Tag: relationships

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).

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).

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).

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).

Roadside Confessions

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Feulner, Glen. Roadside Confessions. Glen Feulner, 2024.

Reason read: This is one of my favorite Early Reviews from LibraryThing.

This is fiction. This is fiction. This is fiction. I have to say that to myself over and over again like a mantra because Roadside Confessions is so beautifully believable and I (confessionally), I wanted it to be true. The journey is real. The grief is real. Grief puts people on pedestals and guilt gives them a golden halo. The suicidal tendencies are real (desire to burn by fire; drown in the ocean; hang inches above the dirt; a gun to the temple). What started as a writing exercise for Glen Feulner in 2003 turned into an AI-assisted love story. A man, torn apart by grief and guilt after losing his wife to cancer, makes a California to Maine sojourn to come to terms with his loss. Added to the drama: he might commit suicide along the way. As they say in Maine, hard tellin’ not knowin’.
While Roadside Confessions is a short read (I cracked it open on my lunch break and inhaled it faster than my black bean burrito), the words are powerful and the accompanying photographs are just gorgeous. Speaking of photography, only a handful belong to the author (fourteen, I think) and that was my a-ha moment. They are all beautiful nature shots and not a one is of the deceased beloved wife. But. I digress. Back to the writing.
Feulner sinks down and grinds into what it feels like to mourn deeply. If you have ever listened to Dermot Kennedy’s music and really heard his passionate lyrics, you could make the comparison. Feulner is just as lyrical and emotional. You just have to get over the voice changing from speaking about Allison to speaking to Allison. If you owe the reader nothing, do not assume our expectations. Besides all that, I (obviously) enjoyed every word and when I get over the fact it isn’t a true story I’ll read it again and again.

As an aside, I want to meet Kathleen Jor Hall-Dumont. I like blunt people.

As an another aside, Feulner tells his readers that there is a Roadside Confessions playlist on Spotify that readers can listen to. Maybe I don’t have the right subscription but I couldn’t find it. Bummer. Here is the music mentioned in Roadside Confessions:
The Replacements, Elvis Costello, the Smiths, and Death Cab for Cutie.
Here is another disappointed – this was an AI assisted book.

Boy Meets Boy

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Levithan, David. Boy Meets Boy. Alfred A. Knopf, 2003.

Reason read: August is the new back to school month. Since most of Boy Meet Boy takes place in a school, read in honor of lockers everywhere.

The world inside Boy Meets Boy is the fantasyland where we all want to live, or at least visit whenever the mood strikes us. A place where kindness reigns supreme and hate just does not seem to exist. At. All. Main character, Paul, is unlike any teenage boy you will ever meet. He is sensitive, smart, funny, romantic, thoughtful, and a serious empath. His environment is a high school where students, dissatisfied with clubs of the cultural norms, create groups like the Joy Scouts, the French cuisine club, and the Quiz bowling team. The janitors are closet (pun totally intended) wealthy day traders. The parents form groups like P-FLAG (Parents and friends of lesbians and gays). The town itself is ultra-accepting – there is a bar called the Queer Beer bar where straight guys sneak in to hit on lesbians. It’s like a paradise for the LGBTQ community: the perfect world where everyone is welcomed and joyfully accepted. Even insults are always playful and harmless. The quarterback can also be the homecoming queen – shoulder pads and manicured nails come together in one character, Infinite Darlene. Cheerleaders can afford Harleys. Mothers make pancakes that resemble the topography or states or continents. Imagine that.
But. In order to have an interesting story, you need conflict. Right? The conflict is love and all of its broken hearts. Paul was once dumped by Kyle. Now Kyle wants Paul back, but only after Paul has started something with a new boy, Noah. Noah has been burned himself. So when Noah finds out Paul kissed another boy, he’s a goner. Now Paul wants Noah back while Kyle chases Paul. Then there is Ted who was dumped by Joanie for Chuck. Somehow, Paul tries to mend all these hearts, including the ones he has no business mending. The big question is, will he win Noah back or will Kyle win his heart?

Author fact: Even though David Levithan wrote a long list of books, I am only reading Boy Meets Boy for the Challenge.

Book trivia: I could easily see this being made into a movie.

Music: Dave Matthews Band’s “All Along the Watchtower” (but not really DMB) and “Typical Situation”, “One More Day”, Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus”, “We Are the Champions”, Cole Porter, Pink Floyd, “Bizarre Love Triangle”, “I Will Survive”, “She’s All Mouth”, Elvis’s “Love Me Tender”, “Heartbreak Hotel”, “All Shook Up”, Ella Fitzgerald, PJ Harvey, Erasure’s “Always”, Indigo Girls, Chet Baker’s “Someone to Watch Over Me”, Beatles, “If I Had a Hammer”, “Time after Time”. “It’s Always You”, and “Let’s Get Lost”, and “Michael, Row the Boat Ashore”.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Best for Teens” (p 23). Interestingly enough, Pearl thought Boy Meets Boy was more appropriate for boys than girls.

Feral Creatures in Suburbia

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Liebhart, D. Feral Creatures in Suburbia. 9:25 books, 2024.

Reason read: an Early Review book from LibraryThing.

A single mother trying to wrangle a violent teenage son, a girl trying to cope with intense school bullying threatens suicide enough times to land herself in a psych ward, employers abusing drugs, a doctor battling two aggressive cancers; we have all been there before. We have all had bullies at one time or another. We know people with incurable diseases or inconsiderate neighbors. We have all known a deep and abiding love. Secrets, miscommunications, assumptions, jealousies, they are common to us all.
Even though each chapter was in the voice of a different character I kept getting them confused. The chapters were short which didn’t give me a lot of time to get to know and fully absorb each person.
A small disappointment was the ability to only get inside Myra’s head. She was the only teenager with her own voice. We also got to see life from her mother’s point of view. Why not add Logan’s voice in contrast to his mother, Julie’s? Not knowing Logan’s motives kept assumptions at an all time high. Maybe Liebhart wanted it that way, considering the end.

The episode with the not broken-no wait-broken arm was curious.

Music: Chopin, Vivaldi, Black Sabbath, and Ozzy Osbourne.

Burning Marguerite

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Inness-Brown, Elizabeth. Burning Marguerite: a Novel. Alfred A. Knopf, 2002.

Reason read: part of Burning Marguerite takes place in New Orleans. Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans in the month of August.

Marguerite Ann Bernadette-Marie Deo, otherwise known as Tante, has passed away. Burning Marguerite starts with James Jack’s third person perspective, and at first, you think it’s going to be his story. However, Marguerite, in her own voice, tells the genesis of her nearly one hundred years and how the orphan James Jack came into her life. The reader gets to know Tante more James, which, in my opinion, is a missed opportunity. James Jack is a character ripe for exploration. As it stands, he is a thirty-plus-year-old man who has never strayed too far from his sheltered island home somewhere in Vermont. He rarely has romantic relationships. The reader does not hear of friendships. His only mission is to take care of Tante. She is all he has ever known since his parents died in a tragic accident when he was just a baby. Meanwhile, Marguerite has lived a colorful life, experiencing great loves and losses from turn-of-the-century Vermont to 1920s New Orleans and back to the island of her childhood to live out the rest of her days as a hermit. A word of caution: Marguerite’s history is harsh. The more I read, the more I wept for her. A third character is the island as it lives and breathes, influencing the townspeople as if it had a personality of its own. Its harsh winters and small-town gossip do well to feed a sense of unease.

Confessional: I had a little trouble with chronology. I’ve tried to make sense of it a few times. Because Inness-Brown moves the timeline around I am not sure of the order of events after Marguerite’s death. She and James Jack argue about a married woman, Faith, on a Sunday night. Faith is leaving the island Monday morning and Tante wants James to go to her. Because of Faith’s marriage James refuses and out of anger sleeps in a secondary cabin, away from Tante. In the morning he finds Tante dead. At first James Jack feels the need to report the death and goes to the sheriff’s office. He changes his mind after he’s sitting across from the sheriff. Tante would not want the law involved with her remains. Meanwhile, Faith had a flight to catch sometime on Monday but she would have to go the mainland first. So when does James Jack catch up to her and ask her for help with Tante?

Line I loved, “I wanted to interpret your look, to read that gaze, but I had not yet learned the language in which your eyes wrote their message” (p 41). Stunning.

Author fact: According to the back flap of Burning Marguerite Inness-Brown lives on an island in Lake Champlain, Vermont. I have to wonder if Grain Island is modeled after South Hero.

Book trivia: Burning Marguerite is Inness-Brown’s first novel.

Setlist: “It Was Just One of Those Things”, and “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You”.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “First Novels” (p 88) and again in the chapter called “New Orleans” (p 168).

Carnival

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Mackenzie, Compton. Carnival. D. Apple & Company, 1921.

Reason read: the Culzean Summer Fair happens in July in Scotland. A good portion of Carnival takes place in Glasgow.

The life of Jenny is a complex story with themes of identity, love, and sacrifice. Her journey is a verbose exploration of the human experience, filled with unexpected twists and turns. Throughout the narrative, Jenny’s internal struggles and external choices paint a vivid picture of a woman who is unafraid to defy societal norms and follow her heart, despite the challenges she faces. The exploration of her gender identity, her romantic entanglements, and her passion for ballet all contribute to a rich and multi-layered portrayal of her character. For lack of a true plot in Carnival Jenny navigates the tumultuous seas of love and self-discovery. Her interactions with the men in her life, Maurice, Fez and Zack, reveal the complexity of her emotions and the depths of her desires. Her willingness to make bold decisions, such as sacrificing her career and friendships for a life in the country, highlights the fierce and unyielding nature of her convictions. Jenny’s story is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the complexities of the heart. It does not come without a warning.

Lines I liked, “There is nothing to counterbalance the terrors of childhood in Hagworth Street” (p 30) and “It was glorious to think of someone who could make the worst headache insignificant and turn the most unsatisfactory morning to a perfect afternoon” (p 196).

Author fact: Compton Mackenzie’s full name was Sir Edward Montague Compton Mackenzie.

Book trivia: Carnival was interpreted on the big screen three different times. Of course I have not seen any version.

Music: “March of the Priests”, “Athalie”, Wagner, Brahms, Verdi, “Tannhauser”, “Lucky Lindy”, Chopin, Victoria Monks, “The Eton Boating Song”

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Tickle Your Funny Bone” (p 217). But, here is the thing. Carnival is only listed because it is one of the first ten books reprinted by Penguin. None of those ten books were necessarily known for their humor. Mackenzie, however, did write some funny stuff.

Year of Lesser

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Bergen, David. A Year of Lesser. Harper Collins Publishers, 1996.

Reason read: Canada Day is in July. A Year of Lesser takes place outside Winnipeg in a small town called Lesser.

Orbital relationships. At the center is Johnny. What is it about this man that has women lining up to act the fool for him? His wife, Charlene, is never on the same page about wanting or not wanting children. His mistress is already a mother with a teenaged son. Both slobber over him despite the fact he is a man-child who can’t decide between love and lust. He works for a feed store and runs a drop-in center for teens. It’s complicated.
No question Johnny worships women. He observes them through a detailed and hungry lens. He notices the soles of their feet, their popped-pregnant belly buttons, the curve of an upturned nose. Yet, Johnny is a God-fearing, born again and again, Bible reading religious man. It’s complicated.
I felt bad for Charlene. What is she supposed to do about a husband who admits he is having a child with another woman? The whole town knows about Johnny and Loraine. Then I felt bad for Loraine. Pregnant with Johnny’s child and yet, he stops coming around. Rumors like smoke from a fire start to swirl about Johnny and a teenaged girl. It’s complicated.

Detail I had trouble with: Johnny is trying to quit smoking. You don’t readily carry cigarettes if you are trying to quit. How then can Johnny so easily offer Loraine a smoke?

Author fact: Bergen has written a bunch and Nancy said he is one of her favorites, but I’m only reading The Year of Lesser for the Challenge.

Line I liked, “He’s trying to weigh time and desire” (p 7).

Playlist: Led Zeppelin, Peter Tosh, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and the Rankin Family,

Nancy said: Pearl said the author was a favorite of hers.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Canadian Fiction” (p 51).

Charms for the Easy Life

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Gibbons, Kaye. Charms for the Easy Life. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1993.

Reason read: Mary Lee Settle celebrates a birthday in the month of July. Nancy Pearl suggested Charms for the Easy Life be read with Settle’s memoir, Addie.

Three generations of southern women. The relationships between mother (Charlie Kate), daughter (Sophia), and granddaughter (Margaret) are tangled and complicated. Like all relationships, they are rich in drama, tough-love, grace, and unspoken courage. Complicated by pride and fierce independence. Only these are no ordinary women. Granddaughter Margaret is no exception. She assists her grandmother with unconventional medical practices on military patients and encourages her mother’s second-time-around love life. The three generations can read the same book and discuss and argue like best friends and yet, they can also carry dark secrets strategically kept from one another, hold on to old grudges like a mean snapping turtle, and parse out the silent treatment to one another like professionals. Strong without menfolk to provide for them, the Birch women support each other through everything. This is an age when grandmothers could orchestrate the love lives of their granddaughters. Wise beyond her years, Margaret listens to her grandmother’s advice. As an aside, my favorite was when Charlie Kate gave Margaret her easy-life charm, telling Margaret that it worked…depending on the definition of easy.
Confessional: I couldn’t help but be reminded of Yellow Raft in Blue Water by Michael Dorris.

As an aside, the method of quilling a pregnancy was a new one for me.

Favorite line, “She had said all that she needed to say, and so there were no secret longings, no secret wishes and desires that had never been spoken” (p 254).

Author fact: Gibbons wrote her first novel when she was in her twenties.

Book trivia: Charms for the Easy Life is Kaye Gibbons’ fourth book and other editions include “Christina’s World”, a painting by Andrew Wyeth, as the cover art.

Playlist: Benny Good man, Nelson Eddy’s “Sweet Mystery of Life”, Johnny Mercer’s “Deep in the Heart of Texas”, Hazel Scott’s “Minute Waltz”, Frank Sinatra, “White Christmas”, “I’ll Be Seeing You”, “You Made Me Love You”, Britten’s “A Ceremony of Carols”, Chopin’s Revolutionary Etude, Grieg’s E Minor Piano Sonata, Bach’s Minuet in G, Ravel’s Le Tom beau de Couperin, and Sarah Bernhardt.

Nancy said: Pearl was generously vague when describing why Charms for the Easy Life was paired with Addie. The multitude of complimentary themes was a joy to discover on my own.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Companion Reads” (p 62) and again in the chapter called “Mothers and Daughters” (p 159), and a third time in the chapter called “Southern Fiction” (p 222).

Easy Way Out

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McCauley, Stephen. The Easy Way Out. Simon & Schuster, 1992.

Reason read: McCauley celebrates a birthday in June and it’s Pride month. What better way to honor both occasions than by reading The Easy Way Out?

Patrick O’Neil has been called the anti-hero and I have to admit, when I read that I thought of Taylor Swift (I love that song…only Dermot Kennedy’s version). Patrick is not exactly the best lover to his partner, Arthur. He isn’t the best brother to Ryan and Tony either. He is an even worse travel agent. How he manages his relationships, both personal and professional, is a conundrum. In all honesty, I didn’t like any of the characters well, except Sharon. Everyone was someone who took the easy way out (hence the title of the book). Am I supposed to applaud Patrick for finally not compromising his feelings? The way he did it wasn’t admirable either.
As someone who took the easy way out because I thought I knew what I wanted, I have learned that life isn’t always lived in regret. I do have my moments of oops, but for the most part I do have my share of gratitude for the mistakes I’ve made and how it all turned out.

As an aside, did anyone else notice the multiple comments about global warning?

Lines I liked, “I sometimes worried that he might suddenly disappear, especially when I’d been spending a lot of time fantasizing about leaving him” (p 19) and “I was in that oddly euphoric state that accompanies fasting, sleep deprivation and natural disasters” (p 281).

Book trivia: I could easily see this as a movie.

Author fact: I have three MCauley books to read. Man of the House and Object of My Affection are next.

Setlist: “Ill Wind”, “Put the Blame on Mame”, “MoonSlide”, “The Shadow of Your Smile”, Richard Tauber, Ben Webster, Mozart, La Traviata, “Surrey with the Fringe on Top”, “Hello Dolly”, Uccini, and “La Vie en Rose”.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in two different chapters. First, in “Gay and Lesbian Fiction: Out of the Closet” (p 93) and again a few chapters later in “My Own Private DUI” (p 165).

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).

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).

The Odd Women

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Gissing, George. The Odd Women. Stein and Day, 1968.

Reason read: Read in honor of Mother’s Day.

Society is the name of the game in The Odd Women. Think Victorian and you have The Odd Women in a nutshell. It is all about the sociable attitude and the intelligent female society: women live in shame if they do not marry a man who has a sense of honor (and carries gloves and a walking stick). There is a subtle analysis of the institution of marriage.
As an aside, I found myself getting increasingly annoyed by Edmund Widdowson’s behavior when he would not allow Monica to see her friend Milly alone. By the time he consented to let her see her friend for just an hour I was seething. Edmund insists on them always being together and criticizes her friends. It reminded me of the classic behavior of an abuser: alienating one from their friends and family, always wanting to be together, the possessiveness that turns rageful (my word). Meanwhile, there is Everard Barfoot and Rhoda. Rhoda fears that marriage would interfere with the best parts of her life. All in all, I did not care for Gissing’s barely veiled attitudes towards women’s love of fashion and gossip.

Lines I liked, “If I could move your feelings, (p 29), and “Not a word reached her understanding” (p 30), and “I would go any distance to see you and speak with you for only a few minutes” (p 67). That last line, while incredibly romantic, is also very telling.

Author fact: George Gissing helped a prostitute while he held a teaching position. He was later fired for the act, but he married the lady of the night.

Book trivia: the introduction to The Odd Women was written by Frank Swinnerton.

Playlist: “The Blue Bells of Scotland” and Schubert.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Companion Reads” (p 62).