Superstar lawyers and math whizzes and software engineers appear at first blush to lie outside ordinary experience. But they don’t. They are products of history and community, of opportunity and legacy. Their success is not exceptional or mysterious. It is grounded in a web of advantages and inheritances, some deserved, some not, some earned, some just plain lucky—but all critical to making them who they are.

Malcolm Gladwell, in Outliers, strikes a blow against individualism. When he looks carefully at the super successful—outliers—he examines the generation, class, ethnicity, and culture of the outlier. Granted, an outlier like Bill Gates has genius.  But that alone cannot explain Gates’ success. Gladwell tells us why. This engaging book is a string of stories illustrating both the opportunities and the legacies given to many outliers, some whose names are household words, others more obscure. Gladwell discusses the 10,000 hour rule: that to excel at anything you must spend at least 10,000 hours working at it. In the story of Korean pilots, Gladwell discusses frankly how our ethnicity affects our success and/or failure.

While I’ve been digesting this book, I thought of an outlier in the blogging world: Ree Drummond of The Pioneer Woman. Many of you knew her as a homeschool mom on the Well-Trained Mind forum. She started a blog in 2006 that quickly exploded into a Big Deal. If you look at Ree’s gifts, you will find a writer whose appeal crosses cultural lines, a little naughty for some and wickedly funny to the rest. She parlayed her story of city girl transplanted to a cattle ranch into an entertaining story compete with cliff hangers. But Gladwell would urge us to look at where Ree is from, what opportunities she was given. My theory is that she is a marketing genius. In one sense she bought her audience, offering regular giveaways for high-ticket items. She had the capital to give away Nikon cameras and $500 Amazon gift cards, converting the number of clicks into advertising revenue. That alone would not have been enough to keep her audience, but it attracted them in the first place. The daughter of a surgeon, she was raised with the expectation of hard work and excellence. This does not  diminish Ree’s writing, Ree’s photography, Ree’s cooking, Ree’s everything: she just didn’t do it alone.

Happily, my favorite part of this book is the introduction. Happily? Yes! Because you can go Amazon click on Look Inside! and read it yourself. It tells the story of Roseto, PA, a community whose medical history is so much better than the norm that researches spent years working to crack open its secret. The answer, revealed in the eleven page introduction, is profound. I urge you to read it.

In the continuing saga of synchronicity, in one of my current reads, The Creative Habit, which predates Outliers, Twyla Tharp employs the same reasoning of Outliers to explain Mozart’s success. You can also read this by following the link, clicking Look Inside!, and entering Mozart in the search box.

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?

If Alexander McCall Smith were to write a book about an Indian matchmaker, The Marriage Bureau for Rich People would be the book. Light and delightful, exotic yet familiar, this cheerful book charmed me.

Through Mr. Ali, a retired government clerk, and owner of a newly opened marriage bureau, and his assistant, Aruna, the details of daily life in India are displayed. How, for instance, offering a drink of water to a guest is traditional courtesy, necessary for basic hospitality. That doesn’t sound earth-shattering, but if you fail to offer the glass of water, great offense is given/taken. Zama names many of the Indian dishes/customs, but always offers an explanation. Some of the caste and religious distinctions are harder to grasp, but don’t distract from the flow of the story.

Gentle humor pops up like marshmallows in hot chocolate.

He scowled and turned to Ramanujam and said, “Take a seat.” He added, sotto voce, “You are taking our daughter, what’s a seat?” 

What I appreciated the most about Marriage Bureau is the perspective it gave me on arranged marriages. 

I never expected this of you…. Have you no thought of your family’s honor? And what about [her sister's] future? Which respectable family will accept her into their household if you have a love marriage? I am disappointed in you. You are the last person I expected to do something like this.

We don’t marry for love. You know that. Love is supposed to follow marriage, not the other way around. A marriage is not just about two people. It is about two families.

Even better for understanding arranged marriage was this first-hand essay, First Comes Marriage, which Zama wrote for the New York Times. I am impressed and intrigued by Farahad Zama. Raised in the slums of an Indian coastal city, he was raised from the slums by the encouragement of his parents and his love of books. His acknowledgement at the end of the book made me smile: This book would not have been possible, but for [...] My two boys, who think that all writers will be as famous and rich as J. K. Rowling. If only. 

Thank you to Laura, without whom, I would not have known about this title.

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.

I’m eating my lunch in a graveyard.
Human seeds have been planted in neat little rows. Stone stakes label the crop.

~ N.D. Wilson in Notes From The Tilt-A-Whirl

I like cemeteries.
The names, the epitaphs, the iconography, the quiet.
I like the sadness, the melancholy, the stab of pain, the bracing reality of death.

I hate death.
I hate the ripping and tearing, the long separation, the disruption, the destruction.
Death is my enemy.
I whisper John Donne’s words, “Death, thou shalt die.”

But.
I believe.
Weekly, we quote the Apostle’s Creed:
I believe in the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting.

Grief for Little Charlie. Grief for Little Charlie’s mom.

So personal: My Mother. Our Son.

A hollow emptiness.

Spring time is perhaps the best time to visit a cemetery.

 Spring’s blossoms sing an ancient melody ~
after death comes the resurrection.

Our favorite epitaph.

 Your life in five words?

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.

The foreword by J.I. Packer is worth the price of the book. From his advice to writers,

…there are three essentials: first, something to say, something you have seen and want to share; second, enough technique to enable it to find its own best shape on paper; third, a strong bottom on which you can sit for hours together handcrafting sentences, paragraphs, and chapters.

to his justification of the novel,

Thus, if you want to feel the force of Tolstoy’s view of Christianity, you read, not What I Believe, but his novel, Resurrection.

to his discussion of Christian fiction,

Unhappily, these moral tales, though not novels, often claim this name, and so spread the idea that this is what “real” Christian novels are like. The result, both funny and sad, is that when folk feed on this diet read a genuine novel by a Christian novelist (Graham Greene, say, or Charles Williams, or George Target, or Flannery O’Conner, or Fyodor Dostoevski, or Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn) their appreciation, if any, is overshadowed by regret and puzzlement that the author did not so manipulate his characters as to produce a straightforward moral tale, clearly illustrating the gospel.

and, finally, his assessment of how Elisabeth Elliot’s book illustrates the task of a novelist, are spot on. Four pages of profundity. I repeat: worth the price of the book.

No Graven Image is not a feel-good, light read. It makes demands on the reader. But it is a book I highly recommend. Margaret Sparhawk is a young single woman, a solo missionary in a small mountain village in Ecuador. The story gives an honest portrait of the joys, frustrations, doubts, questions, hopes, and confusion of a Christian trying to spread the gospel. She sees and critically evaluates both the efforts, attitudes and culture of fellow missionaries and of the Quichuas.

At the time of its publication (1966) it had to be controversial. My brother-in-law saw me reading the book and remarked, “Oh. The book where the missionary swears.” Well, yes. The missionary swears. And is shocked that such a word is even part of her vocabulary. But one word should not define the tenor of the whole book.

Though the ending isn’t happy, neither is it hopeless. There are questions: some answered, some left unanswered. The clear and flowing narrative is a joy to read.  Here are some samples:

[fashion] “Sensible” shoes carried all the stigma of the missionary spinster image which I loathed, but I could unhappily foresee my own progressive conformity to this image. Even that, however, could be endured for Christ’s sake. 85

[children's vaccinations] If only missionary work were so simple, I reflected. If people could be corralled and injected, like so many cattle branded, without explanation or persuasion or personal sense of need. I had heard missionaries say “I gave him the Gospel!” as though it had been an injection, and now, as the comparison presented itself, I began to ponder just how important it might be that an individual be prepared for the Gospel. 151

[overwhelming need] I suppose anyone who tries to help people in any way soon becomes overwhelmed with the endlessness of the task. So he has two choices. He can give up at the start, or he can accept his limitations and go on doing what he can. 152

[Quichua culture] It was all very well to accept life and its conditions without complaining—I had been pleased to find that the crises need not be turned over to the professionals as I had been taught to think. Birth, marriage, accidents, old age, death—all these things were dealt with by the people themselves, in the sanctuary of the home as a part of the course of life, not to be interfered with by outsiders, and whatever might be said for the other side, the Indian way seemed laudably humane and in harmony with nature. 200

[simple life] Rosa sat back with one heel curled under her, one neat small foot stretched out beside the fire, and laid the baby across her lap. He burrowed furiously under her blouse, found what he wanted, and let his feet flop in contentment. His small snortings and smackings mingled with the scraping of the spoon and the rattle of the corn. Firelight, shelter, food to eat, love. You don’t know what you’ve got, Rosa. 218

[after a bad outcome] God, if He was merely my accomplice, had betrayed me. If, on the other hand, He was God, He had freed me. 243

I thought about naming this post Guys Belting, but figured that might be misconstrued.

There is something about men singing that thrills me, that sends currents of electricity crackling through my limbs, a frisson of delight. From my earliest moments I was raised with the sound of guys singing. Though my dad’s income was scant, there was an abundance of books and music in our home. In the chapel of my childhood, we split hymns, e.g. everyone on verses 1 and 2, men only verse 3, women verse 4, all on the last verse.  The men’s verse was always my favorite. There was a potent oomph, a deep well, a pleasing sound when they sang.

Two (among a thousand) things I love about my church: 1) there are no silent men when we sing. Male participation is universal. 2) The guys sing like they have testosterone in them. It is glorious. 

Random guy-singing memories:

• Hearing my seven year old sing as he washed the dishes

• My four brothers singing in a spontaneous quartet at the 1996 Harper reunion.

• Loving the way Garrison Keillor sings. His voice isn’t excellent, but he puts himself into the singing.

• The sound of singing in the shower

• My brother (who sings in the opera) practicing with the volume UP in the garage when he visits us.

• Watching teen-aged boys playing frisbee on the lawn after church, singing as they play

• Hearing my son(s) sing to his baby

• Listening to my grandson sing Come Thou Fount

• Another grandson singing You Are My Sunshine

• My husband singing his seventh grade fight song at a dinner party a few years ago

• Puddling up whenever my brother (pictured above) sings Children of the Heavenly Father

Yesterday, a friend said that her husband likes to belt out How Can I Keep from Singing? My estimation of him jumped up five notches. I like guys that belt it out.

I long to live in a culture, like South Africa or Wales or Estonia, where singing is so deeply woven into daily life, that folks find it impossible not to sing. Can you imagine waiting in line (subway, Costco, at school) with strangers, and everyone joining in a song? Our headphones/ear buds keep us isolated. [Aside: this is why I loathe personal DVDs in the car.] Singing connects us in a powerful way. Aren’t the best times at a party when everyone sings along to the music?

The first man in my life, my dad, was a man who sang. It is he who taught me, by example, how magnificent it is to hear a man sing. If I were evaluating a potential husband, he would be, among other things, a guy who holds babies, a guy who appreciates poetry, a guy who reads, and a guy who sings.

Thank you, Dad.

JWH, October 3, 1922 – February 14, 1987

I need your help. I’m collecting a list of (clean) movies that have a group of guys singing. I thought of The Hunt for Red October, O Brother, Where Art Thou and How Green Was My Valley. The singing in the trailer for The Hobbit gave me goosebumps. Can you recommend others?  Do you have memories of guys singing?

I started out loving Barbara Tuchman’s book of essays. The first eight essays, on the craft of writing history, sent me over the moon. My ardor went down just a degree or two in the next section, which might be described as history in small chunks. Although the final section, in which she comments about (1960-1970) current affairs, yields nuggets, I found myself in disagreement with Tuchman and disengaged with her writing. It seems to me the further away the period about which she writes, e.g. Medieval times, the Great War, the more I like her.  That said, I would have no qualms recommending this book to an aspiring writer or an avid student of history.

Tuchman returns often to the theme of selection, the art of leaving things out.

The historian is continually being beguiled down fascinating byways and sidetracks. But the art of writing—the test of the artist—is to resist the beguilement and cleave to the subject. 18

Happily, Tuchman utilizes some great stories that were cut from her books to illustrate this point. Striking discoveries, fascinating though they be, must fit into the structure and scope of the book to be useful.  These behind-the-scene revelations reminded me of watching a DVD with the director’s commentary. Consequently, this book is more valuable to one who has read many of Tuchman’s books.

Tucked in this collection is a love song to libraries.

To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse. 76

The breadth of Barbara Tuchman’s experience—even expertise—leaves me breathless: China, Japan, Spain, Israel, Turkey, Europe, Medieval times, late 19th century, WWI, Vietnam. Those interested in Israel will appreciate two essays on the young/ancient nation written in 1967.

One of my favorite essays was her portrait of her grandfather, Henry Morgenthau, Sr., an advocate of assimilation, a Jew opposed to Zionism. (His Zion was America; he wanted to be a Jew in America.) After donating time and money to Woodrow Wilson’s election, he was awarded, not a Cabinet position, but a minor ambassodorship to Turkey, a post set aside for Jews. With the advent of the Great War, Morgenthau, in his position in Constantinople, was able to give life-giving aid to Jews in Palestine, Armenian refugees, and later to Greeks.

Here is a sampling of Barbara Tuchman:

…the reader is the essential other half of the writer. 81

…concerning all cafeterias in American government basements the only polite comment is silence. 79

With the appearance of the tape-recorder, a monster with the appetite of a tapeworm, we now have a new problem of what I call artificial survival. 72

There are gems of quotations, as when Dean Acheson, asked why a meeting of senior advisers lasted so long, replied, “We are all old and we are all eloquent.” 220

If you know me, you know that I love books. If you’ve ever met me, you don’t need Aristotelian logic to deduce I love food.

I’ve been modifying my diets, both books and food.  And thinking how the two correlate.  With food and with books, we ingest, digest, and eliminate waste. In some magical way, the stuff we take in becomes part of who we are. Those good bits feed our cells and nourish us. Become part of our DNA. It’s a mystery that last night it was salad, and today it is Carol. And Hey, Boo!, some of the most magnificent words in To Kill a Mockingbird, is also part of who I am.

Hands down, my current favorite food is grapefruit. When I figured out the the best way to eat a grapefruit is to peel it like an orange and eat it section by section, breakfast has become a sensual delight. I like taking my time, peeling back the membrane, removing the seeds, examining the intricate design of one section, soaking in the deep pinkish red, smelling the sweet-sharp citrus, pulling apart a segment, plopping it in my mouth, letting it sit on my tongue, and savoring the flavor before I chew and swallow. There’s the teensiest amount of effort that I willingly expend for the joy of eating the grapefruit. I’m reading less like a fast food meal scarfed in the car and more like a grapefruit, section by beautiful section. Most nourishing reading takes some work, but it rewards the reader with delightful morsels to taste, enjoy, digest.

Since I’ve been ruminating on this topic, one question I ask myself when I pick up a books is, “If this book were a food, which would it be?” This week I finished Barbara Tuchman’s book of essays, Practicing History.  A lot of fiber in that book, a lot to chew. Definitely meat, perhaps a pot roast.  Now I’m smack in the middle of Anthony Trollope’s novel He Knew He Was Right.  Something with vinegar, that’s easy to swallow. A kosher dill pickle!  The book about hormones was easy: multivitamin. This morning I sobbed for a half hour while I listened to the final chapter of Eric Metaxus’ Bonhoeffer.  This book is worthy of a yearly re-read. The sweetness of Bonhoeffer’s sacrificial love played with the bitter taste of the Third Reich. It would be impossible to assign one food to this book. It was Babette’s Feast.

I’m reading more slowly, chewing more carefully, gulping less air. La vita è bella.