Tag: book lust ii

Compleat Angler

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Walton, Izaak. The Compleat Angler or, the Contemplative Man’s Recreation. Mount Vernon: Peter Pauper Press, 1947.

Considering this was first published in 1653 the language is fun to stumble over; full of ‘methinks,’ ‘thee,’ ’tis,’ that sort of thing. At first blush I would have said this is a nonfiction story of three gentlemen walking through the countryside bragging about their respective “hobbies.” One man is a falconer, all about the birds. Another man is a hunter, primed for the kill. The third man is, of course, the fisherman, the angler. It is this man we learn the most from (hence the title of the book). There is a great deal more to the story – an 17th century “how-to” on cooking, inn-keeping, religion, poetry and the like, but I got incredibly bored and gave up halfway through.
As a postscript, I did enjoy the illustrations by Boyd Hanna in my undated edition.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called “Gone Fishin'” (p 100). Of course.

The Moffats

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Estes, Eleanor. The Moffats. New york: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 1941.

This was a cute little story read in just a few hours during the downgraded to the tropical storm “hurricane” Irene. It focuses on the four children of a single mother living in a small Connecticut suburb. Written in 1941 before the U.S. involvement in World War II, but taking place just after World War I, it is tinged with easy innocence. The children, Jane, Sylvie, Joey and Rufus, are just old enough to begin helping mom with household chores and running small errands in town, but they are still young enough to get themselves into mischief. Running away from school and riding a freight train as a first grader wasn’t as dangerous then as it would be today.

Author Fact: Eleanor Estes was a librarian.

Book Trivia: The Moffats is only the beginning of the story. Estes goes on to write more about the family in The Middle Moffat among others.

BookLust Twist: Nancy Pearl liked The Moffats a great deal. It is mentioned once in Book Lust in the introduction and twice in More Book Lust in the chapters called “Best For Boys and Girls” (p  21) and “Libraries and Librarians” (p 138).

A Child’s Garden of Verses

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Stevenson, Robert Louis Stevenson. A Child’s Garden of Verses. Boulder: Shambhala, 1979.

A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson is one of those books that remained as a constant in my house growing up. Somehow, side by side with unlikely titles such as Fear of Flying by Erica Jong and The World According to Garp by John Irving there A Child’s Garden of Verses sat. It had a permanent place on the shelf and never moved. As a child (I was ten when my 1979 edition was published) it was the illustrations by Charles Robinson that really captured my imagination. Simple illustrations like the title one for “Pirate Story” or more complicated ones like the one for “Garden Days.” I don’t know how I resisted the urge to fill the black and white line drawings with color.
When Natalie Merchant chose “The Land of Nod” as a poem to set to music for her newest album, Leave Your Sleep, it was if the simple verse took flight. Suddenly the poem spread glorious wings and soared with great majesty. It became lush and alive. It made me wish she had taken the entire collection of poems from A Child’s Garden of Verses and set them to music.
Like Natalie’sLeave Your Sleep, A Child’s Garden of Verses is the epitome of poetry for and about children. The imagination of a child grows wild and free among the pages. Hopes and fears are expressed as only children can. The sense of wonder and innocence resonates as reminders to all adults about how the world once was.

Point of amusement: just as I was drawn to the illustrations of Charles Robinson so were the publishers of A Child’s Garden of Verses. The back cover, usually reserved for praise for the author or an abstract about the text, sings the praises of illustrator Charles Robinson and ignore Robert Louis Stevenson completely.

Author Fact opinion: Stevenson and wife Fanny had one of the most romantic courtships I have ever read.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the introduction (pix). Nancy Pearl is confessing herself to be a “readaholic” and remembering the stories read to her as a young child.

Mrs. Dalloway

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Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. San Diego: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1925.

I felt like I shouldn’t have had this book on my list at all. Nancy Pearl bearly makes reference to it in More Book Lust and it certainly isn’t one of her recommendations. In fact, she only mentions it in reference to another book. After spending several hours mucking through Woolf’s prose I feel I should go back to my Lust list and weed out the “unintentional” recommendations and put them on an “If You Really Care” list.

I didn’t care for Mrs. Dalloway (character OR book). In a nutshell the plot is one day in the life of a middle-aged Londoner as she goes about planning for a party. Nothing more than that. The style of writing is tedious as it is a stream of every character’s inner monologue and one must be careful of character switches for not everything is from the rambling point of view of Mrs. Clarissa Dalloway. The chronology of the story is also a maze of creativity as it bounces back and forth in time. A Wednesday in June post World War I is present day, here and now so to speak.
One detail of Mrs. Dalloway that I found myself fixated on is Mrs. Dalloway’s relationship with a man named Peter. As she goes through her day she thinks about him with regularity. He is the man Dalloway could have married but didn’t. I found myself wondering if she had regrets. Through all the ramblings it was hard to say with certainty she did.

Book trivia: Mrs. Dalloway is the product of two short stories melded together.

Author Fact: Virginia Woolf suffered from depression and at the age of 58 committed suicide by drowning.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called “Voice” (p 230). Pearl is actually recommending Our Kind by Kate Walbert. In Our Kind a book club is reading Mrs. Dalloway.

Dive From Clausen’s Pier

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Packer, Ann. The Dive From Clausen’s Pier. New York: Random House, 2002.

I have to start off by saying this seems to be the month for reading about selfish women. The Dive From Clausen’s Pier is about Carrie Bell, a young woman who doesn’t really give a lot of thought to other people’s feelings. After her fiance is paralyzed from a diving accident (hence the title of the book) Carrie must decide if she can spend the rest of her life with a quadriplegic she doesn’t really love anymore. After the decision has been made the rest of the book is more of the same, Carrie steamrolling over people’s emotions while she forges ahead in search of what makes her happy. The Dive From Clausen’s Pier is extremely well written. Character development is flawless. Carrie is supposed to make you angry. Her family and friends are appropriately hurt and slow to forgive. You may not agree with the character (I certainly didn’t when it came to her second big decision), but you will agree with the pages on which she comes to life.

Personal aside: Probably the person I connected with the best is Paul Frasier, better known as Kilroy. There was something magical and intriguing about his character. For days after finishing Dive From Clausen’s Pier I couldn’t stop thinking about him.

Best lines: “How could you become anything without having wanted to be that thing first?” (p 227), and “Lane and I were like lines that intersected and then split apart again, without a pattern but with a kind of purpose” (p 281). I have a friendship like that. We can go for months without speaking, living those parallel lives, until one day our paths cross and it’s like we never were apart.

Author Fact: This is Packer’s first novel.

Book Trivia: The Dive From Clausen’s Pier was made into a Lifetime Original movie.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called “First Book” (p 89) because indeed, The Dive From Clausen’s Pier is Ann Packer’s first novel. Also, in More Book Lust in the chapter called “Ready, Set, Liftoff: Books to Ignite Discussion” (p 192). I would also agree with this selection because it’s the ultimate topic for discussion: what would YOU do?

While I Was Gone

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Miller, Sue. While I Was Gone.

My mother borrowed this book from a house she manages. For that reason I needed to finish it before leaving the island. Piece of cake. I was able to read this, start to finish, in two days. Mostly because I found myself thinking about it long after I had put it down.

While the plot was amazing Jo Becker wasn’t a likable character for me. Which is probably what Sue Miller wanted from me. I found her to be deceitful, conniving, and more than a little self centered and selfish. Jo is a woman of lies; an easy liar. So much so that her everyday relationships are tinged with half truths and falsehoods. Even her daughters recognize her deceit and are sensitive to her phoniness. When an old roommate from Jo’s past resurfaces more lies are uncovered.
But it’s not her falsity that hangs like sour fruit. It’s her selfishness that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. She misinterprets the intentions of the old roommate and begins to fantasize about an affair with him. When she thinks about how easy it would be to commit adultery she barely gives thought to whether or not her husband has ever thought about straying. When a terrible secret stands between Jo and having the affair she expects her husband to support her and not be upset by the turn of events.
The best part of While I was Gone was the character development of Jo’s husband. Watching Daniel struggle with jealousy and anger was like a metamorphosis. He emerges a different man.
This book made me question secrets. Which is worse? A half truth or a half lie?

Best line: “With the closing of the door I felt released from the awareness of his sorrow that had held me in his orbit” (p 8).

Author fact: Sue Miller has connections to Western Massachusetts.

Book Trivia: While I Was Gone was made into a 2004 movie starring Kirstie Alley.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called “Wayward Wives” (p 232).

Daughter of Fortune

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Allende, Isabel. Daughter of Fortune. New York: Perennial, 2000.

This took me three days to read thanks to a five hour car ride, an hour boat ride and an evening by the sea. Read the day before, the day of, and the day after Isabel Allende’s birthday.

Daughter of Fortune is the didactic tale of what happens when you become so obsessed with a thought, a feeling that you carry the obsession long after you remember why or what it was all about. This is the complicated saga of Eliza Sommers, raised as an orphan by a Victorian brother and sister – strict and unfeeling Jeremy and his spinster sister Rose. Secrets abound in Daughter of Fortune. When Eliza falls in love with delivery boy Joaquin Andieta her whole life changes. An obsession to be his “slave” claims her and compels her to follow him from Valparasio, Chile to California during the gold rush of 1849.

Best lines to remember: “Many years later, standing before a human head preserved in a jar of gin, Eliza would remember the first meeting with Joaquin Andieta and again experience the same unbearable anguish” (p 80). This line, if you remember it 150 pages later, gives away the entire story. Another line to remember, “The girl felt that she was opening like a carnivorous flower, emitting demonic perfumes to attract her man like a Venus’s-flytrap, crushing him, swallowing him, digesting him, and finally spitting out the splinters of his bones” (p 94) and one more, “‘I told you before that a fixation of the heart is very stubborn: it burrows into the brain and breaks the heart. There are many fixations but love is the worst'” (p 129). Wise words from the Machi.

Best word in the book: epizootic.

Author Fact: According to Allende’s website she has received 12 honorary doctorates. I enjoyed poking around the family photos the most.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called “Dewey Deconstructed: 600s (food)” (p 73).


It’s Not About the Bike

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Armstrong, Lance. It’s Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life.New York: Berkley Books, 2001.

I read this in one sitting, again as a passenger on a trip from Maine. I had the luck (?) of traffic on my side so instead of the usual 4.5 hours to get home it took us over six.

I will be 100% honest. I don’t know what to think about this book. When I first finished it I was expecting some sort of lesson to be learned, some sort of moral to the story. Instead I found the ending as well, an ending. The end. I’m not sure why it wasn’t more for me. I guess it’s because in comparison with Matthew Long’s recovery back to athletics Long’s process was more drawn out, more detailed. I felt that Long’s experience was more painful and not as easy to cope with emotionally. I think that was due, in part, to how little time Armstrong spent describing his road to recovery. In comparison to Long, Armstrong made it a much simpler process with much less emotion. To be fair, one man was hit by a bus and another was hit by cancer in three different areas of his body. Only two similarities really rise between the two men. Both men were ordained by doctors to die and both had an insane willpower to defy all odds and, ultimately, get back to the sports they loved so much.

Everyone knows Lance Armstrong’s story – man with cancer defies the odds and wins the Tour de France a shocking seven consecutive times. But, as the title of Armstrong’s story suggests it’s not about the bike. Instead it is about a different kind of competition. Fighting cancer. Ultimately, as near death moments will do, cancer changed him. It woke him up to the possibilities of a fuller, more meaningful life. He never would have become a philanthropist without the experience of personal pain. It’s Not about the Bike is that journey from hotshot cyclist to a powerhouse with a greater purpose.

Favorite lines: “If there is a defining characteristic of a man as opposed to a boy, maybe it’s patience” (p 65). “During our lives we’re faced with so many different elements as well, we experience so many setbacks, and fight such hand-to-hand battle with failure, head down in the rain, just trying to stay upright and to have a little hope” (p 69). Finally, “We watched the World Series and tried to act like we were interested in the outcome – as much as anybody really cares about baseball before brain surgery” (p 110 – 111).

Author fact(s): Two of my favorite details about Armstrong as the person (and not the writer) is he is also a marathoner (three times) and allegedly agnostic.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called “Best for Teens” (p 23)

Where the Heart Is

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Lette, Billie. Where the Heart Is. New York: Warner Books, 1995.

This was another “reread” book. I don’t know when I read it first, but I do remember not liking it as much as the second time. The first time I found everything just a tad unbelievable, the people and plot a little unreal. I have since changed my mind. About everything.

When we first meet Novalee Nation, she is seven months pregnant and about to be abandoned by her no-good boyfriend. Luckily for her, Novalee’s boyfriend picks a Wal-Mart in Sequoyah, Oklahoma where Novalee decides to take up residence when she realizes Willy Jack isn’t coming back. As a seventeen-year-old Novalee is incredibly conscientious. She keeps track of every item she takes from Wal-Mart while in residence (canned Spam, maternity clothes, a sleeping bag…) and during the day tries to be as inconspicuous as possible. No one questions this strange pregnant girl roaming around town. In fact, she befriends a few of the community members on the very first day by taking their picture. These caring, generous people will become Novalee’s lifeline and family after her baby girl, Americus, is born. In a sea of goodwill there are a few tragic events that give a well-placed reality to the story.The town of Sequoya suffers a devastating tornado and later Novalee’s best friend is brutally attacked by a man who originally seemed too good to be true. Finally, there is the return of Willy Jack. These events help temper the sticky sweetness of the rest of the plot.

Best lines:  “And suddenly, Novalee knew- knew what she hadn’t known before. She wasn’t who she had been. She would never again be who she was before” (p 157).

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called “Dewey Deconstructed: 600s” (p 73). Where the Heart Is is not mentioned in More Book Lustbecause of anything more than a mention of an orange almond bisque (the range of the 600s in the dewey decimal system includes applied sciences – cooking).

Atonement

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McEwan, Ian. Atonement.New York: Anchor Books, 2001.

I love it when I find a book that I find impossible to put down. I read this in three stages: on the car ride to Syracuse (3.5 hours), in the hotel an hour before bed, and on the car ride home (another 3.5 hours). Finished it in that eight hour time span. It was that good. I know I will be reading it again. And again.

How to review a book that has already been “reviewed” over three hundred times in one place? Suffice it to say I could not (and will not) write a one line review, “this was boring.” Nor, will I say “I loved it” and leave it at that. Having not seen the movie I am relieved I cannot confuse the two.
Briony Tallis, as a thirteen year old girl, witnesses an exchange between her 23 year old sister, Cecelia, and the son of a house servant, Robbie Turner. Because she is not within hearing distance she perceives the situation based on body language and facial expression alone. Being young and impressionable she mistakes sexual tension for violence and anger. This misconception is further compounded when she witnesses Cecelia being “attacked” by Robbie later in the evening. Briony’s perceived reality is so horrifying she points the finger at Robbie when her cousin is raped by an unidentifiable man. The next two parts of the novel are from the point of Briony and Robbie five years later as they both deal with the horrors World War II. The final section is sixty years later when Briony is a successful author.

Part One was definitely my favorite section. It’s the only point in the book where one character tells the story from a limited perception and another character circles back to describe the same situation from his or her point of view. The reader has the sense of circling the scene, seeing it from different angles, witnessing it from all sides.

Favorite quotes, “Cecelia longed to take her brother aside and tell him that Mr. Marshall had pubic hair growing from his ears” (p 48), “Every now and then, quite unintentionally, someone taught you something about yourself” (p 111), and “In love with her, willing himself to stay sane for her, he was naturally in love with her words. When he wrote back he pretended to be his old self, he lied his want into sanity” (p 191 – 192). I chose these three quotes because they seemed pivotal to turning points in the story: the first quote is lighthearted, a foreshadowing of how treacherous things are about to become; the second quote could sum up Briony’s entire existence; and the third quote illustrates true love in its finest moment.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called “Ian McEwan: Too Good To Miss” (p 149). I’ve read five books by McEwan so far and I have to say this one is, by far, my favorite. Atonement is also listed in More Book Lust in the chapter called “Tricky, Tricky” (p 222). This last inclusion is a head scratcher for me. While there were many twists and turns to the story I never once felt McEwan “tricked” me in any way. If anything, McEwan’s ending seemed logical and expected.

Gold Bug

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Poe, Edgar, Allan. “The Gold Bug.” The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe.Vol. V. New York: AMS Press, Inc., 1965.

“The Gold Bug” is a fascinating short story about a man, William Legrand, who, after being bitten by a gold beetle, appears to become mentally unstable. His man-servant, Jupiter, calls on an unnamed friend (the narrator) to visit & assess Legrand’s sanity. It’s at this point that Legrand claims he knows where the treasure of Captain Kidd is buried. Well, at least he knows how to get to it. Legrand is able to convince his servant and mystery friend to go on an adventure to find the lost treasure. Using cryptography Legrand brings his servant and this unnamed friend to the site of the treasure.

BookLust Twist: This was one of those off-hand mentions. Pearl doesn’t recommend reading The Gold Bug at all. She merely brings it up in More Book Lust in the chapter “Codes and Cyphers” (p 51) because author Leo Marks mentioned Edgar Allan Poe in his book Between Silk and Cyanide.

Confession: I have long been fascinated by E.A.P. and his writings. Of course his strange and often macabre stories held my attention first, but ever since I learned of his early demise at age 40 and the mystery surrounding his death I have been captivated by the man. How did he die? What did him in? Was it drugs, politics, or none of the above?

…And Ladies of the Club

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Santmyer, Helen Hooven. …And Ladies of the Club. New York: Berkley Books, 1985.

After 1,433 pages what exactly did Santmyer have to say? …because I have to confess, I didn’t finish it! …And Ladies of the Club is a sweeping, multi-generation saga that spans 64 years in a small town in Ohio. It begins when two college girls are invited to join a literary “club” to study and discuss influential authors of the day. The two girls take their invitation to membership very seriously and act accordingly. After all, their group consists of a mix of women with varying marital and political statuses. For example, Anne is chosen to go first. She studies the poetry of Browning to present a critique to the group and is chastised for being immature in her thinking. However as the group grows it is these different stages of life and opinion that sets the stage for Santmyer to paint the bigger picture – the trials and tribulations of life in a small town immediately following the Civil War. This is a time when men snickered at the silly, “harmless” interests of their wives. A time when health and reputation could deteriorate with a single, innocent event.
I will admit, this was a tedious book to read. In order to finish it within the prescribed 30 days of June I had to allocate 50 pages a day. I think that would have been realistic and maybe even fun had the main characters been more reined in and the story, well…more interesting. Any book that takes 50 years to write is going to have its share of inconsistencies. …And Ladies of the Club was no exception. Sometimes the plot dragged on minute by minute in great detail. Other times a whole year is covered in less than a blase chapter. My biggest complaint Santmyer spent more time (considerable more time) painstakingly recreating the era in which the characters lived than on personality development. That is to say, no one character was developed fully enough for me to have an understanding of, never mind much less like! There were so many characters (spanning several generations) that I couldn’t keep them straight. In a nutshell, …And Ladies of the Club uses a literary society to focus mainly on the political, social, and economic recovery of post Civil War Waynesboro, Ohio.

Best line: “If she could only reach Anne before the meeting – it would be dreadful to sit all afternoon with good news locked in your bosom” (p 58).

Author Fact: Santmyer was in a nursing home when …And Ladies of the Club was finally finished. Many feared she wouldn’t live to see its publication. She did and at age 88 she was a literary success thanks to clever marketing and publisher pushing.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called “Small-Town Life” (p 202).

Persepolis

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Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood. New York: Pantheon, 2003.

Whenever I read a book like Persepolis I think about how gluttonous, how wanton, how extravagant my life within this country has been. Imagine being told what to wear and how to wear it. Imagine being told what to not to do or say. Imagine having a curfew. Imagine the banning of alcohol or parties. All common for coming of age, but as an adult? Imagine uncles being executed; bombs exploding and killing your entire family of neighbors. Here one day, gone the next. Persepolis was hard to read. Maybe it’s because Marjane is my age (younger by several months) so all along I kept comparing her her stages of growing up to my own. But, really, how can one compare such things when we are figuratively and literally worlds apart?

The Amercican version of Persepolis is a two-part story. Part one begins when Marjane Satrapi is ten years old. It’s her first year of having to wear the veil, of school segregation, and the disintegration of life as she knew it. The story follows the next four years of her life as she comes of age in revolutionary Iran. She is interested in all the things a typical pubescent girl should be: fashion, rock posters, friends. As she grows up her personal uprising and rebellion run parallel with her country’s political unrest. As the Iran/Iraq conflict escalates Satrapi’s childhood world becomes more and more dangerous. She struggles with religious trust versus media influences touting the extremist view. Finally, her Marxist parents decide her future is more certain if she is sent to a boarding school in Austria.

Striking line: “When I went back to her room she was crying. We were not in the same social class but at least we were in the same bed” (p 36).

Book Trivia: Persepolis was adapted into an animated film.

Author Fact: Satrapi speaks five different languages (according to the wiki I read).

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called “Graphica” (p 105). Obviously.

Dean’s List

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Hassler, Jon. The Dean’s List. New York: Ballantine Books, 1997.

One of the dangers I have with reading books based in academia is making comparisons to my own employment. The Dean’s List was no exception. Scarily so. Right down to the weird chick who pretends to be a professor…

Leland J. Edwards, Ph.D, Dean of Rookery State College and senior member of faculty is 58 years old. From the moment you meet Leland you get the sense he has never really experienced the world; never really grown up. Rookery State College runs in the family as his father chaired the History Department. He still lives with his 81 year old mother and caters to her every need as she has advanced lung disease. He is, in his own words, “excessively attached” to her. With his marriage failed, Leland pours himself into boosting Rookery’s flagging fund-raising efforts. In the hopes of bringing national exposure to the college he works to bring a renowned poet to the college for a reading. It is from this moment that Leland starts to stand up to his mother, quell the memory demons, and make peace with the problems of his past.

Favorite zingers (and there were a few): “We still had high academic standards in those days; near-illiterates had a hard time graduating” (p 2), “If all of his students had brains, who would Kahlstrom feel superior to?” (p 46), and “If I’m ever to become as enlightened as I’ve always secretly wished to be…” (p 150).

Author Fact: Hassler died in 2008 just ten days shy of his 75th birthday. He suffered from Progressive Supranuclear Palsy. It’s related to Parkinson’s. One of Hassler’s characters, Richard Falcon, suffers from Parkinson’s…Which made me wonder if Hassler was trying to disguise a little of himself in Falcon.
Another interesting fact – on Hassler’s website his final resting place is given, complete with plot location in the cemetery. I thought that was a great idea. Fans of Hassler can pay their respects anytime they want.

Confessional: I didn’t read Pearl’s description of Hassler’s work closely enough. If I had, I would have caught on that Rookery Blues should have been read before The Dean’s List. Oh well.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called “Big Ten Country: The Literary Midwest (Minnesota)” (p 28). This was read in honor of Minnesota becoming a state in the month of May but I easily could have read it in honor of college graduation month since this took place on a college campus.

Antigone

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Sophocles. Antigone. Translated by Elizabeth Wycoff. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954.

The Cliff/Spark version of Antigone is this: Two sisters want to bury their dead brother. One wants to bury him admirably and the other doesn’t want to break the law. The brother in question cannot be buried because he was executed for a crime and must be left to rot in the courtyard as an example for the community. Defiant sister must go against the king alone as everyone who is anybody refuses to help her. True to Greek tragedy nearly everyone, including the king’s wife ends up committing suicide. The end.

Of course there is much, much more to the story and, depending on which version you read, you get it. In my version of Antigone translated by Elizabeth Wyckoff the language is watered down and somewhat pedestrian. It’s not as lyrical as other translations. A small example: from a 1906 Oxford Clarendon Press version (translated by Robert Whitelaw): “Ismene: There’s trouble in thy looks, thy tidings tell” compared with the 1954 University of Chicago Press version (translated by Elizabeth Wycoff): “Ismene: What is it? Clearly some news has clouded you” (p 159). Ismene is basically saying the same thing in each line, but the Whitelaw version has more animation, more movement. In the end Antigone is a simple story about the man against The Man, no matter how you read it.

Note: I’m note sure how many other versions have this, but I appreciated the biography of Socrates in my version.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called “The Alpha, Beta Gammas of Greece” (p 9).