History, Science, and Mystery

As I thought I would, over the past two weeks I did read a library book about Laura Ingalls Wilder's books, Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little Town: Where History and Literature Meet, by John E. Miller.  It took up the subject of how Laura had incorporated the history of the westward movement into her books, especially those set in DeSmet, South Dakota. The author compared her account of how people worked and played with actual accounts published in newspapers, diaries, letters and other sources of the time.  It was interesting to see that Laura was pretty accurate in her rendering of life during the pioneer and early settlement days.

I continue to read the Little House books with my mother. We're both enjoying hearing about Laura through her growing up years.  She's about to be married now, and the original series will end, though there are two other books we can read.  One deals with Almanzo's early years, Farmer Boy, and the other tells of the first four years of Laura and Almanzo's marriage, aptly titled The First Four Years.  The latter was never published during Laura's lifetime; it was written for an adult reader and is much shorter than the others (probably because unfinished).

Besides the non-fiction literary criticism book, last week I read some of the essays in the 2005 edition of The Best American Science and Nature Writing, edited by Jonathan Weiner, who wrote The Beak of the Finch, one of my all time favorite science books (reviewed in this blog). I read a few of the articles so far, ranging from psychological testing to religion to gray-hat hackers to the dubious claims of supplements.  All were interesting and remarkably timely despite being eight years old.

This week I decided to take a break from the book of essays to begin the latest James Lee Burke mystery, Creole Belle.  Burke is one of my favorites, not only because he was my teacher once, but also because his main character, Dave Robicheaux, is so complex and so wonderfully articulate.  He has a tremendous vocabulary and a true philosopher's outlook, but most of what he thinks about life and the people around him remains in his thoughts; only we, the readers, are privy to his many astute observations.  Outwardly, he's the quintessential hard-boiled detective: tough, plain-spoken, canny, brooding, drawn to the dark side.  Inwardly, he's a shrewd observer of life and society, especially as it unfolds in New Orleans and southern Louisiana, his home and beat.  The juxtaposition makes for a fascinating character.

After this, I'm back to non-fiction, I think.  But we'll see what the next week brings.