Sunday Sundries, 249

1. AOTW: All those who devote themselves to dividing us.

2. I somehow finished three books this week, one of which I've been reading each night, ten pages or so/night.

     - The one I've been reading slowly was Steve Brusatte's written-for-a-general-readership book, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World (2018.) And I learned a lot! (Now ... if I could just, you know, remember most of it!)

Brusatte, a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh, begins pretty much at the beginning: continental drift, the evolution of some of the largest creatures this planet has ever known, the most recent discoveries about them (a surprise to me: even some of the largest had begun developing feathers, probably, he says, for display purposes--one result: all the birds now flying around on the planet).

There is a wonderful (but grim) three pages or so about what happened when that asteroid hit the earth and very quickly ended the lives of the dinosaurs and myriads of other species. Fortunate for us: our distant mammalian ancestors survived, and here we are.

Really fun (and enlightening to read)--full of pictures of people and bones and critters. One odd thing: For some reason Brusatte seemed intent on reminding us, over and over again, that he has a Ph.D. He must've mentioned it twenty times--or more. !?!??! I got the point the first dozen mentions.

     - The second was a terrific 2019 novel by Jeanette Winterson (whose work I really admire), Frankissstein: A Love Story.

The story shifts back and forth from the life of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley (1797-1851), author of Frankenstein (1818), and Winterson does a wonderful job of telling those stories (the actual Frankenstein summer of 1816 is especially great) to the present, or near future, when robots and A.I. are all the rage. (Do we see a connection?)

A scientist/entrepreneur is trying to figure out a way to preserve the brains of people (never mind the bodies!), and another guy is interested only in developing, well, sexbots. The latter's name is Ron Lord, and here we see Winterson's playfulness. One of the principals in that 1816 summer was, of course, Lord Byron (not much to convert that to Ron Lord!)--Lord Byron was known for major-league hanky-panky and a boundless libido.

One other principal character is Ry Shelley, a trans figure (take away the Ma- from Mary's name, and what is left!). Ry gets sexually involved with Victor Stein (!), the guy who's trying to preserve brains. And on and on and back and forth we go.

Winterson has some things a bit wrong about the Shelley story. For example, she appears to accept the very questionable notion that Castle Frankenstein (along the Rhine near Darmstadt, Germany) was the source for the name of Mary's character and novel. Makes sense--only there's no evidence. Winterson says that the Shelleys saw the castle from the Rhine; not possible--I've been there. You can't see it, even when you know it's there and are looking for it!

There are a few other things, too--but who knows why she did it? Perhaps for narrative purposes?

But, hey, I cavil. I loved the book.

     - The final book I finished this week was Jacqueline Woodson's Red at the Bone (2019), a multi-generational story about an African American family. Each section focuses on a different person, and it takes a while to catch on to who all these people are. (Unlike Faulkner in As I Lay Dying, Woodson does not give each section a title that is the principal character's name.)

Once I figured out who everyone was--and what Woodson was up to--and what was going on--I had a great time. There are some wrenching scenes (a family break-up), some stories of struggles to "make it," some painful moments at Oberlin College, where one character discovers that lying to a lover is not really a good idea.

It's not at all "hard" to read; what's (moderately) difficult is to get the characters straight in your head. But once you do? Moving.

3. We didn't get out much this week (still slowly recovering from that Damn Infection that leveled me), but I did make it to the health club five days, started (slowly) back into my routines. Last night (Friday) was the first night we actually went anywhere--off to Books-a-Million near Chapel Hill Mall, where I dropped more $$ than I had intended to ... but they had a signed copy of Coates' The Water Dancer, so ... had to pop for that ... right?

4. We've been "winterizing" around here--storm doors, etc. Tomorrow, we will shut off the outside faucets, cover the A-C outdoor unit, creep under our covers and try to Stay Warm for the next six months (or whatever).

5. Last Word: A word I liked this week from one of my assorted online word-of-the-day providers:

     - from wordsmith.org

I picked this word because--many years ago, back when I was a wee lad living in Enid, Oklahoma--we had a cat that we named Scheherazade. (It was probably my older brother who did so?) Oddly, I can't remember any of the stories that cat told us--and one day ... she was gone ... don't remember in what fashion ...

Scheherazade

PRONUNCIATION: (shuh-her-uh-ZAHD, -ZAH-duh, -dee)

noun: A storyteller, especially one who tells long, entertaining stories.

ETYMOLOGY: After Scheherezade, the wife of a king in One Thousand and One Nights. Earliest documented use: 1851.

NOTES:In One Thousand and One Nights, a collection of stories from the Middle East, the king Shahryar discovers his wife being unfaithful. He learns that his brother’s wife is unfaithful as well. He kills his wife and decides to take revenge on all women by marrying a virgin every day and having her executed the next morning so she never gets an opportunity to cheat. One day it’s the turn of Scheherezade, the vizier’s daughter, to be the bride. She asks the king if she could say farewell to her sister Dunyazad first. The king agrees and the sister, who has been prepared in advance, asks Scheherezade to tell a story. The story is engrossing and the king is awake listening. Scheherezade stops the story just before dawn saying there’s no time left to finish. The king spares her life to find out what happened. The next night she finishes the story and starts another, even more captivating story. And so it goes for 1001 nights and by that time the king has fallen in love with her beauty and intelligence and makes her the queen.

Sheherazade is the patron saint of television script writers, who decide just where to put commercial breaks in a TV show.

USAGE: “Yes, [Rachel] Cusk is a Scheherazade here, holding us fast with stories.”

Karen Brady; “Framework of Narrator’s Life Emerges Through Others’ Stories”; Buffalo News (New York); Jan 31, 2015.