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For the next year, I’ll be taking part in Pajiba’s Cannonball Read, joining one hundred other bloggers as we read and review 52 books in one year.

Today I’ll be reviewing my first book: Stephen Fry’s novel, “Making History.”

There’s a certain romance to “what if.” At night, when I can’t sleep, I have a box of regrets I like to paw through. What would have changed, I wonder, if I had done x instead of y, chosen this college over that, if my parents had bought a house one town over instead of my childhood home? Would I be a better person now, smarter, thinner, better with money, less prone to late-night ruminations?

Physics offers some comfort: String theory suggests that for every decision we make, each moment when potential paths diverge, an alternate universe is created. Years ago, in some alternate history, the man who was to become my grandfather boarded a ship to Hong Kong instead of going home to his new bride, and was lost along with the rest of its crew. In some other universe, he stayed behind, but moved his family west instead of heading home to North Carolina. My mother grew up in San Francisco, never chose a college in St. Louis, never met a bearded junior who reminded her Little Women’s Dr Bhaer, and I was never born. In some other history, I was born, but did everything differently. I live in Kansas, with kids and a yard and some job involving lots of math. In yet another universe, JFK actually was a jelly donut.

In Making History, actor/novelist Stephen Fry tackles the 20th Century’s most haunting what if: how would the world be changed if Hitler never rose to power? Would Europe have marched quietly past the twentieth century’s halfway mark, innocent of one less genocide? Or was there an inevitability to Hitler’s rise that transcended even the man himself? Could you have Hitler without Hitler?

The novel follows Michael “Pup” Young, a Ph.D. candidate at Cambridge who has chosen history, not because its his passion, but because it is his “field of least incompetence.” If only he’d been endowed with more patience, more discipline, he’d have chosen literature. But, he notes,

While I can read Middlemarch or The Dunciad or, I don’t know, Julian Barnes or Jay McInerney say, as happily as anyone, I have this little region missing in my brain, that extra lobe that literature students possess as a matter of course, the lobe that allows them the detachment and the nerve to talk about books (texts they will say) as others might talk about the composition of a treaty or the structure of a cell. I can remember at school how we would read together in class an ode by Keats, a Shakespeare sonnet or a chapter of Animal Farm. I would tingle inside and want to sob, just at the words, at nothing more than the simple progression of sounds. But when it came to writing that thing called an essay, I flubbed and floundered. I could never discover where to start. How do you find the distance and the cool to write in an academically approved style about something that makes you spin, wobble and weep?

But this inability or unwillingness to look beyond literature’s emotionally resonant qualities only shows Pup’s blindness: everything makes him spin and wobble, from his tumultuous relationship with his physicist girlfriend, Jane, to the history that he can’t resist dressing up with  prose-y historical fictions scattered throughout his Ph.D. Thesis. And so, when given the opportunity to tweak history itself, he doesn’t pause for analysis, but instead goes spinning off into an ill-thought-out adventure in historical revisionism.

Ultimately, what saves Pup are the lessons to be had in following his what ifs to their unforseeable conclusions. There is no perfection to be found, no event that, avoided, can save the world from itself. But in embracing his own present, in finding the self that fortune cannot alter, Pup ultimately gains the best outcome we can hope, for both the world and ourselves: he grows up. And in doing so, he comes to terms with history.

Edit: I just realized that, though I finished the book this morning, I started it yesterday, before the official start of Cannonball Read. Oh well. Consider this a practice run.

Another great find at the Mechanic’s Institute: The Gentleman’s Companion, Vol II: Around the World with Jigger, Beaker & Glass. Written by Charles H. Baker, Jr., who apparently traveled the world on Town and Country’s dime in pursuit of interesting recipes for food and drink.

A highlight, chosen at random:

THE AMER PICON “POUFFLE” FIZZ:  Something Native Originally to Paris & Encountered at the Cafe du Dome, where in Spite of the American Inundation of Pseudo-Bohemians Is Still a Moderately Consistent Rondezvous for other Americans Over There Who Do Things with Their Brains & Hands

Simply turn 1 to 1 1/2 jiggers  of Amer Picon into a shaker, add lots of cracked ice, the white of 1 fresh egg, 1/2 jigger of grenadine, shake, then turn everything into a big thin goblet and fill up with club soda to suit taste. This is a fine stomachic, and inspires interest in foods.

There are plenty of other drinks that sound delightful, including:

THE MARTINIQUE CRUSTA, which We Found Waiting for Us in Fort de France on the Occasion of Our First Trip through the West Indes, in 1929

and

THE RANGOON STAR RUBY, a Wonderful & Stimulating Cocktail from Lower-Burmah

Nearly every page includes some enticing concoction, no doubt sipped by idle gentlemen in dress whites on some balcony overlooking the sea, or on some far-off colonial cricket-field. For the temperate, there are even some marvellous-sounding nonalocoholic drinks, including two recipes for homemade, stone-bottled ginger beer. Why stone-bottled, you ask? Baker explains,

Of course this ginger beer may be bottled in glass, but that too is like modernizing any mellowed and ancient custom, or like a charming girl in sport slacks who wears high heels; for then certain of the charm flies out the window, through needless inconsistency.

So there.

I’ve decided to follow Loobylu’s lead on this. After all, when have you ever seen her do anything that didn’t look like loads of fun?

Hot:

1. Open Studios! Brian’s were this past weekend. It was a bit chilly, but great having all the work out, and having people tromping through. Plus, a spider built a web that went just perfectly with Brian’s latest sculpture. Photos to come.

2. Visiting Aunties! This was my aunt Ruby’s first time in San Francisco. She was only out for the weekend, so most of her visit was spent hanging out around the studio, but we managed to squeeze some fun in, including an expedition to:

3. Alcatraz! It’s really the prettiest view of San Francisco you’ll ever see. And we even saw a harbor seal frolicking beside our boat on the way home. The tour is a bit grim, but I think it’s fascinating. Military history! Prison history! Native American History! Add WWII, and you’d have an afternoon’s programming on the History Channel.

EDITED TO ADD::
Not:

HEADCOLDS. I’ve had this one over a week. I’m coughy, my sinuses hurt like a mofo, and I it’s got me so scatterbrained I forgot to add a ‘not’ section to my blog post for nigh onto 14 hours. Boo, common cold virus!

So, I had errands to run this morning, a big shopping trip to a big-box store down by the freeway overpass.

It didn’t start out well. I was on my way to grab a cup of coffee when I saw a bus approaching, and decided just to hop right on, never mind the coffee for now. It was at least four blocks before I realized I was on the bus going in the wrong direction, which just goes to show that coffee first is a good instinct to follow.

Anyway, when I finally got off the bus and back on the right bus and off the bus again, I wasn’t feeling very confident about my navigational abilities.

The directions I got off the internet said to head right on Harrison, but I was pretty sure I needed to go left. I even made an ‘L’ with my thumb and forefinger to make sure left meant what I thought it meant. Yup: lllllleft. Left toward the freeway. I had a really good feeling about left.

But the directions from the internet said right, and without coffee I wasn’t sure how trustworthy my instincts could be. I very nearly asked an older man, who was wheeling a grocery cart full of rags through the morning fog, what direction 14th street was in. (That’s where I was headed: 14th and Harrison). I even picked my out accent (I like to pretend I’m from someplace else when I ask for directions): a sort of Julia Child-ish nasally thing, maybe from Europe, maybe not. I figured I had a cold, so it’d sound convincing.

But then I looked up, and saw that Harrison St. actually ended on the corner where I was. So there was no going right. Llllleft it was. Left on Harrison and then left again on 14th, where, sure enough, I found my big box store.

So there, Google maps.

Jason and I were talking today, and somehow we got onto the subject of Disney World, which somehow led to road trips, which inevitably led to ‘I Love Lucy.’

“You need a boyfriend so we can go on humorous car trips as a foursome,” I said. “How about a personal ad: ‘Fred seeks Ethel for double dates and hijinks.’”

“I think Brian’s the Fred.”

“So I’m the Ethel?”

“And I’m the Lucy.”

“Ok, so you just need to find Desi.”

“Oooh! A Cuban band leader!”

“And every date could be something from an ‘I Love Lucy’ Episode!”

“Yeah — we could squish grapes with our feet!”

“And make flour sack dresses!”

“And every date would start with an argument.”

“It would be awesome if you didn’t tell him at first, just spring it on him a few weeks in.”

“Desi, sweetie…. I’ve got something to tell you…”

“…. I got us jobs at a chocolate factory.”

So, Not only is this the most well-documented cold in the history of ever, it’s also the most tenacious. Here’s hoping I don’t get Brian sick before his Open Studio.

Tonight, Brian and I headed over to the SF Open Studios opening gala. We ran into and chatted with a ceramic artist who we’d met at last year’s open studios, drank free wine, and best of all, I got to wear one half the bridesmaid dress from my cousin Molly’s wedding last month. Fancy!