My “book”
As I have  mentioned previously, my job for 2012 was to write a book-length history of a 160-year old insane asylum. I had a great time playing history detective for many months at the National Archives and then a much less great time writing about what I found. The text was largely finished by the end of the year, but I am now in the process of finding photos to help tell the story.

I have long had access to over a thousand digitized historcial photographs of the hospital which were always fun to comb through as part of my research. But this week I had the chance to go through hundreds of photos at the archives that are not digitized. It was so much fun discovering the contents of those archive boxes. The images I had access to previously focused almost exclusively on pictures of buildings and landscapes that were useful in the master planning and design work for the redvelopment of the 174-acre campus. So it wonderful finding photos of people and other signs of life that are absent from the architecture photos.

The history will be finished by the end of this week. My boss will do one final copy edit and then it will be “published” as a pdf document and available on the project website. (Budgets are such that there is no money to have the book printed at the moment. In fact, if Congress fails to stop the budget sequestration, I will likely be out of work in about twelve days.)

In case any of you are interested, I will post a link to the history when it is finished.

Some of the staff being very chummy. Undated photo circa 1908.

Nurses in very poofy hats.

Sun porch. The hospital was extremely overcrowded so it is unlikely that this was a typical day at the hospital.

A nurse administering one type of hydrotherapy. The therapy was really just a means to calm patients down and is unlikely to have had any curative effect.

Patients swaddled after hydrotherapy. They may have enjoyed their bath or shower, but these wraps suggest full body straitjackets to me.

An attendent stands in the industrial shop where patients made wooden toys.

Dining room in one of the wards for African American females. I am mesmerized by the patients looking directly into the camera. Especially the woman in the middle.

My challenges
About half way done with the TBR Double Dog Dare which ends on April 1st. For me, anything that is on the downward slope of halfway counts as almost done.  With so many great “to be read” books on my shelves, this isn’t much of a challenge for me. That is until I went to a secondhand bookshop yesterday. The result was that I came home with a grocery bag full of delights and I really wanted to sit down and read a few of them. In particular, there were three or four novellas that were really speaking to me given that I am working through a 900 pager at the moment (more on that below). But I had to stick to the TBR dare so I quickly shelved them in their proper alphabetical homes. Dispersing the haul lessened their collective power over me. No doubt in a week or so I will forget they are there.

With only 35 books left to read on my A Century of Books list I am beginning to see the finish line fast approaching. I was hoping maybe to finish by the end of the TBR dare, but that is beginning to seem pretty close to impossible. No worries though, I’ve been reading a lot more this year than last and I think I will finish by the end of may for sure. And sooner if I stay away from Wilkie Collins.

My current read
Lately I have been working  my way through the Century list in chronological order. But for some reason Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon all the way at the other end of the list (1999) was calling me like a siren. I was somewhat afraid of this book both because of its 909 pages and my notion that it might be too difficult for my relatively non-scientific mind to follow. But I have loved it almost from the get go. At page 550, as the right side of the book contines to get thinner and lighter, I can physically feel it heading into the home stretch. And I am even looking forward to writing a real review for this one.

   

Armadale by Wilkie Collins
I think Wilkie Collins should be the patron saint of the Royal Mail and postal services in general. If his characters didn’t have use of the mail his whole oeuvre would be turned on its head and lots of villains would have gotten away with their crazy schemes. And it just so happens that all of the letter writing is one of my favorite things about Collins.

In Armadale there really isn’t one big mystery, but several with lots of twists and turns along the way. Would Allen Armadale ever find out about Allen Armadale? Would Lydia’s secret past come out? Would Lydia get away with her scheme? Would Miss Milroy be married before she graduates out of her training bra?

If you haven’t read Collins yet, you really are missing out. Six hundred pages fly by pretty quickly. Out of the three of his that I have read I would still rank The Woman in White as my favorite, Armadale now comes in second and No Name is a somewhat distant third. Many people tell me Moonstone is their favorite so the next time I am in the mood for a little Wilkie and cookies I will give that one a go.

Peter Camenzind by Hermann Hesse
I loved this novel. It isn’t necessarily a book that grabs one and says “I am great”, but there was much about it that really connected with me emotionally. Basically the story of Peter C’s childhood, university days, and career as writer/journalist. I was particularly struck by his university days. There was something about the way Hesse wrote about them that really transported me to my own undergraduate days. There was nothing superficially similar about our experiences, quite the opposite in fact. But there was a quality that deeply reminded me of something…something that I can’t really put my finger on, but pretty fundamental to that period of my life.

Beyond the emotional connection to my youth I was also struck by a scene where Peter’s attitude toward a disabled man was transformed and results in a deeply meaningful relationship between the two. It was unexpected and very touching.

When I was in high school I first stumbled across Hermann Hesse’s name when I was reading some modern gay novel–I think it was Edmund White’s A Boy’s Own Story–in which is mentioned the sexually ambiguous quality of Hesse’s books. As a young village gay (hat tip to Little Britain) in the mid-1980s I was always looking for reading material that spoke to my still secret identity. I ended up reading a lot of Hesse and he does provide a lot of (platonic) male friendships that gave comfort to a sixteen year old hoping to have that kind of connection with another male. Well, except for the platonic part–I wanted romance not bromance.

The fact that most of Hesse’s protagonists are book-reading, school-loving, culture hounds also makes him a very attractive author for me. I really need to go back and re-read Narcissus and Goldmund which was a favorite of mine almost thirty years ago.

Overall, a fantastic way to cross 1904 off of my Century of Books list — and so much more modern than the books that surround it on the list.

The Duel by Alexander Kuprin
For some reason this 300-something page book is part of Melville House Publishing’s Art of the Novella series. Perhaps because the publishers think that if the novel had been edited properly it would have been at least a hundred pages shorter. That explanation seems highly unlikely, but it does begin to desceibe how I felt about this book. It really didn’t need to be so long. But I guess in a world of Russian writing where the greats (like War and Peace) can clock in at 1,300 pages, maybe this does qualify as a novella. In any case, I was not a fan. It just seemed so of a piece. Soldier perpetually short of cash tries to continue to party and woo and control his temper. (And do married Russian women always act like they have no husband?) If it weren’t for the fact that this one knocked out 1905 on my A Century of  Books list, I am not sure I would have bothered finishing.

 
January 31, 2013 has come and gone and the winners have been picked for my Whipple giveaway.

Patty at Reflections from the Hinterland is the Whipple virgin who will recieve an old hardback copy of The Priory.

Danielle D. is a Whipple fan who will receive Because of the Lockwoods.

Ladies, email your mailing addresses to onmyporch [at] hotmail [dot] com.

  
The first two full days were nothing but cruising the open seas on our way to Aruba. So relaxing. We read, napped, ate, read, worked out, got massages, read, listen to some live music, sat by pool, read, ate. You get it.

Reading Armadale on our verandah

We always forget to take a room picture before we mess it up. That bed is more comfortable than almost any hotel bed I have ever slept in.

One of the works of art. Knitted balloons!

They had some ceramic pieces that reminded me of the V&A.

The view from our verandah.

  
This was only our second cruise. Before we took our first one four years ago we really didn’t think it would be for us. We are pretty independent travellers who like to get off the beaten path wherever we go. But we thought we would try it out for a week. We ended up liking it so much that decided that the next time we should go for two weeks. So this time we made good on that and went for 14 days.

When you tell people you are going on a cruise one of the first things they ask (not surprisingly) is “Where to?” If you find the right ship for your style, interest, pace, etc. it really doesn’t matter where you cruise to especially when it is the Caribbean in January. No matter where you stop there will be sun, sand, and water.

We have only gone on Celebrity Solstice-class ships. They are big, and comfy, have remarkably tasteful interiors, tons to do, great food, great art, a fantastic spa and fitness center, and really, really great customer service. We have so enjoyed our two cruises on Celebrity that it is hard to imagine going on another line. Even when I look at higher end cruises they don’t interest me much.

A vacation like this is so much about relaxing that we tend to forget to take pictures, but we did snap a few.

The Library. Purists like myself are not totally satisfied with this library. It is open to other decks and so isn’t very quiet. The decorative books on the upper shelves are old law books and such and don’t really make much sense on a ship even if they are just for decoration. As for the real books that people can take back to their cabins to read? Let’s just say there were some very popular authors that I would never read. They did have an exhange shelf as well were I left about nine of the eleven books I read over the two weeks.

These people ordered a flight of martinis. The very talented bartender mixed up all six of them, then poured them into these glasses all at once from this stack of tumblers. It was like a colored waterfall of martini.

That’s right, a vending machine for wine. There is a wine cellar lounge that is lined with bottles. All you need is your room key, put it in the slot then choose your 1 oz., 2.5 oz., or 5 oz. pour of your favorite.

Cruising does bring out the kid in me. I love all the big ships. That is a Holland America ship in the background.

The enormous, double wide Oasis of the Seas pulling out of Port Everglades. It carries about 6,000 passengers twice as many as our ship.

Pleasure boats taking the opportunity to cross the channel in between cruise ship departures.

I love watching the ships. That is a Princess ship in the background.

  
Still trying to figure out why Reagan decided we needed to invade this island nation. I guess it was to keep its strategic spice supply out of communist hands.  It is a beautiful island with a charmingly gritty port. I am not sure what the beaches are like here as we went tubing down a river.

  
Sigh.

  
There isn’t much going on in Bonaire which is one of the reasons it is so charming. The other reason is the amazing water and fantastic snorkelling.

The weather wasn’t so good when we got to Aruba but we did manage to go parasailing. It was a lot of fun, but oddly more peaceful than exhilirating.

  
We had been to St. Maarten on our previous cruise. Although we had a nice time at a beach there, this time decided to take a ferry to Anguilla for the day. It was amazing. The place is so laid back and relatively undeveloped (cruise ships don’t stop there). And the beaches. Oh the beaches. Unfortunately we didn’t take our camera that day so I found some beach photos online. It really was this beautiful. The sand was amazing, the water was amazing. The little shack where we got some rum punch and fish sandwhiches was amazing. Loved Anguilla.  Will definitely go back to stay for a while.