I went away for a week on vacation – the first one not in upstate New York in years – and I spent the whole time relaxing, and reading. I read about a book a day. Her’s what I read:
Twain’s Feast by Andrew Beahrs. I found this at a library book sale, and it blew me away. I’m a big fan of Mark Twain, but this book isn’t about his writing. It’s a dissection of the ideal American feast that Twain said (in A Tramp Abroad) that he’d put before European hosts to show them the glories of American cuisine. It’s about a lot of foods that are virtually forgotten or extinct since Twain’s time – Terrapin (which fell off the American menu during Prohibition, and never got back on), Prairie hens (almost wiped out – Twain lived during that rare time when , due to the way settlers transformed the land, they rose in number for a brief period before falling off), Raccoon and opossum, Oysters and mussels, and Cranberries. It’s a cultural history of these foods, and fadcinating reading.
Robots in American Popular Culture by our own Exapno Mapcase. I’d wanted to read this one for a long time. Impeccably researched, although there are a few things I want to comment on.
Giant of the Senate by Al Franken – I’ve read most of his other books, and I was curious about his experience becoming and remaining a senator. Very well written and fascinating. But the scary part is that modern Republican politics means that even the scant compromise and cooperation exhibited here has mostly vanished. My favorite line (repeated on that back cover, but I’ve heard it before) :”Here’s the thing you have to understand about Ted Cruz. I like Ted Cruz more than most of my other colleagues. And I hate Ted Cruz.”
The Incorporate Knight by L. Sprague de Camp and Catherine Crook de Camp – De Camp’s Lest Darkness Fall is an acknowledged classic of science fiction, about an unintentional time traveler who finds himself in Imperial Rome as it is about to fall, and tries to prevent the fall. De Camp was clearly heavily influenced by Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. At one point in ACYiKAC, Twain has the Knights of the Round Table forming a stock market, and explains the decline of the table as a result of stock market manipulations by Lancelot and others. I kinda think this volume (a set of short stories later extended into a novel) is his take on throwing knights errant into modern business situations. The incorporation of the titular knight never takes center stage, but it’s in the background throughout and its cause – starting up a stagecoach business – motivates the knight.
Conan of Aquilonia by L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter. I’ve been reading the books of the Lancer series of Conan novels not written by Robert E. Howard (something I haven’t done since the 1970s), and this is the last one. Like The Incorporated Knight, it’s actually a set of previously-published short stories stitched together. Interesting, especially the wat de Camp and Carter name-check the characters they invented and brought into the saga, more than Howard’s characters. But, despite their long association with the character, de Camp and Carter aren’t up to Howard’s story-telling level.
On audio, I’ve been working my way through the complete Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. I’d read the complete tales back as an undergrad (we only had to read two of the stories, but I got interested and read the whole thing.) . I’d forgotten a lot – in particular how many fart jokes there are , even outside of The Miller’s Tale. I’ve been reading the explanations in Wikipedia of each tale as I read it, and I wasn’t aware how many were copies from elsewhere, especially the Decameron (which I never did get around to reading)..
One thing I like about the narration – the reader pronounces “primer” (as in a child’s first reading book) the same way you pronounce the paint base, with a long “I”. I’ve never liked the “proper” pronunciation, which is as if it was spelled “primmer” , and would like to see that pronunciation replaced. It’s good to know that someone else thinks so, too. I make it a point to pronounce it with a long “I”, myself.
