Re: What Have You Read Lately? (2024 Edition)

[nebo113]

Edith Wharton's Age of Innocence.. The pretentiousness of the characters is hilariously awful.

[apl68]

Healing a Divided Nation:  How The American Civil War Revolutionized Western Medicine, by Carole Adrienne.  The Civil War occurred right in the middle of the 19th century's long-term revolution in medicine.  The troops who fought then were both more fortunate than those in previous wars, and less fortunate than those who would come later.  For example, they had routine use of anesthetic for surgery, but not yet use of antiseptics.  Adrienne tries to cover all aspects of Civil War medicine--the medical theory and practice of the time, hospitals, ambulance and evacuation services, administrative aspects, and much more.  She also tries to do justice to the involvement of women, of black doctors and nurses, and of civilian volunteers, many motivated by Christian religious concerns. 

Both sides seem to have done a generally good job of providing the best level of care then available.  They produced a number of advances in fields like prosthetics and hospital organization.  The Confederates of course had far fewer resources, but still managed to do a surprisingly good job. They even produced some of the innovations--Confederate doctors developed improved methods of administering anesthesia, actually gave their troops a better dental service than the Union did, and employed Captain Sally Louisa Tompkins, a talented hospital administrator who was the first woman ever commissioned in any American army.  Unsurprisingly, the Confederacy did not employ any of the pioneering black doctors who served.

It's an impressively researched work.  What it unfortunately isn't is very well-written.  When I was a TA in the 1990s we wouldn't have regarded this as even outstanding undergrad-level writing.  That such a clearly diligent and skilled scholar can't write any better than this is an indictment on how poorly American institutions in recent decades have trained their students in writing.  It's also an indictment of how little American publishers put into providing their authors with good editorial support.  I've read all too many serious works of nonfiction in recent years that seem to have been edited by wolves.  A sad mark on what is otherwise an admirable work of scholarship.

[Sun_Worshiper]

The Comedians: Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels and the History of American Comedy (2016)

A history of (mostly) standup comedy, from the Vaudeville days to modern times. This was an easy and fun read - great airplane reading. I also learned quite a lot, as most of the comedians profiled were well before my time.

[apl68]

The House of the Seven Gables, by Nathaniel Hawthorne.  One of those classics that I've heard about all my life, and only recently gotten around to reading.  I find Hawthorne much more readable than his reputation.  He's even quite funny in places.  His themes--in this case, the way that those who commit evil acts in order to enrich their household will end up leaving an evil legacy--are still worth exploring.  A good book, although the way it ends is highly implausible.

I read a copy of a 1950s edition illustrated with photos of places that inspired Hawthorne, including the actual "House of the Seven Gables" in Salem.  If only Mamselle were still with us, she could probably tell us all sorts of insider stuff about the place.



John Halifax, Gentleman, by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik.  "Mrs. Craik," as she was known for much of her career, was one of that seemingly endless supply of prolific novelists produced by the Victorian era.  This is said to be her best-remembered work.  It's the life-story--narrated by a close friend--of a turn-of-the-19th-century orphan who is taken in by a kindly family, works hard, and becomes a successful yet ethical businessman. 

It's very much a work of its time--very long, because publishers insisted on padding works out to fill three expensive volumes for initial publication, and with the sorts of subject matter and stylistic tendencies associated with Victorian literature.  A reader who's prepared to accept it on its own terms will find it pretty well done.  It reportedly had the inevitable BBC TV adaptation in the 1970s.  I can see a Christian publishing imprint today putting out the same story, except that it would be told entirely from the point of view of the eventual Mrs. Halifax.  And it would either be greatly abbreviated, or possibly published as a "trilogy," rather than a Victorian "triple-decker."  Publishers haven't changed that much over the past 150 years.

[RatGuy]

The House of the Seven Gables, by Nathaniel Hawthorne.  One of those classics that I've heard about all my life, and only recently gotten around to reading.  I find Hawthorne much more readable than his reputation.  He's even quite funny in places.  His themes--in this case, the way that those who commit evil acts in order to enrich their household will end up leaving an evil legacy--are still worth exploring.  A good book, although the way it ends is highly implausible.

I finished teaching HSG this week and we spent some time discussing the ending. Students generally don't buy or don't appreciate Holgrave's sudden reversal of ideology. I tell them that Hawthorne believed love to be transcendent (we read Emerson last week) and asked students to consider whether love truly does transfigure us. It's not that we change for those we love, but that love makes us fundamentally different. Only like 15% of them actually agree, but those who do seem absolutely convinced

[Larimar]

I just read Because I Could Not Stop for Death by Amanda Flower. It's a cozy mystery in which the amateur sleuth is none other than Emily Dickinson. The story happens through the eyes of her fictional maid. The author has done her homework about Dickinson's life and has incorporated some known events in the story, notably a trip the family made from Amherst to Washington D.C. I liked this book and plan to get my hands on the sequel, I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died, when I can.

[hmaria1609]

I just read Because I Could Not Stop for Death by Amanda Flower. It's a cozy mystery in which the amateur sleuth is none other than Emily Dickinson. The story happens through the eyes of her fictional maid. The author has done her homework about Dickinson's life and has incorporated some known events in the story, notably a trip the family made from Amherst to Washington D.C. I liked this book and plan to get my hands on the sequel, I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died, when I can.

I read both from the library. There's a 3rd book titled I Died for Beauty releasing February 2025.

[Larimar]

I just read Because I Could Not Stop for Death by Amanda Flower. It's a cozy mystery in which the amateur sleuth is none other than Emily Dickinson. The story happens through the eyes of her fictional maid. The author has done her homework about Dickinson's life and has incorporated some known events in the story, notably a trip the family made from Amherst to Washington D.C. I liked this book and plan to get my hands on the sequel, I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died, when I can.

I read both from the library. There's a 3rd book titled I Died for Beauty releasing February 2025.

Awesome. Hopefully I'll have the chance to read book 2 before book 3 comes out. :)

[AmLitHist]

My women's lit class finished Chopin's The Awakening last week and had some really perceptive things to say about it. We're lightening up a little this week with Porter's "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall" and Welty's "Why I Live at the P.O." Yesterday I listened again to the author reading the latter and laughed until I cried in a couple of spots.

[hmaria1609]

One Dark Window and Two Twisted Crowns by Rachel Gillig ("Shepherd King" duet)
I kept seeing the novels in this best selling fantasy duet for patron holds at the library--a long wait list for both. I pre-ordered the Barnes & Noble Exclusive editions so I could read them--they're definitely collector books!

[apl68]

The Yellow Hearse, by Floyd Mahannah.  I bought this 1950-vintage mystery thriller mainly for the eye-catching, well-preserved book jacket that shows a stylized image of a car driving down a street festooned with electric signs.  Hard-boiled mysteries of this sort are not at all my cup of tea.  But I feel an obligation to read any book I purchase, so I did.  You can easily see this being toned down and made into a Hollywood noir picture.  It ends on a cheerier note than most noirs.

Besides the cover, it's an interesting collectible because it comes from an imprint and publisher I'd never heard of.  It's a "Bloodhound Mystery" from Duell, Sloan and Pearce.  From what little I can find about the publisher online, they merged with another publisher not long after publishing this one.  This must have been one of the last Bloodhound Mysteries ever published.  Author Floyd Mahannah was an obscure mystery specialist who apparently published only a handful of books, and a fair few magazine stories. 

As a bonus, this is also the first example I've ever encountered of a former rental library copy.  Subscription (you bought a monthly subscription to use) and rental (you paid by the checkout) libraries were a major source of reading material before free public libraries took over during the 20th century.  I've researched them a bit in recent years because of the influence they had over publishing at one time.  Subscription libraries' insistence that publishers pad out their novels to fill three volumes--which you could only check out to read all at once if you paid for a premium subscription--was a major reason why Victorian novels are so often so exhaustingly long.  And the Japanese manga industry as we now know it was largely shaped by the postwar rental library market in that country.

Anyway, this volume's otherwise almost pristine cover bears a label for Womrath's, a New York bookstore chain that apparently also operated rental libraries for some years.  Inside there's a stamp for a specific location called Milbert's at Brighton Beach Avenue, and another stamp giving the rental on the book as fifteen cents for three days.  It cost $2.50 to buy, so that was a bargain if you didn't have a free public library nearby.  Adjust for inflation, and the prices are in the same ballpark of what libraries pay for circulating e-books and single e-book circulations today.

[spork]

Hum, by Helen Phillips. The title should have included Ho.

[Puget]

Catching up on posting reads/listens from the last few months:

The Grey Wolf -Louise Penny's latest Gamache mystery (#19!). Like all of them it was implausible but entertaining, plus you get all the bonus food descriptions.

The Enigma in Room 622 by Joel Dicker (translated from French). This was another convoluted and entertaining mystery that kept me guessing till nearly the end. The author-as-character style is similar to Anthony Horowitz, so if you're a fan of those you'll probably like this too.

The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman (of the Magicians trilogy). A clever re-imagining of some of the King Arthur stories interwoven with new adventures that start at the time of his death, as order breaks down, the old gods and faeries return, and a rag tag bunch of surviving knights and others must figure out how to go on. Really enjoyed this one.

Ancillary trilogy (Ancillary Justice, Ancillary Sword, Ancillary Mercy) and Translation State (which is set in the same world, but stands alone), by Anne Leckie. These won Hugo and Nebula awards but I somehow missed them when they first came out. Took me a little while to get into the first one but then I was hooked. Great world building and complex characters. Won't say to much more because figuring out what is going on is part of the fun.

The Masquerades of Spring by Ben Aaronovitch. A Rivers of London novella to tide readers over until the next full length book. This one goes back to Nightingale's youth, and a visit to Jazz age NYC to sort out a little problem with a cursed saxophone. Delightful as always, and for this series I'd definitely vote for the audio books, which are excellently narrated.

[AmLitHist]

Re-reading Marilynne Robinson's Gilead with my women's lit class this week and next.

I adore Hawthorne; my English MA centered on the Am. Renaissance/Transcendentalism. The House of Seven Gables and The Blithedale Romance are both still toughies for me to just read, though I do enjoy "working" them as texts.

NH, Poe, Dickinson, Faulkner, and TS Eliot are my go-to's. I'm not sure what that says about me.