Citizen Reader

You go, Jane Jacobs.

The book which has held me captive since Sunday night is titled Wrestling with Moses: How Jane Jacobs Too On New York's Master Builder and Transformed the American City, by Anthony Flint.

The reasons I love this slim history are legion. I had never read anything about Jane Jacobs (a longtime New York City resident and activist, and author of the architecutral and urban planning classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities), but she is a fascinating woman. Through the 1950s and 1960s she fought against City Hall (and "master planner" Robert Moses, who was responsible for building numerous bridges, highways, parks, and residential buildings across the city for decades through the middle of the twentieth century), primarily to save Washington Square Park from having a highway built through it, and against the construction of an elevated ten-lane highway across the tip of Manhattan.

I also loved this book because it is a great slice of history. In a succinct 195 pages, it provides information about the history and planning of New York City, controversies about urban renewal and development, the remarkable career of Robert Moses, and the even more remarkable career and personality of Jane Jacobs. Of course I loved this book because it is about New York City, and I wish I had a cool author name like "Anthony Flint." But the front and center attraction of this book is Jacobs herself. Consider her conduct at a sham city hall meeting to gather community feedback about the proposed elevated highway:

"Though the ostensible purpose of the meeting was to collect opinions about the project, it had been hurriedly scheduled--to make sure testimony was gathered before legislation passed that required an even more extensive public approval process...The manner in which the meeting was being conducted--the microphone faced toward the audience, not the officials the residents were nominally addressing--suggested that state officials were just going through the motions...

From the seat she'd taken near the front of the auditorium, Jane Jacobs made her way up the stairs and onton the stage. 'It's interesting, the way the mike is set up,' she observed tartly as she reached the microphone. She was calm, and her expression was matter-of-fact. 'At a public hearing, you are supposed to address the officials, not the audience.'

The chairman of the hearing, John Toth of the New York Department of Transportation, bounded down from the statge and turned the microphone around. But Jacobs turned it right back.

'Thank you, sir, but I'd rather speak to my friends,' Jacobs said. 'We've been talking to ourselves all evening as it is.' The crowd roared with laughter." (pp. xii-xiii.)

From there she went on to call for a silent protest march across the stage, during which the stenographer's rolls of tape documenting the meeting were destroyed (which meant there was no public record, and the meeting couldn't be counted), called it a "fink meeting," and was arrested.

It's a great book, and it has spurred me to consider, again, reading Jacobs's The Death and Life of Great American Cities. I always used to shelve it at the used bookstore, and wonder if I should read it, and then for years I would shelve it at the public library and give it some more thought (it went in and out quite regularly); but it was so thick I never got around to it. Maybe now is the time.

A disappointing reading weekend.

I couldn't really find my reading groove this weekend.

First I looked at a book called How Patients Should Think: 10 Questions to Ask Your Doctor about Drugs, Tests, and Treatment, by Ray Moynihan and Melissa Sweet (as I firmly believe that where the medical establishment is concerned, your best defense is a good offense). It had some good information, and I liked their philosophy that "asking questions needs to be seen as an essential and valid part of seeking health care," but I just cannot read any more health or medical books right now. I will have to check it out some other time.

I also started Greg Grandin's Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City, but was completely bored. I don't think it's a bad book, just a very detailed history, and something for which I wasn't in the right mood.

I also started Alison Weir's The Lady in the Tower, about the fall of Anne Boleyn, which is okay, but didn't quite hold my attention the way I wanted.

So, all in all, a meh reading weekend, and I hope yours was much better. I did start a new book last night that I'm excited about (always at the end of the weekend, I find them). Further bulletins as events warrant.

The problems with "more for less."

I have been reading Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture,* by Ellen Ruppel Shell, for a hundred years.

Okay, not really. But it was starting to feel like it. Make no mistake: that's not because it was a bad book. It's because it was a really good book. It was everything nonfiction should be: interesting, detailed, well-researched, and thorough. It was also as depressing as hell.

Shell describes the American (and to some extent, world) love affair with "cheap," and how our identification with consumer culture, rather than working class or production culture, is leading to a breakdown in many of our social and business systems. She does so systematically, discussing the history of discount stores and pricing in America (starting way before Wal-Mart), and she does so convincingly, examining all aspects of the "cheap" worldview such as pricing strategies and global trade imbalances. She covers a variety of retailers and products, from IKEA to our food supply. Really, it's an incredible book.

She's also upfront about how much we all enjoy bargains,** and how that might have to change if we really want to improve working conditions and wages and lifestyles worldwide. Honestly? There's so many and interesting and sad things to quote in this book, I wouldn't even know where to start. Oh, wait, I did stick in a couple of bookmarks; heres one paragraph I found interesting, from a labor scholar Shell interviewed:

"'Corporate giants have become our heroes,' he continued. 'We are so focused on the dream of wealth that we identify with billionaires, with whom we have nothing in common. Where fifty years ago we had labor identity that pit workers against management, today we have a system that pits worker against worker. And that includes workers in the United States against workers in the developing world.'" (p. 203.)

The book's also jam-packed with scary statistics about how much the overall price of food has dropped since 1970--and what that says about what we're eating--as well as numbers showing how real wages for the majority of Americans have mostly gone down, especially in the face of out-of-control health care costs.

It's a sobering book. Make some time to read it, and then read it. I think it will make you wonder just a bit about where bargain prices come from and how much they actually cost us.

*Please do click on this link, and read the review of this book listed there from The Washington Post. Now THAT is a review--and is right on. Although I liked this book, it did have its shortcomings. Reading that review highlights how my little blurbs here are not really "reviews" but are instead light "opinion pieces."

**I recognize this. The other day I was excited to find pork chops on sale for 2 for $2. I love pork chops, so I snapped some up, but when I think about it...how is that even possible? And this coming from a person who will not shop at Wal-Mart and mostly tries to avoid shopping at all. So the desire for cheap really is in all of us.

Back away from the nonfiction, James Patterson.

Normally I'm content to live and let live where author James Patterson is concerned. Sure, I think he's an unbelievable hack and all that is wrong with the state of American fiction and consumers' current reading habits. But, as he typically writes (or contracts with others to write) thrillers, which are not my cup of tea, I don't tend to think much about him at all. I don't, for example, hate him with the heat of a thousand white-hot suns, the way I hate Thomas Friedman. Thomas Friedman is special for me that way.

But now the man is starting to come out with nonfiction titles, which is where I'm going to have to draw the line. His first title was a "medical thriller" titled Against Medical Advice (co-authored with Hal Friedman), which I glanced at but didn't read. I did note, however, that it was at least superficially a book that could pass for adult reading--more than twenty words on a page, chapters that were sometimes longer than 2 or 3 pages, and at least a half-hearted attempt at putting together a cohesive medical tale. But now? Now he's come out with something called The Murder of King Tut: The Plot to Kill the Child King--A Nonfiction Thriller (it's co-authored by Martin Dugard). I thought, well, I'm interested in Egypt. I thought, I should really keep up with what Patterson is doing, because readers do seem to love him. So I checked it out.

And, much like Jodi Picoult, I find that nobody can illustrate quite how bad James Patterson is better than Patterson himself. I submit, from the second chapter:

"'This is James Patterson calling. Is Michael around? I have a mystery story to tell him.'

As most people would expect, I love a good mystery, and I thought I might have unearthed a real doozy to write about, which was why I had put in a call to my editor at Little, Brown, Michael Pietsch, who is also the publisher.

As I waited for Michael to come on the line--he usually takes my calls, night or day*--I looked around my second-floor office. Am I completely mad? I wondered.

The last thing I needed right now was another writing project. I already had a new Alex Cross novel on the fires, and a Women's Murder Club brewing, and a Maximum Ride to finish. In fact, there were twenty-four manuscripts--none of them yet completed--laid out on the expansive desk surface that occupies most of my office..."

The mystery that Patterson was calling Pietsch about was a book about the life and supposed murder of King Tut, with alternating chapters from 1300s BC, and the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries  when Howard Carter was excavating Tut's tomb. Even a cursory glance at his book indicates something is slightly off. If your third-grader brought this book home, you would look it over and say, "Honey, shouldn't you be reading something harder than this by now? Where are my tax dollars going?" It literally looks like an easy reader for kids just out of picture books.

I should have put in the half hour it would have taken to read the whole thing so I could critique it properly, but I'm now getting to an age where I am too protective of each of my half-hours. Fie on you, Patterson, and your book assembly line.

*I'll bet he takes your calls, since I'm assuming you've made him massively rich and he is, in fact, probably contractually obligated to kiss your ass at all times.

A book I should have read BEFORE going to Great Britain.

While Mr. CR and I were in Great Britain in October, I was embarrassed because every time something came up about the royal family, I kept forgetting who was who, and who was the parent of who, and who the Queen Mother was, and how they were all related. I rather think Mr. CR expected me to know that kind of stuff, as I spend every possible moment I can reading about Great Britain, watching BBC programming, or looking at British online newspapers.*

What I should have done before we went was read Richard Hough's very interesting, very comprehensive, but not too overly detailed historical biography, Born Royal: The Lives and Loves of the Young Windsors. Now, the "young Windsors" he's referring to there are not William and Harry and Co.; he is in fact talking about the children of King George V and Queen Mary of Teck: David, Bertie, Mary, Harry, John, and George.

And that's where the confusion comes in. Who the hell are these people? Well, now, thanks to this book, I can clear that up for you: David is Edward VIII, who abdicated to marry Wallis Simpson; Bertie is King George VI, who became the father of the present Queen Elizabeth. Bertie (King George VI) married Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, also known as Queen Elizabeth, but when Elizabeth II (the current Queen) took over, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon became the Queen Mother. Whew. Got that? All of this leads me to believe that the English monarchy needs to 1. start picking some different names, and 2. stop calling their children by multiple names, and then having them change their names when they become the monarch. That's not too much to ask, right?

I really enjoyed this one. It's a very readable history, and, at 300 pages (and packed with pictures), it gives you just enough personal and family details to keep you interested. In a weird twist of fate, Mr. CR read this one before I did, and we've had a great time talking it over. We are in agreement that old King George V (father of the "young Windsors") was kind of a, well, it's late and I'm tired, so "prick" is the only word that's coming to mind. The book also includes a truncated family tree, and Mr. CR and I are also in agreement that we're stunned these royal families all turn out as well as they do (hemophilia notwithstanding) when you see how closely related they all are. Did you know that the present Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip are both great-great-grandchildren of Queen Victoria and third cousins? Well, now you do.

*I can't help it. They're just more interesting than our newspapers. Plus that way I can pretend I live there.

Book Menage Day 4: The Wrap-up.

Welcome to Day 4 of our Book Menage! I just want to take a moment and thank everyone who has popped into the comments so far; I have found this to be a particularly fascinating discussion and I'm rather glad we went with the true crime subject matter, even though they're not typically easy books to read.

I think we've already covered a lot of ground, so a few easy questions today.

1. What were your favorite and least favorite parts of each of these books? Would you suggest either to other readers, and if so, why?

2. Do you think you'll ever read another true crime book, ever again?

  3. You know that I always have to ask about covers. How did you feel about the covers of these books? (The Horn book has different covers in hardcover and paperback; the paperback cover is the one I've posted before--look below and you'll find it and the Geary cover--and I'll post the hardcover jacket with this post.

I have emailed some of our questions to both of the authors, but it's a hard time to be making a living as a writer (or artist) so I'm not sure either one will have time to answer. Please do check back, though; if they reply I'll post their answers here.

Book Menage Day 2: Exclusively Geary.

Welcome to Day 2 of the True Crime Book Menage! Today I'd like to focus specifically on the Rick Geary book The Borden Tragedy.* The questions I have for you today are:

1. How do you feel about reading true crime, or really any nonfiction, in graphic novel format?

2. Did you read the newspaper articles at the end of the book too, or not? If not, why not? If so, did they add to your enjoyment of the book?

3. What questions would you have for Rick Geary after reading this book?

Don't feel like you have to answer each question if you don't want to. These are just my three biggest questions about the Geary book. As previously noted: please feel free to pose and answer your own questions in the comments. I love it when people take the comment discussions in different directions.

*Please note: if you read different titles by Geary, please feel free to answer these questions anyway--I think they're still pretty applicable.

A good graphic novel, but not one that I'm in love with.

I am a huge, huge Brian Fies fan.

His graphic novel Mom's Cancer is not only one of my favorite graphic novels, it is one of my favorite memoirs, and favorite books, full-stop. It was his take on his mother's battle with both lung and brain cancer, and a family story of how he and his siblings dealt with her illness. It was, of course, horribly sad, but it was also fantastic. The rare graphic novel that I loved without reservations, and in which the art and the text were easy to integrate, and which complemented each other.

So I was very, very excited to see that he had a new graphic novel out, titled Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow? This one starts at the New York World's Fair of 1939, and charts the course of scientific and future discoveries and aspirations in different decades, including 1945, 1955, 1965, and 1975.

I did read the whole thing, but it turned out to be not for me.

This is no reflection on the quality of the work, which is once again very, very high. I love Fies's clean drawings, simple text, and how easy it is to integrate the two while reading. However, I have never been enthralled with science and progress* OR comics, which are two things that clearly had a big effect on Fies; in fact, this book is like an extended love letter to both. In fact, in between the chapters, Fies has inserted what appear to be classic comic books, titled "Space Age Adventures" and printed on what appears to be pulpy comic/newsprint pages. Unfortunately, the beauty of much of his work is lost on me, as I am not and never was a comic reader. (I am such a person of inaction that most action/adventure stories, which is what a lot of comics are, completely bore me.)

I was also a bit confused by the characters in the story, as Fies uses the same father/son pair in each decade, without the kid growing up for several of the first decades, which I found disconcerting. (He explains this in a foreword, commenting on the wonder of "comics time" which allows characters never to age or change.) Anyone else have this problem?

Still and all, though, Brian Fies is a super-talent. Immediately upon finishing this book I went and re-read my copy of Mom's Cancer, and appreciated him all over again. Give this one a try if you're interested in science or comics; I don't think you'll be disappointed.

*I am in fact usually quite cranky about both science and progress, although I am a fan of indoor plumbing.

Men I Love: Second in a Series.

I have always had a little thing for Jimmy Carter.

Which, let's face it, is pretty much the only reason I picked up Kevin Mattson's new book "What the Heck Are You Up To, Mr President?" Jimmy Carter, America's "Malaise," and the Speech That Should Have Changed the Country. For one thing, I'm not a big history reader (unless it's about British history, or labor history, or the holy grail of my history nonfiction reading, British labor history); for another, that's not really a title that inspires a whole lot of "wow, I've got to read this one!"*

But I do find it interesting that there's actually a growing little subgenre of nonfiction books in which authors look at history and presidents through specific speeches**; I'm somewhat interested in speeches and rhetoric (as only the nerdy author of a public speaking handbook for librarians can be); and what the heck, it was only 217 pages long. 

The book takes as its subject the summer of 1979, primarily its gas shortages and cultural ennui, and examines how President Carter sought to address the energy crisis and what he described as America's crisis of confidence. One of the most interesting things (to me) about the story is how Carter sought to hear a variety of viewpoints, and duly invited groups of people (people other than politicians and lobbyists, note) to the White House to talk these issues over. When he was done, he charged his speechwriters with creating (with his input) the speech he would give on July 15, 1979. The entire text of the speech is also provided as an appendix, so you can read it for yourself, and I would do so:

"In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God,*** too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we've discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We've learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose...

We were sure that ours was a nation of the ballot, not the bullet, until the murders of John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. We were taught that our armies were always invincible and our causes were always just, only to suffer the agony of Vietnam. We respected the presidency as a place of honor until the shock of Watergate...We believed that our nation's resources were limitless until 1973, when we had to face a growing dependence on foreign oil.

These wounds are still very deep. They have never been healed." (p. 212-213.)

I won't lie to you; although it's not obnoxious, this is not an author who is being very critical of Carter, although he does point out his many and obvious missteps. But he's also an author who has managed to weave a compelling slice of history out of a speech that has been largely misremembered by an entire nation. If nothing else, he also does a good job of placing the speech and Carter's presidency in historical perspective as the one that paved the way for Reagan (and the Cult of Reagan and all that went with it), as evidenced in this quote:

"I remember the exact moment I knew Ronald Reagan could beat Jimmy Carter. The date was July 15, 1979." (Richard Wirthlin, Ronald Reagan's pollster.)

It's an interesting book. If you're up for a historical stroll through the late 1970s, this might be a good place to start. Now off with you, and have a good weekend.

*Or is it? I think it's kind of a clunky title, myself. I might have chosen How to Lose the White House: Endeavor to be Decent and Intelligent.

**David Maraniss's The Clinton Enigma is also a fabulous little book.

***I would guess that most atheists are probably not Carter fans.

A sigh-worthy British read.

Yeah, here's a shocker: I'm more interested than ever in reading books about British history.

I also thought it might be fun to combine the side of my personality that responds to chick flicks (yeah, that would be the "big sap" side) with the side that demands British history details, so I picked up Sarah Gristwood's Elizabeth & Leicester: Power, Passion, Politics, about Queen Elizabeth I and her longtime friend and counselor Robert Dudley (the later Earl of Leicester).

All in all, it should come as no surprise that I found this one a satisfying read. There's a bit too much "did they or didn't they?" speculation, but in all fairness, I suppose that's the question a lot of people have about the Virgin Queen and, by all accounts, a man she honestly loved. It's not the thing I find most interesting about their relationship, though, particularly not when you consider the speculation about how Dudley's first wife died (did he or didn't he have a hand in her death, so he had a better shot at marrying Elizabeth), and the overall question of Elizabeth's personality. Why didn't she--and, as the author points out, the best evidence that Elizabeth really didn't want to marry is that she never did--want to get married? That is the crux of the matter that I find the most fascinating. Was she afraid a marriage would be the end of her power? Was she afraid of the risks of childbirth? Did watching her father's treatment of his many wives, you know, sour her on the whole idea?

This is an interesting book, but it may not be the best place to start if you're looking for a full biography of Elizabeth; it really does focus on the relationship. It is, however, a librarian's dream: it's got lovely source notes in the back about related reading, a short appendix on film versions of Elizabeth's life, and a very comprehensive index. Kudos to the author and publisher for all those things.

Incidentally: I included pictures of two different covers for this book, neither of which I am particularly fond. By all accounts, Elizabeth ruled just as much with her head as with her torso. So why don't we get to see it? For some reason these beheaded women portraits on any covers--fiction included--creep me out.

A love affair with books.

For the past few weeks I've been making my way slowly through the title Built of Books: How Reading Defined the Life of Oscar Wilde, and it's wonderful. It's a literary biography about Oscar, told entirely through the lens of the books he read as a child, owned, gave away to others, and had confiscated and sold when he was put into jail.

I never really knew much about Wilde, and reading this book was a lovely way to get up to speed on his life (although reading about his arrest and imprisonment for "gross indecency" and "sodomy"* was anything but lovely--the prison they sent him to didn't sound good at all). But that is only a very small part of the story; author Wright does a splendid job of exploring Wilde's childhood and education through the books he read, explaining how that reading influenced his later life and his own writing:

"The folk tales and Ossianic legends formed the landscape of Wilde's adult imagination. He spoke fondly 'of the beauty and glamour of the old Celtic legends,' and retold Irish folk tales at dinner parties in Paris and London. During these performances Wilde imitated, in an alien urban context, the seanchai [Irish storyteller] he had encountered as a boy in the West of Ireland. When he picked up his pen too, Wilde drew on the reservoir of images, scenes and phrases he had absorbed in his infancy." (p. 25.)

Even if you've never read any Oscar Wilde** (I've started The Picture of Dorian Gray on tape, but I don't know if I'll be able to stick with it), if you're a reader, you should definitely consider this title. And do make sure to read the afterword, which explains the author's own education, following in Wilde's footsteps.

*Mr. CR read a couple of those chapters and thought that perhaps it might have been prudent of Wilde not to have a love affair with the son of the Marquess of Queensberry, a peer of the realm, who was really the one who was determined to put Wilde away. I have told Mr. CR that sometimes the heart wants what the heart wants, but he's not buying it.

**I still don't know him all that well, but I was charmed that one of Wilde's first requests for books from inside prison was for titles by Gustave Flaubert (like Madame Bovary), another author who had been charged with indecency for that very book. That took some chutzpah, I think.

Dream library.

Yesterday I spent a bit of time reading the introduction and looking at the black and white photographs in the oversized book The Photographs of Homer Page: The Guggenheim Year, New York, 1949-50. It was lovely.

I love black and white photography, and I love New York City, and I love the 1950s (okay, it's the very beginning of the 50s, but still). Well, I love the "look" of the 1950s. Actually living in the 1950s probably wouldn't have worked for me. But I do love me some chrome and that lovely low-slung, straight lines, strange pastel colors 1950s furniture. (I have owned a mint-green 50s couch, and do own a 50s coral-colored chair that has most definitely seen better days, but which I can't get myself to throw out.)

So when I saw this book's title in my library catalog, you can bet I had to see it. And I was not disappointed. I've tried to provide a bigger image than usual of its cover image so you can see the photo; four boys playing with a dressmaker's form. The kid on the left just makes me laugh and laugh. Look at his face! He's totally in the moment.

So as I looked through the book, I wondered if there were collections of photographs of New York City from other twentieth-century decades*: the roaring 20s, the not-so-pretty 70s and 80s, etc. And I thought, man, if I was putting together my dream library, I would seek out big books of New York City photography and collect them for it. And then I thought, hm, dream library, that's something to think about. It's a fun fantasy to not only think about what I might like to read but which books as physical objects I might like to own. So far, I have this photography wish, and I'm also always secretly book-lusted after a rare first edition of Norman Maclean's A River Runs Through It, from the University of Chicago Press. (I saw one once at a rare book sale, and might have lost my head if Mr. CR hadn't been there reminding me of the mortgage.) So there's the question. What would you have in your dream library? Give it some thought. I'll revisit this topic, I'm sure.

*The other day I gave my nephew a book about twentieth-century baseball, and he said, "What's the twentieth century?" I'm old.

How is that going to work?

I have two big questions about Jean Hatzfeld's latest book, The Antelope's Strategy: Living in Rwanda after the Genocide. Number one is a basic question about the premise of the book: In 2003, the Rwandan government started releasing Hutu prisoners who had confessed to and been convicted of numerous murders of their Tutsi neighbors in the Rwandan genocide of 1994. I ask you: how is that going to work? My second question is more basic, and it's about Jean Hatzfeld: how does he stand continuing to write these books?

This is the third in a series of Hatzfeld's books, originally written in French (and translated beautifully by Linda Coverdale). The first book was Machete Season, and was an oral history of the Hutus who did the killing. In the second, Life Laid Bare, Hatzfeld spoke with Tutsi survivors. In this book, he speaks with both Hutu and Tutsi residents of Rwanda, many of whom are now struggling to live as neighbors, side by side with Hutus who hunted them (for the Tutsis) or with the Tutsis they couldn't catch and kill (for the Hutus).

I don't know if it's because it was the first book I read on this subject, or because it was the best, but Machete Season blew me away. That was a book that actually changed my view, not of the world, but of myself. When I recognized, in the Hutus' stories of why they picked up machetes and started murdering Tutsis, that part of why they did it was because farming was a ridiculously hard way to make a living and they coveted what their neighbors had, I could understand what they were saying. When they further explained how they had been hearing bad things about Tutsis all their lives, and how they hated them, I could get that too. Everyone, at some time, I think, has felt some sort of overwhelming disgust or dislike for their fellow humans and often, specific humans at that. I know we like to think, secure here in America with our clean water and our working sewage systems and our grocery stores full of food, that we would never commit atrocities. But couldn't we? If those grocery stores and water and everything else went away, wouldn't we?

I won't say it wasn't a depressing thought. But it changed how I thought about many other things in my life, and about myself. I'm not saying we're all killers at heart. What I am saying is that I don't think any of us are sure what we are truly capable of, especially in horrifying and lawless and threatening circumstances. That is a powerful thing to realize, and it makes you a little less likely to make blanket statements which start with "I would never..."

I can't say that this book gave me that experience, but it's a must-read anyhow. How will these people live together? Granted, I didn't know how it was going to work to keep all the Hutus locked up, either, but to let them all live together again? How can you be a neighbor to someone who once chased you with a machete through a forest, where the only way you could survive in a group was by employing the "antelope's strategy" of scattering out? (Hence the book's title.) I don't know. To his credit, I don't think Jean Hatzfeld knows, either, and he doesn't have much to say about it, as in this book he largely tells the story in the words of those people who he interviews. It's oral history at its finest, and saddest. If you can stand it, you should read it.

Ah, relics, they always make for good reading.

You know you have slightly strange tastes in nonfiction when you see a book about saints' relics and you think, "Ooh, goody!" And you further know you've probably read too much nonfiction when you think, "I wonder if it will be as good as the other relic book I read?"*

I was very, very excited to find Peter Manseau's book Rag and Bone: A Journey Among the World's Holy Dead in my library catalog. Not only because I find the idea of saints' relics (purported remnants of saints' bodies and other holy items--like pieces of the cross Jesus was crucified on--that are honored and venerated within various religions, including Catholicism and Buddhism) fascinating, but also because I love, love, LOVE Peter Manseau. (His memoir Vows, about his parents, a former nun and priest, and his childhood spent trying to understand their and his relationship with the Catholic Church, was hands-down one of the best memoirs I've ever read.)

This book finds Manseau traveling around to various holy sites, including Jerusalem and Goa, a city in India where the remains of Saint Francis Xavier are kept, and investigating such relics as the foreskin of Jesus (you heard me) and the burnt bones of Saint Joan. He strikes just exactly the right tone throughout; he is respectful without being obsequious, skeptical without being rude. He is, above all, fascinated by and thoughtful about his topic. This is what he has to say about Francis Xavier, who was an unenthusiastic missionary (at best) to India, although that is where his remains are today: "In death Francis Xavier had joined the lives of a people and a place where he had never wanted to remain. These children, born in the country he scorned, educated in a school that bears his name, have lived their lives in his shadow, but now they run in front of his church, casting their own." (p. 52.)

When I really love nonfiction I fall into very distinct feelings when reading it. Some nonfiction is exciting; some is inspiring, some makes me very angry; but my very favorite titles make me feel settled and thoughtful and peaceful. You know what I mean, about different feelings that books give you? This book makes me feel settled and peaceful, and it's wonderful. Right on, Peter Manseau.

*The other relic book was Anneli Rufus's Magnificent Corpses: Searching through Europe for St. Peter's Head, St. Claire's Heart, St. Stephen's Hand, and Other Relics from the Saints, which was also excellent. More personal in some ways, sharper in some ways, less historical and even-toned in others, but still brilliant.

Ah, serendipity.

Remember how, a while back, I was looking to find the portrait of Helene Hanff (she of 84, Charing Cross Road fame) that Elena Gaussen painted? (The artist and the painting are described in Hanff's sequel to 84, CCR, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street.)

Well, Google had turned up nothing, except for a bit more information on the artist, Elena Gaussen Marks, and her husband, Leo Marks (whose father originally owned the bookshop to which Hanff wrote about in 84 CCR). So I was resigned to never seeing the portrait. However, as I read more about Leo Marks and his career as a codemaker during World War II (and as the author of lovely cipher poems), I became more interested in reading his book, Between Silk and Cyanide: A Codemaker's War, 1941-1945.

So I checked the book out at the library, brought it home, and looked at it for a few weeks, longingly, as I didn't have time to start it right away. Finally I decided I would just have to get it back some other time, but before I returned it, I opened it up to check out the pictures in the middle. I don't know how you feel about this, but I am fundamentally unable to put a nonfiction book down before I have looked at its pictures (if any are available). Even if I don't get them read, I always look at ALL of the pictures in whatever nonfiction books I drag home. I don't know why. They're usually the first thing I look at when looking at new nonfiction books in bookstores, too. So before I returned Between Silk and Cyanide, I went to look through the pictures, and guess what I found?

"Helen Hanff's 84 Charing Cross Road, by Elena Gaussen Marks." A picture of the portrait! Or at least I'm guessing it's the portrait. (As my sister says, how many can there be?) It's not at all what I expected, but it's beautiful in its own way. So there it is, and if you want to see it, all you have to do is check out Leo Marks's book. All I can say is, suck that, Google.

Letting someone else do the writing.

Just a quick note of congratulations this morning to my friend Minnesota Sarah (sorry, Sarah, I just like the way that makes you sound, like a pool hustler or something), who has had a lovely article on World War II nonfiction published in Library Journal. You can, and should, read it here:

http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6652458.html

This is a very useful article for me, because I do not naturally gravitate to World War II fiction and nonfiction. In fact, I naturally gravitate away from it. I think it has something to do with having to check out way too many copies of Tom Brokaw's shit book The Greatest Generation to, well, too many members of the Greatest Generation. Also, the general glorification of war doesn't do much for me, and WWII is definitely glorified, I feel (unlike the Vietnam War, which is emphatically not glorified, and about which I have read a lot more).

All of that is the long way to say, you may have noticed from this blog that I don't read or post much about World War II. So now I'm lucky to have access to Sarah's article to which I can link!

Fifty bucks well spent.

I haven't spent it yet, mind you, but I think I will.

The pending purchase in question is the oversize book from DK Publishing titled Art: Over 2,500 Works from Cave to Contemporary.* It's gorgeous.** For a girl who wishes she'd taken an art history course, it's an art history course all by itself, with representative artists from numerous countries over the course of human history. Each page includes five to fifteen major artworks, along with timelines, short artist bios, and short facts about each work of art.

It's wonderful, and the slick pages are beautifully printed. This is certainly a case where looking at a book is just hands-down better than looking at the Internet (faster, too), and if you know anyone with young kids, I'd suggest this book, just so they can leave it laying around and their kids can learn about art from an early age.

I'll admit I spent most of my time in the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries, primarily in Europe, but there's also sections on art from other parts of the world, and the latter pages on modern art (although it's not my favorite) were also very informative. Even if you don't want to buy it, I would check it out.

*Do follow the link to Powell's--there's a video there you can watch and see inside the book.

**Take care when you carry it home. It's heavy!

Helene Hanff Appreciation Week: Queen of England

Before she became quite well-known for writing 84, Charing Cross Road, Hanff worked as a script reader and childrens' book author. Now, I can't say that her book for kids, Queen of England: The Story of Elizabeth I, was her favorite book of mine. For one thing, it was published in 1969, and it' was published by Doubleday, and all those educational kids books from the 50s and 60s share a quaintly dated feel.

But I still enjoyed it, and I read the whole thing. For one thing, the way she talked about her in other books, I think Hanff had a real love and appreciation for Elizabeth I, and I can respect that, because I do think Elizabeth I was a singular woman:

"On the morning of Palm Sunday--a chill, rainy March morning--Elizabeth was taken by boat across the river to the Tower of London. She stepped on shore, and saw stone steps leading up to an iron gate called Traitors' Gate. She stopped in her tracks.

She cried out that she would not go through Traitors' Gate. She was not a traitor. She was true and loyal to the queen...

The guards made her climb the stone steps. At the top step, she stopped again. She sat down on the wet stone step and said she would go no farther. She would not go into the Tower--too few left it alive.

A few friends had come this far with her. They now had to say good-by, and one man broke down and began to weep. At this, Elizabeth rose to her feet. She told the man to stop weeping.

'My truth is such,' she said, 'that I thank God my friends have no cause to weep for me.'"

You're preaching to the choir, dude.

So, here's my question about political books. How do people stand to read books that only share and provide facts about their own personal points of view? I'm talking about the Ann Coulter and Al Franken political readers of the world. For the most part, the only people reading those books are the hardcore disciples who completely agree with everything they already think. To me, that sometimes seems like nothing more than a big waste of reading time.

Take a book like William Kleinknecht's The Man Who Sold the World: Ronald Reagan and the Betrayal of Main Street America. Now, I am of the opinion that Ronald Reagan was a total shithead. So you'd think, wouldn't you, that this book would be right up my alley? And I guess it could be. But after reading the Introduction, I just couldn't get myself to read any further. For the most part, I was completely in agreement with everything the author said. If I had any sort of memory (I don't, sadly, except for book titles and the names of BBC actors and the literary adaptations in which they appear, you know, the really important stuff) this would be a great book from which to learn facts and interesting tidbits about the many and exact ways in which Ronald Reagan was a total shithead. Consider:

"But therein lies the great myth of Reaganism, for his betrayal of the working people of America could not have been more complete. Thanks in large part to Reagan's policies, the two periods of economic expansion that followed his election did little for Americans in the middle and lower income brackets...Expressed in constant 1998 dollars, households whose wealth placed them in the bottom 40 percent of the country had seen none of the benefits of two decades of economic growth. Between 1962 and 1983, the average household net worth of that group had grown from $800 to $4,700. But by the time Reagan was out of office in 1989, that group had a negative net worth of $4,100; that is, they were in debt for that amount...

The real winners in that economic growth were the wealthy. The top 1 percento fhouseholds saw its average net worth grown from $7.2 million to $9.1 million between 1983 and 1989, a 26.9 percent increase that far surpassed the 6 percent growth for the middle 20 percent." (pp. xiv-xv.)

Now, that's interesting stuff. But the problem* is, a. I know numbers can be largely manufactured or construed to say pretty much whatever you need them to say, so it's hard for me to get too passionate about them, and b. I'm never going to remember them anyway, so I can have them ready for when someone asks me why my gut feeling is that Ronald Reagan was a total shithead. So yeah, this would probably be an interesting book (there are also chapters on Reagan's mastery of the media, deregulation, his big-business friendly policies, his campaign against Jimmy Carter, crime and punishment, tax, and his relentless pummeling of liberals and the New Deal). I just don't have the time or the heart or the inclination to read it right now. On the other hand, I do now have a title I can remember for the next time someone tells me how great Ronald Reagan was. They won't listen to me or read it or anything, but I'll at least have tried.

*My second problem with the book is this line, from the introduction: "This book is borne of annoyance: a great bewilderment over the myth that continues to surround the presidency of Ronald Reagan." I agree with that in spirit. But shouldn't it be "This book is BORN of annoyance"? Help me out, grammar experts, because if it should be BORN I'm going to be totally annoyed with this book.

Where has 84, Charing Cross Road been all my life?

Okay, who among you out there has read Helene Hanff's correspondence collection 84, Charing Cross Road?

Anyone? Now, at the risk of sounding stern, if you have read this book, why weren't you telling me to immediately drop everything, get it, and read it? I don't mean to be churlish but you might have told me this perfect little book was just out there waiting for me.*

If you haven't read it, let me explain. It is, quite simply, a small collection of letters that passed between this totally awesome New York City broad Helene and the used bookstore, Marks & Company, at 84 Charing Cross Road, London, with whom she did book business for more than twenty years. It started off sedately enough, with Helene responding to one of their ads and asking for some clean secondhand copies of a few books she was looking for. An employee at Marks, Frank Doel, responded to her queries and sent her the books she requested when he could find them. Of course, he didn't always have exactly what she wanted on hand, which prompted a letter such as:

"Frank Doel, what are you DOING over there, you are not doing ANYthing, you are just sitting AROUND.

Where is Leigh Hunt? Where is the Oxford Verse? Where is the Vulgate and dear goofy John Henry, I thought they'd be such nice uplifting reading for Lent and NOTHING do you send me.

you leave me sitting here writitng long margin notes in library books that don't belong to me, some day they'll find out i did it and take my library card away."

I swear to God, I'm in love with Helene Hanff.

Eventually other store staff members start writing to her, and she writes back. Because they are in postwar England, and under some pretty strict rationing, she also starts to send them packages of meats and eggs and other goodies.

Have I mentioned how I'm in love with Helene Hanff? I don't care that this book was written in 1970 and Helene has long since passed on. Don't speak to me of these mere trifles.

No kidding. Although nobody told me to go read this book immediately (oh, sure, some people mentioned I might enjoy it, but that was not nearly strong enough language) I'll do my bit here: GO READ THIS BOOK IMMEDIATELY. I read it last week (I was prompted because the novel I reviewed yesterday, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, was similar to it) and now I'm busily revising my list of five books I'd take to a desert island with me. It literally made me forget my (admittedly small and stupid) worries for an hour, and for that I am eternally grateful to Helene. I hope wherever she is in the great big ol' crazy afterlife, there's books there with her, and a nice little bookstore to boot.

*I'm not taking the chance of missing something again. I'm going on a total Helene bender now, starting with Letter from New York and moving into The Duchess of Bloombury Street.