Despite already bulging bookshelves in every room, I can't stay out of my favourite nook-and-cranny bookshop. I haunt them most Friday mornings. Today I added three more books to my collection. Enough to keep me busy at least through the weekend (if I do nothing else - which is a distinct possibility in these grey and rainy days).

I recently mentioned 'Five Days Gone', a memoir I'm enjoying (but I need more, more, more). Today I bought another memoir 'Inheritance' by Dani Shapiro, about "genealogy, paternity, and love". Yet again, a DNA test disclosed the news - this time to Dani - that her "beloved" father was not biologically related to her. (There's a lot of that going around these days).


Next, I spied a book in the window called 'Genius & Anxiety' by Norman Lebrecht. It is subtitled: 'How Jews Changed the World, 1847-1947'.

The inside cover flap states: "A unique chronicle of the years 1847 to 1947, the century when the Jewish people changed the world - and it changed them". Intriguing subject I thought.

The roll call includes familiar names: Marx, Freud, Proust, Einstein, Kafka. Less well known are the likes of Karl Landsteiner (who classified blood groups, allowing for transfusions and modern surgery), Paul Ehrlich (hematology, chemotherapy), Siegfried Marcus (motorcars) and Rosalind Franklin (genetic science).

The flap continues: "They all had a gift for thinking in wholly original, even earth-shattering ways." Surely, a rarity.

Also: "...The Jewish way of thinking surmounted the horrors of two world wars and a Holocaust". Haunting.

The author states that the people he will discuss "All appear to think "outside the box", and all of them think fast." Fast thinking - a great attribute.

He goes on:

"Folk wisdom has it that five Jews wrote the rules of society:

Moses said, "The law is everything."
Jesus said, "Love is everything."
Marx said, "Money is everything."
Freud said, "Sex is everything."
Einstein said, "Everything is relative."

Haha.

And:

"Hillel the Elder said: 'Love your neighbour as yourself. The rest is commentary.'

Would that every religion would keep it this simple. I could get behind that with joy.

And:

"Two millennia later, Albert Einstein, asked by a journalist to explain the theory of relativity, replies: "Matter tells space how to curve." A Hillelian aphorism. When the hack still looks blank, Einstein tells a Jewish joke."

The joke comes about when Einstein further explains relativity in response to the journalist's question - "This is very simple. Matter tells space how to curve - and this is all it's about." When the journalist is still puzzled, Einstein goes on "When you sit with a nice girl for two hours you think it's only a minute but when you sit on a hot stove for a minute you think it's two hours. That's relativity."

I'm fond of saying about pretty much everything: "It's relative." It's fun to see the Einstein also joked about it.

It's going to be a major read - nearly 400 pages - with masses of endnotes. And from a quick perusal, I'm going to guess the author doesn't pull punches and may well clash with the ideas and beliefs of many others. Should be lively.


My third purchase was a brief bio of Florence Nightingale, one of my all-time heroines from my early youth to today. Born in 1820, she grew up in the Victorian age, a time when women had few rights or opportunities. Florence felt a call to nurse the sick and she is credited with founding modern nursing. An amazing achievement in a day before germ theory had even taken hold and discovery of antibiotics (penicillin) didn't occur until 18 years after her death. She revolutionized the care of wounded soldiers (Crimean War) and saved many lives. Too, she consulted with the US Army on setting up field hospitals during the Civil War. Florence is still recognized today for her compassion, hard work, major reforms in nursing and medical care, as well as her admirable steely character that caused her to stick up for herself and speak her mind.

Yeah, I need to read another bio of one of my favourite ladies!

So, what are YOU reading? :)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/31/2020 06:43PM by Nightingale.

I'm reading the "New Road to Surfdom a letter of warning to America." It describes all the things wrong with Europe and how America is so much better, and the European Union catastrophe. It was written in 2009 and it's interesting that so much of what he was writing is so relevant today. Daniel Hannan (who is a member of British parliament) describes things that hadn't even happened yet like Obama care.

I'm also reading Death Valley in 49, that's an amazing book as well all about a group of Pioneers trying to get to California and how because some of them were associated with Missourians they made all kinds of terrible blunders on the trip and were terrified of the Mormons, The author describes what a scary lot the Mormons were and how awful they were, stealing stuff, killing people, with long beards. Then he gets in with Chief Walkara who saves his life coming down the Green River in a canoe but naively doesn't trust his advice, Later he meets up with Captain Hunt who knows what he's doing but they still doesn't trust the Mormons (even though the Mormons haven't done anything bad to them) so they head across Death Valley to get away from them, (I think they are all going to die!, but not yet to that part)

Poor Europeans cannot compare to America when it comes to surfing, so it should be a quick read!

Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World, by Adam Tooze. This was a NYT book of the year for 2018. I bought it a year ago and read 100 pages and put it down.

I started over this year and have less than 100 pages to go. Unlike most books on the 2008 crisis, Tooze talks about what happened to Europe and brings it up to Trump and 2018.

Endless miseries in Greece and just up to Ukraine in 2015.

Phantom Shadow Wrote:
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> and just up to Ukraine
> in 2015.

You can stop right there. The rest of the book sucks.

It is an excellent book. Tooze is a serious writer.

Nothing like the smell of a good used bookstore on a rainy afternoon. Throw in a properly made croissant and a good cup of coffee and what more is needed?

I salute you that you can get through three books over a rainy weekend. I envy that. I’m a painfully slow reader.


Was surprised that Kona on the Big Island has a decent, sizeable used bookstore. I have a long list of things to look for knocking around in my head, and I found a few, a few I never expected to ever find:

1. Night Thoughts, by Edward Young, illustrated by William Blake.
Edward Young was once hugely popular, in the 1700s, a household name like “Shakespeare” and “Milton”, but today is all but forgotten. Dr. Johnson, Edmund Burke, Boswell etc all praised, adored and memorized him, then in the Victorian Age George Eliot ridiculed him. Blake, on the other hand, was totally unknown when he made his engravings for the poem, and today Blake’s fame continues to grow. This was a delightful find.

2. A Rhetoric of Motives, by Kenneth Burke. This is the sort of book, an obscure academic work of literary criticism, that makes me wonder about the previous owners and the journey of the book. Sometimes a book like this will have an old bus or plane ticket, or a restaurant receipt tucked inside. Often in such a book there will be marginalia. This one is a clean copy but well read judging by the spine. I’ll need several very quiet hours to understand it.

My much better half picked up Patrick Leigh Fermor’s three volumes accounting his walk across Europe, from Holland to what was then still called Constantinople: A Time Of Gifts, Between The Woods And The Water, and The Broken Road.

Human wrote,
>
> I salute you that you can get through three books
> over a rainy weekend. I envy that. I’m a
> painfully slow reader.


Me, too. I read every comma.

kathleen Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Me, too. I read every comma.

Yes! And semicolons “sound” different.

When I was in my early 20s, I used to entertain myself by looking/shopping in used book stores. Used books fit my budget quite nicely, and the stores were quiet havens. I used to love to hunt for my "treasures."

When doing the same in my early 20s I was sorta hoping to run into a girl like you. Doing so would have spared me a lot of grief.

The Testaments, by Margaret Atwood.
She thought she was done with the subject after Handmaid's Tale, but no.
Milkman- a modern look at the divide in Ireland.
On order- Anne of Kleves.

The joys of retirement: reading classics I avoided when younger.

Also, Rory Miller's "Violence: A Writer's Guide," which I recommend for all writers. Details and accuracy are so good it could be useful in law enforcement and military curricula. Not just conflict, combat, weapons and wounds, but the psychology of different people types and situations.A chilling chapter: "How You Die."

Human, I empathize with you--I'm a slow reader, too. The Wall Street Journal had an article recently about Evelyn Wood Speed Reading. Did you know she was LDS? Their take: the "Reading Dynamics" was more hype than product. Some people can read fast, others can't. Sigh...

caffiend Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> Human, I empathize with you--I'm a slow reader,
> too. The Wall Street Journal had an article
> recently about Evelyn Wood Speed Reading. Did you
> know she was LDS? Their take: the "Reading
> Dynamics" was more hype than product. Some people
> can read fast, others can't. Sigh...

Ya, it sucks, eh?

I should amend a bit. I can ”read” quickly enough for information, articles and documents etc, but I’d call that “scanning” rather than reading. It’s a chore and lacks pleasure, but has its uses. I can’t sustain this kind of reading for anything book-length though.

Reading something like Anne of Green Gables the same way seems like blasphemy. I will dramatize in my head this kind of reading, with various voices and tones and cadences. And if I get along in the book and find I got the tone wrong, for example, I’ll go back and reread with changes. For me, “information” is not the point of this kind of reading.


I have seen articles lately critical of speed reading. But A few friends when entering University took the course and swore by it. Either way, I don’t think its an appropriate way to read “the classics”. I recently reread Flaubert’s Sentimental Education. I’d be hard-pressed thinking of a reason someone would even want to speed read through that.

Down side to slow reading is not getting to all we want to get to, but that’s probably true for everybody.

(A Mormon Wood in my childhood claimed kinship with Evelyn’s family.)

Alas, the clip seems to be stuck behind an NBC pay wall or something. But I remember Gilda Radner brightly proclaiming, "Ever since I learned to slow read, I'm understanding and enjoying literature so much more!"

Perhaps we can pick up on this later. I made two mistakes last night: 1) I overcaffeinated in the evening, and stayed up all night, and (worse) 2) got into a spitting contest with Lot's Wife, when I should have been working on my book (which you'll love!)

So I'm going to log out and go to bed.

Good night, Human. Lot's Wife. Ziller. Warrior. Elder Old Mutt...

i remember that!

Remember this:

Evelyn Woodhead Speed Reading Course

https://genius.com/Cheech-and-chong-evelyn-woodhead-speed-reading-course-lyrics

I still have my childhood "Anne of Green Gables" set. I'm saving it for my grand niece one day.

I'm a slow reader as well. I can read quickly if I absolutely need to, but for enjoyment, I read slowly. When I was in upper elementary school, one of my teachers taught us speed reading (I think she was influenced by Evelyn Wood.) I could do it, but I hated it. Speed reading was in fashion back then. Nowadays teachers give instruction in skimming text when needed for a given purpose.

Einstein should have said, "Relatives AREN'T everything."

  

Let me add a heartfelt "yup."

I'm making a point to include more books from other cultures in my book diet.

I'm almost done with The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami. It's strange but interesting. It follows odd experiences of a male character who lives near Tokyo. It includes aspects of Japanese society at the end of the 20th century.

Murakami is fun. He cites Kafka and Kundera as major influences as well as modern Japanese culture.

Ishiguro is interesting too. He is a native English speaker but with Japanese sensibilities; the Remains of the Day, the White Countess, When We Were Orphans, the dystopian Never Let Me Go, etc. It's a remarkable combination of elegant writing, rather than translation, and Japanese aesthetics.

Wow, fascinating shares-ies. Thank you all!

I might have to look up some of your reading material myself. Such a broad spectrum of interests.

To clarify a couple of points (if it matters):

1. My favourite little nook-and-cranny shop isn't a used bookstore. (Although I do haunt one of those also - recently bought a lovely leatherbound Animal Farm there for my little brother's birthday; he'd mentioned he'd fallen in love with it - my whole family shares the book obsession).

2. I can't read all three books in one weekend, Human. 'Genius and Anxiety' is nearly 400 pages and 'Inheritance' is 250. Plus I'm in the middle of a riveting detective novel for a "down-time" read as well as one by David Gregory, Journalist, called 'How's Your Faith', and a few others scattered around.

I go back and forth amongst them all, depending how I feel and when I'm reading. The more serious non-fiction ones I like during daytime, the lighter reads at night. What better than a good murder mystery to induce sleep, haha.

I need a big supply of bookmarks to keep my place in all the books I am in the middle of. I guess I'm a butterfly reader, flitting from one to another, depending on mood and time of day.

Good thing I can pass many of the books on to siblings, as we share interests, as the bookcases bulge and groan, even as I try to downsize. Some books that I really love, though, I must keep close. The leather-jacketed Dickens, Stevenson and Burns, for instance.

No matter how much I read, I can't get through all the books. Because: Housework. Shopping. Stuff.

Now you've all added to the list.

Thanks. I think!

Nightingale Wrote:
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> ...as the bookcases
> bulge and groan, even as I try to downsize.

You can always donate to a charity thrft store, but also consider dropping them off at a homeless shelter.

ah, then you’re just like me.

I’m always in the middle of at least a dozen books, distributed between non-fiction, essays, and poetry. I never read more than one novel at a time.

I used to try to read one book at a time. But reading several different kinds of books all at once is the best way to manage a terrible case of ADHD, that and plenty of exercise.

I found this app fun and useful for managing multiple books at a time (I must always finish what I start, eventually):

https://getbookly.com/

I have the same trouble, I buy books online or at used stores and then never seem to fine enough time to read them. But I think it's important to have books around that are interesting to you even if you don't read them. It's a sign that we want to develop character and have refined aspirations. It's noble!