2012 Battle of the Prizes, American Version

2012 will be the fourth year I've hosted this Battle of the Prizes Challenge here at Rose City Reader.

This challenge pits winners of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction against the winners of the National Book Award in the American Version of the Battle of the Prizes.

Does one prize have higher standards than the other? Pick better winners? Provide more reading entertainment or educational value? Maybe challenge participants will be able to answer these and more questions – maybe they will simply read three great books!

For details and to sign up, please visit the challenge page, here, or click the page tab in the bar at the top of the blog.

Teaser Tuesday Oregon Two-fer: On Mount Hood and An Architectural Guidebook to Portland

Over the years the mountain has been host to a range of unique climbing feats and stories not readily found on other Cascadian peaks.  In 1894, in response to an advertisement in the newspaper, more than one hundred people climbed to the top of Mount Hood and formed the Mazamas outdoor club.

-- On Mt. Hood: A Biography of Oregon's Perilous Peak by Jon Bell. Another good one from Sasquatch Books. Mount Hood is the highest peak in Oregon and an icon of the state.

Definite Christmas gift potential!

It doesn't matter if you've been through the sacraments or not; if you want to see a beautiful spiritual and architectural space, visit [St. Mary's Cathedral]. . . .  The architect chosen for this job was Joseph Jacobberger, the man who oversaw the layout of the University of Portland and executed many church designs in the early 20th century.

-- An Architectural Guidebook to Portland by Bart King, also published by OSU Press.

This entry was particularly interesting to me because we live in a 1912 house that Joseph Jacobberger designed.  Jacobberger designed 261 houses, but only about half of them survive. 

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

Mailbox Monday

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday! MM was created by Marcia at A girl and her books (fka The Printed Page), who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, before turning it into a touring meme (details here).

Marcia herself is hosting in November. Seem like old times! Please go by and visit her Mailbox Monday site to see all the people participating and remember to stop by her wonderful blog.

I got one book last week, from the author:

Understanding the Abuse of Adults by Catholic Clergy and Religious by Kathryn R, Byrne.



In my law practice at O'Donnell Clark & Crew, I work with many adults who were abused as children by clergy and other trusted adults.  And I work on cases involving elder abuse.  I am interested to learn more about how those two issues may come together.

But I confess that I am not going to read it until after the New Year.  It is not an uplifting topic for the holidays.

Opening Sentence of the Day: The Hair of Harold Roux

Aaron Benham sits at his desk hearing the wrong voices. 

-- The Hair of Harold Roux by Thomas Williams.

This was the 1975 winner of the National Book Award.  It has recently been reissued after years of being out of print.

I got my copy from LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program.  It counts as one of the two National Winners I am reading for the Battle of the Prizes, American Version, Challenge.

Opening Sentences of the Day: On Mount Hood and An Architectural Guidebook to Portland

On this Big Shopping Day, it seems appropriate to feature two books that I think would make great Christmas presents for the Oregonians or Oregon visitors on your list:

Misty here at 6,000 feet on the south side of Mount Hood.

-- On Mt. Hood: A Biography of Oregon's Perilous Peak by Jon Bell. Another good one from OSU Press.

It may seem strange to begin a guide to architecture with an "empty" space.

-- An Architectural Guidebook to Portland by Bart King, also published by OSU Press. He is talking, of course, about Pioneer Courthouse Square, Portland's living room.





A Few More Pages hosts Book Beginnings every Friday.  The event is open for the entire week.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Author of the Day: David Lodge

David Lodge is a British author who writes substantive, entertaining novels about people coming to terms with the changing world, such as Londoners in WWII, Catholics facing Vatican II, and college professors braving the sexual revolution. His characters do not always find answers, but Lodge follows their quests with unrivaled intelligence and humor.

Lodge has also written nonfiction books, plays, and screenplays.

Of his fiction books, those I have read are in red. Those on my TBR shelf are in blue.

The Picturegoers (1960)

Ginger You're Barmy (1962)

The British Museum Is Falling Down (1965)

Out of the Shelter (1970)

Changing Places: A Tale of Two Campuses (1975)

How Far Can You Go? (1980) (winner of the Costa BOTY award; on Anthony Burgess's list of favorites; reviewed here)

Small World: An Academic Romance (1984)

Nice Work (1988)

Paradise News (1991)

Therapy (1995) (reviewed here)

The Man Who Wouldn't Get Up: And Other Stories (1998) (out of print)

Home Truths (1999) (reviewed here)

Thinks . . . (2001)

Author, Author (2004)

Deaf Sentence (2008) (reviewed here)

NOTES

If others are reading David Lodge's books, please leave a comment with links to relevant posts and I will list them here or, if I've reviewed the book discussed, on the review page.

Last updated on June 28, 2012.

Teaser Tuesday: Murder in the High Himalaya

It is gravely forbidden for PAP officers to talk to Westerners and would likely be an imprisonable or court martial offense to talk to journalists.  So Akar, a senior PAP officer was understandably wary when we met at an undisclosed location in an international city.

-- from the author's Introduction to Murder in the High Himalaya: Loyalty, Tragedy, and Escape from Tibet by Jonathan Green, published by PublicAffairs Books.

This is a non-fiction account of the 2006 tragedy in Nepal, when Chinese border guards fired on Tibetans fleeing to India, killing one.  The scene was witnessed by a group of western climbers.

This is the kind of book that makes us give thanks for the freedom and blessings we have.

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

Mailbox Monday

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday! MM was created by Marcia at A girl and her books (fka The Printed Page), who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, before turning it into a touring meme (details here).

Marcia herself is hosting in November. Seem like old times! Please go by and visit her Mailbox Monday site to see all the people participating and remember to stop by her wonderful blog.

I got one book last week.  Sometimes funny things show up in my mailbox from OSU Press, and this is one of them:

Wading for Bugs: Exploring Streams with the Experts by Judith L. Li and Michael T. Barbour, Illustrations by Boonsatien Boonsoong

Review of the Day: Therapy

 

Laurence "Tubby" Passmore has a sexually active, but otherwise stalled, marriage, a platonic mistress, and a bum knee. He is the creator and writer of a popular British sitcom, but his career is heading for a cliff unless he can rewrite the season finale. All this has driven Tubby to therapy – psycho, cognitive, physical, and aroma – as well as a self-guided study of the 19th century Danish existential philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard.

David Lodge is clever and perceptive and writes the kind of books I can't resist – intelligent stories of charming, bumbling, middle aged men behaving badly. In Therapy, Lodge uses the workable device of Tubby writing a journal at the request of his practical-minded psychiatrist, broken up with chapters in the voices of other characters and a longish "memoir" by Tubby of his teenage romance with a Catholic schoolgirl.

Lodge uses Kierkegaard's own romantic history and the religious philosophy he developed from it to organize some of the plot and ideas of this novel. He also revisits the Catholic themes he plumbed so deeply in How Far Can You Go? (winner of the Costa BOTY award; on Anthony Burgess's list of favorites; reviewed here).

He has a light touch with the philosophy and religious bits, and the book remains funny and entertaining throughout, with an ending that made me laugh out loud in pleased surprise.

Opening Sentence of the Day: Murder in the High Himalaya

Tibet is a land of timeless, infinite expanse.

-- from the author's Introduction to Murder in the High Himalaya: Loyalty, Tragedy, and Escape from Tibet by Jonathan Green, published by PublicAffairs Books.

The scouring winds howled in from the plateau.

-- from "Songs to the Precious One," the first chapter.

Here is a synopsis from the Publisher's Weekly review:

In 2006, an impulsive, naïve young Tibetan nun and her best friend, both yearning for religious freedom from Chinese rule, joined a group of fellow Tibetans desperate to escape to India, where the Dalai Lama has lived since the 1950 annexation of Tibet by China. Kelsang Namtso and Dolma Palkyi embarked on the brutal journey over the Himalayas. Smuggled by illegal guides past Chinese border police, the group braved freezing temperatures and snow, the high altitude, and perilous crevasses. Green alternates the refugees' trek with that of Luis Benitez, an American celebrity mountain guide leading a rich group of international clients to the Himalayan peak Cho Oyu. The two groups met on the peak as Chinese guards, alerted to the refugees' presence, chased after the escapees with machine guns ablaze, and Kelsang was killed in full view of the Westerners. One of Benitez's clients filmed the incident, which gained worldwide notoriety.

A Few More Pages hosts Book Beginnings every Friday.  The event is open for the entire week.

Day(s) of Fun!

My sister is here visiting from Germany, where she's been living and working for the past year and a half. She's a chef in Bavaria, at the fancy Steigenberger Hotel about an hour west of Munich. This is her first visit home since she moved.




We are going to spend the next couple of days exploring Portland, with emphasis on food.  Of course, we will make a bookish stop at Powell's, but mostly we will be inspired and guided by this:



Portland's 100 Best Places To Stuff Your Faces by Jen Stevenson, illustrated by Mette Hornung Rankin. I bought this from the author at some women wellness whatever thing. Stevenson has a wonderful blog-like website called Under the Table With Jen, all about food, food in Portland, and life in Portland. Great stuff.

Teaser Tuesday: Aftermath

One Saturday morning in early March, when Amanda Horenstein was eleven and her brother Donald nine, their grandfather drove his Cadillac into the side of their house.  If the car made a noise on its way towards them, the children didn't hear it.

-- from "If You Needed Me" in Aftermath by Scott Nadelson.  Ack! And you have to read to nearly the end of the story to know what happens.

I really enjoyed Nadelson's earlier collection, Saving Stanley, which I reviewed here. This new collection of stories is just as good.

This is one of the beautiful Hawthorne Books editions that make you re-think the idea of "paperback" because they are taller and skinnier than a typical trade paperback and feature "acid-free papers; sewn bindings that will not crack; heavy, laminated covers with double-scored French flaps that function as built-in bookmarks."  Hawthorne is a Portland-based, independent publisher specializing in literary fiction and narrative non-fiction.

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

Mailbox Monday

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday! MM was created by Marcia at A girl and her books (fka The Printed Page), who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, before turning it into a touring meme (details here).

Marcia herself is hosting in November. Seem like old times! Please go by and visit her Mailbox Monday site to see all the people participating and remember to stop by her wonderful blog.

I only got one book last week -- timely given the Penn State child abuse story -- and it is one I have read already. But I gave away my copy and wanted to replace it. It is time for a re-read in any event.

Scout's Honor: Sexual Abuse in America's Most Trusted Institution by Patrick Boyle.



This book was published in 1994 and was, for a long time, the only publicly-available information on the Scout's horrible problem with sexual abuse -- including their secret "Perversion Files" documenting pedophile Scout volunteers. 

A lot more information has been in the news in the last year and a half or so, since my firm won a big verdict against the Scouts here in Portland. I think Boyle should consider a revised and updated version of this fascinating book.  

Opening Sentence of the Day: Aftermath

The summer I first discovered how it feels to suffer in love, I worked for a local newspaper, selling subscriptions over the phone.

-- from "Dolph Schayes's Broken Arm," the first story in Aftermath by Scott Nadelson.  I love the whiplash in that sentence, from lofty to mundane.

I really enjoyed Nadelson's earlier collection, Saving Stanley, which I reviewed here. This new collection of stories, also in a lush Hawthorne Books edition, looks to be just as good.

Nadelson will be reading from Aftermath this coming Monday, November 14, at 7:30 p.m., at Powell’s Books on Hawthorne in Portland.






A Few More Pages hosts Book Beginnings every Friday.  The event is open for the entire week.

Happy 11th Anniversary! And Happy Veterans' Day!

Hubby and I are celebrating our 11th anniversary today, on 11/11/11.  We got married at 11:00 am, so we could even add another 11 to the list.

It seems momentous.

Opening Sentence of the Day: Odds Against

I was never particularly keen on my job before the day I got shot and nearly lost it, along with my life.

-- Odds Against by Dick Francis, published in 1965.

This is the first of his three books featuring ex-jockey, Sid Halley.  The second, Whip Hand, won the Edgar Award in 1979.  The third, Come to Grief, was published in 1996.  I've read the other two, but never got around to this one until now.

Teaser Tuesday: Discovering Main Street

Gold Beach on the southern Oregon coast feels more like a river town than an ocean place. The wild, tumbling Rogue River empties here, and given the choice between a walk on the sand or taking a jet boat one hundred and four miles into the interior of Oregon, most visitors take the later.

-- Discovering Main Street: Travel Adventures in Small Towns of the Northwest by Foster Church.

This is the kind of travel book I love because it explores off-the-beaten track, hidden corners, with a little more history and anecdote than practical advice. It is clear that Church really enjoys his exploring and knows how to find the vibe of the little towns he writes about.

Church was a long-time Oregonian reporter who now writes a blog called Small Town Travels, "celebrating the small towns of the Pacific Northwest."

I was pleased as punch to get this from the Oregon State University Press.


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

Mailbox Monday

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday! MM was created by Marcia at A girl and her books (fka The Printed Page), who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, before turning it into a touring meme (details here).

Marcia herself is hosting in November. Seem like old times! Please go by and visit her Mailbox Monday site to see all the people participating and remember to stop by her wonderful blog.

I got a couple of good books last week and something fun:

Portland in Three Centuries: The Place and the People by Carl Abbott, published by OSU Press. It looks like a concise, readable history of Portland, and I love the cool zine cover.



A Simple Machine, Like the Lever by Evan P. Schneider, published by the super nifty Propeller Books.



I also got a fun little bookish thing from The Joy of Ex Foundation that would make a pretty great Christmas present for some ladies I know. Mine is unframed, but still very cute.  It doesn't apply all that well to my book club, because we read the books as well as the wine labels, but I appreciate the sentiment.

Review: All the King's Men

 

Robert Penn Warren won the Pulitzer Prize in 1947 for All the King's Men, his fictionalized account of Louisiana's legendary governor Huey Long. In the novel, Long is Willie Stark, an idealistic country lawyer who takes on the political machine in his state and achieves meteoric success, only to be compromised by the same system he railed against.

This book has been on my list of Top 10 favorites since I read it in the mid-1990s, shortly after law school. Robert Penn Warren's combination of beautiful writing, compelling story, and political shenanigans wholly beguiled me.

Now, getting close to 20 years later, I wanted to re-read it to see if it still packed the same punch. It did, but in a quieter way. Either because I am older now or because I was familiar with the story, the political side didn't grab me, but the personal stories of Stark's family and the narrator, Stark's operative Jack Burden, struck me even harder with their heartbreak.

Warren was a poet first and a novelist second. His writing is full of metaphor, long descriptions, philosophical musings, and some long digressions away from the central plot. All these things, if not done right, can ruin a novel for me, fan of a good yarn that I am. But Warren does it right. It is definitely a book you have to settle in to and let it lead, but it is worth the dance if you do.

OTHER REVIEWS

on Vapour Trails

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

NOTES

All the King's Men is listed on the Modern Library's list of Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century and the Time Magazine list of All-TIME best novels. 

This counts as one of my Pulitzer Prize choices for the Battle of the Prizes, American Version.  This challenge runs through January 31, 2012, so there is still time to enter -- books read since February 1, 2011 count.

A revised edition of All the King's Men was published a few years back, to little fanfare and a small dustup between Noel Polk, editor of the "restored" edition,  and Joyce Carol Oates.  It is much longer and, inexplicably, Willie Stark is called Willie Talos, which in itself would make it impossible for me to read, Willie Stark being such an icon of American fiction.

Review: Cathedral

Nelson DeMille's Cathedral may be the best thriller ever written. Big words, but it's hard to think of another so well constructed and executed.

It's St. Patrick's Day in Manhattan and the city is gearing up for the big parade. Things go wrong when an IRA splinter group seizes hostages and takes control of St. Patrick's cathedral. Faced with impossible demands and bombs set to take down the cathedral at dawn, police, the National Guard, politicians, diplomats, and the Catholic Church scramble to come up with a plan.

This is a book you drink in – it doesn't even feel like reading. DeMille is a genius storyteller who knows to keep his writing out of the way of the action and make dialog snappy and realistic. Action and dialog are all there is. He tells where, what, who, when, and how and describes what things look, sound, smell, taste, and feel like. But he wastes few words on the thoughts or emotions of his characters, or any big themes that can't be gleaned from the facts described.

The only speed bump is readjusting to the pre-cell phone, pre-internet world of 1990 when the book was first published. But once passed that, the story hurtles along to the very last page. In fact, the story is more of a nail-biter now, in this post-9-11 world where buildings do actually fall down, than it would have been when it first came out.

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of Cathedral or any other book my Nelson DeMille listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

NOTES

This counts as one of my four choices for the Chunkster Reading Challenge. It is only the second book I've read for the challenge, so so it is a good thing the challenge runs through the end of January. Maybe I can read two more by the end.

Wendy at caribousmom is hosting this fun challenge again this year.  The challenge post is here.

Opening Sentence of the Day: Discovering Main Street

This book celebrates the small towns of the Northwest as places to spend time and explore.

-- from the author's Introduction to Discovering Main Street: Travel Adventures in Small Towns of the Northwest by Foster Church.

People don't necessarily visit Estacada for its own sake; they come to play in the Clackamas River, which flows through town like green silk.

-- from "Estacada" (pop. 2,700),the first chapter. Personally, I go to Estacada every year to U-Cut my own Christmas tree.  That is a pretty part of the Willamette Valley.

I am lucky to live in the beautiful Pacific Northwest and I love exploring small towns.  This would be the travel book I wrote myself if I had time and talent.

Foster Church was a long-time Oregonian reporter who now writes a blog called Small Town Travels, "celebrating the small towns of the Pacific Northwest."

I was pleased as punch to get this from the Oregon State University Press.



A Few More Pages hosts Book Beginnings every Friday.  The event is open for the entire week.

Review of the Day: Drood

 

Drood is Dan Simmons' creative reinterpretation of the literary rivalry between Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins. The two authors were friends and sometime collaborators from when they met in 1851 until Dickens' death in 1870. The factual friendship between the two is rich fodder for Simmons' invented tale.

Simmons takes this relationship and superimposes a fantastic story of mesmerism and murder involving a spooky underworld character called Drood. Drood may or may not be the abandoned son of an English nobleman, a high priest of ancient Egyptian religious rites, a savage mastermind of murder, or a figment of Collins' opium dreams.

The book goes on too long, the plot drags, characters disappear, and storylines fray – the same things that happen in some of Dickens' and Collins' overly long 19th century novels. But Simmons packs so much imagination into the story and maintains such an authentic tone that the book is compelling, no matter several overwrought or sluggish patches.

A Wicked Teaser Tuesday Two-fer: Wicked Autumn and From This Wicked Patch of Dust

Max wondered if Miss Pitchford had been alluding -- in her blushing, genteel, old-world way -- to the true nature of the relationship between her two former pupils.  Looking back, he realized that what she had expressed was skepticism regarding the existence of a girlfriend in Jasper's life.

-- Wicked Autumn by G. M. Malliet.  The title made this a good pick for Halloween week, even if it is too cozy to be scary. Fine with me. I love it.

This is the first in a promised series featuring Max Tudor, a former M15 agent turned Anglican priest. I got my copy from the LibraryThing Early Reviewer program.

The full moon glimmered on San Lorenzo Avenue's new pavement.  Julia unlocked the black metal gate quietly.

-- From This Wicked Patch of Dust by Sergio Troncoso. This is the inter-generational story of the Martinez family, who begin life in a shantytown on the U.S.-Mexico border and struggle with cultural clashes, different religions, and contemporary politics.

Troncoso has many readings and appearances scheduled this fall. Check his schedule here to see if he will be in your area.


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