Archive: Book Review

I finished The Professor and Other Writings, a collection of essays by Terry Castle, a week and a half ago, but I couldn’t bring myself to write a review because I hated it so much.

There, I said it.

I should note that I love to read essays and short stories. They’re modular and easy to slip in and out in case of distraction. If I don’t like one piece, I take comfort in the fact that it’ll be over soon. The description for The Professor said that Castle wrote “in the grand tradition of such feminist luminaries as Susan Sontag, Camille Paglia, and Joan Didion,” so I went ahead and requested it.

Well. Maybe my taste is too immature or uninformed, but Terry Castle is not my cup of tea. I found her writing to be dense, labored, and overly ornamental. She is effective in painting a scene, but only if you know the author, city, painting, book, or song she’s referring to. The overall effect was that I felt as though the book was calling me a dunce.

For example, there’s a moment in a piece called “Travels with My Mother”  that describes a certain room in a museum:

The space is bijou, only about fifteen feet across: white-walled, octagonal and windowless, with the same low light the Tate Britain has in its Blake room.

My train of thought upon reading this line: Um, I need to look up “bijou” … okay, it means something that is delicate, elegant, or highly prized. I need to reread this now. … It’s been too long since I’ve been to the Tate. What is it now, six years? I can’t even remember what the Blake room looked like. Whatever. Next sentence…

Instead of creating a specific scene or feeling for me, Castle’s obscure references flew over my head and left me feeling like an ignoramus. I ended up skipping what I didn’t know — which was a lot — in the hopes of reading something I liked — which didn’t happen.

Castle’s style also makes a lot of room for digression, and this tic did not sit well with me. I’d see the title of the piece and wait for something that aligned with it, only to wait a very long time before that happened. In the last essay, “The Professor” — if a 200-page piece can be called an essay — Castle spent 79 pages setting the scene before we ever met the eponymous professor. I found this style very frustrating, and I barely skimmed that last piece out of pure irritation.

So, maybe I’m just not smart enough to appreciate Terry Castle. Maybe I need to read more, see more art, listen to different music, or travel to more countries. Maybe you’re a lot more informed and cultured than I am, and you don’t mind pages and pages of tangential writing. If that’s the case, then go right ahead and try out this book. Take my copy, while you’re at it! Please. Seriously.

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I received this book as a free sample from HarperCollins. If you’d like a chance to win your own copy and you live in the United States or Canada (sorry, other countries!), please leave a comment. Comments will close at 8pm Eastern Time on Friday, February 26, and I will choose one winner randomly.

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Edited to add: The comments are now closed, and the winner has been selected. Congratulations to Brianna!

This Book is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All, by Marilyn Johnson, is an intriguing peek into the back alleys of libraries and the folks who run them. When the author was researching her first book (about obituaries), she says she became interested in librarians because “the most engaging obit subjects were librarians.”

How about that?

This book sucked me in immediately. I needed little persuasion as I am a huge book nerd, and this book is from a nerd, about nerds, and for nerds. I ate up descriptions of the travails of migrating a library database from one system to another, the decor of the library at the American Kennel Club, and the saga of four Connecticut librarians (what up, Nutmeg State!) protesting the Patriot Act. I pumped my fist when a virtual librarian cited one of his core values as bibliomancy, defined as “divination by jolly well looking it up.” Heck, yes!

Johnson does a great job providing context about the people she’s interacting with so that the reader can appreciate the enormity and attention to detail in their jobs without bogging down in the intricacies of the technical aspects. She provides an accessible, readable, anecdotal record of why librarians are more important every day that we slide more deeply into the digital world.

Speaking of the digital world, my least favorite sections of the book took place in the virtual realm of Second Life. At first, it was fascinating to learn about the cyber libraries and online resource centers the librarians’ avatars had set up. However, I found it difficult to keep the fake names and places straight from the real ones, and I couldn’t tell when we were in Second Life or, uh, First Life. I appreciate that this virtual world is a significant aspect of librarian community, but since I have no experience with it, I found it unnerving and disorienting.

Under all the stories about the idiosyncrasies of each librarian and library, there lies tension between budgets, technology, and reduced workforce. Johnson makes a compelling case for why the public needs to be the advocate of libraries and their staff, who she calls “civil servants and servants of civility.” She argues that librarians keep us organized, historically accurate, and educated, protecting our right to information. Between the researchers (the finders) and the archivists (the keepers), we can theoretically access any published piece.

Initially, I thought the title was not at all indicative of the content. Librarians aren’t shushers pecking at every overdue fee, I thought. What was up with the title? Then I realized: it’s a joke, kind of. It’s not just any book that’s overdue; this specific book is overdue, one that champions librarians as the superheroes they are. I’m concerned that there’s a certain preaching-to-the-choir element, in that those who read this book will most likely be on the side of libraries and librarians to start. But you know, I don’t think we can underestimate what can happen if the choir gets riled up.

There’s a heartwarming passage about how valuable and personal library services can be:

Nicholas Basbanes tells a story about his search for a particular edition of A Descriptive Catalogue of the Pepys Library, not the 1829 or the 1978 editions — only the 1914 edition had the information he needed. He finally found its three volumes, untouched, in the basement of the Boston Athenaeum research library. “You wonder who they bought these books for, anyway,” he said to the librarian. “We got them for you, Mr. Basbanes,” he was told.

On the other side of the coin, there’s a heartbreaking moment with John Lundquist, the former head of the Asian and Middle Eastern Division of the New York Public Library. His staff had been decimated, his collections had been relocated, and his retirees were not to be replaced.

“I’m terribly sad about it,” he said. “In due time no one will remember we existed. These rooms will be reoccupied, and all will be forgotten. I’m quite sure we will be forgotten.”

Oof. If that hit you right in the gut, you will want to read this book. And then hug your librarian.

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I received this book as a free sample from HarperCollins. If you’d like a chance to win your own copy and you live in the United States or Canada (sorry, other countries!), please leave a comment! Comments will close at 8pm Eastern Time on Sunday, February 7, and I will choose one winner randomly. Good luck!

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Edited to add: The comments are now closed, and the winner has been selected. Congratulations to Brianna!

The Happiness Project, by Gretchen Rubin, is a memoir chronicling her year-long quest in the pursuit of happiness. At the beginning of the book, she describes the start of her project:

… as I sat on that crowded bus, I grasped two things: I wasn’t as happy as I could be, and my life wasn’t going to change unless I made it change. In that single moment, with that realization, I decided to dedicate a year to trying to be happier.

First, Rubin had to figure out if she believed she could change her level of happiness, and if so, what that would even look like. She explained her reasoning in the “Getting Started” section, and I found her research fascinating. I can’t imagine how much she must have read to come to the conclusion that, yes, she could affect her personal level of happiness, which she loosely defined as “positive affect,” “subjective well-being,” and “I’ll know it when I see it.”

As an attorney-turned-writer, Rubin tackled the year in a manner I very much admired. For each month, she focused on a specific area of her life to improve (energy, marriage, parenting, gratitude), which entailed a handful of pertinent resolutions.  For example, one of her goals for March, the Work month, was to launch a blog, which is still alive and well. Every night, Rubin evaluated her performance on a Resolution Chart, which helped her summarize her progress at the end of each month and chapter.

When I was reading this book and I described the premise to someone, the response was usually, “Oh, like Eat Pray Love?” Well, yes. And no. Yes, because both books cover life changes over the course of a year. But, no, vehemently no, because The Happiness Project is completely mundane, but that’s what makes it so personable. Rubin never left her New York apartment. She wasn’t financed by a book deal. Her venture wasn’t spurred by trauma. As she put it, she wanted to change her life without changing her life. For me, reading Eat Pray Love was like listening to an invited speaker in college as an act of escapism, but The Happiness Project was like chatting with your girlfriend at a sidewalk bistro. In some ways, that’s what makes its content a lot more thought-provoking, because if you’re anything like me, you start thinking, Hm, maybe I could do this.

Of course, it helped that I identified strongly with Rubin, who described herself as someone who always wants that gold star. Her methodology resonated with me, even when it highlighted areas of weakness. That said, I can understand if it comes off as somewhat militant and rigid. As Rubin emphasizes, everyone’s happiness project will look different because different things make different people happy. So, if a chart isn’t your deal, that’s okay.

I didn’t love everything about this book; I was turned off just slightly by the mantra-esque aspects, like the principles that eventually become The Four Splendid Truths and Rubin’s personal Twelve Commandments. There are sections that quote comments from her blog, and although the sentiments were relevant, they disrupted the first-person narrative in my brain.

I thought The Happiness Project was wonderfully researched, accessible, and (dare I say it?) inspirational. Most of all, it was thought-provoking. I’m still thinking about how I affect my own level of happiness, and how, by striving to become a happier, lighter person, I might impact more than my immediate person. I am for darn sure keeping my copy for future reference and another read-through.

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I received this book as a free sample from HarperCollins. If you’d like a chance to win your own copy and you live in the United States or Canada (sorry, other countries!), please leave a comment! Comments will close at 8pm Eastern Time on Sunday, January 24, and I will choose one winner randomly. Good luck!

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Edited to add: The comments are now closed, and the winner has been selected. Congratulations to Tammy O!

I’m pretty sure that Bill Russell didn’t write Red and Me for me. I barely know anything about basketball, and I only ever watch the sport during March Madness. I don’t follow the Celtics (when pressed, my family claims allegiance to the Knicks), so I don’t know anything about Bill Russell’s history with the team or Red Auerbach as its coach. I started to do a little background research when I first received the book, but I stopped myself, curious to see what I could glean from it with no base of knowledge.

As it turned out, I didn’t get very much. I don’t think the book is well-written, and I doubt that familiarity with basketball would have helped. I assume that Bill Russell is a really dynamic person in real life, but on the page, I felt bombarded with his repetitive metaphors. Red was a genius, a psychologist, a mathematician, a leader — repeat! — a genius, a psychologist, a mathematician, a leader, and so on. I kept rolling my eyes at the grandiose language: everything happened “instantly” and “absolutely.” I didn’t buy it.

Perhaps the greatest disappointment for me was that I didn’t think the book fully fleshed out the subtitle,”My Coach, My Lifelong Friend.” It seemed from the start that Bill Russell and Red Auerbach naturally got along with eachother, and I guess that’s all fine and good, but is it compelling? I couldn’t see how they had to work at their relationship, and surely that undersells what their friendship was.

Of all the basketball fans, Celtics fans, and fans of Bill Russell or Red Auerbach, I’m sure someone will like this book. It just wasn’t me.

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If his picture on the back jacket flap of Writing Places is any indication, William Zinsser is an adorable old man. He’s wearing a Panama hat and leaning against a subway stop with his hands in his pockets. It’s exactly how I would picture the man who wrote On Writing Well, which I hear is a classic text of writing courses, not that I ever had to read it (oops).

Writing Places is a petite volume about, well, where Zinsser wrote stuff. He tells about copy rooms and apartment offices and country homes and London flats — wherever his metal writing desk and typewriter settled for a time. It’s a memoir, I suppose, but more accurately, it’s a description of someone at work. Zinsser just happens to be a writer, so he writes about writing, and I drank in the whole thing in one fevered streak. At one point, I put it down because it was high time to go to sleep, but my mind was buzzing so busily with words and writers that I had finish reading.

I loved many lines throughout the book, but these were my favorites:

“Writers, I learned, are one of nature’s most unconfident species, in constant need of assurance that they are not doomed souls.” — on teaching his first nonfiction writing course at Yale

“The hard part of writing isn’t the writing; it’s the thinking.” — on On Writing Well

Zinsser’s tone was so comforting and instructive to me, and his words struck a chord. See, I’ve always downplayed my writing abilities by saying that I was a better editor than writer. But for Zinsser, being a good writer is being a good editor, and for me to shrug off my editing as a sort of second-class skill is assuming I am a doomed soul. Reading Writing Places made me want to get out there and write! Right now! Just thinking about it gives me a thrill.