A Life of Reading Words
DATE: 1/6/26
Challenge Titles Finished (Totals To Date):
Titles Finished: Totals for 2025:
All titles left to go for Challenge: 3,540
Next count: 1/1/27
Smith, Lee. Family Linen. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1983.
Reason read: Family Linen takes place in Virginia. Virginia became a state in the month of June.
Lee Smith introduces you to a typical dysfunctional family in America. They all have their quirks, but when the matriarch of the family dies, true colors reveal themselves as a jumble of full personalities with dark secrets. Family Linen has been called a murder mystery. Nettie, seeking help for constant headaches, visits a therapist. Under hypnosis, Nettie remembers an axe murder and her mother was directly involved. Did she wield the axe? Nettie, despite her mother’s passing is determined to solve the crime. Family Linen has also been called a psychological commentary on family dynamics. Throughout the story Smith uses various characters to voice past regrets and future forgiveness. Every character has their own tangled troubles.
As an aside, Nettie left her husband Marvin and later started seeing Millard, a flower shop owner. Nettie said Marvin could make beautiful arrangements. Was that her faux pas about her ex-husband or Smith’s?
Line I liked, “Sybill wishes she had never let Bob step one foot down in her subconscious” (p 43).
Author fact: Lee has her own website here: https://leesmith.com/
Book trivia: Family Linen’s story begins on June 1st, 1983. I started reading Family Linen on June 1st.
Music: “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” Beatles, “Breaking Up is Hard to Do,” “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover,” “You Picked a Fine Time to Leave Me, Lucille,” “You’re Ruining My Bad Reputation,” “Tennessee Waltz,” “What a feeling,” “Every Breath You Take,” “Mule Skinner Blues,” “Yellow Rose of Texas,” “Careless Love,” Boy George, “Mr. Sandman,” “Georgia On My Mind,” “I Know That My Redeemer Liveth,” Willie Nelson, Elvis, “Mr. Blue,” Synchronicity, Thriller, Kenny Rogers’ “Don’t Take Your Love to Town,” Nat King Cole’s version of “Ramblin’ Rose,” “Orange Blossom Special,” “The Twelfth of Never,” “Sea Cruise,” Rickie Scaggs, “Shout,” and “Wayward Wind.”
As an aside, I had to laugh when Lee Smith called Willie Nelson “old” in 1985…
BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust twice. First in the chapter called “Lines That Linger; Sentences That Stick” (p 140) and again in the chapter “Southern Fried Fiction” (p 205).
Lundy, Derek. Godforsaken Sea: Racing the World’s Most Dangerous Waters. Algonquin Books, 2000.
Reason read: June is the perfect month for an ocean voyage.
I would call the Vendee Globe sailing’s answer to the Barkley Marathons. The rules of the 27,000 mile race make the endeavor one of the most challenging competitions in the world. Sailors must sail solo without a crew. Once underway sailors cannot receive help from anyone on shore, either. They can moor their boat for a stop to make repairs, but they themselves cannot step foot beyond the high tide mark. At the time of publication the minimum funding needed to enter and prepare for the Vendee Globe was four million pounds. Only the truly dedicated (or insane) attempt the Vendee Globe.
Lundy, an avid sailor himself, chronicles the trials and tribulations of the sixteen sailors attempting the 1996-1997 Vendee Globe. He focuses most of the adventure on the extreme weather conditions around the most difficult leg of the race, the Southern Ocean. Only six of the sixteen vessels to enter the race will finish. As a result of the outcome of the 1996-1997 Vendee Globe race officials created new rules, making boats safer for future competitions.
I appreciated the anatomy of a ocean vessel I have never been aboard. Even more than that, I thrilled to learn the Beauford Wind Scale: the assigned number to the force of the wind and corresponding wind speed in knots, miles per hour, meters per second and kilometers per hour; the World Meteorological Organization categories (calm to hurricane); and what the water looks like from the land (mirror to air filled with foam and the sea completely white with driving spray. You know that the weather is terrible when you cannot tell the sea from the sky from the clouds.
Confessional: I have always been a dreamer about the idea of reincarnation. To think that a fellow sailor came back as an albatross to keep Chaband company was pure magic.
In the very beginning of Godforsaken Sea Lundy describes the capsizing of the boats of Dinelli, Bullimore, and Dubois. Cruelly, he leaves you hanging as to their fates.
Quote to quote, “It is interesting to contemplate what combination of compulsion and desires drives these sailors to the Southern Ocean” (p 177).
Confessional: I have a friend who is not necessarily all that good with boats. He definitely will not be reading Godforsaken Sea anytime soon. Most definitely not.
Other harrowing stories about trying to sail around Cape Horn:
Author fact: Lundy was trained to be a lawyer but decided to do something different.
Book trivia: there are no photographs in Godforsaken Sea.
I didn’t think it would be possible for Godforsaken Sea to mention music, but I was wrong: the Who and the Platters.
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Adventure By the Book: Nonfiction” (p 9).
Kantner, Seth. Ordinary Wolves. Milkweeds, 2004.
Reason read: Colorado’s Wolf Preserve opened in the month of June and while Ordinary Wolves isn’t exactly about wolves, I chose this book to honor the place.
Life can be brutally harsh, especially in the far reaches of the Alaskan tundra. Seth Kantner does not sugarcoat the Alaskan way of life. Violence is a simple reality whether it be hunting animals to stay alive or getting into fights with bullies for being too different or “too white” in Inupiaq country. The violent subject matter often throws cold water on the warmth of Kantner’s writing; for Ordinary Wolves despite the pain is also beautiful and lyrical. Emotions are physical entities: distrust squirted, embarrassment marched and memory pretended. Kantner writes in the language of keen observation and passion. I was seduced by the aromas of the land: coffee and campfire, the forest and snow.
Told in three parts, Ordinary Wolves takes readers from the wilderness landscape of Alaska to the city of Anchorage and back home again from the point of view of Cutuk. Despite being born and raised in Alaska, even at five years of age Cutuk has been aware of his differences: his yellow hair and pointed nose. Abe, his father from “away,” has embarrassed him all of his life. Throughout Cutuk’s childhood he feared his father was not manly enough. Despite living on the barren tundra Abe does not like to hunt; he is not rugged nor outwardly strong. Abe survives as an artist who builds furniture for extra income. Then there are the hints that Abe is not an observant father: the unfulfilled promise of a sleeping bag so that Cutuk doesn’t have to sleep so close to his coming-of-age sister; or realizing his daughter needs glasses. As Cutuk grows older his sense of self expands to a new understanding about the world around him.
Ordinary Wolves is a coming of age story that explores themes of identity, heritage, and belonging.
Favorite line, “I wiped my greasy hands on my pants and climbed up into his words as if they were a long team to pull me away to the land of strength and adultness” (p 11).
Author fact: Kantner was born and raised in Alaska. Ordinary Wolves has the potential to be autobiographical.
Book trivia: One of my all-time favorite authors, Barbara Kingsolver, write a review for Ordinary Wolves. It makes perfect sense that someone who can paint portraits of the landscape as well as Kingsolver would write Kantner a beautiful review.
Music: Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark,” Stevie Nicks, “Country Roads,” and Lucinda Williams (one of my favorites).
BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Maiden Voyages” (p 158).
Parks, Tim. Italian Neighbors: or, A Lapsed Anglo-Saxon in Verona. Grove Weidenfeld, 1992.
Reason read: the Arena di Verona festival is held every June. Here is something cool: while I was in Verona we walked by the amphitheater while they were busy setting up.
Tim Parks takes you on an Italian journey where every mundane experience comes alive in vivid detail. From the moment he and his wife move into the apartment inhabited by the belongings of ghosts thirty years passed to learning that all beverages have their time slots (order your cappuccino before 10:30am), Parks will have you giggling with delight on the outskirts of Verona. At the same time as delivering humor, Parks also brings the beauty of the region with cherry blossoms in spring and the sharp white peaks of the Alps piercing the bright blue sky. Doesn’t it all sounds so magical?
Parks takes you by the hand and leads you through various instances of Italian customs and cultures. Taxes. Death. And speaking of death, take cemeteries for example. Sometimes loved ones are moved from their final resting place. As Parks says, “They come to find their loved ones and discover the grave is gone” (p 144). I would not have believed him until I experienced this for myself. I went with friends to a cemetery in Udine. We were looking for a long-deceased uncle. Row after row of photographs of loved ones smiling out at me from the grave, but we could not find Giuseppe. The family shrugged and nonchalantly declared he must have been moved or removed. They then wandered away from the place he should have been, discussing what to have for lunch.
Another example: driving in Italy. Parks paints an action movie picture of racing through winding and narrow lanes with walls on either side; just room enough to barely clear the sideview mirrors. All the while another motorist is following you too closely to avoid an accident should you stop short. As so often with all of Italy, the picturesque is juxtaposed with the sharp edge of danger. This much is clear.
Italian Neighbors was such a delight to read that I cannot wait for the sequel, An Italian Education.
Confessional: I now want to stay in Montecchio. According to Tim Parks, June is the month to go because of all the poppies in bloom. Sounds wonderful.
Line I liked (and there were a bunch), “A test of the extent of your Italianization is whether you still grind your teeth when you hear that something has closed” (p 262). I picked this sentence as my favorite because after driving nearly two hours when we arrived in Florence we discovered the park closed at two. We arrived at 2:02pm.
Author fact: Parks returns to the subject of Verona in A Season With Verona which is on my Challenge list, along with An Italian Education and Juggling the Stars.
Book trivia: I really wished there had been photographs in Italian Neighbors.
Music (I think): “On the Bridge at Bassano We Hold Hands” and Ave Maria.
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the simple chapter called “Verona” (p 243).
Fosco, Cory. The Question of When: a Practical Guide to Knowing When It’s Time for Assisted Living, Memory Care or Skilled Nursing. Campion Hall Press, 2026
Reason read: As a member of the Early Review Program for LibraryThing I often chose books that seem interesting to me. Very rarely do I chose a book because it pertains to my personal situation. This is one such book.
Confessional: it took me a very long time to read Question of When. Not because it is poorly written (it isn’t). Not because I did not believe Fosco’s words (I did). But because the subject matter hit home in ways I did not expect.
Nearly everyone has to go through the painful process of watching a parent age. It is either from a remote distance across the country or painfully up close and personal in the same house. Neither scenario is all that comfortable, but Fosco does an excellent job of clearing away some of the confusion surrounding the hard (and harder) decisions to come. Even if you think you have all the answers, Question of When makes you think again. Second guessing your knowledge and preparedness is a good thing. You are forced to ask the painful questions like, “are we merely adjusting to mom’s decline and losing perspective? Are we making excuses for the forgetfulness and erratic behaviors?” The difficult answer could be yes.
Fosco delivers a primer on territory; knowing the difference between the various facilities available to the aging loved one. Long term care versus assisted living or memory care. Each chapter ends with a takeaway piece of advice and a single action step to take. Small bites for a daunting and often overwhelming process.
Almost immediately I started to think about my own situation with my aging mother. If something were to happen unexpectedly, would I know what to do? Do I really know what mom wants for her final years, but more importantly, do I have the financial capacity to fulfill those wishes? There are financial implications with every situation, planned or unplanned. This is a book I will buy for my sister and not before it is too late.
Author fact: Fosco has thirty-four years of experience.
Mittelman, Amy. Dames, Dishes and Degrees: Faculty Wives in America. Cynren Press, 2026
Reason read: As a member of the Early Review Program for LibraryThing I sometimes win interesting books. This is one such book.
Dames, Dishes and Degrees thoroughly researches a woman’s place in academia and beyond. No one has tackled the historical perspective of faculty wives quite like Amy Mittelman. The aspect of Dames, Dishes and Degrees I appreciated the most was getting to know some of the women who were considered trail blazers in equality for women. For example, Julia Bogholt made a name for herself in politics, thanks to her inability to get a PhD in science. She sought to change the employment laws after that. [As an aside, she reminded me of my niece and her quest to become a research scientist.] Alison Lurie is another influential woman. As a faculty wife at Amherst College she wrote about her experiences and shed light on the prejudices. Dorothy Burnett Porter Wesley was an early member of the Howard University Faculty Wives group. She was the Head Librarian at Moorland-Springam Research Center for 45 years and the first African American woman to earn a masters of library science degree at Columbia! I could go on and on.
It is interesting to note that statistically speaking, a daughter of an academic father typically went on to be a faculty wife. Amy Mittelman studied the effects the Great Depression and World War II had on working women in addition to researching the wives of college professors. [As an aside, I thought of the short-lived television show Homefront when reading about women trying to maintain employment after their husbands came home from World War II.]
Did women know they were getting around the rules about nepotism was by having a lesbian relationship? You could have a career alongside a colleague and even live with that same colleague if you were not married to them. To have a career like a man meant no husband and no children; there was a choice and sacrifice to be made.
One aspect of Dames, Dishes and Degrees that was completely unexpected was the histories of colleges such as Mount Holyoke (their search for a president after Woodley), Smith, University of Chicago, and North Carolina.
As an aside, I wonder what Mittelman thinks of Hampshire College closing. It is one of the colleges she talks about in Dames, Dishes and Degrees.
Music: “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” “Pack up Your Troubles,” “My Dear Old Southern Home,” and Lohengrin’s “Wedding March.”
Moore, Brian. The Magician’s Wife. Penguin, 1998.
Reason read: Algeria celebrations its Revolution Day in June.
We begin Magician’s Wife in 1856 France. Emmaline Lambert stands in the shadow of her famous magician husband, Henri Lambert. Her personality dims next to the brilliance of her husband’s growing notoriety as an illusionist and inventor. The crowds are agog over his inexplicable trickery. Emmaline almost becomes a cliche being described as uneasy, nervous, foolish, and unsure; acting with trepidation and panic. But in reality, she is just a lonely woman without intimacy in her marriage. It is all about the choices you make in life. Emmeline admits she married a man she did not love. Upon being summoned to the opulent estate of Napoleon III the Lamberts meet dashing Colonel Charles Deniau. Like tendrils of relentlessly advancing vines of kudzu, the Colonel ensnares Emmeline Lambert’s confidences little by little. France has a mission for Henri: in an effort to increase France’s empire and conquer Algeria, astound the Bedouins of North Africa. Frighten them into submission. Is Emmaline falling in love with Deniau? Will she convince her husband to perform the ultimate illusion for the sake of domination?
Author fact: Moore also wrote The Doctor’s Wife which I am reading for the Challenge. I am sensing a pattern here.
Book trivia: The Magician’s Wife was inspired by true events.
Music: “Marseillaise.”
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “North American Notes: Algeria” (p 159).
Smith, Ali. The Accidental. Pantheon books, 2005.
Reason read: I have no freaking clue when I am reading this book. I already one book from the Scotland chapter.
Is this a cautionary tale about the dangers of miscommunication, assumption, or dysfunctional family silence? The Smith family, on holiday in Norfolk, England, find a beautiful woman on their doorstep announcing her car has broken down. She soon stays for dinner then stays the night. She learns their names: Eve, a writer on the brink of literary success; Michael, a philandering professor; Magnus, a teenager wrack with guilt over a school prank gone horribly wrong; Astrid, a typical twelve year old girl bored with life; everything is substandard in her eyes. The family learns her name, Amber. No one recognizes her from anywhere. Either the Smith family cannot or will not ask each other what they know about the mysterious stranger. Based on their preconceived opinions about each, other each family member makes a blind assumption. Amber is a friend of Eve’s. Amber is Michael’s next “bit ‘o fluff on the side,” maybe one of his latest students he to shag? Amber is a teacher from Magnus or Astrid’s school. Each family member sees a situation from a completely different point of view and that’s when the lies start. Without confirming anything about Amber, the Smith family starts to let the woman integrate herself into their daily lives until it is too late to extract her.
Author fact: Smith is a Scottish writer. I am also reading Hotel World for the Challenge.
Book trivia: The Accidental” could be a movie. It has a little of everything.
Favorite part of the book: when Smith explains the entire Ah-Ha video for “Take On Me.” She captured every minute of my sister’s favorite song.
Music: Elton John, Chicago’s “If You Leave Me Now,” “smooth Operator, Beatles, Barbara Streisand, Chris Montez’s “The More I See You,” Elvis Costello’s “Oliver’s Army,” Dire Straits’ “Romeo and Juliet,” Four Seasons’ “December 1963 (Oh what a Night),” Ray Stevens’ “Misty,” “Bohemian Rhapsody,” Marianne Faithfull, Janis Ian’s “At Seventeen,” and Mick Jagger.
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter “Scotland: More Than Haggis, Kilts, and Ian Rankin” (p 200).
Shreve, Anita. Sea Glass. Little, Brown and Company, 2002.
Reason read: June is Small Town Month and Sea Glass takes place in a small town in New Hampshire. Even though I read this years ago I am sticking to my rule: if I don’t remember the plot or major characters I have to reread it.
The backdrop to Sea Glass is 1929 New England, specifically on the coast of New Hampshire. Each chapter reveals the perspective of a different character; like a viewfinder, clicking through their lives one by one. Honora Beecher finds herself in a rundown cottage, married to a typewriter salesman she met at her teller job at a bank. Sexton provides for Honora and she loves him, despite him being a virtually stranger. Little by little, Honora’s world expands as she meets the various residents of her (fictional) seaside town. When the stock market crash of 1929 explodes, true personalities are revealed. Shreve is a magician; making readers change their minds about characters. Vivian starts off as a snob while Sexton is admirable. McDermott appears untrustworthy and untethered to life. As with all Shreve novels, the ending is not Hollywood and yet we keep coming back for more.
Characters:
Author fact: Shreve is a New England author.
Book trivia: I didn’t realize Sea Glass is the third installment in a trilogy about Fortune’s Rocks, the fictional New Hampshire town. Pilot’s Wife and Fortune’s Rocks round out the series.
BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Small-Town Life” (p 203).
Stout, Rex. Prisoner’s Base. Bantam Books, 1952.
Reason read: to continue the series started in honor of Stout’s birth month (December).
Prisoner’s Base begins in the month of June…on the exact date I started reading.
A woman invites herself to stay at Nero Wolfe’s townhouse. It is all very mysterious as the woman is well familiar with the layout of the place and its inhabitants, yet she does not seem to care that Wolfe is not fond of women. Nevertheless, she offers to pay $50 a night. Archie, unbeknownst to his employer, takes the woman in. Thus begins Prisoner’s Base and the story of Priscilla Eads. Wolfe callously turns Ms. Eads away deciding not to take a case she doesn’t have. Needed a place to stay is not a mystery or a crime. Hours after her dismissal Ms. E is found murdered. Anger on Archie’s part and guilt on Wolfe’s prompts Wolfe to solve her murder…for Archie’s sake. It turns out to be a complicated case. Ms. Eads had a target on her back. As the primary heir to a towel company, she stood to inherit 90% if she lived to see her thirtieth birthday. She was murdered a week shy. Any number of people stood to gain something by her demise. Was it her ex-husband who claimed he had a right to 50% of her inheritance? Was it the other company shareholders who would gain her shares if she died?
As an aside, one of my favorite moments was when Archie mentioned having apple pie with cheese. One of my favorite things in life is a slice of warm apple pie with a thick slab of cheddar cheese laid purposely on top.
As an aside, Rex Stout is proof that not every character needs to have a full name and backstory (Shreve!), especially if the reader is to never encounter that character again.
Author fact: Rex Stout’s working title for Prisoner’s Base was Dark-Base.
Music (in introduction): “Suspicious Minds” by Elvis.
Book trivia: Introduction to Prisoner’s Base was written by William L. DeAndrea.
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe: Too Good To Miss” (p 226).
Trollope, Anthony. Can You Forgive Her? BiblioBazaar, 2008.
Reason read: to continue the series started in honor of Anthony Trollope’s birth month in April.
When we rejoin Alice Vavasor she is still annoyingly waffling between two men, committing to neither. One is her cousin George Vavasor, who seems to only want Alice’s hand in marriage to gain access to her money (which she gives him freely, by the way). But, George wants more. His grandfather is not dying fast enough and needing money for his seat in Parliament grows more and more desperate. When the old man finally dies, George is driven to violence and breaks his sister’s arm.
The other suitor is Mr. John Grey who seems to be if not without fault, has very little.
I was disappointed to find volume two did not move any of the relationships any closer to resolution. Alice was still oscillating between George Vavasor and John Grey to the point where to two men came to blows over the woman.
Lest us not forget Mrs. Greenow. In volume two of Can You Forgive Her? this fickle lady was still refusing Mr. Cheesacre. But, the most beautiful relationship was between Mr. Palliser and his wife. Palliser sacrificed his political career to save his marriage.
Trollope continues to amuse me with his odd character names like Mr. Scuby (pronounced Scrubby) and Cheesacre (pronounce cheese-acre).
Favorite slight: a pettifogging rascal.
Favorite quotes, “The cicatrice began to make itself very visible in his face, and the debonaire manner was fast vanishing” (p 271).
Author fact: Anthony Trollope died on December 2nd, 1882.
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Barsetshire and Beyond” (p 15).
O’Sullivan, (Belake) Blake. 4 Weeks to Sleep Mastery: A Proven System to Maximise Your Recovery and Energy in Just 30 Days. 2026.
Reason read: as a member of LibraryThing’s Early Review program I often chose (and win) interesting books. This time I chose a book that could potentially help me with my situational insomnia.
Straight away O’Sullivan does not want you to think he is a licensed medical professional. He was an athlete looking to improve his performance and had an ah-ha moment about sleep. His advice is mostly common sense: stay away from caffeine and your phone before bed; expose yourself to light as soon as you wake up; take cold showers in the mornings and warm showers in the evening; remove all light sources from your bedroom and so on. O’Sullivan uses a lot of analogies to get his point across. He also repeats himself. There was a lot of redundancy surrounding the checklists for each week.
I have always heard the advice about how to get a good night’s sleep, but thanks to $ Weeks to Sleep Mastery, I have a better handle on the science behind the advice. I also appreciated O’Sullivan’s breakdown of information into two categories: simplified and advanced.
4 Weeks to Sleep Mastery is short. O’Sullivan could have added more depth to his book by including advice for the outliers. What about the people who are at work before the sun makes its appearance? What about seasonal changes when the sun doesn’t always rise before you do? I have a friend who gets up at 2am in order to get to work at 4am. How is he supposed to get early morning sunshine to signal his brain to wake up? He also works in the belly of a ship for eight to ten hours a day. He doesn’t even have enough time on a lunchbreak to see the sun, let alone the sunset anchor.
As an aside, why not call the heart the drum? Why violins? Are drums too cliche? As another side, O’Sullivan can be a little didactic (he told me what attenuated meant). As yet another aside, I am not downloading another app that is free but utilizes third party ad services which use cookies to target personalization. No thank you.
I would have liked to see more information regarding diet and special circumstances, like traveling or having a chaotic life event (new baby, job loss, foster puppies) that keep you up at night.
Author fact: Belake is twenty years old at the time of publication. My burning question is why point that out to readers? Why draw attention to your age and create doubt about your knowledge base? Stand firm with the knowledge and you should not have to make excuses. Because of that one disclosure about age my immediate thought was you are a life coach? Have you been alive and on the planet long enough to be a coach?
Mailer, Norman. Naked and the Dead. Signet Book, 1948.
Reason read: Germany surrendered on May 8th 1945. Read in honor of that historic day.
Meet General Cumming, arrogant and blundering. Gallagher is only twenty years old with a pregnant wife back home. Look out for Sergeant Croft because he is mean. Red grew up in a mining town. The idea that any man, from any walk of life, can experience the horror of war as equals.
Norman Mailer takes you inside the mind of a solider. The long nights in a foxhole keeping watch and the raging thoughts that go through a soldier’s head: paranoid about the enemy’s location, wondering about his girl back home. The twisted sense of right and wrong: a soldier can be devastated after the torture and killing of an insect, but feel nothing for doing the same to his Japanese enemy. Writing letters back home: being diplomatic about what a soldier could or could not say. Even though they were not sure what they were fighting for, a soldier could not admit that to his family. By stepping back in time before each character became a soldier was a way for Mailer to humanize his characters even further. Some escaped fatherhood by enlisting. Others needed to prove their toughness for fear of seeming too sensitive and weak as little boys.
Mailer’s attention to detail brings his reader right into the jungle fighting. The way water seeps into greased “waterproof” shoes. The way a forty pound pack gets heavier with the weight of water. What they carried and how they carried it. Obviously, Mailer speaks with experience. Heartbreakingly so.
Quotes to quote, “Dalleson was no problem; he even had potentialities for being a good man” (p 65), “In the war you keep on moving” (p 202).
Music: “Pennies From Heaven,” Tchaikovsky, “Show Me the Way to Go Home,” “I Love a Parade, the Beat of a Drum,” “I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead, You Rascal,” “My Country ‘Tis of Thee,” and “Roll Me Over.”
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “World War II Fiction” (p 252). Also, from More Book Lust in the chapter called “You Can’t Judge a Book by Its Cover” (p 237).
Russell, Andrew B. Like Friends, Like Foes: Japanese Americans and Nevada Through World War II. University of Nevada Press, 2026.
Reason read: This was a selection from the Early Review Program for LibraryThing.
If Nancy Pearl were to update her Book Lust chapter called “Companion Reads” I would want her to add Like Friends, Like Foes: Japanese Americans and Nevada Through World War II to be read with the government document WRA: a Story of Human Conservation. While WRA is a no-nonsense report of the internment of West Coast Japanese-Americans during World War II (and riddled with errors), Russell begins his nonfiction with the arrival of the first Nikkei in Nevada in 1900. Writing in a warm and approachable style, Russell moves through history documenting Japanese contributions to mining, farming, and the expansion of the railroad and ends with the onset of paranoia and prejudice during World War II. Unlike WRA, Russell offers extensive personal perspectives by including carefully researched interviews, journals, letters and photographs of four decades of Japanese Americans in Nevada. His obvious respect for his subject matter is readily apparent from the very first chapter. Hopefully, Russell will keep writing about this topic.
The genesis for Like Friends, Like Foes was Russell’s masters thesis “Hearts of Gold and Hostile Times: Wartime Reactions to the “Japanese Question in Churchill County Nevada” and is part of the Wilbur S. Shepperson Series in Nevada History.
Parkview, Alex. Broken Mirrors, Steady Ground: Self Published, 2026.
Reason read: as a member of LibraryThing’s Early Review program I often read heartbreaking books. This is one such book.
I am writing this the day after Memorial Day; the day to remember, honor, and thank the military men and women who have served or are currently serving our country. In Broken Mirrors Parkview (obviously a pseudonym) bares his soul to release demons and pain. After serving several tours in Iraq Parkview came home a broken man. A soldier is not supposed to show weakness or vulnerability. A soldier is supposed to be made of Kevlar for strength and Teflon for resilience. Nothing fazes a soldier. Parkview is all Kevlar and Teflon. But, he suffered abuse long before Iraq. Drinking Wild Turkey and smoking before the age of fifteen; becoming sexually active at the age of nine. These things can damage a young person beyond repair. He spends considerable time trying to find his place in the world after the military, both physically and mentally.
Broken Mirrors has a few broken records. Parkview mentions sexual situations in a way that makes me sense he used physical intimacy as a drug to mask pain. He was addicted to hiding his true self with women. As an aside, when Parkview wasn’t crudely talking about sex his writing was beautiful and almost lyrical. There were many good lines that I hope make it into the final publication.
The was a very slim volume with wide margins so it made for a very quick read. I was able to finish it in one sitting. I will probably read it again. Maybe I’ll see something different a second time around.
As an aside, I hope Parkview learned that broken relationships are most likely the result of an inability to truly love yourself. Like that oxygen mask you are supposed to put on before helping others, you are no good to anyone else without caring for yourself first.
Playlist: Soul Asylum’s “Runaway Train,” Cat Stevens’s “Father and Son,” Harry Chapin, and Kesha’s “Cathedral.”
~*LunaSea*~ 