Dear Fahrenheit 451: Love and Heartbreak In The Stacks: A Librarian's Love Letters and Breakup Notes to the Books In Her Life by Annie Spence

Dear Fahrenheit 451: Love and Heartbreak In the Stacks: A Librarian's Love Letters and Breakup Notes to the Books in Her Life by Annie Spence

256 Pages

Published September 2017 by Flatiron Books

Publisher's Summary: 

If you love to read, and presumably you do since you’ve picked up this book (!), you know that some books affect you so profoundly they forever change the way you think about the world. Some books, on the other hand, disappoint you so much you want to throw them against the wall. Either way, it’s clear that a book can be your new soul mate or the bad relationship you need to end.

In Dear Fahrenheit 451, librarian Annie Spence has crafted love letters and breakup notes to the iconic and eclectic books she has encountered over the years. From breaking up with The Giving Tree (a dysfunctional relationship book if ever there was one), to her love letter to The Time Traveler’s Wife (a novel less about time travel and more about the life of a marriage, with all of its ups and downs), Spence will make you think of old favorites in a new way. Filled with suggested reading lists, Spence’s take on classic and contemporary books is very much like the best of literature—sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, sometimes surprisingly poignant, and filled with universal truths.

A celebration of reading, Dear Fahrenheit 451 is for anyone who loves nothing more than curling up with a good book…and another, and another, and another!

My Thoughts:

"When people say books are full of wonder, we don't take it seriously enough."

This one was recommended for my book club and I worked and worked on finding a theme for the year that would work to include it. Finally I hit on the idea of a book that represents something about each month and for February it was love - in this case love letters to books. I was expecting a book full of letters to books that Spence has loved through her life and I felt certain that I would have enjoyed that book. But this book is so much more. 

Dear Fahrenheit 451 is funny, snarky, political, and, unexpectedly, a bit naughty (which, honestly, makes me love librarians even more). Spence writes letters to books she loves, books that she is culling from collections (including a book about masturbation and a recipe book filled with recipes for popcorn), and even a book collection in a person's home that she becomes a little too involved with. There is more here, though, than just the letters. Spence also includes lists of books for readers who want particular kinds of books and recommendations for people who say they don't like or have time to read. 

To Dr. Seuss' Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories, Spence writes about how the book saved her on the playground, when she saw it sticking out of another outcast parent's diaper bag and likens that playground hierarchy to the one in the book. 

"Since your release in 1950, you may have assumed fascism was dead, but you need only look around this lot of tyrant tots and their proud parents to see that no everyone absorbed your line about all creatures being free. While the parents at the top of the proverbial turtle heap discuss min-body connections and preschool plans on the shady benches, I'm down the throne on the broiling-hot-covered-in-bird-sh&# bench, whipping sand out of my crying child's eyes with the bottom of my T-shirt."

Most of all this book is a love letter to the idea of books. What they make us feel, how they make us think, and what they represent to society: 

"Dear Fahrenheit 451,

Don't ever change. And stay here with us, always, You were created in a library, and I'm comforted by the fact art you'll remain on library shelves around the world. If we ever get to a point where you're not included in the core of a book collection, we're all f*^#ed...Some days the world feels closer to that point than I'm comfortable with. Be glad you have a voice but no eyes. Since 1953, the talking walls are bigger and louder than ever. The modern-day "firefighters" are armed not with kerosene but snarky internet memes, reality TV, and the ability to simultaneously see more and less of the world around them." 

So many books here that I haven't read...yet. Thanks, Spence, for the recommendations and the reminder that libraries are great places and that librarians are cool. 

 

The Custom of The Country by Edith Wharton

The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton
Originally published in 1913
Source: my copy purchased for my Nook...because I couldn't find my print copy*

Summary:
A scathing yet personal examination of the exploits and follies of the modern upper class. As she unfolds the story of Undine Spragg, from New York to Europe, Wharton affords us a detailed glimpse of what might be called the interior décor of this America and its nouveau riche fringes. Through a heroine who is as vain, spoiled, and selfish as she is irresistibly fascinating, and through a most intricate and satisfying plot that follows Undine's marriages and affairs, she conveys a vision of social behavior that is both supremely informed and supremely disenchanted. - Anita Brookner

My Thoughts:
I am a little embarrassed to admit that I've been doing such a bad job with reading classics that I've sort of forgotten what it takes to read one. Patience. A time commitment. An understanding that there may not be a lot of action and there will be a lot of detail. Fortunately, because I had picked this book for my book club to read, I had to make sure I had read it.

And I'm so happy that I did because Undine Spragg turns out to be one of the great bad girls of literature. I really can't believe that her name isn't as well known as Becky Sharpe (Vanity Fair) and Scarlett O'Hara (Gone With The Wind). In fact, she may be worse than Scarlett O'Hara - Scarlett, at least, was trying to save Tara when she married again and again for money instead of love. There is nothing that Undine cares about more than Undine. As much as I disliked Becky Sharp for the better part of 700 pages, eventually I came to hope she found happiness. Undine, not so much; I never stopped disliking her.

Which just goes to show that you can dislike a character and still enjoy a book about them.

Also, that I will find pleasure in anything that Edith Wharton writes. I adore the way she skewers the privileged classes and those who aspire to join them (I do love me some snarkiness in a novel!).

"The affair was a 'scandal' and it was not in the Dagonet traditions to acknowledge the existence of scandals."

I adore her descriptions:

"...her pale soft-cheeked face, with puffy eye-lids and drooping mouth, suggested a partially melted wax figure which had run to double-chin."

 "...what Popple called society was really just like the houses it lived in: a middle of misapplied ornament over a thin steel shell of utility. The steel shell was built up in Wall Street, the social trimmings were hastily added in Fifth Avenue: and the union between them was as monstrous and factitious, as unlike the gradual homogenous growth which flowers into what other countries know as society, as that between the Blois gargoyles on Peter Van Degen's roof and the skeleton walls supporting them."

Most of all, I adore the way she sees the truth of people:

"Mabel had behaved 'beautifully.' But it is comparatively easy to behave beautifully when one is getting what one wants, and when someone else, who has not always been altogether kind, is not."

I must admit that I had my doubts about choosing Wharton for book club. But it was a success; while people acknowledged that it was slow going getting started, they got more and more wrapped up in it and found they had to find out what would happen to Undine. Undine never disappointed. And neither did Wharton.


*I have a very old copy of this book. I'm pretty sure that I've used it somewhere around the house for decorative purposes. Therein lies the problem with decorating with books!

Sunday Salon - November 6

November, already? How did that happen while I wasn't looking? It's been such an unusual and busy year for me and my reading time has really taken a hit. Heading into the holiday season, I'm going to have to accept that it's not going to get any better the rest of the year. That being said, I'm tossing in the towel on all challenges. I'm going to try to read some of the books that I'd planned for them but I'm giving myself permission to "fail" without guilt.

Now for that promised picture from last month's Omaha Bookworms meeting. Mary Helen Stefaniak, author of The Cailiffs of Baghdad, GA is third from the left. What fun we had talking with Mary Helen about her books, her family and even baseball. Hmm, now that we've seen how great it is to have an author in our midst, I wonder how Timothy Schaffert (also from Omaha) would feel about joining us to talk about The Little Coffins of Hope?

Added to my wish list this week: Catherine The Great by Robert K. Massie, Lionheart by Sharon Kay Penman, The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman, The Wandering Falcon by Ahmad Jamil, The Boy In The Suitcase by Lena Kaaberol and Agnete Friis, and James Madison by Richard Brookhiser. It's probably bad to add this many books at a time given how little I've been reading lately!

Fans of Sarah Jio's, The Violets of March, will be happy to know that she's got a new book, The Bungalow, coming out this December. Here's a little teaser for you:



 I'm finishing Vivienne Schiffer's Camp Nine for a TLC Book Tour this week. Then I'm back to reading The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives by Lola Shoneyin, the Omaha Bookworms December selection. What are you reading this week? What books did you add to your wish list?

Sunday Salon - October 30

Happy 29th anniversary to my beloved Big Guy! This year has really served to remind us both of those vows we said before our family and friends all of those years ago. And how did we celebrate, you may ask? Last night we enjoyed dinner at a wonderful Italian restaurant but today we have spent most of the day going our own ways - he to enjoy the beautiful fall colors and me to have Miss H's senior pictures taken. Here's what he saw today:

Thursday evening The Omaha Bookworms enjoyed a wonderful evening with Mary Helen Stefaniak, author of The Cailiffs of Baghdad, GA. Ms. Stefaniak stepped in and immediately became one of the gang, particularly when she mentioned to group that she was interested in the World Series game. When you let on to a group of women, half of whom have spent some time in St. Louis, that you're cheering for the Cardinals, you have made yourself a group of friends! We started by picking her brain about her writing process and ended by talking about the Ku Klux Klan--what a fantastic conversation! Pictures to come!

I've mentioned before that the Omaha Bookworms is a diverse group of women; we count among our members our own political activist. You have probably not heard of the Trans-Canada effort to build a pipeline through Nebraska but it really is something that everyone should be concerned about given that its planned route takes it directly over the Ogallala Aquifer, one of the world's largest aquifers. That's gotten our former President of the League of Women Voters so riled up that she appeared in front of the state legislature in her Susan B. Anthony outfit, something she may regret having told a blogger! Here she is in action:



This evening we're enjoying some literary television. First we watched "Once Upon A Time" which I'm thoroughly enjoying (but The Big Guy says it feels like "Desperate Housewives" goes goth to him). Now we're watching "Case Histories" on PBS, a series based on Kate Atkinson's books about Jackson Brodie with this episode based on her book "When Will There Be Good News." We both quite liking this and wish we would have caught the first two episodes.

I'm finishing up Steve Inskeep's Instant City for a TLC Book Tour this week. I'll also have reviews of Julia Child's My Life In France and The Kitchen Counter Cooking School by Kathleen Flinn. What's on your reading agenda this week?

Saying Goodbye To A Friend

The act of reading a book is almost always a solitary experience. But, if you're lucky, you'll find a group of people who like to talk about books with. If you're even luckier, who'll find friends in that very same group. A lot of people scoff at book clubs. Some believe they are nothing more than an excuse to drink wine and gossip once a month. Some believe that the people in them take the books much too seriously and don't have any fun at all. I'm sure there are clubs that are like this.

Three years ago a friend invited me to join her book club. I love getting the chance to read books I might not otherwise read; I love having the chance to talk about the books with other people who have read them. Do we drink wine? Oh, yeah, we like our wine! Do we spend a lot of time talking about things other than books? Well, yes, as a matter of fact, we do. Which is how the Omaha Bookworms went from a diverse group of women to a circle of friends. Over the past year or so, we've had to say goodbye to a number of our friends as they have moved away from us. Today, though, five of us joined more than a hundred other people to say a final goodbye to one of our friends.

E was diagnosed four years ago with Stage 4 Inflammatory Breast Cancer. At the time she was told that, because she was young and in such great health otherwise, she had six months to two years left. That wasn't good enough for E. She began doing research. Already a healthy eater and advocate of organic foods, E amped it up. She found new methods of treatment, including an alternative to using scans which utilize radiation. E was a fierce competitor in every way so she would have fought Cancer with every ounce of her being no matter what. But E is the mother of three young girls, three girls with whom she was determined to spend more time.

I met E a little more than a year after she was first diagnosed with IBC. Her hair was just growing back from the first rounds of treatment, a beautiful curly steel grey. I didn't know then, though, who E was and what she was going through. Only after that first night did I find out. I couldn't believe it because I have never seen a healthier looking person. This past winter, E was able to join the Omaha Bookworms when we met to discuss her choice of book, Jane Gooddall's Harvest for Hope: A Guide To Mindful Eating and despite what she had been through in the past six months, she remained one of the healthiest looking women I have ever seen.

E was one of the fiercest, most courageous people I have ever met. Her spirit touched so many lives and she was an inspiration to all who knew her. E's favorite quote was "Attitude is Everything" and she had the most amazing attitude. Last year E said of her previous two years:

"Every minute of life is amazing when you didn’t think it was going to be there.    Actually every minute in life is amazing.  Sometimes we just don’t see it that way.  Miracles are everywhere."

In the past year, E has been writing a blog. If you are interested in learning more about what E learned about living with and treating Inflammatory Breast Cancer, I encourage you to visit Rolling On The Edge Of Life.

The Omaha Bookworms Talk to Jennie Nash

Last month my bookclub, The Omaha Bookworms, got the chance to do a Skype interview with Jennie Nash and talk about her book, The Threadbare Heart.  Jennie is such a delight to talk and even put up with us when we got off topic on occasion.

Jennie wanted to know which character our group liked the most and it was pretty much unanimous that Eleanor was our favorite character in the book.  We all liked the relationship between Lily and Eleanor and the fact that when it came right down to it, Eleanor was jealous of Lily.

Because so much of her book The Last Beach Bungalow reflects Jennie's own experiences, we wanted to know if the same was true of this book.  At first Jennie said there really wasn't much that came from her own life except for the character of Gordon who was somewhat loosely based on the man who just married Jennie's mother.  But the more she talked, the more Jennie confessed that there was some element of her own thought process in the book.

The seamstresses in the group wondered if Jennie was herself a seamstress but she confessed that she was not.  She said that she had gone into a fabric store looking for samples of fabrics to get some ideas, however, and found a wonderful man there that really made her understand how fabric speaks to people.

One of our members wanted to know if Tom really had not had an affair or if that was a lie to make Lily feel better. Jennie said that he had not but laughed at our midwest preoccupation with the fact that the woman Lily fears he's been cheating with never wears a bra.

One of our members, who couldn't be with us, has also experienced a home fire and said that she, too had made lists after the fire just like Lily did.  So we wondered if Jennie knew someone who had lost a home in a fire.  She said she didn't but just felt like that was something that she would do if she had that experience.

Because Lily suffers from migraines, we asked if Jennie did as well and she said that she has suffered from quite severe migraines for years.  It's what lead her to write the non-fiction book that she is working on e-publishing right now.  Before the group met, I had a chance to talk to Jennie about this and she said that it's a whole different thing to go this route over traditional publishing and she's learning a lot.

We always have to know about what an author is working on now and Jennie confided that she's got something very different in the works.  When she approached her editor with another book idea, her editor suggested that she go bigger this time, as opposed to the smaller in scope novels about families that she has done up until now.  She's got some very interesting ideas for it--boy, did we get off topic talking about one of them!

I think we'd all agree that The Threadbare Heart made a great book club selection; we certainly found a lot to discuss.  And if your book club likes to find books that will allow you to speak with the author, Jennie makes a terrific guest to the party!

Rooftops of Tehran by Mahbod Seraji

Rooftops of Tehran By Mahbod Seraji
368 pages
Published May 2009 by Penguin
Source: borrowed

In pre-revolutionary Iran, 17-year-old Pasha is spending the summer on his rooftop with his best friend Ahmed, talking about what teenage boys the world over talk about--the girls they're in love with, their crazy parents, the neighborhood bullies. Pasha is secretly in love with Zari, the girl next door. But Zari has been betrothed to Doctor since they were young children. And Pasha really, really admires Doctor who, as a student many years older, has ideas about the world that Pasha finds compelling. When Doctor goes away for a while, Ahmed hatches a plan to allow Pasha to spend time with Zari (and Ahmed to spend time with the girl he is in love with as well). Despite feeling guilty about being in love with Doctor's future wife, this is a wonderful time for Pasha. But when Doctor sneaks back to the neighborhood late one night, Pasha accidentally gives him away to the Shah's secret police and sets in motion a series of events that will change the lives of everyone in the neighborhood.

This story appealed to me on many levels. It was so interesting to learn more about another part of the world, another culture, another time. Seraji includes in the story the views that many Iranians had of the Americans at the time. They hated the U.S. for their interference in their country and for installing a despot. At the same time, they were entranced with the idea of going to the U.S. and the lifestyle and educational opportunities to be found there. The stories about how dissidents were treated were horrific but not over done and really used to make the reader understand the character' motivations.

The coming-of-age story of both Pasha and Ahmed includes, remarkably, a great deal of humor which makes it feel very realistic and believable as it balances out the heavier elements. The writing is clear but paints a vivid picture of the people and their surroundings.

Seraji's writing can sometimes get a bit cliched and occasionally even flowery. Periodically, the story seemed to drag. But not often and not for long; and, because the overall story was so good, this reader was willing to forgive those flaws.

I read this for my face-to-face book club which will meet to discuss it next week. I anticipate that it will lead to a lively discussion as there is much to talk about in this book. We are looking forward to getting to talk to Mr. Seraji as well; it specifically says in the back of the book that he is available to talk to book clubs.

**Update**
For an author Q and A and an audio interview, click here.