Review

Shelf Monkey
by Corey Redekop


For starters, I usually prefer not to read books about our time. We live it. We are inundated with it. The news coverage is already overwhelming. The worse it gets out there, the more I long to reread Buddenbrooks.


However...occasionally a book overlaps so closely with my actual life that I not only bother reading it, I really enjoy reading it. (Wow - does that ever sound egocentric!)


Shelf Monkey is, delightfully, one of those. Although the narrator, megabookstore-employee Thomas Friesen, is almost painfully manic, his tastes, his book dreams and his book frustrations are similar to mine. I am even a bit of a shelf monkey myself, volunteering in a school library once a week. (Is anything more pathetic than a librarian wanna-be? We even inhabit the same loser-land.) The key idea for a shelf monkey is that the books are more important than the readers.


The premise of the book - bookstore staff jointly working up their frustrations to the point where they snatch an opportunity to attack a talk-show host cum purveyor of trash-fiction - is the set-up for a disquisition on the culture of reading as I guess is experienced by...dare I say it?...many readers and most, if not all LibraryThingers. The tone is hard and smart and funny. The story is sufficient unto itself - no padding. Hate padding!


I have promised to lend my copy to a few friends, but I really want to keep it close to hand, to track down the references to books that I couldn't get or re-read the ones that seem like they might bear new fruit. The whole book is like a conversation about books with a smart-ass friend.

And thus, in conclusion, Shelf Monkey rox!

Fun fact: I discovered Corey Redekop on LibraryThing because I saw that he connected two books I love through Recommendations, and I looked at his profile only to discover he is a writer himself! Go LibraryThing!

1984 - Steampunk?

I was moved to re-read 1984 by Ann Coulter who said she is the liberal-left's "Emmanuel Goldstein". She noted that although we all claim to have read the book, few got her reference. It is a good book to read (or re-read) in our times. Maybe it is always a good book to read to think about your own time.

It strikes me first of all that this is a steampunk book, as I understand the category: technology projected inaccurately (by chance or on purpose) resulting in a much darker, grimmer vision than actual technological advances have produced.*

Secondly, I suffered several shocks of recognition as I was reading, not police state, totalitarian stuff, but the shifts in the experience of normal daily life:

Children are trained to be wild and ungovernable, while also remaining zealous followers of the party line, questioning only their parents' authority, never the state's. (Think anti-smoking, think environmental issues - the level of programming is comparable.)

Mass-produced "art" for the masses - pornography, cheap broadsides covering crime and sports only, music fabricated by computer-like machines.

The working tax-payers can be seen to be the Outer Party members, held to a boring and rigid orthodoxy, squeezed into position between the luxury-loving, nonsense-issuing Inner Party, and the unconfined, irresponsible Proles. Think of Al Gore, leaving his mansion to fly in his private jet to preach energy-responsibility, or rock star Sheryl Crow thinking we could all start using a little less toilet paper to save trees, while on the other hand, mortgages are given to people who have no hope of paying them, and little girls feel that they want to dress like prostitutes.

The marigold asks nervously: 'Twas ever thus or is it worse now?

* The Toronto Public Library defines "Steampunk" as a "steam-powered and clockwork-driven" future. I think that fits 1984 in style.

D-minor update

I had a chance to hear Beethoven's Sonata No 17 in D Minor,
Op.31, no 2 "The Tempest" in performance.

I love the idea of D Minor as the saddest key/Dorian mode etc etc and this was a piece on my list to hear.

It was lovely, but I did not find it particularly sad in feeling, nor do I consider Shakespeare's The Tempest, upon which it is apparently based, to be a sad play.

Kind of a disappointment, really. I love sad music.

I guess I should check and see if I can find someone else's list of D Minor music and work my way through it.

Actually, Widipedia says Mozart's Requiem is in D Minor - reason enough to call it the saddest key - as is Beethoven's 9th Symphony.

And my correspondent from months ago telling me that it is a Spinal Tap joke is correct - it is, but not original to them - Nigel Tufnel credits Mozart and Bach for inspiring his work in D Minor.

Further update:
Meanwhile, Verdi's Requiem seems to be in G Minor, but Brahms's Requiem seems to be - yes! in D Minor (like his First Piano Concerto.)

Added note: I have added a link under Music Links to Wikipedia's (somewhat) incomplete explanation of Dorian mode, which also has a note about Aeolian mode, for anyone who is reading in the comments about Gorecki.

And: this Wikipedia article refers to The Beatles Eleanor Rigby, as a pop song in Dorian mode. It certainly makes sense for a song that is undoubtedly about loneliness and is perhaps the saddest Beatles song of all. Perfect.

LibraryThing Early Review

Garner on Writing and Language
by Bryan A Garner

What a fabulous book!

I love and collect books about English usage and history, but this one is unique. I was surprised to receive the envelope from the American Bar Association, as I had not picked it up as being targeted at legal writing. However as Bryan Garner says somewhere, law is traditionally considered an educated profession, and thus I conclude that the book is suitable for any person wishing to write in an educated manner. And yet, having challenged my expectations for a book on language by being about legal writing, it then challenged my expectations for a book on legal writing by being fun and funny. Just check out "octopus, octopi, octopodes" in the index, to see what I mean. There are extensive and useful lists of references and suggestions, and it is fun to think that I might have to write Mr Garner a note suggesting a couple of books he should look at, if not include in future editions.

It is also worth saying that I was strongly and delightfully reminded of the tone of Strunk and White in "The Elements of Style": both practical and American in character.

This book will be a pleasure to keep by the desk as a reference, and to rummage around in during a spare moment, for fun. And I will be suggesting it to the school library where I volunteer as a reference work to acquire.

More about opera manga (Yeah, more!)

P Craig Russell has beautifully captured The Magic Flute in his graphic version. The work exceeded my expectations, doing such things as giving a sense of the overture in graphic format and remaining true to the traditional costuming ideas associated with the characters. I am now lending it around to my opera-buff friends, but I look forward to getting it back to rummage around in again. Naturally my kids were curious and have peeked in and around it, too, but it is a bit long and forbidding to sit down and read, even for me, I must admit.

In contrast, the manga version of La Bohéme was short and simple. Better as a synopsis perhaps, than a traditional synopsis, but not without fault. I was sorry to see my favourite part of the story overlooked in this version - when the friends sell the last of their meagre possessions to try and buy medicine for Mimi when it is already too late - and there was a grammatical error, but the drawings were sweet and the text rang true to the words of the opera. Bravo Vancouver Opera! It is the way forward, for sure.