Author: gr4c5

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

Childhood’s End

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Clarke, Arthur C. Childhood’s End. Random House, 1981.

Reason read: October is Science Fiction Month for some people. I also needed a book set in the future for the Portland Public Library 2023 Reading Challenge.

Confessional: this review will be very brief. As I have said before, I am not a fan of science fiction. Boo. The first section of Childhood’s End is based on a short story called “Guardian Angel”. Earth is controlled by the Overlords. They provide security, peace and prosperity but their interests lie in human psychology, mysticism, telepathy, the occult, second sight, and psychic phenomena. Fact meets fiction. The Republic of South Africa had racial tensions for over a century. U.S. and Russia did have a race to space. I found those elements to be interesting. The other aspects of Childhood’s End I found curious were the social commentaries Clarke was making about the human race. When we cannot pronounce a name that is unfamiliar to use (like Thanthalteresco) we come up with nicknames (like the Inspector). The Overlords are like parents, banning something (space) because they think their children (humans) are not ready for it. My favorite part was when Jan Rodricks, a Cape Town engineering student, pulled a Trojan Horse stunt and stowed away in a giant whale replica to visit the Overlords on their turf.
The moral of the story could be that without conflict there is no passion. Without passion there is only apathy and with apathy comes boredom. With boredom comes the need to rile things up.

Author fact: Have you seen the list of books Clarke has written, both in fiction and nonfiction? It is impressive. I am only reading Childhood’s End for the Challenge.

Book trivia: Childhood’s End was originally published in 1953 and considered way before its time. It took almost a year to write.

Nancy said: Pearl said Childhood’s End was a great read.

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

Bluest Blood

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Roberts, Gillian. The Bluest Blood. Ballantine Books, 1998.

Reason read: to finish the series started in July. Yes, I definitely took some time off from reading the series.

Amanda Pepper is back! This time she is on the case for a different kind of mystery. Pitted against the Moral Ecologists, a group hellbent on censorship, Amanda must stop them from ruining her ability to teach English. The plot thickens early on when Reverend Harvey Spiers, leader of the Moral Ecologists, shows up at a fundraiser hosted by Edward and Theodora Roederer. The Roederers are wealthy staunch supporters of free speech and annually give a ton of money to the community, including Amanda’s prep school. First red flag? Spier’s son and Roederer’s son are close friends. Second? Jake and Griffin are in Amanda’s class. Both are angsty teens with family issues that go beyond morality and wealth. Of course, the protesting gets out of hand and someone winds up dead. But it wouldn’t be an Amanda Pepper mystery if Amanda didn’t find herself in a wee bit of danger herself.
The ongoing joke is that Amanda does not know Mackenzie’s full name so whenever she goes to introduce him to someone new she stumbles. Why she can’t call him “C.K.” is beyond me.
As an aside, the details are a little dated. This was written in an age when photoshopping the Mona Lisa with a scowl was good fun. Technology has come a long way since the days of putting grins on dogs.

Line I liked, “Sometimes a speaker needs a soliloquy” (p 74).

Playlist: the Three Tenors

Author fact: Gillian Roberts, also known as Judith Greber, wrote a bunch of Amanda Pepper books, but this is my last one for the Challenge.

Book trivia: Sasha and Amanda’s mom are repeat characters.

Nancy said: Pearl mentions Bluest Blood first when naming good Amanda Pepper mysteries.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Big Ten Country: the Literary Midwest (Pennsylvania)” (p 31).

It Must’ve Been Something I Ate

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Steingarten, Jeffery. It Must’ve Been Something I Ate: the Return of the Man Who Ate Everything. Alfred A. Knopf, 2002.

Reason read: October is the month the vegetarians celebrate their kind…or something like that. I also needed a book with a six (or more) word title for the Portland Public Library Reading Challenge.

Confessional: my view of Mr. Steingarten has been colored by other reviews calling him pompous and “casually offensive”. Indeed, here are a few examples: even if said in jest, he wants to take credit for getting people to eat out of their comfort zones. He has a strong humble brag going on about the time he had a half pound bag of Oshima Island Blue Label Salt on his kitchen counter. The comments made me pay attention to every time he said something disparaging about women or demonstrated mock insecurity. In truth, it got a little annoying to be so hypersensitive to ego remarks like, “Where were you when you tasted the most delectable and expensive fish in the world? Me, I was in L.A.” (p 13). Good for you, Steingarten. There have been a lot of what I call, “Have you…? I have!” statements.
But all of this is not to say Steingarten was not informative. I learned that cheese is not the source of your lactose intolerance and the monosodium glutamate will not give you a headache.
I have never been a fan of one collecting all his or her previously published essays to bring them out as a “new” book. It’s just recycled words. To continue to pick on It Must’ve Been Something I Ate, I don’t know how you can index Parmesan cheese a dozen times and not once put Italy in the index. Not even Parma makes a mention. Steingarten mostly focuses on French cuisine and French influences. He completely ignores Spain, Germany, and Italy (even though he has whole chapters on Neapolitan pizza and Parmesan cheese).

As an aside, I did agree with one statement, “Pizza is perfect food” (p 367).

Author fact: from everything I can tell, Steingarten is still a food editor at Vogue Magazine. Does anyone else flash back to Carrie from Sex and the City and her dealings with the editor from Vogue?

Book trivia: It Must’ve Been Something I Ate is not new material. It is a compilation of essays already regurgitated published elsewhere. I said that already.

Playlist: Cole Porter, Vivaldi, and Beatles’ “Revolution 9”.

Nancy said: Pearl didn’t say anything about It Must’ve Been Something I Ate but she called his column wide-ranging and entertaining. So…same thing, I guess.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Food For Thought” (p 91). Interestingly enough, the proper title is It Must’ve Been Something I Ate although it is indexed as It Must Have Been Something I Ate”. No shortcuts for Pearl!

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Writing New York

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Lopate, Phillip, ed. Writing New York: a Literary Anthology. Library of America, 1998.

Reason read: First and foremost, the Portland Public Library has an annual reading challenge and this satisfies the category of anthology. Second reason: the New York Gypsy Festival takes place in October and November.

Literature written for and about New York is organized in chronological order in Writing New York: a Literary Anthology. In the diary of Philip Hone you will read about a child abandoned on his doorstep. Henry David Thoreau goes wandering around Staten Island looking for nature. You will read the day-long observations of Nathaniel Parker Willis. Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener has a place. Fanny Fern, also known as Sara Payson Willis, contributes as the first woman newspaper columnist in the United States. You’ll learn that O. Henry started writing fiction in prison. James Huneker will tell you about the New York public urban parks: Battery, Corlears (which I had never heard of before), Gramercy, Bronx, and Central, to name a few. Charles Reznikoff would walk twenty miles a day and by default find interesting material for his poetry. (All I want to know is what happened to the lost shirt.) E.B. White chimes in. William Carlos Williams was called the “bard of Rutherford, New Jersey”, but he wrote about New York City with such eloquence. You will read a fraction of a biography of LaGuardia by Robert Moses and hear from Henry Miller, William Burroughs, Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion, Ralph Ellison, and so many more. The mini biography of Lady Day was my favorite.

As an aside, you know I can’t write a review about a New York book without mentioning Natalie Merchant, right? When Lopate mentioned the contrasts of New York, I instantly thought of “Carnival” when Natalie sings about wealth and poverty. Later on, Walt Whitman has a poem about New York and that instantly reminded me of “Song of Himself” off Natalie’s new Keep Your Courage album.

Favorite lines. From Philip Hone The Diary: “It is too much for the frailty of human nature and I am off to the Springs tomorrow to get out of the way” (p 32). I can only assume he means Saratoga Springs. Here is another from The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson, “New York City’s the most fatally fascinating thing in America” (p 387). “Thus I take leave of my lost city” from F. Scott Fitzgerald (p 578), and “Laughter is a beautiful obituary” from “Lou Stillman” by Jimmy Cannon (p 933).

Confessional: I skipped Domestic Manners of the Americans by Fanny Trollope and The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos because I had already read them. I also skipped the excerpts from Dawn Powell’s diaries because she is on my list for another time.

Editor fact: If you Google Phillip Lopate, you will find a picture of him with a cat.

Book trivia: the copyright page is cool. Words form the shape of the Empire State Building.

Playlist: Beethoven, “Blue Bell”, Bessie Smith, Benny Goodman, Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata”, Ben Webster, Billie Holiday, Chick Webb, Count Basie, Charlie Parker, “Charlie’s Elected Now”, Coleman Hawkins, “Danny By My Side”, Duke Ellington, E. Power Biggs, Ethel Waters, Fats Waller, George Gershwin, Gladys Bentley, “Hello, Central, Give Me No Man’s Land”, “He May Be Your Man But He Come to See Me Sometime”, John Coltrane, Louis Armstrong, Lester Young, “Orange Blossom Waltz”, Paul Robeson, Prologue to Pagliacci, Puccini, Roy Eldridge, Roland Hayes, “St. James Infirmary”, “Swanee River”, “Take Your Time, Miss Lucy”, Trixie Smith, Thelonious Monk, “Under the Bamboo Tree”, and “You Called Me Baby Doll a Year Ago”.

Nancy said: Pearl called Writing New York “a deliriously diverse mix of writers…too bulky to carry around” (Book Lust To Go p 152).

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “New York City: a Taste of the Big Apple” (p 151). To be fair, Writing New York is about more than just New York City. It covers people and cultures as well.

Rome From the Ground Up

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McGregor, James H. S. Rome from the Ground Up. Bel Knap Press, 2015.

Reason read: Kisa and I are going to embark on a roman holiday at the end of the year.

McGregor starts off by saying Rome is an agglomeration of historical cities. That statement alone fires the imagination and makes one want to read on. Rome was not a planned city. It has gone through multiple redesigns. Each city section had its own purpose, much like New York City has it’s myriad of regions within the five boroughs. Yes, McGregor will walk you through every section of Rome and describe everything along with way with meticulous care. He encourages readers to take Rome from the Ground Up as a guide book to the city. He does not include restaurants or the best places to stay, as those will change over time.
Here are some of the things I gleaned from reading Rome from the Ground Up: the Mouth of Truth may have been an ancient manhole and sewer cover. There were two palaces of power, the Vatican and the Quirinal. Julius Caesar was assassinated and his body burnt on a pyre in the Forum. Later, a temple was built on the spot and dedicated to him. As an aside, I bet all dictators wish they had temples built in their honor. Laurel trees were sacred to Apollo. Read Rome from the Ground Up if you are into minute details descriptions of architecture, including details on the art within every museum, church, or chapel.

Some things I would like to research while in Rome: is the fig tree still standing in the Forum? Can you still see the collapsed bridge that was never repaired from 1598? What about the Seated Boxer? Is he still near the Baths of Constantine on the Quirinal Hill? What about the final resting place of St. Valentine? Are they still in the Chapel of San Zeno?

As an aside, if you know me then you know I find connections to music all over the place. When McGregor mentioned Stations of the Cross performed in the Coliseum by the pope every Good Friday, I thought of Josh Ritter.

Line to like, “Vows of celibacy could be difficult to maintain; pilgrims far from home turned into randy conventioneers” (p 193).

Author fact: McGregor has written a bunch of “From the Ground Up…” books. I am only reading about Rome for the Challenge.

Book trivia: Rome from the Ground Up has the most wonderful photographs and architecturally detailed plans.

Nancy said: Pearl said Rome from the Ground Up is great for architecture and history buffs.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Roman Holiday” (p 188).

Tisha

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Specht, Robert. Tisha: the Story of a Young Teacher in the Alaska Wilderness. St, Martin’s Press, 1976.

Reason read: October is the month Alaskans celebrate Alaska Day. I also needed a book for the Portland Public Library Reading Challenge in the category of a book about a teacher.

Alaska, 1927. Anne Hobbs has traveled by ornery pony to be a teacher in the Alaskan remote village of Chicken. Tisha is a true story as told to Robert Specht. Barely twenty years old, Anne begins her adventure in Chicken battling sub-zero cold winters and even more frigid prejudiced hearts. The natives of Alaska are considered lesser people even though it is their land. The word siwash is derogatory, both as a noun and a verb. Even the children are not exempt from cruel words and actions of the white community. Anne is not fazed by the immature behavior of the white community and, after developing a fondness for one such “half breed” child named Chuck, insists he attend her school. The taunts and threats now targeting Anne grow louder when she develops an even stronger fondness for a “half breed” adult named Fred. It isn’t until Anne and Fred survive a terrible tragedy that the community starts to slowly come around.

Line I liked, “So I knew better than to judge somebody from what somebody else said” (p 129).

Author fact: According to the back flap of Tisha, Specht graduated from CCNY at 32 years old. At the time of publication he was working on a sequel to Tisha.

Book trivia: Other publications of Tisha credit Anne Purdy as coauthor. The title Tisha comes from young Chuck. With his lisp he couldn’t say teacher properly.

Playlist: “Home Sweet Home”, “Home on the Range”, Yes Sir, That’s My Baby”, O Susanna”, “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”, “Sweet Rosie O’Grady”, “Auld Lang Syne”, “Ta Ra Ra Boom Dee Ay”, “Yankee Doodle”, “Little Brown Jug”, and “Turkey in the Straw”.

Nancy said: Pearl called Tisha a good companion to Benedict and Nancy’s Freeman’s novel, Mrs. Mike. Indeed, the inside flap of Tisha also mentions Mrs. Mike.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “All Set for Alaska” (p 15).

Gathering

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Enright, Elizabeth. The Gathering. Read by Fiona Shaw. Black Cat Publishing, 2007.

Reason read: there is a jazz festival in Cork that happens every year. The Gathering has nothing to do with music, but it takes place in Ireland. Good enough.

Gathering. It is what friends and family and colleagues and sometimes even strangers do when someone dies. As an aside, I just attended my very first virtual funeral (a Doom Zoom, we are calling it).
In Elizabeth Enright’s Gathering, what is left of a very large family gather to say goodbye to Liam: a son, a brother, an uncle, a beloved who has committed suicide by drowning off the coast of England. Separated in age by a little over a year, sister Veronica Hegerty is Liam’s nearest and dearest sibling and more his twin in every sense. It is her responsibility to collect the body and hold the gathering. She tells Liam’s story through a series of childhood flashbacks and present-day adult manic musings. Growing up with Liam was a mixture of deep seated secrets and innocence lost. Veronica spends her time trying to puzzle the clues and remembering the memories. Here’s what we all do when someone close to us commits suicide: we sift through the ashes of a life burnt out, searching for clues to why they left us; trying to answer the questions of Is it our fault? Did we set the fire? What could we have done differently to save them? (To quote Natalie Merchant, “It was such a nightmare raving how can we save him from himself?” Are you surprised I went there? How could I not?) As for her adult issues, thirty-nine year old Veronica wrestles with problems with her marriage, confused by subliminal hang-ups about sex. She has inner demons that have haunted her since childhood. I honestly can’t say how well I enjoyed The Gathering. It did leave me thinking of the characters for a long time afterwards, so there’s that.

As an aside, no one can decide just how many siblings are in the Hegerty family. In some reviews I read nine, ten, or even twelve. Not counting the seven miscarriages.

Quotes to quote, “His compassion is a muscle” (p 70), and “What use is the truth to us now?” (256).

Author fact: Enright has written a bunch of stuff but I am only reading The Gathering for the Book Lust Challenge.

Book trivia: The Gathering won the 2007 Booker Prize.

Nancy said: Pearl did not say anything specific about The Gathering.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Ireland: Beyond Joyce, Behan, Beckett, and Synge” (p 111).

Za’atar Days, Henna Nights

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Masood, Maliha. Za’atar Days, Henna Nights: Adventures, Dreams, and Destinations Across the Middle East. Seal Press, 2006.

Reason read: October is hero month and I would consider Masood a sort of superhero for traveling around by the seat of her pants.

Masood straddles that line between American and Pakistani, Pakistani and American. Born in Pakistan, her family moved to America when Masood was in middle school. Now, eighteen years later, Masood is traveling haphazardly through the Middle East. She bought a one-way ticket with no intention of having a specific itinerary. It was a journey just be to on a journey. One could call it a trek to Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Turkey as some sort of spiritual quest to find herself or get back to her ancestral roots. Did she? I’m not really certain. To be sure, Masood had some crazy adventures (some more dangerous than others), she had a few cultural misunderstandings, and she relied heavily on the natives she befriended (I felt bad for the men who fell in love with her). All in all, she survived her seventeen months of travel relatively unscathed.

As an aside, I had no idea pollution was a thing in Cairo.

Confessional: Tommy Rivs got me interested in the poetry of Mary Oliver. Masood includes one of Tommy’s favorites, “Listen, are you breathing just a little, and call it a life?”
Second confession: Because of Natalie Merchant’s album “Keep Your Courage” I have been paying attention to mentions of Walt Whitman. Masood also reads Walt.

Reason read: there is such a thing as za’atar days, the celebration of the spice.

Playlist: “Staying Alive”, U2, Phil Collins, Pavarotti, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Duran Duran’s “Union of the Snake”, Umm Kulthum, “Enta Omri” (as an aside, Masood spelled Umm’s name as Om Khoulsoum and the song as “Inta Omri”. I couldn’t find singer or song with those spellings) Amr Diab (as another aside, this guy is very good looking), Fairuz, Saleh, Wadi al Safi, Jose Fernandez, Elvis Presley, and Billy Joel.

Nancy said: Pearl did not say anything specific about Za’atar Days.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “A Mention of the Middle East” (p 148).

Bone People

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Hulme, Keri. The Bone People. Penguin Books, 1985.

Reason read: October was the month the Booker Prize was awarded. Bone People won the prize in 1985. I also needed to read a Booker Prize winner for the Portland Public Library Reading Challenge.

Hulme’s storytelling is punctuated with snippets of inner thoughts.

Kerewin and Joe are an unlikely couple. They come together because of a mysterious mute boy of four or five named Simon. Confessional: I was not sure I was supposed to like Kerewin. She likes to drink herself into a stupor and, as a self-exiled recluse, she has the time and inclination to take to the bottle often. She also spends her time making art, having won her independent wealth from a lottery ticket. She is estranged from her family, considers herself unlovable, and doesn’t like companionship so when she comes across mute Simon, she cannot explain why she takes him in. Second confessional: I wasn’t sure I was supposed to like Joe. Hard working and rugged, Joe has been a self-imposed foster father to Simon. When provoked he likes to beat the tar out of someone, but he gives just as many kisses as he does kicks. His passions are confused. Third confessional: I wasn’t sure I was supposed to like Simon. He’s a devilish imp. He has a way of stealing things and acting out when he doesn’t get his way. He can be just as violent as Kerewin and Joe in action and emotion. Yet…Kerewin, Joe, and Simon somehow belong together and I found myself rooting for them.
The Bone People is like a slow moving train. At first you are not sure if you are on the right ride, but once it gets going it’s a runaway success. I couldn’t put it down after the first hundred pages. Maybe it took me that long to get used to Hulme’s style?
You know a book is going to be good when it is endorsed by Alice Walker.

Quotes to quote, “Orion pales to a distant ice glitter, and one by one, his stars go out” (p 328) and “His bruised heart still beats, but he no longer cares” (p 410).

Author fact: Hulme is a Maori and is also an artist.

Book trivia: The Bone People is Hulme’s first novel and it also won a Pegasus Prize for Literature.

Playlist: “Sur le Pont d’Avignon”, “Recuerdos d’Alhambra”, “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary”, “Pack Up Your Troubles and Smile”, and “Pavane for a Dead Infanta” by Ravel.

Nancy said: Pearl said Bone People is one of those books “you either love or hate” and that it is not an easy book to read.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Kiwis Forever!: New Zealand in Print” (p 123).

Bear

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Engel, Marian. Bear. McClelland and Stewart, 1976.

Reason read: October is Animal Month.

Lou, an archivist for an Institute is sent to a remote Ottawan island to catalog the estate of Colonel Joycelyn Cary. The institute has acquired the Pennarth Estate’s books, journals, and other ephemera. Admittedly, I had to go into this story with an extremely open mind. From everything I heard, the only detail that stuck out to me was that the protagonist has sexual feelings for, and tries to copulate with, a bear. Say what now? The second thing people said, as if to follow up on that statement, was that Engel writes in such a way that a relationship between a woman and a bear is totally plausible. My first indication of realism comes when, even though Lou and the bear have a growing friendship, Lou is constantly reminding herself he is a bear that weighs over 300 pounds with claws and teeth. Bears are predators that are attracted to the emanating odors of blood and fear. To be sure, the writing is beautiful. The treatment of women in society (in the 70s) is accurately articulated. I just couldn’t wrap my brain around the fact that Lou’s choices for male companionship were so wretched that she had to settle for an animal. The end.

Author fact: Engel passed in 1985.

Book trivia: Bear is a ridiculously short book of less that 150 pages (at least my copy was).

Lines I liked, “It took the curse off his warnings about the bear” (p 75),

Playlist: “Old Black Joe”.

Nancy said: Pearl called Bear odd and strange and a gem. The cool thing is that she also mentioned it has been long out of print, but I was able to find it in a local library. Yay for public libraries!

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Animal Love” (p 13). I’d say.

Staying On

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Scott, Paul. Staying On. Avon books, 1977.

Reason read: The Booker Prize was awarded in October. Staying On is a Booker Prize recipient.

On August 15th, at the stroke of midnight in 1947, British rule comes to an end and India has gained her independence. Not all British soldiers have departed India in shame, though. Colonel Tusker Smalley and his wife, Lucy, have stayed on. It is now 1972 and the couple have started to fade in money, health, vitality, and the real reason they decided to remain in the remote hill station of Pankot. Everything is in question now. Complicating matters is their antagonistic landlady, Mrs. Bhoolabhoy. Bhoolabhoy is determined to humiliate the British couple into leaving her country. After all these years her tactics are getting more and more hostile, forcing the English couple to renew their commitment to one another.
A backdrop for Staying On is the tapestry of culture and caste. What it means to have wealth and status in a country on the verge of finding a new identity. The Smalleys and the Bhoolabhoys are no different in their hope for the future.

Author fact: Scott also wrote the Raj Quartet. I am only reading The Jewel in the Crown, book one of the four.

Book trivia: as mentioned before, Staying On won the Booker Prize. I probably should have read The Jewel in the Crown before Staying On. Oh well.

Quotes to quote, “I’ll sue the bitch from arsehole to Christmas” (p 29), “I feel worn to a shadow”, (p 125),

Playlist: “Onward Christian Soldiers”, “Flowers of the Forest”, “God Save the King”, “Abide with Me”, All Things Bright and Beautiful”, “These Foolish things”, the Inkspots, Judy Garland, Dinah Shore’s “Chloe”, and Ravi Shankar”.

Nancy said: Pearl compared Staying On to Women of the Raj.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “India: a Reader’s Itinerary (History)” (p 125).

Dayhiker’s Guide to the National Parks

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Oswald, Michael Joseph. The Dayhiker’s Guide to the National Parks. Stone Road Press, 2023.

Reason read: I am very excited about this Early Review pick from LibraryThing. I love to hike. I want to travel around the country and see every national park. I’ll be sure to take this book with me.

First impressions after cracking open The Dayhiker’s Guide to the National Parks:

  • Beautiful color photographs in full page.
  • The copyright is amusing.
  • Easily organized by regions: East, North, South, Southwest (because it deserves its own chapter), West, Alaska, and Remote Islands.
  • Good to know the average distance of hikes is 5.8 miles (almost my favorite distance).
  • Maps are generated from USGS National Map data.
  • Terrain, elevation, trailheads, parking information – including parking spots (?!), and shuttle service information is included where applicable.
  • Elevation information is sourced from Google Earth.
  • Trail map legend is easy to understand.
  • Time zone information.
  • Inclusion of national monuments on historical sites.
  • No index so if you heard of a place but have no idea what state or even region it is in, you are out of luck and will have to scan the entire book only to find it might not be there.
  • Excited to try the online trail location map!

I have a question, though. Oswald makes a list of the best dayhiking parks? What makes them the best? What criteria did he use to come up with that specific list?

As an aside, my spellchecker did not like “dayhiker” as one word.

Author fact: Oswald is a hiking fanatic.

Book trivia: Dayhiker’s Guide to the National Parks includes 198 trail maps. You couldn’t find two more to make it an even 200? Just kidding! 198 is plenty!

When Broken Glass Floats

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Him, Chanrithy. When Broken Glass Floats: Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge. W.W. Norton and Company, 2000.

Reason read: I needed to pair a nonfiction book on history with a historical fiction on the same subject for the Portland Public Library 2023 Reading Challenge. Both When Broken Glass Floats (nonfiction) and For the Sake of All Living Things (fiction) are about the days of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. I am also reading When Broken Glass Floats in honor of the monarchy of Cambodia being restored in the month of September.

Many times, more times than I could count, I found myself trying to put myself in Him’s shoes. Having her brother waste away and die before her very eyes. The utter grief she experienced when her father left for “orientation” before she could say goodbye (not to mention his subsequent murder). Those are only some of the devastating events Him experienced during the rein of Pol Pot terror. Then came the never-ending slave labor and extreme starvation. One by one, her family withers and dies. How does one survive such constant suffering? Him is courageous and her will to survive is astounding.
Confessional: Despite the horrors Him relates in When Broken Glass Floats, there was a fascinating component of describing cultural superstitions. When Him’s brother is dying it was believed he urinated on someone’s grave and that is why, during the worst of his illness, he could not speak or relieve himself.

Author fact: Chanrithy is a human rights activist as well as an author.

Book trivia: one of the maps in When Broken Glass Floats is curious. Places are pinned as meals: supper, breakfast, dinner, dessert, snack, and lunch.

Playlist: Sinsee Samuth, Ros Sothea, and Leo Sayer’s “I Love You More Than I Can Say”.

Nancy said: Pearl called When Broken Glass Floats heartbreaking and unforgettable.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter simply called “Cambodia” (p 47).

For the Sake of All Living Things

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Del Vecchio, John M. For the Sake of All Living Things. Bantam Books, 1990.

Reason read: For the Portland Public Library Reading Challenge of 2023 I needed a book of historical fiction to pair with a nonfiction on the same subject. I am reading For the Sake of All Living Things with When Broken Glass Floats. Both books cover Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge. A second reason is Cambodia had its monarchy restored in the month of September 1993.

I don’t care how many years pass. The plight of Cambodia in the years following the Vietnam War is atrocious. For the Sake of All Living Things is a difficult read. It is powerful. Powerful like a 250 pound man of all muscle punching you in the gut. From scenes when the poorest of poor farmers have to pay tolls or “donations” just to travel a road to the vicious methods of torture and killing (chopsticks driven into the brain via the ears, bodies cleaved in two, children buried alive) I was wincing the entire time I read For the Sake of All Living Things. Through fear and violence the dominance of the Khmer Rouge spreads like a staining black oil throughout Cambodia, indoctrinating and training villagers to become killing machines for the Pol Pot regime. The methods of brainwashing are subtle and sly. As a historical fiction For the Sake of All Living Things reads like a nonfiction because of the appropriate terminology, government reports and various strategic maps. At times I was internally cringing to be American.
I read somewhere that For the Sake of All Living Things is actually the second book in a trilogy about the Vietnam war, Cambodia and the Pol Pot year zero cleansing, and veterans coming home.

Author fact: While Del Vecchio has written a few other works, this is the only one I am reading for the Book Lust Challenge. Confessional: I am kind of relieved.

Book trivia: this should have been a movie or a mini-series. Maybe it is a movie. I don’t know. Everyone has made comparisons to The Killing Fields, the 1984 film directed by Roland Joffe.

Nancy said: Pearl did not say anything specific about For the Sake of All Living Things.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the simple chapter called “Cambodia” (p 47).

Barlowe’s Guide to Fantasy

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Barlowe, Wayne Douglas. Barlowe’s Guide to Fantasy: Great Heroes and Bizarre Beings from Imaginative Literature. Harper Prism, 1996.

Reason read: this was a very short read that satisfied two categories of the Portland Public Library Reading challenge for 2023. I needed a book under 150 pages and a book with a cryptid or mythological being as a character.

I think a more accurate title for this book would have been Barlowe’s Guide to Fifty Fantastic Heroes and Bizarre Beings in Fantasy. Too long? Okay, we can drop the “in fantasy” because it is kind of redundant. Seriously, I did not find this to be a guide to the genre of fantasy, but more of a who’s who of popular characters from authors such as Peter S. Beagle, Robert Jordan, Clive Barker, and Stephen Donaldson. The illustrations of insects, monsters, dragons, beasts, unicorns, and the whatnot are truly beautiful. From fashion to faces, each creature comes alive in Barlowe’s guide. I imagined Barlowe pouring over every descriptive element of each creature in order to get features, costumes, and weapons as accurate as possible. Even though the list of characters is short (there are only fifty), this must-read for fantasy readers of all ages.

Confessional: There is a book from my childhood that I like better. I still have it. It’s called Fantastic People: Magical Races of Myth and Legend by Allan Scott and Michael Scott Rohan. It includes chapters on dragons, trolls, vampires, witches, demons, and more.

Author fact: besides being an illustrator, Barlowe is an author.

Book trivia: Barlowe’s Guide to Fantasy was coauthored by Neil Duskis.