Falling in love again: the nonfiction tome

Just the other day, I was complaining to a friend about how so many works of nonfiction are obese, topping the 500-page mark, when they would be so much more appealing at, say, 250 to 300 pages. Yet for the last couple weeks I have been happily ensconced in just such a work -- Robert K. Massie's new biography of Catherine the Great, which weighs in at 579 pages before the bibliography and end notes. I used to read these kinds of tomes all the time. This was a time when I lived in a city far from where I'd grown up where I had no friends outside of the workplace -- and I lived two blocks from an excellent independent bookstore and about five blocks from the library. I had a studio apartment that didn't require much upkeep. There was no Internet. So basically I'd do nothing all weekend but read. I'll even admit that this studio apartment and all this free time happened to be on South Beach circa 1989-1991 -- but hey, I'm a dork. I read lots and lots, current fiction and classics, and lots of giant biographical tomes like Carlos Baker on Hemingway and William Manchester on Churchill and whoever was writing about Virginia Woolf or Elizabeth I. I loved diving into a big nonfiction tome. This might be the fault of David Halberstam, whose doorstop about journalism dynasties, The Powers That Be, was one of my favorite books when I was a young and impressionable college journalist.

But in recent years, not so much. Over my journalism career, my nonfiction reading turned more toward works of current narrative nonfiction -- the New Yorker School, I guess you'd call it (Trillin, Frazier, Horwitz, Orlean). And in most recent years, I've been on a sustained run of fiction, mainly genre fiction -- historical for the most part, especially historical mysteries. I can only blame the Key West Literary Seminar's session on historical fiction for jumpstarting that.

But I was surprised and delighted when I saw that Massie, who is in his 80s, has produced another giant tome on a Russian monarch. A little guilty, too -- like almost everyone I know, I had a copy of his Peter the Great on my shelf for years; finally gave in and donated it to the library for the book sale. But I have read him and liked him a lot -- I first read his book The Romanovs: The Final Chapter, which used DNA findings and the post-Soviet Russian thaw to tell the story about what really happened to the royal family (hint: Anastasia did not make it out). From there, I read his Nicholas and Alexandra and found it to be well-written absorbing history, perfect for the lay reader who doesn't know much about the subjects, the place or the time. And the same, I'm happy to say, goes for Catherine. I've long had a thing for Elizabeth I and Catherine is a similar figure in being a woman ruling in her own right, despite all kinds of odds against her ever reaching, or keeping the throne.

The only problem with inhabiting these giant tomes is that post-book letdown is all the more severe for having lived with the characters for weeks. My mom, after finishing Bob Richardson's biography of William James, said she felt sad and that she'd miss James -- I knew just what she meant.

These are some titles of giant nonfiction tomes I highly recommend if you're looking to dive into the deep end:

Catherine The Great by Peter Massie -- For all the reasons described above. And no, there's nothing about horses at least not of an intimate nature. Turns out the Potemkin Village thing isn't true, either.

The Song of the Dodo by David Quammen -- You may think island biogeography would be a boring subject. In Quammen's hands, you would be very very wrong

One Art by Elizabeth Bishop -- Her letters, edited by her longtime publisher Robert Giroux. The closest thing we'll ever get to a memoir; they are heartbreaking in many ways but an amazing insight into the mind of a great poet

Up In the Old Hotel by Joseph Mitchell -- Early New Yorker writing at its finest. Yeah, I know, we can argue about the "nonfiction" qualifications of this one.

Annals of the Former World by John McPhee -- A compendium of the modern New Yorker master's books about geology. You know who was surprised to find herself reading 657 pages about geology ... and enjoying it? Me!

Titan by Ron Chernow -- Biography of John D. Rockefeller -- Great book on the influential mogul behind Standard Oil.

Other Powers by Barbara Goldsmith -- Biography of Victoria Woodhull, who was a medium, a suffragette, a financial adviser and all around force of nature -- fascinating look at the nation in the late 19th century, through the lens of a mostly forgotten figure

To be appreciated

I am so negligent a book blogger that I hadn't even realized it was Book Blogger Appreciation Week -- but it is! At least for another day. The website has links to lots of interesting blogs, almost all of which are new to me. But I thought I'd use the occasion to point out some links to some blogs that I particularly appreciate. They're all in my blogroll on the right, but these few are the ones I find myself turning to most often. In no particular order, they are: Citizen Reader -- Written by a librarian and avid reader of (mostly) nonfiction, I appreciate how it is always smart and both sincere and snarky, when appropriate.

Philobiblos -- Written by a librarian with a historical bent; I particularly appreciate the reviews and the links to stories about manuscript and rare book shenanigans.

Smart Bitches Trashy Books -- I appreciate Sarah Wendell bringing romance out of the closet and celebrating (or ridiculing) its many and varied forms. I particularly enjoy the HaBO (for Help A Bitch Out) feature, in which readers describe in hilarious terms some romance they read long ago and the commenters invariably figure out which book it is.

Between the Covers -- Written by Miami Herald Books Editor Connie Ogle, I appreciate the reviews, the South Florida literary news and, most of all, Connie's and the Herald's perseverance in providing book coverage in a time when newspaper journalism is in dire straits indeed.

Book Slut Blog -- I appreciate its relentless literariness and its links to interesting literary journalism, especially when I don't have keep up with Arts & Letters Daily -- which I don't know if that qualifies as a book blog but it's definitely worth checking when you have time.

And all of these, along with the nominees and winners from Book Blogger Appreciation Week, I appreciate for supporting my belief that the Internet is not, in fact, the Grim Reaper of Reading and in many ways serves to connect, facilitate and otherwise celebrate people who live for the written word.

Let us now praise Georgette Heyer

Sometimes people are shocked when I reveal that I occasionally read ... romance novels. I could give you an abbreviated version of my rant about how this is as valid a genre as, say, thriller or mystery, which seems to be perfectly acceptable as lighter literary fare. Only thrillers and mysteries generally have more violence and usually have less sex. Some romances are pretty well written. Many of them are terrible dreck. I think that's true in any area of literary output, including a lot of the stuff that is considered Literary. But I'll spare you (any more of) that rant. Instead, I'll blame my mom and grandmother. They did not leave what the smart women at Smart Bitches Trashy Books have dubbed Old Skool romances (Kathleen Woodiwiss, Rosemary Rogers) lying around the house. But they did have a weakness for the works of Georgette Heyer. Enough of a weakness that the bookshelves in our house, along with lots of Serious Nonfiction and Classic Works of Literature, had a pretty good collection of Heyer novels. These tended to be either well-worn hardcovers that had been discarded from the Chappaqua Library, where my grandmother was director, and some 1970s-vintage paperbacks, like the one I'm including here.

I don't know my romance novel history all that well but I suspect Heyer might be responsible for making the Regency the Big Mama of historical romance time periods. This, of course, is a nod to Jane Austen (by the way, people, the works of Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters are NOT HISTORICAL NOVELS. They are novels that were contemporary works of fiction; they just happen to have been written a long time ago. It makes me crazy when I see that stuff recommended as works of historical fiction). But back to Heyer. She's funny. She's entertaining. Her characters are smart and complicated (or stupid and funny). You're pretty much guaranteed a happy ending but you may be surprised and you're probably going to be amused by how she gets there.

Don't just take my word for it. How about the word of A.S. Byatt, Booker Prize-winner and all that? In her essay collection, Passions of the Mind, she has a whole piece about Heyer called "An Honourable Escape" (which sounds just like a Heyer title, as I'm sure Byatt intended). It comes right after essays about Sylvia Plath and Toni Morrison.

All of which is to say, if you need some good "escape literature," as Byatt calls Heyer, to distract yourself from hurricanes, economic stresses, political strife or whatever, you might consider giving Heyer a try. Especially since, if you are of the digital persuasion, you can get a lot of her stuff for pretty damned cheap, at least on Amazon. If you prefer reading on dead trees, we have a bunch of them in the Monroe County Library collection and I wouldn't be surprised if, outside of the Keys, your local library also had a good stock. My grandmother was not the only librarian with a weakness for Heyer. If you don't know where to start, two that I highly recommend are The Nonesuch and The Toll-Gate -- and not just because the Key West Library copies happen to have those old buckram library bindings, about which I am becoming ridiculously nostalgic.

Santas in July

Late July in Key West means a couple things. It's hotter than Hades. You start seeing interesting blobs on satellite images of the Atlantic. If you live in my house, you spend most of your nonworking waking time watching the Tour de France. And if you hang around Old Town, you suddenly have sightings of Santa wherever you look. Only it's not supposed to be Santa. The hale white-bearded fellows are entrants in the annual Ernest Hemingway Look-Alike Contest, a guaranteed publicity winner for the tourism council (and I've been as guilty as anyone; I once wrote a cover story called "The Papas and the Papas" for the late, lamented Tropic magazine, chronicling one year's contest). An earlier story I wrote about Hemingway's long, strong, posthumous celebrity pointed out that Amherst doesn't hold Emily Dickinson lookalike contests -- only now they do.

I've always hoped one year the winner would be the rare entrant who looks like the younger, darker-haired, nonbearded Hemingway -- as Hemingway looked when he actually lived here in the 1930s. You do get the occasional entrant who gives it a try but since previous winners serve as the judges, the late-Hemingway look appears to have a lock on the thing.

All of which is a longwinded introduction to a couple of recent book reviews, one of which has a strong Hemingway connection: My review of A Skeptic's Guide to Writers' Houses ran in Sunday's edition of Solares Hill. And a couple Sundays before that they ran my review of Janet Malcolm's Iphigenia in Forest Hills. Both interesting, well reported and written books of nonfiction, though naturally very different. I liked the Malcolm book a lot about the court system; not so much with her pronounciations on journalism. And I liked Trubek's tour of writers' house museums though she was a bit snarky in approach at times. I hadn't realized how many of these museums I had toured until I really thought about it though to be fair two of them are in my backyards, past and present (Emily Dickinson and Ernest Hemingway, whom Trubek holds up as sort of polar opposite of house museum ethos).

Like many a Key Wester, I'm almost as sick of Ernest Hemingway as I am of Jimmy Buffett -- but lately I've been thinking it might be time to read him again. One reason is the hilarious portrayal in Woody Allen's recent movie "Midnight in Paris" -- young Hemingway again, before he was the self-created celebrity and legend. Another is simply in reaction to all the late-Hemingway hysteria; I haven't read the short stories and early novels since I was in my 20s and I have learned that books take on a whole new dimension when you bring some life experience to them. Maybe it's time for A Farewell to Arms. After I finish re-reading Jane Austen.

Is this just fantasy?

Best lists aren't just for the end of the year -- and they're not just for professional book critics, either. Right now, NPR has a fun exercise going, compiling a list of the 100 best science fiction and fantasy books ever written. They're soliciting suggestions (five titles at a time) from listeners/readers and in four days they've received more than 4,600 posts. Take that, all you reading-is-dead handwringers! There are a couple rules -- you can suggest a series as one of your entries, as long as that series is written by a single author. And YA is banned, which made it a little difficult for me because Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy and Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games trilogy would have been high on my list.

Still, even though I would not consider myself a big reader of scifi or fantasy, I managed to come up with five. * Here's my list, in no particular order: Naomi Novik's Temeraire series (always glad to give this one a mention; it's alternative historical fiction, Napoleonic wars with dragons and it's AWESOME). Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series, a loopy literary alternaworld to which I will be forever grateful for getting me through the Horrible Hurricane Year of 2005. Doomsday Book by Connie Willis -- highly recommended for people who like medieval stuff and/or time travel. American Gods by Neil Gaiman, which needs no help from me but is pretty cool, and will soon be a major motion picture. And The End of Mr. Y by Scarlett Thomas, a book about a book that is powerful and strange. Both books, I mean. Just read it.

If you are into books, by the way, and you don't follow or check NPR's books coverage (it's compiled at their website and has the requisite Facebook and Twitter feeds) then you are missing out. And if you prefer to get your radio auditorially but can't listen to NPR all day long, they do a nice podcast of compilations of their books coverage every week or two.

The Guardian, another bastion of book coverage in the popular media, has also compiled a 100 best list recently, their picks for best nonfiction titles. They solicited reader suggestions after the fact; my contribution was The Song of the Dodo by David Quammen. Amazing book about biodiversity and evolution and island biogeography and if those sound like heavy, dry subjects then trust me, in Quammen's hands they are not. If and when I have to do a serious weed of my own book collection, this will be one of the last to go.

* Addendum from 8/18/11 -- Since writing this I have joined the George R. R. Martin Cult and am midway through the third book in his Song of Ice and Fire series -- and they really as addictive as everyone says. Martin didn't need my help -- he still scored high on the final list -- and I'm not sure which of my initial five I'd knock out. Either American Gods or the Thursday Next series, which is loopier than straight-up fantasy anyway.