Amuse Me

What I like about writing is the words.

I was passing the exotic cheese shop the other day and I noticed a sign for, I think it was, salami made from wild boar meat. The sign said, "Feral swine."

Feral swine. How cool is that for an expression? It calls up all sorts of images, from Wonder Wart-Hog to a rag-tag cadre of old Nazis living off the land in a remote area of Bavaria, the Feral Swine Brigade. Or a motorcycle gang. The Feral Swine. I can see their jackets now. You wouldn't dare wear one in certain bars.

One morning last week I fell ill with chills and fever, which is a story for another day, and sooner than run off to the ER and give everybody whatever the hell it was I had I decided to take a hot water bottle and a book and go to bed. After awhile I got better, as planned, but in the meantime I read the book. It was Green Hazard by Manning Coles, two writers who liked words. Cyril Coles fought in the trenches and then was a spy in Germany during World War I. He knew how bad things can get, probably knew it better than many of us, and yet managed to dance around the edge of the pit with the most elegant and amusing language imaginable.

This is the opposite of the way things are done today. Nowadays the Knowing Ones will tell you, there isn't enough conflict here. Create conflict. I've tried to read a couple of books by people who took this advice, injecting bogus conflict into a limp manuscript. "Oh, why did I say that to my boyfriend? Now he's mad at me. Well, I'm mad at him." As the murderer creeps closer. Fling! Another book goes crashing against the wall. Unless it's a Kindle. Then it just gets soundly cursed.

Where are the amusing writers? That's what I want to know. I've run out of Manning Coles novels, I've read everything by Terry Pratchett, and I need something else to read. History books are good, if the writer doesn't have some unpleasant axe to grind. Some history books I have to feel terrible about, since they chronicle the bestial sins of my ancestors. Mayflower, by Nathaniel Philbrick, for instance—My God! How horrible we were to the Indians!—and A Great and Noble Scheme by John Mack Faragher. I was all set to read A Great and Noble Scheme when I realized that my ancestors who "settled" Nova Scotia in 1760 did so a scant five years after the area had been ethnically cleansed of Frenchmen.

Right now I'm waiting for a delivery from the Naval Institute of a book about German spies in Baltimore in the years before we entered World War I. This should be diverting. I don't have to assume any personal guilt for whatever happened. I might write an amusing piece of spy fiction based on that book, and on the memoir of Franz von Rintalen, The Dark Invader, who was a saboteur in those times. Maybe I'll call it Feral Swine.

© 2015 Kate Gallison

Going Through the Books

I woke up this morning and as soon as I had eaten breakfast began to pull books off my shelves and evaluate them for re-shelving, tossing, or re-reading. I didn't want to sit down, you see. What with the snow and all it's been weeks, oh, all right, months, since I regularly attended the gym. I can feel myself turning to cement from the armpits down. Maybe even higher. So, the books. One must stand up to examine them, lift them, drag them around.

The shelves in the bedroom contain mostly non-fiction, mostly American history. The straight-out genealogical books and the witch trial stuff live in my office, the fiction in the "library," where we keep the television, the children's books on the shelves in the third floor guest room, the guilty pleasures of Louis L'Amour, Terry Pratchett, and Brian Jacques in a small bookcase in the upstairs hall. The big bookcases in the upstairs hall are full of Harold's books, which I wouldn't dream of touching, since he has his mysterious system.

Fact is, I haven't touched my bedroom bookcase in quite a while either. So the exercise involved Swiffers, first to dust the family pictures in front of the books, and then to dust the books themselves. Then to rediscover all the things I used to be interested in. Here's a row a yard wide of books about the Indians. Actually I'm always interested in the Indians. Here are a number of books about Thomas Edison, including one all about the electric chair. Those of you who read The Edge of Ruin, which I wrote as Irene Fleming, will recall that I did a number on Edison in that book. I would never do that without reams of documentation.

Then there are some diaries. Keep? Toss? I was on the point of throwing away a nearly blank diary covered in red leather with something weird like rotted brown paper sticking to the front when I got a look at the earliest entries. This is the book I took notes in the time I pretended to be a newspaper reporter so I could get next to Bil Baird, the famous puppeteer, when he gave a talk at the Trenton museum. I was, I confess, a drooling fan. I'll tell you the whole story sometime, but the diary is well worth keeping. It has sketches of puppets and their workings.

The bookshelves are mostly shoveled out now. I'm sitting here eating lunch and considering actually going to the gym. When I get back I'll return the family pictures to the shelves and think about putting up Duncan McColl's memoirs as a kindle. They are long, long out of copyright, and it seems to me that scholars would like to see them. He was a famous Methodist preacher in St. Stephen, New Brunswick, Canada. I admire him greatly; sometime I'll tell you why.

That's the fun thing about my bookshelves. They're full of people I admire, Lincoln Steffens, Maxine Eliot, Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Masterman Hardy, Ida Tarbell, Bil Baird, Tecumseh. Anytime I want to I can go read about their doings, now that the dust is off the books, and fall in love all over again. But first I have to go to the gym.

© 2014 Kate Gallison

Comfort Reading

Avid readers of this blog will remember that some months ago I was having a romance with cortisone. I was writing songs for it (Just a sharp shot of steroids/ helps the misery go down,/ the misery go dooown, /the misery go down). I was stopping strangers on the street and asking them if they had had cortisone shots. Alas, it was but a fling. Cortisone dropped me as quickly as Britney Spears abandoned that high school sweetheart she married.

I have now moved on to Orthovisc, a substance that replaces knee fluid. I’ve had two injections. I got the second on a grey, cold, blustery day and found myself practically keening from pain both before and after the procedure. I know what you’re thinking: “She writes songs about medication; she accosts total strangers on the street and she keens and howls when in deep distress. Steph sounds like she’s up for a whole lot of fun. How can I get to know her better?”

Yes, I have been miserable but I always keep two things in mind. I don’t have a job that forces me to talk to Ted Cruz on a daily basis and books can make almost anything better.

Here are some my favorites for a sour mood:

Ken Bruen’s Jack Taylor novels. I know that a man who begins his day with a double Jameson’s and 2 Xanax doesn’t seem like a natural role model, but his life is always much worse than mine and he survives.

The Moving Toyshop by Edmund Crispin. This is one of my favorite mysteries and features the Oxford don, Gervase Fen. And if your work setting doesn’t really allow the use of profanity, you’ll find exclaiming “Oh, my fur and whiskers” keeps people guessing.

The Bear Went Over the Mountain by William Kotzwinkle. While searching for food, a bear finds a suitcase that contains a manuscript. He takes it to Manhattan and becomes a huge (in more ways than one) literary celebrity. If you’re not happy about the state of publishing, this is the book for you.

Any short story or novel by P.G. Wodehouse. I do find that people either love or loathe Mr. Wodehouse. I think anyone who can write sentences like this should be venerated: “Mike nodded. A sombre nod. The nod Napoleon might have given if somebody had met him in 1812 and said, ‘So you’re back from Moscow, eh?’”

The Barsetshire novels of Anthony Trollope. I’m currently re-reading Framley Parsonage. Big questions loom. Will Mark Robarts the vicar become tainted by his association with the Duke of Ominum and the crowd at Gatherum Castle? Will Griselda Grantley marry Lord Dumbello or Lord Lufton? Will the bishop’s wife, Mrs Proudie, ruin her husband’s career by appearing to wear the clerical apron in the family?

After I read Kate’s blog from a few weeks ago, I purchased Sprig Muslin.

I’d love to hear about the books that other people turn to in times of distress.

© 2013 Stephanie Patterson

Book Shelves and Their (Dis)Contents

I have just finished Susan Hill's excellent bookish memoir Howard's End is on the Landing: A Year of Reading From Home. If I wrote my own version of such a memoir, it would be called Stephen Sondheim is on the Floor And He Has Lots of Company. Ms. Hill wrote this book because she discovered, while looking for a copy of Howard’s End, that she owned many books she had not read.

I took up her book because I needed solace as I once again try to tame my own collection. My husband has announced that we need new carpets and that the books and shelves will have to be moved. He has also suggested that I might think about getting rid of a tome or several.

I am a bit daft when it comes to buying books. I once told Robin Hathaway that if authors knew how easy it was to sell me a book, they would fight to sit next to me at mystery conferences.

Alas, books require housing. When I lived at Coles House, I was the only boarder to be allowed two book shelves. The good folks at Coles House initially felt that I should make do with one and put any overflow in the basement.

“The basement!” cried a friend of mine who threw herself into the discussion. “That’s like asking Stephanie to put her closest friends in the basement.” I nodded solemnly in agreement and the second bookcase was mine.

When I moved to a studio apartment in Center City, I bought sturdy canning shelves that were wide enough to allow me to put two rows of books on each shelf. But they filled up over the years and pretty soon my books were read and returned to the shopping bags in which I brought them home.

Then I married and my husband cheerfully moved all my books to our condo. Now I had more than one room to fill with books. Joy unrestrained filled my breast. I could not only put the books on shelves but also impose some sort of order on them.

Then we planned the move to Collingswood. My mother in law agreed to talk to the movers when they came to do their estimate.

“What about the books?” I asked her

She chuckled softly. “They say you have 90 boxes of books here. It’s $1,500 just to move the books.”

So my husband decided he would move the books. He would call me at work and leave messages: “Dickens is in Collingswood." or “Ian Rankin is in his new home.”

We’ve lived in Collingswood for almost 10 years now and the books again overflow the shelves. I thought my acquisition of a Kindle would mean fewer traditional books.

I’m sure the Kindle has made a difference but when people come to work on the house they still say, “Gee, I guess you folks really like to read.” A friend of mine who came to visit looked at my shelves and said to her husband, “See, you complain about all the books I have. Doesn’t this make me look like a model of restraint?”

Each Sunday I spend just a bit of time going through my books So many of them bring back memories because of where I bought them or where I was when I first read them. Some of them remind me of the people who recommended them or of people to whom I lent them.

I own a very battered copy of Anna Karenina. It’s a mass market paperback that was produced when PBS did a dramatization on Masterpiece Theater. It strikes me now that the translation isn’t very good and the pages fall out as I turn them. But I can’t get rid of it. It was given to me as a Christmas gift by a woman I met at Coles House. We were both serious readers and delighted to find each other. She had a job but certainly was not making much money. I was so touched by her thoughtfulness. I took the book on my train ride home to see my mother. Amtrak was doing major work along the Northeast corridor at the time and I still remember the bumpy ride as I read.

What people have in their medicine chests is of little interest to me but I always check out their bookshelves. Susan Hill manages to find on her shelves just 40 books that she could be contented with for the rest of her life. (Though it’s not clear that she’s sending the rest to the local church jumble sale).

Maybe some day I’ll be able to show similar maturity, restraint and self-sacrifice, but not just yet.

Stephanie Patterson

A Rose for Miss Bonnie

My mother has lived with us since her death in 2006.

My mother hated staying overnight in unfamiliar surroundings. She was happy to go anywhere you might want to take her as long as she could sleep in her own bed the same night. It made sense to me to keep her ashes among family.

Her urn is topped by a jaunty hat that she loved wearing. She is surrounded by a Furby (She had several who talked to each another and there was sometimes a disquieting twitter—in the old sense—behind her when I called home), a frog (she collected them), a stuffed dog that taps its foot and moves an umbrella as “Singin‘ the Rain” plays, an old VHS of Johnny Carson shows and a book about “Guiding Light,” her favorite soap opera. The symbol of her devotion to Bill Clinton, a hand puppet of the former president given to her by my cousin, Alison, did not wear well and will need to be replaced. What is not so well represented in this collection is my mother’s love of books.

My obsession with books came entirely from my mother. I was the first grandchild on my mother’s side and my grandmother loved bringing me gifts. My mother didn’t like this. Her family had little money and she didn’t want me to expect a present every time my grandparents visited.

“If you have to get her something, get her a book,” mom said.

I became the owner of countless Little Golden Books and a whole series of Louisa May Alcott novels. I had many Little House books and a lot of Doctor Seuss. During my childhood and adolescence the Scholastic Book Service sold books in schools and the day the shipment came was always an exciting one for me.

As I got older, my mother still emphasized the importance of books and doing well in school. I was the only child I knew who didn’t have fights with her parents over cleaning her room. It was perfectly acceptable to befriend the dust bunnies, curl up on the unmade bed and read.

I was never told I wasn’t allowed to read a particular book. My mother assured me I might read whatever I liked. She told me she didn’t worry about my being tainted by dirty books. She worried that I would be bored. When, at about 14 I tried reading Lolita, mom’s fears were realized.

During her later years, Mom got her stories from T. V. and movies. The last book I remember her reading was Sue Grafton’s P is for Peril. Shortly before she died, she said to me, “Stephanie, I don’t know anyone who feels about books the way you do.”

“And whose fault is that?” I asked.

My mother, who was not always particularly happy during her last years, gave me the most delightful smile.

Stephanie Patterson

Don't Touch That Book!

Recently I was complaining to a friend about the hazards of having too many books. She said, “Why don’t you have an appraiser come in and tell you which ones are valuable? Keep those, and get rid of the rest?”

Logical, right?

Wrong. Because my idea of valuable and the appraisers may not agree. He’ll be talking monetary value; I’ll be talking sentimental value.

How could I ever get rid of that scuffed volume of “A Child’s Garden of Verses,” illustrated by Nathaniel Wyeth and Jesse Wilcox Smith? The one with the picture of a duck drawn in crayon on the inside back cover, by my mother when she was four years old.

Or… that set of Edgar Allan Poe with the black crinkly binding and silk ribbon bookmarks. Or…the tattered complete set of Dick Francis in paperback, that I know I’ll reread again and again.

Or… all of Dorothy Sayres, Margery Allingham, and Josephine Tey? Or… ”The Long Goodbye,” by Raymond Chandler in which I marked the passage where the hero goes into a hotel bar early and describes the making of a martini as if he were in church watching the priest perform his sacred rituals. Or… the battered copy of “Rebecca” with all the suspense passages marked to be read to my class in mystery writing. Or… I could go on and on.

The trouble is—these books are my friends. And when I go to sleep at night it is a comfort to be surrounded by them.How can I think of getting rid of even one of them?
It’s hopeless.

Robin Hathaway

Moving With Books

Don’t. Leave them behind. Sell them. Give them away. But don’t move with them. Especially don’t ask your friends and relatives to help you move them. That is, if you want to continue to have friends and relatives. If you don’t want to spend the rest of your life as a hermit. (Of course, you could get a lot of reading done.)

If you insist on moving with books, do it yourself. The whole operation — packing the boxes, loading the boxes in the van, unloading the boxes from the van, unpacking the boxes, putting the books on the shelves. That is the only safe way to avoid being shunned, dropped, avoided, sued for back injuries, etc.

Recently we closed up our New York apartment and moved all our stuff to Philadelphia. I don’t know how we managed to crowd so much stuff into two rooms. Of course, the “stuff” was mostly MY books. Five bookcases full. I put a lot down in the Laundry Room for anyone to take. But that didn’t even make a dent in the amount. We still have to make one more car trip back to New York to collect the BIG books — the ones that wouldn’t fit in the boxes.

Now the Philadelphia house resembles a book warehouse, because it was full of books before we moved the new ones in. I can barely squeeze between the boxes to reach our bed. And I don’t know how much longer I can sleep with a box of books for a pillow. It will take us weeks to unpack and get things back to normal. Normal? What’s that? Oh, yeah, taking books out of the library and then returning them.

I could open a used bookstore tomorrow, if I so desired. The trouble is — I’d rather read than sell them. My fate is sealed. I’m an incurable bookaholic.

Future generations won’t have this problem. When they move, they’ll just tuck their Kindle or Nook or Whatever, under their arm and their library will be ready to go on moving day. They won’t even have to dust their precious volumes.

Robin Hathaway

10 Ways to Chill Out

1. Do nothing
2. Drink cool beverages
3. Doze in air-conditioned room
4. Daydream
5. Eat ice cream
6. Read books set in cold places*
7. Take a cold shower
8. Don’t wear any clothes
9. Listen to cool jazz
10. Think cool thoughts

*10 Cool Books to Beat the Heat:

1. Call of the Wild – Jack London
2. Bodies in Winter – Robert Knightly
3. Snow Falling on Cedars – David Guterson
4. Winter Solstice – Rosamunde Pilcher
5. Fear Itself – Elena Santangelo
6. Italian Shoes – Henning Mankell
7. The Snows of Kilamanjaro – Ernest Hemingway
8. Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates – Mary Mapes Dodge
9. Steve Hamilton’s Alex McKnight series
10. Anything by a Russian novelist…

Robin Hathaway

10 Ways to Beat the Heat

1. Do nothing
2. Drink cool beverages
3. Doze in air-conditioned room
4. Daydream
5. Eat ice cream
6. Read books set in cold places
7. Take a cold shower
8. Don’t wear any clothes
9. Listen to cool jazz
10. Think cool thoughts

Robin Hathaway

Bookcases

One of the troubles with being a lover of books is that the books pile up, even when you're married to a librarian with his own public library to store books in. Everyone in Lambertville brings his excess books to the library, after all, hoping to find them a good home. But the public library is already full of books. Very few of the donations are put in the collection, and those that are must displace other books, which are thereupon deaccessioned. Which is to say, put on sale. Or worse, recycled.

I can see you blenching at the idea of destroying books. I tell you what, it depends on the books. Some books should have been pulped at birth. It may be that I myself wrote a couple of them. But I digress; I was talking about home storage.

I've never counted the number of books we own. Since the total is a moving target, such an activity would be a waste of time. I do have standards, however. Have the piles on the floor reached my knees? Worse, has Harold begun to stuff books into cardboard boxes? I hate cardboard boxes, unless they're coming in the door with shoes and dresses in them, to be emptied and put out with the recycling, or to be sealed up again with the original contents and sent back to Shoebuy or L.L. Bean or wherever. In no case are cardboard boxes to be filled with books and placed around the house as permanent fixtures.

A few weeks ago I noticed that cardboard boxes full of books were multiplying in dark corners of the house like an infestation of rats. Time to take action. Time to deaccession those books which we can bear to part with. Time to buy more bookcases to hold the rest.

So I went on Overstock.com and ordered three bookcases, just the right size to fit in our back hall as long as no one needs to use a wheelchair to get from our bedroom to the upstairs bathroom, which no one does so far, thanks be to God. They were handsome and inexpensive, made of coarse particle board with a microscopically thin veneer of mahogany, and they came, as you might expect, knocked down. The veneer was cracked and chipped in places but the Chinese manufacturer had kindly included in the plastic bag of parts a felt-tip pen the color of the veneer to fix it.

Shall I tell you of the other defects in quality control? Shall I complain about how the dowels were too narrow to fit snugly into the holes drilled for them, or how one of the cam thingies was not even threaded, or how two of the holes in one of the side pieces were drilled wrong? No. Instead of that I'll brag about how we put the three bookcases together in three days, working alternately and in tandem, switching off parts among the three until all the faults and defective bits (except for the chipped veneer) had been shifted to one last joint, which the resourceful Harold put together with new dowels, Gorilla Glue, and a huge clamp. Now to go load the bookcases up with books.

Probably they won't all fit. Tell you what. If you'd like some books, send me a stamped self-addressed cardboard box.

Kate Gallison