Tackling Tomes

by Eric

I prefer brief books. In grade school I'd cart five Doctor Seuss books home from the library, read them all immediately. and go back for more before closing time. The library was nearly a mile from home and up a steep hill. Who says reading isn't good exercise?

Long books overwhelm my attention span. Especially since I'm a slow reader. Not to mention I'm always impatient to discover how the story turns out.

Excuses, excuses...I know I should have read War and Peace by now but I just can't face it. It's so long it's famous mostly for being long...and the characters all having ten or fifteen different impossible to pronounce or remember Russian names. Or so I've heard. I'm not sure since I've never even contemplated tackling the tome.

Classic mysteries are the right size. Agatha Christie is a favorite. Georges Simenon's Maigrets are even shorter. Of course like many short books they are concisely written and all of a piece, which I find satisfying aesthetically. Gold Medal style noir from the forties and fifties share the same qualities. Jim Thompson and John D. MacDonald for example.

Even writers I like can discourage me with lengthy books. I've read virtually all of Steinbeck (including Grapes of Wrath) but not East of Eden. I haven't read Simenon's long autobiography Pedigree either. I did read Stephen King's The Stand but Under the Dome is too daunting. (Not for Mary, I might add. But she's even read Les Miserables! Honestly! All of it!)

Needless to say, being a writer and an English Lit major, my aversion to long books has left me with a fair amount of guilt. There are certain lengthy novels I have always felt I ought to read and felt this so strongly that I actually purchased the books and made the effort.

When I was in college I made day trips to New York City, spending much of my time in book stores. There I found a trade paperback edition of Swann's Way by Marcel Proust, the first of his seven volume Remembrance of Things Past. (In those days trade paperbacks were reserved mostly for literary titles not expected to sell as well as mass market paperbacks and were hard to find where I lived.)

What could I possibly have been thinking? Yes, the work was touted as one of the great literary achievements of the twentieth century. It was also more than 4,000 pages long, well over a million words. Oh, the naive optimism of youth! I started to read and got nowhere. Odd because I've read and enjoyed lots of French literature in translation quite apart from Simenon. The book remained on my shelves, taunting me, for decades. More than once over the years I have steeled myself for the task. I've never made it to page three.

There's no point in my trying again. Considering my reading speed the actuarial tables say I'd never make it to the end anyway.

Other important books have similarly defeated me. Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon, the fantasy classic Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake. Do I even have to tell you that James Joyce's Ulysses is on this list. None of these books were page turners for me. I barely turned one of their pages.

Well, so much for the mea culpas. I am now going to start reading Lock No. 1, an Inspector Maigret mystery that is a nice, neat 176 pages long and I fully expect to finish it.

Theirs is a Sinister Beauty

by Mary

This year a striking crop of volunteer foxgloves is growing in the back garden, flourishing in its shady grove. We calculated the tallest to be about six feet by the simple expedient of standing human measuring stick Eric next to it.

Traditional names for the plant that put the digit into digitalis include fairy gloves or thimbles. However, despite these charming names for foxgloves theirs is a sinister beauty, acknowledged by other names for them such as bloody fingers or witches' gloves. Which isn't surprising considering the entire plant is highly poisonous. We've noticed local deer, whose depravations decimated our beds of hosta and day lilies, do not bother them. Perhaps they instinctively realise it is far safer to dine elsewhere.

When recently admiring the display of these striking purple-red flowers it occurred to me it would be possible to utilise the toxicity of the plant as a murder method in a mystery novel. After all, like other plantings in Mother Nature's garden foxgloves may be attractive but can become deadly in the wrong hands.

My thoughts ran on. How could a murderer get the victim to eat them? It might be done by presenting a guest with a dish of stewed foxglove leaves, telling them it's the latest gustatory craze. How about creating a mixed salad featuring foxglove leaves masquerading as comfrey? Further investigation by our vast research staff revealed foxglove leaves have a unpleasant bitter taste and one mouthful of either dish would probably result in plates being pushed away.

Considering how deadly foxgloves are known to be, a Doubting Thomas might wish to know how their taste could have been identified. Elementary, my dear reader. Know-it-all Mr Google pointed me to an article at The National Library of Medicine featuring a detailed description of two cases of accidental digestion of foxglove leaves. Foxgloves do not flower in their first year and in these cases the leaves of a young plant were mistaken for kale. The patients survived to describe the taste of their near fatal dish. *

In closing, let me also mention -- no, I must insist -- subscribers may be interested in a fascinating article on the Open University's CORE website. Titled Digitalis Poisoning: Historical and Forensic Aspects, it includes comments on the use of the foxglove derivative digitalis in real life murders. **

Really, it's little wonder country folks' nicknames for foxgloves included dead men's bells or fingers.

* https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4938686/
** https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/82526436.pdf
Includes a section devoted to the use of digitalis in mysteries