Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories - 1983

Though I do enjoy the occasional ghost story, an entire collection--even of the best ever--was a little much, and I'm happy to list this on Paperback Swap where 3 members are wishing for it. Perhaps they work better when you're not alerted to the genre. When you know it's a ghost story, right off the bat the mysterious child/dog/crone/policeman isn't so mysterious--only the details remain to be determined. The only image which stuck in my mind was the "white fat hand" in Sheridan Le Fanu's "The Ghost of a Hand." The story itself is more imagistic than plot-driven. I did especially enjoy my dear E.F. Benson's "In the Tube," more light-hearted than the rest and with an optimistic ending (as in The Sixth Sense, the ghosts want the help of the living to communicate with their loved ones). That's the key--I like fantasy and not pure horror because the latter is so often purposeless. Why the haunting? No reason is given in classic horror--the scary stuff just is, and the story dwells on the protagonists' reactions. My impression is that seeing the motivations and mechanisms of the Big Bad steers closer to fantasy.

In the introduction, Dahl claims that women are/were (this was the early 80s) disproportionately represented in the writing of great ghost stories, as they are/were in great children's books. After talking about how rare and difficult it is to write a truly classic children's book, he veers off into an anecdote about the publisher Crowell Collier inviting "all the most celebrated writers in the English speaking world to write a children's story."

...[A]ll the writers accepted. These were big names, mind you, famous novelists, so-called giants of the literary world. I won't mention who they were but you would know them all.
The stories came in. I saw each one of them. Only one writer, Robert Graves, had any conception of how to write for children. The rest of the stories were guaranteed to anaesthetize in two minutes flat any unfortunate child who got hold of them. They were unpublishable.

Three Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Story - Leonie Swann, 2005 (English translation 2006, Anthea Bell)

What an unusual book! It does work - the sheep are believable sheepy and yet solve the mystery - but I can't say I loved it. It's a lot better than Play Dead, where the dog is the key to the mystery, but precisely because the narrators are sheep and don't fully understand what's going on, the solution doesn't have the complete mystery payoff. We're at a remove from all the human protagonists. Instead the payoff is how Swann manages to have her sheep act and reason within their species limitations. It's brilliant in a way, and funny, but not compelling. I don't want to read anything else on these lines, but I would pick up her next book with anticipation.

Buy from Powell's Books

Buy through Indie Bound

Museum: Behind the Scenes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art - Danny Danzinger, 2007

I grew up just a few blocks from the Met and have spent many, many hours there. It's not my favorite museum in the world (that would be the V&A, followed by quite a few others before getting to the Met), but it's the one I know best. Yet I saw many other sides of it in this Studs-Terkel-style interview book. Danziger's no Terkel, but he draws out many different sides of his subjects. The most interesting aspect to me was probably the clear class divisions between the workers (security guard, plumber, etc. - not totally blue-collar but close), the curators (intellectual, boho), and the trustees (obnoxiously wealthy and privileged). Because the order is simply alphabetical by last name, they rub elbows in the pages in a way that presumably doesn't happen in real life. A quick, enjoyable read, which makes me want to visit again and take a closer look at Duccio's Madonna and Child, Rembrandt's portrait of Gerard de Lairesse, and the pi-pa (a Ming dynasty lute). The Akkadian (Assyrian) reliefs always fascinated me, but I didn't realize before how unusual they are.

Song of the Wild by Allan W. Eckert - 1980

This book was described on the Project Wombat list, and to my surprise we had it at the library (it hadn't circulated since 1994, but it's a memorial so we kept it anyway). The concept is fascinating - a boy can project his consciousness into any animal, bird, or insect, and share its experience - but the writing doesn't do the idea justice. It's a strange book - it should fit into the tradition of great fantasy fiction like the animal parts of The Sword in the Stone, but it's actually on the dry side. Caleb's life in the human world is downer realistic fiction, and his experiences in the animal kingdom don't feel involving. It's partly the distant third person narration. The overall impression is Mark Trail come to life. Apparently it was pitched as an adult novel, but it falls between two stools - it's not involving enough for teens, but it doesn't feel like a standard novel either. I'm glad I read it once.

Lady of Quality - Georgette Heyer, 1972

The other in the pair of Heyer's Regency romances which I like enough to have kept and re-read (along with The Grand Sophy). Annis Wychwood, practically "on the shelf" at twenty-nine, takes in and gives countenance to impetuous young Lucilla Carleton, who 's run away from home to avoid being married off to Ninian Elmore. Her companion in this escapade? Ninian himself, who doesn't want to marry her but is being guilted into it by his parents. The inevitable sparks between Annis and Lucilla's guardian naturally kindle into love, but the many amusing moments come from primarily from Lucilla, Ninian, and Annis' foolish suitor Lord Beckenham. The plot climax arises when Annis nurses her little niece through influenza and then catches it herself. Heyer's heroines may be independent, rebellious, and witty, but of course they reveal themselves as Angels at the Sickbed when needed--I guess as part of their competence and clear-headedness in contrast to the other flighty and muddle-headed females (very Austenish), but it's a bit tarsome, as Georgie Pillson from the Lucia books would say.

The Mapp and Lucia books - E.F. Benson

This must be my fourth or fifth time through this wonderful series of novels, but this is my first reading of them on my Sony Reader. It was great to stick all of them in my purse and take them on vacation. Unlike many feather-light comedies, the more I read these the more I relish every word, and I'm always sorry to get to the end. Their appeal is hard to explain; the characters have no redeeming virtues and in fact are snobbish, fake show-offs; the plot incidents are the most trivial possible minutiae of everyday life; there is no real change or growth. But there are hundreds if not thousands of fans who absolutely adore them, and I'm one of them. It's mostly Benson's writing, which extracts the maximum comedy and suspense from the tiniest observations. The titles are:

Queen Lucia (1920) - We're introduced to Lucia as the Queen of Riseholme society--a small British village with Elizabethan architecture, which Lucia and her husband Peppino make the most of ("Perdita's garden" full of only Shakespearean flowers, smoky fireplaces, tables that are difficult to sit at). Some wonderful episodes, including the stir caused by an imported Guru with whom Lucia's rival Daisy Quantock tries to outshine her. Lucia's victories will become even more satisfactory when she encounters a more formidable opponent.

Miss Mapp (1922) - Introduction to Elizabeth Mapp and Tilling society. Similarly, we're itching for Lucia to get there and the maximum fun to begin, but Captain Puffin and Benjy's "duel" is one of many delightful scenes.

Lucia in London (1927) - Lucia and Peppino inherit money and Lucia uses it to claw her way up the social ladder in London. Her snobbery and pretension reach their peak. Also features the wonderful Riseholme museum, with an assortment of junk donated by the residents, including mittens which supposedly belonged to Queen Charlotte. (They would have looked like this and not this.) Peppino falls ill at the end and we glimpse Lucia's better nature for one brief moment.

Mapp and Lucia (1931) - Finally, the two social titans meet when Lucia and Georgie rent houses in Tilling. The irresistible force encounters the immoveable object! In the climactic episode, the two ladies are swept out to sea on a kitchen table and vanish for three months, but the plot point that dwarfs this minor excitement is that Mapp has copied Lucia's recipe for Lobster à la Riseholme. The psychological warfare over a recipe mattering more than physical jeopardy epitomizes the feel of these books. Perhaps that's one reason they're so appealing--it's a bizarre kind of escapist fantasy...

Lucia's Progress (1935) (US title: The Worshipful Lucia) - Contains probably the funniest episode of all, when Lucia thinks she's discovered Roman remains in her garden.

Trouble for Lucia (1939) - More plot than I remembered, with Susan Wyse's dead parakeet and Major Benjy's tiger whip popping up in various places throughout the book.

Oh, how I wish there were more of these! Although on principle I hate sequels by different authors cashing in on the originals, perhaps I'll try to ILL the two Tom Holt follow-ups, which do seem to have a certain credibility among Bensonites.

The Smartest Investment Book You'll Ever Read: The Simple, Stress-Free Way to Reach Your Investment Goals - Daniel R. Solin, 2006

Here's the same basic investment advice you'll hear from the few smart-and-honest money people out there: index mutual funds with low expenses, folks. So why do we need another book about it? Because people still choose active over passive investments. Why do they do that when study after study has shown that nobody can beat the market consistently?* Because media companies of all kinds make money on financial pornography, and dull doesn't sell; the very adjectives "active" versus "passive" fit into that paradigm. Solin instead calls them "hyperactive investing" and "smart investing" styles. It's a quick read and an extremely worthwhile one if you have any money at all to invest. The meat is in the chapter telling you exactly what funds to invest in, and to rebalance twice a year. (For Vanguard, Total Bond Market 80%/60%/40%/20% from low to high risk, rest in Total Stock Market Index and Total International Stock Index, 2.33:1 ratio). If only the library's 401(3)b was in the "smart" TIAA-CREF instead of the "hyperactive" Putnam Investments (with correspondingly high fees). Aaargh.

*Unless they are actually getting involved in the company's future, like Warren Buffett. Thas was fascinating to read about--I think it might have been Andrew Tobias who explained it, but I can't remember.

Slackjaw - Jim Knipfel, 1999

Years ago I went through a phase of reading the New York Press when we visited New York, and my memory of that publication boils down to Jim Knipfel's column, Slackjaw--kind of fascinating, kind of repellent. When the book came out, I noted the positive reviews, but never had an opportunity to read it. Then it turned up as a donation at the library, and I'm the first to check it out. He's a brave, articulate, cynically funny man who's had more bad breaks already than another ten people put together, from retinitis pigmentosa to a brain lesion. His descriptions of dealing with the various agencies helping the blind in New York City--particularly the way they valued him symbolically for holding down a full-time job, yet continually expected him to have time during the day for their bureaucratic paper chase--are both entertaining and enlightening. I enjoyed the writing and the anecdotes, admired Knipfel's resilience, and identified to a certain extent with his misanthropy. But overall, I can't say I loved it, and I was glad to part ways with him at the end. Sometimes the person who moves into my head when I read a biography or memoir turns out to be somebody I just don't click with long-term; no reflection on the book itself. My favorite passage, about a stint at the Whitney when they decided to hire impoverished artists as museum guards:

This is what my fellow guards and I experienced, during a typical ten-hour day: Packs of wild grade-school children on a field trip, running rough-shod over Giacometti sculptures. Tourists protesting, "But I am French!" when told not to touch the paintings. American visitors demanding their money back, arguing that there was no real art in the museum.

Oh, and Thomas Pynchon loves him! I thought blurbs from Pynchon must be pretty rare, but perhaps I'm wrong.

Blog Rules: A Business Guide to Managing Policy, Public Relations, and Legal Issues - Nancy Flynn, 2006

This is the one book on blogs we had at the library, and I wanted to read up before teaching my Montrose Adult School class. It's OK, not great, and could have been edited down to a much shorter book. Two problems that jumped out at me: quite a few of the author's examples of trouble that can be caused by blogs were actually email issues, and she seems to have misunderstood what permalinks are: "posts...typically remain accessible forever via the permalink (unlike web pages, which are subject to change and removal)." Ummm...unless the post or entire site is taken down, which happens not infrequently! But for a large organization, this does provide a helpful overview of pitfalls, best practices, and the importance of including blogs and relationships with bloggers in crisis communication plans.