Tag: book lust i

Case-Book

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Doyle, Arthur Conan. The Complete Sherlock Holmes: The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes. Doubleday & Company, 1922.

Reason read: to complete the series started a long, long time ago in honor of Doyle’s birth month.

The best stories come to life when the personality of Sherlock Holmes gets to shine through his investigative brilliance. It is in Case-Book that readers are reminded that Sherlock is his most human self when he relaxes in a Turkish bath.

As an aside, Sherlock reminded me of Nero Wolfe in The League of Frightened Men when he refused to help Colonel Damery.

The stories:

  • Adventure of the Illustrious Client – Baron Gruner is known as the Austrian murderer who supposedly killed his wife. Will he kill his latest fiancé? Why is the woman dead set (pun intended) on marrying this man?
  • Adventure of the Blanched Soldier – crime is not always at the root of a case for Holmes. This time a man hides his pale face for a completely different reason.
  • Adventure of the Mazarin Stone – the theft of a missing crown jewel.
  • Adventure of the Three Gables – a tale of what one person will do to keep their reputation clean.
  • Adventure of the Sussex Vampire – a mother is accused of being a vampire.
  • Adventure of the Three Garridebs – a weird scam so that a villain could acquire a counterfeiter’s printing press.
  • The Problem of Thor Bridge – a woman is found dead. Could the murderer have been her husband’s younger and more beautiful mistress?
  • Adventure of the Creeping Man – what would make a respected professor act like a monkey?
  • Adventure of the Lion’s Mane – Did a man kill his friend over a woman?
  • Adventure of the Veiled Lodger – What happens when a murder plot goes horribly wrong.
  • Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place – how far would a man go to hide his sister’s demise?
  • Adventure of the Retired Colourman – A man experiences the ultimate betrayal…or did he?

BookLust Twist: this will be the last time that will I say this does not come from Book Lust in the chapter called “I Love a Mystery” (p 123). The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes is not listed.

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

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Joyce, James. The Portable James Joyce: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Viking Press, 1981.

Reason read: James Joyce was born on February 2nd. He and I share the same birth date. I also needed a book for the 2024 Portland Public Library Reading Challenge in the category of a book someone you know did not like. Portrait was an easy choice. Not many people like Joyce.

Stephen Dedalus, being James Joyce’s alter ego, is a study in personal and spiritual growth. The subtext is one of sexual awakening; a coming of age, if you will. Stephen navigates life with contradictory moments of trepidation and vigor. He believes that in order to be a great artist one needs to suffer for the art. A self imposed exile and abandonment of family is critical for success. Not unlike Joyce’s own journey to becoming an accomplished author.
The trick to reading A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is to not take every sentence as gospel. Every detail is not going to be on some final exam. Read Joyce like you are on an acid trip. Tiptoe across the run-on sentences and uber microscopic details and you will be just fine. If it helps, Joyce was experimenting with different ways to write literature. They didn’t always make sense.

Lines I liked, “He wanted to meet in the real world the unsubstantial image which his soul so constantly beheld” (p 77), “Pride and hope and desire like crushed herbs in his heart sent up vapours of maddening incense before the eyes of his mind” (p 335).

Author fact: Joyce’s full name was James Augustine Aloysius Joyce.

Book trivia: The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was adapted into a film in 1977.

Playlist: “Lily of Kilarney”, “O, Twine Me a Bower”, “Bluest Eyes and Golden Hair”, and “The Groves of Blarney”.

Nancy said: Pearl called Joyce an influence on all other Irish writers.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapters called “Irish Fiction” (p 125) and “100 Good Reads, Decade By Decade: 1910s (p 175).

Rubber Band

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Stout, Rex. Rubber Band. Bantam Books, 1986.

Reason read: to continue the series started last month. Also, Rex Stout was born in December.

The immediate mystery in Rubber Band is that $30,000 has gone missing from a Vice President Muir’s desk drawer. He is convinced he knows who took it. Anthony D. Perry, President of Seaboard Products Corporation, takes offense to the accusation because the alleged culprit, Miss Fox, is his alleged mistress. The secondary mystery involves a group known as the Rubber Band. They are owed money for freeing a man destines for hanging. George Rowley killed a man but escaped punishment due to a seemingly cooked up story about an inheritance. He bribed his way to escape then conveniently never paid the group who freed him. Miss Fox is involved in both cases.
Here are the things I appreciate about the Wolfe series: Rex Stout pays homage to Arthur Conan Doyle by having a picture of Sherlock Holmes over Archie’s desk and the consistencies – Archie, who has lived with Nero for eight years, will always go on and on about Wolfe’s weight. Nero’s time with his beloved 10,000 orchids never varies (9am – 11am and 4pm – 6pm), nor will he alter this schedule for anyone or anything.

The one thing I didn’t appreciate about Stout’s writing. I was constantly considering the time of Stout’s writing. Archie is a little sexist referring to women as “little girls” and using other disparaging remarks.

Line I laughed at, “…she had the kind of voice that makes you want to observe it in the flesh” (p 10).

As an aside, I want to create an Archie Dictionary. Has anyone already done this? Here are some words I would include: bird=guy, bean=brain, pink=kill, faded=retreated, lamped=observed and brass=courage.

Author fact: Rex Stout was born in Noblesville, Indiana in 1886. As an aside, I am reading forty-two more Nero Wolfe mysteries. Hopefully, I will be able to find 42 more facts about his creator. Sigh. [As an aside, according to the back page of Rubber Band Rex Stout wrote 72 Nero Wolfe mysteries by the time he died. I am not reading the thirty short stories.]

Book trivia: the front cover of my copy of Rubber Band is humorous. Rex Stout is “the grand master of detection” and Nero Wolfe, complete with a portly silhouette, is “the world’s most brilliant detective.”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Rex Stout: Too Good To Miss” (p 227).

Empire Express

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Bain, David Howard. Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad. Penguin, 2000.

Reason read: November is Train Month.

Bain used an extraordinary list of sources for his epic history of the birth of the transcontinental railroad. Everything from autobiographies, essays, letters, biographies, trial transcripts, historical pamphlets, pioneer atlases, private papers, railroad reports, manuscripts, government documents, and periodicals…just to name a few sources. Not quite doorstop heft, Empire Express is an impressive true life, detail-dense, historical adventure, just shy of 800 pages. It covers thirty years of savvy entrepreneurship and brilliant engineering. He describes how Robert Mills proposed something resembling a steam train in 1819 while Asa Whitney was a firm believer in the 2,400 mile railway. The end of the Civil War brought a hunger to connect the East with the wild western plains. The Rocky Mountains proved to be a formidable obstacle so military topographical engineers sent out expeditions to solve the problem. These were the days of gold rush frenzies. By 1842 imaginations fused with innovation and the iron rails began to span the country. Bain included details of a buffalo hunt gone awry and white men wanting to witness a fight between “the hostiles” as if it is was a farcical Broadway musical. [Sometimes history is just ridiculous.] There was even a first hand description of a scalping. [As an aside, who in their right mind would tan a scalp and then put it on display in the public library in the children’s section?]

Author fact: Bain is from my home away from home state of New Jersey.

Book trivia: the series of black and white photographs in Empire Express are as beautiful as they are awe inspiring.

Setlist: “Waiting for the Wagon”.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Riding the Rails: Railroad History” (p 200). Also included in More Book Lust in the chapter called “The Beckoning Road” (p 19). I would argue that this book does not belong in this section at all.

Inherit the Wind

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Lawrence, Jerome and Robert E. Lee. Inherit the Wind. Ballantine Books, 2007.

Reason read: two reasons, actually. John Jay was born in December. Inherit the Wind is about a trial. Second reason – I needed a play for the Portland Public Library Reading Challenge.

The title of the play, Inherit the Wind, comes from Proverbs, “He that troubleth his own shall inherit the wind…” (p 126). Bert Cates, a young schoolteacher, is jailed for deliberately telling students about Charles Darwin and the Origin of Species. In this deeply religious town, Cates knew he would cause trouble. Brady comes to town to prosecute this willful lawbreaker. Even though this takes place in the 1920s, some things never change. The verdict of this trial could change the course of politics for it is an election year…
Stage direction: it is important for the concept of the play that the town always be visible. The town serves as a reminder for the audience that the entire community is vested in this trial.
Inherit the Wind was originally copyrighted as an unpublished work in 1950. In my 2007 copy the reader is cautioned that the story is not a history but rather inspired by true events of the Scopes/Monkey trial.

Lines I liked, “You never pushed a noun against a verb except to blow something up” (p 127).

Book trivia: the play was performed in New York City in 1955 starring Tony Randall and Ed Begley. It was performed again in New York City in 2007 starring Christopher Plummer and Brian Dennehy. As an aside, Brian Dennehy played the father in one of my favorite laugh-out-loud stupid movies, Tommy Boy.

Author(s) fact: Lawrence and Lee met in 1942 and wrote four screenplays together.

Songs: “Marching to Zion”, “Gimme That Old Time Religion”, and “Go Tell It On the Mountain”.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “What a Trial That Was!” (p 243).

Streets of Laredo

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McMurtry, Larry. Streets of Laredo. Simon and Schuster, 1993.

Reason read: to finished the series started in June in honor of McMurtry’s birth month.

By all accounts, no one should love Woodrow Call. He is small-framed, cantankerous, old and weary. He keeps to himself; a self-confirmed bachelor and loner. He does not suffer fools and hates conversation, even with the smarter ones. Since the death of his best friend, Augustus McCrae, in McMurtry’s previous book, Lonesome Dove, Woodrow Call has given up cattle ranching and is spending his twilight years as a bounty hunter. Never one to shy away from danger, he is now on the trail of a young train hustler who has a death wish. Except Call has lost his speed and agility. He is no longer the feared Texas Ranger. He is no longer the spirited cattle rancher. He is only a man hellbent on bringing a violent man to justice.
Streets of Laredo is a return to violence. Luckily, strong women like Lorena play a pivotal role in keeping the plot from becoming a bloodbath.

Missed opportunity: a large gathering of crows is not called a crowd. As cool as that sounds, a group of crows is actually called a murder. That would have been the perfect name for a town.

Line I liked, “He knew that women were sometimes fond of cats, though the reason for the attraction escaped him” (p 42).

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Western Fiction” (p 240).

Pity of War

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Ferguson, Niall. The Pity of War: Explaining World War I. Perseus Books, 1999.

Reason read: Armistice Day is November 11th. We have been observing the day since 1918.

Ferguson thinks World War I is not given the respect it deserves. The Civil War and World War II are more widely written about than World War I. His book, The Pity of War, sets out to explain the war in detail by answering ten questions about the war:
1. Why didn’t the Germans win the war?
2. What kept the men fighting through terrible conditions?
3. What made the men finally stop fighting?
4. Who really won the peace?
5. Was World War I inevitable?
6. Why did Germany start the war?
7. Why did Britain get involved?
8. Did the war keep going due to well placed propaganda?
9. Was the war popular on the home front?
10. Why didn’t the British Empire defeat the Central Powers?
In truth, I felt that there was a sort of pissing contest going on about the different wars: which one lost the most men, which country financed which war more, how bloody was each battle…needless to say, they were all pretty horrible.
The table of International Alignments from 1815 to 1917 was pretty helpful. It is hard to believe that in the beginning there was Anglo-German cooperation surrounding finance. Ferguson describes the moments leading up to war minute by minute. Britain went to war at 11pm on August 14th, 1914. Can we learn from history? Few soldiers knew why they were fighting. they blames their involvement solely on the assassination of the Archduke and his wife. Here are other influences, the brilliant marketing of the Parlimentary Recruiting Committee: speeches, letters, posters, leaflets, surging military bands, and news articles. Psychological pressures of wives wanting brave husbands, the peer pressure of friends, the economy, national pride, ignorance of war, and sheer impulse to “try it.” Ferguson goes on to examine why soldiers stayed in the war even though it was sheer hell. He questions the positive effects of war and the adittance that some soldiers actually enjoyed the fight.
Ferguson’s Pity of War is chock full of detailed statistics like food consumption and the fact that Hitler did not approve of holiday cease-fire truces, such as Christmas Day.

Does an arms race accelerate the likelihood of war?
As an aside, Ferguson made me laugh with his tongue-in-cheek comment about George Bernard Shaw being “cranky.”
As another aside, I believe every man made decision is exactly that, man made. War. Peace. Debt. Excess. Behind it all is a person or a group of people. We have the power to change every wrong decision. When we say something is caught up in red tape, we are not talking about a machine denying us. We are talking about people denying people. If something is complicated it is because people, human beings, want it that way.

Author fact: Ferguson’s grandfather served in the Second Battalion of the Seaforth Highlanders. That explains his passion for World War I.

Book trivia: Pity of War contains black and white photographs of WWI images. Some of the photos are from the private collections of soldiers.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the obvious chapter called “World War I Nonfiction” (p 251).

Interview with the Vampire

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Rice, Anne. Interview with the Vampire. Buccaneer Books, 2006.

Reason read: The movie version of Interview with the Vampire was released in November. Read in honor of the event I did not attend.

This was supposed to be an interview with a very young reporter who wants to write the biography of a vampire. Louis de Pointe du Lac the Vampire agrees to sit down with the unnamed interviewer and share his life story. I was expecting more of a dialogue; a back and forth of questions and answers. Instead, in more of a monologue, Louis shares the romantic history of his vampire beginnings in New Orleans in 1791. Despondent after the death of his family, Louis meets Lestat who convinces him to chose immortality over suicide. With Vampire Lestat as his cruel creator and mentor, Louis learns to avoid the sun, sleep in coffins and experience the exquisite pleasure of the hunt; learning how to drink blood to stay alive (their immortality is conditional on that detail). Yet Louis can not let go of his humanness, drinking the blood of animals and avoiding humans altogether. He is too kind for his kind. Young, beautiful and extremely clever Claudia is his first human feasting. As a child vampire, she is full of grace, passion and intelligence. Louis becomes infatuated with her. It is she who convinces Louis that together, they must kill Lestat and run away to Europe (Transylvania) to find more vampires like themselves. The “couple” end up in France where they find a troupe of vampires and even more danger than they bargained for. The France section of Interview with the Vampire drags quite a bit. Some vampires finally die and I’ll leave it at that, as I will be reading Lestat’s biography next.
Confessional: I did not expect Interview with the Vampire to be so sensual. The act of drinking blood was portrayed as borderline erotic. Yet, “Louie” is a goofy name for a vampire who has lived over 200 years.

Author fact: Rice was an atheist for thirty-eight years. Interview with the Vampire was a search for God and her first novel. Brava!

Book trivia: as mentioned before, Interview with the Vampire was made into a movie starring Tom Cruise. Brad Pitt and Kirsten Dunst in 1994.

Music: Mozart

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

Caught in the Web of Words

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Murray, Katherine Maud Elisabeth. Caught in the Web of Words: James A.H. Murray and the Oxford English Dictionary. Yale University Press, 2001.

Reason read: November is National Writing Month. It makes sense to include a book about words since words make sentences that eventually (hopefully) turn into books.

Elisabeth Murray wrote a biography of her grandfather. While it is a straightforward birth to death biography, I was hoping for a more personal memoir filled with stories of James Murray, the family man instead of just focusing on the fact he was one of the greatest lexicographers of all time. Katherine Murray reveals that her grandfather had wanted to write down “a narrative of his life and memories” (prologue). Maybe that is why I expected more. Anecdotes of Murray’s personal life were no more than a few sentences here and there and a smattering of black and white photographs of James (mostly at work in the Scriptorium). However, James was a religious family man and proud father of eleven children with a sly sense of humor.
Having said that, the most annoying pebble in my shoe: I couldn’t help but notice the number of times Murray put her grandfather on an extremely high pedestal: James had a higher standard of accuracy than with anyone else he worked alongside; James was too meticulous; James worked harder than anyone else and worked longer hours than anyone else. To be fair, James Murray did dedicate over thirty-five years of his life to editing the Oxford English Dictionary. He worked under trying conditions – never had enough time, space, or money for the endeavor. Every day was a constant struggle. He employed his own children when the project started to fall behind. Even though he died before the project was finished, Murray was without a doubt, the godfather of etymology.

Author fact: according to the back cover of Caught in the Web of Words Murray was Principal of Bishop Otter College of Education in Chichester, England.

Book trivia: there is a typo in the copyright statement of my version of Caught in the Web of Words. Mine is missing the word ‘not.’ It literally says “This book may be reproduced in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form…without written permission from the publishers.” Woops.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter obvious called “Words to the Wise” (p 249) and again, in More Book Lust in the chapter called “Dewey Deconstructed: 400s” (p 68).

Roughing It

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Twain, Mark. Roughing It: a personal narrative. Harper and Row, 1913.

Reason read: to celebrate Twain’s birth month.

Originally published in 1872, Roughing It is most commonly presented as a two-volume travel adventure. Twain, ever the storyteller of exaggerated fact and humorous fiction, takes us on a epic journey across the country; an exercise that he called “variegated vagabondizing.” This would seem to be a nonfiction, but you really cannot trust Twain with his stories of Slade, the Rocky Mountain desperado and the outrageous shootouts Twain supposedly witnessed. My personal eye roll story was when Twain and a companion rowed 12-15 miles to an island…in the middle of a storm. I am from an island ten miles out to sea and I can tell you it takes 70-75 minutes to go that far with an engine-powered boat in flat calm weather. My favorite moment was a Winnie-the-Pooh situation when Twain and his companions were thinking they are being stalked by a growing group of men when really it was their own footprints multiplying as they wandered around in circles. Did Milne get the idea from Twain?
But. I digress. Back to Twain’s western adventure. Beyond California, Twain journeyed to Utah, Nevada and Hawaii. [As an aside, when Twain described the scorpions and the centipedes (with forty-two legs on each side), I found myself lifting my feet high off the floor.]

Quotes to quote, “Three months of camp life on Lake Tahoe would restore an Egyptian mummy to his pristine vigor, and give him an appetite like an alligator” (p 158). Does the tourism board of Lake Tahoe know that Twain said this? What a great endorsement! Here is another line that made me laugh. This one on the subject of polygamy: “Take my word for it, ten or eleven wives is all you need – never go over it” (p 109).

Author fact: We know Twain was born Samuel Clemens and that he worked as a steamboat captain. he also married Olivia Langdon and became filthy rich.

Book trivia: Twain spends an entire chapter discussing the Mormon bible.

Playlist: “Shining Shire”, “Coronation”, “Praise God From Whom All Blessings”,

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Western Memoirs” (p 241).

League of Frightened Men

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Stout, Rex. The League of Frightened Men. Farrar & Rhinehart, Inc. 1935.

Reason read: I kicked off the Nero Wolfe series because League of Frightened Men begins in the month of November. I will continue to read the series in honor of Rex Stout’s birth month in December.

While in college, years ago, a fraternity of men pulled a prank that left one of their brothers horribly handicapped. The fraternity men spend the rest of their lives trying to make amends to Paul Chapin, until years later, one by one, brothers are winding up dead or missing. Has their scarred-for-life brother finally decided to seek revenge? It certainly seems that way when poems appear after each death, cryptically pointing the finger back at the group and the accident suffered so long ago. Nero is hired to find a missing fraternity brother and stop the killings before the entire league of frightened men is wiped out.

Because I will be spending a lot of time with Nero Wolfe, I thought I would keep track of his traits. For example, here is what I know so far: Nero likes beer for breakfast. He is considered obese. He has lived at West 35th Street in New York City for the last twenty years (thirteen alone and the last seven with his sidekick, Archie) and it takes an act of god to get him to leave his apartment. Nero is an avid reader and likes tending to his orchids. His right hand man, Archie, is a long time friend and they yell at each other and bicker like an old married couple. As an aside, Archie drinks a lot of milk; almost as much as the beer as Nero puts away.

As an aside, be forewarned! There are several examples of unflattering name calling that, by today’s standards, would be considered politically incorrect.

Line I liked, “You must not let the oddities of this case perplex you to the point of idiocy” (p 158).

Author fact: According to Wikipedia, Rex Stout died in Danbury, Connecticut.

Book trivia: League of Frightened Men was first serialized in the Saturday Evening Post.

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

Cold Case

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Barnes, Linda. Cold Case. Delacorte Press, 1997.

Reason read: Cold Case takes place in Boston. Massachusetts is beautiful this time of year. Read in honor of the leaves turning.

Carlotta Carlyle is a private detective and part time cab driver. A case comes to her that is as confusing as an overgrown corn maze. Thea Janis disappeared twenty-four years ago when she was only fifteen years old. After much digging Carlotta discovered Thea was a precocious and promiscuous teenager who published a book of poetry to wild success when she was fourteen. In the span of two weeks of working on the case, Carlotta uncovers a tangle of family secrets. Thea’s name was actually Dorothy Cameron, a gardener from the Cameron family employee also went missing at the same time as Thea, Thea’s sister is a schizophrenic, Thea’s brother is a politician running for office while his marriage falls apart, and more than one murder has taken place.
Maybe this is a premise I have seen too many times, but the wealth of the Cameron family bored me. Rich woman with an icy demeanor and impeccably dress code has a stranglehold on her adult son, who does nothing but disappoint her. Her beloved daughter went missing twenty-four years ago and has been presumed dead ever since a serial killer confessed to her murder. Her second daughter is in a mental facility battling with schizophrenia. What secrets are hidden beneath the cover of wealth?
On top of all this is a subplot involving Carlotta’s little sister and the mafia. Because Cold Case is the seventh Carlotta Carlyle mystery but my first, maybe I’ve missed some key details outlined in an earlier mystery.

As an aside, throughout the entire book I found myself asking does Carlotta ever drive a cab in Cold Case? Answer is yes, but not for hire.
As another aside, Liberty Café was a real place. Too bad it closed. I’m sure fans of Linda Barnes and Carlotta Carlyle would continue to see it out.
Third aside, and I would need an expert to weigh in on this but, when you open a casket after twenty four years, would the smell of death still be so strong that you would need a rag soaked in turpentine to mask the stench? Just curious.

Quotes to quote: there were a few really thought-provoking lines I would love to share, but due to the copyright language, I cannot. Too bad because they were really good.

Author fact: Linda Barnes, not to be confused with the character on Criminal Minds, has written other mysteries series.

Book trivia: as I mentioned before, Cold Case is actually the seventh book in the series. I am reading seven, eight, and nine for the Challenge.

Playlist: “Aint No More Cane on the Brazos”, Beatles, Blind Blake, Black Velvet Band, Chris Smither’s “Up on the Lowdown”, “Hard Times Blues”, Mississippi John hurt, Mozart, Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson, and Rory Block’s “Terraplane Blues”.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “I Love a Mystery” (p 117). Also from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Boston: Beans, Bird, and the Red Sox” (p 40).

Lonesome Dove

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McMurtry, Larry. Lonesome Dove. Pocket Books, 1985.

Reason read: to continue the series started in June in honor of McMurtry’s birth month.

This time, it is all about the characters in Lonesome Dove. Romantic entanglings and broken hearts. Unlike Dead Man’s Walk and Comanche Moon, the action moves at a gentler pace from Texas to Montana. Noticeably, there is less violence in Lonesome Dove (the town and the book) from the very beginning. McMurtry brings his characters alive whether they are important to the story or not. People like Dillard Brawley, Lonesome Dove’s barber, is missing a leg due to a centipede bite. Hopping around on one leg while he cuts hair doesn’t bother him one bit. True, he is a minor character but he is developed as if he will be impactful throughout the entire story (which he isn’t, but do not forget about him.)
Back to the people who are important. Call and Gus are now retired from being captains with the Texas Rangers. Bored without wives, children, or families of any kind, they take a journey to the unknown land of Wyoming to start a cattle ranch. Gone are the violent Indian scalpings that were so prevalent in The Long Walk and Comanche Moon. The buffalo herds have all but vanished. Revenge is doled out on a much smaller scale. The first real violence comes when an former prostitute named Lorena is kidnapped by Blue Duck (remember him?). Lorena is sold to the Kiowas who rape and torture her repeatedly. Rest assured, this is nothing compared to the violence in the previous novels.
For fans of Clare, she is back! Her life has changed quite a bit since she ran the general store in Austin, but rest assured, she is still as feisty. She still remains one of my favorite characters.

As an aside, I will not lie. It was tough to lose some characters. Hangings are within the letter of the law.

Quote I liked, “My ears sort of get empty” (p 512).

Author fact: a young Larry McMurtry reminds me of Woody Allen for some reason.

Book trivia: Lonesome Dove is McMurtry’s most famous book.

Setlist: “My Bonny Lies Over the Ocean”, “Buffalo Gal”, and “Lorena”.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Western Fiction (p 240) and again in Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Texas Two-Step (After a Bob Wills Song)” (p 220).

Hearts in Atlantis

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King, Stephen. Hearts in Atlantis. Scribner, 1999.

Reason read: Stephen King’s face should be in the dictionary next to the word ‘scary.’ Read in honor of Halloween.

Critics have cited King’s first novel, Carrie, when reviewing Hearts in Atlantis. Like Carrie, Hearts in Atlantis carries a running theme of the Vietnam War and psychological breakdowns. Like a television on in the background where no one is watching, the conflict begins as a faint constant presence, a hum, until it becomes a deafening roar by the end of the book. Despite having five separate narratives Hearts in Atlantis reads like a fragmented novel. The character narratives are sequential in nature, allowing the reading to stay connected to particular characters from beginning to end, even though the locations and stories change.
In the 254 page short novella that kicks off Hearts in Atlantis, “Low Men in Yellow Coats,” eleven year old Bobby Garfield just wants to buy a bicycle. It is his birthday and all his mother can afford is an adult library card. This is when Bobby is introduced to William Golding’s Lord of the Flies and the weird upstairs neighbor, Ted. Suddenly, adults are no longer the protectors he has always trusted. Predators lurk behind faces he has known all his life. Bobby was a good kid who slowly soured on doing the right thing. He sank lower into a life of crime – breaking windows, drinking, theft.
In the next short story, “Hearts in Atlantis,” we leave Bobby and follow Pete who ends up dating Bobby’s childhood girlfriend, Carol. Carol is now college-aged and she is the one who ties “Low Men in Yellow Coats” and “Hearts in Atlantis” together. In fact, she, together with the Vietnam war, are the linchpins that hold all of the stories together.

Lines I loved, “Put a glass of water next to Nate Hoppenstand and it was the water that looked vivacious” (p 262) and “In Orono, Maine, buying a Rolling Stones record passes for a revolutionary act” (p 395). Truth.

Author fact: Stephen King is known for taking ordinary situations and making them scary as hell. In Hearts there are no monsters. Only what war can do to a person; how human nature can turn ugly and sinister.

Book trivia: I loved how the genesis of the peace symbol is explained in “Hearts in Atlantis.” I never knew it was the British Navy’s semaphore letters for nuclear disarmament.

Setlist: Andy Williams Singers, Animals, “Angel of the Morning”, Al Jolson’s “Mammy”, Allman Brothers, Beatles, Benny Goodman Orchestra, Bob Dylan, “Boom Boom”, “Bad Moon Rising”, Bobby Darin, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B Good”, Carpenters, Dave Clark Five, the Doors’ “Break On Through”, Dean Martin, Diane Renay’s “Navy Blue”, “Do You Know What I know?”, “Don’t You Just Know It” by Hury “Piano” Smith and the Clowns”, Danny and the Juniors, Donovan Leitch’s “Atlantis”, Dovells, “Dance to the Music”, Doors, Donna Summer’s “Bad Girl”, Elvis Presley, Four Seasons, Frank Sinatra, Freddie “Boom Boom” Cannon, “Gimme Some Lovin'”, Gerry Miller, “Goin’ Up the Country”, “Hang on Sloopy”, Hare Krishna Chorale, Herman and the Hermits, “Insta Karma”, Jack Scott, Jo Stafford, Jimmy Gilmer’s “Sugar Shack”, “Let’s Work Together”, Little Richard, “Light My Fire”, Liz Phair, “Love is Strange”, “Louie, Louie”, Miracles, Mitch Miller, “Mack the Knife”, Mysterians’ “96 Tears”, “My Girl”, Neil Diamond, “Night and Day”, “Oh! Carol” by Neil Sedaka, Offspring, “The Old Rugged Cross”, “One O’Clock Jump”, “One Tin Soldier”, Paul Anka, Petula Clark, Peter Frampton, Platters, Phil Och’s “I Aint Marching Anymore”, “Queen of the Hop”, “The Rainbows”, Rare Earth, “Red River Valley” Rolling Stones, Royal Teen’s “Short Shorts”, “Silent Night”, Sly and the Family Stone, Supremes, Smokey Robinson, Strawberry Alarm Clock’s “Incense and Peppermints”, “Tequila” by the Champs, Tro Shondell’s “This Time”, William Ackerman, Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders, “Where the Boys Are”, and the Youngbloods.

Confessional: whenever I think of “Mack the Knife, “I think of a time when I was in my early twenties. The guy I was dating called a radio station to request a song. No one had a person phone back then. My true love had to run out to a payphone up a hill and around a building. I thought for sure he was going to request something romantic; something just for me. Nope. He requested “Mack the Knife.” When I asked him why Mack he said he just liked the song.
More connections to my life: I went to UMaine and dated a guy named Soucie. His twin was named AnneMarie. I also worked in the Bear’s Den.

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

About Looking

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Berger, John. About Looking. Pantheon Books, 1980.

Reason read: October is Art Appreciation month.

Right away About Looking opens up with a dismal commentary of the relatively modern practice of keeping pets for the sake of companionship. Berger points out that humans sterilize their companions while not allowing them to roam free, socialize with other animals, or eat the foods natural to their diets. I will never look at animals at the zoo in the same way. From the very first essay Berger has found a way to illustrate the title of his book. Berger then moves on to describe the artwork of painters and photographers and the idea of looking at art from the perspective of time and of aging. Similar to reading the same book every ten years, how does the art change with aging? Bergen ends the book with an essay on nature. More specifically, he describes an open field of which your perspective changes depending on who or what is in it. The overarching message is how altered reality can reflect your own life.

As an aside, thank you, John Berger, for introducing me to the art of J.J. Grandville. He, Grandville, is the epitome of the phrase wondrous strange. I also want to thank Berger for introducing me to places I have never heard before, like the Valley of the Loue, to the west of the Jura Mountains.

Lines I liked, “hope is a marvelous focusing lens” (p 128),Author fact: John Bergen also wrote film scripts.

Book trivia: About Looking includes twenty-three black and white photographs. Some of them are explained while others are not.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Art Appreciation” (p 25).