What are you reading the week of July 31, 2021?

I'm about halfway through Earth System History. It's a decent textbook, but too introductory for what I wanted to know.

As of now I'm 80% done with A Fine and Private Place, 50% done with Monsters and Myths, 30% done with Building Washington, and am just starting The Anarchy (and expect to be working on this book through August).

Finished Death of a Dude by Rex Stout, in which Nero Wolfe joins Archie Goodwin at Lily Rowan’s cabin in Montana! It was a little different, not only being set outside the good old brownstone but with Saul Panzer flying to St. Louis to investigate, although no action takes place there. And NW enjoys a real Montana trout deal, along with some foods he didn’t enjoy, like canned tomato soup, but he endured with good grace.

Currently finishing up Larry McMurtry’s Berrybender Narratives with Book 4, Folly and Glory. Have enjoyed this series very much.

Read Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid this week, and also A Tangled Web by Leslie Rule. Rule is the daughter of late true crime writer Ann Rule, whose books I've enjoyed for years, and Leslie is as talented a writer as her mother was.

I've just begun Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo, but haven't read enough to form an opinion beyond "so far, so good".

I'm about to start The Corporal Was a Pitcher: The Courage of Lou Brissie by Ira Berkow. Brissie was a top pitching prospect whose career was interrupted, as many were, but World War Two. Receiving a severe leg injury in an artillery attack in 1944, Brissie nevertheless went on to pitch in the Major Leagues from 1947 through 1953.

Finished: The Fallen Kingdom by Elizabeth May (YA)
Finale and #3 in the "Falconer" trilogy

Current: The Betrayed by Kiera Cass (YA)
The conclusion and sequel to The Betrothed.

still reading Neuromancer, The Mists of Avalon, an d Ancestral Night.

I'm reading Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker for my book club. It's heavy but good.

Heaven, Texas – Susan Elizabeth Phillips
Digital audiobook read by Anna Fields
ZERO stars

Book # 2 in the Chicago Stars romance series.
From the book jacketIt’s Gracie Snow’s job as a new motion picture production assistant to get the legendary ex-football player, Bobby Tom Denton, back to his Texas hometown to begin shooting his first movie. Good luck with that. A head-spinning battle of the sexes – with Beauty waging war against Brains – except this male beauty has a fine intelligence, and brainy Gracie isn’t nearly as ordinary as she thinks.

My reactions:

No. Just No.

A “gentleman” does NOT play mind games for his own amusement to trick a virgin into succumbing to him so that he can then drop her like a hot potato when the fun is over. (Even if eventually, he will fall in love with her and propose, his intention from the outset is to just use her.) Past hurt does not give a man a free get-out-jail card to blackmail a woman into having sex (of course, he has secretly admired her for decades and would never “really” hurt her). There is nothing remotely romantic or appealing about these scenarios. Shame on Phillips for propagating such a misogynistic message.

Anna Fields does a reasonably good job of narrating the audiobook. She handles the many characters with skill and kept up a good pace. Too bad she had such dreadful material to perform.

A Long Petal Of the Sea – Isabel Allende
Book on CD performed by Edoardo Ballerini
4****

A family epic covering six decades of history from 1930s Spanish Civil War to 1990s in Chile.

This is the kind of historical fiction at which Allende excels. She seamlessly weaves the real historical events into the story line, while giving the reader characters that come alive on the page and about which we come to care.

She begins with Part 1: War and Exodus, set in the late 1930s in Spain, which is gripped by Civil War. The Dalmau family’s two sons, Guilem and Victor, are both serving at the front – Guilem as a soldier, Victor as a “doctor” (though he doesn’t yet have his degree). Meanwhile, back in Barcelona, Professor Dalmau has opened their home to Roser Bruguera, a young woman with remarkable musical ability and no family ties.

The story follows the Dalmaus as they flee Spain for France, and ultimately sail to Chile to start anew. It is on this voyage to Chile that they encounter the del Solars, a wealthy, influential family. Felipe, the eldest son, and Ofelia, their headstrong daughter will become intimately connected to the Dalmaus.

Among the characters are real-life figures: Salvador Allende, General Augusto Pinochet and Pablo Neruda. The title comes from Neruda’s description of his homeland; he defined Chile as a “long petal of sea and wine and snow…with a belt of black and white foam”.

Central to this work, as to all of Allende’s novels, are the strong women. Roser and Ofelia certainly take center stage. But the older women – Carme, Laura and Juana – are equally strong, resilient, intelligent and determined.

There are a few elements of magical realism, a literary device for which Allende is well-known. But this is not a central focus of the work, and I wouldn’t classify the book, as a whole, as magical realism.

Edoardo Ballerini does a marvelous job performing the audio version. He has a gift for language and for making each character uniquely recognizable. 5***** for his narration.

My summer reading turned goofy!
I've got serious stuff I keep meaning to get to, but please,
when:
Taken By The Gay Unicorn Biker by Chuck Tingle crosses your path, you don't say no! I found it while browsing my similar libraries here on LT.
It's happy, stupid, crazy, unicorn-on-human queer porn. Give it a try!

I finished Last Bus to Woodstock by Colin Dexter and dropped it in the
Free Little Library box up the street. No more Inspector Morse for me.
So now I'm filling my mystery slot with Three Black Bags by Marion Polk Angellotti. It's a 1922 mystery/spy/international intrigue/romance that no one knows about. I have the only copy on LT. I found it at The Green Hand, a great used bookstore in Portland, ME. It's a lot like the early Hitchcock films The Thirty-Nine Steps and The Lady Vanishes. Three strangers with identical black travel bags are seated together with three other people in a train compartment in transit from Paris to Berlin. The fun begins when one bag owner is arrested and dragged on the train. And then... one of the remaining passengers murders another while the rest sleep. Having a great time with it.

Let's throw in a Louis L'Amour, Silver Canyon.

And for plays, right now it's Twelfth Night - Shakespeare
One of the very silly comedies.

Finished up July with nine reads and one DNF. Best book of the month was The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, and the Sad Sack Award goes to an LTER, The Lake House at Lenashee.

Just finished the first read for August, Nowhere Else on Earth, which is a kind of coming-of-age / memoir / love story set in North Carolina during the waning days of the Civil War.

Next up is another LTER, No Names to Be Given by Julia Brewer Daily.

I’m reading
Hour of the Witch by Chris Bohjalian

Finishing Miracle Creek which I started years ago and my library loan ended.

Currently reading:

1. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
2. The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Milk, M.D.

Finishing tonight:

3. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

Reading a recently published on Amazon book called Mystical Utterances in America, by Douglas Spiegel (Oddly interesting– Highly recommend), h also giving a first time read to Catcher in the Rye... (Not sure how all these years. went by and I have never read it before.)

https://www.amazon.com/Mystical-Utterances-America-Vol-1/dp/B099TMN16N/ref=sr_1_...

https://www.amazon.com/Catcher-Rye-J-D-Salinger/dp/0316769177/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=...

Decided to put down Like A Sword Wound....not in the mood for historical melodrama. Don't rule out giving it a try.

Next up for reading is Curl, a collection of poetry by Romanian poet, T.O. Bobe.

I just spent a lovely afternoon in a hammock by a lake reading the charming, poignant, fantastical Curl.

Next up for reading is The Makioka Sisters by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki.

starting this OverDrive audio ~

The Hollywood Spy: A Maggie Hope Mystery, #10
by Susan Elia MacNeal

I finished The Corporal Was a Pitcher: The Courage of Lou Brissie by Ira Berkow. This is a fascinating, well-written book biography. Lou Brissie's story is quite something. A teenage pitching phenom in his native South Carolina in the late 1930s, Brissie interrupted his promising baseball career to enlist in the Army after Pearl Harbor. But Brissie's leg was shattered during an artillery attack in Italy in 1944 and he had to beg the doctors not to amputate. Luckily for Brissie, he found one Army doctor willing to try to save the leg. Brissie went through multiple operations--his leg bone was essentially fused together from the fragments the exploding artillery shell had left behind--and he had to wear a cumbersome brace to walk, let along pitch in the major leagues. And yet pitch in the major leagues, he did, and quite effectively, despite that leg brace and the essentially constant pain he endured. In fact, Brissie was extremely well known during the post-war years as an inspiration for wounded veterans and kids with handicaps. It's surprising and more than a bit sad that his story has been largely forgotten. I've written a bit more on this book on my 50-Book Challenge thread.

Next I'll be starting The Slave Ship: A Human History by Marcus Rediker, though I will have to set it aside when my copy of Braiding Sweetgrass arrives in the mail, as that is this month selection by my book group, and the group's meeting date is looming.

Finished reading Rabbit, Run, a good portrayal of a lost searching young man, but not exactly a fun read. By the end he's still running.

Finished listening to The Copenhagen Trilogy, a moving, excellent memoir.

Next up for listening i will finish True Evil by Greg Iles.

Men and Cartoons
Jonathan Lethem
3.5/5 stars
This is an imaginative short story collection by Lethem. I found this on the free shelf at our library and it looked intriguing. I was not disappointed; I enjoyed most of the stories and liked that they were written in different styles.

finished Neuromancer. started Victories Greater Than Death by Charlie Jane Anders.

A Gathering Of Old Men – Ernest J Gaines
4****

A dead man. A running tractor. A white woman who claims she shot him. A gathering of old men with shotguns. A sheriff who knows everyone is lying. A father who needs revenge.

What is so marvelous about this work is that Gaines tells it from a variety of viewpoints, as different characters narrate chapters. Candy Marshall is the woman who owns the plantation that has been in her family for generations. It is she who spreads the word among those in “the Quarters” that the men need to show up at Mattu’s place. By the time Sheriff Mapes is called and arrives there are dozens of elderly black men, each with a fired shotgun, though many can barely hold the gun let alone aim and fire it with any accuracy. One by one they tell their stories of how and why they shot Beau Bouton.

Meanwhile Beau’s brother, Gil, comes home to meet with his father, Fix, who wants nothing more than to call up his group of Klansmen to “take care of this problem.” It is Fix’s arrival that the group of old men is awaiting. One by one they tell their stories of how and why they shot Beau Bouton.

Their stories are simply but eloquently told. Oppression lasting for generations. Men who will not take it any longer. Their decision to stand up for what is right and against those who would continue the sins of the past has been coming for a long time and they are united and steadfast in their determination to see this through. And that includes NOT allowing some white woman, however well-intentioned, to “save” them. No, they will save themselves, or die trying.

Gaines’s writing is evocative of time and place. I can feel the humid heat, taste the dust that fills the air, hear the buzz of mosquitos as evening comes, smell the swamp and sweat. This is the second book by Gaines that I have read (and I’ve read A Lesson Before Dying three times), but I have all his works on my tbr. The world of literature lost a great writer when he passed on in 2019.

Okay, I finished it. I read and reviewed No Names to Be Given and even was moved to give it three stars. But I tell you, Joan Crawford could have acted the hell out of this and never had a shoulder pad out of place.

Moving on to something just for fun, Louis L'Amour's Comstock Lode, which is a little more tightly historical than a lot of his stuff but still manages to hit a lot of Western tropes.

My latest is The Keeper Of Lost Things by Ruth Hogan

The new thread is up over here.