Bookish NYC

On the Shelf

I've always loved the main reading room at the New York Public Library -- the big one on 5th Avenue and 42nd Street, with the lions out front: 

This damn career . . .

It takes up SO much time (its only saving grace is that it keeps me supplied with the cash to buy books, and more books).  In any event, I have been working crazy hours since the end of last week and, sadly, have had no time to read or pay the slightest bit of attention to bookish matters!  I'll be back in a day or two -- certainly to report my weekly findings on Friday's Seen on the Subway post.  Meanwhile, off to court  . . .   

Object of Desire

I usually crave salt rather than sugar, but I wouldn't mind whiling away an afternoon with a good book and a box of these pink champagne truffles from Charbonnel & Walker (available in the U.S. at Saks Fifth Avenue): 

Weekend Report

This weekend was a bit of a bust, book-wise.  I had to work both Saturday and Sunday putting together emergency motion papers.  Ugh!  I did manage to start a new book on my Kindle: A Duty to the Dead, by "Charles Todd," the same mother/son writing team who brought us the excellent Inspector Ian Rutledge series.  A Duty to the Dead is the first in another series set during World War I, and features nurse Bess Crawford.  Invalided home after her hospital ship is blown up by German mines, Bess delivers a message to the family of an officer she nursed on his deathbed.  Entanglements ensue . . . 

After fleeing the office Sunday afternoon, I went to see Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, and can report that it's terrific.  The writers took bits and pieces of the 2008/09 financial meltdown, changed some names, inserted Gordon Gekko into the mix, added some slick cinematography (New York looks fabulous, I must say), a great soundtrack, and top-notch performances (including a couple of hilarious cameos) to create a highly enjoyable couple of hours in the movie theater.  

I'm looking forward to the end of this week.  On Thursday I am going to Das Rheingold with Bryn Terfel as Wotan.  This is a new production by Robert Lepage (of Cirque du Soleil fame), so it should be, um . . . interesting.  (This is the first of the new Ring cycle productions that are making their debut over this season and next.)   On Friday, it's the Mahler 6th with the New York Philharmonic.  And on Sunday, it's the Vienna Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel.  

Now to tackle the work week . . . have a good one, everyone.  

Sunday Quote

"Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen."

--Willa Cather

A Bookish Link

Here's an interesting link to a piece in the NY Times that appeared in July (I only just spotted it online) about how to fill one's bookshelves with more than just books.  

Seen on the Subway

A woman in her early 30s wearing a black Adidas track suit, black running shoes, and carrying a large Louis Vuitton duffel bag was reading The Brothers Karamazov.  She had a pen and was making notes in the margins.  

The 30-something man sitting next next to me the other day on the uptown 6 train was reading All Of My Friends Are Going To Be Strangers by Larry McMurtry.  Or, more accurately, he was staring blankly at said book, as he didn't turn a single page between Grand Central/42nd Street and my stop at 86th Street.  

A tall auburn-haired woman in her early 50s was wearing a business suit and reading Too Big To Fail:  The Inside Story Of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System-- and Themselves, by Andrew Ross Sorkin.  

On the Shelf

Can you smell the Chanel No. 5? The photo below is of "Mademoiselle's" apartment at 31, Rue Cambon, Paris.  It's very elegant, non?  Of course, those books don't like they've been read, do they?

 Photo: France Today

I can always dream about lolling on the couch, reading the latest Chanel bio by Justine Picardie:  Coco Chanel:  The Legend and the Life."  

 

Favorite Cookbooks

Although I don't cook a lot for myself (most nights I eat out or order in), I really do love entertaining and cooking for others, and I always dawdle near the display of new cookbooks at my local bookstore.  Now that Fall is upon us, I am sorely tempted by An Apple Harvest: Recipes and Harvest Lore, by Frank Browning and Sharon Silva (Pork and Apple Pie with Horseradish sauce, anyone?):  

I must say, however, that my two favorite cookbooks are approximately twenty years old.  The first is Rose Levy Berenbaum's Cake Bible, originally published in 1988, and containing a fantastic "chocolate bread"  -- actually, a very dense, rich cocoa-flavored chocolate pound cake -- that is my "go to" dessert recipe.  This is a terrific book, with an emphasis on the "chemistry" of baking.

 

 For the rest of the meal, I rely upon Sarah Leah Chase's 1990 book, Cold Weather Cooking, in particular the recipe for pumpkin-prosciutto-parmesan lasagna (made with a bechamel sauce and studded with toasted walnuts), a pure helping of heaven, delicious with an arugula salad and poached pears for dessert: 

 

These are a tiny sampling of the couple of hundred cookbooks currently stashed in my hall closet.  (I live in a typical NYC apartment with a galley kitchen that has no room for a table, much less dedicated shelves for cookbooks, back issues of Gourmet magazine, etc.!)  What are YOUR favorite cookbooks?  How many do you own?  And are you an "armchair cook," reading the cookbooks like novels, or do you don an apron and try out the recipes on your family and guests?   

Object of Desire

My friend Julie over at Austen Only called my attention to The Literary Gift Company, a U.K.-based mail order company featuring all manner of bookish presents.  If I had to choose just one, I think I would pick this laser-cut scarf featuring all the letters of the alphabet (it comes in white, too): 

 
 

Mignon G. Eberhardt

I had never heard of mystery author Mignon G. Eberhardt, but stumbled upon her books while surfing Amazon a couple of weeks ago.  I learned that she became a leading American crime novelist during the 1930s, and was known as "America's Agatha Christie."  She had a long career, publishing nearly 60 books, the last during the 1980s.  So I took the plunge and ordered The Patient in Room 18, her debut novel that was originally published in 1929.  The first of seven or eight books featuring Nurse Sarah Keate as protagonist, this one is set in a rural hospital where Room 18 seems to be cursed -- the patients assigned there have a suspiciously high death rate.  A bit creaky but satisfyingly suspenseful, this novel is an unexpected treat from the Golden Era of detective fiction. 

 

Sunday Quote

"There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully

 as those we spent with a favorite book." 

-- Marcel Proust

 

Seen on the Subway

A woman in her early 40s wearing a twin set (no pearls) was reading Tim Gunn's new book, entitled Gunn's Golden Rules: Life's Little Lessons for Making It Work.  

I had my first sighting of Freedom by Jonathan Franzen, read by a woman in her 30s with really short hair (think Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby) and those faux-geeky little rectangular eyeglasses. I don't know; I can't decide whether to read this or not.  I opted out of The Corrections a decade ago without any discernible ill effects, and I think I may be headed in that direction on this one, too . . . 

A woman in her late 30s wearing "business casual" was reading Wicked Appetite by Janet Evanovich.  (A shout-out here to my blogging friend Elaine over at Random Jottings, who has devoured the Evanovich oeuvre in recent weeks.)  

On the Shelf

Earlier this week some fellow Manhattan-based devotees of Persephone Books gathered chez Bookish NYC to discuss Round About a Pound a Week by Maud Pember Reeves.  Mrs. Reeves was a founder of the Fabian Women's Group, and this nonfiction work arose out of that organization's attempt to raise awareness of the plight of the working poor in Lambeth, where it was not unusual for families -- even those with 5 or more children -- to subsist on a pound a week.  While not a page-turner, this book was not without its quirky charm, setting forth typical weekly menus (heavy on bread-and-dripping, short on protein, devoid of fruits and vegetables and fresh dairy products), describing a typical day for a young mother, and the heart-breaking fact that the one "luxury" that many of these families allowed themselves was the payment of a shilling a week for funeral insurance so that they would be spared the indignity of a pauper's burial should one of their numerous children die.  

Even birth control is touched on obliquely:  "Though fond of the children when they are there, this life of stress and strain makes the women dread nothing so much as the conviction that there is to be still another baby with its inevitable consequences -- more crowding, more illness, more worry, more work, and less food, less strength, less time to manage with . . . Should we be able to conquer the problem of poverty, we should automatically solve the problem of the excessively large family."  

That's a long preamble to this week's On the Shelf post, but here some photos of the Persephone Bookshop at 59 Lamb's Conduit Street, London (where I was privileged to visit this summer), with its shelves of lovely grey volumes:  

Cheers to Kimbofo.typepad.com for kind permission to use the above photo. 

  

Object of Desire

Regular readers know that I earn a living practicing divorce law.  I have a collection of paperweights that I use to keep my desk semi-organized, including a red Elsa Peretti heart paperweight from Tiffany's that I use to anchor the paperwork on whatever prenuptial agreement I'm currently working on.  (Hey, I have to amuse myself somehow.)  I thought that this paperweight from John Derian would be a snarky addition to my collection:  

 

Royal Shakespeare Company in New York

Next summer, the Royal Shakespeare Company will have a six-week run (July 6th - August 14th) at the Lincoln Center Festival, performing King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra, A Winter's Tale, As You Like It, and Romeo and Juliet.  The performances will be held in the mammoth Wade Thompson Drill Hall of the Park Avenue Armory, on a special-built thrust stage replicating that of the Company's Courtyard Theater in Stratford-Upon-Avon.  It's not clear to me from the Festival's website when tickets go on sale to the general public; at the moment, it appears that one has to purchase a package, the cheapest costing $2,000, which entitles one to admission to three of the plays, plus a variety of largely useless perks, including an invitation to a cocktail party, etc.  

Here is a computer rendering of the stage, which may be the closest Bookish NYC gets to it:  

 

Sunday Quote

"Beware of the man of one book."

--Thomas Aquinas

Seen on the Subway

A casually-dressed woman in her early 40s whose ensemble included granny glasses and clogs was reading Forces For Good: The Six Practices of High-Impact Non-Profits by Leslie Crutchfield and Heather McCleod Grant.  

A banker/broker type in his late 30s was reading The Romanov Prophecy by Steve Berry.  (I confess I am a sucker for the "Tsarist-Rasputin-Winter Palace-newly-discovered-heir-threatened-by-the-KGB" thriller genre, so may have to follow up on this one.) 

A woman in her late 60s carrying a colorful patchwork bag was reading Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay, previously featured in these annals of subway reading habits, and a book I can heartily recommend.   

On the Shelf

Love this bookcase wall, designed by architect Gianni Botsford (the gentleman in the photograph) to house his collection of 16,000 books: 

 
 

Back from Labor Day "Break"

I was upstate visiting family over the Labor Day weekend.  I had envisioned a three-day break (albeit one potentially fraught with family dysfunction) before the onslaught of autumnal business, but it turned out to be one of those weekends in which I was cyber-chained to my office, such were the demands of my very "entitled" clients.  Having been quiescent all summer -- indeed, often difficult to tear away from their Hamptons Hideaways, Ibiza Idylls, Barbados Breaks, South-of-France Sojourns (OK, I'll stop now) -- they all re-appeared last Friday, clamoring to be divorced NOW.  As in RIGHT AWAY.  "I want to get on with my life."  Yeah, me too.  [Insert hollow laughter here.]  

I did manage to get some reading done -- quite a bit, in fact.  My family took pity on me and pretty much left me alone when I wasn't shouting down the phone or furiously pecking away at my Blackberry.  So, here's the rundown:

Room, by Emma Donoghue.  Purchase, beg, borrow, or steal this one and read it immediately.  (Go on, I'll wait.)  Mesmerizing account of a woman kidnapped and held hostage for several years, told entirely from the point of view of her five-year-old son, fathered by her captor and having spent his entire life in the one-room garden shed/bunker that serves as their prison.  (None of the foregoing is a spoiler, by the way, as you learn these facts in the first chapter.)  Nominated for the Booker Prize.  

Skippy Dies, by Paul Murray.  Another Booker Prize contender, this one is set in a Catholic boys' prep school in Dublin.  Just a touch long-winded (nearly 700 pages), but well worth the commitment.  The protagonist dies at the beginning of the first chapter, and yet somehow that doesn't slow down the narrative.  The adolescents, the teachers, the obnoxiously "progressive" headmaster, the priests, the inevitable girls' school next door, the mostly-dreadful parents, the drugs, the sex, the texting, the casual bullying, all combine into a compelling stew of a novel that's difficult to describe.  "Creepily hilarious" is about the best I can do.  

A Sentimental Murder: Love and Madness in the Eighteenth Century, by John Brewer.  I have just started this non-fiction work that explores the 1779 slaying of Martha Ray, the mistress of the Earl of Sandwich, by a young clergyman.  The author approaches the story via accounts of the incident in contemporary news reports as well as later, Victorian-era versions of the events.  The story morphs over time, the emphasis/interpretation evolving with changing attitudes and social mores.  I can say one thing:  21st-century crime reporters have nothing on their forebears -- this case was treated every bit as sensationally as any current-day crime of passion, driving news of the American Revolution off the front pages of London papers.  

And what of M. Proust?  Never fear, I have not abandoned my intrepid trek through Swann's Way.  I'm not too proud to confess that I'm not sure what to say to you all about it -- it's so beautiful, so all-consuming.  I will report further when I have something not entirely banal to say.