Reading about New York

First posted March 19, 2014.

Most of the nonfiction I read falls into the memoir category, with an emphasis on travel. But one of my favorites is Anne Fadiman’s Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader, a book for book lovers. If you haven’t read it, buy it now. It’s short and you’ll read it so quickly you’ll wish it were longer. I’ve read it a couple times and love all of the essays, but one of my favorites is called “My Odd Shelf”.

It’s about Fadiman’s obsession with polar exploration and the collection of books she has built centering on it. You can read a little of it in this review, but the concept is a simple one: many of us voracious readers have a niche topic which fascinates us, one that the general population wouldn’t understand. I have a few of them – favorite authors that I’ve read almost everything by, girls’ mysteries stories with a focus on Nancy Drew and books about Nancy Drew, and fairy tales. But I’m starting to build a small collection which could be called “Books about NYC that I haven’t finished reading yet.” Not quite like Fadiman’s collection. Oh well.

The only book in this collection that I did finish is called My First New York: Early Adventures in the Big City, and I gave it away. It’s a collection of essays from New York Magazine by notables from all fields about what New York was like when they first arrived, whenever it was. I saw it on the ubiquitous New York tables at bookstores and museums and finally gave in and bought it. It was, like Ex Libris, a quick read, but a good one.

Another “saw it everywhere” purchase was New York Diaries: 1609 to 2009, edited by Teresa Carpenter, which offers snapshots of the history of this city in diary entries from New York residents throughout the city’s existence. I’ve dipped into it, but have yet to read more than 40 or so pages. What I’ve read, though, was fascinating!

When I graduated college I was given The Neighborhoods of Brooklyn as a gift. It traces the history of each section of the borough I’ve lived in since moving to New York, and while I’ve read up on some of the neighborhoods I’ve lived in, I have yet to read all of it.

Not strictly about New York, but my friend gave me a copy of To Marry an English Lord, the book that inspired “Downton Abbey”, and while I’ve only read about three-quarters of it, I was struck by how many of the American heiresses in it were from New York society, and by the portrait of that society it painted.

A book that is useful for this blog: the DK Eyewitness Travel Guide: New York City 2014, given to me by the fabulous Allie Singer. Once the weather’s a little nicer I’m going to use it to plan adventures in parts of the city I haven’t had the chance to explore yet.

On my to-be-purchased list: Museum: Behind the Scenes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I’ve seen it in the Met bookstore (where else) and my fascination with museums means I will eventually get around to buying it.

What’s on your odd shelf? What books do you buy faster than you can read them? And what books about New York should I add to my read-eventually pile?

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Christmas Eve as We Grow Older

First posted December 24, 2013.

Excerpts from “What Christmas Is as We Grow Older”

By Charles Dickens

Time was, with most of us, when Christmas Day encircling all our limited World like a magic ring, left nothing out for us to miss or seek; bound together all our home enjoyments, affections, and hopes; grouped everything and every one around the Christmas fire; and made the little picture shining in our bright young eyes, complete.

. . .

Therefore, as we grow older, let us be more thankful that the circle of our Christmas associations and of the lessons that they bring, expands! Let us welcome every one of them, and summon them to take their places by the Christmas hearth.  

Welcome, old aspirations, glittering creatures of an ardent fancy, to your shelter underneath the holly! We know you, and have not outlived you yet. Welcome, old projects and old loves, however fleeting, to your nooks among the steadier lights that burn around us. Welcome, all that was ever real to our hearts; and for the earnestness that made you real, thanks to Heaven!

. . .

Welcome, everything! Welcome, alike what has been, and what never was, and what we hope may be, to your shelter underneath the holly, to your places round the Christmas fire, where what is sits open-hearted!

. . .

On this day, we shut out Nothing!

. . .

I heard parts of this essay long ago, as pieces of it were worked into the production of A Christmas Carol I performed in as a kid. The whole thing is worth a read, but these excerpts are my favorite bits.

Whether you celebrate Christmas or not, as the year ends I hope that you too find that your circle has expanded, that old and new aspirations have a place by your hearth, and that the new year brings hope and peace.

And as the Muppets say:

Have I mentioned that I love travel writing?

I’ve been thinking a lot about travel writing lately. Part of it is figuring out what kind of stuff to write about on this blog, part of it is that I have some travel coming up soon, and most of it is that I just love travel writing. My travel reading falls into four major categories: guide books for trips I’m going to take (mostly skimmed), books by Bill Bryson, books by Frances Mayes, and books about American women (usually in their twenties or thirties) moving to Paris.

NB: I’ve never even been to Paris, and I’d probably go back to London again before going there, and yet I’ve read four books that fit that category. Oops? (For the record, these are the four.)

Thinking about my love of Bill Bryson and my emerging fondness for Frances Mayes really clarified for me what I’m looking for in travel writing. I’ve read four Bill Bryson titles (Notes from a Small Island was my first, and is my favorite) and two Frances Mayes (I’m about to finally read Under the Tuscan Sun), and they are two distinctly different experiences.

 I’ve read Mayes’s A Year in the World twice, but I can only remember a handful of moments from it. Her writing is beautifully descriptive; last year at one point I was desperately craving a trip and had nothing planned, so I reread  A Year in the World and felt like I was there, for each adventure she described. I got lost in the details, totally immersed, and that’s exactly what I wanted. It’s like taking a trip, except cheaper and not really. But I’m looking forward to reading Under the Tuscan Sun and getting a glimpse of Tuscany.

I’ve just reread Bill Bryson’s Notes from a Small Island and am halfway through a reread of I’m a Stranger Here Myself, his book about living in the US after twenty years in the UK. If you haven’t read anything by him, go do it, but the main thing to know is that Bill Bryson is funny, and his stories are a mix of anecdotes given a comedic slant and strange and interesting facts about the places he describes. I might not always remember all the ins and outs of his travels, but usually a few stick in my mind. When I read Bill Bryson’s books, it’s like hearing a good story a second time from a friend: you remember most of the twists but that just makes it better. In these books, some of his references are dated now – and not always PC – but a lot of what he talks about holds up.

I’m a unfortunately little too wedded to factual (sometimes overly factual) reporting in my writing to imitate Bill Bryson. He has a way of telling you something that you’re pretty sure did not happen quite the way he tells it but instead is a perfect send up of how that situation might go down. In I’m a Stranger Here Myself, he talks about calling a government hotline to try to get his wife’s social security number and how the official on the other end wouldn’t give it to him, but did, when asked, tell him that baking soda would get that strawberry pop stain right out of his t-shirt. I’m reasonably sure this did not actually happen, but the way he describes it is hilarious. Then again, maybe it did happen and Bill Bryson has more interesting interactions with strangers than the rest of us do.

He’s also just funnier than I’ll ever be, and I can accept that.

I also may never be able to travel the world quite like Frances Mayes does, and I’m pretty sure I’ll never own a house in Tuscany, but I can sit somewhere  beautiful and describe the sights and sounds and smells. Her writing builds a scene for us to step into, and I can aspire to that. It’s easier to do when I’m writing in the moment, though; if I try to recreate it afterwards, the details have already faded, or I never noticed them to begin with. The only drawback to that kind of writing is that it tends to bring out my earnest side. It’s hard to be snarky about a beautiful day in the park, but I’ll try!

Here and there I’ve picked up travel story collections, from The Best American Travel Writing 2000 (edited by Bill Bryson) to Female Nomad and Friends (edited by Rita Golden Gelman), and I’m always looking for recommendations for writers to check out – especially if they fit one of the categories I’ve described, or if they’re totally different. I’d love to hear about books by American women in their twenties or thirties who go anywhere besides Paris, because I’ve only found a handful of those. What should I check out? And what do you look for in your travel writing?

PS My first piece for the Toast goes live on Wednesday, May 14. I’ll link to it in Thursday’s post, but in the meantime if any Toasties find their way here, welcome!

How to spend an hour

Yesterday I had some time to kill in midtown. I’d rushed up to go to a doctor’s appointment (I am finally ear infection-free!) and had a little over an hour before I was meeting my friend for dinner. Sometimes when I have time and don’t know what to do with myself, I wander, especially if it means I can chat with my mom on the phone, or catch up with a friend.

But yesterday I had a book I was knee-deep in and loving (this one, in case you’re curious) and so I needed to find a spot to read. There are a few outdoor public spaces with benches in that part of town, but it wasn’t quite warm enough. Also, I wanted hot chocolate. I peeked into the café at Barnes and Noble, but didn’t see a free table, so I went into the atrium of the building B&N is in and headed for a café.

My cocoa was a little small for the $3.50 they charged me, but it tasted good, and there were chairs nearby in the atrium. I sank into one and started reading, totally absorbed.

Absorbed, that is, until a tiny girl toddled by looking at me. Her parents were walking ahead of her, pushing the stroller and urging her on, but she walked at her own pace and stopped to stare at me and the man at the next table. I smiled and waved at her, and after a few moments, she smiled back, and even looked back to smile again before her parents finally got her to keep going. The man at the next table grinned at me and said something about how I’d gotten her to smile, and I nodded and smiled back and returned to my book.

The next time I came up for air, a different guy was sitting there and the barista from the café was closing up and starting to take the chairs in. The guy and I looked at each other, shrugged, and waited a few more minutes until the barista apologetically told us we needed to move. I still had another fifteen or twenty minutes till my dinner, so I wandered over to another atrium nearby, one with tables that stay out at all times, and I sank back into my book until my friend walked up beside me. I had ten pages left, so I marked my spot and saved them for the subway ride home later on. We went for dinner at a diner and talked work and life and relationships and I was a little too tired and scattered, but with a good friend, that doesn’t matter.

It’s been a busy week for me at work and so I’ve spent a lot of my time at home decompressing – when I wasn’t getting things done.  But it’s nice to know that I can still lose myself in a book, even in the middle of Manhattan on a weekday evening, and then come back to myself to have small, friendly interactions with strangers and a thoughtful conversation with a friend.

And tomorrow’s Friday!

Reading about New York

Most of the nonfiction I read falls into the memoir category, with an emphasis on travel. But one of my favorites is Anne Fadiman’s Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader, a book for book lovers. If you haven’t read it, buy it now. It’s short and you’ll read it so quickly you’ll wish it were longer. I’ve read it a couple times and love all of the essays, but one of my favorites is called “My Odd Shelf”.

It’s about Fadiman’s obsession with polar exploration and the collection of books she has built centering on it. You can read a little of it in this review, but the concept is a simple one: many of us voracious readers have a niche topic which fascinates us, one that the general population wouldn’t understand. I have a few of them – favorite authors that I’ve read almost everything by, girls’ mysteries stories with a focus on Nancy Drew and books about Nancy Drew, and fairy tales. But I’m starting to build a small collection which could be called “Books about NYC that I haven’t finished reading yet.” Not quite like Fadiman’s collection. Oh well.

The only book in this collection that I did finish is called My First New York: Early Adventures in the Big City, and I gave it away. It’s a collection of essays from New York Magazine by notables from all fields about what New York was like when they first arrived, whenever it was. I saw it on the ubiquitous New York tables at bookstores and museums and finally gave in and bought it. It was, like Ex Libris, a quick read, but a good one.

Another “saw it everywhere” purchase was New York Diaries: 1609 to 2009, edited by Teresa Carpenter, which offers snapshots of the history of this city in diary entries from New York residents throughout the city’s existence. I’ve dipped into it, but have yet to read more than 40 or so pages. What I’ve read, though, was fascinating!

When I graduated college I was given The Neighborhoods of Brooklyn as a gift. It traces the history of each section of the borough I’ve lived in since moving to New York, and while I’ve read up on some of the neighborhoods I’ve lived in, I have yet to read all of it.

Not strictly about New York, but my friend gave me a copy of To Marry an English Lord, the book that inspired “Downton Abbey”, and while I’ve only read about three-quarters of it, I was struck by how many of the American heiresses in it were from New York society, and by the portrait of that society it painted.

A book that should be useful for this blog: the DK Eyewitness Travel Guide: New York City 2014, given to me by the fabulous Allie Singer. Once the weather’s a little nicer I’m going to use it to plan adventures in parts of the city I haven’t had the chance to explore yet.

On my to-be-purchased list: Museum: Behind the Scenes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I’ve seen it in the Met bookstore (where else) and my fascination with museums means I will eventually get around to buying it.

What’s on your odd shelf? What books do you buy faster than you can read them? And what books about New York should I add to my read-eventually pile?

The Union Square bookstore trilogy

How the heck have I made it this long without talking about bookstores in NYC? I guess I take them for granted now, though one of my earliest memories of life in New York is making the trek from Clinton Hill to the Barnes and Noble on Court Street. It was my very first weekend here and I wanted to buy a book that had just been released. I looked up directions and walked all the way over there and back, a roundtrip of about three miles. The things we do for books.

When bookish friends come to visit me, if I’ve already taken them to the NYPL, Union Square is a great place to visit. Within a few blocks you have the huge and lovely Barnes and Noble on E. 17^th St, at the top of the Park, Forbidden Planet at 13^th St and Broadway, and of course, the Strand, at 12^thand Broadway.

Barnes and Noble has a huge range of new and recent titles across its several floors. It has a café on the third floor and space for author events on the fourth floor. While there aren’t quite enough places to sit with a book and browse, if it’s not raining you can usually find somewhere to squeeze in. Once I found an awesome bit of graffiti on the back of a bathroom door at this store: someone had written “Don’t even blink. Blink and you’re dead”, which is a reference to a one of my favorite Doctor Who episodes.

It’s something you’d expect more to find in a bathroom at Forbidden Planet, which sells everything from comic books and graphic novels to collectibles and t-shirts. My brother, who loves video games, and my friend, who loves super hero movies, both enjoyed stopping in, and once I had to tell myself not to buy the not-as-nice-as-on-the-show TARDIS journal they had on the display table. Perfect for quirky gifts or new reading materials.

The Strand, just a block south, is absolutely lovely, but a bit overwhelming. According to their site they have eighteen miles of books, used ones, new ones, and rare ones. If you fight your way past the crowded display tables on the first floor to the fiction section at back, or to any other floor, the crowds are easier to handle. I seem to always end up in the travel and nonfiction sections in the basement, with a quick pop in to the children’s section on the second floor. I almost never leave without buying something, and that something usually costs fewer than ten dollars.

My only quibble with the Strand: they don’t have a romance novel section. They have sci fi and mystery, but the romances they have are lumped together with other books on their disorganized mass market paperback tables. Romance generates more revenue than any other category, so the fact that an institution like the Strand can’t take the time to cultivate and organize a section for it seems a little crazy.

Anyway, those are my three go-to bookstores when I have friends in town. Anyone have suggestions of other stores to take people to? I need to find some hole-in-the-wall used bookstores to patronize…

The Little Prince at the Morgan Library

Last Friday I made my second-ever visit to the Morgan Library & Museum. The Morgan, which began as the private library of Pierpont Morgan, father of J.P Morgan, is now a complex of buildings that houses rare books and materials, and even includes a performance space. Admission is a bit pricey, but it’s free on Friday nights between 7 and 9 p.m., and when I was there they had a pair of musicians playing in the courtyard, near the café.

The Morgan’s permanent collection is impressive, but I also just love the building. The library portion reminds me of a small scale version of the Beauty and the Beast library, and it even has a (locked) doorway hidden by a bookcase, which a security guard pointed out on my first visit. This time I gleefully noticed an image of a dragon on the fireplace, above where the flames would be. And you could spend an hour just reading the spines on the shelves, not to say anything of the fine pieces of literature and history showcased in the library.

All this is to say that the Morgan is worth a visit at any time, but I especially urge to go now, before April 27, while the exhibit “The Little Prince: A New York Story” is on view. If you haven’t read The Little Prince, go buy a copy and read it, and then go to the exhibit.

The Little Prince, written by French aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and published in the US in 1943 simultaneously in English and French, is one of my favorite books. I have a lot of favorites, but this is one that I’ve read many times. It’s one of the books that grows with you, even though (and maybe because) part of its message is a reminder not to become a grown up. Grown ups, as the book tells us, are very strange, and are preoccupied so much with things that don’t matter that the things that do matter pass them by. Grown ups get caught up in worrying about money, or status, forgetting that, as the fox tells the little prince, “One sees clearly only with the heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye.”

In her book about faith and art, Walking on Water, Madeleine L’Engle refers to one of my favorite parts of The Little Princewhen discussing how children, when creating art, are free from self-consciousness. She says, “They don’t worry that they may not be as good as Di Chirico or Bracque; they know intuitively that it is folly to make comparisons, and they go ahead and say what they want to say. What looks like a hat to a grownup may, to the child artist, be an elephant inside a boa constrictor.” Like Saint-Exupéry, I’m fairly confident that if I show someone his picture of a boa that has eaten an elephant and he or she knows exactly what it is, we will be able to talk about the things that are really important.

The Morgan exhibit highlights that while Saint-Exupéry wrote about the child’s ability to see to the heart of things and to understand more than grown ups, he was not content to toss  his words and pictures on a piece of paper and trust to his readers to understand his message. His first draft of The Little Prince was over twice as long as the 14,000 word final book, and the exhibit takes us through some of the passages and images which existed only in early versions. We follow the narrative, seeing as Saint-Exupéry writes and edits and streamlines and focuses his message until he’s honed it into the story loved around the world.  Did you know The Little Prince has been translated into more languages than any other work of fiction? I didn’t, until Friday.

There are interesting bits about Saint-Exupéry and the book throughout the exhibit, from the writing in the book while Saint-Exupéry lived in New York City, to his subsequent disappearance after an aircraft mission in the south of France the year after the book was published. The biographical details are fascinating, especially when seen in context with the story’s message of loss and longing, but it was the manuscript that really drew me. How hard he must have worked to choose those 14,000 perfect words!

If you can, visit the Morgan in the next three months and see the exhibit. Be sure to notice the beautiful blue walls of the exhibition room, with their simple recreations of images from the book—including the one that Saint-Exupéry calls the “loveliest and saddest landscape in the world.” After you go, I promise you that you’ll want to read the book again.

Have you been to the Morgan? Or will The Little Prince convince you to go?

Why Children’s Books Matter at the New York Public Library

I am fairly certain that I have taken almost every person who has visited me since I moved to NYC to the main branch New York Public Library, also known as the Stephen A. Schwarzman building. My reasons are simple: It’s in a great location near other tourist outings (Bryant Park, Grand Central, Rockefeller Center, and Times Square are all nearby), I love libraries and this is a particularly beautiful one, and, of course, it’s free.

Someday I want to bring my laptop or a notebook and do some writing in the Rose Main Reading Room, but so far my visits are limited to showing that gorgeous space off to out-of-town visitors. We take a quick lap around, staying quiet so as not to disrupt the many people who do use the library as a work space.

Besides a moment to say hit to Patience and Fortitude, the lions outside the library, and a peek in the gift shop, the other main stop on my tour is the children’s room on the ground floor. It houses a circulating collection of children’s books, and it’s also usually home to the original stuffed animal that inspired the Winnie the Pooh books.

I say usually because right now Christopher Robin’s beloved friends are on the main floor of the library as part of a special exhibit, ongoing until March 23, 2014, called “The ABC of It: Why Children’s Books Matter”. I’ve mentioned the exhibit before, but I went back for my second visit in December and I have to say, you should go! As someone who thinks about kids’ books on a daily basis (and gets paid for it!), I was familiar with a lot of the books discussed, but not all of them, and I highly enjoyed both of my visits.

Some of my favorite bits were a model of the car from The Phantom Tollbooth (a book I didn’t read until college), an Alice who “grows” (with the help of some books), and the original letter written by Edward Stratmeyer to Mildred Wirt Benson outlining the new girls’ series he wanted her to write the first books of under the name of Carolyn Keene — the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories.

While that last one is probably not as exciting to anyone else as it is to me, there are many other bits and pieces relating to well-known children’s books that will be fascinating to people who loved them, and at the least nostalgia-inducing for everyone else. There is also a great section on banned books, with a display of the titles of many books that have been banned and a discussion of the reasons some censors have given for banning them.

I could go on and tell you more about why children’s books matter, but that’s what the exhibit’s for! Have you visited already? What did you think?

Christmas Eve as We Grow Older

Excerpts from “What Christmas Is as We Grow Older”
By Charles Dickens 

Time was, with most of us, when Christmas Day encircling all our limited World like a magic ring, left nothing out for us to miss or seek; bound together all our home enjoyments, affections, and hopes; grouped everything and every one around the Christmas fire; and made the little picture shining in our bright young eyes, complete.

. . .

Therefore, as we grow older, let us be more thankful that the circle of our Christmas associations and of the lessons that they bring, expands! Let us welcome every one of them, and summon them to take their places by the Christmas hearth.  

Welcome, old aspirations, glittering creatures of an ardent fancy, to your shelter underneath the holly! We know you, and have not outlived you yet. Welcome, old projects and old loves, however fleeting, to your nooks among the steadier lights that burn around us. Welcome, all that was ever real to our hearts; and for the earnestness that made you real, thanks to Heaven!

. . .

Welcome, everything! Welcome, alike what has been, and what never was, and what we hope may be, to your shelter underneath the holly, to your places round the Christmas fire, where what is sits open-hearted!

. . .

On this day, we shut out Nothing!

. . .

I heard parts of this essay long ago, as pieces of it were worked into the production of A Christmas Carol I performed in as a kid. The whole thing is worth a read, but these excerpts are my favorite bits.

Whether you celebrate Christmas or not, as the year ends I hope that you too find that your circle has expanded, that old and new aspirations have a place by your hearth, and that the new year brings hope and peace.

And as the Muppets say:

 

 

The Queens Museum and the Panorama of the City of New York

When you live in Brooklyn and work in Manhattan, going to Queens is terrible. It involves multiple subway lines, or, probably (I’ve never tried it!), multiple buses. But there are a couple places I’ve been to in Queens that make the effort absolutely worth it—even if I do try to time my visits to when my family (or friends), who have a car, are in town.

One of my favorite places in Queens is the Queen Museum (formerly the Queens Museum of Art). The original building was erected in 1939, for the World Fair, to house the New York City Pavilion, and the museum, which opened in 1972, just finished a two-year expansion. It reopens on Saturday, November 9, after closing for a few months to finish up construction, making this the perfect time to visit and check out its most famous exhibit, the Panorama of the City of New York.

The Panorama has to be one of the neatest pieces of NYC history that exists. Built for the 1964 World Fair, it is a scale model of the city of New York and includes every single building in the five boroughs that was constructed before 1992, when the last major update was made to it. The model sprawls across 9,335 square feet and is surrounded by a raised walkway. Visitors can walk around the outside of the model to view the city from different angles. The model’s lighting has been redone recently to once more fade from day to night, and tiny airplanes on wires take off and land at JFK and La Guardia airports.

A great part of the fun of the Panorama is looking for familiar landmarks. It’s easy to spot the big ones: the Empire State Building, Central Park, the Twin Towers, the Statue of Liberty, even. But for those of us who live here, it’s also neat to look for where are offices and apartments are and try to decide if the model accurately reflects them.

I first learned of the Panorama in Brian Selznick’s beautiful book Wonderstruck, in which the Panorama, and another of my favorite places, the Natural History Museum, play important roles. I thought the model looked lovely in the book’s black-and-white drawings, but it’s even more gorgeous in person.

The Panorama isn’t the only exhibit at the museum, and I’m excited to visit again to see what changes the recent expansion has brought. But the Panorama alone is worth the price of admission (which is a suggested donation of $8) and the hassle of getting there.

Have you been to see the Panorama? Which buildings did you (or would you) look for?