Milk in My Coffee

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Dickey, Eric Jerome. Milk in My Coffee. New York: New American Library, 1998.

Reason read: Cow Appreciation Day is tomorrow – 7/14/16. I kid you not.

The premise is Jordan and Kimberly are supposed to each take turns telling their side of their seemingly doomed romance. While I tagged this “chick lit” it isn’t. Not really. It’s the story of two people trying to overcome the color of their skin and their deep rooted opinions. I appreciated Jordan’s ingrained racism that spoke to a long standing tradition of passing prejudice through history. He continually referred to the South unapologetically, as if that’s just the way it will always be, like it or not. His perceptions of Kimberley as a white woman are generations old. There was more drama in this story expected but that didn’t take away from the story.

Milk in My Coffee is broken into four parts. The first eleven chapters are from Jordan Green’s point of view. Every chapter is titled “Jordan Greene” before it switches to Kimberley Chambers (for one chapter). Wouldn’t it have been simpler (and I would have preferred this) to have one giant section of Jordan Greene narrative?
This isn’t a huge deal, but Milk in My Coffee contains references that date the plot. I didn’t know Erica Kane or Nurse Rachid so I didn’t get the jokes referencing them. Luckily, I know Barney, Vanna White, and Eartha Kitt so they were not a great mystery.

Everyone knows I am nit picky when it comes to dialogue. I want the characters to talk to one another as if they really know each other and are authentic with one another. It bothers me when conversations don’t make sense. To be honest, that only happened once in Milk. Jordan asked what Kimberly was doing for the holidays. She explains about how holidays and her birthday bring her down. They then go off on a mini tangent about birthdays. After that, without missing a beat Jordan asks again about the holidays as if he never asked and she answers in a completely different way.

Dickey is full of cheesy analogies:

  • “More purple than Barney”
  • “More tracks than a Hot Wheels set”
  • “Like microwave popcorn”

Quote I liked (yes, there was only one), “I didn’t know her well enough to earn any heartbreak, but I felt it anyway” (p 14).

Author fact: Dickey’s bio reads like Superman: engineer, stand up comic, able to develop software, best selling author…

Book trivia: Milk in My Coffee is a best seller. Did I mention that?

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “African American: He Say” (p 12).

Black Faces, White Faces

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Gardam, Jane. Black Faces, White Faces. New York: Abacus, 1975.

Reason read: Gardam’s birth month is July.

Black Faces, White Faces loosely links together ten short stories, all taking place in Jamaica; all involving vacationing Brits completely out of their comfort zones. What is special about Black Faces is that Gardam interlocks details as well as characters. For example, a character in one story leaves behind a toy. Another character from another story finds it.
“Babe Jude” – encountering crude vacationers & a language barrier.
“Missus Moon” – foreigners witnessing a funeral.
“Best Day of My Easter Holidays” – a boy’s essay about meeting crazy man Jolly Jackson.
“The Pool Boy” – Lady Fletcher doesn’t want to be so prim and proper.
“The Weeping Child” – Mrs. Ingram tells the story of the ghost of someone who is still alive.
The House Above Newcastle” -Newlyweds Boofey and Pussy are unrecognizable to each other on their honeymoon.
“Saul Alone” – a sad story about a stroke victim observing the people around him.
“The First Declension” – a wife suspects her husband of having an affair while he visits Jamaica.
“Something To tell the Girls” – two teachers on holiday in the mountains of Jamaica.
“Monique” – a woman mourning the loss of her lover.

Quotes I liked: from “Babe Jude” – “He foresaw an agitated lunch and felt depressed” (p 6), from “Best Day of My Easter Holidays” – “We seemed somehow after a very long time to get back to the same place, I don’t know how” (p 19), and from “The Weeping Child” – “Imagination was her rarest occupation” (p 34).

Author fact: Gardam is a Fellow of the Royal British Society of Literature and an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.

Book trivia: Black Faces was a little harder to get from a library. I requested my copy from the Boston Public Library.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Jane Gardam: Too Good To Miss” (p 96).

Where the Road Ends

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Hicks, Meghan M. and Bryon Powell. Where the Road Ends: a Guide to Trail Running. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 2016.

Reason read: for the Early Review program for LibraryThing. Perfect, isn’t it?

The first time I laid eyes on the cover of Where the Road Ends I instantly thought “cheesy” and when I glanced through the pages I was reminded a little of a middle/grade school textbook, all glossy and full of pictures. But, that is where the fluff ends. As far as content goes, Where the Road Ends is chock full of great information. Most of it might be second nature to the more experience ultra runner but for beginners this book is a perfect must-have. The layout of information chapter by chapter is intuitive, starting with just learning and ending with full-out racing. In between is a plethora of everything you need to know: how trail running differs from the road, how to navigate the terrain, what equipment to use, how to stay fueled and hydrated (especially on the long desert runs), and so on and so on. Don’t judge a book by it’s cover (or lack thereof). This is a well organized informative book.

July on Deck

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July. Summertime. Lots of music (starting with you guessed it, Phish). Lots of running (hopefully all outdoors). Lots of travel, lots of play. Plenty of reading:

  • Milk in My Coffee by Eric Jerome Dickey (in honor of National Cow Appreciation Day on the 14th. I kid you not.)
  • Disco for the Departed by Colin Cotterill (#3 – to continue the series started in May in honor of Rocket Day)
  • The Last Battle by Cornelius Ryan (#3 – to continue the series started in June for D-Day)
  • Cranford (AB) by Elizabeth Gaskell (in honor of Swan Upping. If you don’t know about this day, check it out. It’s fascinating. Or you can wait for my review when I’ll explain the practice.)
  • Black Faces, White Faces by Jane Gardam (in honor of Gardam’s birth month)

As an aside, I have read the last two Cotterills in a day each, so I know I need to add at least one or two more books to the list. I’m off to the great unknown for vacation so when I get back I’ll probably have to revisit this list.

Also, I should note that I won another Early Review book from LibraryThing, but since its not here yet I won’t promise to read it. 😉

 

By July

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June was an interesting month. Ran 43.5 miles. But, for the reading it was full of short stories and quick reads. Finished:

  • The Millstone by Margaret Drabble
  • Thirty-Three Teeth by Colin Cotterill
  • Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich
  • Yocandra in the Paradise of Nada by Zoe Valdes
  • A Bridge Too Far by Cornelius Ryan (AB)
  • A Death in the Family by James Agee
  • Edge of Time by Loula Grace Erdman – probably my favorite

Short stories:

  • “A perfect Day for a Bananafish” by JD Salinger
  • “For Esme – with Love and Squalor” by JD Salinger
  • “The Orphan” by Nell Freudenberger
  • “Outside the Eastern Gates” by Nell Freudenberger
  • “Four Calling Brids, Three French Hens” by Lorrie Moore
  • “People Like That Are the Only People Here” by Lorrie Moore
  • “Mr Squishy” by David Foster Wallace
  • “The Suffering Channel” by David Foster Wallace
  • “Blight” by David Bezmozgis
  • “Hot Ice” by David Bezmozgis

For fun I read two books related to running:

  • Anatomy, Stretching and Training for Marathoners by Dr. Philip Striano
  • Rocket Fuel by Matthew Kadrey, MD

And for the Early Review program with LibraryThing, another book about running:

  • Off the Beaten Trail by Meghan Hicks and Bryon Powell

A Bridge Too Far

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Ryan, Cornelius. <em>A Bridge Too Far</em>. New York: Popular Library, 1974.

Reason read: D-Day. Need I say more?

Like The Longest Day before it, A Bridge Too Far reads like a novel at times. It isn’t a dry regurgitation of names, dates, places and statistics. Like The Longest Day the reader gets to know key players in a personal, almost intimate manner. They become more than names of historical significance. The violent battles become real with the ugly sights and sounds of war. This is largely in part due to Ryan’s first hand interviews with witnesses: the veterans and townspeople alike; anyone right in the thick of the action. What sets Ryan’s books apart is that he was given exclusive access to documents that others had only heard about. The confirms and clarifies the history books.
A Bridge Too Far details the failed Market-Garden Operation. Their mission was to seize five major bridges in Belgium, France and Germany. Market was the “from air” attack and Garden was the ground portion of the offensive. After many weather related delays the operation lasted from September 17th to the 24th, 1944. This imaginative battle plan was supposed to be the Allied answer to end the war. Only it didn’t turn out that way.
As an aside, it’s easy to see how Ryan’s books all transitioned easily to the big screen.

Author fact: Ryan became a U.S. citizen when he was 31 years old.

Book trivia: the dedication says it all, “For them all.”

As an aside, while I was working on this blog it dawned on me (after three or four edits) that I had titled it “A Bridget Too Far.”

BookLust Twist: from <em>Book Lust</em> in the obvious chapter “World War II: Nonfiction” (p 254).

PS ~ I don’t think it would be a spoiler to say that I couldn’t bear the end. If you know your history, you know how it goes.

Edge of Time

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Erdman, Loula Grace. The Edge of Time. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1950.

Reason read: Erdman’s birth month is in June.

When Bethany Fulton married Wade Cameron she had no idea what she was getting herself into. As a child she had loved Wade from afar for as long as she could remember. Coming of age, she continued to love him despite the fact he preferred her pretty cousin, Rosemary. After Rosemary rejects Wade for a wealthier suitor Wade takes Bethany instead; takes her to be his wife and to accompany him to the wild unknowns of Texas. Bethany’s first hurdle is understanding where she is going for she can’t picture a house without running water or real glass windows; she can’t picture a landscape without trees. Bethany’s second and bigger hurdle is internal – getting over the fact she is Wade’s second choice for marriage. The memory of Rosemary hangs over everything, especially in the beginning when Wade had no way of telling his far-off Texan neighbors he had married a different girl. More than that the land teaches Bethany to lose her naive ways.

Edge of Time is the kind of simple story. The title comes from Wade’s realization they arrived too late in Texas to be ranchers and too early to be farmers. They arrived “on the edge of time” (p 232).

Lines I liked, “Loneliness bit into people here” (p 81), and “A blob of inconsequential nothingness on the great face of nothingness itself” (p 254).

Book trivia: Erdman dedicated Edge of Time to the homesteader. She felt that plenty had been written about ranchers and nesters, but homesteaders were an unknown.

Author fact: Erdman died in the 70s. I think it’s great that her books still live on.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called (of course) “Texas: Lone Star State of Mind” (p 233).

Coast of Chicago

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Dybek, Stuart. Coast of Chicago. New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1990.

Reason read: June is short story month.

Coast of Chicago consists of fourteen stories. I read “Blight” and “Hot Ice” for the Challenge. While every short story has well rounded and thoughtful characters, it is the city of Chicago that steals the show. It is the largest personality in every story. Everyone describes Dybek’s language as “gritty” and I couldn’t agree more.
“Blight”
Remembering Chicago in the late 50s.

“Hot Ice”
The legend of the girl frozen in a block of ice ice.

Quote I liked from “Hot Ice”: “He’d been a butcher in every meat market in the neighborhood, but drunkenly kept hacking off pieces of his hands, and finally quit to become a full-time alky” (p 126).

Author fact: It should come as no surprise that Dybek was born and raised in Chicago. He illustrates the city intimately in Coast of Chicago.

Book trivia: Coast of Chicago is comprised of fourteen stories. “Hot Ice” won first prize in the O. Henry prize story collections in 1985. “Blight” won in 1987.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Good Things Come in Small Packages” (p 102).

Death in the Family

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Agee, James. A Death in the Family. Read by Mark Hammer. New York: Recorded Books, 2000.

Agee, James. A Death in the Family. New York: Penguin Classics, 2008.

Reason read: Father’s Day is in June. This is in honor of what the loss of a father can do to a family. Believe me, I know.

This is the autobiographical story of what happens when the anchor of a family dies unexpectedly. Set in 1915.
The language of Death in the Family is lyrical and breathtaking. Three scenes worth mentioning: Father Jay sets out to visit his dying father after receiving a middle-of-the-night call from his alcoholic brother. His father has suffered another heart attack and this time it’s bad. Jay’s wife, Mary, lovingly makes him a huge breakfast before his trip despite the early hour. He in return remakes the bed for her. Their exchanged goodbyes are tenderhearted and endearing. In a flashback, when their son experiences a nightmare, Agee describes these night visions in words that are nothing short of enthralling. But, the best part is when Jay comes in to console his son, Rufus. This last scene is heartbreaking. Via a telephone call, Mary has been told there has been a serious accident involving her husband and “a man” needs to come. She isn’t told anything more than that. Mary and her aunt wait up, agonizing over every little word exchanged during the short phone call. Mary’s worry bleeds from the pages.

Quote I really liked, “Talking to that fool is like trying to put socks on an octopus” (p 167). I think I will use that one day.

As an aside, Agee quotes a limerick, “Fat Man From Bombay” in A Death in the Family but he doesn’t give credit to Edward Lear. The limerick is from Lear’s Book of Nonsense.

Author fact: Agee died before this could be published. Oddly enough, this was autobiographical and there has been controversy over what Agee was and wasn’t planning to publish.

Book trivia: Agee was awarded a Pulitzer for Death in the Family. I can see why.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “100 Good Reads, Decade by Decade: 1950s” (p 177).

Natasha: and Other Stories

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Bezmozgis, David. Natasha: and Other Stories. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2004.

Reason read: June is short story month.

Natasha and Other Stories is comprised of seven short stories. I read “Tapka” and title story, “Natasha.” The interesting thing about all seven stories is that they all center around one family, the Bermans. “Tapka” and “Natasha” center on Mark, the son.

“Tapka”
Six year old Mark Berman falls in love with Tapka, his neighbor’s tiny white Lhasa-apso, at first sight. He cares for this animal so deeply he and his cousin are bestowed care-taking duties of Tapka. Until tragedy strikes.
Best line, “With no English, no money, no job, and only a murky conception of what the future held, he wasn’t equipped to admire Tapka on the Italian Riviera” (p 5).

“Natasha”
Ten years later, sixteen year old Mark develops feelings for his fourteen year old cousin, Natasha. She is wise beyond her years; much more experienced than Mark. She teaches him a thing or two about coming of age.
Best line, “She was calibrated somewhere between resignation and joy” (p 90).

Author fact: Bezmozgis was born in Latvia.

Book trivia: Natasha and Other Stories is Bezmozgis’s first book.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Good Things Come in Small Packages” (p 102).

Anatomy, Stretching & Training for Marathoners

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Striano, Dr. Philip and Lisa Purcell. Anatomy, Stretching & Training for Marathoners: a step by step guide to getting the most from your running workout. New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2013.

This was a weird book for me. The goal of the book seems to be of two minds: either getting you fit enough to run a marathon (minus the cardiovascular endurance piece) or supplementing the idea that running is a good exercise for losing weight. The focal point of the book is strengthening and stretching key muscles that are used while running. Beyond that, there is very little about running aside from what to wear and where to run. The mechanics of running are largely ignored. But, to be fair, thrown in is a strange sample marathon training schedule. I’ll get to my comment on the training schedule later. But for now let’s focus on the good news.
There were a bunch of things to like about Anatomy, Stretching and Training. For starters, the overall layout of information is comprehensive and intuitive. I appreciated that the illustrations highlight the key muscles affected by the stretch or training move while the photograph of the individual doing the same thing highlights proper form. The anatomy information was, by far, the most informative aspect of the book. A neat little feature, one I’m sure everyone makes a beeline to find, is the stretching and strength training routines at the end.

Now for the bad news:

  • Page 9 – The last time I checked, a marathon is 26.2 MILES. In the introduction the last sentence is, “Take the time to learn how to run right, using the guidelines found in the following pages, and you’ll soon be entering that 26K.” Assuming that the “K” in that sentence is kilometers a 26K is the equivalent of 16.16 miles.

    • Yes, 16 miles is an impressive distance to run but it’s not a marathon.

  • Page 10 – I don’t know how they measure calories but I’ve never heard of a running program that burns 100 calories in an hour. As a 114 lb woman I burn approximately 100 calories for every mile I run. Maybe they meant mile instead of hour? That would make more sense.
  • Page 17 – I have looked at many different training plans for running marathons and they all agree on one thing – tapering mileage before a race. The sample marathon training plan supplied for Anatomy calls for a 20 mile run the day before running the marathon. Is that normal? To be fair, it might be a typo. It’s the only day that doesn’t actually have the word “run” after the mile distance. It just says “20-miles.” The question is 20-miles what?
  • I think the authors resorted to referring to yoga when they didn’t know what to call a certain stretch (like the back stretch = cobra). This causes confusion in regards to the high lunge/low forward lunge. For practitioners of yoga, a high lunge is done without either knee touching the ground, whereas a low lunge has the placement of the back knee of the ground.(p 86-87).
  • Some detail information is not consistent. Some exercises have times regarding how long to hold a move and/or how reps. For example, the standing quad stretch is to be held for 15 seconds at a time and repeated three times. The very next exercise, the sprinter’s stretch, doesn’t have that information. It would have been nice to see some consistency.

Birds of America

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Moore, Lorrie. Birds of America. New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1999.

Reason read: June is national short story month

The two short stories I read are “Four Calling Birds, Three French Hens” (p 111) and the incredibly sad “People Like That Are the Only People Here: Canonical Babbling in Peed Onk” (p 212).

“Four Calling Birds…” –
Aileen mourns the death of her cat, Bert. She has him cremated and sees a therapist to get over his passing. It just goes to show you how much like a family member a pet can be. The very last scene is the best part.

“People Like That…” –
Despite the fact everyone in this story is nameless, this one is even sadder than “Four Calling Birds”. “Peed Onk” is actually “pediatric oncology.” Parents of a baby boy are faced with his cancer diagnosis. A child having such a serious illness seems unfathomable.

Lines that got me, “When a baby gets cancer, it seems stupid to ever have given up smoking” (p 225) and “The synapses between minutes are unswimmable” (p 235).

Author fact: Where do I begin with Ms. Lorrie? So many things to say about this woman. Here are my favorite facts: She is from an area I used to frequent often, Glens Falls, NY and she goes by her middle name.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Good Things Come in Small Packages” (p 102).

Yocandra in the Paradise of Nada

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Valdes, Zoe. Yocandra in the Paradise of Nada: a Novel of Cuba. New York: Arcade Publishing, 1995

Reason read: June is Caribbean Heritage Month & Yocandra takes place mostly in Cuba.

Meet Yocandra. She is a woman with an identity crisis. Born Patria, at sixteen she develops a rebellious streak and marries an author turned philosopher who takes her away from her beloved Cuba for some time. She is a wild child, fiery and passionate, just like her homeland. I don’t know how to explain the rest of this short novel. Yocandra’s second marriage ends in death & so at an early age she is a widow. That doesn’t slow her down in the least. She has two lovers, the Nihilist and the Traitor. At best, Yocandra is a handful, and all one can hope to do is just try to keep up with her.

Lines worth mentioning, “There I was, a tiny little lump slimy with maternal gook, wrapped in the Cuban flag, and already my father was scolding me for failing to fulfill my revolutionary duty” (p 11), “What sin has a people committed that causes the sea to demand expiation?” (p 54), “In my heart I’m still more Cuban than the palm trees and no one can ever change that” (p 90), and “Apparently our politics can be determined from our excrement” (p 152).

Author fact: Yocandra is Valdes’s first novel.

Book trivia: Yocandra was translated from the Spanish by Sabina Cienfuegos. She includes notes about references and Spanish dialect used in Cuba. Very useful. Another detail of note – this could be considered a short story being barely 150 pages in length.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Cuba Si!” (p 68).

Oblivion

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Wallace, David Foster. Oblivion: Stories. New York: Little, Brown & Company, 2004.

Reason read: June is short story month

“Mr. Squishy”
The complexity of “Mr. Squishy” has been compared to a Magic Eye poster. Reading and rereading will yield varying results. Getting up close will show you something different than if you backed away or circled it, growling like a battle-ready rabid dog. As readers, we step into the scene as it is already underway, a focus group talking about an initially unnamed product. Then we discover we are focused on a chocolate dessert food product under the brand name of Mr. Squishy. The company is trying to market a chocolate dessert with the name “Felonies!” At the same time, unrelated to the scene on the inside is an individual climbing the outside glass wall. The duality of scenes implies an inside looking out/outside looking in desire.

“The Suffering Channel”
There are more ironies in this story than I know what to do with. when faced with writing a review for “The Suffering Channel” I soon found that I was suffering. How do I even begin to describe this short story? Having said all that, here is my feeble attempt:

Brint Molke is an artist. His medium is not oils or watercolor. He specializes in his own excrement. Not to say he is a sculpture in sh!t. He just happens to defecate art. This astonishing feat caught the attention of Skip Atwater, writer for Style magazine. The title of Wallace’s short story comes from Skip’s coverage of a cable channel called…wait for it…the suffering channel. A 24/7/365 channel where, you guessed it, one can watch images of all kinds of suffering. There is more to the story than this, but the overlaying detail that shrouds everything is Style magazine is located in one of the World Trade Center Towers and it’s September 10th, 2001. In other words, nothing in the story matters because in a day’s time everything will change.

Author fact: Wallace wrote “Mr Squishy” under the name Elizabeth Klemm.

Book trivia: there are six other stories in Oblivion that I did not read.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Good Things Come in Small Packages” (p 102).

Love Medicine

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Louise Erdrich. Love Medicine. Toronto: Bantam Books, 1984.

Reason read: Erdrich’s birth month is in June. June is also Family Month, so take your pick.

This is such a powerful book on so many different levels. It is the story of two different Native American families, rich with culture and tradition. Even though June Kashpaw dies within the first chapter, her spirit threads through the entire rest of the story. Just like the history of the land they live on, every subsequent character is complicated and vibrant. This isn’t a plot-driven novel. Instead, the characters with their robust personalities and passionate life experiences make Love Medicine come alive.

Quote worth mentioning, “She always used the royal we, to multiply the censure of what she said by invisible others” (p 7).

Author fact: Erdrich also wrote Beet Queen which is also on my Challenge list. Another piece of trivia – Erdrich was married to Michael Dorris who wrote Yellow Raft in Blue Water one of my all time favorite books.

Book trivia: Love Medicine was a national bestseller.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “American Indian Literature” (p 23) and also in More Book Lust in the chapter called “The Great Plains: the Dakotas” (p 106)