A Borrowed Post

🙏    This post is actually borrowed from my brother and his blog (https://apercussionistsnotebook.blogspot.com/2020/11/an-unwanted-post.html). 

This week I received an email from a cousin informing me that her older brother, David, had died. I have been trying to think of what to write about it this week. My brother Jerry has already done it. I can't do better than what he has said. With heartfelt thanks to him, here it is:

I was planning to update my gourd rattle project today when I received a message from my brother this morning. One of our cousins passed away last night from Covid-19. 

During the summers Dave and 2 his sisters would stay at our house for 2 weeks. Afterward Pop would take us all back to Ohio and my brother and I would spend 2 weeks at their house. They were always fun times, raiding my aunt's garden eating all the veggies, looking for water moccasins near the creek (I don't think they live in Ohio but it was fun to look for them). Dave was the person who taught my brother and me how to ride a bike. His wife has also tested positive for the virus. It was inevitable that the pandemic would become personal.

May you rest in peace Dave.🙏

Election and Reading

 Today is finally here. We will be eating dinner - pizza and wine - in front of the TV tonight and will watch the returns as long as we can before finally going to sleep. Neither of us has anywhere to go tomorrow so no need to get early. And of course, there's the pandemic.

I've been spending most of my time this past week and a half attempting to choose a book for my book club that I will lead during one meeting. I began my hunt thinking I would need to choose two, but another person stepped forward and volunteered to do a second book this year. Her books are often a little out there, almost always about a foreign country, or at least an immigrant recent to this country. But I must say they are usually something I would not normally read.

I have it whittled down to three books - I think. The one in the lead is fiction - can I say science fiction - about Albert Einstein in 1905, the year he publishes his famous paper on time. He works in a Swiss post office and he has these dreams, 30 of them, one a night over a period of two and a half months. Each dream has time doing something different - speeding up, going slower, repeating itself, traveling back in time, and giving three different endings to things - just to name a few. I've read it before and enjoyed it. Maybe it will be this year's Flatland. The name of this book is Einstein's Dreams.

The second book is a novel about an older woman living in Seattle, or maybe Portland, who grew up in Russia during the siege of Leningrad in WW2. She was a young woman who was a guide in the famous museum (Hermitage?) giving tours. They had to take the pictures out of the frames for protection and store them. But the frames were hung back up on the walls and the guides were required to memorize everything about the pictures and give tours as if they were still hung. This story is juxtaposed against present-day Seattle where she lives and her granddaughter is getting married. This is complicated with the fact that the woman is suffering from early stages of Alzheimer's and has difficulty remembering things; but she can still remember vividly her tours of the WW2 museum, what she had to recite, and working as a plane spotter on top of the museum at night. Again, I've read it before. The title is The Madonnas of Leningrad.

The last book is a mystery from a series. It is my favorite mystery series and is about a Scotland Yard inspector who is a shell-shocked veteran of the Great War. He carries around with him in his mind, his Scots Sergeant who he had to kill for refusing a direct order. I won't go into the details here, but it a lot more interesting than how I am describing it. This particular story is actually a prequel, 14th in the series which currently stands as 22. Its title is A Fine Summer's Day, and as you might guess is just before the war in 1914. All of the others take place beginning in June 1919 and time-wise progress about 1-2 months each. I think we are at about 1921, but I forget which month. 

I'm half-heartedly thinking of also recommending a nonfiction book I read earlier this year. Written in 2012, Spillover is about viruses and how they spread. By taking and discussing several of last over the past 30 some years, the author gets us ready for the COVID by specifically identifying it. The book was written in 2012!

In addition to that, I am reading four books presently: The End of Your Life Book Club, a memoir; Good-Bye to All That, an autobiography by Robert Graves; On Conan Doyle, a small literary romp about Sir Arthur and his writings; and The Woman in White, a thriller mystery as they called them back then in 1860 when it was written by Wilie Collins. He also wrote The Moonstone in 1868 which I read last year. It was one of the best books I have ever read.

Oh, and I am still watching about two episodes of M*A*S*H daily. By next Monday  Colonel Potter arrives; except for whatever reason, the network, MeTV, is showing the episode where Henry Blake leaves and dies.

Now I have to read before I take a nap before I start to watch the election results. I'll talk about my doctor's visit to the sleep clinic yesterday at another time.

Harassing a Friend

I've been working with a friend of mine from our book club about choosing books for next year. In the meantime, I've been recommending several good mysteries to him. Below is a typical missive he has been bombarded with these past several days. I only hope our friendship outlasts my obsession!

Dave,

As I was working earlier in my study, I happened to look down at my mystery pile next to my desk. That's' where I keep my stack of mysteries to be read or re-read. On top of the pile was the second of a five-part series by Anne Perry. She's probably most famous for the 18th Century Detective Thomas Pitt mysteries (I've never read them - don't know why), but since WWI is my weakness, I read her series several years ago and now have already re-read the first one, Angels in the Gloom, again. The second, Shoulder the Sky, the title from the English poet A. E. Housman, is beckoning me to read once again. 

Angels is the story of a young man whose parents were just killed in an auto accident that turns out to be murder. While solving the murder, the son - Joseph, an Oxford teacher of religion - discovers a conspiracy that threatens national security. So while the murder is solved in the first book, the conspiracy connects all five books. The story is about his adventures during the war, and those of his younger brother Mathew and younger sister, Judith, while they all get involved in the war and in solving the conspiracy.

I don't know why I didn't recommend this series to you before. It's on a par with CT.

I'll write later about my two French mysteries. Still trying to decide on what to do about the 2021 book selections. You and I are the last ones. Barbara came through today, while Debi gave me a three-choice; she will choose from them and us know early in the coming year so we have plenty of time to get the book. She is scheduled for November. I also have let Vera choose which two months she wants since she is doing two books. (If we had chosen the 2-book CT deal, I would have scheduled them back-to-back as well.)

Anyhow, these emails help me even if they may be slightly bothersome to you. It beats talking to myself.

Stay safe 

Ron

As you can see, my friend has a lot patience.

Mind Wandering

The title represents what I have been doing this past week after Tuesday's book club meeting. Between settling down to choose my book for next year, thinking about posts for Facebook, to watching too much political theatre, I can't seem to settle on anything to read, post, or watch with regularity. I have decided on a stylistic photo to use when I don't have any for a particular post (remember, I told you that I don't like posts without a photo - sort of like a room without a window).

When I look at it I am reminded of the first Indiana Jones movie when he flies to Southeast Asia. It shows a drawing/photo of a Pacific Clipper Seaplane heading west over a map/globe. I am going to use this whenever I don't have any other specific pictures to use.

All this writing and I have not yet been able to settle on anything to write about. So it's lunchtime. I'll eat and get ready to venture out into COVID Land with my mask on for my annual eye doctor. 

Talk to you later. Stay safe. 😷

Book Choices for 2021 Book Club

Without any preamble, this is the list of books I have decided my selection (or selections) will be coming from for the coming year, along with notes to myself to help in my decision:

Fiction

A Very Long Engagement (find)

Regeneration

City of Thieves

A Gentleman in Moscow

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

The Wind in the Willows

The Secret Garden (library book)

Doomsday Book (library book)

Madonnas of Leningrad

The Indian Clerk

The Two Georges

Going After Cacciato (library book)

  

 

Non-Fiction

Spillover (500+ pages)

Killers of the Flower Moon (library book)

The Island of the Colorblind

The Death of Politics (decide after the election)

The Death of Truth (decide after the election)

Travels with Epicurus

Caesar's Last Breath

The Library Book

Inextinguishable Symphony

Shoe Dog (library book)

Movie Nights with the Reagans (library book)

Twin Tracks

The Pinball Effect

I will be discussing a few of these in the days to come to help me decide on my final selections - I'll choose two in case we need to cover the 11 months of book meetings. As of today, we have three submissions. I'll make my selections after I know everyone else has either submitted theirs or if someone has declined to submit one (we have two of these so far).

Re-Visiting Re-Reading

It's been quite a while since I have written on this topic. I have always been a re-reader. Most people I personally know are not. Most people I read about and the authors that I read are. I try very hard to explain to people why I enjoy re-reading a good book. By the way, this also fortifies my argument for keeping books after I read them. But I know I go overboard.

Yesterday I found something in a book I haven't read yet that best explains the habit of re-reading I've seen to this point. It is in a book by Michael Dirda.

He writes in his preface on page x, "Who, at any age, can read unmoved the last pages

of Tarzan of the Apes when the rightful Lord Greystoke, deliberating sacrificing his

own hope for happiness, quietly says, ' My mother was an ape...I never knew who my

father was.' In our hearts, we measure all the "better" and "greater" books of adult-

hood against such touchstones - and in later years we often return to the originals for

comfort and renewal."

Comfort and renewal. I guess that's how I feel when  I go a book I've read before and pick it up to begin again the story has to tell. One of my very favorites is actually non-fiction but is a series of essays about - what else but books. It's called, Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman. I have read it at least four times. Every time I enjoy it more. From combining her library with her husband's after only five years of marriage (to say nothing of six years before that of living together) to about what people write on flyleaves of books, the entire book is a treasure.

Now that I've pulled it down from the shelf, I just might read it again. At least about combining libraries.

Where Have You Been, Mrs. Robinson?

 Now that I have your attention, let me explain. I am talking about my  own  absence from the blog. In a sentence - I have been busy with medical visits and preparing for next week's book group meeting.

The medical appointments have all been normal follow-up visits with my docotrs. In one case, my diabetes is being handled by the endocronology department now instead of my primary care doctor (though he will remain in the loop). And they are not over yet. I have a urologist, a demotologist, a podiatrist, and a sleep specialist on my calendar before the end of the calendar year.

As far as the preparation for this month's book club, I am the discussion leader this time. The book, "when Books Went to War", is about the program America had to provide small, specially-made paperback books for the servicemen and women during WWII. As discussion leader I was responnsible for developing the questions. I actually found some online and a few of my own.

My current reading comes and goes. Books that I am currently reading: in fiction, "The Woman in White" by Wilkie Collins and "The Hunting Party" by Linda Foley. My nonfiction are "The Pity of It All" by Amos Elon, "Good-Bye to All That" by Robert Graves, and "Mind of the Raven" by Bernd Heinrich.

All good reads.