By Shannon Cole

Devil in the White City, by Erik Larson (2003)

If you’ve heard of this book, I know what you’re thinking: the girl gets to recommend books to the city of Providence, and she talks up some book about Chicago?? But hear me out. Larson’s chronicle of the 1893 Colombian Exposition (aka the first World’s Fair) is part historical drama, part crime thriller, and an intense page-turner. Larson weaves together the tales of the two men whom popular history has all but forgotten, but to whom we owe so much: chief architect of the fair Daniel Burnham and H.H. Holmes, the first American serial killer. It’s another book that testifies to human ingenuity and determination, and it profiles a time period when our nation still had something to prove – a time period we would do well to remember more often.

Read it ’cause:

- Holy crap, it’ll make you way smarter. You’ll learn brilliant, oh-that’s-the-reason facts like why all important government buildings in America are white with pillars and domes (Providence’s particularly, since it was designed by one of the fair’s primary architects – see? I told you this was relevant!), but also cool stuff like where belly dancing came from, and how many pounds of screws were in the first Ferris wheel, and what the upper class ate for dinner in the late 19th century (“Consommé of Green Turtle,” among other, unpronounceable things) and, subsequently, why so many of them suffered from gout.
- Larson’s portrait of the Gilded Age puts into context the economic disparity America is experiencing today. Some things have changed in good ways since then (standardized work hours and on-the-job safety for laborers), and some things haven’t changed at all (billionaires only interested in protecting their interests). He even snarks about it a little.
- The suspense is fabulous. Every horror story trope we’ve come to squirm and scream over is present, and the scariest part about it is that in the case of H.H. Holmes they all really happened. I’m pretty sure I even shouted, “Do not go upstairs!” at one point.
- The sheer preponderance of extant documentation regarding the fair and Holmes’ case is staggering. Larson’s research is so meticulous and thorough it’s impossible to distinguish between fact and inference as you read, although he does you the courtesy of noting the facts and his sources later on, just so you can marvel at the fact that it all really happened.

My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead, edited by Jeffrey Eugenides (2008)

Ok, so I haven’t actually read it. But I really, really *want* to. It’s one of the few anthologies of previously published materials out there that manages to not reek of academia, even though it packs heavy literary heat like Faulkner, Nabokov, and Munro. Jeffrey Eugenides, author of Middlesex (2002) and Brown University alum, assembled the collection and wrote its introduction. Eugenides is not just another besotted romantic, as evidenced by his acknowledgement that, “Love stories, nearly without exception, give love a bad name.” However, I have read several of the included selections before and from what I can tell there are love stories in here for both the sappiest and most jaded among us.

Read it ’cause:
- The cover is pretty damn cool. (Yeah, yeah . . . can’t judge a book . . . blah blah blah.)
- It’s the perfect way to impress that cute bookish guy or gal you’ve been scoping on lunch breaks/the bus/campus. My Mistress’s Sparrow is an all-in-one guide some of the modern greats, and sure to include a few lessons in wooing the opposite sex (see Lorrie Moore’s “How to be an Other Woman”).
- Outside of impressing a possible future date or mate, the concise collection of so many authors in one source allows the opportunity to compare their styles. For example, Chekhov’s sentences march along even when striving to capture true love, and Brodkey uses the beautiful and gently swirling imagery you’d expect of romantic literature. It’s like a literary dessert buffet.
- There’s no Shakespeare. Seriously. Even though there are a lot of recognizable, oft anthologized names in the table of contents, there are new, fresh names to discover, too. And, if you purchase the book, the proceeds will be donated to a national nonprofit network that encourages and teaches children to write.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, February 9th, 2008 at 3:46 pm and is filed under Books, Lit-Up. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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