Book Beginnings: Polite Society

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author's name.

TWITTER: If you are on Twitter, please tweet a link to your post using the has tag #BookBeginnings. My Twitter handle is @GilionDumas.

MR. LINKY: Please leave a link to your post below. If you don't have a blog, but want to participate, please leave a comment with your Book Beginning.



MY BOOK BEGINNING

The color of night, Sharon moves toward the pickup truck.  She looks at the grille and headlights, "smiling" in a way that only they can, before she pops the hood with hardly a creak, silently thanks her father for teaching his only child about the inner workings of cars, and makes the adjustments that will keep the old Chevy out of commission for what she hopes to be several days. 

-- Polite Society, the quirky debut novel by Colleen Sohn, illustrated by Maren Jensen.

  

There are still a few of the lovely, limited edition hardbacks left (see here for details). And, Polite Society is now available in a Kindle edition, with all the illustrations.

Review: Doctor Zhivago

I probably watched Doctor Zhivago three or four times in high school and college and never could remember the plot, beyond the basics about Omar Sharif being in love with two women – his earnest wife Tanya and the elusive, flawed, and beautiful Lara. Other than that, it was all snow, trains, battles, furry hats, theme music, and Julie Christie's doe eyes.

The book is the same, but without the balaclava music or Julie Christie.

There is a chronological order to it, but with big gaps. Some threads take so long to tie together I had forgotten where they started. And in between scenes of snow, trains, trains stopped by snow, trains buried by snow, battles, battles in snow, battles on trains, and more of the same, were rambling discourses on religion and political philosophy. And I thought the movie was slow!

The themes are grand and the writing, even in translation, is beautiful. Boris Pasternak won the Nobel Prize because of the book, although the Soviet government forced him to renounce the honor. There are many reasons to read Doctor Zhivago and many reasons to enjoy it. But it is a long and often frustrating read.

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

NOTES

I read this one for the Eastern Europe Reading Challenge, the TBR Pile Challenge, the Mt. TBR Challenge, and the Off The Shelf Challenge. Since Pasternak won the Nobel Prize, I also made some progress on that list.

Review: How to Read and Why

 

Several years ago, I read Great Books by David Denby and was inspired to upgrade my reading program significantly. At 48, Dendy had returned to Columbia University to take its controversial "Great Books" course and wrote his about his reawakened appreciation for and engagement with the Western canon.

Denby reminded me of the intellectual and emotional pleasure I had gotten from my own college courses on classic literature. He motivated me to go back to some of those classics and to search out other Great Books. As a result, I undertook to finish the books on the Modern Library's Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century list (the inspiration for this blog), bought the complete 54-volume set of The Great Books of the Western World at a library sale, and, more lastingly, began to read more deliberately.

I turned to Harold Bloom's How to Read and Why with the expectation that it would arouse the same enthusiasm in me. I was looking for bibliophile red meat and was disappointed by the thin gruel between the covers. There was enough there to keep me going, but now, a couple of months later, nothing has really stuck with me.

Bloom organized his discussion by short stories, poems, novels, and plays, then picked a few of his favorites from each and explained what he liked about them. If this was touted as a collection of essays by a brilliant literature professor reflecting on his favorite books, I may have enjoyed it more. But Bloom didn't impart to me why I should read these books, only why he did. And his lessons for how to read them seemed interchangeable – read them out loud, read them for their irony, re-read them, etc.

I think I would have been happier reading Bloom's seminal work, The Western Canon, and leaving How to Read and Why to his more ardent devotees.

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

NOTES

This counts for the Non-Fiction Challenge, Mt. TBR Challenge, Off The Shelf Challenge,  and TBR Pile Challenge, 

Teaser Tuesday: Fierce Conversations

Above all, as you describe reality from your perspective, do not lay blame. . . . Each time you describe reality accurately, without laying blame, you create a kind of force field around yourself -- one that feels good to others.

-- Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life One Conversation at a Time by Susan Scott. I really like what this book promises and have been looking forward to reading it. 

But this passage has me confused. One of the main reasons I am reading the book is to learn how to have difficult conversations with people when they screw up.  I am now confused about how to confront someone about a mistake or a wrongdoing -- and get them to accept responsibility -- without "blaming" the person. Hopefully, as I move through the book I will figure out this conundrum.

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Should Be Reading, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event. 

Mailbox Monday

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday! MM was created by Marcia, who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, before turning it into a touring event (details here).

Kathy from BermudaOnion's Weblog stepped up to the plate to host in November. The link for today is here.

I got one book last week, but it is a very special book, a limited edition hardback of Polite Society, the quirky debut novel by Colleen Sohn, illustrated by Maren Jensen.



I've only dipped into the book so far, reading passages at random, but it engages me every time I do.

There are only a few of the lovely hardbacks left (see here for details). The good news it that Polite Society is now available in a Kindle edition, with all the illustrations.

Happy Vetrans' Day

Book Beginnings: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author's name.

TWITTER: If you are on Twitter, please tweet a link to your post using the has tag #BookBeginnings. My Twitter handle is @GilionDumas.

MR. LINKY: Please leave a link to your post below. If you don't have a blog, but want to participate, please leave a comment with your Book Beginning.



MY BOOK BEGINNING

To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. 

 - from "A Scandal in Bohemia," the first story in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle.

That is a catchy start for any story. But given the eminence of this particular story in Doyle's oeuvre, and the significance of "the woman" to Sherlock Holmes, it is worth reading a fuller opening passage:

To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind. 

Yes, it is the introduction of Irene Adler! I think she plays a greater role in movie adaptations and spin offs than in the books, but she still looms large in the collective recollection of Sherlock Holmes' world.  

I started reading all the Sherlock Holmes book in order last year.  This is the third volume and I like the stories a lot.  But this is the book I have on my iPhone kindle app, which means it is my emergency book for when I get stuck waiting in line, or need something to read while grabbing a quick bite to eat. So I've been reading these stories for months and months. I may have to grab the book-book off my shelf and finish it off. 

Review: Oscar and Lucinda

 

Oscar and Lucinda is a strange book. Or, more precisely, it is a normal book about strange people. There is nothing experimental about the writing and there are no long philosophical passages. It definitely falls in the "good yarn" category of novels. But the main characters are odd birds – awkward misfits who end up doing unusual things because they can't do otherwise.

This Booker Prize winner by Peter Carey is a historical novel set, almost entirely, in the mid 1800s, mostly in Australia. Oscar is the son of an English marine biologist of such fervent Low Church beliefs that he beat his son for eating a Christmas pudding. Lucinda is an Australian orphan of independent mind and means, who invests half her fortune in a glass factory.

The two are drawn together by their mutual love of gambling. Oscar put himself through university by playing the ponies. Lucinda is dithering away the other half of her money on cards. The book is as much about gambling addiction as it is about anything else, although there is plenty in there about other 19th Century preoccupations, like religious sectarianism, natural sciences, sea travel, and geographic exploration.

None of the characters are particularly likable, or have much depth, despite the rich detail of the narrative. The ending is abrupt and half-baked. But the story is a grand, mesmerizing kaleidoscope of Australian history and human nature that never let's go of the reader's imagination.

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

NOTES

This counts as one of my Booker choices for the 2012 Battle of the Prizes, British Version.  It also counts for the Mt. TBR Challenge, the Off The Shelf Challenge,  the TBR Pile Challenge,  and as one of my 450-550 books for the Chunkster Challenge.

Teaser Tuesday: Death of an Expert Witness

The rich, loamy smell of the fen autumn night washed over his face, strong, yet fresh. The rain had stopped and the sky was a tumult of gray clouds through which the moon, now almost full, reeled like a pale, demented ghost.

 -- Death of an Expert Witness by P. D. James. 

P. D. James is a favorite of mine. I am reading her Adam Dalgliesh series in order -- this is Number 6. I think I have read all of them with my ears because Penelope Dellaporta does such an amazing job with the audiobooks.

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Should Be Reading, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event. 

Mailbox Monday

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday! MM was created by Marcia, who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, before turning it into a touring event (details here).

UPDATE: Kathy from BermudaOnion's Weblog stepped up to the plate to host in November. The link for today is here.

I found a couple of books by favorite authors at a library sale that have me wishing I could hole up for a rainy November week before the holiday rush and just read and relax. What a fantasy!



Glory by Vladimir Nabokov

 

Destinations: Essays from Rolling Stone by Jan Morris

 

Leaving Home by Anita Brookner

 

Earthly Possessions by Anne Tyler

EUROPEAN READING CHALLENGE: WRAP UP POSTS

The European Reading Challenge
January 1, 2012 to January 31, 2013

THIS IS THE PAGE FOR WRAP UP POSTS

TO SIGN UP, GO TO THIS PAGE

TO POST A REVIEW, GO TO THIS PAGE.

The idea of this first-ever European Reading Challenge was to read books by European authors or books set in European countries (no matter where the author comes from). The books could be anything – novels, short stories, memoirs, travel guides, cookbooks, biography, poetry, or any other genre.

Each book had to be by a different author and set in a different country.

If you have finished the challenge at whatever level you signed up for, and if you did a wrap up post, please enter a link to your wrap up post here:



Participants complete the challenge by finishing the number of books they signed up to read. But participants are encouraged to keep reading because there is a Jet Setter prize for the person who reads the most books -- each one from a different country.

I've finished the challenge and this is my wrap up post. I read the following books for this challenge, although I did not review all of them.

• High Stakes by Dick Francis (UK; reviewed here)
• Serenissima by Erica Jong (Italy; reviewed here) 
• People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks (Bosnia; reviewed here)
• Vie De France: Sharing Food, Friendship and a Kitchen in the Loire Valley by James Haller (France; reviewed here)
  
• Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson (Norway; not reviewed)  

I am just finishing Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak, which will count as an extra book.

Review: Evolutionaries

 

"Whether we like it or not, the new economy demands leaders that are agile, adaptable, innovative and visionary." That idea of how to adapt in today's quickly-changing business world is the impetus behind Evolutionaries: Transformational Leadership: The Missing Link in Your Organizational Chart, by business strategists Randy Harrington and Carmen E Voillequé.

The authors define evolutionaries as leaders that emerge from any part of a company and act as the catalyst for change. Evolutionaries are risk takers willing to proceed before every contingency is worked out perfectly. They will cross-pollinate ideas from across the company and look outside the company for inspiration on how to transform the business.

The book is organized around interviews with half a dozen or so individuals the authors identified as successful evolutionaries within their fields, including Chandra Brown, the President of United Streetcar; Captain Steve Ahlberg, leader of Navy SEALS teams; and Cindy Tortorici, CEO and Founder of the Link for Women. The format works because it puts faces on the ideas. However, the one weak spot in this short book is the lack of concrete examples of evolutionary ideas in practice. It is a short book and has room for a few war stories that could really make the concepts come alive.

One of the biggest strengths in the book, aside from bringing light and terminology to the evolutionary idea, is its honesty in describing the dark side of evolutionaries and their force in some organizations. Evolutionary practices may be invaluable in an organization that needs to innovate to exist. But in a business seeking to grow along established lines or implement a proven business plan, change for change's sake, or innovations that sap resources from successful programs may be more damaging than beneficial.

Evolutionaries is definitely a book that deserves space on any shelf of leadership and business innovation books. It is a quick read – hopefully a little more fleshed out with concrete examples in future editions – and worthwhile just to spark ideas and discussions about where your business is going and when and how to tap into the power of evolutionary thinking.

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it. 

NOTES

This counts as one of my books for the Non-Fiction, Non-Memoirs Challenge, hosted by Julie at My Book Retreat.  I only have one more book to go to complete the challenge.

Book Beginnings: Aurora

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author's name.

TWITTER: If you are on Twitter, please tweet a link to your post using the has tag #BookBeginnings. My Twitter handle is @GilionDumas.

MR. LINKY: Please leave a link to your post below. If you don't have a blog, but want to participate, please leave a comment with your Book Beginning.



MY BOOK BEGINNING

Papa says my arrival in this mortal world was a new beginning.

-- Aurora, Daughter of the Dawn: A Story of New Beginnings by J. J. Kopp, published by OSU Press.

This short historical novel is based on the life of Aurora Keil, a young pioneer girl whose father founded the Aurora Colony in Oregon in the mid-1800s. The colony was a utopian communal settlement in rural Oregon. The book would make a terrific Christmas gift for young readers interested in real-life stories of pioneers.

The town of Aurora still has several historic buildings, many preserved as antique shops. It makes a wonderful day trip from Portland.

Boo!

Teaser Tuesday: Death at the President's Lodging

Why had Umpleby met his death in a story-book manner?… He had died in a literary context; indeed, he had in a manner of speaking died admid a confusion of literary contexts.

-- Death at the President's Lodging by Michael Innes.

This is an erudite Ivory Tower mystery, first published in 1936. I really enjoy the Vintage Mystery Challenge because it's made me search out some Golden Age authors who are new to me, like Michael Innes.

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Should Be Reading, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.

Mailbox Monday

 

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday! MM was created by Marcia, who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, before turning it into a touring event (details here).

Marcia is hosting again in October.  The sign-up post is here, where you can find links for all the participants.

I got one book last week, from OSU Press. It looks like a super-interesting history of the Sherman Institute, an off-reservation boarding school for Native American children that still operates as the Sherman Indian High School.

 

The Indian School on Magnolia Avenue: Voices and Images from Sherman Institute, edited by Clifford E. Trafzer, Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert, and Lorene Sisquoc.

This collection of writings and images focuses on the earlier years of the school in Riverside, California.  The federal government opened this flagship institution in 1902, seeking to transform American Indian students into productive farmers, carpenters, homemakers, nurses, cooks, and seamstresses.

The book is a compilation of documents from the Sherman Indian Museum examining the building of Sherman, the school’s Mission architecture, the nursing program, the Special Five-Year Navajo Program, the Sherman cemetery, and student life.  There is also a photo essay depicting life at the school.

Book Beginnings: Death at the President's Lodgings

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author's name.

TWITTER: If you are on Twitter, please tweet a link to your post using the has tag #BookBeginnings. My Twitter handle is @GilionDumas.

MR. LINKY: Please leave a link to your post below. If you don't have a blog, but want to participate, please leave a comment with your Book Beginning.



MY BOOK BEGINNING

An academic life, Dr. Johnson observed, puts one little in the way of extraordinary casualties. 

 -- Death at the President's Lodging by Michael Innes.

Isn't the vintage Penguin cover terrific!

I am reading this 1936 Ivory Tower mystery for the Vintage Mystery Challenge.  I'm in Minneapolis for work for a couple of days, and this is the perfect book to read after a long day.

Teaser Tuesday: The Imperfectionists

He already knew [his staff] in a way -- he understood this breed backward and had foreseen how his speech would be received.  Journalists were as touchy as cabaret performers and as stubborn as factory machinists.

-- The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman. I am tearing through this novel about an English-language newspaper based in Rome. I love it. What a terrific description of the funny subculture at the center of the story!

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Should Be Reading, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event. 

Mailbox Monday

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday! MM was created by Marcia, who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, before turning it into a touring event (details here).

Marcia is hosting again in October.  The sign-up post is here, where you can find links for all the participants.

Last week, I got a book from author Ray Rhamey, his futuristic political/legal thriller, We the Enemy. It looks great!



I met Ray when we were on a panel together at the Wordstock book festival.  He is a writer and editor and has a very fun blog called Flogging the Quill, where he offers to critique the first page of someone's manuscript, with readers' comments and votes on whether they would read past the first page.

The Wordstock panel was moderated by YA author and creator of the Novel Novice blog, Sarah Gundell. Sarah a real live wire! Very fun to work with.

Stephanie Guerra, author of a YA novel Torn and contributor to the popular readergirlz blog, was the third member of the panel.  Stephanie is a wonderful woman who, along with motherhood and several other pursuits, works on a literacy program for troubled teens.

Book Beginnings:

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author's name.

TWITTER: If you are on Twitter, please tweet a link to your post using the has tag #BookBeginnings. My Twitter handle is @GilionDumas.

MR. LINKY: Please leave a link to your post below. If you don't have a blog, but want to participate, please leave a comment with your Book Beginning.



MY BOOK BEGINNING

Sorry, I don't have a Book Beginning today!

Yesterday, by court order, my law firm released 1,200 Boy Scout "Perversion Files" about accused molesters in Scouts from 1965 to 1985. It's been a circus at our office.  I was on the phone with reporters all day yesterday for regional stories like this one about accused child molesters in Montana and Wyoming.

And I am rushing off now to a TV studio to do an interview on MSNBC. Crazy!

Review: The Man With the Golden Arm

 

If gritty reality set to a jazz beat is your thing, then The Man with the Golden Arm is the book for you. It's Jack Kerouac meets James Farrell. In a deserted Chicago alley. With a used hypodermic needle.

 Nelson Algren won the first National Book Award in 1950 for this bleak portrayal of postwar life on Chicago's Division Street. The story centers on Frankie “Machine” Majcinek, discharged from the Army with a morphine addiction, no job, and a wife confined to a wheelchair thanks to his drunken driving. Frankie's days are spent dealing poker, fighting with his wife, shooting up, and putting the moves on his drunken neighbor, all the time fantasizing about playing drums for Gene Krupa.

Mixed in with the plot are several montage scenes where Algren moves out of the action to describe every detail of the picture. These verbal jazz improvs, including serial descriptions of the guys in the holding cell at the local precinct and the revelers at a New Year ’s Eve party at Schwiefka’s neighborhood bar, are virtuoso performances and give the novel lasting value. But the story is still as dark and depressing as it can get, even with these artistically compelling interludes, right to the bleak and inevitable ending.

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it. 

NOTES 

The Man With the Golden Arm is commonly considered the "first" National Book Award winner, but there was a period of time before WWII when an earlier version of the award existed, although it was not limited to American books.

I've already read two National winners for the American Version of the 2012 Battle of the Prizes, so this doesn't count for that challenge.  But I read it with my ears, so it counts for the Audio-Book Challenge. 

Teaser Tuesday: Doctor Zhivago

Once or twice already, Lara had stopped irresolutely and hesitated on the threshold of the drawing room, hoping that Komarovsky, who sat facing the ballroom, would notice her. But he kept his eyes of his cards, which he held fanlike in his left hand, and either really did not see her or pretended not to.

-- Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak.

The book has all the sweeping grandeur of the movie, with the snow, trains, fur hats, tortured love affairs, and soulful looks. The above passage is typical of the dramatic plot.

But what is understandably missing from the movie (at least, as I recall) are long passages of crypto-religious, philosophical ramblings, usually from the mouth or pen of Zhivago's uncle, sometimes from Zhivago himself. This passage describes the general theme, but the rambling passages are much longer -- or at least feel that way.

In the books [Nikolai Nikolaevich] published there in Russian and in translation, he developed his long-standing notion of history as a second universe, erected by mankind in response to the phenomenon of death with the aid of the phenomena of time and memory. The soul of these books was a new understanding of Christianity, their direct consequence a new understanding of art. 

I'm reading this one for the TBR Pile Challenge and the Eastern Europe Reading Challenge.  Since Pasternak won the Nobel Prize because of Doctor Zhivago, I will also make some progress on that list.


Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Should Be Reading, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event. 

Mailbox Monday

 Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday! MM was created by Marcia, who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, before turning it into a touring event (details here).

Marcia is hosting again in October.  The sign-up post is here, where you can find links for all the participants.



The Things that Matter by Nate Berkus. Mine is an ARC from the LibraryThing Early Reviewer program. It's a little hard to appreciate the book because all the pictures in the ARC edition are in black and white. But it looks like the real thing will be gorgeous.



The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman. This is my Book Club's book for November and it looks great.

I posted early because I have a busy day.

Wordstock is Here!

This weekend is Wordstock, Portland's annual book and literary festival, a showcase for contemporary writers.

I am excited to be on a panel tomorrow, along with a couple of other book bloggers, to discuss the role of bloggers in the writing community.  It is going to be a lot of fun.

I also hope to see some of the other panels and readings by some of the "Spotlight" authors. 

Book Beginnings: Krakatoa

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author's name.

TWITTER: If you are on Twitter, please tweet a link to your post using the has tag #BookBeginnings. My Twitter handle is @GilionDumas.

MR. LINKY: Please leave a link to your post below. If you don't have a blog, but want to participate, please leave a comment with your Book Beginning.



MY BOOK BEGINNING

 

Though we think first of Java as an eponym for coffee (or, to some today, a computer language), it is in fact the trading of aromatic tropical spices on which the fortunes of the great island's colonizers and Western discoverers were first founded. 

 -- Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883 by Simon Winchester. Even though I've had this book on my TBR shelf forever, I am listening to the audio version from the library because it is read by Winchester himself. He is such a favorite of mine and I preferred to have him read to me than read this one with my eyes.

Review: The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club

When a venerable member of the Bellona Club is found dead in a wingback chair, Bellona member, Lord Peter Wimsey, is called in to make some discreet inquiries into the time of his death. The inheritance of a large fortune depends on just when the old fellow shuffled off.

The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club finds Lord Peter at the top of his game, always urbane and witty as he unravels a series of knotty clues and evaluates myriad suspects. There are many moving parts to the puzzle, but Lord Peter and his technologically savvy butler Bunter never lose their cool, right up to the surprisingly dark ending.

OTHER REVIEWS

My review of Clouds of Witness is here.

If you would like your review of this or any other of Dorothy L. Sayers book listed here, please leave a comment with a link.

NOTES

The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, first published in 1928, is Dorothy L. Sayers' fourth book in the Lord Peter Wimsey series. It was one of my Golden Age Girls choices for the Vintage Mystery Challenge, hosted by Bev at My Reader's Block.

Teaser Tuesday: Boys Don't Tell

 








 

. . . I had always felt that people should put problems of youth, including abuse, behind them. Big deal. Get over it. Move on. Right? Wrong! Until we can open that box and shed light on the abuse, we don't have a clue as to its impact.

-- Boys Don't Tell: Ending the Silence of Abuse by Randy Ellison (emphasis in original). This is the author's own story of a life messed up by childhood sexual abuse at the hands of his minister and how he healed by coming forward and confronting the church.  It is an honest and moving account that includes prose and poetry.

Randy is now a strong advocate for abuse survivors, working on his own and with the wonderful organization OAASIS. 


Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Should Be Reading, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event. 

Review: The Comedians

 

François "Papa Doc" Duvalier and his secret police, the Tonton Macoute, ruled Haiti from his election in 1957 until his death in 1971. As tin pot dictators go, Papa Doc was particularly repressive, using bribery, extortion, and confiscation to enrich his cohorts; crippling the country by causing a mass exodus of educated professionals; and killing as many as 30,000 of his countrymen.

In The Comedians, Graham Greene tells the story of Papa Doc’s ascendency from the perspective of three foreigners: narrator Brown, owner of a once-chic ex-pat hotel in Port-au-Prince; former US Presidential candidate Smith, in Haiti with his formidable wife to open an institute of vegetarianism; and third rate mercenary Jones, hoping his fabricated credentials will earn him fame and fortune on one side of the conflict or the other.

Brown, Smith, and Jones are the comedians of the title, but only in the older sense of the word comedy as political satire or a work that emphasizes the ridiculous and the absurd in human life. There is humor in the book – the whole bit, for example, about Smith running for President on a vegetarian ticket is an ongoing and funny gag. But the humor is often dark, as when Smith doesn’t understand that there is no need to teach Haitians the benefits of a vegetarian diet since they cannot afford meat.

Although Greene keeps the tone light and the story moves along at a steady clip, there is a sad inevitability to it. Local leaders die, opposition is crushed, and the lucky flee. Brown’s love affair with a diplomat’s wife founders in the turmoil. The grand plans of Smith, Jones, and Brown all crumble against Pap Doc’s corrupt political and military might. Contrary to comedies of old, there is no happy ending, but The Comedians is a story of history on a human scale that will grip the reader’s attention to the very last page.

OTHER REVIEWS

1966 New York Times review of The Comedians

If you would like your review of this or any other Graham Greene book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it. 

NOTES

I read The Comedians for several challenges, most obviously the Graham Greene Reading Challenge hosted by the Carrie at Books and Movies, but also the Birth Year Reading Challenge on Hotchpot Cafe, the Books Published in the First years of My Life Challenge hosted by Emma at Words and Peace, the Mt. TBR Challenge on My Reader's Block, the Off the Shelf Challenge on Bookish Ardour, and the TBR Pile Challenge hosted by Adam at Roof Beam Reader.

Empty Mailbox Monday

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday! MM was created by Marcia, who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, before turning it into a touring event (details here).

Marcia is hosting again in October.  The sign-up post is here, where you can find links for all the participants.

For the first time in a long time, I have an empty mailbox. No books came to my house last week.

Oh well, there's always hope for this week!