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Wondering what happened between April and December? Check out the travel section, particularly the hiking pages. After T-day, I moved to Brookline, New Hampshire. I’m having lots of fun, even in crappy weather, because the Merrimack YMCA has nice facilities, and in the evenings, the area is full of climbing gyms. But in the meantime, I’ve been catching up on some reading.
Star-Spangled Manners: In Which Miss Manners Defends American Etiquette (For a Change), by Judith Martin
I got it in paper, because I’ve been concerned that Martin may tip over the edge into an unacceptable degree of conservatism at any moment (many of my friends of course think she started there). As with a few of her recent books, she has abandoned use of collections of columns to produce volumes. This time out, it’s a book length (and not a short one) essay on what manners systems should do, what ours does, what should be tinkered with, by whom, how, and so forth. She retains awareness that she’s not documenting a phenomenon but rather engaging in advocacy, which makes the result tolerable.
I am so naive I thought she was exaggerating about show business, specifically with regard to weddings. This naivete has persisted despite attending a number (and not a small number) of weddings in the last few years, and participating in one as a bridesmaid. Further, I’ve been a bride myself, over ten years ago, at which tender age I was so appalled at the massive overkill and tasteless expense of weddings at the churches I normally attended my own was intentionally simple by comparison.
As I begin to plan another wedding, however, I am forced to accept that her assessment of American manners through the lens of the Show Business metaphor is uncomfortably accurate. Worth a read, particularly as Martin’s take on the interface between law, morality and manners provides useful insight for thinking about elements of social control, what can be controlled, and how best to deploy forces.
The Sweet Hell Inside: A Family History, by Edward Ball
Very different from A Slave in the Family, here Ball tells the story of the Harleston descendants of a slave owner and one of his slaves, a relationship that continued after the Civil War. Ball tells the larger story of light skinned black society in Charleston over several decades as context, a context which expands as the family disperses to New York, Europe and California. He does an excellent job of conveying the sense of tight limitations in all directions, despite the comparatively good fortune of these people who were able to own real estate and attend college and provide some of the same benefits for their children.
Patience and Fortitude: A Roving Chronicle of Book People, Book Places and Book Culture, by Nicholas A. Basbanes
I?ve had this book for over two years before finally getting around to reading it. I blame all the hiking. As with A Gentle Madness, Basbanes blends interviews with historical overview into an enormously pleasant journey through landscapes real and imagined, but all populated by books. What’s not to love?
Storm Front
Fool Moon
Grave Peril
Summer Knight
Death Masks, by Jim Butcher
A friend sent me these shortly after I moved to New Hampshire, so when I caught the cold that had been going around, I had something lovely to keep the honey in hot tea company.
Noir meets Huff/Hamilton style near-contemporary alternate universe. Sidhe, vampires, wizards and assorted other supernatural critters run amok, complete with councils, politics, broken accords and the inevitable trickery.
Harry is an out-of-the-closet wizard, working occasionally with a Knight, but more often with a Chicago police woman in charge of wild-side crime. Other characters recur between the books (a journalist, various Sidhe, in-the-closet wizards, crime lords, etc.). Everyone has an agenda, of course, or should I say several. The books are highly readable, and the series is ongoing.
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Copyright Rebecca Allen, 2004.
Created: January 6, 2004 Modified: January 8, 2004