Fave Bookstore: The Title Wave

“The Title Wave” is the terrifically named used book store run by the Friends of the Multnomah County Library. Located in a charming former library branch at 201 NE Knott, the shop is a decent resource, but deserves only a mixed review overall. When it comes to library books stores – or any used book store – my criteria are price, quality, and selection. My goal is to find very inexpensive books in clean, “like new” condition. Good selection for me means heavy on literary fiction, especially prize winners and books on my other “must read” lists. The Title Wave earns high points for prices and condition, but loses out on selection. The prices are great – most hardbacks are $2 or $3. The condition of the books is very good considering that they are ex-library books. Most have the mylar covers, with tape, and library markings, but they are clean and still new-ish The big disappointment is the feeble fiction selection. The books are mostly recently published and unknown – duplicate copies of newer books that did not circulate much. Several books looked like they might be entertaining, if you are willing to take a flyer. But there is little chance of finding a particular book, especially anything well known. The mystery section seems more promising than the general fiction, especially for fans of hardbacks. Likewise, the non-fiction selection is good. There are a lot of great cookbooks, as well as books on house stuff, gardening, and hobbies. The biography selection is extensive. Finally, they have quite a few audio books at incredibly low prices (many were $1.25). Most of these are cassettes; a few are cds. With no way to make sure they work and no returns, it is a risk. But for the price, not a big one. All in all, worth stopping in now and again, but it does not warrant a special trip.

Cheers from San Francisco!

Since we are in San Francisco to celebrate my sister's 40th birthday, thoughts have turned to cocktails. In particular, thoughts have turned to Irish Coffees, since the fog is starting to roll in and it is turning typically chilly. While the Buena Vista Cafe is justly famous for its Irish Coffees, we are personally more fond of the version served at Hark! Cocktails on Chestnut (technically, the "Marina Lounge"). A good I.C. is all about ratio, and the glass they use ensures the ideal mix of coffee to sugar to whipped cream to whiskey. Yum!

Along with cocktails themselves, I love books about cocktails. In general, I tend to be a cocktail purist, so I stay away from most modern books about drinks. For example, it makes me bonkers to see weird, frou frou cocktails called "martinis" just because they are served in a martini glass. A "martini" is gin, a drop of vermouth, and an olive. It is only very recently that I have acknowledged the "vodka martini" because I always considered this drink to be a "vodkatini" -- a poor second cousin to a true martini.

I have turned to vintage cocktail books because I like reading the informative sections, especially the advice on how to host parties, and trying out the old drink recipes -- classics and those that have not managed to stand the test of time. These books are generally out of print, but often found in used books atores or eBay. My favorites are:

Trader Vic's Bartender Guide
Esquire's Handbook for Hosts
Patrick Duffy's The Official Mixer's Manual

Bottoms up!

Modern Library v. Radcliffe

I adopted both the Modern Library and Radcliffe Publishing lists of Top 100 novels of the 20th Century. Having finished all the books on the M.L. list, I am still working on the Radcliffe list. Both include very good books and there is a tremendous amount of overlap between the two. That said, if I had to chose which list really represented the "best" 100 novels of the 20th Century, I would pick the M.L. list for a couple of reasons. First, I think the Radcliffe list leans in general to books that are more popular (Gone with the Wind, for example), while the M.L. list includes books that are more literary. For example, the M.L. list includes An American Tragedy, which I thought was heavy sledding, but as it was a groundbreaking work, it should be on the list. Second, but along the same lines, the Radcliffe list includes a number of children's books, such as Charlotte's Wed and Winnie-the-Pooh. They are good children's books, but I would have chosen only from books for adults. Finally, while I understand that the M.L. list is often criticized for not having "enough" books by women, I think the Radcliffe list overcompensates. I really do not think the list needs three books by Tony Morrison or even three by Virginia Wolf, especially at the expense of some of my favorites from the M.L. list like A Dance to the Music of Time and The Alexandria Quartet.

Cookbook Library: A Taste of Oregon

Junior League cookbooks are a big favorite of mine, and A Taste of Oregon, the Eugene, Oregon book is one of the best. So many of the recipes, such as the delish "Breakfast Stratta" casserrole, are standbys -- especially for entertaining. Because this is usually a great source, I was extra disappointed that the "Pork Chops Florentine" recipe was such a flop. This sounded like are real winner: slow cooked pork chops on a bed of spinach, smothered in a cheesy sauce. But smothered does not come close to describing the incredible amount of goo involved. There was something way off in the ratio of sauce to food. And, of course, the sauce got so mixed into the spinach that there was no way to separate everything once it was cooked. It was an unappetizing mess. Yuck! Oh well, they can’t all be winners.

Review: Theirs Was the Kingdom

Theirs Was the Kingdom by R.F. Delderfield is one of those "family saga"/"sweeping epics" that I would have eaten up when I was in high school.  There is more interwoven historical detail than bodice ripping, but otherwise this book is right up there with John Jakes's "Kent Family Chronicals" and other books of the 1970s school of historical novels.  Meaning that the men are all strong, the women are all lusty, the hero is moral but misunderstood, the villans are evil and usually deformed.  The characters do not have much depth, but there are a lot of them, and separate plots involve each of them.

Unfortunately, while the story is interesting, the writing is a little much. This is a typical sentence (yes, one sentence):

It was only then that he remembered the fearful risks Avery was running by coming here, a man with a double murder charge hanging over him and no means, at this distance, to establish his innocence, for who would be likely to believe that a rake like Avery had shot a man in self-defence after a whore had squeezed him dry, and afterwards fled into the night in the back of one of Swann's frigates as far as Harwich, where he had bribed a Dutch skipper to carry him to the Continent.

Whew! I give it a 3/5 stars because I think it is a two-star book for adults, but would be a four-star book for younger readers. If younger readers stil read historical fiction, this would be appropriate -- it is definitely PG and the history is interesting.


OTHER REVIEWS
 
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Six Random Things

Hmmmmm . . . I just got tagged by Karen Vanuska for the Six Random Things About Myself game. I am now torn between my enjoyment of making lists and my sister's admonition: "Just because it happened to you, doesn't make it interesting." But add in that I get to tag six other people, which means another list, and I see on which side this is tilting: 1. The first book review I ever wrote was of The Borrowers Aloft when I was in the first grade. 2. There are 799 books on my TBR list, according to my LibraryThing library. 3. My current ratio of attorney billing hours to reading time is approximately 4 to 1. 4. I have read books while walking outside since I was in Kindergarden. The invention of the iPod, which allows me to download audiobooks, has saved me from chronic dorkiness, twisted ankles, or worse. 5. When I was 12, I wrote a book called Sixth Grade: The Way it Really Happened, which, while it may have been derivative of Judy Bloom (my favorite at the time), would have been a blockbuster had it not blown away in a Nebraska blizzard while waiting for the school bus. 6. I am currently working on 96 book lists, according to ListsOfBests. The list I am most likely to finish is Prose Books by Jim Harrison, which I am 94%+ of the way through (with only 100 pages left of Off to the Side). The list I am least likely to finish is Outside Magazine's 26 Essential Books for the Well-Read Explorer, which I added only for Christmas present ideas for Hubby. The six book bloggers I tagged for this are: The Tip of the Iceberg Books 'n Border Collies The Lists Reading, Writing, and Retirement Leafing Through Life DaBookLady Read and Release It was hard to find six who hadn't done it yet. And maybe some of these have. Sorry to tag you twice if that's the case.

Review: The Sound and the Fury

The Sound and the Fury is much easier to understand if you realize that it cannot be understood from the get go, but only when it is complete. To borrow a line from The Big Chill, sometimes you have to let art flow over you.

The book is divided into four parts, the first three of which are told in first-person, stream of conscious narrative from the perspective of three Compson brothers: Benjy, Quentin, and Jason.  Benjy’s section is particularly difficult to follow because he is mentally retarded and does not talk, but only narrates what he hears, in no particular chronological order.  Quentin’s and Jason’s sections are progressively more comprehensible as pieces of the story develop.  The final section is told by an omniscient third-person narrator, ties the loose ends together, and brings the story to its exciting close.

The first-person accounts are made even more confusing by the multiplicity of names.  Because this is the story of a large Southern family, many family members share first names.  There are two Moreys, although the younger of the two is renamed Benjamin, the first narrator.  The two Jasons, father and son, can usually be told apart, but the two Quentins, uncle and niece, are particularly confusing when introduced in Benjy’s section because the absence of chronological consistency brings both Quentins into the story at the same time, although the niece was born after the uncle’s death.

Reading The Sound and the Fury is like watching a masterpiece being painted.  Each brushstroke brings out more of the picture until the whole, beautiful composition is revealed.

OTHER REVIEWS

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NOTES

Reading The Sound and the Fury is also particularly satisfying for compulsive "list" readers, since it shows up on so many "best of" lists, including the following:

Books by Nobel Prize winners
The Modern Library's Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century
Radcliffe's competing list of Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century
Time Magazine's All-Time Best 100 Novels (1923 to the Present)
The Well-Stocked Bookcase (Book of the Month Club)

The Internet Review of Books

Oh! I am pleased as Punch because The Internet review of Books is going to publish a review of mine. This is heady stuff for a book geek. It looks like a longer version of my review of Franklin and Lucy will be showing up in the June edition. How exciting!

Review: The Size of the World

The Size of the World by Joan Silber is less a novel than a collection of loosely interconnected short stories – sort of a literary game of tag in which a character in one story has a connection with one, sometimes more, of the characters in the next story.  This structure is gimmicky, but clever. Ultimately, the stories come full circle when the hero of the final “chapter” sells the defective airplane screws that caused the problem that brought the hero of the first “chapter” to Vietnam to solve.

Silber’s writing is graceful and stories are interesting enough to pull a reader through to the end, but the book as a whole lacks depth. Several characters make adventurous choices to live and marry in foreign lands, but the short story structure does not give Silber room to examine the cross-cultural riffs she reveals.  Analysis of the relationships is thin.

Likewise, Silber’s bigger themes are nothing new.  The idea that, while the world may be a big place, people come together by personal connections, is intriguing if not startling.  But the premise that colonialism, corporations, and the military are heartless and bad is a pretty shop-worn formula.  All in all, there is not much to The Size of the World to keep a reader thinking after closing the back cover.

OTHER REVIEWS

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Review: Franklin and Lucy

Franklin and Lucy is an intimate look into the personal life of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the women close to him.

Joseph Persico examines the roles played by Roosevelt’s mother, wife, dearest lover, closest companion, daughter, and a cadre of others. While Persico occasionally makes assumptions based on no more than reasonable speculation, most of his conclusions are well-supported and persuasive.

The title is somewhat misleading in suggesting that the book focuses primarily on Lucy Mercer Rutherford, who became Franklin’s lover while working as Eleanor’s personal secretary during World War I, but then played only a peripheral role in his life until late in his third term as President.

Persico’s point seems to be that Lucy was Franklin’s true love. However, the same point could have been made about Missy LeHand, Franklin’s long-time secretary and best friend, who lived with him for decades. Although the timing is fuzzy, a case could be made that, had Franklin not discarded Missy when she suffered a series of mental and physical breakdowns, she, not Lucy, would have deserved top billing in the book’s title.

Just to describe this minor flaw in the book is to demonstrate its absorbing appeal. Persico keeps the tone personal rather than prurient, but the intimate details are thoroughly discussed. He shows Franklin’s domineering mother Sara using the family purse strings to direct Franklin’s life. He explores Eleanor’s complex relationship as simultaneous inspiration and aggravation, as well as describing her own personal intrigues as she led her parallel life as an international do-gooder. He considers Franklin’s lifelong appeal to women and his delight in their company, despite being crippled by polio.

Although designed to fit a niche in collection of FDR biographies, Franklin and Lucy provides enough context to provide a good introduction to the man’s life. The book is entertaining, thorough, and readable.

Review: The Golden Bowl

Only Henry James can take a beguiling idea like quasi-incestuous adultery, add an Italian prince, a billionaire art collector, and exotic foreign travel, and make a story so tedious that it is a true chore to read.

James writes in wisps of ideas, continually layering these wisps until there is a shimmery, translucent image that gives an idea of what he is trying to get at. These literary holograms are sometimes pretty, often interesting up to a point, but there is no substance to them. By the time the image emerges from the wisps, all I can think is, “So what?”

I can appreciate the talent it took to write an entire novel without saying anything directly. James definitely had a skill that he developed to the utmost. But while I admire the talent, I have no desire to make it a part of my life. I appreciate James’s talent the way I appreciate that of the artists who can paint the face of Jesus on a grain of rice. Impressive, but I’m not going to collect a gallery of rice portraits.

OTHER REVIEWS

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NOTES

This was one of the three Henry James books on the Modern Library's list of Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century.

Review: Beethoven Was One-Sixteenth Black

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Beethoven Was One-Sixteenth Black, a collection of short stories by South African Nobel Prize winner Nadine Gordimer, has its hits and misses. The misses include a story about a tapeworm from the tapeworm’s perspective; a reminiscence of a cockroach trapped in a typewriter that doesn’t rise above casual anecdote; and the self-indulgent “Dreaming of the Dead” in which Gordimer recounts a dream of having dinner with Susan Sontag and two other deceased friends.

The hits more than make up for weaknesses in the collection. Gordimer’s elegant writing raises ordinary events above the tawdry and mundane, pulling out bigger ideas and themes, including the theme of personal identity in a changing world. In the title story, for instance, the protagonist goes on a half-hearted search for black relatives possibly descended from his white, diamond-prospecting great-grandfather. Gordimer subtly makes it clear that his search is driven by more than genealogical curiosity as he searches for a family that would unify his prior anti-apartheid political efforts and his personal history.

Likewise, in “A Beneficiary,” a young woman faced with the early death of her actress mother struggles to determine which is her real identity – daughter of the famous actor who sired her, or the loving businessman who raised her knowing she was the product of his wife’s brief, illicit affair.

Gordimer is at her best writing about marriage and its challenges. Adultery and sexual history are common elements. In “Alternative Endings,” for example, Gordimer examines adulterous affairs in three stories, using a different one of the five senses as the focus of each. Unfortunately, while one of the three involves hearing and another scent, it is entirely unclear which sense was featured in the third. More confusing, especially since this trilogy ends the book, is why Gordimer didn’t write five stories so as to feature each of the five senses.

Overall, this is a worthwhile collection of stories and a good introduction to Gordimer’s sophisticated writing.

OTHER REVIEWS 

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Author of the Day: Penelope Fitzgerald

Penelope Fitzgerald (Dec. 17, 1916 to Apr. 28, 2000) was a prize-winning British poet, essayist, and biographer. She is an inspiration because she did not write her first book until she was in her 60s. She won the 1979 Booker Prize for Offshore the 1998 National Book Critics Circle Prize for The Blue Flower.

Her novels, in chronological order, follow.  Those I have read are in red.  Those on my TBR shelf are ion blue.

The Golden Child (1977)

The Bookshop (1978)

Offshore (1979)

Human Voices (1980)

At Freddie's (1982)

Innocence (1986)

The Beginning of Spring (1988)

The Gate of Angels (1990)

The Blue Flower (1995)

NOTE

Last updated on April 19, 2012.

Nobel Prize

Among my many other reading goals, I am trying to read at least one book by every winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. So far, I have read books by the following winners: Harold Pinter J.M. Coetzee V.S. Naipaul Toni Morrison Nadine Gordimer William Golding Gabriel García Márquez Saul Bellow Samuel Beckett John Steinbeck Ernest Hemingway William Faulkner T. S. Eliot Pearl S. Buck Sinclair Lewis Thomas Mann George Bernard Shaw William Butler Yeats Rudyard Kipling Which, according to Lists of Bests means I am 18% of the way through. I just joined a great team blog called Read the Nobels that has a 2008 challenge going to read five (or six) books by Nobel winners before the end of the year.

On a Booker Roll

I recently read two Booker Prize winners, Offshore (1979) and The God of Small Things (1997), when taking a break from slogging through Henry James’s, The Ambassadors. In one of those oddly common instances of literary serendipidy, Offshore and TGST were similar in several respects — both were by women, about women, and involved atypical, insular communities. Offshore is about a group of misfits living in converted barges on the Thames river in London. TGST is about a Syrian Christian family in a small town in India. Also, both were excellent entertainment, although in different ways. Offshore was a little gem that offered a glimpse into this secret world on the river before ending without tying up loose ends. TGST addresses bigger issues, has a more complicated plot, and uses wonderful, Nabokov-like word play. Both have stuck with me.

Review: The Sea

Following the death of his wife, the widowed narrator of The Sea spends a lengthy recuperative and reflective stay at the same beach town where he vacationed as a child. The story goes back and forth between his present grief and his coming-of-age memories.

John Banville, who won the 2005 Booker Prize for this elegant novel, has a graceful way of turning a phrase and more than a few clever lines. For instance: "If there was such a thing a 'long shrift,' I was in need of some" and "He was half way to a half wit" tickled my fancy for word play.  The present-day story of the wife's death is particularly touching. The childhood story is charming, although the end did not work as well, in retrospect, as it seemed to. All in all, an entertaining read.

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Review of the Day: How Far Can You Go?

How Far Can You Go? by David Lodge is a fascinating, anthropological novel following the lives and religious development of a group of English Catholics from their days in a college church group in the 1950s, through the tumultuous years of the sexual revolution. The friends question their religious tenant and traditions as they face marriage, families, religious callings, sexual identity, and mortality. At the same time, the Catholic Church wrestled with Vatican II, the battle over contraception, internal reform efforts, and the charismatic movement. The title jokingly refers to the question the young Catholic men asked their priests about “How far can you go with a girl?” But more substantively, the book asks how far the Catholic Church can alter its rituals and adapt to modern mores and still remain the Catholic Church. Or how far individuals can abandon their religious customs and personalize their faith and still remain Catholics or even Christians. On a different level, the title refers to how far a novelist narrator can insert himself into the story and still count the book as a novel. This is an absolutely intriguing novel. It won the Costa (Whitbread) Award for best novel in 1980. Anthony Burgess included the book in his list of the best 99 novels since 1939. Catholics (whether they lived through the changes depicted or came along after), other Christians, and general readers interested in religious cultures should find it mesmerizing.

National Book Award

I just found, at my neighborhood used book store, a 1966 Modern Library edition of Goodbye, Columbus, with a near perfect dustjacket. This puts me in the mood to pursue the goal of reading all the winners of the National Book Award. It got pushed to the back burner while I finished the Modern Library's Top 100 list. But now that I am almost done with that goal, I am looking forward to a new list. I am a big Philip Roth fan, so Goodbye Columbus will be the first one I read.

Review of the Day: Crescent City

Crescent City by Belva Plain has all the makings of a great historic saga: Jewish immigrants flee the poverty and persecution of 19th Century Europe for a life of luxury in the religiously tolerant boomtown of antebellum New Orleans; families are torn apart over the slavery issue and fight on opposite sides of the Civil War; there are loveless marriages, adulterous affairs, hoop skirts, burning plantations, and even blockage runners. Unfortunately, the book is still boring. It only skims the surface of the major events of the plot and the conflicts the characters face. It lacks the emotional depth and pure entertainment of the classic Gone with the Wind. It lacks the details of the really good historic epics, like John Jakes’s Kent Family Chronicles. It lacks the smutty thrill of a good bodice ripper like that 1970s gem, The Flame and the Flower by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss. Despite being over 500 pages long, Crescent City comes up short.

Book Note: Agnes Grey

Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte is The Nanny Diaries of the Nineteenth Century.

Review of the Day: Thomas Paine

In Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations, Craig Nelson taught me that Thomas Paine was the Forrest Gump of the Enlightenment. He bumbled along through life, usually with no money, no real job, or no home of his own. Yet he was involved in the most important events, and with the most notable figures, of the Eighteenth Century. Paine (then Pain) spent his first 37 years in England when, separated from his wife, bankrupt, and fired from his job, he decided to go to America. It was then that he precipitously met the most famous American in Europe, Benjamin Franklin, who became his lifelong friend and his immediate benefactor by providing him letters of introduction. Arriving in America in 1774 with his cache of Franklin letters, Paine was a delegate at the first Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. He began another lifelong friendship, this time with George Washington. While struggling along as a magazine writer and editor, he wrote Common Sense, which sparked the American Revolution. Although he did not fight in the Revolution, he was often at the front lines with Washington, and his line, “These are the times that try men’s souls” was the troops’ rallying cry. Following American independence, Paine did not hold office like many of the other Founding Fathers. But he was sent to France to represent America in negotiating peace with Britain. He wrote Rights of Man, which sparked the French Revolution and was a world-wide best seller. It also earned Paine, in abstentia, a British death sentence for sedition. During the French Revolution, Paine was elected to the French National Assembly, where he was the only member to vote against beheading Louis XVI. He got himself crosswise with Robespierre and was thrown into prison, destined for the guillotine, when the tide turned against Robespierre and American diplomacy got him released. While waiting in France until it was safe to sail to America, Paine wrote The Age of Reason. He also provided military advice to Napoleon Bonaparte about how to invade Britain. He returned to America upon the invitation Thomas Jefferson. Nelson does a good job with the story of Paine’s life and adventures. His “grand theme” gets a little attenuated towards the end as he tried to tie everything together. But overall this is an entertaining overview of this omnipresent at the revolution Founding Father.

Review of the Day: The Right Stuff

The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe is my favorite book about astronauts. Of course, it is the only book about astronauts that I will ever read, so that isn't the strongest praise. But it is perfect for a general reader like me looking for an entertaining history of America's early space program.

Wolfe definitely keeps the tale interesting. He focuses on the personal, rather than the technical and administrative, aspects of the Mercury space program and the first seven astronauts involved. He follows the seven through their early careers, mostly as test pilots, through each of their turns in a Mercury capsule.

The most remarkable part of the story is the connection Wolfe makes between fighter jet pilots and astronauts. Having grown up in the NASA age, I did not know that the Air Force had a competing rocket program (a program that managed to send pilots several miles into space and then have them actually land the aircraft back on earth) before it was scuttled in favor of NASA's moon missions.

The only drawback of the book is Wolfe's Gonzo journalism style, which much have been refreshing and bold back in 1979. Now, the hipper-than-thou tone is a little tired and can get exasperating.

Cookbook Library: Fog City Delights

Community cookbooks enthral me. Junior League cookbooks generally lead the pack in this area, but church societies, chambers of commerce, and other groups put together pretty good collections too. I like the recipes because they are usually tried and true and sure to please.

Fog City Delights is the 1987 cookbook put out by the “Letterman Auxiliary” of the Letterman Army Medical Center that used to be in the Presidio in San Francisco. It is a sentimental favorite of mine because I lived next to the Presidio, just up the hill from where the hospital used to be (it has since been torn down and replaced with the more attractive Lucas Center).


Although “Cheddary Tomato Fish Fillets” may sound dubious, it was really tasty.

2 tablespoons butter
1 pound fish fillets
1/2 teaspoon salt
dash pepper
2 tablespoons finely chopped onions
2 tablespoons minced fresh parsley
1 medium tomato, chopped
1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese

Melt butter in large skillet. Add fillets, turning to coat both sides. Season with salt and pepper. Sprinkle the onions, parsley, and tomatoes over the fillets. Cover and cook over low heat for 7 to 9 minutes. Sprinkle cheese over the top and cover. Cook 1 to 2 minutes, until the cheese melts. Serves 4.

Library Book Sale in Prineville

Every third Saturday of the month, the Crook County Library in Prineville, Oregon has a used book sale in the lobby. (Well, every third Saturday except for in July when they have the HUGE sale over Independence Day weekend.) Luckily for me, I was heading over to Bend for the weekend, so had a chance to swing through Prineville and stop at this month's sale. Not bad. The selection wasn't enormous, but there were several long table stacked three rows deep, mostly donated (not ex-library copies), mostly hardbacks, and mostly in good shape. Hardbacks were all $1 and paperbacks were 50 cents. The newer books were mostly mysteries; the older stuff was more varied. Among other gems, I picked up a copy of The Silent Spring in very good condition. It's not a book I'm all that excited about, but it is on the Modern Library's list of Top 100 Nonfiction Books of the 20th Century, so I will get around to it someday.

Review of the Day: Restless

Restless by William Boyd is one of the rare novels that is enjoyable from the opening quote to the final paragraph. The story goes back and forth between the cloak-and-dagger world of WWII British espionage and the “contemporary” (1976) relationship between a mother and her daughter.

The premise is that a proper English grandmother, tucked away in a tiny Oxfordshire village, puttering in her garden, gives her daughter a manuscript she wrote, which reveals that she had been a British spy. From there, the story of her life as an intelligence agent develops along with the daughter’s completely new understanding of the person her mother is.

While it has its exciting bits, it is not a heart-racing thriller. Instead, gets into the minds of the characters to look at what it was like to have once been a spy, then live a normal life, and what it would be like to learn that your parent had been a spy with an adventurous life no one knew anything about. Fascinating.

NOTE: The audio book version was particularly entertaining because the woman who read did remarkably well on the accents. She had to portray characters with a variety of English and American accents, as well as Irish, Scottish, French, German, Russian, Mexican, and Iranian. She did an incredible job.

Review: Middle Passage

Middle Passage by Charles Johnson won the 1990 National Book Award. I was reluctant to read it because I thought it was going to be too depressing and preachy. It was depressing at times, but it was also, well . . . goofy. Very engrossing, even exciting, but a little haphazard. It has a ne’er-do-well hero, multiple plots, and exciting adventures -- a real sea yarn.

I could not get my brain around the notion that the narrator knew about and referred to things that didn’t happen until decades after the story takes place (he mentions things like time zones and squeegees that didn’t exist in 1830, for example, not to mention philosophical and scientific theories that didn’t develop until much later, such as evolution). But once I decided to let that all flow over me, I enjoyed the book. It certainly packs a lot into its 206 pages.

OTHER REVIEWS

Living Life and Reading Books
Bibliofreak

Book Note: The Inheritance of Loss

I have mixed feelings about The Inheritance of Loss, the 2006 winner of the Booker Prize. The story was complex and engaging, but it seemed to end in mid-stream.

iPod in the Car

One reason I get through a lot of books is that I listen to audio books on my iPod. (See lists over on the right.) I get audio books on cd from the library, load them into iTunes, then transfer them to my iPod. Easy! And it lets me carry around a dozen books in my purse. Most iPod users probably were born understanding how to use them in every situation. Not me. Figuring out how to plug my iPod into my car's stereo system took me several days. I did some consumer research and finally decided on the AVB Cassette Adapter. Now, obviously, that only works if you have a cassette player in your car. Otherwise, you have to get one of the wireless adapters that are significantly more expensive and/or had mediocre performance reviews. I wanted to keep things as simple as possible. I've been using cassette adapter thingy for a year now and it works like a charm. Also, I just ordered one for my mom and the price is down to $9.99! Good grief, that's cheap! I use the car adapter with the Griffin Technology iPod charger to keep the gizmo juiced up.

Review of the Day: The Adventures of Augie March

The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow won the National Book Award in 1964. The story follows the life of the eponymous hero from childhood in Chicago, through a sojourn in Mexico with a zany huntress, to life on the seas in the Merchant Marines. Full of Bellow's over-the-top characters and riddled with discourses on Big Ideas, Augie is a great American hero. Bellow is a treasure.

Favorite Author: Lee Child

Lee Child writes Jack Reacher books. Thankfully for all his loyal fans -- "Reacher Creatures" -- he turns out a new one pretty much every year.

Reacher is the prototypical hero. He is big and strong and smart and he drifts around solving unsolvable problems. He doesn't need anything besides his folding toothbrush and a little folding money. (Confronted with the reality of our post-9/11 world, Reacher started carrying a passport and an ATM card in later books -- a stumbling block for loyal readers.) He can calculate the trajectory of a bullet. He can kill a man with his thumb. He's cool.

I have read all but the last two of Lee Child's Jack Reacher books.

The books in publication order are:

Killing Floor
Die Trying
Tripwire
Running Blind
Echo Burning
Persuader
Without Fail
The Enemy
One Shot
The Hard Way
Bad Luck and Trouble
Nothing to Lose
Gone Tomorrow
61 Hours
Worth Dying For (reviewed here)
The Affair
A Wanted Man
Never Go Back
Personal
Make Me
Night School
The Midnight Line

Past Tense

Blue Moon

NOTE
Last updated April 5, 2021.

Review of the Day: The Shell Seekers

The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher is a plot-driven family saga centered around Penelope Sterne, daughter of an artist and mother of three unlikable adult children (well, two are outright unlikable; one is supposed to be admirable but is singularly off-putting). Penelope, now 64 and suffering from a weak ticker, putters in her English garden, ponders her past, and considers how and when to dispose of the few of her father’s now-valuable art works in her possession.

The story moves right along at a bracing clip, through lengthy detours into Penelope’s childhood in Cornwall, Britain’s WWII home front, and the younger daughter’s sojourn in Ibiza. It is an enjoyable read, well-deserving of it’s decades of popularity.

Only in retrospect does the novel disappoint. The main weakness is a lack of character development. The characters spring fully-formed onto the page. The “good” people are all generous, hard-working, independent, and bluntly forthright. (They are also startlingly unsentimental.) The “bad” folks are greedy, vain, self-centered, and silly. None of them change, either individually or in relation to the others. When the narrative reaches its chronologically natural ending, resolution of the various threads is brusquely efficient, but not convincing or satisfying.

Overall, it is an entertaining but unfulfilling read.

'Bye 'Bye 1776

I am giving up on 1776 by David McCullough. Normally, I am too task-oriented to not finish a book once I start it, but I find it easier to drop an audio book than a paper book. Maybe there is something too immediately tactile about abandoning a paper book, while stopping the audio book is more of a "virtual" abandonment. In any event, I only got through about two hours of the 12 hours of 1776. Nothing against McCullough's writing, which is first rate, but I simply do not enjoy stories about battles. The guns, the tents, the weather, the food, the boots, the horses -- none of it interests me. I did not realize that this book was all about fighting the first year of the Revolutionary War. So, great book. Just not my cup of tea.

Review of the Day: The Centaur

Despite its title, I was surprised by how myth-centric The Centaur is. It is the story of a high school science teacher and his student son. It is also John Updike's re-telling of the myth of the centaur Chiron who, wounded, gives his life (his immortality) to Prometheus.

This is a book I may appreciate more in the recollection. While reading it, I was distracted by the allegory. Sometimes, the mythical references were too vague or convoluted to catch and I had to refer to the index at the back to make sure I wasn't missing something important. But at times, the myth is more than allegory -- it is right there in the middle of the action. Updike sometimes refers to the hero as Chiron and describes his hooves clacking on the school stairs, for instance. I found the switch from allegory to action to be jarring.

Also, the hero was annoying, not just to me as a reader, but to his son, wife, and co-workers in the story. I can't figure out how his unlikeability ties in with the myth of Chiron.

I read this because it won the National Book Award in 1964. I prefer his Rabbit novels.

Review: Look Great, Feel Great

Look Great, Feel Great by Joyce Meyer caught my eye at the library. I had never heard of Meyer, but a book about weight loss and fitness from a Christian perspective intrigued me. I am glad I took the time because I picked up a few pointers that I hope will pay off.

The book is well-organized and direct. Meyer sets out 12 “keys” to optimizing how you look and feel, focusing on healthy eating and exercise, but also emphasizing the spiritual side of her recommended endeavors. The keys include things like “mindful eating,” limiting stress, drinking water, and taking personal responsibility.

After discussing each key, Meyer provides a list of five suggested ways to implement each idea. She urges readers to chose just one of the five, write it down, and do it every day until it becomes a habit. In fact, her suggested plan is to go back after reading the book and focus on one key each month, making a habit out of one of the implementation tips, with the idea that you would have a different, healthier life in a year.

The book is definitely aimed at those at a “beginner level” of health and fitness. Some of her information is pretty basic (deep fried food is bad for you, stress causes high blood pressure) and some of her tips are hackneyed (get more exercise by taking the stairs, herbal tea counts as drinking water).

But there is enough substance there for those who have reached the “intermediate level” to make it useful. She does a very good job of explaining the science behind diabetes, for example, instead of simply propounding a ban on sugar and starch. Her chapters on how stress leads to overeating and the health benefits of water have similar depth. And her menus of implementation ideas provide something for everyone – either as a first step or a gentle reminder.

For me, the ideas for how to be a “mindful” eater made the reading worthwhile. Ideas like “stop eating if you are no longer hungry” may seem mighty simple, but that alone could make a huge difference.

Cookbook Library: The Silver Palate

Other than The Joy of Cooking, which I bought when I was still in high school just because I loved it so, The Silver Palate was the first cookbok I ever owned. The recipes now seem “so Eighties” to me — but that isn’t a bad thing. I am often nostalgic for those ‘80s treats I used to make, like these “Toffee Bars” that are easy and very good: 1 cup butter (2 sticks) 1 cup light brown sugar 1 egg yolk 2 cups flour 1 teaspoon vanilla 12 ounces semisweet chocolate chips 1 cup chopped pecans or walnuts 1. Preheat oven to 350. Grease a 9×12 baking pan. 2. Cream butter and sugar. Add egg yolk; beat well. 3. Sift in flour, mixing well, then add vanilla. Spread batter in greased pan. Bake for 25 minutes. 4. Cover cake layer with chocolate chips and return to oven for 3 or 4 minutes. 5. Remove pan from oven and spead melted chocolate evenly. Sprinkle with nuts. Cool in pan completely before cutting. About 30 bars. The only change I made was adding a little salt to the batter because I used unsalted butter.

Review of the Day: Hard Times

Hard Times by Charles Dickens is one of the many Victorian Era classics that I had never gotten around to reading. But thanks to an audio version new on the shelf of my library branch, it made it to the top of my TBR pile. In equal parts good old fashioned storytelling and outdated social criticism, Hard Times is the tale of the Gradgrind family and their struggle to reconcile the rational, fact-based side of life with the emotional and imaginative side. Thomas Gradgrind, Sr. is proud of his “system” of raising children – his own and those in the school he runs – to know and depend only on facts, with no “wondering” or amusement. The ultimate failure of his system leads to the final showdown and resolution of the story. Dickens packed the book (first published in installments in 1854) full of his usual extraordinary characters. These really came to life in the audio version. Along with some Victorian moralizing, he mixed in plenty of humor and even a little intrigue and adventure. None of the characters are particularly likeable, perhaps especially to a modern reader with less sympathy for the outmoded social constraints under which the characters labor, but they all get their just deserts – for good or ill – in the end. Despite its age, Hard Times remains thoroughly entertaining.

National Book Award

Of the many lists of prize winners and recommended books I have going, I’ve been working for the past several years on reading the winners of the National Book Award. I recently found and joined the National Book Award Project – a group blog focusing on the winners and finalists of the NBA. I’ll be posting about my progress there as well as here. According to Lists of Bests, I am 38% finished with this list. Those I’ve finished are in red; those I own but haven’t read yet are in blue. 2007 Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson 2006 The Echo Maker by Richard Powers 2005 Europe Central by William T. Vollmann 2004 The News from Paraguay by Lily Tuck 2003 The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard 2002 Three Junes by Julia Glass 2001 The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen 2000 In America by Susan Sontag 1999 Waiting by Ha Jin 1998 Charming Billy by Alice McDermott 1997 Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier 1996 Ship Fever and Other Stories by Andrea Barrett 1995 Sabbath's Theater by Philip Roth 1994 A Frolic of His Own by William Gaddis 1993 The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx 1992 All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy 1991 Mating by Norman Rush 1990 Middle Passage by Charles Johnson 1989 Spartina by John Casey 1988 Paris Trout by Pete Dexter 1987 Paco's Story by Larry Heinemann 1986 World's Fair by E.L. Doctorow 1985 White Noise by Don Delillo 1984 Victory Over Japan by Ellen Gilchrist 1983 The Color Purple by Alice Walker 1982 Rabbit is Rich by John Updike 1981 Plains Song by Wright Morris 1980 Sophie's Choice by William Styron 1979 Going After Cacciato by Tim O'Brien 1978 Blood Ties by Mary Lee Settle 1977 The Spectator Bird by Wallace Stegner 1976 JR by William Gaddis 1975 The Hair of Harold Roux by Thomas Williams 1975 Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone 1974 Gravity's Ranbow by Thomas Pynchon 1974 A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer 1973 Augustus by John Williams 1973 Chimera by John Barth 1972 The Complete Stories by Flannery O'Connor 1971 Mr. Sammler's Planet by Saul Bellow 1970 Them by Joyce Carol Oates 1969 Steps by Jerzy Kosinski 1968 The Eighth Day by Thornton Wilder 1967 The Fixer by Bernard Malamud 1966 The Collected Stories by Katherine Anne Porter 1965 Herzog by Saul Bellow 1964 The Centaur by John Updike 1963 Morte d'Urban by J.F. Powers 1962 The Moviegoer by Walker Percy 1961 The Waters of Kronos by Conrad Richter 1960 Goodbye Columbus by Philip Roth 1959 The Magic Barrell by Bernard Malamud 1958 Wapshot Chronicle by John Cheever 1957 The Field of Vision by Wright Morris 1956 Ten North Frederick by John O'Hara 1955 A Fable by William Faulkner 1954 The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow 1953 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison 1952 From Here to Eternity by James Jones 1951 The Collected Stories by William Faulkner 1950 The Man with the Golden Arm by Nelson Algren

Review of the Day: The Assistant

The Assistant by Bernard Malamud is the moving story of an Italian-American stranger who works his way into the lives of an immigrant Jewish shopkeeper and his family. Malamud perfectly portrays the grinding worries of running a mom-and-pop grocery, but also brings out bigger themes such as the importance of education and an individual’s ability to overcome bigotry. Focusing on the value of loyalty, repentance, and personal responsibility, it is a story of the redemptive power of love and forgiveness. Four stars.

List: Anthony Burgess

In 1984, Anthony Burgess (best known for A Clockwork Orange) published 99 Novels: The Best in English Since 1939 (reviewed here).



His book included mini-reviews of the 99 novels (some are sets or series), which he chose on the basis of personal preference. I read the book, but now I don't remember why he started his list in 1939 and limited it to 99 books instead of an even 100.

This is my go-to book list when I'm looking for something good. There is some crossover with other Must Read lists, but a lot of originality. There are many books I've read only because they were on this list and I they now have permanent spots on my list of all-time favorites.

So far, I've read 39 of the 99 books on this list. The ones I have read are in red. Those on my TBR shelf are in blue.

Here is the list, in the same chronological order by publication date that Burgess lists them in his book:

Party Going, Henry Green

After Many a Summer Dies the Swan, Aldous Huxley

Finnegans Wake, James Joyce (discussed here)

At Swim-Two-Birds, Flann O'Brien

The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene

For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway

Strangers and Brothers, C. P. Snow (an 11-novel series; A Time of Hope, reviewed here; George Passant, reviewed here)

The Aerodrome, Rex Warner

The Horse's Mouth, Joyce Cary

The Razor's Edge, Somerset Maugham (reviewed here)

Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh

Titus Groan, Mervyn Peake (reviewed here)

The Victim, Saul Bellow

Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry

The Heart of the Matter, Graham Greene

Ape and Essence, Aldous Huxley

The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer (reviewed here)

No Highway, Nevil Shute

The Heat of the Day, Elizabeth Bowen

Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell

The Body, William Sansom

Scenes from Provincial Life, William Cooper

The Disenchanted, Budd Schulberg

A Dance to the Music of Time, Anthony Powell (a 12-novel series; discussed here)

The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger

The Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight, Henry Williamson

The Caine Mutiny, Herman Wouk

Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison

The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway

The Groves of Academe, Mary McCarthy (reviewed here)

Wise Blood, Flannery O'Connor

Sword of Honour, Evelyn Waugh

The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chandler

Lucky Jim, Kingsley Amis

Room at the Top, John Braine

The Alexandria Quartet, Lawrence Durrell

The London Novels, Colin MacInnes (a trilogy)

The Assistant, Bernard Malamud (reviewed here)

The Bell, Iris Murdoch

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Alan Sillitoe

The Once and Future King, T. H. White

The Mansion, William Faulkner

Goldfinger, Ian Fleming

Facial Justice, L. P. Hartley

The Balkans Trilogy, Olivia Manning

The Mighty and Their Fall, Ivy Compton-Burnett

Catch-22, Joseph Heller

The Fox in the Attic, Richard Hughes

Riders in the Chariot, Patrick White

The Old Men at the Zoo, Angus Wilson

Another Country, James Baldwin

An Error of Judgment, Pamela Hansford Johnson

Island, Aldous Huxley

The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing

Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov

The Girls of Slender Means, Muriel Spark

The Spire, William Golding

Heartland, Wilson Harris

A Single Man, Christopher Isherwood (reviewed here)

The Defense, Vladimir Nabokov

Late Call, Angus Wilson

The Lockwood Concern, John O'Hara

The Mandelbaum Gate, Muriel Spark (reviewed here)

A Man of the People, Chinua Achebe

The Anti-Death League, Kingsley Amis (reviewed here)

Giles Goat-Boy, John Barth

The Late Bourgeois World, Nadine Gordimer

The Last Gentleman, Walker Percy

The Vendor of Sweets, R. K. Narayan

The Image Men, J. B. Priestley

Cocksure, Mordecai Richler

Pavane, Keith Roberts

The French Lieutenant's Woman, John Fowles

Portnoy's Complaint, Philip Roth

Bomber, Len Deighton

Sweet Dreams, Michael Frayn

Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon

Humboldt's Gift, Saul Bellow

The History Man, Malcolm Bradbury

The Doctor's Wife, Brian Moore

Falstaff, Robert Nye

How to Save Your Own Life, Erica Jong (reviewed here)

Farewell Companions, James Plunkett

Staying On, Paul Scott

The Coup, John Updike

The Unlimited Dream Company, J. G. Ballard

Dubin's Lives, Bernard Malamud

A Bend in the River, V. S. Naipaul

Sophie's Choice, William Stryon (reviewed here)

Life in the West, Brian Aldiss

Riddley Walker, Russell Hoban

How Far Can You Go?, David Lodge (reviewed here)

A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole

Lanark, Alasdair Gray

Darconville's Cat, Alexander Theroux

The Mosquito Coast, Paul Theroux

Creation, Gore Vidal

The Rebel Angels, Robertson Davies (reviewed here)

Ancient Evenings, Norman Mailer

NOTES

Updated March 19, 2018.

OTHERS READING THESE BOOKS

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