Tag: Fiction

Grass Dancer

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Power, Susan. The Grass Dancer. Bookcassette Audio, 1998.

I have admitted as much, I am not a fan of magical realism. But, I think I found a way to combat my dislike – audio books. Listening to Grass Dancer is certainly easier than reading it!
As an aside, I have become spoiled by compact discs when it comes to audio books. I’m listening to The Grass Dancer on cassette and the hum and clicks in the audio is so distracting! Luckily, I am using this book as entertainment while I walk on the treadmill so it’s not too terrible. Ahem. Correction: I WAS using this book as entertainment. Last night my stereo ate the tape! Damaged it beyond repair. UGH! Embarrassing that I had to pay the owning library a $5 replacement fee.

Anyway, onto the review, such as it is. Since I only got halfway through the story this will be brief. Grass Dancer doesn’t have a plot. It doesn’t have a main character. It doesn’t have a linear timeline. At best, I would call it a mishmash of stories with interconnected characters, most from the same family. Grass Dancer as a whole is a shape shifter. With multiple points of view bouncing from first person to third and timelines that are all over the place (1981, 1964, 1935, and 1969 are important dates), it is hard to stay focused on the main purpose of the story. What I found most disheartening is that I would grow attached to a character (like Pumpkin) and then the story would move away from him or her. Most characters came back, but in impersonal ways. Wait until you read what happens to Pumpkin! This is not to say I didn’t enjoy Power’s writing. She inserted some surprises along the way that I wasn’t expecting and she stayed true to the cultures, legends and myths of the Sioux Indians which I appreciated.

Reason read: North Dakota become part of the union in November.

Author fact: This is Power’s first novel.

Book trivia: Susan Power actually reads the unabridged audio. I think this is the first time I’ve listened to an audio book actually read by the author. I think.

BookLust Twist: This was indexed in Book Lust twice. Once, in “American Indian Literature” (p 23) and again, in “Growing Writers” (p 107). It is also in More Book Lust in the chapter called “The Great Plains: the Dakotas” (p 106).

Butchers Hill

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Lippman, Laura. Butchers Hill. New York: Avon, 1998.

Tess Monaghan is back. This time she has her own “business” as a private investigator. It’s a bit hokey, but the business actually belongs to someone else and she does the “detecting” for a cut. Since it is a brand new venture for her, she is thrilled when she gets two cases on the same day – cases she considers “slam dunks”, especially since she has other people helping her with the leg work. Client #1 is Luther Beale of Butcher Hill. Six years earlier he went to prison for killing a kid vandalizing cars in his neighborhood. Now, newly released from prison Beale wants to make amends with the children who witnessed the death of their friend, even though he has always claimed self defense. Beale needs Tess to not only find these kids, but identify them first since they were anonymous minors at the time. Her second client is a woman with several different aliases. Although shrouded in mystery, Tess can tell she is a well-to-do black woman. This woman claims she looking for the daughter she put up for adoption thirteen years before. Of course, both cases turn out to be more complicated than they first appeared. The end of the story delivers a curve ball that somehow doesn’t smack of shock that it should. Instead, the surprise misses the mark and fails to make an impact.

Letdown: I was surprised Tess didn’t know what a “mule” was. Reason read: to continue the series started with Baltimore Blues…but not really. See BookLust Twist below for what I mean. I could also say that I am reading Butchers Hill because November is National Adoption Month.

Author fact: Lippman won the Anthony Award for Best Paperback Original for Butchers Hill.

Book trivia: Butcher’s Hill is third in the Tess Monaghan series. I skipped book #2, Charm City.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Ms. Mystery” (p 171). Funny thing is, Pearl doesn’t mention specific titles except #3 and #8. The first book in the series, Baltimore Blues is mentioned in Book Lust To Go in the chapter “Baltimore.”

As an aside, what would have been really cool is instead of listing the same book in several different chapters (like To Kill a Mockingbird) list out all the books within a series. Less repetition, more information.

Another note: I had been calling this book Butcher’s Hill as opposed to Butchers Hill. Big difference.

 

Great Hunt

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Jordan, Robert. The Great Hunt. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 1990.

Full disclosure – I don’t know why I am reading any more books from this series. I have a problem with repetition and in the preface Jordan writes the phrase, “the man who called himself Bors” no less than 23 times. I get it. He wants you to know the guy’s name isn’t really Bors. As a result of the preface, I expected nothing less in the rest of the book. There is a lot of repetition between the first and second book to “catch you up” if you didn’t read the first one. However, truth be told, very little changes in the next installment of the Wheel of Time series. Everything is still over-the-top dramatic (“eyes more dead than death” p xiv). Rand al’Thor is still the reluctant hero. Trollocs are still terrible. Egwene is still conflicted and childlike. They still have this weird romance thing lingering. Probably the more interesting thing about them at this point is that they go on different journeys. Still, it wasn’t enough to keep me glued to the page.
And another thing! Can I just say how annoyed I am by the sheer number of groups, nations, societies and the like? Good grief! You have aielmen, arad doman, caemyl, cairhien, children of the light, darkfriends, dai shan, dreadlords, far dareis mai, eyeless, forsaken, fades, gaiden, goaban, hardan, hundred companions, lurks, manetheren, marath’damane, mydraal, halfmen, questioners, shadowmen, sea folk, taraboners, tinkers, tree killers, trollocs, tuatha’an, warders, watchers over the waves, white cloaks, women’s circle, and wisdom. Let’s not forget about the aes sedai who can be red, brown or blue, or the ajah who can be blue, red, white, green, brown, yellow or gray (where’s the purple, orange or pink?).

Can I admit that I think the Wheel of Time “logo” looks a lot like a Mickey Mouse head?

Reason read: to continue the series started with Eye of the World in October.

Book trivia: The Great Hunt is 757 pages long.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter “Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror” (p 214).

Picture of Dorian Gray

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Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. New York: Viking, 2000.

Nancy Pearl included this in her chapter “Horror for Sissies” in More Book Lust. But, when I really think about it, it’s more horrible than any slasher film out there. Dorian Gray is a beautiful young man in Victorian England. His beauty and youth have taken him places and afforded him many luxuries. During a sitting with a painter he rashly wishes he could remain young and beautiful all his life. This wish is granted but subsequently his personality sours and his morality rots away. With each passing cruel remark and act, the portrait grows older and uglier while Dorian’s human exterior remains handsome and pure. Soon, Dorian cannot separate himself from the image that he sees on the canvas. The more hideous the portrait, the more violent his actions against humanity. It’s a downward spiral with tragic results.
Wilde has a lot to say about Victorian society norms, but his tongue-in-cheek humor and wit thread through the evil demise of Dorian Gray with delightful frequency.

Strung-together words I liked, “Music was not articulate” (p 30) and “Philanthropic people lose all sense of humanity” (p 49). Funny! Here are two more lines I liked, “He was late on principle, his principle being that punctuality is the thief of time” (p 60), and “There was an exquisite poison in the air” (p 63).

Reason read: Halloween. Duh. Also, Basil (the artist who paints Dorian) wants to include Dorian’s portrait in a show scheduled for October. By this time Dorian’s canvas image has begun to deteriorate so Dorian is loathe to show it to anyone.

Author fact: Oscar Wilde had such a tragic end to his story.

Book trivia: If you can, find The Whole Story version of The Picture of Dorian Gray because it is really unique. First of all, it’s the complete, unabridged text as it was originally published so you aren’t missing out on Wilde’s artistic endeavor but the annotated extras make the story really come alive.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Horror for Sissies” (p 119).

November the End List

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This is the final month for the Challenge year. I don’t have much to say beyond that. Here are the books:

  1. In a Strange City Butcher’s Hill by Laura Lippman (to continue the series started in September) Note: Butcher’s Hill was supposed to be read in October but it took over a month for it to arrive.
  2. ADDED: All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren
  3. Andorra by Peter Cameron
  4. Any Four Women Can Rob the Bank of Italy by Ann Cornelisen
  5. Beaufort by Ron Leshem
  6. Cradle of Gold by Christopher Heaney
  7. Grass Dancer by Susan Power*
  8. ADDED: Great Hunt by Robert Jordan (to continue the series started in October, because I forgot to mention the rest of the series)
  9. You Get What You Pay For by Larry Beinhart- MAYBE

*Planned as audio books

FINISHED (Dec 2013 – Oct 2014):

  1. Absolute Zero by Helen Cresswell*
  2. After the Dance by Edwidge Danticat
  3. Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow*
  4. Alice I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin*
  5. Angels Weep by Wilbur Smith
  6. Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz by Mordecai Richler.
  7. Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro
  8. Art Student’s War by Brad Leithauser
  9. Baltimore Blues* by Laura Lippman
  10. Beirut Blues by Hanan al-Shaykh
  11. Benjamin Franklin: an American Life by Walter Isaacson
  12. ADDED: Biodegradable Soap by Amy Ephron
  13. Bring Me a Unicorn by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
  14. Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks*
  15. Black Lamb and Gray Falcon by Rebecca West (DNF)
  16. Bluebird Canyon by Dan McCall
  17. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown
  18. Cabin Fever by Elizabeth Jolley
  19. Captain Sir Richard Burton by Edward Rice (DNF)
  20. Careless Love by Peter Gurlnink
  21. Caroline’s Daughters by Alice Adams
  22. Charlotte Gray by Sebastian Faulks
  23. Children of Cambodia’s Killing Fields: Memoirs of Survivors compiled by Dith Pran
  24. Civil Action by Jonathan Harr
  25. Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire*
  26. Culture of Disbelief by Stephen Carter (DNF)
  27. Dancer and the Thief by Antonio Skarmeta
  28. Dancer with Bruised Knees by Lynne McFall
  29. Dark Sun by Richard Rhodes (DNF)
  30. Day the Falls Stood Still by Cathy Marie Buchanan*
  31. Dervish is Digital by Pat Cadigan
  32. Earthly Possessions by Anne Tyler
  33. Eighth Day by Thornton Wilder
  34. Eye of the World by Robert Jordan
  35. ADDED: Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
  36. Faith Fox by Jane Gardam
  37. Falcon Flies by Wilbur Smith*
  38. Feast of Love by Charles Baxter
  39. First Man by Albert Camus
  40. Flower and the Nettle by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
  41. Fordlandia by Greg Gandin
  42. French Revolutions* by Tim Moore.
  43. Georges’ Wife by Elizabeth Jolley
  44. Gesture Life by Chang-rae Lee
  45. Half Magic* by Edward Eager
  46. Herzog by Saul Bellow
  47. History Man by Malcolm Bradbury
  48. Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
  49. House of Morgan by Ron Chernow – attempted
  50. Illumination Night by Alice Hoffman
  51. In the Graveyard of Empires by Scott Jones*
  52. Inside Passage by Michael Modzelewski
  53. Inspector Ghote Breaks an Egg by H.R.F. Keating
  54. It Looked Like Forever by Mark Harris
  55. Last Train to Memphis by Peter Guralink
  56. Last Tycoon by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  57. Leopard Hunts in the Darkness by Wilbur Smith
  58. Life in the Air Ocean by Sylvia Foley
  59. Long Way From Home by Frederick Busch
  60. Lotus Eaters by Tatjani Soli
  61. Lulu in Hollywood by Louise Brooks
  62. Men of Men by Wilbur Smith
  63. Neighborhood Heroes by Morgan Rielly
  64. Now Read This II by Nancy Pearl
  65. Ocean of Words by Ha Jin
  66. Oedipus by Sophocles
  67. Owl Service by Alan Garner*
  68. Palladian Days by Sally Gable*
  69. Partisan by Benjamin Cheever
  70. ADDED: Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
  71. Price of Silence by Liza Long
  72. Professor and the Housekeeper by Yoko Ogawa
  73. Racing Weight by Matt Fitzgerald
  74. Raw Silk by Janet Burroway
  75. Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro*
  76. Rose Cafe by John Hanson Mitchell
  77. Rose of Martinique by Andrea Stuart
  78. Run or Die by Kilian Jornet
  79. Running for Mortals by John Bingham
  80. Seeing in the Dark by Timothy Ferris
  81. Soul of All Living Creatures by Vint Virga
  82. Sword at Sunset by Rosemary Sutcliff
  83. Thousand Ways to Please a Husband by Weaver/LeCron (E-book)
  84. Thrush Green by Miss Read*
  85. Toronto by Charles Way
  86. Transcriptionist by Amy Rowland
  87. War Within and Without by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
  88. Wildwater Walking Club by Claire Cook.
  89. Winners and Losers by Martin Quigley
  90. Zero Days by Barbara Egbert

Poetry:

  • “Aftermath” ~ a poem by Siegfried Sassoon
  • “Romance” ~ a poem by W.J. Turner
  • “Kubla Khan” ~ a poem by Samuel T. Coleridge

Short Stories:

  • “The Huckabuck Family” by Carl Sandburg
  • “How to Revitalize the Snake in Your Life” by Hannah Tinti
  • “Sound of Thunder” by Ray Bradbury
  • “Thirty Year Old Women Do Not Always Come Home” by Mark Winegardner
  • “Birdland” by Michael Knight
  • “Killer Inside Me” by Jim Thompson
  • “Down There” by David Goodis
  • “Crossing the Craton” by John McPhee.
  • “Lukudi” by Adrianne Harun
  • “The Eighth Sleeper of Ephesus” also by Adrianne Harun
  • “Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” by Jorge Luis Borges

For next year:

  • Hall of a Thousand Columns by Tim Mackintosh-Smith.

Biodegradable Soap

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Ephron, Amy. Biodegradable Soap. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1991.

This is such a short, snarky little story about a community in suburban Los Angeles. Claudia Weiss is becoming more and more obsessed with recycling and the environment while her husband leaves her for a younger, more self-centered actress. Claudia’s friends gossip and have affairs of their own. One friend starts up an affair with her personal trainer and gets caught. Interspersed in the story are different current events: the Soviet invasion of Lithuania, the war in Iraq, the Exxon-Valdez spill… It’s truly an odd book.

Quote worth quoting, “That was what he liked about Lara – she was completely self-obsessed and he didn’t think she’d ever had an altruistic thought in her life” (p 45).

Reason read: Ehpron’s birth month is in October.

Author fact: Ephron has her own website here.

Book trivia: This is a quick, quick, quick read. 159 pages…but not really. Each “chapter” is short and choppy; only 1-2 pages long. If you were to squish the pages it’s only — pages long.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “All in the Family: Writer Dynasties” (p 6).

Eyre Affair

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Fforde, Jasper. The Eyre Affair. New York: Penguin Books, 2003.

Reason read: Reason #1 – I was home-home and had finished the two books I brought with me. I was thinking Robert Jordan’s 800+ page behemoth would take much longer, but obviously I forgot I would be in the backseat for 5.5 hours, then on a boat for another hour, and then stuck in a very relaxing vacation on a very relaxing island with lots of time to read…
Reason #2 – October is Crime Prevention Month and since Thursday is a cop, more or less, I thought this would be appropriate. More or less.

So. Picture this: the year is 1985. The Crimean War is still raging and Great Britain is in a reverse time warp. Instead of being behind the times they are way ahead of them. England is a futuristic place where time travel is an everyday occurrence, the most common thing to clone is the resurrected Dodo bird (everyone has them as pets), and visitations to the pages of literature is child’s play. Thursday Next is a Special Operative in literary detection where not much is supposed to happen (it’s supposed to be a desk job after all). Most crimes in involve Byronic forgeries and protests over Shakespeare’s authenticity. That is until a minor character from a Dickens novel is found murdered outside the novel, changing the plot forever. That’s just for starters. When Jane Eyre herself is plucked from Bronte’s original manuscript and the kidnapper threatens to alter Great Britain’s most beloved story, Thursday rises to the challenge to rescue Jane. It’s no small task for the kidnapper is a former professor who once tried to seduce Thursday and seems to have godlike powers. To make matters worse, Thursday’s mind is not 100% on the case as she is distracted by a heartbreaking secret in the form of an ex-lover she can neither escape nor forget.
Fforde writes with cunning intention. Every chapter is riddled with wordplay, puns, literary allusions and trivia. With a names like Thursday Next, Hades Acheron, and Jack Schitt, you can just imagine the possibilities. Even the twins Jeff and Geoff got a giggle out of me. Because I am not up on pop culture I am sure some references went over my head.
One of my favorite scenes is when Thursday and the before mentioned ex-lover attend a performance of Shakespeare’s Richard III. Only this adaptation is more like The Rocky Horror Picture Show than serious theater in the round. The audience participation is hilarious. Another great moment is when Thursday’s uncle is showing Thursday his latest inventions. The bookworms are the best.
My only gripe is when Thursday is first asked to join the hunt to stop her former professor from destroying an original manuscript. Rule #1 is to never think or say the professor’s real name. If you do he can detect your whereabouts, your whole game plan right down to your very next move. After the first attempt to capture him goes horrible awry Rule #1 is abandoned and no one abides by it anymore. It doesn’t seem to matter anymore. Odd.

Favorite line, “The worms were busy reading a copy of Mansfield Park and were discussing where Sir Thomas got his name from” (p 152).

Author fact: Fforde has one of the most entertaining websites I have seen in a long time. Visit it here.

Book trivia: This is Fforde’s first novel.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapters called “Action Heroines” (p 6), “Companion Reads” (p 64), and “First Novels” (p 88). Also, from More Book Lust only in the chapter called “Brontes Forever” (p 35). As an aside, Pearl suggested reading The Eyre Affair with Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (for obvious reasons), but I already read Jane Eyre and The Eyre Affair for different reasons so it was pointless to read them again with Wide Sargasso Sea.

I have to say, one of the drawbacks to reading anything in Book Lust is that it is going to be old news. I always feel late to the party when I see a best seller with over 500 reviews on LibraryThing. It makes me wonder what I could possibly say that hasn’t already been said.

Partisan

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Cheever, Benjamin. The Partisan. New York: Atheneum, 1993.

Right away Cheever wants you to laugh out loud. How could you not with an opening like this? “That was the summer I worked for the Westchester Commons. I was in love with Amy Snodgrass Rose. Amy was in love with David Hitchens. David was in love with Gloria Thomas. I was in Westchester. Amy was in Washington State. David was in Montreal. Gloria had gone to Paris. The sex was very safe” (p 1). I know I was thinking, “oh the poor schmuck” until I got to last sentence. At least the guy has a sense of humor. It’s even funnier when you find out the person speaking, the main protagonist Nelson, is a virgin.
So the gist of the story is this: Nelson narrates the story about his life with “Uncle”, “Aunt” and sister Narcissus in Westchester, New York. Nelson is 20 years old, and as I mentioned, in love obsessed with Amy. “Uncle” really isn’t Nelson and Nar’s uncle. Jonas Collingwood and his wife Elspeth, took over raising Nelson and Nar after their adoptive father died. Jonas is a revered author on the verge stardom when a newspaper article hints his last book was a thinly veiled autobiography of his time in wartime Italy. He receives a huge advance to write a real memoir but what ensues is a comedy of errors and tragedies. Cheever has a dark side to him and while most of the story is relatively funny (Nelson is someone I would love to hang out with), there are moments is subtle uncomfortableness. My favorite scenes involve the car.

I should add that it took me only three days to read this book. It would have taken only two had I been a little more serious about reading. Cheever packs a strong story in a tight little package.

Likes I liked (other than the beginning), “I want the kind of love you don’t have to hear” (p 3), (Don’t we all?) and “Really, there ought to be a law about facial expressions” (p 223).

Reason read: Ben Cheever’s birth month is in October.

Author fact: Benjamin Cheever is the same age as my mom, older by mere days.

Book trivia: I feel bad for The Partisan. Every decent review of it mentions Cheever’s first novel The Plagiarist. It’s another one of those situations where you think, “crap! I’m reading the wrong book!”

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “All in the Family: Writer Dynasties” (p 5).

Eye of the World

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Jordan, Robert. Eye of the World: Book One of the Wheel of Time. New York: Tom Doherty Associations, 1990.

I will be the first to admit I am not a big fan of fantasy. I can’t suspend my belief for long enough, my kisa says. He also says I have a sense of humor, so really what does he know? Half the time I think fantasy is someone’s excuse to not make any sense. Everything from people’s names (Nynaeve al’Meara) to the places they live (Cairhien) are gobbledegook to me. Everything is so over the top grandiose. Elan Morin Tedronai is the Betrayer of Hope. See what I mean? Cue evil music. Then, there are the trillion difficult weird names to remember. In the first chapter alone there are 14 different such oddball names. The only normal one is Bela, and she’s a horse.
So, anyway – onto my review, such as it is. Eye of the World opens with a whole slew of firsts. Strangers come to the village of Two Rivers for the first time in five years. The entire town is on edge because the youth of the community are the only ones who get the feeling they are being watched. They are also the only ones to catch glimpses of an ominous figure on a black horse. Soon after, a pedlar and a gleeman both come to town with news of a war raging across a nearby land. Suddenly, their peaceful little village is ravaged by these half human, half animal creature looking for three young farmers. They are the chosen ones so of course, in order to protect their community they must leave. What follows is a journey through many different kinds of hell. Spoiler alert: they all survive every single ordeal. In the end, some fare better than others but Jordan definitely leaves the door open for his 13 subsequent sequels.
In the end, I enjoyed Eye of the World. You know how I can tell? I was thinking about the characters the next day and when I saw a fairy house in Cathedral Woods with at least six different rat skulls, I shivered.

Jordan draws from Tolkien in that his Two Rivers is a lot like the Shire in Middle Earth. I also see hints of Star Wars with Evil being after one particular boy, like Anikin Skywalker in Star Wars.
I think the first sentence sums up Eye of the World nicely, “The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend” (p 1). Other quotes I took a fancy to: “There must be a difference in what you saw…depending on whether you sought adventure or had it forced on you” (p 159), and “Keep your trust small” (p 196).

Reason read: October is National Fantasy Month.

Author fact: Robert Jordan is actually James Oliver Rigney and he passed away in 2007.

Book trivia: This is the first book in the Wheel of Time series – the massive Wheel of Time series. I have 11 on my list. Gawd help me. Another book trivia: Eye of the World was made into a comic book series.

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

Owl Service

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Garner, Alan. The Owl Service. Read by Wayne Forester.  Franklin, TN: Naxos Audio Books, 2008.

This is a really cool audio. For starters, each chapter is punctuated with classical music – music from the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra with Libor Persek, conducting. Wayne Forester does a great job reading the story as well. My one gripe? The plot itself was a little difficult to follow since a lot of detail is implied rather than spelled out. I might have had an easier time of it if I had read it rather than listen to it on audio. This is part children’s story, part Welsh legend. The Owl Service takes children and adults alike through mythology and modern day tensions. Alison and Roger are step-children brought together by the marriage of Alison’s mother to Roger’s father. In an attempt to bond the family they go on holiday to the countryside of Wales. The vacation home has been in Alison’s family for years and with it comes a cook/housekeeper and her son, Gwyn, who happens to be the same age as Alison and Roger. Together, the three children struggle to find their place in the newly formed union. But, the story really begins when Alison hears a noise in the attic. Nothing is there except a pile of dishware with an owl/flower design. These plates become the center of an ancient welsh myth and become Alison’s obsession. Strange things start to happen. As she traces the design onto paper it disappears from the plates, leaving them a plain white porcelain. Then the plates are discovered smashed, one by one. What follows is a tale of secrets unraveling – great for young and old…as Pearl says.

Reason read: Garner’s birth month is in October.

Book trivia: The Owl Service won the Carnegie Medal.

Author fact: Don’t Google Alan Garner. You’ll get the guy from the Hangover. This Alan Garner, the one who wrote The Owl Service has a really cool unofficial website here.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Fantasy For Young and Old” (p 84).

October List

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The obvious choice would have been to name this list after something having to do with Halloween (like I always do), but I’m thinking that was getting old. So. It’s just the October List. Tahdah! There it is. I’m going on my last vacation for the year and I’m going home (where else?). As an aside, I’d like to think there is someone out there who reads me often enough to know where that is! And of course I’ll be bringing some books:

  1. Captain Sir Richard Burton by Edward Rice
  2. Culture of Disbelief by Stephen Carter
  3. Eye of the World by Robert Jordan
  4. In a Strange City by Laura Lippman (to continue the series started in September)
  5. Owl Service by Alan Garner*
  6. ADDED: The Hope We Seek by Rich Shapero – In light of the additional 80+ books I had to add to my list, I decided I am not going to read this!

Here is how the last month of year eight should go:

  1. Andorra by Peter Cameron
  2. Any Four Women Can Rob the Bank of Italy by Ann Cornelisen
  3. Beaufort by Ron Leshem*
  4. Cradle of Gold by Christopher Heaney
  5. Grass Dancer by Susan Power
  6. You Get What You Pay For by Larry Beinhart

*Planned as audio books

FINISHED (Dec 2013 – Sept 2014):

  1. Absolute Zero by Helen Cresswell*
  2. After the Dance by Edwidge Danticat
  3. Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow*
  4. Alice I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin*
  5. Angels Weep by Wilbur Smith
  6. Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz by Mordecai Richler.
  7. Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro
  8. Art Student’s War by Brad Leithauser
  9. Baltimore Blues* by Laura Lippman
  10. Beirut Blues by Hanan al-Shaykh
  11. Benjamin Franklin: an American Life by Walter Isaacson
  12. Bring Me a Unicorn by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
  13. Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks*
  14. Black Lamb and Gray Falcon by Rebecca West (DNF)
  15. Bluebird Canyon by Dan McCall
  16. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown
  17. Cabin Fever by Elizabeth Jolley
  18. Careless Love by Peter Gurlnink
  19. Caroline’s Daughters by Alice Adams
  20. Charlotte Gray by Sebastian Faulks
  21. ADDED: Children of Cambodia’s Killing Fields: Memoirs of Survivors compiled by Dith Pran
  22. Civil Action by Jonathan Harr
  23. Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire*
  24. Dancer and the Thief by Antonio Skarmeta
  25. Dancer with Bruised Knees by Lynne McFall
  26. Dark Sun by Richard Rhodes (DNF)
  27. Day the Falls Stood Still by Cathy Marie Buchanan*
  28. ADDED: Dervish is Digital by Pat Cadigan
  29. Earthly Possessions by Anne Tyler
  30. Eighth Day by Thornton Wilder
  31. Faith Fox by Jane Gardam
  32. Falcon Flies by Wilbur Smith*
  33. Feast of Love by Charles Baxter
  34. First Man by Albert Camus
  35. Flower and the Nettle by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
  36. Fordlandia by Greg Gandin
  37. French Revolutions* by Tim Moore.
  38. Georges’ Wife by Elizabeth Jolley
  39. Gesture Life by Chang-rae Lee
  40. Herzog by Saul Bellow
  41. History Man by Malcolm Bradbury
  42. Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
  43. House of Morgan by Ron Chernow – attempted
  44. Illumination Night by Alice Hoffman
  45. In the Graveyard of Empires by Scott Jones*
  46. Inside Passage by Michael Modzelewski
  47. Inspector Ghote Breaks an Egg by H.R.F. Keating
  48. It Looked Like Forever by Mark Harris
  49. Last Train to Memphis by Peter Guralink
  50. ADDED: Last Tycoon by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  51. Leopard Hunts in the Darkness by Wilbur Smith
  52. Life in the Air Ocean by Sylvia Foley
  53. Long Way From Home by Frederick Busch
  54. Lotus Eaters by Tatjani Soli
  55. Lulu in Hollywood by Louise Brooks
  56. Men of Men by Wilbur Smith
  57. Neighborhood Heroes by Morgan Rielly
  58. Now Read This II by Nancy Pearl
  59. Ocean of Words by Ha Jin
  60. Oedipus by Sophocles
  61. Palladian Days by Sally Gable*
  62. Price of Silence by Liza Long
  63. Professor and the Housekeeper by Yoko Ogawa
  64. Racing Weight by Matt Fitzgerald
  65. Raw Silk by Janet Burroway
  66. Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro*
  67. Rose Cafe by John Hanson Mitchell
  68. Rose of Martinique by Andrea Stuart
  69. Run or Die by Kilian Jornet
  70. Running for Mortals by John Bingham
  71. Seeing in the Dark by Timothy Ferris
  72. Soul of All Living Creatures by Vint Virga
  73. Sword at Sunset by Rosemary Sutcliff
  74. A Thousand Ways to Please a Husband by Weaver/LeCron (E-book)
  75. Thrush Green by Miss Read*
  76. Toronto by Charles Way
  77. Transcriptionist by Amy Rowland
  78. War Within and Without by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
  79. Wildwater Walking Club by Claire Cook.
  80. Winners and Losers by Martin Quigley
  81. Zero Days by Barbara Egbert

Poetry:

  • “Aftermath” ~ a poem by Siegfried Sassoon
  • “Romance” ~ a poem by W.J. Turner
  • “Kubla Khan” ~ a poem by Samuel T. Coleridge

Short Stories:

  • “The Huckabuck Family” by Carl Sandburg
  • “How to Revitalize the Snake in Your Life” by Hannah Tinti
  • “Sound of Thunder” by Ray Bradbury
  • “Thirty Year Old Women Do Not Always Come Home” by Mark Winegardner
  • “Birdland” by Michael Knight
  • “Killer Inside Me” by Jim Thompson
  • “Down There” by David Goodis
  • “Crossing the Craton” by John McPhee.
  • “Lukudi” by Adrianne Harun
  • “The Eighth Sleeper of Ephesus” also by Adrianne Harun
  • “Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” by Jorge Luis Borges

For next year:

  • Hall of a Thousand Columns by Tim Mackintosh-Smith.

Last Tycoon

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Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Last Tycoon. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1941.

It’s too bad this was never finished. I think this would have been my favorite Fitzgerald book. Even incomplete, I like it better than anything else I have read. This is a simple yet complicated story about love. She loves him. He loves someone else. That someone else is set to marry anyone else but him. Classic love square. You have to feel sorry for Monroe Stahr. He is lovestruck by a woman who strongly resembles his deceased wife. As a man in the movie business he has the money and the power to woo Kathleen into a brief relationship, even despite the fact she is engaged to be married to someone else. Meanwhile, there is young Cecilia, a junior at Bennington College, just willing Stahr to look at her, to notice her. It is her voice that tells the entire story. Fitzgerald explains the first and third person narrative. What Cecilia is not witness to, she imagines. “Thus, I hope to get the verisimilitude of a first person narrative, combined with a Godlike knowledge of all events that happen to my characters” (p 164).

One of my favorite scenes is Stahr’s treatment of a letter Kathleen addressed to him. He manages to not read it for three hours and is proud of his restraint. Why? What difference does it make when he opened it, immediately or three hours later? The fact of the matter is he opened it anyway.

As an aside, this is going to sound awful, but in a way I am glad Fitzgerald died. The story is beautiful as it is – unfinished yet simple. His plans for the rest of the book are over the top: murder plots and a Stahr dying in a plane crash. Children stealing from the dead and their subsequent trial. Cecilia in a sanitarium (like his wife, Zelda?). Like I said, it all seems over the top.

Lines I liked, “His dark eyes took me in, and I wondered what they would look like if he fell in love” (p 22), “It was more intimate than anything they had done, and they both felt a dangerous sort of loneliness, and felt it in each other” (p 102), “What people are ashamed of usually makes a good story” (p 117), and “It would come in some such guise as the auto horns from the technicolor boulevard below, or be barely audible, a tattoo on the muffled dream of the moon” (p 144).

Reason read: F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in September.

Author fact: Fitzgerald died of a heart attack while writing The Last Tycoon. According to the forward, he had just written the first episode of Chapter six. Sad.

Book trivia: The Last Tycoon is narrated by a junior co-ed at Bennington College, but the story is more about Monroe Stahr.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Literary Lives: the Americans” (p 145). This book actually doesn’t belong in the chapter. “Literary Lives: the Americans” begins with this sentence, “If you want to know more about a writer, before or after reading his or her book, here are some top-notch literary biographies” (p 144). The Last Tycoon is not a biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald.

 

 

 

Dervish is Digital

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Cadigan, Pat. Dervish is Digital. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 2000.

Right away I knew Dervish is Digital was going to be weird. The story opens with Dore Konstantin, a detective lieutenant in charge of TechnoCrime, Artificial Reality Division, meeting with an arms dealer. Later, she is spending time discussing demons and blowfish with a cyborg. It’s almost as if you aren’t meant to follow Cadigan’s off the wall imagination. It gets even stranger so my only advice is to hang on. Maybe you aren’t supposed to understand it all. Snarly Konstantin is supposed to be solving a case involving someone stalking his own ex-wife but it gets more complicated when the East/West Japanese and Hong Kong deviants are introduced. While Konstantin’s character is shallow and underdeveloped, Cadigan does an amazing job of describing Konstantin’s world. Cyberspace is richly detailed and completely believable. I never did latch onto the idea of there was a real crime to solve, but the story was an interesting ride.

My only gripe? Cadigan loved to describe anatomy as “wasp-waist.” I get the look Cadigan was going for, but after awhile I started to believe she couldn’t think of any other way to describe someone as having a narrow waist.

Reason read: September is Cadigan’s birth month..and if I’m still reading this in October, October is computer learning month. Whatever that means.

Author fact: according to the all-knowing Wikipedia, Cadigan is local. Schenectady and Fitchburg.

Book trivia: the main character, Dore Konstantin is introduced in an earlier novel by Cadigan called Tea From an Empty Cup. Yup, I am reading them backwards. Here’s what I’m hoping, Konstantin is an underdeveloped character in Dervish because she has been completely spelled out in Tea.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called Cyberspace.Com (p 69). For the record I want to say that Pearl doesn’t mention that the same character is in both Dervish is Digital and Tea From an Empty Cup. There was no way for me to know the two books are linked.

Baltimore Blues

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Lippman, Laura. Baltimore Blues. Read by Deborah Hazlett. North Kingston, RI: BBC Audiobooks America, 1997.

Tess Monaghan is an out of work reporter trying to make ends meet with little odd jobs. The only stable consistencies in her life are rowing and her friendship with fellow rower, “the Rock.” She manages to stay out of trouble until Rock “hires” her to do some private investigating of his near perfect fiancee. She has been acting so weird as of late so Rock wants to know why. Tess’s tactics to tease out the truth are less than desirable, so when she uncovers an affair and the other man, who happens to be the fiancee’s boss, winds up dead,  all fingers are pointed at Rock. Of course they do. Now Tess has even more incentive to uncover the truth. Along the way Tess uncovers a whole slew of shady dealings involving a rape support group, unpaid settlements for victims of asbestos related ailments, and a sexual predator of children on death row. What makes Baltimore Blues a likeable story is a combination of things. Tess is far from perfect as a private investigator. Her antics are downright funny. The city of Baltimore is like another character in the book. Places around Baltimore play a significant role in the plot which is a treat for readers who really know the area.

My only irritant? Tess doesn’t know the difference between an attempt on her life and a hit and run. Even though her friend Jonathan is killed in the process, it is deemed an accident and dismissed. Tess isn’t the least bit suspicious until there is a second attempt to kill her.

Reason read: Baltimore, Maryland has a book festival in September. What better way to celebrate than a book called Baltimore Blues?

Author fact: Laura Lippman lives in Baltimore, Maryland. Big surprise, right?

Book Audio trivia: This is one of the few audio books I have listened to where the narrator is American and doesn’t have some sort of accent. Although her Baltimore accent is funny.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called simply “Baltimore” (p 35).

Bluebird Canyon

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McCall, Dan. Bluebird Canyon. New York: Congdon & Weed, 1983.

Picture southern California. Now picture the star of a soap opera star named Rex Hooker with a penchant for self-destructiveness. The two go together in a stereotypical way, don’t you think? What isn’t so typical is Bluebird Canyon’s narrator, Oliver Bodley. Better known as “Triphammer” or “Trip”, Detective Bodley is a not so ordinary city police officer who gets caught up in Rex’s struggle to keep from losing it all. Interestingly enough, Rex and Trip go way back, as in high school way back. As the story unfolds, we find that Trip and Rex had been through quite a bit together back in their younger days. Just to give you an example. Rex and Trip are accused of partaking in the gang rape of a drunk girl. The victim’s brother and five of his friends proceed to kick the crap out of Trip and Rex…in detail. There’s more where that came from. Fast forward 20 years. Trip has been called to the Hooker estate for an apparent suicide attempt. Trip hasn’t seen his friend in those 20 years and Rex was rumored to be the victim. Be prepared. It gets nutty from there. Turns out, Rex is fine but 45 pages later his girlfriend’s sister accomplishes what he didn’t. Rex still lives with his parents but has a son, an ex-wife and a girlfriend. Meanwhile, at 37 years old, Triphammer is adrift. He doesn’t have a steady relationship, hates his exwife, in fact; he lives in a trailer on the beach (think Chris the DJ on Northern Exposure), he’s constantly losing his hat, and he doesn’t have a problem doing drugs in uniform (minus the hat). What he does mind, however, is being spit on.

All in all, some of Dan McCall’s plot was a little annoying. As I mentioned before, Trip is called to Summer Snow because Rex Hooker is trying to commit suicide. 45 pages later, another character hangs herself. It is mentioned the Hooker family is petrified of fire. 51 pages later Summer Snow is burning, thanks to an arsonist. I never grew to like Trip at all and I thought the writing was rambling and disconnected. At times the behavior of all the characters were exaggerated and ridiculous. Other times their actions were too sedate for the scene: two dogs were murdered on two separate occasions, two different houses were set on fire, two different suicides occurred…it all seemed a bit much. If McCall was trying to bring Rex’s soap opera to life in Bluebird Canyon he succeeded.

Quotes to make you sit up, “The world is full of assholes, and eventually they all turn up at the beach” (p 65), “My hole couldn’t handle a Q-tip” (Yes, he’s talking about what you think he’s talking about on p 72), “Chemists do not liven up a conference” (p 111), and “I wish my mind was a dog and I could train it to go sit” (p 244)

Reason read: California became a state on September 9th, 1850.

Author fact: Dan McCall passed away on June 17th, 2012. The Cornell Chronicle posted a really nice obituary about their former colleague.

Book trivia: I could see this as a movie, but to my knowledge one has never been made.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “California, Here We Come” (p 49).