TITLE:  Phantoms on the Bookshelves

AUTHOR:  Jacques Bonnet

TRANSLATOR:  Siân Reynolds

DATE PUBLISHED:  2010

ISBN-13:  9781906694586

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DESCRIPTION:

"This enchanting study on the art of living with books considers how our personal libraries reveal our true nature: far more than just places, they are living labyrinths of our innermost feelings. The author, a lifelong accumulator of books both ancient and modern, lives in a house large enough to accommodate his many thousands of books, as well as overspill from the libraries of his friends. While his musings on the habits of collectors past and present are learned, witty and instructive, his advice on cataloguing may even save the lives of those whose books are so prodigiously piled as to be a hazard... The Phantoms on the Bookshelves ranges from classical Greece to contemporary Iceland, from Balzac and Moby Dick to Google, offering up delicious anecdotes along the way. This elegantly produced volume will be a lasting delight to specialist collectors, librarians, bibliophiles and all those who treasure books."

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REVIEW:

A memoir-type collection of hodge-podge book collection musings.  For a specific audience  - those with vast libraries and/or those with an interest in (mostly) French literature.

Millard Salter’s Last Day, Jacob M. Appel, author

It is rare that an author is able to take a dark, difficult subject and transform it into one that it is easy to read and is also very funny. Appel has accomplished this. This novel has been compared, by some, to “A Man Called Ove”, which I truly enjoyed, but I think the message of this book is more profound and important. While the book is not laugh out loud humorous, the witticisms on every page will bring a smile to most readers’ lips and surely make them think wistfully about how they approach and experience their own lives.

If you have ever lived in the New York area, the book will call to you more loudly and will certainly bring back memories. If you are of a certain age, it will touch your heart even more. Although the novel takes place in one day, it presents a composite of the last seven decades as it travels through the memories and present life of the main character. It was like traveling down a hallway filled with nostalgic pictures of life as it once was and life as it is today. The contrasts drawn were delightful and the book should really appeal to those of all ages.

Murphy’s Law played a large role in the life of Millard Salter on his “last day”. Everything that could delay his plans or change them, even the most bizarre of circumstances, occurred on his birthday. He met with people he hoped to avoid, experienced danger and encountered people at their best and their worst. The question of whether or not something would inevitably intervene and stop him from his final pursuit hung over every page. I kept rooting for him to choose to live.

Millard, a man of a certain age, has experienced a modicum of success with many moments of romance and love in his life. A psychiatrist, at a well known hospital, he has witnessed the frailties of human beings in all of its phases. After decades, the field of his specialty is still treated, by and large, with whispers. His office is located in the basement of the building with the more mundane services, like housekeeping. It is a building that will soon be torn down and relocated, to be replaced by what some would define as “progress”.

Millard has also experienced disappointment. Over the years he has suffered loss and grief, as most people do with the passage of time. He has witnessed the suffering and indignity of those he has loved at the end of their lives. Millard is determined not to follow in their footsteps. He has decided to pick the day of his death rather than have death take him randomly.

Essentially, Millard is a dinosaur who believes that he has outlived his usefulness. He has lost many dear to him, and sees little else occurring in his life of any value. His children are grown and carving their own paths. His humor, once appreciated, is lost on the young generation. In short, Millard is really everyman who is aging and facing the ultimate result. He wants to walk down that final road with dignity rather than as a powerless and vulnerable victim. However, Millard is still respected and well liked and really does not have a reason to believe that he has come to the end of his road. He is still able to work and is in excellent health aside from an ache or pain which naturally comes with aging. Is his decision rational? He is after all a psychiatrist, the one who is sought when behavior is irrational.

Millard believes in “Compassionate Endings”. As the reader travels down the road with him, the reader might choose a different path or two, but the reader will definitely be inspired to think about all of the decisions Millard makes with regard to their own lifestyle. The reader will witness the freedom that comes to Millard on the day he believes will be his last. He is unstressed and calm. He quietly terminates his relationships with those he knows and loves and those he dislikes. He ties up all of his loose ends. As his friend and lover, Delilah, suffering from a terminal disease, plots her own demise, he is drawn into her plans. He has witnessed her gradual descent into helplessness and her determination not to become completely dependent on others. He supports her right to choose.

Although the subject is dark, as death is, the author has treated it with such a light and witty hand, it feels commonplace and nonthreatening. The author’s style and prose is really easy to read and is not heavy at all. He has made a subject that is tabu, very palatable. The book is not so much about life and death, or the choice between them, but it is about the idea of euthanasia, of living and ending one’s life with dignity, not unnecessary distress. It is funny and filled with humanity. I highly recommend it.

Well, I needed to read 22 books this month if I was going to pull myself out of the TBR-reducing-hole I'd dug for myself in June, and thanks to a reading binge, I pulled it off.  My total this month was 28 books.  6 of those were re-reads, but either way you interpret the parameters of my challenge, I still pulled it off.

I had 1 5-star read this month: Headstrong: 52 Women Who Changed Science-and the World by Rachel Swaby and I recommend it to anyone - in either print or audio - that has an interest in women, history or science.  The bios are brief, but 90% of these scientists are ones you're likely to have never heard of before, so it's all new stuff and well-written.

I had 4 4.5-star reads too, including one Man Booker Prize winner; a first for me.  Lincoln in the Bardo was also the only fiction to make the cut this month.  

For July, since I was feeling chart-y this month:

(I just realised that second chart is mis-labeled; it should read "fiction/non-fiction" but I can't be bothered opening the program back up and fixing it.)

TBR Challenge update: 

July budget: -11

Books bought in July: 3

Books read in July: 28

Deficit brought forward to August: 0

# of books pre-ordered for August: 6

August budget: 7*

*: by my admittedly dodgy mental rules, because I went into July at a deficit, clearing it should start me back at zero, as though I'm starting over. So this month's budget is based on half the number of books I read in July *after* clearing that deficit.

So it would appear I have 1 book left to buy in August, except I don't.  I've placed an order for 5 books from Mysterious Books, which means I'm in the hole again by 4 books.  So far.  Hopefully it'll stay at 4; Halloween Bingo is coming up, but I have loads of books on my TBR I should be able to make work, so I'm semi-confident I won't need to buy any - at least until September.

How was your month?  :)

I bought this on a whim, because it's just a gorgeous book, chock full of old book covers.  I figured I'd be interested in the contents too, of course, but was prepared, based on the title, for a lot of hyperbole.

Not so much really.  I'd say the editors did a fantastic job of choosing books that most people would agree significantly affected, if not changed, the course of society.  I enjoyed the narratives written for each one too; I learned at least a little something about each book, in spite of at least 95 of them being familiar to me already.

I knocked the rating back a little because some of the choices would have had a more localised influence than others (A Book of Mediterranean Food and The Cat in the Hat come most quickly to mind), and because there was a slight but noticeable political bias to the choices.  Whether that bias was the editors' or history's, I don't know, and I can't argue the impact most of these books had, so it's a pretty small quibble really.

A nice book for the bibliophile or the armchair historian who enjoys the trend of history through objects.

The blurb for this one does a good job of summing up the premise, although some things are a bit misleading. As a psychiatrist, our main character does have an up close and personal viewpoint on the affects that aging can have on the mind and body, and like most of us, he doesn't want to go through that or be a burden. He takes it a step further and decides to end his life before the inevitable happens. 

While the book is well-written, and at times humorous, I had a hard time connecting to this character. The story also requires a bit of a suspension of belief on some of things that happened as well as the possibility that all of it happened in the span of one day. I did continue reading, mostly because I kept expecting someone or something to stop the intended suicide and I did have some curiosity about that aspect. I won't give that part away, but I will say that with so many distracting side-stories and a character that I found less than engaging, this one was just too easy to set aside for later. I didn't find that compelling aspect in a story that makes you want to read just one more chapter before turning out the light, making this one just an okay read for me.