Fast Food Nation

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Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation: the Dark Side of the All-American Meal. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2001.

When I first realized Fast Food Nation was on my Lust list I had but one burning question. I wondered if my own personal opinions about fast food establishments would be altered after reading Schlosser’s book. As a rule I don’t eat fast food, so if the answer ending up being yes, how then would my opinions be altered? Was it possible I would turn against my previous dietary sensibilities and try a Big Mac? I will readily admit I am two-faced and biased when it comes to “fast” food. Subway and Chipotles are considered “fast” establishments and yet I don’t put them in the same swamp as McD, BK or Wendy. I guess that’s because you can’t technically drive through Subway or Chipotle. You can’t order and eat without ever getting out of your car the way you can with the clown, the king and the kid.

From the very first chapter of Fast Food Nation I felt as though I had been slapped upside the head with a whole bunch of really disturbing facts about the country in which I reside. Schlosser doesn’t leave a single aspect of the fast food industry untouched or without scrutiny. To use a bad pun, he devours it all and then spits it back out. At us. From the historical humble beginnings of the hot dog cart to the corporate conglomerates of tomorrow Schlosser covers it all. It’s fascinating and yet distracting. Fast food Nation took too long to read because I kept rereading passages out loud to anyone who would listen.

Best thing I learned: Malling is a verb. To mall is to cover this great nation of ours with shopping malls. What’s that Natalie Merchant lyric about sprawling concrete? You get the point.

Wake up moments: “The whole experience if buying fast food has become so routine, so thoroughly unexceptional and mundane, that it is not taken for granted, like brushing your teeth or stopping for a read light” (p 3). Obviously Mr Schlosser hasn’t driven in my neck of the woods. Who stops for a red light?
Another wake up moment from the same page, “A nation’s diet can be more revealing than its art or literature” (p 3).

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called “Guilt Inducing Books” (p 112). Read in April because April is national food month.

“Golden Retrievals”

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Doty, Mark. “Golden Retrievals.” Sweet Machine: Poems. New York: Harper Collins, 1998.

This is such a great poem to read out loud. Read it to a child in a really funny voice and watch him laugh with his imagination running wild. It’s not hard to see the golden retriever waiting for the ball to be thrown, eyes watching his master anxiously. Short attention span: the breeze, another animal, his owner’s distracted mood. Everything captivates and yet, he’s still waiting to play fetch. Love it.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called “Great Dogs in Fiction” (p 105).

These Happy Golden Years

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Wilder, Laura Ingalls. These Happy Golden Years. New York: HarperTrophy, 1971.

When we meet up with Laura again she is fifteen years old and off to teach school at the Brewster settlement, twelve miles away. This is a period of great confusion for her. On the one hand, she is still a child, wanting to go to school to learn and to be with friends. On the other hand, she is a young adult, wanting to teach school to earn money for her family. Mary is away at a school for the blind and needs help with tuition. As she says, “only yesterday she was a schoolgirl; now she was a schoolteacher” (p 1). During this time Laura’s fashion sense is becoming more adult with floor-length dresses and fancy hats. She takes up sewing on Saturdays to earn money for new clothes. She is starting the receive the attention of Almanzo Wilder as well. While this attention is, at first, unsettling to Laura she begins to look forward to his cutter (winter) and buggy (summer) rides. Soon they are courting under the guise of taming wild horses, but I don’t think I will be spoiling anything to admit their inevitable engagement seemed sudden and uneventful to me.
Probably the most interesting part of the story was when Laura was negotiating her wedding vows with Almanzo. She doesn’t want the ceremony to include the word “obey” in it. Almanzo is fine with that but when Laura learns the reverend also feels strongly about not including the vow of “obey” she is shocked. Yet she is not a feminist. She doesn’t want the privileged of voting. Interesting.

This is the last book in the “Little House” series for my challenge. It has been a pleasure to reread these classics and I thank Nancy Pearl for bringing them back to me.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “The Great Plains: the Dakotas” (p 107).

Unfinished Odyssey of Robert Kennedy

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Halberstam, David. The Unfinished Odyssey of Robert Kennedy. New York: Random House, 1968.

In a nutshell, Unfinished Odyssey is the campaign story of Robert Kennedy. Halberstam follows Kennedy’s entire campaign from his beginning reluctance to run to his fateful ending assassination. Along the way Halberstam paints an interesting picture of the attitudes towards the U.S.’s involvement with the Vietnam war. Those in power who felt the U.S. needed to become more involved were the hawks while those in favor of pulling out were the doves. Kennedy was a dove. He delves into the lives of the supporters and the detractors starting with Lyndon Johnson and ending with Herbert Humphrey.

Some issues with Unfinished Odyssey: the chronology is scattered and hard to follow from time to time. Then again, I often find flashbacks in nonfiction are often clunky. Also, I disagreed with Halberstam’s ending. Everyone (myself included) expects a story about Robert Kennedy to include his murder. The Unfinished Odyssey of Robert Kennedy is no different. Everyone expects it to include the bitter end. Even if the funeral and country’s reaction to Kennedy’s death isn’t part of the story surely the murder would be. Maybe Halberstam was thinking everyone knows the end of the story, so why include it? It is, after all, called the unfinished odyssey.

Favorite line (partial): “…a few eggheads here and there…” (p 10) and “Kennedy was still playing Hamlet on whether or not to run” (p 18).

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called “David Halberstam: Too Good To Miss.” (p 113).

“America To Me”

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Van Dyke, Henry. “America To Me. ” The Poems of Henry Van Dyke. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1911. p 167 – 168.

“America To Me” is begging to be set to music. In my mind it has all the makings of a really great patriotic song, complete with cheerful verse and enthusiastic chorus. It is the perfect post-9/11 anthem; a rally of sorts. It’s simple in its message: a traveling individual has grown tired of the Old Country. He (or she) has seen enough of France, Italy and England. It is simply time to go home, back to young America. After all, as Van Dyke has quoted Frank Baum, “there is no place like home.”

Favorite line, “I want a ship that’s westward bound to plough the rolling sea…” (p 168).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Travelers Tales in Verse” (p 237). Read in April for poetry month.

John Barleycorn

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London, Jack. John Barleycorn. New York: Greenwood Press, 1968.

This was a hard book to read. How can I explain this? I am not in the midst of turmoil caused by someone who can’t put down the bottle. But rather, I am on the periphery of the damage that the drink is causing. Yes. I know alcoholics and at one time in my life I could have been part of the problem and yet…now it’s none of my business. Now I can walk away guilt and Scott B. free. How convenient. It’s someone I used to know. How odd. At one point in our lives he wrote the line “I never want to not know you” as he was breaking up with me. Now he’s drinking himself to death. It’s not only not my fault but it’s also none of my business. April is alcohol awareness month. I always think of Natalie’s song “Don’t Talk” when she says, “we’ll discuss this in the morning when your head is clear” but for me, morning never came. Clarity is a myth.

Jack London is the master of denial in John Barleycorn. His drinking takes him on adventures he cannot fully remember. He wakes up with his shoes, jacket, and of course, his money stolen with no memory of how he ended up where he is and yet, it is not his problem. It’s John Barleycorn’s problem. London calls alcohol John Barleycorn as if to personify the alcoholism; allowing Barleycorn to take the blame and London to be absolved of it. Early in the narrative London illustrates his confusion with John Barleycorn, “I am. I was. I am not. I never am. I am never less his friend than when he is with me and when I seem most his friend” (p 4). Sure. In addition to denial London is obsessive. Everything he does is to the extreme. Shoveling coal, studying books, drinking, writing. Whatever he does he attacks it, spending 15 hours a day at it.

One of my favorite lines, “But it is ever the way of John Barleycorn to loosen the tongue and babble the secret thought” (p 52). Here’s another, “Gratitude is inherently human” (p 207).

Author fact: some think London committed suicide. Interesting because John Barleycorn touches on suicide several times.

Book Trivia: Librarians don’t be shocked when I say this, but according to Wikipedia the first reference to being extremely drunk as “seeing pink elephants” came from John Barleycorn. Interesting, if true.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called “Lost Weekends” (p147).

“Happiness”

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Kenyon, Jane. “Happiness.” Otherwise New & Selected Poems. Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 1997.

I have been listening to Natalie Merchant a lot lately. No. I take that back. I have been watching her more. Every night while I walk the training miles and miles on my treadmill I watch old video clips; those Quick!NatalieMerchantIsOnTelevision moments. Anytime she was on VH1 or Mtv promoting a song someone pressed the record button and I benefited from their fast fingers. Last night I watched Natalie explain the meaning behind her song “Kind and Generous.” (Some people call it the Thank You Song.) She explained it as “simple and to the point. Everyone knows what I am talking about.”
I feel that way about Jane Kenyon’s poetry. Kenyon has a way of expressing herself through her poetry in the most natural of ways. Her language is simple, to the point, and everyone knows what she is talking about.
In “Happiness” the message is just as clear. Happiness can find you whether you expect it to or want it to. Happiness can startle you out of an otherwise typical moment. Happiness should not be taken for granted or ignored.

Author Fact: When I first found out Jane Kenyon died before her 50th birthday I instantly thought it must have been cancer. Indeed, she died of leukemia in April 1995 at the age of 47.

Book Trivia: Jane Kenyon was in the process of editing Otherwise New and Selected Poems when she passed away. It was published a few months after her death.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called “Poetry Pleasers” (p 189).

Egg and I

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MacDonald, Betty. The Egg and I. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Co., 1945.

April is humor month so I chose The Egg and Ias the next book to make me laugh. I have to admit I was a little surprised this was even something my library had on its shelves. Go figure.

Betty MacDonald is by all accounts just a housewife. A housewife with a wicked sense of humor and the ability to transfer that humor to paper. In The Egg and I she tells of the time in her life when soon after getting married she follows her new husband from Butte Montana to the Olympia mountains to start up, of all things, an egg farm. From a young age her mother had always drilled it into her head to support her husband’s chosen vocation and while chickens and their subsequent eggs weren’t Betty’s thing she dutifully packs her bags and with great determination tries to become a chicken-farming, egg-picking, hard-working housewife. Hilarity ensues.

I had a hard time limiting my favorite quotes because almost everything Betty blathers on about is hysterical. I could have quoted the whole damn book if I wasn’t careful. When she wasn’t funny she was thought provoking, “I expected to look up some day and see a mountain bare shouldered and grabbing frantically for her trees” (p 101). Can’t you just picture that? Or, “Coffee so strong it snarled…” (p 115). Can’t you just taste that?

Author Fact: Betty MacDonald was born Anne Elizabeth Campbell Bard and died of uterine cancer.

Book Trivia: The Egg and I was a controversial book because Betty, writing about a specific time in her life, based the other characters on the also very real people in her life…like her neighbors. Those very real people decided to sue her for ridicule. Lesson learned. This is yet another reason why I refuse to write a book!

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called “Tickle Your Funny Bone” (p 217).

Cold Mountain

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Frazier, Charles. Cold Mountain. New York: Vintage Contemporaries, 1998.

I started the year reading a lot about World War II (Flags of Our Fathers and Band of Brothers) and decided to move onto the Civil War. It was perfect timing for such a move because the start of the Civil War was in April.

Right away I need to make a bold statement. I have mixed feelings about this book. While the writing was amazing I couldn’t reconcile all the sadness. Hopelessness and starvation follow every character and violence is nearly in every chapter that involves main man Inman. As a deserter in the Confederate army I realize his journey back to North Carolina will be fraught with dangers of all kinds, both from nature (animals and the elements) and mankind (by leaving the ear he is officially an enemy of both sides now). The Home Guard is determined to bring every deserter to justice. It’s a harsh book so don’t expect any happy endings (although the epilogue tries an attempt at some semblance of peace if not cheer). I am embarrassed to say I am like every other romantic out there that wished the book ended on page 406.

In the very beginning of Cold Mountain there is a line that sums up the epitome of any war, “Every vile deed he had witnessed lately had been at the hand of a human agent so he had about forgot that there was a whole other order of misfortune” (p 9). Cold Mountain is a war book but it is also a relationship book and a romance. Inman is a confederate soldier recuperating from a serious neck wound. When he is well enough to move he decides to become a deserter and make his way back to North Carolina where there is the memory of a girl he fell in love with. During his long journey home his love, Ada, is struggling to run her deceased father’s farm. Helping her is Ruby, a strong mountain woman running from her father and the memory of a neglectful childhood.
Towards the end of the book not one but two wounded men make their way back to Ada and Ruby. Ruby’s father has murdered his relationship with his daughter but when he is shot and left for dead it is up to her to put aside their differences and nurse him back to health. Inman makes his way back to Ada with more than a broken body. His spirit has been tested. I spotted a lot of symbolism (intentional or not). The reoccurring mention of crows was ominous while the fixation of food represented an emptiness of more than just bellies. There was an absence of comfort and of hope.

Only favorite line (besides the one I previously quoted), “Even my best intentions come to naught and hope itself is but an obstacle” (p 353). See what I mean about hope?

Probably my biggest connection in the book was with the music. If it weren’t for Natalie Merchant I wouldn’t have recognized the lyrics to Wayfaring Stranger or Mary Don’t You Weep and now that I know the movie has a soundtrack I might have to go out and get it.

Author fact: Frazier is from North Carolina and a distant relative was the inspiration for Cold Mountain, Frazier’s first novel.

Book Trivia: Cold Mountain won a National Book Award and was made into a movie.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called “Civil War Fiction” (p 57).

“House of Blue Light”

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Kirby, David. “The House of Blue Light.” The House of Blue Light. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1998. pp 26-29.

“The House of Blue Light” reads like a short story. We’re talking really, really short, but a story with characters and a plot all the same. It starts off with dad at the gym. I’m guessing he’s in his 40s, maybe early 50s. He’s watching Little Richard on tv. Inexplicably he gets emotional about the music he hears. I say inexplicably because personally, I cannot understand Little Richard for the life of me. Anyway, when describing the incident to his wife she tells him, “your just emotional because your son is going off to college.” His emotions make him think about other situations where he has broken down and lost his compusure. He imagines a house of blue light where good times are had. A place where all his memories are kept.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called “Kitchen Sink Poetry” (p 138).

April ’12 is…

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April is and will always be my WhatTheFukc month. It’s the last full month of Just ‘Cause training. It’s the month when I think I’m never walking enough despite hours on the treadmill. It’s the last full month of the semester at school. It’s the month when the animals students are doing stupid sh!t like hanging from water pipes and causing a major flood in their dorm. I kid you not. It’s the last truly cold month of the year. At least one can hope. It’s the last month I feel comfortable wearing knee high boots. For reading it’s an even more discombobulated month. April is National Poetry month so between the novels I’ll be reading poetry. It’s like a car stalling. I can’t explain it.

Anyway…here’s what I PLAN to read for the month of April. You know as well as I do I probably will stick to only 75% of this…
April is Alcohol Awareness month so I’m reading John Barleycorn by Jack London. April is also food month so I’ll be depressing myself with Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of an All-American Meal by Eric Schlosser. April happens to be National Humor month so I’m buzzing through The Egg and I by Betty MacDonald. The Civil War started in April so I threw Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier on the list. I need to wrap up a couple of series I started in Janurary so The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien and These Happy Golden Yearsby Laura Ingalls Wilder are on the list. Last but not least I finally, finally got an Early Review book from LibraryThing: A Small Fortune by Rosie Dastgir. Oh. And there’s the random poem in between all that…

What else is April all about? Easter with the in-laws to talk about our upcoming trip to Hawaii. My sister’s birthday. It’s a big one. A jaunt to the theater with a good friend. A Red Sox game. Maybe a little cowbell in Vermont? Not sure.

March ’12 was…

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March 2012 was huge for reading. I think that’s because some of the books took me a day or two to read. March was also the first month of training for Just ‘Cause. Whenever I talk about training to walk it sounds stupid. I mean really, who trains to put one foot in front of the other? I guess when you put those steps all together and come up with a total of sixty miles over the course of three days it all adds up. Anyway, training (such as it is) is going great. For the month of March I averaged six miles a day, every day. But, this blog is not about walking miles or not. It’s about books. Here’s the Lust list for March 2012:

  • A Grain of Wheat by Ngugi Wa Thiong’o in honor of African Writers month
  • Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neal Hurston in honor of Zora
  • Little Town on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder in honor of keeping on with the series
  • Up Country by Maxine Kumin (read in one afternoon) in honor of March being poetry month (April is the official one)
  • Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte in honor of Literature month
  • Band of Brothers by Stephen Ambrose in honor of March having a “Hug a G.I.” day
  • The Fixer by Bernard Malamud in honor of Malamud passing in March
  • Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien in honor of keeping on with the Lord of the Rings series. I will admit I didn’t finish this.
  • The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler in honor of crime month
  • My Antonia by Willa Cather in honor of another classic (this was, by far, my favorite read of the month)
  • Lawless Roads by Graham Green in honor of April being the best time to go to Mexico (obviously I jumped ahead a little)

I started an audio book (as is my tradition with trying to train and read at the same time) but the book I chose, Illumination Night by Alice Hoffman was so scratched I couldn’t get beyond disc one. Bummer. Also, for the third time in a row I didn’t receive the Early Review book I was awarded from LibraryThing. So I didn’t end up reading anything for LibraryThing. I was awarded a fourth book…we’ll see if it actually shows up.

So. There it is. The big list of books. Aside from Band of Brothers and Two Towers every other book was really short and easy to buzz through. I doubt April will be so kind.

Lawless Roads

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Greene, Graham. The Lawless Roads. London: Heinemann, 1960.

Graham Greene was a deeply religious man. When he was commissioned to write of the Mexican government’s forced anti-Catholic secularization and anti-clerical purges he traveled to the country to see for himself what effects this had on the people. Churches were being destroyed and clergymen were being driven into exile or brutally murdered at an alarming rate. As Greene traveled to the areas where the Catholic persecutions were the most violent Greene was deeply affected and reaches an almost despondent state. It is hard to tell if his depression was cause by an inability to connect to people and culture of Mexico (his Spanish was limited and their English was nonexistent), his on-going illness or the inability to open his mind beyond his own colonialism. In the end Mexico was a country he could barely wait to escape.

Best head scratching line: “Four one-armed men dined together, arranging their seats so that their arms shouldn’t clash” (p 9). Kisa and I do that, too. Only we sit that way not because we are missing arms but rather because he is right handed and I am left.

Author Fact: Graham Greene died in April 1991 which is the main reason why I chose to read Lawless Roads. Another reason is April is a good time to visit Mexico, if you dare.

Book Trivia: Lawless Roads was published as Another Mexico.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Postcards From Mexico” (p 185). Note: This is my first Book Lust To Go “accomplished” book. At least it’s the first one that wasn’t already read because of Book Lust or More Book Lust.

My Antonia

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Cather, Willa. My Antonia.New York: Everyman’s Library, 1996.

Rereading My Antonia was like spotting a familiar face in a crowd somewhere in a country I have never been to before. It was like coming home after forty years away and remembering houses and neighbors. An old familiarity that was somehow comforting and true. I thoroughly enjoyed rereading this classic. Structurally, My Antonia is separated into five different books: The Shimerdas (introducing Antonia and her Bohemian family), The Hired Girls (delving into Antonia’s life in town), Lena Lingrad (Antonia’s good friend), The Pioneer Woman’s Story (Antonia’s friend, Tiny’s return to the farmland) and Cuzak’s Boys (Jim visiting Antonia after a twenty year absence and meeting her large family).
The premise of the story is in the introduction. Two friends are traveling by train and reminiscing about Antonia, a girl they both knew growing up. They agree to write their thoughts of her but James Quayle Burden is the only one to do so. He tells the story of growing up on the Nebraska plains with Antonia as his lifelong friend.

Best lines: “Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great” (p 20), “Those two could quarrel all morning about whether he ought to put on his heavy or his light underwear, and all evening about whether he had taken cold or not” (p 159), and “Clearly, she was the impulse, and he the corrective” (p 262).

Author Fact: Willa Cather was born Wilella Cather and lived in New York for most of her life.

Book Trivia: My Antonia was made into a movie in 1995.

BookLust Twist: My Antonia is indexed in all three Lust books: in Book Lust in the chapter called “100 Good Reads, Decade by Decade: 1910s” (p 175), in More Book Lust in the chapters called “The Great Plains: Nebraska” (p 107) and “The Immigrant Experience” (p 123), and in Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Nebraska: The Big Empty” (p 148). If Pearl had written a chapter called “Women Channeling Men” she could have included My Antonia there as well.

Big Sleep

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Chandler, Raymond. The Big Sleep, Farewell, My Lovely, The High Window.New York: Everyman’s Library, 2002.

This was my first introduction to a “hardboiled” thriller. Phillip Marlowe is a private investigator hired to deal with a blackmailer. His client is an ailing elderly General with two unruly adult daughters. The plot twists and winds around murder after murder and through it all private investigator Philip Marlowe is right behind, chasing down clues and killers. It takes place in the 1930s so the economy is a little out of place but the humor and sarcasm of Marlowe is timeless. One of my favorite “shticks” in the story is how everyone keeps asking Marlowe if he is looking for the missing husband of one of the daughters, Vivian. He has been hired to sort out a blackmail scheme, not find a missing man but everyone assumes that is why he is on the case. He ends up accomplishing both but his technique along the way is highly entertaining.

Favorite passages: “The General spoke again, slowly using his strength as carefully as an out-of-work show-girl uses her last good pair of stockings” (p 7) and “Dead men are heavier than broken hearts” (p 36) and “If you can weigh a hundred and ninety pounds and look like a fairy, I was doing my best” (p 44).

Author Fact: Raymond Chandler didn’t start writing detective fiction until he was 45 years old. Pretty cool if you ask me!

Book Trivia: The Big Sleep was made into a movie twice and was just adapted for the stage in 2011.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called “I Love a Mystery” (p 122). This is a huge chapter with over 80 titles. She does try to break up the lists into different genres of mystery and I guess Chandler would be listed under private investigators.