Author: gr4c5

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

Wild Sheep Chase

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Murakami, Haruki. A Wild Sheep Chase. Vintage International, 1989.

Reason read: in early June the running community celebrates a national run day. Murakami is an experience marathoner. To celebrate running and Murakami’s athleticism, I am reading A Wild Sheep Chase.

Hidden in the midst of The Wild Sheep Chase are mysteries. Early on, the nameless narrator receives a letter from someone he didn’t want to think about. He throws the letter away without opening it. As the reader, are we supposed to remember this letter? Is it important later on? I’m thinking it must be or it wouldn’t have been presented in such a way. Right? Wrong assumption. This nameless protagonist has been issued a threat – find a unique sheep with a star on its back or else. The blackmail is terrifying in an unspecific way. Get use to the vagueness of A Wild Sheep Chase. No one has a proper name. Not the narrator, ex-wife, girlfriend, business partner, or even the strange man dressed in a sheep suit.
The entire time I was reading A Wild Sheep Chase I thought it could be a video game…either that or a fever dream. You find yourself questioning chaos versus mediocrity. The negating of cognition. Part I begins in November of 1970. This date is important but you won’t realize it until long after you’ve closed the book. Like I said, fever dream.

As an aside, I was struck by this line, “…an epidemic could have swept the world…” (p 307). It was published 31 years before Covid-19 blanketed the entire world with its deadly power. Here is another line I liked, “No matter how much speed we put on there was no escaping boredom” (p 100).

Author fact: Murakami won the Norma Literary Newcomer’s Prize for A Wild Sheep Chase.

Book trivia: A Wild Sheep Chase is part of a trilogy called The Trilogy of the Rat. I am not reading the other books in this trilogy.

Setlist: Bach, the Beach Boys, Beatles, Beethoven, Benny Goodman’s “Air Mail Special”, Bill Withers, Boz Scags, Brothers Johnson, the Byrds, Chopin, Deep Purple, the Doors, “Johnny B Goode”, Johnny River’s “Midnight Special”, Maynard Ferguson, Moody Blues, Mozart, Nat King Cole, Paul McCartney, Percy Faith Orchestra’s “Perfidia”, “Roll Over Beethoven”, the Rolling Stones, “Secret Agent Man”, “Star Wars”, and “White Christmas”.

BookLust Twist: First from Book Lust twice in the chapters “Japanese Fiction (p 131) and “Post Modern Condition” (p 190). Also in Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Japanese Journeys” (p 117). I see this BLTG addition as a cheat.

Easy Way Out

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McCauley, Stephen. The Easy Way Out. Simon & Schuster, 1992.

Reason read: McCauley celebrates a birthday in June and it’s Pride month. What better way to honor both occasions than by reading The Easy Way Out?

Patrick O’Neil has been called the anti-hero and I have to admit, when I read that I thought of Taylor Swift (I love that song…only Dermot Kennedy’s version). Patrick is not exactly the best lover to his partner, Arthur. He isn’t the best brother to Ryan and Tony either. He is an even worse travel agent. How he manages his relationships, both personal and professional, is a conundrum. In all honesty, I didn’t like any of the characters well, except Sharon. Everyone was someone who took the easy way out (hence the title of the book). Am I supposed to applaud Patrick for finally not compromising his feelings? The way he did it wasn’t admirable either.
As someone who took the easy way out because I thought I knew what I wanted, I have learned that life isn’t always lived in regret. I do have my moments of oops, but for the most part I do have my share of gratitude for the mistakes I’ve made and how it all turned out.

As an aside, did anyone else notice the multiple comments about global warning?

Lines I liked, “I sometimes worried that he might suddenly disappear, especially when I’d been spending a lot of time fantasizing about leaving him” (p 19) and “I was in that oddly euphoric state that accompanies fasting, sleep deprivation and natural disasters” (p 281).

Book trivia: I could easily see this as a movie.

Author fact: I have three MCauley books to read. Man of the House and Object of My Affection are next.

Setlist: “Ill Wind”, “Put the Blame on Mame”, “MoonSlide”, “The Shadow of Your Smile”, Richard Tauber, Ben Webster, Mozart, La Traviata, “Surrey with the Fringe on Top”, “Hello Dolly”, Uccini, and “La Vie en Rose”.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in two different chapters. First, in “Gay and Lesbian Fiction: Out of the Closet” (p 93) and again a few chapters later in “My Own Private DUI” (p 165).

Old Glory

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Raban, Jonathan. Old Glory: an American Voyage. Simon and Schuster, 1981.

Reason read: read as a companion to Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain (which was read in honor of National River Cleanup month).

Raban was captivated by the story of Huckleberry Finn in 1949. He never forgot it, so in September of 1979 he decides to retrace Huck’s journey. Imagine traveling down the massive and mighty Mississippi River in a borrowed 16′ aluminum boat with just an outboard motor. He didn’t even have a radio to communicate with the larger tows.
Probably the biggest surprise of Old Glory was how much time Raban spends talking about being on shore comingling with the locals. He finds people to feed him and give him rides. He even spends a night or two in the homes of strangers and goes on a few dates. One date becomes serious enough for him to start using words like our garden and we went to church. He takes the time to hang out in bars to listen to the locals gossip and fight and gets caught up in both from time to time. He speaks to schoolchildren about his adventures (and they are not impressed). He hunts racoon, visits the Oscar Mayer factory workers on strike, attends a pig roast and crashes a house warming party. He stays with a taxidermist. He tries to talk politics by asking the locals about the upcoming election to get a sense of the political climate (and they are not impressed with Jimmy Carter). He romanticizes the writings of Twain, Dickens, Trollope, and Thoreau as he learns to listen to the Mississippi River’s moods and heed her whims.
One of my favorite parts was when Raban took on hitchhiking Monarch butterflies as they migrated down to Venezuela and Columbia.
In all honesty, I couldn’t tell if Raban was happy with the conclusion of his journey. Was it worth it and what did he do with the borrowed outboard motor boat?

As an aside, can I say I was shocked when Raban threw the empty cigarette pack into the river? I had to remind myself that Raban was not piloting down the Mississippi for the love of nature; that was not his goal.
On a personal note, Raban mentioned a poky little movie house in Northampton, Massachusetts; watching Twiggy in “The Boy Friend”. The year was 1972 so my husband’s family was not in town, but it was cool to see a town name I not only recognized, but had visited many, many times.

Lines I liked, “It is hard to make travel arrangements to visit a dream” (p 16) and “High wakes from towboats came rolling at me through my dreams” (p 48).

Author fact: other Raban books I have on my Challenge list include Passage to Juneau, Coasting, Waxwings, and Bad Land.

Playlist: Andre Kostelanetz, Aida, Barbra Streisand, Big Bopper’s “Chantilly Lace”, “Camptown Races”, Carol Lawrence’s “Tell All the World About Love”, Dave Brubeck, “Jingle Bell Rock”, Judy Garland’s “Meet Me in St. Louis”, “I Want That Mountain”, “It Is Well with My Soul”, Len Mink, Miles Davis, “Old Man River”, “On Blueberry Hill”, Patience and Prudence’s “Tonight You Belong To Me”, “Saints”, Scott Joplin, “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes”, Smokey Robinson’s “You Better Shop Around”, “South Rampart Street Parade”, and Verdi’s requiem “Dies Irae”.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the forgotten chapter “Water, Water Everywhere” (p 254), and again in Book Lust twice. First, in the chapter “Companion Reads” (p 62) and again in “Rivers of Words” (p 202).

War and Remembrance

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Wouk, Herman. War and Remembrance: Vol. 1. Little, Brown and Company, 1978.

Reason read: to continue the series started in honor of Memorial Day in May.

War and Remembrance: Vol 1 covers the Americans at war from Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima and even though it picks up where Winds of War left off, Wouk assures his reader that War and Remembrance can be read independently of Winds of War. I disagree to a certain degree. In Winds of War we have gotten to know the Henry family very well. You can’t help but get tangled in their lives. There is something about this passionate family! We have followed their adventures in love and war. Torrid affairs and wild ambitions have led each family member through various trials and tribulations. We rejoin Victor as he struggles to understand his feelings for the young and beautiful Pamela while traveling across the globe from the Soviet Union to Manila and Hawaii. His time on the Northampton set my teeth on edge. Natalie and Byron still haven’t rendezvoused on American soil. Natalie is still trapped in Italy with the young son Byron has never seen. Warren and Janice have welcomed a baby into their family, too, but Warren is always away, piloting top secret missions. Rhoda can’t decide between an absent husband and a totally different man, one more than willing to be there in the flesh. Like Winds of War, Wouk will take his reader to intimate places most are unlikely to go, like the belly of a thin-skinned submarine.
Military politics can be a fine line to balance upon. It can have career-ending ramifications to reject a vice admiral’s invitation to tea, for example. Wouk recreates military conversations that are fraught with tension and innuendo. His characters vibrate with drama. War and Remembrance is every bit as exciting as Winds of War.

Confessional: by now you know that I sometimes get hung up on the details. Here is one: Warren and Byron are sitting on the lawn, drinking beer straight from cans. Dad comes out and Warren produces a “frosty glass” for him. To create a “frosty glass” one has to chill the glass, most likely in a freezer. Why would they have such a glass out on the lawn while they are drinking straight from the can?
Second confessional: I knew something was going to happen when Warren’s mission does not go as rehearsed; when they alter the plan from what they practiced. That sense of foreboding was pungent.

Line I liked, “This isn’t the war we trained for, but its sure as hell the war we’ve got” (p 45).

Author fact: Wouk lived to be 103 years old.

Book trivia: War and Remembrance was dedicated to Abraham Isaac Wouk who didn’t make it to his sixth birthday.

Playlist: Bing Crosby, “Battle Hymn of the Republic”, “Boogie Woogie Washer Woman”, “Der Fuchrer’s Face”, “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen”, “Hut-Sut Song”, “Lili Marlene”, “Reactionary Rag”, “Rozhunkes mit Mandlen”, “Three O’Clock in the Morning”, “Yah Ribon”

Nancy said: Pearl called War and Remembrance good fiction.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “World War II Fiction” (p 252).

Groves of Academe

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McCarthy, Mary. The Groves of Academe. Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1952.

Reason read: Mary McCarthy was born in the month of June. Read in her honor.

Meet Henry Mulcahy. He is a middle-aged (42) professor who teaches literature at a small progressive college in Pennsylvania. Taught literature, I should say. His contract was not renewed for the upcoming term. There is a philosophical argument to be had: is it better to be fired or just not have your contract renewed? Is there a difference? Is there a more acceptable option? Henry “Hen” Mulcahy thinks President Maynard Hoar has it out for him. The sad thing was I didn’t care. When it came to intellectual liability, I thought they all were floating in egotistical backwater.
McCarthy is a crafty one. You are led to believe one thing about a character, but then, as the story unfolds, you hear the truth is something quite different. The reader is drawn into the manipulation. Mulcahy seems like a genuine person until you realize how far he is willing to go in order to save face.
McCarthy captures the snootiness of academia perfectly with all of its Proustian and Jamesian context. If Groves of Academe was a baking game show and the challenge was satire, McCarthy would have failed because her secret ingredient was too secret. The flavor was lost behind too many other ingredients like religion, philosophy, politics, literary greats, psychology, and let us not forget, human emotions like jealousy, competition, and hubris. At face value, Groves of Academe is a story about a man who doesn’t want to lose his job.

Author fact: McCarthy taught at Bard and Sarah Lawrence. Groves of Academe are based on McCarthy’s experiences teaching at these institutions.
Quote I wonder if she heard somewhere for real, “I had the misfortune to be born into the upper classes and I cannot respond to the suffering when the sufferer is base” (p 213). The attitude is the poor are free of money guilt…lucky them. Here’s another line I didn’t understand, “…her violent thrusts against the modern…” (p 227).

Book trivia: The first chapter of The Groves of Academe was featured in The New Yorker in 1951.

Playlist: Bach

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the very obvious chapter called “Academia: the Joke” (p 3).

Early Days in the Range of Light

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Arnold, Daniel. Early Days in the Range of Light: encounters with legendary mountaineers. Counterpoint, 2009.

Reason read: In honor of nature.

What makes Early Days in the Range of Light so special is that Arnold not only follows in the footsteps of great naturalists and mountaineers from 1864 to 1931, he truly wants to be in their company. He says of one excursion, “I joined their little camp, too, as best I could with 143 years between us” (p 11) and “They sat on top for an hour or so, and I shared their seat for half that time” (p 216). He imagines where each adventurer slept, ate, and placed every toehold while climbing majestic mountains. There is a romance to Arnold’s writing; a deep appreciation for the California mountains and the ghosts that linger there.
Having just spent three short days exploring the wonders of Yosemite, I could picture every landmark Arnold mentioned: Half Dome, Yosemite Fall, Glacier Point, El Capitan, I could go on. Early Days in the Range of Light is probably my favorite book I have read this year.

I love it when a book teaches me something unexpected. The art of Bolton Coit Brown is fantastic and I had never heard of him before. Joseph LeConte spent sixteen years to map the entire Sierra Range in comprehensive detail, the first of its kind. Naming a mountain peak after your institution of education was a thing.

Lines I liked, “But I have begun to see the limitations imposed by the lines we draw” (p 181) and “The mountains have a way of propagating human echoes” (p 244).

Natalie Merchant connection: Every time a man left his family to climb a mountain or spend days hiking in the wilderness I thought of the line, “Can you love the land and love me, too?” from Cowboy Romance.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Climb Ev’ry Mountain” (p 64).

Last Chronicle of Barset

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Trollope, Anthony. The Last Chronicle of Barset. Illustrated by G.H. Thomas. Classic Books, 2000.

Reason read: to finish the series started in April in honor of Trollope’s birth month being in April.

While The Last Chronicle of Barset technically can be read as a stand-alone book, there are a few subplots left over from Small House at Allington. Lily Dale’s relationship with Johnny Eames, for one. The main thread of the story is Reverend Josiah Crawley. Did he steal a cheque for twenty pounds? Who cares? Admittedly, I found the Last Chronicle of Barchester to be a bit of a bore. I was pleased when the entire saga mercifully came to a close. The plot was too slow for me. It plods along in a slow meandering way with all of the subplots. Made worse was Trollope’s habit of repeating himself. Don’t get me wrong, there is plenty of gossip and scandal, romance and betrayal. I just didn’t care for many of the characters.

Author fact: The Last Chronicle of Barset was published in 1867 when Trollope was fifty-two years old.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Barsetshire and Beyond” (p 15).

Meetings with Remarkable Trees

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Pakenham, Thomas. Meetings with Remarkable Trees. Random House, 1998.

Reason read: Arbor Day is in June in some states (the National Arbor Day is in April).

Thomas Pakenham proclaims Meetings with Remarkable Trees to be a “book of British tree portraits” and indeed, he has personified trees into categories of natives, travelers, shrines, fantasies, and survivors. He will tell you from where certain trees have immigrated like they are refugees of war. He will give their ages like gossip out of the tabloids.
My favorite section was about the trees he called shrines. These are the mystical trees that were sacred to the landscape and continue to hold ancient secrets. Remarkably beautiful.
In reading Meetings with Remarkable Trees I discovered that I absolutely love the Ginkgo biloba tree, but the Davidia Involucrata, the Handkerchief or Dove tree, is also truly beautiful. Another jaw-dropping fact I enjoyed learning concerned the Himalayan Magnolia and how its blooms grow to be almost a foot in diameter.
The unexpected delight of Meetings with Remarkable Trees was Pakenham’s subtle humor. I giggled when he called Aelian a killjoy. When Pakenham said he didn’t normally hugged trees I had to laugh because I do hug trees on a regular basis.
The true mastery of Meetings with Remarkable Trees is Pakenham’s ability to demonstrate the sheer size of each tree. Most photographs have a person standing next to the tree’s massive trunk for perspective. At the end of the book Pakenham includes a gazetteer which provides information on the National Trust trees, the Forest Enterprise trees, the trees that are regularly accessible to the public and those that are on private property.

Author fact: Pakenham is an Earl.

Book trivia: take the time to read Pakenham’s acknowledgments. He actually takes the time to thank landowners for allowing him to photograph trees on their property.

Playlist: Handel

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Dewey Deconstructed: 500s” (p 70).

Cement Garden

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McEwan, Ian. The Cement Garden. Simon and Schuster, 1978.

Reason read: McEwan celebrates a birthday in the month of June. Read in his honor.

Put your mind right before you read The Cement Garden. If you think of it like Lord of the Flies by William Golding, only Lord of the Flies family-style, you will be fine. Cement Garden is dark. Really dark. It deals with really difficult subjects. A family of four children, the youngest being six and the oldest, fifteen, are left alone for the summer. The do not have neighbors, teachers, parents, relatives, town officials, anyone to look after them. No one knows these four are alone. They don’t have many friends, either. Left to their own devices a quiet chaos within the house ensues. Told through the fourteen year old character of Jack, McEwan’s psychological exploration of naivety and stunted societal growth is captured in the themes of death, sexuality, and relationships as the children do not know how to deal these things. The death of their mother, coming of age impulses, and interactions with the outside world confound them and they react inappropriately. Beyond death, sex, and interpersonal relationships, the subtle emotional themes of grief, jealousy, and love are also probed. It’s a blessing that is mercifully short.

Pet peeve: I can sometimes get obsessed with details. The siblings are in Julie’s room when they pull down Sue’s pants. So when Jack wanted her to get dressed, why did he throw her skirt at her? Why wasn’t it a skirt of Julie’s? Why wasn’t it the pants they originally removed from Sue?

Author fact: So far I have read Atonement, Cement Garden, Amsterdam, and Comfort of Strangers. I have five other novels on my challenge list.

Book trivia: The Cement Garden is McEwan’s first novel.

Playlist: “Happy Birthday”, “Greensleeves”, and “Get Your Kicks on Route 66” by the King Cole Trio.

Nancy said: Pearl didn’t say anything specific about The Cement Garden.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Ian McEwan: Too Good To Miss” (p 149).

Winds of War

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Wouk, Herman. Winds of War. Simon & Schuster, 1974.

Reason read: Memorial Day is in May. Read to remember those no longer with us.
Confessional: I read most of this as an ebook. I made a lot of notes and highlighted many passages, but had to return it before I could transfer the information here.

The year is 1939 and Germany busily bullies the world into a clash that would later become the infamous World War II. The advances of Hitler into Poland and eventually England, France, and the Soviet Union indicate a man hellbent on world domination; all the while citing the “Jewish problem” as his justification and motivation. Wouk will take you on a panoramic journey through the intimate details of war. You will have a front row seat in the war room; be a voyeur in the bedroom; sit elbow to elbow in the libraries of world leaders as they speak in hushed tones about counterattacks. With a book this size (Winds of War is over one thousand pages long in paperback format), I wanted to make sure I kept track of all of the different characters. I wasn’t sure who was going to be worth remembering, real or imaginary. At the center is Berlin attaché Victor Henry (“Pug”), his glamorous but bored wife, Rhoda, and their three adult children. Winds of War begins when the parents are relocated with Germany on assignment. The three children, Byron, Warren, and Madeline are scattered across the globe. Pug desperately wants to captain a battleship but being relegated to serve as Naval attaché in Berlin has afforded him the opportunity to see the war fold out firsthand. As he gains the unusual trust of President Roosevelt he travels the world, gaining insight on future enemy tactics. Indeed, many real political powerhouses make an appearance in Winds of War.
A note about Winston Churchill: It is interesting to see how time blunts the sharp edges of an unfavorable reputation.
It is also interesting to see the varying opinions about the start of the war. Byron and his girl, Natalie, didn’t take it seriously until they were strafed in Poland and Natalie began to have troubles getting her Polish uncle out of Italy. Byron’s mother only had superficial societal concerns when Pug couldn’t accompany her to the opera. I mentioned she was the epitome of the bored housewife, didn’t I? She becomes even more cliché as the story progresses.
Separating fact from fiction: Did Hitler really have a remarkable smile?

Wouk certainly loved his women characters. As an aside, have you ever noticed that a woman’s breasts can be described with abandon (dressed or undressed), but barely (pun intended) anyone writes about the size of a man’s privates? Wouk is no different in the way he romanticizes the female body. Here are the breasts of Wouk: creamy breasts, pretty bosom, ample bosom,

Quotes to quote, “So they stood together, watching the Luftwaffe start its effort to bomb London to its knees. It was the seventh of September” (p 422).

Author fact: Wouk won a Pulitzer for The Caine Mutiny.

Book trivia: Winds of War has been made into a mini series starring Ali MacGraw and Robert Mitchum. Of course I haven’t seen it. Confessional: I confuse Ali MacGraw with Ali Sheedy.

Playlist: “The Star Spangled Banner”, Chopin, “Star Dust”, Liszt, “Deutschland Uber Alles”, “Three O’clock in the Morning”, “Horst Wessel Lied”, “Bell Bottom Trousers”, “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon”, “Auld Lang Syne”, “This Can’t Be Love”, Bach, Schubert, Beethoven, Mozart, “There Will Always Be an England”, and “Alexander’s Ragtime Band”.

Nancy said: Pearl called Winds of War good fiction.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “World War II Fiction” (p 252).

Giants in the Earth

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Rolvaag, O.E. Giants in the Earth: A Saga of the Prairie. Translated by Lincoln Colcord. Harper & Brothers, 1927.

Reason read: a celebration of spring and Minnesota became a state in May.

Volume One of Giants in the Earth was published in Norway in 1924. The second volume was published a year later. Vern Lewis Parrington (editor) wrote an introduction. Rolvaag wrote the foreword. Forty-six pages later we begin the story…Per Hansa is moving his family from Minnesota to the the Great Plains of the Dakota Territory in the hopes of putting down roots.
A lot of comments have been made about Beret and her mental illness. Her uncontrolled fear of the Midwest was justified. She was in a strange land without the comfort of true community. There was an underlying fear of Indians – fear and fascination in equal measure. I am reminded of the 10,000 Maniacs’ song, “Gold Rush Brides” written by Natalie Merchant. The lines, “The land was free and the prices was right”, and “Who were the homestead wives? Who were the gold rush brides? Does anybody know?…Accounts of madness, childbirth, loneliness, and grief” are particularly poignant. When Beret uncovers an evil secret wrongdoing her husband committed she starts to question their entire relationship. She fears that evil everywhere and her husband seems oblivious to her growing concerns. No one in the community notices her distress until it is beyond breaking. They even make fun of her nonsense. Were they distracted by opportunity? Were they preoccupied with adversities such as the strain of long, harsh winters and plagues of locusts in the summers? Did they want to slough off their old world identities identities in the new world by choosing new names? The question becomes how does one honor traditions of Norway while forging a new existence in America?

Quote to quote, “But it was easier to warm his body than thaw his soul” (p 277).

Author fact: Rolvaag was born in 1876 on the island of Donna almost in the Arctic Circle.

Book trivia: The title comes from a Bible quote.

Nancy said: Pearl said Giants of the Earth is one of the earliest sagas written about the immigrant experience (More Book Lust p 123).

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “The Immigrant Experience” (p 123).

The Odd Women

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Gissing, George. The Odd Women. Stein and Day, 1968.

Reason read: Read in honor of Mother’s Day.

Society is the name of the game in The Odd Women. Think Victorian and you have The Odd Women in a nutshell. It is all about the sociable attitude and the intelligent female society: women live in shame if they do not marry a man who has a sense of honor (and carries gloves and a walking stick). There is a subtle analysis of the institution of marriage.
As an aside, I found myself getting increasingly annoyed by Edmund Widdowson’s behavior when he would not allow Monica to see her friend Milly alone. By the time he consented to let her see her friend for just an hour I was seething. Edmund insists on them always being together and criticizes her friends. It reminded me of the classic behavior of an abuser: alienating one from their friends and family, always wanting to be together, the possessiveness that turns rageful (my word). Meanwhile, there is Everard Barfoot and Rhoda. Rhoda fears that marriage would interfere with the best parts of her life. All in all, I did not care for Gissing’s barely veiled attitudes towards women’s love of fashion and gossip.

Lines I liked, “If I could move your feelings, (p 29), and “Not a word reached her understanding” (p 30), and “I would go any distance to see you and speak with you for only a few minutes” (p 67). That last line, while incredibly romantic, is also very telling.

Author fact: George Gissing helped a prostitute while he held a teaching position. He was later fired for the act, but he married the lady of the night.

Book trivia: the introduction to The Odd Women was written by Frank Swinnerton.

Playlist: “The Blue Bells of Scotland” and Schubert.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Companion Reads” (p 62).

Odd Woman

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Godwin, Gail. The Odd Woman. Ballantine Books, 1974.

Reason read: I needed a book for the Portland Public Library Reading challenge in the category of a book that takes place in the Midwest. The Odd Woman opens in a midwestern town. This is also a companion read for another book I am reading in honor of Mother’s Day.

On the outside, Jane Clifford has everything going for her. She is a respected professor, teaching Women in Literature (the British section) at a Midwestern college, but secretly Jane is a neurotic mess. She lives vicariously through the beloved characters of literature; every character is either a friend or a mentor or a villain. She gets all of her advice from these imaginary people. Poor Jane doesn’t know how to relate to people in the real world, especially her own mother. The death of her stylish grandmother sends Jane down upsetting memory lanes especially when she returns to her childhood home for the funeral.
To make matters worse, Jane’s love life revolves around a married man who has no plans to leave his wife. Gabriel patronizes Jane by being controlling and condescending and like a good girl, she puts up with it. He gently admonishes and corrects and chides. Pay attention to the language Godwin uses about Gabriel and his hands. He is always “trapping” Jane’s hand in his own. He holds all the cards because he is the married one.
In the end I didn’t know whether to cheer on Jane or cry for her.

Quotes that had me thinking for days, “If Jane Austen were putting me in a novel, how would she define me?” (p 27), and “Jane, face it: we are all just basically neurotic creatures trying to get through our days and nights” (p 46).

Author fact: Gail Godwin reported for the Miami Herald.

Book trivia: The Odd Woman is a bit dated. Written when flying meant you could sit wherever you wanted and planes had magazine racks.

Playlist: Mozart, Al Martino’s “Here in My Heart”, Glenn Miller’s “Little Brown Jug”, The Ink Spots’ “If I Didn’t Care”, and Nat King Cole’s “Somewhere Along the Way”.

Nancy said: Not only did Pearl suggest reading The Odd Women and The Odd Woman together as “companion reads, Godwin practically insisted upon it as well, albeit in a much more subtle manner. I found it a disappointment to do so. In The Odd Woman Godwin revealed a spoiler in The Odd Women that I wasn’t prepared to absorb. I did not want to know Monica died.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Companion Reads” (p 62) because Jane in Odd Woman is using George Gissing’s Odd Women in her Women in Literature class. Also in the chapter called “Mothers and Daughters” (p 159).

Presenters Aren’t Robots

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Pettit, F. Annie. Presenter’s Aren’t Robots: a Practical Guide to Becoming a Fearless and Engaging Public Speaker. 2024.

Reason read: as a member of the Early Review program for LibraryThing I get to read interesting books. This is one of them.

I struggle to call Presenters Aren’t Robots a full length book. There are only seventy-five pages of text. Chapter one doesn’t begin until page eleven, but that’s me reading it on my phone. Maybe the print version will be different.
Practical is the key word to Presenters Aren’t Robots. Most of the suggestions were intuitive. I learned a few things (it was cool to see AI art options mentioned) and relearned a few things (handouts are still a thing). Some information was micro-detailed (like explaining the colored buttons on a clicker for a presentation), while other information was vague (like no suggestions of software for presentations). I appreciated the speaker checklist the most. I am sure I will use it in the future. Aside from a few typos and font changes, I found Presenters Aren’t Robots to be a helpful and friendly book.

As an aside, why all the illustrations of robots if presenters aren’t robots? Are the robots the audience?

Author fact: Pettit mentors people in public speaking and she is a marketing research author.

I Sleep Around

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Jaffarian, Sue Ann. I Sleep Around: the Humorous Memoir of a Nomadic Writer. Harbor Lane Books, 2024.

Reason read: An Early Review selection from LibraryThing…another travelogue book. I am sensing a pattern with my preferences. Ha!

How to describe I Sleep Around? Part primer on how to retire to a life on the road with tips and tricks to make the transition to fulltime traveler, part humorous travelogue and touching memoir. Sue Ann Jaffarian will help you keep your body, sanity, and snail mail healthy while on the road for long periods of time. She can help you chose an RV of the right size, the right amount of storage, and any other options you desire. She found “Novella”, her Winnebago Travato 59K, to be just perfect for her new life as a nomadic writer. When I Sleep Around takes a break from RV instruction in the first quarter of the book, Jaffarian talks about the business of writing as a professional before circling back to RV repairs. The second half detailed the places she visited along her five-year journey.
As an aside, I found it interesting that she chose to switch to RV life before officially retiring from her job as a paralegal. Juggling both the planning for a life on the road and finishing up a career must have been exhausting and emotional.
The section on RVing during the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown was interesting for those of us who were housebound for that period.
Jaffarian makes the claim that travel changes you. I would have loved for her to expound on that. Tell me more about that metamorphosis. I am so curious! Another wish – I wish Jaffarian would have included a compiled list of all of the attractions she was able to take in along her journey. It would have been cool to have a directory of interesting places to visit. High on my list is the Tabasco factory. I put that sauce on everything! Pictures would have been cool, too.

Question: has Jaffarian read Gogarty? Paul’s Coast Road is a similar excursion.

Confessional: Jaffairian’s first test camp was Yosemite. I have decided to make visiting all the U. S. national parks a life goal. My first official park since choosing this challenge is Yosemite. Other things we have in common: she and I share the “alone” trait. She likes sightseeing and sleeping alone in parking lots. I prefer to run alone, watch tv, and cook alone. As she says, “loneliness is not about being alone” (a line I hope she keeps in I Sleep Around). I fully agree.

Author fact: I love Jaffarian’s independence, confidence and humor. If she wrote I Sleep Around to get people interested in her fiction, job well done. I plan to look her up on the socials and possibly read an earlier book or two. She wrote the Odelia Grey, Granny Apples, and Zelda Bowen series; as well as the Madison Rose Vampire mysteries.