The Devil in the White City

As the cover says, "Murder, magic, and madness at the fair that changed America." I highly recommend reading this with breath mints on hand - otherwise the bile in your throat might overcome you. The creepy sick-minded murderer info is broken up by parallel stories in the city that will surprise, delight, and intrigue the reader.

I loved the format of this book and truly enjoyed all the history and knowledge about the process of building and maintaining the fair and its attendance. The things in popular culture today that stem from the World's Columbian Exposition of 1892 were startling to me. The fact that I see architecture in my city every day that was designed or heavily influenced by the lead architect of the fair was a revelation to me. I realized that I have read about Daniel Burnham before without being able to appreciate him or tie his name to anything specific. Now I know.

Education of a Wandering Man

What a guy! So often we put people into a compartment: "Louis L'Amour was a famous Western writer." Well, guess what? He was also a soldier, professional boxer, lumberjack, miner, sailor, world traveler, and among many other things, a voracious reader. Of nonfiction and fiction alike. He may have the most well-rounded knowledge of any person I've ever heard of. It was simply amazing to read his life story, as told by himself: an amazing storyteller on a mission to educate the world about what education should look like. "Our libraries are not cloisters for an elite. They are for the people, and if they are not used, the fault belongs to those who do not take advantage of their wealth. If one does not move on from what merely amuses to what interests, the fault lies in the reader, for everything is there."

He may have convinced me to start reading more than one book at a time, which would be a big change for me. I certainly wish that I had read one of his novels parallel to my reading of this memoir. I highly recommend it to anyone who is considering reading this, and I suggest The Walking Drum, L'Amour's 12th century historical novel. (Other hardcover bestsellers: The Lonesome Gods, Jubal Sackett, Last of the Breed, The Haunted Mesa, and of course, Education of a Wandering Man : ) Hondo is his first published novel, and his short stories are much talked about in this memoir. I would like to read a collection of them.)

He doesn't think everyone should learn the way he did: on the move, reading here and there whatever he could get his hands on. After sharing about one of his jobs in a sawmill, he says: "It has been years since I have been in a sawmill, and it is probably all done by machinery now, as are most of the jobs I used to do. I feel very sorry indeed for any young man without an education in these days, for there is literally nowhere to go." They certainly can't follow his own footsteps, working around the globe, footloose, and hope to get much of anywhere. While there are some places for such people to go, I think L'Amour regrets the end of the labor force as he knew it, and the end of the lessons he was able to learn while in it.

L'Amour does think that every person should have a broader and a deeper education. "I think the greatest gift anyone can give to another is the desire to know, to understand. Life is not for simply watching spectator sports, or for taking part in them; it is not for simply living from one working day to the next. Life is for delving, discovering, learning."

I think one of his purposes in writing this book was to clear up his intent in writing Western novels. Entertain, yes. But teach too! Record what has been for the generations to come who will never see it again, and may never have known what it was like otherwise. Speaking of his own written works he says: "Woven into their lines is much about how men have lived, fought, and survived." He recognizes a lack of this type of information in the histories of the world and has done his part to record it for the American frontier.

My younger sister is an aspiring author, and it was interesting to me that he targets this audience in his book - he shares a lot of insight and knowledge about the process of becoming a writer. If you fall into that category, you'd learn quite a bit from this read. One bit of wisdom: "Gustave Flaubert said once that "Talent is nothing but long patience."" L'Amour goes on to tell of other aspiring writers he knew who would write things "so brilliant that I envied them their facility with words and ideas..." Yet of those he knew, only one was able to 'make it' and he didn't make it incredibly far. L'Amour suggests that they were "unable or unwilling to take the rejection, and obviously incapable of that long patience of which Flaubert speaks."

"Knowledge is like money: To be of value it must circulate, and in circulating it can increase in quantity and, hopefully, in value. ... Upon the shelves of our libraries, the world's greatest teachers await our questions."

L'Amour laments the knowledge that dies each time a person dies. We each have so much inside us and lack motivation to record and share it. "A parent or a teacher has only his lifetime; a good book can teach forever." His own personal library contained over 17,000 books, many of them rare.

I'm calling up my father to learn more about how L'Amour's avid readership viewed him. Happy reading!

Extremely Loud, Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer

Foremost: Eww! There is way too much detail about the former sex lives of Oskar's grandparents. That said, it can be easily avoided by not reading the chapters that are their letters. Just skip those letters from the grandparents and you'll get a clean story - of Oskar.

I found Oskar's part of the story engaging and educational. He makes a lot of thought provoking friends and is a very observant child. The most interesting moments of the story for me where when someone else was talking to Oskar about death. His father died before the story begins, and Oskar is on the hunt for a message or clue from his dad. Death and talk of death is sprinkled meaningfully throughout the narrative. It is interesting to think about it from Oskar's point of view, then incorporate the comments into one's own point of view.

I'm labeling this one as "not recommended" because of the sex, but if you skip those chapters that are letters from the grandparents, it's clean.

The Whistling Season, by Ivan Doig

I'm in a bit of a state of awe over this book. The way it captures such meaning, and the essence of where education has been and where it's headed, was a real treat for me to enjoy. I felt that the book was about schools, schooling, students, teachers, parents, and community - as much or more than I felt it was about the story of Paul's family and the season of life they were in. What can I say? I'm a teacher.

That said, the story line is intriguing and well thought out. The syntax is a bit over-worked, but lavish and meaningful. The crossing of four such bright minds in a rural dry-farming community in the middle of (nowhere) Montana is something to enjoy - the wit and spectacle keeps the reader hopping and hoping.
My favorite passage comes as the main character, Paul, remembers drawing water from the well in his schoolyard back when he was a child.

    Out beyond the play area, there were round rims of shadow on the patch of prairie where the horses we rode to school had eaten the grass down in circles around their picket stakes. Perhaps that pattern drew my eye to what I had viewed every day of my school life but never until then truly registered: the trails in the grass that radiated in as many directions as there were homesteads with children, all converging to that schoolyard spot where I stood unnaturally alone.
    Forever and a day could go by, and that feeling will never leave me. Of knowing, in that instant, the central power of that country school in all our lives. It reached beyond those of us answering [the teacher's] role call that first day... Everyone I could think of had something at stake in the school... The mothers dispatched their hearts and souls out the door every morning as they sent waist-high children to saddle up and ride miles to school. We all answered, with some part of our lives, to the pull of this small knoll of prospect, this isolate square of schoolground.
    There at the waiting pump I could not sort out such matters totally, but even then, I am convinced, began in me some understanding of how much was recorded on that prairie, in those trails leading to the school. How their pattern held together a neighborhood measured in square miles and chimneys as far apart as smoke signals. I would say, if I were asked now, that the mounted troupes of schoolchildren taking their bearing on that schoolhouse on its prairie high spot traveled as trusting and true in their aim as the first makers of roads sighted onto a distant cathedral spire.

Paul attended school in that one-room building and loves what it stands for. Now grown, he has become the head of all the schools in the state and is asked to close all the one-room schoolhouses in favor of bigger, supposedly better schools for the children. This book is his memories of one year of his schooling and the impact that visiting the area, with his childhood home and schoolhouse, has on the decision he will present to the board.

I taught in a fairly rural community, with many students who could have ridden horseback to school if they'd chosen to. I read this book in one day, almost in one sitting. I wolfed it down and will spend a long time digesting it. It was good, healthy food for my teacher's soul.