10E2623: Queen Victoria's "Journal of a life in the Highlands"

 

The Journal of a Life in the Highlands by Queen Victoria covers years 1862-1882 (the period of Victoria's ensconcement at Balmoral in Scotland after the death of her husband Prince Albert) - includes all day to day activities and the closeness with her Highland attendant Mr. Brown.  Better than most lifestyle blogs, probably because not aspirational...      You can read the whole thing courtesy of the InternetArchive.  Abbreviated versions are in print as well.

If you have not seen the fantastic film Mrs Brown (as Victoria became colloquially known due to this close relation with Mr Brown) starring Judy Dench as Victoria and Billy Connolly practically inhabiting the role of Brown... get it on your list. Anglophilia sure - but great stuff. The movie was directed by John Madden who immediately followed up with Shakespeare in Love - another 90s classic ("that woman - is A WOMAN!" etc...) where Dench reprises as a monarch this time with cameo as Elizabeth I and a knockout line.

The Mrs Brown trailers are horrendous... just go rent it.  Read some first though...

10E2267: The Art of Manliness Book Club

10e readers may or may not be familiar with The Art of Manliness site. Since 2008 (!) they have done a consistent job of walking the line on sincere discussions of 21st century masculinity without falling into arch or camp or 'roid rants. Examples of most popular articles include How to Shave Like Your Grandpa, How to Tie a Tie, How to Carve a Turkey, 9 Ways to Start a Fire Without Matches, etc...

A further example of enlightenment here is their book club that currently counts over 900 members as active. Started this summer the readings so far have been, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and this month Gates ofFire. As their choice of graphic suggests, these picks are all consistent with the idea of self improvement [one could say that about most reading -ed.]. Readers that care to borrow a copy from their library can search WorldCat for the nearest copy.

10E2244: The Secret Ministry of Ag. & Fish

New biography released in the UK detailing the life of Noreen Riols, one of the last remaining members of the Special Operations Executive (or SOE, also referred to as Churchill's Secret Army or Baker Street Irregulars) intricately involved with the French resistance of WWII. Synopsis below.

"My mother thought I was working for the Ministry of Ag. and Fish..." It was 1943, just before her eighteenth birthday, Noreen received her call-up papers, and was faced with either working in a munitions factory or joining the Wrens [Women's Royal Naval Service -ed.]. A typically fashion-conscious young woman, even in wartime, Noreen opted for the Wrens - they had better hats. But when one of her interviewers realized she spoke fluent French, she was directed to a government building on Baker Street. It was SOE headquarters, where she was immediately recruited into F-Section, led by Colonel Maurice Buckmaster. From then until the end of the war, Noreen worked with Buckmaster and her fellow operatives to support the French Resistance fighting for the Allied cause. Sworn to secrecy, Noreen told no one that she spent her days meeting agents returning from behind enemy lines, acting as a decoy, passing on messages in tea rooms and picking up codes in crossword puzzles.

You can read the whole first chapter via AmazonUK.

10E2204: The Birds

The Birds, one of the most famous short stories by novelist Daphne duMaurier, is v different from the same-named movie directed by Hitchcock but manages to reach that intensity in about 40 pages. Published originally in a collection of stories titled The Apple Tree in 1952 then later as The Birds and other stories I just found it in this pocket paperback. You can read it for yourself online.  Set in Cornwall, England over about 48 hours, and centered on a farmer and his family, it creates feelings of claustrophobia and fear of change from an Eastern wind (this is post WWII remember) - will also gets any parent's blood pumping similar to McCarthy's The Road. #recommend.

10E2198: The Day The Crayons Quit - Oliver Jeffers

The Day The Crayons Quit illustrated by 10e fave Oliver Jeffers from a Drew Daywalt story - features letters to a boy (Duncan) from all his overworked crayons. Great idea. Just released today. Which color gets the most pissed I wonder... purple? Underused!

10E2091: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Recent animation by Woof Wan-Bau's for Penguin Books. 

“Published as a ‘shilling shocker’, Robert Louis Stevenson’s dark psychological fantasy gave birth to the idea of the split personality. The story of respectable Dr Jekyll’s strange association with ‘damnable young man’ Edward Hyde; the hunt through fog-bound London for a killer; and the final revelation of Hyde’s true identity is a chilling exploration of humanity’s basest capacity for evil.”

Have mentioned this classic before and at under 100 pages it is a killer read… (see what I did there?). If you have a kindle or the app on your phone you can download a copy of J&H for $0 from amazon - here. Must read.

10E2001: Chalmers and 'Sending Milk' on WCAX

My buddy Skye Chalmers took his photo-essay Sending Milk (about dairy farming within the Cabot Cooperative) onto Vermont television this morning. You can hear a bit more from him about his hopes for the book (get curious!) and the crux of the project (pay respect to the farmers themselves). I am over the moon for the guy and am trying to get him to Boston for a lecture and slideshow; details and date forthcoming. Like how he is showing more leg than the presenter .... #shortshorts

the salt book

Pamela Wood started Salt in 1973 as a folklore & oral history course at Kennebunk High School in Maine. Students conducted interviews, took photographs, and edited the first issues of Salt magazine.

The Salt Book (available from specialty sellers, not expensive usually, ABE features a bunch now for under $20) is a compilation of some of the Salt articles. It is split into two sections; THE SEA (fishing, shrimping, rum running, sea moss harvesting, how to buid a lobster trap, and more) and THE LAND (snowshoe making, flintlocks, stone walls, barn raising, fiddleheads, maple syrup, and more). Pretty fantastic. Limited photos. B&W.





This a case where I wish googlebooks had a scan... Salt has since morphed into The Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, based in Portland, Maine. A non-profit documentary school/entity/website/building with a contemporary edge.

the toothpick

I like these historical narratives that are created using objects, e.g. the books Salt, and Cod. The Toothpick by Henry Petroski does something similar but happens to also intersect with the Maine logging industry and the story of American manufacturing generally. Plus, I bet you know someone who mysteriously started using toothpicks after seeing the movie Drive... this book is for them too.

The Maine Historical Society is holding a series of discussions in the upcoming months, "Extraordinary Histories of Ordinary Things" with The Toothpick as one focus. More info here. Sidenote, the book is also a testament to the power of research (and not using Google), as the author finds many mistruths online and has to dig for hard data with interviews and visits to various repositories. I'm a bit late to the party here as book out a few years ago but looking forward to this. Excerpt below;

The plain wooden toothpick, it may be argued, is among the simplest of manufactured things. It consists of a single part, made of a single material, intended for a single purpose–from which it gets its simple name. It is also among the most convenient and ready of things. It can be used directly out of the box–there being no instructions to read, no parts to assemble, no priming or booting required, and no maintenance expected. When it has served its purpose, it is simply discarded.
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The very simplicity and banality of the thing made the toothpick and its manufacture an artifact of tacit knowledge and trade secrets. Even in the late twentieth century, Japanese visitors who showed up at a Maine toothpick factory were turned away, lest they see the tricks of the trade. An American scholar, who should hardly have been seen as a potential competitor, was similarly denied entrance to a Minnesota counterpart. He had to go to Sweden to see some toothpicks being made.

Secrecy coupled with a dearth of reliable, confirmable documentary material makes the task of uncovering the real story of a common object a challenge for ordinary scholarship relying on the usual scholarly sources. But there are other sources of information, not least of which is the artifact itself and the documented social and cultural context in which it has been made and used. Much of the story of the toothpick must be coaxed out of the thing itself and its milieu. With patience, slivers of it can be teased out of even a closed box of toothpicks the way a stubborn seed eventually can be dislodged from between the teeth. Insights into the use and misuse of things can be gleaned from both the froth and the detritus of society.
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To an engineer, the challenge of mass-producing something like a toothpick with sufficient efficiency that it can be sold at a profit holds a special fascination. The origins and rise of the mechanized toothpick industry in the latter half of the nineteenth century make for a fascinating chapter in the history of manufacturing, as do the human stories of inventors and innovators such as Benjamin Franklin Sturtevant and Charles Forster, along with their inventions, their patents and patent rights, and their struggles through failures on their way to achieving successes. It is in this chapter of the story that the history of the modest toothpick assumes heroic proportions and provides especially poignant lessons for the technological enterprises of today and tomorrow.

baghdad country club

Book "trailers" are a relatively new sort of thing. This one is for a book/memoir about activities in the Green Zone of Baghdad and the creation of a bar called the Baghdad Country Club. Awesome trailer (animation by Colleen Cox, sound design by Pat Walters) does its job; I want to know more. You can read an excerpt over at The Atlantic then download the whole thing to your ereader via The Atavist. There are straight text versions and a multimedia option with accompanying maps, audio etc. You getting an iPad for Chrimbo? This has Xmas break written all over it.

tarzan of the apes

Just finished the adventure classic Tarzan of the Apes, the first of more than two dozen in the Tarzan series by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Highly recommend. It is not a goof or a romp as many early, slightly campy film versions make out. Gorey. Bows and arrows play a large role in the story which was news to me, and the preamble of the Claytons arrival on the island (Tarzan's parents) is a great castaway-type segment. You can see the where the films (and later tv series) traced their jungle roar/yodel but in the book it is instead a throat-rending explosion into the sky, let out after each bloody kill. Again, good pulpy stuff.

Note, there are serious 1914 Euro-centric views expressed about other nations and the noble white man's inherent superiority... a caricature of the black nanny, and it has been noted that by the 1969 (5th printing) further material had already been left out that was deemed "offensive to certain groups or nationalities". Still, think it is worth reading to see the foundation of this recognizable character.

You can read it free via the GutenbergProject or on your Kindle/iPhone app, again for free, via Amazon. Serious pageturner. Perfect commuter fare.

power moby dick

Damn me. I never understood the first line of Moby Dick "Call me Ishmael." Got it now.

The site Power Moby Dick doesn't so much interpret Moby Dick but rather reveal the history and meaning of words in the text. V v helpful. You can make up your own mind on author's intent. Plus they have links to every conceiveable related resource on the web and beyond.

10e over at cbtr

One of my go-to, stealth picks is the British site Caught by the River. Won't explain it all again [agrarian-mod? -ed.] but they run a feature called The Nature Book Reader which is a collection of reviews (almost high-5s) to "great lost nature books". Long/short, was really chuffed to have been asked to contribute, I submitted a note about one of my faves; Tall Trees, Tough Men. Have mentioned it twice before on 10e but never at length. Read my thoughts on Robert Pike's book over at CBTR.

e b white -one man's meat

Picked this up at our library's book sale last w/e (there were 2 copies actually) and have only just started it - but can see this is going to be a reread for years to come. E.B. White moved with his wife to a farm in Maine from NYC in the late 1930's and among other things wrote a monthly column for Harper's from there. This book One Man's Meat is a collection of those works I understand.

''One Man's Meat'' is too personal for an almanac, too sophisticated for a domestic history, too funny and self-doubting for a literary journal. Perhaps it's a primer: a countryman's lessons that convey, at each reading, a sense of early morning clarity and possibility.
-via NYTBooks

Sidenote; it was in his barn that White began to follow the activity of a certain spider that became the source material for his book Charlotte's Web (1952).

parenting -great day for up

Just discovered this snappy Dr Seuss book Great Day For Up and highly recommend. Departing from the usual Seuess-ical world here the rhymes seem crisp, and more humourous than others from the Dr.




Illustrations by the Englishman Quentin Blake; recognizable as the artist for many Roald Dahl books. He is much more than that though, including being voted Children's Laureat in 1999. Further reading. Nice little sting in the tail at the end. Parents will enjoy.

somerville library book sale tomorrow and this weekend

I volunteer for the Friends. Will be manning the book sale Saturday and Sunday afternooons. Cheap, cheerful treasures. #alliteration

The Friends of the Somerville Public Library will hold their Fall Used Book Sale on Friday October 28th 1-4 PM, Saturday October 29th 10-4 PM, and Sunday October 30th 1:30-3:30 PM. The sale will be held at the Central Library located at 79 Highland Avenue, Somerville, MA.

This year’s collection of books for sale includes most categories, but is particularly strong in the Arts, Science Fiction, Classic Literature, Cook Books, Children's Literature, Foreign Language, and lots of Audio-Video materials including vinyl records. There is also plenty of fiction.

All proceeds from the book sale are used to support cultural and educational programs at the library including the popular museum pass program. Leftover books will be donated to local non-profit groups and the Prison Book Program.

The Friends of the Somerville Public Library is a not-for-profit organization that helps the library and its branches to provide programs, services and materials not covered by the library's normal operating budget. If you would like to become a member of the Friends, or volunteer to help with the book sale, please contact the Friends by email at: FriendsSomervillePublicLibrary@gmail.com

sam lovel's camps

Written by Rowland Evans Robinson in 1889, Sam Lovel's Camps (subtitle Uncle Lisha's friends under bark and canvas) was a sequel to his successful Uncle Lisha's Shop. I had not heard of it before... thought I was up on my 19thC Vermont writers, obviously not.

Robinson created a whole world built around the fictitious town of Danvis, VT populated with farmers, trappers, loggers and canucks. In many of the books (including here) he wrote the dialog in full-on Yankee dialect. Or French-Canadian drawl. Practically impenetrable. Read and enjoy the dry humored explanatory note below.


This and many of his other works can be read and downloaded at the Internet Archive. I found this Forest&Stream published first edition a little while ago; inscribed inside "to father, 1892". Take that Kindle...

His parents were abolitionists, and he wrote his best works later when he was blind. Further reading at The Atlantic Monthly who wrote a fantastic obit for him in 1901.

rhymes with borrow -thoreau

From Thoreau's Walden by Tim Smith.

I have spent the last few Saturdays in the Special Collections below the Concord Free Public Library (founded 1873). There is a mass of pre- and post-revolutionary information, and the archive is also a magnet for Transcendentalist research. I am not looking at anything to do with Walden, or related writings but you can't help but pick up this stuff by osmosis. Thoreau was addressed as thawr-oh in his time... (rather than tha-roh) so you can too.

somerville public library book sale -Oct 28, 29, 30

The Friends of the Somerville Public Library will hold their Fall Used Book Sale on Friday October 28th 1-4 PM, Saturday October 29th 10-4 PM, and Sunday October 30th 1:30-3:30 PM. The sale will be held at the Central Library located at 79 Highland Avenue.

This year’s collection of books for sale includes most categories, but is particularly strong in the Arts, Science Fiction, Classic Literature, Cook Books, Children's Literature, Foreign Language, and lots of Audio-Video materials including vinyl records. There is also plenty of fiction. All proceeds from the book sale are used to support cultural and educational programs at the library including the popular museum pass program. Leftover books will be donated to local non-profit groups and the Prison Book Program.

The Friends of the Somerville Public Library is a not-for-profit organization that helps the library and its branches to provide programs, services and materials not covered by the library's normal operating budget. If you would like to become a member of the Friends, or volunteer to help with the book sale, please contact the Friends by email at: FriendsSomervillePublicLibrary@gmail.com

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This is a great book sale. Highly recommend. Add the event now via FaceBooks

harris tweed -from land to street

Photodoc From Land to Street from Lara Platman. See inside this good looking book at her site.