Tag: book lust iii

Dark Star Safari

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Theroux, Paul. Dark Star Safari. Houghton Mifflin, 2003.

Reason read: Theroux was born in the month of April. Read in his honor.

Paul Theroux likes putting himself in dangerous situations. Traveling across Africa in overcrowded busses and taxis, under the constant threat of flat tires, engine troubles, heat exhaustion and bandits is only part of the journey. Rubbing elbows with tourists and natives alike; the insistent begging for money follows him everywhere (as an aside, Kira Salak encountered excessive pleas for money along the River Niger in her memoir The Cruelest Journey). Yet, despite it all, Theroux begrudgingly admits he enjoys traversing the African continent. He is patient of delays but intolerant of filth.
Here’s the thing about Theroux’s prejudices. Everyone gossips. Everyone speaks poorly of a stranger for one reason or another. We all do it at one time or another. Theroux just happened to put his colorful and not so politically correct musings in a book. Knowing the context, I think I would like hanging out with Paul Theroux especially on cruise ships and in swanky hotels. His snarky comments about the fellow passengers and wandering tourists are unveiled observations about visitors as a comfortable, indulgent society. He makes no apology for his disdain. What was more difficult to stomach was his harsh opinions of the natives and relief workers, especially when referred to an an old man. Theroux is definitely not a people person and that made reading Dark Star Safari more of a slog.
If I can end on a positive note: I love it when literature brings familiarity to a foreign place even if you have never been there before. It is as if Dark Star Safari provided me with an unintentional guidebook for travel to a place I will never see with my own eyes.

Favorite quote defending the aging process, “Years are not an affliction” (p 198).
Other line I liked, “…nothing is more revealing of a person’s mind than a person’s anger” (p 25). So true.

As an aside, this is the third book that has a section on female circumcision or infant clitoridectomy.
Confessional: I read the section about Malawi with great care because of a Malawi penpal I had in high school. He died in an automobile accident.

Author fact: Theroux was once a Peace Corps volunteer. I am sure it was during this time that he developed a disdain for the privileged and misinformed tourists he met in his journeys.

Book trivia: several times throughout Dark Star Safari Theroux described the landscape as otherworldly, of another planet like a “dark star.”

Music: Bob Marley, Enya, Tracy Chapman, Jim Reeves, Hank Williams, Flatts and Scruggs, Thomas Mapfumo’s “Hondo,” “Fascinatin’ Rhythm,”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Africa: the Greenest Continent” (p 7) and again in “Brazil” (p 44). Brazil has nothing to do with Dark Star Safari.

Journey to the Frontier

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Stansky, Peter and William Abrahams. Journey to the Frontier: Two Roads to the Spanish Civil War. Little, Brown and Company, 1966.

Reason read: the Spanish Civil War ended in April.

Julian Bell (1908 – 1937) and John Cornford (1915 – 1936): Both were poets, intellectuals, English, and part of the aristocracy. Both had famous relatives (Bell was the nephew of Virginia Woolf and Cornford was the great-grandson of Charles Darwin). How did they both end up fighting for the Republic and ultimately dying in the Spanish Civil War?
Julian started at Cambridge as a soldier for peace in 1929. At twenty-six he was unsure of his future and the critical dilemma of his day was how to oppose the war and Hitler at the same time. His life was very full before heading to Spain: poetry, academia, literature, philosophy, politics, and even romance all vied for Julian’s attention. He lived all of it to the fullest, including an entanglement with a jealous and clingy yet decidedly married woman in China. What Julian said of the woman was quite amusing, “She’s such a devil when she cares to be, and yet completely charming” (p 292). That’s love for you.
One of the most poignant comments Julian Bell made, “It’s the most dramatic step I’ve taken, I think, after being born” (p 250).
Rupert John Cornford seemed destined for war, named after a poet who was eager to go on a military expedition. Like Julian Bell, Cornford was absorbed in literature. At fourteen he was critiquing his mother’s poetry (and was quite harsh, I might add). He once said of her, “I don’t believe chaos begins till things get lost” (p 197) in response to her lack of tidiness. The Young Communist League in London was the center of his life.
John Cornford was only supposed to be in Spain for a few days. He wanted to see the fighting and then get back before anyone missed him. Cornford’s companion in Spain, Franz Borkenau, supplements Cornford’s movements, filling in details and confirming events.
Confessional: I read about John’s end around the time of the ten year anniversary of Prince’s passing so when John, despite a nasty head injury left the hospital out of boredom I couldn’t help but think of Prince. Even though John’s body hadn’t healed properly he checked himself out for fear of missing out on the action.
Julian Bell set out to be an ambulance driver in the Spanish Civil War. What is interesting is that he didn’t know how to drive a lorry; he didn’t know how to speak Spanish; he didn’t know how to administer first aid; he didn’t know how to tell if someone was deceased. Nevertheless, he wanted to gain a first-hand military experience. Like John Cornford, Julian Bell had a companion, Richard Rees, to bolster his narrative.

Journey to the Frontier dips into the life of Lynton Strachey and examines E.M. Forster’s Howards End in the time of the Edwardian-era heyday.

Author facts: Stansky is a graduate of Yale and Abrahams is a graduate of Harvard.

Book trivia: It has been said that the title Journey to the Frontier is the fusion of two different works: On the Frontier, a play by Auden and Isherwood and Journey to the Border, a novel by Upward.

Music: Beethoven, Sibelius, “Pie in the Sky,” “Solidarity Forever,” “Bandiera Rossa,” “La Cucaracha,” “The Old Grey Mare,” and “She Was Poor but She Was Honest.”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called simply “Spain” (p 218).

Birds Without Wings

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De Bernieres, Louis. Birds Without Wings. Alfred A. Knopf, 2004.

Reason read: In Turkey there is a day in April called Children’s Day.

De Bernieres introduces a mystery within the very first few pages of Birds Without Wings. You do not know what Ibrahim did to the beautiful Philothei. You do not know what the narrator did to his son Karatavuk except to say he/she lives in shame. Throughout Birds Without Wings the reader is introduced to a myriad of characters. The Dog – a mysterious stranger whose smile gives nightmares to children and adults alike. Mustafa Kernal – the teenager in Military Training School. Karatavuk, Mehmetak, Polyxeni, Ayse, Stamos, Snowbringer, Leech Gatherer, Tamara, Broken-Nosed, Rustern Bey, Charitos, Yusufthe Tall, among others. At the center is Philothei, betrothed since childhood to Ibrahim. Ever since childhood she has been beautiful beyond measure.
This is a story of human nature in the midst of prejudice and hate, war and relationships. Told from the perspective of a myriad of characters, Birds Without Wings is tragic and heartbreaking and beautiful all at once.
De Bernieres knows human relationships, especially marriage. I had to laugh at this situation: when a wife is unhappy with her husband he might get a little too much pepper in his food. After doing a bad thing the husband thinks I am going to get too much pepper in my food again tonight. But a husband a;ways has more power. He can put aside his wife and get a new one if he thinks she has been adulterous.
As an aside, I wish I had paid attention to all the bird references from the beginning of Birds Without Wings. There were so many! Sparrows, seagulls, ducks, doves, goldfinches, pigeons, partridges, nightingales, robins, owls, blackbirds, songbirds – they all soar (or cannot) and sing and escape cages. Of course, the ultimate little bird is the lovely Philothei who states plainly, “I have found that perfection is not enough” (p 463).

Author fact: Louis De Bernieres also wrote Corelli’s Mandolin but I am not reading it for the Challenge. Birds Without Wings is my only De Bernieres book.

Quotes to quote, “There comes a point in life where each of us who survives to feel like a ghost that has forgotten to die at the right time…” (p 3). What about this quote, “Nowadays no one would say, “I think we’ll remove all these people from their homes and send them to another country” (p 487)?!

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Digging Up the Past Through Fiction” (p 79) and again in Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Turkish Delights” (p 238) which always makes me think of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis.

Elegy for Easterly

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Gappah, Petina. Elegy for Easterly: Stories. Faber and Faber, 2009.

Reason read: Zimbabwe gained its independence in April.

The short stories:

  • At the Sound of the Last Post – Esther is attending the funeral of her philandering husband.
  • Elegy for Easterly – Martha Mupengo is pregnant has been moved into a house where a murder-suicide had occurred.
  • The Annex Shuffle
  • Something Nice From London – a brother who bled his family dry emotionally and financially is finally dead.
  • The Mupandawana Dancing Champion – who knew the man could dance until he died?
  • In the Heart of the Golden Triangle – what would you put up with to stay seated in the lap of luxury?
  • Our Man in Geneva Wins a Million Euros – a man, seeing the World Wide Web for the first time, gets caught up in its excesses.
  • The Maid From Lalapanzi
  • The Cracked, Pink Lips of Rosie’s Bridegroom – guests surmise when the bridegroom’s new wife will meet her demise.
  • My Cousin-Sister Rambanai – an Americanized daughter comes back to her homeland for her father’s funeral.
  • Aunt Juliana’s Indian – good help is hard to find.
  • the Negotiated Settlement – Sometimes a tragedy can alter the course of a marriage, for better or for worse.
  • Midnight at the Hotel California – I loved how the all-commodity broker described his job, “…if it can be bought, it can be sold, and if it can be sold, I am your man” (p 208). Did anyone else think of the movie Say Anything?

Quotes I loved, “I thought I loved him; but that was in another country” (p 8), “And we had no jam for our bread, no milk for our tea while Peter drank away our father’s inheritance in London” (p 75), “Fame is an elastic concept especially in a place like this, where we all know the smells of one another’s armpits” (p 91).

Music: Oliver Mtukudzi, Michael Jackson, Bhundu Boys, Alick Macheso, Andy Brown and the Storm, System Tazvida and the Chazezesa Challengers, Cephas Mashakada and Muddy Face, Boyz II Men, Hosiah Chipanga and the Broadway Sounds, Mai Charamba and the Fishers of Men, Simon “Chopper” Chimbetu and Orchestra Dendera Kings, Tongai “Dehwa” Moyo and Utakataka Express, Bob Marley, Chamunorwa Nebeta and the Glare Express, Lumumbashi Stars, “Bhutsu Mutandarikwa,” and the Eagles’s “Hotel California.”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Zipping Through Zimbabwe/Roaming Rhodesia” (p 268).

Cruelest Journey

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Salak, Kira. The Cruelest Journey: 600 Miles to Timbuktu. National Geographic, 2005.

Reason read: Timbuktu gained its independence from Mali in April.

Why do we as humans do hard things? Why do we run one hundred miles in a desert? Why does Kira Salak want to travel the length of the Niger River from Old Segou to Timbuktu? Six hundred miles of enlightenment? Courage? Money? Recognition? Mungo Park, a Scottish explorer from the 1770s is an obvious inspiration for Salak. She draws upon the experiences gleaned from Park’s letters about his journey down the Niger River in 1795 Not only does Salak provide readers with a mini biography of the man, she also includes a great deal of historical context when thinking (obsessing?) about Mungo Park.
What sets The Cruelest Journey apart from other travel memoirs is that Salak lets the reader into her private thoughts and fears in a transparent manner. In addition to worrying about her safety and getting to Timbuktu in one piece, she is equally concerned about her future. Will she get married and settled down? She goes to great lengths to get answers.
I have to admit the buying of the slave girls was an odd twist at the end of the journey. Even though freeing a couple of Mali slave girls was an objective Salak claimed to have had from the very beginning, she did not mention it throughout her journey until the end. Wouldn’t this be on her mind as she travels the six hundred miles? It’s not like looking out for hippos or dealing with dysentery. Buying people just isn’t common practice for a young white girl.

As an aside, I was reminded of the nature photographers when out photographing wildlife. They cannot interfere with the circle of life no matter how distressing the situation. When Salak reaches Timbuktu she is suffering from exhaustion, dysentery, starvation, and heat stroke. Remi and his partner, Heather, act like Salak is a wild animal they are not allow to interfere with. Salak does not mention them giving her aid or anything to ease her discomfort and illness other than to offer her a bottle of water, but she repeatedly describes Remi’s personal chef and other luxuries on the boat.

Line I liked, “I’ve never been good at small talk, particularly not with people I’ve just purchased” (p 223). I was going to say this is also something we have in common, besides being left-handed and afraid of hippos, up until the part about purchasing people. My favorite line, however, is the very last sentence in the book, “…the journey will always tell you when it’s over” (p 229).

Author fact: Salak was the subject of a CBS segment in 2008.

Book trivia: even though a National Geographic photographer followed Salak down the Niger River there are no photographs in The Cruelest Journey. I was a little more than disappointed.

Confessional: Salak wrote, “As a matter of fact, I had a strange, irrational fear of hippos that was so strong it might have come out of a past life” (p 31). I, too, have that same strange fear. I do not live anywhere near the animal, but I cannot ever bear to look at them in captivity or on a television screen.
Like Salak, I too, am a southpaw.

Music: Salif Keita

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Timbuktu and Beyond” (p 229).

Wake Up Dead

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Smith, Roger. Wake Up Dead. Henry Holt and Company, 2010.

Reason read: Jan van Riebeck founded Cape Town on April 6th, 1652.

The bad guys abound in Wake Up Dead. Even people you do not expect are violent, savage people who aren’t above torture, sodomy, and other nefarious activities. But that is life in South Africa’s Cape Town. Gun runners, drug fiends, gangsters, petty thieves, prostitutes, doctors who keep amputated body parts in the freezer, and just plain greedy individuals all prowl the pages of Wake Up Dead. Disco, Afrika, Piper, the cannibal, Maggot…they all have a score to settle with someone. At the center of the story is Roxanne Palmer, a beautiful American ex-model now married to a criminal. Everyone needs something from Roxy. Money her gun-running dead husband owes Billy Afrika. Piper needs Roxy to lead him to Afrika to finish a botched murder attempted when they were children. Disco thinks Roxy will lead him to a boatload of cash so he can steal to support his out of control drug habit. Throw in a serial killer lobbing off blonde heads and you have yourself a thriller. There is so much violence in Wake Up Dead I lost track of the dead, but I enjoyed Roxy’s strength. I cheered for her redemption.

As an aside, it is interesting to read about the practice of witchcraft in three books at the same time. The Cruelest Journey and Birds Without Wings have a witch presence as well.

Line I liked the best, “Nothing like hating someone to give you a reason to go on living” (p 279).

Author fact: Roger Smith had no way of knowing MySpace was not timeless.

Book trivia: This could be a movie with all of its violence, sex, drugs, and even a little romance.

Music: Celine Dion’s “The Power of Love” and “Because You Loved Me”, Barry White, Nirvana, J Lo, Britney, Three Tenors, Ludacris, Chet Baker’s “Old Devil Moon,” “Abide with Me,” Bob Dylan’s “Death is Not the End,” Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive,” Courtney Love, and “Happy Birthday.”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “South Africa” (p 215). Interestingly enough, Pearl said somewhere that she didn’t like violence (maybe it was in the Lee Child chapter?), but anyway, holy cow there is a LOT of violence in Wake Up Dead. Even the everyday descriptions of things are crude and rude.

The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be

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Mowat, Farley. The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be. Little, Brown and Company, 1957.

Reason read: April Fool’s Day and April is Dog Month.

How much of Farley Mowat’s The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be is imaginative exaggeration? It is hard to say, but nevertheless it is a delightful read for all ages. Mowat looks back at his childhood in Saskatoon with his faithful dog, Mutt, at his side. The addition of “four cent” Mutt, a goofy, intelligent pup full of personality, lends humor into an otherwise typical 1930s household. Mutt has a personality all his own and often gets his loyal and loving family in trouble, especially while duck hunting, tangling with skunks and anything having to do with boats. Every member of the Mowat family bonds with Mutt in special ways but my favorite stories centered around a pair of mischievous owls, Wols and Weeps, who the Mowat family somehow adopts.
Disclaimer: The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be is a bit dated. Hunting practices have changed and leash laws abound these days. The carefree attitudes of the 1930s are a thing of the past.
Confessional: I unexpectedly shed a few tears at the end of The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be. Like all young children with pets, they grow up and leave their animal behind. Humans outlast most furry friends, after all. I knew Mutt was getting old so I was expecting that kind of coming of age, circle of life ending. Not even close. No spoiler alert needed. Just read the book.

Author fact: Mowat also wrote Bay of Spirits which I am slated to read for the Challenge in July of 2031.

Book trivia: The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be was illustrated by Paul Galdone and first published in 1957.

Line I liked, “I did not speak, for I had a certain intuition that silence would be safer” (p 63), “…and in twenty nine years a man can remember a good many things that ought to have happened” (p 177).

Music: “The Bonnets of Bonny Dundee.”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in two chapters, “Canadian Fiction (p 50) and again in “Humor” (p 116). Also in Book Lust To Go in the simple chapter called “Newfoundland” (p 154).

Devils in the Sugar Shop

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Schaffert, Timothy. Devils in the Sugar Shop. Unbridled Books, 2006.

Reason read: Nebraska becomes a state in the month of March.

Devils in the Sugar Shop takes place in the Old Market district of Omaha, Nebraska, back in a time when smokers were cordoned off in dark lounges with thread-bare carpets and worn exhausted furniture. The “sugar shop” is an adult sex toy shop. Deedee Millwood is it’s top seller and has won a trip to the Bahamas. Reminds me of my aunt, only she sold cars for Toyota and was sent to Mexico several times.
All of the characters are interconnected in various ways. There isn’t much a plot in Devils in the Sugar Shop. With the advent of Valentine’s Day approaching everyone ‘s sense of priority is out of whack. Not much happens in Devils in the Sugar Shop except a lot of gossip and party planning. Everyone is screwing someone else. Deedee is nearly forty and divorced. Her best friend is Ashley Allyson. Deedee and her husband, Zeke, are taking art classes to improve their divorce (how progressive of them). Zeke is messing around with Vivian, also a friend of Ashley Allyson. Ashley’s husband, Troy, works for Mrs. Bloom at the Omaha Street, an alternate news weekly, as an editor and writer. Viviane Daily, an artist of sorts, enjoys day drinking and is receiving obscene pictures from an unknown stalker. Mrs. Bloom is also in the aforementioned art class. Mrs. Bloom used to be a birthday clown, a reverend, an art therapist at a prison, and an organizer of poetry slams for cancer patients. Ashley’s son Leo is gay. Tucker is tallish dwarf and an artist from Mississippi. Peach and Plum are twenty-something year old twins who own a bookstore. Plum is married to Mickey.
Once you get all the characters straight, Devils in the Sugar Shop is a sexy romp set in Omaha, Nebraska (of all places).

Does anyone else find it ironic that Ashley’s first novel was published with a font created by a children’s book author? Keep in mind Ashley writes erotica.

Author fact: while Shaffert wrote a bunch of other books, I am only reading Devils in the Sugar Shop for the Challenge. As an aside, Timothy Schaffert knows his shoe brands.

Book trivia: the cover of Devils in the Sugar Shop is based on a design for a Polish release of an 1968 Italian film. Cool.

Music mentioned: Garth Brooks, Vivaldi’s “Spring,” Jean Stafford, Josephine Baker, Concrete Blonde, Diana Ross, Roy Eldreidge’s “If I Had You,” Red Hot Chili Peppers, Orenda Fink, “King of the Road,” REO Speedwagon, Air Supply, Billie Holiday’s “Everything Happens to Me,” “I Must Have That Man,” and “I Don’t Want to Cry,” Bloodcow, Rufus Wainwright, Elton John, Cher, Mary J. Blige, Chet Baker, Neil Diamond and Barbra Streisand’s “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers,” “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” “Heart of Glass,” and Tina Turner.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Nebraska: the Big Empty” (p 148).

Wife of the Gods

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Quarty, Kwei. Wife of the Gods. Narrated by Simon Prebble. Trantor Media, 2010.
Quarty, Kwei. Wife of the Gods. Random House, 2009.

Reason read: in the month of March Ghana obtained sovereignty.

Who would want to murder Gladys, a young woman studying to be a doctor. She volunteered at an HIV clinic battling the wide-spreading threat of AIDS across Ghana. She seemed to be a very sweet girl with a bright future ahead of her and yet she wound up strangled to death and hidden in a grove of trees. Darko Dawson has been assigned the case even though it is out of his jurisdiction. Because he has family ties to this remote village, Darko potentially could navigate the cultural conflict between witchcraft versus modern science.
Like any good murder mystery there is that one suspect who looks so good for the crime that you think how could it NOT be him? Everything points to Samuel, a man obsessed with Gladys. Witnesses saw him talking (harassing?) her right where she was murdered. He couldn’t account for his whereabouts before or after the crime…even Darko’s aunt swears the boy was seen talking to Gladys.
[As an aside: The definition of a wife of the gods is a woman who has committed a crime serving penitence with fetish priests. This woman is forced to have sex with the priests to “pay” for her crime.]
Confessional: I thought the ending of this book was perfect. It was very satisfying, akin to putting the last pieces of a puzzle into place. I enjoyed getting to know Darko Dawson and wished I had more Quarty books on my Challenge list to see what Darko did next.

Best quote in the book, “It’s always in the lying that a mistake is made” (p 310).

This was a book I enjoyed on audio narrated by Simon Prebble.

Author fact: Quarty is a crime writer and a physician. Wife of the Gods is Quarty’s first novel.

Book trivia: Wife of the Gods is the first book in the Darko Dawson series. It is the only book I am reading by Quarty for the Challenge series.

Music: “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Africa: the Greenest Continent” (p 7).

Blue Hammer

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MacDonald, Ross. The Blue Hammer. Alfred A. Knopf, 1976.

Reason read: Arizona became a state in the month of February.

Blue Hammer is part of the Lew Archer series. Like any good character series, the reader gets to know Lew in increments. We know he is a loner and was previously married. In The Blue Hammer is era is also another character. The 1970s were a time when strangers could enter apartment buildings and ride the elevator freely; hotel keys were returned to the front desk every time guests left their rooms; librarians had no qualms about giving out personal information like where someone lived or their phone number. Lew Archer has been hired to retrieve a stolen painting by Richard Chantry, a man who has been missing for twenty-five years. Doris Biemeyer seems to be at the center of the mystery of the missing painting. She readily admits she let her boyfriend Fred steal it from her parents. The same painting was later stolen from Fred’s bedroom (He lives with his patents.). But, the painting is only the beginning of the mystery. When the bodies start piling up Lew knows this case is bigger than just art theft. Paul Grimes is beaten to death, but before his murder he mistakes Lew Archer for Richard Chantry. Why? Then Jacob Whitmore is drowned seemingly in a bathtub before thrown into the ocean. Are these murders connected? What about missing man Richard Chantry? Is he dead, too? Then Lew’s love interest, a nosy reporter, goes missing.
Blue Hammer is the kind of mystery that prompted me to keep notes on every character and event. The twists and turns come at you fast and furious. I sensed the connection between people and their actions were too important to be overlooked. Everyone has a story to tell and everyone seems to be connected one way or another…

Confessional: Colonel Aspinwall, Dr. and Mrs. Ian Innes, Jeremy and Molly Rader, Jackie Pratt Mackendrick, Betty Jo Siddon, These are people at the party. Will they be important later on?

Lew Archer goes to a party where he is introduced to Arthur Planter,…Will these people be important later in the story or are they decoys with the only purpose of confusing me?

Line I liked, “She can go to hell and copulate with spiders” (p 25). Interesting. Is this a insult specific to the 1970s? Here’s another line, “We walked slowly around the block, as if we had inherited the morning and were looking for a place to spend it” (p 241).

Author fact: Ross MacDonald was an educator.

Book trivia: the title of Blue Hammer comes from a very small detail at the end of the book. Lew Archer is watching his reporter girlfriend sleep. the blue vein at her temple pulses with a steady beat…just like a blue hammer. You’re welcome.

Music: “Someone to Watch Over Me.”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “AZ You Like It” (p 30), a chapter about Arizona which is annoying because not much of Blue Hammer takes place in Arizona.

Views Afoot

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Taylor, Bayard. Views Afoot, Or Europe Seen with a Knapsack and Staff. Sampson, Low, Martson, Low, and Searle, 1872.

Reason read: Taylor was born in January. Read in his honor.

As a teenager, Bayard Taylor was fascinated with the microcosms around him as well as the greater world he could not see. On January 1844 he got the opportunity to travel with a cousin to Europe. Sailing aboard the Oxford they traveled abroad to Europe. Once in Bruges, Taylor wrote about visiting the Cathedral of Notre Dame. I think he was referring to Onze Lieve Vrouwekerk. Taylor went on to have so many unique adventures like witnessing a burial by torchlight, dancing with friends on rooftops across Germany, traipsing through the Black Forest, and after nearly a year in Germany, moving on to Switzerland to visit an exiled poet named Freiligrath. Italy become a love of his when visiting the Royal Gallery in Florence. He spent four glorious months in Tuscany. As an aside, it was fascinating to hear Taylor’s descriptions of the same art I experienced two years ago. Most stunning is his description of an area I plan to see this May: “Colossus of the Apennines” by John of Bologna outside Florence. I wonder if you can still climb on the rocks of his back, enter his body and peer out of his ear?
Since Views Afoot is comprised of journal entries and letters sent during Taylor’s first two years of travel I did not expect to find a sense of humor, but Taylor is funny. After a night’s stay in a posh establishment Taylor was surprised by the bill and quipped he was charged three francs for “the honor of breathing an aristocratic atmosphere” (p 52).
Despite the title of his book Taylor was not always on foot. Sometimes he and his companions traveled by boat and carriage whenever necessary.
The best part of Views Afoot was the section on travel advice. You must be content to sleep on hard beds. You must be willing to partake of course fare. You must be comfortable traveling for hours in hard rain or worse. Watch your traveling expenses closely. Sounds pretty reasonable for the 1800s.

As an aside, I love it when my books collide. I am reading a book by Kavenna called The Ice Museum in which Kavanna goes searching for the mysterious land of Thule. In Views Afoot Taylor mentions a poem called “The King of Thule.”
Another aside, I want to know if the Christmas market in Romerberg Square still exists. Because if it does I would like to go.

Line I liked, “We breathed an air of poetry” (p 160). I am not even sure I know what that means, but I liked it.

Author fact: Taylor has a sense of humor. He wrote a book called Blah, Blah, Blah. Too bad I am not reading it for the Challenge. I am only reading Views Afoot.

Book trivia: my copy of Views Afoot costs eighteen pence and was first published as a “boy’s record of first travels” in 1847.

Natalie connection: Bayard visited Loch Lomond and I couldn’t help but think of the song of the same name that she sings with Dan Zanes.
Confessional: when Bayard reached Scotland and met with the McGregor family I wondered if they were related to Ewan.

Music: “Hail Columbia,” “Exile of Erin,” the Mountain Boys, Mendelssohn, “Walpurgisnacht,” “Landsfather,” Schubert, Strauss, Beethoven, “Ave Maria,”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the fun chapter called “Explaining Europe: The Grand Tour” (p 82). Confessional: I keep wanting to call this chapter Exploring Europe.

Betsy and the Great World

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Lovelace, Maud Hart. Betsy and the Great World. Harper Collins Publishers, 1952.

Reason read: Reason read: In February there is a carnival in Venice. Betsy and the Great World takes place partly in Venice.

Elizabeth “Betsy” Ray wants to see the world instead of the four walls of a classroom. After two short years in college she convinces her family she needs to travel. At twenty-one years old there is little her parents can say so Betsy sets sail to discover the world. She spends the first part of her adventure aboard the Columbic, a floating society of friendships and crushes.
Despite being an adult, Betsy travels with companions who are not really part of the story. She spends a considerable amount of time in Bavarian Germany and Austria. She turns twenty-two in Sonneberg, the doll capital of Europe. She spends six weeks in Venice and takes Italian lessons. [As an aside, there are a bunch of locations in Venice I would like to visit while I am there.] She spends another four weeks in Paris, France. Along the way her family and friends send her letters, money, and gifts. But the one person she does not hear from is joe, her ex-beau. Throughout the entire journey she thinks of him.
Betsy demonstrates a combination of naivete and intelligence. She speaks up for the campaigning for votes for women and in every country she visits she tries to learn the native language. Throughout her journey she refused to worry about much except for Joe.
We leave Betsy just before the start of World War I.

As an aside, I want Betsy to demonstrate her debutante slouch, the move she kept practicing throughout the story.

Author fact: Lovelace wrote a bunch of “Betsy” books. I am only reading Betsy and the Great World for the Challenge.

Book trivia: Betsy and the Great World are full of wonderful illustrations, but I have to admit the one on the cover makes me think Betsy is trying to strangle herself with her own scarf.

Music: Straus, Debussy, “O Sole Mio,” Ravel, “Debutant Slouch,” Stravinsky, Madame Butterfly, “Long Way to Tipperary,” La Boheme, Tales of Hoffman, Beethoven, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Wagner, Carmen, Barber of Seville, Die Meistersinger, “Annie Laurie,” Tavern in Town,” “Down By the Old Mill Stream,” Shine On Harvest Moon,” Peg O My Heart,” “Trail of the Lonesome Pine,” Giannina Mia,” Kathleen Mavourneen,” “The Harp That Once Through Tara’s Halls,” “Over the Wave,” “Beautiful Blue Danube,” Ossip Gabrilowitsch, Il Trovatore, “Funiculi, Funicula,” “Marseille,” “Rule Britannia,” “Rock of Ages,” and “God Save the King.”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “”Veni, Vidi, Venice”” (p).

Ice Museum

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Kavenna, Joanna. The Ice Museum: In Search of the Lost Land of Thule. Viking, 2006.

Reason read: I read somewhere that the Shetland Viking Fire Festival takes place every January.

Kavenna blames her obsession with Thule on Pytheas, stating he began the story when he claimed he had been to the mythical land of Thule by way of Marseilles. But what or where exactly is Thule? Is it a place of barren rocks, howling winds, and flinty skies? Is it a Nazi organization, a secret society borne out of prejudices and hate? Is it an ancient calling to barbaric Vikings and long-forgotten mythologies? Kavenna travels the globe looking for answers. She meets with the former president of Estonia, Lennart Meri, searching for the true Thule. She travels to a former Thule settlement in Greenland and talks with scientists about global warming and the threat to the region’s polar bears.
Throughout Kavenna’s journey her descriptions of the landscape and people are stunning. Her words crackle with the cold and demonstrate the warmth of the people.
Eye opening moment: I guess I never thought about it before. Nazis believed Iceland was the cradle of Germanic culture. That makes sense with the blond hair, blue eyes, and fair skin of its residents.

Favorite description of Iceland, “A land like a disaster film, a natural gore-flick- the country scattered with the innards of the earth” (p 68).
Here is another line I liked, “the past and the future lurked at the edges of the day time dusk” (p 288).

Author fact: even as a small child Kavenna was urging her parents to travel with her.

Book trivia: there are no photographs or illustrations of any king in The Ice Museum. Not even the author has representation.

Music: “I Do Like to be Beside the Seaside.”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Sheltering in the Shetlands” (p 204).

Radetzky March

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Roth, Joseph. Radetzky March. Translated by Joachim Neuroschel. Overlook Press, 1995.

Reason read: Hanukkah is in December.

The premise of Radetzky March is deceptively simple. At the start it follows the three generations of the Trotta family at the end of the Hapsburg Empire. Grandfather, Captain Trotta, saved the life of Emperor Franz Joseph and was forever known as the Hero of Solferino. All in all, the characters of Radetzky March are incredibly dismissive. One character has a relationship where after twenty years he still cannot remember if his friend has sons or daughters. He only knows Herr Nechwas has now adult children. Herr von Trotta und Sipolje can never remember the personal details of another human’s life. A father decides his son’s profession by simply saying “I’ve decided that you’re going to be a lawyer” (p 15). Never mind what the son wants. You have to feel sorry for Carl as he is always under the thumb of his father; insecure around other men of military standing. Radetzky March follows Carl’s life as he makes his way under the shadow of a hero grandfather and a unsympathetic father. He can never live up to their grandeur and his life descends into a world of debt, adultery, alcoholism, and a lost sense of self. Joseph Roth has written a beautiful tragedy.

Confessional: something always gets lost in translation when I read a book originally not written in English. For example, how do sofa cushions slide slyly and cautiously toward someone? I could see cushions losing the battle against gravity and slowly toppling over when someone sits down next to them. And this – Trotta dropped a blade and it made a jingly whimper when it landed. The jingle, I understand. the whimper? Not so much.

Author fact: Roth wrote a sequel to Radetzky March called Emperor’s Tomb but I am not reading it for the Challenge. Instead, I am reading What I Saw: Reports from Berlin 1920 -1933.

Book trivia: my copy of Radetzky March has an introduction by Nadine Gordimer.

Music: Straus’s Radetzky March, Tannhauser Overture, Wandering Tinker, “The Internationale,” and “God Save.”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the simple chapter called “Berlin” (p 36).

Windows of Brimnes

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Holm, Bill. Windows of Brimnes: an American in Iceland. Milkweed Editions, 2008.

Reason read: Iceland won its independence in the month of December.

Author fact: Holm is known as a poet, musician, Minnesotan, and all-around curmudgeon.

I wanted Windows of Brimnes to be all about Iceland. The culture. The food. The people. The flora and fauna. The traditions. The weather. Holm does not keep his focus strictly on Brimnes. Instead he rails against America, television, and modern technologies like cell phones and computers. He has his two cents about September 11th, 2001 and the subject of Communism. He traces his early years in Minneota and life during the war. Every once in awhile he comes back to his beloved Brimnes. Admittedly, these parts are so beautiful Holm makes me want to visit.
Confessional: I was forewarned about Holm’s rants about America. I was even urged to skip those parts. Because I can be a b!tch I decided to make note of every disparaging thing Holm said about the country from which he tried to distance himself. Here are some of the things he said: the United States is too much. It has too much religion, too much news, too many weapons of mass destruction, too much entertainment, too much electricity, too vast an area. America has broken connections to its past. America is indifferent to nature if money is to be made and greed always wins. America is obsessed with security and loves war of any kind. America’s sense of civility has fallen into disrepair. “Americans are a nation of mentally drugged cattle” (p 133). Holm was tired of apologizing for being American. I wonder what he would think of the state of our country now.

Three degrees of Natalie Merchant: there is a YouTube (PBS) video that is nearly thirty minutes long about Bill Holm and his windows of Brimnes. In that video he mentions Walt Whitman who is a hero of Natalie’s. She wrote a song about Mr. Whitman called “Song of Himself.”

Lines I liked, “Introverts never deceive you just to cheer you up” (p 57) and “I’ve had sixty-three years’ experience at being spoiled, and I’m almost getting good at it” (p 110).
Here is an example of Holm’s snarkiness, “The shenanigans of Bill and Monica were the subject of several of my favorites” (p 195). No need to explain. Everyone knows to whom you are referring.

Author fact: I am sure Holm was going for this look when he chose the author photograph, but he is one grumpy looking dude.

Book trivia: there are no photographs whatsoever in this little book.

Music: Anna Sigga Halgadottir, Bach’s Fugue in B Minor, Prelude from Well-Tempered Clavier I and Christmas Oratori, Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, Britten, Chopin’s Nocturn, Couperin, Debussy’s “Clair de Lune,” Dixie Chicks (twice), Dvorak, Faure, Franz Joseph Haydn’s Sonata no. 52 in E Flat Major, Hindemith, Fur Elise, Hall Bjorn Hjartason, Hindemith’s First Sonata, Leonard Bernstein, Mahler, Liszt, Loch Lomond, Mozart’s Turkish Rondo, Prokofiev’s Sonata #9 in C Major, Ravel’s “Pavane,” Rachmaninoff Prelude, Scarlatti, Scriabin, Schubert, Schumann, Swan Lake, Turkey in the Straw, Verdi, William Tell Overture, Wagner, “Waltzing Matilda,” and Wolf.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the obvious chapter called “Iceland” (p 99).