Author: gr4c5

I write. I read. I cook. I run. That's me, in a nutshell.

188th Crybaby Brigade

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Chasnoff, Joel. 188th Crybaby Brigade: a Skinny Jewish Kid from Chicago Fights Hezbollah. Free Press, 2010

Reason read: Read in honor of Yom Kippur being in October.

Joel Chasnoff was not your typical Israeli soldier. Wimpy. American. Graduate of an Ivy League University. A standup comedian. Twenty-four years old. The only part of his story to make sense was that he had always understood he was an Orthodox Jew. He walked the walk, talked the talk, dressed the part, and especially prayed the part. Even though he was a scrawny, funny, twenty-four year old kid from Chicago, he thought joining Israel’s cause was the way to man up; to become an adult. This is his story, warts, wars, and all.
Religion is strange. Joel was Orthodox enough to join the Israeli army’s tank division and fight for Israel, but not Jewish enough to be buried in their military graveyard. Joel was Orthodox enough to be potentially mortally wounded for Israel, but not Orthodox enough to marry his longtime girlfriend because of a minor discrepancy. This confusing contradiction unleashes an identity crisis for Joel and even though he is the quintessential funny man, there was no hiding his disappointment.

Lines I liked, “Each day lasts a year and flies by in an instant” (p 102). Yup.

Author fact: Joel has his own website here.

Book trivia: I was excited to see recipes at the end of 188th Crybaby Brigade. Meatloaf, sweet tea and grilled cheese. I was all set to try one until I noticed I needed a tank. There is also a glossary of military slang.

Setlist: Led Zeppelin, Jim Morrison, Beatles, “In Your Eyes”, Chariots of Fire theme song, “Hava Nagilla”, Deep Blue Something’s “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Simon & Garfunkel, John Lennon.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Leavened in Lebanon” (p 130).

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Quicksilver

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Stephenson, Neal. Quicksilver. Perennial, 2003.

Reason read: Neal Stephenson celebrates a birthday in October. Read in his honor.

The timeframe is 1660 – 1688 and Europe is transforming itself into a culture of scientific thinkers. Alchemy and imagination. Burgeoning financial complexities and modernized social developments abound. [Side note: the experiments on dogs was really hard to read. And I’m not a dog person.] Quicksilver follows real-life historical figures in real-life events. The glint in a crow’s eye. The cough of a cholera-infected child. Fine grains of dirt that cling to a man’s boots as he strides across a courtyard. The tremble of a drop of water as it rolls down a soot-covered windowpane. The hair of a rat as it scurries under a table. The details of Quicksilver are even finer than this; an overabundance of details. I hope you stub your toes on the sly humor that pops up in between the verbose narrative.
Additional facts about Quicksilver: it is exactly one third of the Baroque Cycle, Stephenson’s trilogy. Quicksilver in and of itself is in three separate parts. The second section follows the adventures of Jack Shaftoe. The third involves a slave who ties the characters of the first two sections together. As an aside, Eliza’s story had me scratching my head. I felt that Stephenson had more to say about her than he was letting on. The writing of Cryptonomicon and the reading about Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz inspired Stephenson to write Quicksilver.

Author fact: Stephenson wrote Quicksilver, all 930 plus pages of it, by longhand.

Book trivia: This might be a no-brainer for some, but read Peter Ackroyd’s London: the Biography before Quicksilver. Certain historical events and characters will come into sharper focus when you meet up with them in Quicksilver. For example, I enjoyed reading about the fictional account of the Great Fire of 1666 from Ackroyd’s storytelling perspective.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the obvious chapter called “Neal Stephenson: Too Good To Miss” (p 214).

Hearts in Atlantis

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King, Stephen. Hearts in Atlantis. Scribner, 1999.

Reason read: Stephen King’s face should be in the dictionary next to the word ‘scary.’ Read in honor of Halloween.

Critics have cited King’s first novel, Carrie, when reviewing Hearts in Atlantis. Like Carrie, Hearts in Atlantis carries a running theme of the Vietnam War and psychological breakdowns. Like a television on in the background where no one is watching, the conflict begins as a faint constant presence, a hum, until it becomes a deafening roar by the end of the book. Despite having five separate narratives Hearts in Atlantis reads like a fragmented novel. The character narratives are sequential in nature, allowing the reading to stay connected to particular characters from beginning to end, even though the locations and stories change.
In the 254 page short novella that kicks off Hearts in Atlantis, “Low Men in Yellow Coats,” eleven year old Bobby Garfield just wants to buy a bicycle. It is his birthday and all his mother can afford is an adult library card. This is when Bobby is introduced to William Golding’s Lord of the Flies and the weird upstairs neighbor, Ted. Suddenly, adults are no longer the protectors he has always trusted. Predators lurk behind faces he has known all his life. Bobby was a good kid who slowly soured on doing the right thing. He sank lower into a life of crime – breaking windows, drinking, theft.
In the next short story, “Hearts in Atlantis,” we leave Bobby and follow Pete who ends up dating Bobby’s childhood girlfriend, Carol. Carol is now college-aged and she is the one who ties “Low Men in Yellow Coats” and “Hearts in Atlantis” together. In fact, she, together with the Vietnam war, are the linchpins that hold all of the stories together.

Lines I loved, “Put a glass of water next to Nate Hoppenstand and it was the water that looked vivacious” (p 262) and “In Orono, Maine, buying a Rolling Stones record passes for a revolutionary act” (p 395). Truth.

Author fact: Stephen King is known for taking ordinary situations and making them scary as hell. In Hearts there are no monsters. Only what war can do to a person; how human nature can turn ugly and sinister.

Book trivia: I loved how the genesis of the peace symbol is explained in “Hearts in Atlantis.” I never knew it was the British Navy’s semaphore letters for nuclear disarmament.

Setlist: Andy Williams Singers, Animals, “Angel of the Morning”, Al Jolson’s “Mammy”, Allman Brothers, Beatles, Benny Goodman Orchestra, Bob Dylan, “Boom Boom”, “Bad Moon Rising”, Bobby Darin, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B Good”, Carpenters, Dave Clark Five, the Doors’ “Break On Through”, Dean Martin, Diane Renay’s “Navy Blue”, “Do You Know What I know?”, “Don’t You Just Know It” by Hury “Piano” Smith and the Clowns”, Danny and the Juniors, Donovan Leitch’s “Atlantis”, Dovells, “Dance to the Music”, Doors, Donna Summer’s “Bad Girl”, Elvis Presley, Four Seasons, Frank Sinatra, Freddie “Boom Boom” Cannon, “Gimme Some Lovin'”, Gerry Miller, “Goin’ Up the Country”, “Hang on Sloopy”, Hare Krishna Chorale, Herman and the Hermits, “Insta Karma”, Jack Scott, Jo Stafford, Jimmy Gilmer’s “Sugar Shack”, “Let’s Work Together”, Little Richard, “Light My Fire”, Liz Phair, “Love is Strange”, “Louie, Louie”, Miracles, Mitch Miller, “Mack the Knife”, Mysterians’ “96 Tears”, “My Girl”, Neil Diamond, “Night and Day”, “Oh! Carol” by Neil Sedaka, Offspring, “The Old Rugged Cross”, “One O’Clock Jump”, “One Tin Soldier”, Paul Anka, Petula Clark, Peter Frampton, Platters, Phil Och’s “I Aint Marching Anymore”, “Queen of the Hop”, “The Rainbows”, Rare Earth, “Red River Valley” Rolling Stones, Royal Teen’s “Short Shorts”, “Silent Night”, Sly and the Family Stone, Supremes, Smokey Robinson, Strawberry Alarm Clock’s “Incense and Peppermints”, “Tequila” by the Champs, Tro Shondell’s “This Time”, William Ackerman, Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders, “Where the Boys Are”, and the Youngbloods.

Confessional: whenever I think of “Mack the Knife, “I think of a time when I was in my early twenties. The guy I was dating called a radio station to request a song. No one had a person phone back then. My true love had to run out to a payphone up a hill and around a building. I thought for sure he was going to request something romantic; something just for me. Nope. He requested “Mack the Knife.” When I asked him why Mack he said he just liked the song.
More connections to my life: I went to UMaine and dated a guy named Soucie. His twin was named AnneMarie. I also worked in the Bear’s Den.

BookLust Twist: Book Lust in the chapter called “Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror” (p 213).

Sense and Sensibility

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Austen, Jane. Sense and Sensibility. Everyman’s Library, 1992.

Reason read: Read in honor of Sense and Sensibility being published in October.

Marianne, rejected by John Willoughby, is impetuous and needs sense. Her sister, Elinor, is the sensible one who will not let on that she is crushed when Edward Ferras plans to marry another. Sense and Sensibility tells the story of two very different romances. Although both are rejected they deal with it in different ways. To utter the words extinction of the individuality is to imply that the price of marriage is a loss of one’s sense of self. Threaded through the story of romance is another, more societal, theme of male dominated lineage. Austen was extremely observant about the world around her. She chose to write abut the country gentry because they stayed in her head, sometimes for years. Like other women authors of her time, Austen published Sense and Sensibility anonymously.
As an aside, I have read a lot of critical reviews of Sense and Sensibility and I have to wonder if Jane’s ghost laughs at the critics who took their task too seriously. Is Jane a psychiatric radical? She is a philosophical conservative? How deep can one delve into the ideology of sense and sensibility? Did she fashion Fanny after the Shakespearean character of Iago?

Author fact: Jane Austen had Elinor and Marianne on her mind when she was twenty years old. She was thirty-six when Sense and Sensibility was finally published. That is a long time for characters to be floating around one’s head.

Book trivia: My version of Sense and Sensibility (Alfred A. Knopf, 1992) has an introduction by Peter Conrad.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “An Anglophile’s Literary Pilgrimage” (p 20).

Summit Visions

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Fraser, Graeme. Summit Visions. Self published, 2024.

Reason read: every now and then, I receive a book to read for the Early Review Program from LibraryThing. I never know what I’m going to get…

If you were to think of Summit Visions as a journey, the number of pages would equal the number of miles to travel on said journey. Imagine setting out on this trek of more than five hundred miles and every two miles there is a diversion, a speed bump of superfluous information or comments about something you will read more about later. I wish Fraser kept his examples grounded in the Nashua Millennium Big 5 Challenge instead of delving into diamond mining ventures or the the struggles of being a corporate lawyer. I know I would have enjoyed Summit Visions more if it did not morph into a preachy self-help book. Fraser toggled between his personal career goals as an entrepreneur and lawyer and the athletic goals of an elite athlete. The narrative became unfocused with side stories about the eating habits of the Arsenal team, yacht racing, climbing Thaba Ntlenyana, tax lawyer quotations, information surveillance, what climate change means for the Maldives Islands, a mini memoir about Fraser’s experiences crossing the finish line at every event, lots of disparaging comments about his physique, a plug for reading the Bible, and a myriad of analogies. I lost track of the number of parenthetical statements (there were a lot!). All of the stories are inspiring but a bit longwinded. So much so that I had to chuckle when Fraser cautioned against information overload. His humor was and fascinating stories when on-topic were not enough to keep me engaged. I gave up after 300 pages.

His Last Bow

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Doyle, Arthur Conan. The Complete Sherlock Holmes: “His Last Bow.” Doubleday & Company, 1922.

Sherlock Holmes is at it again, solving mysteries for his fellow Londoners. In the “Adventure of the Cardboard Box”, Holmes was so embarrassed to have solved it so easily that he did not want to take credit for it. As usual, Holmes has his ways of learning things about people by making them chatter. The more they talk, the more they reveal. He also can discern important facts by the tiniest of details like cigarette butts and handwriting samples.

Short stories:

  • The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge – solving the murder of a man named Garcia.
  • The Adventure of the Cardboard Box – a box sent to a spinster creates an uproar.
  • The Adventure of the Red Circle – a case of hidden identity and self defense.
  • The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans – the theft of submarine plans.
  • The Adventure of the Dying Detective – someone is trying to kill Sherlock!
  • the Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax – a woman is missing. Quote I liked from this story, “When you follow two separate chains of thought, you will find some point of intersection which should approximate to the truth” (p 950).
  • The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot
  • His Last Bow: the war service of Sherlock Holmes

Lines I liked, “Holmes was accessible upon the side of flattery…” (p 901).Book trivia: I love it when Watson remembers previous cases and references them in new mysteries. He compared the Adventure of the Cardboard Box to a Study in Scarlet and the Sign of Four.

Ordinary Chaos of Being Human

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Richards, Marguerite. The Ordinary Chaos of Being Human: True Stories. Soul-baring Moments. No Apologies. Leave It Better Books, 2024.

Reason read: As a member of the Early Review program for LibraryThing, I sometimes get to review interesting and thought-provoking books. This is one such book.

Right off the bat, I have to draw attention to something both Bina Shah and Marguerite Richards wrestled in the beginning of Ordinary Chaos: the conundrum of whether or not to draw attention to the Muslim voice. Between the foreword and introduction the word “Muslim” is written almost forty times and yet Shah toyed with removing it. The concept of being Muslim matters but Shah and Richards were conflicted about its place and purpose within Ordinary Chaos. It is the point of the book despite the contrary challenge put forth to the reader: do not see these authors as one religion or another; see them as human without any other label. I would argue that in order to do that one must tell the story without the identifiers, only reveal them at the end; only then ask if the detail really mattered to the tenor and tone of the message. Otherwise, the connection to a religious or cultural belief does matter to the success of the story. For example, stories such as “Those Eyes of Hers” could be told by anyone. The concept of letting go of a drug that had been a security blanket or a crutch for an ailment that didn’t exist. The human connection is there regardless of religion, gender or sexual orientation, or economic status. When we are taken out of our comfort zones we truly learn about ourselves and that is called growth.
Some of the stories will fill you with nostalgia for an irreplaceable time. Some will leave you inexplicably sad. I could not read Ordinary Chaos for very long. I still have a third of the book to read.

As an aside, do not be overwhelmed by the number of pages of Ordinary Chaos. In the electronic version there was at least a blank page or two between each story. Every story is incredibly short.

Book trivia: before each story Richards provides a short biography. The Ordinary Chaos of Being Human was first published in 2019 by Penguin Random House.

Playlist: Metallica, Michael Jackson, Googoosh, Sin Dios, “Elephant Love Medley”, “Young Folks” by Peter Bjorn & John,

The Islanders

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Robinson, Lewis. The Islanders. Islandport Press, 2024.

Reason read: Early Review for LibraryThing.

The Islanders centers on protagonist, Walt McNamara, whose high school career slid violently out of control after he discovered his father’s affair with a teacher at his school. Walt, an easily manipulated teenager, needs structure and guidance to get back on track. That support comes from an opportunity to attend WILD, a leadership camp on an island off the coast of Maine. [As an aside, are not many details that make this island specific to Maine. It could be an island off the coast of anywhere cold.] On the island of Whaleback Walt and other troubled teenagers form groups called Huddles and learn leaderships skills in the form of exercise, survival and combat drills. As they get stronger and more confident, the teenagers learn to trust one another. Each Huddle is isolated from the others, except during competitions, which forces deep relationships to form. I found it curious that none of the campers are from the same state. There are not two New Hampshires or Maines in the group. This makes it really easy for the team leads to call them by something other than their first names. Less personal that way. As times goes on the teenagers figure out they are attending a leadership camp with hidden agendas. At first, Robinson keeps the reader guessing by patiently doling out clues, one crumb at a time. Then without warning, the action heats up to breakneck speed. I found myself going back through chapters to figure out what changed within the story to force the sudden acceleration of plot. The end what not as satisfying as I would have hoped.

When you know a little bit about something familiar your mind starts to fill in the blanks. I know a little something about islands so I am picturing the culture when reading The Islanders. Whaleback Island easily could have been Hurricane Island, The WILD program could have been called Outward Bound.

Setlist: Arcade Fire, Guns N’ Roses, “Heigh Ho”, “Legs” by ZZ Top, “More Than a Feeling” by Boston, “Tom Sawyer” by Rush, “We are Family”, and “Amazing Grace”.

Salvation on Sand Mountain

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Covington, Dennis. Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia. Da Capo Press, 1995.

Reason read: October is National Reptile Month and in honor of snakes, I am reading Salvation on Sand Mountain. I also needed a book set in the mountains for the Portland Public Library Reading Challenge of 2024.

It all started with a trial. A man in southern Appalachia Alabama was accused of trying to kill his wife with a snake. It’s an interesting way to attempt murder. Glenn Summerford put a gun to his wife’s head and forced her to reach into a box containing a bunch of venomous snakes. She was bitten four times and survived to testify against her husband. After Dennis Covington covered the trial, published his piece, and tried to put the story out of his mind, a book editor came knocking. It didn’t take much for him to convince Covington “this needs to be a full-length book” and Salvation on Sand Mountain was born. Covington immerses himself (and at times, his family) in the mysterious world of praying with dangerous snakes. What makes this journalism different is that Covington has ancestral history with preaching with snakes. As time with the congregation goes on and the more he observes their method of practicing their faith, Covington comes to care for the individual people, even Glenn Summerford. [Confessional: I sense Covington developing a crush on a member of the congregation as well.] Salvation on Sand Mountain culminates with Covington immersing himself completely by taking up a snake and preaching to the congregation he initially only wanted to write about. To think that it all began with a trial and a conviction.

Author fact: Covington has written quite a few books. Salvation on Sand Mountain is the only book I am reading for the challenge.

Book trivia: Salvation on Sand Mountain includes a small series of black and white photographs. Some contain the infamous snakes. All include the people who worship them. Salvation on Sand Mountain was a finalist for the National Book Award.

Playlist: Alabama, “In My Robe of White, I Shall Fly Away”, Liberace, Loretta Lynn, “I Saw the Light”, “How Great Thou Art”, “Only One Rose Will Do”, “I’m Getting Ready to Leave This World”, “Wading Through Deep Water”, “Will the Circle Be Unbroken”, “Prayer Bells From Heaven”, and “Jesus on My Mind”.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Approaching Appalachia” (p 22). Pearl liked Salvation on Sand Mountain so much that she also included it in More Book Lust in the flattering chapter called “Just Too Good To Miss” (p 132).

About Looking

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Berger, John. About Looking. Pantheon Books, 1980.

Reason read: October is Art Appreciation month.

Right away About Looking opens up with a dismal commentary of the relatively modern practice of keeping pets for the sake of companionship. Berger points out that humans sterilize their companions while not allowing them to roam free, socialize with other animals, or eat the foods natural to their diets. I will never look at animals at the zoo in the same way. From the very first essay Berger has found a way to illustrate the title of his book. Berger then moves on to describe the artwork of painters and photographers and the idea of looking at art from the perspective of time and of aging. Similar to reading the same book every ten years, how does the art change with aging? Bergen ends the book with an essay on nature. More specifically, he describes an open field of which your perspective changes depending on who or what is in it. The overarching message is how altered reality can reflect your own life.

As an aside, thank you, John Berger, for introducing me to the art of J.J. Grandville. He, Grandville, is the epitome of the phrase wondrous strange. I also want to thank Berger for introducing me to places I have never heard before, like the Valley of the Loue, to the west of the Jura Mountains.

Lines I liked, “hope is a marvelous focusing lens” (p 128),Author fact: John Bergen also wrote film scripts.

Book trivia: About Looking includes twenty-three black and white photographs. Some of them are explained while others are not.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Art Appreciation” (p 25).

Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin

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Meade, Marion. Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin: Writers Running Wild in the Twenties. Nan A. Talese, 2004.

Reason read: who the hell knows.

The 1920s scene was an era filled with extravagance and excess. Everybody floated through life, seemingly without a care in the world. Jazz music and flapper dresses. Gin and lazy days on the beach. Wild behavior was almost the norm. Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin brings to life the women writers of the decade and the men who loved and loathed them. I would call this a tale of trying. Dorothy Parker’s bitchy attitude and botched suicide attempts. Zelda Fitzgerald’s insane attempts to be a professional ballerina. Edna St. Vincent Millay’s scandalous sexual trysts attempting to find true love. Edna Ferber’s tendency to always be alone, attempting to find happiness in solitude. The hysterical behavior of everyone: women liked to toss their expensive jewelry out of windows and off trains as a sign of their theatrical disgust, for example. The decade of the 1920s was an era when pregnancies were an inconvenience to be shrugged off either by handing the offensive newborn babes to nannies or distant relatives, or having illegal abortions to avoid the mess of childbirth and child rearing altogether. Excessive drinking only meant one could dry out from time to time at an exclusive resort. Mental breakdowns and overdoses were treated as cases of hysteria. It was also an era of triumph. Pulitzers were won. Women made names for themselves and carved out writing careers for future generations.
As an aside, it was difficult to read of the tragic endings for some of the greatest writers. No one seems to die of old age in that era. Vincent died of a broken neck after an apparent fall down a staircase. Ferber died of cancer. Zelda burned to death. Hale supposedly starved herself to death. Benchley died of cirrhosis of the liver. F. Scott died of a heart attack. Hemingway shot himself. Other deaths include tuberculosis, spinal meningitis, and cerebral hemorrhage.

As another aside, I was familiar with many of the different regions mentioned in Bobbed Hair: Maine (almost everywhere, but especially Camden and Rockland), upstate New York (particularly Duchess County), the beautiful Berkshires, and New Jersey (Red Bank and Princeton).

Author fact: Meade wrote a bunch of biographies that look really interesting, but I am only reading Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin for the Challenge.

Book trivia: to read Meade’s afterword is to confront epic sadness. Words like pain, addiction, decline, loner, cancer, destitution, depression, poisonous, and reclusive
Audio trivia: listen to the audio read by Lorna Raver. She is wonderful.

Music: Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, “Cuddle Up a Little Closer”, “March of the Toy Soldiers”, “Old Man River”, “Make Believe”, “Life Upon the Wicked Stage”, “The Treasurer’s Report”, Al Jolson, “The Calendar”, “The International” Paul Robeson, Jerry Kern, and Giuseppe Verdi’s “Aida”.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Group Portraits” (p 108).

Crossing California

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Langer, Adam. Crossing California. Riverhead Books, 2004.

Reason read: You probably have never heard of Matt Vongsykeo, but when he was a teenager, he saved a baby from a burning car.

Meet the members of a Jewish community in Chicago, Illinois. Jill Wasserstrom is a liar. She told Lana she gave Muley Scott a hickey. Lana, the lied-to party, comes from a wealthy family (father is a radiologist, mother is a psychologist, and brother Larry was accepted into Brandeis). Lana wants to be an actor. Fake hickey recipient Muley wants to be a film maker and has a mother who works in the library and cleans houses for a living. Muley is in love with Jill. Jill’s father, Charlie, was fired from a restaurant job (owned by Alan Farbman) because he talked to a reviewer (Gail Schiffer-Bass) who he later marries. Jill’s sister, Michelle, is a tough cookie. Brandeis-accepted Larry wants to be a rock star drummer. The list of characters, some important, some not, goes on and on. It is this group of characters who drive the plot of Crossing California and make the story interesting. California Avenue itself (of Chicago, Illinois), lives and breathes like another character in Crossing California. This is a slice of Jewish life in a early 80s Chicago community at its best and worst.

Lines I liked, “She briefly considered going back, but she had her pride and besides, the door had locked behind her” (p 14).

Author fact: Crossing California is Langer’s first book.

Book trivia: Langer marks the era with punctuations of songs that were popular at the time. It is obvious he is a huge fan of music. Is Larry his doppelganger? See setlist for the music.

Setlist: Aerosmith, Al Jolson’s “California, Here I Come”, Al Stewart’s “On the Border”, “Angie”, Aretha Franklin’s “Respect”, Bach, “Back Door Man”, Barbra Streisand, the Beatles, Bill Haley and the Comets, Billy Joel’s “The Stranger”, Blood, Sweat and Tears, Bob Dylan’s “Seven Days”, Bobby Vinton, Boston, Bruce Springsteen, “Buttercup’s Song”, Cheap Trick, Chicago’s “If You Leave Me Now”, Chuck Berry, Chuck Mangione, Clancy Brothers, the Clash, “Come Saturday Morning”, Dan Fogelberg, “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?”, David Crosby, Debbie Harry’s “Call Me”, Deep Purple, Dire Straits’ “Sultans of Swing”, “Dream On”, Edith Piaf’s “Non Je Regrette Rien”, Electric Light Orchestra, Elton John and Kiki Dee’s “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart”, Elvis, Eric Clapton, Fleetwood Mac, “Flirting with Disaster”, Foghat, Foreigner’s “Head Games”, Frank Sinatra, “Free Bird”, Gerard Lenorman, the Guess Who’s “American Woman” and “No Sugar”, Harry Belafonte, “Hava Nagilah”, Heart’s “Barracuda”, ” Herb Alpert, “Hey Ho Nobody Home”, “If I Were a Rich Man”, “In the Light”, “Is She Really Going Out with Him?”, Isaac Hayes, Jack Dupree, Jacques Brel, Jefferson Starship’s “Miracles”, Jethro Tull, Jim Croce’s “Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown”, Jimmy Durante’s “Inka Dinka Doo”, John Denver’s “Annie’s Song”, John Entwistle, Johnny Hallyday, John Lennon, Journey’s “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow”, Kenny Jones, Kiss, “Le Freak (C’est Chic)”, “Learn How to Fall”, Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir”, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Mahler’s Symphony #9, “Making Whoopie”, Mick Jagger, Modern Lovers, Molly Hatchet, “Mr. Bojangles”, Muddy Waters, Nazareth, Neil Diamond, “One Tin Soldier”, Paul Simon’s “Some Folks’ Lives Roll Easy”, Paul McCartney, Pete Seeger, Philip Glass, Pink Floyd, “Quando El Ray Nimrod”, “Raisins and Almonds”, Ray Charles’s “Hit the Road, Jack”, and “Georgia On My Mind”, “Refrain, Audacious Tar”, REO Speedwagon, Rod Stewart, Roger Daltry, Rolling Stones, Ron Woods, “Runaround Sue”, Rush’s “Fly By Night”, Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag”. “Shaft”, “Slow Ride”, “Squeezebox”, Styx’s “Come Sail Away with Me” and “Lorelei”, “Sunrise Sunset”, “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”, Tom Paxton, Tommy Dorsey, “Top of the World”, “Tonight”, “Troika (Prokofiev’s Lieutenant)”, “Trouble in Mind”, the Who’s “Baba O’Riley”, “Music Must Change”. “Sister disco”, and “Won’t Get Fooled Again”, the Weavers, Wings, Working Man, Yes, “Y.M.C.A.”, “You’re in My Heart”, Yves Simon, and Zoltan Kodaly’s “Harry Janos Suite”.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in two places: “Maiden Voyages” (p 159) and again in “Teenage Times” (p 215).

London: the Biography

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Ackroyd, Peter. London: the Biography. Anchor, 2003.

Reason read: So when I think of London, I think of Lady Diana. Her funeral was in the month of September. Read in her memory.

The word thorough does not do London: the Biography justice. Think of it as a chronology of London’s biggest events from 54 BC to 2000 AD. It is an explanation and examination of culture, architecture, religion, invention, society, education, slang, literature, food, immigration, sanitation, crime, entertainment, commerce, economics, weather… I could go on. There are a lot of opinions about this book floating around. Someone said it took them six months to read it. Someone else said you have to read it before visiting London, while someone else suggested using London: the Biography as a walking guide. Good luck carrying the thing around. It’s heavy!
London is the book to read if you want to know what Charles Dickens thought about London cats or the pervasive fog; what Daniel Defoe thought about the poor, the prison system, or London’s suburbs; or Samuel Johnson’s thoughts on public intoxication or witnessing a well-attended execution in a courtyard. Ackroyd’s meticulous research has uncovered those opinions and more. You will learn about the Great Fire of 1666 and how no one knew how it started; yet it burned for five days straight. You will hear stories about the infamous London fog and how a man could get lost in the ominous mist. Speaking of ominous, penal and criminal behaviors are discussed at great length. I particularly liked the man who couldn’t stay imprisoned. Time and time again he found ways to escape.

Quote to quote, “The beard was long but the rebellion was short” (p 54).

Natalie connection: Ackroyd quotes the same poem Natalie Merchant used to name her album for and about children, Leave Your Sleep.

Author fact: I have already read two Ackroyd books. Next up are stories about the Thames River, Albion, and Troy.

Book trivia: I liked the map of London from 1800 compared to the map of London from “modern times.”

Playlist: “My Shadow is My Only Friend”, “I Wonder What it Fells Like to be Poor”, Handel’s water music, Beethoven, and Chopin.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Entering England” (p 73).

Perfect Daughter

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Linscott, Gillian. The Perfect Daughter. Macmillan, 2001.

Reason read: Linscott celebrates her birthday in the month of September. Read in her honor.

It is difficult to be the prim and proper daughter of a military father and a snobbish mother in 1914 England. [It’s probably difficult to be a child of such parents in any given era.] Giving in to the pressure of perpetual perfection, did Verona finally commit suicide? Or was something more sinister at play? Found with a clever noose around her neck, it looks like the former. When details are revealed, readers must consider the era. Left-wing politics are raging, women are fighting for the vote, and Verona went from being a well-mannered daughter to a runaway, albeit talented, artist living in squalor with a group of Bohemian anarchists. Her life while she lived and breathed was fraught with contradictions, but it is her death which confounds us more. Her autopsy reveals she had been pregnant and had a great deal of morphine in her system. Her friends and family report her behavior was so strange they hardly knew her anymore. Maybe she led a promiscuous life. Maybe she was an addict. Was Verona’s cousin to blame? Suffragette and political agitator, Nell Bray had little contact with Verona; she barely knew the girl, and yet she finds herself trying to solve the mystery. Curious by nature, Nell wonders how a young girl from a well-to-do family could end up deceased on her parents’ property. Is her strange death a message to her society-slaved parents? Or was someone else to blame for her demise?

Author fact: Linscott worked for the BBC before she became a novelist.

Book trivia: This could be a movie.

Setlist: Chaliapin, “O Dem Golden Slippers”, and Schubert.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Ms. Mystery” (p 169).

Jungle

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Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle. Robert Bentley Inc., 1946.

Reason read: Sinclair celebrated a birthday in September. Read in his honor. I also needed a book set in the Midwest for the Portland Public Library’s 2024 Reading Challenge.

In my version of The Jungle (Robert Bentley, Inc., 1946), Sinclair provides an introduction and in that introduction he describes how he came to Chicago at twenty-six years old and started visiting the meat packing district. The living and working conditions of the mostly immigrant workers prompted him to interview them at home, where conversations inevitably turn confessional. Sinclair even crashed a Lithuanian wedding and used the experience in the opening scene of The Jungle.
I will not lie. Reading The Jungle by Upton Sinclair was painful. Jurgis, with his haunting mantra, “I will work hard. I will work faster. I will work longer” was heartbreaking. The desperation for employment – children lying about their ages to get work, women giving out their bodies to find work and bringing bribes of their bodies to stay employed. Look up misery in the dictionary and you should find Sinclair’s The Jungle.
As an aside, pay attention to the words used in the socialist sermon. Monster. Exhaustion. Beaten. Starvation. Horror. Darkness. Obstacles. Threatening. Hostile. Destroy. Fury. Prison. Oppression. Grim. Toiling. Agony. Suffering. Difficulties. Trapped. Hideous. Pain. Wretched. Curse. Misery.
In the end, Jurgis fades into the background as the sermon on socialism, morality, the word of God, and the future of Chicago takes over.

Book trivia: Jack London endorsed The Jungle saying it will run away with you. He was right.

Quote to quote, “They trick you and then they eat you alive” (p 69).

Confessional: I would like to think everyone has read this best selling classic. However, until now I was not one of those people. I never had to read it in grade school, high school, college, or graduate school. It was not on any supplemental list supplied by my teachers.

Natalie connection: 10,000 Maniacs performs a song called “My Sister Rose” which depicts a family wedding. Natalie sings about “dollar dances with the bride” much like the dancing described in the early pages of The Jungle. Music can take you back to your homeland.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “One Hundred Good Reads, Decade By Decade: 1900s” (p 175).