Old Book Reviews

400 Years with a House

2007-04-15T06:08:00.000-07:00

I remember reading House by Tracy Kidder when it first came out in the mid 1980’s. It was right around the time I had my first construction job, building houses, and Kidder’s New Journalistic work was easy to read and captivating for me.

There is one scene I remember, not too clearly, but I remember it. The builders sign the house, on a rafter or something, inside where their writing will soon be covered up and invisible, forever perhaps, or maybe only until a renovation occurs. What I remember about the scene is less the specifics of what occurred in the book (in real life for the people whose lives Kidder was documenting), than it is my own wondering about who might discover the names. What would happen in the intervening years. Or if it would never be discovered, and totally forgotten as anything other than a line in a book.

Of course, in 400 years, the answers will be known (although maybe the question will have been forgotten). Houses, in this way, can serve as the core character or structure of a book both through the story of their construction, and the story of their existence.

Many books have been written based on this concept, that a house can be the timeline about which a story is constructed, a larger story or history told. Two houses, built during the reign of Elizabeth I in England come to mind. Norah Lofts novel Bless This House was written in 1954. It is pure fiction, but uses events centered around the house, Merravey, to capture the real history of England starting with the house being built in 1577. Lofts has a devoted core of fans, and her writing is widely considered warm and exceptionally astute.

Holland House by Princess Marie Liechtenstein (available at Open Library), is a different beast. Holland was a great estate, built as Cope Castle in 1605, and the Hollands were a long line of nobility. The title died out in the late 1800’s as no male heirs were around to assume the titles. The house itself was pretty much destroyed by the Nazi air raids in the early 1940’s.

Holland House

It had a very real history, opposed to the fictional stories of Loft’s Merravey. Political movements were founded within its walls, and it was a center of society life and culture. Liechtenstein’s 2 volume work, bound often in blue morocco as shown, is a collectible book, especially in its earlier editions. Descriptions of the various rooms, furniture and paintings are intermingled with anecdotes about events, history, and profiles of the people who lived in and frequented the house. Liechtenstein herself was of the Holland Family and spent much time in the house. The book is nicely illustrated with woodcuts.

“There are always some berries in each basket that are cut out for crushing (just like some people, unfortunately).” - Elsie Masterton

2007-04-03T16:10:00.000-07:00

“Once upon a time there was a musician who complained that half the notes he wanted to play were not on the piano. They lay, he claimed, between the keys where he could never get at them. Accordingly, he took up fiddling, which has no such limitations, and lived happily ever after. This is a book on cooking; but like the musician, it concentrates more on the cracks and interstices of the culinary keyboard than on the conventional notes themselves. It, too, involves considerable fiddling around….”

- Robert Capon, The Supper of The Lamb, 1969

There are hundreds of thousands of cookbooks out there. I know cookbook collectors who themselves have thousands of cookbooks. Not really to cook with, but to collect, look at, enjoy as objects rather than working tools. I even knew a woman who had a major quarrel with her husband when buying a new house because the pantry was not big enough to convert into a cookbook room.

I, too, enjoy having nice old cookbooks around. But I like to use them, and if it is not helpful and functional in addition to being a nice book I really don’t need it on my shelf. It is also fun if it is well written or creatively laid-out, as it is nice to have a good time reading as you cook.

Hence the quote from Elsie Masterton in this post’s title. She is the much acclaimed author of the three (that I know of) Blueberry Hill Cookbooks , The Blueberry Hill Cookbook , The Blueberry Hill Menu Cookbook, and Blueberry Hill Kitchen Notebook.

(The Blueberry Hill Inn in Vermont is still in operation, although long since under new management and ownership.)

Masterton’s books are not as well known today as they should be (based on the sample of people I have spoken to about them). They are still well remembered and used by those who grew up with them, though, and they have enjoyed reprints over the years. I use them for a core of especially good recipes, mostly sweets such as her pancakes, shortcake and buckle. In fact, I almost refuse to make any of these three things if not by her recipes.

But while entertaining to read, her abrupt and abrasive asides can cause one to cringe. (or, to take ownership of that passive sentence, it can cause me to cringe). The crushing quote is from her strawberry shortcake recipe, on p. 144 of The Bluebery Hill Menu Cookbook (3^rd printing, 1964). She also interjects directives into her recipes such as “Do as I say, now” or something similar. Most people to whom I show these pages will chuckle, and a few will say “good golly” (and some will not really be interested). Still, incorrectness aside, it is entertaining, and make the book more fun to have around.

Capon’s The Supper of the Lamb...A Culinary Reflection is written with many more deliberate and lengthy asides, all of which make the book worth reading even if you aren’t cooking today. Chapter seven begins:

Meanwhile, back at the stove…

You no doubt feel that it is high time for a speedy return to the pot of lamb stew that was left simmering at the end of Chapter Three. If I assess your mood correctly, you judge that the intervening chapters, with their excursions into meat, metaphysics, and metalware respectively, should have been more than enough to allay the author’s apparently morbid dread of proceeding too hastily through a recipe. After all, you say, what we have in hand here is a very minor stew indeed. Why will he simply not thicken the gravy as he pleases, and get on with it?”

Other examples abound. Vegetariana by Nava Atlas, for instance (revised and reprinted in the late 1990’s) was a lot of fun back in the seventies or eighties or whenever it first came out. It still is, with its little sidebars and drawings. I don’t use it as much as other good vegetarian cookbooks, but it is certainly fun to look at as you are deciding what to shop for this week. I enjoy hearing about others.

In the Bear's House with Momaday

2007-03-31T13:25:00.000-07:00

N. Scott Momaday is hardly an overlooked author. In the Bear's House is one of his recent compilations that has gone out of print all too quickly, though. It seems a lot of is stuff goes out of print. Happily, though, it remains readily available used at good prices.

This is not strictly speaking an old book, but it includes some of and is reflective of his older work. I think I bought it as a remainder about five years ago. I was looking it over again recently, as I wanted to read an excerpt to my son. Including poetry, prose and excerpts, mostly from the 1990’s but some earlier, it is illustrated with Momaday’s own drawings and paintings. It is the illustrations, in my opinion, that make the book worth a lot more as an introduction to Momaday for anyone unfamiliar with his work.

How is it he keeps the night, God?
Alone, in universal space.
Is his the loneliness of time?
And being. Night defines his place.

- excerpt from Ursa Major, in In the Bear's House by N. Scott Momaday

Notes from Centuries Past

2007-03-16T08:48:00.000-07:00

So my father-in-law asked me if I had a copy of The Man Who Walked Through Time: The Story of the First Trip Afoot Through the Grand Canyon, Colin Fletcher’s account of his hastily conceived 1963 adventure. He had read it a long time ago and wanted to see it again. I told him yes, but then I couldn’t find it. Luckily, I was able to quickly locate a copy, which turned out to be very nice, from PaperBackSwap.com. This is always an iffy place to get a book if you are looking for a certain quality, as it is a free swapping site and you get sent the next book in line without knowing anything about the condition. But it was free, it turned out to be a good copy, and he was happy with it.

Which all got me to thinking about great old natural history travel books that we have either read and should all refer to again, or that we really should have read at some time and just didn’t (which I am always inexplicably embarrassed to admit). I certainly do not have an exhaustive list, but certain books always come to mind in this category. I don’t mean those like The Inland Island or A Sand County Almanac, which are certainly wonderful classics, but do not involve the same kind of moving about within and between landscapes and places.

Notes from The Century Before: A Journal from British Columbia ,by Edward Hoagland, is, like The Man Who Walked Through Time, an account of a season, two or three months, spent exploring one particular region. Both attempt to connect the geologic and human histories of the past to our present understanding of and relationship to that region and the changes it is undergoing currently. Both journeys, too, took place in the 1960’s, which gives them sort a double edges historical perspective. Both are histories written in the context of a time 40 years in our own past. And both have had wonderful staying power to this day.

The Modern Library, over the course of several years in the late nineties and early naughties released The Modern Library Exploration Series. These are all nice quality trade paperbacks, and most are still available new, or used for only a few bucks.

If you are looking for an old book, don’t forget to check the Global Library

2007-03-13T21:10:00.000-07:00

For all the powerful searches available, it is worth bookmarking and remembering to use the library search sites available. Many if not most library systems have an online catalog, either local or regional. Globally, you can do a search at: WorldCat (http://www.worldcatlibraries.org/), which claims to search “Over 1 billion items in more than 10,000 libraries worldwide”

I use Worldcat, and I have to work to remember to search beyond the bookselling sites when I am looking for a book. I’ll put a WorldCat link on the sidebar when I get a chance.

Nukruk Agorek visits my other website.

2007-03-10T20:17:00.000-08:00

Earlier today I posted this on one of my bookselling sites (Tin Woodman Books, where I focus on children's books). I figured it was appropriate for here as well.

There are always piles of old books. Many books are deservedly forgotten and not worth seeking out for ourselves or our children. Some, though, while neither widely known nor well remembered, deserve remembrance. These are the ones we come across quite by accident, or are given by a friend.

Elizabeth C. Foster wrote only two children’s books that I know of, The Friend of the Singing One, and its sequel, The Long Hungry Night. Almost every copy I have ever seen has been a library discard, so they must have had mostly institutional distribution (although they must have been popular enough to justify the second book being published).

The Friend of the Singing One and The Long Hungry Night

I found the second in a box of old books I bought. I then tracked down the first title and bought it too. I always screen these first for books my kids might like. My son at the time was four or five years old, and this looked like it might interest him. It did. He was soon to discover Laura Ingalls and Dorothy Gale, but this was about his first foray into a series of longer chapter books with a young protagonist with whom he easily and excitedly identified.

The Eskimo boy in the book is not yet named at the beginning. The name he eventually has bestowed upon him is Nukruk Agorek, or The Friend of the Singing One. Agorek is the wolf, and it is the boy’s life and death adventures with a young wolf, leading to a lifelong connection that continues in the second book, that leads to his name. The Hungry Night refers to the year when winter brought not only the sunless winter, but also a change to the usual weather and animal migration patterns. Nukruk Agorek’s village is slowly starving to death, and the boy’s relationship with Agorek is in the end the only hope.

I have only one copy of each, which I am keeping, but there are usually used copies to be found on Amazon, Biblio, or Ebay.

There are thousands of these hidden gems all around us. I never know which ones will pan out and which should not even be picked up. But I am always glad to hear of others’ recommendations.

A Mix of Reviews

2007-03-10T04:50:00.000-08:00

I have added a link over there on the left to Powell’s Review-A-Day Feature. Sure, it is marketing aimed at getting you to buy more on their site, but the thing I like is that they serve up a nice mix of genres and titles. The books are not just new books but old titles from various years as well. There is a link to their archived reviews right on their main review page. They also post and sort reviews from various sources (e.g The Washington Post Book World, The New Republic Online, Esquire, The Atlantic Monthly, Christian Science Monitor, Rain Taxi) giving a nice mix of perspective and opinion. You can even subscribe to have the reviews emailed to you every morning.

I am not the best link builder, so it is a bit clunky (the image is not linked but I put a link right next to it.

I will keep adding and tweaking.