cold wet sunday
The creek in back is high and brown, and the weather people have declared a flood watch for our area.
Finn slept over at a friend’s house last night, and she won’t get back until sometime this afternoon. Fallie’s friend from her old school just got here. They are catching up and telling stories now, but soon they will be busy building couch forts, coloring, and constructing cardboard prototypes of time machines. If all goes well, I will only have to resolve a couple of disputes arising from divergent engineering philosophies.
Floyd made me eggs and toast for breakfast. When I am done typing this, I am going to make a second pot of coffee and wander between stacks of books, trying to pick the one I am going to read next. The thrift store has coughed up a pile of Italo Calvino lately, but then again, someone in Alpharetta has been slowly donating a huge library of vintage pulp science fiction books that I remember reading when I was thirteen or fourteen. It would be fun to binge on adolescent nostalgia for a few weeks. Maybe when Finn gets home, I can convince her to play Stratego with me.
I should plan something or finish something, fix something or make something new, but for now, shuffling around the house listening to the rain and little girls playing, and mostly doing nothing feels like the right thing.
(image via dark roasted blend)
two birds, one stone, twenty-two cds
Changes to my schedule have interrupted my steady progress through Ulysses, and NPR has changed in a way that has made it much less interesting to me, so I am going to try listening to this for a while. Floyd has already finished, but she and the oversight committee at itinerant autumn have officially approved this as a legitimate method of finishing the book. I wonder how one hundred minutes of Joyce per day is going to influence my outlook.
cast off the wracking
A Bosun’s Chair rigged to be lowered with assistance from below (a) or by one’s self (b,c) as illustrated in Handbook of Knots and Splices (and other work with hempen and wire ropes) by Charles E. Gibson, 1961. This copy, a recent thrift store used book score, was previously part of the collection of the US Forces Special Services Library, Barenhausen Kasserne. This illustration is part of my favorite chapter of the book, Slinging, Lashing, and Seizing, which also includes beautiful instructions for lifting, moving, and lowering barrels with ropes.
While the Bosun’s Chair instructions focus on the techniques for lowering and raising the chair alone or with the assistance of others, it neglects any discussion of the fixed point from which one is suspended. How can one find a fixed point dependable enough to support a life? How does one deal with the moment (b) when that point moves out of sight and one finds one’s self suspended between the no longer and the not yet seen?
Despite these shortcomings, it is an excellent book and a welcome addition to the mumblelard family library.
…and high in the middle
I found this Evergreen Edition, collecting four short pieces by Samuel Beckett, at a thrift store that is not on my usual circuit. I have been there before, and it is not a great thrift store for books or anything else, but every once in a while I will go back.
This recent thrift store used book score contains the short play, Ohio Impromptu, which was written by Beckett to be performed during the 1981 Beckett Festival at the land grant diploma mill that I may or may not have attended many years ago. The play draws some of its inspiration from his time as James Joyce’s secretary but also from Beckett’s lifelong insomnia, night terrors, and panic attacks. Somehow I had never heard of this play until earlier this year, and I have never found Beckett in a thrift store before; it is uncanny that this volume would be the first.
Nothing is left to tell.
the page of evers
Fallie was rereading the second Lemony Snicket book in the car as we drove back from a short weekend visit with family. When she got to this page, she groaned and muttered, “not the page of evers again.” She is a dedicated reader, and the first time through she read every “ever,” but this time she decided to just skip ahead.
(via A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Reptile Room by Lemony Snicket)
the sinister garden: a guide to the most common poisonous plants (published by Wyeth Laboratories, June 1968)
MORNING GLORY (Convolvulus sepium)
Toxic Part: Seeds.
Symptoms: Used by thrill seekers because of its LSD-like effects, 50 to 200 powdered seeds from this climbing vine can produce mental effects which have led to suicides. Other side reaction to ingestion have been nausea, uterine stimulation and euphoria.
This beautiful and informative forty-eight page pamphlet can be found shelved in the Eddie Jessup Rare Field Guides room of the mumblelard family library.
field guide to the psilocybin mushroom species common to north america (by f.c. ghouled, photos by josé, 1972)
Additional copies may be ordered at a cost of $1.25 each from:
Guidance Publications, New Orleans, Louisiana
The startup I was working for was in early stage collapse, and the “visionary” lead architect was among the first to get cut. While the other looters were arguing over the big monitor and the nice chair, I was going through his bookshelves where I found this little gem which can now be found shelved in the mumblelard family library.
stately, plump…
We started today.
…and there began a long period of numerical agonizing
…and so many books in the boxes, stacks, and shelves of the thrift stores and library book sales. This week’s thrift store books scores include:
- Catch-22 a novel by Joseph Heller. “There was only one Catch…and that was Catch-22.” A lovely but battered old copy with a perfectly centered “discard” stamped inside the cover.
- Biggest Riddle Book in the World by Joseph Rosenbloom and illustrated by Joyce Behr. I bought this as a present for Fallie’s birthday later this month, but I am constitutionally unable to withhold presents until the appropriate time. Surprise presents are better anyway. Fallie loves the book.
- Gilead by Marilynne Robinson.
- Atonement by Ian McEwan. Atonement and Gilead have been on the shelf for a month; I am not really sure why I didn’t buy them earlier. The premature best-of lists for the aughts that have sprouted up lately feature both of these prominently.
- The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. A pristine paperback with a Peter Sis cover.
- The Lord of the Rings: One Volume Edition by J.R.R.R. Tolkien. An Infinite Jest sized paperback containing the entire trilogy and featuring a Peter Jackson cover. I bought these two Tolkien books because the blond monkeys loved The Edge Chronicles, and sooner or later they will be seeking them out.
- Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger. This is a cute little British paperback edition that originally cost 45p. It is my second copy of Franny and Zooey this month, but it was tagged with the color of the day so fate had spoken.
- “As nearly as possible in the spirit of Matthew Salinger, age one, urging a luncheon companion to accept a cool lima bean, I urge my editor, mentor, and (heaven help him) closest friend, William Shawn, genius domus of The New Yorker, lover of the long shot, protector of the unprolific, defender of the hopelessly flamboyant, most unreasonably modest of born great artist-editors, to accept this pretty skimpy-looking book.”
- The Gatefold Book of the World’s Great Warplanes. Featuring kick-ass four page centerfold style pictures of fighter planes. I will probably give this to one of the boy neighbors eventually, but for now I get to play with it.
waiting for dinner
I read some on the deck, but mostly I listen as Fallie tells stories to Gopher Guts about her day at school and the events, real and imagined, that filled it.
time to clear the deck
It is covered with fallen leaves. Also, Floyd and I had fun reading Infinite Jest and The Broom of the System together so we are going to read Ulysses together this Fall.
reblogged from readingulysses
…so many potentially lethal creatures in the shallows and the depths
…and so many books in the boxes, stacks, and shelves of the thrift stores and library book sales. This week’s thrift store books scores include:
- Wild, Wild World of Animals: Dangerous Sea Creatures. This includes text selections from Jaws by Peter Benchley, Kon-Tiki by Thor Heyerdahl, The Living Sea by Jacques-Yves Cousteau, and Toilers of the Sea by Victor Hugo among others. It also has some incredible illustrations including a schematic drawing of dangerous creatures arranged by the oceanic zone they inhabit. This is a birthday present for Fallie, so don’t mention it to her.
- The Complete Nonsense of Edward Lear edited by Holbrook Jackson (hardcover). “A was an ape, Who stole some white tape, And tied up his toes, In four beautiful bows.”
- The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy (hardcover). I have a troubled relationship with The Border Trilogy, but we won’t discuss that.
- All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
- Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger (hardcover). I have not read this one in years.
- No Heroics, Please by Raymond Carver. A collection of the previously uncollected.
- The Devil and All His Works by Dennis Wheatley (hardcover). An illustrated survey of the forces of Darkness published in 1971.
infinite summer redux or oom of the system
Floyd and I both read Infinite Jest as part of the Infinite Summer project. We are almost positive that this was the first time we have read the same book simultaneously, but there is probably some we are forgetting. It wound up being a fun experience, so after a short break we decided to read The Broom of the System together. After this one, we have a few things to get to from our individual reading piles, but then we are thinking of reading the big one.
don’t be a meanie, buy a weanie or today’s thrift store book score
- Managing Ignatius:The lunacy of Lucky Dogs and life in New Orleans by Jerry E. Strahan (His account of two decades as manager of a street dog empire in the French Quarter. I don’t know how I missed hearing about this book. I hope it is good.)
- Sailing Alone Around the World by Captain Joshua Slocum (A firsthand account of the first solo sailing voyage around the world in 1895)
- A Song of Stone by Iain Banks
Into the Highways and Hedges : Profiles of the Street Preacher by Tommy Littleton
I found this interesting little volume at the thrift store today. It appears to have been self published by Tommy Littleton in 2000. It doesn’t have any printing on the spine or page numbers, but this copy was signed by the author at the bottom of the introductory text. It includes profiles of evangelists and street preachers from Georgia and Alabama including Howard Finster, Thomas Spurgeon Russell, Arthur Blessit, and the author, Tommy Littleton. I have only skimmed it so far, but it looks like an interesting find.
