Here is the loot I brought home from my brother's house. He must love me: he let me borrow anything from his vast Teaching Company library.

David and I share a thirst for learning. Several years back, I bought a suitcase in Pennsylvania and filled it with bulky Teaching Company courses—mostly Medieval studies and music history—on cassette. Did you know that you can replace the cassettes with CDs for $10?

Luther, Literature and Lee. How is that for good stuff?

Color me happy.

Label me loved.

Thank you, David.

Dear Mom,

We love you. We miss you. We remember you.

Even though we are separated by that grand canyon between mortality and immortality, our love for you continues. You left an enduring imprint on us. We all have ways that embody Nellie Harper. Your kindness is part of each of our DNA. It would be fun to tell you about the kindness of your children, exhibited just this year. That quiet kindness abides in each of your grandchildren, too. It isn't always evident between siblings (wry grin), but they are kind people.

We all have wishes.

We wish we could honor you, our mom, face to face. As the years accumulate, we see with greater clarity what we owe you. What was a given—your smile, your excellence, your steadfastness, your encouragement—when we were kids, we now know was such an immense gift. You shaped us into who we are. We all would love to 'praise you in the gates'. To have you hear our gratitude, feel our hugs.

We wish our kids knew you...beyond the stories we tell. Ditto, for the husbands and wives who never met you. They get the trace elements of you through us, but we'd love them to know the real you.

And Mom? We all wish we were more like you. Sometimes that is the grief we silently share, more than missing you. Your wisdom: your sweet, practical wisdom. Your generosity. Your faith. You made such an impact on more than one community. You were extraordinary in such an ordinary way. 

We're getting together for Anne's wedding soon. A large, unruly, talkative, loud crowd of relatives. It will be a great time.

It always comes round to thanksgiving. The hollow years without you can't compare to the full years of having you. You filled us up; you fed us; you nurtured us; you made each of us know how special we were to you. The tears have slowed to a tiny trickle. We all get throat-lumpy in May. But it is thanksgiving that we feel in the end. Another of your legacies is the lack of bitterness in your children.

Mom. We love you. We miss you. We remember you.

Carol, for all of us

In my dream house, I would have a library: walls of floor-to-ceiling, glass-fronted bookcases. In reality I have six open bookcases and a woodstove, a dust procreator. Periodically I remove all the books, vacuum the top edges of them, wipe them, and cull out the books I don't need to keep. It is my favorite cleaning project: old friends are fondly acknowledged, unread books are opened and sighed over. There are discoveries and dialogs. Yes, I talk to myself.

Here then, are my thoughts while cleaning and shelving books.

• What discoveries! Many books have Post-it flags dotted across the top; I found (and removed) other forms of bookmarks. One square of toilet tissue. A white plastic flosser. A register receipt. Bear that in mind if you want to borrow my books.

• I moved Charles and Mary Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare from the Shakespeare shelf down to the kids' books on the bottom. All things Greece gave up the glorious Black Ships Before Troy: The Story of The Iliad and The Wanderings of Odysseus to the same location.  Which prompts me to say how much I love the illustrations of Alan Lee.

• There is the problem of the Norton Anthologies. What if? I whisper.  What if? I repeat.  What if I started working through these, reading sections in between other books? I pick one up and flip to the last page. Page 2579. Well, that's a happy thought, I conclude.

• I love the idea, and occasionally the practice, of deep reading. Reading through all the works of a great author. Ignatius Press has issued The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton. How I would love to own all 36 volumes! Seven are still to be published. But I have Volume 1 on my shelf; I remember the splurge of purchasing it at Twice Read Books in Chambersburg, PA. Even though I haven't read all of Volume 1, I like to imagine having read all 29 published volumes.

• The internet has made so many reference books redundant. Take The New York Public Library Desk Reference. I imagine that every tasty bit of information (TBOI, for short) could be found online. But oh, what a glorious source of whimsical reading. And how many hours have I enjoyed between the covers of TNYPLDR. Browsing isn't the same online. Alas, it is on the "out" pile.

• I couldn't just dust the art books without some lookie-loos. Winslow Homer, I love you. 

• I've been called a Grammar Nazi a few times lately, a label I protest. This shelf, however, tells a different story.

 What tales do your bookshelves tell?

I remember the moment. The cover beckoned, winked, seduced me. I was browsing the shelves at Sunflower Books, a charming local book shop. And, full price or not, I had to have it. Unwittingly I had purchased a book by Madhur Jaffrey, the celebrated author of Indian cookbooks. Once obtained, I held it in reserve, a hoarded treasure which continued winking from the shelf. I almost enjoyed the five years of anticipating the read as much as the cozy evenings with my nose in this book. Memoir, ethnic, family, foodie—it has all best ingredients for a delightful read. 

The child of a happy marriage, she begins by explaining her name:

My father, ... , firmly named me "Madhur," which means "Sweet as Honey," an adjective from the Sanskrit noun madhu, or "honey." My grandfather, apparently, teased my father, saying that he should have named me "Mahbhari," or "I am sated," instead, as I was already the fifth child. But my father continued to procreate, and I was left with honey on my palate and in my deepest soul.

Jaffrey's is the life of privilege with a curious blend of cultures. She describes her family as Hindu by origin but heavily veneered with Muslim culture and English education. Two motifs spiral through the book: her father's quest for the best education for each child and her mother's preparation of the most delicious food for every occasion. 

All of us sisters liked to read. we could be caught all over the house in the weirdest positions: legs flung over the back of a wicker chair, books on chest; lying flat on the takht (divan) on our stomachs, book on floor; head down on the desk, book an inch from eyes.

Mrs. McKelvie was my history teacher. She didn't just teach me Indian history and British history, which were part of the set curriculum; I also learned from her that any subject could be fascinating if I delved into it deeply enough. She showed me how history, for example, could be researched from a hundred angles, some obscure and seemingly unrelated; that the study of maps and drawing of maps led to ever-greater clarity; that understanding the character of emperors and generals was sometimes as important as memorizing the dates of their battles.

During her school days (before India was divided) Madhur and her girlfriends shared their lunches: some Hindi, some Muslim, some Punjabi, one Jain.

It was not so much the ingredients—the ingredients we used at home were not all that different, though we did use less chili powder—as the hand that put these ingredients together, and the order and timing it chose to use. That hand had a different rhythm, a different energy from my mother's, and from our own Hindi cooks from Himalayan villages. It produced a Muslim result.

Her family participated in a prayer gathering with Gandhi days before he was assassinated. Anyone interested in 20th century India would benefit from reading this book. A bonus for those interested in Indian cuisine is the fifty pages of family recipes included in the back.

Whenever I've mentioned Jerome K. Jerome's 1889 classic, Three men in a boat (to say nothing of the dog), a small chorus of readers entreated urged me to read Connie Willis' science fiction book To Say Nothing of the Dog.

This chorus included readers I trust, those with whom I share a kinship in books. But, really. Look at the cover. I ask you: would you feel compelled to read this book? And when was the last time I read science fiction? I just don't have the stamina or brain power to keep all the galaxies and unfamiliar creatures straight.

But I have a personal reading philosophy: deep and wide. I choose to read a few books that require patience and effort. Similarly, I like to widen the scope of my reading so I'm not stuck in one genre, one century, or one culture.

So.

I read the book.

And, dear chorus of friends, dear ones...I LOVED IT.

How can an author born in 1945 write so timelessly? With such humor and grace?

And how does one describe this book? The story is set in Oxford in 2057. Historians use a time travel machine to research historical periods. They are not allowed to change history. Ned, a specialist in 20th century history, is transported to 19th century Victorian England. So the book is much more Victorian, more literary than sci-fi. As he mingles and converses with Victorian-era people, Ned runs his thoughts through a mental screen to see if they would make sense. Before he can reference a poem, a piece of music, or an historical fact, he must make sure it is truly historical to 1888.

My delight gurgled when Ned is boating down the Thames with Terence, an Oxford student he met, and he sees three men in a boat, and breaks the cardinal rule of time-travel behavior.

"It is them! I said. "Terence, do you know who that is? It's Three Men in a Boat, To Say Nothing of the Dog."

"Dog?" Terence said contemptuously. "You call that a dog?" He looked fondly at Cyril, who was snoring in the bottom of the boat. "Cyril could swallow him in one bite."

"You don't understand," I said. "It's the Three Men in a Boat. The tin of pineapple and George's banjo and the maze."

"The maze?" Terence said blankly.

"Yes, you know, Harris went in the Hampton Court Maze with this map and all these people followed him and the map didn't work and they got hopelessly lost and they had to call out for the keeper to come and get them out."

I leaned out for a better look. There they were, Jerome K. Jerome and the two friends he had immortalized (to say nothing of the dog) on that historic trip up the Thames. They had no idea they were going to be famous a hundred and fifty years from now, that their adventures with the cheese and the steam launch and the swans would be read by countless generations.

Each chapter has a dozen or so sub-headers listed at the beginning, the kind of delightful detail one seldom sees in modern books. Here's an example from Chapter Seven:

Importance of Locks in the Victorian Era—"Loose lips sink
ships"—Tristan and Isolde—Pursuit—The French Revolution—An
Argument Against Tipping—A Traumatized Cat—Soot—The Bataan
Death March—Sleep—The Boat Is Found at Last—An Unexpected
Development—Importance of Meetings to History—Lennon and
McCartney—I Search for a Tin-Opener—What I Found

If you are an Anglophile, if you like Jeeves, Holmes, Jerome, Chesterton or Agatha, you would enjoy this book. If you like books with the interjections Pshaw! Balderdash! and Rubbish!, you'll like this one. It isn't necessary to have first read JKJ's Three Men to enjoy To Say Nothing of the Dog, but I recommend you read it sometime. Here is a generous sampling of quotes from Three Men. 

Connie Willis has made me eager to read more science fiction. I want to re-read C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy and I definitely want to read more Connie Willis.