Category: Fiction

The World of Henry Orient

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Johnson, Nora. The World of Henry Orient. Little, Brown and Company, 1958.

Reason read: Supposedly, October 6th – 14th is Teen Reads Week. Confessional: some library had that information on a sign in their window.

Nora Johnson split her time between California and New York, thanks to divorced parents. Looking back on childhood memories, she wanted to write a book about what it was like to grow up in the Big Apple. This is an old New York; back when they had wicker seats on the subway and you could buy an ice cream for a quarter. [As an aside, I wonder what she would think of today’s New York.] The World of Henry Orient tells the tale of two twelve year old friends, Marian Gilbert and Valerie Boyd with New York as their backdrop. Marian lives a sheltered life on the Upper East Side while Val is a whirlwind of creativity, culture and crazy. Because of their quirkiness and refusal to join the cliques, they are each other’s only friend…until they discover classically trained musician, Henry Orient. Henry, decades older than Val becomes her obsession. Soon Marian is using Henry as a way to get closer to Val, encouraging her to stalk the older man to learn his habits and eventually, his every move. This behavior sends the already fragile Val into a breakdown of sorts. World of Henry Orient ends with a surprising yet realistic twist. I rather liked the ending. Confessional: there is a scene when Marian and Valerie eat lunch at the Melton Arms. It reminded me of the scene in Beaches when Hilary took C.C. to dine in her hotel.

One mention of Bonwit’s brought me back to when my grandmother gave me a fur coat from the department store.

Quotes to quote, “She traded in gossip the way grownups play the stock market” (p 20), “Just when I am starting to compensate for my lack of home life, it arrives in town” (p 82), “Perhaps it is good to be lonely sometimes, to be able to stand here and feel everything, all at once” (p 87).

Author fact: Nora Johnson was born in Hollywood, California. Her photograph for The World of Henry Orient makes her look like she was destined for the silver screen.

Book trivia: this should be a movie. Oh wait. It sort of is.

Music: Mozart’s “Turkish March,” Bartok, Khatchaturian, Bach, “We Three Kings,” Good King Wenceslas,” “Deck the Halls,”

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Teenage Times” (p 215).

Door into Summer

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Heinlein, Robert A. The Door Into Summer. Doubleday & Company, 1957.

Reason read: October is Star Man Month. Okay, so I admit I had to look this one up. I had no idea what I meant by “Star Man Month.” Guess what! I still do not know what I was talking about. To Google Star Man brings up…me. Meh.

In the 1950s Daniel Boone Davis is a brilliant yet naive engineer with a knack for inventing futuristic household chore helpers. While ideas and designs come easily to him, the business side is murky so he enlists the help of a business partner and Daniel’s fiancé. What could possibly go wrong? Of course the pair double cross Daniel and steal his company. Heinlein introduces his readers to the idea of cold sleep, a form of suspended animation for humans wanting to preserve themselves for the future. This is the perfect way to get Daniel out of the way, making the company takeover complete.
There is a scene in The Door Into Summer that made me think of the movie, “The Lake House” starring Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock. In Door into Summer Daniel is trying to explain to Ricky how he will meet her in thirty years into the future. She has to trust that he will be there when he tells her where to go. Totally like the Lake House except for the fact Ricky is only eleven years old.
As an aside, I loved the nine year old Tomcat named Petronius the Arbiter (Pete for short) and I loved that he understood human speech and drank ginger ale.

Quotes I liked, “Cats have no sense of humor, they have terribly inflated egos, and they are very touchy” (p 42). Yes, yes there are. Here is another, “I am smart enough to appreciate real genius when I meet it” (p 141).

Music: “Time On My Hands.”

Author fact: Heinlein died in 1988 at the age of 81. To read the small bio on the back flap of Door Into Summer, it sounds like an unbelievable fiction. Did he really own a silver mine and when he tried to sell it was the buyer murdered the night before? Did he really know chess before he could read? Was he really friends with eight murderers?

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Time Travel” (p 220). In the beginning, I had to question if Door Into Summer was really a time travel book. D.B. Davis simply took the deep sleep and “waited” for time to march by. Thirty years later he “woke” the same age as he was when he entered the long sleep. It’s not like he jumped thirty years into the future. Later in the book there is an authentic time jump. Phew!

Airs Above the Ground

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Stewart, Mary. Airs Above the Ground. William Morrow & Company, Inc. 1965.

Reason read: Vienna’s National Day is in October.

It all begins when an old school chum asks Vanessa March to travel to Vienna as a chaperone for her seventeen year old son. Tim Lacy won’t stop nagging his mother to see his father in Austria. Coincidentally, Vanessa has just spotted her husband of two years on a news broadcast about a circus fire in Vienna. Lewis was supposed to be in Stockholm, Sweden. Curious about the young woman Lewis had his arm around in the newsclip, Vanessa agrees to travel with Tim. Together they make a wonderful pair of liars. Tim told his mother that his father was meeting him in Vienna and Vanessa said she was going to Austria for a planned meet up with her husband. Nothing could have been further from the truth for either of them. Tim and his father fell out of touch some time ago. Vanessa suspects her husband of lying to her, but doesn’t understand why. Neither father nor husband know of Tim and Vanessa’s arrival.
Vienna proves to be an adventure for Tim and Vanessa. Upon finding the circus Vanessa learns of an elderly horse in desperate need of surgery. She happens to be a surgical veterinarian who had given up her career to get married. While befriending several members of the troupe, Vanessa and Tim find themselves in the middle of a mystery. Turns out, the lame horse is a prized Lipizzaner disguised as an old piebald. By the way, readers will get a history of the Lipizzaner Stallions, but not in a didactic way that is dry and boring. Tim’s knowledge of the Lipizzaner culture is beautiful for someone so young. Confessional: I searched for videos demonstrating the Schulen uber der Erde.
Second confessional: I was wary of Sandor Balog from the beginning and I was convinced the muttering parrot would hold the key to solving the case.

As an aside, I had to giggle when Tim mentioned Archie Goodwin being his favorite amateur detective. Since I am hip deep in the Rex Stout canon, it was like having a new friend tell you about their favorite hairdresser who happens to be your best friend.

Those crazy Europeans! I can’t imagine having supper at 11pm.

Favorite lines or moments, “She dimpled at him” (p 57). Charming!

Author fact: Mary Stewart’s photograph makes her look like she is just about ready to hail a waiter for a second cup of coffee.

Book trivia: I have to admit Airs Above the Ground served as a wealth of knowledge for me. I didn’t know what “airs above the ground” meant (it is a move the L stallions perform); I didn’t know you could not walk by a horse that is lying down without it getting to its feet; the use of a car horn is forbidden in Austria unless it is an absolute emergency; there is always one bay in the Lipizzaner show.

Music: Offenbach, Suppe, Strauss, Schubert, the Rosenkavalier, Mendelssohn’s “Hear My Prayer,” and Boccherini.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the very simple chapter called “Vienna” (p). Incidentally, this is the first book I am reading for this chapter!

Black Mountain

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Stout, Rex. Black Mountain. Bantam, 1983.

Reason read: I am still sloggin through Rex Stout’s canon of Nero Wolfe mysteries.

In the Rex Stout series, Nero Wolfe is known for being a recluse. He does not like leaving his brownstone apartment for anyone or anything. In Black Mountain Wolfe not only leaves his residence and his beloved New York City, Nero leaves country. There are a whole bunch of firsts in this book. Nero at the morgue. Nero on a train. Nero on a boat. Nero making dinner. Nero hiking in the dark through a “jungle of rock” in Montenegro, as Archie called it. Hiking so long and so far that Nero’s feet bleed. Nero taking care of Archie. Nero taking on a case where he is his own client. I should back up a little.
Marko Vakcic, a reoccurring character in the Nero Wolfe series is found murdered. This is a personal blow to Wolfe as he and Marko were childhood friends in Montenegro. His death brings back a memory of climbing Black Mountain, a peak he first summited when he was nine years old. Of course, Nero and Archie must travel back to the Balkans to find Vakcic’s killer and bring them to justice. Along the way readers learn more about Nero’s past and political views.

Line to make me laugh, “the day that Wolfe would like to climb steps to look at children will be the day I would like to climb Mount Everest” (p 119).

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the never ending chapter called “Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe: Too Good To Miss” (p 289).

Last of the Wine

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Renault, Mary. Last of the Wine. Vintage Book, 1984.

Reason read: Mary Renault was born in September. Read in her honor.

Enter life in 5th century B.C. The sweeping backdrop to Last of the Wine is the ancient world of Greece during the final battles of the Peloponnesian War. The focus is on a young man from a well to do family named Alexias from Athens. From a young age he has been a curious learner and is soon captivated by the teachings of Sokrates. It is at one of these lectures that Alexias meets Lysis and together the two young men become athletes and warriors and lifelong best friends and lovers. They attend the Olympic Games, fight in the wars against Sparta, and survive famine, siege, and societal betrayals. Despite marrying women and starting families, their passion for one another is one of loyalty and respect. What I appreciated the most about Last of the Wine was the clever mix of fictional and potentially factual characters. Renault’s imagination breathes life into the ancient world.
As an aside, Renault includes an abbreviated glossary. I say abbreviated because words like hetaira were not included.

Personal connection to Mary Renault’s work – I read The King Must Die in high school. It was one of the first books in my freshman English class.

Quote to quote, “But serious matters broke in on us and, blew such follies way” (p 239). Her is another, “They met and wrestled with me love and envy of an excellence beyond my reach” (p 252). One more, “Everything is change; and you cannot step twice into the same river” (p 288).

Author fact: Mary Renault trained as a nurse.

Book trivia: Last of the Wine has been compared to I, Claudius by Robert Graves (which, incidentally, I finished last month).

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Alpha Beta Gamma of Greece” (p 10).

Small World

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Lodge, David. Small World. Warner Books, 1984.

Reason read: September is traditionally back to school month and since Small World is about academia, why not?

Meet the academics in Small World: Persse McGarrigle is seen as the epic hero. At a typical conference full of pompous blowhards in Rummidge, he has fallen in love with a fellow conference attendee, the mysterious Angelica Pabst. He chases her all literally over the world to the point where it becomes farcical. Professor Morris Zapp is always appalled that he isn’t presenting his paper to a larger audience. He thought for sure the title of lecture, “Textuality as Striptease” would surely bring listeners into the room. [As an aside, the entire book is continuously dominated by various sexual situations.] Then there is the mystery of Joy Simpson. Her old lover thinks she is dead yet she is alive and well somewhere on the planet. Dempsey talks to a computer as if it is his therapist and becomes obsessed with her replies (readers should keep in mind this is the early 1980s and predates Siri or Alexa). I could go on, but I’ll leave the rest of the characters for you to discover.
Critics have called Small World “delightful” but I wouldn’t go that far. Even though this is supposed to be a satire about academia I was annoyed by the characters. The more verbose and didactic the dialogue, the more I tuned out. I will say my favorite scene was when Persse travels to Tokyo and learns of karaoke. Even though he is hellbent to find the woman of his dreams he manages to find time for a little fun. I won’t say whether Persse ever got his girl. It’s more about the journey than reaching the destination! Do not fret, the ending is satisfying!

Line I liked, “Professor B agreed that a law of academic life was that it was impossible to be excessive in flattery of one’s peers” (p 173). So true!

Author fact: David Lodge was an honorary professor of Modern English Literature at the University of Birmingham and it shows.

Book trivia: the title of the book, Small World, surfaces when Persse tells Akira it is a small world on page 335.

Music: Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man,” “Lay Lady Lay,” and “Blowin’ in the Wind,” Bee Gees, Simon and Garfunkel’s “Mrs. Robinson,” Beatles’ “Hey Jude” and “Hard Days Night,” and Diana Ross’s “Baby Love.”

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

Resistance

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Sheers, Owen. Resistance. Nan A. Talese, 2007.

Reason read: Sheers celebrates a birthday in September. Read in his honor.

The year is 1944 and Sheers has introduced his readers to an alternate World War II in which Germany has all but won the war. For perspective, D-Day landings are an utter failure, Dewey wins the presidency of the United States, and Britain is almost completely German occupied. In the far reaches of a remote sheep-farming countryside all of the Welsh menfolk have abruptly disappeared, leaving their wives to farm the land alone just before the harsh arrival of winter. At the center of the story is young Sarah Lewis, not yet thirty and a sheep farmer’s wife of two years. Her antagonist is a German soldier, Albrecht Wolfram, who has come with a band of soldiers to the valley in search of a map. Incidentally, this map is real. It is the Hereford Mappa Mundi, a priceless medieval map of the world. But, back to Albrecht. He is not your average World War II villain. He loves books, nature, and music. The war has made him sick of fighting; he just wants to hide from the war and Sarah’s world is the perfect hideout. It is if Sheers wants you to like Albrecht just a little despite the side he is supposed to be on. Incrementally, the sentiment is felt for all of the soldiers under Albrecht’s command. As winter approaches, the local women and the German soldiers must work together to survive. Their mutual necessity for each other forms strange relationships. Sarah and Albrecht perform a dance of growing trust and lingering suspicion while Sarah tries to hang onto the hope that her husband is still alive and will return. In the end, the community of women face a heartbreaking betrayal. There is much more to the story, but I will leave that alone.
As an aside, one of my favorite scenes in the book is when Albrecht brings Sarah a gramophone and plays her cello music of Bach. It is like a seduction for the senses as well as the heart.

Quotes to quote, “The shrapnel had numbed his world” (p 99) and “…despite his blunted senses, which had left him feeling less human than ever” (p 99). These two sentences sent shivers down my spine as they alluded to something farm more ominous about Mr. Wolfram.

Author fact: Resistance is Sheers first novel. He is also a poet which makes me wonder if he put himself in the story as the poet Sarah remembers from childhood.

Book trivia: because Resistance takes place on a sheep farm readers learn a great deal about tupping, dipping, and foot rot. Resistance was made into a movie in 2011. This is one I would definitely see.

The music is very important in Resistance. Bach’s Cello Suites No. Four, the Allemande, the Courante, the Sarabande, and the Intermezzo.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Wales Welcomes You” (p 248).

Berlin Game

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Deighton, Len. Berlin Game. Pushkin Publications, 2023.

Reason read: The National Security Act of 1947 was signed in July, but most of the provisions went into effect on September 18th.

Len Deighton’s Berlin Game is the first book in the Game, Set, Match trilogy which is part of two other trilogies, Hook, Line, Sinker and Faith, Hope, Charity. In Berlin Game, Bernard Sampson is a married father who works for the secret intelligence service in London, the M16. His wife also serves as an agent, but she outranks Bernard which does not seem to bother him.
Bernard has had a desk job for years, but when Brahms Four, a British agent behind the Iron Curtain (obviously, Berlin Game takes place back with there was an East and West Germany) asks to be rescued by Bernard he cannot say no. Brahms saved his life twenty years earlier and now Bernard must return the favor. What follows is a new game of cat and mouse where everyone could be a traitor, including his own wife. Deighton lines up the suspects, each one more likelier than the last. It’s a fast moving drama, perfect for the big screen.

Confessional: I thought the ending was a little too predictable.

Author fact: Len Deighton was born on February 18th, 1929. He died earlier this year.

Book trivia: Berlin Game is the first book in the Game Set Match trilogy.
Audio book trivia: Berlin Game was read by James Lailey. Confessional: I thought his accents were terrible. I couldn’t tell if a character was German or Russian. I switched to the book format after a while.

Music: Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden,” Haydn’s Seventy-Seven C Major, and “the Trout.”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust twice. First, in the chapter called “Cold War Spy Fiction” (p 61) and again in the chapter called, get ready, “Spies and Spymasters: the Really Real Unreal World of Intelligence” (p 223).

Member of the Wedding

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McCullers, Carson. Member of the Wedding. Library of America, 2001.

Reason read: September is Southern Gospel Month, or at least I read that somewhere. McCullers is the epitome of southern fiction.

Frankie Jasmine Addams wants people to stop calling her Frankie as if her rough and tomboy nature can be erased overnight by the new name, F. Jasmine Addams. Some would call her cheeky or obstinate in her behavior, but at times she is downright wild and violent. She should be just a twelve years old girl, dreaming of a bigger, more exciting life outside her small town. Instead, Frankie is a knife throwing, pistol toting confused preteen; impressionable and immature. Convinced Frankie is going to live with an older brother after his wedding, she repeatedly tells her father, cousin, and live-in housekeeper she is going to leave them. As the wedding date moves closer the tension builds with anticipation. Because Frankie is without any real parental supervision it seems highly possible she will make good on her threat to run away. Her widower father barely registers a parental word. Her cousin is only six and the housekeeper has her own grief to manage.

Bernice’s prayer sent shivers down my spine, “No stiff corpses hanging from the Europe trees and no Jews murdered anywhere” (p 546). Amen to that.

Favorite quote, “She planned it so that people could instantly change back and forth from boys to girls, whichever way they felt like and wanted” (p 547).

Author fact: In many of Carson’s photographs she is smoking. Despite dying at the young age of fifty in Nyack, New York, lung cancer was not the cause. She suffered from alcoholism, breast cancer, and other ailments.
Personal connect: I lived in New Jersey for a bunch of years. Every time I traveled North I went through the town of Nyack.

Book trivia: Member of the Wedding was made into a movie in 1952.

BookLust Twist: from two different books. First, in Book Lust in the chapter called “Girls Growing Up” (p 101) and again in Southern Fiction” (p 222). Pearl thought it best to also include it in More Book Lust in the chapter called “You Can’t Judge a Book By Its Cover” (p 237). Indeed! My copy has a photograph of Carson McCullers, looking all of twelve years old, smoking a cigarette.

Phineas Finn

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Trollope, Anthony. Phineas Finn: The Irish Member. Gebbe and Company, 1901.

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

I feel like Phineas Finn (all three volumes) covers all the same themes as Can you Forgive Her? The male characters are vying for seats in parliament, the women are looking for financially stable men, and everyone is breaking someone else’s heart, sometimes intentionally. Every story has a hapless, heavy in debt, political wannabe who is unlucky with the women. Enter Irishman Phineas Finn. As a lawyer from Ireland he has political ambitions to be in Parliament. Lady Laura Standish, the object of Phineas Finn’s initial affections marries someone else for the convenience of wealth. Luckily, they remain friends and Laura turns out to be one of Phineas’ biggest champions. Ever the naive romantic, Phineas then turns to Violet Effingham who was supposed to be promised to Laura’s brother. Of course there needs to be a duel over Violet. It solves nothing. In the end Phineas does not win the heart of Laura or Violet. Who he turns to next is amusing and oddly beautiful.
The question remains: what is Trollope’s fascination with scheming women? Why are the female characters always bailing the men out of debt? Lady Laura marries Robert Kennedy so that Laura’s brother’s debts can be paid off.
Other similarities: weird names (Mr. Shortribs?), Trollope steps out from the narrative curtain to voice regrets in the novel, and there is even an accident during a hunt that is very similar to the accident in Can You Forgive Her?

Favorite lines, “There was to be an early dinner out in tents at five, and after dinner men and women were to walk about, or dance or make love, or hay, as suited them” (p 152). Oh those crazy Victorians! Here is another, “I think you will acknowledge that if there be a difference of opinion between you and me as to any question of social intercourse, it will be better that you should consent to adopt my opinion” (p 307).

Author fact: Trollope was just as involved in voter reform as his characters in Phineas Finn.

Book trivia: Phineas Finn contains photogravures/illustrations by C.R. Grant, Victor Perard, Hy. Leonard, and R.B. Morrison.

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

Lifeguard

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Fani, Eamon. Lifeguard: Absurd Tales and Minimals. Word Vulcan Press, Inc. 2026.

Reason read: as a member of the Early Program for LibraryThing it is my responsibility to write a review in exchange for reading interesting books.

Fani takes readers into a world of absurd and strange with tongue-in-cheek humor and sleight-of-hand doses of life lessons. Because there is very little substance to each story it is difficult to linger on deeper meanings. I could not become attached to characters or their stories as much as I tried. I really didn’t care about the lessons they were apparently trying to teach. Much like the person who takes your ticket as the amusement park, the characters could be anyone. All you care about is the ride. Lifeguard is definitely a ride to remember.

Short stories in no particular order:

  • The Lifeguard – Arman is eleven and wants to become a life-saving human.
  • The Beggar – a story about having trust issues.
  • The Mustache – a man is fascinated with the facial hair of a prize-winning author.
  • How My Wife Became a cat – just that.
  • Some Pens and Another Item – working in a bookstore.
  • Going – we know something the driver does not.
  • Aremestan – a que of people using an ATM
  • The Student Who Had No Ethics
  • Abyss – code for apathy
  • Ascension – sheep herding
  • The Mouse and the Moon
  • The Plane-Tree Residents Across the Alley
  • Daisies the Size of a Fried Egg
  • Stonewalls and Hedgerows

Author fact: Fani is funny. You can tell just by his dedication in Lifeguard.

Book trivia: this is volume one of Lifeguard so one can only assume there will be more.

Triple Jeopardy

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Stout, Rex. Triple Jeopardy. Viking Press, 1952.

Reason read: I am still working my way through Rex Stout’s entire Nero Wolfe canon.

Home to Roost – Mrs. Benjamin Rackell and her husband come to Nero to find out who killed their nephew. The young man died of cyanide poisoning in the middle of a dinner with five other people. Was it a communist conspiracy? Was he a plant working for the FBI? Stout tries to confuse the matter by introducing a few shady characters. Immediately, readers are supposed to suspect Fifi Goshen. She goads Nero by disturbing his orchids and pouring her cocktail into his beer. Is she trying to cause a commotion to distract everyone from the truth? And speaking of drinks, Archie has moved away from tall glasses of milk and now prefers cool coke and limes.

Cop-Killer – Two Illegal aliens working in a barbershop come to Nero Wolfe for amnesty. They are wanted for murder but cannot claim their innocence because they are too afraid of being deported back to Russia. The cop investigating the murder visited the barbershop to hunt down a lead on a hit-and-run that happened the day before. Carl and Tina Vardas fled thinking their illegal status had been discovered. Their flight makes them look guilty, but as Archie surmises, “to qualify as a hit-and-run driver you must meet certain specifications, and one of them is knowing how to dive a car” (Triple Jeopardy p 94). Dear Archie, I would beg to differ. I would argue that you are more likely to hit someone while driving a car if you have no idea what you are doing. It is during this case that Nero Wolfe leaves his brownstone to get a haircut. Shocking!

Squirt and the Monkey – Harry Koven, a comic book writer, accuses someone on his staff of stealing his gun. To reveal the culprit, Koven enlists the help of Archie. Instead of learning the identity of the thief, Archie is framed for murder, thanks to a rare tropical monkey named Rookaloo. As an aside, this case introduced me to the Sullivan Act of 1911.

True to form, Archie is always flirting with the ladies. I still think it is cute the way Wolfe cares for Goodwin’s appetite.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe: Too Good To Miss” (p 226).

From Sea to Shining Sea

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Thom, James Alexander. From Sea to Shining Sea. Ballantine Books, 1984.

Reason read: August is Friendship month and there is no doubt Lewis and Clark were friends. However, From Sea to Shining Sea is less about the relationship between the two adventurers and more about the entire Clark family.

What a violent time the late 1700s were for fledging America. Battling Native Americans and British soldiers simultaneously. It is as if James Alexander Thom lived in these brutal times in a previous life. His attention to every detail is astonishing. From chamber pots to fashion, mannerisms and foodstuff, real and imagined characters; it is all picture perfect. Each character is fully realized to the point you feel as if you are living beside them at every moment. Was is another character drawn in excellence. It becomes clear that was is not noble; it is not glorious or heroic. War is the explosion of blood and the shattering of bone.
From Sea To Shining Sea tells the story of the tight-knit Clark family from birth to death. Each member of the family receives ample page space to create biographies for all.
Confessional: it took so long to get to the “Lewis and Clark” part of the story that I started to get impatient. William Clark does not meet Meriwether Lewis until page 573. The expedition does not start until another thirty or so pages. On page 616 Discovery finally departs from Camp Wood.

Personal connection: Thom mentions Captain John Smith in the early pages of From Sea to Shining Sea. Captain John Smith is credited with being the first white man to settle on my island. Of course, there were people already there, but the history books ignore that elephant-in-the-room detail.

Author fact: James Alexander Thom was a U.S. Marine, a newspaper and magazine editor, a freelance writer, and a professor.

Book trivia: From Sea to Shining Sea is over 900 pages long. I had to take this behemoth to work to read on my lunch break as well as before breakfast and at night. Phew!

Music: “Betsy Kiss My Lips,” “A Patriot Song,” “Barbara Allen,” “Hang on Till Morning,” “The Hog’s Heart,” “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” “Johnny Has Gone for A-Soldier,” “Katy Cruel,” “The Lawyer Outwitted,” “The Quaker’s Wooing,” “The Spoiling o’ Katy Morah,” “Yankee Doodle,”

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Lewis and Clark: Adventurers Extraordinaire” (p 136).

Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina

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Graves, Robert. Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina. Harrison Smith and Robert Haas, Inc. 1935.

Reason read: to finish the series started with I, Claudius.

Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus has come a long way from the weak and stuttering fool in I, Claudius. After the murder of his cousin, Caligula, Claudius is now the new emperor at fifty years old. He still is a cripple, but has gained a wisdom from carefully watching those who went before him. He creates safeguards against perceived assassination attempts. He refrains from doing anything that would make the ghosts of his family disapprove. Despite all this, and if you know the story, you know what happens to dear Claudius in the end.
Even though Claudius is deeply in love with his seventeen year old wife Messalina, she does not factor much in the beginning of the story. The life of Harold Agrippa is more fully examined than Messalina’s. Towards the middle of the tale, Messalina reveals a devious side. She encourages Claudius to have an open marriage, as long as the other women do not outrank her. Messalina begins to emerge as a strong power player in Claudius’s life, politically and emotionally. Towards the end of the tale the moral of the story is love weaves a tangled web.

Quote I loved, “I detest forensic oratory” (p 123).

Author fact: I already told you about the connection to Natalie Merchant. Graves also wrote Goodbye to All That which I have already read. Claudius the God marks the end of my time with Mr. Graves.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “The Classical World” (p 60).

Lightning Song

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Nordan, Lewis. Lightning Song. Algonquin Books, 1997.

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

The crackling electricity of doing something sneaky can be thrilling to a boy coming of age. Lightning Song begins with twelve year old Leroy Dearman, lost in complete innocence while furtively studying naked woman in the pages of a glossy Playboy magazine. Nordan must have tapped into his own boyhood innocence, because he describes Leroy’s naive thoughts perfectly as he stares at the smiling women.
Leroy is a sheltered boy, growing up on an llama farm in rural Mississippi with his parents and two younger sisters. He confronts adult things: naked women, his mother’s coy and giddy behavior around his uncle, and the creepy death of his grandfather in the attic. Lightning Song only becomes more bizarre as you read on: to name a few: the New Couple’s oddity, Leroy’s mother’s obsession with a kidnapped prime minister, Leroy’s sister and her ferocious courage (confessional: my favorite act of bravery was when she was not afraid to take her father’s withered hand).
The lightning is another character in Lightning Song. It creates tension and an air of danger. It is witness to illicit behaviors and illuminates dark secrets.

Favorite line, “He longed to be his father’s son” (p 122).

Author fact: as there is a whole chapter for Lewis Nordan in Book Lust, I am reading a few. Eight to be exact. I have finished three so far.

Book trivia: this could have been a movie.

Music: Elvis Presley, “Dixie,” “Let Me Call You Sweetheart,” and “Are You From Dixie?”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter “Lewis Nordan: Too Good To Miss” (p 172).