Gossipy books

The great thing about a teacher’s summer vacation is the fact that, if we plan our time wisely, we have time to read as much as we like. That’s what I am doing with part of my time anyway.

In the month since school has ended, I’ve gotten through two books and I’ve started a third. The first was a goofy book titled The Secret Lives of Great Authors by Robert Schnakenberg. The second was a far more serious piece of non fiction by Ishmael Beah called A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. The third book is a small book that might be familiar to you, Anna Karenina by some guy named Leo Tolstoy. For fun, I will occasionally review the books I’ve read.

I’ll start with The Secret Lives of Great Authors by Robert Schnakenberg. A co-worker loaned it to me for the summer and swore that I would love it. I’m not sure love is a good description. This book is kind of like People for literature geeks. It’s not particularly well-written (not unlike this blog) but it has a handful of juicy little tidbits about many of the authors whom I admire. Some of the “revelations” were not really that shocking. For example, the anecdote revealing that Walt Whitman kissed Oscar Wilde squarely on the lips is not very surprising. Actually, I had quite a chuckle when I read it. Walt was 63 at the time while Oscar was a mere 28! I say bully for Walt! On the other hand, I found it all together disturbing that Gertrude Stein was friends with a Nazi collaborator in the Vichy government.

All of this brings me to a larger question – why do so many people read or watch celebrity “news”? I know that some of it can’t be avoided, especially when some of it (the Pitt-Jolie birthing event) shows up in serious news outlets. I’m thinking more about those shows or magazines dedicated wholly to lives of the rich and famous. What do people get out of reading those? Fess up, which one of the grocery store line magazines do you pick up and thumb through while waiting?