FolioDeux Blog

FD has been reading two books about the Great Books.   A Great Idea at the Time by Alex Beam is about the Great Books of the Western World, a project of the Encyclopedia Britannica and  the University of Chicago (Mortimor Adler & Robert Hutchins).   The Whole Five Feet by Christopher R. Beha is about the Harvard Bookshelf of great books.  The Beha book is the better of the two, because Beha includes a memoir of himself and his family and the year in which he read the volumes in the Harvard series.  As Lewis Carroll knew, we want “pictures or conversations” or at least something of “real life” in our books.

Beha even makes one think that perhaps Thoreau (and Mr. FD who agrees with him) is right that one should “read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.”  Of all the authors and books described by both Beam and Beha, FD is thinking that the Stoic Philosopher Epictetus sounds the most interesting.  Perhaps FD will add reading Epcitetus to the New Year’s Resolution list.

Last year, FD’s New Year’s Resolution was to stop taking bags when shopping — not just at the grocery store, but everywhere.  At the beginning of the year, sales clerks sometimes were surprised, but by the end of the year, a lot of stores were selling their own reusable bags and most clerks were fine with the announcement “I won’t need a bag.”  [“Bag” of course, tags FD as having been young on the east coast; now FD lives west of the Mississippi and a lot of people says “Sack”]

Anyway, that’s a great resolution (sure beats, “eat less chocolate” or “get more exercise”) and FD will continue it this year.  But a new resolution is needed.  And what might that be?  FD is tempted by the idea of “simplify by eliminating (discard, donate, gift or refashion) at least one thing every day.”  Mr. FD spent some of his time off for the Christmas holiday sorting and shredding and that was quite inspiring.

FD is doing a “book census” of the FD bookcases. Almost every room in FD’s house has bookcases, usually more bookcases than walls. Over time, FD and Mr. FD have forgotten what books we own, so FD has been doing a book census. Every book gets taken off the shelf, examined, listed, and value-checked (usually against what is being offered on ABE).

When everything is done, FD would like to upload the lists to Library Thing, but first the task has to be finished, and the last three rooms, with the most bookcases are taking a long time. Still, overall it has been a fun project, with many surprises, including signed copies, first editions, and (alas) some duplicates. Mr. FD is very unwilling to give up any book that finds its way to the FD bookcases, even duplicates. FD, on the other hand, would be very happy to get rid of some of the falling-apart paperbacks. That would free up room for the new books that keep arriving!

FolioDeux is happy to give a special shout-out to the Poetry Daily Poem of the Day for December 22.  It’s “Folie a Deux” by Geoffrey G. O’Brien from the journal titled Lana Turner.

FD does not really understand the modern definition of the Christmas holiday.  For one thing, it starts too early (before Halloween, at least in the drugstore aisles) and then it ends completely abruptly.  FD has already received the first of the post-Christmas sales catalogs (prize goes to the Metropolitan Museum of Art), a week before Christmas.

It wasn’t always thus.  “Twelfth Night” used to be the end of the Christmas festivities, and parties etc continued throughout the time between December 25th and January 5th.  Even in the 19th century, here in the US, newspaper advertisements for holiday gift giving were frequent in the days after Christmas, indicating that there an expectation that people would be continuing the  celebration.

Perhaps people who put up their holiday lights on Thanksgiving weekend are exhausted and bored with them a month later, and perhaps if you don’t send out a holiday card before the day itself your good wishes won’t be welcomed.  But does it make sense to start the holiday build up so early and then, just when the weather is really bad and the end of the year is bringing all of its regrets over the past and anxieties for the future, shut off the cheer that might accompany a continued Christmas celebration?

The news that Great Britain is considering the end of paper checks — by 2018! was disappointing to FD.  What’s so wrong about people having options??  There are those who want to get rid of cash and coins, too.  But there are many, including FD, who want to have more options in life, not fewer, and don’t think that forcing everyone onto the internet for every activity of life is going to bring about Utopia.

FD visits the Shopgoodwill.com auction site often.  It’s a well done site — easy to navigate and full of possibilities. Plus, if one does buy something, there’s the added benefit that you’re supporting a worthy charity.  But as the various member shops that offer items through the site stress, they aren’t professional appraisers. Thus, one sometimes sees items whose opening price seems to have been mis-set.  FD doesn’t know enough about many categories to judge, but has seen some mistakes in the book section, most frequently, the idea that if an item seems rare, it must be valuable.

It’s an easy mistake to make, and one that we all probably make when we consider what we ourselves own and value.   For example, when trying to price a book, one might look to see how many others are available on existing sites for books sales.  Perhaps no other copies are listed on a large site like ABE.  Or perhaps ther is one or two copies, and they have large prices attached.  Does this mean the item is worth hundreds of dollars??  Not necessarily.  Ultimately,  demand is what drives prices — the buyer, not the seller, is the real determinator of value.  FD owns many small press magazines and books that can be considered rare, in that they were published in tiny editions, by obscure outfits.  A few of them are also valuable, but most are just curiosities.  Perhaps they will be valued on the market more highly one day in the future, or they may continue to be of value primarily to FD, who knew the authors personally.

The other frequent mistake in the book section is not considering condition.  Books are sturdy items, and too many of them exist in good shape for those in bad shape to have much value, even if they are a first edition of an otherwise desired volume!

Another soap opera, As the World Turns, has been cancelled.  Soap operas are interesting as a narrative form, and a lot of good critical work has been done on them by feminist scholars.  My favorite analysis is by Laura Stempel (written as Laura Stempel Mumford), Love and Ideology in the Afternoon. And there are many other essay collections, articles in journals, and full-length analyses.  But, in recent years the soap opera as a specific format has been replaced by dramas with continuing narratives, like The Closer or Gray’s Anatomy. Spanish speakers have long had telenovelas, which unlike US soap operas have a set ending — though they may take many episodes to get there.  US attempts at English language night-time series that were structured like the telenovelas weren’t successful.  Perhaps attention spans just aren’t geared toward such narratives any more?  And yet, long running novel series do seem to maintain loyal audiences….

Anyway, years and years ago, FD was interviewing for a job in Maine and was being taken through a library of Maine women writers’ papers.  The guide said that As the World Turns (a very popular soap at the time — FD remembers a student enthusiastically explaining that ATWT was so good because “the Snyder family has more members than some other soaps, and they aren’t the only family on the show”) was based on a novel by Gladys Hasty Carroll, As the Earth Turns. I haven’t read the Hasty novel, but based on the reviews, I’m a little skeptical.  There is a farm family, and some domestic drama, but other than that there weren’t many connections between the two, at least in the 1980s -1990s when I was aware of the plot lines.  But the novel was very popular, was made into a play and a movie, and has attracted some scholarly attention.

Megan Marshall has a nice piece in Slate (December 7 edition) on Thomas Mallon’s new book about letter — not email — writing.  FD suspects that the situation isn’t as bad as advertised, that is the art/practice of letter writing hasn’t been totally subsumed by email, text messaging and IM.  FD and Mr FD still writes actual letters, and gets some in return, and surely we aren’t alone.  There’s a great little card/stationery store in our town, that seems to be doing OK, at least they aren’t out of business yet!

Not that FD’s letters will ever the basis of a biography, and of all FD’s correspondents, only one set of letters is being saved at the moment by FD (Now, Mr. FD saves everything, so may have a lot of letters in boxes somewhere — FD tries not to think about what’s in Mr FD’s study) .  FD does have a small supply of letters from writers (collected when FD was the editor/publisher of a small literary magazine) and has been thinking about looking for library or historical society collections to which they can be donated — FD would like to simplify life and reduce physical belongings.  That’s about the only advantage FD sees to electronic over paper communication.

FD has obtained from the local library a copy of Hilary Mantell’s Wolf Hall. The reserve line was 17 people long, but they bought extra copies and so the wait was short.  Now, FD just has to start reading!  After all, FD is also on the reserve list for A.S. Byatt’s The Children’s Book and just yesterday decided that the new memoir by her sister Margaret Drabble — the reviews haven’t been great, but it includes a lot about jigsaw puzzles, and FD is interested in jigsaw puzzles…

FD’s favorite childhood books were Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass and then E. Nesbit’s children’s stories  and  Jane Eyre. FD also read a lot of British history, and was able to recite the names of the British kings long before the names of the US presidents.  FD’s own heritage is Sicilian, but, alas, no Italian was FD taught, and nothing in translation seemed available in her youth, either.  Instead, British fiction (but not Dickens!) was FD’s escape.  To a certain extent, it is still is — FD probably reads more British fiction than US fiction in any given year.