Five More Wrapped Up

I wouldn’t believe it if someone else told me they’d done it, but I’ve read or finished (okay, mostly finished!) nineteen books in 2009. Whew. What a great start!

15. The Trouble Begins at 8: A Life of Mark Twain in the Wild, Wild West by Sid Fleischman

 

Who better to tell the story of that wonderful storyteller, Mark Twain, than that wonderful storyteller, Sid Fleischman? Fleischman starts at the beginning and relates all the tales about the man, Mark Twain, true and apocryphal. It was the aphorisms that was so wonderful:  “Man—a creature made at the end of a week’s work when God was tired” and “Man is the only animal who blushes—or needs to” and “Everybody complains about the weather but nobody does anything about it” and “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated” and, my favorite, “When I was a boy of fourteen my father was so ignorant, I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.”

 

If only motion pictures had been invented to capture this man! He was such a presence, full of wit and fun. I wish I’d been alive to see him in person.

 

16. The Civility Solution: What to Do When People Are Rude by P. M. Forni

 

Our America is just crying out for a book like that. We Americans are rude. Have we always been this way? Or is it just our increased number of human interactions that make for more rudeness.

 

In any case, Forni takes on every possible case of rudeness and proposes what we are to do about it. His fundamental approach: confrontation, albeit gentle confrontation. His solutions did not seem plausible to me. I find it almost impossible to imagine that someone who spits in public would completely change their behavior when approached by a stranger and gently scolded.

 

I found him to be on spot when he spoke about things we can do in our own lives to rein in our own rude behaviors. He suggests that we slow down, become empathetic, remain positive, respect others, disagree graciously, become familiar with those around us, watch small things in our lives, and ask rather than telling.

 

17. The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

 

I waited and waited to obtain this book.  Then, when I did receive it, I waited and waited to read it.  And, finally, when I did read it, I read it very, very slowly.

 

Conclusion:  I liked it very much. Not a disappointment. Not a book overhyped. Thoughtful. Full of wonderful, very human characters.

 

The plot centers on two people: a middle-aged concierge, brilliant but determined to hide her intelligence from her world, and a clever twelve-year-old, who has decided she will commit suicide and burn up her apartment building before her next birthday. Both are deeply lonely people, estranged from almost everyone in their lives. Then a new tenant moves into the apartment building and everything changes.

 

Lovely story.

 

18. Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thornton

 

When I read books like this one, I sigh with relief that I am a humble librarian, completely unconcerned with the business aspects of the world that seem to have permeated our whole society, even, it seems, the art world. Thornton visits seven icons of the art world, and devotes a chapter of her book to each. It is a very complex world. I had the picture of the artist working diligently in his studio, oblivious of the demands of the world. That is not the picture Thornton presents. Instead, she shatters my every illusion of the art world, including its aloofness from the world, its isolation from workaday worries about money, its purity.

 

I know several artists who need to read this book.

 

19. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

 

Gladwell loves a good story based on some semblance of the connectedness of the world. And he’s such a good storyteller that the reader can’t help being carried along with his ideas. I read and loved Blink. I read and loved The Tipping Point. Now I’ve read and loved Outliers. But are any of these valid if they are studied carefully and scientifically, rather than anecdotally? 

 

Outliers seems grounded in basic American common sense: People are successful when they work hard. (And, it helps, when circumstances are fortuitous for their success, he adds.) I’m still thinking, hard, about the last chapter, which concludes with a study done on students’ reading and math acquisition over the summer months and during the school year. The study splits up children according to their SES: low, medium, and high. Here’s the startling conclusion: low and middle SES kids learn MORE during the school year than high SES kids. Odd. And, further, in the summer, low SES kids learn little or even lose ground while high SES kids make tremendous gains.

 

Gladwell certainly knows how to tell a good tale.

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