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0224097008
| 9780224097000
| 0224097008
| 3.74
| 74,833
| 2014
| 2014
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it was amazing
| The archaeology of grief is not ordered. It is more like earth under a spade, turning up things you had forgotten. Surprising things come to light: The archaeology of grief is not ordered. It is more like earth under a spade, turning up things you had forgotten. Surprising things come to light: not simply memories, but states of mind, emotions, older ways of seeing the world.Helen MacDonald had suffered a great loss. In Anna Karenina, Tolstoy wrote, Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Perhaps the same might be applied to grieving. I know for myself, during an acute period of grieving I was practically unable to speak for well over a month, probably not a typical experience. MacDonald’s reaction was just a wee bit more unusual than mine. She decided to train a goshawk. [image] Helen MacDonald and friend - from The Daily Mail The loss of a person, whether through death, distance, or alienation, can bring about a significant crisis of identity. In MacDonald’s case, she had to lose her self, to an almost pathological degree, in order to find a way forward with her life. H is for Hawk is her tale of that journey. Of course, being a Cambridge-educated writer and naturalist, research fellow at Jesus College of Cambridge, and research scholar with the Cambridge Department of History and Philosophy, she brought a fair bit of writerly and intellectual heft to the task. I was in ruins. Some deep part of me was trying to rebuild itself, and its model was right there on my fist. The hawk was everything I wanted to be: solitary, self-possessed, free from grief, and numb to the hurts of human life.Hope may be a thing with feathers, but in MacDonald’s case, it was also a thing with a rapier beak, death-dealing claws and a penchant for killing. MacDonald named her Mabel. She takes us along on her year-long struggle to master both her hawk and her grief. MacDonald had been very close with her father, well-known, award-winning news photographer, Alisdair MacDonald. It was he who had introduced her to hawking as a child. Training a hawk was her way of connecting to her father. [image] Helen MacDonald with dad, Alisdair MacDonald - from Suffolk Magazine And then she added another dimension to this experience. There are four primary threads here. The first is MacDonald’s ongoing struggle to train Mabel. The second is her family history with her father. The third is her emotional, existential struggle to find a passage through her grief to the light. The fourth is her consideration of TH White. [image] T.H. White and friend - from Anendlessbanquet.com Terence Hanbury White gained considerable renown for writing The Once and Future King, The Sword in the Stone, and more. But he also wrote a book about his experience with falconry. MacDonald finds much in his book, The Goshawk, that touches her, reminding her of her childhood falconry bonding with dad. But she digs deeper, generating some in-depth analysis of White’s life and work. While his writing had garnered him considerable wealth and fame, White’s personal inclinations and struggles are not so well known. He had had, to put it kindly, a less than nurturing upbringing, with a particularly cold and remote father. He was gay, with sado-masochistic impulses, which was not exactly a comfy fit in the mid 20th century. MacDonald sees in his writing an expression of this inner self. When White writes about his love for the countryside, at heart he is writing about a hope that he might be able to love himself. But the countryside wasn’t just something that was safe for White to love it was a love that was safe to write about. It took me a long time to realize how many of our classical books on animals were by gay writers who wrote of their relationships with animals in lieu of human loves of which they could not speak.Both White and MacDonald used hawking as a way to step away from the world. She also sees an expression of White’s violent inclinations, and recognizes a bloodlust in herself as she assists Mabel in the slaughter of local fauna. In referring to a scene in which White tells of a fox being ripped to bits In this bloody scene, one man escaped White’s revulsion: the huntsman, a red-faced, grave and gentlemanly figure who stood by the hounds and blew the mort on his hunting horn, the formal act of parting to commemorate the death of the fox. By some strange alchemy—his closeness to the pack, his expert command of them—the huntsman was not horrible. For White it was a moral magic trick, a way out of his conundrum. By skillfully training a hunting animal, by closely associating with it, by identifying with it, you might be allowed to experience all your vital, sincere desires, even your most bloodthirsty ones, in total innocence. You could be true to yourself.This was something that appealed to White, a publicly sanctioned milieu in which he could express his bloody desires. MacDonald recognizes the feeling of bloodlust in herself, as well. [image] The original cover of The Goshawk We are treated to a bit of falconry history, consideration being given to the class and gender elements. I saw those nineteenth century falconers were projecting onto their hawks all the male qualities they thought threatened by modern life; wildness, power, virility, independence, and strength. By identifying with their hawks as they trained them, they could introject, or repossess, those qualities. At the same time they could exercise their power by ‘civilising’ a wild and primitive creature. Masculinity and conquest; two imperial myths for the price of one.The book is filled not only with her emotional struggle to recover, but with some breath-taking nature writing. The bare field we’d flown the hawk upon is covered in gossamer, millions of shining threads combed downwind across every inch of soil. Lit by the sinking sun the quivering silk runs like light on water all the way to my feet. It is a thing of unearthly beauty, the work of a million tiny spiders searching for new homes. Each had spun a charged silken thread out into the air to pull it from its hatch-place, ascending like intrepid hot-air balloonists to drift and disperse and fall.Does being in nature offer a salve to human suffering? Or does it reveal more of who we really are? MacDonald obviously survived her trial by feather with her personality, her core, intact. It will not feel entirely clear as you read this that she will. MacDonald is gloriously adept at bringing you into her experience, leading you to wonder the things she wonders, to feel the pain of her struggle. H is for Hawk is a magnificent achievement, taking us along with the author on her dark road, but offering glimpses of glory, of growth and understanding, while teaching us a bit about something most of us have never encountered, and giving us an expanded appreciation for one of the most beloved authors of the 20th Century. If you have not yet had the pleasure of reading H is for Hawk (I know there are some of you out there), I cannot urge you more vociferously to snatch off your hoods, fly to your bookstore and pounce on a copy before they are all gone. You will find in this book a very satisfying feast. This review first posted – 10/14/16 Published – 7/31/14 PS - Lena Headey, the actress who plays queen Circei Lannister on The Game of Thrones bought the film rights to the book in April 2015. I do not know if the project has progressed to a development stage. =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s Twitter and FB pages H is for Hawk has won a claw full of prizes and recognition -----2014 – Samuel Johnson Prize (now the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-fiction) winner -----2014 – Costa Book of the Year winner -----2014 – Duff Cooper Prize – shortlist -----2015 – Thwaites Wainwright Prize – longlist -----2015 – Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction - shortlist Items of interest -----The New Yorker - March 9, 2015 - Rapt - by Kathryn Schultz -----Radio interview - WBUR in Boston – 11:16 -----National Geographic - July 25, 2017 - Why This Young Hawk Thinks It’s an Eagle - By Sarah Gibbens - An interesting piece about a red-tail hawk going through an unusual upbringing -----Literary Hub - August 25, 2020 - Helen Macdonald: The Things I Tell Myself When I’m Writing About Nature Videos -----MacDonald talk at 5 x 15 - 16:18 -----Macdonald with Mary Karr at 92nd Street Y - 1:17:51 -----MacDonald on BBC News Meet the Author - 3:04 ----- Helen at a bookstore in DC - 58:25 – excellent – her talk is for the first 30 minutes - Politics and Prose is the site -----Helen reads TH White -----The entire film, The Goshawk, based on TH White’s book ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jun 29, 2016
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Jul 06, 2016
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Jun 29, 2016
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Hardcover
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0393351904
| 9780393351903
| 0393351904
| 4.22
| 94,506
| Sep 15, 2014
| Sep 28, 2015
|
it was amazing
| There are many words a woman in love longs to hear. “I’ll love you forever, darling,” and “Will it be a diamond this year?” are two fine examples. There are many words a woman in love longs to hear. “I’ll love you forever, darling,” and “Will it be a diamond this year?” are two fine examples. But young lovers take note: above all else, the phrase every girl truly wants to hear is, “Hi, this is Amy from Science Support; I’m dropping off some heads.”You have all seen The Producers, right? The version with Zero or Nathan, in the cinema, on TV, on the stage, whatever. Those of you who have not…well…tsk, tsk, tsk, for shame, for shame. Well, there is one scene that pops to mind apropos this book. In the film, the producers of the title have put together a show that is designed to fail. The surprise is on them, though, when their engineered disaster turns out to be a hit. During intermission of the opening performance, to Max and Leo’s absolute horror, they overhear a man saying to his wife, “Honey, I never in a million years thought I'd ever love a show called Springtime For Hitler. One might be forgiven for having similar thoughts about Caitlin Doughty’s sparkling romp through the joys of mortuary science, Smoke Gets in your Eyes. If you were expecting a lifeless look at what most of us consider a dark subject, well, surprise, surprise. [image] Yes we are, and dead-ender Caitlin is happy to help with the cleanup Caitlin Doughty has cooked up a book that is part memoir, part guidebook through the world of what lies beyond, well, the earth-bound part, at least, and part advocacy for new ways of dealing with our remains. Doughty, a Hawaiian native, is a 6-foot Amazon pixie, bubbling over (like some of her clients?) with enthusiasm for the work of seeing people off on their final journey. Her glee is infectious, in a good way. The bulk of the tale is based on her experience working at WestWind Cremation and Burial in Oakland, California, her first gig in the field. She was 23, had had a fascination with death since she was a kid and this seemed a perfectly reasonable place in which to begin what she believed would be her career. Turned out she was right. [image] Caitlin Doughty from her site Smoke Gets in your Eyes is rich with information not only about contemporary mortuary practices, but on practices in other cultures and on how death was handled in the past. For example, embalming did not come into use in the USA until the Civil War, when the delay in getting the recently deceased from battlefield to home in a non-putrid form presented considerable difficulties. She also looks at the practice of seeing people off at home as opposed to institutional settings. There is a rich lode of intel in here about the origin of church and churchyard burials. I imagine churchgoers of the eras when such practices were still fresh might have been praying for a good stiff wind. [image] No Kibby, no smoke monsters here Doughty worked primarily in the cremation end of the biz, and offers many juicy details about this increasingly popular exit strategy. But mixing the factual material with her personal experience turns the burners up a notch. The first time I peeked in on a cremating body felt outrageously transgressive, even though it was required by Westwind’s protocol. No matter how many heavy-metal album covers you’ve seen, how many Hieronymous Bosch prints of the tortures of Hell, or even the scene in Indiana Jones where the Nazi’s face melts off, you cannot be prepared to view a body being cremated. Seeing a flaming human skull is intense beyond your wildest flights of imagination.Beyond her paying gig, Doughty has, for some time, been undertaking to run a blog on mortuary practice, The Order of the Good Death, with a focus on greener ways of returning our elements back to the source. (Would it be wrong to think of those who make use of green self disposal as the dearly de-potted?) One tidbit from this stream was meeting with a lady who has devised a death suit with mushroom spores, the better to extract toxins from a decomposing body. I was drooling over the potential for Troma films that might be made from this notion. [image] No, not pizza One of life’s great joys is to learn something new while being thoroughly entertained. Smoke Gets in Your Eyes offers a unique compendium of fascinating information about how death is handled, mostly in America. Doughty’s sense of humor is right up my alley. The book is LOL funny and not just occasionally. You may want to make sure you have swallowed your coffee before reading, lest it come flying out your nose. I was very much reminded of the infectious humor of Mary Roach or Margee Kerr. Doughty is also TED-talk smart. She takes on some very real issues in both the science and economics of death-dealing, offers well-informed critiques of how we handle death today, and suggests some alternatives. If the last face you see is Caitlin Doughty’s something is very, very wrong. The face itself is lovely, but usually by the time she gets her mitts on you should be seeing the pearly gates, that renowned steambath, or nothing at all. Preferably you can see Doughty in one of the many nifty short vids available on her site. You will learn something while being thoroughly charmed. Reading this book won’t kill you, even with laughter, but it will begin to prepare you to look at that event that lies out there, somewhere in the distance for all of us, and point you in a direction that is care and not fear based. If you enjoy learning and laughing Smoke Gets in Your Eyes is dead on. Review posted – 12/11/15 Publication date – 10/15/2014 (hc) – 9/28/15 - TP I received this book from the publisher in return for an honest review. Well, not really. I mean they specifically said that there was no obligation to produce a review, so there is no quid pro quo involved, but it does seem the right thing to do, don’tchya think? Me on social: [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s personal, Twitter, Instagram and FB pages You MUST CHECK OUT vids on her site. My favorite is The Foreskin Wedding Ring of St Catherine . All right, I’m gonna stop you right there. Go ahead. I know you wanna ask. No? Fine. I’ll do it for you, but you know this is what you were asking yourself. “If she rubs it does it become a bracelet?” Ok? Are ya happy now? Sheesh! If you are uncertain about making a final commitment to reading this book you might want a taste of the product first (That sounds sooooo wrong) Here is an article Doughty wrote about her first experience with death as a kid, from Fortnightjournal.com. There are several other Doughty articles on this site as well. Another book sample can be found here, in The Atlantic Doughty offers a nifty list of sites to use for dealing with death, your own (presumably, you know, before) or others. Interview in Wired I came across this Caitlin Doughty video in June 2016. The caps are all hers. WHAT HAPPENED TO TITANIC'S DEAD? You might want to check out one or more of the following -----The Loved One -----The American Way of Death ----- The American Way of Death Revisited -----Six Feet Under -----January 22, 2020 - Vox - Why millennials are the “death positive” generation - by Eleanor Cummins -----March 6, 2022 - The Daily Beast - The Grassy Green Future of Composting Human Bodies by Mercedes Grant -----July 27, 2022 - Smithsonian - Could Water Cremation Become the New American Way of Death? by Lauren Oster Some items noted in Doughty's tale are getting a bit of attention. Here, a NY Times article by Katie Rogers - April 22, 2016 - Mushroom Suits, Biodegradable Urns and Death’s Green Frontier Doughty has written at least two more books since this one -----2017 - From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death -----2019 - Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? Big Questions from Tiny Mortals About Death ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Dec 03, 2015
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Dec 10, 2015
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Paperback
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055341884X
| 9780553418842
| 055341884X
| 3.66
| 31,758
| Oct 06, 2014
| Oct 28, 2014
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really liked it
| Of course, everybody on earth had the power to reshape reality. It was one of the things Peter and Beatrice talked about a lot. The challenge of g Of course, everybody on earth had the power to reshape reality. It was one of the things Peter and Beatrice talked about a lot. The challenge of getting people to grasp that life was only as grim and confining as you perceived it to be. The challenge of getting people to see that all the immutable facts of existence were not so immutable after all.Sustaining a relationship over a long distance presents serious challenges. I tried it once or twice in my twenties. Of course that was back before the invention of the wheel, when communications technology lacked the immediacy of Facetime, Skyping, texting, instant messenger, even cell phones and e-mail. And calling long distance entailed costs far in excess of what one might incur today. Distance, it turns out, did not make the hearts involved grow fonder. Pastor Peter Leigh and his wife, Bea, face some of the challenges many of us did back in the distant past. Of course they are already married, which has to boost one’s commitment to keeping in touch. (or not, depending) But the distances involved make my New York to London, or DC, or New Hampshire connections seem paltry in comparison. Instead of hundreds or thousands of miles, try trillions. And despite the scientific advance that allows spacecraft to cover vast distances by jumping through worm-holes, the communication tech is a lot more like Pony Express than Star Trek [image] Michel Faber - from New Republic.com Peter had been recruited by the mysterious USIC corporation (we never learn what the letters stand for) to minister to the locals on a planet named Oasis. They refer to the bible as The Book of Strange New Things. Although he wanted Bea to come with him, she was not given an imprimatur by the selection committee, so he is off to spread The Word, solo. There is a trinity of material relationships involved. Peter interacts with the residents of the USIC base, some more than others. Alexandra Grainger is his handler, and some dynamic tension develops between the two. He has dealings with other USIC staff, but it is spread lightly across the group. He communicates with Bea through a poor excuse for e-mail com-tech. It is called a Shoot. But seems it might have been better called a Toss. It is limited to text-only, for one. Messages have to pass the censor before being transmitted, and there is no certainty when the message will get through. Peter’s communications with Bea consist primarily of her describing the accelerating collapse of economies, of civilization itself on Earth, spurred by large dollops of natural catastrophe. Makes one want to hurry home, no? The third interaction is Peter with the locals, or as the Terran sorts refer to them, Oasans. The residents of the planet Oasis are humanoid, although looking not much like us, at least the us one sees without the benefit of hallucinogens. Here is a description, which is presented about one fifth the way in, but if you prefer to wait until you read the book, I am putting it under a (view spoiler)[ Here was a face that was nothing like a face. Instead it was a massive whitish-pink walnut kernel. Or no: even more, it resembled a placenta with two fetuses--maybe three-month-old twins, hairless and blind—nestled head to head, knee to knee. Their swollen heads constituted the Oasan’s clefted forehead, so to speak; their puny ribbed backs formed his cheeks, their spindly arms and webbed feet merged in a tangle of translucent flesh that might contain—in some form unrecognizable to him—a mouth, nose, eyes.(hide spoiler)] shield. Somehow they (or at least a sizeable portion of the local populace) manifest an intense desire to better know a savior. Did they arrive at this need through some sort of divine revelation? Was it prompted by the prior cleric, say, the intriguingly named Jacob Kurtzberg? I found myself wondering about the state of his health. A quote from Desmond Tutu also ran across my mental crawl When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said 'Let us pray.' We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.Fittingly, I suppose, Peter does not question the origin of the locals’ interest in Jesus and the bible, opting to take the purity of their interest on faith. Much of the story is on how Peter goes about establishing his church on Oasis, how he gets to know and feel for the locals, and what he learns about the physical environment in which he is living. He is trying his best to be the rock on which this church is built. The Oasans have a culture, a community, but they are very unlike humans. At the time I was hatching the book, I was very wearied by all the hidden agendas and neuroses of human beings. I think that one of the reasons I made up the Oasans was that it was like a fantasy of being able to hang out with people who were totally benign and totally un-ego-driven… The Oasans, on another level though they are a bit like sheep, or bees in a hive. Human beings are wonderfully various and distinctive and memorable and a lot of what makes them that way is their dysfunctions and their neuroses; you can’t have one without the other. – from Faber interview on The Awl.comThe environment that Faber concocts for Oasis is, despite a gross similarity to the planet we all know and litter on, quite different. Maybe it takes more exploration, but where are the mountains, rivers, lakes, oceans, forests? It does seem like a pretty lightly seeded rock for the most part. But it has some interesting characteristics, mostly having to do with how water cycles through, and how the local flora is transformed into edibles. There is also a lower life form that offers some surprises when it appears in numbers. I am no particular fan of religion, but I found Peter to be a very engaging, honest, sincere sort. He is possessed of a powerful faith, which tends toward the bromitic, but he seems a pretty good guy and it is easy to get past differing belief systems to wish him well, not only in his attempts to fulfill his mission on Oasis, but in his struggle to sustain his marriage. It was Bea, after all, who had found a drunk, homeless Peter hitting bottom in the hospital in which she was working as a nurse, and resurrected his spirit with a bit of the old time religion. It is no wonder that he clings to his beliefs like his old self might have to the last available bottle. The loneliness of the long-distance missionary was fueled, after the writing had begun, by a dire event. I didn’t know that Eva [Faber’s wife] was going to be diagnosed with cancer, but it certainly ending up being suffused with the anticipation of loss. The book’s about many other kinds of loss as well.It certainly seemed to me that the devastation being reported on earth might have been intended to echo damage to Peter and Bea’s marriage. And also might be a literary projection of the damage disease was wreaking on Faber's wife. The book is hardly short at 500 pages. I found it slow going, although Faber manages to infuse enough tension and mystery into his tale to keep you turning the pages. How will Peter and Bea manage? Will Peter ever be able to go home? Why is earth going to hell? Will there be a home to go back to? What’s the deal with the Oasans, and why did they get all religious? Are they really serene or is there a dark side? Why did the Oasans pick up and leave their town when USIC arrived, setting up a greater distance away? Are they hiding something or merely trying to maintain a comfortable margin? What happened to Kurtzberg? Why does a corporation employ a missionary? Home figures large as a theme. Some of the base employees see themselves more as French Foreign Legion types, unconnected to place, than most of us might be. Is home a location, a community, a state of mind, a relationship? Much thought goes into figuring out the right thing to do in difficult situations, which makes this tale one of moral and not merely physical survival. Biblical and religious imagery appears with some frequency. One cannot but think of Noah when Bea is reporting on incessant rain, and biblical end times certainly pop to mind as she describes the natural catastrophes that seem to be occurring on a daily basis. Peter’s time with the locals, and being out of touch with base, reminds one of earlier, lengthy sojourns in the desert. The locals have a ritual that seemed quite resonant with earthly communion. This is not an action adventure novel, jam-packed with a new danger every chapter, car chases, gun battles. It is about survival, personal, emotional and big picture. You will get through it, but will not inhale it. There is enough to savor that taking one’s time will be rewarding. Review first posted - 2/20/15 Published ----------Hardcover - 10/28/2014 ----------Trade paperback - 6/30/15 =============================EXTRA STUFF The author’s FB page. His personal web site has vanished since we updated this last, and his FB connection was last updated in 2020, so take that for what it's worth. I did not find a twitter account for him. Dutch-born Faber was inspired by the creative geniuses of Marvel Comics as a kid, and in the acknowledgments section, mentions that all the surnames used in the book are based on those of the Marvel artists. He adds that the character Jacob Kurtzberg has a lot to do with Jack Kirby. There are several musical numbers mentioned in the book – here is a link to one, Patsy Cline singing Walking After Midnight There is a very interesting interview with Faber in TheAwl.com In this link to BookBrowse, there is a video of Faber talking about this book, a text interview with Zachary Wagman, Faber’s editor and a 2003 text interview with Faber October 7, 2017 - Although it aired in March 2017, I only recently (September 2017) discovered (when subscribing to Amazon Prime) that a series had been (or was being) made of this book. The title is Oasis, which may actually be a better title than that of the book. Sadly, only a single, pilot episode has been shown. I do not know, but presume, that other episodes have been produced, but have, for whatever reason, not yet been aired. At least I hope that is the case. The pilot was quite good, capturing much of the core of the book. I very much hoped there would be further episodes ready to roll, and that a second season (if the first does not complete the story arc) would be in the works. Alas, it died on the vine, with only the single episode. Here is a wiki about the show. [image] Richard Madden, late of his Robb Stark role you know where, plays the lead - image from Amazon ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Feb 02, 2015
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Feb 08, 2015
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Feb 02, 2015
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Hardcover
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0805095152
| 9780805095159
| 0805095152
| 4.49
| 194,749
| Oct 07, 2014
| Oct 07, 2014
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it was amazing
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(Added a link - 4/18/15 - at bottom) In the past few decades, medical science has rendered obsolete centuries of experience, tradition, and languag(Added a link - 4/18/15 - at bottom) In the past few decades, medical science has rendered obsolete centuries of experience, tradition, and language about our mortality and created a new difficulty for mankind: how to die.Being Mortal is completely irrelevant for any readers who do not have elderly relations, do not know anyone who is old or in failing health, and do not themselves expect to become old. Otherwise, this is must-read stuff. Life may be a journey, but all our roads, however long or short, whether express, local or HOV, whether traversed by foot, burro, bus, SUV, monster truck or Star Trek transporter, converge on the same destination, and the quality of those last few miles is something we should all be concerned about. Old age is not a battle. Old age is a massacre.Atul Gawande, as a doctor, has had considerable exposure to issues of death and dying, but when his father was diagnosed with brain cancer, Gawande was motivated to look into how end of life care was being handled across the board. Being Mortal is the distillation of what he learned. [image] Atul Gawande - photo by Aubrey Calo – From Gawande’s site What we have today is the medicalization of old age. It has not always been thus. Instead of embracing the circle of life, we have bent and twisted it until it looks like a Möbius strip. Facing the fact that we are all going to die is certainly not a fun notion, but neither is believing we can extend our so-called lives indefinitely. There really is such a thing as quality of life, and probably should be a thing called quality of death as well. … hope is not a plan, and in fact we find from our trials that we are literally inflicting therapies on people that shorten their lives and increase their suffering, out of an inability to come to good decisions. - Gawande - from the Frontline segmentPeople have priorities besides just living longer. The percentage of the population that is elderly is rising dramatically as boomers enter their (our) golden years. So how is the medical profession preparing to meet the booming demand for geriatric care? With the same gusto as a Republican legislature faced with a crumbling infrastructure. They are cutting back. I picture a cinematic bandit with a white coat under his bandolier, "We doan need no steenking geriatricians." The reality is not far from this. Although the elderly population is growing rapidly, the number of certified geriatricians the medical profession has put in practice has actually fallen in the United States by 25 percent between 1996 and 2010...Partly, this has to do with money--incomes in geriatrics and adult primary care are among the lowest in medicine. And partly, whether we admit it or not, a lot of doctors don’t like taking care of the elderly.Gawande tracks the history of late-life care from the poorhouse to the hospital to the nursing home to the range of options currently available, providing information of the benefits and shortfalls of each. Assisted care comes in for a lot of attention. policy planners assumed that establishing a pension system would end poorhouses, but the problem did not go away. In America, in the years following the passage of the Social Security Act of 1935, the number of elderly in poorhouses refused to drop. States moved to close them but found they could not. The reason old people wound up in poorhouses, it turned out, was not just that they didn’t have money to pay for a home. They were there because they’d become too frail, sick, feeble, senile, or broken down to take care of themselves anymore, and they had nowhere else to turn for help. Pensions provided a way of allowing the elderly to manage independently as long as possible in their retirement years. But pensions hadn’t provided a plan for that final, infirm stage of mortal life.There comes a point at which one passes from being elderly to being frail and the range of options narrows. Gawande asks, “What does it mean to be good at taking care of people whose problems we cannot fix?” When does the need for safety leap past a person’s need for independence? There are various levels of care offered at different sorts of facilities. Some people can remain at home for a long time if they have a bit of help. Nursing homes are heavily medical, assisted care facilities more independence oriented. And there are plenty of variations on each. Gawande looks at several variations on assisted living facilities, noting the strengths and weaknesses. I found this extremely interesting. He also looks at some techniques that can make assisted living more tolerable, adding flora and fauna for residents to take care of for example, things like different sorts of physical layouts. One of these reminded me very much of my daughter’s erstwhile college dorm setup. Point being that there is a spectrum and beginning from understanding the patient/resident needs and desires in the context of physical and medical limitations can inform the choices to be made. All too often these decisions are made without considering the impact on or getting input from the person most affected. Being Mortal looks at trends in the impact of using all available means to keep people alive, and how that affects someone’s final days. When is the right time to stop treatment? How much is too much? When is the right time to die? It used to be that, when it was time, one’s final days were spent at home, with family. These days, they are likelier to be spent in an institution of some sort, and as likely as not, entail the patient being hooked up to sundry tubes, wires and flashing, beeping devices. It is important to identify exactly what it is that a person wants, or fears most, as a basis for decision-making. If your needs are minimal it speaks to one set of decisions. If your needs are more substantial, it speaks to another. One person said that as long as he could watch football and eat chocolate ice cream, life would be worth living. (There is no way he is a Jets fan) Others have a more extensive list of must-haves in order to make life worth living. It does lead one to consider what your list might include. For me, watching baseball would definitely figure in. Being able to read and write, to communicate would be necessary. What if you couldn't clean yourself? What if you could only have food through tubes? How much pain could you live with, and what measures would be acceptable to ameliorate it? What would keeping me alive cost? And how much is too much? All these questions figure into deciding the appropriate level of care. One fascinating section here had to do with hospice care, which need not take place in a hospice building. That was news to me. And it is a revelation how such care impacts patients. One of the significant points of the book is that planning is paramount. Have those difficult conversations. Talk about what you want for yourself, if your care is at issue, or what your parent/friend/spouse/relation wants well before one is in a crisis situation. It may be uncomfortable, but it is hugely important. In fact, this book is hugely important. Being Mortal offers not just a fascinating look at the history of late life care and living options, it not only offers a review of what is happening out there in the field of facilities for the frail and in the theories of how to approach late life care, it not only offers sage advice on planning for eventualities that we must all face sooner or later, it does all these things with humor and clarity, the bookish equivalent of an excellent bed-side manner. It is a fast read, too, useful if time is short. I would strongly suggest adding Gawande’s book to your bucket list, before…you know… it gets kicked. This is must-read stuff. Published – 10/7/2014 Review first posted – 2/13/15 [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s personal, Twitter and FB pages The book was the basis for a Frontline episode, which is excellent Here are the articles Gawande wrote as a New Yorker staff writer An interview with Gawande from Modern Health Care Interview in Mother Jones magazine 4/18/15 - GR friend Vaidya sent along a link to a wonderful January 2015 NY Times opinion piece by Tim Kreider, You Are Going to Die, on facing what lies ahead. Worth a look. Thanks, V. 5/3/15 - An interesting Op-Ed on futility care January 23, 2017 - The New Yorker Magazine - Gawande article on the benefits of investment in incremental care in light of investments in heroic intervention - interesting stuff - The Heroism of Incremental Care (The title in the print magazine was Tell Me Where It Hurts) January 3, 2020 - an update on the state of growth (or lack of same) in the field of geriatricics - Older People Need Geriatricians. Where Will They Come From? - by Paula Span ...more |
Notes are private!
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Jan 31, 2015
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Jan 29, 2015
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Hardcover
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0804139024
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| 4.42
| 1,144,551
| Sep 27, 2011
| Feb 11, 2014
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it was amazing
| I’m pretty much fucked.Ok, show of hands. How many of you have uttered these exact words? (or words to that effect). Not everyone? I see we have s I’m pretty much fucked.Ok, show of hands. How many of you have uttered these exact words? (or words to that effect). Not everyone? I see we have some liars out there. How many have said them at least twice? Three times? Four? Those with hands still up, you probably need to make some adjustments to your approach, find a safer line of work, hobbies that do not entail long drops, stop trying the weekly specials at McBlowfish, or seek out people to date who are into less extreme…um…sports. These are the opening words of The Martian. Astronaut Mark Watney is definitely more screwed than most of us have ever been. Dude missed his ride and there will not be another along for, oh, four years. Supplies on hand were only meant to cover a few weeks, maybe months. And that Martian atmosphere is definitely no fun, lacking stuff like, oh, breathable air, and a reasonable range of temperature. It does, offer, however, extremely harsh (good for scouring that burned on gunk from sauce pans) and long-lasting (as in months) dust storms. And if that was not enough he faces an array of other challenges. [image][image] unfriendly locals No, Kibby (the 12-year-old kibitzer who infects my brain), no Mars Attacks brain beasts, or that other guy, even though I know he is your favorite. Real challenges. For example, the music he has for his stay consists of disco. The viewing options include 70s TV. Most of us might give serious consideration to minimizing the guaranteed pain, frustration, starvation and inevitable death by, maybe, taking a short hustle outside sans that special suit. It would be a very, very short last dance. Watney is either a cock-eyed optimist or an idiot. I'm going with the former, as he is indeed made of the right stuff. He is armored and well supplied with the sort of can-do designer genes that might make the rest of us feel like the can’t-do sorts we are. He is the poster boy for positive attitude. It does not hurt that he is way smart, with expertise in a wide-enough range of things scientific to matter. It does not hurt that he is an engineer who gets off on taking apart, putting back-together, figuring out, thinking through, testing, trying, and pushing envelopes. But his crew is headed home, and what hope is there, really? [image][image] The Martian tells of Watney’s attempt to survive in a literally alien environment, using only the tools on hand and his wits. It is a gripping story with one of the most adorable heroes you are likely to encounter, on this planet or any other. (No, Kibby, not a kitten) How could you not root for a guy who scrapes through Thanksgiving dinner for potato parts to plant for food? Of course, one might think “been there, done that,” particularly as 1964’s Robin Crusoe on Mars offered a retelling of Daniel Defoe’s classic tale in a more contemporary notion of a remote locale. A 1905 novel used a different classic traveler in the same sort of format. [image] Of course those tellings had a lot more in common with the Barsoom of Edgar Rice Burroughs as seen by Frank Frazetta than they do with the vision we have of the Red Planet today, or, say, reality. Reality [image] Or is it? [image] One of these was a shot of you know where. The other was taken at Death Valley, which was used, BTW, in the filming of Robinson Crusoe on Mars Most of the tale is spent on Watney’s very compelling attempt to survive, going through all the challenges he faces trying to make air, preserve and maybe generate water, make his food last, get some sort of communication set up, deal with things like exploding air-locks, biblical level dust-storms, toppling ground-transport vehicles, you know, stuff, most of it life-threatening. The other end of things is how the folks on the ground deal with this GInornous OOPS. There are technical elements, of course but more interesting, for me, were the political considerations. To tell the crew or not? Imagine how bummed out, embarrassed, and guilty you might be on that ship (the Hermes) returning home, knowing you had left one behind. Might it affect your ability to take care of necessary business for the next bunch of months? Another question is whether to tell the public, and if so, when. How about getting help from other space-capable nations? Are any international dealings simple? There is also some in-house (NASA) staff maneuvering that is wonderful to see. [image] Andy Weir In her fabulous book on writing, Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott writes Having a likeable narrator is like having a great friend whose company you love, whose mind you love to pick, whose running commentary totally holds your attention, who makes you laugh out loud…Probably the greatest strength of The Martian is the narration of Mark Watney. He is engaging and funny, optimistic and capable. I suppose there are some who might find him lacking in sharp edges, but I thought he worked great. [image] Matt Damon as Mark Watney, enjoying the view – from the film. The new earth-based shooting location was Wadi Rum, Jordan. I am sure they did plenty of color adjustments in post, but boy-o-boy does this place look like an alien landscape. Gripes Yes, really, there is too much scientific detail. It is not that it is beyond the comprehension of a lot of readers (although it will skip by a fair number) it is the share of time, the number of pages, the sheer volume of obstacles to be overcome, and the very detailed explanation of so many of them that tilts the book a bit too much towards the MacGyver demo. Weir writes very well about the other elements of the story. Repetition of DANGER, WILL ROBINSON, with the subsequent amazingly clever repair du jour, does get a bit old after a while. I had to fight an urge to scan at times. But that is really it. Otherwise, The Martian is an absolute delight to read. Watney is lovable as well as capable, and makes excellent use of his sense of humor to look on the bright side of life, in a very dark circumstance. Whether he makes it out on time or not (not gonna spoil that one) you will cheer him on, hope for the best, and fly past those pages with considerable, if maybe not interplanetary, speed. Is there life on Mars? There will be while you read this book. Review posted – 1/16/15 Updated and trotted out there again on release of the film - 10/2/15 This review has been cross-posted on my site, Cootsreviews.com Publication date – self-pub in 2011 – Bought, edited and published by Crown 10/28/2014 PS - Saw the film on 10/9/15 and it kicks ass! Go see it if you haven't already. It is very true to the book, with the improvement of not getting bogged down in details, has a great cast, looks amazing and does a fantastic job of promoting science. =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s personal and FB pages. 5/24/16 - Weir wrote a short story prequel to The Martian, called Diary of an AssCan. I posted a review this week. It includes a link to the story, so you can read it for yourself. Andy Weir’s second novel, Artemis, while, IMHO, not quite up to this one, is also pretty darned good. August, 2016 - At the Hugo awards Weir wins the John W, Campbell award for best new writer, and the screenplay for the film wins for Best Dramatic Presentation, long form The Martian Chronicles on Gutenberg Gullivar of Mars by Edwin Lester Linden Arnold on Gutenberg For a real Martian experience check out NASA’s Mars page For a realer Martian experience, and ideal for those trying to keep one step ahead of creditors and/or the law, you might want to consider applying to be on a Mars mission, no joke. There is more on this project below but the above link is for the selection process, just in case you don’t mind a strictly one-way journey. A nifty article from the NY Times (10/5/15) about the woman at NASA responsible for seeing to it that we do not bring Earth germs you-know-where - Mars Is Pretty Clean. Her Job at NASA Is to Keep It That Way. - by Kenneth Chang I bet you thought I’d forgotten these guys. No chance! I just ran out of time to figure out how to stuff them into the review. So, sorry, I am stuffing them here. That sounds so wrong. If you want to experience Mars while still on earth, it is indeed possible [image][image] A general National Geo article on Mars Planetary.Org has an excellent list of all Mars missions to date, and some that are in process When you are checking your ancestry some of that unusual DNA might come from a place, far, far away. Two scientists look at the unfortunately named notion of Panspermia, (view spoiler)[(the natural result of guys watching really good porn? A bad review of ineffectual seed? An unspeakable fried dish?) (hide spoiler)] which addresses the possibility that the genesis of life on Earth had its opening act elsewhere. If you want to know Who goes to Mars for the waters, the answer is yes And speaking of Eau d'Ares, a nifty article on the presence of H2OMG you know where, in the 9/28/15 article in the NY Times - by Kenneth Chang. Thanks to my pal, Henry B, for this refreshing item. 8/31/16 - Another recommendation from the intrepid Henry B. Planning any long trips, HB? - How to Win Friends and Influence People (on Fake Mars) by Katie Rogers - New York Times [image] Downhill streaks indicate water has flowed - image from NY Times who got it from NASA who got it from JPL Here is a nifty article from The New Yorker, on work being done to cope with inter-planetary cabin fever. Moving to Mars: Preparing for the longest, loneliest voyage ever by Tom Kizzia - from the April 20, 2015 issue 9/12/16 - If, like Quint, you think we're gonna need a bigger boat, to get to Mars that is, Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin company may have just the thing - Meet New Glenn, the Blue Origin Rocket That May Someday Take You to Space - By Daniel Victor for the New York Times 9/27/16 - New York Times - Elon Musk’s Plan: Get Humans to Mars, and Beyond - by Kenneth Chang 10/25/16 -National Geographic is producing a documentary series about our favorite red-tinted neighbor (no, not the lady across the way who got too much sun. Put those binoculars away NOW). Coverage in the latest issue includes a whole passel of things Martian. Enjoy. - Mars: Inside the High-Risk, High-Stakes Race to the Red Planet From the August 2017 National Geographic - This Is What a Martian Looks Like—According to Carl Sagan - By Natasha Daly [image] Painting by Douglas Chaffe - from the above NatGeo article 9/17/17 - Washington Post re-printing an AP story - Mars Research Crew Emerges After 8 Months of Isolation - Caleb Jones 12/16/17 - NY Times Sunday Review - Tim Kreider offers his take on why we should go Red - Earthlings, Unite: Let’s Go to Mars 5/4/18 - NatGeo - Interesting piece on the latest Martian explorer, Insight - Are Marsquakes Anything Like Earthquakes? NASA Is About to Find Out - by Nadia Drake [image] Illustration of Insight deployed - Photo by Lockheed Martin, NASA, JPL-Caltech All right. We’re all done now. You’d better get going or Marvin will lose his cool [image] Oh, sorry Marvin, just one more thing, lists. FILMS Abbott and Costello go to Mars The Angry Red Planet Bad Girls From Mars The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars Capricorn One Devil Girl From Mars Doom Empire of Danger Escape From Mars Flight to Mars Ghosts of Mars Invaders from Mars The Last days on Mars Lost on Mars Mars Needs Moms Mars Needs Women Mission to Mars Race to Mars Red Planet Red Planet Mars Robinson Crusoe on Mars Rocket Man Roving Mars Santa Claus Conquers the Martians Stranded The Terror from Beyond Space Total Recall TV Programs Is There Life on Mars – PBS My Favorite Martian Life On Mars – British Life on Mars – American Mars One – Proposed - (check this one out) Race to Mars Novels 2312 – Kim Stanley Robinson The Barsoom Series by Edgar Rice Burroughs ----- A Princess of Mars on Gutenberg - and my review -----The Gods of Mars -----The Warlord of Mars -----Thuvia, Maid of Mars -----The Chessmen of Mars -----The Master Mind of Mars -----A Fighting Man of Mars -----Swords of Mars ----- Synthetic Men of Mars -----Llana of Gathol -----John Carter of Mars Blades of Mars – Edward P. Bradbury C.O.D Mars – E.C. Tubb The Caves of Mars – Emil Petaja Children of Mars – Paul G Day City of the Beast – Michael Moorcock The Daughter of Mars – Thomas Keneally The Empress of Mars – Kage Baker First on Mars – Rex Gordon Icehenge – Kim Stanley Robinson Life on Mars – Jennifer Brown Life on Mars (a different one) – Jonathan Strahan The Long Mars – Terry Pratchett Mars – Ben Bova Mars is my Destination – Frank Belknap Long Mars Plus – Frederick Pohl The Mars Trilogy – Kim Stanley Robinson -----Blue Mars -----Green Mars -----Red Mars Marsquakes – Kevin F. Owens The Martian Chronicles – Ray Bradbury Masters of the Pit – Michael Moorcock Moving Mars – Greg Bear No Man Friday – Rex Gordon Old Mars – George R.R. Martin Packing for Mars – Mary Roach – ok, not a novel Podkayne of Mars - Robert Heinlein Prelude to Mars – Arthur C. Clarke Priests of Mars – Graham McNeill The Road to Mars – Eric Idle The Sands of Mars – Arthur C. Clarke Sebastian Of Mars – Al Sarrantino Shadow Over Mars – Leigh Brackett Sin in Space – Cyrill Judd (Cyril M. Kornbluth and Judith Merril) Stranger in a Strange Land – Robert Heinlein Urania – Camille Flammarion White Mars – Brian Aldiss ...more |
Notes are private!
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Jan 2015
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Jan 08, 2015
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Jan 01, 2015
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Hardcover
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0062225065
| 9780062225061
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| 4.05
| 44,902
| Oct 01, 2014
| Oct 07, 2014
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really liked it
| Wilkommen, bienvenue, welcome!Settle in for a story that is appalling and entertaining, hopeful and disappointing, reflective and sometimes ephem Wilkommen, bienvenue, welcome!Settle in for a story that is appalling and entertaining, hopeful and disappointing, reflective and sometimes ephemeral. Life is disappointing? Forget it.It is a good thing that this advice was not followed. Remembering seems more the thing. We have no troubles here. Here life is beautiful.Ummm, not so much. And now, Meine Damen und Herren, Mes Dames et Messieurs, Ladies and Gentlemen, Ich bin eur confrencier, je suis votre compere…I am your host.the star of our show: [image] Cumming in the 1998 production - from Fanpop.com “You need a haircut, boy!”Alan Cumming, star of stage and screen, notable Cabaret emcee, introducer of Masterpiece Mystery, bluish X-man, Smurf voice, and political operative Eli Gold on The Good Wife, among many other memorable characters, was raised on a large estate in Scotland. His father, Alex, was the head groundskeeper. He was also a mercurial and often cruel and violent parent to both Alan and his older brother Tom, offering ambiguous instructions to the boys and almost always finding the resulting work unsatisfactory, an excuse to justify the punishment that usually followed. Cumming’s experience as a battered child, coming to terms as an adult with some of the reasons for his harsh upbringing, and attempting to finally, decades later, move past it, is the core of the story in Not My Father’s Son. But this is not just a story of the father he knew. It is also about the grandfather he had never met. [image] Mary Darling and Alex Cumming – wedding day - from the NY Times In 2010, Cumming, having attained a certain level of celebrity, was invited by the British show Who Do You Think you Are (now in the USA as well) to be a subject for their weekly genealogy quest program. The research that was intrinsic to this process would cast light on a black hole in his family history. As awful as his father was, Mary Darling, Alan’s mother, was his angel, always supporting and nurturing him. Within limits, of course. She did not seem to do a very good job of preventing her husband from tormenting their sons. She had last seen her own father, Tommie Darling, when she was eight years old. He had supposedly died in a gun accident in Malaysia in 1951. The family knew very little about him, and had few remnants of his existence. The TV show would follow that trail and find out what had happened to Tommie. (There is a link to the entire program in the EXTRA STUFF section below) Just before this process began, Alan’s father, long estranged, got in touch, passing along a disturbing piece of information. [image] As Eli Gold and Nightcrawler - from NothingButMemory.net One part of this memoir is travelling along and peeling back the layers of the mystery that was Tommie Darling. (Peter Pan was not involved) As researchers for the program unearth more and more information about Tommie, Alan learns more and more about not only his family, but sees in his ancestor traits he recognizes in himself. [image] Masterpiece Mystery host - from the Boston Herald Chapters alternate, more or less, between now (2010) and then, the years of Alan’s childhood, the new work prodding recollections of the past. However, it is not all childhood and now. Cumming also tells of his breakdown at age 28 when he was starring in a London production of Hamlet, rehearsing for his breakthrough role as the emcee in the London revival of Cabaret and planning to have a child with his wife. There is some detail here. Later he tells of meeting his current mate when he was 39. He seems to have packs of friends, who remain mostly nameless, in both London and New York, and who function as scenery, for the most part. He offers a few tales from his acting life. When I joined Twitter I described myself as “Scottish elf trapped inside a middle aged man’s body” and I still think that’s accurate.Despite Cumming’s elfishness, there is not much comedy in the book. Although Cumming the performer does indeed present a pixie-ish facade, the only real laugh, at least for me, was when he talked about Patti Smith and a particular vile habit of hers. A story about attempting to film against the incessant noise in South Africa during a particularly noisy World Cup is another light moment. A youthful masturbatory scene that one thinks might be queasily amusing turns in another, far more substantive direction. The two parts of this story now seem so clearly connected, mirroring each other perfectly. I had lost a father but found a grandfather. One of them had never sought the truth and lived a life based on a lie; the other’s truth was hidden from us because society deemed it unsuitable. Both caused strife, and sadness. But now, both combined to reinforce for me what I knew to be the only truth: there is never shame in being open and honest. It was shame that prevented us from knowing what a great man Tommy Darling was. And it was shame that made my father treat me and Tom and my mum the way he did.Not My Father’s Son is a moving and fascinating tale, and probably would not have been told had Cumming not been world famous. TV programs do not seek out the likes of you or me to give them permission to travel the world looking into our backgrounds. Most of us do not have the resources to delve into our family history so richly. It remains to be seen if the book would have been written had the TV program not been made. Cumming had indeed been thinking about his childhood for some time, but it was the show that prompted him to move ahead with it. What Cumming’s talent did was give him a way to get out of a bad situation. A lesser light might have dimmed if left in that place. One thing the book might do is prompt a bit of reflection. Surely there are leafless branches on all our family trees and Cumming’s tale of looking into his might encourage some of us to consider looking into some of ours. And maybe to look a bit closer at even our known history for a bit of help in explaining how we became the people we are. [image] Tom, Mary and Alan at Tommie’s grave I have admired Alan Cumming as a performer ever since seeing him in the New York revival of Cabaret back in 1998. I now admire him as a writer as well. He has written a moving memoir of a father lost and a grandfather gained. It is rich with reflection, insight, pain, and healing. Any decent father would be bursting with pride to have a son capable of writing such a book. Review first posted – 10/17/14 Publication date – 10/7/14 [image] [image] [image] [image] This review has also been posted at Cootsreviews.com. Stop by and say Hi! =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s personal and Twitter pages He is not on Facebook. Some miscreants have posed as him, but those pages have been taken down Definitely check out his site. It is a cornucopia of info. NY Times article on Cumming Here is the full Who Do You Think You Are episode from September 2010 Series 7, Episode 9) - thanks to Richard Derus for passing along the link, previously removed. — oops, looks like this link is no longer working. When/if I find another one that does the trick I will post it here. ...more |
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not set
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Oct 12, 2014
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Oct 12, 2014
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0307700313
| 9780307700315
| 0307700313
| 3.63
| 20,088
| Oct 07, 2014
| Oct 07, 2014
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it was amazing
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There are so many elements to Some Luck, long-listed for the 2014 National Book Award, that wherever your interests may lie, there is much here from w
There are so many elements to Some Luck, long-listed for the 2014 National Book Award, that wherever your interests may lie, there is much here from which to choose. Take your pick—a Pulitzer-winning author going for a triple in the late innings, finishing up her goal of writing novels in all forms. Take your pick—a look at 34 years of a planned hundred year scan of the USA through the eyes of a Midwest family, winning, engaging characters, seen from birth to whatever, good, bad and pffft, where’d that one go? Take your pick—a look at the changes in farming, over the decades, the impact of events like the Depression and massive drought on people you care about. Take your pick—the impact of the end of World War I on the breadbasket, a sniper’s eye view of World War II, the chilly beginning of the Cold War. Take your pick-- the searing summer heat that killed many, the biting snow-bound winter that stole the heat from every extremity. Take your pick-- an infant’s eye view of learning to speak, a teenager’s look at awakening sexuality, an older man looking back on his life. Take your pick—the newness and revolution of cars, tractors, hybrid plants, new fertilizer, the tales brought from the old country, often told in foreign tongues. Take your pick—a bad boy with talent, brains and looks, a steadfast young man taking the old ways of farming and mixing them with the new to make a life and a future, a smart young woman heading to the big city and getting involved with very un-farm-like political interests. Take your pick—shopping for a religion while looking for answers to the sorrows of existence, shopping for political help when no financial seems forthcoming from the nation. Take your pick—love is found, lost, found again, couples struggle through ups and downs, the charring of fate and time, the questions that arise, the doubts, the certainties. Take your pick. [image] Jane Smiley - from The Guardian Jane Smiley, born in Los Angeles, raised in a suburb of St. Louis, MO, and now a California resident, spent twenty four years of her life planted in the farm-belt. It’s not heaven, it’s the University of Iowa. Smitten with the place, she stayed on after completing her MFA and PhD, and taught at Iowa State for fifteen This first part looks at the growth of the United States from an agricultural, second tier power, to the dominant military and economic power in the world following World War II. When I thought about where exactly I wanted to set it, I considered that the most important aspect of any culture is where they get their food — how they think of their food, what their food means to them. So I decided to go back to farming - from Little Village Magazine interviewShe seeds her story in 1920, Denby Iowa. Walter Langdon, 25, and his wife Rosanna have just started their lives together, on their own farm. Baby Frank has recently arrived. "I feel like it's going back to the center and saying, 'OK, things come from here. This is where the roots are.' ... If we start the family living in Iowa, then they're gonna go lots and lots and lots of places." -from the NPR interviewAnd, over the course of thirty four years the farm will be a touchstone, a place to which the various members of the clan return, for reasons happy and sad. The book consists of thirty four chapters, one for each of the years from 1920 through 1953. Each chapter touches on things that are going on in the world, and how they affect the Langdon clan. From the affect on milk prices as Europe recovers from The Great War, through the boom times of the 20s, the Depression, World War II and the beginnings of the Cold War. With such a large canvas Smiley can look at some of the details that might not stand out in a broad overview, things like the move from livestock to tractors, how the spread of the automobile affects a farm family, changes in how crops are bred. Some of the details of farm life are chilling indeed, a woman giving birth alone in a farm house because no one can hear her calls for help over the driving wind, nothing but brown from the pump signaling the end of available water during a severe drought, the loss of a child to a random accident. Another death from a cause that would be easily treatable today. An omniscient narrator gives us both a bird’s eye view and close-ups as needed. We often get to look through the eyes of her characters, even from early childhood. Frank creeping around as an infant is precious, particularly when he heads to his favorite hiding place, and more alarming when he is an adult, in the military. There are plenty of Langdons to go around, the prime group, father Walter, mother Rosanna, and each of their kids get time in the spotlight, but to the extent that there is a primary here, it is Frank. He is far from perfect, but he is perfectly engaging. You really, really want to know what he is doing, where he is going, and what is in store for him. Smiley’s writing style is straightforward, dare we say Mid-Western? This is a very effective approach, quietly but steadily advancing the story. She does let loose with some dazzlers from time to time. The paragraph with which I opened this review is an homage to one of those, a Thanksgiving celebration late in the book. I am including the entirety of that bit under a spoiler tag, mostly because of its length, but there might be a detail or two in there that would be actually spoilerish, so you might want to skip it until you have read the book. Caveat lector. (view spoiler)[ Rosanna could not have said that she enjoyed making Thanksgiving dinner for twenty-three people (a turkey, a standing rib roast, and a duck that Granny Mary brought; ten pounds of mashed potatoes, and that not enough, five pies; sweet potatoes; more stuffing than could be stuffed; all the Brussels sprouts left in the garden, though they were good after the frost). She could not say that Lilian had control of those children, who were underfoot every time you took a step, though they were good-natured, to be sure. Henry scrutinized the dishes of food as though he were being asked to partake of roadkill, at least until the pies were served, and Claire burst into tears for no reason at all, but when they all had their plates in front of them, and a few deep breaths were taken, and first Andrea, and then Granny Elizabeth, and then Eloise said, “This looks delicious,” she began to have a strange feeling. She should have sat down—Joe, who was sitting beside her, moved her chair in a bit—but she didn’t want to sit down, or eat, at all (what with tasting everything she wasn’t hungry) she just wanted to stand there and look at them as they passed the two gravy boats and began to cut their food. It couldn’t have happened, she thought. They couldn’t have survived so many strange events. Take your pick—the birth of Henry in that room over there, with the wind howling and the dirt blowing in and her barely able to find a rag to wipe the baby’s mouth and nose. Take your pick—all of them nearly dying of the heat that summer of ’36. Take your pick—Joey falling out of the hayloft, Frankie driving the car to Usherton, Frankie disappearing into the Italian Campaign. Frankie, for Heaven’s sake, living in a tent all through college. Take your pick—Walter falling into the well (yes, she had gotten that out of him one day during the way when he said, “Remember when I fell into the well?” and she said, “What in the world are you talking about?” and he blushed like a girl) Take your pick—Granny Mary with her cancer, but still walking around. Take your pick—Lilian running off with a stranger who turned out to be a clown, but a lovable one, and nice-looking, and weren’t Timmy and Debbie just darling? Normally Rosanna took credit for everything good and bad (her eye flicked to the doorway, the very spot where Mary Elizabeth had slipped; it might be happening right this minute, that’s how vivid it was) but now she thought, this was too much. She could not have created this moment, these lovely faces, these candles flickering, the flash of the silverware, the fragrance of the food hanging over the table, the heads turning this way and that, the voices murmuring and laughing. She looked at Walter, who was so far away from her, all the way at the other end of the table, having a laugh with Andrea, who had a beautiful suit on, navy blue with a tiny waist and white collar and cuffs. As if on cue, Walter turned from Andrea and looked at Rosanna, and they agreed in that instant something had created itself from nothing—a dumpy old house had been filled, if only for this moment, with twenty-three different worlds, each one of them rich and mysterious. Rosanna wrapped her arms around herself for a moment and sat down. (hide spoiler)] There are others bits of writerly sparkle and well-honed craft in the book. I suppose if I have any gripes with the book it is that I wanted to spend more time with this or that character at this or that period of their life, a hazard in any book that takes in so much real estate and so many characters over so many years. There are sixty six years to go in the remaining two volumes of Smiley’s trilogy. With any luck at all I won’t miss a single one. Published – 10/7/14 Review first posted - 8/14/15 =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s web site, FB page and Huff-Po blog ----------Interviews -----NPR – NPR with Lynn Neary -----The New York Times - by Charles McGrath -----Bookpage - by Alden Mudge -----The Millions - by Michael Bourne -----The Little Village Magazine - by Mallory Hellman -----Authorlink - by Anna Roins My review of Smiley's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, A Thousand Acres ...more |
Notes are private!
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Jul 31, 2015
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Aug 07, 2015
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Aug 01, 2014
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Hardcover
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0062284061
| 9780062284068
| 0062284061
| 3.79
| 3,346
| Sep 23, 2014
| Sep 23, 2014
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it was amazing
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Hi, welcome. I’m happy to see you are settling in to read this now. But…what?...really?…please…ignore that chirp that just told you a new e-mail arriv
Hi, welcome. I’m happy to see you are settling in to read this now. But…what?...really?…please…ignore that chirp that just told you a new e-mail arrived. It is probably just another add for Viagra or penile enlargement. It is almost never something critical, so…hey…come back. Son of a bitch. (Taps fingers on desk, plays some solitaire, checks watch) Ah, you’re back. Took long enough. Geez. All right, can we get back to it now? You remember? The book is A Deadly Wandering, a pretty amazing look at attention, the demands on it, how it functions, how it is being compromised, and what the implications are for some aspects of that. Stop, no, do you have to answer the phone now? Can’t it wait? (sighs loudly, checks e-mail on a separate screen; weather.com lets us know upcoming conditions in another tab; who is pitching for the Mets tonight?) Oh, you’re back, sorry. Been there long? I must have wandered off. Focus. I know a little bit about distraction. My last job entailed constant blasts of it. I worked as a dispatcher for a security company. I had a dozen or more sites checking in every hour to make sure our guards are not sleeping (or that they know how to set the alarms on their cell phones). People call asking for their schedules. People call at 2 in the morning to let us know they will not be showing up for their 6am shift. They call because they just turned the wrong way and the cell phone in their pocket somehow redialed the last number they’d called. They call at 4am to let us know they will not be coming in for their 6am shift. They call asking for direction when there is some event at their site that requires handling. (This does go on for a bit, so rather than inflict on you the horrors of my typical work night, I will leave a full viewing for the intrepid and tuck a chunk of it under a spoiler label)(view spoiler)[Our clients call, sometimes asking for emergency ASAP coverage in diverse places across the continent, sometimes to add ridiculous increases to the number of guards they want for a morning shift at a large institution. Our security guards call to ask if their check is at the office, or to inquire as to why the totals on their checks did not match what they expected. They call to let us know they have arrived at their post. They call to let us know they have clocked out for the day. They call at 5am to let us know they will not be in for their 6am shift because they have a newly discovered “appointment.” There are many, many calls. It makes it damned tough to keep a log of all the calls, particularly when half a dozen arrive at the exact same moment. It makes it tough to prepare the multiple reports of overnight activity, all of which have to be transmitted during the busiest time of the morning. In the middle of this, the boss comes in, drops papers on my desk and asks when this or that person arrived at or left from a post sometime in the last week or so. For someone who is, shall we say, not comfortable with being interrupted, this presents some challenges. And it presents a real problem. I used to write the bulk of my reviews while at work. And to enter notes, do research on items, and then compose actual reviews of books during this time could be a bit difficult. Thoughts that had not made their way into a file were in constant danger of vanishing into the ether with the next barrage of incomings. I screamed sometimes. (hide spoiler)] I frequently forgot what I was doing before the latest set of calls. And, struggling to remember, I was interrupted yet again by the next set. The one good thing about this blitzkrieg of interruption was that I am not enduring it while behind the wheel of a ton-plus hunk of metal hurtling down the road at 60 mph. My sanity might have been in jeopardy, (or long gone) but I presented no existential threat to the rest of humanity. The same cannot be said for the main character in Richtel’s story. By all accounts nineteen-year-old Reggie Shaw is a decent young man. A Mormon, he was eager to serve his community by preparing for and then undertaking an LDS mission. His first try had come up short, so he was back home, working until he could build up enough moral credit to try again. In September, 2006, while driving a Chevy Tahoe SUV, Reggie had his Cingular flip-phone with him and was texting with his girlfriend. A witness reported seeing him weaving across the center line multiple times. Finally, Reggie weaved too far. The results were fatal. Reggie came through ok but two scientists were killed as a result of Reggie’s texting, leaving wives and children to pick up the charred pieces of their lives and go on without their breadwinners, husbands, fathers. Reggie denied he was texting when the accident occurred. Matt Richtel is a novelist and top-notch reporter. He won a Pulitzer for a series of articles, written for the New York Times, in which he detailed the national safety crisis resulting from increasing use of distracting devices by drivers. He has written a few novels and even pens a comic strip. There is nothing at all amusing, however, about the tale he tells here. [image] Matt Richtel - from his site The core of A Deadly Wandering is how constant distraction, particularly while in a car, kills. Richtel looks at the case of Reggie Shaw as a prime example of how the distractions that have become embedded in our lives have unintended consequences. Richtel spends time with Reggie, with the cop who pursued the case when most officials wanted to brush it off and move on, the surviving family members, and a victim’s advocate who pursued prosecution of the case. Richtel also talks with several neuroscientists who have been studying the science of attentiveness. That material is quite eye-opening. There are legal questions in here regarding where responsibility lies for such events, and how far communities are willing to go to punish violations and even to establish that such behavior is not permissible. Where does your freedom to act irresponsibly interfere with my right to stay alive? There are scientific questions about how the brain functions in a world that seems to demand multi-tasking. How does the brain work in dealing with attentiveness? What is possible? What is not? Where are the edges of that envelope? When drug companies want to bring to market a product for public use, they must go through a significant review process to make sure their product is safe to use. Before auto manufacturers can bring a vehicle to market they must put it through safety testing. But neither Verizon nor any other cellphone company supports legislation that bans drivers from talking on the phone. And the wireless industry does not conduct research on the dangers, saying that is not its responsibility - From - Dismissing the Risks of a Deadly HabitAnd the corporations know what they are doing with their techolology. If you take yourself back millennia, and you're in the jungle or you're in the forest and you see a lion, then the lion hits your sensory cortices and says to the frontal lobe, whatever you're doing, whatever hut you're building, stop and run.In addition, and in a chillingly similar impact to other addictive substances, our communications technology knows how to make itself feel crucial to us. when you check your information, when you get a buzz in your pocket, when you hear a ring - you get a dopamine squirt. You get a little rush of adrenaline. So you're getting that more and more and more and more. Well, guess what happens in its absence? You feel bored. You're actually conditioned by a kind of neurochemical response. - also from the NPR interviewRichtel follows Reggie’s story through to the end, at least for some of the players here. Laws have been changed. New knowledge has been gained. Responsibility has been allocated. Amends have been attempted. It is a moving tale. In addition, you will learn a lot about what science has found about how our brains handle multiple concurrent demands. You will learn about change in how distracted driving is being addressed by our legal system. But most of what you will get from reading this book is a chilling appreciation for what is involved in distracted driving. You might even be persuaded to switch off your phone the next time you get behind the wheel. At least I hope you are. I would like to live a bit longer and not be taken out before my time because someone was talking on the phone with their friend, texting with their significant other, or trying to order penile growth products from the road. I would like to live long enough to spend at least a few more nights screaming at the phone to stop ringing at work so I can get some writing done. That call you were thinking of making while in the car can wait. It really is a matter of life and death. A Deadly Wandering is must read material. Please, please pay attention. Review first posted – 7/18/14 Publication date – 9/23/14 Trade Paperback - 6/2/15 This review has been cross-posted at Cootsreviews.com =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s personal, Twitter and FB pages A list of Richtel articles in the NY Times’ Bits blog The Pulitzer site includes links to all the pieces in Richtel’s award-winning series. Very much worth checking out Another article Richtel did looked at the benefits of uninterrupted face time free of technological intrusion, from August, 2010, Outdoors and Out of Reach, Studying the Brain There is some great material in Richtel’s 2010 interview with Terry Gross on NPR, Digital Overload: Your Brain on Gadgets There are some interesting pieces on Oprah’s site. Distracted Driving: What You Don't See is pretty good. And it is worth checking out Oprah's No Texting Campaign The US Department of Transportation has a site dedicated to distracted driving. There are some interesting bits of information available there. October 22, 2015 - Richtel's latest look at distracted driving, a NY Times piece, Cars’ Voice-Activated Systems Distract Drivers, Study Finds February 24, 2016 - Reading This While You Drive Could Increase Your Risk of Crashing Tenfold - By Nicholas St. Fleur, in the NY Times, reporting on a study of distracted driving conducted by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, the results published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. April 13, 2016 - NY Times - Dispatcher Playing With Cellphone Is Faulted in German Train Crash by Alison Smale April 27, 2016 - NY Times article by the author on new tech for treating driving while texting like DUI - Texting and Driving? Watch Out for the Textalyzer August 17, 2016 - NY Times article about a proposal in New Jersey that goes beyond cell phones and texting - A Distracted-Driving Ban in New Jersey? Some Say It Threatens a Way of Life - by Vivian Yee According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 10 percent of fatal crashes and 18 percent of crashes that caused injuries in 2014 were reported to involve drivers distracted by activities including eating, smoking, adjusting the radio or air-conditioning, or being "lost in thought/daydreaming." They caused 3,179 deaths, injuring an estimated additional 431,000 people. In 2014, for the fifth straight year, distracted driving was the top cause of fatal crashes in New Jersey.November 15, 2016 - Biggest Spike in Traffic Deaths in 50 Years? Blame Apps by Neal E. Boudette March 6, 2017 - Why We Can’t Look Away From Our Screens - Claudia Dreifus interviews Adam Alter about his book Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked September 2017 - National Geographic Magazine - How Science is Unlocking the Secrets of Addiction - By Fran Smith September 6, 2018 - NY Times - Having Trouble Finishing This Headline? Then This Article Is for You. - By Concepción de León October 26, 2018 - NY Times Magazine - A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley - by Nellie Bowles - Silicon Valley exec know what goes into the tech of small screens and are trying to keep their kids from getting hooked ...more |
Notes are private!
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Jul 02, 2014
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Jul 09, 2014
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Jul 02, 2014
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Hardcover
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1476746583
| 9781476746586
| 1476746583
| 4.31
| 1,716,522
| May 06, 2014
| May 06, 2014
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it was amazing
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4/20/15 - PULITZER WINNER for 2014 The brain is locked in total darkness of course, children, says the voice. It floats in a clear liquid insi4/20/15 - PULITZER WINNER for 2014 The brain is locked in total darkness of course, children, says the voice. It floats in a clear liquid inside the skull, never in the light. And yet the world it constructs in the mind is full of light. It brims with color and movement. So how, children, does the brain, which lives without a spark of light, build for us a world full of light?Marie Laure LeBlanc is a teen who had gone blind at age 6. She and her father, Daniel, fled Paris ahead of the German invasion, arriving in the ancient walled port city of Saint Malo in northwest France to stay with M-L’s great uncle, Etienne. His PTSD from WW I had kept him indoors for two decades. They bring with them a large and infamous diamond, to save it from the Nazis. Daniel had made a scale model of their neighborhood in Paris to help young Marie Laure learn her away around, and repeats the project in Saint Malo, which is eventually occupied by the German army. Werner and Jutta Pfennig are raised in a German orphanage after their father is killed in the local mine. Werner has a gift for electronics, and is sent to a special school where, despite the many horrors of the experience, his talent is nurtured. He develops technology for locating radio sources, and is rushed into the Wehrmacht to apply his skill in the war. His assignment brings him to Saint Malo, where his path and Marie Laure’s intersect. [image] Anthony Doerr There are three primary time streams here, 1944 as the Allies are assaulting the German-held town, 1940-44, as we follow the progress of Werner and Marie Laure to their intersection, and the 1930s. We see the boy and the girl as children, and are presented with mirrored events in their young lives that will define in large measure the years to follow. Werner and Jutta are mesmerized by a French radio broadcast, a respite from the anti-Semitic propaganda the government is broadcasting. The Professor in the French broadcast offers lectures on science, and inspires Werner to dream of a life beyond the orphanage. Open your eyes, concluded the man, and see what you can with them before they close forever, and then a piano comes on, playing a lonely song that sounds to Werner like a golden boat traveling a dark river, a progression of harmonies that transfigures Zollverein: the houses turned to mist, the mines filled in, the smokestacks fallen, an ancient sea spilling through the streets, and the air streaming with possibility.As her father is the head locksmith for the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, Marie Laure has the run of the place. She spends a lot of time with a professor there, learning everything she can about shells, mollusks and snails. Dr. Geffard teaches her the names of shells--Lambis lambis, Cypraea moneta, Lophiotoma acuta--and lets her feel the spines and apertures and whorls of each in turn. He explains the branches of marine evolution and the sequences of the geologic periods; on her best days, she glimpses the limitless span of millennia behind her: millions of years, tens of millions of years.Both Werner and Marie Laure are enriched by teachers and books as they grow. No nuclear families here. Marie Laure’s mother died in childbirth. The Pfennig children lost their remaining parent when father was killed in the mine. The author, in a video on his site, talks about the three pieces of inspiration that provided the superstructure for the novel. While 80 feet below ground in a NYC subway, a fellow passenger was griping about the loss of cell service. Doerr appreciates the beautiful miracle that is modern communications. At the start of the book I wanted to try to capture the magic of hearing the voice of a stranger in a little device in your home because for the history of humanity, that was a strange thing. I started with a boy trapped somewhere and a girl reading a story. A year later he was on a book tour in France and saw Saint Malo for the first time. Walking around this beautiful seaside town, a walled fortress, the beautiful channel, the green water of the channel breaking against the walls and I told my editor, “look how old this is. This medieval town’s so pretty.” He said, “actually, this town was almost entirely destroyed in 1944, by your country, by American bombs.” So I started researching a lot about the city of Saint Malo immediately and knew that was the setting. That was where the boy would be trapped, listening to the radio. The third piece arrived when Doerr learned that when the Germans invaded, the French hid not only their artistic treasures but their important natural history and gemological holdings as well. The story is told primarily in alternating Marie Laure’s and Werner’s experiences. But there is a third stream as well, that of Sgt Major Reinhold von Rumpel, a gem appraiser drafted by the Reich to examine the jewels captured by the military and collect the best for a special collection. He becomes obsessed with finding the Sea of Flames, the near mythic diamond Daniel LeBlanc had hidden away. He is pretty much the prototypical evil Nazi, completely corrupt, greedy, cruel, as close to a stick-figure characterization as there is in the book. But his evil-doing provides the danger needed to move the story forward. There may not be words sufficient to exclaim just how magnificent an accomplishment this book is. Amazing, spectacular, incredible, moving, engaging, emotional, gripping, celestial, soulful, and bloody fracking brilliant might give some indication. There is so much going on here. One can read it for the story alone and come away satisfied. But there is such amazing craft on display that the book rewards a closer reading. In addition to a deft application of mirroring in the experiences of Werner and Marie Laure, Doerr brings a poet’s sense of imagery and magic. Marie-Laure’s sense of the world is filled with shell, snail, and mollusk experiences and references. Some are simple. During a time of intense stress, she must live like the snails, moment to moment, centimeter to centimeter. In a moment of hopeful reflection, these tiny wet beings straining calcium from the water and spinning it into polished dreams on their backs—it is enough. More than enough. You will find many more scattered about like you-know-what on a beach. I knew early on that I wanted her to be interested in shells. I'm standing here at the ocean right now. I've always been so interested in both the visual beauty of mollusks and the tactile feel of them. As a kid, I collected them all the time. That really imbued both "The Shell Collector" and Marie with, Why does the natural world bother to be so beautiful? For me, that's really embodied in seashells. I knew early on that I wanted her to find a path to pursue her interest in shells. I think that fits — I hope that fits — with visual impairment, using your fingers to identify them and admire them. - from the Powell’s reviewWerner’s snowy white hair alone might stand in for the entirety of the visible spectrum. (although it is described as “a color that is the absence of color.”) The dreaded prospect of being forced to work in the mines in a literally coal-black environment, the very antithesis of light, offers motivation for Werner to find another path, and coal itself offers a balance for that other form of carbon that drives Marie Laure’s father out of Paris, the one that embodies light. While black and white are often used in describing Werner’s environment, the broader spectrum figures large in his descriptions. Werner liked to crouch in his dormer and imagine radio waves like mile-long harp strings, bending and vibrating over Zollverein, flying through forests, through cities, through walls. At midnight he and Jutta prowl the ionosphere, searching for that lavish, penetrating voice. When they find it, Werner feels as if he has been launched into a different existence, a secret place where great discoveries are possible, where an orphan from a coal town can solve some vital mystery hidden in the physical world.A nice additional touch is Marie Laure’s reading of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. It permeates the tale as her reading echoes events and tensions in the real world of the story. Also avian imagery is a frequent, soulful presence. A particularly moving moment is when a damaged character is reminded of a long-lost friend (or maybe a long-remembered fear?) by the presence of a particular bird associated with that friend and the time when they knew each other. There are substantive issues addressed in this National Book Award finalist. Moral choices must be made about how to respond when darkness seeks to extinguish the light. There are powerful instances in which different characters withdraw into their shells in response to evil, but others in which they rage against the night with their actions. Thoughtful characters question the morality of their actions, as dark-siders plunge into the moral abyss. Sometimes the plunge is steep and immediate, but for others it is made clear that innocence can be corrupted, bit by bit. The major characters, and a few of the secondary ones, are very well drawn. You will most definitely care what happens to them. As for gripes, few and far between. There is a tendency at times to tell rather than show. Marie Laure may be too good. That’s about it. There are sure to be some who find this story too emotional. I am not among them. Just as Werner perceives or imagines he perceives an invisible world of radiowaves, All the Light We Cannot See enriches the reader with a spectrum of imagery, of meaning, of feeling. You may need eyes to read the page, ears to hear if listening to an audio version, or sensitive, educated fingers to read a Braille volume (please tell me this book has been published in Braille), but the waves with which Doerr has constructed his masterwork will permeate your reading experience. They may not be entirely apparent to your senses the first time you read this book. They are there. Whether you see, hear or touch them, or miss them entirely, they are there, and they will fill you. All the Light We Cannot See is a dazzling novel. When you read it, you will see. [image] [image] [image] [image] =============================EXTRA STUFF November 2, 2023 - Netflix releases the mini-series Links to the author’s personal, and FB pages My review of Doerr's 2021 masterpiece, Cloud Cuckoo Land Definitely check out Doerr’s site. And if you are wondering what he had in mind, specifically, with the title: It’s a reference first and foremost to all the light we literally cannot see: that is, the wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum that are beyond the ability of human eyes to detect (radio waves, of course, being the most relevant). It’s also a metaphorical suggestion that there are countless invisible stories still buried within World War II — that stories of ordinary children, for example, are a kind of light we do not typically see. Ultimately, the title is intended as a suggestion that we spend too much time focused on only a small slice of the spectrum of possibility. - from Doerr’s siteInterview by Jill Owens for Powell’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea for free on Project Gutenberg Here’s the wiki page for Saint Malo An interesting article on the damage done to Saint Malo in the 1944 battle A page on the surrender of Saint Malo, from the site World War II Today Here is a nice, large panoramic shot of modern Saint Malo, far too wide to include here Doerr adds a lot to our understanding of the book with his Notes and Highlights commentary here on GR 4/20/15 - Pulitzer prize winners were announced today, and All the Light shines brightest for fiction 6/27/15 - All the Light We Cannot See is awarded the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction November 2018 = All the Light is among the semi-finalists for GR's Best of the Best Award January, 2022- Netflix announces that All the Light is being made into a four-part series, starring Mark Ruffalo and Hugh Laurie. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 06, 2014
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Nov 09, 2014
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Jun 28, 2014
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Hardcover
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0062335944
| 9780062335944
| 0062335944
| 2.98
| 2,311
| Aug 26, 2014
| Aug 26, 2014
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it was amazing
| …to save her from the graveyard he must take her to the sea. He took her mother once, and being on the water only made her bloom.In 1793 ten-year …to save her from the graveyard he must take her to the sea. He took her mother once, and being on the water only made her bloom.In 1793 ten-year-old Tabitha is smitten with the idea of the sea. Her father, John, an erstwhile pirate, and soldier in the Continental Army, owns a shop in Beaufort, NC. Tab’s affection for the maritime may have to do with her mother, Helen. John and Helen had eloped, over her father’s objections, and sailed together under a black flag. But her father’s tales are all Tab has of her mother, who died giving birth to her. When Tab contracts yellow fever John is desperate to find a way to help his daughter. They board a ship bound for Bermuda. This does not sit well with her grandfather, who believes her chances are best ashore, and well prayed over. Asa owns a plantation, producing turpentine from considerable stands of pines. A religious sort, he is hell-bent on making sure that his legacy is carried forward. When his wife died in childbirth, he focused that need on his daughter. But his attempts to root her to his land failed when she fell in love with John, a man of not much family, but an excellent heart. The story is told in three parts, beginning with Tabitha’s struggle. Part two goes back to Asa raising Helen, giving her a slave, Moll, for her birthday, and the complicated relationship between Moll and Helen. While the comparison falls very short, both Moll and Helen are chained to their roles in life. Both resent their restrictions. But only Helen can actually act on her desires without being scourged for it. Asa is chained to his land and his attitudes, unable to see past what is to what might be, and unwilling to see beyond self-serving adages to what is right, to ever loosen himself from his own bindings. Part three returns to John and Asa, Moll, and her son, Davy. It goes into how each of the primary characters ultimately copes or tries to cope, with the challenges of their lives, their losses, and chances. Katy Simpson Smith has more than enough background for undertaking a look at America in the late 18th century. Before she returned to school to get her MFA, she completed a doctorate in history, and has published an examination of motherhood, We Have Raised All of You: Motherhood in the South, 1750-1835, which covers the period on display in her novel. [image] The author It was a hard knock life for women in late 18th century America. Not only was the risk from childbirth far greater than it is today, even past that life-threatening event women were treated as chattel. Not to the same extent as actual slaves, but to a significant degree. He [Asa] had a possessiveness in him that encompassed his house, his land, his womenAnd he would use marriage as a way to shackle both his daughter and her slave to his land. And what of the reverberations of the lot of females to those around them? Increased peril for their children, for one. Strained existence for their survivors, both emotionally and materially. And various forms of torment as the storms that rise from imprisonment bring forth dark gales. Parents are taken from children and children are taken from parents by the foolishness of custom, the limitations of ignorance and the blind eye of fate. Thematically there is a lot going on here. Property views figure large. Asa considers Helen a form of property and takes as little heed of her wishes as he does of those of her slave, Moll. Marriage and choice come in for some consideration. Within that larger theme, both Moll and Helen confront the conflict between who their respective owners want them to marry and what they want for themselves. “I wouldn’t mind if I had some say in who I laid down with.” [says Helen’s slave, Moll]It is also clear that love is not always allowed to be the greatest consideration in choosing a mate, or to define one’s relationship with a mate after the marriage is made. “Do you miss your husband, Mrs Randolph?” He had died looking for free land in the frontier, shot through with a Cherokee arrow. His partner had buried him in the west and sent Mrs. Randolph his musket and his spectacles. The gun she keeps hung behind her cabin door, where all the little Randolphs know to find it.There is a tautness to this relatively brief novel. The concept of Checkov’s gun is well implemented. A beaten slave in one scene is employed relevantly in another. A notion of escape by boat is recommended and no sooner done than an actual boat appears. Sometimes this seemed a bit too neat. As is the bludgeoning irony of Asa freeing a panicked bird that is trapped in his house, while denying freedom to enslaved humans. On the first page of the novel, John interrupts Tabitha’s request for more information about her mother. He looks down the hall at the shadows whipping across the slats and holds a finger to his lips. “Can you hear any birds?”This certainly gives one the notion that birds might be related to souls of the dead, or shadows. Could be something else entirely of course. Birds might be functioning as a sort of Greek chorus. In any case, you might want to keep this in mind as you come across the many bird references throughout the book. Land references abound as well, as wood is noted many a time, particularly pine, and flowers. The writing in The Story of Land and Sea is beautiful, moving, and insightful. The story begins: On days in August when sea storms bite into the North Carolina coast, he drags a tick mattress into the hall and tells his daughter stories, true and false, about her mother. The wooden shutters clatter, and Tabitha folds blankets around them to build a softness for the storm. He always tells of their courting days, of her mother’s shyness. She looked like a straight tall pine from a distance, only when he got close could he see her trembling.There is plenty more where that came from. The Story of Land and Sea is a sturdy vessel that will take you to places worth seeing. This is one boat you won’t want to miss. Review first posted – June 6, 2014 Publication dates ----------Hardcover - 8/26/14 ----------Trade paperback - 7/21/15 This review has been cross-posted at Cootsreviews.com [image] [image] [image] [image] =============================EXTRA STUFF The book opens with an abridged version of an Isaac Watts hymn about the joys of heaven offering one a reason not to fear death. It seems an odd intro, given that the focus in the tale is, to a large degree, about the impact of death on those left behind (no, not in the Tim LeHaye way) with no assurance of a heavenly reward waiting. Perhaps it was intended ironically. In any case, the hymn is beautifully set to music by Red Mountain Music here. From mentalfloss.com – The Historical Horror of Childbirth The author’s site is now up. A nifty interview with the author on NPR on 8/22/14 ...more |
Notes are private!
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May 28, 2014
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May 28, 2014
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May 28, 2014
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Hardcover
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0062331159
| 9780062331151
| 0062331159
| 3.71
| 41,027
| May 06, 2014
| May 06, 2014
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it was amazing
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The Bees is a powerful tale of what life might look like to a hive member. This is not your kids’ Bug’s Life, but a very grown-up, compelling drama th
The Bees is a powerful tale of what life might look like to a hive member. This is not your kids’ Bug’s Life, but a very grown-up, compelling drama that includes both sweetness and considerable sting. There are several elements that might make one think of Game of [image] Bee life cycle Of course Flora 717 might not have been considered a wonderful egg to those around her. She was born to the Flora caste, a group responsible for, ironically, cleaning up, a sanitation caste, essentially untouchables. But this Flora is a bit different. She is larger for one, possessed of great determination, curiosity, and a capacity for speech that is mostly suppressed among her peers. Still she is different and that is not usually allowed. The police are about to remove her (Deformity is evil. Deformity is not permitted.) when a Sage intervenes. Sages are the priestess class. Their intentions however, are not entirely holy. This Sage takes Flora under her wing, and the story is on. Sometimes it is good to spare the deviants, and experiment a little. We get to see many aspects of hive life through Flora’s five eyes, but also through her six feet, which are able to interpret vibrations in the floor, and her antennae, which she uses to sense scents and for more direct communication with other bees. That Paull can make the very alien sense environment of bees understandable to those of us with only four limbs and no antennae at all (well except for our friends in intelligence) is a triumph on its own. The Hive Mind is considered for its positive and negative aspects as well. [image] The author Paull tells about the origin of the story on her web site A beekeeper friend of mine died, far too young. In the immediate aftermath of her death, I began reading about the bees she loved so much. Very quickly, I realized I was exploring the most extraordinary ancient society that was like a hall of mirrors to our own: some things very similar, others a complete inversion, whilst more were fantastically alien and amazing. The more I read the more I wanted to find out, but when I learned about the phenomenon of the laying worker, I became incredibly excited by the huge dramatic potential of that situation.Her feeling of loss is very much present here. Bees are not the longest lived creatures on the planet, and more than a few see their end here. But there is another element as well, from a recent interview posted here on Goodreads, Becoming a mother changed me and made me stronger—but evolution is never easy. I didn't write Flora from an intellectual perspective but in a very visceral way: Motherhood made me a more passionate person—or allowed me to express that innate side of myself much more. So perhaps that's why Flora works as a character: There's primal truth in her motivation. She accepts her life one way, but then a forbidden force takes possession of her. Called love.[image] Religious nomenclature permeates the tale. The Queen is not only a temporal ruler, but is considered divine as well. This is helped along by her ability to produce pheromones in vast quantity that can soothe her hive family. There are sacraments in this world, a catechism, rituals, prayers, some of which will sound familiar. There are also some virgin births. And what would religion be without a little human sacrifice, or in this case bee sacrifice. It is a place in which religion is joined to politics to generate Orwellian mantras like Accept Obey Serve, Desire is Sin, Idleness is Sin, From Death comes Life Eternal, and the like. And, of course, there is some Orwellian behavior. Life is held cheaply, particularly for those not of the favored groups, and the jack-booted police that enforce the rules are definitely a buzzkill. The death penalty is more the norm than the exception, and it is often applied immediately and energetically. [image] Western honey bee Flora’s explorations of the world are entire adventures on their own, as she encounters not only adversaries like wasps, spiders and crows, but man-made hazards as well. On the other hand she experiences the longing of the flowers, and the expanded internal horizons that result from expanding one’s horizons externally. She has a particular longing of her own, which fires the engines of her determination. The Bees is a fast-paced, engaging, invigorating tale that will have you flipping pages faster than a forager’s wings. You will come away not only with the warm feeling of having shared a remarkable journey but will find yourself eager to learn more about our buzzy brethren, well, except for Nicolas Cage. And you might even find yourself tempted to get up and do a [image] Waggle Dance =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s personal, Twitter and FB pages In Paull’s site there is a photo of a Minoan palace map that informed her hive layout. Worth a look . This month’s (May 2014) GR newsletter features a brief interview with Paull That buzzing in your ear might be more cause for concern that you’d realized. New project aims to upload a honey bee's brain into a flying insectobot by 2015 An item I came across on a reason why bee population is in decline - We May Have Figured Out What's Killing The Bees A wonderful short piece in the NY Times - You’re a Bee. This Is What It Feels Like.- by Joanna Klein - December 2, 2016 [image] Well, hello, good-looking! A Bombus fraternus bumblebee. Sam Droege/United States Geological Survey from the above article June 7, 2018 - A NY Times article on new research on Bee cognition - Do Bees Know Nothing? - by James Gorman July 28, 2020 - Smithsonian Magazine - Scientists Crack the Mathematical Mystery of Stingless Bees’ Spiral Honeycombs by Theresa Machemer [image] Mathematically speaking, the honeycombs grow like crystals. (Tim Heard via Royal Society Publishing) ...more |
Notes are private!
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not set
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May 14, 2014
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May 14, 2014
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Hardcover
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081299342X
| 9780812993424
| 081299342X
| 4.22
| 7,519
| Apr 03, 2014
| Apr 08, 2014
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it was amazing
| There is no law, only power.The author looks at some of the details of how this is manifested in the USA, and offers, in addition, some insight in There is no law, only power.The author looks at some of the details of how this is manifested in the USA, and offers, in addition, some insight into the psychology of criminal targeting. Matt Taibbi is widely known and respected as a hard-hitting author and financial reporter/editor for Rollingstone Magazine. His previous book, Griftopia, went into considerable detail about how debt is used by large corporations to ensnare customers, how commodity speculation screws us all, how some politicians are selling off public assets for their private political gain and how the vampire squid that is Goldman Sachs has been draining the fiscal blood from the planet. If you get off on seeing what is going on behind the curtains, this constitutes good times. Well, Taibbi is at it again. He decided to look at how the legal system treats street crime and fiscal malfeasance. See? Even the terminology that pops to mind is a form of cover-up. If Al Capone stole, say, a million dollars from a bank there would be no question that he was a bank-robber and a dangerous felon. But if a corporate leach like, say, Barclay’s Bank, steals $10 billion, no one goes on the FBI’s Ten-Most-Wanted list. Newspaper headlines about a massive theft are remarkably absent, and ultimately, unlike the situation with Capone, no one goes to jail. (Yes, I know he went to jail for tax evasion, not bank-robbery, sheesh) The pension funds and other investors whose resources were stolen are left holding the very empty bag, with no Lone Ranger riding to the rescue. It is almost as if the prosecutors and regulators responsible for keeping the foxes from slaughtering the hens are wasted on heroin, nodding off in a corner while the predators go about their business. [image] The author At the other end of the economic spectrum, the police-judicial system seems to be zooming along on speed or Angel Dust. Taibbi spent some time with illegal immigrants, working class blacks, and even a white musician to get a good look at how the legal system operates at the bottom rungs of the economic ladder. We’re creating a dystopia, where the mania of the state isn’t secrecy or censorship but unfairness. Obsessed with success and wealth and despising failure and poverty, our society is systematically dividing the population into winners and losers, using institutions like the courts to speed the process. Winners get rich and get off. Losers go broke and go to jail. It isn’t just that some clever crook on Wall Street can steal a billion dollars and never see the inside of a courtroom; it’s that plus the fact that some black teenager a few miles away can go to jail just for standing on a street corner, that makes the whole picture complete.Taibbi offers plenty of examples. Uptown, (generically, yes I do know that Wall Street is geographically downtown, geez) corporations routinely and knowingly engage in illegal behavior, confident that no one will ever go to jail, certainly not anyone who counts, and if the company is ever dragged into civil court for its crimes, the worst that will happen is that it will have to pay a fine, the cost of which will be borne by shareholders. Executives are never held personally liable, and any fines that may be levied against them are paid by the company. Corporations routinely hold their employees hostage in negotiations with regulators and prosecutors, threatening that if they are actually held to account for their crimes, thousands of innocent people will lose their jobs. This is the essence of the too-big-to-fail problem. When Arthur Andersen was actually prosecuted for its crimes, 27,000 people were put out of work. The political cost of such an impact is unacceptable to the politicians who run government and decide who gets charged with what. Yet, the regulators, prosecutors and legislators do nothing to reduce the size of these Godzilla-like corporations, leaving them free to roam the planet leaving a trail of smoking ruins in their wake. On the other hand, it is stunning how much public investment there has been in stomping on the downtrodden. The welfare system, in particular, seems to feed on misery, doing its utmost to make needing help a scourge-worthy offense. If any of you have had to deal with this system, you will be familiar with horrendous lines, wait times, incompetent employees, contradictory requirements, byzantine regulations, and the complete surrender of your constitutional rights that is entailed when you are a poor individual in need. This is where all the moral hazard concern is focused, on whether a potential welfare recipient might have a pair of nice underwear in her drawer, or might somehow be trying to get over on the public welfare system. Somehow that moral hazard is not applied to organizations that borrow billions of public dollars at virtually no interest, then use those funds to engage in illegal activities. Nope, no moral hazard there. Street crime has been dropping nationally for some time, but governments federal and local have been ramping up their wide net approach to filling jails and local coffers. Turns out arresting people willy-nilly is good business for local governments, regardless of the merits of the arrests. And apparently it offers career advancement for those who net the most fish. And if millions of people are irreparably harmed by this Orwellian practice, well tough titty. Who cares about those people anyway? They don’t write large checks to people running for office. Taibbi looks at collateral consequences. When corporations are accused of anything they hide behind the collateral damage actual prosecution might cause, and battalions of lawyers. Overwhelmed, under-resourced and probably chicken-shit prosecutors advance straight to deals that not only entail no jail time for perpetrators of massive crimes, but not even an admission of guilt. When some poor schmo is gathered up in a street sweep, even if there is no actual justification, that person can spend months in jail, merely for being accused. The person’s family can be thrown out of their home. The person can be made ineligible for a whole raft of potential public benefits. Parental rights can be lost. But these collateral consequences are never considered when the person charged is poor, and particularly when that person is a minority. It is a truism that life is not fair. But fairness should at least be a goal. We should at least try to apply the law equally to all people, certainly to all citizens. And yet we are headed in the opposite direction. Rule of Law has become a cynical joke. When punishment is routinely applied only to the powerless, and the powerful continue their illegal practices with no effective punishment, the law is no longer merely an ass, it is a trained attack dog, a weapon used by society to torment those it disapproves of. That’s what nobody gets, that the two approaches to justice may individually make a kind of sense, but side by side, they’re a dystopia, where common city courts become factories for turning poor people into prisoners, while federal prosecutors on the white-collar beat turn into overpriced garbage men, who behind closed doors quietly dispose of the sins of the rich for a fee.As more and more folks are being pushed over the side of the middle class to swim the waters of working class America, more and more folks are coming into contact with the legal horrors that swim those waters. Taibbi is always very successful at pointing out the flaws in our systems, the inequities, the underhandedness, the corruption. He is extremely gifted at boosting his readers’ blood-pressure. I do wish he had devoted some more effort to offering suggestions as to how things might be nudged back toward a less toxic level of unfairness. He does so, in bits here and there, by noting, for example, the radically dimorphic funding allotments for white-collar prosecutors versus, say, immigration enforcement. But there really needed to be more of that. A tea-kettle opening, at least, through which we might direct some of that screaming steam. But Taibbi has indeed succeeded in pointing out the big-picture gross unfairness that permeates our nation. And if he allows himself to vent his rage at times, making not-wholly supported assumptions, stretching his canvas a bit, I suppose it is forgivable. Sometimes he goes too far, such as when he suggests that unfairness is an aim of our system. It may work out that way, but I do not accept that there is intentional unfairness at play here. The American people are notoriously passive, having dined for a very long time on the empty calories of so-called personal responsibility. (Less filling! Tastes great!) People, it is not your fault that you got laid off. It is not your fault that the company your bank sold your mortgage to is foreclosing on you even though your payments are up to date. They are probably using feloniously false signatures to do the deed. It is not your fault that the local constabulary finds it convenient to take you in for being in the wrong place at any time, just so that some boys in blue can make their daily quotas. It is not your fault that corporate profits keep rising while salaries stagnate, or worse. At some point you should begin to get really pissed. Divide will certainly fuel that justified rage. It seems sometimes that contemporary life, for many in the dwindling middle and working classes, is a series of frustrations designed to test our commitment to non-violence. Hopefully, by the time that pressure builds up, there will emerge some way to vent it other than in pointless street rioting or guillotine-fueled mass destruction. But at the rate we are going I would not bet on it. This is not a class war that is going on out there. War presumes multiple combatants. What is happening now in America is class enslavement. And it is not gonna get any better any time soon. Any legal system that allows the biggest thieves in history to walk off scot free is a joke and does not deserve our respect. This is not to say that there are not good people in government, people who truly want to do right for all of us. And it is not to say that the system is incapable of locking up seriously bad people. And sometimes legislators and government executives do manage to get something positive, something reasonable, something fair, done. But the wins are few and far between, while the losses accumulate and accelerate. So long as the super-villains in finance and transnational corporations continue to loot the planet with impunity, it remains the truth. There is no law, only power. =============================EXTRA STUFF NY Times Magazine article about Why Only One Top Banker Went to Jail for the Financial Crisis A NY Times op-ed by Thomas B. Edsall, Supreme Injustice, on how the top court is taking sides in the class war A May 7, 2014 article from the Dealbook section of the NY Times on prosecution of big financial crime, Seeking Tough Justice, but Settling for Empty Promises An August 26, 2014 NY Times Op Ed by Thomas Edsall,The Expanding World of Poverty Capitalism, notes the increasing privatization of not only prisons, but public fine and fee administration, all with virtually no oversight. Guess who suffers? In this August 26, 2014 opinion piece in the NY Times, How the Supreme Court Protects Bad Cops Erwin Cheminsky argues for recognition of what anyone who is paying attention should know. There is no law, only power. Money in elections is the rotten core of the American electoral apple. Happily residing in that core is the Federal Elections Commission. This September 2, 2014 NY Times op-ed offers a fix for that particular problem. Some de-worming is in order. Following the non-indictment in Ferguson (when was the last time you heard of a prosecutor offering a grand jury exculpatory evidence?) the notion of division is back on the front page - NY Times - 11/26/14 - After Ferguson Announcement, a Racial Divide Remains Over Views of Justice A fine example of how the law tilts against the poor in a Dickensian version of debtors' prison - Can't Pay Your Fines? Your License Could Be Taken Here is another way in which our legal system criminalizes being poor - Skip Child Support. Go to Jail. Lose Job. Repeat. - by Frances Robles and Shaila Dewan - April 19, 2015 Sued Over Old Debt, and Blocked From Suing Back - By Jessica Sinver-Greenberg and Michael Corkery - NY Times - December 22, 2015 in his op-ed piece, Is It a Crime to Be Poor?, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof looks at the growing trend of, effectively, a revival of debtors' prisons in the USA - June 11, 2016 3/8/2018 - Buzzfeed - an in depth report on how secret NYPD files show that many NYC police guilty of serious crimes are left unpunished - dark stuff and not all that surprising - BUSTED - by Kendall Taggert and Mike Hayes 5/20/2018 - NY Times - A chilling article on how unscrupulous landlords abuse the housing court system in NYC to push poor and working class people out of their apartments, so they can jack rents up to astronomical amounts - Unsheltered: The Eviction Machine Churning Through New York City - by Kim Barker, Jessica Silver-Greenberg, Grace Ashford and Sarah Cohen ==============================THE AUTHOR Links to the author’s Twitter and FB pages I could paste a gazillion Taibbi refs here, (not all of them complimentary) but if you are interested in more than the few listed here, the Google machine will happily spit up scads when you enter the author’s name. Matt at Rollingstone (he left there in February 2014) Matt’s pre-2011 blog Matt’s prior book, Griftopia ...more |
Notes are private!
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Apr 30, 2014
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May 07, 2014
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Apr 30, 2014
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Hardcover
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0062315285
| 9780062315281
| 0062315285
| 3.89
| 1,294
| Jul 01, 2014
| Jul 01, 2014
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it was amazing
| It just came crashing down, she says. Sometimes in life it just all comes crashing down.There’s all sorts of crashings-down going on here, some re It just came crashing down, she says. Sometimes in life it just all comes crashing down.There’s all sorts of crashings-down going on here, some real, some not. Some are anticipated, but never arrive, some happen before you know it. Others happen far away but carry a large impact. Naomi Hill has been a singer in Chicago (her kind of town) ten years or so and in a once-important jazz club that has seen better days for less than a year. But when her photograph appears on the cover of Look magazine in 1965, it signals her arrival. On the night of her last performance at The Blue Angel most of the important people in her life, her true family, are gathered. From this stage we look past the footlights to how each of them came to be there. Most important is her daughter, 11-year-old, Sophia. Mother is a singer. I live in her dark margin.The story is told from alternating perspectives, Naomi’s and Sophia’s. We see Naomi as a disaffected teen in Kansas, It was just—nothingness. It filled us with nothingness. It made you feel so…trapped. Isn’t that funny? With so much space around you? Trapped? Can you explain that?and follow her as she finds her way, geographically, musically and sexually. Naomi is driven by her needs like a dust mote before a haboob: How could I tell Hilda, or anyone, how much I feared such a life, a normal life. How much I feared becoming invisible again, powerless, dependent. I wanted to do the right thing but I wanted something else more. To be known. To be loved.Just as Naomi’s quest for fame and fear of enclosure drive her, Sophia is driven by a need to be loved by her mother, to be a necessary part of her world. Tonight I clap so hard I think she’ll look over at me and pull me out of the wing into the spotlight and introduce me as her daughter, whom I love more than anything, she’ll say. But she doesn’t.Last Night… is a deceptive book. It reads quickly, and weighs in at a modest 325 pages, but this is one of the richest novels I have read in a long time. One could simply follow the melody of the story and hum along, but I suggest you take your time. There is rarely a single voice trilling in a scene. Almost always it is a combo, offering syncopation, harmony, backbeats and meaningful riffs. Take your time, and let all the notes, beats, rhythms, and emotional sound of the book wash over you. [image] The Author The settings are the 50s in Kansas and Chicago in 1965. It is a volatile era, in which sexual and racial norms are being challenged, a time in which the new is rising and the established is crumbling, although not without a fight. This is highlighted in Kansas (Something is definitely the matter there) with a display of the antediluvian notions extant in Naomi’s home town. In Chicago we see this through Jim, a guy who clings to the belief that someday Naomi will love him back, and in the meantime he is not only always there for her, he serves as the father Sophia never knew. He delights in photographing, while the opportunity remains, great Chicago buildings that have been slated for demolition, (He also photographs Naomi) celebrating the glorious before it is gone. Why do you love buildings?It is also a time of fear. Sophia is concerned about a possible nuclear holocaust, so has been compiling a list of items, the workings of which she wants to understand, (streetlamp, toaster, record player, percolator, et al) so that after the worst happens she can begin to re-invent a bit of civilization. There is a saying that you can’t choose your family. Well, maybe not your DNA-based family. But you can create a heart-based family, and this is how Naomi and Sophia survive in the world. Naomi may have been raised in Eisenhauer America, but she is at core a modern, independent woman, and strives to find fulfillment on her own terms. We are treated (and it is so very much a treat) to seeing how each came into Naomi’s life. Every story its’ own wonderful melody. Of course, the primary relationship we see is that between Naomi and Sophia, The seed of this story was planted many years ago. I have this very beautiful, dynamic mother. And it seemed, wherever we were she became immediately central. So, to be at her side rendered you a bit invisible, which was of course both wonderful and terrible. If the world was watching mom, I could watch the world, freely and without notice. It carved this automatic space for me, a private world, the world behind another's wings.We see Sophia adapting as a daughter to the spotlight that is her mother much more than the other way around. It is not that Naomi wants to be distant to Sophia, but her drives usually urge her in another direction. One strong thematic current here is wind. People in Kansas will tell you how beautiful it is but all I can say is that in Kansas, the wind blows everything down or away, it just beats the shit out of it.There is even a Sister Windy who is a much more beneficent prairie breeze. You will not go more than a few pages without encountering a draft, a flutter or a gust from a wind reference. It is also amusing to see how people are always racing ahead of other walkers, or struggling to keep up. Among the many love stories tucked inside …the Blue Angel, a major one is about a love of beauty. Jim loves those great old buildings. And Naomi loves singing I lay there in the moonlight breathing deep until I was sure she was asleep. Then I just let my head run back to the music, to little phrases I’d committed to memory. I felt my throat move a little as I imagined singing. And I understood that this must be love, to visit a place in your mind where music is playing, to have such a place at all.And there is another scene of Naomi singing in an unexpected venue that will leave you gasping. I have two issues with the book. I thought it could have used a bit more humor. It seems that kind-and-gentle moments are used to serve that purpose. There is one surprise revelation scene that also serves well to turn that frown upside down, but a couple of yucks here and there wouldn’t have hurt. Secondly, there is a hint of danger here. No, not the automatic-weapon sort. The romance sort. I am disinclined toward such things, and there are definite aromas that waft through. For good or ill there is a dishy female lead being wooed by (among others) a male yin and yang, a gun-toting bad boy gambler and a camera-toting too-good-to-be-true guy of the doormat persuasion. Such things usually make me wretch, but it was held in enough check here to stave off any unintended regurgitation. If Rotert is not working on a musical stage production of this, she should work up a tempest and get cracking. This is major Broadway musical material. Whatever awards this book will win, and there should be many, there are Tonies, and then Oscars just waiting to be scooped up. Which requires a casting call. Much as I would love to cast Amy Adams as Naomi, and as great as she looks, Naomi is, maybe 27 or 28 and the actress would have to pass for 17 in a few scenes. Adams is 39, (even Jessica Chastain, who might be wonderful here, is 37) so, for the umpteenth time, we will return to the well and wonder how cool it would be to see Jennifer Lawrence as Naomi, (but she probably lacks the singing licks - ☹) Bradley Cooper as Jim, whose age is not specified in the book. And [image] Johnny Sequoyah, of the TV show Believe, as Sophia would be just about perfect. (Please don't let her age!) And if you think I am getting all sexist about age and gender, I had John Hamm in my tiny mind for another character here, but even Don Draper couldn't sell Hamm as a twenty-something. Be warned, I don’t care who you are, young or old, big or small, male or female, hell, human or alien, this novel will break your heart (or hearts in that last case). 210 pounds of old guy was sobbing on the couch at the back end of this book. Ok 220. You had better have those tissues handy. You are gonna need ‘em. Ok, ok, 225, geez. And could you hide those jelly beans please? Thanks. Yeah, went major wet-face. Like a baaaaaaaby. Last Night at the Blue Angel is one of those rare works where craft meets entertainment. It is not only a brilliantly written novel. It is a dazzlingly satisfying read as well. This angel is indeed heaven-sent. Review first posted – May 2, 2014 Publication dates ----------Hardcover - July 1, 2014 ----------Trade paperback - 4/14/15 =============================EXTRA STUFF A couple of the many pieces of music mentioned in the text: Sam Cooke When I fall in Love Naomi listens to Bird and Diz when she is sad Saint Cecilia comes in for a look here as well, yes, Saint Cecilia =====================================AUTHOR Rebecca Rotert (roe-tear) has been a poet and singer for many years. Her familiarity with stage performance informs much of the novel. Links to Rotert’s personal site and her Twitter feed Harper posted on Soundcloud an amazing audio piece. You must check this out, not only does Rotert sing, smoky and sultry, but she talks about elements that went into the story, and reads a passage from the book that simply dazzles A nice profile of the author from Femmes Folles Nebraska A video interview with Rotert from NCTV17 - worth a look ...more |
Notes are private!
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Apr 21, 2014
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Apr 30, 2014
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Apr 21, 2014
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Hardcover
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0062306812
| 9780062306814
| 0062306812
| 3.62
| 144,710
| Jul 03, 2014
| Aug 26, 2014
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it was amazing
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The death of Nella Oortman’s father left the family in difficult straits, saddled with unexpected debts and a declining standard of living. But the wi
The death of Nella Oortman’s father left the family in difficult straits, saddled with unexpected debts and a declining standard of living. But the widow finds a suitable match for Nella, in a successful Amsterdam merchant and trader. As he travels extensively, the wedding is a quick affair, and it is a month before he will return to his home. In October of 1686, Nella arrives there, in a very exclusive part of the city. She is greeted by her new husband’s sister, Marin, who makes her feel as welcome as a case of influenza, and who just might make you think of Mrs. Danvers. [image][image] Burton says “When writing my hero, Johannes, I had this guy in mind.” As a wedding gift to his 18-year-old bride 39-year old Johannes Brandt acquires for her a cabinet, a kind of doll house that mirrors the Brandt home. Nella engages the services of a miniaturist, a craftsperson, to help fill the spaces. What she receives is far more than she expected, as the pieces reflect a bit too closely persons and events in the family’s life, some frighteningly so. Also, they do not always remain exactly as they were when she’d received them. And they arrive with Delphic messages. Do these tiny constructions predict the future, reflect their owners’ fears and concerns, reveal secrets, tell truths, or offer misdirections? Nella determines to find out who this mysterious miniaturist is and what is behind these small objects. Burton did considerable research to get her 17th century details right. I have a bibliography as long as my arm. And then there are first-hand resources—maps, paintings, diaries, prices of food, inventories, wills—and the physical city of Amsterdam itself. I first went in 2009, which is when I saw the house in the Rijksmuseum, and then again August 2012 for my birthday – with a long list of questions and locations to visit post-fourth draft. Where did they bury the bodies in the Old Church? How many windows on the front of a gable? How did they winch furniture in? A lot in the book is all historically true in terms of life in the city… - from the Richard Lee interviewNella’s search and her coming of age occur in a difficult time and place. The Amsterdam of the late 17th century, the Dutch Golden Age, is a world financial and military capital, a harsh, unforgiving place, where human failing and difference is not be tolerated, where neighbors are encouraged to spy and report on neighbors, (yes, very much like your office) and where it is always a contest whether the worship of gold or god will hold sway in any given circumstance. The two domains cross paths frequently. It is this city. It is the years we all spend in an invisible cage, whose bars are made of murderous hypocrisy.It is a time when being a woman was much more of a challenge than it is today. Marriage, paradoxically, was seen by some as the only way for women to secure any influence over their own lives. But what if a woman wanted something more, something of her own, the opportunity to be the architect of her own fortune, and not submit to a life in a golden cage. Nella may have stepped into a wealthy man’s world, but she must still take care for the many traps that have been laid by a cold society and those jealous of her husband’s success and of her. And there are challenges as well with her marriage, which was not quite what she had bargained for. I wanted to create women who are not more ‘strongly female’ or ‘stronger than other females’, or ‘strong’ because they are braver than men, or can physically lift more saucepans or anything like that. I just wanted some women who for once are not defined by any other ideal than that they are human. - from the Richard Lee interview[image][image] Images that inspired Nella and Marin Jessie Burton has written a dazzling first novel. The Miniaturist presents readers with a worthy mystery, and maybe a bit of magic, offering enough twists and turns for a figure skating contest, opening tiny door after tiny door to reveal the secrets of Brandt’s household. This is a look at the Dutch golden age that will resonate with contemporary gender, race, religious and power issues. The author offers just enough imagery to enhance without overwhelming, and breathes life into an array of compelling characters. In addition, Burton paints this world with the eye of a true artist, and does it all in a book that you will not want to put down. It will require no Dutch courage to get through this one. To have crafted The Miniaturist is no small achievement. Jessie Burton has written a book that seems destined to be huge. [image] The dollhouse of the real Petronelle Oortman, currently in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam This review is cross-posted at Cootsreviews.com Review first posted - April 4, 2014 Release date in the UK – July 3, 2014 Release date in the US – August 26, 2014 Trade Paper - US - 6/2/15 The BBC aired a three-part series of The Miniaturist in 2017. It received mixed reviews. =============================EXTRA STUFF One must wonder what London-resident Burton thinks of actors, given how she portrays one here, and given that she has worked as an actress, while toiling as an executive assistant to bring in a few guilders. Here are links to the author’s personal webpage and her Twitter feed. She has a few more historical novels in the works. If she continues writing at this level she will be making history instead of writing about it. My review of Burton's 2016 novel, The Muse In addition, her Pinterest page is most definitely worth a look There is a lot of interesting material on Burton in this interview by Richard Lee at the Historical Novel Society site and more here in a piece from The Guardian. Sugar loaves figure significantly in the story. While I had heard the term Sugarloaf before, my only association with it was with mountains, whether the iconic mound in the Rio de Janeiro harbor, or the host of other mountains across the planet that share the name. Never gave it much thought. But folks with a bit more historical knowledge than me (most of you) would probably know that there was a time when sugar was routinely formed into solid cone shapes for shipping. That Rio hill and its cousins seem a bit more understandably named now. Here is a link to the wiki entry for sugarloaf, which I found pretty interesting. And another that deals with tools used for handling the stuff. Sweet. [image][image] 8/29/16 - “I read and pursued The Miniaturist in manuscript for over a year before publication, so utterly passionate was I about its astoundingly beauty and its rich and diverse characters. Jessie has created an exquisite gem, making the world of seventeenth century Amsterdam live and breathe in incredible detail whilst also delivering a fast paced thriller full of intrigue and dark secrets” – Executive Producer Kate Sinclair [of the Production company The Forge] ...more |
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Mar 19, 2014
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Mar 28, 2014
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Mar 19, 2014
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Hardcover
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0062286447
| 9780062286444
| 0062286447
| 3.81
| 15,068
| May 27, 2014
| May 27, 2014
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it was amazing
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There should be fireworks shooting off for Smith Henderson's first novel, as it is a just cause for celebration. This is not to say that the subject m
There should be fireworks shooting off for Smith Henderson's first novel, as it is a just cause for celebration. This is not to say that the subject matter is exactly festive, but the book is a triumph. Pete is a social worker in Tenmile, Montana, a place so insignificant it was named for it's distance from the nearest possible somewhere. The folks he is charged with trying to help out need all the support they can get, but some can't seem to accept any. There are three main threads braided into this novel. Cecil is a troubled teen in a household where the biggest problem is his substance-abusing layabout mother. The two do not get along, big time. Firearms are involved. When eleven-year-old Benjamin Pearl wanders into town alone, dressed in rags, and looking like he'd been reared by wolves, Pete is called in to check things out. Following the story of Benjamin and his family is the core here, although a portion of almost every chapter is given over to the third thread, Rachel Snow, Pete's daughter, who has troubles of her own. Pete is the central element interlacing with the threads. Pete Snow is basically a decent guy, bloody far from perfect, but his heart is in the right place. He really cares about the people he is charged with helping, and tries his damndest to figure out what the best thing is to do for each. That it does not always work out, and that he is better at helping others than he is himself, are foregone conclusions. [image] The Author Smith Henderson offers us a look at a place in America, rural, and sometimes not so rural Montana, but also a time. It is no coincidence that the story is set in 1980, when the promotion of "Morning in America" also encouraged the release of a lot of pent-up insanity. Benjamin's father is a seriously scary survivalist. His paranoia may at times have a basis in reality, but his worldview is straight out of the Lunatic Fringe Encyclopedia. There have always been folks with Jonathan Pearl's particular flavor of madness, but it looks like Henderson is signaling what lies ahead, a world in which entities like right-wing talk radio, Fox News and any organization associated with the Koch brothers foment fear 24/7 and offer a media route in which to legitimize lunacy. Ben's father actually believes, when he sees jet contrails, that the gub'mint is spying on him. There is plenty more to that story, but the political, this-is-what-is-being-unleashed, element is quite significant, although it is only implied. The implications of freedom are given a look. At what point does your ability to be free, living a life of paranoia, infringe on the rights of those who have not chosen the same path? Where is the line between legitimate desires for non-interference and license to do whatever? Where is the line between society's right to protect it's children and parents's rights to raise children as they see fit? We get a look at institutional limitations and extreme downsides, even when those institutions are staffed by well-meaning folks. Of course not every one is so well-meaning. We also get a look at the hazards to kids of growing up working class, from screwed up homes. Children have a lot to contend with here. Ok, now that I have made the whole thing sound like such a downer, time to shine a bit of light in the darkness. While Pete definitely has his issues, he is beautifully drawn and is someone we can cheer on, most of the time anyway. There are some good people in Tenmile, a family who fosters kids in need, a caring judge, a tonic to the extant horrors. Learning about the survivalist world is fascinating stuff, even if these days we know more about it than we should have to. The writing is powerful and stunningly beautiful. A sample of lovely descriptive: He liked the Sunrise Cafe for its coffee and smoky ambience and the way his arms stuck to the cool plastic tablecloths in summer and how the windows steamed, beaded, and ran with tears when everyone got out of church and came in for breakfast on a cold morning. He liked how Tenmile smelt of burnt leaves for most of October. He liked the bench in front of the tobacco shop on the square and how you could still send a child to buy you a pouch of Drum from inside with no problem from the proprietor. He liked the bowling alley that was sometimes, according to a private schedule kept only by them, absolutely packed with kids from the local high school and the surrounding hills who got smashed on bottles of vodka or rotgut stashed under their seats and within their coats. How much biology throbbed and churned here--the mist coming off the swales on the east side of town and a moose or elk emerging as though through smoke or like the creature itself was smoking. How the water looked and how it tasted right out of the tap, hard and ideal, like ice cold stones and melted snow. How trout looked in that water, brown and wavering and glinting all the colors there were and maybe some that didn't really exist on the color wheel, a color, say, that was moss and brown-spotted like peppercorns and a single terra-cotta-colored stone and a flash of sunlight all at once. That color existed in the water here.There are plenty more examples to be found here. One particular image of native fauna coming into contact with civilization was particularly chilling. Henderson may be new to novel-writing, but he has already had some success with other forms. I do not know if he had much success as a social worker, a prison guard or a technical writer, but he co-wrote a feature film, while at the University of Texas, Dance With The One, won a 2012 Pushcart Prize for his story Number Stations, and the 2011 PEN Emerging Writers Award for Fiction. I guess he has emerged. It should be known that you have probably seen some of Smith Henderson's work already, without realizing. You know that half-time Superbowl ad for Chrysler, with Clint Eastwood, Halftime in America? Henderson was one of the writers. It ain't halftime this time. Henderson, with Fourth of July Creek goes long and scores a game-winning TD. There is satisfaction to be had in how Henderson resolves the conflicts he has presented. And even when his outcomes are not happy ones, they are believable. We have been treated in recent years to a wealth of top-notch first novels. Fourth of July Creek will fit in nicely with the likes of The Orchardist, The Enchanted, and The Guilty One, for example, and it would sit very comfortably next to works by Willy Vlautin. Smith Henderson's is a dazzling new literary voice, and the release of this outstanding work is cause enough to light up the sky with barges-full of pyrotechnics. Trade Paperback Publication date - March 10, 2015 This review was first posted March 7, 2014 =============================EXTRA STUFF Henderson's Web page, FB and Twitter In case you missed it above, here is the Halftime in America ad 6/27/14 - A gushing NY Times review by Janet Maslin 7/4/14 - a lovely short short piece from Ron Charles on the naming of the book and it's geographical placement. ...more |
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not set
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Feb 16, 2014
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Feb 17, 2014
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Hardcover
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0062218298
| 9780062218292
| 0062218298
| 4.08
| 11,363
| Mar 04, 2014
| Mar 04, 2014
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it was amazing
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Astoria is a tale of two journeys. It is an adventure of the highest order, and with Peter Stark as your guide, it is one of the best non-fiction book
Astoria is a tale of two journeys. It is an adventure of the highest order, and with Peter Stark as your guide, it is one of the best non-fiction books you will read for a long time. In 1803, the Louisiana Purchase had brought the young United States all the land draining into the Mississippi (at least according to our side of the story). The President wanted to know all he could about what he had bought, particularly as there were still some disagreements going on over the breadth of the purchase. Thus the Lewis and Clarke Expedition, in 1804, and the later Red River Expedition and Pike Expedition provided Jefferson the information about this new land he needed to negotiate with France, and others. But what lay beyond? Opportunity, resources, and vast swaths of land. [image] Peter Stark - image taken from Random House In the early 1800s, John Jacob Astor was one of the richest men of his time. He had made a fortune trading North American furs in Europe, and had begun trading with China as well. What he had in mind was to take advantage of the fur resources of the Northwest and establish a triangle trade. Northwest furs to the Orient, porcelain from China to London and New York and other goods from there back to the Northwest. His aim was to monopolize trading on the Pacific Rim, at a time when Lewis and Clark had been across the country only a few years prior. He involved Jefferson, who also had a more global vision than other men of the day. The Northwest was unclaimed by westerners, (no thought was given, per usual, to the native people who were actually living there) and was considered available for the taking. For Astor it was to be a base for establishing a trade monopoly. Jefferson saw an opportunity to spread democracy to the west coast, and encouraged Astor. To accomplish his aim, it would be necessary for Astor to establish a base of operations. He decided on the area near the mouth of the Columbia River. He put together two groups of men to reach the spot, one to travel by sea the other to cross the continent by land. It is their adventures that form the bulk of the story, and what a story it is. Were this a novel, the dueling road trips would both be tales of self-discovery. This is a case where reality exceeds fiction. The character of many of the travelers is revealed in how they handle the extreme stresses to which they are subjected. Following the development, or revelation of their characters, for good or ill, is one of the great pleasures to be had in reading Astoria. The ship Astor sent was the Tonquin, a 290 ton bark. He selected as its captain the young (31) US Navy lieutenant Jonathan Thorn. Thorn had been a military hero, serving with distinction in the Barbary Wars, and Astor wanted someone who could fend off potential attacks. Our friends across the pond, engaged in a tiff with Napoleon, had taken to stopping vessels in international waters and shanghaiing sailors or passengers who were British subjects to fight the French. Rule Britannia was not being sung by the crews of American-flag ships. This aqueous stop-and-frisk imposition would be one of the causes of the War of 1812. [image] An engraving of the Tonquin at the entrance to the Columbia, from the Oregon historical Society While the captain was the right sort for dealing with a military crew and worked well within the rigid specifications of a military regimen, he was not so adept at controlling a crew that was not exactly military, and most of whom were not even American citizens. Also aboard were shareholders in Astor’s company, a dozen clerks, four tradesmen and a baker’s dozen rough and tumble voyageurs from what is now Canada. He also had a lot to learn about dealing with locals and trade negotiating. The ship was challenged to endure near continual onslaught, whether from the elements, a pursuing ship, or the captain’s personality. He got along so well with the crew that they took to speaking with each other in their native tongues, which Thorn did not speak. And more than once he intentionally set sail while tardy returnees were still on land. His rigidity made for a dark passage. And his sometimes cavalier attitude towards the survival of his own men is breathtaking. He might be charged with depraved indifference today. Along with a certain Captain Queeg, I was reminded of a scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Consider here Thorn as the king (although Arthur seems quite a bit less rigid) and the castle residents as his crew. The Overland Party was led by Wilson Price Hunt, a young (27) businessman who had worked with fur-traders in St Louis. A polar opposite to Thorn, Hunt was someone who sought, above all else, to construct consensus. The Overland group did not exactly have a roadmap to their destination. The route they took followed in the footsteps of Lewis and Clark for a time, but they had to carve a new trail at a certain point, into completely unknown and not terribly welcoming territory. [image] Despite the term Overland, much of the Overland Party’s travel was done by water, on rivers. This is the sort of conveyance the Voyageurs were accustomed to paddling - image from the Canadian Encyclopedia Far too much of their river time was spent in water of this sort. [image] From the Susquehanna Chapter of the Wooden Canoe Heritage Association In a blog entry on Stark’s site, he writes The big Montreal freight canoes could be as long as 40 feet, yet made of lightweight birchbark, and capable of carrying three or four tons of supplies or furs, propelled by ten or twelve voyageurs.It is amazing how many times the Overland Party was assisted by Native Americans. But there were also plenty of locals who were not exactly happy to see them. How the Overland group interact with the natives they encounter is a significant element of the story. How they survived, (or didn’t) is the stuff of adventure yarns. How Hunt herded his pack of cats (and sometimes didn’t) is very impressive. This was definitely not a crew to belong to if you walked on four limbs. Resources became extremely scarce, and desperate measures had to be taken. There is even a hint that starving sojourners might have partaken of the special meat. Some characters stand out here. My favorite is Marie Dorian, a native woman who had married a Metis named Pierre. He dragged her along on the Overland trek, along with her two small (2 and 4 year old) children even thought she was pregnant at the time. Hers is a particularly poignant profile in courage and endurance. There are a few legendary names that folks in this tale encounter, including Sacagawea and Daniel Boone. The story is the thing here, and focus remains on the travails of the travelers. But there are also excellent, informative asides, relevant to the tale, about various and sundry things. One tells why sea otter pelts are so highly valued. Another looks into the societal composition of some native groups, looking at their sources of wealth and social organization. Consideration is given to how the locals react to newcomers, and why, citing past experiences. There is also ongoing consideration for the impact on the enterprise of potential and then kinetic British-US hostilities. We know today that the nation did indeed expand to the West Coast, but the details are plenty soft in your recollections, I will wager. It might not even be that you (or I) forgot, but that we never really knew. Astoria offers an excellent way to patch that gap. It will excite you in the process. This is real-life adventuring, life and death on the line, people you will admire and scoundrels who will make you hiss. What a fun read, and what an informative book! It may or may not be a far, far better read than you have ever had before, but I cannot urge you strongly enough to climb, trek, paddle, or sail to your nearest book-trading post. This journey to Astoria is very definitely a trip worth taking. PS – the volume I worked from was an ARE, so did not have all the materials expected to be in the final hardcover edition. Spaces were left for illustrations but I did not get to see those. One thing I did see is that there is a very helpful Cast of Characters section at the front of the book, and another at the back called The Fate of the Astorians, which I thought was pretty cool. Published ----------Hardcover - March 4, 2014 ----------Trade paperback - February 10, 2015 Review first posted - December 8, 2013 This review is cross-posted on Coot’s Reviews =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s personal and FB pages Here is a link to the Wiki entry for the Tonquin – but if you have not yet read the book, be warned that there is very spoilerish info there. Although I expect the physique of this re-enactor might not match the bulkier torsos of actual voyageurs, this might give you an idea of what was considered proper attire for the proud paddlers [image] So there it is. I was wondering what had happened to that shirt. For more on voyageurs check out this piece from McGill University Astor could not have suspected that Astoria would become a familiar site in many films. Here is a list of a bunch. It includes The Goonies, Short Circuit, Kindergarten Cop, The Black Stallion and plenty more. John Day was a member of the Overland Party. He does run into a bit of trouble at the mouth of what was then the Mah-hah River, along the Columbia. It was later renamed for him. A geologically notable site through which that river wanders was also named for him. Day himself was never near there. I have had the pleasure and there are a few shots in my Northwest set on Flickr that offer a glimpse of the striking landscape. The National Park Service site for John Day NP is definitely worth a look Among the places the Overland Party encountered, one that held great hope for them was seeing one particular Mountain chain. The three mountains were hailed by the travelers, Wilson Price Hunt, weighted by his Yankee reserve and need for geographic grounding in this unmapped wilderness, called them the Pilot Knobs. The buoyant French-Canadian voyageurs called the as they saw them, the Trois Tetons,--“the three breasts.”It’s the voyageurs’ name, which has stuck for these mountains that tower above today’s Jackson Hole, Wyoming.[image] Grand indeed Also, that image I use as my GR avatar to spare you the crypt-worthy image of my ancient puss is from the Tetons as well. Today’s city of Astoria, Oregon has a nice site Sadly, while I have been to Astoria, and even visited its Astor Column, it was while my wife and I were in a bit of a rush, heading back to our temporary camp in Portland from a trip to the coast. Did not get there until far too late in the day to get any decent photographs. Then, assisted by considerable fog, we inadvertently took a scenic route that featured a seemingly endless series of blind turns, and was inhabited by large numbers of bulky four-legged creatures standing in the middle of the road and appearing only moments before impact…well, in my white-knuckled imagination, anyway. Having read the book, I would dearly love to return to Astoria, in daylight, and have much more of a clue than I had then what it was all about. ...more |
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2
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Dec 03, 2013
not set
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Dec 04, 2013
not set
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Dec 03, 2013
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Hardcover
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0062285505
| 9780062285508
| 0062285505
| 3.95
| 20,491
| Mar 04, 2014
| Mar 04, 2014
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it was amazing
| What matters in prison is not who you are but what you want to become. This is the place of true imagination.Rene Denfeld, the author of The Enchante What matters in prison is not who you are but what you want to become. This is the place of true imagination.Rene Denfeld, the author of The Enchanted, has the heart of a warrior and the soul of a poet. She has written a novel about identity, understanding, the roots of crime, the reality of prison life, the possibility for redemption, and the ability of people to use imagination to rise beyond the purely material to the transcendent. There are three primary and several very strongly written secondary characters whose stories are interwoven. In the death row of a stone prison somewhere in America, a nameless inmate, entombed in a lightless dungeon, has constructed a fantastical appreciation for the world he inhabits, bringing a glorious light into his Stygian darkness. The most wonderful enchanted things happen here—the most enchanted things you can imagine. I want to tell you while I still have time, before they close the black curtain and I take my final bow.In reading, he has the freedom his external circumstances preclude. And he interprets his surroundings through a magical lens. The rumblings of tectonic activity become golden horses racing underground. He sees small men with hammers in the walls (a particularly Lovecraftian notion) and flibber-gibbets, beings who feed on the warmth of death itself. He visualizes his very sweat rising to join the atmosphere and raining down on China. He is also able to perceive feelings and needs in others, observing from his isolation, and offering a bit of narrator omniscience. That he is able to find enchantment in this darkest of situations is breathtaking. I was reminded, in a way, of Tolkien’s Gollum, the battle between the darkness and the light within a single being. But enchantment is not reserved for the inmate alone. [image] Rene Denfeld An investigator, known only as The Lady, is working on the case of a prisoner named York. After being on death row for twelve years, York had decided to abstain from any further appeals. The Lady had been hired by York’s attorneys to look into his case. We follow her as she unearths a horrific past that helps explain how York came to be where and who he is. She has a history of her own that informs her ability to relate to her clients. Once upon a time she needed a redoubt of her own. What did she think about during those endless hours in the laurel hedge? As a child, she made an imaginary world so real that she could feel and taste it today. Sometimes she would imagine that she and her mom lived on a magical island where the trees dripped fruit. Other times they traveled all over the world, just the two of them, like the best of buddies. In all the stories her mom was whole and she was safe. When she left the laurel hedge, she would bend the thick green leaves back, to hide where she had been. And when she came back the next day, crawling with a sandwich she had made of stale bread with the mold cut off, and hardened peanut butter from the jar, the magic would be waiting for her.She has enchantment in her adult life as well, while pursuing her investigation, as she is dazzled by some of the natural beauty she encounters. A fallen priest tends to the spiritual needs of the inmates, but he guards a secret that he desperately needs to confess. While he offers what comfort he can to the inmates, who can really see him? Who can forgive him? Much of this novel is about seeing and being seen, of crime, punishment and forgiveness. The Lady’s role is to see the prisoners, see their history, see what lies beneath the awful exterior. She is respected and admired, but not much seen herself. Many of the inmates and guards get by precisely because they succeed in remaining unseen. Prison is a dangerous place in which to be seen. Those who see might use that vision for dark purposes. Denfeld lifts a wet rock to reveal the maggot-ridden structure of unofficial prison governance, the corruption and cruelty that permeates this world, even with a fair warden nominally in charge. Corrupt guards ally with brutish alpha inmates for their mutual gain. There is considerable detail about prison life, including such things as why metal food trays are used instead of plastic, how the bodies of the deceased are handled, what events are considered disruptive and what are considered ameliorative, and even some history of the prison, including reasons for elements of its design. She also looks through the eyes of the warden and the guards, offering keen insight. The story lines include learning what The Lady discovers as she looks into York’s past, following the travails of a new, young, white-haired prisoner, seeing how corruption in the prison operates, and accumulating bits of the nameless prisoner’s story. There are indeed monsters inside the stone walls, as there are monsters without, both drawn to the despoiling of innocence and beauty. But in this pit of ultimate despair, where all hope is lost, there is magic of another sort. Life may be harsh and death may be near, but welcoming the golden subterranean steeds, attending to the little men with hammers, imagining elements of one’s self traversing the planet, traveling along with the characters in a book, seeing, really seeing others, can lift one beyond the cares of the physical world. Can there be redemption for the horrific crimes these condemned men have committed? Should they die for their crimes, whether they want to or not? Might it be a harsher punishment, even crueler, to keep them alive? Denfeld has a considerable history. She is an investigator for death-row inmates, and thus the model for The Lady. Her knowledge of the prison world is well applied here. She wrote a piece for the New York Times Magazine on the impact on children of being raised by cognitively impaired parents, a subject that is significant in the story. In addition, her 2007 book, All God’s Children informs her knowledge of the often violent world of street families, young criminals in particular. She is also an amateur boxer. I would not mess with her. This is simply one of the most moving books I have ever read. Not only is the material heart-breaking, but the language Denfeld uses in her descriptions, the gentle magic of the imagination with which she imbues some of her characters is poetic and stunning. I hear them, the fallen priest and the lady. Their footsteps sound like the soft hush of rain over the stone floors. They have been talking, low and soft, their voices sliding like a river current that stops outside my cell. When I hear them talk, I think of rain and water and crystal-clear rivers, and when I hear them pause, it is like a cascade of water over falls.While there is enough darkness in The Enchanted to fill a good-size dungeon, it is the moments of light, the beauty of language and imagination, and the triumph of spirit that will cast a spell over you that will last until you shuffle off this mortal coil. Published ----------Hardcover - 3/4/2014 ----------Trade paperback - 3/4/2015 This review was originally posted November 4, 2013 =============================EXTRA STUFF The author’s personal, Twitter, and Facebook pages Interviews -----with Jane Eaton Hamilton -----Denfeld and author Stephanie Feldman talk with each other about genre - Writing to genre stinks: Two debut novelists on the hard line between fantasy and realism — and why it doesn’t make sense - on Salon.com Items of interest -----2/11/2015 - The long list was announced today for The Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and NonFiction and The Enchanted was on it. -----August 11, 2017 - NY Times - GR friend Andrea clued me in to this very moving piece by Denfeld on adopting her own kids, another form of the heroism that is her life - Four Castaways Make a Family -----October 2, 2019 - Crimereads.com - Denfeld’s close call - MUST READ!!! - The Green River Killer and Me Other Denfeld books I have read and reviewed -----2019 - The Butterfly Girl (Naomi Cottle #2) -----2017 - The Child Finder (Naomi Cottle #1) ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Oct 25, 2013
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Oct 28, 2013
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Oct 25, 2013
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Hardcover
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0062276751
| 9780062276759
| 3.93
| 3,261
| Feb 04, 2014
| Feb 04, 2014
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it was amazing
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When Leroy Kervin was 24, a roadside bomb in Iraq parked him in a German hospital with fractures and a serious brain injury. Couldn’t talk. Couldn’t w
When Leroy Kervin was 24, a roadside bomb in Iraq parked him in a German hospital with fractures and a serious brain injury. Couldn’t talk. Couldn’t walk. Despite seven years of rehab and huge struggles to regain some of his normal functions, Leroy still suffers from acute PTSD, physical struggles, constant fear, and a fog-shrouded view of the world around him. So, when he wakes up one day miraculously clear-headed, and assumes that this respite is temporary, all he can think is that he will never return to the way things were. To make sure of that he decides to use this fleeting moment of personal reanimation to kill himself. Leroy’s decision brings together the main characters in Willy Vlautin’s look at what it is to be working class in 21st century America. I write, or hope to write, stories about the working class. I’ve always been a fan of stories about working people, and normal people and the day-to-day struggles they go through. – from interview at 13E Note EditionsFreddie McCall was the night man at the long term care facility where Leroy was living. He is roused by the commotion of Leroy plunging down a staircase onto some wooden stakes. Freddie calls 911 and sees that Leroy is taken to a hospital. …he held two kitchen towels over the main wound and stared at Leroy’s face. There was a two-inch cut on his cheek leaking blood, and a growing welt on his forehead. Freddie wanted to say something to comfort him, but every time he tried to speak he began to cry.Freddie has had a rough go of it himself, and gets why Leroy might want to end his suffering. McCall is the third generation living in his house, but he is among the many suffering under the burden of the number one cause of bankruptcy in the nation, medical bills. One of his daughters was born with dysplasia, required multiple surgeries to repair her hips and Freddie is sinking quickly in a quicksand of debt. And his wife took off with their kids to Vegas to live with her boyfriend. She didn’t take the bills with her. Freddie works two jobs, overnights at the group home and days at Logan’s Paint Store. He catches snatches of sleep when he can. There is no longer heat in his house because he was unable to pay the fuel bill. Desperate for money, he takes on a dodgy venture. In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets, and steal loaves of bread. – Anatole France from La Vie en fleurPauline is a nurse at the hospital where Leroy is taken. She tries to help take care of her father, who declines to bathe, wash or eat more than a very narrow list of things. Her mother abandoned her when she was a kid, leaving her in the care of a man who was mentally ill. She did not understand that at the time, but does now. Pauline lives with her pet rabbit Darla, and gets lonely, sometimes. But she has a friend she has known since childhood, and a heart that pulls her to connect with people. [image] the author - from Australian Broadcasting in 2010 One of the major elements in The Free is how just folks can care for each other in a pure way. I do believe in the kindness of strangers. One of the great things about being in a band is you find that out. People really help struggling bands. Over the years people have been so nice to me and my band, helped us out, fed us, put us up for the night…It’s easy to be scared and cynical. All you have to do is read the paper. I know I have a rough time that way. But I do believe humans, although violent and destructive, have a great ability for kindness. – from interview at 13E Note EditionsFreddie looks out for the residents at the group home and their families, looking for ways to spare them unnecessary costs, even if it means having to do extra work himself. Pauline comes across a runaway teen girl, and goes to extraordinary lengths trying to save her from certain destruction. For all the hoopla given the wealthy when they make large contributions to this or that, it is the lower economic end that actually gives more, and Vlautin is well aware of that. One of the most surprising, and perhaps confounding, facts of charity in America is that the people who can least afford to give are the ones who donate the greatest percentage of their income. In 2011, the wealthiest Americans—those with earnings in the top 20 percent—contributed on average 1.3 percent of their income to charity. By comparison, Americans at the base of the income pyramid—those in the bottom 20 percent—donated 3.2 percent of their income. The relative generosity of lower-income Americans is accentuated by the fact that, unlike middle-class and wealthy donors, most of them cannot take advantage of the charitable tax deduction, because they do not itemize deductions on their income-tax returns. – from Why the Rich Don't Give to Charity by Ken Stern in the April 2013 AtlanticAnd this does not even take into account the in-kind contributions people make with their time and labor. Leroy’s suicide attempt was not successful and he hangs on in a hospital room. Awake, he is in constant pain, so he decides to remove himself from the realm of the real. Most of our experience of Leroy is in his sci-fi fantasies. I was reminded of Billy Pilgrim’s escape to Tralfamador in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. Leroy’s adventures contain elements of memory and of fantasy. They are also where Vlautin becomes most metaphorically direct in his critique of 21st century America. This is a world in which people are marked as military-worthy or not, but the mark eventually becomes a mark of Cain and bands of vigilantes hunt them. There is a lot in here about racism, the media, the mean-spirited world in which we live. Leroy’s real-world girlfriend, Jeannette, is a major character in Leroy’s dream-life and nurtures him there the way she nurtured him in real life. It is sometimes difficult to tell where memory leaves off and fantasy picks up. Religion comes in for some attention here, and not in a supportive way. Religious faith in Vlautin’s universe is a bludgeon used by the unscrupulous, the ignorant, or both to inflict their demands on the young and the powerless. Christian charity in the land of The Free is an oxymoron. One of the core problems of our economy is personified by an owner who is completely incompetent, but owns and benefits from having a business only because his father left it to him. Detroit is like rich people. You always hear stories where the dad comes up the rough way, struggles and works harder than everyone else. He builds something, something of value. He spends his whole life doing it. Then his kids come along and take over. They’re so well off that they don’t understand how hard it is to create something good. They just see the money and run with that until it quits. Then everything is lost and even the good idea gives out…I was most moved by the stories of Freddy and Pauline. Leroy’s story is certainly compelling, but I found it the least engaging of the trio. The one-step-removed methodology used for him kept me feeling one-step–removed as well. If the option were available, I would have knocked my rating down to a 4.5, but the power of the rest moves me to keep this one at five stars. I expect that Willy Vlautin will begin to gain recognition as one of America’s finest artists, a modest guy who embraces his humble beginnings and works to offer us a look at what is becoming the real America for increasing numbers of us. To all of you who are not doing so great in our new two-tiered economy, I strongly encourage you to get into Willy Vlautin. He has been into you for a long time. Posted – October 10, 2013 Publication date - February 4, 2014 (Trade Paperback) [image] [image] [image] [image] ============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s personal and FB pages Willy Vlautin, born in 1967, grew up in Reno, Nevada. He was a working class kid, raised by a single mom. He was never a great student but had a feel for music and for story. He is one of the founders of the alt-country band Richmond Fontaine . Vlautin’s stories make up much of the lyrics used in the band’s songs. There is a fair bit of crossover between the songs and Willy’s other writing. The Free was his fourth novel. His first, Motel Life has been made into a film with Emile Hirsch, Stephen Dorff and Kris Kristofferson, among others. It was released in November 2013. His second novel was the award-winning Northline, and the 2010 release, Lean on Pete, was also widely praised. Vlautin continues to write songs and stories. He lives outside Portland, Oregon these days, when not travelling with the band, but would love to return to Reno someday. His writing calls to mind John Steinbeck and his musical work summons images of Woody Guthrie. He is one of the best writers of his generation. A promotional vid for The Free Wiki page on Willy A short story by WV Interview with 13eNote Harper Audio has posted four short audio bits on Soundcloud in which Willy talks about how he came to write The Free. Vlautin, talking about the book, and reading a few excerpts, is backed by haunting clips of his own music. This is must-hear stuff if you have read the book, and might inform a decision on whether or not to read it if you have not. 2/18/14 - attended a reading. Willy is amazing. Other Vlautin books I have reviewed -----Don't Skip Out on Me -----Northline ...more |
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ebook
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006228553X
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| 17,813
| Feb 02, 2014
| Feb 11, 2014
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really liked it
| I wondered if faith were not a form of pretendingYou’re in Luck! Matthew Quick, author of The Silver Linings Playbook, has written an incredibly movi I wondered if faith were not a form of pretendingYou’re in Luck! Matthew Quick, author of The Silver Linings Playbook, has written an incredibly moving story, populated with his usual range of damaged, quirky, lovable characters, but containing a core of significant philosophical substance. [image] A man called “Q” Bartholomew Neil is 38 years old. He keeps a journal of interesting things. He has never held a job. He has lived with his mother all his life, and the two have always shared a close bond. His father has never really been in the picture. Bartholomew can probably be found somewhere on the autism scale. Although he has never spoken to her, he is smitten with a young lady at his local library. He calls her the Girlbrarian. He has an angry man in his stomach who keeps telling him awful things. He has no friends, but he has a young grief counselor, although she has troubles of her own. After a prolonged illness, Mom passed away. For the first time in his life, Bartholomew must take care of himself, a fledgling who needs to grow a pair…of wings. The Good Luck of Right Now is the story of how Bartholomew creates a new family/home/life/nest for himself out of the shards of the past and the flotsam of the present. The cast’s oddities are based in their personalities and in their troubles, and there is plenty of damage to go around. Mom is, well, dead. Not much to be done about that. Father McNamee is not just their local parish priest, but a close friend of the family. The padre has issues of his own, and after not hearing God speaking to him for a stretch, decides, from the pulpit, to chuck the collar, and pursue what he believes to be his personal mission from God. And he’s not even one of these guys. [image] from Wikimedia If Father McNamee is not enough, how about Bartholemew’s new friend, Max, who charmingly uses expletives as adjectives, nouns, and verbs, particularly the f-bomb, and has issues with paranoia, particularly as it pertains to therapists who may or may not be alien abductors. The Girlbrarian completes the core cast, a quiet, but very dedicated library worker, several steps further outside the norm than that other librarian you may have heard of. She is very retiring, and with good reason The story is told by Bartholomew, writing letters to his more or less imaginary friend, Richard Gere (think Woody Allen in Play it Again, Sam). Mom had been a huge fan, and in her waning days imagined that Bartholomew was someone other than who he was. Bartholomew played along, pretending, for her sake. Now, he writes to Gere as if they were buds, telling him about his life and ongoing challenges. [image] from www.japanese-buddhism.com He may never have taken care of himself before. He may begin this journey friendless. He may communicate with a person who has no idea he is alive. He may have more than his share of oddities, but Bartholomew is a good egg with an outsized heart, an admirable openness and an eagerness to learn, and to help others. But there is so much more than quirkiness and warmth to this novel. As with Silver Linings, there is consideration for how one faces the downsides of our existence. Is there some sort of balance in the universe? What is worth dismissing and what is worth believing in? And can believing, or pretending make it so? Where does delusion leave off and faith begin? Like the haloed saints depicted in stained glass at Saint Gabriel’s, Mom seemed to be guided by divinity. Her madness appeared holy. She was bathed in light.Some part of Bartholomew believes that Richard Gere cosmically reads the letters he writes. And a part of his affection for Gere has to do with Gere’s Buddhism and alliance with the Dalai Lama. His one-sided communications are reminiscent of how the prayerful might feel about a favored saint. Father McNamee believes that God has spoken to him, and hopes He will again. He spends long hours on his knees, in prayer. Max believes in aliens, and swearing. Others believe that bad and hurt people will get better with counseling. Lest one think there is nothing but sunshine here, let me disabuse you of the notion. Bartholomew has come in for the sort of treatment one might expect from moron bullies confronted with the unfamiliar. His home has been the object of unpleasantness as well. In fact there is a fair bit of abuse across the cast of characters here, all off-screen. It is how they cope with life’s challenges that is at issue, not the obstacles per se. You might want to keep an eye out for avian references. I counted thirteen, but stopped counting after a point. They permeate, and work well to illuminate character and events. And if you are fond of cats, there is one scene in particular that is at least as uplifting as a good scratch behind the ears. [image] My nominee for a star turn in the role of Max's cat, Alice, is the female who shares my bed almost every day, the sultry calico, Madison Toss in some human organs on public display, and peculiar therapeutic environments for good measure. [image] Charles Guiteau’s brain [image] Brother Andre’s Heart from HolyCrossUsa.org What’s not to like? Very little. There is an event in which Bartholomew’s advisor offers guidance that seemed to me outside the realm of the likely. Just what the Good Luck of Right Now consists of is explained in the book. It has to do, generically, with there being some balance in the universe, but I will not dump details here. I must say, though, that, I do not think this particular philosophical view stands up to close scrutiny, at least not to mine. Yet it certainly is an uplifting, and comforting way of looking at the world, and very much informs the characters and actions of this tale. One can look at the world through one’s own lens and still appreciate the landscape as seen through Quick’s. This book is a delight, well-paced, moving, (yes, you will need tissues) and content-rich. You might even feel, when you get around to reading this, that your luck will have taken a turn for the better. Published - February 11, 2014 [image] [image] [image] [image] ==============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s personal, Twitter and FB pages Canadian Parliamentary Cats - (view spoiler)[OK. This is not really a spoiler, but I wanted to include this stuff and thought it would clutter up the review even more than I have already done. The Cats of Parliament Hill figure in the story. I will refer you to the Wikipedia page for that history. Don’t worry. You will not spoil anything about the book by reading this. Here is a particularly wonderful FB page if you want to see more shots of the place and it’s erstwhile inhabitants. Sadly, it was shut down, (the place, not the website) as of January 2013. So here is a sample of shots from that page. [image] Cat posse [image] One of the cats of Parliament Hill [image] Standing Guard- well lying down, actually (hide spoiler)] Here's a video of Q talking about the book 2/12/14 - Here is a radio interview of Q by local radio institution Leonard Lopate - most definitely worth a listen Full, well, partial, well, at least a little disclosure While I can be bought, this review is not evidence of the fact. I received the ARE from my Book Goddess (no, not Madison) who works at HarperCollins. The opinions expressed here are mine alone. ...more |
Notes are private!
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Jul 30, 2013
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Jul 31, 2013
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Hardcover
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0062267493
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| Sep 10, 2014
| Feb 04, 2014
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it was amazing
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**spoiler alert** George had imagined this moment many times but had somehow never imagined the outcome. Liana was not simply an ex-girlfriend who**spoiler alert** George had imagined this moment many times but had somehow never imagined the outcome. Liana was not simply an ex-girlfriend who had once upon a time broken George’s heart; she was also, as far as George still knew, a wanted criminal, a woman whose transgressions were more in line with those of Greek tragedy than youthful indiscretion. She had, without doubt, murdered one person and most likely murdered another. George felt the equal weights of moral responsibility and indecision weigh down upon him.There are lies, damned lies and then there is Liana Dector, falsehood on feet, the sort of dame who puts the fatale in femme fatale. Of course she was also George’s long lost sweetheart from college, the one. George is a decent sort, an unexceptional guy who had the misfortune to cross paths with the wrong woman at a tender age, and never really recovered. She is the one who has been haunting his dreams ever since, the one for whom he would drop all others, the one for whom he would do anything, really, anything. When she walks back into his life what she asks does not seem all that much, really. Of course if it hadn’t been all that much, then George might have been spared a whole lotta trouble. He’d known he was going to say yes to Liana even before he knew what it was that she wanted. He’d known the moment he’d let her into his apartment. He also knew that Liana was as trustworthy as a startled snake. [image] Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity - from britannica.com I am sure there are more than a few of us, particularly we gullible guys, who have a page of our private books dedicated to one person in particular, the one who broke our hearts the worst, the ones who came into, or more likely passed through, our lives at a point when the people we were becoming had not yet formed, when the clay was still damp, and left an impression, like a teen tagger in wet concrete. How does that scarring affect the rest of our lives? What directions do we take, or avoid, as a result? Two words work to describe George Foss once Liana returns to wrapping her desires around his dreams, poor bastard. [image] Peter Swanson - image from his Instagram pages The story is told in two time lines. The earlier covers the time when Liana and George first got together, in college, and George’s attempt to find out what was really going on with his gf of a semester when she takes a powder. This includes learning about Liana’s life in her Florida home. The latter, and larger stream is contemporary, and includes a crooked ex boyfriend from whom Liana snatched half a mill, an impressively violent enforcer sort, George’s on-again-off-again gf, a mysterious house well off the beaten path, and a payload of diamonds. There is indeed a mystery here. Can anything Liana says be believed? What is the truth of her tales, both now and in the past? What is the nature of her relationship with her erstwhile bf and with the thuggish Donnie Jenks? [image] Mary Astor and Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon - Image was taken from Oscars.org A few cops cross the stage but there is no primary PI in this noir tale. This book is less Raymond Chandler, and more North by Northwest. Liana’s favorite book is Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca, and you might extract some value by keeping that in mind. George has a cat named Nora, which might be a nod to The Thin Man, which featured Nick and Nora Charles. But I expect that one is a stretch. Are the references to hot and cold calculated nods to The Postman Always Rings Twice, or are we going all taffy-like again? Liana is a person with several aliases, and that always makes one suspect there is content in here about identity. How do we become who we are? Can that change? What if people cannot or do not accept us for who we are? Can we ever get away from who we were? Notions of this sort abound. I had become this different person, this person I’d rather have been—you know, in school, doing well, with a boyfriend, a boyfriend like you—but it was like I had a secret disease, or there was this clock inside of me, ticking like a heart, and at any moment an alarm would go off and [the girl I was then] would no longer exist. She’d die and I’d have to go back to being Liana Dector.There are always some hesitations. I thought the notion of the book’s title was less than meets the eye. Few of the subsidiary characters come to life, much. But when you are flipping through pages as fast as I did and you will, such things generate as much concern as notions of morality to a sociopath. The Girl With a Clock For a Heart is a must-read thriller. Once you pick it up you will not be able to put it down, unless of course, that special someone from that special time all those years back should show up at your favorite reading spot and ask you for a favor. One look in those eyes and you know you won’t be able to say “no.” [image] Lauren Bacall - From noirwhale.com ==============================INTERVIEW Peter Swanson graciously agreed to answer a few questions about his book. The responses here have been only minimally edited: PLACE How important is place in The Girl What’s most important is the difference, class and otherwise, between New England and the fictional Sweetgum, Florida. Liana wants to reinvent herself, and part of that is leaving the town she lived in and never coming back. And when George visits Sweetgum it is important that he is out of his element.Could it have taken place in locations other than Connecticut, Boston/New Essex, Florida? The important thing would be the differences between the locations. The book is currently under option by a British film company, and writer/director James Marsh is working on an adaptation. I spoke with him about setting the story in England, which is his plan right now. He wants to substitute Oxford for Boston and a seaside town in East Anglia for Sweetgum. I thought this completely worked.Why Tulum, and not, say Rio, Cancun, or the French Riviera? The short answer is that I’ve been to Tulum and haven’t been to Rio or the French Riviera. The longer answer is that I just think there’s something incredibly evocative about Tulum, those Mayan ruins hovering above the ocean. WRITING On your blogger profile, you list yourself as a writer of crime fiction and poetry. Which came first? Poetry came first. I’ve been writing it since I was a kid, and for most of my twenties and thirties I worked very hard at becoming the best poet I could be. I’m not sure that worked out quite the way I had planned, but I wrote a few poems that, when I read them today, don’t make me physically ill. So that’s good.Do they get equal time or is one dominant? Right now, fiction is entirely dominant. I only write poetry now when I get an idea for a poem, and that happens very infrequently. I think I’m tapped out on poems. I don’t really write confessional poetry—e.g. Grandpa’s funeral, running into ex-girlfriend, etc.—so I sometimes feel like I’ve said all I can say in poetry form. This is one of the reasons I decided to do The Hitchcock Sequence, a sonnet for every Hitchcock film. It gave me a subject matterYou have written a lot of short crime fiction. Have you considered other genres, say police procedural, or horror or sci-fi? I’ve written some horror short fiction and a little bit of sci-fi. It’s a matter of ideas, more than anything, and almost all of the ideas I get fall into the realm of mystery/crime. I like the idea of writing a solid police procedural but that involves a lot of research, and I’m pretty lazy about research.When did you decide you wanted to write novels? I started writing novels about ten years ago. At first, I just wanted to see if I could do it. I wrote a classic whodunit in which the amateur detective is a visiting writer/poet at a university. It was hard work, but more than that, it was a lot of fun. I loved spending a year in one fictional world, and I loved the feeling of finishing the novel, getting to the last page.When did you start working on this one? Was it a prolonged gestation? The Girl with a Clock for a Heart began life as a novella. It was essentially the college-years section of the book. My agent was the one who suggested that it could be turned into a book. The whole process probably took about two and a half years.You are writing sonnets for all of Alfred Hitchcock's films. Is that project complete? All the sonnets are written, although a few them definitely need to be tweaked, or even re-written. I’ve been sending the poems out individually to journals and online magazines, and several have been published. At some point I’ll see if I can find a publisher for the whole sequence.What impact did Hitchcock's work have on your writing in The Girl? Hitchcock is my favorite filmmaker, and he’s a big influence for that reason alone. Out of his 53 films there are at least ten or so that I re-watch frequently so they just seep in. James Marsh commented to me that he thought there was a real Vertigo vibe going on in The Girl with a Clock for a Heart, and that was news to me, although maybe he’s right. Definitely Irene is based on Midge, the Barbara Bel Geddes character from Vertigo. THE GIRL What was the spark that started your engine in writing The Girl? I was thinking about the difference between going to college now and going to college when I did, back in the 1980s. Nowadays, most teens have an established online identity. When you arrive as a freshman and meet someone new you probably run back to your room and look them up on facebook and find out everything about them. But in the olden days all these kids arrived in college, and they had a real opportunity to reinvent themselves. No one knew anything about anyone. That was the spark that led me to wondering how far a freshman year re-invention could go.When you were writing did you have particular faces in mind, people you know, relatives, neighbors, actors? I do and I don’t. Usually, when I start writing a character, I picture what they look like, often using actors, but as I keep writing that connection seems to fade. As I said before, when I pictured Irene in this book I was picturing Midge from Vertigo. Short blonde hair, glasses. But she’s the only character in the book that I had a real specific person I thought about.[image] Barbara Bel Geddes as Midge in Vertigo I heard that there is a sequel in the works, There actually isn’t. The book I’m working on right now is a new standalone thriller. I would write a sequel but I would need to come up with an idea first that would get the characters back together, and that hasn’t happened yet. TECHNIQUE What is your physical writing methodology re when and how long? I work at home in the morning, on my computer. I write 500 words a day on whatever it is I happen to be working on. That makes it sound like I’m incredibly disciplined but I do a whole lot of procrastinating before I start to write. Sometimes it’s reading, and sometimes it’s looking at mindless stuff online, or playing Candy Crush on my phone, but after doing that for a while, I eventually settle down into writing. I write my 500 words and then I quit. The most important part for me is that I’m writing every day, plus I think it’s important to read what you’ve written that day before you fall asleep. A lot of work can get done during a good night’s sleep. In that case there are a lot of us who are incredibly productive. Thanks so much, Peter, for so generously offering your time. Best of luck with The Girl. I hope a lot of people get a chance to read it. Publication Date - February 4, 2014 [image] [image] [image] [image] ==============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s personal, Twitter, Instagram and FB pages Swanson’s web site has a cornucopia of samples of his Hitchcock poems, other poetry, short fiction and non-fiction, and is well worth checking out Armchair Audience is Swanson’s site for writing on “Books read. Movies seen. TV Watched” A fun site that deals in you-know-what, noirwhale.com, which includes a lovely list of further links ...more |
Notes are private!
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Jul 21, 2013
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Jul 30, 2013
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Jul 21, 2013
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Hardcover
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