To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life. ~ Somerset Maugham.
Two of my bookcases.
The Habit of Reading
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Category Archives: Books
Ten Eventful Years, Volume 2
I’m happy to report that none of my yarn is made from chicken feathers. I found that research item in Ten Eventful Years, Volume 1.
Before I put Ten Eventful Years Volumes 1 and 2 in the donation pile, here are a couple of items from Volume 2.
Page 222 has a photograph of Chicago’s first subway, 4.5 miles long. It opened on October 17, 1943. This is under the category of “Electric Transportation.”
Page 355 has a full page photograph of sand sailing. The caption is “Florida’s first beach yachting regatta. Sand sailing became popular after World War II and was added to the sports open to vacationists in Florida.” That’s a little strange. Why wouldn’t it be open to residents as well? Was there someone checking your home address and only let you sand sail if you had an out-of-town address?
Page 243 has a photo of George Bernard Shaw holding a book with “G.B.S. 90” on the cover. The book was written by a neighbor to celebrate Mr. Shaw’s 90th birthday (July 26, 1946).
I wonder what my neighbors would write in a book about me for my 90th birthday. Hmm, maybe I should start baking them some cookies or something, just in case they are taking notes.
The Dark Side
I was shopping at BookPeople (an independent bookstore in Austin) recently, looking for a romance novel.
It’s for a friend. Really.
A friend at work is scheduled for some surgery soon. I decided to put together a gift bag with a few items to help her stave off boredom while she is at home recovering. I bought a mixed bag of pecans (milk chocolate covered, white chocolate covered and honey glazed) from Berdoll Pecan Candy and Gift Farm, located on Highway 71 between Austin and Bastrop. They grow and make all their pecan products. I’m planning on adding some nice hand cream and a romance novel to the gift bag.
Sure, sure, I have read romance novels — two of them, many years ago and that was way more than enough. I vaguely remember them being strikingly similar: It’s the 19th century or before and a young woman of good breeding is somehow rendered penniless and homeless. Because of the laws and society, she cannot inherit property and she has no education or skill (but she has a good upbringing and good manners). She is wearing the one dress she owns and it is tattered. There are regular ellipses in the dialogue . . . and she gasps a lot. A man appears, he might be highborn or a rogue, and he saves her from society’s scorn just for being female and awakens in her the physical desires she’s never even dreamed of.
Just what my soon-to-be recovering friend needs, I thought, to take her mind off of her pain and her temporary immobility. I’ll get her one of those.
Things have changed, my friends, things have changed and that includes romance novels. They have gone over to . . . The Dark Side.
I must have spent an hour in front of the romance section. Where were the stories about 19th-century mansions, secrets and men with curly hair falling into their eyes? They have been replaced by 21st-century wizard romances, vampire romances, werewolf romances, and zombie romances, everyone driving about town in their convertibles and talking on their cell phones. I recognized a couple of authors’ names (purely by chance, I assure you), but I didn’t know anything about them or their books.
I finally just chose one. I ended up with Pale Demon by Kim Harrison (not an author whose name I recognize). The spine lists the book as an “urban fantasy.”
The back cover teaser says that “Condemned for black magic, Rachel Morgan has three days to get to the annual witches’ conference in San Francisco to clear her name. If not, she’ll be trapped in the demonic ever-after . . . forever.
[At least it still has ellipses.]
But a witch, an elf, a living vampire, and a pixy travelling 2,000 miles in one car is a recipe for disaster — not even counting the assassination teams waiting in ambush … or the demon they unleash in St. Louis.
Now, after centuries of torment, a fearsome creature walks free, craving innocent blood and souls — especially Rachel Morgan’s, who’ll need to fully embrace her own demonic nature to survive. And even that may not be enough.”
Gee, I hope my friend hasn’t already read it.
Ten Eventful Years, Volume 1
Ten Eventful Years is the name of a series of books covering 1937-1946. I found them while re-arranging two bookshelves of dog-related books. I thought all the books on those shelves were about dogs, but I was wrong. Here were two volumes of Ten Eventful Years: A to Cona, Conc to Ley. The table of contents lists four volumes: Volume 1: Abbreviations to Conant (836 pages); Volume 2 Concentration Camps to Ley (862 pages); Volume 3 Liberalism to Scrap (862 pages); and Volume 4, Sculpture to Zoology (800 pages).
We are missing Volumes 3 and 4. That doesn’t matter, though, because hubby and I don’t know where Volumes 1 and 2 came from. Neither of us claims to own them and the dogs are denying everything. I found no inscriptions, no notes in the margins and no grocery list or autographed Jackie Robinson baseball card as forgotten bookmarks.
Before I donate them, I will take a look to see what the editor of the Encyclopedia Britannica, Walter Yust, and his employees considered remarkable about those years.
I opened Volume 1 to page 50 and found an entry for Air Conditioning. Turns out that air conditioning came into use somewhere around 1912, mostly for industrial applications. Theatres started using “comfort air conditioning” around 1925. “Comfort air conditioning … was extensively applied in a variety of other applications during the decade 1937-46. Commercial establishments using air conditioning extensively included department stores, five-and-ten-cent stores, small stores, restaurants, amusement places having eating facilities, multiroom buildings, theatres, passenger cars, busses, passenger ships and aeroplanes. Residential applications also started during this period.”
All I can say is Thank You! to the 1937-1946 decade for implementing air conditioning to the general public.
Moving on. Page 412 has a black and white photograph of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge at Puget Sound (Washington state) being ripped apart by a windstorm on November 7, 1940, four months after it was built. At the time, it was the world’s third longest single suspension bridge. Well, there went $6,400,000.
One more entry, then, towards the end of Volume 1. Page 615 has a photo of a man in a yarn factory. The caption is “Experimental yarn made of chicken feathers, a project of the U.S. Rubber Co.” The umbrella category is Chemurgy, which I’m guessing is a cross between chemistry and metallurgy. “[Chemurgy] is a concept which teaches that by extending the understanding and utilization of agricultural materials the base of mankind’s wealth can be greatly broadened.” The Chicken Feathers section explains that there was a problem of preventing the chicken feathers, which were gathered up wet, from deteriorating from the wetness before they could be used. At the end of 1946, “commercial exploitation awaited further improvements in the process.”
Oh. Excuse me while I go check the labels of my knitting yarn skeins. I don’t think I was wearing my glasses when I bought them. And I thought I only had to read food labels.
Drawing, Lesson 07
Here is one drawing in Lesson 07 from You Can Draw in 30 Days by Mark Kistler. Lesson 07 is Advanced-Level Cubes. Ohh, I’m advanced now! With each chapter I learn a little bit more, but at this point I’m following step-by-step instructions for each drawing. Works for me.
Here’s the one from the book. Mine looks almost just like Mark’s! (Copyright belongs to the author Mark Kistler, his publishers, etc.)
It's a long story ... 