Book Log 2022 #56: Caddyshack: The Making of a Hollywood Cinderella Story by Chris Nashawaty

On one hand, this book is a film history, as it details what went on behind the scenes of filming Caddyshack, from the excesses of its stars to the all the ways it could have been a much different film (such as having Mickey Rourke play Danny Noonan, or keeping the original script's stronger focus on class issues).

On the other hand, it's a film criticism, as it discusses Caddyshack's place among period films, comedies in particular. There are the obvious comparisons to films like The Blues Brothers and Animal House, but also distinctions with more mainstream comedies (such as Any Which Way But Loose, where Clint Eastwood costars with an orangutan).

In both senses the book is largely successful, giving great detail as to how the film got made while also discussing how it's place in film contributed to not being an instant success at the box office. The book also spends a fair amount of time on the film's writer, Douglas Kenney, whose gift for comedy was often countered by episodes of depression. 

 Book Log 2022 #54: The Gilded Page by Mary Wellesley

This book examines the history of medieval manuscripts, from the people that created them, the subjects they covered, and the various ways they've survived into the present day. Wellesley goes into detail on specific manuscripts, detailing their history and what's unique about their subject matter and construction, while also taking a broader look at the contexts within which manuscripts were created.

It's there that I think the book lags a bit, as Wellesley spends a fair amount of time examining things through a feminist lens, not always with success. Part of me thinks this may have been better served with a separate book about the role of women in the production and ownership of manuscripts, but I also see where covering the topic in a more general work has merit.

Either way, if this is a subject that interests you it's probably worth checking this out. 

 Book Log 2022 #53: Slow Horses by Mick Herron

I first became aware of this series through the acclaimed series on Apple TV. I wanted to watch it, but didn't want to start until I'd started the books.

Set in the world of British intelligence, the term "slow horses" is given to those MI5 agents assigned to Slough House after committing some sort of grave offense in the line of duty. In the case of River Cartwright, it was training exercise that went very wrong in public. For others it's their personal habits, or just being up against the wrong person at the wrong time. Regardless of the reason, they're shunted off and given busywork in the hopes that the ongoing tedium will lead them to quit.

This tedium is interrupted when, in the course of investigating a fringe right-wing journalist, the agents get drawn into the kidnapping of a Pakistani student by a white nationalist group. As they get more involved, we learn more about why the agents have been sent to Slough House, and how there may be more to the kidnapping than first thought.

There's a fair bit of lore to go along with the main case, from River's relationship with his grandfather (himself a retired intelligence agent), the political machinations of MI5's leaders, and the mysterious death of a senior intelligence agent with connections to at least two of the slow horses. 

I really enjoyed the book, which uses liberal doses of humor to balance the more violent aspects of intelligence work. Looking forward to both the other books and the TV series.

 Book Log 2022 #52: Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History by Lea Ypi

Lea Ypi grew up in Albania in the 1990s, during the period after the death of communist dictator Enver Hoxha and the country's transition into an unstable multiparty democracy. In this memoir, she recounts the time from a personal perspective, documenting the social changes while highlighting how it impacted her schooling, friendships, and relations with her family.

It's the interactions with her family that are the most striking. Ypi learns that a former politician she'd been taught to hate in school was actually her great-grandfather, who was prime minister for a time during the country's monarchy. She also learns that her family was (or is?) Muslim. As the political climate changes in Albania, Ypi sees her parents become leading figures in the opposition, which brings its own set of challenges.

While there is plenty of reflection on the broader picture of Albania's transition to a liberal democracy (which dovetails nicely with Ypi's career as a professor of political theory and philosophy), it's the personal recollections that really make this book stand out.

 Book Log 2022 #51: The September Society by Charles Finch

Gentleman detective Charles Lenox is back on the case, this time looking into the disappearance of an Oxford student. An alumnus of Oxford himself, Lenox is happy to revisit his old stomping grounds, but less happy when the case evolves from missing persons to murder.

His investigation leads to the secret society of the title, which appears to have ties to soldiers who've served in India. While he works to uncover what role the society may have had in the student's death, Lenox looks to keep moving out of the friend zone with neighbor Lady Jane Grey. He also takes on an apprentice, another gentleman with an interest in detection, though one of of more profligate habits.

While I wouldn't call this a cozy mystery, the setting among England's Victorian elite does take the edge off a bit. It's hard to feel like Lenox or his colleagues are going to come to harm. But it's still an engaging mystery, and a successful follow-up to the debut novel of the series.

Book Log 2022 #50: Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law by Mary Roach

I'm a little surprised that this is the first Mary Roach book I've read. Roach has written a number of highly accessible books about the intersection of science and human civilization, typically focused on a specific aspect (such as Bonk, about human sexuality, and Stiff, about the disposition of human bodies after death). These should all appeal to me, and on the face of it I do find all of them interesting.

I expect our family vacation, where we drove across much of the country visiting national parks, drew me to this book about the ways humans and animals interact. This includes examinations into animal behavior, people who manage interactions between people and specific animals (such as elephants), and how the encroachment into animal habitats by the built environment makes these interactions more frequent (and more dangerous).

For the most part I enjoyed this very much, but got a little bored with it by the end. Not sure if I'd hit my limit of stories about man versus animal or if the later parts of the book were just less interesting. I did find it entertaining enough that I'll read another of her books. Eventually.

 Book Log 2022 #49: A Death in Vienna by Daniel Silva

The past crashes into the present in this installment of the Gabriel Allon series, when Gabriel is sent to Vienna to investigate the bombing of a Holocaust research office. A local Holocaust survivor tells Gabriel to look into a person, and is killed soon afterwards. The person he mentioned to Gabriel appears to be a former Nazi who was deeply involved in a project to erase evidence of the Holocaust. 

While Gabriel travels the world to confirm that this man is indeed the Nazi fugitive, he also has to keep dodging an assassin hired to kill him. He also has to determine how his mother may have known the fugitive, as someone who looks very much like him appears in a painting she did of the Death Marches, forced evacuations where Holocaust victims had to walk to other camps to avoid the oncoming Allies.

It's another solid outing the series, strengthened by getting a deeper look into Allon's family and their past.

 Book Log 2022 #48: The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections by Eva Jurczyk

Liesl Weiss works behind the scenes in the rare book department of a large university's library. She's put front and center when her boss has a stroke and she has to run the department, which would be fine except she makes a discovery pretty early on that would cause scandal and potentially see someone go to jail.

Liesl has to balance what's best for the department with what will keep the donors giving money to the school, all while trying to solve the mystery she's uncovered (as well as a second mystery that is coincidental to be unrelated).

As someone who's made a career in higher education - including a stint in a school library - the subject matter was very appealing. The author, herself a librarian, brings a lot of that experience to bear, and there was a lot of familiarity to the college politics and the personalities involved. I liked the book well enough but had a non-specific feeling of it not being 100 percent what it could be. I don't have a good explanation of where that feeling came from, honestly. It's definitely worth giving a try if you like campus novels.

 Book Log 2022 #47: Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe

This book, expanded from the New Yorker article "The Family that Built an Empire of Pain," tells the story of the Sackler family, whose fortune and later downfall came via their company Purdue Pharma and the drug oxycodone, which fueled the opioid epidemic. The book shows in great detail how the family continued to market the drug even when it was clear it was being prescribed in a way to invite abuse, and the ways in which they tried to avoid liability. It also follows the people who saw the problem and their fight to bring the family, and the company, to justice.

This is a tremendous book, long but well worth the investment of time. The focus on the family is especially helpful, as it puts names and faces to actors who, in the vast majority of coverage, got to hide behind the family and company names. While the subjects are different, I think of this book as a companion piece to Bad Blood in how both displayed how greed and ego can be used to dupe the public and, if unchecked, can cause great harm.

 Book Log 2022 #46: Stolen Souls by Stuart Neville

Jack Lennon is looking forward to a quiet Christmas with his daughter, while trying to overcome his grief and guilt at the events of Collusion. That doesn't come to pass, as violence ramps up with one of the local gangs, related to the killing of one of their own by a woman who was trafficked into Northern Ireland for prostitution. Her escape has its own repercussions, as her supposed savior isn't what he appears to be.

I liked this book more than the first two in the series. It's the first book not to be focused on the Troubles and related issues, which allows the plot to develop outside of the boundaries of that conflict. I feel like the writing style changed a bit as well.  I'm more likely to continue with the series now, though still not fully drawn in.

 Book Log 2022 #45: The Old Ways by Robert Macfarlane

In this book - the third in a loose trilogy looking at how man shapes the natural world - Macfarlane travels ancient paths (mostly on land, but also at sea) to understand what they meant to the people that shaped them and what they mean to us today. He pulls in a variety of natural, geographic, and literary references to put these trails into context, with the help of traveling partners and strangers he meets along the way.

I liked the book, I feel like it's a spiritual cousin to John McPhee's nature writing. The styles aren't the same, but there's some communion between their work as far as trying to come to a deeper understanding of natural history and the natural world within a current context. I found some of the travels more interesting than others, but felt positive about the whole.

 Book Log 2022 #44: Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

A girl grows up alone in the marshes of North Carolina, learning how to fend for herself while becoming familiar with the rhythms of life in the wild. Shunned by townsfolk and bullied out of school after one day, she lives alone but eventually falls into the orbits of two local boys, one a friend of her brother, the other the high school's star quarterback. A love triangle ensues, until one of the boys turns up dead - with the girl as the main (and only) suspect.

I liked this more than expected, at least up until the end, which felt a little forced and not particularly surprising. There's an additional twist at the end unrelated to the murder which is a little more surprising, though it didn't really change my overall opinion of the book. 

 Book Log 2022 #43: The Search for Delicious by Natalie Babbitt

I wound up reading this to fulfill the reading challenge of a book mentioned in another book, though at this point I couldn't tell you what the other book was.  I wound up choosing it based on having played the villain in a grade school play adapted from the book. It was the apex of my theatrical career, as I had the most lines, got to wear a purple velour cape as part of my costume, had a song, and (spoiler alert) a death scene. 

Oh, right, the book. The prime minister of a kingdom is trying to write a dictionary, and gets stuck when trying to define 'delicious.' The king and queen object to his definition ("Delicious is fried fish"), so the prime minister sends his stepson out to ask everyone in the kingdom how they'd define the word. 

At some point there's an uprising in the kingdom, with the villain taking control of the water supply (though in my memory of the play, the villain acts to get his own definition of delicious - the taste of walnuts - chosen for the dictionary). Various mystical creatures are involved in the story and its resolution.

It was fun to read the book and compare it to my memories of the play (which are likely not as accurate as I'd like them to be). This was an early work for Babbitt, who may be best remembered for Tuck Everlasting, which I remember as being hugely popular at the time we did the play. 

 Book Log 2022 #42: In the Distance by Hernan Diaz

Brothers Håkan and Linus Söderström are sent away from their Swedish home by their father, a struggling farmer, in the hopes that they'll find a better life. Joining the growing wave of immigrants to the US, they are separated, and Håkan winds up in California. Believing that Linus is still in New York City, Håkan sets out on an epic trek eastward to rejoin him. The story of that trip, the people Håkan meets, and how he deals with being alone in a new and foreboding country, is told in this novel.

To be honest, I was looking to read Diaz's most recent book, Trust, but the waiting time for my hold was months long, so I turned to his earlier novel instead. I did like it, but it did bump against my general disinterest in Westerns. Not that it's a traditional Western. But it's still a genre I'm not that interested in. To put it in context of other Westerns I've read recently, I think I liked The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu more, but liked this much, much more than The Last Kind Words Saloon.

 Book Log 2022 #41: The Wandering Earth by Liu Cixin

This is a short story collection by the author of The Three Body Problem and is named for its first story, in which mankind works to move the Earth out of the way of the sun when it goes supernova. Not all of the stories are hard sci-fi, and some have a fairly light or humorous tone. I thought they were all well-written and inventive, though there were a couple I liked less than the others, which I expect is pretty common given the mixed nature of the collection.

 Book Log 2022 #40: The Stranger in my Genes by Bill Griffeth

As part of his interest in genealogy, financial journalist Griffeth took a DNA test to get more information to help fill out his family tree. The results gave him not just a new branch to consider, but possibly an entirely new tree. This memoir documents his work to uncover the truth about his past and the pasts of his parents, biological and otherwise.

This book came out in 2016, when DNA testing was just becoming popular and surprise results were often (at least locally) newsworthy. Reading the book in 2022, when these sorts of results have become more commonplace, does threaten to lessen the impact of the story. But Griffeth uses his journalistic skills to tell a story in an engaging way without being overly dramatic. 

 Book Log 2022 #39: The Confessor by Daniel Silva

So I didn't intend to dip back into the Gabriel Allon series quite so quickly, but I needed a book and figured I could stand to catch up a bit on the series. In this outing, a Holocaust scholar is murdered in his Munich home, and Allon is tasked to find out who did it. In the course of his investigation he learns about a secret society within the Catholic church that acts to defend its reputation and power - both of which were under threat from the scholar's work. When that group sees the current pope as a threat, Allon must act to not only avenge the death of the scholar, but to prevent an assassination that could have worldwide ramifications.

Like the previous book, Silva selects an historical basis for the plot that is worthy of greater public examination. It's fair to say that the Vatican did not cover itself in glory in its response to the Holocaust and Nazi Germany. On the other hand, a secret society within the Vatican is a pretty tired trope. Still liked the book, just hope it doesn't indicate the series heading off in a Dan Brown-type direction.

 Book Log 2022 #38: We Don't Know Ourselves by Fintan O'Toole

A combination memoir and social history, O'Toole uses the coincidence of his birth and the passing of legislation to open up the Irish economy being in the same year to use his life experiences as a lens to examine the changes in Irish society. His journey from being a kid in working class Dublin to going to university to becoming a journalist and critic echo Ireland's change from being insular and church-dominated to being one of the most open societies in Europe.

In some instances the book is quite touching, especially as O'Toole shares memories of his parents and growing up in the 1960s. In others, he is searingly critical of the power structures that allowed violence and abuse to run free, from the overt violence of the Troubles to the personal violence of abusive parents, teachers, and priests that went undiscussed and unchecked. 

The book takes its title from an Irish saying, "Sure, we don't know ourselves," which typically refers to things improving to a point where you don't recognize who you are now based on where you were. What O'Toole successfully demonstrates is that there was (and probably still is, in some fashion) a cognitive dissonance in Irish society between the things that are publicly known and things that are collectively privately known but allowed to fester. This book take a fascinating and highly readable step towards synthesis.

 Book Log 2022 #37: You Are a Badass by Jen Sincero

So another genre I don't normally read that I've had to dip into for reading challenges is self-help. I wound up picking this for the most recent challenge as the title was amusing. I found the book less so. Some of it is motivational, but then there's a lot about manifesting things and becoming a life coach. I suppose there are people for whom this is the right book to get their life jump started. I'm not one of them.

I don't know if my reaction is specific to this book or to the genre as a whole. I suppose I might find out the next time I'm forced to read a self-help book.

 Book Log 2022 #36: Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann

When oil was discovered in Oklahoma, it turned out that quite a lot of it was sitting under land owned by the Osage nation. The Osage quickly became rich, and looked to be headed towards long-term security.

Except that the Osage started to die. Some mysteriously, others more obviously murdered. The killings often targeted families, with the inheritances eventually winding up with a sole survivor. This sole survivor was, more often than not, a white man who married into the family.

Officials took up investigations into the killings. Many of the investigators were themselves killed.  The nascent FBI took up the cases, struggling until J. Edgar Hoover assigned a former Texas Ranger, Tom White, to lead things. This book largely tells the story of White and how he was able to unravel the conspiracy against the Osage.

While the book does an excellent job of detailing the crimes and their eventual solution, what stood out to me was how it set the crimes into a larger context of American history and colonization. These were not isolated events, but part of a greater conflict over race and class. Recommended.

 Book Log 2022 #35: The English Assassin by Daniel Silva

Art restorer and Israeli spy Gabriel Allon is in Switzerland for his former job, only to find that the owner of the Raphael he's restoring has been killed - and left at the foot of the painting. An investigation uncovers that the owner also held a collection of looted Impressionist paintings, which are now gone. Allon is tasked by his service to track down the killer (who appears to be someone Allon trained) and recover the art so it can be returned to its rightful owners.

This book has all the hallmarks of the spy thriller - twisty plot, gunplay, clandestine meetings, etc. - while throwing some light on how Switzerland became a repository for treasure stolen by Nazi Germany. I enjoyed the book quite a bit and will likely stick with this series.

 Book Log 2022 #34: The Rumor by Elin Hilderbrand

One of the challenges of doing a reading challenge is when you get a category that falls into a topic or genre you don't really like. This kind of happened to me with this book, which I read to satisfy a requirement for a "beach read." And while the person running the challenges was very flexible about the category, I felt like I had to respect the spirit of the thing and go with a summery romance-type novel.

The set up here is that a writer is blocked, and with bills looming is desperate for inspiration. She finds it when her best friend decides to revamp her garden, and hires a "ruggedly handsome" landscape architect to get the work done. While the friend seems attracted to the architect, the writer works this into the sort of "woman hires gardener to trim her hedges, if you know what I mean" story you'd expect, and both have to work to counter a rumor mill that already has the friend and her lawn guy laying sod together. If you know what I mean.

Without any real background in the genre it's hard for me to say if this is a good representation. Objectively, it's not a book I would recommend. Ever. One thing it did do for me was confirm my prejudices against Nantucket, which were developed early on thanks to an unlikely football rivalry. So if you're looking to find something to justify thinking that people from Nantucket are jerks, this may fit the bill.

 Book Log 2022 #33: The 99% Invisible City by Kurt Kohlstedt and Roman Mars 

The 99% Invisible podcast focuses on the aspects of architecture and design that typically go unnoticed. This book combines topics from the pod with additional information and helpful illustrations to explain details in the built environment that we often see but usually don't understand (for example, what the symbols and colors spraypainted on pavement before digging mean).

While I found much of this book fascinating, the one drawback is that if you are a regular listener to the pod you may find that you're familiar with a lot of what's covered. This is probably a common hazard for books based on other media - I had a similar issue with For the Love of Europe by Rick Steves - but in this case there was enough new material to keep me going.

 Book Log 2022 #32: Dad is Fat by Jim Gaffigan

Gaffigan reflects on being a parent in this collection of essays and stories, mostly centered around the challenges of having younger kids (his musings on diaper changes and organizing family trips to the park will feel familiar if you've had kids) and the problems of being outnumbered (he and his wife have five kids). 

As someone who can safely look at parenting young kids in the rear view, I did recognize a lot of what Gaffigan writes about, and appreciated how he applied his particular brand of humor. Not all of the stories worked for me, but I expect that the success of the stories are more dependent on the experiences of the reader than usual. 

 Book Log 2022 #31: Atonement by Ian McEwan

The combination of an interest in writing and an active imagination is typically a good thing - how would we get books otherwise? - but in the personage of Briony Tallis, they prove damaging on a generational scale.  Her interpretation of things seen and read during a particular day in 1935 cause her act in a way that cause permanent injury to family and friends.  We see how she came to act the way she did, and how her actions played out in the future, over the course of the novel.

As much as I appreciated the writing and the nuanced way history played out over the course of the book, I had a hard time not thinking about what drove Briony to make the decisions she made. She was young (13 in 1935) and not particularly experienced, and the way her interior life seemed to influence her behavior made me wonder if she had an undiagnosed ASD (to the extent one could diagnose such a thing at the time). But it could just be that she's kind of a monster.

And just to put a cherry on top, the book also has a bit of a twist at the end that may change how you view everything that happened before it. 

 Book Log 2022 #30: Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

While several authors used the Covid-19 outbreak as the inspiration for writing a pandemic novel, Mandel is among the few who used it to write a second pandemic novel. The difference between her first, 2014's Station Eleven, and the second, is personal experience.

A number of people have noted the similarities between Mandel and Olive Llewellyn, the main character who is also an author whose breakthrough novel involves a pandemic. Olive is on a lengthy book tour, and misses her family on the moon (there being two moon colonies in the 23rd century where Olive lives). Olive is on Earth at a time when an actual pandemic seems to be brewing, and isn't quite sure if it's enough of  threat to cut the tour short. Outside of actually living on the moon, it's pretty easy to see how Mandel's pandemic experience informed Olive.

But this is just one timeline in the book, which follows characters from the 20th to the 25th century. These timelines have a number of callbacks to other books (most notably The Glass Hotel), and are tied together by a real-life anomaly that Olive worked into her book. That anomaly later becomes a focus of time researchers, who provide its ultimate solution.

I enjoyed this book quite a bit, but I've liked all of her books. It will help if you've read Station Eleven and The Glass House prior to reading this one, as there are some spoilers. There are significantly more sci-fi elements to this book than the others (you did notice I mentioned time travel and living on the moon?), so price that in if you're not typically into sci-fi (though I think people who aren't into sci-fi can still enjoy this).

 Book Log 2022 #29: London to Ladysmith via Pretoria by Winston Churchill

This book is the first of two Churchill wrote on his experiences in the Boer Wars. He went to South Africa as a reporter, and his letters and dispatches form the book's source material. While there's ample coverage of the military engagements (which Churchill would later participate in when he rejoined the military), I found the sections dealing with his capture by the Boers and subsequent escape to be the most interesting part of the book. 

Unfortunately I found most of the book not that interesting, probably a combination of a somewhat archaic writing style and a lack of knowledge about British military history and the Boer Wars in general. I wouldn't say it's a bad book, just one with a fairly narrow appeal.

 Book Log 2022 #28: Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

An Asante woman named Maame has two daughters, half-sisters who live in separate villages in what is today Ghana. One winds up marrying the British governor of a local slave forts and remains in Africa, while the other sister is captured in a raid and enslaved, sent through the fort her sister lives in to North America, where she winds up at a plantation in the US south. The book follows their stories and those of some of their descendants, up to the present day.

Gyasi, who was born in Ghana and raised in the US, wrote this book after her first trip back to Ghana, where she was struck by the difference in the upper levels of the slave fort and the dungeons, and how the people living upstairs were unaware of what the people in the dungeons were going through. 

I don't know that I would have picked this book up on its own, and I'm very thankful to the reading challenge that led me to it.  It's wonderfully written, both story lines are engaging and the characters fully realized. It's also impressive that this is Gyasi's debut novel. Recommended.

 Book Log 2022 #27: The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury

When I was a kid one of the magazines we got at the house was Reader's Digest. I'm pretty sure we got a gift subscription every year, as I don't recall ever seeing my parents sending in the renewal.  And say what you will about America's favorite source of abridged stories, but it was the publication that introduced me to Ray Bradbury.

There may have been others, but I remember two chapters of his novels that I first read in the magazine. One was "The Sound of Summer Running" from Dandelion Wine, the other was "There Will Come Soft Rains" from this book. 

This was a re-read rather than my first time through, and this time through I found the similarities between 21st century Mars and 1950s America a bit distracting. I know this was more or less done intentionally as a way to depict how current thinking and values can have significant impacts in the future, but I don't think it's aged all that well. Still worth reading if you like Bradbury, though.

 Book Log 2022 #26: Moon Over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch

A part-time jazz drummer dies during a gig, and when London constable Peter Grant arrives to investigate he senses the tune of a jazz standard coming from the body, a sign that the death is not just unnatural, but likely supernatural.

Grant soon discovers this is just the latest unexpected death of someone in London's jazz scene. The broader scope of the investigation leads him to involve both his boss, the wizard Inspector Nightingale, and a music journalist with an understanding of the London jazz scene. The case quickly becomes personal for Grant, given that his dad is a jazz musician and that the relationship with the journalist starts heading in a romantic direction. 

This description probably doesn't do the book justice, as it's a highly imaginative (and often funny) mix of mystery and fantasy. I've come to like this series quite a bit over the first two novels, and am looking forward to continuing on.

 Book Log 2022 #25: Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell

A novel of the Shakespeare family rather than of the Bard himself, this book is named for William Shakespeare's son Hamnet, who (spoiler alert) died at the age of 11. O'Farrell uses his death to tell two different but related stories, one on how his illness and death affected Shakespeare's work and relationship with his wife, and the other going back to when the pair met and fell in love 15 years before Hamnet's death.

For all the talk of William and Hamnet, the main character of the book is Anne Hathaway, Shakespeare's wife and Hamnet's mother. We know very little about her in real life, possibly not even her first name (at least one surviving document refers to her as Agnes). O'Farrell uses this largely blank canvas to depict Anne as an eccentric, with an interest in healing and falconry. We see how her marriage to Shakespeare leads to conflicts between her original self and her as a wife and mother, and how the loss of Hamnet causes grief, but also an opening through which to reclaim part of herself.

Most commercial reviews of the book were highly positive, while reader reviews seemed more split (a number of people complained about the pacing, as well as finding the characters flat). I did not find either of those to be issues, though as a parent (and as someone who lost a sibling at a relatively early age) I may have connected more with the issues of grief and loss and not noticed other shortcomings. 

 Book 2022 #24: Oh, Florida! by Craig Pittman

Pittman, a native Floridian (so a Florida man, but not Florida Man), brings his personal and journalistic experiences together in this book whose subtitle, "How America's Weirdest State Influences the Rest of the Country," fits both the state's general vibe and its cultural weight. 

More than just a compendium of stories involving men, alligators, and liquor stores, this book is an honest (and funny) attempt to explain why Florida is the way it is. Not surprisingly, Florida was kind of weird from the get go, and has only become weirder as time gave us more ways to be weird and more ways for that weirdness to be noticed outside of the state.

Pittman does a great job of balancing humor, history, and a kind of pride about living in Florida. He's also a good interview, as he's been on Rick Steves's radio show a number of times to talk about the state (this show has an interview about this book, but he's appeared on other episodes, too). 

 Book Log 2022 #22: Benjamin Franklin's Last Bet by Michael Meyer

Before Benjamin Franklin died, he added a bequest in his will to the cities of Boston and Philadelphia, leaving both 1000 pounds. But it wasn't a simple gift, as he also put specific conditions on the use of the money. For the first 100 years after his death, the funds would only be available to help fund apprenticeships, similar to the one that got him started in the printing business. Any money not loaned out would be invested to collect interest.

After than 100 years, 75 percent of the principal could be used for a public works project, with the remaining money staying invested and available for apprenticeship loans. After another 100 years, whatever money was left could be used as seen fit with no restrictions.

This book tells the story of how the money was spent over time, and the issues that came up along the way. Not surprisingly, there are stories of bad investments and politicians using the money for themselves. But there were also questions of how to manage a bequest as times changed. For example, as apprenticeships became less popular, what options do you have to loan money that would still meet the letter of the gift?

I did like the book, but I felt like there was probably more Franklin backstory than was strictly necessary.

 Book Log 2022 #23: Runnin' With the Devil by Noel Monk

Monk, who served as tour manager and then personal manager for Van Halen, tells the story of his time with the bank in this book, which roughly covers the band's beginnings to the departure of David Lee Roth. 

Most of the behind the scenes stuff is what you'd expect - they trashed a number of hotel rooms and had a fondness for cocaine - but there were some more revelatory aspects to the story as well.  Alex and Eddie Van Halen's home life when they were growing is presented as deeply dysfunctional, making it easy to draw a line to issues in their adulthood (Eddie is depicted as emotionally needy, while Alex is shown as having more issues with being part Indonesian). The Van Halens and Roth were also depicted as not treating bassist Michael Anthony as an equal member of the band, and he does kind of come off as being a bit apart from the others (though Monk always describes him positively).

I also hadn't really known what an overnight success the band was, probably as they became popular right when I first started noticing bands and listening to the radio. They're one of those bands that, to my mind, has always been there.

I did enjoy the book quite a bit, it's not the most penetrating analysis of the band but the stories are good and it fills in a lot of history for those of us who might not be aware. One suggestion I came across online was to read this and Van Halen Rising, as that book covers the period up to their signing with Warner, with this book adding on the history up to Roth's leaving. Seems like a good suggestion.

 Book Log 2022 #21: Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr

The story in this book runs in three timelines - one set during the 1453 siege of Constantinople, one in present day Idaho, and one in the future on a spaceship delivering colonists to an exoplanet.  What each timeline shares is an ancient Greek story of a person who wants to be turned into a bird so they can go to a utopia in the sky. We see how the story affects the characters in each timeline, and the influence it has on them and, in some sense, the other timelines.

The book gave off Cloud Atlas vibes for story and character, and how these connected over time. I don't know that I liked this book as much as that one, but I did like it quite a bit. The page linked above tries to tie this in with Doerr's previous book, All the Light We Cannot See, but I don't think there's much of a connection. That shouldn't dissuade you from reading either book.

 Book Log 2022 #20: Collusion by Stuart Neville

After a string of killings in Northern Ireland, Gerry Fegan has gone to New York and the ex-wife and daughter of Belfast police detective Jack Lennon have gone into hiding.  While Lennon presses to find his daughter (with resistance from official channels), Fegan has to return home and face a rival hitman, hired by a survivor of Fegan's violence to exact revenge. 

The book was fine, I was on the fence about the series after the first book and am no more convinced either way as to whether or not I should continue on with it.  

 Book Log 2022 #18: The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The second book in the Cemetery of Forgotten Books series, this is actually set before the first book. 

Daniel Martin survived a difficult childhood (thanks in part to the Sempere and Sempere bookstore) to become a writer of books about Barcelona's underworld. He moves into a deserted house with a murky past, one that appears to be slowing shaping his present. It impacts not only his writing - primarily a commission by a shadowy Frenchman to write a religious-themed work - but in his personal relationships with his patron, the daughter of the patron's chauffeur, and a devoted fan.

This all leads to an atmospherically gothic ending that may put some readers off. I figure if you can accept a story where a house is imposing its history on its current resident, the ending isn't that unexpected.

I think if you liked the first book you'll like this one. 

Book Log 2022 #19: The Kill Artist by Daniel Silva

This is the first in a very long series of spy thrillers featuring Gabriel Allon, who is trying to put his past in Israeli intelligence behind him to return to his real passion: art and art restoration. That doesn't quite work out, as he is drawn back into service after the Israeli ambassador to France is assassinated. The killing is the work of the same terrorist who killed Allon's son and caused permanent mental damage to Allon's wife, so Allon's return to spy work is part professional experience with the terrorist and a chance at revenge.

I'd been thinking about starting this series for a while, unsure if I wanted to start a new series. In the end it turned out to be a perfectly serviceable example of the genre, firmly in the airport read zone if a little better than what I think of as the average book of that type.  I think the involvement of the art world gave it just that small difference to separate it from standard spy fare. I'll probably keep reading these, they move pretty quickly and do scratch that genre itch.

 Book Log 2022 #17: Gillespie and I by Jane Harris

Harriet Baxter, now an old woman living in London, is taking upon herself to chronicle the life of Ned Gillespie, an artist who she believes never gained the acclaim he deserved. She considers herself to be the best suited person for the job as she knew Gillespie quite well, having met him and his family by accident when she was visiting Glasgow for the 1888 International Exhibition.

That meeting involves Harriet saving the life of Gillespie's mother, and from that act she becomes quite close with the family, becoming a sort of surrogate member by helping with day to day tasks and patronizing their work as artists. It's clear that the family has its troubles, and when they eventually lead to tragedy and a criminal trial, Harriet winds up in the middle of things.

Where the book is told from Harriet's point of view and several decades removed from the events she's recalling, there is plenty of room to question the reliability of the narrator. It's also not clear what her motives are in telling the story - is she really trying to give Gillespie a boost in popularity, or is she trying to clear her own name?

I liked this book quite a bit, though in reading a couple of reviews Harris' previous book, The Observations, was noted as being along similar lines but better. I've not read it, but maybe it would make sense to read that one first.

 Lentorama 2022: It Happened on Easter

Day 40: The first spring forward

Americans who hate Daylight Savings Time should rue the day March 31, 1918, as that was when DST became an official practice in the US. 

For most of history there was no organized approach to best using the increased daylight that comes with summer. In Roman times, when the day was split into 12 equal hours of day and night, they just changed the number of minutes in each hour to suit prevailing conditions. When fixed-length hours became the norm, businesses and other institutions would shift opening and closing times as needed, but that was a voluntary practice.

The idea of actually shifting the clock ahead was suggested by a few individuals, but didn't catch on (outside of a handful of localities) until World War I, when Germany and Austria-Hungary shifted their clocks ahead in 1916 in order to conserve coal. Most of Europe followed over the course of the next year, with the US (as with their entry into the war) coming later. And like much of Europe, the US wound up dropping DST after the war (though Congress had to override President Wilson's veto to do so).

DST would pop up in the US again during World War II (though it was called War Time rather than Daylight Time), and was repealed again after the war. Localities were allowed to observe DST, and many states did, creating a patchwork of local times. Complaints by several industries (most notably transportation) led to the Uniform Time Act of 1966, which required states to observe DST unless they passed a state law exempting the entire state from the practice.

And that's pretty much where things have stayed until recently, with a renewed push for year-round DST (most notably in the Sunshine Protection Act). Proponents tend to forget the mid-1970s experiment with this that was prompted by the 1973 energy crisis, which saw problems with late sunrise times in the winter months that had kids going to school in the dark.

So there you have it, 40 days of things that happened on Easter. Tune in next year when we'll have 40 days of things that happened on Holy Saturday (if I take this to its logical extension I can run out most of the 2020s with things that happened during Holy Week).

 Lentorama 2022: It Happened on Easter

Day 39: On the march

The Panic of 1893 caused an economic depression in the US that lasted for four years, and was the most significant economic downturn (non-Civil War division) experienced by Americans in their lifetimes. This led people to some drastic measures, such as the decision by Ohio businessman Jacob Coxey to lead a march to Washington, DC, to demand the government intervene by creating jobs and putting more money into the economy.

Coxey and about 100 other men left Massillon, Ohio on Easter Sunday, March 25, 1894. Other marchers met up with Coxey (now leading what became popularly known as Coxey's Army), and about 6000 men made an encampment just outside of the capital. The day after making camp, Coxey and some of the other march leaders were arrested for walking on the grass at the Capitol building. Not long after that the marchers lost interest and the protest largely broke up.

While it wasn't successful, Coxey's march is notable for being the first planned protest march on Washington. It also saw one of its main goals, a government works program to provide jobs during a depression, adopted for the New Deal. 

 Book Log 2022 #16: American Fire by Monica Hesse

Accomack County in Virginia was once one of, if not the richest, rural counties in all of the US. But over time, as agriculture shifted to other places and took money and people with it, it became more isolated and poorer, with plenty of fallow fields and abandoned buildings.

Which wound up being a pretty good environment for a serial arsonist. As buildings burned and the locals tried - and failed - to catch the arsonist, the spate of fires drew national attention. Once a suspect was arrested, the author went to Virginia to cover the hearing, and as the case unfolded it not only reflected the history of the county,  but took an unexpected detour into a love story.

I don't remember many specifics about the book, but I gave it four stars on Goodreads, which suggests I liked it. So sure, give it a read.

 Lentorama 2022: It Happened on Easter

Day 38: Marian Anderson sings

In 1939, contralto Marian Anderson was trying to plan a concert for Washington, DC. Only problem was that Anderson, an African-American, couldn't find a venue. The Daughters of the American Revolution denied her the use of Constitution Hall, which when the DAR wasn't hosting their national convention was often used for concerts. Turns out the DAR had a whites-only performer policy in place at the time, and the building also lacked segregated bathrooms (as required by DC law). Anderson then tried to book the auditorium at a whites-only high school, but was similarly denied by the city's board of education.

An ad hoc group of supporters, drawn mainly from civil rights and labor groups, formed the Marian Anderson Citizens Committee, which then put pressure on the DC Board of Education to change their decision. In addition, the DAR saw a slew of resignations after their decision, most notably by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.

As pressure mounted to let Anderson sing, Roosevelt was able to lean on her husband, who then got Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes to let Anderson perform an open air concert at the Lincoln Memorial. And so it was that Anderson, on April 9, 1939, performed for an assembled crowd of 75,000 (and millions more at home over the NBC radio network).

This landmark concert opened up further opportunities for Anderson to perform in integrated settings, most notably a 1943 concert at the now-integrated Constitution Hall (though the DC Board of Education still banned her from using public high schools). Anderson would later go on to become the first African-American to perform with the Metropolitan Opera, sang at the inaugurations of Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy, and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her work promoting civil and human rights before retiring from singing in 1965.

 Book Log 2022 #15: Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson

This climate novel brings together a feral pig hunter, an oil billionaire, and the Queen of the Netherlands in a scheme to address global warming through a rogue geoengineering project. While the project isn't sanctioned by any government, it does draw the attention of both China and India, which undertake their own responses aimed at promoting their own interests in relation to the project.

This book reminded me a little bit of both Zodiac and Cryptonomicon in how non-governmental actors can influence policy through technology (though this book is much more focused on the aftermath). It also had one of the more entertaining romantic subplots, which was unexpected.

It's not his best book, but I did enjoy it, and think it compares favorably against other climate fiction.

 Lentorama 2022: It Happened on Easter

Day 37: A planter gets planted

The Harrison family has roots in Virginia going back to around 1630, when Benjamin Harrison arrived and quickly established himself. Within three years he was made clerk of the state's Governor's Council, setting a course in public service that future Harrisons - many also named Benjamin - would follow.

Notable among them is Benjamin Harrison V, who by the age of 20 was managing several plantations covering thousands of acres (which included a manor house, a grist mill, a fishery, and a number of slaves). This all was due to the untimely death of Benjamin Harrison IV, who also left other plantations to others of his 10 children.

Harrison flourished, and followed in his father's footsteps by being elected to Virginia's House of Burgesses (although he was too young to serve when first elected, which makes you wonder how he got elected in the first place). Harrison quickly fell in with those opposed to direct British rule, and served on several bodies which argued that colonists should have a voice in the laws (and taxes) applied to them.

Not surprisingly, Harrison was voted to be a delegate to the First and Second Continental Congresses (one of his roomates at the latter was George Washington), and would be one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. He spent most of the Revolutionary War in Virginia, serving in the new House of Delegates and working with the fledgling government to secure military aid for the southern states.

Just a month after the American victory at Yorktown, Harrison became the fifth governor of Virginia, and focused mainly on maintaining peace and improving the local economy, which the war had damaged greatly. After his term he returned to the legislature, where he served until his death on April 24, 1791, of unknown causes (though he was often in ill health thanks to what one source calls his "persistent corpulence").

For all that, Harrison's greatest legacy may be that he fathered one president - William Henry Harrison - who then fathered another - Benjamin Harrison. Who, as you might have noted, was not one of the line of Benjamin Harrisons. Benjamin Harrison V's oldest son was Benjamin Harrison VI, who like his dad was a planter and state politician. He would father Benjamin Harrison VII (with his first wife after the death of his second wife), and he would beget Benjamin Harrison VIII, and after that I can't bother to look. One other notable detail of the Harrisons is that they are also related to Abraham Lincoln through Thomas Harrison, who established a branch of the Harrison family in the Shenandoah valley.

 Lentorama 2022: It Happened on Easter

Day 36: The phone lines reopen

Much like recent innovations in communication, the telephone was adopted quickly after Alexander Graham Bell's successful demonstration in 1876. It allowed anyone to talk to any other person - as long as there was an operator to connect the call.

By 1919, thousands of women were working as telephone operators in New England. While the job wasn't as dangerous as mill work and in a more professional setting than domestic occupations, the work wasn't easy. Operators were expected to work at quick pace throughout their shift, and were often disciplined harshly for minor mistakes. The pay was also much lower than that given women in other occupations.

Julia O'Connor had tried to change that. While working as an operator she had a little success trying to organize operators into a union, and that combined with the poor working conditions led O'Connor to leave her job to start organizing full time. The operators went to the Postmaster General (who was given oversight of the telephone industry during World War I), who refused to bargain with them for a new contract, or allow the telephone company to negotiate. So on April 15, 1919, the New England operators went on strike.

The effect of the strike was immediate, and several attempts were made to bring in replacement workers, from college students to recently-returned war veterans. But they were often stymied by members of other unions - cab drivers refused to take them to work, and the police refused to break the strike. This was critical for the operators, as women didn't generally have the support of largely male unions.

With the phone outage crippling business, the Postmaster General relented and allowed New England Telephone to negotiate with the union. And so on April 20, 1919, the operators returned to work, with a new deal in hand.

Their victory was somewhat short-lived, however, as the phone companies made an even harder push to develop a telephone system that would automatically connect calls. Within 20 years, the operators union was gone, replaced by technology. Also something we're getting used to with recent innovations in communications.

 Lentorama 2022: It Happened on Easter

Day 35: It's good to be the Chhatrapati... sometimes

After the death of Shijavi I, ruler of the Maratha Empire, his widow, Soyarabai, maneuvered to get her son, Rajaram, made emperor. Rajaram, at all of 10 years old, was installed on the throne on April 21, 1680 (I'm guessing he was unaware that it was Easter Sunday). 

The only problem is that his older half-brother, Sambhaji, was still around and aiming to be emperor. He was a prison at the time that Rajaram was elevated, but upon hearing about this Sambhaji made plans to escape. He did so, taking control of a couple of forts along the way, and on July 20, 1680, he replcaed Rajaram on the throne. Sambhaji would survive a coup attempt not long after becoming emperor, and to make sure that didn't happen again he executed a number of people involved, including Soyarabai. 

Rajaram was spared, and finally became emperor when Sambhaji was captured by the Mughals (with whom the Marathas were having a series of wars) and executed. Rajaram would serve until his death in 1700 due to lung disease (someone liked his bidis a little too much), which fittingly kicked off another succession crisis between his various wives and children. On the plus side, his family still holds the throne of what has become Kolhapur state.

 Lentorama 2022: It Happened on Easter

Day 34: The Post-Raphaelite Brotherhood

Dante Gabriel Rossetti was a poet and painter, and was a co-founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of British painters who wanted to revive the style and look of painting from 15th century Italy and Flanders. His paintings were usually of classical, mythological, or religious subjects; his only attempt at a modern painting as part of the Brotherhood went unfinished.

Rossetti was also a translator, and his work on titles like Dante's La Vita Nuova and Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur also influenced his painting (art inspired by literature was common among the Brotherhood). 

Rossetti's personal life also had a strong influence on his work, and vice versa. He had several relationships with his models, including a two year marriage to Elizabeth Siddal, which ended when she overdosed on laudanum (possibly on purpose, as the overdose happened not long after she gave birth to a stillborn child). Rossetti buried the bulk of his unpublished poems with Siddal, though friends would later convince him to dig them up for publication.

Unfortunately, the public reaction to his first volume of poetry was quite negative, finding the poems too erotic or sensual. Rossetti suffered a nervous breakdown as a result of the bad reviews, and it took him a couple of years to recover to the point where he could paint again. That period was short lived, and his mental state went back into decline. His physical health wasn't much better, between a dependence on chloral hydrate and heavy drinking to mask the drug's bitter taste. Rossetti died on April 9, 1882, of Bright's disease (a form of nephritis). 

 Lentorama 2022: It Happened on Easter

Day 33: Under the Green Grass

Marilyn Chambers (born Marilyn Briggs) wanted to be an actress. In New York she landed some modeling gigs (her first job came when she was much younger, as a baby on boxes of Ivory soap), and a small role in The Owl and the Pussycat. She went to the west coast on a promotional tour for the film, and wound up moving to San Francisco, which she thought was much more of a location for the entertainment industry than it actually was.

In 1972 she answered a newspaper ad that touted a "major motion picture" in need of actors. It turns out that the movie was porn. Chambers was concerned that making porn would prevent her from crossing over into mainstream movies, but her resemblance to Cybill Shepherd led the film's producers to give into her salary demands (which included a percentage of the film).

That film, Behind the Green Door, was a hit. Chambers would stick with porn, making Resurrection of Eve the following year. It was also successful, but rather than continue with porn Chambers wanted to make the transition to mainstream roles. The only problem was the no one in Hollywood wanted to cast a well-known porn star in their movies. 

Chambers did land a part in David Cronenberg's Rabid, but spent most of her post-porn '70s doing a variety of things, from stage acts to a memoir to singing on a disco song. Not surprisingly, she decided to return to porn, in 1980's Insatiable. Chambers would continue to make porn movies throughout the 1980s and 1990s, though she took some time off during the AIDS crisis.

She did land some roles in independent films in the 2000s, and was a vice-presidential candidate for fringe libertarian parties in 2004 and 2008. On April 12, 2009, Chambers died of a cerebral hemorrhage.

 Lentorama 2022: It Happened on Easter

Day 32: Dr. Jurin retires - permanently

John Jurin was born in London in 1684, lived in what appears to be a pretty average household, and was granted a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge. He earned a BA and a MA, became a school head teacher, and gave public lectures on mathematics and Isaac Newton. He returned to Cambridge to study medicine, earning his MD in 1716. He established a medical practice while also lecturing on anatomy and working at a London hospital.

His most notable contribution to medicine (or more precisely, public health) came in his research into smallpox variolation - where material from a smallpox sore is inserted into a scratch on a healthy person to give them a mild case of the disease, which would also confer lifelong immunity to the disease. Based on his statistical analysis, compounded by results found elsewhere in England, he determined that variolation was much less risky than catching smallpox naturally. 

His medical work didn't preclude him from involvement with math and other sciences. A fellow of the Royal Society, he was its secretary during the latter part of Isaac Newton's presidency, and was an ardent supporter of Newton's work. At one point he published a 300-plus page defending Newtonian calculus against a critique by George Berkeley. Jurin also studies optics, the mechanics of the heart, meteorology, and had a law concerning capillary action named for him.

It wasn't all smooth sailing for Jurin, though. A medicine he created for treating bladder stones may have accidentally killed Robert Walpole (though Walpole's health was always precarious). Jurin himself would pass away five years after Walpole, on March 29, 1750.

 Book Log 2022 #14: 1979 by Val McDermid

One of Scotland's most prolific crime novelists, I was aware of McDermid but hadn't read any of her works before picking up this one. It's the first novel in a series featuring Allie Burns, a journalist who is trying to break into serious reporting while being shunted off on "women's stories" at her newspaper. She finds an ally in a male investigative reporter, they're able to complete stories about international tax fraud and a Scottish nationalist group that wants to create a local version of the IRA.

While these stories give Allie greater standing in the newsroom, they also make her a target for those who she might report on next. Amid this danger she also has to balance difficulties in her personal life, including her relationship with her parents and a woeful love life.

I've read more than one review for the book that called it "charming," citing its cultural references and nostalgic depiction of the time. McDermid noted in the introduction that she herself was a fledgling journalist in 1979, so I'd think there's a fair bit of autobiography that helps with the overall tone of the book. 

I don't have any point of reference between this book and McDermid's other works, so I can't say how it measures up against her other series, but I did like this quite a bit and look forward to future installments (which will be set in 10 year increments).

 Lentorama 2022: It Happened on Easter

Day 31: More !%&#&% twisters

In March 2020 the southeast US was under an area of high pressure, which combined with calm weather to cause higher than normal temperatures and a quick warming of the waters in the Gulf of Mexico. This also created higher humidity near the water's surface, and the warm, moist air created instability where it interacted with the high pressure system. 

The result? Tornadoes. Lots of tornadoes.

Over the course of Easter weekend (April 12-13), at least 141 tornadoes touched down over 10 states, from Texas to Maryland. Monroe, Louisiana may have had the worst storm of the bunch, which didn't cause any fatalities but did a quarter billion dollars in damage. Mississippi saw the strongest storms of the outbreak - they were the only state to record storms at EF4 - and had the most deaths of any state, tallying 14 of the 38 attributed to the storms.

And, of course, this outbreak happened during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, so relief and recovery efforts were hampered by social distancing requirements and the demand for PPE.  

 Lentorama 2022: It Happened on Easter

Day 30: It's another twister!

The tornado outbreak over Easter weekend in 2000 happened a little farther south than the 1913 outbreak, with 33 known tornadoes touching down over a seven hour period on Sunday, April 23 in Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana. Unlike 1913 there were no fatalities (only 12 injured), and none of the storms were rated higher than F3. 

 Lentorama 2022: It Happened on Easter

Day 29: It's a twister!

The weekend of March 21-23, 1913, saw two major tornado outbreaks. The first, on Good Friday, struck mostly in the south, with a F4 storm in Alabama killing 27.

A larger outbreak struck the midwest on Easter Sunday, with a number of F4 storms touching down in Indiana, Missouri, and Nebraska. Nebraska actually got the worst of the outbreak, recording 135 tornadoes over the weekend, which was more than half of all tornadoes recorded. The deadliest of these tore through Omaha, where the storm entered from the west of the city and left a path of destruction through both high end neighborhoods and the city's African-American district. All told over 2000 homes were destroyed and 94 people died.

 Lentorama 2022: It Happened on Easter

Day 28: Post-it Notes hit the shelves

In 1968, Spencer Silver was trying to develop a super-strong adhesive for 3M. What he came up with was a low-strength adhesive, but one that was pressure-sensitive and reusable. Silver spent years presenting the adhesive to his colleagues, but without finding a way it could be developed into a saleable product.

In 1974, another 3M employee named Art Fry used the adhesive to solve a personal problem, using it to keep the bookmark in his hymnal in place. Fry decided to create a product out of this idea, and while his press and stick bookmarks didn't catch on, the notepads that we've come to know did, and Post-It Notes were launched to the American public on April 6, 1980.

Or at least that's the official story. An inventor named Alan Amron claimed to have developed the technology behind the Post-It Note in 1973, which he disclosed to 3M in 1974. A 1997 lawsuit led to a settlement, where Amron agreed to not press his claims if 3M agreed to not claim that they invented the Post-It Note. Amron brought another lawsuit in 2016 alleging that 3M breached their agreement by claiming that they invented the notes, but this suit was dismissed. 

 Lentorama 2022: It Happened on Easter

Day 27: Bulgaria rises up

While the Irish may have the best known rising related to the Easter holiday, the Bulgarians did it first, and on Easter Sunday to boot (albeit Western Easter).

What we think of today as Bulgaria became part of the Ottoman Empire in the mid-15th century. For a time the Ottomans were able to suppress Bulgarian identity, but Russia and Austria-Hungary would support Bulgarian Christians in occasional revolts, with an eye towards destabilizing Turkish rule in the region.

As the idea of the nation-state took hold in Europe in the 19th century, Bulgarians began to reassert their national identity, and saw an opportunity to throw off the yoke of the Ottomans, who were having their own issues in maintaining the empire. An 1875 tax on non-Muslims led to a revolt in Herzegovina, which the Ottomans put down, but the act of revolt exposed the weakness of the empire. Later that year a revolutionary committee of Bulgarians decided it was time to have a rising of their own.

After about six months of planning and preparation, the rising started on April 20, 1875, two weeks before it was planned to start thanks to a local revolutionary committee's decision to attack an Ottoman police headquarters near Sofia. The revolt spread quickly over the next few days, but the Ottomans replied in force starting on April 25. Their response was brutal, with an estimated 15,000 to 30,000 killed and 58 villages destroyed by the end of the rising in mid-May.

Reaction to the rising and its bloody quelling in the rest of Europe was strongly anti-Turkish, especially after accounts of what happened spread. The UK, which had been a supporter of the Ottomans, distanced themselves, and when Russia attacked the Ottomans in 1877 the British refused to help the Turks, citing negative public opinion due to the aftermath of the Bulgarian uprising.

It was the treaties that came after the Russo-Turkish War that would lead to the re-establishment of an independent Bulgaria, albeit a small principality that was still legally affiliated with the Ottoman Empire. It wouldn't be until 1908 that a fully independent Kingdom of Bulgaria was proclaimed.

 Lentorama 2022: It Happened on Easter

Day 26: Wham! in China

When the pop duo Wham! took the stage at Bejing's People's Gymnasium on April 7, 1985, it was the culmination of 18 months work started by their manager, Simon Naptier-Bell. The Chinese wanted a Western musical act to play in China to help spur foreign investment, and Napier-Bell wanted Wham! to be that act. The only problem: the rock band Queen was also vying for this groundbreaking opportunity.

So Napier-Bell resorted to a little propaganda/homophobia. He drew up brochures that showed Wham! members George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley as clean-cut Brits, while depicting Queen frontman Freddie Mercury in the dress and poses common to Queen performances. The ploy worked, and China gave Wham! the OK to play.

The band wound up playing two shows in the People's Republic (one in Beijing and one in Guangzhou), and faced some unique challenges with regards to the audience and their cultural expectations for attending a concert. They were quiet, forbidden from dancing, and didn't understand the concept of clapping along to the music. These problems dissipated as the concert went along, but it might not be a coincidence that it was another 10 years before a Western act (this time the Swedish duo Roxette) was cleared to play in China.

A documentary about the tour, Wham! in China: Foreign Skies was released in 1986. Footage shot for that project was used to create the music video for the song "Freedom," which I'm sure the Chinese government appreciated.

 Lentorama 2022: It Happened on Easter

Day 25: Catholics get an American university that isn't Notre Dame

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops first discussed establishing an official Catholic university in the US in 1866. They adopted the name for the institution, The Catholic University of America, in 1885. Which doesn't seem like a name that would take 19 years to come up with. In any case, the first US bishop sent over to ask for papal approval to found the school went to Rome in 1882. But it wasn't until April 10, 1887, that the pope sent a letter that formally granted his approval to the school. The university incorporated that year, laid the cornerstone for its first building the following year (President Cleveland was in attendance), and opened for business in 1889.

The school was originally focused on graduate study in the areas traditional to pontifical universities: philosophy, theology, and canon law. The school opened an undergraduate division in 1904, and took on a law school in 1954. Today the school has just over 5300 students, and is located in a section of Washington DC that earned the nickname "Little Rome" as there are over 60 Catholic institutions in the area.

Notable alumni include actors Chris and Susan Sarandon, John Slattery, and Jon Voight; New York governor Kathy Hochul; and what seems like at least half of the current American cardinals.

 Book Log 2022 #13: Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

This memoir about Zauner's difficult relationship with her mother, and how it changed once her mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, was widely praised upon publication, and rightfully so. It's a powerful and moving look at the struggles of adolescence and young adulthood, the friction between parents and children (both in general and specific to Korean culture), the power of food to build and trigger memories, and the effect grief and loss have on us as individuals and with our relationships.

I don't have a lot in common with Zauner, but like her I lost my mother to cancer when I was in my 20s. Our relationship was very different than the one that Zauner had with her mother, but there were definite commonalities between her experience and mine, and discovering those similarities made me appreciate the book that much more.

 Lentorama 2022: It Happened on Easter

Day 24: Charles Grodin debuts

Charles Grodin was born on April 21, 1935, though being born on Easter Sunday probably didn't mean much as his parents followed Orthodox Judaism. Grodin dropped out of college to pursue acting, and landed a number of small and supporting roles before breaking out in 1972's The Heartbreak Kid (though he turned down the role of Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate).

He was featured in comedic roles for much of the 1970s and '80s, most notably in Midnight Run. He would transition to family films in the 1990s and 2000s, and then took a break from film to focus on his family, TV commentary, writing, and theater. He returned to film in 2006, and had several parts in movies and TV until he stopped acting in 2017. He passed away in 2021 from bone marrow cancer.

His comedy film roles mostly had him playing the straight man, usually one put upon by unexpected circumstances. This played counter to his usual talk show persona, where he would be combative and verbally spar with Johnny Carson and David Letterman. While this was very much an act, it wasn't always obvious to viewers, many of whom wrote to NBC to complain. I have to admit I mostly know Grodin though his Letterman appearances (and his guest hosting when Letterman had heart surgery), and was always highly entertained by their exchanges.

 Lentorama 2022: It Happened on Easter

Day 23: Tobias Hume switches from composing to decomposing

Unless you are a fan of viol music or have read the novel Loot and Loyalty by Jerzy Pietrkiewicz, it's unlikely you've heard of Tobias Hume. A Scot who served as an officer in the Swedish and Russian armies, he spent his non-military time composing music for the viol, which he felt was superior to the lute. This got him crosswise with Sting's favorite luteist, John Dowland, though it didn't seem to go beyond publishing a refutation of Hume's ideas.

Hume was occasionally whimsical (or eccentric, depending on your point of view) with his compositions, such as the one that would require two people to play the same viol, with one sitting in the lap of the other. He also had a work that required the player to hit the viol with their bow, which was odd for the time but is considered the first use of the technique now called col legno, which shows up in works by Mozart, Hayden, and Radiohead (among others).

The combination of military and musical careers apparently didn't go as well for Hume as you might think, as in his later years he became a resident of the London Charterhouse, an almshouse for older men of a higher than average station (such as gentlemen, soldiers, merchants, and servants of the royal family). During his time at Charterhouse he game himself a promotion to colonel (records indicate he never had a higher rank than captain), a title he used when publishing writings saying he could quell the rebels in Ireland or make the king 20 million pounds if given his own navy for three months. 

Howe entered Charterhouse at Christmas in 1629 and died there on Easter, April 16, 1645.

 Lentorama 2022: It Happened on Easter

Day 22: Get your Sunday paper here!

While daily newspapers had been around for a while, up to 1780 no one had tried to put out a paper on Sunday. That changed on March 26, 1780, when the  British Gazette and Sunday Monitor put out its first edition.

If you want to know anything more than that about the paper, good luck. The best that I can tell the paper was published by an E. Johnson (though at least one site I found had his first initial as F) and published its last issue in 1805 (according to the Library of Congress). Though I also found a page that claimed it changed its name to The Times in 1788 (it didn't, that paper started in 1785 as the Daily Universal Register). 

Perhaps most galling (if you have gall to spare over this sort of thing) is that the Wikipedia page on the history of British newspapers claims that the world's first Sunday newspaper was The Observer. Whose Wikipedia page notes correctly that it's the world's oldest Sunday paper. Get this fixed, editors!

 Lentorama 2022: It Happened on Easter

Day 21: Antibiotic resistance gets a toe hold

On April 9, 1950, biochemists Thomas H. Jukes and Robert Stokstad announced that they discovered that adding antibiotics to animal feed leads to increased growth.  They found that using a 400 to 1 ratio of animal feed to antibiotics caused a 50 percent increase in size in piglets, with smaller gains in chicks and calves. This was a boon to the pharmaceutical market as it opened up a new market, and to livestock producers who were always looking to increase yield. 

But it's probably less of a boon to the rest of us, as the continual use of antibiotics kills off the susceptible bacteria, leaving only resistant strains, which then fill the niche opened up by the death of those other bacteria. Growers then have to move to new antibiotics and repeat this process all over again. Eventually you get bacteria resistant to most antibiotics, which can then spread through animals (and the humans who raise and eat them). 

The European Union banned the practice in 1999, while in the US the Food and Drug Administration has released several guidance letters trying to reduce the practice, but an outright ban has yet to be implemented.

 Book Log 2022 #12: A Column of Fire by Ken Follett

This entry in the Kingsbridge series takes out out of the town and into the wider world (and conflicts) of the Elizabethan era.  What events that happen in the town reflect what's going on in the wider world, as its three most influential families - one staunchly Catholic, one Puritan, one nominally Catholic but not averse to Protestantism - struggle to hold power and maintain their positions. But unlike the earlier books, much of the action here takes place not just in Britain but in Europe as well.

This is facilitated by one of Kingsbridge's own becoming a spy in the service of Elizabeth.  As he advances in trust and seniority he becomes more integral to fending off Catholic plots against the queen, both from abroad and (very) close to home.

 This change, while obvious, didn't really strike me as I was reading the book. I did note that the cathedral itself was much less central to the story, but didn't really twig onto how different the plot was to the other two books. It could be that basing the story on the broader events of the period made the change less noticeable, or I just wasn't being particularly observant. Either way, I don't think it particularly detracts from the book, which I did like quite a bit.

 Lentorama 2022: It Happened on Easter

Day 20: Easter comes early

I know, Easter happening on Easter isn't exactly news. But it kind of was on March 22, 1818, as that's the earliest possible date on which Easter can happen. This article gives more detail on the history of how the date of Easter is calculated and the possibility of Eastern and Western Christian churches finally agreeing on a common date for the holiday.

If you're interested in celebrating Easter on this earliest day, you should start taking care of yourself. The next year that Easter is on that date is 2285. But if you miss that one you only have to wait until 2353 for it to come around again.

 Lentorama 2022: It Happened on Easter

Day 19: Arnold Houbraken is born

Arnold Houbraken was born in the Netherlands on March 28, 1660. He was sent to learn threadtwisting (not sure if that's for art or the actual manufacture of thread), but was also taught engraving. He would later study painting, and would move to Amsterdam after he was married to pursue art as a career.

But what he was best known for was writing, or at least the writing of one particular work, The Great Theatre of Dutch Painters. Published in three volumes (the last coming out after he died), this work is perhaps the greatest source of biographical information on 17th century Dutch painters. It is in some cases the only source for images of painters, as Houbraken included several engraved portraits. As comprehensive as the work is, it did miss some painters whose esteem would grow over time, most notably Jan Vermeer, who gets one mention in passing throughout the entire work. 

The book is included in the Digital Library of Dutch Literature's Basic Library of 1000 works from the middle ages to today that are seen as foundational for Dutch culture.

Lentorama 2022: It Happened on Easter 

Day 18: Kids pester local man to have Easter egg roll on his lawn

The origins of the White House Easter egg roll are murky, but it seems to have started with Dolley Madison in 1814. For years afterwards, it was not uncommon to see Easter egg rolls all over Washington DC on Easter Monday (and occasionally Good Friday), and in the 1870s the main location for the event was the Capitol.

As you might imagine, having hundreds of people running around rolling eggs and otherwise cavorting does a number on your green space. Congress didn't want to spend money fixing things after each year's roll, so in 1876 they banned the use of the Capitol grounds as aa children's playground. Heavy rain cancelled the event in 1877, but ads taken out in the newspapers on Easter Sunday 1878 reminded the locals that the Capitol was closed for egg rolling. 

Enter President Rutherford B. Hayes. He wasn't particularly aware of the egg rolling tradition, and while on his daily walk some kids stopped him to ask if they could use the South Lawn of the White House now that the Capitol was off limits. Hayes went back to the White House, asked some staff about it, and instructed them to give access to any kid who came to the White House looking to roll eggs. 

The egg rolling tradition continues to this day, though the event is much more tightly controlled. There are other events besides egg rolling, and there are often appearances by celebrities or other members of government. At the end of the day all attendees get a commemorative wooden egg signed by the President and the First Lady.

 Lentorama 2022: It Happened on Easter

Day 17: The Guantanamo Files drop

Starting on April 24, 2011, several hundred files regarding prisoners held in the US base at Guantanamo Bay were released by WikiLeaks and published by media outlets including The New York Times and The Guardian (the Times said they received the files independently from WikiLeaks, and they shared them with other media outlets). 

The files detailed the incarceration of over 150 individuals from Afghanistan and Pakistan, ranging in age from 14 to 89, many held for years without charges. Most of those were held specifically for intelligence gathering, rather than being considered a risk for terrorism. Most exhibited signs of mental illness due to their long confinement.

Along with these details was a statement given by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed stating that al-Qaeda would detonate a nuclear device in Europe if Osama bin Laden was captured or killed. Given that bin Laden was killed by US Navy SEALs in 2011, this was either a lie or al-Qaeda is playing a very long game.

 Lentorama 2022: It Happened on Easter*

Day 16: Lidwina embarks on the road to sainthood

As a teenager, Lidwina was seriously injured in an ice skating accident, and never fully recovered from her injuries. In fact, she became progressively more disabled, losing function in everything but her left hand and prone to bleeding and the loss of body parts. There's some thought today that Lidwina was actually suffering from multiple sclerosis. 

Attestations taken during her lifetime stated that Lidwina rarely if ever slept or eat, and recorded instances of her ability to heal the sick or provide food that would last much longer than expected based on the quantity given. She continued her good works until her death on April 14, 1433.

Locals began to venerate Lidwina almost immediately, and several biographies (including one by Thomas à Kempis) helped to establish her following. Her relics moved to Brussels for a time after the chapel they were housed in in her hometown of Schiedam, the Netherlands was destroyed.  A new church was later built and the relics returned home. In 1890, Pope Leo XII made Lidwina a saint by equipollent canonization, which allows the pope to make someone a saint outside of the usual procedure due to the continued universal veneration of the individual.

* The date used here is when Easter would have fallen if the Gregorian calendar were in place in 1433, rather than the actual date of Easter that year reckoned by the Julian calendar. 

 Lentorama 2022: It Happened on Easter

Day 15: Anthony Fokker is born

Anton "Anthony" Fokker was born on April 6, 1890, in the Dutch East Indies, where his father owned a coffee plantation. The family moved back to the Netherlands when Fokker was four, and as he grew up he showed an interest in mechanical things but not much interest in school.

Fokker was sent to Germany as a young man to become an auto mechanic, but he had been interested in flying ever since seeing Wilbur Wright's flying demonstration in France in 1908. He transferred to a company that also made airplanes, and started to build and design his own models. After showing success he opened up his own company and started building his own planes. 

At the outbreak of World War I, the German government took over his factory, and Fokker started to build the warplanes that made him famous. Though his status didn't come without controversy, as he was seen as a less than ethical businessman, a designer who took credit for others' work, and he had issues with planes failing in flight due to problems with production or design (though he would argue that interference by German engineers and the military caused some of these problems). He also helped develop an interrupter gear that timed machine gun fire so it wouldn't hit the propeller, though it also had mechanical issues that caused crashes.

After the war, with Germany banned from rearming itself, Fokker moved his business (and most of his remaining stock) to the Netherlands. He expanded his business by moving to the US in the 1920s, where his planes were the choice of aviators and explorers like Richard Byrd and Amelia Earhart. That good publicity dimmed when Notre Dame football coach Knute Rockne died in a Fokker plane crash. Fokker would later take his company public, which led to its acquisition by General Motors and his eventual resignation from the company. Fokker would die in the US in 1939 from pneumococcal meningitis.

 Lentorama 2022: It Happened on Easter

Day 14: Patrick Pearse elected president of the Irish Republic

The Irish Republican Brotherhood planned on leading a rebellion in Ireland against British rule as early as 1914, taking advantage of Britain's involvement in World War I. This led to the establishment of a military council within the IRB, which continued to plan for a rising even though the leadership of the IRB and the related Irish Volunteers thought the timing wasn't right. 

As planning continued, the council got the Irish Citizen Army, led by James Connolly, to join in the rebellion rather than launch their own. In the week prior to Easter, the British intercepted a shipment of German arms meant for the rebels, which prompted the ICA to call off all actions for Easter Sunday. 

The IRB's military council on Easter, April 23 1916, and decided to go ahead with the rising, even if the ICA wouldn't be involved. Patrick Pearse was named both president of the Irish Republic and commander in chief of its army (made up of the Irish Volunteers and the ICA). New orders were sent out, and the rest is history.

 Lentorama 2022: It Happened on Easter

Day 13: The Battle of Toulouse begins

One of the last battles of the Napoleonic Wars the Battle of Toulouse actually started after the abdication of Napoleon and the capitulation of the French Empire, but as news traveled slowly in those days the fighting continued. 

A force led by the Duke of Wellington pushed out of Spain and proceeded to Toulouse, one of the last strongholds for Napoleon in the south. Fighting began on Easter Sunday, April 10, 1814, with a plan of using a diversonary attack to draw off some of the French troops so that the main body of Wellington's army could take the Heights of Calvinet. Muddy fields and some battlefield confusion led to some disjointed fighting early on, but by the end of the day the main force had taken the heights, and the French pulled back behind the city's fortifications. 

From their new positions, the allied army was able to move its forces up the next day, leading the French commander to abandon the city. Officials turned the city over to Wellington on the 12th, at which point he learned of Napoleon's abdication. An armistice was signed a few days after that, once French military leaders were satisfied that the provisional government was legitmate.