Bookworm

Oxford English Dictionary

". . . the immortal O.E.D., the one that lives in bound pages last published micrographically in 1991, is obsolete — at least according to the folks who publish it. As of now, Oxford University Press has no official plans to publish a new print edition of the Oxford English Dictionary." [NY Times]

The scholarly side of me has occasionally pondered whether I should own the O.E.D. OK, maybe not the twenty volume set or the compact, read-it-with-a-magnifying-glass edition, but perhaps the Shorter O.E.D. in two volumes? The online version would certainly be convenient for someone who is almost always connected to the Internet, plus you'd have the most current version all the time. On the other hand, it costs $295 per year for an individual subscription.

Wyoming

"Wyoming is under assault here, Ms. Fuller said, standing on a road buffeted by the infamous high plains wind. She believes people are being used by the energy industry. In the past several years, dozens of workers have died on the rigs around the West.

“Throwing warm beating hearts at a failed energy policy is a tragedy, whether it’s the war or the oil fields,” Ms. Fuller said. “The jobs are a good thing. But going after it so frantically and doing so much damage is wrong.”

“I travel between these worlds. I couldn’t leave the oil field behind when I came home to Teton County,” she said. It has been hard, Ms. Fuller allows, to tell her friends about the other Wyoming. “I can’t talk about my childhood, I can’t talk about the war, and its hard to talk about what’s going on in the oil field. That’s why I wrote the book.”

. . .“Rather than write in the rhetoric of conflict, she’s chosen to tell a story of one young man,” said Terry Tempest Williams, a neighbor of Ms. Fuller in Wilson, who has long written about the West. “That’s much more powerful because it touches our humanity.”

It is critical, Ms. Fuller said, that people know who to blame. “Teton County has a huge carbon footprint with heated driveways, roofs and huge houses heated all winter long with no one in them,” she said. “I don’t see this as something the roughnecks or the oil companies or the administration alone is doing. It’s something we’re all doing.”

~ Jim Robbins, in the New York Times

I'd buy a Kindle if. . .

• If it cost about $100.  (I do understand why they currently cost $399 -- Amazon pays for the wireless connectivity -- there is no monthly or annual fee -- you just connect.)
• If you could buy books from other vendors, not just Amazon.com (much as I love them)
• If it worked everywhere.  Right now, if you live in Montana or Alaska, you're completely out of luck, and there are wide swaths of other states where service isn't available. 

Essay about working in the indexing trade

"Printed on 25-pound bond, tapped into crisp alignment, jacketed in heavyweight cardboard. The disk, neatly labelled, enveloped and centred, four extra-heavy rubber bands gartering the stack. There you have the Sydney Wolfe Cohen index. It is a thing of beauty." [My Time In The Indexing Trade | More Intelligent Life]

Read!

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading   them. ~ Joseph Brodsky

Rampant executive power

Jack Goldsmith was "willing to say no" to the Executive Branch's push for power when he disagreed with their legal arguments; his tenure in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel lasted only nine months. David Cole, in this meaty, must-read review of Goldsmith's book The Terror Presidency, praises the author's withdrawal of the infamous "terror memo," but points out that he never subsequently prohibited any of the "interrogation tactics" it contained. Cole disagrees with one of Goldsmith's central ideas -- that the Bush administration should have fewer legal restraints -- stating that would be "disastrous for future efforts to restrain rampant executive power." [Quotes from The New York Review of Books review]

Requiascat in Pacem, Madeleine L'Engle

Writer, actress, pianist, teacher, mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother Madeleine L'Engle passed away on Thursday at the age of 88.  She loved her family, her friends, her work, music, books, God, and life.   I barely knew her "in real life" -- I was blessed to meet her and be at Holy Cross monastery for a writer's workshop and silent retreat she led in January 1998 -- but I love her.  She shared so much of herself in her books that you almost feel as if you know more about her than some of your own family members.

Newspapers, etc.

• New York Times Arts section article/obituary: “At dinnertime, you look and see which pot smells best and pull it forward,” she was quoted as saying in a 2001 book, “Madeleine L’Engle (Herself): Reflections on a Writing Life,” compiled by Carole F. Chase. “The same is true with writing,” she continued. “There are several pots on my backburners.”
• Washington Post obituary:
• Associated Press: "Although L'Engle was often labeled a children's author, she disliked that classification. In a 1993 Associated Press interview, she said she did not write down to children. "In my dreams, I never have an age," she said. "I never write for any age group in mind. ... When you underestimate your audience, you're cutting yourself off from your best work."
• Episcopal Life: "In November 2000, she told an interviewer for Religion and Ethics Newsweekly that suffering and grief are a part of life.
  
  • "In times when we are not particularly suffering, we do not have enough time for God," she said. "We are too busy with other things. And then the intense suffering comes, and we can not be busy with other things. And then God comes into the equation. Help. And we should never be afraid of crying out, ‘Help!' I need all the help I can get."
• Slate: "The final tesseract: Madeleine L'Engle, author of A Wrinkle in Time, has died. Although L'Engle worked at various times as a stage actress, playwright, and librarian, she was best known for her dark and beautiful children's novels, which were predicated on the author's "faith that the universe has meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or say or do matters, matters cosmically." Her books matter cosmically to most everybody who is lucky enough to have read them."

NPR

• 1998: Susan Stone interviews the author prior to the debut of the television movie of Wrinkle
• 1998: Margot Adler has a profile with the author.
• 2007: Janice Voss talks about how reading A Wrinkle in Time at age ten inspired her interest in space travel; Dr. Voss is now an astronaut.
• 2007: An appreciation/remembrance on All Things Considered (includes snippets from above linked S. Stone interview with Ms. L'Engle):
  
  • "I frequently write about myself 'cause that's how I discover who I am.  So I'm asked if I'm like Meg as a person, I am like Meg.  I am Meg." 
  • When it was published, it was uncommon to have a female heroine in a science fiction book.  A Wrinkle in Time is "a smart girl's book but it's about a girl who isn't yet smart, so a lot of people can identify with her."
  • "Read any daily paper.  You've got to survive.  You've got to walk through the dark to get to the light; it isn't free.  It takes courage to walk through the dark."
  • "It gives a human being an incredible responsibility when you consider that the smallest thing you do can have enormous consequences."

Blogs

• John Podhoretz (The Corner: The National Review online): "Madeleine L'Engle At Home": "I wrote her the first fan letter of my life and, heart pounding, rode the elevator to 9 and slipped it under her door. Within hours a package was left at our door with an inscribed copy of its recently published sequel, A Wind at the Door, a box of baked chocolate chip cookies, and a response that was so appreciative I could hardly believe it, it was so gracious and thoughtful."
• Scheiss Weekly: "These books teach us that if we wait and work and strive and refuse to give up, we can change our own world which, of course, changes the whole world. Thank you, Madeleine. I've loved you since the day I discovered that first book, and I've loved you more with each additional discovery. You made the world better. I'll miss you. Thank you. Thank you so very, very much."
• John Scalzi at Whatever: "What great books, and what a great writer she was. Her books remain; in fact, they are on my daughter's bookshelf right now, waiting for her. I envy her that she gets to read them for the first time."
• Thread on Metafilter with many comments (most are respectful)
• Michael Melcher, at the Huffington Post: What I Learned From Madeleine L'Engle: "Focusing on what we can do in our lives - as they are now -- rather than endlessly wondering why we are here, or why we're not somewhere else - opens up possibilities. Maybe you can write a book that goes into (literally) 69 printings. Or maybe you can just bounce your ball to your own personal rhythm."
• Blogcritics: R.I.P. Madeleine L'Engle: "Thank you for the great stories that transported us into your world, making us feel like we were getting to know you through your characters."
• Blog post on the San Francisco Bay Guardian site: ". . . no one but L'Engle could make a mitochondrion the scene an apocalyptic battle between good and evil. Plus: damn good writing."
• Amazon.com Bookstore's blog: "It's been many years since I read A Wrinkle in Time, but that doesn't make the news of Madeleine L'Engle's passing sting any less. When I look back on my childhood reading, it's her books I see stacked on my shelf within easy reach."
• About.com Classic Literature quotes and remembrance: "In A Severed Wasp, she wrote: "There's a theory which I take seriously... that we live until we do whatever we're meant to do." That statement seems appropriate now, as we say farewell to Madeleine L'Engle."

Other online sites, articles, and interviews of interest

• The official site, with complete bibliography
• Christianity Today (originally published in 1979): "Supernatural Sagas of Good and Evil"
• New York Times, 2001: Busier Than Ever at 82, and, Oh, Yes, Still Writing
• Wheaton College: About the Author: "In the city, L’Engle involved herself with the Cathedral of St. John the Divine where she assumed the position of church librarian while enjoying a challenging tutelage under her spiritual advisor, Edward Nason West, the Episcopal cathedral’s extraordinarily learned subdean. Subsequently, West was honored in several novels as a character called “Canon Tallis.”
• St. Anthony Messenger magazine (1999): Madeleine L'Engle: An Epic in Time: “Have courage and joy. Sometimes our moments of greatest joy come at [the] times of greatest courage,” she says simply. “Our children need to hear over and over again that there is no such thing as redemptive violence,” she adds. “Violence never redeems. And what we do does make a difference!”
• Religion & Ethics Newsweekly (interview took place in 1999, was published in 2000): Profile: Madeleine L'Engle: "In spite of her losses, and in spite of the world's wars and atrocities, L'Engle insists that, in the end, life and the universe are good."

Judy Blume: On the Web

"I’m an e-mail junkie though I’m trying to read my in-box only twice a day and to answer all at once. (So far, that’s a joke.) In late August I’ll be launching a new website to coincide with the publication of my new book with my own - gulp! - blog. But it won’t be an everyday blog. Maybe once a week? Maybe just when something actually happens? So yes, the Web is a distraction. It’s especially dangerous during first drafts when I’m always looking for an excuse not to focus on my book. . . . One thing led to another and before I knew it it was time for lunch. So I’d call the Web a mixed blessing." [From: Paper Cuts - Books - New York Times Blog]

Judy Blume -- I read and reread her books when I was in junior high.   

For Your RSS Feed Reader

Oh, my, this blog looks wildly addictive.  I've always been interested in books and writers and that is the subject of this blog called Paper Cuts
on the NY Times site.

I can judge the "danger" level (to my productivity) of a blog by how many Firefox tabs are spawned as I read it -- twelve, people, twelve! additional tabs open because I browsed Paper Cuts while eating my lunch.

The New Yorker, June 11 & 18, 2007 (#4)

Still reading the Final Destination article.  [N.B.  I'm pretty much only reading this magazine on my half hour lunch breaks and I'm usually checking email as well.  Hence the slow progress.  And a reminder to me that I really shouldn't sign up for a subscription again, much as I want to!]

Don DeLillo:

“I was a semiconscious writer in the beginning,” he writes. “Just sat and wrote something, or read the newspaper, or went to the movies. Over time I began to understand, one, that I was lucky to be doing this work, and, two, that the only way I’d get better at it was to be more serious, to understand the rigors of novel-writing and to make it central to my life, not a variation on some related career choice, like sportswriting or playwriting. The novel is different. . . . We die indoors, and alone, and I don’t mean to sound overdramatic but you know what I’m talking about. Anyway, all of this happened over time, until eventually discipline no longer seemed something outside me that urged the reluctant body into the room. At this point discipline is inseparable from what I do. It’s not even definable as discipline. It has no name. I never think about it. But there’s no trick of meditation or self-mastery that brought it about. I got older, that’s all. I was not a born novelist (if anyone is). I had to grow into novelhood.” (p. 68, print edition)

I think one of the reasons this quote struck me is that it emphasizes the growth of an artist over time.  I'm hitting a significant birthday soon and realizing that I am almost in the middle of my statistically projected lifespan.  If I want to be fit and create things and take pictures and read great books and make scrapbooks to preserve memories and be present, I really need to make sure I'm not putting things off for someday.  I guess Barbara Crafton's post this morning emphasized this line of thought as well:

"Death comes when we haven't anything else to do, we sincerely hope. But sometimes it comes smack in the middle of everything, clearing our calendars for us, and we leave our half-finished tasks to others. They either complete them or they do not, depending on how important they were to anybody but us. This fact should help with the triage: which of your unfinished tasks do you definitely not want still hanging around when the funeral casseroles start arriving? If it's something everyone cares about, someone else will do it. But if it's only your pet passion, not particularly admired or even understood by anyone else, you'd better do it yourself, while you still can."