Linda Shapiro. Yesterday’s Toronto 1870-1910 (1978)

     Linda Shapiro. Yesterday’s Toronto 1870-1910 (1978) A collection of photos with reasonably well-researched captions. Nostalgia trip, really, with selections intended to bring back warm feelings about the Good Old Days, which of course weren’t. But the pictures are useful, and the information for the most part is too. Here and there a few reminders of reality help us understand what rare treats the times at the beach or at the Ex really were: wages were low, cost of living was high. We are much better off now, in all respects. One of my continual annoyances are references to long ago prices without reminders of wages. When a dollar a day was a decent wage for a shop girl, a nickel for tram fare was a lot of money. ** (2010)

Elizabeth D’Oyley. English Diaries (1930)

     Elizabeth D’Oyley. English Diaries (1930) A school book, apparently aimed at senior high school. The flyleaf is inscribed “J A Bennett VB”, which I think would be grade 11 here. The selection starts with Charles Wriothesley (pron. rizely or rizzly) through Pepys, Boswell, Sir Walter Scott, etc. Most of the diarists are remarkably circumspect about their own reactions to the events they describe, the main exception being Pepys and Fanny Burney. In part this is no doubt the effect of  D’Oyley’s care in selecting suitable passages. An interesting read, since it provides eye-witness accounts of historical events, and implies differences in the goals of education between the 1930s and now. **½ (2010)

Ed Gorman & Martin Greenberg. Solved (1991)

     Ed Gorman & Martin Greenberg. Solved (1991) What do you get when you ask crime fiction writers to  write stories that “solve” unsolved crimes of the past? You get a pile of pulp fiction. The stories here offer all the familiar formulas: conspiracies, mob-corrupted politicians, psycho-pathologies, megalomaniacs, and so on. Plus more or less vivid gore. Entertaining reads, but not especially memorable, in fact, I’m having a hard time recalling the stories.
The Jack the Ripper tale works best, I think: a vicar’s wife tells how she comes to suspect her pompously pious and uncharitable husband is the Ripper, and how she expects to burn in Hell for having poisoned him with arsenic. Told obliquely in the first person, it works because the character is plausibly devout. **

Sam Berns, progeria patient (link)

Progeria is a genetic disorder that results in premature aging. I've seen a number of documentaries about it. Here's Sam Berns talking about his philosophy of life. He died on January 10th of this year, a little less than one month after giving this talk.

Sandra Ley. Beyond Time (1976)

     Sandra Ley. Beyond Time (1976) The stories deal with time, time slippage, what-ifs, etc. The most common trope is the multi-world interpretation of quantum mechanics, but a couple of stories take the observer effect to mean a conscious observer, the author apparently not realising that in any interaction between particles each is the observer of the other. That’s what Heisenberg’s Uncertainty is really about.
     Anyhow, the most common tone is elegiac and meditative. Contemplation of what-if will prompt regrets for the actual. Any slippage into an alternate reality will prompt nostalgia for what was lost. Questions of value and purpose appear without prompting: if every choice triggers a new set of realities, then none has more purpose or meaning than any other.
     But despite these philosophical implications, the stories tend to the pedestrian and pompous. The most entertaining simply work out the more or less ironical consequences of a single glitch, with Jefferson (for example) a prime mover in the struggle for the independence of England from America, after George III’s son Frederick establishes himself in the colonies and moves the centre of power from London to Washington. I didn’t read all the tales. * to **½ (2010)

Reay Tannahill. Sex in History (1980)

     Reay Tannahill. Sex in History (1980) A nicely done survey of sexual customs and practices from as far back as they can be inferred from archaeological data up to the 1970s. Tannahill notes that through most of recorded history women were oppressed and sex was controlled. Even in the most libertine eras, there were strict limits on what was permissible, and usually a barrier between public and private behaviours.
     The great change from pagan (Roman) practices and early Christian ones came about because of St. Augustine and St. Jerome’s hang-ups. Both men were terrified of women and sex. This prompted them to misread Paul’s comments, easy enough to do, since Paul himself was somewhat ambivalent about the place and value of sex. He accepted the Jewish tradition of sex as a sacred duty and joy within marriage, but also approved of celibacy (an un-Jewish concept), mostly, it seems, because of the disgust aroused by the libertine Romans. Christians were to live a pure life, which meant one as unlike the Romans as possible.
     Sex inevitably includes marriage and family, and that’s the nexus of social and legal control. Marriage has always been seen as a duty and a means of controlling property. Ironically, the Christian emphasis on limiting sex to marriage in the long run strengthened the family as a personal relationship, so that we’ve now arrived at the stage where people see no connection between duty and marriage. Women are somewhat less oppressed now than they were 30 years ago. Young women take it for granted that they can do what they want, and “domestic violence” is not only no longer accepted, there is a determined effort to at least minimise it. That is of course in the West. In most of the world, females are still considered the less important sex. *** (2010)

Sue Grafton. K is for Killer (1994)

     Sue Grafton. K is for Killer (1994) It’s hard to believe that Grafton’s books are set in the early 90s. The only clue is the absence of computers, which have changed ways of doing things faster than any prior technology. They are the most disruptive technology ever invented. (I just read a gloomy comment on Arizona’s anti-immigration law, sponsored and supported by white Republican males with close connections to the Tea Party, which itself could not grow so fast so quickly without the internet.)
     Anyhow, Kinsey Millhone investigates a ten-month old murder, which was motivated by money, graft, and political corruption. The story is nicely twisty, with a couple of plausible suspects cleared one fact at a time. A crime boss, who had intended to marry the victim on the day she was murdered, wants Kinsey to pass on the identity of the murderer, which she does, because although she knows who he is, she doesn’t have the evidence to convict him. Kinsey realises that her desire for vengeance overcomes her respect for the law and due process. In a way this was foreshadowed by the story’s setting, almost exclusively at night.
     Grafton as usual delivers the goods; A well plotted tale, interesting characters, and sufficient atmosphere to produce plausibility. ***
(2010)