What are you reading the week of September 25, 2021?

I finished In Search of the Indo-Europeans which I began earlier this year. Overall, I think that The Horse, the Wheel and Language is a better book on the subject. I'm almost through with Riccardino, the last, posthumously published, book in the Inspector Montalbano series. It's been a great deal of fun. I was up until 2am reading it.

Next up is Richard Powers' new novel, Bewilderment.

This morning I finished Fifty Words for Rain by Asha Lemmie. I really loved the story, but the ending left me like ???

I have about 100 pages left of The World Doesn't Require You: Stories by Rion Amilcar Scott which I hope to finish today.

Up next is Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut for Banned Books Week.

Happy Banned Books Week!

started this OverDrive audio selection ~

One by One
by Ruth Ware

I'm enjoying The Paris Library by Janet Skeslien Charles.

I love children's books by Katherine Paterson (she's The Bridge to Terabithia author), and I've put a couple that I haven't read on my reader. Now reading The Great Gilly Hopkins, and it's great. Very sad, but beautifully written like all of her books.

I'm about halfway through Indian Summer by Effie McAbee Hulbert. This is an obscure one, a family memoir about the life of the Indian tribes, and their interactions with white settlers, in the Anderson Valley region of Mendocino County, CA, in the mid- to late-1800s and into the 20th century. The book was published in the 1980s by the Anderson Valley Historical Society, of which I am now on the board.

still reading Tonight You're Dead, Empire of the Vampire, and Constance.

I'm in various stages of Rosewater Redemption, Southern Gambit, and Pontiac Concept and Show Cars.

>1 fredbacon: I've read both and "In Search of the Europeans" is a considerably older book; I also remember the authors of the other work being snappier writers.

We Were Feminists Once
Andi Zeisler
3/5 stars
This book came out in 2016 and talks about how feminism was politicized, taken over and turned into a media trend without any real change in how women are treated at work and in the media. I thought the author made some good points.

finished Tonight You're Dead by Viveca Sten. really liked this one.

added The Chaos Kind by Barry Eisler to my rotation.

Winchell: Gossip, Power, and the Culture of Celebrity
Neal Gabler
4/5 stars
Gabler does a thorough job tracking Winchell’s career, relationships with his family and friends and his ups and downs in the publishing arena, vaudeville, radio, TV business and the gossip culture against the background of what was going on in America in the time period he worked in. I never realized how prolific he was in his career. Very interesting!

Just finished Molly Gloss's Wild Life. I want to think about it a little more before trying to review it, but I do know it's getting a 5-star rating.

Just finished reading the novel Cold Mountain by author Charles Frazier

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>13 Erick_Tubil: How did you like it? Goodness, what a sensation when it was first published! I did enjoy it, though I actually thought Frazier's second novel, Thirteen Moons was even better.

I finished Indian Summer by Effie McAbee Hulbert. This memoir, written as a fictional narrative, describes the author's girlhood growing up during the late 19th century and into the early 20th century in the Yorkville and Anderson Valley region of Mendocino County, California, and about her constant, loving interactions with the native tribes of the area.

The book begins with a brief history of the local native tribe and an imagining of their experience of the first coming of Europeans to the valley. The valley is surrounded by what were then relatively inaccessible mountains and is located generally in a remote part of northern California, so white settlers were relatively late arriving and few in number. That didn't last long, however. At any rate, Hulbert grew up in a prominent early land-owning family in the region, raised by her parents and grandparents. Her grandfather, particularly, had a strong empathy for and friendships with their Indian neighbors. Hulbert herself was back and forth constantly between the family ranch and the Indian villages and made life-long friendships there.

If interested, you can find my somewhat more in-depth comments on my 50-Book Challenge thread.

I've now started Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision by Barbara Ransby.

>8 Shrike58: Yes In Search of the Indo-Europeans is a much older book. It came out when I was in college. :-) It also has a much different intended audience than The Horse, the Wheel and Language. The first is much more of a scholarly work than the second. It also has some discussions of Indo-European mythology which are interesting but very speculative. I enjoyed the discussion of the prevalence of twins in Indo-European religions from India to Europe, but there are plenty of twins in non-Indo-European mythologies as well. So, it's really not that unique to IE cultures. It also has a nice discussion on the seamier side of IE studies and the racism of 19th and 20th century history. There was a lot of pseudo-science built up around Indo-European studies culminating in the Aryan nonsense of the Nazi era.

I finished Bewilderment on Monday. I'm not sure how I feel about it. It's good, but not one of Richard Powers' best efforts. It leans very heavily on Flowers for Algernon. Most of it's emotional impact is drawn from the parallels with that book. Instead of the central character gaining and losing "intelligence" the child in Bewilderment gains, then loses, emotional intelligence over the course of the novel. The scientific breakthrough in the book is an extension of neural feedback techniques that are already in use. Powers imagines a more advanced technique using functional MRI instead of EEGs for training awareness and active control over an individual's emotional state. The book has many minor characters who are thinly veiled references to people in the news. That's one of the more aggravating problems with the novel in my opinion. The US President becomes a sort worst case scenario of the past administration. It's all a bit heavy handed. Ultimately, the pessimism of the novel wins out over the more hopeful themes of the book, leaving us with the darkening landscape of Eliot's "The Hollow Men". "This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends..."

I need a drink.

I finished two audiobooks today, A Promised Land and American War.

Next up for listening is Ordinary Grace by William Kent Kreuger.

I finished the LTER book The Reluctant King. This depiction of a gangster family contained more violence and sex than I normally read but did also present surprising plot twists and portraits of the various characters.

The Girls – Emma Cline
Audiobook read by Cady McClain.
2**

From the book jacket: Northern California, during the violent end of the 1960s. At the start of summer, a lonely and thoughtful teenager, Evie Boyd, sees a group of girls in the park, and is immediately caught by their freedom, their careless dress, their dangerous aura of abandon. Soon, Evie is in thrall to Suzanne, a mesmerizing older girl, and is drawn into the circle of a soon-to-be infamous cult and the man who is its charismatic leader.

My reactions
I vividly remember the Manson murders of Sharon Tate et al. I followed the news coverage and could not imagine how these people became so enthralled and obedient to the obviously crazy Charles Manson. Cline’s Evie gives me some insight into how that might have happened.

But I cannot bring myself to rate the book even with three stars. The subject was so distasteful to me. I cringed at how Evie is drawn in, at how she was abused, at how she “begged” for the abuse because she was so hungry for attention and for what she thought was evidence of love. I could hardly bear to keep listening, but persevered because so many people I know had rated this debut highly. At the end I felt I had wasted my time, as these characters wasted their futures.

Cady McClain did a good job narrating the audiobook. She really brings Evie to life, and she was equally believable voicing the slimy cult leader, or Evie’s mother.

Enjoying these two books ~

OverDrive audio ~
Forgotten in Death by J.D. Robb
(latest Eve Dallas novel by Nora Roberts)

and

OverDrive Kindle eBook ~
Peril by Woodward and Costa

All Over But the Shoutin’ – Rick Bragg
4****

In this memoir, Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist Rick Bragg outlines the difficulties of growing up “dirt poor” in Appalachia, with an alcoholic father who could never shake that demon and a mother who willingly sacrificed her own health and well-being for her children’s sake. He also gives the reader a look at the life of a child who felt loved and was free to explore and roam and enjoy the nature around him. He openly shares the differing paths his brothers took. Older brother Sam found his own success, taking on the mantle of adult responsibilities when he was still a child, while younger brother Mark continues to struggle. And Bragg gives a nod of thanks to the relatives (Uncle Ed, in particular), townspeople and teachers who recognized his talent and encouraged him to strive for something more.

There is a sense of nostalgia about some of his reminiscences. Bragg left his home, but his home never left him. His story in an honest, gripping, heart-wrenching and inspiring love letter to his mother.

Lost Children Archive – Valeria Luiselli
Digital audiobook performed by the author, Kivlighan de Montebello, William DeMeritt, and Maia Enrigue Luiselli.
5*****

A cross-country journey from New York to Arizona gives one family – mother, father, 10-year-old boy, five-year-old girl – an opportunity to explore the history of this nation from two perspectives: How the immigrant Europeans, in the name of expanded opportunities, wrested the land from the native population, and how their descendants are trying to keep a new wave of immigrants from seeking their own opportunities.

As they travel, they sing along with the songs on the radio, play games, stop at various tourist attractions. They encounter people of all walks of life, and differences the parents sometimes struggle to explain to the children. And they begin to hear more and more news coverage of a growing crisis along our nation’s southern border – the many children who are desperately trying to enter the country.

I loved the way this unfolded. Luiselli changes narrators hallway through the book, first giving us the mother’s perspective, and then the son’s. Both parents work to document things, but one is a documentarian and the other a documentarist. I’m still not sure I fully understand the difference, but clearly this difference is important to both the man and the woman. What’s important to the reader is the way they are documenting what is happening, in their family, in nature, in the nation, in the world. And this forces the reader to think about how we remember things. The same photograph of a landmark, or a family gathering, will elicit different memories from those who viewed that same event together. And a child’s interpretation will be far different from an adult’s.

As distressing as the images and stories of the lost children trying to enter this country are, the specifics of this family’s journey had me on the edge of my seat. I could not help but think of the Stephen Sondheim song “Children Will Listen” from Into the Woods.

Luiselli’s writing is evocative of time and place. I could clearly picture the changing landscape as the family travels across the United States.

I am so looking forward to my F2F book club discussion of this book!

The audiobook is performed by a team including the author, Kivlighan de Montebello, William DeMeritt, and Maia Enrigue Luiselli. This was a very effective way of reading this book. However, the text has numerous photographs, drawings, maps, which are difficult to convey in audio format. Though I applaud the team for how they managed this, I’m glad I had a text version handy so I could see what they were describing.

Finished listening to the absolutely wonderful Ordinary Grace.

Next up for listening is In Persuasion Nation by George Saunders.

I am so enjoying Redbirds by Rick Flagg, I shall be following up on this author.

Practical Magic – Alice Hoffman
Book on CD narrated by Christina Moore
3***

The Owens women have always been known for their beauty and have always had magical powers. But when sisters Gillian and Sally are orphaned, they are taken in by their older aunts and endure years of taunting and teasing in their Massachusetts town. They turn their backs on magic and set out on their own. Years later, Gillian is twice divorced and living in Tucson with a very bad man. Older sister Sally is widowed with two young daughters of her own, settled in upstate New York. Then one rainy night, Gillian appears on Sally’s doorstep … with a dead man in her car. And things get weirder and weirder from that point forward.

I remember the movie starring Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock – vaguely. I remember I thought little of it and quickly forgot it. I resisted reading anything by Hoffman as a result. But a particular challenge drew me to this work at this time, and I have to say that I’m glad I read it.

Hoffman is a great storyteller and she does a marvelous job weaving this “fairy tale for adults.” Her characters and much more complex that I was expecting. Like all fairy tales there is a lesson here. Hoffman deals with sibling rivalry, with forgiveness, with the pull of family and the desire for independence.

Christina Moore does a splendid job reading the audiobook. I loved being read to by her!

The new thread is up over here.

>21 BookConcierge: Since you enjoyed All Over But the Shoutin', I'd like to recommend Ava's Man, also about Bragg's family history. The final piece of the trilogy is The Prince of Frogtown, which is about his father, and was probably my least favorite of the three.

>27 LyndaInOregon: Thanks, Lynda