MarysLibrary

November Books - 25-30 Lyn MacDonald

                                 

The English author, Lyn MacDonald, has written a series of excellent popular histories of the First World War. They are a good place to learn more about the specific battles of the war or the aspects of the conflict that aren't treated in detail elsewhere. Here are some comments from Penguin:

They Called It Passchendaele, an account of the Passchendaele campaign in 1917.

The Roses of No Man's Land, a chronicle of the war from the neglected viewpoint of the casualties and the medical teams who struggled to save them.

Somme, a history of the legendary and horrifying battle that has haunted the minds of succeeding generations.

1914, a vivid account of the first months of the war. It won the 1987 Yorkshire Post Book of the Year Award.

1914-1918: Voices and Images of the Great War, an illuminating account of the many different aspects of the war.

1915: The Death of Innocence, a brilliant evocation of the year that saw the terrible losses of Aubers Ridge, Loos, Neuve Chapelle, Ypres, and Gallipoli.

To the Last Man: Spring 1918, was published by Viking.

All MacDonald's books are based on the accounts of eyewitnesses and survivors, told in their own words, and cast a unique light on the First World War.

Serendipity

WARNING: Cat Book Discussed Below

Once in a while I like to pull a book from the shelves of the library or a book store or occasionally a friend's bookshelf at not-quite random just to see what turns up.

What turned up recently was We Are the Cat: Life Through the Eyes of the Royal Feline (2006) by Terry Bain, who wrote the book in spite of his cat's wishes otherwise.

Cat books, like books about Antarctic explorers and time travel, are either/or propositions. Either you can't get enough of them or you wouldn't read one on a bet.

This is such a quintessential Cat Book that it will positively thrill the cat book crowd. The rest of you can go back to Shackelton's autobiography.

Their cat describes the Bain family (known to their cat as The Laps), the purpose of yarn (not knitting), the significance of grooming (very significant), the delights of various foods (kibble, grass, houseplants), and the best places to sleep (in the sun, on the computer.)

It's an altogether charming book and one that has the additional appeal for me that it's written by a Lap from Spokane.

November 2006 Book of the Month

For a while there I was naming a Book of the Month in my blog, a practice that I let lapse. I think it's time to start doing it again, starting with November.

This month's Book of the Month is Goodbye, Columbus (1959), Philip Roth's first novel, the one that made him famous among the literati and for which he won the National Book Award. (Can someone explain to me the significance of the title, please?)

I've never understood why people say Roth is America's greatest living writer. So I decided recently to find out why. My previous impression had been that he was a self-referential narcissist who wrote the same book over and over. I've tried reading a couple of his novels but I've always felt I was coming into a movie halfway through, perplexed and confused by the reappearance of the same characters and the insipid plot (or lack of it.)

Goodbye, Columbus has changed my mind about this. I still think Roth is a narcissist, but he's a talented narcissist, a man who knows himself and has the talent to put himself on the page in such a way that the reader can almost see and hear him.

I was startled by the brilliance of his dialogue. Why didn't somebody tell me Roth was America's greatest living dialogue writer? That I can wholly agree with, even after only one book.

I am currently reading the short stories that were originally included in the volume with Goodbye, Columbus, which is a novella. The stories are surprisingly different from Goodbye - much grittier, more obviously "Jewish," and harder for me to understand.

Because I like to read something about an author whose work I'm exploring for the first time I picked up Claire Bloom's 1996 memoir, Leaving a Doll's House. As you can tell from the title, Bloom is not gentle with Roth and their lengthy relationship and short marriage. It would seem, if Bloom can be relied on, that Roth suffers from that well-known malady, Portnoy's Complaint.

NY Times Best Books of 2006

The New York Times has announced their choices for the 10 best books of 2006.

The fiction titles are:

Absurdistan, by Gary Shteyngart
The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel
The Emperor's Children, by Claire Messud
The Lay of the Land, by Richard Ford
Special Topics in Calamity Physics, by Marisha Pessl

And the non-fiction:

Falling Through the Earth, by Danielle Trussoni
The Looming Tower, by Lawrence Wright
Mayflower, by Nathaniel Philbrick
The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan
The Places In Between, by Rory Stewart

Not Just Another Walk Around the Block

I just got back from my morning walk with Karla. Instead of our usual 45 minute hike in Manito Park we went around the block and we did it in less than 10 minutes. Ordinarily it's a 15 minute walk at brisk speed. I think we deserve kudos for going walking at all.

The thing is, the temperature outside is 6 degrees.

I wore my silk longjohns under my trousers, two pair of wool socks, a long sleeve cotton sweater and a wool Norwegian sweater under my jacket, two pair of gloves, and two wool hats.

No wind to speak of. That will come this afternoon with the snow when the wind chill is predicted to be 20 below and it takes 30 seconds to lose a nose to frostbite.  When that happens I'll be indoors at A Grand Yarn drinking hot coffee and knitting with my friends and bragging about having gone for a walk this morning.

Not Just Another Cat Picture

This is a photo I took a few minutes ago with . . . a telephone! Modern technology amazes me.

I've had this cell phone for a while but I hadn't bothered to learn how to enter contacts or direct dial numbers, let alone figuring out how to take pictures with it. And now that I've bothered I discover I can not only take photos but email them to myself. And others.

This cat is Miss Darcy and her picture is the one I took because she was about 16 inches away from me, lounging on the warm radiator. Isn't she lovely!

November Books 24 - The Myth of the Great War

The Myth of the Great War: A New Military History of World War I (2001) is written not by an historian but by a Loyola English professor and film critic, John Mosier. From Publisher's Weekly:

For most of WWI, Mosier reminds us, it was the French who held most of the front and did most of the dying. In contrast to the German army's systematic success at technical and tactical innovation, Mosier finds that French and British generals "solved" battlefield problems by throwing shells and bodies at them, then concealing the gruesome results from their governments and their people.

Allied victory, he argues, depended on an American Expeditionary force whose commander, Gen John J Pershing, saw through the pretensions of his counterparts in command, and insisted on fighting the war in his own way.

. . . this is the best narrative account in English of the Franco-German combat in central and in southern France from the aftermath of the Marne in 1914 to the end of Verdun in 1916.

Powell's Books

Powell's, in Portland, Oregon, the largest bookstore in the US (they hand you a map when you walk in the door), sends me book reviews every morning. This morning's novel is "experimental fiction" by the author of Lemony Snicket. It got a starred review from Publisher's Weekly.

Here's the info from the the book jacket:

I am Daniel Handler, the author of this book. Did you know that authors often write the summaries that appear on their book's dust jacket? You might want to think about that the next time you read something like, 'A dazzling page-turner, this novel shows an internationally acclaimed storyteller at the height of his astonishing powers.'

Adverbs is a novel about love - a bunch of different people, in and out of different kinds of love. At the start of the novel, Andrea is in love with David - or maybe it's Joe - who instead falls in love with Peter in a taxi. At the end of the novel, it's Joe who's in the taxi, falling in love with Andrea, although it might not be Andrea, or in any case it might not be the same Andrea, as Andrea is a very common name.  . . .

It might sound confusing, but that's love, and as the author - me - says, It is not the nouns. The miracle is the adverbs, the way things are done. This novel is about people trying to find love in the ways it is done before the volcano erupts and the miracle ends. Yes, there's a volcano in the novel. In my opinion a volcano automatically makes a story more interesting.

SPECIAL OFFER from Powell's: For a limited time, receive a full set - sixteen cards in all - of Powell's Author Trading Cards with the purchase of any featured title! The debut series includes rookies and veterans alike, packed with stats, bios, and career highlights. Order Adverbs and be the first on your block to own this collectible set!

Somebody stop me before I start collecting author trading cards!

Cynthia Peale Mysteries

The Death of Colonel Mann (2000) is one of those fine little mysteries that make you want to read the rest of the books in the series immediately, more for the characters than for the mysteries.

The mystery here - who killed the colonel - was mysterious enough. There were a dozen possible suspects, slowly reduced to about four people. Any of them could have done it. They had the motive, heaven knows. The man was blackmailing half the Brahmins in Boston in 1890.

And they all had opportunity. Some suspects had seemingly good alibis, but they were with other suspects, so that was a wash. And since the man was shot, most everybody had the means. A tiny woman could have killed him as easily as a strong man.

But the reader is just as interested in watching the good Doctor Mackenzie falling in the most charming manner for the sister of the detective, Caroline Ames. And vice versa. Or maybe not. The declasse police inspector, wittily named Crippen, also has his sights on Caroline, who shudders at the thought of serving tea to this most common of commoners.

The amateur detective, Addington Ames, is head over heels for a fallen woman, the most popular actress on the Boston stage, and the most beautiful. Young debutants are suffering for love of men who are lukewarm. Men are going to the dogs over unavailable women. And the fog is turning the streets into one big and very dangerous traffic jam.

There are two more books in this series, Murder at Bertram's Bower (2001), and The White Crow (2002.) Cynthia Peale is a pseudonym. The author is actually Nancy Zaroulis, who wrote The Last Waltz and Call the Darkness Light. There's been nothing from her since 2002, alas.

December Books - 3 - Petroski

Everybody has an engineer on his Christmas List and I have the perfect book for this sometimes hard-to-shop-for guy (or girl.) It’s called The Evolution of Useful Things (1992) and it’s by my favorite engineer, Henry Petroski.

Useful Things is about inventions and patents and how everyday artifacts, from forks and pins to paperclips and zippers, came to be as they are.

Other Petroski books that are favorites of mine are The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance (1990) and To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design (1985.)