Book Beginning: The Lady Who Liked Clean Restrooms by JP Donleavy

I'm either a few days late or a few days early, but here goes. Book Beginnings is a weekly meme hosted by Rose City Reader. Share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires.

With everyone reacting to and following trends and fashions you never know what's going to happen next in around New York and especially in suburban climes like Scarsdale. But what worried her more than anything was that she might sink down so deep into the doldrums that back up out of them she might never again get.

This is a funny but rather strange little novella. It reads like your best friend is telling you her recent life story, breathlessly pouring it all out. There are no chapters, although it does have paragraphs and normal punctuation. The Washington Times called it a "marvelously sophisticated, scatological, acerbic, and entertaining novella."

Book Beginning: The Girls at 17 Swann Street by Yara Zgheib

Book Beginnings is a weekly meme hosted by Rose City Reader. You are asked to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires.

I call it the Van Gogh room. Just a different color scheme. Hazy peach blanket, hazy peach walls. Pastel-green carpet on a cherrywood floor. White blinds and shutters, the window and closet creak. Everything looks pale and tired, a little like me.

I look around and think, This is where it starts. In Bedroom 5, on the east side of a pink house at 17 Swann Street. As good, as bad a setting as any, I suppose, for a story like this. Plain and mildly inviting, dubiously clean. At least there is a window; I can see the driveway, the edge of the street, bits of garden and sky.

My library book club is reading this novel about a young woman with anorexia who has been admitted to a residential treatment facility. It's part diary and part omniscient narrator, and the tone is rather dreamlike. So far it's very interesting and not too intense.

Book Beginning: The Prodigal Tongue by Lynne Murphy

Book Beginnings is a weekly meme hosted by Rose City Reader. You are asked to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires.

"If there is a more hideous language on the face of the earth than the American form of English, I should like to know what it is!"  Baron Somers, in the House of Lords (1979)

Americans are ruining the English language. I know this because people go out of their way to tell me so. I am a magnet for such comments - an American who dares to teach English Language and Linguistics at a British university and who has the chutzpah to write about American and British languages differences on the internet.

What a fun start! I love books about English and British English. When I first visited Britain I discovered our languages are maybe 75% the same. Sure, we use most of the same words, but the Brits use some of them differently than we do, and they pronounce some quite oddly, too. And then there is "gobsmacked", "chuffed", and "fairy liquid". I'm chuffed to be reading this book before my fall trip to Britain!

Urban Pigment Foraging

 Make Ink: A Forager's Guide to Natural Inkmaking
 Jason Logan; conversation with Michael Ondaatje
 Abrams, 2018
 191 pages


With a background in chemistry and a love of both colorful arts and crafts and fountain pen inks, this book reached out and grabbed me from the start. It's a combination of a coffee-table book with gorgeous pictures, an ink-making recipe book, and a study of the culture of inks and colors.

The forward is by Michael Ondaatje, the Sri Lanka-born Canadian author of "The English Patient" and other works. As someone who even now writes all his first drafts with pen and ink, he felt compelled to meet the ink maker. He writes of their meeting:

We sat down in his kitchen and it felt like being introduced to someone with the skills of some lost medieval craft. What he did seemed a blend of alchemy with foraging and some possibly illegal art of cooking.

At the end is a transcription of a conversation between Logan and Ondaatje. They talk of foraging, the relationship between words and drawings, strange old techniques of ink making, and ink making around the world.

The publisher's description of the book:

The Toronto Ink Company was founded in 2014 by designer and artist Jason Logan as a citizen science experiment to make eco-friendly, urban ink from street-harvested pigments. In "Make Ink", Logan delves into the history of inkmaking and the science of distilling pigment from the natural world. Readers will learn how to forage for materials such as soot, rust, cigarette butts, peach pits, and black walnut, then how to mix, test, and transform these ingredients into rich, vibrant inks that are sensitive to both place and environment. Organized by color, and featuring lovely minimalist photography throughout, "Make Ink" combines science, art, and craft to instill the basics of ink making and demonstrate the beauty and necessity of engaging with one of mankind's oldest tools of communication.

Having read about producing black walnut ink before, I was expecting natural ink making to involve plant parts and maybe a few chemical stabilizers. What I didn't expect was that urban detritus could turn into ink as well. But Logan see possibilities everywhere in the urban environments around him. From pieces of rusty metal to copper wires to pieces of drywall, he is willing to try them all. Of course, most of the pigments in the recipes do come from nature - acorns, oak galls, pokeberries, and grape vines all contribute their colors, often in surprising ways. Dark purple buckthorn berries result in green ink!

The last section presents images created with his inks by many artists and writers to whom he sent samples. In addition, throughout the book there are stunning full-page pictures of his ink testings and paintings. There are some examples of writing, but note that this type of ink is not for use in fountain pens, only with dip pens or brushes.

This is a fascinating book, even if you don't plan on harvesting rusty bedsprings from beside the roadways in your town. After reading it, the produce at the farmers' market and the herbs and spices in my kitchen cupboards began to look like ink ingredients to me. And I'm sure there will be plenty of acorns and black walnuts around this fall. Some experimenting of my own is coming soon!


Further Reading

The publisher, Abrams, has images from the book here:
https://www.abramsbooks.com/product/make-ink_9781419732430/