Tag: book review

Old Man & Me

gr4c5Leave a comment

Dundy, Elaine. The Old Man and Me. New York: New York Review Books, 2005.

Introductions to books often bore me, I’ll admit it. I’m the one who will skip them nine times out of ten. For some reason I didn’t skip Dundy’s introduction to The Old Man and Me and I’m very glad I didn’t. I appreciated her explanation of who Honey Flood is, why Honey is the way she is (think Jessica Rabbit, “I’m not bad. I’m just drawn that way”), and why she wanted Honey that way. Dundy wants her reader to know the purpose of Honey in Old Man is as a response to the male anti-heroes of the era. By creating the female counterpart, Honey Flood is the Angry Young Woman who hates everything English. Additionally, Miss Flood is opinionated, hot-tempered, easy annoyed, more often than not, sarcastically irritated and a liar to boot. As Dundy explains, “But what I hope I had going for me is that Bad Girls are more interesting that Good ones” (p ix). Amen to that. So, about Honey…she’s out to seduce an older man. She’ll go to great lengths to land an interview with him, including befriending people she can’t stand. Why? He married her stepmother after her father’s death and by default (stepmum later committed suicide), has all Honey’s inheritance. In short, Honey wants her money back. True to Dundy’s intro, Honey is nothing short of nasty. There were surprises within Old Man and Me that popped up unexpectedly.

Lines which sparked the imagination, “Bollie was a sort of chain-talker, lighting one end of a conversation to another without letting the first go out” (p 8) and “She had lost her husband only two days ago and already she was a lost soul” (p 29).

Confessional: I didn’t catch that The Old Man and Me was a continuation of sorts of The Dud Avocado so I read Old Man before Avocado. My mistake. Bummer.

Reason read: January is the time people make resolutions. It’s also the most popular time to put affairs in order, like creating or revising a will.

Author fact: Elaine died in 2008. At 82 years of age she wrote the introduction I mentioned earlier. She lived to be 87 years old.

Book trivia: The Old Man and Me is a sequel of sorts to The Dud Avocado. The main character is in Dud and although she is older, she appears again in Old Man.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “American Girls” (p 18).

Assault

gr4c5Leave a comment

Mulisch, Harry. The Assault. Translated by Claire Nicolas White. New York: Pantheon Books, 1986.

Right away, I am struck by the imagery of The Assault. The detail with which Mulisch describes people and places is extraordinary. The year is 1945 in occupied Holland. Twelve year old Anton Steenwijk’s whole world changes the night a Nazi collaborator is murdered and the body moved to the Steenwijk’s front yard. Despite the war being nearly over, just months away really, Holland is still very much under the thumb of the Germans. Retaliation is inevitable and Anton’s life is forever changed. The Assault follows Anton through adulthood and the cold reality that no matter how he lives his life he can never escape his past. The Why haunts him. Each chapter is an episode, relating back to the assault. In the second episode, as a 19 year old medical student he attends a party in his hometown. He hasn’t been back since that fateful night. In episode three the year is 1956 and Anton is 23 years old and married. He runs into a man from his past with tragic stories to tell of his own. By the fourth episode he has passed his final exams to become an anesthesiologist. He attends a funeral and meets yet another man from his past. Each year he becomes more successful and grounded in his present life, but the past continues to circle him until the final episode. By 1981 Anton is 48 years old and has remarried. His second wife gives him a son. The Why of his past becomes an ever widening circle of reason. Explanations expose the answers to all his questions but do they soothe his agonized memory?

Lines that struck me, “Not until people are called Adolph again will the Second World War be really behind us” (p 13), “A man who has never been hungry may possess a more refined palate, but he has no idea what it means to eat” (p 43), and “Everything is forgotten in the end” (p 185).

Reason read: there is a day in January (the 24th) when people are supposed to thank their mentors. The Assault is in the Book Lust chapter about coming of age, so I imagine there is a boy who has mentor he needs to thank.

Author fact: Mulisch lost his mother to the concentration camps and his father was jailed after the war for collaborating with the Nazis. Think about that for a second.

Book trivia: The cover photograph is that of Dutch policeman Fake Krist lying dead in the street, October 25th, 1944.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Boys Coming of Age” (p 45).

Alma Mater

gr4c52 Comments

Kluge, P.F. Alma Mater: a College Homecoming.Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1993.

This is an interesting Kluge book. It’s basically a memoir about how Kluge went back to his alma mater for an academic year to teach a writing/literature course. Each chapter is subsequent month in the semester, starting with (obviously) orientation in September and ending with graduation in May. What makes this book so interesting is the honest look Kluge takes of academia in general. As someone who has experienced both sides of the desk (student and faculty), he is free to examine the day to day as well as the behind-closed-doors politics of campus life. Every topic is fair game: tenure, scholarship, Greek life, dormitory living, the hiring process, alumni relations, the formation of committees to name a few. But it was the admissions process; specifically the process of accepting prospective students I found really interesting. Others in academia have said Kluge could have been writing about their institution. Admittedly, Kluge takes a tongue-in-cheek approach to Alma Mater but what was really surprising was how negative a picture Kluge paints of Kenyon. The disparaging comments were so frequent I was tempted to reread the book just to take note of every dissatisfaction. As an aside, most of the negativity didn’t come from Kluge directly. It came from faculty, the occasional student, alumni, and even the president of the college, just to name a few.

Other observations: It almost felt contractual for Kluge to mention past famous faculty and students (Ransom, Jarrell, Doctorow & Wright) several different times throughout Alma Mater. Also, I made the mistake of reading Kluge reviews on a “Rate My Professor” site. I’m sorry I did because it altered how I now feel about Alma Mater. I find this troubling because I had finished Alma before reading the reviews yet I was still influenced.

Lines I liked, “As sure as shit and feathers on a chicken coop floor, there’s always something” (p 14), “Was it the fullness of their lives or the emptiness that propelled them?” (p 144), “You need to learn the rules before you break them, master the traditions that you add to, or subvert” (p 145) and last one – “It’s like taking out my eyeballs and rolling them in a plate of breadcrumbs” (p 198). Funny!

Reason read: January is Kluge’s birth month. Read in honor of that birth.

Author fact: Because I have read another Kluge book I had to refer back to that review to see what I said for an “author fact” – simply because I didn’t want to say the same thing twice. Truth be told, I wasn’t writing author facts back than. So, this will be my first “fact” about Kluge and it’s an obvious one: Kluge wrote a book everyone has heard about, at least in major motion picture form – Eddie and the Cruisers.

Book trivia: Even though Alma Mater is a memoir of sorts, Kluge does not include any photographs. Bummer. At the very least I would have liked a picture of his dog especially since he meant so much to Kluge. 🙂

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter “P.F. Kluge: Too Good To Miss” (p 140).

Maus II

gr4c5Leave a comment

Spiegelman, Art. Maus II: A Survivor’s Tale: And Here My Troubles Began. New York: Pantheon, 1992.

I think by the time I read Maus II I was conditioned to lose the conundrum I previously faced with Maus I. When I first read Maus I I struggled with the dilemma of an extremely serious storyline wrapped in a cartoon; the holocaust in pictures. With the reading of Maus II my mind could reconcile the conflict. The heavy topics return as Spiegelman’s father continues his story of survival. At this point he is a prisoner in the concentration camp at Auschwitz and surviving because of his ability to appeared skilled at whatever the gestapo or Nazis need, whether it be working with tin or fixing shoes. The most poignant element of Vladek’s story is that he never gave up on his wife. Being that she was so thin and frail, he feared the worst but he never lost some small hope that he would see her again. The struggle between father and son held the most emotional tension, despite Vladek’s ordeals. Evidence of Alzheimer’s disease complicates their relationship, as does the leaving of Vladek’s second wife, Mala.

Stunning quotes, “If you want to live it is good to be friendly” (p 62) and “I wish he and Mala could patch things up and make each other miserable again” (p 120).

Reason read: to finish the Maus series I started well over a month ago.

Author fact: Thanks to Wikipedia I learned that Spiegelman came up with the Garbage Pail Kids after the Cabbage Patch Kid craze. Interesting.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Graphic Novels” (p 103). Funny how I didn’t mention this earlier, but Spiegelman, Maus I and Maus II are not in the index of Book Lust. Somehow they were left out.

By a Spider’s Thread

gr4c5Leave a comment

Lippman, Laura. By a Spider’s Thread. Read by Barbara Rosenblat. New York: Recorded Books, 2004

Private detective Tess Monaghan is back. To bring you up to speed, this time she is a gun-toting, more experienced mystery solver. She has an online network of lady private investigators to help her solve cases, too. Tess still rows (although not as much as in the beginning), her aunt is finally settling down and getting married (Tess is maid of honor), but Tess and her cool boyfriend, Crow, are taking a break (sadly) after finding out they have differing opinions about marriage. In By a Spider’s Thread this time Tess has been contacted by a rich Jewish furrier, desperate to find his missing wife and children. What Tess and her new client, Mark Rubin, don’t know is that wife Natalie willingly took their three children and ran away, joining her criminal lover on the run. This time Lippman gives the reader both sides of the story – Mark’s desperate search and Natalie’s ever-increasingly criminal escape (and boy, does it get criminal). The bigger mystery is why Natalie would want to run away from a man who has given her everything she has ever wanted. As a successful furrier, Mark Rubin has always kept his wife in the lap of luxury. True to Lippman form, as always, things are not as they seem.

Reason read: This finishes the series I started in September in honor of a Baltimore Book festival.

Author fact: Laura Lippman has a FaceBook page and I “liked” it.

Book trivia: This is the last Tess mystery I will read even though there are more in the series.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Ms. Mystery” (p 171).

Dew Breaker

gr4c5Leave a comment

Danticat, Edwidge. The Dew Breaker. Read by Robin Miles. New York: Recorded Books, 2004.

This is an amazing book, pure and simple. The plot is as remarkable as the telling. What appear to be disconnected short stories are really different connections to one man, the Dew Breaker. In Haiti during the dictatorial 1960s this man was responsible for torturing and killing innocent people. Years later, with his evil past behind him, the Dew Breaker is trying to live a quiet life as a barber in Brooklyn, New York. Through the various chapters we meet his connections – his family, his victims, his community. His past slowly comes out in small segments. It behooves the reader to pay close attention to the detail Danticat gives to each chapter, to each story. A mystery from a previous chapter could be solved in the next. A seemingly meaningless character in one chapter becomes the key to everything in another. This was definitely one of my favorites.

Reason read: Edwidge Danticat was born in the month of January.

Author fact: Everyone has a FaceBook page these days. Here’s Danticat’s.

Book trivia: The Dew Breaker was too short. But, the audio, read by Robin Miles, was fabulous.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “The Contradictory Caribbean: Paradise and Pain” (p 56).

Greater Nowheres

gr4c5Leave a comment

Finkelstein, Dave and Jack London. Greater Nowheres: a Journey Through the Australian Bush.New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1988.

The premise of Greater Nowheres is simple. Dave Finkelstein and Jack London are on the hunt for a mythical yet terrifying and elusive crocodile in the Australian bush. Despite their lackadaisical searching Finkelstein and London never really meet up with the famed creature (sorry to disappoint – Jack sees it but Dave doesn’t). Instead, Greater Nowheres becomes an eye opening account of a region in Western and Northern Australia few have traveled just for the fun of it. Finkelstein and London take turns writing chapters about their adventures and it is interesting to see their differing styles on the page (London is much more descriptive, in case you were wondering). One thing they both comment on is the inhospitable climate of the Australian Bush, a place where temperatures can soar and stay elevated (above 100 degrees) even at 10 o’clock at night. There are two seasons – the Wet and the Dry and both wreak havoc on travelers and residents alike. After awhile you sense a pattern, every place Jack and Dave visit is desolate but fiercely loved by the people who call it home.

As an aside, before I started reading Greater Nowheres I wondered if London’s drinking would play a part in the story. Neither Finkelstein or London shy away from mentioning London’s love of drink, even while in the arid deserts of the outback. Jack makes reference to his hangovers and the local pub being the only place he did his best verbal sparring.

Quotes that stuck with me, “Once again small athletes had come up short, but such narrow mindedness may soon be a prejudice of the past, at least in Australia, where the rapidly proliferating sport of dwarf-throwing is winning fans and enthusiastic devotees” (p 143), “To refer to Wyndham as a dead end is to make it sound a more appealing place than it actually is” (p 172), “We passed through a town called Kumarina without even realizing it” (p 192),

Reason read: Jack London’s birth month is in January.

Author facts: Finkelstein once was a Chinese interpreter and London once was an English professor.

Book trivia: there are no photographs to speak of in Greater Nowheres. Just illustrated maps.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Australia, the Land of Oz” (p 28).

Shot in the Heart

gr4c5Leave a comment

Gilmore, Mikal. Shot in the Heart. New York: Doubleday, 1994.

Mikal Gilmore has an incredible story to tell. But, here’s what I can’t wrap my brain around – the fact that his story is about his own brother. True, they didn’t know each other very well due to their age differences growing up and the fact that Gary was always either behind bars or on the run. Mikal had to rely on an older brother’s memories to fill in the gaps.
Everyone knows the story of Gary Gilmore, thanks to Norman Mailer’s biography The Executioner’s Song (and subsequent made for television movie of the same name). Everyone has heard of the controversy surrounding Gary Gilmore’s time on death row. What makes Mikal’s account so different is his family bond. This is his history as much as it is his brother’s. Gary was born Faye Robert Coffman and from the very start his life was surrounded by rage. Mikal wraps this story inside the history of the bloody beginnings of Mormon Utah. It’s as if the Gilmore family was destined to fail. Gary’s fame aside, Shot in the Heart is worth reading for Mikal’s story. As I mentioned before, it is as much Mikal’s history as it is Gary’s. Spoiler alert: don’t expect a happy ending. Mikal doesn’t really tie up his own tale in a neat bow. I found myself asking, what now? Where is Mikal now? More importantly, is he happy? Has he escaped the profound destruction and despair that tortured and ruined the rest of his entire family?

There were many different passages I would have liked to quote, but I limited it to just these:
He would not stop fighting the battle that he knew he could never win” (126), “It was a time when most Americans hadn’t yet armed themselves in fear of the world outside” (p 137), and “There are so many sounds that make so little sense in the silences of a deep night” (p 179). That last one is probably my favorite.

Reason read: Gary Gilmore was (finally) put to death in the month of January.

Author fact: Gilmore wrote for Rolling Stone magazine. He even wrote a piece reviewing The Executioner’s Song.

Book trivia: Unlike other biographies that clump photographs together Shot in the Heart includes a photograph at the beginning of each chapter. They are black and white and intensely sad.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Dewey Deconstructed: 300s” (p 67).

Ancient Rome on 5 Denarri a Day

gr4c5Leave a comment

Matyszak, Philip. Ancient Rome on 5 Denarri a Day: Your Guide to Sleeping, Shopping and Sightseeing in the City of the Caesars. London: Thames & Hudson, 2007.

If you have plans to get into your time machine and visit ancient Rome, this is the book for you. Just make sure you go in the time of the Caesars (200 AD). By reading this book you can learn how to don a new toga or tunic, attend the best circus, avoid drinking feces tainted water, visit a brothel, see the tomb of St. Peter and so much more. Read every word so you don’t miss the humor (especially in the section of useful phrases. My personal favorite: “Vel vinum mihi da, vel nummos mihi redde or I want my wine or my money back”). How’s this for tongue-in-cheek: “The oldest and largest of Rome’s sewers is the Cloca Maxima, which runs under the forum and is large enough to take a boat through, if that is your idea of fun” (p 34). See what I mean? It’s a small book but it’s packed with good fun!

Reason read: December is a good time to visit Rome, or so they say…

Book trivia: maps, photography, illustrations. Like any decent tour guide, this book has it all.

Author fact: Matyszak also wrote a book about visiting ancient Athens. I read that one two years ago.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Just So Much Greek To Me” (p 120). This is another one of those “in the wrong place” books. This has nothing to do with Greece.

Nero Wolfe Cookbook

gr4c5Leave a comment

Stout, Rex. The Nero Wolfe Cookbook. New York: Viking Press, 1973.

This is one of those cookbooks I would call “unique” just because it isn’t just a bunch of recipes with a common theme. This cookbook is for the diehard Nero Wolfe fans who really want to submerge themselves in his world. It’s a great concept. I don’t know how many readers actually tried to cook these meals, but they are real, honest-to-goodness recipes, albeit with weird ingredients like kummel, kirschwasser, sauterne, and pig livers. There is a whole chapter on just corn (note to self: try the roasting of corn in their husks instead of the traditional steaming). Throughout the recipes are little snippets of Wolfe’s unique relationship with food. I found it interesting that he can’t stand to have hungry visitors, even if those same visitors are thought to be suspects. Of course, it isn’t Nero doing all the cooking. He has his trusted cook, Fritz Brenner for that.

Reason read: Rex Stout was born in December. This was a quick “read” for the end of the month.

Author fact: According to the author info in The Nero Wolfe Cookbook, Stout had a passion for hotdogs. Okay.

Book trivia: I will admit 100% that I have read this at the wrong time. Having only read one Nero Wolfe mystery thus far (Fer-de-Lance) these recipes meant nothing to me. What saved me from quitting saving this for later were the quotations from the books in reference to each recipe.

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

A Good Doctor’s Son

gr4c5Leave a comment

Schwartz, Steven. A Good Doctor’s Son. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1998.

First and foremost, I could not put this down. I came to care about David Nachman. Even worse, I really worried about him. I think I read this book in one week’s time. Told from the retrospective first person, David Nachman, at nine years old in 1960s Pennsylvania, wanted to become a doctor like his father. Stoic and gentle, Dr Nachman did not discriminate patient care at a time when crosses were burning on some front lawns and the whites were moving out to the suburbs. You get the point – he was a good doctor and a good man. David wanted to be just like him. However life had other plans for young David by the time he reached his teens. Desperate to fit in, David joined a group of fellow teenagers for nights of gambling and crude sex jokes. Inwardly shy, it really wasn’t his thing but he wanted to belong somewhere so he played along. One terrible mistake changed his course of history forever. At a time full of protest and war, David has his own inner conflict to contend with. Now in his forties, David recounts his coming of age years in a slow and careful cadence. While his remembrances are gentle, it is impossible to ignore the growing undercurrent of guilt.

Line that lingered, “Either way…we wouldn’t talk about what was right in front of us” (p 13). How many families live like that, ignoring what is blatantly obvious and impossible to ignore?

Reason read: Pennsylvania became a state on December 12th, 1787.

Author fact: Schwartz wrote another book called Therapy but sadly it isn’t on my list. Another sad fact, another reviewer reviewed Schwartz (said he was an ass) in addition to giving his/her opinion of the book. It’s always cool when author AND book are great, but that doesn’t always happen.

Book trivia: Is this a movie? Because this should be a movie. I don’t know who would play David, but I see Richard Dreyfus as dad.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Big Ten Country: the Literary Midwest: Pennsylvania” (p 140).

Drinking: a Love Story

gr4c5Leave a comment

Knapp, Caroline. Drinking: a Love Story.New York: the Dial Press, 1996.

Reason read: Prohibition was repealed in December

It is difficult to ready any story about a fall from grace, especially one written as honestly and bluntly as Caroline Knapp’s. The story winds its way around different out-of-control drinking; when Knapp drank, why she thought she drank so much, the people she affected with her drinking, the denials along the way. At times her stories seemed repetitive and meandering but that perception comes from the why of it all. Knapp was clearly in pain and had trouble rationalizing her rage. She brought two points home: you don’t need to have suffered a trauma to become addicted to anything and once you recognize your problem, your addiction is never again a normalized behavior. In the world of alcohol, most people think nothing of having a cocktail with friends, a beer after work. All of that became off limits to Knapp once she accepted her addiction. IAnd speaking of addiction, it is clear Knapp had an addictive personality. She was drawn to obsessions and performed rituals while drinking, rituals about food consumption to the point of anorexia, rituals in how she fought with her boyfriends. Even after sobriety, Knapp was drawn to obsessions concerning cleanliness and being constantly aware of how large a role alcohol plays in our society. Even the words “champagne bunch” grated on her abstinence. This latter point I often refer to as the “pregnant woman” syndrome. Fearing pregnancy or craving pregnancy causes one to see pregnant women everywhere. It’s all in the level of need want. In the end, Knapp was resolved to take one day at a time. She couldn’t set large goals for herself while her drinking was larger than her resolve. She was smart to know that every day was a major victory. Her story ends unresolved but hopeful.

As an aside, someone went through my copy of Drinking and marked a bunch of interesting passages. Here are a few, “Perception versus reality. Outside versus inside” (p 15), “”It is not so much that people like me hide the truth about our drinking from others (which most of us do, and quite effectively); it’s that we hide from others (and often ourselves) the truth about our real selves, about who we really are when we sit in our offices dashing off memos and producing papers and preparing presentations, about what is really churning beneath the surface” (p 16-17), and “…tension would hang over the room like a fog, a preoccupied silence that always made me feel wary, as though something bad was about to happen” (p 36).
My favorite line was “Add venom and stir, my own personal recipe for rage” (p 168).

Author fact: As I was checking out other reviews for Drinking I kept noticing reviewers would refer to Knapp in the past tense, “she was a writer.” Turns out, she died of lung cancer when she was just 42 years old. Strange how her smoking wasn’t really part of the story, and yet it was another addiction.

Book trivia: no photographs.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Lost Weekends” (p 147).

Eugene Onegin

gr4c5Leave a comment

Pushkin, Alexander. Eugene Onegin: a Novel in Verse. Translated by Walter Arndt. New York: Dutton, 1963.

Eugene Onegin is a novel in verse. There are eight chapters centered around two couples. Eugene and Tatyana are the main characters and Lensky and Olga support their story. Pushkin himself is narrator, an acquaintance in the story and a supporting character in his own right. Olga and Tatyana are sisters. So, now you have the groundwork for the story. The main event, if you will, is when Eugene, bored at a party, flirts with Olga relentlessly, This behavior offends Lensky to the point of no return and he challenges Eugene to a duel. What I find particularly annoying is, while both men are full of remorse, they go ahead with the duel and Lenksi dies (stupid male pride). Of course, there is a lot more to the story than just the duel and death. Eugene goes away for awhile and when he returns he reunites with Tatyana, realizing he is still in love with her. She, unfortunately, has moved on and married someone else. While she still has feelings for Eugene she opts to stay with her husband, leaving Eugene despondent.

Things that were a head-scratcher for me: there were a lot of references to the spleen and a lot of talk of feet.

Reason read: December is National Poetry month in the United Kingdom. I know, it’s a stretch, but I picked this up at a time when I didn’t have anything else to read.

Author fact: Pushkin took ten long years to write Eugene Onegin. Each section has a notation of a completion date.

Book trivia: Eugene Onegin was Pushkin’s favorite work.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Poetry: a Novel Idea” (p 186), and again in the chapter called “Russian Heavies” (p 210).

Lady Franklin’s Revenge

gr4c5Leave a comment

McGoogan, Ken. Lady Franklin’s Revenge: a True Story of Ambition, Obsession and the Remaking of Arctic History. London: Bantam Books, 2006.

Lady Jane Franklin is right up there with Freya Stark and Isabella Bird when it comes to fearless lady travelers – except Stark and Bird were barely born before Franklin started her travels. She truly exemplified a pioneer in female expedition. Although Nancy Pearl doesn’t include Franklin in her chapter on the subject in Book Lust, Franklin was the first to venture to far off places such as Russia, Africa and the wilds of Australia at a time when Victorian women were expected to stay at home, be dutiful wives and raise docile families. Jane Griffin was different. From a very young age she couldn’t be bothered with such domestic pursuits. She wanted an education, an adventure, and to be an outspoken voice. Even after marrying John Franklin and becoming an instant mother to his four year old daughter, Jane Franklin felt no parental responsibility for Eleanor and continued to travel on her “own” (servants and escorts not counted). It was only after her husband, now Sir John Franklin, disappeared in the Arctic that another obsession besides travel of Lady Franklin’s was realized- to bring her husband home. She spared no expense (even her stepdaughter’s inheritance) and pulled out all the stops to convince high-powered officials that her husband’s expedition was worth searching for. At a time when America and Great Britain were not on the best of terms, Lady Franklin worked deals with both countries to send rescue expeditions into unknown waters. She worked tirelessly to keep the missing ships in the minds of everyone on both sides of the pond. Even after the mystery of Frankin’s disappearance had been solved, Lady Franklin insisted his name should carry on as the discoverer of the Northwest Passage.

Can I just say I wish I could have known Lady Franklin? For some reason I find her incredibly cool. While I don’t admire her selfish behavior and prejudice ways, I value the strength in her independence, her tenacity and resolve.

Quoting my favorite lines, “She cloaked her need in the language of love, thus deluding even herself” (p 53), and “In her twenties, the studious Jane Griffin not only read prodigiously, but began keeping a special notebook, updated annually, in which she listed books and articles she perused” (p 63). I, too, keep a journal of such lists. Only my journal is updated monthly and I don’t include articles. Just books.

Reason read: Jane Griffin Franklin was born in December. Reading Lady Franklin’s Revenge in her honor.

Author fact: Ken McGoogan also wrote a biography of Samuel Hearn, another adventurer fascinated with Arctic exploration.

Book trivia: One of the great things about McGoogan’s Lady Franklin is the variety of photographs included. Something as simple as a photograph of a replica of the dress Jane would have worn as a young woman was appreciated. It added texture to the text, if you will.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “To the Ends of the Earth: North and South” (p 232).

Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

gr4c5Leave a comment

Diaz, Junot. The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Diaz. New York: Riverhead Books, 2007.

From the very first pages of The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (which I will from now on refer to as “Wondrous” because the title is too long), you are sucked in. The narrator goes on and on about “fuku” curse and the superstition of it all. It’s amusing and chilling all at once. All the while, you are hoping fuku doesn’t set its sights on you. But if it does, you also hope to have a little zafa (counterspell) hanging around.

When we first meet Oscar, he is seven years old and the year is 1974. He is the “GhettoNerd at the End of the World” trying to have two girlfriends at once. The story switches gears for chapter two (1982 – 1985). Oscar’s sister, Lola takes over the story in first person. She is a feisty runaway girl with typical teenage angst. From there, the narratives keep changing. Each voice tells a new story (just wait until you get to the story of Lola and Oscar’s mother, Belicia from 1955 to 1962). Through the generations, all the while the fuku is circling this doomed family. The writing of Wondrous is rich and enveloping. You cannot help but get completely drawn into the lives of every character.

Favorite lines (and there are a few), “The talkback blew the fuck up” (p 6), “You don’t know the hold our mothers have on us, even the ones that are never around. You don’t know what it’s like to grow up with a mother who never said a positive thing in her life, not about her children, not about the world, who has always been suspicious, always tearing you down and splitting your dreams straight down the seams” (p 55-56), and “Even at the end she refused to show me anything close to love” (p 208).

Reason read: New Jersey became a state on December 18, 1787.

Author fact: Junot also wrote Drown which is also on my list.

Book trivia: Pearl recommended listening to the audio of The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao so I did both. I listened to the audio to and from work and read 10-15 pages on my lunch break. Also, Wondrous won a Pulitzer.

Audio trivia: The audio is read by Jonathan Davis and an unknown female…unless Davis does an extraordinary job sounding like a woman?

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Cavorting Through the Caribbean” (p 54).