Category: NonFiction

Without Reservations

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Steinbach, Alice. Without Reservations: the Travels of an Independent Woman. Random House, 2000.

Reason read: According to the web, Steinbach celebrates a birthday in October. Read in her honor.

In January of 1993 Alice Steinbach decided to take a leave of absence from her job as a reporter for the Baltimore Sun. Her two sons had grown up, no longer dependent on her. Influenced by a “journalistic idol” who wrote about Paris for fifty years in The New Yorker, Steinbach headed to France first.
Admittedly, Alice has become a sort of hero for me. I loved how she easily met people by joining them at a cafe table or sharing a seat on a train. Striking up random conversations affording her a travel companion everywhere she went. I loved how she wrote postcards to herself as a shorthand journal and a keepsake for the future. I loved Steinbach’s fond memories of her mother and grandmother. They served as virtual travel companions.
What would have put Without Reservations in a completely different class is if Steinbach has taken a nod from Nick Bantock and made the postcard pages feel real. Instead of back and white photographs, Steinbach could have printed them on different paper and in color. On the reverse page, (think just like flipping over a postcard), Steinbach could have included her message.
A question: when is travel really travel? Is it when you are on the move, physically going from one place to another? Or are you traveling simply by being away from your own hometown and cozy bed?
Steinbach blurs the lines between solitaire and independence. As I mentioned earlier, no matter where she goes in what country, she always ends up sightseeing with someone else. Not much of her travel is truly alone.

As an aside, I was going to say imagine going to a cafe that was once a favorite spot for artists like Picasso or F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, but I do know what it’s like. I listen to music in a venue that was once haunted by the likes of Bob Dylan, James Taylor, and Carly Simon. The cushions are as old as the hills so maybe Dylan sat on them before I ever did.
Confessional: I want to adopt Albert’s Theorem: mishap equals excellent adventure.

Author fact: Alice Steinbach won a Pulitzer for feature writing in 1985.

Book trivia: my copy of Without Reservations includes a reader’s guide, questions for discussion, and a list of books for suggested reading.

Music: “Who-o Goes the Wind,” “How High the Moon,” Charlie Parker, Frank Sinatra, Edith Pilaf, Oklahoma, Mozart, Chopin, “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees. Vera Lynn’s “We’ll Meet Again,” Ella Fitzgerald, Cole Porter’s “My Funny Valentine,” Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’ Armore,” Fred Astaire’s “The Way You Look Tonight,” Verdi, Caberet, and “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes.”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Explaining Europe: the Grand Tour” (p 82).

Resonance

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Miller, Ron K. Resonance: Why Music Moves Us. Open Channel Press, 2026.

Reason read: LibraryThing has this Early Review Program for members. I chose Resonance for its musical theme (obviously).

Music is powerful. We have all heard it before. Music has the ability to change someone’s emotion, their perspective on life, or even their entire future. Music can bring people together with a commonality or introduce new (and sometimes lasting) relationships. Music can be a bodily experience with synethesia or frisson. How people absorb, process and release music can be a physiological response. Music as medicine for patients with Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease. Miller delves into all of this and much, much more in Resonance: Why Music Moves Us. He starts with recognition; how music can evoke an emotion or recall a memory. Later, Miller discusses reverence – how culture, science and technology is shaped by music. Even though I enjoyed Resonance a great deal, some chapters went deep enough into the science to become didactic and dry. A smaller complaint is the repetition (word for word) of some sentences which leads me to believe AI had a hand in the writing.
Some highlights for me were: Miller’s relationship to music on every level; exploring the psychology of a walk-up song in baseball, learning that there is a thing called musical anhedonia, and there are people out there who become archaeoacoustics researchers. A startling concept was the idea that music is an art form that dies as soon as a piece is over. It’s true. It drifts away like campfire smoke. It saddens me that some songs I loved as a teenager might never hit my ear again because I cannot recall the name, melody or performer. That piece of music is lost to me forever, especially if it wasn’t a radio hit at the time of its release. Maybe it was a B-side on a mixed tape someone made for me…now long lost?

Confessional: Miller once burned cds of themed music. I wish he shared the playlist of both the funeral and songs that “pulled [him] toward something better.” I am always on the hunt for new music. Further confessing: a friend of mine committed suicide recently. Before she left this world she and I shared dozens of songs that meant something to us. It is too painful to listen to any of them, but someday I hope they soothe my broken heart.

Author fact: Further proof I was paying attention. Miller is a father to a son with Down syndrome and he has a cat. When I read about his interaction with Jack White I cringed. I too had a similar experience with Natalie Merchant. Eye contact. Her turning away as disappointed; as if I missed my cue to have a greater connection.

Book trivia: I could see this being a textbook for music theory courses.

Music (and if you know what Resonance is about then you know the list is long): AC/DC’s “Hell’s Bells,” Andrew WK’s “Party Hard” and “She is Beautiful,” Angine de Poitrine, “As Tears Go By,” Bach’s D Minor Chaconne, “Baa Baa Black Sheep,” Barney Theme Song, Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Get Back,” Beethoven’s Ninth and Pastoral Symphonies, Bob Weir, Bobby McFerrin, Brahms, Brian Wilson, Bruce Springsteen, Charlie Puth, Chopin, Chris Thile’s Not All Who Wander Are Lost, the Cure, Dave Matthews, David Gray’s “Babylon,” Depeche Mode, Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” and “I Will Always Love You,” Don Henley, Don McLean’s “American Pie,” Duran Duran’s “Rio,” Ed Sheeran, Eddie Vedder’s “Guaranteed,” Elvis, Emmylou Harris, Europa Singers, Five Foot Two, George Jones’s “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” “Go Rest high On That Mountain,” Grateful Dead, Howard Jones’s “Things Can Only Get Better,” Isley Brothers’ “Shout,” Jack White, Jackson Browne, Jeff Buckley, Jerry Garcia, Jewel’s “You Were Meant for Me,” (cowritten by Steve Poltz), Jimmy Buffett, John Cage’s 4’33”, John Cale, Jonh Lennon’s “Across the Universe,” John Mayer’s “3×5,” “Heavier Things,” “Clarity,” and “Room for Squares,” Joni Mitchell, Jorge Calderon, Karen Carpenter, Keith Richards, Korn’s “Blind,” Lead Belly’s “Goodnight Irene,” Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” Liebestraum, M83’s “Reunion,” Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On,” Maurice Ravel’s Bolero, Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” and “Master of Puppets,” Miles Davis, Moody Blues’ “Your Wildest Dreams,” Mount Eerie’s A Crow Looked at Me, Neil Peart, Nick Drake, Niel Gow, Neutral Milk Hotel’s “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea,” Nine Inch Nails, Pat Metheny, Paul McCartney’s “Yesterday,” “Pete Yorn’s musicforthemorningafter, Pink Floyd, Prince, R.E.M.’s “Everbody Hurts,” Rolling Stones’ “(Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” Rush, Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love,” Steve Winwood, Sting, Sturgill Simpson’s “Turtles All the Way Down,” and “Mutiny After Midnight,” Stravinsky, Sufjan Stevens’ “Casimer Pulaski Day” and “Should Have Known Better,” Supergrass, Syd Barrett, Third Eye Blind’s “Semi-Charmed Life,” Tom Petty, Tom Waits, Toto’s “Rosanna,” Townes Van Zandt, Trent Reznor, “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,” Warren Zevon’s “Keep Me In Your Heart,” Whitney Houston, “Wild Thing,” and Yoko Ono.

As an aside, here are the songs and/or musicians I was hoping Miller would mention. These are some of my favorites. “Paper Moon” by sirsy, “Vincent” by Don McLean, “Boston” by Dermot Kennedy, “”King of May” by Natalie Merchant, “Verdi Cries” by 10,000 Maniacs, “Willing and Able” by Noah Kahan, and “Henrietta, Indiana” by Josh Ritter.

Fatal Passage

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McGoogan, Ken. Fatal Passage: The Story of John Rae, the Arctic Hero That Time Forgot. Carroll and Graf Publishers, 2001.

Reason read: the hero of the story, John Rae, was born in September.

McGoogle writes with a vivid imagination about what John Rae’s world must have been like. To orientate the reader to the times, McGoogan rattles off the Who’s Who of the day: Gottschalk, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and Charles Dickens (more on him later). John Rae’s story reads like an action thriller as if he is side by side with Rae the entire time. Chosen to look for the lost Franklin on March 25th, 1848, Rae sounds a bit like Superman: impervious to the cold (temperatures sometimes falling to below negative sixty degrees Fahrenheit), legendary snowshoer and hiker, skilled doctor (qualified to be a surgeon at aged sixteen), successful hunter, fastest of the long-distance canoe-and-boat pilots, able to display impeccable timing when it came to deciding when to turn back or push onward. The list goes on. The one attribute Rae did not possess was the ability to communicate with tact. How he chose to describe Franklin’s demise was his downfall. Researchers questioned Rae’s reports; accusing him of leaving out key details or saying too much (like announcing the probability of cannibalism among Franklin’s men). Lady Jane Franklin never forgave Rae for the latter and successfully sought to ruin him and his reputation.
Despite Rae’s downfall it cannot be disputed that he was the first explorer to rightly surmise that Victoria Land was actually an island. Rae was the first to discover relics from the Franklin expedition. Rae also discovered the hidden gateway to the Northwest Passage. Unfortunately, it was Amundsen some fifty years later who would positively confirm it.
Later in life, John Rae was hired to survey the proposed route for telegraph lines over 2,000 miles from the East Coast and over the Rockies. Sadly, the Hudson Bay Company never did build the telegraph route that Rae proposed.
As an aside, clearly, McGoogle wants justice for John Rae. By default he was not kind to Lady Jane Franklin in his descriptions of her or Charles Dickens. I had an on odd sense of vindication for Rae when McGoogan was able to travel to the very spot of Rae’s cairn and place a plaque in his honor.

Quote that had me giggling, “In 1843, Sir John Franklin, derided as a victim of petticoat domination…” (p 222).

Author fact: McGoogan has a website here (the coolest thing I learned is that McGoogan is also a musician).

Book trivia: Fatal Passage was a best seller in Canada.

Music: “Jenny Lind,” and Gottschalk.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “To the Ends of the Earth: North and South” (p 230). This is obviously to the North.

Don’t Let’s Go To the Dogs Tonight

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Fuller, Alexandria. Don’t Let’s Go To the Dogs Tonight: an African Childhood. Random House, 2001.

Reason read: Recognizing Levy Mwanawasa Day.

There is no question that Alexandria Fuller led a particularly unique childhood growing up on a farm in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) in the 1970s. How many can say their mother habitually slung an Uzi over her shoulder whenever trouble arose? Even Alexandria was photographed with an Uzi in her hands like it was a bouquet of flowers. Fuller and her family seemingly moved with ease through the violence of war, hatred, and death whether it be blowing the head off a venomous snake or fighting off squatters on their land during the Rhodesian Bush War (more of the tamer encounters for the Fullers). They stayed not because they enjoyed the turmoil. It was just what they were accustomed to as a matter of survival because they loved the land. What is so striking about Fuller’s memoir is how candid she is about life in Africa and her family’s daily existence in survival mode. She does not sugarcoat her mother’s alcoholism and subsequent decline into mental illness after losing three children. She does not make light of the droughts and extreme poverty they caused. By the end of the of the Rhodesian Bush War in 1980 the Fuller family moved to Malawi and Zambia. From here Alexandria’s memoir accelerates. She and her older sister, Vanessa, grow up, marry and have kids. Life goes on.

Favorite line, “The world looks better when your belly is full, brighter and more hopeful” (p 184).

Author fact: Fuller is my age.

Book trivia: There are a smattering of black and white photographs of Fuller and her family in Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight and a film of the same name was released in 2024.

Personal connection: when Alexandria mentioned the Cat Stevens song “Morning Has Broken” I was immediately transported to my childhood. My piano teacher loved that song and would play it often.

Setlist: “Flower of Scotland,” “Ole, I am a Bandit,” Beatles’ “Yesterday,” “Ipi Tombi,” Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, Chopin, Roger Whittaker’s “I’m Gonna Leave Ole London Town,” “Morning Has Broken,” “D’ya Think I’m Sexy?” Eric Clapton’s “Cocaine,” “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear,” “Hallelujah,” “Jingle Bells,” Bizet, Puccini, Chopin, Brahms, Debussy, and Rachmaninoff.

BookLust Twist: First, from Book Lust in the chapter called “Dreaming of Africa” (p 76). Then, twice in Book Lust To Go in the chapters “Africa: the Greenest Continent” (p 7) and “Zipping Through Zimbabwe/Roaming Rhodesia” (p 268).

Forward Only

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Watson, David. Forward Only: A Memoir. Self Published, 2026.

Reason read: as a member of LibraryThing’s Early Review Program I am sometimes asked to read interesting books. This is one such book. I would read this one again.

What makes a person land on the illegal side of the law time and time again? What makes a person chose to do the absolute wrong thing each and every chance they get? Sometimes there are people who love them; people who care about them. People who give them the world and still it is not enough.
David Watson lost his grandfather at an age when he needed a father figure the most. It was as if losing his grandfather sent David down a road to perpetual ruin. At age twelve David tried to run away. At age fifteen he stole money from a McDonald’s cash register and went on the run again. After that, it was a series of escapes time and time again. No matter how much his grandmother loved him, David insisted on sometimes stealing from her, lying to her and always letting her down. When David reached dating age he found girlfriends who were willing to be his partner in crime. He latched onto women who would go along with his schemes and scams. Each and every time he would swear this woman was the love of his life. The problem was he did not know how to love. David didn’t know how to be anything but a smooth talker, always wheeling and dealing. Detention, jail, and even years in prison could not stop him. Becoming a father didn’t stop him. Almost being murdered by a Mexican cartel only slowed him down. There was always another scam to be played out. His pattern of hustle was so destructive I couldn’t imagine him ever climbing out of his self imposed hell. His story kept me turning the pages to see what happened next.

If it were not for a cousin who could not or would not (?) stay out of trouble I wouldn’t believe David’s story. It seems impossible that someone could take advantage of the loved ones who are constantly bailing people like this out of sticky situations. But it happens.

Author fact: David Watson has a social media presence.

Book trivia: I don’t know if the final published copy will have photographs, but the ARC did not.

Rogue Entrepreneur

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Krentzel, Elise. Rogue Entrepreneur: Building a Life the World Didn’t Have a Name For. Kumi Books, 2026.

Rogue Entrepreneur is the second book in a trilogy. Under My Skin: Drama Trauma and Rock and Roll was the first. Confessional: I didn’t read it and I probably won’t read the third. So little time for so many books!

What an adventurous life Elise Krentzel has led! There are so many things to unpack in Krentzel’s memoir Rogue Entrepreneur, I am not sure where to begin. Throughout Rogue Entrepreneur she was portrayed as an odd mix of poet and trouble maker; risk taker and romantic. Imagine being taken to court for not following laundry rules in your apartment building or being swindled out of shares of a company she owned with her first husband! Most of Rogue Entrepreneur takes place in the 1980s and 1990s, a era when women were not respected in the music industry (or any business for that matter). Krentzel upped the ante by not only chasing a career in music, but she chose punk as her genre and decided to make a name for herself in Japan. After Japan she moved onto Queens (New York), Switzerland, Germany, Africa and the Netherlands. With the changing times came changing ventures. Krentzel was able to reinvent herself time and time again. She enjoyed challenges and took crazy risks.
I try not to judge an author by the lines they write, but I couldn’t help thinking Krentzel really wanted to emphasis her callousness when she described carelessly leaving one man for another. She wanted to paint the picture of being a hardcore badass. When she had a child at age forty-four, I somehow knew she would end up a single parent.
Even though Krentzel does not frequently orientate her readers to the changing times in Rogue Entrepreneur, her description of the phonebook hanging from a public payphone chain put the timeline into perspective. So did her ability to smoke in the hospital while recovering from peritonitis.
My favorite portion of the book was the advice she gave at the end. She’s not wrong! The was such a fun book that I now want to be friends with her!
I am sure this will be cleaned up in the final edit, but there is some repetition in one of the footnotes, whole sentences were repeated (“Uelie played piano…”) and key words (like a verb) were missing from sentences. I was confused by one inconsistency: Krentzel met Ueli in the spring when flowers were blooming, but says she watched snow falling while at a party that same day. The Land of Mud was as clear as mud to me.

Book trivia: Rogue Entrepreneur should have been published by August 27, 2026.

Music: Al Jolsen, Robert Plant, Bob Geldof, David Bowie, “1-800-273-8255” by Logic, B52s, Baby Grand, the Band, Barry Manilow, the Beatles, Bob Marley and the Wailers’ “Redemption Song,”, Brinkley Schwartz, Bruce Springsteen, Chopin, Earth Wind and Fire’s “That’s the Way of the World,” Eddie and the Hot Rods, Elvis Costello and the Attractions’ “Allison,” Emerson Lake and Palmer’s Tarkus, George Sand, Graham Parker and the Rumours’s “Stick to Me,” “Squeezing Out Sparks,” “Don’t Ask Questions,” “I’m Gonna Tear Your Playhouse Down,” “Thunder and Rain,” and “Discovering Japan,” Grandmaster Caz, Herc, Iggy Pop, Joe Jackson’s “Black and White,” John Lennon, Kiss, Leif Garrett, Lene Lovich, Masayoshi Takanaka’s “Sexy Dance,” Muddy Waters’ “Mannish Boy,” “Hoochie Coochie Man,” “Champagne and Reffer, and “Honey Bee,” Nick Lowe, Noel Pointer, Peter Frampton’s Frampton Comes Alive album, Pink Lady’s “Kiss in the Dark,” the Plastics, Prince, Ryuichi Sakamoto, “Soldier of Love” by Sade, Sex Pistols’ “Never Mind the Bollocks,” Sinead O’Connor’s version of “Nothing Compares 2U,” Steve Khan, the Stranglers, Tot’s “Africa,” Talking Heads, Whipper Whip, Yellow Magic Orchestra, and Yoko Ono.

Among the White Moon Faces

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Lim, Shirley Geok-Lin. Among the White Moon Faces: an Asian-American Memoir of Homelands. The Feminist Press, 1996.

Reason read: Merdeka Day is in August. In 1957 the Federation of Malaya received its independence and became a sovereign state. Read in honor of that event.

Lim begins her memoir with the introspective commentary on her sense of self – the name with which she most identifies, but ends the introduction by saying she found her identity wrapped up in the women who shaped her entire life. She did not have an easy childhood. She lacked women role models to teach her how to be feminine. Her first time wearing a bra reminded me of my own foray into adult garments.
Confessional: I had a hard time reading Among the White Moon Faces. Lim had a tug of war with chronology; going back and forth in time. One minute Lim is making excuses for the Hokkien language, the next she is describing Ah Chan, their servant. Next, Lim has memories of her mother’s appearance but moves quickly to stories of her grandfather or the Tan Family. All along she interrupts herself to ask questions we as readers cannot answer.
Despite the leapfrogging of the timeline, I appreciated Lim’s honesty. Growing up, she was no angel. She admitted to changing grades on a report card and lying about where she was on Friday nights. As the story progressed I lost track of Lim’s age when her father and a nurse scrubbed her body clean. No one had ever taught her her to clean…anything.
Throughout Among the White Moon Faces Lim struggles with abandonment. Her mother left the family early on. Father would bring his dates home and ignore his children. Interspersed in this honest narrative Lim makes commentaries on British colonialism and American waste. She steps away from her memories to voice her opinions about corrupt cultures.
By the end of Among the White Moon Faces I admired Lim for her determination to make something of herself in a very competitive academic society.

Line I liked a lot, “Nurturing is a human act that overleaps categories, but is not free of history” (p 67), and “There were more ways to be a poet than sit still beneath his judgment” (p 144).

Author fact: Geok-Lin also wrote Joss and Gold which I am scheduled to read at some point.

Book trivia: there is a small collection of black and white photographs in Among the White Moon Faces. There are mostly of Shirley as a child.

Music, “A Summer Place,” “Red Sails in the Sunset,” Elvis Presley, Chubby Checker, “Sixteen Candles,” “Strangers in the Night,” “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head,” “Jolly Miller,” “O Susanna,” “She’ll Be Comin’ Round the Mountain,” James Taylor’s “Fire and Rain” and “You’ve Got a Friend,” “On Top of Old Smoky,” Beatles, “Oh Rosemarie, I Love You So, I’m Always Dreaming of You,” “Mockingbird’s Song,” Everly Brothers, Ali Akbar Khan, Hawaiian Wedding Song, Pat Boone’s “April Love,” “Ye Banks and Braes of Bonne Doon,” “The Minstrel Boy,” and Bill Haley and His Comets.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called simply, “Malaysia” (p 40).

Age of Napoleon

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Horne, Alistair. Age of Napoleon. Modern Library, 2004.

Reason read: Napoleon was born on August 15th. Read in his honor.

After already covering Napoleon’s military career in Master of Europe and How Far From Austerlitz, Alistair Horne felt he could concentrate on writing a book about Napoleon’s contributions to French society above and beyond his military career (although that is not left out of the story). Architecture (the construction of the Quai d’Orsay and rescuing Paris’s Sorbonne University), society (encouraging freedom of religion by restoring the relationship with the Vatican and restoring the sanctity of marriage after the Revolution), art, and even the renumbering of streets. Napoleon liked the finer things in life, but could turn on a dime and have little tolerance for those individuals making his beautiful things come to life. Even his wife Josephine was fired from the job of being his wife because she couldn’t produce an heir fast enough.
Horne simultaneously looks future forward as well as historically back to tell Napoleon’s story. He reminds his audience more than once that Napoleon was “no Hitler” and he makes multiple comparisons to World War II. Yet, for all of Napoleon’s military shortcomings, Horne is quick to point out, his legacy was that he was instrumental in creating important and lasting social equalities.

As an aside, I couldn’t help buy think of Dermot Kennedy’s line, “his eyes lit up with all the power” when reading Age of Napoleon. Napoleon was touted as being a hands-on leader. These days, I think his subjects would call him a micromanager or deranged. Just the fact he would ban plays if he didn’t care for them shows his ego.

Author fact: Is it any wonder that Alistair Horne is a British historian? Of course he is.

Book trivia: Age of Napoleon is a quick read, less that 200 pages.

Music: Beethoven’s Fidelo, Te Deum, Chopin, Edith Pilaf, and Le Triomphe de Tra Jan opera.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “The Complex Napoleon” (p 53).

In My Father’s Footsteps

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Matthews, Sebastian. In My Father’s Footsteps. W.W. Norton & Company, 2004

Reason read: Matthews was born in August. Read in his honor.

How do you pay homage to a person who repeatedly broke your heart and let you down as a child; a good guy with harmful tendencies in adulthood? Sebastian Matthews, by turns loved and looked to respect his father. From an early age, father and son had a complicated relationship. When William Matthews died of a heart attack at just 55 it was a shock, but no one was surprised. A womanizer, a drinker, and a smoker (and maybe a midnight toker), Matthews senior was a force to be reckoned with. In My Father’s Footsteps is aptly named for Sebastian followed closely behind his father: a lifelong jazz enthusiast, becoming a writer, and poet unable to commit to any relationship for more than a few dates. Deeply buried resentments over the divorce of his parents; standing in the shadow of his father’s brilliance as a poet and professor; trying to understand the complexity of his inheritance, Matthews carefully picks his way through the emotions to share a loving, yet brutally honest tribute to his father.

Confessional: there was a part of Matthews’s story when he was watching father and son bricklayers build a wall. It reminded me of an earlier story I read about a son following in his father’s footsteps as a bricklayer until he found science.

Author fact: I want to believe Sebastian has found happiness in marriage and fatherhood. As of the publication of In My Father’s Footsteps he still lived in Asheville.

Book trivia: both of Matthews’s parents were poets. At times Matthews would put poetry from each parent side by side.

As an aside, when the police were at Matthews’s father’s apartment they went from room to room turning on lights. Why don’t do they do that in the movies?

Personal connection: Dying alone requires the procurement of a court order before gaining permanent access to the deceased residence. If you die in public, even if it is of natural causes, your body is considered a crime scene and cannot be moved until fully investigated.

Setlist: James Taylor, Cowboy Junkies. Indigo Girls, Joni Mitchell’s Hejira album, Tommy Flanagan, Booker Erwin, John Handy, Carnell Jones, Horace Silver’s “Song for My Father,” Gerry Mulligan, Joe Henderson, Alfredo Kraus, Elton John’s “Your Song,” Bob Dylan’s “On a night Like This” “Idiot Wind,” “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go,” “Shelter From the Storm,” and “Blood on the Tracks,” Mozart, Ella Fitzgerald, Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks, Duke Ellington’s “Cottontail,” “Amazing Grace,” Bach, Miles Davis’s “Flamenco Sketches,” Tallest Trees album, “All Blues,” and “Kind of Blue,” Bob Marley’s Babylon By Bus album, Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section, John Coltrane, Stan Getz’s “Sweet Rain,” the Jazz Messengers, Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Sonny Rollins, Lester Young, Earl Hines, Mal Waldron, Billie Holiday’s “I Can’t Get Started,” and “Miss Brown to You,” John Bunch Trio, Charlie Mingus’ Alum, “Goodbye Porkpie Hat,” and “Better Git It in Your Soul,” Thelonius Monk’s “Round Midnight,” Dexter Gordon, JJ Johnson, Bud Power, “Some Other Spring,” Getz and Gilberto’s “Girl from Ipanema,” Prince, Sweetheart of the Rodeo, Grateful Dead, Anita O’Day, the Police’s Zenyatta Mondatta album, “Easy Living,” “Let’s Get It On,” and “John Wesley Harding.”

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Me, Me, Me: Autobiographies and Memoirs” (p 162).

At the Mercy of the Sea

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Kretschmer, John. At the Mercy of the Sea: the True Story of Three Sailors in a Caribbean Hurricane. International Marine/McGraw Hill, 2007.

Reason read: August is the best time to be on the water. Read in honor of the perfect month for a sail.

John Kretschmer begins his story on November 14th, 1999. His main focus begins with his friend, Carl Wake, captain of the 42′ sailboat La Vie en Rose. Carl was sailing from the Chesapeake Bay to the Caribbean in time to meet Kretschmer for Thanksgiving so this part of At Mercy of the Sea is heartbreakingly personal. [How could it have been Carl’s first and last at-sea voyage?] Tragically, Carl meets up with Hurricane Lenny and does not survive the storm’s wrath. In addition to Carl’s story, Kretschmer also follows the tragedies of Steve Rigby, sailing English Braids and Guillaume Llobregat, captain of Frederic-Anne, also victims of Hurricane Lenny.
Hurricane Lenny was an anomaly, a dangerous freak storm that defied logic. Understanding how a hurricane is supposed to behave plays a huge part of the drama. Part of At Mercy of the Sea is the biography of a hurricane from birth (African, Gulf of Mexico or other) to its landfall slow death. Kretschmer carefully outlines what typically happens from start to finish, beginning with the naming of each hurricane. In this way, he is able to illustrate just how unusual Lenny turned out to be.
Confessional: Like The Diary of Anne Frank, I had a hard time reading towards the end of At the Mercy of the Sea. As the pages turned, the story brought me closer and closer to the demise of the sailors. I knew it was coming, but dreaded the end all the same.

As an aside, last month I read a book about the Vendee Globe race. When Kretschmer mentioned it I was thankful I had more than a passing knowledge of what he was talking about. He also mentioned the book A Voyage for Madmen by Peter Nichols, which is on my Challenge list.

Line I adored, “Retreating into the past is one way to keep your sanity – or disturb it, depending on what you run into there” (p 10). Kretschmer is not wrong. He is able to make keen observations about the psyche of a sailor too long at sea, probably because he has been there himself.
Other lines I really liked, “My wife was weary of my dreams and, worse, downright sick of my realities” (p 70) and “The only way to savor the essence of life is to nearly lose it” (p 173).

Another confessional: reading about hurricanes brings me face to face with conflicting emotions. I got married in the middle of Hurricane Ivan. I was twelve miles out to sea. According to Kretschmer, Ivan produced the highest measured significant wave height, fifty feet.

Author fact: Kretschmer is a professional sailor in his own right.

Book trivia: I would have liked to see photographs of the sailors or, at the very least, their boats.

Music: Louis Armstrong’s “La Vie en Rose,” Edith Pilaf, Neil Young’s “Rust Never Sleeps,” Pink Floyd, and Jimmy Buffett.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “See the Sea” (p 201).

Everything Feels Impossible Until It’s Done

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Van den Broeck, Vincent. Everything Feels Impossible Until It’s Done: How the Life You Build Becomes the Life That Saves You. Publish Nation, 2026.

Reason read: as a member of the Early Review Program for LibraryThing I get to read tragic yet inspirational books. This is one such story.

You get the sense that Vincent’s life was adrift in his younger years. Example: when considering higher education he chose a degree because it sounded impressive. Unbelievably, he did not actually having a clue what it was for. Losing his mother to cancer at a young age must have played a significant part in this drifting. Grief can untether you from reality. It wasn’t until he entered the world of hospitality did Vincent begin to shine and really find his focus. He became a workaholic, taking on too much too soon; opening one restaurant after another; drowning in debt. It took an accident that nearly killed him before he was forced to slow down, take stock of his life and find his future.
You will have to read for yourself, but there are some really beautiful sentences and phrases in Everything Feels Impossible Until It’s Done. So much so that I wanted more of the story. It was too short! I wanted to hear more. Imagine a bumblebee darting from one fragrant flower to another; never taking the time to linger on one bloom for very long. Everything Feels Impossible Until It’s Done is a bumblebee of a story. Vincent never digs into the details of his life more than he needs to…but I wish he did.
As an aside, Vincent called the accident inevitable. I want to know why was it inevitable? Instead, I argue that our system for dealing with reckless or illegal drivers is tragically flawed. If it wasn’t, the driver who struck Vincent would not have been driving at all. Think about it. The driver was dangerous enough before Vincent’s accident to have his license taken away. We can do better as a society.

Book trivia: in the advance copy I received Everything Feels Impossible Until It’s Done did not include photographs. I would have liked to see the restaurant or meet his amazing wife.

Italian Education

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Parks, Tim. An Italian Education: the Further Adventures of an Expatriate in Verona. Grove Press, 1995.

Reason read: to continue the series started in June in honor of a festival.

With Italian Education British-born Tim Parks continues his lighthearted memoir about life outside Verona where he moved in the early 1980s. In addition to capturing the social, political, and cultural life of Italians, Parks introduces family life and raising his children as bilingual Italians. He and his wife Rita already had a toddler, but in the introductory chapters of Italian Education they discovered they were expecting child number two. This time a daughter. Stefi brings all the trials and tribulations of what it means to father a newborn who never sleeps. As Stefi and her brother Michele grow up they give Parks plenty of subject material on schooling (Italian schools do not offer extracurricular pursuits such as music, organized sports, hymns, or classes in carpentry or cooking), what to ask Santa Lucia for at Christmastime, fishing and going to the beach (Italy offers public beaches to avoid being accused of privatization).
Unlike his previous book, Italian Neighbors, Parks writes with an undertone of discontent in Italian Education. Like the soft green mold slowly starting to spoil a loaf of bread, there is a subtle sense of malcontent hidden in the descriptions of his narrative. There is less humor and more criticism. At the end of Italian Education Parks reveals his wife is pregnant with their third child. It is hard to tell if this brings him joy or angst.

Line I liked, “…the Italians are mislaying their rosaries among the clutter of their economic success” (p 312).

Author fact: Even though Parks has written a bunch of books, I am only reading two more: Juggling the Stars and A Season With Verona.

Book trivia: I wish Parks had included some maps of the region.

Music mentioned: Vivaldi’s Concerto in Re Maggiore for Two Mandolins, “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” “Oh When the Saints,” “Imparare in Liberta,” “Bells of Bovolon,” Giuseppe Verdi, Bellini, “Il treno dei desideri,” and L’Aida.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Verona” (p 243). Pretty simple.

Treetops

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Cheever, Susan. Treetops: a Family Memoir. Bantam Books, 1991.

Reason read: Read in honor of Cheever’s birth month in July.

Susan Cheever had already written a biography of her father called Home Before Dark so I was excited when she wrote in the introduction to Treetops that this was a book about the three generations of her mother’s family and Treetops as a place. By the end of the introduction she returns to the men: Tom Watson the inventor who assisted Alexander Graham Bell, Winter the grandfather who started the Yale School of Medicine and of course, her father, acclaimed writer John Cheever. Susan Cheever’s father dominates a great deal of the Treetops story…again. Cheever needs to share her father’s accolades and affairs with a healthy dose of name-dropping. It would have been refreshing if Treetops contained less about the man she had already written a full biography about and concentrated more on her mother’s life. Her mother is talked about as footnotes when she describes the short stories (in detail) of her father’s. Cheever would rather describe her father’s relationships with, and perception of, women as a gender. Most of the time the details of her mother as in reaction to something her father said, did, or wrote. The more Susan Cheever quoted her father’s short stories the less I enjoyed Treetops.

As an aside, when Cheever relived the invention of the telephone and detailed exactly what happened between Alexander Graham Bell and her great-grandfather Thomas Watson, I know she was setting up the historical backdrop to her family’s history, but I couldn’t help but think it was also device to subtly suggest Watson invented the telephone and Bell took all the credit.

Author fact: I have satisfied all of the Susan Cheever books I needed for the Challenge.

Book trivia: there are a smattering of photographs in Treetops.

Music: Ella Fitzgerald, Charlie Parker, and “Happy Birthday.”

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “All in the Family: Writer Dynasties” (p 5). Pearl put it perfectly when she said that when you related to someone famous there is almost an “irresistible temptation to write about the experience” (More Book Lust p 5). Cheever takes it a step further by writing about her famous great grandfather and notable grandfather as well.

Small Tree in a Texas Hurricane

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Benson, Robert Henry. A Small Tree in a Texas Hurricane: a Memoir. Pauraque Ridge Press, 2026.

Reason read: as a member of the Early Review Program for LibraryThing I get to read moving memoirs. This is one such book.

Benson makes you feel as though the two of you are sitting on a big wraparound porch in the summertime gloaming. As darkness grows and we can no longer see each other’s face the mood turns somber; the words become quiet confessional. There is a great deal Benson wants to share in A Small Tree in Texas Hurricane. His childhood and early adolescence was not easy. Peeling back the layers of his father’s volatile personality Benson reveals a hair trigger temper followed by outbursts of violence and crime. Poverty was a constant. Benson had the potential to follow in his father’s hothead footsteps, but through gritty perseverance he chose a different path. Earning a Ph.D in Physics seems an unlikely success for a bricklayer and one-time high school dropout.
Benson’s story is remarkable, but what I appreciated more was the way with words Benson has. He may have a Ph.D. in Physics, but his real talent is writing. I inhaled this book.

As with any advance reader copy, there were a few typos here and there such as quotation marks where they did not belong and a handful misspelled words.

Music: “A Boy Named Sue,” Paul Anka’s “And They Call It Puppy Love,” and “Away in a Manager.”

Walking Along the Ancient Tokaido Road

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Asanuma, Ichiro. Walking Along the Ancient Tokaido Road: a Pilgrim’s Path: Adventures and Transformations (Volume 1: Departures). 2026.

Reason read: as a member of the Early Review Program for LibraryThing, I requested a copy of Walking Along the Ancient Tokaido Road.

Asanuma began his journey in 2006 after surviving a life-changing traffic accident. Walking was prescribed as part of his physical therapy. To feel truly healed he resolved to stand on the Sanjo-Ohashi in Kyoto. Walking along the ancient Tokaido Road became a sixteen year long adventure. Using money from an insurance claim he was able to afford the trip, but he admits that he didn’t really pay much attention to the landscape he traveled through.
Walking Along the Ancient Tokaido Road (volume one) documents the beginning of Asanuma’s journey across Japan’s historical and cultural landscape. Told in three sections, Asanuma begins with “Departure (2006: from Tokyo to Shizuoka).” Part Two is “Insight and Memory (2009) from Shizuoka to Nagoya.” After the first trip, Asanuma started to pay more attention to the people around him. Part Three is called “New Beginnings (2022: from Kuwana to Kyoto).” This section is the final leg of the journey that was previously unfulfilled.
Like many other reviewers I could not identify a genre for this book. It could be seen as a personal memoir. Asanuma shared intimate details about his life such as the fact that he lacked the personality and social skills to mingle with strangers. Walking Along the Ancient Tokaido Road is confessional in that he shares deep feelings.
Walking Along the Ancient Tokaido Road could also be called a photo-journal. Asanuma included and explained in more detail the many different photographs he took; more so than he did of the actual journey. The gorgeous photography sets this book apart. The images are candid, raw and sometimes, moving.
Walking Along the Ancient Tokaido Road could be seen as an historical essay. For example, Asanuma describes the Edo period and the significance of the fifty-three stations of the Tokaido.
I enjoyed the color illustrations as well as the photographs. As an aside, the map of the hedgehogs is cute.