maybe I'll write one or maybe not. That's about all I have to say about it tonight.

>209 labwriter: Repetitive motion releases endorphins, I didn't know that...Maybe that's why I love knitting! And sitting in a rocker chair or glider or porch swing! You've just explained my entire life. lol

>212 drdawnffl:. Yep--you nailed it. Knitting, rocking, sweeping--those "homely" little activities actually make us feel better. I have a friend who vaccums whenever she's upset. I read that somewhere years ago, and it makes all the sense in the world. My neighbor once told me my driveway was cleaner than her kitchen floor. I didn't tell her why. Heh.

My mother cleaned when life seemed out of control. We had the cleanest house in the entire town. Now, when I experience stress, I turn into my mother and the house smells like pine sol.

Ha--yes, everyone in my house knows that when I'm cleaning--watch out!

The second half of Donald Hall's Life Work, while very good, wasn't as good as the first half. This is a man who lives to revise his writing, and in the second part I don't think he revised at his usual level. This was at the same time that he found out his colon cancer, previously in remission, had metastesized to his liver. The surgeon removed one-third of his liver and they put him on chemo. He was using the memoir to more or less distract himself from not only feeling terrible physically, but facing the almost certain fact that he wouldn't be around for very much longer. Ironically, while his cancer again went into remission, his wife developed leukemia and died. I guess it just proves that writers write because they have to, and they use everything. Don't get me wrong, the book in my estimation still rates 5-stars; but I don't think Hall would disagree that the second half of the book feels a bit disorganized and distracted.

#216: I look forward to reading Life Work when I get my hands on it. The book sounds very good, second half notwithstanding. I appreciate you bringing the book to my attention, Becky.

Hope you like it, Stasia!

I'm trying to move ahead with the Reisen LMA biog: Louisa May Alcott The Woman Behind Little Women. I still have high hopes for this book. Harriet Reisen seems to me to be uniquely qualified to write LMA's story for a new generation of readers. I'm starting to be a little concerned about a problem I find in a lot of biographies which is a sense of proportion. The book is 300 pages long. I'm on page 80 (a quarter of the way into the book, if my higher math is right), and LMA is only eleven years old. Now there may be good reason for so much emphasis on Louisa's young life--probably so, in fact, since LMA's entire life was so wrapped up in her family of origin. But I do hope to see Reisen move it on a little bit faster. The other reason this proportion may be OK is that LMA lived to be only 56 years old, so we're not looking at a long, productive old age.

So, having dispensed with my usual complaint about the "proportion" thing, what stands out so far? I think in the other books I've read about Alcott, and this is mostly an impression since it's been awhile since I've read them, Louisa's father Bronson Alcott always seems to get a total pass because he was some sort of genius--or something. While that may be true (it's hard to judge from this distance, and I've never read any of his writings), it would also seem that the man had serious mental problems and was completely incapable of taking on adult responsibilities, for himself or anyone else. He probably would have been much better off being the unmarried "crazy uncle," taken care of by the entire extended family.

Abby March, Louisa's mother, comes across as the most interesting, if not conflicted, character so far. She seems to have had a bizarre double view of her husband. Writing in her journal, she described him as "laboring unremittingly in his garden, producing neat regular beds and borders, verdure presenting itself and food promising for us. What a calling is the husbandman's! How intimately he relates himself to God!" The biographer suggests that perhaps Mrs. Acott's ecstasy sprang from relief that Bronson was finally out of bed and working at something. It seems that when she couldn't take Bronson's craziness anymore, periodically she would leave home, taking with her one or two of her children for an extended visit with family in Boston. The only wonder is that she ever returned.

I wanted to add that if Abby March was the "sensible one" of the duo, she certainly experienced gaps in her sensibility. She became pregnant eight times in about ten years, experiencing several miscarriages and at least one stillbirth. She also had two sisters who died either as result of miscarriage or in childbirth. Other women of the time found ways around perpetual pregnancy. She knew all too well her husband's limitations in his ability to make enough money to feed, clothe, and house the family. Woman, what were you thinking?

The child Louisa seems to be an extraordinarily intelligent, head-strong girl who needed different parenting than what she was getting. She almost never attended a school that wasn't taught by her father--that would have been a challenge for her to overcome right there. Louisa has Jo learning to control her temper in Little Women, but what she wrote in her children's books was apparently a much cleaned-up version of her own childhood rages, which often took the form of creative bad behavior. Once when she was locked in her room, punished yet again for something, she poured out the lamp oil and rubbed it over every surface in the room, including herself and her own hair, ending up "smelling like a whale." Yikes.

Edited for a bit of content.

#219: I have that one on the way to me now. If you are interested in learning more about Bronson Alcott, I would recommend Eden's outcasts : the story of Louisa May Alcott and her father by John Matteson.

Earlier in the thread we were discussing cleaning (213-215), and I was thinking about something Donald Hall wrote in Life Work while I was sweeping my kitchen floor this morning. Hall says that his grandmother ended every day by mopping her hardwood kitchen floor. This woman was a demon for work, living with her husband on the farm, doing all the woman's work that is "never done." This despite the fact that she received straight-A's in all her schoolwork and was admitted to the "women's version" of Johns Hopkins Medical School, to which she wasn't able to go because of finances or marriage or whatever--I've forgotten. After her marriage, she became a woman who kept house for her family. Hall says she never read a book, yet she didn't seem to mind. She always said she had better things to do.

Which brings me back to the thought of mopping my kitchen floor every day. Ha. Despite the fact that I have a very nice Oreck steam cleaner which does a beautiful job on my kitchen tile floor, I wouldn't think of cleaning my floor every day. It would just never occur to me. In fact, I'm very pleased because the surface of the tiles and the color (a nice green) has the added advantage of not showing the dirt. I think I was influenced too much by my mother, who also cleaned house like a madwoman. She certainly had a clean house, but beyond that I never thought she had too much to show for it. I vowed that I would live my life differently--and I have, sometimes to my own despair at the collected dirt in my home. Don't get me wrong, I don't live in filth, but I have no problem sitting down with a good book even if the room is something of a scattered mess. My mother, now 85, still spends the majority of the day cleaning, even if now it's only her little apartment. I have to think that this must be something she enjoys, so--God bless her for that.

>220 alcottacre:. Hi Stasia. Yes, I've heard of that book. Have you read it? Thanks for reminding me of that one.

Stasia, your post reminded me of a book that's on my shelf, one I'd forgotten I owned: The Alcotts: Biography of a Family by Madelon Bedell. This one was published in about 1980. Paging through this one, I remember that Bedell did an excellent job, particularly on the people surrounding Bronson Alcott and the Transcendalist community. She paints Bronson Alcott as severely narcissistic, which in my mind seems exactly right. This is worth a re-read, since I'm thinking I must have read it in 1980 when it was published; however, I'll first have to get over my current overdose of all-things-Alcott.

#222: Yes, I have read it. I thought it very good.

I have not read the Bedell book, but I will give it a try if I can locate a copy. Thanks for the recommendation.

Another one you might want to try, Becky, is The Sheltering Tree about the friendship between Bronson Alcott and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Great, Stasia--thanks so much! Yes, from what I've read so far, the Bronson Alcott-Emerson friendship was an important one. It would seem that Bronson influenced the people around him, like Emerson and Thoreau. He had vision and big ideas, but he doesn't seem to have been able to communicate them like the other philophers and writers in his community. I'll definitely put that one on my list.

Gotta add Donald Hall's book to my wish list. The second half of his book may not be as tight, in terms of quality of writing, but it sounds like the part I would connect with the most. Again, like how you discuss books as you're reading them. I'm going to try to start doing that more.

#226: I was going to do a re-read of The Sheltering Tree which was what triggered my recommending it to you, only to discover that the local library's copy is now lost. *sigh*

Got the garage cleaned up and the deck cleaned up. The new smoker is now in place, the Weber Smokey Mountain, and I'm reading Lesson One in Low & Slow: Master the Art of Barbecue in 5 Easy Lessons. Recipe One is chicken. The guy who wrote this is my kind of guy: "I know you all want to do ribs first thing, but there's a reason I'm having you do eight dollars of chicken instead of fifty dollars of ribs." Heh.

Hope everyone is having a good Memorial Day weekend. God Bless Our Vets.

As the daughter of a veteran, wife of a veteran, and stepmother of a veteran (though he is still in the Army), thanks for the gif, Becky! I like it.

I think the Wall in Washington, D.C. is one of the most moving memorials I've ever seen. They got that one right, in my opinion. God bless them all, those who didn't return and those who did.

#231: The last time I was in DC, the wall was not up yet. It and the Holocaust Museum are two things on my list of the top things to do when I get to revisit the city, although I am not sure of when that might be.

Oh yes, you must see the Wall. I haven't seen the Holocaust Museum either, but that's on my must see list when I go back--like you, when, I don't know, but I know I'll make it back there eventually.

#233: The last time I was in DC was 26 years ago, for my 22nd birthday. I loved the city. My sister had to drag me out of the Library of Congress though :)

Continuing with Louisa May Alcott The Woman Behind Little Women by Harriet Reisen. LMA spent about a month from Dec. 1862 - Jan. 1863 nursing Civil War soldiers. She was 30 years old that year. She spent only a month as a nurse because she became ill apparently with typhoid fever and was sent home. However, short as it was, the experience had quite an effect on her. I like this assessment by Resien:

"Nursing tempered Louisa, matured her, replaced her book knowledge of behavior under duress with real-life experience. For all their liberality, her parents' notions of human character were just that--notions. They were idealists (especially her father but also her mother) who didn't see people for who they were so much as for how far they fell short of what they should be. Louisa wanted to know life in all its true variety, and she was getting the chance."

Louisa later created a book called Hospital Sketches from the letters she sent home.

I am enjoying these conversations regarding the writers of wonderful American literature. The Concord and Lexington area in Mass. is one of my favorite places to visit.

I had an incredible American Lit. professor and he brought the works to life, including some lessor known works such as Nathaniel Hawthorne's work The Artist of the Beautiful.

Hi Linda. I've never been to Concord or Lexington. It would be fun to spend some time there. I have a very large biography of Hawthorne--Salem Is My Dwelling Place: A Life of Nathaniel Hawthorne that I hope to get to sometime this summer.

I don't have too much experience with Hawthorne's work--mainly from Young Goodman Brown and Other Tales. I really enjoy this period in American history and lit.

Just thought you'd like to know, dear Becky, that I spent the morning trying to figure out with the techs at Amazon why my Kindle wasn't downloading the Works of LMA with active table of contents......It turns out that 20 minutes wasn't long enough to wait what with the size of the offering and my relatively weak signal here in N.C. All is well!
And I'm enjoying your comments on the Reisen book and thinking so far that I'm not going to be compelled to read it!

I just downloaded the same set of books on my Kindle a couple of nights ago. Mine took quite awhile--it's good to know why.

I have not yet read Hospital Sketches so I will probably be reading that after I read the Reisen book (which I do not have in hand yet.)

How crazy of someone to hack the LT site. Dumb. Go hack FB. Anyway, I guess all is good now.

I'm within striking distance of finishing Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women by Reisen. I'm giving myself extra time to read today because of the long holiday weekend (four days in our house) that allowed for little reading besides the book about how to barbecue. Which was a total success, by the way. I bought the smoker for father's day, but we decided the holiday weekend was the perfect time to begin to learn how to use it. My husband's father was a butcher, and I think DH has always wanted to make his father's sausage recipe. Now he can, if, that is, we can pry said secret recipe from his sister's selfish fingers. We will--that will happen. Also, we used to go backpacking and enjoyed the little camp stove (and fire when that was permissable). Our first experience with the smoker this weekend was hilarious. We got stuck in the garage because of a torrential rain storm, so we definitely smelled like "camping" when it was all finished. We also had the best smoked chicken I've ever eaten--but best of all, DH said it was the best he'd ever had. I want us to be the neighborhood awsome meat smoking go-to people so that we have something to contribute to the annual block party.

OH, this was supposed to be a post about reading. OK. Like I said, I'm within striking distance of finishing the LMA biog. Once Louisa wrote the sequel to Little Women, Little Men, she became a seriously wealthy woman--earning something on the equivalent of well over $2 million a year once the sequal was out.

From the biog: "There were other reasons Louisa kept writing: she was still cooking up stories that were 'knocking at the saucepan lid to get out.' She didn't want to be known solely as an author of children's books; she wanted to write one book she could be proud of; she was curious to know how much money she could make." (emphasis mine) I think that's a very poignant statement. She didn't really like writing the children's books. So she kept at it, but she continued to write the series of children's books because they made her so much money. Who, really, can blame her, knowing how emotionally abusive her early life had been?

Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women by Harriet Reisen. I finished this today. I'm vascillating between a 3 and a 3.5-star rating for the book. It was well-written, but to be honest, I'm not sure that there was really anything new--or new enough to rate another biography. I'll have more to say later.

I am so saddened that all of Louisa's work and wealth didn't seem to bring her any happiness or peace. Perhaps that was because her health was so poor. That's one of the new ideas presented in the book--the reason for her poor health. Other biographers have speculated that her symptoms were caused by mercury poisoning from the calomel given to her when she had typhoid pneumonia during the Civil War. That conclusion is disputed in this book.

My next book is The Manchurian President by Aaron Klein. I'm going to say this up front. I'll be posting about the book here as I read it, the same way I always do. I'm a committed conservative, leaning towards libertarianism. I do not like Barack Obama, not even a little. I think he and his administration present a grave danger to our country. I spend a lot of time reading all kinds of things--blogs, magazine articles, books--on all sides of the issues. I've attended about ten Tea Party rallies. Having said that, I have no intention of arguing politics on this post. I do enough of that on my political blog, and I don't want to bring political divisiveness into my posts at LT. I invite you to read my posts about the book if you're interested; I invite you to post any replies that you care to post. But I do not plan to argue my position. Anyone who is insulted by my politics is politely invited not to read this particular thread. Fair warning.

#243: Becky, I will be checking your posts because I am very interested in seeing what you think of the book. Like you, I am a committed conservative, leaning toward libertarianism.

I have just a few more things to say about the LMA biog by Harriet Reisen. Like all the biographers, Reisen relies heavily on LMA's journals. Very heavily. Reading the journals along with the biography often results in reading the same thing twice, sometimes almost word-for-word. None of that is particularly surprising, since biographers use what they have, although Madeline B. Stern, an Alcott scholar, used the same material in her biography, and in my opinion, she did it better.

Having said that, one of the things I learned from the Reisen biography was that Alcott's journals and letters evidently were redacted after Alcott's death by her sister, Anna Pratt ("Meg" of the Little Women story) and a woman named Ednah Dow Littlehale Cheney, a writer, social activist, and family friend. Anna gave the papers to Cheney who used them to publish two books about LMA, books which perpetuated the "genteel spinster Aunt Jo" image that Louisa had created about herself. Says Reisen, "{Cheney} and Anna Pratt excised from the various journals and letters whatever they thought detrimental. Worst of all, Cheney did not return many of the papers she consulted, leaving contemporary scholars only Cheney's own selective transcriptions as sources." Reisen gives her readers this information on the last page of the book. I wish instead this had been written into the introduction.

So having read that last bit in Reisen, I went back to the copy of the journals that was edited by Myerson, Shealy, and Stern: The Journals of Louisa May Alcott (1997) to see what they had to say. This comes from the Introduction, written by Madeleine Stern, the Alcott scholar: "As they are presented here, these journals comprise all the extant journals of Louisa May Alcott. They derive from two major sources: the manuscript journals preserved in Harvard University's Houghton Library, and the journals edited after Alcott's death by Ednah Dow Cheney in Louisa May Alcott: Her Life, Letters, and Journals. The former--covering the significant pre-Little Women years, 1863-1867, and the last years, 1879-1888--have been subjected to the cancellation lines of a censor who crossed out certain passages without obliterating them. The latter--the published Cheney version--are punctuated with three dots for omission as well as with a plethora of initials in place of names. Now, in this volume, omitted entries have been included wherever possible and full names substituted for initials. The result is a richness despite the obvious fact that some of the journals have been destroyed or vanished." She then goes on to speculate what may have disappeared from the journals.

For my money, I'll take Stern over Reisen. Stern wrote Louisa May Alcott A Biography, first published in 1950 and reissued by Random House in 1996.

The Manchurian President by Aaron Klein. A word about Klein. He's an American journalist and serves as senior investigative reporter and Jerusalem bureau chief for WorldNetDaily.com and is a columnist for the Jewish Press.

What's with the title? This is from the Introduction: "The book title is taken from The Manchurian Candidate, a 1959 spy thriller by Richard Condon, who depicted the son of a prominent political family in America who has been brainwashed into becoming an unwitting assassin for the Communist Party." Then he also discusses the two movies more-or-less based on the book.

"The authors (the book is co-authored by Brenda J. Elliott) are by no means arguing herein that President Obama has been brainwashed by anyone or is a sleeper agent for any international party or weapons conglomerate. However, the main theme of The Manchurian Candidate's various incarnations--that of a powerful politician whose true past has been intentionally obscured, and who has become the vehicle for implementing a hidden radical agenda--absolutely fits with the theme of this work and with the facts that are carefully documented in these pages."

My biggest beef with Barack Obama is that as a candidate he was allowed pass after pass by the "mainstream" media in this country--to the point, in my opinion, of journalistic malpractice. His past was obscured for at least a couple of reasons: one, because of his abysmal lack of experience for the job; and two, to obscure his radical past and the exact nature of his radical present. He was absolutely the least-vetted candidate we have ever had running for president. People voted for him because they didn't know anything about him, and also because of the awesome coolness of voting for an African-American as president--"Aren't we open-minded and smooth."

In the second chapter, Klein gets into the "mysterious" college years: "In one of the many strange features of Barack Obama's presidential candidacy, his campaign went to great lengths to conceal normally routine information about the candidate's college years." His transcripts from Occidental College, Columbia University, and Harvard Law are sealed--why? No one seems to remember Obama during his two years at Columbia. Obama writes in his memoir that it's because he spent a lot of time in the library, "like a monk." So the smartest president evah (just ask him) spent all of his time studying, and yet received a poli-sci degree "without honors." Huh. Somethin' ain't right there. Klein suspects that Obama spent his time with some radical groups like the Black Students' Organization and Coalition for a Free South Africa, associations which might have been "uncomfortable" (my word) for Candidate Obama to explain. There may also have been a question of his grades at Columbia and how he was able to be admitted to Harvard Law, another "uncomfortable" question that Obama and his team wouldn't have wanted to answer. So--seal the records. Problem solved. Yet in Obama's own words, "Judge me by the people with whom I surround myself." We'll do our best.

Another book I just started is Donald Hall's Without, poems he wrote when his wife was battling leukemia (unfortunately she eventually died). The first half are poems about her illness and death; the second half is about the first year without her. She was the poet Jane Kenyon, and she died in 1995. She was much younger than Hall, who was diagnosed with an "incurable" cancer before she was diagnosed with hers, so it's something of an irony that he is still alive. I discovered this book of poems when I read his memoir, Life Work.

#246: Thanks for the review of The Manchurian President. I will look for that one.

>245 labwriter:-246: Oops! LOL! I thought I had left the message, "Thanks for the 'heads up,' I'll bite my tongue!" ;-)

This morning I picked up Hall's Without, thinking to read a couple of poems. Before I knew it, I had finished the book. Ooof. It's a tough read. Such a beautiful thing to be remembered so lovingly (and painfully) by a poet, but still, a tough read. I need something to get it out of my system, and instead I find myself just staring out the window.

#250: instead I find myself just staring out the window

Sounds like a deeply meditative book . . .

About time for a new thread, Becky?

New thread labwriter: 2010, thread the third