February, 2019: "Whateva da weatha", keep reading

Read thirteen books last month, trying to keep up the pace in February, while working on my own projects.

Couple of juicy tomes already beckoning me, we'll see which one I pick...

Started Solo Faces. Man, Salter can write.

Salter is truly a writer's writer.

I just finished Ben Winters' THE LAST POLICEMAN.

What's the point of being a policeman when a massive meteor is six months from destroying the earth?

Well told tale, entertaining--read it in a couple of sittings.

Recommended.

>3 CliffBurns: I would recommend Winter's whole trilogy, one of the most under-appreciated SF offerings in recent years.
I also want to read his Underground Airlines and see how it stacks up against The Underground Railroad since both have essentially the same concept.

I shall be seeking out more work by Mr. Winter.

The Colson Whitehead book you allude to is a good one, but very, very grim.

Polished off The Final Solution in a day. I still think Michael Chabon over-writes. Now reading Boneland by Alan Garner.

Ernest Shackleton, Antarctic explorer, is one of my heroes, and over the last couple of days I read an account his greatest adventure.

SHACKLETON'S BOAT JOURNEY was written by one of the men who accompanied him on the Endurance and was with him on his epic journey to save the rest of his stranded party.

Not great literature, the writing unadorned and matter of fact, but Frank Worsley still manages to capture the perils Shackleton and his men faced and, especially, the courage and resilience of their commander.

#7: Cliff, this isn't really relevant, but I call my parka Shackleton: https://tinyurl.com/y7mf6xey. Especially when paired with the snow boots, I resemble a polar explorer of old.

There's something called "Shackleton boots"--which look a lot like the old Sorels I dig out (bought on Baffin Island 25 years ago) when the weather turns REALLY cold (like this week):

https://www.bigskyfishing.com/snow-products/baffin-shackleton-boot.php

They do resemble my own Sorels!

Other Voices, Other Rooms – Truman Capote
3.5***

Capote’s debut novel is a semiautobiographical coming-of-age story. After the death of his mother, thirteen-year-old Joel Knox leaves New Orleans to travel to rural Alabama, and the home of the father who abandoned him at birth. Skully’s Landing is his stepmother Amy’s dilapidated mansion, set far in the woods, and without electricity or indoor plumbing. Among the residents of the estate are a centenarian Negro, Jesus Fever, his granddaughter Missouri (known as Zoo), who keeps house for the family, and the mysterious cousin Randolph. The person who is obviously missing is Joel’s father. Nearby live two sisters, Florabel and Idabel, the latter a tomboy who provides a glimmer of love and approval to the lonely Joel.

This is a classic Southern Gothic novel, full of ghosts, haints, superstitions, secrets and closed off rooms. There are real dangers aplenty as well: poisonous snakes, quicksand, and people with guns. Joel is isolated not only by the remote location, but by the lack of connection with these people. He is confused and cautious, and his loneliness and despair are palpable.

Capote’s writing is wonderfully atmospheric. Here is what Joel sees on his journey to his new home:
Two roads pass over the hinterlands into Noon City; one from the north, another from the south; the latter, known as the Paradise Chapel Highway, is the better of the pair, though both are much the same: desolate miles of swamp and field and forest stretch along either route unbroken except for scattered signs advertising Red Dot 5c Cigars, Dr. Pepper, NEHI, Grove’s Chill Tonic, and 666. Wooden bridges spanning brackish creeks named for long-gone Indian tribes rumble like far-off thunder under a passing wheel; herds of hogs and cows roam the roads at will; now and then a farm-family pauses from work to wave as an auto whizzes by, and watch sadly till it disappears in red dust.

Like Joel, I felt somewhat lost in unfamiliar surroundings. Was Capote trying too hard to be atmospheric? Was he forced by the standards of the day to be so circumspect regarding his message of awakening homosexuality? It makes Cousin Randolph’s statement all the more poignant: ”The brain may take advice, but not the heart, and love, having no geography, knows no boundaries; ... any love is natural and beautiful that lies within a person's nature; only hypocrites would hold a man responsible for what he loves, emotional illiterates and those of righteous envy, who, in their agitated concern, mistake so frequently the arrow pointing to heaven for the one that leads to hell.”

The Hamilton Affair – Elizabeth Cobbs
4****

If you don’t already know about Alexander Hamilton’s role as a founding father, then not only did you not pay attention in history class, but you’ve been living under a rock these past few years as the musical H✰milton has swept the Tony awards.

Cobbs is an historian, who also occasionally writes a work of historical fiction. She started researching this novel, got intrigued by the subject, and was told by her publisher that “No one knows about this guy or wants to read about him … Snooze!” But she was convinced that the story was a good one. Several years into the project, a friend told her, “You have to see the You-Tube video of this guy reading a rap poem about Hamilton at the White House!” (It was Lin Manuel Miranda, and this eventually became the hit musical.)

I thought I knew Hamilton’s story, but there were still things in this novel that caught my attention and made me take notice. I was interested and engaged from beginning to end.

Cobbs tells the story in alternating perspectives: Alexander and Eliza each get a turn at relating events. In this way we get some insight into each character’s background, guiding principles, joys, sorrows and desires. I really appreciated how strong a character Cobb’s Eliza is. And while Cobbs’ sympathies were clearly with Hamilton, she did not shy away from pointing out his faults, infidelity being perhaps the least of them.

Our F2F book group had a spirited discussion, made all the more enjoyable by a Skype visit from the author.

Currently reading Iain Banks' Whit. The protagonist's innocence in relation to the everyday world, having been sequestered in a religious cult all her life, makes the novel at times read like a particularly earthy take on Paddington Bear.

Currently reading How to Kill a City - it's actually both for work and because gentrification is such a "thing" in Portland Oregon and as a resident I want to understand it better. Making me feel very angry at late stage capitalism in general. Because I need a break from the grimness, I am also reading What We Become because at least in Arturo Perez-Reverte's world, the rich are relieved of a lot of their ill gotten gains by good looking cat burglars.

Winter Solstice – Rosamunde Pilcher
Digital audiobook narrated by Carole Shelley
4****

Five very different people, ranging in age from teen-aged to mid-sixties, converge on a Scottish cottage just before Christmas. Each is facing some difficult changes in his or her life, and together they find a way to navigate the turbulence in their lives.

What a charmingly told story. I grew to love these characters. Elfrida is practical, giving, generous and compassionate. Oscar is reeling from loss, struggling to come to grips with his guilt and grief, and hesitant to take a chance. Sam is trying to find a new path in life and return to his home from years spent abroad. Carrie is stubbornly independent, afraid to open herself to love after having been badly burned, and yet willing to sacrifice to help her young niece. Lucy is feeling lost and abandoned, unsure what she wants but knowing that it is NOT to be a third wheel in her mother’s new romance.

The novel changes perspective with each chapter so the reader gets to know the characters slowly, learning what is important to each as they go about their lives. There are a few coincidences that are just too good to be true, but they add to the joy and the promise of a happy ending.

I’d never read anything by this author previously, and her work reminds me of Maeve Binchy’s. I look forward to reading more of her books.

Carole Shelley does a fine job narrating the audiobook. She has a wide range of voices to handle in this cast of characters and she has to skill to do it well.

I know the title of this thread is "Whateva da weatha" but, cripes, the windchill here was -43 this morning.

I could be BURNING books to stay warm instead of reading them...

>16 CliffBurns: There's a chewing-gum film that comes round on broadcast tv fairly regularly over here, The Day After Tomorrow, wherein dramatic climate change plunges most of North America into a new Ice Age almost overnight. A group of our ensemble cast are holed up in the New York Public Library and have to keep warm at any cost.

They are debating the merits or not of burning books; and if so, whose books should be saved for posterity. Two characters are arguing over Nietzsche, but the argument is stopped when another one pops his head over the stack to say "Hey guys! There's a whole case of books over here on tax law which we aren't ever going to need again!"

For some reason, this sprang to mind when I read your post, Cliff.

>16 CliffBurns:

I thought of Bill Murray in Razor's Edge:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1kPkLco-mk

#17--terrible movie, Robert, endurable only with copious amounts of mind altering substances.

#18 Probably my favorite scene in an otherwise forgettable movie. And that scene was not in the book, by the way...

FASCISM: A WARNING by former diplomat Madeleine Albright.

An okay summary of the history of fascism in the 20th century--and she certainly sees some parallels with CEO Trump--but there was something a bit deceptive or disingenuous about her approach to the subject.

First of all, her trite and inaccurate portrait of America as a global good guy. That just doesn't hold water to anyone with even a scant knowledge of the way the world works.

But it's her definition of fascism that bugs me. As I wrote in my notes: "All fascists are tyrants but not all tyrants are fascists".

I won't go on about this (ideology is so dull) but I felt that someone who teaches history at Georgetown, is over 80 and who no longer holds political office should have been much more forthcoming and clear-eyed.

I hope you got that from the library, Cliff! Otherwise, I don’t think the price is worth it! Ha! Ha! I slay myself. Fuck her.

A loaner, for sure.

She is nowhere near me on the political spectrum.

An apologist for American exceptionalism, a shill for power politics.

16/17> I imagine that book burners are having to work overtime now with minimalism being this year's look. No place for books - just one table, one chair and a pot plant. (To be honest, this has always bothered me. I see these photos of immaculately clean rooms and can't help asking, "Where are the books?", "Where is the life?").

Klaus Gieringer's THE MURDER OF ROSA LUXEMBURG was a big disappointment.

As previously noted, Rosa is one of my heroes and I thought she deserved far better treatment than this.

Geitinger's account of the murders of Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht is bloodless, meandering, fragmentary; thin on background, history and context.

I hoped for something far better, will have to be satisfied (for now) with Kate Evans' stellar graphic novel, RED ROSA.

How the García Girls Lost Their Accents – Julia Álvarez
4****

The García family flees the Dominican Republic for the United States amid political unrest. The four sisters – Carla, Sandra, Yolanda, and Sofia – find 1960s New York City very different from the upper-middle-class life they knew “back home.” Absent their maids and extended family, the García girls do their best to assimilate into the mainstream; they iron their hair, forget their Spanish, and meet (and date) boys without chaperones.

This is a wonderfully entertaining look at the immigrant experience and at the strong family ties that see these sisters (and their parents) through a tumultuous adolescence and young adulthood. The novel is told in alternating perspectives, focusing on a different sister in each chapter, and also moving back in time, from 1989 to 1956.

When exploring their childhood in the DR, Alvarez allows the innocence of youth to be apparent. Children may sense that something isn’t quite right, but they typically don’t know the realities facing their parents. The family’s sudden departure for the United States is at first a great adventure, but the reality of reduced circumstances and cramped city apartments (instead of a large family compound with gardens and servants) quickly makes the girls homesick. Once assured that there is no going back, they struggle to fit in with their peers at school. They don’t want to stick out due to dress, language, food, or customs. With their assimilation, however, comes a greater clash between the girls and their parents’ “old world” values.

The use of multiple narrators and non-linear time line, however, made for an uneven reading experience. I would be invested in one sister’s story, and then jerked to a different time and place and narrator with little or no warning. Some members of my F2F book club found this so distracting that they lowered their ratings significantly. But for me the “confusion” is indicative of the immigrant experience. Each immigrant ultimately has to choose the extent to which she will adopt the customs, foods, dress of her new environment, and how much of her native customs, foods, dress to keep and share with her new neighbors. The García girls draw comfort from their deep roots in the Dominican Republic while bravely and enthusiastically facing and embracing their future as Americans.

Finished How to Kill a City. Very good book about the process of gentrification in US urban centers, using four case studies: Detroit, San Francisco, New York and New Orleans. Gentrification is not just a "market" phenomenon that is just the way things are, but a deliberate policy that ties into the overall ethos of "shock doctrine" capitalism in the FIRE sector. Highly recommended.

Finishing The Soul of America an awesome string of quotations from the key players in American History. There were some real ass-hats out there: Andrew Johnson, Woodrow Wilson, the KKK, Joe McCarthy. Sometimes, and not related to the book, I get the vibe that us Uhmuhrahcuns jump to racism and proto Fascism at the drop of a hat. Other countries probably go through tougher shit-shows before they start up with the hate and extremism. Oh well, as those Christians say, I'm probably preaching to the choir, here.

Finished The Ginger Man last night. I have very complicated feelings about this thing, which I tried quickly to work out in this review: https://wp.me/p4LPys-m2.

I've just finished a Jamil Nasir novel called Distance Haze, pretty good, but not as powerful to me as the first one of his that I read decades ago, Tower of Dreams. (Probably because the latter was set in Cairo, which holds a lot more meaning for me than rural Michigan.)

I'm currently reading an Oprah-recced best seller loaned to me by a co-worker, An American Marriage. It's well-written and I am enjoying it so far.

Currently reading Brideshead Revisited, which many consider one of the best English novels. It's clearly a more serious work than the other Waugh novels I've read, and I don't know that it's that much better than those. But certainly Waugh's over-writing is a lot more readable than, say, Chabon's.

>30 iansales: I always found that novel difficult to read without hearing Jeremy Irons' voice in my head.

>28 KatrinkaV:, I've read similar reviews and already dismissed that novel from TBR consideration, long ago. Much easier just to grasp the point it strove to make that way and move on, rather than suffer through.

Finished THE WHITE DARKNESS, David Grann's latest work of non-fiction.

Grann tells the stories of two grueling Antarctic expeditions--Shackleton's famous journey and then, 100 years later, Henry Worsley's attempt to cross Antarctica alone, on foot.

A good account but not as riveting as other work I've read by Grann. This one seemed rather passionless...

I'm about a third of the way into The Captured: A True Story of Abduction by Indians on the Texas Frontier by Scott Zesch. Children in frontier communities were regularly abducted by different tribes and became thoroughly Indianized. Not only Caucasian but African American and Mexican children. I'm not too thrilled about the way the book is written (feels a bit scattered at times) but the subject is fascinating. Very enjoyable.

Also nibbling on Thomas Merton's translation of The Way of Chuang Tzu. Some aspects of Taoism are creepy.

32: Yeah, somehow, I just don't learn!

Just finished Sally Rooney's Conversations with Friends, which was really a pleasant surprise. I gave it a quick review here: https://wp.me/p4LPys-mc.

Where the Crawdads Sing – Delia Owens
Digital audio performed by Cassandra Campbell
2.5**

In the small North Carolina coastal town of Barkley Cove, everyone knows about the “Marsh Girl.” Kya Clark was abandoned, first by her mother, then by her older siblings, and finally by her father. Left to her own devices since the age of ten, she’s learned to fend for herself and keep away from any authority figures who might want to force her to go to school. But when Chase Andrews, the former football star, is found dead at the base of a tower, the sheriff suspects he’s been murdered, and attention is drawn to Marsh Girl.

I found this intriguing and interesting. I loved Owens’ descriptions of the marsh and the marvels of the natural world. And I appreciated Kya’s and Tate’s reverence for the ecosystem that the marsh provides.

I was invested in Kya’s story from the beginning, and her loneliness was practically tangible. I marveled at her resilience and intelligence; the way she learned to cook and to fend for herself. Yes, she had some help. Loved Jumpin’ - the proprietor of the local gas station / bait shop – and his wife Mabel who stepped in when they noticed the waif being on her own and simply offered her the assistance she so clearly needed. No questions asked and no payment expected. I also really liked the way that Tate slowly gained her trust and confidence, and the way he encouraged and supported her efforts to learn more about the flora and fauna of the marsh, not to mention teaching her to read and providing her with books so she could begin to educate herself.

However, this is where things got a little too unbelievable and soap-opera-ish for me. I kept wondering where everyone else in town was. Okay, Kya hid from the truant officer, but what about the other townspeople? Was there no kind librarian, teacher, minister, doctor, church lady who might recognize her distress and offer help? Seems that everyone knew about “the marsh girl” but no one, save Tate and Jumpin’, stepped in to help her. They simply labeled her and looked down on her as “trash.”

And then we have the whole murder mystery and the trial. After all that drama the ending seeming rather anti-climactic. If I had been reading the text, I may have just thrown it at the wall.

Cassandra Campbell does a fine job narrating the audiobook. She is an accomplished narrator, and I like the way she voiced the many characters. I’d give her 4**** for her performance. I wish she’d had better material to interpret in this case.

A plug for John Semley's HATER.

How can I not like a book that celebrates the contrarian, the curmudgeon?

Semley bemoans the loss of critical thinking, the rise of fanboys and amateur reviewers. And along with that, we see discourse reduced to "flame wars" and virtual temper tantrums.