Category: Book Reviews

Paul Revere and the World He Lived In

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Forbes, Esther. Paul Revere & the World He Lived In. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1942.

Reason read: Paul Revere was baptized on January 1st, 1735. But. But! But, back in those days the child was usually baptized the day after birth… so I’m thinking he was actually born on 12/31. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

In the beginning Apollos Rivoire came to Boston with an American dream…

Esther Forbes wrote Paul Revere with a good natured, almost folksy tone. I could almost see the twinkle in her eye by her choice of words. Here are some quotes to illustrate my point, “Like so many men of his years and period, Mr. Coney was enjoying his third wife – ‘Prudent Mary,’ Judge Sewall calls her” (p 8), “Boston had not yet run out of either rum or religion fervor” (p 13), and “Only once did she save labor by twinning” (p 21). I could go on and on.
But, just because Ms. Forbes wasn’t didactic in her tone doesn’t mean she wasn’t informative. Her narrative paints a thoroughly detailed and informative account of Paul Revere’s life and times. As an added bonus, the city of Boston also is biographied. One such fun detail is about Boston’s streets: If the present day street is straight it probably used to be sea bottom. “Wherever the streets are snarled up, you are standing in the ancient town itself” (p 49). The next time I am there, I’m going to check that out for myself.

As an aside, I am so glad Revere didn’t teach himself dentistry.

Author fact: Esther Forbes also wrote Johnny Tremaine, a book my sister still has on her bookshelf.

Book trivia: Paul Revere includes photographs. That’s the boring trivia. The more interesting one is that the table of contents includes an abstract of each chapter. I have never seen that before.

Nancy said: Forbes used the information collected for Paul Revere to write Johnny Tremaine.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Historical Fiction for Kids of all Ages” (p 114).

Rainbow’s End

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St. John, Lauren. rainbow’s end: A Memoir of Childhood, War and an African Farm. New York: Scribner, 2007.

Reason read: December 4th used to be Shangani Day in Rhodesia.

Rainbow’s End is a 1000 acre farm and game preserve in Rhodesia. In the fall of 1978 eleven year old Lauren St. John moves there with her family. This is during the dying, yet bloody, last stages of the Rhodesian Bush War. Rainbow’s End isn’t just a sprawling farm, it is also the scene of a bloody massacre less than a year earlier. The blood evidence still lingered.
Because Lauren’s coming of age years coincided with her time on the Rainbow’s End farm and the end of Rhodesia her memoir is part teenage angst biography and part commentary on the the war and its politics. Was it about Communism versus democracy or black against white? What makes Rainbow’s End so interesting is Lauren’s perception of being white in newly formed Zimbabwe after Independence and the realization she has been loving a war for all the wrong reasons.
There is no doubt of Rhodesia’s untamed beauty.

A line I liked, “Then I relocated to the sofa where I had my new books fanned around me like lives waiting to be lived” (p 48). As an aside, I can remember doing that same thing when I was a kid. I’d put the books in a row and pick one based on where I wanted to go next.

Author fact: St. John has also written a few sports books. None of them are on my list.

Book trivia: rainbow’s end includes a smattering of non-personal (if you don’t count the cover) photographs and a couple of maps. Interestingly enough, one of the maps includes “hippo pools.” Oh goody.

Nancy said: nada. She just listed it for the chapter.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Zipping Through Zambia/Roaming Rhodesia” (p 269).

Geometry of Love

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Visser, Margaret. The Geometry of Love: Space, Time, Mystery, and Meaning in an Ordinary Church. New York: North Point Press, 2000.

Reason read: Saturnalia Solstice in Rome happens in December.

Author fact: Visser was born in South Africa.

The Sant’ Agnese fouri le Mura church is named for a twelve year old girl named Agnes who was murdered in 305 A.D. Her throat was cut after she refused to marry the son of a Roman prefect. The name literally means “Saint Agnes Outside the Walls”. In addition to a physical description of the church Visser supplies a mental and spiritual picture as well. She takes the reader on a journey back to the roots of Christianity with etymology lessons thrown in for good measure. My favorite part was the comparison of church to theater. Of audience and performance. Evocation of imagination and emotion in both arenas. Geometry of Love is for anyone with a good imagination and wants to “see” Sant’ Agnese fouri le Mura church for him or herself.

My one criticism is the etymology. Visser pauses to tease apart words to reveal their deeper meaning quite often. Words like remember, mind, theatre, nave, orientation, gospel, error, heresy, pilgrim, passion, orthodoxy (I could go on and on and on) are explained. It reminded me of trying to have a conversation in the woods with a good friend who happened to also be an avid birder. Every sentence was punctuated or interrupted with “Did you hear that? That was a female Hylocichla mustelina…adolescent, of course.” And then we would pause to listen to the bird that, to me, sounded like every other brown bird in the trees. Having a normal back and forth conversation was damn near impossible.

Quotes I liked, “…the sea is a major metaphor in Greek literature for fate and necessity, or circumstances otherwise beyond human control” (p 62), “Today, the lambs arrive at Sant’ Agnese’s by car” (p 120), and “For anyone who is not spiritually allergic to churches, to walk into a beautiful church is to encounter understanding, to hear echoes of the soul’s own experiences” (p 125).

Book trivia: Despite the fact this book focuses on a particular church there are no photographs of it in Geometry of Love. Bummer. I really would have liked to see the statue of Agnes since Visser describes it so lovingly.

Nancy said: Geometry of Love is “the study” of the Sant’ Agnese fouri le Mura church.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Roman Holiday” (p 189).

On the Ocean

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Pytheas of Massalia. On the Ocean. Translated by Christina Horst Roseman. Chicago: Ares Publishers, Inc., 1994.

Reason read: December is a good time to visit Greece, if you are so inclined to travel this holiday season.

Probably the biggest take-away I got from Christina Horst Roseman’s translation of On the Ocean was that Pytheas did not intend it as a sailing guide. What is amazing is that despite eighteen known ancient writers making reference to Pytheas over an 850 year-span, his original writings do not exist at all. It is obvious that On the Ocean was an important document but what happened to it? How was it not preserved in some way? In addition, Roseman states, “special problems are also raised by the work of two authors who probably made use of Pytheas, but in whose surviving work he is not named” (p 18). Wouldn’t that be considered plagiarism…if they had such a thing back then? A great deal of Roseman’s text is comparing what Strabo, Polybios and Pliny wrote as they were considered rivals of Pytheas.

Author fact: Roseman admits that through the years, because not a shred of Pytheas’s original writings exist, “assumptions have been accepted” about On the Ocean. I think that would be true of anything without substantiated proof. Rumor becomes real after awhile.

Book trivia: On the Ocean has an index of Greek words but no dictionary. There are quite a few passages in Greek without translation so right away I found it inconvenient.

Nancy said: not much aside from the writings of Pytheas don’t exist anymore.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Here Be Dragons: the Great Explorers and Expeditions” (p 111).

Tu

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Grace, Patricia. Tu. University of Hawaii Press, 2004.

Reason read: New Zealand was discovered in December

The novel Tu opens and closes with a letter. New Zealander Tu Hokowhitu-a-Tu owes an explanation to his niece and nephew, Rimini and Benedict. Sandwiched between the letters there are Tu’s journals interspersed with third person flashbacks. In his journals Tu tries to tackle the war in his own words. The war everyone is signing up for. World War II. In flashbacks we learn Big Brother Pita thought he should stay home to care for his family until the fighting pulls him in and seesm to be the only way out. Pita follows feisty Brother Rangi, already wild with battle. Left behind is little Te Hokowhitu-a-Tu. Too-young-to-go-to-war Tu, but there’s no place he would rather be. Maybe because of his brothers? He wants to be useful. He wants to get away. Through his journals he implies enlistment means freedom and despite being underage he signs up for the Maori Battalion.
When it is all said and done, and the war is over(sorry, accidental spoiler alert), there is a poignant moment when Tu asks himself who will he be now that the war is finished and there is no more fighting. Where is his place in life?

I found it interesting that all three brothers would want to go into battle after seeing what war did to their father. Coming back from World War I and wracked by post traumatic stress disorder, their father at times was a wild and raging man; given to fits of insanity and violence.

Interesting to note: New Zealand’s June had 31 days back in 1943.

A quote that got me, “…I’ve decided I’ll write only when there are enough words in my head to create a flow to paper through a warmed up pen” (p 23). How many times have I said that same thing? Another quote, “When you see a man fall you’re not sure whether or not it was your bullet or someone else’s that dropped him, so his death does not feel so real to you” (p 82). Two more: “Perhaps there’s an in-between state where ghosts walk in and out of you, or where you could be your own ghost coming and going” (p 180), and “Reading intrudes on thought and takes a man away from so much self-pity” (p 238).

Author fact: Grace is not Patricia’s given last name. But, that’s not the interesting fact. She was inspired to write Tu by her Maori father’s involvement in World War II. He went to fight for the very country that was trying to control his.

Book trivia: Tu won the Montana New Zealand Book Award.

Nancy said: “…beautifully written and depressing…” (p 125). I would have to agree.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Kwikis Forever!: New Zealand” (p 125).

Wherever You Go

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Kabat-Zinn, Jon. Wherever You Go, There You Are: mindfulness and meditation in everyday life. Read by Jon Kabat-Zinn. California: Renaissance Media, 1994.

Reason read: Mindfulness around the holidays is good to have! I’m starting early.

If you are reading Wherever You Go just to say you have read Wherever You Go (like I am) this will take you no time at all. Sometimes a page is as short as a paragraph or just a couple of sentences. But, if you are looking for mindfulness it is best to read this book slowly. Let each section sink in and be sure to savor each line. It is a basic introduction to Buddhist meditation without of mumbo jumbo.

As an aside, I thought this went well to follow MindValley creator Vishen Lakhiani’s book Code of the Extraordinary Mind.

Lines I really like, “best to meditate…” Whoops. Scratch that. No part of Wherever You Go may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever. No favorite quotes for this review.

Author fact: Kabat-Zinn is the founder and director or the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center.

Book trivia: this didn’t come with my copy of Wherever You Go, but Zinn mentions a series of mindfulness meditation practice tapes that are to be used in conjunction with the book.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the obvious chapter called “Help Yourself” (p 110).

Jingle the Books

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December is going to be a crazy month. I need to run 93  miles. I will be hosting my in-law’s Holiday party for the first time. I’m going to the Christmas Eve Patriots Game. What else? Oh. The books!

Nonfiction:

  • Conquest of the Incas by John Hemming ~ in honor of December being the best time to visit Peru
  • Rainbow’s End by Lauren St. John ~ in honor of Shangani Day in Rhodesia.
  • Paul Revere and the World He Lived in by Esther Forbes ~ in honor of Revere’s birth month (I’m guessing since he was baptized on January first.)
  • On the Ocean by Pytheas (translated by Christina Horst Roseman) ~ in honor of finally finding a copy of this book!
  • Geometry of Love by Margaret Visser ~ in honor of Rome’s Saturnalia Solstice.
  • Freedom at Midnight by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre ~ in honor of December being the best time to visit India.

Fiction:

  • Tu by Patricia Grace ~ in honor of New Zealand being discovered in December.

Series:

  • Spiderweb for Two by Elizabeth Enright ~ in honor of finishing the series started in September in honor of Enright’s birth month.

Early Review:

  • Yoga for Athletes by Ryanne Cunningham ~ for LibraryThing

Thanks for the Books

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November was a stressful month. The injury that sidelined me for the last half marathon of the season continued to plague me & myself but I pushed through it – ran 70 miles for the month. I don’t think I have ever mentioned this here but…back on January I was a dumbass and agreed to a 1000k challenge. By November 1st I had 267k left to go. I’m now down to 151k. Almost 100 miles. But enough of that. It stresses me out to even think about it.

Here are the books finished for November:
Fiction:

  • Goodbye, Mr. Chips by James Hilton. I thought of this as a short story because it’s less than 100 pages long.
  • Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
  • The City and the City by China Mieville (AB)
  • Advise and Consent by Allen Drury – confessional: I knew that a fictional political book might bore the crap out of me but what I didn’t expect was outright disgust after the election. I couldn’t stomach the contents of Advise and Consent.

Series:

  • Then There Were Five by Elizabeth Enright. (AB)
  • Love Songs From a Shallow Grave by Colin Cotterill
  • Toast to Tomorrow by Manning Coles

Nonfiction:

  • Living Poor by Moritz Thomsen
  • Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn (audio and print)
  • Baby Doctor by Perri Klass
  • The Fifties by David Halberstam

Postscript: it came in too late for me to mention here, but I DID get that Early Review book that I was pining for. I’ll review it next month.

Advise and Consent

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Drury, Allen. Advise and Consent. New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1959.

Reason read: Not to state the obvious but November is election month and unless you have been living under a rock you know we have to elect a new president.

Confessional: I just couldn’t finish this…maybe because of the election? I’m not sure. I just feel as if this country is broken – very, very broken and reading about politics, even fictional, at this time is not a good thing.

The inside flap to Advise and Consent states it is “…a story so sweeping and complex in its conception that each segment alone would make an enthralling book.” Right. I’m sure that’s why the entire story is over 600 pages long. Drury has crafted five segments: Bob Munson’s book, Seab Cooley’s book, Brigham Anderson’s book, Orrin Knox’s book and Advise and Consent.
Advise and Consent opens with the announcement of the President of the United State’s controversial appointment of Bob Leffingwell as Secretary of State. Right away Drury’s language is witty and mischievous as if there is a twinkle in the eye of the storyteller. If you have ever watched “House of Cards” then you know how deviously politics can be played out. Advise and Consent is no different.

Author fact: Drury covered politics as a reporter for multiple publications including The New York Times.

Book trivia: Advise and Consent has a few drawings by Arthur Shilstone.

Other book trivia: Advise and Consent won a Pulitzer.

Other, other book trivia: Advise and Consent was made into a movie.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Politics of Fiction” (p 189)

The Fifties

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Halberstam, David. The Fifties. New York: Villard Books, 1993.

Reason read: November is clean up month. The last month to finish books started during the year.

The 1950s. The greatest generation. To put it into perspective, Churchill announced America was poised to be the most powerful country in the world by 1950. The 1950s also gave birth to the microwave oven, Lucy and Desi, desegregation, Holiday Inns, the photocopier, McDonald’s restaurant, the credit card, the polio vaccination, hip=shaking Elvis, the discovery of DNA, the color TV…I could go on and on but Halberstam does that for me brilliantly in The Fifties. He covers everything from inventions to politics; from fads to phenomenons; from people to places.

One of the best things about The Fifties is the insight into personal lives. For example, who knew that General Douglas MacArthur was a mama’s boy? She “took up residence in a nearby hotel for four years” (p 80), while MacArthur was in school. Or that Lucille Ball was adamant about her real Cuban husband playing the role in I Love Lucy?

As an aside: you can’t launch into the 1950s without backing up and talking about the mid to late 1940s. Expect a little history lesson before the history lesson.

Author fact: Halberstam’s coming of age happened during the 50s. This era is “his” generation.

Book trivia: As one would expect, there are photographs. Just not enough of them.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “David Halberstam: Too Good To Miss” (p). Nancy Pearl mentioned this is one of her Halberstam favorites.

Neverwhere

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Gaiman, Neil. Neverwhere. New York: Avon Books, 1997.

Reason read: Gaiman was born in the month of November.

Neverwhere opens with mousy nondescript Richard Mayhew on the eve of his departure for London. For some reason he needs his palm read by a mysterious old woman. Adding to the intrigue, she tells him he will go to London, but not any London she knows. And with that, she leaves him. Fast forward to London. Mayhew is a businessman with a flat & a pretty fiancee. All seems well and yet, one night after an argument with Jessica, Richard has the misfortune of rescuing a strange girl bleeding on the sidewalk. From then on nothing is the same. True to the fortune teller’s words, he no longer lives in any London he’s ever known. His world is now full of smoke and angels, monsters and sewers, talking rats and the girl he rescued, Door. There is a London Above and a London Below. All he wants to do is get back to his own world. All Door wants to do is find out why her entire family was slaughtered. Their missions couldn’t be any more different from one another but yet they need each other.

I am choosing one quote because I think it sums up Neverwhere perfectly. Richard is writing a diary post in his head, “On Friday I had a job, a fiancee, a home and a life that made sense…Then I found an injured girl bleeding on the pavement and I tried to be a Good Samaritan. Now I’ve got no fiancee, no home, no job and I’m walking around a couple of hundred feet under the streets of London with the projected life expectancy of a suicidal fruitfly” (p 120). After I was done laughing I realized this quote should be the book review. That is the entire story in a nutshell, thanks to the protagonist.

Confessional: whenever I thought about Neverwhere my mind slid to Mieville’s The City and the City. Both are fantasy. Both take place in overlapping societies. Both deal with murder and the ever persistent need to get “home”, wherever that may be.
As an aside, I was surprised by the amount of violence in Neverwhere. Mr. Vandemar and Mr. Croup are a couple of vicious, crazy characters.

Author fact: Gaiman is best known for his graphic novel series The Sandman. Not a one is on my list. Bummer.

Book trivia: Neverwhere is Gaiman’s first novel.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Best For Teens” (p 24).

City and the City

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Mieville, China. The City and the City. Read by John Lee. New York: Random House, 2009.

Reason read: November is Imagination month and believe me, this book takes the imagination to the moon.

Despite the fact Tyador Borlu is investigating the murder of foreign student Mahalia Geary, the real main characters of The City and the City are the city and the city, Beszel and Ul Qoma. In order to wrap your brain around the plot you first need to understand the landscape. Each city shares essentially the same geographic space. Members of each city are trained to “ignore” the other and to perceive “their” city as different from that other one. Everything, from the clothes people wear to the architectural styles of the buildings, is seen as unique to the people within “their” city. Residents are taught to have different languages and mannerisms to further differentiate themselves; and to acknowledge the other city’s existence or “see” is called Breach. Breach is worse than murder. Residents need to learn how to “unsee” the other city or face the consequences of Breach. Only Copula Hall exists in both cities and is in fact the gateway to travel from one city to another.
But, back to the plot: murder victim Mahalia Geary was found mutilated in Borlu’s city, Beszel, but after some investigation Tyador Borlu learns she had connections to that other city, Ul Qoma. And to complicate matters, she was researching a third city, Orciny. Was her investigation getting too close to the truth? Was she murdered because she was about to expose a completely different society with nefarious activities? As Borlu gets closer to the truth he increases his chances of Breach.

As an aside, I now know why I don’t do well with fantasy and science fiction. The weird names that seem to be a staple of the genres are hard to pronounce and even harder to remember. No wonder I didn’t do well in my foreign language class.

Author fact: I read somewhere that Mieville wrote The City and the City for his dying mother since she loved police procedurals.

Book trivia: The City and the City won a Hugo award and many, many others.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter appropriately called “Travels to Imaginary Places” (p 236).

Baby Doctor

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Klass, Perri. Baby Doctor: a Pediatrician’s Training. New York: Random House, 1992.

Reason read: November is National Health Month.

Think of Baby Doctor as part memoir, part journal and part collection of essays. Klass starts from the logical beginning, her first night on call as an intern. Fresh out of medical school she finds herself in the neonatal intensive care unit with a three pound baby who can’t breathe. Over the next 300 pages she tells us what it’s like to worry about a young mother’s ability to care for a newborn, what it’s like to watch a patient die, what it’s like to fear the accusation of child abuse in her own home and even, shockingly, what it’s like to be stalked and harassed. As her knowledge progresses and her confidence grows, Klass encounters new challenges such as resident. Klass also addresses heavier topics such as feminism and playing God; when to intervene and when to let nature take it’s course. I found both sections enlightening.

Eye opener: which came firstI can’t imagine what it takes to be a doctor, never mind a pediatrician, charged with caring for ill people children all day. I can’t imagine being a writer, thinking about your next essays at the same time as being a pediatrician, either.

Honest quotes to quote, “I don’t even try to like lost of people” (p 80) and “It is considered bad form to arrive at the destination hospital, leap briskly from the ambulance, and throw up” (p 243). True.

Author fact: Being a doctor wasn’t enough for Perri Klass. She wanted to be a writer as well.She graduated from Harvard Medical School and wrote for the New York Times.

Book trivia: I don’t know what kind of photographs I was hoping for, but they weren’t there either way.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Physicians Writing More Than Prescriptions” (p 185).

Toast To Tomorrow

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Coles, Manning. A Toast To Tomorrow. Boulder: Rue Morgue Press, 1940.

Reason read: to continue the series started in October in honor of Octoberfest.

Spoiler Alert: In the first installment of Manning Coles’s series the reader is to think Tommy Hambledon has drowned. However, on the cover of A Toast to Tomorrow it reads “The second Tommy Hambledon book” so you know he’s in it somehow. No mystery there.
The real mystery begins within a radio broadcast. Someone is sending Morse coded messages hidden in a drama; a code that hasn’t been used since World War I. British Intelligence knows something is amiss. But what? One of my favorite parts of Toast was the different ways key people heard the broadcast and how they reacted.
But, back to Tommy Hambledon. He washes ashore in Belgium with a nasty wound to the head and a chewed up face. He can’t remember his own name but can speak German fluently. His rescuers assume he is wounded German soldier and Hambledon agrees with that identity until his memory comes back: probably the best line to sum up A Toast to Tomorrow is uttered by Hambledon: “”I am the Deputy Chief on the German Police,” said the British Intelligence Agent” (p 48). The intensity of A Toast To Tomorrow comes from German officials slowly starting to question Hambledon. They can’t find evidence of him being a soldier, or even German. The more they question the more Tommy Hambledon is in danger of being exposed. He needs to run but the question is when is it too late?

Author fact: Adelaide Oke Manning died from throat cancer.

Book trivia: the English title for A Toast to Tomorrow is Pray Silence.

Book Lust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Intriguing Novels” (p 124).

Love Songs From a Shallow Grave

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Cotterill, Colin. Love Songs From a Shallow Grave. New York: SoHo Press, 2010.

Reason read: I started this series in May 2016 in honor of Laos and Rocket Day. It’s with mixed emotions that I announce this is the last book on my list. While the series goes on for me, it ends here.

Dr. Siri is just trying to watch a movie with his lovely wife, Madame Daeng, when he is rudely called away to examine the naked body of a young female security officer found in a sauna with an epee through the heart. In quick succession two more women are found murdered in the same manner. Dr. Siri can’t just be the national (and reluctant) coroner. He needs to find out who did this before the wrong man is condemned in public court. There is one problem, Dr. Siri is the only one who believes they have the wrong man and he’s locked up in a Cambodian prison.

It is always great when a series has strong supporting characters that only get stronger with each installment. Madame Daeng, Inspector Phosy, and best friend Civilai are back.. Even Mr. Geung, Dr. Siri’s assistant, is in the action. We learn in this installment that he gets his hair permed by Nurse Dtui.

Quotes I liked or laughed at: “To find a young crocodile with a good mind among the flock of flamingos was a rare delight” (p 8) and “Not knowing what’s going on makes my teeth curl with frustration” (p 35). Here’s a couple of not so funny ones to make you think: “Hungry people made poor environmentalists” (p 70) and “And what you don’t find you don’t lose” (p 298). Right.

Author fact: What have I told you thus far about Colin Cotterill? I mentioned his website twice (because I love it so much). I also told you he lived in Thailand and has taught in Australia. New info: he has a wife named Jessi and has a bunch of dogs.

Book trivia: this is book seven of the Dr. Siri Paiboun series. However, there are four more not on my list. Boo.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Laos” (p 128). Sad to say that for the last time!