Category: BookLust I

Flashman and the Dragon

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Fraser, George MacDonald. Flashman and the Dragon. New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1986.

Reason read: this is the eighth book in the Flashman series. Hard to believe I started this in April in honor of Fraser’s birth month!

To bring all you historians up to speed: So far in the series Flashman has seen action in four military campaigns: the First Afghan War, Crimea, the Indian Mutiny and the Sioux War of 1879. With Flashman and the Dragon Harry gets himself involved in the Taiping Rebellion. Another worthy note: for this particular installment of papers, George MacDonald Fraser himself acts as editor, admitting he confines his corrections to spelling, while “checking the accuracy of Flashman’s narrative and inserting footnotes wherever necessary.”
Fans of Flashman’s sexual conquests will not be disappointed. As usual, Harry works his charms on a number of different women, the most important being the favored Imperial Yi Concubine, Lady Yehonala (who later became Empress Tzu-hsi). She ends up saving his life (much like my favorite tart, Szu-Zhan, from earlier in the story). “Get ’em weeping, and you’re halfway to climbing all over them” (p 11).

A small word of warning for the faint of heart: there is a lot of detailed violence and torture in this Flashman installment. It’s almost as if Fraser was getting bored with Flashman as just a cowardly womanizer. The action needed to be ramped up a little.

Book trivia: The cover to Flashman and the Dragon is interesting. A nearly naked woman holding a fan is cradled in the arms of a gentleman (not Flashy). The man’s face is partially obscured by the woman’s fan.

Author fact: Fraser has also written a series of short stories, The General Danced at Dawn and McAuslan in the Rough.

BookLust Twist: Are you tired of me saying, “from Book Lust in the chapter called “George MacDonald Fraser: Too Good To Miss” (p 93)”? We only have three more after this one.

Flashman and the Redskins

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Fraser, George MacDonald. Flashman and the Redskins. New York: Plume, 1983.

Reason read: Flashman and the Redskins continues the series I started in April in honor of Fraser’s birth month.

Flashman and the Redskins circles back to where Flash for Freedom left off. Harry Flashman is up to his old tricks again. If you think I’m joking just know that sex is mentioned on the very first page. That’s Flashy for you! But, in Flashman and the Redskins he takes it a bit further. To get out of yet another jam Flashman is forced to take up with Susie, a madame of a New Orleans brothel (surprise, surprise), but to further complicate things, he ends up marrying her to ensure safe passage across the west to California. It’s on this journey that Flashman encounters the “redskins” and ends up marrying an Apache Indian too. Never a dull moment for 28 year old Harry. The multiple marriages set the stage for the rest of Flashman’s story with a twist at the end.
Fast forward and Flash is back in the States, this time with his real wife, Elspeth. To give you some perspective, the events in Royal Flash happened twenty eight years earlier. Remember Otto von Bismarck? This time Flashman is up against an even craftier opponent…a woman he has wronged (it was bound to happen sometime).

The charming way Flashman looks at women: “…she looked like a bellydancer who’s gone in for banking” (p 337).

Best line, “But life aint a bed of roses, and you must just pluck the thorns out of your rump and get on” (p 442).

As an aside, earlier this year someone decided Washington D.C.’s professional football team’s name needed to be changed. Suddenly the word “redskin” wasn’t political correct. I have to wonder if someone will try to ban this book on the same premise?

Author fact: What can I tell you about Mr. Fraser this time? According to Flashman and the Redskins Fraser also wrote The Pyrates (another Flashy book; after The Great Game but before Lady). This book is not listed in Book Lust. Hmmm…

Book trivia: for some reason the pagination is weird. The pages skip from xii to 15 immediately and I don’t think any are missing. Odd. Another piece of trivia: my copy included a map of the U.S. from Minnesota to Idaho called “Flashman’s West.”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the obvious chapter “George MacDonald Fraser: Too Good To Miss” (p 93). Where else?

Inflating a Dog

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Kraft, Eric. Inflating a Dog: the Story of Ella’s Lunch Launch. New York: Picador Press, 2002.

Reason read: in honor of Kraft’s birthday I started the “series” in February. It is now September and I have reached the final book on my list.

For Inflating a Dog we jump back in time to Peter Leroy’s childhood. His mother, desperately wanting to invent something or be in some kind of business for herself, buys a decrepit clam boat so she can start a floating “elegant excursions” cruise. The only problem is this, the boat leaks. Peter must secretly bail out the boat every evening to keep the old clam boat (and his mother’s dreams) afloat. But Inflating a Dog is also about Peter coming of age and lusting after Patti, his partner in crime.
True to Kraft’s sense of humor, nothing is as it seems. Men walk chickens on leashes and women can sell sandwiches with pastel breads.

Quotes I liked, “Do you want anything? She asked. At thirteen? I wanted everything” (p 20) and “If you are taking notes, jot this down: never buy a boat while you are under the beguiling influence of moonlight” (p 77).

Author fact: at the time of publication Kraft lived with his wife in New York City.

Book trivia: like many of the other Kraft books this one includes photographs and illustrations.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in two different chapters, “Eric Kraft: Too Good to Miss” (p 141) of course, and “Sons and Mothers” (p 160 & 161). As an aside, the index misses the 2nd mention of Inflating a Dog on page 161.

The Book Lust Mistakes

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I have (so far) spent ten years with Book Lust and over that course of time I found numerous oddities. I don’t know what made me do it, but here is a list of all the errors or weird things I discovered:

Within the Table of Contents:

  1. The chapter “Eric Kraft: Too Good To Miss” (p 140) is completely missing from the TOC.

Within the text:

  1. The title Moving On does not include an author (page 203). Larry McMurtry’s name doesn’t appear on the page at all.

Within the Index (these are the book, short story and poem titles not included in the index but are mentioned in Book Lust somewhere):

  1. “Ado”
  2. Alice, Let’s Eat
  3. American Practical Navigator
  4. American Fried
  5. The Achieve Of, the Mastery Of, the Thing
  6. “At the Rialto”
  7. “Blind Heron”
  8. “Blue Garden”
  9. Bonny’s Boy
  10. Burn Marks
  11. Bonobo: the Forgotten Ape
  12. “By a Swimming Pool…”
  13. A Bridge Too Far
  14. “Brown Wasps”
  15. Caged Owl
  16. Caddie Woodlawn
  17. Choose Your Own Adventure
  18. A Child’s Life
  19. The Citadel
  20. Casket and the Sword
  21. Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1950s
  22. “Corn-pone Opinions”
  23. Collected Fictions
  24. Cruddy
  25. Crazy Creek
  26. “Days of Pie and Coffee”
  27. “Devil Baby at Hull House”
  28. “Crack Up”
  29. “Dear Derrida”
  30. Dog Next Door
  31. Dream Gold
  32. “Drug Store in Winter”
  33. End and the Beginning
  34. “Ethics of Living Jim Crow”
  35. Ethel and Ernest
  36. Eva Luna
  37. “Exorcist of Notre-Dame”
  38. Freedom at Midnight
  39. Fredericksburg to Meridan
  40. “Forgetfulness”
  41. “Funeral II”
  42. “Golden Retrievals”
  43. “Golden Angel Pancake House”
  44. Ginger Pie
  45. Good Times are Killing Me
  46. Green Eyes
  47. “Goodbye, Place I Lived Nearly 23 Years”
  48. Hitty
  49. “House of Blue Light”
  50. In Between Sheets
  51. In the Gloaming
  52. “Introduction to Poetry”
  53. Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer
  54. Jew of New York
  55. Jimmy Corrigan: the Smartest Kid…
  56. Kid From Tomkinsville
  57. “Law of Acceleration”
  58. Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
  59. “Letters from a Birmingham Jail”
  60. Little White Horse
  61. M16
  62. Maus
  63. Maus II
  64. Moffats
  65. Minnow on the Say
  66. Old Yeller
  67. Only Bread, Only Light
  68. Now Read This
  69. Now Read This II
  70. Pendragon Cycle
  71. Red River to Appomattox
  72. Saturdays
  73. Sea is Blue
  74. “Sex Ex Machina”
  75. Second Common Reader
  76. “Stickeen”
  77. “Strip Poker”
  78. Terre des Hommes
  79. Third Helpings
  80. “Tortures”
  81. “Try to Praise the Mutilated World”
  82. “True Love”
  83. Tumbling
  84. War Babies
  85. “Two Tramps in Mud Time”
  86. Wait for Marcy
  87. Ulysseys
  88. Wetware
  89. Wheels Within Wheels
  90. “Workshop”
  91. Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet

Within the Index (these are the authors not included in the index):

  1. Lynda Barry
  2. Eleanor Cameron
  3. A.J. Cronin
  4. Gardener Dozois
  5. Kristin Waterford Duisberg (note: last name was missing – indexed under Kristin Waterford)
  6. Eleanor Estes
  7. Rachel Field
  8. Robert Frost
  9. Phoebe Gloeckner
  10. Slavomir Rawicz
  11. Keith Robertson
  12. Art Spiegelman

Pagination errors in index:

  1. Asimov, Isaac
  2. The Brothers K
  3. Death Comes for the Archbishop
  4. Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
  5. Paul Eddy
  6. Educating Esme
  7. Grand Sophy
  8. Robert Heinlein
  9. The Hobbit
  10. I Don’t Know How She Does It
  11. In the Fall
  12. Inflating a Dog
  13. Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
  14. Kazuo Ishiguro
  15. Lord of the Rings
  16. Alice McDermott
  17. Moo
  18. Larry McMurtry
  19. Midnight’s Children
  20. Alice Munro
  21. Pride and Prejudice
  22. Remains of the Day
  23. Salman Rushdie
  24. That Eye, the Sky
  25. The Trial
  26. Timbuktu
  27. Vietnam
  28. Winter’s Heart
  29. Dean Young

Title Errors:

  1. Shockwave Runner should be Shockwave Rider
  2. The Eye, That Sky should be That Eye, the Sky
  3. Too Late Boyhood Blues should be Too Late American Boyhood Blues
  4. Twelve Days of Christmas should be Hillary Knight’s Twelve Days of Christmas

Interesting omission: The name of the series has been indexed but not the individual titles within the series. The only reason why I bring this up is because Pearl does list the individual titles in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

  1. The Pendragon Cycle:
    1. Taliesin
    2. Merlin
    3. Arthur
    4. Pendragon
    5. Grail
  2. The Complete Sherlock Holmes:
    1. A Study in Scarlet
    2. Sign of Four
    3. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
    4. Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
    5. Return of Sherlock Holmes
    6. Hound of the Baskervilles
    7. Valley of Fear
    8. Last Bow
    9. Case Book of Sherlock Holmes
  3. Irish R.M.:
    1. Some Experiences of an Irish R.M.
    2. Further Experiences of an Irish R.M.
    3. In Mr. Knox’s Country
  4. Sea of Fertility:
    1. Spring Snow
    2. Runaway Horses
    3. Temple of Dawn
    4. Decay of the Angel

Interesting oversight in reverse. This time the individual titles are indexed but not the name of the series:

  1. The Years of Lyndon Johnson

Of course, this is not a comprehensive list. I am not done with Book Lust (not in the least) so there is a possibility other mistakes will crop up. I just felt like posting this now. If there are any additions in the future I will be sure to mark them.

Families & Survivors

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Adams, Alice. Families & Survivors. New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1975.

Reason read: Alice Adams was born in the month of August. Yes, a completely boring reason to read Adams. I know.

This is the story of Louise from 1941 to 1971. We first meet Louise as a precocious teenager poolside with her best friend, Kate. As her story moves languidly through the years we watch Louise get married, have a child, have affairs, struggle with self-image and artistry and of course, grow older. Along the way we see both sides of wealth, both sides of ambition, both sides of a Southern versus Yankee culture.
Something to get used to – Adams includes a lot of parenthetic information. I found it to be a little distracting at first. And oddly enough, for the first ten years the perspective is third person about Louise then there is a switch to first person Maude, Louise’s daughter. Coming to that point was like unexpectedly hitting a speed bump in the center of town.

As an aside, another thing I was distracted by was the number of times Adams mentions the out-of-date shape of Louise’s pool.

Book trivia: Families and Survivors is Nancy Pearl’s favorite book from Adams. I found an interesting enough book but I can’t say it was my favorite. All in all I thought it was a book about growing older from the perspective of different couples. Once they all got divorced and remarried I found the characters little confusing to keep track of.

Author fact: Families and Survivors was, and still is, Adams’s first novel.

BookLust Twist: from the very first chapter in Book Lust, “A…My Name is Alice” (p 1). As an aside, because of the show Major Crimes, whenever I hear the name “Alice” I think of Rusty’s quest to find a Jane Doe they called Alice.

Flashman’s Lady

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Fraser, George MacDonald. Flashman’s Lady. New York: Penguin, 1988.

Reason read: to continue the series started in April in honor of Fraser’s birth month.

If you are keeping track we are now ten years into the biography of Harry Flashman. This is the sixth packet of papers and introduces events between 1842 – 1845 which were previously missing in earlier manuscripts. Like an earlier packet, this installment was edited by Flashman’s sister-in-law, Grizel de Rothschild and includes journal entries from Fashman’s wife Elspeth. I think it’s hysterical that Grizel cleaned up his “rough” language but left in his exploits with other women (because Flashman always gets his girl, whether she be an African queen or his own lovely wife). And speaking of Elspeth, Flashman has to turn his attention to her (more than normal) when she is kidnapped by a pirate who wants her for himself. Along the way (by way of Madagascar), Flashman is held captive by the ruthless Queen Ranavalona and forced to be her love slave (but of course).

Laugh out loud lines (warning: they are both a little crude): “…her udders were almost in her soup” (p 51) and “For a moment I wondered if having his love-muscle shot off had affected his brain…” (p 144).

Author fact: at the time of publication Fraser was living on the Isle of Man.

Book trivia: the footnotes are not as annoying this time around and there is a great deal of attention paid to the game of cricket.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter “George MacDonald Fraser: Too Good To Miss” (p 93).

Faster!

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Gleick, James. Faster: the Acceleration of Just About Everything. Read by John McDonough. Prince Frederick MD: Recorded Books, 2000.

Reason read: Gleick’s birth month is in August.

Funny. Funny. Funny. From the moment Gleick started talking about fast-working medication for a yeast infection (because only slackers have time for one of those) I knew I would be in for a fun ride. He may go on and on about a topic (the impatience one feels one when the elevator doors do not close fast enough, for example) but his points are valid. It’s as if he is holding up a huge mirror and asking us to really look at how we behave when impatience or boredom sets in. Exactly how long does it take before YOU push the “door close” button in an elevator? It’s an interesting test.

And when Gleick says “the acceleration of just about everything” he means everything.
A cool element to Faster! is that each chapter is independent of each other and therefore do not need to be read in order. But, something to be aware of – the subject material is a little dated. If he thinks the conveniences of microwaves, television remote controls and synchronized watches are indications of our need-it-now society,what does he now think of what the 21st century has been up to with our texting, smart phones, Twitter accounts and 65 mph toll booths (because who needs to stop driving incessantly on those long road trips?). He mentions computer watches (a la Dick Tracy). Funny how Apple just released their version this past year. Gleick moves on to talk about computer chips embedded in the human body, and why not? We are already comfortable with metal piercing our bodies in the oh so most interesting of places. Why not a computer chip? Gleick brings up photography and the need to see our pictures within the hour. How about the ability to take a picture and share it with the world within seconds ala Instagram and FB? There are so many examples of our world getting faster. What about the need for speed for athletic competition? Doping. Amphetamines. And speaking of drugs, what’s that saying about liquor being quicker? It was interesting to think of hard liquor coming about because wine was too slow for the desired reaction to consumption. The list goes on. This was a great eye-opening read & I would love to know what Gleick would say about our need for speed these days.

Favorite line, “Language was not invented for improving the quality of introspection” (p 269).
Author fact: Of course James Gleick has a website.

Book trivia: John McDonough does a fabulous job with the narration. He made me laugh.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the obvious chapter called “Science Books (For The Interested But Apprehensive Layperson)” (p 212).

Leaving Small’s Hotel

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Kraft, Eric. Leaving Small’s Hotel: Ella’s Lunch Box Launch.

Reason read: to continue the series started in February in honor of Kraft’s birth month.

I have to get this off my chest. The inside flap of Leaving Small’s Hotel implies that Kraft’s other works (with the exception of Herb ‘n’ Lorna) are not popular and therefore are not worth reading. The negative spin made me sad.

Leaving Small’s Hotel is really fifty stories Peter Leroy reads to his hotel guests (one per night) leading up to his fiftieth birthday. These stories are supposed to be his memoirs but true to Leroy fashion they are a mix of the truth and imagination; how things were and how Leroy thought they could have, or should have been. The guests, who Leroy calls “inmates,” love them. The subplot for Leaving Small’s Hotel is the state of disrepair and debt Small’s Hotel is in. Peter and his wife, Albertine, are losing money on a daily basis on the money pit. The roof leaks, the boiler keeps breaking, the washing machines shred clothes in addition to cleaning them. They can’t catch a break and even when they decide to sell they can’t find a suitable buyer.
Be prepared if you are reading Kraft’s books sequentially – there are a few reoccurring themes: clamming, the threat of nuclear war, aliens, and inventions. Oh, and sex with older women.

Author fact: Book trivia: BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Eric Kraft: Too Good To Miss” (p 141).

Light in August

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Faulkner, William. Novels 1930 – 1935: Light in August. New York: The Library of America, 1996.

Reason read: I was thinking I should read this in August, just for the title. Instead, I’m reading it in July because of Faulkner’s death month. How morbid of me.

I found this to be one of the more enjoyable Faulkner stories. There was more plot and less stream-of-consciousness. The characters are fewer and more fully developed. Lena Grove is a pregnant white woman from Alabama looking for her man in Jefferson, Mississippi. Gail Hightower, a former reverend is forced into retirement and nearly run out of town for his wife’s erratic behavior and subsequent suicide. Joe Christmas, one of the strongest main characters, is an orphan who thinks he has “nigger blood” despite his pale skin.

There are several elements of repetition to Faulkner’s work. Most stories take place in Jefferson, Mississippi. There is usually one character that is mixed race and as a result, struggling with identity. A fire usually breaks out somewhere. Someone usually is pregnant. Probably the most typical reoccurring element is style. Faulkner uses flashbacks to either tell a story or fill in the gaps of one. Light in August was one of the more easier ones to follow.

Author fact: Like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Faulkner died of a heart attack in the month of July.

Book trivia: Faulkner began writing Light in August in August 1931 and it was published in October 1932.

BookLust Twist: first, in Book Lust in the chapter called “100 Good Read, Decade By Decade: 1930s (p 177). Second, in More Book Lust in a chapter that doesn’t really make sense to me. “You Can’t Judge a Book By It’s Cover” (p 238). But, Pearl isn’t bringing up Light in August because its cover contradicts what it’s about. Faulkner is just one of the books in Alan Powers’s Front Cover.

New Physics and Cosmology

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Zajonc, Arthur. The New Physics and Cosmology: Dialogues with the Dalai Lama. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

I have to set the stage for this interesting book: Nine individuals participating in a five-day discussion set in Dharamsala, India as part of the Mind and Life Conference. To elaborate: Arthur Zajonc was there to present as well as facilitate a dialogue between the other members of the group: Tenzin Gyatso, His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama; David Ritz Finkelstein; George Greenstein, Piet Hut; Thupten Jinpa; B. Alan Wallace; Tu Weiming; and Anton Zeilinger. The group included five physicians, a historian, two interpreters and the Dalai Lama. Their goal was an open dialogue without rules. Buddhism and science have something in common: fundamentally both are a system of thought and the idea is to question everything. The comments made by the Dalai Lama are the most interesting.

Reason read: July is the birth month of the 14th Dalai Lama.

Book trivia: the illustrations within New Physics and Cosmology are really helpful.

Author fact: Arthur Zajonc has his own website here: Arthur Zajonc

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “A Holiday Shopping List” (p 115). Pearl would buy this book for someone who is interested in Buddhism and physics.

Study in Scarlet

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Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan. “A Study in Scarlet”. The Complete Sherlock Holmes. New York: Doubleday, 1930.

Reason read: Doyle died July 7th 1930. Read in honor of his passing.

Confessional: in Book Lust Pearl lists The Complete Sherlock Holmes but what she doesn’t say is that it’s a canon of sixty stories – four novels and 56 short stories totaling 1122 pages. I knew it would be impossible to read 1122 pages in 31 days – even if it would be the only thing I read in July I still wouldn’t finish it. In addition I couldn’t stand the thought of attempting something so boring. I need to visit other characters from time to time. So, my plan is this, read each work separately. I began with the first novel of the collection, “A Study in Scarlet.”

Study in Scarlet is in two parts. Part one: “Being a Reprint from the Reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D., Late of the Army Medical Department.” It’s here that Dr. Watson and Mr. Sherlock Holmes meet for the first time. Watson, arriving in London and  needing a place to stay, learns of Holmes looking to share his apartment. From the very beginning they are thrown together in a murder mystery. Watson is astounded by Holmes’s ability to deduce facts from the smallest pieces of evidence.

Part two: “Country of the Saints” steps back in time and tells the story of the Brigham Young and the Mormons settling in the plains of Utah. John Ferrier meets up with the four elders, Stangerson, Kemball, Jonston & Drebber and they take him and his young companion in. This story sets the backdrop for the murder mystery Holmes is trying to solve.

Quotes. First where the title of the story comes from: “There is a scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it” (p 36). Second, one of Sherlock’s most quoted utterances: “…where there is no imagination there is no horror” (p 37).

Author fact: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle died of a heart attack.

Book trivia: A Study in Scarlet is less than 100 pages long.

BookLust Twist (not really): from Book Lust in the chapter called “I Love A Mystery” (p 123).

At Home with the Glynns

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Kraft, Eric. At Home with the Glynns: the Personal History, Adventures, Experiences and Observations of Peter Leroy (continued). New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1995.

Peter Leroy is now a 13-almost-14 year old naive teenager. He has befriended the Glynn family; painting with Mr. Glynn, writing contest poetry with Mrs. Glynn and jumping into bed with their lovely twin daughters, Margot and Martha. Every member of the Glynn family has something to teach young Peter. Andy Glynn has Peter secretly improving the sketches of his art students. Rosetta Glynn instructs Peter on the art of writing with “the shock of the new, cushioned by the familiar” And the Glynn twins? Let’s just say they start him off with simultaneously manipulating two peas; rolling them under his fingertips. You get the picture.

At Home with the Glynns can only be described as fast, fun and funny. Eric Kraft has this way of mingling truth with imagination – so much so that you aren’t sure what’s really going on. Or, maybe it’s just that Peter’s memories are faulty. Memoirs are only as good as what you want to remember. For example, the twins, Martha and Margot, aren’t really twins at all.

Favorite part: the Troubled Titan Ad on page two. It’s indicative of the 1950s with its reference to “troubled times” (note the subtle bomb launched overhead). I have to wonder how many people wrote to PO Box 98 Legume, Ohio for their “Free Titan Booklet Offer.”

Reason read: to continue the series started in February in honor of Kraft’s birth month.

Author fact: No new fact this time around. Stay tuned.

Book trivia: This is the 6th book in the 8 book series, but as mentioned before, it is not necessary to read this as a series or in order. At Home with the Glynns is super short – close to 150 pages.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Eric Kraft: Too Good To Miss” (p 141).

Grifters

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Thompson, Jim. The Grifters. New York: Black Lizard/Vintage Crime, 1990.

Reason read: In July 1901 fingerprinting was first introduced as a crime prevention tool.

Everyone once in awhile I will read reviews of a book before I can get to the actual book. Most of the time I regret that decision because it taints what I think about the story. But other times, like now, I’m actually glad I did. The reviews for The Grifters I checked out didn’t reveal too much of the plot nor the ending. Instead the reviews did caution that every character “sucked”. No one was likeable or worth rooting for. Interesting.

Twenty five year old Roy Dillon’s apple doesn’t fall far from the family tree. His mother Lilly, barely 15 years older, is a con-artist and as a result Roy grew up having to hustle to make an existence for himself. By the time he turned eighteen Roy couldn’t wait to strike out on his own; to try grifting for himself. Only he’s not that good at it. Grifters opens with Roy badly beaten and bleeding internally, staggering back to his rented hotel room after a failed attempt to con someone. His girlfriend Moira, nurse Carol and mother all take turns nursing him back to health, each with their own con game in the works. It’s a disaster waiting to happen as no one in the group is truly honest. Everyone is blinded by greed and what they think is love.

A quote – “She’d never given him anything but a hard time, which was about the extent of her generosity to anyone” (p 11).

Author fact: Thompson sold his first fiction when he was only 14 years old.

Book trivia: The Grifters is short, only 189 pages long. I was able to read it in one day. Most everyone has seen the 1990 movie with John Cusack and Anjelica Huston. Except me. I haven’t so I won’t make any comparisons.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter Les Crimes Noir (p 67).

Berlin Stories

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Isherwood, Christopher. The Berlin Stories. New York: New Directions, 2008.

If we want to be technical about it, The Berlin Stories is actually two novels in one. The first, Mr. Norris Changes Trains (American title: The Last of Mr. Norris) is just under 200 pages while Goodbye to Berlin is just over (207). The Last of Mr. Norris contains the famous line, “I am a Camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking” (p 1). Even though both stories are connected, I will review each story on its own.

The Last of Mr. Norris – Mr. Norris is a mysterious man. Wealthy one minute, impoverished the next. A sexual deviant with prim and proper manners. Shady friends. He is the focal point and the most developed character of The Last of Mr. Norris. Indeed, Isherwood wanted his readers to focus solely on the character of Mr. Norris throughout the entire novel. The subtleties of this complex character needed to be teased out somehow. Isherwood found that vehicle through the first person narrative of Norris’s English friend, William Bradshaw. From Bradshaw you learn there is something sinister and cunning yet beguiling about Norris. The only other “character” is Berlin in the 1930s. Hitler is beginning to gain power. Communism. Spies. Alliances. Blackmail. How Norris moves through this world is what makes the story interesting.

Goodbye to Berlin – Isherwood explained that in order to have the reader truly focus on Norris every other character needed to be culled from The Last of Mr. Norris. In Goodbye to Berlin those orphaned characters have found a home. Characters like Sally Bowels, Frl. Schoeder, Otto Nowak, and Peter —-. As an aside, the composition of Goodbye to Berlin is a little different from The Last of Mr. Norris. This time the chapters are titled: A Berlin Diary (1930), Sally Bowles, On Ruegen Island (Summer 1931), The Nowaks, The Landauers, and A Berlin Diary (Winter 1932 -3). Favorite lins, “With a mere gesture of wealth he could alter the whole course of our lives” (p 48) and “The political moral is certainly depressing: these people could be made to believe in anybody or anything” (p 90).

Author fact: Isherwood confessed The Berlin Stories was based heavily on the diary he kept during his four years in Berlin.

Book trivia: Armistead Maupin wrote the introduction to Berlin Stories.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “100 Good Reads, Decade by Decade: 1940s” (p 177). Also from Book Lust to Go in the chapter called simply, “Berlin” (p 36). I should note that I feel slightly tricked. Pearl mentioned The Berlin Stories was comprised of The Last of Mr. Norris and Goodbye to Berlin but I thought she meant they were short stories. Oops! The good news is a result of this error I was actually able to cross three titles off my list because they were all listed in the index.

Drinking with the Cook

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Furman, Laura. Drinking with the Cook. Houston: Winedale Publishing, 2001.

Reason read: June is national short story month.

Drinking with the Cook – Peggy and Don have a weird relationship. While they have been dating and seem quite serious they never really discuss anything of importance. Right away you can tell they aren’t meant to be together, especially when Peggy gives up her city apartment to live with Don in the country. She doesn’t even know if he wants her there. She is a fish out of water but blind to how wrong the situation really is. Best line: “I wish there was a way to bank fear and draw on it only when necessary” (p 19).

Hagalund – is a story for which I needed a map to guide me. Miriam, while on vacation in Colorado with her husband and son, reminisces about her time as a single girl spending a winter in Sweden. It’s during the Vietnam War, a time when no one trusted anyone else – not completely. Favorite quote: “But now that was over, and I was waiting for the next thing to happen though it was happening already” (p 155).

Author fact: Furman has her own website here: Laura Furman.

Book trivia: There are eleven other stories in Drinking with the Cook.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Good Things Come in Small Packages” (p 103).