I love to read, but rarely have time for it. Cliché, I know, but there you have it. This entry started out as a Spring 2012 reading list, but as spring trotted along I realized I hadn’t read nearly enough to make an entry out of it unless I wanted to include a selection of Reddit threads and Cracked articles to round it out. When I visited our family cottage in Manitoba I devoured six books—enough to write this entry and present you with some books I think you should read. And here they are.
The Vinyl Café Notebooks by Stuart McLean
This wonderful book reads like a collection of letters from a dear friend you haven’t seen in years, each one with a point worth pondering and emotions worth indulging. It’s the sort of book you read a chapter or two at a time (though they are short and make for very pleasant reading) so you can really savour each story. Stuart McLean has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember, but this is the first book of his I’ve read. It won’t be the last.
There are people waiting to love you. You might not believe that, but that may be the truest thing I have ever written. If they aren’t around you know, believe me, they exist. You have a job too. Go and find them.
Mother Tongue: English & How it Got That Way by Bill Bryson
This book was utterly wonderful, but it came with a hint of melancholy as I have now read every book Bill Bryson has published (with the exception of his dictionary of troublesome words, though I did actually give that one a go as well). After reading his Made in America, a history of the English language in the USA,Mother Tongue sounded like just what I needed to continue my etymological education.
Mother Tongue is full of answers to questions you never knew you had. Vague little things. Like why are bank tellers called such? Well, it’s because “tell” used to mean “count”. Brilliant! Bryson starts with the dawn of spoken language, works his way up to English, and then tracks it (ever so humorously) around the globe, examining pronunciation, spelling, slang, where words come from, and why we no longer say hath. It’s a fascinating journey well worth taking.
In Britain homely is a flattering expression (equivalent to homey; in America it means “ugly”. In Britain upstairs is the first floor; in America it is the second. In Britain to table a motion means to put it forward to discussion; in America it means to put it aside. Presently means “now” in America; it Britain it means “in a little while”. Sometimes these can cause considerable embarassment, most famously with the British expression “I’ll knock you up in the morning,” which means “I”ll knowck on your door in the morning.” To keep your pecker up is an innocuous expression in Britain (even though, curiously, pecker has the same slang meaning there), but to be stuffed is distinctly rude, so that if you say at a dinner party, “I couldn’t eat another thing; I’m stuffed,” an embarrassing silence will fall over the table. (You may recognize the voice of experience in this.) Such too will be your fate if you innocently refer to someone’s fanny; in England it means a woman’s pudenda.
And the Band Played On…: The enthralling account of what happened after the Titanic sank by Christopher Ward
Considering how much I love the Titanic, you would think I had already read every word that had been written about it. But that isn’t even close to being true, as I think someone is always writing something about it, so I should be well supplied in Titanic-related reading material until I die, and likely for sometime afterwards as well.
And the Band Played On… focuses on what happened after the Titanic sunk, told mostly through the story of 21-year-old band member Jock Hume, the author’s grandfather. When the ship went down Jock left behind a pregnant fiancé, and we follow her struggles with Jock’s rather unbelievably unkind father, along with the recovery of the bodies by the Mackay-Bennet, the aftermath of the sinking, and everything in between. It is a wonderfully told love story with a thoroughly heartbreaking ending, wrapped around the legend of the RMS Titanic.
Of the 1,497 passengers and crew who died that night, more than 1,000 were never seen again, their bodies disappearing for ever, their families, loved ones and friends left in an eternal state of not knowing, with no body to grieve over.
Yet the bodies of three out of the eight bandsmen were recovered and—even more remarkably—were found together. For the next eight days and nights, kept upright and buoyant by their cork lifejackets, Hartley’s violin case still strapped firmly to his chest, they were carried forty miles from the Titanic‘s last resting place by winds and currents.
We will never know how, in the last minutes of their lives, numb with cold, they managed to achieve this or how or when the other five slipped away from the rest of the band. But on 23 April the three dead bandsmen had a rendezvous with a ship as remarkable in its own was as the Titanic: the cable ship Mackay-Bennet. One of the three was my grandfather, Jock.
Titanic: The real story of the construction of the world’s most famous ship by Anton Gill
More Titanic. Surprised? I didn’t think so. This is a highly detailed account of how the Titanic was built, complete with some great photos. I would have loved some diagrams, though; talk about girders and beams, fore and aft, all you like; I still have no idea what’s going on. I think my favourite chapter was the one on interior decorating, where I learned that the suites in first class were decorated in a variety of different styles, ranging from Renaissance and Tudor all the way through to Regency and Victoran.
Reading the OED: One man, one year, 21, 730 pages by Ammon Shea
I picked this book up in a used book/coffee/vintage clothes shop in Wasagaming, Manitoba. Fresh off Mother Tongue, a book about reading the dictionary sounded like a great idea, especially since I wasn’t about to try reading another dictionary anytime soon. Ammon promised to highlight the best forgotten words he found in his journey through the Oxford English Dictionary (the OED), and he fulfilled his promise. This book reads nothing like a dictionary, thanks to the author’s humorous commentary. Now I simply need to memorize the words I really like and start re-introducing them to the world.
Finifugal (adj.) Shunning the end of anything.
Many things in life deserve being finifugal about: the last twenty pages of a good book, a special meal that someone has just spent hours preparing for you, a slow walk in a light rain.
Obdormition (n.) The falling asleep of a limb.
Obdormition is the feeling you get just before prinkling (pins & needles).
Conspue (v.) To spit on someone or something with contempt.
I have not yet found any word that defines the action of spitting on someone or something for a reason other than contempt (can you spit on someone out of friendship or admiration?), and I have a strong suspicion that I will not. One who conspues is referred to as a consputator.
