Librarian at the Farmers Market

We have been told to take the library to wherever the clients are. I spent yesterday at a library table at the farmers market in Western Springs. It was the first time I have done such a thing, after several years of thinking that we should. I learned a lot of things right off the bat.

• Big posters work like sails. It might seem like a calm day, but even the slightest puff of air will catch the poster and you will fly.
• You need lots of rocks to hold down your handouts. Again the wind that you hardly notice will lift your papers and send them away.
• Laptops are difficult to view in the sun. We wanted to do some reference from the table, but it was tough. Maybe someone can recommend outdoor PCs.
• Do not expect people to rush the library table. People have come for the fruits and vegetables. You are a curiosity.
• Do not expect all of your regulars from the library to recognize you. You are not where they usually see you.
• Talk will be your most popular offering. You may return to the library with most of your handouts and books.

It was fun. The weather was beautiful and I enjoyed hearing Annalee, a folksinger raising funds for World Bicycle Relief, sing throughout the afternoon. I especially liked the Joni Mitchell tunes. She wanted to take bicycles to children in Zambia. We were all there in a good cause.

Answers to the Biography Pop Quiz

Here are the answers to last week’s biography pop quiz. All answers can be found in my new book Real Lives Revealed: A Guide to Reading Interests in Biography.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. In Eminent Victorians, Lytton Strachey did not write about (b) Matthew Arnold. Strachey wrote about Thomas Arnold.

2. Supreme Court Justice John Marshall wrote a biography of (c) George Washington

3. Sheriff Pat Garrett shot the outlaw know as (d) all of the above, which were names used by the outlaw known as Billy the Kid.

4. Journalist Martha Gellhorn died from (b) suicide.

5. On Illustrious Men (De Viris Illustribus) was written by (d) all of the above. It was popular name to use in Latin collected biographies.

6. Singer Michael Jackson claimed that his life was changed by reading a biography of (c) P. T. Barnum, who wanted to present the "greatest show on earth."

7. Elizabeth Barrett Browning had a dog named (c) Flush, who was dog-napped several times. The author defied her father to pay the ransoms. This may have helped her finally break away from her domineering parents.

8. President Abraham Lincoln's friends did not included (b) the late David Herbert Donald who was a Lincoln biographer, not a contemporary, though you might suspect he would have liked to be a Lincoln friend.

9. After their baseball careers ended, Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth developed a friendship while (c) golfing.

10. J. Randy Taraborrelli has not written a biography of (c) Barbara Streisand.


True or False?

11. True - Ray Charles learned to play boogie-woogie piano before he was classically trained.

12. True - The pirate William Dampier was also a noted scientist who chartered ocean currents and drew tropical birds.

13. True - Ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev was born on a train near Lake Baikal in Siberia.

14. True - Martha Washington burned all of her letters to and from her husband George.

15. False - Jonas Salk DID NOT suffer from polio as a child.


Bonus Question

16. Name the author of the first biography?

d. Ion of Chios is the best answer, as he wrote sketches of Pericles and Sophocles in the fifth century BCE. Scholars, however, do not agree on what a biography is, so the question is really hard to answer.

If you got any of the answers right, consider yourself pretty well-read.

Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting by Michael Perry

In his new book Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting, Michael Perry of northwest Wisconsin has moved with his new family into an old farmhouse with thirty-seven acres that could lie fallow while he prospers by writing. Having been raised on a family farm, however, Perry lives by principles, which include making the most of what you have. Though he never intended to become a farmer and is still reluctant to call himself one, he buys chickens and pigs.

Raising chickens and pigs is more work than you might imagine if you've never lived on a farm. A good portion of his year involves planning to build a chicken coop and pens for the pigs, learning about breeds, shopping for his livestock, feeding and caring for the creatures once he has them, and slaughtering them for meat. A less talented writer could make this pretty boring, but Perry uses it all to connect with his childhood and to muse on his future.

Readers may sense that Perry has lost some of the harder edge that he had in Population: 485. That's okay. Falling in love in Truck and raising children in the new book give him a new sense of purpose that requires a softened heart. He can, however, still write with clarity and honestly, free from sentimentality. Perhaps this skill comes from the same reserve that allows him to wring the necks of chickens with personal names.

As in Population: 485, there is tragedy, this time a nephew's death. In its wake he writes the following when visiting his parents' house:

And finally I climb the stairs to bed, to one of my childhood bedrooms, and stare straight up in the dark. I am remembering that before Jane was born, I was talking to a friend about how it was when he went from one child to two. "Love expands," he said, "to fit the need." I am wondering grief can do the same.

I found the stories of his parents fostering and adopting many children quite interesting. They certainly expanded their hearts. Readers may, too.

Perry, Michael. Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting. Harper, 2009. ISBN 9780061240430.

By the way, Citizen Reader in including Population: 485 in her summer book menage.

What I'm Doing at ALA

I have been looking through all of the offerings at the American Library Association Conference that starts July 10 in Chicago and have come up with this plan.

Friday, July 10

The Unconference, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. I am facilitating a discussion about nonfiction readers' advisory using the web.


Saturday, July 11

Gregory Maguire, 8 a.m.-9 a.m. The author of Wicked will speak at the Auditorium Series. It is pretty early and I have to drive in, so I might be late.

Open Knowledge Commons, 10:30 a.m.-noon. Digitized books from someone other than Google.

Booklist Online: Books and Blogs, Made for Each Other, 1:30 p.m.-3 p.m. I'm obviously interested in this.


Sunday, July 12

Net Neutrality and Its Implications for Libraries, 10:30 a.m.-noon. I might get the gist in half the time.

Top Technology Trends, 1:30 p.m.-3 p.m.


Monday, July 13

Lexis/Nexis Breakfast with Bonnie.

Rethinking the Reference Collection, 10:30 a.m.-noon. I am a reference librarian first. This is about the heart of my work.

From the Book and Beyond, 1:30 p.m.-3 p.m. More readers' advisory.

Tracy Kidder, 3 p.m.-4 p.m. I enjoyed Mountains Beyond Mountains and My Detachment: A Memoir.

Cokie Roberts, 5 p.m.-6:30. I heard Roberts in New Orleans and would enjoy hearing more.


I will probably add other presentations. I will be blogging about the programs I attend at both PLABlog and here at ricklibrarian.

I will also be checking in at the ABC/Clio exhibit to see my book.

Nonfiction Readers' Advisory in the Online World: For the Unconference

On Friday, I will facilitate a discussion about nonfiction readers' advisory and the role of the Internet at the Unconference before the American Library Association Conference in Chicago. If you are going to attend, here are some questions and statements to consider. Even if you will not be here, weigh in anyway with some comments.



Roles of the Internet in Nonfiction Readers' Advisory

· Tool for Assisting Face-to-Face Client

· Instruction Media for Readers' Advisory Librarian

· The Librarian's Rival for Readers' Advisory

· The Librarian's Platform for Readers' Advisory


Discussion Questions

· Is there a difference between fiction and nonfiction readers' advisory resources online?

· Are online RA resources easy to use with face-to-face readers?

· In an online world, who are our clients?

· Is the Internet better for indirect readers' advisory?

· Can we enlist our population of readers?


Web Sites and Services with Readers' Advisory Applications

· NoveList Plus

· Reader's Advisor Online

· Shelfari

· LibraryThing

· Amazon

· Barnes and Noble

· BookTV

· ChiliFresh

· Twitter

· BookLetters

· YouTube

· Google Books

· blogs

· podcasts

· chat and text



Nonfiction Readers' Advisory Observations


NoveList Plus has records for 47,157 adult nonfiction titles as of June 6, 2009. 108,604 adult fiction.

NoveList has genre based Recommended Reads: biography and memoir; business writing; current events and politics; food writing; history; humor; nature writing; religion and spirituality; travel writing; true crime.

To find read-a-likes, NoveList searches subjects and broad categories, not appeal factors. If library catalogs were more powerful, they could do as well.

Reader's Advisor Online collects the content of Libraries Unlimited books, few of which are nonfiction.

Reader's Advisory Online Blog and Early Word have lots of nonfiction alerts.

Shelfari genre groups vary in level of response to discussions. Some have growing memberships and active administrators. Some groups seem to duplicate already existing groups.

Librarians Who LibraryThing is the service's most populous group.

LibraryThing groups seem to respond to original discussion queries but rarely comment on the responses.

LibraryThing title records include member ratings. Could they be more reliable than Amazon ratings which can be manipulated by authors and publishers?

Twitter does not seem designed for RA, but users still broadcast requests for book help. Do librarians go to the readers? Is there a good way to harvest these tweets?

NPR Books, New York Times Book Review and Washington Post Book World podcasts lean toward nonfiction.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg County Public Library does a good job of getting readers to share reviews.

BookLetters and NextReads include customizable emails for nonfiction genre.

Book Ratings on LibraryThing and Amazon

I was wondering how similar or different reader ratings in LibraryThing and Amazon would be. So I tried a title. To the left is the result. The reader consensus is just about the same.

Of course, this needs more study. Has anyone else already done this?

I am wondering whether Amazon ratings can be more easily manipulated by authors, publishers, or publicists. Is this really something worth worrying about?

Any thoughts?

Montmorency: Thief, Liar, Gentleman? by Eleanor Updale

Thanks to Heather Booth, who had a stack of teen fiction on the reference desk, I now have a new series of books to read: Montmorency by Eleanor Updale. I liked how the covers of the books in the series evoked a foggy nineteenth century London. I anticipated something dark and cerebral and was not disappointed in the first book Montmorency: Thief, Liar, Gentleman?

The story begins in 1875 when a young surgeon saves the life of a criminal who is badly injured in falling through skylight. As the surgeon takes his patient to various scientific society meetings to show off his handwork, the criminal is introduced to both scientific thinking and the lives of gentlemen, sparking a desire for a better life than that of a petty thief. At first, his vision is simply being of a higher class of criminal. With diligence and ingenuity, he sets forth to realize his dream of comfort and achievement through burglary.

What seems unusual to me about Montmorency: Thief, Liar, Gentleman? is that readers are asked to cheer for a master criminal. To any reader who has difficulty with that idea I recommend just accepting that a criminal can be a heroic character. I do not want to say too much and spoil the plot. I will say that some of the incidents are quite amusing. I enjoyed contemplating execution of the crimes, and I think others will, too. Perhaps there is a master criminal in each of us.

Updale uses her deep knowledge of Victorian England in telling a compelling story. I particularly enjoyed learning about Joseph Bazalgette and the engineering of the London sewer system. The details of men's clothing are also finely done. I think fans of English literature and readers who like clever characters will enjoy this quick reading book.

Updale, Eleanor. Montmorency: Thief, Liar, Gentleman? Scholastic, 2003. ISBN 0439580366

Magyk by Angie Sage

One of my goals for this year is to learn more about books for teens and tweens. In our library's remodeling late in 2008, the teen collection moved much closer to the reference desk, which has resulted in a great increase in readers' advisory for middle school students. While I have read and even reviewed some good books intended for teens, I still do not know enough. Needing more audiobooks anyway, I am trying to mix work and pleasure with listening to teen-oriented audiobooks.

Last week I listened to Magyk by Angie Sage, the first of the titles in the Septimus Heap series, books about wizards, princesses, evil bureaucrats, and magical beasts. That is almost all I want to say about the fast-moving story as there are many plot twists that should not be foreshadowed in reviews. I did look at some reviews after finishing the audiobook, trying unsuccessfully to learn the name of the magical world that Sage has created. Almost all of the reviewers gave plot secrets away. I am glad I listened with no preconceptions.

A reader of fantasy will, of course, find elements in the story that remind him or her of other series, especially Harry Potter, but I found enough new ideas to be entertained. Magyk is widely available in public libraries.

Sage, Angie. Magyk. Recorded Books, 2005. ISBN 1419338048

Digital Photos Management: A Presentation at Thomas Ford

With many of our residents about to take summer vacations and vacation photos, I presented a program Digital Photos Management to twenty-five library users in our downstairs meeting room last week. I knew from the first that I had a lot to cover, so I got us started right away. My plan was to just briefly mention buying and taking photos. The emphasis of the presentation was what to do with photos after taking them. My assumption, which proved a little naive right away, was that everyone moved their photos from their cameras to their computers. A handful of the participants did not want to have anything to do with computers! Instead, they regularly take their cameras to Walgreens, Fox Photo, WalMart, etc., and use the printing services there. Some have mastered the self-service machines, but others always get staff assistance. Even though my publicity specifically mentioned use of a computer, a few people had different expectations for the program. Unfortunately, they got little from my program, and some left early.

In an hour and a half, I demonstrated loading photos onto a computer, arranging files in Windows, simple photo editing with Picasa, uploading photos to Flickr and Kodak Easy Share Gallery, attaching photos to email, and posting a photo on a blog. We discussed how to store your photos on CDs, DVDs, and extra hard drives, backing up photos before you edit them, and the idea of sharing your photos via the Internet. It was an ambitious program, which might have been better presented as a series, I now conclude.

From discussions with several of the participants as they dropped by the library in the days following the program, I gather that they did learn something valuable. Some were exposed to ideas that they had not encountered. Each of them seems to have a certain goal, such as better editing or sharing their photos with family. I told them that I am available to help them further through our "Book a Librarian" service. I expect to see several amateur photographers this summer. I've appointments with three already.

I was also asked to take photos at a wedding, but I declined.

Why People Read

Cindy Orr at RA Online has a great post Why People Read. She searched the Internet and found dozens of great statements. It seems like they should be used and spread around.

Drinking the Sea at Gaza: Days and Nights in a Land Under Siege by Amira Haas

When you belong to a book club, you will at some point book read books that you never had on your list. That was the case with me and Drinking the Sea at Gaza: Days and Nights in a Land Under Siege by Amira Haas. It is already an older book (translation 1999) that I did not recall. It deals with the Gaza Strip, one of the Palestinian enclaves with the state of Israel, not a subject that I long to contemplate. The troubles in the Middle East have been daily news for sixty years. What more could I learn that I have never heard?

The problem with relying on broadcast or even print news is that it rarely gets under the surface of the story. Reporters drop in and soon leave, just reporting what they learn from a little observation and listening to official spokespeople. Amira Haas, an Israeli journalist and a Jew, however, became a Gaza resident to observe the lives of Palestinians over the course of several years. What she found was quite troubling, an entire society being repressed.

While Haas tells intimate and compelling stories, the net effect of the book is overwhelming. I took nearly two weeks to read her book filled with many accounts of injustice and hopelessness. Palestinian authorities and Israeli political and military leaders have all failed to even consider the lives of the powerless men, women, and children of Gaza, many living in refugee camps since 1948. 1948 is a long time.

Our discussion of Drinking the Sea at Gaza was lengthy and not confined to the content of the book. A couple of people had wished that the stories had been arranged more chronologically, to help readers understand the events. We naturally included a discussion of American policy toward the Middle East. The consensus was that our government has enabled injustice, but we had no firm ideas of what would have or can help.

The story Haas tells has, of course, been dismissed by Hamas, Fatah, and Israeli partisans, which is itself a good reason to have it in libraries, available to readers. Not many of our libraries seem to have it. Will the stories be forgotten?

Haas, Amira. Drinking the Sea at Gaza: Days and Nights in a Land Under Siege. Metropolitan Books, 1999. ISBN 0805057390

Biography Pop Quiz: Questions from Real Lives Revealed

Roche, Rick. Real Lives Revealed: A Guide to Reading Interests in Biography. Libraries Unlimited/ABC-Clio. 2009. 601p. ISBN 9781591586647.

Real Lives Revealed: A Guide to Reading Interests in Biography officially publishes today. It is the second book in the Real Stories Series, following The Inside Scoop: A Guide to Nonfiction Investigative Writing and Exposes by Sarah Statz Cords. Instead of writing a review of my own book, which would hardly be unbiased, I offer a biography pop quiz. All of the answers can be found in my book. How fast can you get your hands on one? I will reveal the answers next week.




Multiple Choice Questions

1. In Eminent Victorians, Lytton Strachey did not write about

a. Florence Nightingale
b. Matthew Arnold
c. Henry Edward Manning
d. Charles George Gordon

2. Supreme Court Justice John Marshall wrote a biography of

a. Thomas Jefferson
b. John Adams
c. George Washington
d. Thomas Paine

3. Sheriff Pat Garrett shot the outlaw know as

a. William H. Bonney
b. Billy the Kid
c. Henry McCarty
d. all of the above

4. Journalist Martha Gellhorn died from

a. natural causes
b. suicide
c. cancer
d. malaria

5. On Illustrious Men (De Viris Illustribus) was written by

a. Cornelius Nepos
b. Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus
c. Diogenes Laertius
d. all of the above

6. Singer Michael Jackson claimed that his life was changed by reading a biography of

a. John Lennon
b. Harry Houdini
c. P. T. Barnum
d. Paul Robeson

7. Elizabeth Barrett Browning had a dog named

a. Chaucer
b. Sappho
c. Flush
d. Puck

8. President Abraham Lincoln's friends did not included

a. Joshua Speed
b. David Herbert Donald
c. Orville Browning
d. William Herndon

9. After their baseball careers ended, Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth developed a friendship while

a. playing tennis
b. betting on horses
c. golfing
d. fly fishing

10. J. Randy Taraborrelli has not written a biography of

a. Madonna
b. Cher
c. Barbara Streisand
d. Elizabeth Taylor


True or False?

11. Ray Charles learned to play boogie-woogie piano before he was classically trained.

12. The pirate William Dampier was also a noted scientist who chartered ocean currents and drew tropical birds.

13. Ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev was born on a train near Lake Baikal in Siberia.

14. Martha Washington burned all of her letters to and from her husband George.

15. Jonas Salk suffered from polio as a child. He met Franklin Roosevelt in a New York hospital.


Bonus Question

16. Name the author of the first biography?

a. Samuel Johnson
b. James Boswell
c. Plutarch
d. Ion of Chios


Here's a hint for those who can use my book to answer these questions. Two of the questions are drawn from the Chronology of Biographical History that I include in the History of Biography at the front of the book. One question comes from Appendix B: Top Biographers. The others come from the 600 book reviews.

At Last the 1948 Show

"And now for something completely different."

No, it is not Monty Python, it's At Last the 1948 Show, a television sketch series from ITV London that was a parent of Monty Python. Marry At Last the 1948 Show to Do Not Adjust Your Set, and you get the baby Monty Python's Flying Circus.

Crazy, silly, zany, weird, uproariously funny. Viewing a five-episode DVD set of the show, Bonnie and I laughed Saturday evening away. We also saw a lot of what Python was going to be. John Cleese was already a fully mature John Cleese. Right off the bat in episode one he plays a psychiatrist who will not allow the client to recline on the couch fearing that the latter might be a bed-wetter. Tim Brooke-Taylor, the client, can hardly get a word in as Cleese talks and talks and talks. Graham Chapman is already a talented Graham Chapman-like player. He plays a policeman several times. He even plays a policeman in drag. There is also Marty Feldman in his first acting role. He goes completely bonkers in some scenes! In other scenes with Cleese, he seems to foreshadow the coming of Michael Palin. Finally, there is Aimi MacDonald, whose "moments" link sketches and remind me of the female comedians in the 1968 American series Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In. At Last the 1948 Show came first in 1967.

Eric Idle is an extra. In "Thief in the Library," he gets to play a librarian. Shhhh!

"The Four Yorkshiremen" is touted as the most famous sketch. I think my favorites are "The Chartered Accountant Dance," "A Train Carriage, and "Life Insurance for the Accident Prone Man."

Viewers may be surprised to find At Last the 1948 Show is in black and white. Color came to ITV the next year. According to an interview with Tim Brooke-Taylor on the DVD, the show was somewhat regional and broadcast to only parts of Great Britain. The two DVD set includes five episodes, and its box gives the impression that it is the complete series. Aimi MacDonald in her links, however, refers to scenes you don't see, as does Brooke-Taylor in his interview. BFI Screenonline and IMDB indicates that there were thirteen episodes. Wikipedia explains that the DVD is a compilation that was shown on Swedish television. The BBC destroyed most of the original videotapes. That's so sad, as I'd like to see more.

Read On ... Women's Fiction: Reading Lists for Every Taste by Rebecca Vnuk

What is women's fiction? According to Rebecca Vnuk in her introduction to Read On ... Women's Fiction: Reading Lists for Every Taste, the genre includes novels about women characters and their relationships with family, friends, and men. These novels tend to be written by women, and most of the readers are women. Separating them from romance novels is at times difficult. Women's fiction does not have to include a happy ending, as the romances do. Vnuk points to two trends in women's fiction reflected in book sales and library circulation: lighthearted Chick lit and more serious novels examining social issues, which she describes as "Oprah-esque."

I started my examination of Vnuk's guide with the index. I found four books that I had read among the many unfamiliar titles: The Bonesetter's Daughter by Amy Tan, Dream When You're Feeling Blue by Elizabeth Berg, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg, and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. I may have also read Emma by Jane Austen, but I am not certain after all the film and television adaptations that I have seen. I thought that I might find more, such as the novels of Barbara Pym or Muriel Spark, which I find fascinating. Vnuk, however, explains in her introduction (which I read after scanning the index) that she focused on contemporary authors, adding only a short list of classical authors at the end.

Like the other guides in the Read On Series, Read On ... Women's Fiction in divided in to five sections group titles according to the appeal factors of character, story, setting, mood, and language. Each list has a common factor, such as Christmas gatherings or war-time love. I think my favorite list titles are "Putting the Fun in Dysfunctional" and "I Still Miss My Ex, But My Aim Is Getting Better."

Read On ... Women's Fiction is going to be handy to have around the library. Jamie and Annie may get some book list and display ideas from it. It will give me some titles to suggest to the next reader who has finished the Sophie Kinsella books. At Thomas Ford, we are going to circulate it and the other Read On Series guides to let readers discover more titles on their own.

Vnuk, Rebecca. Read On ... Women's Fiction: Reading Lists for Every Taste. Libraries Unlimited/ABC-Clio, 2009. ISBN 9781591586340

The book has arrived!

The book has arrived!
Originally uploaded by ricklibrarian.

I have to grin! The book is here! As soon I came home today, Bonnie revealed that a box from Libraries Unlimited/ABC Clio had arrived. Inside were my personal copies of Real Lives Revealed: A Guide to Reading Interests in Biography. We took the heavy box to the dining room table where Caramel watched closely as I opened the top flaps and removed a copy. Bonnie caught it all for the ages.

I finally know that the book is a total of 601 pages. That includes 600 reviews, a chronology of biography, three appendices, and three indexes. I hope many readers and librarians find them useful.

The official publication date is next Tuesday, June 30. There will be copies at the American Library Association Conference in July.

The Lost Art of Walking: The History, Science, Philosophy, and Literature of Pedestrianism by Geoff Nicholson

The Lost Art of Walking: The History, Science, Philosophy, and Literature of Pedestrianism by Geoff Nicholson is my kind of book. It is partly a microhistory of walks, walkers, and walking, telling stories from ancient history to the space age. It is also a memoir, as Nicholson recounts his own walks, both in the places he has lived and in exotic locations that he has visited for the sake of walking.

While I liked the stories featuring characters from history and literature, I especially enjoyed Nicholson's own story. In the first chapter, he tells about walking around Los Angeles, where few people ever leave their houses not in an automobile. On foot he sees things that many people never see. Near the end, he recounts growing up in the "county estates" (public housing) in Sheffield, England. Even as a youth he had a passion for walking. I liked this quote:

"... when I was eleven years old or so and it was reckoned that even though I was too young to be left alone in my parents' house, I was old enough to be allowed to wander the streets of Hillsborough."

The oddest story may have been about family vacations in Blackpool. Their lodgings were only for the night. They had to be out by 8:00 every morning and were not allowed back in until 5:00 in the afternoon. The family, parents and young children, walked through the tourist town, back and forth, all day. Because his parents were frugal, their entertainment options were very limited. It is surprising that he grew up to enjoy vacations and spend them walking.

Thanks to Maggie for recommending The Lost Art of Walking. I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Nicholson, Geoff. The Lost Art of Walking: The History, Science, Philosophy, and Literature of Pedestrianism. Riverhead Books, 2008. ISBN 9781594489983

Reasons to Read Biography

In the June 2009 issue of Booklist, David Wright states that he can think of only two good reasons to read biography. He thinks it is a good way (1) to learn history and (2) to "get the dirt." He enjoys exposés and confessional memoirs that reveal inner demons. In the same issue, Kaite Mediatore claims that she enjoys reading about "dames," which she describes as strong, good-humored women worth admiration. Both David and Kaite review five books, some of which are old and rare.

Since they have opened the conversation, it seems a good time to bring out my list of reasons to read biography.

Reason 1: To discover fascinating people.

Harry Harlow is one such person. He was an enthusiastic experimental psychologist at the University of Wisconsin in the 1950s, when he discovered how important parental care was to the development of young monkeys. He became a proponent of love featured on CBS Television news. Ironically, he ignored his own wife and children. Deborah Blum examines the life of a contradictory character in Love at Goon Park: Harry Harlow and the Science of Affection.

Reason 2: To rediscover people we think we know well.

In our mental processing of everything that we have learned about historical figures, such as George Washington or Abraham Lincoln, we sometimes reduce them to a few facts, such as "general who became our first president" or "president who freed the slaves." In doing this we forget what truly made them remarkable. Luckily for us, biographers recollect the stories and present them fresh and new. Consider John Adams. Many people considered him pretty old and dry before David McCullough wrote his intimate biography, simply called John Adams.

Reason 3: To reassess infamous characters.

Margaret Sanger was a nurse who saw tremendous suffering in the slums of New York City in the early twentieth century. She began a crusade for birth control, which included the distribution of honest and frank information about sex. For this she was condemned by many religious, political, and law enforcement officials. Ellen Chesler recounts the life and times of a woman ahead of her times in Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America.

Reason 4: To get the story behind legendary characters.

There really was a Queen Boudica who tried to expel the Romans from Britain, but she was not the mass murderer that some legends suggest. Vanessa Collingridge uses archeological evidence to redraw the queen's image in Boudica: The Life of Britain's Legendary Warrior Queen.

Reason 5: To get the dirt. (A nod to David)

Sir Thomas Malory is often credited with establishing the tradition of knightly chivalry. According to Christina Hardyman, he was really a rapist, murderer, and thief. She makes her case in Malory: The Knight Who Became King Arthur's Chronicler.

Reason 6: To find a hero, warts and all. (A nod to Kaite)

Ethiopian widow Haregewoin Teffera did not want to foster an AIDS orphan, but her priest insisted. Once she cleaned the girl, she fell in love and began working for all her country's orphans. Melissa Fay Green describes Teffera's life and work in There Is No Me Without You: One Women's Odyssey to Rescue Africa's Children.

Reason 7: To learn history through the life of an individual.

When the heads of her friends began to fall in Paris, Marie Tussaud was there to catch them and cast them in wax. Kate Berridge recounts how a survivor of the French Revolution became a entertainment pioneer and a very rich woman in Madame Tussaud: A Life in Wax.

Reason 8: To experience adventure from the safety of one's armchair.

Despite the dangers of travel over the Andes Mountains and on the Amazon River in the eighteenth century, Isabelle Godin des Odonais set forth to cross the South American continent to rescue her husband. Robert Whitaker tells an excite tale in The Mapmaker's Wife: A True Tale of Love, Murder, and Survival in the Amazon.

Reason 9: To celebrate one's culture.

Why did the life of an entertainer mean so much to his many fans? Novelist Bobbie Ann Mason explains in her compact biography Elvis Presley.

Reason 10: To enjoy a good book.

Take any of the nine titles from above and insert here.


Ten seems a nice number at which to stop. You might write some more reasons of your own after reading a few good biographies.


My book Real Lives Revealed: A Guide to Reading Interests in Biography publishes next week. It includes reviews of all of these titles, plus 591 more.

The Remarkable Life of William Beebe: Explorer and Naturalist by Carol Grant Gould

This is the entry for an adventure biography reviewed in my upcoming book Real Lives Revealed: a Guide to Reading Interests in Biography. William Beebe was a romantic figure who led nearly fifty expeditions for the New York Zoological Society and the American Museum of Natural History. Due to his station as director of the society's Department of Tropical studies and the wide popularity of his travel memoirs, he knew every important conservationist from Teddy Roosevelt to Rachael Carson. He also knew Noel Coward, Will Rogers, and many smart, beautiful women.

Gould, Carol Grant
The Remarkable Life of William Beebe: Explorer and Naturalist. Island Press/Shearwater Books, 2004. 447p. ISBN 1559638583.

In 1932, long before Jacques Cousteau explored the oceans, William Beebe (1877–1962) broadcast on the radio from a bathysphere a half a mile below the ocean surface, describing fish and other creatures never before seen by humans. Long before the television age of David Attenborough, Beebe traveled to remote jungles seeking out rare and new species of animals and plants for his magazine articles and books. As the first ornithologist for the Bronx Zoo, the energetic scientist collected and studied birds from around the globe. Given access to Beebe’s papers at Princeton University , Gould has written an adventure story about a now-forgotten celebrity of early twentieth century zoology that will appeal to viewers of televised nature programs as well as other readers.

Subjects: Beebe, William; Explorers; Naturalists; Zoologists

Now try: Beebe’s own books mix memoir and science. His titles include Two Bird Lovers in Mexico, Half Mile Down (about deep sea diving), and Galapagos: World’s End. A more recent naturalist who will go anywhere to get a story is David Attenborough. He recounts his career of making nature films in Life on Air: Memoirs of a Broadcaster. Zoologist Gerald Durrell describes growing up with animals in his highly entertaining My Family and Other Animals. Carl Sagan was another enthusiastic scientist who doubled as media celebrity. Carl Sagan: A Life in the Cosmos by William Poundstone captures a life in the pursuit of knowledge that is free of difficult science reading. Peter Matthiessen has also traveled the world seeking to see wildlife in natural habitats. In The Snow Leopard he describes his attempt to see the reclusive cats on the rocky cliffs of the Himalayan Mountains.

Juliette Morgan, Librarian for Racial Equality

In a sidebar in the book that I reviewed yesterday, Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice, Phillip Hoose briefly tells about white support for the boycott of the Montgomery buses by African Americans in 1955 and 1956. He devotes two paragraphs to librarian Juliette Morgan, who was terrorized by white supremacists after her letter stating her admiration for blacks who stood up against repression ran in the Montgomery Advertiser newspaper. Hoose says that after months of death threats and constant harassment through the night, she committed suicide.

Wanting to know more, I found "Juliette Hampton Morgan: A White Woman Who Understood" on the website Teaching Tolerance, A Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center. This article tells how Morgan, a woman with deep Southern roots, began calling for an end to Jim Crow laws in 1939, sixteen years before the boycott. For years she wrote letters to the Montgomery Advertiser and participated in interracial prayer groups. For her outspoken stand, she lost jobs, lost friends, and became estranged from her family. Despite her isolation, the Carnegie Library hired her as a reference librarian. When her letter in support of the boycott ran in the newspaper, the city's mayor demand that she be fired, but the library refused, even when the mayor withheld library funding.

According my calendar calculations, Morgan survived through the boycott and retained her job past the crisis, but the strain must have taken its toll. Interracial violence continued in the city for years after the boycott. Severely depressed, she resigned from the library on July 15, 1957. Her mother found a bottle of sleeping pills beside her body the next morning.

The Reverend Martin Luther King mentioned Morgan in his book Stride Toward Freedom, and she has been remembered with induction into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame. We need a librarian's hall of fame to remember brave librarians, such as Morgan and Judith Krug.

Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice by Phillip Hoose

I continue to read juvenile biographies. The only thing "juvenile" about them is that they are intended for older elementary or middle school students. The writing in many of these serious books is honest and economic. Though they are on the short side, their authors include enough details to tell their stories well. Horrible injustice is described truthfully, and the courage of individuals is lauded. If these books were formatted and bound as typical adult nonfiction, they might easily pass as such.

Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice by Phillip Hoose is one such book. In 133 pages, Hoose tells the mostly forgotten story of a teenage African American who was arrested in early 1955 for not giving up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama city bus, nine months before Rosa Parks also refused to relinquish her seat. Few people praised Colvin for her stand. Most of her classmates in high school shunned or ridiculed her for getting in trouble. She lost her case and was sentenced to a year of probation. Despite the trouble that resulted from her initial stand, she later joined in a long shot case in Federal Court to declare Montgomery's segregating of buses unconstitutional. Her testimony helped win that case of Browder v. Gayle, which was later affirmed by the U. S. Supreme Court.

Colvin's story is not, however, triumphant. Because she was an unwed mother, she was even shunned by many leaders in the civil rights movement. It was many years after the events that her role was "rediscovered" and celebrated. In the meantime, she lived a hard life.

Readers learn a lot about Montgomery, the South, and the fall of the old racist ways in Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice. It's not just for kids.

Hoose. Phillip. Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice. Farrar Strauss Giroux, 2009. ISBN 9780374313227