MarysLibrary

Math and Science for English Majors

The Square Root of Murder by Ada Madison. Mysteries with amateur detectives who are mathematicians or scientists or that feature math and science have a particular pull for me. As the years have gone by I've become more interested in, for example, algebra, and do quadratic equations for fun - they are so much more relaxing than reading serious literature because they have a definitive answer with little ambiguity. The same goes with mysteries of course and this first in a series about college math teacher Sophie Knowles is a treat. A second book in the series comes out in March.

2011  No 191

 

 A Spark of Death by Bernadette Pajer. This first of the Professor Bradshaw mysteries is about exploring the uses of electricity, which was fairly new phenomenon in 1901. When a much disliked University of Washington professor is found dead in a Farady Cage in the school's lab the police come looking for his colleague, Professor Bradshaw. Set in turn of the last century Seattle and at the Snoqualmie Falls, the book is interesting as well as entertaining with a clever plot that had me baffled until the very end. A second book in the series will be out in May.

2011  No 192

 

I Am Half Sick of Shadows by Alan Bradley. I'm grouping this latest Flavia de Luce mystery in the science and math category because one of the things we all love so much about Flavia is her knowledge of botany and chemistry and her skill at concocting things in her attic laboratory. This mystery also concerns itself with Shakespeare and especially Romeo and Juliet and takes place at Christmas. There is much to like in this story including the ending, which I did not anticipate.

2011  No 193

Show Dog - Jack the Australian Shepherd

Show Dog by Josh Dean. Ah, show dogs! The prima donnas of the canine world (and that includes the males.) I picked up this newly published book in hopes a little dog show reality would help me get over my crush on Westminster's 2012 Best in Show, Malachy. This Pekingese, as Josh Dean says, is an animal that appears to be a Pac Man ghost bred to an angora goat and looks pretty much like Cousin It from the Addams Family. What better way to take my mind off Malachy than to read a book about Jack, an Australian Shepherd, a dog that looks like a generic Dog.

Jack coulda been a contenda. He may, some time in the future be one of the "campaigned" dogs who are in line to win Best in Show at big dog shows. He blew onto the scene and came away with his championship status in four months. He's a delightful character and a splendid show dog.

But the dog show world is complicated and seldom does a dog like Jack, whose owner can't afford to pay a handler to travel with him to shows all over the country all year or to advertise in dog magazines in an attempt to bring him to the attention of judges, make it to top dog in the US or to the winner's circle at Westminster. But people who love dogs love to show them off and dogs like Jack, who are natural showmen, want to be shown, so his owner will probably bring him back to the show circuit.

Meanwhile, in spending a year following Jack around, meeting owners, handlers, judges, and others in the dog world, Josh Dean has learned much that ranges from interesting and amusing to hilarious to downright weird. For example, did you know that George Washington was a breeder of American Foxhounds and instrumental in defining the breed? That there are 15,000 polar bears in Canada alone, but only 500 Sealyham terriers in the entire world? That Berger Picards are often mistaken for Wirehaired Portuguese Podengo Media? (I had to throw that in there. If Sealyhams, which are familiar to everyone, are down to 500 dogs, how many Wirehaired Portuguese Podengo Media can there be out there?)

The dogs are characters, but the people who own and show them are, as we learned from the movie, Best in Show, sometimes more eccentric than the dogs. One owner tells the story of a handler who was kicked out of a show in Pennsylvania . . . for relieving herself in the exercise pen.

It seems that this owner of a field spaniel who "almost certainly having spent too much time in the company of dogs, ducked into one of those sawdust lined, fenced enclosures . . . and not just any ex-pen. It was the one for puppies, which has a short door intended to keep out larger dogs. The woman . . . had to crunch down into a ball and crawl to get in, and then - to add to the indignity - she got stuck on the way out. Within a few minutes of her ungainly exit, someone had hung a sign that said DOGS ONLY."

The book is full of anecdotes and serious discussions about such things as breeding and health, popularity of breeds, cost of advertisements ($4,500 for the cover of The Canine Chronicle), the difficulties of training a dog to perform in a dog show, and the money flowing into the American dog show world from emerging economies, with major players now in Brazil and China, for example.

A wonderful book and I hope not the last from Josh Dean who lives in Brooklyn with his wife, son, and imaginary pet dog.

2012  No 33

Is this the Great American Novel?

The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald. Perhaps the most famous American novel of the 1920s, The Great Gatsby has been riding a sine curve ever since, going into and out of fashion at regular intervals. It is heading into a new popularity phase right now. Which is good, because it just may be the Great American Novel we used to talk about.

There is so much in this short novel, so many extraordinary characters (Fitzgerald said he thought Tom Buchanan was his best creation), settings you can almost smell and touch, a seemingly simple but actually quite complex plot line, a little mystery, a little murder. And lots of themes and symbols. An English teacher could go nuts with the theme of time, with which the book starts and ends, the American Dream, travel by automobile (both Jordan and Baker were makers of automobiles at the time), wealth, honesty, and clothes.

And of course the green light flashing at the end of Daisy's dock.

I picked up the book because the 22nd Avenue Book Club is going to be discussing it next month. I'm so glad we picked it.

2012  No 32

A humorously serious poke at some sleazy politicians, Act of Darkness by Jane Haddam

Act of Darkness by Jane Haddam. This book has been sitting in my real, physical To Be Read pile. There is a virtual pile in my head that doesn't bear thinking about, but the physical pile is, if not exactly manageable, at least not mind-boggling. But I've been putting off reading it because I do love the Gregor Demarkian mysteries and I know they grow deeper and more thoughtful as time goes along so I have a great deal of good reading ahead of me, but not enough.

Jane Haddam, whose real name is Oriana Papazoglou, which I like a lot more than her pseudonym, has written 27 of these books, originally called the Holiday Series because the stories took place on holidays: Christmas, Easter (Western, Roman Catholic), and in Act of Darkness, the 4th of July. The next book will take place on Halloween, and the next on St Patrick's Day, and then on Thanksgiving. The books have themes of social criticism, the one at Easter being a discussion of the church and this one being about politicians.

Gregor Demarkian, the Armenian Hercule Poirot as Time Magazine has called him, goes off to Long Island at the beginning of this book with his friend Bennis Hannaford, whom he met in the first mystery, to a fund raising "seminar" at the house of "the last of the real actresses," an Elizabeth Taylor-like woman who is doing this to raise money for her son-in-law, a US senator from Connecticut. Demarkian has been asked to attend by an old friend at the FBI for reasons he is finding difficult to understand.

The senator, Stephen Whistler Fox, and his wife, Janet, were the parents 10 years earlier of a baby with Down's Syndrome. Fox and his college friend Kevin Debrett, who delivered the baby, were purportedly so affected by the child's death they have devoted themselves to passing legislation which will aid in the care of children with Down's and in Debrett's case, running a clinic to deal with the many illnesses such children are prone to and not incidentally making a lot of money. Since a major piece of legislation is about to be proposed, a lobbyist for a union of workers who care for mentally retarded children is also there, hoping to influence the legislation, which was in part written by Debrett to favor private clinics like his.

The sleazy people in this book happen to be Democrats but that is, I think, a function of the time it was written (it was published in 1991.) It's politicians in general the author is after and the kinds of corruption that occur on both sides of the aisle, and she has some sharp things to say about Republicans and conservatives as well. The author does create a hilarious knee-jerk liberal who relies on her astrologer and meditation to decide everything from what to have for breakfast to whether to pull the plug on her hospitalized mother, who was not in a coma or near death but rather had broken her hip. She is entirely unable to understand why anyone would criticize this euthanasia. "She was old. Why would she want to live?"

I knew from the very beginning who did it, why, and how. Unfortunately, when I got to the end of the book I discovered I was wrong. Which pleased me. It was a convoluted plot with many possible murderers and many possible motives, not to mention a mysterious method of actually committing the murders, all wrapped in a very amusing package. This is a first-rate mystery.

2010 No 31

What Is It About Cats?

The Encyclopedia of the Cat by Bruce Fogle. I've been paging through this book for a couple of years and finally got down to reading the text recently as well as looking at the splendid pictures. I don't usually notice the publisher of a book, but it's impossible not to be aware you're looking at a DK Publishing book, the quality is so outstanding.

I would like to get a kitten. Wilhelm, having spoken to Miss Darcy and Miss Woodhouse about this matter, says they do not. But I can dream about a blue Chartreaux, a seal point Exotic, or a sleek, lilac Havana Brown.

This is the book to inspire those dreams.

2012  No 30

White Crosses by Larry Watson

White Crosses by Larry Watson is a slow moving book about a good and well-meaning but misguided man, insecure, self-critical, and ultimately a failure. Jack Nevelsen is the sheriff of a remote county in Montana near the Canadian border, a man with a lot of responsibility but not a great deal to do. Serious crime is not a problem in his county and he and his deputy are easily able to handle the complaints about barking dogs, a drunken man wandering in the street, and the occasional invented problems of lonely people.

But then one night he gets a call that there has been an auto accident with two fatalities. Since it's the night of the local high school graduation he fears it is two teenagers. But it turns out to be the principal of the local elementary school and a young girl who graduated that day. Suitcases in the trunk seem to indicate they were running off together.

For reasons even he doesn't really understand, the sheriff concocts a story to explain away what he thinks is a scandal that would tear the town apart. And once having spread his story he has to ride herd on the people who might let the truth slip out. After a short while two white crosses appear near where the accident occurred.

I wish I could tell you the ending because the irony is so sharp and bitter it is almost unbearable.

Although the book is set only about 700 miles from where I live, I read about it in an excellent review by dovegreyreader, who is 5,000 miles away in England. She read about it in another fine review by Kevin from Canada, who is at least 3,500 miles from Devon. This is Globalization I can really appreciate.

I have posted a large picture of the cover of the book because the photograph fits so well the story within and is so starkly beautiful.

2012  No 29

 

A Ball for Daisy by Chris Raschka is given the Caldecott

Chris Raschka's A Ball for Daisy was given this year's Caldecott award for the best children's picture book of the last year. Once again (I'm getting to be a curmudgeon) I find the award-winner unworthy of the award.

If there is such a thing as a sentimental minimalist post-modern picture book, this is it. Daisy has a red ball, which she plays with and obviously loves. When at the park another dog plays too roughly and the ball deflates Daisy is bereft.

But when she goes again to the park the other dog has brought a blue ball to give to Daisy. You have here angst over the loss of something beloved and the sentimental return to joy at the replacement with something equivalent. The story reminds me of Job, who at the end of the story is given a new family and flock. As if they could replace what he has lost. Children do not "get over" heartbreaking loss. They become distracted by a new toy or a new puppy, but they do not, like Daisy, recover entirely from their sadness.

Publisher's Weekly gushes over the pictures, but I was not particularly impressed with them. A trained artist might understand the appeal, but I doubt children will. Raschka uses color to reflect moods: yellow for happiness, lavender and purple for sadness. (There's a brilliant new idea.)

The book is for children in preschool to grade 2.

2012  No 28

H L Mencken on Government

All government, of course, is against liberty. 
            H L Mencken

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More Books I Read in 2011

A Book of Secrets: Illegitimate Daughters, Absent Fathers by Michael Holroyd.

This book was one of the Time Magazine Top 10 Nonfiction Books of 2011 and a Publisher's Weekly's Best Nonfiction Title for 2011. I'm not sure why. The book was interesting but it didn't have the spark to light my biblio-fire. Here's what the publisher says:

 A Book of Secrets is a treasure trove of hidden lives, uncelebrated achievements, and family mysteries. With grace and tender imagination, Holroyd brings a company of unknown women into the light. From Alice Keppel, the mistress of both the second Lord Grimthorpe and the Prince of Wales; to Eve Fairfax, a muse of Auguste Rodin; to the novelist Violet Trefusis, the lover of Vita Sackville-West—these women are always on the periphery of the respectable world.

2011  No 188

Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and Lessons for Global Power by Niall Ferguson. I thought it was brilliant. Here's what Library Journal had to say:

First published in England last year (with the shorter subtitle How Britain Made the Modern World), this is intended as a cautionary tale for the United States. In this sweeping narrative, British historian Ferguson (economic history, NYU; The Pity of War) eloquently addresses the origin, scope, and nature of the British Empire. He confronts the negative aspects of the empire-suppression of native populations, involvement in the slave trade-but also examines the idealistic mission of the British and offers valuable insight into the expansion of the empire in India and Africa. Ferguson effectively weaves economic analysis into his history, presents fresh observations on the American War of Independence, and charts the empire's decline. He gives the British high marks for spreading the concept of "liberal capitalism" and democracy throughout the world while acknowledging its failure "to live up to its own ideal of individual liberty."

2011  No 189

The House of Windsor by Antonia Fraser and Andrew Roberts. From the publisher:

The House of Windsor has undergone profound changes since its inception in 1917. Their tenure has seen two world wars, an abdication, and undreamed-of social change, but still the monarchy prevails. Andrew Roberts traces their history to the tragic death of the Princess of Wales and its aftermath.

2011  No 190

 

The Pre-War Protests of George Orwell

Facing Unpleasant Facts, 1937-1939 by George Orwell. This volume of The Complete Works of George Orwell, which is edited by Peter Davison, includes his letters, journals, essays, book reviews, and two timelines of news leading up to the war in Spain and World War II.

Orwell was alert and observant and when commenting on politics and as fair as any writer I've encountered. He was a dedicated socialist and was vehemently anti-war after his return from fighting in Spain. He escaped from that country only steps ahead of the Stalinists who arrested most of his friends and fellow-soldiers. It was this experience that changed his outlook and made him a convinced anti-Communist and eventually led him to write Animal Farm and 1984.

Orwell was in Spain from January to June 1937, returning to England to escape the purge in Barcelona and to recover from a wound he suffered at the front. He was shot through the neck; the bullet managed to clip one of his vocal chords but did no other damage. Shortly after he returned he began hemorrhaging from what was first thought to be tuberculosis but then was diagnosed as bronchiectasis. He spent six months in a sanatorium and then was told by his doctors to go to southern France or North Africa for the winter. He and his wife went to Marrakech.

Orwell told his friends he was glad he was out of the country during the crisis of September 1939 when Chamberlain made his now infamous peace treaty with Hitler in Munich. He was until just before the war broke out in early September 1939, a pacifist, predicting if there was a war England would become a fascist country. His friends were therefore surprised, not to say shocked, when on 8 September, five days after the war began, he applied to the government for war work. His health being extremely fragile they did not take him up on this right away but eventually they found a way to use his talents. The next volume in this 20-volume collection is call, A Patriot After All.

Here is a quote from a piece about his experiences in Morocco that Orwell wrote for John Lehman's New Writing in December 1939. It's a bit long but it is quintessential Orwell - he is attentive to detail and brutally honest about himself:

Every afternoon a file of very old women passes down the road outside my house, each carrying a load of firewood. All of them are mummified with age and the sun, and all of them are tiny. It seems to be generally the case in primitive communities that the women, when they get beyond a certain age, shrink to the size of children. One day a poor old creature who could not have been more than four feet tall crept past me under a vast load of wood. I stopped her and put a five-sou piece (a little more than a farthing) into her hand. She answered with a shrill wail, almost a scream, which was partly gratitude but mainly surprise. I suppose that from her point of view, by taking any notice of her, I seemed almost to be violating a law of nature. She accepted her status as an old woman, that is to say as a beast of burden. When a family is travelling it is quite usual to see a father and a grown-up son riding ahead on donkeys, and an old woman following on foot, carrying the baggage.

But what is strange about these people is their invisibility. For several weeks, always at about the same time of day, the file of old women had hobbled past the house with their firewood, and though they had registered themselves on my eyeballs I cannot truly say that I had seen them. Firewood was passing - that was how I saw it. It was only that one day I happened to be walking behind them, and the curious up-and-down motion of a load of wood drew my attention to the human being underneath it. Then for the first time I noticed the poor old earth-coloured bodies, bodies reduced to bones and leathery skin, bent double under the crushing weight. Yet I suppose I had not been five minutes on Moroccan soil before I noticed the overloading of the donkeys and was infuriated by it. There is no question that the donkeys are damnably treated. The Moroccan donkey is hardly bigger than a St Bernard dog, it carries a load which in the British Army would be considered too much for a fifteen-hands mule, and very often its pack-saddle is not taken off its back for weeks together. But what is peculiarly pitiful is that it is the most willing creature on earth, it follows its master like a dog and does not need either bridle or halter. After a dozen years of devoted work it suddenly drops dead, whereupon its master tips it into the ditch and the village dogs have torn its guts out before it is cold.

This kind of thing makes one's blood boil, whereas - on the whole - the plight of the human beings does not. I am not commenting, merely pointing to a fact. People with brown skins are next door to invisible. Anyone can be sorry for the donkey with its galled back, but it is generally owing to some kind of accident if one even notices the old woman under her load of sticks.

 2012  No 27

The Case of the Peculiar Pink Fan

Sherlock Holmes stories and novels by Conan Doyle are among those "classics" that one never wearies of re-reading. But once a year is enough. What are we Sherlockians to do with the other 50 weeks of the year?

We read pastiches, and among the most charming of those is a series of children's books by Nancy Springer starring Sherlock and Mycroft's much younger sister, Enola. Particularly clever is the donee, as Henry James would put it (if he were a Holmes fan - I wonder if he read Conan Doyle.) The problem of the books is the attempt to send Enola to a finishing school at the age of 14 and her determination to avoid it. Mycroft, who is Enola's guardian in the absence of her mother who has run away in mysterious circumstances, is particularly emphatic that the girl has to be given an education that will make her more attractive in the marriage market. Sherlock goes along with him.

So Enola also runs away and how she supports herself, her attempts to find her mother, the codes (the language of flowers, fan signals, cyphers) her mother has taught her, and her many disguises contribute to her ability to elude her brothers.

In The Case of the Peculiar Pink Fan Enola is doing some routine detective work (finding a lost lap dog, locating a misplaced ruby, returning an amputee's leg bone) when she encounters Lady Cecily Alistair, a former client, in London's new public rest room for ladies. Using her fan, Lady Cecily alerts Enola to her desperate situation. She is being held captive and is about to be forced to marry against her will.

The game is afoot, and Enola as usual can be counted on to figure out who is responsible for these nefarious doings and to work out a way of saving her friend. The fast-moving story is delightful, moving us quickly from an attack by a mastiff, a flock of scruffy orphans, an encounter with her guardian and another with Sherlock, and a particularly clever rescue just in the nick of time.

This is the fourth in the Enola Holmes series and I've been warned that there are only two more books to come before the series ends.

2012  No 26

Dean Davis photographs the Palouse Hills

Dean Davis is a local Spokane photographer who does mostly commercial photography. But once in a while he can't resist taking pictures of old buildings, abstract designs made by shadows, and of course landscape, like this photo of the Palouse. You can see more of this particular shoot and sign up to get Davis' Shot of the Week here.

Betrayal of Trust

Betrayal of Trustby Susan Hill. This latest Simon Serrallier mystery starts with a violent rainstorm, resulting local flooding, and the uncovering of a skeleton. Chief Superintendent Serrallier hopes it will turn out to be a Roman soldier, but it's not. It's the remains of a teenager who disappeared 15 years before and this discovery reopens a cold case. A chief superintendent doesn't usually take on such a case but Serrallier is particularly interested and hopes to be able to solve the crime, especially when a second skeleton is unearthed nearby.

One of the things I like about the Serrallier books is the integration of Simon's work as a policeman and his work as an artist with his sister, Cat's, work as a doctor and her family life without her husband. Cat has become increasingly interested in hospice care and cut back on her office hours in order to spend more time at the local hospice.

But there are budget cuts everywhere and that is producing problems for everyone in our story. Serrallier has a single assistant in his "team" and Cat is faced with the closure of a wing of the hospice. The father of the missing girl whose skeleton has now been found is the chair of the hospice committee and he and Cat identify a doctor who is opening a small facility for Alzheimer's care as a possible fund raiser.

Meanwhile we are following a woman who has been diagnosed by Cat with motor neurone, the generic term for conditions such as ALS. She wants to commit suicide before her condition deteriorates to the point where she can do nothing, but the various alternatives are not attractive. Her plight is treated with a great deal of sympathy in the book. The opposition to assisted suicide is voiced well and vehemently by Cat.

A computer imaging of the skull of the second set of bones, a music teacher who is facing the problems of a partner with dementia, and the unearthing of a witness to the disappearance of one of the victims 15 years before lead Serrallierto a sad and inconclusive solution to his cold case.

2012  No  25

Dead End in Norvelt

Dead End in Norvelt by Jack Gantos. Children's books have always been didactic, since books expressly for children surfaced in the 17th century. They have been used to teach children to read and to entertain them and the temptation to teach lessons has often been irresistable. Fairy tales, Hans Brinker, Heidi, Uncle Remus, Pinocchio, The Wizard of Oz, and Peter Rabbit - all reinforce the lessons adults want children to learn. Unselfishness, generosity, religion, truthfulness, obedience, and there's no place like home. And these are only the famous books. Many others taught these virtues as well as courage, responsibility, self-reliance, respect for adults, and patriotism.

 Today's children's books are no different, but now they teach sensitivity to racial minorities and to the disabled, suspicion of authority, multiculturalism, and in the case of this book, which was given this year's Newbery, anti-imperialism, suport for working people who "always share the same history of being kicked around by the rich," socialism, reliance on government, shame for America's history, and worship of Eleanor Roosevelt and by extension the Democratic party.

I'm not making that up. Read the book.

2012  No 24

The Body in the Transept

The Body in the Transept by Jeanne M Dams. I found The Body in the Transept . . . no, let me rephrase that, I found Jeanne M Dams' mystery through a useful service the Spokane Public Library provides through their catalog (see yesterday's post.) I had not heard of Dams, though she has been writing since the mid-90s. And I'm glad to hear of her now as this, her first Dorothy Martin mystery, is quite good.

Dorothy is an American, a widow who has moved to a cathedral town in England. She knows a handful of people from the days when she accompanied her husband as he did research at the local red brick university. But now she feels a bit isolated, is not really making friends, and is still grieving for her beloved husband.

After midnight services at the cathedral a man who was seated next to her during the service offers to walk her home and while he is off to find her coat and scarf she stumbles over a corpse, in the north transept. The man turns out to be Chief Constable Alan Nesbitt, a widower.

At first Dorothy talks to her acquaintances about the murder - it of course turns out to be a murder. But she soon finds the likely suspects are among her few acquaintances in town and she begins to dig deeper into the case in hopes of finding that these people have alibis or that their motives are weak.

Dorothy Martin has a good deal of charm and is clever and discerning. As she decides to stay in England at the end of the book we readers feel confident that she is beginning to make friends in her new home. Let's hope not too many of them are killed off in the forthcoming books in this series.

2012  No 23

The Increasingly Useful Library Catalog

Spokane Public Library South Hill Branch

The Spokane Public Library, (and perhaps your library also), provides more services all the time. The ones I find particularly useful are these:

• Refereed reviews from Publisher's Weekly, School Library Journal, Library Journal Review and others.
• Fiction & Biography, which lists the book's characters, genre, topics, setting, and awards
• Goodreads reader reviews
• NoveList recommendations for other books in the series
• NoveList recommendations for other, similar books
• NoveList recommendations for other, similar authors
• NovelList's list of awards the book has won
• NextReads' newsletter of similar books
• A summary of the novel
• A link to the library's holdings of that author

And there are more. I've used various of these tools to find new writers and other books that fit into categories I particularly like or need. Here's one recommendation:

"If you enjoy 'The body in the transept,' you may also enjoy 'The burglar on the prowl.' Both are character-driven and witty Cozy mystery stories, Gentle Reads, and mystery stories about Murder investigation."

I particularly like that "Gentle Reads" category, which assures me there will not be small children and animals slaughtered in hecatombs and will probably spare me a car chase at the end of the book. Sometimes one needs a Gentle Read.

You, too, can harvest all this information by searching the Spokane Library catalog. You need not have a library card unless you want to borrow a book. And of course Spokane is not alone. My old library system, Virginia's Fairfax County Library has a catalog also run by SirsiSynix and offering many of the same goodies. Also useful are the Boston Public Library, Seattle Public Library, and for that matter, the Manchester (England) Public Library.

Is Jeffrey MacDonald Guilty?

Fatal Vision by Joe McGinniss. Jeffrey MacDonald used to be a household word in the US in the 1970s. He was an MD, an army captain whose wife and two children were murdered. He was in the house when the murders took place and he had minor injuries whereas the attacks on the others were brutal. This is about all that everybody involved can agree on.

MacDonald claimed three hippies did the murder; the initial US Army investigation concluded that MacDonald had killed his own family. He was found not guilty in an army hearing but after an extensive civilian investigation he was found guilty. He's been in and out of jail since then, mostly in since he lost his last appeal. But the controversy has not gone away.

McGinnis' book has been just as controversial. He befriended MacDonald and his team of supporters and lawyers and led everyone to believe he was convinced MacDonald was not guilty. Indeed, he probably did think so until late in the appeal when he changed his mind. Meanwhile he had gathered an enormous amount of information with the help of the team. The issue of journalistic ethics was widely discussed.

MacDonald is probably guilty, but there is a window of doubt through which one might glimpse innocence. In any case, the book is very well written and the whole case is fascinating even four decades later.

2011  No 185

The Journalist and the Murderer by Janet Malcolm. Janet Malcolm's book about the MacDonald murders is an examination of the ethical issues of journalists lying to subjects to get them to share information they otherwise would not want the journalist to know. She sees the conduct of Joe McGinniss as he was writing his book about the case, Fatal Vision, as unethical.

2011  No 186

 

 

 

Fatal Justice: Reinvestigating the MacDonald Murders by Jerry Allen Potter and Fred Bost. From the book jacket: ...a well-documented argument for the other side of the Jeffrey MacDonald case--an argument that the prosecution mishandled key crime-scene evidence, withheld potentially exculpatory material, and even discounted confessions from other suspects. Whether you change your mind about MacDonald's role in the murder of his family, you will learn much about the case that puts it in a new light. For example, the army narrowed in on MacDonald as their prime suspect very early in the investigation, and discouraged the FBI from developing alternate theories. And the judge in the case, Franklin Dupree Jr., appeared to have been biased in favor of the prosecution. Janet Malcolm, the New Yorker writer who wrote The Journalist and the Murderer (about MacDonald's relationship with McGinniss), called this book "quietly convincing."

2011  No 187

The Language Wars

Ah the joys of disparaging those who disagree with us about English usage. They seem never to get old. The author of this "History of Proper English," Henry Hitchings, while he tells us repeatedly that he does not take a stand, he's just explaining to us what has happened over the years, is actually quite opinionated. In his opinion there are no valid standards, all standards are artificial (he speaks repeatedly of "bogus" rules), and no one has a right to impose his "standards" on the rest of us. Ebonics, anyone?

On the one hand, this book is so dry I have to keep hand cream by my reading chair. I fell asleep three or four times over the third or fourth page. And if he isn't lively enough in the first few pages to keep even a reader like me awake what can we expect on page 241? On the other hand, there are gems embedded in the sand. I did not know, for instance, that "speakers of Dyirbal in Queensland have traditionally had for all things an everyday word and an alternative one for use in the presence of their mothers-in-law," or that "the Burushaski language spoken in some northern parts of Pakistan distinguishes four genders." (That one threw me a bit. I still haven't worked it out.)

In plugging the value of redundancy, Hitchings contends that "it is the lack of redundancy in mathematics and its teaching that explains why so much maths bewilders so many people." Who knew? After futzing around for 20 pages he finally defines language. "Language is power." Useful, that. He also says that "'Logic' is often a mask for smugness and jingoism." And that grammatical failings have been associated with moral ones." That last is probably true, but can I trust anything this guy says?

He ticked me off when he stopped his discussion of the validity of using "n't" instead of "not" to lecture America on what he sees as our history of genocide, wars of conquest, imperialism, and I forget what else. (Repetition of these charges tends to do the opposite of convince.) As for the French, Hitchings says that "the main purpose of the Academie Francaise is not to affect the behaviour of French-speakers, but to provide amusement for foreign journalists." Possibly so.

The book is indeed a history of attempts to describe or prescribe grammar and reactions to those attempts and he mostly tells us about the ludicrous mis-statements and frustrated "oughts" and "musts." One grammarian declared in 1762 that "because" was obsolete, and if he's so wrong about that how can he be right to try to standardize spelling and encourage us all to avoid double negatives? There's a name for that illogical assumption but I forget what it is.

I did not know that Joseph Priestly had written a grammar book but as Hitchings implies, why would you listen to a guy who initially called oxygen "dephlogisticated air." How indeed. He addresses rapidly diverging English English and American English, first mentioned in print in 1663 when it was pointed out that an "ordinary" in America was a tavern whereas in England it was an inn. Things deteriorated from there.

Hitchings is alert for the inconsistencies of people and institutions who/that have taken a position on the descriptive/prescriptive scale. The American Heritage Dictionary, for example, was responsible for untold cases of apoplexy when it came out some years ago with a very lax descriptive edition. If a lot of people use "ain't" then "ain't" is an acceptable word. Here's Hitchings' comment:

". . . it is striking that the editors of The American Heritage Dictionary are responsible for a book with the title 100 Words Almost Everyone Mispronounces. Examples include acumen, chimera and niche. If 'almost everyone' mispronounces them, it follows that almost no one pronounces them 'correctly', so perhaps the supposedly correct pronunciations are close to becoming obsolete." You will be relieved to know that I pronounce them correctly.

Personally, I cringe when people use "whom" when the correct usage (at least for the moment) is "who." When they use "who" for "whom" I don't really care. I answer the phone, "This is she," which usually gets me a moment of silence. I cling bitterly to the difference between lie and lay and a couple of other lost causes, but on the whole I welcome new words from wherever they come (I would be mute without "download," "delta function," "skoch," and "binary.")

But there IS an argument for retaining small distinctions. When "shall" and "will" are interchangeable, "hopefully" is thrown about recklessly, and almost anything can be described as "awesome," we lose subtlety and are less able to communicate fine distinctions. Unfortunately, there are fewer of us trying to do so all the time.

2012  No 22

Seeing Trees

Seeing Trees by Nancy Hugh and photography by Robert Llewellyn. fits into two genres. It's a fine handbook for identifying trees by their twigs and buds - provided you bring these specimens home as the book is oversized in order to best display the photographs. And photography is the second genre into which the book fits nicely. The photographs are gorgeous.

To see the photos go to Amazon's entry for the book and scroll. Most of the book is there. The photo on the cover gives you some idea what to expect. The book description at Amazon explains the unearthly beauty of these unusual photographs thus: Using software developed for work with microscopes, Robert Llewellyn created incredibly sharp close-up photographs of the tree detail by stitching together 8 to 45 images of each subject—each shot at a different focal point.

A section called "Ten Trees: Intimate Views" zooms in on the American Beech, Ginkgo, Red Maple, Southern Magnolia, Tulip Poplar, White Oak, White Pine, American Sycamore, Black Walnut and Eastern Red Cedar. The photos are so entrancing it's easy to overlook the text, which is entertaining and informative.

2012  No 21

Lament

I happened on this verse of William Dunbar's 1509 poem, Lament for the Makers and it took my breath away with the memories it brought with it. Perhaps you have to have been an English major or at any rate to have the rich associations I have with the works of Chaucer, the flower of all makers, of Lydgate, the Monk of Bury, and of Gower to feel the impact of the poem. "He" is death:

.

He hes done petuously devour,

The noble Chaucer, of makaris flour,

The Monk of Bery, and Gower, all thre;

Timor mortis conturbat me.

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