Books as Period Pieces, or, Books That are Fun Entirely for Their Own Sake.

I sometimes wish I had enough space and enough money to spend all my time collecting interesting little books, the sort that isn’t really widely collected or sought after, but which reflects a niche interest of passing whim of a small publisher, business, or hobbyist.

Paper: Pacemaker of Progress is subtitled “A Tribute to the Paper Industry and to the Part Played by Paper in the Advancement of Civilization. Published by F. C. Huyck & Sons on the Occasion of its 75^th Anniversary (1946). It is a fun, nicely done little book, slim and attractively bound in blue. Inescapably a product of its era (immediately post-war), it is a simple and brief overview of the history of paper, with nice woodblock prints. It also review, propaganda-like, the important role paper played in the war effort, as well as the challenges to come for the “tremendous tomorrow” of “man’s most used product.”

The book was put out contemporaneously with a “sound-and-color motion picture of the same name,” which I for one would like to see.

CSI on the Moon - Marketing those books. It’s fun to watch the blurbs and how books are marketed

Just Like CSI but on the moon, or in outer space, or sci-fi, or whatever….

Whatever..

The latest entrant in the “Sci-Fi CSI” comparison is BSI: Starside: Death Sentence, by Roger MacBride Allen. BSI stands for Bureau of Special Investigations, and as Allen usually puts out competent and often well conceived science fiction, I assume this book will be passable despite its unfortunate marketing efforts. I have not read it, so I cannot really comment on the book. I might never read either, so don’t hold your breath on my account.

Other similar concepts have hit the shelves recently, and I am more amused than anything else by the attempts to use the CSI television show as a tie-in for these. The latest I read the other day, Dead Man on the Moon: An L.C.S.I. Novel, by Steven Harper, who is more widely read for his Silent Empire series and his contribution to the Battlestar Galactica series. The book is billed on the web (Amazon) as “Sci-Fi Meets CSI. When humanity's only moon colony suffers its first murder, it's up to the forensic experts of Luna City Special Investigations to solve the case.” Unfortunately, the book blurbs and cover dopy do not really reflect the content. The back cover bills LCSI as a “small but highly efficient team dedicated to solving whatever homicides threaten the peace…” Well, no. That is not what they are, at least if you read the book. Small, yes, but not the other stuff. The book gets off to a very bad start, and I almost put it down for good following very bad errors in the first chapter - “Earth had risen about halfway up the horizon…” (Earth does not rise on the Moon) and “On Earth it would have weighed about thirty kilos, but here it barely topped five.” (Well, weight and mass get confusing, and there can be arguments of interchangeability, but even most first time writer using outer space as a setting try to follow the generally accepted understandings). I persevered, however, and it did recover.

Of Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s Retrieval Artist Series, it has been written (The Edge – blurbed on the latest cover) “If there’s any such thing as sci-fi CSI the Retrieval Artist novels set the tone.” This, at least, is true. As far as a tone can and has been set, Rusch’s should be the standard. The sixth novel in the series is due this September (2007). The novels are consistent, entertaining, and well written. As with any mass market science fiction series, there are certainly concerns about characterization and stale tropes, but I like the series well enough to await the next. I have read none of Rusch’s Star Wars or Star Trek writings, simply because I cannot bring my self to read those series aside from one which I read (I forget which) by another author about 15 years ago.

In any case, it is easy to dismiss marketing claims such as “CSI this” or “CSI that,” and I think we should indeed be quick to follow through on such dismissive impulses. I am sure the blurbs work, though. I noticed them (post acquisition), so I bet more people buy the books because of them. They are quite unrelated to what is actually between the cover though.

Making Cookbook Recommendations

Often when I suggest a cookbook to someone the result is a flop. They don't like it as much as I do. Nonetheless, I continue to do so.

I have only so far made a few guides on Amazon, but it is a good way to organize things and share one’s opinion. I just put together a guide of my favorite cookbooks (that I actually own – there are others that I do not currently own, but as I don’t really use them they did not make it onto my list).

Great New & Classic Vegetarian Cookbooks I Own, Use and Recommend

A Thesaurus by Any Other Name … March’s versus Roget’s, Soule’s Webster’s and the Rest. Which is Your Favorite? Which is the Best?

Francis March (1825-1911) is not a name that leaps to mind for most people when reaching for a thesaurus, yet some would argue that his work does not occupy the place it deserves in everyday American reference, philology, and lexicography. (Well, perhaps there is no such thing as every day American philology or lexicography, but the part about reference stands.)

Certainly scholars and serious student of letters are familiar with his thesaurus, but why is it that his methods have been so occulted by Roget’s, Oxford, Webster’s and the like?

March’s Thesaurus and Dictionary of the English Language, by March and his son Francis Andrew March (1863–1928), was first published in 1902. Its organizing principle differed from other thesauri in that the Marches sought to create an easier to use and more comprehensive system, especially in terms of contradictions and definitions.

March was a professor and librarian at Lafayette College, and he is said to have been the first in the world to hold the title “Professor of English” at any institution. Although important, his thesaurus is but one of many influential works in the area of language studies that he produced. Perhaps his most influential was A Comparative Grammar of the Anglo-Saxon Language, published in 1870.

His thesaurus was partially a response to need he saw arising from the organization of Roget’s, but also reflected March’s interest in codifying and improving the study of English both as a language in and of itself, in comparison to other languages, and as one f the most important tongues and “most powerful instruments of thought and action assigned by Providence to the service of man.” (March, Lectures on the English Language, 1861)

March held Roget and his thesaurus in high regard, but felt the indexing system and cross referencing required too much back-and forth flipping through the pages. Clarence L. Barnhart, in the introduction to the 1968 edition, writes that despite its superior cataloging methods, the thesaurus “gradually decreased in usefulness because of the great increase in scientific and technical vocabulary.” Despite the efforts to revise and reissue the work in 1968, it seems the resources are simply no there to keep March’s up to date and competitive with the currently established competitors on the wordsmithing reference industry.

Norman Cousins, in the foreword to the 1968 (revised) edition, writes:

“Speaking personally, I can attest that there is no word book in my own library which has served me better or which I prize more highly than March’s.”

“Perhaps Francis march’s greatest contribution to thesaurus making is in his system of juxtapositions. He believed that the full flavor of a word could best be brought out through contrast. Under the word “approval,” for example, it will be seen that he follows the definition with a table called ‘approval-disapproval.’ In this table, divided into categories of nouns, adjectives, verbs and phrases, he brings in to play all the color range and depth of meaning…(and) even where words do not lend themselves to the contrasting juxtapositions, March has associated word that do.”

So, is March still held in as high regard? Is he as useful and is his system as relevant, especially now that online thesauri are updated continuously and can do in an instant what it might take 15 minutes to do by hand? I would argue that yes, the book is just as relevant, and that by having it as a reference will help anyone learn to use the language better. Personally, I have 2 copies, and hope to give one to each of my children.

Five Reasons I Still Read Children’s Books (or, If You Can Blame Your Parents for Something, Let’s Go Right Ahead And Do So)

1) I made Bad choices as a child. (I still make bad choices as an adult, but that is a different matter.) Can you say "Hardy Boys"? Not that it’s bad to read The Hardy Boys. I’ll both let and actually encourage my own sons to read them. But enough is enough. How many hundreds are there by now, both the original series and all the derivations? Your mind just stops expanding after 20, 30, 40 of these.

2) Childhood was simply too short. (And I did not know how to read for a good potion of it.) Combined with 1 (above) and 3 (below), the deck was stacked against me from the get go (git go?).

3) My parents “forgot” to give me some of the good ones. (I know few parents who can keep up with it all, but to this day I continue to complain to them that they should have shown me this or that book as a child.) To wit, The Wolves Chronicles by Joan Aiken. The series started in 1962, the same year I was born. How could my parents not have known about it and gotten for me. And all to many others. E. Nesbit, Earthsea, so many that I remained ignorant of while growing up. To their credit, I had Narnia, Middle Earth, and other classics.

4) Now that I have kids, I need to keep ahead of the game. (Both my boys devour books.) Well, they make us pre-masticate them, as they still do not wholly read on their own. But they plow through series after series, and even though I disapprove of the quality of some, I keep ‘em coming. The thing is, I want piles of choice around for them to browse, so I want to know what is good, and not limit my choices to that which I am familiar with from my own childhood. (e.g. Jonathan Stroud.)

5) It’s actually good, much of it. (Why shouldn’t I read it if I want to?)

Digging through the reviews at Amazon.com

For those of us who buy a lot on Amazon, the reviews of all the books can be very helpful, but also quite difficult to wade through and sort out the reviews worth taking seriously. Many authors and publishers a rumored to place reviews on their own book, trying to bump good reviews to the top, or skew the ratings upward. Believing other reviews is a potshot. It is always helpful if you can see other books reviewed by a reviewer to see if here is a pattern you can agree with. Often this is not possible though.

Also helpful is the feature showing what other books were bought by people who bought the book you are looking at. This at least give a sense of actual similarities to other books you may know.

The best situation, of course, is when there is a reviewer you have grown to be familiar with and trust. I do not myself keep a long list of such reviewers, as I have never taken the time to tax my weak organizational skills to do so. I have a couple, though, that when I see them I know that their tastes and sensibilities are close enough to my own to trust them. Now that I am organizing my thoughts on blogs, though, I can list some.

Now, there is nothing inherently special about being a top reviewer on Amazon. The benefit as I see it, from a reader/buyer standpoint, is simply that you are much more likely to actually run into one of these people when examining a book in the future.

One of the “Top 100” reviewers on Amazon is E. R. Bird ("Ramseelbird"), who has reviewed over 1250 books. She concentrates on children’s books, and her Amazon reviews can be found HERE. Reliable reviews such as this are important for parents (like me) who really want to find and make available for their kids a wide variety of stimulating, quality books in all genres. So I am careful to remember her Amazon nickname and pay attention if I see her opinion.

I also serve on the board of my local library. Very few of the public libraries in my areas actually have librarians running them or working there (we have a tri-county library system, and librarians are available to support our town libraries from the central office in Plattsburgh). When making recommendation on what our library should buy, I enjoy having resources that go beyond what I already know my own children enjoy and would benefit from.

She also has recommended books lists (Listmania) on Amazon HERE and looking at those led me to her blog, which I am sure I will never have time to fully read. She reviews a book every day there.

Then there are the science fiction reviewers. It is enormously difficult to get much agreement about what is worthwhile science fiction. There are some reviewers, such as Patrick Shepherd ("hyperpat”), who I can at least read and know what kind of filter to use. I agree with a lot of his ideas, and am able to recognize opinions that I likely will not agree with.

Reviewing across many genre is B. Capossere. If I see his take on a book I am likely to trust it, at least more than your average, random reviewer.

While it is interesting to see who is rated “top 1000” reviewer or “top 100” or whatever on Amazon, it is by no means a good criterion to use when deciding if the review has merit. I have seen many reviews I agree with by a top reviewer, only to discover upon delving more deeply in the person’s reviews that I am cringing at some of the ideas and comments.

Then there was the time I read a review I agreed with only to discover it was written by a person I knew a long time ago in another context (before Amazon.com even existed). This was a person I (to my shame, I know) had no respect for and would stop listening to as soon as he started speaking. Needless to say, I was psychically unable to give an impartial read any more of his reviews. How he got to be a top reviewer left me boggled, with my sense of worldly order badly disturbed.

Anyway, I try to look out for similar names to trust or keep track of in other genres as well. I am always happy to of other trustworthy, favorite reviewers. Let me know your favorites if you have any, and tell me why they are your favorites.

In the beginning, there was a book….

For me, it started with maps. Then atlases. I cannot even remember a time in my childhood when I was not obsessed with maps, charts and the like, and I remember prowling the many used piles of National Geographics I could find, hoping to find one of those folded maps that I had not yet procured for my overflowing boxfuls. When I was in grade school I bought a cheap tin filing cabinet to organize my collection. Even now I enjoy collecting, for myself, old maps more than I do old books.

Of course, I always loved books, too. But that was, in the beginning, more rooted in the stories than in the books themselves. My appreciation of nice books, the really nice ones, the kind for which we each have our own definition, began when I was in an old bookstore and found for $5 an 1874 edition of Blacks General Atlas of the World. This is one of those nice huge Elephant Folios, laden with double page maps which are themselves printed on a single side, each bound individually into the atlas.

My copy is not worth a whole lot. It never was taken care of, having a broken cover and was dripping on the front. The maps are in great shape, though (and they are all still there, an increasing rarity in this age of breaking up and selling beautiful books for their parts on eBay or elsewhere – I will rant more about that later).

So it was with this book that I first took to heart the value that come with well made and cared for books. I have had many much more expensive and even some fairly rare books pass through my hands, but if I had to give them all up and cling to just one, I would have this atlas until the very end.