robertbrigham-books
  • Home
  • About the author
  • Books by Robert
    • When Your Lover Dies
    • Math Is Murder
    • Murder by the Numbers
    • You're Almost There
    • Patriotism
  • Leave Feedback
  • Fluff & Tough(

The Painful Gift

3/31/2018

0 Comments

 
When I retired in 2004 there was the unreasonable expectation I would surrender my office. That office, a fairly large one earned by spending decades at my university, housed what must have been more than 300 mathematics books accumulated over 50 years of academic life. All migrated to my home.
 
There they joined well over a thousand others, on a variety of subjects, shelved in multiple rooms. Bookcases were everywhere with the most content in a “library” on the first floor and the rest distributed among bedroom bookshelves on the second. Every available space that could house a book did house a book. To a family steeped in the love of the printed page, the closeness of these friends was a constant comfort.
 
Then the unthinkable occurred. The problems of maintaining the large two story home I’d inhabited for over 40 years became more than I wanted to deal with. It was time to downsize.
 
I learned “downsize” truly does mean smaller—significantly smaller. The new home is a delight, but with decidedly fewer square feet. Selling points included a beautiful built-in bookshelf and a bedroom that would transform into an office with space for a portable bookcase. The books were safe.
 
Until reality reared its ugly head.
 
Lovely as was the built-in, functional as was the portable, there simply wasn’t room for more than 200 books, perhaps 300 if squeezed in unsightly concentration. There was no way around it: My wife and I had to part with over 1000 of our dearest possessions. How on earth could that be achieved?
 
Those precious mathematics books, accumulated lovingly, had to go. At least most of them. I have been told, shocking as it will seem to you, that there are some who cannot understand wishing to keep books on that subject. Alas, for me it was difficult to part with them, even though the majority hadn’t been cracked in decades.
 
The hurt was somewhat assuaged knowing they would be donated to my university math department library where they can remain unopened by countless faculty and graduate students. They had to be carted a relatively long distance from my car to the math department. But that’s what graduate students are for! I did save the most important of them, the ones related to my research area and those that were signed by the authors.
 
What else was lost? I gave up a huge collection of books authored by Agatha Christie, Ellery Queen and John Dickson Carr/Carter Dixon. I gave up the complete Harvard Classics bought with pride at a book sale many years previously.
 
I gave up a Funk and Wagnalls encyclopedia as well as the Britannica, both circa 1940’s. I know, I know, the latter is online. And a lot has happened since the 40’s. Somehow, though, online is not the same. I remember, when I was in the fourth grade, lying on the floor, head raised as I perched on my elbows, with a Britannica volume before me from which I extracted what was needed for a social studies report. And back then I could rise without moans!
 
I gave up other mysteries, novels, do-it-yourself handbooks, foreign language texts and a multitude of other books. I gave up two huge dictionaries that had inhabited both floors. I kept books signed by the authors.
 
My wife, a philosophy major and music enthusiast, saved books in those areas.
 
Box after box was filled, some to be carted to the library, which would sell them for a pittance, and the rest to our new home.
 
How we misjudged, moving far more of them than our meager shelves could accommodate. More trips to the library.
 
We’ve survived, but often I think about a specific book fondly and look for it among our present holdings. Alas, it often is long gone.

0 Comments

My First Reference Books

3/24/2018

1 Comment

 
“Mom, what does ‘hoopla’ mean?”
 
I’m not sure how old I was or if “hoopla” was the word I raised, but her response would have been independent of those variables.
 
“Look it up.”
 
From the earliest days of my reading life the dictionary was a nearby companion. How could one not be dazzled by this amazing book? It actually had every single word in it—or so I thought. Of course, in the maturity that destroys so many childhood myths, I learned that almost all the words in our dictionary were from only the English language, that some words considered too risqué were absent, and that new yearly entries were a constant truth.
 
But I never looked without finding the word I wanted, at least if I could get enough of the spelling correct. Well, maybe, just maybe, I might have failed to locate a risqué word or two.
 
Dictionaries were everywhere. In later life I had two of the huge unabridged ones, one on each floor of my home. Smaller versions played a big role at my elementary school. I think it was the sixth grade when our teacher distributed one, temporarily, to each of us. We were going to learn how to look up an entry.
 
A silly activity, I thought. I’d been doing that for years. But that wily teacher knew a trick or two. “Look up palindrome,” she said. I’m sure that wasn’t the word, but a palindrome is one of my favorite things so I thought I’d immortalize it here.
 
Most of us started thumbing through the multipage book maybe 50 sheets at a time, starting with “aardvark.” Finally someone discovered our goal and announced the page number for all to hear.
 
“That’s great,” our teacher said, “but it took a long time. Let’s see how to make it go faster.”
 
We learned to think where the first letter, here a “p,” is in the alphabet. A little more than half way, we realized. So why not turn over half the pages of the dictionary in one shot? We practiced finding words for over 20 minutes and got pretty good at it. Came in handy with phone books too. Yes, there used to be such things.
 
It was only one day, a small part of one hour, devoted to the technique. But it stayed with me through decades. Funny what you retain when so much else is lost.
 
Later in life, maybe high school, the wonders of a thesaurus were uncovered. Imagine, an entire book telling me what words mean the same thing, or nearly so, as a word I’d started with. Roget’s Thesaurus was the standard.
 
I use both dictionary and thesaurus often in my writings. I have a good vocabulary but not a great one. Couple that with the slow deterioration in memory recall and I often need a little help with a definition or synonym.
 
No longer, though, do I approach the beloved tomes of earlier days. Now I clique on a bookmark to bring up online versions. It’s so easy. If I enter “rediculous,” the system patiently points out no such word exists and provides a long list of possible suggestions as to what I meant, with “ridiculous” right at the top. When I enter the corrected version in the thesaurus (part of the same system) I’m not happy with any of the suggestions but “comical” comes close. Maybe I should look for a synonym of that. No problem. Just clique on “comical.” Ah, “uproarious” is suggested. Perfect! And no time consuming tracing through a path involving several pages in a book.
 
Yes, the modern approach is a vast improvement in efficiency. But oh how I miss those paper versions!

1 Comment

Paper, Audio or e?

3/17/2018

1 Comment

 
It’s a Saturday in the late sixties, the snow dusts my New Jersey home, a fire warms the living room, and a book is an intimate friend sharing the sofa. Can it get any better than this?
 
Not far away, in a bedroom I call an office, is my beautiful slide rule, the computer that saw me through an engineering degree.
 
The world has changed. My first electronic calculator cost one third that of my slide rule, performed more functions, and had greater accuracy. Sometimes these days you can find a slide rule in a museum, right next to Neanderthal Man.
 
Are physical books also slated for extinction? I hope not because there is something special about the connection I feel when I settle in with one. These days, though, this Florida dweller has replaced the hypnotic fireplace with the humming air conditioner. I’m encouraged because I’ve heard comments saying “real” books are making a comeback.
 
I don’t like the term “real” books. To me a book is not a pretty cover and pages you can turn. It’s a story that holds your interest. Or a math text you can pore over as many times as desired. The essence of a book doesn’t change just because it’s encoded with 1’s and 0’s.
 
We tend to think of audio books as a fairly recent phenomenon, but the Talking Books Program for the Blind was founded in 1931. It was a lifesaver for my mother who was blind the last 20 years of her life while books on CD entertained my father-in-law, a prodigious reader, when his sight ebbed.
 
I embrace the old and the new in my own reading. In fact, I’m always working on two books at the same time.
 
The traditionalist in me loves the old fashioned kind, the one made of paper. Usually it’s a mystery. Nothing better at the end of the day than curling up with a whodunit, trying to unravel the plot and work out the guilty party. Mostly they come from the library and the torn pages and food stains form a connection with the previous readers who have placed their imprint on the same surfaces.
 
My second book is audio, embedded on a temporary basis in my iPod, and accompanies me on my runs and dog walks. These books tend not to be mysteries. I especially enjoy audio when the book is long, has multiple characters, or contains difficult Russian names. The readers, usually professional actors, are wonderful, using different voices for the various characters, thereby keeping me straight on who’s who. And it’s nice to be distracted as I bend to pick up poop.
 
I have many friends who swear by eBooks. I do too, because, when one of mine is sold, the royalty is surprisingly large. My daughter is a Kindle fan. She tells me she’s listening to my latest, Patriotism, while commuting to work. She says it’s interesting because Kindle can read it aloud but often makes strange choices as to pronunciation. For example, the book might have “The wind is blowing,” and the Kindle voice might pronounce “wind” as in “Wind your watch!”
 
I can understand the attraction for eBooks and occasionally I make a purchase. Especially if it’s a book I want to keep. I for the most part no longer store books on a shelf. Instead they’re in my really old Kindle. My own books reside there. Yes, I do want to keep those. But there are others that seem to speak to me, including The Elements of Style, the classic Flatland describing a two-dimensional world, a sad history of the Everglades, a description of the heyday of transistor developer Bell Telephone Laboratories where I spent seven years, and a biography of an interesting mathematician named Claude Shannon.
 
It’s clear there are many ways to read. What’s your favorite? Whatever it is, it’s the right way.

1 Comment

My First Book

3/10/2018

3 Comments

 
My first book was born in misery, not mystery, inspired by the death of my wife of 42 years. She was a therapist, and over time I had picked up some of her tricks.
 
One was writing down my feelings.
 
I’d never done that, but after the most devastating event of my life I found myself creating vignettes over the next year or two. Here are a couple of the shorter ones.
 
Life! Her! You embraced it passionately—just as you did her. You inhaled its beauty, opportunity, adventure and enjoyed it fully—just as you did her. You searched for every nuance—just as you did her. Life! Her!—Her! Life! Inseparable. You used to want to live forever—with her. You were an active participant in life—with her. Now you’re only a spectator—without her.
 
The dress will attend no more parties. The book is forever closed. The thyme, old and soggy, has doctored its last meal. Memories—one box for good will, one for the library, and the other for the city dump.
 
I had a friend who told me the vignettes sounded like C. S. Lewis. I very much doubt that. Besides, I’m not sure I’m happy with the comparison.
 
I was to learn that time does amazing things. Eventually I met a woman understanding of my loss and misery who was to bring me to the next chapter of my life in a way that honored the past. I wrote her this:
 
When I see gray, you show me color,
When I feel despair, you offer me hope,
When I embrace death, you introduce me to life.
Thank you.

 
Eventually, eight years after my loss, these and my other writings sparked the creation of my first book, When Your Lover Dies, which includes the vignettes and my path to living. I call it a self-help book. Others have said it’s more like a memoir.
 
It is constructed of three sections whose titles accurately communicate the content: From Marriage to Death, Passing Through Hell to Recovery, and Peace and Advice.
 
I read dozens of books attempting to help deal with death and loss. None resonated with me. I think mine is more powerful. Probably not for everyone, though, because we all deal with life’s disasters in our individual ways. But I really thought it would be helpful, and to some it has been.
 
But there has been no massive outpouring of demand. I sent it to Oprah (is that thinking big or what?) and its receipt was not acknowledged. I sent it to an advice columnist and its receipt was not acknowledged. I sent it to publishers and agents and there was no interest.
 
But I’m content, because I think it may well be the best work I’ve ever done. Even more importantly, writing it helped bring me to the point where I can embrace being alive so I can share this time with that woman who showed me color, hope and life.
3 Comments

Whodunits—Again

3/3/2018

0 Comments

 
I’ve talked about whodunits before, those wonderful carefully crafted murder mysteries in which all clues are available to the reader and suspects abound. The brilliant but flawed detective, usually not a part of law enforcement, often gathers those under suspicion and in an ingenious deductive argument uncovers the murderer. Then the slightly befuddled but grateful police officer hauls the villain away.
 
I’ve mentioned some of the masters: Agatha Christie, Ellery Queen, Arthur Conan Doyle, and John Dickson Carr.
 
I recently came across a website in which mystery author John Verdon (I’m not familiar with him but feel I should be) lists 10 of his favorite whodunits. Conan Doyle, for Hound of the Baskervilles, is the only author mentioned above that appears on his list. Some of his picks surprised me.
 
His very first selection is Oedipus Rex, followed by Hamlet. He also likes Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré, Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith, and The Crossing by Michael Connelly. His entire list along with justifications appears at https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/tip-sheet/article/70916-10-best-whodunits.html.
 
My next post, the one that should have been here, was ready to go. But instead I felt a need to return to my favorite genre after I finished reading Anthony Horowitz’s Magpie Murders, published in 2017.
 
It offers all anyone could want in a whodunit, while simultaneously educating us about what a whodunit truly is. I don’t want to reveal too much because, if you like this genre, you’re sure to like this book. Let me just quote a phrase from the inside front cover flap: …this fiendishly brilliant, riveting thriller interweaves a classic whodunit worthy of Agatha Christie….
 
But this book goes way beyond the classical whodunit and Agatha in a masterful way, without ever leaving the genre. To me, there’s even a reminder of Hamlet. If you read Magpie Murders, I’ll be interested in hearing if you think I’m completely off my rocker about the Hamlet comment.
 
I like to believe I’ve been somewhat successful in creating whodunits in Math Is Murder and Murder by the Numbers, but I’ve strayed from strict compliance to the style in You’re Almost There and Patriotism.
 
Magpie Murders has tweaked my interest in trying one again. So I hope you’ll excuse me if I quit the blog here and spend some time trying to come up with a plot, even if I have to abandon, for a while, the book I’ve already started.
 
“Er, Bob.”
 
“Yes, Elmo.”
 
“What does this mean for me?”
 
“What do you mean?”
 
“Well, you said I’d be in the book you’ve been working on. Now what will happen to me?”
 
“Don’t know, but we do need a brilliant non professional detective. Elmo, stop grinning.”
 
I’m glad I didn’t add “flawed” to the detective’s description.
0 Comments

    Author

    Write something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview.

    Archives

    June 2025
    May 2025
    April 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed