Nonsuch Book

sunday salon: nancy drew, national book festival and wicked plants

Random reading this Sunday morning has turned up all sorts of interesting items, but this one especially appeals to me. "Nancy Drew and the Secret of the 3 Black Robes" by Mary Jo Murphy examines the possibilities as to why three Supreme Court justices (O'Connor, Ginsburg, and now Sotomayor) have publicly extolled the virtues of the girl detective. Article touches on the universal appeal of the awkward, plot-driven prose, and quotes another favorite article.

“The real allure of Nancy Drew is that, almost uniquely among classic or modern heroines, she can follow — is allowed to follow — a train of thought,” wrote Sandra Tsing Loh, reviewing Melanie Rehak’s “Girl Sleuth,” a biography of Nancy Drew’s creators, in The Atlantic. “The plot opens ever outward for her, her speeding blue convertible a metaphor for the sure-shot arrow of her intellect, the splendidly whizzing shaft of the maiden huntress Diana.”

Wow. I was not exactly capable of such weighted analysis or synthesis at 8 or 9 with my big stack of 55 yellow spines, but I do appreciate the passion in Loh's insights as an adult. And article author Murphy's correct assertion that all of us fans attach ourselves to the essence of Nancy, blind to the flaws of the books.

And great news for fans of the National Book Festival now in its ninth year - President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama will serve as the honorary chairs of the DC event. All the fun takes place on the National Mall, all is free, and it is VERY kid -friendly. Saturday, September 26 this year. Think about it. Will get back to this later, but for now, the preliminary details may be found here. (Poster above is from the 2003 event.)

Would not the earth, quickened to an evil purpose by the sympathy of his eye, greet him with poisonous shrubs ... Would he not suddenly sink into the earth, leaving a barren and blasted spot, where, in due course of time, would be seen deadly nightshade, dogwood, henbane, and whatever else of vegetable wickedness the climate could produce, all flourishing with hideous luxuriance? 

- Nathaniel Hawthorne

Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln's Mother & Other Botanical Atrocities by Amy Stewart is the book I will be dipping into today. I am so busy at work right now that I am having difficulty finishing anything I start these days so I decided that I would bestow a little reading forgiveness upon my self today and just read around the internet without direction, and pick up this little gem. Because of it's structure and the fact that it is nonfiction, my tired brain will not be taxed by having to attach myself to a narrative thread. And this book is gorgeous. But more on that later....

"A tree that sheds poison daggers; a glistening red seed that stops the heart; a shrub that causes paralysis; a vine that strangles; and a leaf that triggered a war. In Wicked Plants, Stewart takes on over two hundred of Mother Nature’s most appalling creations. It’s an A to Z of plants that kill, maim, intoxicate, and otherwise offend. You’ll learn which plants to avoid (like exploding shrubs), which plants make themselves exceedingly unwelcome (like the vine that ate the South), and which ones have been killing for centuries (like the weed that killed Abraham Lincoln's mother). 

Menacing botanical illustrations and splendidly ghastly drawings create a fascinating portrait of the evildoers that may be lurking in your own backyard. Drawing on history, medicine, science, and legend, this compendium of bloodcurdling botany will entertain, alarm, and enlighten even the most intrepid gardeners and nature lovers." (from the publisher)

What is everyone else in the Sunday Salon reading this week?

weekly geeks: guilty pleasures

In vino veritas.

What's your non-reading guilty pleasure?

"Bless me, father, for I have sinned. I am a human wineskin." But I seem to be conflating brands of Christianity. The Catholic rite of confession or penance with the Protestant embrace of sobriety. Catholicism sounds more like "Someone grab Monsignor's keys. He can't drive like that." So perhaps a confession more appropriate to my faith would be "Bless me, father, for I have sinned. I bought you cheap wine for Christmas."

But I digress from the point of this week's geek assignment. Widely.

Love wine and am willing to spend impractical sums of money for it. I look back on certain bottles with great emotion and affection as I associate their consumption with a happy occurrence, a particular friend, a moment of boredom and exhaustion on a Wednesday night in 1997. If you share my guilty pleasure you understand. If you are not quite there yet, but secretly crave a seat at the bacchanalia, may I suggest two great, non-snob starter books with exhaustive but user-friendly content? Windows on the World: Complete Wine Course by Kevin Zraly and Oldman's Guide to Outsmarting Wine by Mark Oldman.

Cheers!

sunday salon: book coveting

Thanks to Claire at kiss a cloud, I picked up this mini-challenge just in time for a last minute Sunday Salon post. There has been holiday weekend fun and sloth to attend to prior to this evening. So here, in the final hours of the day, are the current objects of my book lust. The books I hope to pick up and consume this summer. 

Rex by Jose Manuel Prieto. The review at Three Percent alerted me to this one. Full to the brim with literary allusion and a Proust-obsessed narrator. Made to order for me.

The Children’s Book by A.S. Byatt. Any A.S. Byatt release is an event. Will be forced to obtain through Book Depository because  I cannot stand continuing to read about on UK blogs while it is not available in US until the fall. Thank goodness for free shipping.

The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry. An unlikely detective—armed only with an umbrella and a singular handbook—must solve a string of crimes committed in and through people's dreams. Dark, escapist, existential, thought provoking, routine subject matter turned on its ear.

More Than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the City by William Julius Wilson. Harvard sociologist Wilson (The Declining Significance of Race) makes a bold effort to reframe current debates on the relationship between race and poverty in the U.S. The author observes that discussions of race have hardened into two mutually exclusive and inflexible perspectives. One view regards black poverty as a consequence of social forces—e.g., segregation and the flight of middle-class black residents from urban centers. Alternately, black poverty has been portrayed as a product of individual and cultural inadequacy. Wilson argues for perspectives that acknowledge the inherent symbiosis of social and cultural forces. For example, cultural concerns about black violence in the 1970s gave rise to a more punitive response to street crime leading to greatly increased incarceration rates for black men. Employers' unwillingness to hire black ex-felons, coupled with the rise of service jobs that favor women, led to the decline of the traditional male provider role that had sustained long-term family commitments. Wilson combines a critical look at recent research on poverty and race with his own field research to construct a synthesis that sidesteps many of the pitfalls that often entrap race and poverty theorists. (from Publishers Weekly)

The Last Dickens by Matthew Pearl. Pearl is supreme at delivering a well-honed, highly readable piece of literary mystery. Read his other fictional forays into the lives of authors, and know better than to miss this new offering. Perfect summer reading for me.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez: A Life by Gerald Martin.  One of my favorite authors. Hope that this authorized bio tells me much that informs the author's work.

Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle, Simone Beck, and Sidonie Coryn.

The Sweet Life in Paris: Delicious Adventures in the World’s Most Glorious – and Perplexing – City by David Lebovitz. 

Saw a movie trailer last night for the summer film Julie and Julia, a film based upon the bestselling culinary memoir by Julie Powell. Meryl Streep as Julia Child. Unbelievably appealing to me. Watch the preview and you will be a little charmed too. So I needed the book right away. Now well into it, I know I need my own copy of MtAoFC. And then that want reminds me that I also want the second book you see above, also the product of a wildly successful food blogger. And then to the library for cookbooks. Piles of them, my friends. It is summer after all. No work for those of us that teach, the best possible ingredients, time to experiment on my nearest and dearest.

What books are you lusting after?

booking through thursday: a second first time

What book would you love to be able to read again for the first time?

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. Crossing the divide between reason and faith. Celebrating the love of the book. A mystery to unravel with echoes back to the grand master Holmes. Would relish the opportunity to read it all again for the first time for these reasons pulled from the text:

"How peaceful life would be without love, Adso. How safe, how tranquil... and how dull." 

"Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry."  

"For what I saw at the abbey then (and will now recount) caused me to think that often inquisitors create heretics. And not only in the sense that they imagine heretics where these do not exist, but also that inquisitors repress the heretical putrefaction so vehemently that many are driven to share in it, in their hatred for the judges. Truly, a circle conceived by the Devil. God preserve us." 

"Then we are living in a place abandoned by God," I said, disheartened._ "Have you found any places where God would have felt at home?" William asked me, looking down from his great height." 

"Legions of scholars have wondered whether Christ laughed. The question doesn't interest me much. I believe he never laughed, because, omniscient as the son of God had to be, he knew how we Christians would behave. . . ."

"I have never doubted the truth of signs, Adso; they are the only things man has with which to orient himself in the world. What I did not understand is the relation among signs . . . I behaved stubbornly, pursuing a semblance of order, when I should have known well that there is no order in the universe."_ "But in imagining an erroneous order you still found something. . . ."_ "What you say is very fine, Adso, and I thank you. The order that our mind imagines is like a net, or like a ladder, built to attain something. But afterward you must throw the ladder away, because you discover that, even if it was useful, it was meaningless . . . The only truths that are useful are instruments to be thrown away." 

"Perhaps the mission of those who love mankind is to make people laugh at the truth, to make truth laugh, because the only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth."

list of fiction works made into feature films

If you have never been over to see Laura at 52Books, you should go now. Pithy eloquence. Well go ahead. Yes now. I'll wait.

See what I mean. Today's link to a Wikipedia list of fiction works made into feature films prompted some mindless browsing. Where I did not find Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. The inexcusable horror. Will add in myself later. The 1958 film featured above may have been the expurgated version of the Tennessee Williams classic adapted (censored) for homophobic times, but it is still my favorite film adaptation of the play. Paul Newman's exquisitely tortured self and the always spurned but hopeful Elizabeth Taylor.

Brick Pollitt: What is the victory of a cat on a hot tin roof? 
Margaret "Maggie" Pollitt: Just staying on it I guess, long as she can.

What is your favorite fiction made into a feature film?

weekly geeks: dc and george pelecanos

This week's geek assignment - "Take us on a literary tour of your hometown! Do you live in a place where a famous author was born? Does your town have any cool literary museums or monuments? Does Stephen King live at the end of your street? Was Twilight set in your hometown?'

Dozens of ways to approach this topic went through my head. I live in the Washington DC metro area where more than a few great books have been set or written. But Thursday night I popped over to my favorite independent, Politics and Prose, to hear George Pelecanos read from and take questions on his new novel, The Way Home. A main topic of conversation was why his books are all set in DC and if he ever considers writing about another place. But essentially, he writes not only what he knows but what he sees, and has no plans for straying from his DC home.

Pop over to his blog and hit the Washington tab if you want to see what I mean about writing what he sees. Thursday night, he told everyone how he photographs (with his iPhone now he offered) the various locations and markers about town that will appear in his stories, the visual cue of the image presumably supplying the sharpness of detail for which his prose is praised. Really important to take note of the Washington he photographs for this is the subject matter of his books. Gritty portraits of the residents of the nation's capital who arrived pre-gentrification, of the marginalized, of the displaced and the struggles that mark their daily existence.

The Way Home examines a difficult relationship between father and son, a relationship challenged by both the son's incarceration and subsequent efforts at redemption and the hit the father's working class presumptions and values take because of his son. The juvenile detention center featured in the novel is actually Oak Hill here in the district. The author's visits there lend stark realism to the dialogue in the those sections of the book. The neighborhood where the working class father has lived his whole life is Friendship Heights, now a neighborhood for the well-heeled, a neighborhood that does not remember its decidedly middle class roots. Read through and perhaps you will recognize other places in DC with which you are familiar. And many places a typical tourist never sees. But the father and son dynamic here could have occurred anywhere. Click here for more info on The Way Home.

Here is George Pelecanos signing your new book last Thursday night. Comment with a reason why you would like to take this particular trip to DC, and I will pick one out I especially like next Saturday. If they are all so compelling that I cannot possibly choose, it will be a random draw for one signed copy of The Way Home. And don't forget the author's website for more info on the novels, the author (including his huge success with The Wire), and, of course, Washington DC.

Photo credit for first image to Andrew Councill of NYT in 2006. 

for love of the book: the selected works of t. s. spivet by reif larsen

A treasure in the hands. And the second time this spring that a book has found its way to me that makes me believe that the physical book will never be completely replaced by the electronic or digital equivalent. Because they are not truly equal. The printed book will reinvent itself. As in the cases of The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet and The Doorbells of Florence, the book will reinvent itself as art. But I am getting ahead of myself in my excitement.

The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet is a fictional story of a 12 year old cartographer, a child with unique intelligence, obsessions, and talents. A young man who maps his thoughts and experiences as you will see in the margins of this extra wide text. Mourning the death of his brother, he takes off cross country from Montana to Washington DC to claim a prize that the Smithsonian is bestowing upon him. And this is the story of his travel, both in words and graphics.

Am only a fourth or third of the way in, but was just so giddy about the whole thing that I needed to share now. Just like the three and four year olds at my school anxious to show me something, I am jumping up and down waving this book at people. An excerpt from Chapter 1:

“The phone call came late one August afternoon as my older sister Gracie and I sat out on the back porch shucking the sweet corn into the big tin buckets. The buckets were still peppered with little teeth-marks from this past spring, when Verywell, our ranch hound, became depressed and turned to eating metal. 

Perhaps I should clarify. When I say that Gracie and I were shucking the sweet corn, what I actually mean is that Gracie was shucking the corn and I was drawing a diagrammatic map in one of my little blue spiral notebooks of precisely how she was shucking the corn. 

All of my notebooks were color-coded. The blue notebooks that neatly lined the south wall of my room were reserved for "Maps of People Doing Things," as opposed to the green notebooks on the east wall, which contained zoological, geological, and topographical maps, or the red notebooks on the west wall, which was where I mapped out insect anatomy in case my mother, Dr. Clair Linneaker Spivet, ever called upon my services. 

I had once tried lining maps on the south wall of my room, but in my excitement to organize, I briefly forgot that this was where the entrance to my room was located, and when Dr. Clair opened the door to announce that dinner was ready, the bookshelf fell on my head. 

I sat on my Lewis and Clark carpet, covered in notebooks and shelving. "Am I dead?" I asked, knowing that she would not tell me, even if I was. 

"Never let your work trap you into a corner," Dr. Clair said through the door.”

Was very skeptical about this book and the stories of the bidding war that escalated to a $900,000 advance from Penguin for first time 29 year old author Larsen. But now that seems irrelevant. I think Penguin wisely invested in something incomparably beautiful, something that serves as paradigm for the future of the printed book. Guess what I will be reading and staring at this weekend.

the language of bees by laurie king

Book 9 of the Mary Russell novels. Waited so long and now it is over. With no comfy conclusion but with a "to be continued" promise. And that is fine. There will be more.

To the uninitiated, these books are the story of Mary Russell, first protegee and then wife to the famed Sherlock Holmes. A premise that could have run awry but does not. Russell is Holmes' partner and holds advanced degrees in theology and abilities to match those of the master of deductive reasoning. The intellectual hug of the Conan Doyle stories but with a feminine influence that humanizes the great detective.

Without giving too much away, this story opens with the couple's return to Sussex after nearly a year away at work at tasks beyond the abilities of most. As they prepare to settle in with just the countryside and the question of a vacated bee hive to occupy them, they are met on their doorstep by an adult son that Holmes did not know he had. Holmes rapidly departs to help his son recover his lost wife and child, and Russell must grapple with her doubts about the damaged surrealist artist she now calls stepson and her conflicted emotions about being alone without knowledge of her husband's whereabouts.

King is a natural born story teller with great insight into her characters as well as human nature. The very thing I loved about this particular novel is the thing some are complaining about. It is Russell running a different course from Holmes. But their paths prove parallel time and again as they meet unexpectedly when piecing through the puzzles independently. Because they are in sync without always wishing to acknowledge their dependence upon one another. Goes against the grain of feminism and reason embraced here. Smart people in love. Communicating through sign and impulse as subtle and mysterious as the language of bees. The conflict within the highly intelligent of whether to embrace the isolation that their difference hoists upon them or admit to the near-shame of having the same pedestrian feelings and needs as lesser minds. And King is masterful in juggling these moments without beating the reader over the head with them.

Great story full of wit and humor (Russell's airplane journey is hilarious). For Sherlock Holmes fans one and all but especially for women that read the Conan Doyle stories and always secretly thought they could match wits and hold their own against the Baker Street dweller.

evening man by frederick seidel

Spent quite a bit of time in April looking about the Farrar, Strauss & Giroux poetry blog, The Best Words in Their Best Order. Go look if you have the inclination and time to get lost for a bit or more than a bit. A stray comment I left somewhere won me this signed, limited run (500 copies) chapbook. Elegant darkness just like Seidel's words. Thrilled. And bracing myself for the brute force of his words from this new collection.

From the FGG poetry blog:

Calvin Bedient has called Seidel “the most frightening American poet ever.” Michael Robbins calls him “a ghoul,” while James Lasdun defined his work as "an oasis…in the desert of contemporary American poetry.”

All true but misleading in a way as well. To me there is sometimes a vulnerability and tenderness to the savage honesty, sometimes no triumph in the revelation of uneasy truths but a sadness. 

From title poem "Evening Man:"

The man in bed with me this morning is myself, is me,
The sort of same-sex marriage New York State allows.
Both men believe in infidelity.
Both wish they could annul their marriage vows.

And a little further on:

You have to practice looking like thin air
When you become the way you do not want to be,
An ancient head of ungrayed dark brown hair
That looks like dyed fur on a wrinkled monkey.

And ends:

Evening Man sits signing bills in the Oval Office headless - 
Every poem I write starts or ends like this.
His hands have been chopped off. He signs bills with the mess.
The country is in good hands. It ends like this.

Didn't see that coming, did you? I enjoy his poetry. Just wouldn't want to fall asleep around him.

Curious? Read some FSG blog posts about him here and download some readings of his poetry here. While the Evening Man chapbook is not available for sale, it's contents may be found in the first section of the new collection Poems 1959-2009 by Frederick Seidel.

sunday salon: on not blogging

When all above you looks like this, it is no time for blogging. There is time to walk or feel the cool breeze on your face or read on the screened-in porch or watch kids ripping around outside or staring off into space with a glass of wine in your hand, but sitting with notes and a computer open on your lap just seems  - well, wrong. Over at Of Books and Bicycles this week, some similar thoughts popped up in a great post called "On not reading" (from which I stole today's subtitle).

"I’m not sure if any of that makes sense, but I wanted to say something about how sometimes in the evenings when I have plenty of time to read, I put off picking up a book in favor of staring at the wall or surfing aimlessly online. I feel bad sometimes for not using that time better, but, as with many things I feel bad about, there’s no good reason for it."

But I have been writing on (gasp) paper with a (really?) pen this week. Something told me that I should. In the last week or so, met the mothers of two of my friends - one friend I know very well and one I would like to know better. Friends from two different sections of my life. But both their mothers told me a story of their child when he was young and visitors came to their house. What are the odds of that happening? So their experiences have been re-interpreted into a short story that still needs some work, but speaks to the unique in both these people. I hope. You never know.

And I have read and read and read. Have hung with Sherlock Holmes, loitered in the American south, hung on some lesser words of an American humorist, and played voyeur on a DC crime scene. And took in some Bolano poetry. Also decided on the James Grieve translation for In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower. Picking a translation of Proust takes me way longer than it should. 

I have been drifting.

Maybe next week I will have a greater blogging sense of purpose. 

What have all of you in the Sunday Salon had the pleasure of reading today?