Citizen Reader

What'll you have?

I had a wonderful time this weekend, reading the book Counter Culture: The American Coffee Shop Waitress, by Candacy A. Taylor.

It's a slim but meaty book featuring interviews with waitress "lifers"--waitresses the author sought out who have made working in coffee shops and diners their life's work. In between the interviews the author offers historical and sociological tidbits about the waiting life, including chapters on tricks of the trade, regular customers, and tips. It's also beautifully illustrated, with multiple photographs.*

I enjoyed the interviews and the different women** the author spoke to, particularly as I have a bit of history with the career myself (although I was one of the part-timers just doing the job for cash that these old-timers scoff at as mere flashes in the pan). But I was particularly amused by author's history of how women came to be the staffers of choice for diners during World War II. She cites a 1941 article from The Diner magazine, which lists the reasons why women make superior diner staff:

"1. Women will work for less pay. 2. Women won't stay out late drinking and call in sick the next day. 3. Women belong around food. 4. Women will work harder than men. 5. Women are always happy. 6. Women are more efficient workers. 7. Women are more honest than men--they don't steal. 8. Women can talk and work at the same time. 9. Women clean diners better than men. 10. Women are cleaner than men. 11. The customers like women better. 12. Customers don't swear in front of women." (pg. 18.)

Now, I don't know that I agree with much of that list, but I was charmed by numbers 4,6, and 8. It took me back to my own restaurant days.

This is a great book. Although I'm just glad it was published by someone (in this case, the Cornell University Press), this is the sort of book that should be published by a mainstream trade publisher, and which should become a bestseller. If there were any justice in the world, anyway, that's the way it would be.

*Why aren't all adult nonfiction books illustrated? It would be so much more interesting.

**The frank nature of the interviews reminded me, in the best possible way, of the superlative title The Oxford Project.

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.

Book Menage Day 1: Stacy Horn and Rick Geary

Welcome to Day 1 of our Rick Geary (The Borden Tragedy) and Stacy Horn (The Restless Sleep: Inside New York City's Cold Case Squad) Book Menage! Thanks for popping in; and here's hoping everyone had a good Thanksgiving.*

I have been sitting here and looking at these books for some time today, wondering where to start. What to ask is not really the problem; I have a whole list of questions. When to ask what, is more what I'm struggling with.

So: there's nothing else for it but to start, and leave organization to work itself out. (This is the principle I follow for pretty much everything else in my life, which sometimes made it hard to be a librarian, and around other people for whom organization IS life.) In short, here's the two questions I most want to know about today. As per usual, please do provide your answers to both or either (or ask new questions of your own) of the questions in the comments. I used to jump in first, but now I wait a bit, because I don't want to unduly "steer" the conversation.** I won't be able to not answer, mind you; I just would love it if someone else went first!

1. Did any lines/stories/anecdotes/pictures in either of these books stand out to you (in short: what bits were most memorable?) and if so, why?

2. Were either of these the first "true crime" books you've ever read? If so, what did you think about reading on this subject? If not, what did you think about either or both of these books as examples of the "true crime" nonfiction genre?

Let the Menage begin!

*And that no one had to get up and shop at 4 a.m. on Friday, which always seems like a retail environment that must closely resemble at least one level of Dante's hell, if not all of them rolled together.

**I'm not usually much of a forceful personality but I can be a bit overbearing when it comes to books.

New York so pretty.

Just when I've pretty much decided that London is the city for me, along comes a book like New York Skyscrapers (by Dirk Stichweh)and makes me realize that I've been a fickle lover. Oh, New York, you're still my only one--will you still have me?

I really loved this book. For one thing, it's oversized, and I love oversized books (now that I no longer work in a library, and I don't have to bitch and swear about shelving them). Any book of photography about New York City really needs to be an oversized book; it's particularly necessary when you're trying to do credit to its skyscrapers.* In this collection are photographs, histories, and facts about seventy-nine of the city's best known high-rise buildings, including the years when they were completed, their architects, and their height. The photographs, done by Jorg Machirus and Scott Murphy, are universally beautiful, and I'm getting just old enough to appreciate that even the text in this book is slightly larger than typical. And, in addition to the rather straightforward historical and arhictectural information, you get very readable tidbits like this:

"The unusual ground plan of the [Flatiron] building makes for a lack of standardized office spaces, but at the same time almost every office unit admits daylight." (p. 67.)

I was impressed by that, because who doesn't like to work where there's some daylight? Kudos to Daniel Burnham, the designer of the Flatiron Building, on that one. So if you need some New York eye candy, after checking out Stacy Horn's blog for her near daily New York pictures, you should definitely pick up this book.

*The cover of this book, featuring a rather standard shot of the Empire State Building and the Chrysler building, doesn't really reflect the many aerial and atypical (but beautiful) angles used for the photography of the seventy-nine buildings profiled.

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.

Rick Steves, bad boy?

Normally I think Rick Steves is the most boring travel writer/presenter on the planet. I often watch his shows on PBS because I like travel shows, and because every time Mr. CR and I see his "Back Door" productions logo, we giggle, because we are immature. But if I want witty travel talk, I watch Burt Wolf.*

So I was pleasantly surprised by Steves's new travel narrative, titled Travel as a Political Act. Although Steves makes his living writing straightforward tour guides and running tours, this is more of a thoughtful book on travel, explaining how the cultures of other parts of the world differ from our culture in America. He strikes a nice balance; he's unabashed about saying he loves being American,** and he's actually thankful to be operating his small business in America, but he's also generous about pointing out how other cultures may have figured out different and very valid lifestyles; in Denmark, for example, residents pay much higher taxes but are also highly content with the health care, education, and other services their government provides. He also describes a number of Islamic countries, including Turkey, Iran, and Morocco, and is particularly interested that Morocco seems to be prospering while largely ignoring America and its cultural mandates (he found that Tangier had three languages on all of their street signs: Arabic, French, and Spanish). I also liked his idea, stated in his concluding chapter, that the "ultimate souvenir is a broader outlook."

But perhaps my favorite part of this book was reading about Europe's different approaches to drug use and their emphasis on "harm reduction," particularly where hard drugs (like heroin) are concerned. By pointing out that other first-world nations can and indeed do function, even in countries where you can go to "coffeeshops" to smoke marijuana, I think Steves is providing some valuable insight. I was also just tickled to find out that he is a former board member of NORML and sometimes speaks to groups in America about Europe's approach to drug laws and enforcement. Rick Steves, bad boy. Who knew?

*I have a huge crush on Burt, which disturbs Mr. CR.

**Steves's patriotism doesn't particularly bother me, as he seems to have developed it by learning about other cultures and giving it some independent thought, which is not a typical hallmark of patriotism (or so I've found).

The pleasures and sorrows of Alain de Botton.

I have always rather enjoyed books by Alain de Botton. I really enjoyed Status Anxiety, although I'm hard-pressed to remember anything about it, now that I think of it, and I also liked The Art of Travel. Truth be told, though, I think I enjoy his subjects and the formats of his books more than I actually enjoy his style; Status Anxiety was about how we all try to keep up with each other in what we own and the affluence we project; it also included a number of photographs which served to break up de Botton's sometimes dense text.

The same goes for his most recent book, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work. I read it over the last weekend and found it quite enjoyable, although once again the inclusion of photographs really helped it along. In the book he examines a number of different professions, but he doesn't so much investigate them as he ruminates on them, and sometimes from afar.* (In a chapter seemingly about transmission engineering, electricity, and the structure and construction of electric line pylons, he describes the work from the somewhat removed vantage point of walking along a trail of pylons across southeast England with a pylon installer and enthusiast, describing less the actual process of pylon installation than the willingness of human beings to ignore such fundamentally basic and important structures in their lives and surroundings.)

I don't know that this is an author I'd like to have a conversation with (he seems a bit prickly sometimes**) and sometimes I did get the feeling he's in love with the sound of his own voice, as when he describes his experiences at an aviation conference:

"At the stand of the world's second-largest engine manufacturer, I spent some minutes observing an unusually attractive young saleswoman with shoulder-length chestnut hair, dressed in a beige suit, who was biting the nail of her left index finger and crossing her slender legs whilst leaning against a large fan blade. She was not the first of her type I had seen that day, but something about her appearance left me thoughtful. I had until then believed that the vendors' frequent and deliberate reliance on feminine appeal was merely a vulgar stratagem intended to win over airline executives, through an implicit suggestion that a purchase might bring them closer to intimacy with a sales agent. Now I began to see the matter differently: it seemed obvious that no order, however lucrative, would actually render these women available to buyers, so their presence on the stands took on a more poignant and commercially effective dimension. Their real function was to serve as a reminder of the unavailability of beauty to an overwhelmingly male, middle-aged and harried-looking base of customers..."

I just don't know about all that. And it seemed to take a long time for de Botton to say. But overall? The subject matter and the photographs still won the day; the chapter on accountancy was a wonder to behold, and I simply love all books about work, the way only someone who really tries to avoid work at all costs can.

*Except for his chapter on tuna fishing, which is alarmingly in-depth. If you like tuna (and by this I mean, like having it in a sandwich) and you want to keep on liking tuna, I would suggest not reading the tuna chapter.

**Although I was a bit tickled that he told a reviewer who gave this book a less than sparkling review "I will hate you till the day I die and wish you nothing but ill will in every career move you make." There he was able to get something said with remarkable economy of words! Reviewers of course have the right to actually review books, and authors have the right to respond, so his prickliness doesn't really bother me here.

Not smart enough for pop culture.

The other day this book came in at the library for me: Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry.

I totally don't remember why I requested this book, or where I heard about it. (Sadly, this happens a lot; my memory is a sieve, except of course where BBC miniseries and their stars--about most of whom I can recite their ages, their spouses, and their most well-known roles.) So when I picked it up and saw the cover with the little porcelain doggies, I got excited, thinking maybe it was an actual auction catalog.*

But then I got it home and saw the blurbs on back from Dave Eggers and Amy Sedaris, so now I'm guessing it's some kind of clever humor book that I'm entirely missing the point of. It's laid out perfectly, just like an auction catalog, with lot numbers, short descriptions, and price estimates, only the artifacts here are the remains of a couple's relationship:

"LOT 1224: Two Aprons. One red-and-white striped cotton, label reads 'Daniel Boulud Kitchens.' One vintage flower print, no label. Laid into pocket of latter is a note on the back of a shopping list handwritten from Morris to Doolan. Reads in full: 'Dear one, Third batch of macaroons definitely the best. X.' 7 x 2 in. Both aprons size small. $5-10." (p. 88.)

So yup, I'm pretty sure that's we have, the story of a couple's break-up (I guess; I haven't looked closely enough to find any evidence of the break-up, most of the blurbs I've seen have been for rather pedestrian couple-type things), in auction catalog form, and now, in real time, I'm going to click over to Powell's and see if that's right...and, yup, here we go: "In Leanne Shaptons marvelously inventive and invented auction catalog, the 325 lots up for auction are what remain from the relationship between Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris (who arent real people, but might as well be)."

I guess it's funny, but it's a bit too far down the rabbit hole for me. Pop culture humor like this usually just ends up making me feel dumber, and if I need that, I'll just go about my daily business--I don't have to read a book for it.

*I am addicted to auction catalogs, and auctions, although the auctions where I live tend to offer primarily bed linens, lawn tractors, and maybe a bit of antique glassware or a few guns thrown in. If you want a totally decadent time sign up for the online catalog service at Bloomsbury Auctions; every now and then I get auction catalogs about rare books and prints and even the catalogs themselves are drool-worthy.

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.

Small town pictorial records, continued.

I really love photography collections, so whenever I wander through my local library's catalog and see a new photography book out, I'll typically request it regardless of its subject matter.

I particularly love photography books about small towns and communities (such as the superlative book The Oxford Project), and Facing North: Portraits of Ely, Minnesota, is no exception. It is filled with black-and-white photographs of (primarily) the small town's residents, and a few short essays about life on the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Only 3,700 residents live in the town year round, but the region hosts at least 200,000 visitors each year, which makes for an interesting conjunction of personalities.

Is the book as good as The Oxford Project? Well, no, but then, that's a tough book to beat. This book does include small informative paragraphs about all the subjects in the photographs ("When we showed up to take his picture, he came outside in an old green miner's uniform--something you see a lot of around Ely--toting his oxygen tank"), but the true glory here is the photographs themselves. You'll have to read the introduction to find out about the camera and film used, but it's some kind of special-format camera (and the skill of the photographer) that makes the faces of the people sharp and the other edges in the photographs gently fuzzy. They're beautiful, beautiful photographs, and it's a book well worth looking at.

Underneath our feet.

Up the street from me they're tearing up a major cross street, and replacing all sorts of pipes and fire hydrants and big cement things which Mr. CR thinks are drains of some kind, but really, how would we know? So we walk up regularly to take a look at progress, and all I can think every time is that I wish I could see a cross-section of everything under our street and house, to see how all that sewer and stuff works. I'm just glad someone understands it all. (Or at least I hope they do.)

The whole thing has put me a bit in the mood for a book about the underground, so which better book to choose than New York Underground: The Anatomy of a City? It's not been quite what I expected it to be, but it is really interesting nonetheless. The author, Julia Solis, points out that many of the underground tunnels and secret spaces she details and has photographed for her book are no longer accessible, because access to anything underground after 9/11 has been seriously curtailed.

"The underground is being policed like never before. Hatches have been sealed, subaquatic tunnels are guarded, and cameras have been installed. Information is disappearing off Web sites, archives are closing to the public, and photographers of infrastructure are increasingly met with suspicion. I was lucky to have discovered nearly all of the spaces in this book before the terror attacks and to have found a few kindred spirits among those who work below the streets, since it is now a bad idea to venture into the city's tunnels." (pp. 6-7.)

That makes me kind of sad, but at least we have this book to see the utility tunnels, subway and rail tunels, underground passages, and building foundations. For a book about dark and underground spaces, it's weirdly illuminating and totally beautiful.

In other neighborhood news, this morning I stumbled out to the curb with my trash, three-quarters asleep and wearing my fifteen-year-old robe, and some guy driving by stopped and said, "Hey, I haven't seen you for a hundred years!" And I didn't know who he was, which I felt bad having to admit. I'm guessing he was someone from high school, but he only told me his first name, and that didn't really help. I just wish I'd had the presence of mind to say, "Dude, I have blocked out almost all of high school." I don't know why it bothered me so, or why I'm boring you with this story. This must be one of the side effects of freelance working at home; you are all now my co-workers who I must bore with my stories. Good working with you!

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!

Heaven, in a perfect marriage of engineering and New York City.

Two of my very favorite things in the world are engineering (in a general sense, although I'm also very fond of engineers) and New York City. So when I saw the oversized book titled New York Rises, you know I was all over that.

It's a book of photographs taken by a man named Eugene de Salignac, who was not a famous or artiste photographer, but who worked for the New York City Department of Bridges during the first few decades of the twentieth century. Culled from a collection of twenty thousand eight-by-ten-inch glass negatives that had been sitting around in the basement of New York's Municipal Archives, this is a collection of photos of bridge-building, building building (the Municipal Building, to be exact), city inspectors doing their measuring and inspecting work, accident scenes, and city residents and workers during the Depression.

It's fantastic, absolutely fantastic. The photograph of men just starting excavation for a subway on Delancey Street was taken in 1908; in 2009, can you imagine starting a major subway building job with three or four guys just digging a big hole on the side of the street? And to give you an idea of the mettle of the man we're dealing with here, consider that some of his shots taken from the top of the Brooklyn Bridge were taken when he was 72 years old:

"One year from reluctant retirement, he climbed to the top of the tower holding an eight-by-ten-inch glass-plate camera and at least six sheets of glass. He probably had an assistant to help him with the equipment, which must have weighed about fifty pounds, but he still had to climb the towers himself. There is only one way to get to the top of those towers: to walk up the two-foot-wide cable from the roadway to the tower, 380 feet above the river." (p. 18.)

Get this book. It can be read in an hour, and it will leave you thinking about the beauty of building things for days.

Marvelous engineering.

It was always my secret dream to marry an engineer.

You'll notice I've always been a pragmatic girl; I recognized early on I wasn't going to have the brains to BE an engineer, so I tweaked my dream accordingly. It didn't come true, but the fact remains I've always been a big fan of engineers. My brother is an engineer. I used to be an engineering librarian, and students training to be engineers remain the nicest group of students and people I've ever worked for. (In fact, when I left the engineering library for the public library, the members of the public were so shockingly mean, when compared to engineering students, that I cried after work the whole first month.)

So the other day when I was browsing the library stacks and found the book Marvels of Engineering, I thought, hey, I miss engineering. So I brought it home and spent a very enjoyable Saturday evening perusing it. I know. I'm the biggest nerd ever. But did you know that "in 1824, Joseph Aspdin concocted 'Portland cement' by burning a mixture of clay and lime. He had rediscovered the art of making cement, which was known to the Romans"? I thought not. It covers a ton of subjects: waterways, bridges, railroads, tunnels, skyscrapers, sports arenas, pyramids, and gothic cathedrals (among many others).

It's a great book, worth it for the pictures alone, but also for the explanatory text. It is, in short, the type of book you should buy if you have kids, and just leave it laying around for them to discover and look at. I may have missed the boat on marrying an engineer. But maybe if we have kids I can keep the dream alive by hoping they'll become engineers?

Now THIS is history, part 2.

The other day a friend said to me, "Hey, did you know that Terry Jones [of Monty Python fame] has written a book on the Crusades?"

Well, I hadn't, but I immediately set about correcting that situation by requesting the book from the library. It's the companion to a BBC/A&E TV special (which I also want to see now) and it's a very, very readable account of the Crusades, and the Middle Ages by extension. It's not really funny, which you might expect from a Monty Python guy, because funny is hard to pull off where anything as senselessly tragic as the Crusades are involved, but it's definitely got style:

"During the battle a Norman eyewitness noticed that the Turks went into the attack with a distinctive war-cry: 'These Turks began, all at once, to howl and gabble and shout, saying with loud voices in their own language some devilish word which I do not understand.' Tancred's biographer, Radulph of Caen, explained that this 'devilish word' was "Allachibar,' that is, Allah al-Akhbar or 'God is great.' The two sides were hurling themselves into battle against each other, one side yelling 'God's will! God's will! God's will!' and the other 'God is great!' Both sides were addressing the same god. Neither could understand what the other was saying." (p. 49.)

In detailing the Crusades' leaders desire to amass land and booty, the author also subtly points out that love of money, perhaps even more so than love of God, had a little somethin' somethin' to do with these wars.

The book is great. But it was also fun picking it up from the library, where the check-out clerk got very excited when he saw it and said, "Hey, you're the second person to check this out this week, how interesting, I think now I have to request it!" It IS interesting that I was the second person to get it, since it's an oldish book (pub. date 1995). And I appreciated the clerk's telling me so, and we had a nice little chat about it, which I enjoyed. Evidently the library I go to now, as opposed to the library I worked for, doesn't have any stupid rule about clerks not talking to patrons about books. Can you believe I was ordered not to talk to people about any of the books they were checking out?* I know the reason for it; we weren't supposed to be prying. But I was always annoyed that my bosses thought my fellow circulation clerks and I were too brain-dead to know the difference between making a statement like, "So, I see you've been checking out a lot of divorce books, how's that working out for you?" and "Hey, a book by Terry Jones on the Crusades! Interesting! Let me know what you think of this, I'm considering getting it for myself."

And...end rant. Sorry about that. Clearly the no talky talky rule still rankles.

*Many librarians will disagree with me on this, citing that patrons have a right to privacy. I maintain that it was kind of a dumb rule, since when I sat at the reference desk (same library, different desk) I was supposedly allowed to talk about books to the patrons all I wanted. Which was weird, considering I was the same person regardless of which desk I was sitting at.

Gutsy babe.

Sometimes the bravery of other women astounds me. Perhaps because I am a huge scaredy cat.

A while back I reviewed Deborah Copaken Kogan's novel Between Here and April, and while I basically liked it, there were a few elements that rubbed me the wrong way. In the comments for that review, however, a friend of mine we'll call Minnesota Sarah (hi up there!) reminded me that Kogan has also written the memoir Shutterbabe: Adventures in Love and War, which I promptly went and got from the library. 

Now, how anyone decides they WANT to go to war zones and take photographs among largely hostile crowds has always baffled me. But when a woman does it? Then I'm really stymied. For one thing, I'd say I personally place a pretty high value on my own safety. I'm a big believer in hoping to minimize trouble by not going out to look for it. This must be a trait that Kogan has never had, because the book opens with her traveling with a bunch of Afghani fighters in Afghanistan--by herself. Holy crap. Other chapters detail her experiences covering wars in Zimbabwe and snapping pictures in Romanian orphanages (photos are included throughout the book), and unless you have a high capacity to read about human suffering, I wouldn't say this is the book for you. She also, of course, dishes on the personal details of being a globetrotting photography correspondent, including a (what seemed to me) somewhat unhappy affair with another photographer.

But I digress. This is one gutsy woman. Consider her photography thesis project for college:

"[My] thesis was called 'Shooting Back,' and it was a series of photos of men who had accosted me in various red-light districts up and down the Eastern seaboard. New York's Forty-second Street. Boston's Combat Zone. South Philly. The whole project evolved as a sort of radical form of self-therapy after I'd fallen victim to a number of armed robberies (two) and assaults (four). It was the equivalent of an acrophobe tackling Mount Everest, or an agoraphobe facing down the mall at Christmas: I was a bad-guy-o-phobe, hanging out in the belly of the beast.

I'd troll the seedy streets outside the strip clubs and the porno shops and wait for the inevitable comment, which ran the gamut from 'Hey, baby, wanna get it on?' to 'Suck my dick, bitch.' To every proposition I would quickly and confidently reply, 'No, thank you, but I would like to shoot your photo.' This retort and the presence of my camera changed the entire dynamic of the encounter. My clunky old Nikkormat became my weapon, turning hunter into prey, and as I held my wide-angle 28-millimeter lens mere inches from these men's faces, distoring their images, I felt the universe tipping for a moment in my favor." (p. 44.)

I ask you: who does that? I stand in awe of the gutsiness of other women.

The Oxford Project.

No cutesy post headings today, and no time to waste: If you haven't yet seen or bought Peter Feldstein's and Stephen G. Bloom's beautiful and oversized photography book The Oxford Project, you're missing out. To say it is a good book would be entirely understating the case. To say it is one of those rare books that stops time and is transcendent might get a little closer to the mark.

Which is so odd, considering it is a book of photographs of the residents of a small town (Oxford) in Iowa, and is almost oppressive in its subjects' normality. It helps that it is a unique idea: in 1984, art professor and photographer Peter Feldstein set up a small studio in Oxford and invited all the town's residents (population: 693) to have their photos taken for free. Twenty-five years later he went back and took the residents' portraits again (nearly a hundred residents had died; another hundred had moved away; but the rest were there and were largely amenable to having their pictures taken again); he also took along writer Stephen Bloom, who recorded anything the Oxfordians felt like telling them. Between the historical pictures, the present-day pictures, and the text of what the residents had to say, believe me when I say this is a book like no other.

Do you know what I mean when I say a book is so good it stops time? It doesn't happen very often but when it does it's one of those experiences that makes life worthwhile. It might be more strictly accurate to say such a book speeds up time, but for some reason it feels more like time is stopped. I started this book at 10 p.m. on Saturday night, and when I looked up from it the first time, it was 10:45, and it felt like only a minute had passed. The next time I looked up it was 11:30, and then 12:20. Finally I forced myself to put it down because I knew I was going to be tired on Sunday. Then, Sunday morning, I picked it right back up and was lost for another hour. It was wonderful, except I was bereft when I finished it, because lately I have particularly wanted books that, as one might beg Calgon, "take me away from all this."

So what did I particularly notice about this book? Well, the pictures, for one, which are nothing fancy and are in black and white, but which are fascinating. One thing I was particularly drawn to were the older peoples' hands; there is something about the curl of the hand when people have worked with their hands all their lives that is fascinating, individual, and yet strangely universal. In the older women you notice it in their fingers and in the flesh around their wedding rings; in the older men you see it in the permanent crook of their hands and fingers hanging at their sides.

I also enjoyed the text. I can't say I understand the appeal or atmosphere of small towns; I was raised in the midwest as well but, even though I lived on a farm, we were near enough to a bigger city that we never really felt like we had a cohesive small community. But I love reading what people said about living in small-town Iowa, as well as the number of viewpoints that were represented. Some people loved the town; one woman never felt like she fit in; some men and women are happy and fulfilled in their families; some are lonely; many have suffered terrible injuries, hardships, and the deaths of either their (too-young) parents or children. I'll just share one quote, because you simply must go and read this book yourself:

Bob Tandy: "I still get a lot of grief for having a college degree. My family is proud on one hand, but it's really not talked about because it makes me different from my brothers and the extended clan. I wanted to get out of Oxford in the worst way...

Our first child, Britton Elise, died as an infant almost three years ago. The doctors believed she died of placental abruption, which is a Latin term for Bad Fucking Luck. For six days my daughter lived in the hospital. She got to meet all of her cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and two great-grandmas...

That's Oxford. People have family feuds. They bitch. But when the shit hits the fan, people who on Wednesday were pissing and moaning, they'll be helping each other get through whatever you need them for. Then by Friday they'll be calling each other assholes again." (p. 30.)

Eternal light indeed.

I have always been fascinated by ancient Egypt.

Egypt tops my list of places that I'd go if time, money, and personal safety were no objects. I used to absolutely devour books about King Tut, Queen Nefertiti, and egyptology. I even read Robin Cook's Sphinx when I was about ten (and decidedly too young for some of the subject matter) because it had a picture of a pyramid on the cover. (I'm still not sure where that book came from; it wasn't my parents', and it wasn't a library book--a sibling's, maybe?) For years afterward I wanted to be an egyptologist, and remember feeling crushed when I put it together that job openings for egyptologists in the midwest (where I have always intended firmly to stay, negative temperatures notwithstanding) were few and far between.

To this day, whenever I see a book about ancient Egypt, I bring it home. The latest such treasure was The Eternal Light of Egypt: A Photographic Journey, by Sarite Sanders. It's published by Thames & Hudson, and even though the photography is all black and white, it's still beautiful. I particularly love the close-ups of statues and carvings of human torsos, particularly those on buildings where light and shadow comes into play. They had such a beautiful way of carving--these torsos, most of them featuring bare midriffs or chests, look like they could breathe any second. To make stone look like it is a living thing is a pretty fantastic thing to be able to do, particularly way back in BC times.

The photographs are beautiful, but still they're only half of the book. The other half of the book is quotes and texts from ancient Egyptian sources (as well as a few more modern ones), and those are beautiful too. Consider:

"I live on Truth, and I have my being in Truth, I am Horus, who dwells in the heart, who dwells in the centre of the body. I live by saying what is in my heart, and it shall not be taken away from me. My heart is mine, and it shall not be wounded. No terror shall subdue me..." --The Book of the Dead, Chapter 29b.

That feels eternal to me. Take that, Julian Barnes.

Oh, damn it, now I'm hungry.

Which is not a rare occurrence, granted. But you know how they say you should never go grocery shopping while you're hungry? Well, on a related note, you should never read the book The Food Life: Inside the World of Food with the Grocer Extraordinaire at Fairway while you're hungry.

It's a beautiful book, first off, with tons of pictures (which I wish were in color, but you can't have everything), and it's fascinating. Author Steve Jenkins (who is also the author of The Cheese Primer) relates the details of his decades spent working for the Fairway grocery store, which has several locations in New York City, describing how he built their cheese department, as well as how all of the store's departments and managers work together. It's primarily a book about food, for foodies (I'll admit I skimmed the chapters on olive oil and vinegar, I'm not a gourmet cook and those chapters could only hold my interest for so long), but it's also one of my favorite types of books: the work memoir.*

Jenkins admits that he got the job and then fell backwards into loving it, eventually becoming a cheese expert. His love and respect for his job, the objects of his expertise, and his co-workers is inspiring. He also has the correct attitude toward shoppers, in my opinion:

"If your kid is cranky and you're on your way to Fairway or on your way home via Fairway, it is advisable to consider dropping the kid at the apartment, tying the little sweetie securely to something, and then going out to shop...If I see one of your children pick up a twenty-dollar bottle of balsamic vinegar just for the hell of it, I'm going to snatch it away from him (her, whatever), glare at you, and hope you get indignant. After all, shopping here is not a right, it's a privilege. You have to know how to conduct yourself." (pp. 111-112.)

*In addition to being a good memoir, this book also includes a ton of good-lookin' recipes.