What have you read lately?

[apl68]

So--did you keep it?

M.

It's an old, worn-out copy, too tattered to sell and too old to recycle.  Had I really loved it I might keep it warts and all.  But no, it's going to be euthanized.  From the looks of it, it found many readers in its previous existence as a public high school library copy.

[mamselle]

Ah, got it.

Other, related issue: do you guys have these around?

   https://www.pressherald.com/2022/04/19/the-recycle-bin-a-better-idea-for-books/

M.

[Juvenal]

Ah, got it.

Other, related issue: do you guys have these around?

   https://www.pressherald.com/2022/04/19/the-recycle-bin-a-better-idea-for-books/

M.

Yes, but I think the nearest has been vandalized.  I'll have to go by and see (and if not, well, add a few to the "shelves").

[apl68]

Ah, got it.

Other, related issue: do you guys have these around?

   https://www.pressherald.com/2022/04/19/the-recycle-bin-a-better-idea-for-books/

M.

We started two of them in our town awhile back.  One was not very well located and has not been much of a success.  The other is at the main entrance of the local grade school.  I can't keep it stocked!  I put some in there just yesterday.  I'd like to put up some more around town at some point.

We also have started shipping some of our not-so-old deleted books back to our main book wholesaler through a recycling program they have.  We boxed up six boxes full of deleted items just this week.  We can only do this once every few months, because you have to send the books back in the vendor's own boxes.  We're developing a cycle where we save up a set of boxes, then weed a section and send in the recyclable items.  As a general rule of thumb, if they're too old to have an ISBN number, they're too old to think about recycling.

[mamselle]

OOh, that's a useful cut-off point. (ISBN numbers, that is).

M .

[Juvenal]

Today is about as nice an early spring day as possible.  Windows are cracked open; the sky is cloudless; the breeze is slight; it's in the sixties.  Flowering trees of all kinds are--well, "flowering."  The oak tree buds continue to swell.  Soon, before the leaves really come fully out, the young expanding leaves will be there, pale green, lightly reddened with xanthophylls, and then a golden mist in the branches for a couple of weeks.

Life's tasks are, of course, never ending, golden mists or not.

For no particular reason, although a decade's-long reader of the NYer, I've re-read most (not all ) of Jame's Thurber's The Years With Ross, and Brendan Gill's Here at the New Yorker.  Interesting contrast.  For one thing, Gill loathed Thurber, and it shows.  But how things have moved on.  Thurber almost seventy-five years ago; Gill fifty.  I was a bit (a lot) dismayed at Harold Ross's dislikes of anyone not genuinely Anglo-Saxon as reported by Gill.  "Kikes" and "coons" not infrequently spoken...

I hope to live to the Centennial (2025).

[mamselle]

I grew up in Columbus, Ohio.

When we read the short story about the 1913 flood, and the electricity leaking out of the light socket, I brought my grandmother's photos to class.

In a house where Thurber lived in CT they discovered he'd covered one wall with cartoon drawings, which were saved:

    https://www.nytimes.com/1976/10/04/archives/thurber-cartoons-on-wall-being-salvaged.html

The home he lived in in Columbus is now a museum.

   https://www.thurberhouse.org/james-thurber

This site is also pretty good:

   https://jamesthurber.org/gallery

And while I'd differ with the "unstudied line" claim (I can think of a few predecessors) this is also good:

   https://www.columbusmuseum.org/blog/news_room/celebrating-james-thurber-at-cma/

Anyway, he wrote some good books, too....

;--}

M.

[paultuttle]

Currently re-reading the Harry Potter books, in order. I'm in Book 2 just after Mrs. Norris is found next to "Enemies of the heir, beware!"

[apl68]

Yesterday I spent part of a rainy evening reading Ooka the Wise, by I.G. Edmonds.  Ooka Tadasuke was a Japanese judge who served in the early 1700s and was renowned for his intelligence and fairness.  Legends of his clever verdicts, detection of crimes, and Solomonic judgements have made him a major figure in Japanese folklore.  Ooka the Wise is a collection of Ooka tales for English-speaking children, nicely illustrated by one Sanae Yamazaki. 

In the early 1960s it was issued in paperback form by Scholastic under the title The Case of the Marble Monster.  I encountered a copy of it in a fifth-grade classroom.  It was one of many books I found in classrooms that I tried to read in bits and pieces stolen from my schoolwork.  Teachers usually let me get away with it because I wasn't making noise, I stayed on top of my grades, and it just goes against the grain for a teacher to discourage reading.  Forty-odd years later, I find that I remember quite a bit of the book well.  I had stumbled across this copy some months ago.  Finally taking the time to read it yesterday evening was a joy.  Over the years I've assembled quite a collection of books I recall having read as a kid (I'm still finding them now and then--picked up one while on vacation just last week).  This is one that's just as good as I remember.

Some years back I read Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler's Ghost in the Tokaido Inn as part of a library school class on children's literature.  Judge Ooka figures as a major character in it.  It was good to "meet" him again.  I guess I'm also going to have to read that one again sometime soon.  We've got it right here at work.

[mamselle]

I'm still on the hunt for the children's book about a "bear with special stuffing," that, I think, made him forget bad things and remember good ones, or something like that.

It's not Paddington, I don't think, nor any of the 'Bear family' books, I saw it once c. 1990, didn't make a note of the title or author, and have ever since wished I had.

I'd add it to my personal childhood collection of all the Barbara Cooney books, "Pish, Posh, said Hieronymous Bosch," the Zilpha Kathy Snyder books, etc.

M.

[ab_grp]

Apl68, I'm pretty sure I had or my elementary school had the Ooka stories, because I remember reading and enjoying them.

Mamselle, that bear story sounds familiar, though I can't come up with a title.  I will keep thinking on it.

I've listened to a few more audiobooks since my last update, alternating mostly between fiction and nonfiction.  Coming Back Alive: The True Story of the Most Harrowing Search and Rescue Mission Ever Attempted on Alaska's High Seas (by Spike Walker; narrated by Paul Heitsch) was a fairly interesting book about the Coast Guard's attempt to rescue the captain and crew of a fishing boat in terrible weather and seas.  It also talks about other rescue missions, some successful, some not.  I thought the book was a bit disjointed at times and couldn't tell where the story was going.  There was also a lot of detail about the land, history, sea, ships, helicopters, etc. that distracted at times from the rescue tale.  I think it's hard to know how much of that is necessary and helpful, and it's also hard to know whether it would feel different reading it rather than listening, or with a different narrator, and so forth.   The narrator was a bit annoying at times.

Next, I listened to the N.K. Jemisin Broken Earth trilogy as narrated by Robin Miles.  The narrator did a great job with it.  We read the books a couple years ago and loved them, but I definitely found myself thinking that the first one was the best one this time.  I listened to them back to back, so it may have just felt repetitive in spots. 

The one I just finished was When You Find My Body: The Disappearance of Geraldine Largay on the Appalachian Trail (D. Dauphinee; Traci Odom), which is a tale of a tragedy that could probably have been easily avoided.  It definitely felt like a cautionary tale to me, centering on "the largest manhunt in Maine's history."  I have day hiked sections of the AT but certainly don't understand doing that or through hiking into parts of Maine without any knowledge of woodsmanship.  You can get into enough trouble day hiking easier sections.  It brought up the science of survival and research into what people do when they get lost, which sounds like pretty useful and fascinating research.   With a childhood in Maine and a background in mountaineering, international exploration, and search and rescue, the author has a lot of interesting tidbits to share.  The narrator was very easy to listen to, as well.

Now I am listening to The Godfather (Mario Puzo; Joe Mantegna).  Despite having seen the movies a couple times and having read the book many years ago, I am getting a better understanding of the story this time through or in this medium.  Mantegna is doing a pretty good job with the narration so far.   

[apl68]

I'm still on the hunt for the children's book about a "bear with special stuffing," that, I think, made him forget bad things and remember good ones, or something like that.

It's not Paddington, I don't think, nor any of the 'Bear family' books, I saw it once c. 1990, didn't make a note of the title or author, and have ever since wished I had.

I'd add it to my personal childhood collection of all the Barbara Cooney books, "Pish, Posh, said Hieronymous Bosch," the Zilpha Kathy Snyder books, etc.

M.

It's frustrating when you have vivid and fond memories of a book, and can't recall an author or title.  It becomes a matter of just browsing wherever and whenever one gets the chance, and hoping for the best.  I've encountered quite a few items that way over the years.  Now and then one even drops right into my lap when I'm sorting through a batch of recent donations at the library. 

This is why whenever I travel to a place I've never been before I look around any bookstores, thrift stores, and antique malls I can find.  You never know when you'll get lucky.  I've still got at least eight fondly-remembered books that I'm hoping to run across one day, plus others still lurking out there that I'm not currently thinking to look for.

[mamselle]

Hmmm...sounds like a thread title, "Books I'm still trying to find."

Wouldn't only have to be children's books...

Hmmm...

M.

[RatGuy]

I've started Melville's "piazza tales." I plan on finding copies of "Redburn" and "White-Jacket" next.

[hmaria1609]

Hmmm...sounds like a thread title, "Books I'm still trying to find."

Wouldn't only have to be children's books...

Hmmm...

M.

I'm a long time subscriber to Fiction-L, a listserv for public librarians to ask the collective brain (fellow list subscribers) about all things fiction. (Questions about non-fiction books have been asked and answered too) There's been requests for help identifying the book title based the details that patrons have given them.