London’s Sinful Secret by George Cruickshank

One of the fruits of my nonfiction library spree back in March, George Cruickshank’s London’s Sinful Secret: The Bawdy History and Very Public Passions of London’s Georgian Age proved well worth the read. It isn’t a quick read by any stretch (coming in at 2 pounds and 672 pages according to Amazon), but it is a fascinating one and an eye-opening one to boot.

Cruickshank himself is an architectural historian, which lends an interesting lens to an already-scintillating topic. The overarching argument of the book is that the sex industry was pervasive and vital to London as an economic hub of eighteenth-century Europe, but, because of his training, Cruickshank is able to take the book beyond basic history and standard “my topic is important and unique!” statements. Throughout the book, he includes fascinating examples of the ways in which the architecture of London was shaped by London’s prominent sex industry and how what remains of Georgian architecture in contemporary London can provide us with vital clues about the city’s often sordid past.

‘Down the Nile’ by Rosemary Mahoney

I can’t say I went into Rosemary Mahoney’s excellent Down the Nile: Alone in a Fisherman’s Skiff completely unbiased. The book may well be the first book about contemporary Egypt I’ve ever read and my first book about rowing and, sure, I’d never heard of Mahoney before picking up the book, so there are a few reasons I ought to have gone into Down the Nile with no pretensions or expectations.

But, the plain truth be told, I’m an Egyptian travel narrative junkie. I can’t get enough of them, particularly female-authored Victorian travel narratives of Egypt.

Late in her book, Mahoney quotes early Egyptian traveler Charles Sonnini, who wrote in 1777, that,

“…this frequence of travelers cannot exclude my pretension to a place among the rest, and I am not to be deterred from speaking of Egypt by the number or renown of those who have trodden the ground before me … Objects do not present themselves to all observers under the same point of view.”

And perhaps that is why I’m so drawn to the form, as much as why people throughout time cannot seem to stop writing about Egypt—objects do not present themselves to all observers under the same point of view. Egypt has, for all intents and purposes, been the same tourist destination for centuries (same sites, same ruins, same tombs, etc.), but people keep writing about it, as if the Sphinx will somehow be better understood for one more description of it.

A Dog’s History of America by Mark Derr

Per my earlier chagrin at forgetting how excellent nonfiction can be, I got me to a library a couple of weeks back and scoured the nonfiction shelves, purposelessly abandoning myself to the serendipitous library gods. Happily, they did not fail me and I came up with the wonderful A Dog’s History of America: How Our Best Friend Explored, Conquered, and Settled a Continent by Mark Derr.

First of all, it’s a great topic and one which I feel has been too often neglected by historians. The topic of dogs in history appears universally derided as a fluff-topic, best confined to the little coffee-table books on offer by the check-out (probably next to things like Inspirational, Famous & Hilarious Quotes About Dogs and You Know Your Dog Owns You If…).

But this shouldn’t be! Dogs, by virtue of being humankind’s constant companions for the better part of human history, have been present at practically every meaningful historic moment, big and small, and have inserted themselves into the narrative of history even as established History refused them access.

Mark Derr to the rescue, ladies and gents, and not a moment too soon.

An embarrassment of fictions

Now that I’ve finally got myself back on the reading bandwagon (oh, reading, I missed thee!), I’ve stumbled into another challenge: I can’t seem to stop reading novels!

At first, I was inclined to blame this glut of fiction on my recent release from graduate school. The freedom associated with “real life” reading was intoxicating—you mean I can read whatever I want whenever I want without guilt? Sweet, dizzying liberty! Suddenly, the whole world of non-academic text was open to me and I gorged myself on novels.

A post of doggery

Since Eva was so nice as to request such a post and because my new canine buddy Millie is the thing foremost on my mind, I now present LT’s first ever dog post! In the interest of staying true to the blog’s mission (so to speak), this is not just a “hey, meet my dog, y’all!” post. It’s also a series of short reviewlets about dog books I’ve read in the past few months.

Those of you who have met me in person have probably noticed that, in addition to my propensity to try and steer any conversation towards books, my love of dogs comes up in pretty short order. Maybe there’s a dog taking his or her walk I must gasp over while we’re talking. Or maybe there’s some vaguely relevant story about a news-worthy dog I’m able to (gracefully, of course!) slip into our conversation. Or maybe I’m totally tactless and just start yammering on about a cute dog I saw or how something reminded me of my old dog earlier or just wouldn’t it be great if I had one and what do you think of these breeds?

Brave Girl Eating by Harriet Brown

“I don’t want to die, Mommy, but I feel so guilty…I ate a whole Popsicle and I wasn’t even hungry. I ate a piece of fish. I’m a pig, Mommy.”

“‘I’m supposed to be smarter than this,’ she says. ‘I’m supposed to be able to figure things out without screwing up.’
“‘So you think you’re supposed to be better than everyone else in the world?’ I ask, smiling so she knows I’m making a joke. Clearly I am no comedian, because she hears my words as criticism and stalks off.
“The answer is yes, she really does believe she’s supposed to be perfect in a superhuman way.”

“‘If I choose to eat something I don’t have to, then I’m bad,’ she explains. If I choose to eat something I don’t have to. Anorexia is a prison sentence for a crime you didn’t commit, a crime that fills you nevertheless with guilt and dread.”

This book should be mandatory reading for everyone who 1) has an eating disorder, 2) knows someone with an eating disorder or 3) thinks they know something about eating disorders.

Brave Girl Eating is a partial memoir written by a journalist who watched her daughter struggle against anorexia (and a very severe case of it) for over five years. Over the course of six months, she watched her daughter turn from a bright, cheerful 14-year-old girl into an emaciated wreck possessed by guilt, fear and desperation.

Brown writes for a living, and it shows. Her story opens with a parable of sorts; a vivid vignette in which she asks the reader to imagine him or herself in a bakery, starting at french pastries, chocolates and even simple things like sourdough bread through glass cases.

Phantoms on the Bookshelves by Jacques Bonnet

As I’m sure loyal LT readers know, I am an absolute books-about-books nut. I’ll read almost anything if it claims to be about books in general or bookstores or the history of books or even typography.

But as much as I love the genre, it is not a love of total abandon. For every amazing bookish book, there are ten others that have somehow missed the “books are magic” memo and checked their love of the medium at the door.

So, after a few books-about-books disappointments, I’ve started judging the genre by what I call the Fadiman Gold Standard, set by the wonderful Anne Fadiman in Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader. In short, the Fadiman Gold Standard starts with the obvious (affection for books and appreciation for them in terms of both form and content), but then also incorporates felicity of expression, erudition, perfectly-formed essays, general well-readness, and whimsy. Yes, the Fadiman Gold Standard is super-subjective, but so is reading itself.

This week I randomly discovered Jacques Bonnet’s lovely Phantoms on the Bookshelves and, I am pleased to say, it comes pretty close to the Fadiman Gold Standard.

“O” Books

Today I am very pleased to announce that our catalogue is finally finished and ready to help you with any and all of your searching! As I looked through the entries, I found that we’re only missing entries for the letters O, X, and Z. This seemed too small a number to just ignore, so consider me now on the quest for books with authors whose last names begin with those letters. Any suggestions for X’s and Z’s?

On the O front, I’ve actually already read more O’s than I thought and apparently just never posted about them here, so let me rectify that situation straight away with a few words on Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, Barack Obama’s Dreams of My Father, and Penelope Orth’s An Enviable Position followed up by the promise of a good old-fashioned Rereadings post on The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy on the way as soon as I can find a copy.

I suppose I didn’t write about O’Brien, Obama, and Orth not because I apparently am subconsciously intent on perpetrating some kind of anti-O conspiracy, but because in some ways I was too affected by these books to write about them.

Nonfiction reviewlets: Deborah Cohen and Susan Hill

Because most of the reading I’ve been doing lately is nonfiction and thus not terribly controversial, here my short thoughts on two I read recently, both the good and the bad.

Household Gods by Deborah Cohen is a fascinating look at the historic relationship between “the British and their possessions.” In other words, Cohen explores why Britons, more than any other nationality, are so bonded to their homes and the bric-a-brac they put in their homes. And, because Cohen is brilliant, she goes about this both chronologically and thematically, starting with the morality and religiosity of objects in the early nineteenth century and going through to the antiques craze of the Edwardian era. Along the way, she also stops to talk about the rise of the department store, interior design as a profession, and the Aesthetic Movement, let by Mr. Oscar Wilde.

It’s a remarkably well-plotted book, filled to the brim with pertinent examples and interesting factoids along with Cohen’s very persuasive arguments on the importance of Home to the British.

Connections through Books

Courtesy of the Florida Center for Instructional Technology

I was recently reading a letter from the wife of a British missionary in New Zealand in the 1840s and came across a particularly moving passage. In it, she writes to her cousins back in England of the “new books” she has recently received in the colony. The cousins then have a sort of book club back-and-forth about what they thought of the books, discussing what they did and didn’t like.

I found this whole episode completely remarkable and was struck by the value of books as a way of maintaining connections with other people, be they your cousins or complete strangers, as is more often the case out here in the book blogging territory. Books create an unparalleled connection between people: that of a simple shared text. Even a woman thousands of miles from home in the 1840s could still feel a little bit like home through the books read both by her and by her family back in England.

And it’s still like that for readers today.