The Universe Within: Discovering the Common History of Rocks, Planets, and People by Neil Shubin

Joni Mitchell was right when she sang "We are stardust ..." in her song "Woodstock." According to University of Chicago professor Neil Shubin in his recent book The Universe Within: Discovering the Common History of Rocks, Planets, and People, the human body is composed of elements that were forged by the stars. There had been a point when there was only hydrogen, helium, and lithium. The process took billions of years, and it may have been only five to ten million years ago that the right elements in the right quantities under the right conditions allowed our species, or at least its predecessors, to evolve on earth. No knowing about elsewhere. 

So what contributed to our appearance on earth? Our solar system had to absorb stellar matter, form spheres, and establish orbits, and the earth had to stabilize with a temperature in a receptive range for life. We need to thank Jupiter and its gravitational pull for keeping us viable. Warm water had to foster the growth of single cell organisms, some of which had to develop photosynthesis to build up available oxygen reserves for a great variety of spiny and spineless creatures to evolve and spread over the planet. There were many other contributing factors. Even the break up of the super continent was necessary to get the balance of elements right. 

Shubin has written popular science before. His Your Inner Fish was awarded best book of the year by the National Academy of the Sciences in 2009. The Universe Within expands on the themes he introduced in that book, starting with the Big Bang and ending with the age of DNA research. He tells a great story with many interesting characters, some of them human. Look for it in libraries with the earth sciences books. 

Shubin, Neil. The Universe Within: Discovering the Common History of Rocks, Planets, and People. Pantheon Books, 2013. 225p. ISBN 9780307378439.

Topsy: The Startling Story of the Crooked Tailed Elephant, PT. Barnum, and the American Wizard, Thomas Edison by Michael Daly

Topsy: The Startling Story of the Crooked Tailed Elephant, PT. Barnum, and the American Wizard, Thomas Edison by Michael Daly presented my biggest challenge to reviewing books for Booklist so far.

My difficulty with Topsy was the author's unrelenting depiction of 19th century American corruption and cruelty. The entertainment entrepreneurs who ran circuses and amusements cheated employees, customers, and retailers without remorse. Newspapers pandered to the grand and insincere pronouncements of the circus barons, and the public bought up the papers and rushed to the shows whenever they came to town. Rough criminals followed the circuses to towns, where they picked pockets and stole laundry from clothes lines while families attended shows. Police were paid off to look the other way. There is rarely an honest or kind person in Topsy.

Worst of all, almost everyone abused the animals. Most elephant trainers were ill-paid, alcoholic men who seemed to hate the animals; they seemed to enjoy beating animals that did not follow commands. The circus masters turned a blind eye. The elephants were often chained together and unprotected from heckling crowds. Drunks gave them drinks of beer and whisky. Gangs of boys offered apples laced with hot peppers. The abuse went on and on. I started dreading what I might find when I turned a page. 

When researchers for Edison and Westinghouse began animal tests of electrocutions, I knew where the author was leading.

I would not have finished the book if I had not had an obligation to Booklist and its readers. Regardless of how uncomfortable I felt reading, Topsy tells a story that needs to be told. Here is a book to counter the idea that our country was a much better place in the past.

Daly, Michael. Topsy: The Startling Story of the Crooked Tailed Elephant, PT. Barnum, and the American Wizard, Thomas Edison. Atlantic Monthly Press, 2013. ISBN 9780802119049.

Paul Fusco: RFK by Paul Fusco

I remember the day, June 8, 1968, sitting in front of a black and white television in Texas, watching a slow moving train carrying the body of Robert Kennedy from New York to Washington, DC, for internment near his brother at Arlington National Cemetery. The funeral train was many hours behind schedule, slowed in the interest of safety of the people lining the route. Already there had been an accident in which two had died, struck by a train that they did not see on another line.

I remember mostly helicopter views of the train as I watched the TV coverage. As Walter Cronkite and others spoke, cameras must have also shown people waiting along the tracks and more people waiting in Washington for the procession. All in black and white. I do not remember seeing what Look photographer Paul Fusco saw from his perch on the train - hundreds of thousands, maybe a million people standing by the tracks, on top of cars, on walls, out windows, and in fields. Many of his colorful photos are now published in Paul Fusco: RFK.

Turning the pages of Paul Fusco: RFK, you will see 1968 America. If you are old enough, you may see yourself, or someone much like you, among the people black and white, young and old, holding babies, offering flowers, taking photos with a variety of cameras. On page 111, in front of a red bicycle with a banana seat, is a slightly out-of-focus boy wearing black glasses and a shiny watch. That looks like me. To his left (our right) is another boy, who looks much like my friend Pete Midkiff. Did they ride the bike together?

Looking at the people, you can tell they came for different reasons, for they display a wide range of emotions. Some are waving cheerfully to whoever is waving from the train, which was loaded with Kennedy's family, friends, and supporters and many dignitaries (who were also displaying a wide range of emotions, according to the text). Some were obviously in mourning or shocked. As the daylight failed and the train entered the city, the images become blurred and confusing, which seems fitting for the day.

Paul Fusco: RFK is the third and most comprehensive of Fusco's books about that day, including 120 photos, as well as essays by Norman Mailer, Evan Thomas, and Vicki Goldberg. Fusco wrote an Afterword that helps explain his work. Allow two or three hours to look through this moving book.

Fusco, Paul. Paul Fusco: RFK. Aperture, n.d. 223p. ISBN 9781597110792.

Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin by Jill Lepore

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) was the fifteenth of seventeen children of Josiah Franklin. The last of the children was his sister Jane Franklin (1712-1794), of whom little has ever been written. Unlike her famous brother, she spent almost her entire life in Boston dealing with family matters and making soap. She was married at age 15 to Edward Mecom, who proved to be a poor provider and unstable character. He eventually landed in debtor's prison, losing the family home, forcing Jane to move with their children in with her parents. Many of their children and grandchildren also proved to be sickly or unstable, and the industrious Jane outlived most of them. We would know nothing about her today if it were not for her life-long correspondence with her brother Benjamin. Using their remaining letters, noted historian Jill Lepore has written about Jane in The Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin.

Readers might expect an eighteenth century woman of limited means, education, and travel not to be noteworthy. Not Jane. She borrowed books and newspapers and stayed informed about colonial affairs, always watching for news of her brother. He sent her numerous books that she read and sometimes critiqued in her letters back to him. Though not in position to meet and correspond with wealthy women, such as Abigail Adams and Martha Washington, she expressed some of their common concerns. She too thought that the Continental Congress and the writers of the Constitution should, as Adams said to her husband, "consider the ladies."

Because most of what we know of Jane Franklin comes from the Benjamin Franklin sources, Book of Ages is primarily about their relationship. Though he assisted her on numerous occasions, directing his business partners to transfer rental properties to her, readers may wish that he had done more to help. With communications and transportation so slow, the brother and sister were sometimes out of touch for years when she could have used him. Her survival through some really hard times is a testament to her tenacity.

Book of Ages may look like a really big book about a relatively unknown character, but readers will find that nearly half the volume is the appendix with its notes, genealogies, a calendar of letters, and a description of Jane's library collection. Much of this is worth reading after finishing the main text.

I was lucky enough to get a copy of an uncorrected proof of Book of Ages at the American Library Association's Carnegie Awards ceremony, where Lepore's was a finalist for her wonderful book The Mansion of Happiness. Book of Ages will be in libraries and bookstores in October.

Lepore, Jill. Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin. Knopf, October, 2013. 480p. ISBN 9780307958341.

Travels in Siberia by Ian Frazier

The first thing that Ian Frazier tells us in Travels in Siberia is that Siberia is not and has never been a well-defined place. It was never an official state of any kind. It is an idea - a really big idea burdened with myths. It is believed by many to be a desolate, forbidding, unforgiving region, frozen in time forever - a place to which people are banished. All of this is true but that is not all that there is to say. Frazier in his numerous trip to and through the fabled region of Russia also found magic.

At the heart of his book is one long trip across Russia from St. Petersburg in the west to the Pacific port of Vladivostok in the east with two guides, Sergei and Volodya, in an unreliable van. Though Frazier had an advance for a magazine article, he was on a tight budget and the trio slept in tents much of the time. He had not allowed for expensive van repairs either. At one point when the tailpipe fell off, Sergei opportunely walked along the littered highway until he found a suitable replacement. After a few twists of wire, a serviceable repair was made and the trip continued. There were many other auto problems, which strained the mood of the companions.

Away from cities much of the time, the roads were rough broken pavement or gravel. To cross some rivers they loaded the van onto ferries. Through one marshy region without any passable road, they drove into a boxcar and rode in semi-darkness for over 24 hours. During six weeks, they met many people, visited historical sites, and fought many mosquitoes. A very well-traveled man, Frazier said he had never seen mosquitoes as plentiful as in Siberia.

In Travels in Siberia, Frazier also recounts several shorter visits, the last being three-week winter trip because all of the others had been hot summer trips. It was only on the last trip that he finally visited a prison camp and drove across frozen lakes and rivers.

Despite the hardships, Frazier, being a great fan of Russian history and literature, remains optimistic to the end of the book. Readers will find him good company, much in the way of Bill Bryson. They may also discover urges to read about the Decembrists, the many czars of Russia, Aleksandr Pushkin, and Siberian energy reserves. If the hardcover book looks daunting, try Frazier's audiobook. He is a great narrator and will keep you well entertained.

Frazier, Ian. Travels in Siberia. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010. 529p. ISBN 9780374278724.

16 compact discs. Macmillan Audio, 2010. ISBN 9781427210531.

Between Heaven and Earth: Birds in Ancient Egypt edited by Rozenn Bailleul-LeSuer

I had the pleasure a couple of weeks ago of seeing an exhibit at the Oriental Institute Museum in Chicago for a second time. It is called Between Heaven and Earth: Birds in Ancient Egypt, and it displays artifacts from the Oriental Institute with a few select items borrowed from other Chicago museums and one coffin for an ibis from the Brooklyn Museum. Everything in the show which ends at the end of this month relates to the role of birds in Ancient Egypt culture. Among the items are bird mummies, statues, reproductions of wall paintings, vases and other pottery, furniture, and a 5000 year old ostrich egg.

I was so impressed at my first viewing of the special exhibit that I bought the catalog, Between Heaven and Earth: Birds in Ancient Egypt edited by Rozenn Bailleul-LeSuer. The first half of this attractive publication is a collection of short papers about the roles of birds along the Nile River. The last half shows and explains all the items in the exhibit.

One role of birds in Ancient Egypt was as food, as the river attracted great flocks of water fowl. After fish, birds were the second most popular source of protein in the Egyptian diet. In the collection is a wall painting of a royal person hunting birds with a throwstick, an actual 3500 year old throwstick, and another painting showing ducks and geese being herded and caged for sale. Eating was not, however, the Egyptians only concern. They were interested in nature, and everywhere they looked there were birds, especially every spring and fall during the great migrations between Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa. Many of these birds whose species can still be identified were depicted in Egyptian art works.

But there is more. Egyptians believed their gods took the forms of birds and some birds, because they could fly, served as messengers between earth and heaven. Falcons, ibises, storks, vultures, and owls figure in myths and even lend their shapes to hieroglyphs. There are 54 recognized bird hieroglyphs and another 8 of bird parts, such as feathers and eggs.

There is so much more to say, but I should let you discover it through the catalog which is so beautifully illustrated. It is worth seeking out.

Between Heaven and Earth: Birds in Ancient Egypt. Oriental Institute Museum Publications 35, 2012. 232p. ISBN 9781885923929.

Still Looking: Essays on American Art by John Updike

With celebrity come privileges. I have to wonder how many publishers would be interested in a book like Still Looking: Essays on American Art if its author were not famous like John Updike. He was, however, having studied painting at the Ruskin School of Art before he became a famous writer. I am happy he had the background and the eminence because I enjoyed the book very much.

Like many books of essays by literary figures, Updike's collection of pieces spans several decades. Reporting on art exhibits that he visited, he described what he liked and did not, often including biographical profiles of artists and explaining their significance in art movements. From early in the book I enjoyed learning that he liked many of the same artists that I do. Feeling akin to Updike, I read essay after essay, even about artists I had not considered. I also enjoyed how beautifully the book is illustrated. Would writers with less influence have been able to get the publisher to acquire rights to so many works of art?

Still Looking includes an introduction to American art and 18 essays. Only the final piece, three pages on Andy Warhol, seems insubstantial. Most run 10 to 20 pages and include a dozen or more color images of major works discussed. My favorites were essays on American landscape painters, James McNeill Whistler, Childe Hassam, and Edward Hopper.

You do not have to like Updike novels to enjoy his essays. I have now reserved Just Looking, an earlier collection about European art.

Updike, John. Still Looking: Essays on American Art. Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. 222p ISBN 9781400044184.

The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss by Edmund de Waal

This week all of my books feature art and artifacts: netsuke from Japan today, American painting and sculpture Wednesday, and Ancient Egyptian images of birds Friday.

I think I have a new sure-bet book to suggest to readers who ask me for something wonderful to read. Of course, they will probably not use the word "wonderful," but will somehow indicate that they are tired of settling for formulaic fiction or cookie-cutter memoirs. I will offer The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss by Edmund de Waal. Set in Tokyo, Odessa, Paris, and Vienna, this book recounts six generations of a Jewish family as its fortunes rose and fell with the tides of European history. Binding the threads of story together is the fate of a collection of netsuke, tiny Japanese carvings used to toggle small purses or bags. One of the netsuke is a small hare with yellow stones inlaid as eyes.

Even sure-bet books need a reader ready for them. I know I brought The Hare with Amber Eyes home once before, read two or three pages and decided it was too involved for my mood at that time. This time I borrowed the audiobook expertly read by Michael Maloney. I enjoyed having the epic story of the Ephrussi family, Russian grain merchants transformed into international bankers, wash over me as I drove, cooked, and worked in the garden.

In an interview, de Waal says that he tried to stay out of the story, but I am glad he failed. His descriptions of travels to see old family homes and to visit archives with family papers connects our time with the 19th and 20th centuries, and we get to feel what he felt when he made discoveries. I also enjoyed learning new words, such as netsuke, bibelot, and vitrine. The Hare with Amber Eyes is a richly-told story to enjoy if you are ready.

Libraries have many opportunities to promote de Waal's book. They can add The Hare with Amber Eyes to displays on Japanese art, art collecting, family history, Jewish history, Impressionist France, 20th century Austria, or World War II. They may want to pair it with the novels of Marcel Proust or the poetry of Rainer Marie Rilke, which figure in the telling of the Ephrussi family story.

De Waal, Edmund. The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2010. 354p. ISBN 9780374105976.

The King of Infinite Space: Euclid and His Elements by David Berlinski

In high school, I never knew how ancient the proofs of geometry were. I worked with points, lines, and planes without feeling I was part of a continuum, enjoying how new the ideas of logic applied to shapes and spaces felt. Only years later did I read about Euclid and how for over 2000 years his axioms had been applied in mathematics, engineering, and philosophy.

According to David Berlinski in his book The King of Infinite Space: Euclid and His Elements, the writings of Euclid have held up very well, withstanding many who have tried to disprove his propositions. Only the parallel postulate from his book The Elements continues to trouble as no one has been able to definitively prove or disprove it. Euclidean geometry was the only geometry until the middle of the nineteenth century when non-Euclidean geometry rose to explain some phenomena not previously explained.

In picking up this small volume, I hoped to learn more about Euclid himself, but there is little to know. Like Shakespeare, it is his writing that has survived to inspire new generations of scholars, many of whom still swear by him. Though it has been many years since I studied geometry, I found I could follow most of the text of The King of Infinite Space and enjoyed puzzling about negative numbers, infinity, and our ability to test theories about real things on geometrical models. I had to use a dictionary to read several pages, but my vocabulary may expand from the effort.

Berlinski, David. The King of Infinite Space: Euclid and His Elements. Basic Books, 2013. 172p. ISBN 9780465014811.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

I have enjoyed improbably journey stories before. In the movie The Straight Story (1999), an elderly farmer from Iowa rides a small riding mower over 300 miles to Wisconsin to reconcile with his dying brother. In the BBC's mini-series The Missing Postman (1997), a retiring postman empties his last letter box and to protest against new letter-sorting equipment vows to deliver his last bag of letters by bicycle across Great Britain. Both of these stories mix humor and melancholy and feature aging men unhappy about the drift of their lives. I expected a similar situation in the novel The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce. I was not disappointed.

I do not, however, want to suggest that The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is to be read for laughs. It is filled with delightful details, some of which are funny, but its hero Harold Fry is a complicated character with serious issues to address. His quest to walk across Britain to visit a dying friend will prove his making or breaking. Never predictable, the novel is continually entertaining and honest.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is Joyce's first novel after writing over 20 plays for BBC Radio. I hope she writes more. It was included in the long list for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Fiction and has been read by many book clubs. It is widely available.

Joyce, Rachel. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. Random House, 2012. 320p. ISBN 9780812993295.

More Than Human by Tim Flach

Do not let the image of a panda on the cover of More Than Human by photographer Tim Flach deceive you. More Than Human is not a book of pretty nature pictures. While there is much beauty within the photographs, mostly taken in studios, there is also much to disturb. Flach confronts readers, many of whom may have little face-to-face contact with animals, with the impact their lives have on the mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, and insects with which we share the planet. The images may challenge the way we think and feel about animals. Sometimes it is the accompanying text written by Lewis Blackwell that shakes us.

Through large, colorful photographs, Flach shows us many things that we have probably not seen, such as the green fluorescent glow of a rat into which genes from luminescent jellyfish have been introduced. Portraits of chickens genetically modified to have no feathers, bizarrely-groomed show animals, and hybrid animals, such as the liger and the zonkey, show how humans tamper with the animals world. Other photos, including those of millipedes, bats, and spiders, force readers to view what they often avoid.

An effort must be made to read More Than Human. I found that I needed two bookmarks, holding my spots in the main series of photos and in explanatory notes in the back of the volume. I also read at a table, as the book is rather heavy. Still, I enjoyed the viewing and suggest the book to readers who seek works on natural history and wildlife conservation.

Flach, Tim. More Than Human. Abrams, 2012. 312p. ISBN 9781419705526.

Collection Development & Community Expectations: Managing Collections and Balancing Resources in an Era of Budgetary Restraints

On the opening day of the American Library Association
in Chicago, a panel of librarians from public and academic libraries discussed measures they have taken to stay within their budgets for acquiring library materials. Rick Anderson of the University of Utah began by suggesting it helps to understand the internal and external forces constraining collection building, including funds, staff time, library space, library policies, and community expectations. The last is hardest to gauge. Should libraries chose to purchase everything that members in their communities desire or should they try to get only materials that will be popular with a predetermined minimum number of library members? What holds enough value (hard to measure) to justify cost (easier to measure)?

Stephanie Chase of the Seattle Public Library continued, telling about how libraries manage in periods of short budgets. To make up for not having as many new titles as readers would like, she emphasized marketing the available collection, especially titles that were little-read when new. Having strong, effective readers’ advisory service can connect members with these less recent books and relieve pressure for new titles. In lean times, she also suggested limiting the number of holds members can make, which makes them make choices similar to those the library has to make and shortens reserve lists that trigger purchasing of additional copies. She thought it a mistake to buy bestsellers disproportionately in lean times.

Chase also thought weeding must continue in lean times. Shelves in popular reading collections need to look fresh to attract readers; removing worn, battered volumes is especially helpful. At her libraries, circulation statistics have shown borrowing up in weeded areas even without significant new purchasing.

Michael Santangelo of the Brooklyn Public Library compared managing an electronic material collection in lean times to reality TV. If a database does not get the votes (visits or document downloads), it is this week’s cut. And there is always someone sad at the passing of a databases out of the collection. How to count the votes is the challenge, as every vendor reports different measures. The librarian’s task is to determine which databases have really provided the most service (not visits or searches) and which combinations of databases cover topics essential to members’ needs.

Santangelo issued several warnings. 1) Consortium purchases save money but they also introduce instability into the collection as groups may change vendors every year looking for better deals. 2) Ebook subscription plans may highlight highly popular materials but they also drag along materials of little interest. Study costs carefully before taking a package deal. 3) Having multiple platforms to provide ebooks from various vendors confuses readers and librarians. 4) Loyalty to vendors can stabilize an online collection and sometimes win discounts but do not go so far as to sign onto new databases just because a favored vendor recommends them.

Re-examining How We Work: What Should We Do With the Staff?

In these days of smaller workforces and technology-based services, the subtitle of this program held at the beginning of the third day of the American Library Association Annual Conference in Chicago was layered with foreboding . Before reading the program description (and even after reading it), I anticipated hearing predictions of layoffs and further budget cuts in libraries. I expected a gloomy message but found instead a panel of speakers who seemed somewhat upbeat. Reduced workforces were still a given, but the speakers seemed to assume that was an opportunity and there would still be funds to redesign library public and staff spaces utilizing new furniture.

The first speaker, Christopher Stewart of Dominican University, spoke about the demand for more public space in academic libraries, which becomes possible when libraries reduce their workforce. Meeting rooms, study commons, and even production studios can be added when staff and workspace is reduced. Stewart also said that academic libraries are trying to get their professional staff into private offices away from the public – not something most public libraries will do. Increasingly, some staff have to share desks or tables, which he says works well with low-complexity job employees. Despite having little space of their own, he said employees work best when they have some control over their personal work space, needing good lighting, free from distracting talk or music, with counter spaces, storage, and equipment. High-complexity, high-responsibility employees need more space and privacy.

Whereas the library was once a grocery, it is now a kitchen, according to consultant Joan Frye Williams. The factory has turned into a laboratory, where people come to innovate and create. The public and the staff are being moved into flexible spaces. Focusing on staff, she said that she sees more emphasis on team work and less working alone. The staff is clustered into more collaborative spaces with fewer barriers to separate departments. All work in progress is on display for team comments. Williams warned that this model may be popular but does not work well for all. It assumes all employees will be extroverts.

Designer Elisabeth Martin spoke about the five kinds of work spaces: refuge (for 1 or 2), enclave (3 or 4), team (5 to 8), assembly, and community. The type of work of an organization determines how much of each type is needed. The current trend is toward more collaborative and community efforts, so meeting spaces are being added in libraries. She also posed that modern organizations are moving away from having distinct departments. With less privacy, she thought it particularly important that workspaces be comfortable. She even likes incorporating comfy chairs (some with movable desk tops) in employee spaces.

Joe Agati of AGATI Furniture showed a variety of office pieces and systems. He said that to some extent, modern workers need to learn to go digital and get rid of things. Clutter seemed to be non-existent in most of his photos, but he showed that there were special drawers for shoes and purses (some things employees always have). The most unusual item was a workstation including a treadmill.

Answers about ricklibrarian

I think more and more that the best thing about library conferences is meeting people. This morning I received an email with questions about writing my blog from a librarian I met at the American Library Association Annual Conference this week in Chicago. Since I have not really said much about the blog itself in a long time, I am also posting modified answers to her questions.

I stay at least partially informed on book and library industry trends by reading articles linked from AL Direct and Library Link of the Day as well as listening to the New York Times Book Review podcast. I read newspapers and journals. I also learn at librarians' meeting and from my Facebook friends.

I receive no dollars or cents from my blog. I have never tried because I want to stay totally independent. Money is not as valuable as peace of mind.

I ignore most of the email I get from marketing agents trying to get me to read books. Maybe twice a year I might be willing to read something and tell the author/agent that I make no promises about reviewing. It has probably been more than a year since I have reviewed anything on ricklibrarian by request. I mostly review books from libraries. I have requested maybe three electronic readers copies through Edelweiss.

I review instead of promote. I usually stick to books and media and ignore products and services. I might comment on a product/services good for libraries or readers, but it rare.

I have enjoyed blogging, and it led to my writing two readers' advisory books. It has made me lots of friends. That's the payoff.

American Library Association Annual Conference in Chicago

Bonnie and I have attended two full days of the American Library Association in Chicago and are heading back in again today. It has been good so far.

My highlight on Saturday was being a part of a focus group for Booklist, a review journal aimed at public libraries. We were asked questions about how we used the journal in collection development and what we would change in the publication to aid our work. These questions led to a broader discussion about our libraries. I enjoyed the meeting greatly.

On Sunday, I attended several author events. During the day, I heard both Temple Grandin (Animals in Translation and The Autistic Brain) and Ann Patchett (Bel Canto and State of Wonder) speak in the auditorium and Timothy Egan (The Worst Hard Time and Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher) at the Booklist booth on the exhibitions floor. In the evening, Bonnie and I attended the Carnegie Awards presentation, where we heard Timothy Egan, David Quammen, and Richard Ford live and saw videos from Junot Diaz, Louise Erdrich, and Jill Lepore. Egan and Ford won the prizes.

My to-read list is growing longer every day (I came home with a bag of free books from the awards ceremony), and I am looking forward to applying some new ideas at work, especially concerning readers' advisory. I have also seen many friends at sessions and along the hallways, as well as at last night's ceremony. I am feeling recharged.

We are heading in today via train for a third day. More reports later.

The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey

Josephine Tey (1896-1952) is less remembered by the general public than Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, and other big name writers of the Golden Age of British Crime (1920-1950), but Tey (her real name was Elizabeth Macintosh) is still very well-regarded by devoted readers. In fact, the Crime Writers Association, a British literary group, put Tey's Daughter of Time at the top of its 100 best mystery novels list issued in 1990. The Franchise Affair is #11 on the list. Her books are still in print and finding readers.

Strangely, her publisher doesn't even know what it is marketing. The banner across the back cover of The Franchise Affair proclaims "Inspector Alan Grant returns in one of Tey's finest mysteries." While this is technically true, there is very little of Tey's famous inspector in the book. I think he appears in two scenes and is otherwise offstage. The main character in this case is a small village lawyer who is asked to represent a middle-aged woman and her elderly mother in an alleged kidnapping case. It is alleged because there is no actual evidence that the two women locked a teenager in their attic for a month as the girl who had been missing claimed. At first, no one wants to believe the girl, but she is able to describe the house and its attic very well.

The lawyer Robert Blair is an endearing man who knows much more about wills and deeds than criminal proceeding, but he learns what he has to do and calls in help when necessary. The local mechanic and his elderly aunt may be his most clever allies in this somewhat gentle mystery that avoids being in any way predictable. If you want a sample of a mystery in which no one dies (despite the picture on the cover), this is your book.

Tey, Josephine. The Franchise Affair. Touchstone Books, 2009, 1949. 300p. ISBN 9780684842561.

Who's on Worst: The Lousiest Players, Biggest Cheaters, Saddest Goats and Other Antiheroes in Baseball History by Filip Bondy

As Filip Bondy says in his introduction to Who's on Worst: The Lousiest Players, Biggest Cheaters, Saddest Goats and Other Antiheroes in Baseball History, it is unfair to categorize anyone who makes it to the major leagues as truly untalented. So few aspirants make it. They have all been very, very good at some level. Even the hapless Marv Throneberry of the 1962 New York Mets was an accomplished hitter in triple A minor league baseball. That said, Bondy goes forward with some humor and a bit of indignation to name players, managers, and other baseball people to a sort of hall of shame.

Take Bill Buckner. He enjoyed a great baseball career, but he was embarrassed by an error at a key moment in a world series. His missing of what should have been an easy play is what many people remember about him today. Totally unfair. To his credit, Bondy lets you know how good Buckner was and how he's coped with the aftermath of the error.

Humor prevails in the profile of spitball pitching Gaylord Perry. Bondy recounts how Perry learned and perfected the illegal pitch. In his case, the rumor of the pitch was almost as effective as the pitch itself. Only near the end of his career did the pitcher get caught and ejected from a game.

The heaviest doses of indignation concentrate in the chapters "Most Overpaid Yankees" and "Most Overpaid Outside the Bronx." In these chapter, Bondy exposes not only players who performed pitifully after accepting millions of dollars but also the baseball executives who foolishly hired them when there were plenty of indicators signalling probable failure (age, prior injuries, inconsistent performance, etc.)

I particularly enjoyed the chapter about the worst players who turned into the most accomplished managers, as the author tells well the stories of Tony LaRussa, Sparky Anderson, and Tommy Lasorda, men who entertained fans for years. For sports fans looking for a light read that can be dipped into a little at a time, Who's on Worst is an entertaining book in print or audio read ably by Scott Brick.

Bondy, Filip. Who's on Worst: The Lousiest Players, Biggest Cheaters, Saddest Goats and Other Antiheroes in Baseball History. Doubleday, 2013. 252 p. ISBN 9780385536127.

Audiobook: Books on Tape, 2013. 7 compact discs. ISBN 9780385362603.

The Frick Collection: Handbook of Paintings

I collect few things. I have compact discs from some of the performers who have appeared at our library's concert series. I sometimes buy small bird guides when I travel to other states or countries. Now I am selectively collecting books from the gift shops of art museums I visit. I recently bought guides to both the Frick Collection and the Cloisters on our trip to New York.

The Frick Collection: Handbook of Paintings is a catalog with photographs of every painting in the museum, arranged alphabetically by artists. 131 paintings were left to the museum by its benefactor, industrialist Henry Clay Frick, and 48 were added later by his descendants. He was obviously a very, very rich man of refined tastes, who focused on European paintings from the Renaissance to the 1800s. Collecting at a time before art prices inflated to today's standards, he acquired works from many of the most renowned artists, including Constable, David, Gainsborough, Goya, Monet, Rembrandt, Titian, Turner, Van Dyck, Vermeer, and Whistler.

Being a 6 X 9 handbook and not an oversize art book, The Frick Collection is not adequate for detailed study of the paintings, but it serves as an attractive reminder and useful reference to the wonderful afternoon we spent at the museum. I have it when I want to verify which Vermeers we saw that day.

Now I look forward to reading about the Cloisters.

The Frick Collection: Handbook of Paintings. Frick Collection, 2012. 168p. ISBN 9780912114095.

A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit

Rebecca Solnit writes personal essays about travel, art, architecture, and culture. In each she mixes her experiences with what she discerns through research. Because the pieces are unpredictable, the reader never knows what to expect, other than Solnit will be insightful and entertaining.

In her 2005 collection, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, her binding idea is that getting lost can be a good thing. Only when you are lost do you have the freedom to discover what you never imagined. She writes about losing one's way, losing things, losing one's confidence or identity, losing loved ones, losing focus, and even disappearing. Even painful loss can yield benefits, such as the deepening of one's soul.

A second common element through many of the essays is the color blue, how it is used and what it means in various situations. Deeper blues show greater distance in Leonardo's paintings. Lakes and the sky are blue until you reach them, and they then prove colorless. Blue can be perceived as calm or cold. We sing the blues. Some of Solnit's reflections on the color are autobiographical, revealing losses in her life, a life about which we come to care in our reading of her essays.

Solnit has written at least a dozen books so far, including A Book of Migrations: Some Passages in Ireland. You may find A Field Guide to Getting Lost your portal to more reading.

Solnit, Rebecca. A Field Guide to Getting Lost. Viking, 2005. 209p. ISBN 0670034215.

How Animals Grieve by Barbara J. King

The feeling of emotions and self-awareness in animals other than humans is still a fairly recent topic in science. Historically the science community as a whole and probably much of society assumed that animals did not feel or think. Instead, animals were thought to be governed by instincts. The idea that animals could grieve would have been ridiculed, except possibly by sympathetic pet owners who witnessed behaviors hard to attribute to emotionless beings. A book like How Animals Grieve by Barbara J. King was unthinkable.

After much research, some scientists are now positing that animals (including humans) are complex emotionally. They recognize that members of species do not all behave the same. The consequence is that humans must now consider their actions and the suffering they may cause by inconsiderate acts towards animals. Anthropologist King is part of the movement studying how animals experience life in a world dominated by humans.

How Animals Grieve is a book in a space between disciplines. King is faithful to her scientific training and resists projecting human motivation onto other species, but she also reports many stories, some of them personal, that give evidence to a great variety of animal responses to death of their companions. She also discusses the possibility that animals love. Two chapters near the end look at human grief practices.

How Animals Grieve is published by an academic press but is easy reading for almost anyone who regularly uses a library card. Animal lover will enjoy King's storytelling and concern for the ethical treatment of our companion species.

King, Barbara J. How Animals Grieve. University of Chicago Press, 2013. 193p. ISBN 9780226436944.