Libraries in the Ancient World by Lionel Casson

Libraries in the Ancient World

by Lionel Casson

Yale University Press, 2001

177 pages

I like history, and I like libraries. This book has been on my radar since 2008, when it was reviewed at Bookwyrme's Lair. Just that brief little blurb rocketed this book onto my list, because: history, libraries. Yes.

It's not a very long book. The page count includes several pages of notes and an index. The writing is mostly quite readable if sometimes (infrequently) a little stilted in the way of academic writing. The descriptions are often evocative enough that with the accompanying (grainy, black and white) pictures, I can visualize what an ancient Roman or Greek library might have looked like. I can picture the people, the books, the spaces.

I like that Casson leaves some things to us to infer, as well, as when discussing theft and/or damage in the private libraries of Assyria. He just goes straight to the source text for us, with an ancient version of a book plate and theft policy:

Clay tablet of Ashurbanipal, King of the World, King of Assyria, who trusts in Ashur and Ninlil. Your lordship is without equal, Ashur, King of the Gods! Whoever removes [the tablet], writes his name in place of my name, may Ashur and Ninlil, angered and grim, cast him down, erase his name, his seed, in the land.

Or perhaps one prefers the caution against damaging a book (this one is my favourite, because it was clearly written by one hella pissed off librarian):

He who breaks this tablet or puts it in water or rubs it until you cannot recognize it [and] cannot make it be understood, may Ashur, Sin, Shamash, Adad and Ishtar, Bel, Nergal, Ishtar of Nineveh, Ishtar of Arbela, Ishtar of Bit Kidmurri, the gods of heaven and earth and the gods of Assyria, may all these curse him with a curse which cannot be relieved, terrible and merciless, as long as he lives, may they let his name, his seed, be carried off from the land, may they put his flesh in a dog's mouth!

You can bet that put the fear of the gods in some careless library patron. It's a good reminder that there really is nothing new under the sun.

Actually, that said, the public library as we might recognize it was really an invention of the Greeks, quite some time after Ashurbanipal was cursing the seed out of the rascals who stole and desecrated his private books. And though Casson works his way through the Assyrians and slightly before all the way through to the beginning of the Middle Ages, the bulk of his time is spent showing us Greek and Roman libraries, both private and public. This is, one realizes, because that's where a lot of the evidence is -- earlier and there's not a lot to go on, later and we're out of the Ancient period Casson is investigating.

Which leads me to two things: the first is that this is a great book that investigates one aspect of a culture I know less about than I wish I did. My study of Greek culture is... extremely limited to say the least, and my study of Roman culture is limited to a Grade 10 Latin class. I took a Classics course in first year uni, but there we mostly looked at mythology, not culture (to the extent that it can be separated, which is actually quite a bit.) Therefore, I think this book will be a good re-read once I've done a bit more investigating into those cultures. I'm particularly taken with the pre-Greek cultures. I got a lot out of this little book, but I think I would have gotten even more if I had a better depth of knowledge of the time periods and cultures covered.

The second is that the cultures covered are Western precursors, which is of course the tradition in which I stand here today. I would love to read something similar about Eastern precursors. Well, to be honest, I would probably do well to read something about contemporary Eastern libraries. I don't even know if there is such a thing, though I assume there must be something like what we have here. Anyone have any suggested readings for me?

Overall, I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in libraries, or anyone interested in the history of books or reading or literature in ancient Western cultures. Anyone who knows ancient Greek and/or Roman will find this an interesting addition and in-depth investigation into one aspect of those cultures, too. Extremely fascinating, generally well-written, and I'm very glad fishy was able to find it for me.

Japanese Gardening by Charles Chesshire, photos by Alex Ramsay

Japanese Gardening

by Charles Chesshire, photos by Alex Ramsay

Aquamarine, 2006

160 pages

It must be late January. Every year, like clockwork, the seed catalogues come and we have a few gorgeous, somewhat warm sunny days (which soon tilt back into frigidly appropriate dead-of-winter temperatures), and I start to feel the draw of the garden again. January is far too early to start planting even the earliest seeds indoors around here. I've got at least until mid-March before I dare to attempt that. So the next best thing is garden books, and I expect there will be a smattering of them from here on out until I'm actually out in the garden in the sun and soil.

I've always really liked the traditional Japanese garden ethic. I didn't know anything about it, really, except that there is something I appreciate instinctively about it. So this book, with its absolutely gorgeous cover and beginner attitude, appealed to me strongly when it came back across the desk.

Having not read any Japanese gardening books before, this appears to me to be a good entry into the aesthetic. It's very basic in some ways, although it's not at all a basic gardening book. There is an understanding that you, as a reader, have gardened before in a Western style, probably for a while, and are now turning your sights towards designing a Japanese-style garden. It's hard to say whether or not it fulfills its purpose, as I don't have the kind of space, time, or (most important) restraint to implement almost any of the ideas in this book. Generally, these are big gardens for big properties, and only a very few ideas for smaller gardens were briefly touched on. Which in a way is odd, because it's not like most Japanese gardeners have acres of space to play with.

As garden porn, it fulfills its purpose -- the photos are beautiful, and the layout of the book itself is very pretty. As garden erotica, perhaps not so much -- I was left wanting quite a lot more. I was lead to believe, for example, that there would be some discussion of contemporary Japanese gardening, and there were perhaps one or two glancing blows, mostly in captions of photographs. Along the same lines, there were sometimes photographs that were very incompletely explained; one caption discusses a photograph of a "bandaged" pine, which was probably very symbolic and/or functional, but there was nothing at all in the text to explain anything about it.

Done well, on the other hand, was a good chronology of design styles and a good explanation of design influences through history. It wasn't in-depth, but it was good enough that I now know I want to know more, and could at least name and explain a little bit about the four traditional Japanese garden styles and where they came from. Also, while Chesshire explains the design ethic, he touches often on the fact that to really understand the Japanese garden, one needs to understand the spiritual influences and not just the hard design. I think that's probably very important for Western gardeners to at least acknowledge as a major part of a Japanese garden, when attempting to design one of their own; Chesshire feels the same.

Also good were the glossary and plant lists. The bibliography was very small, which was a bit of a disappointment.

Overall, far too brief, I think, but nice to look at and a fine entry point for someone interested but not committed to the traditional Japanese garden. It was enough for me to recognize that while I appreciate the ideas, they really won't work for me. Not at this point in my gardening life, anyways. I don't have enough restraint. I love my flowers and my colours and my scents. The search for my own garden design ethic continues...

1001 Children's Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up, edited by Julia Eccleshare

1001 Children's Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up
ed. Julia Eccleshare
Universe, 2009
960 pages


How would one pare the world of children's literature, since its inception, down to only 1001 books every child should read? Certainly 1001 is a lot. This book is a doorstop, at its slightly-less-than-a-book-per-page format. But there is so much that is wonderful out there; how did the editor stop once she had reached her 1001 target? This is a very challenging, not to mention controversial, undertaking, to weed out and highlight the best and brightest in children's literature. I'm glad someone's done it because this book has been very useful to me and I see that continuing.

As the title suggests, this book provides reviews and synopses of 1001 recommended, quality children's books. It's arranged by age group, which is handy for those of us looking for recommended reading for kids of certain ages, and also for those of us looking for inspiration for kids' book clubs. Each age category (0+, 5+, 8+, and 12+) is arranged such that the earliest books are first, and the later books go right up to 2008. There are several different reviewers, and each review talks about the book in question as far as plot, why it's good, and where its place in the world is. Some of these reviews are better than others, but most do well within the word count they are given.

Two things in particular really struck me as really valuable about this book: first, it's very international; and second, there are a lot of older and relatively obscure books represented here. Both of these things are nice, because while I feel I have a pretty decent grounding in children's literature, I certainly don't know a lot of the international titles and there are a lot of obscure, older, but definitely foundational books represented here. I have been able to use it to remind myself of some of the "classics" both old and new that I'd like to look at with my book club groups.

There are a couple of things that bother me about this book, too. As is inevitable with lists of this sort, things get included and others get left out. I think it's a good exercise in itself to think about why certain things show up and others don't. For one example that cast the entire selection process into doubt for me: Twilight. Really? Everyone should read that? Really? I mean, I know the book is a phenomenon, and that it has changed the face of YA literature, but it's just not that good. Its "readable" quotient is high, if one isn't put off by the writing or the characters, but if "readable" was the criteria, I would have expected to see more Meg Cabot and Sarah Dessen and Maureen Johnson and Norah McClintock and John Green, just to name a few for that age group, none of whom were included. And there are a lot of series that get double-listing -- the Harry Potter books, say -- where probably listing the first one would have been enough, with a "this whole series is excellent/gets better/etc." statement, rather than taking up valuable space on the list.

The other quibble I have is a little more practical. None of the listings include a page count. This is exceedingly irritating, particularly in the "8+" section where both picture books and early chapter books are included, and where books for that wide range of reader ability are included, too. Actually, as nice as a page count would be, even a "this is a picture book" would probably have been enough. As it is, it's really not always clear from the review. When using this book as a tool for reader's advisory or book club book selection, that kind of information is extremely important. Further, instead of a page count, we get "themes" which can be useful, I suppose, but are subjective and often more useful to the person thinking them up than the person reading about them. Though I guess that if I were looking for a book on a specific theme, those tags might be handy as a starting point. I just tend to resist classifying things too tightly (she says, and then eyes her blog sidebar and sighs.) At any rate, you'll notice that from now on, I'm including page counts on my reviews. And publisher and author info. I'd be rather a hypocrite if I didn't start.

Overall, I think this book is worth a look if you have any interest at all in children's literature. It has some very interesting stuff in it, some of which I'm sure is exceedingly challenging to find (the older translations, for example? unless they're widely-accepted classics, good luck.) It's not a perfect list, but it's a good one.

Deconstructing Penguins by Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone

So, I have a new job. I may have mentioned this a couple of times before, I can't quite remember. But yes -- I have transferred from my old position (which I loved) to a new position in which I am responsible for all programming, except 3-5 year olds, at a different branch. I am starting to love this job, too, but I have occasionally felt a little overwhelmed.

One of the things I'm doing now, as mentioned previously, is leading book clubs. Not just an adult book club, but a child-parent book club. The adult book club I think I can probably handle (I have managed so far with only one major foot-in-mouth moment) but a child-parent book club? I feel completely unprepared for this task. The parents are going to expect me to know stuff. It has to be differently structured from an adult book club, if I want answers to questions more eloquent than "I liked Ralph! Can I have another cookie?"

Enter Deconstructing Penguins: Parents, Kids, and the Bond of Reading. This book was brought to my attention by a co-worker; she started these programs up and her research included this book. So the first thing I did when starting here was find a copy and read it, and wow, am I glad I did. Indeed, this is perfect for anyone thinking of starting or facilitating a child-parent book club, but it's better for more than that, and I'll tell you why.

At it's heart, Deconstructing Penguins is about talking books with kids, no matter if you are leading a book club, a teacher, a parent, or a librarian. It's critical literary analysis structured in a way that makes sense to both adults and kids, and in a way that gives discussions about books a form that is easily facilitated and easily understood by everyone involved. The structure is that of a mystery: each child (and parent) is a detective. The author has hidden clues in their book to point the reader to the story's meaning, and as a book detective, each participant is charged with figuring out what those clues say. Then the participants get to defend or critique the author's choices; in essence: is this a good book?

The Goldstones have come up with a way that makes literary analysis and critique completely accessible to kids. Along the way, reading and participating in discussions like those reported in the book, kids pick up critical thinking skills, too. And frankly, it's useful from an adult perspective too. The Goldstones make the point that often children's literature is more straightforward than literature written for adults, which is why their book detective method of analysis works so well. They never suggest that children's literature is simplistic, however, and they also do works written for adults (such as Animal Farm) with their groups as well.

The breakdown throughout this short book is simple: one chapter for studying character, one for setting, one for conflict and climax, one for point of view, one for critiquing, and a few others on either side. The stories they tell within each chapter are illustrative and interesting, and there are a couple of books that I'll look at differently now, and a few more that I'd like to read.

It's not all roses; there are a couple times when I wince a little at the way the authors lean slightly towards book snobbery at some points, and the one section where they completely devalue video games and television hurt their authority, in my mind. I didn't think it was a necessary attack as it only came up once and had nothing to do with the rest of the book. I think that television and video games have their place in the literacy pantheon, when watched/played wisely. Yes, reading is important, and reading good literature is important, but one gets the impression that if the Goldstones had their way, no one would even publish easy and fluffy reads for kids. I agree, reading only that is kind of like a white-bread diet, but at the same time, I wouldn't restrict my reading to only critically acclaimed literature and I'm not about to tell kids to do that either. A mixture of both is fine, beneficial even: if kids can think critically about what they're reading and say why they like something and what it is that makes The Black Stallion a better book than #800,000,000 in the Thoroughbred series, even if they enjoy both, then rock on.

I think their point was more that there is a tendency (I have this myself) to say "well, as long as they're reading something!" and not try to challenge children to read things that make them think. I agree that this is dangerous and, to take that further, insulting to the kids. Children are nearly always far more sophisticated thinkers than we give them credit for. What they need is a place and an opportunity to hone those skills. I would really like my book club to be one of those places.

This is an extremely approachable book, and I think it's going to be invaluable for me. So much so that I have ordered a copy to buy to have of my own. I think anyone who reads would benefit from reading this, but especially those who have anything to do with reading with children between the ages of six and thirteen. Absolutely recommended.

Grow Great Grub by Gayla Trail

I'm not done with the gardening books, not by a long shot. Gayla Trail (of yougrowgirl.com and the beginner gardening book You Grow Girl which I thought was good with minor caveats) has written a new book, entitled Grow Great Grub. It's about growing edibles organically, and no matter what your space constraints. I had it on hold at the library, got about halfway through it, and then decided to buy it. I've got my own little copy here beside me now. It's that fabulous, and I can see using it again and again, right up there with my favourite gardening book of all time, Patrick Lima's The Organic Home Garden.

First of all, this book is gorgeous. The pictures are lovely and the layout is both attractive and easy to follow. Just looking at the cover makes me want to get out into the garden. But it's not just the photographs, either -- the text gets my gardening fingers itching. This is something I appreciate in a gardening book: it doesn't overwhelm, confuse, or make me feel hopeless. It gets me excited about trying new things, or about trying again things I did last year that didn't work out the first time. (Actually, it's a very rare garden book that convinces me to give spectacularly failed experiments a second shot.)

It's organized in such a way that it's easy to find the information I need. One of the not-overwhelming parts is that Trail doesn't drown the gardener in information; there is enough, but for super-detailed info like specific planting depths or spacing, or long lists of varietals this might not be the best book. The thing is, I have discovered that, after three summers of attempting a vegetable garden with varied results, I don't need or want excessive detail. I can get the detail I need from the seed packet. The information I want is of the more general sort, anyways. I wish someone had been a little more clear, for example, on how damn difficult winter squash can be to grow instead of going on about specific varieties and finding disease resistant ones. Reading the section on squash, both winter and summer, made me realize that it's not actually as easy as my grandmother makes it look. Again, rather than frightening me off, Trail's little section on squash made me want to try again, this time forewarned and forearmed. I've got some small, easy tips to try out, including a suggestion not to worry about the male flowers all dying before any of the female flowers actually bloom. And how to give my squash a better chance against powdery mildew. I'm still not going to expect ten beautiful buttercup squash. I will be satisfied if I get any. And I might even try frying up some of those early male flowers at Trail's suggestion, if I can bring myself to steal them from the bees.

As with You Grow Girl, there are little projects stuck throughout the book, from making a teatowel storage bag for produce to making a self-watering container out of plastic bins to planting potatoes in a garbage can to recipes. I want to try nearly all of them. The entire last section of the book is about the harvest. There are ways to preserve the harvest, and yet again, it's not overwhelming, it's encouraging. Simple things like how to best freeze food, or how to can it. This is stuff that may be second nature to my grandmother, but aside from my yearly forays into new types of jelly, I'm pretty clueless.

But the best thing about this book, for my money, comes in the form of Trail's encouragement of and tips about growing food in containers. We have three little vegetable garden beds. This will be the first year that I'm not planning to dig another one, or enlarge any of them. The one that lends itself to enlargement is currently planted up with garlic, so I'm not even going to bother this year. So, if I want a larger variety of veggies than I can fit in my three little beds, I'm going to be growing in containers.

Trail makes this so easy. The second section of the book is called "The Plants" and as advertised, there is a page or two for each grouping of edibles (ie. root vegetables, leafy greens, beans, brassicas, etc.). And in each section, in a little box, is some information on growing plants from that group in a container. Each box includes general tips, suitability of the plant for container growing as high, medium, or low (but nothing is off-limits for container growing, as far as Trail is concerned), a suggested minimum depth for the container, suggested varieties best suited for containers, and any additional things a container farmer might need to know. This may seem a small thing, but it is excellent. I am feeling confident that I can try some of this in a much more organized and hopefully successful way than I managed last year.

There's a lot more to this book than I've managed to discuss. It is going to be useful throughout the seasons, including winter with the projects I can see trying. I highly, highly recommend it for anyone interested in food gardening, even and maybe especially if you don't think it's something you could ever do. It's budget-conscious, helpful, and enthusiastic; and the best part is, you really don't have to have a backyard. Even a sunny window can grow at least some tasty things and Grow Great Grub will help you do so. Now excuse me while I go stare at the seeds I have been trying to sprout.

You Grow Girl by Gayla Trail

My reading plan for the week (Popular Music from Vittula by Mikael Niemi) got hijacked by sunshine. By which I mean, there is sunshine out there and when I walk outside it smells like spring. This means that it is time for me to break out the gardening books, because I can't actually get into the garden yet, probably for another four to six weeks.

Waiting for Gayla Trail's hugely popular (at our library) Grow Great Grub, I have instead picked up her earlier book, named after her blog, You Grow Girl. It's like gardening's answer to the young-hip-knitter books like Chicks with Sticks and Stitch 'N Bitch. It's a very basic guide to gardening, which I need more of like I need a hole in the head, but this one had a few perceived advantages over others.

First, Trail's Canadian. She lives in Toronto, not too far from me. I prefer to read advice from gardeners who have had to put up with crappy, too-hot-or-too-cool unpredictable summers and long, snowy winters. However, I've noticed that despite the fact that Trail gardens basically a stone's-throw (well, if I was Superman) away from my backyard, there is next to no Canadian-specific advice. It's very general leaning towards Americanized, even mentioning things like "state borders" instead of "provincial borders" and it has an inset telling me how to get my soil tested, if I'm American -- but no Canadian info on that. This is particularly galling as I had mentioned to a patron at the library that she was Canadian, and the patron was excited to read something specifically Canadian. Ah well. She does have an entire section on making it through the winter, so that helps. Particularly at this time of year.

The other perceived advantage was Trail's somewhat laissez-faire attitude, and on this she has delivered. I do not mean lazy (this is the sort of gardener I am), I mean try-it-and-see. With a helpful dash of let-it-go-don't-worry-about-it. See, though I am a lazy gardener, I am also an anxious gardener. Or I was, when I started. I am much less now, because let me tell you, being lazy and yet anxious is an exhausting combination. It helps to have books that essentially remind me that plants want to grow, much like The Potted Plant (reviewed lo these many years ago). Sometimes bad gardening books can be like bad parenting books: they make you feel like an idiot if you aren't doing things The Right Way. Trail's writing, however, is neither patronizing nor admonishing, and that's a great thing in a beginner book.

In this book, too, I have also discovered several nifty little ideas that get the creative gardening juices flowing. There are a few little recipes, sewing patterns (I'm going to try to make my own reusable tea bags now, when I get around to it) and other crafty ideas and plans, all very straightforward. The illustrations are cute and hip. Despite not focusing so much on Canada, Trail does provide some reassurances for container gardeners, including those who grow plants on fire escapes and tiny balconies. She's got some great ideas for people who are gardening in very small spaces. I don't have to put up with this anymore, but I still appreciate it.

Finally: if you're a young, hip, male gardener, there is no reason to not use this book, despite its title and despite the introductory paragraphs which do target young women. Generally, after that, Trail doesn't bother with making any distinctions; she just basically mentions the continuing trend of women of my generation in our particular culture picking up things for pleasure that our grandmothers had to do. I'm always sensitive to anything excluding one gender or the other, and this book certainly starts off with the impression of doing so. Part of me wishes she hadn't bothered with that and just kept it to the rest of the completely gender-neutral book, but I guess in the field of beginner gardening books one has to find a way to distinguish oneself.

Overall, Trail's gardening tips are simple to follow (largely) and organic; and her writing style is very accessible, enthusiastic without being terrifying or overwhelming. It is written as a book for raw gardening beginners and as such it delivers admirably. Someone like myself, who considers herself an expert armchair gardener but a bumbling beginner outdoors, can also pick up a few things, but there's not a lot here that will be brand new.

The Organic Home Garden by Patrick Lima

I wanted to write about this book because, in my humble opinion, it is an outstanding gardening book. It remains the guide I go to year after year. It is the one book that I live in fear of my local library weeding from their collection without my knowledge, thus denying me access to it. It's published by Key Porter, and it is "out of stock indefinitely" according to their website. I have a local bookseller who may have ideas, and I need to talk to them before I panic.

For a reference book it's completely readable, and it's a pleasant read to boot. Lima never attempts to suggest that what works for him will work for anyone else. That said, it quickly becomes clear that he absolutely knows what he is talking about, and that following his suggestions is probably a very good idea.

To know why I love this book so much, it maybe makes sense for me to finally come to terms with something: my first, and greatest, gardening love is the vegetable garden. I like perennials, I'm growing appreciative of annuals, I'm always happy to see the bulbs that manage to escape the squirrels. But it is the vegetable garden that I love. It has something to do with the treasure hunt for peas and beans, digging up new potatoes, discovering the squash hidden under the great squash leaves, watching an eggplant go from a beautiful purple flower to a stunning purple fruit. There's something about knowing that I can grow brussels sprouts in my own garden that makes me want to learn to like them.

One of the things I love about Lima's writing, no matter what he's writing about, is that I believe his first gardening love is the vegetable garden, too.

Throughout the book's helpful tips and tricks and guidelines for growing organically and growing well, are stories about past gardens. We hear the story of how Lima and his partner John Scanlon ended up at Larkwhistle, and I am amazed at how brave they were, and how they managed to make it work. We get little tidbits of information on how various vegetables were used and viewed in the past. We hear about their very first garden, on a little rented lot in Toronto. I love especially this bit:

But optimistically we dug and planted. Results were mixed. Tomatoes spread into a wild tangle, half their fruit lost under leaves; zucchinis swelled overnight, apparently blown up by some unseen squash fairy. Marigolds bloomed among the vegetables and morning glories crawled over everything. Unwittingly we spread fungus on the Swiss chard by watering every evening. Not knowing better, we transplanted small pea vines from the shade to the sunnier front yard; the peas, not knowing that they "resent transplanting," attached themselves to strings and began to climb. Cucumbers soon joined them to veil the front porch in green vines hung with fruit.

Can't you picture it? What a fabulous garden that must have been, and how exciting. I like the part about the peas especially, because it reminds me that plants want to grow. They want to grow in spite of their hapless gardeners. I love a forgiving hobby.

This book is fantastic because the information is good, the writing is great, and the whole thing makes organic vegetable gardening seem quite accessible. Not always a walk in the park, but accessible. I also am drawn in by the sheer awe in which Lima clearly holds all living things. It's a "how to" of the best sort, with beautiful photographs, information about soils, troubleshooting, and various groups of vegetables that can be grown reliably in Canada. If you like gardening, or just the idea of gardening, try to get your hands on a copy of this book. And if you do, please tell me where you got it because I want one too.