Summer Reading Recap, Non-Fiction Edition

More summer reading from Lindi. This time it's non-fiction! I know -- that's rare for me, but it does happen from time to time that I pick up a book from the numbered part of the library. Sometimes I even read a few chapters.

But... but... but... I actually read two this summer, start to finish! Windows on Nature: The Great Habitat Dioramas of the American Museum of Natural History, by Stephen Christopher Quinn, and Old Books, Rare Friends: Two Literary Sleuths and Their Shared Passion, by Madeleine B. Stern and Leona Rostenberg.

Quinn seduced me with his coffee table book full of gorgeous photos -- historical shots of people and workshops, full color photographs of landscapes and dioramas, and frankly who isn't pulled in by the magic of a diorama? So, yes, I was intrigued by the subject and figured something with that many pictures would be fun to thumb through. But captions with the recurring name of Carl Akeley piqued my interest. On one page he's bandaged after having been mauled by a leopard, on another it's after an elephant crushes his lungs. I had to read the book to find out who this guy is and why he's going back to Africa over and over again? Along the way I found out Akeley pretty much single handedly invented modern dioramas and perfected taxidermy. I found out that the paintings on those curved backdrops are seriously distorted up close and that pretty much everything in the displays was collected in the field and preserved through a variety of methods. I found out that the museum dioramas of the late 19th century were instrumental for preserving wildlife habitats around the world. Turns out Windows on Nature is a fascinating book!

One reason Carl Akeley was interesting to me was his lack of formal education. He grew up on a farm and loved the outdoors. He apprenticed with a taxidermist which led him to his life's work -- preserving animal specimens in the service of educating the public. His work in natural history museums and in establishing wildlife preserves was a clear case of following his passion to find a career. Stern and Rostenberg recount their similar paths. Unlike Akeley, they went to high school and college and, in fact, Rostenberg continued on through graduate school. But their careers, while bolstered because of their educational background, really came about outside the "usual" trajectories. Or should I say usual for men?

Stern taught high school English for many years, and Rostenberg toiled for her Ph.D at Columbia, only to have her completed dissertation rejected by her advisor who had wanted her to research something else. It was right after World War II. She got a job with a Viennese rare book dealer who had fled the Nazis and set up shop in New York. On their own time, Stern and Rostenberg continued to research their passions -- Stern's for 19th century womens' lives and Rostenberg's for early print literature. Stern wrote and published important biographies, including one of Louisa May Alcott, and in fact researching that book uncovered Alcott's pseudonym. Scholars had long believed Alcott wrote the kind of sensationalist stories that Jo March does in Little Women, but no one had a clue until Rostenberg found a reference to "A.M. Barnard" with other notations of payment for writing.

Meanwhile Rostenberg continued collecting and researching her beloved early print literature, ultimately opening her own rare books business. Both women regularly published their findings in literary and trade journals with the occasional biography from Stern. That they were discouraged from the usual academic research positions mattered not. They have never stopped questioning, searching, learning and sharing through their writing, and Old Books, Rare Friends is but one example of their perseverance and generosity.

A Reader Responds...

Lindi has written about darkening her days of summer with heavy books, and makes a good case to pick these up when the sun arrives early to erase any dark thoughts caused by reading about violence and grief. But for me, summer reading remains more indulgent. While propped uncomfortably in a tent, trying to get the headlamp to illuminate the words, nothing but a lurid mystery will do. When faced with a weekend with the extended family, several generations talking all at once in the same space, then a YA novel with urgent plot lines and breathy incomplete sentences is the only thing I can focus on. And when the nights turn sticky and the open windows bring no relief, well, then it is time to turn on the TV and hope for the best.

Winter, on the other hand, is the time for sturdier stuff. Well researched historical fictions in which characters scheme and drink flagons of white mead take my mind off car pool rotations, homework supervision and menu planning. Three part Victorian tomes fill the long nights, stretched on the couch, nearly napping. Chapters of award winning novels fill the minutes of waiting in a pick-up line. Reading about polar explorers stuck on the ice in fierce blizzards put my own struggles to drive up the slightly snowy hill into perspective. I’m looking forward to all of that. Winter is coming!

Of course, the best books are those that have no season, those that are well written and memorable as well as being entertaining. I read two this summer that stand out among the rest: Longbourn by Jo Baker and Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan.

It would be easy to say that Longbourn is the downstairs to the upstairs of Pride and Prejudice, but that summary misses that point of this original and fully imagined novel. Think of a household with 5 daughters in the days before maxi-pads. Guess who had to wash the rags! When Elizabeth Bennett famously sets off to Netherfield in the mud, Sarah the housemaid knows the pink Persian silk dress will be ruined. When Mr. Collins arrives at short notice for his twelve day stay, Mrs. Hill the housekeeper knows there is no time to properly air and buff the guest chamber and so makes do with a spray of evergreen and berries in a vase and goes off to roast a hen with parsnips. James grooms the horses and takes the family to the balls and dinner parties. But the book is not merely about cold mornings and chilblains and cooked chicken. The characters are all fully realized with secrets of their own. The writing is a dream to read and the plot pulls you along. While it probably helps to have read Pride and Prejudice, this novel stands on its own. Rest assured the story of Sarah and James is as romantic as anything Jane Austen can pen.

Mr. Penumbra is also a romance of sorts, illuminating the way old books and high tech can mingle and support each other. The plot is a bit farfetched - employees of the titular bookstore race across the country to discover secret reading rooms, arcane book societies, hunt down type punches (the literal printing fonts) and make book scanners out of cardboard and computer chips. Somehow the goose chase of a plot doesn’t matter because it is such fun to read about the discoveries. Written with wit and imbued with creative ideas, this book zips along breezily, until the final emotional punch at the end. Unlike The Circle by Dave Eggers which is a heavy handed screed against Google, Mr. Penumbra enthusiastically embraces all kinds of reading. So, if a heady combination of topics as unrelated as Aldus Manutius, rock climbing, fantasy fiction, secret societies, research, type fonts, 3-D models, and tall ladders hold any interest, this is a book for you.

Today it is warm, but rainy. The days are getting shorter, but it is definitely still summer. Back to my mystery.

Summer Reading Recap, Grown-Up Edition

Hey y'all!

It's summer! And what a glorious summer Seattle is having this year! Temperatures consistently in the 80s with a few 90+ days sprinkled in, day after day of sun. It has been one for the books... and I mean the record books.

But as long as we're talking about books, let me bend your ear about what I've been reading. People talk about "beach reads" and "chick lit" for the summer, and yeah, I read my share of what I call popcorn, but I also tend to reserve my dark and serious books for these bright days. Don't want to be reading depressing stuff when it's dark at 3:30 in the afternoon, oh no.

So what stands out for me in the grown-up fiction realm this summer? Number one is definitely An Untamed State, by Roxane Gay. Followers of this blog will remember that last May I was eagerly anticipating its publication. [Quick plot recap for those who need it, Mireille is a Miami woman kidnapped while visiting her parents in Haiti and held for 13 days before she is released.] The novel exceeded my expectations. It's harrowing and there are some scenes where I just had to pretend I didn’t know what was going on. It’s also authentic, hopeful and compassionate. Gay very skillfully writes about violence without titillation of any kind. I can imagine a person reading some of the torture scenes in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and, well, getting off a little. You know? It's hard to resist the push of our culture's misogyny and glorification of violence. I mean, look at Fifty Shades of Grey. But Gay does not allow that in her writing. Mireille has had a bad thing, a series of bad things, happen to her. They are done by men, and Gay's not giving the reader anything but the ugly truth about that. One Goodreads reviewer said that for her, “An Untamed State is about what a woman absorbs.” That’s succinct and true, just like Gay’s beautiful writing. Another theme that stands out in An Untamed State is the notion of before and after in a life. Mireille's imprisonment and recovery both are dark and hard. The after isn't necessarily her release from the kidnappers.

The second novel I loved this summer is The Possibilities, by Kaui Hart Hemmings, a thoughtful book of grief and resilience. Hemmings is probably better known as the writer of The Descendants, which was made into a George Clooney movie a few years back. Like her more famous book, The Possibilities is about relationships’ complexities. Here’s my Goodreads review: “You know how you know and love someone; you think you know them better than themselves maybe even? And you love them, deeply, warts and all? And then they do something surprising. Not out of character, because that suggests they're an actor. Just something that you didn't see coming. That's how this novel is. Hemmings has written a book about long-time friendship and love and family, and I thought I could see where it was going, but then she surprised me with moments so perfect, so unexpected -- the whole novel captures that essence of how complicated and multi-layered people are.”

Stay tuned for more mini-reviews of what we read this summer. Now back to the sunshine… where’s my book?