Tag: june

Under the Gypsy Moon

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Thornton, Lawrence. Under the Gypsy Moon. New York: Doubleday, 1990.

Reason read: Federico Garcia Lorca was born in June (1898).

Despite being a little over 210 pages long, Under the Gypsy Moon packs a powerful punch. Magical realism flows in and out of historical events creating a spellbinding and dramatic love story. Joaquin Wolf becomes a politically motivated writer after the Spanish Civil War. He meets and begins a relationship with narrator, Ursula Krieger, who carries her own demons of war. Together they struggle against fascism using Federico Garcia Lorca as a their guide. His poetry is the symbol of courage they embrace, allowing them to rise above the despair.

Line I liked, “Poverty gnaws at the body before it feasts on the mind” (p 54).

Author fact: Thornton also wrote Imagining Argentina, also on my list.

Book trivia: Under the Gypsy Moon is short, barely over 200 pages. I read it in a weekend.

Nancy said: Under the Gypsy Moon is one of two fictions in which Guernica plays a part.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called simply “Guernica” (p 89).

“The Executor”

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Epstein, Joseph. “The Executor.” Fabulous Small Jews: Stories. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003.

Reason read: June is Short Story Month

I think “The Executor” was my favorite story from Fabulous Small Jews. It was short, simple, and direct…but with a twist. Kenneth Hopkins is a Princeton student with a Jewish poet for a mentor. His time with Professor Bertram is profound, but not as life altering as his meeting with Mrs. Bertram. But, their meeting isn’t what you think.

Author fact: according to the dust jacket, Epstein has been a lecturer in English and writing at Northeastern. Another fact: I am reading a compilation of essays also written by Epstein called Plausible Prejudices.

Book trivia: There are eighteen stories in Fabulous Small Jews. I am only reading two.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter “Good Things Come in Small Packages” (p 102).

“Artie Glick in a Family Way”

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Epstein, Joseph. “Artie Glick in a Family Way”. The Hudson Review. Winter 1998; 50; 4; p545.

Reason read: June is Short Story Month.

In a nutshell: This is about a man who, at at fifty-seven, finally grows some you-know-whats and becomes an adult. After growing up in the shadow of a difficult father only to have him die in surgery, Artie substitutes this father for a just as difficult therapist. Twice a week for fourteen years Dr. Lieberman has been milking Artie’s feelings of inadequacy; for Artie was never good enough for his dad. Let’s count the ways in his dad’s eyes: he doesn’t have business sense. He has already failed at marriage once. He has never started a family. It is only after Glick’s girlfriend announces she is pregnant does Artie finally realize he could have a much different life.

Author fact: Epstein won the National Humanities Medal in 2003.

Book trivia: Fabulous Small Jews also contains the short story, “The Executor” (also on my list).

Nancy said: nothing specific about “Artie”.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the obvious chapter called “Good Things Come in Small Packages” (p 102).

Black Faces, White Faces

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Gardam, Jane. Black Faces, White Faces. New York: Abacus, 1975.

Reason read: Gardam’s birth month is July.

Black Faces, White Faces loosely links together ten short stories, all taking place in Jamaica; all involving vacationing Brits completely out of their comfort zones. What is special about Black Faces is that Gardam interlocks details as well as characters. For example, a character in one story leaves behind a toy. Another character from another story finds it.
“Babe Jude” – encountering crude vacationers & a language barrier.
“Missus Moon” – foreigners witnessing a funeral.
“Best Day of My Easter Holidays” – a boy’s essay about meeting crazy man Jolly Jackson.
“The Pool Boy” – Lady Fletcher doesn’t want to be so prim and proper.
“The Weeping Child” – Mrs. Ingram tells the story of the ghost of someone who is still alive.
The House Above Newcastle” -Newlyweds Boofey and Pussy are unrecognizable to each other on their honeymoon.
“Saul Alone” – a sad story about a stroke victim observing the people around him.
“The First Declension” – a wife suspects her husband of having an affair while he visits Jamaica.
“Something To tell the Girls” – two teachers on holiday in the mountains of Jamaica.
“Monique” – a woman mourning the loss of her lover.

Quotes I liked: from “Babe Jude” – “He foresaw an agitated lunch and felt depressed” (p 6), from “Best Day of My Easter Holidays” – “We seemed somehow after a very long time to get back to the same place, I don’t know how” (p 19), and from “The Weeping Child” – “Imagination was her rarest occupation” (p 34).

Author fact: Gardam is a Fellow of the Royal British Society of Literature and an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.

Book trivia: Black Faces was a little harder to get from a library. I requested my copy from the Boston Public Library.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Jane Gardam: Too Good To Miss” (p 96).

Edge of Time

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Erdman, Loula Grace. The Edge of Time. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1950.

Reason read: Erdman’s birth month is in June.

When Bethany Fulton married Wade Cameron she had no idea what she was getting herself into. As a child she had loved Wade from afar for as long as she could remember. Coming of age, she continued to love him despite the fact he preferred her pretty cousin, Rosemary. After Rosemary rejects Wade for a wealthier suitor Wade takes Bethany instead; takes her to be his wife and to accompany him to the wild unknowns of Texas. Bethany’s first hurdle is understanding where she is going for she can’t picture a house without running water or real glass windows; she can’t picture a landscape without trees. Bethany’s second and bigger hurdle is internal – getting over the fact she is Wade’s second choice for marriage. The memory of Rosemary hangs over everything, especially in the beginning when Wade had no way of telling his far-off Texan neighbors he had married a different girl. More than that the land teaches Bethany to lose her naive ways.

Edge of Time is the kind of simple story. The title comes from Wade’s realization they arrived too late in Texas to be ranchers and too early to be farmers. They arrived “on the edge of time” (p 232).

Lines I liked, “Loneliness bit into people here” (p 81), and “A blob of inconsequential nothingness on the great face of nothingness itself” (p 254).

Book trivia: Erdman dedicated Edge of Time to the homesteader. She felt that plenty had been written about ranchers and nesters, but homesteaders were an unknown.

Author fact: Erdman died in the 70s. I think it’s great that her books still live on.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called (of course) “Texas: Lone Star State of Mind” (p 233).

Coast of Chicago

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Dybek, Stuart. Coast of Chicago. New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1990.

Reason read: June is short story month.

Coast of Chicago consists of fourteen stories. I read “Blight” and “Hot Ice” for the Challenge. While every short story has well rounded and thoughtful characters, it is the city of Chicago that steals the show. It is the largest personality in every story. Everyone describes Dybek’s language as “gritty” and I couldn’t agree more.
“Blight”
Remembering Chicago in the late 50s.

“Hot Ice”
The legend of the girl frozen in a block of ice ice.

Quote I liked from “Hot Ice”: “He’d been a butcher in every meat market in the neighborhood, but drunkenly kept hacking off pieces of his hands, and finally quit to become a full-time alky” (p 126).

Author fact: It should come as no surprise that Dybek was born and raised in Chicago. He illustrates the city intimately in Coast of Chicago.

Book trivia: Coast of Chicago is comprised of fourteen stories. “Hot Ice” won first prize in the O. Henry prize story collections in 1985. “Blight” won in 1987.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Good Things Come in Small Packages” (p 102).

Death in the Family

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Agee, James. A Death in the Family. Read by Mark Hammer. New York: Recorded Books, 2000.

Agee, James. A Death in the Family. New York: Penguin Classics, 2008.

Reason read: Father’s Day is in June. This is in honor of what the loss of a father can do to a family. Believe me, I know.

This is the autobiographical story of what happens when the anchor of a family dies unexpectedly. Set in 1915.
The language of Death in the Family is lyrical and breathtaking. Three scenes worth mentioning: Father Jay sets out to visit his dying father after receiving a middle-of-the-night call from his alcoholic brother. His father has suffered another heart attack and this time it’s bad. Jay’s wife, Mary, lovingly makes him a huge breakfast before his trip despite the early hour. He in return remakes the bed for her. Their exchanged goodbyes are tenderhearted and endearing. In a flashback, when their son experiences a nightmare, Agee describes these night visions in words that are nothing short of enthralling. But, the best part is when Jay comes in to console his son, Rufus. This last scene is heartbreaking. Via a telephone call, Mary has been told there has been a serious accident involving her husband and “a man” needs to come. She isn’t told anything more than that. Mary and her aunt wait up, agonizing over every little word exchanged during the short phone call. Mary’s worry bleeds from the pages.

Quote I really liked, “Talking to that fool is like trying to put socks on an octopus” (p 167). I think I will use that one day.

As an aside, Agee quotes a limerick, “Fat Man From Bombay” in A Death in the Family but he doesn’t give credit to Edward Lear. The limerick is from Lear’s Book of Nonsense.

Author fact: Agee died before this could be published. Oddly enough, this was autobiographical and there has been controversy over what Agee was and wasn’t planning to publish.

Book trivia: Agee was awarded a Pulitzer for Death in the Family. I can see why.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “100 Good Reads, Decade by Decade: 1950s” (p 177).

Natasha: and Other Stories

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Bezmozgis, David. Natasha: and Other Stories. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2004.

Reason read: June is short story month.

Natasha and Other Stories is comprised of seven short stories. I read “Tapka” and title story, “Natasha.” The interesting thing about all seven stories is that they all center around one family, the Bermans. “Tapka” and “Natasha” center on Mark, the son.

“Tapka”
Six year old Mark Berman falls in love with Tapka, his neighbor’s tiny white Lhasa-apso, at first sight. He cares for this animal so deeply he and his cousin are bestowed care-taking duties of Tapka. Until tragedy strikes.
Best line, “With no English, no money, no job, and only a murky conception of what the future held, he wasn’t equipped to admire Tapka on the Italian Riviera” (p 5).

“Natasha”
Ten years later, sixteen year old Mark develops feelings for his fourteen year old cousin, Natasha. She is wise beyond her years; much more experienced than Mark. She teaches him a thing or two about coming of age.
Best line, “She was calibrated somewhere between resignation and joy” (p 90).

Author fact: Bezmozgis was born in Latvia.

Book trivia: Natasha and Other Stories is Bezmozgis’s first book.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Good Things Come in Small Packages” (p 102).

Anatomy, Stretching & Training for Marathoners

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Striano, Dr. Philip and Lisa Purcell. Anatomy, Stretching & Training for Marathoners: a step by step guide to getting the most from your running workout. New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2013.

This was a weird book for me. The goal of the book seems to be of two minds: either getting you fit enough to run a marathon (minus the cardiovascular endurance piece) or supplementing the idea that running is a good exercise for losing weight. The focal point of the book is strengthening and stretching key muscles that are used while running. Beyond that, there is very little about running aside from what to wear and where to run. The mechanics of running are largely ignored. But, to be fair, thrown in is a strange sample marathon training schedule. I’ll get to my comment on the training schedule later. But for now let’s focus on the good news.
There were a bunch of things to like about Anatomy, Stretching and Training. For starters, the overall layout of information is comprehensive and intuitive. I appreciated that the illustrations highlight the key muscles affected by the stretch or training move while the photograph of the individual doing the same thing highlights proper form. The anatomy information was, by far, the most informative aspect of the book. A neat little feature, one I’m sure everyone makes a beeline to find, is the stretching and strength training routines at the end.

Now for the bad news:

  • Page 9 – The last time I checked, a marathon is 26.2 MILES. In the introduction the last sentence is, “Take the time to learn how to run right, using the guidelines found in the following pages, and you’ll soon be entering that 26K.” Assuming that the “K” in that sentence is kilometers a 26K is the equivalent of 16.16 miles.

    • Yes, 16 miles is an impressive distance to run but it’s not a marathon.

  • Page 10 – I don’t know how they measure calories but I’ve never heard of a running program that burns 100 calories in an hour. As a 114 lb woman I burn approximately 100 calories for every mile I run. Maybe they meant mile instead of hour? That would make more sense.
  • Page 17 – I have looked at many different training plans for running marathons and they all agree on one thing – tapering mileage before a race. The sample marathon training plan supplied for Anatomy calls for a 20 mile run the day before running the marathon. Is that normal? To be fair, it might be a typo. It’s the only day that doesn’t actually have the word “run” after the mile distance. It just says “20-miles.” The question is 20-miles what?
  • I think the authors resorted to referring to yoga when they didn’t know what to call a certain stretch (like the back stretch = cobra). This causes confusion in regards to the high lunge/low forward lunge. For practitioners of yoga, a high lunge is done without either knee touching the ground, whereas a low lunge has the placement of the back knee of the ground.(p 86-87).
  • Some detail information is not consistent. Some exercises have times regarding how long to hold a move and/or how reps. For example, the standing quad stretch is to be held for 15 seconds at a time and repeated three times. The very next exercise, the sprinter’s stretch, doesn’t have that information. It would have been nice to see some consistency.

Birds of America

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Moore, Lorrie. Birds of America. New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1999.

Reason read: June is national short story month

The two short stories I read are “Four Calling Birds, Three French Hens” (p 111) and the incredibly sad “People Like That Are the Only People Here: Canonical Babbling in Peed Onk” (p 212).

“Four Calling Birds…” –
Aileen mourns the death of her cat, Bert. She has him cremated and sees a therapist to get over his passing. It just goes to show you how much like a family member a pet can be. The very last scene is the best part.

“People Like That…” –
Despite the fact everyone in this story is nameless, this one is even sadder than “Four Calling Birds”. “Peed Onk” is actually “pediatric oncology.” Parents of a baby boy are faced with his cancer diagnosis. A child having such a serious illness seems unfathomable.

Lines that got me, “When a baby gets cancer, it seems stupid to ever have given up smoking” (p 225) and “The synapses between minutes are unswimmable” (p 235).

Author fact: Where do I begin with Ms. Lorrie? So many things to say about this woman. Here are my favorite facts: She is from an area I used to frequent often, Glens Falls, NY and she goes by her middle name.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Good Things Come in Small Packages” (p 102).

Yocandra in the Paradise of Nada

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Valdes, Zoe. Yocandra in the Paradise of Nada: a Novel of Cuba. New York: Arcade Publishing, 1995

Reason read: June is Caribbean Heritage Month & Yocandra takes place mostly in Cuba.

Meet Yocandra. She is a woman with an identity crisis. Born Patria, at sixteen she develops a rebellious streak and marries an author turned philosopher who takes her away from her beloved Cuba for some time. She is a wild child, fiery and passionate, just like her homeland. I don’t know how to explain the rest of this short novel. Yocandra’s second marriage ends in death & so at an early age she is a widow. That doesn’t slow her down in the least. She has two lovers, the Nihilist and the Traitor. At best, Yocandra is a handful, and all one can hope to do is just try to keep up with her.

Lines worth mentioning, “There I was, a tiny little lump slimy with maternal gook, wrapped in the Cuban flag, and already my father was scolding me for failing to fulfill my revolutionary duty” (p 11), “What sin has a people committed that causes the sea to demand expiation?” (p 54), “In my heart I’m still more Cuban than the palm trees and no one can ever change that” (p 90), and “Apparently our politics can be determined from our excrement” (p 152).

Author fact: Yocandra is Valdes’s first novel.

Book trivia: Yocandra was translated from the Spanish by Sabina Cienfuegos. She includes notes about references and Spanish dialect used in Cuba. Very useful. Another detail of note – this could be considered a short story being barely 150 pages in length.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Cuba Si!” (p 68).

Oblivion

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Wallace, David Foster. Oblivion: Stories. New York: Little, Brown & Company, 2004.

Reason read: June is short story month

“Mr. Squishy”
The complexity of “Mr. Squishy” has been compared to a Magic Eye poster. Reading and rereading will yield varying results. Getting up close will show you something different than if you backed away or circled it, growling like a battle-ready rabid dog. As readers, we step into the scene as it is already underway, a focus group talking about an initially unnamed product. Then we discover we are focused on a chocolate dessert food product under the brand name of Mr. Squishy. The company is trying to market a chocolate dessert with the name “Felonies!” At the same time, unrelated to the scene on the inside is an individual climbing the outside glass wall. The duality of scenes implies an inside looking out/outside looking in desire.

“The Suffering Channel”
There are more ironies in this story than I know what to do with. when faced with writing a review for “The Suffering Channel” I soon found that I was suffering. How do I even begin to describe this short story? Having said all that, here is my feeble attempt:

Brint Molke is an artist. His medium is not oils or watercolor. He specializes in his own excrement. Not to say he is a sculpture in sh!t. He just happens to defecate art. This astonishing feat caught the attention of Skip Atwater, writer for Style magazine. The title of Wallace’s short story comes from Skip’s coverage of a cable channel called…wait for it…the suffering channel. A 24/7/365 channel where, you guessed it, one can watch images of all kinds of suffering. There is more to the story than this, but the overlaying detail that shrouds everything is Style magazine is located in one of the World Trade Center Towers and it’s September 10th, 2001. In other words, nothing in the story matters because in a day’s time everything will change.

Author fact: Wallace wrote “Mr Squishy” under the name Elizabeth Klemm.

Book trivia: there are six other stories in Oblivion that I did not read.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Good Things Come in Small Packages” (p 102).

Love Medicine

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Louise Erdrich. Love Medicine. Toronto: Bantam Books, 1984.

Reason read: Erdrich’s birth month is in June. June is also Family Month, so take your pick.

This is such a powerful book on so many different levels. It is the story of two different Native American families, rich with culture and tradition. Even though June Kashpaw dies within the first chapter, her spirit threads through the entire rest of the story. Just like the history of the land they live on, every subsequent character is complicated and vibrant. This isn’t a plot-driven novel. Instead, the characters with their robust personalities and passionate life experiences make Love Medicine come alive.

Quote worth mentioning, “She always used the royal we, to multiply the censure of what she said by invisible others” (p 7).

Author fact: Erdrich also wrote Beet Queen which is also on my Challenge list. Another piece of trivia – Erdrich was married to Michael Dorris who wrote Yellow Raft in Blue Water one of my all time favorite books.

Book trivia: Love Medicine was a national bestseller.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “American Indian Literature” (p 23) and also in More Book Lust in the chapter called “The Great Plains: the Dakotas” (p 106)

Thirty-Three Teeth

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Cotterill, Colin. Thirty-Three Teeth. New York: SoHo Press, 2005.

Reason read: to continue the series started in April in honor of Rocket Day in Laos.

Thirty-Three Teeth takes up exactly where The Coroner’s Lunch left off. It is now March 1977 and an Asian black bear has just escaped from somewhere. Is this the terrible beast that has been mauling unsuspecting victims to death?

Adding to Dr. Siri’s title of reluctant coroner is confused psychic – “for reasons he was still trying to fathom he’d been delegated Lao’s honorary consul to the spirit world” (p 13).

Siri still has his sidekicks, Nurse Dtui, Mr. Geung and even Saloop, the dog who hated him in the beginning of Coroner’s Lunch. Nurse Dtui and Saloop have bigger roles this time around.

As an aside, the title of the book comes from the belief that if someone has 33 teeth it is a sign they were born as a bridge to the spirit world. You guessed it, Dr. Siri has 33 teeth. One of the best scenes is when he is trying to run his tongue along his teeth to count them.

Spoiler alert: Revenge is a powerful thing. I was very sad by what happened to Saloop.

Lines that made me laugh, “Diarrhea, in it’s most vindictive state, can erase even thoughts of terror” (p 20), “Siri was impressed that the department of information could provide so little of it” (p 31), “Honesty can be a dirty gift” (p 65), and one more, “When you befriend a man whose mind lives on a distant star, you deserve whatever you get” (p 159).

Author fact: at the time of publication of Thirty-Three Teeth Cotterill was living in Thailand.

Book trivia: Thirty-Three Teeth is short; easily read in one day.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Laos” (p 128).

Lucky Girls

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Freudenberger, Nell. Lucky Girls: Stories. New York: Harper Collins, 2013.

Reason read: June is National Short Story month

“The Orphan”
This is the short story of a family splintering in different directions. The parents are separated and on the verge of getting a divorce. The nearly adult children are in Thailand and Bangor, Maine – worlds apart from one another. When the family converges in Bangkok it is an orphan that shifts the tide for them all, individually and as a family.
I can’t decide if I like Alice or not. As a mother, what should she have done when her kid calls up and says not only has she been assaulted, but raped as well? That’s not the sort of thing you let drop when the kid suddenly changes her story and says it’s no big deal.
Lines I liked, “She drops the dog, possibly robbing him mother of his life” (p 31) and “…often, when you step around the conventional way of doing things, you end up with something worse” (p 56).

“Outside the Eastern Gates”
The protagonist in “Outside the Eastern Gate” is like any 40 year old person facing the deteriorating aging of a parent. There is a sense of bafflement at the role reversal; a sense of sadness about being away for so long. Upon returning to Delhi she remembers the desperate longing for her mother’s love while simultaneously coping with her father’s Alzheimer diagnosis.
A line to like, “The bogeyman appears in the first forty seconds after nightfall” (p 68). Good to know.

As an aside, did you see Jimmy Fallon’s tribute to Prince (otherwise known as the ping pong story)? Now, whenever anyone mentions ping pong (as was mentioned in “Outside the Eastern Gate”) I will think of the last line of Jimmy’s story, “Ask your boy.”

Author fact: Feudenberger has taught English in Bangkok and New Delhi.

Book trivia: Lucky Girls is Feudenberger’s first book.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Good Things Come in Small Packages” (p 102).