indispensable wisdom

The Big Book of Indispensable Wisdom, is a collection of three books, published by Reader's Digest. I'm not sure where this book came from, but its been sitting on my shelf for a few years. The three books are: The Classics, My Grammar and I...Or Should That Be Me?, and Easy as Pi.

I know, its adorable.

There are a series of authors, and copy editors involved, so lets just say that these three books were edited by Pamela Johnson. Each has its own focus, but all of the subject matter is treated the same: 'You know this stuff, we're just going to remind you what you forgot since high school, and have a laugh doing it!'

None of the three subjects is explained in any depth. I think the idea is to cover as much ground as possible, and give the reader a framework to organize their own thoughts and memories on these subjects that we already (should) know. There were a few trinkets and additives that were new to me, and that was fun. All in all, it wasn't an awful read, and it certainly didn't read like a text book, but I certainly didn't find myself laughing along with the crummy jokes and enjoying myself. I finished, I guess that's something.

shadow of night

The second installment in the All Souls Trilogy is Shadow of Night. Its a big undertaking for an author that's new to fiction, it seems to me, but what do I know. Deborah Harkness seems to know what she's doing, and she certainly has plenty of writing under her belt at this point given the scholarly work she has previously published.

Lots of times I find that the second or middle book in a trilogy ends up being a link, or filler between the beginning and the end of a long story arc; as a stand-alone book in these cases, they're sometimes a little weak. Not so with this one. Shadow takes the two main protagonists to a completely new place. The reasons for being there are obvious by the end of the first volume, but I was surprised at how much this diversion ended up being critical to the overall story-line. It wasn't just blab on the way to the story ending, but seemed critical to the overall narrative. So, good on you Deborah Harkness.

Harkness takes a different tack on witches and vampires in this trilogy, and part of the re-envisioning comes (I think) from her historical research background. She re-imagines witches and vampires as potential historical fact, seen through the lens of history and the accompanying hysteria early Judeo-Christian Europe felt about anything that seemed to lean in the direction of sin. Maybe there were people that were good with herbs and medicines, and maybe folks didn't understand them, were frightened by their knowledge, and assumed they were in league with the devil. Seems like a sensible motto: kill the smart ones. No wonder we had the Dark Ages.

I've had fun with this trilogy thus far. I'm hoping the professor can bring it home in the final installment.

get shorty

Did y'all see the movie? Everyone did, I think. Chili Palmer is an ex-New York, ex-Miami shylock, who's following the money trail to the coast, and finds more than he hoped for. The loan shark business is wearing thin for Chili, as is the endless stupidity of his fellow gangsters. In LA, Chili sees how a man with his experience, street smarts and savoir-faire may be an asset in Hollywood.

This is the first book I've read by Elmore Leonard, so I'm not sure if all of his books are written this way or not, but he writes the way people speak to one another in the street. His writing sounds like speech; it sounds like someone you know is telling you a story.

Chili and Tommy were both from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, old buddies now in business together. Tommy Carlo was connected to a Brooklyn crew through his uncle, a guy named Momo, Tommy keeping his books and picking up betting slips til Momo sent him to Miami, with a hundred thousand to put on the street as loan money.

The language just rolls, and keeps on rolling, right through this story. It pops, hustles, and jives the way Chili does. Leonard's language doesn't give a damn, and its not waiting for anyone; you have to keep up, or get out of the way. That, coupled with less than 300 pages, makes for a fast, fun read. I'll keep my eyes open for more Elmore Leonard.

quartos archive

Love old books, incunabula or otherwise? A whole collection of early Shakespeare works--hard bound and beautiful--are now all available for perusal online. You can read about the volume itself, read the text in HTML or XML, or you can look at wonderful, high-resolution photographic images of the actual volume, page-by-page.

This image is from another site. Hamlet; 1st quarto 1603; C.34.k.1; Provenance: Halliwell-Phillipps

Each of these 32 editions is a pre-1642 Shakespearean quarto of Hamlet. Hamlet was chosen as the inaugural play for the Shakespeare Quartos Archive project, but they have plans to add more in the future. A quarto is a book printing technique: a large piece of paper is printed with four pages on one side, and four pages on the other, and then folded twice to make 4 double-sided leaves of a book.

These volumes aren't incunabular, they're too late, but boy are they handsome. The pictures are really high quality. If you're planning to take a look, you're going to need a fat connection.

Mmm juicy.