Merry Hall by Beverley Nichols

A few weeks ago, Nancy Pearl, a librarian famous for her ability to recommend the right book for the right person and also for being the model for the librarian action figure with real shushing action, tweeted that gardening/readers who like P.G. Wodehouse's books and E.F. Benson's Mapp and Lucia series might enjoy Beverley Nichols gardening trilogy starting with Merry Hall. In any case, I retweeted her tweet admitting that I fit that trifecta of reader interests. What this all leads to is that BHPL staff member, Mme. P.,  who follows our Twittering, offered to loan me Merry Hall, because the library does not own this 1951 memoir of British journalist Beverley Nichols.
Mr. Nichols' book tells the story of restoring the gardens of an old country house outside London just after World War II. His passion for gardens, bordering on obsession, crossing the border actually, is told with dry wit and some withering accounts of local ladies with whom he has gardening disputes. The book combines British wit with the memoir genre, gardening trivia, eccentric characters and rambling country house dreams.

A sample: "I wanted a house. And I wanted a Georgian house. And I wanted a garden of at least five acres. A garden which, for preference, should be wrecked and lost and despairing...I was in a rescuing mood..." (p. 20)
The author finds a house and it's the spectacular lilies that seal the deal. He must have those lilies. His friend tells him it's "lunacy" to buy the house, but his manservant Gaskin rises to the challenge of taking care of the mansion single-handedly. The gardener Oldfield conveys with the house along with his stubborn methods and gardening opinions and oddly inpenetrable accent, as is the stereotype for gardeners in English books. The neighbors are nosy and opinionated, especially Miss Emily and "Our Miss Rose" whose rivalry regarding decorating the church results in a comical confrontation during the Harvest Festival about whose flowers should adorn the altar.
These scenes of English village life recall Bertie Wooster's visits to his aunts' houses in the country, or Lord Blandings dithering about the pigsty whilst admiring the porcine Empress of Blandings.  I'm pretty sure the church decorating rivalry popped up in the Mapp and Lucia books, or if not, it's a familiar theme. So, Nancy Pearl was right: this is a good book for fans of those authors or for gardeners. Although nothing touches the Master, P.G. Wodehouse, in my pantheon of authors, for he truly loves his characters and never condescends. Nichols' humor is arch and a bit mean at times, so be forwarned. Since "snarky" is in style now, perhaps he is due for a revival.

Related links:
Read Mapp and Lucia online here http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks05/0501131h.html
The Wodehouse Society website for fellow Plum fans http://www.wodehouse.org/
A list of gardening memoirs from GoodReads http://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/gardening-memoirs

Summer Fiction

Some of the books on the Beach Read display this month. (Can you use dust jackets for wallpaper?)

Tomato Girl by Jayne Pupek
Eleven-year-old Ellie's mother has bipolar disorder and her father falls under the thrall of the tomato girl who sells her produce to their store.

Every Secret Thing by Laura Lippman
On a July afternoon two little girls, banished from a birthday party, take a wrong turn onto an unfamiliar street - and encounter an abandoned stroller with a baby inside it. Dutiful Alice Manning and unpredictable Ronnie Fuller only want to be helpful, to be good. People like children who are good, Alice thinks. But whatever the girls' real intentions, things go horribly awry.

The Love Season by Elin Hilderbrand
When Renata, newly engaged to a wealthy Nantucket summer boy, comes to the island to visit her fiance's family, she visits Marguerite, the godmother she's been forbidden to see her entire life and the one person who can unlock the mystery surrounding her mother's untimely death.

Under the Boardwalk by Carly Phillips
A Jersey girl's twin sister goes missing and she decides to investigate the Atlantic City casino where her sister was working.

Sleeping Arrangements by Madeline Wickham
A friend with a villa in Spain double books two families by accident, and only Chloe and Hugh know of their previous romantic entanglement.

Men and Dogs by Katie Crouch
When Hannah was 11, her father went on a fishing trip in the Charleston harbor and never came back. After a disastrous attempt to win back her husband, she ends up back at her mother's home to "rest up", where she is once again sucked into the mystery of her missing father. Suspecting that those closest are keeping secrets, Hannah sets out on an uproarious, dangerous quest that will test the whole family's concepts of loyalty and faith.

The Marriage Bureau for Rich People by Farahad Zama
Alexander McCall Smith meets Jane Austen in this Indian novel about finding love. A retired man in a coastal city in India opens a marriage bureau. With a steady stream of clients to keep him busy, Mr. Ali sees his new business flourish as the indomitable Mrs. Ali and his careful assistant, Aruna, look on with vigilant eyes.

Miss Julia Hits the Road by Ann Ross
Miss Julia's invaluable housekeeper, Lillian, and all her neighbors have been evicted from their homes by their greedy landlord, who has bigger plans for the property. So off Miss Julia rides (in the sidecar, naturally)- risking life and limb on a a motorcycle fund-raiser to save Lillian and her friends' home.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is a book that somewhat resembles the "vegetannual" plant that novelist Barbara Kingsolver imagined to help you remember what's in season.

At its roots it's the narrative of the year in which she and her family ate nothing but local food, mostly grown or raised themselves. But it's also an indictment of industrial agriculture (via sidebars written by Steven Hopp) and a reasoned look at what is actually good for the environment (like eating heirloom turkeys - the kind that can actually walk & are smart enough to know how to reproduce on their own - raised locally, vs. eating tofu made from soybeans shipped thousands of miles). Also scattered through the book are essays by Kingsolver's daughter Camille reflecting on the experiences of growing up locavore, and her seasonal meal plans, with the recipes linked to the Animal, Vegetable, Miracle web site.

Here are my thoughts on the book:

-It's not preachy, but may induce eye-rolling. The sheer amount of work that the Kingsolvers do in order to eat locally, all the while extolling its virtues, will turn off the average harried supermarket shopper. (Imagine them saying: "I just spend an hour and $100 - I even bought Cheerios and organic apples - so I could feed my family all week, and you're telling me that isn't healthy enough & bad for the environment?!") The book does assure you that it isn't necessary to do this work yourself; just go to the farmer's market, and start asking the restaurants you go to if they buy locally.

-On the other hand, if you bake your own bread and make your own cheese, then simple dinners like bread, cheese & a salad from the garden would taste great and take no time at all to put on the table. Even if you are downright suspicious about people who want to "save the earth," eating locally tastes really good. And meal planning is much simpler if you buy what's in season and then use seasonal recipes, rather than picking a random recipe at home first, then stressing out when even the grocery store doesn't have cabbage or green onions that week.

-If you are interested in being environmentally friendly, but could never give up meat, you'll be happy to read why eating grass-fed, free-range meat is good for the environment & even necessary in some of the world's harsh climates.

Shakespeare in the Parking Lot

The Next Stage Ensemble, the summer touring program of the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, will perform an hour-long version of the Shakespeare comedy As You Like It in the parking lot behind the Berkeley Heights Public Library tomorrow, Friday, July 23 at 7 p.m. Abigail Isaac, an alumna of The Shakespeare Theatre’s professional training program, directs this comedy, which is recommended for ages 8 and up. Please bring your own chair. In case of rain, call (908) 464-9333 for alternate location.

In As You Like It, Rosalind is banished by her cruel uncle. She disguises herself as a boy and flee to the Forest of Arden. In this fairy-tale setting, surrounded by courtiers and fools, shepherds and outlaws, the plucky Rosalind becomes a catalyst for change, bringing about laughter, love, and reconciliation.

The Next Stage Ensemble performing in 2005

As You Like It is the play in which these famous lines appear:

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.

Immediately followed by the lesser-known but equally choice verses which my infantile sense of humor finds hilarious:

At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school.

Rosalind is one of Shakespeare's strongest female characters. You can read more about her at Shmoop.com.

The Checklist Manifesto: how to get things right

What do modern aircraft and most surgeries have in common? According to best selling author, Atul Gawande, in his short, fascinating book, The Checklist Manifesto: how to get things right (Metropolitan Press 2009), they are both systems which are designed to make our lives better, but are fraught with complexities which even a super-specialist cannot completely understand. What Gawande asserts is that the modern age has given us tremendous knowledge, but that knowledge doesn’t necessarily translate into bettering our lives: airliners do crash; surgeries do go awry; investments fail. What is the solution? The lowly checklist: the simplification of a complex situation into its most basic and necessary components.

Drawing graphic cases from surgical practices and from the annals of aviation (e.g., the test flights of the B-17) at the beginning of the book, Gawande shows how the vast volume of knowledge an individual acquires through long periods of training and specialized education often does not translate into higher success rates. The world has become too overwhelmingly complex for an individual to achieve consistent success. In contrast, Gawande also illustrates how simple checklists can lead to desired outcomes in emergency situations, such as in “the Miracle on the Hudson”.

Underlying Gawande’s theory, that carefully constructed checklists may be the key to higher success rates, is the idea of collaboration -- no longer can one person master everything in even the smallest specialty because of the torrent of new knowledge; teams of people must work together for the success of an enterprise, especially in emergency situations. They must communicate, question, take individual and collective responsibility. And the checklist is the basis for all these activities to take place.

But all checklists are not created equal. Gawande spends a few chapters examining what makes good checklists, and how they are created, and what hinders a checklist’s efficiency. He also spends some time discussing the limitations of checklists, and how their adoption requires a shift in cultural norms.

Given the examples Gawande provides, it hard not to be persuaded that checklists can be the solution to many of life’s vicissitudes. When all is said and done, Gawande would agree with Henry David Thoreau’s advice to “simplify, simplify, simplify.”

Post written by Ted Li

Note from Anne: what happens when you leave a book lying around the house and start another one and another one? People pick up "your" book and read it, but if you're lucky you can guilt trip them into writing a review for the library blog. Thanks, Ted. Now I really will finish The Checklist Manifesto, as soon as I finish Merry Hall and The Mapping of Love and Death.