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Two in one day!

I just had to share a little thing. A little thing that is one of the nice things about selling books online — in small quantity — and having a Post Office within walking distance.

I just got back from walking down to our local Post Office to mail a copy of Mehville’s The Confidence-Man* to New Jersey. It’s pretty cold out today, but very bright. The sky is that perfect shade of blue, and the half-ish moon has risen early and greeted me as I walked east on our block, toward the Post Office.

I was about half a block away from the Post Office, when I heard a sound like someone shuffling up behind me. I turned around and no one was there. Looking down I saw a dried hydrangea flower head making its way toward me.

Satisfied that I was in no danger, I walked on. That hydrangea caught up with me and stayed with me for a bit, then leapt in front of me and stopped. I stopped, too.

I looked down at the hydrangea and it up at me.

It just sat there looking like it wanted to tell me something.

We stayed that way for a few moments, then I grinned, and the hydrangea bounded off into a nearby yard. I happily made my way to the Post Office (where the employees are the greatest, by the way), then home again, and didn’t see the hydrangea again… it must have found somewhere else to go.

Thinking back on it, I think the hydrangea just wanted to tell me to have a nice day.

So I will.

It’s the little things.

Took a very brief haitus from Shakespear’s drama to reread Lucky Jim* by Kingsley Amis for The Civil Life Civil Readers meet-up last night (February 18). We had a pretty nice crowd of about 14 people. Great beer. Great food. Great conversation.

Amis is kind of an “old boy’s club” boy. He’s in the category of authors called “Angry Young Men,” and that’s fairly obvious in this, his first, novel. Patrick says he only gets more crochety as time passes (I haven’t read anything else by him).

LJ is really hilarious though. Last night we were all laughing about our favorite antics… The ruined bed clothes, Bertrand’s “obviouslam,” etc., the “faces,” “Hysterics, eh?”… just a lot of great fun. I’m not the only one who said I’d laughed out loud more than once while reading this — and I’d read it before and knew what to expect for the most part.

One thing that came up that really interests me, and I can’t find anything about it on the Interwebs, is the college porter’s name. Brice was mentioning how he thought it was interesting that, and did Patrick have any idea why, his name was “Maconochie,” which is the name of a penal reformer from the 1800s… and also, (Brice didn’t mention this, but Wikipedia did, and I sure love food…) a stew of sliced turnips, carrots and potatoes in a thin soup. I said something like, “Oh, was that one of Dixon’s nicknames?” much to everyone’s dismay, I think. No, it was actually the guy’s name. I really didn’t remember that at all. In fact, I’d remembered his name as “Montgomery.” So Brice and I tried to get on the same page (literally) to see what was up. Sure enough, his copy says “Maconochie” and mine (well, Patrick’s) says “Montgomery.”

I’ve Googled like a mad woman, and I have to say, I’m pretty good at finding what I want to find that way… but I have found nothing about why this porter has different names in different editions of the book. If anyone out there has info, I’d love to hear about it! Leave a comment or send a private message on facebook or send an email to teresa [dot] s [dot] hurley [at] this site’s domain.

And as a sort of side note, if you’re interested in becoming a Civil Reader, send an email to Patrick at bloomsday [at] thecivillife [dot] com, or stop by the brewery and talk to him in person, and he’ll make sure you get added to the email list. Our next meet-up will be April 15 at 7pm at the brewery. We’ll be discussing White Teeth: A Novel* by Zadie Smith. The previous link will take you to amazon.com’s page for the book, but if you’d prefer to shop locally, we’ve got a Civil Reading Group book club page at Left Bank Books, where you can see what we’ve got coming up and even purchase the titles we have on our list.

BTW, yes, the cover illustration on our copy is by Edward Gorey, in case you were wondering….

Found in Prose, Essays, Poems* by Gottfried Benn.

This week we actually added something like 30 books to our inventory, but I’m only covering the ones we have for sale… plus one that’s just cool. K? K.

All of these except Inferna are available as of this writing on our Amazon.com storefront.* Prices and images shown below may not reflect the copies we have for sale. Our images will almost always have the orange background as shown here (the exception is the “main” image; amazon requires that to be on a white background, so if we’ve designated an image as main, it won’t have the orange background). To find our prices, go to “available from these sellers” and look for Hurley House. If you do not find a copy available from us in the list, then we’ve sold it already.

Found in Time of Hope* by C.P. Snow.

“Just hum the nitwit little tune they taught you, and try not to fuck up.”

Photo taken at Broad Ripple Brewpub

“Solitude, even among the meshes of this war, can when it wishes so take him by the blind gut and touch, as now, possessively.”

Photo taken at The Severin Bar

“Now there grows among all the rooms, replacing the night’s old smoke, alcohol, and sweat, the fragile, musaceous odor of Breakfast: flowery, permeating, surprising, more than the color of winter sunlight, taking over not so much through any brute pungency or volume as by the high intricacy of the weaving of its molecules, sharing the conjuror’s secret by which—though it is not often Death is told so clearly to fuck off—the living genetic chains prove even labyrinthine enough to preserve some human face down ten or twenty generations … so the same assertion-through-structure allows this war morning’s banana fragrance to meander, repossess, prevail.”

Photo taken at The Civil Life Brewing Company

Found in Marabou Stork Nightmares* by Irvine Welsh.

“In the kitchen, black-market marshmallows slide languid into syrup atop Pirate’s double boiler, and soon begin thickly to bubble.”

Photo taken at Colorado Bob’s Ship of Fools

Still on Shakespeare. As I mentioned in my previous post about what I’m reading, I’ve read all the Pelican Shakespeares we have, so have moved on to The Riverside Shakespeare.* Since it contains a (what they think is mostly correct) chronology, I decided now to just start reading the plays in the order they were written. You might remember from my first post about starting to read all the Shakespeare plays, that the first two I read because I’d just finished watching all the episodes of Slings & Arrows on Netflix.¹ After reading those, my order had been fairly random.²

So evidently the (accepted) first play is King Henry VI, Part 1.* Also evidently, it has been disputed whether Shakespeare actually wrote it.³ But according to the Riverside, there’s enough evidence to moot the dispute.

Although this is a history play, it’s in no way what I would call dull.⁴ There’s some intrigue, some foreshadowing of betrayal, actual betrayal, some sorcery, some witch-burning, some battles, some death and destruction, some adulterous thoughts, an anything-but-chaste Bishop…. you know… the usual Shakespeare.

Henry is a young king, and is sort of controlled by all the old guys who surround him.⁵ So in this, the first part, most of the action is really surrounding and involving the old guys. We don’t see too much of Henry until fairly late in the play, and even then, we still don’t see too much of him.

Well, I’m not going to use this space to write a synopsis or anything, and I kinda wanna get on with other stuff today, like running errands and having fun, so… I think I’ll just end this post here.

Happy reading!

This week our new arrivals are mainly in the science fiction genre:

All of these are available today at our Amazon.com storefront*

So I finished reading all the Pelican Shakespeares we had and had to find another source. We’ve got The Riverside Shakespeare,* a neat little Barnes & Noble The Complete Works of Shakespeare, Boxed Set,* and the Guttenberg Project’s free Kindle version of Shakespeare’s complete works. I thought, “Hey, the kindle is nice and compact, so that’ll be the easiest way to read it!” Let’s talk about that. Here’s an example of what the Guttenberg text looks like at the default size on our Kindle Fire:*

See how the lines break kinda oddly? Look at Helena’s second line there. That’s a good example. I found that really distracting. It interrupted the flow, the rhythm, you know… But hey, You can change the type size on the Kindle! Cool. Here’s what it looks like at the smallest type size:

Can you see that same line? Still wonkified (if I can use my sister’s term here). Plus, there’s no table of contents, so you can’t just go directly to the play or sonnet you want to read. You can guess about which of the more than 40,000 locations is close to where what you want to read is, then flip one way or the other until you get there… Ummm. Nope. I did that (more on that later), and… Well, nope.

So I thought I’d try out the mini book from the boxed set. Just because it’s cute, here are a couple views of the whole set:

Isn’t that cute? Yeah. And the books are really small… like palm-of-your-hand sized, but the text is very legible. And you can see when you look at that same line by Helena, that it’s not too bad to read, really:

Oh, but complainer tree, she can find something, can’t she.. Look at this:

Notice anything? Yeah, that line number (245); it’s iterrupting the text. This happened too often for my taste. I also found it a little awkward to hold the small but somewhat thick book. Try again…

OK. Finally, I tried the Riverside. I’d been putting that off because it’s just so darn huge. It’s heavy. It’s bulky. But, the text is laid out, well, OK. Here:

Yeah, that’s pretty nice (sorry for the blurriness at the top, but the line we’re focusing on here is crisp). Like the mini, it doesn’t have the weird line breakage that leads to wonkiness. Also like the mini, the line numbers are within the text instead of in the margin (as they are in the Pelican versions), but (and I didn’t shoot an example of this), when the text seems like it will be close to the line number and make the line number cause a distraction/interruption in the text, there is more space/margin to the left of the line number. It’s not as good as having the line numbers in the margin, but it’s not bad. I could live with it, anyway. The Riverside is laid out in two columns, which makes sense, so that’s a good reason for the line numbers not being out in the margin.

And really, the heft/bulk of the Riverside isn’t a problem. I just lay the book in my lap to read it and it’s fine. However, it is kind of big to take with you. So for that, I did use the Kindle. I just dealt with all the things that bothered me about that text, since I wasn’t going to have to be reading like that for long anyway. Although it did take me a full five minutes just to find the place where I needed to start reading.

So I’ll be reading the rest of Shakespeare in the Riverside, unless we come across some Pelican editions at book sales.

One little non-sequitur: I could only find one film version of All’s Well That Ends Well on Netflix. I wonder what gives. Is the story not interesting enough? Is the maiden-swapping to creepy? At any rate, it’s not available to watch instantly, so I haven’t watched it yet.

OK. I’ve already finished the next play, so I’d better catch up on my writing… maybe over the weekend. Happy reading!

Hi Guys!

It’s official. Patrick is pretty busy with other stuff right now, so I’m taking over the general operations of Hurley House. He’s still the big boss, of course… I’m just gonna be doing everything like posting inventory, processing sales, etc.

So you won’t really notice any changes beyond the fact that maybe I’ll be posting more frequently and not just in the “What my wife is reading” section.

And how cool is it that Patrick let me pick my own title? I shall henceforth be known as General Operations Director.

:)

In case you wondered, Patrick took that photo with the tin type pack from Hipstamatic

Yeah, I should probably write these right after I finish reading the books instead of waiting a week. I had some thoughts while I was reading The Tragedy of Coriolanus,* but I’m not sure I remember all of them. Let’s see…

In the introduction, I remember the editor saying this wasn’t a popular play, and it wasn’t really very well liked. He also said something to the effect that it was because it was about someone who should have been popular, but was actually disliked instead, and that we find it easier to side with his antagonists than with him. Hmmm. Well. I guess I’m just different.

Then Netflix described a film version starring Ralph Fiennes and Gerard Butler* as a “tale about the arrogant general who is banished by the republic he has protected at all costs…” Hmmm. Well. Yes, I am just different.

I do agree that Coriolanus should have been popular and wasn’t. But I didn’t want to side with his antagonists at all. They were painted as smarmy, underhanded creeps. Why would I side with them? And arrogant? Maybe the person writing the description of the movie only watched the very beginning or something. Yes, Coriolanus (then Caius Marcius) does essentially spit on the common man with his words, but… context, people. His response to their … revolt, essentially … is one of rage and confusion: Why are you people so ignorant/impatient/ungrateful/whatever? And he doesn’t hold his tongue; he just let’s all his anger out. In harsh terms, sure, but it’s clearly the anger speaking and not any part of his rational self. It’s one explosion, but not the norm for him… at least as I read it.

I’ll give them “pride,” though. Which is totally founded. I mean, he has every right to be proud. He fearlessly and devotedly fights for his republic (Rome). And he’s successful. He always wins. So he should be proud. But arrogance?

Later, when he’s to run for consul and they want him to show off his battle scars to get the common people to “give him their voice,” he refuses. He says he doesn’t think he should go around saying, “Hey, look at my scars. Look what I’ve done for you. Look how great I am.” Kind of the opposite of arrogance, don’t you think?

I see the play as a commentary on the fickleness… inconstancy… unfaithfulness… tenuous loyalty… whatever you wanna call it of man. While he’s railing on them at the beginning, he says the important thing. The foreshadowing thing: (I paraphrase) “You’re all gonna like one thing one minute then hate it the next. You cheer for one guy now, then later you’ll spit on him. You have no loyalty.” And it’s true. They hate Caius Marcius as “an enemy of the people,” even while he’s out there laying all their actual enemies to waste. Then after he comes back, they suddenly all love him. Then a few words from a couple of tribunes (who, in my opinion feel threatened by him: If the people don’t hate Coriolanus will these tribunes lose their control of them?), and suddenly he’s again the enemy.

Isn’t it similar to the Biblical story of Jesus? Throngs follow him and seem to love him for a while. Then it only takes a smallish group of Pharisees and Sadducees who connive against him (another case of a group who wants to control the common people feeling that control threatened?) to ultimately turn all but his few actual loyal disciples against him. Brutus and Sicinius trick the people into believing Coriolanus has made mockery of them and in doing so has committed treason. The Pharisees and Sadducees convince the people that Jesus is a blasphemer, that ultimate treason against Jehovah. Coriolanus‘s “Banish him!” certainly echoes the Gospels’ “Crucify him!” And finally, we have the tragic, and unwarranted, death of each man.

Sure, there’s more to it than that. We could explore the fact that his mother actually says the words “had I a dozen sons, each in my love alike and none less dear than thine and my good Marcius, I had rather had eleven die nobly for their country than one voluptuously surfeit out of action.” Wow. Not exactly nurturing, there, mom.

And should we question Coriolanus’s own loyalty? I suppose on the surface… or “to the letter”… If he were altruistic (who is?), certainly his betrayal of his own republic would be a true sign of his lack of loyalty. But in context — they’d banished him completely — you might agree that his republic had indeed become his enemy. Or at least the fact of that emnity had become known to him.

So maybe I’m more of a surface reader or something and didn’t get the intricacies that I should have so I could have sided with Brutus and Sicinius (ummm. no, never.)… or I could have seen how much of an arrogant jerk Coriolanus was. But I’ll stay happy with my unscholarly reading. At least for now.