Books Blog : books and reading, books

The Library: An Illustrated History by Stuart A. P. Murray

Bufkinite@evpl — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 23:01:00 GMT

This very readable and lavishly illustrated book is a survey of libraries, from the earliest gatherings of clay tablets in the library at Nineveh to the present grandeur of the Library of Congress. It is full of the characters of library history as well: from King Assurbanipal in 700 BCE, Mansa Musa, the sultan of Mali in Timbuktu in the 1300s, and the Mughal emperors Akbar in the late 1500s, to Thomas Bodley, Melvil Dewey, and Andrew Carnegie. All of themhave anecdotes attached to them which help to illustrate and flesh out the development and evolution of those institutions we call libraries today.

The Library: An Illustrated History tends to focus on Europe and the United States, but spends a chapter discussing Asia and Islam and their influence on the history of the book and libraries, and another, called "People of the Book," discussing the interplay between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in the history of library development.

One of the themes running through this book is how the libraries of the victors are enlarged and enriched throughout history by the pillaging of the libraries of the vanquished. The Bibliotheque nationale de France, the Vatican Library, and the British Library have all broadened their substantial collections in this fashion. Another theme mentioned frequently was how war influenced which ideas were given currency in a given culture and time: "It was usually the sword that decided whose teachings would be supreme in any given land."

In this regard, this book compliments the message in Matthew Battles's book Library: An Unquiet History, but that book is only marginally illustrated, and does not bring the reader the wonderful survey of world libraries with which Murray's book ends. Anyone wanting a good overview of library history would find their time well spent reading this book.

Love As Always, Kurt: Vonnegut As I Knew Him, by Loree Rackstraw

Bufkinite@evpl — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 06:21:00 GMT

In September of 1965 Lorree Rackstraw was a graduate student in her second year at the Iowa Writer's Workshop, apprehensive about her new teacher, a relatively unknown writer named Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut had published just three books: The Sirens of Titan, Mother Night, and Cat's Cradle. He'd also finished writing God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater the previous spring, and was struggling to get onto paper what he referred to as his "Dresden Book."

Love As Always, Kurt, recounts the friendship that began that summer, and lasted over 40 years, until Kurt Vonnegut died in April of 2007. To call it a friendship cheapens the care that this memoir makes clear they shared with one another. Rackstraw is now Professor Emeritus and the University of Northern Iowa & former editor of The North American Review.

This memoir of Rackstraw's forty-year relationship with Kurt Vonnegut is a very personal and deep look into both the human and the writer behind the name Kurt Vonnegut. We see clearly how, as a writer, he labors in draft after draft of everything he wrote from Slaughterhouse Five to Man Without a Country, and down to the speeches he gave at countless colleges, universities, graduations, and memorial services. We see, just as clearly, how he champions common humanity, and simultaneously enjoys the company of the famous and relatively well-to-do. We see how, despite periods of darkness and cynicism, this relationship buoyed Vonnegut, and provided Rackstraw with an escape from the pressures of her academic career as well.

We see, most plainly, a deep and abiding friendship that transcends all normal definitions. Was it love? Definitely. What it friendship? In the most useful meaning of the word, yes. But it was more: it was a collegial relationship - Vonnegut sent her page proofs of everything from Slaughterhouse Five forward; it was an intimate relationship, certainly: "Kurt and I toured the town of Key West, hand in hand like kids, and took photographs of each other beside somebody else's catch of a huge fish... Later, we danced barefoot under moonlight on that beach, to ragtime music from the piano bar;" and ultimately, it was a lifelong relationship, that saw a parting of the ways only in the death of one.

Being a long-time Vonnegut fan, I loved this book. It represents a first-hand account of four decades of his life by someone who he consistently loved, and who loved him in return. A tender portrait.

The Book of William: How Shakespeare's First Folio Conquered the World

Bufkinite@evpl — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 21:34:00 GMT

Paul Collins writes in a convivial and breezy style, and is the kind of natural storyteller who brings history to life. Nevertheless, in The Book of William, his scholarship and authority are undeniable, and make this book an important entry point for those interested in learning more about Shakespeare.

This telling of the "life story" of what became known as the First Folio of Shakespeare (though the book's title, according to commonly accepted cataloging rules would be Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies) is, quite simply wonderfully done.

Written in five "Acts" subdivided into scenes, it takes the reader from the day in 1617 or 1618 that John Heminge and Henry Condell - two aging men who had actually worked with Shakespeare - approached the printer William Jaggard with the idea of publishing all the known works of the Bard, to 2006 in Meisei University in Tokyo, home of the largest university collection of First Folios in the world; 12 of them, "more than the British Library and the New York Public Library combined."

In between we are introduced to such well-known characters as Alexander Pope and Dr. Samuel Johnson, and a host of lesser-known but nevertheless interesting characters as: Dr. Anthony James West, who conducted a recent worldwide census of First Folios (locating a record 230 copies); Henry Clay Folger, collector extraordinaire and founder of the Folger Shakespeare Library (which owns an astounding 79 copies of the First Folio); Charlton Hinman, inventor of the Hinman collator; and Mitsuo Kodama, past president of Meisei University, and the only reason why Meisei University has so many First Folios.

Spanning three continents and nearly four centuries, this book is a delightful look at the one book that routinely sells for fifty-five times its weight in gold.

Link to the Shakespeare Folio Electronic Library at Meisei University.
Purchase a facsimile of the First Folio from Amazon, and benefit the Public Library Friends.

90 Classic Books for People in a Hurry by Henrik Lange

Bufkinite@evpl — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 13:20:00 GMT

This morning over my first cup of coffee I read Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness; and then Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. I decided to read The Three Musketeers before jumping in the shower.

This delightful book reduces most of the canon of "Western Literature" into a series of four-panel cartoons. Each of the books thus encapsulated is given one two-page spread, and each 4-panel cartoon only uses 3 to tell the story, because one panel is always the book title.

I found this collection to be very funny and well thought out. It's also weird how many of the books he actually does capture the essence of in one page.

You're in a hurry, so check this one out!

Revolution In The Air by Clinton Heylin

Bufkinite@evpl — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 16:09:00 GMT

When Clinton Heylin writes about Bob Dylan, people listen. His biography Dylan: Behind the Shades, not only dug deeper than any other biographer or Dylan enthusiast, the painstaking detail of his scholarship was obvious.

So having the chance to get my hands on the first of a projected two-volume opus detailing each of the 600 songs Dylan has written thus far, I couldn’t let it go. I haven’t been disappointed. Heylin chronicles the songs in the order they were written, not the order in which they were recorded or performed (many of them have yet to be recorded, or were recorded and not released, and some of them have no known performance date), and this choice serves him well, allowing him to use his detailed knowledge of Dylan’s biography to give the songs a context that the lyrics alone might not provide.

The first volume details the first 300 songs, from “Juvenilia” in Hibbing (1957) to 1972 and the songs associated with Pat Garret and Billy the Kid. Amazingly, 207 of these 300 songs were written in the five year period of 1962-1967, what Heylin calls “a burst of creativity that dwarfs any comparable twentieth-century figure.”

The scholarship and attention to detail are, as was the case with Behind the Shades, commendable. My only complaints are that:

Heylin tends to grouse about the scholarship of others that got there before him. For instance he says of Michel Krogsgaard’s sessionography, published in nine installments in two Dylan fanzines, that it “has become, in the fullness of time, a valuable resource. But it could have been of greater value still if he had collated his own work with that of the the only other person to use Sony’s resources [Heylin], and annotated his session listing with a clear indication of which material he had actually heard (almost none of it, I’d surmise).” 
There are few - very few - glaring omissions: places where Heylin seems to just simply have missed what most other folk music students know. For instance, Heylin lists Dylan’s #16 song as “Just As Long As I’m In This World,” a song written by Rev. Gary Davis, and first recorded by him as “I Am The Light Of This World” during his initial recording session for the American Recording Company in 1935. Heylin mentions Dylan’s studies of traditional blues music, and even the fact that Dylan would often borrow tunes and lyric phrases and call them his own. But he describes “Just As Long As I’m in This World” as “another early attempt at a would-be spiritual” that “tries hard to evoke a Pentecostal fervor, the singer suggesting he has ‘fiery fingers / I got fiery hands / And when I get to heaven / I’ll join the fiery band.’” All without ever mentioning Rev. Gary Davis, or the earlier recording, which have just exactly these lyrics as one verse.

But these are admittedly petty complaints, given the immensity of the task Heylin set for himself. No one else even made the attempt of a chronicle so daunting, so minor grouses and omissions do not constitute failure. Heylin has succeeded beyond my expectations.

The book contains a song index and a general index, and each song is keyed to books where the lyrics have appeared, and to published recordings where the song first appeared.

The second volume, entitled Still on the Road - The Songs of Bob Dylan 1974-2006, is due out later this year.

The official Bob Dylan web site.

Dylan's MySpace page, where you can listen to tracks from his forthcoming recording Together Through Life, which you can buy at Amazon.com & benefit the Public Library Friends.

Clinton Heylin's site, detailing published and forthcoming works.