Some of my best friends are animals

more cat pictures

It's true; many of those I love best are animals. Tucket, my wobbler kitten who is now ten months old, is recovering from tearing her tail ligaments. I never thought about tail ligaments until she tore hers. As far as I can tell, she injured them when she fell backward off a bed and landed on her tail. Most cats use their tails for balance, but hers is merely ornamental.

I came across a wonderful, little book a couple of years ago, a book which I would enjoy rereading and which I recommend to other animal-lovers. "Providence of a Sparrow: Lessons from a Life Gone to the Birds," by Chris Chester, is a funnny, heartwarming, true story of a man and the birds that came to share his home. Sparrows may be considered pernicious by many, but B, the sparrow in the book, turns out to have personality plus. B was a featherless nestling when found by the author, and he came to dominate Mr. Chester's home as he grew. Eventually, two male finches joined the household. Mr. and Mrs. Chester learn to play "sparrow games," among other things as their lives become evermore entwined with their avian friends'.

I loved the book's wit, its literary references and its warm humor. I also enjoy discovering people's unusual ways of living. This would make a dandy beach or vacation book, but it would also brighten one's winter reading.

Now here is a prayer, by an anonymous writer, followed by a quotation on Christian treatment of animals.

"Maker of earth and sea and sky,
Creation's sovereign Lord and King,
Who hung the starry worlds on high,
And formed alike the sparrow's wing;
Bless the dumb creatures of Thy care,
And listen to their voiceless prayer."

"I believe where the love of God is verily perfected, and the true spirit of government watchfully attended to, a tenderness toward all creatures made subect to us will be experienced; and a care felt in us, that we do not lessen that sweetness of life in the animal creation, which the great Creator intends for them under our government...To say we love God as unseen, and at the same time exercise cruelty toward the least creature moving by His life, or by life derived from Him, was a contradiction in itself." (John Woolman)

Reader's (in)Digest(ion)

What would you make if I gave you a pound of Velveeta, a pound of butter, a cup of cocoa, four pounds of powdered sugar and a tablespoon of vanilla? Why,chocolate cheese fudge, of course.

Hungry? How about if I tell you that the best way to serve cocktail weiners or rumaki (bacon-wrapped chicken livers and water chestnuts) is swimming in a brew of Coca-Cola and grape jelly and/or barbecue sauce?

Here is a famous recipe for potato salad: boiled potatoes, milk, Miracle Whip and salt. The creator of the recipe says "it offends no one," but I beg to disagree.

Do salmon fillets coated with mayonnaise and cornflakes and cooked in margarine, sour cream, cheese and canned tomatoes with chilis sound good? If so, perhaps you are the one who wants my recently acquired selection of community cookbooks.

I found these recipes and scads more when I browsed cookbooks I found while helping clear someone's house. They are from the mid 1980s to the early 1990s, and most of them are from the MidWest. The cookbooks show a rather touching dependence on canned soup, "oleo," Wesson oil, Velveeta, canned milk, bacon, salt and sugar. The canned soups go toward making gravies and sauces; most of the soups are creamed chicken, mushroom, and so on, though tomato soup pops up frequently.

I used to attend many church lunches and dinners during the years that these cookbooks were published, and I saw many familiar recipes. I recalled the year that chicken salad with grapes swept the nation, then it was chicken salad with canned mandarin oranges and Chinese noodles. Those recipes are here. Also here is the grandaddy of recipes that took the nation by storm, pot roast made with (dried) Lipton Onion Soup mix. Then there is the "ideal side dish," Stove-Top Stuffing mixed with canned soup and broccoli. Its contributor says it's perfect with anything.

These cookbooks were compiled from recipes submitted by members of churches, women's clubs, charitable organzations, hospitals and others. The most popular recipes appear time and again in almost identical words, often within the same cookbook.

The cookbooks give me a view of what was popular in a particular time and place. It's interesting to see what was considered healthful or exotic. I always get a kick out of recipes that claim to be old, old family traditions, then end up calling for Cool Whip, Reddi Whip, packaged cookies, chili sauce, etc.

I thought I would find new and tempting food ideas, but I ended finding a good many things I would never eat because they are mostly fat, salt, sugar and other things I avoid. But it's been fun. I know there are more community cookbooks waiting to be found as I clear houses, and I look forward to more amusement and fun.

The bargain bin

As a serendipitous shopper, I keep my eyes and mind open to finding treasures everywhere. It's amazing to see what wonderful items are just waiting to be found. Today's treasure came from a big-name bookshop's bargain bin: "Decorating With Color Inside and Out, An Essential Sourcebook of Decorative Schemes" by Sally Walton and Richard Rosenfeld. Ripe, juicy colors all but drip from this book's large, lush photographs. Readers are taken on a journey of colors, each named and shown in luscious illustrations. Decorating ideas spill from every page. Some ideas are accompanied by step-by-step instructions, ideas for things such as painting techniques and window treatments.
I was ready to spring to my feet to begin working on these ideas although it was late at night when I read the book. Colors bold, colors delicate and colors in between are all here, and so are many tastes and modes of decorating. The most unusual thing I saw was a "playful" garden chair featuring strips of Astroturf on the seat and back with plastic daisies here and there.
Even those who simply appreciate beauty and who have no notions of decorating will linger over the pictures in this book. The writing style is sensible and straightforward. It relates the how-tos in a way that makes anything seem possible. Although the book was published in Britain, American language equivalents are given so that instructions are easy to follow.
Not only shall I use this book in future decorating plans, but it is also something I would want if I were in bed and too sick to follow a plot in a book. It's cheery and lovely as well as useful.

Booking through Thursday

There was a widely bruited-about statistic reported last week, stating that 1 in 4 Americans did not read a single book last year. Clearly, we don’t fall into that category, but . . . how many of our friends do? Do you have friends/family who read as much as you do? Or are you the only person you know who has a serious reading habit?

I was not surprised by the statistic. As a librarian for almost thirty years, I have seen how reading habits have changed. Where once, patrons would stagger to the circulation desk with a dozen books to check out, now they have three or four. Where once, we would have to buy a dozen copies of the latest bestseller, now we buy three or four. Perhaps, some of this trend can be attributed to the online booksellers, whose deeply-discounted prices make it more attractive to buy a best-seller than to wait for 3-4 weeks to get it from the library. More likely, people who once were casual readers have become less likely to read for any of a million reasons - I won't bore you with my cynical list of possibilities.

One of the details in the MSN article caught my attention - the notion that women are less likely than men to read biographies . I won't generalize from myself, since I'm a fiend for biographies, especially if they're about literary or intrepid women. (I'm itching to read the new biography of Gertrude Bell, for example.) I will generalize from my women friends, though - they (we) all read history, biographies, science, all manner of nonfiction, and we discuss amongst ourselves.

Another detail - or omission - from the article made me wonder whether the survey included audio books. I've seen discussions and debates on whether audio books count as "reading" - for example, check out this excellent post by Moonfrog and the comments below - and I've been rather surprised by some of the conclusions. For the record, I think that any medium that lets you absorb the author's words qualifies as reading - and I wonder who amongst the scoffers would tell, say, blind people that they aren't reading their "Books on Tape."

So, do my friends and family read as much as I do? Friends, yes, but wouldn't you expect that we'd choose friends whose passions complement our own? In fact, some friends astound me with the number of books they read, especially since they also knit amazing things, create and sustain splendid gardens, raise excellent children, work time-intensive jobs....Would that I had the energy and time-management skills to keep up with them!

(Family - not as much. Alas.)

melanie

Booking through Thursday : Indoctrination

When growing up did your family share your love of books? If so, did one person get you into reading? And, do you have any family-oriented memories with books and reading? (Family trips to bookstore, reading the same book as a sibling or parent, etc.)

My family reads. Always read. Always will read. It's our nature to read. No matter what else we do or don't do, that remains constant.
My best family-oriented book memory is a trip to the big Barnes & Noble store on Fifth Avenue in the late 1950s. While my mother was looking for art books about The Floating World, I wandered around the used-book section, where I found a lovely Everyman's Library copy of Jane Eyre, bound in red cloth, and only a dollar or two. I had a dollar or two. Reader, I bought it, read it, and still read it.

melanie

Booking through Thursday

One book at a time? Or more than one? If more, are they different types/genres? Or similar?

(We’re talking recreational reading, here—books for work or school don’t really count since they’re not optional.)

Monogamy? HAH! No way. I have no discipline, no plan, almost no discernment. Whatever comes along, if it looks delectable, I will taste it.

As for what I read - No rhyme, no reason - No, that's not true, because I am apt to be reading poetry and non-fiction together, along with fiction, which can be anything from classics to children's books.

(In fact, I have just joined a read-and-knit-along for Anne of Green Gables, and I'm looking forward to it as I would look forward to curling up with ice water and peppermints... no, that's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, which I also want to reread...)

melanie

Booking through Thursday

Have you ever written an author a fan letter?
Did you get an answer?
Did it spark a conversation? A meeting?


I've written to a few authors, but only received three responses. Joseph Epstein, whose collection of essays, The Middle of My Tether, delighted me, sent a typed postcard thanking me for my comments. Laurie Colwin wrote a short note. And Joan Didion, to whom I sent a letter of condolence on the death of her husband, sent a personal note on her lovely blue stationery.

I've met authors, but not through letters, only at book signings: Joyce Carol Oates, Alexandra Stoddard, Dominick Dunne, Alan Dershowitz, Marvin Kitman...

(Have you read Carolyn See's Making a Literary Life? One of the suggestions she makes is to write letters to authors. I really should write one to her.)

teabird

Booking through Thursday

1. Do you cheat and peek ahead at the end of your books? Or do you resolutely read in sequence, as the author intended?
2. And, if you don’t peek, do you ever feel tempted?

I'd like to say no, I don't cheat, because I'd like to honor the intent of the author. After all, she labored to put the words and sentences into a particular sequence to express her own particular and linear storyline, whether fictional or not.

However -

I do cheat, though not if I'm reading a mystery - what would be the point of spoiling the ending of a mystery?

I cheat a lot when I'm reading nonfiction - especially biographies - by attacking the index and plates before anything else. I make up for this egregious sin, however - I read every word of acknowledgements!

melanie

The Year of Magical Thinking - Joan Didion

Joan Didion has always been a reporter, but not the type of reporter whose persona becomes part of the story. Instead, the stories, details, and tone have defined her as the reporter. Didion always has remained cool, detached, and trustworthy, providing insight without theatrics.

How could anyone write about the sudden death of a husband and the simultaneous critical illness of a daughter with the same approach? Could you? Could you step back from the moment when your husband of 40 years collapsed and died at the dinner table? Could you write about having to keep this from your daughter to avoid further endangering her fragile health? Could you remember, sort through, and write enough of the details of that first bereaved year, moment for moment?

"It's ok... she's a pretty cool customer," says a social worker before the hospital gives back her husband's silver clip, watch, cell phone, clothes. She wonders "what an uncool customer would be allowed to do. Break down? Require sedation? Scream?" At home, she places the cell phone in its charger before she goes to bed.

Much of the book details the life they had lived with their only daughter, Quintana Roo: their travels, their work, their homes on two continents. Past and present and past cycle through the pages, stopping for details that would unhinge many. Has her daughter sustained brain damage from her illness? Did John Dunne have a presentiment of his death?

The "magical thinking" of the title represents thoughts that a child might have, thoughts that one might not expect of a "cool customer." The most striking : her inability to discard her dead husband's shoes because "he would need shoes if he was to return...The recognition of this thought by no means eradicated the thought. I still have not tried to determine (say, by giving away the shoes) if the thought has lost its power."

To me, the questions raised by these simple sentences define the book. When I first read it, I wrote one note that was based on a question that Didion found written in one of her husband's books (in blue, fountain-pen ink) - What is the experience and what is the meaning?

There it is, the basic existential question. I think that neither the experience nor the meaning exists on its own. Only the observer is real. The observer determines both history (the event) and its consequences (or, its meaning).

What Joan Didion has done here is to include us in her observations, responses, and thoughts on a brutal experience. Is she a "cool customer"? I don't think so. I think she has used her skills to show us what we might neglect to see in the aftermath of a personal tragedy. I hope she has taught me to do the same, to allow all of my own skills to inhabit and define my responses, and to avoid judging those responses whether of not they fit anyone else's definitions of emotional reality.

melanie

Ten books you cannot live without

From Kailana's Written World -- (in no particular order)

Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass- Lewis Carroll
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Little Women - Lousia May Alcott
Possession - A.S. Byatt
Pride and Prejudice (or Emma) - Jane Austen
Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf
Portrait of a Lady - Henry James
Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde

How hard to narrow it down to ten books that the world (or I) could not live without! I can presume for myself, as of this moment, but the world? The books I chose are good reads and books that (I presume) illuminate many of the aspects of the human spirit, both good and ill. They never fail me.

What would your choices be? Be sure to check out the list of participants on Kailana's blog, and comment there (and here, if you like!) if you decide to participate.

melanie

By the decade challenge: Murder on the Orient Express

Last night, I read my selection for the 1930s: Murder on the Orient Express (Agatha Christie). I'd never read anything by Christie, and I was expecting to be bemused by a period piece.

Instead, I was enthralled, unable to put down the book until I had finished. Not only that : since I'd never seen the movie, I was depending on the book alone , and I was utterly amazed by the ending. I never saw it coming. Great fun!

(One cavil: anyone who reads this should be prepared for some musty, unpleasant cultural stereotypes. This book is not politically correct... but one must take it as a period piece, after all.)

The tally, so far:
1890s Picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde)
1900s Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad)
1910s Song of the Lark (Willa Cather)
1920s The Beautiful and Damned (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
1930s Murder on the Orient Express (Agatha Christie)
1940s Brideshead Revisited (Evelyn Waugh)
1950s Wise Blood (Flannery O'Connor)
1960s Speak, Memory (Vladimir Nabokov)
1970s Play It As It Lays (Joan Didion)
1980s Joy Luck Club (Amy Tan)
1990s The Biographer's Tale (A.S. Byatt)
2000s The Seven Sisters (Margaret Drabble)

melanie

Non-Fiction Five

Yet another challenge:

The Non-Fiction Five.

My choices:

Marc Romano:Crossworld: one man's journey into America's crossword obsession.
Dava Sobel: The planets.
Ann Linnea: Deep water passage.
Elizbeth Gilbert: Eat, pray, love.
Joyce Carol Oates: The faith of a writer.

This challenge runs from May through September. It's going to be hard to restrain myself from starting early!

melanie

TBR Challenge : Never let me go

Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro

What I remember most about Ishiguro's earlier book, Remains of the Day, is that he was able to capture the nuances of language and gesture that can separate people, or define them. In this book, language and nuance are key because the characters possess almost nothing else.

When we meet Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy, they are students in a posh English boarding school. It becomes apparent quickly that the education they are receiving is not typical, and that they are being educated for an unusual purpose. They become aware that their destinies will not be chosen freely. That awareness almost becomes a character in itself, growing and becoming, simultaneously, more nuanced and more overt. The women who instruct them might be religious Sisters but for the lack of religion or spirituality in the curriculum.

These children are permitted one box of treasures apiece. The things that comprise "treasure" may have come from the trucks that bring random objects to the school - a cassette tape of an obscure singer, say, or a fancy pencil case. The treasured objects that define and separate the children are pathetic artifacts from a world they have yet to experience.

I hesitate to further define the plot. The details of these childrens' destiny are revealed fairly early in the book. How they deal with this certainty, and how their relationships change as they go through their lives, comprise most of the novel. Again, details and nuance rule until the end of their lives.

If I had to sum up the book in one phrase, it would be "mysterious dystopia." One never learns why these children were essential to the plan that their lives took, but that question (for me, at least) did not surface until I closed the book and begun to ponder. I'm still pondering, and making connections to books and films that have addressed the central issue. Ishiguro's genius in showing us the hidden corner of a dystopia is strongest in what he does not reveal. The negative space of that world is limned, delicately.

"Tell the truth but tell it slant," says Emily Dickinson. Absolutely.

melanie