Browsings

Dirda, Michael. Browsings: A Year of Reading, Collecting, and Living with Books. New York: Pegasus 2015. Print

First Sentences:

As readers of Browsings will discover in the weeks to come, I'm pretty much what used to be called a "bookman." 

 

This means, essentially, that I read a lot and enjoy writing about the books and authors that interest me....But my tone aims to remain easygoing and conversational, just me sharing some of my discoveries and enthusiasms.


Description:

OK, I admit it. I'm a hopeless sucker for books about books. Anything that covers ground about reading experiences and interesting titles, I'm all in. Whether the topic is about reading the encyclopedia (The Know-It-All: One Man's Quest to be the Smartest Man in the World), perusing every book on one shelf in the library (The Shelf: From LEQ to LES), thoughtful recommendations from someone who reads 6,000 books a year (One For the Books), or just a personal list of wonderful books organized by subject and complete with witty descriptions (Book Lust), I gobble up these books, copying enticing titles into my pocket notebook of "Books To Be Read" for later consumption.

My latest treasure in this "Books on Books" topic is Michael Dirda Browsings: A Year of Reading, Collecting, and Living with Books. Dirda was a columnist for The American Scholar between 2012-13, taking the column over from the great William K. Zinsser, the author of On Writing Well, which to me is the definitive grammar and writing style advice guidebook. Quite large shoes to fill.

But Dirda can really write, and write he does on any book-related topic that strikes his fancy for his column, "Browsings." In this book, Dirda collects one year's worth of his short columns on a wide variety of topics, including:

Thrift store book shopping -

One thing never does change: the books you really covet always cost more that you want to pay for them. But, to borrow a phrase that women use of childbirth, the pain quickly vanishes when you finally hold that longed-for baby, or book, and know that it is your forever.

Book Collecting - 

Three important points for buying a collectable book : condition, condition, condition....Now you can easily acquire almost anything with a keystroke, if you have the funds. But where's the fun of that? Where's the serendipity? The thrill of the hunt?...that's not collecting, that's shopping.

Anthologies - 

Anthologies resemble dating. You enjoy some swell times and suffer through some awful ones, until one happy hour you encounter a story you really, really like and decide to settle down for a while with its author. Of course, this doesn't lead to strict fidelity.

His own life - 

I had graduated from Oberlin College and failed to win a Rhodes Scholarship -- a long shot, at best, given that I played no sports, earned mediocre grades as a freshman and sophomore, and had participated in absolutely nothing extracurricular. It turned out that zeal for learning and boyish charm weren't quite enough for the Rhodes committee... 

He introduces or refamiliarizes us readers with his favorite writers, such as:

• Everett F. Bleiler - author of The Guide to Supernatural Fiction, with summaries for 1,775 books written between 1750-1960;

• Irvin Leigh Matus - author of Shakespeare, In Fact, the definitive scholarly work about the life of the Bard, despite Matus having no formal education beyond a high school diploma, and incredibly had 20 years earlier been living on a heating grate behind the Library of Congress

• Charles Wager - Oberlin College professor who wrote essays on his college in To Whom It May Concern. Wager was the teacher whom Robert Maynard Hutching, renown president of the University of Chicago, said was the only truly great teacher he experienced during his years of education at Yale, Princeton, and many other universities

Dirda mentions his love of classic novels, especially those long-forgotten but are still captivating and worth re-exploring. He even developed and taught a course at the Univerisity of Maryland entitled, "The Classic Adventure Novel: 1885-1915" where students read King Solomon's Mines. Kidnapped, The Time Machine, The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Man Who Was Thursday, Kim, The Thirty-Nine Steps, and Tarzan of the Apes (my favorite hero as a boy. I read all 24 Tarzan books three times before my parents made me move on). This wildly popular class led to his follow-up course "The Modern Adventure Novel: 1917-1973" which covered Captain Blood, Red Harvest, The Real Cool Killers, True Grit, and The Princess Bride. Who wouldn't want to take those courses with him and dive into these gripping novels?

Here's just a peak at a smattering of some of the other unusual titles Dirda mentions that caught my eye:

• Fully Dressed and in His Right Mind 
• The Moon Is Feminine
• The Man With the Magic Eardrums
• The Skull of the Waltzing Clown
• The Lost Continent
• When I Was a Child I Read Books 
• I Am Thinking of My Darling
• The Fangs of Suet Pudding
• The Bible Repairman and Other Stories
• The Venetian Glass Nephew
• The Man Who Understood Women 

I could go on and on about the treasures uncovered in Browsings, but I'll leave that pleasure to you readers curious about discovering new titles to explore, reading about the author's incurable scrounging through used book stores, encounters with famous and not-so-famous writers, and his pursuit of quality reads and reading experiences.

I've lived slow, dithered and dallied, taken my own sweet time, and done pretty much what I've repeatedly done ever since my mother first taught me to read so long ago: Found a quiet spot and opened a book. 

Happy reading. 

Fred

Other book recommendations
About The First Sentence Reader blog

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Miller, Andy. A Year of Reading Dangerously: How Fifty Great Books (and Two Not-So-Great Ones) Saved My Life  

Author Andy Miller decides to read fifty book in one year. Along the way, he writes an essay on each book about what the book means to him, his feelings for the author and background, and anything else delightful he can think of. He avoided Dan Brown's books. (previously reviewed here)

Queenen, Joe. One for the Books  

Here's a gifted reader, writer, and commentator on books (he reads up to 32 at a time!), guaranteed to fill up your To Be Read file with countless interesting titles you simply cannot live without reading. Wonderful writing and a goldmine of book ideas (previously reviewed here)

 

 

 

Special Post - Short Reviews #3

Here are a few short reviews of very interesting books that I enjoyed but just don't have the energy to compose a full review each. These books are all well-written, with great characters and interesting plots. It is only my lack of time (laziness?) that they don't get the full attention they deserve.

Happy reading. 

Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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Born on Snowshoes - Evelyn Berglund Short

First Sentences 

I suppose that on the banks of American Creek in Alaska the hills were green with spruce and birch, and that wild flowers and berries spotted them and the valleys below. 

      

Description:

Author Evelyn Berglund Short recalls her extraordinary life in the wilds of Alaska during the 1920s and '30s with her two sisters, mother, and an old trapper who took them in when Evelyn was 12 and her father died. Her memories revolve around poling boats 280 miles away from civilization to their trapping cabin where they wintered, hunting, fishing, and trapping marmots, beaver and shooting caribou, bears, and moose. Despite only one year of schooling, Evelyn's stories are gripping, honest, and clearly narrated as she braves 70 below zero weather, freezing water, hungry wolves, sled dogs, and the threat of starvation. The four women and trapper lived for ten winters in that cabin, and her stories describe the beauty, humor, and harshness of that world wonderfully.

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Bruno, Chief of Police - Martin Walker

First Sentences  

On a bright May morning, so early that the last of the mist was still lingering low over a bend in the Vezere River, a white van drew to a halt on the ridge that overlooked the small French town. 

Description:

A small town in France is quietly supervised by a gentle police chief known to all as Bruno. A former soldier who never wears a gun, Bruno knows everyone, understands their lives, and enjoys the quiet life he has built for himself. But then there is a murder in his village, the killing of an old French war hero who had recently moved to St. Denis to live in seclusion near his son, grandson, and unborn great-grandson. The murder appears to be a hate crime, but Bruno cannot understand how this could happen in his peaceful community. Adding local police and state law officers complicates the investigation that Bruno feels may point to activities during the French Occupation during World War II and the Resistance Movement.

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Scouting for the Reaper - Jacob M. Appel

First Sentences  

Miss Stanley was new to the ninth grade that autumn, and we could all sense that she wasn't cut out for it.

        

Description:

Seven exquisitely constructed stories compose this book and each one is a gem. Full of characters with secrets and relationships that are grudgingly uncovered, Scouting for the Reaper engrosses readers in the common lives that turn unexpected. From the tombstone salesman who meets his former wife now as a customer, to a young girl who discovers via a simple schoolroom blood type experiment that her parents cannot genetically be her real parents, to a reclusive fairy tale researcher to a truck driver who crashes his load of penguins, each story is unexpectedly compelling and unpredictable. Strongly written and completely believable in its characterizations of ordinary people forced to reveal buried stories and make difficult decisions.

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My Life East and West - William S. Hart

First Sentences  

I was born at Newburgh, New York.

My first recollection is of Oswego, Illinois. My father was a miller, and we lived near the flour mill on the Fox River. There were only two houses. 

   

Description:

William S. Hart was not only one of the first Silent Screen movie stars as a gun-toting cowboy, he actually lived a fascinating live among the world of cattle drives, Sioux Indians, gunslingers, bronco busting, and prairie schooners in his unsupervised youth. His autobiography is cleverly told, full of anecdotes of both his upbringing and his film career and early departure into seclusion while he was still on top.

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I, Fatty - Jerry Stahl

First Sentences  

Daddy referred to my mother's reproductive organs as "her little flower."

In my earliest baby-boy memories, the man's either looming and glum -- not drunk enough -- or bug-eyed and stubbly after a three-day bender, so liquored up he tilts when he leans down to snatch me off the burlap rags my brothers and sisters piled on the floor of our Kansas shack and called our "sleep blankets." 

"You broke her little flower, pig boy!" 

--WHACK! -- 

Description:

Here is a fictionalized memoir of the silent film comedian, Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle. Narrated by Arbuckle, the book reveals Arbuckle's rise from an abusive home of poverty to his early success on the stage as a 375-pound singer and comedian, from his rise to superstardom along with Chaplin and Keaton in the earliest silent films, to the horrific public trials and disgrace when he is accused to a rape/murder occurs. During that period, he is vilified by audiences to the extent that his films are removed from cinemas and he cannot work for years. A gritty, personal, and in-depth look at one man and his rollercoaster life of fame and shame on the stage and screen of that fascinating, greedy era.

What do you do when the world thinks you're a monster, and you know it's the world that's monstrous?

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Special Post - Short Reviews #1

I've been reading so many books lately that I will never have time to write full reviews of all the gems I've come across. Also wanted to alert you to a few oldies that I've enjoyed in the past as well. So for your reading pleasure, here are ten short reviews for wonderful books you should definitely consider for your next reading selections. 

All have my big three requirements for a quality read: great story, involved interesting characters, and of course extremely good writing. Trust me that each will not disappoint you.

Happy reading.

Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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Death and the Penguin - Audrey Kurkov

First Sentences:

First, a stone landed a metre from Viktor's foot.

He glanced back. Two louts stood grinning, one of whom stopped, picked up another from a section of broken cobble, and bowled it at him skittler-fashion. Viktor made off at something approaching a racing walk and rounded the corner, telling himself the main thing was not to run. 

Description:

This is an offbeat, oddly humorous story, translated from the original Russian, about a man living in modern Kiev who is hired by a newspaper to write obituaries for living people. Not so unusual until his obits begin to appear in print as these people coincidentally turn up dead. Everything happening is masked in secrecy, with his newspaper Chief saying, "When you do know what's what, it will mean there no longer is any real point to your work or to your continuing existence."

Oh, and a few oddities: the obit writer owns a penguin adopted from a bankrupt zoo that lives in his apartment; a little girl is dropped off to live with him by her father who then disappears; someone is regularly entering Viktor's locked apartment at night, unseen, leaving gifts and notes including a pile of money and a gun; and much more highly unusual occurrences and people that keep the writer in a constant state of puzzlement.

Keeps you guessing to the very last sentence.

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Campus Sexpot: A Memoir  - David Carkeet

First Sentences:

"Linda Franklin had not been to bed with every boy in the junior college of Wattsville, but at nineteen she had known physical intimacy with a high percentage of those boys who knew enough to appreciate her amply endowed body."

As first sentences go, it is not a bad one. It treats Linda Franklin's promiscuity like a familiar subject, it shows a touch of wit in its sober contradiction of a preposterous assertion ("had not been to bed with every boy in the junior college,") and its categorical precision ("a high percentage of those boys who ...") tells us we are in the hands of an author with a working mind.



Description:

Author David Carkeet, while reading sleazy novel, realizes that his small town and its citizens were the basis for this sexy book which was written by a former English teacher who skipped town. Carkeet recalls his own coming-of-age story and compares it to the narration of the activities of the people in his town. Very funny.

[Side note: I accidentally left my copy of this book behind at a conference where I spoke, so had to go through the unusual experience of contacting organizers and facilitators to ask whether they had seen my Campus Sexpot book laying around. Took more than a few calls, each a bit more embarrassing than the last. Probably lost a bit of my image (or fortified it) among my colleagues.]

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Doc: A Novel  - Mary Doria Russell

First Sentences:

He began to die when he was twenty-one, but tuberculosis is slow and sly and subtle. 

The disease took fifteen years to hollow out his lungs so completely they could no longer keep him alive, In all that time he was allowed a single season of something like happiness. 

Description:

Dr. John Henry (Doc) Holiday, a Southern aristocrat, moves to Texas for his health and opens one of the first dentistry offices in Dodge City. After becoming a gambler to survive when business was bad (always), he befriends Wyatt Earp in this rich, compelling historical fiction of the people and environment of the Old West. 

Highly recommended in every way.

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Down the Great Unknown:John Wesley Powell's 1869 Journey of Discovery and Tragedy Through the Grand Canyon - Edward Dolnick

First Sentences:

The first inhabitants of Green River Station, Wyoming Territory, gather at the riverfront to cheer off a rowdy bunch of adventurers...

Their plan could hardly be simpler. They will follow the Green River downstream until it merges with the Grand to become the Colorado, and then they will stay with the Colorado wherever it takes them

Description:

Here is a real life adventure. Ten men, including their one-armed leader, in 1869 set out in wooden boats to follow the Green River to the Colorado River through the entire Grand Canyon. Uncharted and unseen water faces them, with rapids, cold, and starvation a daily trial. Hold-your-breath fascinating and gripping on every page. 

One of the best adventure books I have ever read.

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The Glorious Deception: The Double Life of William Robinson, a.k.a. Chung Ling Soo, the "Marvelous Chinese Conjurer"  - Jim Steinmeyer

First Sentences:

All the World's a stage. 

Inscribed in the plaster and finished in gold leaf, those five famous words appeared over the proscenium at the World Green Empire in north London, in the smooth white halo that formed the focal point of the theater, and surrounded the blood red, gold-tassled curtain.

Description:

Here is probably one of the most fascinating (and true) accounts of the world of magic, revealing the life of William Robinson, an ordinary magician in the early 1900s who tries to find a gimmick to make his performance stand out. He hits on the idea of pretending to be a silent Chinese conjurer, Chung Ling Soo. In his foreign make-up and Asian robes, he works astonishing magic he has designed himself to audiences fascinated by his mysterious nature as much as his tricks, including catching bullets fired from a gun. 

The book shows the inner working of his illusions, his constant dedication to his craft, and the imagination and technical skill behind each performance. It is a great book that provides a peak at the world of magic, illusion, and performance.

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In Search of Moby Dick: The Quest for the White Whale - Tim Severin

First Sentences:

The Essex was not going to founder immediately. That soon became clear to the men of the three whaleboats. 

Description:

Did the Great White Whale of Herman Melville's Moby Dick actually exist? Author Severin travels the world to record fascinating stories and eye-witness accounts of white whales and their behavior in today's world and in past history, leading credence to the idea that Moby Dick actually existed and was just as ornery as Melville portrayed him. 

I really loved this book, the riveting accounts from eye-witnesses, and the travel to exotic locations around the world that have reported sightings of a white whale. 

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Mammoth - John Varley

First Sentences:

The helicopter flew low over the landscape as barren as any to be found on planet Earth.

This was Nunavut. It wasn't a province and hardly a territory though they called it that. As far a Warburton was concerned they could give it all back to the Eskimos. 

Description:

When examining a rare find of a Mammoth elephant in the ice fields of Canada, a carefully-preserved man in animal skins is found next to the animal's body. An astonishingly historic find. But there is something else. Strapped to the ancient man's wrist is a gleaming stainless steel briefcase, not exactly something a cave man would have in prehistoric times. 

A lovely, clever page-turner of a novel.

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Mortality  - Christopher Hitchens

First Sentences:

I have more than once in my time woken up feeling like death 

But nothing prepared me for the early morning in June when I came to consciousness feeling as if I were actually shackled to my own corpse. The whole cave of my chest and thorax seemed to have been hollowed out and then refilled with slow-drying cement.

Description:

Christopher Hitchens is a remarkably clever, intellectual, and funny writer. In Mortality, he details his battle with esophageal cancer and his entrance into the "land of malady." While a depressing topic, Hitchens retains his caustic wit and piercing observations, beautifully writing about his own sickness, fears, treatment, friends, and life facing this disease.

As a cancer combatant, this book resonates with me as few other do on this topic. 

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My Mercedes is Not for Sale: From Amsterdam to Ouagadougou...An Auto-Misadventure Across the Sahara  - Jeroen Van Bergeijk

First Sentences: 

Stuck to the cracked dashboard was a decal of the Dutch soccer team PVS Eindhoven.

A PVS Eindhoven fan in Ouagadougou? I tapped on the team's red and white logo and asked the driver if he was an admirer of Dutch soccer. He had no idea what I was talking about. He'd never heard of PVS, didn't give a damn about soccer. He didn't even know where the Netherlands was.

Description:

The delightful, witty true adventures of the author who hits on a scheme to sell a very old Mercedes automobile to people in a Third World country where these cars are very popular. The only catch is that to make any profit at all, he has to drive the wreck himself to the destination; that is, from his home in The Netherlands to Africa, including a section across the Sahara desert. 

Desert, people, travel, and culture come into contact in adventurous and humorous situations, revealing aspects of each at their best (and worst). 

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Remember Me: A Lively Tour of the New American Way of Death - Lisa Takeuchi Cullen

First Sentences:

Rebecca Love met Tommy Odom ten years ago at a Renaissance fair. 

She had her booth selling clay sculptures of women's bodies; he ran the fool's maze.

Description:

Different cultures and people choose a wide variety of ways to deal with the bodies of loved ones claimed by death. The author explores these many methods with quiet fascination and respect, no matter how unusual the practices are. She talks with the people who offer these services and learns that bodies can be: 1) cremated and dropped from a crop-dusting plane; 2) mixed with cement that is shaped into a sculpture and tossed into the ocean as a habitat for fish; 3) buried in a natural cemetery without coffin or embalming; 4) turned into diamonds using the carbon found in their ashes. Of course, there are examples of even more wildly-interesting after-death options that she explores.  

Fascinating, thought-provoking, and most of all, strangely fun.