Citizen Reader

Back in the reading saddle.

I realized the other day that I have a different book going in every room of the house (and one in my backpack), and it feels really, really...good. It feels like I am getting back to myself again, reading-wise.

So what's going on where? Details to follow, but in the bathroom I have a novel by a British author I've always enjoyed, in the bedroom is a book on how Generation Y is getting royally screwed, economically speaking (nice light bedtime reading, dontcha know), in my bag is a memoir that I'm not quite sure about but am going to stick with anyway, in the living room is a somewhat depressing book (book info toward the bottom of that post) that I've had to take a small pause from, and in the kitchen waits a book I started a few weeks back and really must get back to, because it is fascinating. Oh, and how could I forget a book about books, which, interestingly enough, has a chapter about being in the middle of too many books (and which roves around as I carry it from room to room and outside)? Add to that some books on gardening (every year in spring I read about gardening, rather than actually gardening) and some on toilet training (although, sadly, neither CRjr nor I are too interested), and you have a full reading slate.

It's lovely.

A surprise favorite.

Northern Slave, Black Dakota: The Life and Times of Joseph Godfrey
by Walt Bachman

Whenever I index books, it is always a real bonus when they turn out to be readable, fascinating books (they don't always, particularly when I'm indexing literary criticism). Particularly because when I index a book I end up reading it at least twice.

One of the titles I've most enjoyed indexing was one I did last year: Northern Slave Black Dakota: The Life and Times of Joseph Godfrey, by Walt Bachman. It's a history/biography of a man named Joseph Godfrey, who was born into slavery in Minnesota in the 1830s, and his role in the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862.

Wait a second. Did you say born into slavery...in Minnesota? That's right, I did. And that's just one of the fascinating aspects of this book. Godfrey was born to a woman who was held in slavery by a U.S. Army officer in Minnesota--which, it turns out, was pretty common in the army. It was common enough, in fact, that a healthy (well, not so healthy, if you were one of the slaves) slave trade went on at all sorts of military posts in states that have traditionally been considered free territories.

But there's much more to the story. Joseph Godfrey eventually made his way into the Native American community in the area (details are a bit fuzzy on how he escaped indentured servitude, because of course there aren't many primary sources documenting his life early on) and married a Dakota woman. When a group of Dakota Indians banded together and decided to declare war on German-American Minnesota settlers in 1862 (I need to read more about the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 in general, since I'd never heard of it before), primary accounts refer to one massacre in particular: an ambush after which it was reported that "it was, as I am informed, Wabashaw's band, a negro leading them, who committed the murders." (p. xvii.) After the war, when many Dakotas and other Native Americans were taken into captivity and put on trial, it transpired that Joseph Godfrey had taken part in the massacres, but the question became: did he take part willingly, or was he forced to by his adopted community?

Add in some strangely compelling accounts of the rushed trials of the Dakotas, and a fascinating dash of information about Abraham Lincoln*, and the end result is a really, really great book. It's put out by a small independent publisher, the Pond Dakota Press (part of the Pond Dakota Heritage Society), but it should certainly be sought out and made a part of every public library collection (as well as more academic libraries, and of course, individuals looking for a good book to add to their TBR piles).**

*That guy was incredible. In the middle of everything else he had to do as president, he personally looked through trial transcripts (and assigned others to help him) to make sure the Dakota warriors sentenced to execution were not sentenced just because they happened to be in the general area.

**And of course, I can promise you that it is as extensively indexed as I could make it.

History that left me cold.

The Year Without Summer: 1816 and the Volcano That Darkened the World and Changed History
by William K. Klingaman and Nicholas P. Klingaman

There are many shortcomings in my nonfiction reading (and in me personally, frankly!), and one of them is that I don't read enough straightforward history books. For the most part, I like to get my history more contextually--I love it when historical bits come up in investigative writing, for instance, and I really enjoy reading historical biographies. But for some reason I don't often read or love more stereotypical history books.

The latest such history to leave me cold (pun intended) was William K. Klingaman's and Nicholas P. Klingaman's The Year Without Summer: 1816 and the Volcano That Darkened the World and Changed History. I first saw it reviewed over at RickLibrarian, and thought it sounded interesting.

Unfortunately, it was more interesting to read about than it was to read.

This is not to say it was a bad book. The authors actually do quite a good job of putting together a bunch of disparate story lines: in the aftermath of a huge volcanic explosion in Indonesia in 1815, people across the globe had to react to an almost immediate (and quite severe) change in the climate. The authors relate stories of how agriculture in particular was disrupted in Indonesia, the United States, in Switzerland, in Great Britain, and across Europe, and how those climate and agricultural changes affected and shaped culture and historical events. Of course, I found the British and Irish history most interesting--how rising food prices led to riots among workers in Great Britain, in particular--but really, the writing's solid enough.

I'd have to say I skimmed this one more than read it, and I wasn't the only one: Mr. CR reported having the same reaction. For a better review of the book from someone who gave it a closer read than I did, try this one from Maclean's.

*Rick does a much better job than me of reading and describing history books.

Who doesn't enjoy Dame Agatha Christie?

The Grand Tour: Around the World with the Queen of Mystery
by Agatha Christie

No one, that's who.

Recently I plowed through the travel diary The Grand Tour: Around the World with the Queen of Mystery, in which Christie's grandson Matthew Prichard has gathered together her travel diary entries, letters, photographs, and snippets from her autobiography in order to re-create her 1922 world tour. Then a mother of a young toddler (Rosalind, who stayed home with Christie's mother), Christie and her first husband, Archie Christie, were invited to "join a trade mission to promote the British Empire Exhibition."

Even after reading the book, I'm not really sure what the deal was with the British Empire Exhibition. Don't you just love the early twentieth century? Trade missions! Empire Exhibitions! World's Fairs! Sure they didn't yet have antibiotics, but it sure seemed like people in those times knew how to enjoy themselves.

Anyhoo, the long and short of the matter is that Agatha got to accompany her husband on an around-the-world tour to various locations in the British Empire (South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada among them, with time for a side trip vacation to Hawaii), along with various other British dignitary/bureacrat types, in order to finish planning for the British Empire Exhibition. And the lively accounts she gives of her travels, both in her letters and in her autobiography, should not disappoint fans of Christie's mysteries. In fact, particularly while in Africa, you can see how she was already honing her descriptive style of her surroundings, which is a facet of her mysteries I think I always underestimated. And the chapter on Hawaii, when she's obsessed with surfing? Awesome:

"First you have to recognize the proper wave when it comes, and secondly, even more important, you have to know the wrong wave when it comes, because if that catches you and forces you down to the bottom. Heaven help you!" (p. 266.)

Of course she goes on to describe how she once caught the wrong wave. Scrappy gal.

The pictures of Christie herself are a lot of fun, particularly in her surfing get-ups, but most of the other snapshots are of people (mostly other bureaucrats and ex-pats) she met along the way, and are not that exciting. It's a fun book, if you're looking for something a little different in the travel line. (And if you're looking for something a little different in the review line, consider RickLibrarian's.)

A dance with Jane Austen.

It is a truth pretty much universally acknowledged that I am a sucker for all things Jane Austen.

A Dance with Jane Austen: How a Novelist and Her Characters Went to the Ball
by Susannah Fullerton

In addition to having read her books, re-watched most film adaptations of her books way more often than is good for me (damn you, YouTube, time-waster extraordinaire), and reading any modern-day adaptations of her novels that I can find, I also pick up any nonfiction titles about her that I see pop up in my local library catalog. My latest such find was Susannah Fullerton's A Dance with Jane Austen: How a Novelist and Her Characters Went to the Ball.

It literally is just that: a book about dancing in Jane Austen's day, with extensive quoting from her novels to see how Austen incorporated balls and dancing into her fiction and plotlines. There is also a ton of good basic historical information, such as which dances were popular when, how people in that era learned dancing, what kind of music was played at balls, and how many different types of balls there were (as well as many more topics). At first I couldn't really get into this book; I just read bits of it here and there, but then over the course of two nights I got really interested and read most of it straight through. I particularly enjoyed the information on how suppers were held along with balls (I never really understood that when reading the books) and the different types of balls that were held and how people got invited to them.

But my very favorite part of the book was learning about Jane Austen's own personal experiences of ball-going and dancing:

"Jane Austen enjoyed these [Assembly] balls so much that she was disappointed if she had to miss one. If she was away from home, then she placed her 'spies' so as to get all the news. Catherine Bigg could be relied on to share gossip about who had danced with whom, who had too much to drink, which lady had opened the dance, and all the other juicy titbits of news the evening could provide." (p. 52.)

I enjoyed picturing ol' Jane dancing and placing her spies. I enjoyed that a lot.

A tragic shipwreck.

So you've all heard the song The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, right?

Well, of course, I had too. And I'd always been, somewhere in the back of my mind, intrigued by the story of the ship's sinking in Lake Superior. But here's the embarrassing thing--I'd always had in mind it was something that happened in the 1920s or 1930s.

Did you know that the huge iron ore carrier sank in November, 1975?

Mighty Fitz: The Sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald
by Michael Schumacher

You're right, I really should have known that myself. And it's one of many reasons I'm glad that I saw Michael Schumacher's book Mighty Fitz: The Sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald listed as one of the new nonfiction books in my library's catalog, and brought it home.

It's a succinct little history, telling the story of the Edmund Fitzgerald's last tragic voyage on stormy seas, as well as a bit about the ensuing investigations of the wreck. It's only 187 pages long (although appendixes include a list of the names of the 29 men who died aboard, notes, a comprehensive bibliography, and an index. It was just what I wanted; a quickly paced account that covered the basics but never got too technical*, although I might have liked to see a bit more information on the sailors who died and their families. The most interesting thing about the story is how it is resolved--or not--you'll just have to read the book to see what I mean.

*I'd actually love to see William Langewiesche take a whack at this subject, or maybe Great Lakes shipwrecks in general. I know he doesn't write history, really, but he does a great job of making the technical interesting, I always think.

Nonfiction educates us, whether we want it to or not.

Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History
by Florence Williams

So I read Florence Williams's really fascinating book Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History almost entirely in the bathroom, and skipped around quite a bit among chapters, but I still enjoyed it. What I MOST enjoyed, however, was that Mr. CR evidently spent some time in the bathroom reading it as well. This is how his experiences with the book progressed:

The first day he came out of the bathroom and said, "Wow, breasts are really interesting."*

The second day he came out of the bathroom and said, "Thinking about what's all floating around in the environment, that's pretty weird."

The third day he came out of the bathroom and said, "I can't read that Breasts book anymore." And I think he really did stop reading it.

So what was the breaking point for Mr. CR? I think it was reading about all the chemicals and toxins in our environment, and how our bodies (womens' breasts, in particular) suck up and synthesize and deal with all those said toxins. But this book was about much more than just that.

I'd probably classify this book as popular science with a good dose of sociology thrown in: Williams discusses the anthropological and cultural history of our breasts, and also talks to a lot of scientists and researchers about their various studies, from the more sociological (male preferences for breast sizes) to the more genetic (including undertaking the chemical analysis of her own breast milk). I think that's the chapter where Mr. CR started to lose it, because you start to find information like this, on why flame retardants show up in everyone's breast milk:

"As one industry website proclaimed, 'Today, polyurethanes can be found in virtually everything we touch--our desks, chairs, cars, clothes, footwear, appliances, beds, the insulation in our walls, roof and molding on our homes.'

There's just one problem: it's highly flammable, earning nicknames like liquid gas and fatal foam. A typical home filled with polyurethane products can literally burst into flames in five minutes once the petrochemical gasses heat up enough. Much household and office foam is treated with flame-retardans designed to delay ignition. The substances, which include bromine, chlorine, and phosphorus versions, came into widespread use after 1975..." (p. 202.)

And that sort of information, coupled with the science of how breast tissue, more so than other body tissues, sucks up environmental ingredients and interacts with them, is what starts to freak a reader out.

Depressing subject matter notwithstanding, I really enjoyed this one.** I like a good science read that isn't completely dumbed down but which is still within my understanding, and Williams has a nice writing style. She reminds me a bit of Mary Roach, but I like her better--Roach seems (to me, anyway) to be becoming increasingly cutesy in her science writing.

So do give this one a try. If nothing else you'll probably be amused by the photos on the front and back covers. Very clever.

*This still makes me giggle. You think it's interesting reading about them, guys? Try walking around with the complex buggers.

*I know The Lesbrarian swears by Stacked, and I mean to read that one too, but I think I enjoyed the heavier emphasis on science topics that this book offered.

Jonesing for more Downton Abbey?

Life Below Stairs: True Lives of Edwardian Servants
by Alison Maloney

Well, I said I wasn't going to do it, I didn't watch much of the first two seasons, but I did get sucked into the third (and most recent season) of Downton Abbey on PBS. I think maybe it was because I read about the huge (do I still have to say this? SPOILER WARNING for following link) season-ending spoiler before the episodes even started playing here, and I thought, hell, now I might as well see how it gets there.*

I feel a bit dirty now that I've watched it and I still say that 1. Lady Mary  is the most boring, annoying female character in the history of BBC productions, and 2. She and Matthew Crawley are the least sparky couple I've ever seen. But let's face it, I'm a sucker for all things British, and particularly all things Edwardian. And not so much the upstairs Edwardians, but rather the servants. I cannot believe how house servants got worked all day long, for such little pay. Perhaps, on a very small scale, it is my farm upbringing that makes me sympathize with people who probably desired very little else but to have a moment here and there to sit down.

I do have a nonfiction point here. In one of my trolls through the "New at the Library" nonfiction lists, I found Alison Maloney's title Life Below Stairs: True Lives of Edwardian Servants, and a few weeks ago blew through it in the course of about two days. It's quite slight and I'm not sure it's worth its $23.99 cover price, but It still was an informative, entertaining read. The author explores several aspects of servants lives, including the backgrounds from which they came, their hierarchies within a household, typical days and tasks, pay and conditions, hiring and firing, and many more. The text includes many citations from primary sources, which really give a feel for the period:

"Most servants were given just one afternoon off a week, on Sunday, so that they could attend church. In addition, if the mistress was a benevolent one, they might have had an extra day off a month.

Cassell's Household Guide suggested the generous extra day did away with the necessity for a maid's friends to call on her at the house. 'At the same time, a mistress should be careful not to bind herself to spare her servant on a certain day in every month, as is sometimes demanded,' it advised." (p. 84.)

Goddamn servants. Always demanding the same one day off per month. You can see how the upstairs ladies of these houses just had their hands full.

Overall: a good book. And it might just help tide you over a bit until Season 4.

*Also because Sesame Street did a lovely Upside Downton parody. Good old Sesame Street.

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

It seems an appropriate day to mention that Taylor Branch's new history title, The King Years: Historic Moments in the Civil Rights Movement, was just released on January 8. (PLEASE NOTE: This book is a compilation of selections from his trilogy on the subject, starting with Parting the Waters. The good news is, if you don't have time to read all three volumes, you could just read this new book instead.) He won the Pulitzer Prize for the first book in his series of books on this subject, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63. I read that a long time ago, but it was interesting. Some day when I win the lottery this is one of the long series that I'll sit right down and read (along with Robert Caro's biographies of Lyndon B. Johnson, which, heaven help me, I just don't have the time for right now).

However, if you're looking for something shorter that might make you think about the state of civil rights and race issues today, I would definitely recommend Geoffrey Canada's Fist Stick Knife Gun: A Personal History of Violence.

Back to the Library: November 2012

It is becoming absolutely ridiculous how many books I check out from the library and then return unread. I have tried to turn this into a positive, by viewing the carrying home and returning of books as my exercise regime, while at the same time boosting circulation numbers for my local library. But in reality it is just annoying, as so many of the books I have to return (most often because they are overdue and other patrons are waiting for them) are ones that I really want to read. Not always, but often. So here's last month's list of unread books. I'm sorry if these are annoying posts, but they will function for me as a sort of back-up TBR list--I can't read these books right now, but I'd like to get them back in the future. I thought you might enjoy seeing them too--a lot of the times they're books that fly slightly under the radar but might be interesting to you all the same. For the most part I'll quote off their dust jackets, which are sometimes painful to read, but which should give you an idea about their contents.

Heimbuch, Craig J. And Now We Shall Do Manly Things: Discovering My Manhood Through the Great (and Not-So-Great) American Hunt. Requested this one after I couldn't get through Steven Rinella's American Hunter, and I wanted to see what this new subgenre of "hunting memoirs" is all about. Here's a bit from the back cover; this book is: "the witty, moving, and insightful story [see what I mean about painful?] of one man's quest to free himself from the shackles of his domesticated suburban lifestyle by immersing himself for one year in the hunting culture his family has always cherished." The book seems like it might be an okay read, but not a great one; here's how he describes a mounted bear head in his dad's basement: "The bear, on the other hand, gives me the creeps. It's all soft fur, claws, and teeth. And the eyes--I swear it's looking at me, pleading with me to be taken down from the wall of the dim basement. 'Put me in a ski lodge,' it's saying to me. 'I want bikini models lying on me. I want to be the set of a late-night Cinemax movie. Please!'" (p. 4.)

Speck, Jeff. Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time. From the front cover blurb: "But in the typical American city, the car is still king, and downtown is a place that's easy to drive to but often not worth arriving at...Speck reveals the invisible workings of the city, how simple decisions have cascading effects, and how we can all make the right choices for our communities." I still really want to read this one. I love and believe in walking, but no one else in my Midwestern city does. I live approximately two blocks away from an awesome grocery co-op and I put my life (and CRjr's life) in danger whenever we walk there, because we have to pass through an insanely busy and poorly marked intersection that I call "the intersection of death."

Sullivan, Robert. My American Revolution: Crossing the Delaware and I-78. Not too interested in the subject of this one (the Revolutionary War and its place in the history of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania) but I love Robert Sullivan, and have ever since I read his fantastic book Rats.

Vonnegut, Kurt. Kurt Vonnegut: Letters. Damn. Damn damn. Having to take this one back unread really hurts me. Love reading letters; love Kurt Vonnegut; 'nuf said.

I got sucked in anyway.

For the most part I managed to sidestep "Downton Abbey Fever," which has seemed widespread this past year.

I watched the first episode, and bits of subsequent episodes, but I could never really find the energy to dedicate subsequent Sunday nights to it.* (I prefer my Masterpiece Theatre viewing in one- and two-episode chunks, I find.) I also got a bit bored with it because its popularity has been a big and continuing story, and one that I linked to frequently whenever I blogged for the (aimed at librarians and readers' advisors) Reader's Advisor Online Blog.

But of course I couldn't help myself when I saw that a companion guide, The World of Downton Abbey, had been written by Jessica Fellowes. It truly is a companion guide, hewing closely to the storylines of the program and referring to the characters as though they were real people. It does include beautiful photographs, and the chapters cover the topics of family life, society, change, life in service, style, house and estate, romance, war, and behind the scenes.

Although I'd hoped to find more historical information and context, the little there was was quite interesting. Consider this tidbit:

"While bells are now seen as a symbol of servitude, at the time the bell-boards came in, around the 1820s, they were hailed as an absolute liberation. Up until that point, the footmen had to sit on hard wooden chairs within earshot of the family--usually in the hall. They would get a message...find the maid, and then go back to their chair." (p. 20.)

Of course I read the whole thing. It was like candy; I just couldn't stop. It also gave me more of an urge to watch the series, but I'll have to find a whole lot more time to devote to it than I have now.

*Plus I found the main heroine, Mary, to be the most obnoxious leading lady ever, and her romantic interest, played by Dan Stevens, doesn't do anything for me character- or looks-wise. As Mr. CR would say, he's no Mr. Darcy. (The joke on Mr. CR is that Mr. Wentworth and Mr. Tilney both beat out Darcy as my favorite Austen men. Don't tell him--he thinks his "Oh Mr. Darcy..." shtick is very clever.)

A pleasant puff piece.

I had forgotten that I had requested Sally Bedell Smith's Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch from the library, but I was excited to see it when it came in. I brought it home, intending really only to take a look at the pictures and maybe read the first few chapters. But pretty soon I just got kind of sucked in, and before you know it, I was finishing the book's last chapter about the wedding of William and Catherine and the future of the monarchy.*

Now, there's nothing really very challenging here. Smith keeps an upbeat tone about everything, spinning all the stories as positively as she can for both the Queen and the other members of her family. There is nothing really overtly gossipy about this book either; Smith seems to have spoken with a lot of people, but the quotes she shares all seem pretty innocuous. Although I did enjoy this bit, about a much younger Elizabeth and Philip:

"During a visit to the Brabournes in Kent, John said to Philip, 'I never realized what lovely skin she has.' 'Yes,' Philip replied, 'she's like that all over.'" (p. 48.)

So, it's a puff piece. But it's a well-done puff piece. I particularly enjoyed learning more about the Queen's knowledge and love of horses and horse-racing, as well as more about her relationships with all the different prime ministers she's known. And the book included a fair amount of pictures, which I always enjoy. Looking for a read about her majesty? You could do a lot worse than this one. And this might be a fun year to read one--it's QE2's Diamond Jubilee year, celebrating her 60 years on the throne.

Reviews: LA Times, New York Times

*I did skip some of the political history and commonwealth visiting bits just to finish a bit faster.

A tough act to follow.

I waited for months and months (thanks to a kindly reader who alerted me to its upcoming publication) to read Craig Taylor's oral history Londoners: The Days and Nights of London Now--As Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It, and Long for It. When it finally arrived in for me at the library, I was ridiculously excited, and took it along to read in the car on the way to visit my in-laws the next day.

It seemed like a bad sign when the book couldn't even hold my interest in those surroundings, as, when you are stuck as the passenger in a car driving through south-central Wisconsin in March, there's really not that much else to do or look at.

I was massively disappointed in this book as an oral history, and as a treatise on the city of London. Slave to convention that I am (indexing and proofreading books has made me, somewhat prematurely, and for lack of a better phrase, a "pedantic old fart"), I had to read the entire introduction to this book first--and that set off the first warning bell. At seventeen pages (that read like a long seventeen pages), the introduction is just too long. It shouldn't be that complicated to say, in effect, "London is an interesting city, populated by a wide variety of interesting types. Let's hear what they have to say."

The actual transcripts of the authors' interviews with Londoners (which are numerous--I'm not saying the author didn't talk to a whole lot of people) are also, for the most part, unsatisfying. Each speaker's name is given, as is their "role." (For example: "Kevin Pover, Commercial airline pilot.") Although some are meaty, many tend to end just as they get interesting; for example, one man arrived from another British city, Leeds, and explained how he went homeless for the first few nights while looking for a reasonable place of his own. Although he seems to be speaking in the past tense, describing an ordeal he has already survived, there is no closure to the interview--did he find a place to live? How did he deal with having all his possessions in the world--stored in his backpack--stolen while he was sleeping?

It did not help that I read this book shortly after re-reading John Bowe's and Marisa Bowe's superlative oral history abou working, titled Gig: Americans Talk about Their Jobs. The books are structured similarly--interviews woven together in larger thematic chapters--but whereas Gig was completely satisfying, which each interview telling its own complete little story (even if the endings were still unknown)--this one just left us wanting more.* There were some bright spots--the interview with the woman who provided the taped voice messages for the London Underground particularly stood out--but not enough to carry me past p. 91 of this book. That's where I'm stopping, and it's going back to the library.**

Other reviews: New York Times; The Guardian

*Mr. CR read a large chunk of the book and mentioned to me out of nowhere that he was also annoyed with the interviews' lack of narrative arcs.

**Although after writing this I did read a few more interviews in the book, and found several of them quite interesting. I might just have to get this one back in the future.

Below stairs.

I blew through Margaret Powell's completely enjoyable 1968 memoir Below Stairs* in two nights.

Supposedly one of the inspirations for the popular Masterpiece Theatre series Downton Abbey (as well as the earlier popular series Upstairs, Downstairs), Powell tells the story of her years spent working "in service" for the upper class in pre-WWII Great Britain, first as a kitchen maid and then as a cook. The second oldest of seven children (she's philosophical about her mother's large family--"You see that was the only pleasure poor people could afford. It cost nothing--at least at the time when you were actually making the children. You could have babies forevermore. Nobody bothered about doctors. You had a midwife who came for almost next to nothing"), she was sent out to work when she was fourteen, first in a few random jobs and then at a laundry, until she started as a kitchen maid at age fifteen.

I enjoyed the hell out of every minute of reading this book. I'm not sorry, though, that it wasn't longer--it was just the perfect, 176-page, mindblowing, hilarious little account. I liked everything about it, especially the earthy bits. And to call this book earthy would be to vastly understate the term "earthy." Consider this tale, from one of the more untraditional households in which she worked:

"It this somewhat bizarre household I used to have to go and get my orders while Mrs. Bishop was in the bath. I was horrified at first because I'd never seen a nude figure, not even a woman, before. It was amazing, after a couple of weeks I got quite used to it, and I'd sit on the edge of the bath, while she used to tell me what she wanted.

One morning at ten o'clock I went to the bathroom. I'd got so used to going there I just used to knock and walk in without waiting for an answer. One this particular morning, to my horror, instead of seeing a very flat, nude, white body laying there, there was a huge, black, hairy one, standing up in the bath. It was an Italian. Well, it was the first time I'd ever seen a full-scale appendage in my life. And after having had a look at it I could quite see why Adam rushed to get a fig leaf! I would have too if I'd discovered I had an object like that! The Shock! It took me about a week to get over this thing." (p. 142.)

Now if that doesn't make you laugh out loud I give up. But rest assured Margaret's no prude--later on she's annoyed with a beau who won't take her into the pub because beers make her a bit amorous. The descriptions of work are also unbelievable.** It's one of those rare nonfiction books that truly transports you--check it out.

*Please note: this is another book Rick reviewed at RickLibrarian.

**And here I've been complaining because I don't have a dishwasher! I'm so spoiled.

Ah, those Victorians.

A few weeks back a friend and I went to see the new movie Daniel Radcliffe (a.k.a. Harry Potter) is starring in, a horror movie titled The Woman in Black (based on novel by Susan Hill). It had been ages since I saw a movie in the theater, and I enjoyed it, even though it was so-so. But man, that Victorian age. Talk about an era made for ghost and horror stories: everyone's wearing black; pollution in London and England was terrible; and they made some of the world's creepiest wind-up toys, evidently.

So it was a pleasure to go to the library not long thereafter and find Kate Colquhoun's historical true crime thriller Murder in the First-Class Carriage: The First Victorian Railway Killing waiting for me. It tells the story of the murder of a respectable City of London businessman, Thomas Briggs, the investigation of the crime, and the chase and apprehension of the prime suspect, a German expat named Franz Muller.

The book is divided into three parts: a description of the crime; the investigation of Muller (which included several detectives and witnesses following him across the ocean to America); and Muller's trial. I wouldn't say it's a great book--it dragged a bit in parts--but it was still sufficiently interesting to keep me reading until the end. And of course, who can say no to that good old Victorian atmosphere:

"The sun was low and swallows wheeled in the sky as the banker alighted from his omnibus to walk back through the City's stone warrens. Above him, the thin sliver of a bright new moon pulsed from between the clouds. The sounds of the metropolis had thinned. Passing under the great clock on the facade of Fenchurch Street Station and into the station with its modern vaulted roof, he nodded to the newsvendor. Eating his supper on a stool near the booking office, the ticket collector Thomas Fishbourne looked up as Briggs touched him on the shoulder and said goodnight. Alone, the old man mounted the stairs to the platforms, his empty black bag in one hand and his ivory-knobbed cane in the other." (p. 17.)

Rail travel! Stations called Fenchurch Street! Omnibuses! Old men carrying ivory-knobbed canes! It's the details that make this one interesting (I was going to say "fun" but that doesn't seem like the right word) and thought-provoking: imagine traveling on train cars that weren't connected to one another by doors and in which you had no way of alerting anyone to a problem (which is how early train cars in Britain were, evidently). Imagine a world before the telegraph line across the Atlantic Ocean, when the detectives had no way to alert anyone in America that they needed someone apprehended as he got off a ship in New York. Wild stuff.

Nonfiction trends 2012: part 2

In which we consider some nonfiction book trends for the coming year, and how they all make me want to stop reading, and then poke my eyes out for good measure.*

In addition to political books, it seems like there are a ton of History and Historical Biography titles coming out. (And a lot of Historical Biographies are related to politics; consider titles like John F. Kennedy, by Alan Brinkley; Two Americans: Truman, Eisenhower, and a Dangerous World, by William Lee Miller; Eisenhower in War and Peace, by Jean Edward Smith; Reagan and Thatcher, by Richard Aldous, etc.) And not only are there a lot of History books, there are a lot of History books on subjects and with angles that leave me cold (for various reasons):

Ike's Spies, by Stephen Ambrose (Ambrose is a big fat plagiarizer)

Freedom's Forge: How American Business Built the Arsenal of Democracy that Won World War II, by Arthur Herman (see? America was great once! All we need is another "great" war for which we can manufacture a ton of weapons--that will keep people employed and make America great again!)

Enterprise: America's Fightingest Ship and the Men Who Helped Win World War II, by Barrett Tilman (WWII! WWII! Keep writing about WWII and Americans will never notice anything is wrong currently!)

Now, this is unfair of me. There are actually a lot of forthcoming History books that have nothing to do with World War II and look decent. But I can't say that any of the titles in the spreadsheet or on this list light me on fire. What do you think?

*Sorry to be such a melodramatic grouch about it. But really. All of these new nonfiction titles bore me to death, and that's just the titles! Imagine getting stuck reading these entire books. Ugh.

Still not over London.

I ate up Peter Ackroyd's London Under: The Secret History Beneath the Streets with a spoon.

Well, not literally. But it was a slim little book that I enjoyed very much, about one of my very favorite cities in the world. Ackroyd relates short histories and anecdotes about the messy and historical business under London's streets: its sewers, buried rivers, water pipes, tunnels, and the Underground (to name just a few of his topics). At around 200 pages with generously spaced text, it was the perfect little morsel to get me through a couple of days when I couldn't find much else I wanted to read.

It's not perfect; it ends rather abruptly and it moves from subject to subject without much rhyme or reason, but if you're at all interested in urban planning, history, or London itself I think you'd find this book very interesting:

"The sewers of early medieval London were the streams and rivers that ran down to the Thames. Cess-pits, lined with brick or stone, were also in common use and were cleansed weekly or fortnightly by urban workers known as 'gong-fermers.' In 1326 one of them, 'Richard the Raker,' fell into his own cess-pit and suffocated 'monstrously in his own excrement.' The first pipes to carry waste, in an underground drainage system, were introduced to London in the thirteenth century during the reign of Henry III." (p. 80.)

Okay, that's not a pleasant image. But Ackroyd most definitely has painted an image. And that's what blows my mind about London, and other really old cities. 1326! Just imagine. I want to keep imagining--and that's why I'm going to look into another of Ackroyd's history books: London: A Biography.

100 Best-ish Nonfiction Titles: History

Big category today, everyone, not least because the Time list of 100 Best Nonfiction titles included a lot of History books, as well as a "Social History" category. What? I think "Social History" is one of those lame categories where no one really knows what it means. So we're dispensing with the two categories and listing Best-ish History titles, full stop. Are you ready?

Here's Time's titles (Social History is in the second list):

The Best and the Brightest, by David Halberstam
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, by Dee Brown
Carry Me Home, by Diane McWhorter
The Fatal Shore, by Robert Hughes
The Gnostic Gospels, by Elaine Pagels
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, by James Agee
A People's History of the United States,* by Howard Zinn
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by William L. Shirer

The American Way of Death, by Jessica Mitford
Animal Liberation, by Peter Singer
The Beauty Myth, by Naomi Wolf
The Death and Life of Great American Cities, by Jane Jacobs
The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Friedan
Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared Diamond
Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich
The Other America, by Michael Harrington
Why We Can't Wait, by Martin Luther King Jr.
Working, by Studs Terkel

These lists are so lame I don't even know where to start. First of all, why are books like Let Us Now Praise Famous Men and A People's History of the United States called History and not Social History? Why is a book like Nickel and Dimed called Social History and not Investigative or Journalism or Current Affairs? I refuse to play along with these categories--I'm going to offer a separate list of Investigative titles where books like The Beauty Myth and The American Way of Death (which is old, now, but that doesn't really make it "History") can go.

I don't disagree with a few titles on this list; the Studs Terkel in particular is an important and interesting oral history, and I've heard good things about The Fatal Shore, but I'll admit I've not read the majority of them, and the ones I have read didn't do much for me (in particular I've never understood the appeal of Jared Diamond, I think his writing is SO BORING).

Anyway, fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy ride; for me, History is a tough category, because I don't read a ton of it, and I tend to like the under-the-radar titles rather than the big popular Stephen Ambrose types (even before the many plagiarization charges against Ambrose I was not a fan). So this may be a somewhat underdoggy type list.

The Rape of Nanking, Iris Chang. This one should be on Time's Best History list. Period. Rather than paying lip service to women's history with Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (which also doesn't really belong in the History category), a book of history written by a woman, telling the true horror of what happened to all of Nanking's residents during the second World War, but particularly to its women residents.

Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak, Jean Hatzfeld. An oral history of the Rwandan genocide, told by the people who did the killing. It's unsettling in the extreme but you should read it nonetheless. Philip Gourevitch's We Regret To Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families is a close second in this category.

How the Irish Saved Civilization, Thomas Cahill. This title was quite popular when it came out, and with reason (I thought). Cahill's a good writer and even if you don't agree with his emphasis on the importance of Irish monks saving civilizations' manuscripts, it'll give you something to think about. Just very nice, not overdone, readable history.

Hiroshima, by John Hersey. Well, this one was written at the time, so it probably counts as Investigative as well, but now it's a fantastic read about the history of what atomic weapons do to people. Once you read this one I promise you you'll never forget learning about radiation burning people's kimono patterns directly onto their skin. Hersey was an interesting writer, although some of his works are dated now; another interesting war reporter to consider for historical purposes is Martha Gellhorn.

Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants, by Robert Sullivan. Boo on Mark Kurlansky (for me his books are too long and somewhat dry); I say this one is the best "micro-history" out there. Sullivan explores world and New York City history through the story of its lowliest and arguably most disgusting residents. (I'm still recovering from learning, in this book, that adult rats can squeeze themselves through a hole the size of a quarter.)

In Our Hearts We Were Giants: The Remarkable Story of the Lilliput Troupe--A Dwarf Family's Survival of the Holocaust, by Yehuda Koren. I no longer read books about World War II--historians and publishers seem to think it's the only era in history worth writing about, and I've just read TOO MUCH of it--but when I did this one stood out. The story of a dwarf family being experimented on by Nazi doctors is horrific, but its emphasis on the family's love and support for one another highlights the other side of human nature. Another history which is told on human scale on the topic is Death on the Black Sea: The Untold Story of the Struma and World War II's Holocaust at Sea.

Queen Isabella: Treachery, Adultery, and Murder in Medieval England, Alison Weir. I'm using this one as a stand-in for all the great Historical Biography titles I should be listing, but which I can't think of right now. It's a good idea to read any Alison Weir--she's a well-known and skilled (and comprehensive--her books are the big thick impressive type) historical biographer. I really like getting my history through biography, as a matter of fact; another great choice here would be Robert Massie's Nicholas and Alexandra, from which I learned most of what little I know about Russian and revolution history.

I know I'm missing a TON. What history titles would you suggest?

*I've read maybe half of this one. I keep trying, I liked Howard Zinn, but I just can't get into it.

Twenty attempts at a review.

How to Read: A review of Sarah Bakewell's How to Live: Or a Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer.

1. How to Read: Consider format

I started this critically acclaimed biography with very little knowledge of Montaigne, but I was intrigued by all the good reviews of the book's writing. I was not disappointed; Bakewell's done a neat thing here with (to my mind) the somewhat tired biography format of birth, life, death.* Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), best known for his almost single-handed creation of the essay form, wrote about anything and everything, and most of his writings deal with the big question: "how to live?" In twenty chapters, Bakewell tells his life story by answering that question in twenty different ways. In the chapter titled "How to Live? Don't Worry about Death" she describes his attitude toward life and a near-death accident/experience he had; in one titled "How to Live? Survive love and loss" she describes his love for his friend La Boetie, who died an early death. It's still largely chronological, but the focus in different chapters on different aspects of his life makes the format of this biography a little something special.

2. How to Read: with great interest

Essays are some of my favorite things to read, and although I didn't know much about Montaigne other than his obsession with writing down the personal details of his life, I started out reading this book with a high level of interest. Plain and simple, I kind of like this guy: "Montaigne had hitherto been keeping two lives going; one urban and political, the other rural and managerial. Although he had run the country estate since the death of his father in 1568, he had continued to work in Bordeaux. In early 1570, however, he put his magistracy up for sale. There other reasons besides the accident...perhaps his own encounter with death, in combination with the loss of his brother, made him think differently about how he wanted to live his life. Montaigne had put in thirteen years of work at the Bordeaux parlement when he took this step. He was thirty-seven--middle-aged perhaps, by the standards of the time, but not old." (pp. 23-24.)

That's right, the guy retired at 37. My kind of guy.

3. How to Read: with growing distraction

Perhaps it's finally happened; my brain has re-wired itself due to all the reading and work I do online, and I'm not able to read long books anymore. But after the 200-page mark my desire to read/finish this book just kind of flagged. It was still interesting, I just kind of...trailed off. I pushed further, and skimmed another 50 pages, but that's it. I'd learned all I wanted to of Montaigne for the time being, that's all. But I'd still recommend this one; I hope to get it back some day and finish it, as well as read Montaigne's actual essays. If only I could retire at 37 that would leave me a lot more time for that sort of thing.

4. How to Read: so many other books that you don't have time to write the full review you promised in the beginning of the post. I'm not going to try to get to 20 questions and answers.

*Although this is also the format of, well, real life, so it makes sense as a biography template.

Science lite.

Every now and then I really like a good science read. I don't read science all that often, but if I find a title I can understand, I enjoy the subject much more than I ever did in high school.*

I was able to understand most of Edward Dolnick's history of science title The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World, so the book met my first criteria for science reading. Although the subtitle includes that bit about the Royal Society, this is much more a book about some of the luminaries who were part of that organization (Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke, Christopher Wren, and eventually Isaac Newton) and those whose discoveries they built upon (Descartes, Johannes Kepler, Galileo).

For the first hundred pages, I really enjoyed the book. I understood it; the writing was quite vivid; the chapters were short; all things I typically enjoy in my nonfiction. But as the narrative wore on I started to feel that the chapters were a little too short and the writing a bit too choppy: I finished it, but in my opinion it never really coalesced into a cohesive narrative about the Royal Society, some of its most noteworthy members, or science in the seventeenth century as a whole.

But Dolnick does have a nice touch with setting the stage (his first chapters are all about plagues and fires sweeping across Europe in the 1660s): "Making matters harder still, London was not just built of wood but built in the most dangerous way possible. Rickety, slapdash buildings leaned against one another like drunks clutching each other for support. On and on they twisted, an endless labyrinth of shops, tenements, and taverns with barely a gap to slow the flames." (p. 31.)

He brings that same descriptive power to Newton's struggles with and eventual mastery of mathematics, planetary movements, the power of gravity, etc. And it's wild to realize how much some of the thinkers of this age accomplished, and how much they accomplished separately but concurrently. Newton and one of his main rivals, Gottfried Leibniz, evidently worked out calculus within years of each other, although Newton was too paranoid to publish his work as soon as he theorized it.

Huh. Imagine just "working out calculus." So yes, there are quite a few interesting tidbits like that in this book, but still...I finished it feeling a bit disappointed that it hadn't read a little smoother.

*Being a lazy student, I signed up for "General Physics," which was my school's version of "Physics for Dummies." I didn't want to be a scientist, I figured, why kill myself with regular physics? Our textbook even considered us too dumb for regular pronunciation guidelines; it said things like "joule (rhymes with tool)" and "torque (rhymes with fork)." Ha! I was so busy laughing at that textbook I never even learned what a joule really is.