Tag: Fiction

Roughing It

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

Reason read: to celebrate Twain’s birth month.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stern Men

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Gilbert, Elizabeth. Stern Men. Read by Allyson Ryan. Books on Tape, 2008.

Reason read: a book about Maine in honor of me trying to get home for Thanksgiving.

I found myself stuck after reading Stern Men. I could not describe it to people the way that I wanted to. It is and it isn’t a story about two warring lobstering communities, battling over the same Maine waters for the same lobsters. Taking place on two fictional islands, Fort Niles and Courne Haven, twenty miles out to sea and only separated by a narrow channel, that plotline seemed plausible enough (especially if you know anything about Matinicus Island). Lobster wars are definitely part of the story, but these battles are not significant enough to drive the main storyline. More transparently, Stern Men is the story of eighteen-year-old Ruth Thomas. She is a Fort Niles resident, newly returned to the island after completing high school at a boarding school in Delaware. She has returned to the island unsure of her next steps. She fakes her feelings towards lobstering despite it being her father’s profession. She will not let anyone dictate her future, especially the wealthy Ellis family who have a hold on Fort Niles. She is ambivalent towards most things until she meets silent lobsterman, Owen Wishnell, from Courne Haven.
I would say the community of Fort Niles is the best part of Stern Men. Mrs. Pommeroy, the woman who took Ruth in when her parents were divorcing; Mrs. Pommeroy’s twin sons, sweet Simon, who wants to create a Fort Niles museum, and cranky Angus, the toughest and meanest lobsterman in all of Maine – to name a few.

Confessional: whenever I read about a Maine island, I always compare it to Monhegan. It doesn’t matter if the island is fictional or real, I still stack up the story against Monhegan and its community. Monhegan is only ten miles out to sea and takes an hour to get to. Fictional Fort Niles and Courne are twenty miles out to sea and take four hours to get to. Interesting. Monhegan’s largest wildlife is the muskrat. Somehow fox have landed on Fort Niles and Courne. How did they get there? As an aside, Monhegan is mentioned very briefly in Stern Men. Maybe I am too close to the particular subject of warring lobstermen. My island went to battle with an adjacent island and it got so heated both parties ended up in court. The end result was a mandate that Monhegan’s lobstermen cannot fish beyond a two-mile radius. That also means the rest of Maine cannot come within those two miles for their lobsters.]

Author fact: Gilbert has been compared to Dickens, Emerson, Austen, Tyler, Irving, Heller, Elkin, and Hoffman!

Book trivia: Stern Men is Gilbert’s first novel.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “The Maine Chance” (p 135). Pearl uses a lot of cute titles for each chapter but I have to admit this one was lost on me. I had to look it up to discover that there was a 1969 television drama called “The Main Chance.” Oh.

Cold Case

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yiddish Policemen’s Union

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Chabon, Michael. The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. Narrated by Peter Riegert. Audible Productions, 2016.

Reason read: November is Imagination month. The Yiddish Policemen’s Union takes us to an alternate history which is quite imaginative.

The Yiddish Policemen’s Union takes place in an alternate history when the Germans do not surrender the Second Great War for another four years past reality and President Kennedy is not assassinated from the grassy knoll. In this alternate history Kennedy ends up marrying Marilyn Monroe (of course he does). Sitka, Alaska is the site of a federally mandated safe refugee location for European Jews. The area was created at the height of World War II and sixty years later, the safe haven still exists. Only, now Alaska wants their territory back. The plot is great, but the characters of The Yiddish Policemen’s Union are what makes the novel hum. Chabon’s characters exude personality. To name a few: Meyer Landsman, the main protagonist, was a character I loved. This flawed policeman whose life is a mess cannot let go of one particular cold case, the murder of a drug addled chess prodigy and supposed messiah. Landsman is supervised by his ex-wife, Bina and she has ordered the force to abandon all cold cases now that the safe haven for refugees is being dismantled. Berko Shemets, his partner is half Jewish, half Tlingit and all intimidation.

As an aside, listen to the audio version narrated by Peter Riegert. Additionally, there is an interview with Michael Chabon that is not to be missed.

Author fact: Michael Chabon is also a screenwriter.

Book trivia: The Yiddish Policemen’s Union won a Hugo Award in 2008 and a Locus Award that same year.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Travel to Imaginary Places” (p 236).

Lonesome Dove

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kennedy’s Brain

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Mankell, Henning. Kennedy’s Brain.

Reason read: October is national crime month.

Tragedy trails Louise like an unwanted stray dog. She lost her mother when she was only six years old. She has all but lost her father to grief and alcohol in the years since her mother’s tragic accident. Louise’s marriage vanished into thin air and for the last twenty-plus years she has barely seen her ex-husband, despite having a son together. She barely believes Aron exists. Now, she is facing the unexplained demise of her only son, Herik, found dead in his bed. Like Verona in The Perfect Daughter by Gillian Linscott, Henrik is found with a belly full of drugs, and with no visible signs of foul play, his death is deemed a suicide. And like Nell in The Perfect Daughter, Louise cannot find truth the forensic evidence. She refuses to believe her only son committed suicide. So begins an epic journey to uncovered what really happened to Henrik. From Athens to Barcelona and Mozambique, Louise hunts for explanations.
My one complaint about Kennedy’s Brain was the unnatural dialogue between characters. I know Mankell is using his characters to fill historical background and give context to current situations, but they, the characters, offer way more information than is realistic in their conversations. Maybe something is lost in the translation? Here is an example, Adelinho accuses Ricardo of talking too much but when speaking of his friend, Guiseppe, Adelinho reveals Guiseppe is Italian, is friendly, and visits now and then. Adelinho also says Guiseppe likes the solitude, is responsible for the navvies building roads, likes to get drunk, and goes back to Maputo every month. Why tell a stranger all of this? Another example, Lucinda, dying of AIDS needs to tell Louise something important, but she says she is tired. She’ll share the rest when she has rested. She then goes on to talk about a few other things of little consequence.

As an aside, I had trouble with Louise’s character. What archaeologist injures herself on a shard of pottery uncovered at a dig site and why is she allowed to keep the shard as a gift for her son? That didn’t sit right with me.

Line I Liked, “The horrors in store left no warning” (p 120).

Author fact: Mankell was only 67 years old when he passed away.

Book trivia: Kennedy’s Brain was made into a Swedish movie. We watched a trailer for it and my husband was not impressed.

Playlist: Bach. Note: there was a lot of music in Kennedy’s Brain but nothing specific that I could add here.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Swede(n), Isn’t It?” (p 222).

Quicksilver

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Stephenson, Neal. Quicksilver. Perennial, 2003.

Reason read: Neal Stephenson celebrates a birthday in October. Read in his honor.

The timeframe is 1660 – 1688 and Europe is transforming itself into a culture of scientific thinkers. Alchemy and imagination. Burgeoning financial complexities and modernized social developments abound. [Side note: the experiments on dogs was really hard to read. And I’m not a dog person.] Quicksilver follows real-life historical figures in real-life events. The glint in a crow’s eye. The cough of a cholera-infected child. Fine grains of dirt that cling to a man’s boots as he strides across a courtyard. The tremble of a drop of water as it rolls down a soot-covered windowpane. The hair of a rat as it scurries under a table. The details of Quicksilver are even finer than this; an overabundance of details. I hope you stub your toes on the sly humor that pops up in between the verbose narrative.
Additional facts about Quicksilver: it is exactly one third of the Baroque Cycle, Stephenson’s trilogy. Quicksilver in and of itself is in three separate parts. The second section follows the adventures of Jack Shaftoe. The third involves a slave who ties the characters of the first two sections together. As an aside, Eliza’s story had me scratching my head. I felt that Stephenson had more to say about her than he was letting on. The writing of Cryptonomicon and the reading about Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz inspired Stephenson to write Quicksilver.

Author fact: Stephenson wrote Quicksilver, all 930 plus pages of it, by longhand.

Book trivia: This might be a no-brainer for some, but read Peter Ackroyd’s London: the Biography before Quicksilver. Certain historical events and characters will come into sharper focus when you meet up with them in Quicksilver. For example, I enjoyed reading about the fictional account of the Great Fire of 1666 from Ackroyd’s storytelling perspective.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the obvious chapter called “Neal Stephenson: Too Good To Miss” (p 214).

Hearts in Atlantis

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sense and Sensibility

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Austen, Jane. Sense and Sensibility. Everyman’s Library, 1992.

Reason read: Read in honor of Sense and Sensibility being published in October.

Marianne, rejected by John Willoughby, is impetuous and needs sense. Her sister, Elinor, is the sensible one who will not let on that she is crushed when Edward Ferras plans to marry another. Sense and Sensibility tells the story of two very different romances. Although both are rejected they deal with it in different ways. To utter the words extinction of the individuality is to imply that the price of marriage is a loss of one’s sense of self. Threaded through the story of romance is another, more societal, theme of male dominated lineage. Austen was extremely observant about the world around her. She chose to write abut the country gentry because they stayed in her head, sometimes for years. Like other women authors of her time, Austen published Sense and Sensibility anonymously.
As an aside, I have read a lot of critical reviews of Sense and Sensibility and I have to wonder if Jane’s ghost laughs at the critics who took their task too seriously. Is Jane a psychiatric radical? She is a philosophical conservative? How deep can one delve into the ideology of sense and sensibility? Did she fashion Fanny after the Shakespearean character of Iago?

Author fact: Jane Austen had Elinor and Marianne on her mind when she was twenty years old. She was thirty-six when Sense and Sensibility was finally published. That is a long time for characters to be floating around one’s head.

Book trivia: My version of Sense and Sensibility (Alfred A. Knopf, 1992) has an introduction by Peter Conrad.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “An Anglophile’s Literary Pilgrimage” (p 20).

His Last Bow

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Doyle, Arthur Conan. The Complete Sherlock Holmes: “His Last Bow.” Doubleday & Company, 1922.

Sherlock Holmes is at it again, solving mysteries for his fellow Londoners. In the “Adventure of the Cardboard Box”, Holmes was so embarrassed to have solved it so easily that he did not want to take credit for it. As usual, Holmes has his ways of learning things about people by making them chatter. The more they talk, the more they reveal. He also can discern important facts by the tiniest of details like cigarette butts and handwriting samples.

Short stories:

  • The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge – solving the murder of a man named Garcia.
  • The Adventure of the Cardboard Box – a box sent to a spinster creates an uproar.
  • The Adventure of the Red Circle – a case of hidden identity and self defense.
  • The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans – the theft of submarine plans.
  • The Adventure of the Dying Detective – someone is trying to kill Sherlock!
  • the Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax – a woman is missing. Quote I liked from this story, “When you follow two separate chains of thought, you will find some point of intersection which should approximate to the truth” (p 950).
  • The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot
  • His Last Bow: the war service of Sherlock Holmes

Lines I liked, “Holmes was accessible upon the side of flattery…” (p 901).Book trivia: I love it when Watson remembers previous cases and references them in new mysteries. He compared the Adventure of the Cardboard Box to a Study in Scarlet and the Sign of Four.

The Islanders

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Robinson, Lewis. The Islanders. Islandport Press, 2024.

Reason read: Early Review for LibraryThing.

The Islanders centers on protagonist, Walt McNamara, whose high school career slid violently out of control after he discovered his father’s affair with a teacher at his school. Walt, an easily manipulated teenager, needs structure and guidance to get back on track. That support comes from an opportunity to attend WILD, a leadership camp on an island off the coast of Maine. [As an aside, are not many details that make this island specific to Maine. It could be an island off the coast of anywhere cold.] On the island of Whaleback Walt and other troubled teenagers form groups called Huddles and learn leaderships skills in the form of exercise, survival and combat drills. As they get stronger and more confident, the teenagers learn to trust one another. Each Huddle is isolated from the others, except during competitions, which forces deep relationships to form. I found it curious that none of the campers are from the same state. There are not two New Hampshires or Maines in the group. This makes it really easy for the team leads to call them by something other than their first names. Less personal that way. As times goes on the teenagers figure out they are attending a leadership camp with hidden agendas. At first, Robinson keeps the reader guessing by patiently doling out clues, one crumb at a time. Then without warning, the action heats up to breakneck speed. I found myself going back through chapters to figure out what changed within the story to force the sudden acceleration of plot. The end what not as satisfying as I would have hoped.

When you know a little bit about something familiar your mind starts to fill in the blanks. I know a little something about islands so I am picturing the culture when reading The Islanders. Whaleback Island easily could have been Hurricane Island, The WILD program could have been called Outward Bound.

Setlist: Arcade Fire, Guns N’ Roses, “Heigh Ho”, “Legs” by ZZ Top, “More Than a Feeling” by Boston, “Tom Sawyer” by Rush, “We are Family”, and “Amazing Grace”.

Crossing California

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Langer, Adam. Crossing California. Riverhead Books, 2004.

Reason read: You probably have never heard of Matt Vongsykeo, but when he was a teenager, he saved a baby from a burning car.

Meet the members of a Jewish community in Chicago, Illinois. Jill Wasserstrom is a liar. She told Lana she gave Muley Scott a hickey. Lana, the lied-to party, comes from a wealthy family (father is a radiologist, mother is a psychologist, and brother Larry was accepted into Brandeis). Lana wants to be an actor. Fake hickey recipient Muley wants to be a film maker and has a mother who works in the library and cleans houses for a living. Muley is in love with Jill. Jill’s father, Charlie, was fired from a restaurant job (owned by Alan Farbman) because he talked to a reviewer (Gail Schiffer-Bass) who he later marries. Jill’s sister, Michelle, is a tough cookie. Brandeis-accepted Larry wants to be a rock star drummer. The list of characters, some important, some not, goes on and on. It is this group of characters who drive the plot of Crossing California and make the story interesting. California Avenue itself (of Chicago, Illinois), lives and breathes like another character in Crossing California. This is a slice of Jewish life in a early 80s Chicago community at its best and worst.

Lines I liked, “She briefly considered going back, but she had her pride and besides, the door had locked behind her” (p 14).

Author fact: Crossing California is Langer’s first book.

Book trivia: Langer marks the era with punctuations of songs that were popular at the time. It is obvious he is a huge fan of music. Is Larry his doppelganger? See setlist for the music.

Setlist: Aerosmith, Al Jolson’s “California, Here I Come”, Al Stewart’s “On the Border”, “Angie”, Aretha Franklin’s “Respect”, Bach, “Back Door Man”, Barbra Streisand, the Beatles, Bill Haley and the Comets, Billy Joel’s “The Stranger”, Blood, Sweat and Tears, Bob Dylan’s “Seven Days”, Bobby Vinton, Boston, Bruce Springsteen, “Buttercup’s Song”, Cheap Trick, Chicago’s “If You Leave Me Now”, Chuck Berry, Chuck Mangione, Clancy Brothers, the Clash, “Come Saturday Morning”, Dan Fogelberg, “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?”, David Crosby, Debbie Harry’s “Call Me”, Deep Purple, Dire Straits’ “Sultans of Swing”, “Dream On”, Edith Piaf’s “Non Je Regrette Rien”, Electric Light Orchestra, Elton John and Kiki Dee’s “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart”, Elvis, Eric Clapton, Fleetwood Mac, “Flirting with Disaster”, Foghat, Foreigner’s “Head Games”, Frank Sinatra, “Free Bird”, Gerard Lenorman, the Guess Who’s “American Woman” and “No Sugar”, Harry Belafonte, “Hava Nagilah”, Heart’s “Barracuda”, ” Herb Alpert, “Hey Ho Nobody Home”, “If I Were a Rich Man”, “In the Light”, “Is She Really Going Out with Him?”, Isaac Hayes, Jack Dupree, Jacques Brel, Jefferson Starship’s “Miracles”, Jethro Tull, Jim Croce’s “Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown”, Jimmy Durante’s “Inka Dinka Doo”, John Denver’s “Annie’s Song”, John Entwistle, Johnny Hallyday, John Lennon, Journey’s “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow”, Kenny Jones, Kiss, “Le Freak (C’est Chic)”, “Learn How to Fall”, Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir”, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Mahler’s Symphony #9, “Making Whoopie”, Mick Jagger, Modern Lovers, Molly Hatchet, “Mr. Bojangles”, Muddy Waters, Nazareth, Neil Diamond, “One Tin Soldier”, Paul Simon’s “Some Folks’ Lives Roll Easy”, Paul McCartney, Pete Seeger, Philip Glass, Pink Floyd, “Quando El Ray Nimrod”, “Raisins and Almonds”, Ray Charles’s “Hit the Road, Jack”, and “Georgia On My Mind”, “Refrain, Audacious Tar”, REO Speedwagon, Rod Stewart, Roger Daltry, Rolling Stones, Ron Woods, “Runaround Sue”, Rush’s “Fly By Night”, Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag”. “Shaft”, “Slow Ride”, “Squeezebox”, Styx’s “Come Sail Away with Me” and “Lorelei”, “Sunrise Sunset”, “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”, Tom Paxton, Tommy Dorsey, “Top of the World”, “Tonight”, “Troika (Prokofiev’s Lieutenant)”, “Trouble in Mind”, the Who’s “Baba O’Riley”, “Music Must Change”. “Sister disco”, and “Won’t Get Fooled Again”, the Weavers, Wings, Working Man, Yes, “Y.M.C.A.”, “You’re in My Heart”, Yves Simon, and Zoltan Kodaly’s “Harry Janos Suite”.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in two places: “Maiden Voyages” (p 159) and again in “Teenage Times” (p 215).

Perfect Daughter

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Linscott, Gillian. The Perfect Daughter. Macmillan, 2001.

Reason read: Linscott celebrates her birthday in the month of September. Read in her honor.

It is difficult to be the prim and proper daughter of a military father and a snobbish mother in 1914 England. [It’s probably difficult to be a child of such parents in any given era.] Giving in to the pressure of perpetual perfection, did Verona finally commit suicide? Or was something more sinister at play? Found with a clever noose around her neck, it looks like the former. When details are revealed, readers must consider the era. Left-wing politics are raging, women are fighting for the vote, and Verona went from being a well-mannered daughter to a runaway, albeit talented, artist living in squalor with a group of Bohemian anarchists. Her life while she lived and breathed was fraught with contradictions, but it is her death which confounds us more. Her autopsy reveals she had been pregnant and had a great deal of morphine in her system. Her friends and family report her behavior was so strange they hardly knew her anymore. Maybe she led a promiscuous life. Maybe she was an addict. Was Verona’s cousin to blame? Suffragette and political agitator, Nell Bray had little contact with Verona; she barely knew the girl, and yet she finds herself trying to solve the mystery. Curious by nature, Nell wonders how a young girl from a well-to-do family could end up deceased on her parents’ property. Is her strange death a message to her society-slaved parents? Or was someone else to blame for her demise?

Author fact: Linscott worked for the BBC before she became a novelist.

Book trivia: This could be a movie.

Setlist: Chaliapin, “O Dem Golden Slippers”, and Schubert.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Ms. Mystery” (p 169).

Jungle

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Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle. Robert Bentley Inc., 1946.

Reason read: Sinclair celebrated a birthday in September. Read in his honor. I also needed a book set in the Midwest for the Portland Public Library’s 2024 Reading Challenge.

In my version of The Jungle (Robert Bentley, Inc., 1946), Sinclair provides an introduction and in that introduction he describes how he came to Chicago at twenty-six years old and started visiting the meat packing district. The living and working conditions of the mostly immigrant workers prompted him to interview them at home, where conversations inevitably turn confessional. Sinclair even crashed a Lithuanian wedding and used the experience in the opening scene of The Jungle.
I will not lie. Reading The Jungle by Upton Sinclair was painful. Jurgis, with his haunting mantra, “I will work hard. I will work faster. I will work longer” was heartbreaking. The desperation for employment – children lying about their ages to get work, women giving out their bodies to find work and bringing bribes of their bodies to stay employed. Look up misery in the dictionary and you should find Sinclair’s The Jungle.
As an aside, pay attention to the words used in the socialist sermon. Monster. Exhaustion. Beaten. Starvation. Horror. Darkness. Obstacles. Threatening. Hostile. Destroy. Fury. Prison. Oppression. Grim. Toiling. Agony. Suffering. Difficulties. Trapped. Hideous. Pain. Wretched. Curse. Misery.
In the end, Jurgis fades into the background as the sermon on socialism, morality, the word of God, and the future of Chicago takes over.

Book trivia: Jack London endorsed The Jungle saying it will run away with you. He was right.

Quote to quote, “They trick you and then they eat you alive” (p 69).

Confessional: I would like to think everyone has read this best selling classic. However, until now I was not one of those people. I never had to read it in grade school, high school, college, or graduate school. It was not on any supplemental list supplied by my teachers.

Natalie connection: 10,000 Maniacs performs a song called “My Sister Rose” which depicts a family wedding. Natalie sings about “dollar dances with the bride” much like the dancing described in the early pages of The Jungle. Music can take you back to your homeland.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “One Hundred Good Reads, Decade By Decade: 1900s” (p 175).

Ways of Dying

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Mda, Zakes. Ways of Dying. Picador Press, 1995.

Reason read: Ways of Dying was awarded the M-Net Book Award in September. Read in recognition of that event.

Told in the collective voice of “we,” Ways of Dying unfolds the story of Toloki and Noria. The community owns the story, but keeps an emotionally safe distance. Toloki makes his living as a professional mourner. What an interesting vocation. Toloki will be there if you need someone to help carry a casket; he will wail as if he just lost his own best friend, or he can rescue a body from the morgue before officials dump it into a mass grave. Toloki’s most important task is to attend funerals to comfort the mourners. It is at one such funeral that he reconnects with someone from his childhood. As children, Toloki was always jealous of the beautiful and mysterious Noria. No matter how hard he tried to please his father, Noria was the only one his father had eyes for. Noria acted as Toloki’s father’s artistic muse. Now, years later, Noria is a changed woman after suffering so much heartache and loss. Together, they forge a new friendship.
Confession: there was so much misery in Ways of Dying that I could not trust a happy ending.

Lines I liked, “That Mountain Woman had razor blades in her tongue” (p 30), “If you don’t praise yourself while you are alive, no one else will” (p 147), and “He is willing to find more ways of living” (p 192).

Author fact: Mda was a visiting professor at Yale at the the time of Ways of Dying‘s publication.

Book trivia: Ways of Dying won the M-Net Book Prize.

Setlist: “Silent Night”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “South Africa” (p 215).