Today's recommended read

OK, it's not about books. But it's about reading and information and it's an interesting topic -- a book review from the Washington Post, of a book called "Against the Machine," a rant against the Internet and how Kids Today communicate. The reviewer is a former software engineer who wrote a book called "Close to the Machine" so perhaps she was destined to dislike the book. And as a blogger and avid reader of stuff on screen, I also dislike this guy's central thesis. Especially from a guy who posed as a commenter on his own blog. Fundamentally, I just don't get why this is an either/or question -- yes, the Web is full of crap (as is printed matter). But there's so much good stuff out there, so much of which was inaccessible or couldn't even have existed before.

Can you read this?

Megan Marshall -- author of the excellent biography "The Peabody Sisters" and panelist at next year's Key West Literary Seminar -- has an interesting piece on Slate today. Marshall, who knows a thing or two about deciphering migraine-inducing handwriting (the Peabody sisters would actually use stationery twice -- writing first horizontally, then turning the paper and writing across their own writing, creating the beautiful but mind-boggling pages like the one pictured here).Marshall is commenting on the uproar over Robert Frost's notebooks as annotated by scholar Robert Faggen (who incidentally is coming to The Studios of Key West later this year). She's more sympathetic than many of the scholars who have attacked Faggen. It's an interesting insight into the hard work of literary scholarship.

All for one

The apparently tireless Kris Neihouse from the Key West library has more book club news: "To keep things straight I am now referring to this Book club as the "All for One" book club in reference to the fact that participants all read the same book! So the All For One Book club will be meeting in just over a week on February 20 at 4:00 at the key West Library.

Up for discussion is A Primate's Memoir by Robert A. Sapolsky. Both the library copies are currently checked out but the book is available in hardcover and paperback on Amazon.

This is a fun interesting book--I'm about half way through and thoroughly enjoying it! Remember to come to the group whether you enjoyed the book or not, even if you did not finish the book. Those who come to the group get to decide what we read next! Come with questions and comments, and ideas! See you at the library.

Kris"

Weekend read

Looking at a publisher's catalogue of upcoming titles, I was interested in one by a writer named Kate Summerscale. Her new book, The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher, is about a Victorian detective who became a model for a lot of great literary detectives. But the catalogue also referred to her previous book, The Queen of Whale Cay. That sounded interesting, so I looked it up. The story was REALLY interesting, about a classic 20th century eccentric, Marion "Joe" Carstairs, an heiress to the Standard Oil Fortune who became a very successful motorboat racer -- and very out-of-the-closet lesbian -- in the 1920s, then retreated to an island in the Bahamas as public opinion turned against her. Even better, it turned out that the Key West library had the book on the shelf. So on Wednesday evening, I stopped by and got it. It's a small book (literally), and a quick read.

Turns out Summerscale used to work for the British paper the Daily Telegraph, which is famous for its hilarious and outrageously candid obituaries, which is how she learned about Carstairs. When I heard that, I decided to check out the Telegraph online just to see if they had these great obits every day. Of course there are a limited number of Carstairs types out there -- but the Telegraph does the best it can with its material, and the obit editor has a pretty entertaining blog.

Props for the Pine

My friend Karen, a PhD student in marine ecology, says in my earlier paeon to Keys libraries I neglected the library on Big Pine. She's right: Probably because that branch was opened well after I moved to the Keys, and Big Pine is not a place I found myself killing time on trips up and down the Keys. Also the County Commission doesn't meet there, as it does at the Key Largo branch. Still, it's a great resource for the Lower Keys, where earlier people faced the choice of a longish trip to either Marathon or Key West for library access. Here's Karen's ode:

"Sandwiched between the bagel shop and Pizza Works, it must surely be the tastiest library in the county. And in "Torpedo Juice", Tim Dorsey's hero falls in love with the BPK librarian. Okay, so she turns out to be a serial killer. Big Time...Big Pine." Karen also reports that "Big Time ... Big Pine" is not an original phrase. But it sure fits here.