Tag: june

War and Remembrance

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Wouk, Herman. War and Remembrance: Vol. 1. Little, Brown and Company, 1978.

Reason read: to continue the series started in honor of Memorial Day in May.

War and Remembrance: Vol 1 covers the Americans at war from Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima and even though it picks up where Winds of War left off, Wouk assures his reader that War and Remembrance can be read independently of Winds of War. I disagree to a certain degree. In Winds of War we have gotten to know the Henry family very well. You can’t help but get tangled in their lives. There is something about this passionate family! We have followed their adventures in love and war. Torrid affairs and wild ambitions have led each family member through various trials and tribulations. We rejoin Victor as he struggles to understand his feelings for the young and beautiful Pamela while traveling across the globe from the Soviet Union to Manila and Hawaii. His time on the Northampton set my teeth on edge. Natalie and Byron still haven’t rendezvoused on American soil. Natalie is still trapped in Italy with the young son Byron has never seen. Warren and Janice have welcomed a baby into their family, too, but Warren is always away, piloting top secret missions. Rhoda can’t decide between an absent husband and a totally different man, one more than willing to be there in the flesh. Like Winds of War, Wouk will take his reader to intimate places most are unlikely to go, like the belly of a thin-skinned submarine.
Military politics can be a fine line to balance upon. It can have career-ending ramifications to reject a vice admiral’s invitation to tea, for example. Wouk recreates military conversations that are fraught with tension and innuendo. His characters vibrate with drama. War and Remembrance is every bit as exciting as Winds of War.

Confessional: by now you know that I sometimes get hung up on the details. Here is one: Warren and Byron are sitting on the lawn, drinking beer straight from cans. Dad comes out and Warren produces a “frosty glass” for him. To create a “frosty glass” one has to chill the glass, most likely in a freezer. Why would they have such a glass out on the lawn while they are drinking straight from the can?
Second confessional: I knew something was going to happen when Warren’s mission does not go as rehearsed; when they alter the plan from what they practiced. That sense of foreboding was pungent.

Line I liked, “This isn’t the war we trained for, but its sure as hell the war we’ve got” (p 45).

Author fact: Wouk lived to be 103 years old.

Book trivia: War and Remembrance was dedicated to Abraham Isaac Wouk who didn’t make it to his sixth birthday.

Playlist: Bing Crosby, “Battle Hymn of the Republic”, “Boogie Woogie Washer Woman”, “Der Fuchrer’s Face”, “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen”, “Hut-Sut Song”, “Lili Marlene”, “Reactionary Rag”, “Rozhunkes mit Mandlen”, “Three O’Clock in the Morning”, “Yah Ribon”

Nancy said: Pearl called War and Remembrance good fiction.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “World War II Fiction” (p 252).

Groves of Academe

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McCarthy, Mary. The Groves of Academe. Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1952.

Reason read: Mary McCarthy was born in the month of June. Read in her honor.

Meet Henry Mulcahy. He is a middle-aged (42) professor who teaches literature at a small progressive college in Pennsylvania. Taught literature, I should say. His contract was not renewed for the upcoming term. There is a philosophical argument to be had: is it better to be fired or just not have your contract renewed? Is there a difference? Is there a more acceptable option? Henry “Hen” Mulcahy thinks President Maynard Hoar has it out for him. The sad thing was I didn’t care. When it came to intellectual liability, I thought they all were floating in egotistical backwater.
McCarthy is a crafty one. You are led to believe one thing about a character, but then, as the story unfolds, you hear the truth is something quite different. The reader is drawn into the manipulation. Mulcahy seems like a genuine person until you realize how far he is willing to go in order to save face.
McCarthy captures the snootiness of academia perfectly with all of its Proustian and Jamesian context. If Groves of Academe was a baking game show and the challenge was satire, McCarthy would have failed because her secret ingredient was too secret. The flavor was lost behind too many other ingredients like religion, philosophy, politics, literary greats, psychology, and let us not forget, human emotions like jealousy, competition, and hubris. At face value, Groves of Academe is a story about a man who doesn’t want to lose his job.

Author fact: McCarthy taught at Bard and Sarah Lawrence. Groves of Academe are based on McCarthy’s experiences teaching at these institutions.
Quote I wonder if she heard somewhere for real, “I had the misfortune to be born into the upper classes and I cannot respond to the suffering when the sufferer is base” (p 213). The attitude is the poor are free of money guilt…lucky them. Here’s another line I didn’t understand, “…her violent thrusts against the modern…” (p 227).

Book trivia: The first chapter of The Groves of Academe was featured in The New Yorker in 1951.

Playlist: Bach

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the very obvious chapter called “Academia: the Joke” (p 3).

Early Days in the Range of Light

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Arnold, Daniel. Early Days in the Range of Light: encounters with legendary mountaineers. Counterpoint, 2009.

Reason read: In honor of nature.

What makes Early Days in the Range of Light so special is that Arnold not only follows in the footsteps of great naturalists and mountaineers from 1864 to 1931, he truly wants to be in their company. He says of one excursion, “I joined their little camp, too, as best I could with 143 years between us” (p 11) and “They sat on top for an hour or so, and I shared their seat for half that time” (p 216). He imagines where each adventurer slept, ate, and placed every toehold while climbing majestic mountains. There is a romance to Arnold’s writing; a deep appreciation for the California mountains and the ghosts that linger there.
Having just spent three short days exploring the wonders of Yosemite, I could picture every landmark Arnold mentioned: Half Dome, Yosemite Fall, Glacier Point, El Capitan, I could go on. Early Days in the Range of Light is probably my favorite book I have read this year.

I love it when a book teaches me something unexpected. The art of Bolton Coit Brown is fantastic and I had never heard of him before. Joseph LeConte spent sixteen years to map the entire Sierra Range in comprehensive detail, the first of its kind. Naming a mountain peak after your institution of education was a thing.

Lines I liked, “But I have begun to see the limitations imposed by the lines we draw” (p 181) and “The mountains have a way of propagating human echoes” (p 244).

Natalie Merchant connection: Every time a man left his family to climb a mountain or spend days hiking in the wilderness I thought of the line, “Can you love the land and love me, too?” from Cowboy Romance.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Climb Ev’ry Mountain” (p 64).

Last Chronicle of Barset

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Trollope, Anthony. The Last Chronicle of Barset. Illustrated by G.H. Thomas. Classic Books, 2000.

Reason read: to finish the series started in April in honor of Trollope’s birth month being in April.

While The Last Chronicle of Barset technically can be read as a stand-alone book, there are a few subplots left over from Small House at Allington. Lily Dale’s relationship with Johnny Eames, for one. The main thread of the story is Reverend Josiah Crawley. Did he steal a cheque for twenty pounds? Who cares? Admittedly, I found the Last Chronicle of Barchester to be a bit of a bore. I was pleased when the entire saga mercifully came to a close. The plot was too slow for me. It plods along in a slow meandering way with all of the subplots. Made worse was Trollope’s habit of repeating himself. Don’t get me wrong, there is plenty of gossip and scandal, romance and betrayal. I just didn’t care for many of the characters.

Author fact: The Last Chronicle of Barset was published in 1867 when Trollope was fifty-two years old.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Barsetshire and Beyond” (p 15).

Meetings with Remarkable Trees

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Pakenham, Thomas. Meetings with Remarkable Trees. Random House, 1998.

Reason read: Arbor Day is in June in some states (the National Arbor Day is in April).

Thomas Pakenham proclaims Meetings with Remarkable Trees to be a “book of British tree portraits” and indeed, he has personified trees into categories of natives, travelers, shrines, fantasies, and survivors. He will tell you from where certain trees have immigrated like they are refugees of war. He will give their ages like gossip out of the tabloids.
My favorite section was about the trees he called shrines. These are the mystical trees that were sacred to the landscape and continue to hold ancient secrets. Remarkably beautiful.
In reading Meetings with Remarkable Trees I discovered that I absolutely love the Ginkgo biloba tree, but the Davidia Involucrata, the Handkerchief or Dove tree, is also truly beautiful. Another jaw-dropping fact I enjoyed learning concerned the Himalayan Magnolia and how its blooms grow to be almost a foot in diameter.
The unexpected delight of Meetings with Remarkable Trees was Pakenham’s subtle humor. I giggled when he called Aelian a killjoy. When Pakenham said he didn’t normally hugged trees I had to laugh because I do hug trees on a regular basis.
The true mastery of Meetings with Remarkable Trees is Pakenham’s ability to demonstrate the sheer size of each tree. Most photographs have a person standing next to the tree’s massive trunk for perspective. At the end of the book Pakenham includes a gazetteer which provides information on the National Trust trees, the Forest Enterprise trees, the trees that are regularly accessible to the public and those that are on private property.

Author fact: Pakenham is an Earl.

Book trivia: take the time to read Pakenham’s acknowledgments. He actually takes the time to thank landowners for allowing him to photograph trees on their property.

Playlist: Handel

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Dewey Deconstructed: 500s” (p 70).

Cement Garden

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McEwan, Ian. The Cement Garden. Simon and Schuster, 1978.

Reason read: McEwan celebrates a birthday in the month of June. Read in his honor.

Put your mind right before you read The Cement Garden. If you think of it like Lord of the Flies by William Golding, only Lord of the Flies family-style, you will be fine. Cement Garden is dark. Really dark. It deals with really difficult subjects. A family of four children, the youngest being six and the oldest, fifteen, are left alone for the summer. The do not have neighbors, teachers, parents, relatives, town officials, anyone to look after them. No one knows these four are alone. They don’t have many friends, either. Left to their own devices a quiet chaos within the house ensues. Told through the fourteen year old character of Jack, McEwan’s psychological exploration of naivety and stunted societal growth is captured in the themes of death, sexuality, and relationships as the children do not know how to deal these things. The death of their mother, coming of age impulses, and interactions with the outside world confound them and they react inappropriately. Beyond death, sex, and interpersonal relationships, the subtle emotional themes of grief, jealousy, and love are also probed. It’s a blessing that is mercifully short.

Pet peeve: I can sometimes get obsessed with details. The siblings are in Julie’s room when they pull down Sue’s pants. So when Jack wanted her to get dressed, why did he throw her skirt at her? Why wasn’t it a skirt of Julie’s? Why wasn’t it the pants they originally removed from Sue?

Author fact: So far I have read Atonement, Cement Garden, Amsterdam, and Comfort of Strangers. I have five other novels on my challenge list.

Book trivia: The Cement Garden is McEwan’s first novel.

Playlist: “Happy Birthday”, “Greensleeves”, and “Get Your Kicks on Route 66” by the King Cole Trio.

Nancy said: Pearl didn’t say anything specific about The Cement Garden.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Ian McEwan: Too Good To Miss” (p 149).

Rebels of Ireland

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Rutherfurd, Edward. The Rebels of Ireland. Doubleday, 2006.

Reason read: to continue the series started in May.

This is the sequel to the Princes of Ireland. The Rebels of Ireland follow six families through history but before doing so, Rutherfurd takes the time to catch the reader up by giving a recap of The Princes of Ireland. Once caught up historically, Rutherfurd focuses on deep character development of the families and their political involvements in Ireland’s struggle for independence.
Throughout history, differences in religion have been dangerous. A tale as old as time and will never change. I found it interesting when a character used the pulpit to announce his declaration of war. Everyone in the church knew what his sermon would be, but none expected the vehemence of his words.
Another notable moment: looking for the staff of St. Patrick.
The Rebels of Ireland is well researched. Rutherfurd consulted the National Library of Ireland as well as other national offices in Ireland to make sure he had his history accurate.
Word to the wise: do not try to read two different Irish historical novels in one month. All month long I was getting Rutherfurd mixed up with Flanagan and Flanagan confused with Rutherfurd.

Author fact: Edward Rutherfurd’s real name is Francis Edward Wintle.

Book trivia: The Rebels of Ireland contains a map of Ireland, a map of the Dublin region and a map of the city of Dublin.

Nancy said: Pearl said nothing specific about The Rebels of Ireland except it is a historical novel.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Ireland: Beyond Joyce, Behan, Beckett and Synge” (p 110).

Unless

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Shields, Carol. Unless. Read by Joan Allen. Harper Collins, 2002.

Reason read: Shields celebrates a birthday in June. Read in her honor.

How do you carry on with your life when one of your children is mentally ill and choosing to live on the streets for no apparent reason? I read a review where someone called Unless whiney and self-indulgent. I’m sorry but if I had a loved one “lost” like that, I too would be fixated on their wellbeing. Are they getting enough food to eat? Where are they going to go when the temperatures are minus ten degrees (not including wind chill factor) or one hundred and two (in the shade)? Reta Winters is trying to be a mother to her two other teenage daughters while thinking these things about a third, her eldest. She is a wife going through the motions with her trilobite-obsessed husband. She is a translator while trying to write her own second novel. She is an aging woman, trying to stay relevant in the youth-obsessed world around her.
There is a little trickery going on with Unless. Like mirrors angled so images are reflected to infinity, Unless is a story about a woman writing about a woman writer who is writing about a woman writer. The nesting dolls of feminism. Then there is the carefully disguised biography of her mentor, Danielle. Danielle is at once a strong holocaust survivor and a fragile French woman who relies on Reta for writing support. Finally, there is the mystery of why eldest daughter, Nora, insists on sitting out on a street corner with a sign that simply reads “Goodness.”

Author fact: Shields died when she was only 68 years old, shortly after Unless was published. My audio had an interview with Ms. Shields and I was struck by how oddly she spoke. I have to wonder if she was ill at the time of the interview.

Book trivia: Chapters are titled with adverbs and conjunctions. If I read more carefully I probably would have seen how each word tied back into the storyline.
Audio trivia: at the end of the reading of Unless Carol Shields answers some questions. I have to admit I was distracted by her strange manner of halting speech.

Playlist: Mozart, Sinatra, Beethoven, and Bach.

Nancy said: Pearl did not say anything specific about Unless.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Carol Shields: Too Good To Miss” (p 197).

I Capture the Castle

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Smith, Dodie. I Capture the Castle. St Martin’s Griffin, 1948.
Smith, Dodie. I Capture the Castle. Read by Toby Jones and Holliday Grainger. BBC4 Radio, 2016.

Reason read: A long time ago we stayed in a castle. It was June and very romantic.

Teenage Cassandra writes in her diary like a typical girl. She makes observations about not-so typical situations, like the fact her family lives in poverty in a rundown English castle. Her dream is to become a famous author so to practice she recounts the lives of her family with sharp and witty commentary. As she says, “contemplation seems to be about the only luxury that costs nothing” (p 25). At the onset, the name of the game seems to be to marry off sister Rose to the highest bidder; and that man seems to be American Simon Cotton. Poor Rose cannot even find a suitable dress for dinner let alone charm her future husband over a decent meal. I Capture the Castle is more than a dating game, it is the story of society’s opinion of a woman’s place. It says something about the attitudes about feminine decorum.
One of my favorite moments was when Simon and his brother Neil spotted Rose and Cassandra in ratty fur coats. To avoid anyone seeing them in such shambles Neil pretends they are a bear and “kills” it before mother can see. How perfectly ridiculous yet, there is an air of social grace in the midst of destitution.

As a personal aside, I could relate when Cassandra was seduced with the help of music. I have been there myself, both as seducer and seduced. Music can say a lot without saying anything at all…if you know what I mean.

Author fact: Dodie is Dorothy Gladys Smith, born in 1896. I Capture the Castle is her first novel, but she is also responsible for the Disney story of the One Hundred and One Dalmatians, inspired by Pongo, Smith’s own Dalmatian.

Book trivia: I Capture the Castle was made into a movie “most romantic” but before that, it was a play in 1954. Confessional: I have been saying I captureD (past tense) the castle for days now.

Audio trivia: the BBC4 Radio version is a big production with a full cast complete with music.

Playlist: “Green Sleeves”, “The Isle of Capri”, “Blow the Man Down”, “God Save the King”, Handel’s “Air from the Water Music”, Debussy’s “Water Music” and “Clair de Lune”, La Cathedrale Engloutie”, “La Terrasse Des Audiences au Clair de Lune”, Bach’s “Lover” and “Sheep May Safely Graze”.

Nancy said: Pearl admitted it was hard not to smile when reading the first line of I Capture the Castle. What was that first line? Read the book to find out.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “First Lines to Remember” (p 86).

End of the Hunt

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Flanagan, Thomas. End of the Hunt. Dutton, 1994.

Reason read: to finish the series started in April.

Flanagan’s End of the Hunt picks up where Tenants of Time left off; right after the Easter Rebellion. So begins the birth of the IRA (Irish Republic Army). Flanagan weaves intimate portraits of widow Janice Nugent as she tries to find love again; Patrick Prentiss as he navigates the world as a World War I amputee; and Frank Lacy, a contradiction in character with his weapons and Virgil in hand. Character development is so on point you swear you have met these people before. Meshed with real historic events and people, it is easy to see why End of the Hunt is a best-seller.

As an aside, how can you be historically deliberate and accurate and yet only coincidentally name actual people? I realize the coincidence phrase is a standard blurb to cover an author’s ass, but either these people were a part of history or they weren’t.

Line I liked, “Dublin is a city of half sentence” (p 7).

Author fact: At the time of publication, Flanagan divided his time between Long Island (New York) and Ireland.

Book trivia: End of the Hunt is the final book in the Irish trilogy and has been compared to Leon Iris’s Trinity.

Playlist: “Lead, Kindly Light”, “Sean O Dwyer”, “Slievenamon”, and “A Nation Once Again”.

Nancy said: Pearl called the entire trilogy “magnificent” and End of the Hunt “good.”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the obvious chapter called “Historical Fiction From Around the World” (p 113) and again in the chapter called “Irish Fiction” (p 125). Funny how none of the other books in the trilogy are mentioned in this chapter.

Sweet Cheat Gone

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Proust, Marcel. Remembrance of Things Past: The Sweet Cheat Gone. Vol. 6. Translated by C.K. Scott Montcrieff. Chatto & Windus, 1961.

Reason read: to continue the series started in November for National Writing Month. Obviously, I have skipped a month or two.

If The Fugitive was all about keeping Albertine hostage, The Sweet Cheat Gone is her escape. Albertine’s departure sets the stage for volume six. Proust has this way of capturing obsession and grief in all their painful intricacies. You know that moment, right before coming fully awake when you thinks maybe yesterday has all been some kind of horrible nightmare? But then remembrance brings back the horror with a vengeance. Yesterday’s reality is today’s truth. Proust’s narrator is constantly remembering the times he bused Albertine’s love. He couldn’t tell her she reminded him of paintings of other female forms because he didn’t want her to think of female nude bodies. His jealousies were that strong. After her departure, he is inconsolable; able to pick up his grief right where he left off before sleep; as if he had never closed his eyes. He repeatedly fixates on how to return the escaped Albertine back to him. If you don’t believe me, count the times Albertine’s name appears on every page. It got to the point where I wanted to please take this man out behind the barn and put him out of his misery.
It is so cliché to say, but you really do not know what you have until it is gone. Proust’s narrator is no different. He enjoyed hurting Albertine while she was in his possession, but upon hearing of her death he fixates on all the times he took her for granted or thought her company to be a nuisance. Her charms, her innocence was something to be scoffed at until she vanished. Now that he has lost her everything she touched (including “the pedals of the pianola she pressed with golden slippers”) becomes all too precious. He knows he has abused her and admits as much in the way he describes her departure as flight, escape, gone, and on the run. His obsession grows worse when he thinks her dead. He couldn’t even read newspapers because the mere act of opening and lifting one to his eyes brought back memories of Albertine doing the same.
In volume two there is a return to M. de Guermantes and Gilberte. Everything remains the same. Our nameless narrator is still looking for love wherever he can find it. His mother is unwilling to let him see just how much she loved him and that bothers him.

Quotes to ponder, “An impression of love is out of proportion to the other impressions of life, but it is not when it is lost in their midst that we can take account of it” (p 107) and “We wish to be understood, because we wish to be loved, and we wish to be loved because we are in love” (p 111). This last sentence is probably my all time favorite quote of Proust’s.

Author fact: For the first volume I told you Proust’s full name. In the second review I explained where the term romans-fleuve came from. In the third review I mentioned Proust spent a year in the army. In the fourth review I mentioned the influence of Flaubert, but by the fifth review I had run out of things to say (either that or I just forgot to add an author fact). Now, in this sixth review, my author fact is Proust was also an essayist. I won’t be reading any of his essays.

Book trivia: Sweet Cheat Gone is also called The Fugitive or Albertine Gone. So many different titles, I can’t keep track! Another tidbit of info: in the French text Albertine Disparue volume one ends before chapter two, “Mademoiselle De Forcheville.” It is at this time that the obsession with Albertine abruptly ends. She is not mentioned on every page life the first volume.

Nancy said: Pearl said absolutely nothing about this volume of Remembrance of Things Past.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Romans-Fleuves” (p 208).

Boy’s Own Story

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White, Edmund. A Boy’s Own Story. Iconic Books, Open Road Media. 2000.
White, Edmund. A Boy’s Own Story. Vintage International, 1982.

Reason read: June is Pride Month.

First published in 1982, A Boy’s Own Story‘s main character has been compared to Teddy Roosevelt and characters from Lolita and Huckleberry Finn. The first in a trilogy and supposedly autobiographical in nature, A Boy’s Own Story introduces themes of desire, coming of age, and identity. The book’s nameless young narrator navigates his own sexuality in an age when parents simply warn their children about predators who seem “oversexed” and “take advantage of younger boys.” Our hero fights his homosexual tendencies while wondering why the adult camp counselor doesn’t rub his back in the middle of the night. Torn between propriety and passion, he struggles to find normalcy in his desires. Will his feelings for other boys fade in time? It this something to grow out of? In an effort to “change” he first seeks the advice of a priest. When that does not work, he convinces his father to send him to an all-boys boarding school. Maybe being in the presence of so many males would normalize his sexuality and set him straight? Not so. Next came a psychiatrist. Maybe he can address the psychological aspects of being attracted to men? Ultimately, he is looking for a way to have sex with a man and then disown him so to disavow his homosexuality. The secret to his longing is power which makes A Boy’s Own Story all at once poignant and sad.

Line I liked, “The subject of this book might be that brief eloquence between the fantasies of a dream-bound child and his implementing through charm, sexuality, his wits” (p 6). The saddest sentence in the book, “I had spent so much of my childhood sunk into a cross-eyed, nose-picking turpitude of shame and self-loathing, scrunched up in the corner of a sweating leather chair on a hot summer day, the heat having silenced the birds, even the construction workers on the site next door, and delivering me up to the admonishing black head of the fan on the floor slowly shaking from left to right, right to left to signal its tedious repetition of no, no, no, and to exhale the faintly irritating vacillations of its breath” (p 126).

Author fact: White lists Proust as one of his influences. I love it when I’m reading a connection to another book.

Book trivia: A Boy’s Own Story is autobiographical.

Playlist: “Dies Irae”, Juliette Greco, “Nothing Like a Dame”, Odetta, “Pat Boone’s “Twixt Twelve and Twenty”, “Now is the Hour”, “Zip-a-Dee Doo-Dah”, “Kitten on the Keys”, “I’ll Be Seeing You in Apple Blossom Time”, “The Tennessee Waltz”, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Liberace, Schubert’s “Unfinished”,

Nancy said: Pearl said Boy’s Own Story was “set prior to Stonewall” (Book Lust p 94). For those who don’t know, Stonewall refers to the Stonewall Rebellion or Stonewall Uprising; a riot in the early morning of June 28th, 1969. Police violently raided an establishment known as Stonewall. The community in and around Greenwich Village, New York, protested the attack.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the too-short chapter called “Gay and Lesbian Fiction: Out of the Closet” (p 93). There are so many other great novels Pearl could have mentioned (like Annie On My Mind by Nancy Garden).

Blue Bowl

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Minot, George. The Blue Bowl. Alfred A. Knopf, 2004.

Reason read: June is National Family Month.

On the surface The Blue Bowl is the story of Simon Curtis, accused of killing his father. It is an open and shut case for the prosecution. Simon blamed his father for his mother’s death because he heard her exclaim she would kill herself if his father didn’t stop drinking; Simon wanted his father’s money; when Simon wasn’t squatting in his father’s Maine house (when his father wasn’t there), he was living as ghost with his father in Massachusetts. Maine or Massachusetts, it didn’t matter. His father didn’t want him in either place. If his father knew Simon was disobeying him and squatting in either house he never let on. Are you supposed to like Simon? He has no social graces, an anarchist attitude, lazy, barely cognizant of the world around him, tags along uninvited, lies, scams and steals. As the trial progresses you want him to be guilty.
I have to admit, The Blue Bowl was a little annoying. Because of Minot’s style of writing I wasn’t sure in which house Simon was squatting, Maine or Massachusetts. It seemed like both at one point. I know the death happened in Manchester, Massachusetts and the trial took place in Boston, but then there are all these other connections to Maine. Everyone in Boston seemed to have something or someone somewhere in Maine.
Then there was the issue with the word “like.” I am not a fan of repetition. Like is everywhere. Like like like.
Run on sentences are not my thing either. Holy marathon run-on sentences. It is if Minot has so many thought running through his head and, afraid of losing them, spits them out in a stream of consciousness.

But here is a spoiler. I figured out who killed dad pretty early on. The Blue Bowl opens with the first person narrative of Simon’s nameless brother. He relays how Simon came to visit him in New York and then backtracks to tell the story of the murder, “starting with the aftermath.” The reader is given a ppe-show montage of Simon’s family, but here is thing thing – this first-person brother never inserts himself into the story. Who is he? How come he never came to Simon’s trial? He tells Simon’s story in third person narrative but never breaks in to say where he fit in. Because this “nameless” brother has something to hide.

Author fact: Minot lived in New York City at the time The Blue Bowl was published and leonine is a favorite word of his.

Book trivia: I don’t think it is a spoiler alert to say that the title of the book, the blue bowl, doesn’t really come into frame until the very end of the book. The Blue Bowl is the only work of Minot’s in LibraryThing.

As an aside, it was cool to see so many Maine names I knew. I decided to track them: Babbidge, Bangor, Blue Hill, Burnt Island, Camden Hills, Georges Bank, Iron Point, Isle au Haut, Thorofare, Little Thorofare, North Haven, Rockland, Thomaston, Portland, Mullen’s Head, Belfast, Rockport, Camden Hills,
As an another aside confessional, I never thought about the phrase “man-child” until a friend used it to describe someone with whom I was desperately in lust. I couldn’t understand his hot-cold nature and his loose grasp on reality. Simon is that same man-child.

Playlist: “American Pie”, “Allelujah”, Bee Gees’ “Lonely Days”, Billy Joel, Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, Chopin’s “Nocturnal”, “Coconut”, Counting Crows (as an aside, I thought it ridiculously funny that Minot described the line “I need a raincoat” as whiney), James Taylor, Jimi Hendrix, “Lean On Me”, Mick Jagger, Neil Diamond, Neil Young’s “Helpless”, Pete Townsend, “Rock of Ages”, Three Dog Night’s “Jeremiah”, and the Who.

Nancy said: when talking about the Minot siblings as writers, Pearl said they each offered their own perspective on growing up in a large, dysfunctional family, but nothing specific about each individual author.

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

At Weddings and Wakes

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McDermott, Alice. At Weddings and Wakes. Farrar Straus Giroux, 1992.

Reason read: June is a very popular month for weddings…to the point where it is almost cliché.

Time is handled in a “This Is Us” fashion: time goes backwards and forwards in At Weddings and Wakes. Time moves through memory and observation and seems incrementally slow. This is the story of what it means to be Irish-American in New York, told from the point of view of Lucy Dailey’s school-aged children. Again, I was reminded of “This Is Us.” The viewpoints are poignant and sad, tender and true to life. This Is Life. Lucy dutifully brings her children from Long Island to see her sisters and stepmother in Brooklyn. The three generations of family all have a rich bittersweet history to tell. Aunt Veronica needs alcohol to numb her grief. Aunt Agnes is nothing but sharp-tongued and career driven. But, the sweetness and light is found with Aunt May, a former nun in the midst of a romance with mailman.
McDermott is a master at displaying human emotions and behaviors in a way that you swear the characters are in your life; just ghosts who have just passed into another room while you weren’t looking.
As an aside, can I just say how much I love the slug scene that appears in the beginning of the book and then returns at the end?

Line I liked, “She inherited her mother’s easy access to regret” (p 52) and “The need to disagree rose in her like appetite” (p 87).

Author fact: I am reading five McDermott books. I cannot wait for That Night and Child of My Heart. I have already read Charming Billy and The Bigamist’s Daughter .

Book trivia: this should have been a movie.

Setlist: “All the Things You Are” by Jerome Kern, “Wild Irish Rose”, “I’ll Be Seeing You”, “I’ve Been Working On the Railroad”, “Rambling Wreck From Georgia Tech”, and “The Caissons Go Rolling Along”.

Nancy said: Pearl did not say anything specific about At Weddings and Wakes.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “A…is for Alice (p 1).

Grow Your Business with ChatGPT

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Kelley, Steve. Grow Your Business with ChatGPT: The 5-Step Al Blueprint to Generate More Revenue by Automating and Optimizing Your Business Processes Using Artificial Intelligence. Kindle Edition, 2023.

Reason read: as a member of the Early Review Program for LibraryThing I am occasionally asked to review interesting books. My institution is getting into ChatGPT and so I thought I would expand my horizons a little with this review.

Confessional: I didn’t read the fine print about how this book would be delivered. Yes, I knew it was an e-book. Yes, I knew the author would send me a link. No, I didn’t know it would be an Amazon-only product (brought to you by Kindle). I don’t own a Kindle. What if I didn’t even have an Amazon account? I have to log into Amazon as if I am shopping in order to read Grow Your Business with ChatGPT. Amazon’s bots must think I’m doing a lot of browsing, but I never seem to buy anything.

Second Confessional: I don’t have a business from which to generate more revenue. I don’t have a business to automate. I don’t have a business process to optimize. I chose Grow Your Business with ChatGPT: The 5-Step Al Blueprint to Generate More Revenue by Automating and Optimizing Your Business Processes Using Artificial Intelligence because I wanted to come at it from the perspective of someone who is interested in starting a business. A business to automate and optimize and certainly from which to generate more revenue (who doesn’t want that).

I found Grow Your Business with ChatGPT to be very straightforward and dare I say, fun? Kelley writes with a conversational tone when his subject matter could be very dry and technical. Confessional Number Three: I did skip some parts, but only when he told me I could. There is a lot of sound advice and solid information in the parts I did read. In truth, I think Grow Your Business with ChatGPT is best suited for the audience Kelley intended – the folks already in business; the people wanting to stay well ahead of the curve.