So Many New Books for Mailbox Monday!

 

It's raining in Portland and it's raining books here at my house! I'm not complaining. Rainy days and good books go hand in hand.

What new books came into your house lately? 

 

Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt by Arthur Brooks. 

I've been listening to The Art of Happiness, Arthur Brooks's podcast that started in March. It's terrific. That's what made me want to read his latest book. 

The Virginia Dynasty: Four Presidents and the Creation of the American Nation by Lynne Cheney. 

I got this one for Hubby because it's right up his alley, but I might read it myself. We watched a documentary on John Marshall, the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and it put me in the mood to learn more about the Founding Fathers.

Rough House by Tina Ontiveros, new from OSU Press. This memoir about growing up in the logging camps of the Pacific Northwest looks like it might be a tough read but moving. 

A Reason to Be by Norman McCombs. This one came from the LibraryThing early reviewer program. It's a novel about a widow who takes up genealogy and traces his Scottish lineage back through several remarkable generations. 

Hieroglyphics by Jill McCorkle. This is another one from LibraryThing. It's sounds like a story about a long marriage and family secrets, sort of like an Anne Tyler book.

I haven't been posting a lot because work has been busy. November 16 is the deadline to file a claim for sexual abuse in the Boy Scouts’ bankruptcy case. My law partner and I are busy filing claims for our clients here in Oregon and across the country.

We are honored to work with these guys. Most of them are coming forward for the first time, now in their 50s and 60s, because they know this is their only chance to get their story off their chest and be heard.

So until mid-November, blogging will be hit or miss. I'll hope to be back to speed by Thanksgiving.

MAILBOX MONDAY 

Join other book lovers on Mailbox Monday to share the books that came into your house last week. Visit the Mailbox Monday website to find links to all the participants' posts and read more about Books that Caught our Eye.

Mailbox Monday is hosted by Leslie of Under My Apple Tree, Serena of Savvy Verse & Wit, and Martha of Reviews by Martha's Bookshelf. 

A Small Crowd of Strangers by Joanna Rose - BOOK BEGINNINGS

 

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

Welcome back for another week of sharing the opening sentences (or so) from the books that have captured our attention. Please put a link to your post below. If you do not have a blog and want to play along, leave a comment with the first lines from the book, along with the title and author. 

If you post on social media, please use the hashtag #bookbeginnings so we can find each other.

MY BOOK BEGINNING

It was things like reading all of John Updike, and all of Elmore Leonard, and doing the crossword in the middle of the afternoon when she didn't have to work, with the all-classical station pouring out the windows of her apartment over the dry cleaner's.

-- A Small Crowd of Strangers by Joanna Rose, new from Forest Avenue Press.  I like John Updike. I like Elmore Leonard. I like crossword puzzles. And I like this kind of long, descriptive opening sentences. I think I am going to like this book.

PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION

How does a librarian from New Jersey end up in a convenience store on Vancouver Island in the middle of the night, playing Bible Scrabble with a Korean physicist and a drunk priest? She gets married to the wrong man for starters--she didn't know he was 'that kind of Catholic'--and ends up in St. Cloud, Minnesota. She gets a job in a New Age bookstore, wanders toward Buddhism without realizing it, and acquires a dog. Things get complicated after that. Pattianne Anthony is less a thinker than a dreamer, and she finds out the hard way that she doesn't want a husband, much less a baby, and that getting out of a marriage is a lot harder than getting into it, especially when the landscape of the west becomes the voice of reason. Joanna Rose's second novel, is part love story, part slightly sideways spiritual journey. 

I admit I'm a little put off by the "that kind of Catholic" comment. I'm not Catholic, but the sentence "didn't know you were that kind of _____" doesn't typically express a kind thought. But the description is not the book, so I'll read it with an open mind. 

YOUR BOOK BEGINNING

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THE FRIDAY 56

Join Freda and friends at Freda's Voice to share a two-sentence teaser from page 56 of your book. If you are reading with your ears or on a device, share a teaser from 56% of the way through your audiobook or ebook. 

MY FRIDAY 56

He'd known this priest as long as he could remember. Father McGivens had helped him talk to his parents about his decision to be a teacher instead of going to law school.

Make Russia Great Again by Christopher Buckley - BOOK REVIEW

 

Make Russia Great Again by Christopher Buckley (2020, Simon & Schuster)

Christopher Buckley took a break from writing satire to write two historic comic novels, The Relic Master and The Judge Hunter. At the time, he said American politics had become “sufficiently self-satirizing” and did not need his help. The Trump Presidency tempted him back and his latest book, Make Russia Great Again, brings us back to Buckley's favorite formats, the faux White House memoir.

MRGA is the "memoir" of Herb Nutterman, former White House chief of staff for Donald Trump, now convicted felon serving his term in a federal penitentiary. He got the chief of staff job after working in Trump hotels for 27 years, most recently as the general manager of the Trump Bloody Run Golf Club in Little Hot Pepper, Virginia.

And with that set up, the story is off and running, as only a Christopher Buckley novel can do. There are plenty of funny names for people doing normal jobs in exaggeratedly funny ways: Senator Squigg Lee Biskitt of South Carolina, chief of communications Greta Fibberson, news pundit Chip Holleran, etc. The play on words continues throughout. The jokes hit today's hot buttons: Civil War statues, cable news talking heads, political nominations, Russian elections, and more.

It takes a while to get to the core of the plot, which is a Russian plan to blackmail Trump and alter the outcome of the U.S. 2020 election. As in any good farce, the plan is convoluted and the goal keeps changing, all to maximum comic effect. Nutterman running interference with a Russian oligarch and Vladimir Putin to fend off an election disaster is funny. The book is spot-on parody, slapstick, silly, and funny.

But what is really clever is the satire at the heart of the plot. Satire has to be audacious to work and the satire here really zings. It involves a Pentagon plan called Placid Reflux to use artificial intelligence to combat Russian interference with US elections. The plan goes too far and gets a member of the Communist party elected to lead Russia (thereby triggering the rest of the story).  

Those who dislike Trump will like MRGA more than Trump supporters, although I don't think there's enough red meat in it for those who really can't stand him. It is definitely funny and readers who enjoy Veep will most likely enjoy it, whatever their political leanings.

NOTES

Read an article with Christopher Buckley about Make Russia Great Again in The Atlantic. 

Storm Beat by Lori Tobias and Never Leaving Laramie by John Haines - BOOK BEGINNINGS

 

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

Do you get in a nonfiction mood in the fall? I do! It must be a vestige of some back-to-school impulse. I feel like learning new things and stretching my brain. 

Fortunately for me, several new nonfiction books have come my way recently and they look terrific. They aren't novels, but they will introduce me to worlds much unlike my own. I have two to share on Book Beginnings. 

Please join in to share the opening sentence (or so) of the book you are reading this week or the book you want to highlight. Share the link to your blog post below. If you don't have a blog but want to play along, please do! Share the opening sentence in a comment, along with the title and author of the book. 

If you share on social media, please use the hashtag #bookbeginnings.

MY BOOK BEGINNINGS

I had been writing for the Oregonian for about three months when the entire volunteer fire department walked off the job in Wheeler, a little town set on the hillside above Nehalem Bay on the north coast.

-- Storm Beat: A Journalist Reports from the Oregon Coast by Lori Tobias. This new book from OSU Press is a collection of stories, part memoir, part journalism, from a woman who has written the news from Oregon's 300-mile coast for the last 20 years. 

Storm Beat is brimming over with stories of small town life, crime, loss, bad weather, heroes, love, gossip -- everything that makes living off the beaten track wonderful and horrible. It doesn't matter if you know nothing about Oregon, it's a terrific read. 

I didn't know what independence meant, but I had it in Laramie as a boy.

-- Never Leaving Laramie: Travels in a Restless World by John W. Haines.  Haines was a first-rate traveler from a young age. Some of his adventures included biking through Tibet, kayaking the Niger River, and riding the Trans-Siberian Express from Bejing to East Berlin. In 1999, he he broke his neck when he fell from a train in the Czech Republic, leaving him partially paralyzed and radically changing his life. 

Haines's new memoir is about his pre-accident travels, with all their excitement. It is also book about the philosophy of travel as Haines writes about how his childhood in Laramie, Wyoming created his worldview and what he learned from his adventures. He ends with a chapter on his life since his accident and the different ways people can travel through the world.

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

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THE FRIDAY 56

Freda at Freda's Voice hosts another teaser event on Fridays. Play along by sharing a two-sentence teaser from page 56 of the book you are reading -- or from 56% of the way through the audiobook or ebook. Please visit Freda's Voice for details and to leave a link to your post.

MY FRIDAY 56S

From Storm Beat:

It was the first time I listened to a scanner during a storm, and hearing Chan and his fellow lineman at work as power lines fell igniting brush fires, and the winds gusted, taking down trees and blowing cars off the road, utterly unnerved me. The house shook and creaked in the wind; rain cracked against the windows.

From Never Leaving Laramie:

The likely prospect of having our travel intentions scrutinized and our mountain bikes confiscated weighed on us. We were taking our chances and we knew it: six Americans without permission to bicycle in Tibet, but carrying new mountain bikes donated by an American company that manufactured them in Taiwan, a detail we had belatedly realized needed to be scraped off our bike boxes before Chinese security inspections at the airport.

Burn Down This World by Tina Egnoski - BOOK REVIEW

 Burn Down This World by Tina Egnoski (2020, Adelaide Books)

Tina Egnoski's new novel, Burn Down This World, centers on Celeste and Reid Leahy, a brother and sister who come of age in a military family in the South in the late 1960s, at the height unrest about the Vietnam War. Both are active in antiwar demonstrations at the University of Florida in the early 1970s until violence at the protests tears the siblings apart. Reid leaves Florida, not to return until the two reunite in 1998 during the devastating Florida wildfires.

The novel goes back and forth between the story of the campus protests in the 1970s and 1998 when Celeste and Reid reunite during the wildfires. Egnoski handles this braided narrative well. She weaves just enough information into each storyline to keep the reader engaged without revealing too soon the twists and turns of the plot.

The essence of the story is the family drama between Celeste and Reid. The exciting settings of protest and wildfire make that family story all the more compelling. Egnoski also uses the music of the 1960s and 1970s to set the scene and sometimes as a catalyst for the story. For example, Celeste's love of The Doors brings her closer to her brother at an otherwise contentious time in their lives. Both the college protest and the wildfire storylines have action and emotional impact.

All in all, Burn Down This World is an absorbing story, well told.

NOTES

I'd recommend Burn Down This World for readers interested stories about the 1970s or Vietnam War protests, brother/sister stories, or family dramas. Also, readers looking for novels about Florida other than murder mysteries would like it. It would make a great Book Club pick because there is a lot in it to discuss.

Burn Down This World is available in paperback or kindle.

Author Tina Egnoski writes poetry and fiction. She is a native of Florida and now lives in Rhode Island where she works in the Liberal Arts Division at the Rhode Island School of Design. Burn Down This World is her first novel.

Read my review of Tin Egnoski on Rose City Reader here.