As I read, I was struck that the main obstacle that Douglass had to overcome was not the freezing weather, the starvation, the humiliations, and the beatings, but rather a broken will. Of course, all of the former abuses directly contributed to the later, but it is his will that allowed him to be himself amidst the horrors of slavery.

Douglass was a strong-willed and intelligent boy as he grew in Baltimore. For example, he tricked the white boys his age to teach him how to read and he secretly worked on learning more. But as a teenager, he found himself reassigned to an overseer in the country who had a reputation for “breaking in” rebellious slaves. Eventually, Douglass’s spirit was broken too. That was the most heart breaking to me, for the slave masters determined to turn him into something less than human.

Douglass’s story about his broken spirit reminded me of the story of Sethe and the others in Beloved, one of my favorite novels. “You your own self,” Sethe is told. And that is what I kept thinking as Douglass told his story. He was his own self, and he was strong. He had to rediscover his will to be an individual after that master “broke” him, just as Sethe ultimately had to discover herself in Beloved. As is evidence by the existence of this narrative, Douglass eventually escaped slavery and was able to tell his story, further evidence that he was able to rediscover his will to be an individual.

Douglass’s story was written just ten years after his ultimate escape from slavery, when he was 27 or 28, and that also fascinates me. It was the 1840s, and slavery was a long way from being ended. As an escaped slave, evidence of his whereabouts could bring slave catchers, and many Northern states were required to return the slaves. Yet, he does not fear to name many names. It is clear that he has a confidence in himself. He later was able to earn enough money, lecturing in Europe, to legally buy his freedom. That is a story of success and self-confidence.

As I read this account of a slave in a border state, a slave with a difficult and tragic life and yet one that was not “that bad,” I was repeatedly reminded of a picture book I read a few weeks ago. I wrote up a blurb about it and had intended to post it with other picture books about the subject in a few more weeks. My original impression of The Listeners by Gloria Whelan, illustrated by Mike Benny, was as follows:

In a beautifully illustrated large book, we learn the story of three little slave children, whose job it is to listen near the plantation house every night and report back to their parents. It’s a slave story, but it has an element of hope to it. The illustrations are gorgeous. I’ve seen some comments suggesting that it is too light-hearted a look at slavery: truly this is not like the slavery I’ve read about before, and I can accept those comments. But it still is a touching and beautiful picture book, and I can see it as a good introduction to the subject for young children.

After reading Douglass’s book, I am now confused about what I think about The Listeners. I think it gives an incorrect view of slavery. I no longer have it to reread (I had to return it to the library), but I do remember a scene where the children are dancing with their parents. They delight in those evenings.

On the contrary, Frederick Douglass said:

I have often been utterly astonished, since I came to the north, to find persons who could speak of the singing, among slaves, as evidence of their contentment and happiness. It is impossible to conceive of a greater mistake. Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears. At least, such is my experience. I have often sung to drown my sorrow, but seldom to express my happiness. Crying for joy, and singing for joy, were alike uncommon to me while in the jaws of slavery. … (page 35, emphasis added)

Gloria Whelan, author of The Listeners, is a woman from Detroit, who has written a number of picture books set in rural Michigan, as well as other stories and picture books set in other locales, such as Russia and Japan (see Wikipedia; her author site). I guess I wonder what books she’s read about real life in slavery. Has she read any escaped slave journals and accounts, like this one? Maybe she has; I don’t know. But now I doubt the veracity and the appropriateness of a picture book with slave children laughing and dancing. It gives the wrong impression.

In Douglass’s account, as a child, he received one shirt a year and when it wore out, he went naked. He was always hungry. All the children ate out of a trough, and the quickest ended up eating the most. At night, he had a burlap sack as a blanket. In the rural Maryland winters, his feet would frost over in the night. He was forced to watch women being whipped, and saw a man shot for being slow to respond to the master’s orders.

How does one teach this cruel reality of slavery to children, or do we just gloss over it with pretty picture books until they are older?

Do you think it’s appropriate to emphasize, in a picture book, imagined happy moments that some slave children may have had?

I don’t have any answers. As I said above, I’m conflicted.

• Beloved by Toni Morrison
• Lincoln: A Photobiography by Russell Freedman
• Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
• Listen to the Wind by Greg Mortenson and Susan L. Roth
• The Life of Wilkie Collins (Biographies by Clarke and Peters)
• The Book That Changed My Life, edited by Roxanne J. Coady and Joy Johannesson + Giveaway
• Golden Legacy by Leonard Marcus
• The Life of Our Lord by Charles Dickens
• The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum

A Room of One’s Own

My favorite story that Woolf shared was about Shakespeare’s sister. (This sister was a complete fabrication on Woolf’s part, but it captured Woolf’s point.) Shakespeare had a sister who had just as much genius as Shakespeare, and who likewise dreamed of the stage. How did her life play out? Despite her inclinations, she was not sent to school to learn the classics; instead, she was encouraged to focus on the needlework and mending at home. Her father also wanted her to be married young to a local young man. Although she rebelled and fled to London, seeking a life on the stage, she was ridiculed and abused, for women were not actresses in 1600 London, let alone writers of plays.

In short, everything about society would have discouraged her genius. How can we wonder that there are not female “Shakespeare’s” throughout history of the written word? As Woolf points out, it’s very probably that the ever-popular “Anon” was such a strong woman, seeking to get her words into print, even if anonymity was the only way to do so.

Woolf speaks to women in the late 1920s. As I read, I was surprised to discover that this was written at such a late date. From her discussion of how men dismissed women (referring to them as the “weaker sex” among other more cruel things), I thought it had been written two decades earlier. Yet, even a decade after women in England gained the right to vote, men still neglected to accept women as capable of creative output.

At a few points, Woolf looks to the future. One comment in particular stood out to me:

Moreover, in a hundred years … women will have ceased to be the protected sex. Logically they will take part in all the activities and exertions that were once denied them. The nursemaid will heave coal. The shop-woman will drive an engine. All assumptions founded on the facts observed when women were the protected sex will have disappeared. (page 40)

(She also comments, I suspect in a bit of a mocking tone, that maybe such a life will allow women to die off much quicker since they won’t have protection: “Anything may happen when womanhood has ceased to be a protected occupation.”)

Virginia Woolf takes care to not praise women too highly. She does not want women to think it easy to become Shakespeare. No, it is a challenge to overcome generations of inequality in education. Shakespeare had the genius, after all: his success was not only due to his ambition and education. Woolf’s point, instead, is that women, just as men, need their own income and their own space in order to create. Certainly, prolific male writers have an income and space for creation: poverty does not beget creative output very often.

I think about my own life. I have the “leisure” to stay home with my son while my husband works full-time. I also have a computer of my own where I can write and blog. If I lost that resource and/or if I needed to financially support my son, my ability to write and blog would become depleted. But then again: I am able to get a job (let’s hope), a thing that middle class women in Jane Austen’s day could not do. I would still have the ability to create because of that freedom.

Although I had not yet begun the book (other than the introduction), I could not renew it on Wednesday as I’d intended because of another person’s hold; instead, I read it in a day and returned it quickly to avoid greater fees (it was already a bit overdue). That tells you how small this book is (about 110 pages). Why did it take me so long to pick up?! (Oh, yes, I always have too much library loot.)

The message it shares in those brief pages is informative but also heartening. As a woman, it reminds me to seek to become Shakespeare’s sister in an era that no longer discourages it (quite as much).

Have you read A Room of One’s Own?

Do you have a room of your own? (literally or figuratively)

What other classic books about women and women in fiction can you recommend for my Women Unbound reading?

• To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
• Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
• Why Women Should Rule the World by Dee Dee Myers
• Sister Bernadette’s Barking Dogs by Kitty Burns Florey + Giveaway
• Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn
• The Creative Family by Amanda Blake Soule
• Founding Mothers by Cokie Roberts
• Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman + Giveaway (Used Book)
• The Life of Wilkie Collins (Biographies by Clarke and Peters)

Don’t get me wrong: I’m glad I read it. However, I wouldn’t call Churchill’s tome a scholarly history. Even after finishing, I’m still not all that comfortable with English history.

Although I tend to avoid abridgements, I picked up this book after I read a selection of Churchill’s speeches back in October 2008. I wanted to read more Churchill. After all that time sitting on my shelf, I’m glad I got to it.

First some negatives: It reminded me of Charles Dickens’ History of England which I read last year. In places it simply felt like stories and traditions from the history, told in an interesting way and with plenty of opinion. There were few footnotes. Churchill’s writing is more detailed, informative, and overarching than Dickens’s was (Churchill made connections between kings, patterns, and eras). But I felt academic heft was missing. Despite that, I still got rather bogged down in the explanation of military strategies: I don’t care to know the details of each battle, but rather the outcomes and the effects of the battles.

And then the positive: I did really enjoy the first half, which was about the settlement of England and the kings of England. I feel so very ignorant! I am looking forward to reading Shakeapeare’s histories of England. Although those are fictionalized, Churchill mentioned some of them in passing.

I was really looking forward to the section on Victorian England, since I’ve been enjoying Victorian reads in the past month. Unfortunately, Churchill was a bit over the top with the politics and not so much about life, but it tells me where my interests lie for my next read! I have a number of Victorian English history books on my TBR list.

As for the abridgement, I can’t really compare it to the original (which I obviously haven’t read) but this abridgement, which was stated to be geared toward American audiences, had too much about America in it. Obviously, Churchill wanted to capture more than the history of Great Britain: he called it History of English-Speaking Peoples, after all. And since Churchill’s mother was American, he was just as interested in the U.S. history as the British. But I really wished Churchill would talk a little bit more about the other settlements. Surprisingly, Australia and New Zealand, in particular, had only about five pages total in this entire abridged volume. In contrast, the U.S. Civil War had a long section of about 80 pages. In a book that is less than 500 pages, that seemed a bit skewed.

In the end, I’m glad I finally got around to reading this. Churchill certainly has an interesting political perspective. But this wasn’t the best for a first look at English history.

Can anyone recommend a good nonfiction book about the history of Great Britain and its territories? I’d love to keep learning, and while I have some on my TBR, I’d always love more.

Which should be my first Shakespeare history play?

• Jane Austen: A Biography by Carol Shields, a Quote Book, and a History of England
• Speeches of Winston Churchill
• Daughter of Destiny by Benazir Bhutto
• Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott
• Reading Journal (17 March): Happy St. Patrick’s Day
• Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt
• February in Review
• Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman + Giveaway (Used Book)
• The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order by Samuel P. Huntington
• The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy (In Chancery and To Let)

I am a suburban American stay-at-home mom. I have always been well fed and safe. I have 16+ years of education and I could get more if I felt like it. When I was 26, I delivered my first child naturally in a hospital with a nurse midwife present. I don’t feel I’ve ever been discriminated against because of my gender, and I’ve never been abused or beaten in any way.

I am pretty naïve about the state of women in the world.

Reading Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn was eye-opening for me. I had of course heard about sex trafficking in Asia. I had of course heard of maternal deaths in Africa due to improper medical care. I had of course heard about the atrocities against woman that occurred (and are occurring) as a part of national genocide in Africa. I had of course heard about lack of education for girls around the globe and corresponding gender discrimination.

But hearing something is different than meeting the people. The stories Kristof and WuDunn share about woman around the globe made these issues real to me. These Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists capture the issues and it is heart-breaking. But because each section ends with stories of success, I feel that change is possible in the future. There is hope. What will it take to turn the world around? I think being aware is part of the first step, and Half the Sky is a great first step for all to gain a little bit more of that awareness.

I am having an incredibly hard time writing this post. I have started many times. I have pondered which direction to go. I could list all the atrocities that are happening around the world. On the other hand, I could share the success stories because people in better situations decided to start something or decided to donate money or went to Africa to see for themselves what is happening. Good things are happening because people make a difference. But I can’t decide which of the stories to share.

What I really want to tell you is that you must read this book. It taught me that the battle for women’s rights really is just beginning.

While I may be sitting at a personal computer in suburban Chicago, a woman somewhere in the world is being beaten because she burnt dinner, or because she has been sold into sex slavery, or because she asked her father to be able to go to school like her brother, or because her insides rotted after her first pregnancy at age 13 and her husband doesn’t like her smell. This book really helped me to see the place of women in the world as a whole, rather than just my limited experience.

When I checked out this book at the library, the librarian was kidding around and said she knew this wasn’t my son’s book (as the other one, a picture book, was) because it for women.

“It’s not for women!” I said.

“That’s what it says on the cover,” she responded.

I looked down. The subtitle is “Turning oppression into opportunity for women worldwide.”

“No,” I responded, shocked she’d think this book was meant to exclude men because women are the focus. “It’s about women. It’s for everyone.”

I do believe Half the Sky’s message is for everyone. It will not be easy to shift world culture toward respecting women. Even if you and your loved ones respect women, it’s horrible to think what a large percentage of world cultures do to women by using the excuse “they are women.”

That said, I know from experience that not every book works for every person. This is a violent nonfiction book because it describes the life of women around the world: rapes and beatings in particular enter a lot of stories. I am not one to read that type of nonfiction often, but I could get through this book because the ultimate message is one of hope and action. It is very easy to read, and I admit I struggled to put it down because once a story starts, I wanted to know how it ended. Some ended positively. Some did not.

The most important part is awareness. Maybe you don’t feel you need to read it because you are already aware. Regardless, if you don’t think you can or want to read this book, at least check out the official Half the Sky Movement website. It shares inspiring stories from the book and links to dozens of charities that the authors feel help support women around the globe.

I want to do something, and while my charitable contributions budget is stretched right now, I’m still researching options and considering where some of my charitable contributions will go in the future. I’m impressed with all the options before me, and I only wish I had more money to share or the ability to travel where help is needed.

As I was reading this book, I also was reading 1920s Harlem Renaissance poetry (which I talked about the other day). Georgia Douglas Johnson’s “The Heart of a Woman” really broke my heart because it captured the horror of being a woman in a bad relationship. It’s too bad that this still describes so many women in the world today, whether that is in a suburban USA city or in rural Africa or in a brothel in Asia. If you didn’t click over, here it is:

The Heart of a Woman

The heart of a woman goes forth with the dawn,
As a lone bird, soft winging, so restlessly on,
Afar o’er life’s turrets and vales does it roam
In the wake of those echoes the heart calls home.

The heart of a woman falls back with the night,
And enters some alien cage in its plight,
And tries to forget it has dreamed of the stars
While it breaks, breaks, breaks on the sheltering bars.

–by Georgia Douglas Johnson, 1922

• Why Women Should Rule the World by Dee Dee Myers
• Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
• A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
• Founding Mothers by Cokie Roberts
• The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
• March by Geraldine Brooks
• The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
• The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
• Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman + Giveaway (Used Book)
• Aucassin and Nicolette by an Out-of-the-Box Medieval Author

“Hateful Things” is an interesting piece when considered as an essay because it doesn’t read like any other essay I read for that class. Like the rest of her The Pillow Book, it is partly a list, partly a personal journal entry, and mostly a personal ramble. Yet, Shonagon writes beautifully. It has an interesting organization to it, and from the beginning until the end, “Hateful Things” progresses from generic to personal in a beautiful way. Much of The Pillow Book is similarly personal, and the vibrant personality of the woman who wrote it makes The Pillow Book a delightful, fascinating, and important book to read.

Sei Shonagon collected her writings (a bundle of papers kept inside her pillow) in the late 900s A.D. in Japan while she was working as a lady in waiting to the empress. She may have had a somewhat lower-class upbringing, but her extensive reading and later employment by the empress made her critical of the lower classes. In short, she’s a bit of a snob. Add to the mix a propensity toward middle-of-the-night liaisons and her feminist leanings and Shonagon’s diary becomes not just historically significant but also delightfully amusing.

Nat at In the Spring it is the Dawn took the name of her blog from the first line of Shonagon’s book and says in her review “I like to think that if Sei Shonagon were alive today, she’d have a blog, and a fun one to read it would be too!” I have to agree. Shonagon is witty and sarcastic, honest and playful. I think she was born 1000 years too early, because she loved finding something, be it funny, annoying, or ironic, in the ordinary events of the day. And despite her claim that she “regret[s] that it ever came to light” (page 264) because people have been hurt by her criticisms, I still believe she would have delighted in an unknown international audience that blogging would have given her.

Because Shonagon lived more than 1000 years ago, her work is also an historical and cultural piece. I know nothing about Japan. In fact, I believe The Pillow Book was the first Japanese book I’ve ever read. I learned about the traditions of Heian Japan, including the necessity of proper poetic response to the poetic notes people sent. Although I like to think of myself as a creative person when it comes to writing, I can’t imagine my social status being dictated by the witty poems I write!  I learned a little bit about the superstitions and religious traditions of the era, which I also was completely unfamiliar with. And I loved learning about life in a palace that wasn’t what I was used to hearing about (my only palace exposure previously has been Western, via fairy tales and Arthurian legends).

Because of my ignorance, it would have been very hard to follow the significance of Shonagon’s diary if not for the extensive notes by Ivan Morris. While Morris’s translation is 266 pages, he also includes 80 pages of notes that explain portions of the text and 20 pages of appendices with illustrations of clothes and layouts, details about the calendars and government, and timelines of Shonagon’s life. I wished the text was annotated instead, so I wouldn’t have had to flip back and forth for the entire book, but I loved all the information. I didn’t concern myself with trying to remember all the different names and customs, but I did enjoy learning about them. I suspect this is a book I must reread.

Ivan Morris’s translation is actually an abridgement of a larger, more detailed text. While I hadn’t realized that when I read, apparently most modern translations of The Pillow Book excise similar sections since they are lists that Shonagon wrote to help her remember things and have little interest to a modern reader. The sections that were included were fascinating, and I did find myself interested, even in the brief lists Shonagon kept, especially when they morphed into a personal ramble:

5. Different Ways of Speaking

14. Hateful Things

16. Things that Make One’s Heart Beat Faster

27. Trees

28. Birds

29. Elegant Things

30. Insects

32. Unsuitable Things

(These are just a few: the entire book is peppered with such lists.)

I also love the stories Shonagon included about palace life. Some of them are specifically about herself and experiences (such as 8.” The Cat Who Lived in the Palace”) but others are more generic. It’s as if she’s pretending it’s not her own story, such as 46. “A Lovers Visit,” in which Shonagon talks about “a lady” and her attendants. One can only assume it is her own story. My favorite section was 116. “When I First Went in Waiting.” By this section of the book, I was familiar with Shonagon’s outspoken personality and relationship with the empress and others at Court. To go back and revisit her first impressions of royalty and palace life was then quite entertaining. It was comforting to know that even Sei Shonagon, who was anything but shy, was nervous during her first days in the palace.

Shonagon also had sections dedicated to complaining about people and customs. She had sections delighting in people and customs. She wrote about everything that struck her, and as the introduction states, it’s possible Shonagon was writing some sections as idea-outlines for her possible future novels. Unfortunately, The Pillow Book is the only remaining text by Sei Shonagon, and her life after she left court in 1000 A.D. is unknown.

I call it a diary but The Pillow Book is so much more. It’s a beginner’s education in Japanese Court life. It’s a outline of future novels. It’s an outlet for frustration. It’s a personal history. In the end, I think it’s a fun read.

Do you read blogs by random people who talk about the everyday aspects of their life and yet you find it interesting simply because of how they write about it? Ironically, I don’t but I still enjoyed this book!

[Japanese Literature Challenge 3 because it's classic Japanese literature]

[Really Old Classics Challenge because it was written before 1600 AD]

[Women Unbound Challenge because it's about a women's life]

Related posts:

• The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa
• Reading Journal (6 January): Starting Off the New Year
• The Old Capital by Yasunari Kawabata
• January in Review: A Good Start to 2010
• Reading Journal (17 March): Happy St. Patrick’s Day
• Reading Reflections: A Book Kingdom
• Reading Journal (24 February): My First Vlog
• The Book That Changed My Life, edited by Roxanne J. Coady and Joy Johannesson + Giveaway
• Reading Journal (March 3): Swapping Books
• What is Reading? and Audiobook Review of The Book Thief

Because he’s so ready to learn, I’ve been pondering how to introduce him to the world of letters, the world of reading, and a pre-preschool world of him and me. I know he’s not ready to learn to read, but what can I do now to help him be ready in another year or two?

I decided to seek out some books that might help. While I checked out dozens of books, I only read two in the past few weeks. Growing a Reader from Birth by Diane McGuinness was fascinating, but I was disappointed that the majority of the book focused on baby language learning rather than learning to read (as the title would suggest). The ABCs of Literacy by Cynthia Dollins, on the other hand, was just what I was looking for, and I’ve even ordered my own copy I loved it so much. Both books were geared toward parents and childcare givers, and the second is one every parent of a toddler should read.

Growing a Reader from Birth

I admit that I started the first book because it had a pretty cover. Besides, I loved the premise of the title: Growing a Reader from Birth. It reminded me that learning to read and loving to read are a process. One does not suddenly, at age six, sit down in a classroom, learn the letters, and become a reader. Since I (obviously) love to read and my son, already, follows me around the house with his own books, I’m hoping that he eventually becomes a reader too. In fact, because he enjoys books so much, even “reading” them to himself, I would consider him a reader already (or at least a lover of books, which is a great start).

But I should have considered the subtitle: Your Child’s Path from Language to Literacy. To my surprise, Diane McGuinness does not focus on reading. In fact, the first 200 pages are about language: how babies and toddlers learn language, parental impact on language development, the do’s and don’t’s for talking to your children in order to help them learn language best. Did you know that newborns hear sound differently than older children? The “motherese” that is higher pitched than normal speech and that covers greater range is the type of language newborns physically need to hear. I find it fascinating that we instinctively speak in a high range when talking to babies. (Note that baby talk is not necessary and is detrimental; just the higher range of speaking is necessary).

I also learned why my son thinks his name is “Baby.” Since that was the name I repeated to him often in his first year (how could I resist? This adorable little baby was waking up and I loved him and found him cuddly), that was the first word he learned. I found that discussion fascinating, since it’s normally the their own name the child learns first. Let this be a lesson to you: if you call your newborn “Baby” all the time, he will call himself “Baby” at age two.

Further, I was fascinated to read the studies of interaction between children and their mothers. When mothers spoke with a lower vocabulary (600 words) to their one-year-old children, the same children at age 3 had a lower IQ. On the other hand, when mothers spoke with a normal adult vocabulary (or at least 1500 words) to their one-year-olds, their children knew a lot more by age 3. This should be a given, but for me, it really made me reconsider how I talk to my son: Why do I say “Choo choo” instead of train or locomotive? Why don’t I explain things when I say the word? How can I explain the world to him?

All of these language concepts do relate to literacy: a child has to understand certain things about the world and have a vocabulary before reading makes sense. This was the most valuable part of Growing a Reader.  Unfortunately, I was a bit disappointed by the subsequent discussion (about 50 pages) about teaching a child to read. It was a rant about the failings of the modern educational teaching method. McGuinness explained how bad schools are, how they won’t teach your child to read properly, and how we should demand better teaching. But she failed to explain to parents what we should be doing, beyond insisting that teachers use a phonics system. It was disappointing, because so much of the book built up to the learning to read moment: she failed to deliver.

Throughout the book, McGuinness also had some odd ideas about reading. She does not like picture books, believing they teach a child to look for context clues rather than focus on the words. She does not expect kids to learn to read before going to school. Now, in subsequent reading (Dollins’ book), I learned that children are not normally physically ready to learn to read until age six (that is, they are not physically able to remember so many letter-phonic combinations or keep such information as plot in order) but McGuinness never address that: she focused on language learning almost to the exclusion of reading learning.

I enjoyed McGuinness’s book for the insights in to my own communication with my son, but I do wonder what her qualifications are: the cover says “PhD” but what does that really mean these days?

The ABCs of Literacy

On the other hand, Cynthia Dollins, EdD, elementary classroom teacher for twenty years and lecturer in child and adolescent literature and writing and reading methods (from back cover), perfectly captured what I was looking for in nurturing my young son’s reading habits. I do not often buy myself new books (to be accurate: this is first time since last February), but I have already ordered a copy of this book for myself. It is that good.

If you have a toddler and you want your “read-aloud” moments to help him learn, to increase his literacy, and to be fun, The ABCs of Literacy is the book you must have.

Part A focuses on the “whys” to reading aloud to toddlers: it’s a bonding time between parent and child, it helps them learn about the world, it helps them learn how printed reading works, and it teaches them vocabulary and phonemic awareness. Now, she’s preaching to the choir here, but I loved being justified in my reading! What this section did do for me was encourage me to turn off the TV more often, since it does not help with any of the above things at all (even for vocabulary and phonemic awareness, the effect is minimal). I know I mentioned above that my son learned “two” from Sesame Street, so it’s not a waste of time all the time, but still: I should interact with him more. I’ve begun a new unofficial project, called “keep lots of books in the family room.” Now, when my son says “watch! Watch” I say, which book would you like to read next? It’s been lots of fun because we’re reading books in the middle of the day. I think he remembers the books better, especially when we’re acting out The Cat in the Hat, for example (he likes to hop holding books, like the Cat in the Hat does).

The other sections are incredible comprehensive: she covers the issues of which books to choose (what makes a picture book “quality” literature), the best methods for reading books out loud, and other ways to promote literacy. Now, some people may balk about the “quality” literature comment: surely, we want reading to be fun. Dollins discusses this as follows:

“Most of us remember books from our childhood that we wanted to read again and again. These books resonated with us for some reason and stayed with us into adulthood, evoking positive memories. Surely we can point to many of the books considered classics and understand why they have been so disginated. They may contain a universal theme that is uniquely human to all of us, or they may tug at our heart or emotions. The author’s words may be so carefully chosen that we find ourselves quoting them in conversation to make a point. Picture books, too, distinguish themselves through the feelings they evoke and the themes they hold. They also contain exemplary use of language …. Books from our childhood remain with us because of our reaction to them, the reaction that made us laugh, cry, feel deeply, or just think.” (page 51).

It’s a long quote, but I want to share it because it resonated with me so strongly. You probably know that I’m a big fan of classic literature by now. And I think she perfectly captures why classics are classics. She’s talking about picture books, but I think it extends to all classics.  I just love them for the universality of it all!

Here’s an example from our own reading. While there is a place for the Little Golden Book Thomas and the Big Big Bridge (and my son and I read it at least once a day), it’s obvious that the writing, illustrations, and story are not as engaging, thoughtful, and able to teach concepts and vocabulary as even The Little Engine that Could. Can anyone forget “I think I can! I think I can!”

Dollins’ book ends with an 80-page (yes, 80) annotated listing some books that she considers classic, well-written, and thoughtful and that teach vocabulary or phonetics or concepts. They all are fun for her and for her own children. I look forward to seeking out of some of those books. While not every picture book will work for everyone else, I’m eager to give her list a try. I really trust her concepts and this list gets me excited for years or reading with my son!

Have I convinced you to read this book yet? I seriously think it is awesome.

Children’s Projects

I have been reading a textbook about the history of children’s literature and reading the historical literature mentioned in it. I intend to do that for myself, but after reading Robinson Crusoe aloud to my son (and taking three months to do so), I came to the belated conclusion that learning the history of children’s literature is for me, not for him. I’m still tracking it and working on it. But I also need a project that is for the two of us!

My newest project is this. I’d like to read 1,000 different books with him before his fifth birthday. I started keeping track December 12, 2009. In tracking this list, I won’t count a book twice. Any book counts: picture books, board books, wordless books, audiobooks (the ones for kids), chapter books, adult books I read aloud to him (if I dare try that again). But I’m only counting a book if I read it to him (not my husband) and only if I’ve read him the entire thing or most of it (no skipping pages). I’m a bit torn on this last point. For example, we read Richard Scarry’s Cars and Trucks and Things that Go almost every day, but we have yet to read every single page in one sitting, because it is so long. I may count that one anyway, since we’ve read the book so many times in pieces. I’m hoping that in the next two and half years we’ll get through it.

The purpose of this is to introduce my son to great literature and fun literature. I also want to make reading with him priority, not just a dread before bed (because he wants to read for a long time and I’m always exhausted and ready to move on with my night). Of course, many of the books we read are repeats: no day goes by without five readings of The Red Caboose. But I think finding new favorites is important too, and I’m looking forward to find them. I’m going to adopt the reading lists from The ABCs of Literacy as my own, I’m going to continue seeking out age-appropriate Caldecott winners, and I’m going to browse the library more frequently.

As for this site, every 100 books, I’ll post about his and my favorites. I think that will be a fun way to round out this project and give myself a sense of accountability to you. Now I just need to make a project button…

A question for parents to toddlers: Do you do reading projects with your toddler? How do you choose your next book(s)?

• 1000 Books: A Little Clarification + The First 80 Books or So
• The Arrival by Shaun Tan
• Abecedaria (aka Alphabet Books)
• The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett
• A Circle of Quiet by Madeleine L’Engle
• Reading Journal (23 December): Holiday Reading
• Robinson Crusoe Adaptations for Children
• Favorite Author: Sandra Boynton’s Picture Books
• Reading Journal (16 December): A Classics Circuit TBR List from Wilkie Collins to Harlem
• Speak, Child: The Illiad as the Infancy of Children’s Literature

In terms of reading, I finished off my biography of Jesus on December 26. I was right: December was the ideal month for reading James E. Talmage’s 700+ page tome. Part gospel harmony, part historical explanation, and part doctrinal interpretation, Jesus the Christ follows the pre-mortal, mortal, and post-mortal mission of the Savior by interpreting the scriptures.

Talmage wrote his book in the first two decades of the twentieth century, in an era before computers could have helped him put things in order. The seamless nature of his book is therefore all the more impressive to me. Besides that, I really did enjoy the outmoded writing style. While Talmage’s scholarly tone makes it difficult to read quickly at first, I found it beautiful (and not as difficult) once I got used to it. It is clear Talmage is a Bible scholar, and he clarifies the context of the parables, the Jewish dissension, and other aspects of New Testament life with which I was unfamiliar: Talmage puts the New Testament events in context.

Talmage is also a scholar of Mormon doctrine, as his research and commentary gave me insights into the continuing nature of the mission of Jesus Christ. While he only briefly referred to the pre-mortal and post-mortal ministry of the Savior, he did regularly complement his New Testament commentary with references to Latter-day scripture.

As a whole, the book certainly focuses on the Latter-day Saint doctrines of the Savior, and therefore, I am not certain non-Mormon readers would find it so engaging or satisfying. Even Mormon readers need to keep in mind that this volume in one man’s interpretation of the key events and scriptures: I didn’t necessarily agree with all his doctrinal interpretations, and it’s interesting to consider the past 100 years of further gospel insight as I read. Talmage’s volume, although rather comprehensive, is still flawed and incomplete. Yet, reading it had encouraged me to better delve into the scriptures on my own and seek guidance and direction by reading the words of the living prophets.

This blog is not primarily a religious blog: it’s a reading blog. I’ll therefore keep this post brief by saying that I’m grateful I finely did submerge myself in this volume. While I was intimidated by its length and it does have some flaws, I found Jesus the Christ ultimately rewarding, especially at this Christmas season.

John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

We have this gorgeous illustrated edition on our coffee table, and I love browsing through my favorite pictures of Christ.

• Christ and the New Covenant by Jeffrey R. Holland
• The Life of Our Lord by Charles Dickens
• Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling by Richard Lyman Bushman
• December in Review
• Nineteenth-Century Mormon Architecture and City Planning by C. Mark Hamilton
• Reading Journal (18 Nov): Planning for a Quiet December
• 2009 in Review (+ Lots of Stats)
• Children’s Christmas: Picture Books of the Season

I’m not normally interested in memoirs. I find I just don’t care about the personal life of (1) most celebrities or (2) random people I’d never heard of before. But because Feynman was a Nobel Prize winner in science, I thought he might have something interesting to add to the scientific discussion. Since I’m always in need of more scientific thought in my life, I picked it up.

Richard Feynman (1918-1988) certainly did have an interesting life, and his memoir captures some of the fascinating aspects of being a scientist: how he learned to repair radios as a teenagers by taking them apart; his interest in science from a young age versus his anti-social tendencies; his years working on the Manhattan project; his severe criticism of Brazil’s educational system and his thoughts on what makes an education “good.”

I particularly liked to learn of Feynman’s personal development as he grew older, learning to embrace the humanities as well as science. As a college student, he resented the requisite humanities classes. As he aged, he learned to play the drums, draw, and even become an expert in Mayan antiquities. This was refreshing to me: it show me that a ground-breaking physicist can also be a well-rounded individual.

On the other hand, Feynman is not a serious man, and his memoir is filled with non-scientific tidbits. Feynman was fascinated with topless bars, for example. His escapades in Brazil during Carnaval, his bar fights, and his irreverence for all things “formal” (such as the Nobel Prize ceremony) also were pretty non-scientific. As those who know my reading style may be able to guess, these less serious bits were not as interesting to me. In fact, I could have skipped all the topless escapades and been happier. Still, as Feynman himself commented at one point “All this human being stuff is kind of fun too.”

In the end, I could have passed on Surely Your Joking, Mr. Feynman. Although it was fun to see how a scientist looks at the world, I would have rather learned something about science with my time. On the other hand, if you want to see how a famous physicist lives and learns, this might be the book for you.

The audiobook I listened to was unabridged and wonderfully narrated by Michael Kramer.

• Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling by Richard Lyman Bushman
• Why Women Should Rule the World by Dee Dee Myers
• The Elements of Cooking by Michael Ruhlman
• The Discoverers by Daniel Boorstin
• Two Neuroscience Books (Proust was a Neuroscientist by Lehrer and Sacks’ Musicophilia)
• Hunger: An Unnatural History by Sharman Apt Russell
• On Writing by Stephen King
• The Planets by Dava Sobel + A Giveaway
• A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg
• December in Review

That said, even reading three very different books about the Renaissance, I don’t feel I know it very well. I want to read half a dozen books written in the Renaissance decade. I want to read biographies and autobiographies of the characters influential to the movement. I want to immerse myself in the movement even further! I love this focused reading: it feel so satisfying.

The first book I picked up with a new Juvenile nonfiction book that was on a library display: The Harlem Renaissance: An Explosion of African-American Culture by Richard Worth. Worth’s The Harlem Renaissance has lots of information, photographs, and illustrations to effectively teach the history of the movement to a juvenile reader, or (in my case) an ignorant adult reader. Specific authors and artists are featured in one-page biographies interspersed with the main narrative. In the end, my only complaint is that there are not many excerpts from the actual writing from the Renaissance.  The main focus of this book is the history, and although the literary and artistic figures are appropriately highlighted, the actual creative output is not.

This book helped me gain a historical context for the Renaissance and I’m very glad I picked it up. Because it was written for younger person, it was easy to access and a great start.

The second book I picked up was so wonderful great I suggest anyone interested in the Harlem Renaissance go out and find it! Harlem Stomp! A Cultural History of the Harlem Renaissance by Laban Carrick Hill was just what I needed. I seriously wish I owned this Young Adult coffee table book because it is that wonderful. It is one I could browse through at leisure every now and then and find something new and interesting.

To begin with, Harlem Stomp! has brightly colored pages. Call me superficial, but this really makes it interesting to pick up. The era’s art, the contemporary photographs, the newspaper and magazine clippings, and photos of key figures are all designed to capture attention. While Worth’s book also had illustrations, art work, and photographs, Harlem Stomp! is designed with a reader in mind: it’s designed to be a coffee table book about a cultural explosion rather than a history book. I love that.

Further, going along with the great design is the easy-to-access details of the movement. There are sidebars, photo captions, chapter headings, and great chapter organization. Although it begins following a historic time line, there are separate chapters for music and dance, theater, and visual artists, something I felt was lacking in the first book (which focused on the history). Further, the historical situations and the overviews are interspersed with numerous excerpts from novels, poems, and essays, not to mention the beautiful visual arts of the era.

I only wished this book could play music for me. Everything else is there. If you are looking for a great overview of the Harlem Renaissance, this book is for you.

The last book I finished (and actually the first book I began) was a volume of criticism called The Harlem Renaissance, Bloom’s Period Studies. I actually am immensely glad I read this volume too, but I’m not sure I can recommend it unless you know what you are picking up:  about 20 essays about the literature, art, and music of the Harlem Renaissance. These are academic and full of “spoilers.” I personally like reading criticism, and I feel that reading through this volume also helped me to gain a better idea of which authors and artists are most important to the movement. I loved reading excerpts and storylines for so many poets and novels, and I almost feel I don’t need to read everything now. That said, I did begin this book before the other two, but due to the serious nature of the essays, I had to essentially plow through the essays a little at a time. This was not a page-turner, and I finished it after the other two books.

I enjoyed my brief overview of the key figures, historical events, and literature of the Harlem Renaissance, and I look forward to introducing you to the subject through the upcoming Classics Circuit tour! As I’ve been writing the introductory post for the Circuit (to appear, with sign up, next week), I keep deciding what I’ll read: as I research Zora Neale Hurston, I want to read her books (all of them). When I read about Jessie Redmon Fauset, I want to read her novels, etc.

As with everything that’s worth reading, there are so many books, and so little time!

• Harlem Renaissance Poetry
• Black No More by George S. Schuyler
• Reading Journal (16 December): A Classics Circuit TBR List from Wilkie Collins to Harlem
• Reading Journal (18 Nov): Planning for a Quiet December
• December in Review
• Reading Journal (25 November): Unplugged Edition
• Reading Journal (11 Nov): I Am a Quitter
• Jazz by Toni Morrison
• Reading Journal (3 February): Black History Month
• Reading Journal (20 January): Distracted

Let’s face it: I’m a blogger and want-to-be photographer who rarely takes photographs (but I like tweaking them in Photoshop: instant results). I like to use computers creatively, but I do not create things completely from scratch.  I know that practice makes perfect. But I don’t have patience to practice.

And yet, I have a two-year-old. He loves to “help” me cook, so I’ve turned to Play-Doh during those times when he’s really just in the way. Then I wanted him to make his grandparents a Christmas present, so we’ve been playing with markers and wooden ornaments for weeks. And he loves it.

So, thanks to my son’s budding creativity, I decided to pick up The Creative Family: How to Encourage Imagination and Nurture Family Connections by Amanda Blake Soule, which Lisa and Eva reviewed recently. In some respects, I found Soule’s book to be a life-shifting book for me as a mother.

No, I’m not suddenly going to be become a proponent of “unschooling” as Soule is. Soule’s philosophies are a bit extreme for me. But Soule’s book was, for me, a creative recharge that I needed. She shares my opinion that kids don’t need big plastic toys with batteries to have a happy Christmas childhood. She helped me see what I could do with my son instead.

Interspersed with gorgeous photos of her children and their creative projects and pursuits, Soule discusses what creative things mothers can do with small children. She focuses on the materials, including how to be resourceful. She explores the ways in which art can be play, how art encourages imagination, and the ways that children can create gifts we can be proud of. She explores how the arts can be the center point of mothering, and she talks about how creative output can connect a family together.

As I look back now, I can’t recall what specific thing in this short (215-page) book spurred me into action. Was it the idea of creating a “station” for a child to call his own creative corner?  Was it the sample projects she shared, with patterns? Or was it the pictures of rather beautiful art created by her very young children? At any rate, I feel motivated to stop delegating my son’s care to toys and movies. It’s time I help him create in whatever ways I can.

When I see him discover Play-Doh or crayons, his eyes light up in delight and I know that for him the end result isn’t what matters. For him, it’s the joy of creating, of putting a marker on the paper and seeing a line appear. I don’t even have to purchase a coloring book for that light to come into his eyes: I need to hand him a crayon and a paper.

For Christmas, I was aiming for low-key, since I don’t think Christmas should be primarily about gifts. Now I’m feeling rather embarrassed by the idea, but I was going to give my son a second-hand plastic castle a friend gave me. It’s in good shape, and I think he’d really enjoy playing with it. It has all sorts of reactions: touch this and the stairs unfold, etc. But it was huge and ugly, so I took it to Goodwill this week.

Instead, I’m setting up a bulletin board near his desk in the playroom to become a new “creative corner.” I bought watercolors, and we have markers, crayons, Play-Doh, etc. I’m also making a felt “weather board” for his bedroom, so every morning when we look outside, we can choose the sun or the snowflakes or the rain or the clouds. I feel like I’ve suddenly gone insane with creative ideas for my little son. (I’ll post pictures of my creations if all turns out all right.)

For the record, my son does not have a lot of plastic toys. But he has some, and if I took away his choo-choo train and cars, he’d certainly let me know he is upset. Besides, he uses them in a creative way:

If you can’t tell, that’s one of the Wise Men (from the Little People Nativity) driving in the train. They choo-choo up to the stable, the people get on, and then my son waves “Bye! Bye” to Mary and Jesus before the train leaves again. (P.S. I hope you don’t find that offensive or irreverent. I personally think the Little People Nativity is great because I don’t want my son touching any of my other nativities, and I have about a dozen non-touchables. The Little People Nativity is his to play with for December as consolation. Besides, he apparently understands that Jesus stays and the Wise Men come to visit. He’s learning the story!)

Are you creating gifts this Christmas?

I noticed that Chris at book-a-rama has a list of homemade ideas for you if you’re feeling creative!

• Baby’s Monday Salon: Dogs, Trains, and Simple Illustrations
• Children’s Christmas: Picture Books of the Season
• Poetry Friday: Christmas Poems
• A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
• Lullabies
• A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
• Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss
• The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron
• Winner of Anthem + Swamped
• The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum

Although I like reading classics, I don’t know much. Before August of this year, I’d never heard of Wilkie Collins! I first experienced Wilkie Collins through The Woman in White (loved it!), and I recently read The Moonstone.

For this Circuit, I decided to read about his life. Although reading two biographies does not make me an expert, it’s been fun to read reviews now that I feel I know about the man! I hope this overview of Wilkie’s life interests you too.

The Biographies

I read two biographies of Wilkie Collins. The first attracted me because the title seemed appropriate for a writer of suspense. The Secret Life of Wilkie Collins by William Clarke gave me a fresh look into Wilkie’s personal life and the controversy and complications of his circumstances. It was written by the husband of Wilkie’s great-grandaughter, so he had a personal interest in proving the facts of Wilkie’s mistresses and children. The biography met those needs, it was well researched, and it was well notated.

Yet, Secret Life failed to give me a complete picture of Wilkie Collins as a popular writer, and therefore it left me wanting more. I turned to Catherine Peters’ comprehensive biography, The King of Inventors, to get a well-rounded perspective. Since Peters’ biography was published after Clarke’s, I should have gone straight there.

Peters’ biography was what I expect when I read a biography of a literary man. She looks both at his life and at his works. Peters details the controversies and unknown aspects of his personal and family life.  Then, for his most significant publications, Peters spends a few pages discussing why the books were monumental, which seems appropriate for one dubbed “King of Inventors.” Even though I skipped a few paragraphs when I was unfamiliar with a novel and therefore unable to follow the discussion, I was still able to understand the overall discussions about the breakthroughs Wilkie made in his writing.

As I have returned Secret Life to the library, all references below are to King of Inventors.

The Beginning

image via Wikipedia

From his birth in 1824, William Wilkie Collins looked strange, with a bulge on the upper right of his head, probably the result of a difficult birth. He was always self-conscious of his forehead, and his large beard in his later life may have been an attempt to distract from the unbalanced look of his head (pages 18-19). He also was horribly short-sighted throughout his life and had unusually small hands and feet.

His was named after his father, the artist William Collins, and his godfather, the Scottish painter David Wilkie. Wilkie (called Willie as a child) was not impressed with his father’s religious piety, and Peters’ suggests that Miss Clack in The Moonstone is part of Wilkie’s response to his father (page 306). On the other hand, Wilkie was always close to his mother, and lived with her until 1856 (age 32).

Although he spent only one year (age 13) touring Italy with his family, Wilkie considered it a “crucial” point to his development as a writer. Among other things, he learned about life outside of his own closed family circle. From my perspective, it seems he had a remarkable memory of people and places, able to rework the images in his mind into a story even many years later.

It’s good that Wilkie had memorable experiences in Italy, for he was teased at boarding school upon his return and was actually bullied into telling stories to the other boys; if a story wasn’t interesting, they’d bully him more (page 50). That was a good start for the budding novelist; he wrote his first novel (about Tahiti) as a teenager.

A Literary Man

His father may have wanted Wilkie to become a painter, but instead Wilkie eventually entered Lincoln’s Inn to study law. When his father died in 1847, Wilkie stopped working on his second novel to write his father’s biography, which he’d promised to do. Although Wilkie wanted to write novels, he realized that writing a good biography of a respectable painter may help him get in the door with publishers (page 76). He was right.

When I read The Woman in White and The Moonstone, I found it remarkable that an author could write such a coherent story over the course of more than a year of serialization. He had to know, from the beginning, how it would end. Wilkie Collins did: he wrote outlines and plans before beginning a novel so he would not have problems later. His contemporary writers particularly disliked the idea: “Such work gives me no pleasure,” said Anthony Trollope (page 392).

In his good novels, Wilkie brilliantly captures characters, settings, and plot. There is suspense as it had never been done, and mystery as it had never been written. He wrote about fallen women; he wrote about people with disabilities; he wrote about sexual tension.

Today, we may read his works and not think them extraordinary, but at the time, he was an inventor of a new type of fiction. Peters discusses most of Wilkie’s major works in detail, discussing how Collins is an “inventor.” I look forward to reading them now that I have a better understanding of how monumental they were!

A Ladies’ Man and a Family Man

Wilkie met Charles Dickens at the acting troupe of amateur actors (all artists and writers) in the late 1850s. Although Dickens was 12 years Wilkie’s senior, the two struck up an unusual bond, as Wilkie became Dickens’ favorite companion for “nightly wanderings in strange places” (page 98). Together, they traveled Europe frequently. (The first time they traveled together, Dickens was disgusted by Wilkie’s immaturity and cheap ways). Wilkie eventually worked for many years on Dickens’ staff at the serial magazine All the World Round.

Although Dickens worked hard to keep his subsequent affair with Ellen Ternan (which began in 1857) a secret, Wilkie Collins did not attempt to hide his two mistresses. This difference in dealing with a personal matter may have lead to the rift between the two writers in later life.

Wilkie supposedly had his first love affair in Rome at age 13, and from then on he was unabashed in flirtation. In 1858 (age 34), he began to live openly with the widow Caroline Graves, who had a young daughter (called Carrie). Supposedly, Wilkie met Caroline in a situation that inspired the opening story of The Woman in White, but there is no solid evidence of that (see page 191). Caroline was not of middle-class upbringing, but Wilkie did not like dinner parties and the physical restrictions of the middle class, so that appealed to him (page 195).

In the late 1860s, Caroline left Wilkie and married another man. Her marriage did not take, for she returned to Wilkie soon afterwards, who had, by that time, begun a second liaison with Martha Rudd, a young woman with an even lower upbringing. Yet,

Martha herself was an incarnation of the courageous and independent-minded young working women Wilkie had always found touching and intriguing. (page 294)

Martha and Wilkie went by the alias of Mr. and Mrs. Dawson, and Wilkie was to father three children. Wilkie loved being a father, and the children often traveled with him and Caroline (Martha was, apparently, not respectable enough to travel with him).

Although Wilkie Collins was quite a ladies’ man, it probably won’t surprise his readers to know he liked a woman who could think for herself.

Though he was far from conventionally attractive, Wilkie had the ability to charm and amuse women of all ages. He wooed them with his story-telling, with comic verse and intimate affectionate letters. … Though Wilkie was not in the least interested in female emancipation, he liked women who where intelligent and gifted and spoke their minds. (page 122)

I found it strange to read that he doesn’t have any interest in female emancipation, since it seems that his books have strong women: I would have thought he would like to support women and free them from Victorian class status. He lived with one woman and had three children by another, so this life style seems in conflict with the message his novels share. Peters brings up this issue. She herself asks that question and then answers it:

How could Wilkie continue, though out his association with Martha,  to write polemical roman a these in which ‘fallen women’ were reinvigorated into society through marriage to great-hearted, unconventional radicals, fighting to break down class barriers? Though he thought the legal forms quite irrelevant, he took care to keep ‘readers in general’ contented with a conventional happy ending. (page 297).

Wilkie Collins, in other words, was still rather Victorian in his attitudes. He treated the women in his life well, from his perspective, but from my modern perspective, it seems he used them as he pleased. Caroline was always referred to as his “housekeeper.” Martha was a “kept woman” (she had a very generous living allowance), literally stuck with raising his family. When I understood that Martha was unable to escape the situation if she had wanted to, it seems sad to me. That said, both woman (from this distance) seemed happy with their lives.

An Ill Man

For much of his life, Wilkie struggled with “rheumatic gout,” a type of arthritis. Wilkie’s gout returned at times of stress, such as when he was under pressure to write a serial. Occasionally it attacked his eyes, and he would dictate to Caroline’s daughter, Carrie (page 335). From the early 1860s, he began taking laudanum (tincture of opium) for the pain. By the time he died in 1889, he was taking enough each day to kill twelve people (page 336).

In later years, his writing deteriorated. After The Moonstone in 1868, Wilkie did not write another such successful novel. There were some modest successes, but nothing to the same extent of his early writing. After an unpopular serial novel, magazines would not serialize his next. They even suggested that he was too literary (and therefore too expensive) for their household magazine (page 395).

Wilkie also took the time to tour America and Canada, but he was not as popular there. He also struggled to retain copyright in America; his publications were constantly underscored by illegal pirated versions, both in print and on the stage.

Peters mentions that Wilkie’s successes at the theater were detrimental to his novels. Earlier in his career, he would write a novel (such as Armadale) and then later in his career, he’d adapt it for a theater production (Miss Gwilt). In later years, he would write a novel with a theater production in mind. Thus, his later novels have less character development and more theatricality and dialogue.

Peters also suggests that he was stale.

Little of his work after The Moonstone transcends its era and the limitations of the sensation genre. By comparison with the novels Wilkie Collins wrote in the 1860s, many of the later ones seem flat and dated. (page 313)

Wilkie’s favorite writers throughout his life were Honore de Balzac, Sir Walter Scott, Lord Byron, and James Fenimore Cooper. Although they might have been influential in the beginning of his life, by the end, these were still his favorite, and he had no taste for the newer styles of fiction out there. So, while Wilkie began as an “inventor” of new types of fiction, in the end he began to resent those who invented new fiction (see page 377-8 and 420-421).

In the end, whether it was his opium addiction that brought about less clear descriptions, or his desire to put moral lessons in his novels, or his own inability to see the world in a cutting-edge way, Wilkie Collins lost his ability to consistently write engaging novels. His last years were hit or miss. When he died, his estate was worth just over £10,000, much less than he’d have expected. As specified in his will, the money was divided between the families of his mistresses. Although he’d intended for them to live well, they vanished into obscurity. Probably due to embarrassment at their own illegitimacy, his three children went by the name of Dawson for the remainder of their lives.

In Conclusion

Wilkie Collins’ life is almost as fascinating as his sensational novels. One of the aspects of Peters’ biography that I loved was her detailed discussion of the books Wilkie wrote: particularly the inspiration for the story and the ways in which each book was innovative for Victorian England. I don’t, however, have the time or space to detail all of them. If you are interested in Wilkie Collins (and this post still hasn’t fulfilled your craving!), I’d highly recommend Peters’ biography, The King of Inventors. It really puts Wilkie’s Victorian literature into context.

Also, check out the rest of the Wilkie Collins Classic Circuit.

• The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
• Victorian Second Helpings (The Moonstone by Collins and North and South by Gaskell)
• Reading Journal (16 December): A Classics Circuit TBR List from Wilkie Collins to Harlem
• A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
• March by Geraldine Brooks
• Why Women Should Rule the World by Dee Dee Myers
• Jane Austen: A Biography by Carol Shields, a Quote Book, and a History of England
• Founding Mothers by Cokie Roberts
• Reading Journal (18 Nov): Planning for a Quiet December

I think I’d say the Lehrer was my preferred of these two, only because I hadn’t realized the Sacks was abridged. At any rate, I enjoyed both books and would love to revisit either other again in the future.

Proust was a Neuroscientist by Jonah Lehrer

Jonah Lehrer writes about some of the giants of the humanities as if they were neuroscientists, a hundred years ahead of their time. I found myself eager to read, eat, visit a museum, and listen to the music of the artists he discusses. It was truly fascinating, and it showed me that science and humanities really do go hand in hand.

I was fascinated to hear a scientists’ perspective about Proust’s understanding of memory in In Search of Lost Time. While I haven’t read the books, I have had my own memories. Lehrer’s commentary actually got me excited to read Proust’s masterwork! Lehrer also talked about Escoffier’s innate understanding of taste and the pleasures of eating, and in retrospect, I think this is what got me on my current “Spice of Life” kick (i.e., reading more books for my own Spice of Life Challenge). When he talked about Cezanne’s painting style as a commentary on how we see and Stravinsky’s music as a commentary on how we listen to music, I had to come and find some examples of Cezanne and Stravinsky.

Cezanne image via Wikipedia

Not surprisingly, Stravinsky’s Rites of Spring does not sound all that dissonant to me. It is amazing to think it caused rioting on opening night because it was so disturbingly different. In fact, not 30 years after the rioting opening night, Disney adapted it for Fantasia. (This is the first 7 1/2 minutes of Fantasia’s version.)

Lehrer also discusses Whitman in terms of “Feeling”; Eliot in terms of “Freedom” (the only chapter I didn’t really understand); Gertrude Stein in terms of “language”; and Virginia Woolf in terms of “self.”

In the acknowledgments, Lehrer says that while he dreamed of being a research neuroscientist, he quickly realized he “wasn’t good enough.” I have to say that his ability to bring neuroscience down to an understandable level for this lay-person was certainly good enough. In fact, it was excellent!

Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks

I loved learning about music from Oliver Sacks’ neuroscientific perspective. Although Sacks’ is obviously a very well-renowned scientist, his book made the scientific process very easy to approach. This book is a great start for a nonscientific person like myself! (I may have to copy Eva in reading all his books!)

However, let me just say from the get go of this review that I was horrified to learn, after the last track of the audiobook ended and the audio-producer spoke, that what I had just listened to was an ABRIDGMENT. I was so mad, for it says nothing of the sort on the cover. I look for that, and I always make sure my audiobooks are not abridged. Now I wish I had not listened to this, for I would have loved to read all of it.

I consider myself a musical person.  Although I cannot listen to music while doing brain intensive things (such as studying when I was a student) I do love music and I love singing. I lead music for the young children at church, and occasionally I’ve been in choirs. All of Oliver Sacks’ stories, then, were quite interesting to me as his book contained, as the subtitle suggested, “Tales of Music and the Brain.”

He begins by talking about all the disturbing things about music: non-musical people who, after being struck by lightning, now play the piano; people who have seizures when a particular type of music is heard; the songs that get in our head and don’t go away; musical hallucinations in which people hear loud music, even when there is no music playing anywhere. These sections were most challenging to listen to, because I felt it made me wonder how I’d cope if music were a disturbing influence in my life, rather than a pleasant one.

In the next section, Sacks focuses on the different ranges of musicality in people. On one side, some people are musical geniuses. Others have perfect pitch (incidentally, those that grew up speaking a tonal language as a first language are more likely to have perfect pitch). On the other hand, some people have amusia, where they cannot hear music properly. Sacks discusses impact of cochlear amusia (when people age and therefore become hard of hearing) and people that go through occasional and seemingly random amusia at various points of his life. I can see why he’s so interested in the subject, since he mentions having had amusiac experiences in his life!

The last bit of the audiobook focused the impact of music therapy on people with various illnesses and struggles. People with severe amnesia – so severe they cannot remember more than 15 seconds – found they could still sit at a piano and play something from beginning to end. Those with severe dementia, who could not have a coherent conversation, likewise could sing a song from beginning to end. These aren’t people that have had musical training, per se, but the impact of music on a person’s life is apparently enough to bring them back to reality, even if only briefly.

Sacks obviously talked about a lot more than I’ve mentioned here. But that last bit is what stood out to me most. Even without having musical training, having perfect pitch, or being some kind of musical savant, having music in our life brings us to a different state of being. It can help us find emotional grounding, and that is enough for me to want to keep beautiful music in my home!

Do you like music?

Have you ever considered art from the perspective of neuroscience?

• Reading Journal (18 Nov): Planning for a Quiet December
• The Planets by Dava Sobel + A Giveaway
• Jazz by Toni Morrison
• Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
• Christmas Countdown: Music Collections I Love
• The Magic Flute by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Emanuel Schikaneder
• Lullabies
• The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa
• Carmen by Prosper Merimee
• Listen to the Wind by Greg Mortenson and Susan L. Roth

Jane Austen: A Life by Carol Shields

I loved Carol Shields’ biography of Jane Austen! The narrator for the audiobook had a lovely Austen-esque British accent, which gave it a great sense of place. Then Shields began by admitting that she’s an “amateur Jane Austen fan” who goes to the Jane Austen Society of North America meetings because she loves Austen so much. That made me think of her as a kindred spirit.

While I haven’t read many Austen novels (yet), I loved Shields’ emphasis on the fact that we can learn from and compare Jane Austen’s own life to the setting, characters, and situations in her novels.

It was very short (about 5 ½ hours, the equivalent of 180 pages) and yet I feel I have a greater understanding of the remarkable woman who wrote some delightful romances.

Some random facts about Jane Austen (and long-time Austen fans probably already know all of these things):

• Jane Austen spent her first years farmed out to a neighbor for nursing purposes. (Apparently, mothers did not normally feed their own babies.)
• Jane Austen had a romantic interest in Thomas Lefroy but neither of them had money, so nothing came of it.
• Jane Austen was engaged for one night to Harris Big-Wither. She returned the next morning to cancel the engagement.
• Jane’s sister Cassandra was engaged to a sailor, who died. He left Cassandra all his money in his will. Cassandra never married.
• Jane’s father wrote the query letter to a publisher for the manuscript of Pride and Prejudice; he really believed in her!
• Jane’s novel (now known as) Northanger Abbey was purchased for ten pounds, but never published; Jane eventually bought it back. It was not published until after her death.
• When her father retired (he was a vicar), he moved the unmarried Austen sisters to Bath, where he died, leaving his widowed wife and two unmarried daughters rather poor. Jane did not write any novels during the ten years she lived in Bath.
• Jane had to pay out-of-pocket to get Sense and Sensibility (first published novel) printed.
• Jane Austen was “encouraged” to dedicate Emma to the Prince Regent, which she was probably not happy about, since he probably never read it.
• Jane Austen died age age 41 of what may have been breast cancer (although Wikipedia suggests Hodgkin’s lymphoma).

Jane Austen’s Little Advice Book edited by Cathryn Michon and Pamela Norris

Then I turned to a short little quote book that jumped out at me while I was at the library one day. The editors of this quote book admit feeling a little guilty to earning money on this book, since Jane Austen herself never earned more than £700 in her lifetime. Yet, it’s rather cute and it was fun to read over the course of an hour.

Using only Jane’s own words, including letters, her unpublished works, and her published novels, the editors give us Austen’s “advice” on Men and Women, Love and Marriage, Family, Worldy Things, The Human Condition, Social Life, The Literary Life, Odd Topics, and Jane Predicts the Future. They readily admit that they take quotes out of context, and I must say that the editors’ comments on each quote are the most amusing parts. From those chapters, I must say my favorite part was the “predicts the future” section, with such quotes as these.

On Predicting the Success of the TV Series E.R.

A sick chamber may often furnish the worth of volumes. (from Persuasion)

On Not Worrying About the Ozone Layer

What fine weather this is… at least everybody fancies so, and imagination is everything. (from the letters of Jane Austen)

There are 125 pages worth of fun quotes, and reading through them got me even more excited to read Sense and Sensibility (as well as the other novels) in the future.

Two Histories of England by Jane Austen and Charles Dickens

Jane Austen’s The History of England and A Child’s History of England by Charles Dickens are a bit harder for me to write about because, um, I know nothing about the history of England. Therefore, I missed the delightful jibes and jokes that Austen wrote and, while I understood Dickens had an interesting bias and judgment of history, it did not make sense to me in a historical way as the writer of the introduction indicated it would.

Jane Austen wrote her short manuscript for her sister when she was 16, and it was clearly a parody of history books. From my perspective, it certainly was amusing. For example:

“Edward the 5^th: This unfortunate prince lived so little a while that nobody had time to draw his picture.” (page 5)

Her snide remarks about various kings and queens really went over my head, since, as I mention, I know little about England’s history. I can only assume her frequent and over-the-top defense of the Stuarts was more sarcasm.

Charles Dickens’ A Child’s History of England is also sarcastic and judgmental. He refers to King James the First as “His Sowship” because that’s what James’ favorite helper called him and Dickens “cannot do better than call his majesty what his favourite called him” (page 72). The disdain is just dripping throughout the descriptions of the king’s reign.

But Dickens’ history (which is much longer, and apparently is only an excerpt from the whole) is packed full of all sorts of extraneous details that make it fascinating and fun. I loved learning about the Gunpowder Plot through Dickens’ imaginative story!

To me, the most amusing thing about Dickens’ account  is that, according to the introduction, it was actually a part of the school curricula for British school children “well into the 20^th century” (introduction, page ix). My question is: was it used as a history text or rather as a humourous part of British culture? As I read, I kept laughing at the thought of this being a proper history textbook. There were so many descriptive beheadings!

I first saw this on Heather J.’s blog and I had to get it!

Have any people from England read Austen’s or Dickens’ histories? I’m curious as to the “accuracy” and/or the impact of the humor on those that actually are familiar with the history of England.

Which Austen novels are your favorites? I’ve still only read Pride and Prejudice and Northanger Abbey. (But I’ve seen all the movies!)

• Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
• Churchill’s History of the English-Speaking Peoples, abridged by Henry Steele Commager
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
• The Life of Our Lord by Charles Dickens
• Personal History by Katharine Graham + Why I Love a Great Biography
• Twenty Years at Hull-House by Jane Addams
• November in Review + Reading Journal (2 Dec)
• Victorian Second Helpings (The Moonstone by Collins and North and South by Gaskell)
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
• A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

You see, I’ve been converted. There is, there has been, and there will have been, only one Julia Child in all of history. Her story (which I read in My Life in France) is fascinating and inspiring, her cooking style (which I experienced in part in Julia’s Kitchen Wisdom) is refreshingly simple, and together the two Julia Child books I read gave me hope for my own pathetic cooking abilities. It is, therefore, completely unfair to include Ms. Franklin’s book (and my criticisms of it) in the same post. Nevertheless, because I read Julia Child on the wake of Too Many Cooks, Ms. Franklin is a part of my experience in the past few weeks.

I enjoyed Too Many Cooks: Kitchen Adventures with 1 Mom, 4 Kids, and 102 Recipes by Emily Franklin to some extent. Some of her ideas were right on with what I’d expect. For example, she believes one gets kids to eat healthful foods by feeding them healthful foods, not by hiding vegetables in brownies. Also, she suggests great ways to introduce unfamiliar foods by explaining how they are similar to the foods the children are already familiar with.

Yet, I had expected more cooking inspiration for how to feed a family. Instead, I felt it was a Mommy-blog style book, with lots of emphasis on how great a mom she is because she does such and such. That’s not to say it was bad: it just wasn’t my style, since I personally get bored with mommy blogs. “Mommy blogs” also give me a guilt complex since I know I will never have the energy and talent, for example, to improvise a muffin recipe in the 45 minutes before soccer practice.

Too Many Cooks also failed to inspire me in the kitchen because it seemed Ms Franklin was so far beyond my abilities, especially since she readily admitted to having worked as a cook in a luxury yacht in the years before mommy-hood. In my pre-mommy years, I was preparing Rice-a-Roni four or five nights a week. That’s not to say the recipes in Too Many Cooks (for example, Monte Cristo sandwiches and Cornish pasties and chicken nuggets) are “fancy” or incredibly challenging. But they are not simple, and they are not recipes that give you a foundation for future cooking. (I felt rather incompetent when Ms. Franklin’s easy Mommy Chicken Nuggets recipe took me two hours. I wrote a few posts about some of the recipes I tried on my Cooking Journal.)

I didn’t realize how uninspired I was until I picked up Julia’s Kitchen Wisdom, a slim 110-page volume Julia Child produced in the last years of her life. I’ve always been intimidated by Julia Child, since Mastering the Art of French Cooking is a monster tome (and comes in two volumes) and “French Cooking” in general is not practical for a mommy on a budget. In short, I’ve been afraid of reading Julia Child.

All that was without foundation, for Julia’s Wisdom made cooking sound easy. The best part is that I believe her: it is that easy. She’s not trying to give us recipes for a lifetime of cooking: she’s trying to share tidbits of the most important techniques that we may need over a lifetime. Her philosophy is

Once you have mastered a technique, you hardly need look at a recipe again. (page 3, Julia’s Kitchen Wisdom)

Kitchen Wisdom has a few basic recipes for soups; salads;  vegetables; meats, poultry and fish; egg cookery; breads, crepes, and tarts; cakes and cookies. Each section also has ideas for variations. I’ve tried a few of the recipes and they seem simple enough. While they all certainly have the French influence, they are not as overwhelming as I anticipated. I almost want to check out Mastering the Art of French Cooking now!

As I write about this book of “essentials,” I am reminded of Alice Waters’ book (The Art of Simple Food), which I reviewed at the beginning of the Spice of Life Challenge. I’m not sure what the difference was (both focus on the basics to help us know how to make food taste good) but in some respects, I feel Julia Child is better able to speak to the incompetent cook: myself.

I fell even more in love with Julia Child when I read her memoir, My Life in France. Just as I doubted her cookbook, I doubted I’d relate to this story. But I was delightfully surprised. I was amazed to learn that when she was first married, her cooking was much like my cooking when I was first married:

My meals were satisfactory, but they took hours of laborious effort to produce. I’d usually plop something on the table by 10:00 p.m., have a few bites, and collapse into bed. (My Life in France, page 6)

Julia Child did not know how to cook. Her husband’s work took them to France, and there Julia Child found herself without much to do. But the delectable food had made an impression on her from the first day, and she became determined to learn how to produce it.

I could relate to that as well. Although I am not sure I’ve had any true “French” food, my husband took me to a delicious restaurant in Chicago while we were dating and I was so impressed by the meal as an experience I’ve wanted to improve my own cooking abilities. There is something about eating that can move you, if you let it!

The most impressive part of Julia Child’s story was her determination. She spent weeks on a project (mayonnaise, for example) until she got it right. Although she was a student at the Cordon Bleu, the school was (from this perspective) rather inept, and she had to teach herself the essentials of cooking. And she did.

Although a French-style cook book for American audiences was Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle’s idea, Julia Child was the one that understood what creating such a book for an American audience would require. She was the one that worked out the amounts for most of the recipes. Although Simone Beck did a lot of work too, Julia Child was the rock behind the project. If you’ll pardon a ridiculous pun, she was the yeast that allowed it to rise to its monumental size, depth, and ultimate success.

I loved the memoir. I loved Julia’s relationship with her husband, Paul. I loved the image of France it created in my mind. It’s probably changed since then (as Julia mentions), but the idyllic people, places, and food were simply fascinating from the historical perspective. We can only wish it were so peaceful now! (And someday I will make it to Provence.)

There were so many inspiring quotes in My Life in France. I imagine it is one I’ll reread someday: maybe then I’ll take care to write down the snippets of Julia’s wisdom so we can all learn from the Master.

Julia Child’s memoir (and her cook book) is inspiring for the busy family cook. Just as it illustrates that learning to cook good food is not a year-long project, but a life-long pursuit, it also illustrates that it is possible and even fun! Thanks to Julia Child for bringing delicious food to America, and for giving housewives the inspiration to attempt the seemingly impossible!

As my husband said every time I stopped reading to tell him an inspiring story: “There is a reason Julia Child is a household name!”

• My Spice of Life “Feast”: A Pool of Books to Chose From
• A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg
• The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters
• The Elements of Cooking by Michael Ruhlman
• The Spice of Life Challenge
• An Edge in the Kitchen by Chad Ward
• Pretend Soup by Mollie Katzen and Ann Henderson
• The Making of a Chef by Michael Ruhlman
• Reading Journal (4 Nov): Reading Progress and Library Loot
• The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron

Before this month began, I hadn’t read any books in the Dewey Decimal 500s category or the 600s category (for the Dewey Decimal Reading Challenge) in all of 2009. I also hadn’t read a single book that could possibly count for the 2009 Science Book Challenge. While I don’t want challenges to always dictate what I read next, I did feel the urge to read something science related: I want to be a balanced reader.

I ended up reading a few books in the past few weeks (and I’m in the middle of another), and to my surprise, I enjoyed most of the books I picked up. Some I loved, others were a struggle to read, but I remain glad I did so. Science books, like the architecture and history and politics books I’ve read in the past months, can be fascinating.

If you’d like, you can skip to the review you’re interested in by using these shortcuts:

• The Great Equations by Robert P. Crease
• Better by Atun Gawande
• Complications by Atun Gawande

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I’m getting burned out from writing long reviews, so I may take to writing shorter reviews in the future. This post is still incredibly long but since they’ve been sitting and waiting to be posted, I thought I’d merge them together a little bit. It breaks my heart that I’m not telling you every single good and bad aspect about the books I’m reading, but I hope what I do share is enough to help you decide whether or not you’d like to read the book.

The Great Equations by Robert P. Crease

Mathematics classes were always my school nightmare, and while I don’t recall why it was so painful in elementary school, I do recall that my math “experience” only got worse, despite the fact that I got good grades. To overcome my strong feelings against math, I even took Calculus in college simply because I figured it was something I should do in my quest to be a well-rounded, intelligent individual. That “cure” to hating math failed utterly (I got by, thanks to a nice young man in my class that tutored me, but I don’t recall a single thing and I only remember hating it). I decided this month that it was time to face my worst nightmare once again.

Enter The Great Equations: Breakthroughs in Science from Pythagoras to Heisenberg by Robert P. Crease. I’d hoped that The Great Equations would help me understand the importance of math in the world and the ways math relates to science and daily life. I hoped that it would help me see the whys behind studying math, just like those optional extra credit posters (the ones that explain the practical uses to our subject) that no one did in my high school pre-Calculus class.

In some respects, The Great Equations did help. I have a greater appreciation about why we have math. I see that mathematics is a way of explaining how the world works. The world follows patterns, and just as 1 + 1 = 2, the equations of science, from E=mc² to Maxwell’s equations and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle (which I won’t write out!) are a logical way of explaining the world.

My favorite chapter, hands down, was the first chapter, which was about the Pythagorean theorem:

a² + b² = c²

Pythagorean proof

This equation, which helps determine the length of the sides of a right-angled triangle, makes sense to me because I studied it in school, so the information about how it works, how it was “discovered,” and why we need it was seriously fascinating. When I put the book down one time, I curled up with a homemade quilt to watch a movie and I started looking at the triangles on it in a new light: it was kind of fascinating to see the world around me in terms of math! I’d never done that before.

The chapter on Newton’s laws and the chapter on Euler’s equations were almost approachable for me, but once Maxwell, Einstein, Schrödinger, and Heisenberg showed up, I felt completely lost. I sincerely wish the other chapters were as clear as the Pythagorean theorem chapter, but alas, because they were “new” equations and concepts to me, I couldn’t relate to them.

I also liked the interludes between chapters, as they focused on issues with science and math reaching the nonscientific public. Since that is me, I wished the whole book were as approachable as those interludes were.

In other respects, though, I’m still as hopelessly confused as ever! I should have realized this book was not for the non-mathematical when I read this in the introduction:

The experience of learning [mathematics] transforms the way we experience the world, which fill us – naturally, if sometimes only momentarily – with wonder. (page 14)

I laughed out loud at the thought of mathematics filling me with wonder, but I had hope. Maybe this book would do just that!

Unfortunately, Crease hadn’t written a book for those like me who didn’t find mathematics wonderful. He was writing for the mathematician. Primarily, this is a book with the history of mathematical thought in each of ten chapters of development, revolving around the ten most significant equations. Therefore, Crease focused on the history of the mathematics and science in a way that required an understanding of mathematics and science.

For example, at one point, while talking about E=mc², he says “it follows a simple yet powerful logic…that is relatively easy to understand” (page 165). He then proceeds to talk about the equation in a way that I don’t understand: and this is something I did understand after reading a biography of Einstein last year! Ironically, Crease addresses the difficulty of talking about scientific subjects with nonscientists in one of the interludes.

Talking about science to outsiders is like talking about a city to noninhabitants; what you say depends on the interest of your audience. If they intend to become inhabitants, you give them one kind of talk…If your listeners are just tourists with no intention to become inhabitants, on the other hand, you can focus on  the public attractions, not go into too much detail, and safely condense a lot. (page 210)

Crease’s book talks to scientists or want-to-be scientists. Despite the fact that he referred to this project as a book “about science accessible to nonscientists” (page 271), it was not. As a nonscientist, as one simply interested in a “tourist” look of science and mathematics, I found The Great Equations painful (my brain hurt) and challenging to read. I’m glad I read it, simply because I’m still hoping to gain a better appreciation for mathematics’ relation to the world, but it was not accessible at all for me.

Math and science (or maybe just physics) is confusing to me. That’s the bottom line. I still hate math. I’m not cured yet!

Has anyone read a super basic book about math and science that explains some of the most relevant ways the world works? I didn’t think I needed a “for dummies” book, but after this one (which I thought would be so easily accessible), I think I might!

For the Dewey Decimal Reading Challenge (500s).

Better by Atul Gawande

Medicine demands perfection. When a life is on the line, the things a doctor does make a difference in results. If something goes wrong, a person has to deal with the consequences. In Better, surgeon Atul Gawande explores what “better” medicine might look like, what it might require, and how physicians can get there. The three sections discuss diligence, ingenuity, and what it means to do right. I listened to the audiobook, and I was surprised by how engaged I was in his anecdotes and the facts he provided about medicine. I am convinced that being a “successful” doctor is truly an art.

As I listened to the “Diligence” section, I was amazed (and disgusted) by the discussion of something as simple as washing hands – and how doctors struggle to remember to do so! The discussion of polio vaccination was fascinating, and I felt sick to my stomach when I listened to the chapter on casualties of war, and not because it was disgusting: it was just heart-wrenching. War causalities in the current war in Iraq are 10% of those who have been wounded; in previous wars (including the Persian Gulf War) it had not dipped below 25% of wounded. This is thanks in part to the increased diligence of doctors.

The “Doing Right” section seemed much more complicated. As Gawande discussed the cost of health care and the battles with insurance, I started to see the other side of the argument – I’d only seen the consumer/patient side before (and always been frustrated). It seems doctors are just as frustrated with health care insurance! The chapter on ethics, which focused on the doctors who help administer the death penalty, was likewise complicated. Gawande himself seemed to struggle to put in to words what he thought about doctors helping in such a situation: it goes against the medical ethics code, and yet without physician involvement, such executions are physically cruel. I finished that chapter with a very strong aversion to the death penalty, something I’d never seriously been decided about before.

Finally, in the “Ingenuity” section, I found myself literally in tears as I learned what doctors in rural India do to succeed against the odds. In a 500-bed hospital that serves 2.3 million people, only nine surgeons service patients every day. When a patient needs a life-saving and rather basic surgery, the true question is whether or not there is a spot for them. The surgeons are able to do any surgery, and when a child came in with hydroencephalus and there were no resources, the doctors used whatever they could find to meet the needs. The boy lived.

The discussion about U.S. doctors that are striving to be better was likewise fascinating, but the India stories really touched my heart. If I had extra resources myself, I’d send them to a rural hospital in a third-world country.

I admit I hadn’t previously thought about what makes a doctor successful, and I loved Gawande’s plea for doctors to consider it themselves.

For the Dewey Decimal Reading Challenge (600s).

Complications by Atun Gawande

Complications was written when Gawande was still a resident in surgery, before he wrote Better. In some respects it was more detailed and “fleshed-out” than the second volume, which I listened to before reading this. Complications had more examples of real people, and it was more centered on the American health care system. But I unfortunately did not enjoy it nearly as much, and if I had read it before Better, I probably would not have sought out the other book.

I think some of the things I mention above as bonuses were what made it negative in my book. I am clearly a pessimist in my way of looking at the world, so reading about all the things that go wrong for doctors and surgeons was a bit horrifying to me. For example, I would have panicked before going in for my laparoscopic surgery last year if I’d realized the (slight) chance that I would have major complications. Realizing the fact that doctors are learning on the job makes me a bit more hesitant to seek medical help.

As a pessimist, then, I better appreciated Gawande’s second book best, for it focused on ways doctors are attempting to make the world (not just the U.S. system) better, and the ways in which doctors attempt to improve their craft.

In Complications, Gawande focuses his patient stories under the categories of fallability, mystery, uncertainty. Sometimes the doctors messed up, sometimes the doctors couldn’t (and still don’t) understand a case, and other times doctors were simply “unsure” about a diagnosis – and doing something wrong could be disastrous and even fatal. The stories were fascinating, and although I was grossed out by the gore and frank discussion of surgery (I guess I’m just easily made queasy), I found I could not put it down: I wanted to know how the cases would resolve.

Gawande’s point is that being a doctor is incredibly hard. While other occupations are allowed some lee-way, medical professionals are expected to solve patient cases without error. It’s horrifying (to me) to read about the times that the errors crop up. That said, I think it’s important to know where doctors are coming from. Further, while I don’t stand by Gawande’s surgeon bias toward surgery (I believe one should do whatever is possible to avoid having to be cut open), I found his attitudes and explanations informative and yes, even somewhat refreshing. Here is a doctor who admits, “Yes, we all make mistakes.”

Although I am immensely glad I read Complications, the bottom line for me was that Better was truly better: it gave me hope in the medical professionals around me. Eva really enjoyed Complications, though, so maybe its subject matter (explaining all the problems that arise) just wasn’t for me.

For the 2009 Science Book Challenge. (While all three of these would count for that challenge, I am in the middle of another science book, and I hope to get a third one read as well: it’s about time!)

Which aspects of science do you struggle most with? Which parts of science fascinate you?

Are you an art/history/social science person like me, or a science lover, or a completely well-rounded individual who loves everything? (If you’re the later, you are my hero!)

• The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa
• October in Review
• A Bite of the Spice of Life (Two Books by Julia Child and Too Many Cooks by Emily Franklin)
• Reading Journal (21 Oct): Victorian Second Helpings + Giveaway of an Abandoned Book
• We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
• Reading Journal (7 Oct): Books for Every Season
• Reading Journal (14 Oct): Blogging Burnout
• Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman by Richard Feynman

It seemed odd to me, and although I’ve enjoyed the ones I’ve read, I didn’t understand it, I’m sorry to say.

Thanks to a tweet from Nymeth, I found Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud, which is a nonfiction comic all about comics. It’s kind of like a poem about poetry, except that analogy fails, for poetry is limited to words. Comics (or graphic novels, if you will) are multi-dimensional compared to a poem.

McCloud illustrates the power of comics by showing the reader what it can do. This is a book that literally shows, not tells.

Yes, Understanding Comics is nonfiction. If you do not normally read nonfiction, you may be bored. It goes through a brief history of comics, it analyzes what makes a comic good, and it gives some background on how comics interact with the reader. If you, like me, are interested in understanding what is meant when someone says “comics” or “graphic novel,” you will, like me, be fascinated by Scott McCloud’s book.

Because I’m such a neophyte when it comes to this type of book, I feel I can’t coherently put into words all the amazing things I comprehended about comics as I read this book. Instead, I’m going to give you some bullet points what I’ve learned from each chapter. I suspect if I read it again, I’ll get even more out of it. (I wish I could “quote” the pictures to you!)

• No genres define “comics.” “Comics” is not a genre, but a format. “Sequential art” can be about any subject. (Chapter 1)
• Viewing cartoon-like images helps us picture ourselves. A simple style does not necessarily mean a simple story. Symbols and icons are somewhat universal. (Chapter 2)
• The white space (or lack of it) between frames tells a story to. Comics allow each reader to use his or her own imagination to close each panel and move to the next. (Chapter 3)
• Comics allow time frames to get tangled up. (Chapter 4)
• The art in comics provokes emotion by using symbols and recognized.  (Chapter 5)
• In comics, pictures and words work together in an appropriate balance to show and tell a story. (Chapter 6)
• Successful comic writers have to balance these things: purpose; form; idiom (i.e., genre); structure; craft; and surface.  (Chapter 7)
• Color has not historically been a bonus to comics – it tends to overwhelm the purpose – but with new technologies, it could be used as a bonus to the format. (Chapter
• In short, comics can go anywhere – and they do! (Chapter 9)

As I started realizing what he’s saying about genre, I got really excited. Comics is not a genre, but a format to tell a story. No wonder I am not drawn to the superheroes and the fantasy fables comics. It doesn’t mean I don’t like comics, I just don’t like the genre; I don’t normally like superheroes in novels either. But there are comics about subjects I’m interested in, and those the comics I should look for.

I also was fascinated by the discussions in chapters 4 and 6 about how comics successfully capture a reader and make a reader participate in the creation of story.

Notable quotes (note that they don’t seem nearly as powerful without the awesome illustrations:

If people failed to understand comics, it was because they defined what comics could be too narrowly. | A proper definition, if we could find one, might give lie to the stereotypes – and show that the potential of comics is limitless and exciting. (page 3)

The artform – the medium – known as comics is a vessel which can hold any number of ideas and images. | The “content” of those images and ideas is, of course up to creators, and we all have different tastes. (page 6)

A good rule of thumb is that if readers are particularly aware of the art in a given story — | — then closure is probably not happening without some effort. | Of course, making the reader work a little may be just what the artist is trying to do. Once again, it’s all a matter of personal taste. (page 91)

The idea that a picture can evoke an emotional or sensual response in the viewer is vital to the art of comics. (page 121)

And because I love you all, here’s something from Scott McCloud’s website so you can read the first pages and see just what I’m talking about when I say “a comic about comics.”

Even after reading Understanding Comics, I’m not certain the comics format is for me. It seems many comics are fantasy, and I just am not drawn to it (even something like Fables doesn’t appeal to me much; although I did enjoy reading Castle Waiting). That said, the nonfiction comics I have read have always fascinated me. While I don’t normally enjoy a memoir, I have loved how comics give dimension to memoirs. I may pick up more of those, particularly the political impact memoirs. I have a few on my list, including Safe Area Gorazde by Joe Sacco and Pyongyang by Guy Delisle. Can you recommend any others?

Understanding Comics is excellent. If anything is missing, it is only the effect of the past 17 years of comics history and impact, for this book was written in 1992. It seems the graphic format has exploded in the past decade. I highly recommend it to anyone who seriously wants to understand the hows and whys behind comics.

If I’d recommend one comic/graphic novel to you, I’d say start with The Complete Maus. It’s excellent.

If you have reviewed Understanding Comics on your blog, leave a link in the comments and I’ll add it here.

Other Reviews:

• Jenny’s Books
• Sophisticated Dorkiness
• things mean a lot
• 1330V
• Shananagins

• Graphic Novels Challenge
• What is Reading? and Audiobook Review of The Book Thief
• Reading Journal (23 Sept): The Classics Circuit
• Uglies by Scott Westerfeld
• Castle Waiting by Linda Medley
• September in Review
• 2009 in Review (+ Lots of Stats)
• Reading Journal (30 Sept): The Gift of Choice (Thoughts on Banned Books Week)
• October in Review
• Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

As I read about Chicago architecture last month, I found myself curious to read about Mormon architecture (such as the Salt Lake Temple) as well. The only published book I found that talks about the architectural aspects of Mormon architecture, from Kirtland to Utah, was Nineteenth-Century Mormon Architecture and City Planning by C. Mark Hamilton, an academic volume on the subject.

Because it is academic (published by Oxford University Press), I’d suggest it’s only for extremely curious readers. I liked reading it, but I was specifically looking for it! I was mostly interested in the Temple architecture when I picked up this volume, but I admit that all of it interested me to some extent.

This volume covers nineteenth-century Mormon temples, tabernacles, meetinghouses, other associated buildings (such as cultural halls and offices), domestic architecture, and various other buildings (such as governmental buildings, warehouses, and schools). It also had a chapter discussing the Mormon concepts of city planning and a background chapter on Mormon history. It was not, however, a Mormon book: it was an architecture book. Details from Mormon history are interspersed throughout simply because the history helps explain various architectural styles.

The facts behind a number of specific buildings fascinated me.

The Kirtland (Ohio) Temple (built 1833-1836) is a mixture of various styles, including Georgian, Federal, Greek, and Gothic. The classical elements both inside and out were probably from patterns in carpentry textbooks to some extent. Many of the builders were young amateurs.

The Salt Lake (Utah) Temple (built 1853-1893; yes, forty years) is a distinctly English architectural style, specifically when one looks at the medieval crenelations at the top. That may have been influenced by Brigham Young’s familiarity with England. I admit that I love the look of this building, and learning that it’s walls are six-to-eight feet thick really does make it more fortress-like in my mind.

Many of the other temples built in Utah in the nineteenth-century were likewise crenelated and fortress-like. Personally, I think these settlers were trying to say “No, we’re not leaving this time!” (Mormons had been driven from Kirtland, Ohio, where they’d built a temple; Jackson County, Missouri; and Nauvoo, Illinois, where they’d also built a temple.)

I also was interested in construction of the Salt Lake Tabernacle (home to the Mormon Tabernacle organ and Choir and a hall with excellent acoustics; built 1863-1870) and the Assembly Hall (Victorian-Gothic; 1877-1882).

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I hadn’t heard of (let alone seen) many of the other beautiful meeting houses and other buildings discussed, but I was surprised by how architecturally creative the buildings were, considering the time period and the geographic isolation of the people building them. Even in the 1860s, many buildings were built by following 1820-1840s popular styles because the builders were so removed from the core of architectural thought. Once the railroads came through Utah, more mainstream architecture was built in Utah.

While I’d seen Brigham Young’s Beehive House (built 1852-1854) and Lion House (built 1854-1856) before, I hadn’t seen a picture of his Forest Farmhouse (built 1861-1863), which I like better. It just looks so homey!

I also liked to learn about Brigham Young Academy (built 1884-1891) in Provo, Utah, because that is the town where I went to college. While this text (published in 1995) mentioned that the Academy Building was slated for demolition, since then it has instead been restored and is now a gorgeous local library. I’m so glad it wasn’t destroyed!

The text was scholarly and had very thorough endnotes, which I enjoy. I would have preferred footnotes because I read all of them. I also was regularly referring to the photographs of the buildings, so I had my hand in three pages of the book at once whenever I read it!

I found this book to be surprisingly easy to read (especially after the Chicago architecture one) and I think that’s partially because I’m more familiar with Mormon history than I was with the Chicago history. I also think the Chicago architecture book was a bit more technical as it discussed the buildings. Hamilton’s volume used lots of architectural terms I was not familiar with, but by looking at pictures and reading sentences in context, I learned the terms fairly easy.

I’m glad I read about some buildings I was curious about; I do think they are beautiful. Now I am curious to learn about the twentieth-century Mormon buildings too, buildings like the modern temples (I love the Hong Kong Temple), the Conference Center, and even the Office Building. I really like learning the history of these buildings.

What building(s) do you think are beautiful?

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• The Chicago School of Architecture by Carl W. Condit
• Chicago, Chicago!
• Reading Journal (26 Aug): Focused Reading
• Jesus the Christ by James E. Talmage
• Reading Journal (19 Aug): Miscellany
• Reading Journal (2 Sep): Vacation Prep
• Christ and the New Covenant by Jeffrey R. Holland
• August in Review
• Chicago Poems by Carl Sandburg

Overall, I liked the information I read. I got excited about my kitchen knives! But when I went to try and sharpen my own knives according to the instructions in the book, I was a bit lost. My husband, who has sharpened kitchen knives himself before, seems to think the problem was me, and not the book. Nonetheless, for a novice knife sharpener, I’d suggest that a book is probably not a great place to start your knife sharpening education.

I’m a relatively new cook, so I feel most of what I read about the technical aspects of cooking is new to me. This book was no different. I read An Edge in the Kitchen at a very slow rate, about 10-15 pages a day while I ate breakfast. This worked pretty well for me.

I learned about buying knives: there are more knives out there than I could ever want let alone use! There are knife collectors out there just like there are book collectors. (Why does that scare me?) I learned what is important and what is not important when buying a knife. For example, don’t waste your money buying a block of knives: buy the individual knife that you need and get a good one (and there are good ones for $40-$60).

I learned about cutting boards, knife storage, and general kitchen safety. Did you know lots of food poisoning can be avoided by washing the sink? Keeping separate cutting boards for meat versus vegetables helps too, of course.

An Edge in the Kitchen also reviewed some basic cuts. The middle of the book had color pages illustrating some of the basic ways to cut vegetables and meats for cooking. He also provided a few recipes that require lots of cutting so people can practice with their knives. I personally don’t mind the prep side of cooking a meal, but I admit I’m am incredibly slow with a knife. I have a hard time imagining that some people cook recipes with specially cut vegetables just so they can use their knives more often. Really?

The last section of An Edge in the Kitchen provided some facts about maintenance and sharpening. The maintenance and honing was clear to me. I felt like I was learning something. I liked the comparison of the various sharpening systems, and I accept fully the argument that electric sharpeners are very very bad for your knives.

As I read the instructions about sharpening with a stone, I started getting a bit confused. When I sat down one afternoon to try, I admit I was nearly in tears I was so frustrated and confused. I think the instructions may be good for someone like my husband who’s done it before, but I was completely lost. All the talk about angles and burrs was incredibly confusing. I tried to do what it said, and I don’t think it was good for the knife. My husband showed me what he’s always done and it seemed a lot less confusing that the book made it sound.

So the bottom line is, don’t read a book to try to sharpen a knife unless you’ve already done this before or at least seen it done. I look for a video of knife sharpening on YouTube, and my husband showed me what he does. Two hours later and the one knife I was working on doesn’t feel any sharper to me. And now I wonder if I’ve ruined it.

Chad Ward says in this book that anyone who can cook a complicated recipe can sharpen their own knives. I’m thinking that the two arts are rather different things. I’m not so happy at this point.

I’ll try sharpening my knives again in another day or two, when I’m not feeling frustrated at the thought. Maybe I just need practice.

Do you sharpen your own knives with a stone? How did you learn?

• The Elements of Cooking by Michael Ruhlman
• A Bite of the Spice of Life (Two Books by Julia Child and Too Many Cooks by Emily Franklin)
• The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters
• Pretend Soup by Mollie Katzen and Ann Henderson
• The Making of a Chef by Michael Ruhlman
• The Spice of Life Challenge
• Carmen by Prosper Merimee
• A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg
• Reading Journal (26 Aug): Focused Reading
• My Spice of Life “Feast”: A Pool of Books to Chose From

The Chicago School of Architecture

The architects that flocked to Chicago after the fire of 1871 found a willing city. Chicago was determined to rebuild, and the architects were eager to comply. The most interesting aspect was that for the first time in history, architects were able to look upward: new engineering techniques were encouraging taller buildings. Yet,

[I]t became more and more difficult for [the architect] to develop an exterior form that grew out of and gave expression to the dominant social factors of the time, chiefly the new conditions of urban life in the great centers of trade and manufacture. (page 2)

Thus, a new style was needed for the new type of taller and larger buildings that were being created.

Condit’s book had long sections at the beginning and end about architecture and where it was and is going. For example, “architecture is the only art that is both utilitarian and aesthetic and hence ought to express its practical function as well as the inspiration that leads to the creation of beauty” (page 9). These passages were slow and difficult for me to read, but I still learned a lot about architecture as an art, and I feel a new interest in this field of art. It may be a new favorite, along with photography which always has been.

What I liked most was the direct discussion about the specific buildings and how certain buildings were influential. I liked hearing what the architectures themselves said about their designs. One significant architect (and my favorite) was John Wellburn Root, who died in 1891. I wonder how the face of modern architecture would be different if he had lived longer!

For example, Root says,

As far as material conditions permit it to be possible, a building designated for a particular purpose should express that purpose in every part. The purpose may not be revealed by conventional means, but it must be so plainly revealed that it can be escaped by no appreciative student. . . . another essential characteristic of all true art work – moderation. (page 47-48, italics added)

The Monadnock

Monadnock, image via Wikipedia

My favorite building that I read about was one of Root’s buildings, The Monadnock (mouth-watering but copyrighted picture here). It was one of the last masonry constructed buildings, and yet, it was in a design that seemed to indicated it was a sky scraper (a building which could only truly reach the sky once steel framing was readily adopted):

…[T]he projecting bays of the walls with their large glass area give the structure a light open appearance in spite of its great mass and the relatively small size of the windows. Stripped of every vestige of ornament, its rigorous geometry softened only by the slight inward curve of the wall at the top of the first story, the outward flare of the parapet, and the progressive rounding of the corners from bottom to top, subtly proportioned and scaled, the Monadnock is a severe yet powerfully expressive composition in horizontal and vertical lines. It presents in its relentless exactitude the formal beauty latent in the commercial style, but at the same time it demonstrates the limitations of the old method of construction. (page 68)

When I first read about this building, I thought back to Lost Chicago (thoughts here), which documented all the buildings in Chicago that have been torn down. I got very scared and ran to my computer: Is the Monadnock still standing?! Yes, it is. I love to look at this building: I keep searching for more pictures on the Internet (such as here and here). I can’t wait until my next visit to Chicago so I can go see it in person. (Yes, I am a nerd.)

I love it even more when I read the contemporary praise of this building:

This building has no precedent in architecture. It is itself a precedent. Yet is has a precedent outside of architecture; it comes up to an ideal, and by virtue of its correspondence with this ideal it becomes a work of art. (page 68, quote of Robert D. Andrews of Boston Architectural Club).

The Auditorium

Auditorium Theater, image via Wikipedia

Another significant Building was the Auditorium, built by Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan. I didn’t feel any connection with the building, but it was interesting to see the impact:

Like the Monadnock, [the Auditorium] was the high point of masonry and iron construction in the new age of mechanized industrial techniques. It brought the old system of construction to a close and at the same time substantially advanced the new structural technique growing up and around it. (page 77)

I’m glad I didn’t start with a book about or by Louis Sullivan, even though he was one of the only architects I’d ever heard of. Sullivan was one of the most well-respected architects in the world, always encouraging “the rule with no exceptions in the concept ‘form follows function’” (page 36), and yet it seems he was a bit of a feisty, rude man. His own pride and his cantankerous personality were his downfall: once his partner left the firm, he was unable to gain any large commissions.

My History with Architecture

When I was in a seventh or eighth grade elective class (I think it was an art class), we had one week of lessons on architecture. As a special field trip, we walked around the houses near my junior high school and my teacher told us “That one is Victorian style” and “Notice the gables on that one” and so forth. That was all I’d ever learned about architecture.

Because I’ve been reading about Chicago lately, I have become quite interested in the buildings down town. They didn’t mean anything to me, so I researched, and apparently, there is an entire school of architecture based on the buildings created in late 1800s in Chicago! Duh! I should know these things.

While The Chicago School of Architecture was a slow and sometimes boring read, I’m so very glad I read this book. I look forward to learning more about various architectural styles, preferably the 19^th and twentieth century architecture styles.

Have you read any easy-to-approach architecture books? I’m in the middle of another dense one, and I’m hoping the next after that isn’t quite so academic.

What is your favorite type of art?

• Chicago, Chicago!
• Nineteenth-Century Mormon Architecture and City Planning by C. Mark Hamilton
• Chicago Poems by Carl Sandburg
• Reading Journal (26 Aug): Focused Reading
• Reading Journal (29 July): Summer Mode to Blog Reading
• Reading Journal (19 Aug): Miscellany
• Listen to the Wind by Greg Mortenson and Susan L. Roth
• Twenty Years at Hull-House by Jane Addams
• Kid’s Corner: Birthday Books (Age 2)
• All the President’s Men by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward

I hadn’t realized when I began reading that these books were true, but then I found them in the nonfiction section! The first is collection of letters between Helene Hanff and Frank Doel, the proprietor of a used book shop in London, during their 20-year correspondence (1949-1969). The second book is Helene’s journal when she finally makes it to London, a lifelong dream that comes true only after the first book was published.

I loved the book talk, and while neither of these books were favorites of mine, I did love learning about Helene’s reading and studying style. Oh, the power of books!

84, Charing Cross Road was a delightfully light collection of letters. I enjoyed the banter between Helene and Frank. I was a little sad by how few letters captured the last years of the correspondence. The friendship was still obviously clear, but the letters were fewer. Keeping the book as it was (simply a collection of letters) made it more powerful, though. Because the letters were every few years instead of every few months, I, as the reader, could see how this long-distance friendship meant so much to the two book lovers. It was sweet.

I wanted to see how Helene finally got to London, so I quickly found the second book after I finished the first. I admit that I was disappointed in The Duchess of Bloombury Street. I disliked the casual writing style in the second book (although it hadn’t bothered me in the letters of the first), and I didn’t like Helene’s overbearing personality as it came across in the second book (most people seem to like her sense of humor, but it wasn’t for me). I couldn’t relate to most of the sites she was longing to see in London (I have not read enough to know the authors and places she mentions), and I’m the wrong generation to be interested in the celebrities she spent time with.

But all the complaints aside (and I think I’m the only person in blogdom to complain at all), I’m very glad I read both books. I loved the book talk, and I loved the look at the thoughts and desires of another compulsive reader. What struck me was how isolated Helene seemed, living alone and working freelance at home. She seemed to have no other person with whom she could share her reading loves and the thoughts she had about books.

In that sense, then, reading Hanff’s story made me all the more glad for book blogging. Helene Hanff was a blogger born 50 years too early. She missed the community, and she would have loved it.

The Movie

I normally have a hard time with books to movies, and I find I enjoy the movie much more if I wait to watch it until long after I’d read the book. This was one that probably could have used some distance.

The majority of the movie was excerpts from letters that Helene (Anne Bancroft) and Frank (Anthony Hopkins) wrote to each other, and so there was little action (my husband fell asleep in about 15 minutes). The action that there was seemed to suggest things that I hadn’t interpreted from the book: that Frank wasn’t completely happy with his wife, that there was an unspoken romantic tension between the two, even though they’d never met. While I’m sure there was a special bond between the two book lovers, the suggested romance did not seem to have come from the book. I also missed some of the great books quotes. The movie and the acting was okay overall, but I much preferred the book (but no surprise there).

Helene’s Reading Style

I really loved Helene’s reading style. First, she has no qualms with disliking books:

I houseclean my books every spring and throw out hose I’m never going to read again like I throw out clothes I’m never going to wear again. It shocks everybody. My friends are peculiar about books. They read all the best sellers, they get through them as fast as possible, I think they skip a lot. And they NEVER read anything a second time so they don’t remember a word of it a year later. But they are profoundly shocked to see me drop a book in the wastebasket or give it away. They way they look at it, you buy a book, you read it, you put it on the shelf, you never open it again for the rest of your life but YOU DON’T THROW IT OUT! NOT IF IT HAS A HARD COVER ON IT! Why not? I personally can’t think of anything less sacrosanct than a bad book or even a mediocre book. (84, Charing Cross Road, page 54)

I don’t throw my books out any more, but that’s only because Bookmooch allows me to pass them on to a happier reader. I could really relate to Helene, and I felt like saying “Finally! Someone who understands me!”

Do you throw away (or give away, etc.) books you hate? Do you throw away (or give away) books you’ll never read again? Why or why not?

And then I also really liked her description of how she gave herself her college education: by reading Arthur Quiller-Couch’s serious of lectures. Whenever she first got to a literary reference she wasn’t familiar with, she said, “Wait here” and went and read the book in question. And when that book had a reference she wasn’t familiar with, she went and got that book. This went on until she was familiar with the issues at hand; then she returned to Quiller-Couch (Q). She says,

So what with one thing and another and an average of three ‘Wait here’s’ a week, it took me eleven years to get through Q’s five books of lectures. (The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street, pages 51 to 52)

Now, that is a dedicated learner! I envy her dedication to the project, and I realize that that kind of careful reading, reading to truly understand, is what I’d love to do. I often find I’m lacking patience. I think I’d fail to get through one volume of Q at that rate. And yet, how marvelous it would be to have read so carefully!

Do you do research if you don’t know a reference you come across in a book? I’m sad to say I certainly don’t do much, beyond consulting Wikipedia and moving on.

The last thing that stood out to me was her depth of reading. She may have been pretty narrowly limited to English Literature, but she sure knew it well.

I’m always ashamed when I discover how well-read other people are and how ignorant I am in comparison. If you saw the long list of famous books and authors I’ve never read you wouldn’t believe it. My problem is that while other people are reading fifty books I’m reading one book fifty times. (The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street, page 106).

I can definitely relate to that. I want to be a widely-read person (as I’ve mentioned before), but I’d also love to really know some books. My problem is, I can’t decide which books to read fifty times!

Do you/have you read any book fifty times?

If you love reading, you may be intrigued by Helene’s letters and journal. Neither of these books are books I’ll ever revisit, but I enjoyed reading them once.

P.S. I do personally think this book about books beginning during the aftermath of WWII was the inspiration for Guernsey (thoughts here). But I thought Hanff’s story was better, mainly because it was real.

If you want to know which books are part of the exchange between Helene and Frank, Wikipedia shares a partial list of the books mentioned or ordered by Hanff in 84, Charing Cross Road.

Other reviews:

• Nymeth (review got me to read the book)
• At Home With Books
• The Literate Housewife Review
• Care’s Online Bookclub
• Books and Movies
• Citizen Reader
• Book Nut
• The Book Lady’s Blog
• The Bluestocking Society
• Library Queue
• A Comfy Chair and a Good Book
• Bart’s Bookshelf

If I missed your review of either book, let me know and I’ll add it here.

• August in Review
• Reading Journal (26 Aug): Focused Reading
• Reading Journal (22 July): Reading as a Priority
• Reading Journal (19 Aug): Miscellany
• Palestine by Joe Sacco
• Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers
• Chicago, Chicago!
• Reading in Spanish (Neruda’s Poetry and La casa en Mango Street by Cisneros)
• To Kill a Mockingbird, The Movie

I’ve been looking for something to nurture this interest, and then I recalled a book that months ago Eva mentioned her niece enjoyed: Pretend Soup by Mollie Katzen and Ann Henderson.

I didn’t realize how wonderful Pretend Soup was until I consulted another preschool cookbook and compared the two.

The second book had cooking activities, and each treat was either in a shape (such as fruit pudding decorated like a cat, bread shaped to look like a bear) or the treat itself was a sugary desert (chocolate dipped fruit, fruit tarts arranged in a pretty pattern). These recipes seemed far too artistic for my creative design talents, let alone those of my one-year-old (or even an older preschooler).

While Pretend Soup does include some “decorated” food (“Bagel Faces,” decorated with vegetables, for example), the emphasis in the entire book is different. Katzen and Henderson assert that for a preschooler, the fun part of cooking is the actual act of cooking. Watching my son, I believe it.

The introduction provides numerous safety ideas (such as mark the handle part of the bread knife with masking tape to remind the child where to hold it), as well as ideas to ease the stress of cooking with a child (such as keep a baking sheet under the mixing bowl, so clean ups will be as painless as putting the baking sheet in the sink). Cooking with children will certainly be messy, but that doesn’t mean it’s a no go.

Further, each recipe is written twice, once for the adult in words, and then illustrated in a two-page color spread so the child can “read” the recipe himself. My son is still too young for that aspect, but I’m sure three- and four-year-olds love being able to “read” along.

And then the “critics” (i.e., preschoolers) also provide hilarious reviews of the food they’ve created.

“I wish I could have two bunches of them!” says Nathan, liking his plate after the “Zucchini Moons”

“This is so good, I can’t even say a word.” says Matthew about the “French Toast”

“It tastes so good, I’m gonna eat it ALL UP!” says Jessica on the “Oatmeal Surprise”

“Good! Very good! So really very good!” says Sammy about the “Pizza!”

What I like best about Pretend Soup is not the recipes; the end results seem mediocre and ordinary. My son and I have so far cooked the “Zucchini Moons” (sautéed zucchini with salt, pepper, and cheese), the “Hide and Seek Muffins” (with a hidden strawberry inside each one), and the “Pizza” (which he loved putting cheese on, and then some more). My son wouldn’t eat much of any of these, probably because he’s getting teeth this week and not eating much anyway. I didn’t think they were the most original or most delicious meals either.

No, what I like most about Pretend Soup are the tips and ideas for making the process fun. Cooking doesn’t have to be intimidating, and Pretend Soup makes even the most basic dishes into a game. I think the kids praised the end results (even the pretty ordinary sautéed vegetable dishes) because they had made it themselves. It was their creation: of course they liked it.

I have a friend that doesn’t let her son cook with her because “he wants to help me crack the eggs.” Apparently, she doesn’t want him to get that “hands on.” It’s messy, and eggs are, well, raw eggs.

Oh, my. How can I explain to you the look of absolute delight on my son’s face when he helped me crack open those eggs? That’s worth any mess. He had a blast: one minute the egg was hard, the next minute it was all runny. Enter: delighted screeches, loud laughter, and a largest smile I’ve ever seen. Plus, a mess on his hands and the counter, but hey, who cares?

Of the three recipes we made together from this book, I think my son had the most fun with the “Hide and Seek Muffins.” We had to roll the strawberry in sugar and dip it inside the muffin dough. My son would eat a strawberry, and then remember to get another and put it in the muffin dough. He also had fun putting the papers in the muffin tin, cracking the eggs, mixing the mix, and putting the dough in the papers. Yeah, pretty much all of it. He didn’t have patience to wait the 15 minutes for the muffins to be done: he said, “Eat! Eat!” as soon as he saw the strawberries. So we ate strawberries while we waited for the muffins. Altogether, it was a fun morning.

I look forward to many more mornings cooking with my son. It may not be recipes from Pretend Soup, but it will certainly be with my son!

Do you cook with your kids?

What are your favorite “kids cooking” recipes?

P.S. I know I’ve written three kid-like posts in a row; I’ll get back to other stuff the rest of the week, I promise!

Cross-posted on Rebecca’s Cooking Journal

• The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters
• The Spice of Life Challenge
• A Bite of the Spice of Life (Two Books by Julia Child and Too Many Cooks by Emily Franklin)
• The Elements of Cooking by Michael Ruhlman
• A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg
• An Edge in the Kitchen by Chad Ward
• My Spice of Life “Feast”: A Pool of Books to Chose From
• The Making of a Chef by Michael Ruhlman
• Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne (Revisited in Poetry)
• Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel + Giveaway

Anthologist and “historian of ideas” Joe Wheeler has also been fascinated by Lincoln, and he spent seventeen years studying the fascinating man and collecting stories about him. Abraham Lincoln: A Man of Faith and Courage is Joe Wheeler’s collection of favorite stories from the life of the sixteenth president, focusing on the development of Lincoln’s faith and morals.

I really enjoyed the stories Wheeler collected. The book was personable and readable, so it moved quickly. Because I am religious, I appreciated the emphasis on Lincoln’s faith, and the first-person, opinionated side-notes, while completely unnecessary, made it feel like I was sitting by a rocking chair listening to my grandpa (or someone else’s grandpa) tell his favorite stories from Lincoln’s life. It felt like a book of reminiscences.

Despite that pleasant approach, I still ended up being disappointed at times. It’s important to realize that Wheeler’s Abraham Lincoln is not an academic biography. I’m a compulsive endnote reader, so when I read a story or quote, I immediately want to see where it came from; I’m constantly flipping to the back of the book to look at the sources. With this book, it seemed many of the stories were not documented; none of the epigrams (quotes by Lincoln before sections in the chapter) were documented; and many of the stories that were documented were taken from other biographies, not “original” material.  To avoid being frustrated, I had to keep reminding myself that Wheeler is a compiler of stories, not an academic historian.

I tend to prefer my biographies to be fact rather than hearsay, and I tend to prefer a carefully written, non-personal narrator rather than a first-person narrator that writes in sentence fragments, even if the sentence fragments are more “readable.” But the purpose of this book was different: to build an image of the character of this man that so many people revere. The religious purpose behind the book was rather blatant, but because I knew what it was going in to it, I appreciated it. I wanted to read a book of stories about Lincoln’s faith.

Reading Abraham Lincoln: A Man of Faith and Courage as a collection of stories (and not as a biography) was certainly enjoyable. While reading Freedman’s Photobiography gave me a feel for the facts (Freedman was careful to only give information that was documented fact, claiming to refute the “myths”), Wheeler’s Abraham Lincoln gave me a feel for the traditional, inspiring personality that is the man Abraham Lincoln. I’m glad I read it, but unless you are specifically interested in the canon of stories relating to Lincoln’s faith, I’d probably recommend starting with something more factual and/or academic.

What type of biography do you prefer: academic (endnote heavy) or conversational (story-driven)?

I’ve only read these two biographies of Lincoln, although I have Team of Rivals on my upcoming radar. My interest in this man is still keen. What biography of Lincoln have you read and loved?

I read Abraham Lincoln: A Man of Faith and Courage for the U.S. Presidential Reading project.

If you have reviewed Abraham Lincoln: A Man of Faith and Courage on your blog, leave a link in the comments and I’ll add it here.

• Lincoln: A Photobiography by Russell Freedman
• August in Review
• Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling by Richard Lyman Bushman
• Reading Journal (29 July): Summer Mode to Blog Reading
• Nonfiction Five Challenge
• Reading Journal (22 July): Reading as a Priority
• Reading Journal (5 August): Library Loot
• The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester
• Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis

Twenty Years at Hull-House is Jane Addams’ autobiography until about 1910, a chronicle of the various reforms she brought to life and some of the things that changed the lives of the immigrants (9,000 a year). Hull-House was a non-political, non-religious haven for those that had no other advocate in a busy city. The story is remarkable.

I have never read anything quite like this before, and so this “review” is more of a collection of notes, quotes, and issues that stood out to me as I read it.

Twenty Years of Hull-House is written not in chronological order (except for the first few chapters covering her childhood) but rather in topical order.  In places, the text did become dry when it discussed people, philosophies, and economic issues I was unfamiliar with. But reading a more difficult book was well worth the effort for me. In a sense, it opened my eyes to the plight of the poor. While the issues have changed in the past 100 years, I believe that the underlying isolation that comes with poverty or immigration is still pertinent today. I liked reading this book both for the historical value and for the interesting perspective of hands-on social work.

Why Jane Addams Began It All

Jane Addams’ ability to see those without her privileges may have been due to the influence of her father. When she was but a child, he encouraged her to think about others:

[A]s a little girl of eight years, arrayed in a new cloak, gorgeous beyond anything I had ever worn before, I stood before my father for his approval. I was much chagrined by his remark that it was a very pretty cloak – in fact so much prettier than any cloak the other little girls in the Sunday School had, that he would advise me to wear my old cloak, which would keep me quite as warm, with the added advantage of not making the other little girls feel badly. (page 15)

I wonder how many fathers today encourage their children to be less materialistic.

Jane Addams determined to set up a settlement house in Chicago after seeing a similar type of house in London (in the 1880s). It seems she could intuitively see the disparities among the people, and she sympathized with those that were ignored. One major problem was that the poverty-stricken new immigrants didn’t take initiative when they had problems, and “[t]he policy of the public authorities [was] of never taking an initiative, and always waiting to be urged to do their duty….” (page 68). Hull-House opened its doors September 18, 1889. She ran Hull House until her death in 1935, at age seventy-four. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931.

Challenges

Jane Addams found it difficult to lead a settlement house in a politically charged city, in a politically radical age. This was the age in which even the President of the United States, President McKinley, was assassinated. She found that Hull-House “constantly clashed with the existing political code” (page 207). Politicians, it seems, were especially crooked even then, hoping to get Hull-House to stop fighting for certain issues if enough money were placed on the table. From this account, it seems Jane Addams certainly did her best to keep Hull-House non-political, but rather practical. She fought for the social reforms that the people needed.

In addition to political pressure, Jane Addams faced religious pressure. Those people providing financial backing for the settlement worried about the apparent non-religiosity of the organization, and in fact hesitated to support it because of that. Why not provide a community center for religious worship, they asked Addams. Her reply:

[T]he residents of Hull-House could not come together for religious worship because there were among us Jews, Roman Catholics, English Churchmen, Dissenters, and a few agnostics, and … we had found unsatisfactory the diluted form of worship which we could carry on together … [T]his diversity of creed was part of the situation in American settlements…. (page 288)

It was striking to me that religion was so closely connected to social reform in that day. When one looks at the ethnic make-up of the Hull-House neighborhood, Addams’ comment makes sense, and the diversity of American religions seems to reflect on America as a whole.

Making a Difference

The ignorance of the leaders of Hull-House was quickly turned in to campaign for social reform. Even an attempt to give children a treat turned in to an eye-opening experience:

Our very first Christmas at Hull-House, when we as yet knew nothing of child labor, a number of little girls refused the candy which was offered them as part of the Christmas good cheer, saying simply that they “worked in a candy factory and could not bear the sight of it.” We discovered that for six weeks they had worked from seven in the morning until nine at night, and they were exhausted as well as satiated. (page 132)

After such an eye-opening experience, child labor laws quickly became an issue for Hull-House to fight for, as did general labor laws, since many of the adult immigrants worked such long hours that they died in accidents due to exhaustion.

Beyond social reform, the major aspect that stood out to me was the education that Hull-House encouraged. So many of the things they taught the people made me wonder at the social situation of the immigrants in the pre-Hull House days.

For example, Hull-House workers found that because so many babies died in infancy, the immigrant mothers blamed it on the fact that the babies had cow’s milk in the USA and goat’s milk back in the home country (in this case, Italy). They had to learn about basic sanitation and only feed their newborn babies sanitary milk (page 167). Another example: The trash overflowed on to the streets, and the children’s first play yards and toys were garbage heaps and maggots. It’s no wonder that children died at a young age. Jane Addams took the responsibility to be garbage inspector, and Hull-House purchased property to make a proper playground (page 185-188). To think that such basic sanitation issues brought death to a community of people was heart-breaking.

Further, there was a big disparity between the generations because the adults “lost their hold upon their Americanized children.” The parents also could not understand their children’s desires of recreation and play; after all, the adults as children had worked all day in the fields, why should the children not work all day in Chicago? Jane Addams realized that there was some need for “a bridge between European and American experiences in such wise as to give them both more meaning and a sense of relation” (page 155). It seems to me that modern-day poor immigrants and their Americanized children may similarly find conflict.

Literacy and Art

I was excited to see the influence of books and art on the immigrants. Jane Addams said:

I once asked one of these young people, a man who held a good position on a Chicago daily, what special thing Hull-House had mean to him, and he promptly replied, “It was the first house I had ever been in where books and magazines just lay around as if there were plenty of them in the world. . . .  To have people regard reading as a reasonable occupation changed the whole aspect of life to me and I began to have confidence in what I could do. (page 224)

And further, when Hull-House had an art exhibit, an immigrant was surprised “when he found that we, although Americans, still liked pictures, and said quite naively that he didn’t know that Americans cared for anything but dollars – that looking at pictures was something people only did in Italy” (page 240). In his otherwise bleak life, it must have been wonderful to see something beautiful and familiar.

Those two experiences reflect to need for the encouragement of literacy and art among the poor.

What Do We Do?

At one point, Jane Addams explains that “our very [American] democracy so long presupposed that each citizen could care for himself that we are slow to develop a sense of social obligation” (page 237). Addams said that statement as a matter of fact, and I certainly can see that today. Certainly, the newly arrived immigrants weren’t accustomed to a lot of things about their new country and home. Maybe the poor today need to learn how to take care of themselves, as the poor immigrants Jane Addams helped were.

I’ve thought about what I could do today. I still don’t know. I feel nothing I could do would even remotely match the work of a Settlement. Addams herself pointed out the different between a “relief station” and a “settlement”:

… the difference between the relief-station relation to the poor and the Settlement relation to its neighbors, the latter wishing to know them through all the varying conditions of life, to stand by when they are in distress, but by no means to drop intercourse with them when normal prosperity has returned, enabling the relation to become more social and free from economic disturbance. (page 111)

Because I can’t give up my life to work for free at a settlement for fifty years, as Jane Addams did, I know I cannot have the influence she had. But maybe I can do something to show that I care about the issues.

Jane Addams paraphrased something that I think hits home to us “book bloggers” and novel readers:

Mr. Howells has said that we are all so besotted with our novel reading that we have lost the power of seeing certain aspects of life with any sense of reality because we are continually looking for the possible romance. (page 200)

Addams argues that there is “romance” to the poverty side of real life; you just have to get to know it.

Have you read about Jane Addams? What do you think was her greatest legacy?

Other Reviews and Sites of Interest:

• Twenty Years at Hull-House, complete text at Project Gutenberg
• Hull House on Wikipedia
• History of Social Work on Wikipedia
• Jane Addams on Wikipedia

If you have reviewed Twenty-Years at Hull House, leave a link in the comments and I’ll add it here.

• Chicago, Chicago!
• Library Summer Reading Programs Completed!
• Jane Austen: A Biography by Carol Shields, a Quote Book, and a History of England
• Hunger: An Unnatural History by Sharman Apt Russell
• Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
• August in Review
• The Arrival by Shaun Tan
• Chicago Poems by Carl Sandburg
• Reading Journal (5 August): Library Loot
• A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift

I found that many of the books I got were quite dry histories, and I didn’t have much patience with them. I read some and mostly I looked at the pictures of some. My history lesson came from videos. Here are two of the books I’ve read and one of the videos that I’ve enjoyed lately.

Chicago: Then and Now by Elizabeth McNulty was the first book that I picked up. It’s a coffee table book, and it compares street corners and neighborhoods over the years. It provided a short paragraph about the scene, and had the “then” picture on the left-hand page and a “now” picture on the right-hand page. I am not very familiar with Chicago today, let alone in the past, so it probably wasn’t the best starting point, but it was still interesting. I was interested enough to keep searching for more information.

Lost Chicago by David Lowe focuses on the buildings that have been torn down. Since I’ve never lived in the city, it’s not as tragic to me, and I got rather tired of the drama (this building has “disappeared” and this “gem” has been horrifically removed). Beyond that, though, the book provided a very general history of Chicago in between the photographs, starting with Louis and Clark and going through the Chicago fire and to the early 20^th century. Because the focus was on the photographs of the now-torn down buildings, the history was not too dense for me. I learned about a little about the Chicago School of Architecture and I’m eager to learn more. I also found myself interested in some more of the history.

I mentioned the video Chicago: City of the Century in my Reading Journal post last week. It was excellently done, and I thought watching a three-disc documentary was a wonderful way to grasp some of the history of Chicago without having to read a 700-page book. It was slightly cheesy in its drama, but overall, this movie was a great beginning. I know it was not too cheesy because I also started a different one that was so horribly done I couldn’t watch more than 30 minutes. I won’t bother pointing you to that one.

What to Read?

As I’ve read and learned about Chicago, I’ve found a lot of different things to add to my “to read” lists. If you’ve read any of these, please let me know what you thought.  What Chicago books come to your mind? It seems Chicago isn’t often a memorable setting for novels, as London and New York are.

Nonfiction

• Twenty Years at Hull-House by Jane Addams. Autobiography of a serious Chicago social humanitarian. I’ve already started this, and I’m loving the insight into a difficult place and people.
• The Autobiography of an Idea by Louis Sullivan. Autobiography from one of the initiators of the Chicago school of architecture.
• The Chicago School of Architecture by Carl Condit. I’m interested in more Chicago architecture info; even if I don’t read these things in full, it’s still interesting to skim through.

Fiction

• Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser. A Chicago author that wrote a turn-of-the-century Chicago novel. I want to read it now.
• The Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters. Poetry from turn-of-the-century Chicago. Apparently each poem is from the perspective of a different dead person in the cemetery, telling the story of his or her life.
• Native Son by Richard Wright. A novel about a citizen of Chicago.
• Lucy Grayheart by Willa Cather. I love the few Cather novels I’ve read. This one has some scenes in Chicago.
• The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. I don’t really want to read this, but I feel I should. Especially after learning all about Chicago’s stockyards. Yuck already.

I really wanted to end with a little Frank Sinatra singing about That Toddlin’ Town. But I can’t find the real man on YouTube. Here’s a cover band.

And if you’d rather, here’s the Obama version.

• The Chicago School of Architecture by Carl W. Condit
• Chicago Poems by Carl Sandburg
• Nineteenth-Century Mormon Architecture and City Planning by C. Mark Hamilton
• Reading Journal (26 Aug): Focused Reading
• Moments: The Pulitzer Prize-Winning Photographs by Hal Buell
• August in Review
• Reading Journal (29 July): Summer Mode to Blog Reading
• Twenty Years at Hull-House by Jane Addams
• Two Books on Literacy (Growing a Reader from Birth and The ABCs of Literacy)
• Kreativ Blogger Award

Molly Wizenberg’s A Homemade Life is a great example why someone else’s life may be incredibly interesting, simply because Molly’s life has been defined by food. And as she explains each chapter of her life for us, she provides recipes so we can experience the integral food too, if we choose.

It’s so much fun to see a life through the eyes of delicious foods. Molly shows that food is a communal part of our lives, helping to form lasting memories and lasting relationships. Food really can tell the stories of our lives, as Molly’s memoir/cookbook attests.

As she writes of her childhood, for example, she shares her dad’s excellent French toast. As she writes of her first trip to Paris, she writes of the bread and chocolate that defined her days.  As she writes of the holidays, she shares favorite holiday treats. And then, of course, there are her Paris recipes, and her best friends’ recipes, and her vegetarian boyfriend’s salad recipes. And Molly could just keep going, I’m sure.

But A Homemade Life is not just about the food. Molly’s memoir is excellently written, easily readable, and absolutely delightful. I know “delightful” is a cliché, but this book seriously fits the word without being cliché. It is real, and yet amusing and engaging all at the same time.

As Molly writes about her dad’s death, for example, I was in tears myself, thinking about the impact he had had on her life. His was an influence not to be forgotten. As Molly moved on with her life, she realized that. She subsequently learned to follow her dreams, even when they took the form of a food blog (Orangette). In fact, the only thing missing from this book are the gorgeous photographs Molly normally includes along with her blog posts on Orangette.

Many of the recipes Molly shares are a bit too “fancy” for my tastes. I’m primarily a family cook, and I don’t cook with specialty foods simply for cost reasons. “French style” cooking is not really my thing. But I do like simple food, and some of the recipes appear simple; at least a dozen and a half have entered my personal recipe file for future experimentation.

Molly’s story comes full circle, with the one center point in every part of her life being food.  In the end, I love the concept that foods, and not only the events, make up a life.

I would never think of delicious food as the center point of my childhood memories, and that’s okay. But it is encouraging to me that food can be such a staple in a life, and I look forward to making delicious food a memorable part of my family’s life going forward.

In the end, I can say I liked reading Molly’s story so much I intend to reread it someday. And cook her recipes.

What food memories do you recall from various stages of your life? As a child, I recall my dad’s pancakes on Saturday mornings. As an adult, I recall the risotto my husband made for me for one of our first dates.

A Homemade Life was a memoir read for The Spice of Life Challenge.

Other Reviews:

• Books Lists Life
• I Read What??
• Books and Cooks

If you have reviewed A Homemade Life on your blog, leave a link in the comments and I’ll add it here.

• The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters
• A Bite of the Spice of Life (Two Books by Julia Child and Too Many Cooks by Emily Franklin)
• My Spice of Life “Feast”: A Pool of Books to Chose From
• Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel + Giveaway
• Pretend Soup by Mollie Katzen and Ann Henderson
• The Spice of Life Challenge
• The Making of a Chef by Michael Ruhlman
• An Edge in the Kitchen by Chad Ward
• The Elements of Cooking by Michael Ruhlman
• My Antonia by Willa Cather