Overwhelming book deliveries

The Amazon logo smiling at me repeatedly. Something about unwrapping books makes my heartbeat quicken. I just don’t even know where to begin.

I finished Blue Blood – the book by Edward Conlon, NYC detective and Harvard graduate. Dude can write. Thought the book was about 3 chapters too long. At the end, we have his experience at the landfill on Staten Island, post 9/11 – which was one of the more horrifying and disgusting things I have ever read – but riveting – so glad I read it – it’s just that there were maybe 3 extraneous chapters floating around BEFORE that. But still. LOVE his writing and I will definitely keep an eye out for more of his work.

I also finally finished Imperial Grunts: On the Ground with the American Military, from Mongolia to the Philippines to Iraq and Beyond by Robert Kaplan – a book I had started about a year ago, put down – and now finished, in a frenzy, staying up late to polish it off. He’s great. I look forward to the other books in the series he’s planning and working on now.

But now books are arriving – either as gifts (thank you!!) or from stuff I bought in a fit of celebration last week – having come out of a brief rough spot – thankfully brief …. but harsh nonetheless. I needed books to get me through. Or – not even the books themselves – just the prospects of the books. And Rocky, of course. Rocky helped get me through. But that’s a given at this point. I had forgotten, though, that I had had a book-buying binge, even though it was only a couple weeks ago. A lot of times I don’t remember much of what goes on during the “rough spots” and this was no exception. Even 2 days later, the awfulness started to fade and mist into memory.

But now they are arriving.

Fun!!!

First of all – Tennessee Williams’ Notebooks. It’s gotta be 1000 pages long – brand-new published – and … I flipped through it last night, astonished first of all at how gorgeous the book itself is – but also how beautifully it is put together. On the right hand side of the page – we have the entries in Williams’ notebooks – and on the left hadn side – we have corresponding notes. So that means you don’t have to flip back and forth endlessly for the footnotes. It’s amazing – we see his postcards, his photos … I haven’t even started reading it yet, and just looking at it is giving me a heart attack.

I got 3 more Library of America books … I already have many (American Poetry : The Twentieth Century, Volume 1 : Henry Adams to Dorothy Parker, Cather Novels & Stories 1905-1918: The Troll Garden, O Pioneers! The Song of the Lark, and My Antonia, Eudora Welty : Stories, Essays & Memoir (Library of America, 102), William Faulkner : Novels 1942-1954 : Go Down, Moses / Intruder in the Dust / Requiem for a Nun / A Fable (Library of America) – those are all from my dad) – and I also have Thomas Jefferson : Writings : Autobiography / Notes on the State of Virginia / Public and Private Papers / Addresses / Letters (Library of America).

But over the last 3 days more have arrived: Alexander Hamilton: Writings (Library of America) – (there will, naturally, be some redundancy with the rest of my Hamilton collection, but that’s okay) – the Lincoln : Speeches and Writings : 1859-1865 (Library of America) – and also The Debate on the Constitution : Federalist and Antifederalist Speeches, Articles, and Letters During the Struggle over Ratification : Part One, September 1787-February 1788 (Library of America).

I feel actually a little nauseous thinking about how much I already love these books.

I have also been slowly but surely collecting each book in the American Presidents Series, edited by the late Arthur Schlesinger – and they’re quite wonderful – written by all different people – I’ve very much enjoyed the ones I’ve already read. They’re cheap, and usually about 150 pages long, maybe less – a quick read – and it focuses purely on the presidency of the individual. You get maybe 2 chapters of lead-in – but the rest is all about what went on during the presidency. So far I’ve read the one on James Madison and Thomas Jefferson: The American Presidents Series: The 3rd President, 1801-1809 – and over the past week I received 3 more to add to my collection: George Washington (The American Presidents Series) and John Adams (The American Presidents Series, No. 2) and John Quincy Adams (The American Presidents Series).

I also received the book Final Cut: Art, Money, and Ego in the Making of Heaven’s Gate, the Film that Sank United Artists which I have always wanted to read. It’s interesting to read books like The Making of Casablanca: Bogart, Bergman, and World War II – to hear how things become hits – but sometimes it’s more interesting to learn from the debacles. Like The Devil’s Candy: The Anatomy Of A Hollywood Fiasco.

Oh, and also I got the Baseball: A Literary Anthology in the Library of America – and I am almost more excited about that one than all the others. Classic American baseball writing since the beginning of the sport? Please count me in. Now.

I received a MASSIVE biography of Alexis de Toqueville – from an absent friend across the Atlantic (I miss you!!) – like seriously – it is HUGE – and gorgeous, beautiful typeface, very readable – and it’s a guy I know almost nothing about, although I have read his book about America. So I’m very excited to read that, too. In 2023, which is when I will get to it.

Let’s see. What else.

Oh yeah – Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance– and also the novel Perfume: The Story of a Murderer – which I’ve been dying to read, but just keep forgetting about. So now it has arrived.

I know there’s more.

Some people go shoe-shopping when they get the blues. (Although what I had could not be called the blues. It was more like a crisis.) Shoes don’t do it for me, although I love them as well. Books bring on the adrenaline, the pheromones, the energy, the pulse quickening. They bring life. Life to the spirit, yet again.