Oops, I Did It Again...

Intaxicaton: Euphoria at getting a refund from the IRS, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.
~Author unknown, from a Washington Post word contest



HANK: Every year, I mean EVERY YEAR, I promise myself the same thing.
And the promise occurs around April 16. And every year I break the promise.

And every year, I mean EVERY YEAR, I realize that broken promise on (pretty much) the same day. Let's say, around today.

Every year I swear I will not leave my taxes until the last minute. And not just "doing" the taxes, but every year I promise, I resolve, I swear that I will not stuff all my receipts and check stubs and envelopes of convention expenses and invoices and bills from the bookmark guy into a big shopping bag. But, I do.

One year, determined, I actually bought an accordion file, one of those expando things where you can file by category, and then at the end of the year it's already organized. Yeah, that worked for a little while, but then it got too full and the old paper bag seemed like the best solution.

DO NOT tell me about excel spreadsheets, I just won't do it. First, you make a spreadsheet. Stymied from moment one. So, next weekend, I'm going to dump the bag(s) on the bed and organize and list on a yellow pad and then get a calculator and...Grrr. Grrr. Grrr. And then, after I'm finished, I'll resolve never to do that again.

If I had to predict: I'd say: Jan and Hallie and Roberta are all finished and have sent in their forms to Uncle Sam. Rosemary and Rhys give all their stuff to an accountant and don't have to worry about it. How'm I doing?

JAN: No. I'm not finished, but I do have it all in an Excel spreadsheet.

HANK: Sigh.

JAN: Well, "all" is an exaggeration. Although I do try to record all my bills as I pay them, I'm not what you call a perfectionist. Or even a good "double checker" because there's always an unexplained absence of say.... two months worth of Internet bills or travel expenses. There's always something important missing for no apparent reason, providing great insight into the holes that are in my brain.

HANK: I know! Why do we never learn?

JAN: But Hank, take heart, I'm behind the 8-ball, too, I haven't started nagging Bill yet to get the taxes done, which is BIG part of my job.

HALLIE: In my house taxes is 'men's work' - yes I assemble my income and expenses (nearly done) but my poor husband does the heavy lifting. It's too easy to file an extension!

RO: Oooooh, I think there's only one royal on this blog. My reputation as a princess is somewhat unwarranted - at least in this respect. Yes, Nancy the accountant extraordinaire makes sense of all my little scraps of paper but during the year I keep separate files for work expenses and I highlight those credit card purchases that are work-related. I've never been able to just use one credit card for all work expenses, though, not sure why. It would be very easy to spend a ton of dough promoting our books but I like to make a budget and stick to it.

HANK: Make a budget? What a concept. And I am inspired, Hallie, to get Jonathan to read this. I must say we each do our calculations separately--then off it all goes to the accountant. So we're not actually subtracting line 4(C)sub3 from Line 4 (c) sub2, or whatever.

So how are you all doing? Sent your forms off to the IRS and now patting yourselves on the back? (Good for you!) Or sorting receipts with the rest of us? Any tax tips? Besides, of course, to do them before April?

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And coming up this week: Tomorrow--do you use your family secrets? Wednesday: *fanfare* NANCY MARTIN! (And a book giveaway.) Thursday, bring a cup of tea, because we have short stories for you. And Friday, a truly hilarious thing that took me three times reading it to figure it out. The ultimate lost in translation.

On a librarian's discerning taste...

Today Jungle Red welcomes SALLY BISSELL an extraordinary Florida librarian who's been blogging since 2007 as SALLYB at Read Around the World. Every week she writes about the books she's reading. Her taste is wonderfully eclectic. Over the last few weeks she's dissected Colm Toibin's BROOKLYN, Michael Connelly's NINE DRAGONS, and Chris Cleeve's LITTLE BEE. She runs a book discussion group, and her online reviews are both insightful and personal.

HALLIE: Sally, how many books do you read and write about each month, and how do you pick them?

SALLY: Well, not nearly enough! The great thing is that I “read” in many different formats so that I’m able to have a book on my mp3 for exercising, a book in my car to keep road rage to a minimum, a book at my desk for lunch break and a book by the bed in case I can keep my eyes open long enough to get a few chapters in. I also get a book each month to review for Library Journal and I even have a Sony e-book reader for travel. I’d estimate that I read maybe 7 or 8 books a month. True confessions – I don’t always finish everything I start.

I read many professional review journals and subscribe to tons of book blogs, like your fabulous one, so picking books is easy. My “to read” list is huge and I keep buying used paperbacks to save for the day when I retire and can read that much more. Generally, I tend toward literary fiction, police procedurals, biography and some politics so that I can keep up with what my customers might be interested in.

HALLIE: What book has kicked up the most controversy in your discussion group(s)?

SALLY: Oh, wow, well, lots of them because I choose the book for that specific purpose. I’d have to say that Don DeLillo’s FALLING MAN, an examination of the effects of the attack on the World Trade Center on a small group of New York families, was a great way to begin our book discussion season last year. There were no wishy-washy responses to that novel!

It drew people I’d never seen there before, even a woman who had been living in New York during the tragedy, who shared her feelings openly and honestly. It never ceases to amaze me how willing people are to open up in a group of strangers. This is the beauty of literature, isn’t it, that we find a common ground on which to meet?

HALLIE: I agree completely. ! know you've discussed crime novels with lots of groups. If it's possible to generalize, what do you think today's readers particular like?

SALLY: Crime novels seem to be more popular than ever. I suspect, but who can really know this for sure, that the joy of a crime novel is that one is on the outside looking in and can say, “oh, this could never happen to me,” even though there’s a little frisson of suspicion that, in fact, it could.

Cyber-crime, identity theft, anything “ripped from the headlines,” as they say, is always good and then there’s the whole medical examiner genre kicked off by Patricia Cornwell, then Kathy Reichs, and echoed by CSI on TV, which is still very hot. I’ve noticed an uptick in books about terrorism and spies as well.

My personal guilty secret is medical thrillers. Michael Palmer scares me half to death!

HALLIE: What really turns them off?

SALLY: For my crew it’s definitely anything involving violence against children.

HALLIE: For you personally, when a suspense/mystery novel disappoint, is there anything in particular that tends to go wrong?

SALLY: I’d have to say that the motivation of the character is a big issue for me. It has to be believable when a person plots to take the life of another, especially a family member. Yet I completely understand random murder or murder in the throes of passion.

HALLIE: Here's a loaded question: what do you see as the main differences between murder mysteries and suspense on the one hand and literary fiction on the other?

SALLY:Ha, ha, watch me dodge this one! I think that murder and suspense novels and literary fiction have more in common than people may realize. Whenever we read, and we will always need stories in our lives, we are interacting with and recognizing a piece of ourselves in the characters on the page. Sometimes what we see isn’t flattering but it makes us think about what motivates people to act the way they do and, perhaps, to have more empathy for others.

There are novelists who some might consider crime writers yet who I think are very literary writers as well. George Pelecanos comes to mind right away, so does Dennis Lehane and Richard Price. That’s why I prefer not to box in an author to a certain genre and I try to get my customers to branch out a little bit as well
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HALLIE: Do you get involved in your library's buying decisions - and if you do, what makes a difference in whether a book gets on the BUY list or not (aside from budget).

SALLY: Yes, I am involved in what we buy and I love it. We have a relatively large library system with 12 branches so there’s been a big push on streamlining the ordering system. At a central location certain books are put on the purchase list each month based upon reviews in major publications, this list might be up to 100 titles a month. Then the list is sent to each branch where a librarian there chooses which titles he or she may want based upon a knowledge of the demographics and reading habits within that branch library’s area.

If the book is by an author I’m unfamiliar with I will check our database for past popularity, the number of times an author has been checked out.

We also have checks and balances to go along with this process. We periodically run reports that tell us how many customers are waiting for a particular title. For each 6 customers waiting we immediately lease another copy of the book. Leasing allows us to keep our readers happy while a certain book is hot and then, when the title cools off, we return leased books for credit toward future leases. I think this is common in libraries around the country.If a title falls through the cracks we are confident that our customers will let us know and we respond quickly.

HALLIE: Thanks Sally! Questions or comments for Sally? She'll be around today to respond.

On puttin' on the Ritz...

HALLIE: The Ritz Carlton (now Taj Boston) was once THE hotel at Boston to see and be seen. It had a world class dining room, a dark cozy bar, and a roof garden where a band played and dancers could pause and look across at a moonlit Public Garden. When my parents wrote a play that opened in Boston, I stayed there with them, an easy walk to the theater district.

Ken Sullivan knows all about what it was like from the inside. He's a mystery reader with a taste for Robert B. Parker and Anthony Trollope who worked behind the scenes in the kitchen and room service in the hotel's heyday when the hotel guests were a virtual Who's Who of the rich and famous.

Ken, when did you work at the hotel, how old were you, and what did you do?

KEN: I worked at the Ritz from June 1965 until Sept 1966 when I was in my late teens. I was hired as a dishwasher and after a month or so became a "kitchen runner", a job that was probably unique to the Ritz.

The Ritz had a room service set-up that was different from any other hotel that I know of. Each floor had a kitchenette/pantry that was operated by a room service waiter who was responsible for two floors and who never worked in the dining room and never even went to the kitchen. Instead, The waiter would write up the guest's order, place it and a carbon in a capsule, and drop it down a pneumatic tube to the kitchen runners. We'd enter the order in the kitchen, pick up the order, check it out through the room service cashier and then send it to the proper floor on a dumbwaiter.

HALLIE: What were some of the luxury features or services that we commoners would never have known about?

KEN: The most remarkable feature of the Ritz for me was the wine cellar. It encompassed the entire front half of the basement of the building. Even though I didn't know anything about wine at the time, I was still impressed. Knowing a lot more about wine now, I'd love to have a chance to go back in time and just wander through it again.

HALLIE: Who were some of the most gracious famous guests you met?

KEN: I have several great memories. Tom Yawkey, the owner of the Red Sox at the time, and his wife Jean lived at the Ritz during baseball season. They had a suite on the top (16th) floor at the corner of Arlington and Newbury Sts. and were the easiest people to get along with. They always ate in their rooms and had the same meal every night when they dined in: prime rib (rare), parslied potatoes and French style green beans. Mrs. Yawkey got a reputation as a nasty person after Mr. Yawkey's death when she took over the Red Sox, but nobody had anything bad to say about her during my time at the Ritz.

The pianist Artur Rubinstein stayed at the Ritz while he was in Boston for a Sunday afternoon concert at Symphony Hall when I was working there. I broke every rule the hotel had by delivering his brunch order to him directly instead of sending it up to his waiter and got to listen to him practicing Chopin while I set his meal up. Can you imagine? Artur Rubinstein playing and I'm the only person in the world listening. What a thrill! I broke another rule and asked for his autograph, which I still have. I keep it in the slipcase of his recording of the Tchaikovsky piano concerto.

Robert Preston stayed at the Ritz when he was in town performing in the stage version of "The Lion in Winter." I told him what a big fan of his my mother was and asked for an autograph for her. He actually wrote her a nice little personalized note which she treasured for the rest of her life.

For some reason that I can't begin to remember, Debbie Reynolds' movie "The Singing Nun" had its world premiere at the Cleveland Circle theater and she stayed at the Ritz for the occasion. I happened to be in the pantry when she popped in and asked if she could have some tea. The regular waiter was taking care of someone else, so I made tea for her. I don't remember what we talked about, but I know I made sure I didn't mention Liz Taylor. And, come to think of it, I don't think we ever charged her for the tea.

HALLIE: And who were the most monstrous?

KEN: I never met her so this is not first person experience, but I remember that Edna Ferber had the reputation of being the most ill-mannered guest in the history of the hotel. I was really disappointed to learn that one of my favorite authors had behaved so badly.

Speaking of monstrous behavior, in its early years well before my time there, the Ritz was "exclusive" in the worst meaning of the word. People of color and with certain ethnic last names or appearance were not welcome. In your introduction you mentioned dancing at the roof garden. In the 30's and 40's, Benny Goodman performed there regularly, but he would not have been allowed to stay there as a guest.

Then there was the most eccentric guest I encountered while working at the Ritz. In the summer of 1966, we were suddenly told that the entire 4th floor was off-limits to all employees and unauthorized guests. Boston police officers were actually stationed on the floor to make sure no one had access by way of the stairs or elevators. After a while, we learned that Howard Hughes had taken over the entire floor while he was in town negotiating some sort of business (I think he was selling TWA). He had his wife (Jean Peters?), some business associates, and his own chef with him to supervise the kitchen in preparing Hughes' food. He also had one of the room service waiters assigned to him full time. (The waiter had his own room on the floor and was even allowed to have his wife stay with him, but he was on call 24/7.)

After a while, security loosened up and we were allowed access to the floor. The waiter, Henry, was a friend of mine and I went up to visit him one evening in November (Hughes had stayed there for 5 months.) Henry handed me a menu and told me to order anything I wanted. I hesitated because it sounded dishonest to me, but Henry said everything was OK. Hughes had completed his business a couple of days before and had left town, but he didn't want word getting out for a week (he'd actually been taken out of the hotel on a stretcher to an ambulance by the delivery entrance without anyone, even hotel management, knowing it was him) and he'd instructed Henry to continue to order food as if he were still in the hotel and do whatever he wanted with it.

So, Howard Hughes bought me dinner at the Ritz Carlton.

HALLIE Were there other famous folks (besides you) who worked at the Ritz?

KEN: The most famous fellow ex-Ritz person and the one best known to your audience is Dennis Lehane. I met Dennis at a signing for "Prayers for Rain" at Barnes and Noble in Chestnut Hill in 1998. At the time, David Robicheaux and a crew from Channel 4 were doing a story on Dennis and they were covering the signing. I had brought all 5 of my Lehane books to the signing and, since the store didn't have all of Dennis' books in stock, David asked if they could take a shot of my books for the story. In the meantime Dennis and I started to chat and, somehow, the Ritz came up. He'd worked there in the 80's, either as a doorman or at the front desk, I'm not sure which. Meanwhile, I have videotape of him signing my books. Talk about a certificate of authenticity! I few years ago, I came across an Internet website that claimed that an autographed first edition of "A Drink before the War", his first book, was valued at $400!

RO: What stories you could write! I have very fond memories of staying at The Ritz when I worked for Crown Publishers and went to Boston for a meeting at WGBH. Yes, these were the eighties - today they'd probably put me on the Bolt Bus and send me home. But I was traveling with the publisher and he was a Ritz-y guy so they couldn't very well put me in the Dew Drop Inn. I felt so grown.

HALLIE: So, gentle readers, please share your questions of Ken and your own memories of tea or dancing or just breezing through the lobby of the Ritz.