Tag: book lust i

Second Confession

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Stout, Rex. Second Confession. G.K. Hall and Co., 1992.

Reason read: to continue the series started in November of 2024. I am now a year into the Nero Wolfe series.

It all starts when a father wants to hire Nero Wolfe to confirm or deny his daughter’s fiancé is not a Communist. James Sperling believes his daughter’s suitor needs to be investigated before they marry. At first Nero is reluctant to take the case for he knows Sperling has connections to the mafia. That is the least of his troubles when the man in question is found murdered and all evidence points to Nero. [Stout likes vehicular homicide and it is Wolfe’s vehicle with the blood evidence.]
It is rare that Nero Wolfe leaves his brownstone in New York City as the country makes him nervous, yet, in Second Confession Wolfe finds himself in Chappaqua, just above White Plains, New York. Another variance of this Nero Wolfe mystery is a different set of law enforcement running interference. Despite these differences, fear not! Archie is his old sarcastic witty self.

As an aside, I truly enjoy learning more about the highly entertaining Archie Goodwin. This time we learn he has gone to high school in Ohio.

Lines I liked, “I wouldn’t go to the extreme of calling him a cheap filthy little worm, but he is in fact a shabby creature” (p 93) and “There are numerous layers of honesty, and the deepest should not have a monopoly” (p 276).

Author fact: Rex Stout served as chairman of the war writer’s board.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe: Too Good To Miss” (p 209).

Avalon

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Lawhead, Stephen R. Avalon: the Return of King Arthur. Avon, 1999.

Reason read: King Arthur was born in December…supposedly.

The is a classic tale of the struggle between good and evil. Cast as the power hungry antagonist is Prime Minister Thomas Waring. When the last King of England committed suicide Waring was under the impression he would lead England from his seat in government. Out of nowhere along comes James Stuart, an apparent nobody with all the credentials to prove it is he who is actually next in line for the throne. All of the characters you expect from King Arthur’s time are represented in modern day Britain. Ancient enemies are present with a modern day twist.
My favorite parts were when James experiences fiosachd, a kind of mental time travel where he can see his surroundings in a medieval light. Sights and sounds shimmer into his mind like a memory but appear before him as real as his own skin. Modern day dissolves to reveal a time before time.
My least favorite part was the relationship with Jenny. She rebuffs James and seems to fancy another until she does a surprising 180.

Confessional: I went back and forth about whether or not Avalon was part of the Pendragon series. In the end I decided it wasn’t because I couldn’t care enough if it was or wasn’t.

Book trivia: Avalon is the LAST book in the Pendragon Cycle series (according to Lawhead’s website). Once again, I have read these books out of order.

Author fact: several of Lawhead’s books have been made into television series for 2025.

Music: “Auld Lang Syne,” “Bowl of Punch Reel,” Gerry Rafferty, “Crown Him with Many Crowns,” “Amazing Grace,” “We Rest on Thee,” “Wedding March,” “O Worship the King,” “Blest Be the Tie That Binds,” “Scotland the Brave,” and “Be Thou My Vision.”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “King Arthur” (p 136). What Pearl does not tell you is that at the time of the publication of Book Lust, Avalon was the last book in the Pendragon Cycle series.

Life Among the Savages

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Jackson, Shirley. Life Among the Savages. Narrated by Lesa Lockford. Dreamscape Media, 2015.
Jackson, Shirley. Life Among the Savages. Farrar, Straus and Young, 1953.

Reason read: December is Jackson’s birth month. Read in her honor.

This is a delightful series of essays about being a mother and wife in a large family. Jackson has four children in a very chaotic home. She attacks each subject whether it be education, childbirth, failings of the furnace and automobile or life with a cat with wit, sarcasm, humor, and humility. This was a great way to pass a rainy afternoon. I look forward to her other nonfictions as well as the fiction on my list.
Confessional: There were times I wanted to strangle her children but refrained from throwing the book across the room when I realized there potentially could be a fair amount of exaggeration in Jackson’s descriptions.

Author fact: Pearl misfiled Life Among the Savages under ghost stories because Jackson also wrote the very creepy short story “the Lottery.”

Book trivia: try to find the version with Lesa Lockford as narrator. It is fantastic.

Music: “Joy to the world,” and “O Come, All Ye Faithful.”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the odd chapter called “Ghost Stories” (p 100). I say odd because Life Among Savages is not a ghost story. It is just mentioned because Jackson did write a scary story or two.

Speaker for the Dead

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Card, Orson Scott. Speaker for the Dead. Macmillan Audio, 2006.

Reason read: to continue the series started in October in honor of Science Fiction Month.

As a small child, Andrew “Ender” Wiggin saved planet Earth from war with the Buggers. Now as an earthly yet ageless thirty five year old adult, Ender is faced with a second alien invasion with the piggies. War seems to be inevitable. Ender has transformed himself into a Speaker for the Dead and must reconcile his horrible past as Ender Wiggin the Xenocide. Not many know he is one and the same. It is a dance of identity to come to terms with the past.
I found it interesting to learn that in order for Speaker for the Dead to work Ender’s Game had to be a full blown novel. The sequel actually birthed the first book’s existence.
As an aside, I do not know how Speaker for the Dead can be pigeon holed into the genre of science fiction when it carries themes of philosophy, religion, family, psychology, religion, socio-economics, ethics, ecology, genetics, mysticism, hatred, and science.
I applaud any book that makes the reader feel something whether intended or not. If the author can be clever enough to hide personal feelings while promoting an unfavorable view, more power to him or her. Speaker for the Dead made me laugh and cry, hate and love, all at the same time.
The best part of Speaker for the Dead was Ender’s conversation with the Bishop about death – how another culture could see death as the greatest honor.

Line I liked, “I think, said Ender, that you should not plant anymore humans” (p 415).

Author fact: to look at Orson Scott Card’s list of books is impressive. I am only reading seven Ender books for the Challenge.

Book trivia: Speaker for the Dead is an indirect sequel to Ender’s Game. You can get by without reading Ender, but why would you want to?

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror” (p 213).

Mammoth Book of Twentieth Century Ghost Stories

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Haining, Peter, ed. The Mammoth Book of Twentieth Century Ghost Stories. Carroll and Graf Publishers, 1998.

Reason read: November 1st is Day of the Dead in Mexico. Read in honor of ghosts everywhere.

The stories:
The Golden Era –

  • “The Third Person” by Henry James – two spinster women live together in a haunted house.
  • “The Presence By the Fire” by H.G. Wells – a man mourns the loss of his wife.
  • “How It Happened” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – a man crashes his brand new car.
  • “Ghostly Duel” by Jack London – published in the Oakland Aegis and renamed “Who Believes in Ghosts?”
  • “The Hand” by Theodore Dreiser
  • “The Ghost of Down Hill” by Edgar Wallace – Wallace’s short stories were made into movies.
  • “Honeysuckle Cottage” by P.G. Wodehouse – no one is who they say they are in this haunted house.
  • “The Old Dark House” by J.B. Priestly
  • “Sophy Mason Comes Back” by E.M. Delafield – Dorothy Sayers was a fan of Delafield.
  • “In a Glass Darkly” by Agatha Christie – a man saves a woman from murder…or does he?
    Two: the Phantom Army –
  • “The Bowman” by Arthur Machen – is this story really fiction when there have been eye witness accounts of the World War I phenomenon?
  • “The Other Side of the Medal” by Stella Gibbons – another version of the Bowmen story.
  • “Three Lines of Old French” by Abraham Merritt – Haining said this could be a benchmark ghost story.
  • “The Lusitania Waits” by Alfred Noyes – Noyes was an English poet who, like John Mayer, did not wait to graduate college before becoming famous.
  • “Vengeance is Mine” by Algernon Blackwood – a chance encounter with a stranger changes a mild-mannered man’s life.
  • “We are the Dead” by Henry Kuttner – from the pulp magazine called Weird Tales.
  • “The Escort” by Daphne du Maurier
  • “The Elf in Algiers” by John Steinbeck
  • “The Mirror in Toom 22” by James Hadley Case – written while Case was serving in the Royal Air Force.
  • “Is there Life Beyond the Gravy?” by Stevie Smith
    Three: The Modern Tradition –
  • “Sloane Square” by Pamela Hansford Johnson – a ghostly subway ride.
  • “The Leaf-Sweeper” by Muriel Spark – one of my favorites about a man who confronts his living ghost.
  • “At the Chalet Lartrec” by Winston Graham – a story about time spent in an isolated mountain hotel.
  • “The Love of a Good Woman” by William Trern – mild-mannered salesman murders his wife for the sake of a mistress.
  • “The Haunting of Shawley Rectory” by Ruth Rendell – does history repeat itself?
  • “Voices From the Coalbin” by Mary Higgins Clark – a woman slowly goes insane thanks to childhood traumas.
  • “A Good Sound Marriage” by Fay Weldon – a pregnant woman has a heart to heart with her ghost of a grandmother.
  • “A Self-Possessed Woman” by Julian Barnes
  • A Programmed Christmas Carol” by John Mortimer – published in the London Daily Mail in 1994.
  • “A Figment in Time” by Peter Haining

My favorite observations: the spinsters in “The Third Person” were happy to have a man in the house, even if he was a ghost and in “A Programmed Christmas Carol” a descendant of Scrooge’s is living in the world of Apple computers and paternity leave.

Line I liked, “James Rodman had a congenital horror of matrimony” (p 147), “Rage pertained to savage days” (p 263), “The dangerous thing is for a woman to wait too long, so she end with nothing” (p 445)and “Curiously, too, I thought that although a lot of people die naked, I could not find a single story of a nude phantom” (p 480).

Author Editor fact: Haining has over 200 works to his credit. I am only reading The Mammoth Book of Twentieth Century Ghost Stories for the Challenge.

Music: “Good-bye to Tipperary,” “The Holly and the Ivy,” “Lillibullero,” “The Rogue’s March,”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the very obvious chapter called “Ghost Stories” (p 99).

Those Who Hunt the Night

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Hambly, Barbara. Those Who Hunt the Night. Ballantine Books, 1988.

Reason read: Bram Stoker, the ultimate vampire storyteller was born in November. Read in his honor. Hambly mentions Bram Stoker and his novel.

Hambly has come up with an interesting concept for Those Who Hunt the Night. Someone is killing vampires while they sleep in their coffins. It is as simple as lifting the lid to expose the sleepers to broad daylight. Each vampire is helpless to escape the bright sun’s devastation, and if that doesn’t work, a quick wooden stake to the heart should finish them off. When in doubt, maybe a little exposure to something silver would work. With four of his fellow vampires dead, Don Simon Xavier Christien Morado de la Cadena-Ysidro has no choice but solicit the help of mere mortal Professor James Asher with an offer he can’t afford to refuse. Solve the mystery of the murders and Asher’s wife will stay alive. It’s blackmail, but what can the professor do? What Asher discovers is a variety of vampires who can grow tolerant of silver and daylight, at least partially. This means the serial killer of vampires could be one of their own. In addition to a thrilling murder mystery, Hambly manages to add a little romance to Those Who Hunt the Night.
Trivia: Don Asher rides a brand of motorcycle that was manufactured just down the road from me. I drive by the now defunct factory every single day.

As an aside, if I ever had the chance to meet a vampire and could ask him questions my very first question would be do you have a high tolerance for pain? Maybe I would ask about the incineration process when exposed to light (but that might be too sensitive a topic?).

As another aside, does Hambly contradict vampire lore? In another book vampires avoided drinking the blood of people who were ill, drug addicts, or on certain medications. They did not want to taint their own bloodstreams. In Hambly’s version, the vampires drank the blood of those affected by the Plague. In fact, the Black Plague threatened to live on through the activities of vampires.

Line I could relate to the most, “…he had long grown used to her habit of sleeping with books” (p 216). When Kisa leaves for a business trip I too cover his side of the bed with stacks and stacks of books.

Author fact: Hambly sounds like someone who was never satisfied with staying in one place. She described herself as a high school teacher, model, waitress, technical editor, clerk at a liquor store, karate instructor, and author. I am also reading A Free Man of Color for the Challenge.

Book trivia: I have to admit, the vampire on the cover of Those Who Hunt the Night is somewhat of a joke. He looks like he is wearing an odd-fitting wig and his canine teeth are much too long. In every vampire movie I have ever seen the vampire’s teeth are not visible with the mouth closed. The fangs are only revealed when he or she opens their mouth.

Music: “Till We Meet Again,” Salieri, and Tchaikovsky.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror” (p 213).

Trouble in Triplicate

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Stout, Rex, Trouble in Triplicate. Viking Press, 1949.

Reason read: to continue the series started last year in honor of Stout’s birth month.

Trouble in Triplicate is actually three short novellas:

  • Before I Die – Dazy Perrit, king of the black market, has come to Nero Wolfe to help him with his daughters. One is blackmailing him and the other has a nervous tic Perrit thinks Wolfe can cure.
  • Help Wanted, Male – Wolfe hires a body double when his life is threatened while he works a murder case.
  • Instead of Evidence – It is not everyday that a man shows up on your doorstep and announces that he is about to die and proceeds to name his future killer. This is a mystery all about identity.

New things I learned about Archie Goodwin: he is from Ohio. He is an ankle man. He has a strange prejudice against people with the name Eugene.

Lines I liked, “He paid us a visit the day he stopped a bullet” (p 3), “If you are typing to can’t talk” (p 160), and “He sounded next door to hysterical” (p 185).

As an aside, Stout mentioned Billy Sunday in “Before I Die” and I had to wrack my brain. Where had I heard that name before? From the lyrics of Ramble On Rose by the Grateful Dead.

Author fact: Stout moved to Paris in order to write full time.

Book trivia: you get three stories for the price of one in Trouble in Triplicate and the stories are not tied together in any way.

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

Johnny Got His Gun

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Trumbo, Dalton. Johnny Got His Gun. Narrated by William Dufris. Tantor Media, 2008.
Trumbo, Dalton. Johnny Got His Gun. Bantam Books, 1970.

Reason read: Armistice Day is celebrated on November 11th. Read in honor of that day.

I hope you read the copy of Johnny Got His Gun with the foreword by a mother, Cindy Sheehan, who lost her son to war. Her anger is palpable in every sentence she wrote. Her foreword throbs with an abundance of seething words. She ends with the largest question in the human lexicon – why?
Joe. What a brilliant name for a character. Just your average Joe. Joe is every man. Joe is the average man. Joe is your son. Your brother. Your father or uncle. Your husband or boyfriend. Joe could be your world. Told in flashbacks of better days, Joe was your typical teenager before World War I; he grew up with a good friend, he liked to go fishing, he had good parents, he had a best girl. Then everything changed when adulthood set in. Joe lost his best girl to his best friend. Later he left behind a perfect girl when he shipped off to fight the good fight in World War I. Did want to fight? Maybe. Did he want to become a “piece of meat” with no arms, legs, eyes, ears, or tongue? Unable to move anything but his head, unable to see, hear, or speak? Most definitely not. Joe’s incremental realization of the loss of his limbs, sight, hearing, sense of smell was terrible. Even when he wants someone to end his life he cannot get relief. As an audio book it was even more devastatingly painful to hear. I do not think I would have been able to finish it if I had to read it only in print.

Confessional: I was upset when critics would call Joe “a hunk of meat” until I learned that’s what he thought about himself. He said it first.

Author fact: While not officially banned many schools found it too disturbing to have on their shelves. Trumbo did not mind the threat of banning Johnny Got His Gun. He and his publishers decided to delay a reprinting during World War II.

Book trivia: Johnny Got His Gun won a National Book Award. Metallica used clips from the movie based on the book in one of their songs.

Audio trivia: Read by William Dufris, the narration was amazing.

Music: “After the Ball is Over.”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter “Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror” (p 213). At first I thought Johnny Got His Gun would be in the fiction section of the World War I chapter, but horror is the perfect place for this book.

Ender’s Game

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Card, Orson Scott. Ender’s Game. Read by Stefan Rudnicki and Harlan Ellison. Macmillan Audio, 2004.

Reason read: October is Science Fiction Month.

Planet Earth is prepping for a galaxy war against the Buggers. The last skirmish was eighty years ago and Earth barely survived. Recruiting this time around has to be aggressive and highly tactical. Andrew “Ender” Wiggin, born in a society of limiting offspring: only two children per family, is known as an extra or Third. As a Third Ender must leave planet Earth at six years old for a boarding school where he trains to be a soldier. He leads an army of other children and it is here that he proves to be a natural-born leader and a prodigy at winning battles. So the saga begins.
Back home, the proverbial power struggle between good and evil begins. While Ender grows into a tactical fighter, his brother Peter demonstrates increasing violent tendencies every day. Their sister, ironically named Valentine (the symbol of love) as the token female, stands in the middle of the two brothers.
One of the most fascinating elements of Ender’s Game is that Card challenges the assumption about reality and what is “normal.”

Author fact: the idea for Ender came when Card was sixteen years old. He was fascinated by the idea of a Battle Room.

Book Audio trivia: listening to the audio was a treat because Orson Scott Card explained his process for writing Ender’s Game. I had no idea the book was meant to be read aloud. Also, when Card first presented Ender’s Game he was told it was fantasy. He needed to change some details, bring in aliens to make it science fiction.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror” (p 213).

In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz

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Wrong, Michela. In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz: Living on the Brink of Disaster in Mobutu’s Congo. Harper Collins, 2001.

Reason read: Mobutu Sese Seko died in October. He was Zaire’s first president. Read in his memory.

More than a biography of Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbedu wa za Banga, Michela Wrong set up to write a love letter to the Congo. Even though Mobutu was a dictator and the first and only president of Zaire, the history of his homeland is a tale that is just as interesting to tell. It is a story of great triumphs and devastating downfalls; a cautionary tale of corruption, greed and betrayal.
It is a small detail of In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz, but I appreciated knowing Mobutu’s origin story of his love of leopard print. I am sure it is exaggerated, but the story goes that Mobutu’s grandfather used to ridicule him for being afraid of leopards. After killing one its skin became Mobutu’s personal fashion plate for his hats. I like to think every time Mobutu wore a leopard print hat he was giving his grandfather the proverbial middle finger.
As an aside…Every time someone saw me with In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz in my hands they would murmur, “ah…Heart of Darkness…” followed by either “I hated that book” or “I loved that book.” No one ever said it was just okay.

Chilling quote, “Knowing nothing about the past, of course, frees a population from any sense of blame for the present” (p 59). Or future, I would add.

Author fact: Wrong was a correspondent. As an aside, I found her comment about the potential spread of AIDS to be somewhat naïve. She was describing a hospital where AIDS carriers and HIV negative patients were “indiscriminately mixed together, their narrow beds only inches apart” (p 138). Even if the mixed patients were holding hands the HIV negative person would not be infected unless they shared blood.

Book trivia: the title of the book comes from a character in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.

Music: “As Time Goes By,” “Hotel California,” Koffi Olomide, Zaiko Langa, Papa Wemba, Mick Jagger, Bryan Ferry, Wenge Musica and its variations: Wenge Musica 4×4, Wenge Musica Maison Mere, Wenge Musica BCBG, Wenge Musica Kumbela, Wenge Musica Aile Paris, Tabuley Rochereau, Pepe Kalle, and Gregorian chants.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Africa: Today and Yesterday” (p 10).

Almost Everyone’s Guide to Science

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Gribbin, John. Almost Everyone’s Guide to Science: the Universe, Life and Everything. Yale University Press, 1999.

Reason read: October is Science Month.

Atoms. Electrons. Energy. Hydrogen. Nucleus. Photons. Quantum. Particles. Molecules. Do you feel as though you are back in a physics or chemistry class? Gribbin will take you there. You’ll be reminded of the chemical action of covalent bonding and the spectral signature. You’ll meet geniuses of the day: Michael Faraday, Albert Einstein, and Isaac Newton. You’ll read up on the supercontinent of Gondwanaland. You’ll have a good chat about the Solar System, minus Pluto. There is a mention of climate change with and without human intervention. Gribbin will tell you his favorite theories with unbridled enthusiasm. You can almost hear the excitement as he warms up to his various topics. Everything Gribbin explains is done in a folksy, casual manner so as not to scare the reader away: “But the details need not bother us” (p 69). He will simplify the science by making Disney analogies and talk to you as if you are leaning over beers in a bar. This was fun.

Author fact: Gribbin also wrote Stardust which is on my Challenge list.

Book trivia: the illustrations in Almost Everyone’s Guide to Science are helpful.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Science Boks (For the Interested But Apprehensive Layperson)” (p 211).

And Be a Villain

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Stout, Rex. And Be a Villain. Bantam, 1994.

Reason read: to continue the series started a year ago!

Nero Wolfe is crafty. The way he finds clients is to insert himself into a dilemma (pretty much always a murder) with the promise of a solution (usually by proving someone’s innocence)…for a price (usually pretty steep). However it is up to Archie Goodwin to sell that service and bring the client onboard. When on-air guest Cyril Orchard is murdered by cyanide poisoning during Madeline Fraser’s radio program, Archie’s spin is that the heat will be off Madeline as a suspect if she hires the great Nero Wolfe to find the real killer. Logic prevails and Madeline agrees to Wolfe’s demands; except now it looks like the poison was meant for her. Is someone out there is trying to kill her? At the same time Beula Poole is found shot to death and a seemingly unrelated gynecologist is being blackmailed. Then a third person is poisoned. Are all of these events related? The case so stumps Wolfe that he begrudgingly involves his on again-off again nemesis, Inspector Cramer. As usual, Goodwin is the star of the show.

Line I liked, “No doctor should assume responsibility for the health of one he loves or one he hates” (p 168).

Author fact: according to one biography, Rex Stout devised and implemented a school banking system.

Book trivia: As with most Stout books the publishers lets the reader peek behind this curtain. This time And Be A Villain shared Viking’s lawyers’ attempt to find any detail that resembled real people or situations.

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

Bee Season

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Goldberg, Myla. Bee Season. Doubleday, 2000.

Reason read: I have a category called “Special Child Month” and this book falls in it.

Poor eleven year old Eliza Naumann just wants to be noticed by her family. Every member of her family has their own preoccupation. Older brother Aaron, once destined to becomes a rabbi, is on a quest to discover the right religion for him. Slowly he becomes absorbed into the Harre Krishna culture and dreams of becoming a pujari speaking Sanskrit. Mother Miriam has a fixation on stealing things. She stole a random shoe from a mall department store sale rack. She didn’t even want the shoe, useless without its mate, after all. She ended up throwing it away. Each theft begs the question why Each family member slips further into the background while Eliza becomes obsessed with words. When she discovers she is good at spelling her father becomes her champion and urges her to “remove herself entirely from daily life, to brush against the limitless” (p 98). There is an open-ended conclusion to this fractured family.

Lines I liked, “Besides, he can always masturbate to his memories” (p 48) and “It is late enough that the grass is filled with tomorrow’s dew” (p 196).

Author fact: Bee Season was Goldberg’s first book and the only one I am reading for the Challenge.

Book trivia: the front and back covers of Bee Season mimic a dictionary. The novel was made into a movie in 2005.

Music: Duran Duran, Eurythmics, Flock of Seagulls, Pachelbel canon, “God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman,” the Eagles, and “Oh Susanna.”

BookLust Twist: first, in Book Lust in the chapter called “Jewish American Experience” (p 132), and then again in More Book Lust in the chapter called “Child Prodigies” (p 43).

Feast of Snakes

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Crews, Harry. Feast of Snakes. Atheneum, 1976.

Reason read: October is scary month and this one takes the cake.

Feast of Snakes is not for the fainthearted. There is every kind of excessive abuse one can think of within its pages. Rape, domestic violence, corruption, animal cruelty, racism, adultery, elder abuse, alcoholism, gambling, murder, and even castration.
Joe Lon Mackey exists as your typical down and out alcoholic twenty-something year old. His high school glory days as a football star have long faded, “Then one day football was gone and it took everything with it” (p 102). Saddled with a mealy wife and two small squalling kids, trapped in a small town with no future, Joe Lon forever lives in the past. His sister is mentally unstable after coming home to find mom murdered by dad. Dad spends his time getting dogs to fight to the death. Old flame Bernadette is still as beautiful as ever, but committed to someone else. It pains Joe Lon that she has moved on and doesn’t seem to remember the good old days, but he’ll force her to think of them one way or another. The memories of what Joe Lon Mackey had but lost have made him brutally mean to everyone around him. His innermost thoughts lead one to believe that deep down inside he has a tiny smidgen of good that is trying to find a way out. Like mean Mr. Grinch, one had to have faith Joe Lon would crawl out of the anger that ensnares his soul. Unfortunately, the entire town seems to be full of brutally mean men and deeply sad women. It’s only a matter of time before the community explodes with rage.

As an aside, there is a rattlesnake round up that happens every year in Claxton, Georgia.

Line that summed up the entire book, “He always got mean when he got nervous” (p 141).

Author fact: Crews has written a bunch of stuff but I am only reading Feast of Snakes for the Challenge.

Book trivia: the dedication is pretty cool, “I have never raised a glass with a better friend.”

Music: Merle Haggard

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Grit Lit” (p 106).

Arabian Sands

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Thesiger, Wilfred. Arabian Sands. E.P. Dutton and Company, 1959.

Reason read: September is back to school month and a good time to learn about a strange region of the world.

Wilfred Thesiger was driven to go where others had not. He had a strong desire to test his limits and, where others shied away from them, unique challenges excited him. Nothing motivated him more than to say, “I know that no European had ever been here before me.” He sailed to Bahrain in a dhow simply because he wanted to have the same experience as an Arab sailor. He remembered his childhood as an explanation for his wanderlust spirit for his mother loved Africa.
In Arabian Sands Thesiger reported the Arabia he traveled in 1959 was unrecognizable from his earlier expeditions. He talked of long treks into the desert where “now” (in 1959) there were marring roads instead of endless stretches of dusty sand. [As an aside, what would he think of the region today? I am sure it has changed even more so since 1959.]
As a locust officer on behalf of the Locust Research Centre at the Natural History Museum, Thesiger was free to travel across the Empty Quarter. Although he showed no fear of danger wherever he went he had to hide behind a Syrian façade because of his Christianity. He absorbed the strange and fascinating culture of harsh people in a violent landscape. For example – the Islam faith. It regulated one’s religious observance, a man’s interactions with society and even the detailed routines of his daily life. Thesiger described the confusion of trying to identify various tribes by their saddles. It was important to know friend or foe to protect the camels from constant theft. [Speaking of camels, I found it remarkable that camels could be identified by the shape of their toes in the sand.] Thesiger became friends with Hamdu Uga who admitted he had just murdered three men. Thesiger casually reported that a mere two days later the young chief was murdered as well.

Quote to quote, “No, it is not the goal but the way there that matters, and the harder the way, the more worth the journey” (p 260).

Author fact: Thesiger was an avid hunter. He reported shooting seventy lions in the five years he was in the Sudan.

Book trivia: Maps were drawn by K.C. Jordan. Speaking of maps, there is a huge, fold-out map of the Empty Quarter at the back of Arabian Sands.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Armchair Travel” (p 24). Again, in Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Arabia Deserta” (p 23).