Author Archives: Richard Miller

What do the following have in common?

• An outrageous, irrepressible drag queenA piano-playing attorney who stays one step ahead of creditors by serially squatting in local mansions
• An antiques dealer tried for one murder four times over nine years who enlists the help of a local voodoo priestess in his defense
• The gravesites of song writer Johnny Mercer and poet Conrad Aiken
• A college bulldog mascot dressed for game day in suit and tie
• A local debutante whose mother hires Peter Duchin and his orchestra for her party
• A failed inventor who reportedly possesses a poison powerful enough to spike the water supply and kill everyone in town
• A pianist/singer who knows 6,000 songs by heart and recognizes no speed limit when driving from gig to gig

All of these characters and situations – and more – appear in the novelized, non-fiction book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt. The author, a magazine writer in New York City for decades, discovered the magic of airline supersaver fares in the early 1980s which offered travel to U.S. cities for less than the nouvelle cuisine restaurant meals he critiqued. Through cheap travel to a sampling of continental U.S. cities, the author finds himself drawn more and more to Savannah, Georgia with its charms and eccentricities, so much so that he finally ends up living more of the year there than in NYC.

This title happens to be the one our Nebraska Library Commission book club will be discussing at its August session (and we have a book club kit in case your local group would like to read it). From shocking, to laugh-out-loud funny, the book manages to draw in the reader into the lives of the characters. Ultimately, Savannah itself becomes a character. Its history is fascinating. One example is that fact that, through southern charm and good manners, the then-mayor managed to talk the union general Sherman out of burning the city to ground in his march across the south.

The city itself, however, is not all charm and hospitality, with its beautiful squares that form the basis of the “old” Savannah. The city has traditionally stiff-armed any attempts to bring in local economic development and any chain stores. Such entities moved on up or down the road to Augusta or Atlanta. But the lack of economic opportunity, the still-present stratification of society along black and white lines certainly contributed to Savannah being named “Murder Capital of the U.S.” at one point.

Give it a try. I think you will be charmed, shocked and tickled with Mr. Berendt’s loving yet dispassionate treatment of Savannah. It certainly has led me to put the city on my list of must-see places sometime in my life.

Talk about “johnny-come-lately,” just last week I picked up a paperback copy of this title at a used-book sale at Greenwood Public Library. I had gone there on a trip back from Papillion to see the renovation completed in Greenwood, partly with money from the Kreutz Bennett Donor Advised Fund. I’d been meaning to read something by Maeve Binchy for years but hadn’t, fascinated as much by her name as anything. I’m sure Binchy fans are probably appalled that I’d waited so long. Now, as it turns out, this title is the very last one she wrote; she died shortly after finishing this book.

A Week in Winter tells the charming story (actually many stories) of a host of eventual guests at Stone House, a new guest house located in what had been a run-down mansion on the west coast of Ireland, high overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. Three elderly sisters, had lived a “beans-and-toast” existence there, with Queenie the only survivor. The proprietress of this venture is a former resident of Stoneybridge, the town in which the place is located. She has returned from a long stay in the States with some money to invest in her hometown. Her story is that she is returning following the death of her spouse in a car wreck. As with many of the characters in this story, however, her biography is not quite as presented to the world.

A cast of characters descends upon Stone House during its first week in business, from many venues – the U.S., Sweden, England, Ireland (of course), and so forth. The author sets the scene with each one coming to this “restful place for a holiday by the sea” for quite different reasons. One guest couple wins second place in a travel contest (and they’re not happy about not going to Paris instead). One of the staff is sent there following a reform school stint. Another guest arrives following a devastating affair. (She’s the librarian!) Another received her stay as a retirement gift from teaching. (She is probably the only character who is not rejuvenated by her stay.) Still another — the one from Sweden – is faced with taking over his father’s button-down business, while he’d rather be playing music in local Irish pubs.

My guess is that Binchy fans will love this book. It felt to me a bit like what one of the characters says: “Problems don’t solve themselves neatly like that, due to a set of coincidences.” It does appear that the circumstances in which each character finds herself or himself are too easily “wrapped up” in the story. However, the author is such a good writer that I think I’ll try at least one more title. Any suggestions out there about which of her other nineteen titles is worth a go?

Sometimes we choose a book; sometimes a book finds us. The latter is what happened with David Wroblewski’s The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. An elderly neighbor who had recently lost his wife and who was cleaning out the house before moving to Florida offered me two books including this one.

This novel tells the story of Edgar, son of parents who raise and train a breed of dog named after the family. For no explicable reason Edgar can hear but is unable to speak. Because of this he trains dogs using signs (and sign language), while his mother uses voice commands.

The story revolves around the death of Edgar’s father (in which Edgar suspects his uncle, Claude) and the accidental death (in which Edgar had a part) of a beloved veterinarian who cares for the family’s dogs. The latter event impels Edgar to run away for two months with three dogs he has raised. His survival in a wilderness area, the appearance of another character who helps him, and his eventual return home to confront his uncle all lead the story along at a good pace for the reader.

Perhaps the most fascinating part of the book is when the author, employing the “omniscient” voice, tells part of the story from the dog’s perspective. This is especially poignant when Almondine (present at the birth of Edgar and with whom Edgar has a special bond), is facing the end of her life, wondering why her beloved Edgar has left and not returned. It is heart-breaking, but then I am a lover of dogs, so that may have something to do with it. (Note that the author read up on canine cognition in preparing to write the book.)

This book was a 2008 selection of Oprah’s Book Club. (All of us in the library field owe Oprah a debt of gratitude for her support and promotion of book clubs.) If you like dogs and a good mystery, you’ll enjoy this book.

If you are interested in this title for your book club, the Commission has it available for check out. Go to following link to accomplish that:

http://nlc.nebraska.gov/ref/bookclub/

Richard Miller

OK. I admit it – I’m a bit of a grammar snob. I know I’m opening myself up to criticism if I were to make a mistake. [Notice how I used the subjunctive – “were” not “was,” just now.] I ask for your sympathy. I attended a high school in eastern Pennsylvania that, in English classes from grades 9 through 12, we learned grammar, spelling, diagramming sentences, and vocabulary every year. The point I’m making here is, we had all this drummed into our wee heads, so we could not help but become somewhat obsessive about it. However, when I taught ninth-grade English in a high school in western Pennsylvania just  four years later, there was no place in the curriculum for grammar – that’s how quickly matters had changed. (I taught some grammar anyway.)

If you are interested in learning more about English grammar, spelling, vocabulary, and usage – and learning about these in a way that is perhaps more fun than the methods my classmates and I were exposed to – you couldn’t do much better than acquiring a copy of The Grammar Lady: How to Mind Your Grammar in Print and in Person, by Mary Newton Bruder.  Starting a Web site in Pittsburgh entitled, “The Grammar Lady,” the author set herself up to answer any question that might be thrown at her related to grammar, whether directly or tangentially. I think she realizes that she is a bit of a grammar snob too, but she delivers her message in amusing ways with laugh-out-loud examples of how grammatical, spelling, vocabulary, and language usage mistakes can get in the way of communicating what one really wants to get across.

Bruder begins the book by laying out why grammar is important. Some of the major reasons:

• It can save time by keeping us out of situations (through misunderstanding or offense) that we later have to apologize for. [Yes, I know I ended that sentence with a preposition – excuse me!]
• It enhances communication.
• People are judged on the basis of their grammar (especially important during job interviews).

The author makes the point that students should be taught the basics of grammar by the third grade, and after that spend time refining that knowledge and learning vocabulary and more complex sentence structure. She also says it’s a waste [not “waist’] of time diagramming sentences. I disagree with that. [I really enjoyed learning to diagram sentences. I learned parts of speech by that method which, I think, helped with foreign languages too.]

One of my favorite aspects of this book is the amusing examples she offers of unintentional mistakes she sees in advertisements, company memos, school assignments, with many of these sent to her Web site. Here are a few:

• From a government-contract proposal: “We have ascertained that the project will require 66 man-moths of experience.”
• “The guest book is in charge of Mary Jane,” rather than as it should be, the other way around.
• “They referred a woman with a broken exhaust pipe and three flat tires.”
• “Hopefully it won’t rain tomorrow,” rather than “I hope it won’t rain tomorrow.” [Later in the book she describes this development as a battle that may already be lost.]
• The bugaboo of the parts of speech related to the verbs “lie” (meaning to recline), and “lay” (meaning to place something on a table, for example).
• A sportscaster and weatherman on a local television station described what they called a “heart-rendering” story.

In one sense I do the author a disservice. She may be a bit of an elitist, but she does allow for the fact that the English language does change, and that there is a difference between the written and the spoken language. However, there are some things she cannot abide, one of them being overuse of the word “like,” in a sentence such as, “It was . . . like . . . cold.” She refers to this as, an “inarticulate stutter,” all the while admitting that she has never seen it in print since it is mostly a bothersome habit of some speakers.

I recommend that you pick up this book – if you want to learn about grammar, spelling, vocabulary, language usage, and so forth, or if you just want to be amused at the many ways that we can mess up what it is we are trying to say to each other. For those who are interested, you may also want to look up another related book – Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss.