Tag: august

Age of Napoleon

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Horne, Alistair. Age of Napoleon. Modern Library, 2004.

Reason read: Napoleon was born on August 15th. Read in his honor.

After already covering Napoleon’s military career in Master of Europe and How Far From Austerlitz, Alistair Horne felt he could concentrate on writing a book about Napoleon’s contributions to French society above and beyond his military career (although that is not left out of the story). Architecture (the construction of the Quai d’Orsay and rescuing Paris’s Sorbonne University), society (encouraging freedom of religion by restoring the relationship with the Vatican and restoring the sanctity of marriage after the Revolution), art, and even the renumbering of streets. Napoleon liked the finer things in life, but could turn on a dime and have little tolerance for those individuals making his beautiful things come to life. Even his wife Josephine was fired from the job of being his wife because she couldn’t produce an heir fast enough.
Horne simultaneously looks future forward as well as historically back to tell Napoleon’s story. He reminds his audience more than once that Napoleon was “no Hitler” and he makes multiple comparisons to World War II. Yet, for all of Napoleon’s military shortcomings, Horne is quick to point out, his legacy was that he was instrumental in creating important and lasting social equalities.

As an aside, I couldn’t help buy think of Dermot Kennedy’s line, “his eyes lit up with all the power” when reading Age of Napoleon. Napoleon was touted as being a hands-on leader. These days, I think his subjects would call him a micromanager or deranged. Just the fact he would ban plays if he didn’t care for them shows his ego.

Author fact: Is it any wonder that Alistair Horne is a British historian? Of course he is.

Book trivia: Age of Napoleon is a quick read, less that 200 pages.

Music: Beethoven’s Fidelo, Te Deum, Chopin, Edith Pilaf, and Le Triomphe de Tra Jan opera.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “The Complex Napoleon” (p 53).

Lightning Song

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Nordan, Lewis. Lightning Song. Algonquin Books, 1997.

Reason read: Nordan’s birth month is in August.

The crackling electricity of doing something sneaky can be thrilling to a boy coming of age. Lightning Song begins with twelve year old Leroy Dearman, lost in complete innocence while furtively studying naked woman in the pages of a glossy Playboy magazine. Nordan must have tapped into his own boyhood innocence, because he describes Leroy’s naive thoughts perfectly as he stares at the smiling women.
Leroy is a sheltered boy, growing up on an llama farm in rural Mississippi with his parents and two younger sisters. He confronts adult things: naked women, his mother’s coy and giddy behavior around his uncle, and the creepy death of his grandfather in the attic. Lightning Song only becomes more bizarre as you read on: to name a few: the New Couple’s oddity, Leroy’s mother’s obsession with a kidnapped prime minister, Leroy’s sister and her ferocious courage (confessional: my favorite act of bravery was when she was not afraid to take her father’s withered hand).
The lightning is another character in Lightning Song. It creates tension and an air of danger. It is witness to illicit behaviors and illuminates dark secrets.

Favorite line, “He longed to be his father’s son” (p 122).

Author fact: as there is a whole chapter for Lewis Nordan in Book Lust, I am reading a few. Eight to be exact. I have finished three so far.

Book trivia: this could have been a movie.

Music: Elvis Presley, “Dixie,” “Let Me Call You Sweetheart,” and “Are You From Dixie?”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter “Lewis Nordan: Too Good To Miss” (p 172).

Shattered Silk

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Michaels, Barbara. Shattered Silk. Atheneum, 1986.

Reason read: Michaels passed away in the month of August. Read in her memory.

Shattered Silk begins with such a benign plot I questioned the seriousness of including it in a More Book Lust chapter called “Girl Guides, Or It’s a Dark and Stormy Night…” (p 99). Karen Nevitt, soon to be divorced, has sought refuge at her aunt and uncle’s home in Georgetown, Washington D.C. under the auspicious of housesitting and dog watching. This is a return to her college roots, complete with old frienemies and an old boyfriend with whom a relationship ended badly. What originated as an escape from a bad marriage turns into a business venture when a family friend urges Karen to start a vintage clothing shop. That’s when the trouble starts. Karen experiences harassing behavior from an unknown person, but no one knows why. The sad thing is, I honestly did not really care to know the reason. Karen’s personality was such that I did not root for her either way. She wasn’t a likeable or believable character. She was just meh. All of the characters were just blah. I didn’t believe them. Why would a cop buy a house for a woman’s business before even asking her?
I will say this about reading Shattered Silk: I know more about taking care of various fabrics than I ever cared to. Even though Michaels introduces Karen as not knowing much about fine fabrics, Karen brings herself up to an expert in record time. Readers will learn about designers, textiles, and even receive fashion tips.

I am always curious about the relationships people have with one another. Exactly who is Karen to Jill and vice versa. What Michaels writes, “They parted with mutually insincere expressions of affection” (p 24), I had to wonder.

Personal connection: When Michaels was describing Karen’s relationship with her mother she could have been describing mine. A mother who asks what you did wrong when you share that a serious relationship is coming to an end. Failure is on you o matter what happened.

Author fact: Peter Mertz’s photograph of Barbara Michaels has her looking like a character straight out of a Victorian romance; big hat, fuzzy cat and all.

Book trivia: this could have been a movie.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter with the long title, “Girl Guides, Or It’s a Dark and Stormy Night, Good Thing You Have a Flashlight” (p 99). As an aside, Shattered Silk is the first book I am reading for this chapter. Believe it or not, after ten years of this Challenge there are still some chapters I haven’t touched.

In My Father’s Footsteps

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Matthews, Sebastian. In My Father’s Footsteps. W.W. Norton & Company, 2004

Reason read: Matthews was born in August. Read in his honor.

How do you pay homage to a person who repeatedly broke your heart and let you down as a child; a good guy with harmful tendencies in adulthood? Sebastian Matthews, by turns loved and looked to respect his father. From an early age, father and son had a complicated relationship. When William Matthews died of a heart attack at just 55 it was a shock, but no one was surprised. A womanizer, a drinker, and a smoker (and maybe a midnight toker), Matthews senior was a force to be reckoned with. In My Father’s Footsteps is aptly named for Sebastian followed closely behind his father: a lifelong jazz enthusiast, becoming a writer, and poet unable to commit to any relationship for more than a few dates. Deeply buried resentments over the divorce of his parents; standing in the shadow of his father’s brilliance as a poet and professor; trying to understand the complexity of his inheritance, Matthews carefully picks his way through the emotions to share a loving, yet brutally honest tribute to his father.

Confessional: there was a part of Matthews’s story when he was watching father and son bricklayers build a wall. It reminded me of an earlier story I read about a son following in his father’s footsteps as a bricklayer until he found science.

Author fact: I want to believe Sebastian has found happiness in marriage and fatherhood. As of the publication of In My Father’s Footsteps he still lived in Asheville.

Book trivia: both of Matthews’s parents were poets. At times Matthews would put poetry from each parent side by side.

As an aside, when the police were at Matthews’s father’s apartment they went from room to room turning on lights. Why don’t do they do that in the movies?

Personal connection: Dying alone requires the procurement of a court order before gaining permanent access to the deceased residence. If you die in public, even if it is of natural causes, your body is considered a crime scene and cannot be moved until fully investigated.

Setlist: James Taylor, Cowboy Junkies. Indigo Girls, Joni Mitchell’s Hejira album, Tommy Flanagan, Booker Erwin, John Handy, Carnell Jones, Horace Silver’s “Song for My Father,” Gerry Mulligan, Joe Henderson, Alfredo Kraus, Elton John’s “Your Song,” Bob Dylan’s “On a night Like This” “Idiot Wind,” “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go,” “Shelter From the Storm,” and “Blood on the Tracks,” Mozart, Ella Fitzgerald, Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks, Duke Ellington’s “Cottontail,” “Amazing Grace,” Bach, Miles Davis’s “Flamenco Sketches,” Tallest Trees album, “All Blues,” and “Kind of Blue,” Bob Marley’s Babylon By Bus album, Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section, John Coltrane, Stan Getz’s “Sweet Rain,” the Jazz Messengers, Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Sonny Rollins, Lester Young, Earl Hines, Mal Waldron, Billie Holiday’s “I Can’t Get Started,” and “Miss Brown to You,” John Bunch Trio, Charlie Mingus’ Alum, “Goodbye Porkpie Hat,” and “Better Git It in Your Soul,” Thelonius Monk’s “Round Midnight,” Dexter Gordon, JJ Johnson, Bud Power, “Some Other Spring,” Getz and Gilberto’s “Girl from Ipanema,” Prince, Sweetheart of the Rodeo, Grateful Dead, Anita O’Day, the Police’s Zenyatta Mondatta album, “Easy Living,” “Let’s Get It On,” and “John Wesley Harding.”

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Me, Me, Me: Autobiographies and Memoirs” (p 162).

At the Mercy of the Sea

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Kretschmer, John. At the Mercy of the Sea: the True Story of Three Sailors in a Caribbean Hurricane. International Marine/McGraw Hill, 2007.

Reason read: August is the best time to be on the water. Read in honor of the perfect month for a sail.

John Kretschmer begins his story on November 14th, 1999. His main focus begins with his friend, Carl Wake, captain of the 42′ sailboat La Vie en Rose. Carl was sailing from the Chesapeake Bay to the Caribbean in time to meet Kretschmer for Thanksgiving so this part of At Mercy of the Sea is heartbreakingly personal. [How could it have been Carl’s first and last at-sea voyage?] Tragically, Carl meets up with Hurricane Lenny and does not survive the storm’s wrath. In addition to Carl’s story, Kretschmer also follows the tragedies of Steve Rigby, sailing English Braids and Guillaume Llobregat, captain of Frederic-Anne, also victims of Hurricane Lenny.
Hurricane Lenny was an anomaly, a dangerous freak storm that defied logic. Understanding how a hurricane is supposed to behave plays a huge part of the drama. Part of At Mercy of the Sea is the biography of a hurricane from birth (African, Gulf of Mexico or other) to its landfall slow death. Kretschmer carefully outlines what typically happens from start to finish, beginning with the naming of each hurricane. In this way, he is able to illustrate just how unusual Lenny turned out to be.
Confessional: Like The Diary of Anne Frank, I had a hard time reading towards the end of At the Mercy of the Sea. As the pages turned, the story brought me closer and closer to the demise of the sailors. I knew it was coming, but dreaded the end all the same.

As an aside, last month I read a book about the Vendee Globe race. When Kretschmer mentioned it I was thankful I had more than a passing knowledge of what he was talking about. He also mentioned the book A Voyage for Madmen by Peter Nichols, which is on my Challenge list.

Line I adored, “Retreating into the past is one way to keep your sanity – or disturb it, depending on what you run into there” (p 10). Kretschmer is not wrong. He is able to make keen observations about the psyche of a sailor too long at sea, probably because he has been there himself.
Other lines I really liked, “My wife was weary of my dreams and, worse, downright sick of my realities” (p 70) and “The only way to savor the essence of life is to nearly lose it” (p 173).

Another confessional: reading about hurricanes brings me face to face with conflicting emotions. I got married in the middle of Hurricane Ivan. I was twelve miles out to sea. According to Kretschmer, Ivan produced the highest measured significant wave height, fifty feet.

Author fact: Kretschmer is a professional sailor in his own right.

Book trivia: I would have liked to see photographs of the sailors or, at the very least, their boats.

Music: Louis Armstrong’s “La Vie en Rose,” Edith Pilaf, Neil Young’s “Rust Never Sleeps,” Pink Floyd, and Jimmy Buffett.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “See the Sea” (p 201).

Everything Feels Impossible Until It’s Done

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Van den Broeck, Vincent. Everything Feels Impossible Until It’s Done: How the Life You Build Becomes the Life That Saves You. Publish Nation, 2026.

Reason read: as a member of the Early Review Program for LibraryThing I get to read tragic yet inspirational books. This is one such story.

You get the sense that Vincent’s life was adrift in his younger years. Example: when considering higher education he chose a degree because it sounded impressive. Unbelievably, he did not actually having a clue what it was for. Losing his mother to cancer at a young age must have played a significant part in this drifting. Grief can untether you from reality. It wasn’t until he entered the world of hospitality did Vincent begin to shine and really find his focus. He became a workaholic, taking on too much too soon; opening one restaurant after another; drowning in debt. It took an accident that nearly killed him before he was forced to slow down, take stock of his life and find his future.
You will have to read for yourself, but there are some really beautiful sentences and phrases in Everything Feels Impossible Until It’s Done. So much so that I wanted more of the story. It was too short! I wanted to hear more. Imagine a bumblebee darting from one fragrant flower to another; never taking the time to linger on one bloom for very long. Everything Feels Impossible Until It’s Done is a bumblebee of a story. Vincent never digs into the details of his life more than he needs to…but I wish he did.
As an aside, Vincent called the accident inevitable. I want to know why was it inevitable? Instead, I argue that our system for dealing with reckless or illegal drivers is tragically flawed. If it wasn’t, the driver who struck Vincent would not have been driving at all. Think about it. The driver was dangerous enough before Vincent’s accident to have his license taken away. We can do better as a society.

Book trivia: in the advance copy I received Everything Feels Impossible Until It’s Done did not include photographs. I would have liked to see the restaurant or meet his amazing wife.

Lyndon: an Oral Biography

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Miller, Merle. Lyndon: an Oral Biography. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1980.

Reason read: Lyndon’s birth month was in August. Read in his honor.

Merle Miller spent more than five years compiling Johnson’s oral history. The miles he put in, literally and figuratively, are astounding. Lyndon B. Johnson was a complicated man living in the time of the greatest society. Known for his aw-shucks attitude, he started out being a good ‘ole boy who voted against antilynching and antidiscrimination laws but ended his career as an instrumental advocate for federal aid to education, the creation of Medicare, changes in voter rights, and stronger civil rights. The death of Texas Congressman James P. Buchanan was a turning point in Johnson’s political trajectory. His campaigns were memorable – arriving by helicopter when running for senator. By the end of his political career Lyndon had weathered a tumultuous era: the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., the march in Selma, Alabama, the Vietnam War.
As with any oral history, the chronology jumps around a bit. Case in point: the birth of Lyndon’s first child came before the purchase of the radio station, KTBC.
Miller provides an intimate primer on the inner workings of the United States government. Probably the most fascinating section was the hour by hour, behind the scenes account of the Kennedy assassination and the transition of power to Lyndon B. Johnson. He also peeled back the curtain on Lady Bird Johnson’s life as well. Just as Lyndon was thrust into presidency, Lady Bird became the First Lady overnight. There was no time for preparation but she acclimated to her position with grace. As an aside, her note of encouragement to her husband was beautiful.

Author fact: Miller died when he was only 67 years old. My copy of Lyndon was signed by him.

Book trivia: Miller does not leave a detail unexplored. By default, readers get glimpses into the personality of President Roosevelt and a short biography of Lady Bird (Claudia)’s life leasing up to meeting her husband, to name a couple.

Music: Lena Horne, “I’ll Be with You When I’m Gone,” “Kate Smith on the South,” “God Bless America,” “San Antonio Rose,” “Dixie,” “The Eyes of Texas are Upon You,” Beethoven, “Hello, Dolly,” “The Eyes of Texas,” and “Ruffles and Flourishes.”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Merle Miller: Too Good To Miss” (p 155). If Pearl wanted, she could have included Lyndon in the “Presidential Biographies” chapter as well.

Sunne in Splendour

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Penman, Sharon Kay. The Sunne in Splendour. St. Martin’s Press, 1982.

Reason read: King Richard III died in August. Read in his memory.

Fabulous. Glorious. Beautiful. Absorbing. Exceptional. Painstaking. Immersive. Captivating. These are the words critics used to describe Sunne in Splendour when it was first published. The only word I focused on the most? Painstaking. I was intimidated by all 900+ pages. I will be the first to admit that historical fiction is not my thing so I thought this would be a slog. And yet. Sunne in Splendour is a best seller. And. And! And I admit, very entertaining.
This is a time in history when boys of ten wed for political positioning. Brothers killed brothers for the throne. Beheadings were the entertainment of the hour. Backstabbing and betrayals of all kinds ruled the day. Christmas truces could be broken without warning. Penman delivers a glorious fifteenth century England that is bloody and brutal. Richard III is right smack in the middle of it; becoming king on a technicality of legitimacy.
Everything about Sunne in Splendour is detailed perfection. Everything from the food people ate, their choice of drink (spiced hippocras), where they lived and the clothes they wore.

Author fact: Penman died in 2021.

Book trivia: Sunne in Splendour contradicts the well known view of Shakespeare’s Richard III.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Digging Up the Past Through Fiction” (p 80).

No Place Like Nome

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Engelhard, Michael. No Place Like Nome: the Bering Strait Seen Through Its Most Storied City. Corax Books, 2025.

Reason read: As a member of the Early Review Program for LibraryThing, I occasionally read interesting books. This one was fantastic!

Engelhard spent a “three year stint” in Nome, Alaska and took the time to write about his experiences. Confessional: I enjoy books that are well organized. No Place Like Nome is separated into four logical parts: first, geography of the place, then the characters and personalities within the place, the business and art of Nome, and finally, journeys around the region.
Engelhard is informative without resorting to didactic explanations. Linguistics (the use of the word Eskimo for example), anthropology, short biographies (Sally Carrighar, Edward Sherriff Curtis, James Kivitauraq Moses, Father Bernhard Rosecrans Hubbard, Roald Amundsen, and Lynn Cox), the importance of whales to the Nome culture (confessional: I did not know their bones were used as construction material), the history of jade, the advent of bicycles. The photography was amazing. My favorite was the one of Serum-Run racer Leonard Seppala.
What seem barbaric and strange in our culture is commonplace in the far reaches of civilizations like Greenland, Siberia and Alaska like hunting practices and diet.
Because I read this an an ebook, it would have been great to have footnotes that jumped to the corresponding image or text.

As an aside – was it a typo when Hrdlicka was later called “Hard Liquor”?

Personal complaint – here is a description that bugged me, “nude mermaid on a floe’s edge with her feet dangling in the water.” Hello? Does anyone remember Ariel? Mermaids have tails, not feet.

Author fact: Michael Engelhard won the National Outdoor Book Award for Arctic Traverse. The photo Engelhard used for Nome shows him drinking what looks like to be a beer. I’m dying to know what kind it is.

Book trivia: No Place Like Nome will be published in September 2025.

Setlist: Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit,” “Julia Ward Howe’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” Paganini, “Float Coat” (to encourage water safety), and Madonna.

Mystical Paths

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Howatch, Susan. Mystical Paths. Alfred A. Knopf, 1992.

Reason read: to continue the series started in recognition of Easter back in April.

As with every other Starbridge novel, Mystical Paths is designed to be read independently of others in the series, but it is recommended to read them in order. Characters who were in the background in previous novels jump to the forefront in later ones. This time, Jonathan Darrow’s son, Nicholas, narrates the story. Nicholas and his father are modeled after the work of Christopher Bryant and are both psychics. Nicholas is now twenty-five years old and has a “sex-mess” in the middle of the 1960s. He believes he is one half of his father and suffers from somnambulism. Every night he has to tether himself to something before falling asleep for fear of wandering off somewhere. He leads a double life in order to protect his father, his other half. Yet at eighty-eight years old, Jonathan Darrow is still sharp as a tack and can run circles around his son. Like the other Howatch books, psychological situations are examined through a spiritual and theological lens with the help of a spiritual advisor or religious mentor. Mystical Paths is one of my favorites due to the plots many twists and turns.
I think I have said this before, but the benefit of reading the Starbridge series in order, one right after the other is that besides character development the reader gets the varying perspectives of the same history. Each character recalls the same point in time with different feelings and memories. It reminded me of Michael Dorris’s Yellow Raft in Blue Water.

Every Howatch book (so far) has a character with sexual hang-ups or has trouble with alcohol. Nicholas Darrow is no different. Lines I liked, “As I mooched around, bored out of my mind, I wondered how the Church could survive the 20th century when one of its most famous training-grounds had been so wholly smothered by the dead hand of an irrelevant past” (p 19), “Funny how the vast majority of the human race has to generate a repulsive amount of noise before it can convince itself it’s having a good time” (p 55),

Author fact: Beyond the Starbridge series I have two more Howatch books to read for the Challenge.

Book trivia: According to the author’s note, Mystical Paths is the penultimate book in the Starbridge series. However, Pearl lists a seventh book, Wonder Worker, to round out the series. Wonder Worker is actually the first book in a different series.

Setlist: Peggy Lee, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Beethoven, Rolling Stones, “River Deep, Mountain High” by Tina Turner, John Lennon’s “Money,” Mick Jagger, “It’s All Over Now” by the Rolling Stones,” Ella Fitzgerald, Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Berlioz, Dead March,

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Fathers, Mothers, Sisters, Brothers: the Family of Clergy” (p 86).

Maine Woods

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Thoreau, Henry David. The Maine Woods. Decorations by Clare Leighton. Ticknor and Fields, 1864.

Reason read: the Maine Lobster Festival is always the first weekend in August.

Henry D. Thoreau made three separate trips to Maine. Most of the Maine Woods is a descriptive narration about the journey and the nature witnessed along the way. From navigating rapids and hunting moose to observing flowers, trees, and small animals. From a cultural perspective, The Maine Woods paints a picture of Thoreau’s interactions with the natives in Maine: especially their canoe building and cooking skills and their hunting and fishing practices. Thoreau wanted to learn from the natives (“I would tell him all I knew, and he should tell me all he knew” p 221).
Thoreau could not help but insert a little politics into his narrative from time to time, “The Anglo-American can indeed cut down, and grub up all this waving forest, and make a stump speech, and vote for Buchanan on its ruins, but he cannot converse with the spirit of the tree he fells, he cannot read the poetry and mythology which retire as he advances” (p 309).
While the narrative just ends abruptly, the appendix includes a list of trees, flowers, shrubs, and birds seen along the excursions. It also includes how to outfit and excursion with tents, tools, etc. There is also a glossary of Indian words and their meanings.
I did not know this about Maine: in 1837 there were 230 sawmills on the Penobscot river.

Thoreau had a sense of humor, “We saw a pair of moose horns on the shore; and I asked Joe if a moose had shed them; but he said that there was a head attached to them, and I knew that they did not shed their heads more than once in their lives” (p 127).

As an aside, I thought of my papas when Thoreau was explaining how to steer a boat into waves to avoid capsizing or taking on water.
As another aside, Thoreau mentioned John Smith from 1614. That is the same year Captain Smith landed on Monhegan. Interestingly enough, Thoreau mentions a “Manhegan Island.” I’m not sure it’s the same one.
I’m glad to know some things never change. The nuisance of mosquitoes was just as bad then as it is now, “We were considerably molested by mosquitoes at this camp” (p 253).

Author fact: beyond being a naturalist and an essayist, Thoreau was a philosopher.

Book trivia: If only there were photographs! Or a map. I swear Thoreau mentions Monhegan (spelled Manhegan).

Music: “O Susanna!”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “The Maine Chance” (p 135).

Young Men and Fire

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Maclean, Norman. Young Men and Fire. University of Chicago Press, 2017.

Reason read: Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans twenty years ago this month. Young Men and Fire is about a different natural disaster; one started by lightning strikes and odd wind patterns.

On August 5th, 1949 thirteen out of fifteen smokejumpers lost their lives in the Montana Mann Gulch fire. Started by multiple lightning strikes, Mann Gulch and the surrounding area was soon a blazing inferno, completely out of control. For years, researchers have studied the tragedy to make sense of how only a handful of men, two being smokejumpers, survived. Someone needed to be blamed. Explanations were dire. Controversy surrounding foreman Dodge’s intentional lighting of an escape fire only added to the mystery. In 1978 Norman Maclean brought Robert Sallee and Walter Rumsey, the two surviving smokejumpers, back to Mann Gulch. Their memories of the tragedy were so sharp they were able to remember a can of white potatoes with two knife punctures. Nearly thirty years later, they could find the same can complete with puncture holes.
Beyond walking the scene of the catastrophe, Maclean and others plotted a course of reasonable explanation. They rationalized that if mathematics could be used to predict fire, why couldn’t math be applied to a past fire to reconstruct it? The science behind this was fascinating.
As an aside, this was the first time I read a publisher’s note explaining how a book which was published posthumously, came to be structured, fact-checked and released to the world. The University of Chicago Press was able to express its gratitude for the people who brought Young Men and Fire to bookshelves. I thought it wise of the University of Chicago Press to include “Black Ghost” as the preface to Young Men and Fire. A seemingly unrelated essay, it introduced Maclean’s personal experiences with fire and why the Mann Gulch tragedy was important to him.
In the end Maclean desperately wanted to believe the thirteen smokejumpers did not suffer. He consulted a doctor who said that asphyxiating in a fire is much like drowning; “it is not terrible,” was the conclusion. If you have read A Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger you might remember his play by play description of what it is like to drown. No thank you.

Memorable line, “No one who survived saw what happened to those who became crosses on that hillside” (p 307).

Author fact: in the introduction by Timothy Egan he shared that when Maclean was looking for a publisher for Young Men and Fire he was approached by a publisher who had previously turned him down for A River Runs Through It. As everyone knows, River was a smashing success. Big mistake. Big. Big. Mistake. Maclean was reported as saying he wouldn’t give this well known publisher Young Men and Fire if they were the last company on earth. Talk about a Pretty Woman moment!

Book trivia: Young Men and Fire includes photographs that not only show the devastation of the fire but also explain how the tragedy occurred.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “What a (Natural) Disaster!” (p 242).

African in Greenland

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Kpomassie, Michel-Tet. An African in Greenland. Harcourt Brace Janovich, 1983.

Reason read: August is the last month of freedom for students returning to school. Every once in awhile I chose a travel book to recognize this fact.

Before Kpomassie can tell you about his time in Greenland he needs to explain where his life began and all that Western Africa entails. To understand his culture you must first embrace his origin story.
Upon discovering a book about Greenland, Kpomassie became obsessed with traveling to that “other” green land. Kpomassie exhibited a great deal of patience – it took him six years just to make it out of West Africa. But he was also smart and ambitious. Being bilingual he was able to pay his way as he traveled. He had hopes of living with seal hunters, sleeping in igloos, and riding the sledge. He wanted the full experience. He got more than he bargained for in the northern Greenland village of Rodebay. Families too poor for groceries ate rabid dogs. Their bathroom was a bucket by the door for everyone to see. A father takes his son-in-law hunting so his daughter and Kpomassie can have four days of intimate alone time. Parents ignore their young son while he practices oral sex on his two year old brother. Dos are so hungry they attack and devour their master. When the community is not hunting or fishing, they are fall-down drunk. Besides culture, Kpomassie learned about the science of fashion; what it took to survive temperatures that reached forty or fifty below zero.
I did not expect to laugh while reading An African in Greenland but Kpomassie’s account of using the grease from a lizard to grow one’s penis was hilarious.

As an aside, animals and there shed blood is very important to tribal cultures. I saw it in The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down as well as An African in Greenland. The butchering of whales, seals, and even dogs was difficult to read.

Confessional: Kpomassie’s father had five wives and how the hierarchy within that system worked: who was intimate and for how long; who did the cooking and how other chores were parsed out. Polygamy was natural in Western Africa, yet Kpomassie found it hard to share a woman with another man in Greenland. Curious.

Author fact: Kpomassie is the first African to choose to live in Greenland, trading in one green continent for another.

Book trivia: I do not know why I feel this way, but the preface by Jean Malaurie is a little self-indulgent.

Music: the Beatles

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Where On Earth Do These Books Belong?” (p 258). Armchair travel, maybe?

Silent Speaker

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Stout, Rex. Silent Speaker. Bantam Books, 1946.

Reason read: to continue the series started in November.

One of the aspects of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe that I just adore is that Wolfe’s unscrupulous tendencies. He does not mind stooping to all new lows when trying to solve a case. When Cheney Boone, Director of the Bureau of Price Regulations, is murdered right before he was due to deliver a speech to the National Industrial Association, Wolfe pounces on a way to make NIA his client. Since the BPR and NIA are not exactly friendly, it is easy to pit them against each other. What better way than to accuse NIA of murder? Wolfe then finds a way to turn a $30,000 fee into an $100,000 reward along with faking a mental breakdown. As usual, it is Archie who steals the show.
Who would have predicted Nero Wolfe would come to the defense of Cramer? When Cramer is taken off the case Wolfe actually disapproves of the way the inspector has been treated. It is strange to not have him be the rival of a case.

Small confession: when I don’t take a lot of notes while reading that usually means I am not into the plot. But! I did find this quote that I liked, “An unaccustomed chair always presented him with a complicated problem” (p 238).

Author fact: Among Stout’s many occupations he was also a sightseeing guide.

Book trivia: Walter Mosely provides the introduction to Silent Speaker.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe: Too Good To Miss” (p 226).

To Maggie Wherever You’ve Gone

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Andersen, Christine. To Maggie Wherever You’ve Gone. Cloeofpleirn Press, 2025.

Reason read: this was an Early Review for LibraryThing.

I have this habit of trying to solve mysteries while I read. I needed to know if Maggie was a real person and if she was, who was she to Andersen? Like a detective searching for clues I looked for answers within the words. Andersen’s daughter? No. Stepdaughter? Maybe. As I read on I stopped caring if it was real or fiction. Andersen words flow as a clear stream of meaning and you cannot help but be caught up in the flow. The reader has a vivid picture of Maggie as a child, a rebellious teenager, a lost young adult forever adrift. The imagery of angst and inner turmoil is crystal clear. So is the author’s inability to save Maggie. The feeling of helplessness and the hopelessness of trying to save a drowning soul is palpable. I read this over and over and over. While the words were painful the language was so beautiful. Beauty among the thorns. “To pick a rose you ask your hands to bleed” as Natalie Merchant would say.

Confessional: They say that once someone is deemed truly suicidal, meaning they have tried to die more than once, they won’t stop trying until they succeed. If that is the case, really and truly, then I am really and truly fukced.