Monthly Archives: April 2012

A Year in Books/Day 91: An American Childhood

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  • Title: An American Childhood
  • Author: Annie Dillard
  • Year Published: 1987 (Harper & Row, Publishers)
  • Year Purchased: 1987
  • Source: My Mom.
  • About: Dillard’s impressionistic memoirs of growing up in Pittsburgh between the years 1950-1962.
  • Motivation: This is one of the definitive books of my girlhood. I nicked it from my Mom’s shelf in late autumn or early winter of 1987; I never gave it back. Why I honed in on this particular volume on that long-ago day is somewhat foggy, although I’ll venture to say that it was due to a combination of the title and boredom. I was in the midst of my own, although very different, American Childhood. What remains in my mind, as brilliant and clear as ice, is curling up on the floor next to my bed and reading it straight through in a couple of hours. Already a budding writer, with scores of stories, poems and plays to my name, I desperately wanted to be able to write like that: simply, divinely, forcefully. It’s twenty-five years later and my writing voice, developed long ago yet still tightening, transitioning, is nothing like Dillard’s; it contains no trace of my pubescent infatuation with her wordplay. What remains is a sense of gratefulness to one of my many literary heroines, one that I needed at an age when so many dreams scatter and fade away. Her book is a fine thread in the narrative of my formative years.
  • Times Read: 3 or 4 (all back in 1987/1988)
  • Random Excerpt/Page 51: “By the time I knew him, our grandfather was a vice-president of Pittsburgh’s Fidelity Trust Bank. He looked very like a cartoonist’s version of “vested interests.” In fact, he almost always wore a vest, and a gold watch on a chain; he was short and heavy; he had a small white mustache; he smoked cigars. At home, his thin legs crossed under his belly, he read the financial section of the paper, tolerant of children who might have been driven, in the long course of waiting for dinner, to beating their fingertips on his scalp.”
  • Happiness Scale: In importance and satisfaction to my young self,  is incalculable.

A Year in Books/Day 90: The Victorian Visitors

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  • Title: The Victorian Visitors Culture Shock in Nineteenth-Century Britain
  • Author: Rupert Christiansen
  • Year Published: 2000 (Atlantic Monthly Press)
  • Year Purchased: 2001-2002
  • Source: History Book Club (I think)
  • About: It is exactly what it says it is, with each chapter devoted to the experiences and impressions of a noted foreign tourist (from Emerson to Wagner). I especially love the parts dedicated to Australian cricketers and Yankee Spirit-Rappers!
  • Motivation: I’m quite the Victorian-era connoisseur. I also love the strange niche that is the Victorian travelogue. This is a wondrous combination of both of those things, with a dash each of literary and cultural history added to the mix. Plus, it’s well-written and funny, the latter being an especial quality in this type of book.
  • Times Read: 2
  • Random Excerpt/Page 158: “But (Daniel) Home had departed before the spirits had reached the villas of Holloway and he passed over to the other side with his glamour unsullied by low associations. Today, he remains secure in his reputation as the supreme exponent of his art: it is his bust which presides over the library of the Society of Psychical Research in Kensington, defying the ghost-hunters’ theories and explanations as bafflingly as he did a hundred and fifty years ago. Spiritualism’s history would look completely different without him. His visit-his visitation-was without doubt the most consequential of any in this book.”
  • Happiness Scale: 10+++

A Year in Books/Day 89: The Woman’s Book of Courage

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  • Title: The Woman’s Book of Courage Meditations for Empowerment & Peace of Mind
  • Author: Sue Patton Thoele
  • Year Published: 1991 (Conari Press)
  • Year Purchased: 1992
  • Source: According to the hand-written inscription, this was a Christmas gift from my Mom in 1992.
  • About: This pocket-size book contains one to two page ruminations on the emotional challenges faced by so many women, counterbalanced by practical wisdom and encouragement.
  • Motivation: I was a teenager with waffling self-esteem, in need of reassurance that I could handle the baffling transition to adulthood. Momma knows best!
  • Times Read: A few
  • Random Excerpt/Page 14: “Many times our automatic reaction when faced with an uncomfortable or confusing situation is to thrash around trying to change it immediately. We attempt to swallow the whole predicament at once and spit it out, solved. Very rarely does this approach ease our pain or alter the situation. In fact, thoughtless, quick action is often more frustrating than productive.”
  • Happiness Scale: 9 (at the time)

A Year in Books/Day 88: Veronica

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  • Title: Veronica The Autobiography of Veronica Lake
  • Authors: Veronica Lake with Donald Bain
  • Year Published: 1969/This Edition: 1972 (A Bantam Book)
  • Year Purchased: 1994?
  • Source: Antique Barn at the Ohio State Fair, Columbus, Ohio
  • About: Sultry movie star Veronica Lake’s autobiography attempts, as most memoirs do, to right a lifetime of perceived wrongs. The cover line tells us, in all-important CAPS, what we are in for: THE TRUE STORY OF THE STAR WHO WALKED OUT ON HOLLYWOOD. Whether or not you believe her version of events probably radically varies from person to person but one thing is for certain: by the time you close the back cover, you will have read your way through one hell of a wild and tragic story. Fun Fact: Her co-author (or ghostwriter, depending on your level of cynicism) Donald Bain  has ‘shared’ a by-line with Jessica Fletcher in the ‘Murder, She Wrote’ series of books since 1989.
  • Motivation: Oh, just some movies with titles you may have heard of: ‘Sullivan’s Travels’, ‘This Gun for Hire’, ‘I Married a Witch’, ‘The Blue Dahlia’. I really love Lake’s screw-you attitude to intrusive authority, which may or may not strike a strong cord with me. She’s also one of the few major stars in history as short as me, which made her a great example for this then-struggling young actress.
  • Times Read: 4 or 5
  • Random Excerpt/Page 214: “Merchant seamen look a certain way. Spencer Tracy? All the senior airline pilots in the world? All people cursed with premature wrinkling? Leathery skin? Romance through squinting eyes? I don’t know. But Andy was undoubtedly a seaman and so were his two friends. It wasn’t even debatable.”
  • Happiness Scale: 10 (whenever I am in the mood for a quick, vitriolic take-down of Hollywood’s superficiality by someone with a compellingly prickly persona)
    Studio portrait photo of Veronica Lake taken f...

    Studio portrait photo of Veronica Lake taken for promotional use. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)