“Sometimes I think the ideal library is composed solely of reference books. They are like understanding friends—always ready to meet your mood, always ready to change the subject when you have had enough of this or that.”
The Treasure Chest
James Donald Adams was a New York Times Book Reviewer who also edited many volumes of poetry and literature.
Adams can either be Time or Degree
Dr. Jones unintentionally has two ascendants for Mr. Adams, which causes a conundrum. When I first reviewed them, I went with the time-based ascendant and ignored the tabular listing. Overtime though, the most I read about Adams, the more I became convinced it was off and had to be adjusted, so I changed it from 28 Scorpio to 22 Sagittarius. Only the rectified chart is mentioned here. The original two are over here called Jones 007.
Mr Adams’s obit is from the New York Times, naturally.. 76966967.pdf
Bonding with Sappho
In in the first house Pallas Athene is conjunct another asteroid, this time Industria depicting the amount of hard intellectual work he had to perform. Reading the books on a deadline can become tedious for many I have to imagine were lackluster, and perhaps he learnt the skill of speed-reading to deal with the volume.
After that task, Adams then had to prepare the review, giving readers enough information, and fitting the space allowed, to form a judgement of whether they would spend their time. Of course there had to be some amount of blowback — unhappy publishers and irate writers, but that is all part of the game, so Saturn in the ninth has to give him a thick skin.
Jupiter the planet of variety
Jupiter is opposite Mercury and Mars tells us it got palling and since it makes a Grand Square with the Moon and his Ascendant, made him wonder if it was a never-ending task with no relief in sight. I suspect this suggests after so many years of reviewing books, like the recently retired Michiko Kakutani, who reviewed for the Times for 34 years, he longed to write his own for always being the host and never the guest of honor is tough on the ego (Daedalus conjunct the Sun).
See Goodreads for those books. He was the introductory editor, and those he wrote himself.
