Reading between the lines

Thank God for the King County Library System. Just as I finished The Inextinguishable Symphony and was thinking I’d have to start opening boxes to find a book I haven’t read, I got a notice that War Paint was waiting for me at my local branch.

This means I don’t have to go carton-diving for a long enough period that I can probably find something else on the library shelves or Amazon to tide me over until I move.

Moreover, it makes a really nice change from my most recent reading. Inextinguishable Symphony is Martin Goldsmith’s account of the Jüdischer Kulturbund, the organization that grew up in Germany after the Nazis began cutting Jews out of national—“Aryan”—cultural activities. The Kulturbund brought together Jewish artists, musicians, singers and lecturers and put on a rich variety of programs for Jews, who were forbidden to attend "Aryan" performances. It’s also the story of his parents, who met as musicians in the Düsseldorf chapter of the Kubu.

It’s well written and engaging, but also really depressing. For some reason I can take historical analyses of crackbrained Nazi (or Soviet or Roman or American) policies. When the story gets down to the individual human level, though, I take it personally and start having nightmares.

I was alternating Symphony with The Innovator’s Prescription, which apparently has solutions to the US healthcare mire. (Get ready—it involves you paying a whole lot more for your care.)

This tome is dire in its writing style (and I say this as someone who made her living for many years by reading dreck), but it’s all the rage at work. It’s like The Lord of the Rings in the 70s—you couldn’t be matriculated in college without one of the volumes in your backpack.

So my recent reading hasn’t been what you can call entertaining. Therefore I’m looking forward to getting the goods on those arch-rivals in the beauty business, Helena Rubenstein and Elizabeth Arden.

I find it interesting that, like Mary of Scotland and Elizabeth of England, each marshaled forces and schemed at the destruction of the other, and yet never met, even though on occasion they were in the same restaurant at the same time.

And I know I need the respite before diving into Joe Queenan's Closing Time, his memoir of growing up with an alcoholic, abusive father.