PUBLICATIONS Inside Illinois Vol. 21, No. 3, Aug. 2, 2001

More Sizzlin' Summer Reading

Photo by Bill Wiegand Mare Payne

Mare Payne
associate director, News Bureau
I make lots of lists – of things to do today, this week, and, of course, books to read. The book list keeps growing, outpacing my time for marking any off.

Here’s one for fans of legal thrillers. After hearing NPR’s quirky "This American Life" spend an entire hour with New York Times reporter Kurt Eichenwald, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on his book, "The Informant." It’s the masterfully written tale of the price-fixing fiasco of Decatur’s Archer Daniels Midland Co.

For intrigue, it rivaled any fiction by John Grisham or Scott Turow. The latter, I believe, beats Grisham hands down, but I’m looking forward to Grisham’s "A Painted House" – a departure from his previous work. Perhaps the change of genre will help him find his way again.

NPR also turned me on to essayist/humorist David Sedaris, whose latest, "Me Talk Pretty One Day," tells of his trials of living in Paris without benefit of knowing much French. He’s a hoot.

Larry McMurrty’s been on my list, and so while the weather was sweltering in June, I hit the dusty trail with the first of his Texas Rangers foursome (in chronological order, that’s "Dead Man’s Walk," "Comanche Moon," "Lonesome Dove" and "Streets of Laredo."). I’ve enjoyed his other books, but I was a little surprised how much I loved this one. I got so caught up in it, I felt guilty sipping a lemonade while Gus and Call and the boys were marched through the New Mexican desert.

Right now I’m checking my list for paperbacks I own that I can take backpacking next week. I’m taking Ivan Doig’s "English Creek" (part one of a trilogy) that I picked up because of what the late, great Wallace Stegner wrote about him. Stegner’s books are on my list, too, and I savor each one.

Photo by Bill Wiegand Barbara Jones

Barbara Jones, head
Rare Book and Special Collections Library
For better or worse, a book related to libraries and the library profession appeared on the New York Times recommended summer reading list. It is Nicholson Baker’s "Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper." Baker is on the academic conference and
C-SPAN lecture circuit and raises some controversial ideas about how to preserve texts in perpetuity while bringing important focus on issues related to the preservation of culturally important artifacts. Baker blames librarians for the demise of paper copies of old newspapers replaced by microfilm. Many librarians – including me – have serious objections and reservations about Baker’s facts and argument.

The book has caused such a flap that I organized a "salon" for librarians and faculty members of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science to discuss the book.

Two possible candidates for future discussion are "Libraries in the Ancient World," by Lionel Casson; and Andre Shiffrin’s "The Business of Books: How the International Conglomerates Took Over Publishing and Changed the Way We Read." In my opinion, Shiffrin’s book is far more important than Baker’s, and is of vital interest to anybody, in or out of the academy, trying to get published.

My summer "leisure reading" often consists of unabridged tapes for the car. I recommend the comprehensive holdings of Books on Tape or Recorded Books (see their Web sites), both of which offer discounts for multiple rentals. Their lists have serious and fun books alike, and good readers for the most part.

In my recent drive to and from the College of William and Mary, I listened to two of Janet Evanovich’s mystery novels. Her detective, Stephanie Plum, is a New Jersey native and the books are terribly funny, not at all "noir." For "noir," I recommend Dennis LeHane’s "Mystic River"; and James Ellroy’s wrenching "My Dark Places: An L.A. Crime Memoir."

I also listened to "Moo" by Jane Smiley, a novel about academic life at a Midwestern public university. I highly recommend it; you will undoubtedly have several moments of "recognition."

In addition, I have continuously re-read "Don Quixote" and "Moby Dick" for the last decade. Those two books just get better and better. In August, I will get a head start on a recently translated 800-page novel for a September reading group: "Only Yesterday," by Yehuda Amichai..