I’m shamelessly stealing a page from Dani Torres’ blog (pun totally intended but not very good) and doing a library books post today… mostly because I’m snowed under by so much stuff I “should” be doing that I don’t want to do anything. And because when I went to the library to return things, a whole bunch of my requested books had come in AND I found a couple books at the Friends of the Library bookstore. You never know with the library request system. Sometimes books come right away, and other times it takes a week or more. I got all hot and bothered requesting books last weekend, and five of them came in all at once! This makes me simultaneously happy and stressed…happy because I love to have plenty of delicious books to choose from, and stressed because I’m worried I’ll have to give them back before I finish with them. Though I want to start on these right away, I’m already reading a novel (The Paris Wife, by Paula McLain, which I am loving) and the last book for my “Off the Shelf” challenge (Why New Orleans Matters, by Tom Piazza, also excellent)

I know it’s crazy to have so many books hanging around waiting to be read, especially this time of year when I have so many other things to do. I can’t seem to help myself! See, here are the library books I picked up. Don’t they all sound tempting in their own ways?

Of Flowers and a Village, Wilfred Blunt. I can’t remember where I heard of this, but it sounds charming. This is a novel written in the form of “chatty letters” from a godfather to his goddaughter who is bedridden while recovering from an illness. The letters paint a picture of village life, combined with history, gardening knowledge and local lore.

The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life, William Nicholson. Laura, a happily married mother of two, begins to question her choices after her college boyfriend resurfaces after 20 years, comparing the passion of her first love with her current suburban life. Little does she know, she’s not the only one having a personal crisis in her small English village.

Civil War Wives, Carol Berkin. A peek into the lives of the wives of abolitionist Theodore Dwight Weld, Confederacy President Jefferson Davis and Union commander Ulysses S. Grant. Publisher’s Weekly says, “[Berkin] wants to catch the realities of three privileged, yet restricted women and thus to reveal how even the most fortunate of wives—at least fortunate in the importance and celebrity of their husbands—struggled, not always successfully, to face down the difficulties of their sex. In this, [she] is entirely successful.”

Design*Sponge at Home, Grace Bonney. Design*Sponge is one of the most popular design sites on the web, and creator Bonney’s book contains home tours, DIY projects, before-and-after makeovers and more. I’m enamored of this table/library project...

What It Is, Lynda Barry. How to describe this book? It’s called a “writing how-to graphic novel” and one review commented, “Each page is a feast for the eyes with beautiful full-page collages of photographs, watercolors, ink drawings, and text, resulting in a gorgeous volume that explores and encourages writing in a combination of ways.” Sounds fun, yes?

My two bookstore finds were Mary Emmerling’s Romantic Country, and, ironically considering the state of my house and my mind, Karen Kingston’s Clear Your Clutter With Feng Shui.

It’s likely that while I “should” be wrapping gifts or writing Christmas cards, I’ll be reading. Oh, well. Maybe I can use reading time as a reward for getting my chores done?

Which book would you choose to start with?

Photo courtesy Mirko Harnisch

Perhaps it was a reaction to the gathering speed of life in this holiday season, but my weekend was full of guilty pleasures and comfort reading. Every year at Christmastime I make a big batch of molasses sugar cookies for us and our neighbors across the street. Our sons have been friends since they were preschoolers, and we’ve developed a friendship and an alliance with the parents to keep the kids supervised and out of trouble (as much as is possible with teenage boys). Jodi always bakes us something yummy at Thanksgiving—this year it was a loaf of red velvet cake—and I return the favor at Christmas. Of course, when I make these cookies, there is much tasting of dough and of finished cookies (don’t want to give the neighbors something that doesn’t taste good, do we?). Then we have a cookie jar full of cookies for a few days, and these cookies go really well with my coffee... I’m eating one as I write…

But I digress. Where was I? Oh, yes, guilty pleasures. While I was baking said cookies, I was watching—and I almost hate to admit this—a Netflix disk of Laverne & Shirley. Go ahead, laugh if you want. My husband does. L & S came out in the late 70s/early 80s, and I remember watching it with my mom. It’s a silly show, but one with a sweet heart and optimistic spirit. I like to have the TV on when I bake, but I can’t watch anything too engrossing. I either lose crucial plot points, or get caught up in what I’m watching and burn the cookies. Laverne & Shirley was perfect for my purposes. Guilty pleasure piled upon guilty pleasure.

When I was done with guilty pleasures, I moved right on to a comfort read, revisiting a book from my childhood: Rosamund du Jardin’s Double Date. Double Date is the first book in a series about twins Pam and Penny Howard. A few months back, feeling nostalgic, I was trying to remember the names of the books in this series, or even the author’s name. I remembered the series involved twins, and I thought some of the titles included the word “double,” but beyond that I was stumped. Through the magic of the internet, I was able to track it down and even order the first book from Amazon.

Double Date is set in the 50s (coincidentally, so is Laverne & Shirley), and I thought the story held up well, even though it’s incredibly sweet and innocent compared with today’s children’s/tween books. Just before their senior year of high school, Pam and Penny move with their mother and grandmother to a small town outside of Chicago, so their mother can open her own interior design business. Pam is the more self-assured twin, popular with everyone, while Penny is quieter, unsure of herself and more serious. The story takes place through the school year, and Penny learns to come out from under Pam’s shadow and blossom into herself. I can see why I liked this so much when I was growing up—I must have identified with Penny.

Between cookies, Laverne & Shirley and Double Date, I had a very comforting weekend.

What guilty pleasures, or comfort reads, have you indulged in lately?

On our last full day in New Orleans, we spent the morning touring and sketching at the Beauregard-Keyes House. Built in 1826 by a well-to-do auctioneer, it takes its name from its most famous residents, Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard, who lived there for some time during the mid-1860s, and author Frances Parkinson Keyes, an author who penned 51 books beginning in 1919.

During the tour, I confess I was much more interested in Mrs. Keyes than in General Beauregard, so most of the information I took away concerned her. Mrs. Keyes (pronounced to rhyme with “eyes”) rented the house in 1944 from a group of ladies who had saved the house from demolition in 1925. (They had tackled the house as a historical project because General Beauregard had lived there.) Mrs. Keyes eventually bought the house and restored both it and the formal garden, and turned the kitchen washhouse into her writing studio. For 25 years, she lived there during the winter months and wrote several of her books there, including the only one that I have read, Dinner at Antoine’s. She died there in 1970.

The house contains furniture belonging to General Beauregard and his family, as well as many items Mrs. Keyes collected throughout her life: dolls, fans, and veilleuses, described to us as nightlights, but originally used to keep a small portion of drink or semi-liquid food warm at nighttime, usually for an infant or sick person. I loved the veilleuses Mrs. Keyes collected and wanted to bring a similar one home as a souvenir, but the only ones sold in the museum gift shop were plain white and not particularly attractive. Something to look for in antiques stores, perhaps.

A veilleuse

 My favorite part of the tour was seeing Mrs. Keyes’ writing studio. (I love seeing other people’s creative spaces!) She wrote in longhand in a composition book, one of which was open on the desk. The light-filled space charmed me completely. Hmm, maybe I’d get more writing done if I had a studio like this?

Handwritten manuscript for The Chess Player

Following the house tour, we sketched in the formal garden. I always loved seeing everyone scatter to the different places that intrigued them for sketching purposes. Even when two people chose to sketch the same thing, the final products always came out looking different from each other—the “hand of the artist” in evidence.

Two sketchers at work

This trip just reinforced my love for New Orleans. Spending five days exploring different aspects of NOLA’s culture and history whetted my appetite for more. I want to go back!

All our sketchbooks. Mine is the one on the bottom left.

Have you ever visited someplace that captivated you? Were you ever able to return?

Photo courtesy Jonathan King

It’s likely that if you found the original handwritten manuscript of T. S. Eliot’s groundbreaking poem, “The Waste Land,” you wouldn’t be able to trade it for a candy bar at the Quick Shop on your corner. Here’s a poem by David Lee Garrison of Ohio about how unsuccessfully classical music fits into a subway. [Introduction by Ted Kooser.]

Bach in the DC Subway

As an experiment,
The Washington Post
asked a concert violinist—
wearing jeans, tennis shoes,
and a baseball cap—
to stand near a trash can
at rush hour in the subway
and play Bach
on a Stradivarius.
Partita No. 2 in D Minor
called out to commuters
like an ocean to waves,
sang to the station
about why we should bother
to live.

A thousand people
streamed by. Seven of them
paused for a minute or so
and thirty-two dollars floated
into the open violin case.
A café hostess who drifted
over to the open door
each time she was free
said later that Bach
gave her peace,
and all the children,
all of them,
waded into the music
as if it were water,
listening until they had to be
rescued by parents
who had somewhere else to go.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2008 by David Lee Garrison, whose most recent book of poems is “Sweeping the Cemetery: New and Selected Poems,” Browser Books Publishing, 2007. Poem reprinted from “Rattle,” Vol. 14, No. 2, Winter 2008, by permission of David Lee Garrison and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006.