Wrapping Up Four Books

221. Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages by Ammon Shea

 

I can imagine reading the encyclopedia.  I cannot, however, in my wildest dreams, imagine making my way through over twenty thousand pages of a dictionary. Would anything be retained? Wouldn’t whole sections of words run together?  How useful is it really to know words you will probably never be able to bring up in conversation? 

 

Nevertheless, it was great fun to read this book. Shea starts each chapter with an essay about an item of interest to word lovers, including where to read, reading glasses, short dictionaries to read, and the history of dictionaries. Shea concludes each chapter with favorite words from each volume of the dictionary. His comments about the words are a hoot.

 

Yes, I can truly say it was great fun to read this book about reading the dictionary.

 

222. Apples & Oranges: My Brother and Me, Lost and Found by Marie Brenner

 

Marie and her brother, Carl, have never gotten along. Not as children. Not as teens. And certainly not now as adults.  Carl is not an easy person to get along with. This is something his neighbors say, his girlfriends say, his employees say. It seems clear that Carl is difficult. And Marie is also a strongly opinionated person.

 

Then Carl is diagnosed with terminal cancer. Marie is determined to establish a relationship with her brother and to help him through this time.

 

The fascination with this book for me was in listening to and observing Carl. Was there ever a person more intent on putting others off him? Marie explores reasons for her sibling difficulties by examining difficult family relationships in her family’s past. If being difficult has genetic components, this is useful. But if these difficult genes are inherited, can they be overcome? If Carl is our example, we would have to conclude no.

 

223. The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima

 

I am glad to have finished this book, but I am sorry I ever started it. I took away very little from this book. Our main character, Mizoguchi, is troubled by stuttering. He ends up (this is no plot giveaway) setting fire to one of Japan’s most beloved sites, the Temple of the Golden Pavilion. Mizoguchi, between the beginning and the end of the book, meets other deeply troubled people and sees people he hoped to respect acting in deeply troubling ways. He gets no consolation from his studies or his work or his friends; instead, these seem to lead him farther along the path to destruction.

 

Why did he decide to destroy the temple? It was beautiful and it represented everything he wanted. Why, then, did he decide to destroy it?

 

The front cover of this book proclaims, “An outstanding novel by one of the literary geniuses of the century.”  Mishima, I learn, later kills himself by using a classical Japanese sword to disembowel himself. And I spent many hours reading a book by this person? His path and the path of his character were inexplicable to me.

 

224. Walden by Henry David Thoreau

 

Alas. I never would have thought it, but I seem to be just another modern woman. I clearly remember reading this book back in high school and loving its slow pace, its carefully chosen words. Not today. I found myself wishing Thoreau would pick up the pace, leave off all the tedious details of his life in the country, go into town and get some perspective. And then, abruptly, Thoreau would say something so profound and so wise that I would forgive him everything. I seem to have a love-hate relationship with this book.

 

I would like to ask Thoreau a question or two. Most pressing:  If living at Walden Pond was so great, why did he leave? 

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