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
Fuller, Alexandria. Don’t Let’s Go To the Dogs Tonight: an African Childhood. Random House, 2001.
Reason read: Recognizing Levy Mwanawasa Day.
There is no question that Alexandria Fuller led a particularly unique childhood growing up on a farm in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) in the 1970s. How many can say their mother habitually slung an Uzi over her shoulder whenever trouble arose? Even Alexandria was photographed with an Uzi in her hands like it was a bouquet of flowers. Fuller and her family seemingly moved with ease through the violence of war, hatred, and death whether it be blowing the head off a venomous snake or fighting off squatters on their land during the Rhodesian Bush War (more of the tamer encounters for the Fullers). They stayed not because they enjoyed the turmoil. It was just what they were accustomed to as a matter of survival because they loved the land. What is so striking about Fuller’s memoir is how candid she is about life in Africa and her family’s daily existence in survival mode. She does not sugarcoat her mother’s alcoholism and subsequent decline into mental illness after losing three children. She does not make light of the droughts and extreme poverty they caused. By the end of the of the Rhodesian Bush War in 1980 the Fuller family moved to Malawi and Zambia. From here Alexandria’s memoir accelerates. She and her older sister, Vanessa, grow up, marry and have kids. Life goes on.
Favorite line, “The world looks better when your belly is full, brighter and more hopeful” (p 184).
Author fact: Fuller is my age.
Book trivia: There are a smattering of black and white photographs of Fuller and her family in Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight and a film of the same name was released in 2024.
Personal connection: when Alexandria mentioned the Cat Stevens song “Morning Has Broken” I was immediately transported to my childhood. My piano teacher loved that song and would play it often.
Setlist: “Flower of Scotland,” “Ole, I am a Bandit,” Beatles’ “Yesterday,” “Ipi Tombi,” Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, Chopin, Roger Whittaker’s “I’m Gonna Leave Ole London Town,” “Morning Has Broken,” “D’ya Think I’m Sexy?” Eric Clapton’s “Cocaine,” “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear,” “Hallelujah,” “Jingle Bells,” Bizet, Puccini, Chopin, Brahms, Debussy, and Rachmaninoff.
BookLust Twist: First, from Book Lust in the chapter called “Dreaming of Africa” (p 76). Then, twice in Book Lust To Go in the chapters “Africa: the Greenest Continent” (p 7) and “Zipping Through Zimbabwe/Roaming Rhodesia” (p 268).
Lodge, David. Small World. Warner Books, 1984.
Reason read: September is traditionally back to school month and since Small World is about academia, why not?
Meet the academics in Small World: Persse McGarrigle is seen as the epic hero. At a typical conference full of pompous blowhards in Rummidge, he has fallen in love with a fellow conference attendee, the mysterious Angelica Pabst. He chases her all literally over the world to the point where it becomes farcical. Professor Morris Zapp is always appalled that he isn’t presenting his paper to a larger audience. He thought for sure the title of lecture, “Textuality as Striptease” would surely bring listeners into the room. [As an aside, the entire book is continuously dominated by various sexual situations.] Then there is the mystery of Joy Simpson. Her old lover thinks she is dead yet she is alive and well somewhere on the planet. Dempsey talks to a computer as if it is his therapist and becomes obsessed with her replies (readers should keep in mind this is the early 1980s and predates Siri or Alexa). I could go on, but I’ll leave the rest of the characters for you to discover.
Critics have called Small World “delightful” but I wouldn’t go that far. Even though this is supposed to be a satire about academia I was annoyed by the characters. The more verbose and didactic the dialogue, the more I tuned out. I will say my favorite scene was when Persse travels to Tokyo and learns of karaoke. Even though he is hellbent to find the woman of his dreams he manages to find time for a little fun. I won’t say whether Persse ever got his girl. It’s more about the journey than reaching the destination! Do not fret, the ending is satisfying!
Line I liked, “Professor B agreed that a law of academic life was that it was impossible to be excessive in flattery of one’s peers” (p 173). So true!
Author fact: David Lodge was an honorary professor of Modern English Literature at the University of Birmingham and it shows.
Book trivia: the title of the book, Small World, surfaces when Persse tells Akira it is a small world on page 335.
Music: Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man,” “Lay Lady Lay,” and “Blowin’ in the Wind,” Bee Gees, Simon and Garfunkel’s “Mrs. Robinson,” Beatles’ “Hey Jude” and “Hard Days Night,” and Diana Ross’s “Baby Love.”
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Academia: The Joke” (p 3).
Sheers, Owen. Resistance. Nan A. Talese, 2007.
Reason read: Sheers celebrates a birthday in September. Read in his honor.
The year is 1944 and Sheers has introduced his readers to an alternate World War II in which Germany has all but won the war. For perspective, D-Day landings are an utter failure, Dewey wins the presidency of the United States, and Britain is almost completely German occupied. In the far reaches of a remote sheep-farming countryside all of the Welsh menfolk have abruptly disappeared, leaving their wives to farm the land alone just before the harsh arrival of winter. At the center of the story is young Sarah Lewis, not yet thirty and a sheep farmer’s wife of two years. Her antagonist is a German soldier, Albrecht Wolfram, who has come with a band of soldiers to the valley in search of a map. Incidentally, this map is real. It is the Hereford Mappa Mundi, a priceless medieval map of the world. But, back to Albrecht. He is not your average World War II villain. He loves books, nature, and music. The war has made him sick of fighting; he just wants to hide from the war and Sarah’s world is the perfect hideout. It is if Sheers wants you to like Albrecht just a little despite the side he is supposed to be on. Incrementally, the sentiment is felt for all of the soldiers under Albrecht’s command. As winter approaches, the local women and the German soldiers must work together to survive. Their mutual necessity for each other forms strange relationships. Sarah and Albrecht perform a dance of growing trust and lingering suspicion while Sarah tries to hang onto the hope that her husband is still alive and will return. In the end, the community of women face a heartbreaking betrayal. There is much more to the story, but I will leave that alone.
As an aside, one of my favorite scenes in the book is when Albrecht brings Sarah a gramophone and plays her cello music of Bach. It is like a seduction for the senses as well as the heart.
Quotes to quote, “The shrapnel had numbed his world” (p 99) and “…despite his blunted senses, which had left him feeling less human than ever” (p 99). These two sentences sent shivers down my spine as they alluded to something farm more ominous about Mr. Wolfram.
Author fact: Resistance is Sheers first novel. He is also a poet which makes me wonder if he put himself in the story as the poet Sarah remembers from childhood.
Book trivia: because Resistance takes place on a sheep farm readers learn a great deal about tupping, dipping, and foot rot. Resistance was made into a movie in 2011. This is one I would definitely see.
The music is very important in Resistance. Bach’s Cello Suites No. Four, the Allemande, the Courante, the Sarabande, and the Intermezzo.
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Wales Welcomes You” (p 248).
Deighton, Len. Berlin Game. Pushkin Publications, 2023.
Reason read: The National Security Act of 1947 was signed in July, but most of the provisions went into effect on September 18th.
Len Deighton’s Berlin Game is the first book in the Game, Set, Match trilogy which is part of two other trilogies, Hook, Line, Sinker and Faith, Hope, Charity. In Berlin Game, Bernard Sampson is a married father who works for the secret intelligence service in London, the M16. His wife also serves as an agent, but she outranks Bernard which does not seem to bother him.
Bernard has had a desk job for years, but when Brahms Four, a British agent behind the Iron Curtain (obviously, Berlin Game takes place back with there was an East and West Germany) asks to be rescued by Bernard he cannot say no. Brahms saved his life twenty years earlier and now Bernard must return the favor. What follows is a new game of cat and mouse where everyone could be a traitor, including his own wife. Deighton lines up the suspects, each one more likelier than the last. It’s a fast moving drama, perfect for the big screen.
Confessional: I thought the ending was a little too predictable.
Author fact: Len Deighton was born on February 18th, 1929. He died earlier this year.
Book trivia: Berlin Game is the first book in the Game Set Match trilogy.
Audio book trivia: Berlin Game was read by James Lailey. Confessional: I thought his accents were terrible. I couldn’t tell if a character was German or Russian. I switched to the book format after a while.
Music: Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden,” Haydn’s Seventy-Seven C Major, and “the Trout.”
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust twice. First, in the chapter called “Cold War Spy Fiction” (p 61) and again in the chapter called, get ready, “Spies and Spymasters: the Really Real Unreal World of Intelligence” (p 223).
McCullers, Carson. Member of the Wedding. Library of America, 2001.
Reason read: September is Southern Gospel Month, or at least I read that somewhere. McCullers is the epitome of southern fiction.
Frankie Jasmine Addams wants people to stop calling her Frankie as if her rough and tomboy nature can be erased overnight by the new name, F. Jasmine Addams. Some would call her cheeky or obstinate in her behavior, but at times she is downright wild and violent. She should be just a twelve years old girl, dreaming of a bigger, more exciting life outside her small town. Instead, Frankie is a knife throwing, pistol toting confused preteen; impressionable and immature. Convinced Frankie is going to live with an older brother after his wedding, she repeatedly tells her father, cousin, and live-in housekeeper she is going to leave them. As the wedding date moves closer the tension builds with anticipation. Because Frankie is without any real parental supervision it seems highly possible she will make good on her threat to run away. Her widower father barely registers a parental word. Her cousin is only six and the housekeeper has her own grief to manage.
Bernice’s prayer sent shivers down my spine, “No stiff corpses hanging from the Europe trees and no Jews murdered anywhere” (p 546). Amen to that.
Favorite quote, “She planned it so that people could instantly change back and forth from boys to girls, whichever way they felt like and wanted” (p 547).
Author fact: In many of Carson’s photographs she is smoking. Despite dying at the young age of fifty in Nyack, New York, lung cancer was not the cause. She suffered from alcoholism, breast cancer, and other ailments.
Personal connect: I lived in New Jersey for a bunch of years. Every time I traveled North I went through the town of Nyack.
Book trivia: Member of the Wedding was made into a movie in 1952.
BookLust Twist: from two different books. First, in Book Lust in the chapter called “Girls Growing Up” (p 101) and again in Southern Fiction” (p 222). Pearl thought it best to also include it in More Book Lust in the chapter called “You Can’t Judge a Book By Its Cover” (p 237). Indeed! My copy has a photograph of Carson McCullers, looking all of twelve years old, smoking a cigarette.
Watson, David. Forward Only: A Memoir. Self Published, 2026.
Reason read: as a member of LibraryThing’s Early Review Program I am sometimes asked to read interesting books. This is one such book. I would read this one again.
What makes a person land on the illegal side of the law time and time again? What makes a person chose to do the absolute wrong thing each and every chance they get? Sometimes there are people who love them; people who care about them. People who give them the world and still it is not enough.
David Watson lost his grandfather at an age when he needed a father figure the most. It was as if losing his grandfather sent David down a road to perpetual ruin. At age twelve David tried to run away. At age fifteen he stole money from a McDonald’s cash register and went on the run again. After that, it was a series of escapes time and time again. No matter how much his grandmother loved him, David insisted on sometimes stealing from her, lying to her and always letting her down. When David reached dating age he found girlfriends who were willing to be his partner in crime. He latched onto women who would go along with his schemes and scams. Each and every time he would swear this woman was the love of his life. The problem was he did not know how to love. David didn’t know how to be anything but a smooth talker, always wheeling and dealing. Detention, jail, and even years in prison could not stop him. Becoming a father didn’t stop him. Almost being murdered by a Mexican cartel only slowed him down. There was always another scam to be played out. His pattern of hustle was so destructive I couldn’t imagine him ever climbing out of his self imposed hell. His story kept me turning the pages to see what happened next.
If it were not for a cousin who could not or would not (?) stay out of trouble I wouldn’t believe David’s story. It seems impossible that someone could take advantage of the loved ones who are constantly bailing people like this out of sticky situations. But it happens.
Author fact: David Watson has a social media presence.
Book trivia: I don’t know if the final published copy will have photographs, but the ARC did not.
Trollope, Anthony. Phineas Finn: The Irish Member. Gebbe and Company, 1901.
Reason read: to continue the Palliser series started in honor of Trollope’s birth month in April.
I feel like Phineas Finn (all three volumes) covers all the same themes as Can you Forgive Her? The male characters are vying for seats in parliament, the women are looking for financially stable men, and everyone is breaking someone else’s heart, sometimes intentionally. Every story has a hapless, heavy in debt, political wannabe who is unlucky with the women. Enter Irishman Phineas Finn. As a lawyer from Ireland he has political ambitions to be in Parliament. Lady Laura Standish, the object of Phineas Finn’s initial affections marries someone else for the convenience of wealth. Luckily, they remain friends and Laura turns out to be one of Phineas’ biggest champions. Ever the naive romantic, Phineas then turns to Violet Effingham who was supposed to be promised to Laura’s brother. Of course there needs to be a duel over Violet. It solves nothing. In the end Phineas does not win the heart of Laura or Violet. Who he turns to next is amusing and oddly beautiful.
The question remains: what is Trollope’s fascination with scheming women? Why are the female characters always bailing the men out of debt? Lady Laura marries Robert Kennedy so that Laura’s brother’s debts can be paid off.
Other similarities: weird names (Mr. Shortribs?), Trollope steps out from the narrative curtain to voice regrets in the novel, and there is even an accident during a hunt that is very similar to the accident in Can You Forgive Her?
Favorite lines, “There was to be an early dinner out in tents at five, and after dinner men and women were to walk about, or dance or make love, or hay, as suited them” (p 152). Oh those crazy Victorians! Here is another, “I think you will acknowledge that if there be a difference of opinion between you and me as to any question of social intercourse, it will be better that you should consent to adopt my opinion” (p 307).
Author fact: Trollope was just as involved in voter reform as his characters in Phineas Finn.
Book trivia: Phineas Finn contains photogravures/illustrations by C.R. Grant, Victor Perard, Hy. Leonard, and R.B. Morrison.
BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Barsetshire and Beyond” (p 15).
Fani, Eamon. Lifeguard: Absurd Tales and Minimals. Word Vulcan Press, Inc. 2026.
Reason read: as a member of the Early Program for LibraryThing it is my responsibility to write a review in exchange for reading interesting books.
Fani takes readers into a world of absurd and strange with tongue-in-cheek humor and sleight-of-hand doses of life lessons. Because there is very little substance to each story it is difficult to linger on deeper meanings. I could not become attached to characters or their stories as much as I tried. I really didn’t care about the lessons they were apparently trying to teach. Much like the person who takes your ticket as the amusement park, the characters could be anyone. All you care about is the ride. Lifeguard is definitely a ride to remember.
Short stories in no particular order:
Author fact: Fani is funny. You can tell just by his dedication in Lifeguard.
Book trivia: this is volume one of Lifeguard so one can only assume there will be more.
Krentzel, Elise. Rogue Entrepreneur: Building a Life the World Didn’t Have a Name For. Kumi Books, 2026.
Rogue Entrepreneur is the second book in a trilogy. Under My Skin: Drama Trauma and Rock and Roll was the first. Confessional: I didn’t read it and I probably won’t read the third. So little time for so many books!
What an adventurous life Elise Krentzel has led! There are so many things to unpack in Krentzel’s memoir Rogue Entrepreneur, I am not sure where to begin. Throughout Rogue Entrepreneur she was portrayed as an odd mix of poet and trouble maker; risk taker and romantic. Imagine being taken to court for not following laundry rules in your apartment building or being swindled out of shares of a company she owned with her first husband! Most of Rogue Entrepreneur takes place in the 1980s and 1990s, a era when women were not respected in the music industry (or any business for that matter). Krentzel upped the ante by not only chasing a career in music, but she chose punk as her genre and decided to make a name for herself in Japan. After Japan she moved onto Queens (New York), Switzerland, Germany, Africa and the Netherlands. With the changing times came changing ventures. Krentzel was able to reinvent herself time and time again. She enjoyed challenges and took crazy risks.
I try not to judge an author by the lines they write, but I couldn’t help thinking Krentzel really wanted to emphasis her callousness when she described carelessly leaving one man for another. She wanted to paint the picture of being a hardcore badass. When she had a child at age forty-four, I somehow knew she would end up a single parent.
Even though Krentzel does not frequently orientate her readers to the changing times in Rogue Entrepreneur, her description of the phonebook hanging from a public payphone chain put the timeline into perspective. So did her ability to smoke in the hospital while recovering from peritonitis.
My favorite portion of the book was the advice she gave at the end. She’s not wrong! The was such a fun book that I now want to be friends with her!
I am sure this will be cleaned up in the final edit, but there is some repetition in one of the footnotes, whole sentences were repeated (“Uelie played piano…”) and key words (like a verb) were missing from sentences. I was confused by one inconsistency: Krentzel met Ueli in the spring when flowers were blooming, but says she watched snow falling while at a party that same day. The Land of Mud was as clear as mud to me.
Book trivia: Rogue Entrepreneur should have been published by August 27, 2026.
Music: Al Jolsen, Robert Plant, Bob Geldof, David Bowie, “1-800-273-8255” by Logic, B52s, Baby Grand, the Band, Barry Manilow, the Beatles, Bob Marley and the Wailers’ “Redemption Song,”, Brinkley Schwartz, Bruce Springsteen, Chopin, Earth Wind and Fire’s “That’s the Way of the World,” Eddie and the Hot Rods, Elvis Costello and the Attractions’ “Allison,” Emerson Lake and Palmer’s Tarkus, George Sand, Graham Parker and the Rumours’s “Stick to Me,” “Squeezing Out Sparks,” “Don’t Ask Questions,” “I’m Gonna Tear Your Playhouse Down,” “Thunder and Rain,” and “Discovering Japan,” Grandmaster Caz, Herc, Iggy Pop, Joe Jackson’s “Black and White,” John Lennon, Kiss, Leif Garrett, Lene Lovich, Masayoshi Takanaka’s “Sexy Dance,” Muddy Waters’ “Mannish Boy,” “Hoochie Coochie Man,” “Champagne and Reffer, and “Honey Bee,” Nick Lowe, Noel Pointer, Peter Frampton’s Frampton Comes Alive album, Pink Lady’s “Kiss in the Dark,” the Plastics, Prince, Ryuichi Sakamoto, “Soldier of Love” by Sade, Sex Pistols’ “Never Mind the Bollocks,” Sinead O’Connor’s version of “Nothing Compares 2U,” Steve Khan, the Stranglers, Tot’s “Africa,” Talking Heads, Whipper Whip, Yellow Magic Orchestra, and Yoko Ono.
Stout, Rex. Triple Jeopardy. Viking Press, 1952.
Reason read: I am still working my way through Rex Stout’s entire Nero Wolfe canon.
Home to Roost – Mrs. Benjamin Rackell and her husband come to Nero to find out who killed their nephew. The young man died of cyanide poisoning in the middle of a dinner with five other people. Was it a communist conspiracy? Was he a plant working for the FBI? Stout tries to confuse the matter by introducing a few shady characters. Immediately, readers are supposed to suspect Fifi Goshen. She goads Nero by disturbing his orchids and pouring her cocktail into his beer. Is she trying to cause a commotion to distract everyone from the truth? And speaking of drinks, Archie has moved away from tall glasses of milk and now prefers cool coke and limes.
Cop-Killer – Two Illegal aliens working in a barbershop come to Nero Wolfe for amnesty. They are wanted for murder but cannot claim their innocence because they are too afraid of being deported back to Russia. The cop investigating the murder visited the barbershop to hunt down a lead on a hit-and-run that happened the day before. Carl and Tina Vardas fled thinking their illegal status had been discovered. Their flight makes them look guilty, but as Archie surmises, “to qualify as a hit-and-run driver you must meet certain specifications, and one of them is knowing how to dive a car” (Triple Jeopardy p 94). Dear Archie, I would beg to differ. I would argue that you are more likely to hit someone while driving a car if you have no idea what you are doing. It is during this case that Nero Wolfe leaves his brownstone to get a haircut. Shocking!
Squirt and the Monkey – Harry Koven, a comic book writer, accuses someone on his staff of stealing his gun. To reveal the culprit, Koven enlists the help of Archie. Instead of learning the identity of the thief, Archie is framed for murder, thanks to a rare tropical monkey named Rookaloo. As an aside, this case introduced me to the Sullivan Act of 1911.
True to form, Archie is always flirting with the ladies. I still think it is cute the way Wolfe cares for Goodwin’s appetite.
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe: Too Good To Miss” (p 226).
Thom, James Alexander. From Sea to Shining Sea. Ballantine Books, 1984.
Reason read: August is Friendship month and there is no doubt Lewis and Clark were friends. However, From Sea to Shining Sea is less about the relationship between the two adventurers and more about the entire Clark family.
What a violent time the late 1700s were for fledging America. Battling Native Americans and British soldiers simultaneously. It is as if James Alexander Thom lived in these brutal times in a previous life. His attention to every detail is astonishing. From chamber pots to fashion, mannerisms and foodstuff, real and imagined characters; it is all picture perfect. Each character is fully realized to the point you feel as if you are living beside them at every moment. Was is another character drawn in excellence. It becomes clear that was is not noble; it is not glorious or heroic. War is the explosion of blood and the shattering of bone.
From Sea To Shining Sea tells the story of the tight-knit Clark family from birth to death. Each member of the family receives ample page space to create biographies for all.
Confessional: it took so long to get to the “Lewis and Clark” part of the story that I started to get impatient. William Clark does not meet Meriwether Lewis until page 573. The expedition does not start until another thirty or so pages. On page 616 Discovery finally departs from Camp Wood.
Personal connection: Thom mentions Captain John Smith in the early pages of From Sea to Shining Sea. Captain John Smith is credited with being the first white man to settle on my island. Of course, there were people already there, but the history books ignore that elephant-in-the-room detail.
Author fact: James Alexander Thom was a U.S. Marine, a newspaper and magazine editor, a freelance writer, and a professor.
Book trivia: From Sea to Shining Sea is over 900 pages long. I had to take this behemoth to work to read on my lunch break as well as before breakfast and at night. Phew!
Music: “Betsy Kiss My Lips,” “A Patriot Song,” “Barbara Allen,” “Hang on Till Morning,” “The Hog’s Heart,” “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” “Johnny Has Gone for A-Soldier,” “Katy Cruel,” “The Lawyer Outwitted,” “The Quaker’s Wooing,” “The Spoiling o’ Katy Morah,” “Yankee Doodle,”
BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Lewis and Clark: Adventurers Extraordinaire” (p 136).
Graves, Robert. Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina. Harrison Smith and Robert Haas, Inc. 1935.
Reason read: to finish the series started with I, Claudius.
Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus has come a long way from the weak and stuttering fool in I, Claudius. After the murder of his cousin, Caligula, Claudius is now the new emperor at fifty years old. He still is a cripple, but has gained a wisdom from carefully watching those who went before him. He creates safeguards against perceived assassination attempts. He refrains from doing anything that would make the ghosts of his family disapprove. Despite all this, and if you know the story, you know what happens to dear Claudius in the end.
Even though Claudius is deeply in love with his seventeen year old wife Messalina, she does not factor much in the beginning of the story. The life of Harold Agrippa is more fully examined than Messalina’s. Towards the middle of the tale, Messalina reveals a devious side. She encourages Claudius to have an open marriage, as long as the other women do not outrank her. Messalina begins to emerge as a strong power player in Claudius’s life, politically and emotionally. Towards the end of the tale the moral of the story is love weaves a tangled web.
Quote I loved, “I detest forensic oratory” (p 123).
Author fact: I already told you about the connection to Natalie Merchant. Graves also wrote Goodbye to All That which I have already read. Claudius the God marks the end of my time with Mr. Graves.
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “The Classical World” (p 60).
Lim, Shirley Geok-Lin. Among the White Moon Faces: an Asian-American Memoir of Homelands. The Feminist Press, 1996.
Reason read: Merdeka Day is in August. In 1957 the Federation of Malaya received its independence and became a sovereign state. Read in honor of that event.
Lim begins her memoir with the introspective commentary on her sense of self – the name with which she most identifies, but ends the introduction by saying she found her identity wrapped up in the women who shaped her entire life. She did not have an easy childhood. She lacked women role models to teach her how to be feminine. Her first time wearing a bra reminded me of my own foray into adult garments.
Confessional: I had a hard time reading Among the White Moon Faces. Lim had a tug of war with chronology; going back and forth in time. One minute Lim is making excuses for the Hokkien language, the next she is describing Ah Chan, their servant. Next, Lim has memories of her mother’s appearance but moves quickly to stories of her grandfather or the Tan Family. All along she interrupts herself to ask questions we as readers cannot answer.
Despite the leapfrogging of the timeline, I appreciated Lim’s honesty. Growing up, she was no angel. She admitted to changing grades on a report card and lying about where she was on Friday nights. As the story progressed I lost track of Lim’s age when her father and a nurse scrubbed her body clean. No one had ever taught her her to clean…anything.
Throughout Among the White Moon Faces Lim struggles with abandonment. Her mother left the family early on. Father would bring his dates home and ignore his children. Interspersed in this honest narrative Lim makes commentaries on British colonialism and American waste. She steps away from her memories to voice her opinions about corrupt cultures.
By the end of Among the White Moon Faces I admired Lim for her determination to make something of herself in a very competitive academic society.
Line I liked a lot, “Nurturing is a human act that overleaps categories, but is not free of history” (p 67), and “There were more ways to be a poet than sit still beneath his judgment” (p 144).
Author fact: Geok-Lin also wrote Joss and Gold which I am scheduled to read at some point.
Book trivia: there is a small collection of black and white photographs in Among the White Moon Faces. There are mostly of Shirley as a child.
Music, “A Summer Place,” “Red Sails in the Sunset,” Elvis Presley, Chubby Checker, “Sixteen Candles,” “Strangers in the Night,” “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head,” “Jolly Miller,” “O Susanna,” “She’ll Be Comin’ Round the Mountain,” James Taylor’s “Fire and Rain” and “You’ve Got a Friend,” “On Top of Old Smoky,” Beatles, “Oh Rosemarie, I Love You So, I’m Always Dreaming of You,” “Mockingbird’s Song,” Everly Brothers, Ali Akbar Khan, Hawaiian Wedding Song, Pat Boone’s “April Love,” “Ye Banks and Braes of Bonne Doon,” “The Minstrel Boy,” and Bill Haley and His Comets.
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called simply, “Malaysia” (p 40).
Horne, Alistair. Age of Napoleon. Modern Library, 2004.
Reason read: Napoleon was born on August 15th. Read in his honor.
After already covering Napoleon’s military career in Master of Europe and How Far From Austerlitz, Alistair Horne felt he could concentrate on writing a book about Napoleon’s contributions to French society above and beyond his military career (although that is not left out of the story). Architecture (the construction of the Quai d’Orsay and rescuing Paris’s Sorbonne University), society (encouraging freedom of religion by restoring the relationship with the Vatican and restoring the sanctity of marriage after the Revolution), art, and even the renumbering of streets. Napoleon liked the finer things in life, but could turn on a dime and have little tolerance for those individuals making his beautiful things come to life. Even his wife Josephine was fired from the job of being his wife because she couldn’t produce an heir fast enough.
Horne simultaneously looks future forward as well as historically back to tell Napoleon’s story. He reminds his audience more than once that Napoleon was “no Hitler” and he makes multiple comparisons to World War II. Yet, for all of Napoleon’s military shortcomings, Horne is quick to point out, his legacy was that he was instrumental in creating important and lasting social equalities.
As an aside, I couldn’t help buy think of Dermot Kennedy’s line, “his eyes lit up with all the power” when reading Age of Napoleon. Napoleon was touted as being a hands-on leader. These days, I think his subjects would call him a micromanager or deranged. Just the fact he would ban plays if he didn’t care for them shows his ego.
Author fact: Is it any wonder that Alistair Horne is a British historian? Of course he is.
Book trivia: Age of Napoleon is a quick read, less that 200 pages.
Music: Beethoven’s Fidelo, Te Deum, Chopin, Edith Pilaf, and Le Triomphe de Tra Jan opera.
BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “The Complex Napoleon” (p 53).
Nordan, Lewis. Lightning Song. Algonquin Books, 1997.
Reason read: Nordan’s birth month is in August.
The crackling electricity of doing something sneaky can be thrilling to a boy coming of age. Lightning Song begins with twelve year old Leroy Dearman, lost in complete innocence while furtively studying naked woman in the pages of a glossy Playboy magazine. Nordan must have tapped into his own boyhood innocence, because he describes Leroy’s naive thoughts perfectly as he stares at the smiling women.
Leroy is a sheltered boy, growing up on an llama farm in rural Mississippi with his parents and two younger sisters. He confronts adult things: naked women, his mother’s coy and giddy behavior around his uncle, and the creepy death of his grandfather in the attic. Lightning Song only becomes more bizarre as you read on: to name a few: the New Couple’s oddity, Leroy’s mother’s obsession with a kidnapped prime minister, Leroy’s sister and her ferocious courage (confessional: my favorite act of bravery was when she was not afraid to take her father’s withered hand).
The lightning is another character in Lightning Song. It creates tension and an air of danger. It is witness to illicit behaviors and illuminates dark secrets.
Favorite line, “He longed to be his father’s son” (p 122).
Author fact: as there is a whole chapter for Lewis Nordan in Book Lust, I am reading a few. Eight to be exact. I have finished three so far.
Book trivia: this could have been a movie.
Music: Elvis Presley, “Dixie,” “Let Me Call You Sweetheart,” and “Are You From Dixie?”
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter “Lewis Nordan: Too Good To Miss” (p 172).
~*LunaSea*~ 