Category: Fiction

Japanese By Spring

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Reed, Ishmael. Japanese By Spring. Athenaeum, 1993.

Reason read: Traditionally, December is the end of a term. Since Japanese By Spring is set in academia I thought I would read it in honor of the end of a trying term.

An ad promises Benjamin “Chappie” Puttbutt III that he will learn the language of Japanese by spring. He had started taking lessons to learn Japanese in the Air Force Academy in the mid 1960s. Only the lessons ended after he had been expelled from the Academy. In the beginning the reader has no idea why Puttbutt has been expelled, but hang on! That story is coming and it’s a doozy. In present day, Puttbutt teaches English at the Jack London College. His only ambition in life is to make tenure, but he is a miserable failure. [As an aside, I can tell you that tenure is not all that it is cracked up to be.] But anyway, Puttbutt is so desperate for this recognition that he jumps on the latest support bandwagon that will further his cause, even if it means derogatory talk about his own race and culture.
Reed’s tongue in cheek commentary on institutional endowments was pretty funny. A student can get away with murder because his father practically funds the entire college. Where have we seen that before? Be prepared for other snarky commentary on political hotbed topics like the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill scandal, LA riots and the beating of Rodney King, nationalism, racism, any ism you can think of. Speaking of racism, here is a snarky scene to ponder: a professor is exclaiming that racism has never existed on the Jack London College campus while a fraternity is having its annual “Slave Day.” I was tempted to play a drinking game with the words nationalism and Yoruba.

Fair warning: the details are a bit dated and unbelievable. Chappie is powerful enough to have a plane brought back to the gate when he misses his flight. These days, a plane can still be at the date, but if the door is closed, you will not gain access no matter who you say you are. Not for anything.
Chappie’s mother had been kidnapped three years earlier by Arabs? Supposedly, she helped plan a bombing raid on Libya. This would make sense as Chappie’s father has been tapping his phone and his grandfather, who has been in hiding, had to kidnap him.
The satire drips thick in Japanese By Spring. Chappie’s main rival is a woman by the name of April Jokujoku and all I could think was April Fools. The president of the college is President Stool. The Berserkley left, I could go on and on.

Author fact: Ishmael Reed inserts himself into Japanese By Spring with real facts, like he was born in Tennessee and

Book trivia: Satire is even hidden in the Japanese words Reed peppers throughout Japanese By Spring, like bakamono.

Lines I liked: According to the copyright of Japanese By Spring , one cannot quote any part of this book for any reason. So. No favorite lines will be mentioned. Ugh! there was a line about pacifism that is so hilarious.

Setlist: “You Will Never Walk Alone”, Little Milton, Max Roach, Bob Dylan, Miles Davis, John Coltrane’s “Blue Trane”, Beatles, Michael Jackson, Prince, Hank Williams, Matata, Ice Cube, Sister Soulijah, George Clinton’s “Do Fries Go with That Shake”, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, and “Onward Christian Soldiers”.

Nancy said: Pearl called Puttbutt’s story “hilariously sad” (Book Lust p 3).

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

D.B.

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Reid, Elwood. D.B. Doubleday, 2004.

Reason: I started this in the last week of November because the book opens with the date November 24th, 1971.

Does everyone know the real story of the man who used a bomb to skyjack a plane back in the early 70s? Elwood Reid takes the real-life events of D.B. Cooper and turns them into two parallel stories. Fitch’s sounds like a bad country song. He loses his wife, his job, and his Dodge Dart all in quick succession. In truth, it reminded me of a movie called Dead Presidents where a man, down on his luck, is forced into a life of crime because he cannot catch a break the honest way. He tries and tries but finally decides he needs a one-time, single-payout super crime. Something huge that will take him away from it all for the rest of his life. As an interesting aside, Dan Cooper, aka Fitch, skyjacks a plane for $200,000. Today, that same sum would be worth $1,519,362.96 Not too shabby.
On the other side of the narrative is newly retired FBI agent Frank Marshall. Typical of most law enforcement, Marshall can’t immediately give up all he has ever known for a life of leisure. He still feels the need to protect a female witness with whom he is slowly falling in love, he continuously carries the finger bone of a murder he couldn’t solve, and occasionally thinks about a man who jumped from a Seattle-bound 727. When a fresh faced eager agent approaches Marshall about putting down the bottle to help him with the still-open D.B. Cooper case, Marshall feels the tug of solving the old mysteries. Is it possible D.B. Cooper survived the jump? Is he still out there?

Confessional: this takes place in a different time so the details are a bit dated. This happened in a time when one could call an airline for the names of passengers on a certain day’s manifest. I appreciated how Reid used the presidents in office orientate the reader to the appropriate era.

A point of irritation: Dan Cooper asked the stewardess to sit next to him. He then looked at a note he had written on his wrist. Did Susan see that note? How could she not? I know seats were a little more comfortable in the 1970s, but surely she noticed this?

Author fact: While Reid wrote a bunch of novels, I am only reading D.B. for the Challenge. As an aside, Reid publicity shot looks like a head shot and he could be a stand in for Treat Williams.

Book trivia: D.B. is based on a true story.

Playlist: John Lennon’s “Imagine”, Carole King, “American Pie”, Blood Sweat and Tears, Nancy Sinatra, “Lara’s Theme”, Wagner, 96 Tears, Frank Sinatra, “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida”, Bob Seger’s “Night Moves”, Willie Nelson’s “River Boy” and “Crazy”, Neil Young’s “Everyone Knows This is Nowhere”, Thelonious Monk’s “Crepuscule with Nellie”, “Over the Hills and Far Away”, Beatles, the Golden Variations, Roy Orbison, “Sister Ray”, and Velvet Underground.

Nancy said: Pearl called it a great read.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Plots for Plotzing” (p 185).

Silver Scream

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Daheim, Mary. Silver Scream: a Bed-and-Breakfast Mystery. William Morrow, 2002.

Reason read: I have no idea.

In a word, goofy. Everything about Silver Scream was goofy. The premise goes like this: the owner of a bed and breakfast needs to solve a murder on her property before the authorities blame her for the death and shut her business down. I thought that was a plausible and clever way to have a civilian try to solve a mystery. A bunch of movie are staying at Hillside Manor for a movie premier. When the producer is found dead, drowned in the kitchen sink, the race is on to solve the death. Accident? Suicide? Murder? The cleverness ends here and the story becomes just plain goofy. Judith, as the bed and breakfast owner, became completely unbelievable when she promised to have an elaborate costume for an actress repaired in one day. Then there was this goofy moment: the rookie police officer, responding to aforementioned death in Judith’s kitchen, makes bunny ears behind her superior officer’s head while investigating the scene. This is at a potential crime scene! Goofy! And another (still at the same crime scene): Judith’s husband’s ex-wife shows up. She’s not only allowed to enter the potential crime scene, but she hangs around for awhile. I could go on and on, listing all the silliness of Silver Scream. Even though I didn’t solve the mystery right away, I wasn’t sure I cared.

Here is another head-scratcher for me. In the toolshed, where mother is squirreled away like Rochester’s wife, one has to go from the bedroom and through the living room and kitchen in order to get to the bathroom (counter clockwise), when the bathroom is literally on the other side of the bedroom wall. In the main house there is a guest room but no bathroom unless the guest is allowed to go through the master bedroom in order to get to the nearest bathroom. I guess whoever designed these structures wanted the bathrooms as out of the way as possible.

As an aside, as a former housekeeper, if I found a slip of paper that appeared to be a prescription of some sort, I don’t care how illegible the handwriting was, I would never throw it in the trash. That is definitely not my call.

Quote I liked, “Who will you blame if something happens while these movie nutcases are staying at Hillside Manor?” (p 3). The word nutcase is one of my favorites.

Author fact: all of Daheim’s books have pun-typical titles.

Book trivia: It is not necessary to read the other Daheim mysteries in order to enjoy Silver Scream. Daheim will fill you in on details such as Judith worked as a librarian and bartender during the time of her first marriage and there were two other murders at Hillside Manor. Of course there were…

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Living High in Cascadia” (p 154). Maybe it was just me, but I felt Silver Scream could have taken place anywhere.

Hound of the Baskervilles

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Doyle, Arthur Conan. The Complete Sherlock Holmes: The Hound of the Baskervilles. Doubleday & Company, 1930.

Reason read: Yup. I am still slogging through this. I feel a break coming on…

This is probably my favorite Sherlock Holmes mystery. I loved the way Doyle described the moor as having a grim charm. The thought of an escaped convict, someone dubbed the Nottinghill Murderer, living out on the fog-filled moor was eerie. Whole ponies have been swallowed up by this deadly bog and yet, supposedly, this murderer was out there with an evil creature, something with “diabolical agency” and supernatural powers. Something that looked like a dog, but twice its size with glowing eyes and a mouth teeth and flames. this is another tale of deception and greed, but with a welcomed unusual twist.

Line I liked, “To act the spy upon a friend was a hateful task” (p 718).

Author fact: I have lost track of what I have said about Sir Conan Arthur Doyle.

Book trivia: The Hound of the Baskervilles was made into a movie in 1959.

Nancy said: Pearl didn’t say anything specific about The Hound of the Baskervilles because she only mentions The Complete Sherlock Holmes.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “I Love a Mystery” on page 117 (although not really because it is contained in The Complete Sherlock Holmes). I said that already. A few times.

Sister of My Heart

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Divakaruni, Chitra Banerjee. Sister of My Heart. Anchor Books, 2000.

Reason read: I needed a book for the Portland Public Library Reading Challenge in the category of something cozy. I chose Sister of My Heart because people chose words like beguiling, magical, moving, and emotional to describe it.

From the very beginning of Sister of My Heart, Divakaruni dangles mysteries and secrets in front of the reader. Anju and Sudha are non-blood cousins, but as close as conjoined sisters. Both girls lost their fathers when they were newborns, but how? There is mystery surrounding their simultaneous demise. Each chapter of Sister of My Heart is told from the alternating viewpoints of Anju and Sudha. Each cousin’s voice is too similar to discern but maybe, just maybe that is the point. Their love for one another, their bond makes them as close a singular entity. When one “sister” learns a deep family secret she is torn between keeping it and uncovering it. She needs to weigh the cost of each choice carefully.
This is the story of how one event can leave you scarred. Like a clogged artery, love cannot flow as easily. Secrets snag the once open heart. Is there a chance for forgiveness?

Lines I loved, “This is how love makes cowards of us” (p 166) and “Don’t regret what you can’t change” (p 230). Chitra, are you talking to me?

Author fact: Divakaruni has her own website here.

Book trivia: Even though Divakaruni wrote a few other “of” books (Mistress of…Vine of…Errors of…), Sister of My Heart is the only book I am reading for the Challenge.

Nancy said: Pearl did not say anything specific about Sister of My Heart.

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

Oscar and Lucinda

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Carey, Peter. Oscar and Lucinda. Harper and Row, 1988.

Reason read: in honor of National Writing Month, I chose a Booker Prize winner. In truth, the Portland Public Library Reading Challenge also had the category of Booker Prize.

Confessional: I felt no affinity for the timid boy with flaming red hair who was afraid of everything. I felt no affinity for the wealthy heiress with the gambling problem. To be honest, I felt no affinity for Oscar and Lucinda the couple or the novel. It dragged on and on. For the most part, I found it was a tirade about the human condition.
As an aside, there are strange details all throughout Oscar and Lucinda. Even though I was bored most of the time, I still am curious about the significance and role of cauliflower to Lucinda when she was on the boat.

Quotes to quote, “The smile did what the Irish accent never could have” (p 121) and “She could marry this man, she knew, and she would still be captain of her soul” (p 329

Author fact: At the time of publication (1988) Carey lived in Australia.

Book trivia: Oscar and Lucinda won the Booker Prize. I have mentioned that before.

Playlist: “The Wearing of the Green”.

Nancy said: Pearl called Oscar and Lucinda “notable” and “Victorian”.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust twice. First, in “A Dickens of a Tale”. I don’t agree. Yes, Oscar and Lucinda is Victorian (19th century Australia), but it is Jack Maggs that is a Dickens reinterpretation. Oscar and Lucinda is also in the chapter called “Australian Fiction” (p 29). No argument there as the story takes place in Australia.

Cat’s Eye

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Atwood, Margaret. Cat’s Eye. Read by Kimberly Far. Random House Audio, 2011.
Atwood, Margaret. Cat’s Eye. Anchor Books, 1998.

Reason read: Atwood was born in the month of November. Read in her honor.

Atwood is clever in describing typical friendships between girls with the simple line, “we think we are all friends”. Young Elaine Risley has all the angst of a young girl growing up in the bullseye of bullying; something that haunts the adult Elaine when she returns back to her childhood city of Toronto to put on an art show. Elaine confronts the painful memories of the various traumas of her childhood with every passing landmark. Most prominent from her childhood are three girls who at turns tormented and loved Elaine with equal parts malice and warmth. As with all young friendships, Elaine was an easy target. She was desperate to please; bullied into thinking she was never good enough for the friendships she begged to have. One of the saddest moments for me was when Elaine contemplated suicide, not because she wanted to end her life, but because she knew how much her death would please an enemy.
As a teenager, Elaine discovered she had a sharp tongue which becomes her best defense and her most valuable weapon. Her enemies fall away not because they leave her, but because she lets them go.
As an adult, Elaine learns that the monsters of our youth can shrink to the harmless size of dust balls under the bed; their teeth and claws can dull upon adult scrutiny. But not all of them go away, especially when you do not want them to.

As an aside, Atwood seems to have an affinity for the nail polish color, “Fire and Ice”. Several different characters wear it.

Simple yet devastating lines, “She thinks I am happy” (p 161), “Murder ought to be a more ceremonial occasion” (p 266), and “There’s too much old time here” (p 453).

Author fact: Margaret Atwood has long been one of my favorite authors.

Book trivia: Cat’s Eye is a type of marble design. Back in the day everyone had marbles. Elaine carried one as a talisman.

Setlist: “Skye Boat Song”, “Scots Wha’ Hae”, Frank Sinatra, Betty Hutton, “Hearts Made of Stone”, “Moonlight Sonata”, and “There Will Always Be an England”.

Nancy said: Pearl describes the plot of Cat’s Eye.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Women’s Friendships” (p 247).

False Years

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Vicens, Josefina. The False Years. Translated by Peter G. Earle. Latin American Literary Review Press, 1989.

Reason read: Vicens died on November 22nd, 1988. Read in her memory. I also need a book that is under 150 pages for the Portland Public Library Reading Challenge. The False Years is only 76 pages long. The is also my “cheat” for Central American author. Mexico is technically not part of Central America.

Luis Alfonso Fernandez is only fifteen years old when his beloved father, “Poncho”, accidentally commits suicide while showing off with a gun. Now, at age nineteen Luis has become his father. At first father and son are interchangeable by name only, both born Luis Alfonso Fernandez. Life and death are balanced precariously; a father’s memory is more alive than the living and breathing son could ever be. Luis does not share his father’s personality. Poncho was generous, extravagant, manly, charming, extroverted, gregarious, influential, brash, ebullient, narcistic, a dreamer, and popular with everyone. He is gone but definitely not forgotten. Luis the son must make sense of his father’s life and is constantly overshadowed by the reputation that refuses to die. It does not help that culture deems him the man of the house now. Soon, his mother treats him like a grown man to be feared. The lines become blurred when Luis inherits the gun that killed his father and his father’s mistress. His life has followed so closely in his father’s footsteps, Luis might as well been the one to make the initial impressions. He develops a god complex when his father’s friends want to make him into another Poncho. Luis finds that instead of wanting to take over his father’s life, he wants to be an innocent child again. He mourns a time when his life was unburdened by adulthood. He oscillates between love and hate for his father.
Fair warning: the misogynism is not hard to miss. In this story there are dozens of comments alluding to the belief that women are of little value.

As an aside, I loved Josefina’s two-word phrasings. Here are a few: “involuntary suicide”, “influential irresponsibility”, “dedicated enemies”, and “prearranged agony”.
Here is a full-sentence quote to quote, “Maybe to be dying is a murmur that might be missed; but death is a silence that must be listened to” (p 33).

Author fact: Vicens only published two novels.

Book trivia: The entire story takes place at Poncho’s fourth anniversary memorial service.

Nancy said: Pearl only described the plot of The False Years.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Mexican Fiction” (p 153).

Return of Sherlock Holmes

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Doyle, Arthur Conan. The Complete Sherlock Holmes: The Return of Sherlock Holmes. Doubleday & Company, 1930.

Reason read: I am still working my way through Sherlock Holmes. I obviously took a little break, but now I am back.

The Return of Sherlock Holmes is comprised of thirteen adventures. There is a certain formula to Doyle’s writing. Someone is always trying to scam, blackmail, or extort something from someone else. Clients come to Holmes when Scotland Yard thinks the case is out of their league. Scandal, public embarrassment, or out and out trickery is usually the name of the game. Sherlock is always the master of disguises; a chameleon of identity. He is always seeing details others commonly miss. Confessional: I got a little tired of his smug attitude. I love love Watson, though.

  • “Adventures of the Empty House”
  • “Adventure of the Norwood Builder”
  • “Adventure of the Dancing Men”
  • “Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist”
  • “Adventure of the Priory School”
  • “Adventure of Black Peter”
  • “Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton”
  • “Adventure of the Six Napoleons”
  • “Adventure of the Three Students”
  • “Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez”
  • “Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter”
  • “Adventure of the Abbey Grange”
  • “Adventure of the Second Stain”

Author fact: Doyle tried to kill off Sherlock but his fans wouldn’t let him.

Book trivia: The Return of Sherlock Holmes was published in 1905 as a collection. The stories came out individually from 1903 – 1904.

Nancy said: Pearl never mentions The Return of Sherlock Holmes because it is within The Complete Sherlock Holmes.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “I Love a Mystery” (p 117).

What was She Thinking?

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Heller, Zoe. What was She Thinking? Notes on a Scandal. Read by Nadia May. Blackstone Audio, 2006.

Reason read: I needed a book about a teacher for the Portland Public Library 2023 Reading Challenge. This is a doozy.

The slow decline into obsession is like a slow growing cancer. The sickness of the heart soon controls the soul. Barbara Covett’s long teaching career at St. Georges School affords her a critical opinion of her colleagues, old and new. With barely any friends, scarce family ties, and no love life to speak of, Barbara is an aging spinster alone with an ailing cat. Such bitter loneliness entitles Barbara to scoff at any relationship until she meets Sheba Hart. Sheba brings out a strange possessiveness in Barbara. As a pottery teacher Sheba is new to St. Georges and it’s politics. Barbara takes Sheba under her wing and desires to be her only friend. Except Sheba is capable of making a variety of relationships which fuel Barbara’s jealousies. Barbara reminded me of the manipulative Iago in the way that she slyly pushed Sue, another St. Georges colleague, out of the friendship with Sheba. Three is definitely a crowd.
As mentioned before, Sheba is capable of making connections quickly. When she starts a physical relationship with a sixteen year old student in her pottery class, Barbara seizes the opportunity to be Sheba’s only nonjudgmental confident, further pulling Sheba into a sick dependency. However, Barbara’s immature need to be on the high horse of morality gets the better of her and she risks Sheba’s friendship by keeping a journal. The more obsessed Sheba gets with the schoolboy, the more reckless she becomes. How long before the house of cards come crashing down?

Author fact: What was She Thinking is Heller’s first novel.

Book trivia: this should be a movie.

Nancy said: Pearl said nothing in particular about What was She Thinking?

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the obvious chapter called “Wayward Wives” (p 231).

Young Pioneers

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Lane, Rose Wilder. Young Pioneers. McGraw-Hill Books, 1961.

Reason read: South Dakota became a state in November in 1889. Read Young Pioneers in honor of that event. I also needed a book for the Portland Public Library 2023 Reading Challenge in the category of a book under 150 pages. Young Pioneers was 118 pages long.

Rose Wilder Lane was a born pioneer woman. From early childhood she was groomed by her parents to have courage, resilience, and faith in order to survive anything the Midwest wilderness could throw at her. So it was easy for Lane to fictionalize her life in the character of Molly Purl. In Young Pioneers Molly becomes a wife to David at sixteen and a mother by seventeen on the long journey out west via the settler’s trail. These are the days of trading goods for essentials and being resourceful while the transcontinental railroad was being built. Once in South Dakota, in quick succession, Molly learned about the harsh countryside, motherhood, and survival. Her first challenge was to give birth safely in their new sod shanty hundreds of miles from family, friends or medical care. With a newborn on her hip and her husband, David, away for months at a time looking for work, Molly encountered events that tested her courage, resilience, and faith. If it wasn’t a plague of grasshoppers, it was blinding blizzards, or starving wolves. While she wasn’t exactly alone on the prairie, she was without help once the grasshoppers forced her nearest neighbors to move back east. Her faith in her husband’s return kept her going.
Critics have stated that Young Pioneers contains biographical elements of her mother’s history because some of the hardships Lane encountered are the exact same as her mother’s as told in the Little House on the Prairie series.

Line I liked, “Their smiles were shaky, but they smiled” (p 63).

Author fact: I don’t know if this was the publisher’s doing, or if this was Lane’s idea, but I feel like Young Pioneers was hyped more for the fact that Lane was Laura Ingalls Wilder’s daughter more than for the merit of Lane’s writing. Why else would “daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder” be blazoned across the cover of Young Pioneers and included in reviews?

Book trivia: Young Pioneers was originally titled Let the hurricane Roar. Young Pioneers was made into a television movie sometime in the 1970s.

Setlist: “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad”.

Nancy said: Pearl mentioned how much she enjoyed Laura Ingalls Wilder’s series…oh and here are two novels by her daughter.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “The Great Plains: the Dakotas” (p 106).

Childhood’s End

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bluest Blood

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

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

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

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

Playlist: the Three Tenors

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

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

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

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

Writing New York

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tisha

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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