I wonder how long books like The Rough Guide to Europe on a Budget will last in this digital world. (Rough Guides, 978-1-84353-994-0) Even though it’s a compact 5 x 7 3/4, it feels a bit dinosaur-ish at nearly two pounds.

Not that the information is excessive, or even burdensome. I love the short histories of the nations and the cities. The sidebars about things like “Taking a Bath in Budapest” or “Hiking in the Tatras.” There are language basics, maps galore, emergency numbers, and activities inside and out.

Maybe my reserve is for the olden days of travelers who needed, who really used an all-purpose guide to Europe. It may have started out a brick, but by the end of the trip, it looked more like the sole of a shoe, frayed and worn softly open.

I’m also thinking that I’d rather have this kind of information on digital device. For people who travel a lot or extensively, why not a yearly subscription to Rough Guides that allow access (and input) to guides around the world. The guides could be downloaded at any WiFi spot and stored on the device until the next download. Wouldn’t you love to have photos and info about what the Ko Tarutao looks like today, not a year ago when the guide went to press?


Phil and Carol White still have the traveling chops in Live Your Road Trip Dream: Travel for a Year for the Cost of Staying Home (RLI Press, 978-0-9752928-3-9). A concise book, designed with a sense of fresh air and no strings, the couple start with a how-to of financing, then cover planning, staying in touch, emergencies, and returning home. The last half of their book details week by week their own experiment.

 
If you’re planning a trip to Egypt or Greece this summer, check out University of California’s Dictionaries of Civilization (978-0-520-25648-4, 978-0-520-25647-7). While not exactly travel guides, you’ll want to have them with you for the plane, the airport, busses, hotels, boat. Sensationally illustrated, they cover the people, state, religion, daily life, “The World of the Dead,” and monuments. Maps, museums, chronologies, a bibliography, and an index are also included.

Funny how a domestic occupation, a crucial one at that for most of the history of civilization, can so quickly and completely become irrelevant. Cleaning, cooking, and some kind of child-care arrangement will be difficult for technology to entirely flush, but sewing ability has gone the way of sitting room poetry recitals and musical presentations. Technology has made entertainment ubiquitous and clothing too cheap to mend.

One of my grandmothers sewed all of her clothes. Fancy stuff, too. Evening gowns and lined suits, all hemmed by hand in a leafy stitch. She tried to get me interested as a kid, but after having to tear out my basted hem three – four times, I realized and choked on the meaning of the word “discipline.” Or was it “desire?”

Nevertheless, I did learn to sew from necessity. No, wait, there was a home economics class back in the seventh grade. I learned to use a sewing machine and made a lilac terry cloth jumpsuit. (No one told me that terry cloth wasn’t exactly suited for anything but bathrobes and towels. You can guess what the item looked like after a few minutes of sitting.) Home economics still exists in the middle schools around these parts, for both of my sons have taken it, but they only teach cooking. Buttons and seams apparently never come loose.

Come to think of it, it is unusual for my boys to ask me to mend something of theirs. Must be that the item wears out before it breaks. Or does it break therefore it’s worn out? I don’t know, and maybe I’m not paying very close attention, but a book did come in a little bit ago that seemed like a good idea for kids, and even grownups who’ve resisted the passion of mending.


The title Hand Mending Made Easy: Save Time and Money Repairing Your Own Clothes (by Nan L. Ides; Palmer/Pletsch Publication; 978-0-935278-74-3) implies that some of you are sending your broken items out to a tailor (instead of throwing them away). It’s quite explicit that no tools are necessary beyond scissors, needles, thread — in other words, stuff you can pick up in a grocery store. It’s a great reference, well-illustrated and covering everything from ripped crotch seams to snags and patches. Send one of these off to your children away from home. I plan to hand a copy to my teenaged sons the next time they ask for a mend. Beats me doing it while explaining and them nodding, trying to look interested, uhuh Mom, uhuh.

Some other sewing books I liked are


Closely Knit: Handmade Gifts For the Ones You Love by Hannah Fettig (North Light Books, 978-1-60061-018-9). A terrific selection of projects for the experienced knitter who likes to watch tv. What I mean is that they’re not too difficult, but they’re not scarves either. Pillows, sweaters, baby clothes, caps – good stuff for gifts or just for fun. Nicely illustrated and well organized instructions.


You know those ugly dolls the New York Times says are great for boys? Aranzi Aronzo, manga king, has a book called Cute Dolls (Vertical, 978-1-932234-78-7) that shows you how to make your own. Okay, they’re “cute” rather than “ugly,” but if it’s ugly you want, then turn the mouth upside down. Anyway, there’s plenty of weird as well as cute and the instructions remind me of the old Ed Emberly drawing books. Make a tadpole, a kidnapper, a penguin, a monkey. Yes, you’ll want them all. Instructions include full-size patterns for tracing.

I was intrigued the other day by the announcement that Grove/Atlantic was releasing Mike Lawson’s new book digitally, through DailyLit.com, two months ahead of its bookstore appearance.

First of all, I went to check out DailyLit. Here’s what they say about themselves:

We got the idea for DailyLit after the New York Times serialized a few classic works in special supplements a few summers ago. We wound up reading books that we had always meant to simply by virtue of making them part of our daily routine of reading the newspaper. The only thing we do more consistently than read the paper is read email. Bingo!

DailyLit sends books in installments via e-mail or RSS feed. We currently offer over 750 classic and contemporary books available entirely for free or on a Pay-Per-Read basis (with sample installments available for free). You can read your installments wherever you receive e-mail/RSS feeds, including on your Blackberry and iPhone.

DailyLit allows you to schedule the time of arrival of your installments (you can also click on a link to download more immediately), and each installment takes under five minutes to read.

Under five minutes to read.

I’ll come back to this in a minute, but first I want to say that although I’ve read less than ten minutes of Mike Lawson, it’s pretty clear that he’s an airport read. I’ve got absolutely nothing against airport reads—in fact, the $9.95 price tag, the absence of the extra weight in my carry-on, and the sparing of a tree combine to make a convincing package, I think. Except for this one thing:

Under five minutes to read.

Until they give away Wi-Fi in airports and aboard planes, I can’t keep clicking on the re-load button every couple of minutes. (This could be solved with an option to download 10, 20, 100, etc. pages.)

Then I got to wondering if a Mike Lawson-type book could be had anywhere else. I went to Barnes & Noble first, keyed in “ebooks,” and got this message:

Our eBooks Store is Closed.
B&N.com no longer sells or provides support for eBooks. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

I’m not terribly inconvenienced (there are always options on the net), so I wondered if it was really B&N that was inconvenienced about how to price and distribute ebooks.

Next stop, Amazon. Okay, they have lots and lots of selection, but only if I own a Kindle, which I don’t. I have an iPod Touch. And I have actually read books on it, not to mention the papers every day but Sunday.

My favorite site for the Touch is TextOnPhone.com. Yes, it’s also exclusive – only for the iPhone and Touch. It’s also free, and I can make a reading list to dip in and out of. Short stories work the best for this. TextOnPhone allows me to download in 4-page segments, and up to 50 pages at a time. I can, however, download several 50-page segments at once if I’m planning to be off the Wi-Fi for a while. I can also choose the font and size for best reading.

My last research operation was to price a book at several different sites. Here are the least expensive options for The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins.

DailyLit – Free
Barnes & Noble - Unavailable
Amazon - $2.97
TextOnPhone – Free
ebooks.com (MicroSoft, Mobi and Adobe readers only) - $5.95
Project Gutenberg – Free

Hmmm. What do you think?

Every once in a while there is a perfect book for children. The Story of Ping is perfect, and Ferdinand the Bull. And Peter Rabbit. And Where the Wild Things Are. The way I came to judge a perfect book when I was a young mom with young children was how little I had to change or embellish the words on the page.

We’re talking very young children here. And there seemed to be a lot of books that my kids liked the idea (pictures) of, but in which the text was over their heads, or just silly. It’s very tiring to rewrite the words to a book over and over, and I vividly remember one evening choosing Peter Rabbit, and then marveling at what a total pleasure it was to read out loud. There was not one single word that I wanted or needed to change.

And of course, a perfect book needs to be perfect for the children, and not just for me, so it also has to be a book that gets read and reread a hundred times. Word for word.

All right, there can be sound-effects. When I read Where the Wild Things Are there were always sound effects. But that’s it. No changing anything else.

It was perfect.


I’ve found another one. It’s called Waiting for Mama by Lee Tae-Jun, and it was published in 1938 in a Korean newspaper. This edition by NorthSouth (978-0-7358-2143-9) was illustrated with graceful lines and suspenseful color treatments by Kim Dong-Seong.

The story is simple: a little boy goes down to a streetcar stop to wait for his mother. There are probably less than fifty words in the entire tale, but there’s a beginning, a middle -- there’s tension and characterization -- and there’s an end. It’s a classic in Korea, and although the dress and street scenes are foreign to most Americans, the theme is universal. The little boy and his experience is universal. And encouraging.

Don’t miss the very interesting paragraphs at the end of the book about the Korean language either.

I guess it’s better than chips, or ciggies, though I won’t say I don’t have battles with those as well. For me, mysteries are the Valium of reading material. (Reading material used to be a euphemism for pot back in my old days; “¿Oyes, no tienes materia de lectura?”) I like to read mysteries in bed. If I can get away with it, I’ll spend an entire rotten-weather Saturday moving from couch to chair to nap to mystery until it’s over and in the clear. Yes, mysteries clear my head of the day since they have nothing to do with my job, my family, my economics, etc.

And I love Soho. The galleys come in all the time, sometimes in yellow wrappers and sometimes with a half-finished, glossy cover. There are cozies and foreigners and toughs and exotics. Here are two that I’ve recently read:

Assasins at Ospreys by R.T. Raichev
It’s not the plotting that’s riveting in this book, it’s the language and the characterization. Antonia Darcy and Major Hugh Payne set off one wintery day to rescue a damsel in distress. Darcy’d met the lady at an author meet-and-greet the last summer; Darcy is a mystery writer, Payne is, well, handsome, smart, and handy.

Goldilocks, as Darcy’d nicknamed her, had been in a wheelchair when they first met. Not any more. She’s lithe and light as champagne. She’s also a terrible flirt even though she’s a newlywed. Sound like a cliché? So do most of Raichev’s characters at first impression. Beware. It’s not that the author’s playing games with identity, it’s that he/she (?) develops his/her characters over the course of the story. And first impressions are not always accurate. Imagine!

Then, there’s the language. Pure delight. Everything from the titles of the chapters: “Malice Aforethought,” “The Enigmatic Mr Lushington,” “Ceaseless Turmoil,” “Unholy Dying,” but the sentences, word choice, dialogue, and conversation topics are delish and delovely. Assasins at Ospreys deserves a whole Saturday uninterrupted.


The Headhunters by Peter Lovesey
I know I’ve read something else by this author, but it was years ago and I’d have to see the cover to pick it out. Anyway, that’s irrelevant because nothing about this book fits easily into any category. Sure, there’s a murder – or rather, a body – in the second chapter, and another one about halfway through, but most of the time, I felt more like I was reading a novel than genre fiction.

For one thing, the detective is not the hero of the story even though it appears she is part of a series. Not only is she not a hero, she is shrill and prefers easy answers. For another thing, the characters behave like real people, speak like real people, and are often inscrutable – out of shame, shyness, or deviousness -- like real people. Finally, I had no idea who the perp was until nearly the end, and that only by process of elimination. That doesn’t happen too often without authorial tricks. Lovesey’s trick was all craft.

Is it Spring Break yet? As I’m writing this, the sun is shining and out the window, two swans glide along the Boardman River. They’re not the only ones gliding and diving: besides the ubiquitous mallards, there are mergansers, buffleheads, scoters, and ring-necks. What a nice day, you’re thinking … sounds like Spring Break. Nope. It’s March and the bay is frozen. The river’s the only open body of water around here and that’s why the crowd.

But I’m thinking about Spring Break; I’m thinking about sitting on the beach, legs stretched to the sun. My son is standing in the surf, fishing, and I’m reaching for a book… which one?



How about Mind, Life, and Universe: Conversations with Great Scientists of Our Time (Chelsea Green, 978-1-933392-43-1, edited by Lynn Margulis and Eduardo Punset). This collection of thirty-six interviews is just long enough, just short enough, just provocative enough to warrant lots of in-between surf gazing.

“People think that the brain appeared suddenly,” says Rodolfo Llinás from the NYU School of Medicine. “This is not true. It took 650 million years to become what it is.”

Hmmm. 650 million years ago there was only one land mass and it was called Pangaea.

How about an interview with Daniel Dennett, director for the Center of cognitive Studies at Tufts. He talks about consciousness, soul, will, language, and ESP. And Edward O. Wilson, Harvard professor (emeritus) and one of the greatest science writers of all time. He talks about extinctions by meteorites and the consequent diversification. The last major extinction happened 65 million years ago, and it takes about ten million years for the earth to recover. Between ten and twenty thousand years ago, the Earth was sa rich in species as it’s ever been. “Then we appeared. We are the great meteorite.”

Topics range from the why vodka sometimes refuses to unfreeze, the definition of beauty, and the lack of a biological limit on the human lifespan. What could be more wonderful?

Well, magic, I guess.

In Mind, Life and Universe Diana Deutsch, Professor of Psychology at U-C Sand Diego points out that right-handed people tend to hear high-pitched sounds on the right and low pitched sounds on the left. This is regardless of where those sounds are actually coming from. She calls it an acoustic illusion.

Almost magic, but not quite. There is an explanation.

Did anyone ever stop to ask why Orpheus’s lyre charmed stones and snakes, heaven and earth? If they did, was the answer simply because it’s music?


The Biblical account of the birth of magic, according to Astrology, Art, and Alchemy in Art by Matilde Battistini (translated by Rosanna M. Giammanco Frongia, J. Paul Getty Museum, 978-0-89236-907-2) begins with the rebellion of the angels and their outcast from heaven.

These children of heaven, having fallen in love with mortal women, decided to reveal to their brides the secret for dominating the Earth. Thus were the magic arts born, the knowledge of the stars and therapeutic properties of minerals and plants that women received and passed on for millennia.

All right. That sounds like fun.

The rest of the book is just as enticingly written, and is fabulously illustrated with the works of everyone from Marcel Duchamp to Giotto to Riminaldi to Blake. The handy size – 5 ¼ x 7 ¾ -- will pack easily in a bag, and all ages and orthodoxies will find something to wonder about when the rain falls on your holiday parade.

I love Seth Godin (http://sethgodin.typepad.com). Like most people, I’ve had a series of “learning to see” moments in my life. Some of them were traumatic and some so gradual they went unnoticed. None were what I’d call pleasant. Except for Seth. (Could also be that this particular “learning to see” event wasn’t volcanic so much as just eye-opening.) But besides just eye-opening however, Seth’s mix of curiosity and common sense has given me skills for critiquing and communicating about procedures and policies that used to frustrate and sometimes enrage. Okay, I still get mad, but now I talk about it.

Take a recent visit to the doctor’s office. It’s just routine, nothing special, but I did talk to the receptionist twice in a week because the doctor had to reschedule.

So I leave work and drive to the office. It’s snowing like mad. I park and stumble in. Behold! The office is empty! What’s going on? I’ve been coming to this place for ten years…where did it go?

Apparently, it moved two weeks ago. “They sent out a postcard,” a nurse in the hall informs me, “but not everyone got it.” She hands me a murky Xerox of their new location.

Okay, I’m not in sales, but I do work for a business that requires and relies on sales; on making the customer happy; of anticipating needs. What business doesn’t, you may ask? Doctors, that’s what.

What other business would neglect to tell you on the phone – twice – that they’d recently moved? What other business, for that matter, would routinely keep you waiting 40 minutes (at least) for your appointment? What other business would say, “Oh, that’s okay,” when I informed them I was late because I didn’t know they’d moved. That’s okay? You mean it’s my fault and you’re telling me “that’s okay?”

Now, if this were a normal business blowing me off, say a printer or car repair, I’d walk away. And while my initial response to walking away from my doctor is trepidation, that’s mostly because of laziness: I’d have to find another. But think about it, could she, the new one, be any more anonymous than the one I have? I doubt it. Even after ten years, she doesn’t know a single thing about me apart from the stuff on my chart. Is it hard to find a new doctor? No, not really. Certainly not any harder than finding a new printer or car repair shop.

And the point of this harangue? I suppose it’s to shout out from the rooftops, I’m sick and tired of arrogant doctors and I’m not going to take it any longer. Doctors are a business after all, and as a client, I’ve got choices.

It just occurs to me that there’s another business that systematically treats its clients like they have no choice: public schools.

From Bondage to Belonging:
The Worcester Slave Narratives
Edited by B. Eugene McCarthy and Thomas L. Doughton
University of Massachusetts
978-1-55849-622-4

This book is crazy good. Why don’t they use primary materials like these in middle and high schools? The thought and feelings of these men and women are perfectly intelligible to children of that age, and incredibly powerful as they are the words of the people themselves, not some scholar telling, but real slaves showing.

And with that, I’ll let the people speak for themselves.


The Narrative of Lunsford Lane, Formerly of Raleigh, N.C. 1842
“My infancy was spent upon the floor, in a rough cradle, or sometimes in my mother’s arms; my early boyhood in playing with the other boys and girls, colored and white, in the yard… I knew no difference between myself and the white children nor did they seem to know any in turn. Sometimes my master would come out and give a biscuit to me, and another to one of his own white boys but I did not perceive the difference between us…

“When I began to work, I discovered the difference between myself and my master’s white children. They began to order my about, and were told to do so by my master and mistress. I found, too, that they had learned to read, while I was not permitted to have a book in my hand. To be in possession of anything written or printed was regarded as an offence. And then there was the fear that I might be sold away from those who were dear to me, and conveyed far to the South I had learned that being a slave I was subject to this worst (to us) of all calamities and I knew of other in similar situations to myself, thus sold away… To know, also, that I was never to consult my own will, but was, while I lived, to be entirely under the control of another, was another state of mind hard for me to bear. Indeed all things now made me feel, what I had before known only in words, the I was a slave.”


The Life of John Thompson, A Fugitive Slave; Containing His History of 25 Years in Bondage, and His Providential Escape. Written By Himself. 1856
“The first act of slavery which I recorded in my memory , was the sale of my elder sister, who belonged to Henry Wagar, brother to J,H., and who lived three miles from our plantation. My mother heard of the sale, which was on Saturday, and on Sunday tool us with her to see our beloved sister, who was then in the yard with the trader’s drove, preparatory to being removed far South, on the Monday following. After traveling six miles, we arrived at our place of destination. Mother, approaching the door of the trader’s house, fell upon her knees, in tears begging to be permitted to see her imprisoned daughter, who was soon to be dragged away from her embrace, probably to be seen no more in the flesh. It was not his custom to admit slaves into his yard to see their friends; but at this time, his heart seemed to be moved with compassion, for he opened the door, telling us to go in, which we did.

“Here, the first thing that saluted my ears, was the rattling of the chains upon the limbs of the poor victims. It seemed to me to be a hell upon the earth, emblematical of that dreadful dungeon where the wicked are kept, until the day of God’s retribution, and where their torment ascends up forever and ever. As soon as my sister say our mother, she ran to her and fell upon her neck, but was unable to speak a word. There was a scene which angels witnessed; there were tears which, I believe, were bottled and placed in God’s depository, there to be reserved until the day when He shall pour His wrath upon this guilty nation.”