Becky's Books –

I rarely watch movies,  this might be the second movie I’ve watched this year and it’s 2 days from December.  Oh well.   I’m not impressed.    I watched because I think  I saw it back in 1986,  when it was released.  I was confusing it with the Dead Poet’s Society and although I still think I saw Seize the Day, I was obviously not impressed then and I hadn’t read the book. 

The movie was good for what it was.  But it wasn’t anywhere nearly what the book by Saul Bellow was. Robin Williams was excellent in his overly-dramatic role,   and the rest  of the cast was wonderful ((in my ignorant opinion). The movie even managed to catch a bit of the book’s lighthearted approach without which it would all descend into gloom and doom.  But I felt like I was being given a 90-minute version of a rather thought-provoking 4-hour book (a novella).  It felt condensed with a lot of the meaning left out and the obligatory addition o skin.

There have been movies I’ve wanted to see over the years,  Cloud Atlas for one.  But if this is any indication of what happens to books I enjoy,  I have to say I’m just as happy to skip them.  Movies which were originally intended to be movies are probably a LOT better unless you’re looking for a very picturesque rendition and a seriously cut version – like Pride and Prejudice. 

Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak is a favorite book and then I watched the movie.  Tragically pathetic. And Belizaire the Cajun is a favorite movie and it was never a book.  The Wanderers is another favorite and it only claims to be “based on” a book. It is kind of based on Richard Price’s first novel, but …    Finally,  Blade Runner is a brilliant novel by Philip K. Dick (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?)  and made into an entirely different brilliant movie by Ridley Scott.  I could  go on with a few more movies but like I said, I watch very few.  

See?  I do enjoy some movies but, based on my preferences,  I doubt I’ll watch or go to more.  I can’t imagine going to see any of those playing within 50-60 miles now.  

I read this for a group, sometimes like Bellow, but other times I’m not so hot on him.  I did see the movie which is based on this book and I remember liking it,  but not being blown away.  

On one level this is an amazing book,  I have no idea how it was received when it was published or how it was received by different age groups but it hit me just perfectly in 2018 at the age of 70.  LOL.   And it doesn’t appear to be stuck in the 1950s for setting.   The themes of what makes a man free and materially successful  apply to almost any time frame of American history.

*******
Seize the Day 
by Saul Bellow
1956  /  114 pages
read by Grover Gardner – 3h 47m
rating
(both read and listened) 
*******

Tommy Wilhelm is a 44-year old  failed actor turned salesman who is now unemployed as well as divorced and generally down on his luck.  He lives in a hotel in New York with his father with whom he has difficult relations. His mother passed away a long time prior.  

And poor Tommy/Wilkie is unhappy with just about everything including, and maybe especially,  himself.   I guess he’s depressed because the anger seems to be turned inward, but he complains about everything.  He’s a slob and self-centered to the extreme.  No one much cares for him unless they can use him.  

He has a lot of pride but in many ways he just isn’t as good as he’d like to be,  so he’s ashamed.  Basically, I think he needs to grow up and accept himself and his own part in his difficulties.  In a way I suppose it’s a coming-of-age story for a very late, or non-, bloomer.  

You can change your name but you will still be the same person. The singular pursuit of money, and buying into that American dream,  will warp a person.  

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/353599/seize-the-day-by-saul-bellow/9780142437612/readers-guide/

This was a freebie for platinum members at Audible.com and it’s an “Original” so it’s not a simple reading of the book of the same title; it is acknowledged to be an adaptation. .  I rarely read these but this sounded kind of interesting and it was,  in its own way, and after getting used to it.  The recording uses a main reader (Nick Offerman) as well as many voices like at a dinner party sometimes or in interviews at other times.  That takes some getting used to.

I’m familiar enough with Twain’s writings (I won’t list what I’ve read), but I’ve never read a biography.  And I’ve been to Hannibal Missouri,  to New Orleans,  all through Nevada and of course I’ve been all through San Francisco.  The book felt like learning a bit more about an old friend.  

*******
Twain’s Feast: Searching for America’s Lost Foods in the Footsteps of Samuel Clemens 
by (by Audible Originals and  based on the book by Andrew Beahrs
2010 /  338 pages
Read by Nick Offerman (and cast)/ 4h 27m
Rating:  8 / nonfiction  (history) 
*******  

 The early chapters and sections deal with prairie chickens and raccoons and Huckleberry Finn.  But  the book as a whole it’s mostly about Twain’s conversion from his origins as Sam Clemons to the larger-than-life persona of  Mark Twain,  giant of American literature.

His riverboat days are fascinating and I did read Life on the Mississippi long ago.   But some rather disturbing things about Twain and Native Americans in revealed Chapter 3 about the Nevada territory.  And then comes his San Francisco days and very interesting food,  like turtle soup in those days.  His American-ness just is what it is (or was what it was) and the book gets fascinating.  

And then there’s the real Mark Twain aka Samuel Clemens and his real life.  This is a pretty good recording when it gets down to it,  but it’s NOT the book.  It did get me interested in reading a good biography of Twain though.  

Overall I’d say don’t bother although parts are pretty good. It’s not what I expected at all,  but it was on sale and I’d enjoyed a couple of Finder’s books in the past.   This particular book is kind of humorous in an odd way. 

 The set-up is believable enough,  Michael Tanner,  a young coffee bean entrepreneur, gets his laptop mixed up with that of someone else while going through airline security.  Turns out the laptop he gets belongs to a US Senator and it inappropriately has highly confidential information on it.  

*******
The Switch
by Joseph Finder
2017 / 381 pages
read by Steven Kearny – 9h 55m
rating:   B  / crime 
*******

But then it gets weird and the original believability is completely undermined when .the Senator’s aid, Will Abbott,  gets paranoid about anyone finding out about his boss’  laxity.   And Tanner,  who has the Senator’s computer, tells a journalist friend rather who fills him with conspiracy theories.  Then there are the unsavory characters who murder for hire and the dark web where things can be hidden and found,  things get highly unlikely.  

The tale takes a more thriller-type tone when Tanner’s journalist friend dies suddenly and Tanner ends up in a hit-and-run accident in which he is the driver-runner.  Meanwhile Abbott tries to clear things up with Tanner via honesty but Tanner is too paranoid by now and the overly-ambitious Abbot is willing to do whatever it takes to protect his boss.  It gets complicated.And then things get worse.  

It is rather entertaining though.  The twists include a journey to the dark web and bit coin.   It’s also about how ambition can play heavily in what people decide they can/should do.  And how average good guys can,  with a bit of fear,  get sucked into some scary stuff.  It’s a bit over-the-top in terms of how people connect to the dark side, but it might be spot on about how we’re tracked.  

On sale and listening only  –  I’d read one by her prior and enjoyed it and I was ready for a good crime novel so … 

Yes,  this is good – not outstanding, but it’s fun and a worthy successor to Haper’s best-selling “The Dry”  of a couple years ago (link to my review on this site) 

*******
Force of Nature
by Jane Harper
2018/ 329 pages
read by Stephan Shanahan: 9h 3m
rating:  A- / crime 
*******

In this second Aaron Falk  adventure,  five women go on some kind of working retreat in the Australian bush and only four come back because one of them,  Alice, a whistle-blower on the company,  has gone missing “in the bush” of the primeval rainforests. 

 The men of the company have their camp a short ways away.  And there is a serial killer still at large even after 20 years and there was another missing woman in the area from several years prior.  Aaron Falk has been working with Alice to get the goods on the company and her only message to him was “Get the contracts”  until he heard the unclear and ambiguous words left on his message machine, 
“… hurt her.”  

So what we have is a missing woman possibly only lost or there could be criminal behavior involved as there is a motive and opportunity.  The suspects would be the other women in the camp, a couple of the men in the their camp as well as a possible serial killer or two thrown in for good measure.  lol 

The tension is good and builds and the plot is complex.  

Two things make  the narrative as a whole difficult to follow – at least when you’re listening.  First, the structure goes between the hunt for Alice with Falk and Carmen Cooper interviewing and doing their procedurals in the current time frame. Then there’s the actual building tension within the actual camping trip group which returned a few days prior and which shows what happened to Alice.  The camping sections are distinguished by a heading of  sorts which says “Day 2” or something.   But the switch back to Falk and company is not as clear, although maybe it is in print format.  

The other thing which makes it complex is the number of characters on the trip –  Alice is kind of mean and really tries to boss the group while Jill, whose family owns the firm, is the real boss of  this group  at work,  Meanwhile,  Breanna and  Beth have personal, dysfunctioal-type issues, especially Beth and Lauren is a very old friend of  Jill’s. 

And, while Alice is missing,  her  daughter Megan is at home and worried about her missing mother,  in the middle of some of her own serious problems and Falk gets involved in that, too.  I’ll be watching for her fourth book,  The Lost Man,  due out in February (not an Aaron Fawk book).  

Don’t let the simple language fool you,  this is quite a good book,  inspiring even, if you finish.  After I got through the first,  1/3 arguing with the author like I was, I quite enjoyed it.  In some ways Rosling’s thinking goes right along with Steven PInker’s  in his books,  The Better Angels of our Natures and Enlightenment Now.  (reviews on this site).  It might be more balanced than the Pinker books,  but it goes further in covering some difficult issues as well as providing solutions.  

So although it starts slow the book builds to dealing with how we can develop what Rosling calls “Factfulness” which includes specific critical thinking skills together with curiosity motivated, fact-based learning about the world while keeping the detrimental “instincts” out of the way or at least to a minimum.  And it gathers momentum all the way to the amazing last couple of  chapters. 

*******
Factfulness:  10 Reasons Why We’re Wrong About the World and Why Things Are Better Than You Think
by Hans Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund
read by Richard Harries – 8h 51m
Rating:   6   – nonfiction (social sciences)  
*******

The first third  feels like it’s the “for dummies” version,  but during Rosling’s mission in Mozambique in Chapter 5 it improves tremendously.   By this time I was starting to think in global terms and that was enough to push me through the book, albeit with some reservations at first,  but those were cleared up.   Of note, is that this was NOT necessarily written for the US audience – (although there are a few paragraphs about the US) and I think Rosling’s genuine global view makes a difference.  

Rosling, who passed away in 2017,  was an award-winning Swedish doctor  who had served in a lot of notable capacities and been involved in extra-ordinary projects. His efforts on behalf of sick and starving people in very poor countries are truly commendable.  
See:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Rosling

The bulk of the book is nicely organized (I appreciate this kind of thing) around various “instincts” humans have.  For instance there is “The Gap Instinct,” “The Fear Instinct,”  “The Destiny Instinct” and others, ten of them in all bookended by other material.  And included in these chapters are anecdotes and a “Factfulness” section which is comprised of measures for control of that instinct.  

He tries to answer the question,  “Why are we so negative?”  and teach us how to deal with our runaway instincts.   I was very skeptical for almost half the book but then he got into controls and qualifying facors and what it amounts to is solutions. 

I do understand the situation of the US.  First,  historically we have been  US-centric – the world revolves around us and we tend to know precious little about the rest of the planet.  The US is not the only country which has changed.  

Around the world there has been tremendous progress since 1970s while we have actually stagnated with some progress in some areas but not like it was in the 1950s.  In fact, where we truly boomed for the whole century between 1870 and 1970 it was the result of a several fortuitous circum-stances. 

 It’s hard to be in the position of faded glory.  To many Americans it feels like we’re actually going backwards,  but we’re not.  We’re just progressing much more slowly while the world is catching up and possibly pushing ahead in many areas and that’s been rather quickly.  In light of what’s going on here, it makes taking Rosling’s guardedly optimistic world view rather difficult.  (See Robert Gordon’s fabulous “The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War“ for more. (The link is to my review on this site.) 

It’s been awhile since I read a good old political/economics book and because this was on sale and recommended I got it,  both  read and listened and was very pleased.  It’s great if your interests run along these lines – same information basically but with a different twist and very relevant to our own times.

Sitaraman is a legal scholar at Vanderbilt University and he writes very well    explaining clearly and yet interestingly.  

*******
The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution:  Why Economic Inequality Threatens Our Republic
by Ganesh Sitaraman 
2017 / 433 pages
read by MacLeod Andrews –  12h 24m
Rating:  9 / history-economics
(both read and listened) 
*******

Starting with a strong Introduction the book is organized into Parts, Chapters and Sections which help to break up the reading into digestible chunks. And at the outset of each Part there is a short introduction to what its two Chapters will cover.   I’ve come across this kind of organization before and I really appreciate it.  Down to the paragraphs it’s structured and written using the methods I used studying and writing history in college.  The result is a book which sticks to the point and progresses from one point to the next.  Not  only that,  the numerous Source Notes seem thorough and valuable.   (Aaaaahhhhh…..) 

Part One deals with history,  back to the Greeks and their ideas, but more about the Romans and their system of dealing with the divide between rich and poor and constitution.  Then comes the way the US is set up and how the founders seem to know in fair depth what they were doing. The fear of aristocracy combined with the open land space available after the War of Independence played a huge part in the writing of the Constitution.  It was expected that the US agrarian ways would continue so there would be a huge and stable middle class for the decades to come.  

Part Two concerns the US and it’s growing and then shrinking middle class from the era of post-Civil War feudalism in the south to probably 2015,  including the industrial revolution and the Gilded Age,  WWII, the Civil Rights era and up to today’s polarization.  And then we have Donald Trump in the last 30 pages (out of 300 narrative pages), but it’s not about him or his policies specifically, the subject is much greater than that.   Rather,  Sitaraman includes a number of methods which work toward fixing the imbalance and restoring a Republic.  Kudos.  

 It’s an excellent book if you’re interested in economics and government policy.  

Review:
 https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/03/middle-class-constitution/519909/

Excellent book!  Be warned that it’s slow,  but I knew that beforehand and settled in for long weekend read.  Tana French is a favorite crime writer and Paul Nugent is a new-to-me narrator who turned out to be great.   I was rewarded handsomely.  

This book is different from French’s prior novels, though.  The six books in The Dublin Murder Squad series are all police procedurals,  a series of sorts, but with a different lead character in each book.    The Witch Elm is set in and around Dublin and involves a murder, hence the Murder Squad (probably) does make an appearance,  but the book is from the point of view of a suspect.  

*******
The Witch Elm
by Tana French
2018 / 526 pages
read by Paul Nugent – 22h 7m
rating:  A++ / crime
*******

Toby is a young man, in his late 20s or early 30s, who works for an art gallery, has a number of friends, a close family and a fiancé who loves him dearly.   He’s generally a happy man who admits to sometimes using his innate charm to get what he wants.  Very engaging but not entirely trustworthy.  (One does alway suspect unreliable narrators in 1st person narratives.) 

One day he wanders into aiding a crime related to his job.  He’s gets in trouble there, but keeps is job.  Then he is robbed and left for dead at his apartment. He lands in the hospital and is incapacitated for several months. This event leads to some dealings with the police and his own idea that the job stupidity led to the burglary-assault. . Whatever,  the point is he’s missing some mental functions and he knows it.  

At six months into his recovery his beloved single Uncle Hugo  needs Toby to assist him with end-of life management as Hugo has brain cancer. This is something Toby can do.  Ivy House is not far away and it’s the very large home at which he and his cousins,  Susanna and Leon, have spent many happy days all through their youths and the threesome continues to enjoy the place and its lovely setting.  

At a weekend get-together Susanna’s children are playing in the yard and the young boy starts screaming.  While playing treasure hunt he’s found a human skull in the big old tree.  This finding brings the police.  

As it turns out the skull belonged to a young man who was a friend of Toby’s from high school days, about 10 years prior,  who had gone missing, left a suicide note and been presumed dead although no body was ever found.  Toby can’t remember much and when the murder squad starts investigating this incident this creates some difficulties.  

And the murder investigation complicates every facet of Tony’s life so the tension mounts because even he doesn’t really know if he committed the murder or not.  He thinks not.  He thinks someone else did it,  but with only a bit of his memory available,  he doesn’t really know.    

French never tells a tale quickly and she certainly takes her time with this one, carefully developing characters and setting as she slowly and expertly builds the tension.  Very enjoyable.  

First of all,  I hate this new editor business for several reasons.  (Just wanted to make that clear up front.) 

Those who know me know I read the books of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series as they come out.  I’ve done this since the first book in 1999. The Colors of All the Cattleis the 19th in the series. 

The Colors of All the Cattle
by Alexander McCall Smith
2018 / 240 pages
read by  Lisette Lecat  – 9h 36m
rating 9 (because I’m a fan)
*******

As usual the Detective Agency of Precious Ramotswe has several balls in the air at once. She has consented to run for council because her friend is very persuasive and also because a big developer wants to do something rather outlandish with the property and it’s located next to a cemetery. Running against her wants to do something rather outlandish with the property and it’s located next to a cemetery. Running against her is Violet Supoto, a villainous character who is a regular in the series.  

Meanwhile,  she’s working on a hit-and-run case in which Charlie, the apprentice detective in her office, follows some leads he thinks up and gets in some troubles there.   But Charlie has his own life issues now – a girlfriend, of sorts.  

Of course  Mma, the title used for all women, Grace Makutsi has her own issues related to the hotel and campaign – why are women getting involved in men’s business her husband wants to know?

All in all it’s a very worthy addition to the series and I enjoyed myself reading it.  

Out of all the novels and stories I’ve read by David Mitchell my favorites are Cloud Atlasand The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.  Sad to say,  I seem to get less enjoyment from the newer works, so it’s a real treat to read Mitchell’s first published novel. I can see the almost direct  progression from this first novel to the wonderment he produced with my favorites.

David Mitchell seems to have listened to his own drummer as he went from these slightly mystical novels which are comprised of  loosely connected episodes to the more mystically mysterious, but also more somewhat interwoven novels.  From Ghostwritten to Cloud Atlas and then on to Slade House it’s kind of like the very long and progressively more imaginative development of a theme – or an oeuvre.

*******
Ghostwritten
by David Mitchell
1999 / 427 pages
read by William Rycroft – 15h 9m
rating: 7.5 / fiction 
(both read and listened)
*******

Ghostwritten is comprised of ten interwoven episodes which take place all over the world with the title of the story indicating where in the world.’

In the second story of Ghostwritten,  “Tokyo,” Haruki Murakami is mentioned as a translator of F. Scott Fitzgerald. This is true.  And this is the story about the young jazz aficionado who sells CDs. (Murakami and Mitchell are both jazz enthusiasts.)

The stories cross the globe with Asia being kind of central.  They are linked by circumstance, theme and a couple of minor characters,  but there isn’t quite enough connection to call them interwoven.  The ending however completes that connection.

Most of the stories include a ghost or otherworldly types of being and a huge theme is the question of whether life is determined by fate or chance.  The effect is mysterious but the tone is generally humorous.

“Holy Mountain” takes place in China and concerns one woman’s difficult life over the course of decades. I think that’s my favorite story.  It’s brilliant.

The rest of the stories are of varying interest with the better ones toward the end.  “Clear Island” and “Night Train”  are loaded with suspense and “Underground” winds everything up and back into the first chapter.  This makes it more novel-like rather than simply linked stories.

http://nymag.com/nymetro/arts/books/reviews/3773/

What a waste of time and paper! Why? First, Cozzens never uses a lone, single word when a whole convoluted paragraph full of them can be had. This book is as dense as the London fog near the coal burning plant in 1952 which actually created a killer smog. And that’s a word which suits the narrative nicely – a smog of words which close to killed my interest.

Second, Cozzen’s apparent attitude toward women, Catholics,  Jews,  Blacks and other minorities, is abominable to my 21st century sensibilities and abhorrent to most folks in this day and age.  I’m sure some of the ideas were totally acceptable in the 1950s, many were social  assumptions. Because the book was billed as being very realistic,  I suspect the depiction of small town American values is accurate.  I was in my childhood so yes,  I was kind of raised with a lot of this,  although I never heard anything bad about Jews or Blacks.  My grandmother hated the Catholics and everyone I knew expected women to know and accept their place.  We were raised to be good and virtuous wives and mothers. Period.

*******
By Love Possessed
by James Gould Cozzens 
1957 / 570 pages
rating:  3  (classic and out of print)
(read in paperback from library) 
*******

So why did I continue reading? I don’t know all the reasons.  There were at least a couple of fairly interesting plot threads going and I was curious as to how they would come out.  And the major (male) characters were pretty nicely developed and likable.  But had it not been a reading group selection I would never have picked it up (it’s been long out of print) much less finished it.  As it was, I saw the book as a bit of a challenge.  And I finished.

In the service of some mid-20th century realism,  Cozzens has created a 570-page tedium of details piled one atop the other, apparently trying to get at the exact nature of the honorable WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) male experience during a two+ day period in the life of a character named Arthur Winner.  Henry James was a master of this type of thing,  but Cozzens is no James at all – in any way.   Cozzens seems to have been trying out the style on the mid-20th century scene in  the US and maybe it worked in 1957,  but in 2018 it’s truly cumbersome and almost unreadable.

The main plots themselves evolve over a 2-day period, with flashbacks covering Arthur’s whole life. Those backstories end at about half-way through and we get philosophy-like treatises on religion and life or legal issues which pad the plot lines.

The point most of the rave reviews made at the time was that the book upholds traditional establishment values when they seemed to be being attacked.  These were values like honesty, virtue, Protestantism, marriage and children with hard-working well-educated guys from the right families working hard and creating wealth.  Women were needed for sex, babies and homemaking,  but in general they needed to be directed and cared for.  Sex was for the marriage bed only and women who looked like they were interested in that at all were thusly judged.  Homosexuality was almost unheard of and beyond scandalous. It was vile and the work of the devil.  Blacks also were fine –  if they “knew their place.”   Meanwhile, well-educated, white, Protestant males, especially successful bankers, lawyers and the clergy,  were generally (!) caring souls with the best interests of their clients and families at heart, although there might be a rascal in the bunch,  maybe a politician or a Catholic. Catholics and Jews were simply “other” and therefore suspicious.

Those were the values but sometimes the fine, upstanding males slipped up in some minor way.  That’s the basis of most of the plot threads. So the main males cover for each other as necessary, by simply keeping quiet.

The main theme of the novel concerns accidental or misguided actions on the part of good people which results in harm to others, or may result in harm to others in the future, or are simply immoral for some reason.  A young man is enticed into having very inappropriate sex;  in the distant past, a much older man, now losing memory, helped his unlucky friends by embezzling from the account of a widowed mother and friend who now needs the money;  a rather dizzy woman considers converting from Catholicism; and the problems of the effeminate bell ringer at the church. Arthur Winner, our wise hero with a married woman issue from his own past, advises them all.

All that said, By Love Possessed was a huge best-seller and garnered widespread acclaim.  It’s a classic now and I can only view it as such, a bird’s-eye view into the times of the 1950s, small-town USA.

I read the following review after I wrote my own and was pleased to find a scathing critique validating my own views (even down to Henry James).  At the time this review set off quite a controversy.  https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/by-cozzens-possesseda-review-of-reviews/

I read this about a month ago but  I very much enjoyed it and in order to remember it well enough to participate in a discussion I decided to reread it.    Yes,  it was definitely worth it because where I kind of glossed over the animal behavior parts the first time,  this time it became a focus. I’m not surprised because my usual interests are more oriented toward law, government and policy analysis but animal behavior is fascinating.

*******
American Wolf: A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West 
by Nate Blakeslee
2017/ 290 pages
read by Mark Bramhall – 9h 31m
rating:  9  –  natural history 
(read and listened)
*******

That said,  I won’t raise my rating because it was generous last time and this time it’s very close to right on.

Blakeslee is obviously a pro-wolfer but he tries to keep that to himself as he gets some basic information from the man he calls Steven Turnbull.  I think this helps overcome the fact that he and  his sources humanize the wolves in so many ways throughout the book. There are few “lone wolves” in the book and those are sad, lost creatures.  Rather for the most part, the wolves live in packs which are described as families. They are empathetic creatures and their watchers truly love them.  And the reader gets caught up in those descriptions and actions as she reads.

I did have a small problem with the amount of violence the wolves do to the elk and other prey with the watchers rooting them on admiring. But man is a predator too., Perhaps Turnbull is a bit more honest.

I’d like to be a 100% wolf lover but there’s a part of me that says wait a minute, those rancher families have been there, free of wolves, for over 100 years.  Now the forest service decides it wants the wolves back.  Is threatening the livelihoods of honest and hard working people a great idea?   I hope some viable compromise can be worked out.

I got this expecting some kind of easy-breezy memoir, I guess. Big WRONG-O! It’s the poignant yet sometimes tension-filled and occasionally exciting true tale of a man in search of his father, his father’s ghost, his family, his country,  his life. It’s an amazing book and has the 2017 Pulitzer in Biography/Autobiography to show for itself.  (I didn’t know that when I got it on a kind of between-book whim.

But still,  overall,  it’s not really for me because it’s written so beautifully there seems to be a disconnect between the son’s anguish and his prose.  It’s like obsessive dreaming about a time long past hoping for a different ending.  Hoping for emotional closure where there might never be one.  And with the author reading it I’m afraid it all turns into a kind of soggy sad tale.

*******
The Return:  Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between

by Hisham Matar

2017/ 245  pages
read by Hisham Matar 8h 51m
rating:  8  / memoir

(both read and listened)
****

I have to thank Lisa over at AnzLit for highly recommending this book I may never otherwise have heard of.  But I’ve known her for a long time and we share a love of Australian Lit like Patrick  White, Tim Winton, Shirley Hazard,  Kim Scott and others,  so I completely trusted her when she raved about this one, actually comparing it favorably with Dead Man Dance (my review on this site) by Kim Scott!

*******
Shell
by Kristina Olsson (Australia)
2018 / 272 pages
read by Melle Stewart – 10h 47m
rating: 8.75 / contemporary  fiction   
(both read and listened)
*******

I Googled for information I knew from blurbs would be relevant before I even started reading, things maybe Australians would know that I don’t,  like about the Sydney Oprah House.  

The story opens with a very short chapter which works as a kind of prologue set in November, 1960 (5 years before the story opens) when Paul Robeson sang to the construction workers of the Sydney Opera Theater while they ate their lunch.  This is true and impressively told – see:  The Austrailian 

In this tiny opening chapter, the reader is also treated to some truly outstanding prose from Olsson setting very high standards for the literary quality as well as the emotional tone of the book as a whole.

The level of word-smithery is a huge draw here lending itself to the ideas of the Opera House architecture with the airy and watery feeling Olsson manages to achieve along with the strong sense of poignancy other reviewers have noted.  .

And there are nicely drawn characters as well,  with quite a lot of heartache in those days of the Vietnam war draft, separations and deaths, while Australia didn’t know if it wanted to reach for greatness or not what with the difficulties and expense of the Opera House.

Pearl Keogh is a motherless news reporter with two younger brothers who were lost to the “system” and grew up to get involved in the War in Vietnam.  The war is something to which Pearl herself is deeply opposed.  And she gets a double whammy because in her mother’s absence, she had been a young surrogate mother for them and that family all fell completely apart  when she deserted them, as well.   So now, a decade after the fact, with the boys eligible. or nearly so, for the newly established draft, she searches for them.

The other main character is Axel Lundquist, a young , Swedish glass artist in love with the idea of the developing Sydney Opera House on which he works making a sculpture. Axel misses his widowed mother but he idolizes the Danish architect Jørn Utzon as a kind of father-figure, a substitute for the one he lost to suicide. Axel lives in his head a lot just feeling and smelling and touching the air and water and sunlight and rain.

Alex and Pearl are both looking for their own identity while grieving their losses and scared for their own private reasons  They find each other (of course) and that story goes on in its own way.  Love has many aspects here.

The themes are interwoven,  reflected off each other one might say, as family, love, loss, nature, the sensitivities of the arts, loyalty,  neutrality in war vs neutrality in injustice,  the price paid by everyone.

I really had no idea that Australia was as profoundly impacted by the War in Vietnam as it was.  No wonder, seriously (!),  Lisa was affected as she was.  I’m not sure I could stand to read a book this intimate about the anti-war effort in the US as it unfolded here.  I was part of that.  But I went into the book thinking it would be historical fiction about the Sydney Opera House and it’s really so much more than that. It makes me wonder how much the stupidity and arrogance  (the very lightest words I can think of) of the US affected people around the world.

Personally,  I was unable to read any books about the Vietnam War for many years (decades) but then I started with Tim OBrien’s The Things They Carried in 2002 or so and went on to Fire in the Lake by Frances FitzGerald (nonfiction).  Those were before I started this blog.  More recently I’ve read Matterhorn, by Karl Marlantes. as a group read and The Sympathizer (a truly excellent book!).  Finally this year I read,  the doorstop novel 4 3 2 1 by Paul Auster.  There have been others of course where the war was touched on but not central. (links to my reviews on this site)

And Shell is very similar in some ways to All the Light We Cannot See  (Anthony Duerr) as well as The Flamethowers (Rachel Kushner)  as has been observed,  but there are many novels

I think none of them hit the emotional level of Olssen book and had this been set in the US with a foreign artist working on a Martin Luther King statue or something – I would have been overwhelmed.   From the New York Times “Profile” article  of October 26, 2018:

“Ms. Olsson’s writing, Ms. Wyndham (a literary editor) said, ‘is like a prism that refracts dazzling images of the city, its politics and people, light and water and weather.’”

Exactly.

Finished this a few days ago and didn’t get the review up here.  Bottom line up here at the top?  I’d say read the whole book because the most important and powerful parts are in the final chapters and the Epilogue but they made the rating what it is. And don’t just flip back to the end to read them – the whole story makes the impact.  I was totally wowed by the ending and picked it back up to check some details and then I expect I’ll be rereading some sections come November (when it comes up for discussion in the e Allnonfiction reading group  where I think I may have nominated it because it’s an interesting subject with a lot of controversial aspects.   (Actually, it was the subtitle which grabbed my attention. – blush & chuckle)

Fwiw,  I both listened and read in Audible and Kindle formats.  I wanted photos and maps and maybe sources plus the ability to read single paragraphs without having to hunt for 20 minutes.  I was totally pleased with the experience especially for the source notes which are exceptional.

*******
American Wolf: A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West 
by Nate Blakeslee
2017/ 290 pages
read by Mark Bramhall – 9h 31m
rating:  9  –  natural history 
(read and listened)
******* 

I’m not usually a reader of books about animals, fiction or non-, but  sometimes … studies of animal behavior can be fascinating.  This one was kind of mediocre about that part – it was the human story playing out next to it that captured my attention.   The parts about the wolves themselves as they lived and traveled and hunted got quite confusing due to the names like “31,” or ”

There are some humans in the tale who really feature more than others  – there’s Rick McIntyre, and Laurie Lyman – the obsessive wolf watchers,  McIntyre features prominently but there are many whole chapters which focus on the packs of wolves which roam the Yellowstone area.  And there’s “Steven Turnbull” the man who shot O-Six.

Blakeslee takes the reader through several generations and families (packs) of wolves in the Lamar Valley located in the northeastern corner of Yellowstone National Park.  Using the notes of the real wolf-watchers,  Laurie and Rick, he reconstructs the lives of these animals –  way more empathetic and human-like qualities than I ever really thought although having read about this prior I wasn’t surprised.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_wolves_in_Yellowstone

He also takes us to a couple of court sessions and legislative matters dealing with the issue of wolves as  “endangered species,” as well as re-introduction programs and that whole legislative tangle.

Although I’m a serious environmentalist,  I’m not really all that opposed to wolf hunts when they kill the animals the locals are raising for food.  I don’t like big-gun wolf hunting for sport at all and not even limited unless there really are too many for the immediate area to sustain.   I understand there are a lot of very complex ways an environment works,  but sometimes it gets out of balance and one species or another takes over.  We have to live with realities – not  what “should” or “should not” be happening.

Although there are some great chapters in the book with wild animal doings or legal shenanigans,  nothing beats “Chapter 12:  A Good Day in the Park”  with its tension and tragedy and aftermath.  That one chapter makes the whole book worth it – both formats- so the Epilogue is like a huge surprise wonderment.

https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/nature/wolves.htm
This is a fabulous site – I found it by Googling ” how many wolves in Yellowstone 2018?”   Came up with the National Park Service report.    There are other good videos online including one about O-Six,  the wolf famous for her beauty and leadership was shot by a hunter.

Yellowstone site:
https://www.yellowstonenationalparklodges.com/connect/yellowstone-hot-spot/the-call-of-the-wild/

I bought both the Audible and the Kindle versions because I wanted the maps and sources and I just generally get a lot more out of a book when I do that.  I see how names are spelled,  I can reread paragraphs quickly and easily,  I can listen along and if I lose my place or get a bit mixed I can catch up or read again in the Kindle.  I don’t bother with crime books (they’re often better on Audible anyway) but it’s quite enjoyable on a lot of other books,  literary or nonfiction.

Lucky for me someone in one of my groups nominated this and I seconded it although I’d never heard of it before.  I like literature from foreign countries, especially translated fiction, because it’s more likely to expand my cultural horizons with new thoughts and ideas of all kinds from setting and historical points of view to cultural ways and philosophical underpinnings.

And in some ways it was the perfect story for Halloween – short, strange and with a bit of a  spooky.

*******
The Invisibility Cloak
by Ge Fei /  translated by Canaan Morse
2016 (English)/ 144 pages
Rating:  9 / contemp Chinese fiction
*******
The Invisibility Cloak did all of this and more because it’s light and surreal in its own way.  The author has been called a leading writer of “experimental fiction.”  This is possibly due to the abundance of trade names and foreign countries and perhaps the way coincidence and superstition play into the whole.   I need to point out here that it’s really quite funny in its own subtle way.  .

Our first-person narrator, named only in the last few pages as Mr Cui.  is a lowly and middle-aged but highly skilled audio technician.  He helps his clients get the best sound possible for their money and their music.  He’s divorced and childless with financial and personal problems, your common contemporary urban working man/laborer.

The audio systems, their components and the other materials he works with come from all over the world as does the music, both modern and historic.  His fairly rich friend Jiang Songping and wife enable our hero’s business to struggle along by having Sonping’s CD music played on Ciui’s best system when they have parties for their rich friends and family. The guests then place expensive orders.   Our hero meets a couple of very strange and possibly dangerous people this way.

He also has family problems.  His father died disappointed in his own life/career and his mother died a few years later.  Now his sister,  her possibly abusive husband and our hero live in the same small place, his sister’s,  in a Beijing neighborhood (hutong) This was the place of their youth and our hero has memories.

The narrator sketches out his life including  the terror of the 1976 earthquakes. I think there might be some drugs around at one point, but only because of a single possible mention.

One day he meets a new client, a lead from Songping, who is stranger than usual and comes with a warning.  There is so much in this book it’s hard to believe it’s only 144 pages.

The best part about this book is the setting – it’s totally contemporary and yet very Chinese with capitalism,  of the Party variety, in full swing right alongside the superstitions of the old people and traditional marriage requirements. Wonderful.

http://quarterlyconversation.com/the-invisibility-cloak-by-ge-fei

Ahhhh… a good old fashioned who-done-it in the traditional style by a master,  one of Dick Francis’  last novels.  I just picked it up on a whim seeing as what I’d tentatively planned to read either wasn’t quite on the market yet or had received less-than-stellar reviews.   I won.  🙂

*******
To the Hilt
by Dick Francis
1996 / 351 pages
read by Simon Prebble
rating:   A / mystery (who done it)
******

This is a nice slow-moving mystery in which no one dies until about half-way through. But the set-up involves Alexander Kinloch, our protagonist and an artist who happily lives in Scotland near his uncle, an earl.

His mother, widowed and remarried some years prior.  Her husband is the owner of a prosperous brewery,  or it was until it’s found out that someone has been skimming some money,  embezzling,  or something. The long-term controller is missing.  This probably set off the heart attack.

Mom pleads for Alexander to come and help, but before he leaves he is attacked in his little place in Scotland by four thugs who harangue him rather cryptically,  “Where is it?”

When he gets to England he finds things in disarray and his step-sister and her husband are deeply suspicious of his presence.   He’s not getting well,  he knows something about the state of things and he wants Andrew Kinloch to sort it out. The will and its codicils are of paramount importance.

Horses are included,  this is Dick Francis of course,  but not a mainstay of the plot.  Francis was a jockey until he was injured and took to writing crime novels and a hallmark of the whole series is the racing  theme.

It’s a good book to start Dick Francis with.  I’ve read his books on and off for many years.  Never a poor one and they’re not in any particular order.