Underneath My Christmas Tree

My sister gave me a wonderful Christmas present: William Blake: The Complete Illuminated Books. (Look at it at the publisher's web site here.)
William Blake was an illustrator as well as a poet. Much of his poetry (perhaps all of it) was published in the form of drawings that Blake created himself. Click this link, for instance, to see the plate of my favorite Blake poem, The Sick Rose.
The reproduction in my new book is much crisper and more clear than the Internet link above. My book also includes all of Blake's work its original size, except for one image, the poem "Laocoon", that had to be reduced by about 30 percent.
I'm looking forward to reading the introduction by David Bindman.
Another thing that fascinates me about this paperback book is how relatively inexpensive it is. Amazon lists it at $25.17. I say this not to diminish my sister's wonderful gift, but to appreciate the fact that this kind of high-brow art is accessible at a reasonable price.
In other holiday books news, J.K. Rowling announced a few days before Christmas that the new Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, will be released on July 16. Hooray, hooray! I will be writing more about my appreciation for the Harry Potter books as this date approaches. I encourage anyone who loves books to at least try reading the first book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

Reading for a Merry Christmas

If you can make the time this week for some great reading, I urge you to turn to that old classic, A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens. (Click the link to read it in its entirety.)

Because Tiny Tim looms so large in the popular consciousness, people mistakenly recall Dickens as being maudlin or sentimental. Actually, he has a biting, sarcastic sense of humor, especially when it comes to the rapacious excesses of industrial capitalism.

I particularly love the opening of A Christmas Carol. Here it is:

Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were partners for I don't know how many years. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, and sole mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral, and solemnised it with an undoubted bargain.

Teaching journalistic writing

William Zinsser is the author of On Writing Well, one of my favorite books about nonfiction writing. He's a new teacher at my alma mater, the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. What I wanna know is, how come he didn't teach when I was there? Not fair!

Read the alumni newsletter here announcing it. Warning, it's a pdf document.

Another tidbit I gleaned from the newsletter is that James B. Stewart is still working on Disneywar. (I've written about this book previously here.) Stewart teaches at Columbia, too, and in fairness I will add that he did teach then when I was a student, lo these many moons ago (1999, anyway).

Is anyone waiting for this book with more bated breath than me?

Hot 100 X 2

The New York Times and The Washington Post have both published their lists of best books for 2004. Check them out here and here while they're still freely available.
I adore year-in-review lists. (And not just for books, I also like music and movies.) It's fun too see how many of the books I've read, and I get lots of ideas for what I want to read next.
On the other hand, the lists do give me that queasy feeling of being chronically underread. I think to myself, I'll never catch up! I try to accept this feeling and then move beyond it, because there are just too many books out there. No one, and I mean no one, will ever catch up. Get used to it!
For all you foodies out there, the NYT has also posted a section on the year's notable cookbooks. Check it out here for the time being.

The Intermittence of Memory

Marilynne Robinson has a new book out. It's called Gilead. The New York Times Book Review calls it "demanding, grave and lucid." (Read their review here.)
I read Marilynne Robinson's first novel, Housekeeping about 10 years ago. I remember that I liked it a lot. But what was it about? ... an aunt, a couple of orphans maybe? I think the aunt comes to live with her nieces (or is it nephews?) after their parents die. Or something like that. And then my mind goes blank.
This is no slam on Robinson. I clearly, clearly, remember reading Anna Karenina when I was 16. My favorite English teacher recommended that I read it specifically, and it made a big impression on me. I loved the opening sentence: "All happy families are the same, but every unhappy family is unhappy in it's own way." But beyond that? Of course, I remember that Anna has an affair with Vronksy, and then she throws herself onto the railroad tracks in despair. But can I remember anything more insightful than this Cliff's Notes-like synopsis? I cannot.
This disturbs me. As I grow older, I find more and more that I can't remember details and subtle insights of all the books I've read. Sure I can remember some things ... I can remember specific lines like "Blow, winds, blow and crack your cheeks!" from King Lear. I can remember the spooky owl from the children's book Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, the poignancy of him foretelling the death of the tree where he lives. I can remember the love that Henri, a soldier in Napoleon's army, has for Villanelle, the Venetian casino dealer of Jeannette Winterson's The Passion. (But even that isn't quite so: I remember the love story, but I had to look up Villanelle's name and I initially misspelled Henri.)
If I can't remember books, does that mean I've lost their insights? I think I have lost some part of them. Partly for that reason, there are some books I read over and over again. To Kill a Mockingbird, for instance, is a book I try to read every year. And every year I get more out of it: I understand an allusion I didn't get previously, or certain parts of it mean more to me as I get older.
When it comes down to it, though, I think I do derive benefit from books even when I later lose track of their details. They affect me at the time that I read them. Here's a good analogy: I don't remember what I had for breakfast the first time I ran a 5K race, but I have no doubt it helped me all the same.

$5 vs. $0

As I've written previously, I recently watched the movie versions of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" and "Sense and Sensibility."
I rented the two movies -- technically, one movie and one mini-series -- from the local corporate video outlet at a cost of approximately $5. This weekend, I was at the library and saw both titles. I could have checked them out from the library at a cost of approximately $0.

Librarians in the news

Two recent news bits on libraries here ...
First, librarians in Michigan want to pursue jail time as a penalty for the most egregious cases of overdue books. (Thanks to RF for the tip!)

For example, one patron from Bad Axe owes $1,190 for 73 items — mainly science-fiction books — hoarded for more than a year, Paffhausen said.

Patrons keep an average of $25,000 in overdue materials out of the county's library system each year, officials said.

That costs taxpayers money, because the library often must buy second copies to replace unreturned materials, leaving less for new books, CDs and DVDs, Paffhausen said.

The other news is librarians in Orlando want to stop solitary adults from loitering in the children's section. Adults can go into the kid's section and get books, but no hanging out alone allowed.
Librarians there say they haven't had any problems, but they want to act now to create a "safe environment for children". That seems a little vague to me. I would describe it plainly as a pre-emptive meaure against child sex predators. But I guess they don't want to say "libraries" and "child sex predators" in the same sentence, and I suppose I can't blame them.

Jail time for the worst overdue borrowers sounds pretty good to me. I have more mixed feelings about the no-adults-in-the-kids-section rule. In principle, I don't like to see restrictions created before any actual problems have happened. It seems paranoid. On the other hand, I don't see a huge problem in asking adults, once they've made their book selections, to leave the kids section for the kids.
What do you think?

Glutting myself on Jane Austen

I liked Sense and Sensibility so much, I moved right on to Pride and Prejudice.
I liked that one even better -- dear Miss Elizabeth Bennett and proud Mr. Darcy!
Then I rented the movie versions of both books (here and here).
My spouse thinks I'm wacky, but we're having fun imitating Austen-speak:
"My dear Mr. -----, Shall we dine at the charming Thai restaurant near East Lake-enshire this evening? The particulars of their meals are quite charming."
"Why, that would be quite splendid, Mrs. -----. I should enjoy partaking the evening meal in your stimulating company. Would you be so kind as to do me the honor of traveling alongside me in my Nissan Sentra?"

Daring To Name Names

Remember my previous post on Another Bullshit Night in Suck City? It's a literary memoir about the author's relationship with his alcoholic father.

National Public Radio recently interviewed author Nick Flynn on "Morning Edition." You can hear it here.

Interestingly, the book title that so intrigued me is deemed unspeakable on NPR. They don't say it until the very end and then they say, literally, "Another B.S. night in Suck City." If the book's title is so unspeakable, why even bother discussing it? My spouse said it was just another example of NPR being ridiculously squeamish. I think it's kind of silly of them myself. Like people are going to run screaming from their radio if they hear the word bullshit, especially after hearing the disturbing story of a wretched, homeless alcoholic.

Not that this kind of thing hasn't happened before in other media. The New York Times, for instance, reviewed a play by Suzan-Lori Parks called "Fucking A," but refused to name it. (Here's a Village Voice review documenting the flap.) The Times referred to it as "F----- A". I honestly couldn't figure out what the title was for the longest time ... I knew it was some variation on "Fuck" but the familiar phrase just didn't occur to me. Finally, I was in New York visiting friends and saw an unexpurgated sign advertising the play. "Oooooh! That's what it is!"
And Parks isn't some nobody flinging around profanity for an easy pose, either. She won a Pulitzer for her play "Topdog/Underdog" and wrote a novel, "Getting Mother's Body." I haven't read any of it, but my favorite independent bookstore recommends "Getting Mother's Body," so it's probably pretty good.

Yet the NFL can show Janet Jackson's exposed breast or their similarly tasteless Desperate Housewives promo. (I'm not going to bother detailing these recent flaps; if you haven't heard about them, read about it here.)

I don't worry so much about TV taste scandals. If you don't want to see crude depictions of sexual commodification, here's a news flash: Don't turn on your TV. Shocking as it may seem, you don't have even have to have a TV in your home. Though I wonder how many people realize this.

But literary self-censorship bothers me more. I don't want to live in a world full of profanity, by any means, but come on. This is serious literature here. If it's worth talking about, why not just say the name? Isn't there a common-sense solution here that doesn't smack of big-brotherish prudery?

What's your opinion?

Librarian Humor

Someone on the librarians' email group that I subscribe to put this together. It made me chuckle ...

I must admit, there have been times I’ve had a difficult time keeping a straight face at the reference desk because of off-the-wall questions, but it’s important that one does. It’s a true test of librarian diplomacy to treat each and every question respectfully, even off-the-wall ones.

Weird Questions Asked of Librarians:

"Do you have a list of all the books written in the English language?"

"I was here about three weeks ago looking at a cookbook that cost $39.95. Do you know which one it is?"

"Can you tell me why so many famous Civil War battles were fought on National Park sites?"

"Do you have any books with photographs of dinosaurs?"

"I need a photocopy of Abraham Lincoln's birth certificate."

"Do you have a list of all the books I've ever read?"

My favorite books, Part 1

I've been working on a list my favorite books, but it's taking me a lot longer than I thought ... partly to decide what books should be on the list, and partly to describe the books and do them justice.
So here is Part 1 of my favorite books, with more to come at a later date.

Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters
My blog is named in tribute to this wonderful book. See previous post here.

Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Like Spoon River, Life of Pi uses beautiful writing to tackle the most important issues: What is life and why does it matter? The philosophy is carefully cloaked in an adventure story: A young boy is shipwrecked and must share his life boat with a tiger. A real tiger. I found an excerpt you can read here.

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
The book's characters include teenaged tennis prodigies, recovering alcoholics in South Boston, Quebecois wheelchair assassins and the Prettiest Girl of All Time. Infinite Jest is very long, very difficult, very funny, and very profound. Wallace's writing has a very kind, compassionate quality here that I don't see as much in some of his more recent work.

Collected Poems by T.S. Eliot
I read The Waste Land when I was 16, and it still startles me whenever I go back to it. It's so full of longing and sadness, but it also has a very dignified kind of hope. I've read that Eliot wanted to call this poem "He Do The Police in Different Voices" but Ezra Pound talked him out of it. Thank goodness for friends.

Enchanted by Austen

Jane Austen was on the long list of authors I'm embarrassed to say I've never read. (William Faulkner and James Joyce are also sadly on that list.)
Fortunately, Kristin in my book group chose Sense and Sensibility for our last selection. The novel is about two sisters: Elinor, sensitive but practical, caring but cautious; and Marianne, passionate, strong willed, and a real "To thine own self be true" type. Marianne's emotions get her into trouble, while Elinor cautions restraint.
This novel falls into the category of what we used to call in college "the marriage drama," and both these young women are clearly on their way to the altar. But who will win their hands? In the meantime, it's Elinor's Sense vs. Marianne's Sensibility.
What interests me is that the battle is still relevent. Check out this story on a local college's problems with its study abroad program, the problem being the kids can't behave themselves, getting into fistfights and displaying other examples of poor manners. A Marianne of 2004 might join these kids in saying, "I gotta be me!":

Professors say some of the problems overseas come when students have trouble adjusting to a new culture.
"Students have a very strong sense ... that it's important to be natural and true to their feelings," said Andrew Chittick, an associate professor of East Asian humanities at Eckerd.

Early Voting in Florida

My spouse and I took advantage of early voting yesterday, the Saturday before the election. We had to stand in line for two and a half hours. Afterward, my feet hurt and I was very tired. But I got to cast my ballot for what is the most important presidential race of my lifetime. So it was definitely worth it. (Sorry, but I'm not saying how I voted, you'll have to guess! This blog is nonpartisan.)
The polling place was at one of the two local libraries where I visit frequently. Standing in line for those hours, I got to observe my neighbors. I wondered: For how many was it the first time they had come to this library? The East Lake Community Library is a great library ... They tend to have a lot of the newer books I'm interested in, and the building is homey and the librarians are very friendly.
To help voters pass the time while they waited, the librarians rolled out carts of old magazines. At one point, I looked down the line, and almost everyone was reading! It warmed my heart, it really did.

Happy Halloween!

I've been looking for some good Halloween-related reading, but I haven't been able to find much.
I checked out from the library "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," aka the story of the Headless Horseman, but it wasn't quite what I had in mind.
Reading it now as an adult, I can tell that it's supposed to be clever. Ichabod is the pretentious schoolmaster trying to win the hand of the lovely and rich Katrina Van Tassel. But Ichabod's devil-may-care rival Brom Bones triumphs using his country wisdom and the legend of the Horseman.
Maybe Ichabod's fall was an original storyline in the 1800s, but now it seems like just another page in America's long history of anti-intellectualism.
Not that I liked Ichabod, mind you. He clearly just wanted to marry Katrina for her money, the jerk.
Nevertheless, I will give Washington Irving lots of credit for vivid writing. Here's his description of Ichabod:

The cognomen of Crane was not inapplicable to his person. He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small, and flat at top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weather-cock, perched upon his spindle neck, to tell which way the wind blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some scarecrow eloped from a cornfield.

You can read the whole story for yourself here.

If you know of a good Halloween book or story, post it in the comments or send me an email. (You can use the "Email me" link on the upper right.)

High-tech Libraries

I am continually impressed by the technology my local library uses. Thanks to the Internet, I can browse the library catalogue from home. If my library has the book, I can put a hold on it. That means the library staff will fetch the book for me and hold it at the counter for a few days, until I come into get it.
If my library doesn't have it, I can search through the local library network. (Here it's called Alleycat.) It searches libraries within about 100 miles of my town. If one of those libraries has the book, they will send it to my local library. Then I get a phone call or email to let me know it's there, and I have a week to pick it up.
This is super nifty. It saves me lots of time, and I feel like I have access to just about any book I'm interested in.

TV B-Gone!

I ran across this and couldn't resist posting about it ... A guy in California has invented a keychain gizmo -- you click the button and it will turn off any remote-controlled TV. It works because he's programmed it with the "off" codes for every known type of remote.
This could come in handy in restaurants, airports, waiting rooms and other public spaces. Reclaim quiet reading space from the yackety idiot box!
Of course, civility would demand that you get the consent of your neighbors before punching the button. I image it might be tempting to secretly punch it and then say, "Oh darn, the TV must have broke!" But that wouldn't be very nice, would it?
This device confirms my suspicion that TV as a genre is in decline. The vaunted computer -- the networked computer, to be exact -- is displacing TV as the primary means of communication, entertainment, and recreation. In the way that TV eclipsed radio in generations past, TV won't go away entirely. It will remain important in many respects, but TV seems to losing its "top dog" status, at least at this moment. As a reader, I can't say I'm overly sad about that. I love the way computers are reaffirming the importance of the writing and reading.

David Sedaris and his book tour

Last night, my book group and I went to see David Sedaris. Sedaris regularly reads his work on National Public Radio and This American Life. He writes about his large, sarcastic Greek family and also about life in Paris with his boyfriend Hugh. Most of it is darkly humorous.
The theater was sold out. It was nice to see. Sedaris stood at a podium and read aloud from manuscripts. It was very writerly.
I wish we would see more authors tour like that ... But I imagine you have to have pretty broad popularity as a writer to sell out venues and make it work from a financial standpoint.
T.S. Eliot was reputed to be very good at reading his work aloud. When he toured the United States, back in the 1950s, he would sell out stadiums.

Spoonreader's inspiration

Yes, the book that inspired me to start my blog is We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People. I wrote a review of it for Baltimore City Weekly, a publication I freelance for.

Technology is blurring the lines between journalists, newsmakers, and the audience, making information exchange more honest and robust, according to Gillmor, a nationally known technology columnist for the San Jose, Calif., Mercury News. And if news organizations are brave enough to embrace change instead of rebuffing it, we could all be the better for it.
“Tomorrow’s news reporting and production will be more of a conversation, or a seminar,” Gillmor writes. “The communication network itself will be a medium for everyone’s voice, not just the few who can afford to buy multimillion-dollar printing presses, launch satellites, or win the government’s permission to squat on the public airwaves.”

Check out the enire review here. Read my other book reviews here.

The sad, precipitous decline of Walt Disney World

My mom and I were in Orlando this weekend, and, not wanting to pay a $50+ entry fee for Disney World, we decided we would instead go to Downtown Disney, which is Disney's shopping/eating/nightclub complex near the park.
I should interject here that I was practically raised on Disney. As a youngster, I had albums of songs from Disney movies like "Cinderella," "Sleeping Beauty," "The Jungle Book" and "Snow White." I adored, adored, adored Winnie the Pooh. Years later, in high school, I was thrilled by Disney's animation revival through films like "The Little Mermaid," "Beauty and the Beast" and "Aladdin." (Read an astute review of "Beauty and the Beast" and its place in the Disney canon here.) I remember seeing "The Little Mermaid" in high school with one of my best buddies, Liz G. When the credits rolled to the song "Under the Sea," we ran down to the screen and danced like lunatics to the calypso-inflected tune. (Back then, I was prone to giddy outbursts when I wasn't listening to The Smiths and morosely contemplating the futility of life.) As an adult, I've come to appreciate even more the amazing soundtracks to movies like Mary Poppins, and the easygoing, intimate charm of a Walt Disney World ride like Peter Pan's Flight.
So it gives me no pleasure whatsoever to say that Disney has gone into utter and complete decline. Disney movies leave me cold, I can't remember the last one I saw in a theater. The parks are not being kept in good repair -- there were water spots clearly visible in the ceiling of "It's a Small World" the last two times I went to the park, for instance. The (relatively) new ride Alien Encounter is cool, but a lot of the other rides added in recent years are just dumb, like Mickey's Toon Town Fair and Space Ranger Spin.
So mom and I headed off to Downtown Disney this weekend, and really, I should have known better. First off, the music was blaring, even outside the shops. Then, there were so many people jammed into the shops that it was hard to stop and look at anything without being trampled. Then, when we did manage to stop and look, 9 times out of 10 the items were plastic crap -- the worst kind of gewgaws and trinkets. Mom thought the stuff was ugly, too.
I'm not saying that Disney shouldn't make money. They absolutely should, because the good Disney movies are nothing short of art, and artists should be compensated for their work. But I am left with the inescapable conclusion that Disney Inc. wants to wring every cent from its tourists, and the company is willing to whore out their characters -- pardon the expression, but that's what it is -- to make a lousy $3 off some wretched disposable tchotchke. Is that what Walt would have wanted? I can't imagine it.
Interestingly, Walt Disney's nephew, Roy Disney, has broken with the company and started an intriguing web site, www.savedisney.com, that seeks the ouster of Disney CEO Michael Eisner, among other goals. (Roy's resignation letter from the Disney board in 2003 is here.)
Which all leads me to the book I wanted to mention ...
For all these reasons and more, I am so excited about the impending publication of James B. Stewart's new book Disneywar: The Battle for the Magic Kingdom. (Amazon shows its release date as Nov. 15, 2004.) Stewart is one of my favorite writers and a superbly talented journalist. Meticulous reporting allows him to reconstruct events and write about them in an almost novelistic style. He used to work for The Wall Street Journal so he has an acute sense for the decision-making strategies of the rich and powerful. (His book Den of Thieves covered the insider trading scandals of the 1980s stock market, for instance. ) I haven't been able to find much written about Disneywar yet, but based on the title and Stewart's previous work, I expect it will be about Disney's recent travails in the business world, Roy Disney's split from the company, and the sad decline of the Disney parks.
I will definitely buy this book as soon as it comes out. I can't wait to read it.

UPDATE, 11/19/2004: Apparently publication of Disneywar has been delayed until March 2005. I will have to wait a little longer for it than I thought.

Hem

I love Ernest Hemingway, and his novel The Sun Also Rises is one of my favorites. In the original manuscript, he referred to the narrator Jake Barnes as "Hem."
I mention this because I bought a new album I like a lot, by a band called Hem. It's kind of vintage country music, very mellow, and the lady singer has an ethereal, sweet voice.
I think Hem got their name from Papa Hem. At least, I hope they did, because that would be really, really cool.

October magic

I have always liked the month of October. My birthday is in October, and my favorite holiday, Halloween, is also in October. I love the way the weather turns cool in October, and I love the magical, mysterious atmosphere created by big orange moons, carved pumpkins and pointed witches' hats.
But a few years ago, I got into baseball. And if you are into baseball, October is the most exciting, magical month of all. The playoffs and the World Series take place in October. It happens every year, just another part of baseball's almost intrinsic connection to the seasons.
Now we are in the midst of October baseball, and the lovable, scruffy Red Sox are going up against the formidable, privileged Yankees. Oh the human drama of it all!
One of my favorite journalists, Michael Lewis, author of hilarious books about the business world (Liar's Poker and The New New Thing, for instance), has written an excellent book that unravels the economics of baseball talent. The book is Moneyball. Its scope is quite remarkable: business, sports, psychology, the human form. If you are interested in such things, you must read it.
If you're just interested in watching baseball at its finest, then tune in tonight when the Red Sox play the Yankees. The winner goes to the World Series.

Literally required reading

If you had a magic wand, and could make everyone in America today read one book, what would it be?
If you conducted a poll on it, I imagine a lot of people would choose The Bible. The more politically minded might choose the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights or the Declaration of Independence. I'm sure there are some who would choose an allegorical morality tale like The Giving Tree or a universal how-to like All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. And I bet some people would pick a novel such as Grapes of Wrath. I loved Grapes of Wrath; that's one of the great American novels.
But if I had the magic wand, I'd pick something more current and policy-oriented. I would pick Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich - and Cheat Everybody Else, by David Cay Johnston. I read this book recently on a long plane trip, and it really made me mad about how the IRS and the government have virtually stopped enforcing tax collection on what Johnston calls "the political donor class." After reading this book, I concluded that a lot of people who make $500,000 or more a year are just not paying their fair share of taxes, because of either exemptions in the tax policy or lack of enforcement of existing tax law. This is particularly true of people who make most of their money through investments or deferred compensation plans.
I know the tax issue seems as dry as it can be, but if you are remotely interested in this topic, I would urge you to read this book. Johnston, a New York Times business reporter, is a good writer, and he keeps the book moving along fairly well.
Hopefully the problems this book raises will be resolved one day, and then I could pick something like Grapes of Wrath.
What book would you pick for the country's required reading?

Best places to read

My spouse and I are going away for a long weekend. I'm having such a good time deciding what books I'm going to bring with me on the plane.
I think I'm going to bring Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen, which is my book group's choice for this month. I think I will also bring The Devil in the White City, by Erik Larsen, about a serial killer at the World's Fair of 1893. It looks excellent, and I'm excited to read it. Larson also wrote Isaac's Storm, about one of the worst storms in U.S. history, the Galveston hurricane of 1900. (Read my recent post on Hurricane Jeanne, a wee little baby storm compared to Galveston.)
Here's my list of best places to cram in reading time, the places where I can blissfully read lots of pages without interruption:
1. On planes. The gentle thrum of the engines help me concentrate.
2. At the car dealership when I get my car worked on. They always take forever. I just have to find a quiet corner away from the piped-in music.
3. At the doctor's office, especially if the doctor is running late. And, I bring my book with me to the examination room because they always make you wait there, too.

What's your favorite place to read?

The hawk

I was leaving the exercise room this morning, but the gate that leads back to my apartment was broken, so I had to turn around and go the other way. That's when I saw a hawk, not more than 10 feet away. I've seen her before in that general area -- once sitting on the playground equipment.
But never as close as she was today. She was following two cawing blue jays, probably chasing them away from her nest. (That's what makes me call her "she".) Then she stopped atop the wrought-iron gate, turning her head to look over her shoulder. She was spotted, white on brown.
It was something to see such a beautiful creature in such a mundane moment!
Florida is like that sometimes. The coastal areas are filled with wildlife trying to survive amidst suburban development.
Of course it made me think of the beautiful poem in Spoon River Anthology, "The Unknown." Here's an excerpt:

Daily I search the realms of Hades
For the soul of the hawk,
That I may offer him the friendship
Of one whom life wounded and caged.

The Washington Post on blogs, sex and feminism

One of the best newspaper stories I've read in recent weeks is "Blog Interrupted" in The Washington Post. You may have heard the story already: A young woman working as a low-level Senate aide in Washington, D.C., chronicles her sexual exploits in her blog, called Washingtonienne. The blog gets attention from a more prominent site, and all of sudden everyone in D.C. knows exactly what she's up to, and with who -- "including a married Bush administration official who met her in hotel rooms and gave her envelopes of cash," as the story puts it.
The tale strikes me as sad and almost pathetic. But April Witt, the reporter who wrote the Post story, brings a lot of introspection and seriousness to the episode. Among other things, Witt brings up a topic near and dear to my heart -- the role of feminism in 21st century America. For instance:

Feminist author Naomi Wolf ... says modern sexual conduct offers a window into what's been gained and lost in the nation's values revolution. The sexual revolution, now stripped of much of its feminist political ideology, has left legions of young women free but confused. "I think the tipping point came three or four years ago with the first generation to grow up with the Internet," Wolf says. "They were daughters of feminists. The feminist message of autonomy got filtered through a pornographized culture. The message they heard was just go for it sexually.
"What is gained is they totally reject the double standard and believe they are entitled to sexual exploration and sexual satisfaction," Wolf says. "The downside is we've raised a generation of young women -- and men -- who don't understand sexual ethics like: Don't sleep with a married man; don't sleep with a married woman; don't embarrass people with whom you had a consensual sexual relationship. They don't see sex as sacred or even very important anymore. That's been lost. Sex has been commodified and drained of its deeper meaning."

I think Wolf is getting at a crucial point here with no easy answers.

PS Let me know if the link to the Post story doesn't work. I'm not sure how long the link will remain active. That's the problem with linking to newspaper stories, the darn things expire pretty quickly. I'm hoping this link might last longer as it is one of their high-profile, feature-length stories.

Happy to be wrong

It looks like my earlier prediction about the presidential debates being boring was dead wrong. Last night's first debate between Bush and Kerry was just about as substantive and informative as I could hope for. They tussled long and hard over the issues, and Jim Lehrer did a fine job of moderating.
Nevertheless, I think Open Debates makes an important point that the debates' organizing authority should be nonpartisan and independent. I hope their argument isn't lost in the weeks to come.
But I'm glad I was wrong!

A visit from Jeanne

Hurricane Jeanne blew into town on Sunday and knocked out our power until today (Tuesday). So please pardon the gap in my posts.
The chief difference between a hurricane and a bad rain storm, IMO, is the wind. Hurricanes howl. They blow in hard. It's somewhat shocking.
It made me think of this poem. It's one of my favorites by William Blake. I admire its economy. And despite its 1794 publication date, I think it sounds quite modern. It's from "Songs of Experience."

The SICK ROSE

O Rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,

Has found out thy bed of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

Snoozing through the presidential debates

I expect I will watch all three presidential debates, because I am a news junkie and unable to resist their wonkish allure. But I also expect there will be moments watching when I am bored stiff. Why? Because the campaigns of both major parties do their level best to turn debates into what are essentially joint press conferences, devoid of confrontation or spontaneity. How do they do it? By agreeing to rules ahead of time that limit questioning by the moderators, the public and even the candidates themselves. Check out this year's rules here.
A new book outlines the problem. It's called No Debate: How the Republican and Democratic Parties Secretly Control the Presidential Debates, by George Farah. I haven't read it but it sounds fascinating. IYou can read a review at the Columbia Journalism Review here and check out Farah's organization Open Debates here.) Farah is starting a movement to wrest control of the debates away from the major parties and give them back to a nonpartisan commission. Did you know the major parties ran the debates? I didn't. The major parties took over in 1988 because they thought the League of Women Voters was being far too independent and inquisitive, and questioning those poor little ole' candidates too roughly. Meanies!
A little postscript -- Spoonreader is officially a nonpartisan blog, dedicated to fairness and accuracy. But from time to time I will write about nonfiction books, including books that deal with political issues. Here's the first one.

Newbie blogger

Yes, this is my first blog. If you are an experienced blogger and have suggestions for improving my blog, please email me (link is on the left or here). A friend of mine had to alert me to change my settings so you can post comments without registering as a Blogger user. So I changed it, and now you can post comments without registering. (Hint, hint, DJ, maybe you'll post a comment now?)
I have to say having my own blog has been a blast so far. I'm even learning a little html, whoda thunk it? If you're interested in learning html, here's the site I used to learn the basics.

Where do you buy your books?

You won't see me linking all the books I mention to the Amazon web site (though I will link there sometimes).
It's not that I don't like Amazon. I do like them, very much. You can get so many different kinds of books from them, often even the most obscure titiles. And as someone who grew up in a rural town of 4,000 in south Louisiana, I'm sure that Amazon is a virtual godsend to people who have limited access to bookstores or libraries. Amazon has made books from almost anywhere available to almost anyone (at least in the U.S.).
But -- if you live in a city, and can support an independently owned bookstore in your area, please do it. A knowledgeable staff and a small but smartly chosen inventory are absolute treasures. They make independent bookstores oases of intellectual inquiry. I hooked up with a great, great book group through my local store.
You can search for an independent bookstore near you here.
To see the best sellers at independent bookstores, go here.

Happiness is ...

Are people really good judges of what will make them happy? Or is there something about happiness that must remain forever out of reach, like the rainbow that hovers just over the horizon, no matter how fast you approach it?
Tom Perrotta's new novel, Little Children, is full of characters who are spectacular at misjudging their own desires. They think they want to get married and have kids, but once they do, they feel trapped. Perhaps an affair will alleviate the boredom? Wrong again, it just makes the logistics that much more complicated. The suburban couples in Little Children are so busy cataloguing their discontents that they're unable to step back and say, hey, maybe I've got it pretty good here. (You can read an excerpt of the book here.)
Satirizing the suburbs may seem like shooting fish in a barrel, but Perrotta has a delicate touch. His characters are woefully shortsighted but still oddly likeable. And Perrotta has the most wonderful sense of pacing -- I read this novel very quickly, because at the end of every chapter I wanted to know the answer to that most profound of narrative questions: What happens next?
Perrotta also wrote Election, which was turned into a sharp, satirical movie with Matthew Broderick and Reese Witherspoon. (And if you like that movie, you should check out the director Alexander Payne's other brilliant films Citizen Ruth and About Schmidt.)
And in answer to my opening questions, yes, I think we can know what makes us happy, but only if we have significant amounts of maturity and self-discipline. It takes detachment from the infantile, consumerist desires of "me" and "more."

Another Bullshit Night in Suck City

Is this the best title ever or what? It appeals greatly to the black-clad, Smiths-listening, angst-ridden teenager I once was.
The book is by Nick Flynn. I read an excerpt in the New Yorker in July. Drunk guy ends up in rehab, becomes counselor to the homeless, meets up with his own alcoholic father. Dad claims he's still working on his masterpiece of a novel (yeah right). It showed what con artists addicts can be, as well as the creepy allure of alcohol. People in recovery often call it "cunning, baffling, powerful" -- what a powerful, compact description.
I've noticed a string of interesting-looking books dealing with alcoholism recently. Of course, one of my absolute favorite novels ever is David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. It's a doorstop of a novel, coming in at 1,088 pages. But it's so funny and hard and poignant; I just love it. One of the main characters is Don Gately, a recovering addict and half-way house counselor. Infinite Jest is set in the future, after an environmental cataclysm, when years are sponsored by corporations (i.e. The Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment, The Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad). Other major plot elements include a tennis academy for athletic prodigies and Canadian separatists in wheelchairs. But a substantial part of the novel aims at explaining the power and attraction of the Alcoholics Anonymous program. (If IJ sounds interesting to you, you might want to look at the excellent Wallace fan site, Howling Fantods.)
High up on my future reading list is Dry, by Augusten Burroughs, and My Name is Bill, by Susan Cheever. Burroughs wrote a harrowing and hilarious coming-of-age memoir, Running with Scissors, about life with his crazy mother and her seemingly equally crazy shrink. (Warning, some of it is quite disturbing.) His excellent web site, http://www.augusten.com/, is shut down for a re-design, darn it.
I have a copy of the Bill Wilson biography; from a cursory look-through, it appears highly readable. (Here's a review.) All hail readable biography!!! Just not enough of that in the world.

Why Spoon River Anthology?

This blog is named as a tribute to Spoon River Anthology, by Edgar Lee Masters.
Why am I so enamored of this book?
First off, I love the book's structure. Spoon River Anthology tells the story of life in a small town during the late 1800s. The book is a collection of similar poems: Each is a dead person speaking from the grave, reflecting on his or her life and life in Spoon River. Just a few of the poems I really like are Mrs. Williams, Fiddler Jones, and Lucius Atherton.
Some of the characters even comment on each other and contradict each other's rationales and explanations. (The dueling married couple Roscoe Purkapile and Mrs. Purkapile are a great example.) Some of the poems are funny, some are sad, some are contemplative. They are all different.
But when you take them together, they form a cohesive whole, an almost different entity. I grew up in a small town, and the portrait Spoon River Anthology paints of small-town life strikes me as vividly accurate: The community spirit, the caring for neighbors, as well as the injustice and hypocrisy. In modern times, it seems like we revile hypocrisy as the worst sin, but Edgar Lee Masters sympathetically shows that hypocrisy is an inherent part of human nature.
Have you heard of the 2004 book, The Wisdom of Crowds, by James Surowiecki, a business writer for the New Yorker? The subtitle is, "Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations." It's about how groups can make the most intelligent decisions. Taken together, Spoon River residents reveal true wisdom. The whole is greater than the parts, and the parts are pretty good, too.
Look again at Mrs. Williams, and then read Lucinda Matlock. These women both have truths to impart. It's pretty profound.

First post

This is my first post. I'm going to write about books that I like on this blog.
The name of this blog is a tribute to one of my favorite books: Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters.