Author: 459856pwpadmin

Last week I posted the first half of a two-part review of my July reading.  As I mentioned at that time, it seemed all I did in July was read, although in retrospect I can say that mostly I read and I slept.  Not a month marked by ambition in any sense.  Or was it?  My body may have been fighting its own battles, but my mind was at least grasping at something, anything.

 

First, I shall repeat the list.

68. Thomas Seyfried, Cancer as a Metabolic Disease.

69.Eric Kossoff, Ketogenci Diets: Treatment for Epilepsy and Other Disordors.

70. Lee A Reich, Uncommon Fruits Worth of Attention.

71. Leofranc Halford-Stevens, A Short History of Time.

72. Margery Allingham, Look to the Lady.

73. Anne Lamott, Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers.

74. Robert A. Weinberg, One Renegade Cell: How Cancer Begins.

75. C. S. Wilkins, Bandera Bound.

76. James Hillman, Healing Fiction.

77. Herbert M. Shelton, The Science and Fine Art of Fasting.

78.  Peggy Knickerbocker, Love Later On

79. Arundhati Roy, Azadi: Freedom, Fascism, Fiction.

80. KC Davis, How to Keep House While Drowning.

81. Neil McKinney,  Naturopathic Oncology.

82. Joanne Fluke, A Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder.

83. Scott Zesch, The Captured.

84. Herman Pontzer, Burn.

85. Toni Dwiggins, Quicksilver.

86. Karin Slaughter,  False Witness.

87. Kristen Hannah, Firefly Lane.

88.  Ann Cleeves, The Crow Trap.

89.  Amy Greene, Long Man.

 

In this post, I am discussing the groupings of books coded red (mysteries and suspense), purple (other literature),and turquoise (uncategorized, memoir, or "hell I don't know what to call this but I loved it").

 

First up: mysteries and suspense.   

 

First was Margery Allingham's Look to the Lady.  I had not read Allingham in many years, but as mentioned last month, I had recently found myself interested in looking back to the great mid-twentieth century grand-dames of mystery, and I wondered how my memories of youthful perceptions would mesh with my current experience.  I found the novel to be a grand romp:  interesting, fun, light-hearted, and at times surprising.  The story is almost more quest than mystery, with many interesting and overlapping themes — callow young lordling about to come of age; a criminal gang out to steal a priceless medieval chalice; hints of mysticism and ancient rites — but all is tied together quite satisfactorily in the end. I tend to think Albert Campion has aged well, but I suspect this may be because he is witty and charming, reminding me perhaps of Nick Charles.  This is perhaps more a mark of the time; both Campion and Charles hail from one particular style prevalent in the 1930s when criminals were deviously psychological and the detectives were charmers who relied on a wealth of informants.  Also of its period is the strong emphasis on the mystical, and, perhaps more difficult for modern reader, the disconcerting class differences.  I personally think these are linked, and it is easy for this reader, with the advantage of history on her side, to look back to the changes in the British class system that were already well underway, if not yet fully recognized and accepted, at the time this novel was written.  Perhaps what actually draws me in is Allingham's ability to tell a story without taking herself too seriously. She is a master storyteller, one whom I feel is perhaps under-appreciated, and I continue to enjoy her novels. 

 

The next couple of mysteries were not such successes.  I read Joanna Fluke's Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder simply because I have on occasion enjoyed the Hallmark series based on these books and found them a lighthearted mindless escape.  Initially the characters appeared more complex than they do in the series, appearing less saccharine, and I was encouraged, but that perception rapidly changed.  I was expecting a light-hearted, fluffy read, and I got that, but I also felt like I was getting a load of sanctimonious crap about how women should and should not behave, look, think, etc.  In the novel, as opposed to the series, thank goodness, the brother-in-law cop goes out of his way to encourage his sister-in-law, the local cookie baker, to do his work for him while he reaps all the credit. In what world could this even begin to be acceptable?   I found all of this, the belittling of the slightly overweight but well-meaning, unmarried, and obviously therefore a failure, baker, who's talents and kindness were taken advantage of, if not outright used, by all of the characters and never given credit for her accomplishments, difficult to swallow.  I suppose none of this was as overt as I make it out to be, but still, not a role model for women and not the kind of novel I want to read.  

 

I suppose I felt the same way about Toni Dwiggins's novel, Quicksilver. I read the book because I found the premise interesting:  a pair of forensic geologists solving mysteries through scientific knowledge.  However, although I thoroughly enjoyed the geology, I found the plot to be over simplistic and the actions of the main characters to be improbable.  I just couldn't believe that people who could be so smart about their science, could also be so utterly clueless, and goodness knows I've known a few clueless geniuses in my time. The female lead was even worse than the mail scientist and all of the men in the story treated her in a rather patronizing way. Given the idiocy of her behavior, and the simplistic clues left her by the others, which she still missed, this may have been partially deserved.  The scientific side of this book was highly detailed and well done, but not particularly well integrated with the story.  This is the first of a series, and perhaps the author has managed to integrate the characters and the science more fully, and interestingly, in future volumes, but at this point I am not certain I am inclined to find out.   

 

Despite the fact that it is not light and entertaining, I thoroughly enjoyed Karin Slaughter's new novel False Witness.  I preordered the book upon finishing the last novel in July and dove in to it as soon as it arrived.  Once again, abuse against women is a central focus of this story.  But don't let that idea lead you think that this novel is so narrowly conceived.  The novel opens with our main protagonist, Leigh, a woman who appears to have it all:  a legal career at a blue-chip firm, a daughter she adores, an ex-husband with whom she is able to maintain a close relationship.  She is the woman everyone envies.  Or is she?  Slaughter deftly upends the narrative as Leigh is thrown into a case that reveals a deeply troubled childhood which she thought she had escaped.  We watch Leigh as her neatly compartmented life crumbles, as she reconciles with her sister, Callie, who never managed to escape their past, and as she fights for those she loves and prays that the life she has built does not come crumbling down around her.  Slaughter captures the relationship between the sisters well, both in its sisterly normalcy as well as its dysfunction.  All of the characters are complex and multi-faceted, even the sociopathic serial rapist Leigh is called to defend.  This is a terrifying and deeply disturbing novel, but it is also gripping and difficult to put down.  Slaughter pulls no punches on how abuse and violence rips apart the fabric of childhood, the fragile psychology of the surviving adult, or even an entire culture built on denial.  But Slaughter is also a master of plot, and she keeps the reader on edge.  

False Witness is a hard-driving and compelling novel, but there is a lot of food for thought here: violence against women; drug culture and the way the war on drugs has fractured society; regret over lost relationships and the stupid mistakes people make without ever meaning to do so. The novel is set currently.  The Covid-19 shutdown has interrupted the court system. Characters are masked.   Although Slaughter does not slap us in the face with this, there is a sad and shocking sense of the toll the pandemic shutdown has taken on those segments of society where the struggle for survival is marginal at the best of times.  In fact, I think this book is worth reading again as it is compelling, entertaining (if one can tolerate the darker side of life) and thought-provoking.

 

Like Karin Slaughter, Ann Cleeves' mysteries are character based, but there all similarities end.  The Crow Trap is the first of Cleeves' Vera Stanhope series and it is an interesting, if a bit odd, introduction to the character.  Stanhope does not really appear until half way through the story, and although the reader gets a good introduction to the detective's unorthodox ways, she does not always come off as particularly in control of the investigation here.  I admit this may be a feint.  

The story takes place at the site of a proposed quarry where three scientists, all women, have been called in to prepare an environmental impact statement.  The initial portion of the nivel goes over the same events from the perspective of each of the women.  These events begin with the suicide of a neighbor, Bella, shortly before the women arrive, to the murder of Grace, one of the three scientists.   Cleeves successfully fleshes out the background to the mystery from the three different perspectives of the women, Rachel, Anne, and Grace, allowing us to get to understand the characters from their own individual points of view.  DI Stanhope, when she finally entered the story, appears to be a highly unusual and intelligent detective.  Even as I write this, I can see more clearly, how Stanhope's actions, and manipulation of the characters, deviously sets the stage for the murderer to be revealed.  I still think this is an odd introduction to a set of serial mysteries, but a devious and well thought out one.  I must also admit that I have never watched the PBS mini-series based on these novels, and although I may well do so, it will wait until after I have more fully caught up with the reading. 

 

Next up, those pesky turquoise books that I don't specifically know how to categorize although I suspect I am placing them both in the memoir category.  First up, Anne Lamott's Help, Thanks, Wow is an essay in book form.  It focuses on the development of gratitude, humility and a sense of wonder (the three essential prayers). This book was given to me when I started chemotherapy and although I wanted to read it immediately, somehow it disappeared into the stack and re-appeared later on, just when I was ready to read it as it happened.  I have long been aware of this book, and even longer been of the opinion that all prayers fall into these same categories, although we are often more cognizant of praying when we are asking for help.  But that is not the point of this book.  Lamott's book is more of a memoir with a spiritual bent, and a reminder of what we all already know but too easily put aside and forget, that not only do we need help in this world, but that we also need to hold onto a sense of wonder, something we all to often suppress as we move from childhood into adulthood, and something that we cannot become fully developed as humans without embracing.  I love Lamott's books, primarily because they explore things we all already know but are inclined to shove aside.  In short they are books about things we should not need to read about in books.  And that, precisely, is the point.

 

Peggy Knickerbocker's Love Later On is another memoir, this one about falling in love later in life.  Knickerbocker is a character, and she appears to be comfortable with writing about who she is, or was, and the process of allowing herself to upend an otherwise comfortable life to find something unsettling but perhaps more rewarding.  Knickerbocker's life is not my life.  There is a lot of name dropping and discussion of San Francisco food culture, which does not bother me because I am food-obsessed anyway, even though I am not at all a part of that world.  This was a light, refreshing book that made me smile.

 

The last three books, coded purple for other literature have nothing in common except the fact that they are fiction and I enjoyed all three albeit to different degrees and in different ways.   The first, C. S. Wilkins Bandera Bound,  is a romance, the second in a trilogy revolving around the Buchanan family in Bandera Texas.  I loved this book.  It is a light read with a strong story-line and well-developed appealing characters. I admit it is not like most of the books I love, and yet it appeals in a way that moves my heart, and makes me think of home.  

 

The next novel, Kristin Hannah's Firefly Lane is a bit more complicated, as is my reaction to it, although I did end up enjoying it in the end.  When I started the novel I had an uneasy feeling I had read it before; then I remembered that I had watched the first few episodes of the Netflix series based on the book before turning it off in frustration.  My frustration with the series probably did not help my attitude about the book.  And yet, I kept reading.  I will admit that I found the characters two-dimensional; they never really changed, never really grew up, and the. story line and dialogue were predictable, manipulative and boring.  In short, typical chick-lit, except that Hannah is a better writer than that, and parts of the book was surprisingly well written given the obvious attempts to exploit an emotional response in the reader.  I enjoyed the way Hannah captured the atmosphere of growing up in the 70s and 80s in the Pacific Northwest, as it added richness to the story, even though her experience, or the experience of these characters is nothing like my experience of the same period in a different part of the country.  I cried, I finished the book. Hannah has stated that this novel is based on a personal storyr, the story of her mother, and as I read my feelings about the book softened. I felt there was something obviously heart-felt on the writer's part, and that this inner struggle contributed to the lapses into poor writing and cliche.   In the end, I am wiling to give Hannah that.  There is something here that is meaningful, perhaps more meaningful, because I find this novel somewhat at odds with the author's other novels.  I accept my complicated response as a good thing, and found this was worth reading.

 

Last, but far from least, we come to Amy Green's novel Long Man, which I thoroughly enjoyed.   It is a historical novel set in rural Tennessee at the time the TVA was erecting dams on the Tennessee River.  The writing is lyrical, moody, tense and powerful and Greene captures the sense of place and time beautifully.  The story takes place over the course of three days in 1936, in a place that is soon to be flooded. Most of the residents have relocated but a few remain, especially one family, that of Annie Clyde Dodson, her husband James and their three year old daughter, Gracie.  All the characters are well developed and we do get into their thoughts, but the portrayal of Annie Clyde is particularly powerful.  Or perhaps I am biased, because as I read Annie Clyde's thoughts and her interactions with James, I could hear my maternal grandmother, also a southerner, slightly older than Annie Clyde, from Mississippi rather than Tennessee, of a completely different background.  Yet her stubbornness, her sense of history, of place, of belonging, and her inability to suffer the interference of others struck close to home.  I understood Annie Clyde in a way I might not have otherwise, and I understood how deeply she loved James, how deeply she felt tied to that particular place, and the terrible threads pulling at the center of who she was. 

 

At times the writing is choppy, and transitions between characters are not always smooth, but how could they be?  Part of the power of this book is the very contrast between the beauty of the setting, the rawness of poverty, and the pain and fear and lack of communication that drives so much of the story. That very sense of disruption gets into the skin.  The child, Gracie, disappears in a storm, and a search is mounted.  Everyone comes out, but the search centers more around the fears of the searchers than any reasonable thought about what might have realistically happened to the child.  We are given strong hints about what happened to Gracie early on, and the astute reader will worry that she may not be found in time.  But the stories, the recriminations, the fears and loss, poverty and absence of any attempts at understanding will also resonate with the reader.  In many ways the search for Gracie is the archetypical search for that which has been lost.  Gracie will be found, but her life will never be the same.  Annie Clyde and James will move on as well, but that which is lost is not so easily replaced.  

 

 

 

 

Last week I dreamt of two blog posts, hoping that I would have the energy to say something, anything.  Perhaps that hope was naively predicated on the idea that I would have something to say.  As yet, I still don't know if there is nothing there, nothing worth saying, or if perhaps what wants to be said wanders a tad too close to vulnerable territory.  No extra posts then, and it is best to stick with a format, in this case the bookish format.  

 

So what did I read in July? Obviously, if you look at the list below, I read a lot, over 20 books.  I was able to do little else.  My body was fighting its own battles, primarily telling my ego to sit still and be quiet.  I did have study plans, but even those became too ambitious.  There were times when I read with a plan, and times I just floundered about.  Now I look at it all and see a tangled mess that I don't know how to parse. I am not certain that there is thread here, just the random entertainments of a person in all her humanity searching, sometimes hiding….

 

What I have decided, however, having spent far more time than I had hoped attempting to sort this out, is that 21 books is too many.  I cannot write coherently about 20 books in one post.  No one wants to read about 20 books.  It is likely that no one wants to read about 10 either, and equally likely that coherence will be marginal at best.  Nonetheless, I am breaking my July book review into two.  First up will be those books colored green and blue in the list below, which are all non-fiction. The remainder of the list, primarily fiction, but not entirely so, will appear in the second post, either later this week or early next week.

 

68. Thomas Seyfried, Cancer as a Metabolic Disease.

69.Eric Kossoff, Ketogenci Diets: Treatment for Epilepsy and Other Disordors.

70. Lee A Reich, Uncommon Fruits Worth of Attention.

71. Leofranc Halford-Stevens, A Short History of Time.

72. Margery Allingham, Look to the Lady.

73. Anne Lamott, Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers.

74. Robert A. Weinberg, One Renegade Cell: How Cancer Begins.

75. C. S. Wilkins, Bandera Bound Book 2.

76. James Hillman, Healing Fiction.

77. Herbert M. Shelton, The Science and Fine Art of Fasting.

78.  Peggy Knickerbocker, Love Later On

79. Arundhati Roy, Azadi: Freedom, Fascism, Fiction.

80. KC Davis, How to Keep House While Drowning.

81. Neil McKinney,  Naturopathic Oncology.

82. Joanne Fluke, A Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder.

83. Scott Zesch, The Captured.

84. Herman Pontzer, Burn.

85. Toni Dwiggins, Quicksilver.

86. Karin Slaughter,  False Witness.

87. Kristen Hannah, Firefly Lane.

88.  Ann Cleeves, The Crow Trap.

89.  Amy Greene, Long Man.

 

Let's start with the more ambitious reading.   As had mentioned back in May, I had accumulated a stack of books related to cancer both directly and indirectly, and had a rough plan for getting them all read.  That plan has remained rough, but I have made progress.   I started with Thomas Seyfried's book, Cancer as a Metabolic Disease, which I found both challenging, fun, and fascinating.  In one sense, it would have made more sense to read Robert A. Weinberg's The Biology of Cancer first, as that would have given me a broad introduction to the currently dominant view of cancer development and treatment.  But Seyfried addressed much of Weinberg's text in his own book, and there were many chapters where I was simultaneously reading Weinberg and Sefried side-by-side.  My edition of Weinberg is newer than the one Seyfried referenced, and some ideas have changed over time, which is probably good.  It seems to me that these two views of cancer cannot exist separately, although at the moment they seem to.  I am hoping that changes.  Yes cancer is caused by a change in the DNA of cells, but it is also quite obvious that these changes affect and are affected by metabolic changes to the ways that cells operate and grow.  There is much yet to discover.  And although our knowledge of cancer has grown by leaps and bounds, the effectiveness of this knowledge remains questionable; treatment lags far behind. Weinberg himself admits that as much as we have learned about cancer, and as fascinating as cancer DNA is to the researcher, himself included, cancer DNA research is unlikely to yield a cure.  That admission alone seems to be a powerful statement, and one that motivates me to power on. I am still reading Weinberg.  I went back and started at the beginning after finishing Seyfried, and got about a third of the way through the book before my body told me that even intellectual pursuits were pushing the bounds of my available energy.  I just picked the book up again recently, and hope to finish it this month, along with a huge stack of research papers, which will not be reviewed here, but the volume of which seems to keep growing.

 

Other books in this category would include Eric Kossoff's Ketogenic Diets and Herbert M. Shelton's The Science and Fine Art of Fasting,  both of which I picked up after recommendations from Seyfried who is very interested in metabolism and the role diet plays in cancer development and recurrence. Both are informative and thought-provoking although of little interest to the general reader. The book by Shelton is not actually the one Seyfried recommended, but is the book I could get my hands on.  Shelton's book, a classically early 20th century text, was frustrating to me as he referred to many experiments and data, but unlike modern texts, was not very good at actually providing references.  At least I can say that is one less rabbit hole for me to fall into.  

 

Robert Weinberg's One Renegade Cell is, I suppose, considered a classic in the popular science vein, an attempt to explain cancer for the non-science audience.  It is actually quite good, and quite readable, but now also somewhat out of date.  It is clearly written, does not fall into either pandering or fear-mongering, and I found it an easy enough read that offered little new to say.  I will keep it though.  I suppose it should have been the first book I read.  Neil McKinney's Naturopathic Oncology, has proven to be an invaluable reference work (along with Seyfried) and I am glad to have read it as well as have it on hand when both my Integrative medicine physician and my oncologists make treatment recommendations.  Both books focus on the research to date (at the time of writing) and both point to solid resources for further exploration.  

 

Lastly, Herman Pontzer's Burn fits only tenuously into this category.  Pontzer is simultaneously fascinating and maddening; the book could have used a good editor.  When he is talking about his own research about human evolution, and the role metabolism and diet play in evolution, he is fascinating.  The book is useful for this information alone because it tends to turn a lot of stories we tell ourselves about diet and metabolism on their heads.  But he gets into trouble because he repeatedly ignores research in related fields of nutrition and nutritional epidemiology, and impugns the research of others without going further into his own epistemology.  He. tells many stories and anecdotes that seem to serve no purpose, and often come to no conclusion.  He falls into the same traps he accuses others of, the same traps we all fall into, the traps of cognitive dissonance, and he explains them away repeatedly by stating "It's complex", using complexity as an excuse rather than as an opportunity for further exploration.  And yet, I have no real regrets with reading the book even though I am not yet sure where the information I gleaned will take me, or any of us.

 

The other nonfiction books I read are a rather mixed lot although there was intention behind my choice of reading material, at least at the time the choice was made..

 

Lee Reich's Uncommon Fruits Worthy of Attention was, in its own way, perfect fantasy reading for a time when I cannot work in the garden, and realize that my time and priorities for gardening may have been permanently changed over the course of the last year.  I have had the book for years, and have certainly perused sections of it over those years, even if I have only read it from cover to cover once or twice.  This time was particularly poignant because I realized the fruits I miss and really wish to grow, namely currants in all their forms, are not suited to my current climate.  Truly fantasy reading to soothe the soul of one of my fantasy selves.

 

Leofranc Halford-Stevens' book A Short History of Time cropped up as I was shifting books on one of the shelves to make room for some of the books listed above.  It is not really a discussion of the nature of time itself but a history of the myriad ways humans have measured and marked the passage and existence of time.  I picked it up to reread on a whim and it was interesting enough — fascinating, even, in sections — and probably a good reference if one needs to be reminded that the way we look at time today in Western culture is neither preordained or universally accepted.   I have put the book back on the shelf although I am not particularly inclined to read it again.  Its status may change.

 

James Hillman and KC Davis are, I suppose on opposite ends of the psychological repertoire, or at least these books are.  Davis's How to Keep House While Drowning is a very short, easily read self-help book about, yes, housekeeping.  But it is also about more than that; it is about letting go of shame, and about new ways of thinking about taking care of oneself and, with oneself, one's environment.  I think Davis has a good way of looking at the way our brains judge our actions, and in finding ways to help us accept these quirks without adding unnecessary judgement. James Hillman's book, Healing Fiction,  is a much deeper and more serious tome, but in some ways it plays well with Davis' book, even though they were not intentionally read together. The latter book is really a book for psychologists and is not particularly geared to the general reader.  And yet I always find Hillman fascinating; his books allow me to think about things I think I know in different ways, and that is enlightening. I suppose what I like about the book might or might not be what a professional psychoanalyst might find useful.  I love the way Hillman looks at the essential question of "what does the soul want" and then explores the fictions we devise to both clarify and occasionally obfuscate these yearnings. I love the often subtle layering of his text; the examination of Freud, Jung, and Adler; but also the sense of exploration and deft thread of ideas that Hillman weaves in and out, never really shrinking the complexity of human development but at the same time not open-ended. Hillman explores the necessity of story in our lives while simultaneously questioning both the constraints and the possibilities, both of our stories themselves and the way we tell them, our stories impose on our understanding of our lives.  This is a book I could read again and again, and perhaps see and understand in new ways with each reading.

 

 

The other two non-fiction books came to be on my list due, at least in part,  to their relationships to fiction.  Scott Zesch's book, Captured, is about the real-life stories of children on the Texas frontier who were captured by Indians.  I read it because I had recently reread Paulette Jiles' novel News of the World. I found it fascinating, both in its stories of a Texas long gone but with which I am still partly familiar, and with its deep exploration of the two cultures and their deep misunderstandings and misrepresentations of each other.  Well, this hasn't changed in all of human history, but it is interesting to see how this clash of culture can play out in the lives of children and of families.  Zesch started writing this book to explore his own family history; I believe the story he tells is important to our history, and the history of the development of this country, to what makes us who we are.  

 

Arundhati Roy's book, Azadi: Freedom, Fascism, Fiction, was purchased last August after I heard Roy speak at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.  I started to read it at that time, then put it aside.  Apparently Roy has written much about politics and her beloved India and Pakistan, has written more non-fiction than fiction.  But I what I found most fascinating about this book is the way Roy writes about language, about language and culture, the way it shapes us, but also the way it used against us, to mold us in certain ways, mostly political, and in what is lost and what is gained in that process.  The political and the practical are not that separate in our lives, and one cannot really separate the novelist from the writer of political essays.  We want to separate our lives into convenient little rooms, each with defined doors between them, doors that can be opened or shut at will.  Roy explores the ways this is really not possible, the ways story and language and politics all interweave to make us who we are.  Reading this book, I now think I need to reread both The God of Small Things, and especially The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, which I think I underestimated.

 

There you have it, the first half (more or less) of my July reading.  The rest will follow.  At least I have material for at least one more blog post.   There is hope that thought and word will once again meet and that act of blogging will once again find its own groove.

 

Here it is the end of July, another month shaped by inconsistency. I have been trying to write a book post for over a week, and my fifteenth draft is possibly even worse than my first. Perhaps it is time to let go of any pretentious that I can write anything more than a straightforward list. Perhaps it is time to start yet another first draft, and then hit publish before creeping doubts seep in.

Here are the books, listed in order read,  no categories or cute stuff this month.

 

53.     Haruki Murakami, First Person Singular.  If you have read my book posts over the years, you probably know that I am crazy about Murakami and I will preorder just about any of his books.  This is the first book that has proven difficult for me, but I can also safely say it is as much the timing of the release, and the timing of my reading that caused the difficulty.  This is a series of short stories, told from the male perspective, in many ways the typical perspective of many of Murakami's protagonists, everyday, simple-appearing kind of guys who are observant and yet also isolated in some way.   As is also typical for Murakami, nothing is as simple as it seems.  As usual Murakami uses magical realism in a deeply psychological and almost allegorical way.  This book explores the inner lives of men, and Murakami makes no attempt to state that they are representative of all men, just as it is obvious that he is exploring deeply seated feelings and archetypes.  There are a three stories in which the men are so awful from a woman's perspective that female readers may have trouble reading them.  I did struggle, but I also finished each one; they are worth finishing as this author is clearly not misogynistic,  and these men are emphatically condemned. Although Murakami writes from a male perspective, and often from the perspective of rather hapless men with little understanding of their own selves, he clearly writes from the perspective that women are in charge of their own destiny, and have their own equally important and powerful lives, lives which are alas, often completely separate from, and sometimes incomprehensible to,  the inner workings of these men's emotional states. As usual for Murakami there is a lot of music in the story, and also exploration of the strangely almost invisible way the heart and soul works.  Although I struggled with the stories, mostly because I was in the middle of my own struggles with isolation, and strange interruptions in life, my own questions of meaning and relevance, many of these stories have struck with me, and I have had to read them again.  Perhaps not my favorite book of Murakami's but still worth reading and owning. 

 

54.     Lawrence Block, The Burglar in Short Order  is a series of short pieces concerning Bernie Rhodenbarr, who is certainly my favorite literary burglar.  Some of the pieces are variations on scenes in the novels, or have appeared other places.  Some were appealing, others were not. I might have preferred another novel, but this was fun and a good way to round out my collection even if it is probably of little interest to anyone but Bernie Rhodenbarr fans.

 

55.    Tayari Jones, Dispossession. This is a short story, exclusive to Audible, and it takes a little under an hour to hear the entire story.  It is about a mother reminiscing about her life and the choices she made raising her son, whom she sent away from Atlanta to a boarding school in the Northeast.  Her relationship with her son is now distant, (she has been dispossessed of him) and she struggles to understand the huge divide in their lives as she reviews her own life and the choices she has made.  I found it poignant and moving. Even though it is sad, I found it a powerful escape on a difficult day, and a reminder of the struggles we never see in other people's lives. 

 

56,     Ann Cleeves, Raven Black.  My second foray into the novels of Ann Cleeves was as rewarding as the first, this time with Raven Black, the first of the Jimmy Perez, Shetland Island series.  There is not a lot of development of Perez' character in this first novel, but there is enough that he is interesting, and although he is Fair Isle born, he also carries a sense of being an outsider, noted here primarily because of his coloring and name.  I like that this aspect of Perez character is not over-developed, and in fact the idea that Perez does not come across as being particularly egotistical.  He is, instead, an observer and a listener.  I also like the fact that Cleeves writes this novel well from different perspectives, with the different voices remaining individual and separate.  Particularly moving is seeing the events through the eyes of a lonely, confused and frightened older man, Magnus, who is seen by the community as the natural prime suspect in this murder, and in one that occurred many years earlier.   That Magnus is not the killer seemed evident to this reader early on, but Magnus' story, and the way lives are shaped by lies and fear haunts the entire community in this novel.  In fact I would say this is something Cleeves is very good at, fleshing out the way we let lies and falsehoods become facts, how we ruthlessly cling to these stories despite their costs, both to ourselves and the victims of the falsehood, simply because we prefer the supposed comfort of a lie than the perhaps more uncomfortable truth of reality.  Highly recommended and I look forward to more novels by this author.

 

57.    Ross I.S. Zbar, Floating Feathers. Ross Zbar is a physician and his memoir, Floating Feathers, the story of a horrific accident, how he survived it and recovered, despite equally horrific and inhumane treatment in the ICU, treatment that is all too common, and in fact standard.  Zbar uses his experience and his knowledge of medicine to offer insights into the often brutal ways we treat critically ill patients, how those standards evolved, and he offers suggestions for ways to make caring for the critically ill more compassionate and humane, which would lead to greater healing.

 

58 & 59.    Elinor M. Brent-Dyer. The School at the Chalet, and Jo of the Chalet School.  Elinor Brent-Dyer is the author of a rather long series of novels for young girls, beginning in the 1920s and spanning the course of 40 years, of which these are the first two.  I had not read them before, but apparently they were fairly beloved, and I might well have read them had we lived in Spain a little longer, until I was slightly older perhaps, simply because British books were more available than American ones.  Therefore I was intrigued when a friend lent me the series. The setting is charming, the author creates a pleasant bubble of a world, and the characters are believable and well developed.  But the stories barely hold together and I do not feel they have held up well.  It is not merely the extreme ethnocentrism and xenophobia, although some of these attitudes will be shocking to modern readers, but the way people are primarily described by their "ethnic" traits more than their individual characters is disturbing.  I have read other books from this era, and grew up in a time when America was far less open to diversity, but even so, at times these novels made me cringe. Also the forced jocularity and use of slang feels forced now, even though I have no idea if it actually would have at the time.  My pre-teenage self might have loved these books.  My oder self feels there are better books, even from this time period, which although perhaps still dated, offer a more timeless appeal.  I admit that although I initially enjoyed aspects of the books, I grew increasingly reluctant to finish and I dreaded the thought of picking up a third. I returned the series to its owner.

 

60.    Arianna Davis,  What Would Frida Do?  This book is billed as self-help/biography, and it does in fact mix both of these genres.  I read it hoping to attend a book group at the local art museum, which, due to chemo side effects, I missed. (the story of my life lately). Davis's goal appears to be uplifting Frida. Kahlo as a role model for today's young women on how to live life boldly despite any setbacks  that might occur, and to be true to oneself and one's own talents and gifts.  She also offers the reader a great deal of information about Frida Kahlo's life and art, as well as attempting to set Frida up as a role model for the confident modern young woman. The style was breezy and light.  In fact I initially found the book charming, perhaps a little gushy, in a girl-crush kind of way.  I had no problem with this and Davis is a good writer and I applaud her efforts in writing this book.  My problem with the book is that it did not appear to follow or adhere to a specific outline or timeline and became very repetitive, probably for this reason. The author would repeat the same anecdotes and stories, describe the same artworks in almost the same words, although granted she was trying to make different points.  Because of my chemo-induced haze, I kept thinking, "Oh I lost my place, I already read that" but this was not the case.  When I looked back, it was easy enough to locate the repetitive passages. That girl-crush sense became stronger along with a forced sense that there was just not enough material here to make the case.  I grew bored, and increasingly annoyed, especially as I would read another chapter and cry to myself that the author had just said the same thing in not so different words a few pages earlier.    I do think Ms. Davis made valid points and some of her analysis was enlightening.  And truthfully I think the book has potential.  I certainly have not written a book and admire anyone who can do so.  I agree with Arianna Davis that Frida's attitude and life have much to teach us and even though I felt that this book was rushed to press and could have used editing, I hope Ms, Davis writes more books in the future.

 

61.    Carol Culver,  A Good Day to Pie. I read one of the author's previous novels, That's Amore, in May, and found it a sweet, well written and charming romance of the old school, meaning. without steamy sex.  I understand that this is a transitional novel for the author, and although it was entertaining light reading, I did not find it flowed as well as the romance.  But I also have to admit that I am not, generally a reader of cozy mysteries and my criticisms may be completely off-base given the appeal of the genre. Although I could easily pick out the formula, the bright young woman, talented baker of pies, smart but insecure, small town environment, various interesting characters with a grudge,  it just did not seem to gel, and I felt that the author's transitions between points in the plot/formula were not as smooth as in the romance.   There was a great deal of back-circling and repetition.  Again, it got me through a rough day and the author is a talented writer so these kinks are probably worked out in future books in the series.  There are some potentially interesting story lines here, and I like the fact that Hannah's grandmother lives in a high-end nursing home, and that the author begins to explore some of the difficulties that occur in such places.  I smiled at the competition between the ladies in the bridge group.  I cannot say I would not read another on a particularly difficult day.

 

62 & 63.    Marcella Hazan, The Classic Italian Cookbook, The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking.  Two cookbooks, an older volume and a newer, updated edition.  I wrote about them here. 

 

64.    C. Pam Zhang, How Much of These Hills is Gold?  I adored this book. I think it is brilliant, a brutal story told with delicate realism.  It is a grand tale of the west in the time of the gold rush, about Chineseness, the immigrant experience, and gender identity.  In some ways this book is a sweeping, old-style Western, in others it is lyrical exploration of the meaning of home and the yearning for more, something all humans share.  I like that Zhang explores difficult issues: the lives and difficulties faced by Chinese and other Oriental immigrants, discrimination, gender identity, the kind of brutality brought about by xenophobia, but she does it in a rather gentle way as compared to modern trends.  This does not make her message any less powerful.  This is the time of the gold rush, and gold is a constant here, both as a physical thing worth seeking, as a metaphor for greed and avarice, but also as a metaphor for the yearnings of human nature, the constant searching for the ideal of home, of love, of the meaning of life itself.  Just as, apparently, one can never find enough gold, we never achieve what we are searching for.  Just as Lucy thinks she has found what she was seeking and settles in, she finds that the reality and the dream do not match up; yet she stays.  And we see many characters here, both immigrant and white, rich and poor, driven to search, yet also allowing themselves to believe that they have found their dreams.  This is a novel about the important searches of life, which are not, in the end, about accumulating wealth.  The ending is, in one sense, inconclusive.  And yet I think not. We never achieve what we are searching for, we never stop yearning even though we may temporarily convince ourselves otherwise.  I find the ending both unsettling, because we tend to seek fixed happy endings in novels, and calming, in that yearning itself is such an ongoing and essential part of human nature.  For Lucy to own her wanting, to accept that it is, in and of itself, a part of her, is indeed a fine ending.

 

65.     Martha Grimes, The Man With a Load of Mischief.  I had never read Grimes before and I considered this an experimental read, as I fleshed out different types and classes of mystery.  Grimes, an American author, writes classic British detective mysteries revolving around Scotland Yard inspector Richard Jury.  She does seem to employ all the comfortable tropes that readers of the genre expect, comfortable settings, small, quaint villages, quirky characters and a sense of humor in the telling off the story, dropping steady clues to help the reader untangle the mystery, including the addition of a few red herrings.  Yet I felt that plot was not a strength here.  The identity of the murderer was obvious from the very beginning and although there were still details to work out, and a few red herrings, even most of the motive was quite clear well before the end of the novel.  Perhaps this is the point.  As I have said, I am a relatively new reader of mysteries.   I did like Melrose Plant, but again, think this is not my series.  I would be more likely to reread Christie, who is a master of plot.  The Man With a Load of Mischief was an entertaining, if not memorable, bit of fluff.

 

66.    Karin Slaughter, The Silent Wife.  Karin Slaughter's novels are nothing like the others explored here, and The Silent Wife is no exception.  This novel, the 10th in the Will Trent series, comes full circle. The first novel of the Grant County Series centers on a horrific rape and this novel opens with a prison riot and a prisoner, claiming to have been falsely convicted of that first rape, who offers to trade testimony for a chance to move to a lower security facility.    The novel masterfully interweaves the two investigations and two stories, which are essentially one complexly interwoven story.  The original investigation is weak and that weakness is explored, as is Sara Linton's complex relationships with both of the lead investigators, her deceased husband, and sheriff of Grant County, Jeffrey Tolliver, and her new love Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent Will Trent.  This is a complex novel, and yes it is also a violently disturbing one at times.  

 

There are admittedly times I would prefer not to know the horrific details of the crimes perpetrated against women, but I understand Slaughter's point.  Violence against women is common, and often horrific, and as long as well deny this, we cannot stop it or change it.  Too many many girls and women are beaten and/or raped; too many men and boys do not see the issue.  The statistics are staggering. This is Slaughter's point, that violence and abuse is all too real, all too common, and although we console ourselves by saying that most of it is not "that bad" we are lying to ourselves.  The continued and ongoing trauma to the victims does not fade away.  The attitudes of the perpetrators do not soften,  Our cutlure and our world is tainted even if we do not see it, perhaps all the more so because we do not see it. I don't fault Slaughter for attempting to shock me into realizing that the world is not the bubble I would like it to be.

 

Of course the other thing I read the Will Trent series for is for Sara Linton and her relationship with Will Trent.  It is complex, concordant, and satisfying, even though in many ways on the surface, and in the eyes of other characters in the novel, it makes no sense.  Sara loved Jeffrey Tolliver, but that relationship never really worked; it was discordant.  They each loved the person they wanted the other to be, not the person they were.  Will and Sara's backgrounds were terribly different,  on at least one level, in that Sara grew up in a loving  safe family and Will grew up in a children's home and a life of abandonment and abuse.  But like so much of life, such differences are only one prism that shapes life.  Both Will and Sara are phenomenally bright, bright enough to be disconnected from others, Sara was brutally raped  and her life subsequent to that rape has changed her, and made her far stronger than she appears, a counterpoint to the way Will is far more vulnerable than he appears.   Both have a deep understanding of the evil that lies just below the surface of life.  This novel brings all this together, the relationship, the histories, the dark underbelly of violence against women in this country, the way that violence cannot be ignored even when we would prefer to put it aside and not think about it. How every act of violence, even those we write off as "minor", change us.  I am not sure where Slaughter is going next.  I fear that this is the end of Sara and Will, but I hope not.  I doubt it is the end of Slaughter's writing.

 

67.    Lucy Foley, The Guest List. Last among the mysteries, but far from least, is Lucy Foley's The Guest List, which is a stylish and fascinating "locked-room" kind of mystery.  We have a wedding on a remote island.  We are told there will be a murder.  We know who the prime suspects are and the story is told from their perspectives.  It is not difficult to deduce who will be murdered, although the actual murder is not revealed until the end, but the rest is a complexly unfolding puzzle.  I was surprised by this mystery and liked it more than I thought I would. The plotting is almost Christie-like, although this is a thoroughly modern mystery, a mystery that explores modern pop-culture, influencers, and the secrets that lie beneath the glitz.  The story unfolds in an alternating telling of "now" and "before" but the before is not always clearly delineated from the now and the different voices often overlap and become almost indistinguishable..  As the story progresses more and more inconsistencies crop up, and more odd coincidences as well, and yet the book is thoroughly satisfying, page-turning, and told well overall.  None of the characters are all that likable, but I found myself rooting for the murderer in the end.  A good read.

 

There you have it.  I got the June list out before the end of July, and hopefully next month will be better. 

Did you think I had forgotten?  I still keep a list,  although I am not convinced that the May reading list reflects anything more than random unsettledness.   But first, the List:

39. Ruth. J. Gendler, The Book of Qualities.

40. Việt Thanh Nguyễn, The Committed.

41. Karin Slaughter, Unseen.

42. C.S. Wilkins, Breezy in Bandera.

43. Karin Slaughter, The Kept Woman.

44. Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine.

45. George Gissing, The Odd Woman.

46. Lee Miller, Landscape Design Combinations.

47. Bryan Chick, The Secret Zoo.

48. Tom Robb Smith,  Child 44.

49. Karin Slaughter, The Last Widow.

50. Olga Ravn, The Employees.

51. Ann Cleeves, The Long Call.

52. Carole Grace, That's Amore.

 

Let's see, five suspense novels, three of them by Karin Slaughter.  I have been slowly, intermittently, working my way through the Sara Linton novels, and although I was beginning to waver during the end of the first series, with Will Trent I have become more engaged.  I connected with Sara Linton from the first novel, small town girl, too smart, awkward, self-doubting — she is a character I can understand and it is for this reason that I continue to read.  The brutality of the novels doesn't really bother me.  Sara and Will are sufficiently complicated to carry me through and I always learn something, feel my time was rewarded even if that reward is simply escape into a world so completely outside my own experience.

 

As to the other two, Ann Cleeves is a new to me author who has been oft recommended.  I saw The Long Call  at the library and picked it up.  Alas it is a new series and now I have to wait months for the second book.  I have sought out some of Cleeves' previous novels.  More about that later.  Matthew Venn is a fine character with a sharp mind, the story is complex and richly woven with both intricate relationships, a great slow-burn of a story that peaks near the end of the book and was quite a bit more complicated than I expected it to be.  

 

Tom Robb Smith's Child 44 is another slow burn, but this one is dark, raw, and emotionally draining.  Unlike Slaughter, whose brutality and darkness is somehow separate from the reader, at least this reader, this novel  seeps under one's skin and explores humanity's deepest emotions in a way that is quite unsettling.  Smith accomplishes this while telling a gripping story, one I had read before.  I didn't realize this until I was in to it, but I read this years ago, when it first came out in paperback, either when George was sick, or I was packing to move, a raw and emotionally draining period in my own life.  The book was worth reading again and it managed to surprise me even on this second reading.  Leo Demidov is a fascinating character, both filled with strength and conviction as well as doubt, but perhaps those are necessary balances, each bolstering the other.  I might well read the next.

 

Intermingled with the mystery/suspense were two literary novels.  Viet Thanh Nguyen's The Committed was every bit as brilliant, poetic, sarcastic, dark, cutting and outrageously humorous as The Sympathizer, except without the fine line of hope in the face of despair that ran through the previous novel.   I loved it but it also left me feeling cold and unsettled in my bones.  Both novels are disturbing in that they cut right to the heart of who people are, the way we act, and the stories we tell ourselves to hide the truth of our lives from ourselves and each other.  In that sense these are not happy escape novels.  But they are brilliant, insightful, intelligent, witty, poetic, and incredibly humorous.  Nguyen has a way of capturing a scene, an emotion, a way of wrapping truth and a story in humor so that you don't notice you are bleeding until after you have rolled on the floor in laughter.

 

Olga Ravn's The Employeees is a completely different kind of novel and it is not an easy read, although I do think it is brilliant and proved worth the effort.  Such a short novel: science fiction; some unknown place; some unknown time.  The story does not emerge linearly.  In fact, we get a series of short interviews, sometimes reports, sometimes vignettes, sometimes almost poetry, and through the spacing of these interviews, the use of words and white space, Ravn explores what it means to be human, memory, self, life itself as some of her characters are human-born and some are made, artificial life.  But as the story progresses the lines begin to blur and the question of who we are and how we define ourselves emerges.  I found this fascinating, unsettling, but also calming in an odd sort of way.  Highly recommended for those who can work their way slowly through metaphor and vague images, who can read a poem a day in search of a unifying thread.

 

Then there were the toss-offs,  quick easy reads that I enjoyed, some more than others, at the time of reading but which are effectively completely forgettable.   Landscape Design Combinations  was the only non-fiction in this group and although it had lots of pretty pictures, I found nothing new or particularly inspiring in it —  an afternoon of garden pictures that will have no impact on my future gardens.   Of the remaining books, Eleanor Oliphant was probably the best of the lot.  It is a rather quirky novel, and the author does a good job of hinting at Eleanor's past without either revealing too much or too little.  Eleanor herself is endearing and charming, and I loved her unintentional sense of humor.  An excellent feel-good read with little long-term impact.   I don't know how The Secret Zoo ended up on my stack; the cover perhaps?  It is a children's novel, but not a good one although I initially thought the premise was interesting.  It reads much like a bad children's movie, pandering to stereotypes with shallow character development.  That said, probably my 8 year old self would have loved it.  That's Amore is a romance, given to me by a friend in a period when I was having trouble reading or settling down, and it surprised me with how good it was.  The writing is crisp, and there is wit in the dialogue despite the other tropes of the formula.  It is a bit out of date for modern tastes in this genre, sweet and romantic, with no steamy scenes, not that I am objecting.  A perfect novel for when you crave inane feel-good fun.

 

Now let's deal with George Gissing.  I did not like The Odd Woman. It reminded me of all the worst things about Victorian Literature, and there are Victorian authors I adore and whose writing withstands the passage  of time.  Not Gissing.  Of course don't tell my former college student self that I ever admitting to liking anything Victorian.  That girl thought literature stopped in 1800.  Yes, we all have our faults.   That said, there were many good things about this book.  It was filled with shocking and valuable information about the plight of women in Victorian England.  Alas for Gissing he is no Upton Sinclair and I would be surprised if this story provoked outrage, which is a shame.  I did find it interesting, upon reading this, as I noticed how many of these same biases still shape our understanding of women's worth and women's work today.   Gissing was excellent at sussing out the foibles of people of society (then and now) and their blind spots and self-delusions.  In fact, I wished I was reading an in-depth sociological study rather than a novel; that, perhaps, I could have appreciated. 

 

And what are those two remaining books? The green ones?  Those are little frivolous bits of fluff that surprised me and which I adored.   J. Ruth Gendler's The Book of Qualities is a brief book, an alphabet book of sorts, although dealing with emotions and qualities.  I found it charming, and although yes, sometimes the analogies are simple, they are also at times quite profound.  I breezed through this book once, and keep it near my mediation chair as I find it often offers a perfect diving board for reflection on those mornings when I am too scattered, too tired, to nauseated, to settle my mind.    And since I have already. said I "breezed" through The Book of Qualities, that brings up our last book, Breezy in Bandera.   Bandera is a town in the Texas Hill Country, and this novel was written by a blogger whom I have followed for a few years now, although never really commenting.  I think I found her through knitting, but she is a fabulous weaver and inspires me, even though I have not yet warped my loom.  I found the story well written (it is a romance), and I felt at home with the descriptions of place, as if I was back in familiar territory. with a character I could relate to (an introvert who loves to cook and feed people and weave).  Yeah.  My kind of story.  Make no excuses for what you love.  I am looking forward to the second book.