So glad I stuck it out! Yay me!

Gone Girl
by Gillian Flynn

It's a rare book that has me (a) almost giving up in the beginning--it was just too dull--and (b) nearly crying at the end, and (c) laughing out loud at the "last word."  And another thing--when I listen to a narrator for too long, I find myself picking up patterns of their speech.  A British narrator has me dropping my haitches; a few German words have me interspersing my speech with Dunderkopf's.  So this book, much as I hate to admit it, added some very annoying speech patterns into my conversational repertoire.

Hint: most started with a b- or f-.

In spite of that, I heartily recommend it.  It is truly a head trip.  Just don't take it too seriously.

Cold. Hungry. Lost. Rinse. Repeat.

In the Kingdom of Ice:
The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette

by Hampton Sides 



I know it’s a coincidence that I keep reading books about near-starvation and survival under incredible odds—and I’m on a diet.  I sure wish I could send those people some of my uneaten food.

But that would involve time travel, so I’ll just chuck it in the trash and carry on.  Like those poor adventurers on board the Jeannette, sailing and steaming to the arctic in search of the North Pole.  It wasn’t as stupid as it sounds and they weren’t stupid people.  In those days (1880's), it was a common belief that once you got past the ice, the arctic opened up into a warm, very salty sea.  There were some convincing theories to explain it.  So off went Captain De Long and his heavily fortified, ice-crunching ship Jeannette.  They were well prepared to overwinter in the ice, if it came to that.  And not all that poorly prepared for what actually happened.  So it's a long, harrowing story you'll have to read for yourself--and stay off Wikipedia until the last page is history.

Short and sad. But it happened.

Whose Names Are Unknown
by by Sanora Babb, Lawrence R. Rodgers

I never read The Grapes Of Wrath, but I was suprised to learn that this book was written in 1939 but not published because Random House felt that Steinbeck had already said it all! What a feeble, short-sighted notion.  Recovered from obscurity and published in 2006 by the University of Oklahoma press, this is a worthwhile, first-hand account of a national disaster--happening in person's lives.  All of the prejudice and pain, foolishness and greatness, of an entire nation, wrapped up in a few short pages.  It deserved to be published long ago.

It was pretty brave to pile all your belongings in a car and head across the desert to compete for a job at a farm laborer wage.  But more interesting to me was what came before--the waves of dust, whole days and even weeks of unending dust.  Chickens couldn't scratch in two feet of heavy dirt.  That dirt was probably highly fertile topsoil, but without rain, it couldn't be farmed--it only smothered.

I wonder if there's a story of the people who didn't go west, but instead chose to go back east or south?  Did any of the Okies end up in Florida, Georgia, or East Texas?  I'd love to hear their stories as well.

Another question--was this occurring at the same time as the great migration of southern sharecroppers moved north, to the factories of Chicago and Ohio?  I'll check in a bit.

Not 17 buttons, mind you

Napoleon's Buttons: How 17 Molecules Changed History
by Penny Le Couteur, Jay Burreson

Got my chemistry fix for the month!  

It starts out with a refresher course in organic chemistry and the notation used to describe molecules, then jumps into the seventeen molecules.  How they chose the seventeen is anyone's guess, but it must have been a lot of fun.  Dye, opium, silk--I don't think of silk as a molecule, but apparently it is.  Salt, of course.  But oleic acid?  Isoprene? 

Jump in for a world--literally--of fun.  Science fun.

For kids only, I'm afraid

Incantation
by Alice Hoffman

Alice Hoffman has a habit of showing big and tragic events through very small eyes, full of touch and detail.  But there's a lacking of emotion that baffles me.  How could I read this story without feeling?  But I did.

It's an episode during the Spanish Inquisition, in a tiny village in Spain, where Muslims and Christians coexisted in a manner that seemed, on the surface, harmonious. Secreted in the midst of them were secret Jews, the Conversos, Jews who had converted to Christianity to avoid persecution.  Many of them, no doubt most, continued to practice their religion in secret.  But none of that mattered to the Inquisitioners or the ignorant, intolerant, peasants who were easily incited to violence against their neighbors.  Open Jews, converted Jews or secret Jews--they were all the devil.

So much evil done in the name of Jesus.  If there were a heaven, I'd imagine he and Muhammad are up there now, swapping sad stories and crying bitter tears.

Grueling and worth it

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
by Laura Hillenbrand

Call me faint of heart, but for first time in an audiobook, I actually had to skip forward a few times.

Let me explain.  This is the true story of Louie Zamperini, an Olympic mile runner and air force bombardier who ended up a captive of the Japanese during World War II.  That much too much isn't telling, is it?  It would be on the book cover.  The story begins with his boyhood pranks, so numerous and flamboyant that in another time and place he might have been arrested for juvenile delinquency.  During the first few chapters, you also learn then that this author, Laura Hillenbrand, likes the detail.  (I won't call it minutia, it's not the kind of detail like the exact brand name of each pack of cigarettes he stole, but it is: each pack of cigarettes he stole.)

I'm not exaggerating much.  It was entertaining to hear, for a few hours, but then you just wanted her to get on with the story.  So when the bad stuff started happening and she was relating the daily, sometimes hourly, episodes of beatings, humiliation, and senseless violence he endured at the hands of his Japanese guards, I could only take so much of it.  I either had to turn the player or skip forward a little in time.  Not much, but enough to keep me sane.

The book explains a little of the mystery of how, after so much hatred and suffering and watching people die, the Americans and Japanese because strong allies and trading partners. Part of the push came from the Cold War and fear of communism, but not all. We need to study this phenomenon; learn from it; reproduce it.  It's our only hope.

Great book. Sad though.

Telling: A Memoir of Rape and Recovery
by Patricia Weaver Francisco

The highly personal story of a woman who survived and even overcame--after a long, long time--a rape by a stranger who broke into her house when her husband was out of town.  And by extension, the stories of many other women.  I'm not saying their stories are alike, only that they all share certain elements that lingered long after the bruises and pain should have faded.

Feeling of powerlessness, worthlessness, irrational (and rational) fear.  A marriage on the edge despite a strong, supportive husband.  She quotes a certain statistic about marriage after rape that I won't write here, because that would deprive you of the impact it had on me when I read it in context.  Nightmares, flashbacks, bad therapists.

Her rapist was never found, but ten years after the event she attended the trial of a serial rapist in a nearby neighborhood.  He had a similar approach--watch the house or apartment, enter when he was fairly sure a woman was alone, cover her eyes, and steal whatever money or sell

able property was around.  In the one case where there were two men in the apartment attacked, the difference between the men's reaction and hers was shocking.  They all fought back--she had fought desperately and blindly, finally suffering a cut so deep that the attacker had to wrap it in a sheet.   But the two men bided their time, caught their opportunity and found with effectiveness.  (And a hockey stick.)  

 That trial alone made the whole painful book worth enduring.  Read it.

Best weapon award

Started Early, Took My Dog

Great and frustrating book!  There appeared--without warning--to be four separate plot lines--or was that five?  All intertwined.  The date jumped from 1975 to now, or rather, now minus six months, but at least she gave you warning about that by putting the date on top of the flashback chapters and those where it returned.  But the plot lines and all the character changes kept me confused almost to the end.

(Warning: I'm not a reader who thrives on complexity of plot.  Complexity of subject, yes, but I just can't cozy up to so many new people so suddenly.)

But I still recommend it thoroughly. Best detective mystery I've read in years.  Between the police, the ex-police, and the used-to-be-police but now private fugitive tracker, there are plenty of insider details.  Throw in a stolen dog a little girl of indeterminate origin,  and a woman who just wants to know who she is--and you have it all.

Great gazing. And poring.

Great Maps
by Jerry Brotton


There's so much learning crammed into this book, my feeble little brain couldn't take it all in.  It's an oversized picture book, each two or four-page spread showing and explaining a map that's either significant, beautiful, or puzzling.  In some cases a map is really a collection of maps, like the Vatican Gallery of Maps.  What a thing to see!

I was amused by his method of illustrating the size of the maps.  Beside each was a figure of a human or else a human hand, showing its size relative to something we're all familiar with.  A surprising number of them were much larger than a human being.

He did marvelous work of condensing big things into (relatively) small pages.   I was disappointed only by the amount of space they gave up to show pictures that came out as big blurs.  The small, blown-up pictures of areas of the maps--those were great.  But a few of the "bigger picture" items were just wasted space.

Like many books of illustration, someday this book should be remade as an online resource.  Then the viewer could expand and contract to the limits of his thumb and forefinger.

Two natives, the author and a dog named Fatback

Neither Wolf Nor Dog:
On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder

by Kent Nerburn

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I don't want to write about it.  If rancor and pain can linger in a collective soul for so long, what hope has mankind?

At the same time I'm listening to a book about World War II in Japan.  These people, indoctrinated from birth to fear and hate foreigners, told that their race was a superhuman one and all others little more than brutal savages, raised a generation of soldiers capable of killing without remorse.  Chinese, Koreans, and American prisoners were beaten, tortured or murdered.  The decent humans feared to act--sadism ruled.

But today they're our allies.  Trading partners and friends.  What happened?

I'm hoping some of the books on my reading list will enlighten.  But the point of this diatribe is, how can we ever reconcile with the hearts of our own native races?  I'm not saying the Indian elder in this book hated the white man--he chose a white man to write down his philosophy--but oh, how he loathed the acts of the conquerors.  You feel the very land weep, poisoned with the blood of her children.  You feel the great sadness of the ones left to live...if you can call it that.

Great and long. Really long.

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
by Jared Diamond

I'd almost call this mistitled--should be something like, Agriculture, Herding and Geography: The Fates of Human Societies.  Because those were the factors that made some societies successful and others extinct.  Surplus and storage gave people the time and energy to improve their methods, breeding more surplus, better methods....  Living close to herds of animals improved the odds that infectious diseases could spread--I wish he'd written more about this--and natural selection bred resistance to those diseases.  And finally, Geography--for example, having metal ore close to the surface makes all the difference. I don't think I ever knew that smelting of metal was invented independently in different parts of the world--I always pictured it as a single man's a-ha! moment.

It's totally great but I wanted more.  He didn't get into European societies very much, after pointing out that the animals and plants domesticated in the Fertile Crescent traveled West and rapidly became established there, but the lands where they originated are now overgrazed, barren, and dry.  Why?  Was it climate change or did the humans of the Fertile Crescent simply fail to learn how to keep their farmlands productive?

And what happened after Steel?  It wasn't just Guns, Germs and Steel that made some societies dominant.  He does talk a good deal about writing, but never mentions printing. (I think.)  And what of the role of religion?

Always, I want more.

Book collector or private detective?

Louisa May Alcott:
From Blood & Thunder to Hearth and Home
by Madeleine B. Stern

Collection of Madeleine Stern's essays and lots of Alcott's letters, written from 1943 to 1995.  The story of the fascinating discover of Alcott's A.M. Barnard pseudonym is here, along with a more sympathetic view of how she came to be known as "The Children's Friend" author.  The biography of Alcott that I read gave me the mistaken view that after many frustrations making a living as a serious writer, she came to write a Girls' book as an unwilling favor to a publisher.  Not true at all.

The only essay I didn't enjoy wholeheartedly was the one where she attempted to link certain episodes in Alcott's career to passages in her children's books.  Her acting episodes in the early years, yes--almost every book had an amateur play or wannabe actress.  But I don't think it's fair to imply that direct quotes from her books had a direct parallel in her own life.

One of the recipes came out good--after I fixed it

Breaking the food seduction:
The Hidden Reasons Behind Food Cravings--and 7 Steps to End them Naturally

Neal Barnard, M.D.

Frustrating book!  The first part explains the biology behind the cravings and offers some insights as to why some cravings may be beneficial to our species.  After all, if mother's milk didn't taste good to babies they'd be disinclined to put up with it, right?   It's full of fun stuff about the opiate effect of chocolate and dairy products and sugar.  He didn't include salt for some reason.

So after the fun stuff, here comes a chapter subheading: Is it Good to Break a Chocolate Habit?   The answer he proposes is overwhelmingly, YES--chocolate can trigger migraines, increase irritability, it's full of fat, etc, etc.  Definitely a habit to break.  So why, in the last part of the book, out of 21 dessert recipes,  7 recipes are for things like "ultra-fudge brownies" and "creamy fudge frosting"  using cocoa powder?  And other five use carob powder but say,  cocoa powder can be substituted?  Someone wasn't listening to himself.

In his descriptions of vitamins, and at various other places throughout the book, he recommends fortified breakfast cereals--Corn Flakes, Product 19, Total, Special K....  But his chapter on the glycemic index of foods and lists Cheerios at 106 and Corn Flakes at 130.  Anything over 90 is considered high glycemic index and theoretically should be avoided.  So you should get your vitamins from highly processed, pre-digested and often sugary breakfast cereals instead of from fruits, vegetables and whole grains?   And worse still, he recommends a daily multi-vitamin, because it will provide vitamin B12 and also ease your mind in case you're worried you're missing something.   I'm okay with the latter, but if you're filling your body with a cocktail of synthesized chemicals to provide only one vitamin, something's screwy.

So I have some serious issues with the details, but I can't fault the content.  And he has a delightful writing style, for example in quoting the Coca-Cola Company's "Myths and Rumors" web site about the non-addictiveness of caffeine, he says:
       Caffeine is not addictive?  This is what your mother used to call "a lie."

Lot of reading

Walt Disney:
The Triumph of the American Imagination
by Neal Gabler

Hefty biography of a complex man.  I enjoyed it to the end, but didn't come away satisfied.  I learned all about him; a little about the people who helped him; and a tidbit about his work; but the insight into how and why never showed up on the pages.  But like I said, he was a complex man.  Who ever knows why one does something?

So a wanted less detail, more substance. Hard job for a biographer, unless they resort to making things up.

Warning: makes you really want to see some of those old Mouse cartoons again. The future of reading ought to include "animated" biographies--where you can click a link and see the cartoons they're talking about. Or if it's about a political figure, you can click to view the speeches. Or any person introduced, you can an least hover over the name and see their picture.

How much loss can a human being suffer?

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
Ishmael Beah

It is amazingly impossible that a boy's memory can have so much stuff in it.  For certain periods in his life, he relates day-by-day, hour-by-hour narratives that are mind-bogglingly detailed, down to the taste and feel and smell of the scenes unfolding.  They are so real and in our faces that it seems more of a movie than words spoken in my ears.

I listened to the audiobook, read by Ishmael Beah himself; in this case, I think that was the best choice.  Since my discovery of audiobooks a few years ago, I've heard only a few that would have been better on paper.  My theory is that most books of fact and history are better read than heard. When I'm reading history, I often want to flip back a chapter or two and review something that was skimmed or failed to stick.  But memoirs and fiction, with a good reader (they call them "performers"), have an extra kick when heard rather than read.  It could be simply that it forces me to slow down and savor.

Ishmael Beah tells of a life destroyed by war that I don't even understand as war.  What is a war that means random killing of civilians, women and children, farmers, old men, babies?  What he described was more pointless than a genocide.  The only thing distinguishing a rebel from a soldier was the color of the cloth bound around his head.  Rebels and soldiers alike recruited from the captured boys and young men--it wasn't a race war, a land war, a religious war--it seemed to have been started by rebels from neighboring Liberia, attempting to obtain a base and armies to attack into Liberia.  Once started, the Sierra Leone RUF (rebels) went on to gain more and more territory, with poorly stated goals of redistribution of wealth and power to the people.  But all they seemed to do was to make the people fear and suffer and starve. 

The United Nations peacekeeping forces eventually ended the fighting.  For now.

The book's unbelievable pain is relieved by scenes of impossible kindness.  The boys look after each other, but they are helped along their many journeys by random individuals who step outside of their fear and give them food, shelter, medicine and hope.  It is the most depressing and the most uplifting book I have found in years.

I wanna be a medical examiner!

Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies, and the Making of a Medical Examiner
by Judy Melinek and T.J.Mitchell

Impossible to put down--heartbreakingly honest--fascinating.

Always in the forefront were the bodies and their ailments.  OD'ed bodies that the family insisted had been murder; bodies smashed by a falling crane; 9-1-1 bodies and and body parts.  She told a lot of medical and anatomical details without drowning you in ten-syllable words.  She revealed enough about her personal life as a trainee medical examiner to make herself a real person, but didn't get embarrassing.  She didn't try to hide her femininity, but didn't wallow in it, either.

On a side note--this is my blog, I can get personal if I want to--if anyone had ever presented the idea of her profession as an option to me, I might have considered it.  As a kid, I knew about doctors and nurses, and I sure didn't want to be one of them!  Responsibility for a human life?  Not taking it.  When I got older I heard about lab technicians and theirs seemed the most boring  job imaginable.  (Still does)  But poking into a nicely dead body, dealing with science rather than human hopes and fears, occasionally trucking out of the lab with a bag of evidence-gathering apparatus to view the crime scene in situ...what a job!

Odd but likeable

The Millstone
by Margaret Drabbel

Very peculiar. Quintessential ‎scholar with not-so-great social skills gets pregnant by accident and is too shy, unassertive, and possibly conflicted, to terminate it in the early stages.  Will she or won't she?  Will she get dismissed from her position?  Will she ever tell the father?  Or even her own father?

I'm not telling.  It sounds like a good little mystery but it's more--it's an introspection.  And quite a good one. In the progress of her problem, she comes out of her private little world and observes the people around her, which adds a little picture of time and place made quite interesting by her unique perspective.  The British Healthcare system seems amazing for its efficiency.  I suppose rich people have private physicians, but the rest of us just go to the clinic.  I'll admit she had a little trouble finding here to go from there, but at least she didn't have to manage ten different referrals and in-network/out-of-network claim forms.

Nothing to read here

Devotion: A Memoir
by Dani Shapiro

I just didn't get it--sometimes you don't.  I kept expecting something to happen or something to change, and I think maybe something might have, but the happenings and changes were so imperceptible they just breezed by, unnoticed.

I believe the subject of the memoir was the author's journey of self-discovery--exploring her roots, trying out the trappings of her Jewish heritage, and looking into her own soul through yoga and meditations.  All that should be admirable and make for a "riveting read", but it didn't.  If she ever went deeply into anything, it didn't show in these pages.  I learned nothing here.  If she did any research into the meaning behind the tradition, she didn't bother to share it with us. 

But just possibly, another reader, one with more in common to her, will find in this book all that I missed.  Good luck.

Ho-hum historical

Oh! Pioneers
by Willa Cather

Remarkable for its people.  It reminded me of Sinclair Lewis in a little way--the oddball characters who were both stereotypical in their actions and reactions and yet so true to real life people we meet every day.  The not-too-bright brothers, hard working and honest but so quick to assume the thoughts and attitudes of the people who surrounded them.  Alexandra could live a thousand years and her brothers would never realize how she made her land prosper through intelligent choice, sensible risk-taking, and just plain listening to the land.  They were good farmers but nowise entrepreneurs.

And the younger brother--a simple soul who just wanted a wife and home but was expected to plan for a career.  Adrift without purpose, was it any wonder what happened?  (Can't tell; sorry)

I loved her heroine; loved her book; and don't want to read another.  Why, is hard to tell.  Something was missing to make it a winner, but I cannot say what.

Who the heck was Tesla anyway?

Tesla's Attic
by Neal Shusterman

When your dad buys a house and moves you to a new neighborhood, how better a way to make a quick buck and meet some neighbors than to sell off all the junk in the attic?  This is how--hold a huge garage sale with very strange and unexpected consequences, and find out that it takes all the work and ingenuity of you and your new friends to try to get the stuff back.

Brain food for the young and scientifically minded.  It was very enjoyable--quick--lively and absolutely impossible by any set of currently accepted scientific theories. 

Read it and run

What an amazing book.  Adventure, research, human stories, and running.  And racing.  And 100-mile racing.  I was captivated from beginning to end and immediately started listening again when I reached the end. 

Starting with the simple question, why does my food hurt?  The preeminent sports orthopedist in the world says it's because the human body wasn't designed for running--running is like a ticking time bond, and the more you do it, the more likely you are to be hurt.   If you look at the runners around you, that's all you see--injury after injury.

Not satisfied with that answer,  McDougall takes us around the world and backward through time to find the real one. And it's a doozy.

Read this book even if you're not a runner and don't aspire to be one.  There's a lot more than running here.

At times--especially in the first few chapters--he was throwing around suppositions and personal conjectures like they were established fact.  A few times I'd pause the narrative and think, what the heck?   How did that come from that?!?  He'd describe the home-made beer of the Tarahumarans as "blistering paint," which to me implied high alcohol content, but then later explain that it was extremely low in alcohol, even less than the near-bear of the depression years.  They still bug me, but write them off as artistic license and slog on.  He gets to the observable, measurable facts soon enough.

Good ol' Pat done it again

The Bear in the Attic
by Patrick McManus

I didn't laughed my head off for this one because I'd just read the other McManus and knew what to expect.  I snortled, chuckled and grinned instead.  So it's just the usual--but the usual McManus is funnier than most people's best efforts.

Martha who?

My Boyfriend Barfed in my Handbag
...and Other Things You Can't Ask Martha


by Jolie Kerr

Man, I thought this was going to be funnier.  It's funny, but not funnier.  And I learned all kind of dreary things about how often you're supposed to Daily Clean your kitchen but then still have to do a periodic Full-Monty Hard Clean.  That part was nauseating.  If I spent one-tenth the time cleaning that she does...I'd shoot myself.

The little snippets of humor kept me reading, and I may have even learned something.  The next time I have a coffee/tea/soy sauce/Sriracha stain on my best blouse, I'll try harder.  I already knew that bleach was not the answer, after an ill-fated attempt to treat a soiled cotton print blouse--the stain went away, but so did half of the print.

I learned that all stains benefit from cold water.  Then, protein-based stains like blood respond to soap, peroxide, oxiclean or meat tenderizer; sweat stains: vinegar, Oxiclean, peroxide+soda; grease stains: PineSol or a degreaser; ink stains: blot with alcohol; tannin: cold water or soap.  No answer on the soy sauce or Sriracha, but next time I get one, I'll try harder.  I treat soy sauce like a stoppered test tube of anthrax culture--wear protective gloves, line the surface with disposable towels, and hold far away from the body.

Old timey writing but still relevant

Twelve years a slave
by Solomon Northop

Oh how I love the floriferous writing of 1853!

Having been born a freeman, and for more than thirty years enjoyed the blessings of liberty in a free State--and having at the the end of the time been kidnapped and sold into Slavery, where I remained, until happily rescued in the month of January, 1853, after a bondage of twelve years--it has been suggested than an account of my life and fortunes would not be uninteresting to the public.

Once past the gratuitous introspections, retrospections, foreshadowing and hindsighting, all so common in 19th century compositions, I found what remained to be direct, unsentimental, and clearly honest. He tells it like it was and leaves it to future generations to make their own conclusions.

I'd seen the movie, so I was pleasantly surprised to see that they'd kept it relatively close to truth.  They had to do a great amount of creation to bring characters to life--from the description, old Mr. So-and-so, he was a cruel man, they had to create a face and garb, mannerisms and speech, then put words in his mouth because the memoir seldom recalled them.  (I wouldn't expect it to.)

But as to the book, it was definitely worth the reading.  The style wasn't all that difficult once you got used to the 19th century habit of using twice as many words as needed.  It had much to say, and more importantly, show about the brutalizing effects of slavery on people who were themselves not brutal at all.  I wish it could be read by the people of our times who keep slaves, but I fear it would be no use.  They wouldn't see themselves in these pages; people never do.

He's still kicking

Into the Twilight, Endlessly Grousing

Patrick F. McManus

From the title, I thought this was going to be some kind of farewell book from the author.  But it doesn't appear to be, so I'm happy.  McManus just gets funnier with age.  I don't care how many of the stories are real or how many are made up, I just trust and believe them all.

If you're going to read just one, read Cereal Crime. It starts with his best friend Eddie getting a Private Detective kit from a cereal box-top giveaway, then pining away because there weren't any crimes to solve in their little backwoods town.  But Rancid Crabtree tells him of one--

And I've told too much.  Enjoy!

Depressing but worth it

Angela's Ashes


This is nonfiction, right?  I ended up reading it only because I couldn't understand the conflicting reviews.  Some said it unfairly depicted Ireland as a nation of drunkard dads and promiscuous mothers.  Some said "dreary and depressing."  Some said it was unrealistic or distorted.

I say, give me a break.  It didn't portray "the Irish" as squat--it portrayed one person and his own, personal, family story.  Those who say unrealistic don't know what it's like to be dirt poor.  It's a reminder to us all of the simple truth of poverty--it's damn near impossible to break out of, in any day and age.  You have to have decent clothes and a bath to get a job.  You have to have medical care and regular meals to get through school.  And distorted?  Of course it's distorted--it's the world through the eyes of a kid.

Forget the other people.  I agree it was sad.  Life is sad.  He neither softened or exaggerated--it was real.  As real as memory allows.

Doing the Anne Frank thing again. Why?

Memories of Anne Frank: Reflections of a Girlhood Friend
by Alison Leslie Gold




First to explain--the memories are from Hannah Goslar as told to Alison Leslie Gold. So I'll refer the Ms. Gold as the author and Ms. Goslar as Ms. Goslar,

The only things to dislike about this book are the name and the editing. It's a memoir and you can't blast people's memories unless  you were there with them and knew they'd made the stuff up. Not that I think she did make stuff up--I'm just explaining why "content" is not a criteria I can judge on.  I wish there were a little more content, but I'd rather have a sketchy truth than a made-up memory.  But--[to the author]--why isn't there more content?  I feel like Ms. Goslar was given the task of (a) remember everything you can about Anne Frank and (b) you can add on a little from your own life story, but (c) keep it short and (d) be sure to toss in mention of Anne Frank from time to time.

In other words, Ms. Goslar had a story to tell--and this isn't it.  Why couldn't it be?   Why was the scope so severely limited?

And the title sucks. If they had to put in the title to make people want to read the book,
they could have done so without distorting what the book is mostly about.  There's a lot more here than just Anne, and could have been more still if Ms. Goslar had been encouraged to tell it and Ms. Gold interested in writing it.



Anne Frank

About the last of my Judy Blume fandom

Here's To You, Rachel Robinson
by Judy Blume

This book, and the one I read after which probably came before--As Long As We're Together--aren't the most revolutionary of Ms. Blume's books.  She's subtle when she could have been bold--for example, you guess at some of the real reasons of Rachel Robinson's family disfunction, but they never come out in your face.  I fully expected Rachel to come down with a full-fledged case of anorexia or some anxiety-related mental illness, but she just slogs on. 

In the real world, family problems don't get "solved"--they just get outgrown.  Ms. Blume is going for realism instead of lessons, and so the novels lack punch.  But they're still a pair of little gems.

Me and celibrity memoirs again

Kitchen Confidential:
Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly
by Anthony Bourdain

I guess we all have our weaknesses.  I seem to have one for celebrity chef memoirs.  When I find a good one, it gets picked up first from the stack and consumed like a big plate of comfort food. It's my mom's fried potatoes and a pot of white beans.

Mr. Bourdain did a trick here I wish every memoir-writer would do.  He takes off a chapter or two to explain his philosophy of life. or, in his case, of eating (when to eat what and what never to eat).  He also discusses choosing a cooking career (what to expect in the real world), and how to succeed in the career (don't lie much, be reliable, and put up with a lot of sh*t.)

So it's a  pleasurable mix of life and learning with an amusing dose of life lessons.  If you're going to be a cook. Thank heavens I'm not.

Listened to twice, almost

Hope Was Here
by Joan Baur

This will make you cry even if you never shared the experiences she describes. and if you did, you'll cry even harder.

But it's not a sad book, not at all.  It's funny--how can a story of two expatriate New Yorkers running a small diner in the middle of Cheese Land Wisconsin not be?  Hope is a girl of nearly endless optimism, and she's out to conquer the  world...or at least satisfy the people at the counter, growling for coffee and hash browns.  She's the waitress with the dazzling smile and the (nearly) unquenchable optimism, and she's on the job.

Eating recipes

Egg: A Culinary Exploration of the World's Most Versatile Ingredient

by Michael Ruhlman

Almost completely exactly what I was expecting.  I'd thought there might be a little more science in here--a little less how-to and a little more why-to.  It's mostly recipes--great recipes, I'm sure--covering all the ways to prepare an egg, or parts of it, and all the varied flavors and textures that result.  I'm not saying there's no science at all, I just wanted more.

There's not much mention here of the difference in taste and quality between commercially raised eggs (hens in cages, indoors, fed on corn and antibiotics) and pastured eggs (free range, outdoors, fed on corn and juicy bugs).  Only a half-page inset about nutritional differences.  All I can say is that I poached a farm fresh egg last night without bothering to strain the loose white, which he insists is a necessary step, and got a perfect round package with a deep gold yolk, no strings attached.  And it tasted great.

 One of the two recipes I'm going to try is a quiche. normally the simplest of dishes, this one is fussy with roasted red pepper and a handmade crust. He calls for "cured Spanish chorizo" but doesn't specify what that really means.  I can go to the store and buy chorizo--I usually have a choice between hot and hotter, but it's not going to be cured, it will be Mexican not Spanish, and it won't look at all like his pictures. So I can be assured it will neither taste like his chorizo or have the same texture.

No single word can sum this up

The Golem and the Jinni
by Helene Wecker

Hit me like a lime slush brain freeze.  I did succeed in putting it down, but only when my next pick up time was firmly in mind.  I can't think of a single thing to say about it without risking destruction of your joy in finding out that thing for yourself.  I can only use generic words like surprising, for real?, and freaking imagination!

It's a gem and you know it from the moment you pick up the hardcover book.  The publisher recognized it as such and gilded the leaves in sooty gray, or was it dull blue?  Anyway, it doesn't look or feel like a "normal" book. and it sure isn't.  Oddly enough, you'd have to call the genre fantasy, but it's not quite so. Rather than inventing a fantasy world, she took the real world and inserted just a little magic into it.  Her real world descriptions--New York in the 19th century; desert encampments in Syria--are really, really believable.

One quibble--I think she broke the rules. In a fantasy world, the author gets to make up her own rules.  But she hadn't ought to break them, and here, right at the end, I think she bent them a little.  It's still a great ending, but I couldn't help thinking, "but wouldn't...."

History review

The Guns At Last Light:
The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945
by Rick Atkinson

Note that I listened to this while driving the car, which means my attention wavered more than it would with words on paper. I was...well...not exactly riveted.  I knew how it had to end, and the plot synopsis was history to me--but still, I was sort of riveted.  I'd never imagined the waste, the inconceivable waste, of an invasion on such a scale. And the waste went on--gliders smashed, tanks sunk in the mud, supplies torched and exploded, and human lives lives lives.  So many human lives chopped into hamburger. In a world of four billion people I know only too well the insignificance of a single human life...and I know the connections of it, too.  Each lost life ripped the heart out of a number of persons--two, four, eight, or a lot more--and left them permanently crippled.

Best quote in the book: Eisenhower, to a solder who was uneasily suppressing a smile at the sight of General Patton throwing up at a concentration camp site.

I hear that a lot of soldiers say they don't know what they're fighting for. But now we know what we're fighting against.

(My apology if I missed a word or two--hope I got the gist.)

So other than the waste, the battles, and the many mistakes on the front lines, this book had to offer an insight into the interworking personalities of command.  Montgomery--Churchill--Roosevelt--Patton--de Gaulle--Stalin.  Occasionally, very occasionally, equal time was given to the opposition--Field Marshall Rommell had a few appearancees.

So, I don't know. There are other books in the series, but I'll leave it at this one. For now.

Awful, just awful

Philomena
by Martin Sixsmith

Okay, so on the cover is a photo of a mother and a grown son, more-or-less looking at each other.  And the book's cover includes "The poignant true story of a mother and the son she had to give away."  It's in the non-fiction section.

Given those facts, what was I supposed to assume?  All I know is that after the first few chapters, the mother's story dropped out and it became the story of the son. It includes a few attempts by him to find his mother, but otherwise was the biography of a man--and not an especially interesting biography.  I apologize to his friends and lovers but it's really the author who ought to apologize.  Any person--any where, any how--is intrinsically interesting, and so the failure of the author to interest me in this man is totally his blame and no reflection on the subject.

After I skimmed the last three-quarters to get to the pitifully inadequately wrapup at the end, I threw the book aside in anger.  (Figuratively; library book) And now I find this review 

 by a person who knew the man personally and says that the dialog was mostly a lot of made-up crap and the picture of the subject was distorted and even the facts were skewed to suit the purpose of the author.  The theory is that the author was trying to write a sensational story of a "tortured soul" and didn't mind making up junk to do so.

It's not just her, either.  Other people who read the book without knowing Michael Hess described it as "
poorly written," or, "a fantastic true story which he totally wastes."

Apparently the movie is unforgettable.  But the but is eminently avoidable.  Avoid it.

Hilarious and not so much

The True Meaning of Smekday
bu Ada, Rex

Sometimes you have to quit trying to make sense of it all.  Trust the author--she'll get you where you're supposed to go. And then you'll think it's wicked funny when the alien learned his English from very old TV programs and insists on using 'wicked' as his superlative of choice.  And when the alien and the little girl get into a bluffing war about their super powers, including explosive laser eye beams. And putting a cloning machine on an endless feedback loop--
    IT ALL MAKES SENSE.
But if it doesn't, you need to read this book.



 
How Angel Petersen Got His Name
by Gary Paulsen

This was a very short audiobook--kids doing extreme sports before the phrase had been invented.  Not nearly as funny as he wanted it to be.  Maybe it was the reader--there were several episodes that ought to have been hilarious, but hardly a chuckle.  Maybe it's me.  Try for yourself.

Two good ones

The Last Wolf by Jim Crumley

I haven't given a book 5 stars for a while--but this is it.  Nature, history, travel and imagination pass on and off-stage so smoothly you hardly get a breath before one scene ends and the next jumps in.  It's near impossible to put down.

The writer lives in Scotland, a land where the last living wolf was killed in 1743...according to legend.  There's a lot of legend and not much fact.  He starts off with a quick reminder of just how accurate legend tends to be--especially legend associated with such a colossal subject of imagination as The Wolf.  He travels around his home land in search of the legend and finds many amusing variants of it, all of which happened right here.  But he also searches for the wolf's imprint on the land, the trees, the very winds that blow...I think he finds it.


Other chapters of the book take him to Yellowstone and Norway, places where wolf reintroduction is happening.  He tells an awesome account of the changes that the top predator makes on the food chain, the plant succession, and even the mist of the mountains--and those changes are powerful.   it's possible that man can keep a elk population under control.  But deer are a different story--they get fat and happy, overgraze and destroy whole ecosystems, even eating the little trees spawned from a brush fire.  And both get lazy, moving along only when one foraging ground is picked to the bare earth.  It's common knowledge that wolves keep a prey population healthy by weaning out the sick, the weak and the elderly.  But we're only just learning that wolves keep the population moving, too--it's how they find which animals to cull.   And that gives the earth time to replenish and regrow...thus the mist on the mountains.

I'm telling too much.  You need to read his words.






News From Heaven: The Bakerton Stories
by Jennifer Haigh

I both love and hate the kind of writing that makes me forget to read. Makes me forget to slow down and savor--forget that it's going to be over soon and I'll never be here for the first time again.  Forget to think, too--it's all story and feeling and then it's the end.

So that's this.  The stories are thoughtful, meditative--they unfold rather than happen.  The real action is in the heart and head.  The head thinks, but the heart, unknown and often unknowing, rules.  At least in the people you care about most--the ones who listen to the heart.

Great research; okay book

Stiff: The Curious Lives Of Human Cadavers
by Mary Roach

I was way off on this one, thinking it was going to be about specific cadavers and their travels (or travails).  Like Speedy Atkins, the mummified man who used to grace a funeral home in Paducah.  Don't make that mistake--this is a book about the science of dead bodies.  And there's a lot of good science here.

You'd expect that dissection for medical research would be a big topic, and it is.  But also covered are historical use of cadaver parts in "medicine"; the definition of death; organ transplants; crash test dummies and traumatic injury research; rates of decay; and alternative methods of "cremation."  Don't take this on a full stomach.

Lost me

Lost Languages by P.E.Cleator

What a shock to find a book published in 1959 with a writing style I'd thought disappeared in the last century!  Just listen to this:

    Inasmuch as the active application of language is speech, it is upon speech that writing, essentially a secondary means of communication, is dependent.

I got what he was saying--after a, "Huh? Back up, there," moment.  When I went on to finish the paragraph, what he was saying made sense--basically this:  While written language is cool, it ain't shucks to spoken language. 

First line of book, by the way.  I should have ran away screaming.

But when you get used to the style, it's like poetry.  Phrases like, "...though this did not preclude them from acquiring other wives as well."  Why not, "...stop them from taking"?  Because it's style!

I just hope I'm not talking like that when I finish reading it.   Or in other words, "I am fearful, but beg the apprehension may be ungrounded, that my own oral language will soon acquire the characteristics of the author's pedological one."

Now that's out of my system.  I have to decline to write a meaningful review.  The subject matter was way out of my league.  I couldn't begin to guess if it was accurate or just pure baloney, but all signs indicated accuracy, completeness, and comprehensiveness.  I did gain an appreciation for the difficulty scholars face--if the language is known but the script unknown, or the script known but the language unknown, deci

phering is hard enough.  But how about tackling an inscription of language unknown  and script unknown?  Fun, indeed.

Still a child at heart...at least for good books.

Memories of a Bookbat
by Kathryn Laskey


If you have Harriet The Spy on your all-time favorite book list, you should have this on there, too.  I'm not comparing the two--other than the age and sex of the protagonist, the books are completely different--but rather, my reaction to them.  I read Harriet over and over, re-read as an adult, and would still be reading it now if I hadn't practically memorized the whole thing.


If I'd come upon Bookbat at the same age, 10 or so, I'd have done the same.  (might still) And it might have induced me to seek out and explore some of the books she mentions in here. 

Nutrition check

Vegan for Life:
Everything You Need to Know
to Be Healthy and Fit on a Plant-Based Diet

by Jack Norris and Ginnie Messina

Very detailed study of the vitamins, minerals, and essential elements needed for a human body and how a vegan diet could supply them.  Nothing I didn't know already, but nothing ridiculous, either.  I love the way they dismiss the notion that a vegan diet isn't natural because our far remote ancestors ate meat--

There's no doubt that hominids at meat. . .The argument for veganism has always been primarily ethical, and ought to remain that way.  It's based on a concern for the future, not an obsession about the past.

Actually, that's a quote of a quote.  They say,

The assumption that there is one natural prehistoric diet, which can be approximated today and would be optimal for modern humans, is dubious as best.  Today's commercial plant foods and meats are different from the foods available in prehistoric times.  We eat hybrids of plants and we feed foods to animals that they would not normally eat....

A little more discussion on vitamin B12 supplements, why they're needed and especially why they're needed for people over 50.  I guess I'll start taking them.  Good thing I went back and reread that chapter, while writing this review.  They recommend one of the following:

•  Two servings per day of fortified food providing 1.5 to 2.5 micrograms of B12
•  Take daily supplement of 25 micrograms (25 - 100)
•  Take a supplement of 1000 mcg three times a week.

On first reading, I thought it said all three of the above.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 



Can I rant off topic for a second?  How come every time I research a supplement and come up with an appropriate dosage for me, the stores only carry pills with 100, 200 or even 1000 times that dosage?   I went to the store to replace my 1000 IU Vitamin D3 tables and the smallest they had was 2000.  This is a vitamin that's stored in the fatty tissues--whatever I take, it's going to be with me for a long time.

Admitted, I went back and checked--a 1600 IU daily dosage is the current recommendation for a person in my latitude, so the 2000 is reasonably appropriate.  When the bottle runs dry, I fully expect to go back to the store and find nothing smaller than 10,000.

Also on my list was Vitamin B12; I was looking for the 25-100 mcg mentioned about.  I found 500.  Would 500 mcg six times a week be equivalent to 1000 mcg, three times?  Or do I attempt to cut them into 1/10 ths?

Should have gotten a Pulitzer in 1946

The Member Of The Wedding
by Carson McCuthers

Shockingly intense...and weirdly cozy at the same time.  I mean, in the same book, not literally at the same time.  One moment she'll be setting down at the table, having a quiet meal with the colored cook Berenice and her little friend John Henry; next moment she'd be off on a quest for The Monkey Man to tell someone her shocking news--I'm leaving and I'm not coming back.

Strange stuff moves in the mind of a twelve-year-old girl who has no best friends (her age), no mother or aunt or big sister to model after, and no stack of inappropriate books to devour.  Frankie is shockingly naive and oddly adult-minded.  The cook Berenice could be a sensible and not unimaginative role model, but Frankie doesn't see her as such--probably on account of the race difference, but it could be because she's hired help or even just because she's so much older.  Frankie's young friend John Henry has a good bit of sense, but she doesn't recognize it.  She just skitters on, delusional until doom falls.

The cover blurb called it achingly real.  Pretty accurate.

Not cold at at all

Cold Comfort Farm
by Stella Gibbons






Okay, so you're judging the Olympics.  Along comes a balance beam contender--a sharp, sassy little girl who gets every movement right with precision and easy grace, throws in a triple flip with a one-handed stop, hops twice backward to dismount and--
Fails to stick the landing!
What rating do you give that one?  And more to the point, what rating do I give this?

I'm a sucker for the triple flip--I'd take off a token point but still rate it high.  So in the case of this book, I'd recommend it but give you a warning--she's going to drop out at one point and disappoint the heck out of you.  I can't be more specific other than to say that the runner crossed the finish line but apparated from the three-quarters mark to the seven-eighth.  She got there in the end, but missed a serious bit of detail.  The missing detail is later explained--in one short sentence that I missed the first time through--but you don't get one iota of the fun out of that short summation.

Hmm...this review is missing a bit of detail, too.  So here goes.  Flora Poste is like a female P. G. Wodehouse original.  Smarter than the average, nosy, opinionated (but not overbearing), and determined to do some good with herself, she invites herself into the family at Cold Comfort Farm and immediately starts to improve their situation.  You're not sure whether she's doing it to help the others or just to help herself to a cleaner, more agreeable lifestyle; but the results are the same in the end. 

She starts in first on the old servant, Adam, by suggesting he speed up his dish-clettering (washing) by replacing the thorny twigs used for scouring,  with a little mop, with a handle.  When he protests that he has no use for the extra time, she cleverly points out that he might spend more time in the cowshed attending to his beloved beasts.  He won't admit it, but he starts thinking.

And on she goes--to Amos, the eldest, who runs the farm but has a secret life of the evening; Seth, the idle lady-charmer with a secret passion of his own; Meriam, the hired girl, working on her fourth baby out of wedlock--does Flora has a remedy for her!  Then Reuben, the only son who really cares about the farm and is deathly suspicious that Flora is here to take it for herself.  We know how unlikely that is, but how can she convince him?  And sweet Elfine, the seventeen-year-old beauty running wild in the forest and just crying out for a good fairy Godmother to turn her into a princess.  And Judith, the nutty mother, and of course the reclusive and overbearing Aunt Ada Doom, who lies in her bed upstairs and controls the farm with unseeing eyes.  Open them suckers, Flora!

Loved, loved, loved this book.

And I remembered her as the whiney replacement for Norma Jean

Dolly:
My Life and Other Unfinished Business
by Dolly Parton -- of course!

Her stories of the early years back in the hills of East Tennessee make this book worth the reading.  All the rest is good, too, but that first part is hilarious.  Haint tales...store-boughten shoes measured with a stick...digging to China...

1. We picked a spot up on the mountain.  You'd think if we were going to dig all the way to China we would at least have given ourselves the advantage of starting in the lowest holler we could find.  Kids gullible enough to try to dig to China in the first place are not likely to think of that.

About halfway through, I feared it was degenerating into the typical my life narrative--the "I did this. I met so-and-so.  So-and-so was a great friend.  My other best friends of the time were such-and-such."  Blah, blah, blah."  And it did--but only for the briefest of short paragraphs.  Then we were back into her thoughts and experiences with detail and feeling.

Two final points.  I wish it hadn't stopped so soon.  And, I wish all autobiographies were this good.

Inspiring. And a little scary.

It's So Easy
and other Lies
by Duff McKagan

Duff McKagan was the bass player for Guns N'Roses during their flaming twelve-year existence.  He went on to co-found Velvet Revolver and do a solo album and collaborate on many others.  So that's a reason to listen to his music, but why should anyone want to read his autobiography?

Because he quit cold turkey from an alcohol and drug habit of near legendary proportions and he stayed off.  For good. One short lapse into a prescription drug addiction reminded us, the readers, that he was a real human being, and reminded him, the addict, that he's always going to have to fight it. 

It's an amazing story of an amazing life. We all face the demons, but some of us are wimps and some are warriors. It's good to read about the warriors.

Splat. Pfui. Drut.

Winged Leviathan
by Forrest Audobon

I thought I'd try something different and the description didn't sound so bad--
                    SINISTER WINGS FLAP IN THE DARKNESS...

But then came The March Of The Cliches.

• Edward had become strong and handsome and Galina had become excruciatingly hot.
• ...piercing brown eyes that knew no fear.
• They were the Lucky 13, one of baddest squads in all of the Marines.

And then came the predictable and inane interactions of the characters.

• Galina and Edward go swimming.  She pulls him under water and holds him until he thrashes.  He pushes her underwater and holds her while she thrashes.  After this minor bout of S&M, they laughed.  They kissed.  They both got sucked down in a huge vortex....

Well, the latter part was unexpected.  But by then, I was more than ready to see them die.

I made it to Chapter 3 and decided to end the torture.  Pfui.

Sweetheart of the YA novel

Honey, Baby Sweetheart
By Deb Caletti

I'm having so much trouble not comparing this to The Moon By Night by Madeline L'Engel...but that would be so very unfair and I'd probably get flamed.  I'll only say that the plot is vaguely similar--good girl meets bad boy--but this one went so very many places that that one did not. This heroine has brains and hurmor and she makes a conscious choice to "go wild" rather than simply wallow helplessly in an adolescent identity crisis.  She has a mother who both cares and communicates but also gives her the freedom to make choices, interfering in a kindly way that teaches lessons.  And possibly the mother gets a chance to learn something for herself.

But enough with the comparisons.  Standing on its own, it's funny and exciting and the heroine gets a chance to get out of herself and do something real, something to give her some perspective on what rebellion really means.  And it's a hoot, too.

Meh to the meh'est

The Poisoned House
by Michael Ford

Clever tale, cleverly told.  A hundred years ago, this would have satisfied the children's audience for whom it was intended.  It started off well, but soon you discover that the bad people weren't all that bad and the ghost didn't have a sense of humor and the plot is awfully contrived and the characters weren't ever going to get interesting motives.  He could have added a love interest, at the least.

Sorry to be so negative. a lot of people loved this book.  Wish I knew why.

Mahem reminiscent of Supernatural but without wimps

The Haunted Air
by F. Paul Wilson




I think I'm coming in in the middle of a series here and I don't even care.  This was great!  Everybody kicked butt, even the Chihuahua. Guns and bombs and hurricanes; witches and hexes; mutants and normal people with twisted motives--it's got it all.

Repairman Jack is a man without an official identity.  We don't learn why in this book, but I suspect the first one in the series told it. Or one of the first books--it appears to be one of those series where the author went back and wrote several prequels. I actually set out to get the "real" first book (The Tomb) but either the library catalog was wrong or else someone had picked it up right before I got there.  So I grabbed this one.

Hmm...correction to that. This is supposedly the sixth book in the series.  I have a lot of catching up to do.

The P is silent

It's not Bertie Wooster and Jeeves.  But it is pure Wodehouse.  His star is a fast-thinking know-it-all who titles himself Psmith--the P is silent--and his costar is plain, unimaginative cricket-loving Mike Jackson who's just been removed from Cambridge and sent to exile at a rather boring bank.  Psmith follows him there and takes him on a merry ride around and over the stolid bank administrators, culminating in a county cricket match and oops--

I almost gave away the ending.  But you'll guess it.  Not to say that anything at all in this books is predictable.  Not as funny as the Jeeves series, but bone-cracking.

Great biography, great man

Jim Henson: The Biography
by Brian Jay Jones


How could a biography go wrong, given such a subject?  Well, It didn't. It was dense and detailed and almost as funny as the man and his creatures.  He created and performed near nonstop for all his short life, but it seems that his greatest talent was recognizing great people and bringing them together.  I never really thought about the whole teamwork thing--after all, they're identified as "Jim Henson's Muppets--but there were a lot more muppets (and creatures) than a single guy could ever have invented.  And that may have been his biggest gift.

Did you know the Muppets started out doing commercials with the basic script "Do you use our product?  No?  Then take this!  [Explosion]".  Do you know Kermit the frog was originally a lizard-like creature?  And that he was intended to be dropped from Sesame Street after the first season?  That Miss Piggy (voiced by Frank Oz)  started out as a minor character in The Muppet Show?  That The Muppet Show struggled at first with the Fozzie Bear character, another creation of Frank Oz, because he was too pathetic to be funny?  That The Dark Crystal was "successful" but The Labrynth was not, despite great reviews?

If any of this interests you, you need to read the book.