About Laughing Hysterically

Today I finished reading Alice in Bed, the debut novel of the popular American novelist Cathleen Schine, which was published in 1983. (Her most recent novel is The Three Weissmans of Westport (2010).) I have always wanted to read Alice in Bed, because Alice, the college-age heroine, tells the tale of her nearly year-long hospitalization for a debilitating, dangerous ailment that temporarily cripples her. Yes, I know, it doesn't sound like a funny book, but I was doubled over laughing through portions of the book.

Warning! Before you run out to find this book, I must say the reason why I was guffawing my way onto the floor is because I, too, as a young person, was confined to a hospital bed for an extended period of time. I tried reading passages aloud to Ken, but he just didn't get the humor, and I was laughing so hard I didn't care he didn't get it. Ken was absolutely right when he looked at me askance, and said, "I think you have to know the context to get the humor."

Exactly! If you have ever been helplessly ill in a hospital as a young adult, or as an older adult, you may find this novel excruciatingly funny. I think. Or maybe I'm just weird. Maybe Schine and I are sympatico because we were born the same year. (No, I won't identify the year, silly!) I'm feeling a bit sensitive about my age today.

The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper

The Saga of the Reading of a Classic American Novel:
Last night Ken and I settled down with Sasha to watch the 1992 movie The Last of the Mohicans, starring Daniel Day-Lewis. After about 20 minutes, I jumped up from the couch and announced that I could not watch another minute because I had to read the book first before viewing. I immediately abandoned both Ken and dog to dash upstairs and download it onto my Nook. And I began to read. Yes, I made apologies to both husband and dog.


I've never read anything by Cooper, who, although not the first American to publish a novel, is recognized as being the author of the first bestselling or first truly popular American novel. The Last of the Mohicans was published in 1826 and is Cooper's most popular novel. Some scholars have agreed that many of its novelistic elements derive from Sir Walter Scott's novels, particularly Waverly. Like Waverly, Cooper's novel is categorized as a historical romance.

In any event, the plot of The Last of the Mohicans could not be more American. The novel is set in 1757 during the French and Indian War in upstate New York, particularly the region surrounding Fort Edward, Glens Falls, Fort William Henry, and Lake George, all of which were primarily wilderness at that time. Glens Falls had a settlement and there was a small hamlet on Lake George, in addition to Fort William Henry. In this conflict, the French recruited and allied themselves with Native American tribes against the power of the British regulars and American colonists.

As far as I've read so far, Alice and Cora Munro are being escorted to Fort William Henry to join their father, a commanding officer. Every step of their journey is filled with the deathly threat from members of tribes belonging to the Iroquois Nation. Fortunately, the sisters and their male escorts have the guidance of Hawkeye, a "forester," scout, veteran of the wilderness, and speaker of Indian languages to protect and lead them. It's thrilling stuff, even if Cooper's prose can be a challenge at times for the modern reader.

Why I'm Gung-Ho On This Novel: Cooper describes the upstate New York wilderness exquisitely. Secondly, I discovered when I started watching the movie that all these events took place in my backyard, two hundred and fifty years ago. Well, an hour's drive south of my backyard.

Comedy in a Minor Key by Hans Keilson

A dark, but charming tale set during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands is at the heart of Comedy in a Minor Key: A Novel by German writer Hans Keilson. This slim volume, a very quick read at 136 pages, was first published in Germany in 1949 and was only recently translated and published in the US by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Hats off to FS&G for rescuing this little gem from obscurity and bringing it to light in 2011! (UK friends, is it available to you, I'm wondering?) I loved it--the book had its hair-raising moments but a happy, satisfying ending rounded it off beautifully.

Keilson, who died at the age of 101 in early June this year, didn't care as much about his literary legacy as his work as a psychiatrist of war-traumatized children. He always believed his masterwork was the book he wrote about his experiences as a psychiatrist treating these children.

Keilson himself was in hiding in the Netherlands during World War II, so the novel comes from personal experience.

The New York Times obituary published in early June, was rivetting reading. What an amazing life! (Because the obit is over 30 days old, I can't provide a link. But getting to the article is a snap--just Google "Hans Keilson New York Times."

Yeah, a Fun Rant, and More Book Sale Finds

Please skip down about four or five paragraphs if you prefer to skip the extreme frustration of an American citizen who has never seen a political situation as stupid as the one this country faces now. Thank you.

American politics are in a shambles for the moment, though the American People have spoken loudly and clearly, in the vast majority, for balance and compromise. The stock market keeps tumbling, our investments decrease in value. Gee whiz! Thanks so much, Congress, for helping our economy go down the tubes!

But why on earth would our politicians listen to the American people? After all, who are we but mere cogs in the machinery? We pay our taxes to the hilt, send our sons and daughters to fight in wars we don't want without cease or interruption, and, yes, we expect our Medicare and Social Security benefits, which we have fully paid for for decades and decades, you Congressional lunatics! You want to take the benefits away? Then give us our money back!

John Boehner, Speaker of the House, is not in control of his party (Republican) at the moment, which is turning the political mill into a quagmire.

I am "madder than a wet hen," as my farm-raised mother always says. Now tell me, what is so bad about compromise, you silly people who refuse to give an inch?

Did you call your member of Congress today?

Sigh. Breathe in. Breathe out.

NEW TOPIC:
Book Sale Finds:

I have not found many titles that I long for this year. This is partly due to book sorting exhaustion. But, even so, when our town librarian realized I wanted a copy of Barbara Kingsolver's most recent novel, The Lacuna, she set a nice hardcover edition aside for me. How nice of her! It's funny: On Sunday Ken and I were talking about books, and we discussed how we've both wanted to read The Lacuna and haven't had a chance to. We're both huge fans of Kingsolver. Ken says he has loved everything he's ever read by her, and he's even read The Bean Trees, one of her early books, which I haven't. We both LOVED The Poisonwood Bible--what an incredible experience it is to read that extraordinary creation. And we both loved The Prodigal Summer, set in the southern Appalachian mountains. I adored it and would love to read it again. These books are WORKS OF ART.

Today I also grabbed a paperback edition of Saturday by Ian McEwan, another of my favorite writers. I've always been sorry I haven't read this one, because it interested me.

A Wonderful Library Sale Find

One of the perks of working day in and day out on our library's book sale, is the opportunity to obtain and pay for a few books in advance of the sale.


When I unloaded the pristine first edition, first printing copy of Tony Judt's Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945, published by Penguin in 2005, I was close to hyperventilating, so anxious was I to obtain it. This is the widely acknowledged, quintessential book on the subject, and as many applauding reviewers have claimed, it's unlikely that this title will be surpassed in the near future. It was named one of the New York Times Ten Best Books of the Year for 2005. It is an 847-page tour de force, with nary a negative review to its name. Judt was educated at King's College, Cambridge, but he has made his name teaching and writing at New York University, at the Erich Marie Remarque Center of European History.

In other news, after the booksale work in the mornings, I've come home to read The Return of Captain John Emmett by Elizabeth Speller. I've enjoyed it immensely, but at 435 pages, it has not been a quick read by any means, particularly because there are many details to keep track of in this very well-researched and well-written post-World War I mystery set in England. I should be finishing this book tomorrow. I give it a very high rating.

Library Book Sale Week

Our town's annual library book sale preparation is in full swing. It takes us a full week of working every morning 9am-12 noon to get everything ready for Friday Night's Book Preview Party (it's an extravaganza) and Saturday Book Sale.

I told everyone in late March that I would be unable to be the director of the book sale this year, after having done it the past two years, but no one in all this time has agreed to take it over. So when I showed up this morning as a "worker," everyone refused to accept the fact that I'm not in charge. So here we go again.

But, actually, I think I may have hit on a happy medium. I keep telling people I'm not in charge, so I don't have to attend dozens of meetings, I don't have to be stressed out about every detail, yet I can oversee the organization of the sale, answer zillions of questions, and provide guidance to the volunteers.

The scariest time for me will come at the end of the book sale, on Saturday afternoon. As the sale draws to a close, we practically give the books away and force them on people. That's wonderful! And then--the horror, which I only learned about today. This year, for the first time, we have to send the remaining books to the TOWN DUMP. Every year before this one, we've had a "Book Angel" who comes and takes the books to a place where the paper pulp is recycled. Unfortunately, our former angel is no longer in the business, and because we're in such a rural location, there aren't other options. Oh, how upset it makes me to send books away to the dump as trash!

Farewell, Anne LaBastille

The writer Anne LaBastille died in early July and I didn't know anything about it until yesterday. Hers was a passing I would have liked to have known about on the day it happened. She was an ardent wilderness preservationist, an international conservationist and environmentalist, and a prolific writer. She was only 75 and, as I learned yesterday, had Alzheimer's disease.


I read her most well-known book, Woodswoman, shortly after Ken and I moved to the Adirondack wilderness, back in 2006. (We arrived in December 2005.) At that time I was deep, deep in the heady throes of my love affair with this wild land. I'm very nostalgic about that time in my life and, consequently, about Woodswoman.

In that incomparable book, LaBastille recounts her wilderness journey, to build a cabin and be self-sufficient living on an Adirondack lake; far, far from any village, town, or other dwellings. Woodswoman is the story of this adventure and it fed my soul, largely because she did something that was the stuff of my fantasies, but which I knew full well I could never do. No roads (she travelled by boat). No electricity. No plumbing (of course). I didn't realize until I read LaBastille's obituary that she had a Ph.D. from Cornell University in wildlife biology, which she was awarded in 1969. That field was a man's world back then.

LaBastille made enormous contributions to world wildlife and conservation causes, as well as a monumental contribution to the preservation of the Adirondack State Park, all 6 million acres of it.

The New York Times published an extraordinary obituary.
Go in peace, Anne. Others are carrying your flame.

Thumbs Up for Bibliotherapy

This week's Literary Blog Hop topic (sponsored by The Blue Bookcase) involves bibliotherapy. Do you believe that books can be a viable sort of therapy?

I believe to the depths of my soul that books can be and are therapeutic; that is, they can improve a person's sense of well-bringing, can ease the pain of minor ailments, can distract a sufferer from the pain arising from more serious, chronic problems, and can lift a person's mood.

I think that books can be a therapeutic adjunct to psychotherapy, when one reads books or poetry with a licensed, skilled psychotherapist. I don't believe that the reading of books by themselves can cure mental illnesses. Books, however, can alleviate the pain that comes from any disorder, however.


I have received enormous psychological support from the reading of memoirs, particularly from those in which the memoirist describes his or her experiences enduring and recovering from a life crisis. Memoirs of grief and recovery from illnesses or other dire circumstances are excellent examples of the types of memoirs I'm thinking of. I receive strength from the experiences of memoirists conquering or coming to terms with their own life situations. The best memoir in this category that I have ever read was Lucky by Alice Sebold. It's a transcendent work of literature of the memoir genre, and yes, it helped me.

For stress-induced ailments and to combat stress in general, I have been helped by books. When I'm totally stressed out, I turn to simple, some might say "formulaic" novels, such as those written by Phyllis Whitney or a mystery from a series I've found soothing. Just as long as I don't have to think too hard. Based on my reading in 2011, the next time I'm stress out, I'll read more novels in the Kate Shugak series of Alaskan mysteries by Dana Stabenow and more from Julia Spencer-Fleming.

Is literary fiction more therapeutic than other, more popular genres?
I believe that each life-long reader knows the genres and the books that "work" for them. For those that haven't used books as remedies, I would suggest that they experiment and discover the genres and authors until they find what's helpful.

One universal caveat: Most people are soothed by the books that were their all-time favorites as children. Rediscovering these books can be a potent salve to any injury or illness.

What are your thoughts? I'd love to read them!

Discussing Bibliotherapy: Coming This Weekend

I'm participating in the Literary Blog Hop this weekend, sponsored by The Blue Bookcase, because I was keen on this week's topic:
Discuss Bibliotherapy. Do you believe literature can be a viable form of therapy? Is literary writing more or less therapeutic than pop lit or nonfiction?

My forthcoming post is wandering around inside my brain at the moment and will be posted this weekend.