Category: BookLust I

Without End

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Zagajewski, Adam. Without End: New and Selected Poems. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002.

Nancy Pearl mentions “Try to Praise the Mutilated World” in Book Lust in the chapter called, “Polish Poems and Prose” (p 187), but she also recommends the book from which the poem is from, Without End: New and Selected Poems.

I quite enjoyed reading Without End from start to finish. The diversity of poetry within the 270+ pages is refreshing. I especially liked the poet to poet dedications. It’s as if Zagajewski is saying, “from one writer to another, I feel your craft and it influences mine.”

“Try to Praise the Mutilated World” reminds me of Natalie Merchant’s song “Life is Sweet” in that they both try to point out the beauty in the world in spite of the glaring ugliness.

Favorite lines:
“The innkeeper’s daughter was so thin
that she kept bricks in her backpack to outwit the wind…” (p14).

Favorite poem: “Treatise on Emptiness”
A friend and I both agree that this poem moved us in startling and profound ways.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Polish Poems and Prose” (p 187). Yeah, I know I already said that.

“Days of Pie and Coffee”

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Tate, James. “Days of Pie and Coffee.” Shroud of the Gnome. Hopewell: Ecco Press, 1997. pp 2 -4.

This is such a simple image. A man is walking his dog (a golden retriever no less) along a country road. He and the dog are startled by a motorist roaring up and looking for directions. A stranger in this part of the world is such a shock to the man and yet he finds easy conversation with the stranger…as if they are sitting down to a meal of pie and coffee.

I like the powerful descriptions in the poem. It’s not just a poem, it’s a story when you can see the images and feel as if you are there. The act of being startled because you don’t expect a motorist in your little part of the world. A conversation that haltingly starts with mistrust and grows easier with familiarity.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Kitchen-Sink Poetry” (p 138). Note: this missed getting included in the index.

South Wind Through the Kitchen

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David, Elizabeth. South Wind Through the Kitchen. New York: North Point Press, 1998.

The cover of South Wind Through the Kitchen has Elizabeth David posing with a glass of wine in her hand. You can tell the shot is 1950’s staged. Elizabeth is supposed to be lounging with a glass of wine in her kitchen. Instead, she is delicately leaning against a counter, one foot angled just so from her body. She looks away from the camera with only a hint of expression on her face. She does not look comfortable and yet pulls off a sophisticated housewife glamor.

South Wind Through the Kitchen is a collection of Elizabeth David’s best everything – best recipes, best essays, best foot forward (as the cover photograph implies) compiled by friends and family. It is a multi-personality publication, part cookbook, part leisure reading, part reference. Any one person can pick it up for a multitude of reasons, whether to graze lightly through its pages or gorge on them entirely. It’s a great sampling of Elizabeth David’s writing throughout her career.
As for my reading pleasure, I found myself grazing lightly for in the Book Lust challenge I will be reading French Provincial Cooking, Italian Food, A Book of Mediterranean Food, and English Bread and Yeast Cookery. I felt that it was only fair that I skip those excerpts (since I’ll be reading them again in their entirety at some point) and concentrate on the commentary and the excerpts from the books I won’t be reading: French Country Cooking, Spices, Salt and Aromatics in the English Kitchen, Harvest of the Cold Months, and French Country Cooking.

My favorite part of South Wind Through the Kitchen was the praise for Elizabeth David not only as a cook, but as an accomplished writer. For example, one favorite line illustrates that praise, “I remember marveling at the quality of the writing, sitting entranced on a radiator…and quite forgetting to poach the eggs at all. A constant danger with E.D. is being distracted from the actual cooking. -Prue Leith” (p 61).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Food for Thought” (p 91).

Truth & Bright Water

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King, Thomas. Truth & Bright Water. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1999.

The title of this book fascinates me. Here’s why: I’m reading the book in honor of April being National Dog Month (indeed there is a dog named Soldier in the book), yet the story is about two coming-of-age Native boys. The title comes from the geography. Truth is an American town on one side of a river and Bright Water is a reserve on the Canadian side of the same river. Truth and Bright Water are sister cities, or tiny towns to be exact.

Truth & Bright Water is more about a Native teenage boy named Tecumseh than it is about the small towns of Truth and Bright Water which he calls home. Tecumseh is fifteen and life for him consists of keeping peace with his separated parents, keeping his abused cousin company, learning how to drive, trying to find a job, understanding what it means to be Indian during tourist season, unraveling the mysteries surrounding his aunt, and finding things like a baby’s skull with his dog, Soldier. While Tecumseh is an average kid his community is anything but. Truth & Bright Water opens with Tecumseh and his cousin, Lum, spying on a woman who not only empties a suitcase over a cliff, but appears to have jumped off after it. Was it suicide? Then there is Monroe Swimmer, a famous artist returned home, who lives in a church and has big plans to make said church disappear. And what of the baby’s skull found with a ribbon threaded through its eye holes?

There are several quotes that I liked. Here’s one, “…maybe ground squirrels… are just like people. some are lucky, and some aren’t. Some get to drive nice cars, and some end up by the side of the road” (p 91).

There are several scenes that I also liked. I thought the dialogue between Tecumseh and any adult was amusingly accurate. Tecumseh would ask a question and to avoid answering it the adult would ask a different question over it or simply ignore his question completely. In several instances Tecumseh and the adult are having two different conversations that only converge if the subject isn’t sensitive. Here’s an example of a conversation between Tecumseh and his mother who has been gone on vacation:
“So, how was Waterton?”
“”You need to put your sleeping bag away,” says my mother.
“Did you stay at that fancy hotel?”
“And you forgot to knock all the mud off your shoes.”
“I suppose you took the bus out to the lake” (p 203).

Tecumseh wants information about where his mother went and she is clearly ignoring the questions. Tecumseh sums it up later by saying, “Sometimes the best way to get my mother talking about a particular topic is to change the subject and then work your way back to where you wanted to be” (p 204). Classic. The whole book is full of scenes like this. I liked King’s writing so much that I’m definitely adding him as a favorite author on LibraryThing.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in two different chapters. First, in “American Indian Literature” (p 23) and again in “Great Dogs of Fiction” (p 104).

Making of a Quagmire

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Halberstam, David. The Making of a Quagmire. New York: Random House, 1964.

The only way American citizens were in touch with the Vietnam War, at all, was through the eyes of reporters. They were responsible for bringing the fighting as well as the politics of South Vietnam into the forefront of public awareness. They were credited for keeping the public more informed than in the dark. It has been said that not many could cite what we were fighting for “in the jungle.” Not many more could find Vietnam on a map. Yet, with the publishing of the Making of a Quagmire David Halberstam sets up to explain just how involved the U.S. was before the conflict erupted. In a comprehensive manner he explains our country’s commitment to the political struggle in South Vietnam. Despite pressure on all political sides Halberstam never compromised his view of the crisis. He refused to publish propaganda to support either side. The Making of a Quagmire is simply unflinching and honest.

Most interesting quote: “In many areas the war had come to a virtual halt because vital units were practicing for the parade” (p 45). I find this interesting because Halberstam goes on to say, “It seemed unbelievable, but it was true; the public was not to be allowed to watch the ceremonies” (p 46).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter simply called, “Vietnam” (p 238). Also in More Book Lust in the chapter called, “David Halberstam: Too Good To Miss” (p 112). Interestingly enough in both chapters Nancy Pearl gives Halberstam’s book the complete title of  The Making of a Quagmire: America and Vietnam During the Kennedy Era yet nowhere on my copy of  Making of a Quagmire is that subtitle printed.

Wall of the Sky

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Lethem, Jonathan. The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye: stories. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1998.

I like that way Nancy Pearl describes Lethem’s style of writing. Basically she says (in Book Lust) you never get the same book twice. Even within his short stories in The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye you don’t get the same short story twice. Nothing is the same. Even the style of writing is different. Like a box of chocolates with only one candy containing chocolate…

Here’s a list of the short stories:

  • The Happy Man ~ a weird sort of deal-with-the-devil story about a man who is dead, but isn’t.
  • Vanilla Drunk ~ a story that mentions Michael Jordan over 40 times.
  • Light and the Sufferer ~ brothers, an alien, drugs and New York City. What’s not to love?
  • Forever, Said the Duck ~ a virtual party where virtually no one is who they say they are.
  • Five Fukcs ~ I have no idea how to describe this story. It’s all about getting screwed over…
  • The Hardened Criminal ~ a very strange story about a man who ends up in the same prison cell as his father…only his father is built into the cement wall.
  • Sleepy People ~ there is a group of people who sleep through anything…including sex.

Because of Lethem’s copyright statement I am not going to quote favorite lines (and yes, I had a few). Just leave it that I liked the entire book (even though I would have liked more description about the Sufferer from “Light and the Sufferer”).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Jonathan Lethem: Too Good To Miss” (p 145).

Fire Next Time

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Baldwin, James. The Fire Next Time. New York: Dial Press, 1963.

The Fire Next Time is a slim yet powerful 120 pages. Baldwin does not waste a single page on empty words or phrases. Every sentence is an argument for America to beware of “the fire next time.” He implores the reader to take a page from history and not turn a blind eye to it; we must change the course of racial inequality in order to survive. Even though The Fire Next Time was published not even ten years after the integration of Little Rock’s (Arkansas) Central High Baldwin’s fiery words hold true today.

The title, The Fire Next Time, is drawn from a “recreation of the Bible in a slave song” – ‘God gave Noah the rainbow sign, no more water, the fire next time’ (p 120), yet there are several examples of such warning scattered throughout the entire book. This warning is in a couple of my favorite quotes.

“But, in the end, it is the threat of universal extinction hanging over all the world today that changes, totally and forever, the nature of reality and brings into devastating question the true meaning of man’s history” (p 71), and “Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets ans one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time” (p 105).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in two chapters: “African American Fiction: He Say (p 10), even though it isn’t fiction, and again in the chapter “Essaying Essays” (p 81).

Little Friend

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Tartt, Donna. The Little Friend. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002.

In a nutshell The Little Friend is about Harriet Cleve Dufresnes, a twelve-year-old girl who decides she simply must solve the mystery of who killed her nine-year-old brother when she was just an infant. All Harriet knows of the incident is that little Robin was found hung from a tree on Mother’s Day and nobody knew why. During her attempts to solve the mystery Harriet and her sidekick Hely get themselves into troubles far more adult than their years. Larger Mississippi-southern issues such as poverty and prejudice encircle  more complicated crimes such as deception, drugs, and death.

I love the way Donna Tartt writes, but was confused by plot. 555 is a long time to be reading about a mystery that doesn’t really get solved. The ambiguous ending is ripe for a sequel. Yet, there are seemingly unimportant characters that float in and out of the plot without an apparent role in the story (like Harriet’s sister Allison). Could they come back with a stronger presence in another book? One other concern is that The Little Friend is supposed to be a story set in the 1970’s. Were there meth labs back then?

When you first meet Harriet you think she has all the beginnings of a serial killer: “She could set the house on fire if she wanted to, and no one would be there to stop here” (p 67), and “…this was the hallmark of Harriet’s touch: she could scare the daylights out of you, and you weren’t even sure why” (p 74).

BookLust Twist: There is no doubt in my mind that Nancy Pearl loved this book and thought of it often. Case in point: it’s mentioned in Book Lust in the chapters “Families in Trouble” (p 82) because after little Robin is found murdered, nothing is ever the same for his family, and “Girls Growing Up” (p 102) because Harriet, Robin’s sister, grows up between the 555 pages of The Little Friend, as well as in the introduction (p xi) where Pearl says she knew she would love The Little Friend from the very first sentence. Little Friend is also mentioned in More Book Lust in the chapters “Lines that Linger; Sentences that Stick” (p 143) – the same first sentence Pearl mentioned in Book Lust, and “You Can’t Judge a Book by Its Cover” (p 238) because of its creepy doll face – a total of five mentions between the two Lust books. I can’t blame Pearl because Little Friend does fit nicely into each and every chapter mentioned.

Sorrows of Young Werther

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Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Sorrows of Young Werther. Boston: Frances A. Niccolls & Co., 1902.

There are so many little facts about this 134 page story that I just loved! First, I find it enticing that this eighteenth-century novel was written anonymously. It was if it really was meant to be autobiographical. There are many similarities between Young Werther and Johann Goethe. Another interesting tidbit about The Sorrows of Young Werther is that the story was both banned and embraced in eighteenth-century Germany.

To put it simply, Sorrows of Young Werther is about a young, impressionable artist who moves to a new, yet fictional town. He is enamored with his surroundings and shares his new-found joy with his friend, Wilhelm, through enthusiastic, vividly descriptive letters. For the first month the letters contain glorious accounts of the landscape, the sights, the sounds, and the people – everything around him. After that first month though, Werther’s entire focus centers on a young woman he met at a party. It’s obsession at first sight and he can think of nothing else but to be with her constantly. Unfortunately, Werther’s affections are doomed as the object of his affection, Charlotte, is already engaged to be married to a “worthy” gentleman. In an effort to remain near to Charlotte, Werther befriends her husband-to-be. Things becomes complicated (as they also do in this kind of situation). Of course this love triangle cannot last and ultimately ends in tragedy.

Telling lines: “We should deal with children as God deals with us, – we are happiest under the influence of innocent delusions” (p 35), “…a man under the influence of violent passion loses all power of reflection, and is regarded as intoxicated or insane” (p 47), and “I sometimes cannot understand how she can love another, how she dares love another, when I love nothing in this world so completely, so devotedly, as I love her, when I know only her, and have no other possession” (p 81). In these three quotes we see Young Werther growing more and more obsessed with Charlotte. It can only end badly and as we see on the very last page, it does, “The body was carried by labourers. No priest attended” (p 135).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Epistolary Novels: Take A Letter” (p 79).

Hole in the Universe

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Cole, K.C. The Hole in the Universe: How Scientists Peered Over the Edge of Emptiness and Found Everything. New York: Harcourt Inc., 2001.

January is quickly becoming my month for nonfiction (sorry, S.!). The Hole in the Universe is what Nancy Pearl calls a book about nothing and author K.C. Cole supports that with her subtitle, “How Scientists Peered over the Edge of Emptiness and Found Everything.” Cole combines physics, science fiction, literature, mathematics, and humor to make her case. Who knew a book about nothing could be so entertaining? Cole has the ability to take scientific fact and not-so-exact speculation and make nothing about something.

Line to scratch your head over: “Potential, it turns out, is one of the most impressive properties of nothing” (p 3). From that sentence on, I knew I was in for an interesting time.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust” in the chapter called, “Zero: This Will Mean Nothing To You” (p 256).

Echo House

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Just, Ward. Echo House. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1997.

Covering three generations equaling 90  years of politics and power struggles, Ward Just follows the lives of the Behl family starting with Adolph and Constance Behl and their quest (notice I said their quest) for the White House. Adolph’s son, Axel and grandson, Alec continue the saga with their own political ambitions (although Alec goes the legal route becoming a lawyer). Supporting them, and sometimes leaving them, are the women who forever loved them, loved power and had ambitions of their own. Ward Just includes an entire host of Washington characters as well as well-known political events through history. At the center of it all is the Behl family mansion, Echo House. Built to be the next White House it is the scene of secrets of all kinds. Dirty secrets, family secrets, secrets told, secrets kept, secrets that help, secrets that hurt. While nothing terribly exciting happens it’s what doesn’t happen that makes Echo House such fun to read.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Ward Just: Too Good To Miss” (p 135), and from the chapter, “Politics of Fiction” (p 189).

Lost Steps

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Carpentier, Alejo. The Lost Steps. New York: Noonday Press, 1956.

The Lost Steps is about a man who takes a journey that becomes more than travel to him. Married to an actress who barely has time for anything but the stage, he takes a trip to South America with his mistress with the mission of finding primitive musical instruments for a museum curator. In the beginning of the story the man is fixated on making himself happy. For example, caught in the middle of a violent revolution where the streets are riddled with gunfire, he cannot think of getting himself to safety. Instead, he is fixated on returning to his companion for fear she has already (within minutes) taken up with someone else. Throughout the story his priorities change and he begins to imagine the wild landscape back in time, before mankind. His imagination takes him to unchartered territories that are vividly described. Carpentier’s observations are astute and he writes with remarkable clarity. The landscapes of South America are breathtaking.

Favorite lines, “When my birthday was celebrated among the same faces, in the same places, with the same song sung in chorus, the thought invariably struck me that the only difference between my previous birthday and this one was the extra candle on the cake, which tasted exactly like the last one” (p 9). “In this country, I was told, passing from power to prison was the normal thing” (p 60). “Silence is an important word in my vocabulary” (p 109).

Something else I found interesting: The New Yorker claims The Lost Steps begins in New York City yet Alejo Carpentier prefaces the story with a note that begins, “even though the site of the first chapters of this book does not call for any specific location…” (p v). The New Yorker must have gotten the New York City information from another version.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Cubi Si!” (p 68).

Last Best Place

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Kittredge, William and Annick Smith, ed. The Last Best Place: a Montana Anthology. Helena: Montana Historical Society Press, 1988.

When this book first arrived I took one look at it and freaked out. How in the world did I manage to order a book that is not only 1161 pages long but also is not renewable? How would I ever get through 1000+ pages in two weeks? It was ridiculous. When I did the math it equalled out to approximately 90 pages a day in order to finish it on time. Ridiculous. Ridiculous because I was still struggling through the 900+ page biography on Winston Churchill. Luckily, Last Best Place was fun to read!
Starting with Native American Indian folklore and diary accounts of expeditions through the virgin geography of Montana Last Best Place opens in the early 1700’s. It ends with a section of contemporary poetry. The folklore was probably the dullest part. I firmly believe stories like these are best communicated orally because of their repetitious nature. First hand accounts of settlers seeking new land were the most interesting.This is not a book to read all at once. Its 1161 pages encourage random readings and not necessarily in chapter order.

Favorite lines: “Curiosity, a love of wild adventure, and perhaps also a hope of profit, for times are hard, and my best coat has a sort of sheepish hang-dog hesitation to encounter fashionable folk…” (p 170).
“The situation of a man gliding over a beautiful river in a boat always has something magical about it…(p 205).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Montana: In Big Sky Country” (p 156).

Plague

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Camus, Albert. The Plague. New York: Vintage Books, 1948.

I have to start off by saying I was shocked to discovery my library does not have a copy of The Plague in its collection. I don’t know why that surprises me, but it does. Maybe I will donate my copy?

In relation to timeline The Plague is simple. It covers the duration of a bubonic plague. The story begins with the death of rats. First, a few rats are found here and there until they are everywhere; dying by the thousands all across the Algerian city of Oran. Then, the plague increases in intensity and starts killing hundreds of people until finally, colder temperatures arrive and the plague is mercifully over. But, The Plague on a philosophical level is much deeper than the spread of a disease. Dr. Bernard Rieux is a doctor trying to save the community of Oran from the ravages of a plague. Even though Dr. Rieux patiently tries to care for everyone in the makeshift infirmaries most of his patients die. It appears to be a losing battle. Soon it is obvious the bigger question on Dr. Bernard Rieux’s mind concerns humanity. For him, the struggle between good and evil is all apparent. He observes how people react to the disease, are influenced by the disease, and are changed by the disease. In the end, the whole point of the didactic lesson for Dr. Rieux is that we all need someone. Rieux’s biggest discovery is that he is content to continue the crusade against any disease, any suffering, any pain or death.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “100 Good Reads, Decade by Decade: 1940s” (p 177).

Confessional: Maybe this is my 21st century thinking, but I ridicule the idea of a man’s mother coming to keep house for him while his wife is ill. Can’t the man cook or clean for himself?

Dingley Falls

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 Malone, Michael. Dingley Falls. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Jovanovich, 1980.

I chose Dingley Falls in honor of National Author’s Day being in November. Nothing more random than that.

Even if you didn’t know anything about Michael Malone you would swear his novel, Dingley Falls, is supposed to be a script, or at least the backdrop, to a titillating, slightly scandalous soap opera. The town of Dingley Falls, fictitiously located somewhere in Connecticut, is teeming with odd characters with even more bizarre stories to tell. It is as if the entire community has digested some mild altering hallucinogenic that causes everyone to come unglued. To give a few examples, mild-mannered Mrs. Abernathy suddenly ends up under a tree in the pouring rain having wild sex with a poet she has just met; post mistress Mrs. Haig is forced to retire because of a bad heart. It’s not the job that is stressing her out, it’s a snapping, snarling dog who chases her home five nights a week; Headmaster Mr. Saar has trouble controlling his sexual appetite and will wind up handcuffed to a bed in a seedy motel in New York City, naked and dead, if he isn’t careful. Mrs. Ransom tries masturbation for the very first time only to have some stranger catch her in the act.
The list of characters goes on and on, so much so that Malone needed to list his crazy community individual by individual at the start of his book.

When you discover Michael Malone has years and year of experience as the senior writer for One Life to Live then Dingley Falls begins to make sense. The heightened drama, the outrageous characters, the never-ending bizarre situations in Dingley Falls suddenly become par for the course…just a little more graphic with the sex scenes and violence, the things you can’t show as vividly on daytime television.

Favorite lines: “The elderly shut-in bought a new car every year – each racier than the last – as if she thought she could outdrag death if she only had the horsepower” (p 94). “‘Did you know that until I drink this cup of coffee, anything you know is knowing too much?'” (p 145). “He drank in order to pose count; not like Walter Saar, to get in touch with who he was, but to stay out of touch with who he might have been” (p 157).

BookLust Twist: In Book Lust and More Book Lust. This is a popular book in Pearl’s world. First, from Book Lust in the chapter called, “Southern Fiction” (p 222). From More Book Lust in the chapter called, “Michael Malone: Too Good To Miss” (p 160).