book report XVI

Just catching up on my book stack a little!

Recently read (all new, too!):

Robert Ballard, Exploring the Titanic. I thought this one might not be too edifying, as it's basically a kids' version of the story of and the finding of the great ship. But really it was very detailed and fact-filled, and the pictures were excellent. A very nice addition to the Titanic section of my library.

Alison Gopnik, Andrew Meltzoff, and Patricia Kuhl, The Scientist in the Crib: What Early Learning Tells Us About the Mind. I find the premise of this very interesting—that while we're teaching and studying our children, they're simultaneously performing experiments on us. It's a very different way to think about parenting, and I found a lot of the examples they used from their research highly fascinating. But I also thought there was a lot of dry material and maybe in places too much information, making it a little hard to follow and leaving me without a lot of solid memories of what I'd read.

Helene Hanff, Letter from New York. Hanff is perhaps best known for 84, Charing Cross Lane, a chronicle of letters she exchanged with the staff of a bookstore in London from her New York apartment. While that book is on my shelf, I haven't read it yet. I did see the movie, and was unimpressed, although I blame that largely on my dislike of Anne Bancroft. I've never seen her in a role that didn't make her seem like a mean, bitter woman, and this one was no exception. As a matter of fact, it was difficult to read Letter from New York without putting Bancroft's face and mannerisms on the writer, and that was a shame. Because Letter from New York was a lovely book. First written as a series of radio broadcasts on the BBC, the entries consist of vignettes from a New York life. They range broadly across all sorts of topics, but what comes across very clearly is that this is a woman who loves New York and loves her life there. Made me homesick ... but also made me reflect that you don't have to live in New York to love your home and love your life. If each of us were to write a monthly vignette about our lives, would genuine love and enjoyment be the end result when someone read them altogether? And if not, wouldn't that be a good goal?