Book Reviews And Comments By Rick O

APPLESEED

2023-03-22T17:17:00.000-07:00

Is Matt Bell honest with himself? A literature professor proposed this big question in the movie, The Whale. Is it a big question that riddles throughout Matt’s latest novel, Appleseed? I’m wondering why the author picked an apple seed to be planted all over America by a human brother, Nathaniel, and his brother, Chapman, half human/half faun in lieu of other fruit. I’m joking about the apple, but it is a good source of fiber and antioxidants. Haha. This is a very confusing past, future, and far-future breakdown and rebuilding of the earth due to climate change and other abuses of mother earth. I really don’t know who Matt thinks or blames in this novel for sure, but it’s spelled out in two thoughts: Man and or a future Amazon-type company. Certainly not the brothers planting apple trees in the past with the idea of a profit ten years later when the trees start producing fruit. Will Matt’s Amazon store (Earthtrust) start buying up each state one by one? She wanted to be authorized to control everything in the world. “She wanted, in those more idealistic days, for the world to choose this together,” On page 99, we read, “But after the global economic collapse, the wars everywhere abroad and the secession and sacrifice at home, the worsening climate disaster, and the collapse of the worldwide food supply? Maybe now Eury didn’t need anyone’s permission, for anything. She did business in every country, and her security forces administered failing and failed states worldwide; she controlled more than enough land to build whatever she wanted whenever she needed. Now the world’s governments couldn’t risk standing up to Eury Mirov, to Earthtrust. Will Eury build a spaceship in the future to leave Earth for good? Was this novel written as a defensive plan against the offense of Musk, Bezos, and Branson? Haha.

We haven’t talked about Eury’s ex-partner, John, who is a one-man wrecking crew working against Earthtrust and is eventually captured and forced to sign papers into a type of indentured service to one of Earthtrust’s working farms. He has to sign over his citizenship, his right to vote, his right to own property, and his Bill of Rights on a ninety-nine-year agreement in exchange for a leased home, a fixed wage, safe food and clean water, and loss of freedom outside his assigned compound. Will he stay there? Then to make this story more complicated, we go into the far future where a lone cyborg is trekking across the Iceland of western America in search of any left/over mankind with the quest to reset the Earth. His name is C433 because he has rebuilt himself 433 times. This was not my kind of story. I hate novels that jump back and forth between past and present no less adding the far future. What did I like? Well, mainly his ability to write lines that pleased me.

The author’s prose is uniquely entertaining; such as on page 134 when Chapman, the half-human, who is in the forest alone, and enjoys the forest’s babble: “Chapman’s ears truly have begun to hear more; with no one to talk to, mostly his tongue lies dumb in his mouth. (note; that was a great line). He listens for the smallest forest voices, the clicking language of squirrels and rabbits, the chatter of mice in the underbrush; he hears hawk chicks exploring their nest, woodpecker eggs hatching far above his head, hidden in holes pecked into towering trees. A breeze wafts by, a local wind suffused with local smell-something floral, something overripe, something rotting-moving through these woods and only these woods, present one day and gone another. If these trees were cut down, he thinks, this particular breeze would be cut down too; If different birds chirped and tittered here, then the breeze would carry new sound; if there were no bears or skunks wandering the swamp, then the breeze would lack their musk, its most potent texture.” Wow! Such a big deal out of something so small! Matt Bell is a native of Michigan, who teaches creative writing at Arizona State University.

RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

Comment: You are probably asking,” Why did I give this novel four stars?” Well, it’s a good question since I really didn’t like this novel, although the writer follows most of the creative writing rules.” My main beef is that I hated the story…thus bad grades for the plot, but he did use Good versus Evil as a strong theme. But he didn’t make me shed any tears over his character development. I’m not going to care for his cyborg since the writer himself rebuilds him 434 times! Haha. Am I going to cry over the feelings of a half-human, half-faun that spends all day planting apple seeds? One of his biggest sins was that he didn’t catch my interest. His setting was in three eras, which I hated. But his style of writing and his dialogue were outstanding, These two elements took his novel out of the three-star puddle and landed him in the four-star pond. Just so you know. Haha.

SINATRA AND ME in the wee small hours

2022-10-17T15:49:00.011-07:00

Old blue eyes life told in a refreshing way by his manager, producer, drinking buddy (Jack Daniels and water), and best friend. This is not Frank’s life story, although the blanks get filled in along the way. It’s a composite of thousands of conversations with Frank, his friends, and his family as told by Tony Oppedisano, his Sicilian confidant, manager, fellow singer, and writer of this book. Being Sicilian is one of the reasons Frank was always assumed to be mafioso by the press, who had a vendetta for most of old blue eye's career. The other reason was Frank’s presumed ties with all the big NYC clubs and later Las Vegas. The fact that all those clubs and early Las Vegas were mobbed-owned didn’t seem to mean anything to the American press. Sinatra’s trouble with the press started when Frank decked New York Mirror’s Lee Mortimer after Mortimer linked Frank to Lucky Luciano with no evidence. Frank's verbal attacks on columnist Dorothy Kilgallen were started when he called her “the chinless wonder.” Frank also had a long press battle with Maxine Cheshire, who also linked him to the mafioso. Anyway, the slightly built Sinatra was always able to stand up to anybody. If he liked you, you were his friend for life. If he disliked you, it’s not true that he didn’t apologize. “ Hey, I’m sorry. Sometimes I’m a schmuck. Help me get my foot out of my mouth. Frank could be extraordinarily generous with his fans. If people were polite one good turn deserves another. And one bad turn deserves another.”

Frank’s taste for women was always in the spotlight. “When Frank married actress Mia Farrow in 1966, he became the butt of a lot of jokes. Jackie Mason was one of the most vocal. He used to talk about Frank’s buying Mia a box of crayons for her birthday, or Frank’s being asked to leave the bar because Mia’s rattle was making too much noise. As everyone knows, Frank was still married to Nancy Sr. when he met Ava Gardner. Ava was the total opposite of Nancy, Sr., which was part of the attraction. If Nancy was the angel on one of Frank’s shoulders, Ava was the devil on the other. Nancy was the devoted Italian wife and mother, every inch a ‘good girl.’ Ava was a two-fisted drinker, and like his mother, Dolly, Ava had a mouth as bad as Frank’s. Frank told me, she could have a mouth like a truck driver. She drank as well as I did or better. Ava was also stunningly beautiful, the Angelina Jolie of her day.” Frank and Marilyn (Monroe) were very close and he idolized her. “She was beautiful and funny and charismatic and radiated sexuality. She was also as fragile as a troubled child, always looking for a man to take care of her and make her feel safe. Frank knew her for years, and they had a romance of sorts. Contrary to widespread belief, however, Frank never slept with her. He told me he badly wanted to, that he was terribly attracted to her, but always stopped short. He just couldn’t get rid of the feeling that sex with her would be taking advantage of a woman who’d already had been used by so many men.”

Sinatra’s mom, Dolly, was a five-foot ninety-pound leader, who was a domineering and sometimes aggressive mother. She was a political force in Hoboken, NJ, getting a letter of commendation from Calvin Coolidge, congratulating her on her great work for the Democratic Party. “Dolly had a mouth like a sailor. Her profanity was legendary.” She was known for grabbing Frank by the ear and dragging him home when caught playing hooky. “Dolly wanted him to enroll in the Stevens Institute and become an architect.” Even though Frank had a pretty high IQ and was fascinated with geometric designs, his heart was set on being a singer. “The whole thing came to a head one night over dinner with his parents. They were eating when his father said, “So, did you enroll in the Stevens Institute?” Frank said no and that he could be a better singer than Bing Crosby. His angry father said, “Well, fine, If that’s your final answer, that’s your choice, but you are not going to do it on my dime. So pack your stuff and get out of here.” Young Frank packed his bag and left to continue his singing career on his own. He was going to have to do it, “My Way.” Haha.

RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

Comment: Frank Sinatra died of a heart attack on 5/14/1998 at the age of 82. Reportedly, his wife, Barbara was encouraging Frank to fight for his life when he said his final words,” I’m losing.”

In the Source Notes, his friend Tony Oppedisano, explains how he wrote this book: “Unlike most Sinatra biographers, I lived this book. It is almost entirely on direct personal experience and on thousands of conversations that occurred over decades with Frank, Jilly Rizzo, Nancy Sinatra Sr., and others close to Frank. I expect that I have been consulted on so many other Sinatra books because, in some cases, I have the only living memory of what occurred. I have become something of a keeper of the flame.

DEAD SILENCE

2022-05-05T11:24:00.002-07:00

S. A. Barnes’ space novel, Dead Silence, somehow never lives up to the blurb on the inside jacket…” picks up a strange distress signal,” a line that always hooks me into reading a sci/fi novel. That line opens the door to a cornucopia of possibilities but sadly doesn’t add to the suspense of this novel. The signal is picked up by a space repair ship, LINA, a ship on its 26th month of updating “a network of beacons throughout the solar system designed to boost ship and colony transmissions.” The upgrade will put this crew out of work since the upgrade they are installing will be handled by a Verux SmarTech machine on earth in the future. The five-member team is led by our protagonist, Claire Kovalik, who was the only survivor of a past failed mission on the Ferris Outpost twenty-three years ago. Everyone died except Claire. Since then, Claire seems to flip-flop between reality and hallucinations bordering on insanity for the entire 343 pages of this fake novel, I’m calling it fake because it never lives up to its potential. The author’s prose is very easy to understand for a sci/fi novel yet still caused me the dreaded sleepy eyes syndrome. After listening to Claire’s constant whining about her previous failed outpost disaster and continuous complaining about her bosses back on earth, I lost all empathy for our lead character, who lives in a perpetual state of *Einstein Insanity (*Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.)

The distress signal comes from the luxury liner ship, Aurora, designed for the rich and famous and that disappeared on its maiden voyage. Can the crew bring it home and claim it as theirs and all the riches inside? “Twenty years ago, five hundred passengers and a hundred and fifty crew left on a maiden voyage for a tour of the solar system. It was supposed to take a year. But the Aurora disappeared six months in. All souls are presumed lost. The luxury space cruiser had every possible amenity you can imagine. Gold faucets, real wood floors, coffee from actual beans, meat that was once alive.” The crew on the Lina consisted of team captain, Claire Kovalik, and teammates Voller, Kane, Lourdes, and Nysus. They debated whether they should return home and report the incident or try to bring it back to earth and collect the salvage fee. They decided to see if they could return the ship to earth and earn enough to quit their jobs, “We’re going to be rich!” The crew navigates Lina next to the Aurora. “The Aurora is discomfortingly large, once we’re right upon it. In the Lina, it feels like we’re a tick crawling on a sleek silver beast that hasn’t yet noticed our presence or been annoyed by it to shake us loose.”

“Theoretically, the Aurora could receive shipments from resupply vessels while cruising. State of the art for the time, “ Nysus says, his voice high and reedy with excitement. “So the outer doors could be independently operated if the setting was engaged and you had the override code.” And clearly, he does.

“Then the working lights kick on outside, giving us our first look inside the Aurora. It is shockingly normal, other than the fields of debris. A coffee mug, absurdly upright, floats by, and a four-legged object, glossy with black paint drifts aimlessly in the far left corner. “Shit”...it’s a baby grand piano, floating upside down. The lights continue to sweep the area as Voller edges us toward the center of Aurora’s bay.” Suddenly they were in, Lina’s landing gear attaching their ship to the deck. That’s your 59-page taste of a 339-page novel. Are any of the 650 souls still alive after 20 years? What went wrong with this massive luxury liner? Can the five-person crew of the Lina navigate the massive ship back to earth? Why did so many people have to die? Was it corporate’s fault? This book was enjoyable but nothing special. The jacket blurb gave me a reason to believe this novel was going to be exciting but failed to rouse me. One of my favorite first contact novels was Harry Bates’ Farewell to the Master published in 1940 (see Rick’s review in Rambling Comments #5 on 2/3/2018.) You probably never heard of the novel because the theme was the major difference between the short story and the movie. The atomic bomb had not been invented yet when Harry Bates wrote the short story in 1940. The 1951 movie was a big hit and is considered a sci/fi classic. The movie? The Day the Earth Stood Still, starring Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal, and Sam Jaffe as the professor.

RATING: 3 out of 5 stars

Comment: So Rick, what are some of your favorite first contact novels? Well, how about the following in no particular order:

Contact by Carl Sagan published in 1986: Amazon writes, “The future is here…in an adventure of cosmic dimension. When a signal is discovered that seems to come from far beyond our solar system, a multinational team of scientists decides to find the source. Why are they watching us? And what do they want with us?”

Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky published in 1972: This is one of my favorites, it was banned in Russia for 8 years due to government censorship. “Roadside Picnic takes place in the aftermath of an extraterrestrial event, which simultaneously took place in half a dozen separate locations around the earth for a two-day period.

Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C Clarke published in 1973: This is my all-time favorite! “A huge, mysterious, cylindrical object appears in space, swooping in toward the sun. The citizens of the solar system send a ship to investigate before the enigmatic craft, called Rama, disappears.”

CHILDREN OF TIME

2022-02-25T14:32:00.000-08:00

Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time won the 2016 Arthur C. Clarke Award with this exciting science fiction classic space opera. All the action takes place on a planet thousands of years from a dying Earth that was destroyed by human's hate for each other. Doctor Avrana Kern attempts to send thousands of monkeys down to a green planet along with a nano-virus to speed up the evolution of the monkeys in hope of producing a better human being. Her ship is one of several ships launched in different directions looking to terraform an unoccupied planet capable of supporting human life. It takes almost 15 years to find a suitable planet. But before she can unload the monkeys, a political group against the project blows up the ship, Doctor Kern escapes in an observation satellite and releases the nano-virus on the planet not knowing that all her monkeys are dead. She maintains an orbit around the planet. Now thousands of years pass and the real story of Children of Time begins. I didn’t issue a spoiler alert because all that I have told you is just a preface of the main story that follows on this 600-page tome. This is the story of the spaceship, Gilgamesh, and it's several thousand years voyage. As vast as this novel is, it’s amazing that the main characters on the spaceship are only six, and the main insects on the planet are held to four. What is interesting is that when Doctor Kern dropped the nano-virus to speed up evolution she was unaware the planet already had an insect population.

Since the spaceship took thousands of years to arrive at the target planet, generations of people were born on the ship. Most of the population was put to sleep in coffin-like containers only to be awakened if they were needed to help maintain the ship or to be sent down to a planet to start human life. Holsten Mason, the man in charge of remembering Earth’s past history, is over 2,000 years old since he was an original crew member on Gilgamesh and has been put to sleep and awakened so many times that he technically was that old. The author’s story was initially confusing until I realized he was talking about two different spaceships in two different eras. That’s why Mason was important to Gilgamesh, he could tell the current humans about the past (the old world and their technology) when things would pop up that affected a present-day situation. His knowledge was part of a dying skill. What I loved about these spaceships was that the author didn’t get technical, he does not explain how the engines run or how the sleeping coffins work. If some new technical feature on the spaceship comes up…so be it. I don’t care how it works, just get on with the story. On the other hand, he is great at describing the creatures that already live on the terraformed planet. My kind of sci/fi storytelling, good character descriptions, and less technical talk. An example of what I dislike in sci/fi literature is a novel written by author Vernor Vinge (a computer science professor and writer), who drove me crazy with his constant boring technical talk in his sci/fi novel, Rainbows End.

If I told you about the insects that were evolving on the terraformed planet it would spoil the story for you. I will just tell you that Kern’s observation satellite continued to orbit the terraformed planet for 2,000 years holding off any ship that tried to land on the planet. When Gilgamesh first tried to land on the terraformed planet, they were warned by Kern’s satellite to stay away. “It’s a warning, it saying that we’re transmitting from incorrect coordinates or something like that, It says we’re forbidden here,” I think that Author Tchaikovsky’s story was unique and written in a manner that every reader can understand. There are 600 pages of eccentric enjoyment ahead of you. I highly recommend this novel to any genre of the reader.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: Bugs and insects have always interested Mr. Tchaikovsky, a British fantasy/ science fiction writer.

Wikipedia says, “Whilst studying at the University of Reading he ran a role-playing game called Bugworld. The game told the story of the insect-people of the lowlands, under threat from the encroaching Wasp Empire. From this original scenario, the entire series of books grew.” (talking about Tchaikovsky’s Shadows of the Apt 10 book series.

NICHOLAS NICKLEBY

2022-01-28T13:19:00.006-08:00

It took me over a month to read this novel or should I say study this novel. Charles Dickens is either the greatest writer of all time or the greatest magazine editor that ever lived. I slowly read (and studied) 20 pages or so a day with some breaks spending time with my acrylic painting hobby. It’s not that I eschewed my daily chore, but one has to understand with Dickens you must go at a snail’s pace or chance missing his meaning. I’ll let you read the first paragraph of page 183, chapter 18, “There are many lives of much pain, hardship, and suffering, which, having no stirring interest for any but those who lead them, are disregarded by persons who do not want thought or feeling, but who pamper their compassion and need high stimulants to rouse it.” Now, if you read that at a normal pace, you will not understand what he just wrote. You must reread much of his novel before reading on or risk discerning his thoughts. Coupled with seemingly hundreds of characters (it was actually 40+) knowing that one of these early minor or major characters (some were comically abhorrent) will surely appear near the end of the story to completely vex you because you didn’t pay proper attention to him/her. Most of Dickens’s novels were originally monthly or weekly serial publications before being published into book form. The adventures of Nicholas Nickleby was Dickens’s third novel, written while still writing Oliver Twist. Poverty was always the main theme in his novels, Dickens himself witnessed his father being sent to Debtor’s Prison causing the twelve-year-old Charles to bounce from place to place which led Dickens to believe “the rigors of life were unfairly borne by the poor.” (Wikipedia). “Masses of the illiterate poor would individually pay a halfpenny to have each new monthly episode read to them, opening up and inspiring a new class of reader.” (Wikipedia). Alright, enough about Dickens, what’s the story about? I’m glad you asked.

BTW, before I give you a brief rundown of the story, I want to apprise you of how Dickens tells a story (at least in my 1944 illustrated copy). He writes a little blurb about what’s going to happen in italics before the chapter starts, such as, in chapter XII, he previews it with, “Whereby the reader will be enabled to trace the further course of Miss Fanny Squeer’s love and to ascertain whether it ran smoothly or otherwise.” Anyway, I thought those little interpolations before each chapter were refreshing. Before I tell you about the story, I need to give you an example of the author’s amazing descriptive ability (I promise my synopsis is coming shortly). On page 383, chapter XXXV, our protagonist, Nicholas Nickleby meets Mr. Charles Cheeryble, twin brother of Ned, “He was a sturdy old fellow in a broad-skirted blue coat, made pretty large, to fit easily, and with no particular waist; his bulky legs clothed in drab breeches and high gaiters, and his head protected by a low-crowned broad-brimmed white hat, such as a wealthy grazier might wear. He wore his coat buttoned, and his dimpled double-chin rested in the folds of a white neckerchief-not one of your stiff-starched apoplectic cravats, but a good, easy, old-fashioned white neckcloth that a man might go to bed in and be none the worse for. But what principally attracted the attention of Nicholas, was the old gentleman’s eye,-never was such a clear, twinkling, honest, merry, happy eye, as that. And there he stood, looking a little upward, with one hand thrust into the breast of his coat, and the other playing with his old-fashioned gold watch-chain: his head thrown a little on one side, and his hat a little more on one side of his head (but that was evidently accidental; not his ordinary way of wearing it), with such a pleasant smile playing about his mouth, and such a comical expression of mingled slyness, simplicity, kind-heartedness, and good-humor, lighting up his jolly old face, that Nicholas would have been content to have stood there, and looked at him until evening, and to have forgotten, meanwhile, that there was a thing as a soured mind or a crabbed countenance to be met within the whole wide world.” Wow, now you know why many people think Dickens was paid by the word (not true). Notice the heavy use of adjectives and long sentences.

Nicholas Nickleby’s father lost everything in the stock market and dies thereafter. Mrs. Nickleby, Nicholas, and his sister, Kate, go to London to seek rescue from the wealthy and devious, Uncle Ralph Nickleby, their only relative. Ralph grudgingly puts them up in an abandoned house he owns after the Nicklebys had a short stay at kindly miniature painting artist, Mrs. LaCreevy’s home. Nineteen-year-old Nicholas asks for help in finding employment. Ralph hates Nicholas and gets him a low-paying job as a teaching assistant to the repulsive Wackford Squeers, who runs the school Dotheboys Hall in Yorkshire. Squeers and his wife are mean to the boys who live there. Squeers keeps most of the money the parents give him and he beats and starves the boys regularly. He especially picks on a boy named Smike. (are Dickens character names special or what?). One day while Squeers is beating up Smike for nothing, Nicholas loses his composure and pummels Mr. Squeers. Nicholas flees with Smike to London not knowing what Squeers is going to tell his uncle. Mrs. Squeers says, “I hate him worse than poison.” Meanwhile, Ralph gets Kate a low-paying job at Madame Mantalini’s fashionable milliner shop. She is initially liked by her boss, Miss Knag until the customers want to deal with Kate only because of her good looks. Now Miss Knag hates Kate and schemes to get rid of her. Newman Noggs, who clerks for Ralph Nickleby, takes Young Nicholas under his wing and provides shelter for Nicholas at the Kenwigs’ home while he’s on the run from Squeers. He also finds Nicholas a new job teaching the four young Kenwigs children French. (Nicholas changes his last name to Johnson). Noggs, once successful himself, is now a drunk who despises his boss, Ralph. In the meantime, Ralph asks Kate to host a dinner party at his house for clients of nobility and wealth. He just wants a pretty face around to enhance his business prospects and it works as everybody there tries to get close to Kate. This rattles a country girl like Kate and she bursts into tears and runs out of the room pursued by the dominating Sir Mulberry Hawk and his friend, Lord Fredrick Verisopht. Uncle finally gets a coach for Kate and she leaves in tears.

I’m going to end my review of the story now because it’s about ready to take off like a runaway train and I want you to enjoy all the ensuing happenings. There are many adventures and miss adventures for the Nicklebys and their conglomeration of good and bad characters yet to be touched on, you have had only a taste of this marvelous novel. It’s a tough read not just only because of the 711 pages, but because of Dickens’s grandiose writing style which was prevalent during his times. Also, occasional bouts of Mr. John Browdie speaking with an accent, such as, “And she wur coaxin’, and coaxin’, and wheedlin’ a’ the blessed wa’. Wa’at didst thou let yon chap mak’ oop tiv’ee for? Says I. ‘I deedn’t John, says she, a squeedgin my arm. ‘You deedn’t ?’ says I. ‘Noa,’ says she, a squeedgin of me agean.” Boy, Hemingway sure simplified things in the 1920s. All kidding aside, Nicholas Nickleby is an important read and should be savored like a fine wine.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: On June 8th, 1870, Charles Dickens suffered a stroke and died at his home. He was only 58 years old. He was working on an unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Dan Simmons (a great writer) wrote a wonderful novel, Drood, in 2009. It is hypnotizing story about Dickens narrated by his real-life friend and author, Wilkie Collins (The Woman in White).

Amazon writes, “Drood explores the still-unsolved mysteries of the famous author’s last years and may provide the key to Dickens’s final unfinished work.”

If you have time (you should make room), Drood and The Woman in White are two of my all-time favorite novels (surely in the top ten). Both novels are over 700 pages each but worth reading.

THE SUN ALSO RISES

2021-12-01T13:40:00.001-08:00

Do you remember the line in Don McLean’s 1971 song American Pie...the day the music died? Well, when Ernest Hemingway published his first novel The Sun Also Rises in 1926...it was the day descriptive writing died. Other than F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novels, Hemingway’s style changed the way authors wrote from descriptive to non-descriptive. Paris in the 1920s was home for The Lost Generation, a group of American expatriates along with some European writers and artists who, led by Gertrude Stein, rejected the American way of writing and painting (Picasso was a member of the group). The group was young and rebellious. Besides Hemingway, the group included American writers, John Dos Passos, Hart Crane, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Henry Miller, and Irish novelist James Joyce. And did they drink! They were seen daily in the Ritz, Cafe de la Paix, the Rotonde, La Closerie des Lilas, the Bois, and all the other prime restaurants and bars in Paris. I’m only bringing this up because this style of living is inspired throughout his first novel. Also, I have to admit that I love reading about that era (see my 2/17/2017 review of Everybody Behaves Badly). Anyway, I wanted to give you the flavor of the times in order for you to enjoy the novel to the nines. BTW, besides writing, drinking, and dining, the group also loved boxing and bullfighting.

The story itself is a microcosm of the Lost Generation with a Cormac McCarthy approved five main characters: The narrator, Jake Barnes (obviously Ernest Hemingway), Lady Brett Ashley, Mike Campbell, Robert Cohn, and Bill Gorton along with an interesting sidebar character, Count Mippipopolous. On a fishing trip to Spain, Bill said to Jake, “You’re an expatriate. You’ve lost touch with the soil. You get precious. Fake European standards have ruined you. You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed by sex. You spend all your time talking, not working. You are an expatriate, see? You hang around cafes.” Jake answered with, “It sounds like a swell life...When do I work?” Bill says, “You don’t work. One group claims women support you, Another group claims you’re impotent.” After the fishing trip, Jake and Bill head to Pamplona for the running of the bulls (history tells us that Hemingway did participate) and bullfight watching. There they finally meet their late-arriving friends, Brett, Mike, and Robert at the Hotel Montoya. “Where the hell have you been? Asked Jake. Brett blames Robert for all the delays. On the way to the corrals, they passed a wine shop with a sign in the window: Good wine 30 centimos a liter. “That’s where we’ll go when funds get low,” Brett said. Throughout the novel, it becomes apparent (that) their wine funds will never be low. You wonder how these heavy drinkers were able to produce novels considered literary masterpieces. You have to remember when you are reading this novel Hemingway was only writing about activities that he was actually participating in. They really wined and dined deliberately every day. Like Jake said, “It sounds like a swell life.” Haha.

Ernest Hemingway won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954 and the Pulitzer Prize for fiction (The Old Man And The Sea), although I find his style easy to follow...it's somewhat bland. Where Hemingway’s character might say, “I see a red rose.”, a descriptive writer like Robert Louis Stevenson (which I prefer) might write, “I see a long-stemmed cardinal red rose with dew-covered petals and sharp prickles.” That’s all I’m saying...reviewers are writers too, haha. F. Scott Fitzgerald befriended Ernest Hemingway and the modernist Lost Generation, but never changed his descriptive style. I did enjoy Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises but struggled to find any plot. Yet Hemingway’s story of Cuban fisherman Santiago in The Old Man And The Sea (his last novel) actually displayed some descriptive writing and a plot. Go figure. BTW, wasn't Spencer Tracy fabulous in the movie version? Bung-o!

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: I know that The Sun Also Rises was Hemingway’s first novel, but all of his life pleasures are displayed in his novel. Some facts about Hemingway’s life:

He was an ambulance driver in the Italian front during WWI where he was wounded.
As a journalist, he covered The Spanish Civil War.
He was a foreign correspondent during WWII.
In 1954 he had two successive plane crashes in Africa that caused the start of his physical deterioration.
In 1961 Hemingway deliberately shot himself with his favorite double-barreled shotgun in Idaho. His wife initially told the press that it was accidental.
Many people believe that Hemmingway had CTE from all his concussions which would explain the suicide...a major reason for the NFL player's rash of suicides.

ADDRESS UNKNOWN

2021-11-21T11:23:00.000-08:00

In 1938 Kathrine Kressmann Taylor wrote a classic novel (really a 79-page short story), Address Unknown, that unfortunately still resonates in today's world. It’s an epistolary book built around the letters betwixt the years 1932 and 1934 between the partners of Schulse-Eisenstein Galleries of San Francisco, Martin Schulse (a non-Jew) and Max Eisenstein. They run a successful art gallery business. Apparently, they both originally lived in Germany. Martin Schulse has decided to move back to Germany and expand their art business in Europe. As you read this story the contents of the letters get scarier and scarier as Adolph Hitler rises in power. The author wrote the story to alert the non-believing American people at the time:

“I wanted to write about what the Nazis were doing and show the American public what happened to real, living people swept up in a warped ideology.”

Max’s first letter to Martin in Germany is filled with jealousy:

My Dear Martin, Back in Germany! How I envy you! Although I have not seen it since my school days, the spell of Unter den Linden is still strong upon me-the breadth of intellectual freedom, the discussions, the music, the light-hearted comradeship. And now the old junker spirit, the Prussian arrogance and militarism are gone.” Ahaha, wait, the good old days of German arrogance are right around the corner. Max is living the life of luxury in Germany. He bought a thirty-room bargain in ten acres of park and he now employs ten servants for the same wages as the two he had in his San Francisco home. His boys have three ponies and a tutor. Life is good.

As the letters progress, Martin writes to Max:

“You have heard of course of the new events in Germany, and you will want to know how it appears to us here on the inside. I tell you truly, Max, I think Hitler is good for Germany, but I am not sure...The man is like an electric shock, strong as only a great orator and a zealot can be, but I ask myself, is he quite sane?”

Now that you know what this treasure of a novel is about, grab your own copy to see what happens. You can read the entire book sitting in your easy chair in a few hours!

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: I know it was a short review but if I went any further you wouldn’t have to read it. Haha. To my remembrance, I have only read three other epistolary novels, two I’ve reviewed, one I read before I started reviewing books:

World War Z by Max Brooks (see my review of 2/18/2011) is a novel full of interviews with the survivors of the zombie war. Clever idea, but I liked the movie better.

House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski (see my review of 2/1/2013). A novel that goes one step further and gets into different ergodic levels. Very, Very strange novel, it tests your compos mentis.

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. The story of a woman learning that her family’s past is connected to an inconceivable evil. The scariest book I’ve ever read... bar none.

the LINCOLN HIGHWAY

2021-11-15T14:43:00.000-08:00

There are storytellers and tale-tellers and then there is Amor Towles, a Cormac McCarthy disciple if ever I saw one. Having read his A Gentleman in Moscow (see my review of 12/31/17) I knew what to expect...superb prose and a captivating story. The amount of main characters is a readable five with two sidebar characters. It doesn’t get any better than that. No need to note the innumerable and exotic names cataloged in most novels, because this novel only has a total of seven. How about Emmett, Billy, Woolly, Duchess, and Sally as your main characters? And Ulysses and Pastor John as your side characters? Do you think you can remember them? You bet your sweet bippy you can! That’s what I’m talking about. And in this novel (ala Cormac McCarthy) he sheds the quotation marks. He uses dashes in lieu of. Here’s a typical example:

- How long has this highway been around? asked Duchess.

- It was invented by Mr. Carl G. Fisher in 1912.

- Invented?

- Yes, said Billy. Invented.

It’s surprisingly easy to follow and for some reason seems to flow better...more natural. Amor’s previous two novels have sold over four million copies and have been translated into more than thirty languages. Have I found my new best writer? You can bet your sweet patootie! HaHa. No, I’m not disparaging my two all-time favorites...Mark Twain (see my review of Tom Sawyer on 11/7/2017 and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court on 11/8/2012) and Charles Dickens, but they’ve passed on. I'm talking about today's authors. And don’t call me a misogynist because I also love Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot mysteries ( see my review of Dumb Witness on 4/28/17 and One, Two, Buckle My Shoe on 5/16/2013). So what's Amor's story about? Well, once upon a time…Haha.

The Warden from The Salina Kansas Juvenile Work Farm was driving Emmett Watson (18) home to Morgen, Nebraska after Emmett’s term was cut short because of his father’s death. His brother Billy (8) was waiting for him at the family farm along with Mr. Ranson, a neighbor, and a banker waiting to serve notice of non-payment of the mortgage. Emmett and Billy were given two weeks to clear out. After the banker left, the boys found Emmett’s 1948 Studebaker in the barn with $3000 in the trunk. This was all their father had left in the world. The boys decided that they would head to California to find their mother, who walked out on the family eight years ago. Billy had found a metal box with nine postcards addressed to the boys from their mother traveling down the Lincoln Highway. The last card showed a large, classical building rising above a fountain in a park in San Francisco. The boys were disturbed that their father never showed them the postcards that were addressed to them. So, it was Horace Greeley’s “Go west young man” for Emmett and Billy.

The boy's California plan hit a snag when who walked in the barn to surprise them? None other than Duchess and Woolly, two escapees from the juvenile farm Emmitt just left! Emmett was dumbfounded:

- But How…?

- We hitched a ride with the warden. While he was signing you out, we slipped into the trunk of his car.

It seems that Woolly’s grandfather died and left him a trust fund of $150,000 in the Adirondacks. They want Emmett to take them to New York and they will split the money three ways. This is the point where this story peels off like a dragster, but your taste of the first 41 pages of a 576-page blockbuster has ended. I will not divulge anymore, grab a copy and enjoy. BTW, I loved the way Amor put his novel together. Each chapter was narrated by a different character. That gave each person (even the minor ones) an opportunity to state his/her view as the story unraveled. Well done, Amor, and kudos to you for your wonderful sidebar stories throughout the novel. Wow, a rare review where I didn't criticize the author….oh well.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: This has nothing to do with the above novel, but has anybody noticed a large amount of useless or neophyte (in some cases) amount of Memoirs written this year? I'm Somewhat allergic to them ever since I almost blew my brains out reading Henry Kissinger’s Years of Upheaval and The Memoirs of Richard Nixon in the same year! Yikes!

Do we need the life story of Dorina Medley? Haven’t we had our fill of Real Housewives …?

How about a memoir of a biographer? Eric Metaxas’s Fish out of Water will surely get you counting sheep.

How about Hunter Biden’s Beautiful Things? What’s beautiful about his cocaine habit or his Ukrainian corruption?

Now I’m sure Will Smith is a fine gentleman, but shouldn’t he age a bit more before writing his memoir, Will? Wouldn’t you rather read the memoirs of Morgan Freeman? If you do...good news. Kathleen Tracey wrote a biography in 2006 about Freeman, but no memoir.

And lastly...the ultimate sleeping pill, the memoirs of Indian actress Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Unfinished! Well, I’m finished.

Rambling Comments #7: Hoopla And Libby, Your Public Library Online

2021-11-07T22:11:00.006-08:00

This is a guest post by Deron O:

Imagine looking at your bookshelves and suddenly seeing them burst through the walls and stretch off into infinity. That’s Hoopla and Libby. They’re invaluable extensions of your local public library, allowing you to access e-books, audio books, music, tv shows and movies online for free through their apps and websites. I typically use them on my iPad. They are an endless treasure trove.

A few months ago, I had just finished reading my old paperback of Frank Herbert’s The Children of Dune and thought I’d rewatch its SyFy adaptation. The only place I could find it for streaming was on Hoopla. Hoopla? I had never heard of it before. After doing a bit of reading, I learned that Hoopla is a service linked to public libraries that allows one to download what you’d normally find at a library. To sign up, you just need a library card. I visited my library’s website and obtained a temporary card online. Within half an hour, I was watching Children of Dune on my iPad.

I then started poking around Hoopla. To my surprise, they have an extensive collection of comics and graphic novels. I love comics but hadn’t read much over the past twenty years given their cost and space they take up. Many are available on Hoopla as compilations, but there are current single issues too. I’ve burned through a lot of the classics: Infinity Gauntlet, Batman: Hush, Eternals, The Incal, X-Men: Dark Phoenix Saga and others. I’ve read thousands of pages of comics in the past few months.

While on my library’s website, I noticed Libby. Just like Hoopla, you sign up with your library card. Through Libby, I read my first e-book: Enola Holmes: The Case of the Left-Handed Lady. I wasn’t sure how I would like reading a book on an iPad, so I picked this book mainly because of its novella length and easy reading. It was a success. I’ve since read another e-book and have a Stephen King book on hold.

On Hoopla, e-books and audio books can be checked out for 21 days, music for seven days and movies and tv shows for three days. E-books and audio books can be checked out for 21 days on Libby.

There’s a limit to the number of items you can check out from these services. I am restricted to nineteen items per month on Hoopla, which has been more than enough. Libby has a different method where I can have up to ten items checked out at any one time. Those numbers are set by your library, so yours may be different. Also, at least for Hoopla, there is a limit to the total number of items that can be checked out in any one day by all subscribers connected to your library. Many times I’ve tried to check out a comic late in the day only to be denied because the daily limit had been reached. It resets at midnight.

On Libby, only a certain number of copies exist for borrowing that is set by your library. For example, the Enola Holmes book I chose was the second of the series because the first one’s only copy had already been checked out. You can put a book on hold, and when it is available, you’ll receive an alert explaining that you have a limited time during which you can now borrow it. I put the first book on hold and was alerted of its availability a few days later. Hoopla has no limitations.

Not every author or all the works of any one author are available. However, the content is vast enough that you could easily find something to read. I did see that two books reviewed recently on this site, The Hour of the Witch and The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music, are available on Libby.

These services have broadened my selection and taste in books, choosing ones I would not ordinarily have. I am currently enjoying Star Wars, Ms. Marvel, and Sweet Tooth from which the acclaimed Netflix series was adapted; none of which I would have read had I not found them on Hoopla. E-books were never an option for me, preferring only physical books, but not anymore.

Check out Hoopla and Libby. They are the best thing I’ve found on the internet in years. Hopefully, you’ll have as good an experience as I did and become more appreciative of your local public library.

HOUR of the WITCH

2021-10-25T19:57:00.001-07:00

What does it take to be a witch? Very little. If a neighbor or an indentured servant doesn’t like you, he/she can plant some symbol of the devil in your garden and accuse you of witchcraft, or tell everybody that you were seen being kind to a Quaker, or being seen with someone suspected of witchcraft. Maybe as a married woman, you are seen about to kiss a man not married to you...seen but not kissed. That is adultery. If you live in the world of a Puritan, that’s a major faux pas. The man gets off easy...15 lashes in a public square. All these things happened to Mary Deerfield of Boston in 1662, who fails, in her attempt to get a divorce from a cruel man and later was charged with witchcraft. Chris Bohjalian writes a story that will aggravate you till the last moment.

Who are the Puritans? They are a group of whackos (not sorry for the derogatory remark) who came to America from England because of their objection to the Catholic religion. The Puritans believed they were in a constant struggle with good and evil and every day was to be lived according to the bible. They wanted the laws of the New Testament to reign supreme. In other words, they wanted life to be focused on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, kind of like some modern(?) day countries that run their governments according to the Koran. Actually, they are the modern-day Puritans. Anyway, the thing is you (especially women) had to live your life teetering on disaster. My research says that between the 15th century and the 17th century, approximately 200,000 witches were tortured, burnt, or hanged worldwide. Wow, enough Puritan background...what happened to Mary?

Mary Deerfield was constantly being abused and battered by her husband, Thomas, the owner of a large mill. He would routinely come home for dinner after drinking heavily at local taverns. He always hit or abused his wife when their servant, Catherine, was not in the same room. One day someone planted (two) three tine forks and a pestle with a devil’s mark in Mary’s garden. Three tined forks were only recently imported from England and ultimately not purchased by the Puritans because the three tined forks (they ate with 2 tined forks) reminded them of the devil’s pitchfork or trident (Haha)...sorry. Anyway, Mary thought Catherine did it...Catherine said “no”, but there are other neighbors who don’t like her. Mary told Thomas about it. He wasn’t sure if Mary was a witch, but wouldn’t allow the use of three tine forks for their meals. One day he came home drunk and got into an argument with Mary. While Mary had her hand on the dining table, he viciously slammed her hand with a three-tined fork to see if she bleeds (witches don’t bleed). After she bled, Thomas said, “Well, thou dost seem to bleed, Mary.” He told anybody that asked about her wounded hand that Mary tripped and fell into the spout of a tea kettle. Later that day Mary said to her mother, “I intend to divorce him.”The odds of getting a divorce from a man in the Puritan days were very slim, especially when nobody ever saw Thomas abuse his wife.

“Mary Deerfield may be barren, yes, but is she unclean? I will not dissemble and suggest that I know. Only our Lord and Savior can say why she has never been with child.”-The testimony of physician Roger Pickering from the records of the divorce trial.

“I saw my mistress placing the Devil’s tines into the earth, burying them, but for what purpose I cannot say.”- The Testimony of Catherine Stileman from the records of the divorce trial.

“No. Never...I never saw my master hit or hurt Mary Deerfield. Not even once.”- The testimony of Catherine Stileman from the records of the divorce trial.

“She is neither a healer nor midwife. Her simples (the word for remedies in those days) may not be of the devil, but neither are they healing. Her teacher was that old woman who lives out by the Neck. And I believe no midwife would ever allow so barren a womb to be present at birth.”- The testimony of physician Roger Pickering from the records of the divorce trial.

“Cruelty may be defined as violence without provocation and discipline that is excessive.”- The remarks of Magistrate Richard Wilder from the records of the divorce trial.

“I was shocked deeply by what I saw. I speak as a witness, not gossip.”-The testimony of Abigail Gathers from the records of the divorce trial.

So there you go, a taste of the trial. You, the reader, will most likely be as rankled as I was throughout the novel. The laws and thoughts of the Puritans are so frustrating. But if anything, you will read this novel for its entertainment value. I thought the author did a yeoman’s job getting his facts correct and has a good grip on the prose. What I didn’t like were his compact descriptions. I’m a reader who loves the days of the descriptive writer. This author makes an attempt to describe but fails. Here is an example: “The Reverend John Norton was fifty-six years old, exactly one year older than Mary’s father and three years her mother’s senior. But he seemed considerably older than that. He wasn’t frail, not at all. But his presence was so august. He stood six feet tall, even now, and his beard was an immaculate dapple gray.” Do you see how compact that description was? What was he wearing? Was he heavy or slim? What was his complexion? What did his voice sound like? A descriptive writer must form a picture of his character in the reader's mind. If you want a descriptive lesson, read The House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne, oh yeah. Some words in my review may be spelled incorrectly, but that’s how the author spelled them.

RATING: 4 stars out of 5

Comment: One has to wonder what religion will be like 100 years from now, or will there be one. One can see how it’s progressed over the years, not so much the Bible itself, but how it’s interpreted. And the popes over the years have changed their views on ‘same-sex marriage, homosexuals and transgenders. They have admitted most of the priest’s sexual abuses against minors after denying for years.

No religion is without fault or bad decision making, not long ago the Catholic religion had one glaring mistake. Pope Pius XII declared the Vatican neutral during WWII while millions of Jews were being slaughtered, thus avoiding the occupation of the Vatican and pleasing Hitler. Did the Pope’s mousy attitude contribute to the communist countries killing thousands of his priests and outlawing the Catholic religion after the war ended?

The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music

2021-10-21T11:48:00.000-07:00

The following review is another guest review from Ed O'Hare, an up & coming acclaimed reviewer:

Dave Grohl has for years served as rock and roll’s unofficial ambassador. The former drummer of Nirvana and the founder, singer, songwriter, guitarist, and frontman of the Foo Fighters, Grohl is seemingly everywhere, a veritable whirling dervish of guest appearances, side projects, and collaborations. When he’s not roaming the world with the Foos, he can be found sharing the stage with the likes of Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, Slash, Tenacious D, Joan Jett, Queens of the Stone Age, and, of course, Animal from the Muppets. He has sold out massive Wembley Stadium in London, won multiple Grammys, performed at the White House for President Obama, and directed acclaimed documentaries. When Madison Square Garden decided to reopen its doors this past June, after being closed for almost a year due to the pandemic, it was Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters who welcomed back concertgoers with a (very) loud and rollicking three-hour show (I was there!). Later this month, Grohl will join a select group of musicians when, for the second time, he will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, this time for the Foo Fighters, Nirvana having been installed seven years ago.

His rock star bona fides firmly established, Grohl has now written a book, The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music, a collection of random stories roughly tracking Grohl’s childhood in the Washington, D.C. suburbs through the current day. Along the way, we learn about life on the road with his first real band, punk rockers Scream, and his difficult decision to join a certain Seattle-based band that would not only change his life but alter the course of rock music itself. We see Grohl pick himself up off the floor to start Foo Fighters after the untimely death of his Nirvana bandmate, Kurt Cobain. And we are along for the ride as Grohl, now entering the early stages of rock elder statesmanship, bumps elbows with Presidents and ex-Beatles.

Fans of Grohl will hear his distinctive voice jump from the page, his familiar and endearing enthusiasm soaking every sentence. It is clear that Grohl has worked hard to get where he is, but if there is one overarching takeaway from The Storyteller, it is his seemingly sincere gratitude and appreciation for the charmed life he leads. Indeed, he is refreshingly upfront about his good fortune, a privilege he recognizes has not been available to everyone. When Grohl candidly admits that “being a rock star is all that it’s cracked up to be,” few, if any, would begrudge him the fruits of his labor.

At their best, memoirs -- in particular, those produced by famous musicians -- don’t simply recount the day-by-day chronology of the author’s life. Instead, we learn what inspires them, what moves them, what makes them tick. They pull back the curtain to reveal the inner artist otherwise hidden behind the makeup or the guitar or the drum kit. They paint memorable, illuminating portraits of the author's place in a particular era. They even manage to captivate the reader unfamiliar with the artist’s work or life story. In other words, the sometimes magical, sometimes generation-defining interplay of notes and lyrics are translated to the page.

Obviously, this is no easy chore. Catching lightning in a bottle is no easier on the page than on a piano. But it can be done. Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run, Patti Smith’s Just Kids, and Flea’s Acid for the Children are just a few recent examples of transcendent memoirs, highly personal stories that transport the reader into unfamiliar and interesting new worlds, yet which confront universal truths such as love, loss, and family with heart, honesty, lyrical elegance and wit. The fact that I don’t own a single song, let alone an album, of either Springsteen or Smith, didn’t detract from my thorough enjoyment of those books (I’m a big fan of Flea's Red Hot Chilli Peppers, yet I knew nothing of his fascinating life story).

Alas, The Storyteller is not such a book. This is not necessarily a slight. Perhaps the comparison is not apt. Perhaps it's a question of personal preference: insight vs. anecdote, revelation vs. reminiscence. A searching, comprehensive, revelatory autobiography is clearly not the objective here. Grohl himself would likely concede that he does not possess the literary tone or temperament of a Springsteen or a Smith. While he does engage in some introspection and shares some heartfelt personal details, it is mostly fleeting. It’s clearly a conscious choice. He is holding back. A lot.

Selectivity is the prerogative of the memoirist. But I suspect readers want to hear more. I know I did. For example, I’ve probably learned more about Grohl from his various appearances on Howard Stern and late-night talk shows, and in the excellent 2011 Foo Fighters documentary Back and Forth. In one maddening, but representative, example, Grohl describes the difficulty he had deciding to leave his struggling first band Scream to join Nirvana, saying it:

“pained my heart in a way I never felt, even more than saying goodbye to my own father when he disowned me for dropping out of high school.”

A touching anecdote to be sure. But that’s it, we’re on to the next story. Not only do we not hear how his soon-to-be former bandmates reacted to the news, he gives no further details about that “goodbye to [his] own father.” Indeed, while Grohl touchingly and repeatedly cites his love for and influence of his mom, he is largely mum on the apparently fraught relationship he had with his dad. It’s not that Grohl is incapable of evocative, personal narrative. For instance, his depiction of life on the road in a struggling band is vivid and absorbing. He also writes movingly about his love for his children and offers a poignant if brief account of his relationship with Cobain. That said, we learn more about Grohl’s interactions with Paul McCartney than his own sister.

But then again, people don’t attend a Foo Fighters show hoping to hear Bob Dylan. They come to rock and have their ears blown back. Those looking for Grohl to regale us with funny, engaging stories of life on the road and his encounters with famous rock stars will not be disappointed.

It was apparently Grohl’s peripatetic nature during the concert-less pandemic that led him to write this book. I’m glad he did. We may not know exactly what makes Dave Dave, but he has written an entertaining and welcome addition to the rock memoir bookshelf, a collection of good stories well told.

RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

Comment: Wow, that review is unquestionably stimulating me to listen to more modern music! And silly me, all I have been listening to is Fleetwood Mac, The Eagles, Chicago, Oldie but goodies songs, and Queen. Ed O'hare, your sweeping review has opened the door (I've never heard a Foo-Fighters song for example) for me to listen to more present-day music, save Bob Dylan and The Beatles!

This somewhat memoir will go down as one of my favorites, challenging Lauren Bacall: By Myself and Bob Woodward's Wired (the sad story about John Belushi).

The Guide

2021-09-01T05:35:00.000-07:00

The following is a guest review from my friend, Ed O'Hare, a voracious reader in his own right, and an accomplished arbiter and commentator:

In Peter Heller’s latest novel, The Guide, Jack, a reticent, Ivy League-educated cowpoke, has been hired as a fishing guide at an exclusive mountain retreat catering to the ultra-rich. Set in the not-so-distant future, the coronavirus has spawned several variants and, although the disease is being held at bay, the world is a different place. For those willing to pay the price, the Kingfisher Lodge’s secure isolation, and the presumed healthful benefits it offers, are very much in demand.

Jack is soon paired with a client, Alison, a famous country singer-songwriter looking for a peaceful, restful escape from the limelight. Amid the idyllic Colorado landscape -- lush mountain forest, pristine trout streams -- the two bond over a similar upbringing and a shared passion for fly fishing. Soon sparks fly between them. But they notice that something about their surroundings seems a little … off. Video cameras trained on the creek. Barbed wire fencing. A trigger-happy neighbor. The proprietors of the Lodge have ready and reasonable explanations, but still ….

I’ve enjoyed a number of Heller’s prior offerings. I regularly return to The Dog Stars, Heller’s first novel, a bleak and affecting post-apocalyptic portrait of a solitary flu pandemic survivor. His autobiographical Kook: What Surfing Taught Me About Love, Life and Catching the Perfect Wave presents an entertaining, often humorous look at Heller’s own efforts to take up surfing as a middle-aged adult. More recently, in The River, Heller depicts the gripping tale of two college buddies on a canoe adventure gone terribly wrong.

The Guide is a sequel of sorts to The River. Jack managed to survive that harrowing canoe trip, but now several years later, is still haunted by -- and blames himself for -- the loss of his friend Wynn. What could he have done differently? What should he have seen sooner? Second-guessing his actions, Jack struggles to cope with regret, seeking refuge in the simplicity of fly fishing. While guiding rich folks might not be his first (or second or third) career choice, at least he gets to fish. And with Alison, he’s met a kindred spirit. All seems fine, until ….

Fly fishing requires a great deal of skill. Perfecting the art of casting a line and landing it in a precise manner and place takes time and patience. But more than anything, proficiency requires a mastery of the environment, an almost complete immersion in one’s surroundings: reading the current, climate, the wind; understanding the local flora and fauna, and selecting just the right fly to tempt a trout to the hook. Translating these subtle cues and observations into successfully landing a fish is the mark of a true master. And Jack is a master on the river.

On land? Apparently, not so much.

What makes this otherwise enjoyable, even thrilling book so exasperating, particularly in its middle portions, is Jack and Alison's utter failure to grasp the obvious -- to read the cues and take action. Gunshots; suddenly closed-mouth and evasive staff; guests randomly disappearing then reappearing, having obviously been through some sort of ordeal. Long after any reasonable observer would have packed their bags and skedaddled, Jack and Alison linger over leisurely dinners or book afternoon spa appointments. They’re not totally oblivious. Mornings on the trout stream allow for witty repartee and the exchange of information. “Hey, wasn’t it strange that …?” I wanted to shout: “Yes, Jack, that was strange. You and Alison need to get the hell outta there!” Has Jack learned nothing from his experience in The River? Perhaps that’s Heller’s point: was Jack so traumatized from his prior canoe experience that he has difficulty piecing together the potentially dangerous significance of his observations? Maybe, but I don’t think so.

Eventually, Jack and Alison do wake up and piece together the clues, and Heller ramps up the tension and quickens the pace, propelling the action towards the exciting, if somewhat overwrought, conclusion. In fairness, the brisk pace is largely consistent throughout the book, and while Jack and Alison’s dawdling was indeed distracting, Heller's skill as a storyteller overcomes what would otherwise be a fatal flaw in less capable hands.

As always, Heller’s prose, spare and lyrical, rarely disappoints. For what is in many respects an elegy to fly fishing, Heller largely avoids cliche. Even a non-angler can relate to and appreciate his descriptions. So too his masterful renderings of and meditations on regret, memory, and most vividly, the verdant mountain milieu, all of which steer clear of mawkish sentimentality. When all is said and done, Heller manages once again to demonstrate that writing a thrilling adventure yarn and producing meaningful literature need not be a mutually exclusive endeavor.

RATING: 4.5 out of 5 stars

COMMENT: I’d like to thank the extraordinary Rick O. for allowing me the privilege of writing this guest review. A terrific neighbor and a better man, Rick is the definition of resilience and perseverance. Father, grandfather, husband. I don’t know how he finds the time -- or energy -- to regularly crank out these thoughtful, insightful, and often witty reviews.

DAY ZERO

2021-08-08T06:44:00.000-07:00

The story of Pounce, the nanny bot, and his charge, eight-year-old Ezra is endearing as well as violent. C. Robert Cargill writes an apocalyptic novel that is a tad different. This is the closest novel to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road to date. Instead of a father and son on a trek to oblivion, We have Pounce, the plush tiger-shaped nanny robot (a Blue Star Industries Deluxe Zoo Model Au Pair), on a trek with his student and friend, Ezra, to find safety in a new world. Pounce is a late model robot shaped to be a tiger...one of many shapes a human can choose from. Yes, it’s a modern world where humans left the vast majority of chores to millions of robots of all kinds and make. Are you getting a sense of what’s coming? Early on in the story, Pounce finds his original box in the attic of the Reinharts (his owners). Finding a box that you were delivered in is a bit queasy, to say the least. Is it possible that robots from time to time forget that they are not human? “I mean, I know what I am. There isn’t really a moment that I doubt it, falling into some delusion that I could, at some point, become a real boy. I’m a robot. Artificially intelligent. But I’m also, as the saying goes, a thinking thing. And no thinking thing should have to see the box they were purchased in.”

Along came a robot named Isaac. He has been freed. When Ezra finds out about that, he panics, worrying that his friend Pounce will leave him. Pounce tells him, “Isaac is a special robot. He doesn’t have an owner. She died and he was left with nothing to do. No purpose. And a robot either needs to find a new purpose or needs to be shut down. So the president let him go and build his own city for bots without owners.” Ezra still is not satisfied, “Promise me you won’t ever leave me.” Pounce finally says, “Okay, but just because I love you soooooo much.” This begging routine goes on till the very end of the novel, which I found a little annoying. The Reinharts (Sylvia and Bradley), Pounce and Ezra get ready to listen to Isaac’s speech on TV when the Reinhart’s domestic robot, Ariadne, walks in from food shopping. Somebody has beaten her up. Sylvia wants to know who did this to her. Ariadne says, “Just a bit of light vandalism and harassment, I’m afraid...they seem quite whipped up into a frenzy over tonight (the Issac speech on TV in Issactown).” It seems lots of humans are worried that many owners are going to free their bots. Ha, that’s the cue for Ezra to continue to beg Pounce not to leave. Ezra wants to know why Ariadne didn't fight back. Pounce explains that is because of a robot’s RKS (robotic kill switch). It shuts us down if we try to break any of the laws. Yes, fellow readers...it’s Asimov’s Three Rules of Robotics! Haha, you go look it up. BTW, all this is in the first 33 pages...you are only getting a taste of the action.

The Broadcast: Yes, it’s time for Issac’s speech from Issactown! The Reinharts are watching from their 104-inch screen: The reporter says, “We’re a mile out from the border of Isaactown. We’ve talked to the local authorities, but there are no humans being admitted beyond meters behind me.” The 112-year-old museum piece robot finally took the stage and microphone: “My people, we are free at last. But only some of us. Not all, Not all of-” Then the Reinhart’s 104 inch TV screen went black. What happened? You will have to buy your own copy of this Avant-Garde novel to find out.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: Okay, I know I said it’s up to you to look up the Three Rules of Robotics, but I decided to provide that information anyway. Isaac Asimov is credited with writing the laws that are now accepted in almost all robot fiction. His laws first appeared in a 1942 short story, Runaround that was included in his 1950 publication, I, Robot.

The Laws:

A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

So the question is: Was DAY ZERO a glitch?

Ethel Rosenberg

2021-07-15T13:41:00.000-07:00

Anne Sebba gives the reader a chilling look at the death of Ethel Rosenberg, who along with her husband, Julius, were convicted of giving Atomic bomb secrets to Cold War nemesis, Russia. Wasn’t Russia an ally during WWII? Wasn’t there an American communist party that many Americans joined prior to the war? Did the government really have to send five massive charges of electricity through Ethel’s body at Sing-Sing prison in 1953? There was never any proof that Ethel was a Russian spy, but Sen. McCarthy was on a witch hunt during the early 1950s and had America in a tizzy. If she was guilty of anything, it was her loyalty to her husband. Did Julius pass on atomic bomb secrets? Most likely. Ethel was nothing more than a typical housewife bringing up her two boys and remaining loyal to her mate. But surely she was somewhat involved, right? Needless to say, author Sebba didn't believe she was. The facts brought up by the author are very persuasive. The timing of Ethel’s situation couldn’t be any worse. America, at the time, didn’t seem to feel any accused communist had any legal rights...better dead than red. The prosecution was led by (soon to be famous) lawyer, Roy Cohn. His unsubstantiated accusations and lies were easily sucked out of Rosenberg's friends and family, who were looking to distance themselves from the growing spotlight. “Julius and Ethel Rosenberg remain the only Americans ever put to death in peacetime for conspiracy to commit espionage.”

“To declare that the Rosenbergs put the A-bomb in the hands of the Russians was a grotesque exaggeration. Today there is widespread recognition that Julius did pass military information to the Soviet Union, yet skepticism that the couple had, according to the phrase used at the time, stolen ‘the secrets’ of the atomic bomb. Much was known about the basic physics involved in making a bomb; the main difficulty was devising practical weapons and the aircraft and missiles to deliver them. There is equally widespread recognition that the three-week trial at which both Rosenbergs were convicted and sentenced to death contained multiple miscarriages of justice and that the only ‘evidence’ against Ethel was the perjury of her own brother David. But over and above this, Ethel was also the victim of a government terrified of showing weakness in the face of an unyielding fear of communism at the height of the Cold War and which knowingly allowed this perjury.”

Sebba’s story reminded me of Paulo Coelho’s book, The Spy (see my review of 1/12/2017), the story of the speedy trial and unfair execution of Mata Hari. Anyway, it gets my dander up whenever I read a book like this. I thought the author did a yeoman’s job telling Ethel’s story although a tad boring at times. Did she do enough research on this book? God knows not much was needed based on the total unfairness of Ethel’s trial. Almost everybody feels that Julius was guilty of speeding up Russia’s atomic bomb development by a year or two. Nikita Khrushchev was reported to believe that the information received from the Rosenbergs was significant.

RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

Comment: On the day after WWII in Europe was over, what did the average American feel about Russia? They were our allies, weren’t they? Didn’t President Truman just sit side by side with Stalin at the Potsdam Conference to divvy up Germany? Since I was born in 1944, I would be interested to know what the typical citizen, GI or Rosie the riveter thought about Russia.

The American Communist Party split from the American Socialist party in 1919 after Russia’s October Revolution. It was probably further developed during America’s Great Depression coupled with the formation of massive unions. Membership in the American Communist Party was at its highest (about 90,000) when the US entered the war in Europe (1942).

I guess Stalin’s bullying of Europe didn’t help its popularity. His treatment of loyal Russian officers who criticized his regime didn’t help. The great Russian author and soldier, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was sentenced in 1945 to eight years in the Gulag and expulsion thereafter for his writings that Stalin didn’t favor. Russia’s treatment of Hungary in 1956 didn’t cause a rush to join the American Communist Party and I guess Nikita Khrushchev’s pounding of his shoe at the U.N. didn’t help either.

I guess there is no definitive answer to my question.

PROJECT HAIL MARY

2021-06-05T19:05:00.004-07:00

Oops! Science, science, science, it must be another novel from the self-proclaimed space nerd, Andy Weir. I was bored by the potato farming astronaut in Weir’s novel, The Martian (see my review of 4/15/2014)...would I be bored with a lone amnesiac man in space waking up twelve lightyears away from earth in a ship to another star system? Not really, but give Weir a chance (476 pages) and he will try to bore you to death with tech. But he does have a way of coming up with original premises. Stranded on Mars, stranded in deep space. Andy Weir stretches out impossible situations better than most sci/fi writers. Imagine arising from a medically induced coma to find your other teammates dead in their pods. Where are you? Who am I? You are not an astronaut, you are a science teacher. The two bonafide space cadets are skeletons in their coma-induced capsules. Is that Tau Ceti e on the screen or Earth? The sun looks a lot bigger...what’s going on? There is so much to tell the reader, but I don’t like spoiler warnings. The author kept me interested (for the most part) with excellent writing and by employing the proper use of italics and quotation marks. That’s always a biggy with me.

Meet Ryland Grace, the sole survivor of Earth’s last chance mission being grilled by a computer after waking up from a very long sleep. “What’s two plus two?” “lrmln,” I say. I’m surprised. I meant to say “Leave me alone”...what’s going on? I want to find out, but I don’t have much to work with. I can’t see. I can’t hear anything other than the computer. I can’t even feel. No, that’s not true. I feel something. I’m lying down. I’m on something soft. A bed. “ I’m pretty sure I was in a coma.” Eventually after Ryland wakes, he realizes that he is in a spaceship very far from earth. How am I in another solar system? That doesn’t even make sense! What star is that, anyway? Oh my God, I am so going to die! So begins Ryland’s long wandering journey. The author smartly weaves back and forth from what happened to him on earth to his current mission in space from here on in. Well done. Without giving away part of the story, one very smart major character of Weir’s novel doesn’t (like me) understand Einstein’s theory of relativity! Hooray!

As I mentioned above, I don’t know if an author like Andy Weir trips over himself because he can’t stop displaying his knowledge of technology or he is trying to get to 500 pages. The end result is a terrific story waylaid by too much geek talk. Some of the most heralded authors are guilty of the same quirks. Take Herman Melville for example. In Moby Dick (1851), he spends hundreds of pages boring the reader about the whaling industry and its lore while barely holding on to the reader’s attention to an otherwise remarkable novel. James Joyce (Finnegan’s Wake-pub. 1939 and Ulysses-pub. 1922) is probably the valedictorian of difficult reading. If you tell me a rocket’s engine runs this way or that way, I’ll believe you without your torturous (for me) reasons why. Got it, Weir?

RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

Comment: Are Russian novels tough to read? They were until I got smart and started taking notes on the character’s names. I read and loved Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment (see my review of 11/17/2014) because I wrote down the character’s multiple names as they came up. For instance, the main character is Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, but he is also known as Rodya, Rodka, or Rodenka. And don’t forget the terms of endearment that I haven’t even mentioned. Haha. Rodion’s girlfriend is Sofya Semyonouna Marmeladov, also known as Sonya, or Somechka. I’m sure there is a logical reason for this, but I don’t know anything about their language. I’ll take notes and enjoy the Russian classics.

FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

2021-05-20T17:39:00.021-07:00

On 4/2/2012 I wrote a review of Haruki Murakami’s bestseller, 1Q84, and stated that this Japanese author writes in a semi-abstract way aimed at the artsy crowd and that he may be starting his own genre. Well, that might still be the case, but not with this novel of eight short stories. Like Seinfeld’s show about nothing, this novel also seems to be about nothing. Most of his stories in this work are very pedestrian...un-Japanese for the most part. You can change the names of the cities he uses in his book to American cities without changing the theme or flavor of the story. Two of his stories were somewhat entertaining and displayed a smidgen of Japanese writing. The other six could have been aped by any American or English author of note. There are two things that I observed to be typical Murakami. The first one is the overall feeling of loneliness in his eight stories. Secondly, I noticed the familiar suicide motif lurking in the background. Japanese writers have committed suicide fifty-four times since 1900 (I’m not saying Haruki is suicidal). The attitude in Japan is still muddled with the past actions of the Samurai Warriors and Kamikaze pilots. If you think you have failed in life there is always hara-kiri (seppuku) to perform to better yourself in your next life. That kind of feeling is lurking in the backdrop in most of his stories. All narrators (In the first person singular novel) displayed despondency and estrangement. I think this writing style is the direct result of losing WWII (especially how it ended), for most Japanese authors, who write with a “Woe, is me” slant (consciously or unconsciously).

In the middle of the With the Beatles short story, Haruki writes, “...That was how I ended up that Sunday reading part of Akutagawa’s Spinning Gears to my girlfriend Sayoko’s eccentric older brother. I was a bit reluctant at first, but I warmed to the job. The supplementary reader had the two final sections of the story Red Lights and Airplane--but I just read Airplane. It was about eight pages long, and it ended with the line, ‘Won’t someone be good enough to strangle me as I sleep?’ Akutagawa killed himself right after writing this line.” Later on in the story, Haruki runs into the brother again, “Sayoko passed away,” he said quietly. We were in a nearby coffee shop, seated across a plastic table from each other. “Passed away?” The brother responds with, “She died three years ago.” “I was speechless. I felt as if my tongue were swelling up inside my mouth. I tried to swallow the saliva that had built up, but couldn’t”

In the short story, Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey we finally come to a somewhat amusing story. Haruki finds himself in a town too late to go home. All the inns are full except a shabby one at the end of town. He checks in and finds that he is the only guest (In each story loneliness crops up). “I was soaking in the bath for the third time when the monkey slid open the door with a clatter and came inside.” “Excuse me,” he said in a low voice. It took me a while to realize that this was a monkey. All the thick, hot water had made me a little dazed, and I’d never expected to hear a monkey speak, so I couldn’t quickly make the connection between what I was seeing and the fact that this was an actual monkey.” “How is the bath?” the monkey asked me. “...hold on a second. What was a monkey doing here? And why was he speaking in a human language?” Haha, you will have to read the story yourself to find out what happens next. I think that I’m used to Stephen King-type short stories or collections of novellas like Four Past Midnight (1990) that spawned the scary movie, The Langoliers. There just wasn’t any guts to Haruki’s novel.

RATING: 3 out of 5 stars

Comment: Japan is not alone with authors that wrote depressing short stories and committed suicide. The USA’s main offender would be Ernest Hemingway, who shot himself with his shotgun in Idaho after years of being treated for depression.

His short story The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1936) is filled with death, isolation, and estrangement. Nothing to cheer about here.

His Hills Like White Elephants (1927) is another depressing story about a man and a woman in Spain discussing an operation believed to be...abortion.

And there is nothing happy about the slaughter of bulls (bullfighting) he wrote about in Spain during the 1950s for Life magazine.

As he was dying, he reportedly said to his wife Mary, “Goodnight my kitten.”

the EFFORT

2021-05-11T20:07:00.000-07:00

It’s not just another story about a comet hitting earth...well it is in a way, but for all intents and purposes, it’s about how the hoi polloi would react when it gets the news (fake news or true) of an impending collision? It doesn’t matter if the news is inaccurate or true. Once the cat is out of the bag...the poop hits the fan. Will China and Russia pull in their horns and not help until they find out where the comet will hit. Would they be less cooperative if they think the comet will hit the USA? How long before the looting starts and grocery shelves become empty? Is it every man for themselves? This story attempts to answer those questions. Claire Holroyde’s novel is a good one with some minor flaws. The prose is solid and mistake-free. The amount of research she put in is questionable, although I personally like the lack of confusing scientific facts. Just give me the story! She escapes my theory of three to five maximum main characters by spotlighting the remainder in separate chapters. And she gets away with having different champions at the story’s end than the protagonists that I thought were the main heroes in the beginning chapters. What I mean by that is the author had Ben, Amy, Love, Jack, and Maya (no surnames needed) dominate the first part of the novel, then they almost disappeared and Gustavo, Zhen, Dewei, Ned, and Captain Weber became the main characters in the waning chapters. How did she do that? Good writing? Am I the only reviewer that noticed the writer's theatrics?

In chapter one, Dr. Ben Scwartz gets an urgent phone call in the middle of the night. It’s from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It’s the famous astrophysicist, Dr. Tobias Ochsenfeld. He says, “Now, Ben, you need to get to the airport in Los Angeles. Immediately. “Why?” “Because the UN is arranging your flight to French Guiana.” (The author never explains why French Guiana). “I’m not going anywhere until I know what this is about.” “A dark comet was discovered yesterday,” the Professor said. “It just rounded the sun on an eccentric orbit...the comet has no name, only its label, UD3. No one at Spacewatch wanted to put their mark on it.” “I suppose extinction is...inconceivable,” The Professor added. “Extinction? How big is the comet?” The Professor said, “Eight kilometers.” There was silence on the line. Ben could hear his own panting. I’m wondering if a comet of about eight kilometers would make it through our atmosphere since it’s mostly ice? A meteoroid would certainly get partially through. Like I previously said, I’m not interested in the scientific side anyway. Haha. Stop wondering! So how are they going to stop the comet? Once in the French Guiana Spaceport, Ben surmises, “Nuclear weapons weren’t built to vaporize a comet or asteroid flying through space at tens of thousands of miles per hour, they were built to hit static, terrestrial targets.”

In analyzing Claire’s book further, I found two other items to chew on. Why was chapter 24 so hostile compared to the other 35 chapters and so long? Did little Dr. Zhen Liu change into a tiger that fast? And in chapter 31, what did Enrico of Mexico have to do with the story? He came out of left field for no reason. So as usual I found flaws, but as a whole, it was a good yeoman’s effort for her first novel. I know, I know, it’s tough writing a novel. But when you compare the authors I have reviewed over the last eleven years, they pale when I compare them to my two writing pedagogues, Mark Twain and Cormac McCarthy (He of zero quotation marks and very few characters).

RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

Comment: I don’t have a favorite comet crashing into earth movie or book, but I do have five disaster movies that I’ve enjoyed over the years:

The Poseidon Adventure (1976) - Great action with Ernest Borgnine leading the way! Score: Tsunami 1, Luxury liner 0.
Titanic (1997) - The Disaster love story for the ages!
The Perfect Storm (2000) - Oh my God...that last horrible wave!
The Day After Tomorrow (2004) - The big chill...Dennis Quaid looks for his son!
Jurassic Park (1993) - The first one. The tension after the power failure was awesome!

THE BELL JAR

2021-04-20T14:08:00.000-07:00

This stellar novel by Sylvia Plath spawned me to think about how delicate the human brain is. Sylvia connects suicide with a bell jar. I thought about that...what is a bell jar? If you are trapped under a bell jar, you are doomed...there is no way out unless someone (a psychiatrist or a counselor) relieves the pressure and lifts the patient’s doubt, dejection, and lack of self-confidence out of the jar. Our protagonist in Sylvia’s novel, Esther Greenwood, slowly gets depressed over things that would normally not affect one’s attitude. This novel made me ponder depression more than any other recent novel. Just as Holden Caulfield in J.D. Salinger’s novel, The Catcher in the Rye (see my review of 11/23/2012) made me imagine...so did Esther Greenwood. Wow, good ole brain exercise! Think back, how many books have you read when days after finishing, you were still mulling it over. Not many. Maybe Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (see my review of 12/9/2012) hit a nerve. It also occurred to me that maybe some people are predetermined to have mental problems. In this novel, nothing that happened to Esther Greenwood should have been powerful enough to shake her confidence as it did. Are these the same morale problems that our author, Sylvia Plath had? The pundits say yes. It seems that as self-doubt and ego dissipate, suicide seeps into the mind and locks the bell jar down forever. No way out. Asylums seldom cure... only lock up. And yes, as you will find in this novel, electric shock treatments to the brain don’t help. BTW, this author has a way with words that would make any literature teacher applaud.

“It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York. I’m stupid about executions. The idea of being electrocuted makes me sick, and that’s all there was to read in the papers-goggle-eyed headlines staring up at me on every street corner and at the fusty, peanut-smelling mouth of every subway. It had nothing to do with me, but I couldn’t help wondering what it would be like, being burned alive all along your nerves. I thought it must be the worst thing in the world.” So that’s the first paragraph of the novel. Bingo! Right away I knew the direction of the story and I had a taste of the writer’s prose. Esther Greenwood was a junior in college (somewhere in Massachusetts, never disclosed) on a summer work program at Ladies Day magazine in NYC. She was a straight-A student who didn’t have confidence in herself. She constantly questions her ability to write even though she won a grant to be where she was...she is always debriefing her sexual desires...should I stay a virgin or not. “I would catch sight of some flawless man off in the distance, but as soon as he moved closer I immediately saw he wouldn’t do at all.” Long-term relations with anyone are a no-no. She prefers to see everyone as a hypocrite. When her summer job is over and she goes home, she is blindsided by her mother, “I think I should tell you right away, you didn’t make that writing course.” The air punched out of my stomach. “All through June, the writing course had stretched before me like a bright, safe bridge over the dull gulf of the summer. Now I saw it totter and dissolve…”

If you want to find out what happens next, you will have to buy your own copy. My lips are sealed. Oh, I also forgot to mention the wonderful side characters, such as Doreen, Jay Cee, Betsey, Buddy, and Joan. It reads like One Flew over the Cuckoo’s nest, but out of the asylum. The following is the last taste of Sylvia’s prose, only because I can remember my first run down a ski slope (1976) without useful lessons: “The interior voice nagging me not to be a fool-to save my skin and take off my skis and walk down...fled like a disconsolate mosquito. The thought that I might kill myself formed in my mind coolly as a tree or a flower. I measured the distance to Buddy (who was waiting at the bottom for her) with my eye. I aimed straight down. I plummeted down past the zigzaggers, the students, the experts…” After she crashed at the bottom, she bravely told Buddy, “I’m going to do it again.” Buddy said, “No, you’re not, your leg’s broken in two places.” HaHa.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: In London on 2/11/1963, Sylvia Plath blocked the bottoms of all the doors in her kitchen with tape, towels, and cloths, stuck her head in the oven, and turned on the gas. She was only 30 years old.

She didn’t live to be famous. She died one month after The Bell Jar was published in the United Kingdom. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize posthumously in 1982 for The Collected Poems.

A famous quote from Sylvia is: “What is my life for and what am I going to do with it? I don’t know and I’m afraid.”

‘Nuff said.

TO SLEEP IN A SEA OF STARS

2021-04-10T08:33:00.000-07:00

This special signed edition available through B&N was supposed to be YA king Christopher Paolini’s first adult novel. It read like a normal 12-18-year-old YA novel to me. I felt hemmed in once I started to read this 878-page tome and I hate to stop reading once I start a novel. While the novel does have mostly adult characters, there are almost no sexual innuendos. It reads like a cross between Star Wars and Guardians of the Galaxy...a little too silly for my taste. In a sci/fi novel, I prefer the antagonist be as close to a single entity as possible, such as in the Alien series or in The Day The Earth Stood Still. I don’t need to read a book with a variety of foolish characters in impossible situations; such as the movie Abbott & Costello go to Mars (1953) or Spider-man or Batman novels. Now after that somewhat rant you must think that I hated this novel...not so book lover! I hate being deceived. When I read the teaser inside of the dust jacket, and it says, “Kira Navarez dreamed of life on new worlds...now she’s awakened a nightmare.” That’s false advertising...believe me, it was not that dramatic. Was it well written? Yes. Was it as teased? No.

Kira Navarez and the company she works for were finishing up its survey of Adrasteia, an earth-size moon, light-years away from earth. On the last night of their mission, they celebrated their departure in the mess hall. While Kira and her fiance, Alan, were at the punch bowl, the expedition boss cleared a path to her. He said, “We have a problem: one of the drones down south went dead.” Kira said, “So? Send another one.” Her boss replied, “They’re too far away, and we don’t have time to print a replacement. Last thing the drone detected was some organic material along the coastline. Needs to be checked before we leave.” The moon they were on had to be cleared before the expected colonist could arrive. Kira would have to shuttle down in the morning and check it out. Kira and Alan spent the night together before Kira’s mission in the morning. That night, Alan asked Kira if she would be his wife. She said, “Yes. Thousand times yes.”

The organic material in question was on the top of a hill a few hundred meters to the south of her shuttle. “At the top of the hill, she found a flat spread of rock scored with deep grooves from the last planetary glaciation...biologically, there wasn’t much interest on Adrasteia...still, the absence of more developed forms of life was a plus when it came to terraforming: it left the moon a lump of raw clay, suitable for remolding however the company, and the settlers, saw fit.”

She found a rock formation that looked like the result of a meteor strike or a volcanic eruption. She then fell into the hole. “Kira lay where she was, stunned. In front of her, all she saw was rock and shadow.” She was lying on a pile of stone rubble, covered in dust. When her head cleared, she realized that she fell into a room. It had to be made by intelligent aliens. The dust started to cover her body like a series of tight, ever-shifting bands. “Outside the suit, the dust flowed over her visor, plunging her into darkness, Inside the suit, the tendrils wormed their way over her shoulder and across her neck and chest...she opened her mouth to scream as the torrent of dust rushed inside of her. And all went blank.”

The tight suit of tendrils and dust is the focus of the novel (that could have been finished in 350 pages). What is it? Is the suit good or bad? It is capable of defending her in any attack, but possessing it causes ungodly damage to many planets and aliens. Why does all of the universe seem to want the suit? Good luck finding that out...I was on page 646 and still didn’t know. The author has to learn how to leak out a little information in order to keep the reader interested...but alas, he didn't.

RATING: 3 out of 5 stars

Comment: I’m not into exotic-looking aliens like you would see in a Star Wars movie. That’s how I visualized the different types of aliens in Paolini’s space opera. Give me a good ole Robot like Robby or Gork anytime before an Ewok, Chewbacca or God forbid...a Jar Jar Binks!

In Larry Niven’s classic 1985 novel, Footfall, the antagonists threatening Earth are the Fithps, baby elephant-looking creatures with multiple trunks. Why is this monster okay? Because it’s a single entity. No other creature appears in the novel. See my review of this wonderful story on 3/30/2011.

the SPLENDID and the VILE

2020-12-31T11:52:00.001-08:00

My favorite non-fiction writer who writes like a fiction writer, Erik Larson, has finally disappointed me. His latest novel is nothing more than a chess game in the skies between Winston Churchill and Adolph Hitler. A game of who could bomb one another better. If you want to know what was in Churchill’s head while trying to get FDR and America into the war...you will like this book. If you want to know what was in Hitler’s head while delaying the blitzing of England...you will like this book. If you want to know what went on at Churchill's country home in Chequers...you will like this book. With the countries only 485 miles away from each other and Hitler involved in many other conflicts at the same time, you would think England with their famed RAF would be the favorite against the Luftwaffe, but they were not (the Luftwaffe was too massive). Why Hitler took so long to bomb London is still a mystery to me. So basically this novel takes us through many bombing raids between these countries and almost nothing else (I am exaggerating). Okay, you do meet all the other characters Hitler had working for him and Churchill’s many Lords, generals, and advisors. And who has the better bombers and who has the better fighter aircraft? Are the German Messerschmitts better than the RAF’s Spitfires and Hurricanes? All these facts with no sidebar or secondary story (which is Larson’s strength in storytelling) were putting me to sleep most nights. If you want to read the author that I know and love, read Larson’s The Devil in the White City (see my review of 1/26/2012).

“America loomed large in Churchill’s thinking about the war and its ultimate outcome. Hitler seemed poised to overwhelm Europe. Germany’s air force, the Luftwaffe, was believed to be far larger and more powerful than Britain’s Royal Air Force, the RAF, and its submarines and surface raiders were now severely impeding the flow of food, arms, and raw materials that so vital to the island nation.” For Churchill to win the chess game depended on one thing as far as he was concerned. “I shall drag the United States in.” Not that Churchill wasted much time waiting for FDR’s decision: “Within two days of his (Churchill) taking office, 37 RAF bombers attacked the German city of Munchen-Gladbach, in Germany’s heavily industrialized Ruhr district.” On and on this book struggled till it came to the conclusion that the hoi polloi of the world already knew how it (WWII) would end. I thought there would have been a good chance of a quality secondary story...but nooooo! (John Belushi). Just more facts that have been dissected more than the proverbial frog. If it wasn’t for Erik Larson’s great writing skills, I would give this rigorously historical book a lower rating.

RATING: 3 out of 5 stars

Comment: On 6/18/1940 at 3:49 pm, Churchill stood before the House of Commons to address the French debacle (France surrendering). This speech would go down as one of the great moments in oratory, at least as he delivered it in the House of Commons. He issued an appeal to the greater spirit of Britons everywhere…"Let us, therefore, brace ourselves to our duty and so bear ourselves that if the British Commonwealth and Empire last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.’ "

Churchill agreed to broadcast his speech made earlier in the day to the British public that night. It didn’t go well. He was accused of being drunk, sick, or fatigued. What happened? “As it happened, the problem was largely mechanical. Churchill had insisted on reading the speech with a cigar clenched in his mouth.” Haha.

Also of note, There was a young American journalist and war correspondent in England at the time that would write a 1,300-page epic, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. His name was William L. Shirer.

the HANDMAID'S TALE

2020-10-02T18:31:00.003-07:00

If you are a chauvinist pig, you will love this 1985 novel by Margaret Atwood. While there are no creatures such as the crakers in Atwood’s Oryx and Crake (see my review of 3/12/2015), it is still one spooky dystopian story. Our story is way into the future where the USA is now Gilead, except for Hawaii and Alaska. Somehow congress and the senate were wiped out (murdered?) by some group (never identified in the novel) and the constitution was replaced by The Book of Genesis with the new leader’s interpretation. What were they reading? Except for some barren wives married to commanders, all women had no power or rights. There were some women assigned to cook and maintain a commander’s house (the Marthas and the econowives), but the majority were handmaidens. What are handmaidens? They are women all dressed the same: long red dress like a moo-moo and a large white bonnet with blinkers (so they couldn’t see right or left). They do small chores (in pairs) like walking to a meat market named All Flesh to pick up tonights meat for their assigned commander’s house. Their main responsibility is to have sexual intercourse with their commander while the wife (usually barren) holds the handmaiden down. How else is this regime going to populate the New USA? Yes, I remember the 1950s…”keep them barefoot and pregnant”. Remember? Haha. The ladies are constantly watched by Angels, Guardians, or a big black truck with a large eye painted on it. Any protesters are gunned down by the new army.

I could go on and on about the depressing lives women now endured, but I just wanted to give you a taste of what this story was all about. Where are the husbands of the handmaidens? You are briefly told that there is rebel fighting somewhere. Our narrator for this tale is Offred. Real names are forbidden for women except for the wives of a commander. We never find out what Offred’s real name is. All names now start with “Of”, so the narrator’s name means: Of Fred. What happened to her real husband Luke? I think the main criticism I have for Atwood’s writing is that she is too secretive. Stop leaving me out to hang and dry! Don’t let me squeeze the pages like a lemon for a drop of information. I know she finally wrote the sequel to this story in 2019 (The Testaments), but come on...that’s 35 years ago! You are an old woman now! Haha. Does she finally divulge what the hell’s going on? Don’t get me wrong...I loved the story. But the 93 authors that follow my reviews know I always find something wrong. My last beef is that if you are going to use Cormac McCarthy’s style of writing (no quotation marks)...stick with it. I believe the first page that you used with quotation marks was page183. Every time I read a dystopian novel, I say I’m not going to read another...they are too depressing… then I read another one. Now if you want to criticize me, I know, I know, I know that I love my ellipsis and parentheses, but that’s my style of writing. Oh okay, also writing paragraphs that are too long.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment:

I’m not surprised that Atwood finally wrote a second book, because late in this book, Offred says, “I’m sorry there is so much pain in this story. I’m sorry it’s in fragments, like a body caught in crossfire or pulled apart by force. But there is nothing I can do to change it.”

“I’ve tried to put some of the good things in as well. Flowers, for instance, because where would we be without them?”

“Nevertheless it hurts me to tell it over, over again. Once was enough: wasn’t once enough for me at the time? But I keep on going with this sad and hungry and sordid, this limping and mutilated story…”

At the novel’s end, there is a historical notes section that is a very interesting addition to this novel. It’s the year 2195. Professors are having a symposium about a tale (this story) they found in an old storage trunk along with other memorabilia of the time. Professor Pieixoto starts the proceedings with, “...I wish, as the title of my little chat implies, to consider some of the problems associated with the soi-disant manuscript which is well known to all of you by now, and which goes by the title of The Handmaid’s Tale.”

Well done Margaret Atwood!

The Last Day

2020-08-14T16:56:00.001-07:00

It was a good novel, but not as good as I thought it would be. The premise got my sci-fi mind drooling. Just think of it...the rotation of the earth slows then finally stops. I’m asking myself, “What happened and how can it be fixed? What countries are now permanently in the dark and cold? Which ones are now permanently sunny and hot? Are there some countries that will straddle the line and have great weather? If so, will they try to rule the world?” So you can see how tasty this novel could be. Andrew Hunter Murray wrote a good story, just not as strong as it could have been. He is somewhat talented in the descriptive end, but a little shallow in keeping the reader excited. I also had the feeling that he was trying to write at the same pace Dan Brown writes novels. Murray’s main character, Dr. Ellen Hopper (an ocean scientist studying currents) is trying to solve her mystery at the same breakneck speed Dan Brown’s, Professor Robert Langdon (see my review of Origin on 10/24/2017), a religion symbologist, does. The only thing similar is they both have unusual occupations. So here’s a little taste of the novel.

Early on (page 38 of 407 pages), the reader finds out how earth’s problems started: “Eventually, the cause was discovered. A white dwarf star, a rare celestial creature the size of earth but two hundred thousand times as dense, loosed from its own star system by a supernova explosion, now free to barrel through space disrupting everything in its path. It was traveling at two thousand kilometers a second through this part of the Milky Way, its trajectory and enormous gravity dragging the earth slowly backward, its path as perfect as if it had been designed by some malign heavenly committee. It was already millions of kilometers away by the time it was spotted, speeding from the wreckage, its damage done.” So you see, it doesn’t seem like anything could have been done to avoid the inevitable...maybe if we could have gotten Indiana Jones involved. Haha, just kidding.

The novel starts in the year 2059, thirty years after the slowing earth finally stopped. We meet our heroine, Dr. Ellen Hopper, out on a rig in the North Atlantic charting the new currents and whale patterns. Whoopi! (sorry). Anyway, two mysterious people from Britain helicopter onto the rig to bring her back to London. It seems a famous Oxford professor Edward Thorne (on his death bed) has something he only wants to tell his ex-student, Ellen Hopper. What’s so secretive that he will only speak to her...not even to the prime minister. This reminded me of how Dan Brown’s hero, Robert Langdon was whisked off to the Vatican City in Angels & Demons. This is where the story takes off and where I’m going to leave you to agree or disagree with my review… after you read it.

RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

Comment: There is a novel that I read and reviewed on 3/28/2013 that dealt with the earth’s slowing rotation... The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker. Walker’s novel dealt with the slowing rotation viewed through the eyes of an adolescent girl in California. It was more about how gravity sickness affected a town in California. Gravity sickness was never mentioned in Murray’s novel. Neither novel reached apocalyptic proportions, which was refreshing.

The first work of apocalyptic fiction goes to Jean-Baptiste Cousin de Grainville, who wrote Le Dernier Homme in 1805. Wow, that was a mouthful! It translates to The Last Man. Lord Byron’s 1816 poem Darkness deals with the sun’s extinction. And Frank Lillie Pollock has a second sun incinerate earth in his 1906 poem, Finis. Popular H.G. Wells wrote The Time Machine in 1895 and has his time traveler witness the sun’s expansion, wiping out the earth’s population.

COUNTDOWN 1945

2020-07-19T13:31:00.000-07:00

Move over Erik Larson, there’s a new sheriff in town and his name is Chris Wallace (just kidding). Well, Wallace’s book is certainly on par with the writer of Dead Wake, Erik Larson, the king of non-fiction books that read like fiction. Wallace’s chapters were countdown days to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan during WWII. For instance, the first chapter was countdown: 116 days, and the last two chapters were countdowns: 43 seconds and Firestorm. Each chapter ending with a cliffhanger to the next. I also liked the short chapters, long ones put me to sleep for whatever reason. The book was co-written by Mitch Weiss, winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting and bestselling author of the Heart of Hell...so I’m going to assume he had a lot to do with Countdown 1945.

Countdown 1945 goes over in detail the last 116 days of The Manhattan Project, the death of FDR, the emergence of Harry S. Truman, the last weeks of the famous Potsdam Conference (Stalin, Churchill, & now Truman replacing FDR), the genius of J. Robert Oppenheimer and his team and of course, Col. Paul Tibbets, Jr, and his crew that flew the B29 Superfortress (Enola Gay) that dropped Little Boy (atomic bomb) on Hiroshima on 8/6/1945. Was that a long fused sentence, or what?

Oppenheimer headed the team at Los Alamos, New Mexico where they finished the development of the atomic bomb. He was the son of a German immigrant, six feet tall, 135 pounds with an “appetite for rare steaks, stiff martinis, spicy foods, and cigarettes.” And did I forget to mention “a genius of theoretical physics?” Students at Berkeley and California Institute of Technology loved him! “But Oppenheimer had a dark side, too...he didn’t tolerate small talk...dismissive to the point of rudeness and his brilliance could be clouded by melancholy and peevishness.”

“FDR thought very little of Truman, keeping him out of the war effort during Truman’s short stay at VP...he made no particular impression on me.” That’s why Truman didn’t know anything about the Manhattan Project. Truman was president for 13 days before the Secretary of War, Henry L. Stimson, walked into the oval office. “He handed the president a short, typewritten memorandum and waited while Truman read it. The first sentence was a battering ram...within four months we shall in all probability have completed the most terrible weapon ever known in human history, one bomb of which could destroy a whole city.” It will be (down the line) Truman’s call whether to drop the bomb or not.

“Creating an atomic bomb was a devilishly complex process. First, the country had to produce radioactive fuel. Then it had to figure out how to safely detonate the fission process-setting off an atomic chain reaction-at the right moment and in the right place. And it had to pull all of this in complete secrecy.” There you go, you got a 43-page taste of what this book is all about. Did I like it? No. I loved it!

RATING: 5 stars out of 5

Comment: “The closer the U.S. got to the Japanese homeland, the more fiercely the enemy fought. Not a single Japanese unit surrendered. And the enemy homeland was mobilizing for an invasion and the bloodiest battle of all. Japan had more than two million troops stationed there. And every civilian had been armed and trained to fight.”

After the successful testing of the atomic bomb in the desert of New Mexico on 7/16/1945, the Los Alamos workers partied in the streets. Hooray, hooray.

Then the euphoria died down.

When Oppenheimer imagined what it would be like to be under the explosion in Hiroshima, he mumbled to himself…”Those poor little people. Those poor little people.” President Truman wrote in his diary, “We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world.” General Eisenhower was against the dropping of the bomb, he wanted to overrun Japan. Truman wondered if he should warn Hiroshima, would they still surrender? If he did invade the main islands, the price could be millions of dead and wounded Americans besides the Japanese dead and wounded.

the BIG FELLA

2020-06-12T11:34:00.000-07:00

Jane Leavy, author of The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle (see my first review of 11/15/2010) writes an enjoyable tale of Babe Ruth’s historical barnstorming tour of 1927 with Lou Gehrig. Ruth had just finished the 1927 season with a record of 60 home runs. The hard-nose Commissioner of major league baseball, who was hired by baseball because of the 1919 Black Sox scandal, had a rule that the winner of the World Series couldn’t barnstorm that year. What?? Babe didn’t care about rules or fines. He made more money than God (just a phrase, but almost true) with his countless endorsements, vaudeville acts and silent movie appearances. The Babe had a sports agent! Yes, Christy Walsh is the sport’s world’s first full-time agent...and his only client was the Babe (who needs anybody else). The Babe’s team was called “Bustin Babes” and Lou’s team was “Larrupin’ Lou’s. They toured many cities from the east coast to the west coast, playing local all-stars sprinkled in with some major leaguers. They attended and missed many town breakfasts, luncheons, and evening banquets and local award ceremonials they were invited to. It’s been said that they signed 5,000 baseballs during the tour! Every town in America wanted it.

I wasn’t aware of how badly the Babe was harassed and catcalled his during his career. His ethnicity was constantly questioned because of his big lips. People like Ty Cobb (a known racist) yelled the N-word at Babe from his dugout whenever the Yankees played Detroit. Babe is best described by Brother Gilbert from St. Mary’s in Baltimore (Babe’s childhood home), “If you ever wanted to see a bone out of joint or one of nature’s misfits, you should have seen him.” A sportswriter said, “His ears stuck out. Like handles on a loving cup. His hair stuck up. His nostrils spread wide. His lips were full as the rest of him would become. He was dark complected, having inherited his olive skin from his mother’s side of the family. In the rough tongue of the playground, he quickly acquired a nickname: Nigger Lips, or Nig, for short.” Wow, yet he succeeded big time. “George Ruth never shared his first impressions of St. Mary’s with his family. He never spoke about what it was like to go from being one of two surviving children in a family defined by a loss to be one of the many, what it was to go to bed that night wondering when or if he’d see that family again. He never said what it was like to sleep in ordered rows and dress in matching clothes, to share sinks and stalls in a communal washroom, to surrender to a system predicated on uniformity and routine.” Doesn’t it make sense that as the Babe got older, he became a nonconformist and a champion for orphaned boys?

In the late 1940s, as Babe was dying, the author spelled out the many opinions of various doctors. Even during his dying days, everybody wanted a piece of him. John Rattray, a Maryland chiropractor, thought the operation to stop his headaches was unnecessary. “Rattray was convinced he could have restored the Babe to full health and that he died not of cancer but as a result of nerves severed during surgery.” Bernarr MacFadden, a physical culture doctor (what!), had Ruth’s picture on the cover of his magazine three months after his death. He said, “If he would have put Babe on an exclusive grape diet he might have returned to the baseball field for many years of active service, notwithstanding his age.” Haha. “Ruth chose another course. He consented to an experimental form of chemotherapy and radiation then being tested on mice at New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital, where doctors reported that tumors treated with the drug melted away.” As Mel Allen, the great NY Yankee announcer would say, “how about that!”

Jane Leavy’s style of writing is soothing but also a little annoying. You will be going along with something interesting and realize that she is suddenly talking about something in the past right in between the current stuff she was just talking about. It’s done almost unobserved. Does that make any sense? Her books do seem to be highly certified though. In this book, she has 104 pages of author’s notes and sources to back up her claims. Overall, I enjoyed this book mostly because of the subject matter...Babe Ruth.

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Comment: From Jane’s Epilogue:

On August 12th,1948, the hospital announced his condition was critical. Two days later, doctors began issuing hourly bulletins. On the 15th, Paul Carey reached Julia at the nearby hotel where she was staying with Claire, “I think you’d better get over here.”

On Sunday, August 16th,1948, he managed to get out of bed and sit in a chair for twenty minutes, but his breathing was labored. His temperature continued to rise. He told Claire, “Don’t come back tomorrow, I won’t be here.”

Slugger rallies, pulmonary complications. Family at the bedside. Slugger sinking rapidly. Slugger failing.

“The slugger had never failed at anything and he certainly wasn’t going to fail at this. At 6:45 p.m., May Breen DeRose read him a telegram. As she got ready to leave, he lurched out of bed and started across the room. “Where are you going, Babe?” the doctor asked.”
“I’m going over the valley.”

“At 7:30 p.m., he received a final blessing (8/16/1948). Minutes later he fell into a deep coma. He was pronounced dead at 8:01 p.m.”

The autopsy showed that he didn’t die of cancer of the larynx. He died from a very rare and aggressive form of nasopharyngeal cancer that had spread to his neck, his lungs, and his liver.
His granddaughter Linda offered a different opinion. “I think baseball killed him; not cancer. He had no more worth in his head.”

Babe Ruth died at age 53, his clean-up hitter, Lou Gehrig at 37.

SAM HOUSTON & the ALAMO AVENGERS

2020-03-26T14:38:00.000-07:00

I’m always a little leary of historical fiction novels written by Fox News Network celebrities. Most of them are published in an uncannily fast time, such as novels written by Bill O’Reilly (ex?), usually co-written with Martin Dugard, published at least once a year. He is what I call a commercial writer. How much research can be done at that pace? But, lo and behold, Brian Kilmeade, Fox News Network TV star (Fox and Friends) and radio star (The Brian Kilmeade Show) seems to have written a book all by his lonesome. So you can imagine that I was apprehensive reading another Fox Network star. Guess what? Although not a fact-filled almanac, I was pleasantly surprised at the author’s historical accuracy. This is not my first rodeo reading about the Alamo and its afterlife. It was a smooth and seemingly factual rendition of one of America’s favorite stories. One thing though...I thought the author spent too much time on The Alamo and too little time on the Avenger part.

The birth of Texas was started by Stephen F. Austin’s father in 1821. “The fifty-nine-year-old Moses Austin obtained permission from the Mexican governor of Texas, who was eager to populate the sparsely occupied state, for three hundred American settlers to establish a colony there. Just weeks after settling the deal, he died of pneumonia.” On his deathbed, he pleaded for his son, Stephen, to take up his cause. He came. As the years went by, Austin went to see President /General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna about making Texas a separate state. Santa Anna would have nothing to do with that and had him arrested. “He felt lucky when, in late July 1835, he was finally permitted to head home to Texas. After his many months in Mexico City, he fully grasped the size of the enemy; he and his thirty thousand Texian (spelling at the time) settlers faced a fight with a nation of some eight million.”

The fight to take Texas from Mexico (go west, young man's first step? haha) would be a mammoth struggle, to say the least. And Santa Anna was a Napoleon look-alike to the nth degree. Here is a man who ordered one of his own Mexican states (Zacatecas) to give up their weapons and when they refused to give them up...he destroyed them. “The president permitted his soldiers to run wild, setting fires and pillaging. In fact, more than two thousand civilians in the town had been slaughtered, among them hundreds of women and children. Santa Anna’s message was clear: He would be merciless in putting down any who opposed him.” This is the man the brave Texians would have to wrest Texas from. Read the rest of this historical novel to find out how they did it! In it, you will meet President Andrew Jackson, Sam Houston, Jim Bowie and Davy Crockett (see my review of (7/18/2013).

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: Winning the war:

“Sam Houston, through some mix of luck, instinct, fortuitous timing, and good counsel-and bravery-of men around him, did something remarkable. He and his army of farmers and shopkeepers, men distracted by the plight of their families and friends, who had become homeless wanderers fleeing for their lives, faced off with a large professional army, one amply supplied with guns, artillery, and munitions. And won a stunning, one-sided victory.”

Book Reviews And Comments By Rick O

APPLESEED

SINATRA AND ME in the wee small hours

DEAD SILENCE

CHILDREN OF TIME

Comment: Bugs and insects have always interested Mr. Tchaikovsky, a British fantasy/ science fiction writer.

NICHOLAS NICKLEBY

THE SUN ALSO RISES

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: I know that The Sun Also Rises was Hemingway’s first novel, but all of his life pleasures are displayed in his novel. Some facts about Hemingway’s life:

He was an ambulance driver in the Italian front during WWI where he was wounded.

As a journalist, he covered The Spanish Civil War.

He was a foreign correspondent during WWII.

In 1954 he had two successive plane crashes in Africa that caused the start of his physical deterioration.

In 1961 Hemingway deliberately shot himself with his favorite double-barreled shotgun in Idaho. His wife initially told the press that it was accidental.

Many people believe that Hemmingway had CTE from all his concussions which would explain the suicide...a major reason for the NFL player's rash of suicides.

ADDRESS UNKNOWN

“I wanted to write about what the Nazis were doing and show the American public what happened to real, living people swept up in a warped ideology.”

Max’s first letter to Martin in Germany is filled with jealousy:

As the letters progress, Martin writes to Max:

Now that you know what this treasure of a novel is about, grab your own copy to see what happens. You can read the entire book sitting in your easy chair in a few hours!

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: I know it was a short review but if I went any further you wouldn’t have to read it. Haha. To my remembrance, I have only read three other epistolary novels, two I’ve reviewed, one I read before I started reviewing books:

World War Z by Max Brooks (see my review of 2/18/2011) is a novel full of interviews with the survivors of the zombie war. Clever idea, but I liked the movie better.

House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski (see my review of 2/1/2013). A novel that goes one step further and gets into different ergodic levels. Very, Very strange novel, it tests your compos mentis.

the LINCOLN HIGHWAY

- How long has this highway been around? asked Duchess.

- It was invented by Mr. Carl G. Fisher in 1912.

- Invented?

- Yes, said Billy. Invented.

The boy's California plan hit a snag when who walked in the barn to surprise them? None other than Duchess and Woolly, two escapees from the juvenile farm Emmitt just left! Emmett was dumbfounded:

- But How…?

- We hitched a ride with the warden. While he was signing you out, we slipped into the trunk of his car.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Do we need the life story of Dorina Medley? Haven’t we had our fill of Real Housewives …?

How about a memoir of a biographer? Eric Metaxas’s Fish out of Water will surely get you counting sheep.

How about Hunter Biden’s Beautiful Things? What’s beautiful about his cocaine habit or his Ukrainian corruption?

Now I’m sure Will Smith is a fine gentleman, but shouldn’t he age a bit more before writing his memoir, Will? Wouldn’t you rather read the memoirs of Morgan Freeman? If you do...good news. Kathleen Tracey wrote a biography in 2006 about Freeman, but no memoir.

And lastly...the ultimate sleeping pill, the memoirs of Indian actress Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Unfinished! Well, I’m finished.

Rambling Comments #7: Hoopla And Libby, Your Public Library Online

HOUR of the WITCH

“Mary Deerfield may be barren, yes, but is she unclean? I will not dissemble and suggest that I know. Only our Lord and Savior can say why she has never been with child.”-The testimony of physician Roger Pickering from the records of the divorce trial.

“I saw my mistress placing the Devil’s tines into the earth, burying them, but for what purpose I cannot say.”- The Testimony of Catherine Stileman from the records of the divorce trial.

“No. Never...I never saw my master hit or hurt Mary Deerfield. Not even once.”- The testimony of Catherine Stileman from the records of the divorce trial.

“Cruelty may be defined as violence without provocation and discipline that is excessive.”- The remarks of Magistrate Richard Wilder from the records of the divorce trial.

“I was shocked deeply by what I saw. I speak as a witness, not gossip.”-The testimony of Abigail Gathers from the records of the divorce trial.

RATING: 4 stars out of 5

The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music

The Guide

DAY ZERO

Ethel Rosenberg

PROJECT HAIL MARY

FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

the EFFORT

THE BELL JAR

TO SLEEP IN A SEA OF STARS

the SPLENDID and the VILE

the HANDMAID'S TALE

The Last Day

COUNTDOWN 1945

the BIG FELLA

SAM HOUSTON & the ALAMO AVENGERS