Review of the Day: Deaf Sentence

David Lodge’s fourteenth novel, Deaf Sentence, takes up similar themes from his earlier campus novels, this time from the perspective of retired professor of linguistics, Desmond Bates, who finds himself at loss now that his job has gone the way of his hearing. The story is told through Desmond’s journal, which he has taken up as a way to sort through his conflicting feelings about his deafness and his retirement.

The academic rivalry, potential for mischief with graduate students, strained marital relations, musings on religion or its alternatives, and bookish references are all there, although mellowed some with Desmond’s years. The kinky – maybe crazy – come-ons of an American Phd. candidate are more panic-inducing than titillating for Desmond. He is filled with “late-flowering lust” for his wife, although sometimes incapable of following through. Caring for his 89-year-old father leads to general deliberations on aging and mortality. And through it all, Desmond fumbles and fiddles with his hearing aids, mis-understands conversations, and ponders the science and art of deafness, all to great comic effect.

After starting off as hearing-impaired slapstick, Deaf Sentence ends on a more somber, contemplative note. But throughout, the book is an enjoyable ramble with one of Britain’s great novelists.

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Review of the Day: Peaceful Places Los Angeles

 

In Peaceful Places, Los Angeles, Laura Randall explores “110 Tranquil Sites in the City of Angles and Neighboring Communities,” providing descriptions, photos, and useful information for those seeking serene respite in a megalopolis known for glitz and traffic.

The sites are organized alphabetically, from Amir’s Garden in Griffith Park (Hollywood) to the Zona Rosa Caffe (Pasadena), and ranked with three stars (“heavenly anytime”), two stars (“almost always sublime”), or one star (peacefulness limited to certain designated times). Randall also offers two alternate “paths” for finding the sites – by category and by geographic area (sort of like a Zagat guide to tranquility).

The sites fall into several categories: enchanting walks, historic sites, museums and galleries, parks and gardens, quiet tables, reading rooms, spiritual enclaves and others. Randall’ s descriptions are detailed and evocative. She has a breezy style that is like getting information from a well-informed friend.

This book is a treasure for Los Angeles residents looking to explore the quieter corners of their city. It is also a must-read guide for visitors who want a break from the hectic bustle of the typical trip to southern California.

NOTE

This is one of the books I got from the LibraryThing Early Reviewer program. I am not quite caught up on my Early Reviewer list, but I am working on it.

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Review of the Day: Up in the Old Hotel

Up in the Old Hotel is a compilation of essays and short stories that Joseph Mitchell wrote for The New Yorker from the 1930s to the 1960s. Most were published as collections before, as McSorley’s Wonderful Saloon, Old Mr. Flood, The Bottom of the Harbor, and Joe Gould’s Secret. Five essays and two short stories were added to the McSorley’s section in this book.

With the exception of three fictional stories set in the Deep South of Mitchell’s youth, Mitchell wrote about colorful characters in and around New York City. He wrote about bar owners, street preachers, gypsies, bohemians, fish mongers, circus freaks, game wardens, shad fishermen, and anyone else he came to know. He could make anyone’s story fascinating.

And that is what makes Up in the Old Hotel such a terrific book – every story is mesmerizingly interesting. It makes no difference if the subject is a kook running his own museum in a brownstone basement or oyster harvesting around Manhattan Island, Mitchell holds the reader’s attention. The stories flow off the page with no distraction from the style of the writing – it is like the stories are absorbed whole instead of word-by-word.

Up in the Old Hotel deserves its spot on any Must Read list. It is a book to leave on the nightstand permanently, as every piece in it could be read over and over again.

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NOTES

My friend Bob from Art Scatter left this note about Mitchell:

This book is just great, great personal journalism, and it brings back the flavor of a New York that will never be again. Mitchell was a staff writer for The New Yorker who spent the last 20 years or so of his life going to the office faithfully every day -- the routine became a legend at the magazine -- but, after an extraordinarily prolific career, never wrote another word. He'd simply written himself out.

Review of the Day: Fer-de-Lance

Fer-de-Lance is Rex Stout's first Nero Wolfe mystery and everything it is cracked up to be. I am torn between being appalled at myself for not reading the entire series earlier and giddy that I have the whole series to look forward to.

This first mystery introduces the portly genius and establishes him as an orchard-growing, beer-drinking eccentric who stays inside his New York brownstone while his intrepid sidekick, Archie Goodwin, does the legwork.  Stout creates intriguing context for the duo with several references to prior cases and earlier fame.

In this case, Wolfe is asked to find a missing Italian immigrant and ends up solving the murder of a golf-playing college president.  Throughout, Wolfe's somewhat pompous self-aggrandizement is balanced by Goodwin's wise-cracking narration.  The book is funny and clever and the plot itself is even pretty good, in a vintage, 1934 kind of way.

I am looking forward to the other 46 Nero Wolfe novels. I see another list coming on . . .

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Guest Review: Nurture Shock

Here is a guest review from a lady lawyer friend of mine who is also busy raising three young boys. Thanks Heather!



I just finished reading a great new book that distills some emerging science regarding child development and turns some “conventional wisdom” on its head. In particular I loved the chapter on a new preschool/kindergarten program called “Tools of the Mind” which teaches kids all the usual stuff plus self-control/self-direction and decision making, which turns out to be very important to later academic success – at least as much as raw native intellect. And it can be learned in a preschool or kindy classroom by kids from all kinds of backgrounds, ability levels, and special needs. It is worth reading for anyone looking for good behavior management techniques. The basic techniques can easily be incorporated into any classroom or home environment.

Get thee a copy of: Nurture Shock: New Thinking About Children by Po Bronson & Ashley Merryman. Your library should have a copy. About 1/3 of the book is end notes, so it is a shorter read than it appears to be at first glance and I’m telling you, you’ll have a hard time putting it down. You might even learn a thing or two about yourself.

Happy summer reading! Sincerely, Heather

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Caroline Bookbinder

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Review of the Day: Angler Management

Angler Management: The Day I Died While Fly Fishing and Other Essays by Jack Ohman.

Angler Management is cartoonist Jack Ohman’s first book of essays and shows that Ohman is as funny with words as he is with pictures.

In this collection, Ohman discusses the obsession that is fly fishing, writing about the compulsive collecting of gear, the frustration of trying to talk to a fly fisherman (even if you are one yourself), the secrecy of fishing spots, the aggravating hobby of tying your own flies (or even more loony, building your own rods), and other crazy-making aspects of what Tom Brokaw calls the “high church” of fishing.

Most of the essays cover general fly fishing topics. However, as Ohman is a self-described “delusional humorist with a fatal streak of nostalgia,” the best pieces are those involving his own experiences and memories, including his reminiscences on his boyhood stream, the Kinnikinnick in Wisconsin, and his story of “the day I died while fly fishing” on Kelly Creek in Idaho.  Even little asides such as this one in an essay on high-tech fishing equipment bring personality to the book:

I was raised by a PhD research scientist, and I can tell you firsthand that he viewed liberal arts majors as ethereal slacker stoners with no real understanding of how the world works, let alone how to turn on a Bunsen burner or create penicillin in a petri dish (when I was a child, my dad once gave me some penicillin that he personally created -- I can't even make a Manhattan without consulting the Internet). One way that we've figured out how to make ourselves feel, well, more scientific, is to inject science into art -- specifically, the art of fly fishing.

Anglers and non-anglers alike will get a chuckle out of Angler Management, but it is definitely aimed at fellow enthusiasts and their co-dependents. It is too late to recommend it for Father’s Day this year, but it would be worth stashing away a few copies for the fly fishermen on your Christmas list.

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Review of the Day: The Secret Scripture

The Secret Scripture is the entwined story of Roseanne McNulty, a 100-year-old mental patient, and Dr. Grene, who is desultorily trying to figure how Roseanne came to live in the institute and whether she really belongs there after all. The story is told through Roseanne’s secret diary and Dr. Grene’s journal.

Roseanne tells a harrowing tale of growing up in civil war Ireland, her tragic marriage, and the unfortunate events that culminated in her institutionalization. Grene is drawn to Roseanne and her sad history as he struggles with his own failed marriage and personal grief.

Barry is an incredibly talented storyteller. He spins a yarn that is wide sweeping, but so compellingly detailed that the reader smells the salt wind of western Ireland and hears the rustle of the meddling priest’s rusty cassock. Even though the ending may not come as a surprise, there is great satisfaction to be had from the way the clues nest so snugly together.

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Wendy at caribousmom

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NOTE

This is the James Tait Black Memorial Prize winner that I read for the Battle of the Prizes, British Version. I’m hosting the challenge, so it is about time I read a book for it.

Review of the Day: A Week in December

A Week in December follows a loosely linked network of Londoners – most of them connected by an invitation to a fancy dinner party on Saturday night at the home of a new Member of Parliament – during the week before Christmas. While the core characters go about their lives, one plots an extravagant act of terrorism with the other members of his militant Islamic cell.

This structure is risky. The different threads could easily unwind into separate short stories and it is difficult to maintain the tension of the two main plots to a satisfactory conclusion. But Sebastian Faulks is a master. There is enough interweaving of the characters’ lives – many of the women are in the same book club, for instance – to keep the stories connected. And he skillfully handles the terrorism story line right to the end.

The device of following such a large cast allows Faulks to take on all of modern culture, examining contemporary literature, professional sports, unscrupulous investment bankers, modern parenting, reality television, corporate sponsorship of book awards, trends in education, and the business of art. Some of his digressions, such as his explanations of esoteric hedge fund transactions, show more enthusiasm for the subject than his readers may share, but overall he packs a lot of material into an entertaining package.

In particular, Faulks’s take on authors and the book business, through the eyes of the snarky, book reviewing Ralph Tranter, is hilarious. After a lackluster reception of his own novel, “R. Tranter” recreated himself as a trenchant, take-no-prisoners book reviewer. Some of his reviews are pithy masterpieces, such as “[p]oor man’s Somerset Maugham, with embarrassing improbabilities at key moments,” or “[c]ostive little stories that beg to be called significant,” or, best of all, “typical subcontinental, sub-Rushdie, look-at-me-aren’t-I-refreshing and tragically not copy-edited bollocks.” But the thing about Tranter is that he simply does not like anything written by a living author:

Crash was what he wanted: crash and burn – failure, slump, embarrassment, He liked it when acerbic youngsters teased established writers and he relished it when old pipe-suckers slapped down a lively newcomer. His own specialty was the facetious, come-off-it review which invited the reader to share his opinion that the writer’s career had been a sustained con trick at the expense of the gullible book buyer.

Despite his bristles, Tranter is one of the few likeable characters and one who, thankfully, gets what he deserves in the end.

Faulks takes a lot on in A Week in December. He manages the job with precision and honesty, and even if his hand is sometimes a little heavy, this is the best book to come off the presses in a long while.

OTHER REVIEWS

Curled Up With a Good Book and a Cup of Tea

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NOTES

I got this book from the LibraryThing Early Reviewer program. Now that I finished it, I can scratch it off my list.

Review of the Day: Clown Girl

Clown Girl by Monica Drake (published by Hawthorne Books & Literary Arts).

Monica Drake writes about a city very much like any city – except that in her city, clowns really matter. Although her clowns share a level of urban society with dope dealers, prostitutes, and sundry petty criminals, they play an extraordinarily large role in society. Not only do they provide entertainment at children’s parties, corporate shindigs, and street fairs, the police deal with a rash of clown bashing – blame the coulrophobes – and other clown-related crimes, and the clowns themselves are constantly on the alert for overly-zealous coulrophiles who could quickly turn from innocent fetishists to stalkers. For apparent reasons, clown prostitution is a temptation as well as a civic problem.

Nita – or Sniffles, to use her clown name – is Clown Girl, the heroine of the piece. She works soul-killing corporate gigs to fund her boyfriend’s clown college try-outs, and tries to focus on her [clown] art, find her missing dog, not get evicted, and shake an overly-friendly policeman.

There are a couple of negative aspects to the book. The first is a matter of preference and has nothing to do with the quality of the writing or the story. Nita is dirty – not in a metaphysical sense, but physically dirty. She is always in greasy clown make-up, it is hot and she is sweaty, and she spends a lot of time pawing through or lying in piles of unlaundered costume parts. The need for her to have a good scrubbing is distracting.

The second is a matter of editing. There is one too many of every scene. There is one too many scenes involving the cop rescuing Nita, the cop trying to convince Nita that they are both outsiders, Nita’s neighbors ostracizing her because she is spending time with a cop, and Nita denying that she is dating a cop. There is one too many scenes of Nita arguing with her clown agent about selling out as a sexy clown and denying that she is a clown prostitute. There is one too many scenes where Nita removes her clown i.d., picture of her dead parents, and/or picture of her clown boyfriend, Rex Galore, from her sweaty, polka-dot bra. The whole thing needed a stricter hand with the red pen.

Despite these flaws, Clown Girl is quirkily entertaining. Drake is clever and she has created a self-contained world where her story makes sense. She is also very funny. She is funny with words and with the way she juxtaposes her clown-world with the real world. There is a dark edge to her humor, though, and it is touch and go whether the book will end in smiles or tears.

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Review of the Day: Missing Mom

Missing Mom is the story of how an adult daughter copes with the unexpected death of her widowed mother. Nikki Eaton is 32, single, involved with a married man, and seems barely ready for adulthood. Her mother’s death knocks her off her pins.

Coping is the best way to describe what Nikki goes through in her first year of mourning. She and her older sister, the bossy, no-nonsense Clare, realize that their mother was the only real bond between them as they work together to organize the formal ceremonies, sort through their parents’ belongings, and try to keep their personal lives intact.

Through this process, as Nikki comes to understand more about her mother, she understands more about herself. Nikki is not the most admirable of heroines – she has a whiney, self-indulgent streak and spends more time than an insecure teen-ager worrying about what outfit to wear – but she starts to mature as, groping for a way through her grief, she takes on some of her mother’s habits and social obligations.

Oates is unflinching in her portrayal of both the heartbreak and banality of losing a mother. Scenes such as Nikki reading her mother’s old love letters are all the more poignant for being balanced by scenes of cleaning out the freezer or filling bags for the Goodwill. Oates manages to make the story emotionally authentic without being gooey or maudlin.

NOTES

Somehow, although she is prolific, this is the first Joyce Carol Oates book I have read. It really hit me and I keep thinking about it, weeks after I finished it.

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Review of the Day: Everyday Drinking

Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amisis a compendium of Kingsley Amis’s previously published “dipsography”: On Drink, Every Day Drinking, and How’s Your Glass? Amis was well known both on the page and off as a drinking man, so was uniquely qualified to tackle his subject.

On Drink was first published in 1972 as a stand-alone book. It is the best of the collected bunch, as Amis is fresh and on his game, often snarky, always opinionated. He covers beer, wine, spirits, general principals of drinking, drinking literature, tips for hosts, hangovers, and drinks recipes. Chapters on “The Mean Sod’s Guide” to being a stingy host and how to sooth a "metaphorical" hangover are fiercely entertaining.

Every Day Drinking is a collection of articles Amis wrote in the early 1980s on the same booze-related topics, many of them re-workings of chapters from On Drink. Despite the Editor’s argument Amis’s second takes are like enjoying a Laphroig after a Glenfiddich , several of these essays are more like the warm half of a large martini.

How’s Your Glass? is the oddest of the bunch. Again a collection of articles from the early 1980s, these take the form of a series quizzes on wine, beer, and hard liquor, with the answers printed further back. It is fine for what it is, although probably appeals to a limited audience.

Because the independent volumes are out of print and difficult to find, Everyday Drinking is a reasonable way to get On Drink into your library – a worthwhile purchase for those who prefer their drinking companions in printed form.

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Review of the day: Indian Summer

John Knowles is still famous for his debut novel, A Separate Peace, although his other novels never caught on with any enduring popularity.  Indian Summer , his third book, is the story of Cleet Kinsolving’s struggle to grow up after returning from WWII.

Cleet spends the summer working as a general assistant for his best friend, Neil Reardon, and his wealthy family. The Reardons – a Kennedy-style Irish Catholic clan living in a sprawling compound on the Connecticut River – have plenty of their own problems to deal with.

Neil toils at make-work projects like current affairs commentary in order to justify living off his father’s fortune. He is heading for a crack up unless he can find a way around his Catholic conviction that he can only have sex with his wife for procreation – now that she is pregnant, he is out of luck.

Neil’s wife Georgia is a fish out of water. Having grown up on the wrong side of the tracks, she is not comfortable with the Reardon’s wealth. Having grown up Protestant, she is not comfortable with her husband’s religion, especially when he brings it into the bedroom.

Neil’s robber baron father, austere mother, and divorcee sister; Georgia’s sad sack father, blousy mother, and floozy little sister; Cleet’s apple pie little brother; and other assorted relatives and hangers-on serve as foils for the main characters. But none of the people are sympathetic or even all that interesting. Cleet and Neil are both despicable in their ways, with nothing very redeeming in their stories.

The theme of the story, repeated several times, seems to be that people are never ready for the phase of life that they are in – they are like actors playing last week’s play in front of this week’s stage set. Is that as simple as “things change”? If so, that is pretty trite. Towards the end, Georgia suggests something only marginally better: that everyone gets stuck with an idea of himself that he cannot grow out of. She cannot get past the idea of herself as a struggling young actress. Her father cannot shake the idea that he is 19 and setting out to conquer the world. And Neil still thinks he is a schoolboy being bullied by other kids. In contrast, Cleet lives in the moment.

Knowles has a smooth way with words and offers some keen observations on family relationships and the influence of money. Because of his prowess as an author, the book is entertaining and speeds by quickly enough. But it does not hold up well to analysis.

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NOTES

This is the first book I read for the Hotchpot Cafe's Birth Year Reading Challenge.

Review of the Day: The Grail

The Grail: A Year Ambling & Shambling Through an Oregon Vineyard in Pursuit of the Best Pinot Noir Wine in the Whole Wild World by Brian Doyle

Brian Doyle spent a year hanging around one of Oregon’s premier wineries, getting to understand the winemakers, the process of making wine, and the almost mystic quest for The Best Pinot Noir Wine in the World. The result of his observations and pondering is The Grail.

Doyle focused on pinot noir because it is the wine that Oregon is famous for. The well-drained, volcanic soil of Yamhill County is capable of producing pinots to rival wines from the Burgundy region of France. Oregon wineries produce a wide variety of wines, but pinots can make a winery famous – or drive the winemaker crazy. As Doyle learned, pinot noir grapes are the divas of the vineyard.

Doyle’s pinot schoolhouse was Lange Estate Winery and Vineyards in the Red Hills of Dundee, Oregon. Winemakers Jesse Lange and his father Don were patient and erudite teachers who explained to Doyle, not only the technical side of how to grow grapes and make wine, but the poetic and personal side of their business as well. Doyle augments their information with chapters on various related topics such as the history of the region, pinot noir from around the world, and his own musings on words, wine, dogs, friends, and spirituality.

One key theme Doyle plays on is the idea that, while good pinot must have structure, balance, and texture, there is a wide range of “pinotpossibility” for any pinot noir – from strong, heavy, substantive wines to lively, minerally, bright wines. This range makes it impossible to definitively decide what the “best” pinot noir is, any decision being, at best, an educated opinion. Thus the search for the Best Pinot Noir Wine in the World is as elusive a quest as for the Holy Grail itself.

It is good to keep this theme in mind when assessing Doyle’s writing style. Just as “good” pinot depends in large part on personal preferences, so good writing. Doyle is a good writer – a very good writer – and an accomplished wordsmith who takes obvious pleasure in the play and flow of words. But those who prefer non-fiction written in a crisp, journalistic style may find Doyle’s prose to be overly flowery. There are times his wordplay, elaborate descriptions, and alliteration get a little sing-song – like Peter Cottontail describing how to make wine. But his exuberant style always conveys Doyle’s good-natured enthusiasm for the stories he delights in telling.

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NOTES

The Grail was a Book Sense Pick (now called the Indie Next List)

Brian Doyle is the editor of Portland Magazine at the University of Portland. He also compiled the list of The 20 Greatest Oregon Books Ever that I am working on.

The Oregon State University Press sent me this book, along with several others, to review. So far, I have been very impressed with both books I have read. My review of City Limits: Walking Portland's Boundary, by David Oates, is here.

Review of the Day: Corked

Neither Kathryn Borel nor her father is the most psychically stable of individuals when they set off on a two-week wine tasting adventure through France. And there is nothing like the pressure cooker of a tin can rental car to bring emotions to the boiling point.

Borel conceived the idea for Corked when, as a newly-minted journalist, she found herself still struggling with depression after a tragic auto accident. Obsessed over her father’s mortality and convinced she had only a short time to heal their relationship, she arranges to accompany him to wineries around his native France, hoping that if she learns to understand wine, she will understand her father.

This is not a travel book about French wine country. It is a memoir about a young woman trying to forge an adult bond with her prickly father. Borel writes with candor and quirky humor. She has insight enough to appreciate her own limitations and, eventually, to accept her father’s.

Hers is not a mature viewpoint, which brings an emotional immediacy to the book that can feel a little raw. But for anyone who has traveled with a difficult family member or gone through a mind-clearing catharsis while traveling, the book rings true.

OTHER REVIEWS

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NOTES

Thanks go to Book Dilettante for this book because I won it in a give-away.

I added this book to my French Connection list, were you can find many, many books set in and about France. 

Review of the Day: Citizen Vince

Most doughnut-making petty crooks in Spokane don’t have to keep an eye out for mafia assassins. But Vince Camden is in the witness protection program and his sixth sense tells him that someone is gunning for him.

Jess Walter won the Edgar Award for Citizen Vince, this quirky comedy of errors thriller set on the eve of Ronald Reagan’s 1980 Presidential election.

As Vince sets out to find whoever is after him, make things right with the mob, and win the girl, he also wants to make the most of his new status as a registered voter and intelligently cast his first-ever vote. Digressions on stump speeches, the Iran hostage negotiations, campaign tactics, and the role of third-party candidates share page space with a fake credit card scheme, meetings with crime bosses, and cross-county gangland hits.

It may not stand out as the most profound political novel, but Citizen Vince is a cut above the typical thriller and 300 pages of first-rate entertainment.

Review of the Day: Gormenghast

Gormenghast is the second volume in Mervyn Peake’s trilogy about Titus Groan, the 77th Earl of Gormenghast. In Titus Groan, the first volume (reviewed here), Peake created the fantastic, elaborate, ritual-bound world within the labyrinthine castle of Gormenghast. This volume picks up when Titus is a restless schoolboy of seven.

Many characters return in this volume: Steerpike is still the villain – now plotting an elaborate take over as the Master of Ritual. The Countess mother is still the batty, bird-loving recluse she was, although she rises to a period of fierce capability when saving the castle’s citizens from an incredible flood. Titus’s sister Fuchsia is still sad. Flay is still in exile, although protecting the castle in secret. The twin aunts are still crazy and are driven even crazier. And Dr. Prunesquallor and his nitwit sister still tie the social fabric of Gormenghast together.

The major addition is the introduction of the professors, a large crowd of eccentric academicians with funny, Peakesian names like Flannelcat, Shred, Shrivell, Mulefire and Perch-Prism, who dominate Titus’s childhood. Major scenes involving these worthy tutors are highlights of the book, although they do not move the central plot forward. One involves a terrifying game played by the schoolboys while their schoolmaster sleeps at his desk. The other is the fabulous party the Prunesquallors throw to find a husband for Irma.

The book is less about plot – although there is a central story around Steerpike’s attempted coup and Titus’s coming of age – as it is about the richness of Peake’s detailing. Reading Gormenghast is like being lost in an elaborate Medieval tapestry.

OTHER REVIEWS

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Review of the Day: A Year in the World

Frances Mayes did not spend one year traveling around the world and then writing about it in A Year in the World. She spend five or so years taking various vacations to places, mostly in Europe, writing about them, and then collecting the essays in calendar order with the idea that the collection would give the idea of a year of travel.

Judging from amazon reviews, her approach left many people seriously miffed because she did not actually drop out of her regular life and do all her traveling in one year, on a restricted budget. These reviewers also griped because they expecting Mayes to travel to the far corners of the globe, not just a relatively small section of southern Europe, Turkey, Morocco, and a bit of Scotland.

Such criticism always make me smile because they seem so off the point – like complaining that Mastering the Art of French Cooking contains no Thai recipes. This was the book Mayes wanted to write. She did not want to write about backpacking in Asia or South America and roughing it with the natives.

For me, this was the perfect kind of armchair travel book to feed my wanderlust fantasies. Mayes and her husband traveled to the places I have been and like to remember, like the Cotswolds and Capri, or would like to go, including Portugal, Spain, Greece, and parts of Italy unfamiliar to Mayes from her “Under the Tuscan Sun” home. They stayed in nice hotels or rented houses, often with friends; ate in nice restaurants or shopped in local markets to try their hand at cooking local dishes; and visited a lot of museums.

She writes about their trips the way a close friend would tell you about her vacation – hitting the high spots, filling in a few colorful details, and leaving out practical tips. The stories are pleasant to listen to, even if they do not give practical travel advice and get a little shaggy. 

As a plus for book lovers, Mayes often read local authors or books about the places where she traveled, and incorporates her thoughts about these books into her essays. For example she wrote extensively about the poet Federico García Lorca when they went to Andalucia, Spain, and Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s novel, The Leopard, when they went to Sicily. For anyone who enjoys themed reading when traveling, these literary digressions were highlights.

NOTES

Because Mayes writes so extensively about the books she reads on her travels, this book counts at one of my choices for the Bibliophilic Books Challenge.

OTHER REVIEWS

Ordinary Reader
Memphis Reads

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Review of the Day: The Wall in My Head

The Wall in My Head: Words and Images from the Fall of the Iron Curtain, published by Words Without Borders Anthologies, is a powerful collection of fiction, essays, poetry, and historic documents about life behind the Iron Curtain after there was no more Iron Curtain. Most of the pieces are short stories, some by world-famous authors like Milan Kundera, some by authors known only in Eastern Europe.

This is a dense book and, because the pieces are written by behind-the-Iron-Curtain authors, there are insider references and imagery that take a while to figure out. But the overall picture built up through little details and different perspectives is fascinating. For example, this snippet from "The Road to Bornholm" by Durs Grunbein really beings home what it must have been like to live through suh historic events as the fall of the Berlin Wall:

"He was surprised to read 'Bornholmer Strasse' on a sign on the Western side.  He had never considered that, on a city map, the connecting routes might continue uninterrupted, that the names might simply go on as before the Wall was built."

 This is a book that will stick with the reader long after the final page.

Review of the Day: A Small Fortune

Celia Donnelly comes from a long line of strong women with bad luck in husbands. Unfortunately for Celia, she has to learn of these family traits while fleeing kidnappers through the jungles of Mexico, roping her ex-lover into protecting her teenage son, and unraveling a complicated financial mystery.

Although A Small Fortune is her first published book, Audrey Braun writes like a pro, with none of the plot glitches or clunky dialog that plagues many a debut novel. Her literary style flows gracefully without weighing down the action or distracting from the story.

The only off note is the opening scene, which seems a little benign for the darker escapade to follow – more Anne Taylor than Mary Higgins Clark. But by page 30 or so, Braun has caught her stride and the story hurtles forward, never stopping until the exciting, satisfying finale. The plot becomes more complicated and layered as it progresses until the book is absolutely unputdownable.

This may fall in the category of "beach book," but don't wait for sun and sand to read this page-turner!

NOTE

I got this book from the author, who is a friend and former neighbor of mine. I warned her that I wouldn't post a review if I didn't like the book, but I am pleased to not have to rely on this back-up plan. This book was completely enjoyable. It kept me up past my bedtime several nights in a row, because I didn't want to stop.

OTHER REVIEWS

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Review of the Day: The Marmot Drive

Published in 1953, The Marmot Drive was the first of John Hersey’s novels not set during WWII. It takes place over a weekend in a New England village, when the town decides to drive out a plague of “marmots” or woodchucks. This happens to be the weekend when Eben Avered brings his fiancée Hester out from New York City to meet his charismatic father, the town’s Selectman, and his faded mother.

The book is a mishmash of conflicts and contradictions. Eben and his father are in a continual battle over ideas, values, and Hester – the kind of battle all too recognizable between powerful men and their newly adult sons. Hester battles with Eben and herself. The villagers battle with each other, rearrange allegiances, and battle some more. And everyone battles the woodchucks.

The book has all the markings of allegory, but it hard to tell what the allegory is. Do the woodchucks stand for something else? Cityfolk? Black people? Commies? All might have been possible contenders back in the 1950s, depending on whether the village is to be condemned for the drive or praised. But the book does not tie things together so easily.

The novel ends up a big stewpot of paradox, where the characters are more bad than good, the country people more open minded than the city people, all of life more complicated than simple. It is thought-provoking and interesting, but peters out in a messy, paltry ending, just like the marmot drive itself.