Reading post: Books from other living room shelves

September's not quite over, but I ended this month's reading challenge several days ago, so I thought I might as well post this now. In September I planned to read books from two sets of shelves in our living room: the long shelf under the steins & demitasse sets, and the biography shelves above the piano. This is how the reading month went.

1. Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell. I've had this little paperback for eons; the price on the cover is 75¢ but I know I got it used. I think I put off reading it because I hated 1984 and thought it might be similar. It's not -- it's (more or less) nonfiction. Also (though this sounds contradictory), I thought it was about living a romantic "Bohemian" lifestyle. Wrong again. It's about being desperately poor. In Paris, Orwell at least found work, though the work was more like slavery. In London, he simply tramped around, and his description of what it was like to be a tramp in London in the late 1920s-early 1930s is eye-opening. Especially so since I've been thinking so much about the homeless. The homeless life hasn't changed a great deal in 100 years, in the USA at least. We have some homeless shelters, with all sorts of rules associated with them, and laws against sleeping in parks... and people like me hate and fear the homeless, just like everyone hated George Orwell and his compatriots for being tramps. Eye-opening, thought-provoking -- this is a good book for someone like me to read, maybe even shifted my thinking a little. It was well-written, too, if a bit repetitive, since the life of a tramp is not very interesting, just endless boredom and misery. Keeping it, but moving it to the dining room bookcase, because it's not really a memoir, more of a sociological treatise.
   
   
2. Adventures with a Desert Bush Pilot by Sylvia Winslow. Now this book is a memoir, of Sylvia Winslow's experiences flying around the Mojave Desert with her pilot husband in the 1950s and 1960s. I think my husband brought this home one day (when we lived in Ridgecrest), but he has no memory of doing so. Maybe I brought it home. It was published by the Maturango Museum in 1984 and, puzzlingly, tucked in the pages of our copy was a 2002 article about Winslow from the Ridgecrest Daily Independent. We lived in Ridgecrest from 2009 to 2013. Why would we have a clipping from a 2002 newspaper? Anyway, I didn't expect to find the book interesting, but I did. It brought back so many memories of our years in the desert, going out every weekend to explore. We didn't have a plane, and we took all our trips with toddler twins, but those are minor differences. I hated moving to Ridgecrest but I ended up loving the Mojave Desert, still do, still miss it. As I finished the book, my heart was aching -- and there's some of that in the book as well, because Winslow was writing 10 years after her husband died, at a time when many of the spots they'd visited were no longer open to the public and she knew she'd never see them again. I don't know whether my husband and I will ever visit the Mojave Desert again -- I think we will, but we won't go everywhere we ever went. And even if our boys should happen to go with us, which is less likely, we'll never see those toddler twins again. I'm keeping this.
   
   
3. I Really Should Be Practicing by Gary Graffman. Another memoir, this one of a concert pianist. This was my father's book and I've always loved the title, so it was fun to finally read it. I enjoyed it very much, although it sagged a little in the middle. The parts about his family background in Russia were fascinating (perhaps especially so because I read two books about Russia last month). Some of the detail in the middle chapters was a little dull, but the book perked up again in the last 60 pages or so. Graffman sounds like such a nice person. I looked him up -- he's still alive at 94, though his wife Naomi, who helped him write this, died four years ago at the age of 90. After he had to stop performing, due to a problem with his hands, he turned to teaching, and taught such great current pianists as Yuja Wang and Lang Lang. Reading this book took me back to the years when I was very interested in piano music and attended concerts with my parents (we heard Jean-Philippe Collard, Tamas Vasary, and Murray Perahia). I still love piano music and sometimes I go to a faculty recital at CU, but it's not a big part of my life anymore. Maybe later on, when I'm not so busy raising twins. Anyway, keeping this.
   
   
4. The Search for the Giant Squid by Richard Ellis. Not a memoir! Not even a biography. When I started thinking about doing this challenge, last winter, this is one of the books that came to mind. It was published in 1999 and I asked for it and received it from my older sister for my birthday that year. I remember being so pleased to get it -- and then I never read it! So now finally I have read it. It wasn't quite what I was expecting. In 1999, very little was known about the giant squid, so a large portion of the book is about how the giant squid has been portrayed in literature and film. There's just one chapter that's actually ABOUT the giant squid, called "What Do We Know About Architeuthis?", and it's only 24 pages. Even the soporific chapter about models of squid in museums is longer! It's not that Ellis didn't do his job, it's just that nothing was known for him to report (a little more is known now, but not a lot). I would have preferred more scientific information about other kinds of squid, rather than the exhaustive (exhausting) catalog of books and movies that portray the giant squid incorrectly. But apparently there still isn't anything better out there, so I'm glad I have this and I'm glad I finally read it. Keeping it.
   
   
5. Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter by Simone de Beauvoir. Yes, as the title tells us, this is another memoir, of the famous existentialist philosopher, novelist, feminist. It's the story of her early life, I've had it for decades, and I've tried to read it before. I tried again. I failed again. I don't know why -- another year I might have succeeded. It's supposed to be a good book. Wikipedia calls it "her most enduring contribution to literature." But I decided that I'm just not that interested in existentialism, philosophy in general, and the memoirs of a pedophilia enthusiast (which she was), and the world is full of other things to read. I closed the book after about 20 pages and put it in the donate pile.
    

In October I plan to read books from one more location in the living room: the tall bookcase by the front door. This bookcase used to belong to my brother-in-law's parents, in Michigan. It's actually four pieces that fit together, and if it is too tall for your home when assembled it's possible to break it up into sections and scatter them around (I have done this, in the past). But in our house all the pieces fit together very nicely in this little space by the front door.

This bookcase contains mostly science books and travel books. My bird books are here, and wildflower books, and a lot of Colorado history, that sort of thing. There are many many books in this bookcase that I haven't read, so I decided to pick one from each of the eight shelves... but I couldn't find anything I wanted to read on the bottom shelf (mostly coffee-table books), so I settled for seven. It is unlikely that I will manage to read seven nonfiction books this month, so I'll just do what I can, no worries. 

It seems a little sad not to be reading spooky books in October, but maybe I can spice up my non-spooky reading with a few extras from elsewhere in the house (or the public library). I tried to convince my book group to read a spooky book this month, but they went with a 700+ page serious novel instead (it's OK, it's a good book, I've read over 400 pages already).

Actually, there are a few in this stack that look a little spooky: bugs, earthquakes, frozen dead guys...