#15 Read 16 works of non-fiction

Woot! I have read my 16th work of non-fiction.

I organize a little book group for my alumnae organization. Since we're so close to the college, we get professors to assign us fun little books and lead our discussions. It's like being back in school without the effort. This time around we read Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age. Because everyone loves a pirate. The book had it's flaws--perhaps too much focus on the parts of history that fit his argument and he stretches it a little when he talks about women and Africans as pirates. Nevertheless, I was interested in his assertion that pirates were sort of socialist revolutionaries. And we got to talk about Somalia a little which makes me feel like I know something about things.

#15 More Non Fiction, Still Scientific

I'm writing an article about changes in medical education, a sort of "then and now" piece. It's why I was in the anatomy lab hallway today; all that formaldehyde got me feeling a little lightheaded. But on some level, I was prepared for it because I just finished Christine Montross's book, Body of Work: Meditations on Mortality from the Human Anatomy Lab, which I am reading for the article. Before Montross went to medical school, she was a poet and you can tell. She looks at anatomy class historically and culturally as well as opening the specifics of dissection of her group's particular body to the reader. She writes with compassion. She skillfully negotiates emotion, drama, comedy and does it all while examining the larger issues of medical ethics and training. I thought this book was remarkable and if you've got the stomach you should read it. You'll never look at your doctor quite the same way again.

Non-fiction: 15.5 (finish the damn flu book already!)

More Non-Fiction of the Science-y Kind

Last week I finished reading An Obsession with Butterflies by Sharman Apt Russell. I have to tell you there is some science you simply shouldn't read while you're eating lunch! I learned way more about frass over food than I wanted to.

One chapter was incredibly touching, a sparely written timeline about the lives of two men who are obsessed with the butterflies of coastal California. This chapter is worth the whole book. Unfortunately, this is also the chapter where she used "glamorous southern California" and "El Segundo" in the same paragraph. People, there is nothing glamorous about the second city. There used to be a really good cross stitch shop there. Used to be.

In the end, I'm not obsessed with butterflies. But you should see me watch the bumblebees on our glossy abelia. Where's the book on bumblebees?

Right now I am reading Body of Work: Meditiations on Mortality from teh Human Anatomy Lab, which a bunch of first year medical students have been assigned. So far, lots of cutting people open, but not so many disturbed lunches...

Non-fiction: 14.5

#15 Revolving Door at the Library

Longitude by Dava Sobel. I'm probably the last person on earth to read this book, but it was fascinating. The slim volume follows the intrigue--really!--involved with the race to solve measuring longitude at sea to win the huge prize offered by the British government. Easy to follow and a good read. A whole lot easier and more interesting than Galileo's Daughter, which I am forcing myself to read. It's like taking cough medicine. Without codiene. Except for the part where I keep falling asleep.

Non-fiction: 13.5

#15 Yet More Non-fiction

Language Visible by David Sacks tells the story of how our letters came to be. The story of many of them is similar. Start with the Phoenicians, move to the Greeks, an ill-understood stop with the Etruscans, (or is that the other way around?) then the Romans, then Anglo-Saxons with some input from the French. The books is interesting and accessible (reviewers call it "lively" and "engaging") but there is quite a bit of overlap because of the way he chose to tell it--one letter at a time. Because letters are related in development or sound or use there's even more overlap. I think I remember reading that this was based on a column he wrote in a newspaper, and if so, that would explain some of it. The other problem is there are a lot of "sidebars" in the book. They are interesting and I'm glad I read them but they totally interrupted the flow of this fascinating look at letters.

I will be forever grateful for the reminder of the yogh. Along with thorn, yogh (I can reproduce neither symbol) was a letter I learned while studying Middle English (an undergraduate graduation requirement) but for the longest time I could only remember thorn. It drove me nuts. Now I know.

Non-fiction: 12.5

Reading

Things at work are heading south fast. I met on Monday with the evil AVP (former boss's boss) to get a list of my new responsibilities and to find out that they're not even going to start the hiring process until after Labor Day, which means I've gone from being a team of three to a team of one (my junior colleague transfered to another part of the group). My good boss and I went over the list together, and she helped me come up with a figure for my new salary. So on Wednesday when the AVP sent me an e-mail listing those responsibilities, I wrote back thanking her and asking for a meeting to discuss salary. She wrote back basically telling me no; she's taken away some of my responsibilities in addition to giving me the new ones and that everyone's salaries will be reviewed once the consultant finishes their analysis of the group. (Those responsibilities that she took away account for about 4 hours a month. The ones she gave account for about 20 hours a week.) On Thursday I wrote back responding to her "argument" and again requesting a meeting. Nothing.

So when I saw The No Assholes Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't at the library yesterday, I had to check it out. Written by Stanford professor of management, Robert Sutton (PhD), the book defines "asshole" and explains the difference between the temporary and the certified asshole, explains the rule and how to implement and enforce it, knowing when you are the asshole and how to stop being one, and how to survive on "Asshole Avenue"--which is where I work.

It takes two things to be an asshole: 1) people who encounter the asshole almost always feel worse about themselves afterwards and 2) assholes focus their venom on the powerless. So, like the AVP who has actually stuck her tongue out at my junior colleague in meetings with people from different parts of the organization and saying repeatedly, "I know where you're going." Which isn't horrible in and of itself, but it is part of a larger pattern of behavior which includes far too many things to include here. Suffice to say she prides herself on micromanaging and demanding things and using the most condescending tone imaginable. She's a kiss-up, kick down kind of person who sides with everyone but her group. Oh, she's an asshole.

So anyway, the advice for dealing with the assholes is to run*. Which I had sort of figured out on my own. It took me a while to realize the AVP is part of a larger problem that starts at the top and wends its way through the entire organization, not just the group, not just our department. (As Sutton says, "Assholes breed like rabbits" because they hire their own kind.) So in the near future, there might be less money available to do some of the things on this list--though I will have more time to do them...

She's leaving for vacation on Thursday. Would it make me an asshole to hand in my letter of resignation on Wednesday?

*If you can't, you're supposed to float downstream with your legs out in front of you. Which I don't get.

Non-fiction: 11.5

#15 On a Roll

This is the book I took a hike to get. I've enjoyed reading Adrienne's blog and I have a keen interest in maternal ambivalence based on my dissertation. I picked it up on Thursday (6/5), and finished the next day, but it's taken me a while to write this all down.

I wish I had known Adrienne when she was pregnant. Not that I could have "saved" her, but I could have given her a big pile of books to read to let her know she's not alone. (Rozsika Parker's Mother Love/Mother Hate for one.) Because she had all that time for reading when she was in the bin.

Adrienne's book is smart and funny and incredibly self-aware about a time when it must have been hard to be smart or funny. My favorite line, on the birth of her daughter, "It’s like getting the best Christmas gift ever, but Santa decided to kick the crap out of you before you unwrapped it." I particularly liked her analysis of Marjorie Kempe but wish she had found a few more such examples in her history of ppd/pp psychosis. Her portraits of the places she's lived bring them to life, making them another character in the book. And that's not far wrong because, according to Adrienne, there is something about place that has contributed to the madness in her family line.

My work on this subject takes a different tack. Mothers who are violent or ambivalent are usually labeled mad or bad. And I looked at what was behind the impetus to label the problem an individual one. My argument was that if we made it the woman's problem then it wasn't society's problem, that is it's nothing to do with me if a woman can't handle being a mother. There is an incredible pressure put on women to be "perfect" mothers--despite what some reviewers think. (One suggested that Adrienne just put too much pressure on herself to be perfect, that that didn't really exist.) But that same society refuses to create the safety nets (state sponsored day care, anyone?) that would allow women to achieve this.

It's a good book about a horrible time in one woman's life (though she stands in for many more). It's not for everyone, certainly.

Non-fiction 10.5

#15 Sticking with it

I have finished another work of non-fiction: Kentucky Moonshine by David W. Maurer. My dad sent this to us because there were a few things he wanted explained. Fortunately, I didn't have to read the book to figure it out.

I do have to tell you that this may be the second worst book I've ever read. Originally published in the 70s this is an incredibly dull work of academic well, it's supposed to be history but there is an utter lack of evidence. I suppose it is an early attempt at cultural studies but of the worst kind. The book is repetitive, lacks logical structure, and isn't well documented. But other than that...

Here's a favorite passage which gives you the flavor:

Transporters are paid from $1.00 to $2.00 per gallon according to the area, the risks involved, and other factors. Usually the owner of the still makes arrangements for the transportation and pays the driver, the cost being passed on to the purchaser. In some areas, the bootlegger hires and pay the transporter himself. These drivers spend as little time as possible around the still and do not openly associate with moonshiners. They are almost always unmarried but often temporarily live with one of the less conventional girls in their own or a neighboring community. Their prowess with women is well known and their tastes run to the flashier type of girl. Since they are paid by the gallon, any risks they take are usually their own, and they may do time if caught. A considerable number are killed or maimed in high-speed chases and most of them at one time or another have been involved in a serious accident. When they no longer drive the hot transport cars, they tend to degenerate into a kind of soft and slovenly indolence, existing as best they can on the empty memories of their younger days.

Ah, scholarship, you've come a long way.

My other favorite line comes from the section where he speculates about the decline of moonshine drinking among young men: "In addition, teenage girls play more and more of a part in the recreational pattern of young men...Because of the cultural factors and the liquor's taste, few girls drink moonshine whiskey with pleasure. However, beer is usually available even in dry territory and this lighter drink may be shared by boys and girls, resulting in a general upgrading of interpersonal relations."

Euphemism anyone? The first three chapters are given over to describing making moonshine in your pressure cooker, building a still, and running the still. The three longest chapters of my reading life. There is also a long prologue to the glossary that describes the reasons why moonshiners might develop their own argot. On the whole, a tedious treatment of a possibly interesting subject.

Non-fiction: 9.5

#15 Still More Non-fiction

Stuffed: Adventures of a Restaurant Family is the memoir of Patricia Volk whose family owned Morgens in NYC. I suppose it's a happy family because in a lot of ways it was like mine (If all unhappy families are unhappy in their own ways, we must be happy ones, right?) except Volk's family made the papers in New York City more often than mine did in small town New Hampshire. Her family members: introduced pastrami to America, invented the multicolored retractable pen, won best legs in Atlantic City, and one was held hostage for seven hours by a burgular. I'm not going to hold my family up to such scrutiny.

Each chapteris named for a food Volk associates with the person or people featured int he chapter. So Uncle Bob is profiled in "Mallomars" (my uncle Bob would be in the "weed" chapter) and her sister is in "Scrambled Eggs" (my sister might be Circus Peanuts). Each family member's story--which is told with a great deal of kindness--has a moral tale, which, according to Telling True Stories, is desirable. Several people stand out in my mind. Aunt Lil has two embroidered pillows on her couch: "Hope for the best. Expect the worst." and "I've never forgotten a rotten thing that anyone's ever done to me." Wow. (There's more needlework too: her family's housekeeper is a quilter.) Aunt Ruthie (who survived being held hostage) is the master of the biting zinger, one of those offhanded little remarks that can cut to the quick. I had planned to read it at Sunday dinner because it's my grandmother all over. But last night I read it to my sister, and she wants to borrow the book. When I read a little bit of the criticism the mother makes, she wanted me to send the book to our mother. I have a feeling this, like Marley and Me, is going to be a book that makes the rounds in my family.

I skipped another book I've read because I want to think about it more before I write about it.

Non-fiction: 8.5

#15 More Non-fiction

Telling True Stories: A Nonfiction Writers Guide
This is a compilation of five years of presentations from the Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism. I read it for work, but I think there were lessons even for blog writers. Blog writing is a form of memoir, which is, after all, narrative journalism. Somewhere I wrote this long essay about blogs-as-memoir and the difference between memoir and reportage (and thus between a truth and the truth, or, you know, as close as we can get).

For me this book was useful because there are a lot of things that I know about writing, but not so many that I know about reporting. Well, I know them but I don't always have ways of articulating them. And I certainly think that skill will come in handy when I am interviewing for jobs.

non-fiction: 7.5

#15 Read 16 Works of Non-fiction

This book is a record of the traveling I would like to do. I would like to go somewhere and get into the culture. I suppose I did that to an extent when I taught English in Poland, but there was something extra safe about being able to call on friends and colleagues when my complete lack of Polish got in the way of me ordering food, about spending time in large groups at tourist destinations, about being carried into the emergency room but surrounded by people who spoke my language.

Erika Warmbrunn decided to run away with her bicycle to Russia and rode all the way to Vietnam. In time she learned to walk into Mongolian gers when she sought shelter, how to offer food to people in China, and how to properly address people in Vietnam. Erika's writing is very good, and she's able to express the human warmth that is generated by a bowl of soup, or sharing a bed, or washing one's feet in (finally) hot water. She is generous about all of the people she meets which makes the reader like her all the more.

I don't remember Erika specifically, though we seem to have been in Russian class together at Bryn Mawr. Her facility with languages and my utter lack thereof may be part of the reason; she was probably one of those people who just wished I would study more (I did!) or drop the class (what and work hard to become mediocre in yet another required language?) .

Erika claims that there is nothing she did that we all couldn't do. But I think there is. The dude, for example, really isn't much of a bike rider (he's ridden twice in nearly 40 years). With my crazy gut illness and falling down issues and chopping myself to pieces problem, I really couldn't have spent that much time in a country that still uses 1950s-style medicine. (I know this about Mongolia because I interviewed a doctor who does heart surgeries there.) Also, there's the complete lack of language facility--though I can say ferroviaria like a native Italian. Unfortunately, I can ask for the train station or a stamp in Rome but not understand the directions I get in return. And in the 15 or so years since she went and did this crazy thing there have been more white people traveling to the far corners of the earth. But she's also right; each of us can put one foot in front of the other and complete a journey of 5000 miles. We only need open our hearts.

Non-fiction: 6.5

This is my 100th posts and I wish that meant I was closer to finishing 101 things than I am. Sigh.

#15 Read 16 Works of Non-fiction

In Other Words: A Language Lover's Guide to the Most Intriguing Words Around the World by Christopher Moore translates some of the foreign words and idiomatic expressions that are reckoned to be "untranslatable."


Words I wish I could remember so that I could use them more:

• esprit de l'escalier (French) witty remark or smart retort that you think of too late to say (in fact, on the stairs)
• korinthenkacker (German) raisin pooper--someone taken up with life's trivial detail that they "crap raisins." (bureaucrat?) Interestingly in Dutch, a raisin pooper is someone who's cheap.


• egyszer wolt budan kutyavasar (Hungarian) "There was a dog market in Buda only once" that is an opportunity you must take or you will regret it.
• Nie dla wszystkich ckrzypce graja (Polish) the violin doesn't play for everybody. If you've ever heard someone try to learn violin, you should understand the essence of the idiom.
• hankikanto (Finnish) in the book they say it resists translation into many languages because it is "a frozen crust on the surface of snow that is strong enough to walk on." I recognized it instantly, though I imagine some people who didn't grow up far enough north wouldn't.
• denize girse kurutur (Turkish) "he gets dry if he enters the sea" someone who can't do anything right.
• aware (Japanese) awareness and appreciation of the ephemeral beauty of the world. Part of the idiom mono-no-aware "enjoying the sadness of life." Moore writes "it's that bittersweet, vaguely poetic feeling you get ...looking out at the driving rain." Isn't it interesting that I felt this on Sunday but didn't have a word for it until Monday?

It's interesting to learn the sorts of philospohies that don't exist in other languages like compromise--or the nuances of relationships that do exist in other cultures. Just like me to read a dictionary. Wordork.


Non-ficion: 5.5

#15: Bonk

I loved this book: I am interested in science; I think everything should be seen through the most humorous lens; and I, like most people, am a voyeur at heart. The other day at an office gathering I regaled someone for 15 minutes with stories from this book about penises. Because we're fascinated by sex. All of us. Even the ones who pretend otherwise. Of course, you don't want anyone telling you about their sex life, but read about Kinsey's proclivities and what he did with toothbrushes, sure. (When I was reading this at the lunch counter of a Korean restaurant, this guy next to me started talking to his friend next to him about this hook up he had had over the weekend and how much he regretted it. I so wanted to say, "this book says she really regrets hooking up with you too." Because really, what kind of guy does that? And he wasn't even that good looking. But I digress.)

I read it in two days. Which just goes to show, there is something really wrong with that influenza book that I cannot get through it. And I have done research on what this college I work for did during the epidemic of 1918. Philadelphia was pretty hard hit because their public health organization (and the local government then as now) was totally corrupt. You'd think that book wouldn't be such a yawn.

I have to go back to the library and get Stiff.

non-fiction: 4.5

Non-fiction

I am still dragging myself through that flu book. It's not that I don't like history or thinking, but it is just taking me so long to read it. I'm about 2/3 of the way through.

I did manage to read Drunk, Divorced and Covered in Cat Hair in about a minute and a half. It was enjoyable like Laurie's website is.

I wanted to share with you Laurie's list for having better relationships, because I think everyone can learn from it.

Have more sex. Hire a cleaning service so you spend less time being resentful. Go out on dates at least once a week. Always be kind, even when you want to be mean. Listen more, talk less. Don't drink too much wine at a party and accuse him of ...anything. Wear sexier stuff to bed. Have your own life. Have your own goals, interests, and activities. Don't give up being whole. Don't pick someone who'd need you to be less than you are. Choose well. Don't criticize his driving.

I'm working on a few of these. The mean thing. The criticizing the driving thing. I think we need to work on the housekeeper thing too.

Nonfiction: 3.5

#15 Read 16 works of non-fiction

For a person who studied contemporary American women's fiction, I know a lot about the Victorian period, especially the New Poor Laws--that's what the dude wrote his dissertation on, and good spouses make good editors. Or something like that. Actually, we would offer polite criticism like "these two sentences should be two paragraphs." And the critiqued would yell, "It's perfectly fine the way it is; you don't know anything." Following a generous period of sulking, the critiqued would take the editor's advice. It was like clockwork. But I digress. I just meant to say, I know a little about the historical and cultural period in which our tale is set.

This book offers a fairly interesting sketch of a subject that is near and dear to my heart, the functioning of medical colleges. I know that the orphaned dead would end up in the medical schools of Philadelphia (from Skeleton Stories); I'd really love to do more research on how the place where I work dealt with the procurement of subjects.

Ultimately, I thought this book lacked organization. Sometimes it felt like the author had no clear direction. Lots of backtracking. Lots of interruptions for whole chapters that were meant to provide context, but it wasn't woven together terribly well...or maybe non-fiction isn't meant to be read in half hour spurts on the bus.

It was fine but I never felt like I opened up the book to find out what happened next...and it was a tale of a lurid court case. I really should have wanted to find out, but the court sections were dense and had the Newgate stink about them.

Non-fiction: 2

#15 Read 16 Works of Non-fiction

This past week as I traveled to Nashville and back, I read Joan Didion's Where I was From. I enjoyed it. It was an interesting mix of history, memoir, genealogy, and sociopolitical analysis. I think it went a long way in explaining California (I lived there for 15 years). Her analysis of the Spur Posse, which was one of the notorious incidents I lived on tv, was the best and most sophisticated that I have read.

What does that mean, lived on tv? It's something more immediate than seeing it on tv. I saw the planes fly into the World Trade Center on tv, but in speaking to friends in New York and Washington, I just didn't experience the event in the same way. I would say there is a sense of the local that is missing, of not quite understanding the social context. I also lived the '92 riots, the '94 earthquake, and the '95 slow speed chase. It's not that I don't think outsiders can't understand it, there's just something missing in the analysis. Anyway, Didion got it right. And it was particularly fascinating to find out what happened to some of those boys. It would be even more interesting to me to find out what happened to the girls, but they've never been the center of that story...