Musings from Brian J. Noggle

I received this book as a gift at my mother-in-law’s birthday party. She was giving away things which came with a request; in this case, I got this book and information about the George Washingont Carver National Monument just south of Joplin, Missouri, and a request that I take my children there this summer. So I started reading this book in the beginning of August, and I took my children to the historical site as requested, but the book sort of fell to the bottom of the stack on my side table.

The book itself is a young adult faith-based biography of the plant doctor. As such, its chapters are short and punchy and it features a lot of Carver talking to God or reflecting on scripture. As Carver was a devout Christian and often lead prayer groups in his various colleges, it’s probably not out of place, but I’m sure there are plenty of 21st century readers who would take issue with it. If you’re such, this is not the biography for you. But as a young adult book, it’s probably a good starter and high level overview.

I won’t recount the fascinating life of the fellow who was born a slave, lived in southwest Missouri during the aftermath of the Civil War, and became an artist before going to school for biology and agriculture. I will, however, note that he walked all over Missouri and Kansas to find a better life for himself and to take advantage of various opportunities and that he did all this and homesteaded for a couple of years in Kansas before going to the university. He did a lot before he was thirty and then his life and fame took off.

That is what fascinates me: how self-reliant young people were in the ninteenth century. I can even tell tales about my father hopping a train with a gun at thirteen to go hunting in northern Wisconsin, but it’s so far from my late twentieth century urban childhood that I cannot imagine that sort of thing without reading about people who actually did it.

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I remember this book being mentioned explicitly (well, not that explicitly) in George Carlin’s comedy routine in his album What Am I Doing In New Jersey?. The bit is the driver behind him has his high beams on, and Carlin says that’s great because he just happens to have his copy of this book with him. At any rate, it’s taken me a long time since listening to that bit over and over on my monthly trips back from Missouri to Milwaukee right after I graduated the university, but I finally read this book (although, in my defense, I only got it last year).

The book is the story of a son of one of the few remaining Saxons in post-Norman Conquest England returning home from the Crusades. His father has disinherited him for supporting the Norman king (Richard II). He helps a Jewish moneylender and merchant and, as a reward, gets armor and a horse so he can enter a tournament, wherein he beats the best of the Normans along with the Black Knight. A Templar is smitten with the daughter of the money lender, and…. Well, there are some nefarious plots afoot, and it involves Prince John and Richard II. Of course, if the story takes place during the time of Robin Hood, one expects Robin Hood to appear. So he does, but he remains a secondary figure.

As I was reading, I confused Sir Walter Scott with Sir Walter Raleigh, so I thought the book was written 200 years before it was; as such, I was very impressed with the treatment of the Jews within the text. Although the characters curse the Jews, they’re treated well by others and are not the villains of the piece; the Normans and some of the clergy are. A bit of post-reading research (I read the Wikipedia entry) put the book in its proper historical context.

Still, in the 21st century, I can see collegiate English papers beginning with the thesis that the book is anti-Semitic (at least until the researcher gets to the Wikipedia entry). Or maybe not.

At any rate, it’s not a bad read. It’s in relatively modern English, although the style is a little more florid than modern readers expect (see also Frankenstein). However, it’s still only 212 pages. How do modern thrillers get three times that large without florid prose? I’d tell you, but I don’t read much modern stuff.

And the edition: This is a 1982 Legendary Classics edition, which means someone grabbed the public domain copy, introduced a couple of typos to protect their copyright, and printed this cheaply. The book identifies a number of others in the series (of which I’ve read only a few). But this edition is blessedly free of introductory essays explaining what you’re about to read (and throwing in spoilers) before you get to the actual novel. My goodness, the middle-of-the-twentieth-century editions of classics are worth more than the modern Penguin editions just for the freedom from interruption and pretension of telling you what you should think about what you haven’t even read yet.

So if medieval romances are your thing, this might be the book for you. I certainly recommend the edition.

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This book is a quick little sampler of Impressionist and sort-of impressionist paintings. It gives a bit of text describing the history of the Impressionist movement and then goes to the images. The book covers painters like Monet and Renoir, but also other people who exhibited with them, including van Gogh, Vuillard, Morisot, Cassatt, Gaugin, Gonzales, Sisley, Cezanne, Bazille, and others. As a matter of fact, the book gives a little more weight to the other painters as opposed to Monet and Renoir.

It shows a lot of breadth and variation in the school–and the nearby styles–so it’s a touch more educational than some of the other Impressionist picture books I’ve looked through (see also Treasures of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism and The Impressionists).

But I still like Renoir the best, although my beautiful wife might someday convince me to decorate our home in something other than Renoir prints.

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This book is pretty much what you would expect from the title: toilet humor.

It’s a collection of cartoons featuring toilets and bathrooms for the punchlines.

Heaven help me for buying it, but I did; not only that, but I chuckled at some of them because some of them are more clever than modern sitcoms.

Even my beautiful wife, who does not like scatalogical humor at all, snickered at one or two of the cleaner jokes amongst them.

So this is worth the price, which in my case was probably a quarter.

And no doubt it will keep my boys entertained for a far longer time than an adult would enjoy the book.

Books mentioned in this review:

This book was published by some arm of the Presbyterian church at the end of history (which was right after communism fell in the Soviet Union, for those of you children too young to remember, before history clawed its way out of the grave and began shambling around and moaning again).

This is not supposed to be a pure poetry collection; instead, it’s said (in its introduction) to be a sourcebook for musing about interacting with the world, other cultures, and other faiths. So it includes some doggerel thoughts about different cultures, a lot of indictment of personal comfort and wealth while there are so many poor in the world, and, dare I say it, a lot more equivalence between the religions than I would expect from a book published by a Protestant church. The very first bit is about how Christians, Muslims, and Indians are all holy or something. Perhaps it’s meaningful to remember that all people are people, but if you’re going to be a church, I should expect if not an overt pitch as to why one’s particular flavor is the best then at least an implicit understanding that not all paths are the same.

But that sort of thinking probably explains why Presbyterian numbers are declining and little schisms are happening.

Ah, well. The book didn’t make me much more thoughtful about the poor. But it did have some colorful photographs.

Undoubtedly, I got this in a collection of chapbooks and whatnot from the Friends of the Springfield-Greene County Library book sale. Which is coming up next week just in case you missed my "Good Book Hunting" posts.

This book is a bit thicker on content than many of the photo-centric books I spend my Sunday afternoons with. The book contains a pretty good history of the Shaker movement, from their leaders being expelled from the Quaker movement to the different communities established in New England and the east to the eventual thinning and dying out of the sect–after all, they were not allowed to reproduce, only to convert to the religion.

As to the photos, they’re professional and whatnot. They highlight the design of Shaker furniture and crafts as well as some of the buildings in the various communities. Many of those communities, as they declined, effected transfers from the Shakers to nonprofit organizations that transitioned them into museums, sometimes while a few elderly Shakers remained in residence.

At any rate, a good enough coffee table book to flip through and to learn something.

Books mentioned in this review: