Review of the Day: Crescent City

Crescent City by Belva Plain has all the makings of a great historic saga: Jewish immigrants flee the poverty and persecution of 19th Century Europe for a life of luxury in the religiously tolerant boomtown of antebellum New Orleans; families are torn apart over the slavery issue and fight on opposite sides of the Civil War; there are loveless marriages, adulterous affairs, hoop skirts, burning plantations, and even blockage runners. Unfortunately, the book is still boring. It only skims the surface of the major events of the plot and the conflicts the characters face. It lacks the emotional depth and pure entertainment of the classic Gone with the Wind. It lacks the details of the really good historic epics, like John Jakes’s Kent Family Chronicles. It lacks the smutty thrill of a good bodice ripper like that 1970s gem, The Flame and the Flower by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss. Despite being over 500 pages long, Crescent City comes up short.

Book Note: Agnes Grey

Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte is The Nanny Diaries of the Nineteenth Century.

Review of the Day: Thomas Paine

In Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations, Craig Nelson taught me that Thomas Paine was the Forrest Gump of the Enlightenment. He bumbled along through life, usually with no money, no real job, or no home of his own. Yet he was involved in the most important events, and with the most notable figures, of the Eighteenth Century. Paine (then Pain) spent his first 37 years in England when, separated from his wife, bankrupt, and fired from his job, he decided to go to America. It was then that he precipitously met the most famous American in Europe, Benjamin Franklin, who became his lifelong friend and his immediate benefactor by providing him letters of introduction. Arriving in America in 1774 with his cache of Franklin letters, Paine was a delegate at the first Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. He began another lifelong friendship, this time with George Washington. While struggling along as a magazine writer and editor, he wrote Common Sense, which sparked the American Revolution. Although he did not fight in the Revolution, he was often at the front lines with Washington, and his line, “These are the times that try men’s souls” was the troops’ rallying cry. Following American independence, Paine did not hold office like many of the other Founding Fathers. But he was sent to France to represent America in negotiating peace with Britain. He wrote Rights of Man, which sparked the French Revolution and was a world-wide best seller. It also earned Paine, in abstentia, a British death sentence for sedition. During the French Revolution, Paine was elected to the French National Assembly, where he was the only member to vote against beheading Louis XVI. He got himself crosswise with Robespierre and was thrown into prison, destined for the guillotine, when the tide turned against Robespierre and American diplomacy got him released. While waiting in France until it was safe to sail to America, Paine wrote The Age of Reason. He also provided military advice to Napoleon Bonaparte about how to invade Britain. He returned to America upon the invitation Thomas Jefferson. Nelson does a good job with the story of Paine’s life and adventures. His “grand theme” gets a little attenuated towards the end as he tried to tie everything together. But overall this is an entertaining overview of this omnipresent at the revolution Founding Father.

Review of the Day: The Right Stuff

The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe is my favorite book about astronauts. Of course, it is the only book about astronauts that I will ever read, so that isn't the strongest praise. But it is perfect for a general reader like me looking for an entertaining history of America's early space program.

Wolfe definitely keeps the tale interesting. He focuses on the personal, rather than the technical and administrative, aspects of the Mercury space program and the first seven astronauts involved. He follows the seven through their early careers, mostly as test pilots, through each of their turns in a Mercury capsule.

The most remarkable part of the story is the connection Wolfe makes between fighter jet pilots and astronauts. Having grown up in the NASA age, I did not know that the Air Force had a competing rocket program (a program that managed to send pilots several miles into space and then have them actually land the aircraft back on earth) before it was scuttled in favor of NASA's moon missions.

The only drawback of the book is Wolfe's Gonzo journalism style, which much have been refreshing and bold back in 1979. Now, the hipper-than-thou tone is a little tired and can get exasperating.

Cookbook Library: Fog City Delights

Community cookbooks enthral me. Junior League cookbooks generally lead the pack in this area, but church societies, chambers of commerce, and other groups put together pretty good collections too. I like the recipes because they are usually tried and true and sure to please.

Fog City Delights is the 1987 cookbook put out by the “Letterman Auxiliary” of the Letterman Army Medical Center that used to be in the Presidio in San Francisco. It is a sentimental favorite of mine because I lived next to the Presidio, just up the hill from where the hospital used to be (it has since been torn down and replaced with the more attractive Lucas Center).


Although “Cheddary Tomato Fish Fillets” may sound dubious, it was really tasty.

2 tablespoons butter
1 pound fish fillets
1/2 teaspoon salt
dash pepper
2 tablespoons finely chopped onions
2 tablespoons minced fresh parsley
1 medium tomato, chopped
1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese

Melt butter in large skillet. Add fillets, turning to coat both sides. Season with salt and pepper. Sprinkle the onions, parsley, and tomatoes over the fillets. Cover and cook over low heat for 7 to 9 minutes. Sprinkle cheese over the top and cover. Cook 1 to 2 minutes, until the cheese melts. Serves 4.

Library Book Sale in Prineville

Every third Saturday of the month, the Crook County Library in Prineville, Oregon has a used book sale in the lobby. (Well, every third Saturday except for in July when they have the HUGE sale over Independence Day weekend.) Luckily for me, I was heading over to Bend for the weekend, so had a chance to swing through Prineville and stop at this month's sale. Not bad. The selection wasn't enormous, but there were several long table stacked three rows deep, mostly donated (not ex-library copies), mostly hardbacks, and mostly in good shape. Hardbacks were all $1 and paperbacks were 50 cents. The newer books were mostly mysteries; the older stuff was more varied. Among other gems, I picked up a copy of The Silent Spring in very good condition. It's not a book I'm all that excited about, but it is on the Modern Library's list of Top 100 Nonfiction Books of the 20th Century, so I will get around to it someday.

Review of the Day: Restless

Restless by William Boyd is one of the rare novels that is enjoyable from the opening quote to the final paragraph. The story goes back and forth between the cloak-and-dagger world of WWII British espionage and the “contemporary” (1976) relationship between a mother and her daughter.

The premise is that a proper English grandmother, tucked away in a tiny Oxfordshire village, puttering in her garden, gives her daughter a manuscript she wrote, which reveals that she had been a British spy. From there, the story of her life as an intelligence agent develops along with the daughter’s completely new understanding of the person her mother is.

While it has its exciting bits, it is not a heart-racing thriller. Instead, gets into the minds of the characters to look at what it was like to have once been a spy, then live a normal life, and what it would be like to learn that your parent had been a spy with an adventurous life no one knew anything about. Fascinating.

NOTE: The audio book version was particularly entertaining because the woman who read did remarkably well on the accents. She had to portray characters with a variety of English and American accents, as well as Irish, Scottish, French, German, Russian, Mexican, and Iranian. She did an incredible job.

Review: Middle Passage

Middle Passage by Charles Johnson won the 1990 National Book Award. I was reluctant to read it because I thought it was going to be too depressing and preachy. It was depressing at times, but it was also, well . . . goofy. Very engrossing, even exciting, but a little haphazard. It has a ne’er-do-well hero, multiple plots, and exciting adventures -- a real sea yarn.

I could not get my brain around the notion that the narrator knew about and referred to things that didn’t happen until decades after the story takes place (he mentions things like time zones and squeegees that didn’t exist in 1830, for example, not to mention philosophical and scientific theories that didn’t develop until much later, such as evolution). But once I decided to let that all flow over me, I enjoyed the book. It certainly packs a lot into its 206 pages.

OTHER REVIEWS

Living Life and Reading Books
Bibliofreak

Book Note: The Inheritance of Loss

I have mixed feelings about The Inheritance of Loss, the 2006 winner of the Booker Prize. The story was complex and engaging, but it seemed to end in mid-stream.

iPod in the Car

One reason I get through a lot of books is that I listen to audio books on my iPod. (See lists over on the right.) I get audio books on cd from the library, load them into iTunes, then transfer them to my iPod. Easy! And it lets me carry around a dozen books in my purse. Most iPod users probably were born understanding how to use them in every situation. Not me. Figuring out how to plug my iPod into my car's stereo system took me several days. I did some consumer research and finally decided on the AVB Cassette Adapter. Now, obviously, that only works if you have a cassette player in your car. Otherwise, you have to get one of the wireless adapters that are significantly more expensive and/or had mediocre performance reviews. I wanted to keep things as simple as possible. I've been using cassette adapter thingy for a year now and it works like a charm. Also, I just ordered one for my mom and the price is down to $9.99! Good grief, that's cheap! I use the car adapter with the Griffin Technology iPod charger to keep the gizmo juiced up.

Review of the Day: The Adventures of Augie March

The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow won the National Book Award in 1964. The story follows the life of the eponymous hero from childhood in Chicago, through a sojourn in Mexico with a zany huntress, to life on the seas in the Merchant Marines. Full of Bellow's over-the-top characters and riddled with discourses on Big Ideas, Augie is a great American hero. Bellow is a treasure.

Favorite Author: Lee Child

Lee Child writes Jack Reacher books. Thankfully for all his loyal fans -- "Reacher Creatures" -- he turns out a new one pretty much every year.

Reacher is the prototypical hero. He is big and strong and smart and he drifts around solving unsolvable problems. He doesn't need anything besides his folding toothbrush and a little folding money. (Confronted with the reality of our post-9/11 world, Reacher started carrying a passport and an ATM card in later books -- a stumbling block for loyal readers.) He can calculate the trajectory of a bullet. He can kill a man with his thumb. He's cool.

I have read all but the last two of Lee Child's Jack Reacher books.

The books in publication order are:

Killing Floor
Die Trying
Tripwire
Running Blind
Echo Burning
Persuader
Without Fail
The Enemy
One Shot
The Hard Way
Bad Luck and Trouble
Nothing to Lose
Gone Tomorrow
61 Hours
Worth Dying For (reviewed here)
The Affair
A Wanted Man
Never Go Back
Personal
Make Me
Night School
The Midnight Line

Past Tense

Blue Moon

NOTE
Last updated April 5, 2021.

Review of the Day: The Shell Seekers

The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher is a plot-driven family saga centered around Penelope Sterne, daughter of an artist and mother of three unlikable adult children (well, two are outright unlikable; one is supposed to be admirable but is singularly off-putting). Penelope, now 64 and suffering from a weak ticker, putters in her English garden, ponders her past, and considers how and when to dispose of the few of her father’s now-valuable art works in her possession.

The story moves right along at a bracing clip, through lengthy detours into Penelope’s childhood in Cornwall, Britain’s WWII home front, and the younger daughter’s sojourn in Ibiza. It is an enjoyable read, well-deserving of it’s decades of popularity.

Only in retrospect does the novel disappoint. The main weakness is a lack of character development. The characters spring fully-formed onto the page. The “good” people are all generous, hard-working, independent, and bluntly forthright. (They are also startlingly unsentimental.) The “bad” folks are greedy, vain, self-centered, and silly. None of them change, either individually or in relation to the others. When the narrative reaches its chronologically natural ending, resolution of the various threads is brusquely efficient, but not convincing or satisfying.

Overall, it is an entertaining but unfulfilling read.

'Bye 'Bye 1776

I am giving up on 1776 by David McCullough. Normally, I am too task-oriented to not finish a book once I start it, but I find it easier to drop an audio book than a paper book. Maybe there is something too immediately tactile about abandoning a paper book, while stopping the audio book is more of a "virtual" abandonment. In any event, I only got through about two hours of the 12 hours of 1776. Nothing against McCullough's writing, which is first rate, but I simply do not enjoy stories about battles. The guns, the tents, the weather, the food, the boots, the horses -- none of it interests me. I did not realize that this book was all about fighting the first year of the Revolutionary War. So, great book. Just not my cup of tea.

Review of the Day: The Centaur

Despite its title, I was surprised by how myth-centric The Centaur is. It is the story of a high school science teacher and his student son. It is also John Updike's re-telling of the myth of the centaur Chiron who, wounded, gives his life (his immortality) to Prometheus.

This is a book I may appreciate more in the recollection. While reading it, I was distracted by the allegory. Sometimes, the mythical references were too vague or convoluted to catch and I had to refer to the index at the back to make sure I wasn't missing something important. But at times, the myth is more than allegory -- it is right there in the middle of the action. Updike sometimes refers to the hero as Chiron and describes his hooves clacking on the school stairs, for instance. I found the switch from allegory to action to be jarring.

Also, the hero was annoying, not just to me as a reader, but to his son, wife, and co-workers in the story. I can't figure out how his unlikeability ties in with the myth of Chiron.

I read this because it won the National Book Award in 1964. I prefer his Rabbit novels.

Review: Look Great, Feel Great

Look Great, Feel Great by Joyce Meyer caught my eye at the library. I had never heard of Meyer, but a book about weight loss and fitness from a Christian perspective intrigued me. I am glad I took the time because I picked up a few pointers that I hope will pay off.

The book is well-organized and direct. Meyer sets out 12 “keys” to optimizing how you look and feel, focusing on healthy eating and exercise, but also emphasizing the spiritual side of her recommended endeavors. The keys include things like “mindful eating,” limiting stress, drinking water, and taking personal responsibility.

After discussing each key, Meyer provides a list of five suggested ways to implement each idea. She urges readers to chose just one of the five, write it down, and do it every day until it becomes a habit. In fact, her suggested plan is to go back after reading the book and focus on one key each month, making a habit out of one of the implementation tips, with the idea that you would have a different, healthier life in a year.

The book is definitely aimed at those at a “beginner level” of health and fitness. Some of her information is pretty basic (deep fried food is bad for you, stress causes high blood pressure) and some of her tips are hackneyed (get more exercise by taking the stairs, herbal tea counts as drinking water).

But there is enough substance there for those who have reached the “intermediate level” to make it useful. She does a very good job of explaining the science behind diabetes, for example, instead of simply propounding a ban on sugar and starch. Her chapters on how stress leads to overeating and the health benefits of water have similar depth. And her menus of implementation ideas provide something for everyone – either as a first step or a gentle reminder.

For me, the ideas for how to be a “mindful” eater made the reading worthwhile. Ideas like “stop eating if you are no longer hungry” may seem mighty simple, but that alone could make a huge difference.

Cookbook Library: The Silver Palate

Other than The Joy of Cooking, which I bought when I was still in high school just because I loved it so, The Silver Palate was the first cookbok I ever owned. The recipes now seem “so Eighties” to me — but that isn’t a bad thing. I am often nostalgic for those ‘80s treats I used to make, like these “Toffee Bars” that are easy and very good: 1 cup butter (2 sticks) 1 cup light brown sugar 1 egg yolk 2 cups flour 1 teaspoon vanilla 12 ounces semisweet chocolate chips 1 cup chopped pecans or walnuts 1. Preheat oven to 350. Grease a 9×12 baking pan. 2. Cream butter and sugar. Add egg yolk; beat well. 3. Sift in flour, mixing well, then add vanilla. Spread batter in greased pan. Bake for 25 minutes. 4. Cover cake layer with chocolate chips and return to oven for 3 or 4 minutes. 5. Remove pan from oven and spead melted chocolate evenly. Sprinkle with nuts. Cool in pan completely before cutting. About 30 bars. The only change I made was adding a little salt to the batter because I used unsalted butter.

Review of the Day: Hard Times

Hard Times by Charles Dickens is one of the many Victorian Era classics that I had never gotten around to reading. But thanks to an audio version new on the shelf of my library branch, it made it to the top of my TBR pile. In equal parts good old fashioned storytelling and outdated social criticism, Hard Times is the tale of the Gradgrind family and their struggle to reconcile the rational, fact-based side of life with the emotional and imaginative side. Thomas Gradgrind, Sr. is proud of his “system” of raising children – his own and those in the school he runs – to know and depend only on facts, with no “wondering” or amusement. The ultimate failure of his system leads to the final showdown and resolution of the story. Dickens packed the book (first published in installments in 1854) full of his usual extraordinary characters. These really came to life in the audio version. Along with some Victorian moralizing, he mixed in plenty of humor and even a little intrigue and adventure. None of the characters are particularly likeable, perhaps especially to a modern reader with less sympathy for the outmoded social constraints under which the characters labor, but they all get their just deserts – for good or ill – in the end. Despite its age, Hard Times remains thoroughly entertaining.

National Book Award

Of the many lists of prize winners and recommended books I have going, I’ve been working for the past several years on reading the winners of the National Book Award. I recently found and joined the National Book Award Project – a group blog focusing on the winners and finalists of the NBA. I’ll be posting about my progress there as well as here. According to Lists of Bests, I am 38% finished with this list. Those I’ve finished are in red; those I own but haven’t read yet are in blue. 2007 Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson 2006 The Echo Maker by Richard Powers 2005 Europe Central by William T. Vollmann 2004 The News from Paraguay by Lily Tuck 2003 The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard 2002 Three Junes by Julia Glass 2001 The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen 2000 In America by Susan Sontag 1999 Waiting by Ha Jin 1998 Charming Billy by Alice McDermott 1997 Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier 1996 Ship Fever and Other Stories by Andrea Barrett 1995 Sabbath's Theater by Philip Roth 1994 A Frolic of His Own by William Gaddis 1993 The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx 1992 All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy 1991 Mating by Norman Rush 1990 Middle Passage by Charles Johnson 1989 Spartina by John Casey 1988 Paris Trout by Pete Dexter 1987 Paco's Story by Larry Heinemann 1986 World's Fair by E.L. Doctorow 1985 White Noise by Don Delillo 1984 Victory Over Japan by Ellen Gilchrist 1983 The Color Purple by Alice Walker 1982 Rabbit is Rich by John Updike 1981 Plains Song by Wright Morris 1980 Sophie's Choice by William Styron 1979 Going After Cacciato by Tim O'Brien 1978 Blood Ties by Mary Lee Settle 1977 The Spectator Bird by Wallace Stegner 1976 JR by William Gaddis 1975 The Hair of Harold Roux by Thomas Williams 1975 Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone 1974 Gravity's Ranbow by Thomas Pynchon 1974 A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer 1973 Augustus by John Williams 1973 Chimera by John Barth 1972 The Complete Stories by Flannery O'Connor 1971 Mr. Sammler's Planet by Saul Bellow 1970 Them by Joyce Carol Oates 1969 Steps by Jerzy Kosinski 1968 The Eighth Day by Thornton Wilder 1967 The Fixer by Bernard Malamud 1966 The Collected Stories by Katherine Anne Porter 1965 Herzog by Saul Bellow 1964 The Centaur by John Updike 1963 Morte d'Urban by J.F. Powers 1962 The Moviegoer by Walker Percy 1961 The Waters of Kronos by Conrad Richter 1960 Goodbye Columbus by Philip Roth 1959 The Magic Barrell by Bernard Malamud 1958 Wapshot Chronicle by John Cheever 1957 The Field of Vision by Wright Morris 1956 Ten North Frederick by John O'Hara 1955 A Fable by William Faulkner 1954 The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow 1953 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison 1952 From Here to Eternity by James Jones 1951 The Collected Stories by William Faulkner 1950 The Man with the Golden Arm by Nelson Algren

Review of the Day: The Assistant

The Assistant by Bernard Malamud is the moving story of an Italian-American stranger who works his way into the lives of an immigrant Jewish shopkeeper and his family. Malamud perfectly portrays the grinding worries of running a mom-and-pop grocery, but also brings out bigger themes such as the importance of education and an individual’s ability to overcome bigotry. Focusing on the value of loyalty, repentance, and personal responsibility, it is a story of the redemptive power of love and forgiveness. Four stars.

List: Anthony Burgess

In 1984, Anthony Burgess (best known for A Clockwork Orange) published 99 Novels: The Best in English Since 1939 (reviewed here).



His book included mini-reviews of the 99 novels (some are sets or series), which he chose on the basis of personal preference. I read the book, but now I don't remember why he started his list in 1939 and limited it to 99 books instead of an even 100.

This is my go-to book list when I'm looking for something good. There is some crossover with other Must Read lists, but a lot of originality. There are many books I've read only because they were on this list and I they now have permanent spots on my list of all-time favorites.

So far, I've read 39 of the 99 books on this list. The ones I have read are in red. Those on my TBR shelf are in blue.

Here is the list, in the same chronological order by publication date that Burgess lists them in his book:

Party Going, Henry Green

After Many a Summer Dies the Swan, Aldous Huxley

Finnegans Wake, James Joyce (discussed here)

At Swim-Two-Birds, Flann O'Brien

The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene

For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway

Strangers and Brothers, C. P. Snow (an 11-novel series; A Time of Hope, reviewed here; George Passant, reviewed here)

The Aerodrome, Rex Warner

The Horse's Mouth, Joyce Cary

The Razor's Edge, Somerset Maugham (reviewed here)

Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh

Titus Groan, Mervyn Peake (reviewed here)

The Victim, Saul Bellow

Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry

The Heart of the Matter, Graham Greene

Ape and Essence, Aldous Huxley

The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer (reviewed here)

No Highway, Nevil Shute

The Heat of the Day, Elizabeth Bowen

Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell

The Body, William Sansom

Scenes from Provincial Life, William Cooper

The Disenchanted, Budd Schulberg

A Dance to the Music of Time, Anthony Powell (a 12-novel series; discussed here)

The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger

The Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight, Henry Williamson

The Caine Mutiny, Herman Wouk

Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison

The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway

The Groves of Academe, Mary McCarthy (reviewed here)

Wise Blood, Flannery O'Connor

Sword of Honour, Evelyn Waugh

The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chandler

Lucky Jim, Kingsley Amis

Room at the Top, John Braine

The Alexandria Quartet, Lawrence Durrell

The London Novels, Colin MacInnes (a trilogy)

The Assistant, Bernard Malamud (reviewed here)

The Bell, Iris Murdoch

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Alan Sillitoe

The Once and Future King, T. H. White

The Mansion, William Faulkner

Goldfinger, Ian Fleming

Facial Justice, L. P. Hartley

The Balkans Trilogy, Olivia Manning

The Mighty and Their Fall, Ivy Compton-Burnett

Catch-22, Joseph Heller

The Fox in the Attic, Richard Hughes

Riders in the Chariot, Patrick White

The Old Men at the Zoo, Angus Wilson

Another Country, James Baldwin

An Error of Judgment, Pamela Hansford Johnson

Island, Aldous Huxley

The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing

Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov

The Girls of Slender Means, Muriel Spark

The Spire, William Golding

Heartland, Wilson Harris

A Single Man, Christopher Isherwood (reviewed here)

The Defense, Vladimir Nabokov

Late Call, Angus Wilson

The Lockwood Concern, John O'Hara

The Mandelbaum Gate, Muriel Spark (reviewed here)

A Man of the People, Chinua Achebe

The Anti-Death League, Kingsley Amis (reviewed here)

Giles Goat-Boy, John Barth

The Late Bourgeois World, Nadine Gordimer

The Last Gentleman, Walker Percy

The Vendor of Sweets, R. K. Narayan

The Image Men, J. B. Priestley

Cocksure, Mordecai Richler

Pavane, Keith Roberts

The French Lieutenant's Woman, John Fowles

Portnoy's Complaint, Philip Roth

Bomber, Len Deighton

Sweet Dreams, Michael Frayn

Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon

Humboldt's Gift, Saul Bellow

The History Man, Malcolm Bradbury

The Doctor's Wife, Brian Moore

Falstaff, Robert Nye

How to Save Your Own Life, Erica Jong (reviewed here)

Farewell Companions, James Plunkett

Staying On, Paul Scott

The Coup, John Updike

The Unlimited Dream Company, J. G. Ballard

Dubin's Lives, Bernard Malamud

A Bend in the River, V. S. Naipaul

Sophie's Choice, William Stryon (reviewed here)

Life in the West, Brian Aldiss

Riddley Walker, Russell Hoban

How Far Can You Go?, David Lodge (reviewed here)

A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole

Lanark, Alasdair Gray

Darconville's Cat, Alexander Theroux

The Mosquito Coast, Paul Theroux

Creation, Gore Vidal

The Rebel Angels, Robertson Davies (reviewed here)

Ancient Evenings, Norman Mailer

NOTES

Updated March 19, 2018.

OTHERS READING THESE BOOKS

If you would like to be listed here, please leave a comment with your links to any progress reports or reviews and I will add them here.

Review of the Day: Havoc, in Its Third Year

Havoc, in Its Third Year by Ronan Bennett is a mystery and a morality play and a historical novel all rolled into one. In 1630, John Brigge is the coroner and one of the Governors in an unnamed Northern England town. When he is called into town from his family and farm on the other side of the desolate moor, he finds not only a woman accused of murdering her newborn son, but political upheaval as law-and-order extremists use fiery oratory and public torture to consolidate their power. There are times when the implicit comparison to modern times is a little heavy handed, but, in general, the author avoids preaching by focusing on human ambiguity rather than human hypocrisy. Whether the final ending is heard-heartedly cynical or comfortingly realistic is up for debate.

Review of the Day: Black Jews, Jews, and Other Heroes

Black Jews, Jews, and Other Heroes: How Grassroots Activism Led to the Rescue of the Ethiopian Jews by Howard M. Lenhoff is a mildly tedious book about a fascinating subject. Lenhoff missed an opportunity to reach a broad audience when he intentionally focused on the poisonously dull “development of the infrastructure” of the American Association for Ethiopian Jews.

Telling the story of the Ethiopian Jews from the perspective of the American volunteer organization that did much to rescue them is an interesting take on the subject. Using the history of the AAEJ as a framework for the story of the Ethiopian Jews would have been fine, and perhaps this is what Lenhoff intended. But the narrative gets bogged down in administrative minutia at the expense of the bigger story.

Apparently intended to suggest that the AAEJ could be used as a model, several dozen references to the AAEJ as a “grassroots” organization undertaking “grassroots” efforts are salted throughout the early part of the book. These references feel like they were added later, perhaps at an editor’s request to try to appeal to a broader audience. They peter out as the story gets going, which only leaves another thematic loose end.

The major problem with Black Jews is that it presupposes a level of familiarity with the subject that is well beyond that of a general audience. Only reading the book from cover to cover, including the appendixes, allows the reader to piece together a general history of the Ethiopian Jews, or “Falasha.” There have been black African Jews in Ethiopia since biblical times. When the modern state of Israel was formed and welcomed all Jews to return and claim citizenship, a controversy arose over whether the Falasha were “real” Jews entitled to Israeli citizenship. The issue concerned whether the Jews in Ethiopia were descendants of Abraham, and therefore entitled to citizenship, or descendants of converts.

In the 1970s, religious and government leaders in Israel determined that the Jews in Ethiopia were real Jews. Then began the lengthy process of bringing the Ethiopian Jews to Israel. At first, only several hundred of the Falasha came to Israel each year, mostly through Sudan where they were refugees from government and social persecution. In the early 1980s, efforts to rescue the Falasha intensified, culminating in the spectacular “Operation Moses” airlift of over 8,000 Ethiopian Jews from Sudan. Efforts to rescue Jews remaining in Ethiopia continued through the 1980s, until the 1991 “Operation Solomon” brought over 14,000 Jews from Ethiopia to Israel in less than 36 hours. The AAEJ was active in efforts to raise awareness of the plight of Ethiopian Jews, organize volunteers, raise money, pressure the Israeli and American governments, and even organize rescues.  

Black Jews would have been substantially improved by providing such a thumbnail sketch early on. Instead, it launches directly into details about Lenhoff’s experiences in Israel that brought the Ethiopian Jews to his attention. Distracted by basic questions such as “Who are these Ethiopian Jews?” and “Why do they want to come to Israel?” it is difficult to track the narrative thread of these loosely organized anecdotes. The story develops substantially in later sections of the book, when Lenhoff switches to a more straightforwardly chronological presentation.

In the absence of a general history about Ethiopian Jews and their immigration to Israel, Lenhoff’s book is worth wading through. Hopefully someone will undertake a comprehensive treatment of this worthwhile subject.

My (Current) Top 10 Favorite Novels

These are my ten favorite novels, in roughly the order I would put them if I absolutely had to (which I don't, because it's my list). It is subject to change at whim, which it did for the first time in a long time in 2010.

1. A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell (discussed here);

2. Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov;

3. Sophie’s Choice by William Styron (reviewed here);

4. The Road Home by Jim Harrison;

5. Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco;

6. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons (reviewed here);

7. All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren (reviewed here);

8. Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald;

9. Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell; and

10. Amsterdam by Ian McEwan.


NOTE
Updated June 19, 2010 (Cold Comfort Farm displaced The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All)

OTHER REVIEWS OF THE BOOKS ON THIS LIST
(If you would like to be listed here, please leave a comment with links to your reviews ans I will add them.)

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Review of the Day: Thérèse Raquin

Published in 1867, Thérèse Raquin is Emile Zola's first novel and a magnificent proto-noir thriller. All the necessary elements are here -- a hot-to-trot young wife, an invalid husband, a greedy lover – all simmered together in a Parisian stew of lust, murder, deception, debauchery, and guilt. With the macabre ghoulishness of Poe and the diabolical desperation of Cain, Thérèse Raquin should be on any noir-lover's bookshelf.

Review of the Day: Gifted

Appropriately enough for a book about math, Gifted by Nikita Lalwani is more than the sum of its parts. It is the story of a math prodigy, a coming-of-age novel, and a look at immigrant life. But it all comes together in a way that is so interesting, so satisfying, that it is a truly great novel of general appeal. The heroine, Rumi Vasi, is the “gifted” young daughter of Indian parents living in Wales. Driven by her parents to excel in mathematics, Rumi achieves their highest hope for her – acceptance at Oxford University when she is 15. Lalwani masterfully captures the awkwardness and inner turmoil of this out-of-place adolescent. Lawani’s writing is remarkably polished for a first novel. Her language does not get in the way of the story, either by being distractingly beautiful or stumblingly clunky. The words flow so naturally you do not notice them, allowing the story to unfold with natural grace, right up to the suitably dramatic ending with its hope of positive resolution.

Review: Real Cooking, by George!

Real Cooking, by George! by George Jacobs is a goofy old book I found on Dollar Day at the San Francisco Library's used book sale at Ft. Mason.

It is mostly commentary on food, cooking, foreign living, and entertaining, with a few recipes in the back -- sort of like an MFK Fisher book, but without the caché. I do not know anything about the author, George Jacobs, or why he wrote a book about cooking. He was not a chef. I gather that he was some kind of bon vivant, artist, occasional ex-pat who enjoys food.

His musings are mildly interesting, but nothing memorable. Maybe I could write a book?

The Orange Prize

The Orange Prize for Fiction 2008 longlist came out last week. The Orange Prize is awarded each year for the best novel in English written by a woman. It bugs me. I think that setting up a separate prize for women is saying that women cannot compete with men and need their own remedial competition. Plenty of people disagree -- and they are free to put the Orange Prize winners on their TBR list. But a book won't make my list just for winning the Orange Prize or for being written by a woman.

Review of the Day: Lost in Translation

No, not the Scarlett Johansson movie. This Lost in Translation is an imaginative and satisfying novel by Nicole Mones. The protagonist, Alice Mannegan, is an American living in China, working as an interpreter, and striving to be accepted in the culture she has adopted. When hired by a second-rate American anthropologist, the two hook up with his Chinese counterparts and head to Inner Mongolia looking for the lost remains of Peking Man.

Mones does a great job of weaving the histories of the characters into the main story. While the team follows the trail of homo erectus, Alice struggles to understand her relationship with her powerful father; her boss worries about losing his son’s affection and respect; and their Chinese cohort searches on the sly for the wife he cannot abandon although she disappeared to a work camp during the Cultural Revolution. Mones uses the historic relationship between French priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and his platonic lover, Lucile Swan, to bring thematic unity to the varied storylines.

Equal parts historical mystery, foreign adventure, and cross-cultural romance, Lost in Translation has a lot to offer.

Review of the Day: Dreamers of the Day

It is hard to say why Dreamers of the Day by Mary Doria Russell is so unsatisfying. It has definite moments of entertainment, a few evocative passages, and a couple of really interesting story ideas.

The idea of a novel spun out of the Cairo Peace Conference is a great one. In 1921, luminaries like Winston Churchill, T. E. Lawrence, and Lady Gertrude Bell met in Cairo to create the modern Middle East. Narrator Agnes Shanklin gets caught up in history and lives, or dies, to tell us about it.

But after the initial premise, the book falters. For one thing, the story of the historic events in Cairo are flanked by lengthy sections that have nothing to do with Britain’s “Great Game” in the Middle East: the great influenza that leaves Agnes an heiress on the front end and the Roaring Twenties and Great Depression on the back end. These events and eras, worthy of novels of their own, are given short shrift and merely distract from the main events that get lost in the middle.

For another, the book does not explore its main theme in any detail. It is well researched in peripheral details, such as what Lawrence of Arabia wore, or what it is like to ride a camel, but the intricate workings of the Peace Conference and the complex facets of Britain’s foreign policy following World War I are glossed over. Other than to make the facile point that what happened in Cairo in 1921 greatly affects the Middle East we face today, the book does not delve into particulars. Russell spends more time on the heroine’s wardrobe and the bathroom habits of her dog than on the supposedly central international maneuverings.

Finally, the narrative gimmick is annoying. From the get go, the narrator tells us that she is dead, but writing in present time. The explanation for this, when it finally comes, is either too silly to tolerate or worthy of yet another novel, depending on your point of view. All in all, Dreamers of the Day tries to accomplish much more than it can deliver.

NOTES

I got my copy from the LibraryThing Early Reviewer program.

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