Category: Book Reviews

You Carried Me

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Ohden, Melissa. You Carried Me: a Daughter’s Memoir. New York: Plough Publishing House, 2017.

Reason read: an Early Review for LibraryThing (December 2016 batch).

Ohden knew from an early age she was adopted. For anyone, that alone would conjure up questions surrounding identity. How could it not? Add “survivor of botched abortion” to the resume and a whole new set of mysteries emerge. What happened? Did the birth mother not want me? Did my birth father even know about the pregnancy? How could this happen? What started as a series of mysteries when Ohden was 14 turned into a purpose for life as an adult. You Carried Me is Ohden’s attempt to explain the process.

Ohden tells her story at breakneck speed. Eager to get to the heart of the story she glosses over most of her adolescence and is in college before page 50. It’s no secret I had a love-hate relationship with You Carried Me. Even the title caused me some consternation: I read it as “you should feel guilty for trying to abort me; you carried me.” At times I met Ohden’s words with distracted frustration. Ohden speaks in absolutes. For example, she makes assumptions about the nature of mother/newborn bonding. It’s not always an automatic relationship. It’s pretty typical of some mothers to never emotionally attach to her child; despite it being the child she carried for nine months. Strange as it may seem, there are even hospital classes to help some new mothers connect with their infants. Another example: Ohden describes an accident her father had as a teenager and she blames the altering of so many lives on that accident. How does she know? How could she know? I would have been more comfortable with the assumption that the accident could have altered so many lives. Yes, it might have.
One thing is clear. Ohden writes in an unsophisticated but determined and enthusiastic voice (lots of exclamation points!). Her absolutes and assumptions are all her own. It’s a story impossible to put down once started. At only 166 pages it’s easy to read in one sitting. I read it on a lunch break.

Editing question: is Isaac really someone named Nathan?
Copyright question: did Ohden have permission to reprint Kelly Clarkson’s lyrics to “Stronger”?

Book trivia: black and white pictures were included. What a nice surprise.

Any Human Heart

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Boyd, William. Any Human Heart. Read by Simon Vance. Blackstone Audio, 2011.

Reason read: Most people start a journal in January. this is one giant journal.

The journals of Logan Mountstuart tell of his long and colorful life as an art dealer, writer, lover, spy, prisoner, and sometimes cad. Spanning December 10th, 1923 to October 5th, 1991 we watch as the 20th century unfolds. What makes Any Human Heart so enticing is the inclusion of real events (World War II, the death of JFK,  and the first moon walk, to name a few) and real people, especially from the worlds of art and literature; people like Picasso and Hemingway.

You know the saying, you can’t judge a book by its cover? Well, let it be said, you can’t judge a book by its length either. I was convinced I would have to slog through 500 plus pages half paying attention. Wrong. This was delightful. Devious, but delightful.
There was one review that stuck with me as I was reading Any Human Heart. The New York Times said you could almost forget Logan Mountstuart is not a real person. His journal entries are convincingly honest. I couldn’t agree more.

Lines I liked, “I have no home but all the ingredients of home” (p 181), “You think it begins to diminish with time, the pain, the it comes back and hits you with a rawness and freshness you had forgotten” (p 301), and “As I write this I feel that draining, hollowing helplessness that genuine love for another person produces in you” (p 422). In the end, I loved Logan specifically for this line.

Note: because this was such a long audio book I was afraid I wouldn’t finish listening to it in time. I had to simultaneously read the print version to get through it faster.

Book trivia: this was made into a PBS television series. It aired in 2011.

Author fact: Boyd also wrote Brazzaville Beach, also on my list. Can’t wait to read it.

Nancy said: “wonderful reading” but she said that about the entire chapter and not just Any Human Heart.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter “Just Too Good To Miss” (p 132).

Book of Puka-Puka

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Frisbie, Robert Dean. The Book of Puka-Puka. New York: The Century Co., 1928.

Reason read: National Geographic Travel Month

Puka-Puka is a Polynesian atoll off the coast of New Zealand. Robert Dean Frisbie, originally born in Cleveland, Ohio moved to Puka-Puka for his health and to get away from civilization. He became a trader, married a native, had several children and even died in the Cook Islands. His was one of the earliest accounts of Pacific island life. It’s full of adventure, humor and culture. A great read!

Quote I liked, “He gave me a priceless  recipe for raisin wine which I will whisper to the thirsty reader in due time” (p 12).

Author fact: Frisbie died in the Cook Islands, on Avatiu.

Book trivia: The Book of Puka-Puka was illustrated by Mahlon Blaine.

Nancy said: Frisbie’s is a “classic account” of island life.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Islands, Desert and Otherwise” (p 128).

Hyperion

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Simmons, Dan. Hyperion. New York: Bantam Books, 1989.

Reason read: January is National Science Fiction Month.

A group of seven individuals are recruited to embark on a pilgrimage. Each of the seven, a priest, poet, soldier, captain, detective, consul and scholar have a story to tell. All stories relate back to their interactions, direct and indirect, with a creature called the Shrike on the planet of Hyperion. Simmons does an okay job at making each storyteller’s voice unique but I feel that was the weakest element to Hyperion. In an attempt to make each voice different some characters are exaggerated and come across as dramatic caricatures while others blend ho hum into the woodwork.
The plot itself is convincing. Each pilgrim has something to accomplish on this journey to Hyperion and this first book is the foundation for subsequent sequels. The hook is, if you want to know more, you need to keep reading.
As an aside, even sci-fi stories have to have some element of familiarity and/or reality so that it’s relate-able to readers. Simmons includes warring New Order Shi-ites and Suni shopkeepers along with some Hegemony infidels.

No quotes. But, I can say this. The story of Rachel is the most intriguing, ansd she never says a word in the present day story.

Author fact: I have six Dan Simmons books on my list. Five are in the Hyperion series.

Book trivia: Hyperion is the first book in a series.

Nancy said: not much, just the basic plot.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Space Operas” (p 211).

Italy and the Grand Tour

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Black, Jeremy. Italy and the Grand Tour. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.

Reason read: I think a very common New Year’s resolution for some is to travel. Read in honor of traveling to Italy.

Italy and the Grand Tour provides the reader with a historical perspective on what it meant to visit Italy throughout the eighteenth century, all the while offering little tidbits of interesting facts (Thomas Cook had a travel company and the word bearleader meant guide, for example). Black is determined to analyze the fine line between cosmopolitanism and xenophobia which he insists is cultural but also difficult to determine based on first hand travel journals and letters. He showcases his points with a considerable myriad of quotations and glorious artwork.

Divided into logical sections covering the regions of Italy, accommodations, food, transport, cost, activities, society, religion, art, politics, Italy and the Grand Tour culminates in the chapter on the impact of Italy. Throughout it all, I found it interesting that some things never change in the world of worldly travel. For example, Black pointed out actual itineraries often differed from what had been planned due to spending too long in one area and not leaving enough time for another. Or getting tired of one place and leaving it sooner than planned. Not to mention weather delays and being waylaid by new friends. As if those things would not happen nowadays!
But, the best part of Italy and the Grand Tour was reading the journals and letters of the travelers. They could be Italy’s harshest critics with one word reviews like uninteresting, unsatisfactory, unimpressed, mean, miserable, disappointed, dirty, dismal, disagreeable, beastly, and filthy. I imagined the hell they would raise with those words on modern day social media.

Quote of a quote I liked, “I still persist in thinking Italy a country worth seeing but by no leans worth living in” (p 53). As said by Frederick, 2nd Viscount Bolingbroke.
Another quote, this time direct from author: “Venice was not the sole cockpit of sexual adventure” (p 122).

Author fact: Black has written many other books but they none are on my Challenge list.

Book trivia: the title comes from the term “grand tour” commonly associated with aristocratic British travelers; those who have the money, means and time to go gallivanting through the countryside.

Nancy said: Italy and the Grand Tour is a “nice historical perspective” (p 46).

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Ciao, Italia” (p 46).

Spiderweb For Two

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Enright, Elizabeth. Spiderweb for Two: a Melendy Maze. New York: Listen & Live Audio, 2004.

Reason read: this is the last book in the series to celebrate Enright’s birth month (started in September). I have grown to really like this family. I will miss them.

Here were are, back with the Melendy family. Only in Spiderweb for Two they are less than half the family they are used to being. Father is still traveling the university circuit as a guest lecturer and Mark, Mona and Rush are away at various schools. Left behind are Randy and her brother, Oliver, with the help, Cuffy and Willy. The rest of the family hasn’t been gone a day before Randy is beside herself with boredom. She doesn’t want to play with Oliver. He’s always been the baby of the family and therefore not worth her time…until she discovers a mystery. It starts with a message in the mailbox that takes them on a winter adventure. Each message is a clue to finding another message until they have received fourteen messages and all and it is summer once again.
It’s a cute story. Oliver getting stuck in the chimney was one of my favorite parts.

Profound quote, “Vigorously running bath water always caused Randy, as it does nearly everyone, to wish to sing” (p 80). This quote made me think of Natalie Merchant’s song, “Verdi Cries” and the lyric, “I fill the bath and climb inside, singing.” Maybe there is some truth to Enright’s words.

Author fact: Oliver was the name of Enright’s youngest boy, as it was in the Melendy series.

Book trivia: the e-audio version spells “Cuffy” as “Kaffi”.

Nancy said: absolutely nothing; just listed the title.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Best for Boys and Girls” (p 21).

Dirty Work

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Weston, Gabriel. Dirty Work: a Novel. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2014.

Reason read: I was supposed to review this in July 2014 for the Early Review Program of LibraryThing. I never received a copy so I decided to borrow it from a local library and review it all the same.

Disclaimer: Dirty Work was first published in August 2014 so this is not exactly an “early” review.

When we first meet Nancy Mullion, she is in the middle of a botched abortion. Her patient is bleeding out and she can’t stop it. Subsequently, a four month medical tribunal ensues; an inquisition where Nancy’s actions are scrutinized to determine if she is competent to continue practicing medicine. Throughout her trial, Nancy flashes back to her childhood and the traumas she suffered as a young girl in England. The writing is fuzzy in the flashbacks. Weston purposefully keeps the abuse vague. Here’s what we know about the first incident; we know Mullion was a very small child; too small to sit properly on a bar stool or hold a rubber ball in her tiny grasp. Weston emphasizes this point further to say Mullion’s hand is so small it cannot encircle the bartender’s penis. What the what?!? All in all, I thought Dirty Work was very disjointed in plot and character development. Weston is vague beyond being clever but one thing is clear – abortion is a stronger character than Doctor Nancy Mullion.

People are calling Dirty Work “original” and “courageous”. Original? No. Courageous? Maybe, because it discusses abortions in such detail and is practically a political commentary on the subject.

Captain of the Sleepers

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Montero, Mayra. Captain of the Sleepers. Translated by Edith Grossman. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2002.

Reason read: Hostos Day in Puerto Rico is on January 11th.

This is a very quick read. Once you get into it you won’t be able to put it down, and luckily because of its length you won’t have to. This is the story of Andreas Yasin who has carried a grudge against family friend J.T. Bunker for his entire adult life. Believing Bunker betrayed his family by having an affair with his mother when he was a small boy, Andreas seeks revenge against the now 83 year old man dying of cancer. But what is reality and what is just a childish memory? Set in the time of the Puerto Rican Independence movement politics permeate Andreas’s world.

Best line, “There is nothing more predictable for a mother than her own child” (p 127).

I know I’ve said this before but I am always amazed when my hometown of Monhegan is mentioned somewhere. I knew something was up when Montero gave one of her characters the home town of Port Clyde, Maine.

Author fact: Mayra Montero wrote one of my earliest Early Review books for LibraryThing, Dancing to ‘Almendra’ back in 2007.

Author trivia: I’m guessing Montero likes cats. The photograph of her on the dust jacket of Captain has a picture of her with a beautiful cat on her lap, only she looks like she is trying to strangle it!

Book trivia: I read this in one insomnia fueled night. It’s only 180 pages long.

Nancy said: Nancy has more to say about the translator than the book.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Cavorting Through the Caribbean: Puerto Rico (p 57).

Freedom at Midnight

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Collins, Larry and Dominique Lapierre. Freedom at Midnight. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975.

Reason read: November is the best time to visit India…or so they say.

I have to admit I had a love-hate relationship with Freedom at Midnight. At times I found it incredibly interesting while other times it was as boring as taupe. This is the kind of book a historian could really drool over. Often times it reads like a novel in its detail.
My takeaways: It is profound to think that the age old antagonism between the millions of Hindus and millions of Moslems is seemingly irreconcilable and Freedom at Midnight provides a wonderful, if abbreviated, biography of Gandhi.

Author fact(s): Larry Collins was born in Hartford, CT and Dominique Lapierre was born in France.

Book trivia: Freedom at Midnight include some pretty interesting photographs as well as one or two disturbing ones.

Nancy said: Reading Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie led Pearl to read Freedom at Midnight (from the Book Lust introduction). She also said Freedom at Midnight was “required reading for those interested in understanding colonial and postcolonial India from a non-Indian point of view” (p 125-126).

Confessional: I started to read Freedom at Midnight five (yes, five) years ago. The start of this blog has been hanging out since 2011.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust and More Book Lust. In Book Lust in the introduction (p xi) and in More Book Lust in the chapter called “India: A Reader’s Itinerary” (p 125).

River of Doubt

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Millard, Candice. River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey. Read by Paul Michael. Westminster, MD: Books on Tape, 2005.

Reason: Theodore Roosevelt was the first American to win a Nobel Prize.

Millard paints Roosevelt’s biography in broad strokes, reviewing his fragile health as a child, the loss of his mother and wife in the same 24 hours (Valentine’s Day of all days), and his need to push his physical limits when faced with tragedies or failures. It is this need that sets the stage for Millard’s true focus: Roosevelt’s South American expedition to an uncharted tributary of the Amazon. He refused to go where everyone else had trod and yet, he expected the excursion to be ho-hum and without incident. Silly man. Millard’s account of the expedition has it all, excitement, adventure, violence, death and madness.

As an aside, can I just say I loved the fact that packed among Roosevelt’s supplies was a bottle of Tabasco? Not just hot sauce, but Tabasco by name.

Author fact: Millard used to be the editor for National Geographic Magazine.

Book trivia: My favorite photograph in River of Doubt is one of Kermit. His piercing stare says it all.

Audio trivia: Paul Michael’s accents are great.

Nancy said: “fast paced, well written and difficult to put down” (p 17). I would definitely agree.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the obvious chapter called “Amazonia” (p 17).

December Did Not

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December did not suck entirely. I was able to run 97 miles out of the 97 promised. The in-law holiday party was a lot of fun and I got to most of the books on my list:
Nonfiction:

  • Conquest of the Incas by John Hemming (DNF)
  • Rainbow’s End by Lauren St. John
  • Paul Revere and the World He Lived in by Esther Forbes
  • On the Ocean by Pytheas (translated by Christina Horst Roseman)
  • Geometry of Love by Margaret Visser
  • Freedom at Midnight by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre .
  • River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey by Candice Millard (AB)

Fiction:

  • Tu by Patricia Grace – I read this in four days because it was due back at a library that didn’t allow renewals.

Series:

  • Spiderweb for Two by Elizabeth Enright. I listened to this on audio on my lunch breaks. It was a good way to escape for a little while each day. Confessional: I didn’t finish the whole thing but since it is a continuation of the series it doesn’t matter.

Early Review:

  • Yoga for Athletes by Ryanne Cunningham – this was an October book that took me a little time to review because I was too busy using it to run!
  • Disaster Falls: a family story by Stephane Gerson

2017: a new dawn

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What can I tell you about the new year? Not much. I can tell you about the Challenge books! Here’s what I have planned:

Nonfiction:

  • The Book of Puka-Puka by Robert Dean Frisbie ~ in honor of National Geographic Travel Month
  • Italy and the Grand Tour by Jeremy Black ~ in honor of travel and a personal resolution to see Italy some day
  • Another Life by Michael Korda ~ in honor of the selfishness of resolutions (it’s all about me).

Fiction:

  • Captain of the Sleepers by Mayra Montero ~ in honor of Hostos Day in Puerto Rico
  • Hyperion by Dan Simmons ~ in honor of Science Fiction month
  • Spiderweb for Two by Elizabeth Enright ~ to continue the series started in September (no I didn’t finish this last month like I thought I would)
  • Any Human Heart by William Boyd ~ in honor of the month most people start a journal

Early Review:

  • Dirty Work by Gabriel Weston (NOTE: I didn’t actually receive this as an Early Review. I was supposed to back in 2014. I just decided to borrow it from the local library & read it anyway).

Disaster Falls

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Gerson, Stephane. Disaster Falls: a Family Story. New York: Crown, 2017.

Reason read: a selection for the Early Review Program of LibraryThing.

Grief is hard to explain to another individual. As a listener, unless you have experienced the kind of trauma that changes your whole life it is hard to wrap your brain around it. How does one comprehend an emotion like grief? You may recognize pieces of trauma like how small recognitions in a foreign town you swear you have never visited before give you a sense of deja vu.
Gerson’s story might be redundant in its telling, but that is a part of the grieving process; to tell the story as many times as possible to anyone who will listen. You go over details, searching for truths; for explanations and when you have exhausted your examination you do it again and again, hoping for a different outcome. It’s a never ending cycle of trying to find the Why in tragedy. Especially when the real tragedy of the situation is they (the Gerson family) had real misgivings about the falls before even running the rapids. They had doubt and doubt is the great provoker of the “what if?” game.

I connected with Gerson on one small detail: how chronology becomes “before the accident/after the accident”. For me, everything relating to time became either “before dad died” or “after dad died”. If someone gave me a date I would quickly calculate which side of death my father was on. I say this as a matter of fact, but it is a product of my grief.

Confessional: my aunt lost her son five years ago. In the days, weeks, months and even several years following his death I seriously wondered if she would die of a broken heart and my family would be burying her as well. Her grief was profound and in some ways, complete. It took over her entire existence. I can only imagine Gerson suffered the same hollowing out as my aunt. As my grandmother once said after losing my father, “no parent is supposed to bury a child.”

As an aside: people have been reviewing Disaster Falls since late September so I feel a I am a little late to the party. Not as late as the people who will win an advanced copy in the next month or so, but late just the same.

Author fact: Gerson lost his father in the exact opposite manner of losing his son. Whereas as his son was taken suddenly, Gerson’s father planned his death to the minute.

Book trivia: no photos

Yoga for Athletes

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Cunningham, Ryanne. Yoga for Athletes. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 2017.

Reason read: Early review program for LibraryThing.

Disclaimer: I had to use this book for a few weeks before I could review it. I am a firm believer in yoga to supplement all sports activity.

  • Likes: Pose finder index was very helpful.
  • Photographs of people with different body types was great (instead of photographs all of the same model).
  • Testimonies from professional and nonprofessional athletes add character to the book.
  • Sections on specific sports to target key areas for those who want “quick” routines. I’m a runner so I jumped right to “my” section a few times.
  • Directional language is very straightforward.

Dislikes:

  • some poses have modifications while others do not. All poses can be modified.
  • Some redundancy – some poses are shown more than once (cat cow, spine rolling, boat pose to name a few). The duplication implies filler, like there was no enough content for a complete book.
  • Some sections out of sequence; warming up poses before the “warming up” chapter, for example.
  • No warning on the more dangerous poses (like wheel); I would have liked to see the modification illustrated.
  • Awful outfits for most of the models (especially the men). What’s with the Wednesday tights?

Conquest of the Incas

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Hemming, John. The Conquest of the Incas. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Inc., 1970.

Reason read: December is supposedly the best time to visit Peru. Who knew?

Hemming explains his book as such, “Here I have tried to penetrate the clouds of conflicting hyperbole in contemporary reports and treatises” (p 17).

It is always difficult to read histories such as this because when it comes right down to it, this is a conquest of a people who were indigenous to the land; in other words, people who were “there” first. I found myself holding my breath when I read the sentence, “the moment had finally come when the first Spaniards were to confront the ruler of Peru” (page 33) because you just knew they were going to execute him at some point (and they did). All that aside, Hemming does a thorough job detailing the Spanish conquest of Peru. It is a worthy read, especially if you are planning to visit the region.

As an aside, Francisco Pizarro’s fanatical determination reminded me not a little of Percy Fawcett and his expedition into the Amazon. Which then reminded me of River of Doubt by Candice Millard, which I am reading now.

Author fact: Hemming is an expert on the Incas.

Book trivia: Conquest includes six pages of maps.

Nancy said: Conquest is one of three major histories of the Spanish Conquest of Peru.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Peru(sing) Peru” (p 177).