Well, that was fun and enlightening. I love etiquette books, and am neutral on advice columnists in general except for Daniel Ortberg's Dear Prudence. But then there's that whole other aspect: the how-to-do-anything-better field is one I appreciate. Paradoxically, I have never been a fan of the Self-Help book genre. Yes, I think there is a great deal we can all learn from the billions of other people in the world, many of whom have struggled with the same issues and also, at the same time, skeptical of the idea that reading a book is ever going to really turn anyone's life around. Mari Kondo has much to teach me about how to best put things away, for example, but neither her book nor show is going to convince me to spend a month finding every book in the house and putting it into one big pile in order to hold each one and wait for the spirit to move me in a joy spark or not way.

Much of the historical stuff was completely unknown to me. I had heard of Poor Richard's Almanack, but knew next to nothing about Franklin or his publishing. I knew of Graham, but Alcott was a surprise. Etcetera.
Clever and also entertaining.

Library copy

You don’t have to be a heavy drinker to enjoy this, although it’s probably best if you have an interest of some kind in booze. So many wonderful kinds of booze. There are recipes if you’d like to host a Drunken Botanist party, but largely a lot of very entertaining trivia about all the plants that show up in all the drinks, in so many ways. An amusingly different way  into the subject.

Library copy

03/18/16

My brother owned a copy of This is London as a child (perhaps he still does). Along with his copy of Anatole, these were highly coveted objects. In the London book there is a picture of a man, in a park, up a tree, and he's sawing off a tree branch: the one that he's sitting on!

How quaint that seems now. I'd love to have all the original books, or reprints of same, in theory. I'm worried that the judicious choice of snippets for this book might have some possible basis in the idea of excising images or text that would be broadly offensive now. There is an emphasis here on Anglophone interests, and nothing, I think, on the native people of any location. Really, it can't deserve the word "world" without anything from Africa, Asia, or South America, just to name a few glaring omissions.

Anyway, I loved it. The art is so sixties, and so cool, even now it remains distinctive and attractive. It may be a safe nostalgia, but it was good.

***

11/14/17

Culture: You're soaking in it

“Platypus looks as if he were forever unable to decide what he wants to be: he has a beak like a bird, he swims under water like a fish, he has fur like a kangaroo, and he lays eggs but suckles his young.”

Library copy

Quick and cute read with a lot of funny illustrations!

However, there were lots of facts that weren't that unknown.