The Glass Man and the Golden Bird by Ruth Manning-Sanders

Since about 1979, M for Mischief had been a book I was fascinated by but never actually read. So, full disclosure, it's been hard to go back to that depressing nonfiction book in the midst of this stressful moment. I was in the middle of reading Jonathan Safran Foer's We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast when the COVID-19 pandemic went full bloom.

And, yes, I staged them to make the pile a little more tidy for the photograph. These are, generally, the books I was reading when I snapped all of the Stay-at-home shelfies in one fell swoop on March 29. But reflecting the expansive, slightly paranoid tenor of the post-Nixon era, it's also full of psychic predictions, conspiracy theories, alternative history, analyses of contemporary events, book excerpts, lists of mail-order resources and notable trivia.'Here's the top of the nightstand, which by the way is a piece of oddball family furniture that dates to my great-grandfather. The Almanac was compiled to be a one-stop source for the informed, progressive citizen's informational needs, and in that spirit covers basic facts about world history and geography. 'A perfect a snapshot of the remains of the American counterculture in the mid-1970s. In the meantime, this excerpt from a 2009 Goodreads review might whet your appetite:

I've marked about a dozen things inside that I'd like to write about some day, but that will indeed have to wait for another day. It's the lesser-remembered predecessor of The Book of Lists, and it's a truly fascinating tome. For easy access, the book on the bottom is 1975's The People's Almanac, which has been my go-to browsing book for many months now. Today we move to my nightstand, where we find the books I'm currently reading.

The Glass Man and the Golden Bird by Ruth Manning-Sanders