Days of Books and Reading
July 26, 2009

August is nearly here and for me that means a month away from work. It also means a month away from a paycheck. My job is a full-time position, but it is only for eleven months of the year. In the past I have been able to work through most of it, but this year with the state of California speeding down a descending financial highway that isn’t going to be the case.

Since there is nothing I can do to alter that reality, I have decided to maximize the pleasures of the month. Shorts and tee shirts. Breakfast, lunch and dinner on the patio. Bread  baking. New recipes for gazpacho to be tried and compared to mine. Grilling on weeknights. And of course reading in the lounge chair, a glass of wine or lemon-scented water next to me.

I am thinking of making a list of companionable meals and books and posting it on my refrigerator door. The idea already intrigues me. I have just begun to select the books I hope to read during the month. One is The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America’s Favorite Planet. Just a quick skim through this assures me that it is going to be a particularly good read. It’s beautifully illustrated with well written by an erudite and witty astronomer, combines a readable text with cartoons, musical lyrics, letters to the author, and more. I plan to begin and end August 1 with this, opening with eggs, soy bacon, fresh white grapefruit, and a small bowl of homemade granola. (Pluto is 45 percent rocky parts so some crunch seems appropriate.) By lunchtime I expect to be a little more than halfway through it, perhaps to the chapter, “Pluto Divides the Nation” in which the author describes the attacks that rained down upon his head from adults and children alike who were outraged at the thought that this planet was no more. What better fare than some habañero salsa and tortilla chips to keep things spicy through to the end?

I know that dinner that night will already be accompanied by a book that showed up yesterday, Searching for Virginia Dare. I ordered this about a week ago when I was doing some online research and came across its small publisher. What intrigued me was the description (which was far more enticing than the dull, brief historical facts I remembered from high school history):

In 1587 America’s first English child was born in a remote island wilderness. Her name was Virginia Dare. Soon after her birth, Virginia and more than a hundred men, women, and children disappeared, leaving a cryptic message carved on a tree.

What became of that infant girl and her people, now known as the Lost Colony? In search of an answer, Marjorie Hudson wanders the back roads of North Carolina and Virginia in an aging Dodge Caravan with a satchel of research notes and a head full of memory and imagining. Amazed by abandoned farmhouses wrapped in kudzu, the Great Dismal Swamp “dripping with spotted snakes,” the bones of the Jamestown colony, and the living nation of the Lumbee, Hudson discovers an epic story more complex and more deeply moving than she ever imagined.

Oooh, a mysterious disappearance, backroads travel, abandoned farmhouses, snakes, and more—that is right up my alley. And what better food for the journey than corn on the cob, sea bass, and fresh blackberries for dessert, all, according to the American Heritage Cookbook and Illustrated History of American Eating and Drinking, part of the native bounty which those early English settlers found on their arrival.

In fact the American Heritage Cookbook intrigues me so much—I have taken it off my shelves numerous times during the years I have owned it yet never read it in full—that it’s going to become the third book on my reading list. Its exploration of the culinary trends throughout America’s history appears to offer not only rich reading but an opportunity to do some culinary explorations in my own kitchen. The only part that does not tempt me toward my own repast is the chapter on Diamond Jim Brady, the most famous of over-indulgers.

Though I normally prefer nonfiction, I have chosen two several novels—among them Ann Vickers, the only Sinclair Lewis novel I have not yet read, a rereading of Of Mice and Men, a first reading of The Shape of Water (which describes itself as “a novel of food, wine, and homicide in small-town Sicily”), another Italian novel of murder, To Each His Own, and The Geographer’s Library, the cover of which is so delicate and appealing that it seems to beg for a fine creamy white dish of butter lettuce topped with white peach slices, a sliced broiled boneless chicken breast, freshly ground white pepper, and homemade white salad dressing.

W. Somerset Maugham is also on the list. I own a slipcased two-volume set of his short stories, which I am sorry to say have gone  unread, though not unloved, for years. Now is their time. I am particularly looking forward to “Rain,” which has been recommended. Perhaps pasta with that?

Even though the days of August are bright and long, two books I will definitely read focus on personal memories and lifelong influences of the dark days of Nazi Germany: My Germany by Lev Raphael, and Good-bye to the Mermaids: A Childhood Lost in Hitler’s Berlin by Karin Finell. Both authors are known to me, but I am looking forward to learning more about them than I know now.

And on it goes. I haven’t picked out all my books yet. That’s a chore I will whittle down a little each day, reading, writing my personal post-reading reviews, choosing more books to add, deciding what dish might set off each book. It’s going to be a new experiment because I don’t want to wallow in financial fear. I have money I can use to make up for the loss of salaried income. I can take on any freelance jobs I will continue to look for. I can cut back on expenses (no new books!). But most of all I can use this time to move ahead with my life as it is rather than waste the time mourning what I think it should be. 
 
Note: Lauren Baratz-Logsted has joined BiblioBuffet as a “Writer-in-Residence.” Her current “Reader” series has been moved to her new page and in the future  you will also find essays, interviews, book reviews and other pieces by her. For this issue, she contributed a new piece to the BibliOpinions section, a tribute to both the first men on the moon and to the dreams that got us there. 

Upcoming Book Festivals:
On Sunday, August 2, the Martha’s Vineyard Book Festival, held in the town of Chilmark on the island of Martha’s Vineyard. It is open from 11:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m. Among the twenty-five authors making appearances are Geraldine Brooks, Alan Dershowitz, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Ward Just, James Reston, Jr., and Patricia Sullivan. Authors will be speaking in three different tents, then signing books. Book sales are provided by Edgartown Books, and a variety of delicious foods and drinks will be available to purchase.

The Pub House:
The New Press was established in 1990 as a not-for-profit house specializing in “innovative ways works of educational, cultural, and community value that, despite their intellectual merits, may be deemed insufficiently profitable by commercial publishers. . . .  [and] to provide ideas and viewpoints under-represented in the mass media.”

As such, you will find serious books about significant subjects in the areas of arts/culture/film, criminal justice/law, ecology/health, fiction/literature, gender studies, human rights, labor studies, media/journalism, Middle East, political science, U.S. history, and more. You’ll find bestsellers among their lists (Studs Terkel's Race and Peter Irons's May It Please the Court) but these are by no means the only worthwhile books. Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny, for example, is a historical analysis of third party candidates and their roles have impacted federal elections, and discusses what  reforms could be instituted to open up the process to greater choice. Italian Shoes by popular Swedish novelist Henning Mankell is the story of a surgeon so haunted by memories of a horrible mistake that he lives alone on a tiny  island surrounded by ice during the long winter months, a man so dead to himself and the world that he cuts a hole in the ice each day and enters the water in order  to remind himself he is alive—until an unexpected visitor changes his routine and his life. This publishing house is worth a look if you enjoy high quality and challenging reading.

Of Interest:
Corner of the Library is a blog that will be of particular interest to bookmark lovers and collectors. Not because it is about bookmarks—it’s not—but because blogger Carolyn Carpenter enjoys creating printable bookmarks. Some are of authors, others are illustrations from novels. And they are all lovely. 

This Week . . .
Bibliotarian is a site I just discovered. I like the idea behind it—that it helps to support its parent company, Book Wish Foundation, an organization founded in late 2007 “to provide reading relief for people in crisis . . . [matching] books and other aid as specifically as possible to the crisis, situation, culture, language, demographics, educational history, and aspirations of our recipients.” I’m less crazy about the set-up, which is not, at least for me, user friendly. Registration is quick and easy, but everything else seems designed to annoy. If you can figure the site out, consider going through there to buy books. Then tell me how you did it.

The real reason I am posting this is to let you know that Bibliotarian will be giving away a Sony Reader. You have through August 15 to enter, and there are three ways to do so. Details can be found on this page. 

Book Giveaway: Thanks to Penguin’s generosity, BiblioBuffet has three copies of Sarah Bryant’s new novel, The Other Eden to give away! If you are interested, send me an email with your name and mailing address. The first three people to respond win a copy, which will be mailed out within two days. I promise that you will not receive any emails from us nor will we use it, share it, or sell your contact information.

Until next week, read well, read often and read on!

Lauren