Books About Books

 The book is huge, over 700 pages and that makes it a difficult book to read in bed! There are times when it seems as if my bookmark hasn’t moved in days. Still, the story is good and I’ve fallen into its grasp. I have traveled through both time and space in this piece of fictional literature. I’ve gone to the far side of our globe and have seen both the beauty and the ugliness of the country where it takes place, a place that I’ll probably never visit.

    One of the many things in this book that pulled me into it is the love of books. While not a major part of the story, the importance of the written word plays a big part of this novel. Book appreciation is something I’ve always considered important and that has always drawn me towards certain books.

    I find that as I read different books I can’t help but notice the similarities between them and other books I’ve read. Things such as; certain themes, or locations, the use of an odd word appearing in two different books, sometimes one right after another, these things stick in my mind. I’ll notice how plots are similar or that the subject matter is often the same. Is it just random chance or is it my subconscious picking out the books I read without my knowing it? I often wonder about things such as this!

    So far this year, I have read at least 5 books that have had reading or books as an important part of their stories. Books about books have always intrigued me. I would guess that it is because of my love of the subject. Who doesn’t enjoy reading about or participating in favorite hobbies or activities we like?

    I don’t remember any books in my early reading history that involved this subject other than the Detective Brown series written by Donald J. Sobol. Written back in the 60’s, the main character was Encyclopedia Brown, a 10 year old boy. I was just about the same age when I started reading them. I could be like him! How much they incorporated books I’m not sure, but how could I not like a main character named “Encyclopedia”?

    As the number of books in my collection grew, books on this subject (books and writing) increased. I came across an old book called The Haunted Bookshop written by Christopher Morley. Printed originally in 1919, the bookshop is haunted by the ghosts of writers and the books that they reside in. The story is a mystery but I especially enjoyed the parts dealing with the store and its books.

    This book then led me to the author’s first book, Parnassus on Wheels, printed two years earlier. The story is about a bookshop set on a wagon pulled by a horse. A woman buys the shop and escapes her boring life with an adventure and a celebration of reading.

    Since then, I have added many other books about books to my collection. A definite favorite is the book 84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff. This non-fiction book, written in 1966, is a collection of letters written between the author and the employees of a book shop in London. It is to me a wonderful book dealing with caring, friendship and of course, the love of books.

    Another favorite is The Book Thief written in 2007 by Markus Zusak. This fictional novel is set in Nazi Germany during the Second World War. A young girl steals some books and learns from them, finding a haven from the war in the books she has stolen.

    The The Midnight Library was written by Matt Haig in 2020. In this book, a woman who had attempted suicide finds herself in a magical library. Each of the books in this library offers her an alternative life. With each life choice come both good things and bad. “We” don’t always get what we hoped for.

    This previous book reminded me of another one, Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. Written in 2012 by Robin Sloan, this book tells the story of a young man who takes a job at a bookshop in San Francisco. He finds out it is a front for a secret society. Ancient books and manuscripts mixing with puzzles and secret codes that may possibly lead to the secret of eternal youth make this an exciting read. It takes us on an adventure that blends the ancient world with our modern civilization.

    My bookshelves are filled with books that mention books and reading in their pages. I am always on the lookout for another to add to my collection. Fiction or non-fiction, it doesn’t matter to me, I find them all exciting.

    So what exactly is it that I find so intriguing? They show me the behind the counter activities, how the book trade works. They tell stories about other book lovers, like me. People who can escape the everyday world by diving into another world printed on paper. I’ve read and learned about how books are made, how authors come up with their ideas and how companies decide which manuscripts to publish. I’ve read about how people, known as book scouts would search through bookstores and rummage sales for rare and collectable volumes. (Wouldn’t that be a fun job?) I’ve gone along with people who shared their love of books with others and gone into other dimensions and to other planets through the wonder and workings of books. 

    In case you’re wondering about the 5 books I was talking about earlier, the ones that caused these thoughts about books to begin, here is a quick once over about them…

1)    The Untold Story of Books by Michael Castleman. (2024) This is a history of publishing, from the Guttenberg Bibles and a bit before, to our modern digital age that we live in now.

2)    Camino Island by John Grisham. (2017) A fictional story about a writer who is enlisted to infiltrate a group of writers on an island off the coast of Florida. She is hoping to find some stolen manuscripts that a bookstore owner might have hidden.

3)    How to Resist Amazon by Danny Caine. (2019) The author, a bookstore owner, tells how Amazon manages to sell books at such a great discount. Books play such a small part of this massive industry that they can afford to take a loss on them while reaping in profits on other items. Meanwhile, book shops and stores have to deal with Amazon’s discounts, deals they can’t afford to offer without bankrupting themselves. The workers at Amazon and its offspring’s are paid poorly while the owner has become one of the richest men in the world.

4)    The Astral Library by Kate Quinn (2022) A woman in trouble finds a hidden door leading her into a secret library where she can be protected. People here are able to hide in the book stories! Unfortunately, someone is attempting to break into the library and she must help to defend it.

5)    The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese (2023) This is the thick book that I am still only half way through. In one of the sections, a boy is taught to read by reading Moby Dick and then Great Expectations. He recites the stories to his family and then after being let go from college, he spends what money he still has on books to take back home to his village.

 

I am a sucker for reading and so, I can’t help but enjoy reading books about books. Like any hobbyist, I love anything dealing with the subjects I’m enamored with. I can’t help it; call it an addiction perhaps, an addiction that I don’t want to kick! 

Bad Luck?

 It was Friday night; it was dark and windy outside. It was also the thirteenth day of the month, Friday the 13^th!

    I was listening to a talk during the astronomy club’s monthly meeting. While the speaker was talking I was copying some things into a Word document. I could hear the wind blowing through the trees outside, at times, loud enough to cause a little apprehension. During the day the yard had been covered with broken branches and papers from the neighbor’s trash. The branches I’d have to pick up later but the papers would long be gone by morning.

    Suddenly, the lights flickered and then went dark. The speaker on my screen froze in place. I looked out the window and all I could see were the lights of a couple cars in the valley below. All the buildings and parking lots were dark. Even the traffic lights had gone out.

    I saved my document and shut off the computer. Then I went outside.

    The sky was clear, which certainly goes against Pittsburgh weather norms. Any time that an astronomical event happens, chances are that there will be clouds in the sky! Our sky is almost always cloudy.

    I grabbed my coat and went out for a walk around the block. I saw someone’s flashlight playing across their house and then it went out. I didn’t see anyone else. No one else had bothered to step outside and look around. Most of the houses were dark. A couple houses had solar lights on their sidewalks and porches, but they were unobtrusive. No flickering lights from candles or beams from flashlights could be seen.

    Coming around a bend I came to a house that seemed to be glowing. They had a noisy generator running beside the house and a couple lights lit inside. That house was the only bright spot in the neighborhood. The rest of the neighborhood was dark, and I walked with my head tilted up.

    Orion was spectacular; I definitely could see more stars than usual from my normally light polluted neighborhood. To the left of Orion was Sirius with Jupiter near Castor and Pollux higher above it. Off to the right were Aldebaran and the Pleiades. I watched a satellite pass through Auriga, easily seen and followed even with my poor eyesight.

    A car sitting a couple houses away started up, turning its headlights on. The reflection off of the chrome bumper of the truck it was facing caught me directly in the eye. Hoping that it would soon leave, I went behind my car, in the shadows to wait.

    I decided to take another walk around the block. The beautiful views of the sky kept me company until I got to the house with the noisy generator. He now had a couple spotlights on, shining onto his driveway, his neighbor’s houses and into my dark-adapted eyes.

    (“Thank heavens he had those lights on, he was protecting our neighborhood from bands of roaming vandals, muggers and rapists!” He was “protecting” us from seeing the stars above. I have to admit it…I did call him a few choice names!)

    Once I was past the noisy, glaring house and back into the quiet darkness, I started thinking about how this resembled the neighborhood of days gone by, before we became the frightened society that we are now. People’s porch lights would go out a short while after dark. If they did stay on they were only normal light bulbs, no flood lights or LED bulbs. The cities weren’t as brightly lit and we could see SO many more stars than now. The stars are slowly disappearing, and it is because we are afraid of the dark. What a shame!

    I passed a man in his car listening to the radio, his interior lights were on, I could see him but he had no idea that I had passed him. A bit further on, the car that had flashed me before was still sitting with its lights on. A woman sat inside, the interior lights on also, checking her phone for who knows what. I covered my eyes to avoid getting blinded and passed her by. She didn’t see me pass by either. Their lights hid me from them!

    I sat for awhile in a lawn chair in the front yard with my binoculars. Orion had moved behind a tree, a bit closer to the western horizon. Behind me, the Big Dipper was standing on its handle. Occasional blasts of wind whipped by. For the most part, it was nice and quiet. I was starting to get cold so I zipped up my jacket and returned to the inside.

    I lit a couple candles so that I could write a few notes and then went to bed and snuggled under my covers for a good night’s sleep. I originally thought that it was bad luck that my power had gone off, right in the middle of a meeting no less. Instead it was just the opposite. My Friday the 13^th ended up giving me a couple hours of quiet and dark sky. Who says Friday the 13ths are bad luck? Not me!

The End of a Short Month

It was the last day of February. Posts on Facebook were talking about an astronomical parade of planets that would be happening that evening. Like so many things posted on FB, I didn’t have any real desire to see it. I knew that 3 of the planets would be setting soon after sunset and two of the others would be visible only with optical aid. It always sounds so much more interesting than it turns out to be.

    Instead of watching the parade of planets, I decided to watch an occultation instead. Io, one of Jupiter’s moons was going to be disappearing behind the planet. I always enjoy seeing an object in space moving in real time! The occultation of a star that is light years away will be almost instantaneous. The star is a mere pinprick of light, gone as soon as it passes behind whatever covers it. When a planet’s moon crosses behind the planet, it might take a few minutes for it to completely disappear since the moon is an actual disc that we can see through a telescope. The increased time makes the movement that much more obvious and that much more exciting.

    The day was clear but of course as evening approached, while I was setting up my telescope in the front yard, patches of clouds started drifting in. The majority of the sky was clear but this is Pittsburgh, I knew that the sky will be covered soon. 

    After everything was set up I watched Jupiter and its moons. Io was close to the planet and on the far side, Callisto sat a bit further away. Ganymede and Europa sat further out on either side. With Io disappearing behind the planet and Callisto soon to be crossing in front of it, I could imagine how they were all orbiting the planet. The seeing was steady and I was able to add a doubler to the eyepiece to increase power without getting any distortion.

    Io slowly got closer and closer as I watched until it seemed to touch the planet’s surface. Clouds came and went as I watched and they actually helped me out. The planet’s disc was bright yellow and the moon was both smaller and a fainter orange. The brightness of the planet made it difficult to accurately see the moon as it neared. The clouds would change the color of the planet to grey and as the color faded, the moon became easier to see. This helped when the moon’s disc was partially covered! I thought a couple times that the moon had disappeared only to see it again as the seeing changed. 

    The moon was drifting behind the planet in line with northern cloud band. It was sometime after 7:29 that I lost sight of it. I then turned the telescope to the moon and enjoyed just roaming across the lunar landscape. The craters alongside the terminator were exciting to explore.

    I was wearing only a sweatshirt and the temperature was dropping. The clouds were also increasing so I decided it was time to call it quits. I didn’t need a flashlight to tear my set-up down. The moon was 93% illuminated; I could see my shadow as I was carrying things into the house.

    I missed the planetary parade, but then again, I wasn’t out there to see it. I saw the event I wanted to see and the clouds held off, for the most part, until I was tearing things down. My neighbors generously left their porch lights off and no cars drove by, shining their lights on me. I talked with some of them as they walked their dog and got to pet him for a bit. Petting the dog was "almost" as exciting as watching the moon disappear.

    All in all, not a bad way to end a short month! Come on March, bring it on!