Once again I stomp down the trash in this can here to make some space for critical discussion of historical fiction. And it’s going to fill up that trash can, I warn you.

Warning that this review discusses child molestation. If that is decidedly not what you were hoping to read on a Saturday morning in a hand-moderated historical discussion forum, I completely understand. Also it’s four pages long in Google docs and is mostly about buckram, sooo. This is probably more of an exercise in working out some bad things in my own mind than a proper review, but if you deal with bad things in history, I hope you get some comfort out of it.

#The Catch Trap by Marion Zimmer Bradley, 1979

Let me start this book review with a picture of my copy of the book, which I think is worth looking at.

Wow that’s an ugly book you probably are thinking. Welllll. Yes. But to a library groupie this book is more than ugly. This is the first edition of this novel, and has been rebound (badly, the text block is crooked) in a hideous lime green patterned buckram. For some reason which eludes me, library-grade bookbinding buckram traditionally comes only in colors of extreme uglyness ranging from babyshit yellow, poop browns, a peculiar shade of burgundy that never matches the old burgundy fabric the book was bound in no matter what, the bruisey pink-purple which is the worst one somehow (popular with bookbinders for any book that’s vaguely woman-y so I see it a lot), and a range of oddly bright-dull red, orange, green, and blue reminding you only of soft fruity candies ground into the floor of your car. Then, into this rainbow of vomit, they smash the title, author and call number in with white or black ink, using the ugliest block-capitals font man could devise. When I worked circ I honestly never quite got used to getting books back from being repaired and seeing what cruel punishment the bookbinders had laid down on books that merely had the misfortune to be loved too much. It’s not fair to make good books be ugly! Yet they usually are, in a big library that’s old enough to have had a few old books pile up. And so, behold this ugly ass book from my public library, drink it in, for what we have here is … A Weeding Survivor.

One of the secret pleasures of living the library life in a city with a large and long-established public library system is that you occasionally end up with a Weeding Survivor in your hands. Weeding, for those who have managed never to work in libraries, is when libraries periodically go through the collection and remove books that are not longer being checked out. You probably don’t know about this, because you shouldn’t, good weeding is unnoticeable except you see more good books on the shelf and less old and crappy ones. Usually you pull from the catalog a list of all the books that haven't been checked out in 5-10 years, or some time period like that, and you evaluate them for things that are no longer relevant or accurate (for the non fiction, in particular health books) and that should be replaced with new books in the subject; or for fiction that is no longer being read, it's just removed, and sent to the book sale. This is the bulk of weeding, fiction. Most fiction has a short life span of when people will choose to read it. More of it is constantly being written too. Public library readers don’t want every dumb novel ever published. They want the hot fresh dumb novels. Fiction goes in and out of the library collection in periodical waves, except for those we deem Classic. There are libraries that never weed and just get more buildings, but they are a different story. 99% of well-run public libraries in America weed with vim and vigor.

So, when you have a novel survive in a major US city’s public library collection from when it was purchased in 1979, to today, 37 years later, without either being removed from the collection or replaced by a new copy, it means two interesting things:

1. This book has maintained enough regular circulation among the good people of My City to remain un-weeded for 37 years
2. Yet, conversely, after being rebound (likely in the mid 80s from the style), it has not circulated enough to get worn out and replaced with a new edition, which does say something about the power of industrial buckram

Steady, yet low, circulation, makes for a Weeding Survivor. Weeding Survivors are generally very interesting books for this paradox of readership. They may be cult classics. They may be more legit classics that just get this unique status in your particular town. I doubt many other cities in America are still rocking the first edition in their public library, it’s either gone from the catalog or in a reprint. But My City is special. So, this ugly smashed-Skittle of a book has enjoyed low, steady circulation for 37 years, and that’s something worth taking a second look at. My check-out (and also not ripping the book in half, dropping it in the bath, or eating a burrito over it) has almost certainly ensured it will now make it to 40 years.

So keep an eye out for Weeding Survivors at your own public library. They are special. They are a unique delight of the physicality of shared reading material. Put your fingers in someone else’s (you hope to god) chocolatey fingerprints, imagine when and why they read this, what they thought about it. I once heard an old lady talking about how she loves ebooks now and only checks out ebooks because sharing books is sharing germs. I resented sharing air with her in that moment, for it’s the same thing. Life is sharing physical space, physical items, germs. There’s nothing I like more than reading a weird or controversial book and seeing from the physical book that other people in my town have read it too. What could be more comforting that you are not alone, and are never alone, even through time, that you can touch hands with someone on a book owned by the citizens of your city for more than three decades. And I’m afraid it’s your Last Chance to See. Public libraries do not rebind as much anymore, as it is usually cheaper to replace now. And it will be entirely lost when popular reading moves to ebooks. So go check out an old book.

ALSO, aside from a fascinating physical existence, this book had words inside it, which is pretty common for books, so now I shall review these words and not just talk about buckram. Now is when things get sad and you find out the reason I thought I should bold a warning on this review.

This book is kinda the male/male romance answer to Gone with the Wind. It’s sweeping, epic, so rooted in time and space you can smell history, it will forever etch its name on the ventricles of your heart whether you like it or not, and it’s also, as we say these days, problematic. I compare it to Gone with the Wind because, one, that book is so racially and historically problematic in its presentation of the pre-war South and its Black characters I assume I don’t even need to explain it here, but two, it also features an uncritical marital rape scene, and the hero of the novel Rhett Butler is considered to have been based on the author’s first husband, who was a bootlegger who beat and raped her. (Why Margaret Mitchell immortalized that man in her novel, when her second husband was by all accounts a good man who helped her to write the thing, I leave to other historians.) So yeah, one of the greatest novels in American literature uses slavery as an idealized backdrop to a romanticized abusive marriage. It was also made into a movie, which is officialy, per the US Government, “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” Gone with the Wind’s problems and greatness are something we have to live with. Likewise The Catch Trap’s problems and greatness are something we have to live with.

The Catch Trap follows an Italian-American family of flying trapeze circus performers from 1944 to 1953. The setting is astonishing, taking you so deep into the post-war circus and pre-Stonewall gay world if you read it before you go to bed you’re half surprised when you wake up the next morning and you’re not in a carny trailer. This book is also, roughly, a romance, and it's about a relationship that starts, sexually, between a 14 year old boy and a 22 year old man, and continues off and on into their adulthood. Their relationship begins under circumstances which in some fiction circles is euphemistically called “dubious consent.” The relationship has physical abuse and infidelity. There is also a strongly implied undercurrent of sibling incest.

(reddit yelled at me break)

Anyone have any good recommendations on books dealing with the Stasi?

I was reading articles on Terra Preta and I found out that there was a study on soil found in Northern Germany. As it turns out, there is a sort of Nordic Dark Earth, which has similar properties to the famous Terra Preta Dark Earth of the Amazon, holding onto nutrients extremely efficiently and effectively and producing sustained agricultural yields. In fact, it may have been an important facet of the Slavic and Nordic farming practices. Here's the article, if anyone's interested I'll give them the pdf. It's really fascinating and revolutionizes what we thought about European agriculture. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0341816214003075

Hi! I'm looking for a couple of books on two different topics: Mesopotamia and the Islamic Golden Age.

For Mesopotamia, I'm interested in the general history of the region, maybe specifically the Early to Late Bronze Age and the Akkadian Empire.

I'm a science graduate, so I'd be open to suggestions that focus more on scientific and health advances of both time periods; furthermore, I'm learning, and have a beginner's knowledge of, Arabic, books on the Golden Age that contain faithful transliterations would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

I am looking for a summer read book on a less taught ancient civilization. Something like Minoans, Nabateans, etc. Preferably something understandable to someone with minimal history education, but lots of interest in history.