Water, A Biography, by Giulio Boccaletti

Water, A Biography, by Giulio Boccaletti (Pantheon, 300 pages)

Watching muddy brown water flood the streets of Louisiana, Mississippi and New York City, I want to turn to Giulio Boccaletti’s Water, A Biography for an explanation of how we suddenly seem on the verge of being extras in that 1995 film Waterworld.

The excess, or lack, of water gets more of its share of headlines these days, so the timing seems right for a serious look of how we got here and where we’re going, told in a compelling narrative that can engage non-scientists.

Unfortunately, Water, a Biography is not that book. It’s a treatise written by an economist and scientist for other economists and scientists, and for their policy-making friends. While it may win awards, Boccaletti’s book will not be attractive to the general public; for that, you’ll want Philip Ball’s H20: A Biography of Water, published in 1999. Boccaletti’s work is encyclopedic, in both scope and presentation.

He begins promisingly, with words that evoke Genesis if written by a physicist told to write a version of “In the beginning” without mentioning God:

“Long before Earth ever formed, the subatomic particles that emerged from the Big Bang’s first instants formed a plasma of hydrogen and helium. Gravity pulled them together in a nuclear fusion that fueled the first stars, the furnaces that forged heavier elements like oxygen. In the proto-stellar material left by the death of those first stars, hydrogen and oxygen reacted. They produced water.”

That’s lovely, and Boccaletti goes on to provide a fascinating overview of water throughout space and history: why water exists everywhere in our solar system, what caused ice ages, why a great flood myth is common to cultures all over the world, and why water, in the author’s words, is the “principal greenhouse gas” that wraps the planet like a blanket. He then moves into a history of how access to water played into the change from hunter-gatherer societies to the sedentary agriculture-based communities, and the development of crude dams, canals and irrigation systems.

In these early societies, water also played a role in religious myths. In one story found on tablets in Nineveh, Boccaletti writes, lesser gods were required to maintain the canals. “Eventually the gods, tired of having to do all the work, created man to do the digging for them. In other words, those who wrote [the epic] believed that humans existed for the struggle of managing water.”

He goes on to examine the use and control of water in Egypt, Greece, Italy and China, among other ancient societies. Rome’s system of controlling water was particularly sophisticated. “At the time of Augustus, Rome already had far better infrastructure than most European cities would have until the nineteenth century,” he writes. (In fact, one of those ancient aqueducts is still in use today.)

It’s about here that the book begins to bog down for the reader who may not be overly fascinated by European power struggles over water access throughout the Middle Ages. There is relief in a discussion about what’s known as the Little Ice Age, the period of cooling temperatures that began in the 14th century and saw temperatures fall about 2 degrees below average in Europe for a few centuries. During that time, there were also violent, flooding storms in Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands. “Between 1620 and 1621 the Bosporus froze. Baghdad flooded in 1630. The Arctic pack ice grew enough for Inuits to land kayaks in Scotland. Snowfall, heavier than ever recorded — before or since — lay on the ground for months.”

The cause of the Little Ice Age? Well, no one is sure, just like no one is sure how water came to be on Earth, although there are theories to explain the Little Ice Age, to include volcanic eruptions and sun spots. Regardless, Boccaletti explains, the slight changes in temperature created societal problems to include a “shorter, less reliable growing season,” which led to higher costs of grain and, in some places, famine or malnutrition. “The political crisis of the seventeenth century was inseparable from changes in environmental conditions,” he writes.

As for our current climate, Boccaletti takes it up late in the book and does so carefully, saying it’s too early to predict the extent of the challenges ahead, although “There is a very good chance that [the climate] may change far beyond anything in recent experience, thanks to modernity’s impact on the chemistry of the atmosphere.”

Some countries, however, are better equipped to deal with the changes: “Countries that are rich can manage water better, but it is often the case that countries are rich because they found a better way of managing water.” China’s Three Gorges Dam, the largest dam in the world, may be one of the most impressive attempts by a society to control water. But Boccaletti argues that it is an illusion that society can protect itself from a variable climate with concrete. “The question, once again, is what will happen when — not if — that illusion is shattered.” And for that, he has no answers, or has saved them for another book. B-


Book Notes

In the aftermath of deadly flash floods in New York and New Jersey, The New York Times amused some of its readers by publishing a guide to packing a “go bag” and “stay bin” in order to be prepared for emergencies.

Such information is readily available, even on government websites, but the old gray lady is not usually in the ranks of doomsday preppers, people who are equipped to take on any sort of natural or man-made disaster.

One thing conspicuously absent from Tara Parker-Pope’s list, however, was any sort of book. This is odd because if you’re bugging out to an emergency shelter, bunker or cave, you’ll need something to do when you get there, possibly for a long time. (May I recommend Moby-Dick, The Gulag Archipelago or Les Miserables?)

More importantly, if a doomsday scenario ever occurs, you’re not going to have internet access. So it seems that any sort of survival bag should contain at least one book that teaches you, well, to survive. Enter the newly released 4th edition of The Survival Medicine Guide, by Dr. Joseph Alton and Amy Alton of YouTube survival video fame. It’s billed as “the essential guide for when help is not on the way” and, at nearly 700 pages in paperback, seems to cover everything. Moreover, it’s published by the brilliantly named company Doom and Bloom LLC.

From a legacy publisher, there’s also last year’s The MeatEater Guide to Wilderness Skill and Survival by Steven Rinella (Random House, 464 pages). You may not want to learn how to do everything Rinella teaches, but you definitely want to know someone who did.

And out this week is the paperback version of a 2009 book, Hawke’s Green Beret Survival Manualby Mykel Hawke (Skyhorse, 456 pages). He promises to deliver the information you need on not only medicine and food but also fire, tools, navigation, shelter and “survival psychology.” The publisher promises it’s geared to the untrained civilian, i.e., me.

Finally, one of the best fiction books about surviving a flu pandemic that wipes out much of the human race is Peter Heller’s The Dog Stars (paperback, Vintage, 336 pages). It was published in 2012 but feels alarmingly relevant these days.

Book Events

Author events

AMY TIMBERLAKE Newbery Honor winning author presents her second Skunk and Badger book, Egg Marks the Spot. Virtual event via Zoom, hosted by Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord. Tues., Sept. 21, 7 p.m. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

JEFF BENEDICT Author presents The Dynasty. Gibson’s Bookstore, 45 S. Main St., Concord. Wed., Sept. 22, 6 p.m. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

EMMA PHILBRICK Author presents Arkivestia. Barnes & Noble (1741 S. Willow St., Manchester, barnesandnoble.com). Sat., Sept. 25, 1 p.m.

DAVID SEDARIS Humor writer presents. Capitol Center for the Arts (44 S. Main St., Concord, ccanh.com), Sun., Sept. 26, 7 p.m. Tickets start at $49.

DIANNE TOLLIVER Author presents Life Everyone Has a Story. Barnes & Noble (1741 S. Willow St., Manchester, barnesandnoble.com). Sat., Oct. 9, 10 a.m.

Book sales

MULTI-BOOK AUTHOR SIGNING AND SALE A Freethinker’s Corner(652 A Central Ave., Dover, 343-2437, freethinkerscorner.com), Sat., Sept. 18, noon to 4 p.m.

MULTI-BOOK CHILDREN’S AUTHOR SIGNING AND SALE A Freethinker’s Corner(652 A Central Ave., Dover, 343-2437, freethinkerscorner.com), Sat., Sept. 25, noon to 4 p.m.

FRIENDS OF BROOKLINE PUBLIC LIBRARY TWO-DAY BOOK SALE Featuring hardbound and paperback books of all fiction and nonfiction genres, plus CDs, DVDs and audio books, for sale. 4 Main St., Brookline. Saturday, Sept. 25, and Sunday, Sept. 26, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Visit brooklinenh.us/brookline-public-library/pages/friends-of-the-brookline-public-library.

Poetry

DOWN CELLAR POETRY SALON Poetry event series presented by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire. Monthly. First Sunday. Visit poetrysocietynh.wordpress.com.

SLAM FREE OR DIE Series of open mic nights for poets and spoken-word artists. Stark Tavern, 500 N. Commercial St., Manchester. Weekly. Thursday, doors open and sign-ups beginning at 7 p.m., open mic at 8 p.m. The series also features several poetry slams every month. Events are open to all ages. Cover charge of $3 to $5 at the door, which can be paid with cash or by Venmo. Visit facebook.com/slamfreeordie, e-mail [email protected] or call 858-3286.

Book Clubs

BOOKERY Online. Monthly. Third Thursday, 6 p.m. Bookstore based in Manchester. Visit bookerymht.com/online-book-club or call 836-6600.

GIBSON’S BOOKSTORE Online, via Zoom. Monthly. First Monday, 5:30 p.m. Bookstore based in Concord. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com/gibsons-book-club-2020-2021 or call 224-0562.

GOFFSTOWN PUBLIC LIBRARY 2 High St., Goffstown. Monthly. Third Wednesday, 1:30 p.m. Call 497-2102, email [email protected] or visit goffstownlibrary.com

BELKNAP MILL Online. Monthly. Last Wednesday, 6 p.m. Based in Laconia. Email [email protected].

NASHUA PUBLIC LIBRARY Online. Monthly. Second Friday, 3 p.m. Call 589-4611, email [email protected] or visit nashualibrary.org.

Album Reviews 21/09/16

Barry Altschul’s 3Dom Factor, Long Tall Sunshine (Not Two Records)

Jazz drummer Altschul is staring down the barrel of 80 years of age in 2023. Before the great Covid rain delay, he’d been (and assuredly still is) considering wrapping up the touring period of his career, the prime of which happened during the 1960s, when he worked with such legends as Paul Bley and Chick Corea and gained some fame out of it. So we come to the fourth album of his experimental sax-bass-drums trio, following 2017’s Live In Krakow, which, like this one, finds the band noodling around with five of Altschul’s originals, again in a live setting but this time recorded in a location no one seems to remember (“somewhere in Europe,” read the liner notes). The first 19-odd minutes, encompassing two songs, are a skronk-and-rattle clinic, a sure-sounds-like-improv frontal assault that spazzes and subsides over and over, until it ends with sax guy Jon Irabagon spitting and slurping on his instrument in a display of (so some think) contempt for jazz wonks. “Irina” is a well-behaved beatnik-post-bop ballad, fit for power-guzzling gin; “Martin’s Stew” is a workout that’s terrifying in its power. Not for beginner listeners, put it that way. A

Armored Saint, Symbol of Salvation Live (Metal Blade Records)

I’m probably the least qualified music journo to be discussing this vaunted Los Angeles metal band. One of my old bandmates and I met them once and hung out on their tour bus. It was a bit awkward; there were no girls with them, and they were so bored we finally had to make an excuse to leave. Anyway, I found their music singularly unexciting, vanilla indie-metal thingamajigs falling midway between Savatage and Iron Maiden (that’s a pretty small niche, if you don’t know), so really, the most notable thing for me with regard to this record is that the band is largely the same as it’s been for 38 or so years, save for their original guitarist, who died in 1990, the year before Symbol of Salvation — the album performed live on this LP — came out. Like the other live album mentioned this week, the (European or U.S.) venue isn’t stated, but it sounds somewhat large. The songs are jaw-droppingly generic, some cookie-cutter Judas Priest here, a little Accept-ish rough-housing there. Anyway, a new Armored Saint live album, everyone. B

PLAYLIST

• The next general CD release date for most album releases is Friday, Sept. 17, so let’s dive right into the deep end of this week’s foul-smelling bushel of new music albums, starting with Moor Mother’s Black Encyclopedia Of The Air! Yes, there are albums coming out from much bigger names, but this album sounds like it might actually be interesting, unless it’s some black metal band from Finland, so let’s find out. Nope, Moor Mother’s real name is Camae Ayewa, she’s from Aberdeen, Maryland, and is one half of the Black Quantum Futurism crew, along with Rasheedah Phillips; she also helps lead the group Irreversible Entanglements. She’s a musician, poet and activist, and her last album, Circuit City (released in 2020), dealt with “housing inequality, private ownership and institutional racism.” Given all that, I assumed this new record is super cool off the bat, but for due diligence’s sake I went and listened to the teaser track, “Obsidian.” Very much intended for hyper-urban tastes, it features edgy Alabama-based rapper Pink Siifu canoodling with Ayewa, their voices drenched with Death Grips and Oz-Munchkin effects, over a glitch-noise beat. It’s cool and largely inaccessible for normies, let’s just leave it at that and continue.

Lindsey Buckingham is of course the original genius guitarist for arena-pop superstar band Fleetwood Mac! He has created many many yuge and tremendous hits for people who don’t buy albums unless all their friends like them, but he did have a moment of ignominy in 1979, when he took over all control of the Tusk album, but no one else in the band really cared because they all hated each other anyway. The result, as we all know, was Fleetwood Mac’s worst album ever, and Buckingham has been busily making up for it ever since, even now, when he refuses to have anything else to do with the band. His new album is self-titled and features the single “I Don’t Mind,” which is pretty cool, quite the indie vibe, although it doesn’t really deliver much of a hook. His guitar emulates a mandolin, just like back when Jimmy Carter was president, in case that affects your buying decision. By the way, guess what, he was just here in the area recently, on Sept. 12, at the Music Hall in Portsmouth, so this is all a little late, but it’s his fault for going on tour before his new album was out. So tough cookies, Lindsey Buckingham, maybe work with me here next time.

• I’ve always loved everything about Melissa Etheridge except for her music, so it’s been a slightly strained relationship, given that her job is to make good music, not make people think about heavy stuff. But because she’s kind of an activist, she does make me think about heavy stuff, so I’ll listen to the title track from her new One Way Out album, because, oh, I don’t know, just because, whatever. Say what, looks like this is an old song she never got around to recording until now. It’s got a grunge-rock edge, like, imagine if Pearl Jam wore generic T-shirts with bald eagles on them and had Melissa Etheridge as their singer, this is what it’d sound like.

• We’ll end all this horror with Local Valley, the new album from José González, whom I really only know from his time singing for mildly trip-hoppy band Zero 7. The album opener “Swing” is of course mellow and only half-there, an upbeat beach lullaby to drink pina coladas by, pretty nice escapism.

RETRO PLAYLIST

Let’s go back to 13 years ago this week, when I was still all aflutter over shoegaze heroes Raveonettes, who were releasing four free digital EPs over the course of the coming months. The one they were releasing that week included re-dos of songs like “Dead Sound” (as an 80KIDZ remix, not that a remix was necessary, because the song is fine without one), the rather sucky “Aly Walk With Me” (Nic Endo redid that one) and “Lust,” as remixed by Trentemøeller. It was a nice gesture of them, and I’ll leave it at that.

The featured albums that week included Seattle emcee Common Market’s Tobacco Road, in which emcee RA Scion “gleefully expends terawatts of energy trying to put the Seattle hip-hop scene on the map,” oddly enough by being as townie as he could, that is to say most of his callouts were in-jokes. I failed to see the need for it: “Scion, in his shoulder-shrugging Lupe Fiasco voice and baseball-card-in-the-bike-spokes flow, gives an opaque shout-out to the Virginia Tech killer, scolds his townie brethren in code, then bawls for his lost Kentucky boyhood, not necessarily in that order of sequence or importance.” Blue Scholar beat guy Sabzi was on board with this high-end but a little too ’90s record, “whittling out rinky-dink gospel/blues/jazz samples and whatnot.” If this is all new news, you didn’t miss much.

There was good news, though, in the form of goth-losers-turned-steampunk-winners Abney Park’s Lost Horizons. If we ever have geek conventions again, you’ll definitely want to check these guys out: “moderately grindy industrial with fiddle and a Loreena McKennitt chick doing the enchanted fairy thing.” Closing track “Post Apocalypse Punk” is “the most interesting slice of this pie, with its layer of steam-engine clatter and whatever other appropriate samples they could drum up.” HG Wells would wince at this noise, but it’s still a lot of fun.

If you’re in a local band, now’s a great time to let me know about your EP, your single, whatever’s on your mind. Let me know how you’re holding yourself together without being able to play shows or jam with your homies. Send a recipe for keema matar. Message me on Twitter (@esaeger) or Facebook (eric.saeger.9).

The Secret History of Food, by Matt Siegel

The Secret History of Food, by Matt Siegel (Ecco, 194 pages)

Matt Siegel is obsessed with food — not with eating it, but with learning about it. Siegel’s first book, The Secret History of Food, was born of his pastime of reading about the origins of the things we eat, going down the rabbit holes of history via Google searches and library books.

This means that many of the stories the former English professor tells here have already been told by someone else in formats less engaging. Siegel (not to be confused with the longtime Boston DJ) lives in Richmond and is a hunter-gatherer of the quirky detail, the sort of information that sticks to the brain, and he writes in the folksy style of beer-fueled conversation. His is a voice that sometimes seems too conversational; a grimmer editor might have cut a number of weak jokes. But too much editing and this would be a lengthy magazine article instead of a book.

Siegel begins by arguing that it’s not just eating food but cooking it that changed the earliest humans into modern man, because the process of cooking food changed us into more social creatures, with “larger brains, larger gatherings, more free time, and more collaboration.” In a way, cooking domesticated humans much like humans domesticated wolves, as did the gradual development of table manners. People in Asia and Europe, for example, replaced bladed utensils with chopsticks and rounded dinner knives, for example, to cut down on mealtime stabbings, Siegel writes.

From there, he leads a global tour of foodstuff, to include corn, cereal, vanilla, ice cream and pie, the latter of which was a primary means of fattening the early colonists in New England.

New Englanders didn’t invent pie, but we perfected it, having wrenched it from the hands of the English, who primarily stuffed it with “birds and nightmarish sea creatures.” Back then, Siegel writes, a pie crust wasn’t something to be enjoyed; it had a practically indigestible coating that was seen as a disposable container — “the inedible Tupperware of the Dark Ages.”

“Far from being a delicacy or dessert, it was merely a convenient way of congealing various bits of bird and beast into something portable and relatively stable,” Siegel writes. The name derived from the word magpie, the bird, which should have been our first warning. And the colloquialism “eating humble pie” appears to come from the unsavory pies that household servants used to make for themselves with animal guts unused by their employers.

New Englanders, before they turned the pie crust into a container for fruit, spices and custard, also indulged in meat pies, to the point where a pie of some kind was a staple at every meal, regardless of time, causing one 19th-century physician to write that the “brave men who made up the Boston Tea Party … were pie-biters from Boston.” The physician added, “the Yankee pie is a mighty stimulator of energy … conducive to vigilance, aggressiveness and longevity.” Not everyone agreed; someone in England once criticized Ralph Waldo Emerson’s custom of having pie for breakfast, prompting The New York Times to publish a defense of Emerson’s eating habits, which led to a years-long cross-Atlantic debate.

While Siegel’s pie report is the most New England-centric of the book’s content, his other stories are no less compelling, to include the chapter called “Honey Laundering,” which covers every aspect of the one food that that never goes bad (it can crystallize or turn cloudy, but even then is fine to eat). Among the most interested honey facts: Beehives have historically been weaponized, lobbed at enemy ships; beekeeping was a craft kept alive by the Christian church because beeswax was needed for candles; and you definitely want to buy local honey, even though there are few laws that guarantee its safety and source. (The cheap honey in grocery stores may contain chemicals and pesticides, and some counterfeit honey consists of corn syrup and yellow food coloring.)

Vanilla, Siegel writes, is the victim of slander, because despite its reputation for blandness it is the second most expensive spice to grow (behind saffron). Vanilla beans are the product of a type of orchid, and the pods take years to mature. “So you could probably have a kid and put them through kindergarten in the same time, and for less aggravation, than it would take to seed and harvest your own vanilla crop.”

Also, you probably don’t know what vanilla really tastes like, Siegel says, because up to 99 percent of “vanilla” flavoring in food comes, horrifyingly, from “things such as wood pulp, tree bark, rice bran, chloroform, or castoreum,” a secretion extracted from the nether regions of North American beavers.

From there, Siegel segues into a cornucopia of facts about ice cream, which include Thomas Jefferson’s recipe for ice cream (just a guess, but the cheapest brand at your supermarket is probably better) and how ice cream came to be classified as “essential foodstuffs” during World War I, which may be the best thing Herbert Hoover ever did.

And on he goes. Like his own reading journey that led to this book, Siegel coaxes the reader through turn after turn in a rabbit hole of information, marrying easy prose with weird facts, such as the Aztecs’ obsession with chili peppers (used for medicine, face washing and torture) and how common foods such as tomatoes and potatoes were once considered poisonous and satanic. The best chapter, however, is on the strange origins of boxed breakfast cereal, and let’s just say if John Kellogg were alive today he would be canceled and no one would eat corn flakes or Grape-Nuts (the recipe for which is said to have been stolen from a sanitarium safe).

There’s little original material in this book, but the selection and presentation are fresh, and Siegel is an able and entertaining curator of the information. Also, he named his dog Waffle, so bonus points for that. B+


Book Notes

Another football season, another book about Tom Brady and Bill Belichick — oh, wait.

TB12’s defection to the South disrupted a cottage industry, dissecting the 20-year partnership between the New England Patriots coach and his star quarterback.

One of the most prolific writers on the subject was Michael Holley, a former Boston Globe sports writer turned NBC broadcaster whose books include 2016’s Belichick and Brady (Hachette, 394 pages), 2011’s War Room (It Books, 352 pages) and 2004’s Patriot Reign (It Books, 256 pages). So inquiring minds might wonder what Holley is writing about now.

Turns out he, too, has defected to another camp: shockingly, the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Holley collaborated with former Steelers coach Bill Cowher to produce Cowher’s memoir, Heart and Steel, published in June (Atria, 288 pages). For those with short memories, Cowher coached the Steelers for 15 seasons before Mike Tomlin took over in 2007. The book is not just about his football career but also about the challenges of suddenly becoming a single father of three daughters after losing his wife and father within a period of three months. Highly recommended for the bye week for anyone who possesses a Steelers’ terrible towel.

But fear not, Patriots fans. The cottage industry continues with Seth Wickersham’s It’s Better to Be Feared: The New England Patriots’ Dynasty and the Pursuit of Greatness (Liveright, 528 pages). You just have to wait a few weeks. Set for release Oct. 12, Wickersham’s book will test whether the public will still buy books with both Brady and Belichick on the cover. The publisher promises a “full, behind-the-scenes story of the Patriots” by the ESPN senior writer, with insight on Belichick’s “tactical ingenuity” and Brady’s “unique mentality.”

For those who’d rather look ahead than look back, check out Lars Anderson’s Chasing the Bear, How Bear Bryant and Nick Saban Made Alabama the Greatest College Football Program of All Time (Grand Central Publishing, 304 pages). The Pats’ new quarterback, Mac Jones, hails from Alabama.

Finally, for those of you who’d rather have a root canal than watch football, there’s ammunition for your case in Against Football (Melville House paperback, 208 pages), Steve Almond’s 2014 “reluctant manifesto” against the sport. Almond is a Massachusetts writer who not only hates football but hates the Patriots, just so you know. He’s most famous lately for a New York Times podcast, “Dear Sugars,” hosted with Wild author Cheryl Strayed.

Book Events

Author events

KERRI ARSENAULT Author and journalist presents her investigative memoir Mill Town: Reckoning with What Remains. Thurs., Sept. 9, 6 p.m. The Music Hall, 28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth. Tickets start at $60 for a small table with two copies of the book included Visit themusichall.org.

R.W.W. GREENE Author presents Twenty Five to Life. Bookery Manchester (844 Elm St., Manchester, bookerymht.com), Fri., Sept. 10, 5:30 to 7 p.m.

MARGARET PORTER Author presents The Limits of Limelight. Gibson’s Bookstore, 45 S. Main St., Concord. Tues., Sept. 14, 6 p.m. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

AMY TIMBERLAKE Newbery Honor winning author presents her second Skunk and Badger book, Egg Marks the Spot. Virtual event via Zoom, hosted by Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord. Tues., Sept. 21, 7 p.m. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

JEFF BENEDICT Author presents The Dynasty. Gibson’s Bookstore, 45 S. Main St., Concord. Wed., Sept. 22, 6 p.m. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

DAVID SEDARIS Humor writer presents. Capitol Center for the Arts (44 S. Main St., Concord, ccanh.com), Sun., Sept. 26, 7 p.m. Tickets start at $49.

Book sales

MULTI-BOOK AUTHOR SIGNING AND SALE A Freethinker’s Corner(652 A Central Ave., Dover, 343-2437, freethinkerscorner.com), Sat., Sept. 18, noon to 4 p.m.

MULTI-BOOK CHILDREN’S AUTHOR SIGNING AND SALE A Freethinker’s Corner(652 A Central Ave., Dover, 343-2437, freethinkerscorner.com), Sat., Sept. 25, noon to 4 p.m.

FRIENDS OF BROOKLINE PUBLIC LIBRARY TWO-DAY BOOK SALE Featuring hardbound and paperback books of all fiction and nonfiction genres, plus CDs, DVDs and audio books, for sale. 4 Main St., Brookline. Saturday, Sept. 25, and Sunday, Sept. 26, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Visit brooklinenh.us/brookline-public-library/pages/friends-of-the-brookline-public-library.

Poetry

DOWN CELLAR POETRY SALON Poetry event series presented by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire. Monthly. First Sunday. Visit poetrysocietynh.wordpress.com.

SLAM FREE OR DIE Series of open mic nights for poets and spoken-word artists. Stark Tavern, 500 N. Commercial St., Manchester. Weekly. Thursday, doors open and sign-ups beginning at 7 p.m., open mic at 8 p.m. The series also features several poetry slams every month. Events are open to all ages. Cover charge of $3 to $5 at the door, which can be paid with cash or by Venmo. Visit facebook.com/slamfreeordie, e-mail [email protected] or call 858-3286.

Featured photo: The Secret History of Food.

Album Reviews 21/09/09

Josie Cotton, Pussycat Babylon (Kitten Robot Records)

Well look at this, post-punk royalty in the house. Cotton made her big splash in 1982 with the single “Johnny Are You Queer,” a tune that had originally been done by the Go-Go’s, and Cotton’s version became part of the whole ’80s punk canon, later appearing as background vibe on the soundtracks to Jackass Number Two and Valley Girl. Since then her Kitten Robot record label has released stuff from such diverse bands as CrowJane and Dark Mark vs. Skeleton Joe. But enough LinkedIn-style fluff, the business at hand concerns this full-length, which is basically Son Of Johnny, if you’re just trying to mark this as read and move on to Amy’s movie reviews. Cutesy girl-pop with only the mildest of edge, all retrofitted with noteworthy samples and beat-age, this is stuff that’d work fine at your ’80s throwback pajama party. “Recipe For Disaster” is a darker shade of the aforementioned vibe, slightly goth in fact; “Hi, I Like You” is the punker, something that might come out of KT Tunstall’s suddenly becoming obsessed with Lake Of Dracula. A

Inglorious, Heroine (Frontier Records)

Hey man, I think I’ve been pretty cool about not overloading this space with hard rock releases from ’80s-hard-rock bands, considering that I used to be in one of those crews in the olden days. I know, hard rock is basically dead, but ― and we’ve been over this before, of course ― I consider myself duty-bound to check in with what’s “going on” with the bands that still cling to the genre, which ― and you should know this ― still sells plenty of records basically everywhere in the world except for America and the twin prison colonies of Australia and New Zealand. There are still old-school arena-metal bands in the U.K., like this five-man operation, who’ve tabled here a collection of cover songs, most of which were originally done by famous divas like Whitney Houston (“Queen Of The Night”), Christina Aguilera (“Fighter”) and Alanis Morissette (“Uninvited”). But this is a dude singing, and he sounds like David Coverdale from Whitesnake. Can you picture Whitesnake doing a hilariously annoying cover of Joan Jett’s “I Hate Myself for Loving You?” Good, then we’re done here. B-

PLAYLIST

• The next date for most album releases is this Friday, Sept. 10, meaning we are definitely done with summer, just kiss it goodbye. I hate everything about that, but I shall soldier on, as the air begins to have a slight nip, and my summer non-grumpiness slowly gives way to general impatience with basically everything. I usually write this section two weeks in advance, so for all I know we are back in lockdown or have been invaded by aliens, so anything you see here does in fact hinge on society functioning normally. OK, I can’t keep a straight face about that last bit, nothing’s been “normal” in this culture since 1946 or so, but let’s pretend, for the sake of getting this column finished and into my out box, and since there are Santas in the malls already, let’s start with a band called Sleigh Bells, from Brooklyn, New York! But wait, they are not a band of holiday elves who love working at building toys, they are a boy/girl noise-pop duo, which means that I should automatically like them, unless they suck. Their new album, Texis, is their fifth full-length and their first since 2016’s Jessica Rabbit. Singer Alexis Krauss used to be a schoolteacher, and her side thing is activism, specifically toward the aim of making people aware of ingredients that are used in personal care products. Would you want to know what ingredients are used in your wintergreen-plum hand soap, or are you more like me, not caring which smelly, weird and unnecessary chemical finally puts me in the hospital for good? All right, the first single, “Locust Laced,” sounds a lot like Birthday Massacre, and since no one but me has ever heard Birthday Massacre, I’ll explain: think of ’80s-pop band Missing Persons, unless you’re not old, in which case I can’t help you with a handy reference, because all your music is basically unlistenable dreck. No, I’m kidding, think of all the songs you hear on that TV show Stranger Things, except it’s a lot better and there’s a dude playing a Metallica guitar now and then. Something like that. Make sense? No? OK, then we can continue.

• This is embarrassing, I actually didn’t know 1960s-girl-group mega-queen Diana Ross was even still alive, but sure enough, there she is, with a new album, called Thank You! Hmph, thank you indeed, even the slightest thought of Diana Ross sets off an earwom in my brain, so now all I’ll be thinking about for the next week is the line from whatever stupid song, “My world is empty without you, babe,” with that stupid skronky saxophone, thanks for nothing. Whatever, the album’s title track is a shapeless, formless blob of Foxwoods glitz-pop, nothing too strenuous, but what do you expect from someone who’s 78 years old. If she had William Shatner sing a duet, I would buy it.

• Speaking of wicked old people, Dark Matters is the 18th studio album from British pub-punk band The Stranglers. Did I mention that they’re old? Because they used to be punky and yelly, but the jangly new single “And If You Should See Dave” sounds like the theme song to some 1960s B-movie about a guy who turns into a turkey every full moon. You know, something like that. I can’t relate to this tune at all.

• Yikes, we’re done with this week’s rundown, except for one last thing, another pub-rock band, except this one isn’t as old. Yes, it’s Australian dumb-bunnies Amyl and the Sniffers, with Comfort To Me, their new album! The single, “Guided By Angels,” is like Courtney Love but more punk, like a drunk X-Ray Spex, but with a lot of rhythm. Anyone with ears would love this song, I mean literally anyone.

If you’re in a local band, now’s a great time to let me know about your EP, your single, whatever’s on your mind. Let me know how you’re holding yourself together without being able to play shows or jam with your homies. Send a recipe for keema matar. Message me on Twitter (@esaeger) or Facebook (eric.saeger.9).

Bring Your Baggage and Don’t Pack Light, Essays by Helen Ellis

Bring Your Baggage and Don’t Pack Light, Essays by Helen Ellis (Doubleday, 176 pages)

Resist the temptation to dismiss Helen Ellis because of her previous titles, Southern Lady Code and American Housewife, which sound like something Paula Deen might have written.

Ellis was, in fact, raised in Alabama, but shrugged that life off early in her 20s to move to New York City in hopes of becoming a writer. Before that dream was realized, however, she made a name for herself as — no joke — a high-stakes poker player. When the writing career came, it was jump-started by an anonymous Twitter account she called “American Housewife” with the handle @WhatIDoAllDay. Her timeline was richly sardonic, the MiracleGro for popularity on that platform, and a brand was born.

Her fourth book is a collection of essays called Bring Your Baggage and Don’t Pack Light, mostly composed of foul-mouthed reflections on aging, periodically interrupted by foul-mouthed reflections on cancer and other indignities of life. It begins benignly enough, with Ellis reporting that she is heading for Panama City, Florida, “aka ‘The Redneck Riviera,’” with four friends for a jaunt she calls the “grown-ass ladies’ trip,” the highlight of which is a night out to see a TV psychic, Theresa Caputo, star of a show called Long Island Medium.

After the national anthem, which everyone sang while facing an American flag projected onto the screen, the TV psychic explained that she goes “where the Spirit leads” and that occasionally she gets hot, because perimenopause. This caused Ellis to whoop and clap. “God bless this woman for yelling ‘menopause’ in a crowded theater.” she writes. “I wasn’t sure if I believed in her power, but I believed we could be friends, so she had me now, and I was rooting for her.”

And Ellis is off, with her particular brand of humor, which is a combination of Nora Ephron without the divorce and Erma Bombeck without the kids. Married for 25 years and happily childless, Ellis identified ironically as a housewife until just a few years ago, when she started owning the title “writer” after years of being famous as a pearl-wearing poker player. That distinction is one that makes her a “character,” which she explains is different from a naturally funny person. “A character wants to be the life of the party. Or the life of a seven-hour flight delay. Or the life of a Piggly Wiggly checkout line.”

For the perplexed, Piggly Wiggly is a chain of supermarkets mostly in the South. That, and the pearl-wearing, however, is about Southern as Ellis gets. There’s some of the late Texas humorist Molly Ivins in her, but she would be right at home in the cast of Sex and the City, and her humor is as racy in places as that of Carrie Bradshaw. There is, for example, the chapter in which she admits that she and her husband speculate about the sex lives of their friends. For example, she will say, after long-married friends leave, “There’s no way they’re still having sex,” to which her husband will respond, “Shh, they’re still in our hallway.”

She writes of salivating over a velour housecoat in the Vermont Country Store catalog, and the potential effect it would have on her husband’s libido. She says he would rather come home and catch her in a pyramid scheme than in that robe.

Ellis nails the one-liners in this short string of folksy anecdotes, as when she describes garage-sale regulars as “people who want to profit from your poor life decisions.” She used to wear all black to her poker games because “I myself am a pop of color,” which is shown to be true in stories about accompanying friends to have a baby or to get Botox in possibly illegal circumstances. She and her husband don’t drive (“yes, we will wing it in a zombie apocalypse” but having never owned cars, they “are not confident drivers’’), and as such have collected many comical stories involving public transportation, such as taking long bus rides to casinos. She distrusts technology (“The cloud is tech talk for something Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg invented to store your political preferences, porn searches and high school reunion pictures”) and invents descriptions of her friends when storing their contact information in her phone; rather than John or Mary, for example, they are the “the grifter,” “the puzzler,” “the saint” or “the zookeeper.”

In short, she’s your zaniest friend, on steroids and on her third drink, still possessed of the presence of mind to write everything down.

The collection, however, doesn’t rise to Sedarisian heights, however, because it’s too frothy. David Sedaris is one of the greatest humorists working today because there is a point to everything he writes, no matter how hilarious. There’s not much of a point behind these stories than to make us laugh, or to mildly rage. Ellis’s mother used to tell her, “Helen Michelle, you’re not for everyone,” although she’s probably for everyone who spends more than seven hours a week on Twitter. Hers is a particular brand of humor, for the perpetually caustic with short attention spans. The title notwithstanding, the book packs light and wants a bit more baggage. C+


Book Notes

Can a funny title alone sell a book?

Probably not if the content is wretched, but some publishers seem to be lapping up bad puns these days. Witness the success of the Chet and Bernie mystery series by Spencer Quinn, which features narration by a dog and titles like Scents and Sensibility and (reviewed here recently) Tender is the Bite.

The mystery genre seems especially prone to punnage, given that there is also an “undercover dish mystery series” by Julia Buckley that includes the titles The Big Chili, Pudding Up With Murder and Cheddar Off Dead.

Then there’s the Avery Aames mystery series built entirely around cheese that includes the groan-inducing titles To Brie or Not To Brie, As Gouda as Dead, The Long Quiche Goodbye and Days of Wine and Roquefort. (Aames also has a novel entitled Cheddar Off Dead, and Connecticut author Korina Moss has a Cheese Shop mystery coming out with that title in the spring of 2021, indicating that publishers like bad puns so much they’re willing to reuse them.)

Perhaps most impressive is the “Bought the Farm” mystery series by Ellen Riggs, if not for its punnage, just for the sheer volume of words.

Riggs’ titles include the forthcoming How to Get A Neigh With Murder (for now, only available on Kindle pre-order), and the previously published Dogcatcher in the Rye, Dark Side of the Moo, Till the Cat Lady Sings, Twas the Bite Before Christmas and Swine and Punishment.

For a more erudite look at puns and why we love them, check out John Pollack’s The Pun Also Rises (Avery paperback, 240 pages).

Pollack, a journalist and former speechwriter for President Bill Clinton, knows something of which he writes, having won the O’Henry World Pun-Off competition in 1995. Yes, that’s a real thing. This year’s contest is scheduled for Oct. 23. Check it out at punoff.com.

Featured photo: Bring Your Baggage and Don’t Pack Light.

Album Reviews 21/09/02

Kazemde George, I Insist (Greenleaf Music)

There’s something of a precedent for this album, at least in an inspirational sense. In 1960, jazz drummer Max Roach released We Insist! Freedom Now Suite, a set of five songs intended to be performed during the centennial celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1963. Impossibly, more than 50 years since, the equal rights struggle is still mostly a political battle that’s far from resolved. This, then, is George’s own musical thoughts on the matter, submitted in the — as I’ve noted a million times now — now-hopeless hope that art will inspire humanity to finally stop being idiotic about obvious things. But putting the intent aside, this is a really nice Barcalounger-jazz record from the sax player, leading a group for the first time under the auspices of Dave Douglas’ Greenleaf Music label. Beautifully engineered, these mellow pieces form a crystal clear pond of dive-right-in ambiance. George is definitely a sax player to watch, as his terrific soloing attests, and vocalist Sami Stevens is a treasure, scatting and crooning her way around most elegantly and with an original, unstressed sound. I’d recommend this to anyone. A+

Foghat, 8 Days On The Road (Select-O-Hits Records)

The only original Foghat member in this band is drummer Roger Earl. Singer Dave Peverett died years ago, and so did their lead guitarist, Rod Price (Fritz Wetherbee would want me to mention that Price died in 2005 in Milford after a household mishap). Who cares about the bass player, so that leaves the 70something drummer, like I said, and a bunch of other arena-rock pros, all of whom put up a good enough live front. This record launches with one of my fave overlooked oldies, “Drivin’ Wheel,” then gets into the goods, resurrecting the version of “Road Fever” from the original Foghat Live LP that put them on the map; only thing that’s missing is the energy you could literally feel wafting out of the giant-ass crowd (this all has more of a club vibe). Obviously for Foghat completists, if there are any still alive, and if that’s you, you’ll be psyched to learn that they’re playing at The Big E in Springfield, Mass., on Sept. 19. B

PLAYLIST

• Jane, stop this crazy thing, it’s September, and on Friday the 3rd new albums will appear as spam choices in your friendly streaming service, that super-friendly app that has totally never happily handed over the list of all your personal music choices to marketing data companies so that they could estimate your age, relationship status and economic privilege level and know what ads to send you, because there is no way that you are just viewed as a mindless consumer-bot by the Sentinels of the Big Tech matrix. No, I’m not kidding, everything’s fine, did you know that when you use the free wi-fi at Target, they track you through the store and make notes about what products you look at so they can fine-tune their email spam, no, I’m joking, seriously, oh look, there’s a squirrel, um, I mean a new album, called Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, from U.K. experimental rapper/actress Lil Simz! Her career has had a lot of help from famous Hanna-Barbera cartoon and trip-hop band Gorillaz; she opened for them during the 2017 Humanz Tour, and they’ve guested on each other’s albums. The single, “Introvert,” starts with an orchestral part that’s bombastic and Wagnerian, then settles into a pedestrian, almost-trip-hop beat over which Simz lays down some fluttery grime-ish bad-assery. The tune takes itself way too seriously, but whatever, you might honestly love it, and that’s your right!

gg bb xx is the fourth album from Los Angeles synthpop band LANY, and it is on the way, which is actually good news, because they’re nowhere near as horrible as so many Top 40 bands are today. In fact, the new single, “Up To Me,” is like a cross between Above & Beyond and Boyz II Men, really chill but vocally rich. At the rate these guys are going, this LP will probably reach No. 1, I’m serious.

• Ha ha, look folks, it’s Nevada-based sort-of-rock band Imagine Dragons, with a new album, called Mercury – Act 1! Yes, that’s right, they didn’t break up, that was only a rumor that surfaced when one of the guys said he wanted to spend more time with his family. I know, drat the luck, am I right? To me, Imagine Dragons are basically the Dane Cook of modern ringtone-rock, sort of like if Coldplay and Ed Sheeran had a baby that stuck to whipping out the Millennial Whoop in every one of their stupid songs and only cared about appealing to 11-year-olds who have smartphones, despite the Surgeon General’s warning about smartphones lowering preteen IQs by one point every week they’re used. No, I kid, so, moving on, the new single, “Wrecked,” is a chillout song, an amalgam of Bon Iver, Coldplay and Seal I guess.

• We’ll wrap up the week with Senjutsu, the latest album from arena-metal stalwarts Iron Maiden, who are from England! Fun fact, and I don’t know if this is some sort of publicity stunt or whatnot, but the band’s singer, Bruce Dickinson, apparently contracted Covid-19 even though he was vaccinated. As always, I hesitate to believe anything a rock star says, because usually it’s just a prank to get media attention, which I personally refuse to provide, oh wait, darn it, I just did. The tire-kicker single, “The Writing On The Wall,” is southern-rock-ish, like the Outlaws, except with Bruce Dickinson’s voice. The video is a cartoon about some motorcycle dudes and some guy dressed like the Grim Reaper and there’s a dragon-shaped nuclear bomb; none of it makes any sense, par for the course with this band, whose visuals were always dumb.

If you’re in a local band, now’s a great time to let me know about your EP, your single, whatever’s on your mind. Let me know how you’re holding yourself together without being able to play shows or jam with your homies. Send a recipe for keema matar. Message me on Twitter (@esaeger) or Facebook (eric.saeger.9).

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