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The Victorians

The Victorians

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They drugged their babies, wore four layers of underwear and often went hungry. They are the Victorians, and they may as well have been ancient Greeks so different are the lives they lived from our own. 

I learned these facts from the book How to Be a Victorian and the experiences of author Ruth Goodman, who lived for a year on a Victorian farm where she dug turnips, squeezed into corsets, and brushed her teeth with soot (which she recommends as an alternative to modern toothpaste). 

More than halfway through the book now, I can say with some certainty that life was difficult for most Victorians, who worked hard and ate little. It makes me wonder about the lives of ease that so many of us live. How has comfort shaped us? How did adversity shape them? 

(Halfpenny meals for poor children, 1870, from Wikipedia)

Another Bronte

Another Bronte

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It’s prime reading weather — long nights, cold days — and I recently bought an e-book to keep me company: 50 Masterpieces You Have to Read Before You Die (Volume 1). How could I resist 50 classics for two dollars?

True, I’ve already read many of them. I was an English major, after all. But I doubt I would have started The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte had it not landed on (in?) my electronic nightstand. It’s an epistolary novel, a tale told entirely in letters and journals, and a reminder of how life was lived in an earlier, calmer and difficult-to-be-anything-but-landed-white-male-gentry time.

Though I can’t say Anne has become my favorite Bronte — it would be hard to dethrone Charlotte (Jane Eyre) and Emily (Wuthering Heights) — her novel grew on me, and by the end I couldn’t put it down, so thoroughly was I rooting for Helen and Gilbert to marry and find happiness. No spoiler alerts here; you’ll have to read it yourself to find out. 

(Photo: Wikipedia)

In Person

In Person

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It’s been four years since a virus from China began to enter our consciousness, slowly at first (it was so far away!) but eventually spreading around the world and taking over our lives.

Last night I hosted book group at my house, the first in-person meeting here since 2019. It felt good to sit in each other’s presence, to laugh and talk and drink tea, to plan for the future. The four years we spent on Zoom were good in their own way, but I’m glad we’re back in person. 

Four years have brought other changes. In the past, I would rush home from work to vacuum, dust and bake, barely finishing the prep before the first guest knocked on the door.  Tonight’s do was different. I had time to wash out the delicate Belleek sugar bowl and cream pitcher, to arrange squares of dark chocolate on a plate in honor of the book we discussed — Bittersweet.  I even had a chance to look over the notes I’d taken on the book. 

Sometimes I miss the hectic life I used to lead. And sometimes (less often) I miss Zoom. But I didn’t miss either of them last night.

(In person in a bookstore — with a friend, of course.)

The Books Themselves

The Books Themselves

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Last night was my book group’s annual book picking, held at a local bookstore cafe. It was fun to meet in person and catch up on news. But as usual, the stars of the show, the books themselves, were in short supply. Since we discuss each book we suggest and pass it (or a description of it) around, this was a problem.

I’d spent an hour or so finalizing my suggestions earlier in the day, printing out a page each for Bittersweet and The Book of Charlie. This was a good move because the bookstore didn’t have the former, a 2022 bestseller just out in paperback, and had to search high and low for the latter, just published and chosen as a best book of 2023 by the Washington Post. 

I’d also printed out the book list of a fellow member who emailed us her regrets at the last minute. The 2022 bestseller Solito was another challenge for the sales clerk to locate, but she finally found one copy.

On one hand, I’m grateful to the bookstore for letting us sit in their cafe and chat for 90 minutes. On the other, I wish the ratio of books to toys and accessories was slanted more heavily in favor of the books themselves.

(No lack of books in this bookstore.)
Worth the Wait

Worth the Wait

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I’m going to stay with The Power Broker for this post, too. I realize that most of my comments about the book have been about its weight. But 923 pages into it I can say at least a few words about its content. 

The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York is an in-depth portrayal of New York City’s traffic and building czar, Robert Moses, who held sway over the Big Apple for more than three decades, crucial years during which much of the city’s modern infrastructure was shaped. 

Moses built parks and dams, bridges and highways. He moved rivers and shorelines, condemned homes and destroyed neighborhoods. He shaped not just New York but all the cities of this country, because New York was held up as a model. And in it, public transportation took a back seat to the automobile. That there was a connection between this deficit and the highways that were clogged with traffic almost immediately after opening was just beginning to be understood in the 1940s and 50s. 

The book is also a study of power, how it seduces and changes a person and, by extension, the places over which that person has control. In this meticulously researched account of Moses, author Robert Caro shows young reporters and writers how to tell a big story, one so big that for years it wasn’t understood, let alone written. 

It’s for that reason that the book was assigned as summer reading before I entered a graduate journalism program years ago. I bought it then, a used copy for $7.50, but am only now getting around to reading it. The book has been worth the wait — as well as the weight. 

(Entrance to the Queens Midtown Tunnel, which Moses tried to block. He disliked tunnels.)

Weights and Measures

Weights and Measures

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In the book section of yesterday’s newspaper an article on feeling guilty about tomes we’ve never read featured a book I’m finally reading — The Power Broker by Robert A. Caro. 

I found it interesting that the reason given for not reading this one was its weight. “It’s just heavy by itself, and that physical weight also weighs on my mind about having to heft it while reading it,” John Nash of New Mexico told the Washington Post. 

Tell me about it! I was hefting it last night at 4 a.m. when I couldn’t sleep. And I’ve been hefting it ever since returning from the trip, where every book I read weighed exactly the same, as much as my 7.2-ounce Kindle.

I like to think I’ve adapted to the rigors of reading this four-pound behemoth, though. Pillows help. 

Power Broker Workout

Power Broker Workout

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I wanted to watch “Turn Every Page” as soon as I heard about it last year. The film about the editor-writer relationship between Robert Gottlieb and Robert Caro seemed smart and funny. Gottlieb’s recent passing at age 92 moved the documentary higher on my must-see list, and last week I finally got around to watching — and rewatching — it.

In fact, I can’t seem to stop seeking out clips of the film and thinking about it. Probably because it takes me back to a time when, as the trailer says, “publishing was a religion.” I came of age in that time, working as a magazine editor in New York, and it still seems like the way things ought to be.

Early on, one of Caro’s editors shared a piece of advice, something that would sustain the young investigative reporter, “Turn every page,” the editor said, exhorting him to be thorough. Caro did turn every page, and has continued to, searching through every box of documents, interviewing every subject. Now he is 87 and racing against the clock to finish the fifth and final volume of his LBJ biography series.

The greatest effect the movie has had on me is that I’m finally reading Caro’s first masterwork, The Power Broker, which won the Pulitzer Prize. For me, the imperative is not turning every page but turning any page. My edition of this tome is 1,246 pages and weighs almost four pounds. Holding it up and reading it is putting my arm muscles through their paces. I’m calling my reading sessions the Power Broker Workout.

Decisions, Decisions

Decisions, Decisions

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We leave tomorrow for more than a week in Seattle and environs, so the dust is flying. Among the items on my packing list is one that recurs on every packing list: book. The singular is deceptive. Often this means books.

Sometimes I’m dragging school work along.  And I used to pack work reading, which falls into the general category of books. Neither one of those this time.

Today’s task is simpler, though not without challenges. Today I need to find a good book to read, as in just read, as in for pleasure. Ideally, it would be a medium-sized paperback. Long enough to last me but light enough to keep my baggage allowance where it needs to be. 

I’ve dipped into the home library and found House Made of Dawn, by M. Scott Momaday, which I haven’t read but have always wanted to. It may come along. Also Crossroads, by Jonathan Franzen, a hefty library book, which I’ve listened to but not read in hard copy. 

There are still a few hours to think about this. Decisions, decisions. 

(Book packing with help from a young assistant.)

The Renegade

The Renegade

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As the semester ends, the deconstruction begins. Random print-outs are tossed or tidied. Papers are filed. Library books are gathered and returned to Georgetown.

Since I live nowhere near Georgetown and haven’t had class on campus all year (all via Zoom), this is a big deal. I was so proud of myself that I had dropped them off a few days before they were due, combining their return with a trip into D.C. on Saturday.

But yesterday, my bubble was burst. A stray had hidden itself underneath another book on my desk. Luckily, it can be returned … by mail!

(This wasn’t the renegade volume. I remembered to return this one — but only after I removed every sticky from every page.)
Thin Places

Thin Places

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I picked it up from the library’s new nonfiction section, intrigued by the title: Thin Places: A Natural History of Healing and Home. I wasn’t disappointed. Keri ní Dochartaigh’s memoir is a cry of pain, a poetic rendering of human suffering, as she turns her personal experience of Ireland’s “troubles” into a love song for white moths, ocean swims and her damaged island home.

With a Catholic mother and a Protestant father, Dochartaigh didn’t belong anywhere, a truth that became even clearer after her childhood home was firebombed. She never felt safe growing up, and the grief she carried as an adult almost drove her to suicide. 

But Dochartaigh found solace in the very place that wounded her. After leaving Ireland as a young adult, she feels called to return to her hometown of Derry, arriving just as Brexit is threatening a hard-won peace. 

Dochartaigh takes comfort in the natural world. “There are still places on this earth that sing of all that came and left, of all that is still here and of all that is yet to come. Places that have been touched, warmed, by the presence of something.”

The thin places she finds hold her, hollow and hallow her. She finds in them a reason to go on.