Review: Secret Portland

Having greatly enjoyed Secret New York and Secret San Francisco from the same series, I was looking forward to reading Secret Portland by Ann Carroll Burgess. The New York book has successfully guided me to several hidden treasures. When I lived in San Francisco, that book was my invaluable guide to deep exploration of my adopted city.  But the Portland edition doesn't stack up to the other two.

As a Portlander, I am more picky than a visitor reading the book. Still, it just does not have the same insider flair that the New York and San Francisco books have. The other two were written by people who live in the cities they wrote about. It is obvious that this author does not live in Portland and has not spent much time here. The information is standard for any guidebook of the city. Chuck Palahniuk's Fugitives & Refugees is a much better, although seamier, resource for finding the quirky side of the Rose City.

In addition to only covering the "sites, sounds, & tastes" that you can find in any hotel room visitors' guide, Secret Portland is full of several small, but irritating, errors. For example, while the book includes a truly secret Portland gem, Martinotti's Italian cafe and deli, it misspelled the name as Marinotti's. Even more confusingly, several listings misidentify the neighborhood. For example, the book identifies many downtown locations in southwest Portland as being in the "Buckman" neighborhood -- a neighborhood across the river in southEAST Portland. The nail in the coffin was the author's tip on how to pronounce the name of Portland's river, the Willamette: "Want to sound like a local? Make sure to pronounce it "will-uh-met," with the accent on the "uh." Wrong-o! As any Portlander will tell you, "It's will-A-mitt, damn it!"

List of the Day: Books about Napa Valley

Ah, Napa Valley. In my mind, I love to hate it. The traffic, the commercialism, the tour buses, the conspicuous consumption -- there are so many things about the "Napa Lifestyle" that rub my essentially Puritan and agoraphobic nature the wrong way. But when I am actually in the Napa Valley, I love it. I really do. Napa itself is a charm-free zone, but Calistoga, up at the far end, is still funky and fun. And St. Helena may be the most adorable town in California. The whole valley is a gourmand's paradise, with all the wineries, restaurants, and Gucci groceries. Reading The House of Mondavi by Julia Flynn Siler has stirred up all these mixed feelings about Napa Valley. And it reminded me of several books about Napa Valley that I have greatly enjoyed. For instance, Sean Wilsey's delightfully quirky memoir Oh, the Glory of it All! perfectly captures San Francisco and Napa in the 1970s and early '80s, when he grew up with a goofy mix of socialite parents and stepparents. Both Wilsey and Siler share the anecdote about Wilsey's father flying his helicopter around Napa Valley, insisting on buzzing the Spring Valley Winery owned by his rival, famous as the opening shot in Falcon Crest. There is a "Napa Valley Mystery" series by Nadia Gordon that I particularly enjoy. The protagonist, Sunny McCoskey, is a chef and amateur sleuth with friends in the wine industry. I've read the first two, Sharpshooter and Death by the Glass, and am looking forward to Murder Alfresco, currently on my TBR shelf, and the soon to be released Lethal Vintage. Are there any other books about or set in Napa Valley that are worth reading? Late summer seems the perfect time to lounge on the porch with a glass of wine and a good Napa book.

Review: The Ambassadors

Henry James is not one of my favorite authors, although I feel compelled to read his books because he so powerfully influenced 20th Century writing. As I've mentioned before, his talent reminds me of artists capable of painting portraits on grains of rice.

I found The Ambassadors to be typical James sludge. For example, a convoluted paragraph a page and a half long that I had to read twice just to realize that all the guy was doing was wandering around, looking for a place to read a letter. Ugh! Slow going to the very last page.

Because I didn’t get the main point of the plot, so veiled was it in Jamsien fog, I didn’t care about any of the characters. Their dithering drove me up a wall.

As always, I am reminded of the famous observation by H.G. Wells that a novel by Henry James is

like a church lit but without a congregation to distract you, with every light and line focused on the high altar. And on the altar, very reverentially placed, intensely there, is a dead kitten, an egg-shell, a bit of string. . . . It is leviathan retrieving pebbles. It is a magnificent but painful hippopotamus resolved at any cost, even at the cost of its dignity, upon picking up a pea, which has got to the corner of its den.

Review: House of Mondavi

Starting with Ceasare Mondavi's first ventures in Napa Valley after World War II, through the family's tumultuous history, to ultimate riches but personal dissatisfaction, House of Mondavi by Julia Flynn Siler is a mesmerizing tale.

Like any family business saga, the story of who started the business, who ran it, and who runs it now is one that could be told adequately on the back of a restaurant menu. The Mondavi story itself could have been told well in a Vanity Fair-style magazine article. At close to 500 pages, this is a long book. But the details and diversions Siler includes add depth and richness that bring the reader right inside the Mondavis' world.

Review of the Day: The Studs Lonigan Trilogy

The Studs Lonigan Trilogy is James Farrell's masterwork and a classic of American "realism." Modern Library included the trilogy as one of the Top 100 Fiction Books of the 20th Century. It also shows up on the BOMC's list of 60 novels in it's Well-Stocked Bookcase. I understand readers who complain about the book seeming dated. The slang the characters use, their clothes, even some of their concerns, are anachronisms now. But it strikes me as a spot-on description of the rough world of second generation, Irish Catholic toughs in Chicago in the 1920s. Definitely not the glittery 1920s of Fitzgerald or Dorothy Parker! The final book of the trilogy, Judgment Day, is the longest of the three and my favorite. It has a lot more going on than just what is in Studs Lonigan’s head. This final volume really gives a compelling view of the Great Depression, focusing as it does on the middle class characters and what they lose because of the depression. Because these people have jobs, own their own businesses, invest in real estate, speculate on the stock market, they seem more familiar and relevant to me than dirt farmers (Grapes of Wrath), labor agitators (USA Trilogy), or other soup line characters from books and movies about the Great Depression. Except for compulsive list readers such as myself, I would recommend skipping the first two volumes and only reading Judgment Day. It stands alone and, I think, is the best of the three.