a Twitter recommendation

looking through my Twitter feeds today, after 5pm, this one caught my eye:

Carl Bildt ‏@carlbildt

Rereading John Julius Norwich's "A History of Venice" is always a true pleasure. A great history told in a most enjoyable way.

Carl Bildt is Foreign Minister of Sweden since 2006. Before that most other things.

· http://carlbildt.wordpress.com

So, after looking for the book in theOPAC and finding it at  945.31 N, I walked back into the stacks, and got it. I do think this might be the first book recommendation I've gotten via Twitter (without a doubt, the first recommendation from Minister Bildt  —or, almost certainly).

Norwich, John Julius. (1982). A history of Venice. New York : Knopf.

French still flock to bookstores

New York Times story: As bookstores in the United States and Britain struggle, a centuries-old reverence for the printed page persists in France, where sales have risen. Above, a book exchange.

How old is she?

In this article, the books written by the candidates for the presidency of Mexico are discussed: Andrés Manuel López Obrador has written two (“Nuevo proyecto de nación: por el renacimiento de México” and "La mafia que se adueñó de México... y el 2012”. In the latter he decrees that 30 people control the country: “… esta minoría rapaz es la principal responsable de la actual tragedia nacional: la pobreza y el desempleo, la inseguridad y la violencia, la falta de democracia y la violación cotidiana de los derechos de los mexicanos”.); Enrique Peña Nieto has (allegedly) written one, “México, la gran esperanza: un estado eficaz para una democracia de resultados” (this from the man who during the recent Guadalajara Book Fair was asked to name three books that had influenced him, and could only name the Bible (maybe he went to the same school as Governor Rick "Oops" Perry, of Texas); Gabriel Quadri de la Torre is said to have written "distintos libros y publicaciones en materia de medio ambiente y desarrollo sustentable" but it is his running under the banner of the party led by Elba Esther Gordillo Morales, presidenta vitalicia del Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación (SNTE), a sort of lefty teachers union; Josefina Vazquez Mota, 51, in 1999 wrote "Dios Mío, hazme viuda por favor” (My God, make me a widow, a still-controversial book; Nuestra oportunidad: un México para todos” is her campaign book.

Only the woman has her age given. Huh?

I make a living

After watching To Kill a Mockingbird, produced by Alan J. Pakula, I decided to look for other films in which he was involved. One was Up the down staircase. Searching on that title led me to this wonder of humanity: When Bel Kaufman sits you down on her sofa and asks, “Are you comfortable?” the right answer, she reminds you, requires a Yiddish inflection, a shrug and the words, “I make a living.” Kevin Kline's character in Definitely Maybe  (Professor Hampton Roth) uses the same line.

Ms. Kaufman’s hard work and the watchful eye of a demanding father led to a master’s degree in literature from Columbia and teaching jobs at a series of public high schools. Her 20-year odyssey became the springboard out of her grandfather’s shadow. In 1965, she published “Up the Down Staircase,” a novel about a new teacher very much like Ms. Kaufman who struggles to keep up her spirits in a school crowded with more than a few hopeful but ornery students and where memo-happy principals issue rules like not walking “up the down staircase.”

Complete dog parenting for baby boomers and beyond

Oy vay.

Possessed

After reading her piece about Turkish soccer fans in the New Yorker, I went looking by this book by Elif Batuman. tried it, but it is rather abstruse (or, perhaps, it was me).

Why Reading Isn’t Dead

The news that Borders Group Inc. has filed for Chapter 11 protection and also plans to close 30 percent of its stores doesn’t come as much of a surprise. Increasingly, consumers and publishers are focusing on e-books, and many readers prefer to order books online through retailers like Amazon.com. I love small bookstores. I have a particular fondness for the Lift Bridge Book Shop in Brockport, New York, my hometown. The store may have more books than there are residents in the community.

I don’t think the Borders bankruptcy is an indication that reading is dying–it’s really a sign that reading is changing. The recording industry faced a similar shift. People hadn’t fallen out of love with music — they just wanted it in other forms.

Excellent point.

I’ve found that my 8-year-old son and his friends may actually be more excited about reading than kids of previous generations. They talk excitedly about Harry Potter, A Series of Unfortunate Events and other book franchises. My son’s 16-year-old babysitter borrowed some of my copies of the Hunger Games books. And on more than a few nights, I’ve had to go into my son’s room and turn off his iPod after he fell asleep listening to the Narnia books or the Secret series.

Violin maker

Marchese, John. (2007). The violin maker: finding a centuries-old tradition in a Brooklyn workshop. New York: Harper Collins.

A trumpet player follows the crafting of a violin by Sam Zygmuntowicz,a renowned violin maker whose praises had been sung by Isaac Stern, among others. The violin is being made for Eugene Drucker, a violinist with the Emerson Quartet, a finicky and difficult-to-please client. Along the way Marchese traces the history of luthiers since the times of Amati, Stradivari, and Guarnieri, all from Cremona, considered to be the best violin makers of all time.

Easy to follow, even fun to read, it ids an interesting look into an old craft still practiced widely.

Poisoning the Well

Torsten Blackwood/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

 The right wing is in absolute denial that there is such a problem; some yahoo just recently said that all the snowstorms we're having proves that there is no such phenomenon as global warming. It's socialism's agenda, another way to grow government.

Hertsgaard, to his credit, refuses to sugarcoat these facts. For all the justifiable fears about flooded coastlines, he writes, the “overriding danger” in the coming years is drought. “Floods kill thousands, drought can kill millions,” one expert told him. Within two decades, the number of people in “water-stressed countries” will rise to three billion from 800 million.

Only when they see the palpable truth will naysayers admit there is a problems, if then.


“Scientists had actually underestimated the danger,” he writes. “Climate change had arrived a century sooner than expected.” What’s more, given our current trajectory — economic, cultural and, most important, political — it’s guaranteed to get a lot worse before it gets any better. (Significant impacts like sea-level rise are now “locked in.”) And it won’t get any better — indeed, it will become truly unmanageable — if we don’t make the necessary cuts in global greenhouse emissions.

When the FDR Drive is underwater, what will skeptics say then?

This leads Hertsgaard to what he calls the new “double imperative” of the climate fight. “We have to live through global warming,” he writes, “even as we halt and reverse it.” In other words, while deep emissions cuts (what experts call “mitigation”) remain the top priority, that alone is no longer enough. We also have to do everything we can to prepare for the effects of climate change.

Cap and trade is anathema to the right wing.

Wealth and technology clearly matter, but politics and culture may trump them. Take Louisiana: efforts to prepare for future hurricanes, Hertsgaard writes, “have been crippled by the state’s history of poor government” along with “its continuing reluctance — even after Katrina — to acknowledge the reality of global warming for fear that might harm oil and gas production, and an abhorrence of taxes and public planning as somehow socialistic.”

Escape from Amsterdam

Sherwood, Barrie. (2008). Escape from Amsterdam. New York : Thomas Dunne Books.

After reading Housekeeper and the Professor, and Elegance of the hedgehog, watching Ozu films as a result therefrom, I yearned for more Japanese. This book seemed in keeping with that theme, yet offering a slightly different take.

Started out fine: a young man deep in debt is informed by his father that he and his sister have inherited prints and other assets from a deceased aunt that could results in vast sums of yen for them. Seeing his ticket out of debt, Aozora goes looking for his sister in southern Japan, where he imagines she is working. They both must appear at the lawyer's office for the inheritance to go to them.

As he travels south, Japan does emerge as a character in this novel, and the narrative moves along nicely. Mai's phone is being used by another woman, and her cryptic answers draw Aozoa south. But as he arrives at Amsterdam, a theme park that promises all the pleasures tourists might want, from parades featuring a Princess Michiko look-alike (that is one of two of Mai's jobs) to prostitution, the story weakens. From there is goes on a sort of glide pattern, and although Sherwood tries, he can rescue the book from its two and a half star rating.

Zigazak!

A patron called up today, looking for this book. Peninsula does not own it, but other libraries do.


Two evil spirits wreak havoc on the town of Brisk's Hanukkah celebration, until the town's wise rabbi puts a stop to their mischief.

Gatz

A MAN sits down at a gray metal desk one morning and tries to boot up a computer from the Flintstone age, one with a screen that looks like an old cathode-ray TV set. Nothing happens, so he pulls out a paperback and begins to read aloud. The book is “The Great Gatsby,” but this guy apparently skipped 10th-grade English when it was assigned. He reads slowly, haltingly, stumbling over pronunciations, getting the emphasis all wrong. The last time we heard “Gatsby” read this badly was in the old Andy Kaufman sketch.


This is how “Gatz,” Elevator Repair Service’s seven-hour performance now at the Public Theater, begins. When I saw it last winter, produced by the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass., the set was a spectacularly cluttered office that appeared to be part warehouse, part paper-pushing operation and part waiting room — not a bad metaphor, if you think about it, for the inside of your own head. And what goes on in your head is, in a way, the real subject of “Gatz,” which is not, strictly speaking, a staged reading of “The Great Gatsby,” even though every one of the book’s 47,000 words is pronounced onstage. Neither is it a dramatic adaptation of Fitzgerald’s novel. It’s more a dramatization of the act of reading itself — of what happens when you immerse yourself in a book.

Things we lost in the fire

Having started to read Judah P. Benjamin, the Jewish Confederate, wherein I read that Benjamin's family goes back to Portuguese Jews by the name of Mendes, I remembered the director Sam Mendes. Searching his name led me to this film, which he produced. I know both Berry and del Toro as actors, so I took the film home. Plus, Roger Ebert gave it a positive review.

Berry's character is married to Brian, a flawless man, successful, kind, great father, great husband, and loyal friend to del Toro, a heroin addict and his long-time friend. Splicing action in time, we see how it was that Brian came to be murdered, and how his family and friends reacted.

Whilst it gets a bit melodramatic, the film is powerful drama. Del Toro is magnificently understated, restraining himself from becoming too

One hit wonders of the '50s & '60s.

Farmingdale Library called asking for two songs: Let me go lover! and I'll Always Love You. The second song is in sheet music; the first in this book.

Q 784.5 O

Songs:

Alley cat song -- Angel of the morning -- Apache -- Theme from Baby, the rain must fall -- The birds and the bees -- Bobby's girl -- Book of love -- Chantilly lace -- The deck of cards -- Dominique -- Eve of destruction -- Grazing in the grass -- Guitar boogie shuffle -- Happy, happy birthday baby -- Harper Valley P.T.A. -- I like it like that -- Israelites -- Leader of the laundromat -- Let me go lover! -- Love (can make you happy) -- May the bird of paradise fly up your nose -- More -- More today than yesterday -- Na na hey hey kiss him goodbye -- On top of spaghetti -- Pipeline -- Pretty little angel eyes -- Sea of love -- Silhouettes -- Stay -- Stranger on the shore -- Sukiyaki -- Tie me kangaroo down sport -- Who put the bomp (in the bomp ba bomp ba bomp) -- The worst that could happen.

Operation Mincemeat

Checking for Operation Mincemeat : Macintyre, Ben, and came across this:  Deathly Deception: The Real Story of Operation Mincemeat by Smyth, Denis.

Curiously, I read the original and saw the movie based on it after coming across a mention of it in one of David Ignatius's books.

God

Reading about John McWhorter, having seen his op-ed piece in the Times, I cam across the name of Robert Wright

Bloggingheads.tv (sometimes abbreviated "bhtv") is a political, world events, philosophy, and science video blog discussion site in which the participants take part in an active back and forth conversation via webcam which is then broadcast online to viewers. The site was started by the journalist Robert Wright (The Evolution of God, Nonzero, The Moral Animal) and the blogger and journalist Mickey Kaus on November 1, 2005. (Kaus has since dropped out of operational duties of the site as he didn't want his frequent linking to be seen as a conflict of interest.) Most of the earlier discussions posted to the site involved one or both of those individuals, but since has grown to include a total of more than 250 other individual contributors, mostly journalists, scientists, authors, well known political bloggers, and other notable individuals.

Four seasons in Rome

Four seasons in Rome: on twins, insomnia, and the biggest funeral in the history of the world. (2007). Anthony Doerr. New York: Scribner.

How I wanted to like this book; o, how I wanted. I first came across it many moons ago, and took it out of Peninsula Library. Started to read it, I felt disturbed by the style used, but persevered.And persevered. But I could not like it. And, as Mrs. Delahunty might have said, one can not help not liking a book. And I don't like this one. So I'm stopping at page 96. I have others book to read, others I'm reading (Duke Ellington's America, by Harvey G. Cohen; Napoleon Bonaparte: a life, by Alan Schom (struggling to end it); Flotsametrics and the floating world, Curtis Ebbesmeyer; which lead me to The mysterious history of Columbus : an exploration of the man, the myth, the legacy, by John Noble Wilford), and want to read (In search of Nella Larsen : a biography of the color line, by George Hutchinson; and, perhaps, Why this world : a biography of Clarice Lispector, byBenjamin Moser.).

No Reservations, No Prisoners

Bourdain, Anthony. (2010). Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook. Ecco: New York


The black leather jacket and earring are gone. On the cover of Anthony Bourdain's "Medium Raw," he is dressed in dark suit and tie, the tie a little loose around the neck, as if he is not quite at ease in it. Seated at a beaten-up wooden table strewn with carving implements, the former chef is testing the sharpness of a kitchen knife against his middle finger. Who, you wonder, will he stick the knife in this time?

The leather jacket and earring have been replaced by placed products; he flashes a Chase Platinum, no, Saphire, card. Everyone grows up eventually, I suppose. Bourdain has become trite.

"Medium Raw" mixes personal memoir with travelogues and ruminations on such matters as the degradation of the American hamburger, the dumbing down of the Food Network, the tedium of multicourse tasting menus and the rise of food gurus such as David Chang ("the most important chef in America today"), whose 12-seat restaurant Momofuku Ko on New York's Lower East Side requires you to log onto its website at precisely the right moment six days in advance to book a place.

Nothing is that important.


The author is still a bit of a kid himself, or at least a brat, like the one who shoots off his mouth in class, daring to say out loud what others may secretly have been thinking. He hates vegetarians, raw-food enthusiasts and celebrity chefs' product endorsements.

Is that a form of self-loathing? Or does he consider his own endorsement subtle enough to be refined and excused? Plu-eez.

The news last year about a deadly strain of E.coli in hamburgers sends Mr. Bourdain, an unabashed carnivore, into a paroxysm. The meat was sold by the food giant Cargill, "the largest private company in America. A hundred and sixteen billion dollars in revenue a year," he rails, yet the company tried to "save a few cents on their low-end burgers" by using meat scraps that had been treated with ammonia to kill bacteria. The words "meat" and "treated with ammonia," he says, should never appear in the same sentence "unless you're talking about surreptitiously disposing of a corpse.

A very valid and accurate point. Vintage Bourdain. As is this:

Mr. Bourdain is a vivid, bawdy and often foul-mouthed writer. He thrills in the attack, but he is also an enthusiast who writes well about things he holds dear. His detailed reporting on the backroom lives of restaurant employees is terrific. One of the most moving parts of the book is a chapter on a Dominican, Justo Thomas, who has spent the past six years in a tiny room below the kitchen of Le Bernardin in New York, cleaning 700 pounds of fish a day and cutting it into perfectly uniform portions. Breaking rules of the trade, Mr. Bourdain takes him to lunch in the dining room, where Mr. Thomas for the first time gets to taste the fish he has prepared.

No one else does that.

"At the end of the day, would a good and useful criterion for evaluating a meal be 'Was it fun?' "

The end of the day? Ach, rescue me from clichés!


As a chef, Mr. Bourdain has never been on a par with his heroes, and he readily admits to possessing only "middling" kitchen skills. But he loves to cook and feels strongly that everyone should learn at least the basics. "I have long believed that it is only right and appropriate that before one sleeps with someone, one should be able—if called upon to do so—to make a proper omelet in the morning."

The real Fidel

Coltman, Leycester. (2003). The real Fidel Castro. foreword by Julia E. Sweig.
New Haven : Yale University Press.

Mentioned by Anthony DePalma in his book, The man who invented Fidel (about Herbert Matthews).

Aimée & Jaguar : a love story, Berlin 1943

Saw on book cart.