Becky's Books –

I’d been eye-balling this book and then voila – it was selected as the discussion read at All-nonfiction Group!   Okay – so I looked forward to it – I don’t usually read the group selections until a couple weeks prior to the discussions because I tend to forget details and some of my excitement gets lost.  It was worth the wait.

I’ve read some philosophy but not really very much outside of the excerpts for a 101 class.  I’ve read more books “about” philosophy and philosophers,  biographies,  histories,  etc. than the writings of the actual philosophers.   So I come to this little tome with some background but nothing substantial.   I did fall in love with Jean-Paul Sartre and existentialism,  at least what I read in popular media,  back in high school – 1965-66?  –  I suppose that helps a bit.

*******
At the Existentialist Cafe:  Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails
by Sarah Bakewell 2016
2016 / 328 pages  (Kindle)
rating:  10  / – history- biography- philosophy
*******

This is  not a book about Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir alone – the main starting place is Edmund Husserl the philosopher who worked on something called phenomenology – the philosophy of phenomenon –   experiences and consciousness or how we perceive experiences (apricot cocktails for instance).  I’d heard of Husserl,  but was completely ignorant of his actual ideas.  (See The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbury for all of my prior knowledge  – lol – but I read it prior to this blog).

Bakewell’s book also addresses other existentialists, or thinkers closely related to them,  of the day,  Martin Heidegger,  Albert Camus, Maurice Merleau-Ponty,  Raymond Aron,  Richard Wright,  Hannah Arendt,  Karl Jaspers,  Arthur Koestler,  Václav Havel,  Iris Murdoch and more.   Although I have it from good sources that the philosophy is well done,  it’s mostly a history and biographies as they relate to the philosophy.   Bottom line –  it’s fascinating.

With each philosopher Bakewell seems to take a compassionate,  but not terribly sympathetic,  view.  There is no heroizing or demonization of anyone –  not even Beauvoir or Heidegger.  As much as she can,  she’s looking at these people in their own environment.  She admits she’s most drawn to Merleau-Ponty,  but very much admires Sartre and Beauvoir.   She says she’s not drawn to Heidegger at all, but she could have fooled me because I was very drawn to her description and analysis – (Yes,  he was a mean little person,  but Iris Murdoch liked him.)

One of the important aspects of phenomenology and existentialism is the connection between Being,  Experience,  Freedom and Contingency.   Contingency adds the context of environment – and the way Bakewell presents the material is very,  very much in keeping with that idea.   These philosophers did not just think up their ideas in a vacuum – they were intimately affected by their own very real world including Nazi Germany,  World Wars I and II,  the atomic bomb and the Cold War.   And they and their thinking were affected by each other.   They were human beings living in a very complex world.   They each had experiences which changed them.

Bakewell writes clearly and is able to explain complex ideas in a very entertaining way.  She gives life and humor to what could be a very tedious subject (even if I am a history buff).  I read slowly to really be immersed and besides,   I didn’t want the book to end. Also,  I am reading in my own little “Heideggerian forest” –    (go read At the Existentialist Cafe to see what I mean).

Finally,  the cafe imagery fits nicely – the history is done wonderfully well and I see the phenomenology in all of it.  I felt it.   I experienced the read.   🙂    (High praise.)

I listened to this years ago – one of my first Audio books –  and I was amazed.  So I was more than willing to read it again when it came up as a selection in the Modern Fictionreading group.  It really is a modern classic.

*******
The Keepers of the House
by Shirley Ann Grau
1964 / 320 pages
read by Anna Fields  9h 17m
rating:  9  /  classic US 
*******

Abigail Howland has lived in her grandfather’s rural Alabama house for a long time.  Her mother was born and raised there and returned after a time in England.  And her grandfather lived there –  in fact,  there were a couple generations of Howlands who lived there prior to that.   It’s an old,  rich,  well-established family.

But there are other children who are Abigail’s half-aunts and uncles.  Children of her grandfather and his “freejack,”*  long term housekeeper, Margaret.      The town knew,  but nobody talked about it.

The tale follows these characters as they live through the Civil War period to the very early 1960s just prior to the days of the active Civil Rights movement.  Each of these characters three has sections devoted to their point of view.

It seems slow at times,  but it builds to a somewhat tricky ending with the interracial characters in a land of bigotry.   But the major characters are so carefully well drawn and the ambiance of the setting so delicate it’s totally worth the wait,  the slow building of tension which seems to explode at the end.

This was written in 1964 – the same era as To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee/1960 ) and perhaps more like Go Set a Watchman,  but some time after some of Faulkner’s best works where race is a motif and it shows.  –  There is a haunted feeling to Southern Gothic,  a feeling of lush magic and evil and the ghosts of slaves – it’s in The Keepers of the House,  too.

It took awhile for me to see that the “honesty”  the reviews talk about is there – especially for the era?   And it gets spectacularly racist by today’s standards-  it feels odd that the country once felt like that,  did those things –  but I lived through it albeit in the North.

What about this book gave it the Pulitzer Prize for Lit?     It is very nicely written and definitely an American story –  still (spoiler) don’t look for a happy ending.

* “Freejack” was the term given to black men who were granted their freedom upon discharge from the the 1812-1815 War against the British. Their freedom was given as compensation for having served the United States under the command of Andrew Jackson. Large groups of freejacks tended to keep to themselves, resulting in the founding of the area known as New Church.

http://thepulitzerblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/entry-23-keepers-of-house-by-shirley.html

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1964/06/25/good-housekeeping/

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

The hero is corrupt – specifically,  a New York City detective sergeant has gone bad -actually,  this is basically a really good cop who has gone very bad.  Winslow tells us the story of his fall and it’s gritty – very gritty –  as well as a page-turner.

I’ve been a fan of Winslow for years and read several of his early novels,  but was mesmerized by The Power of the Dog  and The Cartel.   I was expecting a lot from The Force and it was almost there.

*******
The Force
by Don Winslow
2017 / 480 pages (Kindle) 
read by Dion Graham 13h 26m
rating A+   –   Crime
*******

Denny Malone is a 3rd generation police officer  in New York City.  He thinks of himself as a good cop and he loves his family,  the city,  and  maybe most of all,  the elite Special Task Force which he heads.  But why do only the bad guys make money,  the stuff he and so many other officers need for their families.   He and the others o the force see it every day.  He and the force have opportunities in one form or another almost every day.

“How do you cross the line? Step by step.” 

The book opens with Denny in jail and then we’re taken back to how it all happened.  It’s very fast -paced,  tension filled and,  as I said before,  gritty.  The desire for money,  legal or not,  is pervasive among the police, attorneys,  judges and others.  It starts out with the  sellers of heroin but spreads like an addiction.   Denny and “the force”  got deeply involved.

The story is told almost entirely from Denny’s point of view – almost to the point of stream of consciousness at times.  It occasionally gets a bit much to have him going on and on about the streets and his history but not often and it rarely interrupts the suspense.   Denny is wonderfully well drawn but the other characters are almost sketches.

The tension is what makes the book.  We know Denny is in jail from the prologue – the main story is how he got there –  who took him down,  what for,  who else got hurt,  etc.  And as the plot gets more complicated with more characters involved,  the suspense is ratcheted up.  What will Denny eventually do –  where it the bottom?  What motivates good cops going bad is the main idea/theme I suppose.  It works.

I enjoyed The Cartel much more.   It was more creative and the writing and story were better.   The Force seems like it’s been done before in some way,  the focus on violence and corruption in the NYPD seems almost gratuitous.

That said,  I’ll be waiting for Winslow’s next book – he is very prolific.

I’ve read a couple books by Dunant over the last few years ago and have not been impressed.   The prior books were “Sacred Hearts” and “Blood and Beauty”,   Dunant’s 1st book in this series about the Borgias.   Nevertheless, several members of one of my reading groups adore her work and  I succumbed.

*******
In the Name of the Family
by Sarah Dunant
2016 / 480 pages
read by Nicholas Boulton 14h 11m
Rating:  7.5 /  historical fiction 
(sequel to Blood and Beauty) 
*******

I generally enjoy historical fiction,  but there are some highly regarded novels which can grate on me and I’m at a loss to know why.  I have a suspicion they have too much historical information which is too closely intertwined with the fictional elements.

In my opinion,  it would be a good idea to have some background in the story of the Borgia family prior to reading the book.   Blood and Beauty is a good start but unless you read the books back-to-back it’s probably not enough and even then,  In the Name of the Family goes on through the births and deaths of many of the major characters.

Following the daily doings of the Borgia family is one thing,  but making up possible events and dialogue and feelings to accompany the history is different for me because I start wondering about sources – letters and diaries and court documents?   And in the case of the Borgias much of it turns into speculation because what sources there are happen to be seriously biased.    I’m perfectly aware that several of the popes of this era produced children.  (That might have been a shocker back when I was in the 8th grade).

Using Machiavelli as a character from whom we get a decided perspective Dunant points at those events from which The Prince came.   Those are kind of “aha” moments if you’re familiar with The Prince.   (I am but I read it long ago.)

I’m also not particularly fond of over-written and cliche-ridden prose which it sometimes felt like, although it shone in other places.   I suppose that kind of style fits the time and place,  I’m just not fond of that kind of rich and powerful arrogance.  (You cannot write about Pope Alexander IV with simple prose like you would Pope Francis or someone.)

On the plus side –  yes there is a plus side with several aspects  –  the characters of Lucrezia and Machiavelli are wonderfully well drawn and the Duke of Ferrera is viscerally ugly.   Seeing Lucrezia and Machiavelli presented in a sympathetic light is interesting – if not new in Lucrezia’s case.    This is no Wolf Hall with the interior monologue of a revisionist Thomas Crowell,  although there seem to be light leanings in that direction with Machiavelli’s mental consideration of all that transpires around him.

Sofia Papastergiadis is a very bright young woman trying to finish her PhD in anthropology, but who is stuck working at a coffee bar in London.   Mainly she has some family and personal issues.   For one thing she’s almost terminally attached to her mother Rose who has been divorced from her father for a long time.    Rose has apparently lost the use of her feet and she’s also very sensitive to many things including water.

*******
Hot Milk
by Deborah Levy
2016/  224 pages
rating –  8.25  –  general fiction- literary
(Man Booker Short List – 2016) 
*******

Sofia and Rose travel to Almaria on the Mediterranean coast of Spain to see a specialist,  but Doctor Gomez has some unusual ideas – he may actually be a quack and a rather dangerous one at that.  Rose is probably a hypochondriac, anyway,   blocking her own ability to live a full life and tying Sofia down to care for her.

Meanwhile,  Sofia’s father has lived in Athens for some time and has married a much younger woman.  Together they now have a new child.  This presents more problems with immature entanglement.

While they’re spending about a month in Spain Sophia  meets a few people at the beach between her mother’s appointments.  There’s Ingrid who is a kind of goddess and ____,   a young health care worker who rubs her back with ointment to soothe the jellyfish stings,  there’s a horse trainer and a masseuse.  And there’s Ingrid’s boyfriend.   There’s also a cafe owner and his dog Pablo.

There are a myriad of themes running through this wonderfully well-written novel.  There’s freedom and love and entrapment to start –  fraud and self-delusion.   I suppose those are the major themes Levy explores as she maneuvers her characters into various combinations while the first-person Sofie works on becoming more “bold”  and take risks.  Sofia is hugely sympathetic – at least to me – she’s smart and funny and sweet,  but really kind of pathetic.

John McWhorter is an academic, a popular writer and an associate professor at Columbia University.  I listened to his book,  The Story of Human Language a couple or three years ago – (a Great Courses audio),  enjoyed it tremendously and although I wanted to read another since then,  nothing really caught my eye.   Words on the Move was on sale though so … well … what’s a good girl to do?

*******
Words on the Move: Why English Won’t – and Can’t – Sit Still (Like, Literally)
by John McWhorter
2016 / 272 pages
Read by:  John McWhorter 7h 1m   
Rating:  8 /  non-fiction – language/linguistics
******* 

This book is nowhere on the level of the Great Courses lecture, but it’s fun.  McWhorter is fun.   Where do words like “well,”  used as an interjection,  come from?   It’s the same with the  online “lol.”   English is an evolving and  “literally” living,  language.  It changed, is changing and will change again.  We have a lot of words which are no longer necessary for a variety of reasons but we use them out of habit.   And we have a lot of new words from cyber to “lol.”   Where did they come from and why?  How is our language evolving and why?

And then there’s the business of vowels in English and how they’ve been pronounced at various times and places throughout.   Vowels will make or break an accent or a word pronunciation.  There’s been notable shift,  or movement, and in almost predictable ways.   Syllables also show movement in the language –  the natural movement of old traditional ways of saying things to newer ways – how language changes.  I suspect some of this is conjecture,  but I’m not a linguist and it’s quite interesting.

And then there’s the simple creation of new words from old ones by compounding them or by reducing them,  by associating them with other words.   And then there’s the word “like”  –  from a similarity to “‘the room was taken,  like a family had booked it already…'” or –   “I answered the door and it was like … her!”   Or there are other meanings to the word “like”  because the language is changing – it’s on the move.

McWhorter has a very well-trained ear and a nice sense of humor and is a good advocate for going with the flow,  not fighting the changes.

In my wanderings around the net I kept seeing this book and started wondering … and I listened to a bit and was intrigued …  so I got it from Audible.    And then I was listening as I drove and at about Chapter 2 (!)  I realized I needed to have it in my hands and see the words –  I downloaded the Kindle version.   And then I read and listened and listened and read deliberately going over parts twice and highlighting as I went.   Wonderful book,  meant to be studied and USED.

*******
“The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World
by the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu”  ~ as told by Douglas Carlton Abrams 
2016/  354 pages
read by Douglas Carlton Abrams and cast 10h 12m
rating 10 /  spiritual 
*******

I’m not really a Christian,  I’d call myself a Jewish/Buddhist, and the authors of the substance of the book, the main participants in the discussions,   were a Tibetan Buddhist and an Anglican Christian with a Jewish translator or narrator.   This book was totally perfect for me.

The discussions on which the book is based took place at the Dalai Lama’s home in exile,  Dharamsala,  on the occasion of his holiness’ 80th birthday.  Archbishop Desmond Tutu , age 82 at the time,  came to visit and participate in a week-long series of discussions on the subject of joy.

Eight pillars of joy are identified,  divided by mind (perspective, humility, humor, acceptance) and heart (forgiveness, gratitude, compassion, generosity).   The daily lives of the men are told and some input about the personalities of these two Nobel Peace Prize winners.

I suppose it’s a sort of “self-help” book for those who want to learn about joy through enhanced meditation practices.   Kind of a guide to meditation in various ways,  beyond simple escape from the daily grind and aimed at joy.  The main sections include

1.  The Nature of True Joy  (Day 1)
2.  The Obstacles to Joy   (Days 2 and 3)
3. The Eight Pillars of Joy  (Days 4 and 5)

Then there is an appendix kind of part (?)  which goes further and outlines what are called “Joy Practices”  very specifically but not in any way rigidly.

I’ve been trying some of the suggestions augmenting my old meditation ways,  especially “analytic meditation.”    I’ve done this kind of thing before but adding it to meditation will be powerful stuff.

I’ve discovered that I tend to read spiritual books and then procrastinate about actually doing what they say.  I’m not always that way but it’s happened.  We’ll see –  I’ll read this again if necessary.

Don’t bother.   I read it for a reading group- had bad feelings but went ahead anyway.  The idea is not all that impressive –  it was floated around back with Stephen King’s  11/22/63  showing alternative realities in a possibly multiplex world  with a “Joker” in control.  This time the scientists who isolated the means to traveling in those worlds are at the fore,  one is the protagonist who travels one different path  while the other is the actual developer who travels the alternative path.  These are both the same person originally but they have morphed into two life journeys –  and of course there are other possibilities.

*******
Dark Matter
by Blake Crouch
2016 / 354 pages
read by Jon Lindstrom  10h 8m
Rating:   C-   /  sci-fi / romance
*******

Jason Dessen, a brilliant physicist currently working as a professor at a small Chicago college,  is living quietly and very happily with his wife and son when he is snatched one night and taken to a place of many Jasons –  the lives he would have led had he made different decisions.     He only wants to get home to Daniella,  his wife,  but there are other “Jason”s around who want to take over his life.

This is just too far fetched for me.  I mean,  having a beer with myself in a bar somewhere?  –  How about with three or seven of my own selves – almost but not quite identical?   Each is identical up to the point of some decision – but each one is different after that decision.   Would I be willing to kill all these alternative selves to win the love of my life?  (There’s the romance.)

This is as much a romance as it is strung-out sci-fi –   there’s very very little science in the book.  It’s mostly speculation.  It’s kind of dumb but I did finish.

I probably would never have read this book had it not been for the fact it was an All-Nonfiction group selection.   And I would have missed a bunch but it’s not up to the hype of the movie.    Like probably most Americans,  I had no idea that black women were instrumental in the space race – or any women for that matter,  at least until later.   I knew women were important as “computers”  in the development of computer technology from The Information by James Gleick – there are maybe two sentences in his book –  but not specifically black women anywhere (that I remember).

Try this:    http://margotleeshetterly.com

*******
Hidden Figures:   The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race
by Margaret Lee Shetterly
2016/  368 pages
read by Robin Miles  10h 47m
Rating:  7.5  / history-biography
*******

As probably most culturally aware folks  know by now,  this book was made into a movie as well as into a young adult book.   The film got highest honors and reviews and it occurs to me the book might be pretty blah next to the movie.

Apparently the film producers invented a few scenes for the sake of drama and visual effects,   but overall it’s said to be historically accurate.  It’s probably better organized and leaves out a bunch of socio-racial  information as well as the complex material about Langley administration.

See Bookriot –   http://bookriot.com/2017/02/10/hollywood-fails-history/  for a great analysis of how the movie differs from the book.   A snip:

“The film shows the three women as close pals, but their personal successes were spread out of over decades, and the book doesn’t present the three like a buddy movie. Dorothy Vaughan was made a supervisor in 1949, and Mary Jackson became an engineer in 1958, well before the film timeline. “

The main subjects,  Dorothy Vaughan,  Katherine Johnson and Mary Jackson,  each came from different places in the South. Vaughan and Johnson were from West Virginia while Jackson was from Virginia.  But they were all mathematical whizzes from a very early age and after struggles with the educational system and early careers as school teachers, came to be employed by the NACA and NASA as mathematicians ultimately instrumental in the space race.

These main characters are pictured below.   In real life there were many more black women working in the labs than these three.  And they all faced pretty much the same difficulties.  Dorothy Vaughan was one of the very first and she was eventually promoted to the highest position possible for her skills.

There are biographical sections on each woman and how she made her way from childhood prodigy  to the lab at Langley and what they did there. .  The book kind of rambles in disorganized fashion into the science and mathematics part as well as the administrative organization of Langley on top of the social issues of the times.  It talks about the segregation of bathrooms,  education,  restaurants,  etc and how that affected Langley.

Good stuff about the actors and facts: http://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/hidden-figures/

I was basically bored –  the idea was great and yes,  I very much wanted to know about this  in general,   I guess there was simply a bit too much about the personal lives and all the social issues accompanying the material.  I’m not the target audience – I know most of this already.   But!    I’m very glad it hit the movies with general historical accuracy because that’s probably the only way to get any information about or sense of  history through to people these days.

This link is about the whole group and how it was but a subset of the other female mathematicians:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Area_Computers

All three women (Vaughan, Johnson, and Jackson) worked at West Area Computers section of the Langley Research Center in some capacity and at some point.     It’s almost more about the feminist and race issues during the era than about these women.  I can’t find out if these women even knew each other –  one joined Langley in 1943,  the others in the mid-1950s.  There were many other black women working there at the time.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/rockets/a24429/hidden-figures-real-story-nasa-women-computers/

https://timeline.com/women-pioneered-computer-programming-then-men-took-their-industry-over-c2959b822523

I’d seen this on the recommendations lists and reviews from various places,   then my sister recommended it and after a few months I caved.   Yup – it’s pretty good.  And I needed something a bit funny or light weight.   This fit the bill because although serious topics come up and it has some very sobering ideas,  Noah is a comedian by trade and his escapades, with his narration,  shine through.

*******
Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood 
by Trevor Noah 
2016 / 304 pages
Read by Trevor Noah –   8h 50m
Rating 8.5
*******

Trevor Noah is a  33-year old TV-/radio host and comedian who was born and raised in South Africa.  He’s of mixed heritage having a black mother and a white father.  When he was born it was illegal for blacks and whites to have sexual relations so at that time he was “born a crime.”   There were many class distinctions in South Africa during apartheid –  white, black, mixed and coloured.   Chinese were black but Japanese were white for political reasons. .   Most “coloured” people were the products of long prior relationships dating back to the original Dutch settlers and the native women.

Apartheid officially started in about 1948 and finally ended in 1991.  Noah was born in 1984. Noah’s mother was black and his father was white so Noah had light skin but kinky hair.   He was mixed from birth rather than heritage and it was confusing to people and to himself after awhile,   but they had to deal with it as did he – all in their own ways.

He spent a lot of his childhood alone with no playmates and little acceptance largely because of his being “mixed” race.  Not a fun time for him.  But he chose his own place with the blacks because of his mother.

There is a fair amount of politics in the book,  but it’s basically a memoir of a mixed-race child who lives in Johannesburg with his black mother and who knows and loves his father.  He is loved by his parents.   We follow his life from birth through various schools and family situations until he’s relatively full grown and moves out of the house –  in his early 30s,  probably.    There is only a general chronology woven through the stories.   But it’s a funny,  sad and  sometimes poignant look at post -apartheid South Africa with it’s completely irrational attitudes and laws and how they affected an individual life.

Many of the stories are about his mother who was/is a fiercely religious woman, but totally unique in her belief in freedom and love and perseverance as well as a disregard for irrational laws.   Also,  Noah has some really keen insights into racism,  crime, language and skin color.   The book goes beyond the life of the subject into some ideas in general.

I didn’t think I’d read this before,  but perhaps I did back in the 1970, s but it was before I read Rebecca (which I love) ,  so I had nothing to really connect it to.   I remembered that prior read when, in this reading,  I got to the comparison of the drug the protagonist takes to an LSD trip.

Oh well … I didn’t remember how it ended so I kept going even though I didn’t enjoy it all that much.  The idea of time travel  has been done so many times  since 1961 but this is still pretty innovative in that it uses  a drug to get to the past.   That was a first for me and I do rather enjoy time -travel books like Connie Willis’s Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog,  And then there’s  Stephen King’s 11/22/63,  as well as Kindred by Octavia Butler and the list goes on.   They can be interesting and innovative,  but there has to be something more than the time travel aspect to keep you reading.   The House on the Strand is limited that way.

*******
The House on the Strand
by Daphne Du Maurier
1961 / 336 pages
read by Ron Keith 11h  3m
Rating:   6 /   literary sci-fi  (I guess)
*******

Magnus Lane has discovered a drug which will provide a way of transporting himself back to the early 14th century to the exact place on which he is standing.  (It’s a matter of perception.)   He offers a test sample to his friend and our 1st person protagonist,  Dick Young.   Dick and Magnus enjoy taking little day trips back to the past.  The trouble is this escape is addicting and the men go more often, getting involved in what’s happening there.  It’s also dangerous because the reality of the 20th century is going on around them at the same time,  but they just can’t see it or interact with it when they are in the past.   Also –  if they touch anyone in the past they will be transported immediately back to the present.   Al this leads to a couple of tangles of perception translated into reality –  interesting the first time but after that just kind of a part of the landscape, so to speak.

This is almost a mirror image of Open Secrets in terms of  theme but the content and style are so different.   In Open Secrets the really alone people were almost all women,  in this one they are all men –  so the themes of love and loss are major elements.   It’s not Murakami’s best imo,  but it’s good enough,   I think perhaps by the time I read Men Without Women I was tired of people alone.

*******
Men Without Women 
by Haruki Murakami
2017 / 240 pages
Rating:  7.5  /   short stories
*******

I chose to read this AFTER Open Secrets because I thought surely I would get mixed up with two volumes of short stories and I don’t know now.  They are really different.

All of Murakami’s stories take place in the urban and contemporary world while Munro’s take place at various times between 1900 and the 1960s.   And Murakami is known for including cats and jazz (the Beatles?)  and some fantasy in his works – it’s here.   Munro is very North American to the point of regional while Murakami is distinctly placed in a Japan with a lot of American influence.   The volumes are definitely different.

This book felt more musical to me than Murakami’s priors.  It felt like he was trying to write a story with music like other writers might try to write it like a painting.  (I don’t think I can explain that.)

The chapters:
1.  Drive My Car   –  (a Beatles tune)  This is the best of the lot,  in my opinion.   There is a mysterious woman here,  but the protagonist is not in love with her.  Rather she enables him to go back through his memories and realize how he came to be alone.  

2.  Yesterday –  (like another Beatles song)  A young man takes the girlfriend of his buddy on a date at the buddy’s request.  The buddy is very odd – learns another dialect to be different,  etc.

“If you don’t know what you’re looking for,  it’s not easy to look for it,”

3.  An Independent Organ – Although he’s played around a lot with married women,  this time an older man has fallen in love.  More humorous than the others.   

4.  Scheherazade –   A middle-aged woman tells her housekeeping client about her life as a young women when she stalked a young man to the point of  breaking into his house and stealing various small articles belonging to him.  (I think Murakami wrote a similar situation in a prior story – a man is confined to his home and his housekeeper does a lot of things for him.)  

5.  Kino –  a man leaves his wife and opens a jazz bar which, after awhile,  attracts strange customers including a woman with cigarette burns. The most musical perhaps. 

6.  Samsa in Love –  a reversal of Kafka’s The Metamorphosis.   (Kind of stupid,  imo.)

7.  Men Without Women – A man gets a strange phone call about a woman’s being dead – suicide.  He figures it was an old girlfriend of his and it was the husband who rang.  This has happened before – the man goes into a mental fantasy but he wants it to be “essence” or something.

Maybe if I read this a second time it would be more meaningful –  probably so –  but I’m really not interested at this point.

This book has a really slow start but eventually it gets past the background situation and the Jewish situation and zones in on the first person protagonist,  Berekiah Zarco,  a Jew living in Lisbon in the early 1500s.   This time,  April of 1506,  was the time of a huge Jewish purge so life was very difficult for the small group of forcibly  “converted” Jews in Alfama,  the Jewish quarter in Lisbon.    Berekiah explains his  life for awhile with emphasis on the Jewish aspects.  But one day during a bloody rampage,  he finds his beloved Uncle Abraham murdered and there is a young girl next to him,  dead and naked.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Jews_and_Muslims_by_Manuel_I_of_Portugal

*******
The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon
by Richard Zimler
1996 (Portugal) 318 pages 
read by Stephen Rudnicki  13h 28m 
Rating:  B /  historical crime 
*******

Berekiah is now on the hunt for the murderer of his uncle who was also his religious mentor, guide and advisor.  Many characters are horrified and there are many suspects whom he investigates by following and questioning.  Berekiah questions everyone.   Much of the book is concerned with Jewish mysticism and other aspects of the Kabbalah.   I’m sure I missed a lot.

There is also quite a lot of information about the history of the Kabbalah and if you’re interested in that and willing to spend some time with it,   it’s a fine book,  but I wouldn’t recommend it if you’re not.

18th century Alfama,  the old Jewish quarter in Lisbon

This is an “older” collection of stories written by Alice Munro, the “contemporary Chekov of Canada”  (per Margaret Atwood),  or of the world,  some might say since she won the  2013 Nobel Prize in Literature for that very thing.

Munro is so great  –  it seems like she writes whole novels in 40 pages.   She may be a bit regional sometimes,   but that’s okay with me –   as I was reading along I realized that Alice Munro is to western Ontario what Flannery O’Connor is to Georgia.  Maybe what Faulkner was to Mississippi or Wharton was to New York.

*******
Open Secrets
by Alice Munro
 1994 / 295 pages (Kindle)
rating:  9.25 /  literary short stories
*******

There are 8 stories in this volume of 295 pages.  That means they have an average of 37 or so pages each.  Per the great Wiki, “short stories” are under 7500 words.   Figuring it out as best I can,  Munro’s stories are about 15,000 words each which would make them more like novellas.  But  look at “novellas” on that same Wikipedia page and note they are supposedly between 20,000 and 40,000 words in length.  So bottom line,  these are slightly under normal novella length but longer than traditional short stories.   The word for that is Novellette but that’s a rarely used term except in old science fiction.   I generally think of a novella as being about 100 or so pages.

Also,  short stories usually have one plot thread and fewer characters.  Novelettes are usually thought of as somewhat lighter in tone.   Munro is different,  but she is SO good at it.

In the collections I’ve read there have been overarching characters (The Beggar Maid) or themes (Too Much Happiness)

I suppose the connecting themes in “Open Secrets” are that people love, people leave,  people talk or write or they don’t,  life goes on (time).   The main characters are without family ties.   It’s like the characters themselves are “open secrets” because they have no one with whom to share.

Munro’s characters are usually a bit strange,  out of sync, “gothic” comes to mind but that’s not quite it.  They’re poor and

“Carried Away”
This is the story of a young woman, orphaned,  goes to a town and becomes the librarian.  She is alone in a small town who falls in love with a guy serving in Europe during WWI.  He comes home and there are complications with the romance,  but she stays on in town although it’s not her original town.   A lot of time goes by for a “short story.”    Claire has gone missing.

“A Real Life”
After Albert died his sister Dorrie was alone in the old farm house.  She was strange and it suited her.   Muriel never did get married although she looked hard enough.    Millicent was  married to Porter for a long time but it wasn’t really happy.   Dorrie is a kick – she certainly does not use proper language – neither does Muriel.  Dorrie (and Muriel?) move.    (Does Dorrie go missing? – who?)

“The Albanian Virgin” 
Two intertwined stories – two very different women cross paths for awhile.  One is a refugee from Albania – the other is a refugee from her husband.   Charlotte (Lottar) tells Claire her story of being a prisoner and a refugee and Claire is telling us,  but Claire’s story gets in there, too.  She is alone.   Accents?   Both have moved – Charlotte quite a lot,   Claire from western Ontario to Victoria.    (“father” goes missing)

“Open Secrets” –
A little girl who is a recent foster child of someone goes missing from camp and everyone looks for her.  Maureen can understand her disabled husband pretty well except when he uses foul language.   He seems to point to a car –

“The Jack Randa Hotel”
Gail “Massie” leaves her Fiji because her husband left her and her friend is dying.   She goes Australia to where husband is with his new “wife”  and rents her own apartment.   Accidents happen,  complications arise – another old man who has had a stroke – language issues.  She imagines a speech.  Gail moves twice. Letters.   (Boy goes missing.)

“A Wilderness Station”
Simon Herron, a very young man and his younger brother George are orphans and homesteading a new area.  Simon gets Anne,  a very young woman from a nearby orphan home,  to marry him.   Simon dies on the way back to the homestead after the wedding leaving Annie and George alone.  George is taken in by neighbors,  but Annie refuses all help and finally leaves the area finding shelter in a neighboring town jail.   Letters and writing between ministers trying to help.   Time passes.  The woman who takes Anne back is also alone in the world although she has her family of origin – independent is the word for her – (difference?)

“Spaceships Have Landed”
Nineteen-year old Eunie Morgan has disappeared, – The only child of older parents she’s always gone her own way and been highly inventive.   Eunie’s father works at Doud’s.   She is kind of friends with Rhea who is friends with  Billy Doud (of the Douds also in Chapters 1,  2,  4 and 8).

Rhea and Billy go to Monk’s,  the bootlegger’s house/bar.  Eunie got a job at the factory and Rhea at the shoe store.  now grown up,  about age 22,  Billy gets boots at the store where Rhea works.  Eunie and Rhea are still in school.

Billy and Rhea start dating.   Billy has had girls (including Claire of Chapter 3?)  and a young woman named Lucille is Wayne’s date.  Now it’s Rhea but she feels banished from something when he plays cards.   But this night,  the night Eunie disappeared,  Rhea had gone to Monk’s without Lucille and ended up with Wayne.

These young people all feel somewhat alone in dangerous situations although they all have parents and siblings and friend except for Eunie whose parents are so old,  no siblings and no real friends.  She seems especially alone. She’s a walking “open secret.”    A lot of time passes in the space of only 35 pages and the changes are mentioned.  Language comes into play in drunken speech.  E,

“Vandals”
Opens with Bea Doud writing to her friend, Liza.   Bea’s companion, Ladner, is dead and following a dream sequence the story goes back through their relationship.  These two are both alone but they have indulged in serial relationships – Bea is very much a fashion  lady and has some money (from the old piano factory) and Ladner is an outdoorsman with some acreage.

Language,  speaking, books,  lots of signs.   “Liza directed Warren with light blows of her hand on his leg to a back road full as a bed,  and finally hit him hard to stop him.”

Liza gets a phone call from Bea who is out of town with Ladner who is having surgery.  Bea gave money to Liza for college but her father is gone somewhere and she has no one except her husband,  Warren.  She’s a Christian and thinks she should quit working at the gov’t liquor store but they need the money  –  married only a year.

http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/12/06/specials/munro-secrets.html

I guess I should have known better,  but maybe not.   I really enjoyed O’Brien’s The Things They Carried back about 5 years ago,  but never really wanted to try another one by him.   I tend to be  allergic to war books (and romance),  although once in awhile there will be one which appeals.   (Reading groups stretch my horizons.)

*An aside –  I was deeply involved in the protest movements of the late 1960s and early ’70s and couldn’t read anything about the Vietnam War for decades.  It was just too painful.*

But I actually enjoyed The Things They Carried because it really was  a different kind of book and reading it for a group gave me motivation and I got through it.  I think I may have also read  Fire in the Lake by Frances FitzGerald (1972) for a group in about 2008?    Also I very much appreciated Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes  (recommended by a friend) a couple years ago.

*******
In the Lake of the Woods
by Tim O’Brien / 1994 
read by L. J. Lanser  8h 50m
rating –  6  / fiction 
*******

And I have to mention The Sympathizer (read last year) as well as The Refugees  (read last month!) because they are brilliant and authentic.  The author, Viet Thanh Nguygen has now written another book,  Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War,   nonfiction – which I’ve not got to.

Anyway,  as a group choice (again)  I thought maybe In the Lake of the Woods would be okay –  besides,  it’s supposedly a mystery – right?    The war in Vietnam shows up as backstory in a lot of books as somebody’s memory or something.  But unless they are really,  really well done –  war books –  especially those about Vietnam, no thanks.

The second problem with this book was that  I knew the ending before first reading and that really did spoil the main thread for me for awhile,  so I’ll not get into that here.   I think it spoiled the mystery part, but NOT the whole thing.   I frequently reread books completely knowing the ending – delicious!   So I kept going.  But the result of struggling through was,  1. the protagonist’s  war memories (and of Mi Lai for heaven’s sake) and 2, a semi-known ending.  These two made the book either yukkie or boring for much of the reading.    But not entirely.  The philosophical ending is trite.  Still,   I did give the book a 6 which is actually leaning a bit toward “like.”

On the credit side,   what kept me reading is that the book is really quite literary in its own way.   There are lots of sited sources for quotes,  both real and fictitious; it has an interesting structure and uses letters and courtroom type forms of narrative.   The war bit was still irritating, uncomfortable –  I googled some to remember because a part of me is still curious – but I get tired of it (overloaded?) very quickly – too sad we failed to stop it in time to prevent so many atrocities.

The plot –   Vietnam vet John Wade has recently lost a primary election in the state of Minnesota so he and his wife Kathy have rented a cottage on the Lake of the Woods in the northernmost part of the state to unwind.   He lost badly because of some information about his participation in the war which the media picked up on.  The information was related to his secret war record – the Vietnam war.  It seems he was involved in Mi Lai.  It haunts his dreams and ideas – he has PTSD.

He and his wife Kathy have been having problems for a long time and now the problems have got more serious according to some,  but not to others.    Kathy is torn between staying with John and leaving him.  John is unable to control his violence,  the budding alcoholism and the spells of PTSD.  He says he loves Kathy dearly,  but he’s more possessive than loving.   One night she apparently takes the boat and disappears into the waters.  (And that’s as far as I’ll go – this is early on).

The police procedural is excellent and the characters are very well drawn.  The themes revolve around denial, truth,  love,  responsibility and  time,   But the war parts …  I guess I believe it’s valuable to remember and honor that war – it is a part of our history. At this point,  I try to do it without falling into cliches and to understand the various aspects,  the “sides.”   To have compassion for all.

http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/09/20/specials/obrien-lake.html

I’ve enjoyed good True Crime books for years (decades).   It goes without saying that the best of them require a lot of solid research and it would seem Bilton really enjoys that because the background and details are evidence of a LOT of hard work.

And the best ones often also employ some of the same techniques and devices as excellent fiction – especially crime fiction.     Without changing the factual evidence,  the author of a work of nonfiction can give it an interesting structure enhancing the suspense,  add dialogue as remembered by interviewees, or describe settings and personalities,  and end up with a real page-turner.   That’s what happened here.    And I really enjoy techie fiction anyway – an added plus here.

*******
American Kingpin:
The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road 
by Nick Bilton
2017 / 352 pages
read by Will Damron 12h 13m
Rating:   A++  / True Crime (tech) 
*******

I’d heard of the Silk Road website in the general media and kind of what it was about,  but nothing specific,  no names –  just that the culprit was caught and is now in jail.   It was a huge score for some members of law enforcement.

So when I saw this on the new books list (publication date 5/2/2017)  and read the blurbs I snapped it up and then I read it pronto.

The story is basically that of a very bright young man from the suburbs of Austin who has big dreams and a totally libertarian ideal   (I also suspect he may have some kind of sociopathic element to his personality,  but that is not even mentioned in the book.)   Ross Ulbricht believes that all drugs should be legal – period – for the good of mankind.   He wants to change the world.

As an Austen Texas native,   Ross Ulbricht had almost finished his PhD in physics at the University of Texas but was working as a used bookseller on Ebay when he was waylaid by an idea whose time had come – the technology was there.  So between Tor (an anonymous search engine) and the Dark Web,  along with Bitcoin Ross developed a site for his idea,  came up with the name “Silk Road.” With that and some starter mushrooms and pot he then went into business, “advertising” in forums on the Dark Web.  It quickly became- big business and expanded into hard drugs,  guns and even body parts for sale by independent sellers and buyers, like eBay for everything you can’t gt there.   Ross got a small percentage as a fee an got very rich although it was never about that really.   The whole thing was a lot of hard work with tension and problems  mounting – also big time.

He got a kind of partner and friend in a guy named Variety Jones and  Smedley who showed up fairly early on and helped in a variety of ways. :

The trouble with being a very rich drug lord is that it’s usually quite dangerous and there  can be lots of people after you including cops of various sorts, hackers,  employees,  rogue cops,  and so on.  You can’t really tell people what you do for money or perhaps your real name.  The whole situation invites paranoia. Variety Jones

The alternating chapters between Ross (aka “Dread Pirate Roberts”) and the various investigating organizations (from the Baltimore and San Francisco police departments to the Drug Enforcement Administration and the State Department to the FBI and Homeland Security)  individually and trying to cooperate,

There has been some criticism about the ending –  “bumbling” –   but the way Ulbricht was arrested is the way it went down  –  the author can’t help that and it’s the same with the courtroom scenes and the aftermath which really ties ends up.

Will Damron,  the reader,  is amazing with a well paced performance,  clear enunciation and adds to the suspense without ever going over the top.   I’ll have to look for others read by him.

Bottom line –  this one of the best True Crime books I’ve ever read –  if you enjoy the genre,   get it!

http://nymag.com/selectall/2017/05/silk-road-and-buying-drugs-online-a-q-and-a-with-nick-bilton.html

https://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/?toURL=https://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2017/05/09/irs-crime-team-nabs-award-for-investigation-into-the-dark-web-drugs-bitcoin/&refURL=https://www.google.com/&referrer=https://www.google.com/