Last Tycoon

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Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Last Tycoon. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1941.

It’s too bad this was never finished. I think this would have been my favorite Fitzgerald book. Even incomplete, I like it better than anything else I have read. This is a simple yet complicated story about love. She loves him. He loves someone else. That someone else is set to marry anyone else but him. Classic love square. You have to feel sorry for Monroe Stahr. He is lovestruck by a woman who strongly resembles his deceased wife. As a man in the movie business he has the money and the power to woo Kathleen into a brief relationship, even despite the fact she is engaged to be married to someone else. Meanwhile, there is young Cecilia, a junior at Bennington College, just willing Stahr to look at her, to notice her. It is her voice that tells the entire story. Fitzgerald explains the first and third person narrative. What Cecilia is not witness to, she imagines. “Thus, I hope to get the verisimilitude of a first person narrative, combined with a Godlike knowledge of all events that happen to my characters” (p 164).

One of my favorite scenes is Stahr’s treatment of a letter Kathleen addressed to him. He manages to not read it for three hours and is proud of his restraint. Why? What difference does it make when he opened it, immediately or three hours later? The fact of the matter is he opened it anyway.

As an aside, this is going to sound awful, but in a way I am glad Fitzgerald died. The story is beautiful as it is – unfinished yet simple. His plans for the rest of the book are over the top: murder plots and a Stahr dying in a plane crash. Children stealing from the dead and their subsequent trial. Cecilia in a sanitarium (like his wife, Zelda?). Like I said, it all seems over the top.

Lines I liked, “His dark eyes took me in, and I wondered what they would look like if he fell in love” (p 22), “It was more intimate than anything they had done, and they both felt a dangerous sort of loneliness, and felt it in each other” (p 102), “What people are ashamed of usually makes a good story” (p 117), and “It would come in some such guise as the auto horns from the technicolor boulevard below, or be barely audible, a tattoo on the muffled dream of the moon” (p 144).

Reason read: F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in September.

Author fact: Fitzgerald died of a heart attack while writing The Last Tycoon. According to the forward, he had just written the first episode of Chapter six. Sad.

Book trivia: The Last Tycoon is narrated by a junior co-ed at Bennington College, but the story is more about Monroe Stahr.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Literary Lives: the Americans” (p 145). This book actually doesn’t belong in the chapter. “Literary Lives: the Americans” begins with this sentence, “If you want to know more about a writer, before or after reading his or her book, here are some top-notch literary biographies” (p 144). The Last Tycoon is not a biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald.

 

 

 

Dervish is Digital

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Cadigan, Pat. Dervish is Digital. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 2000.

Right away I knew Dervish is Digital was going to be weird. The story opens with Dore Konstantin, a detective lieutenant in charge of TechnoCrime, Artificial Reality Division, meeting with an arms dealer. Later, she is spending time discussing demons and blowfish with a cyborg. It’s almost as if you aren’t meant to follow Cadigan’s off the wall imagination. It gets even stranger so my only advice is to hang on. Maybe you aren’t supposed to understand it all. Snarly Konstantin is supposed to be solving a case involving someone stalking his own ex-wife but it gets more complicated when the East/West Japanese and Hong Kong deviants are introduced. While Konstantin’s character is shallow and underdeveloped, Cadigan does an amazing job of describing Konstantin’s world. Cyberspace is richly detailed and completely believable. I never did latch onto the idea of there was a real crime to solve, but the story was an interesting ride.

My only gripe? Cadigan loved to describe anatomy as “wasp-waist.” I get the look Cadigan was going for, but after awhile I started to believe she couldn’t think of any other way to describe someone as having a narrow waist.

Reason read: September is Cadigan’s birth month..and if I’m still reading this in October, October is computer learning month. Whatever that means.

Author fact: according to the all-knowing Wikipedia, Cadigan is local. Schenectady and Fitchburg.

Book trivia: the main character, Dore Konstantin is introduced in an earlier novel by Cadigan called Tea From an Empty Cup. Yup, I am reading them backwards. Here’s what I’m hoping, Konstantin is an underdeveloped character in Dervish because she has been completely spelled out in Tea.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called Cyberspace.Com (p 69). For the record I want to say that Pearl doesn’t mention that the same character is in both Dervish is Digital and Tea From an Empty Cup. There was no way for me to know the two books are linked.

Baltimore Blues

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Lippman, Laura. Baltimore Blues. Read by Deborah Hazlett. North Kingston, RI: BBC Audiobooks America, 1997.

Tess Monaghan is an out of work reporter trying to make ends meet with little odd jobs. The only stable consistencies in her life are rowing and her friendship with fellow rower, “the Rock.” She manages to stay out of trouble until Rock “hires” her to do some private investigating of his near perfect fiancee. She has been acting so weird as of late so Rock wants to know why. Tess’s tactics to tease out the truth are less than desirable, so when she uncovers an affair and the other man, who happens to be the fiancee’s boss, winds up dead,  all fingers are pointed at Rock. Of course they do. Now Tess has even more incentive to uncover the truth. Along the way Tess uncovers a whole slew of shady dealings involving a rape support group, unpaid settlements for victims of asbestos related ailments, and a sexual predator of children on death row. What makes Baltimore Blues a likeable story is a combination of things. Tess is far from perfect as a private investigator. Her antics are downright funny. The city of Baltimore is like another character in the book. Places around Baltimore play a significant role in the plot which is a treat for readers who really know the area.

My only irritant? Tess doesn’t know the difference between an attempt on her life and a hit and run. Even though her friend Jonathan is killed in the process, it is deemed an accident and dismissed. Tess isn’t the least bit suspicious until there is a second attempt to kill her.

Reason read: Baltimore, Maryland has a book festival in September. What better way to celebrate than a book called Baltimore Blues?

Author fact: Laura Lippman lives in Baltimore, Maryland. Big surprise, right?

Book Audio trivia: This is one of the few audio books I have listened to where the narrator is American and doesn’t have some sort of accent. Although her Baltimore accent is funny.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called simply “Baltimore” (p 35).

Song For Cambodia

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Lord, Michelle. A Song for Cambodia. New York: Lee and Low Books Inc., 2008.

Reason read: While I was reading Children of Cambodia’s Killing Fields by Dith Pran I kept thinking about a high school mate of mine named Arn Chorn-Pond. From the day that I met him I knew he had a pretty horrific story to tell, but here’s what I remember most about my time with Arn: he was thoughtful and kind and warm. To talk to him you would never know of the atrocities he witnessed and suffered in 1975 as a small boy in Cambodia. We were not close in high school. We were not even what you would call friends, but there was an unspoken respect for his integrity and grace. This book, Song for Cambodia is a powerful message for children: music heals.

Even though this is a book for children, as I said before, it speaks volumes about how music can create beauty.

This is one of the last books I will read off the Challenge list.

The Numbers

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DATE: 1/6/26

Challenge Titles Finished (Totals To Date):

  • Books: 2,024
  • Poetry: 79
  • Short stories: 123
  • Plays: 4

Titles Finished: Totals for 2025:

  • Books: 123
  • Poetry: 0
  • Short stories: 0
  • Plays: 0
  • Early Reviews: 40
  • Fun: 17

All titles left to go for Challenge: 3,540

Next count: 1/1/27

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The Numbers – explained

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The numbers are in! Thanks to a severe omission of several chapters from Book Lust To Go I had to add 89 additional titles to the Challenge list, bringing my total number of books left to read to 4,809. While I am irritated by this new number, 4809 is a much better number than what I had been originally anticipating. I guessed 4,840. In order to remain positive, I will try not to fixate on the fact I thought I had 4,726 to go. I will put THAT number out of my head. I will. So. Moving forward, what this means is I will be even stricter about the “fun” stuff I read on the side. I will become pickier about the “outside” books. If you weren’t recommended by Pearl, forget about it. Wait. I’m a liar. I will still review Early Reviews for LibraryThing. I am loyal to the Thing. But being stricter with the rules also means I will give up on Challenge books more easily. Does it pain me to say that? No, strangely enough, in a way I’m relieved. It pained me more to struggle through a book I had no real interest in reading in the first place. Like that history of the atomic bomb…I found myself really reading only the even pages and skipping the odd. I would do that with any book I was particularly bored with. Hey – it worked. I got the gist of the plot and didn’t feel like I missed all that much. But, from here on out, if I don’t like a book within 25 pages I’m moving on. I don’t want Kisa reading to me on my death bed just so I can finish this challenge. So, on the plus side of these new “rules”, by not wasting a ton of time with the boring books, this means I will get to the books I am really looking forward to reading that much faster.

As penance for screwing up my numbers I am going to start a countdown on my blog. “I have read X number of books to date.”

Another confession – I honestly don’t believe Pearl read every book she recommended, either.

Children of Cambodia’s Killing Fields

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Children of Cambodia’s Killing Fields: Memoirs By Survivors. Compiled by Dith Pran. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997.

There has never been a more deadly genocide of its own people than in Cambodia. When Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime descended into Cambodia in April of 1975 they brought with them a rein of terror like never seen before. Children of Cambodia’s Killing Fields contains eyewitness accounts of the genocide and lends a voice to the children who barely survived. Each chapter is a mini memoir, compiled by Dith Pran, a survivor himself. Some accounts are so graphically disturbing they left me sleepless for days. Imagine being forced to witness the killing of your family and not be able to show a single emotion? Imagine having to kill your own community? These children were worked to death, starved to death, disease-ridden and deprived. And yet, they survived and by all accounts, thrived once they escaped. A moving memoir.

I want to quote something from some of the survivors because their words have had a lasting impact on me. I want to pass that impression on.

  • Sophiline Cheam Shapiro: “I know of almost no family that survived without losses” (p 4)
  • Chath Piersath: “Like other mothers, you tried to wage a battle against it with the intention of saving what was left of your children” (p 7)
  • Teeda Butt Mam: “I was scared that they would hear my thoughts and prayers, that they could see my dreams and feel my anger and disapproval of their regime” (p 14)
  • You Kimny Chan: “We had hoped and prayed to leave for years, and now that we had the chance, we realized that we had nowhere to go” (p 25)
  • Sopheap K Hang: “Mother and I began laughing, but then the memory hit our hearts” (p 33)
  • Savuth Penn: “This time the unforgiving Khmer Rouge did not let my father survive” (p 46)
  • Charles Ok: “But life goes on, and I have to learn to take care of myself” (p 55)
  • Moly Ly: “Hitler is dead, but Pol Pot and his entourage are still alive and craving a return” (p 64)
  • Sarom Prak: “I am not you and you are not me, but we are all human beings (p 71)
  • Khuon Kiv: “Amazingly, human life still beats the odds” (p 103)
  • Sophea Mouth: “Can the effect of violence be so strong that it destroys human compassion?” (p 179)

Reason read: The Cambodian monarchy was restored in the month of September. Note to self, look up the Digital Archive of Cambodian Holocaust Survivors website.

Author Compiler fact: According to the back flap of Children of Cambodia Dith Pran is a photojournalist and the founder of the Dith Pran Holocaust Awareness Project. I knew the movie “The Killing Fields” was based on his own experiences in Cambodia.

Book trivia: Each story of a survivor is accompanied by a black and white photograph. But, interestingly enough, the cover has been photoshopped to exclude the temple which, during the Khmer Rouge regime, was used as a killing field.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter simply called “Cambodia” (p 48).

We Interrupt This Book

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I’m not sure how to say this so I’m just going to come right out and say it. I fukced up. Somehow, in some way, I screwed up my Challenge list. I don’t even know how I figured out something had gone horribly awry. All I know is this- dozens of books from Book Lust To Go didn’t make it onto my lists, and believe me, there are a few. I am the queen of lists. I have a double no, triple no, quadruple no, quintuple-check system for keeping my books in order. Behold:

  1. First there is the excel spreadsheet called “Twist List.” It has every single title from all three Lust books. This spreadsheet is alphabetically tabbed and each title is color coded for which Book Lust it came from (white for Book Lust, light green for More Book Lust, light turquoise for Book Lust To Go, dark green for both Book Lust and another Lust book, brown for More Book Lust and another Lust book, dark turquoise for Book Lust To Go and another Lust book, and purple for when I finish the title).
  2. Then, there is a spreadsheet called “Lust To Go List.” It’s the same alphabetically tabbed list as Twist only it’s not color coded and when I finish a book it simply gets deleted from the list. It’s literally a list what I have left to read.
  3. The third spreadsheet is called “Schedule Calendar” and it is all the titles from all three Lust books organized by the month I plan to read them in. Each month gets its own tab: Jan, Feb, Mar and so on.
  4. The fourth and penultimate check system is the “Chapter List.” Each Lust book has its own spreadsheet broken out by chapter. Think of it this way: it’s the index of Book Lust et al in excel spreadsheets. Example: Once I finish a book in the chapter “Montana: the Big Sky Country” (Book Lust p 156), for example, I color code the title. At a glance I cen see I read three titles and there are ten more left to read.
  5. The fifth and final check is not a spreadsheet. It’s actually my LibraryThing account. Every book I have to read is in my “catalog” and tagged “accomplished” when I have read it.

I know, I know. It’s complicated. But, it works. So. Back to my dilemma. Somehow I realized that whole chapters of Book Lust To Go didn’t make it onto the first two lists. I’m not sure how that happened. It kills me to say my comprehensive reading list is not so comprehensive. How to fix this mess? Right now I am systematically (read=painfully) going through Book Lust To Go‘s index and checking the titles against Twist and Lust To Go. I’m up to ‘M’ and I’m adding titles where necessary (and that’s the part that REALLY kills me). Sometimes I only need to add a title to Twist and not To Go. Not sure what happened there, but whatever. Occasionally, I have been checking LibraryThing to see if I included the missing title in my catalog. Nine times out of ten the title is there, so I’m not going to worry too much about that. The lists I haven’t checked (yet) are the Schedule Calendar and the Chapter list. I’ll cross those bridges later. For now, I have enough titles mapped out that I won’t miss the missing…if that makes sense. Watch – I’ll probably end up reading nothing but books on Hong Kong at the bitter end because that’s one of the chapters I completely missed. Oh well.

Soul of All Living Creatures

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Virga, Vint. The Soul of All Living Creatures: What Animals Can Teach Us About Being Human. New York: Crown, 2013.

Don’t think of The Soul of All Living Creatures as something with a plot. It doesn’t have a start, middle or end. Instead, think of it as a series of essays, each with its own theme. Unfortunately, because there was never that “what happens next?” element, I found it easy to put Soul of All Living Creatures down from time to time and not pick it back up for weeks. The premise of Virga’s book is simple. He chooses a behavior or an attitude and applies it to an experience he has had with an animal in his care as a veterinary behaviorist. He then takes that same trait and applies it to the human element, tying the animal world with human thinking. His theory is, by making the animal-human connection, our lives will be enriched.

Reason read: I am always suspicious when I review a book that has been published more than a year earlier. It’s not an “early” review when someone reviewed it 15 months earlier and the book has even won awards. Nevertheless, here am I reviewing Soul of All Living Creatures for LibraryThing.

Author fact: Virga has his own website here.

Book trivia: There should be photographs. That would be cool.

Bluebird Canyon

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McCall, Dan. Bluebird Canyon. New York: Congdon & Weed, 1983.

Picture southern California. Now picture the star of a soap opera star named Rex Hooker with a penchant for self-destructiveness. The two go together in a stereotypical way, don’t you think? What isn’t so typical is Bluebird Canyon’s narrator, Oliver Bodley. Better known as “Triphammer” or “Trip”, Detective Bodley is a not so ordinary city police officer who gets caught up in Rex’s struggle to keep from losing it all. Interestingly enough, Rex and Trip go way back, as in high school way back. As the story unfolds, we find that Trip and Rex had been through quite a bit together back in their younger days. Just to give you an example. Rex and Trip are accused of partaking in the gang rape of a drunk girl. The victim’s brother and five of his friends proceed to kick the crap out of Trip and Rex…in detail. There’s more where that came from. Fast forward 20 years. Trip has been called to the Hooker estate for an apparent suicide attempt. Trip hasn’t seen his friend in those 20 years and Rex was rumored to be the victim. Be prepared. It gets nutty from there. Turns out, Rex is fine but 45 pages later his girlfriend’s sister accomplishes what he didn’t. Rex still lives with his parents but has a son, an ex-wife and a girlfriend. Meanwhile, at 37 years old, Triphammer is adrift. He doesn’t have a steady relationship, hates his exwife, in fact; he lives in a trailer on the beach (think Chris the DJ on Northern Exposure), he’s constantly losing his hat, and he doesn’t have a problem doing drugs in uniform (minus the hat). What he does mind, however, is being spit on.

All in all, some of Dan McCall’s plot was a little annoying. As I mentioned before, Trip is called to Summer Snow because Rex Hooker is trying to commit suicide. 45 pages later, another character hangs herself. It is mentioned the Hooker family is petrified of fire. 51 pages later Summer Snow is burning, thanks to an arsonist. I never grew to like Trip at all and I thought the writing was rambling and disconnected. At times the behavior of all the characters were exaggerated and ridiculous. Other times their actions were too sedate for the scene: two dogs were murdered on two separate occasions, two different houses were set on fire, two different suicides occurred…it all seemed a bit much. If McCall was trying to bring Rex’s soap opera to life in Bluebird Canyon he succeeded.

Quotes to make you sit up, “The world is full of assholes, and eventually they all turn up at the beach” (p 65), “My hole couldn’t handle a Q-tip” (Yes, he’s talking about what you think he’s talking about on p 72), “Chemists do not liven up a conference” (p 111), and “I wish my mind was a dog and I could train it to go sit” (p 244)

Reason read: California became a state on September 9th, 1850.

Author fact: Dan McCall passed away on June 17th, 2012. The Cornell Chronicle posted a really nice obituary about their former colleague.

Book trivia: I could see this as a movie, but to my knowledge one has never been made.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “California, Here We Come” (p 49).

Information Officer

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Mills, Mark. The Information Officer. Detroit: Gale Cengage Learning, 2010.

The Information Officer takes place over eight days in the summer of 1942. World War II is raging all around the tiny Mediterranean island of Malta. The bombings are relentless and devastating. Max Chadwick is a British officer responsible for keeping the Maltese morale and promoting British policy. He does this by manipulating the news about the gritty details of the war’s progress (or lack thereof). The reality is Malta is being blown to shreds, but he needs the Maltese people to continue to believe in the British troops despite the German occupation and incessant Italian air strikes. What complicates this delicate arrangement are the deaths of several local women. Made to look like casualties of recent enemy attacks, autopsies prove otherwise. Further evidence causes Max to suspect a British officer is behind the serial killings. It’s only a matter of time before there is a full blown revolt.
Woven into this story is the quiet unfurling of a subplot. Told from the point of view of the rapist/killer, the reader is witness to the birth of a sexual predator. From the very beginning the juxtaposition of the two plots is intriguing. It’s very much like the crime shows you see on television. For the most part, they show the good guys, hard at work trying to solve the crimes. Every so often the scene switches to the bad guy, plotting his next attack.

The first quote to send shivers down my spine, “His breathing was strangely calm and measured, and there was something in the sound of it that suggested he was smiling” (p 20).

Reason read: Malta gained its independence from Britain on September 21, 1964, twenty years after World War II.

Author fact: I don’t think it will come as any huge surprise that Mark Mills has his own website here.

Book trivia: while I didn’t mean to, I read the large print version.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Messing Around On Malta” (p 144).

A Thousand Ways to Please a Husband

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Weaver, Louise Bennett and Helen Cowles LeCron. A Thousand Ways to Please a Husband with Bettina’s Best Recipes: a Romance of Cookery and Housekeeping. New York: A L Burt Company, 1917.

How to describe this book? I want to avoid calling it a how-to for newly married women who want to keep their husbands satisfied because, given the date of publication, this would not fly in the 21st century. Hell, it shouldn’t have flown in any century, but there’s no getting around historical inequality!

But, anyway…in this book you will find there is only one way to please a husband – through his stomach. Bettina is a newlywed, eager to feed her husband, Bob. Every chapter focuses on an opportunity for Betty to take care of Bob and it usually includes food and the preparation there of. The recipes and preparation instructions are included in detail. But, to be fair, A Thousand Ways to Please a Husband… isn’t just about feeding hubby Bob. Bettina is teaching the local neighborhood wives how to feed their men and keep house as well. It could be a luncheon where Betty teaches the attending ladies how to prepare the meal and how to serve it properly as well. Betty is very proud of her meal plans (and seems to have an obsession with white sauce). She also likes to display her frugality and creativity. She is forever mentioning how she had to plan a meal with very little funds or advanced notice. Each chapter is a variation of the same theme of showcasing Betty’s ingenuity so, be prepared, it gets a little repetitious. Even though housekeeping is in the title, there is very little said about cleaning, doing laundry, or the like at 1107 Carberry Avenue. Bettina does mention getting out a stain or two.
Please note this book was published in 1917 and everything about it screams turn of the century. Even some of the ingredients are head scratchers (Like, what is a chocolate cream? One recipe calls for a dozen of them). What’s funny is that I read a review somewhere describing this book as “creepy and kitschy.” I would have to agree. Some of the language is a little strange. I was taken aback when Betty tells her husband and his adult male friend to “run and play” while she prepares the picnic. At one point her friends made reference to a man as a well known “woman-hater.” Come again?

I keep thinking about how interesting this book  could have been. Take Bob, for example. At Christmas he struggles over what kind of gift to get for Betty. He decides on giving her a kitten but the actual delivery is skipped over entirely. One minute Bob is discussing picking up the kitten and the next minute “Fluff” is quietly sleeping in an armchair. The reader never gets to see Betty’s reaction to the gift. This is just one example of where the plot could have been developed more.

Quotes to make you think, “Love at first sight? Bob introduced us…and I thought – well – I thought Harry was the most disagreeably serious man I’d ever had the misfortune to meet! And he thought me the most disagreeably frivolous girl he has ever seen. So our feud began, and of course we had to see each other to fight it out” (p 195), “Feeling, it must be admitted, a little out of harmony with a world that allowed weary and hungry husbands to come home to dark and empty houses when the clock said plainly that it was a quarter after six, Bob made his way to the kitchen” (p 238) and “Goodness gracious sakes alive, but thinking is hot work” (p 296).

Reason read: Oddly enough, I thought this would be a great book to read in honor of my tenth wedding anniversary on September 18th. I am happy to say my husband comes home each night and not just because of a home cooked meal! *wink*wink*

Author(s) fact: Weaver and LeCron have also written other “Bettina books” such as Bettina’s Best Salads, Bettina’s Best Desserts, and even When Sue Began to Cook with Bettina’s Best Recipes.

Book trivia: Charming illustrations (or decorations as they were called back then) were done by Elizabeth Colbourne. Another detail – this book is available as an E-book through the Gutenberg Project (Release date: 6/4/13 EBook #42865).

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Dewey Deconstructed: 600s” (p 73).

Raw Silk

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Burroway, Janet. Raw Silk. Boston: Little , Brown & Company, 1976.

Suffice it to say, I devoured Raw Silk in four days. I probably would have finished it sooner if I didn’t have to take time out for essential things like eating, sleeping, and a little thing called going to work. I simply couldn’t put it down. Virginia Marbalestier is an American mother to a five year old, married to a Brit, and living in a big house outside of London. She has risen above her childhood of Californian poverty to become a successful textiles designer for a company where her domineering husband is second in command. She appears to have it all, but if anyone were to peep in their windows one would see an abusive relationship spiraling out of control. “Ginny” and husband, Oliver, fight constantly and the confusing thing is, not only does Ginny predict the abuse, she does nothing to avoid it. She welcomes it by deliberately differing and defying her husband on a regular basis. They fight over the welfare of their daughter and when Ginny gives in that is the first betrayal. The second is Frances. Oliver is all about appearances and when Ginny befriends Frances, a mentally unstable, nearly catatonic coworker, he seethes with anger. The angrier Oliver gets, the more “accidents” Ginny has. This downward spiral forces Ginny to examine her own life, her own betrayals, her own sacrifices.

Quotes I liked, “I want you to know I’ve finally got round to regretting what we missed” (p 33), “Do you know that I can still wake with the memory of your mouth?” (p 34), “I have no skill whatever at knowing what my sins are” (p 159), and “Very often I would like to take a plate of fried eggs and fling it full into the four-in-hand of Oliver’s miniature-motif embroidered tie, and this desire makes beads of sweat stand out along the hairline of my unbrushed hair, but even this is pleasurable” (p 164).

Reason read: Janet Burroway was born in the month of September.

Author fact: Ms. Burroway has her own website and the first thing I discovered when I went there is Raw Silk came out as an audio book for Open Road Media on February 4th, 2014.

Book trivia: Raw Silk was nominated for a National Book Award in 1977.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “The Writer’s Craft” (p 237).

History Man

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Bradbury, Malcolm. The History Man. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1976.

The Kirks are are an interesting couple. Howard Kirk is a professor of sociology with a “convenient” marriage. Both Howard and his wife, Barbara, take advantage of sexual relationships that further their causes and commitments. Right from the beginning you know they are bound for trouble. “So, sensing the climate, some people called the Kirks, a well-known couple, decide to have a party” (p 1). And this is how it begins. The History Man starts with a party and ends with a party, but a whole lot happens in between. Howard has liaisons with a colleague and a student while trying to seduce a third woman. Barbara spends her weekends running off to London for a “shopping” trip.

Howard Kirk starts a vicious buzz about campus about inviting Professor Mangel to give a lecture at the University of Watermouth. This creates an uproar as Mangel is seen as a racist, a sexist, a geneticist, and a fascist so no one can agree about his invitation.

There is a good dose of philosophy and psychology; a whole lot of explaining how people are and what makes them tick. I couldn’t decide if I really liked the Kirks. They reminded me of the Underwoods in House of Cards. They both seemed a little conniving. In the end I felt the most sorry for Barbara Kirk. She and her husband have an open relationship but, being a mother, she doesn’t have quite the same opportunities as Howard.

Reading History Man was a little tedious. For one, Bradbury likes to describe people’s actions step by step. Howard getting settled into his office. Barbara driving a car. Every movement is sometimes detailed creating pages and pages of one giant paragraph. Yet, at other times large moments in time are skipped all together. Howard could be talking to his wife at home one moment and the in the next moment he’s lying in bed with another woman.

As an aside, the author’s note is hysterical. It sets the tone for the entire story.

Line I liked: “Everywhere else the code is one of possibility, not denial” (p 71).

Reason read: Well, there are really two reasons: Malcolm Bradbury was born in September. History Man is about an academic and most schools start classes in September. My institution is the oddball who start classes the week before. No. I take that back. We have three days of classes, then have a long weekend, then the semester gets rolling.

Author fact: Malcolm Bradbury’s website is really cool. Everyone should check it out, if not for the information, for the photographs. But. The whole thing is great. Another article you should look up is one written by Tom Rosenthal back in 2006.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Academia: the joke” (p 4).

Gesture Life

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Lee, Chang-rae. A Gesture Life. New York: Riverhead Books, 1999.

A Gesture Life is the elegant story of Franklin “Doc” Hata, a Japanese man living in suburban New York. He is a proper man quietly living out his days after retiring from the medical supply business. He has a beautiful house and garden and what appears to be a calm life. Everyone respects him, but no one really knows him. As we delve deeper into his history we learn of many rippling disturbances. We discover an adoptive daughter, mysteriously estranged from Hata, with a child of her own. We learn of a relationship with a widow who he cared for deeply but to whom he couldn’t quite commit. We don’t even fully understand how close they became or why they drifted apart. Through Hata’s memories we revisit World War II and his position as medic in Rangoon. We watch the unfolding and blossoming of a relationship with “K” a comfort woman; a relationship that ends in tragedy, as most wartime relationships do. In the end, it’s Hata’s relationship with daughter, Sunny, that is the most compelling. Theirs is a deep and complicated bond.
The one gripe? The passage of time (past and present). If it wasn’t a complete mystery to me I only had snippets of understanding. For most of the time it was unclear how much time had really passed in Hata’s present day and trying to do the math didn’t help. At one point he is reunited with his daughter and he guesses her to be 22 years old. I have a problem with this because he also says he hasn’t seen her in 13 years. That means the scene in the drug house took place when Sunny was nine years old. Somehow I can’t see a nine year old engaged in sex with two men at the same time. He also arranged for her to have an abortion…when was that? When Hata sees her again he says it’s as if they are “transported back in time” and he remembers her “lean against the parking meter and smoke her spice-scented cigarettes” (p 209). As a nine year old? Smoking, yes. Sex, while not completely impossible seems unlikely. When Sunny talks about her son she says he is six which would have made Sunny a mother at 16 if she really was only 22. Not completely implausible except it is her second pregnancy. I refrained from trying to put together a CSI timeline, but obviously, Sunny is not 22 years old.

The two quotes I liked, “I am not a long-chase antelope” (p 71) and “…to wonder if something like love is forever victorious, truly conquering all, or if there are those who, like me, remain somehow whole and sovereign, still live unvanquished” (p 216).

As an aside, I can see why Pearl says to read A Gesture Life and Remains of the Day together. Both stories feature an extremely proper yet aging gentleman, looking back over the course of his life. They both have secrets and a way of living that seems to be bound not only by society, but an inner code of conduct.

Reason read: this is a companion read to Remains of the Day, read (erroneously) in honor of Sri Lanka. Here is the funny thing – neither Remains of the Day nor A Gesture Life have anything to do with Sri Lanka in any way shape or form. Both books were used to describe another book, The Hamilton Case which was written by Michelle de Kretser who was born in Sri Lanka.

Author fact: When you pick up A Gesture Life you almost feel you are reading the wrong book. Lee also wrote Native Speaker which won a bunch of different awards. Lee was also named a finalist for Granta’s Best American Novelist Under 40 Award.

Book trivia: The cover to A Gesture Life is stunning. It’s comprised of two different photographs.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust more than once. First, from the chapter called “Companion Reads” (p 65) and again in the chapter called “Pawns of History” (p 182). A Gesture Life is also in More Book Lust in the chapter called “Sri Lanka: Exotic and Troubled” (p 212). Which, as mentioned before, has nothing to do with Sri Lanka.