Tag Archives: reading

04.09.24
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Libraries

Kudos to my friend Jerry Apps for reminding me that this week—April 7-13, 2024—is National Library Week. The theme this year, according to the American Library Association, is “Ready, Set, Library!” 

Apart from the brutish verbing of an ancient and honorable noun, I endorse the sentiment.

Libraries, expecially local public libraries, are wonderful things. 

“Libraries connect our communities and enrich our lives in ways we may not realize,” says National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature and Newbery and Pura Belpré-award winning author Meg Medina, who serves as 2024 Honorary Chair.

Birth of a Bookworm

The first library where Your New Favorite Writer ever had borrowing privileges was the public library on Park Street in Streator, Illinois. I was astonished and proud to learn that, shucks, even kids in grade school could have library cards. I signed up and started reading books, one after another.

Streator’s Carnegie-built public library in 1903, still in daily use.

In those days, between the ages of six and twelve, I read what today we call kid lit. Adventures like Treasure Island and Swiss Family Robinson. Cowboy books like The Coming of Hopalong Cassidy. Horse books by Marguerite Henry, dog books by Albert Payson Terhune, Lassie Come-Home by Eric Knight. 

I read biographies especially written for children—thumbnail sketches of American heroes like Andrew Jackson, John C. Frémont, Lou Gehrig, and George Washington Carver. Casting my mind back to remember a children’s biography of a notable woman, I draw a blank. Sorry, dear—we just didn’t have them.

We had plenty of sports books, though, most of them written by Jackson Scholz or John R. Tunis. None of those books won the Newbery Medal or the Pura Belpré Award, but they were exciting and taught sportsmanship, persistence, self-respect, and consideration for others. 

And then there was science fiction. 

A great place to loiter. Photo from Streator Public Library website. Fair Use.

Dear Reader, when I was a boy, no actual human being had ever flown into space. But the feat had already been achieved many times over in the works of Robert Heinlein, Lester Del Rey, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke. 

My habit, when loitering—there is no better word for it—in the Streator Public Library, was to find a book that looked interesting, pull it off the shelf, and start reading. There in the cool stacks, I sat or squatted on the marble floor and read, sometimes as much as half a book before my stomach told me it was lunch time, or supper time. Then I would trot to the front desk, flash my library card, check out the book, and take it home to finish.

Carnegie Libraries

The library was a swell place to spend time, a temple of learning in its own right. It was one of 2,509 libraries built between 1883 and 1929 with money donated by Scottish-born steel magnate Andrew Carnegie—1,689 of them in the United States. 

According to its website, “The Streator Public Library is a US Landmark Carnegie facility that was constructed in 1903. The Fuchs murals that were installed, around the interior of the lower dome, were painted on leather in a local shop and installed in 1905. The original grand stair case, woodwork, shelves, and stained glass are still in place. Many of the original oak tables are still utilized.” 

Andrew Carnegie in 1913. Photo by Theodore Marceau. Public Domain.

Carnegie started his philanthropy by building a library in his birthplace of Dunfermline, Scotland. Then he gave a library to his adopted hometown of Allegheny, Pennsylvania, and another to Braddock, Pennsylvania, the site of one of his steel mills. 

Eventually, it got out of hand.

As Carnegie began to realize how much money he had, he entertained library proposals from all over. In 1897 he hired a personal assistant, James Bertram, and put him in charge of screening all the requests. They developed a questionnaire to determine whether a town applying for a library actually needed and could support one. They made sure local officials were committed to funding the ongoing costs in perpetuity. 

Once a town was declared eligible to receive a Carnegie library, a handsome edifice was built—in any of several different styles, but with quality and elegance. It was almost always entered by a flight of stairs, symbolizing the elevation of the public mind through reading. There was also a lamp post or lantern near the entrance, a symbol of enlightenment. 

Carnegie pioneered the open stack library. Until then, most library stacks were closed. You submitted a request for a book, and then a librarian went and got it for you. Carnegie figured self-service would reduce operating costs for libraries, and he was right.

But open stacks brought a greater risk of pilferage. So the circulation desks at Carnegie libraries are usually large, imposing, and placed conspicuously near the main entrance. 

That Desk is a Friend of Mine

The new Endres circulation desk. Screenshot from Streator Public Library website. Fair use.

In 2013, a new circulation desk was installed at the Streator Public Library, dedicated to the memory of Oral and Dorothy Endres, the donor’s parents. As it happens, I remember Oral Endres. He was an insurance agent for Metropolitan Life. A nice man. When I was a boy, about seventy years ago, he spent time at our kitchen table often enough so I knew his name. He made sure we were adequately covered.

Mr. Endres’ son, who gave the new circulation desk, was not as big a donor as Andrew Carnegie; but it’s the thought that counts.

Visit your local library soon. While you’re there, take out a book.

Blessings,

Larry F. Sommers

Your New Favorite Writer

08.04.20
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Six Simple Steps to Literary Lionhood

Today, as a public service (Ta-DA!), we begin a series of articles meant to help You, The Aspiring Author, conquer the himalayas of literary greatness. 

Actual Himalayas. Drukair, Bhutan. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

You’re welcome.

We propose that you achieve this impressive goal in SIX SIMPLE STEPS. 

“Simple” is not the same as “easy.” The six things you must do to pluck fame and fortune from the slushpile of rejected hopes are as simple as any six steps can be. 

If they were easy, everybody would be Stephen King.

Oh, do not ask, “What is it?” / Let us go and make our visit.

 (Literary Allusion Alert: File under “T.S. Eliot.”)
T.S. Eliot. Photo by Lady Ottoline Morrell. Public Domain.

Step One: Skip Straight to “Literary Lion”

Cut the line. 

Do not wait for greatness to be thrust upon you. Thrust it upon yourself. 

Since becoming a literary lion is your goal, go ahead and be one. Believe me, if you can’t do this one simple thing, you’re not going to find the other five steps any easier.

(Caveat: What We Are Not Saying. We are not saying “Fake it till you make it.” You can’t fake literary accomplishment. You have to get it the old-fashioned way, like the guy in that old commercial says. You have to earn it.)

If you haven’t begun to do so yet, then begin now.

You must do all kinds of inherently literary things. Such as, for example, “Write.” But that’s Step Two.

Meanwhile, there are a lot of other literary things you must do in addition to writing.

When you do them, as you must, you will be living the literary life—like it or not. 

Are you prepared for this?

You must read. We don’t mean just “read.” Everybody reads for fun, don’t they? 

(No, not actually. Lots of people never read anything more interesting than a cloned Facebook meme. But if you’re still with us, then you are probably one of those who do read, at least for fun.)

At the risk of repeating ourselves, we don’t mean just “read”—we mean READ. 

Read everything you can that’s a classic of your genre. And for balance, read things that are poorly-executed examples of your genre. Read things outside your genre entirely. 

Read books and articles on the art and craft of writing. Read pieces about the business of writing, and how to sell your work. 

Read books, stories, articles, and blog posts by friends (more on this in “Step 3: Get Feedback” and “Step 4: Associate”). Read your own work, with a view to improving it. Read miscellaneous books that come to your attention, just because somebody said they were good.

Read good literature. It may help you figure out how to write good literature.

Larry F. Sommers,

An up-and-coming writer of our acquaintance, Larry F. Sommers, testifies:

“I was seventy years old before I got serious about writing. I thought I was quite a reader, but since becoming a literary lion, I’ve averaged fifty to seventy-five books a year—not to mention stories, articles, and poems.”

When you read this much, two things will happen: (1) Your library card will get threadbare from use. (2) Partly-finished, recently finished, and not-yet-started books will occupy every horizontal surface in your vicinity. Welcome to literary lionhood.

Lion. Photo by Kevin Pluck, licensed under CC BY 2.0.

(Lionhood is the state of being a lion—a literary one, in our case. Lionization—Haha!—maybe in the Afterlife.)

You must gather your tools about you. There are certain things you will need. Some of them cost money, and you must be prepared to invest in them. 

You need a good, standard dictionary such as Webster’s New World College Dictionary or even the Oxford English Dictionary if you can afford it. Either hardcopy or electronic version will cost money. (The many freebie dictionaries found online are about worth what you pay for them.) 

You will need the latest edition of the Chicago Manual of Style. It’s the starting point on important matters of style for nearly all publishers. But you also need a copy of Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style, which in some particulars contradicts the Chicago manual; it’s still worth owning for its brief but powerful advice on how to write the English language. And you will want at least a couple of writers’ magazines; we recommend The Writer and Writer’s Digest for starters.

In order to get your work widely read, you will need to sell it. Therefore you will want some useful compendia of marketing information, such as Writer’s Market or Writer’s Handbook; Jeff Herman’s Guide To Book Publishers, Editors and Literary Agents; and a $25 monthly subscription to the enormously useful PublishersMarketplace website.

Basic tools of craft are needed just for getting your words down on paper (or its electronic equivalent). Some particular brand of laptop computer, let’s say; or a ruled notebook and pens or pencils of a certain kind; or an antique Underwood typewriter; or goose quills. Every writer has his or her own preferred substrate. But whatever it is, you need to have it, so you can, you know, write (see “Step Two: Write”).

We seriously recommend a good computer and a copy of Microsoft Word. If you originate your manuscripts in any other medium or format, you will still need to copy it over to a computer file before a publisher can use it to bring you lots of fame and fortune. But suit yourself.

You must make your presence known. This falls, really, into “Step 6: Platform.” But the problem is, you can’t wait till the end of the process to build your platform. You’ve got to start now.

A writer’s “platform” is simply the sum total of credible ways by which that writer makes his or her work known to the world. If you’re a major motion picture star, all you have to do is write a book and let the publicist mention it to the world. You have millions of adoring fans already; some of them will buy your book.

For those of us who are not celebrities, it’s harder. You have to acquire fans one at a time and keep them interested in you and your writing until you can publish a book and press it into their hot little hands. It takes time for an unknown author to build a following of people who can be relied on to buy a book. Start now.

You make your presence known by authoring a blog; by frequenting one or more social media engines such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, etc.; by showing up at writerly events in your vicinity, such as book signings and readings, literary chats, etc.; or by attending writers’ courses and conferences. 

As you do these things, more and more people will begin to recognize you as a fixture of that part of the world they think of as “literary.” That’s good. That’s what you want.

You must write. This is self-evident, but we include it here because it is an essential part of becoming a literary lion. “Essential” in this case means, “You cannot omit it.”

But never fear. The writing part is so important we devote an entire step to it. In fact, the very next one in this series, “Step Two: Write.” 

So here and now it suffices to say that writing is the quintessential literary activity. The more time you spend writing, the more time you spend in the world of the literary lion.

THEREFORE, Dear Reader:  When you faithfully practice these key disciplines of literary lionhood—reading, gaining possession and use of essential literary tools, making your presence known in literary venues, and actually spending regular amounts of time writing your work—you will not have to pinch yourself, or poke yourself in the eye (which we would not recommend in any case) to know that you are living the literary life. 

You will have stepped into the Twilight Zone which is the literary world, on your way to the base camp for scaling the literary himalayas.

Bon voyage.

NEXT INSTALLMENT: “Step Two: Write” 

Blessings,

Larry F. Sommers, Your New Favorite Author

Author of Price of Passage—A Tale of Immigration and Liberation.

Price of Passage

Norwegian Farmers and Fugitive Slaves in Pre-Civil War Illinois

BUY NOW

(History is not what you thought!)

03.31.20
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A Pair of Good Books

It’s a good season for robust and interesting writing. I have two book recommendations, one fiction and one nonfiction.

The Coming of Cactus Jim

Kansas sheriff James Early makes his debut in Early’s Fall, by Jerry Peterson. Known to his friends as “Cactus”—and I guess I’ll have to read another book or two to find out what that’s about—Early is a cowboy sort of guy, equally at home riding the range on horseback or in a sheriff’s department jeep. 

The book, set in the 1940s, opens with a bold-as-brass daylight bank robbery in a sleepy little town. Early and his deputy scour the countryside in a high-speed, all-terrain chase, to no avail. Before they can catch the taunting, whimsical bank robber, they get distracted by a grisly murder.

Jerry Peterson

As Early methodically investigates likely suspects in the murder, he stops a passenger train, interrogates an Israeli secret agent, and is forced to balance his professional duties with care for his pregnant wife’s mental aberrations. Everything unravels inexorably to an exciting and moving finish.

Peterson, a seasoned author with fourteen books to his credit, knows how to keep a story moving at a compelling pace. His diction is strong and his images stirring. You won’t lightly put down Early’s Fall.

Combustible Wisdom

Norwegian journalist and author Lars Mytting has three critically acclaimed novels to his credit. But the book that made him a household name in the Nordic world is the nonfiction classic Norwegian Wood: Chopping, Stacking, and Drying Wood the Scandinavian Way.

Mytting’s book comes along at just the right time to make me a better-informed woodsman. Some of his practical advice—about axes, chainsaws, and such—tallies with my own observations over the year. Some, however, has given me a new understanding of the best ways to process timber for burning in my fireplace or my cozy little woodstove.

I had long assumed—I don’t know why, wishful thinking perhaps—that if logs sit in the open air for up to a year before being split, they will be better seasoned and thus will split better, or at least easier. Wrong, says Mytting. Log should be split just after the timber is felled. Not only does the wood split easiest when it is fresh; the splitting itself is essential to the proper seasoning of the wood. To dry quickly and fully, the inner wood must be exposed. A log that sits, fully wrapped in bark, for any length of time will start to decompose from the inside out. Even a little bit of this internal rot eliminates hot gases needed for efficient burning and guarantees that the log will never fully dry.

Lars Mytting

So from now on, I’ll split all my wood as soon as I get it.

For me, that was the great lesson from this informative book; for you, something else might be. Writing with fluid and engaging clarity, Mytting delves into all aspects of the Scandinavian firewood experience, as witness his chapter heads: “The Cold,” “The Forest,” “The Tools,” “The Chopping Block,” “The Woodpile,” “The Seasoning,” “The Stove,” and “The Fire.” Each subject, by turn, is thoughtfully and fully explained. The whole book is well-illustrated with photos of lovely and creative woodpiles.

If you burn any wood at home, this book is sure to tell you things you’ll wish you had known before.  

#

Two books, Early’s Fall and Norwegian Wood. Great books for the he-men, and the she-women, among you. Go now and read.

Blessings,

Larry F. Sommers, Your New Favorite Writer

Author of Price of Passage—A Tale of Immigration and Liberation.

Price of Passage

Norwegian Farmers and Fugitive Slaves in Pre-Civil War Illinois

BUY NOW

(History is not what you thought!)

11.19.19
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Memoirs of Millie Marie Gunsten Sommers, Part II

This is a guest post by Millie Sommers (1889-1971), my grandmother. In 1969, at my request, she wrote a memoir of her life, mostly telling about her early days, around 1900. She wrote 13 pages, in clear, crisp longhand. I have broken it into three parts for easy reading. It is verbatim, straight from her pen, except for a few additions of my own, in [square brackets]. 

Grandma’s Narrative:

I was the oldest at home, and was more of a homebody, not caring so much for getting out and tearing around as some liked to do.

Grandma at 18

There was always plenty to do at home outside of school hours, and then we didn’t have automobiles those days to race around in. We had parties of different kinds quite often especially in the winter. When they were out of town we often went in bob-sleds—a farm wagon bed on sled runners, with straw in the bottom to sit on.

Of course there were dances, but I didn’t care for them, and my folks didn’t like them either.

They were mostly public dances in a hall, and some not very nice to go to.

They didn’t have dances in schools & for teenagers as they do today.

Roller Skates and Old Maid Decks

Then Roller skates came in & as we had no cement walks those days, the skating rinks were in a hall or opera House. Very few had their own skates, whoever operated the rinks had skates for rent.

I was never very good at it, but I always went and tried. But ice skating was simply out for me. I was too clumsy or too big a coward or Something.

19th Century Old Maid deck. Public Domain.

My father was never a very religious man, but he never would allow a deck of cards in the house, even a deck of “Old Maid” as was popular then.

So I never learned to play cards & didn’t care enough for it to play much, or try to learn.

At school we played BaseBall, jumped rope, drop the Handkerchief etc. (I expect you think “Some Fun”)

In summer & fall when the leaves came down, we would rake the leaves into ridges or walls for the houses we would layout, marking off rooms etc. This was mostly the girls games. We also played hide & seek quite a bit in the evening, and caught lightning bugs under the street lights.

“Day 264: Raking the Leaves” by -Snugg- is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0 

When some cousins or neighbors came to visit in the evening, especially in the winter, we kids would play what we called “Dark Room,” which was Hide & Seek in the comparatively dark bedrooms or other unoccupied rooms. It was a lot of fun but I wouldn’t have liked my children playing that game, as the rooms were not very presentable when we were through, as we crawled over & under beds and other furniture etc.

Avid Reader

My one enjoyment was reading, and I had a little trouble with my eyes. The folks would hide any books I was reading, but I usually dug something out to read. My grandmother [Johnanna Marie Elizabeth Nybro Gunstenson Reierson Anson] lived next door at the time, and she was as much of a reader as I was. Of course they didn’t have magazines and librarys in most every town as they do now. 

One day she bro’t out some magazines that were yellow with age, but they surely had a lot of good stories in them. I don’t know where she got them, but she had a lot of them & would bring out a few at a time. So I had a “Field Day” for quite awhile. She came from Norway, but these were American magazines.

My younger brothers and sisters cared for a few different things that I did not.

But as I write it, it seems like practically nothing compared to what they have today, but we never knew about anything else, so we were satisfied.

Organic Entertainment

We always had an organ, a reed organ as practically everybody had. We didn’t have pianos at that time.

1882 advertisement for Beatty’s Parlor Organs. Public Domain.

My mother taught me a few pieces to play by ear when I was quite young, long before I was of school age. & soon I could play practically anything by ear, or rather any tunes I had ever heard.

Then one day while looking in the instruction book I accidentially [sic] caught on as to how the notes were placed on the scale & what it all meant. So after that I played also by note. None of my sisters or brothers ever learned to play much.

I have always played in churchs [sic], Sunday Schools, School etc. without ever having taken a lesson.

I never have learned the pipe organ & very little on Electric organs, tho I have always wanted to, and still do.

Household Chores

Being oldest of the family, I naturally learned to cook & sew very well & did most of the sewing for the family. Those days we couldn’t go to the store & buy ready-made clothes as we do today.

But I never cared too much for sweeping, dusting etc. I would rather do outside work, such as shoveling snow, carrying coal, wood etc. and as my brothers were a lot younger than I, I could always do that. One thing I remember that I had forgotten about, where a short time ago something in a paper mentioned the fact that when we set the table, we always turned the plates upside down over the knife, fork & spoon. I think maybe on account of dust etc. as we usually left them on the table from meal to meal along with salt, pepper, Sugar, vinegar etc. which were in a caster (a sort of merry-go-round) which was in the Center of the table & was high and would hold up the Cover.

We always covered the table with a thin white cloth or a mosquito bar or something.

Feel the Burn

We usually had a summer kitchen for summer use, as we had no gas, electricity, or even kerosene stoves at that time.

We would move the kitchen stove out there every spring, unless we had two stoves as some had.

But it was nice to get the stove out of the way so we didn’t have to look at it in hot weather.

Corn cobs. Photo by Krish Dulal, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Then there was usually a rag carpet, which had to be taken up each spring & cleaned.

We burned quite a lot of corn cobs in the summer as they made a quick fire & would cool down quickly when we were done with it.

Later we had a kerosene stove, and then a gasoline stove. That was something! but a lot of people were afraid of them.

There were no furnaces in those days. As for heating stoves, they were also moved out and in, spring & fall, or at least set back in the corner, and decorated a little during the summer. These burned coal or wood.

1888 Advertisement for a gasoline “vapor stove.” Public Domain.

Then there was the Base Burner which was a large heating stove, with small squares of ising glass [sic] all around, through which the fire glowed and looked real nice. They burned hard or anthracite coal with very little smoke or soot.

We didn’t always have transportation of our own but our grandparents lived near, on a near farm at first, then in Middletown they lived next door. So we went with them quite often. Of course we didn’t go places like folks do now a days, and if we went to Springfield or some place farther, we went on the train. To go to Greenview (10 miles) on the train we had to change in Petersburg. But we went that way every once in a while.

While living in the country, we went to Church & Sunday School sometimes at a Country Church.

Then there were always Decoration Day services at the Cemetery about 2½ miles from town.

There was a speakers stand, and they would take an organ out from town. I sometimes played the organ at these services. Later when a band was organized they played too.

Then on 4th of July we usually went to Greenview. They had a large grove there at the edge of town, and there would be a program. Everyone took a picnic lunch, but I can’t remember that there were any tables. They just spread the lunch on the ground.

The water supply was in large barrels, set around the grove. There was ice in them, and about a dozen tin cups fastened to the barrel with long chains, and eveyone drank. (Real sanitary)

They also had fireworks, but of course not as elaborate as they have today. But we all had firecrackers, sparcklers [sic] etc.

Next Week: All the Comforts of a 19th Century Home

Blessings, 

Larry F. Sommers, Your New Favorite Author 

Larry F. Sommers

Author of Price of Passage—A Tale of Immigration and Liberation.

Price of Passage

Norwegian Farmers and Fugitive Slaves in Pre-Civil War Illinois

BUY NOW

(History is not what you thought!)