Walter Leland Cronkite Jr. (1916–2009) was an American broadcast journalist who served as anchorman for the CBS Evening News for 19 years (1962–1981).  During the 1960s and 1970s, he was often cited as "the most trusted man in America" after being so named in an opinion poll.  On November 22, 1963, Cronkite introduced The Beatles to the United States by airing a four-minute story about the band on CBS Morning News. The story was scheduled to be shown again on the CBS Evening News that same day, but the assassination of John F. Kennedy prevented the broadcast of the regular evening news.  The Beatles story was aired on the evening news program on December 10.  On the eve of Cronkite's retirement, he appeared on The Tonight Show hosted by Johnny Carson.  The following night, Carson did a comic spoof of his on-air farewell address.   Cronkite made a cameo appearance on a 1974 episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, in which he met with Lou Grant in his office.  Ted Baxter, who at first tried to convince Cronkite that he (Baxter) was as good a newsman as Eric Sevareid, pleaded with Cronkite to hire him for the network news, at least to give sport scores, and gave an example:  "The North Stars 3, the Kings Oh!"  Cronkite turned to Grant and said, "I'm gonna get you for this!"  Cronkite later said that he was disappointed that his scene was filmed in one take, since he had hoped to sit down and chat with the cast.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Cronkite

Ekphrasis  “Description” in Greek.  An ekphrastic poem is a vivid description of a scene or, more commonly, a work of art.  Through the imaginative act of narrating and reflecting on the “action” of a painting or sculpture, the poet may amplify and expand its meaning.  A notable example is “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” in which the poet John Keats speculates on the identity of the lovers who appear to dance and play music, simultaneously frozen in time and in perpetual motion.  https://www.poetryfoundation.org/learn/glossary-terms/ekphrasis   

“Bats in the belfry” means crazy or eccentric.  Bats are, of course, the erratically flying mammals and 'belfries' are bell towers, sometimes found at the top of churches.  'Bats in the belfry' refers to someone who acts as though he has bats careering around his topmost part, that is, his head.  It has the sound of a phrase from Olde Englande and it certainly has the imagery to fit into any number of Gothic novels based in English parsonages or turreted castles.  In fact, it comes from the USA and is not especially old.  All the early citations are from American authors and date from the start of the 20th century; for example, this piece from the Ohio newspaper The Newark Daily Advocate, October 1900:  To his hundreds of friends and acquaintances in Newark, these purile [sic] and senseless attacks on Hon. John W. Cassingham are akin to the vaporings of the fellow with a large flock of bats in his belfry."  Ambrose Bierce, also American, used the term in a piece for Cosmopolitan Magazine, in July 1907, describing it as a new curiosity:  "He was especially charmed with the phrase 'bats in the belfry', and would indubitably substitute it for 'possessed of a devil', the Scriptural diagnosis of insanity."  The use of 'bats' and 'batty' to denote odd behaviour originated around the same time as 'bats in the belfry' and the terms are clearly related.  Again, the first authors to use the words are American:  1903 A. L. Kleberg - Slang Fables from Afar:  "She . . . acted so queer . . . that he decided she was Batty."  1919 Fannie Hurst - Humoresque: " 'Are you bats?' she said."    https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/bats-in-the-belfry.html   

Proprioception, also called kinesthesia, is the body’s ability to sense its location, movements, and actions.  It’s the reason we’re able to move freely without consciously thinking about our environment.  Examples of proprioception include being able to walk or kick without looking at your feet or being able touch your nose with your eyes closed. Adrienne Santos- Longhurst  https://www.healthline.com/health/body/proprioception#symptoms   

The phrase "scientia potentia est" (or "scientia est potentia" or also "scientia potestas est") is a Latin aphorism meaning "knowledge is power", commonly attributed to Sir Francis Bacon.  The expression "ipsa scientia potestas est" ('knowledge itself is power') occurs in Bacon's Meditationes Sacrae (1597).  The exact phrase "scientia potentia est" (knowledge is power) was written for the first time in the 1668 version of Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes, who was a secretary to Bacon as a young man.  The related phrase "sapientia est potentia" is often translated as "wisdom is power".  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientia_potentia_est   

Little Christmas (Irish: Nollaig na mBan, lit. 'Women's Christmas'), also known as Old Christmas, Green Christmas, or Twelfth Night, is one of the traditional names among Irish Christians and Amish Christians for 6 January, which is also known more widely as the Feast of the Epiphany, celebrated after the conclusion of the twelve days of Christmastide.  It is the traditional end of the Christmas season and until 2013 was the last day of the Christmas holidays for both primary and secondary schools in Ireland.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Christmas   

http://librarianmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2617  January 6, 2023 

Washington Square Park in Lower Manhattan   Alexander Lyman Holley (1832-1882) was born in Lakeville, Connecticut.   His capacity for careful and discriminating observation and his notable drawing talents marked him as an engineer very early in his life.  Holley was the first student to graduate from Brown University in engineering, receiving his bachelor of philosophy in 1853.  He received fifteen patents and wrote several books and hundreds of articles.  Known best for adapting the Bessemer process of steel-making to U.S. needs, Holley had a brilliant and versatile mind.  His work immediately brought rapid production to ironworks and rolling mills, along with a high standard of excellence, and his efforts significantly reduced steel prices and enabled unprecedented growth in the industries that moved America forward, including railroads, bridges, and ships.  Among engineers, Holley’s enthusiasm was contagious, his eloqence captivating, and his character commanding.  He was practical, aiming to simplify, to facilitate, to save labor, and to economize.  Acknowledged as an authority by mechanical, mining, and civil engineers alike, Holley developed ideas and concepts that directly influenced both education and industry for decades beyond his death.  Mechanical engineer Charles T. Porter (1826-1910) eulogized his character:  “That beaming countenance with sparkling eyes, upon which it was such a joy to look . . . was the outward manifestation of a great soul, instinct with every feeling, that, in the appropriate words of another, can ennoble or can adorn our nature.”  When Holley died in Brooklyn at age 49, he was engaged in bringing the engineers of the world together by shaping the foundations for several professional societies.  Three of these societies jointly raised funds and commissioned this memorial:  the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) of which he was the “leading spirit” in its founding; the Institute of Mining, Metallurgical and Petroleum Engineers (AIME) of which he was a past president; and the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) of which he was a past vice president.  Dedicated on October 2, 1890, Holley’s memorial was given to the City of New York by “the engineers of two hemispheres” and was witnessed by an international group including societies from Germany and France.  John Quincy Adams Ward (1830-1910) sculpted the bronze portrait of Holley, which was cast by the Henry-Bonnard Bronze Company of New York in 1889.  The bust is mounted on the central pillar of an elaborately carved tripartite pedestal made of Indiana limestone.  The pedestal was designed by architect Thomas Hastings (1860-1929).  https://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/washington-square-park/monuments/735  View all monuments in NYC Parks, as well as temporary public art installations on our NYC Public Art Map and Guide.  Washington Square Park is close to Minetta Playground and New York University (NYU),  a private research university chartered in 1831.    

Minetta Creek was one of the largest natural watercourses in Manhattan.  Minetta Creek was fed from two tributaries, one originating at Fifth Avenue and 21st Street, and the other originating at Sixth Avenue and 16th Street. They joined near Fifth Avenue and 11th Street then took a southwesterly course.  Minetta Creek's name is thought to have originated from either the Native American term "Manette", meaning "Devil's Water", or the Dutch word "Minnetje", meaning "the little one".  Minetta Creek was originally known by the Dutch as Bestevaer's Killetje.  During the 18th century, large amounts of wildlife could be seen around the creek.  In the early 1820s, the New York City common council commissioned a project to divert Minetta Creek into a covered sewer.  The creek was filled in by the mid-19th century, although it persisted as an underground stream through the 20th century.  Ever since the creek was covered in the 19th century, there have been debates over whether the creek still exists.  Minetta Creek caused flooding in basements and construction sites from the mid-19th century through the mid-20th century.  Pools of water were also found at several construction sites along the creek's course.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minetta_Creek  See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_ManhattanThe 7 Best Bugs in Children’s Literature  by Kyo Maclear  https://orionmagazine.org/article/best-bugs-childrens-books/   

Riley Savage began asking for smaller portions, her father started packing leftovers for lunch.  When food rots in landfills, it generates methane, a greenhouse gas far more potent than carbon dioxide.  The family resolved to do better.  Ms. Savage searched for recipes everybody would devour.  In the United States, food waste is responsible for twice as many greenhouse gas emissions as commercial aviation, leading some experts to believe that reducing food waste is one of our best shots at combating climate change.  In the Columbus, Ohio, area where the Savage family lives, nearly a million pounds of food is thrown out every day, making it the single biggest item entering the landfill.  (The same is true nationwide.)  Households account for 39 percent of food waste in the United States, more than restaurants, grocery stores or farms.  In 2021, 51 percent of the region’s waste was diverted from the landfill through recycling and composting.  Susan Shain  https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/01/headway/composting-food-leftovers.html   

An Unpublished Poem by Paul Newman  Previously uncovered words from the eminent late actor, director, and philanthropist.  https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/paul-newman-posthumous-poem/   

People who demand neutrality in any situation are usually not neutral but in favor of the status quo. - Max Eastman, journalist and poet (4 Jan 1883-1969)   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2616  January 4, 2023 

 

Most historians agree that the first recorded monetary system appeared in Mesopotamia, modern-day Iraq, around 3000 B.C., where the Babylonians began using silver and barley as universal mediums of exchange and units of value.  It coincided with the development of the Code of Hammurabi, one of oldest surviving pieces of writing and law books.  Fast-forward to the Greek civilisation and Aristotle believed that money was crucial for the emergence of trade between nations, “When the inhabitants of one country became more dependent on those of another and they imported what they needed, and exported what they had too much of, money necessarily came into use.”  This is a view that was shared and resurrected by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations.  The Roman Empire’s vast reach was synonymous with its coins being legal tender across huge the entire empire stretched from Europe to the Middle East.  https://arqgroup.com/insights/the-unofficial-history-of-money/   

The silent years, 1910–27  Multiple-reel films had appeared in the United States as early as 1907, when Adolph Zukor distributed Pathé’s three-reel Passion Play, but when Vitagraph produced the five-reel The Life of Moses in 1909, the MPPC forced it to be released in serial fashion at the rate of one reel a week.  The multiple-reel film—which came to be called a “feature,” in the vaudevillian sense of a headline attraction—achieved general acceptance with the smashing success of the three-and-one-half-reel Les Amours de la reine Élisabeth (Queen Elizabeth, 1912), which starred Sarah Bernhardt and was imported by Zukor (who founded the independent Famous Players production company with its profits).  In 1912 Enrico Guazzoni’s nine-reel Italian superspectacle Quo Vadis? (“Whither Are You Going?”) was road-shown in legitimate theatres across the country at a top admission price of one dollar, and the feature craze was on.  https://www.britannica.com/art/history-of-the-motion-picture/The-silent-years-1910-27   

Motion Picture Patents Company, also called Movie Trust, Edison Trust, or Trust, trust of 10 film producers and distributors who attempted to gain complete control of the motion-picture industry in the United States from 1908 to 1912.  https://www.britannica.com/topic/Motion-Picture-Patents-Company   

Figs-in-a-Blanket With Goat Cheese  55 minutes  Total Time  1 hour, 10 minutes  Spicy, honey-glazed figs are balanced by creamy goat cheese and buttery puff pastry in this fun vegetarian play on pigs-in-a-blanket.  If goat cheese isn't your thing, try these bites with brie, Camembert, Manchego, or Parmesan.  Makes 48  RHODA BOONE  https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/figs-in-a-blanket-with-goat-cheese    

In Maya art, the gods are depicted at all stages of life: as infants, as adults at the peak of their maturity and influence, and as they age.  The gods could die, and some were born anew, serving as models of regeneration and resilience.  In Lives of the Gods:  Divinity in Maya Art, rarely seen masterpieces and recent discoveries trace the life cycle of the gods, from the moment of their creation in a sacred mountain to their dazzling transformations as blossoming flowers or fearsome creatures of the night.  Maya artists, who lived in what is now Belize, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico, depicted the gods in imaginative ways from the monumental to the miniature—from exquisitely carved, towering sculptures to jade, shell, and obsidian ornaments that adorned kings and queens, connecting them symbolically to supernatural forces.  Finely painted ceramics reveal the eventful lives of the gods in rich detail.  The exhibit is organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Kimbell Art Museum.  Showing through April 2, 2023  See map and location at https://maps.metmuseum.org/?screenmode=base&floor=1#hash=17/40.779448/-73.963517/-61   

At midnight on New Year’s Eve, all works first published in the United States in 1923 will enter the public domain.  It has been 21 years since the last mass expiration of copyright in the U.S.  We have never seen such a mass entry into the public domain in the digital age.  The last one—in 1998, when 1922 slipped its copyright bond—predated Google.  “We have shortchanged a generation,” said Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive.  “The 20th century is largely missing from the internet.”  We can blame Mickey Mouse for the long wait.  In 1998, Disney was one of the loudest in a choir of corporate voices advocating for longer copyright protections.  At the time, all works published before January 1, 1978, were entitled to copyright protection for 75 years; all author’s works published on or after that date were under copyright for the lifetime of the creator, plus 50 years.  Glenn Fleishman  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/first-time-20-years-copyrighted-works-enter-public-domain-180971016/   

Still round the corner there may wait, / a new road or a secret gate. - J.R.R. Tolkien, novelist and philologist (3 Jan 1892-1973)   

http://librariansmuse.com.blogspot.com  Issue 2615  January 3, 2023

There is a long history of television and film in New Jersey, which is considered the birthplace of the movie picture industry.  The roots of the industry started in Newark with Hannibal Goodwin's patent of nitrocellulose film in 1887.  Motion picture technology was invented by Thomas Edison, with early work done at his West Orange laboratory.  Edison's Black Maria, where the first motion picture to be copyrighted in the United States, Fred Ott's Sneeze, was shot.  The Centaur Film Company of Bayonne was the first independent movie studio in the USA.  America's first motion picture industry started in 1907 in Fort Lee and the first studio was constructed there in 1909.  The nation's first drive-in theater opened at Airport Circle in 1933.  DuMont Laboratories in Passaic, developed early sets and made the first broadcast to the private home.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_and_film_in_New_Jersey 

Alice Guy-Blaché:  Cinema’s First Woman Director in Newspapers  January 26, 2022 by Amber Paranick  Alice Guy-Blaché is a name you likely have never heard.  She was a pioneer of the French and American film industries during the silent era and the first woman to have a career as a director, yet her work and career have largely been overlooked throughout history.  She was among the very first to use film to tell a narrative story, although for years she was largely uncredited as compared to Georges Méliès and the Lumière brothers.  Only recently, has she been acknowledged for influencing many directors that came after her.  Let’s take a look at articles on her life and career in our historic newspaper collection, Chronicling America.  “HOW A WOMAN MAKES A FORTUNE OUT OF ‘MOVIES’,” New-York Tribune (New York, NY), November 24, 1912.  Alice Ida Antoinette Guy was born in Saint-Mandé, in Paris, France on July 1, 1873, to French parents Marie and Emile Guy.  During her childhood, the Guy family moved between Chile and France.  After the family was struck by multiple tragedies in her adolescent life, Alice sought employment outside the home in order to support her family.  In 1894, she worked as a stenographer (or, secretary) to French inventor, engineer, and industrialist, Léon Gaumont.  Gaumont is considered a premier film producer who established the Gaumont Company, the first and oldest film company in the world.  Guy was inspired by the premiere of the Lumière brothers’ Cinématographe motion picture   https://blogs.loc.gov/headlinesandheroes/2022/01/alice-guy-blache/ 

Oat Risotto with Peas and Pecorino  Chef Graham Elliot cooks steel-cut oats risotto-style to make a savory porridge.  For a quicker version, Grace Parisi simmers steel-cut oats risotto-style in chicken stock until they're tender, then stirs in nutty pecorino cheese and sweet baby peas.  https://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/oat-risotto-with-peas-and-pecorino 

Oat Risotto With Parmesan and Peas  Steel cut oats take the place of Arborio rice in this creamy risotto-inspired dish.  It’s actually less hands on than traditional risotto.  For a different taste, try pecorino or Romano cheese in place of the parmesan.  Link to recipes such as oatmeal chocolate chip edible cookie at dough:  https://oatseveryday.com/recipes/wprm-oat-risotto-with-parmesan-and-peas/ 

Laetiporus sulphureus is a species of bracket fungus (fungi that grow on trees) found in Europe and North America.  Its common names are crab-of-the-woods, sulphur polypore, sulphur shelf, and chicken-of-the-woods.  Its fruit bodies grow as striking golden-yellow shelf-like structures on tree trunks and branches.  Old fruitbodies fade to pale beige or pale grey.  The undersurface of the fruit body is made up of tubelike pores rather than gills.  Laetiporus sulphureus is a saprophyte and occasionally a weak parasite, causing brown cubical rot in the heartwood of trees on which it grows.  Unlike many bracket fungi, it is edible when young, although adverse reactions have been reported.  Laetiporus sulphureus was first described as Boletus sulphureus by French mycologist Pierre Bulliard in 1789.  It has had many synonyms and was finally given its current name in 1920 by American mycologist William Murrill.  Laetiporus means "with bright pores" and sulphureus means "the colour of sulphur".  See pictures at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laetiporus_sulphureus  

The theropod (meaning "beast-footed") dinosaurs are a diverse group of bipedal saurischian dinosaurs.  They include the largest terrestrial carnivores ever to have made the earth tremble.  What most people think of as theropods (e.g., T. rex, Deinonychus) are extinct today, but recent studies have conclusively shown that birds are actually the descendants of small nonflying theropods.  Thus when people say that dinosaurs are extinct, they are technically not correct.  See pictures at https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/diapsids/saurischia/theropoda.html 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2614  December 30, 2022

In an essay published in 1942, the writer Jorge Luis Borges captured the absurdity and scope of list-making with his own fictional taxonomy, supposedly found in an ancient Chinese encyclopedia titled Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge.   In it, an unknown scribe orders all the animals of the world into fourteen categories.  These include “those that belong to the emperor;” “trained ones;” “suckling pigs;” “mermaids;” “those included in this classification;” and, my personal favorite, “those that tremble as if they were mad.”  The divisions are precise, elegant, and incongruous.  As the French philosopher Michel Foucault noted, the celestial emporium shows that lists require subtle thought; the ability to segment, categorize, and compare.  These characteristics are a little hidden in ancient texts like the Onomasticon of Amenopĕ, but Borges hauls them to their feet and sets them dancing.  As Foucault says:  “there is nothing more tentative, nothing more empirical (superficially, at least) than the process of establishing an order among things; nothing that demands a sharper eye or a surer, better-articulated language.”  https://lithub.com/what-if-listicles-are-actually-an-ancient-form-of-writing-and-narrative/  Excerpted from Beyond Measure:  The Hidden History of Measurement from Cubits to Quantum Constants by James Vincent.  © 2022   

The first retail Christmas tree lot was established in 1851 by Mark Carr who brought trees from the Catskill Mountains to New York City.  The first president to set a Christmas tree in the White House was Franklin Pierce.  Folklore, Fun Facts, & Traditions from The Old Farmer’s 2022 Almanac   

During the 2021-2022 school year, more than 1,600 books were banned from school libraries.  The bans affected 138 school districts in 32 states, according to a report from PEN America, an organization dedicated to protecting free expression in literature.  And the number of bans are only increasing yearly.  Texas and Florida lead the nation in book bans—a revelation that recently spurred Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot to call her city a "book sanctuary."  But what are the most commonly banned books in America, and why are they considered controversial?  Find a list of the 50 most commonly banned books in America from the 2021-2022 school year, with data supplied by PEN America. 

https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/the-50-most-banned-books-in-america/

 

What to Cook Between Christmas and New Year’s by Helen Rosner  December 26, 2018   I’m going to make lemon curd.  Lemon curd is the sort of thing that you can decant into little jars and tie up with a ribbon for a fussy little gift, or bake over a shortbread base to make lemon bars, or just spoon over buttered toast with a sprinkle of salt.  I’m also going to make rainbow cookies, those almond-scented confections that I buy whenever I go into an Italian bakery.  Dips:  The first is the chef Alex Stupak’s miraculous two-ingredient cashew salsa, in which a combo of smoked cashews and canned chipotle peppers  The second is my friend Martha’s smoked-trout dip—it’s a tin of smoked trout flaked with a tablespoon of mayonnaise, a tablespoon of spicy mustard, and a fistful of finely minced pickled red onion.  At the end of the week, if you’ve cooked a bone-in ham, and timed your eating right, you can throw the picked-over remains into a pot for Hoppin’ John, a stew of black-eyed peas and rice that, in the South, is served for luck on New Year’s Day.  https://www.newyorker.com/culture/kitchen-notes/what-to-cook-between-christmas-and-new-years   

“Approach! Commit! Execute!” Daniel Brush told CBS Sunday Morning in 2004 while doing a sort of dance when he was describing his process.  The moment captures Daniel, who died on November 26 at age 75, to perfection. Re-watching the segment brought back a flood of memories for me from the late 1990s and early 2000s when I knew Daniel best.  The self-described hermit was beginning to come out of his shell at the encouragement of Ralph Esmerian, the gem dealer and jewelry collector, who had an enormous number of Daniel’s creations.  Daniel was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1947.  His father was a merchant and his mother was a writer and photographer who took him on expeditions to museums.  When Daniel was 12, they went to London’s Victoria & Albert Museum and he saw his first display of Etruscan goldwork.  It was a defining moment in his life.  “My heart pounded the way it has not since then,” explained Daniel.  “I was insane to learn how it was made.”  After a foray into academia at Georgetown University, Daniel took up goldwork and learned how to do granulation like none other.  Granulation is a high-wire act of technical bravura.  For the dome Daniel arranged 78,000 granules in a geometric pattern over the curved surface.  Brush said working up the courage to do the final stage—heating the gold granules and gold background, coaxing both to a uniform temperature and then firing the object with a swift sweep of the torch took almost as long as preparing the piece.  If anything goes wrong—say, the granules fall off—months of work are gone in a flash.  Describing the odds of failure, Daniel said, “At 30 seconds it succeeds, at 29 it fails and at 31 it melts.”    Brush’s restless imagination led him to other arcane areas of craftsmanship during the 1990s.  He was a master of the art of turning.  A pursuit of royalty during the 18^th and 19^th centuries, Brush scoured the world to assemble a large collection of antique lathes to conduct the turning in a traditional way.  In order to work them he read historic “How To” guides.  Marion Fasel  See beautiful pictures at https://theadventurine.com/jewelry/profiles/in-memoriam-daniel-brush/   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com   Issue 2613  December 29, 2022 

The great books are great because they speak to us, generation after generation.  They are things of beauty, joys forever—most of the time.  Of course, some old books will make you angry at the prejudices they take for granted and occasionally endorse.  No matter.  Read them anyway.  Recognizing bigotry and racism doesn’t mean you condone them.  What matters is acquiring knowledge, broadening mental horizons, viewing the world through eyes other than your own.  Michael Dirda, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Washington Post Book World and the author of the memoir “An Open Book” and of four collections of essays:  “Readings,” “Bound to Please,” “Book by Book” and “Classics for Pleasure.”   https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/michael-dirda/   

HAPPY NEAR YOU (Happy New Year)   

Favorite books read by the Muser in 2022

·        Open Secrets by Alice Munroe (book of short stories set in Ontario, Canada in which women are the central characters)

·        Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver  (Human life boils down to three basic essentials—birth, death, and sex.)  Kingsolver interweaves three stories of relationships and land set in the fictional Zebulon County near the border of North Carolina and Tennessee.) 

·        Tomorrow Will Be Better by Betty Smith  (A novel of love, marriage, poverty, and hope set in 1920s Brooklyn)  sequel to A Tree Grows in Brooklyn  At the end of my edition is an essay “Things I Want to Say About My Mother” by Nancy Pfeiffer and “Betty Smith’s Library at the Time of Her Death”—a selection of titles. 

·        Twenty Thirty:  The Real Story of What Happens to America by Albert Brooks  (Cancer, Alzheimer’s and muscular dystrophy are cured--leading to the powerful “olds” being supported by struggling young people.)

·        Zero Fail:  the Rise and Fall of the Secret Service by Carol Leonnig (The Secret Service, born in 1865 with the assignation of Abraham Lincoln, began in earnest with the shooting of John F. Kennedy.)

·        The Possessions by Sara Flannery Murphy (The Elysian Society allows paying clients to reconnect with their lost loved ones.  The workers, known as bodies, wear the discarded belongings of the dead and swallow pills to summon spirits.)   

Favorite books re-read by the Muser in 2022

• 1984 by George Orwell  Published in 1949, the book is set in 1984 in Oceania, one of three perpetually warring totalitarian states--the other two are Eurasia and Eastasia.  Oceania is governed by the all-controlling Party, which has brainwashed the population into unthinking obedience to its leader, Big Brother.  The Party has created a language known as Newspeak, which is designed to limit free thought and promote the Party’s doctrines.  The Party maintains control through the Thought Police and continual surveillance. 
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley  Published in 1932, dystopian social science fiction novel, largely set in a futuristic World State, whose citizens are environmentally engineered into an intelligence-based social hierarchy, the novel anticipates huge scientific advancements in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation and classical conditioning.  Huxley followed this book with a reassessment in essay form, Brave New World Revisited (1958), and with his final novel, Island (1962), the utopian counterpart.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World
• The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende (1982) Magda Bogin (Translator) Three generations of the Trueba family, revealing both triumphs and tragedies.  The novel was rejected by several Spanish-language publishers before being published in Buenos Aires.  It became an instant best-seller, was critically acclaimed, and catapulted Allende to literary stardom.  The novel was named Best Novel of the Year in Chile in 1982, and Allende received the country's Panorama Literario award.  The House of the Spirits has been translated into over 20 languages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_House_of_the_Spirits    

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2612  December 28, 2022