A bookish day

 

At 103, it’s a day to stay inside with a book. I talked with a friend in Omaha today, and it’s even 103 up there. Told her she might as well be in Texas. Seems like there’s no escape, though a friend in the Pacific Northwest reports cool temperatures.

This morning I read an article about gender reading. It seems women read books written by both men and women, but men rarely read books by women. Some enterprising group compiled a list of ten books by women that men should read. No surprise that Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale led the list. I confess that I recognized only five of the ten and have read only two. Those two are The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, which I thought should have ended a hundred pages before it did, and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, which remains high on my list of all-time favorite, right along with Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner. The three I haven’t read are Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley (elsewhere this morning I read a good summary of Frankenstein in a Maureen Dowd column titled “Our American Monster”), The Color Purple by Alice Walker, and Atwood’s novel that is so much talked of these days. Confessing to the lapses in my literary background reminds me of a graduate school instructor I had years ago who claimed no one could consider themselves educated if they haven’t read Dante’s Inferno. The fact that I hadn’t read it sparked this pronouncement, but I still haven’t read it. I seem to have done all right even with that gap in my education.

And if you want to curl up in cool air-conditioning and read a book, there’s now the perfect outfit for you (oops! I’m making a gender assumption)—perfect, that is, if you’re a girl. The nap dress is the latest fashion rage for women and girls—loose and flowing enough for lounging or sleeping but structured enough to go to the grocery or the bank. The bodice is often shirred and elasticized, eliminating the need for constricting underwear. Those tops remind me of the hand-smocking that decorated some of my clothes when I was a child—wish I had just one today as a keepsake.

Tonight, friends from church came for happy hour. I wanted to talk to Steve Mosher because he has just been named to the Board of Judges for the Texas Literary Hall of Fame which was developed by the Friends of the Fort Worth Library and is now under the umbrella of the TCU’s Mary Couts Burnett Library. I’ve known Steve casually for years through our mutual church but it turns out I didn’t know him well. He’s a knowledgeable and well-read aficionado of Texas literature—and a guy with a wide-reaching network of friends in the Texas literary world. Plus someone who laughs easily and often. Good company.

We talked books and authors and award and theories, and oh my, it was a delightful evening. I sometimes get to talk books with people, but I don’t often get to talk about Texas literature and its outstanding names. Tonight was a real treat. Steve says the book that started him, an Iowa boy, on the road to Texas reading was John Graves’ Goodbye to a River. Who can quarrel with that? We talked of Elmer Kelton and Katharine Anne Porter and the history of the Hall of Fame, and we each madly name-dropped about who were our friends. Steve’s wife, Nancy, is a devotee of the cozy mystery and her conversation introduced me to several names I haven’t read and need to explore.

We all talked longer than we meant to—from 5:30 until almost eight o’clock—but to top off the evening, Jordan called as soon as my guests left and said, “Cook the asparagus. We’ll cook the chicken.” Christian had made pesto chicken, and I quick stir-fried some asparagus. I keep reading a lot about the need to peel asparagus—darned if I can figure out how to do that.

All in all, a good day. Hope yours was too